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On Congress' proposed protest against drug menace and "deteriorating" law and order situation in the state tomorrow at Jalandhar which will be led by party's vice President Rahul Gandhi, Ramdev said, "one should first ask him (Rahul) whether he took drugs in his life ever."

"If they make Rahul Gandhi the President of the party, the BJP workers shall become lazy as they will have to put in less hard work. But if they chose to make Priyanka as President then BJP people will have to do Yoga," he said.

By Press Trust of India: Yoga guru Ramdev on Sunday voiced dissatisfaction with the scale of efforts being made by the Centre to bring back the black money stashed abroad even as he said when lawmakers are "listening" in Parliament, one should not "speak" on the street.

"Because of lack of effective steps (by the government) on the black money issue, people and I are dissatisfied," Ramdev said.

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"I have spoken with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and BJP President Amit Shah on this issue. When people are listening in Parliament then we should not speak on the street. At least they are listening," Ramdev said.

The yoga guru, however, praised the central government for carrying out development projects and its zero tolerance policy on corruption.

RAMDEV ALL PRAISES FOR RAILWAY MINISTER SURESH PRABHU

"In Modi government, Railway minister Suresh Prabhu has been working in a big way. Transport minister Nitin Gadkari is also doing a commendable job on road projects. Because of zero tolerance policy of the government on corruption, steps are being taken against corrupt people," said Ramdev.

In December last year, Ramdev had spoken out against NDA government's initiatives to bring back blackmoney from foreign countries but hoped that it will soon act on the issue.

RAMDEV ON UDTA PUNJAB CENSORSHIP

On the controversy revolving over film 'Udta Punjab', Ramdev said he could not comment on the matter as he does not watch movies.

"But the use of drugs in the country is growing which should be stopped and efforts are required to be made by everybody in this regard," he said.

RAMDEV TAKES A DIG AT RAHUL GANDHI

On Congress' proposed protest against drug menace and "deteriorating" law and order situation in the state tomorrow at Jalandhar which will be led by party's vice President Rahul Gandhi, Ramdev said, "one should first ask him (Rahul) whether he took drugs in his life ever."

He also took a dig at Congress over plans to elevate Rahul Gandhi as party president.

"If they make Rahul Gandhi the President of the party, the BJP workers shall become lazy as they will have to put in less hard work. But if they chose to make Priyanka as President then BJP people will have to do Yoga," he said in a lighter vein.

On RJD chief Lalu Prasad lauding him last month for attaining "huge" success through "sheer hard work", Ramdev said, "some people cannot digest as Lalu ji has stopped abusing Ramdev."

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By India Today Web Desk: Saina Nehwal clinched her second Australian Open Superseries badminton title after defeating Chinese shuttler Sun Yu in a hard-fought final in Sydney on Sunday.

Saina, who had won the title in 2014, scripted a fightback after conceding the first game 11-21 to Sun. Saina looked far from her best in the first game as Sun took an early lead and continued dominating. Sun was too good for Saina as the Indian shuttler was made to sweat.

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After the thrashing in the first game, Saina lost composure. A frustrated Saina made quite a lot of unforced errors in the second game, which made it easy for her opponent.

However, Saina gathered some momentum and was involved in long rallies with Sun. She came up with a remarkable fightback in later stages of the second game and clinched it 21-14.

With almost nothing to choose between the two shuttlers, the final boiled down to the third game in which Saina and Sun were fighting to take the early lead.

Unlike the first two games, both Saina and Sun were involved in a close contest till the match point was sealed. At the end, a difference of two points costed Sun the title.

The Australian Open title comes as a big boost ahead of Saina's Rio Games campaign. The London Olympic bronze medallist has been facing a bit of title drought since her Indian Open Superseries win in 2015. Saina failed to defend the title at home earlier this year. Saina would have been happy to lay her hands on the trophy after her quarterfinal exits at All England and Indonesian Open in 2016.

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By PTI: New Delhi, Jun 12 (PTI) After securing exemption from service tax this fiscal onwards, capital markets regulator Sebi has asked the government to exempt it from this liability with retrospective effect from July, 2012.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) was asked way back in January 2013 by the Service Tax Department that "services tendered by Sebi" were liable to tax.

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Sebi, which regulates the entire gamut of capital markets including thousands of listed companies, brokers, mutual funds and several other entities, has however maintained that the services provided by it do not attract the provisions of service tax and has been seeking an exemption since then.

After several rounds of communications between the tax authorities and the regulator in this regard, the government decided earlier this year to exempt Sebi from the ambit of service tax with a prospective effect from April 1, 2016. An announcement in this regard was made by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in this years annual budget.

Not satisfied with the exemption with prospective effect, Sebi Chairman U K Sinha has written to Finance Minister, Revenue Secretary and Economic Affairs Secretary, seeking an exemption with effect from July 1, 2012, as per notes to the regulators draft annual statement of accounts for 2015-16.

This annual report would be presented before Sebis board this week for its approval.

Giving details of various contingent liabilities, Sebi said that it was informed first on January 11, 2013, by the Service Tax Department that services rendered by Sebi were not covered under negative list and was asked to discharge the service tax liability at the earliest "on the value of services provided by Sebi with effect from July 1, 2012".

Contesting the demand, Sebi wrote several letters to the Commissioner of Service Tax between July 2013 and June 2014, requesting closure of the proceedings.

In the meantime, Sebi also wrote to the Finance Ministry in December 2013 requesting inclusion of Sebi in the Negative List of entities exempt from service tax.

In March 2015, a summon was also issued to Sebi to provide details of various fees collected by it between July 2012 to December 2015, which were replied to by the regulator.

Sebi again provided a brief description of its fees and receipts in October 2015, in reply to yet another letter from the service tax department.

In the meantime, Sebi wrote again to the Finance Ministry in April 2015 seeking its inclusion in the Negative List. Subsequently, Sebi took up the matter several times with the government between October 2015 and January 2016, including through letters to the Finance Minister, Revenue Secretary and the Economic Affairs Secretary, requesting exemption from the service tax and its inclusion in the "Negative List".

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Finally, the exemption was given in the Budget for 2016-17 though with effect from April 1, 2016, prompting the Sebi Chairman to write again to the government. PTI BJ ABK

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During the meeting, moderate separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq praised contributions of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in the social field. He, however, conveyed him that ongoing situation in Jammu & Kashmir is worrisome.

By Naseer Ganai: Founder of the Art of Living Foundation Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on Saturday called on moderate separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq at the latter's residence.

"He had come for an interaction. He talked about his recent World Culture Festival organised by him. He talked about the sufi conference. He endorsed our views on now shelved proposed Abhinavagupta Yatra," Mirwaiz Umar Farooq told Mail Today.

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SEPARATISTS OPPOSED ABHINAVAGUPTA YATRA



Separatist leaders have opposed proposed Abhinavagupta Yatra terming the fresh Yatra as a deliberate attempt to disturb the peaceful environment in the state. While as the PDP-BJP government in Jammu and Kashmir has banned it, saying it will not allow any unconventional yatra having no precedence. The government had deployed Jammu and Kashmir police and paramilitary CRPF in strength in Budgam to thwart the proposed Yatra.

The plan of the yatra was laid by an RSS-affiliated, Delhi-based think tank Jammu Kashmir Study Centre in memory of Abhinavagupta in Beerwah Budgam.

HURRIYAT WELCOMES KASHMIRI PANDITS



"During the meeting, Mirwaiz praised contributions of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in the social field. He, however, conveyed him that ongoing situation in Jammu & Kashmir is worrisome. He talked about anti-Kashmir plans that the government is trying to implement in the state," the spokesman said.

Mirwaiz also told Sri Sri that Kashmiri Pandits were an integral part of Kashmiri society and that Hurriyat has always stood for their dignified return to the Valley.

ALSO READ: BJP blames separatists for opposing Abhinav Gupt yatra, says ban indicates narrow mindset



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By PTI: CPI(M)

Kolkata, June 11 (PTI) Notwithstanding the defeat that Left Front-Congress alliance faced in the West Bengal Assembly polls, CPI(M) state secretary Surya Kanta Mishra batted for carrying forward the alliance during a party meet today, even as he faced opposition from a section of party leadership.

The CPI(M) organised a two-day state committee meet to discuss reasons behind the poll debacle and the issue of forging an alliance with Congress in the state, violating the official party line.

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According to state committee members, Mishra during his speech said the condition of CPI(M) and Left Front would have been "much worse" had there been no alliance with Congress.

"Surya Kanta Mishra said that had the CPI(M) not gone in favour of the alliance in the state, we would have won lesser number of seats than the present tally," a senior state committee member said.

"He also said there is a need to carry forward the alliance in the state in order to resist the undemocratic attack on opposition parties of Bengal," the member said.

Out of the 85 state committee members, around 29 placed their views in todays meeting. Out of these 29, around eight opposed the decision of forging alliance with Congress by violating the official party line.

Those who opposed the alliance referred to the party line adopted in the last Party Congress and also the Politburo statement after the poll debacle which said the electoral tactics pursued by the CPI(M) in West Bengal was not in consonance with the Central Committee decision that there shall be no alliance or understanding with Congress.

The state committee members said the difference between the partys strategy in the state and the official party line is creating confusion and sending a wrong message to the people. PTI PNT NN NSD

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James Wan's horror sequel is taking on the big budget films by winning the hearts of the audience and critics alike.

By India Today Web Desk: The Conjuring 2 is turning it around for sequels, by raking in the moolah as well as impressing audiences/critics alike. Putting an end to several unsuccessful sequels, James Wan's follow up to his 2013 horror film has almost recovered its USD 40 million budget within the weekend by making close to USD 39 million over 3,343 theatres in the US.

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ALSO READ: The Conjuring 2 is double the ghost, double the scare, reviews Devarsi Ghosh.



The film has been appreciated for its minimal use of VFX, practical effects and how it feels like an old-school horror movie. And what is even more amazing is how it is leaving behind big-budget films like Warcraft and Now You See Me 2.

A still from The Conjuring 2.

The sequel sees Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga return in their roles of demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren as they investigate the paranormal at the Hodgsons. The film was made after the first film did a business of USD 318 million, made on a meagre budget of USD 20 million.









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The Premam actor is reprising the role originally played by Rakshith Shetty in the Tamil remake of Ulidavaru Kandanthe.

By India Today Web Desk: Nivin Pauly is shooting for the Tamil remake of Kannada film Ulidavaru Kandanthe.

ALSO READ: Lucia to Thithi,The resurgence of Kannada films in the global market

The Premam actor is reprising the role originally played by Rakshith Shetty, who also directed the film which won him international acclaim. The Tamil remake is titled Santa Maria, according reports. .

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Reports also suggest that cinematographer and actor Natraj, who is best known for the film Sathuranga Vettai, will reprise the role of Kishore as boat mechanic in the film.

The team is currently shooting in Tuticorin and actor Lakshmi Priya will be playing the Natraj's love interest.

This flick is being helmed by debutant Gautham Ramachandran and notably this film will mark Nivin's second venture in Tamil film industry after Neram.

Written on the basis of Rashomon effect, Ulidavaru Kandanthe is about a female journalist who is on a mission to uncover the truth behind an incident, and the story is told in five different perspectives.

The film was screened at the London Film Festival in 2014, where it was rated a 'dazzling epic'.

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By PTI: Washington, Jun 12 (PTI) A woman researcher at the University of Pittsburgh has accidentally infected herself with the dangerous Zika virus while working on an experiment in a lab.

The woman stuck herself with a needle on May 23 while conducting an experiment with the virus. Nine days later, she began experiencing symptoms consistent with the virus, including a fever.

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The symptoms later subsided and she returned to work last Monday. Two days later, the university received confirmation a test was positive for the mosquito-borne illness, CNN reported.

"On advice of the ACHD (Allegheny County Health Department), the researcher is complying with a request to wear long sleeves and pants and wear insect repellent for three weeks from the date of contact," a university statement said.

Pennsylvanias Allegheny County Health Department confirmed the woman no longer has symptoms and said she is doing well.

In the statement, it called the case unique because the researcher had not travelled to an area where the virus is circulating and she was not infected through sexual transmission.

Nearly all of the infected individuals in the United States were infected while travelling to destinations where the virus is circulating. There are 11 confirmed cases of the virus among individuals who had not travelled to those places but whose sexual partners had.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said health care workers who handle the virus are encouraged to "take precautions to prevent needle sticks or other exposures."

"We want to remind residents that, despite this rare incident, there is still no current risk of contracting Zika from mosquitoes in Allegheny County," Dr Karen Hacker, the health departments director, said in a statement. It was the fourth case of the virus in the Pennsylvania county.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden was quoted as saying that emergency response teams are ready to be deployed when local transmission of the virus has been confirmed in the continental United States or Hawaii.

Zika virus disease is caused by the Zika virus, which is spread to people primarily through the bite of an infected Aedes species mosquito.

The most common symptoms of Zika are fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis (red eyes). The illness is usually mild with symptoms lasting for several days to a week after being bitten by an infected mosquito.

However, Zika virus infection during pregnancy can cause a serious birth defect called microcephaly, as well as other severe fetal brain defects. PTI ASK AKJ ASK

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By PTI: Kolkata, June 11 (PTI) Keeping aside the official party line, the CPI(M) West Bengal committee today batted in favour of carrying forward the alliance with Congress in the state.

Asserting that their alliance will continue, CPI(M) state Secretary Surya Kanta Mishra and more than 50 members unitedly pitched in favour of the alliance with Congress during the two-day state committee meet.

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However, 13 state committee members opposed the decision of alliance with Congress.

Party General Secretary Sitaram Yechury and Politburo members Prakash Karat and M A Baby also participated in the meet.

Mishra, during a press made, it clear that CPI(M) will work with Congress in the days to come.

"We will work with all Left parties outside of the Left Front and also work together with democratic secular parties," Mishra said.

Evading a direct reply, Yechury said, "We have to unite all the Left and secular forces to fight against the undemocratic attack in Bengal."

CPI(M) for the first time since its humiliating electoral reverse organised the state committee meet to discuss the reasons behind the poll debacle and issue of forging an alliance with Congress in the state, by violating the official party line adopted in party congress.

During the closed door meet, Mishra had said the condition of CPI(M) and Left Front would have been much worse had there been no alliance with the Congress.

He said had the CPI(M) not gone in favour of alliance in the state, they would have won less number of seats than the present tally. MORE PTI PNT NIK SUS AAR

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah will together inaugurate the meeting of executives.

PM Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah will together inaugurate the meeting of executives

By India Today Web Desk: With an eye on Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections 2017, the BJP National Executive meet has begun in Allahabad today. The two-day meet will attended by PM Narendra Modi and party president President Amit Shah.

Senior members of the Union Cabinet, chief ministers of BJP-ruled states and members of Parliament will also take part in the meet.



Here are 10 things to know about it

The party will discuss the achievements of the Modi government and the government's welfare initiatives like 'Jan Dhan' accounts, farm insurance, cheap medical stores, LPG for poor households and better governance. The Allahabad meet will see a sharp attack on the SP government for poor governance, including deteriorating law and order, in UP. This is for the first time BJP is holding its National Executive in Allahabad. While there are going to be 3 resolutions , Political, Economical and one related to foreign affairs, all eyes will be on the political session which will deal with elections in 5 states including Uttar Pradesh. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah will together inaugurate the meeting of executives. Modi will address the meeting's concluding session on Monday. Later, he will also address a public rally at the Parade Ground. Elaborate security arrangements are in place in the city in view of BJP's two-day national executive meeting. The elite Special Protection Group (SPG), responsible for the Prime Minister's security, arrived in Allahabad on Thursday and has been busy reviewing security arrangements at the Kayastha Pathshala sports ground where the meeting will be held under a gigantic air-conditioned marquee, and the Parade Ground near the holy Sangam where a public rally will be held on Monday. Speculations are rife on whether BJP will decide on a CM candidate for the polls after the meeting. Ahead of BJP's national executive meeting, rival parties have announced plans for protests in the city though AAP has been denied permission for it, prompting it to move high court. Congress said it will observe 12 June, the day of commencement of the Prime Minister's visit, as 'Pol Khol Diwas' (Day of Expose) while its youth wing has announced a city bandh on Sunday.

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Sonali Shetty, who had brought few street children along with her to Shiv Sagar restaurant to celebrate her husband's birthday, has been protesting outside the restaurant after the owner of the eatery misbehaved with the kids.

By India Today Web Desk: In another shocking incident of discrimination, an upscale restaurant in Delhi allegedly denied entry to unprivileged children.

Sonali Shetty, who had brought few street children along with her to the Shiv Sagar restaurant located in CP to celebrate her husband's birthday, has been protesting outside the restaurant after the owner of the eatery misbehaved with the kids.

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"The owner discriminated with the kids and refused service citing that kids aren't well dressed and look dirty," said Shetty.



The owner discriminated with kids & refused service citing that kids aren't well dressed & look dirty: Sonali Shetty pic.twitter.com/qbwaNgb5ii ANI (@ANI_news) June 11, 2016

Roma Malhotra, PR of Shiv Sagar restaurant told ANI, " The lady had brought few kids along with her to the restaurant but kids started to create lot of 'tamasha' inside."



"As a restaurateur we have rights reserved to deny service if our guest are getting disturbed. Don't think we did anything wrong," Malhotra added.



AAP ORDERS INQUIRY

Reacting to the incident, Deputy CM Manish Sisodia has ordered an inquiry and asked the District Magistrate to report within next 24 hours.

This is typical Colonial mindset. Can't be tolerated. Have ordered DM New Delhi to enquire & report within 24 hours. https://t.co/ifixugxPRD Manish Sisodia (@msisodia) June 12, 2016

If allegations found true,we'll cancel restaurant's license,action will be taken undr appropriate sections-M Sisodia pic.twitter.com/tMaBALX9f3 ANI (@ANI_news) June 12, 2016

Earlier last year, a posh restaurant in an upscale mall in south Delhi had denied entry to a disability rights activist, Nipun Malhotra, allegedly saying that it doesn't "allow disabled people inside, as a policy".

The same restaurant Keya in DLF Promenade mall had also denied entry to a senior citizen couple in May last year.

Also Read:

Disabled activist denied entry to Delhi restaurant, inquiry ordered

No country for the old? Keya denied entry to senior citizens too









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These contrary trends of expanding trade and persistent uncertainty continued this week, as indicated by reports describing different aspects of Iranian oil exports to Asian markets. In the first place, Retuers reported on Thursday that Irans largest Asian oil buyer, South Korea was on track to average 200,000 barrels per day of imports of ultralight oil condensates. This would represent a roughly 50 percent increase over the previous month, and four times the amount of condensates that South Korea was taking from Iran in January, when the sanctions were first lifted. Across all types of Iranian oil, South Korean imports have doubled during this same period.

The Reuters report also emphasizes that this trend puts Iran directly at odds with some of its competitors in the Middle East, particularly Qatar, for which condensate exports have declined 19 percent since April. This loss is attributable to the fact that Iran is rapidly increasing output and selling at a low price in a bid to reclaim market share that was lost during years of punishing sanctions. Recently, Iranian condensate sold for as much as five dollars per barrel less than its Qatari counterpart. The difference has now reportedly shrunk to two or three dollars, but this will certainly not help Qatar to recovery what it has lost, barring intervention from other competitors or certain changes in the market.

Of course, such interventions and changes are a realistic possibility, especially considering that some of Irans leading rivals are well aware of the countrys plans for its oil economy, and are committed to pushing back against them. Last month, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries failed to arrive at an agreement to collectively freeze production and stabilize prices, because Saudi Arabia refused to pursue the plan unless Iran agreed to participate.

Previously, Iran had indicated that it would not consider itself subject to collective market controls until it had recovered its own oil output to pre-sanctions levels. By some accounts, this benchmark has been achieved, although certain analysts expect that the current four million barrel per day output will not be sustainable, as it relies on previous surplus that has been held in storage. But whatever the reason, Iran has shown no sign of slowing down its efforts to expand output and chip away at its competitors shares of the market.

This has contributed to a situation in which Iran and Saudi Arabia have sometimes been described as being engaged in economic warfare. In a clear reversal of the previous efforts to freeze output and facilitate growth in recently-depressed prices, the Saudis recently took the step of cutting prices at a time when market conditions would have allowed for them to be raised instead. Such actions suggest a clear intention to constrain Irans growth.

On a global scale, that objective may continue to be aided by investors wariness regarding the Iranian market. Earlier this week, it was reported that the owners of some European and Asian tankers had entered into a new insurance agreement that could help to carry Iranian oil to foreign markets. But the need for this agreement was a reflection of the overall lack of insurers for such endeavors, which is in turn a response primarily to banking restrictions and persistent terror and human rights related sanctions maintained on Iran by the US.

It is unclear what effect the private agreement among oil carriers will have on this situation. While it may allow some Iranian oil to reach new foreign markets, its success is not yet a foregone conclusion and in any event there is a great deal of ground for such carriers to make up. On Thursday, two days after Reuters reported upon the insurance agreements, the same news agency reported that the absence of insurers had effectively prevented any Iranian exports from reaching markets including Japan in the months since implementation of the JCPOA.

The report points out that Japans official customs-cleared trade data showed it last imported Iranian [liquefied petroleum gas] in February 2012, before tough Western sanctions on tanker coverage for Iran came into effect. Although the head of Irans Association of Petrochemical Industry Corporations claims that the issues regarding insurance and the absence of LPG carriers have been almost resolved, the industry has so far been unable to recover any of the 861,000 tonnes of LPG exports that had been delivered from Iran to Japan in 2010, even though Iranian oil authorities insist that their overall oil output returned to pre-sanctions levels within a period of about four months.

Naturally, the issues that have restrained Irans return to Asian markets have also impacted its return to Europe. And despite the newfound, but limited availability of supertankers to transport Iranian oil, these issues show no sign of being resolved in the near future. A report that appeared in Bloomberg on Thursday noted that while many European investors continue to explore their prospects for purchasing oil from Iran or otherwise participating in the would-be opening of that economy, they also remain dissatisfied with the guidance that they have received from the US regarding what business interactions are permitted and what enforcement measures might still be visited upon people who partner with Iranian institutions.

Because of these persistent uncertainties, Bloomberg reports that there are apparently no banks that will support investments even from companies like Airbus, which has already entered into an agreement to sell 118 commercial jets to Iran, at a price of 27 billion dollars. This news comes in spite of the fact that the Obama administration has been criticized by congressmen and other opponents of the White Houses Iran policy for allegedly telling foreign businesses that investment in Iran is not only permitted but encouraged. These criticisms are apparently at odds with Bloombergs claim that the US has been seen as rebuffing EU efforts to shield banks from sanctions. On the other hand, it may be specifically because of congressional scrutiny of the White Houses communications that foreign entities remain unclear about where the US will stand over the long run.

If that is the case, the situation is presumably exacerbated by continued signs of animosity between Iran and the US as a whole. In fact, some of those conflicts have financial aspects, as is the case with last months US Supreme Court decision upholding a lower court decision that allowed victims of Iran-backed terrorism to claim compensation from frozen Iranian assets. Tehran plans to sue the US over this decision in the International Court of Justice, and the National Interest explained on Thursday that such legal action is made possible by the fact that Iran and the US remain subject to a 1955 bilateral Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights, despite the fact that they have not had diplomatic relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

This bizarre situation no doubt contributes to confusion about the future of legal action and financial penalties between the two countries, thereby making European investors likely to remain uncertain about the long-term status of restrictions on Iran until such time as all relevant disputes are settled.
Itongadol.- Jewish holiday of Shavuot is celebrated around Israel Saturday and Sunday; Celebrating the first wheat harvest and the reciveving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, holiday is filled with festivals around the country the whole family can enjoy.

Israelis and Jews around the world are celebrating the harvest festival of Shavuot on Saturday Sunday. In Israel. the agricultural holiday is primarily celebrated on kibbutzim and moshavim..

Shavuot, coming exactly seven weeks after Passover, is the holiday which celebrates the day when the Jews received the Torah on Mt. Sinai, thereby becoming a unified nation. It is also celebrated as the holiday when the first wheat harvest is carried out. Dairy products such as cheesecake, cheese blintzes, sambusak, siete cielos cake, and other dairy foods are traditionally eaten on the holiday.

Kibbutz Dafna began the festivites with a tractor parade while on Kibbutz Amir the pensioners opened the festival a "scooter dance" followed by dancing to music by the Israeli band Givatron.

Dan Rudolph, one of the older members of Kibbutz Amir, said that "the celebrations (at Kibbutz Amir) were always modest. At the beginning, everything was connected to agriculture, but the drought forced us to dismantle several parts of the kibbutz such as the fish ponds and our alfalfa fields."

"However," Rudolph continued, "this holiday and all of us gathering here together is still very important. You can see how everyone is coming and taking part in the celebrations. That\s what\s great about the kibbutz."

The Gaza border kibbutzim also celebrated the holiday on Saturday. Tali Achitov from Kibbutz Nirim said that "Shavuot is a big and important event on our kibbutz, and lots of people come to our events from all over the country. Our celebrations include everything, and we put a special significance on our first wheat harvest. The adults of the kibbutz go out into the fields with sickles and scythes to cut and harvest the wheat. Afterwards, we have a huge dairy meal accompanied by dancing."

Even the urbanites celebrate the holiday. In the Nesher suburb of Haifa hundreds participated in a first harvest festival which included a short presentation by children from the local school; a farmers market selling cheeses, wine, and olive oil; workshops on basket weaving and wool processing, drum circles, a petting zoo, and donkey rides.

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The holiday continues on Sunday with celebrations around Israel, including a massive celebration at the airfield next to Kfar Yehoshua in the Jezreel valley which begins at 5:30pm
Over the past few years, artists Jay Kreimer and Wendy Weiss have spent much of their time living and working in India as long-term residents rather than tourists.

Now back in Lincoln, the duo have created an immersive installation at the Lux Center for the Arts in response largely to their 2014-15 experience in India, titled They Gave Us Directions.

Life takes place in the street in India with music, food and celebrations unfolding in public spaces in surprising and effective ways, the couple wrote in their artists statement. As long term residents, we were in search of one thing, as we asked for directions, we found another thing. This exhibition provides a sense of the competing energies on the street that vie for attention.

Indeed it does.

Anchoring the installation in the gallerys center is a vendors cart topped with horned loud speakers that play music from Indias street wedding bands, largely unheard music that Kreimer traveled to document. Attached to the cart is a stringed instrument created by sound artist/inventor Kreimer that visitors can strum, its eight-string sound overtaking the recorded music.

Surrounding the cart, which sets the tone for the kaleidoscopic installation are photographs, paintings, vinyl cuts, altered comic strips and a pair of wooden sculptures on wheels.

On the gallerys north wall is a suite of 24 photographs arranged in a grid that literally give the show its title:

When we took excursions outside of Baroda, our favorite driver, Shambu, had a gift for being lost, they wrote. He frequently stopped to ask for directions. Jay, always ready with his camera, captured the gesticulations of the providers of the next direction.

Seen together, the vendors, motorcyclists and street people captured by Kreimer talking, often with their hands in motion create a vibrant sense of the streets of a city teeming with life.

Across the gallery is another set of photos that are as static as the They Gave Us Directions pictures are alive. But the images of Tattered Walls are illuminating and captivating in the own right with abstract patterns and photo collages created by the ripping up of posters.

On the gallerys east wall is a grouping of street paintings the duo commissioned. Done in sets of three, there are pieces that depict the shoulder of a womans brightly colored sari and jewelry titled Flowers and Jewels, and trios descriptively titled Bat, Floating Head and Demons.

Opposite those pieces are a trio of Scrambled Mandrake comics that are revisionist takes on the comics and some of the vinyl cuts created by Weiss and pasted to the galleries walls and pillars.

The vinyl cuts by Wendy come from a variety of sources, they wrote.  Cows are an omnipresent part of life in India. They roam the street. They provide a barrier from the oncoming traffic. No driver will hit a cow, a human is fair game.

The allure of Indias great architectural monuments is acknowledged in the two figures standing before the Jali windows; while Indias supremacy of ocean trade is recognized in the reproduction of textiles found in Cairo, Egypt, in the form of tent hangings and other textile fragments organized on the pillars and the south and east wall.

Completing the exhibition are a Pink Elephant and Camel, a pair of large movable wooden sculptures on wheels that harken to the wooden toys found in India and, appropriately, given Weisss status as a widely recognized textile artist, a loom loaded with thread.

Seen -- and heard -- as a whole, the installation is invitingly chaotic and kind of overwhelming. Viewed piece by piece, the installation is vividly illustrative of the duos experiences in India, interpreted through well-crafted works in multiple mediums.

That larger/smaller contrast, the richness of India and the artists personal response to it make They Gave Us Directions an absorbing experience and one of the best shows in Lincoln so far this year.
Wayne R. Lindholm, age 90, of Prior Lake, Minn., formerly of Lincoln, went to be with his Lord on 6/5/2016. He was born November 11, 1925, in Oshkosh, to Conrad Lindholm and Marjorie Quinn Lindholm. He was a graduate of Polk High School, class of 1943. After graduating, he worked as a hired farm man for two years, then began farming for the next 10 years of his life.

He married Doris Recknor November 17, 1946. They moved to Lincoln in 1956 where he worked as a door to door bread delivery salesman. He then became a foreman of concrete delivery trucks for large buildings at the University of Nebraska and buildings built in and around Lincoln. After that, he worked as an apprentice electrician for the next 10 years until becoming a master electrician in 1970. He started his own business in 1972, Lindholm Electric. He retired in 1983.

Wayne was a trustee for many years for the Evangelical Free Church. He did many repairs in the church as well as helped out where and when needed. He helped many families and businesses with repairs and electrical work when they could not afford services. Wayne was a very caring and generous man.

He is survived by his loving wife of 69 years, Doris (Recknor); sons, DeVern (Sharon) Lindholm, Russell (Pam) Lindholm; grandchildren, Amy Lindholm, Greg (Sigrid) Lindholm, Abby (Trent) Meadows, Jeff (Mollie) Lindholm; great-grandchildren, Svea Lindholm, Sydney Meadows, Hildegarde Lindholm; sister, Cella (Mac) McCallum; many other relatives and friends.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be sent to Lincoln Berean Church, c/o Senior Life Class Missionary Fund, 6400 S. 70th St., Lincoln, NE 68516.
Armon Dixon, one of two inmates who escaped a Lincoln prison on Friday morning, surfaced Saturday afternoon, popping up from a manhole cover at the roundabout of 49th and Francis streets.

Law enforcement took Dixon into custody without incident, capping an intensified search that had dogs and robots scouring the city's drainage system leading from Dead Man's Run.

Kailyn Duell, 15, watched from her house Saturday afternoon as officers pulled Dixon, shirtless on a 97-degree day, from the manhole. Nearby, people rode their bikes and walked their dogs.

Within moments, Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister provided confirmation at a news conference across town that Dixon was captured at 2:10 p.m.

Timothy Clausen, 52, who escaped with Dixon from the Lincoln Correctional Center on Friday, remained at large on Sunday morning. A Nebraska State Patrol spokeswoman said the search for Clausen is focused on Omaha.

"We are confident that Timothy Clausen will be apprehended," Bliemeister said. He asked for the public's help and said all leads will be pursued.

The extensive search for Dixon included not only Lincoln Police, the Nebraska State Patrol, Lancaster County Sheriff's Office, Metro Fugitive Task Force and University of Nebraska-Lincoln Police Department but also employees of the city's Public Works Department familiar with the drainage system and Parks and Recreation Department staff members carrying "Emergency Action Plan" binders.

The pursuit of Dixon began after a late morning assault that sent two women to the hospital.

Dixon, 37, is suspected in the physical assault reported at 11:12 a.m. at an apartment complex on the 5900 block of Norfolk Drive, along Dead Man's Run near Lincoln Lutheran High School.

As police investigated the assault, witnesses around 11:30 reported a man running into a culvert several blocks to the northwest, along Dead Man's Run between 48th and 49th streets.

For the next few hours, police set up a perimeter in the area, blocking intersections but also putting eyes on storm drains and manhole covers. Traffic on 48th Street slowed to a crawl. The city pulled the plug on swimming at University Place Park pool while the search went on.

Eventually a robot was sent into the culvert, with Dixon ultimately emerging from a manhole located about two blocks south of the Dead Man's Run channel.

The investigation into the escape continues, but speaking at Saturday's news conference, Prisons Director Scott Frakes said his department is working closely with law enforcement.

Frakes said the inmates escaped from the prison near Pioneers Park in a truck, but he declined to provide further details.

Bliemeister said police don't know where Dixon and Clausen spent the night or when they separated but hope to learn more after talking to Dixon.

Clausen is black, 5-foot-8, 160 pounds with brown eyes. From Omaha, 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.

Dixon 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.

A State Patrol spokeswoman said Dixon was taken to an undisclosed secure location as the investigation continued.

Of the assault victims, a woman in her 60s was admitted for observation at a local hospital, the Patrol said. A 20-year-old female victim was treated and released.

Fear that the escapees might commit a random attack only heightened in the time since Dixon and Clausen crashed a stolen pickup truck into a parked car at 18th and F streets following a brief pursuit on Friday morning.

The search on Friday night was focused on a perimeter near the initial crash site.

Jan Crosby, who lives in the Plaza V Apartments at 705 S. 18th St., said a team of law enforcement officers searched her apartment Friday night around 8:30. She was out walking in her neighborhood Saturday morning armed with a stun gun.

"We're all worried," Crosby said of her neighbors. "We're all on high alert."

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.

With Clausen still at large, police said people who see any evidence their homes may have been entered should call 911.
Call it a class project with potential real-world implications.

As city leaders mull what could be a $50 million proposal to move the downtown library to the Pershing Center block, architecture students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln are setting the pace, dreaming what the site on Centennial Mall could become.

Like a design from Genevra Obregon, who studied other libraries in the Midwest, particularly one in Sioux City, Iowa, and created a design for a three-story building that would pair a downtown library with two partners -- a grocery store at street level and a gym on a floating third floor -- to reflect urban density inside and out.

Sandwiched in between are library spaces enclosed in glass in a sideways T design that touches all three floors.

Being in downtown Lincoln, it was important to me to create an urban environment, said Obregon, who graduated in May and now works in Bend, Oregon. Im really inspired by the user and how they want to use it, so I can bring something to them they can really make their own.

Another design by graduate student Luke Abkes reflects a personal belief that the library experience should be centered on searching for what you need.

The library is a place people dont just go once, said Abkes, who graduated from Millard North High School and Wayne State College. People know where to go, but they dont know where anything is.

Long ramps connecting floors and program modules of the library provide a sense of exploration within the building, while a unique facade allows natural light to flood it.

A dozen or so other designs, models and reports compiled by the Design Research Studio class are on display on the second floor of the Bennett Martin Library branch at 14th and N streets through Tuesday.

Redevelopment of the Pershing Center block has been in the news since the opening of the Pinnacle Bank Arena led to the shuttering of Pershing in August 2014.

At the same time, the city is looking for a new central library. It issued a request for proposals from consultants interested in working on the project this week, although the site isn't at all tied to Pershing at this point.

Professor Steven Hardy, who said he has been interested in engaging his students in a library design project since 2013, coordinated meetings between them and librarians, members of the city's library board and other stakeholders -- the way working architects do.

We wanted a hybrid experience between what you can do inside the discipline and what you can do with a real project, Hardy said. Thats something we try to do with our research studio.

Students also studied 120 contemporary libraries around the world to learn how the spaces in those buildings serve patrons and wrote comparative studies as part of their research.

Hardy said although there are constraints on the Pershing site -- the existing building, for one, and height limits and other Centennial Mall guidelines -- most students reached the conclusion that a mixed-use building would best serve the library and potential users downtown.

The students expanded on what the relationships were between the library services and looked for synergy with what these new opportunities and services might provide, he said.
"They saved this from getting much worse than it could have," one resident said of the area farmers, before thanking the one who disced her land. "He literally saved our house."
Hundreds gathered Sunday evening at the Nebraska State Capitol for a vigil following Sunday's mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub.

Councilman Carl Eskridge was among the speakers at the event, where participants were encouraged to stand in solidarity with those affected by the shootings at Pulse Orlando.
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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 husband's 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 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 we did and what we said in this scoundrel year. For now, we each have our conscience to attend to.
CHICAGO -- Imagine that: Donald Trump and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor now agree on the role of heritage in a judge's ability to be impartial. They both say it's a non-issue.

After a surprising -- and reassuring -- display of bipartisan disgust at Trump's recent comments that Indiana-born federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel is biased because his parents are Mexican immigrants, Trump had to backpedal. He released a statement that said his words had been "misconstrued," adding: "I do not feel that one's heritage makes [judges] incapable of being impartial."

Even many of Trump's supporters had denounced him. Speaker Paul Ryan called the candidate's original comments about Curiel "the textbook definition of a racist comment." Newt Gingrich noted, accurately, "If a liberal were to attack Justice Clarence Thomas on the grounds that he's black, we would all go crazy."

Speaking of crazy, there was plenty of that too.

President George W. Bush's disgraced Attorney General Alberto Gonzales came out of the woodwork to support Trump. In a Washington Post opinion piece that underscored several salient points why Curiel is beyond reproach -- namely that while Curiel may be a member of a group called the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, it is not in any way affiliated with the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy organization -- Gonzales sought to explain Trump's unease.

"If ... Trump is acting from a sincere motivation to protect his constitutional right to a fair trial, his willingness to exercise his rights as an American citizen and raising the issue even in the face of severe criticism is surely also something for voters to consider," he wrote, sending judiciary experts across the country into a tizzy.

During a recent telephone news conference, Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said, "Suggesting that a judge is disqualified from presiding over a matter because of his or her racial or ethnic heritage could ultimately bring our judiciary system to a halt. Judges are randomly assigned to cases in their district, which is a system that has served us throughout our entire history. And, in fact, 30 years ago this year, the Supreme Court ruled, in Batson vs. Kentucky, that it is unconstitutional for anyone to peremptorily challenge a juror based on race or ethnicity, due to the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment."

Yet despite the many statements about how ridiculous Trump's remarks about Curiel were, at midweek his apologists were still sticking their feet in their mouths as they attempted to stay in the presumed Republican presidential nominee's good graces.

New York state Rep. Lee Zeldin, a Republican, went on CNN and declared, "You can easily argue that the president of the United States is a racist with his policies and his rhetoric."

And then, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, went for the jugular. He told reporters in his home state, "I think that you don't have any more trouble with what Trump said than when Sotomayor said that -- when she was found saying in speeches that, quote, 'A wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male.' I don't hear any criticism of that sort of comment by a justice of the Supreme Court."

Grassley is wrong on two counts.

First, everyone and their mother heard the criticism over that comment during Sotomayor's confirmation hearings -- it, apparently, still haunts her to this day.

Second, Sotomayor herself has, on many occasions, taken pains to clarify her stance on race and ethnicity as a judicial lens, most notably during the second day of her confirmation hearings.

"I want to state upfront, unequivocally and without doubt: I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in sound judging," she told senators. "I do believe every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge, regardless of their background or life experience. ... The words I chose, taking the rhetorical flourish, it was a bad idea. I do understand that there are some who have read this differently, and I understand why they might have concern."

So there it is: Sotomayor and Trump agree that a judge's heritage shouldn't imply an inability to be impartial. And for anyone to suggest that it should is, as even Trump's supporters have made clear, racist.

Worse, as other Republicans have noted about this latest Trump offense, it's un-American.
LONDON -- Of the fighting faiths that flourished during the ideologically drunk 20th century, anti-Semitism has been uniquely durable. It survives by mutating, even migrating across the political spectrum from the right to the left. Although most frequently found in European semi-fascist parties, anti-Semitism is growing in the fetid Petri dish of American academia, and is staining Britain's Labour Party.

In 2014, before Naseem "Naz" Shah became a Labour member of parliament, she shared a graphic on her Facebook page suggesting that all Israelis should be "relocated" to the United States. She seemed to endorse the idea that the "transportation cost" would be less than "three years of defense spending." When this was recently publicized, "Red Ken" Livingstone, former Labour mayor of London, offered on the BBC what he considered a defense of her as not anti-Semitic because "a real anti-Semite doesn't just hate the Jews in Israel." Besides, Livingstone said, Hitler was a Zionist (for supposedly considering sending Europe's Jews to Palestine) "before he went mad." As mayor, Livingstone praised as a "progressive voice" an Egyptian cleric who called the Holocaust "divine punishment."

Labour's leader, Jeremy Corbyn, says he wants to cleanse Labour of such thinking. But Corbyn hopes to host at the House of Commons a Palestinian sheikh who calls Jews "bacteria" and "monkeys" and has been accused of repeating the "blood libel" that Jews make matzo using the blood of gentile children.

Leftist anti-Semites invariably say they hate not Jews but Zionism, and hence not a people but a nation. Israel was, however, created as a haven for an endangered people. Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, refutes the canard that "hating Israel is not the same as hating Jews" by saying:

Criticism of Israel is not necessarily anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist. When Sacks asks his audiences if Britain's government can be criticized, everyone says yes. But when they are asked, "Do you believe Britain should not exist?," no one says yes. Then Sacks tells his audiences: "Now you know the difference."

"It is very easy to hate," says Sacks. "It is very difficult to justify hate." Anti-Semitism's permutations adapt it to changing needs for justification. In the Middle Ages, he says, Jews were hated for their religion. In the 19th and 20th centuries, they were hated for their race. Now they are hated for their nation. "The new anti-Semitism can always say it is not the old anti-Semitism."

But it is. It remains, Sacks says, "essentially eliminationist." It disguises its genocidal viciousness, insisting that it seeks the destruction not of a people but only of the state formed as a haven for this people that has had a uniquely hazardous history. The international "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" movement, supported by many American academics, aims not just to pressure Israel to change policies, as South Africa was pressured to abandon apartheid, but rather to de-legitimize Israel's existence as a nation.

Sacks says that when bad things happen to a healthy society, it asks: What did we do wrong? A fraying, insecure society asks: Who did this to us? Sacks notes that although Jews were never more than 2 percent of Germany's population, this did not protect them from becoming the explanation for Germany's discontents.

In a conversation with a supposedly "moderate" British Muslim leader, Sacks asked, "Does Israel have a right to exist within any borders whatever?" The leader replied: "Your own prophets said that because of your sins you have forfeited your right to your land." To which Sacks responded mildly: "But that was 2,700 years ago and surely the Jews have served their sentence."

After World War II, Western nations strove to develop what Sacks calls "a cultural immune system" against anti-Semitism with Holocaust education and other measures. The immune system is not weakening in Britain, other than among Muslim immigrants and leftists eager to meld their radicalism with radical Islam.

Labour's leader before Corbyn, Edward Miliband, who led the party in the 2015 general election, is Jewish, as was the Conservative Party's greatest 19th-century leader (Benjamin Disraeli). Former Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who was educated at Eton, noted, perhaps regretfully, certainly indelicately, that Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet included more "old Estonians than old Etonians." This was not anti-Semitism, just a jest too fine to forgo.

Seven decades after the Holocaust, some European nations have, remarkably, anti-Semitism without Jews and Christian anti-Semitism without Christianity. Britain just has a few leftists eager to mend their threadbare socialism with something borrowed from National Socialism.
An enduring mystery in Nebraska is how special interest groups influence public policy without the knowledge of the public or even the legislature. Here are two case studies in how this occurs.

In 2004, the Nebraska Supreme Court created an advisory committee called the Commission on Children in the Courts, whose mandate is to study and recommend appropriate steps for the judicial system to undertake to insure that the courts are as responsive as possible for children who interact with, or are directly affected by the courts.

The Commission has 45 members. Most are government officials but about a dozen are not.

Five of the non-governmental members represent special interest groups that have permanent appointments. No other groups are represented on the Commission. No explanation has ever been given for how these groups were selected, who decided they should be included or even what they bring to the table.

Four of the five special interest groups receive substantial financial support from the Sherwood Foundation, which is run by Susie Buffett, the daughter of Omaha billionaire Warren Buffett. In addition, the Commission itself has accepted more than $440,000 in the last four years from the Sherwood Foundation.

These issues are made worse by the Commissions secrecy. Until recently, the Commissions website said its meetings were closed to the general public and restricted to commission members only. This was curious because the Nebraska Open Meetings Act says the formation of public policy is public business and may not be conducted in secret. Every meeting of a public body shall be open to the public in order that citizens may exercise their democratic privilege of attending and speaking at meetings of public bodies. This language was quietly removed last December after it was criticized in a newspaper op-ed.

About the same time the Commission removed this language, it stopped posting meeting minutes on its website even though it had done so for the previous ten years. The latest minutes currently available on the website are from 2014.

These issues arent limited to the Commission. The Office of Judicial Branch Education (JBE) coordinates continuing education for judges. In response to persistent complaints about how judges decide child custody cases, members of the Unicameral asked JBE in 2012 to sponsor additional training on this topic. The content of this training was criticized, so JBE was asked in early 2014 to repeat the training with Prof. Linda Nielsen, who is a national expert and has trained judges in other states.

JBE staff duly invited Prof. Nielsen to conduct the training but then shortly afterwards rescinded the invitation under the pretext of budgetary limitations. JBE staff then immediately hired Prof. Robert Emery to do the training instead of Prof. Nielsen. Who made that decision and why are unknown.

There are some interesting contrasts between Prof. Nielsen and Prof. Emery. Prof. Nielsen has experience training judges while Emery apparently does not. Prof. Nielsen supports the majority view among child development experts that shared parenting provides the best outcomes for children in most cases while Emery is in the small minority who oppose it. Perhaps most interesting, Emery is close to the Buffett family.

At a recent speaking engagement, Emery said, I know [Warren Buffetts] sister pretty well. Indeed he does. The website for Emerys academic center at the University of Virginia includes a prominent reference to Buffett Fellowships, which are funded by Mr. Buffetts sister, who describes herself as a political activist. According to its IRS filings, Ms. Buffetts foundation has given Emerys center more than $325,000 since 2003.

After the JBE staff action came to light, JBE was asked for the training materials that were used and information about how the presenter was selected. JBE refused to disclose this information and was sued for violating the Nebraska public records law. The trial judge ruled against JBE and ordered it to disclose all records it was withholding except one email. Rather than comply, JBE staff appealed.

These issues raise the question of whether the Nebraska judicial branch has secretly outsourced public policy to billionaires. This concern was heightened last September when a photo was published on the Supreme Court website of Chief Justice Michael Heavican and Susie Buffett. The photo included a quote from Susie Buffett that said, Chief Justice Heavican, in particular, has embraced wholesale reforms that are focused on positive youth outcomes. Already we have seen great improvements. This photo was quietly removed from the website less than 24 hours after questions were raised about the Courts relationship with Susie Buffett.
Recently, I had the good fortune of hearing Shane Claiborne, speak about the abolition of the death penalty ("Activity says death penalty is incompatible with faith and humanity," June 11). Mr. Claiborne has just released his most recent book, "Executing Grace: How the Death Penalty Killed Jesus and Why Its Killing Us." While his presentation was excellent, it was a question posed after, that caught my attention. The question went something like this, If we as citizens of Nebraska vote to abolish the death penalty, where does that leave us?

That question haunted me as I drove home. If we retain LB 268 and uphold repeal of the death penalty in November, it seems to me that we will have invited a little more of heaven to earth. Dont I pray, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven? Do I believe there is the death penalty in heaven? No, it seems truly unbiblical to even consider that possibility. Jesus came asking us to help bring more of heaven to earth. He asks us to live the values of heaven now. It seems logical to conclude then, that abolishing the death penalty will bring heaven a little closer to our earthly abode.
I read with great interest the article by Peter Salters on KFOR's Cold War bomb shelter (" KFOR's Cold War bomb shelter going off the air ," May 23), recently republished in The Los Angeles Times on Sunday, May 29. As a resident of Los Angeles, and a native of Nashville, Tennessee, I watch and read about the developers getting whatever they want, regardless of the historical value to the community in any city.

The bomb shelter built beneath KFOR radio may not be much, but it is a huge chunk of history to be leveled for more apartments. Those apartments will not only house a growing Lincoln community but attract refugees from a Los Angeles that has been so overbuilt with such a high cost of living that good people are looking to cities like Nashville and, soon, Lincoln to settle because these wonderful communities are affordable. At least, that is, for now.
SCOTTSBLUFF  Scotts Bluff County officials say a glut of adult prisoners has led them to stop accepting juveniles at its detention center.

The move is only temporary, County Commissioner Mark Masterton said.

"The reason is because we are 100 to 125 percent overpopulated in the adult area," Masterton said, adding that the county was "wasting a third of the jail" because it had been housing only four youths in the juvenile detention center portion of the facility.

Scotts Bluff County built the jail in 2007 for $15.2 million. At the time, the county said that the 184-bed facility could house 156 adults and 28 juveniles. Twenty-four of the beds were to be dedicated to female inmates.

On Friday, Masterton said that the county has decided to use those juvenile beds to house female inmates.

The four juveniles have been moved to another county.

Masterton said changes to the juvenile justice system in 2014 that created some alternatives to juvenile detention have meant fewer youths in the western Nebraska center.
To some, the 11-by-5-foot slab of marble may look like just another historic marker. But for others, it is a treasure that represents countless memories of the place it once adorned  Racine Countys Taylor orphanage.

Discovered a couple years ago, resting face-down between two buildings on the property now called the Taylor Complex, 3131 Taylor Ave., the 2,200-pound, marble marker originally hung on the front of the Taylor Orphan Asylum  an orphanage established on that property in 1868 by Mrs. Emerline A. Taylor, in memory of her husband, Isaac Taylor, which was later called the Taylor Childrens Home. It is a tribute to the Taylors and the home that bore their name, which housed hundreds of area children in need. And a group of local citizens is working to create a permanent monument to preserve the marker and the memories it evokes.

The proposed Taylor Memorial Monument, designed by Ryan Rudie of local architectural firm Butterfield, Rudie & Seitz, would be made of brick and erected near where the original orphanage stood. A vision for its creation grew out of the desire of several Village of Elmwood Park residents who realized, once they saw the marker, that it was a piece of community history that should be preserved.

One of those residents, Wendy Spencer, said she knew, even before the slab was turned over, that it wasnt just a large piece of concrete as the workers who discovered it first thought.

It was very heavy; I was pretty sure it was marble, Spencer said.

The marker had apparently been stored between the buildings, on several 2-by-4s, since the orphanage was torn down in the early 1970s, she said.

Someone must have had the presence of mind to save it, and then it spent the next 40 years outside, with no indication of what it was, Spencer said.

Community partners

Spencer, who has a passion for local history, joined forces with fellow village residents Carol Hansen and Brad Jaeck, to see what could be done to preserve the marker. Preservation Racine was invited to get involved, and member Vivian Merlo joined their committee. So did Janet Kuhl, who came on board as the projects financial adviser and Marlene Salley, who joined as grant writer.

For almost two years theyve worked together to come up with a plan for building the monument, conferring with various people and organizations with more expertise in such areas. They have permission from the Village of Elmwood Park, which currently owns the property, to erect the monument on the land, and they want to place it in an area where it would be visible from Taylor Ave., Hansen said.

They are also working with community partners including the Racine Heritage Museum, which is serving as the projects fiscal agent; Jorgensons General Contracting, in Mount Pleasant; and Bosman Monuments, in Kenosha, which is handling repair (the slab is cracked) and installation of the marker.

We are at the point where were ready to ask the public for their help, Spencer said.

The committee estimates the total cost of the project at somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000. To help pay for it, they are selling engraved bricks, which will be installed in the ground by the monument. Standard 4-by-8-inch bricks can be purchased and engraved with a personal designation for $100 each, and larger bricks cost $500 for an 8-by-8 and $1,000 for a 12-by-12.

The bricks are your opportunity to pay tribute not only to the Taylor Orphanage, but to the Taylors and all the children who found sanctuary in this loving home, reads the project brochure.

Loving memories

While people often dont think of orphanages as such loving places, many former residents of the Taylor home have fond memories of their time there, said Spencer. Her father and aunt lived at the home, while their mother was the cook there, she said. And they related many stories to her about what the home meant to them.

My father said some of his best childhood memories are from his time living at the orphanage, she said.

And they arent the only ones. When author David Rozelle  who wrote the book The Kid Who Climbed the Tarzan Tree about his time living at the home  spoke here in Racine in 2014, many former Taylor home residents, including him, shared their good memories of the orphanage, Hansen said.

An important part of what we want to do with this monument is to express how much the Taylors did for this city, Merlo said.

More information

The committee plans to announce its project to the public at an informational program on June 17 at the Masonic Center, 1012 Main St., in the centers historic Durand Mansion. Attendees will be able to learn more about it from displays, and from various speakers. David Rozelle will speak briefly about his time living at Taylor home, and Spencer, portraying Mrs. Taylor, will provide some historical background, Hansen said.

Their goal is to erect the monument as a gift to the community, Merlo said. And, if all goes well, they hope to have the project completed by this fall.

More information about the project can also be found on the Taylor Monument Facebook page, and will soon be available at a website being established at www.taylormonument.com.
RACINE  Armed with only with a few pieces of chalk and complimentary bottles of water, Kelly Witte braved the heat, got on her hands and knees in the middle of Fifth Street and went to work.

I did a chalk event last year and I really enjoyed it, she said. I found out about this one and I thought Id give it a try.

Witte, 28, is one of 14 artists taking part in the Great Lakes Chalk Art Competition, which headlines the Monument Square Art Festival for the first time this weekend. Visitors to the festival, which began Saturday and continues Sunday, can vote for their favorite chalk designs before professional judge and photojournalist Bill Meyer picks the contest winner Sunday.

I think theres a lot of strong competition, so I think anybody could win at this point, Witte said.

The competition for Witte, a Racine painter who graduated from Horlick in 2006 and University of Wisconsin-Parkside in 2010, comes from all around Wisconsin and the Midwest. That includes Shelley and Dave Brenner, who traveled to the festival from Ann Arbor, Michigan.

He and I compete in these chalk art competitions regionally, Shelley, 41, said. We decided it wasnt too far for us to drive and we decided to come out for the weekend and take part.

Besides being from Michigan, the Brenners also differ from Witte in that they arent professional artists. Shelley works as a nurse anesthetist while Dave, 47, works at the University of Michigan.

We do this for fun in our spare time, Shelley said. We have a little studio made out of our garage and we make our own chalks.

The Brenners were drawn to the competition partly because it benefited the Racine Arts Council.

We loved that this was going to benefit the local arts council, Shelley said. That was a big draw.

As for the actual art the competitors created, both Shelley and Witte featured flowers as their centerpieces.

I love abstract art, bright colors and different forms, Witte said. I really like to juxtapose different shapes to create a 3-D effect.

Shelley and her husband like to recreate master paintings in chalk form. On Saturday, she was inspired by 19th century American painter Martin Heade.

He did a lot of these botanical, orchid pieces that have hummingbirds in them, she said. We find stuff that we like and recreate it in large scale.

For Witte, a festival and competition like this can bring the Racine community closer.

I think everyone can enjoy art and get something out of it, she said. I think it brings so many people together.
RACINE COUNTY  A top federal agriculture official will see the full range of Racine County farms Monday when he visits three local operations.

Val Dolcini, administrator of the federal Department of Agricultures Farm Service Agency, is scheduled to visit Borzynskis Farms in Sturtevant, Piper Farms in Mount Pleasant, and Mighty Grand Dairy near Union Grove in Kenosha County.

Also with Dolcini will be Patty Edelburg, executive director of the Wisconsin Farm Service Agency.

Dolcini and Edelburg will tour the operations and discuss changes in the farming industry, federal farm program updates, and the future of agriculture in an ever-increasing urbanizing area.

With those three farms, Dolcini will see the gamut in local agricultural ventures, from a megabusiness to a family farm.

Borzynskis farms thousands of acres of land and has locations in several states. It operates a diversified farming operation in Mount Pleasant and Sturtevant which includes corn, soybeans, wheat, cabbage, sweet corn and greens. Borzynskis also has a large market and store on Washington Avenue near Interstate 94.

On the other hand, Pipers Farms  Dolcinis second stop  has a mere 40 acres.

He will get to see the big and the small, said Scott Piper, who grew up on the farm. Borzynskis certainly is the big. And I am the small.

Piper said he was probably selected for a visit because of his involvement in a federal loan program to purchase equipment. He said he bought a tractor and a planting implement with a seven-year, low-interest loan through the program.

Piper left a career in architecture to pursue the family farming operation. He currently direct markets his vegetable crops to a number of farmers markets in the area, a necessity to succeed in regional and local food systems.

Over the years, Piper Farms has raised a variety of vegetables, including onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, garlic, tomatoes, peppers, squash, sweet corn, cabbage, melons, cucumbers, beans and asparagus.

But it certainly isnt easy, Piper said: I work seven days a week from March until December. I dont have a single day off. Thats a long haul.

Dolcinis tour will conclude at Mighty Grand Dairy, which has a Union Grove mailing address but is located in the Town of Brighton in western Kenosha County.

Mighty Grand Dairy is a traditional Wisconsin family dairy operation, founded by Dave Daniels, Eugene Weis and Myron Daniels. The dairy also grows corn, soybeans, wheat and hay.
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When we talk about federal assistance for disater relief, we obviously mean money and personnel subsidized by federal taxpayers. That includes those of us living here in Wisconsin. We didnt personally deliver the federal aid in times of need. But indirectly, through the taxes we pay, we did.

We havent had a full-fledged disaster here along the Lake Michigan shoreline in Racine County. But in the erosion of the bluffs along the lakeshore in Mount Pleasant and Caledonia, we do have a crisis which requires federal assistance. Put simply, its our turn to be helped by the federal government.

Late last month, Racine County Executive Jonathan Delagrave issued a declaration of emergency due to the erosion. Such a declaration better positions the county to get state and federal assistance and gives the county authority to make personnel and resources available, according to a news release.

The declaration also allows the county to close public streets and, if necessary, evacuate residents from their homes, Delagrave said.

High Lake Michigan levels have eroded the bluffs, putting homes in Mount Pleasant and Caledonia in danger. One home has already been removed and officials say 10 to 12 other homes in Mount Pleasant and multiple properties in Caledonia are threatened.

In addition to homes, officials are worried about public utilities and streets, Delagrave said, and fear a strong storm could move through and erode more of the bluffs. We dont want homeowners to lose their houses unnecessarily and were also concerned about erosion encroaching on public utilities, Delagrave said.

State Rep. Peter Barca, a member of the Federal Emergency Management Agency National Advisory Council, said he has also contacted federal and state entities and hopes for a quick solution.

There are people in Wisconsin right now who could wake up tomorrow without a home. We need to take action as quickly as possible, said Barca, D-Kenosha, whose district includes the Lake Park neighborhood of Mount Pleasant. For the people of Mount Pleasant, time is of the essence.

This is most definitely true, in Mount Pleasant and in Caledonia.

During Tuesday nights meeting at the Mount Pleasant Village Hall, several residents called for the state and Gov. Scott Walker to get more involved. Walker has not issued an executive order regarding the erosion, but has directed staff to provide support in the area, said Pat OConnor, director of the Bureau of Response and Recovery for Wisconsin Emergency Management.

Apparently, Racine County got the governors attention, and he responded: On Friday, he made public a letter he sent to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, requesting assistance under Section 14 of the 1946 Flood Control Act, which gives the corps emergency authority.

During his June 3 visit with the Journal Times Editorial Board, House Speaker Paul Ryan said that his office is working with the Army Corps and local officials, including Delagrave and Mount Pleasant Village Administrator Kurt Wahlen.

The Army Corps is determining whether the issue fits under the agencys Section 14 emergency authority, Ryan said. Under Section 14, the Army Corps is authorized to construct bank protection works to protect endangered highways, highway bridge approaches, and other essential, important public works, such as municipal water supply systems and sewage disposal plants, churches, hospitals, schools, and non-profit public services and known cultural sites that are endangered by flood-caused bank or shoreline erosion.

Were moving as fast as can be done, meaning weve gotten this moving faster than Ive ever seen it, said Ryan, whose district includes all of Racine County. The question is, how long will it take for them to study this situation, and what resources are available there.

We dont seem to have reached the higher threshold required for Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance, but we definitely have an issue with regard to local infrastructure: Its a short trip north along the shoreline from the worst of the existing Caledonia erosion to We Energies Oak Creek Power Plant.

Our situation isnt at the level of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, or the New York-New Jersey area after Superstorm Sandy in 2012. But with our shoreline erosion crisis, we have an issue which calls for a remedy from an arm of the federal government; in this case, its the Army Corps of Engineers.

To our fellow federal taxpayers, we say: We helped you then. You must help us now.
Chand-Maoist cadres attack World Vision's office

The World Vision International Nepal's District Office at Nuwakot came under attack last night.
Chand Maoists torch 10 Ncell base towers

The Netra Bikram Chand-led CPN Maoist torched 10 base stations of Ncell in several districts on Saturday.
Civilians safety top priority

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Bhim Bahadur Rawal has highlighted the importance of the safety and security of the civilians as a primary responsibility of national governments while emphasising the criticality to the legitimacy and credibility of UN peacekeeping missions.
Critics say state mechanism growing intolerant

Poet Sneh Sayami was arrested for taking pictures of road expansion in Dhungeadda on Saturday. Sayami has been the fourth person to be caught in as many weeks on charges that many say are unbecoming of a democratic country.
Cyclist killed after being rammed by truck

A cyclist was killed after being rammed by a truck at Mirchaiya Municipality along the East-West Highway on Saturday night.
Disgraceful deviation

Despite historical changes in the country, people have sensed no change in their everyday lives
Docs urge govt to upgrade facilities to maximise use

The One Village: One Doctor programme is envisaged in National Health Policy-2015 which states that based on population size, each Village Development Committee will have a doctor with a doctor for 10,000 people.
Embodied Enlightenment discussed

Siddhartha Arts Foundations Education Initiative (SAFEI) organised a talk programme that saw curator Dr Dina Bangdel and architect Pawan Shrestha discuss the motifs of artist Samundra Man Singh Shresthas solo exhibition, Embodied Enlightenment, amid a programme held at the Nepal Art Council, Babarmahal, on Thursday.
Fifty killed in Orlando gay nightclub shooting

Fifty people are now known to have died in Saturday's shooting in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and a "state of emergency" has been declared, the city's mayor Buddy Dyer has said.
FNCCI team off to China for Kunming expo

A delegation from the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) left for Kunming, China, on Saturday to participate in the 11th China-South Asia Business forum. The team is led by Senior Vice-president Bhawani Rana.
FNJ condemns attack and arrest of journalists

Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ) has condemned the attack against its member of Solukhumbu chapter and Managing Director of Himal FM, Bhanubhakta Niraula, and arrest of litterateur and journalist Sneha Sayami.
Govt committed to punish guilty of arson attacks on Ncell towers

Home Minister Shakti Basnet has said that the government is committed to take action against those involved in torching Ncell base towers.
Guatemala arrests 3 ex-cabinet ministers, hunts for 2 more

Three senior Guatemalan cabinet ministers were arrested Saturday on corruption charges and authorities said they were seeking to detain two more as part of a continuing crackdown that has already seen a former president jailed.
Mohan Guragain is a desk editor at The Kathmandu Post. He edited a provincial youth-oriented monthly paper for nearly two years before joining The Himalayan Times in 2008. Guragain also writes occasionally on politics and socio-economic issues. He joined the Post in 2010.
MJF-L eyes way out of govt: Dev

The Madhesi Janadhikar Forum-Loktantrik, a key ruling alliance, is preparing to pull out of the KP Sharma Oli-led government over its poor working style and functioning, according to a senior party leader.
Naya Shakti could challenge other parties except CPN-UML: PM Oli

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has said that the newly formed political partyNaya Shakti Nepalcould challenge the political parties of Nepal other than CPN-UML.
Nepal urges United States to adopt further flexibility

A Nepali delegation, which is currently in the US for the Joint Nepal-US Trade and Investment Framework (TIFA) Council meeting, requested the US to adopt further flexibility in the duty-free market access facility the country has offered to Nepali readymade garment products.
Nepali participants upbeat about increasing exports to China

Participants representing Nepal in the China-South Asia Exposition and the China Kunming Import and Export Commodities Fair have shown optimism about the possibility of increasing exports of Nepali products to China.
No headway in opening new Nepal-China border points

Although Nepal and China have agreed to improve customs infrastructure at seven border points, there has not been any significant headway towards the implementation of the accord.
Nuwakot quake survivors seek land to build homes

Twenty five earthquake-displaced families from Lachyang VDC in Nuwakot have urged the government to provide them land to build homes on.
One drowns in Kanchanpur

A person has drowned in a canal at Bhimdutta Municipality in Kanchapur district this morning. The deceased has been identified as Chhatra Bahadur Rana, 60, of Bhimdutta Municipality-12.
PM invites Sanghiya Gathabandhan for talks

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has invited agitating Sanghiya Gathabandhanan alliance of Madhesi and Janajati partiesthrough a letter addressing the alliance on Sunday.
Pruschas Kathmandu Valley

His inventory prepared during 1970-1975 introduces a visionary plan for the preservation of Nepali architecture
Rise of the machines

Simple robots are becoming a common part of our life, but pundits fear the Robot Age will invite mass technological unemployment
Sadhai Tanneri to release this week

Sadhai Tanneri, author Jeevan Kumar Prasains book about human health and science, is slated to release on June 17.
Snake bite cases on the rise

The number of snake bite cases arriving at the Community Snake Bite Treatment Centre located within the Nepal Army Eastern Division Headquarters premises is on the rise.
Students elated over new building

Shree Bikash Lower Secondary School at Kumari-5 in Nuwakot district has a new school building. Their previous building was destroyed by last years devastating earthquake.
Stung by criticism, Trump vows to work for ethnic harmony

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.
Thapa presides over convocation

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Kamal Thapa on Saturday attended the maiden convocation of South Asian University here in the Indian Capital.
Thapa seeks Indian prezs visit to Nepal

Nepal and India have begun discussion to exchange visits at the presidential level within this year.
Toddler dies after litchi seed stuck in throat

Jivan Limbu from Gothgaon of Dhankuta municipality-3 lost his two year old son Sanam, as the latter could not swallow the litchi.
U.S.-backed forces push deeper into Islamic State territory in northern Syria: monitor

U.S.-backed Syrian forces made new territorial gains against Islamic State on Saturday, moving closer to another of its major strongholds in northern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
VP Pun, Yunnan guv discuss investment

Nanda Bahadur Pun, who is on an official visit of China, on Saturday met Governor of Yunnan Provincial Government Chen Hao in Kunming and exchanged views on cooperation between Nepal and the Yunnan Province.
Waterborne diseases up

Doctors have sounded an alert on risks of various water-borne diseases due to contaminated water and poor hygiene.
Woman shot dead

A 20-year-old woman was fatally shot in her house at Pachanali VDC-6 in Doti district on Friday evening.
Yes, its hard to to tell when one enters the city limits

Yes, they will make the city more inviting

Maybe ... does it really matter?

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South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se left for Moscow on Sunday for talks with his Russian counterpart on North Korea's nuclear weapons program and other issues.



It will be Yun's first official visit to Russia since he took office in early 2013 and the first such visit by a South Korean foreign minister in five years. During his two-day visit to Russia, Yun will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow on Monday (local time). He will attend a Korea-Russia conference on politics and economics and visit South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor's plant in St. Petersburg on the following day.



"It has been five months since North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test and 100 days since the United Nations Security Council approved new sanctions on North Korea," he told reporters at Incheon International Airport on Sunday. "Amid this situation, we should check the bilateral relationship with Russia and international cooperation and coordination (on North Korea)."



Yun has recently visited Iran, Uganda and Cuba to gain their support in pressuring North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program. In Moscow, he is expected to further discuss the matter with Lavrov. Russia, one of five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, has been a key stakeholder in efforts to dismantle North Korea's nuclear weapons program. It is also a member of the now-stalled six-party talks on the North's nuclear program.



"Russia is an important partner for us regarding the denuclearization of North Korea and peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula," Yun told South Korean media on Friday. "We will have in-depth talks on ways to cooperate on the issues of North Korea and its nuclear program."



Yun added that he will also talk about a summit between the two nations, saying that South Korea is ready to discuss the issue seriously once it receives a formal invitation. President Park Geun-hye has yet to make an official visit to the country.



Russia, meanwhile, is expected to touch on the possible deployment of an advanced U.S. missile defense system to South Korea, known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). Russia, along with China, has expressed strong opposition to the idea, claiming it would undermine the strategic balance in the region.



After Russia, Yun will head to Bulgaria on Tuesday, also to discuss bilateral ties and coordinate their policies on North Korea. In Sofia, Yun will meet his Bulgarian counterpart Daniel Mitov on Wednesday.



It will be the first visit to Bulgaria by a South Korean foreign minister since the two sides established diplomatic ties in 1990.



"Bulgaria is thought to be North Korea's base in Southeast Europe with a big embassy," he said. "We will talk about various topics including North Korea and the Korean Peninsula." (Yonhap)




Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Rain showers this morning with some sunshine during the afternoon hours. Morning high of 60F with temps falling to near 50. Winds NW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

A few passing clouds, otherwise generally clear. Low 32F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.
BEIRUT  Two suicide bombers struck close to the Syrian capital Saturday, killing at least 12 people and wounding dozens more in the latest attack to hit the predominantly Shiite area in recent months, state TV and an opposition activist group said.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the bombings through its Aamaq news agency, which said there were three attacks carried out by suicide bombers. Aamaq said two attackers were wearing explosive belts while the third was in a car.

Syrian State TV said the blasts in the Sayyida Zeinab area just south of Damascus killed 12 people and wounded 55 others. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 20 people were killed and dozens were wounded in the two explosions.

The blasts came as U.S.-backed fighters in northern Syria tightened their siege on the IS stronghold of Manbij, where tens of the thousands of civilians are trapped by the fighting. The Syria Democratic Forces, a predominantly Kurdish group, encircled the town after capturing dozens of villages and farms near the Turkish border.

The push toward Manbij slowed down because of fear for civilians there, said Mustafa Bali, a Syrian journalist who visited the front line. All telecommunications with the town have been cut, he told The Associated Press by telephone.

The Observatory said tens of thousands of civilians in the town fear bombardment of residential areas at a time when most bakeries have stopped working and food is running out. It said airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition have killed 30 civilians, including 11 children, since SDF began its offensive on May 31.

Manbij, one of ISs largest strongholds in Syrias Aleppo province, is a waypoint on a key supply line between the extremists de facto capital of Raqqa and the Turkish frontier.
Its been five years since Tim and Eva Ewers opened Le Chateau restaurant in the historic Mons Anderson House at 410 Cass St. in downtown La Crosse.

They plan to open La Cave lounge sometime this week in the 19th-century buildings basement level, where theyve removed drywall that covered the natural limestone foundation. We cleaned and restored the walls, and installed a new tile floor, Tim said, while creating the well-lit lounge.

The Ewerses also soon will open The Veranda, a year-round dining room, in what used to be a screened-in porch. It will be open by the July 14 celebration marking Le Chateaus five-year anniversary and the grand opening of La Cave and The Veranda.

Le Chateau features French cuisine made with local, seasonal ingredients.

La Cave will have its own entrance on the north side of the building, and will be open to people who are dining at Le Chateau, as well as people who are not.

Were really about handcrafted signature cocktails and (French) wines, Tim said of La Cave. Well also have a small food menu thats full of flavor as well as imported beer and other beverages such as coffee, soda pop and tea.

La Caves hours will be 3 p.m. to close Monday through Saturday. For more information, call 608-782-6498 or visit www.lechateaulacrosse.com or Le Chateaus Facebook page.

Oriental Goodies opened May 28 at its new location at 2945 S. 21st Place, off Mormon Coulee Road and across from Burger King and the state Department of Transportation building on the South Side of La Crosse.

The store sells Asian groceries, teas, pottery, home decor, apparel and Samurai swords and knives. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and closed Sunday and Monday.

Fanny Bermudo Whaley said she, her husband Tillman and son Robert moved their store from Viroqua  where the family started it in 2004  to La Crosse. She also had worked at Vernon Memorial Healthcare in Viroqua for more than 20 years until she retired last December.

Its a bigger city, with a larger population and more Asian culture, Whaley said of moving the business. She is a native of the Philippines.

Preferred Rate Insurance, an independent insurance agency in Waterloo, Iowa, opened a second office May 1 at 2709 South Ave. on the South Side of La Crosse.

Tony Rausa is the licensed agent in charge of the new office, which sells auto, home, life and business insurance. He moved to the La Crosse area to be closer to the family of his girlfriend, Rachel Gabrielson, who also sells insurance.

We work hard to compare coverage options, discounts and insurance policies to get you the best insurance rate for your needs, Rausa said. With over 14 companies we have insurance for everyone.

Office hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and at other times by appointment. The new offices grand opening will be July 1.

For more information, call 608-881-6566 or visit www.preferredrate.net or the new offices Facebook page.
WASHINGTON  Significant progress has been made on shortening screening lines since earlier this spring, when airlines reported thousands of frustrated passengers were missing flights, the head of the Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday.

Over the busy Memorial Day weekend, 99 percent of passengers at U.S. airports waited less than 30 minutes and 93 percent waited less than 15 minutes in regular security lines, Peter Neffenger told a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In TSA Precheck lines for travelers who have received priority security vetting, 93 percent of passengers waited less than 5 minutes, he said.

The agency said it is reducing lines partly by adding more lanes and increasing staffing at peak periods, especially at seven of the nations busiest airports: John F. Kennedy in New York, Newark in New Jersey, OHare in Chicago, as well as airports in Miami, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Los Angeles.

When you get stories of long wait times it has primarily been those airports, Neffenger said. If you can prevent problems from happening there, you dont have problems that cascade throughout the system.

TSA also is exploring the possibility of adding automated screening technology at more than a dozen airports that can speed up lines by as much as 30 percent, he said. After TSA viewed the technology in operation at busy Heathrow Airport in London, Delta Air Lines helped pay for its installation in two screening lanes in Atlanta, he said. The new system, which went into operation in late May, has been such a success that TSA has created a special team to talk to other airlines and airports about installing the systems and going even further to add more automation, he said.

TSA also won praise from one of its fiercest critics, John Roth, the Department of Homeland Securitys inspector general. TSA screeners overwhelmingly missed prohibited items in covert tests carried out by the inspector generals office, according to a highly critical report by Roth last year.

I believe we are in a different place than we were last June, Roth told the Senate committee. Under Neffenger, TSA has acknowledged its security weaknesses and is beginning to come to grips with them instead of fighting us every step of the way, he said.

We are generally satisfied with the progress they are making, which is by no means complete, Roth said. Among his continuing concerns are that not enough is being done to protect against the insider threat of an airport worker or other persons who have access to airport restricted areas, he said.

There is no holistic look at an airport worker who has unrestricted access to aircraft, Roth said. TSA continually checks to see if workers have been convicted of a crime, but doesnt go beyond that if there hasnt been a conviction, he said.

Also Tuesday, the House passed a bill that requires TSA to reassign behavior detection officers to security checkpoints and give local or regional TSA administrators more authority to make staffing decisions. Behavior detection officers look for suspicious individuals or activity at airports. Neffenger testified that he has already reassigned the officers.

The House bill, which was passed by a voice vote, would also permit TSA to use private marketing companies to encourage more passengers to sign up for the Precheck program. Prechecks purpose is to separate and expedite screening of low-risk passengers so screeners can spend more time on higher-risk passengers or passengers for whom there is no risk information.
Lisa Weston saw the number of drug incidents in her building tick up each year of her career as a hall director.

Weston was director of Coate Hall at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse for four years and now is student services coordinator for residence life. Her experience is backed up by university data that show an increase in the number of drug referrals in the residence halls the past couple of years.

Were aware there are illegal drugs in the residence halls, Weston said. We are not so naive as to believe they dont exist.

The reasons students are turning to drugs  from marijuana to heroin, alcohol to prescription medication  are varied but include peer pressure and an attempt to cope with the stresses of college, work and social life. There are resources available to students struggling with substance abuse, but experts argue more can be done and that the community needs to root out the social stigma that can make it hard for people to seek help.

No cause has been reported by authorities in the death of 19-year-old Connor Glynn, a UW-L freshman who died in April, but some UW-L officials and student witnesses have stated drugs were involved. When interviewed by police, students said that Glynn had consumed heroin and the prescription anxiety medication alprazolam the night he was taken to the hospital, and both substances were found in his dorm room by investigators.

UW-L Campus Police continue to investigate the incident. But the narratives provided by students interviewed  that Glynn rebuffed urging to get help for substance use and that he may have struggled to fit in and was facing other stressors  fit the pattern counselors, residence hall staff and health workers see.

Drug numbers increasing

UW-L reports drug referrals and violations as part of its annual security report, which is mandated by federal law. According to data from the 2015 report, alcohol violations in the residence halls have risen the past three years from 543 in 2012 to a high of 690 in 2013 before dropping slightly to 667 in 2014.

Drug violations have nearly quadrupled, from 31 in 2012 to 121 in 2014. The data doesnt stipulate whether the violations were for marijuana, prescription drugs or other illegal drugs.

Drug-related hospitalizations and emergency room visits are also on the rise. According to data from Gundersen Health System for La Crosse County, the number of these incidents was 323 for those ages 12 to 24 in 2013 and rose to 393 in 2014.

This is a significant issue for this age group, said Al Bliss, a La Crosse County health educator and coordinator of the county Heroin and Other Illicit Drug Task Force.

Gundersen is seeing an increase in opiate misuse and abuse, among both the college-age population and older adults, emergency room physician and medical director of Gundersen Tri-State Ambulance Dr. Chris Eberlein said.

Work by the drug task force to educate and prevent abuse has cut the amount of prescription drugs diverted for illicit use. With the prescription drug supply tightening up, Eberlein said, users are shifting to illegal drugs, including heroin. Addicts looking for alternatives find heroin becoming cheaper than prescription drugs.

The cost is huge to society and the community, Eberlein said. It is staggering in what it has done to the community.

A coping mechanism

When Kate Noelke, UW-Ls wellness coordinator, came to campus in September 2014, her biggest nightmare was another student walking into the water. Alcohol-related drownings had claimed the lives of at least 10 college-aged students between 1997 and 2014, and most of her work on prevention efforts focused on alcohol use and abuse.

Booze continues to be the biggest and scariest thing for college administrators, she said, but awareness of drug abuse is also increasing. Her office is paying attention.

(Substance abuse) will continue to be an issue on campus, she said. Every day I wake up with really good job security, sadly.

The UW-L Counseling and Testing Center is one resource for students with concerns about substance abuse, director Gretchen Reinders said. The counseling center also gives referrals to outside organizations and clinics.

When students visit the counseling office, they fill out a questionnaire that includes questions about substance abuse. Students indicated they came in for substance abuse issues about 4 percent of the time in the 2015 academic year, down from 7 percent the year before.

But those substance abuse numbers are likely a fraction of the real toll, she said. Not all students seek help, fearing the social stigma associated with drug use, and even when they do they might list a related issue such as mental health or relationship problems.

Gundersens Brenda Rooney, chairwoman of the department of community and preventive care services, collects National College Health Assessment Data from the colleges and universities in La Crosse. The surveys show rising marijuana use among college students, as well as very high levels of mental health stressors.

More than 86 percent of respondents in 2014 reported feeling overwhelmed, and more than 81 percent reported feeling exhausted. More than half of respondents also reported feeling very sad or having had to deal with overwhelming anxiety.

Anecdotally, Noelke said, students her office has worked with for substance abuse problems often are dealing with other issues. Taking drugs or drinking might help them take the edge off the stress of balancing large course loads, homework, a job and a social life.

Others might start drinking or taking drugs in order to feel like they fit in or because they feel too depressed to go out and make friends. A significant minority of college-age students abuse prescription drugs, such as Adderal, many in order to get an edge in performance.

Prescriptions drugs are very frustrating, Noelke said. Students are getting them illegally and using them illegally and seeing positive results.

Prevention and treatment

While campus officials, which include resident assistants, police officers and hall directors, are required to enforce university policies on drugs and alcohol, there is also a lot of work that goes into education and prevention.

UW-L provides education programming as well as alternative activities for students on campus, Noelke, Weston and others said. The university also attempts to make violations educational experiences, with campus police offering diversion programs for first offenses involving alcohol or marijuana.

Along with providing counseling and support for students dealing with drug or alcohol use, UW-L also participates in the Collegiate Recovery Program. Open to any college students at the three campuses in La Crosse, the group provides a support network for students going through recovery by meeting regularly.

What students need is sober friends and places they can go to for resources, Reinders said.

With groups such as the drug task force and organizations including Coulee Council on Addictions, there are also a number of community organizations aimed at combating drug use and providing resources for students dealing with addiction or substance abuse. But all of this works only if the person wishes to seek treatment.

Unless a person gets arrested, if they dont want to go to treatment, you cant make them, Bliss said. But you can encourage people to make that commitment.
HOLMEN -- Retired U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Lem Genovese hasnt been on a magazine cover or cereal box, but he will have the distinction of having his story featured on a special edition of Evan Williams Bourbon bottles.

The Holmen resident was selected for the bourbon makers Red, White and Blue American Hero Edition label set to be released for a limited time this summer. The limited-edition bottles recognize 10 American heroes with their stories of service at home as well as abroad.

Genovese served as a medic in the National Guard and saw action in the Middle East. He considers his time in the Army as a way to serve others.

Thats one of the reasons I wanted to become a medic in the first place; it was to make that connection with my beliefs, Genovese said. Im blessed, thats all I can say. When I put on the uniform, I take it seriously.

Originally from Des Moines, Iowa, Genoveses beliefs were influenced by relatives. His uncles served in World War II and taught their nephew the importance of service. In 1971, he served with the 214th Combat Aviation Battalion Headquarters Company of the Armys 1st Aviation Brigade in Vietnam's Mekong Delta.

After that, Genovese signed on with the National Guard and received basic medical training. With that training, he voluntarily joined the 209th Medical Clearing Company when he was 41 and served in the Desert Storm campaign. During the ground war, Genoveses unit completed more missions and did more humanitarian medical operations than any other unit in the U.S. Army.

As a member of the 3rd Platoon, he helped established the first working field hospital the day after Kuwait City was liberated from Iraqi forces. Genoveses unit treated Iraqi enemy prisoners of war, as well as civilians and international troops.

We treated 300 Iraqi POWs and didnt lose any, he said.

During his Desert Storm tour, Genovese started corresponding with pen pal Nancy Rowe. The correspondence led to the two marrying and settling in Holmen.

During a 12-year break from service, Genovese wrote, recorded and performed nationwide on behalf of the nations military families and Vietnam vets.

Service members gravitate toward each other because we understand what weve been through and theres that respect about it, Genovese said. For our veterans, to have an opportunity to give back to the community or the nation as a whole, thats golden.

According to Evan Williams spokesperson Chris Ratterman, the American Made Hero promotion is the distillers way to honor service personnel and their service.

For us, it was a great way to do something personal to recognize their achievements and successes overseas and at home, Ratterman said. We reached out to MilitaryTimes.com and posted an article about American Made Heroes letting veterans know about the promotion.

This is the first year of the promotion, and service personnel were invited to nominate themselves. Genovese was one of 10 selected out of the 2,000 who applied.

Evan Williams Bourbon is also holding an American Made Hero contest at www.American-MadeHeroes.com, in which 200 veterans can win a $250 honorarium in celebration of their patriotic contribution. Anyone can nominate a serviceman for the recognition and award, as well as the chance to become an Evan Williams American-Made Hero in 2017.

The American Made Heroes bottles are distributed throughout the country and are currently on store shelves. They will be available for purchase while supplies last or until July 4.

The worlds second-largest selling bourbon, Evan Williams is one of the labels produced by Heaven Hill Distilleries of Bardstown, Ky.
ST. PAUL  Hundreds gathered on a very warm Saturday at the state Capitol for the dedication of a memorial to U.S. and Alliance Special Forces in Laos.

The 10-foot tall bronze monument was inspired by survivors of the Secret War in the southeast Asian country, from 1961 and 1975.

Laos was neutral during the Vietnam war, but the CIA recruited Hmong soldiers to carry out a covert campaign.

The Hmong fighters became known as the Special Guerilla Unit. After the U.S. pulled out of Laos and Vietnam, tens of thousands fled and lived in refugee camps in Thailand, eventually re-settling in the U.S. An estimated 66,000 Hmong live in Minnesota.

Lt. Gov. Tina Smith praised the many veterans present for the dedication of the memorial, which resembles a sprouting bamboo shoot. The leaves bear images of daily life, war and relocation.

More than four decades ago, Hmong, Lao and southeast Asian soldiers served during the Secret War, saved American lives and helped to advance the cause of freedom and democracy, she said. Your service embodies the ideal of sacrifice.

Several elected officials  including St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar  as well as veterans spoke at the ceremony, which included Hmong music, a gun salute and taps.

The Americans recruited Gen. Vang Pao to encourage many in his country to fight. Pao, who died in 2011, was represented by his son, Wang Chong Vang.

Vang said it was a special day for all of us to honor the Lao Hmong soldiers who served as the U.S. secret army in Laos.

Especially those who fought bravely and sacrificed their lives to protect the freedom of Laos and the interests of the U.S., Vang said.
Ive read Joe Bidens letter to the Stanford rape survivor a dozen times, trying to put my finger on why it feels like a turning point.

Its beautifully written. (We will make lighthouses of ourselves, as you did  and shine.)

Its unequivocal. (What you endured is never, never, never, NEVER a womans fault.)

Its even optimistic. (Your story has already changed lives. You have helped change the culture.)

Its all those things, but its more. Its a powerful man with no new office to gain and no new voters to win talking about rape from the second-highest office in the land.

Not just talking about rape. Talking to a woman who was raped. Talking to all women whove been raped. Talking to them because their stories and their humanity matter.

It feels like a turning point because weve spent the last week watching as the Stanford rapists smile and swim stats shape him into a fully formed, multi-dimensional 20-year-old, even as his victim remains nameless and known for just one thing  the awful crime she endured.

It feels like a turning point because at this time last year, we were mired in a debate over #YesAllWomen, an attempt by women to share their stories of violence and harassment in response to the Santa Barbara shootings. The stories were shouted down, virtually, by #NotAllMen, a hashtag that missed the point altogether.

In one of the best discussions I read about #NotAllMen, Slate writer Phil Plait had this to say: When people are defensive, they arent listening to the other person; theyre busy thinking of ways to defend themselves.  Instead of being defensive and distracting from the topic at hand, try staying quiet for a while and actually listening to what the thousands upon thousands of women discussing this are saying.

Bidens words are the result of staying quiet for a while and listening.

In 2014, I interviewed Anne Ream about her newly released book, Lived Through This: Listening to the Stories of Sexual Violence Survivors," in which she bears witness to 18 stories of rape.

Being truly heard will change your life, she writes in her book. Its a hard thing to listen  truly listen  to another person, she continues. It often means getting so close to their suffering that it breaks our own hearts. But inside our open, broken hearts  thats where compassion lives.

It feels like a turning point to witness that compassion from a vice president.

I hope we use the moment to move in a better, more humane direction.
Railroads play a crucial role in the Badger State, with the thousands employees who call Wisconsin home operating on approximately 3,400 miles of track. The Wisconsin rail system connects the states farmers, manufacturers and resource producers to markets in other states and around the world, and in a typical year, 175 million tons of freight is carried in the state.

Moving this freight safely is the industrys highest priority, and based on the three most common safety measures used by the Federal Railroad Administration  train accident, employee injury, and grade-crossing collision rates  recent years have been the safest in railroad history.

The railroads are not resting on their record. They are constantly investing in infrastructure, technology and training to make their already-safe operations even safer. In recent years, railroads annually have spent more than $26 billion of their own funds  not taxpayer money  on upgrades and maintenance of their infrastructure and equipment, enhancing their ability to operate safely and reliably. A major initiative is the implementation of positive train control, a technology that will automatically stop a train before certain types of accidents occur from human error. Other innovative technologies include drones for inspecting bridges and improved ultrasonic inspection systems that identify track defects so they can be repaired before accidents occur.

Another important aspect of the industrys safety program is to ensure railroad and state and local emergency responders are prepared for hazardous materials accidents. Railroads have an outstanding record of transporting crude oil and other hazardous materials safely  more than 99.99 percent of hazardous materials shipments reach their destination without incident. Nevertheless, the railroads recognize the importance of being able to respond to accidents when they do occur. Railroads train tens of thousands of first responders annually to ensure they are prepared to react quickly and effectively in the event of an accident. Some of this training takes place at the Security and Emergency Response Training Center in Pueblo, Colo., operated by the Transportation Technology Center, Inc. In 2015, nearly 2,000 first responders learned how to handle derailments first hand at the training center, and more than 800 others received online training.

Should a railroad accident involving hazardous materials occur, it is vital that state and local responders have access to information on the materials in the train. One source of information is a new program developed by the railroad industry, the AskRail app. This app provides another way emergency responders can identify cars in a train carrying hazardous materials and obtain relevant emergency response information. Firefighters around the country have spoken highly about the app.

It is vitally important for Wisconsin  and the nation  that the countrys nearly 140,000-mile freight rail network operate safely and efficiently. With the help of advanced technologies; cooperative efforts with employees, customers and the communities they serve; and sensible public policies, railroads will continue to serve the public interest.
Recently I was invited to try out a Microsoft HoloLens. It is a portable computing device with a transparent lens attached to a headset, and it allows the wearer to place virtual objects within three-dimensional space. Simply by holding ones index figure out in front of the lens and making a tapping motion, it is possible to select objects and move them about the room, placing a holographic image on a table, for example, or interacting with a virtual screen that can be affixed to a wall or move about with the user.

The ability to merge real and virtual worlds in this way is known as mixed or augmented reality. Microsoft is just one of several companies developing devices and programs which promise to radically change the way we experience the world around us and ourselves in relation to the world.

Some experts are predicting that the computer screen will be obsolete in five years. Instead of sitting at a desk writing this column, with such a device I could go to Riverside Park and write upon a virtual screen suspended over the Mississippi River. If there are no real eagles to distract me, I could place a holographic eagle in the sky, circling around the page, searching for red herrings and dangling participles.

The ethical questions raised by this new technology are significant, but, for the most part, they are restricted to issues of ownership, privacy and responsible use. For example, what if a soft drink company wanted to place a hologram advertising its product on top of a downtown office building? Should the owners of the building have any right to object to its placement? Should facial recognition software be allowed to instantly pull up information on everyone the user encounters, including date of birth, profession, address and acquaintances?

New technology tends to raise new ethical questions because it changes how humans interact with one another and the rest of the world. For example, one of the indirect consequences that nobody could foresee was that widespread use of cellphones would reduce the amount of empathy people have for one another. That is the surprising development reported by Sherry Turkle in her new book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age.

Speaking of her work with a middle school in upstate New York, Turkle notes: As the ... middle schoolers began to spend more time texting, they lost practice in face-to-face talk. That means lost practice in the empathic arts  learning to make eye contact, to listen, and to attend to others.

The problem is this: human beings do not simply interact with the world, they are also shaped by their interaction. This interaction continues to shape us throughout our lives, often in ways that we do not realize.

The driving force behind the development of most technology is the strong desire for more freedom and more control. Technology that gives us more freedom and control is good in many ways. It helps us to be more efficient, to be safer, to stay healthier and to be more informed.

But there is an old saying: Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.

The most profound influence on our lives comes from the fact that the world does not answer to our wishes. That fact means that most of our daily behavior is conditioned by the need to continually adjust ourselves to an often undesirable set of circumstances: it is raining, it is too hot outside, the milk in the refrigerator went sour, the grocery store is five miles away, the person I like doesnt like me.

Virtual reality lessons the brute resistance of the world as the central defining feature of human existence.

Turkle quotes a 16-year-old talking about his experience with gaming: On computers, if things are unpredictable, its in a predictable way. Then Turkle observes, Real people, with their unpredictable ways, can seem difficult to contend with after one has spent a stretch in simulation.

The most important ethical lesson parents teach their children is how to get along with other people  most importantly, how to treat people as people (with kindness and respect) and not as objects to be manipulated. Nearly all major ethical lapses are due to failings to learn or remember this lesson.

If a persons will is not formed by the contingencies of the real world  the obstacles and impediments to ones desires  then a new kind of frustration appears. A frustration born out of an inarticulate desire for the world to be other than it is, but without the knowledge of how to bring it into being or the patience to wait for it.

This is why we need ethics  and ethics understood not just as a critical thinking for reaching right decisions, but rather ethics as an understanding of how to live a good life in the context of a rapidly changing world. Such an understanding will not provide us with easy answers to all the challenges posed by the new generation of digital technology, but it can help us determine how, and how not, to use it.
The state of Wisconsin is getting ready to declutter its Madison office space.

Since 2012 the state has been developing what it calls the Madison Master Plan, a once-in-a-generation reshuffling of state offices involving thousands of workers. The process will kick into high gear once the new, massive Hill Farms state office building is completed on Madisons West Side in 2018.

The plan reduces by 15 the number of state leases in privately owned buildings scattered throughout Madison, saving taxpayers more than $3 million a year in rent, maintenance and energy costs, according to the Department of Administration.

In moving and consolidating 29 offices, the state will occupy 86,000 less square feet of office space. It also will reduce its leased office space by 178,637 square feet  about 17 percent of its total leased space in Madison, excluding the university. That includes nearly 103,422 square feet Downtown.

The move creates a sizable hole in the Madison commercial real estate market  the lost square footage equals about as much as the market has absorbed annually between 2011 and 2015, according to Craig Stanley, founder of Madison-based commercial real estate broker Broadwing Advisors.

However, the impact will be mitigated if the market continues to rebound as it has over the past six months, he said. In the first quarter of this year, the Madison market filled nearly 150,000 square feet more of office space, according to the latest market report from Xceligent, which tracks commercial real estate in more than three dozen U.S. cities.

In my 15 years here, theres probably no better time for the state to do this, Stanley said. Is it painful in the short-term, like when Alliant moved out of Downtown? I think it is. But with the strength of the office market today, the overall impact is minimized.

For Madison residents, the most notable move might be the relocation of the citys two Division of Motor Vehicles offices on the West Side  one at the current Hill Farms office building and the other in a leased space on Odana Road  to a consolidated, yet-to-be-determined location.

DOT officials say the new location will offer ample free parking, be open on Saturdays and be similar to the largest DMV centers in the state, including Madisons East Side location.

The state is still completing a request-for-proposals process before finalizing a lease somewhere on the West Side.

Defragging o

ffic

e space

Officials describe the master plan as similar to defragging a computers hard drive, a process that involves reorganizing a computers scattered electronic files so that it runs faster and more efficiently.

A major reorganization of state office space doesnt happen very often, but a planned replacement of the Hill Farms building on Madisons West Side provided the impetus, Cindy Torstveit, administrator of DOAs Division of Facilities Management, said in an interview.

We knew we had to do something for the Hill Farms building, Torstveit said. We started talking about, How can we defrag?

Last summer and fall the State Building Commission and the Legislatures budget committee gave the final approvals for the $150 million Hill Farms building and an accompanying $36 million parking structure between Sheboygan and University avenues near Hilldale Shopping Center.

It also involves selling 18.3 acres of state-owned land, including a parcel on Badger Road, for $13 million for private redevelopment.

The Hill Farms project broke ground with no fanfare shortly after the final paperwork was signed with developer Smith Gilbane in December.

About 4,000 state workers will be affected by the moves, DOA spokeswoman Laurel Patrick said. Half of them will end up in the new Hill Farms building.

Some of the moves began last year, including the Secretary of States office moving from a leased office on Mifflin Street to sharing an office with the State Treasurer in the basement of the State Capitol.

The moves are timed to coincide with leases expiring, Patrick said.

The relocations are designed to increase efficiency among and between departments, Torstveit said.

For example, the Department of Children & Families will go from occupying seven separate offices in two parts of the city with four leases to one owned by the state, the GEF 3 building Downtown.

They wont need seven kitchenettes, Torstveit said. They wont need seven conference rooms all of the same size.

Meanwhile the Department of Public Instruction will be relocated from the GEF 3 building to the GEF 1 building alongside the Department of Workforce Development, which Torstveit said would make it easier for both to collaborate on joint projects such as youth apprenticeship programs.

The current, nearly 60-year-old Hill Farms building hosts the Department of Transportations headquarters in about 287,000 square feet of space.

The new Hill Farms building will house DOT and the departments of Employee Trust Funds, Safety and Professional Services, and Financial Institutions; DOAs hearings and appeals and facilities management divisions; the Public Service Commission; the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission; the Higher Educational Aids Board; and the Educational Approval Board.

The plan calls for moving the new Ethics and Elections commissions out of a leased Downtown building where the Government Accountability Board is located into the Department of Revenue building on Rimrock Road when the current lease expires in December 2018.

Downtown impact unclear

Madison Mayor Paul Soglin said he would have preferred the state consolidate more of its offices Downtown, in keeping with the role of the capital as the seat of state government, but given that theres already significant state space at the Hill Farms, I understand why that makes sense.

Susan Springman, a commercial real estate broker with Mullins Group, said her company is coping with the loss of the state as its tenant in some of its Downtown buildings.

It will change the landscape, but we dont know what the impact will be until we know what the impact will be, Springman said. The good news is the Downtown is pretty healthy right now.

Rep. Joe Sanfelippo, R-West Allis, a chief critic of the states decision to build the Hill Farms building in Madison, said the consolidation process and reduction of leased office space has been a good thing.

But it hasnt ended his interest in moving state offices out of Madison.

Sanfelippo authored a budget amendment last year that would have required the state to explore options outside Dane and Milwaukee counties before renewing leases in those areas. Gov. Scott Walker vetoed the provision.

Sanfelippo said he plans to reintroduce the proposal in the next legislative session as both stand-alone legislation and in the budget.

He said a department such as Children & Families should move to Milwaukee where a large proportion of its clientele lives.

There should be a fair competitive process for these agency headquarters around the state and not just have it limited to one small area, Sanfelippo said. By limiting it strictly to Madison youre driving the cost up on yourself.

In his veto message, Walker said the provision was unnecessary because DOA could already do what was being proposed. He also said he was directing the department to further evaluate these processes and to consider opportunities where leases could be made in counties outside of Dane or Milwaukee.

Patrick, the DOA spokeswoman, said the state considered options outside of Madison for the Hill Farms building, but it made more sense to build on land the state already owned.

She noted the pending consolidation of DWDs unemployment call centers in Menomonee Falls, which in August will close an office on Madisons West Side, saving $271,000 a year in rent and operating costs.

Patrick said the state plans to develop a similar master planning process to the one used to consolidate office space in Madison as it looks at its other office locations across the state.

She said the state is also looking at future consolidations in Madison as leases expire, such as for the large Corrections building on East Washington Avenue, which is leased through 2021.

We clearly are looking at all options outside of Madison, Patrick said. Wherever we are led, we will go.

It will change the landscape, but we dont know what the impact will be until we know what the impact will be. The good news is the Downtown is pretty healthy right now. Susan Springman

commercial real estate

broker with Mullins Group
Larry F. Kaatz

HOLMEN  Larry F. Kaatz, 69, of Holmen, passed away at his home, with his family at his side, June 6, 2016.

He was born March 6, 1947. Larry married Ginger Panke, July 26, 1966, at First Presbyterian Church, La Crosse. They would have celebrated 50 years of marriage July 26.

Larry enjoyed hunting with his boys and family members, but mostly he loved spending time with family. He was an avid Milwaukee Brewers and Minnesota Vikings fan. Larry could fix anything and was always tinkering with something. He was the go to guy when someone was needing advice.

Larry was a proud and decorated Vietnam Veteran, having served with the 1st Cavalry Helicopter Assault Company, as a Crew Chief and Door Gunner. Upon return from Vietnam, he was employed by Caterpillar, G. Heilman Brewing Company, and Clarklift of Minnesota, over his 51 years working in welding and forklift mechanics.

He is survived by his wife, Ginger; daughter, Kris; sons, Chad (Melissa Ertz), Zak (Melissa); six granddaughters Papas little girls, Sheridan, Janie, Madeline, Jencyn, Kolbie, and Briley Kaatz; sister, Kathy (Jerome) Allen, of Wyoming; several sisters-in-law; brothers-in-law; and many nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends.

Larry is preceded in death by his father, Lawrence F. Kaatz Sr.; aunt, Florence Meyer; and granddaughter, Siera Kaatz.

The family would like to thank the 3rd floor Cardio-Pulmonary Unit at Gundersen Health System, and the Gundersen Health System Hospice providers for their unconditional care and support to Larry and his family.

A memorial service will be held 5 p.m. Wednesday, June 15, 2016, at Coulee Region Cremation Group and Center, 133 Mason St., Onalaska. The Rev. Dr. Taylor Haley will officiate. A visitation will be held 3 p.m. until time of service, at the cremation center. Funeral honors will be provided by the U.S. Army Honors Detail, and Holmen American Legion Post 284.

In lieu of flowers, memorials preferred to Homeless Veterans Group, and First Presbyterian Church, La Crosse.
We all drink water. We expect the water to be clean when it comes out of the faucet. We also expect that someone is looking over the safety of our water.

Residents in Kewaunee County wonder more than most if the water they drink is really safe. Well water tested in a random sample last November found a third of Kewaunee wells were contaminated with bacteria or unsafe levels of nitrates.

The likely culprits of well contamination are large livestock farms known as concentrated animal feeding operations. Kewaunee County has more CAFOs permitted by the Department of Natural Resources than any other county except Brown.

The nonpartisan Legislative Audit Committee recently reviewed the DNRs work related to our states pollution discharge elimination system. The DNR staff is charged with watching over about 1,250 industrial and municipality-owned wastewater treatment plants and the discharge of over 250 large farms  mostly large dairies.

This system is a partnership between the state and the federal government to make sure Wisconsin meets its goals for clean water. The federal Environmental Protection Agency relies on Wisconsins DNR to assure compliance with the Clean Water Act.

State law sets Wisconsins policy, to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of its waters to protect public health, safeguard fish and aquatic life and scenic and ecological values, and to enhance the domestic, municipal, recreational, industrial, agricultural, and other uses of water.

Inspections and a permit system exist to make sure those who discharge into our environment do so following the rules.

But auditors found serious problems.

For example, the DNR issued a notice of violation in only 33 of 558 instances (5.9 percent) for which such a notice should have been issued based on DNR policies. A notice of violation is part of the required enforcement system. The official letter may include steps required by the permittee to come into compliance with the law.

Wisconsin has experienced significant growth in CAFOs. From 2005 to 2014, there was an 80 percent increase of CAFO permits.

Farmers are required to send in annual reports, including any manure spills and required testing. Auditors found that the DNR electronically records as received only a fraction of these reports. DNR staff told auditors they do not record report submissions because they are too busy with other duties. Staff also indicated they did not have time to thoroughly review the reports.

Inspections provide the oversight to enforce the law. The DNR strategy is to inspect CAFOs at least twice in a five-year period. Auditors found that while the number of CAFO inspections increased, the percentage of CAFOs inspected twice within a five-year period never exceeded 48 percent.

With the DNR inspecting less than half of CAFOs twice within a five-year period, you might think the DNR secretary would be calling for more staff and more inspections.

Instead, secretary Cathy Stepp, in her written response to the audit, changed the rules. She wrote the Department would commit to only one inspection of each CAFO during a five-year period.

In what sport, or business, does a team that cannot make a goal move the goalpost?

The secretary did acknowledge the number of staff conducting review and inspections was below what was needed, but she never made a request to increase staff. In the most recent budget, the department actually eliminated 66 positions, although none were inspectors.

The secretary also wrote that almost 30 percent of the Bureau of Water Quality staff retired in 2010-11. One effect of lack of staff is a backlog in reviewing permits. Auditors found in the 11-year study period, the DNR never met its goal of having no more than a 10 percent backlog for industrial permits. Only in four of 11 years reviewed did DNR meet this goal for municipal permits.

In July 2011, the federal EPA notified the state of 75 issues requiring DNR action. LAB auditors pointed out details yet to be resolved related to the EPA notice.

Wisconsin had a tradition of clean water. The DNR has both a legal and a moral responsibility to protect our water. Auditors uncovered details that should concern us all. We need to call on DNR leaders to take steps necessary to protect our water.

Democrat Kathleen Vinehout, Alma, represents the 31st state Senate District.
In the weeks since the tragic passing of visionary musician Prince, many speculate his death may have been linked to drug abuse. We now know his death resulted from an overdose of the opiate medication Fentanyl.

Princes hits were all over the radio when I was in my 20s and 30s. He was a truly gifted artist, and he will be missed by many fans. Out of his death, his fans and everyone noting his passing should take away two very important lessons.

First, we as a society must work harder to reduce the stigma that surrounds substance addiction. As people speculated about the cause of Princes death, what judgments were they forming, perhaps even just subconsciously? Did they think he must be weak or of low moral character?

Too often, society attaches labels such as those to people who are suffering from addiction. The truth is that addiction is a disease. We would not view people with leukemia or diabetes as deserving to suffer or die because they have the misfortune of being struck with a disease. What do we think, though, when we hear a news story about a person who died from a drug overdose?

About 10 percent of Americans suffer from substance addiction. Addiction knows no socio-economic, gender, geographic or racial boundaries. For many people struggling with addiction and their families, it is kept secret because they fear the judgments they will face from others. As a result, they dont seek help when they should.

Prince seemed to have some quirks that go with being a celebrity, but I have never seen anything that suggests he was weak or a person of bad character. It is time to start looking at others who struggle with addiction compassionately and supportively. The odds are high that someone you care about suffers from this disease, and perhaps that person hasnt sought help and is afraid of what you will think. It is time to change that.

Second, I hope the passing of this music legend teaches us that no one is immune to the dangers that come with the abuse of prescription painkillers. They are highly addictive and can be deadly when abused. As a multi-millionaire, Prince had resources far beyond anything available to most of us. He could have afforded the best treatment available. Still, it took his life.

This is probably not the first time opiates caused Prince serious health dangers. He had cancelled a concert due to a health concern prior to his fatal overdose. I dont know whether that was opiate-related, but Fentanyl is an extraordinarily strong opiate. It is many times more powerful than heroin that can be purchased on the street.

Data shows most people do not start off abusing the strongest painkiller. More likely, Prince progressed to abusing such a strong drug after his body built up a higher tolerance for less potent prescription medications. Here is a frightening fact: 80 percent of those who abuse heroin started by abusing prescription pain pills such as Oxycontin, Percoset or Vicodin. Once their tolerance builds, they seek ever higher doses or more powerful opiates. They become helplessly trapped.

Opiates took Princes life despite his virtually unlimited resources and network of supporters. If it can happen to him, it can happen to any of us. Once addicted, the power of these drugs can be stronger than even the fear of death. And far too often, addiction comes quickly.

As a society, we need to make treatment more readily available to those who are addicted. We absolutely need to lock up those who prey on our society by trafficking deadly drugs, especially to young people, but we will not incarcerate our way out of this public health crisis.

Ultimately, our best chance to stem the nationwide opiate and heroin crisis is prevention.

We must alter our view of opiates. More people now die in Wisconsin from drug overdoses than car crashes. Prescription opiates, not heroin, are the top killer in our state. In fact, more die from prescription painkillers than from heroin and cocaine combined.

Opiates are appropriately prescribed in some circumstances, but they must only be used in exactly the way they are prescribed by a doctor.

About 70 percent of the time, when a person begins abusing opiates, they do not get them from a doctor. They acquire them improperly from a family member or a friend. So we all have a role in solving this epidemic by securely storing painkillers in our homes and by properly disposing them.

I was sad to learn about Princes death. I am even more saddened, though, about the 850 or so of my fellow citizens in our state who die from drug overdoses every year.

Lets not let any of them die in vain. Lets do something to put an end to this tragic public health crisis. Please go to doseofrealitywi.gov to learn more about how we can make our state safer and healthier.

Republican Brad Schimel is the Attorney General of Wisconsin.
A gunman opened fire in a crowded nightclub in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday morning. At least 50 people are dead and 53 wounded.

It is the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. The previous deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. was the 2007 attack at Virginia Tech. A student there killed 32 people before killing himself.

Here is a list of some of the deadliest shootings compiled by VOA.

December 2015: Couple kill 14 after storming California social services agency, are killed in gun battle with police.

November 2015: Gunman kills three after storming Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic; is arrested after hourslong standoff with police.

October 2015: Gunman kills nine at Oregon community college before being killed in gun battle with police.

July 2015: Gunman kills five at U.S. Navy Reserve center in Tennessee before being shot and killed by police.

June 2015: Gunman kills nine people in South Carolina church before fleeing, is captured the following day, awaiting trial.

May 2015: Nine killed in shootout between rival motorcycle clubs and police at Texas restaurant.

October 2014: Teenage gunman kills four teens, two of whom are his cousins, in Washington state high school before committing suicide.

September 2013: Gunman kills 12 people at a naval facility in Washington before dying in a gun battle with police.

December 2012: Gunman kills 26 adults and children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut before killing himself.

August 2012: Gunman kills six people at Sikh Temple in Wisconsin before committing suicide after being shot by police.

July 2012: Gunman kills 12 people during showing of Batman movie in Colorado.

January 2011: Gunman kills six people and wounds U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona.

November 2009: U.S. Army psychiatrist kills 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas.

April 2007: Virginia Tech student kills 32 people before committing suicide.

October 2006: Gunman kills five girls in Pennsylvania Amish school before committing suicide.

January 2006: Ex-postal worker kills eight before committing suicide in California in rare case of female shooter.

April 1999: Two Columbine High School students kill 12 students, one teacher and themselves in Colorado.

November 1991: Gunman kills four University of Iowa faculty members and a student before committing suicide.

October 1991: Gunman crashes pickup truck into Texas cafe, then begins shooting; kills 23 people before committing suicide.

August 1986: Gunman kills 14 postal workers in Oklahoma before committing suicide.

July 1984: Gunman kills 21 people at a McDonald's California before being killed by police.
Robots are not new to the industrial world. But as technology keeps getting better, more robots are helping humans in the workplace.

Some of the worlds top robot innovators recently gathered at an expo in New York to show off their best machine workers.

One person attending the RoboUniverse expo said robots are important because they can take over tasks humans do not want. The founder and CEO of a new company called Blue Workforce, Preben Hjrnet, said robots will always assist humans, not replace them.

Robots have no conscience, no self-awareness, so theyll never be social. But they dont need to, to make a service for us, he said.

Tom Moolayil, a technical manager at Universal Robots, agrees.

Doing a repetitive, mundane task over and over again, I dont think thats a job any person should be doing even for a day, he said.

He added that a lot of companies with these kinds of jobs find it hard to keep workers. But luckily, robots do not mind being bored. They are also experts at repeating a task over and over again.

Advances in technology have made robots very safe.

Universal Robots demonstrated how one of its machines stopped moving after a human fell on it.

Safety is especially important in workplaces such as car factories, where humans and robots work side-by-side.

Designers at Transcend Robotics created a robot for very dangerous jobs, including mining and law enforcement. It has controllable cameras, climbs stairs and travels over rough terrain.

Chief Marketing Officer Alvin Wong said the machine aims to save lives.

You can actually survey a hazardous environment before bringing a human into that area, he said.

While some people fear robots will replace them, Wong said machines can actually help humans perform better. For example, police officers and soldiers consider the field of robotics to be their partner.

Another use for modern robots is to help people who cannot walk.

5D Robotics showed how its navigation technology can guide people in wheelchairs along pre-programmed paths. 5Ds Chief Marketing Officer, Phil Mann, said cars and airplanes can also use the same navigation technology.

Mann and his colleagues believe Americans will soon have robot co-workers. But in most cases, he said workers wont even notice  except maybe to realize that their day goes by much faster.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Tina Trinh reported on this story for VOANews.com. Bryan Lynn adapted it for Learning English. Kelly Jean Kelly was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Do you think you would enjoy working with a robot? Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

innovator  n. person who introduces new ideas and products

task  n. job for someone to do

conscience  n. feeling inside that you did something wrong

mundane  adj. lacking interest or excitement in, dull

bored  adj. complete lack of interest in something

advances  n. progress made in improving something

terrain  n. a stretch of land

hazardous  adj. harmful, risky, dangerous

colleague  n. person who works with you


North Korea has spent $24 million and four years building the 6,000-square-meter, 35-meter-high Angkor Panorama Museum in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

The Angkor museum shows Khmer warriors fighting using spears, swords and large elephants. The 12th century Angkorian Empire built huge religious centers, called temples. They are now UNESCO World Heritage sites.

The Cambodian government worked with North Koreas Mansudae Art Studio to build the museum and create paintings for it. The museum opened in December.

Mansudae was created in 1959 to tell about North Korea and its ruling family. The stories are often untrue or highly exaggerated.

The studio creates large projects. Its website says it has 4,000 workers, about a quarter of whom are artists. It says its studio is 120,000 square meters large, about 80,000 of which are indoors. It says the studio is probably the largest art production center in the world and by far the largest and most important in North Korea.

Yit Chandaroat is the vice executive director of the Angkor museum. He told VOAs Khmer service that visitors feel as if they are right there during the Angkor era. They feel as if they are with the people selling vegetables [or] those on the fighting elephants in the painting.

The museum has a 13-meter-high, 123-meter-long, 360-degree mural showing thousands of warriors and artisans at war and work during the 12th century. Sixty-three North Korean painters worked on the mural for two years. It is so realistic that some visitors believe it is a picture rather than a painting.

Keo Samoun lives in Banteay Meanchey province in Cambodia. She says the mural is amazing. I can see everything. Just sitting here in one place you can see everything.

She went to the museum after visiting Angkor Wat and the Bayon Temple. She said the museum helps people understand the history of the temples. She said it is easier to visit the museum than some of the temples spread throughout the province.

Chandaroat says people should visit the museum before they go to the nearby temples. He said the more than 40,000 images of ancient warriors, artisans, farmers and animals help people understand the history of the temples and when they were built.

Thai Norak Sathya is the Secretary of State of Cambodias Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts. He told VOA North Korea built the museum because of its relationship with the countrys king. He said it is not designed to make money for North Korea.

Let me tell you that the North Korean company completely abides by the technical condition and Khmer style of art. So, it is not the nature of this business to generate income.

The museum has not earned as much money as officials thought it would. About 90 percent of visitors are Cambodian. Foreign tourists bring valuable foreign currency to Siem Reaps economy. But many say they do not plan to visit the museum.

Sarah and Ashley are from Britain. They say they have traveled a long way and do not want to see just a painting of the Angkor temples.

Sarah told VOA she is quite surprised that they invested so much outside North Korea.

Ashley said I want to see the real things. That is what I am here for. That is what we are going to do today. I am not interested [in going] to the museum.

Christelle Bimar is a traveler from France. She is visiting Siem Reap with her two sons. She did not know about the museum.

I am not aware of whats inside, she said. She was sitting in her chair in the shade of a palm tree in front of the Angkor temple.

But, yes, I think Angkor and Siem Reap deserve to have many more museums, she said.

Chandaroat says North Koreas decision to build the museum was an act of friendship. The agreement between the two countries says North Korea would be paid back the $24 million investment.

The museum will then be fully owned by Cambodia under the agreement within 20 years.

Im Christoper Jones-Cruise.

Correspondent Pin Sisovann reported this story from Siem Reap, Cambodia. Christopher Jones-Cruise adapted it for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section, or visit our Facebook page.

______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

panorama  n. a full and wide view of something

era  n. a period of time that is associated with a particular quality, event, person, etc.

realistic  adj. showing people and things as they are in real life

abide by  phrasal verb obey; to accept and be guided by (something)

shade  n. an area of slight darkness that is produced when something blocks the light of the sun
A gunman has killed 50 people and wounded another 53 at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. It was the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

President Barack Obama, in an address to the nation Sunday, called the attack an act of terror and an act of hate. He said the American people are united in grief and outrage. Obama praised the police and others who worked to rescue the hostages and end the attack.

The president also called the attack a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon. Obamas comments mark his fifteenth address linked to a mass shooting during his presidency.

Many families still do not know the fate of their loved ones who were at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

Police have identified the shooter as Omar Saddiqui Mateen. He worked as a security guard since 2007. He was killed at the scene in a gunfight with police. Mateen is a U.S. citizen born in New York. His parents are from Afghanistan.

U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said intelligence officials informed him the shooter might have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. He added investigators are focused on Fort Pierce, about 190 kilometers from Orlando, where the gunman lived.

Ronald Hopper of the FBI said Mateen purchased at least two guns last week. He said the FBI had earlier questioned Mateen after reports that he had made comments sympathetic to the Islamic State. But the agency determined there was not enough evidence to continue an investigation.

Mateen's father, Mir Siddiqui, told NBC News that he did not believe the attack was connected to religion. He suggested it was more likely an act of homophobia. He said his son had expressed deep anger when he saw two men kissing recently.

"We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident," Siddiqui said. "We are in shock like the whole country."

The suspect exchanged gunfire with an officer working at the nightclub around 2 oclock in the morning. About 300 people were inside. The gunman then went inside and took hostages, Orlando police chief John Mina said.

About three hours later, officials sent in a special police team to rescue the hostages. Officers shot and killed the attacker.

The shooter had an assault rifle and a handgun.

It appears he was organized and well prepared," Chief Mina said.

World leaders have reacted to the news of the massacre in Florida with messages of sympathy and solidarity with the United States.

French President Francois Hollande sent a statement condemning with horror" the mass killing in Florida. It expressed the full support of France and the French with America's authorities and its people in this difficult time.

Italian Premier Matteo Renzi posted a message on the social media website Twitter. "Our heart is with our American brothers," he wrote.

The Vatican said Pope Francis joins the families of victims in prayer and compassion.

Caty Weaver wrote this report for VOA Learning English based on VOA News, the Associated Press and Reuters news reports. Hai Do was the editor.

__________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

nightclub - n. a place that is open at night, has music, dancing, or a show, and usually serves alcoholic drinks and food

outrage - n. extreme anger : a strong feeling of unhappiness because of something bad, hurtful, or morally wrong

assault rifle - n. a gun that can shoot many bullets quickly and that is designed for use by the military

fate - n. the things that will happen to a person or thing: the future that someone or something will have

pledge allegiance - verb phrase to declare loyalty to a person, country, group, etc.

homophobia - n. a person who hates or is afraid of homosexuals or treats them unfairly

authorities - n. people who have power to make decisions and enforce rules and laws

compassion - n. a feeling of wanting to help someone who is sick, hungry, in trouble, etc.
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The United Nations draws up a list of countries ranked by per capita GDP. India is ranked 150. Our per capita GDP is $1,586 per year. This means that the average Indian produces goods and services worth Rs 8,800 per month. Countries below India in the ranking include Yemen ($1,418), Pakistan ($1,358), Kenya ($1,358), Bangladesh ($1,088), Zimbabwe ($965), Nepal ($692), Afghanistan ($688) and Congo ($480). Somalia ($131) is at the bottom.

Right on top are the small European states Monaco ($187,650), Liechtenstein ($157,040) and Luxembourg ($116,560) where the wealthy live. Singapore ($55,910) and the United States ($54,306) are better representatives of high income nations. South Korea ($28,166) is catching up with Japan ($36,298), while Germany ($47,966) and the United Kingdom ($46,461) are quite close together.

These figures are a good indicator, but they are not the only one we must consult. Median income, meaning the income of someone in the middle of the list, rather than the overall average, is higher in Pakistan than in India. This means that income of Pakistanis, even though lower than that of Indians, is better distributed and it is economically less unequal than India.

It will interest many readers to know that countries like Zambia ($1,715), Vietnam ($2,015), Sudan ($2,081) and Bhutan ($2,569) are ahead of India. Sri Lanka ($3,635) has a per capita GDP more than double of India's. This will not be surprising to those who have visited the country and seen how much more prosperous its people are than Indians.

The size of the nation, the source of its income and many other such things need to be considered when we make such comparisons. But looking at these data will give us a good idea about where we stand. And perhaps we can also then consider what we need to do to make India a developed country.

The World Bank has now decided to not use the term 'developing country' and will instead classify nations by per capita GDP. India is a low middle income country. The definition is as follows. Countries with lower than about $1,000 are low income, between $1,000 and $4,000 are low middle income, between $4,000 and $12,000 are high middle income, and over that are high income. Most of the European nations are high income and so far as I know the lowest is Serbia which has a per capita GDP of $6,000.

The Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan, recently spoke about what sort of per capita GDP India would require to reach if it had to be rid of poverty. Or at least the worst aspects of it, because no nation can successfully eliminate poverty entirely.

Rajan said: "At one level, we are still a $1,500 per capita economy. All the way from $1,500 to $50,000, which is where Singapore is, there are a lot of things to do. We are still a relatively poor economy and to wipe the tear from every eye, one would at least want to be middle-income, around $6,000-$7,000 which, if reasonably distributed, will have dealt with extreme poverty. And that is two decades worth of work to be even moderately satisfied."

China has a per capita GDP of $7,600, meaning it has been able to recently achieve what Rajan is talking about. Those who visit China will know that the development of that country is on a different scale from India's and it would not be fair to compare the two. They are very far ahead. I do not think it will be possible in our lifetime, meaning in the next 30 years, for us to catch them.

So what will be required for India to make the four times jump from $1,500 to $6,000? The debate in India tends to focus only on what the government can and should do. The thinking is that if we need to have more and better laws, through economic reforms like a unified Goods and Services Tax (GST). And secondly, we need good governance, meaning a non-corrupt and efficient administration.

Assuming that this second thing is possible in a country where corruption and inefficiency are a product and part of culture, I would still add that these two things are not enough. They are not even the major part of what is required. Those who travel to those countries which have achieved high income status will have observed that their societies function in a different way than in India.

The respect for the individual, the attention they pay to not offending the stranger, the harmony in their societies is something missing in ours, even in our best cities. Reform of society, much more than reform of government, is what has made nations rich and made their per capita GDP high. So long as our focus remains on changes produced by government, India will continue to be slow in its march up the ladder.
Shortly after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) attached assets worth Rs 1,411 crore of liquor baron Vijay Mallya and one of his companies in connection with its money laundering probe in the alleged IDBI bank loan default case, Mallya has hit back, saying that the EDs action will make it even more difficult to pay back the money to banks.

Mallya and his now defunct airline, Kingfisher, owes Rs 9000 crore money (including the interest amount accrued) to a clutch of banks 17-banks including State Bank of India. Mallya, who left the country on 2 March to UK, is fighting the case with banks across various Indian courts including the Supreme Court of India.

In a statement on Sunday evening, Mallya said purely civil matters such as loan recovery are being connected by the ED with baseless criminal allegations. There is no rationale nor any legal basis for the series of actions initiated by the ED which is now making it more difficult to raise resources to pay the banks., Mallya said.

Recently, the government had revoked Mallyas passport and sought his deportation from UK but the request was turned down by the UK authorities. Besides the ED, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is too investigating the case against Mallya by setting up a special probe team.

ED attached Mallyas assets including his bank balance of Rs 34 crore, a flat each in Bengaluru and Mumbai (2,291 sqft and 1,300 sqft respectively), an industrial plot in Chennai (4.5 acres), a coffee plantation land in Coorg (28.75 acres) and residential and commercial constructed areas in UB city and Kingfisher Tower in Bengaluru (84,0279 sqft).

The agency, in a statement, said the order was issued as investigation found that some of the properties were being "disposed of" by the accused so that further action undertaken by the agency under PMLA can be "frustrated." An attachment of assets under PMLA is aimed to deprive the accused from obtaining benefits of their ill-gotten wealth. The accused can appeal against this action before the Adjudicating Authority of PMLA within 180 days.

Heres the full text of Mallyas statement:

I am deeply pained to keep reading in the media that Government agencies are planning further unprecedented action against me.

After months of investigation which included personal interviews with me, the CBI is reported to have now constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to further investigate Kingfisher Airlines and myself. It is, indeed, sad and disappointing that the thousands of documents submitted by us and interrogation of several executives seems insufficient to convince them there has been no wrongdoing.

I have maintained and continue to maintain that there has been absolutely no misappropriation or diversion of funds and strenuously deny any allegation to the contrary. The UB Group has itself invested over Rs 6,000 crores of own money into Kingfisher Airlines which has been lost due to a genuine business failure. At the relevant time Air India received a bail out package of Rs 30,000 crores from the Government which serves to reinforce the stressed position of the Aviation sector at that time.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has alleged that proceeds from the loan made to Kingfisher Airlines by IDBI Bank were diverted or siphoned out. Kingfisher Airlines have provided full details supported by copies of Bank statements and swift copies showing that the funds were utilised only for legitimate business purposes. If the ED wish to expand their scope to include all Banks, Kingfisher Airlines will be only too happy to provide full details and co-operate in the investigation.

The ED obtained a NBW against me for non-appearance before them despite three summons. I never refused to appear but sought time as I was trying to sell assets to pay the employees, tax authorities and Banks. Instead, at the ED's behest, my passport was revoked despite my offering to appear before the ED by video conference and make statements on oath which is permissible.

Now the ED's latest move seems to be to approach the PMLA Court to declare me a proclaimed absconder for reasons that I cannot understand. I left India as per schedule on 2 March to attend meetings in Geneva at which time no ED proceedings had commenced and no summons issued to me.

All government agencies are also approaching various courts to cancel previous exemptions from personal appearance granted to me so that further NBW's can be issued against me all of which seems to be part of a concerted effort to construct a case for my extradition.

It surely appears as if these agencies are pursuing a heavily biased investigation and are already holding me guilty without trial after which I need to prove my innocence.

Through all this I have still reached out to the Banks asking them to nominate a committee to sit across the table and negotiate a one time settlement with us.

Most recent media reports and a tweet from the ED suggest that the ED have attached various properties belonging to myself and United Breweries Holdings Limited which is a public Company and not even the subject of any ED investigation. The assets purportedly attached under PMLA date back to several years prior to the launch of Kingfisher Airlines. There is no rationale nor any legal basis for the series of actions initiated by the ED which is now making it more difficult to raise resources to pay the Banks.

Purely civil matters such as loan recovery are being connected with criminal allegations without any basis whatsoever.
Patna: Amit Kumar alias Bachcha Rai, the mastermind of the Class 12 Board merit list scam in Bihar, was arrested on Saturday after he surrendered before the police.

Rai is the director-cum-principal of the VR College in Vaishali district which is being investigated in the case.

According to police officials, Rai, who has been absconding, surrendered near his college in Vaishali and the police arrested him. Police will produce him in the local court by evening.

However, according to a India Today report, Rai has said he is innocent and denied having links with former Chairman of Bihar School Examination Board Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh. Rai claimed that he is being framed in the case.

But as Times Now reported, the police has claimed there is strong evidence to suggest Rai has a network with top Bihar Board officials and this racket had been functioning for quite some time.

In the last 48 hours police had raided several places but failed to track Rai.

Earlier on Friday, five accused arrested in the case were remanded to 14 days judicial custody by a local court in Patna.

Those arrested earlier 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.

Meanwhile, another key accused, former Chairman of Bihar School Examination Board Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh is still absconding, police said. Singh is a key accused in the case and has gone underground after resigning from the Board.

-With agency inputs
New Delhi : A 23-year-old woman has alleged that she was abducted and gangraped in a moving car and then dropped near a flyover in southeast Delhi's Sunlight Colony, not very far from Delhi Police headquarters, in the wee hours on Sunday.

In her complaint, the woman said that she had gone to an eatery in Nizamuddin area when the three accused approached her and asked her to come along with them in their car. When she refused, they forced her inside the vehicle and drove away, a police official said.

The woman alleged that when she resisted the attempts of the trio to molest her, they gangraped her inside the moving car.

After a nearly two-hour drive, the trio allegedly dropped the woman at a spot near a flyover, not very far from Delhi Police headquarters in New Delhi, under the jurisdiction of Sunlight Colony Police Station, the official said.

A case of abduction and rape has been registered in connection with the incident. It is being probed from all possible angles and two of the accused have been detained for questioning, the official added.
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has directed a sessions court to defer framing of charges against Sameer Gaikwad, an alleged member of Sanatan Sanstha who is arrested in activist Govind Pansare murder case, as the prosecution is awaiting forensic report from the UK.

The report is being awaited to establish if there was any link between the killings of Pansare, and rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and MM Kalburgi.

Justice Sadhana Jadhav on 9 June ordered the sessions court in Kolhapur, which is presently conducting trial against Gaikwad, to defer framing of charges against him.

The direction was given on a petition filed by Maharashtra government's CID, which is probing the Pansare murder case, challenging a 20 May order passed by the Kolhapur sessions court rejecting the prosecution's application seeking to defer framing of charges against Gaikwad, pending the forensic report.

"At the stage of framing of charge, it is necessary to apprise the accused of all the allegations levelled against him and the charges faced by him. That it is incumbent upon the prosecution to establish the nexus and apprise the accused of the fact as to whether there is any nexus between the homicidal death of all the three luminaries and the specific role attributed to the accused," Justice Jadhav said.

Justice Jadhav, while staying the order of the sessions court rejecting the prosecution's application, directed it to defer framing of charges in the case until further orders from the high court.

Government pleader Sandeep Shinde informed the high court that the state CID had filed an application before the lower court seeking to defer framing of charges against Gaikwad, as they were still waiting for a report from the Scotland Yard Police forensic laboratory to establish nexus between the murders of Pansare, Dabholkar and Kalburgi.

Shinde told HC that earlier the Karnataka police, which is probing the death of Kalburgi, had taken from the state CID five empty cartridges and one bullet recovered from Pansare's body to see if the murders were connected.

Later CBI, which is probing Dabholkar's death, took over the cartridges and bullet from Karnataka police and sent the same to the forensic laboratory of Scotland Yard Police in the UK for testing, and the report is awaited.

CBI had on Friday night arrested a member of Hindu Janajagruti Samiti Virendrasing Tawde in connection with the murder Dabholkar in Pune in 2013, the first in the case by the agency.

The Samiti is linked to Goa-based radical Hindu group Sanatan Sanstha, which had come under the scanner for the murder of Pansare in February 2015.
Srinagar: JKLF chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik was detained hours after his release on court orders even as Jammu and Kashmir government allowed the separatist Hurriyat Conference to hold a seminar for opposing construction of Sainik colony for Kashmiri Pandits and soldiers in the Valley.

Malik, who was yesterday released on bail after a week-long detention in a case related to 1987 elections, was picked up by police late last night from his Maisuma residence and lodged at Kothibagh police station, police said on Sunday.

The detention of Malik, who has been at the forefront of fresh efforts at unity among separatists, came hours ahead of a joint seminar by separatist outfits at the residence of hardline Hurriyat Conference chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

The separatist groups had last week decided to launch an awareness campaign against the setting up of separate townships for Kashmiri Pandits and constructing Sainik colonies in the valley.

The seminar at Geelani's residence is part of the joint strategy adopted by the separatist groups. They are planning to hold a silent sit-in on 15 June against any government move to set up the township for Kashmiri Pandits or retired military personnel of the state.

The separatist groups have alleged that these townships and colonies are being constructed to settle people from other parts of India in Kashmir to change the demography of the Valley.

The PDP-BJP government in the state has made it clear that there would be no separate townships for Kashmiri Pandits but transit accommodation will be provided to them till the security situation improves allowing them to return to their native places.

It has also ruled out setting up any Sainik colony in Kashmir in view of "scarcity of land".
Amritsar: Two Pakistani smugglers were killed while another was injured as Border Security Force (BSF) troops fired at them to foil an attempt to smuggle drugs along the Indo-Pak border in Fazilka in Punjab.

Officials said the incident occurred around 2 am when Border Security Force personnel detected some suspicious movement along the International Border in the area under Sohana border post and challenged the intruders.

"While two Pakistani nationals have been killed, another has been injured and apprehended by BSF. About 15 packets of narcotic, suspected to be heroin, has been seized from them, besides some arms and ammunition. This seems to be a case of

cross-border drug smuggling," one of the officials said.

The officials said the bodies have been recovered and a search has been launched in the area.

Senior officials of the border guarding force have reached the forward area and more details are awaited, they said.
New Delhi: Amid hopes of long pending GST bill getting passed in Rajya Sabha in the next Parliament session, state finance ministers will deliberate on the model GST law at a two-day meeting in Kolkata beginning Tuesday.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will participate in the meeting of Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers and try to iron out differences over the new regime that will subsume all indirect taxes and create one national market under the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

"The meeting on 14 and 15 June will discuss the model GST law, which will be adopted by the Centre and all states. Union Finance Minister will attend the meeting on 14 June," an official said.

The Centre is planning to roll out the indirect tax from the next financial year beginning 1 April, 2017, but the GST bill has been pending in Rajya Sabha because of stiff opposition from the Congress party.

Once the Constitution Amendment Bill to roll out GST is passed by the Parliament, the Centre and states will have to adopt their own laws to give effect to the new indirect tax regime.

The Central GST (CGST) will be framed based on the model GST law. The states will draft their own State GST (SGST) based on the draft model law with minor variations incorporating state-based exemptions.

Besides these two laws, the Centre and states will have to approve the integrated-GST law or iGST, which will deal with inter-state movement of goods.

The Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers is headed by West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra, who took over the chairmanship in February.

The government has proposed to take up the GST Constitution Amendment Bill in the Rajya Sabha in the forthcoming monsoon session of the Parliament.

The reform of the indirect taxation was initiated by the Kelkar Committee in 2003, following which the UPA government in 2006 proposed the GST Bill.

The GST Constitution Amendment Bill was passed by Lok Sabha in May last year and has been pending in the Rajya Sabha, where the ruling NDA does not have the majority.
On 26 May 2016, Amnesty International released a proposal calling for decriminalising the sex trade, highlighting the rape, violence, discrimination and extortion faced by sex workers all over the world. In the time since, the proposal has launched a charge debate, with former US president Jimmy Carter penning an (also much discussed) opinion piece for The Washington Post, presenting an alternate model of punishing those who buy sex, rather than those who sell it.

That debate seems a long way away, however, from the narrow lanes of Kamathipura  Mumbais red light district (Asias second largest, right after Sonagachi in Kolkata).

On the day that I visit Kamathipura, its narrow lanes are crammed with the usual businesses and people common to any other neighbourhood in the city. But then you see what sets it apart from those localities  the presence of heavily made-up women, waiting for their customers.

It may be the worlds oldest profession, but prostitution continues to be riddled with all sorts of problems  from trafficking, HIV/AIDS, to violence. And even after the passage of so many years, little advances have been made for the betterment of sex workers.

Shumi, 25, migrated to Kamathipura from Kolkata. She has now been working here for two years, and even though she claims customers are good to her and shes doing this of her own accord, the hesitation in her demeanour is clear. Shumi had to leave her husband and two young children, but intends to go back next year as soon as she manages to save enough money. I want to save money for the welfare of my kids in the future, she says.

The prospect of leaving ones children behind may be brutal, but when faced with extreme poverty many women have little choice. Its no wonder then that most sex workers come from Indias poorest states, including West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. However, by large, the sex trade knows no boundaries.

Arjun (name changed), 23, has been living in a building opposite Kamathipura since he was six or seven. He drives a silver Jaguar and evidently comes from a far different socio-economic background than the other people I encounter. Yet he knows the area inside out. Girls from Mumbai go to Kolkata and Delhi. Girls from Delhi go to Kolkata and Mumbai. And girls from Kolkata go to Mumbai and Delhi, he explains. In other words, sex workers travel as far as possible to avoid the brunt of their family and acquaintances censure back home.

Unfortunately, as is the case in most countries in the world, prostitution is still a source of shame and as such, falls into one of those grey areas of legality.

The legal standing of prostitution is at the very least, ambiguous in India. There are many loopholes in the law, but consecutive governments have preferred to ignore the situation than to seek a long-term solution to address the issues surrounding the trade. Trafficking of minors and forced sex is of course illegal, but when it comes to consensual sex between two adults, the situation is different.

Officially, a sex worker cant legally solicit clients in public, but if she does so in a private home then she isnt technically infringing the law. Brothels and pimps are banned on paper, yet they somehow manage to coexist amongst businesses and even when there is a police unit in the vicinity.

For some young men in India, sleeping with a sex worker is almost a rite of passage. If they have cash in their pockets, they will not hesistate. If its my birthday or someone elses, rather than giving a treat in a restaurant, this is preferred, confesses Arjun.

Dr Nayreen Daruwalla, programme director for the Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action (Sneha), believes there are multiple dilemmas sex workers confront due to their status, which is why she is adamantly in favour of legalisation. I think prostitution should be legalised. Sex workers are doing it behind peoples backs, so what is the whole point? Just give them that legal status, she says.

And legalising may help with one issue that many sex workers testify to: harassment from the police, for bribes. I think if prostitution becomes legal, the police might harass them a bit lessand the women might have a more respectable position, says Dr Daruwalla.

There are an estimated 2-3 million sex workers in India, but due to the lack of registries and sex trafficking, the figure is probably even larger. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, human trafficking, estimated at US$ 32 billion, is the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world. But when the stakes are so high, its an industry thats hard to halt.

Aastha Parivaar is another of the many NGOs which caters to sex workers. Seema Sayyed, the manager of the organisation, believes great strides have been made since the time she first started working with prostitutes. However, there are few other forms of livelihood to which a sex worker can resort. We are not here to stop the profession, because that cannot happen. If I enter a brothel and ask a madam to shoo away a girl and stop working, then what are they going to do? We dont have an option for them, she says.

Perhaps it is time we acknowledged  in India and elsewhere  and acknowledged the fact that sex workers are like any other human beings. They need protection but also have obligations. And the only way to uphold these rights  and duties  is through legalisation.
After the mass exodus of Hindu families from Kairana, Uttar Pradesh, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued a notice to the Akhilesh Yadav government on Friday, seeking a response.

More than 250 families have left their homes since 2014 fearing criminals who enjoy "political patronage", following which the commission issued a notice to the Chief Secretary and Director General of Police (DGP) of the state. The NHRC observed that the allegations made are serious in nature. It has also directed the state's DIG (Investigation) to depute a team of officers for a spot inquiry in the matter covering all the allegations made in the complaint and submit a report within two weeks, the commission said in a statement on Friday.

BJP President Amit Shah said that an atmosphere of violence was prevailing in Uttar Pradesh, citing the incidents at Kairana and Mathura. Meanwhile, Ravi Shankar Prasad, during a press conference in Allahabad on Sunday, said that despite the issue being serious, the state government is not taking any action.

The State Govt is denying the existence of incidents itself, that shows the mindset. It is a serious issue: RS Prasad on Kairana incident  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) June 12, 2016

According to the complaint dated 10 June, 2016, a woman belonging to Kashyap caste was abducted, gangraped and killed, but no action was taken by the police against the offenders.

The complaint also stated that in 2014, two businessmen and brothers, Shankar and Raju, were shot dead in broad daylight at a market, when they refused to pay 'protection money' to a Muslim gang, the complain also noted, according to a report in the Hindustan Times.

A petrol pump was also looted in the area and when the police took on criminals, they shot dead a constable and fled.

India Today reported that the Muslim gang in question was headed by Mukim Kala, who is in jail with his goons.

According to a report in The Indian Express, Kairana MP Hukum Singh, came out with a list containing details of more than 250 families (the list puts it at 346) who left their homes. He then met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh seeking an intervention in the matter.

The Times of India, in a report, added that the Hindu families fled leaving their possessions behind after they were persecuted by another community. Singh said that the list mentioned the families of Kairana, and if he included those families who migrated from other parts of the district, the number would be more than a thousand.

Kairana police, according to Hindustan Times, admitted to cases of extortion but deduced the cause of migration to lack of jobs in the town. Sub-inspector Ravindra Singh dismissed allegations that the local administration was working under pressure from the Muslim community.

Hukum Singh, at a press conference, estimated the number of communal killings in the town at 10 for the last three years and called it the "new Kashmir", the Times of India reported. He also released a list of names who were being extorted for money and when they refused, they were killed, he claimed. Singh added that this was what happened in Kashmir; that businesspersons were being targeted and so people were forced to leave their ancestral properties behind.

Shamli District Magistrate Sujeet Kumar has reportedly formed a team that comprises a sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) and a deputy SP to probe the MPs allegations, Indian Express said. Uttar Pradesh BJP unit has also promised to look into the matter, with state chief Keshav Prasad Maurya setting up a committee for the purpose. Maurya said that the situation in Kairana questioned the UP government's failing security measures.

The Kairana issue, added the India Today report, has brought about a political tussle that the state will witness during the assembly elections in 2017.

With inputs from PTI
Allahabad: Attacking the Samajwadi Party government over recent incidents in Mathura and Kairana in Uttar Pradesh, which goes to polls early next year, BJP President Amit Shah on Sunday said the prevailing "atmosphere of violence" in the state is a matter of serious concern.

"The present Samajwadi government, each day is expressing its helplessness in dealing with these situations," Shah said while citing recent clashes in Mathura as also violence and subsequent migration of over 100 families.

Launching a frontal attack on the Akhilesh Yadav government, Shah told the two-day BJP National Executive which began on Sunday that "the lack of development and the lack of governance in the biggest state of India i.e UP is increasing becoming a matter of serious concern."

Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who briefed reporters about Shah's speech, said the BJP president specially discussed UP and said there was "an atmosphere of violence, which the government has been unsuccessful in curbing."

On the recent incidents in Mathura, Shah said that this politics of forcefully grabbing government land with

"patronage" was "very unfortunate."

Shah also referred to the alleged migration of a community from the western UP town of Kairana and said that it is a matter of deep concern.

The BJP president called upon the party workers to work hard and expressed committment that BJP will form government in UP with full majority after the assembly polls.

Shah said 2017 is a year of challenges in which besides UP, there are polls in Uttarakhand, Punjab, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.
Patna: Seeking to turn the tables on the BJP over the Class 12 Board exam scam, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav on Sunday said it is union Minister Giriraj Singh who has a close association with the prime accused, Bachcha Rai.

Rai is the director-cum-principal of the V.R. College in Vaishali district which is being investigated in the case.

The Bharatiya Janata Party had earlier said that Bachcha Rai has not only been an acive Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) worker, but worked diligently to ensure victory of Lalu Prasad's sons Tejaswi Yadav and Tej Pratap from Raghopur and Mahua seats in Vaishali, respectively.

Tejaswi, who is younger son of RJD chief Lalu Prasad, posted on Twitter account some photos of Bachcha Rai with union minister and BJP leader Giriraj Singh.

He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "favourite minister" is with Rai, the mastermind of the Class 12 Board merit list scam.

Giriraj Singh is "business partner and family friend of prime accused of the Class 12 Board merit list scam," tweeted Tejaswi.

Tejaswi's party RJD has also said that Giriraj Singh had promised to help Rai set up a medical college.
Lucknow: Samajwadi Party MP Amar Singh on Sunday alleged that BJP was opposing the movie 'Udta Punjab' as it would "expose" the fact that the party was involved in narcotics smuggling in the state.

He also claimed that "narcotics smuggling racket" was behind the infiltration and subsequent attack on a military base there, in an apparent reference to the Pathankot Air Force base assault in January.

"Now a days there is a discussion on the movie Udta Punjab. I am not making any direct allegation myself but the Court has said that narcotics was consumed in Punjab and freedom of expression should not be interfered with," Singh said.
Kolkata: Family members of Judith D'Souza, who was abducted from Taimani area of Kabul, said on Sunday that the Centre was doing its best to bring Judith back home from Afghanistan.

"There has been lot of communication from MEA and the Union government. A joint secretary level officer is coordinating with us. We have full faith on the Indian government and the MEA, they are doing their best to bring my sister back. We have also spoken to the organisation my sister was working for," Judith's brother Jerome told PTI.

When asked whether the details about the efforts being made were discussed with the family members, Jerome said, "No these are official proceedings, which MEA and Indian embassy in Kabul are dealing with. These things are not to be made public."

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had called up Judith's family in Kolkata and had assured them of making all-out efforts to bring her back.

Judith, 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.

Judith is working for Aga Khan Foundation as senior technical adviser and was scheduled to return to India next week.

Meanwhile, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury paid a visit to Judith's family and assured of all help.
Bengaluru: Cracking the whip, JD(S) on Sunday suspended its eight rebel MLAs, who voted against the official candidate and supported Congress in the biennial elections, to fill four Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka.

Caught off-guard by the open defiance of rebels, a red-faced JD(S) leadership also issued a notice asking them why they should not be expelled from the party for defying the party whip in the elections held on Saturday, which saw the party candidate, businessman BM Farooq, secure 33 votes against the party strength of 40.

Addressing a meeting of party MLAs, Panchayat members and office-bearers, JD(S) National President and former prime minister HD Deve Gowda said, "all the eight members have been suspended and notice have been issued to them."

He said, according to the party constitution, a three-member enquiry committee would be set up, which after going through their (suspended MLAs) replies to the notice, would decide on the expulsion.

Also accusing the MLAs of indulging in cross-voting during biennial elections to fill in seven seats of Karnataka Legislative Council from Legislative Assembly held on Friday, the party has said that if there is no response they would be expelled in accordance with the party constitution.

The rebel MLAs who faced action are Zameer Ahmed Khan, Chaluvaraya Swamy, Iqbal Ansari, Balakrishna, Ramesh Bandisiddegowda, Gopalaiah, Bheema Nayak and Akhanda Srinivas Murthy who had voted for Congress party's third candidate for Rajya Sabha KC Ramamurthy, paving the way for his resounding victory securing 52 votes aided by them and Independents.

The party earlier on Sunday adopted a resolution asking its president to suspend eight MLAs and to expel them for their indiscipline.

The motion was moved by MLA YSV Datta and seconded by another MLA Ningaiah and MLC TA Saravana.

Union Minister Nirmala Seetharaman and Congress' Jairam Ramesh, Oscar Fernandes and KC Ramamurthy had won Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka.

It was a harder and more humiliating blow for JD(S) as eight MLAs indulged in cross-voting as against the expected five.

Gowda during the meeting vowed to build and strengthen the party by travelling across the state.

Accusing Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Energy Minister DK Shivakumar and BJP state president BS Yeddyurappa of conspiring against JD(S), he said "the agenda of this trio is to finish JD(S), but they will not succeed in it."

Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah, Gowda alleged that BJP had "joined hands" with Congress to win the second seat in the council election.

"Modi and Shah speak across the country about Congress-free India, what are they doing here in Karnataka? They have joined hands with Congress to win the second seat in the Council elections," he said.

Congress had won all four seats it contested in Council elections from the Assembly, while BJP managed to win both the seats for which it had fielded candidates and JD(S) could win only one seat.

JD(S) state president and former chief minister HD Kumaraswamy was absent in the meeting but his message to party workers was read out, in which he called rebels as 'Mir Sadiq' (a minister who betrayed Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan paving the way for a British victory in Anglo-Mysore war).

Party sources said Kumaraswamy was travelling abroad for production related work of the movie Jaguar starring his son Nikhil.

JD(S) has been rocked by "dissidence" in recent months with several of its MLAs unhappy with the leadership over its style of functioning and "unilateral" decisions by the Gowda family which maintains a stranglehold over the party. Congress with 122 members was assured of two seats for Jairam Ramesh and Oscar Fernandes, but with a surplus of 33 votes, the party fielded Ramamurthy, banking on JD(S) rebels and Independents. The required strength for victory was 45 votes.

Even hours before the Rajya Sabha polls ended, the party had admitted that there was cross-voting by its eight rebels, who also publicly said they voted for Congress.
Minutes before BJP president Amit Shah landed at Allahabads Bamrauli airport, senior BJP party leaders were readying themselves with good news. The leaders and their aides were busy with their phones, making and receiving calls from far flung state capitals  Jaipur, Ranchi, Chandigarh and Lucknow  in particular.

The calls had favourably swung the mood in four-star Kanha Shayam Hotel in Allahabad where most senior leaders are staying. At around 6.20 pm on Saturday, BJP general secretary Bhupendra Yadav received that much awaited call from Ranchi that the BJP had won both the Rajya Sabha seats in state. The party was sure to win Mukhtar Abbas Naqvis seat but winning the second seat was a difficult proposition against a combined opposition candidate JMM-Congress-JVM and others. Poddar couldnt have defeated Basant Soren, JMM chief Shibu Sorens younger son, without cross voting from Opposition ranks. After the news came in, the mood among BJP leaders and workers was celebratory.

Party leaders then learnt that the BJP had won all four Rajya Sabha seats in Rajasthan. The BJP had three clear seats and Congress had entered the contest by fielding former Union minister and businessman Kamal Morarka for fourth seat. The Congress couldnt manage additional votes required and all BJP candidates easily sailed through. Partys general secretary in-charge of Haryana Anil Jain was pacing up and down when counting was held up for some time. He got a call and happily broke the news that BJP has won both the seats. Its first seat was clear but for the second seat the Congress and INLD had jointly put up lawyer RK Anand to challenge BJP-backed Independent media baron Subash Chandra.

In Uttar Pradesh, Congress' Kapil Sibal was ahead of BJP-backed Priti Mahapatra and was set to win on basis of second preference votes but the BJP was taking satisfaction from the fact that Sibal could get only 25 first preference votes when Congress on its own had 29 MLAs in the Uttar Pradesh assembly. This meant that not all Congress legislators had voted for him and Mayawati didnt lend BSPs support to him.

The Congress and BJP each had 14 Rajya Sabha members who were retiring. BJP was poised to gain a few seats on account of an increased strength in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Haryana. BJP had taken a bold step by putting extra candidates in four states and thanks to cross voting, it yielded dividend. Even though voting in Rajya Sabha elections are "open", cross-voting does not make one liable to provisions of Anti-Defection Act.

In all these states, the BJP had been able to split rival political partys rank and it set a joyous confident tone for Amit Shah to hold general secretaries meeting later in the evening. At Allahabad airport, Shah got a victor's welcome by party workers, a show intended to lift morale of partys rank and file. Huge hoardings, banners and posters of enthusiastic BJP leaders and their supporters were dotted every part of Allahabad.

And even though they vie for space and prominence against each other but all is intended to one singular message  seeking clear majority for BJP in upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. Sultanpur MP takes the cake in this banner-poster war, both in number and in variety of message:

UP ki Karun Pukar, Abki Bar Bhajapa sarkar, Abki baar 300 paar

Given the intra-party equations, Varun Gandhi cannot be BJP's chief ministerial candidate for Uttar Pradesh but through these hoardings and posters he has made his presence felt and become a talking point before he arrives in Allahabad on Sunday to attend the party meet. While one poster rued the absence of Murli Manohar Joshi, another one had Sanjay Joshi and Shatrughan Sinha along with PM Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh.

The National Executive meet is where BJP sounds the poll bugle for Indias most populous and politically significant state but from the partys perspective its importance lay somewhere else as well.

This is first meet of partys highest policy making body of over 200 members after it created a history by winning election with two-thirds majority in Assam, opening account in Kerala and polling around 15 votes and significantly increasing its vote share in West Bengal compared to the last assembly polls. Expanding party base is going to be one of the highlights to make a mark in coastal states like Andhra, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Odisha and other northeastern states.

Secondly, it coincides with the ongoing Vikas Parv, second anniversary of Modi government in power. Thirdly, it comes after a successful five nation tour  Afganistan, Switzerland, Qatar, USA and Mexico. Fourth, it is being held after the BJP somewhat succeeded in positioning itself as challenger to Mulayam Singh Yadav-Akhilesh Yadavs Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh, post the Mathura incident.

The party leaderships point is simple  instill confidence among leaders attending the meet that BJP under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi is not just a resurgent political force but is there for a longer haul on political landscape of India.
BEIRUT Air strikes carried out by Syrian or Russian warplanes killed more than 20 people in the northwestern city of Idlib on Sunday, monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

Areas hit included a market, and at least five children were among those killed, the British-based Observatory said. It said the death toll was expected to rise because of the number of people seriously wounded.

It said it did not know whether Syrian or Russian jets had carried out the strikes. Both are operating in the area.

Russia deployed warplanes to Syria last year to support President Bashar al-Assad against rebels seeking to end his rule, and have supported Syrian government forces in a separate fight against Islamic State further east.

Idlib city and the province by the same name is a stronghold of rebel groups including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. Air raids in the town of Maarat al-Numan, about 30 km (20 miles) south of Idlib killed another six people, the Observatory said.

There has been heavy bombardment of areas in Idlib province in recent weeks, including air strikes that killed at least 23 people last month.

Fighting in Syria's five-year civil war has intensified since a February ceasefire deal which took hold in the west of the country but excluded al Qaeda and Islamic State, but quickly began to unravel.

(Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Clelia Oziel)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Kolkata: In the wake of a series of attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, the minority community there wants Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian government to take up the matter with Dhaka to ensure their safety and security.

"The Hindu community, which is the biggest minority community in Bangladesh, is vulnerable in Bangladesh. Fundamentalist and Jamat forces are trying to wipe out Hindus from Bangladesh.

"We feel that India being a Hindu majority country, should do something. We have high hopes on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He should act and take up the matter with Bangladeshi government and ensure the safety and security of Hindus," Rana dasgupta, general secretary of Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council and noted Human Rights activist, told PTI.

A 60-year-old Hindu ashram worker, Nityaranjan Pandey, was hacked to death on 10 June by suspected Islamists, becoming the fourth person from the minority community to be killed in a series of brutal attacks on secular activists in the Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

"The religious majority and the fundamentalist groups want to eliminate the Hindu community. Since last two years, this religious cleansing has gained further pace. Stability in the Indian subcontinent region can never be achieved with Bangladesh turning into a fundamental state. So if India wants stability in the region it should act to stop the annihilation

of minorities in our country," Dasgupta, who is also Prosecutor of International Crimes Tribunal, claimed.

Pandey's murder comes within a week of killings of a Hindu priest, a Christian grocer and wife of an anti-terror police officer. 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 Islamist forces. Bangladesh has also seen a series of attacks on secular and liberal bloggers in 2015.

"The condition of Hindus is horrible in Bangladesh. Although we have a secular government of Awami League party, but at grass-roots level the situation is grim. Rapes, murder, loot, arson, destruction of property of Hindu and other minority communities is rampant.

"Until and unless India puts pressure on Bangladesh, the fundamentalists won't budge," well-known actor of Bangladesh and former managing director of Bangladesh Film Development Corporation Piyush Bandopadhaya said.

"India is a major power in the region, it can't sit idle when Hindus are being brutally slaughtered in a neighbouring country," he said.

Bandopadhaya, who along with Dasgupta, lauded the quick response of Indian High Commission in Bangladesh, which had sent its officials to meet the family members of the Hindu priest and colleagues in the ashram, but said India needs to do more.

Human rights groups and Hindu leaders in Bangladesh have been demanding more security for religious minorities. Although the minority leaders are expecting Indian government to take up the cause of the minorities in Bangladesh, a senior Bangladesh minister feels the attack on minorities are actually aimed at creating hurdles in the functioning of the secular and liberal Awami League government.

"This is actually a ploy by fundamentalist and Jamat forces to put up a bad image of Bangladesh. These attacks are not aimed at minorities, but the real target is to malign our government and turn our country into a fundamentalist state. We will never let that happen. We have taken several steps to ensure the safety and security of minorities and strict action will be taken against the culprits," Bangladesh Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu told PTI over phone from Dhaka.

When asked what would Dhaka do if India wants to take up the cause of security of Hindus, Inu said, "India and Bangladesh share very good relations. India is our friend. If India wants to take up a matter with us, we will talk. There is no harm in it."
BEIRUT The headquarters of Lebanon's Blom Bank was the target of a bomb blast in Beirut on Sunday, the interior minister told Reuters.

The bomb was left in a bag by the back wall of the building, Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk added.

"Politically it is clear that target was Blom Bank only," he said, adding that the attack had nothing to do with Islamic State, which has mounted suicide bombings in Beirut. Machnouk said initial reports indicated there had been no fatalities.

(Reporting by Laila Bassam; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
China: China said on Sunday that more talks were needed to build a consensus on which countries can join the main group controlling access to sensitive nuclear technology, after a push by the United States to include India.

China is seen as leading opposition to the US move to include India in the 48-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), but other countries, including New Zealand, Turkey, South Africa and Austria also oppose Indian membership, according to diplomats.

The NSG aims to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons by restricting the sale of items that can be used to make those arms.

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.

"Large differences" remain over the issue of non-NPT countries joining the NSG, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in an online statement.

"With regard to what to do on the issue of non-NPT signatories joining (the NSG), China consistently supports having ample discussion on this to seek consensus and agreement and come to a unanimous decision," Hong said.

"The NPT is the political and legal basis for the entire international non-proliferation system," Hong said, adding that China would support the group in further talks to come to a consensus at an early date.

Opponents argue that granting India membership would further undermine efforts to prevent proliferation. It would also infuriate India's rival Pakistan, which responded to India's membership bid with one of its own and has the backing of its close ally China.

Pakistan joining would be unacceptable to many, given its track record. The scientist that headed its nuclear weapons programme ran an illicit network for years that sold nuclear secrets to countries including North Korea and Iran.

A decision on Indian membership is not expected before an NSG plenary meeting in Seoul on June 20, but diplomats have said Washington has been pressuring hold-outs.

Most of the hold-outs oppose the idea of admitting a non-NPT state such as India and argue that if it 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.
Beijing: Notwithstanding a US push for India's NSG membership, China on Sunday said members of the elite club "remain divided" on the issue of non-NPT countries joining it and insisted that there "was no deliberation" on the bid by India and other nations at the Vienna meeting.

"There was no deliberation on any items related to the accession to the NSG by India or any other countries that are not signatories to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hong Lei said in a statement while referring to the Vienna meeting that took place last week.

He said the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) Chair Argentine Ambassador Rafael Mariano Grossi convened an unofficial meeting of the 48-member group on 9 June.

"The Chair said that this meeting has no agenda and is only convened to heed opinions from all parties on the outreach of the NSG and prepare for a report to be submitted at the NSG Plenary Meeting in Seoul later this month (24 June)," he said.

However, diplomatic sources in Vienna had said earlier that India's membership was discussed at the meeting and talks had remained inconclusive.

China has maintained that non-NPT signatories should not be admitted into NSG on the grounds that it would undermine efforts to prevent proliferation.

Calling for "full discussions" within the NSG to reach an agreement on India's admission, Hong said China would take part in the deliberations in a "constructive manner."

"China has noted that some non-NPT countries aspire to join the NSG but when it comes to the accession by non-NPT countries, China maintains that the group should have full discussions before forging consensus and making decisions based on agreement," he said.

"The NPT provides a political and legal foundation for the international non-proliferation regime as a whole. China's position applies to all non-NPT countries and targets no one in particular," Hong said, without directly mentioning India's application to join the Vienna-based group.

China has been reportedly backing Pakistan's bid to join the nuclear trading club.

"The fact is that many countries within the group also share China's stance," Hong said in response to a question about China, New Zealand, Ireland, Turkey, South Africa and Austria objecting to India's accession to the NSG at its meeting in Vienna.

"There has been some discussion within the group on the NSG membership of non-NPT countries, but NSG members remain divided on this issue," Hong said.
The names of Confederate generals still adorn street signs in Charleston's public housing projects, and a heroic waterfront statue dedicated to the Confederate Defenders of Charleston still faces Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired.

Just down from the Emanuel AME church  where nine black parishioners studying their Bibles were gunned down one year ago  a statue of Vice President John C. Calhoun, a staunch defender of slavery, towers above a park.

After the 17 June, 2015, massacre, South Carolina lawmakers did what many people thought was impossible to achieve and removed the Confederate flag from the Statehouse grounds in Columbia. Across the country, as far away as Alaska, officials moved to strip streets, college dormitories and even lakes of the names of Confederates, secessionists and public figures who championed segregation.

But a year later, little has changed in Charleston, the city where tens of thousands of enslaved Africans first set foot in North America. It was here that the work of plantation slaves made the city one of the wealthiest in the nation before the Civil War. It was here where the bombardment of Fort Sumter threw the nation into that war in 1861.

A section of a street in front of the white stucco Emanuel AME church may have been renamed "Mother Emanuel Way Memorial District," but all of Charleston's Confederate commemorations remain intact  and longstanding racial issues endure.

"I think a lot of things happened out of the immediate emotions of how horrific the killings were. That's the human side of folks and the politeness, particularly of Charleston, that we just had to do something. But then when reality checks us  the question is what is that going to cost us in terms of changing the way we think and do things?" said Dot Scott, president of the Charleston branch of the NAACP.

A white man who police said hated blacks and posted photos of himself with the Confederate flag has been charged with killing the nine parishioners.

"It was truly an attack on a race of people," Malcolm Graham, the brother of victim Cynthia Hurd, said of the shootings. "After 400 years, the African-American community still is suffering and dealing with these types of issues relating to race."

So why was there not a push to remove Confederate symbols in Charleston following the church attack?

Bernard Powers, a black College of Charleston history professor, noted that it took a 15-year struggle to get the flag removed from the Statehouse grounds and that it happened only after the slayings.

"People see what it took, and ultimately that flag was removed because nine people were murdered," said Powers, who co-authored a book about the massacre called "We are Charleston." ''I think people appreciate how deeply entrenched the reverence is for the Confederacy. For a lot of folks, it is a civil religion."

As soon as South Carolina lawmakers voted to pull down the flag, they shut the door on any other changes.

Gov. Nikki Haley had pushed for the flag to come down but feared that going further would incite fights across the state, so she asked lawmakers to protect all the other flags and monuments while removing the Statehouse flag.

"Our goal was to hold everything together. Let's do what we can, let's be kind and accepting and understand history is just that  it's history," she said.

So a statue of former Gov. and US Sen. "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman still stands on the Statehouse grounds. Tillman once famously praised a lynch mob that killed seven black Republicans in 1876 to intimidate others from voting. The statue calls him a "friend and leader of the common people" but makes no mention of the violence he bragged about for decades, something black lawmakers would like to see added.

Changing a monument requires a two-thirds vote, and South Carolina and House Speaker Jay Lucas has vowed to block changes of any kind.

That means the Citadel, South Carolina's Charleston-based military college, has to keep the Confederate flag up in the campus chapel among the flags of the 50 states and other territories, even though the school's board of visitors voted to take it down.

It's not just South Carolina. North Carolina passed a bill protecting its Confederate monuments, and other Southern states also made it harder to alter monuments or change the names of buildings honoring prominent Confederates.

Like many southern states, just about every North Carolina county has a monument extolling the bravery and honor of its Confederate soldiers.

University of North Carolina history professor W. Fitzhugh Brundage, who is white, said he understands blacks who feel alienated seeing statues in public places honoring those who fought a war in large part to keep them enslaved.

"That is a reminder that this state's history includes an organized effort to keep people like you, African-Americans, enslaved at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars of destruction," he said.

Though the monuments remain, the Confederate fervor may be fading decade by decade in Charleston. The area commemorated the 150th anniversary of the Civil War earlier this decade with subdued events at Fort Sumter and elsewhere, compared to the celebratory mood surrounding the 100th anniversary. And there was a new emphasis on slavery as a cause of the war and the roles that blacks played in the conflict.

Daniel Turner, a 57-year-old wastewater treatment plant operator from Charlotte, North Carolina, visiting Charleston's Confederate Museum, said he realizes why the Confederate flag is offensive to many.

"I understand the flag," Turner said. "There are bad people who used it. But the monuments are different. They are a part of history. We can't change that."

Brundage said he expects skirmishes over Confederate monuments to continue to pop up across the South, but that a full-scale removal of Confederate symbols still seems a long way off, even generations removed from the Civil War.

"The flag may be down in front of the Statehouse of South Carolina, but the landscape of South Carolina is still full  bursting  with symbols honoring the Confederacy," the professor said. "And they're going to be there."
On Thursday, after President Barack Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton for President, he joined Jimmy Fallon on 'The Tonight Show' to talk about his soon-to-be-over term as the President of the United States. They started the evening with 'slow jam the news' with The Roots' Tariq, where we got a quick recap of the eight years of Obama government. The message was simple, "Climate change is real, healthcare is affordable and Love is Love"

The 'slow jam the news' was a celebration of the years of Obama government in classic 'Obama' style. Now, we are no stranger to Obama's 'cultured side'. We have seen him freestyle with Hamilton star Lin-Manuel Miranda, we have seen him 'slow jam the news' in 2012 too and his pop-culture references are always on the mark. Take his latest one for example:

Fallon: Mr President, since you are here, I gotta ask. Have you been watching all the electric covers of Donald Trump

Obama: No. But I have been watching my new favourite show, 'Orange is not the new black'.

Sorry Trump! That's gotta burn...

The slow jam comprised of a few brags here and there  the fallen unemployment rate, the legalization of same-sex marriages, the affordable care act, etc. Obama did not try hiding his agenda to promote Hillary and shore up his legacy. The viral bit came when the tone-deaf president sang and danced to Rihanna's "Work, work, work, work..."

Spicing things up with a few finely crafted Naughty by Nature lyrics, Obama was seen pushing the envelope on the 2015 Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

So when Fallon asked, Now hold on, Prez dispenser  are you saying youre down with TPP?

Obamas response: Yeah, you know me.

The entertaining bit came from the ever laughing Jimmy Fallon, "Oh yeah, President Obama stimulated long-term growth, in both the public and private sector. In 2008, the country wasnt feeling in the mood, it was too tired and stressed, said it had a headache. Barack lit some candles and got some silky satin sheets and told the American people yes, we can."

During the interview segment, Fallon invited Obama to sit on his desk and write out a few thank you notes. They were addressed to the Congress, Obama's birth certificate and Questlove's hairstylist. During a segment the host took a sharp dig at Hillary Clinton. "Thank you, Hillary Clinton, for possibly becoming the first f... president. I would have said 'female' but someone deleted the 'emale'" The poker-faced Obama barely registered the joke and moved on to other things. We don't have to second-guess why.

Obama's presidency is in its last phase and he has 8 more months to go at the Oval office (223 days to be exact). We wonder whether the next US President be equally sporty?

Watch the video here:
It was a Saturday night at the Pulse nightclub, which could mean only one thing: a raucous, high-spirited celebration that would not end until well after daybreak.

Strobe lights were flashing and music blaring at the popular lounge, home to one of the hottest party scenes in Florida  and where around 20 people were killed and 42 injured in a mass shooting on Sunday.

Just a few days earlier, Orlando's vibrant LGBT community had marked the annual Gay Days celebration, one of the biggest events anywhere in the United States dedicated to gay pride.

The partying was to go on at Pulse, a popular dance club and bar known for its drag shows.

"Tonight 21 and up is FREEEEEEEE before 11 pm," Kenya Michaels, a well-known Puerto Rican drag queen who was slated to perform at the club, posted on Facebook earlier Saturday.

"Come see me show time at 12 am at Pulse Orlando Doors open at 9 pm. My sister Jasmine international is performing with me," posted Michaels  who escaped the shooting unharmed.

Scores of people turned out for the show: A contest of dancing, lip-synching drag queens took the floor one by one, showing their best dance moves, sashaying in high heels, as patrons laughed, nursed their cocktails, tossed dollar bills onto the stage.

One dancer with swiveling hips and a Beyonce-like mane slinked around the stage, as video footage posted online on Periscope captured the revelry.

Crowd of patrons thronged the area just off-stage, raised bottles of alcohols and drank shots, amid a crescendo of laughter.

Then, barely discernible under the cheers and the throbbing music, were the sounds of what one reveler said sounded like drumbeats punctuating the soundtrack.

Patron Christopher Hanson said at first he thought the loud, rhythmic sounds were part of the music "until you heard too many shots. It was like, bang, bang, bang, bang."

At some point, it dawned on him that the "loud banging noises" were actually "gunshots going off," Hanson said.

"I didn't see any of the actual shooters," he told CNN.

"I just saw bodies going down and I was ordering a drink at the bar. I fell down. I crawled out. People were trying to escape out the back.

"I just know that when I hit the ground, I was crawling and I hit my elbows and my knees. When I got across the street, there were people  blood everywhere."
Karachi: A police constable in Pakistan's city of Karachi has been arrested after he beat a Hindu man aged over 80 years for eating and selling food before iftaar, triggering a social media campaign calling for justice for the elderly man.

According to the reports, the IG Sindh police ordered the arrest of Ali Hussain after the family of Gokal Das posted pictures of the octogenarian who was beaten and bruised badly.

"The incident occurred last Thursday in the remote village of Hayat Pitafi in Ghotki district of the

southern Sindh province where Das was selling Iftaari items before Iftaar, the the evening meal with which Muslims end their daily

Ramadan fast at sunset. Hussain claimed he also saw him eating a banana," a local police official said.

"The constable showed high-handedness in dealing with the matter and he thrashed the old man who was rescued by citizens," he said.

Bachal Qazi, the Station House Officer of the Jawar police station in whose jurisdiction the village falls said that the constable and his brother "threw the old man on the ground and beat him badly before people rescued him." Das was later taken to a hospital for treatment as he was bleeding.

A social media campaign was launched calling for justice for Das following the uploading of his pictures.

Hussain who is posted in Ghotki district has been arrested on charges of torturing and injuring Das. The police arrested Hussain after Vinod Kumar, Gokal Das's grandson, registered an FIR against him for assault.

Social and civil right activists as well as ordinary citizens criticised the intolerance exhibited by the police in the month of Ramadan, which started on June 7 and demanded exemplary punishment for him.

It prompted the government to take quick action and arrest the police constable and his brother. A sizeable number of Hindus live in Pakistan's Sindh province.

Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari, daughter of former president Asif Ali Zardari, whose Pakistan Peoples Party is in power in Sindh, took to social media to announce the arrest of the cop. "The policeman has been arrested," she tweeted.

Dawn reported an FIR had been registered in Jarwar police station against the policeman for assaulting the senior citizen.
Here are some of the reactions to the Florida mass shooting at the Pulse Orlando nightclub Sunday when police say a gunman wielding an assault-type rifle opened fire before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers. At least 50 people were killed and dozens of others wounded in the incident.

-"Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love." Pulse Orlando on its Facebook page.

-"I was thinking, 'Are you kidding me?' So I just dropped down. I just said, 'Please, please, please, I want to make it out.' And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood." Christopher Hansen, who was in the VIP lounge when he heard gunshots.

-"This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as domestic terror incident." Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings.

-"Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, families and all those affected by this horrific tragedy. We are a strong and resilient state and we will devote every resource available to assist with the shooting in Orlando." Gov. Rick Scott.

-"We are heartbroken and angry that senseless violence has once again destroyed lives in our state and in our country. Gay clubs hold a significant place in LGBTQ history. They were often the only safe gathering place and this horrific act strikes directly at our sense of safety." Equality Florida.

-"Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act." Tweet from Hillary Clinton, Democratic presidential candidate.

-French President Francois Hollande "condemns with horror" the mass killing in Florida and "expresses the full support of France and the French with America's authorities and its people in this difficult time." Statement from Hollande's office.
Dhaka: More than 3,000 people, including 37 militants, have been arrested across Bangladesh in a sweeping crackdown on Islamists to halt a wave of fatal attacks on minorities and secular writers, as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday vowed to catch "each and every killer".

The militants arrested were operatives of the outlawed Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), the outfit believed to have carried out most of the attacks on secular and liberal activists and minorities, including Hindus and Christians.

"Out of the 37 militants, 27 belong to JMB," Deputy Inspector General AKM Shahidur Rahman told reporters while reports said more than 3,000 suspects - mostly listed as thugs and criminals - were arrested over the past two days.

Bangladesh launched the drive after a high-level meeting held by Inspector General AKM Shahidul Hoque on Thursday. The anti-militant drive involved the paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh and the elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion.

Bangladesh has been witnessing a string of brutal attacks by Islamists. The Islamic State and Al-Qaeda in the Indian Peninsula have claimed some of the attacks but government denies the presence of these groups in Bangladesh.

Prime Minister Hasina told a meeting of her ruling Awami League party that police would stamp out the violence.

"Where will they hide in Bangladesh," she said. "No one will get away. Bangladesh is a small country. It's not a tough task to find them. They will be brought to justice."

"Each and every killer will be brought to book as we did after the 2015 mayhem (and) all their sources, financiers and patrons would be unearthed and brought to justice as well," she said, referring to the deadly transport blockade last year organised by opposition parties.

She asked her countrymen to not be a bystander during such attacks as most of the attacks involved bike-borne assailants.

"Please don't play the role of an onlooker when you see that a person is under attack, rather, try to resist and catch the criminals... police and (government) will stand by you," she said at the meeting at her official residence Gana Bhaban.

But opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party immediately accused the government of using the crackdown to suppress political dissent. It rejected the allegation that the party and its fundamentalist ally Jamaat-e-Islami were patronizing the attacks under an orchestrated plot against the government.

BNP Secretary-General Fakhrul Islam Alamgir accused the government of arresting "hundreds of opposition activists in the name of crackdown against Islamist militants."

The attacks since last year, which has left more than 30 people dead, has put Bangladesh under a global spotlight for failing to prevent such attacks.

On Saturday, a 60-year-old Hindu ashram worker was hacked to death by Islamic State jihadists, days after another priest was killed by the same terrorist group in the Muslim-majority nation.

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. The same month, a Hindu tailor was hacked to death and Bangladesh's first gay magazine editor was murdered in his Dhaka flat by Islamists.
"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," laments the father of a son caught, literally, with his pants down, sexually assaulting an unconscious woman that stopped short of full-fledged rape only because he was apprehended by sheer chance.

Action, mind you, not violence, not assault, sexual or otherwise, not even ungentlemanly conduct, just events that had turned his son Brock Turners life topsy-turvy, even though hed got away with a sentence of only six measly months, with nary a word for his hapless victim. If you want to know how it shattered the life of the woman who attended a party at the Stanford University campus in January 2015 and unwittingly became the object of Brock Turners lust, how she is still trying to piece it together, just read even a few paragraphs of the 7,244-word gut-wrenching statement she had submitted to the court and then put up on the social news site BuzzFeed since the sentencing last week, from where it has since gone viral.

If this is how blind parental love has played out in the United States in the Stanford student Brock Turners case over the last one year, then how does one explain a Mumbai socialite blithely describing journalist Tarun Tejpals transgressions on a junior colleague as merely a grave error? Something that pricked the bubble of his public image and gave his detractors ammunition to demolish him, and not a single word spared for the young woman who was not only molested by him (by his own admission, if not in those words), but did not even get the simple apology that is all that she had asked for?

A couple of months ago, UKs The Guardian newspaper had carried an article which in trying to give RK Pachauris side of the story in the many cases of sexual harassment against the former TERI boss, had quoted a blog by another journalist as saying, Obviously she was leaned on. This is straight out of All the Presidents Men. Its about rat-fucking. Black politics to undermine Pachauris reputation. I can see people using her. But there has to be someone at the head of it. Anything, but take the womans word for it, women in this case.

True, we didnt need these reminders. We know all too well that whichever part of the world you are in, however affluent or educated you may be, rape or sexual assault (in the eyes of the Indian law they are one and the same) is, to too many people, a minor misdemeanour at worst, something for which the vociferous dragging through the coals. Tejpal was subjected to what was way beyond the pale, as voiced by the Mumbai socialite Malavika Sangghvi earlier this week.

The tragedy is not just that such things happen and people try to find ways and means to wriggle out of such tight corners any which they can (there is no decent way out unless you take responsibility for your actions, repent what you did and face the music with courage and dignity, without putting blame on the recipient of your unwanted attentions), but the brazenness of it all. More the number of women stepping up to demand justice, more strident has become the attempts to belittle their efforts.

More the victims of rape or sexual assault forcing such issues out in the open, naming names and giving explicit details of the wrong done to them, more is the attempt to dismiss such atrocities as untoward incidents (vide Tarun Tejpal in his letter to his colleagues) or explain them away as the fell effects of the scourge of alcohol (as Brock Turner and his father have, to great success with the judge pronouncing a sentence of mere six months even though it could have been as many as 14 years) or more is the attempt to belittle the women and their morals.

His father wasnt the only one who felt Brock Turners 20 minutes of action should not be taken out of proportion, the loss of his place in the universitys swimming team and the scholarship that came with it was punishment enough they felt. While there are more and more takers for rehabilitating Tarun Tejpal, insists Malavika Sangghvi, even before the courts have come to any conclusion.

In a world where a Donald Trump can become the US Presidential hopeful by making mean, bitchy, distasteful comments against Muslims, Mexicans and other minorities, in a world where peoples representatives can proclaim a Muslim-mukt Bharat as a legitimate political goal, in a world where politicians can be seen seething with righteous indignation for a family going unpunished for possessing mutton that had mysteriously turned into beef, disrespect for womens rights does seem par for the course.

But this is also the time to make a stand and draw the line in the sand, to protest each and every small indignity, to fight back against every sexist joke, any snide remark about what women wear, when and where they go and what they eat or drink. With the world turning dangerously conservative, with political correctness being sneered at, letting any anti-woman go uncontested is the most regressive act you can do today.
We may remember Anne Frank from reading the The Diary of a Young Girl for school or in our spare time. We may have even visited the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam. Some may think of her as another one of the many Jewish victims of the Holocaust. But she is so much more than that.

Anne Frank doesnt just keep the memory of the Holocaust atrocities alive; she gave a glimpse into the complex and sensitive psyche of a young girl.

Her father Otto Franks poignant words when he read Annes diary reflect these hidden nuances that Anne left behind in ink, There, was revealed a completely different Anne to the child that I had lost. I had no idea of the depths of her thoughts and feelings.

It is funny how Anne wrote that, Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because Ive never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year old school girl. Oh well, it doesnt matter. I feel like writing. She had no idea about the impact that her writing would have on the world, and yet her wisdom continues to mould young minds even today.

Here are some of the most beautiful quotes from Annes heartbreakingly inspiring and touching diary as we remember her on her birth anniversary:



Anne Frank was born on 12 June 1929 in the German town of Frankfurt am Main.



Her mother was Edith Frank, and her father, Otto Frank, was a lieutenant in the German army during World War I, later becoming a businessman in Germany and then Netherlands. Hitlers rise to power put an end to the familys carefree life, following which Otto Frank and his wife Edith decided to leave Germany and move to Amsterdam.



When Germany troops invaded Amsterdam in 1940, Anne and her family had to hide in a concealed room called 'Secret Annex' - a room above her fathers office - cramped with four other Jewish families.



Shortly before going into hiding Anne received a diary for her thirteenth birthday. She started writing straightaway and during her time in hiding she wrote about events in the secret annex and about herself.



Anne Frank came down with typhus and died in 1945, just weeks before the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in which she was imprisoned was liberated.



Anne Frank would be 87 if she were still alive today.
Pittsburgh (US): Donald Trump may have generated controversies right through his campaign trail but his supporters feel the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is "charismatic" and would change the philosophy of governance in the world's largest economy.

Pennsylvania, a 'coal country' which once was the economic hub of America but is now badly hit by recession and new economy of climate change and green energy, could prove to be critical to Trump's path to the White House.

The 69-year-old real estate tycoon is planning to spend quite a substantial amount in this key swing state and try to exploit the general economic disenchantment of small businesses and people with his slogan of 'Make America Great Again'.

"He (Trump) is a dynamic guy. He is refreshing. He is not any other politician. It's now or never for America," Ralph J Dadowski, who along with several hundred other supporters waited inside a hanger for hours to listen to Trump's speech in this steel city, told PTI.

A local businessman in pharmaceutical sector, Dadowski strongly believes that Trump is the best person to lead the country.

"We need to change the philosophy of governance and how we do things. And Trump represents that," Dadowski said, adding that he would vote for Trump in the November general elections.

As he kicked off his presidential campaign in full swing, Trump selected Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania as one of his key stopover this weekend.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, several thousand people waited for him inside a hanger for hours.

Trump also campaigned in Richmond in Virginia and Tampa in Florida  the other two swing states.

In all his speeches, he dwelt on similar themes  bringing jobs back to the country, reviving the economy, stopping illegal immigration, radical Islamic terrorism, making military strong and his personal attack on Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

Political pundits, however, say it is a tough road for Trump in Pennsylvania as it was way back in 1989 that Pennsylvania was carried by a Republican candidate.

Since then no Republican presidential candidate has won this state.

Trump himself acknowledged the tough task ahead but exuded confidence that "his movement" would see him through this time. His die hard supporters also believe so.

"Of course he is going to win Pennsylvania this time. No doubt about it," asserted Traci Gerrard and her husband Alan Gerrard  who run a small business in Pennsylvania.

They said they want less restrictions in business and smaller government.

"Trump is charismatic. He says what other people are afraid to say," Traci said at a Pittsburg rally of the Republican presidential candidate. The Gerrard couple voted for Trump during the primaries.

"Of course, yes," Traci said when asked if she would vote for the real estate tycoon again in the November polls.

"I am all for a woman president. We want to have a woman president. But not Hillary Clinton. She is not reliable," she said.

Alan Gerrard said he favours a strong immigration system wherein people do not come inside the country illegally.

Caroline Eidbergur, who works for an accounting firm, feels that Trump as a president would turn around the country.

"My husband is in the construction industry and it is a bad situation for the last eight years," Eidbergur said.

She and her husband have already made up their mind to vote for Trump in the November presidential elections.

"Trump would run the country like a business. He would be the CEO of the country. We need someone like him now," her husband said.

"We do not want another eight years of more regulations in steel and coal industry," Eidbergur said when asked about Clinton.

The former secretary of state is scheduled to campaign in the state on Tuesday.

The Democratic party's convention would be held in Philadelphia in July wherein she would be formally anointed as party's presidential candidate.

Clinton is the first woman in American history to reach this position.

John Zilicah, who works for the Pennsylvania state, said he is supporting Trump because he wants change.

This is the same slogan that voted Barack Obama to power eight years ago.

Attending the rally with his friends, Zilicah said he is supporting Trump because of his stand on the right to carry fire arms and a strong military.

"Our military should be strong," he said, adding that he would not vote for Clinton.

"She should be in jail because of the email and Benghazi scandal," he alleged, echoing the points being made by Trump in his public addresses for the last several weeks.

Trump in his speech touched on the right nerves.

"I love steel. I love the miners. I will put them back to work," he said.

Referring to a recent speech of Clinton, he said she is not going to win Pennsylvania.

"She is not winning Pennsylvania. She wants to put coal miners out of work," he said.

The New York-based real estate tycoon also talked about his roots in this state by saying that he spent several years here. He studied at the prestigious Wharton Business School.

Trump promised to lower the taxes and alleged that Clinton would raise the taxes to at least 55 per cent.

"I am lowering taxes for middle class and businesses," he said.

Trump's campaign has been marked by many controversies  from commitment to build a wall along the Mexico border to his call for banning Muslims from entering the country.
The Liberals have smashed the Greens' hopes of picking up new lower house seats at the July 2 federal election after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull confirmed preferences would flow to Labor ahead of the third party.

The move to put the Greens behind Labor in seat-by-seat contests across the country will potentially throw a lifeline to under-pressure Labor frontbencher David Feeney in the Melbourne seat of Batman, and assist senior frontbenchers Anthony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek in the Sydney seats of Grayndler and Sydney.

A furious Greens leader Richard Di Natale condemned the Liberal decision, railed against the "Coles and Woolies" of Australian politics and said he personally had had no discussion with either the Liberals or Labor over preferences.
Recruiters for the National Broadband Network have angered local workers by seeking Ireland nationals to come to Australia to take up jobs on the massive multibillion-dollar project.

Boutique recruiting firm OneIRC Australia is advertising in the Emerald Isle for "copper gurus" to work on "Australia's largest telecommunications project"  the National Broadband Network.

Applicants are being offered $75,000 a year for three years  and migration assistance  to fill vacant full-time positions "all over Australia".
Foreign language learning in Australia is in serious decline, as we are well into the second decade of the so-called Asian Century.

About 40 per cent of students studied a foreign language in the 1960s. That number is now closer to 10 per cent, including students who are native speakers of a language other than English.

In decline: foreign language enrolments. Credit:iStock

But in almost all the OECD countries, apart from Australia, students finish school with at least one foreign language.

Kurt Mullane, the executive director of the Asia Education Foundation, said "one of our great challenges is our monolingual mindset".
Nick (Nikolce) Veljanovski was 28 when he went missing on June 11, 2014. "Unlike most other losses, there is no finality, no ability to have the ceremonies we are used to having as a Western society," said Simoncini. "The biggest thing we find is that ambiguous loss is hard. You can't even grieve because you have a double-edged hope that they will be found. "Months can turn into years, which can turn into decades but they never had a graveyard or a tombstone where they can grieve." Joanne Ratcliffe went missing 43 years ago. Her sister Suzie has set up a support group for families of missing persons. Days have turned into two years for the family of Nick (Nikolce) Veljanovski, who was 28 when he went missing on June 11, 2014 in Bundeena in Sydney's south.

"It is torture," said Nick's mother Sylvia Veljanovski. The past two years had been exhausting, physically and emotionally, says Veljanovski, who has since been diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy. "It is just awful not knowing, if he is safe, is he well? Our life has been in limbo and we can't seem to let go or move on. There are so many unanswered questions, it is hard to plan anything or do anything." Since her son's disappearance, she often has trouble sleeping. With the anniversary approaching, she said the sleeplessness and middle of night fears and anxieties were worse. "It is like a tape, you go over and over it," she says. "Sometimes I have trouble just breathing. I have never known pain like this."

Veljanovski's response is not unusual. "It is about looking for answers, and asking all the questions that occur in the wee small hours, that often don't get put into words," Davies says. "Families do revisit what happens, and go over and over the conversation ... It is a way of looking to make sense of something that makes none." The Veljanovskis, who live in Bankstown, have taken the unusual step of offering a $50,000 reward for credible information that helps them find their son. Nick's mobile phone, keys and wallet have not been found. The car he was driving  a blue Honda Jazz  was found early the next morning at a parking lot on Beachcomber Avenue near the start of the Jibbon Point Trail, a popular walking track in the Royal National Park near Bundeena. About 4pm on June 11, 2014, Nick spoke with his girlfriend of more than nine years. That was the last time anyone heard from him. Initially his family thought he had a minor argument with his girlfriend, now they believe the two had broken up. Nick had also called in sick from work that day.

Like many families of missing people, the Veljanovskis have conducted their own searches. Nick's father David and brother Jim have plastered the National Park with missing signs, and travelled up and down the coast to publicise his disappearance and chase leads. Jim also runs an active Facebook page. The family urges anyone who may have seen Nick to contact Crimestoppers. Despite a comprehensive air, sea and ground search, no trace of him was found, according to police handling the case. The police have now referred his disappearance to the coroner for a ruling after concluding Nick is, in all probability, dead. The family does not believe this is true. In NSW, the police are required  following a recent change  to report a missing person to the coroner after 12 months when the person has not been located and there is no sign of life. A study, published in the March update of the Journal of Law and Medicine, doubted the coronial process offered "resolution to the ambiguity of families of missing people". "It may offer a legal resolution, but it did not necessarily provide emotional closure," wrote Stephanie Dartnell, who works with Davies, and co-author Jane Goodman-Delahunty.

In many cases, inquiries dragged on for years: 52 per cent took 10 years to finalise. One took 68 years and three months. Out of 322 missing persons cases investigated by the coroner in NSW from 2000 to 2013, 94 per cent resulted in a ruling that the person was probably deceased. Despite that, the coroners were mostly unable to give an exact date or time of death. Suzie Ratcliffe, who set up the Leave a Light On group to support families of missing persons like her own, is critical of the bureaucratic processes and time a coronial inquest can take. "It is heartbreaking enough for any family when they lose somebody, but to have something go on for so long, it just draws the pain out." Ratcliffe was not even born on August 25, 1973, when her sister Joanne, 11, and friend Kirste Gordon, 4, went missing during an AFL game at Adelaide Oval.

Ratcliffe believes her father was killed by grief, ultimately dying of cancer eight years after Joanne disappeared. Until the day he died, her father kept searching. She still hopes for answers. "It is 43 years in August, and we are still hoping that one day we will get answers to where Jo was laid," she says. "We just want to bring her home so we can bury her with respect and love, which so many families of missing persons have been denied." She is not alone in still wondering. Others still want answers 40, 50, and in one case, 60 years after the person disappeared. Going missing was not a crime, says Ratcliffe who urged those who had done so to at least contact their families to let them know they were alive. Davies said her support group never used the word "closure" because for many families there would never be an answer, despite a coroner's ruling.
A mother's objection to vaccination is the single biggest reason 3 per cent of Australian infants aren't immunised, new research shows.

Meanwhile children from big families, with single parents or who move around a lot, are more likely to only be partially immunised.

The Australian Institute of Family Studies linked data from the Growing up in Australia long-term study of children with records from the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register to determine why some children were only partially immunised, or not at all.

According to the latest figures from the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register, 93 per cent of one year olds are fully vaccinated. This is below the official target of 95 per cent immunisation coverage.
When the Packer family's loyal lieutenant Peter Malcolm Reid died last year, aged 100, he left behind a $52 million estate.

Mr Reid died a widower and had no children of his own, and in the months since his death an almighty legal battle over his fortune has broken out between more than half a dozen people  including his much younger niece and lover Peta Roberts.

Peta Roberts, who has received an interim distribution from the estate of Peter Reid. Credit:Instagram

Court documents reveal allegations of testamentary documents being signed in "suspicious circumstances" amid "undue influence" by one of the executors and claims Mr Reid was too impaired by dementia to know what he was doing.

A will made in 2000 is the first link in a chain of 22 other potentially testamentary documents executed (or not) with varying degrees of formality between 2001 and 2014.
Washington: President Barack Obama on Sunday described the worst mass shooting in US history as "an act of terror" and "an act of hate," saying the massacre of 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida was an attack on all Americans.

"Today as Americans we grieve the brutal murder, a horrific massacre of dozens of innocent people," he said in a statement at the White House.

"Although it is still early in the investigation, we know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate," Obama said.
A boat with 44 Sri Lankans, including a pregnant woman and nine children, who said they were on their way to Australia, have been found off of Aceh, a northern province of Indonesia.

Local fishermen discovered the boat at 11 am on Saturday in Lhoknga in the district of Aceh Besar.

Local fishermen discovered the boat of 44 Sri Lankans in Lhoknga in the district of Aceh Besar. Credit:Raihal Fajri

Lhoknga police chief Zainudin told Fairfax Media the Sri Lankans did not have any passports or travel documents.

"They said they wanted to go to Australia but there was engine trouble. They didn't look like people who needed food. Their faces looked happy. They didn't ask for food either.
GroupMe allows any member of a group to delete an image, the Daily Telegraph reports. Stanford law professor Michele Dauber speaks at a rally before activists delivered over one million signatures calling for the removal of Judge Aaron Persky from the bench. Credit:AP The revelations come as efforts gather to unseat the judge who sentenced Brock to a mere six months in county jail gather steam. Activists handed a judicial commission a million signatures on Friday calling for the ouster of a Santa Clara County judge. "This really speaks out to a groundswell of outrage in the community," said Paul Hogarth, campaign director for Daily Kos. "We do a lot of online petitions on a myriad political progressive causes, and have never come close to getting 1 million signatures on anything." 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 of Judge Aaron Persky. Credit:AP

The delivery of the signatures was only the highest profile development on a day when furor continued to grow over what has quickly become an internationally symbolic cause in the fight against "rape culture." But there was also support for Judge Aaron Persky: The county bar association put out a statement decrying efforts to oust the judge as an assault on judicial independence. And court officials, besieged with demands for documents in the case, took the unusual step of emailing copies of the entire 471-page file to news organizations - at 2 a.m. Persky has declined to comment, noting the case remains active as Turner has appealed his conviction. Brock Turner in his January 2015 booking photo, released by the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office. Despite an impassioned 12-page letter to the judge from the victim and prosecutors' demand that Turner serve six years in prison, Persky sided with probation officers' recommendation and sentenced Turner to six months in the county jail, along with a lifetime requirement to register as a sex offender. Persky cited Turner's youth, lack of criminal record and intoxicated state as reasons for the sentence, which fell below the so-called mandatory minimum for the crime. But the victim's letter, which prosecutors released after the sentence, quickly went viral online and galvanised outrage over the decision.

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky,. Credit:AP On Friday in California, three rape survivors spoke at the signature delivery event in front of the Commission on Judicial Performance in San Francisco. One, a young man who declined to give a last name, said he was raped by two men after meeting one during a night of drinking. "Brock's victim and I, and other survivors, shouldn't have to take this emotional beating by the system," he said. While organizers acknowledged the petition was largely symbolic and a physical manifestation of online "clicktivism" - delivered via a flashdrive in one of three largely empty boxes used as visual props - they said the wrath generated by the sentence was unprecedented. By Friday, 16 California lawmakers had sent letters to the judicial commission asking for a review of Persky's conduct and to Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen urging him to seek a higher court review of Turner's sentence.

The District Attorney's Office has said there is no legal grounds to challenge Turner's sentence. "The bottom line is that in this instance we believe that Judge Persky applied the right laws and reviewed the right circumstances and factors that he was required to review," said assistant District Attorney James Gibbons-Shapiro. "We believe that he made the wrong decision, ... that he should have sentenced Turner to prison. We don't believe that we have a basis to appeal or seek a writ in this case, though, because his decision was authorised by law and was made by applying the correct standards." But that's not the only avenue activists have taken against Persky. Stanford law professor Michele Dauber, a family friend of the victim who also spoke at Friday's petition delivery, is leading an effort that would allow Santa Clara County voters to recall Persky. Three top political advisers - John Shallman, Joe Trippi and Paul Maslin - have joined the recall effort, it was announced Friday, which will require about 60,000 signatures of registered Santa Clara County voters to reach the ballot. "People are angry, and this is a way for them to address this," she said after the event. "I am 100 per cent confident that we will win this."
Beijing: At least four passengers were injured at Shanghai's Pudong International Airport after an explosion suspected to have been caused by a man who detonated a home-made bomb, authorities said on Sunday.

Security footage of the incident, posted online by CCTV, showed passengers and staff sent scrambling for cover as the explosion occurred.

Shanghai police said the man, who has yet to be identified, detonated a home-made explosive device contained in a beer bottle around 2.26pm at the check-in counters in Terminal 2 of the busy international airport. The man then produced a dagger from his backpack shortly afterwards and self-harmed, before collapsing on the floor. He was taken to hospital in a critical condition

The other four were injured by the bomb's glass shards and have also been taken to hospital for treatment, with two described to be in a serious condition. One of the injured was a Philippines national.
"We are saying we are apologising for the whole incident. We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country," Seddique said. Police officers direct people away from the nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Credit:AP Omar Mateen Investigators said they "have suggestions the individual has leanings towards [Islamic terrorism], but right now we can't say definitely," said Ron Hopper, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Orlando bureau. The shooting raised fresh alarm about the ability of overseas terrorists to wreak havoc on US soil. But it also ignited fears of a broader campaign against the American gay, lesbian and transgender community as the first anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision legalising same-sex marriage approaches. In Washington, police stepped up patrols ahead of the Capital Pride Festival, one of dozens of gay pride events scheduled this month across the nation and around the world.

Huge holes were blown out of the side of the nightclub by police during the shooting. Credit:AP It later emerged that Seddique hosts a TV show in which he has spoken of support for the Taliban. In a recent video from the Durand Jirga Show on a channel called Payam-e-Afghan, Seddique appears to portray himself as president of Afghanistan. Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer declared a state of emergency on Sunday morning. Law enforcement officials work at the Pulse nightclub following the massacre on Sunday. Credit:AP The gunman was found dead inside the Pulse nightclub, one of the largest in Orlando, about 5am after a shootout with the police, Orlando Police Chief John Mina said.

The shooting began inside the club, the chief said, and continued outside when an officer working at Pulse attempted to confront him. The gunman then went back into the club, resumed shooting and took hostages. Omar Mateen photo taken from his myspace page. Credit:Myspace At 5am, Chief Mina said, the police decided to rescue the hostages. They broke down a door with an armoured vehicle and detonated a "controlled explosion", helping about 30 patrons flee to safety. At least nine officers were involved in the shooting with the gunman. One of them was slightly injured, the authorities said. Grieving friends and family of victims of the mass shooting. Credit:Joe Burbank

"It's just shocking," Christopher Hansen, who was inside Pulse, told CNN. 'Bodies going down' Hansen was getting a drink at the bar when he "just saw bodies going down," he said. Angel Mendez, outside the Orlando Regional Medical Centre, holds up a phone photo trying to get information about his brother Jean C. Mendez who was at the Pulse Nightclub. Credit:John Raoux He said the gunshots, "just one after another after another, could have lasted a whole song".

When the shots erupted, he dropped to the ground and was crawling on his elbows and knees, before he spotted a man who had been shot. The Facebook post instructing people to "get out". Credit:Facebook "I took my bandanna off and shoved it in the hole in his back," Hansen said, adding that he saw another woman who appeared to be shot in the arm. Carmen Pena, 30, said he was inside the club, in the same room with the gunman, when the shooting began.



"I know that he was in the room, because I heard a woman screaming, and then all of a sudden she stopped," Pena told People Magazine. The helmet an officer in Orlando police department was wearing when responding to the shooting. Credit:AP

"The gunshots were so loud. It felt like they were right next to my ears. Every second, I thought I was going to be hit." The political fallout The mass slaughter comes in the middle of a heated US presidential election. Republican candidate Donald Trump, who has advocated a ban on Muslim immigration to the US, crowed that the nightclub attack vindicated his position.

"Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance," Trump tweeted. "We must be smart!" Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who has pledged to tighten up gun control, said the attack "reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets." She also described the attack as an "act of terror" as well as "an act of hate" against the lesbian gay bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. 'Mass casualty' event

The police called it a "mass casualty" event. The wounded were taken to three area hospitals. The shooting was described as a "domestic terror incident" by Sheriff Jerry Demings. The shooter was carrying an assault rifle and a handgun, and wearing what Chief Mina described as "some type of device". During the attack, a message on a Facebook account for the Pulse club instructed "Everyone get out of pulse and keep running" several hours ago.

Emergency vehicles descended on the area of the Florida city, as patrons of the club posted frantic warnings online. One witness heard "what sounded like a semi-automatic firearm inside the nightclub, and outside the south Orlando venue from a vehicle". The man, Anthony Torres, told the Daily News: "We were just leaving the club and we started hearing the shots". "Everyone was running and screaming."
Libyas U.N.-negotiated unity government is claiming an offensive thats close to driving Islamic State militants from the coastal city of Sirte is evidence it is making progress at last in establishing its credibility.

The offensive, which has made rapid advances in the past three days, is boosting hopes the struggling Government of National Accord (GNA) may be able to build up a new Libyan army on the back of the success and encourage militias loyal to a rival government in the east of the country to defect.

Murders

But the unity governments authority remains patchy even in the west of the country  which was dramatically demonstrated this weekend when Tripolis general prosecutor confirmed that the bodies of at least a dozen loyalists of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi had been found just days after they were released from detention.

The victims were from two groups of detainees held at Tripolis al-Ruwaimi prison or at the Mitiga air force base a court in the capital ordered to be freed. The bodies started to be found on Friday in different parts of the city, six of them just east of Tripolis international airport. Some officials told VOA the latest count they had Sunday was 17 bodies. The victims had been tortured before being shot in their heads.

The GNA issued a statement condemning the murders and announced it had ordered an investigation. The U.N. special envoy to Libya, Martin Kobler, says he is saddened and disappointed by the summary executions. He tweeted Saturday: Circumstances of the murders must be investigated promptly and with transparency by the authorities. will follow up!

But most of the countrys attention was focused Sunday on Sirte, the hometown of Libyas onetime strongman Col. Gadhafi, which IS has boasted as its stronghold in Libya since the end of 2014. The militants have been threatening to use it as a springboard for terrorism in nearby Italy, just a boat ride away. And in February 2015, IS carried out a gruesome ritual beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians on the Sirte shoreline, posting a video of the barbarity online.

Resistance holding on

Resistance has not completely melted away and snipers in the center of the city maintained fire on the advancing pro-GNA forces, mainly drawn from militias from the town of Misrata; however, a militia spokesman said the GNA forces were confident of being able to clear out the whole of the port city within days.

We think that Sirte will be fully liberated within days, not weeks, said Gen. Mohamed al-Ghasri. Their snipers, ISIS snipers are a problem and they are accurate from long distances.

Earlier, Ghasri told The Associated Press his forces had secured the strategic port area and that the jihadists were pinned in a small part of the city located near the conference center.

After capturing the airport last week and the seaport on Friday, troops loyal to the U.N.-backed unity government are now pounding the conference center with artillery and mortar rounds.





IS militants on Sunday were only able to respond with sniper fire. But the cost of the GNA advance over the last week, which saw the Misratan militias advance more than 160 kilometers in a week, has been costly with more than 100 pro-GNA fighters killed and as many as 600 wounded in the fighting.

U.N. envoy Kobler stressed at the weekend the need for the international community to deliver medical supplies to Libya. Hospitals in Misrata say they have been struggling to treat the number dead and wounded arriving from the battlefront.

Outside support



Pro-GNA commanders say U.S. and British Special Forces have been providing technical support in the battle. The British and U.S. experts are helping us with logistical and intelligence to deal with Daesh suicide bombers and tactical and strategic planning, Ghasri said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

The rapid collapse of IS forces in Sirte has prompted some to question recent Western estimates of the militant strength in the coastal city, which will be the third bastion IS has lost in the past few months. In February, the group was driven out of a base in the western town of Sabratha; and locals ousted the jihadists from Derna in the northeast last year. Western officials had put the IS strength at 6,000 fighters, most drawn from Tunisia, Egypt and sub-Saharan countries.

Pro-GNA loyalists are now preparing for street-to-street fighting to seize the small area IS militants still occupy. Misratan officials say as the pro-GNA militias have advanced, they have found the bodies of militants executed in Sirte; many were handcuffed and officials say they suspect they were shot because they wanted to flee.

It is unclear how the battle for Sirte will impact the standoff between forces backing the GNA and those supporting a rival government in the east. Gen. Khalifa Haftar, the commander of forces loyal to the National Salvation Government in the east and headquartered in Beida, held his men back from entering the battle for Sirte.
Pulse Orlando, the Florida club where a gunman killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in an attack early Sunday morning, describes itself as the city's premier gay nightclub. While the gunman's motive has not yet been established, the incident, the largest mass shooting in U.S. history, was also the worst act of violence apparently targeting members of the LGBT community in the United States.

It was not, however, the only such attack.

On December 31, 2013, Musab Masmari poured gasoline in a stairway of gay nightclub in Seattle, Washington. Some 750 people were inside the club at the time for a New Year's Eve celebration, but the fire was put out and no one was injured. Masmari was sentenced to 10 years in prison for arson.

On September 22, 2000, Ronald Gay opened fire in a gay bar in Roanoke, Virginia, killing one person and injuring six others. Gay told authorities he was upset over being teased about his last name and was on a mission to make all gay people move to San Francisco, which he said would end AIDS.

On February 21, 1997, Eric Rudolph detonated a nail-bomb at a nightclub in Atlanta, Georgia that had a most gay and lesbian clientele. The blast wounded five people. Rudolph would later be charged for the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta that killed one person and injured 111 others in 1996.

On June 24, 1973, an arson attack on a gay bar in New Orleans killed 32 people. While the most likely suspect was a gay man who had been thrown out of the bar earlier, he was never charged, and the incident received little attention from the authorities and media.
Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri on Saturday pledged support for new Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, in a move widely seen by Western analysts as an attempt to limit the growth of the rival Islamic State militancy in Afghanistan.

Zawahiri's endorsement came in a 14-minute video posted online. In it, he described Akhundzada as the "emir of believers" and the "legitimate" head of a Muslim caliphate.

For its part, the rival Islamic State  staunchly opposed by Zawahiri and his followers  pledges allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The IS leader, who has ordered all Muslims to obey him, declared the creation of a caliphate in 2014 that includes large parts of Iraq and Syria.

Akhundzada's predecessor, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, was killed last month in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan, near the Afghan border.

At that time, U.S. officials said President Barack Obama approved the strike because the Taliban leader was "an obstacle to peace" and was overseeing plans for new attacks on U.S. targets in the Afghan capital. Obama later called the killing an "important milestone in our long-standing effort to bring peace and prosperity to Afghanistan."

The drone attack  the first known U.S. strike against a senior Afghan Taliban leader in Pakistan's Baluchistan province  sent shock waves through the region, with Pakistan's Foreign Ministry calling it a violation of Pakistani sovereignty. Pakistani officials say they thought Mansour was in fact preparing to enter long-stalled peace talks with the government.

U.S. strategists have long argued that Pakistan's military and intelligence units provide safe haven for Afghan Taliban fighters. Islamabad routinely denies those accusations, despite the facts that Taliban leaders have long used the country's tribal areas as a refuge, and that the group's top leadership was based in the western city Quetta.
Operators of the ACT college entrance exam on Saturday canceled the tests for students in South Korea and Hong Kong at the last moment over what they said was a verified breach of test materials.

The cancellation affected about 5,500 test takers who will receive refunds of test fees, according to ACT spokesman Edward Colby, who said the company believes it was the first time the exam was canceled for an entire country.

The ACT, an Iowa-based nonprofit organization, had planned to administer the tests at 56 different locations in South Korea and Hong Kong on Saturday morning. The ACT decided to cancel the test soon after it received credible evidence that the test materials had been leaked, Colby said.

We are extremely concerned about any activities that could impact the fairness and integrity of the test. When individuals attempt to profit by stealing test materials and selling them, it can hurt thousands of students who did nothing wrong, as it has in this case, Colby said in an email conversation.

Colby said he couldnt comment on when and how the test materials might have been leaked because the incident is still under investigation. He said the ACT exams will be administered in South Korea and Hong Kong again in September.

The sudden cancellation of the exam caused confusion in South Korea, where many students didnt know of the decision until they arrived at the test sites, according to teachers from private cram schools in affluent southern Seoul that specialize in preparing students for the tests.

ACT emails notifying students of the cancellations didnt reach inboxes until nearly 7 a.m., an hour before students were to arrive at test sites, they said.

Its frustrating for students, including those who had been planning to use the scores for early decision admissions at U.S. schools, said a cram school teacher who had prepared four students to take the test. She spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear she might anger her clients if she allowed her name to be used.

Parents have asked whether they should prepare their kids to take the exams in other countries like Japan in the future, because they are worried that the cheating problems could reoccur here, as it had with the SATs, she said.

South Korea has struggled to clamp down on cheating on standardized English and college admission tests and similar problems have been reported in other Asian countries. The College Board, the New York-based testing firm that oversees the SAT college entrance exams, canceled tests in China and Macau in January over concerns that some students had seen copies of the tests in advance. The College Board was forced to cancel SATs in South Korea in 2013 for similar reasons. Kim Tong-Hyung, Seoul, AP
Greyhound authorities in New South Wales, Australia have charged 179 owners and trainers with breaches of regulations concerning the export of dogs to Macau, which has been banned since 2013 by its principal body, Greyhound Racing NSW.

An inquiry launched by the body late last year brought to the attention of authorities suspected unauthorized exports to Macau. Should the accused be found guilty, trainers and owners involved will face fines, suspensions and even possible disqualification from the sport.

Macaus Yat Yuen Canidrome Company has increasingly eyed Irish greyhounds as its supply from Australia has dried up; a process that was expedited last year when major freight airlines joined a boycott over the export of such dogs bound for the MSAR.

A recent shipment of 24 Irish greyhounds destined for Macau was stopped during transit at Manchester Airport in the U.K.

We are aware of reports concerning 24 greyhounds being exported from Ireland to Macau via Manchester, said the Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB) in a statement.

GBGB does not advocate the export of greyhounds to jurisdictions where welfare standards cannot be verified and will take the appropriate action against persons that knowingly supply greyhounds to such countries, informed the organization.

A related meeting held recently between representatives of the Irish greyhound industry, Irelands Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, and members of the International Greyhound Forum, came to the conclusion that Irish authorities have no jurisdiction outside of Ireland in terms of animal welfare and supervision. DB
Chinas Nanhai Jiujiang dominated the main event of this years International Dragon Boat Races in Macau, managing to renew their title in the womens category and add a new title in the open category. This was an improvement for the team following their 2015 efforts when they were beaten by Indonesias National Team by only 0.34 seconds in the grand final. This year, Chinas team took no chances with Thailands National Team, finishing in 1:51:761. Macaus team came in 3rd position in this race with a Macau team record of 1:54:551. This however was not the only achievement of local teams after reaching 2nd position overall in the womens category and losing only to Chinas Nanhai Jiujiang. Overall in the womens category the MGM Macau team came third.

Pearl Horizon buyers looking for help from Beijing

A group of pre-sale Pearl Horizon buyers participated in a new protest yesterday, after delivering a letter to the Liaison Office. The protestors departed from the Polytec Asset office, passed by Rua do Campo and arrived at their destination at the Liaison Office in the afternoon. This time, the groups main slogan indicated that they are looking for help from Beijing. Central government save Macau Pearl Horizon, read a front sign. The protestors wore white themed t-shirts (as opposed to their usual black), with pictures of blood stamped on them.

Suppliers industry wants to hire more expat workers

Last week, the Macau Union Suppliers Association visited the Labour Affairs Bureau (DSAL), urging the government to allow suppliers to hire more expat drivers. The association, representing small- and medium-sized suppliers, claimed that the industry is facing a shortage of human resources. The association stated that employees often raise the issue concerning the hiring and usage of expats by their employers, resulting in a reduction in the expat employee quotas of the employers, as required by the DSAL. The Bureau claimed to carefully oversee the application for expat employee quotas for every company, according to a report by TDM.
Thanking loyal customers for their business may seem uncontroversial, but Citigroup Inc. has something to say about how exactly you do it.

The bank sued AT&T Inc. on Friday over the telecom companys use of the trademarks thanks and AT&T thanks in a new customer-loyalty program. The use infringes several of Citigroups trademarks, including ThankYou and Citi ThankYou, according to a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court.

Citigroup, the worlds biggest credit-card lender, has been using the ThankYou trademark in a customer-loyalty program since 2004, and more than 7 million of its customers have a ThankYou-branded credit card, the bank said. Citigroup wants a court order barring AT&T from using the terms.

AT&Ts use of the phrases is likely to cause customer confusion, the bank said. The trademark designs also have similar fonts and word placements, according to the suit.

AT&T is balking at New York-based Citigroups allegations.

This may come as a surprise to Citigroup, but the law does not allow one company to own the word thanks, AT&T spokesman Fletcher Cook said in an e-mail. Were going to continue to say thanks to our customers.

Dallas-based AT&T launched the new customer loyalty program on June 2, even though the company was already aware of Citigroups use of related trademarks, according to the complaint. The companies even have a co-branded credit card that gives ThankYou points to users based on how much they spend, according to the cards website. Erik Larson, Bloomberg
This [One Belt, One Road initiative (B&R)] is not new. It started more than one thousand years ago during the Han dynasty. Now we have the continuation. The B&R initiative is a new type of Chinas foreign policy, said Professor Zhou Hong, the current professor of European Politics and Modern History and former Director of the Institute of European Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

The scholar spoke during the keynote speech that opened the Workshop on Contemporary Relations between China and Central and Eastern Europe, organized by the European Union Academic Program  Macao (EUAP-M), taking place at the University of Macau (UM) on Friday and Saturday.

During the keynote speech, Zhou drew a conceptual map of the ideas underlying the initiative and highlighted its importance not only for Chinas foreign policy but also as an internal balance policy.

This is an initiative also to balance Chinas own development, because in China we also have an East-West relation to solve, Zhou said, adding that the Eastern areas of China have been developing far faster than the ones in the West regions.

Professor Zhou recalled that economists and even Chinese President Xi Jinping have supported the R&B initiative, stating that it is a natural extension of the development of Chinas economic path because we have all learned that Chinese proverb, If you want to get rich, you have to build roads first and building roads basically means linking yourself to a bigger market.

Zhou also reminded that although people used to put the focus of the initiative on China, this is no one-way street, as interests and efforts have to come from both sides, bringing attention to the shared benefits and challenges amongst all countries involved. He also recalled that 434 years ago Matteo Ricci was successful in establishing contacts between Western Europe and China because he was well prepared, had the knowledge and had studied well the field to where he was heading.

According to Zhou, the R&B initiative came in a time of dramatic changes within the European Union [EU], recalling how the map of Europe has been changing and how in a short period of time EU members passed from eight to 28.

Krzysztof Sliwinski, a Polish national and associate professor at the Department of Government and International Studies of Hong Kong Baptist University shared similar sentiments. Speaking to the Times during the workshop, Sliwinski mentioned that the statistics of mutual trade show clearly an approach of China with most of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, He stated that mutual cooperation between both parties has been growing at least in the past 6 years, adding that an increase in relations has worked as a win-win for both and namely the so-called 16 countries in Central and East Europe that were hit pretty hard by the Euro-crisis. In his opinion, these countries saw in China some sort of economic backup that they were not getting from the EU, raising tensions within the European Union.

Traditional central Europe powers such has Germany or France are not too happy that countries they call junior partners from their perspective, which include countries such as Czech Republic, Poland or Hungary, could have their own bilateral relations with China, Sliwinski noted.

Also at the EUAP-M workshop, Senior Researcher from the National Institute of Economic Research of Bucharest, Iulia Oehler-Sincai, said that although the relations between Romania and China go back for centuries, the countrys political cycles caused disruption. Some political parties are clearly more supportive of the relations with China while others are more on the side of the Western European countries and its important to find the balance.

As she mentioned, after Greece we are the second most strategically located country and China benefits from that as we are served by several Pan-European corridors. But we also need infrastructure. We are still lacking in high-speed railways and highways to link Eastern and Western Europe and China could offer that to us.
The United Nations Security Council has rejected Soviet demands for an immediate vote on a resolution condemning Israels aggression in the six-day war.

Moscow  which has close ties with Egypt  is also demanding the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Arab territories. It follows six days of fighting in which Israel has made advances on three fronts doubling the area of land it controls.

Israel says the attacks were launched to counter huge Arab troop movements along its borders.

It has seized Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt in the south and the Golan Heights from Syria in the north. It has also pushed Jordanian forces out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The advances ended with ceasefires signed as Israeli troops were poised within striking distance of each of the respective capitals, Cairo in Egypt, Damascus in Syria and Amman in Jordan.

It is not clear what action Moscow will take in the face of the UNs hesitation. The council has postponed making a decision on how to respond to the war until tomorrow at the earliest.

Israel has already declared its intention to remain in control of its newly occupied territories until permanent peace with its Arab neighbours can be established.

Israels casualties after six days of fighting are calculated at 759 dead and about 3,000 wounded, Arab casualties are far higher, about 15,000. The scale of the refugee problem caused by the war is also now becoming clear.

The International Committee of the Red Cross is making preparations to help thousands of Egyptian soldiers stranded in the Sinai desert after last weeks bitter fighting. Water supplies to the area were cut off in the hope of slowing the Israeli advance.

Gaza City in the Gaza Strip saw some of the fiercest fighting between Egyptians and Israelis during the brief war. It is estimated there are now some 200,000 Arabs living in five camps outside the city. Many have not eaten for days.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is appealing for help to buy tents, blankets and vehicles and has also asked for medical supplies.

It says many of the refugees in Jordan are homeless for a second time  having been forced to flee the camps outside Jericho which had been their homes since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

The British Government is contributing towards the cost of the emergency relief, as are many Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia which is donating half a months salary per soldier in its armed forces.

Courtesy BBC News

In context

The General Assembly met again on 19 June but lengthy discussions on what action to take continued for a month until the session adjourned on 21 July and referred the matter back to the Security Council.

The Council, after long discussions, on 22 November unanimously adopted Resolution 242, which became the basis for future United Nations policymaking on the Middle East conflict.

It stated the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and called for withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.

It also called for the acknowledgement of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of every national state in the area and their right to live in peace within secure borders.

In the meantime, the Arab nations resolved to ignore Israels call for peace. With Soviet help, they began rebuilding their armies and adopted a policy of three nays, no to peace, no to recognition of Israel and no to negotiations.

The occupied territories became the basis of the land-for-peace diplomatic concept at the heart of the 1978 Camp David accords and 1993 Oslo accords.

Israeli forces evicted Jewish settlers from the Gaza strip in August 2005 and began to demolish some settlements on the West Bank as well.

Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab nations to have made peace with Israel since 1967.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen blocked her predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou, from making a landmark visit to Hong Kong this week, citing security concerns.

Mas travel request was rejected on grounds that the administration needed more time to ensure the security of the ex-presidents trip and assess what confidential information he had access to, Taiwans Office of the President said yesterday. The onetime-Kuomintang leader was due to address the Society of Publishers in Asias annual journalism awards gala in Hong Kong on Wednesday, which wouldve made him the most senior Taiwanese figure to visit the former British colony since the Chinese civil war ended in 1949.

The Hong Kong visit by Ma, 65, wouldve capped a career of milestone trips. In November, he shook hands with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Singapore, the first face-to-face encounter between leaders of the former civil war foes in almost 70 years. Tsai took office May 20, after securing control of both the presidency and the legislature for her Democratic Progressive Party in a landslide election in January. Yu-Huay Sun, Argin Chang, Bloomberg
Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group Ltd. is chasing Chinese tourist dollars overseas as the economic slowdown in China crimps luxury sales and contributed to a 46 percent drop in full-year profit for the worlds largest publicly traded jewelry chain.

The jeweler was hurt by weak retail sentiment in Hong Kong and Macau, and a decline in tourism, especially from mainland China due to the stronger U.S. dollar. The company said it expected market conditions in the region to stay challenging in the coming year.

By contrast, retail sales outside of its traditional bases, including newer markets such as the U.S., Taiwan and South Korea, grew 26 percent in the fiscal year ending 2016. Chow Tai Fooks strategy is to expand footprint in overseas market to grasp opportunities from the booming Chinese outbound tourism, it said.

The jeweler is aiming to capture a shift in Chinese shopping habits as the countrys slowdown has damped the demand for luxury goods. Hong Kong retailers were also hurt as mainland Chinese tourists, who account for almost a third of luxury spending globally, skip the shopping mecca for other destinations. The governments crackdown on corruption also caused big-spending Chinese to avoid neighboring Macau, causing a two-year gambling decline in the worlds largest casino center.

The increasingly affluent and sophisticated Chinese consumers continue to look for more personalized products and shopping experience, the company said in a statement last week. Lifestyle and leisure spending becomes the trend, with strong outbound tourism boosting the consumption abroad.

Last week the jeweler reported net income fell to HKD2.94 billion (USD379 million) for the year ended March 31.

The retailers efforts to grow beyond mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau may reap little benefit for now, as its overseas presence remains small relative to those core markets, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Catherine Lim. The inclination of Chinese travelers to buy jewelry from a brand readily available in Hong Kong and China may be low, as they are more likely to buy international brands or even try local brands from their destination, she said.

Hong Kong retail sales fell 12 percent in the first quarter, with jewelry and watch sales plummeting nearly double that, contributing to Chow Tai Fooks lowest profit since 2010. Mainland Chinese tourists to Hong Kong, who accounted for more than 70 percent of the total in the first four months this year, have dropped 13 percent in the period compared to a year ago, according to the citys tourism board.

Chow Tai Fooks retail network expanded to 2,319 sales locations as of end-March, including a net opening of 62 in the fiscal year. Of these, 2,179 locations are in mainland China, with the remainder in other markets, which the jeweler doesnt break down into specific countries. It opened six sales locations in Taiwan and South Korea during the period, according to the statement.

Mainland China contributed 60 percent of Chow Tai Fooks sales in fiscal 2016, with the remainder from Hong Kong, Macau, and other markets, which the retailer doesnt break down. The company still sees growth in China, it said.

Chow Tai Fook plans to shut as many as eight sales locations outside mainland China in the current financial year, said Managing Director Kent Wong at a briefing Tuesday. The retailer managed to lower rental expenses by 13 percent for sites in Hong Kong and Macau that it renewed contracts for in the last fiscal year, Finance Director Hamilton Cheng said.

The company expects net opening of stores in mainland China  after accounting for closures  to be similar to the last fiscal year, Wong said. Chow Tai Fook had a net opening of 55 locations in mainland China in fiscal 2016.

Still, jewelers such as Chow Tai Fook will continue to face a challenging business environment in the Greater China region as they grapple with weak consumer sentiments, said Zhang Jialin, an analyst at ICBC Intl Research Ltd. Daniela Wei, Bloomberg
Wood River High School physics and robotics students will create a mythbusters experiment at noon on Saturday, May 28, at Slaughterhouse Canyon in Bellevue. Students will drive a remote-controlled van into a pole to test whether or not there is less or more impact driving the van at a slower speed into the pole.

The project began two years ago when students in Chris Ceys Applied Physics class became interested in the new utility poles placed along the new construction on Highway 75 north of Hailey and south of Ketchum.

At the time, students used math and the principles of physics to calculate the impact of cars into the utility poles. Students involved in the project wondered why they couldnt test their calculations in real life.

Fast forward to 2016, as Cey guides a large group of Advanced Placement and Applied Physics students, as well as robotics students, in a mythbusters type experiment to see whether it is safer to go slower or faster when a car is hitting a utility pole. The myth being that going fast enough to shear off the pole is safer.

Students from BC Bots robotics club have independently worked on installing robotics into a van donated by the Hailey Fire Department that will be remotely driven into the pole.

On Wednesday, May 25 from 11:00-11:45 a.m. at the Distance Learning Lab at Wood River High School, groups of students will present their calculations to the public. On Friday, May 27 at 4:00 p.m. there will be an update on the project on the Blaine County School website. Assuming that the robotic van is ready the students will then test their calculations on Saturday, May 28 at 12:00 p.m. in Slaughterhouse Canyon, Bellevue. Come out at 11:00 a.m. to meet the robotics students and see their van modifications. Check the Blaine County School district website to be sure the test is still occurring. It is possible that the components could break and the test is postponed.

WRHS Physics teacher Cey stated, The students have been highly engaged in this project. We invite the community to come out and support our students as they take their learning out of the classroom and into the real world.

Businesses who have contributed to the project include: Anderson Architecture, Sun Valley Auto Club, Idaho Power, Cars For U, The Feathered Flip, Power Engineers, Hailey Fire Department, Arbor Farms and Advanced Towing.

For more information, contact Chris Cey ccey@blaineschools.org or go to www.blaineschools.org
COTTONWOOD  Twin Falls 28-year-old Chaz Golding has spent a quarter of his life behind bars.

His felony rap sheet includes seven years in prison in Nebraska for burglary and forgery, and possession of a firearm as a felon in Idaho  among other crimes.

Can Golding redeem his life? And at what cost to Idaho?

With a revamped Retained Jurisdiction Program, state officials hope to break the cycle for inmates who continue to commit crimes.

After Golding was arrested for stealing his girlfriends mothers bank card, he took a plea deal. A judge sentenced him in January to the Idaho Department of Corrections Retained Jurisdiction Program at the North Idaho Correctional Institution in Cottonwood. If he fails to receive a probation recommendation from the Cottonwood staff this summer, he will spend the next two to seven years in prison  instead of raising his three preschool children.

IDOC rolled out its revamped Retained Jurisdiction Program at four Idaho prisons this spring. Now the program requires more in-class practice for new learned skills and role-playing of situations that put inmates at risk to commit new crimes. Its a military-like regimen, and inmates say changing their criminal and addictive thinking is difficult work.

The programs overhaul followed an assessment that criticized it last year, and IDOC trained staff in the new program last fall.

The Idaho Legislature bought into the Justice Reinvestment Act two years ago, when the state was at a crossroads: determining whether to build a new prison for an increasing offender population or to spend the money on programs aimed at fixing the root of the problem  criminal behavior and substance abuse addiction. IDOC has had a Retained Jurisdiction Program since 1972, but the program gets more emphasis now with the Legislature asking judges, IDOC and probation officers to use it more to reduce the costs of long-term incarceration.

Goldings 180-day program at Cottonwood costs taxpayers $10,417. A two-year prison sentence at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution would run $64,356.

High Expectations

The idyllic forest setting of NICI on Radar Road belies reality: Its where most of Idahos male criminal offenders are sent when judges place them in the Retained Jurisdiction Program.

Their crimes range from driving under the influence to first-degree murder.

On a hill above Cottonwood, the 11-building compound is surrounded by pine forest. On May 12, three deer munched grass a few hundred yards away from the parking lot, which looks more like a forest campground than a prison. But the cyclone of wire atop the fences ensures that the 400 men inside never forget they are imprisoned.

Golding, also known as Greg Melton, said the program is hard. Much tougher than serving a term prison sentence.

People say this isnt prison. This is still prison to me, said Golding, nervously perched on a chair pulled up to a long table in the wardens office. His manner was polite and his appearance neat  buzz cut, jeans and maroon T-shirt with a name badge clipped to the neckline. A tattoo on his right forearm was the only vestige of his personality from the streets. This isnt a vacation.

The programs inmates are expected to conduct themselves like they are working on turning their lives around and deserve a shot at probation.

Its not easy. They have to take a look at their behaviors and see how they created victims and hurt their own families, Terema Carlin, acting warden at NICI, said as she walked through the compound, past inmates gathered behind wire fences.

Misbehavior or failure to demonstrate progress by participation in the programs means a quick trip back to county jail on peanut butter and relinquishment day, Golding said.

The staff gets together at lunch weekly to discuss who isnt cutting the mustard. That day, the inmate menu is peanut butter sandwiches.

We are always being watched, Golding said. Everybody is walking on eggshells that day. Some people think they are slick and sly, but they are not. It bites them in the butt. Main Street is closed, and they start calling people to the office where they are handcuffed and put in orange jumpsuits.

Inmates relinquished to serve their full prison sentences  put on blast, as Golding calls it  walk down Main Street and immediately board a bus headed for one of the term-sentence prisons. There they wait for transportation back to county jails  and dates with their sentencing judges.

Life inside NICI

Housed in a former U.S. Air Force installation, the prisoners sleep in dormitory-style barracks, use communal bathroom and shower facilities and eat at a mess hall.

They get up at 5 a.m., prepare for the day by 5:30 a.m., stand to be counted four times a day and spend hours in intense programs resembling group therapy. At 8:50 p.m., the lights go out.

Some inmates work on getting their General Educational Development certificates or work at jobs in the compounds laundry, kitchen or grounds maintenance. All are expected to use any free time constructively.

Theres no messing around.

This time, Golding said, hes going to make his incarcerated time count. He wants to learn to correct his faulty thinking and make better choices.

I came from a family that was broken, so before family didnt mean much to me, Golding said.

His mother and father both used drugs when he was growing up, and both landed in prison. When he was 11, he was put in foster care; a year later he was adopted.

His brother died in March 2014 of an Oxycontin overdose at a motel; his sister was able to escape her destructive background and is now married and lives out of state.

Golding was adopted into a good family, he said, but old habits die hard and he ran away, drank and smoked marijuana. Later he became addicted to methamphetamine. He believed he could get away with whatever he wanted to do.

Im learning how to change those thought patterns, he said.

Hes learning skills: understanding how a situation makes him feel, identifying others feelings and de-escalating confrontation.

As part of the training Golding had to go back and identify all of his risky behavior, every rule broken  including moral rules  all the stealing, cheating and drug use, and why he did it, the consequences and how it affected his family. He wrote a report on each instance.

Ive done 80 reports, he said.

Golding wants to change and said his girlfriend and three children, ages 5, 3 and 17 months, provide the motivation.

I dont want to be away from my family anymore, he said. Im tired of being a statistic. Ive always been a negative statistic.

Insidious Addiction

Thomas Ryan Fitzgerald, 45, of Rupert, was arrested in his driveway in March 2015 on his third felony charge of driving under the influence in 10 years.

He pleaded guilty, and the day of his sentencing hearing he expected the inconvenience and costs of an ankle monitor and probation.

Instead, he was handcuffed in front of his wife and placed behind bars. He was transported to IDOCs Receiving and Diagnostic Unit in Boise and then to Cottonwood for the six-month Retained Jurisdiction Program.

The Legislature allows a judge to retain jurisdiction for 365 days, which gives the inmate time to make his way through the intake process where he is given a battery of tests and transported to one of the four Idaho prisons that provide the program. After completion, the inmate is bused back to the RDU, then waits for a ride back to county jail.

Fitzgerald spent 19 days in county jail before he was transported to the RDU. After six months in Cottonwood, hell spend another two to three weeks at the RDU before making it back to jail and his judge.

I was lucky to get a rider. I didnt know it at the time, said Fitzgerald, a meat cutter by trade. His easygoing demeanor and curly hair seemed more congruent with the local grocery than the wardens office. I didnt know if my wife would be able to keep the house or the car and keep the bills up and not be on welfare while Im here.

A rider is an informal term for the Retained Jurisdiction Program.

It takes a while to grasp the luck.

A week later in his office, Michael Crabtree, 5th District Judge in Cassia County, said offenders are often angry when he retains jurisdiction.

I tell them when I sentence them that they are going to be mad. I tell them to view it as a positive and put aside their anger and start working their program, Crabtree said. Some have a harder time putting aside their anger. If they do it and learn to control their thinking and re-engage in the correct process, it is a good sign that I can then put them on probation afterwards.

Crabtree flipped through case files from a silver rolling cart in his office. About 90 percent of them were drug- or alcohol-related charges or stemmed from substance abuse.

Addiction is rampant and knows no boundaries, he said, and elements of substance abuse are in virtually every crime.

Shifting criminal thinking from blame and immediate gratification to personal responsibility and caring about actions effects on others is no small feat.

You have to turn around a lifetime of bad thinking, Crabtree said.

Inside the NICI wardens office May 12, Fitzgerald said he developed a problem with alcohol after his son was killed in a car crash. His ex-wife, he said, drank herself to death.

I was dealing with a lot of issues and tried to put a Band-Aid on it with alcohol, he said.

He now uses the few dollars a week his wife is able to send to purchase phone time with her and his 3-year-old granddaughter.

It keeps him connected to his life on the outside  and sane.

You can see the ones in here that wont make it by the way they treat the staff, Fitzgerald said. I just want to tell them to wake up. Tell them youve been given a chance to be here, and if you cant obey them while you are in here how are you going to take it to the streets?

A Change in Society

Fitzgerald, who has a sixth-grade education, was assigned to the substance abuse program and is working on getting his GED at the prison school.

One risk factor for recidivism is lack of education, Carlin said, so Cottonwood inmates have access to a library and computers, and they learn resume writing and job-seeking skills.

Twenty inmates a month get their GEDs at the prison.

We have an opportunity with this population to really make a change in society, Carlin said.

Along with the school building, the Cottonwood compound includes a library and computer room, a medical building and a chapel. It has 80 staff members  including 16 case managers  plus eight contract medical staffers.

Medical care is provided 16 hours a day, including dental and mental health services, and inmates must fill out a request prior to receiving treatment.

As inmates move from one program to another, to lunch or to their dorms, guards stand at attention in the roadways between buildings. The inmates walk when told and stand still when told.

They are fed 2,900 calories a day. Breakfast might be sausage and eggs or coffee cake. Lunch might be a sandwich, chips and dessert; two times a week, lunch is hot soup made from leftovers. Inmates favorite dinner: hamburgers and french fries, salad and dessert.

On holidays they are served traditional meals. On the Fourth of July they are given disposable plates and picnic lunches and allowed to take them outside.

When Fitzgerald arrived at the compound and observed the communal quarters, he said, he thought: What have I gotten myself into now?

There is no such thing as your own space or free time, and there is no sleeping until noon or lounging around. You cant do those things and function well in society anyway, he said. But if you didnt have those skills before, youll have them coming out of here.

When you live among so many inmates you have to watch what you say, not only with words, but with facial expressions, Fitzgerald said, and you have to stop and think about what youll say before you say it.

You have to remain on guard all the time, he said, and the stress level is high.

Fitzgerald realizes he will always be an alcoholic, even if he stays sober. And hes willing to use what hes learned to maintain his sobriety  even if it means an inquisitive stare as he places a forefinger to his temple as a cue to remember the thought process hes been taught.

I dont want to come back, he said.

The thought of returning makes him work harder when hes called on to get up in front of the nine other inmates in his substance abuse group and role-play an alcohol drinking trigger scenario from his life.

In class May 12, Fitzgerald wrung his hands and fidgeted in his chair as his turn grew closer. When it arrived, he identified one of his triggers: his father calling and inviting him for a day of fishing. For the pair, fishing always means beer.

In front of the class, with another inmate playing the role of his father, he worked through the program steps: identifying his feelings and finding ways to deal with the trigger rather than succumbing to the booze.

The sweaty palms were worth it, he said.

Im too old for this stuff. Im learning my lesson. I dont want my granddaughter to see this.
Fifth Judicial District judges, prosecutors and attorneys said they are hopeful and a bit skeptical that the states new Retained Jurisdiction Program will accomplish its goals.

Michael Crabtree

Cassia County 5th District Judge

Crabtree said he cant help remembering when the prior program was rolled out in 2010. It promised good results and was not quite so good in the end.

It especially fell short in dealing with substance abuse, which is at the root of most of the crime he sees.

Crabtree remains anxious and hopeful that the new version of the Retained Jurisdiction Program will deliver all thats promised. Were all so much better if we can reduce crime, keep families intact and not send people behind the wire in Boise.

Crabtree questions the validity of the Idaho Department of Corrections recidivism rates  higher for inmates released from riders than for those who served term sentences  because they measure the old rider program and didnt measure long enough.

You want to make the right decisions, meet the Legislatures standards, and when one of the factors you look at are stats that are misleading, it makes it complex, Crabtree said. So you talk about it on the record, the lawyers argue about it and then in the end you try to make a decision based on this individual and their prospect of becoming a functioning member of the community.

Kent Jensen

Defense Attorney

For those who take it to heart, its a wonderful program, Jensen said. For those less inclined, it wont make a difference.

Ive never thought throwing a person in prison for five years at the taxpayers expense is a good investment, Jensen said.

Judges dont have many alternatives, he said, and a rider is one of the best.

My experience over the years has been positive, Jensen said. It is a very useful program for first-time and other offenders. It gets them in treatment, which if they were left to their own devices, they wouldnt be able to afford.

Results run the gamut.

Ive had clients who have done very well and its helped them become successful, and others who dont do as well, Jensen said.

But contrary to public perception, he said, the program doesnt let people off scot-free.

When they go up there, there is no guarantee that they wont be relinquished back to the judge, Jensen said. It depends on their initiative, and its on their shoulders to succeed.

Lance Stevenson

Minidoka County Prosecutor

Stevenson remains skeptical.

As a prosecutor I have to look at the recidivism rates, he said. One woman got out of the program and reoffended within 24 hours.

As a prosecutor Im always worried about putting someone in a program where they will be out in six months and go commit another crime in the community when I can put them in prison for five years and take away that risk, Stevenson said.

Stevenson said the state Legislature defined tiered offenses with the thought that someone committing a first-time felony may be able to fix himself with in-treatment by doing a term of probation.

He said it is very unlikely he would recommend anything but incarceration for a violent crime.

Doug Abenroth

Cassia County Prosecutor

The rider program has a place in the criminal justice system, and it is beneficial in seeking the best interest of justice, Abenroth said.

But as a prosecutor he anguishes over how to best use it.

One of my main goals as a prosecutor is the protection of society. The rider program sometimes can provide that protection, but it is not always the right tool.

There simply are no research or statistics at this point to prove it will be successful, Abenroth said. Im curious as to how it will go.

Laurie Welch
Twin Falls County

Felony Sentencings

Brian Wade Conger, 53, Twin Falls; DUI 2nd felony violation within 15 years, $290.50, $1,000 fine, $500 public defender, 10 years penitentiary, two and a half determinate, seven and a half years indeterminate, 197 days credited, three years drivers license suspension.

Auston Stacey Mcroberts, 25, Kimberly; Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon or instrument, $245.50 costs, $1,000 fine, $100 DNA, five years penitentiary, three determinate, two indeterminate, two days credited, 365 days retained jurisdiction.

Ramon Chinea Muller, AKA Ramon Uriel Chinea-Muller, AKA Uriel Ramon, 50, Twin Falls; Fleeing or attempt to elude a police officer in a motor vehicle, $245.50 costs, $1,000 fine, $400 public defender, five years penitentiary, one determinate, four indeterminate, 147 days credited, two years drivers license suspension upon release, sentence to run consecutively with 2016 case.

Driving Under The Influence Sentencings

Christopher Lee Sanders, 32, Twin Falls; DUI second offense, $500 fine, $202.50 costs, $75 public defender, 365 days jail, 355 suspended, one day credited, 365 days drivers license suspension, 12 months supervised probation.

James Preston Johnson, 55, Glendale, Arizona; DUI, $500 fine, $202.50 costs, $75 public defender, 180 days jail, 177 suspended, three days credited, 180 days drivers license suspension, 24 months supervised probation.

Accie Lagran Campbell, 38, DUI, $400 fine, $202.50 costs, $75 public defender, 180 days jail, 170 suspended, two days credited, 180 days restricted drivers license, 24 months supervised probation.

Christopher Lee Sanders, 32, Twin Falls; DUI second offense, $500 fine, $202.50 costs, $75 public defender, 365 days jail, 355 suspended, one day credited, 365 days drivers license suspension,12 months supervised probation.

Sean Thomas Jordahl, 21,Twin Falls; DUI excessive, $1,000 fine, $800 suspended, $202.50 costs, $50 public defender, $100 DNA, prosecutor has 30 days to submit order for further restitution, 365 days jail, 170 suspended, two days credited for time served, 365 days drivers license suspension, 24 months supervised probation, obtain a full GAIN evaluation and complete recommendations given. Disturbing the peace, $300 fine, $300 suspended, $157.50 costs, 180 days jail, 170 suspended, two days credited, sentence to run concurrently with other charge.

Isaac Benjamin Perez, 22, Jerome; DUI, $1,000 fine, $600 suspended, $202.50 costs, $50 public defender, prosecutor may submit order of restitution within 30 days, 180 days jail, 176 suspended, guilty withheld judgment, 32 hours work detail, 180 days restricted drivers license to run concurrent with ALS, 12 months supervised probation, obtain full GAIN evaluation and complete all recommendations.

Ricky Ray Tipton, 57, Filer; DUI, $1,000 fine, $800 suspended, $250 restitution to ISP, 180 days jail, 177 suspended, three days credited, 180 days restricted drivers license suspension, 12 months supervised probation, attend victim impact panel and court alcohol school. Consume or possess an open container of alcohol by driver charge dismissed.

Phillip L. George, 55, Kimberly; DUI, $1,000 fine, $600 suspended, $202.50 costs, 180 days jail, 177 suspended, two days credited, guilty withheld judgment, eight hours work detail, 180 days restricted drivers license, 12 months supervised probation, attend victim impact panel and court alcohol school.

Makenzie Amanda Ellsworth, 20, Twin Falls; DUI under age 21; $250 fine, $202.50 costs, 180 days restricted drivers license, attend victim impact panel.

Luke Vern Thorngren, 29, Arco; DUI, $1,000 fine, $700 suspended, $202.50 costs, 180 days jail, 174 suspended, six days credited, 180 days restricted drivers license, 12 months supervised probation, attend victim impact panel and court alcohol school. Possession of a controlled substance, $100 fine, $197.50 costs, six days jail, sentence to run concurrently with other charge.

William James Agnew, 55, Twin Falls; DUI, $202.50 costs, 60 days jail, nine days credited, 180 days restricted drivers license.

Ashley Nichole Garcia, 29, Filer; DUI, $1,000 fine, $700 suspended, $202.50 costs, $50 public defender, 180 days jail, 175 suspended, one day credited, 32 days work detail, 180 days restricted drivers license, to run concurrent with ALS, 24 months supervised probation.

Divorce Civil Proceedings

Mary Hodges v. Alfred Hodges

Levi Smith v. Amanda Smith

Blanca Mercado v. Gabriel Jimenez

Cindy Watson v. Kit Watson

Elizabeth Douglas v. Daniel Douglas

Kendall Greene v. Rashell Greene

Mac Brandon v. Bonnie Brandon

Angel Castilleja v. Valerie Castilleja

Mayra Delgado v. Jose Aguirre-Morales

Jennifer Ybrra v. Francisco Ybarra

Tiffany Bowers v. Dillon Bowers
JEROME  Jerome High School musicians practiced marching Friday while playing the theme from the western film The Cowboys.

After they did a run-through on the blacktop behind Jerome Middle School, band director Hiroshi Fukuoka said: Thats was pretty clean. We need a little more energy out of everyones sound.

After the band tried again, he commented, That was the best opening yet.

The ensemble is preparing to represent Idaho at the National Independence Day Parade in Washington, D.C. Governors each nominated one band from their state to perform.

Idaho Gov. C.L. Butch Otter heard Jerome Highs band during a Vietnam War memorial dedication a couple of years ago, Fukuoka said. He noticed us.

Fukuoka found out in March 2015 the ensemble had been selected. He talked with school district administrators and Jerome Highs music boosters to see if the trip would even be plausible. He got a thumbs up.

He told students about the trip just before the school year ended in 2015. Since then, theyve had more than a year to prepare.

Its a pretty big honor to represent the state, Jerome School District Superintendent Dale Layne said.

The school districts philosophy, even with the economic downturn around 2008, has been to preserve programs such as fine arts, Layne said. For some kids, thats their chance to shine.

Playing at the National Independence Day Parade is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, said Chezney Olsen, 14, an incoming freshman trombone player. The band has been working in small groups and as a full ensemble to prepare.

We want to make sure we have all of our footing down, he said.

Emily Chojnacky, 17, has been in Jeromes band programs since she was in sixth grade. Now, shes going into her senior year of high school.

The trip to Washington, D.C., she said, is a very good opportunity to perfect our skills.

Emily, who plays tenor saxophone, said shes thankful for the communitys support to help pay for the trip.

Its the first time Jerome Highs band will perform at the Fourth of July parade in Washington, D.C.

But in past years, theyve performed at some big-name events, including the Portland Rose Festival and Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif.

There is a tradition and history of this group performing in parades, Fukuoka said.

In total, 37 students are going on the trip, leaving July 2 and returning home late July 5. Quite a few of the students have never been on a plane before, he said.

During the parade, theyll perform the theme from The Cowboys, by the iconic American composer John Williams. Its a good representation of the western U.S. culture, Fukuoka said.

The ensemble will also perform a patriotic medley Fukuoka arranged. It starts with The Battle Hymn of the Republic, includes all of the U.S. armed forces songs and ends with God Bless America.

During Fridays rehearsal, they were polishing their two parade songs. Were making sure theyre solidly in their memory so they can perform confidently, Fukuoka said.

The challenge with marching band: trying to figure out how to move and play an instrument simultaneously.

And theres a young group of students this year: mostly incoming freshmen and sophomores. Only five seniors graduated this spring and theres 18 incoming freshmen.

And about a dozen incoming eighth graders are already super excited about being in high school marching band in a year, Fukuoka said.

Fukuoka, who just finished his third year in Jerome, leads band programs at both Jerome Middle School and Jerome High School.

It means he gets to see how his students improve over the years. Its cool to see their growth, he said.

The ensemble had several rehearsals in April and May to prepare for the Fourth of July parade. Last week and this week, theyve met for band camps, each two or three days long.

Jerome Highs band performed last week at Twin Falls Western Days and Saturday at Richfields Outlaw Days.

We are treating those two parades as a practice run, Fukuoka said.

After that, students will have two weeks off. But then, theyll be back for a weeklong band camp before heading to Washington, D.C.

Fukuoka said hes thankful for school administrators, businesses and the community for making the trip possible. There is a strong support for music in this community.

The ensemble relied on fundraisers, a big raffle and sponsorships and donations from businesses to cover the expenses. The total cost of the trip: about $67,000.

Weve been fundraising the entire year, Fukuoka said, and met their goal. That was quite a bit to raise.

In addition to participating in the parade, students will have a chance to do sightseeing in Washington, D.C. Theyll also see the Fourth of July fireworks and hear a performance by the National Symphony Orchestra.

Once the ensemble returns from their trip, students will start preparing their field show: Pictures at an Exhibition.

Its based on a piece of music composed by Modest Mussorgsky. Its a great, classical piece of literature, Fukuoka said.
TWIN FALLS  Suicide, homelessness and rejection from family and friends are big issues for LGBTQ communities, including the Magic Valleys.

Theyre issues Magic Valley Pride, a social group for the LGBTQ community here, were bringing awareness to at Thompson Park for Saturday afternoons community barbecue.

If you live in the Magic Valley, come out, Pride facilitator Sarah Zatica said. Heres where you can shop. Heres where you can do business.

Under the park pavilion, kids ate hamburgers and hotdogs while others ran in and out of bounce houses. The barbecue fostered a family-friendly environment not for nothing.

Family support is big talking point for the groups educating community members from their tables.

One such group is the Mama Dragons, an online support group for gay Mormons, their families and allies. The Dragons began as a Facebook group about two years ago and has attracted close to 900 members mostlybut not exclusivelyfrom Idaho and Utah, states with high concentrations of Mormons.

The group gives permission to follow your instincts on what to do with your child, member Jen Blair said.

Blair joined the Mama Dragons after seeking advice on how to understand and support her son, who is gay. Her biggest fear, she said, was her son being completely rejected from their Mormon church.

I hope you fall in love, Blair said of navigating comments from the church. I hope youre happy, but everyone around you is telling you youre leading them wrong.

Mama Dragons, she said, allows parents to process their own feelingssome of which can be homophobic or transphobicwithout hurting their kids. It allows them to try to understand what their kids are going through and how to support them.

Candise Ramsey, a social worker in the middle of starting a support group called Magic Valley Pride Youth, said suicide and homelessness among LGBTQ youth are high. Family support is crucial, she said.

If you feel like family isnt behind you and school doesnt support you, Ramsey said. You get lost.

The group she is forming will promote GSA clubs in schools, offer support, identify safe spaces and using meditation techniques to help people let go of the past and focus on the present, Ramsey said.

Zatica said theres no agenda for the barbecue other than creating a community that encourages LGBQT people to be comfortable to come out, and connect them with welcoming places to shop and do business.

Its also beneficial for the children of LGBTQ parents such as her own daughter, she said.

We wanted her to meet other people who have two mommies or two daddies, Zatica said.
Americans find it hard to imagine that the two-party system could ever break down. "Democracy works, this country works when you have two parties that are serious and trying to solve problems," President Barack Obama said recently. Yet U.S. democracy and the country itself would be better served if politicians started acting as if there were more parties -- which might be the case after this year's election.

Americans have laughed at me when I suggested that their two-party system might be giving way to a more European-style one. Yet foreigners like myself, used to multiparty parliaments and coalition governments, are not the only ones who see the U.S. moving toward this model. Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, one of the architects of Poland's successful post-Communist transformation, wrote this week as calls multiplied for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to drop out of the Democratic race:

"By 2020, it is quite possible that we will actually have four major political parties: a social democratic left, a centrist party, a right-wing conservative party and a populist anti-immigrant party (represented by Trump followers)."

Where Sachs sees four parties, I see five: Sanders's socialists, Hillary Clinton's center-left, a center-right party for the likes of Governors John Kasich and Jeb Bush and Senator Marco Rubio, a conservative Christian party led by Senator Ted Cruz and Trump's right-wing populist force. Whether it's four parties or five, however, it's definitely not two: There are more distinct constituencies and more ideologies in U.S. society than the current system recognizes.

Yet the political machinery and the behavior of presidential candidates is based on the rigidity of a two-party system. Politicians are supposed to fall in step behind their parties' nominees. This is causing agony for some Republicans. House Speaker Paul Ryan had just endorsed Trump through clenched teeth when the presumptive nominee went after a judge because of his ethnicity; Ryan had to admit that the candidate's remarks fit "the textbook definition of a racist comment" -- but he couldn't bring himself to claw back the endorsement. Rubio, asked whether he still believed, as he'd said on the stump, that Trump couldn't be trusted with the U.S. nuclear codes, said he stood by all he'd said during the campaign but that he'd still vote for Trump because he'd signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee.

Trump appears to believe that now that he's on track to be the nominee, other Republicans owe him fealty. Kasich recalled a recent conversation with Trump: "Mr. Trump called me and said, 'What are you going to do to support me?'" The Ohio governor didn't feel compelled to do anything at all.

On the Democratic flank, Sanders is similarly expected to endorse Clinton without preconditions: He has lost, after all, so he should take it like a man and keep the party together in the face of the Trump threat. Well, perhaps he should be offered a few lines in the Democratic Party platform -- a document that means little because it is not linked to anyone's immediate executive or legislative agenda -- as a consolation prize.

It doesn't work like that in Europe, of course. After a parliamentary election, if the winner needs to form an alliance with some of the losers to secure a majority, there's no expectation that the parties closest to the winner in the political spectrum will automatically fall into line without expecting anything in return. Sometimes, the alliances that are made transcend ideological lines; they are formed by political forces that are the best at reaching compromises.

European politics can get messy, and sometimes -- as in Spain today -- there is no way to form a working government. Yet a standoff between the legislature and the executive branch, like the one that has lasted for most of Obama's two terms, is impossible. The ruling coalitions actually get to legislate and implement their compromise agendas.

Here's a hypothetical situation. Let's imagine a European-style parliamentary election in the U.S., with five parties taking part. Clinton's party wins a plurality. Trump's populists come in a close second. An alliance with either Sanders' socialists or the right-of-center moderates (Kasich, Rubio, Ryan) would give Clinton a majority. Trump would go over the top if he made a deal with the moderates and with Cruz's religious right (Sanders won't talk to Trump), and he'd have the majority, edging out Clinton and Sanders.

It would be quite conceivable that Clinton would go with the moderates to deny Trump a victory, and a centrist coalition would run the U.S. just as similar right-left cabinets run Germany and Austria today. There would be no overtones of betrayal, none of the current "if you're not for the Republican nominee, you're helping the Democratic one" binary calculus.

And the U.S. would have a workable, non-gridlocked political system for the next election cycle.

Sachs, of course, may have an axe to grind in predicting the Europeanization of the U.S. system by 2020. He wants Clinton to assign cabinet posts to the Sanders faction, the way she would have had to do in a European-style coalition. As Sanders's informal foreign policy adviser, the professor is not exactly disinterested when he makes this suggestion. It still makes sense though. Giving Sanders some power in the next government would mobilize his supporters for Clinton, whom they distrust, and it might keep them from defecting to Trump, the only remaining anti-establishment candidate.

Similarly, instead of expecting automatic loyalty, Trump would do better to coordinate agendas with the moderates and cede certain issues to them, which might make some of the doubts about his qualifications irrelevant.

Inertia is strong in U.S. politics, however. The main players continue pretending there are still only two relatively cohesive parties, which is no longer the case. The primary winners will act in the usual winner-take-all manner, alienate the potential supporters of likely coalitions and make it more difficult for themselves to win. Then the winner will represent significantly fewer than half of all voters because many won't turn out or will vote reluctantly. And there will likely be gridlock again.

If there's anything this election should have told U.S. politicians, it's that the traditional system is breaking down. There's no need to change the Constitution to accommodate a new multiparty reality. Unlike in Europe, the coalition deals would just need to be made after multiparty primary votes that the states could organize the way some of them run one-party primaries today. Then, ready-made, transparent coalitions would compete in national elections.

It's OK for rules to evolve if the evolution leads to better outcomes. The U.S. is great at embracing technological innovation; political innovation shouldn't be ruled out, either.
Were now out of nomination politics (barring any late-breaking dump Trump effort), and the general-election campaign is on. If there was any doubt about that, Barack Obamas endorsement of Hillary Clinton on Thursday will be the flag to start the race.

What happens now? Slates Jamelle Bouie, in referring to the veepstakes, gives a great introduction to the larger subject of what campaigns really do at this point: I guess this is a hot take, but it is a waste of resources to mobilize base voters who by definition are *already mobilized*.

In one sense, presidential general-election campaigns are enormous undertakings to mobilize those most susceptible to being mobilized.

Remember, most voters have barely been paying attention so far. Hillary Clinton received almost 16 million votes in primaries and caucuses, and a little more than 13 million voted for Donald Trump. Barack Obama received about 66 million votes to win in November 2012. So both Clinton and Trump need to find more than 53 million new votes.

Most of those votes, fortunately for them, are easy to secure. Some will come from people who supported a different candidate for the nomination, but who always intended to support their partys eventual nominee. There are also the party loyalists who skip primary elections, but who will turn out in November.

What about the rest of the electorate? Lots of people need some nudging and other help. Campaigns provide that. Voters who like candidates who talk about health care for all or equality for all, for example, may not describe themselves as dyed-in-the-wool Democrats, or even as Democrats at all. Yet theyll notice from the news coverage and paid ads that Hillary Clinton uses this language and Donald Trump doesnt. Thats why electioneering efforts such as Obamas endorsement video work: Few people will automatically do whatever the president says, even if they like him a lot, but lots of Democrats will see some or all of it and more fully associate Clinton with people and ideas they like.

Voters will also be reminded of what people like themselves generally do in elections. Thus, many Christian conservatives have aligned with Trump since he won the Republican nomination, not because he supports them on policy, or because he says things they like to hear, but because Christian conservatives generally support the Republican ticket.

Once a voter leans in one direction, strong cognitive biases reinforce that direction: We all tend to listen with (at least) open minds and to give the benefit of the doubt to candidates we support, and to close our minds to those we oppose, even to the extent of finding them strongly repellent by November. The ubiquity of the campaign does a lot of that work. If you oppose Trump, you cant just file that away until Election Day. Hes on your TV all the time, saying those things that drive you nuts. Clintons opponents will have the same reaction to her.

Even if Democrats may not be thrilled with Clinton for any number of reasons, almost all of them will not only wind up supporting her; they will become genuinely enthusiasticat least for the duration of the campaign season. And the same will normally be true of Republicans for the Republican nominee, and probably will wind up being true for many this year, even with Trump.

This dynamic helps explain why a candidates choice for a vice president makes so little difference. For people even marginally engaged in politics, the rest of the presidential nominees campaign is more than sufficient to mobilize them. And those who are so estranged from politics that it takes heavy lifting for the campaigns to get them to turn out arent going to be swayed by the choice of a running mate, because they dont really know who Senator Elizabeth Warren or Governor John Kasich is. (Only half of people polled about Warren, for example, have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of her; Kasich doesnt register that much higher. The rest havent heard of them or dont know enough to have an opinion.)

We often think of voters as making choices: watching debates to see who makes the stronger points, comparing policies to see which candidate is closer to our own preferences, assessing the likely behavior of candidates in office. But even when we feel were making a dispassionate, logical selection, most of us, most of the time, already have a heavy thumb on the scale.

So campaigns arent about making the best arguments to convince the other side. Theyre about finding the best cues to teach us to vote for the candidate we should be voting for in the first place  the candidate that people like us vote for.
Some varied thoughts given recent events:

1. Theres something rotten in Denmark. Most folks are familiar with this line from Shakespeares Hamlet that has become a metaphor for corruption at the heart of a particular matter. In this instance it applies to the Idaho treasurers office.

Enough serious questions have been raised regarding the management, or lack thereof, by Ron Crane that Gov. C.L. Butch Otter and Attorney General Lawrence Wasden ought to name an independent group of six to 10 individuals to undertake an independent investigation and report back within 90 days with concrete recommendations.

Otter and Wasden could name someone like deputy Attorney General Clive Strong to head up the panel, add a couple of sharp legislators like Idaho Falls Republican Sen. Bart Davis and soon-to-be Pocatello Democratic Sen. Mark Nye, and also add a couple of financial experts to sort through the charges and counter-charges.

Then present to the public a clear and simple picture of what has been occurring.

How much money has the state lost as a result of Cranes alleged cronyism and mismanagement? There is indeed something rotten but spell it out clearly.

2. Questions in need of answers. Or is Idaho about to buy another pig in a poke? Before Otter became a full-time career politician, he held a major position at J.R. Simplot Corp. As such, he should know the importance of putting together a sound and solid business plan that answers basic questions meant to satisfy lenders, developers, contractors and the public.

This is especially true when public/private ventures are formed, which invariably provide nice financial gain for the private interests but somehow posit all the risk on the public half.

After the problems and shenanigans surrounding the states involvement with the private prison firm, Corrections Corporation of America, and its debacle in contracting with Education Networks of America to deliver broadband to Idaho schools, one would think the governor might be a bit more cautious.

But no. The governor is once again jumping before thoroughly vetting the state hooking up with a company comprised of private investors and a face-saver arrangement with Rice University to provide Idaho with a program leading to a doctor of osteopathy degree.

The program would be housed in the Meridian office of Idaho State University, which the State Board of Education has designated as the lead school for medical program offerings. ISU would provide support services.

Someone ought to be asking why the state of Montana, after a truly thorough due diligence process, rejected this same proposal. Has anyone seen a detailed business plan? Can anyone name all the investors and what the expected rate of return for each investor is?

How much profit is made from each student? Why is there no formal residency arrangement for graduates to head into after completing this program?

Why wasnt the Idaho Medical Association consulted?

If the program fails, who has most of the risk and how many dollars?

There are still too many unanswered questions, yet the state board, at the governors insistence, has already sanctioned the arrangement.

Theres something fishy here, also.

3. Bernie Sanders is correct about media bias. More than 400 super delegates to the Democratic National Convention  largely current and former officeholders and party officials, signed on with Hillary Clinton before the first primary. The media, led by CNN, dutifully started listing these as fully committed delegates when, in fact, they knew a substantial number of these folks switched to Barack Obama at the 2008 Democratic convention. Yet, they still claim to be fair and unbiased.

4. Helen was not the first. I overheard a customer in a cafe tell his companion the first and only female ever to serve in the Idaho congressional delegation was Helen Chenoweth-Hage. That just aint so. The first female member of Congress from Idaho was Hells Belle Gracie Pfost from Nampa.

She served 10 years (1952-62) representing Idahos 1st Congressional District.

Pfost derived her colorful nickname because of her strident support for the federal government, as opposed to private power companies, being the builder of a high dam that would have completely flooded the most beautiful part of Hells Canyon.

Pfost had two other firsts: She was the first congressional candidate ever to defeat an opponent in the logrolling event held in conjunction with timber day events at county fairs. And in 1956, she was the Democratic half of the first ever all-female contest for a congressional seat across the nation, with the late, great Louise Shadduck being the Republican half.

Pfost won, but six years later in 1962, she lost narrowly to former Gov. Len B. Jordan in a race for one of Idahos seats in the U.S. Senate.
Despite what you believe or your church teaches about homosexuality, theres no denying the LGBT community has made mammoth strides toward acceptance in the Magic Valley over the past 10 years.

Less than 10 years ago, in 2007, just after Idaho voters had approved a constitutional ban on gay marriage, Western Days festival organizers forbid a gay and lesbian group from including a float in the festival parade, saying it was inappropriate for a family event. The next year, a float was allowed but with strict restrictions: no rainbows or any references to homosexuality on T-shirts or fliers.

This year, an LGBT group was invited to be in the parade, a drag queen was the centerpiece of the LGBT float and there were plenty of rainbows.

What a difference in less than a decade.

Acceptance in the Magic Valley has largely mirrored the national trend, although perhaps a few steps behind. Idahos gay marriage ban was challenged in the courts and continued to play out over the past two years, until last summer, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage was legal in all 50 states.

Court rulings and politics aside, the LGBT community has steadily staked out its place in the Magic Valley through other institutions, finding acceptance and protections in local schools and through city governments. In 2013, the city of Twin Falls adopted a policy prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation; Ketchum has a similar ordinance. And in October, Twin Falls school trustees adopted a new gender-identity and sexual-orientation policy. School dress codes must be gender-neutral, the policy states, including the traditional school day, school activities including dances/prom, and graduation.

The Magic Valleys gay community has never been as active or vocal as similar communities in other cities, but it has made real and measurable progress.

Thats culminating this weekend with the Magic Valley Pride festival. Tickets to a drag show sold out. A family-oriented barbecue was held Saturday in a public park. The event was sponsored by 20 local businesses and partners.

Still, there are obstacles to overcome. The LGBT community was still barred from handing out literature during this years Western Days parade. LGBT organizers say many same-sex couples are still afraid to walk in public holding hands. And others say theyve been denied promotions at work because of their same-sex relationships.

Many Magic Valley residents will never fully accept or even tolerate LGBT people, for a variety of reasons. But whats clear is that many folks are changing their minds, and a new narrative is developing about the LGBT community in the Magic Valley: Non-heterosexuals are more accepted here than ever before, and it looks like that sentiment will only strengthen over time.
Up a blind alley

In 2003, as the newly installed head of Merck Research Labs, Kim believed that Merck scientists were close to finding a vaccine for HIV/AIDS. This would not have been the ultimate HIV vaccine, but it would have been an enormous step forward, he said. And much of the scientific community, as well as the HIV/AIDS advocacy community, shared our optimism  and our hope.

Under his leadership, Merck partnered with the National Institutes of Health to test the vaccine in 3,000 people, committing hundreds of millions of dollars to scale up production of the vaccine, ready to move into the final stage of testing if the results of the trial were encouraging, he said.

Unfortunately, they were not, he told the crowd. Instead of making a breakthrough, we found ourselves up a blind alley. We had every reason to expect to succeed, but we had not. And this was a very public failure.

Kims story was not, of course, just about failure. It was an inspirational tale of how failures in the world of science add to the greater body of scientific knowledge  and how his story of failure changed the course of his life, eventually leading him back to Stanford.

On the day that we stopped the clinical trial, I wrote a letter to all Merck employees explaining the disappointing news, he said. I concluded by saying, Although the answer is not what we desired, we had completed an incredibly important experiment. In as much as the results were deeply disappointing, we had succeeded in finding an approach that didnt work. And that failure would lead researchers to search for other ways to succeed.

Now that I am back in academia, I am among those continuing the search. Why? Because today more than 36 million people are living with HIV/AIDS  that is one out of every 200 people on Earth. The quest for this vaccine simply must continue until it succeeds.

Something you long look forward to

Expect to confront failure, but dont let it defeat you, Kim added. Remember, as you leave this place, know that you carry with you the hopes of all those  yet unknown to you or them  in whose lives you will make a real difference. Carry this, not as a burden, but as an opportunity and a privilege.

Families and friends of the graduates traveled from across the country, and around the world, to attend the days ceremonies. The class of 2016 was awarded 49 masters degrees, 87 medical degrees and 94 doctorates. Twenty-six of the graduates received MD-PhD degrees.

I disposed of my gloves, wiped my eyes and thought to myself, Everything was worth it.

The mother of AbdulRasheed Alabi, one of those MD-PhD grads, beamed at him in his robes, recalling his brilliance in preschool. We came all the way from Nigeria, she said. This is something you long look forward to.

Graduate Roxana Daneshjou, who also earned an MD-PhD, took a moment before the ceremony to thank her parents, who escaped persecution in Iran during the 1979 Iranian revolution by immigrating to the United States.

My family sacrificed so much for me, Daneshjou said. My people, the Bahai, are banned from attending higher education in Iran. My entire family came out from Texas to be here today. Im the first doctor in the family.

The words of the student speakers reflected the strong emotions of the day. They recounted the scholarship, hard work and perseverance that brought the graduates their diplomas, but also how their journey has left a lasting emotional mark.

Theres that moment when you see something that no one has ever observed before, ... that precious nugget of knowledge, that moment when your discovery becomes part of a larger story of scientific progress, said Popov, reflecting on the years of research that go into a PhD.

Alagappan, who received his MD, described a transformative moment that occurred for him during his clinical rotations: the joy of holding a 10-second-old baby girl.

Literally all I did was hold a 6-pound infant for three minutes without dropping her, but I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I disposed of my gloves, wiped my eyes and thought to myself, Everything was worth it.
@ByKristenMClark

Just hours after the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history left at least 50 people dead and several dozen more injured at an Orlando nightclub on Sunday morning, the Florida League of Women Voters issued a call to action and demanded better gun control laws in the Sunshine State.

"The time for action is NOW. Guns kill people. That is a fact," read the email signed by league President Pamela Goodman. "Florida must be a leader NOW for necessary gun legislation.

"Call your Florida Representative and State Senator. We must have expanded background checks and extensive REQUIRED safety training for all permit holders," Goodman's message continued. "This is a public safety issue. We must all be responsible and take action for the safety of our citizens."

The email blast from the group was sent at 9:53 a.m., about five hours after the hostage situation ended at the Pulse nightclub and as authorities were still assessing the victims and investigating the gunman.
Here are the statements from members of the South Florida Congressional delegation about the shooting in the Orlando nightclub which left 50 dead:

Carlos Curbelo, R-Miami:

"The investigation is just beginning, but early reports suggest that it was an act of terrorism apparently inspired by radical Islam. I thank our brave law enforcement officers and first responders for their efforts. This is a horrific reminder that all Americans are vulnerable to this threat, and that we must come together behind the struggle to contain and defeat terrorist organizations on their own turf. This tragedy is particularly painful because it takes place during LGBT Pride Month. My thoughts and prayers are with the family members of the victims and with many of my constituents who are celebrating Pride Weekend in the Florida Keys."

Lois Frankel, D-West Palm Beach:

I am so sad for the Orlando shooting victims and their families. We must all stand together against hatred and violence.

Alcee Hastings, D-Delray Beach:

Words cannot express the sadness and sorrow that I feel for the families and friends who lost loved ones in the horrific shooting at Pulse Nightclub. This tragic act of violence is utterly devastating, and a direct attack on the LGBTQ community as our nation celebrates LGBT Pride Month. While many details are still yet unknown, I stand shoulder-to-shoulder in solidarity with the LGBTQ community and all the people of Orlando. These senseless acts of violence can never be understood, but we must find strength in knowing that justice will ultimately prevail. I offer my deepest sympathies during this dark hour and stand united in prayer with our nation at this most difficult time.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston:

This horrific, senseless and heart-wrenching tragedy is an act of evil that defies words. At least fifty people were killed as they went out to enjoy their Saturday night, and instead their families and friends are now mourning their loss. I am sending my thoughts and deepest condolences to their families and friends, and the entire Orlando community. I am deeply grateful for our law enforcement, first responders and health care professionals who were on the scene and are continuing their important investigative and lifesaving work. This tragedy is now the single deadliest mass shooting in American history and in this time of need, I encourage anyone in the Orlando area who is interested in donating blood to visit oneblood.org/donate-now/.
Faced with the decision between going to law school or med school, Ben Cory did the only thing that made sense: move to Costa Rica.

Cory, one of the lawyers in the Missoula office of Crowley Fleck, had just finished his undergraduate degree in psychology and pre-med at the University of Montana.

Growing up, he had influence from both the medical and legal worlds. His father was a pediatrician, but his grandmother, who had been a teacher in California, had put herself through law school when she retired and spent the rest of her career working entirely pro bono.

Cory keeps a photo of her on the desk in his office, taken when he was a child and was in a courtroom for the first time watching her work.

She was always very proud that she never had a single client who paid, Cory said.

What started as a three-week Spanish immersion program trip to Costa Rica with his sister became a job teaching English, which gave him the time to consider his future.

When he returned to Missoula nine months later, Cory worked drawing blood with the American Red Cross before he and his wife Kris moved to California, where he worked in a hospital.

It was a good experience, but it taught me that med school wasnt for me, he said.

So it was back to UM and law school. When he graduated, Cory took his first job working under Missoula lawyer Dan Cederberg, who he called an incredible mentor. In 2008, Crowley Fleck recruited him to join their office, and he made partner at the firm in 2012. The company is the largest firm in the region, with 11 offices and more than 150 attorneys spread across Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming.

The cases I get to work on are big enough where you can really be able to practice the law, he said.

At the start of this year, Cory was chosen by the partners to be one of a three-member firm management panel that oversees the entire company.

When he isnt working, Cory said he spends most of his time with his wife and their four daughters Wylie, Maddy, Lizzy and Bella, including getting away to the familys cabin on Placid Lake as often as he can. He said maintaining a strong work-life balance is very important to him.

Getting a break from work allows me to clear my mind and come into the office focused and motivated to do my job and get the best results possible for my clients, he said.
"When you get work for someone like her, it makes it pleasant. You enjoy going to work," said Shae Bradshaw, assistant manager for the Verizon Wireless store on North Reserve Street.

He speaking about Christy Schilke, Verizon's district manager who oversees its seven retail stores in the state of Montana.

Schilke is "always looking out for you as an individual," he said. "She's really in tune with her employees and always looks for ways to advance their career. She's very, very good at getting the most out of people and helping them to see their potential."

Last year, Schilke was recognized by the company as its top-performing district manager in the region, beating out peers who are responsible for metropolitan areas in Colorado and Utah. Her teams have won awards of their own, too.

"Montana has proven itself. That doesn't surprise me, but I like showing people we have a lot of skilled people that work with me," she said.

Her attitude toward management likely has more than a little to do with the success. Asked for a concise description of her work, Schilke said likes to think that she works for her employees.

"Their success and their opportunities are my opportunities," she said.

It's her task to bring them the skills, knowledge, production information they need to do their jobs.

Nicole Goedel, the store's general manager, said Schilke's both a support system and a resource for new ideas, and encourages her to pursue her own ideas as well.

"She does it in a very supportive and encouraging fashion," Goedel said, in which employees meet their goals and set new ones.

If that hasn't conveyed it already, Schilke loves her work. (The travel doesn't hurt either.)

"There isn't a day that I wake up that I'm not excited to go to work," she said. "I'm very lucky to love my job every day," she said.

***

Schilke, who grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in social work. She started with Verizon as a business account executive in Bozeman, and then worked her way up to data sales consultant, which covered Montana and Idaho. She became a business account executive in Missoula, and helped open a store on the UM campus. She then was hired as a major account manager, and spent three years as a store manager at Verizon's former location at Mount and Reserve streets. Three years after that, she was put in charge of its corporate stores throughout Montana, which account for about 160 employees.

***

Late last year, Schilke was diagnosed with a rare form of soft tissue cancer. She's had three craniotomies, the last one in March, and is taking chemotherapy via the pill method.

"Coming back has been one of the better things for me. I'm very close to my team and very proud of them, so being around them throughout this has been important to me, to be open about what I'm going through," she said.

She calls them her work family, and opened up her personal Instagram so they could follow her along. She said both her and the company as a whole have been supportive.

"Cancer is a very scary word, and it's not that it's not scary to me, but as soon as I was told, I was like 'you picked the wrong person. I'm going to fight it,' and I think that's important to show to my team and people around me," she said.
After returning to Missoula following a long hiatus, Tyler Gernant now runs some of the most vitals roles of county government.

As the elected clerk and recorder/treasurer, Gernant runs the real estate recording office, motor vehicles and tax departments, among other duties.

In 2014, when county clerk and recorder Vickie Zeier, who had been in the job for more than two decade, pulled out of the election to work as the countys chief administrative officer, Gernant was named as the replacement to appear on the ballot. With no Republican running, he won the election and took over from an appointed interim candidate that November.

Gernant said that although he heard about the positions steep learning curve coming in, he feels that his background as an attorney, where he focused on many of the same areas he now runs from the county side, made the transition easier.

I feel like I had a pretty good head start. I went from doing those steps to being the person making sure other people did those steps, he said.

For his position with the county, Gernant said it was more a perspective change from working for his clients to looking out for taxpayers.

You want to be able to get the taxes so that government has the means to be able to function, but be fair to taxpayers and make sure people dont lose their homes, he said.

Although he was born in town as a third-generation Montanan, Gernant and his family moved to Idaho when he was very young. His father Gary was a teacher at Hellgate High School and during budget cuts in the 1980s, he went through a period of continual back and forth on his contract.

Around the third year of that he found another job and we moved to Idaho Falls, Gernant said. Even though I moved when I was four, I always identified as a Montanan.

The family continued to visit Missoula, but Gernant wouldnt end up moving back until he attended law school at the University of Montana. By that time, he had already started working in another of his passions, politics. In the years leading up to law school, Gernant worked for former Montana Senator Max Baucus, U.S. Representative Brian Baird of Washington, and on the 2004 presidential campaign of John Edwards.

I really love doing political stuff, I still help out here and there, Gernant said.

Outside of his work, Gernant said he likes spending his time with his wife Katie Carlson and their 1-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter.
Born in Potomac, Jennifer Whipple said where she really grew up was in and around her familys Missoula business Collection Bureau Services, which her grandfather Gilbert Koch started 40 years ago.

Whipple, now vice president, co-owns the company with her father Jeff Koch. She said they work across Montana, handling everything from medical payments to bounced checks and providing collection services for Missoula city, county and the state.

Although getting calls from a collection bureau isnt high on most peoples wish lists, Whipple said they try to make the process straightforward.

People are afraid to talk to us. Then, they realize that were actually nice and helpful and want to work with them to get this taken care of, she said.

As vice president, most of her work these days involves talking with Collection Bureau Services clients and updating them on the agencys efforts, as well as performing management duties like hiring, training and payroll.

When she was growing up, Whipple said she always knew she wanted to do something in business. She started working at the family company while she was a sophomore at Hellgate High School before graduating from the University of Montana with a degree in business management in 2008.

In addition to her work, Whipple also sits on the board of the recently formed Hellgate Finance Academy at Hellgate High School.

It is a big interest and passion of mine to help students and provide education in accounting, banking and financial planning, she said.

Whipple said she would never be able to do her job at Collection Bureau Services without the support of her husband Tyrell, a retired Marine who stays home with their two children and her two step-children. Every year, the family takes a vacation to Hawaii together.

Hes really the reason I can be here and be so successful, Whipple said. He enjoys being able to have time with them. He didnt even meet his daughter until she was eight months old because he was in Iraq.
It's all about the patient.

"When I go into every meeting, I always think of the chair thats empty  as the patient, because they are so removed from these meetings that were having, but yet theyre the focal point of what we do so much work to try to better the experience for," said Haines, a fifth-generation Montanan. "They can't be removed from that. That s something Ive always kept near and dear to my heart, is never forgetting about the patient. Thats what matters the most."

That outlook stems from her upbringing. Her father, a welder, and her mother, a nurse, "instilled a lot in my brother and I to give back."

That led to Montana State University-Bozeman, where she got her bachelor's degree in pre-med and health promotion. She had a chance to do operations management for hospitals, and it went well  so well that in no time she was promoted to operations management for Montana and Washington. She got her executive master's degree in health care administration from University of Washington in 2010 and while in school was a regional operations manager. She switched gears to be director of marketing for a senior care company, but Montana was calling her name.

She became the regional director for the Montana Hospital Association and Montana Office of Rural Health and Area Health Education Center. Providence snagged her three years ago.

"One of the things that I think makes her an awesome leader ... is just how she's A, completely transparent and B, wants what's best for everyone, even if it means it might make her life harder in the short turn," said Providence physician assistant-certified Jennifer Brewington. "She is probably the least self-centered person I've ever met."

St. Patrick Hospital Director of Telehealth LeAnn Ogilvie said she heard about Haines before she ever met her.

"I tripped over Jody's name a lot, as far as being innovative and passionate about rural health and access to health care in Montana," Ogilvie said. "What impresses me most about Jody is every time I spend any significant time with her, an hour in the car, I learn so much more about population health and how to provide access to health care in rural Montana. She has the ability to look at the big picture, take the pieces that are currently working, figure out what's missing and build a model of care."

Ogilvie said Haines' medical home models for western Montana "have been proposed as the standard of care across a five-state health care region." Last year, she earned American College of Healthcare Executives' Early Career Healthcare Executive Regent's Award, the youngest recipient.

"She's just going to be a trendsetter, man," Ogilvie said. "I think people are really watching her, and were really glad to have her."

Managing the Medical Home means a focus on population health.

"It's the idea of keeping people healthy and out of the hospital versus episodic care," Haines said. "It's really following the patient over the continuum."
Maybe youve seen her on the local news, at political rallies around the state, or on the University of Montana campus.

Kathy Weber-Bates, 37 and a mother of two, works mostly out of her home these days on Missoulas Westside, directing the public relations and communications firm she founded in 2015. Since then, Starhitch Strategic Communications has promoted Sarah Calhouns Red Ants Pants clothing manufacturer, music festival and foundation in White Sulphur Springs; this winters Vienna International Ballet Experience in Missoula; Imagine Nation Brewing and Big Dipper Ice Cream in Missoula, and a Bozeman technology firm called Wisetail.

Its a diversity of interests that Weber-Bates says reflects her own core values.

Really what I aim to do is help small businesses and nonprofits better tell their stories, she said. I know it sounds basic, but I think in this world of so many different platforms, its hard for a lot of businesses to figure out: Whats the best way to tell my story, and where, and how?

Weber graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in broadcast journalism in 2001 and a masters in political science a year later. For the rest of the decade she worked in TV news  at CBS affiliates in Billings and Missoula's KPAX, and later as main anchor and assistant news director at KULR back in Billings.

The political field beckoned in 2010. Max Baucus was winding down his long career in the U.S. Senate and convinced Weber to become his communications director. Weber-Bates and husband Joe Bates moved the family back to Missoula from Billings in 2013 to be closer to her parents, Jerry and Lusie Weber. After Baucus resigned his Senate seat to become U.S. ambassador to China in early 2014. Weber-Bates became communications director for John Lewis run for the U.S. House. Lewis lost in the general election to Republican Ryan Zinke.

Among the record nine nominations Weber-Bates received for the Missoulians 20-Under-40 section, was one from Lewis  Kathy raised our campaign to another level. She is the best and the business  and another from his wife Melissa, who called her one of the most professional, intelligent and coolest people I know.

Weber-Bates is also a teacher. Her father met her mother while in the Peace Corps in the Fiji Islands. She draws from her own experience growing up Polynesian in Montana in a Diversity in the Media class she teaches at UM.

In developing this course, Kathy became a very articulate advocate for discussion of diversity issues on campus, said Larry Abramson, dean of the UM journalism school. She turned her course into a statewide discussion on this very sensitive topic.

Weber-Bates ties all those experiences together at Starhitch to promote the right kind of enterprises.

"I want to use my skills to help businesses that are giving back and see Montana as a stakeholder," she said. I think Montana is like a secret weapon for a lot of businesses, and Im really proud to help shout from the mountaintop what a great place this is to do business.
Merger

Goodrich Law Firm, P.C., of Billings, and Reely Law Firm, P.C., of Missoula, merged to form the new firm of Goodrich & Reely, PLLC. They will maintain their former office locations at 2812 First Ave. N., Suite 301, Billings 5910, and 3819 Stephens Ave. Suite. 201, Missoula, 59801, respectively. The following are attorneys at the firm: Malcolm Goodrich has been in practice for 32 years, after receiving his law degree from the University of Montana with honors. He is a business bankruptcy specialist, nationally certified by ABC/ABI, and his practice focuses on commercial transactions and litigation, farm and ranch matters, debtor and creditor disputes, and bankruptcies. Goodrich will work in the Billings office. Judy Williams received her law degree from the University of Montana in 1985 and was admitted to the Montana State Bar the same year. For the past 31 years, her practice has focused on family law, poverty issues, adoptions, and child protection. She is a child welfare law specialist, certified by the National Association of Counsel for Children and approved by the ABA. She works in the Billings office practicing primarily adoption law and accepts select other cases by referral only. Shane Reely graduated from the University of Montana Law School in 1994 with honors. He opened Reely Law Firm in 2008. His practice focuses on estate planning, tax, probate, business transactions, and transactions involving liquor and gaming licensing. He will remain in the Missoula office. Michael Lawlor graduated from the University of Montana Law School with honors and has been practicing law for 14 years. He began his work specializing in estate planning, taxation, and business transactions before accepting a position with the Montana Department of Revenue in Helena. His practice now focuses primarily on alcoholic beverage licensing transactions and business transactions in the Missoula office. Maggie Stein graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2005 and was admitted to the Montana State Bar the same year. She specializes in commercial transactions, debtor and creditor disputes, bankruptcies, and water law matters. She will divide her time between Billings and Bozeman, where the firm intends to establish a separate office in the foreseeable future. Contact the Billings office at (406) 256-3663 or the Missoula office at (406) 541-9799. Visit goodrichreely.com.

New business

The Peoples Republic of Health has opened at 206 S. Third St. W. The company's community acupuncture model makes it possible for patients to use acupuncture and herbal medicine, and to pay for it on a sliding scale based on monthly income. Founder Zoe Strauss earned a masters degree from the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in San Francisco, and completed a post-graduate residency at Shanghai Universitys teaching hospital. She has worked in community acupuncture clinics in San Francisco and New York City after returning stateside. She opened her first Montana People's Republic location about three years ago in Bozeman. Jessi Brock is a massage therapist and Marissa Mayer is an acupuncturist. Visit prhacupuncture.com.

New associates

John Hastings has joined First Montana Bank as a corporate credit analyst. Hastings is a recent deans list finance graduate from the University of Montana School of Business Administration. While attending the University of Montana, Hastings was an officer of the Finance Club and served on the Deans Advisory Council. Hastings previously held internships with Jared Losing and Associates (Ameriprise Financial), the Montana Community Development Corp. and KMPG, LLC.

Promotions

Aaron Gardes has been promoted to Portfolio Assistant for the Missoula branches of First Montana Bank. Gardes has been with First Montana Bank since 2011, previously working as a corporate Credit Analyst for the Bank. In his role as Portfolio Assistant, Gardes will support the Banks commercial loan portfolio providing assistance to commercial officers to underwrite, structure and document loans, managing loans throughout the lending process. Gardes holds an accounting degree from the University of Montana School of Business Administration.

Ashley Larkin has been promoted to Commercial Loan Officer for First Montana Bank Larkin has been with First Montana Bank since 2011, most recently as a Junior Lender for the Bank with experience in consumer and commercial lending. Larkin holds a degree in dinance from the University of Montana School of Business Administration with minors in mathematics and economics. Larkin is a graduate of Leadership Missoula 31 and a member of the Missoula Young Professionals in addition to actively volunteering for a variety of community organizations.

Recognition

Dick Anderson Construction was announced as one of the top 400 contractors in the United States by Engineering-News Record. They were ranked 359 out of 400 in the United States. Dick Anderson Construction has been in business for over 40 years and serves clients throughout the Western United States. It provides services such as general contracting, construction management, preconstruction services, design-build, development, civil construction and alternative energy. It has five Montana offices located in Helena, Bozeman, Missoula, Billings and Great Falls and one office located in Sheridan, Wyoming.

ERA Lambros' top producers for the month of May were the McQuirk team (Barb, Bill, Mark and Tiffany) for commercial, Julie Gardner for residential, Cheryl Smith for the Hamilton office, Barb Riley for the Kalispell office, Cora Gilmore Nelson for the Libby office, Jim Cockriel for the Polson office and Bessie Evans for the Florence office.

C.J. Johnson, attorney and partner with Kalkstein, Johnson and Dye, P.C., has been selected to the 2016 Mountain States Super Lawyers list in the area of professional liability. He was also a 2013, 2014 and 2015 Super Lawyer. Johnsons practice emphasizes real estate agent and broker malpractice, home inspector negligence, construction defect claims, and other consumer rights issues.

Civil engineer Nancy Taylor was recognized as the USFS Northern Region Managerial Engineer of the Year. This award recognizes employees who have demonstrated sustained exceptional engineering leadership in management of programs and organizations. Taylor has managed federal construction and service contracts for the design and construction of forest road improvements and aquatic organism passage for the Lolo National Forest for nine years.

Elected

John Caid, Nancy Hadley, Nancy Holland, Eric Johnson and Bill Pine have been elected to the board of directors for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Caid, chairman from 2011-2013, returns to serve in the role of past board representative. A RMEF life member and habitat partner, Caid currently serves as general manager of the UU Bar Ranch in Cimarron, New Mexico. He is also the owner of Renewable Resource Managers, LLC, and is a retired director of the White Mountain Apache Game and Fish Department. Hadley is a RMEF life member from Sandpoint, Idaho. She currently serves as a financial adviser and senior vice president at D.A. Davidson and Co. Hadley is a former commissioner for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. Holland is also a RMEF life member and serves on the Presidents Council. Holland is a managing partner of Sapphire Point Partners, LLC, and a former investor for Global Property Securities, Fortis Investments/ABN AMRO Asset Management. Johnson is a RMEF life member, habitat partner and Habitat Council member, and Jackson Hole (Wyoming) Chapter committee member. Johnson is a software engineer with experience at several Silicon Valley companies. Johnson has a BS in Wildlife Management and a MCS in Computer Science. Pine is a RMEF life member and member of the Habitat Council. Pine serves as president and shareholder of Pine, Pedroncelli and Aguilar Inc. He is the founder of CPAs for Charity and a member of the American Institute of CPAs, California Society of CPAs and the Tulare County Estate Planning Council.

The Providence Montana Health Foundation board of birectors has elected the following officers: chair, Sydney Carlino, Vice President D.A. Davidson; vice chair, Julie Gardner, Realtor Lambros ERA; secretary, Danielle Sebastian, PharmD., Ascension Health; treasurer, Linda Hogg, trustee, Financial/Systems Facilitator and Chair Emeritus, Robert McCue, owner, Eagle Self Storage. Continuing directors of the board include Jeff Fee, Chief Executive Providence Health & Services Western Montana; Kristy Beck-Nelson, Regional Director Operations Oncology Services Providence St. Patrick Hospital; Herb Depp, retired vice president, GE Aviation; Dave Gilmer, Partner JCCS; Cindi Hayne, Broker, Berkshire Hathaway; Alan B. Jensen, financial adviser, Wells Fargo Advisors; James Kiser, president, Providence St. Joseph Medical Center; Margaret Menendez, M.D., Radiation Oncology Providence St. Patrick Hospital; Jim ODay, Business Development, The Farran Group, LLC; Colleen Powers, senior vice president, Terry Payne & Co., and owner, Rumour restaurant; David Rehbein, President, Peak Investments; and Larry White, Retired CEO St. Patrick Hospital.
Today, the Missoulian visits with Missoula Federal Credit Union, one of our community's cornerstone businesses.

Here's what we learned in a Q&A with Missoula Federal Credit Union's present-day owners.

Give a brief (100 words or less) history of how your business started:

Missoula Federal Credit Union began in 1956 as a small financial cooperative organized by 8 hardworking policemen.

We started talking about starting our own credit union to see if we could borrow money at a cheaper rate than what we were borrowing as policeman at the time. Then the 8 of us decided wed go ahead and try it. - Herb Roehl, one of the original founding members of Missoula Federal Credit Union.

Tell us a little (100 words or less) about the founder of your business:

They were volunteers, just trying to figure out how to deliver access to credit to one another on reasonable terms. And so they all learned as they went, they trusted one another and took some risk.

Wed each put $40 into the kitty; that made it $320 that was the first amount of capital in the credit union. We didnt have a bank at the time. The treasurer had a box of some kind, something like a shoebox. You put all the paperwork in there and the money that was in our credit union. He took it home with him, slid it under the bed so nobody knew where it was at. And that was how everything was kept. We had no training of any kind to run an organization like a credit union. All we did was go by the seat of our pants.  Herb Roehl

What is the key to your longevity as a Missoula business?

At Missoula Federal Credit Union, we are focused on doing what is right for our membership. Competitive rates and services while focusing on giving back to the community and membership that makes all of us financially stronger.

What is the biggest event thats ever happened in your businesss history?

While there hasnt been a single biggest even in our history, we have continued to focus on hiring the right people and providing innovative products to best serve our membership.

How has your business changed, or evolved, over the years?

I dont remember what the first loan was but I do remember this: that it was always either for food or small appliances that people needed in the house.  Herb Roehl

We make the same loans today but our lending program has become more complex with home, vehicle, land acquisition, and business loans. Over the years, weve grown organically and merged with a couple of great local credit unions  the University of Montana Credit Union and Northern Pacific Credit Union  to become Montanas second largest credit union and its largest Community Development Financial Institution as a $420-million-dollar organization serving some 45,000 members.

Tell us a little (100 words or less) about your current business and its employees.

As a team, we depend upon one another to provide world class service and accurate information to our members. We work together to contribute positively to our community. With this great responsibility comes great rewards. Our employees are empowered to make a difference in the lives of our members. They are encouraged to stand up for what is right, to be honest and to give back. Each employee has a role in decision-making, straight-forward communication, and transparency within the workplace. After all, its not who you work for, but how well you work with one another. Were in this together.

What are your future plans for the business?

Trust. Courage. Possibility. These are the very ideas that our founding members began the credit union with and they still hold true today.

We continue to look back and move ahead, to build a sustainable financial institution where people care about each other; always have; and always will.
The greeting card companies are still making money, though the inventive online "cards" are gaining ground. Here's a poem about pen and ink greeting cards, by Cynthia Ventresca, who lives in Delaware.

Delivered

She lived there for years in a

small space in a high rise that saw

her winter years dawn. When the past

became larger than her present,

she would call and thank us for cards

we gave her when we were small;

for Christmas, Mother's Day, her birthday,

our devotion scrawled amidst depictions

of crooked hearts and lopsided lilies.

***

She would write out new ones,

and we found them everywhere  unsent;

in perfect cursive she wished us joy,

chains of x's and o's circling her signature.

And when her time alone was over,

the space emptied of all but sunshine, dust,

and a cross nailed above her door,

those cards held for us a bitter peace;

they had finally been delivered.

***

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2015 by Cynthia A. Ventresca, Delivered, (Third Wednesday, Vol. VIII, No. 4, 2015). Poem reprinted by permission of Cynthia A. Ventresca and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2016 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.
Robert Howe knows full well how hard it is to find and keep a permanent place to live after spending time in prison for a felony conviction.

During a low point in his life and after a series of what he calls very poor decisions, he found himself locked up for felony DUI. After he got out in May 2012, the only place that would hire him was Taco Bell. In Montana, job-seekers are forced to check a box on their application if theyve ever had a felony conviction. And when employers are sifting through big piles of applications, the ones with that box marked yes often just get tossed aside.

Without a good-paying job, its hard to pay rent. Also, most returning citizens dont have any credit, so thats another knock on their application. They might not have good references, and they often have to check the same box for a felony conviction when filling out a housing application. Many studies have shown that not finding a job or a permanent place to live are good indicators that a convict will re-offend and return to the cycle of imprisonment.

Thats why Howe has decided to make it his lifes mission to help recently released inmates find stable housing in Missoula. He and a business partner Steven Smith currently manage Good Neighbors Missoula, an organization that is in the process of becoming a nonprofit. They provide Missoulas only transition housing for those returning from incarceration.

Ive had my own struggles trying to find housing, you know, with a conviction on my record, Howe said. Its not easy because you dont know anybody. So since Ive been released Ive made it a real point to give back to my community and provide whatever else I can for people who need it. I remember the desperation, knowing what that felt like.

Theyve recently opened up their third location, and nearly a dozen men  they hope to open up a fourth location for women soon  are living together as they seek to find a more permanent solution.

I essentially act as a landlord  but I like to call myself a peer  to provide opportunities for those who are in transition, Howe explained. Everything is self-funded. We get no grants, no state or federal funding, everything is funded by the business and individuals who pay rent.

The men in the housing range from teenagers to guys in their 50s. Some have been locked up for just six months, but others have spent years in prison.

Because the properties are privately owned, Howe cant accept people with sexual assault convictions but he can accept people who have been convicted of violent crimes on a limited basis.

We dont tolerate violence, threats of violence or substance abuse, he said. The tenants must also abide by curfews and attend all screenings and meetings required by their probation officers.

Howe knows most returning citizens dont have a lot of cash, so he only charges a $150 move-in fee. He also doesnt require credit and all utilities are paid. The tenants live there as long as they need to until theyre comfortable enough to move out.

They have to learn to live together as roommates, but Howe says he hasnt seen any disputes bigger than what you would find at any typical dorm room or shared housing situation.

He said that the property owners found him through another organization in town, Partners for Reintegration. Once he got started, other landlords began contacting him because they believed in what he was doing. He says his tenants are busting many common stereotypes about those who have served time in prison.

One of my tenants saw that an elderly neighbors grass was getting long, so he went over there and cut her lawn for her, he explained. "They do things like that all the time."

His tenants find out about him in a variety of ways as well.

People get connected to me in a lot of different ways, Howe explained. Im housing one person that I met at McDonalds. I went to grab lunch and a gentleman asked if I could spare some change. I got to talking with him, and ended up housing him. I work with the Department of Corrections and the faith-based community here in town and Partners for Reintegration. People come to me from all over.

Although he hasnt made any money off the entire operation yet and has expended a lot of sweat and time, Howe said its the success stories that motivate him.

He recently had one of his 19-year-old tenants move out and get his own place.

It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it, Howe said.

***

William Harvey, 27, is one of the young men that lives in a property managed by Howe. He got caught with marijuana when he was a senior in high school, or as he puts it, a month into adulthood.

That kind of set the tone for what has been a nine-year journey through the system, he explained.

He was eight months from completing that sentence when he was caught with another three ounces, so he had to start his sentence over and a judge tacked on an additional five years.

I take full accountability for having the weed and making the choices I did, he says. I dont necessarily agree with the consequences, but thats a whole other issue.

Like many other former inmates who transitioned into the Missoula Prerelease Center, his first home outside of jail was a motel room. He got a good deal on the fee because he worked there, but other guys were paying $1,000 a month. A lot of other people end up at the Poverello Center, a homeless shelter in town.

The Pov is not ideal if youre trying to find a job, Harvey explained.

He sent applications to 10 different property management places in town. On almost all of them, he had to check a box acknowledging that he was a convicted felon. And, not surprisingly, he didnt get a single call back.

They would tell me the place was already rented, but I would see it was still for rent on Craigslist, Harvey explained. Or I would just not hear back from them after I paid the application fee. One agency wanted me to jump through a bunch of hoops with a bunch of paperwork. So this place is a godsend. If this had fallen through, I probably would have had to wait it out at the Pov.

The Good Neighbors Missoula house where he lives with five other guys has tomato plants, a cut lawn and a nice exterior. Theyre good neighbors, and Harvey has a professional job now.

Harvey said that that the prerelease center should focus as much on trying to find stable housing for people transitioning back into society as they do on getting them employment. He believes housing could prevent a lot of prison recidivism. He says that a lot of men who find themselves in a situation similar to his, recently released into society and having no luck finding a place to live, are tempted to do drugs or commit the same offenses that landed them in jail in the first place.

If I had had to live at the Pov, that would have been my first experience with homelessness, he said. It would not have been good. I dont think I would have been able to secure the position Ive secured, employment-wise, living out of the Pov. So it would have all bad. It would have affected a lot of different aspects of my life. When you have an expiration date at your residence and you dont have a place lined up, (the possibility of using drugs again) is always in the back of your mind.

***

Jana Staton, a volunteer with Partners for Reintegration, said that landlords arent required to ask potential tenants if theyve had a felony conviction, but many do anyway.

Its not required, but its a practice and the practice is pretty customary, she said. The practice locally is tenants who check that box never get considered. Thats probably because theres so many people trying to get housing. Its hard to say that they deliberately discriminate.

Staton said some private landlords dont ask the question, but many do.

A lot of them are told to be up front about it so its not a problem later on, but then of course it is a problem," she said.

She said Howes work has been incredible in the community.

Hes certainly a shining light for someone who has taken on the private landlord model, she said. What hes done is incredible, because theres not money behind it. Hes got no big agency behind him. If we didnt have Robert Howe, we'd have a big problem.

Good Neighbors Missoula is currently seeking donations of toilet paper, toothpaste, beds, furniture, laundry detergent and other basic supplies. For more information text Howe at 406-498-5437.
LIVINGSTONE, ZAMBIA  Sekelou the lion rubbed his thick mane and whiskers against the palms of visitors who had pressed their hands flat up to the chain link fence.

At the site of their handler, John Munedaneya, the juvenile male and two females rumbled and sashayed around each other. They rubbed their heads against the fence at any willing hands, and the giant cats locked gazes with visitors with their amber eyes.

The trio are part of the second generation of a lion reintroduction program called ALERT, African Lion and Environmental Research Trust, which operates in 20 countries including Zambia.

Lions are going the way of the rhino, but there's still time to save them, said David Youldon, who runs the ALERT operation in Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park.

"We're not an organization that believes in single species conservation," said Youldon, director. "We believe in taking the broader view.

"Having said that, lions to us are the pinnacle."

The conservation program is not averse to using commercial enterprise to support conservation, and it has been controversial for its leashed walks with lions, a tourist attraction at least temporarily defunct.

This year, though, the University of Montana School of Forestry and Conservation is strengthening its relationship with ALERT. UM, which has developed a close tie with conservationists in Zambia, aims to show students that protecting land and animals comes with no easy answers and sometimes happens in ways westerners might consider unconventional  even anathema to the goal.

This year, assistant professor Jennifer Thomsen is in Zambia meeting with UM's contacts, such as Youldon, and making plans for future exchange trips to Africa. Youldon is eager to work with more Montana research students, and Thomsen said introducing future leaders in the field to a program that is contributing to animal protection in a different way is critical.

"I think that's something that students really need to see," Thomsen said.

***

Tourists used to be able to pay to go on walks with lions through ALERT, but at least for now, the organization has stopped the practice. Youldon said the lions that used to walk with tourists are too big, and the pairs that are now breeding are a step removed from human contact.

Lions are not pets, and the tourist offering has detractors, but Youldon also said demand could revive the attraction. Standing palm to nose-and-whiskers with the deadly predators  behaving as congenial cats through a barrier  it is easy to feel the allure.

Some research shows that intimate experiences with wildlife pay dividends for conservation in the long run, but Youldon said he's seen both sides of the coin.

Sometimes, tourists and researchers who cross his path turn into donors and longtime fundraisers for the cause, particularly those who stay for two weeks or more. But that isn't always the case.

"A lot of people dont care about conservation at all. 'I went to Africa, I walked with a lion,' " he said.

***

This year, ALERT is on the brink of hitting a milestone with the apex species: It's on the cusp of freeing its first lions into the wild, the director said.

"We are awaiting the confirmation to proceed with their release into a national park at truly any day," Youldon said.

He isn't at liberty to disclose which park in Africa, but it's a result that's been nearly a decade in the making. The lions being released are the third generation of animals in a phased reintroduction process.

The initial captive parents bore cubs, and the second generation, including Sekelou, still has limited contact with humans. But the third generation of cubs are born in managed fenced reserves without human caretakers.

So far, peer reviewed, published research shows the animals ALERT will release into the wild have the same behaviors and characteristics as lions bred and born in the wild despite some of the program's limitations, Youldon said.

"The idea is always to have a bigger area, but all of the evidence from the research behavior shows they are doing absolutely what they're supposed to be doing," he said.

***

ALERT considers its stakeholders commercial businesses, government, non-government organizations, charities, academics, scientists and private donors.

Youldon said it doesn't get as many private donations because of its lion walking, but it employs a different funding model. Here, business partners and other contributors offer direct support.

The unique setup might come as a surprise to those behind a school desk. In class, Thomsen said, students are often looking for one right answer, but the lesson from ALERT is that a variety of approaches exist on the ground when it comes to preserving wildlife.

"You need to be creative with how you go about it," she said.

Whether it's grizzly bears or Africa's lions, Thomsen wants the next generation of conservationists to see that ensuring the world's iconic animals stay on the planet is done in different ways across the globe.

This year, UM canceled its Zambia course because it didn't have enough students, but Thomsen is gearing up for an exchange trip in 2017. Youldon has worked with one UM researcher already and met last year's students, and he and Thomsen are eager to work on a joint project.

She feels both uneasy with the controversial lion walks and thrilled with the opportunity to see the animals up close. Overall, though, she's seen a program that's grown to embrace a larger ethic of biodiversity, and she's ready to introduce those lessons to students.

"It's evolved into a much bigger project, and that's the story we need to tell," Thomsen said.
Great ideas for connecting kids and nature cross coffee tables every day, but few turn into 25-year institutions.

Thats why Wednesdays celebration at the Montana Natural History Center stands out. The Missoula program that provides everything from butterfly nets to green-screen virtual field trips has its focus on the next quarter-century.

It seemed such an obvious match for this area, to have a place where people could go to learn about nature, provide naturalists in schools, and field trips for adults and kids, said Sue Reel, one of the MNHCs founding members. I was the Lolo National Forest wildlife interpreter and educator, and I had more requests for classroom talks and field trips than I could possibly meet.

While setting up a wolf display at the Western Montana Fair in 1990, Reel, Pat Tucker and Bob Petty planted the idea of a stand-alone program that could provide those outdoors experiences. They started offering their first workshops for students and teachers in the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area and Wilderness north of Missoula the following year. By fall 1991, they had an office in the University of Montanas Jeannette Rankin Hall.

Lots of Montanans go outside all the time and dont think twice about it, longtime MNHC board member Hank Fischer said. But theres a lot of people, kids in particular, who dont have the opportunity to get outside and learn about nature. And the Legislature has done a good job of getting technology into a lot of rural schools, but they dont have any programming.

After years of developing in-class curriculum, field trip plans, and traveling trunks of animal skulls and other hands-on exhibits, the center has moved into the virtual reality world of lesson delivery. A special room in its permanent headquarters on Hickory Street has a full green-screen video setup for remote presentations.

I get to interact as if I was in the classroom, instructor Amy Howie said as she demonstrated the system. One video screen lets her see the students, while the other shows her superimposed over whatever background she wants to work with, just like a TV weathercaster in front of a storm map. The system can beam videos and slide shows from St. Regis to Colstrip.

In-town visitors can see examples of almost all of Montanas important animals as well as many of the plants and insects that play major roles in its habitat. A recent partnership with Big Sky Brewery helped the center acquire three passenger buses for field trips. Between 2,000 and 3,000 people view the centers exhibits, while another 10,000 attend its lectures, excursions and group tours.

Weve been largely a western Montana program for the first 25 years, Fischer said. Were working hard to become a statewide organization. Thats what I anticipate in the next 25 years.
The Clark Fork Market in downtown Missoula has grown so much in the past few years that it's considering expanding to another street.

Franco Salazar, the manager of the market that's below the Higgins Avenue Bridge, said theres 110 reserved vendors this year, up 20 from last year. He said on the busy Saturdays, he estimates that at least 4,000 customers come through the market that's near Caras Park. Other vendors peg that number as much higher, but theres no official way to count.

We get busier every year, Salazar said. Were actually in the process of trying to get part of Pattee Street closed for more space. We would have to get the permission from Holiday Inn to close one entrance to their parking lot, but they have three entrances, so that would just mean closing one for five hours a week.

Salazar said he knows that downtown businesses appreciate how many people the market attracts to the area every Saturday.

We had thought about moving at one point and going to the Sawmill District, he said. The Missoula Downtown Association and the city want to do everything they can to keep us in that spot to promote traffic.

Its a sentiment echoed by many other area businesses: The markets provide a huge boost to the downtown economy in the spring, summer and fall.

***

Rebecca Arensberg has been working at Butterfly Herbs in downtown Missoula for 28 years, and she says the combination of the Clark Fork Market, the Missoula Farmers Market and the Peoples Market make every Saturday easily the busiest day of the week.

Definitely Saturday is our biggest day, Arensberg said. We open an hour earlier on Saturdays, so 8 instead of 9. In the winter, theres nothing happening downtown on Saturdays.

***

Just down Higgins Avenue at Copperopolis, a home decor and gift store that opened in March, owners Lisa King and Jodi McCarthy say the markets create a ton of traffic for them as well.

If nothing else, its great exposure, McCarthy explains. I wouldnt say we necessarily have the best sales on Saturday mornings, but I think its great exposure and it shows people that were here and they come back later. But its good traffic and its a good vibe.

Copperopolis is the name that Marcus Daly, a businessman known as one of the Copper Kings of Butte, originally wanted to give to Anaconda in the late 1800s. Montana's postmaster wouldnt allow it because there already was a town with the same name near White Sulphur Springs. King and McCarthy are both Anaconda natives, and their store there has had so much success they decided to branch out to Missoula.

They looked at a lot of spaces downtown before settling in at 132 N. Higgins.

We looked in the whole area and I love the other side of the street because its the sunny side, McCarthy said. However, this location was perfect. It worked out for us.

She said shes not sure if rents are higher on the east side of Higgins because thats the side of the street with both the farmers markets.

If I were a farmers market person I would take one side one way and come back down the other way just so I could catch it all, she said.

Both say that weather affects the crowd size.

People dont want to park and walk if the weathers not nice, and this is a walking district, McCarthy said.

***

For growers like Michael Duda of Bitterroot Organics farm in Victor, the Clark Fork Market generates almost all of his yearly business income.

I sell a little bit to restaurants, but the market is maybe 95 percent, he said. We have a band of regular customers that you could set your watch by, so thats where a good half of what we do comes from, are just regulars.

Duda estimates 10,000 people come through the market every Saturday. He sells between 400 and 500 pounds of heirloom tomatoes, along with herbs like lovage and bay leaves.

***

Stephanie Lubrecht and her husband sell Wustner Brothers Honey at the Clark Fork Market. Although their products are on grocery store shelves year-round through the Western Montana Growers Cooperative, the market plays a crucial role for their business.

Its pretty much the only venue we have to talk to people about what we do, especially since our products are different, like the raw honey is different from traditional honey, and having a place to talk to our customers about our products is really important, Lubrecht explained. We like getting to know our customers. More people are interested in bees and whats good for them and what bees are doing in the world. And the more knowledge people want, the better. So were happy to be here."

The sales arent bad on Saturdays either, and Lubrecht was busy filling customers bags up with jars of knapweed and wildflower raw honey, their two most popular items. They also sell honeycomb and other assorted bee-related products. She doesnt think they could rely on market sales alone, but its a nice part of the picture.

Its enough for us to get up at 5 oclock every Saturday morning and come down here, so its a big part of our business, she said.
George Ochenski writes some excellent columns and writes well. His recent (May 30) piece on "The Donald" and his foray into Montana is yet another good example. I do laugh, however, at the overarching premise  Trump doesn't know Montana. Few Americans know Montana and fewer know it well. That's the way Montanans like it, right?

There is an undercurrent of resentment fairly widespread among locals that "outsiders" don't understand Montana, and moreover, they are not welcome to stick around and gain understanding. God help them if they're from California! There's even a tongue-in-cheek bumper sticker advising them to "get lost."

I completely agree with Ochenski's views on Trump and lack confidence in his abilities to successfully preside over America. As has been said, "Knowledge is not meaning." And, meaning is not life. So, let "The Donald" spend money in Montana and be gone.

Amen.

Herbert Myers,

Missoula
GREAT FALLS, Mont. (AP)  Katie Hill is remarkable in the same ways that thousands of other 11-year-old girls are.

She likes to giggle, laughing at the silly things the kids in Leia Lins' fifth-grade class at Morningside sometimes come up with. She loves reading  math, not so much. Katie is a talented writer and comes up with funny stories about haunted houses and meeting up with space aliens. She likes to swim and ski, is learning to play drums and the piano, and if it were permitted, she'd probably eat all her meals served with a large side of ranch dressing.

At the end of the long list of the things that make Katie the remarkable young lady she is, there remains her "hard thing," as Katie's mother describes it. Katie is one of the approximately 500,000 adults and children in the United States living with cerebral palsy, and though the neurological disorder undoubtedly complicates her life, it does not define who she is, the Great Falls Tribune reported (http://gftrib.com/1Y9HnIw).

"What we talk about with her often is that everybody has hard things," Elizabeth Hill said of her daughter's affliction. "We all have hard things in our lives. She's had friends who have lost their parents. I have friends who suffer with debilitating disease. That's really hard. This is just her hard thing, and it's OK. She's not special because of it or not deserving praise more than anybody else. It's just dealing with her hard thing that's incredibly obvious."

Another obvious thing about Katie is her love for music.

"I am playing the piano and percussion with my private teacher," she said in an email. "I also play percussion in the band at school."

In fact, she has hopes of turning that love for music into a profession.

"I would like to be a pop dancer when I grow up," she said.

The term cerebral palsy does not refer to one single, specific affliction, but refers to a broad range of childhood neurological disorders permanently affecting a person's muscle control, balance and coordination.

For Katie, living with CP makes it difficult to get around. Her movements are exaggerated and sometimes involuntary. She can walk, and will eagerly do so when the situation calls for it. But walking is an exhausting exercise for her. While at school or getting around town, Katie spends much of her time in her motorized wheelchair.

Perhaps the most difficult challenge for Katie is communicating with other people. Although she can make sounds, including a bubbly laugh she uses often, Katie is non-verbal and must rely on her "talker" to express her thoughts to other people.

More precisely referred to as a "speech-generating device," Katie's talker is a touch-screen digital tablet device loaded with text-to-speech software. Using both symbols and alphabetic text, Katie is able to type in complete sentences that are then broadcast as a computerized voice output. Think of Siri's voice on an Apple iPhone, except higher pitched and more robotic sounding.

The talker, or "Bob" as her family sometimes refers to it, allows Katie to communicate with the people around her  but it has some deep limitations.

Cerebral palsy is not a progressive condition, meaning that the brain damage that is the source of the affliction doesn't typically get worse over time. However, as Katie has begun to enter puberty, her ataxia (shakiness) has gotten worse.

Typing on her talker's screen requires fine motor skills and has become more difficult for Katie over the past year.

"It has become so much more fatiguing for her to communicate that way," Elizabeth Hill said of the challenges Katie faces in using her talker.

Bob is also somewhat temperamental.

"Sometimes he shuts down all by himself," said Amber Anthon, Katie's paraprofessional who assists her at school. "Sometimes he says 20 things that she didn't punch in. It's really quite time consuming."

The length of time required for Katie to type in a sentence and then broadcast it to a friend or acquaintance effectively stops her from conversing with people. Despite the technology, making new friends her own age is a difficult task for Katie.

"The wait time is incredibly uncomfortable for many people," Elizabeth Hill said. "If we go to a park and a kid comes up and asks her a question, by the time we get her talker out and turn it on and she starts formulating an answer, they've already lost interest and moved on. I think for her it's often a question of whether it's worth the effort. Is this person willing to give me the time? I know she's got some good pals at school, but would I say she has best friends she tells her heart and soul and secrets to? I don't know if that's happened yet."

According to the Cerebral Palsy Foundation, roughly 40 percent of people afflicted with CP do struggle with some level of cognitive disability. Katie, however, is among the majority of people living with CP whose symptoms are limited to a lack of control of their bodies.

Katie's difficulty in communicating has occasionally led people to make false assumptions about her intelligence, even among people she encounters on a regular basis.

"She had a bus driver last year who drove her to school for almost the entire year, but because her talker wasn't mounted to her wheelchair, he had no idea that she was intelligent," Elizabeth Hill said. "As a mother I was just kind of crushed by that. Here he had driven her twice a day for seven months and didn't pick up on that. That's the battle that she faces. It's not the disability. It's convincing people that inside this wonky body is a really amazing kid."

One hope for a solution is improved technology in a new generation of speech generating devices. For more than a year, Katie's parents have been working to obtain a new talker for Katie, manufactured by Talk To Me Technologies. Instead of a touch screen, this new device can be operated using a joystick, has wireless Bluetooth capability that allows it to connect with cellphones, computers and other electronic devices, and can be easily mounted onto Katie's wheelchair. The computer-generated voice it uses is also more natural sounding than what "Bob" is capable of.

Without a doubt the "I Have Something To Say" device would make life easier for Katie, but it's expensive, costing upward of $10,000 including all the software and accompanying attachments. Many insurance companies are reluctant to supply speech-generating devices at all, categorizing them as a non-essential luxury item. It's a perspective Elizabeth Hill disagrees strongly with.

"Communication is such an integral part of relationships," Hill said. "People just take it for granted that you get to speak what's on your mind. Well, this is Katie's voice. She's going to be in middle school in a little more than a year from now. There she's going to meet a whole new set of people who haven't been exposed to her before. We hope that she's eventually going to go on to college, and if she does she's going to need to learn how to advocate for herself. All those things have to be trained and prepared for. This is her voice. It's not a luxury item."

In April, Talk To Me Industries loaned the Hills one of their I Have Something To Say speech-generating devices on a limited-trial basis. Using this cutting-edge talker, Katie was able to compete in her school's speech competition. She delivered an animated speech about space aliens, including her half-joking assertion that aliens are being kidnapped and held captive at the super-secret Area 51 U.S. military base in Nevada.

The voice delivering the speech was generated by the device, but the thoughts and humor expressed in it were all Katie. Though she did not win the speech competition, Katie did advance to the contest's second round. Talk To Me Industries has now posted a video of Katie's speech as a marketing tool for their devices.

"That's the goal with hopefully getting a new talker," Elizabeth Hill said. "That it's going to make it so much easier so she can tell us what's in that smart brain of hers."

The hope for Elizabeth and her husband, Jeremy Hill, is that as Katie matures and develops into adulthood she is seen and measured for her personality and intelligence, and not for the disorder that she lives with. Hill points out that people's reactions when they encounter a person with cerebral palsy can run the gamut from fear and prejudice to the unrealistic belief that people like Katie are invariably heroes and role models. Neither perspective is accurate.

"There's a lot of people who think that because she is cognitively intact that makes her special," Elizabeth Hill said. "It bothers me when people say things like, 'She must be your hero,' or 'She's an angel.' Yes she deserves some accommodations and she's an amazing kid, but so are our other kids. They're just as amazing in their own right, with their own gifts and talents and their own challenges. Katie is just an 11-year-old kid. I'm not saying she's not a unique spirit with a great mission and purpose in this life, but so is everybody else.

"I had a friend tell me once that she was grateful for Katie because she taught her children that life isn't fair," she said. "That's something I tell my (other three) children all the time. If life was fair your sister could talk and she wouldn't need a wheelchair. Life isn't fair and life is messy  but it sure is beautiful."

___

Information from: Great Falls Tribune, http://www.greatfallstribune.com
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, R-Mont., 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. Thursday, 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."
Cities across Montana are planning vigils Sunday night for the victims of the Orlando shoots.

In Billings, Not in Our Town will host a candlelight vigil at 8 p.m. at Grace United Methodist Church, 1935 Avenue B.

Speakers will include Marty Elizabeth Ortiz, board chair of Not in Our Town Billings, Dan Mehrens-Wallace and Liz Welch.

Here are the details for other Montana cities. More information can be found at the Big Sky Pride Facebook page.

Helena: 8 p.m. on the steps of the Capitol.

Missoula: 9 p.m. on the Oval on the University of Montana campus.

Bozeman: 9 p.m. at the Gallatin County Courthouse.

Great Falls: 8 p.m. at the federal courthouse, 215 First Ave. N.

Butte: 8 p.m. on the steps of the Butte-Silver Bow County Courthouse.
There will be about a hundred of them in all from a dozen or more states, traveling by car or train or airplane, and when they gather in Montana at the end of this month it will be to celebrate another kind of journey  the one their families made by ox cart a century ago.

As John Gutierrez of Northridge, California, explains, it was exactly 100 years ago, in 1916, that several related Ukrainian families  having left their homeland behind when they moved to Canada a few years earlier  made the trek across the United States border. They homesteaded on the open prairie some 40 miles from Malta, the nearest town of any size.

Weve really got to remember these people and the sacrifices they made so we could have what we have today, says Gutierrez. It was a tough place because youre totally on your own  its entirely up to you to succeed or fail. Theres no doctors, no medicine, nothing. Youre 40 miles from the nearest town. You lived in a tent until you built that first two-room house and then youre working in the fields. It just took a lot of stamina and endurance and hope.

A centennial reunion of the Obach-Wachula and Ivanovitch-Walchuk families will celebrate the legacy of those immigrants when the descendants gather June 24-26 in Malta.

Most of those families arrived in 1916 to join the Walchuks, who had already arrived in 1914. It was the still the homesteading era in eastern Montana, and they had very likely seen the Great Northern posters blaring the promise of lands available for homesteading in places such as Phillips County, Montana. They found land near Frenchman Creek.

Its almost a sacred place to me. This is where it all started  the homestead, said Gutierrez. He is helping to coordinate the reunion for the Obach family, those descended from Thomas and Anna Obach.

Gutierrez, who worked on the Saturn 1B and Saturn V Launch Computer Complex for RCA Radar Systems Division in Van Nuys, California, from 1961 to 1969, said he sometimes marveled at the way that Obach family  one in which education was stressed  arrived in America.

What is amazing to me is that my grandparents immigrated to the United States in 1916 on an ox-drawn cart  a two-wheeled ox-drawn cart in which they moved to this promised land. In two generations their grandson, me, John Gutierrez, Im working for RCA Radar Systems Division, Im working on the Saturn IB and Saturn V launch computer complex, which helped launch a man to the moon and return him safely to Earth. My grandparents came here in an ox cart and I helped land a man on the moon  only in America could this happen  in two generations. It just boggles my mind.

***

Pat Donich of Seeley Lake, who is coordinating the reunion for descendants of the Wachula/Ivanovitch family, said the familys story has echoes of the Mayflower voyage  a quest for religious freedom.

At that time, there was still a czar in Russia, and thats when the Bolsheviks were working to take over everything. Our family was in favor of the czar, but they were afraid because they were religious.

The Bolsheviks, who successfully overthrew the czars government in 1917, were famously opposed to religion. For religious people, it seemed like a good time to leave Ukraine.

They were really terrified of the Bolsheviks, who hadnt even taken over yet, said Donich.

And Donichs father, John Ivanovitch  who was 7 when his family came to Canada in 1914, and 9 when then came to the U.S. in 1916  never forgot the feeling that things would be better in America.

I remember my dad saying, Dont ever complain about paying taxes in this country. Just be so happy youre here and you can,  Donich said.

Donich said the family already knew about the opportunities to homestead before they left home.

They saw ads in Ukraine about free land, which was the homestead land. So when they got to Canada, after a couple years they just walked across the border and applied for citizenship and homesteads, and nobody cared if they did that. Well, they actually came in ox carts, because they had goods.

The familys tradition also tells that the family stayed one season in Mankota, Saskatchewan, because they needed to raise a crop of potatoes so theyd have something to eat when they came.

The land north of Malta didnt exactly drip with milk and honey when they arrived.

It was prairie and lots of rocks and never very good land, Donich said. They raised lots of things. They raised wheat and barley and hay and turkeys  500 turkeys at a time  and cattle and chickens. They just did anything they could possibly do to make some money.

They lived in sod houses. A sod house is like the sod you would put down on your lawn now, only they plowed up the prairie and the walking plows would plow 18 inches wide. Then they would just stack that up like bricks. They would stack it in two rows for one wall and kind of lean them together and the houses were like 30 feet by 40 feet. And theyd have two rooms in them with all those children.

The Obach family lived in their sod house 10 years and then they bought a wooden house from some neighbors who left. They then donated their sod house as a school to educate their own children and those of the neighbors. So that sod house became the Obach School from 1924 to 1934.

Bonnie OBrien, who came to teach the pupils  there are photos of her and her students standing next to the sod walls of that prairie school  ended up marrying John Ivanovitch and staying the area as a farm wife, mother and teacher.

***

The Obachs, meanwhile started looking, American-fashion, for new opportunities as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s set in. They looked toward western Montana.

They sold the homestead back to the government and the Obach family moved to Charlo. They had a much smaller farm, but it was much more productive. There was rain in the spring and there was water and streams. It became a very successful farm in Charlo, said Gutierrez.

But tragedy went with them. For already in September 1935, Michael Obach  who had won $20 in May of that year for being the best judge of horses and mules in the state of Montana at a contest in Bozeman  was killed in a car accident near Hinsdale. It was at night and he had no lights. Another vehicle driven by the postmaster at Meharry struck the Obach family truck head on. Michael was standing in front of the truck at the time, cranking it to get it started. He was pinned between the two vehicles.

He was the fourth-oldest. He was a farmer. He loved it, Gutierrez said. I know my grandmother never got over it  how tragedy strikes your family. And three years after they moved to Charlo, my grandfather died of stomach cancer.

But immigrants in America long ago figured out that bad things still happen in the promised land.

Theres some good stories and some sad stories, Gutierrez said.

They will tell both kinds when the descendants of the Obachs and Wachulas, the Ivanovitches and Walchuks, gather in Malta later this month.
Bonner Milltown Community Council

Ribbon cutting ceremony

When: 6:15 p.m. Monday.

Where: Intersection of Highway 210 and Tamarack Road in Pine Grove.

Agenda: Celebration of the completion of the first phase of the West Riverside bicycle/pedestrian trail.

Regular meeting

When: 7 p.m. Monday.

Where: Bonner School Library, Highway 200, Bonner.

Agenda: Representatives from HDR Engineers will update on progress with the Bonner/Milltown Waste Treatment Feasibility Study; election of officers; consider the initiation of a planning process for Bonner/Milltown; consider public comment on the Longview coal export terminal.

***

Missoula Conservation District

When: 7 p.m. Monday.

Where: USDA Service Center Conference Room, 3550 Mullan Road Suite 106.

***

Hellgate Elementary Board of Trustees

When: 7 p.m. Monday.

Where: School District 4 Board Room, 2385 Flynn Lane.

Agenda: Adopt resolution calling for bond election; Hellgate Elementary Education Association contract consideration; work day adjustment consideration; certified staff considerations; classified staff resignations; consider membership in the Montana Rural Education Association.

***

Seeley Lake Community Council

When: 5:30 p.m. Monday.

Where: The Barn, 2920 Highway 83, Seeley Lake.

Agenda: Overview of the U.S. Forest Services' trail maintenance plan; Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project; update on the Council's Traffic Project; election of officers.

***

Missoula City Council

When: 7 p.m. Monday.

Where: City Council Chambers, 140 W. Pine St.

***

Parks and Recreation Board

When: Noon Tuesday.

Where: Headwaters at Currents, 600 Cregg Lane.

***

Missoula Rural Fire District Board of Trustees

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Where: MRFD Station 1, 2521 South Ave. W.

Agenda: Election of officers; approval of Montana State VEBA; resolution 16-3 Montana State VEBA; approval of the AFG; resolution 16-4 to go out to bid for four compressor cascade and fill station; approval of the Volunteers Association Deferred Compensation disbursement; fiscal year 2015/2016 preliminary budget.

***

Missoula County Public Schools' Board of Trustees

Regular meeting

When: 6 p.m. Tuesday.

Where: Business Building Board Room, 915 South Ave. W.

Agenda: Available at mcpsmt.org.

***

Target Range Sewer and Water District Board

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Where: Community Medical Center Meeting Room H.

***

Target Range School

Board work session

When: Noon Wednesday.

Where: School Conference Room, 4095 South Ave. W.

***

Missoula Housing Authority Board

When: 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Where: Missoula Housing Authority, 1235 34th St.

***

Flathead Basin Commission

When: 10 a.m. Wednesday.

Where: Lone Pine State Park, Kalispell.

Agenda: Development Committee report, financial status, Flathead Community Foundation status update, 401 (c)(3) update; Flathead Watershed Restoration Plan; rail update; AIS strategic plan, drought, wastewater.

***

Missoula County Open Lands Citizen's Advisory Committee

When: 6 p.m. Thursday.

Where: CAPS Office Conference Room, 323 W. Alder St.

Agenda: Anderson-Miester Open Space Bond Project L2 discussion and recommendation.

***

Missoula City-County Health, Air Pollution Control and Water Quality District Boards

When: 12:15 p.m. Thursday.

Where: 301 W. Alder St. Room 210.

Agenda: Continuation of hearing and possible action on proposed revisions to Health Code, Regulation 2 Large Group Function Public Health permits and to fees; approve Public Health Emergency Preparedness Checklists; approve letter of support for Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services request for proposal for home visiting.

***

Missoula Redevelopment Agency Board

When: Noon Thursday.

Where: Hal Fraser Conference Room, 140 W. Pine St.
BILLINGS  In a small office on the second floor of the Yellowstone County Sheriff's Office building, two volunteers read internet comment threads about the county's oldest cold case.

Three donated computers and scattered papers cover the desks. On the wall, a sheet of paper hangs on the wall with a message printed on it: "Incarnate evil doesn't always look evil."

The volunteers, Scott Goodwin and Diana Walker, read aloud to each other, hoping to pick up some new morsel of information to add to the volumes of case files. Dozens of large binders sit on a bookshelf at the back wall, but one was removed.

It was one of many binders covering the 1973 homicides of Cliff and Linda Bernhardt. The couple was found bludgeoned in their Dorothy Lane home. Their feet and hands had been bound, and Linda had been raped.

Investigators have been trying to solve the case since.

It's one of nine cases that the Yellowstone County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit has looked into over the past four years. The part-time volunteers, most of whom are ex-law enforcement, have been working behind the scenes, piecing together clues for murder cases that span decades.

Longtime reserve deputy Monty Wallis coordinates the unit. His group tries to find breaks in homicide cases that full-time law enforcement has investigated for years. The work can be frustrating and often tedious.

"Looking at cold case homicides is a lot different than regular law enforcement duties," Wallis said. "Really, it's a research process."

***

Sheriff Mike Linder announced the Cold Case Unit in 2012. A research group would examine unresolved homicide cases, sort out the evidence and find ways to keep the investigation going.

The unit is comprised of volunteers. The computers, software and some money for lab tests were donated, Linder said. Without the unit, the six officers of the office's detective division would tend the cases when their current caseload allowed for extra time.

"Manpower would not allow us to be in here full time," he said.

The group started with 14 volunteers. They were former detectives, patrol officers, probation and parole personnel and specialized investigators.

"Every genre of law enforcement in the community we've been able to tap," said Sgt. Dan Paris, a detective with the sheriff's office.

Much of the initial work involved digitizing and indexing the old case files. The old work had been done on paper, with carbon copies and other pieces of evidence added throughout the life of the case. There are "walls of case files" to go through, Wallis said.

In cataloged, digital form, current detectives can draw connections with other cases more quickly. If a name pops up in a 2016 case, investigators can easily see if that name appears in a cold case. With a strong lead, the detective division would then take over.

"If information comes in on a particular case, they can follow up and ferret it out," Paris said.

He estimated that the digitization effort has saved him three months of work.

Most of the files have been digitized, though more are being added all the time. The unit is now down to about five volunteers. Collectively, they work up to 200 hours per month, Wallis said.

They go over the case files, determining what evidence is available and searching for new leads  different ways to approach the investigation. Much of that comes from newer DNA technology that can be applied to evidence retained over the years.

It's time consuming work. A DNA analysis can take up to a year, depending on the Montana State Crime Lab's load of current cases. Private labs can charge thousands to analyze a sample. But if there's a strong lead, DNA is a good shot at bringing the case to a prosecutor.

"That's really how cold cases are solved these days  DNA evidence," Wallis said.

In some cases, the passing of time can loosen lips. As relationships change, witnesses sometimes come forward, or sometimes witnesses who had been overlooked are discovered. Earlier this year, Brian David Laird was convicted for murdering his wife in 1999.

The Big Horn County case was cold for years until the FBI spoke with a couple who happened to be vacationing in a trailer next to the Lairds on the night of the murder. That testimony, as well as other evidence, led to Laird's conviction in March.

That's the goal for the Yellowstone County Cold Case Unit. After review, the volunteers compile reports for each case, which are turned over to the detective assigned to the case.

"Out of the nine cases that we have, we've probably made good progress on four," Linder said.

He avoided identifying the specific cases. Though the cases are cold, they're still open. None have been solved since the unit started.

***

The nine cases span 27 years.

Some are high-profile crime stories. The Bernhardt case, for example, attracted a $100,000 reward from an anonymous donor in 2013.

The death of Miranda Fenner in 1998 garnered national attention. The 18-year-old was found on the doorstep of a Laurel video store with a knife wound to her throat. She died two hours after paramedics reached her. Accounts of the cold case made national television.

A $25,000 reward still stands for information leading to her killer.

In 2000, the remains of Jeanette "Charlie" Atwater was found in the trunk of her car, which was set on fire on Bench Boulevard.

The list goes on.

Progress is slow and prosecutions are rare in cold cases, but there are incremental victories. Linder said those small clues  potential clues, even  generate the excitement to keep the group going.

People still call into the Cold Case Unit every once and a while, especially following news coverage of the work, Wallis said. They might field 50 or more calls that lead nowhere, but there's always that chance for valuable information to come through.

"This is a long-term proposition," Wallis said. "It's not something that happens overnight."
Area 1 was founded by three former N.S.A. analysts, Mr. Darche, Oren Falkowitz and Phil Syme. The three sat side by side at Fort Meade, tracking and, in some cases, penetrating adversaries weapons systems for intelligence. A little over two years ago, they decided to start their own company and raised $25.5 million in funding from major venture capitalists and security entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, including Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers and Cowboy Ventures, and security veterans like Ray Rothrock, the chief executive of RedSeal, and Derek Smith, the chief executive of Shape Security.

What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? Whats their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source. Learn more about our process.

Area 1 is a new player in threat intelligence, a nascent subsector of the security business that includes companies like iSight Partners and Recorded Future that track attackers in underground web forums and on social media, gleaning intelligence about them.

Threat intelligence is still more art than science. The jury is still out on whether companies are equipped to use that intelligence to thwart hackers. Area 1 claims that it can head off attacks through the compromised servers it is tracking. It can also use its vantage point to see where attackers are setting up shop on the web and how they plan to target their intended victims.

A handful of Area 1 customers confirmed that its technology had helped head off attackers. One client, a chief information security officer at a large health care provider, said the health care sector had been slammed by digital criminals and governments in recent years. He asked that the company not be named, to avoid becoming a more visible target.

He credited Area 1s sensors with blocking several attacks on his network, helping his company avoid the fates of the health insurer Anthem, which was breached by Chinese hackers last year, and a growing number of hospitals hit by attacks that have forced them to pay a ransom to get important information back.

Mr. Smith, the chief executive of Shape Security, said Area 1 gave his company warning of three attacks before they happened, providing time to block them. Mr. Smith said he was impressed enough that he made a small investment in Area 1.

Many of these mom-and-pop shops are ambivalent because the attacks dont directly impact their business and revenue, he said. Meanwhile, they unwittingly operate this attack infrastructure.
For four years Ridgeline Heating and Cooling owners Mike and Ellenmarie Coates have been keeping the residents of Butte comfortable.

In 2012 the couple launched Ridgeline as a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning business, where they fabricated sheet metal for furnaces and provided air-conditioning and heating installation and repairs.

But now, the couple said, they've expanded their business with the addition of a retail location.

The new business opened May 23 at 1001 E. Front St., where the couple said they are selling wood-burning stoves, indoor and outdoor gas and wood fireplaces, wood-pellet barbeques, and central heating and air-conditioning units.

In the future, the Coates said, they hope to offer pizza ovens as well.

Mike Coates  who has worked in the heating and cooling industry for 28 years with various companies  said he decided to launch Ridgeline Heating and Cooling because he wanted to strike out on his own and spend more time working face-to-face with customers.

"I enjoyed helping people instead of (doing) commercial work," he said.

Mike added that he and his wife have wanted to open a retail location for years, but it wasn't until recently that 1001 E. Front St. became available  which he said seemed like an ideal spot.

Ellenmarie agreed.

"We thought this was a good location. A lot of traffic," said Ellenmarie.

As for Ellenmarie, she's a retired school teacher of 20 years, having taught at Butte Central Catholic High School for 10 years and spending the remainder of her career in a two-room rural schoolhouse in Wise River.

There, Ellenmarie said, she taught students in fifth through eighth grade  a job which, she said, kept her on her toes.

"You are constantly on," said Ellenmarie, recalling the two-room schoolhouse from which she retired to open the storefront. "You're teaching four of each subject for each grade."

Ellenmarie said for four years she worked both at the schoolhouse and at Ridgeline, adding that having two jobs was often taxing.

"I'd go home from teaching, and I'd sit for two or three hours trying to return phone calls," said Ellenmarie.

But once the opportunity to lease the Front Street property became available, she decided to devote herself entirely to the heating and cooling business  a decision which she said was difficult to make but made sense in the end.

Both Mike and Ellenmarie said that giving back to the community is an important aspect of their business.

Ellenmarie said Mike often donates his time to families who can't afford to repair their heating, something she said is especially important during the winter when temperatures get cold.

Mike recalled one particularly gratifying moment last year when the business donated a cost-efficient heater to a local woman who had lived without heat for four years.

"We gave her the heating system and everything for free," said Mike, describing how he installed the heater Christmas Eve.

"She cried, didn't she?" Ellenmarie said. "She was so happy  because she (was) running her house on just little tiny space heaters."

When asked about the difficulties of opening a small business, the couple said some challenges include spreading the word about the business and building a trusting relationship with new customers.

But the Coates said they're up for the challenge, adding that they've already built a loyal customer base, which they hope will continue to grow.

Linda Davis  who owns the Wise River Club, a small resort in Wise River, with her husband Tom Davis  is one such customer.

"He's been instrumental in keeping this facility in check," Davis said of Mike Coates.

Davis added that Mike installed all of the resort's heaters and often goes out of his ways to repair things if they break down.

"This is just the type of person he is," she said.
Theres lots of things that could become of an old, disused tire.

Some are ground up into asphalt pavement. Others wind up as fuel for noxious, near inextinguishable fires.

But few of those tires are likely to come from Helena's Eagle Tire, where Chupl owners Phil and Wendy Sebastian have spent a half-decade repurposing tire treads into soles of shoes sold to benefit Himalayan Hope Childrens Home.

Chupl, the Hindi word for a flip-flop sandal, is the brainchild of the Sebastians' son Tim, who now lives in India but grew up playing in the stacks of tires at Eagle.

According to his mom, he spent much of that time dreaming of possible reuses for old junk tires.

That started, she said, after a Kenyan man visited Tims fourth-grade classroom, telling him and his classmates about conditions in third-world countries, where he said flip flops were made from junk tires.

Wendy Sebastian said her sons passion for that idea rekindled in 2011, after hed already spent more than five years living among orphaned and abandoned Indian children.

Five years after that, Chupl has sold 500 pairs of flip flops for between $50 and $85 and around 100 pairs of regular leather and canvas shoes.

Sebastian said her son hopes to eventually build a shoe factory to employ people in the Indian village where he lives, part of the reason shes hoping to move a lot more shoes, and quick.

You should see my garage; I have boxes and boxes of them  1,600 pairs, she said. We cant make any more until we sell these, because we need the money from these to make more.

Weve primed the pump somewhat, but you have to get the sales before you can start producing again.

Tim Sebastian, writing on Chupls website, said he hoped the company could use junk tires to communicate that peoples lives should not be measured by their current situation but by the potential that can be realized when their lives have been repurposed, like the junk tire.

Chupls wares are now on sale at Fast Signs and Modi Amore in Helena.

For more information on the company, visit chupl.com.
Two major western Montana agricultural retailers have decided to merge into one business.

The producer boards of CHS Mountain West Co-op, based in Missoula, and CHS Kalispell have agreed that consolidating their operations would be in the best long-term interest of customers and their communities, according to Mountain West board chair Brien Weber of Corvallis.

Our combined size and scope will enhance our leverage with chemical manufacturers and strengthen our risk management of market positions, among other advantages, he said. Together, well be able to reach efficiencies for (customers) that we could not achieve individually.

Mountain West operates the Valley Grocery in Alberton, the Ranch and Home Store on Reserve Street in Missoula, and a 24-hour fuel pump and feed store in Drummond. CHS Kalispell operates a feed store, a country store, and a discount store in the Flathead Valley.

Pending the appropriate due diligence, the two business will begin operating as CHS Mountain West Co-op on Sept. 1 of this year. The boards have appointed Chuck Thompson as general manager and Mark Lalum as assistant general manager for the new business.

CHS Kalispell board chairman Doug Manning said customers should expect a smooth transition with little day-to-day change.

Both of our businesses are financially strong, and coming together will allow us to put the appropriate level of resources into programs and services that help our customers grow their operations, he said.

Both businesses serve farmers and ranchers in 10 counties in Montana from the Canadian border to Idaho. They are part of CHS Inc., a global agribusiness owned collectively by farmers, ranchers and cooperatives across the country. The company supplies energy, crop nutrients, animal feed, and food ingredients. It also operates petroleum refineries and pipelines and sells oil and gas products under the Cenex brand name. The company also provides services such as grain marketing and financial risk management.

Agriculture is the largest industry in Montana, generating more than $4 billion for all services and products every year.
Having operated in Montana for 35 years, its safe to say Northwest Parks and Equipment is an oldie but a goodie.

Herbie Hurd opened the business in 1981 in Columbia Falls, where the company sold heavy construction equipment and offered services for the forestry, mining, construction and manufacturing industries.

Today the company provides the same services and boasts two additional locations, one in Missoula and another in Butte.

Butte store manager Al Hess came on board three years ago, when the Utah Avenue location first opened.

Hess describes Northwest as an industrial parts supplier.

At the Butte store, he said, companies can purchase things like ground-engaging equipment and shovel teeth (which are often used in the mining industry); excavators; hydraulic houses; nylon and steel slings used for lifting heavy equipment; and an assortment of fittings, couplers and adapters among a variety of other products.

Recently, Hess added, the store became a Takeuchi dealer and now offers the companys branded excavators.

A native of Butte, Hess previously worked for Montana Resources for 14 years as a warehouse manager where, he said, he often did business with Northwest.

I bought a lot of product at that time from Northwest Parts, said Hess. So I was familiar with owners and the salesmen.

Hess said Montana Resources remains a Northwest customer today and often purchases shovel teeth, which are large metal teeth that can be affixed to buckets that shovel rock in the mines.

Each tooth weighs about 120 pounds, Hess said, and three scoops from the bucket can fill the bed of a 240-ton haul truck.

These slowly start to wear off, said Hess, explaining how the teeth eventually get worn down. (They) wear until they have to swap them out.

Hess  who also worked for Montana Silver Smiths and Town Pump in the past  said he decided to join Northwest when he was offered the managerial position by Philip Hurd, who co-owns the company with his brother Brian Hurd. (Today Herbie Hurd is the companys president.)

Hess said what he more enjoys about working at Northwest is that the job always seems to keep him on his toes.

Its a challenge every day, he said, explaining that the company has lots of moving parts and continually grows in terms of clients. Every day we have a new emergency thats come up for a new customer. Everybody has their priorities.

He added that the Butte location has grown from one to five employees, each of whom plays an important role and brings a unique skill set and knowledge base.

All in all, what Hess said makes the Butte location unique is the fact that the business serves the needs of a community the lacks big-box stores like Home Depot and Lowes.

Were one of the largest suppliers of industrial equipment in Butte, said Hess.
MISSOULA -- At the end of a four-day trial this week, a Butte man was found not guilty of raping a woman in Missoula in June 2015.

After closing arguments in his trial on Thursday, a Missoula County District Court jury found Nicholas James Dolson not guilty of felony sexual intercourse without consent, as well as a lower alternative charge of misdemeanor sexual assault.

In his original charging documents, prosecutors alleged that Dolson went to a Missoula motel to meet a woman who had made an ad on Craigslist seeking sex. After the pair engaged in consensual vaginal intercourse, Dolson inserted himself into her rectum.

The woman told police that she had told him to stop but that he didnt. Dolson said he stopped and left when the woman told him to.

The day after their encounter, Dolson sent the woman a text message that said he had planned to have sex with her twice in this way and then leave.

Dolson said he did send the text message, and has met other women and had anal sex with them after vaginal sex, but that he believed what had happened between him and the woman had been consensual. Dolson said during the incident, he had asked the woman if he could do anything else to her and that she had said she didnt care. During the trial, the woman stated there had been no discussion.

Dolson, 26, was arrested in early October in Butte after a warrant was issued for him out of Missoula. Although he said he had been interviewed by police in relation to the June incident, Dolson said he had no idea he was going to be arrested and charged when he walked into the probation and parole office, which he was visiting as part of a deferred sentence on a prior theft conviction.

While filling out paperwork in a holding cell at the Butte jail, Dolson stabbed himself in the neck with a pencil, and was found lying on the floor near a pool of blood.

Dolson said at the time of his arrest he had been going to school for mechanical engineering at Montana Tech and that he had a job as an aerospace welder.

I had a lot of good things going for me. When all of this went down, I knew I was going to lose a lot of that, he said. Im one of the last people that would want to or be able to rape someone. I take stuff like that really personally.

He said he also thinks the woman in his case had a motivation for accusing him of a crime because she hadnt been paid for their encounter as the two of them had discussed.

Dolson was released after the trial and said he intends to return to living in Butte. He had been in the Missoula County Detention Facility since he was transported there shortly after his arrest. He said he wants his case to serve as a reminder that people are innocent until proven guilty.

Just because somebody is charged with something doesn't always mean they are guilty, he said.
Caverns to focus on geology, birding

Montana State Parks will host the Geology of Butte and Birding Day Friday-Saturday, June 17-18, at Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park.

At 8 p.m. Friday, June 17, Kaleb Scarberry will discuss the rich granite deposit that provided the booming variety of minerals that put Butte on the map. The program will gather at the Campground Amphitheater.

From 8 a.m. to noon Saturday, June 18, assistant Park Manager Tom Forwood will lead birders. Participants will meet at the Main (lower) Visitor Center and hike along the banks Jefferson River and to the Cave Trail below the cliffs of Cave Mountain. Bring binoculars, a snack, water, good footwear and transportation (carpooling is encouraged). The hike will begin at the Parks Main (lower) Visitor Center.

Details: 406-287-3541.

Library hosts ice cream social

The Butte Silver Bow Public Library will have its kick-off for summer reading at 2 p.m. Thursday, June 16, with an ice cream social in the childrens department at 226 W. Broadway. Everyone is welcome. City bus rides are free. Details: Nancy, 406-723-3361.

Volunteers needed for Territorial Days

DEER LODGE -- Volunteers are needed for the annual Territorial Days July 17-18 in Deer Lodge. A volunteer meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 14, at the Pen Convention Center.
A gunman opened fire in a crowded gay dance club in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday morning, leaving at least 50 people dead and 53 injured in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. Authorities identified the attacker as Omar Mateen, of Port St. Lucie man who was killed by SWAT officers. The previous deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. was the 2007 attack at Virginia Tech, in which a student killed 32 people before killing himself.

Here's a look at some of the nation's deadliest rampages since 2012:

 Feb. 25, 2016: Cedric Ford, 38, killed three people and wounded 14 others lawnmower factory where he worked in the central Kansas community of Hesston. The local police chief killed him during a shootout with 200 to 300 workers still in the building, authorities said.

 Feb. 20, 2016: Jason Dalton, 45, is accused of randomly shooting and killing six people and severely wounding two others during a series of attacks over several hours in the Kalamazoo, Michigan, area. Authorities say he paused between shootings to make money as an Uber driver. He faces murder and attempted murder charges.

 Dec. 2, 2015: Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, opened fire at a social services center in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people and wounding more than 20. They fled the scene but died hours later in a shootout with police.

 Oct. 1, 2015: A shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, left 10 people dead and seven wounded. Shooter Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, exchanged gunfire with police, then killed himself.

 June 17, 2015: Dylann Roof, 21, shot and killed nine African-American church members during a Bible study group inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Police contend the attack was racially motivated. Roof faces nine counts of murder in state court and dozens of federal charges, including hate crimes.

 May 23, 2014: A community college student, Elliot Rodger, 22, killed six people and wounded 13 in shooting and stabbing attacks in the area near the University of California, Santa Barbara, campus. Authorities said he apparently shot himself to death after a gunbattle with deputies.

 Sept. 16, 2013: Aaron Alexis, a mentally disturbed civilian contractor, shot 12 people to death at the Washington Navy Yard before he was killed in a police shootout.

 July 26, 2013: Pedro Vargas, 42, went on a shooting rampage at his Hialeah, Florida, apartment building, gunning down six people before officers fatally shot him.

 Dec. 14, 2012: In Newtown, Connecticut, an armed 20-year-old man entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and used a semi-automatic rifle to kill 26 people, including 20 first graders and six adult school staff members. He then killed himself.

 Sept. 27, 2012: In Minnesota's deadliest workplace rampage, Andrew Engeldinger, who had just been fired, pulled a gun and fatally shot six people, including the company's founder. He also wounded two others at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis before taking his own life.

 Aug. 5, 2012: In Oak Creek, Wisconsin, 40-year-old gunman Wade Michael Page killed six worshippers at a Sikh Temple before killing himself.

 July 20, 2012: James Holmes, 27, fatally shot 12 people and injured 70 in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

 April 2, 2012: Seven people were killed and three were wounded when a 43-year-old former student opened fire at Oikos University in Oakland, California. One Goh was charged with seven counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, but psychiatric evaluations concluded he suffered from long-term paranoid schizophrenia and was unfit to stand trial.
The ink has run like a river torrent ever since the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Water Compact was introduced  and approved  in the previous legislative session.

Most of this ink has been spilled in service to explaining to Montana legislators, residents, farmers, ranchers and government officials the many various details of this complicated agreement. Thats only right, as clear understanding is essential to crafting good legislation.

However, a great deal has also been diverted to defending the compact from opponents who either dont understand the point of the agreement, or who seek to derail this critical resolution of historic water rights and turn it into a condemnation of state, tribal or federal authority  or all three.

On May 26, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester stepped out of the stream for a moment in order to introduce the compact legislation into the Senate. Such was largely expected of the Montana senator who has repeatedly introduced water compacts for the Blackfeet, and Gros Ventre and Assiniboine tribes; he also sponsored the Crow water compact, which languished in Congress for more than a decade before finally being ratified in 2010. Tester deserves applause for being a steadfast supporter of these duly negotiated agreements, and for taking on yet another monumental piece of legislation.

Thats no exaggeration. The 1,400-page CSKT Water Compact, decades in the making, will cost some $2.3 billion. Although the vast majority of this will be spent on critical water infrastructure, the sheer amount is still a large lump for Congress to swallow. Compounding this is the fact that our countrys Congress is not known for acting with speed even when confronted with the simplest of commonsense bills. A highly detailed bill that affects such a small portion of the nations population is likely to fall ill with that most deadly of congressional diseases: indifference.

Thats why it is even more important that all three of Montanas congressional delegates, who have expressed various degrees of support for the compact in the past, work together to keep this compact alive and to push for its successful passage  as well as Montanas other outstanding water compacts. It is past time to wrap up the last of Montanas seven tribal water compacts, and provide water rights holders throughout the state with the assurance they deserve that their rights will not be disputed as water becomes ever more valuable.

***

The entire purpose of the compact is to provide that assurance by finally settling historic water rights on and off the Flathead Reservation. It also resolves the tribes water claims with both the state and with the federal government, avoiding immeasurable litigation costs.

The compact will allow drinking water and wastewater systems in the region to receive necessary upgrades, as well as irrigation and water infrastructure though the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project. It also establishes funds for the expansion of agriculture development, from livestock barriers to noxious weed control.

CSKT Tribal Chairman Vernon Finley says the infrastructure and restoration projects will combine to create over 6,330 jobs and an economic impact of $52.9 million per yearproviding a major boost to the economy while enhancing the regions landscape and ecosystem.

Further, Finley says, This legislation also helps remedy some of the devastating impacts to our culture and children caused by failed federal policies relating to the water resources of the Tribes by supporting our cultural and educational programs.

According to a description from Testers office, the compact will also:

 Establish the right for CSKT to develop and market any hydroelectric power generation projects within the Flathead Reservation

 Quantify CSKTs allocation of water rights and usage for the Hungry Horse Reservoir

 Protect the water rights and allocation for existing on-reservation irrigation users

 Provide for water leasing allocations off of the Flathead Reservation

 Protect fishing habitats by establishing CSKT and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks as co-owners for existing off-reservation basins

 Establish the Unitary Administration and Management Ordinance and Water Management Board to administer water rights on the Flathead Reservation

For these reasons and others, the compact has earned strong bipartisan support throughout Montana. Sen. Chas Vincent, a Libby Republican, introduced the bill into the 2015 Legislature and deserves the credit for educating legislators on the particulars of Senate Bill 262.

***

The compact has bipartisan support outside the legislature as well, from the Montana Farmers Union and Montana Stockgrowers Association, local elected officials, tribal officials and conservation groups. Montana's Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock supports the compact, as does Montana's Republican Attorney General Tim Fox.

Now, Montanas bipartisan congressional delegation must guide it through Congress.

Unfortunately, Congress has done a poor job of ratifying Montanas previous tribal compacts. The first to test Congress, the compact for the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation, was passed by the Montana Legislature in 1985 and never ratified by Congress. It was allowed to take effect only because it was not attached to federal funding.

Congress has taken no action on the compact for Fort Belknap. The Blackfeet Water Compact sponsored by Tester was approved by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and will hopefully receive a floor vote some time before the next decade. Meanwhile, the House Natural Resource Committee, of which U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke is a member, has gone so far as to hold a hearing on the Blackfeet compact.

Technically, if a compact is not ratified within four years of the governors signing, it may be withdrawn. That may be exactly what opponents of the CSKT Water Compact hoping for.

Zinke, Tester and U.S. Sen. Steve Daines must not allow the passage of time and the leaky dam of Congress to endanger the hard work, countless hours and expert involvement that went into this water compact. Ultimately, its really not that complicated.

-- The Missoulian
Approximately 50 forensic patients have been moved to a new, partially remodeled facility at Galen. Although the method for doing this may be in question, the end result is that there is less crowding at the State Hospital.

There may also more beds available at the State Hospital to offer psychiatric stabilization for individuals in our communities. There is monumental shortage of acute crisis beds in our nation, state and communities.

Every week we have families in crisis call us asking how they can get their family members the treatment they deserve. Maybe if our family members would receive timely, appropriate treatment they would not become involved in the criminal justice system. We must remember that probably all of the residents in the Forensic Facility have committed a felony. We can also hope that while incarcerated they will receive the necessary and appropriate treatment to recover a life.
Born in 1950, I am no stranger to the Womens Movement. Thus, I have been surprised and disappointed witnessing, what I feel is reverse sexism, in voting for a woman because of her gender. The candidates willingness to pull the gender card has both saddened and disgusted me, in what feels like manipulation from our former first lady, which is a large part of how she got to where she is today.

In this particular case, it is certainly the male Democratic candidate who embodies everything that I identify as feminism  inclusiveness, willingness to communicate, appealing to folks to participate so that his message is actually about us not him, and selflessly serving for over 30 years. With little financial or personal gain, he has continued to carry on because of his steadfast dedication and commitment to integrity, justice and equality.

It is the media who is fabricating a president for us and a false narrative. If the real story were available to our masses, perhaps many more would see the opportunity for the United States of America to make a giant a leap into becoming a beacon as a truly progressive, just and compassionate country.

-- Margaret Beeson, Billings
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Friends of the Old Barn opened the Old Barns doors to the public on Saturday.

The theme was by local goat producer Steve Ausmus, who presented a dairy goat theme.

The items Ausmus brought pertained to goat products such as a display of goat dairy products, a life-size fiberglass goat, a petting zoo and a wooden goat that could be milked.

Ausmus also brought bunnies, chickens, baby chicks and a young calf for onlookers to look at or pet.

The barn also featured a James Weed display that held various information about James Weeds life.

Steve Nienhaus visited the Old Barn with his son Keaton and his daughter Kealy and said they found the barn while they were out looking at garage sales.

We saw the big sign and decided to come and look, Nienhaus said.

Friend of the Old Barn member Paul Carroll was in attendance and talked about how the Friends of the Old Barn came to own the barn.

It was in disuse for about 20 years or so, Carroll said. They found a homeless guy in here and they wanted to tear it down. It would have been a huge shame to lose a historic landmark such as this so the Board of Supervisors drafted a plan to keep the barn and maintain it.
Les blattes ou cafards (Blatta orientalis) sont des insectes qui appartiennent a la famille des Blattoptera. Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes []
The City Press reported that Eskom has quietly awarded a R564 million contract to Optimum Coal, which is owned by President Jacob Zumas son Duduzane Zuma and the Gupta family.

In April this year Tegeta Exploration and Resources, a subsidiary of unlisted Oakbay Investments, completed the R2.1 billion acquisition of Optimum Coal.

According to the newspaper Tegeta is owned by Oakbay Investments (29%), Duduzane Zuma (28.5%), and three other investors.

Before the lucrative Eskom contract, Optimum Coal was a struggling mine losing millions each month.

In March, the business rescue practitioners of Optimum Coal reported that the mine was projected to lose R100 million a month, The City Press said.

However, after the lucrative Eskom deal, the mine is likely to be taken out of business rescue within the next three months.

Eskom defends the contract

Eskom board chairman Ben Ngubane says that Tegeta Exploration and Resources has saved the power utility billions of rand.

In a statement released on Saturday (11 June 2016), Ngubane rejected media speculation of favouritism towards the Gupta family who have faced criticism for alleged state capture, which they have denied.

Eskom rejects any insinuation of favouritism towards suppliers such as Tegeta who are willing to step in to avert the coal supply crisis and allow Eskom to meet the winter demand, Ngubane said.

Eskom stands firm by its process undertaken to conclude extensions of its coal supply agreements with its suppliers. I am satisfied that due process has been followed and we can be proud of the savings achieved by the executive team to date, he said.

The senior executive said that Eskom regularly engages all its coal suppliers on the required volumes and qualities as the demand varies from time to time and contracting relationships are concluded on sound commercial principles and considerations.

He stressed that Tegeta supplies less than 5% of the coal volume required by Eskom.

The coal supply market is in need of major transformation as it has and continues to benefit a small monopoly of companies. This phenomenon is now under review as requested by the Minister of Public Enterprises in her recent budget speech and Eskom is determined to ensure that emerging black miners also benefit from Eskoms buying power, Ngubane said.

He noted that Eskoms supply mix changed in April 2016 leaving the company with a deficit of 2.1 million tonnes which was required to meet the winter supply plan.

Eskom approached its existing suppliers to source additional supply to mitigate this shortfall.

It must be noted that the Exxaro Arnot Colliery had a contract with Eskom to supply coal to Arnot Power Station for 40 years. This contract expired in December 2015. The cost of coal at date of expiry was R1,132/ton.

I am advised that Tegeta now supplies Arnot at an average price of R500/ton. The unit cost of coal supplied under this contract is at a discounted rate of 3%, resulting in a further saving to Eskom of billions of rand in an eight month period and ultimately, the consumer, Ngubane said.

Eskom said that Tegeta was one of the suppliers able to meet its need for the additional coal supply at the required coal quality.

You will recall that this company also stepped in to avert a crisis at the Hendrina Power Station by offering to take the Optimum Coal Mine out of business rescue from Glencore thereby saving thousands of jobs and continuing the supply to Eskom, Ngubane said.

The boards position can be summarised as follows:

It is concerned at the recent media speculation and sensationalism.

It must be noted that Eskom was paying R1132/ton to Exxaro and this was on a cost plus basis.

Tegeta supplies Arnot at an average price of R500/ton, leading to savings of over a billion rand in 8 months.

Tegeta is a 51% black owned emerging miner which meets Eskoms requirements.

Eskom has no issue doing business with the company based on sound commercial considerations and is not driven by unsubstantiated media issues.

Tegeta stepped in to avert a crisis at Hendrina Power Station by saving jobs and continues to supply Eskom at the original contracted price.

All due process has been followed and Eskom is proud of the savings achieved by its executives.

Prepayment is a common practice in coal purchasing and Eskom has used this mechanism previously. In fact, the cost plus mines have been the recipients of an average amount of R38 billion to date this year to companies such as Anglo American, BHP Billiton and Exxarro.

Eskom firmly rejects the suggestion that Tegeta is favoured or that due process was not followed.

More on Eskom

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The group executive chairman of MTN, Phuthuma Nhleko, has told the Business Times that he is not considering returning as CEO of the operator.

This comes after he stepped in to deal with a record fine that the Nigerian Communications Commission penalised MTN Nigeria with, for failing to disconnect 5.2 million unregistered SIMs on its network.

Following a months-long dispute, the fine was reduced from 1.04 trillion naira (R79 billion) to 330 billion (R25 billion).

Nhleko said that dealing with the fine was one of three commitments he made to the MTN board when he took the reins as acting group CEO.

The second was to bring stability to MTN Nigeria, which Nhleko said he did by replacing its leadership.

Nhlekos final task was to find a replacement CEO, which he said is a work-in-progress.

MTN said at its annual general meeting that it will announce a new CEO this month, and that Nhleko will step down at the end of June at the latest.

With all three tasks achieved, Nhleko said has complied with what his original agreement with the board was.

The full report is available in the Sunday Times (12 June 2016).

More on MTN

MTN to pay R25-billion fine

Two graphs that scare Vodacom and MTN

MTN online bill platform back up after data leak

MTN will have a new CEO by the end of June
Napa County is proposing a $449 million budget at the same time that the grand jury has released a report titled Is Napa County Financially Healthy?

All of that puts the 2016-17 county budget in the spotlight. The county is planning how it will spend taxpayers money and the grand jury is being a financial watchdog.

The grand jury found that Napa County is indeed financially healthy, though it also makes recommendations it thinks would lead to even better budgets.

County supervisors will start hearings for the 2016-17 budget at 9 a.m. Monday in the county administration building, 1195 Third St. They will continue hearings on Tuesday and June 21.

The county spends money on such things as health and social services, libraries, the criminal justice system, rural roads and rural planning. It has about 1,500 employees.

Napa Countys proposed $449 million budget is short on major, new spending initiatives. County officials expect increases in property, sales and hotel transient occupancy taxes, but also sounded a note of caution.

Based on recent economic information, it appears the economy may be softening somewhat, County Executive Officer Nancy Watt wrote to the board.

That proposed $449 million budget compares to a $493 million budget for 2015-16. But comparisons are difficult in part because the county has changed how it budgets for multiyear capital projects.

Salaries and benefits are expected to increase by 5 percent, or $9.1 million, to about $190 million. Of the total, $6.2 million comes from negotiated cost-of-living increases and raises and $2 million from increased retirement costs.

Much of the money the county receives must be spent on certain programs. Supervisors have the most flexibility with the general fund.

The county is expecting $186 million in general fund revenues and $197 million in general fund expenses. The budget remains in the black because the county expects to start the fiscal year on July 1 with $64 million already on hand, including reserve savings.

How everything will turn out when the county closes the books on 2016-17 a year from now is another question. The grand jury found that the county budgets conservatively.

Tax revenue is routinely underestimated and general fund expenses are routinely overestimated, the grand jury report said.

Building a new $103 million jail on county land along Highway 221 remains one of the countys highest priorities, the proposed budget said. The county has $35 million available for the jail and has applied to the state for $20 million.

Any remaining funds needed will likely have to come from an outside source, such as revenue from a new sales tax, Watt wrote.

But the countys Measure Y quarter-cent sales tax failed to pass on June 7. The county planned to use revenues for the new jail. County officials said supervisors will likely talk during budget hearings about alternative plans.

Paying pension and other post-employment costs remains an issue, as it does for most California communities. The California Public Employees Retirement System manages pension and health benefit plans for more than 3,000 employers across the state, including Napa County.

Factors such as underperforming investments and longer retiree lifespans have led to CalPERS unfunded liabilities in recent years of more than $87 billion. Long-term liability is the difference between a pension plans projected assets and its expected long-term obligations for current and future retirees.

The grand jury report said Napa County has a $155 million long-term pension unfunded liability and a $43 million obligation for other post-employment benefits.

Napa County has made appropriate annual payments to CalPERS, the grand jury found. It recommended the Board of Supervisors go further and use fund balances each year to further pay down unfunded liabilities using an irrevocable trust.

CalPERS estimates that for every $1 million in excess payments, the county could reduce obligations by $5 million over 25 years, the grand jury wrote.

The county doesnt follow this advice in the latest proposed budget and doesnt plan to do so in future budgets. A Board of Supervisors-approved response to the grand jury explains why.

Any available fund balance each year goes first to county reserve savings, the response said. Once reserves are fully funded, additional money goes to capital projects, such as setting aside money for a new jail.

When and if its capital needs are met, the county might accelerate paying down its CalPERS liability, the response said.

The countys $43 million obligation for its other post-employment benefits is managed through a trust within CalPERS and is amortized over 20 years, the letter said. Fourteen years remain to reach funded status. The proposed budget includes an $8.6 million payment.

CalPERS costs are expected to grow in coming years. Napa County will see less effect on its budget than many neighboring counties and cities because the county shares rate changes with its employees on a 50-50 basis, the proposed budget said.
The Earth drum was throbbing as nearly 50 people walked into the Oxbow Commons carrying signs and a bucket of blessed water on Saturday. It was the final day of Healing Walk Napa Valley, a peaceful pilgrimage that stretched from Calistoga to Napa over the course of three Saturdays.

Its about love and connection, said Julia Winiarski with Healing Walk Napa Valley. Winiarski said that the idea of the walk was inspired by the Refinery Corridor Healing Walks led by Native American elders that have been happening in the Bay Area. We were just so impressed by the spirit of these walks and the intention and the power of really slowing down and seeing our impact on the environment and how the environment responds to us.

Something like this needed to be done in Napa, she said. Just because Napa looks very beautiful and nice, it doesnt mean there arent problems, she said. Weve got deforestation, weve got problems in the Napa River were going to be dealing with drought issues going forward due to climate change.

Although the walk did get the attention of cars and people passing by and people carried signs saying Let the forests live! and No pesticide drift, the walk was meant to be more spiritual than political, she said.

Leading the walk was a water bucket filled with water from all around Napas watershed. It was blessed and carried with gratitude and prayers,  she said. The water led the walk because its what life depends on. Following the walk, the blessed water was returned to the river.

At the Oxbow Commons, Calpulli Nanahuatzin, an Aztec dance group, performed a dance dedicated to the water as well as a friendship dance, in which everyone could partake. Nearly 50 people joined hands and danced in circles as the drums thumped on and chanting could be heard in the background.

It was a special day, especially with the Earth drum out, according to Charlie Toledo of the Suscol Intertribal Council. Toledo explained that the drum, which symbolizes the Earth, is brought out only for special occasions. It was brought out following the walk as a way to apologize to the Earth, she said, for the trees that were torn down to make the Oxbow Commons.

Without trees, we cant live, she said, adding that it isnt just about saving the Earth, its also about saving ourselves.

This was the first Healing Walk Napa Valley, but organizers hope to make it an annual event. Winiarski said that they also hope to do something with southern Napa Valley in August in order to include American Canyon, and even Vallejo, in the healing.

Were working to get the Earth in balance, Toledo said.
Editors note: This is the second of two articles marking the anniversary of the start of the Korean War.

U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson telephoned President Harry S. Truman, who was at his home in Independence, Missouri, to inform him that North Korea had attacked South Korea on Sunday, June 25, 1950, Korean time. Acheson advised Truman not to immediately fly back to Washington, D.C., until the next day, so as to appear to take in stride the Korean crisis to therefore reassure the American people.

Upon flying to Washington the next day, Truman found that Acheson had already drafted a resolution to the United Nations requesting an armed member response to North Koreas unprovoked military aggression against South Korea. Channeling through the U.N., key United States military aid to beleaguered South Korea would effectively bypass Congressional debate for a declaration of war upon North Korea.

Propitiously, Russia had been boycotting the U.N. Security Council since Jan. 13, 1950. The USSRs U.N. ambassador, Yakov Malik, protested Communist China should have Nationalist Chinas seat on the permanent five-member committee for world security under the United Nations; hence, his absence at the onset of Korean conflict. Politically laboring under criticism by the Republican China Lobby for the Loss of China in October 1949, Truman needed credibility in Korea in June 1950.

South Korea is the Greece of the Far East, declared Truman to an aide, as all of his former apathetic fatalism to react in a sudden crisis with the use of force now disappeared. (In March 1947, Trumans aid bill to Greece and Turkey had de facto become the Truman Doctrine to contain Communism without a Third World War.)

Warren Austin, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. presented a proposed resolution for a Security Council vote, which called for U.N. members to furnish such assistance to the Republic of Korea as may be necessary to repel the armed attack and to restore international peace and security in the area.

By midnight, June 27, 1950, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), absent Russia, mustered the required seven-vote minimum needed to send members ground troops to save stricken South Korea. Voting yes were permanent council members, the United States, Britain, France, Nationalist China; and also, UNSC rotating members, (then non-Communist) Cuba, Ecuador, and Norway. Both pacifist Egypt and India abstained while Titos Yugoslavia voted no. Thus, seven yes votes were obtained for the U.N.s as well as Americas first hot war within the larger Cold War, five years after World War II.

Cold Warrior and charter member Wise Man Dean Achesons crafted resolution submitted by Austin and voted for by the U.N., aimed to put teeth into its own forthcoming armed action by implementing combined member forces to make North Koreas invading army retreat above the 38th parallel.

Spearheaded by the United States, which would provide one-half of the troops and 90 percent of the logistics and materiel, as well as air and sea power, 14 other U.N.- member nations responded.

To assuage a circumvented Congress, which was on recess during July 4-18, 1950, an explanatory precis as suggested by the wily Secretary Acheson, would explain to it Trumans unilateral action when it reconvened. Instead however, on July 19, 1950, Congress was formally requested by the Truman-Acheson executive for a quadrupling of the U.S. military budget based on National Security Councils NSC-68, a Cold War study that promoted wartime industrial and manpower buildup during peacetime. Influenced by a fawning Achesons strong, persistent advice, Truman stated, The attack upon South Korea makes it plain Communism has passed beyond subversion to conquer independent nations and will use armed invasion and war.

Meanwhile, rabid Asia-first promoter General Douglas MacArthur had visited Korea coincidentally in time to observe the fall of Seoul on June 28, 1950, local time, to advancing North Korean forces. MacArthur advised Truman, No doubt the Republic of Korea needed [U.S.] help at once if it was not to be overrun. To move swiftly, effectively, and legally, Truman stated, The U.S. was working entirely within the United Nations to suppress a bandit raid [by ravaging] pagan wolves.

Republican leader Robert Taft acknowledged to President Truman that the protocol of formal Congressional approval to militarily intervene in Korea merely would be pro forma. Likening North Koreas attack as a burglary, in which the city council (i.e. Congress) did not need to be notified first in order to send in the police department (i.e., the U.S. armed forces), Taft clearly indicated Truman had the unwavering support of Congress and the American people.

This open support was based on the implicit assumption that Truman would rapidly within only weeks or a few months, neatly wrap up in a package the Korean Conflict. Therefore, any irreconcilables left in Congress could not refute his quick succor of South Korea.

On 11 a.m., on June 30, 1950 Eastern Time, President Truman met informally with a 15-member delegation from Congress at the White House. He stated that U.S. ground forces from nearby Japan would be sent to South Korea to evacuate American advisory personnel and their dependents. Fearing a security leak, Truman did not at the time let it be known that as commander-in-chief, he had ordered two U.S. Army infantry divisions totaling 34,000 men to South Korea to engage the North Koreans.

Publicly, Truman was cautious not to refer to the Korean Conflict as a war, since there was no war declaration by the Congress. Inadvertently coming to his rescue was California Republican Senator William Knowland, who on the Senate floor June 28, 1950, proclaimed that Americas impending use of force to stop Communism in Korea was just a police action. Picked up by a news reporter, who broached Knowlands phrase to Truman at a press conference next day, June 29, the president delightedly responded, that is exactly what it is, inferring the use of drafted U.S. troops in an undeclared foreign war. Truman gladly allowed himself to be quoted.

Officially born was the Orwellian phrase, police action, a label for all of the still-continuing overseas U.S. Presidential Wars, for which the Korean War was the paradigm. (Coincidentally, novelist George Orwells 1984 published in 1949, the year before the Korean War began, presciently postulated a manipulative form of government-speak language employed to pacify the docile multitudes at home.)

A casualty of undeclared U.S. armed intervention in Korea-feverishly decided upon during the heady days of late June to early July 1950, was the checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches-a democratic hallmark of the early American republic. The predominance of a military-industrial complex had begun.

Truman forsook his own Utopian ideal of domestic prosperity to fight Kim Il Sungs counter-Utopian scheme to forcibly reunite divided Korea, and indirectly thus in the process, further extend comrade Chairman Maos revolutionary Communist thunder out of China from the year before.
Looks like Little Big Town is taking a page from the Taylor Swift book of concert special guests, inviting pop dynamo Tori Kelly to join them on stage during Thursday nights show at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. For those not familiar with Kelly, shes easily one of pop musics most talented and exciting young stars, so her voice supported by LBTs harmonies is aural excellence at its finest.

The foursome join Kelly on her song Shouldve Been Us and its everything we never knew we always wanted. Plus Kelly standing next to Kimberly Schlapman is giving us some MAJOR hair goals.

Watch Tori Kelly + LBT breathe new life into Shouldve Been Us here!
As promised, Florida police have now revealed the identity of the man they say is responsible for shooting and killing 22-year-old former Voice contestant Christina Grimmie.

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This afternoon, the Orlando Police Department revealed the identity and photo of St. Petersburg, Florida resident Kevin James Loibl, 27, who they say is the lone gunman responsible for shooting and killing Christina Grimmie as she signed autographs in Orlando last night.

OPD can confirm 27 year old Kevin James Loibl, suspect who shot Christina Grimmie, is from St Petersburg, FL pic.twitter.com/iN6RUi3VRx  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 11, 2016

In response to the incident, The Plaza Live, where the shooting took place, revealed in a press release today that effective immediately they are suspending all events until further notice.

Here is a statement I just received from The Plaza Live on the Christina Grimmie shooting. #fox35 pic.twitter.com/S4NCBHEDcm  Gina Benitez (@FOX35Gina) June 11, 2016



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Yep, something tells me the venue is going to getting up close and personal with their insurance company and working feverishly to get a few metal detectors installed over the next few days.

As reported earlier, Christina, a third place finisher on season 6 of The Voice, was signing autographs after performing at The Plaza Live in Orlando on Friday when Loibl opened fire. He was then tackled by Christinas brother Mark before turning the gun on himself. Loibl died at the scene. Christina was taken to the hospital where she died early Saturday morning. Police held a press conference today stating that the shooter had two guns, two full magazines, and a large knife on him when he died. They also said there was no evidence that Loibl had any previous contact with Grimmie and that he went to the venue with the intention of killing her. They also revealed that, while the venue did employ security to check bags, they had no metal detectors in place.

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Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey appeared on FOX & Friends to explain why he published a video which calls on armed citizens to be ready to stop terrorists themselves after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, Califorinia.

If youre a person who is legally licensed to carry a firearm, now is the time more than ever to realize that you, and you alone, may very well be the first line of defense for you, your family, and others around you in a terrorist or active shooter-based scenario, Ivey said in the video.





During the Tuesday morning segment, Ivey responded to Former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kellys statement that police officers are much better trained and that someone who is not well-trained with a gun could compound that mayhem.





I have absolute faith in our citizens to help us protect our community, said Ivey. We have incredible former military, veterans, former law enforcement officers, across-the-board, that are capable of helping us, and more importantly, protecting themselves.





Brevard County, which is also known as Floridas Space Coast, has a large military veteran population because the county includes Kennedy Space Center, Patrick Air Force Base, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, a U.S. Navy Submarine Facility, and several private space and defense contractors which tend to employ former military personnel.





Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

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Even as passengers looked forward to the government implementing its new proposals to regulate cancellation, refund and baggage norms of domestic airlines, aviation industry experts warned that potentially this can even push up fares and that pricing policies must not be micro-managed. Industry observers whom IANS spoke to said the new proposals tend to tweak the free-market pricing mechanism which could lead to negative consequences for the sector -- as will be the case once Saturday's proposals unveiled by the government come into force to rein in indiscriminate practices of some domestic passenger carriers. "The government should refrain from getting into micro-management issues like free baggage allowance, baggage-fee per kilo. It is best left to market forces," said Amber Dubey, partner and India head of aerospace and defence at global consultancy KPMG. "Airlines that over-charge or inconvenience passengers will anyway get punished through word of mouth and social media. The government should consider stepping in only in extreme cases -- but this definitely appears to be an overkill," Dubey told IANS. On ticket cancellation fee, for which the new proposal is that airlines would return all taxes and not charge a rupee more than the basic fare, Dubey said: "A fee of Rs 1,000 or the base fare, whichever is lower, appears reasonable and can be revised from time to time." Passengers had some reasons to cheer as they were piqued by the policies followed by some airlines. "To pay a re-scheduling charge of Rs 2,000 on a Rs 4,500 ticket is ridiculous. I hope the new measures take note of this aspect as well. Plus, Rs 300 or more for a kilo of excess baggage is also very high. A cap of Rs 100 sounds reasonable," said G. Natarajan, a resident of Madurai. On Saturday, Civil Aviation Minister P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju unveiled the new proposals and said they will be on the website of his ministry for 15 days to get the opinion of the stakeholders. Following that, these will be implemented as soon as possible. The highlights of the proposals include refund of all taxes, levies and user and airport development fees in case of no-shows and cancellations, maximum of Rs 100 per kg for excess baggage of up to five kg beyond the 15-kg limit, and sharp enhancement of compensation in the case of denial or boarding due to over-booking. "Under no circumstances cancellation fee shall be more than the basic fair," Raju said, adding the onus of refund must be with the airline, even if the ticket is booked through agents or travel portals. This also ought to be done within 15 working days in case of domestic travel and 30 working days in case of international travel. "It shall also be the prerogative of a passenger to decide whether to get cash refund or hold the amount in credit." For denial of boarding, no compensation is proposed if alternate flight is arranged within an hour. But it can go up to 400 per cent of booked basic fare plus airline fuel charge, subject to a maximum of Rs 20,000, if an alternative flight is arranged beyond 24 hours. Same applies if the passenger declines an alternative flight, the minister said. What is the quantum of such occurrences? Data for April this year with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, the industry watchdog, suggests 1,149 people were denied boarding on domestic flights, with a compensation of Rs 40.74 lakh. There were 5,025 people who cancelled their tickets with a refund of Rs 25.10 lakh and 40,659 who were affected by delays and were compensated with Rs 67.4 lakh. Amrit Pandurangi, Senior Director of Deloitte in India, also felt the government should allow the market forces to decide on the pricing mechanism of an extremely competitive industry like the airlines sector. "It's not a good idea for the government to get into the pricing mechanism of an industry which is already very competitive," Pandurangi told IANS. "Rather, the government must try to get the cancellation fees of airlines widely published so that passengers can make an informed choice." Sharat Dhall, President of Yatra.com, warned that the proposals might lead to an increase in air ticket prices. "These are positive proposals, but they are expected to impact very few passengers. They might also lead to the overall ticket prices increasing, as airlines will seek to compensate this loss of revenue by passing it on," Dhall said. The new proposals, he said, could also retard growth. "Though the steps are well meaning, the government should rather focus on long term objectives -- like development of infrastructure and regional connectivity -- to give a boost to passenger traffic and expand the market which is still hugely under-penetrated." But Rajiv Chib, Director (Aerospace and Defence) of PwC, told IANS: "What has been suggested is reasonable and in line with global best practices. These measures fall less in the domain of regulating fares and more in the domain of improving customer services." (Rohit Vaid can be reached at rohit.v@ians.in) --IANS rv-ap/kb/vt ( 852 Words) 2016-06-12-12:44:03 (IANS)
British actor and TV presenter James Corden has revealed he underwent three months of therapy to help control his partying habit. The 37-year-old star has revealed he sought out professional help in order to get his partying lifestyle under control, reports femalefirst.co.uk. "I did a bit of therapy. Three months. I still did go out sometimes, I wasn't a monk! It wasn't even about women, it was just going out and being around attention which I don't think is necessarily good for you," Corden told American radio host Howard Stern. "I had been going out a lot. The truth is, I had to learn how to stay in on my own. Because I was only really going out to not be on my own and then what you realise is, until I just get used to coming in, shutting the door, silence, what should I have for dinner?" he added. --IANS ank/nn/ ( 162 Words) 2016-06-13-02:48:03 (IANS)
The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant Site Director Ramayahi Shanmugam Sundar has been awarded Russia's top honour the Order of Friendship. At a special ceremony held in the Embassy of Russia here, Russian Ambassador Alexander M Kadakin presented the prestigious award to Mr Sundar. Kiren Rijiju, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, was also present at the occasion.According to the text of the decree, signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Mr Sundar was awarded "for major contribution to the implementation of the NPP Kudankulam project"."The construction process of new blocks at the Kudankulam site is progressing in accordance with the perspective plan of Russian-Indian cooperation in the field of nuclear energy. Unit 2 of the KNPP is ready to produce electricity and will be connected to the national grid in a few days," the Russian Ambassador said. Speaking at the ceremony, Mr Sundar expressed his gratitude for the recognition of the labour of all Indian workers and specialists engaged in the implementation of the project.The Kudankulam NPP is being built with Russian technical assistance under the inter-governmental agreement signed in 1988. In 2014, Russia and India signed a general framework agreement for construction of the second stage, including the third and fourth blocks.The Order of Friendship was established in 1994 to reward Russian and foreign citizens for special merit in promoting peace, friendship, cooperation and understanding between nations.UNI MK PY SW 2046 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-781397.Xml
President Pranab Mukherjee is today leaving on a tour of three African nations which is aimed at further extending and deepening the outreach to the countries of the continent which is important for India both politically and economically. During the President's visit several agreements and MoUs relating to defence, developmental and economic cooperationand people-to-people contact were expected to be signed. The Presidential visit of Africa is part of the high-level engagements planned by the Government to shore up its relations with states of the continent, where the Chinesefoot print is already very much marked, and it comes close on the heels of Vice-President Hamid Ansari's visit to Morocco and Tunisia. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also expected to travel to Africa this year India last year held the third India-Africa Summit, which was incidentally initiated by the President when in 2008, he held charge of External Affairs. This is the President's first visit to Ghana and Cote D'Ivore and second to Namibia, but as President he is visiting Namibia also for the first time. ''The visit, apart from consolidating bilateral interaction, will carry forward the momentum generated in India-Africa ties post - IAFS-III,'' the Ministry of External Affairs said here today. The President's first destination will be Ghana where he is going at the invitation of his counterpart of the country John Dramani Mahama. Mr Mukherjee will have one-to-one meeting with Mr Mahama followed by delegation-level talks. A number of agreements were expected to be signed, including setting up of a Joint Commission between India and Ghana and renewal of Cultural Exchange programme. The two countries have seen steady growth in bilateral trade and investments. India's cumulative investments in Ghana till date have exceeded 1 billion dollars and bilateral trade crossed 3 billion dollar mark in 2015-16. NRIs, professionals have invested in IT, Pharmaceuticals and other areas. The bilateral trade has gone up nearly 3 times. Ghana's main trade consists of gold imports, it's nearly 80 per cent of total trade. Ghanaian gold is in great demand in India. India's exports to Ghana are close to around 700 million dollars on an average and consists of a range of products like pharma, plastics, steel products, textiles and to most of the African countries besides cereals including wheat and rice. On arrival in Ghana's capital Accra, the President will be received by Vice-President Amissah-Arthur. Besides talks with the President, Mr Mukherjee would be delivering an address at the Joint Business Forum and at the University of Ghana, and interacting with the Indian community at a reception organised in his honour by the Indian High Commission. During the visit, the President will unveil a statue of Mahatma Gandhi gifted by the Indian Council of Cultural Relations and also plant a sapling at the Flag Staff House (Ghanaian Presidential Complex), an iconic building built with the Indian assistance through a Line of credit. He will also pay floral tributes to Ghana's first President Kwame Nkrumah at his mausoleum in Accra. Besides, the President will visit the India-Ghana Kofi Annan Centre of ICT Excellence in Accra, set up with modest Indian assistance of 2.86 million dollars An interaction with the India community is also included in his programme. A State Banquet will be held in the President's honour and accompanying delegation by his Ghanian counterpart. In Ghana, there is a very prosperous Indian community, or Indian origin community actually, roughly around 10,000 of which 7000 have Indian passports. The President will depart for Cote d'Ivoire on June 14 on the second leg of his visit.More UNI NAZ AKC0815 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-781338.Xml
Two Pak smugglers were killed and another injured in an encounter with border security force at Somana outpost of Abohar sector early this morning. According to BSF officials, some Pak smugglers were trying to cross into the Indian territory. On challenge they opened the fire on BSF personnel. In the retaliate, two Pak smugglers were killed on the spot while another was injured. During the search of the area the personnel have recovered 15 packets of heroin (approximately 15 kg) worth Rs 75 crores and arms. Details are awaited. XC RT JW0840 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0150-781622.Xml
President Pranab Mukherjee today left on a tour of three African nations which is aimed at further extending and deepening the outreach to the countries of the continent which is important for India both politically and economically. Minister of State in the PMO Jitendra Singh, who is accompanying the President on this visit said, the President's engagements in the three African countries are very significant and the visit is yet another step in India 's increasing march towards the place of prominence, and its increasing footprint in the world. Besides Mr Singh, MPs S S Ahluwalia and Mansukh L Mandaviya are accompanying the President.Earlier, the President was given a farewell at Rashtrapati Bhawan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi , Vice President Dr Hamid Ansari , the Cabinet colleagues and the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi. During the President's visit several agreements and MoUs relating to defence, developmental and economic cooperation and people-to-people contact were expected to be signed. The Presidential visit of Africa is part of the high-level engagements planned by the Government to shore up its relations with states of the continent, where the Chinese foot print is already very much marked, and it comes close on the heels of Vice-President Hamid Ansari's visit to Morocco and Tunisia. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also expected to travel to Africa this year India last year held the third India-Africa Summit, which was incidentally initiated by the President when in 2008, he held charge of External Affairs. This is the President's first visit to Ghana and Cote D'Ivore and second to Namibia, but as President he is visiting Namibia also for the first time. ''The visit, apart from consolidating bilateral interaction, will carry forward the momentum generated in India-Africa ties post - IAFS-III,'' the Ministry of External Affairs said here today. The President's first destination will be Ghana where he is going at the invitation of his counterpart of the country John Dramani Mahama. Mr Mukherjee will have one-on-one meeting with Mr Mahama followed by delegation-level talks. A number of agreements were expected to be signed, including setting up of a Joint Commission between India and Ghana and renewal of Cultural Exchange programme. The two countries have seen steady growth in bilateral trade and investments. India's cumulative investments in Ghana till date have exceeded 1 billion dollars and bilateral trade crossed 3 billion dollar mark in 2015-16. NRIs, professionals have invested in IT, Pharmaceuticals and other areas. The bilateral trade has gone up nearly 3 times. Ghana's main trade consists of gold imports, it's nearly 80 per cent of total trade. Ghanaian gold is in great demand in India. India's exports to Ghana are close to around 700 million dollars on an average and consists of a range of products like pharma, plastics, steel products, textiles and to most of the African countries besides cereals including wheat and rice. On arrival in Ghana's capital Accra, the President will be received by Vice-President Amissah-Arthur. Besides talks with the President, Mr Mukherjee would be delivering an address at the Joint Business Forum and at the University of Ghana, and interacting with the Indian community at a reception organised in his honour by the Indian High Commission. During the visit, the President will unveil a statue of Mahatma Gandhi gifted by the Indian Council of Cultural Relations and also plant a sapling at the Flag Staff House (Ghanaian Presidential Complex), an iconic building built with the Indian assistance through a Line of credit.He will also pay floral tributes to Ghana's first President Kwame Nkrumah at his mausoleum in Accra.Besides, the President will visit the India-Ghana Kofi Annan Centre of ICT Excellence in Accra, set up with modest Indian assistance of 2.86 million dollarsAn interaction with the India community is also included in his programme.A State Banquet will be held in the President's honour and accompanying delegation by his Ghanian counterpart.In Ghana, there is a very prosperous Indian community, or Indian origin community actually, roughly around 10,000 of which 7000 have Indian passports.The President will depart for Cote d'Ivoire on June 14 on the second leg of his visit.Mr Mukherjee will be received xxx Eds: pls pick up from President-Africa-Visit two New Delhi (DI 8).UNI NAZ JW ADG 1145 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0364-781695.Xml
Out of 107894 kanals of Wakf land, 96709 kanals have been notified while about 6000 kanals of land are illegal occupation of different security forces, including Army in the Jammu and Kashmir, claimed an official record. The Wakf board has been paying salary to 460 imams beside providing monetary support to 488 widows and destitutes and scholarship to Orphans The board has also provided Rs 38 crore to the Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University (BGSBU) roughly at the rate of Rs 2 crore per year, officials said here today. They said the Board is mulling to establish scientific and technological institutes, colleges, shopping malls and high rise buildings in the state. They said that Wakf has total land of 107894 kanals, out of which 96709 kanals stands notified. As many as 5997 kanals of land is under illegal occupation of forces, government departments, individuals and others. A massive drive will be launched to retrieve the land. The Wakf board is constructing and renovating number of buildings and religious structures all around the state, they said. The officials said that the Board provides salary to 460 Imams, besides providing monetary support to 488 widows and destitutes and scholarship to Orphans. Terming the establishment of Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University as major achievement of Wakf Board in 2002 they said that the Board has till date provided Rs 38 crore to the University roughly at the rate of Rs 2 crore per year after the initial grant. UNI BAS QAB SDR ADG RAI1207 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-781735.Xml
To improve the healthcare facilities in Kargil, a 200-bedded proposed government hospital at a cost of Rs 45.17 crore would be constructed in the border town in Ladakh region. An official spokesperson here today said that in order to provide better healthcare facilities and to up-grade the existing infrastructure, a proposal of Rs 45.17 crore for construction of the hospital at Kurbathang in Kargil stands submitted under Special Task Force with the centre. He said Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare has already released Rs 5 crore for the purpose. Meanwhile, Chairman Legislative Council, Haji Anayat Ali said that the district remains cut-off from the entire country during winter and the existing building of district hospital is insufficient to accommodate the growing number of patients. He said that there is no scope of its further expansion. Mr Anayat asked state government for making arrangement of adequate funds so that the work on building of New District hospital is started and completed at the earliest.UNI ABS QAB SDR ADG RAI1157 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0433-781677.Xml
City-based Trujet today announced the beginning of its operations on new sector Chennai-Kadapa-Chennai and Chennai-Vijayawada-Chennai (Via Kadapa) from Jun 14. It already operates Kadapa-Hyderabad-Kadapa, Kadapa-Tirupati, and Kadapa-Vijayawada flights. Turbo Megha Airways Private Limited Managing Director Vankayalapati Umesh said "We are pleased to enhance air connectivity within the region and providing opportunities to fly between the hitherto unconnected cities. We are the only operator to fly to Kadapa as it fits well into our strategy of connecting under-served and unserved routes. With this, we are connecting Kadapa to four cities: Chennai, Vijayawada, Tirupati, and Hyderabad. We have an inaugural sale of offer Rs 999 plus taxes till today for travel on these sectors. Apart from providing new flights, we are also providing connectivity from Kadapa (via Hyderabad) to Goa and Rajahmundry," Mr Umesh said.UNI VV CS 1315 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0434-781886.Xml
The two day long crucial National Executive meet in the Sangam City commenced this morning with party president Amit Shah chairing the meeting of the national office bearers at a posh hotel here today. While Mr Shah addressed the meet, it would conclude in the afternoon at around 1500 hours when Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the concluding session. BJP sources said that the office bearers would finalise the agenda of the national executive to be inaugurated by PM at 1700 hours today. There would be three resolutions to be passed in the national executive-- political,economic and agriculture. Besides a special resolution on Uttar Pradesh and local issue could also come up for discussion. Meanwhile, all eyes are now on the six new entry in the BJP, who have been included in the national executive including former Uttarkhand chief minister Vijay Bahuguna. The former Congress leader is also associated with Allahabad hence his presence in the city gains political importances to lead the legacy of his father and former UP chief minister Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna. The other BJP leaders, mostly from Congress, who have been included at the special invitee in the national executive are Hemant Visha Sharma of Assam, former chief minister of Orrisa and tribal leader Girdhar Gomang, former union minister K P Singhdeo. Besides former state president of UP Laxmikant Bajpai, Karnatak's Prahlad Joshi, V Murlidharan of Kerala, Kamal Sharma of Punjab and Chaoba Singh of Manipur have also been made special invitee for this meet. On the other hand, UP BJP president Keshav Maurya was holding meeting with the irked lawyers of the Allahabad High Court, who had announced to protest on the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Allahabad High Court this afternoon. According to the PM's schedule, the special flight, will reach Allahabad at around 1440 hours and from the Bamrauli airport he will directly go to Kanha Shyam hotel to attend the concluding session of the office bearers meet of the party. Later Mr Modi is slated to go to Allahabad High Court for a brief period and after freshing up at the circuit house he will go to K P College ground to attend the national executive meet at 1700 hours. He is expected to stay there till 2000 hours and will have a night stay at the circuit house. On Monday, PM will attend the national executive meet in the morning and after its end will address a public rally at the Parade ground at 1600 hours. He will leave for New Delhi at around 1630 hours.UNI MB JW ADG RAI1321 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-781794.Xml
Three people of a family including a woman were killed and an infant was critically injured when a car going towards New Delhi dashed against an electricity pole at Nazibabad in the district today. Police sources said that the family of Kotdwar was going to New Delhi when the car met with the accident near Partapur .All the three died on the spot. The injured infant has been rushed to the hospital.UNI XC-MB SDR -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-781797.Xml
Sub-divisional police officer Imtiyaz Ahmed said here that the incident took place, when one Ramayan Mishra, who had a long running land dispute with his neighbour Arun Mishra, opened fire on the latter, leaving him seriously injured.

Infuriated over this, supporters of Arun Mishra critically injured Ramayan Mishra, Gyan Narayan Mishra and Guddu Raja by attacking them with sharp-edged weapons and bricks. Later, police recovered a gun, two country-made pistols and some live cartridges from the house of one Hridayanath Tiwari, while seizing two country-made pistols and some live cartridges from the residence of Sheodan Mishra at the village.

Police have taken four people into custody in this connection.

The injured have been rushed to Gorakhpur in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh for better treatment. Further investigation is on, sources added. UNI XC-DH RJ NS1443

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached here this afternoon to attend the two-day national executive meeting of BJP. Mr Modi reached Bamruli Airport at around 1445 hrs. From the airport, he would be arriving in a hotel located in Civil Lines area of this Sangam city, to join the ongoing meeting of BJP office bearers. He is scheduled to inaugurate the BJP National Executive at 1700 hrs at KP College Ground this evening. After night stay at Circuit House, Mr Modi will attend the National Executive tomorrow and also address Parivartan Rally in the evening at the Parade ground. The Prime Minister is further slated to address the concluding session of the meeting. Later, he will go to the Allahabad High Court.UNI RG/MB PS RJ 1600 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0421-782042.Xml
Speaking in unison, in the rally organised by Karnataka FilmChambers of Commerce, the actors led by Shivraj Kumar, son ofthespian actor Rajkumar, popular Yash and many other prominentactors took part in a rally atop open vehicles in the burning Sunand demanded that the people of the region deserved better watersupply from river sources.

The Karnataka government is supportive of Yettinahole streamproject to lift water from west flowing tributary of Netravati riverin Dakshina Kannada district.

The Kannada cinema today came in support of the people in thisregion, after supporting the agitation over the Kalasa-Banduri NalaProject in the North of the State.

Actors and leaders of Kannada cinema today spoke in support ofthe project that can bring a sea change in the lives of poor in thedry districts of South Karnataka.

Yettinahole Integrated Drinking Water Project is designed toprovide drinking water to nearly 7 million people in drought-proneKolar, Chickballapur, Ramanagaram, Tumakuru, Bengaluru Rural, andparts of Hassan districts by lifting 24 tmc ft of water fromYettinahole, a West flowing stream to the East of South interior districts.

The project is aimed to supply water from the stream, nearSakleshpur in Hassan district and transport it through hardenedsteel pipeline and open canal running to distance of 274 km. Theproject will help recharge 527 tanks be filled using 8.96 tmcft ofwater in these districts so as to help recharge groundwater.

The State government has already started the project despitestiff opposition from people of Dakshina Kannada, downstream, afterthe Congress party had promised to implement the project in itselection manifesto in 2013.

Executive Committee of the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce(KFCC), which met on June 8, decided to participate in today's rallyto bring pressure on the government for speedy implementation of the project.UNI RS HVB CS 1500

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A group of Kashmiri pandits were turned back by police, when they were going for Abhinav Gupt yatra in the central Kashmir district of Badgam. A New Delhi-based organisation, Acharya Abhinav Gupt Samaroh Samiti, has announced to undertake yatra to the cave in Beerwah in central Kashmir, for the first time in June, which evoked massive reaction from separatist organisations, who said it was an attempt to disturb communal harmony in the valley. Today, a group of pandits tried to reach the cave, who were prevented by police and turned back from a naka established on all roads leading to the cave. For the past about one week, additional paramilitary and state police personnel had been deployed in the entire area, including all roads, to prevent the yatra. Deputy Chief Minister Dr Nirmal Singh said since there was no yatra, so questioning of banning it does not arise. However, he said Abinav Gupt was a great scholar. Minister for Education Naeem Akhtar, who is also spokesman of the PDP-BJP also said that there is no question of allowing the yatra as there is apprehension of disturbance.UNI BAS RJ NS1714 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-782182.Xml
Border Security Force (BSF) jawans gunned down two Pakistani smugglers and injured another in an encounter besides seizing 15 kg of heroin and ammunition in heavy quantity. According to a statement issued from the Punjab Frontiers HQ of BSF here, a joint ambush party of Punjab Police and BSF observed some suspicious movements in the area of responsibility of BoP Sowana in Abohar Sector, early this morning. After few minutes, three persons from Pakistan side and two from Indian side approached border security fence with the intention to smuggle heroin and started their activities.On seeing this, the ambush party challenged the smugglers. On being challenged, heavy fire was opened by smugglers, aiming the ambush party. Immediately, BSF troops retaliated and opened fire in self-defence. The Indian smugglers tried to escape taking advantage of continuing firing. Ambush party chased them and apprehended two Indian smugglers.During search of the area, the party found bodies of two Pakistani smugglers. One injured Pak smuggler was nabbed by BSF and after giving first aid, he was evacuated to Civil Hospital, Fazilka. The injured Pakistani smuggler revealed his identity as Ramjan, a resident of Khudian, District Kasur (Pakistan).The BSF during search of the area recovered 15 packets of contraband suspected to be heroin having a value of Rs 75 crore in the international market. Besides this, the BSF troops seize one rifle 12 bore single barrel, one magazine (12 Bore), Ammunition (12 Bore) 26 live cartridges, 2 pistols (7.62 mm M57, ZESTORICMQ caliber 30). Four Pistol Magazines, Ammunition (Pistol) 41 rounds, One Pak mobile phone(Nokia) and two Pak SIM Cards(Telenor).UNI XC DB RJ VN1756 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-782189.Xml
Two teenage boys drowned in state capital's Motia Talab under Shahjehnabad police station limits today, police said.Three boys aged between 14 to 15 years --went to take relief from the scorching heat this afternoon, but two of them went to deep water and drowned. However, one boy was rescued by police team, with the help of locals. The bodies were sent for post-mortem.UNI BDG DS RJ RK1850 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0044-782271.Xml
Emotional scenes were witnessed today as thousands of Kashmiri Pundits, who migrated in 90s to different parts of the country, thronged the revered temple of Hindu Goddess Ragnya Devi on the Mela Kheer Bhawani in Ganderbal district.Chairperson of administrative committee Kalyani Shivshakti Welfare Society (KSWS) Mata Kalyani told UNI that about 50,000 devotees took part in the Mela which would conclude today.She said for the second consecutive year after 90s, migrant pundits are visiting their respective areas and organising "Hawan" on the occasion, including Kupwara, Anantnag, Kulgam and Badgam districts. Last year, migrant pundits visited their ancestral places and performed 'Hawan'.Thousands of Kashmiri Pundits, including those visiting for the first time after their migration, besides people from other parts of the country attended the annual festival of Kheer Bhawani, providing the much-needed opportunity to them to visit their roots. Sixty three-year-old Nancy Kaul, who has an ancestral house in Anantnag and now lives in Jammu, said, "This mela has provided 'us an opportunity to meet our Muslim brethern though we still used to remain in touch during all these years through phone'.However, Ms Kaul said she did not see any change in the relations between different communities though, people with vested interest from both communities, had made attempts to create a wedge. "I used to visit this place even during 90s, though then only few used to come attend the mela, but I always felt a sense of security and belonging in Kashmir," she said. Similar views were expressed by Muslims, who had come all the way from a different parts of the valley to meet their neighbours, separated in 90's."Nothing has changed except that we are living in Jammu and our Muslim neighbours in Kashmir," an emotional 72-year-old P L Tikkoo said.With tears rolling down his cheeks, Mr Tikkoo said he still visit his ancestral house in downtown Srinagar, which he sold to his friend back in 90's. "I can still feel the presence of my father and mother in that house. And I'm fortunate that I get to live in that house whenever I come to Kashmir. People who taking about living in satellite camps are mostly the ones who know nothing about the bond between Muslims and Pundits," he added.A large number of Muslims had come from different parts of the Valley to meet their Pandit brethern, who had come from Jammu, Delhi, Chandigrah, Himachal Pradesh and other parts of the country. "I came here to meet my childhood friend Kishan Lal, who now lives in Delhi. He is still on his way to the temple, even as a kid he was always late," Ghulam Nabi, who lives in Anantnag, said with a smile on his face.Mr Nabi said this is for the first time after Mr Lal migrated to Delhi that they are meeting. "I'm very excited and nervous at the same time. We were best friends and still are in tough, but I still can't believe that I will meet him. This is like a dream coming true. When his family migrated back in 90s, a part of me left with him and today I hope I will get that back," Mr Nabi said, while whipping off tears by his handkerchief. MORE UNI ABS SW RJ VN1846 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0433-782274.Xml
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) led by Mamata Banerjee will launch a campaign against the Left Front government in Tripura early next month, party leaders said here on Sunday. "Didi (Mamata Banerjee) would visit Tripura early next month to launch a massive movement against the Left Front government in Tripura," chairman of the TMC's Tripura unit Ratan Chakraborty told reporters. Accompanied by five of the six Congress MLAs, who joined TMC on June 7, Chakraborty said: "We would form party unit in over 3,000 assembly booth areas and organise a state wide agitation in support of 11-point demands." The TMC leadership comprising old and new leaders on Sunday held assembly segment wise delegate conference and finalised the future party programme and demands to be highlighted during the campaign. Former Congress legislative party leader Roy Barman said that in presence of Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal Chief Minister, the TMC's agitational programme would be launched and it would continue until the Left Front government voted out in 2018 assembly elections. Barman, along with five other legislators and other leaders, resigned from the Congress to protest against the party's electoral alliance with Left parties in West Bengal. They then joined the TMC. The TMC demands that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe the activities of illegal chit funds in Tripura and the money that people invested in such schemes be returned. The demands also include special audit in state government organisations and departments by the central government agencies, waiver of farm loans up to Rs two lakh, and measures to prevent crimes against women and compensation to the victims. Besides the six Congress MLAs, another Congress legislator, Jitendra Sarkar, also recently resigned from the Tripura assembly and said he would rejoin the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) which heads the ruling Left Front. With these resignations, the Congress's strength in the 60-member Tripura assembly has been reduced to the lowest ever -- from 10 to three. The Left Front has 50 lawmakers. --IANS sc/kb/dg ( 343 Words) 2016-06-12-19:46:04 (IANS)
West Bengal Pradesh Congress President Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Sunday urged the Centre to put pressure on the Afghanistan government for securing the release of an Indian woman aid worker abducted by unidentified gunmen in the Afghan capital. "We have friendly relations with Afghanistan. The central government should be more proactive to secure the release of Judith and should put pressure on the Afghan government. I have sent a letter to the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) and National Security Adviser (Ajit Doval)," Adhir said. Judith D'Souza, 40, working with Aga Khan Foundation, an NGO, was kidnapped on Thursday night while she was returning home after a dinner at a friend's place in the Qala-e-Fatullah area of Kabul. A Communitst Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) delegation led by its General Secretary Sitaram Yechury met members of D'Souza's family here during the day. "Our mission in Kabul, the government and the organisation with whom she works are apparently in touch with the family. Everybody is making all their efforts. We have met members of her family and expressed our solidarity," said Yechury, who is also the member of the Consultative Committee of the Ministry of External Affairs. "We conveyed (to them) anything that they require in terms of putting pressure on the government and eliciting information from our mission, as a member of the consultative committee, I will be available to do that." D'Souza's family members, however, lauded the efforts of the government. "Both the Indian Embassy in Kabul and MEA are updating us twice a day and they updated us on the process of release that is taking place. Likewise, the organisation is also updating us," said Judith's brother Jerome D'Souza. "Some of the efforts are shared with us, but some are not, due to obvious reasons. Huge efforts are being made by the government to bring back my sister," he said. No group has claimed responsibility for the abduction but it is feared that she may have been kidnapped by a criminal gang in Kabul motivated by ransom, according to Afghan officials. Abductions for ransom in Afghanistan are on the rise and criminal gangs have made millions of dollars from kidnapping foreign nationals. --IANS bdc/ssp/lok/dg ( 382 Words) 2016-06-12-19:50:03 (IANS)
Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh today underlined the need to strengthen emergency services and trauma care to save precious human lives which are lost in road accidents. He said intelligent transport system was the need of hour and infrastructure investments should take it into account. The Chief Minister was speaking in the third meeting of the Group of Minister's on Road Safety and Ease of Transport organised at Dr Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College Tanda today. He said the stategovernment had given top priority to the road sector, however, this sector in hilly states involved several issues like high cost of construction and maintenance.He said there were just 288 kms of length of motorable roads in the state in 1947 and today a strong network of 34,359 kms roads and 1913 bridges was there. He said out of 17,000 census villages, over 10,000 villages had been connected with roads in the state.He said to address the road safety affects, effective steps including road design, engineering, driver behaviour, training, skills, traffic management, emergency medical care, evacuation of victims, dedicated services like 108 needed to be taken care. He said there was a need to highlight National Accident Relief Policy and a fund should be created for road safety. He also stressed upon use of more IT tools in traffic and road management along with road safety audit.He said 1099 people lost their lives in road accidents during 2014 and 1096 in 2015 whereas 5576 and 5108 people were injured during this period respectively in the state.He said the state government had allocated Rs 50 crore each for the financial years 2015-17 for engineering measures to rectify identified black spots.He thanked Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadakari for announcing new national highways for the state with a view to improve infrastructure, boosting tourism and also addressing issues of road safety.Transport Minister GS Bali, who presided over the function, demanded that hilly states should be given special priority in taking up road safety measures keeping in view tough topographical conditions and other challenges.UNI XC SW BD2031 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-782542.Xml
Ahead of the crucial Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party began a crucial two-day National Executive this evening in this Sangam city.Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed concern over the law and order situation in the state and asked the party leaders to prepare themselves in a big way for the state polls.In his address to BJP office bearers at a local hotel before the meeting here, Mr Modi expressed his concern over the exodus of families from Kairana.Leaders, who attended the meeting, reportedly said that Mr Modi affirmed that the road to 2019 Lok Sabha election passes through 2017 UP elections. Hence, the state elections are very important for BJP. He also remarked on the law and order situation of UP, mentioning the Mathura incident, sources said.Party chief Amit Shah held a meeting with BJP office bearers to seal the agenda, and economic and social resolutions to be adopted during the National Executive. The meeting of national executive will see the saffron party brainstorming strategy for the upcoming Assembly polls in five key states.Party insiders said that the party will also critically review its performance in recently concluded five assembly polls, that witnessed first ever saffron government in a north-eastern state as party snatched Assam from Congress. Besides, fresh concluded Rajya Sabha polls, in which party gained muscle in Upper House by winning 11 seats are also likely to deliberated upon.KP College ground, the venue of NE, is most likely to used by the BJP to recount achievements of Narendra Modi government and special emphasis will be on his foreign trips.The office bearers meeting would also discuss on the strategy for mission UP and Uttarakhand going to polls early next year along with three other states. The NE, will began at around 1700 hrs after the arrival of Prime Minister and the main highlight will be Mr Shah's address to world's largest political party as claimed. Mr Modi will speak tomorrow in this city, one of the most significant towns in the political history of the state, at 'Parivartan Rally." Since he will spend around 27 hours in this sacred city, he is said to be using his accodommation as PMO.The party is holding its National Executive for the first time in Uttar Pradesh since the advent of its government at the Centre.The BJP is now throwing all its might to break into the citadel of the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, which are swapping power in UP for last 14 years. The last time BJP came to power in the state was in 2002 when it formed a coalition government with the BSP. The Bharatiya Janata Party had not been able to form a government on its own after 1992 when the Kalyan Singh government had exited in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid. In its quest to end its exile from holding the reins in this key Hindi heartland state, the BJP is still grappling with the question whether it should project its Chief Ministerial candidate and who it should be.Party chief Amit Shah recently said that no decision has yet been taken this regard.The consultations are also expected to set the stage for a revamp of the Union Council of Ministers and the party set-up. The party is expected to dwell at length on the strategy to win back its core constituencies, especially Brahmins and so-called upper castes, which had off late been lured by both BSP and SP and this time, Congress is also putting up a tough competition for the same block of votes. Winning seats in Uttar Pradesh is crucial for the BJP to increase its tally in Rajya Sabha where the party's agenda is being stalled.UNI RG/MB SW RP1955 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0298-782558.Xml
Coming down heavily on the Uttar Pradesh government over the law and order issue, BJP president Amit Shah on Sunday said the ruling Samajwadi Party has failed on every front. Shah also attacked the Congress, saying the politics of obstructionism had become the hallmark of the opposition party at the Centre in the last two years and this is the reason it is weakening. "There is lack of development in Uttar Pradesh and there is no peace. Here, the atmosphere is of violence and the state government has failed to control all these," Shah said in his presidential address at the party's National Executive meet here. Raking up the issue of Kairana, in Shamli district, where Hindus are said to be migrating, and the Mathura violence, the BJP President expressed grief over the unfortunate incidents. He said: "The incident of Kairana where a large number of people are migrating is very unfortunate. The Mathura violence was also very unfortunate. The SP government here has been unable to control the situation." Shah said that the Bharatiya Janata Party's political rise is not due to the weakening of the Congress. "The repeated obstructions in the path of development, which has become the hallmark of the Congress in the last two years, is the reason for its weakening," the BJP leader said, and added that the "rise of the BJP is not proportionate to the weakening of the Congress." He said: "The BJP is rising because of its ideology, the commitment of its workers and extraordinary commitment of the government and its leadership." --IANS bns/tsb/rn ( 273 Words) 2016-06-12-21:56:02 (IANS)
Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today termed 'the ultimate insult to Sikhs' the appointment of Congress leaderKamal Nath its high command as the leader incharge of Punjab affairs. "This comes on the eve of the visit of Congress vice-president Mr Rahul Gandhi to Punjab is an unbelievable brazen act of insensitivity towards Sikhs and crass and vulgar disregard of national opinion on the guilty of the massacre of thousands of innocent Sikh children, men and women by Congress goons in November 1984. I just cannot believe a political party can be so brutally insensitive to the sentiments of the Sikh community," Mr Badal said in a statement here. Mr Nath, who is alleged to have led a mob that were unleashed on innocent and unsuspecting Sikhs some of whom had in all innocence and trust run to him for help only to find him ordering the mobs to lynch them and the police to open fire on the younger members of Sikh community who tried to defend themselves. According to various independent and credible reports of events of those days, Mr Nath came to historic Gurdwara Rakabganj in Delhi on November 1, 1984, and instructed the police to open fire on Gurdwara Sahib, where a large number of Sikhs were killed. It was also alleged that under instructions of Mr Nath, policemen present at the scene, instead of preventing the attack, joined the attackers and fired several rounds at the Gurudwara Sahib. It has also been reported that Police Commissioner Gautam Kaul had verified Kamal Nath's presence while the Gurudwara was attacked and Sikhs were burnt alive. "These are damning facts and I am shocked that the Congress High Command is going to these heights to rub salt into Sikh wounds while at the same time enacting the drama of putting up a show of Prime Ministerial repentance over its sins. Are these signs of genuine repentance or adding fresh insult to old wounds," asked the Chief Minister, adding that when Rahul Gandhi visited Punjab, this is the first question he would be asked to answer.UNI DB PY SW BD2201 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-782652.Xml
Bihar intermediate examination toppers scam kingpin Amit Kumar, alias Bachcha Rai, and other accused were today remanded in judicial custody till June 25 in connection with results muddle. Rai and two others were produced before the chief judicial magistrate at his residence by sleuths of Special Investigation Team (SIT) who remanded them to judicial custody for 14 days.While Rai was formally arrested after he surrendered in Vaishali yesterday, SIT sleuths had earlier arrested two close associates of former BSEB chairman Lalkeshwar Prasad who is absconding with his wife Usha Sinha, a former lawmaker, since June 8.UNI IS PY SW 2225 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-782723.Xml
Iraqi security forces on Saturday tightened their grip around the city of Fallujah and freed some areas from Islamic State (IS) terrorists after fierce clashes, a security source said. The troops, backed by US-led coalition aircraft, carried out an operation in the early morning to recapture areas on the western side of Euphrates River, which flows on the edge of the western part of Fallujah, some 50 km west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, the source told Xinhua. Area of Falahat in west of Fallujah was recaptured after fierce clashes in which IS terrorists were forced to withdraw, the source said. It added that the troops will continue their advance toward the militant-seized area of al-Halabsa in order to push further toward Fallujah from the western bank of Euphrates River. Meanwhile, the security forces and allied paramilitary units, known as Hashd Shaabi, advanced in east of Fallujah and freed al-Subayhat area after heavy clashes with the terrorists, killing at least 13 terrorists and destroying four of their vehicles, including a suicide car bomb, said the source. Saturday's operations came after the security forces managed to seize part of al-Shuhada district in south of Fallujah and raised the Iraqi flag over some buildings after fierce clashes with IS terrorists on Wednesday. --IANS sku/ ( 225 Words) 2016-06-12-04:08:03 (IANS)
Benin stepped up security patrols and roadblocks and increased border security in the face of a threat from Islamist militants, the army chief of staff and a senior security official said.Yesterday a statement by the army chief of staff gave no details of the threat.West African countries are increasingly concerned about al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and its allies. The groups have expanded a campaign in northern Mali in the last year to stage high profile attacks in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.At the same time, Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which is based in the northeast of Benin's eastern neighbour Nigeria, has killed thousands in an insurgency that began in 2009. It has also launched deadly attacks in Niger, Cameroon and Chad.REUTERS AKC/RAI0926 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0129-781654.Xml
China has showed no sign of relenting on supporting India for membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, asserting further discussion was needed within the 48-member nuclear cartel to forge consensus over the NSG's expansion at an early date.''China has noted that some non-NPT countries aspire to join the NSG. When it comes to the accession by non-NPT countries, China maintains that the group should have full discussion before forging consensus and making decisions based on agreement,'' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.He was asked to comment on reports that China, New Zealand, Ireland, Turkey, South Africa and Austria object to India's accession to the NSG, contending that India's admission would undermine the non-proliferation efforts and was likely to infuriate Pakistan.The Chinese spokesperson noted that the NSG Chair Argentine Ambassador had convened an unofficial meeting of the group in Vienna on June 9. There was no deliberation on any items related to the accession to the NSG by India or any other countries that were not signatories to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The Chair said that this meeting has no agenda and was only convened to heed opinions from all parties on the outreach of the NSG and prepare for a report to be submitted at the group's Plenary Meeting in Seoul later this month, he pointed out.He went on to add that China has noted that some non-NPT countries aspire to join the NSG. ''When it comes to the accession by non-NPT countries, China maintains that the group should have full discussion before forging consensus and making decisions based on agreement. The NPT provides a political and legal foundation for the international non-proliferation regime as a whole. China's position applies to all non-NPT countries and targets no one in particular. The fact is that many countries within the group also share China's stance.''Mr Hong said there has been some discussion within the group on the NSG membership of non-NPT countries, but members remain divided on this issue. ''Looking forward, China will continue to support further discussion within the group to forge consensus at an early date. China will proceed with relevant discussion in a constructive manner,'' he added.China is said to be leading the campaign against India's inclusion in the NSG arguing that India was not a signatory to the NPT. Beijing has also been under intense pressure from its 'all-weather' friend Pakistan to oppose India's admission in the cartel. In the meantime, Pakistan too has applied for the membership of the NSG. The US and other major powers support India's inclusion in the body but are opposed to Pakistan's admission in view of its proliferation record. India already enjoys most of the benefits of NSG membership under a 2008 waiver to NSG rules granted to support its nuclear cooperation agreement with Washington. UNI XC AT RP1600 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0098-782066.Xml
A beer bottle packed with home-made explosives was detonated in the check-in area of Terminal 2, Sputnik News reported.

After the explosion, the suspected attacker took a knife from his backpack, and tried to commit suicide by slitting his throat. He was hospitalised in "serious condition", according to reports.

The wounded suffered minor injuries. One of the injured is from the Philippines.

Police cordoned off the area.

Some flights were affected as their passengers were scheduled to check in at the explosion site. The airport has since begun running normal operations, said officials.

--IANS ask/rn/dg

( 131 Words)

2016-06-12-18:38:02 (IANS)
A Twitter account associated with Islamic State today posted a photo purported to be Omar Mateen, identified by US authorities as the shooter who killed at least 50 people in a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida."The man who carried out the Florida nightclub attack which killed 50 people and injured dozens," the caption accompanying the photo read. There was no official Islamic State statement.It was not possible to verify whether the picture was in fact of Mateen. Other Twitter accounts linked to Islamist militancy also carried photos of the same individual, and Islamic State supporters posted messages of praise for the attack. REUTERS RSD BL2108 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0435-782656.Xml
President Pranab Mukherjee arrived here today on his first visit to the country, beginning the first leg of his tour of three African nations that would also take him to Cote D'Ivoire and to Namibia in the south. The President, who is undertaking the three-day visit at the invitation of his Ghanaian counterpart John Dramani Mahama, will have one-to-one meeting with him followed by delegation-level talks tomorrow. A number of agreements were expected to be signed, including setting up of a joint commission between India and Ghana and renewal of cultural exchange programme. The President was received by Ghana Vice-President Amissah-Arthur. Besides talks with Mr Mahama, Mr Mukherjee would be delivering an address at the Joint Business Forum and at the University of Ghana, and interacting with the Indian community at a reception organised in his honour by the Indian High Commission. During the visit, the President will unveil a statue of Mahatma Gandhi gifted by the Indian Council of Cultural Relations and also plant a sapling at the Flag Staff House (Ghanaian Presidential Complex), an iconic building built with the Indian assistance through a line of credit. He will also pay floral tributes to Ghana's first President Kwame Nkrumah at his mausoleum in Accra. Besides, the President will visit the India-Ghana Kofi Annan Centre of ICT Excellence in Accra, set up with modest Indian assistance of 2.86 million dollars. An interaction with the India community is also included in his programme. A State Banquet will be held in the President's honour and accompanying delegation by Mr Mahama. UNI NAZ SW 2132 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-781364.Xml
"Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?" wrote Republican presumptive nominee Donald J. Trump.

Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton signed her tweet with "-H" as an indication she wrote the tweet herself, instead of her campaign's social media staff.

"Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H."

Democratic Bernie Sanders has not posted on Twitter about the attack, but addressed it on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"It's horrific, it's unthinkable," he said. "And just hopes go out to all those who were shot that they can recover.

--IANS lok/rn

( 164 Words)

2016-06-12-23:10:03 (IANS)
France's interior minister said today he backed UEFA's threat to sanction England and Russia if their fans repeated the violence seen over the last few days in Marseille and urged hosting cities to consider a ban on alcohol around match days."It is absolutely necessary that the national federations whose supporters create incidents of this nature be punished for what happened inside the stadium, and also outside," Bernard Cazeneuve told a news briefing.A spokesman for the ministry clarified that the minister was not specifically calling for the two countries to face sanctions, but that he was merely supporting UEFA's decision to warn Russia and England over their fans' future behaviour.UEFA earlier in the day said that the two countries could be disqualified from the Euro 2016 tournament if fan violence continued.Cazeneuve said he asked police chiefs in nine hosting cities to take all measures to prevent the sale, consumption and transportation of alcohol on the day before a fixture and on the match day.Anybody arrested for violent incidents could also be banned from all stadiums, fan zones and popular public areas in all host cities, he added. REUTERS RSD BL2319 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0435-782758.Xml
"Although it's still early in the investigation, we know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate," Xinhua quoted Obama as saying.

The gunman, identified by authorities as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida, was found dead inside the nightclub after a shootout with the police.

Then the suspect went back into the club to continue shooting and took hostages.

About three hours after the shooting first broke out, police shot and killed the suspect during actions to rescue the hostages.

"It appeared he was organised and well-prepared," said Orlando Police Chief John Mina at an earlier press conference, adding that the suspect had an assault-type weapon and a handgun.

Islamic State (IS) terrorist group has claimed the responsibility for the shootings.

In a message published on the groups semi-official news agency, Amaq, it described gunman Omar Mateen as a soldier of the caliphate, The Telegraph (UK) reported.

Although the statement did not clarify Mateens relation to the group, but the language appeared to suggest he was viewed as a lone wolf attacker.

--IANS sku/

( 242 Words)

2016-06-13-01:26:04 (IANS)
WASHINGTON, June 11 (Xinhua) -- Tools used by medical professionals to assess the extent to which a patient will kill himself or herself are unreliable, a new analysis suggested.

The research, published this week in the U.S. journal PLOS ONE, called for a review of the allocation of resources to mental health patients based on their suicide risk assessments.

"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," said clinical psychiatrist Matthew Large from Australia's University of New South Wales, who led the research.

"However, the reliability of categorizing suicide risk remains unknown," Large said.

In order to investigate the odds of suicide in high-risk compared to lower-risk categories, the researchers reviewed every long-term prospective study of suicide risk assessment published worldwide over the past 50 years.

They found that there was no reliable method for assessing suicide risk, with the results of the assessments varying enormously across the 37 studies reviewed.

Actually, half of all suicides occurred in lower-risk groups while 95 percent of high-risk patients did not suicide, they said.

Overall, the research demonstrated that suicide risk assessments provide results that are slightly better than chance.

Currently, suicide risk assessments are used in many hospitals to categorize mentally distressed patients, with those considered at high risk being hospitalized and those at low risk being denied treatment.

"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," Large said.

"If a patient presents with a suicide crisis they should be thoroughly assessed, without categorization. Mental health professionals must also involve patients in the decision making process about their ongoing care to improve their outcomes," he said. Enditem
MANILA, June 11 (Xinhua) -- A Philippine columnist on Saturday called on the incoming Philippine government to drop a defense pact between the Philippines and the United States, arguing it was reducing the country into one big U.S. military base.

"For as long as we have foreign military bases on our soil, the country can never formulate its own independent foreign policy," Rod Kapunan wrote in an article published on Saturday, calling the foreign policy of outgoing Benigno Aquino's government "a carbon copy of the U.S. policy for the Asia-Pacific region."

Manila and Washington signed the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement in 2014, which allows the U.S. troops to build facilities to store equipment in the Philippines, in addition to giving broad access to Philippine military bases.

"As a lawyer, (incoming President Rodrigo) Duterte could see the implication in allowing the reinstallation of the U.S. bases," Kapunan wrote in an English newspaper the Standard.

He called on Duterte to drop the defense pact, which he said would be used as an example by future administrations to sign agreements that would allow other countries to establish their own military bases in the Philippines.

He slammed the Aquino administration for bringing the dispute with China in the South China Sea to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, saying it would give the United States the leverage to continue "its provocative patrol in the South China Sea."

Kapunan pointed out that the defense pact has been unduly stretched by the United States to allow it to conduct regular naval patrol and reconnaissance flight in the disputed waters, and that invoking freedom of navigation to conduct regular naval patrol would lose its viability if the Philippines decides to scrap the pact.

"Nobody would believe that its continued patrol in the area is to secure the freedom of navigation. Rather, the whole military infrastructure it built would be exposed as a facade to contain China," Kapunan wrote. Enditem
CAPE TOWN, June 11 (Xinhua) -- The local branch of the China Soong Ching Ling Foundation on Saturday made a donation to the Elkana Childcare in Malmesbury outside Cape Town .

Among the donations were wooden beds, mattresses, blankets and quilts that will help the children get through the winter as well as dinning tables, chairs, computer desks, sofas, stationery, kitchen appliances, 50 sets of knives, forks and spoons, and food.

"I hope what we brought here will make it easier for you to spend the the winter time and warm up both your bodies and hearts," said Qing Chen, Chairwoman of the Foundation's South Africa branch.

"I also hope that the donation will help lead to greater understanding among us and promote greater friendship between the Chinese people and South Africans," said Chen.

Maude Goliath, Deputy Mayor of Malmesbury, where Elkana Childcare is located, took the opportunity to thank the foundation, saying the donation "really makes a difference in in our kids' lives and in the whole community".

Jacques Schwartz, a representative from the community, said the Shoong Ching Ling Foundation has been generous in making donations to the poor in South Africa.

These donations, said Schwartz, filled children's hearts with hope.

Kang Yong, Consul-General of the Chinese Consulate in Cape Town, said South Africa Soong Ching Ling Foundation has been participating in many charity functions in Cape Town, providing what it can to the weak, including orphans and disabled people.

The Foundation is a local branch of the Soong Ching Ling Foundation which was established in May 1982 in commemoration of Soong Ching Ling, the late Honorary President of the People's Republic of China.

Since its establishment seven years ago, the local foundation has enthusiastically involved itself in South African public good for women and children, actively raised money and materials and carried out donation activities for local orphanage every year. Enditem
PRAGUE, June 11 (Xinhua) -- At a memorial ceremony on Saturday that commemorating the 74th year of extermination of the Lidice village which was obliterated by the Nazis in 1942, Czech President Milos Zeman warned that neo-Nazism is starting to threaten inconspicuously the Czech society.

Zeman said that Lidice tragedy binds people not only to remember the past but also to actively fight against neo-Nazism, which has been spreading in the country under various pretexts.

This ideology is based on racial hatred, rejection of pluralism and forcing physical and opinion uniform upon people, said the president.

Zeman said that neo-Nazis also benefit from the reluctance of democratic politicians who are incapable of facing current problems.

He said if someone adores war criminal and mass murderer in the World War II, he objectively becomes a neo-Nazi.

Bans are no effective solution, said Zeman.

"Let's promise right here, in the village of Lidice, we will not only remember the past, because it is not enough. We will also actively act against those who are in our territory again beginning to spread neo-Nazism under various pretexts," Zeman was quoted as saying.

Officials, ambassadors, representatives of regional and town governments, churches and civic associations, witnesses and other guests at Lidice commemorated the 74th anniversary of the day when the Nazis burned this Central Bohemian village down in retaliation for the assassination of Nazi Deputy Reichsprotector Reinhard Heydrich by Czechoslovak paratroopers.

All the man in the village were shot dead, women sent to a concentration camp, most of the children were sent to the gas chambers and several of them were sent for re-education in Germany.
FREETOWN, June 11 (Xinhua) -- Sierra Leone's Foreign Minister Samura Kamara has called for the peaceful resolution of the South China Sea dispute through friendly negotiations and honoring bilateral agreements and provisions of the declaration on the conduct of parties in the South China Sea.

Talking to Xinhua in an exclusive interview prior to his visit to China starting on Monday, Kamara emphasized the need for all parties to "exercise respect for the rights of each other as sovereign states and contracting states of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)".

He also urged international judicial institutions or arbitral tribunals to fully respect declarations of optional exception made by each country under Article 298 of the UNCLOS.

He affirmed that Sierra Leone is behind China in looking forward to a "mutually respectful solution among the parties that are involved in the South China Sea".

Kamara's visit to China follows a visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to the West African country in August last year.

Samura Kamara described the relationship with China as growing day by day, noting that the relationship is based on mutual respect and understanding each other's concerns.

He said Sierra Leone would further seek support from China in implementing the country's post-Ebola recovery program as well as in areas including agriculture, education, water resources, revival of the private enterprise and the health sector so that the country will not fall victim to what happened during the Ebola crisis.

He also paid tribute to China's support to the country mentioning the Parliament's building, the national stadium and the newly constructed foreign affairs ministry edifice as some of the symbols of China's contributions to Sierra Leone's development.

Samura Kamara was also thankful to the Chinese support in the country's Ebola crisis which he said helped "galvanize" international support.

Related:

Interview: U.S. main reason behind South China Sea tension: U.S. university professor

HOUSTON, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The heightened tension in the South China Sea is not an isolated incident, but the result of the U.S. "pivot to Asia" policy, University of Houston Downtown Associate Professor Peter Li told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"To the United States, East Asia in particular occupies a strategic position in American foreign policy. However, we have to understand that the U.S. foreign policy has always been based on a shrewd calculation of the American national interest," he said. Full story

Spotlight: Stop playing with fire in South China Sea, says Chinese diplomat

LONDON, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Regarding the South China Sea issue, Chinese Ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming has urged the Philippines to return to a negotiated solution and some countries from outside the region to "stop playing with fire."

Liu made the remarks in a signed article published by the Daily Telegraph on Friday. Full story

Executive Summary: The Tribunal's Award in the "South China Sea Arbitration" Initiated by the Philippines Is Null and Void

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. Full story

Chinese Society of International Law releases paper on South China Sea arbitration initiated by the Philippines

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. Full story

Spotlight: Experts say China's stance on South China Sea arbitration fully justified

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. Full story

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.
TORONTO, June 11 (Xinhua) -- Ontario police evacuated more than a dozen passengers Saturday morning following a bomb threat on a GO Transit bus travelling on Highway 407 en route to Mississauga from Guelph in the greater Toronto area.

A passenger first approached the driver after the man allegedly began swearing and telling others that he had an explosive, said GO Transit spokeswoman Anne Marie Aikins.

Ontario Provincial Police said they put the bus on lockdown after the driver called 911. Police spoke with the suspect on a cellphone and tried to get him to leave the bus, said Aikins.

Police began allowing the 17 passengers to leave the bus before they boarded and arrested the suspect, Aikins said.

"I don't know if I would call it a hostage situation," Aikins said. "I don't have the full details on whether he was telling people they couldn't leave."

The suspect was now in police custody. It's unclear whether he posed a serious threat.

No injuries were reported. The highway was closed in both directions between Britannia and Derry roads during the standoff and has not yet reopened.

GO Transit is a regional public transit system in Southern Ontario, Canada, serving the Golden Horseshoe region and linking Toronto to the greater Toronto area and beyond via train and bus.
BRUSSELS, June 11 (Xinhua) -- A "Chinese village", or a Chinatown, has opened to the public in the southeast Belgian city of Liege, as part of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Charter of Friendship between the Belgian province of Liege and the Chinese province of Fujian.

The village was set up on the Place Saint-Lambert in Liege city centre and included a market to discover the charms of the east as well as many activities which attracted local visitors, a Xinhua journalist reported on the scene.

Liege province spokesman Damien Dejardin said an estimated 200,000 visitors would come to the "Chinese village" in the four days that it is open.

Liege resident Didier Counotte told Xinhua: "I love Chinese cuisine, it's delicious, and I like watching the dragon dance. The martial arts demonstrations are impressive."

A delegation from Fujian, accompanied by more than 20 business leaders from the Chinese province, joined representatives from Liege province at the Chinatown inauguration on Thursday.

Katty Firquet, vice-president of Liege province in charge of external relations, said: "Until Sunday, Liege will have the chance to live a Mandarin way of life with cultural and sporting activities as well as food tastings."

Firquet has led two visits to China to strengthen links between China and Belgium, as part of the 30th anniversary of the partnership between the two provinces of the two sides.

She added: "This Chinatown is a showcase for Fujian province. A business forum will also be held to present the strengths of Liege province in terms of import and export, logistics and sustainable development."

Li Hong, head of the Chinese delegation and vice-director of Fujian province's external affairs bureau, said: "Fujian and Liege are 8,000 km apart, but such a distance does not stop us working together and cooperating with each other."

The four-day celebrations in the "Chinese village" feature products, concerts, cooking workshops, art exhibitions, parades in traditional costume and arts demonstrations. Enditem
WINDHOEK, June 11 (Xinhua) -- Mojanku Gumbi, advisor to former South African president Thabo Mbeki, said about 90 billion U.S dollars may be illegally taken out of Africa every year.

Gumbi argued the value represented almost 1.5 times of what the continent received in foreign direct investment every year.

The capital flight is in forms of the proceeds of crime, tax evasion and corruption, said Gumbi, who revealed this ahead of the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries and European Union Joint Parliamentary Assembly that opens Monday.

"The fraudulent misinvoicing of trade transactions was revealed to be the largest component of illicit financial flows from developing countries, accounting for 83.4 percent," Gumbi said, adding the Sub-Saharan Africa region is the worst affected around the world by illicit cash flows.

To solve this problem, Gumbi proposed the adoption of the anti-money laundering as recommended by the Financial Action Task Force.

Gumbi also said information about ownership should be made available to the public and that banks verify the authenticity of all account holders. Enditem
ALGIERS, June 11 (Xinhua) -- Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on Saturday has conducted a cabinet reshuffle by changing six portfolios, including finance and energy, President Office said in a statement.

The reshuffle has been made through a presidential decree "in conformity of the clauses of Article 79 of the Constitution and following consultation with Premier Abdelmalek Sellal," the source notes.

Noureddine Bouterfa, former CEO of the state run gas and electricity group Sonelgaz, replaces Salah Khebri as Minister of Energy. Minister of Finance Abderahmane Benkhalfa has left office and been replaced by former Deputy Minister for Budget and Forecasting Baba Ammi Hadji.

The reshuffle also established a new portfolio, namely Delegate Minister for Digital Economy and Modernization of Financial Systems, held by Boudiaf Mouatassam.

The sectors of transport and public works have been united under one ministry assured by Boudjemaa Talai, former Transport Minister.

Amar Ghoul has also left the Ministry of Tourism, replaced by Nouri Abdelwahab.

Chelghoum Abdeslam replaced Sid Ali Feroukhi as Minister of Agriculture, Rural development and Fisheries, while Abdelkader Ouali was appointed Minister of Water Resources.

It is the fifth reshuffle since the establishment of Abdelmalek Sellal's cabinet in September 2012. Observers believe the current economic crisis hitting Algeria after the fall of oil prices forced this reshuffle.

Algeria is struggling to get rid of full dependency on oil revenues. The government is set to launch a "new economic model" for the period 2016-2019.

According to Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal, the country is heading gradually towards industrialization and building diversified economy by investing the oil revenues.

Hydrocarbons account for 93.52 percent of Algeria's total exports. It explicitly shows the full dependence of the nation on oil revenues to support national economy. Enditem
LAGOS, June 11 (Xinhua) -- The Nigerian Army on Saturday confirmed the killing of 10 suspected Boko Haram fighters after a clearance operation in Gamboru-Ngala areas of Borno.

Col. Sani Usman, the Acting Director of Army Public Relations, said this in a statement in Maiduguri, capital of Borno State in the north of the country.

Usman said two other suspects were captured alive by the troops during the operation.

He said the troops also recovered arms and ammunition during the exercise. Enditem
ATHENS, June 12, 2016 (Xinhua) -- (from L to R) China COSCO Shipping's subsidiary Piraeus Container Terminal (PCT) CEO Fu Chengqiu, captain of COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA Jude Sebastian Rodrigues, Panama Canal Administrator Jorge Luis Quijano and Vice President of COSCO Container Lines Europe Weng Lin pose for a photo at Piraeus port, Greece, June 11, 2016. COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA, the vessel that was selected to make the first historic transit through the expanded Panama Canal later this June, berthed at Piraeus port and left Greece on Saturday with the best wishes of Panama Canal Authority officials and China COSCO Shipping Corporation Limited top managers for the landmark sail. (Xinhua/Marios Lolos)

by Maria Spiliopoulou

ATHENS, June 11 (Xinhua) -- COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA, the vessel that was selected to make the first historic transit through the expanded Panama Canal later this June, berthed at Piraeus port and left Greece on Saturday with the best wishes of Panama Canal Authority officials and China COSCO Shipping Corporation Limited top managers for the landmark sail.

On June 26 the China COSCO Shipping Corporation Limited operated ship which is owned by American-based MC-Seamax and chartered to COSCO SHIPPING Lines, will be the first and only "Neopanamax" vessel that will go through the new lock at the Panama Canal.

The 299.99-meter-long container vessel with a carrying capacity of 9,443 TEUs will be recorded into the international shipping history during a ceremony attended by heads of states and major maritime stakeholders that will mark the conclusion of a nine- year project.

On Saturday during a reception and tour on the vessel at the premises of China COSCO Shipping's subsidiary Piraeus Container Terminal (PCT) at Greece's largest port, the Indian captain of the vessel, Jude Sebastian Rodrigues, Weng Lin, Vice President of COSCO Container Lines Europe and Panama Canal Administrator Jorge Luis Quijano briefed Xinhua and local media on the ship's history and operations, its milestone passage and the significance for Panama, COSCO and the global shipping industry.

The Marshall Islands-flagged vessel was built in the Hyundai Samho Shipyard in South Korea and delivered on Jan. 15, 2016. Currently, it is in service in the route from the Far East to the Black Sea with a 22-member crew.

Currently, the ship is in service in the route from the Far East to the Black Sea. In this special historic voyage, the COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA set out from Dalian Port on April 23, and it is expected to arrive in Shanghai on Aug. 6. From Piraeus, it sails directly to Panama to pass through the canal within about 12 hours and then stop at South Korea before reaching Shanghai.

"It is a great honor for me to be Captain of the COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA. Having the vessel selected to make the first transit across the Canal is an honor not only for the vessel and its crew, but also for COSCO SHIPPING and all its employees working on board and at sea," Captain Rodrigues said.

"The inauguration of the Canal in itself is a significant event and marks a milestone in the development of the global shipping industry. We are full of excitement and expectation for this ceremony, feeling glorious about being able to have the opportunity witnessing this historic event," he stressed.

The captain also noted that as one of the most important shipping passages in the world, the Panama Canal plays an important role in the development of global trade and its expansion reflects the industry's efforts to follow the trend of mega ships against the background of globalization by upgrading global maritime infrastructure.

Speaking to Xinhua during Saturday's event, Panama Canal Administrator Jorge Luis Quijano hailed the completion of the major project as the start of a new era for Panama and the global shipping industry and trade, as it provides to all sides a great opportunity for further growth.

"We believe it is an opportunity for Panama to grow further. The canal had reached its point of almost no further go unless we expanded it. Now we can almost double the capacity of the canal with this new system that we have installed," he explained.

"I think the opportunity we offer to the shipping community is that now we are able to offer a new product that means you can have a different packaging, you can bring a big vessel instead of a Panamax which is 4,000 TEU, you can go all the way to 14,000 TEU vessels," he stressed.

There is already big interest in transits through the new locks, he said. The Panama Canal Administration has already received bookings for the next 90 days for at least 120 transits and most ships are containers of more than 8,000 TEUs.

Regarding the selection process for the first historic passage on June 26, Quijano said that the "ship was selected by itself." The COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA was a vessel that was meeting all criteria set by the Authority when they informed their top 16 customers on the inauguration ceremony. COSCO is one of the canal's top ten customers.

Weng told Xinhua that PCT is a major part in the "Belt and Road" initiative and COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA's sailing from PCT for the expanded Panama Canal inauguration marks a major step for the company to explore further the global shipping market.

COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA is the first vessel with the logo of "COSCO SHIPPING" after the establishment of China COSCO Shipping Corporation Limited through the merger and restructuring of COSCO Group and China Shipping Group on Feb. 18, 2016.

For COSCO Shipping the expansion and upgrade of Panama Canal will also support the company in expanding its global business and improving its overall customer service.
HELSINKI, June 11 (Xinhua) -- The election of Finnish Interior Minister Petteri Orpo on Saturday as chairman of the conservative National Coalition Party will bring changes in the cabinet posts.

In the party convention in Lappeeranta, southern Finland, Orpo defeated incumbent chairman, Finance Minister Alexander Stubb in a vote 441 against 361.

Orpo said on Saturday he himself would become finance minister, but declined to comment on whether Stubb would take another ministerial position and remain in the cabinet.

Prime Minister Juha Sipila said on Saturday no changes would be made in the strategic government program, but noted that new measures would be needed to attain its goals.

The arrangment of the new ministerial positions would be up to Orpo, Sipila said.

Stubb had been elected two years ago in a wave of enthusiasm at the party congress in Lahti, central southern Finland. He had gained the party's largest personal number of votes and had a huge appeal to convention delegates.

The hype evaporated soon, however, and Stubb was accused of lack of interest in domestic issues, among others.

Local analysts noted that in the 2014 election the party elite had backed another candidate, but the public support of Stubb had been insurmountable and the party floor could not be directed.

Orpo defined on Saturday his predecessor as "a new kind of phenomenon" in Finnish politics and something "the Finns actually were not used to".

"There were then mistakes along the way that created discontent," he said.

Orpo pledged the conservatives would reestablish "contact with the common Finns". He also said there would be no more cuts in education.

Orpo described in his preelection address how a teacher and a nurse had told him they would never again vote conservatives. Orpo said the conservatives would have a "more human face".

He said the party should focus on the self-employed entrepreneurs whose societal safety net in Finland is weak.

Commenting to Xinhua, Timo Soikkanen, former professor of political history at Turku University, coined the change as "Orpo knowing Finland better". He referred Stubb's career in the EU, education abroad and lack of everyday experience in Finland.

Soikkanen said Orpo had a long career in the party while Stubb hardly knew the party structure. Stubb would be a real asset for Finland in international service and diplomacy, Soikkanen said.

The third contender for the chairman's position was MP Elina Lepomaki. She got 122 votes in the first round while Orpo got 396 and Stubb 294. Lepomaki represented a clearly more right wing and called for a change in the party.

As chairman of the conservatives, Alexander Stubb succeeded Jyrki Katainen as prime minister in June 2014. The conservatives lost their position as the biggest party in the election in May 2015 and Stubb became finance minister.

In the current three-party ruling coalition, Stubb was able to get through many conservative policies and claimed in his reelection campaign that the government program had the highest "National Coalition Party content" ever.
UNITED NATIONS, June 11 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Saturday condemned an "appalling" deadly terrorist attack near a shrine in a Damascus suburb in Syria, killing several civilians, including women and children.
UNITED NATIONS, June 11 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Saturday condemned an "appalling" deadly terrorist attack near a shrine in a Damascus suburb in Syria, reportedly killing several civilians, including women and children.

"The secretary-general condemns today's attack carried out near the Sayidda Zeinab shrine in a Damascus suburb," said a statement issued here by Ban's spokesman.

"Reports from local monitor groups said that several civilians, including women and children, were killed and many others wounded in this appalling terror attack claimed by ISIL," referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

At least 12 people were killed in the double bomb attack, reports said, adding that ISIL claimed responsibility for the attacks via an online post.

"Those responsible for attacks on civilians must be held accountable," the statement said.

"The secretary-general extends his deepest condolences to the bereaved families and the government of Syria and wishes a speedy recovery to the injured," the statement added.
MEXICO CITY, June 11 (Xinhua) -- Mexico's federal agents and marines rescued 61 Central and South American migrants during two different operations, federal and state authorities said on Saturday.

Twenty-one migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Colombia were discovered confined in a house in Reynosa, a city on the Mexico-U.S. border Monday night.

The migrants, including at least one minor, were being kept captive by smugglers who were allegedly stealing them to the United States, authorities said.

Two vehicles carrying 40 migrants on a highway in Cardenas, a city in southeast Mexico, was intercepted in a separate operation.

Women and children were among the migrants, who were allegedly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, local newspaper El Heroico reported.

Two Honduran men were detained for being allegedly responsible for transporting the migrants.
LIVERPOOL, Britain, June 11 (Xinhua) -- Chinese companies make up a quarter of the foreign delegations to take part in the International Festival for Business (IFB) held this year in the northwestern British port of Liverpool, organizers said Saturday.

"Our target had been for Chinese companies to account for 20 percent of the delegations," Chris Heyes, head of the international section of IFB 2016, told Xinhua.

"We have been surprised by the variety of businesses coming to Liverpool from China," he said.

The 25 Chinese delegations comprise executives from more than 200 companies, with plans to promote trade and business opportunities for Shanghai, Kunming and Hong Kong particularly.

The three-week event to kick off Monday is expected to attract more than 30,000 global business people from some 180 countries and regions to be represented by a total of 97 foreign delegations.

Heyes expects the business gathering to help boost bilateral trade between China and Britain, saying that "it is the perfect vehicle for Chinese companies eager to invest in Liverpool" and will help "British companies wanting to expand their operations into China."

"We will do this with expert sessions, talks, demonstrations, networking, with opportunities for British companies to meet experts in Chinese law and accountants specializing in business deals with Chinese companies," he said.

"Nowhere else are business people able to have all of these facilities at one time in one location," he noted.

IFB serves as a core part of the British government's efforts to boost exports and increase investment inflows, key to the Northern Powerhouse project focused on promoting economic growth in the North of England.

The business event was launched in 2014 when it generated investment deals and exports worth more than 400 million U.S.dollars.
YANGON, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar's 21st Century Panglong Ethnic Conference is expected to be held in late July or August, official media quoted U Hla Maung Shwe, secretary of the Preparatory Committee for holding the conference, as saying on Sunday.

A recent meeting at the National Reconciliation and Peace Center in Yangon has set a precedent for the review of the amendment to the framework of the political dialogue, aiming to attract ethnic armed groups which are yet to sign the Nationwide Ceasefire Accord (NCA).

State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi was quoted as stressing that the conference should focus on political dialogue directly related to peace, security, defense and federalism, saying that the sooner the political dialogue reaches agreement, the sooner the task if nation building can be implemented.

Suu Kyi urged political parties to organize a civil society forum to present idea for other political agendas for the political dialogue.

U Hla Maung Shwe disclosed that the committee is seeking to discuss with such non-signatory groups as the United Wa State Army (UWSA) and the National Democracy Alliance Army (NDAA)-Mongla, imposing also some conditions on Kokang's Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Arakan Army (AA) and the Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA).

Myanmar President's Office formed a 16-member Preparatory Committee on May 31 for holding the 21st Century Panglong Ethnic Conference to work for national reconciliation and domestic peace.

The committee, divided into two separate sub-committees, is tasked to negotiate with those ceasefire signatory armed groups and non-signatory ones, and review the political framework for necessary amendment.

State Counselor and Chairperson of the Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC) Aung San Suu Kyi pledged to hold the 21st Century Panglong Ethnic Conference successfully which is to be convened on the basis of the Nationwide Ceasefire Accord (NCA).

Myanmar's previous government and eight ethnic armed groups out of 15 signed the Nationwide Cease fire Accord (NCA) on Oct.15, 2015. After that a union-level Joint Cease fire Monitoring Committee (JCMC) was formed along with a tripartite UPDJC which was to draft a framework for holding political dialogue as part of the implementation of the NCA.
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)

WASHINGTON, June 11 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines' unilateral move to seek arbitration over the South China Sea disputes will hurt the prospect of resolving the issue peacefully through negotiations, a U.S. expert told Xinhua in an interview.

China has wanted to resolve the issue through negotiations, but the Philippines, with U.S. backing, felt it could "play hardball" on the issue by taking the disputes to the arbitration tribunal, said William Jones, Washington Bureau Chief of U.S. publication Executive Intelligence Review.

"Arbitration normally is a case when two parties cannot successfully negotiate a problem. But that (Manila's action) is not the case at all, because there have been effectively no negotiations between the Philippines and China on this issue," Jones said.

China adheres to the position of non-acceptance of and non-participation in the arbitration, a stance that Jones said Beijing has "legitimate reasons" to take according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

In his analysis of Manila's intentions behind the arbitration, Jones said the Philippines felt that whatever decision the court would make, the arbitration process itself would give the country a certain amount of leeway in asserting its claims in the South China Sea.

Meanwhile, he said, the United States could use the arbitration as a way to limit China's territorial claims and strengthen its allies, as "the growth of China, especially its maritime growth, is seen more, by at least a large section of the United States elites, as a threat."

"Both of them gain a certain advantage of that in trying to delimit the rightful claims, I think, of China in terms of its territorial demands," Jones said, adding that he believes China's historical claims to the South China Sea region "really cannot be refuted."

Moreover, the expert denounced U.S. support to the arbitration, arguing that it contradicts Washington's position not to take sides on the South China Sea issue.

The United States has "in effect taken sides" by encouraging the Philippines to assert its claims "much more forcefully, making it more difficult to get successful negotiations," he said.

"The intervention, and really the role of the United States, has become the most aggravating part (of the South China Sea issue)," Jones said.

In the interview with Xinhua, Jones also refuted the allegation that China has militarized the South China Sea region with its reclamation and building projects.

"You want to count the number of ships and the number of cruises that have been made by the U.S. and allied naval vessels in the vicinity, and I think the militarization is really all on the part of the United States," he said.

Jones added that the freedom of navigation in the region has never been threatened, "certainly not by the Chinese."

"Chinese trade is very dependent on freedom of navigation in the South China Sea to get what they need to support their population. So they have no reason to threaten that," he said.

Related:

Interview: U.S. main reason behind South China Sea tension: U.S. university professor

HOUSTON, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The heightened tension in the South China Sea is not an isolated incident, but the result of the U.S. "pivot to Asia" policy, University of Houston Downtown Associate Professor Peter Li told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"To the United States, East Asia in particular occupies a strategic position in American foreign policy. However, we have to understand that the U.S. foreign policy has always been based on a shrewd calculation of the American national interest," he said. Full story

Spotlight: Stop playing with fire in South China Sea, says Chinese diplomat

LONDON, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Regarding the South China Sea issue, Chinese Ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming has urged the Philippines to return to a negotiated solution and some countries from outside the region to "stop playing with fire."

Liu made the remarks in a signed article published by the Daily Telegraph on Friday. Full story

Executive Summary: The Tribunal's Award in the "South China Sea Arbitration" Initiated by the Philippines Is Null and Void

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. Full story

Chinese Society of International Law releases paper on South China Sea arbitration initiated by the Philippines

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. Full story

Spotlight: Experts say China's stance on South China Sea arbitration fully justified

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. Full story

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.
by Xinhua Writer Chen Jipeng

BEIJING, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Some Western countries have pressured China hard lately on the excess capacity in its steel sector, hoping to protect their self-interests and gain more in trade negotiations with China. Whatever interests they pursue, they should be fair-minded.

Excess capacity as an economic term should not be abused. In almost all markets, it is natural for enterprises, especially profitable ones, to maintain some extra capacity. The reason is demand tends to fluctuate over time, and that they want to capture as large a share of the market as they can and make the most when still better time comes.

The huge steel capacity the world has today was spurred by a strong demand in the earlier booming cycle -- both in China and across the world. Many of the steel firms, including those in the United States and Europe, as well as the iron ore exporting economies, benefited from the boom.

At the development stage back then, the Chinese economy happened to be an important driver. But it is nothing to be ashamed of. China's housing market took off in the early 1990s and almost all the 1.3 billion people in the country were housed properly within 20 years.

Even as the rest of the world fell into an economic downturn, the housing demand in China persists, though its growth has been slower. This is mainly because China has a shortage of infrastructure.

Should China be blamed for increasing spending in infrastructure at a time of external economic downturn? In truth, such investment in infrastructure not only helped cushion China from the shock of a sharp slowdown in external demand, but also helped the world economy by contributing demand and growth that the world desperately needed. And most importantly, there was a solid infrastructure demand.

The market cycle is unstoppable. The lower housing demand in China unfortunately coincides with the prolonged sluggish growth across the major advanced economies.

China did not specifically choose to support the steel sector when it increased fiscal spending amid the downturn. Rather, its steel sector expanded thanks to advantages in terms of cost and closeness to the market as well as the strong profitability.

Excess capacity, or rather a weak demand, is a shared challenge. World economies should make concerted efforts to solve it instead of pointing fingers at any one in order to create a pretext for practicing protectionism.

Besides, the Chinese government has long stopped issuing orders for any factories to be set up or shut down. It relies on the market to phase out firms not competitive enough to survive the slowdown cycle.

Related:

Commentary: China committed to cutting steel overcapacity

BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- China, the world's largest steel producer and consumer, is resolute in its commitment to reducing overcapacity in the sector, although this may result in job losses.

China's industrial overcapacity is a byproduct of the stimulus program implemented during the global financial crisis, during which China contributed about 50 percent to world economic growth. Full story

U.S. investigations into Chinese steel "imprudent": China

BEIJING, May 21 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Ministry of Commerce has labelled U.S. anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations into steel plates from countries and regions including China "imprudent" and blamed protectionism for the troubles of American steel. Full story

Commentary: China not to blame for crisis in U.S. steel industry




XIAMEN, June 12, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Yu Zhengsheng, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, addresses the opening ceremony of the eighth Straits Forum in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province, June 12, 2016. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

XIAMEN, June 12 (Xinhua) - Top political advisor Yu Zhengsheng stressed adherence to the political foundation of the 1992 Consensus to ensure the peaceful development of cross-Strait ties, and the maintenance of peace and stability, at the opening ceremony of the eighth Straits Forum in Xiamen Sunday.

Yu, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said that as long as the political foundation is upheld, cross-Strait relations will enjoy a prosperous future, adding that secessionist activities seeking "Taiwan independence" must be firmly opposed and contained.

Yu said that he met with representatives from the mainland and Taiwan prior to the conference, and they commended the achievements made during the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations, but expressed concern for the future of the ties.

Representatives strongly supported the maintenance and peaceful development of cross-Strait relations, peace and stability, Yu said, adding that it was the common wish of compatriots of the two sides.

During his speech, Yu also said the mainland highly valued proposals from Taiwan compatriots suggesting easier travel to and around the mainland, and it will put forward measures as soon as possible.

Related:

Top political advisor attends key cross-Strait event in Xiamen
LIMA, June 11 (Xinhua) -- Peru's net international reserves (NIR) totaled 60.5 billion U.S. dollars by June 7, the Central Reserve Bank of Peru (BCRP) said Saturday.

According to a BCRP report, the figure equals to 32 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) and about 20 months of the country's imports.

The BCRP noted that these reserves are mainly made up of international liquid assets.

Peru's NIR increased by 12.8 billion dollars compared with July, 2011 and by 45.9 billion dollars from the level in July, 2006, the report said.
Myanmar Vice President U Nyan Tun (6th R) poses with delegates for a group photo during the opening ceremony of the 20th Ministerial Conference of Greater Mekong Subregion-Economic Cooperation Program (GMS) in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar, on Sept. 10, 2015. Myanmar Vice President U Nyan Tun Thursday stressed the importance of the strategic role to be continuously played by GMS in the economic life of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations. (Xinhua/U Aung)

KUNMING, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Companies and organizations from six countries along the Mekong River have established a business alliance, with a view to build a platform for cross-border e-commerce.

The alliance, established Saturday, will boost cross-border trade through e-commerce across the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS), Yi Hong, chairman of the alliance, said at a forum on GMS economic cooperation held in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan province.

The GMS Economic Cooperation Program, launched in 1992 by six countries along the Mekong River -- Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, is designed to support regional infrastructure, and to promote trade, investment and economic growth.

Members of the alliance include e-commerce institutions, trade promotion institutions and e-commerce companies.

The cross-border e-commerce platform will be available in six languages, of the GMS countries, plus English, together with a platform for business training and a virtual incubator to encourage new businesses focused on cross-border e-commerce.

More than 100,000 commodities will be available on the platform at the initial stage, according to Yi.
XIAMEN, June 12, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Yu Zhengsheng , chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, addresses the opening ceremony of the eighth Straits Forum in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province, June 12, 2016. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

XIAMEN, June 12 (Xinhua) - Top political advisor Yu Zhengsheng stressed adherence to the political foundation of the 1992 Consensus to ensure the peaceful development of cross-Strait ties, and the maintenance of peace and stability, at the opening ceremony of the eighth Straits Forum in Xiamen Sunday.

Yu, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said that as long as this political foundation is upheld, cross-Strait relations will enjoy a prosperous future, adding that secessionist activities seeking "Taiwan independence" must be firmly opposed and contained.

Yu said that he had met representatives from the mainland and Taiwan prior to the conference, and they commended the achievements made during the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations, but expressed concern for the future.

Representatives strongly supported the maintenance and peaceful development of cross-Strait relations, peace and stability, Yu said, adding that it was the common wish of compatriots on the two sides.

During his speech, Yu also said the mainland highly valued proposals from Taiwan compatriots suggesting easier travel to and around the mainland, and it will put forward measures as soon as possible.

Yu also conveyed greetings from Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, to attendees of the forum, particularly compatriots from Taiwan.

Yu said expanded and improved people-to-people exchanges were needed to maintain the peaceful development of cross-Strait ties.

"The more complicated cross-Strait ties become, the more we need to deepen people-to-people exchanges," Yu said, proposing more activities for people from both sides. With continued efforts, Yu believes that cross-Strait people-to-people exchanges will become the "anchor" to ensure peaceful development of ties, as well as the "sails" to drive compatriots across the Strait into a better future.

Meanwhile, stressing the role of the younger generation, Yu expressed hope that they could become good friends who understand each other and build careers together, as well as emerge as the driving force to propel and maintain the peaceful development of cross-Strait ties.

Working toward the goals of peaceful development of cross-Strait ties also needs firm faith and engagement of compatriots from both the mainland and Taiwan, Yu said. As long as they unite in the endeavor, "there is no insurmountable mountain for cross-Strait relations."

The mainland will continue to improve its policies to facilitate Taiwan compatriots to work and live on the mainland, Yu said.

The mainland will also support mainland-based Taiwan businesses in restructuring and in participating in the "Belt and Road" initiative, as well as promote integrated development of industries from the two sides, according to Yu's speech.

Moreover, the mainland will build more platforms for young people from Taiwan to study, work and start up businesses here, Yu said, adding it will encourage cross-Strait scientific and technological research and development, and cross-Strait academic exchanges.

Jason Hu, vice chairman of the Kuomintang (KMT) Party, also attended the forum, and voiced his hope that cross-Strait people-to-people exchanges be strengthened.

Related:

Top political advisor attends key cross-Strait event in Xiamen

XIAMEN, June 12 (Xinhua) - Top political advisor Yu Zhengsheng attended the opening ceremony of the eighth Straits Forum held in Xiamen on Sunday, and delivered a speech.

Yu, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said the mainland has attached great importance to proposals of Taiwan compatriots for easier traveling-around on the mainland, and it will put forward implementation measures as soon as possible. Full Story

Top political advisor meets mainland-based young Taiwan entrepreneurs

XIAMEN, June 11 (Xinhua) - Top political advisor Yu Zhengsheng has wished start-ups of young entrepreneurs from Taiwan a success in the Chinese mainland thanks to the supportive environment in the mainland.
KABUL, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Up to 46 militants had been killed in clashes with security forces and airstrikes across Afghanistan within day, the Afghan Defense Ministry said on Sunday.

"Over the past 24 hours, Afghan security and defense forces conducted several military and cleanup operations, killing 46 militants, wounding 24 and detaining four other militants," the ministry said in a statement providing daily operational updates.

The ground forces were supported by army's heavy artillery and air force, the statement added.

Among the killed were, a member of Haqqani network named Khalil, and 13 militants of Islamic State (IS), the statement noted.

The joint forces also found weapons, ammunition and defused several landmines during the above raids.

The statement also confirmed the loss of 11 army personnel in separate incidents over the same period.

The militant groups have yet to make comments.




SHANGHAI, June 12 (Xinhua) -- An explosion of firecrackers rocked the Shanghai Pudong International Airport on Sunday afternoon, authorities said.

The accident happened at around 3 p.m. near a checking counter at Terminal 2, when the firecrackers suddenly exploded, injuring some at the site, according to the police.

The injured have been rushed to hospital, and an investigation is under way.
LOS ANGELES, June 12 (Xinhua) -- A recent public letter recounting the author's harrowing experience after being raped by a Stanford University student has caused an uproar against white privilege in the United States and prompted compassionate replies by people from different backgrounds.

In the 12-page letter, the 23-year-old rape victim, under the pseudonym of Emily Doe, revisits her assault in January 2015 on the campus of Stanford University and tells of its destructive impact on her life and why she came forward to confront her attacker.

Brock Turner, the Stanford student and star swimmer who was found guilty of three felony charges in the case, faces only a light sentence of six months in jail, while minimum sentence for such crimes should be no less than two years in jail under California law.

The letter, which was read out in court hearing as the woman's personal statement, said that Turner "took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today."

Many have expressed doubts that the obvious too lenient sentence for Turner is due to the fact that he is from a well-off white family.

In handling criminal cases, U.S. judges could adjust the length of prison sentences based on the convict's social standing, race and talents, among other factors, said Danial H. Deng, a well-known Chinese-American lawyer based in Los Angeles.

The Turner case exposed two loopholes in the U.S. judicial system, said Deng. One is that although it is up to the jury to decide if the accused is guilty or not, the judge has "a large room" in deciding on the length of the sentence, and the other is that wealth could easily play a role in the process since the richer ones always have a better legal defense team than the poorer ones, he explained.

Various efforts seeking to remove the judge in the assault case have been underway.

On Friday, a petition with more than one million signatures calling for Judge Aaron Persky's removal was delivered to the state's judicial commission, and the online campaign for the same purpose is also gaining momentum.

The latest entries of the twitter account of #RecallPersky include expression of support by groups and individuals, and also responses to the Emily Doe letter, such as an open letter by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

Titled "An Open Letter to A Courageous Young Woman," the article signed by Biden said, "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," Biden wrote.

"You were failed by a culture on our college campuses where one in five women is sexually assaulted ... and the statistics on college sexual assault haven't gone down in the past two decades," the U.S. leader said, adding that "it's obscene, and it's a failure that lies at all out feet."
TEHRAN, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Iran signed deals to sell crude oil to seven European companies, an Iranian oil official was quoted as saying by semi-official Mehr news agency on Sunday.

Long-term deals are signed with Saras SpA and Eni of Italy, Spain's Repsol, Hellenic Petroleum SA of Greece, France's Total, Switzerland's Vitol Group as well as Lukoil of Russia, executive director for international affairs at National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) Mohsen Qamsari said.

"So far, agreements for the sale of nearly 700 thousand barrels per day (bpd) have been signed" with the European firms, Qamsari said, adding that the crude exports have been already started for the companies.

According to the report, Iran's oil exports has reached 2.1 million bpd, from some one million (bpd) during the sanction period over the past years, and it is planned to hit a total of 2.5 million bpd by the end of summer 2016.

The newly developed Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC) is one of the strategies Tehran has adopted to attract investment and upgrade the country's oil industry, Iranian Deputy Oil Minister for International Affairs Amir Hossein Zamaninia said earlier this month.

To this end, the country is drawing up plans to draw 185 billion dollars of investment in all sectors of the oil industry within a five-year period, Zamaninia said, adding that 85 billion dollars of the investment will go to the upstream sector of the industry.

Iran's IPC, if implemented, would help the country attract financing from Asian and European investors. The new contracts are replacing traditional Iranian "buy-back" contracts which are no longer attractive to foreign companies.

Under the contracts, NIOC will set up joint ventures for crude oil production with international companies which will be paid with a share of the output.

Iran and the world powers reached a nuclear deal last July, which was implemented in January and would enable the country to re-engage with energy firms of the world to develop its oil and gas fields.
BERLIN, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Angela Merkel will pay her ninth visit to China on June 12-14 since she became German chancellor in 2005. The frequency of her visits to China is quite rare for a Western country leader and it reflects the depth and width of Sino-German relations.

During her visit, Merkel will co-chair an intergovernmental consultation with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, to further strengthen their top planning for bilateral relations, enrich their comprehensive strategic partnership, and expand and deepen their bilateral cooperation.

Since the mechanism for intergovernmental consultation between China and Germany was established in 2011, both sides have held three rounds of consultation. It is also the first such mechanism established between China and a European country and has become the most important platform for planning and advancing China-Germany cooperation.

How China and Germany will step up their coordination and cooperation under the framework of the Group of 20 (G20) is high on the agenda of the upcoming fourth round of consultation between the two countries, as China will host the G20 summit in September and Germany will host it in 2017.

Facing the weak recovery of the world economy, countries like the United States and Japan have attempted to get rid of their predicament via stronger monetary easing policies, which have generated various negative spillover effects.

China and Germany have always advocated achieving economic growth and sustainable development through innovation and structural reform. Further strengthening macro policy coordination between them will help reinforce the recovery and stability of the world economy.

"Innovation" has been the focus of China-Germany economic and trade cooperation in recent years, and the two countries have decided to push ahead with the establishment of a mutually beneficial "innovation partnership" as their industrial and technological cooperation has deepened.

It is learned that during her visit to China, Merkel will attend a China-Germany economic and technology cooperation forum and a dialogue with business circles and visit a China-Germany high-end industrial park in Shengyang, capital of northeastern China's Liaoning Province.

Currently, the two countries are vigorously pushing for the docking of China's "Made In China 2025" blueprint and Germany's "Industrial 4.0" strategy, and the upcoming intergovernmental consultation will add new contents to the docking.

"Industry 4.0" is the latest industrial trend in Germany which seeks to keep its global competitiveness by integrating conventional industries with information technology, while China has rolled out a "Made in China 2025" strategy to upgrade itself.

There is also great potential for China and Germany to jointly explore a third-party market. With the "Belt and Road" initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank gaining steam, the two countries will jointly boost infrastructure construction in Asia. ' Surely the two sides have to deal with some differences in consultation, such as China's steel capacity and China's market economy status.

It is believed that cooperation between China and Germany -- a weighty member of the European Union -- in properly settling the related issues will contribute to sound development of China-Germany and China-EU economic and trade ties.

It should be noted that only 7.6 percent of China's total steel exports go to the EU market, accounting for 14 percent of the latter's steel imports. Exaggerating China's steel overcapacity issue and trade frictions or differences will mar the China-Germany and China-European relations.

EU should stop basing its anti-dumping investigations into Chinese goods on its "surrogate country system" in 2016 under the agreement signed when China joined the World Trade Organization.

EU has refused to fulfill its obligations under the international treaty and what it practices is a "substitute protection."

Germany is capable of and has the obligation to play an active role in properly solving such issues. It serves German interests and will help expand China-Germany and China-European pragmatic cooperation.
BUENOS AIRES, June 11 (Xinhua) -- President Mauricio Macri said Saturday that the government will work "side-by-side" with public security forces to improve public security throughout Argentina, given persistent rampancy of crimes of kidnapping and drug trafficking in the country.

"We have come from over 10 years of drastic deterioration in Argentina's security ... we are in time to correct it and we are going to correct it because we have focus on this and we are going to give it priority," the president said.

Macri on Saturday visited a medical center in Buenos Airies and met Santos Gustavo Diaz, head of the Federal Police's Extortive Kidnappings Research Department, who sustained serious injuries in a confrontation with criminals on Thursday in the capital's northeast.

The president said the survival of Diaz, who was shot in the face and almost lost an eye, was a miracle, and promised to improve the security situation.

"It will not happen overnight, like all the things that we have inherited and don't work. However it is important that we have already started to work on this issue with a changed attitude and with a different commitment," Macri told local media.

Macri said that there has been a paradigm shift in the fight against crime since his "government wants to take charge of the issue -- no longer ignore it but face it." They will target not only kidnappings but also drug trafficking that "generates the most violence in the streets."

Media reports say drug trade and police inefficiency are factors behind the rampant kidnappings and other violent crimes that have become a major source of public complaints in Argentina.

In May, four people were wounded as two motorcycle gangs exchanged some 150 shots in a shootout west of Buenos Aires. In December last year, three convicted drug gangsters and killers reportedly escaped from prison in a case that raised much suspicion over corruption in the country's police system.
SHANGHAI, June 12, 2016 (Xinhua) -- An armed policeman stands guard at the site where an explosion happened at Shanghai Pudong International Airport in east China's Shanghai, June 12, 2016. Three passengers were injured after an explosion at Shanghai Pudong International Airport on Sunday afternoon, authorities said. (Xinhua/Ding Ting)

SHANGHAI, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Three passengers were injured after an explosion at Shanghai Pudong International Airport on Sunday afternoon, authorities said.

The accident happened at around 2:20 p.m. near a check-in counter at Terminal 2, when what appears to be a home-made explosive blew up, according to Shanghai Airport Authority, which manages the airport.

The injured have been admitted to hospital. The investigation continues.
Stable economic growth, continued progress in structural reform, and policies supportive of entrepreneurship and employment generation have offered new opportunities for college graduates. (Xinhuanet file photo)

BEIJING, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Stable economic growth, continued progress in structural reform, and policies supportive of entrepreneurship and employment generation have offered new opportunities for college graduates.

A survey conducted by education research company MyCOS Institute, released on Sunday, showed that the employment rate of college graduates in 2015 was 91.7 percent, basically flat compared with 92.1 percent in 2014 and 91.4 percent in 2013.

Breaking the numbers down, 92.2 percent of university graduates and 91.2 percent of graduates from junior colleges and vocational colleges and senior high schools found jobs, according to the survey.

Some 250,000 college graduates in 30 provincial-level regions on the Chinese mainland were interviewed six months after they graduated last year.

"Generally speaking, the employment rate for Chinese college graduates remained stable," said Zheng Dongliang, dean of the Institute of Labor Science affiliated with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS).

In particular, the survey found that more graduates were starting their own businesses after graduation, with 3 percent registering startup businesses in 2015, up from 1.2 percent in 2009 and 2.9 percent in 2014.

The average monthly income of university graduates who started their own businesses was 5,131 yuan (789 U.S. dollars), according to the survey.

The findings showed that more and more college graduates were riding the wave of the country's innovation-driven development strategy, said Zheng.

"Initiatives such as 'Made in China 2025' and 'Internet Plus' helped the development of the service sector and facilitated upgrades in traditional industries to create ample job opportunities for college graduates," he said.

China started to expand enrollment of college students in 1999 to stimulate a weak economy and ease employment pressure. In a similar program, the country encouraged postgraduate enrollment in 2009.

These measures resulted in spikes in graduate numbers. Under the ambitious programs, the number of graduates is estimated to surge to 7.6 million in 2016, the highest in history.

To boost employment and sustain growth, which slowed to 6.7 percent in the first quarter of this year, the central government is modernizing the economic model, which will feature new systems and business models, promote mass entrepreneurship, and bolster the service sector.

A wide range of measures have been unveiled, including financial support, facility construction and administrative assistance for startups.

The government allocated 40 billion yuan last year to startup initiatives, official data showed.

China witnessed a startup boom in the first 11 months of 2015, when newly registered enterprises jumped 19 percent year on year to 3.9 million, equal to 11,700 new companies every day, official data showed.

China now boasts more than 200 makerspace projects, 1,600 business incubators, and 129 high-tech zones or science and technology parks, which help allocate resources and support innovative companies.

For college graduates who lack experience and funding, favorable policies covering training, industrial and commercial registration, financing and taxation have been rolled out, according to a circular issued by the Ministry of Education in 2015.

As part of an employment security scheme, the MHRSS announced last year that it would help 800,000 college students start their own businesses by 2017.

Chen Yun from the Institute of Labor Science suggested that colleges could develop special courses on starting businesses and open them to all students.

Students should also be encouraged to participate in competitions relating to innovation and business creation so as to enhance their interest in entrepreneurship and improve their abilities, Chen said.
TEHRAN, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif said Sunday that the world needs to face the fact that Iran is the most secure and lucrative market for investments, semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

"The enemies such as the Zionists and the Saudi Arabia are making attempts to tell (the international) banks that Iran is not secure for investment, but we must show the realities to the world that Iran is the most secure and lucrative country in the global market," Zarif was quoted as saying.

Iran's financial resources abroad, which had been blocked under western sanctions, have been made accessible and foreign banks are resuming their relations with Iranian banks, he said.

"The reason that certain unjust U.S. sanctions against Iran are still in place is our anti-hegemonic policies," Zarif said, adding that for the same reason the U.S. oppositions and pressures against the Islamic republic will not end.

Since January when Iran nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was implemented, the international companies have been involved in several rounds of dialogue for cooperation with Iran in diverse areas.

While Iran has announced that it welcomes international investments, particularly in its energy industry, international companies drag their feet to invest in the country since they fear that they may face obstacles due to the sour relations between Iran and the United States as well as complications involved in the money transfer to and out of the country.

The United Sates has still its sanction on Iran over the alleged violations of human rights and supports of terrorism, which Iran denies.

Also, Washington has recently blacklisted some Iranian and foreign entities for being involved in Iran's missile program. Besides, U.S. financial institutions are barred from dollar transactions involving Iran.

These continued restrictions have raised concerns among the international companies that they could fall victim of the U.S. law if they invest in Iran.
by Robert Manyara

NAKURU, Kenya, June 12 (Xinhua) -- In a month's time, Geoffrey Obegi will be receiving his lump sum amount from a motorcycle saving group.

Obegi, in his mid-twenties, has been operating from a busy highway supermarket in Nakuru town in Kenya's Rift Valley region.

He is the chairperson of the 12-member saving group they have named Inuka meaning "rise". Each member is bound to a minimum of one share worth two dollars, an amount they contribute daily and share out every fortnight.

"We started the group in August 2014 out of need to boost our living standards. We have seen women selling vegetables buying pieces of land courtesy of their engagement in saving groups," said Obegi during a recent interview with Xinhua.

"At the moment, we have some members who have rented farms for growing cabbages and potatoes. They are doing very well," said Obegi, who has two shares worth four dollars.

The group, according to the father of one, constitutes of members aged between 23 and 42, indicating a category of Kenyan citizens with nuclear and extended responsibilities.

"I am almost completing my concrete house at home in Kisii (Western Kenya) thanks to Inuka. I committed to buying bricks, iron sheets and cement every time I received the collective savings. Next month (July), I will receive 672 U.S. dollars and I am hopeful the money will be adequate to cater for the remaining accessories," he said.

"I have also hired out an acre at Kabarak (West of Nakuru town) where I have planted maize and potatoes," he added.

For 32-year-old Moses Maina, a member of the Inuka group, his four children could be out of school has it not been for his association with the group.

"When things are thick you can present your case to the group members to swap your turn with another member upon consent. They have assisted me twice and I am so grateful," said Maina, who lost his packing and loading job at a Nakuru based wholesale outlet early last year.

With a boost of 280 dollars from the group, Maina says he managed to open a grocery for his wife, relieving him the burden of sole provision for his family.

Unlike the investment groups in which the members target building up their financial resources through developments, Inuka group serves a different purpose according to Obegi and Maina.

As small scale traders with an inconsistent income, creating a livelihood security for themselves comes in the form of setting aside a portion of their daily earnings in a group, they argue.

But that comes with steadfast commitment to effectively appropriate the earnings to meet the immediate needs of the family members and save for developments, says Obegi.

"We actually run our group as a merry-go-round, but we prefer to call it a saving group because each member commits his share and after two weeks one member receives his lump sum. We are simply saving in each other," stated the chairperson.

He further explained that: "We are interested in helping each other achieve their development goals. We are all family men and we have responsibilities. Sometimes this business is very good and sometimes it's very bad, but if we have an alternative means of survival then we are safe. That is the motivation behind formation of this group."

When the low income earners such as the motorcycle riders are able to ascend the development ladder, the country is freed from high levels of poverty, and in the long term, creates employment opportunities for the jobless, argues economist professor Tom Nyamache.

"There are thousands of people across Kenya employed in small and micro enterprises, many of whom fall under the low income cadre. When they are able to progress, the country's economic performance improves too," observed Nyamache.

"When they invest and become successful, they are able to employ others. This is what we need as a country to reduce unemployment and end poverty in the households."

However, he says more sensitization needs to be done on efficient utilization of the financial resources among the micro and small scale traders to assist them in making appropriate investment decisions.

According to him, saving groups are crucial vehicles to propelling change of living standards among the low income earners.

"But they should be able to invest in something that generates another to be able to contribute to the country's economic sustainability," he said.
SEOUL, June 12 (Xinhua) -- American College Test (ACT), an exam for students hoping to be admitted to universities in the United States, was abruptly canceled Saturday in Seoul and China's Hong Kong due to "credible evidence" that test paper had been leaked in advance.

"ACT has just received credible evidence that test materials intended for administration in these regions have been compromised," ACT Inc., an Iowa-based non-profit organization operating the test, said in a statement.

All the 5,500 students affected would get a refund but could only resit the test to be held in September, it added.

Some of the students voiced their frustration on social media on Saturday and Sunday after the test administrators made the decision to call off the test just hours before it was to start. Some of the test takers had travelled a long distance to take the test.

"I can't believe this happened on the test day. I got informed an hour before the actual administration. This is a huge mess for everyone in South Korea and Hong Kong," said a Facebook user named Phillip Yoon.

ACT, along with Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), is an entrance exam available to international and domestic students wanting to go to a U.S. college.

This is not the first time that a cheating scandal has happened in East Asia. In 2013, an SAT test was canceled in South Korea because part of the paper had been leaked.
DUBAI, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The General Command of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Armed Forces in Abu Dhabi said on Sunday a military helicopter crashed while the pilot and his assistant were killed.

The crash occurred during a "routine flight in international waters" in the Persian Gulf, said the statement released by UAE state news agency WAM.

No further details were given about the exact type of helicopter or the crash site.

The crash marks the second of such incidents in the Gulf Arab state less than one month.

On May 15, a UAE military aircraft crashed during a training flight in the country. The accident resulted in the death of the crew which consisted of a pilot and an instructor.
Ahead of an international exhibition, China's railway insiders returned to topic of whether to increase the top speed of bullet trains.H The proposals to increase the top speed on China's high-speed rail (HSR) network have emerged as China seeks to export its trains and HSR technology. (Source: Xinhua)

BEIJING, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Ahead of an international exhibition, China's railway insiders returned to topic of whether to increase the top speed of bullet trains.H The proposals to increase the top speed on China's high-speed rail (HSR) network have emerged as China seeks to export its trains and HSR technology.

"Technology and safety controls allow bullet trains to run at a maximum speed of 350 km per hour," explained He Huawu, chief engineer with China Railway Corp. (CRC), the country's railway carrier and a major successor of the dismantled ministry of railways.

He made the remarks earlier this week at a news briefing for the 13th China International Modern Railway Technology & Equipment Exhibition scheduled from June 20 to 22.

In summer 2011, the ministry lowered the top speed of bullet trains to 300 km per hour over safety concerns.

The decision was made shortly after Sheng Guangzu, now CRC general manager, replaced disgraced chief Liu Zhijun to head the ministry.

A deadly train collision in July that year in east China's Zhejiang Province cast a shadow on the burgeoning industry, although the following investigation found no evidence to link speed to the incident

"In a strategic move, China should restore the designed speed of 350 km per hour to demonstrate that the rail technology is safe and reliable," said Zuo Dajia, associate professor at the Southwest Jiaotong University.

Although some countries seemed cautious about cooperation with Chinese enterprises, a number of overseas rail contracts have been inked, including a high-speed line between Russia's Moscow and Kazan.

"China's restoration to the designed speed will benefit the exports of high-speed trains and technology," Zuo added.

China currently operates more than 19,000 km of HSR track, accounting for more than 60 percent of the world's total. The network is quickly increasing as the country upgrades its transport infrastructure.

Policymakers must now carefully weigh up the profits and costs before deciding whether to increase the operation speed.

"The current limit is reasonable in terms of operational and maintenance costs," said the CRC chief engineer.

Higher speeds can translate into an increase in power consumption, noise, and wear and tear, according to Sun Zhang, a railway professor at Tongji University.

He gave an example: Nearly all the bearings had to be replaced after a bullet train completed a test in late 2010 with its peak speed reaching 486.1 km per hour.

"Speed increases will definitely lead to cost hikes. But it is difficult for outsiders to calculate as the whole system is so complex," said Hu Siji, a professor with Beijing Jiaotong University.

Higher speeds can also add more pressure on train drivers and other staff.

Despite all the drawbacks, Zuo said higher speed means less trains will be needed, thus, less expenditure for the CRC.

"I did not see any comparison between the increase in operational costs and the decrease in purchase expenditure," said Zuo.

The CRC chief engineer told media outlets that it could be a different story if higher speed brings in more passengers or leads to fare increases.

"A thorough study is needed to decide whether and when to increase the speed," he said.
VIENTIANE, June 12, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang (L front) meets with Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith (R front) in Vientiane, capital of Laos, June 12, 2016. Cooperation to prevent cross-border crimes of human trafficking, illegal exploitation of natural resources and the smuggling of drugs and other illicit goods were areas for discussion as Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang began a three-day state visit to neighboring Laos Sunday. (Xinhua/KPL)

VIENTIANE, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Cooperation to prevent cross-border crimes of human trafficking, illegal exploitation of natural resources and the smuggling of drugs and other illicit goods were areas for discussion as Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang began a three-day state visit to neighboring Laos Sunday.

The visit comes in response to an invitation by Lao President Bounnhang Vorachit who also serves as secretary-general of the ruling Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP).

The two leaders also agreed to strengthen bilateral cooperation on soft and hard infrastructure in the form of improved quality education exchanges and the development and improvement of regional roads to aid connectivity between the two nations during their meeting at Vientiane's Presidential Palace.

The meeting comes after their previous encounter in Hanoi on April 25 which came during Bounnhang's state visit to Vietnam after both men were elevated to respective leadership positions in the two countries.

According to Lao News Agency KPL, the state visit from June 12-14 is "to enhance the longstanding friendly relations, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between Laos and Vietnam."

The Vietnamese president also held talks with' Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith and National Assembly President Pany Yathotou.
DHAKA, June 12 (Xinhua) -- A Bangladesh minister said on Sunday that Facebook, Google and Microsoft have agreed to share information related to any "unexpected incidents" with the Bangladeshi government.

"Facebook, Google and Microsoft have agreed to provide us information on any unexpected incident within 48 hours after we request them," said Bangladeshi State Minister for Post and Telecommunication Tarana Halim during a question-answer session in the parliament on Sunday.

Bangladesh has been facing a surge in instances of abuse on social media platforms. Against this backdrop, the government has reportedly asked the leading social media platforms to share information related to any "unexpected incidents" with the Bangladeshi government.

According to sources, a section of foreigners with their local cohorts have long been swindling people and stealing money using various methods on social networking sites including Facebook.

A few months back Bangladesh's anti-crime elite force Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) detained 14 people including 12 foreign nationals for committing crimes using different social media platforms in the country.
BEIJING, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Imagine a court trial online -- not only a live broadcast of a hearing, but a court debate in an online chat room with the plaintiff, defendant and judge all sitting before computer screens.

As part of the program to reform China's judicial system, courts in northeast China's Jilin Province are trying to join the "Internet Plus" strategy by bringing the entire court procedures online.

No need to exchange stacks of paper evidence, the two sides of a lawsuit simply have to confirm or debate on evidence that has been scanned and submitted to the court.

"Thanks to the exchange of digital evidence during pretrial procedures, which enables litigants to be better prepared, court trials have been shortened," said Li Bin, a civil tribunal judge at a court in Jilin's Jiaohe City.

The province is piloting the application of Internet technology in court trials.

Wang Hui, a lawyer with Songcheng Law Firm in Jilin, is also a beneficiary of the digital court trials. Instead of having to spend hours on a court trial, a recent case opened online only took 20 minutes.

Wang's client, a farmer identified only by his surname -- Duan, admitted that although the final ruling was "not satisfying" to him, he had nothing to complain about the court procedure.

"All evidence and supporting materials were submitted and disclosed online to all parties involved. Significantly reducing opportunities for foul play."

In fact, the entire court procedure, from the case filing to court order enforcement, has gone digital in Jilin, making legal action much easier.

"Disputes in rural areas used to be a headache," said Wang, who in the past had to travel between his office, courts and his clients' homes multiple times to collect the evidence and documentation needed to file a case.

"In the past, to successfully file a case at the court takes at least a week," Wang said. Now, it is just a few clicks on the computer.

After paying the litigation fee with mobile payment services on his smartphone, Wang received a text message informing him that his case had been accepted by the court.

In addition to expediting judicial action, court order enforcement procedures, such as property auction, have been brought online -- limiting corruption, and ensuring transparency, fairness and efficiency, according to Zhang Qiwen, head of the enforcement department of Jilin Higher People's Court.

Since the online judicial platform was launched on June 19 last year, courts in Jilin have received 64,270 cases and concluded 29,233 trials via the Internet.
A Ghanaian student writes in traditional Chinese calligraphy with the help of a Chinese teacher at a Confucius Institute Day event hosted by the Confucius Institute at the University of Ghana on September 25, 2015. (Xinhua/Lin Xiaowei) ACCRA, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The Confucius Institute of University of Ghana is set to construct its model institute at the university's campus in Legon, through the joint efforts of the university and the Institute's headquarters in Beijing. The institute has made giant strides since its inception two years ago, helping to promote the spread of the Chinese language which has become popular to many Ghanaians. It has not only set up several teaching branches and created a variety of courses, but also played a leading role in organizing several cultural events widely welcomed by Ghanaians. Presently, the institute is located in the Reginald Amonoo building at the university's Department of Modern Languages, but has over the period outgrown the space it occupies. The construction of the edifice will further bridge the existing friendship between the two countries, said Mei Meilian, Director of the Institute. She said the new Confucius institute building would add further depths to the campus of the University of Ghana. "Looking forward, the Confucius Institute will continue to realize the potential by expanding its core function to promote the teaching of the Chinese language and spreading Chinese culture with our view to becoming the bridge of friendship between China and Ghana," said Mei. Two Ghanaian students dressed Chinese drama costume perform traditional Chinese Yue opera at the 15th Chinese Bridge Preliminary Competition for non-Chinese college students organized by the Confucius Institute at the University of Ghana in the city of Legon on April 8, 2016. (Xinhua/Lin Xiaowei) The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Ernest Aryeetey, believes the building of the model school couldn't have come at a more opportune time. He hopes that, upon completion of the project, the Institute will become a world class centre of excellence with state-of-the-art facilities, which will serve as a hub for the promotion, teaching and learning not only of Chinese language and culture but also of Chinese traditional medicine and martial arts such as Taichi. He appealed to all stakeholders who had contributed to the success of the Institute over the last two years to continue to give it their support as it entered a new phase. The teaching of Chinese language has been included in the curricula of the University of Ghana Basic School and parents have given their full backing to the idea. Nana Ama Agyemang, a parent, said through her children's involvement in Chinese activities and the Chinese lessons received in the classroom, the children are learning a new language and culture which would give them an advantage not only in their education but also in their careers in years to come. "Indeed, as our children are being exposed to the Chinese language and culture, we the parents are also benefiting indirectly," she said.
HOUSTON, June 11 (Xinhua) -- About 1,000 people from across the United States on Saturday took to streets in downtown Houston, the fourth largest U.S. city, to protest against deportation of undocumented immigrants under a controversial government program.

Undocumented immigrant youth leaders, students and their supporters marched from Discovery Green, a popular park for Houstonians, to the Harris County Sheriff's Office, advocating for giving young immigrants a chance to realize the "American Dream," according to local daily the Houston Chronicle.

Wearing orange shirts reading "Undocumented and here to stay," protestors shouted chants such as "I am somebody" and "We are the mighty, mighty immigrants".

The gathering was part of a national conference for young Hispanics entitled United We Dream Congress 2016, the largest immigration event of its kind in the country where an estimated 1.4 million people are dubbed dreamers, meaning they came to America without authorization.

They are eligible for work permits and have their deportation put off under U.S. President Barack Obama's executive order, called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

Currently, around 68,000 immigrants are believed to be eligible DACA holders in the Harris County, which detains and deports more immigrants than almost any other counties under the government program known as 287(g), which made rapid deportations of such immigrants possible.

Before the march, Jorge Ramos, a well-known Mexican-born American journalist who accused Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump of "spreading hate" with his calls for mass deportations of undocumented families and for repealing birthright citizenship, called on participants to speak up on the issue.

"You've heard from Donald Trump that we're criminals, and that's not true," Ramos said, "I think hatred and racism is contagious. Because a politician is saying something racist, many Americans feel it's legitimate."
ORLANDO, June 12, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Photo provided by Orlando Police Department shows police cars and fire trucks gather outside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the United States, June 12, 2016. About 20 people were killed and 42 others wounded early Sunday morning in a shooting incident at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida said local police. (Xinhua/Orlando Police Department)

WASHINGTON, June 12 (Xinhua) -- At least 42 people were taken to hospitals after the shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando in the state of Florida early Sunday, leaving multiple fatalities, said Orlando Police Chief John Mina.

The police twittered earlier that the gunman was dead.
ORLANDO, June 12, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Photo provided by Orlando Police Department shows policemen gather outside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the United States, June 12, 2016. About 20 people were killed and 42 others wounded early Sunday morning in a shooting incident at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida said local police. (Xinhua/Orlando Police Department)

WASHINGTON, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Around 20 people were killed in a shooting incident at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida early Sunday, according to the latest update by the police chief.

The police said the gunman was dead, and at least 42 people have been taken to hospitals after the shooting.
XIAMEN, June 12, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Yu Zhengsheng , chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, addresses the opening ceremony of the eighth Straits Forum in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province, June 12, 2016. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

XIAMEN, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Young entrepreneurs, village chiefs, night market vendors, dispute mediators, meteorologists, among others, are attending an annual cross-Strait exchange event in Xiamen City.

The Straits Forum that began on Sunday in Fujian Province, identified by many people in Taiwan as their ancestral home, is a place to discuss business, friendship and even to find long-lost relatives.

Relations across the Taiwan Strait are at complicated juncture, but the annual forum continues as normal.

With Tsai Ing-wen taking office as Taiwan's new leader, the direction of cross-Strait relationship is unclear. This year's forum is seen as a barometer for how ordinary people feel about the situation.

To the casual observer, the event looks better than ever, with new activities including innovation and youth entrepreneurship forums.

China's top political advisor Yu Zhengsheng told the opening ceremony on Sunday morning that the more complicated cross-Strait relations become, the more ordinary people need to get together. Yu believes that a better future requires peace and cooperation across the board.

Relations have come a long way since the mainland and Taiwan began to talk seriously to one another in 1987. A new phase of friendly interaction began in 2008, with the first Straits Forum held the following year. In 2015, mutual visits across the Strait exceeded 100 million persons.

The mainland has done a lot to make it easier for mainlanders to visit the island and for islanders to come ashore. A plethora of policies, most notably removing entry permit barriers for Taiwan residents, show the mainland walking the walk.

On Sunday, Yu made it clear that the mainland would continue to make it easier for Taiwan's people to live and work on the mainland if they chose, and would support Taiwan's businesses on the mainland in restructuring and joining in the Belt and Road Initiative.

Besides, Yu said, the mainland is happy that so many young people from Taiwan want to study, work and start businesses or families on the mainland, and looks forward to better cooperation in science and technology, as well as more academic exchanges.

Changes may take place in Taiwan's political landscape, but as the bonds of business, amity and family between compatriots grow stronger, the momentum will become irresistible.

The door will not close, but open wider.

Related:

Top political advisor attends key cross-Strait event in Xiamen

XIAMEN, June 12 (Xinhua) - Top political advisor Yu Zhengsheng attended the opening ceremony of the eighth Straits Forum held in Xiamen on Sunday, and delivered a speech.

Yu, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said the mainland has attached great importance to proposals of Taiwan compatriots for easier traveling-around on the mainland, and it will put forward implementation measures as soon as possible. Full Story

China Voice: One China principle, touchstone for Taiwan's new leader

BEIJING, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Taiwan's new leader Tsai Ing-wen made a painful effort not to answer one important question in her Friday speech, whether or not to acknowledge the 1992 Consensus embodying the one China principle.
BEIJING, June 12, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Liu Yunshan (2nd L), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, meets with group members publicizing the deeds of Li Baoguo, a late forestry professor who championed poverty alleviation through afforestation, before a seminar on Li's work at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, June 12, 2016. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

BEIJING, June 12 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping has praised the deeds of a late forestry professor, who championed poverty alleviation through afforestation, saying he should be a role model for members of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Xi made the remarks in an instruction in praise of Li Baoguo, who taught at Hebei Agricultural University. Xi called him an excellent intellectual and likened him to the "foolish old man on the Taihang Mountains," a character in a Chinese fable who relentlessly tried to remove the mountains in front of his house.

Xi urged party members, cadres, educators and scientists to learn from Li, whose tireless, selfless work and spirit was for the masses.

Li will be remembered as a man who was not afraid of getting his hands dirty, as he would spend more than half the year directly involved in afforestation projects and worked closely with villagers to help them lift themselves out of poverty.

He successfully afforested more than 93,000 hectares of barren mountains and helped 100,000 farmers out of poverty.

He died of heart attack on April 10. He was 58.

Li was posthumously awarded the title of "Excellent CPC Member," the top award an individual can receive for deeds that serve the people or the state.

A seminar about Li's work was held on Sunday afternoon in Beijing.

Liu Yunshan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, met with the members of a group publicizing Li's deeds.

Liu expressed his condolences to Li's family members and presented them with Li's certificate of excellence.

Liu said at the meeting that Li's deeds showed the CPC purpose of serving the people, asking all Party members to implement Xi's instruction and learn from Li Baoguo.

Liu urged Party members to make contributions to the cause of the Party and the people, build a benign image of honesty, uprightness and dedication, and asked Party organizations at all levels to make Li a role model in a bid to ask Party members to learn from him and play as role models themselves.

Liu also called for learning from Li's deeds to lift more people out of poverty, and better support economic and social development. He asked publicity departments and the press to advocate Li's work.

The seminar was co-sponsored by the CPC Central Committee's Organization Department and Publicity Department, the Ministry of Education and the CPC Hebei Provincial Committee.
DUBAI, June 12 (Xinhua) -- A military helicopter of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Armed Forces has crashed into the sea in an apparent accident in the Persian Gulf, killing both the pilot and the assistant onboard, the UAE military announced on Sunday.

The General Command of the UAE Armed Forces in Abu Dhabi said in a statement quoted by UAE state news agency WAM that the crash occurred during a "routine flight in international waters" in the Persian Gulf.

No further details were given on the type of helicopter involved, nor the exact location and the time of the crash.

The crash marked the second accident of this kind in the UAE within just one month.

On May 15, a UAE military aircraft crashed during a training flight in the country, resulting in the death of the crew which consisted of a pilot and an instructor.
AMMAN, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Jordan's Islamic Action Front (IAF) said Sunday it will take part in the upcoming parliamentary elections slated for September 20, according to IAF leader.

Mohammad Zyoud, secretary general of the IAF, which is the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, said the decision was taken after calls on the party to engage in the political life in Jordan.

The Islamists boycotted two previous elections on accusation of vote rigging by the authorities.

"We stress on the need that the elections are partial and objective," Zyoud said in a press conference Sunday.

The government has recently set September 20th as the date to elect the 130-member lower house.

The IAF is the only legitimate entity representing the seven-decade-old group that has been labeled illegal recently after authorities shut down its offices across the country.
ORLANDO, June 12, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Photo provided by Orlando Police Department shows police cars and fire trucks gather outside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the United States, June 12, 2016. About 20 people were killed and 42 others wounded early Sunday morning in a shooting incident at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida said local police. (Xinhua/Orlando Police Department)

WASHINGTON, June 12 (Xinhua) -- About 20 people were killed and 42 others wounded early Sunday morning in a shooting incident at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida said local police.

The gunman was found dead inside the Pulse nightclub after a shootout with the police, according to Orlando Police Chief John Mina.

"It appeared he was organized and well-prepared," said Mina at a press conference, adding that the suspect had an assault-type weapon and a handgun.

FBI spokesman Danny Banks said at the press conference that the mass shooting was being investigated as an act of terrorism.

The shooting began around 2:00 a.m. local time (0600 GMT) inside the club and there once was a confrontation between the suspect and an officer working at the club outside the venue, according to local police.

Then the suspect went back into the club to continue shooting and took hostages.

About three hours after the shooting first broke out, police shot and killed the suspect during actions to rescue the hostages, said Mina.

The Pulse describes itself as "the hottest gay bar" in Orlando, according to its website.
KUNMING, June 12, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang addresses the opening ceremony of the fourth China-South Asia Exposition in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, June 12, 2016. (Xinhua/Lin Yiguang)

KUNMING, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Vice Premier Wang Yang stressed that China wants to enhance cooperation with Maldives, Nepal, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos as he met with leaders of the South Asian countries here on Sunday.

The leaders were attending the opening ceremony of the Fourth China-South Asia Exposition in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province.

Wang told Maldives President Abdulla Yameen's special envoy Abdulla Maseeh Mohamed, speaker of the People's Majlis, that China is willing to synergize the two countries' development strategies under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative.

China and Maldives can deepen economic, trade and investment cooperation, further promote negotiation on bilateral free trade agreement, push forward collaboration in infrastructure construction as well as boost tourism cooperation, according to Wang.

When meeting with Nepal's Vice President Nanda Bahadur Pun, Wang stressed that China is willing to work with Nepal to steadily push forward bilateral cooperation in transport, free trade, inter-connectivity, energy and other areas.

Wang told Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung that China stands ready to work with Vietnam to fully implement the important consensus reached by the two countries' leaders, enhance strategic communication, promote cooperation in infrastructure, agriculture, border trade, finance and other areas.

China wants a balanced and sustainable trade ties with Vietnam, said Wang, calling on the two neighbors to expand people-to-people exchanges.

When meeting with Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Hor Nam Hong, Wang called on both countries to maintain high-level contact, link development strategies, enhance cooperation in industrial capacity, infrastructure, agriculture, culture, education, health care, tourism and other fields.

Wang told Lao Deputy Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone that both sides can strengthen high-level communication and exchanges of governing experience, push forward cooperation in industrial capacity, investment, economic cooperation zones, infrastructure and promote local-level ties.
Ma Xinmin (R), deputy director-general of Chinese Foreign Ministry's Department of Law and Treaty, poses for photos with Kazuko Shiraishi (L), Japan's ambassador in charge of Arctic affairs, and South Korean Arctic Affairs Ambassador Kim Chan-woo during the 1st Trilateral High-Level Dialogue on the Arctic in Seoul, capital of South Korea, April 28, 2016. (Xinhua)

ROVANIEMI, Finland, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The once tranquil European Arctic region has seen more and more tourists coming from other parts of the world.

Among the mysterious and romantic attractions are aurora borealis, polar bears, the Arctic Ocean, ice hotels, Santa Claus, indigenous culture, and various snow activities.

DRIVER OF GROWTH

The Finnish Lapland, for example, used to be inhabited only by Sami people who raise reindeer for a living. Nowadays, its capital city Rovaniemi has been packed with first class hotels and log cabin resorts.

Despite the thousands of beds in and around the town, said to be the authentic home of Santa Claus, it could be extremely difficult to find a place to stay overnight if one visitor comes at Christmas or New Year without booking accommodation in advance.

These years, another peak time has emerged as Chinese families begin to celebrate their traditional Spring Festival traveling abroad.

The Lapland area has suffered a lack of labor force as a result of great emigration. Today, local residents, including the Sami people, take up the new career either as a hotel manager, a safari operator, a craft designer, or a skidoo trainer.

Professional tourism courses are given in colleges and schools. Tourism has become one of the pillar industries in this "city right on the Arctic Circle".

While tourism has proved to be a driver of growth for the nations in the Arctic region, the tourist operators face common challenges as how to to maintain the steady flow of tourists throughout the year, how to get visitors to stay longer and how to encourage them to return, said Rauno Posio, member of the Arctic Economic Council.

Tourism businesses in the north are usually small in size, with very limited marketing resources, Posio said at the 4th China-Nordic Arctic Symposium in Rovaniemi earlier this week. Thus he led a project to find out ways to combine resources and facilitate greater visibility and awareness for the joint attractions of the region.

Posio believed by the year 2050, the number of international tourists will double, and the Arctic tourism is surely taking on a positive trend. However, things cannot be taken for granted, as sustainability remains a top concern, noted Posio.

BIGGER NUMBERS, GREATER RISKS

When a small number of tourists come to a remote Arctic village, they may bring new practices and new culture to the local community, said Daniela Tommasini, a senior lecturer at the Multidimensional Tourism Institute in Rovaniemi.

Tommasini conducted field research for years in Greenland, and found out how great the impact a cruise ship carrying hundreds of passengers could bring to the local community even if it stayed for only six to eight hours.

"They were so confused" and they might "not be willing to have tourists" any more, Tommasini told Xinhua.

Ilona Mettiainen, researcher of Arctic Centre of University of Lapland, said excessive growth of tourism may have adverse effects on the environment, such as its amenity values or biodiversity, or lead to competition on land-use between local residents' livelihoods and tourism facilities, or to crowding of some popular sites.

"One of the problems is taking pictures," said Tommasini. "Taking pictures all the time about the children, about the dogs, about this and that, and sometimes tourists are a bit too much invading into the private areas."

With the fast growth of Arctic tourism imminent, Tommasini voiced her concern.

"The bigger numbers of the tourists, the bigger problems," she said. Tommasini believed it is the capacity of the local community to say where the limit is.

"You have to foresee or plan a regulation," noted Tommasini. She reminded the best solution is to get local inhabitant involved.

However, such a regulation is not in place at least in the international level.

"It should be up to operators to self-regulate," said Johan Edelheim, director of Multidimensional Tourism Institute.

He said the operators should be provided with hard evidence of what negative impacts and irresponsible practice would have on their long-term business success. "It should be possible to convince most of them of the need to tread carefully."

Some regulations exist already at different places in the world, but only at places with local operators, Edelheim told Xinhua.
NAIROBI, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank will finance various energy, water and infrastructure projects in northern Kenya worth 1.1 billion U.S. dollars totally, an official has said.

State House spokesman Manoah Esipisu told journalists on Sunday that the government was committed to the development of the northern region where World Bank will launch its Northeastern Kenya Development Initiative.

His remarks came after visiting World Bank Vice-President for Africa Region, Mokhtar Diop, held talks with President Uhuru Kenyatta in Nairobi on Sunday.

Espisu said World Bank will finance an Offgrid Solar Energy Access project, which will provide solar energy access to households, public institutions such as health centers, educational institutions in 14 counties in northern Kenya.

"Key features of the program include incentivizing private companies to expand into these counties, developing mechanisms to make solar products more affordable to consumers without distorting the commercial market and supporting the enforcement of quality standards for solar products," he said.

He added the project was expected to create jobs in operation and maintenance of the solar systems to youth.

World Bank will also finance a Climate Smart Agriculture project which is expected to increase agricultural productivity and build resilience to climate risks among smallholder farming and pastoral communities in northern Kenya.

"Farmers and pastoralists will be assisted with improved agricultural technologies, innovations and management practices. It will also improve access to quality agro-weather and market information to enable farmers and herders to make decisions that are more economically advantageous," Esipisu said.

The program will also support the strengthening of crop and livestock insurance to reduce production risks, he said.

The bank will also finance the construction of a 500 million dollar Isiolo-Mandera Road, which will be a critical road for opening up northeastern Kenya and connecting it to central Kenya.

"This intervention is conceived as a development corridor and as such, fiber optic cables will be provided to ensure the region's digital connection and airstrips will also be built for flight connections," Esipisu said.s.

Another World Bank-financed road project -- the construction of a portion of the 258 km Eldoret-Juba Road stretch -- will begin in August.

"The World Bank is financing the development of 5 mini grids in Tana River, Turkana and Marsabit counties, which are expected to be commissioned by August 2017," said the spokesman.

He said the minigrids will be powered by hybrid generation systems (mostly solar PV and diesel) and will supply villages of 150 to 400 households that cannot be economically served by the national grid in the short and medium term.
A representative from China COSCO Shipping (L, front) reacts during the draw ceremony in Panama City, capital of Panama, on April 29, 2016. China COSCO Shipping won the draw to inaugurate the Expanded Panama Canal this June with one of its mega vessels, the Panama Canal Authority announced. (Xinhua/Mauricio Valenzuela)

by Maria Spiliopoulou

ATHENS, June 12 (Xinhua) -- COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA, the vessel that was selected to make the first historic transit through the expanded Panama Canal later this June, berthed at Piraeus port and left Greece on Saturday with the best wishes of Panama Canal Authority officials and China COSCO Shipping Corporation Limited top managers for the landmark sail.

On June 26 the China COSCO Shipping Corporation Limited operated ship which is owned by American-based MC-Seamax and chartered to COSCO SHIPPING Lines, will be the first and only "Neopanamax" vessel that will go through the new lock at the Panama Canal.

The 299.99-meter-long container vessel with a carrying capacity of 9,443 TEUs will be recorded into the international shipping history during a ceremony attended by heads of states and major maritime stakeholders that will mark the conclusion of a nine- year project.

On Saturday during a reception and tour on the vessel at the premises of China COSCO Shipping's subsidiary Piraeus Container Terminal (PCT) at Greece's largest port, the Indian captain of the vessel, Jude Sebastian Rodrigues, Weng Lin, Vice President of COSCO Container Lines Europe and Panama Canal Administrator Jorge Luis Quijano briefed Xinhua and local media on the ship's history and operations, its milestone passage and the significance for Panama, COSCO and the global shipping industry.

The Marshall Islands-flagged vessel was built in the Hyundai Samho Shipyard in South Korea and delivered on Jan. 15, 2016. Currently, it is in service in the route from the Far East to the Black Sea with a 22-member crew.

Currently, the ship is in service in the route from the Far East to the Black Sea. In this special historic voyage, the COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA set out from Dalian Port on April 23, and it is expected to arrive in Shanghai on Aug. 6. From Piraeus, it sails directly to Panama to pass through the canal within about 12 hours and then stop at South Korea before reaching Shanghai.

"It is a great honor for me to be Captain of the COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA. Having the vessel selected to make the first transit across the Canal is an honor not only for the vessel and its crew, but also for COSCO SHIPPING and all its employees working on board and at sea," Captain Rodrigues said.

"The inauguration of the Canal in itself is a significant event and marks a milestone in the development of the global shipping industry. We are full of excitement and expectation for this ceremony, feeling glorious about being able to have the opportunity witnessing this historic event," he stressed.

The captain also noted that as one of the most important shipping passages in the world, the Panama Canal plays an important role in the development of global trade and its expansion reflects the industry's efforts to follow the trend of mega ships against the background of globalization by upgrading global maritime infrastructure.

Speaking to Xinhua during Saturday's event, Panama Canal Administrator Jorge Luis Quijano hailed the completion of the major project as the start of a new era for Panama and the global shipping industry and trade, as it provides to all sides a great opportunity for further growth.

"We believe it is an opportunity for Panama to grow further. The canal had reached its point of almost no further go unless we expanded it. Now we can almost double the capacity of the canal with this new system that we have installed," he explained.

"I think the opportunity we offer to the shipping community is that now we are able to offer a new product that means you can have a different packaging, you can bring a big vessel instead of a Panamax which is 4,000 TEU, you can go all the way to 14,000 TEU vessels," he stressed.

There is already big interest in transits through the new locks, he said. The Panama Canal Administration has already received bookings for the next 90 days for at least 120 transits and most ships are containers of more than 8,000 TEUs.

Regarding the selection process for the first historic passage on June 26, Quijano said that the "ship was selected by itself." The COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA was a vessel that was meeting all criteria set by the Authority when they informed their top 16 customers on the inauguration ceremony. COSCO is one of the canal's top ten customers.

Weng told Xinhua that PCT is a major part in the "Belt and Road" initiative and COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA's sailing from PCT for the expanded Panama Canal inauguration marks a major step for the company to explore further the global shipping market.

COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA is the first vessel with the logo of "COSCO SHIPPING" after the establishment of China COSCO Shipping Corporation Limited through the merger and restructuring of COSCO Group and China Shipping Group on Feb. 18, 2016.

For COSCO Shipping the expansion and upgrade of Panama Canal will also support the company in expanding its global business and improving its overall customer service.
FALLUJAH, May 30, 2016 (Xinhua) -- A fighter from a Shiite paramilitary group, known as Hashd Shaabi, stands near a tank in the frontline to fight against Islamic State (IS) in Saqlawiyah, in northwest of Fallujah city, Iraq , on May 30, 2016. Iraqi security forces on Monday launched the final stage of an offensive aimed at freeing the city of Fallujah and nearby areas from Islamic State (IS) militants, security sources said. (Xinhua file photo/Khalil Dawood)

MOSUL, Iraq, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi security forces successfully carried out an operation to free villages from Islamic State (IS) militants in the south of the IS-held city of Mosul, a military statement said.

Iraq's army along with Kurdish security forces, known as the Peshmerga, supported by the U.S.-led coalition air fleet, attacked IS posts at a village cluster scattered in the east of the militant-seized town of Qayyara, 50 km south of Mosul, the capital of Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, said the Operations Command of Nineveh Liberation's media office in a statement.

The troops and their armored vehicles engaged in heavy clashes with IS militants in several villages east of the River Tigris, including the village of Kharaib Jabur, which the troops managed to reclaim, according to the statement.

Meanwhile confrontations continued along the edges of the adjacent IS stronghold of the village of Haj Ali, the statement said.

Clashes in Kharaib Jabur village killed at least 25 IS militants and destroyed four of their vehicles, the statement added.

Simultaneously, the international coalition war fleet carried out airstrikes against IS posts in both the villages of Kharaib Jabur and Haj Ali, destroying one of IS's headquarters, two factories full of booby-trapped vehicles in addition to two car bombs, according to the statement.

Sunday's operation is the first phase of a major offensive launched in late March, where troops managed to reach several villages scattered in the south and east of Mosul.

The latest operation aimed to free the town of Qayyara in order to be able to surround Mosul from both the south and east, before heading towards Mosul in order to flush out IS militants from the city, which lies 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

Mosul has been under IS control since June 2014, when Iraqi government forces surprisingly abandoned their weapons and posts and fled.
Fighters from a Shiite paramilitary units, known as Hashd Shaabi, are seen on the frontline to fight against Islamic State (IS) in Harariyat village on the outskirts of Fallujah city in Iraq's western Anbar province, on May 28, 2016. (Xinhua Photo)

MOSUL, Iraq, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi security forces successfully carried out an operation to free villages from Islamic State (IS) militants in the south of the IS-held city of Mosul, a military statement said.

Iraq's army along with Kurdish security forces, known as the Peshmerga, supported by the U.S.-led coalition air fleet, attacked IS posts at a village cluster scattered in the east of the militant-seized town of Qayyara, 50 km south of Mosul, the capital of Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, said the Operations Command of Nineveh Liberation's media office in a statement.

The troops and their armored vehicles engaged in heavy clashes with IS militants in several villages east of the River Tigris, including the village of Kharaib Jabur, which the troops managed to reclaim, according to the statement.

Meanwhile confrontations continued along the edges of the adjacent IS stronghold of the village of Haj Ali, the statement said.

Clashes in Kharaib Jabur village killed at least 25 IS militants and destroyed four of their vehicles, the statement added.

Simultaneously, the international coalition war fleet carried out airstrikes against IS posts in both the villages of Kharaib Jabur and Haj Ali, destroying one of IS's headquarters, two factories full of booby-trapped vehicles in addition to two car bombs, according to the statement.

Sunday's operation is the first phase of a major offensive launched in late March, where troops managed to reach several villages scattered in the south and east of Mosul.

The latest operation aimed to free the town of Qayyara in order to be able to surround Mosul from both the south and east, before heading towards Mosul in order to flush out IS militants from the city, which lies 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

Mosul has been under IS control since June 2014, when Iraqi government forces surprisingly abandoned their weapons and posts and fled.
BEIJING, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel said here on Sunday that her country stands ready to have closer cooperation with China in hosting the G20 summit and in peacekeeping in Mali.

The pledge came as Merkel started her ninth trip to China since she took office in 2005.

Delivering a speech in the university of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, she said that Germany will be working closely with China, the host of this year's G20 summit, on the ambitious goals and rich agenda for the event.

Germany will host the 2017 G20 summit.

Germany welcomes China's bigger role in international organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, Merkel said, adding that China should also accept responsibilities in proportion to its economic power.

She proposed that the two countries deepen cooperation in crisis management, such as disaster relief in Afghanistan and peacekeeping in Mali.

"We are especially willing to cooperate with China in Mali where Germany has our own footprints," she said.

On June 1, a Chinese member of a United Nations mission in the western African country was killed and four others were injured in an attack.

On Sunday, Merkel received an honorary doctorate in Beijing from Nanjing University, one of the oldest and most prestigious in the country.

During her three-day trip, the German leader is scheduled to co-chair a bilateral consultation with Chinese leader.

The China-Germany intergovernmental consultation, established in 2011, is a dialogue mechanism aimed at coordinating and enhancing cooperation between the two countries. More than 20 ministers and vice ministers from both sides are expected to attend this year's session.

The relationship between China and Germany, the world's second and fourth largest economies, has witnessed a rapid development with frequent high-level exchanges.In March, German President Joachim Gauck visited China, strengthening political mutual trust.

China has said that a closer bilateral coordination in both global and regional affairs are expected to serve the fundamental interests of both countries and benefit the China-EU relations and promote peace and prosperity in the world at large.

Merkel will also visit Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province.
ORLANDO, June 12, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Photo provided by Orlando Police Department shows police officers at the site of the shooting incident in Orlando, Florida, the United States, June 12, 2016. About 50 people were killed and 53 others wounded early Sunday morning in a shooting incident at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, according to Orlando mayor. (Xinhua/Orlando Police Department)

WASHINGTON, June 12 (Xinhua) -- U.S. authorities are trying to determine the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida early Sunday is a terrorist act or hate crime.

Fifty people were killed and 53 others wounded early Sunday in the shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer told a news conference.

"Today we're dealing with something that we never imagined and is unimaginable," Dyer said.

The gunman, identified as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida, was found dead inside the Pulse nightclub after a shootout with the police, according to Orlando Police Chief John Mina.

The shooting began around 2:00 a.m. local time (0600 GMT) inside the club and there once was a confrontation between the suspect and an officer working at the club outside the venue, according to local police.

Then the suspect went back into the club to continue shooting and took hostages.

About three hours after the shooting first broke out, police shot and killed the suspect during actions to rescue the hostages, said Mina.

"It appeared he was organized and well-prepared," said Mina at a earlier press conference, adding that the suspect had an assault-type weapon and a handgun.

Danny Banks, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), said that the shooting, the deadliest in a single shooting in the U.S. history, was being investigated as an act of terrorism.

"Do we consider this an act of terrorism? Absolutely, we are investigating this from all parties' perspective as an act of terrorism," said Banks.

Ronald Hopper, an assistant FBI agent in charge, said the authorities now had "suggestions that the individual may have leanings toward" ideology held by the Islamic State (IS) extremist group.

But he added that "right now we can't say definitively."

Reports said the parents of Mateen, a 29-year-old U.S.-born citizen, were from Afghanistan.

ABC News quoted U.S. law enforcement officials as saying that Mateen was "on the radar" of U.S. officials for some time, but he was not the target of a specific investigation.

U.S. President Barack Obama was briefed by his homeland security and counterterrorism advisor Lisa Monaco on the tragic shooting, the White House said in a statement.

Obama asked for regular updates on the investigation, while directing that the federal government provide any assistance necessary to pursue the investigation and support the community.

Gun violence in the United States has in recent years grabbed headlines nationwide and worldwide, especially such cases as the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 in Connecticut, in which 20-year-old Adam Lanza entered an elementary school and fatally shot 20 children as well as six adult staff members.

Additionally, the United States has seen a number of cases of multi-victim shootings, such as a mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado in 2012. A gunman entered a movie theater and murdered 12 people and injured 70 others.

But despite these and other incidents, powerful gun lobbying groups such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) have successively blocked Congress to pass any bills to curb gun rights.

So far gun violence has not been a major political issue during this election season. It remains unknown if the latest shooting will ignite heated debate on gun violence among the presidential candidates.

The NRA has endorsed Republican nominee Donald Trump, who attacked his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for trying to curb the gun rights of U.S. citizens endowed by the Constitution.

Meanwhile, IS radicals are calling on followers to hit the United States and Europe during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which starts last week.

In a recording released online in later May, IS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani called for launching further terror attacks against Western targets.

U.S. authorities have been on high alert against terror attacks since the shooting last December in San Bernadino, California, where an armed radicalized couple killed 14 people in an act of terrorism.

Indeed, U.S. intelligence and police leaders have always warned about the danger of "lone wolf" attacks in the United States by terror groups or radicalized individuals.

James Clapper, director of U.S. National Intelligence, warned at a Senate hearing in February that IS is the U.S. "number one terrorist threat," as it was attempting to launch direct attacks on the U.S. homeland in 2016.
KATHMANDU, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Former Prime Minister of Nepal Dr Baburam Bhattarai on Sunday announced the establishment of a new political party under his leadership with the agenda of economic prosperity of the Himalayan nation.

Bhattarai's new party is named as "Naya Shakti," which means New Force in English.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony at the presence of thousands of well-wishers, party cadres and various political party leaders at Dasarath Stadium here in the capital, Bhattarai declared that his party has given top most priority to economic development of the country.

"We can make Nepal one of the richest nations of the world within period of 25 years by developing it as a bridge between the global economies China and India," Bhattarai said while addressing the inaugural session.

Bhattarai had announced his resignation as the Vice-president of the Unified CPN Maoist in last September, ending a 25-year-long affiliation with the party, following a serious rift with the party Chairman Puspa Kamal Dahal.

Bhattarai, who is regarded as a mastermind of 10-year-long Maoist insurgency from 1996 to 2006, was elected as the country's 35th prime minister in 2011.

After administering the 10-point-oath to members of the new party Sunday, Bhattarai said that "New Force Nepal" would work to protect national independence, inclusive democracy and republicanism.

Stating that his party is different from other political parties, Bhattarai stressed on ensuring proportional representation of all communities including Arya, Indigenous Nationalities and Madhesis to achieve peace and stability in the nation.

Bhattarai further expressed a commitment to respect and promote rights of all social groups and to work for the welfare of next generations. The new political force has claimed of having more than 100,000 members across the nation including intellectuals, experts and civil society leaders.

Leaders of major political parties including Nepalese Prime Minster KP Sharma Oli had attended the party announcement ceremony.

There have been mixed responses in Nepal over the emergence of the new party under Bhattarai's leadership.

On her Twitter Post, Saraswati Subba, a renowned civil society activist in Nepal, doubt over the new party's success on its mission.

On his Twitter Post, Former Finance Minister Dr. Ramsharan Mahat has welcomed the party's vision to achieve economic prosperity in the country.
BEIJING, June 12, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on her visit to China for the fourth round of China-Germany intergovernmental consultation in Beijing, capital of China, June 12, 2016. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)

BEIJING, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Premier Li Keqiang told visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel here on Sunday that China is confident in the future of China-Germany relations, calling on both sides to create new energy for cooperation.

Li met with Merkel, on her ninth visit to China from Sunday to Tuesday, at the Summer Palace in the suburb of Beijing.

During the visit, the two heads of government are scheduled to co-chair the fourth round of China-Germany intergovernmental consultation.

Hailing the progress of bilateral ties, Li stressed that both countries should use innovation to expand their common interests and create new areas of cooperation.

In the upcoming meeting, China is ready to make in-depth exchanges of views with Germany on the integration of China's "Made In China 2025" blueprint and Germany's "Industrial 4.0" strategy, bilateral cooperation in the third-party market, intelligent manufacturing, innovation, entrepreneurship and other fields, Li said.

China welcomes more investment from Germany and other countries, Li added.

The premier also called on the two countries to enhance communication and collaboration in the Group of 20 (G20) to jointly promote global economic growth as well as safeguard world peace and stability.

Merkel spoke highly of the sound development of bilateral ties with China.

As an important mechanism between the two countries, the intergovernmental consultation has promoted the comprehensive development of bilateral cooperation in various fields, said Merkel.

She said Germany is willing to work with China to implement the Program of Action for China-Germany Cooperation issued during the third round intergovernmental consultation in Germany in 2014, and to hold a successful fourth round of consultation in Beijing.

Earlier in the day, Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a meeting with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier on a series of issues of shared interest.
Photo provided byOrlando Police Department shows police cars and fire trucks gather outside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the United States, June 12, 2016. About 20 people were killed and 42 others wounded early Sunday morning in a shooting incident at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida said local police. (Xinhua/Orlando Police Department)

WASHINGTON, June 12 (Xinhua) -- U.S. authorities are trying to determine the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida early Sunday is a terrorist act or hate crime.

Fifty people were killed and 53 others wounded early Sunday in the shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer told a news conference.

"Today we're dealing with something that we never imagined and is unimaginable," Dyer said.

The gunman, identified as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida, was found dead inside the Pulse nightclub after a shootout with the police, according to Orlando Police Chief John Mina.

Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club, where as many as 20 people have been injured after a gunman opened fire, in Orlando, Florida, U.S June 12, 2016. (REUTERS/Steve Nesius)

The shooting began around 2:00 a.m. local time (0600 GMT) inside the club and there once was a confrontation between the suspect and an officer working at the club outside the venue, according to local police.

Then the suspect went back into the club to continue shooting and took hostages.

About three hours after the shooting first broke out, police shot and killed the suspect during actions to rescue the hostages, said Mina.

"It appeared he was organized and well-prepared," said Mina at a earlier press conference, adding that the suspect had an assault-type weapon and a handgun.

Danny Banks, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), said that the shooting, the deadliest in a single shooting in the U.S. history, was being investigated as an act of terrorism.

"Do we consider this an act of terrorism? Absolutely, we are investigating this from all parties' perspective as an act of terrorism," said Banks.

Ronald Hopper, an assistant FBI agent in charge, said the authorities now had "suggestions that the individual may have leanings toward" ideology held by the Islamic State (IS) extremist group.

But he added that "right now we can't say definitively."

Orlando Police Chief John Mina talks about an officer's injury at a news conference after a shooting attack at a Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, U.S. June 12, 2016. (REUTERS/Kevin Kolczynski)

Reports said the parents of Mateen, a 29-year-old U.S.-born citizen, were from Afghanistan.

ABC News quoted U.S. law enforcement officials as saying that Mateen was "on the radar" of U.S. officials for some time, but he was not the target of a specific investigation.

U.S. President Barack Obama was briefed by his homeland security and counterterrorism advisor Lisa Monaco on the tragic shooting, the White House said in a statement.

Obama asked for regular updates on the investigation, while directing that the federal government provide any assistance necessary to pursue the investigation and support the community.

Gun violence in the United States has in recent years grabbed headlines nationwide and worldwide, especially such cases as the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 in Connecticut, in which 20-year-old Adam Lanza entered an elementary school and fatally shot 20 children as well as six adult staff members.

Additionally, the United States has seen a number of cases of multi-victim shootings, such as a mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado in 2012. A gunman entered a movie theater and murdered 12 people and injured 70 others.

Andy (L) and Barbara Parker (C), whose daughter Alison Parker was shot and killed on air during a live television segment in August, take part in a protest and vigil against gun violence on the third anniversary of the Sandy Hook mass shooting, outside the National Rifle Association (NRA) headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia December 14, 2015. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)

But despite these and other incidents, powerful gun lobbying groups such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) have successively blocked Congress to pass any bills to curb gun rights.

So far gun violence has not been a major political issue during this election season. It remains unknown if the latest shooting will ignite heated debate on gun violence among the presidential candidates.

The NRA has endorsed Republican nominee Donald Trump, who attacked his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for trying to curb the gun rights of U.S. citizens endowed by the Constitution.

Meanwhile, IS radicals are calling on followers to hit the United States and Europe during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which starts last week.

In a recording released online in later May, IS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani called for launching further terror attacks against Western targets.

U.S. authorities have been on high alert against terror attacks since the shooting last December in San Bernadino, California, where an armed radicalized couple killed 14 people in an act of terrorism.

Indeed, U.S. intelligence and police leaders have always warned about the danger of "lone wolf" attacks in the United States by terror groups or radicalized individuals.

James Clapper, director of U.S. National Intelligence, warned at a Senate hearing in February that IS is the U.S. "number one terrorist threat," as it was attempting to launch direct attacks on the U.S. homeland in 2016.
ISLAMABAD, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan's top foreign affairs adviser, Sartaj Aziz, said on Sunday that senior U.S. officials, who visited Pakistan on Friday, could not explain logic behind the recent drone strike in Balochistan province that killed the Afghan Taliban chief, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor.

American security officials and diplomats visited Pakistan amid growing tensions caused by the May 21 drone attack that Pakistan insists also undermined the diplomatic efforts to start the peace talks in Afghanistan.

"The U.S. leaders could not give any reason during talks as to why they killed the Taliban leader. We made it clear to them that the attack has hurt the Afghan peace process," Aziz told Dawn TV in an exclusive interview.

Some U.S. officials had earlier claimed that Mansoor was responsible for the killing of American, foreign and Afghan forces and that he was also opposed to the peace process.

"Although Pakistan has protested strongly against the drone strike, there is no guarantee of further drone attacks," the adviser further said.

"We pushed the American officials that there is a need to show patience as the years of conflict cannot be solved in few months," he opined.

To a question he said Pakistan believes the drone strike might have also been linked to the domestic election politics in the United States.

"We have conveyed to the U.S. officials that use of force cannot solve the Afghan problem as the presence of ISAF's nearly 130,000 troops in Afghanistan for 14 years could not resolve the conflict," he went on to say.

"Taliban also cannot control Afghanistan through fighting but they can continue war to ten years more," he said, adding that all will ultimately opt for the reconciliation process.

He said that there is also differences within the Afghan government over the issue of peace negotiations.

"Afghanistan needs peace and peace cannot be achieved through war," he insisted. He also said it is now a shared responsibility of the quartet on Afghanistan to work for the start of the peace process.

Aziz said Pakistan's influence on the Afghan Taliban has decreased after military operation that forced many of their leaders to leave Pakistan and move to Afghanistan.
Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. June 11, 2016. (REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk)

WASHINGTON, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Responding to the deadliest single shooting incident in U.S. history, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Sunday he is right for being tough on radical Islamic terrorism.

"Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism," Trump tweeted. "I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart."

In an earlier tweet after the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida that left 50 people dead and 53 injured, Trump called it as a "horrific incident" while "Praying for all the victims & their families."

"When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?" the tweet said.

The brash billionaire was apparently referring to his stance that the U.S. should be tougher on fighting radical Islamic terrorism.

Trump had blasted the Obama administration for being too soft on fighting terrorism as demonstrated by its refusal to even use the term "radical Islamic terrorism."

Trump has also previously stirred up controversy by vowing to impose a temporary ban on the entry to the U.S. by all Muslims.

In a campaign speech in Iowa last November, Trump promised that he will go after the terror group Islamic State (IS) and "bomb the s--- out of them."

No group, including the IS, has so far claimed responsibility for the Sunday shooting.

And it remained unknown if Omar Mateen, the gunman in the Orlando shooting, was motivated by the terror group, though U.S. news media reports said he called 911 before the shooting to swear allegiance to IS.

Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton tweeted earlier than Trump that she woke up to hear "the devastating news" from Florida.

"As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act," Clinton said in the tweet.

U.S. authorities are working hard to determine whether the shooting attack is an act of terrorism.

Danny Banks, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), said that the shooting was being investigated as an act of terrorism.

"Do we consider this an act of terrorism? Absolutely, we are investigating this from all parties' perspective as an act of terrorism," said Banks.

Ronald Hopper, an assistant special FBI agent in charge, said the authorities now had "suggestions that the individual may have leanings toward" ideology held by IS.

But he added that "right now we can't say definitively."

Reports said the parents of Mateen, a 29-year-old U.S.-born citizen, were from Afghanistan.

ABC News quoted U.S. law enforcement officials as saying that Mateen was "on the radar" of U.S. officials for some time, but he was not the target of a specific investigation.
HELSINKI, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The Finnish Centre Party Convention on Sunday confirmed the presidential candidacy of former Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen.

Vanhanen said his campaign slogan would be "Foreign Policy Together".

Discussing the situation in northern Europe, Vanhanen said Russia needs not to be afraid that Finnish soil could be used for hostilities against Russia.

The presidential candidate called for striving towards maintaining the geopolitical stability in northern Europe by keeping Finland and Sweden outside NATO.

However, Vanhanen said that if stability in the region falters "for reasons not in our control," national leaders must have the ability to assess the situation again, together with the whole nation.

Vanhanen, now 60, ran for presidency in 2006 and got around 600,000 votes in the first round, but did not make it to the second round.

Next Finnish presidential election is set for January 2018. Current President Sauli Niinisto has not yet said whether he will run for another term.

The Centre Party has long traditions of accentuating the importance of good relations between Finland and Russia. Long time President Urho Kekkonen (in office 1956-1981) was from the party, known at that time as Agrarian League. The party changed its name into Centre in 1960s.

The concept of assuring Russia that no threat comes from Finland or over Finland was a key part of the foreign policy thinking in post-war Finland.
Photo provided by Orlando Police Department shows police cars and fire trucks gather outside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the United States, June 12, 2016. (Xinhua/Orlando Police Department)

CAIRO/DAMASCUS, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The Islamic State (IS)-linked news agency Amaq said on Sunday that the Islamist militant group was responsible for the shooting that killed at least 50 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

"The attack that targeted a nightclub for homosexuals in Orlando, Florida and left more than 100 dead and wounded was carried out by an Islamic State fighter," said Amaq in a short English statement that went online Sunday evening.

At least 50 people were killed and 53 others wounded, including a police officer, early Sunday in the shooting at the popular gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida. It is the deadliest terror attack in U.S. history since the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001.

The IS has a recorded history in targeting homosexuals in areas under its control in Syria and Iraq, from tossing them from rooftops to stoning them to death.
DHAKA, June 12, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Students of Dhaka University take food or Iftar, the evening meal when Muslims break their fast, during the holy fasting month of Ramadan at Teacher-Student Centre of the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, June 11, 2016. Muslims around the world celebrate the holy month of Ramadan by abstaining from eating and drinking from sunrise to sunset. (Xinhua/Shariful Islam)
Drug pusher gunned down

According to reports, the victim, Granderson Lee Assing, who was previously charged by the police for drug offences, was walking along the roadway when a gunman alighted from his vehicle and fired several shots at him. He was killed almost immediately.

Police officers who were called to the scene reportedly found a quantity of marijuana in the dead mans possession. A party of officers led by Supt Moses, and including Inspectors Gyan and Maraj, along with a district medical officer, visited the scene.

Investigations are continuing by officers of the Region II Homicide Bureau.
Cop dies hours after duty

PC Krishna Balliram, a summons officer of the Court and Process Branch in Siparia, is said to have died at a private nursing facility early yesterday morning after a suspected heart attack on Friday afternoon. A post mortem is due to be performed tomorrow to determine the cause of death.

Ballirams colleagues yesterday said the officer ended his shift on Friday afternoon and was on personal business in the Central area when he complained of severe chest pains. He was first taken to the Couva District Health Facility before being later admitted to a nursing home where he had been undergoing treatment for heart-related problems. He is said to have died at about 2 am yesterday.

His death has left his colleagues in shock, and an officer said Balliram worked in the court and was normal. We heard he went to change tyres on his vehicle when he began experiencing chest pains, the officer said. In extending condolences to the bereaved family, head of South Western Division Snr Supt Nazrool Hosein described Balliram as a dedicated officer who was diligent in his duty.

He was easy-going but committed to his job, Hosein said. He was a very composed officer who never refused a task he was given. Ballirams wife is also a police officer.

On May 24, PC Russell Bahadoor, 39, also of the South Western Division, then assigned to the Penal CID, died after a 15-feet fall.

Reports said Bahadoor returned to his Penal home after liming and may have leaned against a weak railing which collapsed under his weight causing him to plunge to his death.
Jewels of natures music

A Jewels of Nature recital is as much an aural experience as it is a visual one.

This organic percussion band is not mainstream music. Some critics claim that their work can easily be found in any digital sampling of nature sounds. But the world is a place of contradictions.

Even as it moves digital, audiences still feel a sense of connection, the human connection with natural, acoustic sounds. The countryside after all, is still a place of repose, away from the tussle and tumble of sounds of urban living.

Jajah Oga Onilu (King Master Drummer) created, through his artistic work, a place of retreat and simple living for his family. As a musician, he is remembered as a spiritual guide to many.

The music that he conceptualised and performed exemplified his commitment to his spirituality derived from Yoruba cultural practices. Following Jajahs death in 2012, his legacy lives on in the work of his sons Baba Ayinde Onilu and Modupe Folasade Onilu.

The organic music and instruments make this band one of the unique ones in Trinidad.

The instruments are mainly handmade from natural material.

They are innovations based on their fathers years of experimentation with the sounds of nature.

The music produced, is not divorced from the mens lifestyle and religion.

In the Orisha tradition, sound is manifested and un-manifested, the sound that is heard by the physical ear and the sound that is heard with the spiritual ear. It is a concept common to many of the ancient civilisations, Hindu and Greek for example. The doption style of drumming that Jajah practised and passed on to his sons is derived from the rhythm of the breath.

The commonality in every spiritual tradition is that there is the spirit. In Orisha there is a lot of invocation done by the voice and the drum, ancestral invocation and deity invocation. It is commonly found in Shouter Baptist rituals as well. My father always said the breath is the first drum. Before implementing rhythm on drums, you manifest it in breath, his eldest son Baba Ayinde Onilu explains.

The history of Trinidad, in no small way, influenced the development of Afro-Trinidadian musical traditions.

The banning of drumming in the late 1880s due to colonial authorities fear of revolt was a major influence in African innovation.

The colonial authorities believed that the drums were used to communicate over long distances and thus imposed a ban to control the possibility of revolts.

But, percussion was, and remains, a major part of traditional African social and ritual life. It is no surprise then that, following the ban, the musical instruments with which the African freed men experimented, were percussive in nature. The story of the African peoples search for alternative musical expression lives on in the form of the mouth band, tamboo bamboo and steelpan.

The Black Power Movement of the 1970s too impacted on the consciousness of many artists and musicians within the Laventille community from which Jajah hailed.

It provided a sense of belonging and a sense of self to a people, whose cultural moorings had been eroded by a cruel colonial past, and who lived on the fringes of the city where the city was regarded as the centre of all that was right and civilized.

Jewels of Nature is one story among many that exemplifies the persistence and development of cultural practices when it is forced to improvise. It is a testament to the depth of the human imagination.

My father was one of the first people to make a calabash bag, says Baba.

He was living in a time when Trinidad was coming out of colonialism, when there was a cultural turn around. In that time they had outside influences coming in. That led him to go into the forest where he received ?se, blessings. (pronounced ah-sheh) It would have been no easy task, the men recall.

Their father spent days and months reflecting and experimenting with sounds.

The key to creating the instruments was about understanding the properties of different material, how to use a calabash, how to use a bamboo, the sounds of the wind flowing through bamboo, the sound that different densities and sizes of wood would create.

Music impacts on different people in different ways.

There might be a tone for instance that one individual might like while another might find it repulsive.

However, their aim is really about connecting with the soul.

According to the Onilu brothers, organic music is about invoking something in the listener.

The making of the instruments reflects this deep connection with the soul.

Jah Jahs legacy to his sons is his awareness.

Our self consciousness is a result of the impact of the individuals surroundings.

Each person has his own life experience and just like any other place, Laventille too has its own, says Baba.

I dont think it was only Laventille though, he continued.

My father was influenced by every place where he lived.

We moved from Laventille to St James and then Caura. It is only natural that Caura Valley would be the ideal location for a man so in sync with his environment.

Eat simple, live longer, his son Modupe chants.

Their lifestyle reflects this simplicity.

With their workplace in the Caura Valley, most of the time is spent tending to the natural surroundings, clearing the bushes, ensuring that the building is not overrun with weeds or bamboo. Managing nature is a part of living with it.

All the instruments used in performances are either original work or innovations made on instruments that already exist.

The quica, for example, makes the sound of an animal in pain or mating.

The Earth Harp uses the same technique as a harp, while the bamboo synthesizer is similar to a xylophone and is percussive in nature. The eco guitar, similar to a banjo, functions too as a percussive instrument.

Our approach to music is one of free chords and free harmony.

We dont really pay too much attention to the formal music structure, says Baba.

Attending one of Jewels of Natures concerts, one gets the sense of a free flow - a music that just goes with the vibes.

The musical instruments are pending patent but the brothers workshop in Caura is open to visitors.

It functions as a museum and workshop, housing some of their fathers instruments and designs as well as their own experiments with sound and design.

The musical experience of the Jewels is in the creative expression that nature is given through the instruments and the sounds that emanate, transporting listeners on a visual and aural journey through the natural landscape.

Note: At the workshop in Caura Valley, one can also view some of Vyombo Designs (the jewellery branch of Jewels of Nature) handiwork on display in showcases.

To cater to a new age, the band Jewels of Nature has another form, Dayo Bejide, an organic electric band, featuring a combination of organic instruments and modern instruments like bass guitar, keyboard and trumpet. To visit the workshop at Caura Royal Road, Caura Valley, call 359- 1222/470-1797.
Get ready for The Weekend

Sunday Newsday chatted with Hodgkinson and he revealed, during an interview last week, the idea of the film came to him in January last year when he was at a beach house with the late journalist and actress, Marcia Henville.

Hodgkinson was inspired to do a story about a group of friends in a beach house. When Henville died that month, he shelved the idea.

He went on to do Trafficked which won Best Local Feature at the Trinidad and Tobago (TT ) Film Festival 2015 and has appeared at film festivals in New York, Los Angeles and the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in France.

Two months ago, Aurora Herrera, producer and first assistant director, and Trafficked actress Kia Rollock were discussing doing a new project but lamented the economic recession and the difficulty to get funding. They decided to just do something for fun and the idea for The Weekend came up.

Hodgkinson and his team decided to rope in actors they knew to play the 13 characters and among those recruited were Andrew Friday, Rollock, Cindy Daniel, Stephen Hadeed Jr, Chris Smith, Mark Wallace, Frances de Lancey from Girlfriends Getaway and Ayanna Cezanne.

Herrera reported that they met twice a week and challenged the actors to come up with their characters back story. Hodginkson said they were challenging them to become really brilliant in their roles.

He pointed out that while he wrote the story it was a collaborative effort as the actors helped to contribute. Herrera said peoples natural quirks came out and there was a lot of organic creativity.

Sean has a masterful way of taking on everyones ideas and put it in a scene with humour and drama, she added.

Hodgkinson said life is a mixture of drama and comedy and he pushed that in his debut A Story About Wendy, Part 1 & 2 and even further in The Weekend.

I hope the audiences really react to it. It was made from love of doing something, he added.

Herrera reported that they had a cast and crew of 30 and they filmed 45 pages in two and a half days which she described as a push.

Hodgkinson said it was hard work but if you have directors, producers, cameramen and support staff you can get it done.

You dont have to wait on a handout, he stressed.

He reported that HADCO provided them with food and Prestige Holdings and TGI F provided some funding as they see value in film.

Herrera stressed that creative people are hungry and want to do work and they want to make a sustained living out of it. Hodgkinson said there is a creative product that can be sold, monetised and used to earn foreign exchange. He lamented that they do not have the support from the powers-that-be but they have proven that you do not have to wait on them to create content.

He said they were able to produce The Weekend on a minuscule budget.

Imagine if we have someone backing up what we could do, he pondered, describing the experience as an emotional rush. Herrera recalled that after the last scene the two looked at each other and started crying uncontrollably.

Hodgkinson reported that they plan to apply to the Caribbean Tales incubator in Canada as they hope to turn The Weekend into a miniseries which will highlight local talent while connecting to audiences anywhere through humour, drama, friendship, love, loss and grieving. (Caribbean Tales is a project to develop film and television productions for Caribbean diaspora producers.) Hodgkinson reported that the first episode is in post production and they had pulled in super talented people. He mentioned editor Sascha Ali, whom he said does not get enough credit.

It was a total team effort, he added.

They are also planning to submit it for the TT Film Festival in September and will be sending organisers the rough cut. He said showcasing the movie at the local festival and at international festivals is a model that worked given their successful experience with Trafficked.

Hodgkinson said it was not all about the money, but did note that people do need money to live.

Herrera said the cast and crew of The Weekend were asked so much and were so generous with their time. Hodgkinson said people were not aware of the level of talent that we have locally in terms of actors and crew. He stressed that Trafficked should show that you can do something local and it can travel the world.

It proves a local film can stand up outside, he added.

He also recalled that they showed A Story About Wendy, Parts 1 and 2 at the Zanzibar International Film Festival in Tanzania and people loved it. He reported that they are planning a third part in the Wendy series to conclude the story and hope to shoot in Barbados from April 2017.

On the late Henvilles role, as she appeared in the two parts, Hodgkinson said she would not be recast.

He pointed out that there was a side of her apart from the television personality that people did not know and the two were close despite being from two different worlds.

Shes a part of my life, he added.

He said that compared to Wendy, The Weekend is even more commercial and viable. He added that while they will be looking at the US market they will also be looking at other markets including the diaspora.

Herrera stressed that people want content from the Caribbean and the developing world. She said that other countries provide different funds and rebates for film-makers but locally it is a struggle. On the positive side, she pointed out that members of the local movie community are very close knit and help each other out.

Hodgkinson said the most important thing was to get our stories told. He recalled as a child it was his dream to be a film-maker but there was no opportunity and he was grateful that it was now happening locally. Herrera said local young people waking up and deciding to become film-makers was a beautiful thing.

On the economic side, Hodgkinson pointed out that film-making is more than just films but encompasses catering, locations, transport, makeup, hair, wardrobe and fashion. He stressed that locally someone needs to lead the process.

Im just a film-maker, he added.

For more information on The Weekend you can check out #theweekendtt on Instagram or Facebook.
LET US DISCUSS, NOT CURSE

He made the comments yesterday while delivering the sermon at the celebration of the 95th anniversary of the Mothers Union held at St Marys Anglican Church, Tacarigua.

The group is a charitable arm of the Anglican Church that seeks to support families.

He said that after 95 years he wants the Mothers Union to re-establish a research department and he is awaiting a paper on child marriages.

I know that the Bishop has been criticised and rightly so, hes too hesitant, not loud, not as loud as (Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha Secretary General) Sat (Maharaj), too much diplomacy and different opinions. But the Bishop would be greatly helped by the powerful voice of the wise and mature Mothers Union, he added.

Maharaj has been an outspoken proponent of leaving the marriage laws - which allows for Hindu girls to be married at age 14, Muslim girls at age 12 and boys at age 16, and Orisha girls at age 16 - to remain untouched. He has criticised head of the local Catholic Church Archbishop Joseph Harris and US ambassador John Estrada, who have both publicly called for the laws to be changed, and told them to mind their business and go to hell.

On the Government side, Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi said they are moving swiftly to ensure that legislation to amend the age of consent for marriage to 18 years goes to Cabinet and eventually to Parliament.

Yesterday Berkley reiterated the position of the Anglican Church on child marriages.

As we have said we do not support the matter of the 12-year-olds and so forth (getting married). We do support the marriage of 18-yearolds.

But what we are thinking as well is that there was a system that worked for many generations and its time to change it now, we do not have to be cursing one another across the window and shouting and using all kind of inane things to bring that, he said.

We are a reasonable people and we can bring that discussion to bear because of whatever reasons for the change, for the adjustment. He said that the Mothers Union is an international body and can have a voice on issues such as child marriages and AIDS.

They have the training, maturity and length of time in service to speak to these matters, he said.

He noted that Hindu and Muslim womens groups have spoken out about child marriages but we (the Anglican church) have a group too - the Mothers Union - and it is a worldwide group. He stressed that he was not scolding them or giving the group a bouf but we have to pull ourselves up so that we can give the best we can to our community that is waiting on the work of the Anglican Church.

Also in his sermon, Berkley said there was hostility everywhere including home, church and work and everyone is looking for a refuge.

He pointed out that while the country is worrying about refugees from Venezuela we have refugees in this country and even in church.

He explained these refugees are seeking comfort because relationships have not been right and we have not been treating each other with the love of Christ.

He also challenged the Mothers Union to start chronicling 100 years of the groups missions in this country from now and he expects a committee to be set up from the very next meeting.

On the youths, Berkley said it was necessary to get into the world of young people. He pointed out that some people boast about not being able to handle email or Whatsapp messenger but Berkley admonished dont boast. Be slightly ashamed you didnt adjust yourself accordingly.

He said that while we love the good old days they are not here any more and elders have to be in a position of adjustment.

He joked about a mother approaching her daughter on her phone messaging. She read the message POTS on her daughters phone and wondered what she knew about using or cleaning a pot. Berkley explained that POTS was an acronym for parent over the shoulder to the laughter of the congregation. Berkley also spoke about the impersonal nature of technology and asked who wanted to be proposed to by email or get married on Skype. He said there is a need for face to face interaction.

He pointed out that the mission of the Mothers Union is parenting, homework centres, prison ministry, home and family work. He said as they mark 95 years he would like to see them strengthen their family counselling unit and also spoke of their childrens home.

Berkley stressed that young people need counsel and a source they can trust who will listen to them without being judgemental.

He recalled that at a recent meeting young people were complaining about absent fathers, angry mothers with too much to do and how they are spoken of and spoken to in the church.

Berkley said he agreed with the belief that some youths are too rude but the church has to deal with the rude ones as well.

See page 5A
Faris: Jamaica alarmed by UNC

He said the Opposition UNCs actions have even alarmed Jamaicans, noting hearing such views while at a conference in Jamaica last week.

But you see, this in my humble estimation, is what you get when you try to mirror what should pass for common sense. They (Opposition) havent thought it out properly. I think this is something that is deserving of a substantive motion, Al-Rawi told reporters yesterday.

He was speaking to journalists yesterday following an HDC presentation of keys ceremony held at the Omardeen School of Accounting Limited at Cipero Street, San Fernando.

On Friday last, Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar and other colleagues, walked out of the Parliament in a show of disappointment over the refusal by the Speaker to debate two motions on the Childrens Life Fund and the increase in murders. Al-Rawi noted: The walkout rings hollow because this is not something that could not have been brought out by way of a motion for substantive debate. The issue of crime is not something that is new, the issue of children is not something that is new. The Attorney General questioned the real priorities of the Opposition UNC adding the people in Jamaica are quite surprised at what passes for common sense in some of what we do in TT.

I would take it further and say that that applies to the Opposition and their inexplicable actions. How can you as a responsible Opposition not support anti-crime manoeuvres when you had a PNM Opposition give you 100 per cent support on most areas? They have to step up to the plate and let TT see what they are made of,  Al Rawi charged.

Providing an update on the Strategic Services Agency (Amendment) Bill, 2016, which has been assented to by the President, Al-Rawi reminded reporters that the matter of proclamation of the legislation has to go before the Cabinet. He added that Cabinet is going to be considering issues very soon. He added: In Jamaica, they operate without the legislative structure which Trinidad has. The Opposition and the Government both agree that it is a necessary agency. They are quite surprised and alarmed that TT apparently has an Opposition that has a very different view. Last week Al-Rawi, in his capacity as chairman of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF), chaired discussions at a Plenary and Working Groups Meeting held in Jamaica.

Commenting on the outcome, Al-Rawi noted the 27 countries dealt with issues such as money laundering, counter terrorism and organised crime and dubbed the meeting a success. I am very pleased to say that in the margins of the meeting for CFATF, we have made significant progress in deepening our relationships with the 27 countries, in particular with Jamaica. I spent a lot of time engaging with the DPP of Jamaica, the Attorney General said.

He noted that a country could have many laws but the key is getting the laws to work. Therefore, he said he was pleased that the results of the recently concluded conference was able to facilitate all of that
Minister: We need to ease peoples pain

The main thing we want to achieve is the National Social Mitigation Plan, because TT must come up with strategies to treat with the effects of this economic downturn, the Minister told Sunday Newsday, at last Wednesdays Social Dialogues at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine It is affecting families, it is affecting businesses, it is even affecting the public sector. So we must come up with a plan to mitigate those effects and ensure that people particularly the vulnerable in our society are protected and taken care of. We recognise that we must have input from the broad cross-section of the citizens of TT.

Weve been very fortunate because we have gotten persons from civil society, the man in the street, the business sector and the labour sector. So we have a very good cross section and at the end of the day I expect that plan will incorporate all these elements. Can any plan really help someone who loses his/her job, or is it just a shoulder to cry on? No, its more than just a shoulder to cry on. If you lose your job first off you may not know what is available. If we have data banks that provide information as to where jobs are available, they can access that. We also have to encourage persons, Listen you have lost your job. You were an engineer and may not be able to get a job as an engineer, but as a technician. This is a time to adjust. The Minister also said retrenchment can be a time for persons to study to re-tool, as higher skilled persons are less likely to be affected by the downturn.

You may be unemployed but not be in a financial crisis, so you can use that time as an opportunity to study and enhance your skills. Research has shown that where people are highly-skilled, the impact (of recession) is less great on those persons. So if we can enhance persons skills in that time, it will help.
Sat: Child marriage, a religious matter

In a brief telephone interview 11with Sunday Newsday last Friday, 11the Secretary General of the Sanatan 11Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS) 11declared, Im not prepared to 11respond to a one-man organisation.

He (BCM chairman, Harvey 11Borris) could say what he want, 11this is a religious matter. Maharaj 11was referring to statements made 11by Borris, last Thursday, during 11a press conference at the BCMs 11head office, Western Main Road, 11St James.

Speaking specifically about 11Maharajs controversial speech 11during Indian Arrival Day celebrations 11at Parvati Girls Hindu 11College, Debe on May 30, Borris 11said, It was rather unfortunate 11and could be seen as a racial attack 11on the African community. 11Borris supported his argument 11by pointing out that other persons 11who spoke out were not attacked, 11including a Government 11junior minister of East Indian descent 11Avinash Singh, the Hindu 11Womens Organisation and SWAHA 11International. 11(Yet) two leading African 11leaders were attacked in a most 11vicious manner - Archbishop of 11Port-of-Spain Joseph Harris and 11US Ambassador John Estrada. 11Acknowledging Maharajs 11unapologetic stance, Borris appealed 11to the SDMS Board to try 11and get Maharaj to see the light 11that what he said can disrupt religious 11(and) racial unity. Borris 11said he would be out of line to 11guide the Maha Sabha board but 11said, an apology is absolutely 11necessary. 11
3 guns seized, murder suspect held

According to reports, officers of the Rio Claro Police Station were on patrol along Absalom Trace, Rio Claro on Friday afternoon when they observed a 43-year-old man acting in a suspicious manner. He was searched and officers allegedly found a .38 revolver and three rounds of ammunition.

In another exercise in the Northern Division, Sgt Matthew Haywood and others went to Sherwood Park, Arima, where they seized a pistol and a quantity of ammunition from the home of an alleged drug pusher.

In the third incident, a party of officers led by Sgt Guelmo of the North Eastern Division went to a house at Ramkissoon Trace, Santa Cruz where they also seized a revolver and a quantity of ammunition and drugs. Five persons were arrested in that exercise late Friday afternoon.

The exercises in the Eastern and North Eastern Divisions were spearheaded by ACP Surajdeen Persad, while the exercise in the Northern Division was under the supervision of Snr Supt Rajkumar and Supt Moses.

Also on Friday, police detained 11 persons, among them a murder suspect, in an exercise in the Southern Division in areas such as Marabella, San Fernando and Princes Town. The murder suspect was held in connection with the shooting death of a man in Marabella.

Four persons were arrested for the possession of illegal narcotics while the others were detained for robbery, gun-related offences and outstanding warrants.

Assistant Commissioners of Police Wayne Boyde and Erlene Christopher co-ordinated the exercise.

TT Regiment members were also seen with the police during exercises conducted at Rienzi Kirton Highway and Lady Hailes Avenue.
Special Branch officers fear transfer

Already officers assigned to Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley who complained bitterly about their 24-hour work shift are expressing fears that they may be transferred out of the branch and posted elsewhere in the police service.

Their association via its president, acting ASP Anand Ramesar, claims it has been hearing about the possibility of that action.

The association has already been alerted to the fears of certain of its members that they may be transferred arising out of the complaints about their duties, Ramesar told Sunday Newsday yesterday.

The association is alerting the managers of Special Branch that we are aware, we are watching very closely, we will guard the welfare of our members fearlessly, and we will leave no stone unturned in exposing anybody who victimises any of our members arising out of this incident Sunday Newsday understands that when the information became public on Friday that Special Branch officers were disgruntled over their working hours, senior police officers were reportedly told that they should ask the complaining officers to sort themselves out before continuing any security for the Prime Minister (PM).

During a meeting between acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams and the PSWA on Friday to discuss the issue, it is understood that Williams directed that the working hours be reviewed with immediate effect.

Sunday Newsday learned that following that decision, Special Branch officers began confiding in their colleagues that they heard through the grapevine that they are to be transferred. The officers stood their ground, however, that they were within their right to complain to the association.

Sources have said that 35 Special Branch officers assigned to the PMs security detail and they work three shifts. Officers who work the 24-hour shift are allowed two days off while the other shift takes up duty.

While the affected officers were voicing their concerns, the association, through Ramesar, indicated that it was still in the dark as to whether or not their duties were to be taken over by soldiers who would now be fully responsible for protecting the Prime Minister.

Ramesar said he has not been informed of any changes despite the reports of the new role for soldiers.

On Friday, it was reported that Rowley arrived for the sitting of Parliament on the Port-of-Spain waterfront under the watchful eyes of the soldiers and not Special Branch officers. The protection of the Prime Minister has always been entrusted to Special Branch officers and with the support of soldiers.

Ramesar told Sunday Newsday: I am not aware that Special Branch officers have been officially removed, However if that is the case, that will clearly be a strange decision. He added: The issue raised by the association was a human resource issue, internal to the Police Service. For there to be a decision to remove the police officers, there seems to be no valid reason in doing so, and, in addition to that, the association has always been strong in relation to the use of soldiers to perform duties of police officers, and also any effort to give them the powers of police officers. Ramesar went on to say: We feel that any decision to go that way is really taking law enforcement in the wrong direction in Trinidad and Tobago and we will be very prompt in our response. He reiterated that if police officers were removed, it would be a poor response to the crisis from those in charge. Ramesar said, In the first instance you want to have a response that deals with the issue in terms of addressing the problem in how you treat police officers, not when police officers complain you get rid of them. Such decision reeks of poor management. A Special Branch officer who spoke to Sunday Newsday believes that upcoming elections within the PSWA has given life to a matter that should have never gone public.

It really hurt me because in all my years in the Special Branch this has never happened, the concerned officer said.

He added: Soldiers have always been part of the Prime Ministers security detail and we have always worked closely with each other. Officers love to work with any Prime Minister because you are well taken care of. There are long hours but it has never been problem because we are trained for that. The officer continued: Do you know we are the human bullet proof vests for the Prime Minister? I am telling you working with Prime Minister Rowley cant be as tough as working with former Prime Minister (Patrick) Manning or (Kamla) Persad-Bissessar, so I cant see where that is coming from. I can bet you no long standing Special Branch officer would have made that complaint because we know what we signed up for.

As a Special Branch officer I feel ashamed.
Time to plant peas again

SUNDAY NEWSDAY continues its profiles of the candidates.

COREY CONNELLY The economic recession must not stunt Tobagos progress.

This is the contention of Dr Denise Tsoi-a- Fatt Angus, the Tobago House of Assemblys (THAs) Secretary for Community Development and Culture, as she bids to become political leader of the Peoples National Movements (PNMs) Tobago Council in the June 26 election.

Now in the throes of her campaign, which, mere days ago, took her to Roxborough on the islands east side, Tsoia- Fatt Angus believes that rather than yield to the economic crisis, the Tobago tourist sector can play a critical role in cushioning the island from the effects of the recession.

It is recorded that most of the fortune 500 companies in the United States of America were born during times of recession, she noted in an interview.

We have to now add to our tourism product by maintaining the authentic Tobago tourism experience while opening up our shores to more visitors in and outside the peak season. Reap what we sow Tsoi-a-Fatt Angus said more resources and focus must be placed on developing the agricultural sector as a product that will reduce TTs food bill while increasing the countrys ability to feed itself and create jobs.

For example, we have to get back our pigeon peas, cocoa and sorrel production and export, she said.

A similar focus has to be placed on our fishing industry. We will have to provide ongoing support to our fishermen and encourage more activity in that area. Tsoi-a-Fatt Angus said Tobagos development was being impeded by what she called the limited parameters of our economic functionality and ability to make strategic decisions based on our resources. In addition, she said research conducted recently by a group of postgraduate students from the University of the West Indies revealed that Tobagos healthcare system was another major challenge confronting the island.

It needs more resources both financial and human to effectively deliver adequate treatment to our people, Tsoi-a-Fatt Angus suggested.

A medical doctor by profession, Tsoi-a-Fatt Angus said she intends to use her experience in the field as well as the knowledge she gained as chairman of the Board of the Tobago Regional Health Authority (TRHA, 2006-2008) to enhance the healthcare system.

She said the appropriate selection of recruitment of healthcare professionals and specialists to meet the needs of Tobagonians was a key factor in improving the services on the island.

We will have to keep our equipment up to date with advances in technology and our facilities must be maintained and upgraded on a timely basis, she added.

Tsoi-a-Fatt Angus grew up initially with her grand-parents in Darrell Spring before moving on to her parents home at Mt Pelier.

She attended Mason Hall Government Primary School and Scarborough RC before heading to Bishops High School and Signal Hill Senior Comprehensive School, where she pursued ALevels.

Following in her parents footsteps, Tsoia- Fatt Angus pursued a pharmacy degree at Howard University but later decided to attend the University of Maryland in the US, where she attained a medical degree with a speciality in family medicine.

Better health care Tsoi-a-Fatt Angus worked in private practice in South Carolina and Jamaica but opted to return to Tobago in 2004. On her return, she was asked to serve as deputy chairman on the TRHA Board, a position she held for two years before becoming its chairman in 2008.

Her resume in Tobago also includes stints as senior advisor to the Secretary for Health and Social Services.

As Secretary for Community Development and Culture, Tsoi-a- Fatt- Angus said her focus has been people- centred. For three consecutive years, from 2013 to 2015, it was adjudged best performing division by Tobagonians.

The division, under her watch, also created a new initiative to celebrate the elderly, develop the youth through culture and bolster the profile of the islands fashion industry for international markets.

The priority has been on inclusion and development at all levels. No one is to be left behind, she said. Tsoi-a-Fatt Angus said the Heritage Festival, one of Tobagos signature events, also has been expanded to include more villages and promote year-round activities.

Regarding youth, she said the Next Tobago Star programme was conceptualised to recognise, develop and promote the islands musically gifted youths since there is a need for more Tobago artistes to be introduced within the realm of the mainstream music industry. She said the division has collaborated with Tobagos own soca star, Shurwayne Winchester, on the project.

As the party positions itself to again make a clean sweep in next years THA election, Tsoi-a-Fatt Angus, said the PNM needed a leader who believes in the founding principles of the movement, understands the challenges facing the organisation and has a clear vision of how to surmount those obstacles.

I believe that I am that leader, she said.

High on her agenda, if elected, she said, would be to ensure that the party coalesces after what is likely to be an intestinal contest. She said she also will not be especially fazed by the likelihood of a woman leading the PNM Tobago Council.

The priority is to have a leader with integrity who is approachable, committed, competent and effective as leader of the PNM Tobago Council. If those qualities are best represented in a woman at this point in time, then that is the right choice to make, Tsoi-a-Fatt said.

Empower our youths Outside of tourism and agriculture, Tsoia- Fatt Angus said she also plans to tackle unemployment, especially among the islands youth.

Our youth development policy has to be specific to the needs of our young people, she said. It is said that old men have dreams and young men have visions.

We must project in the consciousness of our young people that greatness is possible in any area of their passion and they must never limit their legitimate ambitions. Saying there were numerous role models from whom young people could emulate - including Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and late President Arthur NR Robinson - Tsoi-a-Fatt Angus said entrepreneurship was a significant area for creating jobs and leaders in Tobago.

Innovation and innovative ideas must be explored and promoted, she said.

However, Tsoi-a-Fatt Angus suggested that more emphasis must be placed on the educational sector to expose young people, at an earlier age, to careers that are not part of the usual curriculum but critical to the sustainable diversification of our economy.

Just as importantly, we have to ensure that we instil in our young people, those attributes of diligence, focus and resilience which defined the Tobagonian of the past and which are critical if we are to continue developing in a dynamic and unpredictable future, she added.

Tsoi-a-Fatt Angus expressed confidence that Tobago, under her stewardship as leader of the Tobago Council, will perform creditably on the world stage.

She said the islands flagship slogan, Clean, green, safe and serene, must not just be a mantra but a way of life that preserves the beauty of the environment, while maximising on the natural resources that Tobago has to offer.
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Religious differences have been cited as a possible reason for the assassination in the state of Puebla last night of 11 people, all members of the same family.

Emergency services quickly took the two wounded children to the general hospital of Tehuacan, a nearby town. The attack happened on Friday in the Mexican city of Coxcatlan in central Mexico.

The Puebla state prosecutor's office told the AP that one of the attackers raped one of women years ago, and she had a child by him. It was not immediately clear the manner in which the deaths occurred.

The prosecutors added that two witnesses survived the attack and were under government protection.

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.

Prosecutors said late Friday that two suspects are being sought and they are believed to have fled into the mountains of neighboring Oaxaca state.

"Personal conflicts are the main line of investigation", the office said. But the mayor said the two villages respected each other.

He added that no motive was now known for the crime, although the family reportedly had earlier clashes with inhabitants of a neighboring community over a difference of religious faith.

"It's a community in harmony, but things change. Sometimes when people come back the harmony is lost", said Lopez de la Vega. There's immigration. Many go to the north of the country and to the United States.

The area around El Mirador has not been hit as hard by the drug-related violence plaguing much of Mexico.

In April, four bodies were found inside a burnt vehicle near Veracruz, an eastern state beset by murders and disappearances linked to drug cartels.

Authorities have not released the names of the victims or the suspects.
Officers investigating the murder of Peter Stuart arrested a 61-year-old man from Leicester at around 8.30am on Sunday.

The couple were reported missing earlier that day by a relative who said Peter and Sylvia Stuart had not been seen by friends or family since 28 May.Police launched the search soon afterwards.

Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Parkes said; "Our priority remains locating Sylvia and we are continuing to conduct searches in Weybread as well as making further enquiries".

"While our hopes for Sylvia's safety are reducing with the passage of time, there remains the possibility that she is still alive".

"We would ask anyone who may have been in the area over the past seven days to get in touch with us immediately, as you may have information that can help".

Detectives have said there is a "slim" chance Mrs Stuart could be with Mr Qazimaj, who they believe may have gone overseas.

Suffolk Police said Mr Qazimaj, who had been living in the Thurrock area, was a "key person" they needed to trace in their inquiry.

Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Parkes of Suffolk Police said that the body had not been positively identified, but was believed to be Mr Stuart.

Police officers from a number of wider regions, including Essex and Cambridge, have been drafted in to assist the investigation.

Forensic units spent much of the weekend scouring the woodland as they search for any trace of Mrs Stuart's whereabouts.

Family liaison officers have been appointed to support the couple's family. We are now carrying out a number of enquiries to find out exactly what has happened and would continue to ask anyone with information to come forward.

"Outside my window I can see two huge tactical support vehicles, the forensics van and a police auto". On Friday night, a body was discovered in woodland just 50 feet away from the couple's house.

She often wears glasses and may have been wearing a top and pants at the time of her disappearance, police said.
Obama's decision again redefines America's support role in Afghanistan's grinding conflict, more than a year after worldwide forces wrapped up their combat mission and shifted the burden to Afghan troops.

After the end of the USA mission in 2014, Obama kept almost 10,000 troops on the ground in Afghanistan - but said they were limited to strictly training Afghan soldiers and performing advisory roles, except in cases of self-defense. "In doing so, the USA forces will more proactively support Afghan conventional forces in two critical ways: One, with more American support, especially through close-air support; and two, by accompanying and advising Afghan conventional forces on the ground and in the air".

"There was no single "precipitating event" that led the commanders to ask for the expanded authority, one defense official said, but the Taliban have been making gains around Afghanistan and putting pressure on the US -supported Afghan military".

Obama's decision removes some key restrictions that barred USA support forces from actively fighting against Taliban militants.

The decision will once again redefine the US military's role in Afghanistan more than a year after global combat troops finished their missions, leaving Afghan troops to fight the Taliban. Obama said that action sent "a clear signal to the Taliban and others that we're going to protect our people" because Mansour and the Taliban had been "specifically targeting USA personnel and troops inside of Afghanistan".

The US announcement comes after Afghan forces, beset by record casualties, desertions and troop shortages, suffered a string of setbacks past year at the hands of the Taliban. The U.N. says 3,545 Afghan citizens were killed and 7,457 were wounded in 2015 - majority at the hands of the Taliban.

Afghan military officials have been calling for expanded air support since they took over the fight in 2015, after most worldwide combat troops were withdrawn at the end of 2014. However, how effectively Afghan forces could fight the Taliban remains a big question and if the security situation deteriorates further, it could threaten the ability of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's government to provide services to citizens, he said. One component, known as Freedom Sentinel, involves rooting out the remnants of al-Qaeda and the recently established Islamic State affiliate, while the other, called Resolute Support, is meant to advise and assist Afghan forces.

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 US and defense officials said Thursday. Self-defense was used last month as the legal basis for the airstrike that killed the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, while he traveled in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan. Also, why do we need to embed more of our own people, and more closely to regular combat troops, in order to make that work?

"Our army is capable of fighting, the only thing we need is air support", Afghan defense ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri told The Associated Press.

Afghan security forces a year ago took the lead in ensuring security across the country, but suffered a devastating string of setbacks at the hands of the Taliban. "It's a good use of the combat power that we have there", he said at a Defense One event.

The Afghan conflict has cost the US nearly $700 billion and killed more than 2,200 USA troops.

USA government's top watchdog said about Afghanistan that the United States had wasted billions of dollars in reconstruction aid to Afghanistan over the past decade and now a renewed Taliban insurgency is threatening the gains that had been made.

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".
The Washington Post reports the Friday face-to-face meeting comes amid rampant speculation that Warren, D-Mass., is on Clinton's shortlist for vice president.

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.

"Clinton won because she's a fighter", Warren said.

Advisers to Warren, a fiery critic of Wall Street and a popular figure among progressive Democrats, have been in close contact with Clinton's campaign team and the conversations have increased in frequency in recent weeks, the sources said.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren also endorsed Mrs Clinton on Thursday. 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. "This has been a hard-fought race".

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It was a healthy thing for the Democratic Party to have a contested primary. Well, they said that eight years ago, as well. "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".

It's campaign extinguisher to those who still feel the Bern and wonder if-or when-Sanders will drop out. The sooner a unified Democratic Party can take on Trump, the more effective it will be. Some speculated it was an entirely strategic move: In keeping mum, she did not damage her rep among Sanders supporters, and was able to signal "that Clinton must meaningfully and substantively go left on economic policy", as one University of MA political scientist wrote this past spring. "I believe we are always stronger together".

The sparring kicked off Thursday afternoon, coming shortly after Trump's tweet attacking Obama's endorsement. The rally will mark the first campaign event in which the two have appeared together since Clinton emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Mbulaiteye explained that Obama and Sanders are both "forward-looking, getting young people to be engaged in politics ... using diplomacy instead of war".

John Kerry, D-Mass., seated at left, to the committee during his confirmation hearing to become secretary of state, replacing Clinton, Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America's retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and elections.
A giant panda has given birth to a male cub at a zoo in Belgium in what has been described as a "true miracle".

She was artificially inseminated twice in February with the sperm of Xing Hui.

There are just over 1850 pandas in existence worldwide - 300 of those are in captivity in an effort to protect the species. Hao Hao's "probable" pregnancy was announced just two weeks ago, accompanied by caution about detecting the tiny foetus. The cub, a boy, has not been named yet and is the son of Hao Hao, a panda who has lived in Belgium since 2014.

The zoo staff said that the newborn is in good health.

Phew! Hao Hao has a well-earned rest after giving birth. "It is also a big worry since the chances of survival of a panda are only one out of two in the first three months". It can keep the cub for four years before it would be returned to China if all goes well. Austria and Spain were the previous venues.

Readers can see more of the giant pandas living at Pairi Daiza wildlife park on their official website or view Hao Hao and her new baby in the video included below.

The zoo, in Brugelette, about 50 kilometres west of Brussels, warned that the mortality rate for baby pandas in their first year is high.

They notoriously struggle to reproduce in captivity, however - though artificial breeding techniques and better knowledge of the animals' needs have led to an increase in births in recent years.
Troops have since destroyed their family homes in an act of collective punishment that is prohibited in worldwide law.

Two Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a Tel Aviv cafe on Wednesday night, killing four Israelis and wounding five others.

On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a slew of punitive measures against Palestinians in the wake of the shooting in Tel Aviv.

The permits were initially issued to Palestinians from the Israeli-occupied West Bank to visit relatives during the holy month of Ramadan, now underway.

The Israeli military said the West Bank would be closed off until the Jewish holiday of Shavuot ends at midnight on Sunday, except for "humanitarian" and medical cases and for some worshippers at the Al-Aqsa mosque in east Jerusalem.

Israel's cancellation of entry permits for Palestinians following a deadly attack in Tel Aviv may amount to collective punishment, which is banned under worldwide law, according to the office of the UN's top human rights official.

The special Ramazan permits were also suspended for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including permits to visit relatives in Israel, travel overseas and attend prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, COGAT said.

The move has sparked outrage among Palestinians, who believe they have a duty to visit the al-Aqsa mosque and protect it from settler attacks during the holy month of Ramadan.

Israeli large-scale closure of the West Bank and Gaza and blockading the Hebron town of Yatta following Tel Aviv deadly shooting that left four Israelis dead hit the front page headlines in the dailies. Israeli encroachments on the mosque were the catalyst for months of stabbings, car-rammings and other attacks by West Bank residents that have left more than 200 Palestinians and almost 30 Israelis dead.

Israeli forces deployed two additional Israeli army battalions to the West Bank on June 9, consisting of hundreds of Israeli soldiers.

According to French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, Israel's heavy-handed reaction to a terrorist attack at a popular cafe in Tel Aviv will likely increase violence, rather than calm tensions.

The policy is backed by Israeli hawks as a deterrent measure. "They will not defeat us", he said, accusing Palestinian leaders of failing to condemn the attack.

The religious site, situated on a hill in the Old City of Jerusalem, is known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

Mohammed's father, Ahmad Mahamra, said "Our conditions drove or motivated them to do these things". Two Palestinian cousins from the West Bank have been detained on suspicion of carrying out the attacks.
Singh did not say whether agreement was imminent - India also wants deals to acquire advanced United States arms technology - but noted that Indian and USA troops now train together regularly.

Narendra Modi has reached the US for a three-day tour, during which he will meet US President Barack Obama in the home stretch of his White House stay.

After his arrival here, Mr Modi started formal engagements with a visit to Arlington Cemetery where he paid homage to the unknown martyred soldiers, thus becoming the third Indian Prime Minister to visit the memorial after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi.

For example, India's review of its innovation and intellectual property climate produced a new National Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) policy that proposed improvements on IP enforcement, but failed to make progress on badly needed reforms to ensure protection of trade secrets, patents, and other forms of IP held by foreign and domestic stakeholders. Modi is visiting the U.S.at the invitation of President Obama.

Noting that the USA and India share common climate and clean energy interests and are close partners in the fight against climate change, the White House said the leadership from both countries helped galvanise global action to combat climate change and culminated in the historic Paris Agreement reached last December.

The visit is an opportunity to showcase the notable gains made in Indo-U.S. relations since Modi took power two years ago and to maintain momentum in ties in the run-up to the U.S. presidential poll in November.

Although concerns over rising Hindu nationalism and religious intolerance persist in Modi's India, experts say they may be addressed behind the scenes and are unlikely to be a major public talking point.

"It's politics. It's pure politics", said Mihir Sharma, a writer and editor with the Business Standard newspaper and a longtime follower of Modi's career. But officials said an actual deal to phase out HFCs wouldn't come until the parties to the treaty meet in October in Rwanda. After the US he goes to Mexico.

The U.S., India and dozens of other countries have already signed the deal, the first hurdle in a two-step process, but Modi has been coy about whether India would formally join this year.

United States on Tuesday extended its support to India's bid for membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

"Penultimate leg of PM Narendra Modi's journey begins as he arrives in Washington DC on a sunny summer afternoon", External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted. In the last seven years, both countries have cemented a long lasting bond of friendship, developed on democratic values, open cultures, and admiration for a rule-based order. "That's something that he cares very deeply about, and India obviously is a very crucial player when it comes to climate issues".

The two leaders said in a joint statement that India and the US Export-Import Bank intend to work together toward a competitive financing package for the project and will work to finalize contractual agreements by June 2017. And depending on who assumes office next, whether it is the likely Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton or presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, bilateral ties between the two countries will be affected to varying degrees.

"Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann has promised India support in its efforts to become a member of the NSG", said Swarup at press conference on Monday in Washington.
Two men grieve near the site of last nights attack on an Orlando gay club. Photo: Gregg Newton/AFP/Getty Images

The Latest

Shooter Omar Mateen was cool and calm after taking hostages, according to cops. He reportedly said that he was affiliated with ISIS and referred to the Tsarnaev brothers as his homeboys.

and referred to the Tsarnaev brothers as his homeboys. The gunman had hung out at Pulse, the gay nightclub where he went on his shooting rampage, at least a dozen times, witnesses say.

say. Mateen may have scouted out Disney World, according to law-enforcement sources.

sources. Mateen allegedly enrolled in an online course in Islam with a radical, anti-gay imam.

imam. The death toll has been revised down by one to 49 people. More than 50 were injured. It is the single deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

history. The suspected gunman, 29-year-old U.S. citizen Omar Mateen, was likely radicalized online. President Obama and FBI director James Comey said it was highly unlikely the plot had direct ties to ISIS or any other terror network.

Overview

Forty-nine people are dead and 53 injured after a well-organized and well-prepared gunman opened fire and took hostages inside a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, at about 2 a.m. Sunday morning. (The FBI revised the number of victims down from 50 to 49 Monday.) Authorities are calling the attack, which is the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, an act of domestic terrorism. The gunman, identified as 29-year-old U.S. citizen and Florida resident Omar Mateen, was found dead inside the club following a shootout with a police SWAT team at around 5 a.m. He was armed with an AR-15-type assault rifle, handgun, knife, and some kind of device. Law enforcement officials have indicated that they suspect the attacker has ties to Islamic extremism, and it has been reported that Mateen made a 911 call and declared his allegiance to ISIS and called the Boston Marathon bombers his homeboys prior to the attack. Since the target was a gay nightclub, the attack is also the worst ever attack on the U.S. LGBT community, as well as the deadliest hate crime in modern American history.

Investigators outside the Pulse nightclub on Sunday morning. Photo: Gerardo Mora/Getty Images

The Attack and Aftermath

About 320 people were inside the Pulse nightclub when the gunman entered the club and started shooting, just before last call around 2 a.m. Witnesses reported hearing as many as 40 shots as they tried to rush to safety, with some crawling away on the floor across broken glass and bottles, and others hiding in a restroom. An off-duty police officer working security at the club initially engaged in a gun battle with the shooter but was apparently unable to stop him. The shooter then opened fire on the crowd. The club, which was hosting its weekly Latin Night, quickly posted a frantic message on their Facebook page warning patrons, Everyone get out of pulse and keep running. The gunman eventually took about five patrons hostage in a bathroom and holed up inside.

Once police arrived, they apparently established communication with the gunman. Orlando police chief John Mina, at a Monday press briefing, described the shooter as cool and calm in his conversations with cops. Mina said no shots were fired, but Mateen brought up his allegiance to ISIS and his admiration for the Tsarnaev brothers, reports the Times. He told police that he had explosives on his person, which prompted law enforcement to act. Those boasts turned out to be false; Mateen only had firearms.

At around 5 a.m., police conducted a raid to rescue the hostages. Officers tried to blow a hole in the wall with explosives. That failed to breach the wall, so they drove an armored vehicle into the building to break through and set the hostages free. Mateen also emerged and was killed in the resulting firefight. Some 30 hostages were rescued at that time, mostly from an isolated room that the killer could not enter, and which police ultimately breached using an armored car.

Photo: Joe Raedle/2016 Getty Images

One SWAT team member was shot in the head during the rescue, but was saved by his Kevlar helmet:

Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life. pic.twitter.com/MAb0jGi7r4  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

The New York Times has constructed a rough timeline of the attack based on what information has emerged so far. And in this video, compiled by The Guardian, a variety of witnesses describe what the attack and aftermath were like:

In these videos posted via social media, victims can be seen being treated by first responders outside the club, and a barrage of gunfire can be heard, presumably between police and the gunman during the SWAT raid:

By the end, roughly one out of every three people at the club were either injured or killed in the attack.

Photo: Undated Selfie of Omar Mateen/Myspace

The Suspected Shooter and His Possible Motivations

According to the Washington Post and multiple other news organizations, the suspected attacker has been identified by relatives and law enforcement officials as 29-year-old Omar Amir Siddiq Mateen, a U.S. citizen who resided roughly 125 miles south of Orlando in Port Saint Lucie, Florida, where he worked for a private security company called G4S. Late Monday night the company released a statement saying Mateen was employed at a gated retirement community and had undergone background checks.

Regional CEO for N America John Kenning has made a statement responding to Orlando shootings https://t.co/VKwQOxAiyR pic.twitter.com/2E8COqi5s6  G4S (@G4S) June 12, 2016

Mateen was born in New York, in 1986, but eventually moved to Florida with his family. His parents had emigrated to the U.S. from Afghanistan. Mateens father, Seddique Mateen, told NBC that, We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident. We werent aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country.

In 2006, Mateen earned an associates degree in criminal justice technology from Indian River State College. He had then been working for the G4S private security firm since 2007. Bloomberg reports that G4S is a major U.S. government contractor, particularly with the Department of Homeland Security. About 15 percent of its employees are rescreened every year, though its unclear if Mateen was subject to a re-check. Its armed guards, including Mateen, carry weapons on the job and receive firearms training. The weapon he used at work was reportedly not involved in the attack.

Mateen was well-organized and well-prepared for the clearly premeditated attack, and was armed with both an AR-15-type assault weapon, a handgun, and a knife. He wasnt wearing or carrying an explosive device, despite what he initially told police. Florida records indicate that Mateen was licensed as a security officer in the state, and also had a firearms license. An official at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms announced on Sunday that Mateen had legally purchased two firearms within the last week or so. Authorities believe those were the weapons he used in the attack.

Guns traced in #Orlando shooting: .223 caliber AR type rifle and 9mm semiautomatic pistol. Similar to those pictured pic.twitter.com/Ao5pcLtwBg  ATF HQ (@ATFHQ) June 12, 2016

Ed Henson, the owner of the gun shop where the shooter purchased his weapons, said Mateen raised no red flags and passed all his state and federally mandated background checks without incidence. An evil person came in here, and legally purchased two firearms from us, Henson said. If he hadnt purchased them from us, Im sure he would have gotten them from another local gun store in the area. He added that he wished he had picked no place.

ATF at the Shooting Center in Port St. Lucie where Orlando shooter Omar Mateen may have purchased weapons #tcpalm pic.twitter.com/Je7OzTFxma  Eric Hasert (@TCPalmHasert) June 13, 2016

Nothing is yet known about how the gunman chose his target, but witnesses have come forward to say theyve seen Mateen at the gay nightclub on multiple occasions  possibly going back years before his deadly attack. The Orlando Sentinel spoke to four club regulars who recognized the gunman from past visits to Pulse:

Sometimes he would go over in the corner and sit and drink by himself, and other times he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent, said Ty Smith, who also uses the name Aries. He saw Mateen at the club at least a dozen times, he told the Orlando Sentinel. We didnt really talk to him a lot, but I remember him saying things about his dad at times, Smith said. He told us he had a wife and child.

Another regular, Chris Callen, told the Canadian Press that Mateen had been going to the bar for at least three years. They said he came with a friend to drink and let loose. Callen and Smith, who also gave an interview to the Canadian outlet, recalled an incident where Mateen had threatened fellow clubgoers:

In separate interviews, both Callen and Smith described one incident that unnerved them. They said they decided to keep their distance from Mateen after he exploded in anger at a joke told by one of their friends, possibly about religion: He ended up pulling a knife, Callen said. He said if he ever messed with him again, you know how itll turn out.

Another witness said that Mateen had messaged him on Jackd, a gay social-networking site, three months ago. When he first contacted me, he was saying things like, What clubs are popping and things of that sort, what are good places to go? the man told ABC News. And I remember telling him, Oh, you can just look it up online because I dont go out that much.

Orlando police chief Mina said he had no knowledge of those reports, according to the Sentinel.

CBSN reported that Pulse night club had at least appeared on the killers browsing history days before the attack, and the owner of another large gay club in Orlando told the East Orlando Post that he received a Facebook friend request from Mateen last week, which he rejected. He says the FBI is now reviewing his security footage to see if Mateen ever scouted that club. Its therefore possible Mateen could have also contacted or visited other gay clubs in his search for an ideal target.

At the same time, law-enforcement sources told CBS News that Mateen apparently enrolled in the Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary, an online course operated by an imam named Abu Taubuh, also known as Marcus Robertson, who preaches anti-gay sermons.

Mateen allegedly scouted other targets in the Orlando area, specifically Walt Disney World, sources told The Wall Street Journal. The killer visited the resort and theme park, though its unclear when he visited, and which specific location he had gone to see.

Regarding Mateens motivation for the attack, NBC News reports that law-enforcement officials say Mateen declared his allegiance to the leader of ISIS in a 911 call. He also referred to the Tsarnaev brothers as his homeboys, though investigators say theres no proof he ever had contact with either of the Boston Marathon bombers. Earlier, during a Sunday-morning press conference, an FBI spokesman cautioned that they were investigating multiple leads, but also indicated that, We do have suspicions that the individual may have leanings toward [a jihadist] ideology. Florida senator Bill Nelson and Florida representative Adam Schiff have both indicated that law-enforcement officials told them that they believe there is a link between Mateen and ISIS, but Nelson also stressed that such connections remain unconfirmed, as the investigation is ongoing. Indeed, officials have not officially confirmed any link between Mateen and any organized terrorist groups.

There were originally no indications that ISIS or any other terrorist group had claimed responsibility for the attack, and if the gunman was motivated by a jihadist ideology, he also could have been acting as a lone wolf, as ISIS has instructed its followers to conduct such attacks. Later on Sunday, an ISIS claim for the attack did emerge, though that doesnt mean anyone in the organization helped plan the attack, or even knew about it before it happened.

38. Alert was posted on Amaq's Telegram channel circa 2 pm EST meaning 12 hrs after attack (well under 2 days it took post San Bernardino)  Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) June 12, 2016

Here is the full statement, published in the New York Times and translated by the SITE Intelligence Group:

With facilitation from Allah the Almighty, the brother Omar Mateen, one of the soldiers of the Caliphate in America, carried out a security raid in which he was able to enter into a gathering of Crusaders in a nightclub for followers of the people of Lot in Orlando, Florida. Allah enabled him to subdue the impure Crusaders, killing and wounding more than a hundred of them before he was killed  may Allah accept him. It should be pointed out that this invasion is the largest in America in terms of the number killed.

ISIS had also recently made their annual call for followers to take advantage of the holy month of Ramadan to conduct attacks.

According to law enforcement sources who spoke with both NBC News and the Daily Beast, Mateen was a known quantity to federal authorities, and had previously been investigated for having Islamic extremist views. Per The Guardian, the FBI eventually detailed those investigations in a press conference on Sunday afternoon, with special agent Ron Hopper explaining that:

The FBI first became aware of Mateen in 2013 as he made inflammatory comments to coworkers, alleging possible terrorist ties. The FBI thoroughly investigated the matter including interviews of witnesses, physical surveillance and records checks. In the course of the investigation, Mateen was interviewed twice. Ultimately we were unable to verify the substance of his comments, and the investigation was closed.

FBI director James Comey said Mateen told authorities that he made those connections up because he was fed up with his co-workers, who were were discriminating against him and teasing him because he was Muslim.

They investigated him again in 2014, after Mateen suggested he had a relationship with American suicide bomber Omar Abu Salah, but the FBI found that contact was minimal and didnt to constitute a substantive relationship or threat at that that time.

Mateen was briefly married, from 2009 to 2011, and in an interview with the Washington Post, his ex-wife said that he was abusive, and did not seem interested in radical Islam. She also questioned his mental health:

He was not a stable person, said the ex-wife, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared for her safety in the wake of the mass shooting. He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasnt finished or something like that. He seemed like a normal human being, she said, adding that he wasnt very religious and worked out at the gym often. She said in the few months they were married he gave no signs of having fallen under the sway of radical Islam. She said he owned a small-caliber handgun and worked as a guard at a nearby facility for juvenile delinquents. He was a very private person, she said.

She adds that her parents, after they learned of his abuse, came to Florida and pulled her out of the house, and she never spoke to Mateen again. She believes they literally saved my life.

One of Mateens former co-workers, Daniel Gilroy, told the New York Times he wasnt shocked when he heard about what had happened in Orlando. I saw it coming, he said. He talked about killing people all the time. He was just agitated about everything, always shaken  always mad, Gilroy said, adding that Mateen was prone to using racial, sexual, and ethnic slurs.

Mateens father also indicated to NBC that he believes his son may have been motivated by homophobia, not religious extremism. This has nothing to do with religion, he told them. He said Mateen had become enraged after seeing two men kissing in Miami a few months ago, and that he believed that incident may be related to the attack.

With regards to Mateens father, the Washington Post notes that he hosts a somewhat incoherent political television show related to Afghan politics, in which he at least once expressed support for the Afghan Taliban:

Seddique Mateen, who has been referred to as Mir Seddique in early news reports, hosted the Durand Jirga Show on a channel called Payam-e-Afghan, which broadcasts from California. In it, the elder Mateen speaks in the Dari language on a variety of political subjects. Dozens of videos are posted on a channel under Seddique Mateens name on YouTube. A phone number and post office box that are displayed on the show were traced back to the Mateen home in Florida. Mateen also owns a nonprofit organization under the name Durand Jirga, which is registered in Port St. Lucie, Fla. In one video, Mateen expresses gratitude toward the Afghan Taliban, while denouncing the Pakistani government.

A state of emergency has been declared in Orlando so that law-enforcement officials can focus on the investigation, according to Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer. Mateens residence in Port Saint Lucie was searched by authorities on Sunday morning as was a house belonging to his relatives, also in Port Saint Lucie. Prosecutors said Monday that investigators had conviscated electronic and criminal evidence from the gunmans residence, and are looking into possible accomplices. I do want to let you know that we have no reason to believe that anyone connected to this crime is placing the public in imminent danger at this time, said U.S. Attorney for Central Florida, Lee Bentley III, on Monday. That there is an investigation of other persons. Were working as diligently as we can on that. We have teams of prosecutors, as well as teams of agents working around the clock, getting search warrants, getting court orders. If anyone else was involved in this crime, they will be prosecuted.

To complicate matters, authorities received reports of a potential break-in at Mateens condo Monday morning, not long after the FBI had wrapped up their raid. Witnesses noticed that the back sliding door was partially open. The lock had apparently been broken.

Comey, who refused to call the shooter by name, said Monday that no evidence existed at this point to indicate the shooter had direct instructions from a terrorist network to carry out the attack, or that he had even been in contact with ISIS or another radical group. Comey added: It is also not entirely clear just what terrorist group he aspired to support. Although he made clear his affinity, at the time of the attack for ISIL, and generally, in the time leading up to the attack for radical Islamist groups.

FBI Director Comey on Orlando shooter: "I am not using the killers name and I will try not to do that." https://t.co/9h1WqAkAsJ  ABC News (@ABC) June 13, 2016

President Obama echoed Comeys assertions, saying Mateen was likely radicalized by online propaganda. He called it one of the administrations biggest challenges in the fight to defeat ISIS. Countering this extremist ideology is increasingly going to be just as important that were disrupting more extensive plots engineered from the outside, he said.

Its not an either-or; its a both-and, Obama continued. We have to go after these terrorist organizations and hit them hard. We have to counter extremism. We also have to make sure that it is not easy for somebody who decides they want to harm people in this country to be able to obtain weapons.

The Victims

Initially, 20 people were reported to have been killed, but the toll was later updated to 50 killed and 53 wounded. On Monday, the FBI said the total number of victims stood at 49. (The original number of 50 dead included the gunman.) That revised total came after authorities were able make sure the club was cleared of potential explosives and safely access the entire building, discovering the additional victims. Most of the victims  39 people, including the shooter  were found dead inside the club, reports the Times. Authorities found two bodies outside the club, and at least nine people died on the way to the hospital. The updated total makes the attack the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, and it was already the worst-ever attack on the U.S. LGBT community.

The media is beginning to learn more about those killed in the attack, and Orlando authorities have identified almost all of the victims, and notified next of kin for a little more than two dozen of those killed. Officials have begun to release the names of those vicitms. The city of Orlando is posting the names of the dead on its website after the families have been contacted.

The portraits of those murdered are beginning to emerge. Because it was Latin Night at Pulse, many of the victims were Latino. Officials have put out a call for volunteer translators to help contact families of the deceased, many of whom are Spanish speakers. The youngest killed was 19; the oldest 50. They included 22-year-old Luis Vielma, who worked at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Studios, and 34-year-old Edward Sotomayor Jr. who had organized the first-ever gay cruise to Cuba in April. At least one New Yorker died in the attack, a social worker and aspiring nurse, 25-year-old Enrique Rios. One victim, 30-year-old Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, texted his mom that he loved her and was in the bathroom: Hes coming, he wrote. Im gonna die.

Orlando health officials said 43 of the 53 hurt in the attack are still hospitalized as of Monday morning. The hospital said five people remain in grave condition. With the exception of those people who died en route, none of those admitted to the hospital since have died of their wounds.

The many people injured in the attack were taken to three area hospitals, and there are multiple heartbreaking reports of family members trying to locate their loved ones throughout the morning. Indeed, one of the most harrowing details to emerge after the attack is that law-enforcement investigators said that after they entered the club, they had to tune out the sound of cell phones going off among the dead, presumably as frantic friends and family members tried to call the victims to see if they were okay.

Families sobbing, collapsing to ground outside Hampton Inn as they get updates on victims. #WFTV #PulseNightclub pic.twitter.com/wgiCxObJUA  Kimberly Eiten (@KEitenWFTV) June 12, 2016

Medical officials asked area residents to donate blood in the wake of the attack (locations to do that can be found here) and the response was overwhelming  though many have pointed out that, despite this attack striking the LGBT community, FDA rules still prohibit gay men from donating blood if they have been sexually active within the past year.

Humanity responds to evil. From a family friend in Central Florida https://t.co/lSuDbRMJ3r pic.twitter.com/CAzBuJYqv9  Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) June 12, 2016

In addition, police have have set up a hotline (407-246-4357) for family members who believe a loved one may be one of the victims. Facebook has also activated its safety-check feature for Orlando-area users. Orlando authorities have also asked the public not to hold any large-scale vigils for a while, as the citys resources are still stretched too thin following the attack.

But vigils sprung up in other cities, including one outside Stonewall Inn in New York City, which is set to be named a national monument to gay rights.

Photo: BRYAN R. SMITH/This content is subject to copyright.

Photo: BRYAN R. SMITH/This content is subject to copyright.

The Location

The venue where the attack occurred, the Pulse nightclub, is one of the largest clubs in Orlando, Florida, and caters to the LGBT community. One of the DJs playing Saturday night told the Times, This is a nice club, decent, people come from all over to dance and have a good time. Young people. A lot of young people were there last night. A former Pulse dancer who spoke with McClatchy DC explained in more detail:

Pulse is like a family. Everybody who works there is treated equally. Treated like brothers and sisters. When somebody is hurting or in need, we always look out for each other, said Benjamin DiCosta, 25, a former Pulse dancer who later lived in Broward County and now works as an HIV counselor in Chicago. The nightclub, which caters to a younger clientele, is about a half-mile from Orlandos downtown area, DiCosta said. This is one of the No. 1 destinations for LGBT people to attend in the summertime, he said. Mostly people from Central Florida, some people come from Tampa to Orlando.  Very trendy club, mostly younger, different demographics. Its been one of the most popular clubs. Theyve been around about 10 years[.] DiCosta said that on most nights, Pulse would be filled with between 500 and 600 patrons, but that on a high capacity night like Saturday, up to 800 people might be there.

He added that the only reason there were fewer people in the club when the attack happened on Saturday night was because it was close to closing time and most patrons had already left.

Here is a 2008 video that shows the interior of Pulse:

The Political Response

Barack Obama addressed the nation on Sunday afternoon regarding the attack, which he called both an act of terror and an act of hate. He also highlighted how horrifying it was that the target was a gay club, which he called a place of solidarity and empowerment for the LGBT community, and connected the shooting to the larger problem of gun violence in America, adding that:

This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, in a house of worship, or in a movie theater ,or in a nightclub. And we have to decide if thats the kind of country we want to be. To actively do nothing is a decision as well.

Watch his entire remarks below:

"This was an act of terror and act of hate." @POTUS on the tragic shooting in #Orlando https://t.co/i7fOS38GzH  The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 12, 2016

Vice-President Biden also released a written statement following the tragedy in which he called the shooting an act of pure hate and unspeakable terror:

VP Joe Biden statement on #Orlando shooting. "Our prayers are not enough..." pic.twitter.com/9UIVp5EJ9V  Harry Horton (@harry_horton) June 12, 2016

Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have both responded to the tragedy, first on Twitter, and with more substantive statements later on Sunday:

Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

Clinton would later release a larger statement, in which she focused a little more on the terrorism element than Obama had, but still essentially echoed his remarks:

This was an act of terror. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are hard at work, and we will learn more in the hours and days ahead. For now, we can say for certain that we need to redouble our efforts to defend our country from threats at home and abroad. That means defeating international terror groups, working with allies and partners to go after them wherever they are, countering their attempts to recruit people here and everywhere, and hardening our defenses at home. It also means refusing to be intimidated and staying true to our values. This was also an act of hate. The gunman attacked an LGBT nightclub during Pride Month. To the LGBT community: please know that you have millions of allies across our country. I am one of them. We will keep fighting for your right to live freely, openly and without fear. Hate has absolutely no place in America. Finally, we need to keep guns like the ones used last night out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals. This is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States and it reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets. This is a time to stand together and resolve to do everything we can to defend our communities and country.

Hillary Clinton gave a national-security speech in Cleveland Monday and called for an intelligence surge to help identify lone-wolf attackers.

And as might be expected from someone who called for a ban on Muslim immigrants following the San Bernardino terrorist attack last year, Trumps comments had a sharper political edge from the start, as he quickly used the attack for a kind of self-gratifying told-you-so moment:

Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016 Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016 Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016 "@WandaWalls20: @realDonaldTrump Please make us safe. We cannot have Hillary as president. We will be in so much trouble.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016 What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Trump then released a statement regarding the attacks late Sunday afternoon, first trying to suggest that terrorism is a result of political correctness, focusing on how President Obama did not use the term radical Islam in his address to the nation (and suggesting he resign because of it):

If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore. Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen  and it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We cant afford to be politically correct anymore.

Trump also defaulted to his larger, de facto Islamophobic argument about how Middle Eastern immigrants, i.e. Muslims, shouldnt be let into the U.S.:

The terrorist, Omar Mir Saddique Mateen, is the son of an immigrant from Afghanistan who openly published his support for the Afghanistani Taliban and even tried to run for President of Afghanistan. According to Pew, 99% of people in Afghanistan support oppressive Sharia Law. We admit more than 100,000 lifetime migrants from the Middle East each year. Since 9/11, hundreds of migrants and their children have been implicated in terrorism in the United States. Hillary Clinton wants to dramatically increase admissions from the Middle East, bringing in many hundreds of thousands during a first term  and we will have no way to screen them, pay for them, or prevent the second generation from radicalizing. We need to protect all Americans, of all backgrounds and all beliefs, from Radical Islamic Terrorism  which has no place in an open and tolerant society. Radical Islam advocates hate for women, gays, Jews, Christians and all Americans. I am going to be a President for all Americans, and I am going to protect and defend all Americans. We are going to make America safe again and great again for everyone.

Monday morning on Fox & Friends, Trump lobbed accusations at Obama for the attack: People cannot  they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the ways he acts and cant even mention the words radical Islamic terrorism. Theres something going on. Its inconceivable. And more was to come.

Trump delivered a speech at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire where he reiterated his not going to have a country anymore line unless the United States started adopting some of his suggestions to screen and temporarily ban Muslims. I called for a ban after San Bernardino, and was met with great scorn and anger but now, many are saying I was right to do so, Trump said. When I am elected, I will suspend immigration from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies, until we understand how to end these threats. Here are his remarks:

Several hours after the attacks Ted Cruz also released a statement that echoed Trumps. Enough is enough, he said. What we need is for every American  Democrat and Republican  to come together, abandon political correctness, and unite in defeating radical Islamic terrorism. He also warned that the Obama administration  and liberals in general  would try to exploit this terror attack to undermine the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms of law-abiding Americans.

Two @OrangeCoSheriff deputies are posted outside the Islamic center of Orlando after reports of threats. pic.twitter.com/Bg40ofiA9x  Ty Russell (@TRussellWFTV) June 12, 2016

This is a developing news story and this post will be updated with new information as it becomes available.
Meg Whitman apparently read Paul Ryan the riot act. Photo: Matthew Cavanaugh/Getty Images

This weekends Mitt Romneyhosted Experts and Enthusiasts summit in Park City, Utah, has gone from ideas festival to Trump-angst conference, according to attendees who spoke with Politico and other news organizations. The annual five-star, press-free retreat plays host to hundreds of GOP donors and strategists, all from Romneys fundraising Rolodex, and many of whom remain none-too-pleased with the Partys nominee this year. A large number of these donors, who helped raise over a billion dollars for the 2012 campaign, are clearly still holding true to Romneys #NeverTrump ideals and refusing to support the candidate, while others seem to be at least trying to will themselves into Paul Ryans #LukeWarmTrump mindset. Meanwhile, others are already focusing solely on down-ticket races, or the 2020 race, or even leaning toward Hillary Clinton. None of this bodes well for the Trump campaigns already lackluster fundraising efforts, if you can even call Trumps presidential campaign a campaign at this point. Indeed, CNN reports that many donors at the retreat were talking openly about how immature and overmatched the Trump campaigns four-week-old fundraising operation was, especially when compared with the well-established Romney machine.

During an off-the-record Q&A with Paul Ryan at the summit on Friday, billionaire GOP donor and Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman reportedly lit into Ryan over his endorsement of Trump, who she likened to Hitler and Mussolini. ABC News reports that she even posed the question, Is it not reasonable to support Hillary Clinton? in light of Trumps various offensive remarks, while former CNN anchor Campbell Brown asked Ryan how he would explain his support of Trump to a young child like her dismayed son. At another discussion, political commentator Ana Navarro not only called Trump a racist, but also a vulgarian and a pig who has made disgusting comments about women for years.

With regards to the summits Donald-despising host, Romney actually teared up at a Saturday morning Q&A when asked why he was so eager to reject Trump, noting that the moguls derisive comments cant be left unanswered, and that seeing this just breaks your heart, according to Politico. And thats after pro-Trump pragmatists like RNC chair Reince Priebus apparently spent hours trying to decrease tensions between Team Romney and Team Trump at the retreat, all in the hopes of paving inroads to the GOP donor class.

Good luck with that, as Romneys comments in a CNN interview on Friday demonstrate:

I dont want to see a president of the United States saying things which change the character of the generations of Americans that are following. 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.

Romney, who continues to reject the idea of running for president as an independent, acknowledged that he doesnt expect a viable alternative to become available to disaffected Republicans like himself, but hell take a look at Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. And though Romney expressed his annoyance that other GOP presidential candidates didnt fight Trump harder in the primaries, he also declined the opportunity to criticize fellow Republicans, like former running mate Paul Ryan, who are now supporting Trump. Others at the summit, like Meg Whitman, were far less understanding. Ryan is said to have looked uncomfortable when he was interrogated over his endorsement of Trump, but defended himself by reiterating that he is bound to the will of GOP representatives, many of whom hail from districts where Trumps support remains high.

Either way, the anxiety over Trump was readily apparent, attendees reported. According to one fundraiser, in an informal poll during a summit session with some 250 donors, only about 20 percent indicated they would vote for Trump. Others seemed to be withholding support until they see evidence of Trumps long-promised pivot to the general and some kind of aversion to controversial statement-making. Said one fundraiser to the Associated Press: Im an optimist by nature, and I keep hoping and hoping and hoping that there will be a reason to support him.

Anthony Scaramucci, a top Romney fundraiser who is supporting Trump, has been trying to convince more donors at the summit to join his efforts, though he acknowledged to the Washington Post that attendees were going nuts over Trumps attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel. Scaramucci also offered a tortured Game of Thrones analogy to describe his predicament wooing Romneyites to Trump:

I feel like Jon Snow, trying to get the Wildlings to team up with the kings of the castles. Your father just got slayed by your uncle, whom you dont really like, and your uncle is now in charge. Youve got the White Walkers descending from the north and theyre coming to hunt you and all the living. What do you do? Do you fight with your uncle or band together and fight the White Walkers?

Said Spencer Zwick, Romneys former national finance chairman, of the Romney loyalists, They would like to see a unified party, but if I hear anything consistently, its country before party.

Summit visitors had at least one thing to be excited about, however. According to Politico, the prospective 2020 contenders in attendance, like Ryan, Scott Walker, and senators Tom Cotton and Ben Sasse, were apparently mobbed by enthusiastic donors.
Photo: Tetra Images/This content is subject to copyright.

CNN has acquired the sentencing memo from the trial of Brock Turner, the Stanford college student who was found guilty of raping an unconscious woman. As if the case itself wasnt harrowing enough, theres more.

According to the documents,

Shortly after the Defendants arrest in the early morning hours of January 18, 2015, Detectives noticed a text message in the Group Me application that appeared on the Defendants screen. It stated, Whos t*ts are those?? (See Exhibit our: photos of screenshot.) A search warrant for the Defendants phone was obtained and his phone 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 on the phone and can be deleted by a third party member in the group.

The prosecutors provided the court with photos of a screengrab, but they couldnt retrieve whatever photo the text is referring to.

CNN reports, A witness told investigators that the day of the assault he saw a female subject lying on the ground behind the dumpster  He also noticed a male subject standing over her with a cell phone. He was holding the 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 flash.

The documents reveals other details about Turners behavior, both in terms of drug and alcohol use and aggressive behavior towards women. You can read the entire PDF here, but be warned  its graphic.
I mean it's understandable if they were close, and she didn't feel like smiling and taking photos with fans.

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I remember one of the first Christina vlogs I saw was when she had just moved in with Selena, she seemed so excited to have been spotted by Selena's dad.



So sad :(

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i can't imagine how she feels considering they're both around the same age and she was performing really close to where christina was shot. i hope this time off is good for her, she needs it



rip christina

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this is so so so sad.

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:( so sad

her brother posted on FB about it too apparently </3 the poor loved ones, i cant imagine how awful this is :(

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Ia. She was being super kind to do the outside m&g. Those are just fans waiting outside her bus or the venue. I think there's barricades, but it can still get unorganized... And if someone had a weapon ://////

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ya i saw a video of her meeting fans outside and someone pulled at her hair.. shit is dangerous

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I can only imagine how she was must be feeling :'(



"40 fans in the nosebleed sections chosen by her crew cause they can't afford VIP"



That's really nice of her to do.





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Taylor taught ha!!!!



jk, no one from the nosebleeds get picked

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lmao stop

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lmao

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Urgh this is so sad.

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omg. this has really been bothering me since I woke up this morning and read the news. places where you should feel safe do not feel safe. I cannot imagine what this family is going through, and I feel awful for Selena. I had no idea they were that close.

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That's how I feel too.. Like I want to go to LA pride this weekend but tbh i feel so scared in largw events like that. Also this is rlly triggering as it reminds me alot about Selena Quintanilla's death :/ and even John Lennon's too. (Musicians/artists)

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All Pride events are getting their security beefed up after what happened in Orlando. A ton of local communities and businesses need Pride, they aren't going to cancel it. Be safe!

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Totally understandable.

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Do they give back the money for those that paid for the M&G?

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yeah I don't think she'll be doing the outside meet and greets anymore

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I feel sick about this. everyone was talking about it today since we're in orlando too, so I heard about it all day.

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Weve been chatting on the phone every now and again.

We definitely want to do something at some point, we havent done anything yet, but we definitely will do something.

He also hopes to collaborate with Craig David, to which Craig David agreed to as well backstage apparently.

He also recently spoke about his lifestyle & fitness...and his workout routine is actually pretty ballin'.

In an interview backstage at the Captial FM Ball today, superstar Mike Posner confirmed that he's about to collaborate with some big UK names...and he also recently revealed the secret to his sexy bod.. When I do a hard workout, I feel really good and I have more energy throughout the day. Also, a by-product of that is my body looks nicer too, which is not a bad thing" he said about his exercise regime."I do HIIT workouts... and he does a lot of callisthenics. I also do a lot of interval sprints  Ill run up a hill, come down, do 10 burpees then sprint up again."He needs a trainer to motivate him, just like all of us basic bitches. "."..




http://trib.al/FOmmMWK There was a second guy arrested en route to the LA parade

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I saw that. I'm terrified for everyone in the LGBT community.

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This is terrifying :(

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omg. this climate of fear we're living in is becoming unbearable. :(

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Fuck!! I was scared of this triggering crazies to copycat what happened in Orlando.

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He was on route before the shooting happened (30 hour drive.)

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scared for all my friends going out to pride today =(

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I saw and I'm so terrified for everyone at the celebrations today. Stay safe loves.

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unreal

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I saw that under the Breaking News on my local station and gasped. WTF is wrong with people?

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I heard it reported that it was unrelated. Not any less scary or fucked up, but there's no sign that a chain of attacks might occur.

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it's disgusting that attacks like these end up spewing others so many times. this is too horrifying.

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god i was literally there just yesterday.

this is all too horrifying and too much to fucking take in.

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Have they said who he is yet?

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I'm so done with people

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What? I'm going today....

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These hateful pieces of shit. At least this one got caught before he could do any damage.

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Fucked up. GDI.

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what the fuck :(

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ugh this is terrible and really really scary

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god i'm glad he was caught

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Yup, people going to pride need to be careful.

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I saw this. Jesus fucking Christ.

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All my fellow LGBT folks stay safe today. And all my Muslim folk as well! Honestly, everyone stay safe! 



Edited at 2016-06-12 06:13 pm (UTC)

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I'm just out of words. I can't.

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call him out, Clay

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get him, clay

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donald is probably conflicted because it's gay people on one hand, and muslim people on the other

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Gay Latinos. He must be very conflicted.

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Doubly so because it was a latin night in a black and latinx club. Which fear wins?

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TBH I thought the same thing. :(

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i'm guessing he's just gonna stay silent...or somehow spin it how GOP always does well every person in there should've had a gun, etc etc etc

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If he condemns it republicans will think he's anti-gun and pro-gay

If he semi-defends it he's supporting Muslims attacking Americans



It's a conflicting day for Satan's minions.

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+@ all the straight ppl not calling it what it is & speaking abt vague tragedy

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Clay is brave

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go clay

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Fuck him up Clay

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I live 10 minutes from the guy who was gonna bomb the LA Pride. This is seriously scary! What is happening to our country?

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Reading comments on Facebook makes me wanna vomit, literally. I cannot believe people can be so hateful and write such horrible things.

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I'm staying away from the news and general comments sections rn </3

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i'm afraid of going to work tomorrow and hearing casually homophobic comments from coworkers. i'd like to think they're better than that but i honestly have no idea.

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I've just witnessed a conversation at work about how it's our rights to own guns, how things would have gone if the people killed had guns (?!?!?!), the security card should have had an assault rifle, etc. I am not surprised at this point at the shit people say especially being from Indiana. Surprisingly they haven't gone on any homophobic rants. Yet.

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You shouldn't have to live and work like that. People are so shitty. I'm sorry.

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I certainly found a few fb "friends" that need to be deleted ASAP.

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Thank God the people on my FB page have been supportive. No homophobia or Islamophobia yet.

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I deleted mine today. I just couldn't.

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I had to stop looking.

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bless richard armitage for calling out guns as part of this

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Always surprised by how eloquent Dwayne Johnson can be.

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Dang, Richard deleted it?

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I know. I feel the same way. I'm here in LA and I walked into a starbucks and everyone isnworking on their computers or reading and i'm trying to hold back tears.. This is so scary. So deeply fucking scary..

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Same. I've basically been a wreck all weekend because I was still processing what happened to Christina Grimmie.



This is just too much.

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Same. It took me a while to leave and buy groceries. Everything has been feeling solemn.

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Not in LA or FL but I felt on edge just going to Target to run errands, because you never really know when some idiot will decide to shoot up a store. A concert. A club. A school. You never know

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I know what you mean. I was running out the door to do a necessary errand when I first heard about the Paris attacks. I sobbed my way through the grocery store to pick up the stuff I needed.

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I live in NC and our bigot governor (Pat McCroy), who frequently fuels anti-gay rhetoric, had the nerve to post his condolences. I'm so angry.

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That's better than the Texas Lt. Governor who tweeted a bible verse suggesting that the people in Pulse deserved what happened and then, when called out on it, doubled down and posted it to his Facebook as well.

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Fuuuuuck hiiiiiim oh my god.

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W o w. Yet another reason Texas remains the worst

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it was a "scheduled tweet"



my ass.

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Texas is terrible.

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PAT MCCORD CAN SUCK MY BBC FROM THE BACK. FUCK HIM.

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this is all so horrifying

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Ok @cnn. This MIGHT have been Islamic terrorism. But it DEFINITELY was a targeted attack on gays! And you're totally downplaying that!   Clay Aiken (@clayaiken) June 12, 2016





This shooter was Islamic. But father says he was "not religious". He was pissed that he saw two men kissing. This was a hate crime! #Orlando  Clay Aiken (@clayaiken) June 12, 2016





A gay man who survived #orlando hate crime can STILL have his landlord evict him in FL (and many other states) simply because he is gay.  Clay Aiken (@clayaiken) June 12, 2016





A gay man who survived #orlando hate crime can STILL have his landlord evict him in FL (and many other states) simply because he is gay.  Clay Aiken (@clayaiken) June 12, 2016



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he's so fucking right, seems like the media especially CNN is downplaying that it was a hate crime, why are they leaving out the gay in gay club?

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fucking TELL IT!

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It saddens me that people don't understand this.

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he's on point

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bless him

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Educate them !

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Yes clay!

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well damn clay

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go IN

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cnn is continually trash

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they just keep saying "nightclub"

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The worst part is that Republicans will care less knowing it was a gay nightclub.

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i've seen people saying we don't need to emphasize the "gay club" part because humans are humans, thinking they're helping the cause. i cannot with morons.

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I knew because Takei has been updating on this since all day.

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Yes Clay!

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yes clay

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Good for Clay going in on them.

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CNN ain't shit. Good for Clay for calling them out.

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Go in!!!

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living for clay the politician. live and speak in truth forever and always, clay.

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I guess I'm stanning for Clay Aiken now. Go in!!!

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Hell yes, Clay.

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"This was an act of terror and an act of hate" - Obama



All my LGBT brothers and sisters, stay safe 

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we're all human. i'm straight and this is heartbreaking.

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I kinda see your point... but wouldn't it be best if as many people as possible speak out against hate crimes like these?

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why? i'm straight but i fight for lgbt rights harder than most people. sure i'll never know what it's like but i'm still passionate about it.

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sympathy and empathy are always acceptable. and when 50 people are killed just because they're LGBT, that's tragic for humanity.

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Then simply don't read their comments condemning this hate crime?

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I just learned about this. I have no words. I'm so angry. This and Christina Grimmie is just too sad

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I don't believe this tbh.

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they're about to play call on cbs now :/

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This is what happens when we push away people, they resort and go to extremist organizations. :(((((

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..this is all so awful

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How to guarantee you will never be forgotten by the media, declare yourself a terrorist supporter. Then they will never be able to stop speaking about you.

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I read on Twitter/through the Amaq Agency that ISIS takes responsibility

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not surprising tbh.

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he apparently mentioned the boston bombers too

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The horizontal white line is unmistakable. A white blanket and an icy sea that cover a "warm" core of hydrocarbons that, recently, seems to have lost its attractiveness. So much so that the oil major Royal Dutch Shell has decided to abandon the extensive arctic lands despite its substantial investments there. The venture simply does not seem to be worth the trouble. Yet estimates would suggest the exact opposite, with past assessments leading many Oil & Gas companies to fund costly explorations, betting on the Arctic to ensure the industrys future. The energy history of the Arctic begins in Russia with the discovery of the Tazovskoye13 field in 1962, which launched the big race for hydrocarbons. It was then Alaskas turn with the Prudhoe Bay field, which came to light in 1967. Approximately 61 large oil and natural gas fields have been discovered within the Arctic Circle since, including in Russia, Alaska, Canada and Norway. A total of 15 of these large fields are still not in production, 11 are located in Canada and territories of the northeast, 2 in Russia and 2 in Arctic Alaska.

Large investments stuck at the starting post

The current collapse in oil prices has resulted in a clear change of perspective. Although the Energy Information Administration speaks of reserves amounting to 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 billion cubic feet of gas "trapped" in the depths of the boundless Arctic lands, major oil companies, such as Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips, have given up their exploration rights in the U.S. Arctic worth a total of $2.5 billion. In particular, last year Shell ended an unsuccessful exploratory effort costing at least $8 billion in the Chukchi Sea. The company determined that the risks were not offset by the earning prospects, and other major companies in the industry are gradually coming to the same conclusion. At the end of 2015, the Obama administration had "frozen," at least until the end of 2016, drillings in search of oil and gas off the coast of Alaska, revoking existing permits (Shell until 2020 in the Chukchi Sea and Norways Statoil until 2017 in the Beaufort Sea). Sally Jewell, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, who also deals with mineral resources in the U.S., blocked the 2 licenses and will not grant any more. The last act in this saga concerns the drawing up, by Shell and ConocoPhillips on May 1, 2016, of the decision to abandon the Arctic, with a deadline fixed for the payment of millions of dollars to the U.S. government, the lessee of exploration blocks in northern Alaska. Meanwhile, on March 15, 2016 Jewell and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) presented the 2017-2022 Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) proposal for the licensing program in the Oil & Gas industry. An entire chapter covers the debate on whether to open a further concessions program in the vast Arctic area corresponding to Alaska. The "regulator" openly expresses her hesitation in proceeding to issue further licenses, even after the moratorium expires in December 2016, in the Chukchi Sea, the Beaufort Sea and in the Cook Inlet areas. The areas under examination, as stated in the document, "could be subject to potential conflicts between oil and gas research and extraction activities and important ecological and livelihood resources for the local people." The BOEM has declared these areas as "important for the environment" while it continues the work of collecting new information, mainly from local populations. "We know that the Arctic is a unique place and crucial for many native populations who rely on the resources that the ocean provides to meet their daily livelihood needs," said Jewell. "We will proceed to prepare the final proposal while continuing to consult the population in order to understand whether these areas are adequate to support new licenses, without adversely affecting environmental resources."

The Washington-Ottawa axis

At the same time as the presentation of this program, in a joint statement with Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, President Obama announced the launch of a handbook of rules for managing the Arctic area. The main rule concerns the commitment to verify and ensure that all commercial activities to be undertaken in the Arctic meet the highest safety and environmental standards, especially with regard to national objectives in terms of environmental protection and climate change. For this reason, during the process of planning offshore oil activities, the BOEM will work with Canada to ensure that the global regulation for managing the Arctic zone, established by the 2 nations, is complied with care. For its part, Ottawa has estimated that approximately 1.36 billion barrels of oil may lie buried beneath the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean. But there are also difficulties on the Canadian side. Major Oil & Gas companies such as Imperial Oil, Exxon Mobil, BP and Chevron could be forced to abandon their research and extraction projects, since they have not been able convince the federal authorities that they can continue their drilling activities  before their licenses expire  without completely evading the environmental risk. Related: Saudi Arabia To Tax Foreign Residence As Oil Crisis Continues

A still uncertain future, awaiting a new president

Yet what will happen after the upcoming presidential election at the White House? Michael Livermore, Professor of Environmental Law at the University of Virginia, recently argued that it would be difficult, although not impossible, for the future president to alter what now seems to be a real change of course in the possibility of Arctic energy exploitation. "If, in the licensing program, some zones are excluded, it will be unlikely that they will be considered exploitable again in the future; therefore no license will be granted, even by the next administration," claimed Livermore. "But the new leaders could decide to launch a new programming process, and through this grant new license areas." In this regard, the message of Hillary Clinton, Democratic presidential candidate, was immediately clear: "the Arctic is a unique treasure, and we cannot run the risk of exposing it to new drilling." Clintons position satisfies the hopes of environmentalists, who are asking White House candidates to adopt a harder line on the development of fossil fuels than the approach taken during current President Obamas 2 terms in office.

By Giancarlo Strocchia via Abo.net

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Wisconsin is home to the third-largest Hmong-American community in the country, behind California and Minnesota. Over 100,000 Hmong came to the United States after the Vietnam War as political refugees. Wisconsin alone has almost 50,000 Hmong, making up about 38 percent of the total Asian population in the state. The Hmong population continues to grow here in Wisconsin and have made tremendous gains in educational attainment, entrepreneurship, medicine and non-profit work.

To showcase some of their impressive accomplishments, Madison365 is presenting 12 profiles of Wisconsin Hmong professionals in the "1.5 generation." This is the generation of those born in Laos or Thai refugee camps and transported to America in their childhood. They represent the link between their parents, who lived through the war and are fluent in Hmong, and their children, who were born in America and are fluent in English.

These profiles are not representative of the whole community, as there are Hmong professionals in many other fields than those listed here, including business, human services and politics. While not totally representative, these profiles do share common themes. The parents of these individuals placed a high value on schooling, and often worked multiple jobs to ensure their children could get the best education available. An acute realization of their parents sacrifices fueled a drive to achieve. Now, they look to help the next generation, acting as mentors and role models.

This is part two in a three-part series. You can read part one here.

Chia Vang: The importance of experiential learning

Associate professor at UW-Milwaukee, department of history

Just nine when she came to the US, by middle school, Chia Youyee Vang had her sights set on higher education. She wrote in her diary that she wanted a PhD by the time she was 25.

She didnt know anyone with a PhD and consequently didnt realize 25 would be a tough deadline to meet. But she attained her masters degree by that age, and today, she has her PhD and is an associate professor of history at UW-Milwaukee.

"It may seem that Im unique, but Im not that unique when thinking about immigrant children," Vang said. Immigrants who come from countries without as many opportunities do well, she says, simply because they can.

"In Laos, I never went to school. It wasnt an option for me. I never held a pen until we got to the refugee camp," Vang said. "So when we arrived in the US and could go to school, some of us just went crazy with learning."

Once in America, growing up in impoverished neighborhoods in the Twin Cities solidified her desire for something better.

"We didnt even start at zero, we started at negative. As refugees, you come with nothing," she said.

Rather than international relocation, Vang knows many Hmong American youth today struggle with their bi-cultural identity. Some hide within the security of the Hmong community, while others ignore their heritage, she said. She wants youth to embrace both sides of who they are, and she believes that in order to do this they must be open to learn.

But as an educator, Vang doesnt want students to learn about anything simply by reading about it. Rather, she wants to get students out of their comfort zones so that they can examine things from different viewpoints. This is why she offers short-term study abroad courses to Southeast Asia.

"Its one thing to sit in the comfort of a university classroom and read about other people and places, and its another thing to be in these places to learn from local professionals and interact with local people," Vang said.

This opportunity is just one part of the Hmong Diaspora Studies program she established at UW-Milwaukee in 2009. The program is a multidisciplinary approach to Hmong culture, history and contemporary issues. Because Hmong history in the courses is not taught in isolation but as part of the larger American immigration history, it has proved especially helpful for students who plan to work in school or healthcare systems that work with diverse populations.

By exposing her students to different global perspectives, she hopes they recognize our common humanity.

"We may live in different parts of the world, but all people share the same hopes for their families," she said.

Kaying Xiong Vue: Dont let anyone tell you "no"

Director of Student Services for Eau Claire Area School District

As a person of color in Eau Claire in the '90s, Kaying Xiong Vue met with resistance. She wanted to graduate from high school early and was told that that wasnt the way things were done. She did it anyway.

As a college freshman, she was told she wouldnt be accepted into the competitive education program. She was.

She doesnt believe the pessimistic advice was given maliciously, but she learned her lesson. "I cant let other people tell me its not going to work when they dont know me," Vue said.

She would continue to meet resistance. She became a first-grade teacher, then an elementary school principal. As principal, she was the first person of color many of the parents had interacted with at the school. Perceived as an outsider, parents came to her time and time again with a clear message. "You havent been here long enough, you dont know about the traditions of our school, let me tell you what we care about," Vue said.

It took years to build relationships so that the community trusted that she knew what she was doing. She worked hard and cared deeply about the children at her school. "I didnt want one day to go wasted without a child feeling like this was their most valuable day," Vue said.

She persevered in the face of criticism, and she hopes that the next generation of Hmong Americans can also confidently navigate their role in dual cultures.

"I want to see them being able to clearly identify, This is who I am, and Im comfortable with that," Vue said.

Vue was the first female Hmong principal in the United States, but shes not very concerned about the title. More important to her is the idea that, as the first, she can help "pave the way and create that space for people to see themselves in roles that have been traditionally been reserved for white middle class men or women." She wants the next generation to know that they shouldnt let people tell them "No."

Her first year of teaching, one of her first-grade Hmong students came up to her and asked, "Are you a real teacher?"

"I thought, Do I look like a fake teacher? But I said, Why do you ask? because I was curious as to her line of thinking. And she said, I want to be a teacher when I grow up, but my mother says only American people (she meant white people) can be teachers."

Vue realized this small girl had learned at a young age that she couldnt achieve her dreams. She had grown up in an education system only seeing people of color as aides and support staff but none as teachers or administrators.

"We have a district of 27 percent students of color, and we probably have three or four teachers of color. Kids learn what they see and what they live with," said Vue.

This realization helped her approach her dissertation, and later her career as a principal, with an intentional focus.

"I was always reminding myself to be consciousness of the fact that I wasnt just a principal," Vue said. As a women of color, she wanted to demonstrate to students that if they were willing to put in the hard work, they could enter any field they wanted.

After 15 years as a principal, Vue is now the Director of Student Services for the school district. In her new role, she gets what she calls the "30,000 feet perspective" as she works with staff and programs in 19 schools. The role presents new challenges, but as an educator, Vue firmly believes in the necessity of lifelong learning.

"I need to be able to buy the product I sell. I truly believe that in this country, in order to seek social justice and to find peace and quality of life, education is a key component of that. So whether people are 40 or 10, education is a key part to wherever they need to go," Vue said.

Bee Lo: An international approach to medicine

Naturopathic medical doctor

Dr. Bee Lo lived in a Thai refugee camp for four years before coming to America. In this difficult environment, he had no ambition or dreams for the future.

"You dont think about a high school degree. You dont think about college. You just live day by day," said Lo. "In America, its Whats your dream? What are your goals? Theres no such thing when I was growing up. Just live, dont think far ahead."

When he eventually arrived in America, he was 11, an orphan and unable to read or write in English or Hmong.

Lo knew he was behind and was willing to put in the hours to make up for it. From 1979 to 2005, he studied straight through every year including summers, taking only two years and one summer off. But what may seem an intolerable burden to some was accepted matter-of-factly by him. "I love education. I love knowledge," he said.

He majored in biology and chemistry with the aim of becoming a doctor, but didnt find it fulfilling. "I realized I wanted to do more than prescribe drugs or do surgery," Lo said.

Growing up watching elders in his community perform spiritual or herbal healings, he believed a more global perspective on healing was important.

"I knew there were other medicines practiced by other countries and cultures out there that are thousands of years old that I wanted to learn," Lo said.

He went to Bastyr University, an alternative medical school, and straight after graduation, he began performing house calls. Eventually he earned enough money to rent an office and then opened a practice in Onalaska. He is now a licensed naturopathic medical doctor and acupuncturist. People come from miles around to come for his natural remedies for arthritis, asthma, migraines, joint pain, allergies, celiac disease and other health issues.

After his years of hard work, the reactions of his patients are easily the best part of his job. Sometimes he gets hugs, or people tell them he is the answer to their prayers. "I enjoy helping people get better," he said simply.

Yer Yang: Helping women have a say

Yer Yang: Middle school teacher in Sheboygan

When Yer Yang arrived in America in 1979 at age 11 with her three siblings, they were orphans. Their parents had died in the Vietnam War when Yang was 6. Growing up in the US, social services moved her around from Pennsylvania to Michigan to Tennessee to Nebraska, and she finally wound up in Wisconsin. Her childhood was a montage of different homes, different cities and different families.

Yet across the string of households, one thing was always the same. Men were first, women were second. Men spoke first; men ate first. Women, although major contributors to the family, were relegated to a permanent secondary status.

"I was always curious as to why the women couldnt have a voice," Yang said. She remembered thinking, "Why cant the mother have a voice? Its always the father who has the only and final say."

Women would not only defer to men in their immediate and extended family, but to the leaders of their clan. This could sometimes be dangerous, as in the case of domestic violence. At times, women in the Hmong community have been encouraged to return to their abusive husbands or wont even considering leaving in the first place, Yang said. A woman who seeks divorce may be ostracized, shunned and left with no resources and nowhere to go. If she returns to her parents, she may be blamed for the separation, said Yang.

"Can you imagine being at the mercy of your parents and extended family, and your clan leaders?" said Yang. "Often times, Hmong women are not courageous enough to make their own independent decisions, especially on personal and family matters."

Even with little power and no female role models to point her to future goals like higher education, Yang knew that America offered unique opportunities. She took advantage of every one she could.

"Coming to America just opened the door so wide, that individuals like myself just seized the opportunity to fly with it. We truly spread our wings," she said.

She got a bachelors degree, then a Masters. Yang wasnt content with personal success; she wanted to help other women of all ages realize their power and potential.

To that end, she started youth organizations for Hmong high schoolers that focused on personal, social and leadership development. Boys and girls alike, she spreads a message of empowerment to pursue confidence, education and dreams.

She also became active in the Hmong Womens Society. Here, her personal testimony holds special weight, as Yang is recently divorced. While the divorce devastated her, she knows that her personal tragedy holds an important message for Hmong women who fear life on their own.

"I can own my own house, I can pay my own bills and I dont have to run to another man to take care of it," she said. "For years and years, I educated them about that, and now its my turn. I have to live it. I have to prove it."

The end goal is a balance where everyone has a say.

"Im not anti-men; Im pro-family," Yang said. "It doesnt matter if youre boy or girl, man or woman; you go ahead and fulfill your dreams and live your passion."

In order to achieve this balance, Yang knows that gender inequality also needs to be addressed at the systemic level. In 2011, Yang, several other women leaders and key Hmong clan leaders called for the first free elections of the Hmong 18 Council in Wisconsin. They made history by not only holding the first open elections, but through the subsequent changing of the organizations by-laws. These new by-laws required a female vice-president for the organization and a chiefess to complement the chief of each Hmong clan. Yang served a term as the first vice president herself.

Along the way, Yang has met with resistance from many Hmong elders. But shes not giving up. As an orphan, she learned not to care much what other people think, but rather do what is right, she said. Almost nonchalantly, she added, "Im just going to keep impacting the world."
"Its good to be king."

Mel Brooks actually said that, quoting himself, to a sold-out show Saturday night at the Riverside. Based on the remarkable stories, the adoring reception and the super-human energy from this soon-to-be 90-year-old film legend, I believe him.

"True story," he said over and over again. With a life lived as richly as Brooks, why lie?

"I dont know what you paid," said Brooks, humbly, "but youre getting your moneys worth, because Im telling you things no one has even heard before."

And that was much more than just "Blazing Saddles" anecdotes, although this crowd roared through film, quoting lines like it was "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" before Brooks came up and spoke. "Spoke" isn't the right word. He dazzled, really, for a good hour to our rapt attention. Of course, I brought my dad tonight, who introduced me to "Blazing Saddles" and Mel Brooks. I could see that he was just as happy as I was to be in the presence of brilliance.

Im not exaggerating when I say this was one of the best live performances Ive ever experienced.

When he spoke, Brooks paid emotional homage to the wonderful cast of the 1974 groundbreaking film. Today is actually the birthday of Milwaukees own Gene Wilder, but he shared stories of the amazing actors and writers who have passed, like Madeline Kahn, Slim Pickens, Cleavon Little, Harvey Korman and Richard Pryor. Some of these stories I had heard over the years, but many I had not.





For example, Brooks talked about the scene between Bart and Lili that ended up on the cutting room floor: "But youre sucking on my arm" was the punchline that was too dirty even for him.

The moderator, who barely had a chance to moderate  mostly because Brooks was content engaging the audience and just plain sharing  asked Brooks his favorite line from the movie. The one that still makes him (and me) laugh: "Someone has to go back and get a shitload of dimes."

Brooks also explained the side-splitting fart scene at the campfire: the writers soaped up their hands and fake-farted under their armpits. "The high (pitched) ones, thats me," he said, giggling. The memories kept coming and coming, all with remarkable and crystal clarity.

But Brooks also shared something really insightful about "Blazing Saddles," my favorite movie of all time. "When you satirize something, the background has to be etched perfectly," he said. While Ive seen that film 50 times, on the big screen at the Riverside, tonight I could pay special attention to the details  and Brooks was right. He made "Blazing Saddles" authentically, and 42 years after its release, we saw that it holds up oh so well.







Beyond "Blazing Saddles," the magic of tonights performance was how a man born in 1926 can recall details from his early childhood (like peeing from his Brooklyn window and his mothers choice for apartment paint colors) then immediately and effortlessly transition into waxing poetically about a bygone era in Hollywood history. He didnt sit down for more than five minutes at a time. When he did, he pretended to sleep and did a perfectly-timed spit take. We gobbled it up and wanted more.

And we got more. The audience heard nuggets about the Borscht Belt, his other works, his friendship with Sid Caesar and a dozen seemingly random memories that still connected in the end. Unfortunately, the selected questions were more about his shoe size and boxer or briefs ("Depends," he shouted without missing a beat). No one touched on his marriage to Anne Bancroft or his life-long friendship with with Carl Reiner.

But thats OK. I wasnt sure what to expect from Brooks or the audience, which was rather diverse in age, but unfortunately devoid of any African Americans that I could see  and "Blazing Saddles" was such a trail-blazing comedy in terms of race relations. For his part, Brooks mind remains sharp as a tack, and in a suit and tie, he bounded around the stage like a man half his age.

Brooks seems like the kind of man who will live forever, and even though hes the consummate showman, he certainly acted and made us believe like he wanted to be in Milwaukee on this hot and steamy night. At 90, why wouldnt he only do the things he wants to do in life?

Brooks was authentic, sweet, and a little off-color tonight  like a beloved grandfather deservedly relishing in his many accomplishments.

"Im giddy with happiness today," he said, looking out to the crowd.

Me, too, Mel. Me, too.




Reprinted from Robert Reich Blog

The Republican Party still has time to change its mind. Right now it's supporting for President of the United States a man...

1. who divides us by race and ethnicity and religion.

He says undocumented Americans "bring drugs, crime, they're rapists." That the Mexican government "sends bad ones over because they don't want to pay for them." And who says he'll round up and deport all 11 million undocumented workers in the United States.

This is a man who equivocated on repudiating an endorsement from David Duke, former head of the Ku Klux Klan. And when asked to repudiate the vicious anti-semitism of some of his followers said "I don't have a message to the fans."

A man who claimed "thousands and thousands" of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the Twin Towers collapsing, when there's no evidence at all to support that statement. And whose response to terrorism is to prevent all Muslims from coming into the United States.

A man who says black criminals are responsible for 81 percent of homicides against whites, which turns out to be a racist myth.

2. whose incendiary lies are inciting violence across this land, but he excuses them.

When he learned that some of his supporters punched, kicked and spit on protesters of color at his rallies, he said "people who are following me are very passionate."

When a handful of white supporters punched and attempted to choke a Black Lives Matter protester at another of his rallies, he said "maybe he should have been roughed up."

3. who bullies, humiliates, and threatens those who dare cross him.

He mocks their physical characteristics, makes up lies about them, degrades them, tries to intimidate them by unleashing hostile attacks on the Internet -- announcing, for example, that a family who donated money to a political opponent "better be careful, they have a lot to hide."

He calls a federal judge who's considering a case against Trump University a "total disgrace" and a "hater," and alleging he's Mexican although he was born in the United States.

4. who spreads baseless conspiracy theories.

He conjectured that President Obama was not born in the United States, and that the government hid information about the Ebola virus and a plague would start in America if flights from Ebola infected countries weren't cancelled. He opined that Ted Cruz's father was with Lee Harvey Oswald during the Kennedy assasination in Dallas, and that child health vaccinations cause autism.

And he suggested that the death of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia might have been a part of a plot.
Giving Peace a Fighting Chance



Whilst the date doubtless has come and gone for most folks, without them thinking much about it, the passing of 10 June should nonetheless have given us pause to reflect on the current state of the Republic, and the direction in which it is heading.

Though it may not have been widely recognized at the time, on that day in 1963, president John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) in his American University (AU) Commencement Address delivered what is arguably the most significant oration of his ill-fated tenure. In fact, it may well have been the most pivotal in American foreign policy in that era. And it unquestionably has an important message for us all now. The following gives us an idea of what was on JFK's mind:

'I have chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived. And that's the most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war....Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children -- not merely peace for Americans but peace for all, not merely peace in our time but in all time.'

In this address, it seemed Kennedy was attempting to re-define the then accepted notion of Pax Americana, to articulate a more inclusive, collaborative version, one that would bring folk with them willingly rather than dragging them kicking and screaming to the position. In almost all respects this wasn't just a redefinition; he aim was to turn the notion on its head. 'Peaceful co-existence' was the sub-text of his message; it appeared the baptism of fire he experienced in his on-the-job training as president thus far had changed him significantly.

But as James Douglass has observed, when Kennedy uttered these words, 'the priests of our national security state saw him as a heretic.' He'd already pissed off quite a few when he baulked at them requiting their apocalyptic urges by nuking Cuba and the Soviet Union back into the Neolithic during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 (CMC), instead insisting on back channel diplomacy to resolve the crisis.

Put simply, the hawks weren't happy with this unexpected development, especially from a president many had decided wasn't cut out for the Biggest Game in Town. For many -- from the Pentagon's Brass Asses to Langley's 'winklepickered' wolf-pack, to the foreign policy and national security 'think-tanksters' inhabiting the Beltway and on to the 'pointy-headed' wonks trolling the hallowed hallways of academia, and indeed, even a few in his own administration -- this came across as appeasement-like nonsense.

For those who were looking, this speech evinced a road to Damascus-like conversion from unreconstructed 1950's era 'McCarthyite' Cold Warrior to a self-styled Grand Pax proselyte of the global kind. Kennedy appeared to eschew the prevailing notion of a Pax Americana on the basis that their Cold War adversaries the Soviet Union comprised folk with the same individual aspirations and collective desires as Americans, notwithstanding the fact they were godless, soul deprived Commies bent on oppression, tyranny and world domination. Now who'd have thought it? Well, JFK for one!

As such, a 'pax' -- even one comprising such noble ideals of freedom, democracy, liberty, rule of law and basic human rights -- predicated by "American weapons of war" was not something as president he saw as desirable, much less one that would or could work in the long run. Instinctively, he seemed to realize that a peace imposed was always going to be a phony peace, a 'faux pax' as it were.

To be sure, Kennedy's address gives us some key insights into where he might have taken U.S. foreign policy in general, especially in its fraught relationship with the USSR in particular. It was this relationship -- defined by the Cold War -- whose apocalyptic possibilities during the CMC became all too probable as far as the president was concerned. He also appeared to refute the conventional notion that leadership greatness is synonymous with being a wartime president, along with rejecting -- or at least questioning -- the prevailing Manichean view of the contemporary geopolitical order.

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Leading Dems, mass media pundits, Green Party activists, and well-meaning Trotskyists are all telling Bernie Sanders what he "needs to do now." None make as much sense as Bernie himself.

"Donald Trump would clearly be ... a disaster as President of the United States," he told reporters after meeting with Obama last week. He found it "unbelievable" that the Republican Party would have a candidate who "makes bigotry and discrimination the cornerstone of his campaign."

"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 Donald Trump does not become President of the United States," said Sanders.

He had spoken briefly to Secretary Clinton, 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 to create a government which represents all of us and not just the 1 percent."

He would not call off his campaign. He would continue fighting within the Democratic Party, and not as a Green or independent. He would continue at the party convention at the end of July to push the issues on which he won such support, even from Clinton supporters. He looked forward to a proper counting of ballots in California, and by implication a change in party rules to prevent such increasingly obvious election fraud. He was not prepared -- at least not yet -- to come out and explicitly endorse Clinton. But he would definitely work with her to stop Trump.

Bernie made all this sound perfectly natural. He would help lead the fight against Trump and his bigotry. But, at least so far, he would not soften the biting criticisms he has made of Clinton, her ties to big money, and her judgment, especially on her supposed strong suit, foreign policy.

Are millions of Bernie's supporters sophisticated enough to appreciate the distinction between opposing Trump and falling in lockstep behind the very flawed Hillary Clinton? I think we are.

Back in 2002, in the second round of the French presidential elections, Jean-Marie Le Pen of the neo-Fascist Front National faced off against the corrupt incumbent Jacques Chirac of the center-right. Almost the entire French left held their noses and backed Chirac, but without ever pulling their punches. My wife Anna and I had just moved to France and joined a march in our provincial capital against Le Pen. "Mieux le Super-Menteur que le Super-Facho," read the placards. "Better the Super-Liar than the Super-Fascist."

Decide for yourself whether Hillary qualifies as a Super-Liar. But, for Bernie and American progressives, the issue has to be Trump. Whether he is a Super-Fascist or only a fascist in waiting, as I suggested in March, he has energized the country's most dangerous fringe groups, from gun-toting Christian militias to neo-Nazis who are already calling him The Leader -- in German, Der Fuhrer.

Trump has created a political vehicle for the alliance these groups have long nurtured with Evangelicals and others who want to make America "a Christian nation," deprive women of their right to choose, and in writer Frank Browning's wonderfully apt phrase, "Make America Male -- Again."

Smashing Trump's bid for power will not eliminate these wingnuts from American life. Racist, religious, and misogynistic extremism are too much part of our history and culture. We have allowed them to grow unchecked far too long, even as we self-righteously congratulated ourselves on electing our first black president and stand ready to elect our first woman president.

Now is the best time we have ever had -- or might ever have again -- to dramatically weaken these extremists and break their hold on our future, especially with the political and cultural momentum that Bernie the grumpy Jewish Socialist brings to the fray.

With Bernie and his supporters spearheading the fight against Trump, the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, which the Clintons lead, will also find it difficult to ignore the platform and rule changes we now bring to the convention in Philadelphia. They will try, no doubt. But, from the comments I've seen, many ardent Clinton supporters favor the changes we put forward. They very much want to hold Hillary's feet to the fire on her hard-won opposition to Obama's trade treaties, fracking, climate change, and inequality, and on recognition of rights for Palestinians. If the Clintonistas block us on these and try to treat us like toast, as Slick Willie has suggested, they risk splitting the party, losing the election, and sacrificing America's future.

Like growing old, politics ain't for the weak-kneed, and the time has come to show just how pragmatic true idealists can be.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.


I warned Californians that they would see their primary become as egregious as New York's Primary!









California's Uncounted Ballots, from several different sages, pundits, pollworkers, and commenters in California

compiled from extensive article by Michael Hertz in Los Angeles Progressive

First this: from Larry Wines





Brace yourself. The actual numbers are shocking. More ballots remain uncounted than the total number of votes for Hillary Clinton.





As of close of business yesterday (the Friday ending election week)"

Official numbers from the Sec. of State as of 4:55 p.m. on Friday June 10:

Total estimate of uncounted ballots

2,423,607

Total votes counted

Clinton: 2,099,064

Sanders: 1,627,035

In percentages, counted ballots show:

Clinton: 55.8%

Sanders: 43.3%

Others: .9%

Totaling the votes for Clinton, Sanders and uncounted we get 6,149,706. A majority of that would be 3,074,853. To reach that number, Bernie needs 1,447,818 of the 2,423,607 uncounted ballots, or 60%.





The fat lady has a case of laryngitis.

472,029 votes currently separate Clinton and Sanders in the stopped frame from the film that still needs to finish running.

Changing that momentary result means, of the 2,423,607 uncounted ballots, the first 472,029 must go to Bernie to draw them even. Then, the remaining 1,951,578 uncounted ballots would need to go 50 percent plus one to Bernie, meaning 975,790 votes, plus the 472,029. So. Bernie needs another 1,447,818 votes from the 2,423,607 uncounted.





Guess this is too much for corporate media to fathom. Or even to report.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

from Michael Hertz who writes:

I worked as a pollworker in North Hollywood on Tuesday (a long day starting at 6 a.m. and ending at 10 p.m.). I just read an article that asked how many ballots remained uncounted. I can only tell you that my precinct is a poster child for uncounted ballots.

First of all, my precinct had no counted ballots when they were delivered to the Los Angeles Central at around 11 p.m. on Tuesday night. Why? Because the machine we were given jammed at around 10 a.m. and couldn't be fixed. The remaining regular ballots voted were dumped into the ballot box with the machine counted ballots, so they would all have to be recounted.

I worked as a pollworker and I can only tell you that my North Hollywood precinct was a poster child for uncounted ballots.

On top of that, we had 139 provisional ballots. According to the Los Angeles Times article, there were 240,000 provisional ballots issued in Los Angeles County alone. Each one must be individually examined. Plus there are individual ballots delivered by mail, or dropped off in individual envelopes at polling places. Supposedly there were three million uncounted ballots in California as of Wednesday morning.

Two of my three pollworker colleagues at our precinct had experience in other elections, and they insisted that they had never seen so many provisional ballots issued. A large number arose from the fact that voters would show up at our precinct, insisting that they had voted there in years past, although this year their home address was not included in our directory. As a result, the voter would have to find a way of locating the proper polling place or else vote provisionally at ours. Almost all elected to cast a provisional ballot.

There were some long lines to vote, with waiting times of about half an hour for most people. Part of the problem was that many people were waiting in the wrong line, which meant that they had to start over again at a different precinct. A lot of that unnecessary delay could have been avoided if an address directory were available to the voters before they entered the line in the first place. It's sort of shocking that no complete address directory for the county was made available to the pollworkers or the voters at the polling place. Incidentally, I tried out the on-line address directory at the County Registrar internet site. I entered half a dozen addresses where I knew that there were registered voters, and yet the directory insisted that there were no registered voters at that address. I tried by own address and my daughter's address. No luck there either. Doesn't anything work?

The voter rolls weren't complete. Even when people showed up at the right precinct with timely registration, the voter rolls did not show them. I remember a man gave an address that showed only his wife's name as a registered voter, even though he had been registered at the same address. And there were many instances of people who had registered within the past month or so whose name were not included in the rolls.





It's hard to see how anyone can call an election for someone when there are over three million uncounted ballots. We'll just have to wait for the final results in order to see how things shake out.





About Michael T. Hertz

[Born in New York City in 1944, Michael T. Hertz has lived and worked in California, New York, Rhode Island, Maine, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, and France -- mostly as a lawyer and law professor. A graduate of Harvard Law School and Pomona College.

>>>>

Stephen Fox says

June 11, 2016 at 9:02 pm

This is really quite important, and according to the petition author, Netra Halperin, a Bernie delegate and superb strategist, may be one of the most important petitions to sign, his "Hail Mary"! I agree, so take the time to share it widely. We should be able to reach the 100,000 signatures in a few days, if you will cut loose on this and put in on lots of group pages and friends pages, also!





Complete FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of private email server while Sec. of State--PRIOR to Dem. Convention





Donald Goldmacher says

I am glad that people are experiencing the ugly nature of our undemocratic system. Not only must we have campaign-finance reform, we need actual reform of the entire voting system. There are election integrity activists in Los Angeles who are trying to observe the counting of the votes of both vote by mail and provisional ballots that are discussed in this article. For more information about election integrity issues in California go to countedascast.Org.

>>>>

Vickie J Anderson says

June 11, 2016 at 4:28 pm

Thank you for writing this article. It is so informational and, as you so clearly stated, it makes NO sense to count a state's election when such a statistically high number of ballots have not even been counted.

>>>>

Jim Spriggs says

June 11, 2016 at 3:09 pm





As of Friday, 10,000 more provisional ballots came into this county. That makes over a quarter million provisional ballots left to be counted in L.A. county alone.

I agree with the article and many of the comments below it. Our "system" is broken. We need to get rid of these inherently corrupt party-run collages of dissimilar franchise regimes and replace them with a uniform nationwide electoral process.

But most of all, we need to get rid of these voting machines that can't be verified and optical readers that can't even see a black oval. We need to get rid of both electronic systems that are prone to hacks, tampering, and breakdowns. How stupid are these byzantine system where even an outside entity can't monitor them because of their opacity, complexity, and overall dysfunction? How stupid is it when we can't even recount votes if there is a dispute when they have been electronically tabulated and rendered untraceable? How stupid is it when we have elections year after year, where we don't even know if our vote is being counted at all?

Activists and journalists such as Bev Harris and Brad Friedman has been shouting to the rafters for years that we have a voting system that is broken, and the only thing that can make it work is going back to transparent, hand-counted paper ballots that can be verified by observers during vote tallies and recounts.

In spite of the corporate media and the DNC wanting to "move on" to their Hillary vs Trump zeitgeist pretense, Bernie Sanders knows that this Democratic primary isn't over because the California count isn't over. As Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog says:

Yes, democracy actually still matters, and that includes counting the ballots of all the legal voters who wish to vote, counting them accurately, and in a way that we can know they have been counted accurately. While we've been reporting this week, often exclusively, on the huge number of still untallied ballots -- both Provisional and Vote-by-Mail ballots -- here in Los Angeles County, ever since Tuesday's Presidential Primary, new data now reveals the totals are even higher than we've so far reported, both in L.A. and across the state. With some 3.5 million ballots now tallied in the Democratic Primary, and a 500,000 vote (appx. 13%) margin for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, there are still some 2.5 million ballots that have yet to be tallied at all.

Jim Sylvester says

June 11, 2016 at 12:05 pm

The election process has been shown to be utterly corrupt, and easily cheated. The sophisticated means of doing so indicate that this has been going on for years. They really know how to do it.

The most important task we face as a country, and as an electorate, is to get the money out of politics, and get rid of the crazy quilt jumble of state and local election polices, which have largely been designed to encourage cheating.

WAKE UP, AMERICA!

>>>>

Adrienne Brietzke says

June 11, 2016 at 3:33 pm

Oh foolish one! Surely you don't expect our media to act like REPORTERS OR JOURNALISTS? That would require RESEARCH and LEARNING. They much prefer to have Hills campaign media dept. give their paymasters deliver their reporting bullets and "discussion" points. Thanks for the break down. Now my stomach is tight again!!! Hope springs eternal.

The key now is going to being shoring up morale and encouraging the Bernie or Bust to hold strong. That's the biggest leverage we have going into convention-Bernies pledged delegates + Hillary the criminal + Bernie can easily defeat Trump/Hillarys national numbers have gone down on a consistent trajectory and she's begun polling below Trump (Re: "if you really don't want Trump, you need to vote Bernie;" + she's likely to come under indictment; + --THIS IS WHY WE NEED TO STAND STRONG: we represent 43% of the electorate -- far more than the Dem party -- we can assure she will LOSE. That's why I don't like Bernie folks saying they'll settle.

>>>>

Karen Wingard says

June 11, 2016 at 10:33 am

Of course the Tuesday night count was short. VBM Ballots potmarked by June 7 and received within 3 days weren't included yet. Also registration deadline had bern shortened, thus allowing greater numbers to participate. But an "open" primary is no panacea. The so-called jungle primary for down-ticket races disenfranchises third parties and wreaks mischief on the ability of the two major parties to nominate representative candidates for the general election. If voters can't figure out which party comes cloer to representing their interests" I despair. The differences are pretty obvious, even if none may be a perfect match.

Michael Worley says

June 11, 2016 at 8:40 am

Los Angeles County has been bad for years- the rest of the state is far better. Part of the problem is that La County has more people than Georgia but does not have the same budget for Elections.The first thing County residents could do is make the Registrar of Voters an elected position instead of just another Supervisoral flunky.

Maureen Cruise says

June 9, 2016 at 3:44 pm





As we are experiencing rampant administrative election irregularities, the system must be changed.

I had three friends who had each always voted for years at the same address. Each experiences a different problem"one drove from Westwood to Norwalk because her VBM dem crossover packet had no ballot in it".and despite promises another one never arrived. Another was told she couldn't register for a dem VBM ballot as an NPP. This misinformation was delivered by an LA County registrar employee answering the LACo Registrar phone line" a month before the deadline for requesting that ballot!

Last case was truly egregious. A relative who voted in Santa Monica brought in an unmarked VBM dem crossover ballot"because coffee had been spilled on it. The poll worker insisted that she could only issue a provisional ballot. The voter refused the provisional and insisted that by law she was entitled to a dem crossover ballot upon surrendering an unmarked VBM . There ensued more discussion before another poll worker intervened and agreed that the law allows for a dem crossover ballot in those circumstances of turning in a dem crossover VBM ballot unmarked. The misinformed poll worker said she had been issuing provisional ballots all day for this situation. Saga not over"..

Upon using the ballot just issued, that ballot was rejected by the machine as "invalid". This happened three times, once with the poll worker in the booth observing. Another voter had the same problem"the machine rejected her ballot as "invalid". A third voter used the same booth with no problem. My relative then surrendered her ballot to the poll worker who said they would fix the machine and run her ballot through once repaired. The poll worker called her at work later that day to say her ballot was cast. Who knows? Highly irregular".illegal?

We need to junk those expensive unreliable machines "which can also very easily be programmed to drop or switch votes. I believe there are only less than 200 voters per precinct. The local high school counts their 2,400 ballots for student body elections in a day. We need go back to paper and pencil, publicly observable counting of the ballots with a public registering of the count at each poll.

What we have is completely open to fraud in addition to the very expensive breakdowns and malfunctions. A pencil sharpener, paper, erasers and a small team of poll workers observing are the answer. And open registration for all citizens using the same ballot is the other answer.

>>>>

Michael T. Hertz says

June 10, 2016 at 2:45 pm

I thought we were very honest poll workers. We could have easily counted the Presidential and Senatorial primary results while we were working. No machine needed. If we needed to have someone watching us, so be it. The provisional ballot issue is hard to solve, though. With all the electronics at our disposal, we should be able to eliminate most the issues that give rise to the need for provisional ballots.

>>>>

Amy says

June 11, 2016 at 10:23 am

I want to mention that the experience Maureen's friend had in Santa Monica was the exact same experience my son, who is a newly registered NPP voter, had there too. He also had his Dem cross-over ballot rejected by the machines three times as "invalid". The poll workers had no idea what to do and tried to call someone for advice. Finally, after waiting for about 15 minutes, I asked if they could please give him a regular Dem ballot. They gave him one, and the machine finally accepted it.

>>>>

Ron Vrooman says

June 11, 2016 at 1:09 pm

I'm all for going back to paper ballots and to counting votes by hand, as long as we have enough workers and observers at each polling place. I always thought that the whole idea was to tabulate all ballots accurately, and I'm willing to wait until the next day, if that's how long it takes for the process to be completed properly.

The emphasis on speed has been entirely misplaced, and I've always been distrustful of electronic voting machines which can be reprogrammed or mis-programmed. An honest and accurate vote count should be the only consideration when we elect our leaders and make decisions on important issues.

See also: Voting Process for California Primary was 'Chaos'

>>>>

Based on LA Times article:
When Donald Trump opened his mouth and announced that Hillary Clinton was "playing the woman card " in her quest for the presidency, he unleashed plenty of reaction.

NARAL Pro-Choice America saw the slam as an opportunity to put together a deck called the Gender Cards. The set applauds the achievements of American women, from the Suffragettes to the founders of #BlackLivesMatter. Writers, artists, athletes and activists are included, along with the four women who have served on the Supreme Court and Harriet Tubman. Hillary Clinton is the Ace of Hearts.





Harriet Tubman

(Image by NARAL) Details DMCA



The two Joker cards are Mindy Kaling and the duo of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. However, it goes without saying that the 2016 election, from the top of the ticket on down, is no laughing matter.

Trump has stated that women should be punished for having an abortion(which he sort of walked back), and has been definitive about appointing a "pro-life" justice to the Supreme Court who is committed to invalidatingRoe v. Wade .

The threat to reproductive rights goes far beyond the Roe v. Wade ruling. It is a constant war of attrition for those in the anti-choice movement, who are continually working to devise new approaches that will impact the playing field.

More than eight-hundred laws, which chip away at access to abortion, have been passed in individual states over the past ten years. They particularly impact those who are young, low-income, and women of color.

NARAL has made it a point to call out elected reps who are getting a pass. A prime example is their push to make the voters of New Hampshire (who overwhelming believe that a women's access to abortion should not be restricted by the government) aware of Sen. Kelly Ayotte's repeated activities to put limitations on reproductive rights and to defund Planned Parenthood. Ayotte is also one of the senators refusing to consider the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland -- until after the election -- which will impact all cases heard.

I contacted Ilyse Hogue, President of NARAL, to get her thoughts on the latest infringement on abortion rights in Oklahoma -- where the legislature passed a bill to take away the medical licenses of doctors who perform abortions (which Governor Mary Fallin subsequently vetoed). I also wanted to hear her thoughts on this wacky, and scary, presidential election.

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Therefore, it is essentially against the law to end poverty in Philadelphia. The major owners of the city's land and money forbid profound change that weakens their grip, even though Philadelphia has the nation's highest rates of



Poverty is one of Philadelphia's major industries. Tens of thousands of jobs-- public and private-- depend on managing poverty. The poor, 400,000 here, are raw material to control (evaluate, certify, monitor, police), punish (courts, fines, evictions, prison), and exploit (small pay, big rent, predatory mortgages, payday loans).Therefore, it is essentially against the law to end poverty in Philadelphia. The major owners of the city's land and money forbid profound change that weakens their grip, even though Philadelphia has the nation's highest rates of deep poverty and incarceration ; plus 200,000 unemployed, 135,000 uninsured, 250,000 "food insecure" with 60,000 chronically hungry children ; even though life expectancy in North Philly is 20 years less than in Queen Village.

For example, Philadelphians could build thousands of low-cost, energy-efficient " tiny houses " and " earthships " on vacant lots, for our seniors, veterans, returning citizens, teachers, farmers, teachers, students, and homeless on land trusts that keep dwellings permanently affordable. Within them, the poor could become creative owners of green neighborhoods . But building and zoning codes resist such construction.

Complete solutions to poverty are everywhere. Hundreds of neighborhood-based initiatives here could empower the poor to take direct control of their lives, gradually replacing welfare with well-being. But Philadelphia does to the poor everything but provide them the tools (land, home ownership, education, jobs, respect) with which to prove they're the equal of everyone else.

Meanwhile, neighborhood land trusts could stabilize housing prices and expand ownership. But the government protects land speculators waiting to cash in with condos and strip malls.

Many thousands more of us could be employed to produce fresh food year-round in thousands of greenhouses and hundreds of orchards, were the Redevelopment Authority and Philadelphia Land Bank focused primarily on feeding local people rather than developers.



Further, dozens of neighborhood free clinics staffed by hundreds of doctors and dentists could serve health co-op members paying $150/year. But Pennsylvania insurance law protects corporate insurance monopolies.



Neighborhood Enterprise SchoolTeachers

(Image by paul glover) Details DMCA



Best of all, new neighborhood schools could make education exciting again by teaching students how to become powerful community managers and creators of jobs, as well as active co-op members, rather than obedient drones. But dull curriculums ensure that few can even imagine a better system.

Our high school dropout rate is 36%. The School Board closes schools while prisons expand.





Broader trust in police can be restored with a Police Integrity Congress.


Sindh presented 2016-17 budget

KARACHI: The Pakistan Peoples Party-led Sindh government presented on Saturday a Rs869.1 billion budget for the financial year 2016-17, with a deficit of Rs14.6bn. It was the ninth consecutive budget presented by the PPP since the 2008 general elections.



Amid a noisy protest by opposition lawmakers in the Sindh Assembly, Finance Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah unveiled the budget, having a Rs225bn Annual Development Programme (ADP), in which total revenue was estimated at Rs854.5bn against the expenditure of Rs869.1bn.



The revenue from federal transfers is estimated to be Rs561bn, while the Sindh government would collect Rs166bn from its own resources and get Rs127.4bn from other resources.



The finance minister termed the budget people-friendly, which was worked out in the spirit of reconciliation and participatory politics.



This year also, we will be providing jobs to 50,000 people, Mr Shah said, adding that the jobs would include 20,000 in the Sindh police, 10,000 in the education department and 3,500 in the health sector.



He said that the Sindh government had been following the policy of spending a major portion of the budget on four priority sectors  education, health, law and order and local government. We will continue with the same policy in the coming financial year, he added.



Mr Shah said that Rs160.7bn had been allocated for the education sector followed by Rs82.3bn for law and order that includes police, jails, Rangers and other security agencies. The allocation for the health sector was Rs65.9bn. Other expenditures in the next financial year are estimated at Rs294.2bn.



Certain relief measures have been suggested in the budget for government employees, pensioners and workers. A 10 per cent ad hoc relief allowance on running basic pay will be given to all employees from July 1. Minimum wage is being increased from Rs13,000 to Rs14,000 a month. A 10pc increase in pension and 25pc in net pension will be given to all pensioners above the age of 85 years from July 1.



An amount of Rs50.3bn has been allocated in the head of the ADP for Karachi division; Rs53.5bn for Hyderabad division; Rs22.7bn for Sukkur division; Rs27.3bn for Larkana division; Rs26.9bn for Mirpurkhas division and Rs18.9bn has been allocated for Shaheed Benazirabad division.



Although no new tax has been proposed, certain more services have been brought under the tax net through the finance bill, which would be taken up for consideration on June 23. The services include chartered flights, consultancy, public relations, visa processing, debt collection and supply chain management on which 13 per cent sales tax is being levied.



The Sindh Sales Tax on Services was being reduced from 14pc to 13pc in the next financial year, the minister said.



I propose to increase the scope of exemption on internet and broadband services used by households, students and researchers. The exemption threshold on internet services is being enlarged from 2mbps speed and Rs1,500 per month per user to 4mbps and Rs2,500 per month per user, he said.



This budget is a reflection of the aspirations of people, a testament of their hopes, and evidence of the trust they have reposed in their representatives, he said.



During the budget speech, lawmakers belonging to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement protested against the registration of a criminal case against leaders for holding a demonstration for water. They wore headbands inscribed with Say No to Corruption.



Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani warned the protesting members not to spoil the atmosphere of the budget session.



Taking the floor, the finance minister pointed out an inordinate delay in finalising the 9th National Finance Commission Award and informed the house that he had recorded his protest over the unwillingness of the federal government to undertake the constitutional obligation.
This Feb. 25, 1955 file photo shows a general view of the main gate to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in Los Alamos, N. M., where scientists developed and tested the first atomic weapon. During the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos scientists worked to develop the atomic bomb that was dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The program also involved facilities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington. (AP Photo/File)

Los Alamos, a once secret city where scientists participated in the nation's classified World War II nuclear development program, can now be experienced much like it was then with a new app.

The "Los Alamos: The Secret City of The Manhattan Project" iPhone app takes users through an "augmented-reality" while visiting the northern New Mexico city to see it in its 1940s character. The app was created by Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Packed with games, historical nuggets and role playing, the app allows users to feel what it was like to join a secret project in an unknown location where the future of the world was at stake, said Jennifer Payne, Resource Management Team leader in Los Alamos' Environmental Stewardship Group. Because Los Alamos has changed since the project and is now a modern city, Payne said the app takes users on a virtual tour of a Manhattan Project world that is gone.

"It took us more than a year to create," Payne said. "Almost all of the structures from that era don't exist anymore."

Once downloaded and opened, users will receive a "recruitment telegram" to begin the virtual journey from 109 E. Palace Ave., in Santa Fe. That's the same location where the original Project Y staff members joined the team. Users then will receive an initial "clearance" there, then board a bus into the mountains to explore "the Hill."

This July 16, 1945, file photo, shows an aerial view after the first atomic explosion at the Trinity Test site, in New Mexico. Residents of Tularosa, an historic Hispanic village located next to the Trinity Test site, are praising President Obama's plan to visit Hiroshima the Japanese city where the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb. July marks the 71st anniversary of the Trinity Test in southern New Mexico. The milestone comes amid renewed interest in the Manhattan Project thanks to new books, online video testimonies and recently canceled TV drama series "Manhattan." The secretive World War II program provided enriched uranium for the atomic bomb. (AP Photo/File)

From there, Payne said users can choose how much information they want to know while they explore Los Alamos as the bomb is developed.

Of course, no actual nuclear secrets are shared, she said.

Officials said the project is a collaboration of Los Alamos National Laboratory's VISIBLE team, the Bradbury Science Museum, and staff history specialists.

This Oct. 15, 1965, file photo shows a "Fat Man" nuclear bomb of the type tested at Trinity Site, N.M, and dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945, on view for the public at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Museum. Thursday, July 16, 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the Trinity Test in southern N.M.July marks the 71st anniversary of the Trinity Test in southern New Mexico. The milestone comes amid renewed interest in the Manhattan Project thanks to new books, online video testimonies and recently canceled TV drama series "Manhattan." (AP Photo, File)

Developers also are working on an Android app.

During World War II, Los Alamos scientists worked to develop the atomic bomb that was dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The secret program provided enriched uranium for the atomic bomb. It also involved facilities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington.

July marks the 71st anniversary of the Trinity Test in southern New Mexico. The milestone comes amid renewed interest in the Manhattan Project thanks to new books, online video testimonies and the recently canceled TV drama series "Manhattan."

This Sept. 9, 1945, file photo Gen. Leslie R. Groves, right, and Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who cooperated on the development of the atomic bomb, survey the area in Alamogordo, N.M., where a tower once stood before the test bomb exploded. A new PBS special looks into the creation of the atomic bomb in the city of Los Alamos and will feature newly-restored footage of nuclear weaponry. "The Bomb," which begins airing Tuesday, July 28, 2015, on most PBS stations, seeks to tell the story of the deadly device as the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki approaches. (AP Photo/File)

In this April 18, 1997, file photo, John Rhoades, director of The Bradbury Science Museum at Los Alamos National Laboratory, holds one of 11 public comment books at Los Alamos, N.M. The books suggest that almost none of the thousands of people writing comments were aware of Japanese efforts to build an atomic bomb during World War II, but most either favored or opposed the U.S. decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan. In foreground is mockup of "Little Boy," the bomb dropped Aug. 6, 1945, on Hiroshima. In background is mockup of "Fat Man," the bomb dropped Aug. 9, 1945, on Nagasaki. (AP Photo/Al Cabral, File)

This undated photo provided by the Atomic Heritage Foundation shows the "high bay" building at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M. The building was part of V Site, a collection of wooden, shed-type structures that were slated for demolition as part of a cleanup at Los Alamos National Laboratory until preservationists jumped in. In 2000, the Cerro Grande fire swept through, destroying all but the high bay building. The simple structure, the first Manhattan Project work site to be restored, is a reminder of the urgency with which scientists gathered in 1944 to design and assemble the first atomic weapons. (Los Alamos National Laboratory via Atomic Heritage Museum via AP, File)

Explore further New mobile application allows users to take virtual tour of Project Y of Manhattan Project National Historical Park

 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Andre Borschberg (R) and Bertrand Piccard are two thirds of the way through circumnavigating the Earth in the Solar Impulse 2 aircraft, a bid to inspire a future powered by renewable energy technologies

The Swiss pilot readying to cross the Atlantic in a solar-powered plane on the next leg of a record-breaking, round-the-world mission says he is making science fiction reality.

Bertrand Piccard, a psychiatrist and balloonist, will next command Solar Impulse 2 when meteorologists determine the best five-to-six day window for the ocean crossing from New York to either Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal or Morocco, depending on the wind and the weather.

"It gives the sensation of being in a science fiction story because you look at the sun and you understand that it's your only source of power," the explorer and father of three told AFP in New York.

"You see left and right, your four props turning with electrical motors, with no noise and it's a vision of future," he added in an interview at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Piccard, and Swiss entrepreneur and engineer Andre Borschberg, are two thirds of the way through circumnavigating the Earth in a bid to inspire a future powered by renewable energy technologies.

Their single-seater plane, which they take it in turns to fly, weighs the same as a car but has the wingspan of a Boeing 747.

They take off at night with a fully-charged battery and climb to 28,000 feet (9,000 meters) in the day before descending to 5,000-6,000 feet, then catching the next sunrise, going up and down in waves.

The journey began on March 9, 2015 from Abu Dhabi, flying across Asia, the Pacific and the United States. They must now cross the Atlantic, fly through Europe and return to the Middle East.

Each pilot lives off special soups and meals designed to withstand extreme temperature changes and catnaps for 20 minutes at a time on a seat that extends into a business-class style flat bed.

Pilots Andre Borschberg (R) and Bertrand Piccard of the Solar Impulse 2 consider themselves superstitious and say they are focusing all their energies on making it back to Abu Dhabi

Cockpit yoga

There is even time for Borschberg to practice yogasitting postures only he concedeswhile Piccard does self-hypnosis to help recharge his batteries or sleep more efficiently.

They need to call on great physical strength.

When turbulence disconnects the auto pilot, Piccard and Borschberg must use their feet and upper body to deflect the yoke and the rudder as the plane swerves from left to right.

"Sometimes it's rock and roll," smiled Piccard. But he is never scared. He has been well trained and the worst that could happen, he says, would be to bail out, but only as an unthinkable last-resort.

"It would be really sad to lose the plane," he said. "We know it's a prototype, it's experimental so we have to be really careful with it."

Borschberg, who broke the world record for the longest continuous aviation journey on the 118-hour leg from Japan to Hawaii, said a positive mindset was vital.

But that journey was fraught with problems and months of maintenance work followed. The task ahead is monumental. The unstable situation in the Middle East throws up yet more challenges.

Solar Impulse 2 flies past the Statue of Liberty as it approaches New York City on the latest leg of a record-breaking, round-the-world mission

Electric flight in 10 years?

Both pilots consider themselves superstitious and say they are focusing all their energies on making it back to Abu Dhabi.

But they also see themselves as modern-day versions of the Wright brothers, the American aviation pioneers working 100 years ago.

Their plane goes at the same speed as Wrights' first plane, is also a single seater and also flies only in good weather, Piccard noted.

"You have to start somewhere," agreed Borschberg, dismissing the impracticalities that make it impossible to replicate Solar Impulse 2 for commercial flight.

"I'll make a bet with you that in 10 years' time you have airplanes for short haul flights with 50 passengers flying electric," said Piccard.

They could leave urban airports at night, he points out. No noise and no pollution would allow airports and airlines to double capacity by working overnight, he believes.

"The aviation industry were all laughing when I started and now they are all working on electric airplanes," said Piccard.

"If you're unsatisfied and do nothing you get depressed. If you're unsatisfied and you do something, you become a pioneer."

 2016 AFP
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When investigators issued an arrest warrant in 2014 to question him about millions of dollars in fraudulent payments, Mr O'Neill made sure the anti-corruption task force was disbanded, sacked the attorney-general and installed a new police chief.

Students across PNG have engaged in a five-week boycott of their classes in an attempt to pressure Prime Minister Peter O'Neill to step aside. For two years, Mr O'Neill has prevaricated in the face of an investigation into long-standing claims of corruption.

For police with automatic weapons to have shot unarmed university students  as happened in Papua New Guinea capital of Port Moresby on Wednesday  speaks volumes of the fragility in Australia's closest neighbour. There is simply no justification for this violent crackdown.

THE right to peaceful protest is fundamental to any liberal democracy. Governments who fear their people and respond to demonstrations with unreasonable force are rightly condemned.

When the PNG Supreme Court allowed the investigation to resume in April, the investigators found themselves again suspended.

The corruption claims levelled against the prime minister are fuelling a wider national malaise. The PNG economy is crumbling and debt is mounting after an expected boon from natural gas deposits was cut by falling global commodity prices.

Public servants have gone without pay and severe budget cuts have followed in critical sectors, such as health and education. Foreign currency is also in short supply, raising fears about imports.

On Wednesday, the tensions boiled over after students from the University of Papua New Guinea attempted to march to Parliament in support of a no-confidence motion against the O'Neill government. Police blocked their path, shooting into the crowd with bullets and tear gas. More than a dozen people were wounded  at least three critically.

Parliament was also adjourned early before the no-confidence motion could be heard. The next sitting is not until August, effectively triggering a constitutional ban on no-confidence motions, which cannot be tabled within 12 months of an election, and PNG is expected to go to the polls in July 2017.

With the police compromised and the Parliament hobbled, frustration about Mr O'Neill's belligerence has mounted. He has blamed the students and "agitators" for provoking a police response, but also conceded the event "could have been handled better". An independent and transparent investigation is urgently needed to establish what led to this outrage.

Australia offered to help. About 70 Australian Federal Police officers are already serving in PNG in mentoring roles. Mr O'Neill immediately rebuffed the offer, calling it an "internal matter". This was missed opportunity.

There is understandable sensitivity within PNG about any Australian interference, given the colonial history. But if Mr O'Neill is so sure of the police conduct, an independent inquiry would have bolstered confidence in the community.

The Turnbull government should also be more vocal in the demanding Mr O'Neill respect of the right of students to protest. Australia provides more than $550 million each year to PNG in foreign aid, but the relationship has been deeply compromised by the Manus Island detention camp.

Relying on PNG to process asylum seekers has seen Australia lose influence over the priorities for aid, and generally cowed Australia's voice about governance challenges in the country.

Instead of attempting to keep the Manus Island camp operation, Australia should not be foisting its responsibilities onto the neighbours. PNG clearly has enough problems of its own.
The Washington Post has identified the 21st Congressional District as one of the top five House races to watch as indication of chances of Democrats re-taking the majority in November.

Democrat Mike Derrick, a retired Army colonel from Peru, in Clinton County, is running against U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, and Green Party candidate Matt Funiciello, a bread company owner and political activist from Hudson Falls.

The Washington Post said Derrick has not yet raised enough campaign funds to be competitive, but the Democratic Party is still watching the race, which Democrats might win in "a true wave election."

Click here to read the report.
You have one week. One week before the day set aside to honor the man in your life, your dad.

I know how blessed I am to have my dad, Jim Sidusky, in my life. He started his life in West Pawlet, Vermont, and at some point moved to Hudson Falls with his family.

There, they opened Siduskys Grocery, where he was taught his strong work ethic from his parents. He went onto to the U.S. Navy after graduation, and served during the Vietnam War.

My dad was a talented machinist by trade for many years. He retired last year.

As I think about my life, I attribute so many things about myself to him: my drive to work hard each and every day; my love for motorcycles, after growing up on the back of a 1952 Harley Davidson pan head; my excitement when I see a big lawn sale, as we would always stop to see if we could find a great deal.

There are some great deals this coming week to celebrate Fathers Day. Make sure to check these out, and if you see something your Dad would like, take advantage of the great pricing!

Home Depot.com has a great price on vacuums. The best I found is a Shark Navigator Lift-Away Bagless Upright Vacuum Cleaner for $109.99 (Reg. $159.99), plus free shipping.

Sears has a great price for the mechanic in your life. Craftsman 2-1/4 ton Jack Stands, 2 pk. $11.99 (Reg. $29.99)

Price Chopper has some great deals on meats to feed Dad this coming Sunday. Premio Hot or Sweet Italian Pork Sausage Links, 16 oz.  $2.99 Use the $0.55/1 Premio Sausage product found on some packages, pay as low as $1.89!

Johnsonville Grillers, 1.5 Lb.  $6.99, use $1.50/1 Johnsonville Grillers 24oz frozen package OR (2) 16 oz. fresh packages, found in 5/8 Smart Source, exp. 08/01/2016 as low as $5.49.

In my monthly class at The Post-Star, I go into detail about using coupons, finding monthly deals and how it will benefit your family and your pocket book! There are free giveaways during the class as well. Please join me for my next class at 6 p.m. June 23. Call 742-3309, or go to poststar.com/couponclass.

Head over to my blog at Making Cent$ About Extreme Couponing to find some great deals around the region this week. Post your questions, comments and deals in the comments section.
FORT EDWARD -- A White Creek man who was arrested earlier this year for having sex with a 14-year-old girl faces new charges after police found he had child pornography as well, court records allege.

Damian J. Waterman, 21, faces nine charges in an indictment that was handed up in recent days in Washington County Court, including counts of second-degree rape, possession of a sexual performance by a child, criminal sale of marijuana and lesser misdemeanor counts including criminal possession of a controlled substance and endangering the welfare of a child.

He is accused of having a sexual relationship with the teen, who was too young to legally consent. The age of consent in New York is 17.

State Police said he was found to have pornographic images of the girl as well.

Waterman pleaded not guilty to the indictment Friday in Washington County Court. Washington County Judge Kelly McKeighan sent him to Washington County Jail for lack of bail.

The State Police investigation led to the arrest of the girl's father, who was charged with misdemeanor endangering the welfare of a child for allowing the girl to live with Waterman.
CAMBRIDGE  Battenkill Conservancy has received two grants, one for a four-day summer outdoors program and another to expand outreach efforts in the community.

The conservancy will be running its popular Outdoor Adventure Trip, thanks in part to a grant from Stewarts Shops Holiday Match Program.

The overnight adventure trip offers a water focused, outdoor environmental science based program geared for middle school students from Aug. 8-11.

The leader will be Randy Jennings, the adviser of Boy Scout Venture Crew 17 Adviser, who has been trained at the National Outdoor Leadership School. He will lead a group of 15 participants, and there will be guest instructors in canoeing, water safety, nature photography, botany science, water sampling and fly fishing.

Evening bonfires, night sky identification and crafts will be included. Battenkill Valley Outdoors in Cambridge, serves as home base for the campers.

Good physical health and solid swimming ability is required to participate. The $225 program fee is supported by Stewarts Shops Holiday Match Program and includes all equipment, food and instruction.

Interested candidates should email bkc@battenkillconservancy.org to reserve a spot.

In addition, the conservancy has received a $5,000 grant from the Royal Bank of Canadas RBC Blue Water Project to support the Battenkill Conservancys River Watch Discovery Program, which will look to promote and expand outreach efforts within the community to highlight the importance of long-term water quality monitoring.

The conservancys goals include conserving land within the watershed to ensure clean water for all, supporting sustainable fishery, biodiversity, outdoor education and multi-use recreation by protecting and restoring aquatic and terrestrial habitats while ensuring the public access to the river.

This year, the RBC Blue Water Project has committed $3.2 million in grants globally, to 152 organizations that are committed to improve urban water quality, enhance storm water management and protect and restore urban waterways.

The RBC Blue Water Project is focused on supporting initiatives that help protect water in towns, cities, and urbanized areas. For further information, visit www.rbc.com/ bluewater.
GLENS FALLS  On Saturday, Mark Petrie, president of The Bridge, the local LGBT group based out of Glens Falls, marched in the pouring rain celebrating the Albany Gay Pride parade and letting everyone there know Glens Falls Pride would be in eight days.

On Sunday, Petrie was fielding calls from many people in the local LGBT community, wanting to know about the plans for the local pride event in light of Sunday mornings mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that left at least 50 people dead. It was the largest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Obviously, I have been getting a lot of phone calls all day, said Petrie, one of the leaders of The Bridge, that will be putting on the pride event on June 19, beginning with a Pride Stroll at 11:30 a.m. We are definitely going to increase security for the event. We are really hoping our whole community will come together for pride. We should be strong and stand together.

John Anthime Miller, a local composer and musician, said he spent Sunday weeping, because thats what you need to do when something like this happens, before organizing an evening candlelight vigil at City Park.

It is horrifying and sad, but in the end it is truly frightening, Miller said. Whats amazing in some ways is that its been almost exactly one year since the nine people were killed in Charleston, South Carolina, and now we have one with more than 50. This one is just so much closer to home.

Anthimes vigil, which he first posted to Facebook at 2:30 p.m., drew 40 people to the gazebo in City Park, including Petrie. The solemn group stood with candles covered with Dixie cups and listened as Miller talked about his fears. I am shocked, distraught and, frankly, frightened, he said.

I am afraid, Miller said. I am afraid the next victim could be you or me,

Jenny Streeter of Hudson Falls attended the vigil and earlier in the day had called for unity.

Its really sad, Street said. We must unite as one, especially with pride next week. We must stand with Orlando.

Streeter said she grew more upset each time she read more news out of Orlando.

With every update on Orlando, my heart breaks a little more. Why? Why did somebody think this was okay? Why did they think killing over 50 people would make their life better? How do we come back from this? How are we not going to be afraid to walk the streets? she asked.

This happened in a gay nightclub. That is our safe haven, and it was taken. We, as a community of LGBTQ individuals, must stand together and unite as a solid front, Streeter added. Hug your loved ones a little tighter today because you never know.
Three villages in Washington County have among the highest tax rates in the Capital Region, while their towns tax bills are among the lowest, according to a new report from the Empire Center.

The center, a fiscally conservative think tank, used tax data and equalization rates to create an effective tax rate for each municipality. That allowed them to be compared to each other.

The center also looked at the average amount of taxes paid, which is essential in determining which residents are actually paying the most. A high tax rate with low home values, for example, leads to a smaller tax bill than other locations that might have a lower tax rate.

But in each Washington County case, town residents had lower tax rates and paid less than village residents.

The village of Whitehall was No. 7 on the list of the highest tax rates in the Capital Region, at an effective tax rate of $39.60 in the Whitehall Central School District.

The town of Whitehall was No. 5 on the list of lowest tax bills in the Capital Region, with an average bill of $1,956. The average tax bill in the village was $2,286.

Likewise, the village of Fort Edward was No. 10 and the village of Granville was No. 18 on the highest tax rates list. Their respective towns were Nos. 13 and 14 on the lowest tax bills list.

The list has provided some fuel for the ongoing discussion of village dissolution. But Empire Center spokesman Ken Girardin said that decision cant be made based on the list alone.

Every village needs to be examined on a case-by-case basis, he said. That includes what services are provided, what the change in taxes would be and the value of local control.

While some have spoken positively about dissolution since the village of Salem dissolved earlier this year, Whitehall village Mayor Ken Bartholomew said theres no reason to get rid of villages.

Theres no advantages, he said, arguing that after the town took over the sewer district, water district, sidewalks, lighting and police, there would be no savings in a dissolution.

The town has less things to take care of, Bartholomew said. When you get done and you add it all up, theyd be paying the same thing.

And then theres the police. Many villages have their own police department. Most of the towns rely on the county Sheriffs Office.

A decision would have to be made what youre going to do there, Bartholomew said. This village police force is here for a reason.

Whitehall Town Supervisor George Armstrong agreed that there might not be any savings if his town took over the village. But he is not as committed to the village police force.

I have advocated for a long time the village should disband their police force and use the sheriff, he said. I think its too expensive. Its a huge cost.

The village did take some steps last fall to reduce that cost. Whitehall and the village of Granville now share a police chief, who oversees both village departments. It allowed the village to create a budget that came in under the tax cap, Bartholomew said proudly.

Not many can say that, he said.
Fighting for what is right and just is enforced by individual moral conscience. It is of a moral duty you and I as citizens owe to this God-given land of ours to protect and safeguard its tomorrow.

AS the president of the University of Papua New Guinea Student Representative Council and on behalf of the students of the UPNG whom have given me the mandate to be their leader, I salute the bravery and courage of each and every individual UPNG student, and students from other sister universities and secondary schools throughout the country, whom have given up their education and have stood up for what we all believe in.

I again salute the UPNG students for not only giving me the mandate to lead them, but also for their correct moral judgement in standing firm with me since we first addressed the issue.

On behalf of the student body, I must remind the citizens of this country, the government and the international community that what transpired on Wednesday 8 June 2016 is a very sad and tragic event in the history of PNG.

The nation must not let such cruelty by the government towards its citizens and students go in to history for it will only set a bad precedence for future generations to come.

The public must be reminded that governments power is for the people, by the people and of the people. We are the source of all power. The public has every right to question such abuse of power.

Shooting of peaceful and harmless students and wounding dozens of students with the intention of suppressing the exercise of fundamental human rights found in our Constitution, is an issue that the government must not use its resources to isolate and confine within the ambit of their power and influence.

The people deserve to know the truth. If people in power can suppress and deviate from the truth, only thing we can do is call on the international community and organizations to assist in enabling the truth to prevail. We are aware the government has crossed line which warrants the attention of the international community.

SRC welcomes Fr Victor Roche of Catholic Bishops Conference of PNG and Solomon Island to mediate the issue

On behalf of the UPNG students, I welcome the initiative approach on behalf of the Catholic Church by Fr. Victor Roche of the Catholic Bishops Conference in Port Moresby to mediate the tension between the Government and the student body. PNG is a Christian country and their initiative is of paramount consideration.

SRC welcomes governments intention for commission of inquiry but on broader terms and conditions

On behalf of the UPNG Students, I embrace the decision of the government to form a commission of inquiry to investigate the issue. However, the government will be a party and subject to the investigation, therefore we will only and fully accept the decision on the following terms, but not restricted to any others: (a) The Commission of Inquiry must be conducted by an independent and impartial body. It must not be a government organisation, or an organisation that is affiliated with any institution of the Government. It can be headed by any of the following organisations: The Catholic Bishop Conference of PNG and Solomon Islands, The Commonwealth The United Nations (b) The terms of the inquiry must be broadened to include; An inquiry into why the referendum was not conducted An inquiry into all the UPNG Senates and Councils decision relating this issue since day one An inquiry into who ordered the indiscriminate Police Shooting An inquiry to establish whether the ONeill-led Government had breached human rights found in the National Constitution and the United Nations Charter on Human Rights

3. Student body appeals to UN and international community's intervention

Papua New Guinea is an independent State who is part of a greater international community. International community enjoys peace and harmony as result of mutual observance of some of the fundamental human rights such as those found in our Constitution. These fundamental human rights found in our Constitution are derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNHCR) which is charter of United Nation that deals with human rights. Government actions on Wednesday amount to a breach of these rights found under UNCHR. PNG is member of United Nations; therefore we call on United Nations and the other Member States to intervene because these universal human rights have been violated.

In conclusion, the SRC on behalf of the student body wishes to inform the public that the university students have brought the fight this far. We have sacrificed our education and boycotted classes to address this national issue. After what transpired on Wednesday 8 June 2016, the students are exhausted.

The issue of returning to class Tuesday 14 June 2016, as prompt by the UPNG Administration is unrealistic and non-pragmatic because students are traumatised and are still recovering from what transpired on Wednesday.

Finally we still maintain our stance for prime minister Peter ONeill to step down.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has given GOP candidates in down-ballot races plenty to think about.

Case in point: U.S. Reps. John Katko and Elise Stefanik. Both are freshman Republicans seeking re-election in upstate New York congressional districts. Both are top targets for national Democrats aiming to win back the seats they held before the 2014 election.

But Katko, R-Camillus, and Stefanik, R-Willsboro, haven't endorsed Trump for president. They both have pledged to support the GOP nominee. (Katko recently said Trump has to do more to earn his vote.)

While Katko and Stefanik haven't jumped on the Trump bandwagon yet, other New York Republicans have. One such supporter is Wendy Long, who is challenging U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer in this year's election.

Long isn't a stranger to New York politics. She ran against U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in 2012. Gillibrand, D-N.Y., won that race by 45 points.

In an interview with The Citizen, Long said she decided to challenge Gillibrand four years ago because she was frustrated with the direction of the country. With the rise of Trump in the 2016 elections, she thinks she was ahead of her time.

"After four years of Clinton-Obama, I was feeling what now has become kind of a national tidal wave," she said.

Long said she first considered a second campaign for U.S. Senate around the holidays. When she learned Schumer, D-N.Y., didn't have a Republican challenger, she contacted Ed Cox and Mike Long, the chairs of the state Republican Party and Conservative Party, respectively.

Both parties are supporting Long's bid to unseat Schumer.

Long doesn't conceal her enthusiasm for Trump, the fellow New Yorker who will likely appear at the top of the general election ballot. She counts herself among the group of Republicans who wanted the Manhattan real estate mogul to run for New York governor in 2014.

"When he decided not to do that, I was disappointed," she said. "But I was very excited when he declared that he was running for president."

In 2012, Long was on the ballot with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. She said it was "very hard" running for U.S. Senate with the former Massachusetts governor at the top of the ticket.

"I tried hard to be a good soldier, but he was not a good candidate, it was a terrible year and it was just a big drag," she said.

For Long, the 2016 race is more exciting. She thinks Trump will have a positive impact on down-ballot contests, such as her campaign against Schumer.

That impact won't be limited to Republicans, according to Long. She said he can appeal to other groups, including conservative Democrats and young voters.

"Look at the data. Look at what's happened already," she said. "He's gotten all these people excited. He's brought people in. He's got more people voting than have voted ever before in a Republican primary. So he's energizing people."

Long's support for Trump also extends to some of his policy proposals. One of his signature plans is to construct a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border  and have Mexico pay for it.

Democrats  and even some Republicans  have criticized the wall proposal. CNBC reported last fall that the cost to build a border wall could be as high as $25 billion.

Long, though, supports the plan.

"I do believe in the wall," she said. "I think Trump's idea is an excellent one. I do believe that he will make sure that Americans don't have to pay for it."

Issues aside, there is a major reason why Long likes Trump: He's not politically correct.

Trump's wall plan drew accusations of racism. He was criticized when he proposed a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S.

Recently, he had to defend comments he made about a judge presiding over a lawsuit against Trump University. The judge, Gonzalo Curiel, was born in Indiana to Mexican parents. (His parents became American citizens.)

So far, Trump's approach hasn't hurt him. Long called it a "one-man war on political correctness."

"He doesn't just criticize it. He defies it," she said. "He acts against it. He is politically incorrect. I think people find that so, so refreshing."
The Summit, which originally was to be organised by the ECOWAS Commission Secretariat, would now be hosted by Ghana with the participation by other ECOWAS-member countries.

The ECOWAS Commission had notified Ghana of its inability to co-organise the Summit due to some internal challenge from its reorganisation activities.

The government thus took full responsibility for the organisation, and a planning committee consisting representatives of the relevant ministries, departments and agencies, began its work in September 2015.

He said the government had invited ECOWAS ministers and industrialists, as well as potential investors outside the Sub-region in Africa, and in Europe, Asia and the United States, to participate in the Summit.

Dr Spio-Garbrah said in view of the importance of the Summit, the Government had invited key personalities such as the Director General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and the President of the African Development Bank, saying those two played critical roles in the industrialisation of Africa, especially in the agro sector.

The one-day summit would be held at the Accra International Conference Centre with President John Dramani Mahama as the Guest of Honour.

A meeting of African Free Zones Association to deliberate the utlisation of free zones to improve Africas competitive and manufacturing proficiency, among other issues, would be held the day before the Summit.

The Summit would immediately be followed by the Ghana-China Investment Forum, which would look at investment opportunities in Ghana for China, the next day.

Dr Spio-Garbrah said China had made a name for itself on the global scale as an export-oriented industrial nation and was now looking to relocate some of its factories to other parts of the world, including South East Asia and Africa because of the rising costs of labour in China.

It makes more sense for them to ship their equipment to Africa to process goods to supply the West African Sub-region, he said. Theyve written to us along those lines and Ghana intends to become the hub for the West African Sub-region for industrialisation purposes.

The Trade Minister said Ghana was the most logical destination suited to some kinds of industry, in spite of some challenges, including unreliable and inadequate power supply.

He urged the private sector and businesses in Ghana to support the Summit as they stood to benefit from a vibrant industry and increased investment.
The statement signed by the communications minister, Omane Boamah noted Our current per capita income is also higher than that of Cote dIvoire (US$1,314.7), Senegal (US$913.0), the governments statement said, adding: We believe human development is a more encompassing and comprehensive way to conceptualise development, as it puts people first. In this light, the government acknowledges the gains made over the last few years in major human development indicators.Ghana achieved the Millennium Development Goal 1 target of reducing the proportion of poor people by half by 2015 in 2013  two clear years ahead of the deadline.

He said: This report that the Minister released, we were told that this is the IMFs World Economic Outlook giving the government significant progress. I read the IMFs World Economic Outlook and I looked at the Ministers statement  the 12-page statement of the Minister; in fact my impression initially when I heard it was that the Ministers statement was coming out of the IMFs report, but 91 per cent of the Ministers statement is not in the World Economic Outlook. So all they say is that the IMF says weve made progress and as I said, there are two parts of this statement in the world Economic Outlook that relates to Ghana, one says that Ghana will see a marginal increase in growth from 3.5 per cent to 4.5 per cent  thats the first part  thats all it says. Then from this particular statement, this one sentence, you generate a 12-page report.
Speaking to media; the Tourism Ambassador hinted that it is necessary to teach the children today about hygiene and cleanliness so it will not be necessary to teach them as adults about the same thing tomorrow. I believe children are the ones that suffer the most and they also have great retentive memory he added.

He expressed concern over frequent outbreak of cholera in the area and said cholera could be avoided by keeping the environment clean and ensuring personal hygiene and urged the public to observe personal hygiene and keep their cleanliness to avoid cholera outbreak again.

He expressed appreciation to the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Guba Foundation, 2131, The British High Commission for supporting this initiative.

Abeiku Santana and his team have been doing a lot in recent times to promote Ghana Tourism potential and urging each and every one to be part of this game changing idea. He has started engaging and educating Taxi drivers across the Greater Accra Region and urging them to be conscious about the key role they play in the promotion of tourism in Ghana.
He argued that the AMA boss is fond of running his mouth instead of focusing his energy on ensuring the countrys capital city is rid of filth and free from floods.

There is too much talk than action, he said. Just before last Thursdays rain, it rained and the AMA Chief Executive came, shouting that they have been able to contain the floods in Accra and that floods are a thing of the past and three days later, there was flood.

Contributing to a panel discussion on Last Thursdays floods, Mr. Mornah charged persons in authority to be measured in their utterances saying, our leaders must measure what they say. You [AMA Boss] run your mouth too much and so now he has to resign because you said there is no flood and there is flood. Why are you still at post?

According to him, the necessary steps which must be taken to manage the flooding situation are yet to be fully implemented therefore it was unwise for the AMA boss to jump from the heavens and say we have contained the floods when the floods are consuming everybody.

He said there is no way Ghana should be experiencing perennial floods because there are countries living below sea level and there are floods. We are living above sea level and there are floods. Why?
The time has come to bring accountability to local government through competitive politics. Election of DCEs at the local level can no longer be delayed. This is going to give a great boost to local initiatives and local self-reliance, Akufo-Addo said at a business forum in the UK.

Currently in local governance, the president nominates a candidate who would have to secure the approval of two thirds of assembly members to be confirmed.

Many have said that it is high time MMDCEs were elected to ensure accountability in their work.
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! 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!
With Mothers Day in May and Fathers Day in June and summer weddings and family vacations during these warmer days, it seems timely to mention Pope Francis recent apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia ("The Joy of Love") with the subtitle On Love in the Family.

First of all, what is an apostolic exhortation? It's a document from the pope. While not introducing new doctrine, it is meant to take a serious look at an important issue facing the church. This document captures recent years of the Catholic Churchs reflection on the family, beginning with the 2014 Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, followed by the September 2015 World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, and concluding with the October 2015 Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. This latter synod sent to the Holy Father its own final report, which included an invitation to issue a document on the family, so that the family might increasingly radiate Christ, who is the light of the world.

In this exhortation, Pope Francis offers the world an extended reflection on marriage and family. His is an optimistic, yet realistic view of marriage and family life in the modern world. The document examines a wide variety of issues facing families today, ranging from unwed mothers to lack of housing, from cohabitation to divorce, as well as reflections concerning the elderly, widows, families with special needs and more. While upholding the timeless doctrines and teachings of the Catholic faith, the Holy Father stresses the importance of tenderness, compassion and gentle encouragement along the path of conversion. This document is an exercise in authentic, compassionate pastoral care.

Amoris Laetitia is divided into an introduction and nine chapters. Chapter four is perhaps the heart of the entire document. Pope Francis provides detailed commentary on each quality of love discussed in Chapter 13 of St. Pauls first letter to the Corinthians, which is often read at weddings: Love is patient, love is kind, love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude The Holy Father applies each quality to a specific love of the family.

In the final section of this chapter, the pope discusses the ways in which married love grows and changes over the life of a marriage, saying that with the grace of the Holy Spirit, we find the strength to confirm, direct and transform our love in every new situation. He also emphasizes, In the family, three words need to be used: Please, Thank you and Sorry.

In chapter eight, Pope Francis invokes the image of the church as a field hospital, especially with regard to couples who are cohabitating or divorced and remarried. Avoiding easy answers and general rules, he emphasizes the role of conscience and discernment on the part of the faithful and encourages pastors to look at each case individually. He cites the mercy of God and the logic of the Gospel," and recommends a process of accompaniment in which the pastor guides the faithful to an awareness of their situation before God.

Amoris Laetitia is not a capitulation to moral relativism, nor does it represent a watering down of church teaching. It is, rather, an aid to reflection, dialogue and pastoral practice. As one commentator said, this is what doctrine looks like when it is actually put to the service of the life of ordinary believers.

You can find the 200-plus pages of the document on the internet; just type in Amoris Letitia. The document concludes with Pope Francis Prayer to the Holy Family:

Jesus, Mary and Joseph,

in you we contemplate

the splendor of true love;

to you we turn with trust.

Holy Family of Nazareth,

grant that our families too

may be places of communion and prayer,

authentic schools of the Gospel

and small domestic churches.

Holy Family of Nazareth,

may families never again experience

violence, rejection and division;

may all who have been hurt or scandalized

find ready comfort and healing.

Holy Family of Nazareth,

make us once more mindful

of the sacredness and individuality of the family

and its beauty in Gods plan.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph,

Graciously hear our prayer. Amen.
The suspect, Akinlolu Ogunlade, reportedly claims to have been pressured into sex by the young girl identified simply as Bisi, which led him to keep her as his sex slave for four days.

Mr Ogunlade claims to have rejected many invitations from the young girl, before he finally gave in.

The suspect was paraded by the Oyo State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Leye Oyebade, as a serial rapist.

Ogunlade said:

I am 65 yrs old and I work as a plumber. I was arrested at Akobo area. The little girl came over to me and started disturbing me to have sex with her and I told her that she was too small. I told her she could not do something of such but she replied by telling me that she could do it.

I thereafter had sex with her two times and kept her in my custody just for four days.

Following questions about his family and wife, Ogunlade said:

I am married but my wife is dead and I have only one child.

The police are reported to have alleged that the suspect has been specialised in the abduction of teenage girls and keeping them in his hideout as sex slaves.

The CP went on to narrate how Ogunlade had committed the alleged offence:

The victim, Bisi (surname withheld), aged 11, left home on May 27 at about 8pm for a church vigil at Abidi-Odan area, Akobo, Ibadan but did not return home on Saturday and all efforts to locate her whereabouts proved abortive.

However on May 30, at about 16:30, police detectives, based on information, traced the victim to the hideout of the suspect at Abidi- Odan area of Akobo, Ibadan where his victim was rescued.
Dr Muideen Akorede, the Senior Special Assistant, Media and Communication to the Governor, said this on Sunday, June 12, in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ilorin.

The statement said Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed concluded the investment deal during his current investment trip to East China.

It also said the agreement for the establishment of Kwara Chitex Industrial Park was signed by Ahmed and Mr Shi Zengchao, the Managing Director of Ningbo Jinsheng Star Import and Export Co Ltd.

The statement said the event took place at the 18th China Zheijand Investment and Trade Symposium held in Ningbo, East China.

Kwara Chitex Industrial Park, it said, was the only one Nigeria- bound.

The statement quoted the governor as expressing delight over the multimillion dollar project which was expected to commence soon.The park, according to the governor, would create 3,000 jobs for the people of the state.

We are looking for investors, especially in the area of manufacturing.

"We have a very youthful population which shows there is a strong workforce that can support industrialisation.

There are opportunities in textiles, agriculture, mining and other areas, the potentials are huge, the statement quoted Ahmed as saying.

It also quoted Ahmeds Chief Economic Assistant, Mr Abayomi Ogunsola, as saying government would provide about N1billion in counterpart funding and 400 hectares of land as well as infrastructure support.

The statement also said the governor held preliminary talks with potential investors in agribusiness and agro allied industries during the visit to China.
Aregbesola said that June 12, 1993, was the day Nigerians put aside their ethnic and religious differences and united to vote MKO as their leader, which unequivocally affirmed the unity of the country.

He said May 29 only symbolises the day the military handed over the affairs of the country to a democratically elected government, noting that Nigerians and lovers of democracy would remain committed to June 12 as a political watershed in the annals of the nation.

The Governor however said that since MKO's election was annulled 23 years ago, it took Nigerians another 16 years to choose a leader that would take them to the Promised Land in person of President Muhammadu Buhari.

We will never drop our commitment to June 12. Nigerians, in their heterogeneity, on June 12, 1993, voted for Chief Abiola in a pattern that defied ethnicity, religion, ideology and local," Aregbesola said.

It was a pattern that made mockery of the fabled fault-lines and fissiparous tendencies of the Nigerian federation and projected a nation united behind a popular leader.

May 29, in 1999, was the date the military handed over power to civilian administration and will remain symbolic for the transition to civil rule and the opportunity it presents for realising a truly democratic government that approximates the yearnings and aspirations of the people for a leader that will lead them to the Promised Land of security and life more abundant.

We waited for 16 years for that leadership to emerge and we thank God for the election and coming to power of President Muhammadu Buhari.

A government with a human face is here at last. He represents the aspirations and symbolism of June 12 in that he also got a pan-Nigerian mandate that once again defied the divisions in our country.

He represents hope for change and national rebirth. He is on that path. God willing, he will lead us to the Promised Land,'' he said.
The lawmaker made the call at a forum with journalists in Yola.

Namdaz, who is representing Mayo-Belwa/Ganye/Toungo/Jada Federal Constituency in Adamawa, said the current hardship being experienced was a global problem and not peculiar to Nigeria alone.

"We need to bear with President Buhari as he is trying to put things in shape, we must realise that he is not a magician to change things overnight.

"We should be patient and accord government at all levels the needed support and cooperation to face the numerous challenges at hand, he said.

Namdaz said this years budget would bring some changes in the lives of Nigerians, adding that about N46.9 billion had been earmarked for capital projects in the North out of which N5.9 billion projects were for Adamawa.

He explained that projects billed for his constituency in this year's budget included the completion of Mayo-Belwa power substation by Transmission Company of Nigeria, repair of Mayo-Belwa-Zing road and rehabilitation of Federal Government College, Ganye.

"I will also continue with my youth empowerment programmes for people in my constituency.
Spokesman of the command, Mr Ebere Amaraizu, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Enugu that there was no substance in the rumour and urged the public to discountenance it.

Amaraizu said, "the command wishes to make it categorically clear that there was no attack by Fulani herdsmen at Akpakume Nze community or any other community in the state.

"There is no tension in Enugu state whatsoever over any issue relating to alleged attack by any group of persons or Fulani herdsmen as alleged in some section of the media.

"For the purposes of clarity and understanding, case of malicious damage of farm crops was received on Thursday from Akpakume Nze community from yet-to-be established cattle tender.

"This prompted a meeting between the seven members of Fulani herdsmen led by Alhaji Shimo Mohammed, farm owners and security agencies.

"This was done after the parties had visited the farm site to establish the extent of damage to farm crops by cattle.
Oyegun, who spoke on Saturday at the Luncheon and Award programme organised by the University of Ibadan Alumni Association, urged Nigerians to persevere and be optimistic.

The event was a follow-up to the third Public Service Lecture of the association entitled, "Change and the Nigerian Traditional Institution, " delivered on Friday by the Obi of Onitsha, Nnaemeka Achebe.

Oyegun said APC took over power when the economy was in bad shape, adding that there was need for complete overhauling of the system to initiate the desired change envisaged by the people.

"The price of crude oil dropped drastically when we came on board.

"Rather than a plastic solution, President Muhammadu Buhari took some sacrificial decisions to overhaul the entire system.

"In the period of pregnancy, there is always pain. Buhari remains one of the few incorruptible Nigerians that can take sacrificial decisions and instil discipline.

"Lack of discipline is one of the factors that brought our institutions to the prostrate state we met them. I have no doubt in my mind that the future is very bright," he said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Oyegun was honoured with Alumnus of the Year Award while the publisher of the Sun Newspapers, Orji Uzor Kalu bagged the Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

NAN reports that among the 56 other awardees were Dr A.A.A Obiora, Dr Alex Izinyon(SAN), Chief Olu Falae, Chief Reuben Fasoranti, Chief Areoye Oyebola and Dr Michael Omolayole.

Also speaking at the event, Gov. Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State described Oyegun as a distinguished public servant as well as an accomplished economist and civil servant.

"Chief Oyegun is the most endowed National Party leader of our time. We are always proud to call him our chairman," he said.

He said that University of Ibadan had contributed immensely to the development of Ibadan and the state at large, urging the institution not to relent in its support for development.

Dr Kemi Emina, the National President of the UI Alumni Association (UIAA), described Kalu as a great entrepreneur, who is leading the youths through his entrepreneurial spirit.

Emina thanked Oyegun and Kalu, who was represented by his Personal Assistant, Kunle Oyewumi, for their contribution to the development of the institution and the advancement of knowledge.

Also speaking, the Vice- Chancellor of the university, Prof. Idowu Olayinka, lauded the awardees for their immense contributions for the development of the institution.

NAN reports that among dignitaries present at the occasion were former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
Daniel K Daniel has repeated the same feat he achieved at the 2016 Africa Magic's Viewers Choice Award for his role in Frankie Ogar 's film, A Soldier's Story.

Daniel, who is fast trailing the heels of OC Ukeje that won the category at the 2015 AMVCAs and went ahead to nab the same award at the 2015 Nollywood Movie Awards, will be counting on his luck to repeat the same feat at the 2016 NMAs to surpass the feat of OC Ukeje.
The trio were awarded with the AMAA Lifetime Achievement Awards, which had been won by Kenneth Okonkwo, Kenneth Nnebue and Zeb Ejiroamidst several others in the past.

Receiving the honour became a teary and emotional moment for Nollywoods iconic couple, Olu Jacobs and Joke Silva as they were presented their plaques by Ghanaian bedazzled actress, Juliet Ibrahim and Senator David Mark.

Distinguished actor and former Delta State commissioner, Richard Mofe Damijo was also honoured by the organisers of AMAA for his contribution to the African motion pictures.

On receiving his Life Time Achievement award, RMD dedicated the honour to the youths and newly born of the Niger Delta.
In statement issued on Sunday, June 12, 2016, Atiku said Nigeria was united in 1993 for Abiola and democracy.

"On #June12, 1993, Nigeria was united in one cause, to defeat tyranny through democracy. We all believed. After 23 years, #June12 still remains a shining light, a reminder of what is possible - a united Nigeria", he said.

The integrity of the #June12 electoral process also shows that we Nigerians can achieve great things, if we are united. For many of us who worked with Chief M.K.O. Abiola, his death was painful, but it paved the way for enduring democracy. Our democracy today, is MKO Abiola's legacy.

"But we must grow beyond just democracy - our country must work. We must reform our country - restructure our federation for peace, growth and prosperity. We must also fix our political system.

"We must embrace reforms, and base our democracy on equity and good governance, which helps every Nigerian feel safe and secure. #June12 was a victory for Nigeria. It was because we knew we could be better. We can actually achieve that dream if we all work together," the statement said.

The Pan Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG) had on Saturday, June 11, called on President Muhammadu Buhari to release the official results of the annulled June 12, 1993 Presidential election.
Police said in a Twitter message that there were "multiple injuries". Local media reported that from seven to as many as 20 people had been shot at the Pulse nightclub, but had no further details.

Several patrons had posted on social media that a gunman was holed up inside and holding hostages. One man who said he was inside the club posted that the shooting broke out around 2 a.m. and that he heard about 40 shots being fired.

Police said they had carried out a "controlled explosion" at the club hours after the shooting broke out, but did not say why that was done. They described the scene as a "fluid situation".

Video posted online showed a large number of police and emergency vehicles outside the nightclub. Bomb sniffing dogs were also on the scene, CNN reported.
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 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 we did and what we said in this scoundrel year. For now, we each have our conscience to attend to.
I am a delegate who will represent Iowa at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. And I will not be voting for or supporting Donald Trump.

This nation is at a tipping point and I believe we must look beyond uniting behind a person only because he has an "R" after his name. I have to decide whether I am more concerned about what people might say or do to me rather than what I need to do in order to help save our nation. Am I going to be more concerned about Iowas first in the nation status or saving the nation from a disastrous mistake in nominating Donald Trump?

Many of us have been saying for months that the media will turn on Trump once he gets the nomination, and they are doing so now, thinking he is the nominee. They are not bringing out anything new about him, but they are reporting now what we have been telling people about him all along. The fraud, the lies, the deceit, the flip-flops -- all are being brought forward now in the media.

And it has just begun. Wait until after July, if he makes it past the convention, the flood gates will be wide open.

You might say, he already has the 1,237 votes so the nomination is over. That is not how it works. This is what the convention is for -- delegates are the only ones who can nominate and declare a winner.

Unfortunately, lack of knowledge causes people to not understand what the process is or how it works. If a candidate needs only 1,237 delegate votes from the primary/caucus then there is no need for a convention. Delegates are elected from each state to go to the national convention to be able to vote on a candidate. It is up to each delegate to vote their conscience after considering whether the candidate is worthy of their vote. It is a check and balance.

After all, what if a delegate finds out the presumptive nominee got his primary votes by lying and deceit and fraud? Is that delegate bound to vote for him at the convention? No. Rule 37 protects the right of each delegate to vote as they wish; as their conscience guides them. Rule 38 prohibits any state or congressional district to force a delegation to vote as a unit, and is only intended to supplement the conscience protections provided by Rule 37.

Delegates have a huge responsibility and we are the only ones that can stop a disaster that will happen to our party and our nation if Republicans nominate Donald Trump.
They've called Donald Trump's words "racism," but still back his presidential bid. They've lambasted Trump's hate-filled scapegoating of minorities, but continue to ride his bandwagon. They've called out his rampant misogyny, but refuse to step away.

The rhetorical gymnastics on display among Republican lawmakers is beyond unsustainable. Some have even made excuses for Trump's demagoguery, including Sen. Chuck Grassley. It's a shameful case of misguided allegiance to party over country.

Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Illinois, last week became the first high-level Republican to un-endorse the would-be demagogue-in-chief. Trump's racially charged attacks on a federal judge was the final straw for Kirk. Kirk's about face bears more than a whiff of opportunism. His Democratic challenger, Rep. Tammy Duckworth, has been one of the most aggressive purveyors of a national Democratic strategy tying any incumbent Republican to the brash real estate baron. Even so, Kirk's reversal is better than his peers' feckless hand-wringing.

Take House Speaker Paul Ryan, for example. Ryan has repeatedly criticized Trump's economic isolationism. Ryan went so far as to label Trump's bullying of Judge Gonzalo Curiel "racist." Yet, so consumed with defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton in November, Ryan still supports his party's presidential nominee. The speaker is hoping to rein in the uncontrollable.

Grassley took false equivalence to a new level last week, likening Trump's attacks on Curiel to comments once made by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Meanwhile, too many Republicans -- such as Reps. Dave Young and Steve King -- remain stunningly mute as a strongman-in-waiting threatens their party's long-term viability. Rep. Rod Blum, of Dubuque, shockingly reiterated his support last week for Trump on party-first grounds, adding only that the New York businessman should "tone it down."

All Republicans -- state, local and federal -- with any interest in maintaining the GOP as a serious party should tear into Trump's un-American bombast. Instead, Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann is busy trying to assemble a pro-Trump coalition and denouncing non-believers.

The deafening silence isn't universal, mind you. Iowa Sen. David Johnson, this past week, ditched his party altogether, but not before likening Trump to a European fascist or two. Johnson, apparently, is one of the few capable of seeing Trump's total and complete lack of respect for the rule of law.

Trump is a man who only supports the Bill of Rights if it serves him. Of course, the same could be said for just about anything Trump supports. Trump "loves" women, but only when they look good on his arm or don a bathing suit for one of his pageants. He "loves black people," so long as they're not acting in a way that stokes the racial anxieties around which his legions coalesce.

The GOP's standard-bearer is little but a vain self-promoting hack without the the vaguest hint of curiosity or integrity.

The Republican Party is an important, necessary part of the American political landscape. But, in recent years, it's invoked nostalgia for a mid-20th century America that never truly existed in order to score votes from increasingly angry white Americans. Trump has seized upon the strategy, ditched the code-speak and exposed the thinly masked face of his supporters.

Trump's candidacy reflects the darkest confluence of American racial history and the Web-fueled tinfoil hat patrol. It's the ultimate outcome when facts are replaced with rage and instinct.

There aren't, at this point, many good options for Republicans in 2016. A brokered convention would almost assuredly fracture the party and hand Clinton the White House. The same goes for a rash of high-level renunciations of Trump's candidacy from the GOP elite. But any self-respecting Republican who doesn't unambiguously oppose Trump is forever tied to his rhetoric.

Any less than a full-throated rebuke is a default endorsement of everything Trump represents.
AUBURN  After settling into a chair to have her head shaved bald on Sunday, Sarah Portipilo said the emotions of the moment finally caught up to her.

To that point, approximately 60 people had already had their heads shaved for Auburn's annual St. Baldrick's Day fundraising event at the Knights of Columbus on Market Street. The haircuts were gestures of support to the St. Baldrick's Foundation's mission to bolster childhood cancer research efforts.

Pacing the event, which was organized by members of the Auburn Fire Department, were intermittent speeches by parents and others directly affected by the disease. Auburn's fifth annual St. Baldrick's Day, by Monday, drew around 120 shavees and raised around $70,000, organizers said.

More than $2,000 of that was collected through fundraising efforts by Portipilo, a special education teacher at Herman Avenue Elementary School.

And when Portipilo's hair was cut on Sunday, she was seated with the family of Caden Schmitt, a 8-year-old student of hers whose experience living with a brain tumor moved her to "brave the shave," as the St. Baldrick's saying goes.

Schmitt, diagnosed with medulloblastoma in 2014, is in remission after his chemotherapy treatments ended in November, according to his mother, Jaime.

Nevertheless, the young boy's plight against his condition moved several in the local community. Through the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Central New York, the Sugarman Law Firm granted Caden Schmitt's wish and funded a trip to Africa for a safari last August.

Portipilo, meanwhile, described her student as "a tough kid" in going through his treatments and hospital stays, saying she committed herself to braving the shave when she learned more about the annual St. Baldrick's Day event in Auburn.

"He'd come back (from treatments) like he never missed a beat. And then I'd go home to my family and it just really hit home," she said before adding, "When I go home to my kids, that's what it's about. And then having to see what Caden's had to endure the last couple years, that's what it's about."

Several who volunteered for haircuts donated locks of their hair to organizations like Wigs for Kids. Other 2016 shavees included Keith Batman, chair of the Cayuga County Legislature, and Jeff Pirozzolo, superintendent of the Auburn Enlarged City School District.

New to this year's St. Baldrick's Day was an added incentive for area school teachers to raise funds. Organizers put together a basket full of rewards collected through donations from local businesses, said firefighter Brian Bennink, event chair.

The basket, which was won by Portipilo, included around $2,000 worth of prizes including gift cards, coupons and tickets for a day trip to New York City, Bennink said. However, the Auburn firefighter said that none of the participating teachers he spoke with  including Portipilo, she said herself  were in it for the basket, parts of which would likely go back to the students.

"Anything that's done, this community  I would put us up against any community, per capita, in the country. We give so much," he said, noting other recent fundraising events, including Majorpalooza and the Socci Stiletto Stampede in Skaneateles. "To think that we're going to be close to $500,000 in five years (of St. Baldrick's in Auburn) is unbelievable."

Caden Schmitt was one of the 17 children formally commemorated through the event.

Another was Carissa Mosher, a 13-year-old who died of cancer, rhabdoid sarcoma, in May. Her mother, Tracey Mosher, told her daughter's story Sunday to a crowd that featured several that could not hold back tears.

Jaime Schmitt joined members of her family and Portipilo in shaving their heads for Caden. The Auburn mother noted that Portipilo first approached her about shaving in her son's honor, saying she and her family will continue supporting the Auburn St. Baldrick's event "for a very long time."

"It's amazing, I knew he touched a lot of people, but this really drove home how much he has moved others in this area," Jaime Schmitt said of Portipilo's efforts.
Trevor Johnson and his friends have built a following posting videos of their scooter stunts on YouTube and other social media websites.

Johnson now is hoping to parlay that exposure into a successful new business in Rapid City.

Scooterantics is the name of Johnsons YouTube video channel and also the name of his sales, repair and parts shop located at 1404 W. Rapid St. near Black Hills Bicycles.

Youve all seen kids zipping around town on scooters, basically inline skateboards with a vertical handle for balance and steering, which have been a mode of transportation and recreation for teens and pre-teens for years.

Johnson, 16-year-old son of Ross and Tonya Johnson and a junior next school year at Rapid City Stevens High School, said he and his friends were constantly ordering scooter parts on the Internet.

If we broke a part, we couldnt ride for a couple days until we could get a part in, he said. So, I thought it would be a good idea to start a shop in town.

Scooterantics shares space with the family graphic design and advertising business, Ross Johnson Design Company. Trevor said his parents viewed the venture as a good hands-on lesson.

They were kind of in with it. It wasnt that expensive. They thought it would be a good learning experience for me in the business, Trevor said.

Johnson not only caters to dozens of local scooter riders, but he also markets through a website, scooterantics.com, taking advantage of his 3,000 YouTube subscribers and 700,000 hits generated by the videos and posts to Instagram.

Customers can fix or modify their scooters or they can completely design their own scooters with custom parts, he said.

Johnson is eyeing a career in engineering, but said if Scooterantics does well there may be some sort of business degree in his future. If he does go into business as a career, he has already gained valuable experience.

Im having a lot of fun with it, but it is pretty intimidating and its a lot more work than I thought it would be, he said.

Re/Max splits

Re/Max of Rapid City has split to become two separate realty companies, Re/Max Results, located at 1240 Jackson Blvd., and Re/Max Advantage, located at 1331 West Omaha St.

Tony Hensley and Yanni Georgas approached Re/Max owner Kelly Howie about purchasing just the west side office. The deal was completed in February.

Howie purchased the business eight years ago from longtime realtor Gene Hensley, Tonys father, and opened a second office in south Rapid City in 2011.

Re/Max Results has 31 licensed agents working out of the Jackson Boulevard location, Georgas said.

Its been great, he said. Both offices are working together. Theres been no uproar, no bad feedback from the switch.

Re/Max Advantage has relocated from Mandalay Plaza on Fifth Street to 1331 W. Omaha St. Suite 200 in the same building housing Office Depot and Platos Closet.

Howie said Re/Max Advantages move from the south side to a more visible central downtown location on Omaha Street has been a good move. Currently, Howie has 25 licensed agents working there

This provides for two offices to be managed a little more efficiently to the benefit of all of our clients, Howie said. We love our new location. It was built to our offices specific needs and also allows room for growth.

Lintz Bros. Pizza reopens

Brian and Kristy Lintz have announced their popular pizza place is back to tossing pizza dough and baking pies again in Hermosa.

A December fire in a neighboring telephone company office destroyed Lintz Bros. Pizza old building, and now, after seven months of construction, they are ready for business again, bigger and better than ever, according to a news release.

Lintz Bros soft re-launch took place this past Wednesday. A grand opening is set for June 25.

New credit union branch

Black Hills Federal Credit Unions brand new Sturgis branch location at 1020 Lazelle St. is open, according to the electronic marquee sign out front.

A news release from Pat Kurtenbach, president of the Sturgis Economic Development Corporation, announced a ribbon-cutting for the new BHFCU branch is set for Tuesday, June 21, at 4 p.m.
ELLSWORTH AIR FORCE BASE, S.D. | People working and living near the base should be aware of the potential for increased traffic, especially in Box Elder, during the South Dakota National Guard's 32nd Annual Golden Coyote training exercise from June 11 to 25.

Several hundred National Guard members from across the state will be operating out of Ellsworth during the exercise designed to provide military units with relevant training opportunities in support of overseas contingency operations and homeland defense.

When traveling from the base, motorists are encouraged to utilize Exit 67B and access Interstate 90 at that point.

Residents of Rapid City, Hill City, Custer and Belle Fourche should be aware of an increase in military traffic throughout the region and in their communities. They can expect an increase in noise levels due to military training.

Additionally, aircraft will be operating throughout the area and will respond to real-world emergencies during the exercise and remain in an all-hours-ready status. The public is asked to remain at a safe distance from all moving military vehicles and aircraft to prevent injury to personnel or damage to property.

According to SDNG Public Affairs, there will be 44 military units representing 12 states and four foreign nations participating in the exercise from multiple branches of military service  Army, Navy and Air Force  working together to create an invaluable training experience.

Created in 1984 by the SDNG, with the cooperation of the National Forest Service and Custer State Park, this year's exercise will allow about 3,400 service members to conduct combat-support and service-support missions in a realistic training environment and provide valuable services to the public.

Local residents receive numerous benefits from the many engineer projects conducted during the exercise. Units transport timber to Native American communities that use it as firewood, conduct building construction, repair and upgrades, identify hazardous wilderness areas and make them safe for public use, and resurface local roadways that have fallen into disrepair.

Media interested in covering the exercise must coordinate with the SDNG Public Affairs by June 10.

For more information, please contact Capt. Amber Symonds with the SDNG Public Affairs office at 605-737-6969, 605-737-6721 or by emailing ng.sd.sdarng.list.pao@mail.mil or amber.a.symonds.mil@mail.mil.
PIERRE | At least 16 of the state Senates 35 seats will have new people in them for the 2017 legislative session, and the chambers Republican leadership could also be in line for big changes as a result of Tuesday's primary election.

Those changes could lead to an interesting and potentially contentious relationship between many of the Republican senators and Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard during his final two years in the office. And the hottest debates from the 2016 legislative session may get even hotter in 2017 as a result.

The shifting dynamics result from the political character of many of the Republicans who have already won Senate seats, or who became their partys uncontested Senate nominees, or who won Senate nominations in Tuesdays primary elections and now face Democrats in the fall.

One debate likely to get heated is a renewed battle over restrictions on transgender people's use of bathrooms in public schools, a measure passed by the Legislature but then vetoed by Daugaard this year. A proposed expansion of Medicaid also could become much tougher under the new Senate roster.

There could even be an attempt to roll back the sales-tax increase that passed in the House with nary a vote to spare after the governors plan fell short by one aye on the first attempt.

Republican legislators and some party leaders who opposed the tax increase for teacher salaries and property-tax relief said they could raise teacher pay without a higher tax. But they never presented a formal plan that was complete in detail.

The tax increase took effect June 1. The rate rose to 4.5 percent from 4 percent, where it had stood since 1969.

A combination of Republicans and Democrats coalesced to get the two-thirds majorities needed for the tax increase. Repealing it would require a standard majority. Adjusting state governments budget internally also would require only a standard majority.

Some GOP lawmakers who backed the sales-tax hike did not fare well in Tuesday's primary, including such West River lawmakers as Rep. Jacqueline Sly and Sen. Bruce Rampelberg, who both lost their elections.

Daugaard also likely wouldnt have enough Republican support in the 2017 Senate to approve expansion of Medicaid to cover the working poor. If he pursues that plan, he likely needs to do it before Labor Day and would need a special session.

The deepening split among Republicans in the Senate can be traced to resignations by Senate Republican leader Tim Rave of Baltic and assistant leader Dan Lederman after the 2015 session.

The governors decisions to appoint Scott Fiegen of Dell Rapids and Bill Shorma of Dakota Dunes rather than others interested in the seats, left the Senate Republican caucus in a climate of suspicion and distrust.

Term-limited Sen. Corey Brown of Gettysburg moved from the president pro tem chair to Senate Republican leader. In the closed-door Senate Republican caucus, Gary Cammack of Union Center edged Ried Holien of Watertown for pro tem, while Jim White of Huron defeated Brock Greenfield of Clark for assistant leader.

Senate Republicans on the losing sides of those two internal battles believed that Daugaard swung the caucus elections in favor of Cammack and White through votes by Fiegen and Shorma.

That wasnt true, according to Tony Venhuizen, the governors chief of staff. But the denial didnt change the perception.

The perception showed in the formal vote on the 2016 sessions opening afternoon when four Senate Republicans voted publicly against Cammack for pro tem.

That set the tone for the tax battle and for the transgender veto. The transgender bathroom restrictions, brought by Rep. Fred Deutsch, R-Florence, likely had enough votes for the two-thirds majority needed to override the governors veto in the House.

But Deutsch publicly said there wasnt enough support in the Senate for an override and asked House members to let the veto stand. Many still voted to override the veto, but not enough to actually get the bill back to the Senate.

Daugaard issued the veto just minutes after the Senate gave final approval to the tax increase. That further fueled anger among many Republicans who opposed the tax and supported the transgender restrictions.

The disgruntled climate undercut Holiens interest in continuing to serve in the Senate. He decided against seeking re-election and now plans to run for the post of South Dakota committeeman on the Republican National Committee.

The current national committeeman for South Dakota, Dana Randall of Aberdeen, isnt running again. The committeeman decision will be made at the South Dakota Republican state convention this summer.

The tax fight split Codington Countys legislators. Holien opposed it, while Rep. Lee Schoenbeck of Watertown jumped into the middle of the fight, serving behind the scenes as a political organizer on Daugaards behalf.

The House Republican leadership stood against the tax increase. Schoenbeck lost an attempt after the 2014 elections to become House Republican assistant leader. During the key weekend of the tax fight, Schoenbeck publicly criticized, repeatedly, House Republican leader Brian Gosch of Rapid City and assistant leader Steve Westra of Sioux Falls.

Gosch and other members of the House Republican leadership team then blocked Schoenbecks further participation in the House Republican caucus meetings. Schoenbeck initially said he would resign, then finished out the session anyway, sitting alone at his House desk during the lunch hours while Republicans and Democrats held their caucuses.

The key vote in the House passage of the tax increase came down, in many ways, to Rep. Roger Solum of Watertown, the third Republican in the countys delegation.

Some House Republicans tried to get Solum to excuse himself and not vote, essentially becoming a nay, because some of the proceeds from the tax increase would be used for pay increases to technical institute instructors, including Solum.

Those attempts to sideline Solum coincided with Schoenbecks eruptions toward the House Republican leadership.

The decision by Holien created an opportunity for Solum to try to continue as a legislator. He was term-limited in the House. He filed candidacy papers for the Senate. So did Neal Tapio of Watertown, who was supported by the Al Koistinen wing of the county Republicans.

Koistinen is a former House member, as was the late Burdette Solum, who is the father of Roger Solum. The Burdette Solum wing of the county party briefly gained control of the county organization roughly a decade ago.

Tapio recently received the public endorsements from Holien and Koistinen. Koistinen has served a political mentor to a variety of more-conservative Republicans in northeastern South Dakota.

Tapio defeated Solum in the primary election Tuesday. Daugaard backed Solum, as did many statewide associations through their political action committees. Tapio showed zero contributions from others in his pre-primary campaign finance report.

Tapios win means Codington County will have three new legislators in the 2017 session. He also might contend in 2018 for a Republican nomination for U.S. House if incumbent Kristi Noem doesnt seek re-election to that seat.

The point of greatest friction in the state Senate in 2017, however, might be the District 19 Senate seat representing all or parts of Bon Homme, Douglas, Hanson, Hutchinson and McCook counties.

Thats where Daugaard put his name, money and network of political support behind Caleb Finck of Tripp for the Senate Republican nomination.

Instead, former Rep. Stace Nelson of Fulton won, despite Daugaard personally making a telephone message that circulated in the campaigns closing days urging households to support Finck.

Nelson has two terms under his belt and ran for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2014. Former Gov. Mike Rounds won the five-candidate primary.

Many organizations supported Finck in the primary election Tuesday. Their open opposition to Nelson puts their agendas for the 2017 session on shakier ground.

The victory by Nelson was coupled with a victory by one of his top allies. Term-limited Rep. Lance Russell of Hot Springs defeated Sen. Rampelberg of Rapid City for their districts Senate nomination Tuesday.

Rampelberg was another of the candidates that Daugaard financially supported in the primary campaigns.

Russell and Nelson still face Democratic opponents in the November general election. They are running in strongly Republican districts, however, making them more likely to win their November contests.

Daugaard also strongly supported term-limited Rep. Jacqueline Sly of Rapid City in a Republican primary challenge to Sen. Phil Jensen of Rapid City. Sly was a leader for the tax increase and higher teacher salaries. Jensen voted against the plan. Jensen beat Sly by a large margin Tuesday and has a Democratic opponent in the November general election.

Five Senate primaries in which Daugaard contributed to candidates broke his way Tuesday. Winning Republican nominations were Sen. Deb Peters of Hartford, Sen. Larry Tidemann of Brookings, Sen. Alan Solano of Rapid City, Sen. Terri Haverly of Rapid City and Rep. Jeff Partridge of Rapid City.

Partridge is seeking the Senate seat now held by Republican Craig Tieszen of Rapid City. Tieszen is term-limited and became a candidate for the House seat that Partridge held.

There is an assortment of House Republicans who are Senate nominees and generally are at least as conservative or more so than the incumbents they seek to replace. Among them are:

 John Wiik of Big Stone City, looking to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Jim Peterson of Revillo;

 Joshua Klumb of Mt. Vernon, running to replace term-limited Republican Sen. Mike Vehle of Mitchell; and

 Al Novstrup of Aberdeen, looking to replace his son, David Novstrup of Aberdeen, who didnt seek re-election.

The 2015 resignations by Rave and Lederman from the Senate caused a ripple effect that could be seen Tuesday.

In a House Republican primary race, Sen. Bill Shorma appeared to have lost, placing third in a three-candidate contest for two nominations. Shorma was one of the governors appointees, replacing Dan Lederman.

In the process, the governor passed over Republican Rep. Jim Bolin of Canton. Term-limited, Bolin is running for the Senate. Rather than face Bolin in a Republican primary, Shorma ran for the House.

Bolin is a champion of transgender restrictions. He led the repeated attempts in the 2014 legislative session that passed in the House but fell in the Senate.

Shorma could seek a recount under state law. He lost by 45 votes to Kevin Jensen of Canton. Placing first in the three-candidate primary was Rep. David Anderson of Hudson. Jensen also ran in 2014, placing third. Daugaard passed him over too, for the Senate appointment that went to Shorma.

The resignation of Tim Rave last year created the second vacancy for Daugaard to fill. The appointment went to Scott Fiegen of Dell Rapids.

Fiegen didnt run this year, opening the way for one of the governors Republican legislative opponents, Rep. Kris Langer of Dell Rapids, to become the Senate Republican nominee this year.

Daugaard appointed Langer to a House vacancy in 2013. She immediately became an ally of House Republican leader Gosch and served in the House Republican leadership for the 2015-2016 term. She supported the transgender restrictions and opposed the tax increase.

All of it points toward the possibility of a very different Senate for 2017, a politically difficult final two years for Daugaards second and final term, and a hard-edged environment for the 2018 Republican primaries for not only Legislature, but for governor and possibly for the U.S. House of Representatives.
After the loss of their baby, Brayden, Mike and Michelle Worden searched for information about Positional Asphyxia, the official cause of his death.

Information about safe sleep and infant mortality, championed by South Dakota First Lady Linda Daugaard, touched the young couple.

There is nothing worse than losing a child. Its a trial no parent should have to face," Daugaard said Friday.

She says the battle against infant mortality continues in South Dakota.

"I am committed to spreading the word about what moms, dads and families can do to minimize the risks to their babies," she said.

Daugaard, along with her husband, Gov. Dennis Daugaard, are co-chairs of the Governor's Task Force on Infant Mortality.

When the task force launched in 2011, state officials already knew many of the factors that contribute to infant deaths  too many mothers use tobacco when pregnant, not enough mothers receive prenatal care in the first trimester, and more families need to learn about the importance of safe sleep positions.

To get the word out about safe sleep, Linda Daugaard appears in a public service video with her grandchildren and talks about how babies need to be placed on their back while sleeping.

Pillows, blankets, toys and crib bumpers should not be in the crib, she says. Family members and other caregivers also need to know about these important practices.

Here are some safe sleep practices offered by the South Dakota Department of Heath's forbabysakesd.com.

 Babies sleep safest on their backs. Always lay baby face up for sleep. Research has shown that a baby is not more likely to choke when on his or her back.

 Baby should sleep alone in a safe crib.

 Room-sharing is advised, but bed-sharing is not. Baby should never share any sleep surface with an adult, a child or a pet.

 Sleep surfaces matter  firm surfaces are safest.

 Every sleep time counts  naps and night time.

 Keep baby away from secondhand smoke  there is no safe level of secondhand smoke.

 Offer a pacifier at nap time and bedtime as baby is falling asleep.

 Dress baby in light sleep clothing to prevent overheating. If home is cool, use a sleep-sack rather than a loose blanket.

 Baby should never be put to sleep on his or her tummy or side. However, as baby gets older and rolls over in sleep from back to tummy, it is not necessary to change his or her position.

 Products that claim to help prevent SIDS are unproven and can be dangerous. Dont buy or use them.
There was no cutting of cake, no tasting of sugary icing, no ripping of wrapping paper off presents.

Instead, Mike and Michelle Worden spent their son, Braydens, first birthday at his gravesite, longing for his touch or yearning to hear him laugh just one more time.

Brayden died Oct. 22, 2015, just shy of five months old.

On Saturday, nearly 70 friends and family members walked alongside the young couple to remember Brayden and raise money for Lachs Legacy, a nonprofit organization that helps fight Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in South Dakota.

Lachs Legacy was created in memory of Lachlan Jon Edwards. He was born in Sioux Falls to David and Brianne Edwards and died unexpectedly in 2008 during his morning nap while at daycare.

The Wordens story is eerily similar. Brayden also passed away at daycare while taking a morning nap.

A happier time

Michelle (Jones) Worden graduated from Rapid City Stevens High School in 2006 and headed off to the University of South Dakota.

Following her freshman year, she returned home to summer with her parents, Steve and Darla Jones.

Mike was going to Western Dakota Tech at the time. Through mutual friends, the two got together.

We started off as just friends, and he asked me to go out with him, and weve been together ever since. This July it will be nine years, she said.

Both say it took a lot of trust and communication to carry on a long-distance relationship, with Mike in Rapid City and Michelle in Vermillion.

Mike graduated from WDTI, then went to work in Rapid City. He got laid off and decided to move to Vermillion with Michelle. At the time of Michelles graduation from USD, Mike was working at Sioux Steele in Lennox. She soon garnered a counseling job at Carroll Institute in Sioux Falls.

They had been a couple for about four years when Mike proposed in the romantic setting of Falls Park in Sioux Falls.

Mike and Michelle married in the Black Hills in July 2012. They now live in Harrisburg, just south of Sioux Falls.

Mike said the subject of having kids likely comes up eventually in every relationship. He and Michelle werent in a rush to have kids.

"I actually said I was never going to have kids," Michelle said.

But she realized Mike had "the kids' touch" with young children. He grew up with a brother eight years younger, and seemed a natural caregiver and nurturer.

"If we show up at a friends house and walk through the door at the same time, they run to me before they run to her, Mike says of youngsters. "If they're up for having fun, I'm the first one to join them."

The two thought of their lives with no children and decided they wanted a family.

"We realized that as we got older we didn't want to spend our lives alone. We looked at where we were at in our lives and if there ever was going to be a right time, that was it," Michelle said.

They were committed to giving the baby-making process six months of dedication. They found out after only two weeks she was pregnant.

Michelles announcement rendered Mike speechless.

"I think the world stood still for a good 10 to 20 minutes at least," he said. "I fell into the recliner and just sat there."

There was no question that as soon as they could, they wanted to know the gender of their baby.

"I'm too Type A. I had to know," Michelle said.

Michelles due date was in June. Brayden decided to arrive early.

"We had our baby showers in early May, and I remember saying to Mike, 'I'm ready. If the baby were to come tomorrow, I think we have everything we need,'" she said.

Less than a week later, Michelle went into labor. Brayden James Worden was born at 1:37 a.m. on May 23, 2015.

"People would always be guessing who he looked more like, and they couldn't because he was a perfect combination of the both of us," Michelle said.

Brayden was a happy baby. His smiles and laugh brought endless joy, Michelle said.

"He was a beautiful, vibrant, happy, happy baby," she said.

'The worst news'

On the day Brayden died, Michelle got a call at work. Their daycare provider phoned shortly before 11 a.m., but Michelle missed the call. Michelle called back and the caregiver told her she had "the worst news."

"She told me that she had laid Brayden down for a nap and when she went to go check on him, he wasnt breathing," Michelle recalled through tears.

Michelle said she grabbed her car keys, gathered her belongings and was ready to head to the daycare. Instead, her boss gave Michelle a ride and while en route she called Mike.

Mike, a volunteer fire department member, carried a radio and knew their daycare provider called for an ambulance.

"As soon as he got my call, he said, 'It's not Brayden, is it?'"

They both arrived at the daycare providers home, where EMTs were performing CPR on Brayden. He was transported to Avera McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls.

Mike and Michelle waited anxiously outside the emergency room.

"The doctor came out and said they werent able to bring him back," she said.

The young parents fell to the floor, their worst fears realized.

"You see it play out in movies, when someone loses a loved one and they drop to their knees, and yell, 'God! No!' That's exactly what it was like," Michelle said.

Mikes volunteer fire department crew members were there in the waiting room and gathered up the two and provided a loving embrace. Mike and Michelle hugged and held one another.

Michelle commends the Avera ER staff for their caring response.

"We sat there with Brayden for hours. We just held him. They did molds of his hands and feet and took photos for us," Michelle said. "They were amazing and so supportive. It broke their hearts, just as much as it broke ours."

Mike and Michelle stayed at the hospital until their parents made their way across the state. Mikes parents, Ray and Karen Worden, live in Winner.

"Everybody was able to hold him one last time," Michelle said. "But walking out of that ER without your baby is absolutely the worst feeling in the entire world. You have no child to bring home."

Because of the circumstances of Braydens death, his body was sent to the coroner. Michelle explained what happened this way: The caregiver had laid Brayden down for a nap in a Pack-and-Play, a temporary bed that folds up when not being used. Michelle later learned there was no baby monitor in the room where Brayden slept and the door had been closed. Brayden had been in the room about 90 minutes before he was found unconscious.

The official cause of death was labeled as Positional Asphyxia. According to the coroner, it technically wasnt SIDS. However the SIDS support community has wrapped their arms around the young couple, Michelle said.

Families pull together

The couple's family took over the painful task of planning Braydens funeral. Mike and Michelle say extended family did about 90 percent of the work.

"Both sets of our parents and our siblings were here for us. They made sure everything went smoothly without a hitch. They tried to put the least amount of stress on us as possible," Michelle said.

Looking back, Michelle says she was on "auto pilot" in the days and months following Brayden's death.

"It's like your body and mind just go numb to be able to process everything that you are dealing with," she said.

Mike says dealing with the decisions while grieving the death of their only child was overwhelming for him and Michelle.

"They want you to pick a funeral home even before you leave the hospital," she remembered.

They were surprised to receive a call from LifeSource, an organ and tissue donation center based in Minneapolis, asking if they wanted to donate Braydens heart valves. They did, and were recognized on May 31 for their donation.

The day of the funeral was what Michelle called "emotionally intense."

"We got up and spoke to our guests and attested to the honor of being Braydens parents and the life he lived, even though it was short."

After Brayden died, friends and family wrapped the couple in love.

Mike recalls that friends and family constantly visited their home for the first two weeks following Brayden's death.

"People would stop by and check on us, whether it was friends, co-workers, or even people from the fire department. It was just a huge outpouring of support and love for us," he said.

After that, the reality of the situation set in.

"You realize you have to start this new life and pick up the pieces as you go," Mike said.

Mike admits he's not good at sharing his feelings and learned, in true South Dakota custom, when you get bucked off the horse, you get back on.

"I had a hard time showing emotion around people. If it was just Michelle and I, I had no problem," he said.

Mike now realizes its comforting to talk about their ordeal.

"It's a chance to share the time we had with him and remember those moments," he said.

Mike says when he and Michelle talk about Braydens death, it can be uncomfortable for some.

Some of our friends shy away from it, especially the ones with young children, he said.

Michelle says she believes those friends arent sure what to say, fearing they may stir up painful memories.

"Some people really censor themselves about what they say or to what extent they are willing to communicate with us about the whole situation," she said.

The grieving process has been especially difficult for Michelle. As a counselor, educated about the stages of grief, she knows what shes going through.

"You are your greatest advocate, but your worst enemy," she said. "Being in your own head, you knew when you were having irrational thoughts and trying to use your coping mechanisms. I would get so emotionally exhausted, running things through my head," she said.

The self-doubt lingers and comes in waves, Michelle says.

"Theres all these shoulda, coulda, wouldas. You really have to learn and work on getting past that portion of it because it eats you up," she said.

A family's rebirth

Through their ordeal, Mike and Michelle have worked to keep communication flowing. They have heard from many sources that deeply emotional experiences can tear a marriage apart.

Instead, they have turned to each other for support and recently announced they are expecting their second child, who is due the first week of December.

They admit to having reservations about having more children. They didnt want the tragedy of Braydens passing to make them bitter, unhappy people.

We are driven by joy and terror, Michelle said, because you know how deeply you can love and how heartbreaking it is to lose.

Loving Brayden and losing him has changed her in more ways than she can describe. But one thing is for sure, the days that I spent with him are truly the best days Ive ever known.
Members of the Meade County Senior Citizens Center have voted overwhelmingly to enter into talks with the city of Sturgis to move their center out of downtown Sturgis.

Center Director Deb Peterson said members voted 162 to 25 to move ahead with discussions with the city on plans for a new senior center in southwest Sturgis.

The city is working with a developer to build a new independent living senior apartment complex in southwest Sturgis. The facility would be operated by Welcov, the same company which now operates Aspen Grove Assisted Living Center just down the street on Moose Drive.

As part of the project plan, the city proposed offering a tax increment financing district, with TIF funds helping to pay for a new senior center. The facility would be shared by the residents of the apartment complex and the local seniors.

In April, Sturgis Mayor Mark Carstensen and City Manager Daniel Ainslie answered questions of members of the senior center concerning the possible move of the center out of downtown Sturgis.

"Based on a lot of the conversations from seniors who visited city hall offices and were at the meeting, it seemed pretty clear that there were a lot of people interested in creating a new senior center for future generations," Ainslie said.

The May newsletter mailed to members of the senior center included a ballot with the question: "As a member of the Meade County Senior Center, should we continue talks with the city about a possible move if the proposals were acceptable?" People could vote either "yes" or "no."

Peterson was impressed with the voter response with nearly 75 percent of the center's membership casting a vote.

The operator of the new senior living apartments, Welcov, initially was working with Dream Design of Rapid City, but that has changed, Ainslie said. He said the city was not ready to announce the name of the new developer who is in negotiations with Welcov.

"It has taken a little longer than we had hoped. They are still going back and forth," he said.

So, it may be four or five months before the city has any plans to take to a committee of the senior center to review.

"We're waiting on plans from the city," Peterson said.

One of the sticking points for the seniors has been a shared kitchen with the senior living apartments. Ainslie encouraged those on hand not to get too wrapped up in that detail, but instead focus on the overall merits of moving to a new facility versus remaining in the current location.

Carstensen said the city, the developer and representatives of the senior citizen's center would work together on a proposal that would satisfy all parties.
PIERRE | Money flew like punches with fury in the final weeks of many campaigns leading to last Tuesdays party-primary elections across South Dakota.

Maneuvers that attempted to deceive or make discovery difficult became commonly used, especially in some of the fierce Republican legislative primaries.

Many candidates of both parties and supporters have turned South Dakota into a wild west of politics.

Gradually were making progress toward more transparency within the formal structure of state and local governments. But that progress hasnt spilled into the ways that campaigns are conducted for the offices that run our governments.

Instead political tricksterism is rampant.

At the heart is the lack of enforcement mechanisms. Thats a discussion for another day.

First the shadiness must be exposed. The 2016 primaries gave us many examples.

Candidates who arent up for election, or who never plan to run again, dont have to file pre-primary finance reports.

This loophole means there isnt a clear and simple way to track whether their political committees are spending money to influence other candidates primaries. You can get at the truth if you grind through every primary candidates pre-primary report.

Thats how you find out Gov. Dennis Daugaard or Rep. Lee Schoenbeck or Rep. Liz May or Rep. Lee Qualm had been spreading money around. But because they arent primary candidates and they dont have to file a pre-primary report, you dont know the sources of recent money.

All you have is their year-end report for 2015 and what they will disclose in their October pre-general election reports if they are on the November ballot, or their year-end report that isnt public until early 2017.

Some of the money being spent in this way came from donations for 2014 campaigns. Oftentimes there are large donations made to candidates in the weeks immediately after a November general election and before Jan. 1 of the next year.

That means money meant for helping Candidate A can be recycled an election cycle later by Candidate A to help Candidate B, regardless whether the donor who supported Candidate A would also support Candidate B come 18 months later.

Political Action Committees often operate in the same way. Money raised in 2014 can be stashed for 2016. They at least must file pre-primary reports.

But PACs can have a thicker shroud of secrecy if they choose. Take Prairie Country PAC, run by Richard Hilgemann and Ken Santema from Aberdeen.

Prairie Country reported revenue this year of $1,000 from Santema, $180 from Republican legislative candidate Drew Dennert of Aberdeen and $380 of un-itemized contributions.

They reported spending this year of $8.50 for a merchant account, $280 for travel and $1,619 for advertising. But for the purpose of which candidate was secret on the report.

Only through bragging on Prairie Countrys Facebook page did people outside discover the PAC paid to attack Caleb Finck of Tripp and support Stace Nelson of Fulton for a Senate Republican nomination won by Nelson on Tuesday.

After a blogger exposed the PAC, the Facebook item was removed.

Next week well consider other methods, such as unsourced donations, independent expenditures, and partisan-financed independent candidates.
"Theres a voter rebellion underway in America. South Dakota voters can help lead the charge and send a message to Washington, D.C., by passing Amendment V."

 Nonpartisan Elections

Anyone watching the presidential primaries knows the voters of America are angry. In a recent poll just released, 76 percent of voters agreed with the statement that, Public officials don't care much what people like me think. Having served the people on a promise to be the Governor for all the people, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, I find it shocking but not surprising that our government is so out of touch with the voters.

The reason for this disconnect is simple: the political parties and special interests are running our country and have locked the voters out. All but a handful of Congressional and state elections are decided in party-controlled primaries.

In many of those primaries, independent voters  now 45 percent of Americans  are not allowed to participate and as a result have no voice. This has emboldened the extremists on both sides to move further away from governing for the people and towards the endless partisan warfare we see today. In 2016, voter anger at being locked out of their own government is reaching a potentially dangerous boiling point.

I know something about voter rebellions. In the 2003 California recall people across the political spectrum  Republicans, Democrats, and Independents  rose up to remove a sitting governor for the first time in state history and elect me to replace him.

I knew then that it was not enough to simply remove a politician. We had to change government so that the voters, not the parties and special interests, had the power. As I said that night in my victory speech, In order for the people to win, politics as usual must lose.

Defeating politics as usual was not easy. When I was elected, California was reeling from the effects of destructive partisanship: deep in a structural deficit, unable to pass a budget due to party politics and few legislators looking for nonpartisan solutions.

I led a reform effort, partnering with a diverse group of political leaders, good government groups and the business community. The centerpiece of that reform battle was making our elections nonpartisan, so that the voters had the power, not the parties and special interests. That is what Amendment V would do for South Dakota and what the nonpartisan Legislature has done for Nebraska for nearly 80 years.

We were right. As a result of our leadership and the will of the voters, nonpartisan elections have transformed California. The Lucy Burns Institute now rates our elections as the most competitive in America (Nebraska is a close second).

All voters  including independents  now participate equally and get to vote for the candidate of their choice, not the political partys choice. This competition for all voters produces legislators who govern for all the people, not the parties and special interests.

In a study just released by the USC Schwarzenegger Institute, we found that many candidates running for the Legislature have become more moderate and more interested in appealing to voters across party lines since the change. And we are regaining the peoples trust, with the Legislatures approval rating soaring from just 12 percent of voters before the change to 44 percent today.

Destructive partisanship is not just a California problem, or a South Dakota problem, but a challenge for all Americans. Thats why Im asking the people of South Dakota to join me in this fight for the voters of America by passing Amendment V  Nonpartisan Elections.

Send the message to Washington: the voters have had enough. Its time to terminate partisanship and give the voters back their government. It is time to elect leaders who are public servants, not party servants.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist Rebecca Mowry saw something during this years spring elk monitoring flights that she had never seen before.

Somewhere between Skalkaho and Burnt Fork, she spotted a group of 47 bull elk hanging out in a bachelor herd off to themselves.

Ive seen groups of five or 10 bulls together before, but never that many, she said. I think the fact that they were all young bulls had a lot to do with it. I had never seen anything like that before.

Mowry completed the annual spring elk monitoring flights in May.

For the most part, what she saw across the valley was encouraging. Elk numbers appear to be holding steady or growing in most of the valleys hunting districts.

On the east side, between Missoula and Skalkaho, elk numbers are so high that Mowry is considering adding additional cow permits in hunting districts 204 and 261.

Im pretty sure that those are the elk that are causing game damage in the winter months in the Stevensville area, she said.

In the areas most popular hunting area in the East Fork of the Bitterroot, Mowry counted 4,018 elk this spring.

While that number is down a little bit from last year, Mowry said its still a bit over the objective set for Hunting District 270. The objective is 3,800 elk.

Were within the 20 percent margin that we give ourselves, she said. Its definitely a place where we can afford to shoot some cows.

The ratio between cows and calves dropped a little bit this year in the East Fork, but Mowry said part of that could be due to the challenge of counting calves while flying over large groups of milling elk.

This year the cow/calf ratio was 19 calves per 100 cows. Last year, the count was 25 calves per 100 cows.

Nineteen isnt terrible, she said. We strive to get a ratio of between 20 and 30 calves per 100 cows.

Mowry said she wasnt really concerned about the drop simply because of the challenge that comes with counting elk in the East Fork. The elk tend to hang out in large groups of 200 to 300 animals.

When you get huge pockets of elk like that, theyre hard to classify, she said. I think the true ratio is higher than that.

The bull to cow ratio bumped up slightly this year to 15 bulls per 100 cows in the East Fork. Last year, Mowry counted 14 bulls per 100 cows.

In an area that is hunted as heavily at HD 270, Mowry said that number is about what she expects to see.

Over in the West Fork of the Bitterroot, Mowry found a few more elk than she did the year before despite the fact that warmer than normal temperatures made it difficult to get a good count.

By the time we got to the West Fork, the temperatures were up in the 80s, she said. We were losing snowpack and the elk werent coming out until after the sun went down. On top of that, morning fog was also an issue.

Despite all that, Mowry counted 792 elk in the West Fork, which was the most anyone has seen in the spring since 2007.

Their numbers are growing, but just slowly, she said.

The cow/calf ratio in the West Fork was 28 calves per 100 cows, which is slightly less than what Mowry found last year.

The bull/cow ratio was down too. It was 21 bulls per 100 cows. Last year, Mowry found 27 bulls per 100 cows.

That might have been because of challenging conditions we had in making the count, she said.

Mowry didnt have any problems finding elk in the two districts further north on the east side of the valley.

Elk numbers in the two hunting districts that include the area from the Skalkaho Road to the edge of Missoula are over objective.

In Hunting District 204  Missoula to Burnt Fork Creek  Mowry counted 1,056 elk, which is almost double the 600 elk population objective set by the state.

As far as Mowry can tell, it also could be an all-time high number of elk counted in the annual spring surveys.

It just keeps going up and up, Mowry said. We dont seem to get a good cow harvest in there.

The cow/calf ratio in HD 204 was 23 calves per 100 cows. Mowry counted 18 bulls per 100 cows.

Both of those numbers are okay, she said. Everyone would like to see higher bull numbers.

Elk numbers were up too in the adjoining HD 261  Burnt Fork to Skalkaho. This year, Mowry counted 947. The year before she found 842.

The elk population objective is 700.

Mowry plans to ask for additional cow permits in both hunting districts.

Across the valley on the west side, elk numbers declined this year in HD 240.

Mowry counted 851 elk this year. The year before, the numbers came in at 955. The objective is 1,000.

Mowry attributes part of the decline to a number of game damage hunts this past year, especially in the Darby area.

Calf numbers were high on the west side with a ratio of 31 per 100 cows, but Mowry didnt find as many bulls as she would have liked. The ratio was 11 bulls per 100 cows.

Some of the bull elk on the west side may have already migrated into the canyons where they cant be counted easily by the fixed wing aircraft.

Mowry said she has also received lots of reports of rag horn bull elk being shot on private land on the west side of the valley.

Im going to look for ways to increase bull elk hunting on public lands while trying to protect those rag horns on private lands, she said. At this point, Im not sure how to do that. Im looking for some feedback from the public on that.
The Bitterroot College enjoyed their first year on Main Street in Hamilton and concluded the year with their largest number of graduates.

Director Victoria Clark said it was a very successful year.

This building was great this year, Clark said. Students, staff and faculty said it felt like the college had arrived. The building has a college feel and even though it is a small building in terms of colleges across the nation, it does feel right.

Clark said the college has classrooms, a science lab, an art studio, a computer lab and a common area. It has outside space and is prominent in the community.

Community members just drop in to check us out, Clark said. The expansion of our continuing ed programming has made us more relevant to a greater percentage of the population which is really important. If we are the community college for everyone, then we really have to provide the whole gambit of adult learning opportunities.

Clark said that the college enrollment was at 200, down from previous years.

Education across the nation is down right now because there is full employment, she said. That always hurts two-year education because we are the pipeline to jobs. If you dont have a job you think I must need training so people go to college.

Clark said the drop in students is a blip and the college is on target for their goal to increase from 200 to 250 this academic year, and to increase to 400 students by 2020.

We are still looking to get to 400 students at the end of our lease here, which is four years away, Clark said. Were not a mature institution in the sense of enrollment. We need to be looking at our goal and increasing possibly up to 700 students. We should see significant growth now that we have a physical location and more services and programs.

As part of the goal for expansion, the Bitterroot College is hosting a College Roundup from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on June 20.

Were hoping it becomes an annual event and that people feel comfortable coming and asking us their college questions, Clark said. Well have the most information about Bitterroot College but are facilitating any college. Our mission isnt just come here, it is facilitating all higher education.

The Roundup will have staff, resources and the answers to college questions.

Advising and Enrollment Services Coordinator Kathleen OLeary said some people are nervous to come.

We give them the knowledge to be more comfortable and confident and help them make better decisions, she said.

Clark said the college is here for everyone.

Kathleen makes a great point that people are sometimes nervous to make that first call or walk through the door, she said. Once they are here they see we are warm and welcoming and that they can do this. We are a welcoming place all about opportunity. Were not judging you, we are thrilled that you have the courage to drop on in and take advantage of your communitys college.

At the Roundup resource tables will have information and staff from TRIO, student support services; MCIS, Montana Career Information Systems; DSS, Disability Student Services; Ed Ready, free online math program, Voc Rehab; Literacy Bitterroot, prep for the high school equivalency test; Sapphire Health, insurance and health options for students; VVS and UM Vets Services for veterans.

If youre a vet, how do you get your veterans benefits? If you have a learning disability or physical disability, then there will be people there to answer those questions, OLeary said. Well also be here to help potential students with their FAFSA, which is Free Application for Federal Student Assistance. We will help them complete their application and give them their next steps. Its also great for people who are just exploring if they want to go to college.

Clark said the potential students worry about their academic abilities and financial resources.

Not only is there free federal assistance but if youre a vet, or trying to retrain from another job, there are so many avenues for funding, Clark said. Sometimes we think there are just scholarships for those who got straight As. Yes, there is funding for those people, but there are all sorts of needs-based resources. If you are aware of all the recourses and use them, you will be successful at college.

Outreach director Jenny Moore said, The year has been about branding ourselves and letting people know we are here.

I am the face of Bitterroot College and Im out telling people what we offer, how we can help them and continue to help them in the future, she said. Everything we do is based on what the community wants and needs.

She encourages people to attend the Roundup.

If people come on Monday, June 20 they are not obligated to sign up, she said. We looked at barriers and well have Child Care Resources and WIC here to talk about options. If someone walks through the door and they dont have their HI Set completed, Literacy Bitterroot can give them the steps they need to take then they can apply.

Moore said the college will have information on their workforce programs and all the programs that they.

There will be a Student Service Center for helping, she said. They can help fill out applications, schedule placement tests, talk about transcript evaluations and anything you can think of that relates to college. All our staff will be here.

The Roundup event also has a raffle to get $20 off a continuing ed class and a prize for a free yearlong FabLab membership (over a $120 value).

That is the biggest prize weve ever given away were very excited about it, Moore said. Just trying to let people know that walking through our doors is a welcoming experience. It is amazing how many people of the valley still dont know about us. My goal as outreach officer is to change that. One day well be a big college campus, were growing.

For more information visit online umt.edu/bitterroot-college or call 406-375-0100.
Kathmandu, Nepal: Former Maoist leader Dr. Baburam Bhattarai has announced the establishment of Naya Sakti Nepal amid a grand function in Kathmandu on Saturday.

Following the announcement of the new party the coordinator of Naya Shakti Nepal, Dr Bhattarai also administered oath to the partys members.

Addressing the function organized at Dasharath Stadium the chief of the newly formed Naya Shakti Nepal Bhattarai said his party would bear the historic responsibility of making Nepal prosperous and developed.

The new party is formed to protect national independence, democracy and republicanism in the nation, Bhattarai said while addressing the ceremony organized to announce establishment of his party.

Our party- Naya Shakti Nepal- will be different than other parties as it is formed with a specific road map for economic development and prosperity of the country, he said adding that Nepal will be one of the richest nations of the world within just 25 years.

Elaborating about the party line, he said his party will practice the inclusive and participatory democracy.

During his address he also regret about his past involvement in the Maoist insurgency. As I had involved in the Maoist movement, I might have hurt the people and leaders of the different political parties in the past, many people were killed, many people lost their kith and kin he said regretting to the Maoist insurgency, he said.

However, Bhattrai, who was the head of so-called peoples government formed by the Maoist rebels during the armed insurgency, made the commitment to accept the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions verdict.

He said justify the Maoist movement that the Maoist movement was launched to end the absolute monarchy and the unitary state.

During his address he also urged the people to trust him. People would have a question that how Baburam can be a leader of the new force as he had launched peoples war for 10 years. But I have come with the Naya Sakti Nepal for the development and prosperity of the country by abandoning the old mindset, he said.

As I am from the family of farmers and I have already become the countrys prime Minister, Ive nothing else to gain now but want to dedicate rest of my life for the country, he said.
FILE a A one-horned rhinoceros stands in the Kaziranga National Park, a wildlife reserve that provides refuge to more than 2,200 endangered Indian one-horned rhinoceros, in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, on December 3, 2012. Photo: AP

GAUHATI: The newly elected government of the northeast Indian state of Assam has launched plans to crack down on the poaching of the areas famed one-horned rhinos.

The states Kaziranga National Park is home to the worlds largest population of the rare rhinos, with more than 2,000 of the species. While overall poaching deaths have dropped over the last few years, a series of rhino killings this year has led the new government to renew anti-poaching efforts.

The states new environment minister, Pramila Rani Brahma, said Saturday that local police have been asked to join the offensive against poaching. Previously, Kazirangas forest rangers and anti-poaching staff handled this responsibility on their own.

Brahma said allegations that some park staff may be involved in the trade in rhino parts were also being investigated.

On Tuesday, as Brahma and other officials visited Kaziranga to discuss the threat of poaching, a female rhino was shot dead by poachers in the vicinity.

In April, poachers killed a rhino at the 480-square-kilometer (185-square-mile) park hours after a visit by Britains Prince William and his wife, Kate.

The royal couple had spent several hours at Kaziranga in hopes of drawing attention to the plight of endangered animals, including the parks one-horned rhinos.

All five of the worlds rhino species are under constant threat from poachers seeking their horns to sell on the black market. Demand is high in countries such as China and Vietnam, where people mistakenly believe consuming rhino horns can increase male potency. It does not.

This year, eight rhinos in Kaziranga have been killed for their horns, after 17 were poached in 2015.

Despite the threats, Kaziranga is a conservation success story. The reserve had 75 rhinos in 1905. In 1966, the number of rhinos in Kaziranga was put at 366. According to a 2015 estimate, the number has risen to 2,401.
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Although there's plenty of people who may disagree with his policies, few honest observers of politics would claim Gov. Andrew Cuomo isn't effective at getting his agenda implemented.

During his time in office, working with a Republican-controlled Senate, the governor has managed to get gay marriage, gun control and minimum wage increases approved despite strong opposition from the other side of the aisle. He's also successfully pushed legislators to approve on-time state budgets that actually have kept overall spending in check, something his predecessors rarely could achieve.

It's because of these accomplishments, and the political skill required to achieve them, that we have a hard time taking Cuomo seriously when he tries to play the helplessness card with respect to ethics reform.

Last week, a day after his 11th-hour proposal to limit the impact of the Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court ruling on New York state campaign donations, Cuomo defended himself when questioned about the failure to get any significant ethics reforms measured approved in Albany this year.

"They havent wanted to pass it for years, the governor said, referring to the state Legislature. Theyve said that 18 different ways. Ive threatened them, cajoled them, tried to charm them, told them jokes. They do not want to pass ethics reform. I gave a major address yesterday in an effort to encourage them to do it. They have time left to do it, and Im hopeful that they will. But this is a conversation that has been going on for years.

Ethics reforms is something that the public overwhelmingly has called for in 2016. It's something that leaders in both parties in both houses have called for. And it's something that makes complete sense in the wake of federal corruption convictions of the two previous leaders of the Senate and Asembly.

Yet, somehow, Cuomo would like us to believe that his hands are tied. That he's tried everything possible.

Don't get us wrong. If legislators walk away from the 2016 session this week having done nothing on ethics, they deserve plenty of blame. And we hope voters hold incumbents accountable in the fall.

But the governor's office, as Cuomo has demonstrated, must play a more forceful and effective role in getting critical reforms such as campaign finance changes, outside income limitations and a truly independent public integrity investigative arm for all of state government.

It's not enough to toss out proposals with little or no follow through. The governor must use the same tactics that brought us legalized gay marriage and an eventual $15/hour minimum wage to deliver meaningful ethics reform.
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.
Shirley Contreras lives in Orcutt and writes for the Santa Maria Valley Historical Society. She can be contacted at 623-8193 or at shirleycontreras2@yahoo.com. Her book, The Good Years, a selection of stories shes written for the Santa Maria Times since 1991, is on sale at the Santa Maria Valley Historical Society, 616 S. Broadway.
PHOENIX -- The FBI is investigating allegations that former state utility regulator Gary Pierce over issues related to the 2014 bid by his son, Justin, for secretary of state.

The elder Pierce confirmed late Friday to Capitol Media Services that two agents showed up at his house earlier in the day with a bunch of questions. Pierce said their focus was that 2014 election but said the federal agents had asked him not to say more to others.

He described the conversation as "cordial.''

At the same time, Jim McDonald, spokesman for Pinnacle West Capital Corp., said the U.S. Attorney's Office had been in contact with that firm. It is the parent company of Arizona Public Service, the state's largest electric utility.

McDonald said he did not know who at the utility had been interviewed.

And a spokeswoman for the Arizona Corporation Commission said that agency had been contacted by the FBI and was "cooperating fully.''

The federal probe appears to be an outgrowth of an investigation originally started at the state attorney general's office.

That included allegations that Pierce, while a regulator, had met secretly with Don Brandt, the chief executive officer of APS, and Don Robinson, his predecessor, while the utility was in the middle of a rate case before the regulatory agency. These were laid out in a letter form a whistleblower, later identified as a former commission staffer, to Attorney General Mark Brnovich and others.

That state investigation also was looking into the role that Scot Mussi, head of the Free Enterprise Club, played in the 2014 Republican primary race for secretary of state. Mussi's organization spent more than $500,000 on behalf of the younger Pierce who lost the primary to Michele Reagan.

Wil Cardon, the third candidate in that campaign, charged during the race that the elder Pierce was using his position on the commission to get financial support for Justin's campaign from companies that are regulated by the panel. Both father and son denied the allegations.

Pierce said Friday he's not worried.

"I've not done anything wrong,'' he said. And he is not faulting federal officials for pursuing the issue.

"I think they're just trying to get at the truth,'' Pierce said. "They don't know whether to believe me or not to believe me.''

But Pierce said he suspects much of the inquiry is "politically driven.''

Pierce, a former lawmaker, was first elected to the commission in 2006 and reelected four years later before retiring in 2014.
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 New top Justice in Massachusetts urges repeal of mandatory minimums for low-level drug offenders | Main | Arizona prosecutors getting started at second (costly) run at death sentence for Jodi Arias 

As reported in this lengthy CNN piece, "Oscar Pistorius' fall from grace culminated Tuesday with a five-year sentence in the shooting death of his girlfriend." Here is more:

The sentence was imposed for the charge of culpable homicide, which in South Africa means a person was killed unintentionally, but unlawfully. Under South African law, he will have to serve at least one-sixth of his sentence -- 10 months -- before he can ask to be placed under correctional supervision, usually house arrest, instead....

During his trial, the double-amputee sprinter often sobbed at the mention of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp's name. He insisted that he mistook her for an intruder when he shot her through a toilet door on Valentine's Day 2013. But there was very little visible reaction from Pistorius as the sentence was read out in the Pretoria court.

Speaking to CNN's Robyn Curnow in the last few weeks before his sentencing, Pistorius told her that he would respect and accept the decision of the court and that he was not afraid of imprisonment. He said he hoped to contribute while in prison by teaching people how to read or start a gym or running club. "Oscar will embrace this opportunity to pay back to society," his uncle, Arnold Pistorius, told reporters. "As an uncle, I hope Oscar will start his own healing process as he walks down the path of restoration. As a family, we are ready to support and guide Oscar as he serves his sentence."

The Steenkamp family's lawyer, Dup De Bruyn, said in a statement: "The family is satisfied. They are glad that it is over and are satisfied that justice has been done."

The prosecution had asked for a minimum prison sentence of 10 years for Pistorius. After the ruling Tuesday, South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority said it had not yet decided whether to appeal Judge Thokozile Masipa's verdict that he is not guilty of murder. Pistorius' defense had called for a sentence of house arrest and community service. There was no immediate reaction from the defense team on the sentencing. Both sides now have a 14-day period in which they can choose to lodge any appeal, according to CNN legal analyst Kelly Phelps....

Giving her reasoning Tuesday, Masipa emphasized that the decision on sentencing would be "mine and mine alone." She pointed out that sentencing is not an exact science but relies on an assessment of elements, including the nature and seriousness of the crime, the personal circumstances of the accused and the interests of society.

She said she would also take into account the factors in sentencing of retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation. In any case, she said, "sentencing is about achieving the right balance."

In her final remarks, Masipa dismissed evidence given by probation officer Annette Vergeer that prison would not be able to accommodate Pistorius' disability, saying her testimony was based on outdated information and sketchy. She said Pistorius would not present the prison system with an "insurmountable challenge."

The judge added that she felt that Pistorius' vulnerability had been overemphasized in the evidence given and that his excellent coping strategies -- shown in his ability to compete with able-bodied athletes -- had been overlooked. He would be able to continue treatment for physical problems and mental health issues while in prison, she said.

In terms of the seriousness of the offense, Masipa said Pistorius had shown gross negligence in shooting into a small toilet cubicle, knowing there was someone inside who could not escape. He also knew how to handle firearms, she said, adding that these were "very aggravating" factors.

On the other hand, mitigating factors include that Pistorius is a first offender and remorseful, Masipa said. She also mentioned his contribution to society in giving his time and money to charities and inspiring others with disabilities to believe they could succeed.

Perhaps seeking to preempt criticism from those who'd like to see either a tougher or more lenient sentence, Masipa pointed out that the purpose of the court is to serve the public interest, not make itself popular. She also indicated that her sentence wasn't affected by Pistorius' fame. "It would be a sad day for this country if the impression was to be created that there was one law for the poor and disadvantaged and another for the rich and famous," she said.

The judge also highlighted the loss suffered by Steenkamp's family, which has had a negative effect on her father's health. Steenkamp was young, vivacious and full of life at the time of her death, she said. "The loss of life cannot be reversed. Nothing I say or do today can reverse what happened," she said.
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October 27, 2014

Prosecutors in South Africa indicate they plan to appeal Pistorius outcome

As reported in this article, headlined "South Africa prosecutors to appeal against Pistorius sentence," it appears that the Blade Runner is not done running from serious legal difficulties. Here are the bascis:

South Africas state prosecutor plans to appeal against Oscar Pistoriuss culpable homicide conviction and five-year prison sentence for shooting his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, it said on Monday. Nathi Mncube, spokesman for the National Prosecuting Authority, said the NPA expected to file papers in the next few days. Until the papers were filed, it would not announce the grounds for appeal, it said. But Pistoriuss conviction for culpable homicide has drawn criticism from some legal commentators. After the athlete, a double-amputee who starred at the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics, was sentenced last week, there was more controversy when lawyers said he could serve as little as 10 months, or a sixth of the five-year term. In South Africa, an appeal can only be made on a matter of law, where we think . . . the judge made an error in interpretation and in the manner in which she applied the law to the facts, Mr Mncube said. Pistorius had been charged with premeditated murder after shooting Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model and law graduate, four times through the locked toilet door in a bathroom at his home in the early hours of Valentines Day last year. But Judge Thokozile Masipa ruled that the prosecution failed to show Pistorius had intent to kill, while saying there was no basis on which this court could make inferences of why the accused would want to kill the deceased. Instead, she appeared to believe Pistoriuss version of events, despite describing the 27-year-old as a poor and evasive witness.

October 27, 2014 at 03:38 PM | Permalink

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Can the prosecutor petition President of HCA if Masipa rejects leave? She is not independent and conflicted. She has already shown an inclination to attempt to correct her verdict judgement after criticism on the first day of reading. Second day she adds " or any other person for that matter" but rationale remains which only relates to deceased not a non-deceased perceived intruder ie because he thought R was in the bedroom. Irrelevant as a reason he didn't forsee the death of a person. She cites law on transferred malice not relevant but it not relevant to mistaken identity for DE. She adds case law on don't assume forsaw just because he should have. This smacks of verdict protection, reasoning and justification on the run. Hardly the kind of person you want having the final word on leave to appeal. I'm a lawyer.

Posted by: Jack Smith | Oct 30, 2014 11:09:35 PM

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This new AP article, headlined "A Glance at Oscar Pistorius's ReSentencing, Now for Murder," details the high-profile resentencing scheduled for this coming week in South Africa. Here are excerpts:

Oscar Pistorius is going back to jail. The only question now is for how long? It could be 15 years. The doubleamputee Olympic runner's sentencing hearing opens Monday after he was convicted of murder by South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal for shooting girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

It'll be the second time Pistorius has been sentenced for the killing following an appeal by prosecutors. The three-year legal saga that began with the fatal gunshots in the predawn hours of Valentine's Day 2013 now appears to be near its end....

Pistorius was initially convicted of the lesser charge of culpable homicide, or manslaughter, at his 2014 trial for shooting Steenkamp through a closed toilet door in his home. He testified he mistook the model and reality TV celebrity for a nighttime intruder hiding in a bathroom, and shot with his 9mm pistol in selfdefense fearing an attack. The trial judge accepted part of Pistorius' story, and he was given a fiveyear jail sentence based on the judge's ruling that he acted recklessly, but didn't mean to kill. After serving a year in jail, Pistorius was released on parole in line with South African procedure and has been living under house arrest at his uncle's mansion since October last year.

But following Pistorius' manslaughter verdict, prosecutors appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that the former star athlete, a multiple Paralympic champion, should have been found guilty of murder. They argued that Pistorius intended to kill someone  even if he didn't know it was Steenkamp in the toilet cubicle  when he shot four times through the door with no justification.

In December, a panel of Supreme Court judges agreed with prosecutors, overturned Pistorius' manslaughter conviction, and raised it to a more serious murder conviction. Pistorius must now be sentenced for murder. Supreme Court Justice Lorimer Leach said: "The accused ought to have been found guilty of murder on the basis that he had fired the fatal shots with criminal intent."...

15 years in prison [is] the minimum sentence for murder in South Africa, which no longer has the death penalty. Legal experts say a judge can reduce that sentence in some circumstances, and that Pistorius' disability and the fact that he is a first-time offender could be taken into account. He has also already served a year in prison. Pistorius will return to the same courthouse in Pretoria where his dramatic sevenmonth murder trial played out in 2014 to be sentenced again.

The hearing has been scheduled to last a week and Pistorius' punishment will again be decided by Judge Thokozile Masipa, who acquitted him of murder at his trial but had her decision overturned by the Supreme Court....

After his conviction was changed to murder by the Supreme Court last year, Pistorius appealed to South Africa's highest court, the Constitutional Court, to review his case. The Constitutional Court dismissed that appeal in March and Pistorius now has no chance of escaping the murder conviction.
For more than half-a-dozen years, the draining of public funding for the arts pushed local organizations to the brink. Many of them cut their programs and events to keep afloat. And each year after the recession has brought worse financial news for the arts in Arizona to the point that this past year has brought painful, historically low numbers.

However, the upcoming fiscal cycle that begins July 1 for Arizona and Flagstaff could signal a glimmer of hope in what has been a darkening tunnel of woeful underfunding  the cuts first spurred by a state balancing its budget during the recession, then by a reluctance to restore swept dollars.

It begins with Arizona, where the state legislature approved and Gov. Doug Ducey signed a budget that includes a $1.5 million, one-time appropriation to the arts for the 2016-2017. This will nearly double the budget compared to last year, and it will move the needle somewhat closer to a time when the annual interest on a once-$20-million fund set up by Gov. Rose Mofford in 1989 bolstered state art programs. The fund became a casualty of budget-balancing during the recession.

For this new allocation, its derived from interest accrued on the states Rainy Day Fund. So, the $1.5 million will not increase overall state spending, according to the Arizona Commission on the Arts, but residents will see the benefits of it.

The most concrete area where you will see that money invested is through our grant making, and thats where the bulk of this additional funding will go, said Steve Wilcox, communications and research director for the Commission on the Arts, in a recent phone interview. This can mean a major boon to the local arts organizations that rely on grant dollars from the state.

He added, As far as a percentage increase, its going to vary from organization to organization  Our grant projects have been funded lower since the recession, so the grantees will benefit greatly.

Wilcox noted that the new allocation does not restore the funds to pre-recession levels, as the commission saw a 60 percent reduction in its budget between 2008 and 2012. However, he noted that it does move the dial in a notable way.

In the pre-recession fiscal year of 2008-09, Arizona Commission on the Arts reports show that state funds and endowments provided $2.76 million in arts funding. That year, the commission sent $224,000 of that to Coconino County for disbursement. This past year, the amount was $98,000  with the potential to double with the new funding.

Optimistic tones

John Tannous, executive director of the Flagstaff Arts Council, said this funding increase is a positive step and one that should help provide some breathing room for organizations that have had struggles with the recent cuts.

The tone right now is cautious optimism  and were starting to peel away the cautious  because I think things are starting to turn in the right direction, Tannous said. The $1.5 million is really big. And I have to tell you, from my perspective, it was a bit unexpected.

He explained, Ive gone down to Arizona Arts Congress at the capitol and have met with elected officials to tell them of the importance of the arts. And Ive been doing that a couple of decades almost. The tone has almost always been receptive. But the tone changed in recent years and it didnt seem like there was much traction for arts funding. So, it was a surprise when the $1.5 million was added.

For Tannous and other local arts organizations, the good news on arts funding also arrived at the city level. During a recent budget retreat, Flagstaff officials tentatively agreed to increase allocated funds to the arts to the tune of $30,000, or 10 percent more than the usual $300,000 fund the Arts Council has received to disburse to projects and organizations.

Pending council approval expected later this month, the allocation in the upcoming fiscal budget also includes a one-time $30,000 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) grant. It joins the other funding the Arts Council over sees, which organizations and initiatives both the arts and sciences.

The proposed increase was prompted by several factors, said Karl Eberhard, the City of Flagstaff Community Design and Redevelopment Manager. As a result of economic and other factors, it has been quite a while since the funding was increased. (Flagstaff Arts Council) continues to do a fantastic job and through their outreach efforts, the demand for funding remains high.

He added, The arts and sciences add a lot to Flagstaff economy and sense of place  and increasing our community character is important for continued economic growth.

Pragmatism and projects

With tens of thousands of dollars of potential increase, Tannous said it could bring some pragmatic assistance to organizations that need more base-level funding, but it also might bring some exciting new projects and events to town.

The arts, culture and science sector has had their funding put on hold and costs have risen significantly over that same period, he said. So, were all in the position where costs for materials, costs for rent and for salary have all gone up. And weve had to make cuts to survive  Were still trying to catch up.

He added, We (also) have money to hire more artists. And we have more money to bring in new talent. And it means expanded programs. For Coconino Center for the Arts, were bursting at the seams. This is from a demand for more workshops, more exhibits and more programs that meld arts and science. As our budget continues to increase, maybe thats something we can do more of.

Tannous referred to Fires of Change as an example of the kind of projects that could be funded by such increases in allocation. The exhibit last fall was a culmination of gathering participating artists and having them engage in field studies on the North Rim and Kaibab Plateau before turning it into art about wildfire. Such in-depth science-and-art-themed projects could happen with more frequency.

A committee of local citizens convenes to determine how the funding is distributed among what is usually around 40 organizations, projects and artists. Although it seems like a large number that splits the funds, the influx of dollars will bring a nice boost of hundreds and possibly as much as a few thousand dollars to each of the grantees.

As for the cumulative impact on that funding increase, a 2012 published study on the economic impact of arts in Flagstaff showed that it generates as much as $73 million annually and that every dollar invested in arts locally has the ability to generate as much as $64 back into the local economy.

While arts organizations wait for the official approval of the $60,000 addition from the city  as well as how the grant funding numbers will play out with the new state allocation, the promise to bolster arts locally carries the potential to bring relief and added vibrancy to the local art scene.


As follow-up stories and reactions spread across the country early Sunday in the wake of the horrific mass murder at an Orlando gay nightclub, the Bay Area woke up to the news just as LGBT Pride month is kicking into gear, and just as many locals are in Los Angeles this morning celebrating Pride there and the conclusion of the AIDS LifeCycle ride Saturday  and where there is also breaking news about a possible thwarted terror attack on the LA Pride parade.

Lieutenant Governor and former SF mayor Gavin Newsom was up earliest Sunday, tweeting his horror at the news  tacitly also likely reacting to this tweet from Donald Trump, who quickly took the opportunity to politicize the attack and take credit for being "right about radical Islamic terrorism."

News has come in fast that the motive behind the shooting for the now deceased gunman Omar Mateen was pretty clearly a homophobic one. As Gothamist reports via NBC News, Mateen's father says his son was recently angry over seeing a gay male couple kissing in public in front of his son.

Gunman's father tells NBC News his son got angry a couple months ago when he saw men kissing at Bayside in Miami pic.twitter.com/MSdCYcHuF9  Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 12, 2016



House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi issued a statement on the attack via Medium:

Our nation has woken to the agonizing news of the brutal attack in Orlando last night. We are horrified and heartbroken to see such hate leveled at so many people hoping just to spend a night out dancing. Our hearts ache for all those killed in this senseless attack, and we pray for the swift recovery of all those who were wounded. While many questions have yet to be answered, the pain of this attack in a mainstay of the Orlando LGBT community is surely magnified as our nation celebrates LGBT Pride month. We will not allow hate and terror to succeed in blinding us with fear. May it be a comfort to the loved ones of those who were killed, and all the people of Orlando, that so many across America are holding them in their thoughts at this terrible time.

And San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee issued his own statement Sunday morning, specifically discussing the need to limit access to deadly firearms.

On behalf of the people of San Francisco, I express our deepest sorrow for the people of Orlando and members of our LGBT community after the evil act of terror carried out this morning. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of those who have lost their lives by yet another mass shooting. San Francisco stands in solidarity with the community of Orlando and the nation in the aftermath of this terrible day. This is a stark reminder of the violence that still threatens our LGBT community. Senseless acts of violence against innocents, fueled by hate and easy access to deadly firearms, have become all-too frequent. We must continue to work each day to reduce gun violence and ensure every community is safe. Profound tragedies and acts of hate again leave us heartbroken, even numb and speechless. But we resolve today, more than ever, that love, strength and unity will always triumph over hate, fear and violence. San Francisco grieves with the people of Orlando, the LGBT community and the nation today.



The New York Times is reporting that Mateen, 29, had "pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State," though so far it appears this was another "lone wolf" type attack, like the December shooting in San Bernardino.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations held a news conference at their Orlando office today, and CAIR-Florida's Orlando Regional Coordinator Rasha Mubarak said in a statement:

We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured. The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence.
ORANGE CITY, Iowa | Matt Schelling runs a dairy and grows corn and alfalfa on his Northwest Iowa farm, so finding spare time is not an easy chore.

But finding the time to be an advocate for the dairy industry is very important to him, he says.

Were pretty busy, but I encourage people to get involved, Schelling says. Its important to be active in your industry.

Schelling and his wife, Cheryl, farm in Sioux County. They milk 120 Holsteins twice a day in addition to the corn and alfalfa they grow. They have a herd average of 29,500 pounds.

He serves as president of the Western Iowa Dairy Alliance (WIDA), and is on the board of directors for the Iowa State Dairy Association (ISDA). WIDA is currently in its 10th year.

Through his work with WIDA, Schelling is involved in several activities, including offering scholarships to youths and providing networking opportunities for dairy producers.

WIDA really focuses on advocacy, while ISDA focuses more on being a legislative representative for us, he says. Both organizations focus not only on local issues, but state and federal issues as well.

One of the priorities, Schelling says, is bringing more milk processors into the state. Another is addressing a labor shortage.

The labor issue has gotten better in the past couple of years, but we need more processors so we can grow our industry, he says, adding Iowa is the 12th largest milk producing state in the U.S.

I think a lot of producers are poised to expand if we can get the processors. Were able to sell the milk we produce now, but we cant grow much larger.

Schelling says ISDA has stepped up its legislative visibility, hiring a lobbyist recently to assist in legislative priorities. He says WIDA works the American Dairy Coalition as a lobbying arm at the federal level.

We do all we can to keep our name out there, and to work to bring more processors here, Schelling says.

He says there is interest from the West Coast in moving or expanding dairy operations in Iowa.

We have groups out there who are very interested in Iowa, Schelling says. But we dont have any place to sell the milk, so there is no incentive for them to expand out there.

He has kept his herd at 120 cows for several years, and says any expansion will be determined by his children.

If we have someone who wants to come back and farm, well look into it, Schelling says. But that hasnt happened yet.

The Schellings have three grown children and two still living at home.

For now, the family makes do with some part-time milking help. Schelling says being centrally located between Dordt College in Sioux Center and Northwestern College in Orange City gives him a steady labor supply.

He says he believes Iowas dairy producers are holding their own despite some price challenges.

The people in business today are lean and mean, and they are going to survive, Schelling says. We need to continue to be efficient operators, and be ready should we get more processors here.

He says some producers have expanded some, but believes the state and particularly his region is at its limit when it comes to milk processing capacity.

Weve been able to find a place for it, but were at our limit, Schelling says. We need more processors, and were going to work hard to bring them to Iowa.
SIOUX CITY | Bryan Goodman, owner of the Goodman Law Firm, attended seminars on April 15 in Des Moines and May 3-5 in Los Angeles for specialized training on the Datamaster DMT breath testing machine.

The Datamaster DMT is used in Iowa to obtain breath samples from individuals suspected of operating while intoxicated.

Both seminars covered the theory and science of evidential breath testing, alcohol and human physiology, machine calibration and accuracy checks, breath sample collection, data analysis of breath test results, and defense strategies in breath test cases.

Goodman practices primarily in DUI/OWI defense, along with general criminal defense.
ORANGE CITY, Iowa | A number of Northwestern College students were selected to give poster presentations at the 28th annual Association for Psychological Science convention May 2629 in Chicago.

The students assisted with faculty research projects headed by psychology professors Laird Edman or Jennifer Feenstra.

Edmans research, Theory and Mind and Religiosity: The Experience and Types of Personal Prayer, operated under the concept that people who believe in a relational, personal deity tend to conceptualize god(s) as intentional agents with mental states. He suggests this belief follows the concept of theory of mind and may be one of the cognitive foundations of religious behavior. Edmans research examined this relationship as it corresponded to reported prayer experiences.

Assisting Edman with his research were Riley Harder, a senior biology health professions and psychology major from Sloan, Iowa; Chris Sietstra, a senior psychology and accounting major from Boyden, Iowa; and Molly Townsend, a senior psychology major from Tea, South Dakota. Students who also contributed to Edmans research, but did not attend the conference, include Haley Chambers, a May psychology graduate from Sioux Falls; Corey Kundert, a senior psychology major from Orange City; Kirsten (McConnel) Lesage, a 2013 Northwestern College psychology and Spanish graduate who is pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of California, Riverside; Jacob Vermeer, a May psychology graduate from Pipestone, Minnesota; and Tyson Wiggers, a May psychology graduate from Holland, Michigan.

Feenstras research, Making a Difference: Using the Theory of Planned Behavior and Generativity to Predict Volunteering, surveyed students in the fall semester in relation to their possible participation in Northwesterns annual Spring Service Projects (SSPs). Measuring personal attitudes about SSPs, feelings of friends and family about service, beliefs in their ability to engage in service, and concern about the next generation, the research team sought to predict SSP participation in the spring 2016 semester.

Assisting Feenstra with her research was Chelsea Weidner, a senior chemistry and psychology major from Elk Point, South Dakota. Although they did not attend the conference, Myles Anderson, a senior biology health professions major from Urbandale, Iowa, and Jillian Estes, a senior psychology major from Sioux Center, Iowa, also aided with research.
SIOUX CITY | Blue Earth Marketing recently added Jessica Blackhawk as senior graphic designer, Holly Tritz as web developer/programmer and David Wilch as account supervisor.

Blackhawk develops creative concepts and collateral materials including brochures, catalogs, signage, websites and other advertising materials for agency clients.

Previously, she was a graphic designer/creative manager at Nutra-Flo Company in North Sioux City, a web designer at Channel Brain in Quincy, Massachusetts, and a graphic designer with Allnative.com in Winnebago, Nebraska.

Blackhawk earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in graphic design from Iowa State University.

Tritz is responsible for website development, launch, monitoring and maintenance, including programming, SEO, social media and database administration for agency clients.

Previously, she owned her own website development company, DoubleClick Web Solutions, in Dakota Dunes. She has also worked for 1st Financial Bank USA in Dakota Dunes, Gateway/MPC in North Sioux City, MANCON and Coastal Bend College in Corpus Christi, Texas, Aacme Technologies in Sioux City, and NetworkMCI in Sergeant Bluff.

Tritz earned her associate degree in micro-computers and computer programming from Western Iowa Tech Community College.

Wilch is responsible for account service, project management and business development for the firm. He is also responsible for market research and assists with strategy development for agency clients.

Previously, Wilch was director of communications at Sunnybrook Church in Sioux City, and an account executive at Argus Leader Media in Sioux Falls. Wilch earned his bachelor of science degree in advertising from Morningside College.

Blue Earth Marketing is a subsidiary of Ho-Chunk, Inc., the economic development corporation owned by the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.
SIOUX CITY | Patricia Wojcik recently joined Ho-Chunk Capital as community manager of Siouxland real estate developments.

Ho-Chunk Capital directs all investments for Ho-Chunk, Inc., the economic development corporation for the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.

In her role, Wojcik is responsible for promoting and managing Ho-Chunk-owned properties in the Sioux City metro area. Primarily she manages the lease-up and ongoing operations of rental units, serves as a community advocate, shows and promotes new home construction, conducts home buyer education clinics and assists with project planning.

Wojcik also serves as a real estate showing assistant and an agent of commercial and residential listings.

Prior to joining Ho-Chunk Capital, Wojcik was a Realtor with United Real Estate Solutions in Sioux City for 18 years. She has received many awards. Before becoming a Realtor, she worked for South Sioux City Community Schools and Iowa-Nebraska State Bank.
On the first Wednesday in April, inspectors with the Coconino County health department walked into China Star, the popular buffet restaurant on Route 66.

Two hours later, the pair walked out with an inspection report noting 10 critical violations, including evidence of a rodent infestation in the food preparation and dishwashing areas, food stored at unsafe temperatures and staff without adequate food handling knowledge.

The restaurant was forced to close its doors and its health license was suspended for two days until the place was cleaned up.

Information about the closure was released last month in a regular bimonthly report from the public health services district, though the public was never notified about the critical health violations.

In an effort to gather more information about recent restaurant closures throughout the county, the Daily Sun requested health department records for all eating establishments that were closed due to critical health violations since 2012. The records show that China Star was not alone and this year two other establishments have been forced to close their doors as well due to health code violations.

In January, Himalayan Kitchen was closed due to a gas leak, evidence of rodent feces and excessive buildup of grease, food debris and dirt on utensils, appliances and surfaces throughout the kitchen.

And last month, Dollar Store had to shut its doors after inspectors found rodent feces on packages of food and shelving as well as evidence that rodents had gnawed into packages of food.

Over the past five years, nine food service businesses in Flagstaff and Page have been closed by the Coconino County Public Health Services Districts environmental health department for reasons ranging from cockroach infestations to food not being adequately refrigerated.

China Star is the only establishment to have its doors closed twice. The restaurant also has received at least 16 complaints since 2009, when the current owner took over the business.

CHECKING FOOD SAFETY

In a county where tourism fuels a dense restaurant industry, and a major university feeds thousands of students each day, the demands are high on the countys health inspectors, said Randy Phillips, division manager with the Coconino County Public Health Services District.

Between July 2014 and July 2015, the most recent full fiscal year, the department performed 1,929 routine inspections of food service establishments, from those that serve prepackaged foods to full service restaurants.

The vast majority  1,357  had no violations, while 16 percent had one violation and 6 percent had two violations. A total of 147, or 8 percent, had three or more violations.

State health code requires health department staff to conduct unannounced inspections of every year-round establishment at least twice per year. Inspectors tasks include taking food temperatures, checking for kitchen cleanliness, quizzing staff on proper food handling knowledge, checking for food handlers and managers licenses and ensuring opened food is dated, Phillips said.

The decision to close a restaurant is subjective, but is based on the number of critical violations a restaurant racks up, Phillips said. Theres no magic number, only the determination that continued operation would be a hazard to customers health, he said.

If a restaurant is closed and its license suspended due to violations, when it opens back up inspectors return on monthly unannounced visits until the establishment has been in compliance for three to six months, Phillips said.

The public however, is left in the dark about the health inspectors work, violations issued and whether a restaurant is closed for health code reasons. According to current standards, restaurants that have their health licenses suspended must post a closure notice but do not have to give a reason, making it unlikely that customers will ever find out the cause. At this point, the only way that a violation gets released to the public is through the bimonthly report from the health departments chief health officer months after the incident occurs.

Recognizing the need to be more transparent, the health district is working on an online, publicly accessible database where users could search for restaurants in the county and view the establishments inspection record for the past couple of years, Phillips said. Many other counties have a similar database, he said.

He had no estimate on when that search tool would be finished though.

FAIR PROCESS

Both the Himalayan Grill and China Star responded to requests for comment about the inspections and said they felt they were treated fairly by the health department. They said the closures spurred major restaurant cleanups.

Sujan Amatya, an employee at Himalayan Grill, said the restaurant was clean and everything was in very good condition.

China Star replaced shelves, patched holes, called in pest control and fixed sinks, said Jeanie Jia, the owner of the restaurant. The restaurant also renewed food handler licenses for its workers and repaired a dishwasher that wasnt dispensing sanitizer.

The restaurants owners and managers recognize keeping up with food safety standards was their responsibility and have worked hard to educate employees and clean up the kitchen, according to Jia, who said she has owned the restaurant since 2009 and also owns the China Star in Tuba City. Her son, Chen Wang who is a manager of the restaurant, echoed those thoughts.

I highly respect the health and environment services, I respect that they come out and tell us new rules and new code we have to follow and things that are wrong and what we need to improve on, Wang said.

When asked whether he believed the health department was right in forcing the restaurant to close, Wang struggled to settle on an answer.

I really dont know what to say about that, he said.
SIOUX CITY | United Way of Siouxland has announced the funding of 30 programs and initiatives in the tri-state region.

We are extremely proud of our Community Impact funding process, said Terrie Binneboese, vice president and director of community impact. We appreciate our team volunteers, all dedicated to making a difference in the community, who give their time to serve on our Community Impact Teams. These individuals are responsible for evaluating programs and initiatives, to make sure they have the type of measurable results we need in order to make positive changes in our community in the areas of education, income, and health.

The following is a breakdown of the funding for fiscal year 2016-2017 for programs and services. The awards listed do not include dollars directly designated to agency partners or United Way direct services.

(*United Way of Siouxland Initiative)

EDUCATION

Community Goal: Children enter Kindergarten ready to succeed

-- Beyond the Bell Jump Start* - Kindergarten Preparedness, $12,096

-- Imagination Library* - Age Appropriate Books for 0-5 Years Old, $35,000

-- Nurturing Environment & Daycare - Mary Elizabeth Child Care & Preschool, $75,500

-- Age Appropriate Development Program - Native American Child Care Center, $43,600

-- Preschool & Child Care - Stella Sanford Child Development Center, $53,500

Community Goal: Children are socially & emotionally prepared to succeed in school

-- Mentoring Youth - Big Brothers Big Sisters, $90,000

-- After School Program - Boys & Girls Clubs of Siouxland, $80,228

-- Strong Youth - Mid America Council, Boy Scouts of America, $41,130

-- Leadership Experience - Girl Scouts of Greater Iowa, $30,848

-- Delinquency Prevention - Sanford Center, $110,274

Community Goal: Children are on track academically and prepared to succeed in school

-- After School/Summer Program - Girls Inc., $126,000

-- Youth Programs - Mary J. Treglia Community House, $75,949

-- Iowa Reading Corps* - K-3rd Grade Level Reading Proficiency, $58,500

-- Summer Camp - Norm Waitt Sr. YMCA, $25,000

INCOME

Community Goal: People have access to resources in crisis to stabilize their situation

-- Emergency Services - American Red Cross, $105,315

-- Basic Needs - Siouxland Family Community Center, $30,015

Community Goal: People have resources and skills to build financial stability

-- Economic Stability Resources - Center for Siouxland, $88,631

-- EITC Outreach* - Tax Preparation Assistance, $20,000

-- Immigration & Translation Services - Mary J. Treglia Community House, $75,949

-- Pathway of Hope - Salvation Army, $60,000

-- Economic/Emotional Stability - Women Aware, $35,357

HEALTH

Community Goal: Children are born healthy and develop on track

-- HOPES - Crittenton Center, $26,984

-- Parent Education - Lutheran Services in Iowa, $15,570

Community Goal: Individuals of all ages will increase coping & life skills to achieve mental wellness

-- Outpatient Therapy - Boys and Girls Home & Family Services, $87,210

-- Healthy & Safe Families - Catholic Charities, $123,825

-- Summer Program - The ARC of Woodbury County, $14,000

Community Goal: Youth and adults live a healthy lifestyle and avoid risky behavior

-- Wellness Program - Norm Waitt Sr. YMCA, $59,214

-- Prevention & Anti-Bullying Efforts - Siouxland CARES, $36,435

-- Enhancing Lifestyles of Older Adults - Siouxland Center for Active Generations, $40,782

Community Goal: Youth and adults live in and maintain a safe/healthy environment

-- Safety for All Residents - Council on Sexual Assault & Domestic Violence, $114,396

The 2016-17 Community Impact volunteers are listed below by teams.

Chair: Mandie Mayo, Briar Cliff University.

Education Team: Alison Benson, Education Chair, Sioux City Community Schools; Tasha Barker, Electric Innovations; Liz Determan, Northwest AEA; Nicole Fluent, PREMIER Bankcard; Carmen Guerrero, PREMIER Bankcard; Meghan McClure, Camp High Hopes; Lisa Peterson, Tyson Foods, Inc.; Jon Saylor, Iowa Nebraska State Bank; Sharrell Wright, BPI Technology, Inc.; Aaron Beutler, United Way of Siouxland.

Income Team: Heather Daly, Income Chair, Mercy Medical Center; Nicole Berner, U.S. Bank; Wendy Brame, Briar Cliff University; Kenny Buhl, PREMIER Bankcard; Amanda Davis, U.S. Bank; Heather Fields, Accretive Health; Nick Hegarty, Primebank; Aron Hoffmeier, Great West Casualty Co.; Connie Miller, 185th Air Refueling Wing; Brenda Noll-Norvell, Community Volunteer; Bryan Marshall, United Way of Siouxland.

Health Team: Michaele Lewis, Health Chair, U.S. Bank; Ken Creech, Briar Cliff University; Jan Dehner, Northwestern Mutual; Brett Hegarty, American Pop Corn Company; DeAnna Henning, Purina Animal Nutrition, LLC; Tyler Kruse, Kruse Financial Group; David Miller, U.S. Bank; Sharla Mozer, Siouxland Federal Credit Union; Theresa Pederson, BPI Technology, Inc.; Jason Rasmus, Wells Fargo; Amber Sherman, United Way of Siouxland.

For more information about the funding or the community impact process, call 712-255-3551 or visit unitedwaysiouxland.com
PHILADELPHIA -- Each entrepreneur got just 12 minutes. In that time, the women pitched tote bags, baby pillows, headphones and more to representatives of QVC  telling their stories, demonstrating their products and hoping they'd win the approval of people who help decide what merchandise the home shopping channel will sell.

Getting a product on QVC is a small business owner's dream. The company says it reaches 360 million households worldwide through broadcast, cable and satellite, and had nearly 1 billion visits to its e-commerce sites last year. Those at the November session in Philadelphia that focused on women entrepreneurs knew it was aimed at giving them feedback, with no guarantee QVC would agree to sell their products.

But since then, several have indeed landed a presence on QVC.com, and the company has told others it's interested in offering their products through programs aimed at helping young companies.

Before an entrepreneur can get on TV, they must have the right products, says Rich Yoegel, QVC's vice president of merchandising.

"We must determine if it will be better than something else we sell, and is it going to resonate with our customers," he says.

Selling products on TV was the springboard for Joy Mangano, who has sold mops, clothes hangers, luggage and other merchandise on QVC and its rival, the Home Shopping Network, since 1990. Mangano was the subject of the 2015 movie "Joy" and portrayed by Jennifer Lawrence, who garnered an Academy Award nomination. And Lori Greiner, who appears on the reality show "Shark Tank," got her start on QVC in 1998 and sells household products, home decor, storage items and more.

Some small businesses have thrived on home shopping TV even as they compete with national brands and QVC's private-label goods for viewers' money. IT cosmetics, which had $1 million in revenue in 2010, when it first appeared on QVC, has seen its revenue grow to more than $200 million.

A look at how some entrepreneurs have fared since the Philadelphia pitch session:

PRODUCT: MinkeeBlue bags, totes that include a lunch bag and coin purse

ENTREPRENEUR: Sherrill Mosee, of Philadelphia

LIGHTBULB MOMENT: Mosee was tired of carrying a purse, laptop case and tote bag, and also saw mothers carrying multiple bags for toys and diapers plus their purses. In 2014, she designed a bag with different compartments and components.

THE PITCH: Mosee, who was already in contact with QVC about an earlier version of her bags, showed the panel the latest model. They liked it but wondered about the cost; the suggested price was about $200. While Mosee demonstrated the bag as something for working women, the panel asked whether the bags could be marketed to mothers.

"We want to have as broad a mass appeal as possible," Albany Irvin, a QVC program host, told Mosee.

THE UPSHOT: Mosee had already had a good response to the previous version of the bag from panel member Christine Dunn. After the pitch, Dunn contacted Mosee and said QVC wanted to sell the bags in its Sprouts program, designed to help young companies get ready for mass merchandising. But in March, Mosee heard separately that QVC and NBC planned a joint pitching competition. Mosee applied, appeared on the "Today" show in April and was a finalist; now one of her totes is selling on QVC.com.

PRODUCT: Loopit, headphones designed to look like jewelry

ENTREPRENEUR: Vanessa Chan, of Philadelphia

LIGHTBULB MOMENT: Chan found it irritating to untangle headphone wires whenever she used them, so in 2014 she designed phones that combined with a metal chain to look like a necklace.

THE PITCH: Chan demonstrated how tiny magnets turn her headphones into jewelry. The panel was impressed with the idea and that she had answers to technical questions and had a manufacturer lined up.

THE UPSHOT: In early December, QVC told her its buyers would look at Loopit. In January, QVC said it was interested in including Loopit in its Sprouts program. But Chan also heard about the QVC/NBC competition, also appeared on "Today" and Loopit is now on QVC.com.

Chan has had interest in her headphones from other retailers since her TV appearance, and has gotten an order from a store in Virginia. After having been on TV, Chan says, "I'm feeling great. ... I couldn't be happier."

PRODUCT: Proper Posie, pillow and lounger designed to elevate babies' heads and upper bodies, to help children with acid reflux

ENTREPRENEUR: Karissa Tunis, of Lititz, Pennsylvania

LIGHTBULB MOMENT: Tunis' children suffered from acid reflux, which causes stomach acid to be forced up into a baby's esophagus and mouth. They had to be propped up on extra pillows. She designed a pillow that can be adjusted to give a baby's body more elevation and began selling it last year.

THE PITCH: Tunis made her first pitch ever for her product, hoping to at least get some feedback.

"I really didn't know what to expect," she says. "I wasn't expecting a deal."

The panel liked Proper Posie, its fabric and the way it was constructed.

THE UPSHOT: QVC employees contacted Tunis and proposed selling her product on the online site Zulily. She's working toward that goal, but is taking some time to develop colors besides pink and aqua to improve her chances of success.

PRODUCT: Shea Radiance, skin and hair care products made with shea butter from West Africa

ENTREPRENEUR: Funlayo Alabi, of Ellicott City, Maryland.

LIGHTBULB MOMENT: Alabi was given shea butter to soothe eczema as a child in Africa. About 10 years ago, she used it to help her son. She found shea butter products were either cheap and didn't work well, or very expensive. She wanted to create shea butter products that worked well and were a good value.

THE PITCH: Alabi was emotional as she told the panel about the millions of women in Africa who make a living collecting shea nuts and processing them into shea butter. Shea Radiance buys its ingredients from women in Nigeria. The panel listened soberly, tried her moisturizers and complimented Alabi on the feel and scent of the products and her packaging.

THE UPSHOT: QVC representatives told Alabi they were interested in Shea Radiance for the Sprouts program. However, skin and hair care products must undergo laboratory testing before QVC will sell them

"The testing is expensive, not in our budget. We are going to do it when we can afford to do it," Alabi says.

PRODUCT: ShoeCandy, women's shoes and accessories

ENTREPRENEUR: Kara Mac, of Mount Kisco, New York

LIGHTBULB MOMENT: When Mac commuted to work, she carried an extra pair of shoes if she had an evening social event. In 2014, she decided to design basic flats, pumps and boots that could be dressed up with interchangeable bows, heel covers and other bling

THE PITCH: Mac showed the panel how her shoes and accessories are mixed and matched. The panel was enthusiastic; Irvin and Lori Goldstein, who sells fashion merchandise on QVC, said she had a great idea. Mac was surprised at how receptive they were; it was a big change from previous pitches she's made.

"How many times I've presented and they looked at me with a blank stare," she says.

THE UPSHOT: QVC representatives were initially interested in ShoeCandy, but its buyers later said no. Mac is selling her products through her website and at conferences, meetings and events that working women are likely to attend. She's hoping QVC will change its mind and says doing the pitch did help her confidence.
SIOUX CITY | Children's book author Camille Farley will sign copies of "Kaydance Just Loves School" at Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 4400 Sergeant Road, at 4 p.m. Saturday.

A West Middle School sixth-grade teacher, Farley named "Kaydance Just Loves School" (2016, Tate Publishing) after her granddaughter. Her two previous books, "Emma Just Wants To Be Cool" and "Hayden Just Loves To Learn," also were named after her grandchildren.
SIOUX CITY | Trisha Theisen stood in the shade next to the hangar at the Iowa Air National Guard's 185th Air Refueling Wing base in Sioux City Saturday morning, waiting.

Nearby, her children, 5-year-old Jaycie and 4-year-old Trace, also patiently awaited the moment their father, Master Sgt. Jason Theisen, would disembark from a KC-135 Stratotanker after his two-month deployment in Qatar.

I asked the kids, Whats the first thing youre going to do when you see Dad? And they said, Well, Im going to give him a big hug, and Im going to tickle him, she said. So I guess thats whats on the agenda today.

Within the hour, Jason's plane taxied to a halt on the nearby runway. It was the second tanker to land that morning.

As Jason stepped off the runway in full uniform, he knelt down and corralled Jaycie and Trace in a long, three-way embrace.

The Theisen family was among several families who reunited Saturday at the base of the Iowa Air National Guard's 185th Air Refueling Wing in Sioux City. Throughout the day, approximately 65 airmen returned on four tanker planes from the Al Udeid Air Base near Doha, Qatar.

One hundred twenty-nine members of the wing had been deployed for the past two to four months to refuel U.S. and partner nation aircraft in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S. military operation currently taking place in Iraq and Syria.

Col. Lawrence Christensen, the 185th's wing commander, said most of the soldiers had been deployed in one of two waves. The first half had traveled to Qatar from February to late March, with the second half deploying around that time and returning Saturday.

Christensen said the wing, which has more than 900 members, of which two-thirds are part-time, keeps very busy. He said mid-air refueling takes a skilled team to complete.

"We do it a lot, and we're very good at it," Christensen said.

Trisha, who's also a first lieutenant in the wing, said her two children have handled the departures that come with her and Jason's National Guard service well. She said Skype, phone and email have helped them stay connected with Jason over the past four months while he was halfway across the world.

"The kids did good," she said. "They're still a bit young, but we did get a globe back home and look at it, and show them this is where Dad is and this is where we are, so it's kind of a good learning experience."

As Tech Sgt. Lance Larson stepped off the runway late Saturday morning, he caught up his two sons in a bear hug and said it felt good to see his wife and two young sons again.

I know theres a lot of guys that are gone a lot longer than we are, he said. I think were pretty lucky that we get to come back in such a short amount of time. But it feels good to see your family.

Larson, who has been to Qatar four times in the last 16 years as part of the 185th, said he plans to get in some good fishing with his boys, who are both under 13, in the coming weeks.

Christensen said the returning airmen will now be working to prepare aircraft for an August inspection. The tankers, many of which he said are nearly 60 years old but have many years left in them, undergo a thorough maintenance and inspection process that keep the planes flying well.

"Right after they hit the ground, were going to start working on our next big inspection, which will come in August," he said. "Theres not a lot of down time. Were very, very busy. But luckily weve got some great people."
LE MARS, Iowa | A 27-year-old Le Mars woman died Saturday evening after being stabbed by her brother at her residence in Le Mars, police say.

Thomas Allen Bibler, 33, of Le Mars was charged Saturday evening with first-degree murder and assault causing serious injury after an investigation into the stabbing of his sister, 27-year-old Shannon Bogh, earlier that evening.

According to a Le Mars Police Department news release, at 8:09 p.m. Saturday, police and the Le Mars Ambulance were called to 591 15th St. SW for a stabbing. Upon arrival, they found that Bogh had been stabbed. Le Mars Ambulance transported Bogh to Floyd Valley Healthcare in Le Mars.

She died a short time later, the release said.

A witness to the stabbing then identified Bibler as the suspect. Officers attempted to make contact with Bibler at his residence, 335 Fourth St. SE, Apartment No. 3, just after 8:34 p.m.

Sgt. Jay King with the Le Mars Police Department said Bibler would not answer the door.

A special response team, including members of the Le Mars Police and the Plymouth and Sioux county sheriff's departments, entered the residence on a search warrant and took Bibler into custody without incident.

He is being held in the Plymouth County Jail on $350,000 bond.

King said the investigation is ongoing. He said no other suspects are being sought at this time.
SPIRIT LAKE, Iowa | Two Spirit Lake firefighters sustained minor injuries Saturday afternoon while battling a structure fire in the 1400 block of Gary Avenue in Spirit Lake.

According to a Spirit Lake Community Fire Department news release, firefighters were called to 1405 Gary Ave. in Spirit Lake at 2:34 p.m. Saturday on reports of a structure fire. Upon arrival, firefighters found heavy smoke and fire coming from the structure.

Spirit Lake firefighters, assisted by several local fire, rescue and law enforcement agencies, worked to extinguish the fire for approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes, and the fire was declared under control shortly after 5 p.m. Crews were on scene approximately four hours.

Two firefighters sustained minor injuries, the release said.

The Iowa State Fire Marshal is currently investigating the cause of the fire.
A bus from the U.S. Bank Foundation has been touring the country and will stop in Sioux City between stops in Sioux Falls and Omaha.

"U.S. Bank Foundation, along with our local U.S. Bancorp branch, have helped LaunchPAD in so many ways, and we are excited to hold this event," Valerie Petersen, the LaunchPAD's outreach director, said in a news release. "This event fits into our STEM-based mission of hands-on learning, and our hope is that the girls will gain a foundation that will lead them down a path of financial independence and stability."
The Stanford sexual assault case has put campus rape at the top of the news ticker, and for good reason. When a crime that serious receives a punishment that light, the public has a duty to become educated and engaged.

But as columnist Meghan Daum and others have noted, the unambiguous violence in the Stanford case has undermined the more important conversation that college campuses need to have about sexual relations that are less clearcut in their criminality.

At Northern Arizona University, that violence does occur: campus police record about a dozen forcible sex offenses each year, including nine rapes in 2014. The university uses Department of Education preponderance of evidence standards in handling cases, and if the accused are found responsible, they are dismissed.

The higher standard of proof  beyond a reasonable doubt  used in the criminal courts means that many of those cases at NAU and other universities never result in formal charges.

Its also likely that many more forcible sex offenses never are reported officially. One widely cited national survey found that when interviewed with specific questions, one in five college women reported at least one encounter during their college careers that fell under the legal definition of a sexual assault. When asked why it wasnt reported, the most common answer was that the woman felt it wasnt serious enough, a code word, researchers say, for the fear they would not be taken seriously.

The Stanford case, although extreme, has raised just that issue front and center: If the perpetrator of a violent, sexual attack on an unconscious victim receives only six months in jail and three months probation when prosecutors recommend six years in prison, why should women bother coming forward with cases that are harder to prove?

NAU and other colleges cant control what judges do with cases after they are filed. But they are looking at ways to head off inappropriate conduct before it needs to be adjudicated. NAU, for example, has mandatory online training called My Student Body that includes sexual violence prevention and bystander intervention training. Colleges have moved away from No means No to affirmative assent, switching the burden in most cases from the woman to resist to the man obtaining a verifiable consent.

That still leaves a gray area when a couple disagrees later over how or if assent was granted, especially when alcohol clouds judgment and memories. Some say the standard still doesnt protect women from rebuffing unwanted advances beyond the first yes. Others say the lower standards of proof of assault put an unreasonable burden on the accused and can lead, as Daum puts it, to a rape accusation culture and the inevitable backlash.

So the burden is on colleges to set definitions of affirmative assent and how to give and obtain it that unblur the boundaries as much as possible. The Stanford case simply wasnt about those shades of gray that most college students encounter in any relationship. But thats where the conversation should be starting, not ending.
SIOUX CITY | Siouxland authorities are working on multiple portions of roadway that have buckled due to the heat Saturday afternoon.

As of Saturday evening, the Woodbury County Sheriff's Office had received reports of roads buckling at 2400 Port Neal Road and at Highway 141 and K-42.

Shortly after 6 p.m. Saturday, the Sioux County Sheriff's Office posted a warning for motorists traveling on state Highway 10 between Highway 75 and Coolidge Avenue due to buckling.

Motorists are advised to take caution in the area.

Sweltering conditions persisted across Siouxland on Saturday, with temperatures in the mid-90s and heat indices registering triple digits in many areas during the afternoon hours.

In addition to the heat, some portions of northwestern Iowa cleaned up Saturday after a series of strong thunderstorms that lingered over Sioux, Osceola, Dickinson, O'Brien, Cherokee and Clay counties Friday night, dropping large hail and bringing wind gusts over 60 mph. Local sheriff's offices had reported several downed tree limbs, as well as some minor power outages Friday night.

A heat advisory from the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls expired for several Siouxland counties at 9 p.m. Saturday, but sultry conditions look to stick around on Sunday, with a predicted high of 95 degrees.

Scattered showers and thunderstorms are possible Sunday night, with chances of precipitation at 70 percent.

Monday brings a 60 percent chance of showers and a slightly cooler high of 85.
Daane receives medical degree

KANSAS CITY, Mo. | Nicholas Daane, DO, was one of 245 medical students who received the doctor of osteopathic medicine (DO) degree from Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences on May 7 in Kansas City.

Dr. Daane is the son of Jim and Tami (Clausen) Daane. He graduated from Sioux City East High and earned a dual degree in biology and integrative physiology from the University of Iowa.

Dr. Daane will complete his postdoctoral training in internal medicine at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois.

Students in business event

YANKTON, S.D. | Seven Mount Marty College students participated in Startup Weekend, a collaborative, 54-hour event that brings together Yankton area people to work on projects and business ideas together. Attending students included Logan Wagner, Robbie Neswick, Jalen Hurley, Marissa Frank, Ben Hegge, Jericho Osborne and Patrick Ciganovic.

Artists attend state show

FAIRFIELD, Iowa | The 53rd Iowa Regional Blue Ribbon winners from across the state came together in Fairfield to the Iowa Artist Show to showcase their artwork. Representing the Cherokee/Storm Lake regions were Ron Erickson and JoAnn Erickson of Remsen, Cris Decious of Cherokee, Barbara McGee of Peterson and Hope Wallen of Le Mars.

Decious received the Best of Show award for his oil painting "Harvest One." Cris will have his art on display at the Witter Gallery in Storm Lake during the month of September.

Hinton graduate wins scholarship

DES MOINES | Truman Schmitt, a 2016 Hinton High School graduate, is the recipient of an IT Leadership Forum Technology Scholarship. The $1,000 scholarship is awarded to Iowa high school seniors who have been involved in technology classes or clubs and plan to pursue a STEM-related degree at an Iowa college or university.

Schmitt plans to pursue a degree in mathematics at Simpson College.

Students win 4-H scholarships

AMES, Iowa | The Iowa 4-H Foundation has announced the recipients of over 70 Iowa 4-H college scholarships valued at over $70,000. Recipients accepted their awards June 5 on the Iowa State University campus.

Recipients from Woodbury County were Brady Butters and Alex Pulford. Butters will be attending Northwestern in the fall and will major in wildlife management. Pulford attends Iowa State University and is studying agronomy.
SIOUX CITY | Siouxland Pride Alliance will hold a vigil for Orlando Sunday from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church of Sioux City.

The vigil comes in the aftermath of the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday morning, when a gunman opened fire inside a crowded gay nightclub, killing at least 50 people before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers. It was the deadliest mass shooting in American history.
HORNICK, Iowa | Rural property owners living in southern Woodbury County face nearly $450,000 in drainage-ditch repair costs to better move water in a sediment-clogged creek near Hornick.

Iowa is divided into hundreds of drainage districts, where rural owners in a several-mile tract combine to fund drainage systems of mutual benefit. People living in the Wolf Creek Drainage District since late 2015 have sought a fix to Wolf Creek, which is located in a flat county area, since three-feet-thick sediment is making drainage slow.

The improvement plans will be aired in a meeting with Wolf Creek Drainage District owners in Hornick on Tuesday. The Woodbury County Board of Supervisors serve as trustees for the drainage district and hired Storm Lake, Iowa-based I&S Group to study the creek.

I&S Group Engineer Brian Blomme said 1,200 feet of drainage pipe must be replaced and 57,000 cubic yards of sediment must be removed over three and a half miles just north of the Monona County border. The creek will be cut lower, and the width of the stream ideally will be narrowed from 20 feet to 14 feet.

ISG estimated the piping and clean out costs at $304,370, while legal expenses, engineering and other costs added in could move the total expense to $447,000.

"It is a big project, but it is response to landowner complaints," said Supervisor Matthew Ung, of Sioux City.

County Engineer Mark Nahra said the last Wolf Creek Drainage District improvements came in the 1970s.

The supervisors will hear public comment during the Tuesday meeting, then in a later meeting determine if repairs should proceed.

"We need to see what the natives think out there," Supervisor Mark Monson, of Sergeant Bluff, said.

Nahra said there are 57 property owners in the district. Costs paid for improvements are shared by drainage districts based on acres owned, and Nahra said if the costs come out to $447,000, the cost per acre would be $58.32. Owners can elect to pay the improvement amounts back over 10 years, which would make the costs $5.83 cents per acre over each year of the decade.

Wolf Creek runs about nine miles long, but only three miles could be addressed as part of the drainage district work.

The county supervisors have used I&S Group for other consulting work, including in 2014 for work on the Orton Slough Drainage District near Sergeant Bluff. The Orton Slough repair plan of $432,000 was eventually nixed.
In a March 30 editorial, we urged the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors to commit money for the ag center proposed on the unused former John Morrell site in the old stockyards area of Sioux City.

Ten weeks later (and ten weeks after the city of Sioux City presented a plan to the Iowa Economic Development Authority Board for $13.9 million in Reinvestment District Program money to help finance a $72 million project, including the ag center), the county continues to study the plan.

If built, the center would be used for a variety of events, including horse shows, cattle auctions, trade shows and farm equipment expos. Other pieces of the total reinvestment proposal include a hotel and parking ramp next to the city's downtown Convention Center; a hotel in proximity to the ag center; and redevelopment to commercial use by Ho-Chunk Inc. of former industrial buildings in the 100 block of Virginia Street.

Like a commitment of money pledged by the city, including $2 million for the ag center, a financial commitment to the center from Woodbury County is, we believe, crucial in order to secure the full $13.9 million in funding from the state for what is a dynamic overall plan of potential significant economic impact on three key geographic areas of our community.

We understand and appreciate the desire by county leaders to first collect as much information on the ag center component as possible, but in our view it's nearing time for supervisors to make a decision, one way or the other. The city can't and the state won't wait indefinitely to find out what the county wants to do. Sometime within the next several months, we expect the city will go back before the Economic Development Authority Board for a final decision. By comparison, the city of Coralville's request for Reinvestment District Program money is on the state board agenda for a possible final decision on Friday.

As a general principle, we are fiscal conservatives, but as a community advocate we also embrace the need for continued local economic growth and recognize the absolutely crucial role quality of life plays.

Because we are a mid-sized Midwest city without a state capital, a state university or natural draws like mountains or the ocean, we in Sioux City must work hard for economic development. To draw visitors and new residents and retain the residents we have - in particular, young residents who represent our future - it's critical for this city to support, pursue, create and build a full spectrum of attractive amenities.

Is the ag center the be-all and end-all of local economic growth? No, but its construction would represent one more tool in our city's toolbox, so to speak, one more attribute on our growing list.

Jeremy Taylor, chairman of the county board, briefed supervisors on the status of ag center discussion by the county at Tuesday's weekly meeting. He described a recent meeting about the ag center between city, county and Siouxland Initiative leaders as "a great discussion." Ag center dialogue will continue, Taylor said, as the county seeks answers to questions, including more information about possible financing options.

"We would expect a presentation in a public meeting in the future at which time the county would need to make a decision whether or not to participate and, if so, at what level," Taylor said in a "Chairman's Report" to county supervisors.

We are encouraged by the fact this discussion remains alive. Today, we wish to provide the county with a gentle nudge toward what we hope, ultimately, is financial support for the project.
Woodbury County Supervisor Jackie Smith is promoting a proposal that would most likely increase the minimum wage in the county.

Under her proposal, a "rounded" commission would make recommendations regarding the impact on both employees and employers. With this hand-picked, stacked deck, is there any question what the recommendation will be?

My objections are:

1. Government at any level has no business interfering with the contractual negotiation rights between legal capacity individuals if for a legal purpose.

2. From a strict economic view, a business cannot pay labor more than the marginal productivity labor generates. If one adds in mandatory Social Security, Medicare, workmen's comp insurance, unemployment insurance, plus fringe benefits, a typical wage balloons another 30 percent.

3. Politicians buying votes on the state or national level is a given. Ms. Smith's proposal will ultimately circumvent the will of the people rightfully through state legislation to a select small group of county supervisors.

Is there an easier way to buy local votes?

4. Ms. Smith's mindset sets up a slippery slope of unintended consequences. Increased unemployment is the obvious. More folks will work under the table and payroll taxes will decrease.

5. Why should Ms. Smith stop with just minimum wage? If government wants to use coercive power to interfere with free-market forces there is no limit. Two-dollar-per-gallon gasoline sounds great but mandate that price and the supply dries up. The same applies to labor; a $10 minimum wage sounds good, but then there will be few entry-level jobs.

It's one thing for county supervisors to spend the public's money to accomplish their stated purpose, but it's quite another to force private employers to spend money disguised as "fairness" to facilitate a narrow political agenda. - Henry Wood, Moville, Iowa
To the editor:

He is unfit to be commander in chief. He has no foreign policy experience whatsoever. He has not clearly outlined any agenda for America. He has relied on name calling and Twitter to campaign for President. He continues to prove to the American public how he would undermine democracy in America on a daily basis.

He is Trump. His most recent incongruity with obtaining the highest office in the land has been his lack of " ...commitment to an independent judiciary and his views of presidential powers." (Daily Sun, 6/4/16, A4). In the lawsuit exposing Trump University as fraudulent, the federal judge hearing the case has been personally attacked by Trump by criticizing the judges's Mexican Heritage. These comments were racist, an attempt at intimidation and the latest example of why Trump is not fit to be President of the United States.

The President or a person campaigning to be President cannot criticize a sitting judge about a ruling and threaten him personally as these actions directly contradict the goals of our Constitution. The balance of power between the Office of the president, the Congress and the Courts is dependent on each branch being autonomous from each other. Trumps comments belie this basic tenet of democracy in America.

We must demand competency for any presidential candidate. Trump's incompetence has shown the American people why he cannot be the President of the United States of America.

GREGORY JARRIN MD

Winslow
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KORIYAMA, Japan | She's 21, has thyroid cancer, and wants people in her prefecture in northeastern Japan to get screened for it. That statement might not seem provocative, but her prefecture is Fukushima, and of the 173 young people with confirmed or suspected cases since the 2011 nuclear meltdowns there, she is the first to speak out.

That near-silence highlights the fear Fukushima thyroid-cancer patients have about being the "nail that sticks out," and thus gets hammered.

The thyroid-cancer rate in the northern Japanese prefecture is many times higher than what is generally found, particularly among children, but the Japanese government says more cases are popping up because of rigorous screening, not the radiation that spewed from Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant.

To be seen as challenging that view carries consequences in this rigidly harmony-oriented society. Even just having cancer that might be related to radiation carries a stigma in the only country to be hit with atomic bombs.

NURSERY SCHOOL TEACHER

"There aren't many people like me who will openly speak out," said the young woman, who requested anonymity because of fears about harassment. "That's why I'm speaking out so others can feel the same. I can speak out because I'm the kind of person who believes things will be OK."

She has a quick disarming smile and silky black hair. She wears flip-flops. She speaks passionately about her new job as a nursery school teacher. But she also has deep fears: Will she be able to get married? Will her children be healthy?

She suffers from the only disease that the medical community, including the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, has acknowledged is clearly related to the radioactive iodine that spewed into the surrounding areas after the only nuclear disaster worse than Fukushima's, the 1986 explosion and fire at Chernobyl, Ukraine.

Though international reviews of Fukushima have predicted that cancer rates will not rise as a result of the meltdowns there, some researchers believe the prefecture's high thyroid-cancer rate is related to the accident.

The government has ordered medical testing of the 380,000 people who were 18 years or under and in Fukushima prefecture at the time of the March 2011 tsunami and quake that sank three reactors into meltdowns. About 38 percent have yet to be screened, and the number is a whopping 75 percent for those who are now between the ages of 18 and 21.

The young woman said she came forward because she wants to help other patients, especially children, who may be afraid and confused. She doesn't know whether her sickness was caused by the nuclear accident, but plans to get checked for other possible sicknesses, such as uterine cancer, just to be safe.

AMONG THE MOST CURABLE

"I want everyone, all the children, to go to the hospital and get screened. They think it's too much trouble, and there are no risks, and they don't go," the woman said in a recent interview in Fukushima. "My cancer was detected early, and I learned that was important."

Thyroid cancer is among the most curable cancers, though some patients need medication for the rest of their lives, and all need regular checkups.

The young woman had one cancerous thyroid removed, and does not need medication except for painkillers. But she has become prone to hormonal imbalance and gets tired more easily. She used to be a star athlete, and snowboarding remains a hobby.

A barely discernible tiny scar is on her neck, like a pale kiss mark or scratch. She was hospitalized for nearly two weeks, but she was itching to get out. It really hurt then, but there is no pain now, she said with a smile.

"My ability to bounce right back is my trademark," she said. "I'm always able to keep going."

She was mainly worried about her parents, especially her mother, who cried when she found out her daughter had cancer. Her two older siblings also were screened but were fine.

Many Japanese have deep fears about genetic abnormalities caused by radiation. Many, especially older people, assume all cancers are fatal, and even the young woman did herself until her doctors explained her sickness to her.

The young woman said her former boyfriend's family had expressed reservations about their relationship because of her sickness. She has a new boyfriend now, a member of Japan's military, and he understands about her sickness, she said happily.

PATIENTS STILL ARE DIVIDED

A support group for thyroid cancer patients was set up earlier this year. The group, which includes lawyers and medical doctors, has refused all media requests for interviews with the handful of families that have joined, saying that kind of attention may be dangerous.

When the group held a news conference in Tokyo in March, it connected by live video feed with two fathers with children with thyroid cancer, but their faces were not shown, to disguise their identities. They criticized the treatment their children received and said they're not certain the government is right in saying the cancer and the nuclear meltdowns are unrelated.

Hiroyuki Kawai, a lawyer who also advises the group, believes patients should file Japan's equivalent of a class-action lawsuit, demanding compensation, but he acknowledged more time will be needed for any legal action.

"The patients are divided. They need to unite, and they need to talk with each other," he told AP in a recent interview.

The committee of doctors and other experts carrying out the screening of youngsters in Fukushima for thyroid cancer periodically updates the numbers of cases found, and they have been steadily climbing.

In a news conference this week, they stuck to the view the cases weren't related to radiation. Most disturbing was a cancer found in a child who was just 5 years old in 2011, the youngest case found so far. But the experts brushed it off, saying one wasn't a significant number.

"It is hard to think there is any relationship," with radiation, said Hokuto Hoshi, a medical doctor who heads the committee.

Shinsyuu Hida, a photographer from Fukushima and an adviser to the patients' group, said fears are great not only about speaking out but also about cancer and radiation.

He said that when a little girl who lives in Fukushima once asked him if she would ever be able to get married, because of the stigma attached to radiation, he was lost for an answer and wept afterward.

"They feel alone. They can't even tell their relatives," Hida said of the patients. "They feel they can't tell anyone. They felt they were not allowed to ask questions."

The woman who spoke to AP also expressed her views on video for a film in the works by independent American filmmaker Ian Thomas Ash.

She counts herself lucky. About 18,000 people were killed in the tsunami, and many more lost their homes to the natural disaster and the subsequent nuclear accident, but her family's home was unscathed.

When asked how she feels about nuclear power, she replied quietly that Japan doesn't need nuclear plants. Without them, she added, maybe she would not have gotten sick.
It doesnt take much to notice that consumer reliance on mobile and mobile search is growing at an enormous speed. But just how important is it for businesses, even small business, to create a powerful mobile experience for their users? Well, according to a new Google-sponsored study, that need is being called critical.

To get a better understanding of what users want from mobile, Google hired third-party research firms Sterling Research and SmithGeiger to conduct a survey that polled 1,088 adults on their feelings about the mobile Web. The results may confirm what we already suspected, but still provide an interesting read.

Not surprisingly, the survey showed that the opportunity that exists in mobile is considerable. Seventy-five percent of respondents say that they prefer a mobile-friendly site and 67 percent said they are more likely to buy a sites product or service when they visit a mobile-friendly website. Add that to the fact 96 percent of users said they had stumbled across sites not designed for mobile, and the opportunity available for savvy businesses is clear.

And its not just considered a positive to have a mobile site, it is looked at as a serious negative if you do not. Why? Because according to the survey, if consumers arent happy with your mobile experience, they wont just end their search there. Theyll keep trying competitor sites until they find an experience that works for them.

61% of users said that if they didnt find what they were looking for right away on a mobile site, theyd quickly move on to another site

79% of people who dont like what they find on one site will go back and search for another site

50% of people said that even if they like a business, they will use them less often if the website isnt mobile-friendly

By not focusing on mobile, you not only lose that conversion, you hand-deliver it to a competitor website. You cant afford to do that.

The survey also found that having a non-mobile site can negatively affect your reputation in the eyes of your customers. Sites that are not designed for mobile leave customers feeling frustrated, which then impacts their overall impression of the brand.

48% of users say they feel frustrated and annoyed when they get to a site thats not mobile-friendly

36% said they felt like theyve wasted their time by visiting those sites

52% of users said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company

48% said that if a site didnt work well on their smartphones, it made them feel like the company didnt care about their business!

Ouch! Do you really want to tell nearly 50 percent of people that you dont care about their business by NOT having a mobile site? My guess is no!

Small business owners need to make sure that they have a functioning mobile version of their website. I know that my company is steadfast about making sure clients are doing all they can to attract customers, regardless of what device they are accessing them from.

What should SMBs consider when it comes to mobile?

Know how your current site looks: Have you checked your site on a mobile device lately to see how it displays? If not, theres no better day than today to find out. Google offers business owners a free tool to help SMBs learn how theyre already doing and where they can improve.

Understand mobile surfers are task-oriented: While the number of casual mobile surfers may be growing thanks to higher functioning devices, the majority of mobile users are task-oriented. Theyre accessing your site while on-the-go because theyre looking for specific information. Perhaps its directions or a menu or hours. Go into your analytics and see what pages are getting the most views from mobile devices and then set your site up to highlight this information and make it easily available. Help customers to work through their tasks faster and the numbers show they wont forget it.

Mobile users are low on patience: Users accessing your site via their mobile device are less likely to hop through hoops looking for information. Instead, theyll just try another website. Likely a local competitor. Keep users on your mobile site by prioritizing the information you show, making content easy to read/skim through, and requiring as few clicks as possible. The more you make someone look for the information or wait for something to load, the greater the chance youre going to lose them in the process.

Make conversions easy: Outside of just lowering the number of steps, make it easier for users to finish tasks. Shorten forms, use checkboxes to make data entry easier, and make phone numbers clickable. Use big buttons with lots of padding around them to prevent against accidental clicks. Without the benefit of a keyboard and mouse, it can be tricky to perform tasks on mobile that are seamless on the desktop. Be aware of these limitations and account for them.

Take advantage of free resources: Googles Mobile Playbook and How To Go Mobile site offer SMBs with great resources to learn more about mobile

Above are some SMB-friendly tips to make sure your presenting as great of a mobile experience as you are a desktop experience.

How have you integrated mobile?
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Starting a handmade business has become much easier in recent years thanks to online platforms like Etsy. But although you can easily open an Etsy shop just by signing up for an account and adding a few products, theres no guarantee that youll actually make any sales.

If you want your products to get found, you need to understand how the platform works and how buyers use it. Thats where Etsy SEO tips come in.

Here are some Etsy SEO tips to help you get your handmade products in front of as many potential buyers as possible.

Etsy SEO

Include the Category in Your Title

When crafting the titles for each of your listings, its important for you to be as clear and concise as possible. By including the terms that people are likely to search for right in the title, youre more likely to show up in search results and more likely to show up before other products.

Include Keywords First

In addition, when you come up with those search terms and keywords, its good practice to use those at the very beginning of your titles. If you use a cutesy name for your product first and then clarify it at the end of your listing title, your product is likely to show up in search results after all of the other listings that actually included the search term at the very beginning of their titles. If they have to scroll through pages and pages in order to get to your products, you arent likely to get found by many shoppers.

Think About Different Names for Your Items

It is important to have that one main keyword or search term that you include at the beginning of your product title. But you might also consider thinking of other names that shoppers might use to search for products like yours and include those either later in the title or in your item description or tags.

Stay Away from Cutesy Names

It can sometimes be tempting for handmade business owners to come up with creative or cutesy names for products. But shoppers arent likely to search for cutesy names, so they arent likely to come across your products if you use them. For example, if you like to come up with unique names for your paintings, you can include those names briefly in your product listing. But your title should be more straightforward and descriptive, like landscape painting, acrylic on canvas or something that actually tells shoppers what the item is.

Dont Use Crafting Terms

In addition, try not to use the crafting terms for items when creating your listings. Sure, you know the specific techniques and materials that you used. But if the people who you want to buy your products arent makers themselves, they arent likely to search for those terms  and you will have lost the sale.

Focus Keywords at the Beginning of Your Listing

Just as the beginning of your title is most important, the beginning of your item description is also the most important when it comes to getting found. You can include a lot of information in an item listing, from sizing information to shipping policies. But that should all go toward the end so that you can pack in as many descriptive terms within the first few paragraphs as possible.

Include Keywords in Tags

Your tags offer another opportunity for you to pack in some relevant search terms. Etsy gives you the ability to add up to 13 tags to your items. And each can be up to 20 characters. So think of as many potential search terms as possible and add those to your tags. They can be related to your exact product, like white printed t-shirt or more of a general category like womens clothing.

Dont Spend Time Optimizing Photos

If youre familiar with SEO tactics on other websites or platforms, then you probably know how important it is to add relevant titles and tags to your images. But on Etsy, photos are all given titles that are a random assortment of letters and numbers when theyre uploaded, regardless of if you named the photo something different prior to uploading it. So its not worth spending time adding relevant titles to each of your images.

Make Your Listings Eye-catching

The more interaction your listings get from customers, the more likely they are to show up early in future search results. So if your products are relevant and have clear titles, good prices and eye-catching photos, they could be more likely to attract customers to click on those items. And the more they click, they better your chances are of getting found in the future.

Consider Relisting and Promoting Popular Items

Etsy also takes how recent the item was listed into account when it comes to search results. Its not as important as it once was. But relisting popular products regularly can help keep the listing fresh and have a small impact on your search rankings. Also, if you want to pay to promote your products on Etsy, try it with products that you already know are popular since theyll be the most likely to get good results and bring in more traffic to your shop as a whole.

Syndicate for Google Shopping

Getting your products found on Etsy doesnt just mean optimizing for people searching within Etsys platform. Plenty of Etsy sellers also make sales by getting their products found by people searching on Google. So as long as you follow Googles policies, you can syndicate your products so that they show up in Google Shopping results.

Focus on Creating a Great Customer Experience

Creating a positive shopping experience for your customers is good practice regardless of its impact on Etsy SEO tips. But Etsy is actually likely to rank items higher in search results if they come from shops that have a good history with customers. So do your best to make your policies clear, communicate with your customers and provide a quality product. If you do all of that, youre likely to get some positive reviews and thus improve your odds of getting found in the future.

Keep Up with Etsy Changes

Etsy is constantly changing its algorithms and user experience. So when it comes to getting found on the site, whats true today could be totally different a few months from now. So its important that you keep up with any changes either by subscribing to Etsys newsletter, following the blog or even participating in the forums. You cant always have a say in the changes, but if you at least know what they are you have a better chance of making them work in your favor.
Selling at flea markets doesnt just mean clearing out some junk from your basement and throwing it on a table. You can actually build a business around selling at flea markets. But youll need some flea market sales tips to really increase your profits going forward. Here are some flea market selling tips to make your next flea market sale a huge success.

Flea Market Selling Tips

Sell More by Providing Many Payment Options

Flea market customers have a huge variety of different payment preferences. Some want to pay with credit cards, some with checks, some with cash. If you can give customers options, youll be more likely to increase your sales over the course of each day. That means using a Square or similar credit card reader, allowing customers to pay with checks, and having enough change for people who just want to pay in cash. In addition, if you can offer layaway options, it can help your ability to sell some larger items that people might need time to gather the funds for.

Sell More by Creating a Facebook Page

Your business is likely to sell more if you actually treat it like a business. Today, that means having some kind of an online presence. And since so many consumers use Facebook already, thats a natural place for flea market vendors to connect with potential customers. So give yourself a professional business name, add some photos and use Facebook to share information and connect with potential customers.

Sell More by Advertising in Advance

Social media and similar online platforms can also be helpful when it comes to advertising your offerings. For instance, if you go to different markets or locations each week or month, you can post on Facebook where youre going to be each week and what types of new products youll have available. You can even pay to boost your posts so that you can reach even more people.

Sell More by Accepting Reasonable Offers

Bargaining is a huge part of running a flea market business. While you dont have to accept every single offer that comes your way, at least being open to reasonable offers can help you increase sales and clear up space for new inventory. The longer you hold onto things, the less space/money you have to acquire new things to offer for sale, and the more your money is tied up in inventory that isnt selling.

Sell More by Conveying Approachable Body Language

At a flea market, you are the literal face of your business. People will be more likely to stop and look at your products if you look friendly and approachable. And if they stop and look at your products, theyre more likely to buy. If you are sitting and do not smile or attempt to engage passers by, they will actually pass you by.

Sell More by Standing Out in the Crowd

Your booth can also be a selling point for potential customers. So dont make it just look the same as everyone elses. Choose that orange canopy instead of that gray one, and spend the money to have some large signage that you can prop up on top of it. Making your booth look nice and eye-catching can cause shoppers multiple rows away to notice your booth and make a point to stop by.

Sell More by Using Professional Signage to Convey Trust

A professional looking shop sign can also convey a sense of trust to your customers. Instead of just seeing a bunch of random items strewn across a table, they are more likely to see an actual business with products that are high-quality and valuable.

Have Business Cards Easily Accessible

Some customers at flea markets might not be ready to buy from you even if your booth looks great and your products are awesome. So you should give them an easy way to connect with you later. Provide business cards to passers by so that if they see something they like, dont buy it, but return home and decide they want it, they can reach you and make the purchase. You can also offer shipping as an option so that those customers dont have to make a return trip. In addition, provide your social media accounts so they can follow you from market to market each week.

Sell More by Appearing Regularly at the Same Markets

You can also garner repeat business even from those who dont follow you on social media simply by being consistent. If someone collects a particular item that you specialize in, maintain a consistent appearance schedule so that they know where to find you when theyre ready to shop. That doesnt mean you have to only ever sell your items at one location, but you could have a consistent schedule where you sell at the same market every Sunday or on the first weekend of every month.

Sell More by Giving Repeat Customers/Collectors Deals

Encourage that repeat business even more by offering deals to those loyal customers. If someone purchases from you every week or month, and theyve done so at least three times, cut them a break and begin giving them good discounts. You may get a bit less for the item than you intended, but you will sell more in the long run because theyll be sure to keep purchasing from you if they feel youre treating them like a special VIP customer.

Sell More by Offering Discounts to Your Social Media Followers

You can also offer special discounts to your social media followers to encourage repeat customers. For example, if youre selling at a particular market on Saturday, blast that out to your followers and provide them with a 20 percent discount offering if they mention your social media post. Followers who may not have intended to go to the market that weekend may be enticed to go if they know a 20 percent discount is waiting for them.

Sell More by Posting Images of New Items for Sale on Social During the Week

Throughout the week leading up to your flea market appearance, you can entice people on social media to shop with you by posting images of the items that youll be offering for sale. If theyre interested in something new theyve seen on social, theyll be sure to show up that weekend at the market to buy it.
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
Just one weekend after Gay Days came to an end, Pulse, a popular gay nightclub in Orlando, has become the worst mass shooting in the history of the U.S.

The latest reports have the total dead at 50 with another 53 injured. It left officials stunned. The numbers were twice that which was originally reported.

The incident took place at 2 a.m. around closing time at the end of a 'Latin nite' in the club. Three hours later, after a standoff and hostage situation, police used force to end the crisis. The suspect was shot and killed, and as many as 30 hostages, hiding out in closets and bathrooms, were freed.

Terry De Carlo, the executive director of the LGBT Center in Orlando tweeted that counseling teams were intervening to offer consolation and support.

Facebook launched a safety check, giving the LGBT community an opportunity to check in to let friends and family know they are safe.

National and international news agencies have been converging on Orlando since news of the tragedy was released.

Governor Scott is traveling to Orlando to hold a press conference this afternoon.

Regular programming has been interrupted as CNN has Jake Tapper hosting on-scene interviews with victims and witnesses of this "horrific massacre," according to its own reporting.

President Obama has issued a statement from the White House expressing his condolences. Earlier this week, the White House hosted a celebration for a cross section of LGBT leaders from across the nation in recognition of June as gay pride month.

FBI sources, in their initial interviews, indicated that they are clearly looking into the possibility that this was a terrorist attack. One such FBI spokesperson suggested there were preliminary signals that it was indeed so designed.

The mass shooting set into operation disaster relief operations for multiple city, state and federal law enforcement agencies, demonstrating a level of preparedness to respond to such attacks. In fact, over 70 police vehicles and ambulances were on-site within hours of the attack.

Local hospitals have implemented contingency trauma plans, and doctors reported as early as 8 a.m. that many victims were 'still' in surgery. With dozens injured, medical officials are calling for O positive, O Negative, and AB blood donors to come forth.

At least one police officer encountering the shooter was himself shot in the head, saved by a Kevlar helmet, according to the chief of police.

One patron in the club, Charles Hansen told CNN how he "crawled out," helping others who had been shot. On its Facebook page, Pulse posted a note saying "Run and keep on running."

Another patron, Lou Nisso, told Jake Tapper, "we did not put 2 and 2 together. At first you thought the gunshots were part of the music. Then people were fighting to get out while helping casualties."

Orlando has set up a hotline number 407-246-4357, for family members and friends. A Family Assistance Center has been set up at the neighboring Hampton Inn.

We are heartbroken and angry that senseless violence has once again destroyed lives in our state and in our country. Gay clubs hold a significant place in LGBTQ history. They were often the only safe gathering place and this horrific act strikes directly at our sense of safety, reads a press release from Equality Florida. June commemorates our community standing up to anti-LGBTQ violence at the Stonewall Inn, the nightclub that has become the first LGBTQ site recognized as a national monument.

The gunman has been identified as Omar Saddiqui Mateen, a resident of Fort Pierce working as a security guard. Local LGBT residents are struggling to identify friends and family members who may have been victims of the attack.

The city's mayor and law enforcement officials have been receiving offers of support from all over the nation, said Police Chief John Dima.

"We are grateful," he said, announcing at 10:30 a.m. EST time that the crime scene has barely been cleared, as 'operational necessities' dictated they check for residual 'secondary devices.' None have been found.

Sean David, the owner Le Boy nightclub in Fort Lauderdale, was shocked by the shooting, "It's tragic. It's terrifying. We all know people and have friends in Orlando."

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio speculated that "this is the new face of the war on terror; lone wolf individuals attacking soft targets."

Mateen carried out the shooting by employing an automatic weapon, an assault rifle. He also carried a handgun during the assault, which was recovered. Born in America, his family was apparently from Afghanistan.

These victims of a hate crime targeting an LGBT club had their futures stolen, had their dreams stolen, their potential contributions stolen from us all. We send a world of love and prayers to all who are grieving today and to all who will begin the hard journey to recover from untold wounds, both physical and emotional, Stuart Milk, co-founder of the Harvey Milk Foundation said in a statement. But our love and prayers are simply not enough. Hate and separation continue to bring forth too much grief, too many stolen lives across the whole world. As we reach out to comfort the Orlando families, and as we support the courage for the injured to heal, may we also have the strength to address and deal with the roots of hatred and separation that target any minority community with violence, anywhere in the world. May we find a way forward to make this act of horrendous violence a commitment to come together and so honor the memories of those who were killed today.

This is a developing story so be sure to check SFGN.com periodically for updates.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)On June 5, unidentified armed assailants attacked two gun shops and a military unit in Aktobe. As a result of the attack, at least 7 people were killed, including three servicemen, and 38 injured. In response, the country's authorities announced an anti-terrorist operation.

"All the participants of the violent acts in the city of Aktobe have been neutralized and arrested by the Aktobe regional operational headquarters for the fight against terrorism," the committee said in a statement.

The committee added that all the weapons at the disposal of the arrested had been confiscated.
A mass protest march involving over 100 people took place in Tokyo on Sunday. Protesters marched through streets of downtown Tokyo, holding banners saying "no more base."

Tensions over the US military presence in Japan were fueled by a series of crimes conducted by US military personnel, including rape, assault, and hit-and-run accidents. In the most recent accident, a US navy servicewoman Aimee Mejia injured two local civilians while driving drunk down the wrong lane of the road. Her blood alcohol level was found to exceed the allowed limit sixfold.
British police have admitted that undercover officers have infiltrated at least 460 political groups since 1968, including in Germany. According to Left Party MP Andrej Hunko, one of the parliamentarians who have been calling for the German government to investigate the Kennedy case, British officers were deployed to infiltrate leftwing activist groups, such as "Youth Against Racism in Europe" and "Dissent!".

Sir Christopher Pitchford has also been addressed by a group of 133 individuals asking to make lists of undercover spies and infiltrated groups public.

According to the group's letter, "there are "hundreds of organizations who still have no idea that they were spied upon. This means the overwhelming majority of individuals and organizations targeted since 1968 has had no opportunity to consider the possible consequences of the actions of undercover officers on their work and cannot currently participate as witnesses."

According to police officer-turned-whistleblower Peter Francis, police officers sent abroad receive "absolutely zero schooling in any law whatsoever."
If the West wanted to complicate the internal political situation for the Russian President, it would have lifted the sanctions, he said.

The politician also added that there could be a change of government and facilitation of the reforms in Russia after the countrys parliamentary elections which are set for September this year.

Jaroslav Basta also commented on the recent crossing of the US Army Convoy through the Czech Republic and its joint training with the Czech Army, as part of the 17-day vehicle road march using Stryker Combat Vehicles and support vehicles from Rose Barracks, Germany, to Tapa, Estonia for the Saber Strike 16 joint military exercise (May 27-June 22).

The convoy demonstrated NATO members shared commitment to security, including the ability to rapidly move a regiment-sized convoy along two routes and through six countries, covering more than 2,400 kilometers, according to a statement of the website of the US Embassy in the Czech Republic.

However Jaroslav Basta believes that NATO has followed the fate of the EU: in the course of its expansion the alliance has become incapable.

Instead of being a defense pact, NATO is a not so-united military union, where the main role belongs to the US armed forces, he said.
In October 2014, Sweden launched a massive eight-day witch hunt for a foreign submarine, which was suspected to be Russian. The chase in the Stockholm archipelago ended in a bitter fiasco, sparking a hot debate on whether the largest Nordic nation, with almost 10 million citizens, should abandon its non-alignment policy and join NATO on account of the fact that it is unable to defend itself properly.

However, it turns out that that incident was apparently a false alarm, and a source of potential embarrassment for the countrys military.

According to Sveriges Radio, in September 2015 the Swedish military announced that the chief evidence of the intrusion  a noise detected by early warning systems  was no longer valid as analysis indicated that it was emanated by a "Swedish source" and not some foreign submersible.
The former German Chancellor remains concerned to see that the beleaguered Merkel government, which recent polling shows carries less than a 25 percent approval rating, also fancies itself part of the new Cold War fantasy.

"Overall, the EU needs Russia and Turkey in terms of security policy, said Schroeder blasting the government for outlandishly taking part of it the massive military buildup along Russias border on the anniversary of the Nazi invasion.

The Russian government has responded by developing the Yu-74 ultra-maneuverable hypersonic glide vehicle which military analysts confirm has the capacity to penetrate any missile defense system and has also looked to beat back US and NATO threats from the Baltic region with a series of buzzing incidents  flying fighter jets next to American battleships.

The Kremlin remains steadfastly opposed to being baited into massively increasing defense appropriations to ward off a threat that should not exist and continues to responsibly explore international avenues of diplomacy against the American and German-led provocations.
BUENOS AIRES (Sputnik)  The Argentinian governments decision to take RT News channels Spanish service off air could be overturned, the nations minister in charge of media told Sputnik on Sunday.

Argentinas State Radio and Television Society (RTA SE) plans to exclude the international channel from free transmission starting in August but will keep it available in paid TV packages.

"RTs removal is not irrevocable," Media and Public Content Minister Hernan Lombardi said, adding the Argentinian government planned to discuss the channel's future with RT.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)On Saturday, a twin blast hit a southern Damascus suburb killing at least 16 and injuring over 50 people. The Daesh militant group claimed responsibility for the attacks.

"Moscow strongly condemns yet another violent action of terrorists on Syrian soil. We express our condolence and compassion to family members and close ones of the victims and we wish a speedy recovery to all injured. We reiterate our support of Syria's nation and government in their struggle against terrorist threat," the statement said.

Syria has been in a state of civil war since 2011, with government forces fighting several opposition factions, including the notorious Daesh, outlawed in Russia and many other countries.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  A vast majority of residents have returned to the western Iraqi town of Ar-Rutbah after it was freed from Islamist rule, its mayor told a local television channel on Sunday.

Daesh terrorists left the strategic Sunni town in March after a government offensive. It was one of the first towns captured by the Daesh terror group in Iraq in mid-2014.

"Some 70 percent of Ar-Rutbah residents have returned to their homes. The life  markets, shops  is getting back on track," town mayor Emad Dulaimi told the Alsumaria channel.
HMEYMIM (Syria) (Sputnik)  Celebrations of Russia Day took place on Sunday at the Hmeimim air base located in Syria's western province of Latakia, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported.

Col. Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, who commands the Russian military contingent in the Middle Eastern country, congratulated the personnel of the facility with the holiday and handed out awards to the most distinguished servicemen.

Dvornikov's speech preceded a ceremonial parade with participation of Hmeimim's personnel, as well as of aircraft located at the airbase.
The silence regime near the village of Darayya in Syria to be extended for 72 hours, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

"The silence regime in the area of the Darayya village of the Damascus province prolonged for 72 hours since 00:01 a.m. of 12 June 2016."

Syria Ceasefire Violated Four Times in Damascus Province in Past 24 Hours

The Russian center for Syrian reconciliation at the Hmeymim airbase registered a total of four ceasefire violations in Syria in the last 24 hours, although the truce largely held.

"The ceasefire has been observed in most provinces of the Syrian Arab Republic. Within last 24 hours, 4 ceasefire violations have been registered in the Damascus province," the ministry said on its website.

The Russian military said that self-described "opposition" forces from the Jaysh al-Islam militant group shelled Syrian army positions populated areas in Harasta al-Basal and in Arbil.
Richard Ledgett admitted that the NSA has interest in Internet of Things during a conference on military technology that took place at The Newseum in Washington DC, on Friday.

"We're looking at it sort of theoretically from a research point of view right now," he said.

He also underscored that, while the Internet of Things can be "a tool in the toolbox" of data gathering, there are easier ways to keep track of terrorists and foreign intelligence agents.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  According to the Spiegel Online magazine, these lists contain about 20 German nationals, who left the Daesh group and returned to Germany. The German authorities received the documents from abroad, according to the media outlet.

"He was expelled [from the group] without the right to return, because he had carried out special operations without the emir's permission," a file, obtained by Spiegel, reads.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The number of UK nationals supporting the country's exit from the European Union (Brexit) account for 43 percent, while the number of people from the Remain camp account for 42 percent, a recent poll by YouGov for The Sunday Times newspaper revealed.

Trends, excluding undecided voters. pic.twitter.com/2SLgICCn8r  The Brexit Poll (@TheBrexitPoll) 11 June 2016

On June 6, the same pollster revealed the opposite situation: 43 percent of respondents intended to vote to keep the United Kingdom within the European Union, while 42 percent supported Brexit.

After tonight's show in Marseilles, I guess many more Europeans are leaning towards Brexit.  Jake Rudnitsky (@Rudnit) 11 June 2016

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.
UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik)  The Orlando massacre has become the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States, surpassing the death toll from the 2007 incident at Virginia Tech, which claimed 32 lives.

"The Secretary-General condemns the horrific attack this morning in Orlando, Florida, in which dozens of people were killed and injured," the UN said in a statement published on its website on Sunday.

The mass shooting occurred at Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando. The city's Mayor Buddy Dyer confirmed that at least 50 people were killed and 53 more were injured in the shooting.
Strange as it may seem, the most powerful weapon in the world is very compact given that a thermonuclear charge with a capacity of 300 kilotons is smaller in stature than most people, the Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported.

Apart from a fusion charge, the nuclear warhead contains a control unit which looks like water can and which performs several tasks.

Its main goal is to detonate the charge at a specific, strictly-determined. Nuclear weapons are not intended for use on the ground and typically explode at a height of 1,200 meters, which is believed to be optimal for creating a shock wave.
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The discussion is closed. You can participate in the discussion within 24 hours after the publication of the article.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, mass shooting occurred at a nightclub in Florida, wounding at least 42 people. According to media reports, the gunman took hostages at the club. The suspect was armed with a rifle and a pistol.

Pulse nightclub shooting: Approximately 20 people dead inside the club.  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) 12 June 2016

The police chief added that the attack can be classified as domestic terrorism.

. @ChiefJohnMina multiple people dead inside the club. Many casualties transported to hospitals. pic.twitter.com/0Lf69tClad  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) 12 June 2016

"Pulse Shooting: The shooter inside the club is dead," the Orlando Police Department said via Twitter.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Omar Mateen's father claims his son became "very angry" when he saw two men kissing in downtown Miami a few months ago, and thinks it may have been part of his son's motivation.

"We weren't aware of any action he is taking," Mateen's father said. "We are in shock like the whole country," Mateen's father told reporters.

Earlier in the day, mass shooting occurred at a nightclub in Florida, wounding at least 42 people and killing 20. The gunman was killed by police during the hostage situation.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, mass shooting occurred at a nightclub in Orlando. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer confirmed that at least 50 people were killed and 53 more were injured in the shooting. US media reported that the attack was conducted by US national Omar Saddiqui Mateen.

"He is from Afghanistan, I believe, and he has also trained in the use of weapons," King told CNN.

King also told CNN that the perpetrator could have Islamist leanings.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Adam Schiff, a member of US House of Representatives, said Sunday that a perpetrator of the deadly attacks in the US city of Orlando had pledged allegiance to Daesh, local media reported.

Earlier in the day, mass shooting occurred at a nightclub in Orlando.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer confirmed that at least 50 people were killed and 53 more were injured in the shooting. US media reported that the attack was conducted by Omar Saddiqui Mateen, US national of reportedly Afghan origin.
The attack is the second deadliest shooting incident by a single gunman in US history. It was the deadliest mass shooting in the US until the Orland nightclub massacre.

The shooter, Seung-Hui Cho then committed suicide.

Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, December 14, 2012: 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shoots 20 children aged between 6 and 7 years old, as well as six adult staff members, injures one.

Prior to driving to the school, Lanza shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at the scene, Lanza committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.
"We know enough to say this an act of terror, act of hate," Obama said.

This was "more than a nightclub. It was a place of solidarity and empowerment."  Obama #Orlando  T.J. Holmes (@tjholmes) 12 June 2016

US President Barack Obama was informed on Sunday of the deadly shooting in the southeastern city of Orlando, and ordered the provision of federal assistance to the investigation into the incident, the White House said in a statement.

Obama: It's too easy to get a gun.



The shooter passed two federal background checks.



Gun control narrative fail. #Orlando  Leah the Boss (@LeahRBoss) 12 June 2016

Mass shooting occurred at Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando. The city Mayor Buddy Dyer confirmed that at least 50 people were killed and 53 more were injured in the shooting.
Earlier Adam Schiff, a member of US House of Representatives, said Sunday that a perpetrator of the deadly attacks in the US city of Orlando had pledged allegiance to Daesh.

My full statement on the #Orlando shooting this morning: pic.twitter.com/viERHIljen  Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) 12 June 2016

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer confirmed that at least 50 people were killed and 53 more were injured in the shooting.

Registered Democrat voter Omar Mir Seddique Mateen of Afghan origins commits worse mass shooting in American History pic.twitter.com/SMp1PZKAG6  Stacey Dash (@REALStaceyDash) 12 June 2016

The attack was conducted by Omar Saddiqui Mateen, US national of reportedly Afghan origin.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, mass shooting occurred at a nightclub in Orlando. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer confirmed that at least 50 people were killed and 53 more were injured in the shooting. US media reported that the attack was conducted by US national Omar Saddiqui Mateen and could have links to radical Islamist groups.

"Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant? Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!" Trump said on his Twitter account.

In the course of his campaign, the Republican frontrunner has been widely criticized for his controversial statements, including with regard to immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, and women.
He said: "We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident. We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country."

Police officers in Orlando, Florida said that Mateen had received weapons training, although at this stage it is not clear whether he received this training in the US or elsewhere.

Mateen was killed by a SWAT team while holding hostages in the nightclub. During his shooting spree he killed 50 and wounded another 53 people.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  US police arrested on Sunday a man, who was carrying weapons, ammunition and possible explosives, heading to a gay pride parade in Californian city of Los Angeles , local media reported.

According to The Los Angeles Times, earlier in the day police service of US Santa Monica inspected a car of an unsavory character and found several assault rifles, as well as materials that could be used for creation of explosive materials.

The newspaper added that police officers found out that the man was in town to attend the L.A. Pride festival in West Hollywood.
Sad and tragic day. Thoughts and prayers with loved ones of #PulseNightclub victims.  Vali Nasr (@vali_nasr) 12  2016 .

Clinton expressed condolences.

Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. H  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) 12  2016 .

While Trump called the Orlando shooting a demonstration of radical Islamic terrorism and called for toughness, smartness and vigilance.

Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 12  2016 .

"Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant? Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!" Trump said on his Twitter account.

Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 12  2016 .

Many called for toughening of gun control in the country. The hashtag is #GunControlNow.

How many more lives have to be taken away before you realize this is a real issue? #GunControlNow  Diana (@TaylenaCimLM) 12  2016 .

U.S. Congress Representatives:



Your prayers won't make your people suddenly bulletproof. What your people need is ACTION and #GunControlNow  Dened Rey (@Hajabeg) 12  2016 .

On June 12, 2016 29-year-old US citizen Omar Mateen opened fire at Pulse gay nightclub in downtown Orlando, killing 50 people and injuring at least 53.

I am gay and I am not afraid. Love conquers all. #PrayforOrlando  Ricky Martin (@ricky_martin) 12  2016 .

He was eventually shot by a SWAT team after briefly taking some hostages.

Our hearts go out to all the families and loved ones of those lost in Orlando. #prayfororlando #loveisthecure pic.twitter.com/nyfzJiyPma  Elton John (@eltonofficial) 12  2016 .

The massacre has become the deadliest in recent US history.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  On June 12, 2016 29-year-old US citizen Omar Mateen opened fire at Pulse gay nightclub in downtown Orlando, killing 50 people and injuring at least 53, making it the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States. It has surpassed the death toll from the 2007 incident at Virginia Tech, which claimed 32 lives.

He was eventually shot by a SWAT team after briefly taking some hostages.

FBI interviewed Mateen in 2013 & 2014. They turned out to be inconclusive. He wasn't under investigation at time of attack #orlando  Saeed Ahmed (@saeed_ahmed) June 12, 2016

"He is not a prohibited person. They can legally walk into a gun dealership and acquire and purchase firearms. He did so. And he did so within the last week or so," Trevor Velinor, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), said at a press briefing in Florida, as quoted by CNN.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Orlando massacre has become the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States, surpassing the death toll from the 2007 incident at Virginia Tech, which claimed 32 lives.

"We need to keep guns like the ones used last night out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals." Hillary on the FL attack  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

Reiterating President Barack Obamas words that it was an "act of terror" and "act of hate," Clinton urged to "redouble our efforts to defend our country from threats at home and abroad," including from international terrorist groups.

"This was an act of terror. This was also an act of hate." Hillary on the attack in Orlando https://t.co/MmaGjrSufr  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

"To the LGBT community: please know that you have millions of allies across our country. I am one of them. Hillary https://t.co/MmaGjrSufr
According to the Democrat Senator's joint statement, "[US] Congress has become complicit in these murders by its total, unconscionable deafening silence."

"This phenomenon of near constant mass shootings happens only in America  nowhere else," said Christopher Murphy, a long-time vocal gun control advocate, who officially represents families in Newtown, where mass shooting took place in December 2012.

"As we learn more in shock and horror about the deadliest mass shooting in our history, my heart breaks for the families of loved ones lost or injured  and for our nation, continuing to suffer from this unspeakable epidemic of gun violence," said Richard Blumenthal, who advocated a ban on rifle magazines of over 10 bullets, earning an F-rating ("True enemy of gun owner's rights") by the US National Rifle Association.
The mass shooting occurred on Sunday at Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando. The city's Mayor Buddy Dyer confirmed that at least 50 people were killed and 53 more were injured in the shooting.

The Orlando massacre has become the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States, surpassing the death toll from the 2007 incident at Virginia Tech, which claimed 32 lives.
In an interview with Sputnik, Omid Shokri Kalehsar, a US-based Iranian energy expert, heaped praise on Russia for providing Iran with a 2.5-billion-euro loan, which he said reflects Moscow's drive to bolster economic relations with Tehran in the face of anti-Russian sanctions.

The interview came a few days after Russia's Deputy Finance Minister Sergey Storchak said that Moscow is ready to loan Tehran up to 2.5 billion euros for infrastructure projects.

Kalehsar recalled that Moscow is currently constructing a bridge to link the Crimean Peninsula with mainland Russia, a 4.5-billion-dollar project which is being implemented amid sanctions that the EU, the US and other countries slapped on Russia.
The recent shooting of two teens that left one dead has shaken up residents that live in the Creekwood and Glen Arbor neighborhoods  the neig


BAKU (Sputnik)"Despite the earlier agreement on ceasefire on the contact line in [Nagorno-]Karabakh, the Armenian side has violated the ceasefire 36 times along different parts of the contact line during last 24 hours," Azerbaijans Defense Ministry said on Sunday.

The outbreak of violence erupted in the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh republic on April 2, and has resulted in multiple casualties. On April 5, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a Russian-brokered ceasefire in Moscow.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a predominantly ethnically Armenian region of Azerbaijan which proclaimed its independence in 1991. After the military conflict ended in 1994, Azerbaijan lost control over the area.
#military history Cold War: AK-47 Assault Rifle  The most-produced assault rifle ever made was developed for t https://t.co/umxvXttDyV  Steve Melito (@SteveMelito) 5  2016 .

The Washington Post quoted SOCOM spokesman Matt Allen as saying that in the long run, the US-made AK-47s may help taxpayers save money.

"A US-based source would be a good use of taxpayer funds, while also delivering the weapons our partners not only need to fight extremists, but also the ones they know how to use, know how to fix and have the supplies in their regions to maintain," he said.

The Washington Post in turn added that although making the AK-47-like weapons in the US "would allow the government to enforce greater control over their manufacture and distribution, it still might be cheaper to buy them elsewhere."

(Real Gun) Shots with SVD Dragunov Sniper Rifle https://t.co/5b1tWBrdKQ   (@gamezavan) 10  2016 .

Meanwhile, Russian military expert Nikolay Kireyev argued that after the creation of the AK-47 clone, Americans will most likely want to bring down prices for Kalashnikovs on the world marker and start supplying its copies to other countries on their own, according to the website news-front.info.

"Stealing other people's developments without paying for it is certainly a deliberate policy. The US has no legal right to produce the AK-47s. The Kalashnikov Concern launched the process of protecting its trademark in the United States, but it was stopped due to the anti-Russian sanctions. Theft with state support is very convenient, isn't it?," Kireyev said.

Poster 12"x18" Dragunov Sniper Rifle SVD Manual AK-47 Russian Soviet Weapons pic.twitter.com/oXSjfo31Yr  Nowroz Raisani (@Out_going381) 10  2016 .

Of course, his ire must be taken with a grain of salt: the rifle's late inventor, General Mikhail Kalashnikov, never owned a patent to the weapon and although his legacy, Kalashnikov Concern, continues to insist that its manufacturers obtain proper licensing, the firearm is produced in over two dozen countries. As he told interviewer Michael Hodges, "I invented a weapon to save the motherland, to save the state from fascismmy career has been dedicated to my country."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  William Browder, the UK millionaire of US origin , is trying to stop the showing of a documentary revealing his alleged involvement in a scheme that resulted in theft of some $230 million of Russian taxpayers' money as a result of tax evasion scheme, US media reported.

On Monday, the Newseum museum, located in Washington DC, is expected to show the documentary dubbed "The Magnitsky Act." The film focuses on Sergei Magnitsky, a tax and legal consultant for Browder's Hermitage Capital Management, and shows that Magnitsky's boss was involved in the multimillion tax evasion processes.

According to the Foreign Policy magazine, managers of the Newseum have already received demands from Browder's lawyers, as well as from Magnitsky's family to cancel the screening of the film.
Does that mean that Turkeys decades-long policy of keeping Montreux intact will be changing? the outlet wonders.

Turkish officials are trying to get an answer to that question as well; something they should get used to, since it seems Turkeys policy changes have become to depend on the two lips of one person, it further suggests.

However it proffers that it will be highly unlikely to see any deviation from the imperatives of the Montreux treaty. Even though countries like Romania continue to push for a forward presence, in the Black Sea.

The newspaper though suggests a formula that ensures NATO presence in the Sea without violating the convention.

Turkey could send several of its warships in the Black Sea operating under the banner of a NATO mission. That could secure a NATO presence there without violating the Montreux Convention.

But Turkey can find it hard to convince its allies on such a formula, since some members wont like the idea of NATO getting embroiled in a collision course between Turkey and Russia in the Black Sea, it says.
XpressWest also indicated that its "biggest challenge" was a de facto federal government requirement that high-speed trains must be manufactured in the United States to secure regulatory approvals.

At the same time, the company recognized that "as everyone knows, there are no high-speed trains manufactured in the United States."

All these explanations hold no water and are nothing but an an artificial barrier to scuttle the implementation of the project, according to Tratas.

He said that "in this case, the US is concerned over its dependence on China" and that "Washington fears that if China enters the railway car market, it will get an instrument to exert pressure on the US during the so-called trade wars."

"Despite the fact that China and the United States remains major economic partners, the "trade wars" between them have been in place in the past 15 years. In the latest project, I think that the differences are related to Washington's reluctance to let the Chinese enter the strategically important market," Tratas said.
Lucky Cocktail wore down pacesetter Duncs Diamond in the final strides to steal the spotlight in the $10,000 Fillies & Mares Preferred 2 Handicap Pace featured at Georgian Downs on Saturday night (June 11).

Duncs Diamond fired to the lead from the outside post six and carved out panels of :28, :57.1 and 1:25.1 before feeling heavy pressure from Lucky Cocktail, who had launched her first over bid approaching the half-mile mark. In a battle to the wire, Lucky Cocktail gained the slight advantage for the neck victory in 1:54.3. Travis Henry drove the four-year-old daughter of Camluck, who paid $7.30 to win. Eve Marie Seelster finished two lengths behind in third after sprinting home from the back of the pack.

Lucky Cocktail is now a 12-time winner this year and is three-for-five since being claimed in late-April at Rideau Carleton Raceway for $10,000 by Bruno Lepage of Beauharnois, Que. The Richard Moreau trainee equalled her lifetime mark that she had taken in her last Preferred 2 victory a month ago over Flamboro Downs.

Making her debut for new connections off a claim, Ninette B ($10.20) fanned wide off cover and charged down the homestretch to win the $7,500 Preferred 3 in 1:55 flat for driver Alfie Carroll and trainer Victor Puddy. The six-year-old Stonebridge Regal mare was claimed for $12,500 on June 6 at Mohawk Racetrack by Gordon McDonald and Christopher Boland, both of Ottawa, Ont.

The Alliance Spring Series continued on Saturday night for $6,000 claiming pacers with Bob McClure driving three of the four second-leg winners. McClure was victorious with Deucette ($4.80), You Mach Me Crazy ($3.60) and Lively Freddie ($6.20), while the other division went to Ok Iceman ($2.60) and Carroll. Duecette, You Mach Me Crazy and Ok Iceman were all repeat winners in the series, while Lively Freddie had missed by just a neck to Ok Iceman last week.

To view Saturday's harness racing results, click on the following link: Saturday Results - Georgian Downs.
Trot Insider has learned that longtime harness racing industry participant Guy Polillo of Brantford, Ont. has passed away after a long and valiant battle with cancer. He was in his 75th year.

Born into a farming family in southern Italy, Polillo immigrated to Canada in 1955 at the age of 13. He worked as a shoe shine boy in downtown Brantford, Ont., eventually buying the business and turning it into and operating as Guy's Shoe Shine through the early 1960s while also working at the Massey Ferguson factory. He eventually sold the shoe shine business and turned to sales in aluminum siding before co-founding Cutlass Aluminum. Polillo then refocused his efforts in the 1980s to his successful renovation firm Classic Home Improvement, eventually managed by his son Paul, a former professional hockey player.

During his time in Canada, Polillo was heavily involved with Standardbreds. A longtime breeder and owner, Polillo was involved with hundreds of horses over five decades after first buying into a Cole Tar yearling filly named Tarish, bred by Harry Rutherford, in the late 1960s. Polillo built up his breeding operation with his wife Carolyn on a 100-acre property in Brantford.

Polillo had idolized top European breeder Jean Pierre Dubois, who had success bringing North American maternal bloodlines to France, and dreamed of bringing an Italian influence to the genetics of the Standardbred breed in Ontario. In 2009, he purchased trotting stallion Cornaro Dasolo, one of Ontario's few studs with strong European bloodlines.

Devoted and loving husband to Carolyn (nee Robertson) for 52 years, they began a love that started in 1955 and have been inseparable ever since. Cherished father to Peter (Maria), Paul (Marcia), and Anne (Scott). Dearly loved brother of Carmelina Boncoddo (Giovanni - predeceased), Tonina and Gennarino Lamacchia (predeceased), Anna and Manlio Alfano, and Franco and Maria Polillo. Loving Nonno to Guy, Christian, Alexander, Chiara, Sophia, and Sarah. Guy is survived by many loving nieces, nephews, and cousins in Canada and Calabria, Italy.

Guy was a tireless worker who devoted himself to making a better life for his family. His passion for business, farming, horses, and the restoration of his ancestral home in Spezzano Piccolo, Italy was limitless. Heartfelt thanks to the VON, The Stedman Hospice, and CCAC for their compassion and care. A Memorial Visitation will be held at the Dwayne D. Budgell Funeral Home, 1105 Rest Acres Road, on Sunday June 26, 2016 from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. In accordance with Guy's request, cremation has already taken place. Charitable donations, in lieu of flowers, can be made to Brant Community Foundation-The Guy and Carolyn Polillo Fund for Programs and Activities for Children Affected by Cancer. For further detail, contact Joanne Lewis at 519-756-2499 or [email protected]

Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Guy Polillo.
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It's Election season and our editor's mailbox is overflowing. Who do your neighbors support? Read about it here.
Maddy Anderson has been crying all week.

The Mark Morris senior was thinking about her friends, who (after Saturday) will scatter in different directions.

Maddy is headed to college in Portland. Others are off to Colorado and Lower Columbia College. She and her six friends have been together throughout high school; some have known each other since kindergarten.

Youre having so much fun and then you blink and realize, Oh my God, Im graduating!  she said.

The moment was a bittersweet one for all them.

Its not very happy, said friend Victoria Carpenter. Youre leaving all your friends.

Nathalie Keilwitz described the feeling as melancholy.

Im glad to continue my studies in an area that will help me get my dream job as a pediatric occupational therapist, she said. (But) I dont know, something about change ....

That something is the way it makes you scared to leave behind the stability of the friends, teachers and schedule youve known for the last four years, she described.

I always take spontaneity and embrace it, she said.

But nows she left thinking, How did my mom prepare me for this? she joked.

Taylan Hinton, too, was ready to embrace her future. She would bid her 6 a.m. alarm clock good riddance  if only she wasnt heading off to Air Force boot camp in August.

Her friends cuddled close to her in the bleachers at Longview Memorial Stadium and remembered their favorite moments in high school: going to lunch together every Wednesday for the past year.

The four friends would drive to Nipps, McDonalds and Wendys together.

Id scream and wed sing in the car, Taylan remembered fondly.

For others, even though their own memories of high school are sweet, the future couldnt come soon enough.

Its about time, said Jayrod Mitchell, 18.

Jayrod said hes been working up to 30 hours a week at his familys convenience store in Lexington all year, and hes ready to become a full-time longshoreman.

Student speaker Jesus Barrios said it was that kind of hard work and commitment that made graduation so rewarding. On Saturday, 191 seniors graduated, having earned more than $227,000 in scholarships.

Really think about what each of you has overcome to get to this point. Give it the attention it deserves, Jesus said.

Again and again, Jesus thanked the family and friends who helped get their seniors to Saturdays ceremony.

Austin White, Kepano Selting and Rowen Seals joked that if it werent for their parents expectations to be at Saturdays ceremony, they wouldnt have attended.

They said they donned the cap and gown to make their parents proud.

My mom said shed kill me if I didnt come, Kepano joked.

Thats what my dad said! Austin joked back.

Still, graduation didnt faze Austin.

Ill feel it tomorrow, he joked.
The men who led a failed recall effort against PUD Commissioner Ned Piper may be reimbursed by the utilitys insurer for some or all of the $44,787 they paid to cover his legal fees, and they may get additional money to cover their own legal expenses as well.

The claims assert that two PUD officials encouraged and guided the men to file the recall.

Attorneys said they believe they have reached a tentative settlement last week after Bill Ammons and Doug Irvine filed two separate claims for damages against the PUD. The utility hopes the settlement  details of which have not been disclosed yet  will close the books on the recall saga.

Ammons, Irvine and Chuck Wallace filed a recall petition against Piper in 2013, but they withdrew it after a Cowlitz County Superior Court judge refused to grant them more time to provide evidence of their claims. Judge Stephen Warning also ordered them to pay for Pipers legal fees tied to what Warning called the frivolous recall.

The PUDs insurance company, Ace Group/Chubb Limited, has negotiated for the last three months with the petitioners, according to heavily redacted (blacked out) documents The Daily News obtained through a state public records request. Dale Kamerrer, an Olympia attorney representing Ace Group, said the deal is meant to settle the claims out of court.

The insurance company basically said, We dont want this case. Cut to the chase and lets get out of this,  Kamerrer said.

Kamerrer and Olympia attorney Barnett Kalikow, who represents Ammons and Irvine, both declined to release details of the tentative settlement pending signatures from several parties.

Kalikow argued his clients shouldnt have to pay Pipers legal fees because they were essentially pushed into the recall by two PUD insiders, Commissioner Kurt Anagnostu and a second man, whose name was redacted from documents disclosed to The Daily News.

Both claims have identical language explaining the rationale: PUD Board member Anagnostou and (name withheld) induced claimants to file a recall petition against Ned Piper that was drafted by Messrs Anagnostou and/or (name withheld) while acting in their official capacity. Messrs Anagnostou and (name withheld) assured claimants that such a petition was complete and its (sic) legality was a slam dunk. 

Although Claimants were dissatisfied with the performance of Mr. Piper and believed that he had abused his office in the manner set forth in the censure petition, they would not have signed and filed the recall petition but for the assurances of Anagnostou and (name withheld) based ... on their knowledge of the facts as insiders of the PUD, the claim continued.

The PUD blacked out the second persons name, citing Washington state law protecting the identity of local government whistleblowers. However, Piper alleged in a court memo that the PUDs attorney at the time, Paul Brachvogel, was the John Doe whistleblower. Brachvogel denied any involvement in the failed recall.

Ammons declined to discuss details of the settlement but said he is satisfied with its outcome.

The little bit of money we got coming is just basically our own money. ... We was right from the start of this thing  you have to also respect us because we were right in what we did, and Ive got document after document of what went on, the Kelso barber said.

Ammons claim with the PUD is for $5,823 in damages for his own legal fees. Irvine claimed $52,732 in damages, which includes his own legal fees and Pipers expenses.

In the end, Ammons said he paid Irvine back for half the $44,787 Irvine paid to Pipers attorney. Irvine declined to confirm this or comment for this story. Documents show Wallace paid at least $3,333 in his own legal expenses, but its not clear whether he contributed to Pipers costs. He did not file a claim with the utility.

Whatever settlement is reached wont impact ratepayers because Ace Group no longer insures the utility.

The PUD does not have a running count for how much it has spent on the recall effort, but General Manager Steve Kern said at least $50,000 worth of legal expenses were not covered by insurance. Past General Manager Don McMaster previously said that unsubstantiated attacks against Mr. Brachvogel and others have cost the (utility) more than $100,000 in attorney fees. The (PUD) has reimbursed these fees as provided for by law.

It was not clear at the time of print whether that $100,000 was reimbursed by the insurance company.

The current settlement negotiations will cost less than $1,000 in legal fees, Kern estimates, and he doesnt expect it to raise the utilitys current insurance rates.

We dont think there is a large risk associated with that because we have re-shopped our insurance coverage here recently, he said. Its not something that I expect to hit our customers with a big premium.

Piper said news of Ammons and Irvines claims prompted him to file claim directly with the insurance company for about $6,000 of legal costs.

I was kind of the victim here, and it kind of pissed me off, frankly, Piper said, of the petitioners effort to recoup money. Piper said he hasnt seen those funds yet, but is confident the utilitys customers wont have to pay.

Kern said he hopes the settlement brings the matter to a close.

The good news is this is under control now and its behind us. And I want the customers to understand that I dont think this will be a concern that this kind of issue will happen again and were really moving forward, he said.
A 10-person committee of scientists will meet in Kelso June 21 to begin a complex study that boils down to a simple question: Should the Spirit Lake drainage tunnel be abandoned in favor of a natural outlet?

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has appointed the committee to develop what it is calling a decision making framework to address managing the lake and Toutle River system north of Mount St. Helens.

The committee will not make recommendations regarding the best engineering solution. Instead, it will identify gaps in information and recommend a framework for decision-making by the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the area.

This effort is a critical piece to the complex effort to provide for Spirit Lake outflow within this dynamic, volcanic landscape, said Gina Owens, supervisor of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, in which Spirit Lake is located.

The debris avalanche from the May 18, 1980, eruption of Mount St. Helens blocked the lakes old outlet into the north fork of the Toutle River. Scientists determined that the blockage would fail if the lake were allowed to rise. The ensuing flood would cause flooding unprecedented in the history of the United States along the Toutle, Cowlitz and lower Columbia rivers, the U.S. Geological Survey wrote at the time.

To prevent the flood, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cut a 1.5-mile-long tunnel through Harrys Ridge to let the lake drain into South Coldwater Creek, from where it eventually flows into the north Toutle. Cutting a channel into the lake through the debris blockage was considered too risky at the time, considering the active nature of the volcano and unstable nature of the blockage itself.

A section of the tunnel earlier this year needed repairs to an unstable section of rock, and the Forest Service has spent $7 million repairing the tunnel since it was completed in 1985. The ongoing need for repairs and hopes to restore salmon runs to Spirit Lake prompted the Washington congressional delegation to ask the Forest Service to re-evaluate how best to manage the lake.

The June 21 meeting will be held at the Kelso Red Lion Hotel. A press release and associated web pages did not make clear the time of the meeting.

The chairman of the committee is Gregory B. Baecher, a professor of engineering at the University of Maryland.
tech2 News Staff

Apple just can't catch a break with the US government. Apple recently locked horns with the FBI by refusing to crack open the gunman's iPhone involved in the shooting at San Bernardino, California. The matter was laid to rest after FBI outsourced it to a contractor, whose name is closely guarded, and they managed to crack open the phone.

Now, the iPhone is going through an existential crisis as the Democratic Leader of the US House of Representatives for the 114th Congress Nancy Pelosi has gone on to say that Apple (and Steve Jobs) don't deserve much credit for the iPhone because most of its features are based on federal investment, research and breakthroughs.

Pelosi made these comments during a hearing to help draft the Democratic Party platform, a multi-day event to prepare for the Democratic National Convention in July, says a report by Mashable.

The report also quotes Pelosi, as she she held up an iPhone (presumably a 6S or 6S Plus), saying, "Anybody here have a smartphone? In this smartphone, almost everything came from federal investments and research. GPS, created by the military, flatscreens, LLD [sic , most probably means LCD], digital camera, wireless data compression, research into metal alloys for strength and lightweight, voice recognition  the list goes on and on. They say Steve Jobs did a good idea designing it and putting it together. Federal research invented it."

The report adds how this comment has already begun to draw parallels with Barack Obama's famous 'you didn't build that speech' in 2012 where he proclaimed that no one has built a business on their own, the government played a big part in it. To quote from his speech, he had said, "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If youve got a business. you didnt build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didnt get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet." This again questions whether the credit of 'inventing' the internet should go to Tim Berners-Lee, or again, the US government.

Coming back to Pelosi, she referred to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) saying that Steve Jobs' contribution was designing and putting the iPhone together - but Federal research invented it.

An AAAS spokeswoman clarified to CNET that an infographic prepared by Association of American Universities was being misconstrued by Pelosi. She said that the infographic merely illustrated the importance of federally funded research and its contribution to some of the technology elements of the iPhone. The spokeswoman added that Congresswoman Pelosi was mistaken in her reference to AAAS.

A spokesman for Pelosi, Drew Hammill told CNET that Pelosi knew Steve Jobs personally as a friend and means no disrespect to his legacy. "But the point she was making is a valid one. Leader Pelosi believes that Steve Jobs and his colleagues at Apple, deserve enormous credit for taking federally-backed innovations off the shelf, refining them, commercializing them and turning them into a beautiful device that changed the world," Hammill says in the report.

Well, with the iPhone being such an earth shattering development in the world of smartphones, it's hard to believe Steve Jobs didn't build that, isn't it?
Mais pourquoi nos ancetres se compliquaient-ils la vie avec leurs groupes WhatsApp ?

par Xavier de La Porte
Joypurhat UP chairman dies from attack wounds

A newly-elected chairman of Bhadsha union in Sadar upazila, who suffered injuries in an attack by miscreants on June 4, died at a private hospital in the capital on Sunday morning. The deceased, AK Azad, succumbed to his injuries at Popular Hospital in Dhaka at about 6:00am, said Officer-in-charge of Sadar Police Station Farid Hossain. Earlier on June 4, a gang of miscreants attacked Azad near his house at Konchkuri village when he was returning home by a motorbike from Durgadah Bazar at about 10:00pm. The attackers hacked Azad and later fired at him, leaving him seriously injured. Azad was rushed to Joypurhat Sadar Adhunik Hospital from where he was shifted to Bogra Shahid Ziaur Rahman Medical College Hospital. As his condition deteriorated, he was shifted to Dhaka. -- Joypurhat, June 12 (UNB)
Turkey admits no visa-free EU travel deal by July 1

AFP, The Hague :

Turkey's Europe minister has admitted there is no chance of completing a deal on visa-free travel to the EU by the July 1 deadline, during a visit to the Hague.

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 Turkey has yet to fulfil all of the conditions laid down by the European Commission for the visa agreement, including changes to Ankara's anti-terrorism laws to meet EU concerns over human rights.

Turkey's European Affairs Minister Omer Celik admitted the July 1 deadline would be missed in an interview late Friday with Dutch broadcaster NOS -- the first official such acknowledgement by Ankara.

"If we are realistic, we are not going to achieve this date," he said.

Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka also said on Friday that the July 1 deadline was not feasible, a view widely shared in Brussels.

"But we think it must happen as soon as possible," the Turkish minister said.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last month that the visa exemption must be introduced by October at the latest. Ankara has threatened to scrap the migrant deal with the EU altogether if visa-free travel is not forthcoming.

Celik said he believed Turkey had met all the necessary criteria and that there was "no question of making any change that would reduce our capacity to fight terrorism".

Once Turkey has fulfilled the conditions laid down, the European Parliament would still have to give its approval to the deal.




CIA head says secret 9/11 report not evidence of Saudi complicity

Reuters, Dubai :

CIA chief John Brennan said on Sunday he expects 28 classified pages of a US congressional report into the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States to be published, absolving Saudi Arabia of any responsibility.

"I think the 28 pages will be published and I support their publication and everyone will see the evidence that the Saudi government had nothing to do with it," Brennan said in an interview with Saudi-owned Arabiya TV. His comments were dubbed into Arabic.

The withheld section of the 2002 report is central to a dispute over whether Americans should be able to sue the Saudi government, a key US ally, for damages.

The US Senate passed a bill on May 17 allowing the families of September 11 victims to do so, setting up a potential showdown with the White House, which has threatened a veto.

Saudi Arabia denies providing any support for the 19 hijackers - most of whom were Saudi citizens - who killed nearly 3,000 people in the September 11 attacks. Riyadh strongly objects to the bill.

It has said it might sell up to $750 billion in US securities and other American assets if it became law. Brennan called the 28-page section merely a "preliminary review."

"It was found later, according to the results of the report, that there was no link between the Saudi government as a state or as an institution or even senior Saudi officials to the September 11 attacks," he added.

The Office of the US Director of National Intelligence is reviewing the material to see whether it can be declassified.
MoU signed between AIUB, Spain UAH

Campus Report :

As a part of the participation at the IAUP Semi-Annual Meeting 2016, American International University - Bangladesh [AIUB] has undertaken to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the host university, the University of Alcala [UAH] in Madrid, Spain recently.

Vice Chancellor of AIUB, Dr Carmen Z Lamagna, and the President of UAH, Fernando GalvanReula signed the MOU on behalf of the respective University. The ceremony concluded with the promise of both institutions working proactively to realize the full potential of the collaboration and moving forward with the implementation of it soon.

The collaboration covers a multitude of academic activities to be pursued by the universities, ranging from teaching to research to exchange programs, all of which enables and encourages cultural diversity, personal and professional development of both its faculty members and students.


GUB holds freshers' orientation

Campus Report :

The orientation program for the newly enrolled students of Summer Semester-2016 of Green University of Bangladesh (GUB) was held recently at the university premises. GUB Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Md. Golam Samdani Fakir presided over the program while Ejaj Ahmed, President of Bangladesh Youth Leadership Center was present as chief guest.

Md. ShahidUllah, Treasurer and Director of Student Affairs, Lt Gen Md. Mainul Islam (LPR), Registrar, Prof MM Khan, Adviser of Green Business School, Prof Dr Golam Ahmed Faruqui, Dean, Green Business School, Prof Dr Md. Fayzur Rahman, Dean, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Prof SMK Nazmul Haque, Controller of Examinations, Md. AshrafulAnowar, Director of Account and Finance, Chairpersons of different departments, faculty members, guests and newly admitted students were present in the program.

The orientation program included introduction session, presentation session and briefing session. The presentation session focused on academic systems and rules, advising and registration process, grading systems, result processing, necessary information about GUB, different clubs and co-curricular activities. At the outset, Register Lt Gen Md. Mainul Islam (LPR) highlighted the background of the University, progress of the construction work of GUB Permanent Campus, made the freshers aware of its rules and regulations and also focused on the university's achievements by a nice PowerPoint Presentation.

Chief guest Ejaj Ahmed asked the students to prepare themselves as complete human being for facing the challenges of the 21st century. He also advised them to learn from their mistakes.

GUB VC Prof Dr Md. Golam Samdani Fakir welcomed the newly enrolled students and encouraged them to prepare themselves as global citizens. The opportunities are global and the competitions are also global. Our students will also have to be globally competent to grip those opportunities. Otherwise, these opportunities will be gripped by the people of other countries and the jobs of our country will be occupied by other countries. He said if the students love for themselves and also love for their parents they had to study hard for presenting the best gift for their parents. The best gift could be not only higher academic performance but also preparing as a complete human being. He also mentioned that our students need to be critical thinker and problem solver to develop their career and they also have to be competent with the English language and Information Technology.
Tanveer with Sumaiya Shimu in Eid special play

Sheikh Arif Bulbon :On the occasion of coming Eid-ul-Fitr, popular TV actor and director Shahriar Nazim Joy has made a special play titled Chander Moto Meye to telecast on Bangladesh Television (BTV). Joy has also written its story. Popular TV actress Sumaiya Shimu worked with promising TV actor and model Tanveer Khan in this play for the first time. While talking about making the play Joy told this correspondent, Story of the play is very nice. I hope most of the viewers will watch the play in Eid. For this reason, I have made the play to telecast on BTV. Both Shimu and Tanveer acted well. I believe viewers will enjoy their acting on the screen.Sumaiya Shimu said, I agreed to work in the play because I liked its story and my role. I hope viewers will enjoy the play.Tanveer shared his feelings by this way, It is my great luck that I got the opportunity to work with Sumaiya Shimu under Joy Bhais direction. Both of them cooperated me well as I could easily perform in the play. I am very much optimistic about the play.Recently Tanveer has returned from Nepal after finish shooting of BU Shuvos Eid serial titled Tomar Chokh-e Duchokh Rekhey. On the other hand, Sumaiya Shimu has been engaged with acting in Eid plays, telefilms and serials one after another. She has already worked under directions of Kobori Sarwar, Ferdous Hasan Rana, Parvez Amin, among others plays.
Testing lab 'NUSDAT-UTS' receives BAB accreditation

Economic Reporter :

The country's first ever testing lab for electronics and electrical good's quality 'NUSDAT-UTS (Universal Testing Services)' has officially received accreditation from the Bangladesh Accreditation Board (BAB) on Thursday.

With the aim of testing the quality of electronics and electrical products, the country's first ever testing lab NUSDAT Universal Testing Services (UTS), owned by local technology conglomerate Walton Group kicked off its journey in 2015.

Industries Minister Amir Hossain Amu handed over the BAB accreditation certificate to Walton Group's Executive Director (Policy, HRM and Admin) SM Zahid Hasan at a programme on "World Accreditation Day" at the conference room of Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI) in the capital on Thursday.

The minister attended the function as the chief guest while DCCI President Hossain Khaled was present as special guest.

The programme was presided over by BAB Chairman Dr Altaf Hossain, while Senior Industries Secretary Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan, Director General of BAB Abu Abdullah and Director David Paul Khandaker, among others, were present.

Addressing the function, Amir Hossain Amu said Bangladesh is moving ahead with a vision of turning into a middle-income country by 2021 and a developed country by 2041. Thus, the country's present export figure would have to be increased through expediting industrialization process, he said adding, "Exports would not be increased if we do not manufacture quality products."

With the help of accreditation bodies in Bangladesh, exporters will get facilities of getting higher price in the international market, the minister said.

Apart from NUSDAT-UTS lab of Walton Group, the industries minister also handed over BAB accreditation certificates to four other institutes, including Julphar Bangladesh Ltd, Quitex Solution, Amber Textile Services Ltd, and Concrete Innovation and Application Centre.

NUSDAT-UTS, established at Chandra in Gazipur, has achieved accreditation certificate from BAB for meeting the requirements of ISO/IEC 17025:2005.

Earlier, there was no lab in Bangladesh for testing the quality of electronics products. As a result, the exporters of consumer based electronics products had to get quality-testing certificate from the testing institutions of different countries, for which they had to count both huge time and local currency.

With the advent of NUSDAT-UTS in Bangladesh, the local exporters of electronics and electrical products will now easily get the testing certificates of their export goods without wasting their valuable time and spending huge amount of foreign currency.
Affluent urged to come forward beside poor

Chittagong Bureau :

Organising Secretary of central committee of BNP and General secretary of Chittagong city BNP Dr. Shahdat Hossain called upon the affluent of the society to come forward beside the poors and destitute during the holy month of Ramadan and Eidul Fitr.

He said the commodity prices during Ramadan goes up unhinderedly during Ramadan month and the increase of commodity prices exceeds previous records this year. He blamed the govt for failure to control the market prices irrespective of commitments. He said the prices of iftar and sehri items alarmingly increased caused unbearable sufferings to the consumers. Dr. Shahdat disclosed it while addressing the distribution of Iftar and Sehri commodities to the poor of the society at Firinghee Bazaar Community Centre hall in city on Tuesday evening as chief guest. BNP leader further said poor, less fortunate people of the society are mostly hapless and affluent section should come beside them.

Ward BNP senior jt. Secretary Zakir Hossain presided the programmes of distribution of iftar items.

Among others, city BNP former religious Affairs secretary Md Ali, former councilor Didadur Rahman Lavu, MA Halim, Jahangir Alam, Yasin chowdhury Liton spoke on the occasion, sources said.


Cracks appear in ruling alliance over killings

UNB, Dhaka :A prominent minority platform's leader has alleged that neither the ruling party or ruling alliance leaders stood by the family members of minority people who were killed recently excluding Pabna.The leaders said this at a joint meeting of 14-party alliance with Awami League associate bodies, minority groups and freedom-fighters platforms on Sunday. Partners of the Awami League-led governing alliance underscored the need for forging national unity to face militancy in the country."We have to build national unity against the secret killers. It will be impossible to face them without forging national unity," Shirin Akhter, general secretary of Information Minister Hasanul Haque Inu's Jatiya Samajtantric Dal, said. Addressing the meeting, Workers Party general secretary Fazle Hossain Badsha said the people of the country are realizing that militancy must be resisted."Our activists have to employ themselves to organize the people in this regard. If we can unite the people, the secretkillers wouldn't get a place in the society," he added. Hindu-Bouddha-Christian Oikya Parishad general secretary Rana Dasgupta said "several times political parties gave us various assurance but these all are lip-service." "We urge all to take up proper political programmes. Otherwise, we don't know how Bangladesh will overcome the present situation only through lip-service," he added.He criticized Awami League and its alliance leaders for not standing with the family members of minority people who were killed recently, except in Pabna. Rana Dasgupta observed that it is possible to wage mass movement against secret killers with taking all political parties in the side.Soon after his speech, the 14-party alliance coordinator and Health Minister Mohammad Nasim reacted saying "Why didn't you talk against the killers-BNP-Jamaat? Why you need all parties? Here is the problem of the Oikya Parishad." The Minister sought public support to resist militancy and secret killers in the country saying "Help us like in the past. We will defeat the evil force taking the people of the country on our side."
MP Mustafiz asked to surrender in court by June 20

UNB, Dhaka :

The High Court on Sunday asked Awami League MP Mustafizur Rahman to surrender before the lower court, rejecting his anticipatory bail petition in connection with the case filed for assaulting Banshkhali Upazila election officer.

An HC bench comprising Justice M Enayetur Rahim and

Justice Amir Hossain passed the order when he surrendered before the court and sought bail for him. Senior lawyer Abdul Baset Majumdar stood for the petitioner, while Deputy Attorney General Sheikh AKM Maniruzzaman Kabir represented the state.

Mustafizur Rahman, an MP from Chittagong-16, and his aides allegedly attacked Zahid at the UNO office on June 1 over the appointment of presiding officer and polling officers for the election.

Chittagong regional election officer M Abdul Baten said Mustafizur Rahman beat the upazila election officer after he refused to appoint the MP's followers as presiding officer and polling officers.

The Election Commission on that day postponed election to 14 Union Parishads of Banshkhali after local Awami League MP Mustafizur Rahman Chowdhury assaulted the election officer. On June 3, officer-in-charge of Banshkhali police station, Md Alamgir Hossain filed a case against MP Mustafizur Rahman.
Approval of 3 pvt medical colleges suspended

Staff Reporter :

The Health Ministry has suspended all activities of three private medical colleges on the charge of violation of medical rules and regulations.

The colleges are Northern Medical College in Rangpur, City Medical College at Gazipur and Nightingale Medical College at Ashulia, Dhaka.

Health Minister Mohammad Nasim said it on Sunday after meeting on private medical colleges in the conference room of the Health and Family Welfare Ministry.

The students of those medical colleges could, however, continue their education in other private medical colleges running under nearby universities.

Besides, the ministry suspended the admission process for 2016-17 years of Southern Medical College in Chittagong for violating the rules. Besides, seat capacity of BGC Medical College was reduced from 125 to 75 for the same reason.

Mohammad Nasim said, the ministry would strictly monitor the activities of medical colleges. "No institute will be allowed to break rules and regulations. If the medical colleges fail to uphold the standard of education, it could not produce good physicians. We never permit any medical college to distribute certificates only. The government will monitor closely the educational quality of the medical colleges."

Mohammad Nasim, who chaired the meeting, instructed the surveillance committee to submit inspection reports of all the 68 private medical colleges within next three months.

Health Minister also said that in future, permission, renewal and increase of seats will be finalized on the basis of the separate inspection reports carried by the health ministry, universities, and Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council.

Dhaka University Vice-Chancellor AAMS Arefin Siddique, Additional Secretary of Health Ministry Biman Kumar Saha, Director General of Health Department Professor Dr. Deen Muhammad Nurul Haque, BMDC President Professor Dr. Muhammad Shahidullah and the Deans of Medical Science Faculties of Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi and Syhet Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, and the higher officials of the ministry and health department, were present in the meeting.
Militants` link yet to confirm: IGP

IO of case changed, two on seven-day remand

Staff Reporter :Inspector General of Police (IGP) AKM Shahidul Hoque has said it is not clear whether militants killed Superintendent of Police Babul Akhtar's wife Mahmuda Khanam Mitu."Probe is still underway. Until we progress further, it can't be told who are behind the killing," said the police chief while addressing as the chief guest a meeting at the shooting club auditorium at Dampara Police Lines of the port city of Chittagong on Sunday.Seeking cooperation from all professional strata, Shahidul Haque requested them to give information about militant activities to the law enforcers. Chittagong Metropolitan Police Commissioner Md Iqbal Bahar presided over the meeting which was addressed, among others, by Chittagong City Corporation Mayor AJM Nasir Uddin and City Awami League President ABM Mahiuddin Chowdhury. "As police is a state force, there is no opportunity to weaken the morale of police", he said referring to attacks on police or their family members.Meanwhile, the investigation officer (IO) of Mitu murder case has been changed to gear up the investigation.Anwar Hossain, Additional Deputy Commissioner (public relations) of Chittagong Metro Police said, "Md Kamruzzaman, Senior Assistant Commissioner of Detective Branch (DB) of CMP, has been given the charge of the case in place of DB Inspector Kazi Rakib Uddin."The IO change has been made following an order taken by CMP Commissioner Iqbal Bahar on Saturday night, said the CMP Spokesperson.Besides, a court in Chittagong on Sunday approved seven days' interrogation in custody for each of the suspects Abu Nosur Gunnu and Shah Zaman alias Robin over the killing of Mitu. Police had demanded 10-day demand for each of the suspects. The court granted them seven days' remand after hearing.Mahmuda Akhtar was murdered in the southern port city of Chittagong on June 7 while on her way to drop her six-year-old son to a school bus at the GEC intersection.
2nd autopsy report finds sign of sexual abuse

Staff Reporter :

The second autopsy of Comilla Victoria College student Sohagi Jahan Tonu has found evidence of "sexual intercourse" before her death.

Dr Kamoda Proshad Saha, Head of Comilla Medical College Hospital's Forensic Department who headed Tonu's second autopsy, confirmed it to the Media on Saturday.

"The body was highly decomposed and, as such, the cause of death could be determined by circumstantial evidences and further investigation," Dr Kamoda Proshad said.

Replying to a question whether the girl was raped before her death, he said, "It could be understood from the sexual intercourse." "The autopsy board didn't find any injury mark in her body as the autopsy was done 10 days after the death and the body got decomposed. So, the cause of death couldn't be mentioned," said Dr Proshad. He also suggested law enforcers to conduct further investigation to ascertain the cause of her death. The three-member board of Comilla Medical College submitted the second autopsy report to the CID at the latter's office about 11am on Sunday. Faruk Hossain, a staff of the Forensic Department, went to the Comilla office of the CID about 10.45am and handed over the report to Assistant Sub-Inspector Mosharraf Hossain. On June 7, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) submitted the full report of the DNA test, conducted on Tonu's body, to the Medical Board formed for her second autopsy.

Earlier, a court here ordered the CID to give the DNA report of the two samples-teeth and spermatozoa-out of total seven samples to the Medical Board upon pleas filed by the Board.

On March 30, Tonu's body was exhumed from her grave for collecting DNA sample, fresh postmortem and proper investigation into the case.

Later, members of Crime Scene Unit of CID brought the DNA and other samples of teeth, nails and body to Dhaka for examination. On April 4, doctors of Forensic Department at Comilla Medical College Hospital in their first autopsy, conducted by Dr Sharmin Sultana, did not find any cause of death or any evidence of rape before Tonu's death.

Tonu was a second year History Department student of Comilla Victoria College. Her body was found about 400 yards from her house inside Comilla Cantonment on the night of March 20, according to her family members.

The murder of Tonu created a huge uproar of protest throughout the country.
FBCCI do what is best for the country

THE Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) sighted many shortcomings in the proposed budget for fiscal 2016-17 saying it did not reflect their concerns about various tax regimes they made in their recommendation to National Board of Revenue (NBR) before the announcement of the budget. The FBCCI believe that the government should accept their tax proposals and other suggestions regarding bank borrowing and funding of other mega projects. It will make private sector's growth easier to achieve higher targets. Terming the budget as 'most complicated ever', the chief of the apex chamber has demanded review of the sensitive issues at a post budget press conference on Saturday listing the areas where it believe readjustment is necessary.

The Federation particularly calls for review of the income sheet projection particularly for micro to medium industries to make VAT system business-friendly. As the country is undergoing economic stagnation, the apex body said that the government should promote business-friendly climate by easing VAT system to the business community.

The FBCCI Chief made clear that business people want to pay tax but the NBR officials must be more cooperative if they want to increase government revenue. He said thousands of people still remain out of tax net and in FBCCI's view NBR has no credible initiative to bring them under the tax net. If the taxpaying system turned digitized taxpayers can pay tax without hassle. The Federation called for fixing 0.5 percent package VAT on retailers and small shops and 3 percent turnover tax on businesses with a turnover between Tk 36 lakh and Tk 1.5 crore. It also said businesses in manufacturing and service sectors should be charged 15 percent VAT on their 26.67 percent value addition, which will result in 4 percent VAT at the end. The FBCCI fear that if their proposals are not accepted income generation from VAT and developing SMEs based industrialization may face collapse.

The apex chamber called for speed up in implementation of mega projects, particularly power generation projects. The process of investment, industrialization and employment generation will rapidly grow if big projects in energy and power sectors and other physical infrastructures are properly implemented. The apex body sounded critical on proposed refinancing of Tk 2,000 crore for state-owned banks; which have already lost their capital in different scams. In its view such steps will encourage further irregularities in the banking system. It suggested that no new investment would come in the garment sector if corporate tax is not brought down to 10 percent from the proposed 20 percent.

FBCCI must do everything to put the government on right track. We have no political opposition party either in the parliament or outside, so nothing to be expected from others.
Modi must be aware that fighting terrorism must not mean killing democracy

Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not name Pakistan but had a clear message in his speech on June 9 to the US Congress: Terrorism "is incubated in India's neighbourhood," he said, stressing that those who harbour, support or sponsor terrorists, and separate religion from terrorism must be "isolated".

In a speech regularly interrupted by applause, Mr Modi did not mention China either but at as concerns grow for disputes over the South China Sea, he said "India also helps ensure security of the sea lanes and commerce and freedom of navigation on seas."

The PM is the fifth Indian leader since 1985 to address a joint session of the US Congress, and the first foreign leader to be invited to do so this year. This three-day visit is the fourth time that the PM has travelled to the US since he took office. He met with President Barack Obama, who reiterated America's support for India's entry to the NSG (Nuclear Suppliers Group), which currently has 48 countries who trade in sophisticated nuclear technology and material while ensuring it is not used for weapons.

Terrorism is basically of two types - state sponsored or public and private sponsored.Countries which the West think are or were major sponsors of terrorism included, in the past, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, and North Korea. But unfortunately by destabilising Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria the level of terrorism in the world went up manifold. Afghanistan was the birthplace of the Mujahideen, a core group of which later became Al Qaeda under Bin Laden. When Iraq fractured it gave rise to ISIS - once again a faction of Al Qaeda which started to destabilise Syria. So we see that the penchant for the West to play God in certain nations has infact lead to a more rapid increase in terrorism - the fall of the authoritarian regimes in Iraq and Libya have done much to destabilise these countries - but the West is unlikely to lose much sleep over it.

Similarly Iran became a terrorist nation because it supports Hezbollah which is striving to legitimately end the discriminations and suffering of the Palestinians - but here also the West is shortsighted as the real terrorist nation should be Israel-even its Deputy Chief Major Gen Yair Golan said that Israel resembled in some ways Nazi Germany of the 1930s. Although he was forced to retract his statement later even Israel's Opposition Leader Isaac Herzog praised his statement as a statement of moral responsibility.

Unfortunately the West sees terrorism with uniquely myopic vision - Nelson Mandela and Yasser Arafat, previously certified as terrorists, were both the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. So firstly terrorism must be defined properly, and then we can see the link between public and private terrorism - as we have seen, one begets the other. The reluctance of the Myanmar government to stop the persecution of Rohingyas is one incident where the state is indirectly sponsoring private terrorism-which is not far different from the state sponsored Nazi party thugs who made life hell for the Jews in the 1930s. All forms of terrorism must be addressed - wherever they may occur in the world. We have also to accept that state-sponsored terrorism is the worst plunging the whole country into a civil war.

We expect Mr Modi, the Prime Minister of India, to understand that fighting terrorism will be counter productive if that allows state-terrorism to kill democracy. During cold war, the US government was ready to support worst autocrats if they proclaimed to be anti-Communist. Vietnam is the worst example how the US had to accept shameful defeat and run away from Vietnam. So about fighting terrorism nobody should take the US strategy as right to end terrorism.

It has been claimed by a responsible source of the Indian government that India will help to bring political stability in Bangladesh. In our situation of bureaucracy dominated government, it is to be accepted as a welcome move if pursued honestly in the belief the political stability can come from the people's government.


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Bernie is "stirred by his emotions?" I would never have guessed. Take a look at these handwriting analyses of the candidates.

NASA is funding research into hitching rides on asteroids as a form of space travel.

A ten-year-old boy had a brilliant idea: blue corn chips for the nachos at the Brewers' concession stands. That way,the nachos match the team colors! "Tyler's Nachos" will be on sale today at Miller Park in Milwaukee.

What was thought to be a lost underwater city has been discovered to be ancient bacterial concretions.

In case you were worried: A study has shown that multiple parallel lines at the checkout lane is faster than the traditional single line preferred by movie and concert ticket booths.

Colombian doctors successfully removed a live grenade from a soldier's head. Another soldier accidentally fired a grenade launcher and embedded one of the explosive devices in his comrade's skull. The operation was done in the parking lot in case it exploded.

Join the Church of the Universe, because weed.
ISIS takes credit for Orlando shooting

(The Hill) The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) claimed responsibility Sunday for a deadly nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., that left 50 dead and 53 injured.

"The attack that targeted a nightclub for homosexuals in Orlando, Florida and that left more than 100 dead and wounded was carried out by an Islamic State fighter," ISIS said in a statement.

The organization offered no proof for the attacks.

http://twitter.com/sheeraf/status/742060751540486145

Speaking to reporters on the scene shortly before 3 p.m., Florida Sen. Bill Nelson (D) said ISIS had accepted responsibility for the shooting. But he said it had not been confirmed by the FBI.

In this case, if were getting those kind of statements from the news agency of the Islamic State, well have to see what those connections are.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) also referenced the United Statess ongoing fight against terrorism but said the FBI would have more information about possible connections to terrorism.

Fifty people were killed and 53 others were injured early Sunday morning when a gunman opened fire inside the Pulse nightclub in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Federal law enforcement officials say the gunman was Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old American citizen living in Port St. Lucie, Fla. He was killed at the scene in a shootout with police.

He was reportedly armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle and a handgun.

News networks reported Mateen phoned 911 moments before the shooting to pledge allegiance to ISIS.

It remains unclear if the planning and execution of the attack were directly linked to foreign terrorist groups.

President Obama Sunday called the shooting an "act of terror" but didn't place blame on the terror group.

Man Armed With Assault Rifles and Explosives Arrested En Route to Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade

Today 1:50pm

Police in Santa Monica Sunday arrested a man, armed with assault rifles and possible explosives, who said he was in town for the Los Angeles gay pride festival.

Santa Monica police were responding to a call about a prowler early Sunday morning when they encountered the man, who has not been identified, in or near a white Acura sedan with Indiana plates. A subsequent search of the vehicle revealed assault rifles, ammunition, and tannerite, an explosive used in target practice and sometimes pipe bombs, the LA Times reports. A source tells the paper he appeared to be caucasian.

The man reportedly told police he was waiting for a friend and in town for the gay pride festival. A city official tells the LA Times security has since been increased around the event.

One source in West Hollywood said there was discussion of calling off the parade but that officials decided to go forward, with heavy security including undercover officers in the crowd.

According to Pro Publica reporter Robert Faturechi, a text about the arrest went out to law enforcement officials around 11:19 a.m.

The arrest comes just hours after a gunman, reportedly 29-year-old Omar Mateen, opened fire in a gay nightclub in Orlando, killing 50 and injuring dozens more. The alleged gunmans father tells reporters his son was recently disgusted by the sight of gay men kissing.

The FBI has reportedly taken over the investigation in Santa Monica.

One source in West Hollywood said there was discussion of calling off the parade but that officials decided to go forward, with heavy security including undercover officers in the crowd.

According to Pro Publica reporter Robert Faturechi, a text about the arrest went out to law enforcement officials around 11:19 a.m.

The arrest comes just hours after a gunman, reportedly 29-year-old Omar Mateen, opened fire in a gay nightclub in Orlando, killing 50 and injuring dozens more. The alleged gunmans father tells reporters his son was recently disgusted by the sight of gay men kissing.

The FBI has reportedly taken over the investigation in Santa Monica.
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.
The sextoy market is growing quite rapidly in India right now.

Although it is not a big trend, it is a hot topic on the internet as it is secretly expanding its market.

In this article, we will focus on sextoy and introduce recommended sextoy for Indian beginners of sextoy by gender.

India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, is very strict about sex.

Also, premarital sex is basically not allowed. Therefore, there are many people who are sexually restricted.

But what happens when you continue to be sexually restricted?

Frustration may build up and you may end up taking your sexual stress out on your partner.

If you are able to adopt sextoy in a timely manner, you can get rid of those problems.

I want to have more exciting sex than Im having now.

I want more variation in masturbation

I want to get even stronger pleasure than I do on my own.

If you have any of these problems, please stay with me until the end.

What is sex toys for Indian?

Sextoy, as the name implies, is a toy used during sex and masturbation.

It is a generic term for vibrators, Egg-vibrators, Electric massagers, dildo, handcuffs and condoms.

They are used to make regular sex more exciting or to make masturbation more pleasurable.

Because sextoy is very stimulating, it can help you to get rid of the problems and frustrations of being in a rut of sex with your partner for a long time, or if you are unhappy with the lack of pleasure in sex with your partner.

The ability to satisfy your desires with movement, texture, and size, which cannot be done by a normal human being, can help you to be satisfied with sex and, as a result, improve your relationship with your partner.

It is also said to help improve sexual dysfunction (inability to get an erection or ejaculate) and difficulty in feeling during sex (insensitivity), which is attracting more attention than in the past.

In recent years, the demand for sextoy has increased due to the spread of smartphones and the Internet and the increasing number of people using online shopping.

Even those who are concerned about the appearance of sextoy (and find it difficult to purchase) can now easily obtain it by using mail order.

In the case of online shopping, most of the stores have taken steps to ensure that the contents of the products delivered to you are not revealed, so you can purchase them without your family members knowing.

Until a while ago, you had to go to the store where the adult goods were sold to buy them, so it was quite a hurdle to overcome.

Also, many people may have an image that sextoy is somehow embarrassing to own.

But nowadays, some of them are so stylish and cute that you cant believe they are sextoy at a glance.

More and more people are using them for travel and outdoor use because they are not too bulky and are suitable for carrying around.

Sextoy situation in India

Before introducing the recommended sextoy for Indians, lets talk about one of the sextoy situations in India in recent years.

In India, due to the high concentration of population, the following six cities have particularly high sales of sextoy in India.

Mumbai

Kolkata

Bangalore

Delhi

Chennai

Hyderabad

These cities account for roughly 70 percent of sextoy sales in India.

In the future, the percentage of sextoy use will gradually increase in other cities in India as well.

If you never talk about sextoy publicly, that girl in your neighborhood might be a sextoy user too.

If you are interested in sextoy, you dont have to suppress your desire for it.

What are Sextoys for beginner?

Among all sextoys, sextoy for beginners are vibrators, dildo, masturbators, Sex Lubricants, and condoms.

Sex Lubricants and condoms, which are familiar to people who have had sex, are also a great beginners sextoy.

I will explain the details of each toy later, but there are many sextoy products that are painful to use and can only be used after some anal expansion.

I assume that the Indian readers of this article are people who have not had much experience with sextoy.

If such people use professional sextoy suddenly, they are at risk of injury or trauma.

Therefore, to introduce sextoy, you need to start with a beginners version and gradually become familiar with it.

Advantages of using sextoy for Indians

There are three advantages of using sextoy for Indians

You can masturbate in a wide variety of ways.

Can have stimulating sex

Can develop new sexual zones

If you try to masturbate with your own fingers or hands, it tends to be a pattern.

However, with sextoy, you can easily masturbate in a variety of ways.

You will definitely be fascinated by the attraction of new stimulation.

Also, your daily sex life will be more exciting than ever.

There are many things in sextoy that are visually stimulating and give you a strong and intense feeling of pleasure.

This allows you to see your partners promiscuity in a way that you wouldnt normally see it.

When you are in a relationship, sex with your partner may become a pattern, but it can also eliminate these problems.

It can also lead to the development of new sexual zones (which is the training of sexual stimulation to allow you to feel orgasms).

For more information on the development of new sexual zones, see the following articles

[Women's Erogenous Zone]How to find and develop, 7 hidden sexual zones !![In India] In this issue, we will dissect the female erogenous zone! ..." Many of you may be like that. Men, in particular, shou...

Thus, the use of sextoy can only be a good thing for the men and women of India.

Sextoy for beginner men in India

So, lets continue with the recommended goods for Indian sextoy beginners.

For ease of understanding, we will introduce them by gender. Lets start with the men!

The following five goods are recommended for novice Indian sextoy men

Masturbator

Cock rings

Love Doll

Sex Lubricants

Toys for the prostate

Lets check each one in detail.

Masturbator

The masturbator is a sextoy for men that elaborately reproduces a womans vagina, mouth, and anus, and is one of the most popular sextoy products.

It is used by men to masturbate, and it is popular because it provides stronger stimulation and pleasure more easily than using hands.

Most are made of good quality silicone, and their softness is something that cannot be achieved with ones own hands.

They can provide stronger pleasure than a real womans vagina, so be careful not to overuse them. (You wont be able to have an orgasm in a womans vagina anymore.)

Again Male masturbators are a wonderful toy. I do not need any favourite timing, bothersome bargaining. You do not have to worry too much.

Revolutionize your masturbation time! ! !

Made in Japan is a wonderful kinky toy.#sextoysindia #SexToyIndia #Japanhttps://t.co/4k70QGzoTP pic.twitter.com/tRVdxTKPpa   SEXToys India PR  (@SextoysIndia) November 12, 2018

Some of them are disposable, while others can be washed and used over and over again, so its fun to buy a few to use depending on your mood.

If you want to know more about masturbator, please click here

Really pleasant male masturbation and how to do it Are you in a rut with your daily masturbation routine? I'm going to show you five ways men masturbate that you might ...

[For Beginners] How to choose and use a male masturbator without fail Gentlemen.Have you ever used a masturbator? The person who sees this article is probably the one who has not experien...

Cock Ring

A cock ring is literally a ring-shaped sextoy that is worn on a mans penis.

It maintains an erection by binding the penis with a ring of rubber and blocking blood flow.

It is sometimes used as an accessory to be worn on the penis, and may be made of metal or plastic as well as rubber.

In some cases, cock rings have parts or vibrators attached to them that stimulate the vagina, so they kill two birds with one stone, giving a woman pleasure while maintaining an erection.

Cock rings are also sometimes used to treat erectile dysfunction.

It can help with erectile dysfunction, where the penis doesnt get hard when you get an erection or doesnt last long when you try to insert it.

Men who are prone to breakage or who are unsure of the hardness and size of their erections can use a cock ring to increase the size of their penis and maintain an erection for a longer period of time.

Cock rings vary in price from around RS700 to over RS2000 with a vibrator function.

Some of them do not fit your penis, so you should check the size of the cock ring before you buy.

You should know the size of your partners or your own penis when it is erect.

[Penis enlargement] What is a cock ring? Types and usage Cock rings can make your penis bigger and harder. It also makes sex with women more fulfilling and increases your sat...

Love Doll

Love dolls, also known as Dutchwives, are dolls with the appearance of a woman who can experience simulated sex.

There are dolls that look like a woman, but they have no face and only have their breasts and lower torso cut off, and some dolls are so realistic that they can actually be mistaken for real women.

Some expensive dolls can cost more than 1 million yen, and the quality of the doll is easily influenced by the price.

The higher the price, the higher the quality of the doll will be, the closer it will be to the real woman, and the cheaper the doll will be, the less elaborate it will be, making it look like a real doll! Something is wrong! That is also true.

You cant go wrong if you choose a balance between price and taste.

There are stores that allow you to make custom-made love dolls, so you can create a girl of your choice.

You can make a girl of your choice. You can start with inexpensive love dolls at first, and once you get used to it, you can try custom-made love dolls.

If you want to know more about Love doll, please click here

Thorough explanation of the charm of sex dolls! Have you ever heard of sex dolls that are used primarily for pseudo-sex purposes? It is a doll that is quite close to...

Sex lubricants

Sex lubricants are used as a substitute for lubricating fluid during sex or as a lubricant for men to use masturbator rules.

It is not uncommon for women to have difficulty getting wet, depending on their physical condition, or to have difficulty getting wet due to their constitution.

Forcing the penis into the vagina at such times can cause painful intercourse.

There are various types of Sex Lubricants, some with a warming effect, some with a cooling effect, and some with a scent.

Changing the Sex Lubricant used during play is recommended as a good sex accent.

If you want to learn more about Sex Lubricants, click here.

What is sex lubricant?Explain the difference and usage of each ingredient The word "sex toy" may seem like a hurdle to overcome, but lotion is actually one of the most familiar sex toys. Many...

Toys for the Prostate

Another sextoy for men is prostate toys.

The most famous prostate toys include Enemagra, which was originally a prostate massager developed by an American urologist to treat an enlarged prostate line.

Modern prostate toys are imitations of Enemagra that have spread as sextoy for men.

Many people think of prostate toys as being used by gay men, but in fact they are often used by straight men.

What is the prostate?

The prostate is an organ found only in men. It is a walnut-sized organ located deep in the pelvis, just below the bladder, and its primary role is to protect and nourish sperm.

You cannot touch the prostate gland from outside the body, but you can touch it by inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus.

By inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus and touching the prostate and developing it, you can feel intense orgasms.

Orgasms felt in the prostate are mainly dry orgasms, which are orgasms that do not involve ejaculation. (You can also feel orgasms with ejaculation through prostate stimulation.)

The prostate is called the male G-spot, and dry orgasms can be much more intense than ejaculation.

Therefore, men who are able to develop a prostate can become addicted to the pleasure.

sextoy for beinner women in India

The following are the recommended goods for Indian women who are new to sextoy.

The following three are recommended for use by women who are new to sextoy.

Vibrator.

Dildo

Electric Masserger

Lets check out what each one is in detail.

If you want to check out womens toys, click here.

[BEST25]Sex Toys for Women in IndiaThat Can Help You Have an Orgasm There are many women who pretend to feel orgasm during sex. But don't worry, you don't have to pretend to feel orgasm...

Vibrators

A vibrator is a sextoy that vibrates with an Egg-Vibrator to provide stimulation and is often referred to simply as a vibrator.

Some vibrate as well as rotate, and there are many variations of sextoy.

It is quite a popular sextoy, and is well recognized by people who do not know much about sextoy.

Its usage is similar to that of a massager, but it is more compact and easier to carry than a massager, and many of them look as cute as a lipstick or a macaroon, so they are popular among women.

For a while, a famous influencer on twitter said, This is good! You may have heard of the topic of this article by introducing the recommended vibrators.

Vibrators are great for women to use on their own, but they are also recommended for men who have difficulty satisfying women with sex.

Since it is powered by electricity, it is far less tiring than moving your hands by yourself.

This makes it easier to satisfy a woman with sex because you can caress her for longer than usual.

Vibrators are mainly used on the female side, but they can also be used on men.

When used on men, they are used to attack the nipples and glans, and in both cases it is recommended to wear a condom for hygiene reasons.

Introducing how to use the vibrator, its purpose, and how to choose it! Vibrator uses the vibrations caused by the rotation of the motor to provide stimulation. It is one or two of the most...

Dildo

A dildo is a model sextoy made to mimic a male penis.

It can be made of silicone, elastomer (think of it as a material similar to PVC), metal or glass.

A dildo can be used by a man for his female partner during sex, or by a woman for masturbation to get pleasure from it.

They are mainly inserted into women, but some can be used in the male anus as well.

It is sometimes used synonymously with vibrators, but the vibrator is not the same thing as a vibrating device.

A model of a penis that does not vibrate is a dildo.

Some of them have suction cups that can be attached to the floor or wall so that you can enjoy realistic masturbation without using your hands.

For fun, there is a dildo made in the shape of your partners penis.

This one is also popular as a gift, and if youve been together for a long time and are having trouble finding a gift for your partner, you might want to pick one.

To learn more about dildo, please click here.

What is Dildo: Orgasms with Dildos for Men and Women A dildo is a model of a male organ that is used by women for masturbation and by men to stimulate the prostate gland. Th...

Electric Masserger

A Electric Masserger is a hand-held electric massager, also known as a handheld massager, and can usually be purchased at electronics stores.

It was originally designed to relieve stiff shoulders and back pain, so the hurdle of buying one in a physical store is quite low.

Many people may have seen or used it in some form or another, as it is often installed in leisure hotels.

Such a massager is highly recommended for beginners because it is easy for women to get pleasure from it when they use it during masturbation.

It is larger than Egg-Vibrator and vibrations are stronger than those of Egg-Vibrators and vibrators, so even just hitting the clitoris can give you a great deal of pleasure.

For those women who have never had an orgasm during sex with their man, the massager may be a good way to get a feel for what it feels like to have an orgasm.

It looks and feels like an electric massager, so you wont have to feel awkward if your roommate finds out.

If you are in a rut of having sex with your partner, if you want to feel an orgasm through masturbation, or if you are thinking of using a sextoy, why dont you try it from a simple massager?

To learn more about Electric Masserger, click here.

What is a massager? Introducing types, selection methods, and usage Originally, the Magic-wand vibrator and the massage machine were sold as a home massage machine used for the back and th...

How to choose a sextoy for Indian

Now that weve covered the different types of sextoy, heres how to choose one.

Especially if you are trying sextoy for the first time, pay attention to the following three points:  Does the size fit you (the partner)?

Does the size fit you (your partner)?

Is the environment able to produce sound without problems?

Price range

First of all, the choice of size is quite important.

Most sextoy are used against or inserted into the genitals, but the genitals are very delicate organs for both men and women.

For this reason, using an inappropriate size may cause damage.

Secondly, the environment should be able to produce sound without problems.

Some sextoys not only wear, but also rotate and vibrate. Its easier to get pleasure from something that moves than something that doesnt, but the fact that it moves means that the internal rotors make some noise.

If you live in a house with thin walls or if you have roommates, you may not be able to concentrate because of the noise, so it is best to choose one that is silent or has a low noise level.

Especially in India, where many people live with their families, it is very important that you dont have to worry about sound when you use it.

Finally, there is the price range.

The price range of sextoy ranges widely, from around RS500 at the cheapest to RS10,000 or more at the highest.

Its good to consider how much money you can afford and how much you want to buy.

Do you want your family to not find out about sextoy?

I live with my family and want to use sextoy without them finding out! If you are a man, you should buy a camouflage sextoy that does not look like a sextoy at first glance.

For men, there are many masturbators that do not look like a sextoy, and for women, there are vibrators that only look like cosmetics.

If you choose such a type, youll be safe in case your family members find out.

How to buy sextoys in India

The best way to purchase sextoy is through online shopping.

For more information on how to purchase sextoy, please see the article below.

Sextoy is one of them.

Therefore, you can easily get sextoy in India by using online shopping.

SexToysINDIA is a long established and stable sextoy store and you can have sextoy delivered to any place in India.

They also offer cash on delivery, so those who are worried about shopping with a credit card do not have to worry.

Of course, the latest security is in place, so your information will not be taken out when you use your credit card.

To begin with, many people may be concerned about whether they are legally allowed to purchase sextoy.

ikmAs it turns out, its not illegal.

Right now, it is not open to the public because the Indian adult market is still in the development stage, but it will gradually spread from now on.

Take advantage of sextoy and open the door to new pleasures and culture.

Cautions for Indians using sextoy

When using sextoy, keep the following three things in mind

Keep sex toys clean

Watch out for electrical leakage

Beware of the heat generated by the body while using a sex toy

As I mentioned earlier, many sextoy products are used for the delicate zone.

Therefore, it is most important to keep the sextoy itself clean. It is very important to keep the sextoy itself clean, because if a slight scratch is created by friction, bacteria can enter and breed there.

It is safe to wear a condom when using the masturbator, just in case.

In addition, many sextoy devices are powered by a power source, so if they are not waterproof, there is a possibility of electric shock or malfunction due to wetness.

Some may even develop heat during continuous use. If the fever becomes too much, you may get burned, so be careful.

If you get a fever during use, stop driving the sextoy immediately and refrain from using it.

You will enjoy sex more if you keep it safe and use it correctly.

Summary

What did you think?

In this article, we have introduced the recommended sextoy for the beginners of sextoy in India.

The sextoy market is growing rapidly in India and it will continue to grow steadily in the future.

As India is a rather closed-minded country, it can be difficult to be open about ones sexual habits and values.

However, being faithful to ones desires by properly dissolving ones sexual desire is very effective for ones physical and mental health.

If this is your first time to learn about sextoy, or if you are interested in using sextoy, why not give it a try?

Indian Sextoys for ur best! will introduce you to sextoy and other trivia about sextoy, sexuality, and sexuality for men and women.

I want to read more! If you think its a great idea, please bookmark it.
A community pharmacy is opening again in Sesser, as MediCenter Pharmacy will celebrate its grand opening Monday.

The pharmacy will open in the Sesser Community Health Center, 6294 Illinois 154.

The grand opening celebration will begin with a ribbon cutting at 10:45 a.m. and will continue with a free lunch, special promotions, giveaways and more.

MediCenter is an independently owned pharmacy. The Medicine Shoppe of Du Quoin is affiliated with the Sesser MediCenter Pharmacy, and Brad Galli, managing pharmacist at The Medicine Shoppe will also be the managing pharmacist in Sesser.

 The Southern
CARBONDALE  Amid discussions for liquor license classifications during a Liquor Advisory Board meeting on June 2, Carbondale Police Deputy Chief Stan Reno addressed crowd control issues concerning Noah's Lounge and other establishments.

We have noticed an increase in calls for service, and an increase in crowd control issues (during) morning hours and closing times, he said.

Sandra Trimborn, one of the two representatives for the lounge, located at 104 W. Jackson St., said issues with crowds at their facility stems from outside involvement.

We dont know who they are, but they show up and the next thing you know, (theres) a fight, she said.

Despite Trimborn's open invitation for more officer presence, Reno said, because of limited resources, the police can only designate one or two officers for a substantial amount of time.

Thats fine if were wanted, but our resources during the time, especially weekends, are limited, he said. We cant dedicate police services to one business every Friday or Saturday.

Additionally, Reno said the police department does their best with implementing resources during early morning hours to better serve each establishment.

"We always respond if we can," Reno said, "but if there are other calls for service that are taking place, we can't always dedicate those resources permanently."

Reno recommended that the Liquor Advisory Board consider including crowd control policies into their adjustments to liquor classifications.

"It's (also) a responsibility for bar owners to manage the premise surrounding their bar  or their location which the liquor license covers  so we suggest that they use their staff to make sure that everyone leaves safely and peacefully," he said.
CARBONDALE  On June 2, members of the Liquor Advisory Commission met to discuss a few concerns with three local restaurant and bar owners.

Representatives from Key West, Noah's Lounge and Tres Hombres were asked to address the board on further actions to be made regarding their applications for a liquor license.

This is not something that youre in trouble for, we just want to know how to solve this problem, said Mark Robinson, chair of the Liquor Advisory Board.

Jeff Vaughn, owner of Tres Hombres, was asked to address the board for his application, which exceeds the required balance of food and alcohol sales.

Because of the installation of gambling machines, Vaughn said, gaming makes up more than 80 percent of his business, and therefore sets him over the required limit of food and alcohol sales.

Robinson said the board is interested in rewriting the current ordinance to change the 51 percent food, 49 percent alcohol requirement.

The advisory board also shared their concerns of whether or not gaming attracts similar clientele to the Mexican restaurant and bar.

We definitely have a little bit of both," Vaughn said. "We have people that come to play, (and) they may have a drink while they play, and then leave."

Scott Uffelman, owner of Key West Bar and Grill, said his establishment has a B2 license.

The Liquor Advisory Commission agreed with Ufflelman's interest for a B3 license to further his aim for his restaurant as a major profit of his business.

(I'm) focusing on making the restaurant a bigger part of the business, that way a portion of the gaming will go down, he said.
CHAMPAIGN  When Melissa Heil heard that Lutheran Social Services of Illinois was cutting jobs  hundreds of them, more casualties of the state budget impasse  she wanted to do something to help.

So in March, the University of Illinois geography graduate student got cracking on her big idea.

Within two months, the Illinois Atlas of Austerity  a slick, information-packed website that chronicles the effects of the ongoing budget stalemate  was launched at illinoisausterityatlas.com.

Using a combination of graphics and information capsules, the site focuses on four main areas  higher education, youth, health services and social services, the category that inspired Heil's project.

"I saw that Lutheran Social Services in Illinois was laying off 43 percent of its staff. That registered as a great loss," she said. "It was one organization. It really matters to people."

The site has grown in popularity, with more than 20,000 people viewing it in the last week.

From rape crisis centers and autism support to MAP grants and HIV prevention programs, the site shows the effects lawmakers' lack of action has had on 15 categories of public services. Each features a chart or map that breaks down the data in a format that's easily digestible for online readers.

"The maps and the graph were created between graduation and when I have to start teaching this summer," said Heil, who notes on the home page that her atlas is not a complex breakdown of the issue, but rather "snapshots" of the effects of the budget crisis.

Data comes from news articles, public information and research findings from groups like Voices for Illinois Children and Illinois Partners for Human Service.

Among Heil's fans: Judith Gethner, executive director of Illinois Partners.

"I think she is very, very classy and very smart," Gethner said. "Being quickly able to translate and understand what it is that we were saying and how she could turn that around for her site was amazing."

Heil envisioned the site as a resource that organizations could use to help better educate people about what the budget does to them. The Michigan native got in contact with Gethner a few months ago to help build it.

"We want anyone and everyone in the state to lift up this mess that Illinois is in," Gethner said. "Help us educate folks on impacts on real people and real families in the state of Illinois."

Heil has made her charts available for any organization affected by the budget. And she's not done.

"I want to add a section on environmental impacts, add a section on the impacts of community colleges," she said. "Hopefully, there will be new posting within the week or the next few weeks. Depends on what happens with the budget situation."

The last legislative session was on May 31, when lawmakers were unable to agree on a solution. Again.

"People think of it as an old story. It is 11 months old," Gethner said. "We can't allow this story to be dormant even for a day."
The Murphysboro Police Department is seeking information regarding the fleeing of an unknown suspect from a residential burglary and arson Sunday afternoon.

After a call from a citizen at 11:44 a.m. Sunday regarding a person entering a residence through a rear window, Murphysboro Police officers, arrived at 413 North 19th St., where a suspect fled from the rear of the residence heading west. The suspect is described as an African American male, 18-25, wearing a pink collared shirt, blue jeans and a sock cap, according to the news release.

A fire was discovered on the stove top at the residence after an officer at the scene heard a smoke alarm sounding inside. The Murphysboro Fire Department extinguished the fire.

The Murphysboro Police Department asks that anyone with information regarding this incident call 618-684-2121.

"Also, residents of this area are requested to be vigilant of suspicious persons and contact police immediately with concerns," the Murphysboro Police stated in the news release.

The investigation in ongoing. The Jackson County Sheriff's Office and the Elkville Police Department K-9 Officer also assisted in this incident.

-- The Southern
MARION -- A longtime family friend of the man who died in a plane crash on Friday afternoon at the Williamson County Regional Airport called John Alleman a friend to many, particularly children and those in need. He also was a quiet humanitarian, a devout Catholic and a loving father to his daughter, and the granddaughter he adopted, said Tracee Foley.

Alleman, 56, worked as a personal injury lawyer in Carbondale and owned student housing near campus. He was an experienced pilot and regularly took trips in his personal aircraft to Wisconsin, she said. He frequently visited both Green Bay for football games, and Door County, a beautiful waterfront location that his adopted daughter loved visiting.

He so loved the Packers that the team logo graced the side of his single-engine, 2004 model Cirrus SR22. But he loved nothing more than his family, friends and even strangers, she said, especially willing to befriend those fallen on hard times and without family to lean on, Foley said.

Foley described him as the type of person who gave freely of his money. But what made him a special kind of philanthropist, she said, is how freely he also gave of his time and heart.

When you know him, you want to be a better person, Foley said. Im a better person because I knew him.

Few crash details

It may be months before details emerge as to what caused the crash that took the life of this experienced pilot, and left the other passenger aboard the aircraft, also an experienced pilot and certified flight instructor, in critical condition.

The other passenger, Todd Greiner, 64, of West Frankfort, was extricated from the aircraft by emergency workers who arrived on scene shortly after they were notified of the crash via 9-1-1 call, said Jeremy Norris, fire chief at the Williamson County Fire Protection District. He was airlifted to a St. Louis hospital.

Aaron Sauer, a senior air safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said the plane departed from the Williamson County Regional Airport as an instructional flight.

The crash took place on Friday around 4:35 p.m. near the airports north-south runway. The airport has remained open, with its east-west runway fully operational, according to the airport director, Doug Kimmel.

Though, Sauer did not say specifically what the purpose was for Greiner to provide Alleman with instruction. Those are details that will be examined as part of the investigation, he said. At some point prior to the crash, the aircraft was performing a touch-and-go practice maneuver, he said, but its too early to say what the two were doing when the crash occurred, he said.

Dispatch received a call from air traffic control and an eyewitness driving by, he said.

Officials representing a variety of agencies provided media an update on the crash on Saturday afternoon at a 3 p.m. press conference at the Williamson County Airport. It was at this media briefing that Scott Kinley, Williamson Countys chief deputy coroner, identified the passengers as Alleman, who he said was pronounced dead at the scene, and Greiner, who Kinley said at the time remained listed in critical condition in St. Louis.

Greiner an 'outstanding man'

No new updates on Greiners condition had been made available as of press time late Saturday night, from officials or family. On Facebook, several people expressed a common theme about Greiner, saying that he was the type of pastor who welcomed everyone into the houses of worship where he served with wide-open arms, and a man who truly lives the gospel he preaches.

His business website also lists him as the owner of Greiner Advertising in West Frankfort, and in the voicemail message at the listed number, Greiner also says he is a flight instructor at the Marion airport.

Jake Thompson, of Marion, said his grandparents are very close to Greiner, and that many people are praying for his recovery, and anxiously awaiting updates on his condition. He said Greiner had served as a pastor in Southern Illinois for years, including one Creal Springs and for a long stretch at the Community of Faith, in Marion. Thompson said Greiner still serves as part of a traveling ministry. He is just a really sweet guy, Thompson said. He would help anyone. Hes an outstanding man, and I look up to him a lot.

Investigation standard protocol

It is standard protocol for all plane crashes to be investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, which will issue a final report of its findings.

A preliminary report will be made available sometime next week, though its unclear at this stage to what degree it will shed light on the cause of the accident. And it may be six months to a year before a final report is completed, the NTSB's Sauer said.

Foley, Allemans friend, said its her understanding that the flight was for a routine re-certification.

Pilots in the United States that intend to operate an aircraft are required to undergo a flight review every two years. The review is required by federal aviation regulations for all pilots who intend to operate an aircraft, and meant to provide a periodic assessment of ones flying skills, and determine if there are any areas of weakness that may affect flight safety and warrant further instruction, according to a publication of the Air Safety Institute.

Both called safe pilots

Foley described Alleman as a safe pilot. He wasnt a risk-taker and was very conscientious and valued his life and other peoples lives, she said. On social media, several people have made similar comments about Greiners commitment to flight safety.

Foley said that Alleman leaves behind an adult daughter, as well as his 13-year-old granddaughter who he adopted and has raised since she was little. He loved them both dearly, she said. Foley said she and her husband John Foley became acquainted with Alleman some 25 years ago, as John also is an attorney, currently serving as legal counsel for the city of Anna.

A quiet humanitarian

Foley said that Alleman did not boast about his generous activities. Among them, he was one of the primary funders of a program in the Carterville school district to send students in need home with a backpack full of weekend meals to get them through to Monday.

She also said that Alleman takes his daughter on a large shopping spree every Christmas  but not to buy things for her. He has instilled in his young daughter the value of giving, and the two would pick out presents for children that may have otherwise gone without, she said.

He also was known for throwing big holiday parties, and inviting friends and anyone in the community who didnt have a place to go to celebrate with loved ones. He loved cooking in his gourmet kitchen, and served large parties of people who showed up around his driftwood kitchen table at his home on Strawberry Road, she said.

But of all the stories of his gracious spirit, Foley said one of her favorites is of the deep friendship Alleman forged with the maintenance man he had hired to work on his student apartment rentals. When that man fell ill with cancer and had no family to care for him, she said Alleman built him a cottage next to his house, and helped him to doctors appointments and made sure he had meals and care and companionship until the day he died. He even fulfilled a final wish for the man to visit Vatican City.

He did these things quietly, she said. Only people close to him knew.

Alleman's biography on his law office's website says that he grew up in Mount Zion, Illinois, and moved to Carbondale to attend the SIU School of Law, where he was one of three students to graduate early. He turned down an offer to move to St. Louis, opting to make a home in Carbondale. An accomplished lawyer, the biography states that in 1996, he won one of the largest "slip and fall" jury verdicts in Illinois ($396,410); and settled one of the largest workers' compensation cases, in excess of $2.1 million, the biography continues.

Under the heading "interesting facts," the biography also says he started his professional education with Spartan Aviation in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1983 and 1984, and continues to be an active pilot today. He lists memberships of the Airplane Owners Pilot Association and the Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association.

He also included in this category that his first job was in high school washing dishes at Red Lobster.

Kimmel, the airport director, said that to the best of his knowledge, the last time there was an accident of significance at the airport was about five years ago. But he said this is the only fatal accident at the airport of which he is aware.
On Tuesday night , American men and women from all backgrounds and all races stood up together and cast their ballots in delegate-rich states of California and New Jersey for Donald Trump as the Republican Party's nominee for President. Many of his supporters say that Trump has united our nation after eight years of Barack Obama's racially and economically divisive political agenda behind a singular vision: Trump's AMERICA FIRST. As Donald Trump said in his victory speech:Unfortunately, the news media preferred to cover Trump's media battle with Judge Gonzalo Curiel taking the side of the Obama-appointed federal jurist. What they failed to cover is the fact Curiel broke the very laws he swore to uphold and enforce. By his own admission, Judge Curiel helped an illegal alien get a scholarship to an American university, thereby aiding and abetting a lawbreaker.Judge Curiel has been praised for such alleged illegal actions that were used by the Bush administration to arrest and incarcerate U.S. businessmen who were frequently targeted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement directorate of the Homeland Security Department.Many may argue that fetching a hefty scholarship for an illegal alien is not the same as hiring one, but the argument is an example of political chicanery. The man who hires an illegal alien and the man who helps an illegal alien secure a reward that's denied to many American students are aiding and abetting a lawbreaker. During the Bush administration, when immigration laws had some semblance of enforcement, many business owners or managers stood before federal judges to answer for the alleged crimes. With Judge Curiel, it is the judge - a lawyer-in-black robes - who should be charged or at least removed from the bench to disregarding a law he swore to uphold.For example, a Texas businessman who employed an illegal alien charged with capital murder in connection with the shooting death of Houston Police Department Officer Rodney Johnson, was arrested and charged with harboring an illegal alien here. The case was investigated by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Houston Police Department, and rightly so.Robert Lane Camp, 47, who owned Camp Landscaping in Deer Park, Texas, was charged with encouraging Juan Leonardo Quintero-Perez, the accused killer of Officer Johnson, to unlawfully enter and remain in the United States, and also with harboring the illegal immigrant Quintero-Perez. The complaint was filed in federal court following an investigation by ICE special agents and the Houston Police Department. Camp surrendered to federal authorities at the U. S. Marshals Service where he was arrested. Meanwhile in Ohio , ICE agents arrested the owner of a restaurant on felony charges of harboring illegal aliens after 10 of his illegal workers were apprehended. In Arkansas, agents arrested the owner of a construction business on felony charges and apprehended 27 of his illegal workers.said ICE Assistant Secretary Julie L. Myers in 2006.In fiscal year 2006, DHS arrested 445 individuals on criminal charges in work site investigations and apprehended another 2,700 of their illegal workers on immigration violations. During all of fiscal year 2005, ICE arrested 176 individuals on criminal charges for aiding and abetting illegal workers and another 1,116 illegal aliens in these cases.As the Conservative Base digs deeper into Judge Curiel's background and work history, it may be discovered that Trump is absolutely right about the Obama judge who gave thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to the Democratic Party.
CRAINVILLE  Illinois Department of Transportation Construction Engineer Doug Helfrich said progress is being made on the construction of a diamond interchange and structure to carry Wolf Creek Road over Illinois 13 at Crainville and widening Illinois 13 from Crainville to west of Illinois 148.

Right now, weve got dry weather, so we are making progress, Helfrich said.

The overpass structure and frontage road system is the present focus of the construction.

Most of Route 13 will be uninterrupted this season because the majority of the work will be off Route 13, Helfrich said. The Wolf Creek structure will be completed this construction season, along with the frontage road system.

Once the structure and frontage roads are operational, the contractors will go back working on the intersection and complete the final surface of new additional lanes on Illinois 13.

I think we are probably on schedule or maybe just a little behind due to rains in April and May. With luck and dry weather, we should be able to make that up, Helfrich said

He added that it is possible that work will be completed this year, including work on Illinois 13, but that depends on the weather.

For the time being, the major item is completing the overpass structure and getting frontage road system operational. That will take us through late summer into the fall, Helfrich said.

The Crainville project is just one of the many IDOT projects in Southern Illinois this road construction season. Helfrich gave an update of some of the bigger projects in the area.

U.S. 51 is being resurfaced south of Carbondale from Makanda to Illinois 146. Workers have completed the patching and are working on the resurfacing the road.

We have an ongoing project on U.S. 45 in Eldorado, Helfrich said.

IDOT is working on additional lanes from Eldorado to Texas City. The project may be completed during the next construction season.

Weve Had Herrin Road closed all week. It will be open today [Friday], and traffic will be using the new alignment, Helfrich said. Work still needs to be done, but it can be constructed utilizing flaggers.

Work continues on Illinois 127 to construct a bridge over Beaucoup Creek north of Murphysboro, and it is expected to be completed by the fall. Illinois 127 remains closed south of Murphysboro to repair a deep culvert in the road. The road is expected to re-open June 17.

IDOT has several ongoing projects on Interstate 57.

At Mount Vernon, nighttime roadwork will continue on I-57 and I-64. Helfrich said that starting Monday in the evening, traffic will be down to one lane in both directions.

A concrete overlay project is ongoing on I-57 south from I-24 to Illinois 146.

Its kind of a continuation of what we did last year, Helfrich said.

Southbound traffic has been diverted to the northbound lane and is sharing the northbound lanes with northbound traffic. Helfrich said this pattern allows the contractor to have complete access of south bound lanes, making it safer for workers and drivers.

The traffic pattern will be in place through November. With any luck and the weather it could be finished sooner, Helfrich said.

Another project is expected to begin in mid to late July on I-57. Helfrich said some time after the Fourth of July, IDOT will begin resurfacing the southbound lanes of I-57 from south of Old Illinois 13 to north of Illinois 148.

We expect extensive backups, detour routes and advance traffic control signing will be in place to advise motorists to seek other routes, Helfrich said.

Traffic will be detoured using Illinois 148 and 37. ITS or smart traffic control system will be used to help guide motorists.

It displays real time information on the length of the backup and relays that to the message boards on I-57. It will give motorists the option to go through the work zone or to utilize the signed detours, Helfrich said.

The work is tentatively scheduled to start July 18, weather permitting, and run through August. Next year work will be done on the northbound lanes.
John Pfeifer John Pfeifer is the editor and publisher of The Southern Illinoisan. Follow John Pfeifer Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

I was in Springfield again last week, this time for the Illinois Press Association annual convention. Each morning  all two of them  I walked the 2.4 miles from the hotel to Starbucks to get my morning fix.

As I walked, I marveled at both the quantity and depth of the city's potholes. They have crater-like potholes in streets, parking lots and even seem to have sub-potholes within their potholes.

But this column is not about potholes.

As I was walking back to the hotel Friday morning, I meandered around a city maintenance truck and a guy who was shoveling blacktop into one of those potholes. As I walked by, I snarkily said, "You've got your work cut out for you." And while digging his shovel into the back of the truck for another load of blacktop, he looked me in the eye and replied in a slight drawl, "Yeah, I'm thankful fer it."

I kept walking. He kept working.

This city worker looked to be a little older than me, was wearing blue jeans, steel-toed boots, a T-shirt and a green reflective vest. He looked warm. It was 8 a.m. and already 80 degrees, and he still had seven hours of blacktop shoveling to go.

"Yeah, I'm thankful fer it."

And he meant it. He did not appear angry or resentful; if anything, he appeared content. I obviously don't know his story. Don't know if he's been filling potholes for five days or for twenty-five years. Don't know if he's married, whether or not he has family nearby, or whether he has a lot of friends.

I know he was filling potholes on a day the temperature was set to top out at 94 degrees and that he was genuinely happy to be working and getting a paycheck.

I don't know his story, but I know mine.

I know that my days are filled with deadlines and pressures, with meetings and conference calls, and all too frequently, with frustration and angst. I think in terms of "deserving" the paycheck that I receive rather than being thankful for it. And although I truly am thankful for my job and paycheck, the simple "Yeah, I'm thankful fer it," attitude is rarely my default demeanor. It is, I imagine, infrequently the temperament that my employees see when they interact with me each day. It's not often the work mindset that my wife first observes when I get home.

In reality, I have it made. Life is very, very good. It is unlikely that I'd voluntarily switch lives with the pothole filler.

But if I take my cue from what I frequently observe in my own attitude, it's easy to see why Americans are angry, why they're frustrated, why they're resentful.

If I take my cue from Friday's pothole filler, I imagine I'd be more thankful, more relaxed, more content.

It was only a five-second encounter Friday. It was random. It was unexpected. It was helpful.

"Yeah, I'm thankful fer it."
UTICA  Kerry Novak, site superintendent at Starved Rock State Park, was trying to figure out how to clean graffiti off Council Overhang with limited staff and without damaging the delicate sandstone when he was contacted by a suburban art conservation/restoration firm.

The cleanup would cost nearly $3,000, which was "$3,000 more than we can do right now," said Novak.

But Conservation of Sculpture & Objects Studio in Forest Park was willing to do the work for free. The job involved lugging in a high-tech laser along a hiking trail to delicately vaporize the graffiti.

"We like nature," said company President Hanna Dajnowski.

Specifically, her son, Bartosz Dajnowski, vice director of the company, likes Starved Rock, a place he has visited many times.

"My first photography class I took, this was my favorite place to take pictures  the rocks, the waterfalls," said Bartosz Dajnowski.

Those rocks were defaced by vandals during or just prior to Memorial Day weekend.

"This kind of thing (the graffiti) has been going on for years and years," said Novak, but this time, the amount of graffiti  mostly names  was extensive, covering an area about 60 feet long.

Council Overhang is an amphitheater-like area eroded away under a massive cliff leading to Ottawa Canyon. It is on the far east side of the park, away from the main trails, and there is not enough staff to check the area as often as they would like, said Novak.

He called the company's offer to clean the graffiti for free "quite an incredible gift."

"One of the benefits of getting it (the graffiti) out of there," Novak said, "is, if we have a clean wall, then maybe people will not be quite as likely to damage it."

Bartosz Dajnowski said, "It just boggles my mind that people would do this. It's fortunate we have technology that can reverse it."

He was at the park Tuesday using a special laser he developed to remove the writing.

"We're able to clean the stone in an environmentally friendly way without chemicals and without damaging the stone," he said. "With this system we can control how far we clean."

The system is calibrated so it does not harm the stone, but, Bartosz Dajnowski explained, "as soon as I move over the area with the graffiti, it vaporizes it."

The laser worked like a high-tech eraser but, Bartosz Dajnowski noted, "It is a slow process."

He used two laser machines, the larger of which weighed about 70 pounds. They had to be carried about a quarter of a mile along an uneven hiking trail and uphill to the site of the damage.

A generator also had to be brought in.

Bartosz Dajnowski has a master's degree in art conservation science and has worked with lasers in the family business for 13 years. He also spent time at a laser research lab in Poland.

He initially developed the GC-1 Laser Cleaning System to clean a 3,500-year-old Egyptian obelisk in New York's Central Park.

The company also has cleaned graffiti from rock containing ancient petroglyph rock carvings in Hueco Tanks, Texas.

Next week, the company will be cleaning the facade on the U.S. Supreme Court Building.
PEORIA  The squid and the whale. Frazier vs. Ali. Aaron Burr against Alexander Hamilton. Among other historic rivalries, mail carriers are vying for the upper hand over dogs.

Help  not in winning the fight, but avoiding the conflict  is here, with two new initiatives announced by the United States Postal Service as part of Dog Bite Prevention Week.

Mail carriers soon will be armed with a Mobile Delivery Device, on which they'll be able to ping potentially dangerous encounters on their route. For carriers who work the same route every day, they have a good idea which houses have barking dogs, but the device, which will alert drivers when they're within 250 feet of a hazard, will be especially valuable when the postal service sends out substitute or new employees.

"It might also tell him that there's a slip hazard or there's broken steps at such and such an address," said Rebecca Brummitt, customer relations coordinator for the USPS in Peoria, "so even if there's a substitute on that route, they can know if there's a potential hazard such as a dog."

Customers also will be asked to designate whether they have a dog any time they schedule a pickup by USPS.

While the two dog bites to mail carriers recorded in Peoria last year pales in comparison to 6,549 in the U.S. (Houston was tops in 2015 with 77 dog bites to USPS employees), Brummitt points out that dog bites can cause serious injury and infection, as well as significant emotional trauma.

Mail carriers are trained about how to interact with dogs and even how to respond during an attack by pushing their mail bag between them and the animal, but being prepared ahead of time using these monitoring tools could be an important step in avoiding confrontations with potentially aggressive dogs.

"Not that all dogs are harmful or would attack, but if you're aware of it already, you would approach it differently," Brummitt said.

Pet owners often fail to see the potential danger in their own pets because dogs inherently will respond differently to mail carriers than they would to their owners or even to other visitors.

Most dogs' interactions with mail carriers are limited to through-the-window observation during the day, when often their owners are not around. Kitty Yanko, education coordinator for the Peoria Humane Society, points out that those simple interactions  dog barks, carrier leaves  can reinforce to dogs that they are performing their home protection duties well by effectively "scaring off" the threat.

"It's when the carrier is walking up to the house and Mom and Dad are gone, the dog's natural interest is to protect the home. They are just doing what comes natural to them," Yanko said.

An interruption to that routine, like when a carrier needs to collect a signature for a delivery, can heighten a dog's perception of threat and trigger an aggressive response. Just the act of handing a letter or package to their owner can be viewed by dogs as an act of aggression.

When accepting a package or letter from your mail carrier, Yanko recommends completely taking your dog out of the area.

"When that interaction is happening, the dog should not be there," Yanko said.

She recommends shutting your pet temporarily in a separate room or putting him or her in a crate before taking the package. Mail carriers, she said, would rather wait for a few minutes than have to fend off an attack.

She recommends that dogs, regardless of size, breed or disposition, not be allowed physical or visual access to mail carriers whenever possible.

"The bottom line is, any dog can bite, even a nice dog," Yanko said.
A nine-panel work of art by Isaiah Zagar has been on display at the Orangeburg County Fine Arts Center since the artist permanently donated it to the center in 2002.

The piece, A Day in America, describes America through an arrangement of various ceramics, figures and seemingly useless objects, proving the old adage that one mans trash is another mans treasure.

Beth Thomas, executive director of the Fine Arts Center, says the piece contains all found items that are American in origin or that you would find in America.

Zagar, a Philadelphia mosaic artist, chooses to tile on alleyways, old walls and even townhouses to beautify the area and visually transform the city.

The reason we have this, in 2002, we had a mosaic exhibit, Thomas said. We had it to celebrate the Society of American Mosaic Artists.

The nationwide association was founded here in Orangeburg and was the first American society for mosaic artists. The Society of American Mosaic Artists was founded in 1998 by members Janet Kozachek, Allison Way Hank, Jeri Burdick, Sonia King, Connie Wannamaker and Sven Warner.

The event attracted artists from multiple states and countries including Austria, Scotland, Israel, and even Zagar himself. He had been traveling the U.S. for three years and would take the piece with him to different museums and art galleries, leaving it on display for two to three months at a time.

He would stack it in the back of his car, Thomas said.

The nine-panel piece was intended to be displayed as a 3-foot by 3-foot square.

It would not fit on the wall here that way, Thomas said. So he spread it out and thought it looked so good, he decided to donate it.

In return, local mosaic artists and SAMA founders Jeri Burdick and Janet Kozachek created a mosaic for Zagar representing South Carolina and sent it to him to display in his studio.

In the mosaic, images representing the state were included, such as the yellow jasmine, the Carolina wren, mountains of South Carolina and the Palmetto tree.

It was very symbolic of South Carolina, Thomas said.

In 2009, when Cliff Emery first arrived in Orangeburg to lend his services to the center, he felt a certain familiarity with the piece.

I asked Beth a little while later and she said it was done by this Philadelphia artist, Emery said.

In a turn of events that Emery could only describe as serendipitous, he had come in contact with Zagar years before during his time in Philadelphia.

Of course! I have been in his house and studio, he told Thomas.

Id actually been in Philadelphia walking down the street, and there was this gentleman with a beard sitting outside with a little sign that said take a tour for five bucks, he said.

Emery described Zagars home as having every inch covered in found items.

He says he doesnt have just one favorite part of A Day in America. I love the whole thing from start to finish.

With renovations scheduled to begin later this year at the OCFAC, it will be a challenge finding a new spot for the mosaic to be displayed, Emery said.

Its got to stay, he said. Whether its upstairs, downstairs  we dont know how were going to do it but were going to have to do it.

This has inspired so many people, Thomas said. They come here and look at it and say, I can do that. Itd be fun.

The Orangeburg County Fine Arts Center looks to motivate both young and established artists. The center will offer summer art classes June 20-23, Jun 27-30, July 11-14 and July 18-21, with supplies included.

For more information, visit the centers website at www.ocfac.net or call 803-536-4074.
I am starting this review with a brief history lesson. Edmund Thornton Jenkins was the seventh son of Daniel Jenkins, who was born a slave. Edmund founded the Jenkins Orphanage on King Street in Charleston in 1891. He also began the Jenkins Orphanage Band. They were so renown that they accompanied every Broadway performance of Dorothy and DuBose Heywards Porgy, the play on which Porgy and Bess was based. Jenkins was also a composer.

While living in Paris in 1924, he wrote his last work, Afram ou La Belle Swita. Unfortunately, he died at the age at 32  before he was able to secure backing for this work. This African romance is told in a cabaret setting with songs that range from opera to jazz. Again, Tuffus Zimbabwe, who played Jasbo the pianist in Porgy and Bess, played the piano as part of a five-piece ensemble. I mention this because he is the grand nephew of Jenkins. In its world premiere at Spoleto, some slight changes were made from the original version to make the story more understandable. Throughout this operetta, there was always an underlying racial theme. The name Afram is for the union of Africa and America. The cast had poignant dialogue between their singing and dance numbers. The singing was splendid, but their speaking voices needed more depth. The costuming of sparkling jazz-age dresses and tuxedos added much to the production. I enjoyed this unique work of art.

I always look forward to any production of The Gate Theatre of Dublin and any play by Oscar Wilde. I was delighted that Spoleto chose to present The Importance of Being Earnest. This social satire about Victorian manners and mistaken identity was marvelous. The set made me feel as if I were a guest enjoying tea. The accomplished actors transition from physical comedy to the mannerly elite with great comedic timing. Bravo!

The Piccolo production When I First Remember also had an African theme. This one-hour show uses music, dance and the spoken word to tell the story of the Gullah-Geechee culture in South Carolinas Lowcountry. The premise was promising, but didnt deliver. This new play needs much editing.

The musical Nunsense premiered in 1985 and became the second longest running show in off-Broadway history. The plot finds five nuns in dire need of funds to bury 52 sisters who were accidentally poisoned. To raise money, they decided to have a variety show. The dialogue is somewhat dated, but the cast is energetic. For the most part, they pull off all of the antics as they sing, dance and prance across the stage.

Pure Theatre in Charleston always produces excellent, cutting-edge shows. The one-hour play Citizen: An American Lyric continues this pattern. The six actors blended music, movement, words, poetry and visual imagery to bring together a thought-provoking production on race relations. In the wake of the Mother Emanuel shootings, Pures artistic director, Sharon Graci, said that she was looking for a way to address this horrific event. She certainly found it in this powerful performance, which was adapted by Stephen Sachs from the award-winning book by Claudia Rankine. After each performance, the audience can stay for a Q&A with the cast. This dialogue was equally thought provoking.

The Rising Star Programs showcase student-artists ages 9 to 18 and is sponsored by the South Carolina Alliance for Arts Education. The 90-minute shows feature five to seven individuals in various art forms. It makes me proud to sit and be entertained by the stars of tomorrow.

I was disappointed in Improvised Seinfeld from the New York group Bellevue. The group asks for a suggestion from the audience then uses that word to bring their version of a new Seinfeld episode. Their act was somewhat clever, but actually, I am being kind. Theatre 99s own improv group, the hilarious Greg Tavares and Brandy Sullivan, two of the original members of The Have Nots!  opened the show. They begin by interviewing a participant from the audience and even made this interview funny. They then use the participants answers as the basis for their improv skit. I felt sorry that Bellevue had to follow them.

The festival ends June 12 so I have to hurry to see more shows. I will have a festival wrap-up next week.
I was happy. It was my first child, and I was ecstatic over her. I thought she was the most beautiful thing in the world.

Her pediatrician came into her room at the Regional Medical Center in Orangeburg to temper her excitement. Bull says she had been warned her baby had a heart murmur. I just figured it was a heart murmur. Many people have one. No big deal, right? It really didnt hit me any kind of way.

The face of her pediatrician said otherwise.

He came in and said, Mrs. Creech, you need to know, this is nothing to sneeze at. You wont be going home. Well be sending you straight to the Medical University of South Carolina, she says. It was at the point, I realized there was something really wrong. Creech was Bulls last name at the time.

When she arrived at MUSC, she saw pediatric cardiologist Ashby Taylor, M.D., who immediately did an echocardiogram and other tests on her daughter, Katherine Crystal Creech, aka KC.

They got Kathy to sit in a wheelchair.

I knew this wasnt going to be good. He started writing down what was wrong. He would write a No. 1 and then write out a defect and explain what it was. Then he would write No. 2, parenthesis and write another defect out. Then No. 3, No. 4., No. 5. By No. 5, I kind of lost it. She had so many severe, congenital heart defects.

Taylor told it to her straight. KC had only one functioning pumping chamber and other issues included transposition of the great arteries, atrial septal defect, ventricular septal defect, patent ductus arteriosus, tricuspid atresia and pulmonary stenosis. Her daughter was unlikely to make it through the weekend. He sent them home and contacted doctors in Orangeburg as well as their hometown emergency room.

Of course, that was very upsetting and very hard to swallow. Dr. Taylor said, You take her home. You love her, cuddle her, be close to her  thats all the advice I can give you.

Thats exactly what Kathy did. While she napped during the day, her mother would watch her. At night, I would watch her and pick her up to feed her when she needed it.

Monday came. Miraculously, KC was still breathing. The family headed back to MUSC to figure out the next step. Doctors found she had another defect that was compensating for the others. They found all her defects were somehow working together for her in a way to keep her alive.

Fight for life

Kathy knew her child would be more susceptible to illnesses, but tried to keep her life as normal as possible. Thats what her cardiologists recommended.

In 1988, 4-year-old KC came into the hospital for her first open-heart surgery, a risky Fontan procedure. KC would be only the third or fourth child at the hospital to have the procedure done. It is used in pediatric patients who have only a single functional ventricle to pump blood. It involves redirecting oxygen-poor blood from the top of the body to the lungs

Recovery was touch-and-go. Camped out in the waiting room with a lounge chair, blankets and a pillow, Kathy remembers a nurse coming up to her at one point with a grim look. They were losing her daughter.

Kathy rushed back and watched the drama play out on the monitors. She was so tiny and little. She was just frail. Her eyes would open to look at me, and they would close back. As I would look up, I could see the monitors and see her vital signs dropping, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop them.

Doctors offered to do an emergency procedure to drain fluids to see if that would help. Kathy agreed, knowing there were no other options. It was a very scary, scary moment.

KC made it through and had to be tube-fed to help her gain weight. Time rocked on and they were moved to another suite in the Childrens Hospital. KC turned 5, and they had a birthday party. The family was supported by a stream of visitors and cards and offers of prayer. KC strung up the cards from one corner of their room to the other.

It was like a big family to us. The nurses and everybody, we were all on a first-name basis with each other.

Oddly enough, what kept Kathys spirit uplifted was the bond she formed with other parents. MUSC Childrens Hospital has a spacious, open atrium where kids may play. Kathy watched children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases parade through. It became a sanctuary for her. She realized she wasnt alone in her struggle.

There were so many sick children. I realized other people feel what I feel like. Kathy started putting her daughter in a wagon and visited other children. I realized there were children in there who didnt have families or a mom who would stay with them 24 hours and watch over them.

Kathy made it her goal to visit the ones who rarely had family to visit. You think youre by yourself, and then you see these children who have no one.

Finally, after several months, KC was ready to leave the hospital. Five nurses who had grown close to them planned a beach trip. Kathy holds up a photo, showing them all playing in the surf. MUSC staff truly became family to them.

There would be other procedures and a diagnosis of Raynauds disease that causes some areas of the body to turn white and feel numb and cold. It would hurt her so bad when the feeling would come back, Bull said. Her mom would take her hands under her arms to warm them. Id do anything I could do to help heat her up.

The next hurdle was a serious case of pneumonia, and KC, then 10, had to be put in the intensive care unit. It was the first time KC told her mom she felt she wasnt going to make it. Shes tough. She had made it through open-heart surgery, the Fontan, the pleurovac, but she hit a wall. She just felt that bad and couldnt get enough oxygen.

Doctors dosed her with antibiotics and finally got her back on her feet. She did well until just before graduation, when she kept going into a-fibrillation, an irregular and often rapid heart rate that can increase the risk of stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications. She had to be shocked to get her heart back to a regular rhythm. Doctors decided to do a surgery, Fontan Revision, another risky procedure.

At the time, there were doctors at other hospitals with more experience in doing the procedure. Kathy asked her daughter, now 18, what she wanted.

Her answer: Mama, you know Ive been going to Charleston all my life. They know me there. They know all about me. Why go anywhere else?

It was settled.

Steel magnolias





KC would graduate from high school on a Friday and faced surgery by pediatric cardiac surgeon Scott Bradley, M.D., the following Monday. Her heart was greatly enlarged, so she had to have surgery to streamline her blood flow and reduce the size of her heart. She also needed an ablation and a pacemaker.

She had like an overhaul done, Id call it. That was her last open-heart surgery, says her mom. KC did well and relies almost totally on the pacemaker for her hearts functioning.

She didnt let it stop her from her dreams. Given all her exposure to the medical field, she decided to become a pharmacy technician at Grove Park Pharmacy in Orangeburg, a group thats been very supportive of her medical needs. She met a friend of her cousin, Brandon Jackson, and life got even better.

In March 2011, they married. Brandon says he didnt know about her health issues at first. She doesnt seem like she has any problems. She doesnt let anything slow her down. I didnt know about them for the longest of times.

In the fall, they decided they wanted to have a child. They talked to doctors who cleared it, warning that it might not happen. They tried for a year with no success. KC resigned herself that it wasnt going to happen. Her mom was secretly relieved. KC was too young to know the storyline of the classic movie Steel Magnolias, but her mother knew all too well the life-threatening risks of a pregnancy for her daughter.

Brandon and KC decided to adopt instead. The day they were going to meet the lawyer to sign adoption papers, the birth mom changed her mind, a memory still hard for the couple to recall. That was hard, and we decided we wouldnt try that again, Brandon says. It was a lot of heartbreak.

Fertility testing came next, and they were debating options in 2015. A week after they returned from testing, Brandon remembers KC woke him with an unusual early Valentines gift. She handed him a stick. It took me awhile to realize I held a pee stick in my hand. It was an awesome moment.

They kept it quiet for a long time. Kathy said she was scared to death and also happy for them. My heart was broken because I was so scared. There were so many risks involved. Sometimes it gets to the point where all you can do is turn it over to God.

KC, on the other hand, was thrilled.

I always wanted to be a mom, and I prayed about it every night. When it finally happened, I just knew that was what Gods plan was. He took me through it. I did very well through my pregnancy. I did better than what they thought Id do, she says.

KC was induced at 37 weeks, and Isaac was born Oct. 1, 2015, by cesarean section. It was during a week of terrible flooding in Charleston, so bad that at one point a doctor had to don swim trunks and flip flops to get in to see them, a story they still enjoy sharing.

KC had to have a cardiac nurse and a cardiac anesthesiologist as well as the usual labor and delivery team members. While Kathy was pacing, worrying and stepping back to let Brandon take the lead, Brandon watched the miracle of his sons birth.

The staff up there is amazing, he says. The nurses treat you like they have known you forever. They seem to genuinely care. One of the anesthesiologists had a bedside manner that was really great. He calmed her down.

KC did develop a hematoma, a localized swelling that is filled with blood, and had to stay in the hospital for eight days. The medical team got her through it, and finally they were able to take Isaac home. KC says being a parent goes far beyond even what she thought it could be. Its wonderful. Ive gotten more patient. I feel very blessed. I feel very protective.

Brandon agrees. The first time his son got a normal, routine virus, he panicked. All of a sudden, he had a new found appreciation for his mother-in-law.

I have two strong, amazing women sitting next to me. Having Kathy here is amazing. She puts my mind at ease. Most son-in-laws and mother-in laws dont get along so well, but were a tight-knit group.

Kathy, who admits she used to worry a lot, says shes just glad to be able to celebrate the moments. She considers many at MUSC as family. I have seen medical technology grow with my own eyes, and how blessed we are to have such a fine medical facility right here in our own backyard. Words cannot possibly express how thankful I am for the efforts of MUSC over the past 32 years. What brilliant and  most importantly  caring people we have watching over us.

She has been richly blessed, she says.

The first five years, I wasted a lot of time in worry. I really did. I wish I could go back and get those five years. It taught me a valuable lesson, and Ive had a lot more years that I didnt waste. Now I worry when its time to worry  when somethings wrong. Otherwise, I thank God for the blessings.
CORDOVA  Nine Carver-Edisto Middle School eighth-grade students have been named South Carolina Junior Scholars based on their outstanding performance on the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test.

The South Carolina Junior Scholars Program was developed by the State Department of Education to identify students with exceptional academic talent and to develop strategies for their inclusion into special accelerated programs. Students receiving this honor must earn high scores on either the Reading and Writing or the Math portion of the PSAT.
Voters throughout The T&D Region will be able to participate in Tuesdays primaries, but party selection is limited.

South Carolina voters can participate in Republican or Democratic primaries, but not both. Voters can vote in either primary on Tuesday, no matter what presidential preference primary they voted in earlier in the year.

Bamberg, Calhoun and Orangeburg counties will all have Democratic primaries. There will be no local Republican primaries.

With few races on the primary ballot since so many candidates are unopposed, some election sites expect a low voter turnout.

I think its going to be slow, said Patti P. Jeffcoat, director of Bamberg County Voter Registration and Elections.

We have one countywide item, House Seat 90, she said. There is also a county council race.

The South Carolina Republican Party reports that it has the most candidates of any political party, with 526 of the 1,007 candidates statewide. The states Democratic Party fielded 446 candidates.

The polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

A runoff will be held June 28, if needed.

Voters will be required to show one of the following forms of photo identification: S.C. drivers license, S.C. Department of Motor Vehicles ID card, S.C. Voter Registration Card with photo, Federal military ID, or U.S. passport.

If you forget your photo ID, you may vote using a provisional ballot but must show an ID prior to the certification of the election.

People with a reasonable impediment to getting a photo ID can vote if they sign an affidavit stating why. Bring your non-photo voter registration card to the polling place.

Local Democratic primaries include:

Orangeburg County





State House District 95: Rep. Jerry Govan will face challenger Kevin Ray.

Sheriff: Sheriff Leroy Ravenell is facing opposition from Darnell Bubba Johnson and Kenneth Mac McCaster.

Calhoun County





Probate Judge: Judge Kathy Strickland Brown is being challenged by Gary Porth.

Auditor: Auditor April Wise is being challenged by Melissa Smoak-Wannamaker.

County Council District 2: Councilwoman Pamela Claxton is being challenged by Ken Westbury.

Bamberg County





County Council District 4: Councilman Joe Guess Jr. is being challenged by Rufus Jamison Jr.

State House District 90: Rep. Justin Bamberg is being challenged by Evert Comer Jr.

U.S. House

U.S. House District 2: Arik Bjorn and Phil Black are seeking to be the Democratic candidate.

Polling places

Orangeburg County precincts/polling locations

Ward 1/Orangeburg Arts Center (River Pavilion)

Ward 2/Orangeburg County Chamber of Commerce

Ward 3/Mellichamp Elementary School

Ward 4/Smith-Hammond-Middleton Memorial Center

Ward 5/Youth Canteen

Ward 6/Youth Canteen

Ward 7/Sheridan Elementary School

Ward 8/William J. Clark Middle School

Ward 9/Marshall Elementary School

Ward 10/Sheridan Elementary School

Suburban 1/Robert Howard Middle School

Suburban 2/Whittaker Elementary School

Suburban 3/Orangeburg Area Development Center

Suburban 4/Orangeburg Municipal Airport

Suburban 5/Rivelon Elementary School

Suburban 6/Rivelon Elementary School

Suburban 7/William J. Clark Middle School

Suburban 8/Marshall Elementary School

Suburban 9/Human Resources Center (Council on Aging)

Bethel/Bethune-Bowman High School

Bolentown/Bolentown Volunteer Fire Department

Bowman 1/Old Bowman Elementary

Bowman 2/Old Bowman Elementary

Branchville 1/Branchville High School

Branchville 2/Senior Citizens Community Center

Brookdale/Brookdale Middle School

Cope/Cope Area Career Center

Cordova 1/Edisto High School

Cordova 2/Cordova Town Hall

Edisto/Canaan Volunteer Fire Department

Elloree 1/New Elloree Elementary School

Elloree 2/New Elloree Elementary School

Eutawville 1/Eutawville Community Center

Eutawville 2/St. James-Gaillard Elementary School

Four Holes/Four Holes Volunteer Fire Department

Holly Hill 1/Holly Hill Elementary School

Holly Hill 2/Holly Hill Roberts Middle School

Jamison/Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College (Student Life Center)

Limestone 1/Prince of Orange Mall (behind food court)

Limestone 2/Prince of Orange Mall (behind food court)

Neeses-Livingston/Livingston Community Center

Nix/Nix Elementary School

North 1/North Town Hall

North 2/Aiken Electric Co-op

Norway/Norway Senior Center

Pine Hill/Pine Hill Volunteer Fire Department #1

Providence/Providence Volunteer Fire Department

Rowesville/Rowesville Community Center

Santee 1/Santee Family Development Center

Santee 2/Santee Fire Department

Springfield/Old Springfield Elementary School

Vance/Vance-Providence Elementary School

Whittaker/Whittaker Elementary School

Bamberg County precincts/polling locations

Colston/Colston Fire Department

Edisto/Edisto Fire Station

Ehrhardt/Ehrhardt Town Hall

East Denmark/Brooker Center

Govan/Govan Fire Department

Hightowers Mill/Old Train Depot

Hunters Chapel/Hunter Chapel Fire Department

Kearse/Brandts Office, 8804 Low Country Hwy.

Little Swamp/Little Swamp Community Center

Olar/Olar Town Hall

South Bamberg/Kearse Agriculture Building

West Denmark/Old Train Depot

North Bamberg/Bamberg City Civic Center

Calhoun County precincts/polling locations

Bethel/Belleville Volunteer Fire Department

Cameron/Cameron Community Club

Center Hill/St. Peter AME Church

Creston/Creston EMS Station

Dixie/John Ford Middle School

Fall Branch/Woodmen of the World Hall

Fort Motte/St. Matthews Episcopal Church

Lone Star/Lone Star Fire Station

Midway/Midway Volunteer Fire Department

Murph Mill/Wesley Chapel UMC

Sandy Run/Sandy Run Public School

St. Matthews/Calhoun County Museum
President Obama recently issued an executive order encouraging federal regulators to promote competition in the marketplace. The order follows a report by the Presidents Council of Economic Advisors illustrating the ways that competition between firms benefits consumers and how collusion/cooperation between businesses to manipulate prices harms consumers. When companies collude, prices rise, quality falls and businesses are protected from the consequences of their poor service.

The executive order instructs federal agencies to eliminate regulations that restrict competition without corresponding benefits to the American public. The president and his advisers should be lauded for recognizing that sometimes government policy does more harm than good by playing favorites.

Among the worst offenders in this regard are the checkoff programs  agricultural programs that generally benefit large producers and force small farms to go along for the ride.

The Department of Agriculture operates 22 checkoff programs, covering commodities ranging from milk to mangos and pork to popcorn. The programs mandate that farmers pay a production tax on every pound of fruit or head of livestock they sell. The USDA distributes these funds  totaling more than $700 million per year  to industry boards, which use them to create generic marketing campaigns like The Incredible Edible Egg and Beef, Its Whats for Dinner.

Whats wrong with this? Generic marketing, unlike brand-specific advertising, doesnt communicate the quality of a particular product to consumers; it simply tries artificially to stimulate demand. Generic marketing replaces what could have been valuable, consumer-focused, product-specific information  like which eggs come from free-range chickens  with the advertising equivalent of a sideshow barker, drowning out the competition with cries of Got Milk?

On top of this, checkoff programs create legally mandated collusion  which goes against the spirit of the recent executive order. They require producers who may not even benefit from generic advertising to pay for it on behalf of their competitors  creating a government-granted privilege for some businesses. And since these programs are implemented with the authority of government, theres no way for individual farmers to opt out.

Take Joseph and Brenda Cochran. These Pennsylvania dairy farmers paid around $4,000 a year from their razor-thin budget toward generic marketing. But this did nothing to distinguish their traditionally farmed milk from the milk produced by their much larger competitors using more industrial methods. Those benefiting from the Got Milk? marketing campaign were bulk producers not interested in differentiating their product, but the checkoff program dragged the Cochrans along for the ride.

This motivated the Institute for Justice to file suit for the Cochrans in 2003. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Cochrans, ruling checkoff programs violated their First Amendment protection from being compelled to pay for speech they disagreed with. But in 2005, the Supreme Court threw out this decision in Johanns v. Livestock Mktg. Assn, which ruled checkoff programs are permissible because they constitute government speech.

The decision was a boon for government-sponsored collusion, which continues to undermine fair competition today. Each year $700 million is taken from farmers  money they would otherwise use to improve product quality or nutrition, or else return to consumers through lower prices. More than $70 million alone goes to encouraging people to eat more beef. You wouldnt think steak would be such a hard sell.

Luckily, this could be accomplished with only a very simple change  by making USDA checkoff programs voluntary. This would allow large-scale farms producing bulk agricultural products to contribute to generic marketing campaigns, if it makes financial sense for them. However, it would also enable farmers who would rather highlight their own products quality to spend their advertising budget as they see fit.

If the Obama administration really wants to eliminate anti-competitive policies in federal regulations, it should start with the low-hanging fruit of USDA checkoff programs.

-----

Michael Farren is a research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in its Project for the Study of American Capitalism. Scott Eastman is a program coordinator for the Project for the Study of American Capitalism and the State and Local Policy Project at the center. They wrote this for InsideSources.com.
In keeping with his roots in a holiness church, artist Leo Twiggs has a testimony he wants to share with the world. It speaks of the range of emotions he felt following the horrific mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston nearly a year ago.

Twiggs lets his art do the talking for him, though, through his use of batik, an ancient technique of manual wax-resistant dyeing applied to whole cloth. He spent many long nights over the course of several weeks manually dyeing and dipping fabric pieces to achieve a texturally rich and deep-toned series titled Requiem for Mother Emanuel.

Nine people, including Senior Pastor and state Sen. Clementa C. Pinckney, were killed by a gunman during a Bible study session at Emanuel AME Church on June 17, 2015.

The tragedy gained worldwide attention and emotionally moved Twiggs, who said his images for Requiem for Mother Emanuel did not actually begin as a series.

The whole idea behind the Mother Emanuel series did not come as a series. I did not think of it as a series. I was doing one painting and that painting was in reaction right after the event happened, the artist said.

His body of work will be exhibited at The City Gallery in Charleston from Tuesday, June 21 to Sunday, July 31. The City of Charleston is dedicating the entire first floor of the gallery for the display of Twiggs work. The paintings will be accompanied by a seven-minute video in which he talks about the nine images and his inspiration behind each.

The Requiem for Mother Emanuel exhibition is part of a nine-day remembrance the City of Charleston is hosting to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the church shooting.

During that period, the exhibit will be open to the members of the church and survivors of the victims for private viewing, Twiggs said.

This is about nine

people that perished

A target and the number nine are symbols that appear in the series, along with the Confederate flag, a symbol that Twiggs has used in his paintings since the 1970s.

I go all the way back with both the target and the Confederate flag as part of the images in my work. I did a whole series on Targeted Man, and I did a series using the Confederate flag, he said.

The artist said he felt the Emanuel AME Church, often referred to as Mother Emanuel, was the target for such horrible violence because of its rich history. Founded in 1816, Emanuel AME is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the Southern United States and is the first independent black denomination in the United States.

Denmark Vesey was a pastor of the church at one time. Charleston probably has more churches than any other single place in South Carolina, but he picked that church because of what it meant to black people, Twiggs said. So my first image was this target and this silhouette of the church.

He said he chose not to reproduce an actual picture of the Emanuel AME Church in the first image of the series, whose pieces were all done in batik on cotton.

One of the things I didnt want to do as an artist is to just put a picture of the church because when you paint and put just a picture of the church, you tie everything to a single church, when its really about churches. So what I did was create a kind of symbol of a church, a kind of imagery that could be any church. That piece was done in 2015 right after the horrible incident, he said.

The second image was actually started in 2015 and finished this year.

I used the flag and the number nine because thats what it was all about. And it was at night, so I tried to suggest a kind of dark sky, said Twiggs, whose third piece also contained a blood-stained Confederate flag with nine Xs at the bottom of it.

Twiggs said the flag became more like a stain on the starkly white church in his fourth painting.

I just saw what happened at Emanuel as a stain on this white church. Here is this blood stain on this white church that was really a metaphor for a white garment that somebodys wearing and gets a terrible stain on. So the flag is there, but it becomes like a blood stain, he said, noting that the nine multi-colored Xs at the bottom of the flag represented the nine shooting victims.

An X means somebody has passed, or that somebody is no longer with us. I dont know why I used the different colors. I suspect its because I wanted to match up with the colors on the flag, but I think it also kind of represents that these were different people, Twiggs said. Some were young, some were old.

He said each of his paintings is a testimony to the nine slain church members.

They are single paintings that live on their own right. Its like a testimony, Twiggs said.

The Confederate flag become a recurring symbol in Twiggs Requiem series, and it is splashed across the surface of the church. It eventually morphs into a cross on a blood-stained background and then changes into a cross with the red drained from it.

Twiggs said there is somewhat of a transition made in the fifth painting, when the Confederate flag becomes smaller and less prominent.

In this one, the blood of the flag has completely disappeared.  This is the flag, but there are nine stars and the flag is now morphing into a cross, he said. This is patterned fabric. This is the only one where Ive used patterned fabric on it.

Twiggs said he took a tour of the inside of the church, images of which are included in his sixth piece.

I had not been inside the church in years. My art teacher at Claflin, Arthur Rose, was a member of that church. So I had been to that church early on, but it had been a long time. I just felt if I was going to do a Mother Emanuel series, I had to see where they died, he said.

He was particularly moved by a massive stained glass window that was located near the churchs altar. He included its likeness in his sixth image, along with the Confederate flags continued morph into the image of a white cross.

I wanted to get the feeling of what was inside the church. Whats amazing is one side of the church is starkly white, but inside its warm and has got all of that old wood. It looks historic, said the artist, whose sixth image also includes the Palmetto Tree and crescent moon, symbols from the state flag.

Twiggs includes all three symbols of the Confederate flag, the target and the number nine in his seventh image, along with crosses representing the souls of the victims.

I look at it and think of it as a summary because I used the flag, but the bloodiness is now gone. I used the target as I did on the first one, and then the number nine, which I also used in the second one. So kind of all the things that are incorporated in those paintings are in this particular piece, he said. And, of course, you have the crosses of the souls of these people rising and the moon.

He intended for the title of the series to reflect hope in the midst of great loss, the artist said.

The reason this is called Requiem is because this isnt about the living. This is about the nine people that perished in this horrible, horrific incident. Nobody knows what happens to you when you die but in the Christian religion, you are transformed from a physical being to a spiritual being, he said.

And I try to represent that spiritual being with the cross because the way Christians get to their final destination is the way Christ went to his destination  through the cross. So these people obviously were Christians, and for them that is the journey I try to portray them taking  that rising up from their church to another place, Twiggs said.

That image is vividly shown in his eighth painting, where a white line of demarcation separates the church from the heavenly place that Christians seek to reach in the afterlife. A darker blue suggests the horror the victims endured on earth, but a lighter blue emanates from above.

Thats where the sky is bluer, and in there I have a lot of crosses because we call our funerals home going ceremonies. Were going to meet our relatives who went on before us; theyre all up there waiting for us. So when Im doing this, Im very steeped in African-American culture and traditions, Twiggs said.

Deciding how to end the series with his final painting was something the artist struggled with. He thought about how the church was located less than a mile and a half from where Africans were brought to America as slaves and less than a mile from where the Civil War began.

Mother Emanuel is less than a mile from where Africans were brought ashore and sold on Market Street in Charleston. Mother Emanuel was in a very unique place and is a very unique place. Its the place where Denmark Vesey tried for freedom and was killed.

I thought about the history of Mother Emanuel and I also thought that (what happened at) Mother Emanuel is not unique to us. It happened in Birmingham with four little girls. It happened in North Charleston when the guy was shot in the back.  This is the stony road we trod, Twiggs said, referring to the lyrics of James Weldon Johnsons Lift Every Voice and Sing, the National Black Anthem.

It was another line from that song, however, that kept coming back to him and was included in his ninth piece: We have come over a way that with tears has been watered. We have come treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.

Those two lines explain Mother Emanuel perfectly, Twiggs said. If the victims could speak, what would they say? They have said, We have come treading a path through the blood of the slaughtered, and this is what has happened to many of us.

So what I wanted in this last one is to kind of sum up and give people the perspective of what Mother Emanuel really means to us as African-Americans. Its a place that speaks about our journey, the pain of a journey that is repeated over and over when you look at our history, he said.

In the final image, a number nine sits above the lines from Weldons song.

Our states finest hour

Twiggs said the seven-minute video that accompanies his series was developed with a $10,000 donation from a group of art patrons in Greenville who have purchased his work over the years. The video was produced by Greenville-based Sailwind Pictures.

Twiggs said the director of Greenvilles Hampton III Gallery gave the donors an opportunity to preview his works and see the video during a special reception. The gallery is the states longest operating art gallery in which Twiggs has been a member since 1972.

It was really a great afternoon. Once you see the video and these works, it gives a whole new perspective of what I was doing, he said.

The Johnson Collection of Spartanburg acquired the last three of the nine paintings, Twiggs said.

One of the most significant (art) collections in South Carolina decided to buy all three paintings and to donate them to two national museums and to keep one that so that it could be loaned to museums in our state, he said. That, to me, was nice.

Another donor funded the printing of 5,000 brochures containing images of the paintings and an essay, all of which will be available at Twiggs exhibit at The City Gallery in Charleston.

If you take the brochure, the exhibit could live forever. Im so proud of that, the artist said, noting that an artists reception is scheduled from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, July 8 at The City Gallery following the nine-day anniversary commemoration of the church shooting.

Were not doing anything formal when theyre having the anniversary because thats a quiet time. When theyre having the anniversary, the only thing is that the families of the victims will know that the works are in the gallery, Twiggs said.

South Carolina ETV also filmed a documentary about the creation of Twiggs paintings on June 2. Beryl Dakers, who retired from ETV but continues to work on special projects, is a long-time friend of Twiggs, and she filmed the documentary.

I know Beryl is also supposed to be going to Charleston to do something with Mother Emanuel. I think shes going to do some interviews and everything else and then feature the documentary with that. So shes putting together this documentary, Twiggs said, noting that the documentary will likely air following the nine-day remembrance,

Bradley Glenn, an award-winning documentary producer from California, is also working on a 60- to 80-minute documentary about Twiggs work called Leo Twiggs: Crossing Over.

He plans to bring a crew to Charleston to cover the Emanuel event. So Ill probably be going down there for that. His documentary is not just about Mother Emanuel, but he wants it to be a part of it, Twiggs said.

He (Glenn) said, I want to get you with some of the survivors. I said, Ive got to wait and see whether they want to do that. So hes going to be in and out of town. Its going to be interesting to see what he does, the artist said.

Twiggs said what he hopes to do is contribute to the healing of the community in the aftermath of the church shooting with his works of art.

When an event happens, there are people who want to write about it, there are people who want to talk about it and there are people who want to paint about it. I said in the video that after Mother Emanuel, it was our states finest hour because for the first time that I can remember, we came together as one, he said.

It was not about the color of our skin or status, but as one human being in relation to another human being. And, if anything, I hope that the paintings record that moment so that when people look at the paintings, they could say that a tragic thing happened at a church, but what happened as a result of that thing was something that had not happened in our state before.

Entry to Twiggs Requiem for Mother Emanuel exhibit is free to the public. The City Gallery is located at 34 Prioleau St. in Charleston. The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday. The gallery is closed on Monday. For more information, call the gallery at 843-958-6484.
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Azerbaijan and Portugal established successful relations despite the geographical distance between the two countries, said a press-release of the Honorary Consulate of the Portuguese Republic in Azerbaijan, dedicated to the national holiday - the Portugal Day, celebrated on June 10.

According to the press-release, Portugal and Azerbaijan signed a number of cooperation agreements.

The representatives of both countries often pay high-level visits, the press-release said.

According to the press-release, the two sides are actively cooperating as part of the international forums.

"The Portuguese entrepreneurs often visit Azerbaijan to find opportunities to expand business cooperation," the press-release said. "Azerbaijan and Portugal have a high potential for cooperation in the fields of information technologies, tourism, construction, agriculture, health and education."
The agricultural products have been freely delivered from Azerbaijan to Russia by 100 carriages and 33 trucks for the last three days, the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee said June 11.

The delivery of agricultural products from Azerbaijan to Russia has been freely restored.

"Azerbaijan and Russia have eliminated all problems arising while exporting the Azerbaijani agricultural products to Russia," the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee said. "After reaching an agreement, Azerbaijani goods were not returned or delayed on the border."

The corresponding agreement was reached following the discussions between Aydin Aliyev, chairman of the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee and the management of the Russian Federal Customs Service.

Earlier, the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee stated that the agricultural products of the Azerbaijani farmers and entrepreneurs, delivered to Russia, are returned or delayed on the border.

The Russian side said that the Azerbaijani farmers in their documents incorrectly indicate the country where the product was grown.

According to the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee, the Azerbaijan-Russia trade turnover amounted to $465.87 million in January-April 2016. Some $78.5 million of this amount accounted for the export to this country.
Azerbaijani Ambassador to Turkmenistan Hasan Zeynalov and Executive Secretary of the Office of the President of Turkmenistan and the Cabinet of Ministers Shamuhammet Durdylyev have discussed the development of bilateral relations between the two countries in a variety of spheres.





Hasan Zeynalov hailed the favorable ground for the expansion of cooperation in all fields between the two countries' peoples who share common ethnic, religious and cultural roots, saying he will spare no efforts in this regard. He provided an insight into the development processes, reforms in economic and social areas in Azerbaijan, as well as the energy and transport projects implemented in the region with the active participation of the country.





Shamuhammet Durdylyev noted that Turkmenistan paid special attention to the development of relations with Azerbaijan, and expressed their willingness to cooperate with the country for further expansion of these ties. He said that frank relations between the Azerbaijani and Turkmen presidents' paved the way for the development of the bilateral relations. Shamuhammet Durdylyev hailed the effective cooperation between the two countries' relevant agencies in economic, humanitarian and cultural fields.





/By Azertac/




At least 31 Daesh terrorists were killed Friday in northern Syria during an operation by Turkish Armed Forces and the U.S.-led coalition, a Turkish military source said Saturday, Anadolu reported.

A total of 33 Daesh targets were hit by Howitzers, the source said, adding that targets included gun emplacements, Katyusha rocket launchers and mortars.

U.S.-led coalition forces also launched nine airstrikes on Daesh positions - five in Jakka, and another four in the rural areas of Doudyan - the source said, adding that the joint operation had killed an estimated 31 Daesh terrorists.

The airstrikes also reportedly destroyed six Daesh defensive positions, five truck-mounted rocket launchers, three fortified buildings and three mortar emplacements.
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, according to Agence France-Presse.





"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."




Business France, the national agency for international development of the French economy and the French Business Council in Dubai & Northern Emirates signed an agreement to enhance business and trade of French companies in the UAE.



The signed convention aims to offer a strategic partnership for the development of French SMEs abroad and especially in the United Arab Emirates. This agreement will establish a framework of cooperation in the following fields: BtoB commercial services, business establishments and promotions.



Together, the two sides will put into effect a range of joint marketing activities, such as btob services, networking events, conferences and exhibitions to help French companies to strengthen ties with local businesses and increase French exports.



The signing partnership was attended by Michel Miraillet, Ambassador of France to the UAE, Majdi Abed, Consul General of France in Dubai & northern emirates and both signatories, Marc Cagnard, Business France director in the Middle East and Bruno de Reneville, president of the French Business Council in Dubai & Northern emirates.



United Arab Emirates remain a key partner in economic terms: the largest market in the Middle East and 4th largest French trade surplus. Total volume of trade between France and UAE represent 5 billion euros ($5.6 billion). In 2015, French exports to the UAE represented 3.9 billion euros and French imports from the UAE meant 1.1 billion euros.



UAE represents a quarter of French exports to the Middle East. French exporters were about 6000 in 2015, 60 per cent of which were SMEs. Around 600 subsidiaries of French companies are present in the UAE.



We have to keep in mind our ultimate goal is to structure French offer to meet Emirati expectations and hereafter to other Middle East markets, this strategic partnership is essential to work together on this, said Miraillet.  TradeArabia News Service
Iran and the International Bank of Azerbaijan agreed on the generalities of issuing a $500-million loan for the construction of the Rasht-Astara railway section, said a report.



The railway section, which will link Iran and Azerbaijan via Astara, is expected to cost about $1.1 billion, half of which will be made available by the International Bank of Azerbaijan as a loan, reported Trend News Agency.



The work on the Astara section is currently under way and is likely to be completed within three to four years, it added.



Azerbaijan's Economy Minister Shahin Mustafayev had visited Iran last month to discuss the implementation of the Qazvin-Rasht-Astara railway project, which is a part of the North-South transport corridor.



It will link Northern Europe and Southeast Asia and connect the railways of Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia.



Iran's Deputy Roads and Urban Development Minister Ali Noorzad said work was progressing smoothly on the Qazvin-Rasht section and was due for completion in March next year.



Initially, three to five million tonnes of cargos per year will be transported via the corridor, and this figure will increase to 10-12 million tonnes in the future, according to preliminary estimates, he added.
Egypts Ministry of Communication and Information Technology has floated a tender to supply and install network equipment and electronic security devices to the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (EFSA), a report said.



Citing June 19 as the date for opening the tenders, the ministry has stated that the supply, which includes over 1,300 devices, including Blu-ray media, laptops, LED screens, and fibre-optic networks, should take place within 12 weeks of awarding the contract, reported Daily News Egypt.



The evaluation is based on the technical specifications of the equipment provided and the training that companies can offer to EFSA employees, the report said, adding that a minimum of 37.5 of 50 points is required for nomination.



The ministry will also consider nomination to companies obtaining 22.5 of 50 points on grounds of previous experience, reputation on the local market, and the quality of service, the report said.



Companies will need to score 15 out of 20 points in the quality of devices, while a total of 75 per cent is the minimum for companies to be considered across all provisions, according to the report.
British-based oil and gas company BP is keen to invest in the development of certain Iranian oil fields, Iran Daily has quoted the countrys deputy oil minister as saying.



Negotiations are underway with BP for cooperation in oilfield development, boosting recovery rate at old fields and research projects, Rokneddin Javadi explained, the report said citing Mehr News Agency.



Resumption of Iran's crude oil sale to the company is also among the agenda for talks, said Javadi, who heads the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC).



BP has also expressed readiness to reopen an office in Iran with plans to resume activities in Tehran in the summer, Javadi said.
Lenovo has launched the worlds first consumer Tango-enabled smartphone, the PHAB2 Pro and the Moto Z family with Moto Mods that transform your smartphone into an entirely new device at Tech World 2016 in San Francisco.



More than 1,300 people, including fans, media, industry influencers and analysts, joined Lenovo at the Masonic in Silicon Valley for the second annual global conference.



Lenovo chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang led the keynote livestreamed on Lenovos YouTube channel.



In addition to launching products, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, Juniper Networks founder, vice chairman and CTO, Pradeep Sindhu and tech leaders from Google shared their insights on the most promising and emerging topics in innovation, including IoT and smart connectivity, the power of big data and transformative user experiences. Through device innovation, device and cloud connectivity and building flexible, reliable and safe infrastructure, Lenovo will deliver the next generation of technology advancements.



New Moto Z family with Moto Mods



With tech entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher Lenovo also introduced the Moto Mods ecosystem with two flagship smartphones and a collection of interchangeable backs that transform your mobile experience into exactly what you need, exactly when you need it  a battery powerhouse, a big screen projector or a boombox.



Moto Z and Moto Z Force are cutting edge smartphones featuring an all metal design, great low light camera performance, Qualcomms Snapdragon 820 processor and Moto TurboPower charging. Moto Z is the world's thinnest premium smartphone and Moto Z Force brings the added benefits of Moto Shattershield  guaranteeing the display will not to crack or shatter.



Combined with our all new Moto Mods, you can transform your Moto Z into exactly what you need it to be in a snap, whether its an instant party maker with the JBL(R) SoundBoost or a 70-inch movie projector with the Moto Insta-Share Projector. Theres also the Power Pack, which instantly adds 22 hours of life to your phone  and it comes in fashionable designs from partners like kate spade new york and TUMI.



High-powered magnets connect Moto Mods to your phone so you can easily snap them together as your needs change. Plus, with the Moto Mods Developer Program, you can develop the next generation of Moto Mods. The Lenovo Capital Fund will be setting aside seed funding to spur innovation on the Moto Mods platform. It has set aside $1,000,000 for the individual or company that creates the best Moto Mods prototype by March 31, 2017.

Worlds first tango-enabled AR smartphone



Lenovo revealed the first consumer smartphone powered by Tango technology, a set of sensors and software from Google that senses and maps its surroundings to make a host of cutting-edge smartphone augmented reality (AR) experiences possible.



This flagship device represents our combined efforts to promote mass acceptance for Tango, a technology that promises to become as prevalent as GPS. PHAB2 Pro transforms how we interact with our surroundings by enabling mobile devices to detect their position relative to the world around them, unlocking AR experiences via customized apps.



PHAB2 Pro uses three core technologies  motion tracking, depth perception and area learning  to sense its surroundings, enabling experiences ranging from AR gaming to virtual object placement. For example, with Tango technology PHAB2 Pro can begin to change the way people think about mapping indoor spaces to create new experiences like future AR museum tours via the GuidiGO app.



The power of connectivity is transforming the PC from personal computing to CC  connected computing, said Yang, CEO, Lenovo. Were 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. Launching groundbreaking products like the PHAB2 Pro with Googles Tango technology and Motos new Z Series smartphones with Mods in the heart of Silicon Valley shows were committed to this strategic technology direction.



The data center is set to become the foundation of an interconnected world. The explosion of data created from billions of devices and endpoints requires next-generation IT to deliver on its promise. Companies usually dont set out to build IT infrastructure to reach their business objectives but, increasingly, they are looking to an automated, software-powered infrastructure to help them simplify their operations and deliver true business agility, said Sindhu.  TradeArabia News Service
Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways is celebrating 10 years of flying to Qatar this summer by launching nine additional weekly flights on the Abu Dhabi  Doha route reinforcing its commitment to one of the airlines key markets in the Gulf.



Effective August 1, the national airline of the UAE will increase weekly frequency to Qatars capital city to 37 services. The new daily morning flights as well as the early evening departures on Thursdays and Saturdays provide more flexibility and greater convenience and have been timed to cater for the needs of business travellers both in Abu Dhabi and Doha, the airline said.



The extra frequencies will provide travellers to and from Doha with greater choice and travel options on Etihad Airways network across the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Asia, Indian Subcontinent and North America. The new services are also timed to coincide with the peak summer travel months, it added.



Since the Doha route was launched in 2006, Etihad Airways has steadily increased frequency to meet demand, and to offer more connectivity to the growing number of global destinations served from its Abu Dhabi hub.



Daniel Barranger, Etihad Airways senior vice president global sales, said: Qatar is a key market for Etihad Airways. Since 2006, we have progressively developed the Abu Dhabi  Doha route to four daily flights, and what better way to celebrate our 10th anniversary linking the two capital cities than by upgrading this important route with nine new flights each week, further demonstrating our commitment to the Doha market.



With an improved schedule to and from Doha, greater network reach and more connectivity, we look forward to giving our guests increased choice and access to even more destinations we fly to via our Abu Dhabi hub, he said.  TradeArabia News Service
Movenpick Hotel West Bay Doha celebrated Global Wellness Day on Saturday (June 11) with a variety of activities, ranging from yoga to swimming, at Bay View 26 Wellness Centre.



Global Wellness Day is a special day that reminds everyone the importance of living well, focusing on the harmony between the body and the spirit. This includes everything from exercise and beauty treatments to spiritual teachings and ways of thinking, and takes place every second Saturday of June around the world.



Guests and attendees were invited to join one of three sessions, each encompassing a yoga session, swimming, mini facials and a discussion on wellbeing and health. Guests were also invited to break their fast with a healthy and nutritious menu created specifically for this day.



The complimentary activities at Bay View 26 Wellness Centre helped attendees learn more on how to live healthier, look better and improve their mental and physical wellbeing.



This year, as Global Wellness Day falls in the holy month of Ramadan, Bay View 26 wellness centre also had a small discussion with attendees about fasting healthy and eating correct during Ramadan.



"Movenpick Hotel West Bay Doha has long been an advocate for healthy living and wellness offerings, and we are proud to be taking part in Global Wellness Day this year," commented Ghada Sadek, general manager. "Our goal for hosting the first celebration of Global Wellness Day in Qatar is to spread awareness to the community about good healthy practices and wellness.



Movenpick Hotel West Bay Doha joins 50 countries across the world celebrating Global Wellness Day.



Strategically located in the heart of the city, Movenpick Hotel West Bay Doha offers 347 delightfully furnished rooms, perfect for both short and long term guests. The hotel is in close proximity to Doha landmarks including as City Centre Mall, Katara Cultural Village, The Pearl, Souq Waqif, Museum of Islamic Art and many more. - TradeArabia News Service
So when they butt-stroked me to the head from an AK-47 and I was bleeding down the side of my face and they threw me back in the cell I could
Monday support meetings

Alcoholics Anonymous: 6:30 a.m., 917 N. Beech; 10 a.m., 328 E. A St.; 10 a.m., 500 S. Wolcott, Ste. 200; 6 p.m., 500 S. Wolcott, Ste. 200; 7 p.m., Glenrock, 615 W. Deer Street. (downstairs); 7:30 p.m., 500 S. Wolcott, Ste. 200, closed; 7:30 p.m., Douglas, 628 E. Richards; 8 p.m., 328 E. A St. Unless otherwise noted, all meetings are open. Casper info: 266-9578; Douglas info: 307-351-1688.

Al-Anon: Noon, 701 S. Wolcott, St. Marks Church.

Narcotics Anonymous: Noon, 500 S. Wolcott, 12-24 Club; 7 p.m., 302 E. 2nd, Methodist Church; 8 p.m., 4700 S. Poplar (church basement). Web site: http://www.urmrna.org.

Teen Addiction Anonymous: From 3:30-4:30 p.m., Boys & Girls Club Teen Center. Info: 258-7439.

VBS at Mountain View Baptist

The Vacation Bible School, Get Submerged in Gods Word, will be held Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., with a special program Friday at 7 p.m.

Pastor Buddy Hanson and MVBC would like to invite all kids from four years old through sixth grade to join. For more information, call 234-4381.

VBS at Sunrise

Baptist

You are invited to Vacation Bible School at Sunrise Baptist Church, 3990 S. McKinley, Monday through Thursday, from 6 to 8 p.m. Ages 4 through sixth grade are welcome. Family night is Friday. Save your coins for the offering. This years offering will go to the Wyoming Rodeo Ministry. Contact Captain Karri for more information, 262-0501.

Childrens summer event

A childrens summer event will be held at River of Life Ministries, 2955 E. Second St., from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. All children ages 4 to 12 are welcome. Parents are invited to come Friday to participate with their children. There will be an awards ceremony and dinner that evening.

Pool opens today

Marion Kreiner Pool opens at 1 p.m. Monday.

VBS at HPCC

Vacation Bible School will be held from 9 a.m. to noon June 13-16 at Highland Park Community Church, 5725 Highland Dr. The event is free for kids 3 and potty trained through entering fifth grade in fall 2016. The theme is Cave Quest  Following Jesus, the Light of the World. Volunteers are needed. Please call 265-4073 for more information.

Summer camp for future historians

The Fort Caspar Museum, Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum and National Historic Trails Interpretive Center will jointly host a Future Historians Summer Camp from June 13 to 17.

The camp is for students entering grades 8-10 (ages 13-15) and is a week long, introducing the history profession through hands-on experience and field trips. The camp will be based out of the Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum, and will include instruction, research and day field trips to various historic venues.

Camp registration is limited to 15 students on a first-come basis. The price for the camp is $50, which includes all transportation, reading materials and snacks/drinks. Students will be expected to furnish their own lunch each day. Registration can be performed through the National Historic Trails Center Foundation at: http://nhtcf.org/ .

For more information, call Douglas R. Cubbison at the Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum, 472-1857, or Stacey Moore, National Historic Trails Interpretive Center, 261-7787.

Fishing trip raffle is today

Soroptimist International of Central Wyoming is selling raffle tickets for a half-day float trip for two on the North Platte River west of Casper with a guide from Wyoming Fly Fishing. Tickets are one for $10 or three for $25. Drawing will be held Monday. Proceeds used to support the Soroptimist local Live Your Dream award, and other local projects. Contact a Soroptimist you know to purchase tickets, or contact Debbie Ehlers at 234-2173, email debbiehlrs@yahoo.com, or visit our Facebook page Soroptimist International of Central Wyoming.

Free writing workshop

The Natrona County Library will sponsor a free writing workshop, All the Water in Wyoming, by Lori Howe at 5:30 p.m. on Monday in the Crawford Room. Join Wyoming landscape poet, Lori Howe, in writing on the meanings of water in Wyoming.

Lori Howe is the author of Cloudshade: Poems of the High Plains and Voices at Twilight: A Poets Guide to Wyoming Ghost Towns. She has taught English and creative writing workshops for the last decade at the University of Wyoming and Laramie County Community College (Laramie and Cheyenne campuses).
From 9 a.m. to noon Monday through Friday, Trinity Lutheran Church, 1240 Missouri St., will host Barnyard Vacation Bible School, where Jesus is at the center of each morning. During the barnyard roundup, we will give five Bible accounts where God gathers his people, just as a shepherd gathers his his sheep, providing abundantly for their needs, leading them and finding them when they wander away. We will also look at the book of John's account, which includes a reference to the boy whose lunch was the source of the five loaves and two fish used by Jesus to feed 5,000. Jesus provides now and forever. All 3-year-old children to those who are in fifth grade are invited to join in a farm-tastic time! For further information, please call 234-0568.
He had already driven his wife to work and tied his daughters ponytails, and now, Justin Hathaway stood in his driveway, surveying the trunk of his car one week after quitting the only career hed ever known.

Lawn mower. Weed Whacker. Extra wire. Gasoline. Garbage bags. Gallon of water. Rake.

Thats it, he said, shutting the door. Thats all I need.

It had been only three days since he posted the Facebook ad: Oil Bust Mowing, I move my ass for dat grass!! and now, his new job trimming lawns paid better than his old job hauling oil.

The 34-year-old eyed his scribbled schedule for the day: five lawns and four estimates. The first house was a rental property, front and back lawn, scheduled at 9 a.m. for $40. He opened the car door, checked his email for an address and started the ignition.

Im ready.

He lasted six years in the oil industry, the first five in North Dakota. He worked as a casing hand, then on a frack crew, then hauled oil, away from his wife and five children three weeks at a time.

They moved to Casper last April so he could be home every night. But three companies later, the industry was once again keeping him away. He woke at 3:30 in the morning and returned by 7:30 at night, hauling truckloads of oil back and forth in a semi down Highway 59.

It used to be easy money. During the boom, Hathaway made as much as $7,500 every two weeks in North Dakota, and $4,500 over the same span in Wyoming. Then the bust happened. Rigs dwindled from 28 to seven. The state shed 11,600 jobs. Hathaways pay was cut in half, then again, enough that his wife returned to nursing.

He never liked hauling oil. He constantly worried about head-on collisions and hated the traffic. He stressed over job security, and lately, the money wasnt worth it. Three weeks ago, after a 14-hour shift, he calculated his hourly pay: $7.96.

So he quit.

Hathaway pulled into the driveway. The air smelled of exhaust. Lawn mowers buzzed as a team of workers trimmed next door. Green Tree Arboriculture, their truck logo read.

This shouldnt take too terribly long, Hathaway said, unloading the car and surveying the lawn. Twenty-five minutes. He smiled and yanked the cord of his mower, pacing it over long blades of grass. A black ball cap and sunglasses shielded him from the morning sun. He was whistling.

Days after quitting his job, Hathaway sat on his couch and listed things he knew he could do. Hed waited tables, tended bar and sold cellphones at a mall kiosk before working in the oil industry. He also had a commercial drivers license (CDL), but the last thing he wanted was to go over the road, which meant driving a truck three to four weeks at a time across the country.

Then the idea hit him. Landscaping. Hed briefly done it 14 years ago. He created the Facebook ad and days later filed for an LLC: Oil Bust Lawn Care.

(Since then), Ive just been booked. Like every single day.

His wife, Anna Bond, is a nurse at Wyoming Medical Center. Her steady paycheck made it easier to leave the oil industry. During the boom, the couple resisted the expensive toys like four-wheelers and boats, but their savings are still depleted and money is tight.

Bond was supportive of her husbands decision to quit, equally frustrated by the stresses. She laughed when she saw the Facebook ad. It would be a side gig, he said, until he found another full-time job. But the flood of messages surprised them both.

I want to be able to say, This is going to go places, Bond said. But you just never know. When youre dealing with the oil bust, youre dealing with all these different facets, even people that arent oil related. Its that trickle-down effect.

Who knows in a couple months if there will be people who still want their lawns mowed?

His goal is to make $200 to $250 a day. Hes mowing lawns seven days a week, and its only a starting point. He wants to grow his company and landscape, hiring others who are struggling.

Hathaway turned off the mower. Blades of grass stuck to his arms like sprinkles of glitter. Twenty-five minutes had passed. Only half of the front lawn was finished.

He reached for his phone and texted Carissa OMalley. The 24-year-old babysits his kids, works as a skin therapist and cuts hair. She was laid off from her welding job last July.

Hathaway asked if she wanted to help before picking up his daughter from school. She arrived a half hour later, raking loose grass in the front lawn while Hathaway mowed the back.

OMalley supports herself and her younger brother. She needs $4,500 a month to pay her bills and isnt making anywhere close to that. Before Hathaway created the Facebook ad, the two talked about going over the road.

Hes a trucker. Ive never worked as a trucker. I just took a CDL class, OMalley said. We talked about going over the road together and driving as a team so that we can keep a truck going almost 24/7, cover more miles and get paid more.

But Id be gone three weeks at a time.

OMalley left around 11:30 to pick up Hathaways 6-year-old daughter, Peyton. When they returned, Hathaway placed the Weed Whacker down and briefly played with his daughter.

This morning, he woke the kids, tied ponytails and dropped them off at school for what felt like the second time all year.

When youre home more often, you figure out what youve been missing, Hathaway said. And Ive missed a lot.

Now, he makes his own schedule, and today, he was way behind. The rental property took more than three hours. He packed his equipment and checked the backyard, eyeing his job once more before leaving.

I think its done, he said, pausing. Except for that spot.

A thin strip of tall grass stretched down the backyard.

That sucks. How did I miss that? Theres like a whole line. How in the heck did I manage to do that? Hathaway retrieved the lawn mower and buzzed over the strip.

Next on the list was Julie Shadoans house. He worked on her backyard the previous day, but it needed a touchup. When she originally contacted Hathaway, she asked how much he charged. He said $30. Shadoan refused, and offered $60.

Ive never researched what you charge, Hathaway said. My idea is, its not just me struggling. Everybody else is struggling. So I kind of want to make a good deal for people as well, but I still want to make money. I probably couldve gotten more. But thats part of learning.

He arrived with OMalley and Peyton. OMalley pushed the lawn mower while Hathaway used the Weed Whacker. They finished by 1 p.m., three lawns and four estimates to go.

Maybe I should just become a bartender instead, OMalley said, packing the lawn mower in the trunk.

It just takes a little bit longer than we expected it would, Hathaway said. I think I can get it down. I can take it from 20 minutes to 15 minutes. So three hours to two and a half hours.

OMalley sighed.

I think it will be fine, she said. If we make enough money to last that long.

Hathaway made a deal with his wife. Theyre giving the business until the end of summer. If it isnt thriving, hell find a more dependable career, one that will help support the family, even if it means spending time away.

(Funds will be tight) in the next week or two, Hathaway said, driving away to the next lawn. Just in the transition.

The car was quiet as he turned onto Wyoming Boulevard. Ahead was a semi. It lumbered down the road, hauling another load to another destination.

Hathaway gazed its way.

Thats what Im trying to stay away from right there.
Editor:

Recently Wyomings NPR brought to the publics attention a stark difference between the multitude of candidates vying for Wyomings lone House seat and big money Cheney: the issue of requiring folks for Wyoming to pay sales tax on purchases on the internet, such as Amazon. Sen. Mike Enzi has sponsored a tax requiring purchases on the internet to collect sales tax on purchases while shopping on the internet. Enzi is aware of the precarious position all cities and towns have to fund basic services for basic infrastructure funded by sales tax. Enzi is also aware of the need to keep local retail business viable and fairly competitive.

Liz Cheney on the other hand has very little experience with such situations these towns and local business face basically said taxes are bad and could care less how this unfair situation plays out as more and more people purchase over the internet. Cheneys campaign will rely heavily on, no entirely on campaign funds from out of state to be elected and as such must represent those who will put her in office. Cheney cannot afford to offend her constituents those from out of state that fund her.

Wyoming cannot afford to elect a person that reports to big money and not to the needs of Wyomings citizens. Cheney will run a lopsided campaign. She will outspend all other candidates combined. But what will that money cost Wyomings cities, towns, and the people in Wyoming? If the media in Wyoming really wants to cover the campaign, you must report on this vital discrepancy, please!
Editor:

Casper, we have a problem. Our city council is irresponsible. The council is about to approve a budget that spends $131.5 million but only takes in $127.5 million. The $4 million difference will come out of saved reserves. It is not prudent to plan to spend more than you receive in revenue. They should be about equal. What happens if their revenue forecasts are worse than expected?

The budget only assumes a 4 percent decline in sales tax revenue in the coming fiscal year. I think that the decline will be much worse and it may be a long time before we see a robust economy again in Casper. We need to keep our reserves in case the local economy implodes. Do we really want Casper to become another Detroit?

Casper and the rest of Wyoming could face a very difficult future, if the U.S. Secretary of the Department of Interior does not approve of the federal coal lease transfers of the three major Wyoming coal miners that are currently in bankruptcy. Environmentalist groups are patiently waiting to pounce on this issue to get the coal mines closed. An irrational Barack Obama may side with them.
The Arizona Geological Survey is conducting something akin to a going-out-of-business sale.

The surveys new digs at the University of Arizona are one-fourth the size of its current offices in the old wing of the state office building on Congress Street, where it also operates a store that sells its publications, maps and Arizona-themed gift items.

So  everything must go. The Arizona Experience store, 416 W. Congress St., offered 30 percent off on items in the last week and additional discounts are planned weekly.

The survey is also scrambling to find a place to archive its historical records and mineral cores after losing its state budget support in a consolidation proposed by Gov. Doug Ducey and approved by the Legislature.

It will now become a center in the College of Science at the University of Arizona, which was not given an appropriation to fund it. It will have offices in the former Office of Arid Lands Studies at 1955 E. Sixth St.

Arizona Geologist Lee Allison said he and his staff are going through a process of high-grading the stuff we have to have with us  keeping only the necessary furniture and files.

It is offering some of its archives to the geological community. The Geological Society of America, for instance, recently accepted a set of bound volumes of its publications that date to 1890.

It paid for shipping, which is a big consideration for the Geological Survey, which was not given any money for the move. Materials from its Phoenix office are being boxed by volunteers for moving into storage at the closed Mining and Mineral Museum near the state Capitol.

The mineral cores, which represent a record of geological exploration in Arizona, will also be stored there.

Allison said the cores, when subjected to modern analytical techniques, have led to discovery. Examination of cores from oil exploration in the Holbrook area aided the discovery of potash deposits which are now being mined, he said. Allison said the UA has arranged for an additional 90 days to move those cores. Everything else must be moved by the June 30 end of the fiscal year.

Were going to run out of time, said Allison. In two weeks, whats left goes into the Dumpster.

This week, volunteers will load up 800,000 pages of mining reports, 10,000 maps, and 7,500 photos at the Geological Surveys Phoenix office, which is closing.

They are also headed to storage at the mining and mineral museum, which was returned to the Geological Survey by legislative action this year, along with a mandate to refurbish the building and reopen it within two years as the Arizona Mining, Mineral and Natural Resource Education Museum.
Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems has signed what it calls a landmark agreement with California-based rocket motor maker Aerojet Rocketdyne to supply rocket motors for Raytheons tactical missiles through 2019.

The companies worked together for two years to find cost-saving opportunities they could work into future contracts, said John Brauneis, vice president of supply chain management for Raytheon Missile Systems.

Aerojet already makes rocket motors for Raytheon systems including its Standard Missile-3 interceptors.

Cost-saving opportunities may include changes in processes, materials, specifications and requirements, both technical or contractual, but such changes now must go through a tangle of red tape for approval, Brauneis said.

Under the agreement, instead of proposing and processing the cost-saving measures individually, Aerojet will factor them into its pricing, potentially saving the Pentagon and taxpayers millions of dollars, Raytheon says. In exchange, Aerojet will get more certainty for its production pipeline.

We think we can save the DoD (Department of Defense) millions of dollars over the next four years with this deal, Raytheon spokesman John Patterson said.

Raytheon Missile Systems President Taylor Lawrence called the pact a landmark agreement that will help the Pentagon achieve its cost-saving goals under a program known as Better Buying Power 3.0.

Brauneis said he believes the strategic sourcing agreement is one of the most innovative approaches hes seen in 36 years in the industry.

The subcontractor gets an unprecedented level of certainty around its portfolio, he said. The prime contractor (Raytheon) is able to propose more affordable prices for its products in an increasingly cost sensitive marketplace, and the U.S. government is the ultimate beneficiary in terms of savings for the taxpayer.

The agreement  which spans seven programs, nine products and all four armed service branches  shows Raytheon is trying to lead the industry in cost efficiency, a defense analyst said.

Raytheon has been trying to turn its Tucson missile plant into a model of efficiency, and part of doing that is having long-term relationships with your suppliers, said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the non-profit Lexington Institute.

It also represents a big vote of confidence in Aerojet, Thompson said.

What Raytheon is really saying with this agreement is, Aerojet is its best supplier of rocket motors, he said, noting that Raytheon along with its competitors contribute to the Lexington Institute.

The head of a think tank that has been sharply critical of Pentagon acquisition policies said the Raytheon-Aerojet agreement seems to be a step in the right direction.

Were encouraged by more strategic sourcing because of its potential to garner savings by leveraging buying power, said Mandy Smithberger, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Informations Project On Government Oversight. We hope that taxpayers reap the savings as well.

In prepared remarks, Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and President Eileen Drake noted that her company already partners with Raytheon on propulsion components for some of the Pentagons most important programs.

This agreement expands our long-term relationship with Raytheon and is a direct result of our commitment to deliver quality products on schedule, while remaining firmly focused on affordability, she said.

Last year, Raytheon presented Aerojet Rocketdyne with an Award for Excellence in Affordability during a supplier conference in Boston.

In contrast, Raytheon has at times had a rocky relationship with the other major U.S. rocket-motor supplier, Orbital ATK. The two companies sued each other over a series of failures of ATK rocket motors on Raytheons Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, or AMRAAM, which halted deliveries of the nations top air-combat weapon for more than a year.

Raytheons announcement of its pact with Aerojet came a few days after the U.S. House rejected legislation that would have required at least two domestic rocket motor suppliers for tactical missiles.

That was widely seen as a measure benefiting Orbital ATK, which lost its business supplying rocket motors for the AMRAAM to a Norwegian company.

A series of failures of AMRAAM motors made by Orbital ATK prompted the Pentagon to suspend deliveries and withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in contract payments to Raytheon between 2010 and 2012.

AMRAAM production was restarted after Raytheon began buying motors from Nammo, a Norwegian defense contractor that delivered its 1,000th AMRAAM motor in 2013.

That prompted ATK to file a civil lawsuit against Raytheon that was later settled out of court.

Aerojet already provides two booster rocket stages and a maneuvering rocket system for Raytheons Standard Missile-3, which is part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system, as well as booster rockets for the related SM-2 and SM-6 ship-defense missiles.

It also makes a launch booster for Raytheons Tomahawk cruise missile, solid-fuel rocket motors for Raytheons Griffin mini-missile and its Stinger portable air-defense missile, and warheads for Raytheons TOW (Tube-launched, Optical Wireless-guided) portable antitank missile and Joint Standoff Weapon glide bomb.

Orbital ATK also is an important Raytheon supplier, providing the third-stage rocket motor for the SM-3, and last week it announced successful testing of an improved version.

ATK also makes rocket motors for Raytheons TOW missile, as well as for the Evolved Sea Sparrow ship-defense missile, Javelin anti-tank missile, Maverick air-to-ground missile and Sidewinder air-to-air missiles.
The male jaguar that roamed three years through the Santa Rita Mountains is biologically insignificant, an Arizona Game and Fish Department official says.

Officials for Rosemont Copper, the company proposing to build the Rosemont Mine in the Santa Ritas, also downplay the significance of the jaguar and its habitat.

Contrary to University of Arizona and federal researchers who just published a million-dollar jaguar study, Game and Fishs Jim deVos said he finds it hard to say that an Arizona jaguar could contribute significantly to the recovery of jaguars on both sides of the Mexican border.

DeVos said he doesnt disagree in theory with Melanie Culver, a U.S. Geological Survey geneticist and the jaguar studys lead investigator, who said a lone male such as the one repeatedly photographed in the Santa Ritas can be a forerunner of a future jaguar population that includes breeding. But he finds the prospect unlikely, given the odds of continued population growth in Arizona.

I expect Arizona to have more human population, with much more dense human infrastructure. The potential for a jaguar population is very, very limited, said deVos, the departments assistant director of wildlife management.

DeVos shares Game and Fishs long-held position that it made little sense for the federal government to designate critical habitat for the jaguar on more than 700,000 acres in Southern Arizona. That habitat includes some of the northern Santa Ritas, where the jaguar was photographed during the recent study.

Department officials say they believe jaguar habitat protection and recovery efforts should occur in northern Mexico. But environmentalists have long argued that Southern Arizona should be a priority for jaguar recovery, given that jaguars once bred occasionally in the state and lived as far north as the Grand Canyon.

DeVos says the number of jaguars documented here is too small for Arizona to be a player in regional jaguar conservation.

At the Stars request, deVos reviewed two papers discussing the extent and range of past jaguar populations in Arizona. One, the new jaguar study, reported nearly 70 jaguar sightings in Arizona from 1900 through 2015, all but four before 2001.

Another report was prepared in 1983 by David Brown, then a Game and Fish official, now an Arizona State University biology professor. Hes also a co-author of the 2001 book, Borderland Jaguars.

His paper in the Southwestern Naturalist journal found 58 documented jaguar killings in Arizona from the 1900s through the 1970s. His 2001 book upped that to over 60.

Such statistics have been cited by environmental groups to make the case that  with proper management, including possible reintroduction  Arizona could again host a jaguar population.

But back in 2005, a Game and Fish employee analyzed Browns study and came up with 33 credible reports of jaguars, deVos said. Some of the reports that people are counting have not been verified, he said. Some of them were second-hand.

Of 21 jaguar reports before 1963 the department considers credible, 17 were of males, he said. All 12 credible reports since then were of males, he said.

The jaguars are a unique component of Arizonas wildlife, but when you look at the species as a whole, Im hard-pressed to say we play a significant role given the lack of animals in the past 50 years or 100 years, deVos said.

Having a jaguar in Arizona is neat, but from a population standpoint it is completely insignificant.

As for Rosemont, Kathy Arnold, a mining company official, told the Toronto Star before the new UA study came out that the Santa Rita jaguar, nicknamed El Jefe, is a wanderer from Mexico.

The jaguar was first photographed in 2011 in the Whetstone Mountains south of the community of Dragoon and then moved over to the Santa Ritas, company officials say. Plus, the animal hasnt been photographed anywhere in the past six months and jaguars are known to travel within their range, said Arnold, director of environment for Hudbay Minerals, Rosemont Coppers Toronto-based parent company.

The new UA-USGS study described the jaguar as a resident of the Santa Ritas since it was known to live there for three years.

Rosemont officials have repeatedly said the mines impact on jaguar habitat wont be significant because the 5,000-acre-plus site would occupy a small fraction of all jaguar critical habitat. When the Toronto Star reporter pointed out that the mine site would block part of a major jaguar corridor, Arnold replied that the animal might have to time his trips, but theres no reason it has to use that corridor.

Two remote camera sites in the Santa Ritas are the only places in the U.S. and Canada where four wild cat species including jaguars and ocelots have been photographed.

In a statement emailed to the Star, Hudbay said the 5,000-acre mine project would occupy less than .5 percent of the jaguars critical habitat. It said the mine itself would occupy only one-eighth of the entire Rosemont project area, which also would include waste rock, mine tailings, buildings and roads.
The Arizona Board of Regents could stand to heed the title of UA President Ann Weaver Harts strategic plan when dealing with Ann Weaver Hart:

Never Settle.

With its announcement Friday that Hart will stay on for two more years but leave the presidency in 2018, the regents have settled for an untenable limbo.

That Hart is leaving is a good thing in that more and more people are growing fed up with her. Even some regents seem to be feeling that way. When I asked regents Chairman Jay Heiler if they were trying to ease her out, he said, There was no coalesced regents opinion to that effect.

I interpret those words this way: Not enough regents were strongly enough opposed to Hart to buy out her contract and say goodbye.

Now, abstractly speaking, a little lead time in replacing a president is helpful. But two years?

Knowing that well need a new UA president in two years means we can take our time and find the right person, as the UAs faculty president and Heiler pointed out to me Friday.

The positive side is that we really have time to think about the succession, faculty president Lynn Nadel said. This provides the institution with the ability to do this in a reasonable, thoughtful way.

Heiler, who is outgoing as regents chair, told me the time would allow the regents to do some strategic analysis in a deliberate way.

I think shes done a good turn for the university and herself in approaching it this way, Heiler said.

True enough, in abstract. It would be especially true if we were talking about a beloved and trusted figure at the helm of the university.

But were not.

Harts presidency has been contested since the beginning. Six months into her tenure, she floated the idea to the regents of receiving an extra $150,000 in compensation  on top of the agreed-upon $620,000  paid for by donors to the UA Foundation. The foundation was not interested.

This set a polarizing pattern of Hart eagerly pursuing her self-interest, even when it bothered donors, faculty members and others.

She chose to move the presidents office from the administration building to Old Main, which was being renovated at a cost of $13.5 million. The move itself wasnt so controversial  it actually makes some sense  but the cost was. Donors have been very slow to pick up that tab.

In fact, it emerged in 2014 through my colleague Carol Ann Alaimos reporting, that big donors were upset with Harts polarizing character and were holding out on giving. They papered over those differences, but even now, for next fiscal year, the university is forecasting a 9.6 percent decline in donations. You cant overestimate the significance of that.

There have been other flash points, such as the 2015 book in which she trashed previous UA leaders by describing how she cleaned up the mess at the university left by others.

But no controversy has burned so hot as this years decision by Hart to join the for-profit DeVry Universitys board of director. Again, the issue has been that the benefit her actions offered the university seemed dubious, while the annual $70,000 in pay plus $100,000 in stock offered to Hart was tremendous  for her.

This isnt to say Hart has done nothing good. Of course she has  perhaps her most important accomplishment was the merger of Banner with University Medical Center.

Its just that she has exhausted much of the goodwill traditionally afforded university presidents with her self-interested actions. And that two years of waiting for the next president could hurt the university.

Will the Legislature, which has been harsh to the universities for years, respect a lame-duck president? Its easy to see them looking past Hart while continuing to offer respect to the 14-year veteran at Arizona State University, Michael Crow.

What will the University do with its Never Settle strategic plan and the resources dedicated to it? A new president will inevitably come up with a new plan, with its own catch phrase.

Will the university be able to undertake significant new ventures under a lame-duck president? Maybe, especially if theyre grant-funded, but the doubt will always exist whether the next president will support it.

How about the presidents cabinet and other high-ranking officials? You couldnt blame them for looking for work elsewhere when they know their future here is in question.

Nadel, the faculty president, acknowledged the risk of a two-year transition but told me its really up to the university community whether Hart keeps her oomph.

If we go about our business and dont let it become a factor, it wont be a factor, Nadel said. She isnt a lame duck. She still has the power for the next two years and presumably will use it to good effect.

I doubt that, of course, but I took some solace from the words of Heiler about Harts remaining tenure as president.

Theres two years to run on her contract, he said. It isnt necessarily the case shell end up serving the entire two years as the president. Shell end up serving much of that or most of it.

Heres a simple proposal: How about just one more year of Hart? With the presidential search starting in the fall, that should give enough time for attracting candidates, selecting finalists and interviewing them.

Yes, itll cost us a year of paying two presidents. Thats not cheap, but its likely cheaper than the downside of settling for a weakening university administration.
Arizona child welfare workers made 88 visits in the case of a Tucson toddler who was later beaten to death, allegedly by his uncle, a state official said.

Arizona Department of Child Safety workers last had contact with the boy more than a month before he died, said DCS spokesman Doug Nick.

Adam Mada, his mother, father and the childs caregivers met with DCS workers an average of four or five times each month as the agency pushed to sever the rights of the childs parents, the state agency says.

The agencys last contact with Adam, who was 20 months old when he died on March 12, was on Feb. 3. The brown-eyed boy had been taken from his mother at birth after he was born exposed to narcotics. Many of his online obituary photos show a laughing baby with pronounced dimples and chunky red cheeks.

Erick Henry, 23, was arrested Tuesday by the Pima County Sheriffs Department Fugitive Investigative Strike Team, and booked into jail on charges of first-degree homicide and child abuse, said Deputy Courtney Rodriguez, a Sheriffs Department spokeswoman.

As of Friday, Henry was in Pima County jail on a $250,000 bond.

Adam had been placed with relatives, but DCS spokesman Nick would not say whether the child had been living with Erick Henry and Henrys wife, Maria.

Since the 2014 placement with the family member, DCS received no subsequent allegations regarding Adams safety prior to his death and no allegations were received involving the suspect in this case, Nick wrote in a prepared statement.

Were dealing with a family thats had 15 years of history with DCS, said Sheriff Chris Nanos. I wouldnt place the most vulnerable with any of those family members.

Nanos said that he understands the benefits of keeping children with family members, and of reunification, but this placement was a mistake, either by the DCS or the courts.

Ive spoken to (director) Greg McKay of DCS and he wants to work with us to find a better way to do this going forward, Nanos said.

Shortly before 3 a.m. on March 12, deputies were called to the Henrys residence near Three Points. They found paramedics performing lifesaving efforts on Adam, but the child could not be revived and was pronounced dead at the home.

The cause of death statement in Adams autopsy report, obtained by the Star through a public-records request, was redacted by investigators. However, the findings of the autopsy were not.

The child had blunt injuries to the torso with some rib fractures, and there was some blunt injuries to the head and the extremities, mainly bruises and scrapes of the skin, said Pima County Medical Examiner Dr. Gregory Hess on Wednesday.

The autopsy report noted that Adam had a torn gastrointestinal tract, as a result of trauma to his belly, and seven visible injuries on his face and neck. Portions of the autopsy results about injuries to Adams head had been redacted.

The childs toxicology screen was negative and, with the exception of a cold, his autopsy describes a healthy boy who weighed 26 pounds and was well nourished.

Because of additional forensic testing necessary to determine the cause of death, the results took longer than a typical autopsy, Rodriguez said.

Court records show that in 2010, Erick Henry was charged with armed robbery and aggravated assault, before accepting an agreement and pleading guilty to attempted auto theft. He served two years probation.

Henrys wife also has a criminal record, having pleaded guilty last August on a felony charge of promoting prison contraband, court records show. She was sentenced to two years probation. She was initially charged with 12 felonies in connection with a January 2015 conspiracy operation to smuggle heroin into prison.

The couple have two small children of their own, according to posts on their Facebook pages.

I cant take it no more, I miss my kids, Maria wrote in a post on June 3. I just cant do this any longer I need them back this is pure torture!

Nick, of the DCS, would not say whether the couples two sons are in protective custody.
As the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind began searching for a new leader, the agency was pulled in several directions.

Questions of whether the new superintendent should have a background in deaf or blind education were pitted against the need to have a leader with administrative experience who could manage the $53 million budget and ensure the school complies with state standards.

There were discussions of hiring two superintendents  one to serve deaf students and one to serve the blind.

It turned out one candidate  Annette Reichman  could meet all of the schools needs.

On July 25, the 55-year-old Reichman will become the first deaf and visually impaired superintendent in ASDBs 104-year history.

She was born with hearing loss, which deteriorated as she got older, until she was classified as functionally deaf at 21 years old. The vision loss occurred at 13 due to a retina detachment in her left eye.

In addition to knowing the challenges of deaf and blind individuals firsthand, Reichman has spent the last 11 years working for the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C., monitoring federally funded special institutions for the deaf and the blind, which included overseeing budgets and projects and analyzing the use of dollars and resources.

In accepting the ASDB post, Reichman will be returning to the desert  home to the University of Arizona, where she earned her masters degree and kickstarted a 30-year career devoted to supporting children and adults who are deaf or hard of hearing.

More than getting by

In addition to campuses in Tucson and Phoenix, ASDB serves students in their home schools all around the state. The school has had to work to overcome challenges created by a superintendent criticized for poor leadership skills, poor communication with parents and inappropriate spending.

Understanding the schools recent struggles, Reichman is ready to build the community back up, spending much of her first year listening, she said.

I believe strongly that to really do anything well, you have to have trust, and you cant have trust without relationships. And you develop relationships by sitting down and listening and responding to what you hear, she said.

Reichman also has a strong focus on ensuring that students who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, visually impaired and both deaf and blind will not just get by in mainstream society, but will thrive, succeed and prevail.

Education is what gives us the tools to be successful as adults, to gain good employment opportunities, to get married, to raise a family, to be able to support the family, to have social networks  all of that comes through the education we get, she said. And for students who are deaf and hard of hearing, blind and visually impaired, oftentimes they dont get the same access to those resources. So by the time they graduate, theyre unemployed, or if they are working, theyre underemployed.

Theyre not getting the promotional opportunities their peers are getting, so education has a tremendous impact on the quality of our lives and an impact on what we can do to contribute back to the larger society.

Missed information, opportunities

Academic performance at ASDB is similar to that of other schools serving the same populations across the country, Reichman said.

For the 2014-15 school year, only 2 percent of deaf students and 14 percent of blind students at the Tucson campus passed the English language arts portion of the AzMERIT assessment. On the math portion, only 5 percent of deaf students and 15 percent of blind students passed.

Part of it is low expectations, Reichman said in speaking about low academic achievement for the deaf and blind communities around the nation. We dont expect them to succeed, so were not creating a culture of high expectations.

Parental engagement is also a challenge. Research shows that students whose parents are involved in their education are more likely to succeed.

As a child, Reichmans mother tutored her during her formative years of public school education when she had no access to interpreters and found herself missing critical pieces of information.

That access to information is another reason for poor academic performance among deaf and blind students, Reichman said.

If youre hard of hearing and youre in the general classroom and you dont have support, youre missing a good portion of whats happening in the classroom just from the noise factor  from the other students talking on top of each other, she said. On average, that hard-of-hearing student will be behind four years academically simply because of the amount of information theyve missed.

Learning living, social skills

The challenge faced by blind students also has to do with access, Reichman said. Timely access to Braille materials is one obstacle  but beyond that, there needs to be a real focus on building independent living skills.

A lot of communication we have back and forth is visual, and if youve never seen that, you dont know how to sit properly, you dont know how to turn toward that person, you dont know how to stop rocking back and forth because visually thats very distracting to other people around you, she said. You have to be taught that explicitly, and the expectation has to be they will develop their social skills and their independent living skills so that they can function on the same level as every other student in the classroom. It may be a different kind of functioning, but its not less.

Reichman herself has long struggled with the access issue, functioning for 30 years as a fully deaf person before making a decision to get cochlear implants to restore partial hearing five years ago, which has improved her access to colleagues in the workplace.

It changes the social dynamic when you bring in an interpreter to a meeting or a discussion. I just wanted to be able to interact more directly with my colleagues, she said.

Reichman hasnt overtly advertised the fact that she has cochlear implants, but those who know have been respectful, she said.

While some would argue that the use of implants is insulting to the deaf culture, Reichman says the controversy is not as much about the technology as it is about language acquisition.

Even with cochlear implants, Reichman does not have full hearing, making use of an interpreter in her interview with the Star to ensure she was aware of all that was being said.

The controversy is more so when you have a baby with significant hearing loss and parents have to make choices about what theyre going to do, Reichman said. The deaf community believes in providing infants with a language that is 100 percent accessible and can be picked up very quickly and naturally, using American Sign Language to scaffold the second language of spoken language.

Reichman said she agrees with that logic and says research backs it up, showing that infants who have learned ASL in the first year of life and then get cochlear implants at 12 or 18 months of age pick up spoken English much more quickly than those who are not exposed to sign language.
The Santa Rita mountain range, known globally for its birds and arduous hikes, now has another distinction  its the only place in the U.S. and Canada where four wild cat species are known to have lived.

This discovery came to light in a new study tracing the paths of jaguars and ocelots across Southern Arizona, particularly in the Santa Ritas. The federally financed three-year study by University of Arizona researchers placed remote cameras at 250 sites across 16 mountain ranges.

At two sites in the northern Santa Ritas, photos captured a jaguar and an ocelot, both endangered species, as well as the much more common bobcat and mountain lion. Both times, all four species were photographed within a 24-hour period, the researchers said.

Its very unusual. We had that happen two times on a single camera, said Melanie Culver, the studys principal investigator. Texas has the ocelot. They dont have the jaguar. In the northern U.S. and Canada they have the lynx, but no ocelot or jaguar. Arizona is really unique. Southern Arizona is really unique.

Added Susan Malusa, the studys project manager, You cannot find four cats anywhere north of Mexico in North America.

Having the four species shot together within 24 hours is about as close as you can get to having them in the same photo, Culver said.

You are not going to get jaguars and pumas posing together, Culver said. The only way that will happen is if one is trying to kill the other one.

Their comments came during a wide-ranging interview, in which they also stressed what they see as the biological importance of the lone male jaguar caught in photos and videos 118 times in the Santa Ritas from fall 2012 to June 2015. From June to October, another nine jaguar photos were shot there by remote cameras managed by citizen science volunteers after the federal money ran out.

Since then, the animal has dropped out of sight, triggering speculation that he may have ventured back into Mexico.

The researchers also discussed the value of species, such as the Santa Ritas jaguar and the ocelot, that live on the edge of their range. Three ocelots were spotted during the study: one in the Santa Ritas and two in the Huachuca Mountains. One of the Huachuca ocelots also was photographed in the Patagonia Mountains by a private citizen during the study period.

In their conversation with the Star, Culver and Malusa discussed how jaguars and ocelots get around the existing U.S.-Mexico border wall and warned that their passage into the U.S. could be virtually cut off if Donald Trumps plan to build a continuous wall becomes a reality. They didnt take a stand on the proposed Rosemont Mine, which would lie near both sites where the four cat species were photographed. But Culver said that, in general, shed like to see the Santa Ritas habitat protected.

The $1 million study, which the Star obtained in draft form through the federal Freedom of Information Act, was financed with $771,000 from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It was one of several DHS-funded projects aimed at mitigating impacts of the existing border wall. The rest of the money came from the University of Arizona, Culver said.

The study was published June 10 by the U.S. Geological Survey, Culvers employer. Malusa is a UA research associate.

Here are excerpts from the Stars conversation with the two researchers:

Q. What makes the Santa Ritas so attractive to large cats?

Culver: Its their ruggedness and remoteness.

Malusa: It is very rich in prey and has perennial water available virtually all year long.

Q. What about the habitat?

Malusa: The greater part of our detections have been in Madrean evergreen woodland (originating in the Sierra Madre in Sonora and dominated by evergreen oak, juniper and sometimes pine).

Q. How much prey?

A. The study found that of 25 individual species and groups of species photographed by the Santa Ritas cameras  the most found in any of the 16 mountain ranges  all but the jaguar itself represented potential jaguar prey.

Q. Before people developed so much of the natural environment, could all four cat species have been photographed in more places?

Malusa: One hundred years ago, when many species were more common and jaguars ranged up to the Grand Canyon, it wasnt so rare to see four cats. But these days, with many species having much smaller ranges, its very unusual.

Q. How can this research help with conservation of these two species?

Culver: It gives us a better idea of the habitat they are using in Arizona, their activity patterns in Arizona and the extent of their range in Arizona.

Q. Can you cite an example?

Culver: There was one instance where one ocelot was going from the Huachucas to the Patagonias and back. Thats pretty significant. Its a larger area than we expect an ocelot to roam through.

Q. Why does that matter?

Culver: It gives us the incentive to look further into the corridors (that they move through). Because we know without protected corridors we wont continue to see these animals. Particularly in the case of the ocelot, if those corridors arent there, they are not going to be able to use these most northern habitats. The same would be true for the jaguar.

Q. The federal government has built 124 miles of fences and 183 miles of vehicle barriers along Arizonas 378 miles of Mexican border. Along the entire, 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, the feds have built 652 miles of fences, walls and vehicle barriers. How do the jaguars and ocelots in Mexico get through the barriers?

Culver: In the more rugged areas, the canyons and mountains, what theyve done is either theres no wall and they just have towers and night-vision goggles, or they have vehicle barriers, Normandy-style fences that are crosshatched. Those are the areas where large carnivores can still get through.

Q. Donald Trump wants to build a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexican border to ensure that immigrants cant cross the border illegally. How would that affect jaguar and ocelot movement into the southwestern U.S.?

Malusa: They need movement corridors. There needs to be connectivity. The wall would cause further fragmentation and reduce connectivity.  The animals range doesnt end at a political boundary, at the international boundary. Its going to stop everything.

Q. When your report came out a few weeks ago, the Center for Biological Diversity said the presence of jaguars, ocelots and species diversity in the Santa Ritas shows that this habitat should be protected. Do you agree?

Culver: I think that area of Southern Arizona has been managed in a way for hundreds of years that has maintained high-quality habitat. Without it, theres no way these jaguars and ocelots would be able to come up there and make a living at what they do. That is really a credit to the stakeholders that live in that area, the managers and the agencies.

Q. So what should we do now?

A. I would recommend that we continue doing the same thing weve been doing for the next 100 years: Keep that habitat in as good a shape as it is today, and not let it get further degraded.

Q. Do you think the information your study gathered justifies opponents calls not to put the mine there?

Culver: I think it depends on the footprint of the mine and how that footprint affects the sites that weve detected and the habitat overall. I dont think that exact question is something that we have looked at. That was not an objective of this study.

Malusa; It definitely would change things, undoubtedly. We cant really look into the future and say exactly how it would change but it would change things.

Q. Switching gears, were you surprised the jaguar stayed in the Santa Ritas so long?

Culver: Pleasantly surprised. You never know what to expect. You could go there for three years and never detect jaguar at all. We consider ourselves very fortunate.

Q. This and the four other jaguars documented in this region since 1996 have been lone adult males. Do these occurrences have any biological importance?

Culver: A lone male animal can be the harbinger of a future population and future breeding. Nonbreeding males, males that strike out in a different direction, they are colonizing new habitat. You get enough nonbreeding resident males and eventually females follow behind. Research on tigers in India has shown this.

Q. But the late scientist Peter Warshall wrote in a 2012 paper that it could take a very long time, at least 45 to 70 years, for female jaguars to come up to the United States from Mexico because female jaguars stay relatively close to their mothers and expand very slowly over time.

Culver: Based on what I know about female movements, they are much more tied to their natal area. It takes a major female to strike out on a long distance. If the Sonoran population is not at its carrying capacity, they never will.

Q. These five jaguars have lived on the northern fringe of the jaguars range, the periphery. Does that mean they dont matter much?

Culver: A peripheral animal does have biological importance. In peripheral populations, you often get unique genetic variation and unique forms of genes. Theyre a little different than individuals at the center of the range.

Q. How are they different?

Culver: The forms on the edge, they are likely to be adapted to those different habitats out on the edge, particularly in the northern edge where the climate is more arid. They may be more adapted to conditions like drought and other climate conditions that could happen with future climate change. I would never understate the importance of a peripheral population, from a genetic adaptation standpoint.

Q. Alan Rabinowitz, the noted jaguar biologist, has spent a career trying to save jaguars in Central and South America, but he doesnt believe the Southwests and northern Mexicos jaguar population is worth the attention its getting from some conservationists. He has said that the money and other resources being spent on jaguars here would be better spent elsewhere in areas where the population is abundant but still needs help. Do you agree?

Culver: I respect Rabinowitz very much, but thats one thing he says I dont agree with. I have some data on the genetics, the genotypes of the Sonoran jaguars. Pieces of their maternal genomes show that they are just as unique as any jaguar population in every other geographic region  Panama, Venezuela, Costa Rica.

Q. Your report says that in the past 15 years, U.S. jaguar discoveries have returned to occurring at nearly the same intervals as before 1973, after having crashed from 1973 to 2000. Does this make you optimistic for their future in this country?

Culver: Sure, Im always an optimist. But it all depends on Mexico, and how healthy the population in Mexico is, and that the jaguar corridors in the U.S. and Mexico remain intact.  You cant separate the jaguars in Southern Arizona and Mexico. Theyre all one population.
According to Amnesty International, at least 122 of the worlds 160 countries it surveyed committed or allowed torture. The global human rights organization also found in its 2015 report that 30 or more countries illegally forced refugees to return to countries where they would be in danger, and at least 156 human rights defenders died while in detention or killed.

Torture, whether sanctioned by governments or used by armed groups operating without impunity, is clearly widely practiced.

On June 26 voices will be raised around the globe in recognition of the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. Here in our corner of the world, a refugee support group, the Owl and Panther Project, and the local chapter of Amnesty International and others will participate in a community gathering to hear from individuals who survived torture, to raise our awareness.

The event will be held at Grace St. Pauls Episcopal Church, 2331 E. Adams St., from 2-4 p.m.

We all have a role in ending this, said Abagail Hungwe, of the Owl and Panther Project. The first step is knowing about it and caring and educating ourselves about it, added Hungwe, who came to Tucson from Zimbawe as a refugee nine years ago.

Leonardo Maturana will be one of the speakers at the event.

The Chilean-born Maturana was tortured after the Chilean military overthrew the democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende, a socialist, on Sept. 11, 1973.

Maturana, now 63 years old, was luckier than thousands of other Chileans who were killed during the coup and in the subsequent 17 years during the regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

I knew people, said Maturana.

Two years after the coup, as the military regime intensified its suppression, police detained Maturana, a university student and son of a miner. He endured kicks, beatings and electric shocks.

More than 40 years later, the memories still haunt him, making it difficult for him to recall and relive the torture he endured.

He has lived in Tucson for 40 years and taught for the Pima County Adult Education program.

As a survivor, Maturana continues to find ways to heal. One way is not to hide the history or deny that torture existed, and to honor those who survived and those who did not.

We want a memorial to victims of torture and abuse, he said during a recent interview. He is active in the efforts to create a living memorial in his native Antofagasta, a port city on the edge of the Atacama Desert.

In some countries, like Argentina and Guatemala, aging generals who ordered the deaths and torture of government opponents are being tried for past crimes, despite those who want to forget the past.

Maturana said suppression is unabated as governments continue to violently silence opponents with clubs and water cannons. Sadly, torture is seen as an acceptable form of response, he added.

Torture also comes in other forms, said Hungwe. There is mental and emotional torture in verbal threats or images of torture sent to opponents. A phone call threatening violence or death to family members, or the sending of a severed body part, are forms of torture, she said.

Torture crosses ideology. Governments from the communist left to the authoritarian right engage in torture to suppress dissent and differences.

And democratic governments, including the United States, also practice torture, in the name of national security.

Think Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and waterboarding. A critical 2012 U.S. Senate report detailed abuses and torture committed after the invasion of Iraq. That didnt keep presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump from endorsing waterboarding, saying torture works earlier this year.

We have been trained to accept that torture is the best way to protect ourselves and our country, said Hungwe.

Hungwe, who works with refugee families who have experienced torture, trauma and forced relocation, said the effects are lifelong and devastating to survivors and their families. The residual effect, post-traumatic stress disorder, creates instability in the individuals and communities, she said.

Talking about torture, owning up to it, is the first step to the eventual goal of ending torture, she 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.
Therapeutic Ranch for Animals and Kids

Izzie Alikpala, left, and Lyric Smith, take a moment to enjoy a misting fan in the shade at the TRAK Ranch at 3250 E. Allen Rd. in Tucson, AZ. TRAK, Therapeutic Ranch for Animals and Kids, just recently moved into this property.
Help India!

By A Mirsab, TwoCircles.net,

Mumbai: With the arrest of a member of Sanatan Sanstha in the murder of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, political pressure is mounting on the ruling BJP governments in Maharashtra and Goa to ban the right-wing organization.

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Dr Virendra Tawade, 48, an ENT specialist was arrested by CBI on Friday night from his residence in Navi Mumbai for conspiring in the murder of Dabholkar. Before arresting Tawade the CBI had conducted a search on June 1 at the Pune residence of another Sanstha member Sarang Akolkar who is on the run ever since his name surfaced in the 2009 Goa bomb blast case.

On August 20, 2013 Dabholkar was shot dead by two unidentified bike-borne assailants near the Balgandharva Bridge in Pune.

Tawade is a member of Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu Janjagruti Samiti (HJS). While seeking custody, CBI mentioned a statement recorded by witness u/s 164 CrPC nailing Tawade in the case and it needed to examine a mobile phone recovered from his residence.

A day after this arrest the opposition in Maharashtra reiterated its demand for a ban on Sanatan Sanstha. Former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan demanded action against the right wing organization saying the Centre should immediately ban the organisation.

State Congress president and former CM Ashok Chavan said, In the past too, Congress had sought a bannow after the arrest of Tawde, we once again urge that Sanatan Sanstha be banned immediately on the grounds that its activities are dangerous to the nation, Chavan told TOI.

However, Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis said a decision to ban or not will depend on the evidence offered by the agencies.

The government has shown its will by cracking the case with its constant follow-up. We will take all actions based on evidence. So any decision to ban or not will be based objectively on inputs given by the agencies so that the provisions of the relevant act are satisfied. We have given a clear signal that no unlawful activity will be tolerated, Fadnavis told reporters.

Even if Sanatan Sanstha and HJS are Hindu rightwing groups, they dont enjoy good relationship with BJP as the groups had earlier accused RSS of hypocrisy over religious issues and therefore BJP may take a call to ban it if CBI produces evidences to that effect.
David Correia

The massive Chino Mine, an open-pit copper mine east of Silver City in southern New Mexico, is so large that it can be seen from space. It grew particularly big in the 1950s and '60s, as more than 1,200 workers labored each year to remove as much as 140 million pounds of copper; it grew so big in fact that it slowly swallowed the town of Santa Rita. Most of the residents were relocated into former military barracks in the nearby town of Bayard. Some were happy to be living farther from the daily explosionsthree mini-earthquakes each daythat blasted free millions of tons of rock and shook their homes day and night. In 2008 mining giant Freeport-McMoRan, the largest copper mining company in the world, bought the mine from its former owner, Phelps Dodge. After a hiatus following a drop in copper prices, Freeport ramped up operations in 2010. Today, if you stop at the overlook on Highway 152 east of Bayard, youll see huge 240-ton diesel trucks prowling along the terraced tracks that ring the mine, hauling away material dumped by massive electric shovels. But bring your binoculars; at nearly two miles across the mine is so wide that the 40-foot tall trucks are barely visible to the naked eye.

Phoenix-based Freeport-McMoRan owns three mines in New MexicoCobre, Tyrone and Chinoalong with others in Arizona, Colorado and even further afield in Chile, Peru, Spain, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and, most notoriously, on the Indonesian side of the island of Papua New Guinea. There, at the Grasberg Mine, more than 20,000 workers toil for wages barely over $1 per day (U.S. currency); in 2011 the mine helped Freeport post record profits of more than $5 billion on more than $20 billion in revenue.

Freeport is accustomed to doing things its own way, workers rights and nature be damned, and this is the attitude Freeport brought with it when it arrived in New Mexico in 2008.

Labor strife defines everyday life for workers at the Grasberg Mine, but its Freeports shocking environmental record that is most egregious. After blasting entire hillsides of copper-laden rock, huge pulverizers grind the material into the consistency of sugar. The milled material is then mixed with a chemical slurry. Agitators inject oxygen and mix the concoction until a thick froth develops. This froth, called concentrate, contains the copper ore, which is skimmed off and sent to a smelter. Milling produces more waste than copper, however, and this leftover fluid, or tailings, constitutes a noxious stew. Freeport refuses to release accurate information on any of its mining operations, but environmental organizations estimate that Grasberg produces between 230,000 and 700,000 tons of tailings each day. Freeport dumps the tailings into the Ajkwa and Otomona rivers. Glacial runoff at high altitude feeds the Ajkwa and Otomona as the rivers travel through an ecosystem astonishing in its biodiversity. Scientists still find new species of insects and mammals in the cloud forests, rainforests, alpine forests, tidal swamps and mangrove forests. But nothing much lives in either river any longer. As the tailings makes its 80-mile journey to the coast, it leaves a toxic sediment of chemicals and heavy metals, including mercury, along the river bottom. This slurry skirts the western edge of the nearly 10,000 square-mile Lorentz National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that is among the most ecologically diverse ecosystems in the world (Freeport euphemistically calls it the controlled riverine tailings transport system). The tailings eventually accumulate in what Freeport calls the modified deposition area, or more accurately, in the place where the spreading ruin of its toxic plume chokes coastal mangrove estuary habitat along the Arafura Sea.

While Governor Susana Martinez flung open the doors of the New Mexico Environment Department to Freeport-McMoRan, the mining giant is reluctant to return the favor. There are no tours of the facility, particularly for curious reporters.

Indonesia is the only country in the world that lets Freeport turn waterways into waste pits. This arrangement comes after decades of payoffs to successive military juntas thatdespite enormous pressure from human rights groups and environmental watchdogslets Freeport regulate itself. And so the company calls this management nightmare the best option available and publishes maps with arrows captioned No Tailings Impact that point to estuaries ruined by tailings.

Freeport is accustomed to doing things its own way, workers rights and nature be damned, and this is the attitude Freeport brought with it when it arrived in New Mexico in 2008. Despite rising copper prices and record corporate profits, Freeport claimed that existing regulations in New Mexico were too costly and onerous, particularly those that governed the handling of toxic mine tailings. It made these claims despite the fact that Freeport received variances from the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) for its Tyrone Mine southwest of Silver City that allowed it to ignore water quality standards and freely pollute groundwater, just like at the Grasberg Mine in Papua, Indonesia. But Freeport hates all environmental regulation, even those as toothless as the copper pit rule in New Mexico.

And so Freeport sought to write a new copper pit rule. Its timing was perfect. Susana Martinez arrived in the Governors mansion in Santa Fe at the same time Freeport-McMoRan restarted the Chino Mine. She established the Copper Rule Advisory Committee, stacked it with industry representatives, including from Freeport, and charged it with rewriting mining regulation. But representatives of environmental organizations also had a seat at the table and so the rule didnt give Freeport the carte blanche it sought. So NMED General Counsel Ryan Flynn, a Martinez appointee and former lawyer at the Santa Fe firm Modrall Sperling (Freeports attorneys in New Mexico), set the draft rule aside and adopted language written entirely by Freeport-McMoRan instead.

David Correia

This industry-written rule defines copper pit mining as an activityfrom the water quality standards established by the New Mexico Water Quality Act. Freeport can pollute as it wishes within what the rule calls areas of hydrologic containment and open pit surface water drainage. A lawyer involved in the copper pit rule described it to me as an unprecedented attack on nature and the authority of the state to regulate extractive industries in New Mexico.

And this was not the first time Martinez weakened environmental regulation. Shortly after she came into office, she fired the entire Environmental Improvement Board (EIB), the body that creates the policies that guide environmental rule-making in New Mexico. Under Governor Richardson, the EIB established sweeping climate change mitigation rules that promised to curtail greenhouse gas emissions among New Mexicos biggest polluters. Martinez replaced them with new members committed to overturning those policies. Two of her appointees had demonstrated their anti-environmental bona fides when, prior to their appointment, they testified against the proposed climate change mitigation rules. Another, Elizabeth Ryan, worked for a law firm that represented energy industry clients. After her appointment the firm bragged to its clients that one of its lawyers now served on the EIB. The new board quickly repealed the climate change rule.

Martinez then turned her attention to three waste pit rules. Her first act was to scuttle a new dairy pit rule that would have required synthetic liners in all manure lagoons in New Mexico.

The oil and gas waste pit rule was next. In 2005 the Oil Conservation Division finally admitted that thousands of oil and gas pitsthe ponds that hold the chemical waste slurry of oil and gas extractionwere leaking into groundwater. It proposed a new rule that, among other improvements, banned open-pit storage entirely. Martinez refused to publish the rule and early last month, after ignoring the pleas of environmental organizations and a history of groundwater contamination by industry, ordered that the state publish an oil pit rule weaker than the original standard. In a press release, Eric Jantz, an attorney with the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, condemned the rule that now allows oil firms to construct multi-acre artificial lakes filled with toxic fracking fluids. They have no size limit. These lakes are new to New Mexico, and they may remain in place until drilling or fracking operations are completed  typically ranging from 5-15 years.

The copper pit rule rounded out the coordinated attack on the environment. Freeport-McMoRan can now operate the Chino Mine as it operates the Grasberg Mine in Papua, unburdened by even the most minimal environmental standards.

The copper rule rewrite and Martinezs attack on environmental regulation is laced with as many ironies as southern New Mexico groundwater is with toxic tailings. At the same time that the New Mexico Environment Department was repealing environmental regulations that protected groundwater from Freeport-McMoRan, the Attorney General of the state of New Mexico was suing Freeport-McMoRan for polluting groundwater. That lawsuit ended in February of 2011 when Freeport-McMoRan agreed to a consent decree with the state of New Mexico regarding historic groundwater contamination stemming from operations at the Tyrone, Cobre and Chino mines. According to the complaint, which described the need for remediation as Superfund-like, massive slag heaps and huge tailings ponds at the Chino Mine are laced with sulfuric acid and dissolved metals such as arsenic and mercury and leach into groundwater. Just as in Grasberg, the Chino Mine relies on natural streambeds to transport tailings, and this practice guarantees that toxic slurry will eventually percolate into groundwater. Historic contamination is more difficult to determine, but the complaint notes that recent events have had significant impacts on surface and groundwater quality. Nearly 200,000 gallons of toxic tailings were accidently released into Hanover Creek in 1996. Three years later a pipeline breach dumped 8 million gallons more. Despite the consent decree, however, the new copper pit rule promises to make monitoring of future groundwater contamination more difficult.

I drove west last week along Highway 152 toward Silver City hoping to get a look at the Chino Mine. Just west of Truth or Consequences the road erupts out of the Love Ranch Basin west of the Caballo Reservoir and into the Black Range of the Rio Grande uplift. It snakes up and over the Mimbres Mountains along 50 miles of hairpin turns through ponderosa pine forest, much of which was charred by the 2012 Whitewater Baldy Fire. The western edge of the Chino Mine comes into focus just as the road finally straightens out and drops into a wide valley just east of the Continental Divide. It had just rained and the mine, really a series of mountain peaks that surround a deep valley that looks like its been slowly turned inside-out after more than 100 years of industrial mining, appears to be melting. Terraced slopes that look painted in vertical streaks of red and copper and yellow bleed into one another as water travels down along deep rills and gullies toward the base of the mine where the runoff pools into mini-lagoons in shades of deep red and dark yellow. I pulled over at the lookout along the northern edge of the mine in order to take pictures, but the incomprehensible vastness of the mine escapes capture by photography.

The week before, I called Eric Kinneberg, Freeports director of media relations, hoping to get access to the mine. He told me that they never let media poke around their mines. Its too disruptive, he said. While Governor Susana Martinez flung open the doors of the New Mexico Environment Department to Freeport-McMoRan, the mining giant is reluctant to return the favor. There are no tours of the facility, particularly for curious reporters. So I lingered at the lookout because its a long way back to Albuquerque, and its as close as Ill get to the mine. Freeports policy of no access extends to nearly every aspect of its operation. It refuses to release data on its mining practicesno one knows how many workers Freeport employs at Chino or how much copper it mills.

But now, thanks to Susana Martinez and her new copper pit rule, we know one thing for certain: Freeport will dump millions of tons of toxic tailings into Whitewater Creek, and those tailings will eventually make it into groundwater. And it will do this because it has a permit, not despite it.
Help India!

By TCN News,

Raipur: An 8-member fact-finding team of All India Peoples Forum, which visited four districts of Bastar, Chhattisgarh between 8-11 June 2016 has found several incidents of communal violence against Christians; as well as fake encounters; rapes; fake cases and arbitrary arrests; and fake surrenders.

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The AIPF team comprised former Madhya Pradesh MLA Dr Sunilam of Samajwadi Samagam, former Jharkhand MLA and CPIML Central Committee member Vinod Singh, Kavita Krishnan, Secretary of All India Progressive Womens Association, Brijendra Tiwari of AICCTU, Amlan Bhatacharya, State Secretary of PUCL West Bengal, Advocate Aradhana Bhargava of Chhindwara, Advocate Ajoy Dutta of Kolkata and Amlendu Choudhury. Bela Bhatia and Soni Sori also accompanied the team.

Communal Violence Against Christian Minorities

1. At several villages in Bastar district  including Karmari, Bade Thegli, Sirisguda and Belar  resolutions adopted under Section 129 (g) of Chhattisgarh Gram Panchayat Act have been wrongly invoked in violation of the spirit of the law to restrict non-Hindus from residing or building places of worship, even though the High Court has quashed such gram sabha resolutions in Karmari and Sirisguda.

2. In Bhadhisgaon (Tokapal Panchayat) in Bastar district, Pastor Pilaram Kawde was given a written notice by the Gram Panchayat denying permission to him to construct a place of worship on his own land. The written notice cited Sections 55 (1) and (2) Chhattisgarh Gram Panchayat Act 1993 and said that Pastor Pileman cannot construct a place of worship because People of big-big castes and religions live in this village, and every Dussehra even the Roopshila Devi Ma joins the celebrations.

3. Christians are being prevented from using burial grounds in several villages. In Bhadisgaon, an elderly Christian lady Saradi Bai died on 25.5.2016, but Hindu villagers provoked by the Bajrang Dal stopped Christians from burying her. Eventually, after negotiations conducted by the police, she was buried in a casket but without the cross  but the Hindu villagers warned that no future Christian burial would be allowed. Accordingly, the 200 Christians of the village gave applications to the SDM, Tehsildar, police and Sarpanch asking that burial grounds be allotted separately for Christians, since they were being prevented from using the common burial grounds.

4. Saradi Bais husband Sukhdev Netam passed away on 6.6.2016, and Hindu villagers prevented Christians from carrying out his last rites and burying him, threatening to kill them if they tried to bury him. Eventually after police arrived, he was buried but again, the villagers and Sarpanch warned that in future, they will call Bajrang Dal if there is any attempt by Christians in the village to use the burial grounds.

5. At Ara village, Bario Chowki, Jeypore thana, District Ambikapur, on last Sunday, 5 June 2016, a Bajrang Dal mob of 25 people led by Chhotu Jaiswal, Sonu Gupta, Bipin Gupta, Chhotu Gupta and others attacked the church during Sunday prayers; vandalized the church; and beat up the pastor, his wife and three others. They made a video of the thrashing and made it viral  we have a copy of this video. They dragged off the Pastor, his wife and three others to the Bario Chowki where they were kept till night. No FIR was registered against the assailtants  instead a case under Section 295 A has been registered against the Pastor who is yet to get bail.

6. In village Sirisguda, rations were denied to Christian believers, and Food Department authorities were beaten up along with Christians; the ambulance was not allowed to enter the village; injured Christians were not allowed to get proper treatment in the district hospital. After great efforts a case was registered but the statements of the injured are yet to be taken in Court. VHP, Bajrang Dal people prevent Christians from filling water in the village. At a meeting called by the DM, the VHP and Bajrang Dal said that Christians must do ghar wapsi, or else we will evict them from the village invoking Section 129 (g) of the Panchayat Act.

Repression and Intimidation of Villagers Resisting Violations of Forest Rights for Raoghat Mine

1. Ramkumar Darro of village Kohche, thana Antahgarh in Kanker district said that 25 hectares of land have been acquired for Raoghat Mines without informing the villagers, gram panchayat, or gram sabha. (Officially the Raoghat Mines, as well as adjoining dam and railway lines are for Bhilai Steel Plant but a consortium of private companies will be involved with the mining project). Trees have been cut, adivasis forest land that they have had for the last 50 years is being grabbed; several places of worship of adivasis are being destroyed and even the burial grounds have been taken over by the company. CRPF camps have come up densely at every kilometer in the area. Ramkumar Darro had spoken to an earlier fact-finding team in May, after which he was threatened by a SDOP that he would be jailed as a Maoist.

2. Dukra Singhs daughter was raped by an SPO and even had a baby by him. No case of rape could be registered, the SPO promised to pay Rs 50000 as compensation but has only paid Rs 25000.

Fake Encounters

1. Nagalguda, thana Gadiras, Kuakonda Tehsil, District Dantewada: Four women  Rame, Pandi, Sunno and Mase  were killed here in a fake encounter at 7 am on 21.11.2015, and Badru, one former Maoist who surrendered and became a Pradhan Arakshak and had accompanied the force, raped Mase before killing her. 22 DRG jawans were decorated and promoted for this encounter, in spite of the fact that rewarding jawans for encounters is against NHRC guidelines and Supreme Court guidelines for encounters.

2. Arlampalli, Dornapal Tehsil, district Sukma: Here, villagers told the team that on 3 November 2015, three village boys  Dudhi Bhima ( age 23), Sodhi Muya (age 21) and Vetti Lacchu (age 19) were killed by the police. The three boys left the village in the morning on 3 November on two cycles to get a drink of the local alcoholic drink (made out of date palm fruits). After getting their drink, they were going to the Polampalli Bazaar, where Bhimas mother was waiting for them. Near the nala close to the village, one youth Vetti Lacchu got down from the cycle while the other two went ahead. Security forces were in the area for a combing operation, and caught the two boys on cycles and began beating them up. The third youth, Vetti Lacchu, seeing this, began to run away  and was shot dead by the police. The other two youth were asked to carry the body of their friend to the Polampalli thana but on the way, they too were shot dead. No FIR has been registered as yet.

3. Palamagdu, Dornapal Tehsil, district Sukma: Police claimed that two women Maoists were killed after an hour-long gun battle on 31 January 2016. In a local newspaper, the police is quoted as saying that the two women Naxalites were wearing saris and could not run and therefore fell into a ditch and were killed. The team found that in fact, the police had killed two small girls in cold blood. The mother of Siriyam Pojje (age 14) said that her daughter along with Manjam Shanti (age 13) had gone to feed the hens and was going to have a bath in the river and return home. On the way the police shot dead both the girls. Manjam Shantis father also said that both girls lived in the village and had no connection with Maoists.

4. Kadenar village, Bijapur district: The police claimed that on 21.5.2016, an encounter took place with 30-35 armed Maoists, in which a husband and wife  Manoj Hapka and his wife Pandi Hapka/Pandi Tanti were killed. On reaching Kadenar village Pandi Hapkas mother and brother told the team that at 8 pm at night on 21 May, police came to the house where the family was eating dinner. They took Manoj and Pandi away, along with their clothes, other belongings and Rs 13000 that they had earned by harvesting chillies in Andhra Pradesh. We were told that Manoj and Pandi had been with Maoists for a year, but five years ago, the couple left the Maoists and came back to the village where they did farming. Pandi has had TB for the past five years and has been very ill.

Fake Cases and Arbitrary Arrests

In Padiya village, Gadiras Thana, Sukma district, on 21 May 2016, at 9 am, a force of 200-300 police came and picked up villagers working on a water body, saying they were involved in the breaking of a Essar pipeline on 19 May 2016. Police took away 11 adivasis, left two of them later, and 8 remain in jail. The night before our team reached the village, the police forced sarpanch Madkam Hadma to wear police uniform and move with the force, arresting four people. Thus the police conspired to make the sarpanch look like a police agent, making him vulnerable to attacks by Maoists.

In the same village, a small 12-year-old boy Joga had been picked up by police on 12 May. The fact finding team met Joga and learned that Jogas father and brothers had been arrested and detained illegally in the thana for seven days, where they were made to clean utensils and do other cleaning work in the thana. They were later released. The night before our team arrived in the village, Jogas father had been taken into police custody with three others. The SHO of Gadiras thana said that repeated arrests are done because Jogas sister is a Maoist Mahila Commander, whereas more than 150 villagers told the team that this is not true and the girl lives in the village. The team is apprehensive for the safety of Jogas sister  she may be killed in a fake encounter claiming she is a Maoist. The sarpanch also is in danger of being killed.

Rape of minor girl by CRPF Jawan

On 8 June 2016, a girl aged 14 years from Podum village, Thana Dantewada, was shutting her kirana shop when a CRPF jawan came and raped her throughout the night in the shop. She told her brother in law, who complained in the thana and was sent for medical examination last night (11 June 2016)  a process facilitated by the team and by Soni Sori. The CRPF jawan had given a name  RR Netam  and number in writing to the girl but this appears to be false since the TI says that no jawan of this name is there in the Jarum CRPF camp near Podum village.

Fake Surrenders

There have been 50 surrenders in the Chintalnar area. The team visited Chintalnar village where we were told of several staged surrenders. One small trader told us that he was called to the Polampalli thana by an SPO saying there is a warrant against him. He went there where he and 25 others were told that either they must agree to surrender or they will be booked in a case of killing Nagesh, an SPO who was killed 2 years ago. He is 55 years old and he said that the other 25 cases were also not genuine surrenders. They all were given Rs 10,000 each on the spot. Several others also testified to fake surrenders but are afraid of reprisals from the Maoists. We were told that the sarpanch, Kosa, is also under threat from Maoists for having facilitated the fake surrenders.

Conditions in the Village

Two AIPF teams covered 1,650 kilometres in their journey, where they encountered more than 60 police and CRPF camps. But in the 25 villages that the teams visited, the villagers were insecure and suspicious of each other. In these 4 districts, political groups and other organizations are rather inactive, suggesting that the scope for democracy has shrunk there. Most of the villages visited by the teams were without electricity, without roads, and lacking in education and health facilities. In Ketulnar, two baby girls died after drinking milk provided by the Anganwadi. We found that the village had 8 mitanin who did not even have medicines to treat diarrhea and vomiting and the hospital is 10 kilometres away because of which the little girls could not be treated. Now after the death of the girls, medicines have been provided but a case of culpable homicide is yet to be registered against the milk provider.
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It strikes me as odd that The Times described this innovative and fascinating chronicle of womens history as ballsy. Actually, its more than that. I imagine a few old boys sitting around the newsroom tossing out descriptors for Dr. Amanda Foremans study and guffawing when they came up with this one. The irony is not lost.

Since the dawn

In the past week, I watched the entire four programs and enjoyed this look at womens place and part in history to be both fascinating and disturbing. It begins at the dawn of civilization giving us a cloudy look at the roles of women based only on ancient pottery and statuary.

Leaping through the ages, the tale, produced by BBC Two, takes us from the Sumerians who enjoyed an abundant lifestyle. In that context, women shared equally in land ownership, education, marriage, and commerce.

Alas, it didnt last

Throughout the ages, as cultures changed and more powerful groups conquered weaker ones, the roles of women were generally eroded according to the dominant peoples rules.

What I found interesting was that the power women held in societies was not uniform across cultures and through time but could be great in some cultures then completely overturned by the conquest of another, less egalitarian, society.

Such was the case in Korea, where the sexes shared equally in societal roles, until the strictly misogynistic Confucian Chinese invaded and imposed their laws, which knocked women back to a subservient and severely restricted life.

Bound feet and other restrictions

The restrictions placed on womens lives range from the ridiculous to the brutal. The Chinese custom of foot binding, which essentially crippled women and severely hampered everyday movement, is one example of how society restricts womens behaviour in their own lives.

Even today, in many cultures, male dominance causes women suffering everyday through limiting choices, physical abuse, and archaic customs, often imposed by male-centric religions.

Its not all bad news

While the history of women is rife with horrors and oppression, there are bright spots. Dr. Foreman has made sure to point these out as she leads us on this journey.

I give this series five stars because its by a woman about women and gives us a brief glimpse into the lives of our sisters throughout the ages.
China creates more development zones to foster innovation Updated: 2016-06-09 02:30 (Xinhua)

BEIJING -- The Chinese government said on Wednesday that it will accelerate building two more national-level development zones to encourage innovation, as the country seeks to foster new engines for growth.

The government approved the establishment of the two "national innovation demonstration zones" in Fujian province and Anhui province, respectively, according to a statement released after the State Council's executive meeting on Wednesday, chaired by Premier Li Keqiang.

The decision was made after similar zones, including Beijing's Zhongguancun, and Shanghai's Zhangjiang high tech zone, have played experimental and pioneering role in the nation, and those models need to be replicated across the country, said the statement.

The government vowed to cut red tape and provide better services to those development zones, making them better serve the nation's economic rebalancing drive.

The government also announced a string of new measures to provide more medical financial aid for residents in the poverty-stricken areas.

Rural residents living in poverty would get more reimbursement when they are hospitalized, and would be covered by the critical illness insurance, according to the statement.
Small Chinese brands gain big names overseas Updated: 2016-06-10 07:23 By Zhou Wenting(China Daily)

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".
Girl's view of Beijing captured in pic book Updated: 2016-06-10 08:09 By Yan Dongjie(China Daily)

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.
Chinese Embassy refutes Wall Street Journal's editorial on South China Sea Updated: 2016-06-10 10:56 By Bian Ji in New York(chinadaily.com.cn)

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 golden creatures of Shennongjia Updated: 2016-06-11 02:32 By Liu Kun,Liu Xiangrui(China Daily)

Huang Yuanpeng's fellow researchers from Shennongjia Golden Monkeys Protection and Research Center check on the monkeys.

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.
More overseas returnees eyeing jobs in civil sector Updated: 2016-06-11 03:01 By YU RAN in Shanghai(China Daily USA)

An increasing number of graduates who have returned from their overseas studies are applying to take the civil servant recruitment exams in Shanghai, according to job agencies in China.

Zhaopin.com, Chinas leading job recruitment site, said that there were almost no overseas returnees applying for such exams three years ago in Shanghai. However, the number of such applicants in 2015 surged to 800 and is expected to reach 1,000 this year.

Yang Yanyan, a senior consultant from zhaopin.com, said that one of the main reasons behind this trend is that returnees, especially those who graduated from famous universities with mediocre grades, are finding it more difficult to find a job. As a result, they are willing to settle for government positions, which generally offer better job security but do not pay as much as companies in the private sector.

"Most of these applicants are from middle-class families. They are not demanding very high incomes and are more concerned about the stability of the job as they dont expect their children to rely on their salaries," said Yang.

"Furthermore, most employers today treat overseas returnees no differently from local graduates as studying abroad is no longer a big deal for Chinese families," he added.

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security recently announced that China had 7.16 million civil servants as of the end of 2015.

Figures from the Shanghai branch of Beijing Offcn Future Education Consulting Co, a private institution that offers training for the civil servant exam, showed that there were about 100,000 people who took the exam in Shanghai last year.

Wang Wenmin, the director of the Shanghai branch of Offcn, said that graduates have in recent years been more receptive to securing a job in the civil sector, and that such positions were "a wise choice" for returnees who have "average abilities and less ambitious goals".

Zheng Wenxiu, who graduated from a US university last year, said that she was facing difficulty in finding a secure job and was recommended to take the civil servant exam by a friend.

"Ive changed three jobs within the past year as my former employers are private-owned companies which have a high turnover of talents. I felt quite insecure in my previous jobs and decided to quit," said Zheng, who is now taking a training course to prepare for the exam later this year.

Zheng also believes that she does not have to worry about getting fired or dealing with a very stressful environment if she is hired by a government-related department.

"The only challenge now is that I have to get used to the exam-oriented system and pass the exam with high scores," added Zheng, who said that her parents support her decision.

yuran@chinadaily.com.cn
Teen returns to China after bid to beg in Dubai fails Updated: 2016-06-12 14:48 By Huang Zhiling(chinadaily.com.cn)

A poor teenager from Southwest China's Sichuan province returned home after he was detained by police in the United Arab Emirates for illegally entering the country with the intention of becoming a beggar to earn money for his family.

The 16-year-old, identified only as Xu, was sent back to Shanghai by the government of the United Arab Emirates, where he took a plane to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, in the wee hours Thursday morning. On that same day, he returned to his home city of Bazhong,Bazhong police said.

On May 26, Xu climbed a tall tree that was high enough to jump fences between eight and 10 meters high before sneaking into the cargo hold of an Airbus A380 passenger plane from the United Arab Emirates parked at Pudong International Airport. After his experience became known, the airport cut down many trees.

He hid in the hold until the jet took off and landed in Dubai more than nine hours later. He was quickly arrested by local police, according to Mian Jinlong, a Chinese interpreter working in Dubai.

It was the first time someone that young managed to illegally enter the United Arab Emirates by hiding in the cargo hold of a plane, said Mian, who acted as a translator for Xu with the police.

Xu told the police that a viral post on social media app WeChat motivated him to go to Dubai. The post claimed that a beggar there could rake in up to 470,000 yuan ($71,400) a month, or 16,000 yuan a day.

It prompted some netizens to joke that they would resign from their jobs and go to Dubai to become beggars.

Xu's family was very poor. Despite opposition from his parents, Xu, who was known as an introvert, dropped out of school in junior high. He became a worker in an electronic product factory in East China's Jiangsu province to support his family, his parents said.

"He gave all the money he earned in the factory to his elder sister and never wasted money," his father said.

Bazhong, in the eastern part of Sichuan bordering Northwest China's Shaanxi province, is one of the least developed areas in Sichuan.

It is common for people to become migrant workers outside the city at a young age, according to Zhang Yingshang, an official with Baimiao township in the city.

In Dubai, after discovering Xu, airport police contacted the Chinese consulate, which offered assistance.

According to the law of the United Arab Emirates, Xu could have been sued for endangering aviation safety and trespassing. Staff at the consulate insisted that Xu was a minor and the government of the United Arab Emirates took his age into consideration.

Police decided not to sue him and sent him directly to Shanghai, said Ma Xuliang, deputy consul general of the Chinese consulate in Dubai.

According to Xu's parents, police in Dubai were kind to their son because he was a minor. They put him up in a nice hotel, showed him around the city, bought him new clothes and gave him $500 before he left.

Ma said Chinese nationals should not be taken in by rumors about begging in Dubai, as the practice is illegal and anyone doing it will be punished.
Huawei sowing IT seeds in Latin America Updated: 2016-06-13 02:16 By MAO PENGFEI in Mexico City(China Daily USA)

Dozens of students from various Latin American countries will travel to China this year to get a handle on cutting-edge information technology.

At least 14 Colombian students and six from Trinidad and Tobago have won the chance over the past few weeks, thanks to Chinese technology giant Huawei's Seeds for the Future program. Another 15 students from Brazil will participate in the program later this year in November.

This Seeds for the Future program seeks to promote studies in information and communications technology (ICT) among university students, the company said.

The winners in Colombia were acknowledged at an awards ceremony in Bogota on June 1, hosted by Huawei's director general in Colombia, Xiong Yihui, and the country's Vice-Minister of Information Technologies and Systems (Mintic), Maria Isabel Mejia Jaramillo.

According to Xiong, the objective of the program is to allow top prospects in each country to learn more about the telecommunications industry in China and put this learning to use back home.

"The Seeds for the Future program is a global effort that Huawei began in 2008 and has now stretched to 57 countries. In the last three years, more than 2,500 students from over 150 universities around the world have participated. This is the third year the course has been held in Colombia," said Xiong, who added that the program aims to boost competitiveness and transfer of knowledge in all of the countries it reaches.

"It is highly important for Huawei that such a program can bring top young talent to China, so they may be trained in new technologies, generate new ideas and innovate in different industries. This is how we can contribute to the reduction of the digital gap, generating knowledge and benefits for society at large," he added.

Colombian students stand out as among some of the best in Latin America because of their drive and dedication, according to Xiong.

Vivian Herrera, a winner in Colombia last year, said the program had been a unique experience.

"Not many people get the chance to understand how telecommunications really works around the world and to return home with the opportunity to help this sector expand into new areas," she said.

Herrera added that her visit to China helped her understand how the sector can work. "We realized that Colombia still has some catching up to do and seeing the sector in China was an enormous advantage. However, there is very good equipment in Colombia and the policies of the government have helped us grow," she said.

Vice-Minister Jaramillo said that the Seeds for the Future program is in line with the policies of the Colombian government.

"Mintic is helping Huawei with this marvelous initiative around the country. We are fully aligned with Huawei's objectives and the ministry is keen to boost technological knowledge and talent in Colombia," she said.

The Colombian government has technological programs in place, such as Vive Digital, which seek to bring internet access to every part of Colombia. The program has also trained more than 6,000 students and will invest $106 million by 2018 on training ICT professionals.

Having attracted students from bigger economies like Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, the program this year expanded to Trinidad and Tobago, an English-speaking Caribbean country, through cooperation with the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the support of the ministry of education.

The six students selected for the program are all local ICT studies majors at UWI and were chosen by a selection committee. The program will help those students better understand the development of telecom technology and encourage them to participate in the international ICT community, according to the Guardian.

During the 15-day stay in China, the students will be trained in various aspects of ICT such as broadband, voice and data services, cloud computing and mobile, among others, through interaction with Huawei's researchers and laboratories.

This year, the 14 Colombian winners will travel to China on June 16 and visit Beijing and Shenzhen. Huawei will cover their travel, food and housing costs.

Students from Trinidad and Tobago will join students from other international universities for the trip and have expressed their excitement over this "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit China and be part of this learning experience that they expect will ultimately enhance their careers," according to the Guardian.

Huawei has a broad presence in Latin America, providing equipment for internet operators, companies and mobile users. The Chinese company has also become the leading supplier for fixed networks and is seeing the largest growth among mobile operators in the world.
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HA NOI Experts from most securities companies expect the VN-Index to hit a two-year peak level of 640 this week.

Nguyen The Minh, in charge of market analysis at Ban Viet Securities Company (VCSC), said investor confidence has helped the VN-Index soar to its highest level of the year so far. Ending Friday, the index closed at 629.84, up 1.3 per cent compared with the previous week.

Notably, in the June 9 session, the VN-Index climbed to 631.26 point, its highest level in 2016.

Nguyen Hong Khanh, Head of Analysis at SBS Securities said last weeks results were better thanks to positive news coming from the industries of oil, construction and steel throughout the week.

The crude oil price reached over US$50 per barrel in the middle of the week, its highest in three months, leading to an early rally in local oil and gas stocks including PetroVietnam Gas Corp (GAS), PetroVietnam Drilling and Well Service Corp (PVD), PetroVietnam Technical Services Corp (PVS) and PetroVietnam Coating Corp (PVB).

Meanwhile, two steel producers that benefited from the zero per cent tax from the US market, Hoa Phat Group (HPG) and Hoa Sen Group (HSG), rose sharply.

Meanwhile the revision of State Bank of Viet Nams Circular No 36 which reduced the tight credit for the realty market helped many realty stocks grow.

While most realty stocks rose lightly, An Duong Thao ien JSC (HAR) grew about 10 per cent over the previous week.

To conclude all the positive signals, Khanh said the results were not only boosting local investors confidence, but also made foreign investors increase their net buying.

Foreign investors were net buyers of VN411billion, contributing significantly to the market boom.

Of which, the southern bourse of HCM Stock Exchange (HoSE) accounted for VN375.63 billion. Stocks of Military Commercial Bank (MBB) were foreigners best buy last week with the buying value of VN142.4 billion. Currently, foreign buyers have bought the maximum 20 per cent for foreigners in the bank.

On the northern bourse of Ha Noi Stock Exchange (HNX), foreign investors were net buyers in four out of five trading days last week with a total value of VN35.74 billion, which contributed to help HNX-Index up 84.85 points, the highest level of the year so far.

Topping the list of foreign investors net buying on HNX were PetroVietnam Technical Services Corporation (PVS), then Viglacera Ha Long JSC(VHL), Sao Vang Rubber Joint Stock Company (SCR) a Nang Airports Services Joint Stock Company (MAS) and Petrolimex Petrochemical Corporation - JSC (PLC).

In further forecasts, VCSCs Nguyen The Minh thought that cash flow was back to mid-caps and small-caps stocks as these stocks had not yet reached the best potential so investors could look for more profit opportunities on them, especially real estate stocks actively benefiting from the revision of Circular No 36 of the State Bank.

According to financial website Vietstock.vn, ten of the most attractive stocks in the market this week will include Viet Nam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade (CTG), F.I.T Investment Joint Stock Company ( FIT), HAR, Hoa Phat Group Joint Stock Company ( HPG), Ba Ria-Vung Tau House Development JSC (HDC),Tu liem Urban Development Joint-Stock Company (NTL), Son Ha Sai Gon Joint Stock Company (SHA), Truong Thanh Furniture Corporation (TTF), Thang Long Investment Group JSC (TIG) and Vingroup Joint Stock Company (VIC).

The website chose the stocks under careful technical analysis of trading and liquidity transactions and experienced recommendations from securities experts.  VNS
QUANG NAM  A June 14-16 exhibition featuring 100 photos will mark the 100th anniversary of Tien Phuoc District in the central province of Quang Nam.

The districts culture and information spokesman, ang Cong Dung, said the event will also include a local cuisine festival, performances, a forestry product fair, and the opening of revolution-era relic centres in the district.

The district was established as a new district in the central province in in late 1816, during the Nguyen dynasty, under the reign of King Khai inh . The district became a base of revolutionary force during the anti-French war and was the headquarters of the liberation army during the American war.

Tien Phuoc was a land with a mixed culture of pre-Sa Huynh and Champa.

The district still preserves dozens of old houses and the memorial house of scholar Phan Chau Trinh (1872-1926).  VNS
VIENTIANE  President Tran ai Quang yesterday held talks with the Lao Party leader and President Bounnhang Vorachith right after arriving in Vientiane for his three-day State visit to Laos.

The host said the Vietnamese Presidents selection of Laos for his first overseas trip after taking office demonstrates the importance Viet Nam attaches to its relations with Laos.

He expressed his belief that the visit would be a milestone in consolidating and further developing the traditional friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between the two Parties, States and peoples.

For his part, President Quang expressed his delight at remarkable achievements the Lao Party, State and people have attained over the recent past.

Congratulating the Lao side on the successful 10th Lao Party Congress, he noted his belief that the Lao people will fulfill all tasks and targets set at the congress to advance firmly on the path towards socialism.

The two sides agreed to push forward the implementation of agreements reached by leaders of the two countries and outcomes of the 38th meeting of the inter-governmental committee on Viet Nam-Laos co-operation, as well as the co-operation plans between the two governments for 2016, the Viet Nam-Lao co-operation treaty for 2016-20, the joint statement issued during the recent Viet Nam visit by Party General Secretary and President Bounnhang Vorachith, along with the outcomes of the Viet Nam visit by Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith and the Laos visit by the Vietnamese President.

The two leaders also reached a consensus on continuing delegation exchanges, maximising the operation of bilateral cooperative mechanisms, and enhancing co-operation efficiency across all fields.

They renewed the resolve to carry out the protocol on bilateral defence and security cooperation for 2016-20, the protocol on border and border markers and the agreement on border and border gate management regulations signed early this year, and the new agreements on trade and border trade between the two countries.

The two countries will continue to enhance the connectivity and mutual supplementation of their economies while promoting cultural and people-to-people exchanges and coordinating to hold activities to mark the 55th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic relationship and the 40th year of the Viet Nam-Lao Amity and Cooperation Treaty next year.

The two leaders shared the view that the regional and world situation is seeing many complicated developments and agreed that the two countries should keep a close watch on the situation and maintain discussions to help each other ensure security and stability in their respective countries.

They affirmed that the two countries will coordinate closely at international and regional forums such as the United Nations, the ASEAN and sub-regional mechanisms.

President Quang pledged Viet Nams active and full support of Laos as Chair of the ASEAN.

The two sides reiterated the intention to coordinate closely to strengthen solidarity among the ASEAN, elevating the blocs central role in the regional security structure.

They underlined the importance of maintaining peace, stability, security and safety in the East Sea, and vowed to work together with other ASEAN countries for the peaceful settlement of disputes in the East Sea based on international law, the full and effective observance of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC) and the early conclusion of a Code of Conduct in the East Sea for the sake of peace, stability, co-operation and development in the region and the world as a whole.

The two leaders also agreed to promote coordination with each other and with other countries and international organisations for the sustainable and effective management and use of water resource in the Mekong River.

On the occasion of the visit, the Vietnamese President presented Sekong Province of Laos a school worth US$1 million.

Viet Nam and Laos boast a fruitful traditional relationship, which was fostered by Presidents Ho Chi Minh and Kaysone Phomvihane, and has been nurtured by generations of the two countries Party and State leaders and people.

Politically, the two sides regularly conducted high-level meetings for their Party, State, National Assembly and Government leaders, and exchanges between their localities.

The latest visits to Viet Nam were made by Lao Party General Secretary and President Bounhang Vorachith in April 2016 and Lao Prime Minister Thoongloun Sisoulith a month later. Permanent member of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee (CPVCC)s Secretariat inh The Huynh, head of the CPVCCs Inspection Commission Tran Quoc Vuong and Secretary of the HCM City Party Committee inh La Thang also visited Laos earlier in the year.

Besides, the bilateral economic cooperation has made big strides in recent years, creating a material foundation to consolidate the special ties between the two countries.

Vietnamese businesses have, to date, invested nearly $5 billion in 258 projects in Laos, mainly focusing on hydropower, mining, transport and industrial tree planting.

The two sides have also paid heed to collaboration in education-training and human resource development.

At present, close to 9,300 Lao officials and students are studying in Viet Nam while 425 Vietnamese students are learning in the neighbouring country.

Co-operation between localities sharing the border have also received due attention, which has been evidenced through the formation of economic and commercial zones at international and national border gates, the signing of a border trade agreement in June last year and the launch of the one-stop-shop customs model at the Lao Bao -Densavan international border gate.

The security-defence co-operation has been maintained at a high level of trust. The two sides completed the project on increasing and upgrading the border marker system.

They also signed two important legal documents, namely the Protocol on Borderline and Border Markers and the Agreement on Regulations on the Management of Border and Border Gates on Land between the two governments.

The completion of the border marker system has contributed to improving the quality of the Viet Nam-Laos borderline, both legally and in reality.

The two sides are continuing the search and repatriation of remains of Vietnamese volunteer soldiers and experts who died in Laos.

In order to develop the Viet Nam-Laos traditional friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation intensively and effectively, senior leaders of the two countries committed to ceaselessly fostering and promoting the relationship and passing on it to younger generations.

The Vietnamese Presidents visit to Laos will be followed by a two-day official visit to Cambodia with the aim of elevating the traditional friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation, as well as the neighbourliness and cooperation with Cambodia to new heights.

The visits have been organised at the invitation of Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni.  VNS


YUNNAN  Deputy Prime Minister Trinh inh Dung has called on China to create more favourable conditions for the transportation and import of Vietnamese goods, especially agro-forestry-fisheries products, in order to improve bilateral trade balance.

The official made the remarks at a meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang in Yunnan Provinces Kunming city yesterday as part of his trip to China to attend the fourth China-South Asia Expo and the 24th Kunming Import and Export Commodities Fair.

He suggested the two countries enhance their coordination in border management and encourage partnerships between their localities.

The two sides should make the best of cooperation mechanisms, including the working group on infrastructure and finance-monetary collaboration, encourage competent Chinese businesses to increase their investments in major projects in Viet Nam, and effectively implement aid packages and preferential loans China has granted to Viet Nam, he said.

The Deputy Prime Minister also proposed the two countries maintain high-level meetings and expand people-to-people exchanges, especially between their young generations.

Viet Nam attaches importance to developing the stable, healthy and long-term relationship with China and stands ready to work together with the country to deepen the comprehensive strategic cooperation partnership, he affirmed.

Dung also expressed his concerns over recent developments in the region and the East Sea, emphasising that peace and stability are necessary for regional cooperation and development.

He called on the two sides to take pragmatic actions to control disputes and take no actions that complicate and expand disputes in the East Sea.

The two sides should seriously observe common perceptions reached by the two countries leaders, especially the agreement on basic principles guiding the settlement of sea-related issues and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea, while collaborating to protect peace and stability at sea, he stated.

Wang Yang reassured that the Chinese Party and Government attach importance to developing the neighbourly friendship and comprehensive cooperation with Viet Nam.

He said the presence of Deputy Prime Minister Dung and 140 Vietnamese businesses at the expo demonstrates the importance Viet Nam attaches to the bilateral affiliation.

The Vice Premier suggested the two sides increase their strategic exchanges, raise mutual political trust, step up connectivity and cooperation in production capacity and soon decide on and implement a number of key joint projects.

Viet Nam is the main guest at the 4th China-South Asia Expo and the 24th Kunming Import and Export Commodities Fair.

The two fairs, co-organised by the Chinese Ministry of Trade and the Yunnan province, attracted 4,000 enterprises from 80 countries and territories in South Asia and Southeast Asia and more than 8,000 booths.

Vietnamese enterprises are running 250 booths at the events.

Deputy Prime Minister Dung was invited by the Chinese Government and Yunnan provinces authorities to visit Yunnan and attend the opening ceremony of the fairs from Saturday to today.  VNS
A NANG  The central city has asked the ministry of transport to allocate funds for key transport infrastructure projects  Lien Chieu port and the East-West Economic Corridor No 2 (EWEC2) connecting Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Viet Nam  in 2016-20.

Vice chairman of the central citys Peoples Committee Nguyen Ngoc Tuan, in a working session with the ministry of transport on Friday, said these projects aim to establish the city as a logistics centre in ASEAN and Asia-Pacific as well as encourage sustainable development and green growth.

Tuan said the city will start expansion of the National Roads No 14B and 14G, Hai Van Tunnel, remove a railway station in connection with EWEC2, and upgrade Tien Sa port later this year.

The construction of Lien Chieu port and removal of the railway station alone will cost nearly VN14 trillion (US$622 million). The city will upgrade the second stage of Tien Sa Port as an integrated cargo and tourist port in the second quarter this year, Tuan said.

We also ask the ministry to allocate funds for land clearance and resettlement for some sections of Ho Chi Minh Trail and a Nang-Quang Ngai Expressway, and Nam O Bridge and the Co Co River waterway system, Tuan said.

Tuan also said the city, in co-operation with Japanese International Co-operation Agency (JICA), will make a pre-feasibility study on the construction of Lien Chieu port and the EWEC2.

Minister of transport, Truong Quang Nghia said almost all transport infrastructure projects would face a deficient fund this fiscal year when mid-term funds only met 11 per cent of approved projects in 2016-20.

The country needs 116 trillion (US$5.1 billion) for developing transport infrastructure projects in 2016-20, but only 11 or 12 per cent of the proposed funds would be allocated, Nghia said.

The ministry, in co-ordination with the ministry of finance, will soon reserve funds for top priority projects in serving the Asia-European Co-operation (APEC) in 2017, and key roles for socio-economic development, Nghia said.

The ministry will soon review the construction of Lien Chieu port before 2020 and put it into operation in 2025 to ease congestion and overloading Tien Sa Port, he emphasised.

He also said the city should look at raising different sources of funds including Official Development Aid (ODA) and domestic and foreign investors in filling up the fund deficiency from the Government.

Nghia also warned the city to monitor and implement strict control on waterway transport, traffic violations and overloading of trucks.

He said the boat accident that occurred on June 4th was a tragedy, and has hurt the citys tourism industry.

On the subject, the citys party secretary Nguyen Xuan Anh said the city will ban all modification work in changing fishing boats into cruising vessels.

He said investigation agencies are poised to prosecute the suspect in the boat accident, while some officials have already been suspended.

As scheduled, Lien Chieu port, which currently handles 50,000 deadweight tonnage (DWT) container ships, will be built to allow access to 100,000-tonne ships and cargo ships with a loading capacity of 8,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs).

The central city also plans to upgrade Son Tra Port for 20,000DWT ships and build up an Inland Container Depot (ICD) to support ports in a Nang and Chan May port in neighbouring Thua Thien-Hue province.

A survey from the ministry of transport revealed that a Nang, which is situated at the end of EWEC, would handle 29 million tonnes of cargo by 2030.

The central citys port system including Tien Sa, Lien Chieu and Son Tra has been planned as the biggest integrated port among six seaports in Viet Nam (Quang Binh, Quang Tri, Thua Thien-Hue, Ky Ha, Dung Quat and a Nang).

According to Viet Nams seaport system development plan to 2020, a Nang Port has been confirmed as a major commercial port in the region, making it one of the key gateways to the East Sea from the sub-Mekong region.  VNS
HCM CITY  District and provincial-level hospitals, in an attempt to receive more patients, are seeking additional training in advanced techniques from leading hospitals in an aim to improve service quality.

The hospitals have been taking a more assertive stance in acquiring high-tech training as they are also aware that financial subsidies from the State will be reduced in the future.

Cho Ray Hospital, for example, in HCM City has worked with the provincial Nghe An Friendship General Hospital to provide training in advanced surgical techniques to treat laryngeal cancer.

Dr Tran Minh Truong, deputy head of Cho Ray Hospital, said the surgery had been performed on 19 patients at Nghe An Friendship over the last year.

Doctors at Nghe An Friendship have been able to treat bronchial stenosis from scars, and an abscess caused by a choking incident with a fishbone.

In the past, the patients would have been referred to hospitals in Ha Noi for treatment.

Thu uc District Hospital last year sent its doctors to leading hospitals, including Thong Nhat Hospital in Tan Binh District, to receive training in high-tech treatments such as catheter-based cerebrovascular intervention.

As of June 9, the doctors had used the treatment on one patient who had a partial seizure on the left side of the body. The patient will be discharged from the hospital after three days of treatment.

Dr Luong Ngoc Khue, head of the citys Medical Examination and Treatment Department, said that residents in outlying areas now had far better access to high-tech treatment.

The use of high-tech treatments at more district and provincial hospitals in recent years has helped reduce overloading at major city-level hospitals.

In 2010, the Ministry of Health told central and leading city-level hospitals to offer more high-tech training to doctors at provincial and district hospitals.

Since then, the central-level and city-level hospitals have seen a reduction in patient transfers from smaller hospitals.

The rate has fallen by 98.5 per cent in patients with heart-related diseases, 97 per cent for cancer patients and 99 per cent for obstetrics.

A report from the HCM Citys Health Department found that the number of outpatients at district hospitals last year increased to 26 per cent from 2 per cent in 2014.

There was also a 19 per cent increase of inpatients, compared to 5 per cent in 2014. - VNS
HA NOI  Vietnam Airlines has warned its passengers who plan to travel between Viet Nam and France or transit through Paris to keep updated on flight schedules which might be affected by French pilots four-day strike since Saturday.

According to the national flag carrier, Air France has cancelled two flights under code-share agreement with Viet Nam Airlines between HCM City and Paris on Saturday and Sunday.

The cancellation affected more than 130 passengers who have been transferred to vacant seats on other flights operated by Vietnam Airlines .

The airline recommended its passengers should regularly check information on official websites of the two carriers, or seek assistance from Vietnam Airlines agents across the country and in France.

Vietnam Airlines has been keeping in contact with Air France to get updates on the case and prepare a contingency plan.

In 2014, a similar Air France pilot strike took place in September , affecting about 1,400 Vietnam Airlines passengers.VNS
By Thien Huong

People throughout the country are familiar with various charity and educational activities organised by the Hoi Quan Cac Ba Me (Club of Mothers).

Based in HCM City, the clubs events, which range from buying agricultural products to helping needy farmers, to seminars on gender, sex and parenting, they are spread all over the country mainly in major cities of Ho Chi Minh City, Ha Noi and Can Tho.

Since its establishment nine years ago, the club has provided parenting skills to thousands of people and held hundreds of seminars on soft skills and living.

Yet few people know that the founder of the club is a fairly small woman, with a gentle voice and warm eyes. She is Nguyen Thi Thanh Thuy, who resides in District 2, HCM City.

Important trip

Possessing a university degree in social sciences, Thuy worked in various jobs and was earning a fairly high income when she suddenly wanted to quit her stable job and take up community work.

She came to this decision after her trip to Gia Lai.

On the bus to the central province, she met three children with congenital heart defects, who were returning home from HCM City.

When talking with their mothers, Thuy figured out that the defect was caused by the mothers ignorance during pregnancy.

She wondered, Would those children have had the problem if their mothers had been equipped with proper knowledge on pregnancy?

At that time she just tried to help out the children in some small way.

I called many companies for financial support for the children, she recalled. Many people sympathised with me and donated money, but many others ignored me and called me a liar, and said that I would make use of the money for myself.

The first amount she collected was given to the children on that bus. But she began thinking of a more effective way to prevent the disease.

Promise after trips

When Thuy had the idea of running a club for women, she thought everything would suit her capabilities. But things turned out quite differently.

My husbands encouragement gave me the power to overcome the very first obstacles, she said.

She has connected with physicians, psychological consultants and community staff.

She was also bogged down with various financial problems while running the activities and at various times used her own finances to cover the expenses.

The clubs first event in Gia Lai was hosted by her alone.

She gathered local women wherever she could, whether it was in classrooms or homes, to share the necessary knowledge on pregnancy and parenting.

Local women are honest, gentle, and hard-working, but their knowledge is rather limited, she said. To them, vaccination for children is something luxurious.

The more she talked to local women, the more knowledge she wanted to impart.

Trips to Gia Lai have become more frequent. She has influenced other members of the club including Minh Hue and Cam Van.

When villages such as Atuk, ak oa and Chu Prong were familiarised with the knowledge imparted, the club members reached out to other places such as Playku, Lam ong, Binh Thuan and Khanh Hoa.

Gender knowledge support

When she talks to young girls or young workers, Thuy is always worried about their poor knowledge of sex.

Most of female workers at industrial zones come from the countryside and always make mistakes during their love affairs.

In workshops for them on genders and sex, she tried to bring along newspapers and books as small gifts for young workers.

She felt sad while answering many of their questions such as, Can I have a baby during my first sexual intercourse? or Is it safe to have sex often?

Even young working mothers with meagre salaries try to feed their babies milk powder instead of breastfeeding them after seeing advertisements which boasted that babies using powdered milk would grow up to be smarter than those who were breastfed.

On seeing a teenage couple kissing at a high school gate, she thought of equipping teenagers with knowledge of sex.

In our educational trips to the southern provinces of Binh Duong or Ben Tre, we were so helpful to the teenagers when they asked us questions, she said.

Can kissing make babies?, or How do we stop arguments between parents and children?, or How do I make my parents care more of me? were their common concerns.

Saving farmers

The clubs activities also include helping farmers sell their excess produce.

Last year, the club gathered onions raised in the Central Highlands province of Lam ong to sell to support farmers in HCM City.

According to the Lam ong Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, there are 1,000ha of land under onions in a Lat City and the suburban districts of on Duong and Lac Duong. Last year, the onion wholesale price dropped to VN1,500 per kg, which is not enough for farmers to cover their expenses.

My home is in Lam ong, I was born into a farmers family so I understood their hardship, Thuy said, We should join hands to help farmers not only in Lam ong but also throughout the country. Farmers are among the most vulnerable labourers.

Two shops offering onions and other farm produce were set up in District 1, HCM City. The club also sold vegetables to restaurants and kitchens throughout the city. On an average, the club helped sell over a tonne of farm products from Lam ong every day in two weeks.

I heard about the shops offering agricultural products to support farmers run by the club, Nguyen Thi Nguyet, an office staff in District 1 said. They sell at the same price as that in the market. I absolutely support such a move to help farmers and consume Vietnamese products.

Challenge ahead

The club has received support from agencies and enterprises such as Sanofi Pasteur, Lavie, and Thai Ha Books, and its consultants are Dr o Hong Ngoc and writer Thuy Ai, and included the late musicologist Tran Van Khe.

Yet the club has been bogged down by many difficulties, especially in finance.

Every month, the club still offers free consulative workshops for expectant mothers in HCM City while mobile bookshelves are very popular among children in Lam ong. A tree planting project has also been run for the past 10 years encouraging local people in the central province to plant trees.

Phan Dieu Linh, who manages mobile bookshelves and tree planting projects said she enjoyed her volunteer work at the club.

I like small, simple but very effective projects the club has run, Linh said, adding, Our club has been a big influence, more than it was a few years ago.

Everything big starts from something small, much like what we do every day, she said. VNS
by Linh Thu

Tran Thieu Quang points at his ears and say ears, and his students repeat the word. It seems to be part of an English class as usual. But in reality, Quang is a 14-year-old teacher. His students are aged 10-20 and have mental disabilities.

Teaching students who have limited awareness is not easy, especially teaching them a foreign language, said Quang.

Despite many difficulties, I still try to equip the students with knowledge and help them feel more confident in life.

Quang is the oldest son in a family of two. His father is a businessman and his mother works at the Ministry of Defence. Quang studied hard at a very young age. Hes best at English and maths, and he won a bronze medal at the Asia Pacific Mathematical Olympiad for Primary Schools (APMOPS).

When Quang studied at Ha Noi Amsterdam Secondary School in 2013, his class visited the Ha Noi Art and Literature Club for Disabled Children to present gifts on the occasion of the Mid-Autumn Festival. Its a regular activity organised by the school management board to get students involved in social work and educate them on issues affecting people with disabilities.

This was the first time Quang met disadvantaged children. He immediately wanted to do something to help them.

The club was founded in 1995 at Trung Tu Primary School in ong a District. Since its establishment, the club has built a bridge between children with intellectual disabilities and the community through various cultural activities, exchanges and vocational training.

When Phan Thi Phuc, chairwoman of the club, asked students from Ha Noi Amsterdam Secondary School to teach English at the club, Quang did not hesitate to volunteer for the special needs class.

I was inspired by Phuc, Quang said. She is a mother of all the club members; despite different ages, they all call her mother. The way she takes care of the children moved me, and I decided to join hands with her.

At the beginning, Quang worked as an assistant for an older student, but when he graduated, Quang became the teacher on Sunday mornings.

A normal class often lasts two hours, but for this one, Quang teaches 30-45 minutes only because the students lack concentration.

I had to think of ways to attract students to the lessons and find a suitable method to help them acquire knowledge, Quang said.

I cant use the teaching method from my school or any language centre. So, I prepared the lesson plan on my own.

Quang consulted many online resources and books about mental disabilities to understand more about the students.

Teaching them requires much patience and empathy, Quang said.

Quang often combines a lesson with a game to create an opportunity for the students to practise.

Its hard for them to acquire the knowledge. I have to repeat many times to make them remember a single sentence, Quang said.

At times, Quang has felt low-spirited and wanted to give up. He reached a stalemate because he couldnt find a way to make the students understand. The work seemed to be at a standstill and he felt helpless.

But Quang kept trying, thanks to the encouragement of his parents and the clubs management board. Above all, he cant quit because he knows the students still await.

His mother, Thieu Lam Quynh, is the one who supports Quang most to pursue the class.

I always encourage him to continue this work, though its very difficult, I know, said Quynh.

Quang is just a student. He also has to learn at school and do homework, she said. He has no experience in teaching. He has spent much effort on this class.

I told Quang that he should help people who are less fortunate than him. Its not only volunteer work, but Quang also receives love and gratitude from others. Its a chance for him to understand that hes luckier than many people.

As a mother, I want him to respect what he owns. In the future, he could face many obstacles, and I believe that he would have the motivation to overcome them. The disadvantaged children in the class are a prime example for him to follow.

After much effort from both the teacher and students, the children can now count from one to 20 and have basic conversations with foreigners. After four years, the fruit of labour is so sweet.

Tran Thi Hai Ninh, vice director of the club, highly appreciated Quangs efforts.

Everyone loves Quang and waits for his class, said Ninh.

We admire him because he successfully finds a good method for the children. The class runs effectively. Together with other subjects, English really helps the students become confident in communicating with other people.

Quang has been busy studying for the final secondary school exam and the entrance exam to high school. However, he still shows up at the front of class each week.

At the age of 75, Phuc tirelessly works to help the students, so I think what I have done cant be compared with her, said Quang. VNS
By Pham Thuy Ha

No sooner had I arrived in Ha Noi than my father phoned me:

Have you met uc?

Im going, dad.

I did tell you to see him immediately and phone me, but youve yet to do it. How heedless you are!

I turned off the phone. I did not get a wink of sleep on the train for the whole night and wanted to take a short rest before going to my office, but fathers phone call made me angry. It did not matter if my meeting uc was one day late. He was still lying in bed, as he has for so many years. Father always phoned me, urging me to do this, to do that, while he could have come and seen him only for a short time and gone. I texted him a message: Yes, I am a heedless girl. If you say so, from now on, please dont phone me if you have anything to do!

I got excited very easily these days and was not patient enough to say something nice. I understood father was worried about uc when I was not in Ha Noi for a week. I got angry with father because he himself was a heedless man. If he had not taken that woman home to spite mother, it would not have happened to mother like that. Mother became mentally ill, and she was not well enough to take care of uc. Right at that time, fathers woman came to live with him in my house.

When mother was 26, she gave birth to me in the mental hospital. When I was five, I saw mother smile for the first time. I heard her voice and called her. We were both very happy then. I felt I had a mother like any other childs.

Are you afraid of me, daughter?

No, I am not, mum!

Do you want to sleep with mother?

Yes.

I also want to sleep with my daughter.

I brought mother a bowl of rice. If there was no more rice in the bowl, it meant that mother had been home; if the bowl was still full of rice, it meant she had slept on the street. Sometimes, I found her smoking cigarettes the whole night and I guessed she had stolen them.

I moved my desk to mothers room. In those 13 years, father stayed with mother overnight only once. Father embraced mother and said nothing. When father and mother were in love each other, mother was a literature teacher at a high school. Mother was pretty, romantic and full of ambition. But father was an amorous man. He had pity for mother when she was diagnosed with a mental disease. He had often come to see mother in the mental hospital, and I was the result of his visits to mother.

When my brother uc and I were studying at university, we rented a room with our mother in a residential building near my school. Mother cooked and waited for us to return from school every day. One day while in class, I suddenly remembered that I had left the key at home. So I rushed home and mother had gone. My brother and I went to look for mother, but mother had not come home for two nights. At the end of the day, we found mother in our home village.

My brother uc graduated from university with high distinction. Right after that, he received a job offer at a Viet Nam-Japan Joint Venture Company with a monthly salary of 1,000 US dollars. I myself was sent by the company to Australia for further studies. But I could not leave mother at home.

*****

Have you got any common property? the Court asked.

No.

Have you got any children together?

No.

Why do you want to get divorced?

We are ill-matched.

It was all over.

Hoang went straight to the parking lot as if he was afraid of getting involved with me. About eight years later, I saw Hoangs brother, who did not remember that I had once been his sister-in-law. Had I changed so much?

Hoang and I had lived together for three months before he went home and lived with his mother. My father said to me:

You have such a mother, so it is difficult for you to get married. He could love you so much, but he could not get over the fear.

Yes, I know, father.

Dont get angry with me, daughter. I have pity for you, so I earnestly ask your pardon for him.

Oh, yes, dont worry, father!

From then on, I tried to forgive what Hoang had done to me, but his mother was unbearable. At the end of the day, we had to rent a house and live separately. We still had no child, so we shared our daily spending fifty-fifty. But my mother-in-law often came and disturbed our married life.

Hoang wanted to divorce me and wrote the application twice, but I did not sign them. As for the third time, I took the initiative to ask for the divorce. My mother-in-law was happy about it. A few months later, I was told that Hoang had married another woman.

********

Be careful! That girl is a succubus, you know!

I read those lines in Tungs phone. I wondered if I had done something that could have terrified people like that!

But Tung loved me head over heels. Immediately after work, he rushed home and embraced me.

Will we embrace each other like this for good, my dear?

I need you, but I dont love you, I said to Tung.

We ended up having a baby boy. Tungs parents had to accept me as their daughter-in-law. My father seemed sad that it was my second marriage. One day, Tung came home looking frazzled. The company had asked Tung to transfer to the accounting section. My husbands job was a designer. He had to adapt to it if he wanted to keep working. So he quit the company.

Half a year went by, but Tung could not find a job. In just one month, he had spent my three-month earnings. He used my money to take taxis to restaurants, where he ate and drank. One week before the Lunar New Year came, Tung pawned his motorcycle for money to buy three peach blossom trees for his friends as Tet gifts. His mother sent money to him to buy back the motorcycle, but he gave the money to his friend from Quang Ninh to pay a debt. On the second day of Tet, the last asset, my motorcycle, was sold.

Tung had certain habits that were like my brother ucs when he first showed signs of mental illness. When uc was 27, he suddenly had a very bad headache and sleepless nights. He started borrowing money and sold everything in the house. He sold the air conditioner, iron and hair dryer. One day I even saw him selling some plastic baskets. Father sat there, heaving a deep sigh. I did not know how to console my brother.

Now I wondered, did Tung go mad because he married me? Insanity can be infectious. But why did Tung go mad, not me?

The whole family now relies on you. If you need anything, tell me, my mother-in-law said to me.

You know, mother, last night, Tung started strangling me. If I had died, who would raise my son, mother?

Possibly the soul of a dead person incarnated into him!

I patiently mixed medicine into his rice, as prescribed by the doctor day in and day out, until my husbands illness got better and better. Every day, he stayed in his room, reading and writing.

My dear wife, Ive completely recovered. I am going to my home village to start the clean vegetable growing project. You stay here and work as a distributor of clean vegetables. Dont leave me, my dear wife!

Mother said to me once that living a painful day also meant living. Who could say that my mother was mad!

Translated by Manh Chuong
by Mathilde Tuyet Tran  Luong Huong

The recent visit of US President Barrack Obama to Viet Nam has led to a dramatic increase in the number of visitors to the Ngoc Hoang Pagoda in HCM City.

The number of bun cha (fresh rice vermicelli and grilled pork) eaters in Ha Noi has also sharply risen.

Located on Mai Thi Luu Street in District 1, HCM City, the century-old Ngoc Hoang (Jade Emperor) or Phuoc Hai Pagoda is recognised as a national cultural heritage. It was the first destination the US president visited right after his arrival in the city on May 24.

The small pagoda, which is usually thronged with visitors on weekends, appears to be even more overcrowded with people visiting at all times following the US presidents visit. Surprisingly, many of them visit not for spiritual purposes, but because they are curious about why Obama dropped by to see such a small pagoda on a narrow and small street which always witnesses traffic jams.

I have heard that the pagoda attracts a lot of visitors, however, only after Obama came here did I make time to visit it. I want to know what is so special that it even attracted the US president. He has travelled thousands miles to visit the pagoda, so I see no reason why I, living right here, shouldnt pay it a visit, Hoang Kim Binh in District 1 said.

Tran Thi Mai Huong, a street vendor near the pagoda, can very clearly see the massive increase in the number of visitors.

Despite it not being a weekend, many people still flock to the pagoda, which is largely due to Obamas visit, she said.

I was also among the people curious about Ngoc Hoang Pagoda. Since it was mid-summer, I tried to arrive at the pagoda early to escape the scorching heat later in the day, but my eagerness soon turned into disappointment.

Ngoc Hoang Pagoda has a spectacular atmosphere and features many sophisticated religious structures, designs and Buddha statues, which makes it deserving of the title of national cultural heritage. However, its religious beauty appeared dimmed by the huge number of visitors that day.

It was just 10am but all the shrines within the small pagoda were already stuffed with all kinds of fruits and offerings, which would soon be cleared up to make room for new ones. It was a hot summer day but inside the pagoda it was even warmer because of the lamps, the candles and the dense incense smoke that kept spiraling up. The ceiling fans were not strong enough to alleviate the stuffy atmosphere caused by too many people gathered inside.

There were security cameras in every corner of Ngoc Hoang Pagoda, capturing every movement of the visitors. There were also huge and sturdy strongboxes used for collection of money donations with guards standing beside them. Like the cameras, the guards also monitored the movement of the people.

I was told the pagoda is very holy and pilgrims are often blessed with what they wish for, especially children and money. Despite the crowd, each person patiently and quietly waited for their turn to confess what they longed for. I could hear many people saying they longed for a son, but I like daughters, just like US President Obama.

Also witnessing the Obama effect is the Huong Lien restaurant where the US president had bun cha for dinner with renowned US chef Anthony Bourdain.

Located on Le Van Huu Street, the restaurant is renowned for the distinctive flavours of its grilled pork and also for its cleanliness, which has attracted many visitors who wish to try this specialty of the city.

One set of Obamas bun cha was the new term coined after his visit. As soon as the customer orders one set of Obamas bun cha, the restaurant staff immediately understands the customers order: fresh rice vermicelli with grilled pork, Hanoi beer and one sea crab spring roll.

Bun cha is often eaten during lunch, but after Obamas visit, strangely, the restaurant is always crowded with customers right from the morning, which has even taken the restaurant manager by surprise.

Most customers are, however, not regulars. Many have paid a visit to the restaurant for the first time to taste the bun cha that the US president ate, to see where he and the renowned chef sat and to check-in on their social network with Obamas bun cha.

While the taste of this Ha Noi specialty does not let customers down, they have to struggle to get a place in the restaurant.

On peak days, hundreds of people line up in front of the Huong Lien restaurant hoping to try Obamas bun cha. Because of the blazing heat of the hot summer, everyone sweats profusely and many have to regrettably even leave the line following the announcement that the restaurant has run out of Obamas bun cha just after one hour of opening.

As soon as someone finishes his food and is about to leave, there is always someone else ready to take his place. It is just like a battle, Nguyen Thuy Hang, who dropped by the restaurant unexpectedly, said.

If you want a place, you must arrive before 11am, she added.

The staff at the restaurant cannot cope with the sudden high demand due to the large number of customers. I ordered an iced tea and crab spring rolls, but was not served because of the shortage of staff, Hang said.

The pagoda will look more beautiful if there is enough leisure time to contemplate its beauty and it is less crowded and noisy. Obamas bun cha will taste much better if we are served faster and do not have to fight for a place. That is why I will visit the Huong Lien restaurant and the Ngoc Hoang Pagoda after some days when the memory of Obamas visit to Viet Nam has dimmed somewhat. VNS
Power tariff is likely to increase by 8-10 per cent in the country after Coal India decided to hike the commodity's prices, CEO and Managing Director Anil Sardana has said.

He also warned against early exuberance over the UDAY scheme and claims of electricity surplus by the government.

"Coal price has increased from 13 per cent to 19 per cent. So the minimum increase that will happen, will be 13 per cent for thermal. If the variable price will go up by 13 per cent, then the average price of power will go up by 8 to 10 per cent," Sardana told PTI in an interview.

Last month Coal India had increased weighted average coal prices by 6.2 per cent over the current price to garner additional revenue of Rs 3,234 crore this fiscal.

Commenting on UDAY scheme, meant for the revival of debt ridden discoms, he said: "At this stage nothing has changed. It is too early to assume they (discoms) will come out of their challenges and start to buy more power. They just got bonds. They are paying for arrears. You have to give them more time."



"In past also we had many schemes, which always attempted and assumed that they will reduce their losses and improve their performance. If that does not happen then rest part of UDAY will sequentially has a challenge. One has to wait and see how actually they change their performance."



On the recent Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL) order setting aside compensatory tariff allowed by Central Electricity Authority (CERC), he explained, "CERC adjudicated under removal of difficulties. It is not the right way to do but force majeure is the right way to do."



He further said, "They (APTEL) have reverted it back to CERC saying you please determine the compensation with force majeure. You cannot envisage impact under force majeure. What we could not envisage was change (increase) in coal prices."



Sardana was also of the view that it is time to change gears and talk about consumers, which is not happening for last many years.

"Our per capita consumption has not changed in many years. We are still at 1,000 Kwh per person in a year. Has consumer started to consume more. If that has not happened then scratching my back, saying I have improved, I am surplus... I think we should wait in making such claims."



The Centre has planned to be power surplus nation by having overall energy surplus of 1.1 per cent with a target of generating 1,178 billion units during this fiscal.

On the plan to provide energy efficient air conditioners to consumers through state-run firm EESL, he said, "Good part is that they are bringing a lot of awareness. The bad part is, I always say that government should not be in business of business.
Amid a debate over local sourcing conditions for foreign firms to open retail stores in India, Swedish furniture major IKEA says it is better to have less detailed regulations, as business will eventually go to the place that has the best preconditions.

The company, slated to open its first store in India next year, however, said it would do whatever it takes to meet the 30 per cent sourcing requirements in India for operating its retail chain.

I am happy about the development which India has taken to enable retailers like us to establish ourself in India, and you have a 30 per cent rule for sourcing. We will do whatever, of course, to fulfil that. We see many opportunities that will be good for IKEA and good for India, group president and chief executive officer Peter Agnefjall told PTI.

Asked if the sourcing conditions were reasonable, he said: At the end of day, its better for the world, for more freedom of trade we can have and with less detailed regulations, because then the business would end up where you actually have the best preconditions to do so.



Elaborating: For instance, textiles, which is super strong in India and not so good in Sweden, its better that we actually do it (source) in India for more countries and we will do something else in Sweden.



However, accepting Indias preconditions, he said: Regulations are what regulations are and we have accepted these and will make sure that we will fulfil the requirements, set up by the Indian government.



Currently, a debate is on over relaxing local sourcing requirements for Apple Inc with Indias Foreign Investment Promotion Board, writing to the department of industrial policy and promotion to relax the sourcing requirement for foreign-funded single-brand retailers, selling products with cutting-edge technology.

Agnefjall said IKEA had agreed that five years from store opening in India, it would fulfil requirements and thats the target set on which we are working upon.

He said initially it was little bit unclear on whether it counts from store opening or from the time you establish the company.

For us, it is important it goes from store opening because we have a very long lead time, as we are securing the land, which needs to be prepared, have a building permit etc, before you can construct the store, Agnefjall said.

He, however, welcomed the steps taken by the Indian government to enable the company to set up shops in the country.

IKEA will open its first store in India at Hyderabad in the second half of 2017. It has also bought land in Mumbai and it scouting for more sites in National Capital Region and Bengaluru.

The company, which received government approval in 2013 for a Rs 10,500-crore proposal to open retail stores under 100 per cent foreign direct investment, plans to open 25 stores by 2025 in nine cities.
Digital healthcare platform is intensifying expansion in key markets, including Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and eastern Europe besides adding 65 new cities in India during 2016.

The Bengaluru-based firm claims it manages over 40 million appointments across 35 cities in India and in countries such as Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines and Brazil.

The company is present in over 50 cities in 15 countries around the world.

"We plan to expand our footprint from 35 to 100 cities in India, while internationally expanding further across South East Asia, Latin America, Middle East and Eastern Europe," Founder & CEO Shashank N D told PTI.

Elaborating on the company's plans, he said "We will expand further into our existing international markets by covering more cities as well as brining more products to Singapore, Indonesia and Philippines."



When asked about the criteria for selecting markets for expansion, he said: "We usually select large markets with high out-of-pocket expense and lack of an legacy technology so that our products can immediately impact millions of people and improve their healthcare experience."



On the company's business model, he said has developed a model named "hyper loop" that connects consumers to a strong community of healthcare providers, including enterprises most of which are running the company's software.

When asked about the main divers of growth, Shashank said: "While our marketplace and clinic software will continue their rapid growth, we will also see considerable growth coming on top with our recent acquisitions of Qikwell and Insta to help us serve the enterprise segments as well."



Practo claims that over 2,00,000 healthcare practitioners, 10,000 hospitals and over 8,000 diagnostic centres and 4,000 wellness and firness centres in 15 countries across the world are on its platform.
With automobile exports in slow lane, the has asked the government to aggressively pursue FTAs with nations in Africa, Latin America and Asean region that do not have strong manufacturing base, besides asking for enhanced duty drawbacks.

Proposing a list of interventions that can help rev up automobile exports, the has asked the Commerce Ministry to adopt a holistic approach to address tariff and non tariff barriers in the potential export markets of Africa, Latin America, Asean and Saarc countries.

According to sources, a study conducted by iMaCS on behalf of the has also been submitted to the ministry suggesting various measures in order to accelerate exports.

The government should aggressively pursue FTAs (free trade agreements) with countries that do not have a strong manufacturing base for automobiles, according to the study.

In Africa, FTAs should be pursued with Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa, while in Latin America the government should try to pursue FTAs with Chile, Peru and Colombia, it said.

Of the total automobile exports of around $8.86 billion in 2015-16, Africa alone accounted for 30-35 per cent of the total overseas shipments in value terms.

Automobile exports from India to Latin America stood at $91 million in 2004-5. It grew to $1,044 million in 2013-14.

The study further said FTAs with countries like Philippines, Myanmar, and Vietnam should be pursued.

For Saarc nations like Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh, the wants the government to press for reduction in import tariffs on its vehicles and components in these countries.

"While India has given free access for automobiles to these countries we have not got reciprocal tariff concessions. Need government interventions to reduce import tariff for Indian automobiles and parts," sources said.

Asean, Africa and Latin America are the fastest growing markets for automobile exports from India since 2004-05. However, exports to Europe, which was once the biggest market, and Saarc nations have been declining.

Stressing on the need for a holistic approach to rev up exports, the study said tariff disadvantage of 25 to 40 per cent is likely to emerge vis-a-vis competing countries in all the potential markets of Africa, Latin America, Asean and Saarc.

In Latin America, India's competing countries like Japan and South Korea have already signed FTAs with many nations.

"Coherent trade strategy by way of free trade agreements (FTAs) with key markets is needed to address this tariff disadvantage," sources said.
Cedar Valley Hospice in Waterloo recently welcomed new employees to its team. KAREN SULLIVAN of Waterloo is a health care liaison. Previously at Community Bank & Trust, she has B.A. degree in accounting and has more than 26 years experience in the customer service industry. LINDA SMITH of Waterloo is an information specialist. She has been a Cedar Valley Hospice patient/family volunteer for almost two decades and has volunteered in the office since 2007. CONNIE HANSEN of Waterloo is a Hospice Home nurse. She has more than 25 years experience as a nurse and has worked in the Cedar Valley Hospice Independence office previously as a clinical service manager. JENISE WESTENDORF of Allison is a hospice nurse. She has 17 years of experience as a nurse.

JONATHAN HENNINGS, MN-FNP, has joined Cedar Valley Bone Health Institute as a family nurse practitioner. Hennings previously was at Ottumwa Regional Health Centers, Waverly Health Center and Peoples Community Health Clinic in Waterloo. He has a masters degree from Allen College of Nursing. Hennings also serves in the Iowa National Guard as a captain and is currently the senior pastor with Peace Church in Waverly.

THERESA BORCHERDING, ARNP, is joining the Covenant Clinic in Reinbeck as a family nurse practitioner. She earned a master of science in nursing degree from Graceland University in Independence, Mo., a B.S. degree in nursing and diploma in nursing from Allen College in Waterloo, and her undergraduate study at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls.

DYLAN WALTERS joins DISTek as an engineering technician after receiving his A.A.S. degree in engineering technology from Hawkeye Community College.

Four new associates have joined VGM Group Inc. NICOLE KULLEN joins VGMs Insurance Department as an accounting associate. She previously was at the Isle of Capri Casino and is an University of Northern Iowa graduate. BROOKE FRANKLIN, an Upper Iowa University graduate, is a patient care coordinator. ALEX SELESKY is a warehouse associate with VGMs Fulfillment Division and is an UNI graduate. COURTNEY WILLIAMS is an administrative assistant for VGM Strategic Imaging.

BILL KALLESTAD has been named the vice president of programs and services at Lutheran Services in Iowa. He has more than 21 years of experience working in human services. He joined LSI in 2012 to direct the Services for People with Disabilities department. Prior to LSI, Kallestad worked as a service manager, consultant, and trainer at ChildServe for 15 years and as an adjunct professor at Grand View University for four years. He has a degree in human services from Grand View College in Des Moines.
CEDAR FALLS  Carol Moliterno sums up her passion for art quite simply: I love to paint our world.

And she does it with an impressionists eye. Her artwork arrests moments in time with thick strokes of oil on canvas  indistinct and fleeting scenes of a couple sheltering in the rain beneath an umbrella, a woman with her white dress flaring out, touches of bright red at her waist and on her broad-brimmed hat, a horse with a windswept mane.

I paint with a lot of energy, a lot of paint and a lot of texture, says the artist from Murfreesboro, Tenn. My style changes as I grow, and my reward is having people purchase my paintings. Its an exciting journey.

Another journey shell be making is to the College Hill Arts Festival. She is one of 75 artists to exhibit and sell their artwork at the 38th annual event on Friday and Saturday. In addition to paintings, there will be jewelry, sculpture, pastel, ceramics, graphics/printmaking, photography, mixed media, fiber, glass and wood.

The College Hill Arts Festival is one of Iowas signature events and has been one of the top 100 best fine arts and design shows in the U.S. for the last 10 years, according to Sunshine Artist magazine. Artists, chosen by a panel of three independent judges, love the grassy, tree-canopied festival site at 23rd and College streets, says CHAF co-chair Mary-Sue Bartlett.

Moliterno plans to have a selection of her paintings displayed, and is looking forward to interacting and sharing her vision with Cedar Valley residents.

Im really excited. Ive never applied before, so Im pleased to get in. My son lives in Iowa City, and I did the Iowa City Arts Festival, and thats where I learned about the College Hill Arts Festival. I love spreading my art around and meeting people from all over the U.S., Moliterno explains.

Although her background is business and economics, Moliterno has studied painting with several notable Nashville artists, and her artwork is a combination of what she has learned under their tutelage and her own intuition and observation.

I like putting atmosphere into my work, and honestly, I really love strong color. That pop of red is something that draws the eye. I know a lot of very successful artists use a muted palette, but my focus is anything that will make someone want to look at my paintings.

Art should be part of your life, and make you happy, she explains.
WATERLOO  The YWCA of Black Hawk County has run summer development programs before, where middle-school girls come in once or twice a week.

But students and parents wanted more.

The girls said, Why cant we stay here and do activities? said Cyndi Ritter, the Ys youth and family services director.

Now, they can.

The YWCA is beginning a nine-week day camp program for the first 12 middle-school girls who sign up. Participants can sign up for one week or all nine.

It begins June 15 and runs through Aug. 12, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Well provide positive activities for the girls, and we have a lot of fun things planned, Ritter said.

Programs will include fitness, prevention activities, service learning projects, arts and crafts and career exploration, including field trips to the University of Northern Iowa and the Cedar Bend Humane Society.

We feel this is a nice balance for the girls and the parents, Ritter said. So much has an educational side to it, but summer is fun.

The program is $100 per week, and financial assistance up to a 66 percent discount is available to those who qualify.

We want people to come in and well get them the best deal possible, said Valerie Cumming, assistant director of youth and family services.

Breakfast, lunch, snacks and all transportation are included.

Its a chance for them to try things theyve never done, go to places theyve never been around, said Cumming.

Middle schoolers especially can benefit from summer programs, Ritter said.

I think thats a time in their lives when they really want to start focusing on their future, maybe doing some goal-setting, she said.

For more information on the Summer Girls program, call 234-7589.
Vincent J. Hamilton, 55, was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash, reported shortly before 5 p.m. on eastbound Business U.S. Highway 30 west of 330th Street.

The Iowa State Patrol said Hamilton was eastbound on Business Highway 30 on his 2004 Harley-Davidson motorcycle when he drove off the south side of the road while negotiating a curve and lost control.
CEDAR FALLS  In the words of Sturgis Falls Celebration President Jay Stoddard, No more mud and wood chips at Gateway Park.

The popular concert venue location, which turns to soup during rainstorms that periodically plague the 4-decade-old city celebration, will be hard surfaced thanks to a layer of recycled asphalt or regrind being donated and applied last week by local contractors.

Its part of a plan Stoddard submitted to the City Council and approved last fall.

The problem we had the last three years, beginning in 2013, it flooded completely, Stoddard said. It was a muddy mess. It cost about $20,000 to buy wood chips, put them down and clean them up again after the festival.

Now the concert venue, beer tap and walkway area will be paved. This takes a huge monetary relief off the city, Stoddard said. It also takes pressure off of festival staff trying to make the venue usable after a rainstorm. The celebration is also equpped with several large tents in the event of rain.

We fell pretty good about this, Stoddard said.

Aspro Inc. is providing the recycled asphalt with assistance from several other local contractors, including Matthias Landscaping of Waterloo, Peterson Contractors Inc. of Reinbeck and Bentons Ready-Mixed Concrete of Cedar Falls. Longtime Sturgis Falls vendor Bob Fahr of Fahr Beverage in Waterloo also was involved in the plan the council approved last fall.

The surface, recycled from resurfaced city streets, is same found in parking lots in city parks, Waterloos National Cattle Congress and the Iowa State Fair, said Stoddard and Mark Ripplinger, director of municipal operations and programs with the city. It is semi-porous. The site is graded to drain into a grassy area and will monitored to see if additional drainage improvements are necessary.

To questions as to whether Sturgis Falls is monopolizing too much park space, Ripplinger noted the paved area would be available for any performance. It was used for the Lt. Dan Band benefit concert for injured Cedar Falls sailor Taylor Morris in 2013. Stoddard also noted that Sturgis Falls had donated back $500,000 to $600,000 to the park space it uses for the annual festival and other public facilities, one of the most notable being the Overman Park band shell.

Obviously, the city and the community have an investment in Sturgis Falls, and Sturgis Falls has an investment in the community, Ripplinger said. With the Gateway Park work, Were creating a venue that is usable the most number of days it can be.

Hopefully, this will be better than wood chips, Aspro President Milt Dakovich said.

The 41st annual Sturgis Falls Celebration will be June 24-26.
CEDAR FALLS  It isnt all about roundabouts.

Yet, Cedar Falls city officials plan to take motorists to school about the circular, foreign-sounding traffic configurations in a series of outreach sessions over the next several months.

Its part of an ongoing effort to keep citizens informed about the project to reconstruct University Avenue through the city over the next several years.

That road is being narrowed from six lanes to four, and six of its eight signalized intersections will be replaced with roundabouts.

It includes a session from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, How to Drive a Roundabout, in the parking lot west of the UNI-Dome. There will be driver demonstrations on how to navigate roundabouts.

I really dont want to frame it as were doing all this focus on roundabouts, said Stephanie Houk Sheetz, interim community development director. Roundabouts are one component of a very large project. This project is adding sidewalks and trails, pedestrian safety, bus pullouts. Those are elements we try to talk about as well.

But we know that the roundabouts are an area where people are seeking information: How does a two-lane roundabout work? So thats what were going to spend some time trying to focus on.

Information kiosks stand at locations throughout the city, including City Hall, Hy-Vee stores, Bank Iowa and at College Square mall. They include handouts on how to drive through a roundabout and others items.

City officials also will staff information booths at the downtown Farmers Market Saturday mornings at Overman Park several times this summer to answer questions and issue handouts.

The city plans to heavily promote Saturdays roundabout event near the Dome.

Its similar to an event the Minnesota Department of Transportation held in Mankato, Sheetz said. Traffic cones will be set up to simulate a roundabout and drivers in John Deere Gator vehicles will demonstrate how to drive through them.

Its meant to benefit those who want a roundabout tutorial Sheetz said.

Programs on the University project will continue airing on the citys cable television channel, and there will be updates in the citys Currents newsletter.

The city also holds biweekly construction update meetings at La James cosmetology college in Holiday Plaza.

A meeting is planned Sept. 20 at City Hall to update residents on the project.

Staff also plans to update the City Council in July. Council members requested the update after some $6.3 million in costs were added to the project, now estimated at $38.8 million.

Council and staff expect to discuss ways to control costs, including potentially spreading the projects second phase over more than one year.

The first section of reconctruction, in front of College Square, Black Hawk Village and Holiday Plaza shopping centers, is expected to open to traffic in November. A second how to drive a roundabout session might be held in the fall.

Sheetz noted staff and consultants are available to make presentations to service clubs, civic groups and other organizations by contacting City Hall, 273-8600.

Part of the citys contract with project engineers Foth Infrastructure & Environment of Cedar Rapids and Des Moines includes roundabout education

This is a very high-profile project, and people are interested to know whats going on. We are trying to do everything we can to get that information out, Sheetz said.
WATERLOO  Crossroads Center and some surrounding businesses are fighting plans for another billboard in their area.

Lamar Advertising is seeking zoning approval to erect a new 45-foot-tall, 378-square-foot digital billboard next to Advance Auto Parts at San Marnan Drive and Sears Street.

But Waterloo Planning, Programming and Zoning Commission members deadlocked 3-3 on the measure Tuesday after hearing opposition from management of the mall and Pancheros Mexican Grill.

The tie vote constitutes a negative recommendation which means Lamar will need at least six City Council members, a supermajority, to support the site plan and allow the billboard.

Lamar representatives said theyre trying to replace billboards theyve lost in the Crossroads area and rejected claims the new sign would detract from the mall or other businesses signs.

Businesses and local events like to advertise in the Crossroads area because it has high traffic from throughout Northeast Iowa, said Lamars Brenda Truelsen.

Do we want to invite people to our businesses, to our community and to our events or miss them completely? she asked.

But John Harshbarger, general manager of Crossroads, said his tenants oppose the billboard, which they see as blocking views to the mall and detracting from their visibility.

Were just getting bombarded by everything thats going in front of the mall, he said. Im working hard every day, and I do not want something like a billboard to affect my tenants when Im fighting for them.

Lynn Hennings, director of operations at Pancheros, noted the billboard would be directly over his patio with bright lights that attract bugs.

This is going to really be intrusive in our dining room with all our customers, he said.

Zoning commissioners rejected the same request in April on a 4-1 vote. It went to the City Council which voted 4-1 May 2 to approve the sign, but it needed six affirmative votes to pass.

Council members later rescinded the May 2 vote, allowing Lamar to return to the zoning commission for a second chance.

No date has been set for the issue to go back before the City Council.
WATERLOO  The Volunteer Center of Cedar Valley is seeking help with the following:

The Northeast Iowa Food Bank is looking for assistance during the first week of its Summer Feeding Program. This week, they are prepping to help feed 600 kids every day. The chef and the volunteers will work from 6:30 to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday.

Volunteers will assist a journey through the scientific world with their favorite Magic School Bus adventures at the Grout Museum District. Participants will explore the Solar System, the human body and the life of invertebrates, all before study hall. Activities are Tuesday through Friday this week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Volunteer two hours or more on any day.

The YWCA will offer a nine-week day camp program for middle school girls in the Cedar Valley. The camp runs from Wednesday through Aug. 12 from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. Sign up for one week or all nine. Breakfast, lunch, snacks and transportation home are included in the weekly fee. Activities include service learning projects, STEM exploration, crafts along with recreational activities and field trips. Financial Aid is available for those who qualify.

Black Hawk County Outreach and 4-H summer 4-H day camps invite volunteers to join the fun from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on June 21 and 28 for K-1st grade and June 23 and 30 for grades 2-3.

For more information, call the Volunteer Center of Cedar Valley at 272-2087, or go to www.vccv.org.
It wasnt pretty, but Waterloo City Council members ended up doing the right thing Monday night.

They voted to set a July 12 special election to fill the 1st Ward council seat left open when David Jones resigned to take a job in Minnesota. Jones often was the swing vote, and his departure leaves the council divided 3-3 on many issues with the mayor unable to break a tie under city code.

Prior to the vote to hold a special election, the council and Mayor Quentin Hart ended up in a no-win argument over an attempt by some council members to fill the position by appointment.

Councilmen Steve Schmitt, Tom Lind and Bruce Jacobs had originally voted in favor of attempting to make an appointment and avoiding the estimated $5,000 cost of a special election.

Schmitt noted the city used the appointment process to fill the last three council vacancies  albeit, we suggest, with a less divided council. Jacobs said he believed the council could agree on a candidate dedicated to cutting property taxes and helping create jobs.

But Councilmen Jerome Amos Jr., Pat Morrissey and Ron Welper voted against trying to appoint someone, instead favoring a special election.

We understand the argument for appointment  saving election costs and the need for expediency in getting the spot filled. We also understand the idea of putting the seat up for election and letting the voters decide.

But from that point, the discussion Monday rolled off the table, deteriorating into an argument over whether Schmitt and Lind had an appointee in the wings.

Hart basically accused Schmitt and Lind of trying to orchestrate a charade over having an appointment application process when they already had an individual in mind. Schmitt said that was absolute B.S. Lind said he heard Morrissey had talked to a potential applicant he would support, effectively providing a fourth vote. Morrissey said he had no idea what Lind was talking about and accused him of spreading gossip.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Time out, kids. Everyone needs to go sit in their timeout chairs for a bit.

This kind of dialogue proves an election is the best and probably only way to go to fill this position. Our elected city officials demonstrated they are incapable of making an appointment because they are incapable of reaching middle ground  which is scary considering how many other significant issues are facing the city. Even if someone was appointed, citizens could still petition for an election.

While we dont believe citizens should be subjected to another month of this kind of behavior, it is, in fact, the residents of the 1st Ward who need to step in and decide this issue.

There are deep ideological divisions on this council, to say nothing of personality issues involved. Voters of the 1st Ward will have to decide whether they want someone who:

Sides with the Schmitt-Lind-Jacobs bloc  in effect a check on the mayors agenda.

Supports the mayor on most issues and will provide him with a working majority to promote the ideas he ran and was elected on last fall.

Thinks and acts independently of either faction and wants to represent citizens of the 1st Ward, whichever direction that leads.

Let the campaign begin.

Meanwhile, we would hope for a more respectful dialogue from our elected officials until the new council member is seated and beyond. Toward that end, we recommend they consider Rotary Internationals Four-Way Test of things we think, say or do:

Is it the truth?

Is it fair to all concerned?

Will it build goodwill and better friendships?

Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

We can always hope for a more respectful dialogue. We are reasonably confident our elected officials have caught citizens attention with their behavior  and those citizens will be watching.
Clayson column

CHERYL HANNAH

WATERLOO It is rare I agree with Dennis Clayson, but the June 5 column on compliance is one of those rare times. I am now retired, but I remember the mandated training, ridiculous requests, etc., to be in compliance with something, usually something meaningless.

So glad I dont have that problem anymore. Go, Dennis. Stand your ground. I did so many times when I was working, although I admit I did comply with mandatory trainings for compliance. You are right; we need to stop doing some of these things and take a stand in our personal lives.

The Jesus party

DAVID MANSHEIM

PARKERSBURG  Some conservative Christian Republicans must believe Jesus was a Republican. But if Jesus were here today, I think he would vote Democratic.

First of all, he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, not an elephant.

Seriously, although homosexuality and abortion were common practices in Biblical times, Jesus never spoke a word about them. And neither practice made the top 10 list of Thou Shalt Nots.

Jesus preached against the love of wealth and dispensed free health care. He said to pray quietly and humbly, not in front of TV cameras at rallies.

He spoke about bringing peace, not about the need for military buildup. When he handed out free food he didnt require proof of worthiness for help.

His message was to care for the poor, the downtrodden and the unfortunate. He said to love your neighbors, not to fear them and build walls.

Jesus had loyalty only to Gods kingdom, not to any nation or state. He did not seek to impose one religion over another but said, There are many paths to my Father. Jesus had a fine message, but conservative Christian Republicans have gotten it wrong in their attempts to apply Jesus to politics.

Look inside

WILLIAM J. TEAFORD

CEDAR FALLS  I was struck by your June 2 diatribe editorial about the despicable choices citizens had made for presidential candidates.

This surely was a self confession for the deplorable quality of information the media delivered during our extended campaign.

As The Courier is one of the greatest sources of news in Northeast Iowa, I have to believe this editorial was a confession of your complicity.

May I suggest were you interested in blame for the situation you describe, your editors and writers should look in the nearest mirror very carefully.

Rally protesters

STEVE KAPLER

WATERLOO  This doesnt measure up to the Trump should release tax returns media mantra, but did anyone catch the peaceful protests against Trump rallies in California recently? Yeah, me neither.

Lets start with burning the American flag. To compound their idiocy, protesters raised the Mexican flag in its place. Not cool. But I readily cede to them both their rights of assembly and speech, however vulgar and limited their English vocabulary appears. Got a big problem when protest descends to physical assault, though.

When idiots start stomping on the hoods of police cars, when both Trump rally attendees and police officers are pelted by stones and flying bottles, when Trump attendees are chased, run down and thrown to the ground by a cowardly mob, the line between protest and thuggery has been breached. Unfortunately, in the illegal sanctuary cities of California, its becoming commonplace.

How ironic, to watch people who left Mexico for America so they could speak freely without fear and violence burn the symbol of their freedoms and hoist in its place the Mexican flag, which did not give them such protections. Now, about those tax returns.

Exposing terroists

DAVE SMITH

WATERLOO  Led by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Democrats have enabled the Islamic assault on free speech.

This is a central component of their campaign to create a religious theocracy that circles the globe.

Most notoriously the president and his operatives cynically spread the lie a video about Muhammad was behind the Benghazi terror attack. Speaking like an ayatollah before the U.N. General Assembly shortly after the attack, Obama declared: The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. What an American president should have said is, The future must not belong to those who murder in the name of Islam.

By actions such as these, Democrats not only betray the 320 million Americans they are obliged to protect but encourage the silence of the Muslim community. The Muslim community has failed to expose the terrorists in its midst. It also has failed to condemn the imams and mosques preaching hatred of Jews and Christians and promoting terrorist agendas aimed at Americans.
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.

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Ladbrokes Casino:

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Paddy Power Casino:

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William Hill Casino:

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Jun 12, 2016 | By Benedict

A team of students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will have its design for a 3D printed excavator cab turned into a reality after winning a nationwide contest. The cab will form part of a fully operational 3D printed excavator that will be showcased at CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2017.

Although 3D printing is slowly but surely laying the foundations for a new era in construction, the focus of this exciting new development is usually reserved for massive concrete 3D printers which can print entire rooms or even buildings. There are, of course, other areas where 3D printing and construction intersect, but even the most diehard additive manufacturing enthusiasts are unlikely to tell you that cranes, bulldozers, and excavators will soon be made from 3D printed parts. Back in April, however, we actually reportedalbeit brieflyon the worlds first 3D printed excavator, which is currently under development and set to be unveiled at CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2017, the largest construction show in the Western Hemisphere.

The massive additive manufacturing undertaking, a joint project between the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), National Fluid Power Association (NFPA), Center for Compact and Efficient Fluid Power (CCEFP), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and the National Science Foundation (NSF), has seen the participants working with experts at Georgia Tech and the University of Minnesota to create a fully functional 3D printed excavator, after receiving a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). One part of the 3D printed excavator, however, was left for the public to design.

First, a very basic introduction to excavator anatomy: an excavator consists of two main sections, the undercarriage (below) and the house (above). An important part of the house section is the cab, in which the operator of the excavator sits and controls the machine. While the majority of the planned 3D printed excavator will be developed and printed by the experts at Georgia Tech and the University of Minnesota, the project organizers decided to run a competition encouraging undergraduate students from across the U.S. to design their own 3D printed cab.

Yesterday, the organizers of the 3D printed cab competition announced its winner: a group of undergraduate engineering students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), whose design doubled up as their Spring 2016 senior design project. The members of the winning team, Naomi Audet, Lucas Meyer, Sharon Tsubaki-Lu, Kevin Kim, and Andrew Peterman, used topology optimization software to design a lightweight but strong cab that used significantly less material than traditional models.

Behind the students victory was a lot of dedication and hard work. To get their creative juices flowing, the UIUC team visited the Caterpillar Visitors Center in Peoria, Illinois, to see how the worlds largest manufacturer of construction equipment conducted its business and built its machines. The team were able to try out an excavator simulator to better understand how it feels to sit in a cab, and even had the chance to speak with a number of excavator operators, who told the team what makes a good (and bad) cab, in their eyes.

When the team started planning their own 3D printed cab design, they tested a number of materials and used TopOpt topology optimization software to identify the important load-bearing areas of the cab. With this information, they trimmed away all unnecessary material before reconfiguring certain sections using Autodesk Fusion 360. Our cab, although made of a weaker material than steel, could be more efficient in its distribution than past designs, said Tsubaki-Lu.

This project was one of the very top efforts in an extremely competitive field of 28 senior design capstone projects within the MechSE Department at UIUC in the Spring 2016 semester, said Professor Elizabeth Hsiao-Wecksler, Associate Head for Undergraduate Programs in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at UIUC. It had the ideal combination of a challenging project with outstanding ingenuity and hard work by the student team. We think it was a perfect example of whats being accomplished within our senior design capstone programs innovative atmosphere.

After winning the 3D printed excavator cab competition, the UIUC students will receive a $2,000 cash prize, donated by the National Fluid Power Association (NFPA), and will travel to Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee to see their creation 3D printed. The full 3D printed excavator will be showcased at CONEXPO-CON/AGG, which is being held at the Las Vegas Convention Center between March 7-11, 2017.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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Cara Cannella in Signature:

Sometimes when I learn about a book about a book, as in Lesley M. M. Blumes new release Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingways Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises, I hesitate to pick up the bigger (i.e., more recent) of the two matryoshkadolls. If I have yet to read  or have read but cant remember details of  the one it contains, theres a FOMO factor: Will I spend time with Mama Book wishing I was better acquainted with Baby Book?

Since schlepping around a combined 1,800 pages of Ulysses and Ulysses Annotated as an undergrad, I dont think Ive read two related books in such tandem. For anyone else who might be in this boat, Im here to assure you that Blumes Everybody Behaves Badly can live squarely on its own as a commentary on Hemingways post-war, expatriate psychology of creativity and its cost to his personal relationships. Standing on a recent reading of his square-shouldered breakthrough 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises, it could only be emboldened.

Like The Paris Wife, Paula McLains bestselling 2011 novel narrated by the first of Hemingways four wives, Hadley Richardson, Badly focuses on the period of their 1920-1927 union. Its hook lies in the Hemingways 1925 trip with friends (or, more accurately, frenemies) from Paris to Pamplona to catch the running of the bulls, and the novel it inspired. Written within six weeks immediately following their adventure in Spain, the novel about youth, sex, love, and excess, as Blume describes it, is as much a work of reportage as it is fiction.

More here.
Malise Ruthven in The New York Review of Books:

The extreme jihadists, of course, are now mainly drawn to the so-called caliphate of ISIS , also known as Daesh. While several books have already charted the rise of ISIS out of the chaos of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, in ISIS: A History, Fawaz Gerges joins Lynch in explaining its provenance more specifically as a direct consequence of the sectarian feelings the invasion unleashed, for which America must bear responsibility:

By destroying state institutions and establishing a sectarian-based political system, the 2003 US-led invasion polarized the country along Sunni-Shia lines and set the stage for a fierce, prolonged struggle driven by identity politics. Anger against the United States was also fueled by the humiliating disbandment of the Iraqi army and the de-Baathification law, which was first introduced as a provision and then turned into a permanent article of the constitution.

In his well-researched and lucidly argued text Gerges shows how the US de-Baathification program, combined with the growing authoritarianism and exclusion of Sunnis under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, provided fertile conditions for the emerging of ISIS out of al-Qaeda under the brutal leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the self-styled caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, his even more extreme successor. Al-Baghdadi is an evident fraud whose claim to legitimacy by virtue of descent from the Prophets tribe Gerges discredits on genealogical grounds.

De-Baathification, based on the American envoy Paul Bremers foolish analogy with the postwar denazification of Germany, had deprived the country of the officer class and administrative cadres that had ruled under Saddam Hussein, leaving the field to sectarian-based militias. As Gerges rightly observes, Baathism as practiced in Iraq and Syria was less of a coherent ideology than a hizb al-Sulta, a ruling party that distributed rewards to stakeholders based on loyalty to the head of the party. In view of the absence of ideological content, it was hardly surprising that disenfranchised former officers of Saddam Husseins army, facing exclusion from Malikis Shia-dominated government, should have migrated to the militant version of Sunnism Gerges calls Salafi-jihadism.

In analyzing ISIS s success, Gerges points to the legacy of Paul Bremer: some 30 percent of the senior figures in ISIS s military command are former army and police officers from the disbanded Iraqi security forces. It was the military expertise of these men that transformed the Sunni-based insurgent movement of al-Qaeda in Iraq into ISIS , an effective fighting machine, combining urban guerilla warfare and conventional combat to deadly effect.

More here.
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.
Audience, Issey Miyake, 2014 digital C-print by Dina Litovsky. Companions from the series Home by Tiffiney Yazzie, 2012 pigment print. (Courtesy of 516 ARTS) Angie and Me, 2014 archival pigment print by Eric Pickersgill. Attracted to Light by Doug and Mark Starn. Siri Why Am I Lonely? (2012), archival pigment print by Delaney Allen. Untitled, from the series The Keepers, 2011, a archival pigment print by Christine Collins. Prev 1 of 6 Next

Take the Rail Runner to Santa Fe and youll see multiple rows of heads crammed next to one another, all silently bent over glaring screens.

Opening on Saturday, June 18, at 516 ARTS, Future Tense explores this contemporary contradiction of loneliness within connectedness through the photographs of CENTER alumni photographers.

CENTER is a Santa Fe nonprofit organization offering portfolio reviews for both budding and veteran photographers. The show is being curated by the University of New Mexico Art Museum.

Part of 516 ARTS PhotoSummer series of programs and workshops, the exhibition also features As We See It, an exploration of Native American photographers and Starn Brothers: Absorption of Light, a series of expansive photographs by twin brothers Doug and Mike Starn.

Future Tenses theme crystallized after co-curators Traci Quinn and Stefan Batista leafed through thousands of photographs in Santa Fe.

Christine Collins haunting image of two beekeepers offered the key.

Equal parts nostalgia and bellwether, the image captures forests with space-suited caretakers, as well as a warning of impending environmental damage.

Theres a tension there, Quinn said. It looks very futuristic. It reminds me of something you see in a sci-fi movie. Were destroying things like bees that sustain us. Shes asking us to re-imagine the way that we live.

The isolation produced by technology drives a strong desire for connection, whether with nature or others, the photographer Collins said in a telephone interview from Boston. The image is part of a series on suburban beekeepers. Their veils leave them both vulnerable and protected, she said.

Theres this sense of a kind of ritual, Collins said. It was like church everywhere. The beekeepers have these very slow, languid movements. Theres this ritualized way of looking at the bees . Theres smoke, and sometimes they kneel down. People were looking for that kind of connection.

Some of the hives dont survive the brutal New England winters, she said.

Its kind of a gesture of faith to do this.

Delaney Allens stark image of a cellphone features the screen grab, Siri, why am I lonely? with, I dont know. Frankly, Ive wondered that myself.

Theres that sense of loneliness and isolation, Quinn said. People are kind of isolating themselves through technology.

Photographer Delaney Allen produced his cellphone image as part of a series on loneliness and solitude after a breakup. The Portland, Ore.-based photographer spent two years traveling up and down the West Coast. At the time, his only connection to others was Facebook.

During one particularly desolate night, he asked, Siri, why am I lonely. The computer program responded, I dont know. Frankly, Ive wondered that myself.

It tells what I see as an autobiographical self-portrait, Allen said. Sitting around alone at night, I decided to use Siri and that was the answer.

Since, then hes watched gallery visitors study the image, then ask the same question on their own phones.

Ive only known one person that got that same response, he said.

Eric Pickersgills Angie and Me depicts a couple lying in bed back-to-back, their faces looking toward outstretched palms that once held cellphones.

He removes the phone, and we see people disconnected, Quinn said. He really examines why these people arent talking to each other. Theyre more engaged with whats happening on the internet or the social media sites.

In a similar vein, Dina Litovskys photo of a fashion show crowd reveals an audience of faces lit by cellphones. They arent even watching the runway.

None of them are communicating with each other, Quinn said.

Our point isnt to critique; this is just where we are, she added.

The Starn Brothers series Absorption of Light captures a wall-sized moth in the moment before it self-immolates, drawn to the light that kills it. With apologies to Mothra, the brothers printed the images across a series of paper 22 feet long by 10 feet high.

The Starns printed their giant moth on fragile Thai mulberry paper that will deteriorate as it travels between exhibition spaces, much like the moth that inspired it.

Dine photographer Tiffiney Yazzie took a series of intimate portraits of her mother in her series Quiescence.

Theyre almost uncomfortably intimate, 516 curator Suzanne Sbarge said. You see every gray hair, every wrinkle, every chipped nail. Her mother is so vulnerable.
Dancing shadows capture the joys and sorrows of immigration behind a screen inside the Blackout Theatres new home.

Opening on Friday, June 17, Beyond the Shadows uses Asian shadow puppets to tell the story of Albuquerque immigrants at the 10601 Performance Space.

Better-known for their late-night comedy sketches and Halloween productions, the actors have been busy crafting puppets from wood and foam board.

It all started with a grant from New Mexico Arts, marketing director Barney Lopez said. Then company member Dani Belvin returned home from Hawaii with a masters degree in Asian theater. Shadow puppetry is an ancient art of storytelling in Indonesia.

Puppeteers manipulate the puppets crouched behind a screen. The puppets star in a cast of characters, as well as set pieces like seaweed, fish, clouds and plants.

The Blackouters interviewed immigrants across Albuquerque, collected their stories and came up with a script for the show starring a protagonist named Alma. The production contains no dialogue, so that audience members from across the globe can follow the story.

A drought strikes Almas nameless homeland, and her family sends her to relatives across the seas, Lopez said.

She gets in a shipwreck and goes down into an underground water world. She gets saved by some fish-like people, he said.

Next Alma soars into the sky, where she meets the cloud people. From there, she falls down into the jungle. She faces something she thinks is a beast that turns out to be her ally, Lopez said.

The actors are busy making from 50 to 100 puppets. Theyre also practicing moving the figures with rods from a platform behind the screen.

Theres a lot of crouching, Lopez said with a laugh. Were practicing our leg warm-ups a lot. 

Blackouts first permanent home reflects the groups partnership with Childrens Choice Child Care Services, an agency offering after-school programming for children throughout the city. The building features both an office and an adjustable performance space seating up to 99 people, Lopez said.

We have been nomadic for about the past five years.

WHAT: Beyond the Shadows by Blackout Theatre

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday, June 17 and Saturday, June 18; 2 p.m. June 19; Repeats through July 10.

WHERE: 10601 Performance Space, 10601 Lomas Blvd. NE

HOW MUCH: $15 Adults; $12 students and seniors Call 489-5092.
The repertoire of the classical guitar has evolved over four centuries.

The beauty of the instrument has captivated many musicians, which is why Guitar New Mexico celebrated the instrument by hosting the New Mexico Classical Guitar Festival annually.

The festival will be held from Thursday, June 16, through June 19 at the University of New Mexico.

The classical guitar is a very intimate instrument, says Justin Muehlmeyer, board member of Guitar New Mexico. I think in New Mexico, particularly because of its Spanish roots, it has a big draw. We have a very active group of classical guitar players. Its one of the reasons were able to bring in global performers, because there is a lot of support here.

This years featured guests are Jorge Caballero, Tantalus Quartet and Anthony Mariano.

At age 19, Caballero became the youngest musician and the only guitarist to win the Naumburg International Competition Award, one of the most prestigious and coveted awards given to performers of any instrument, and comparable to the Pulitzer Prize for musicians.

Meanwhile, the Tantalus Quartet specializes in music by living composers, and actively pursue new works for guitar quartet.

The quartet includes Lynn McGrath, Stephen Mattingly, Kristian Anderson and Sungmin Shin.

And New Mexico native Mariano has played solo performances in Europe and Canada.

He studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

In addition to the concerts will be a finale concert featuring the participants in the festival.

There are about 70-150 guitarists who attend the festival, Muehlmeyer says. The showcase concert gives the players a chance to get on stage and perform.

WHAT: New Mexico Classical Guitar Festival

WHEN AND WHERE: Tantalus Quartet, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 16, at Keller Hall, UNM campus; Anthony Mariano 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 17 at UNM Alumni Chapel; Jorge Caballero, Saturday, June 18 at Keller Hall, UNM campus; Festival Showcase Concert, 1:30 p.m. June 19 at Keller Hall

HOW MUCH: $15-$20 for Tantalus Quartet show; $10 for Anthony Mariano show; $15-$20 for Jorge Caballero show; $5 for festival showcase concert at New Mexico Classical Guitar FestivalTantalus Quartet, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 16, at Keller Hall, UNM campus; Anthony Mariano 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 17 at UNM Alumni Chapel; Jorge Caballero, Saturday, June 18 at Keller Hall, UNM campus; Festival Showcase Concert, 1:30 p.m. June 19 at Keller Hall$15-$20 for Tantalus Quartet show; $10 for Anthony Mariano show; $15-$20 for Jorge Caballero show; $5 for festival showcase concert at newmexicoclassicalguitarfestival.com What is a classical guitar? Classical guitar is used to play classical Spanish music, the other classical music as pop, folk, Latin, and jazz. Nylon cord helps guitar players easily learn new techniques. The musicians that play classical guitar require a longer right nail. Shape of the nails and nail length allow players to accomplish extremely complex songs because music for the classical guitar is the most difficult in all kinds of music for guitar. This is a guitar method based on a combination of musical notes under the rules of rhythm, beat and pitch. Classical guitar requires the musician to understand music theory.  Courtesy of Music Data Direct
LOS LUNAS  Raymond Gabaldon Elementary School second-grader Faith Switzer is a finalist in the regional 16th annual Braille Challenge held at the New Mexico School for the Blind in Alamogordo.

One of 50 finalists out of about 1,200 contestants from the U.S. and Canada, Faith will now go on to compete in the national competition in Los Angeles on June 18.

She also placed in the top 10 of the apprentice category for first- and second-grade students.

I was excited, Faith said about her accomplishment.

Her mother, Alexia Switzer, said when Faith learned she won the Braille Challenge, she was jumping up and down, squealing that they were going to California.

I think its a really good challenge for any blind student who wants to participate because blind students need to know that its OK to be blind and its OK to be a Braille reader, said Vickie Buchignani, Faiths teacher for the blind and visually impaired at RGE.

Faith used to be fearful of taking tests, like any kindergarten student would, she said.

Over the years, shes become a kid who really likes the challenge of taking tests, Buchignani said. Its really exciting to see that change.

The Braille Challenge is the only national reading and writing contest for students who are blind and visually impaired. Faith competed in Braille reading comprehension, spelling, proofreading, speed and accuracy.

Braille opens the doors of literacy, which, in turn, provides educational and employment opportunities for people who are blind and visually impaired, said Braille Institute President Peter Mindnich. The passion and commitment these students demonstrate is an inspiration to us all.

Faith reads at a fourth-grade level and can read 95-100 words in Braille per minute. She is currently reading The Penguin Problem, one of a series of Ready Freddy books.

A Los Lunas resident, Faith was born blind. She has a genetic retinal degenerative disease called Lebers congenital amaurosis, her mother explained.

Her father and I both carry a very rare recessive gene that caused her to be this way, Alexia Switzer said.

At 6 months old, Switzer started her daughter in the birth to 2 program at the New Mexico School for the Blind.

At 2 years old, Faith began preschool to learn pre-tactile Braille, a type of picture book that has raised pictures so blind children can feel the figures or objects.

It worked out well for Faith, Switzer said. It gave her a boost on her education. Shes quite the intelligent little girl.

It is estimated that Lebers congenital amaurosis occurs in two to three per 100,000 newborns. Its one of the most common causes of blindness in children.

The interesting thing about Lebers is a lot of the children who have it are very intelligent children, Buchignani said. Its just amazing that a lot of the kids that weve seen around the country have high intelligence.

Her mother adds that Faith is in the gifted program at school.

She has a very high IQ and she does STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, Switzer said.

Faiths favorite subjects are science and math and she can understand some seventh-grade level math concepts, her mother said.

I can do division, Faith adds.

For the spirited, golden-haired 8-year-old, being blind is not an insurmountable obstacle. It doesnt stop her from participating in activities that sighted children enjoy.

She rides scooters, roller blades, rock wall climbs and, she said, plays ball, shoot guns, bow and arrows, hand guns  my step-father aims it and then I shoot it.

She played horseshoes where a beeper was placed at the target poles.

One time, I threw the horseshoe and shattered the beeper, she says giggling, clearly enjoying her prowess.

I like riding (horses) but we dont have any, Faith says. I go to grannys. Grandma Jackie lives in the East Mountains.

A precocious child, Faith has a spunky sense of humor and she doesnt allow her visual impairment to slow her down.

If she wants to do something, I find a way to let her do it, Switzer said.

Faith has also gone zip-lining, hot air ballooning, fishing, swimming and flying airplanes with the Young Eagles at Mid Valley Airpark.

When she grows up, shed like to be a pediatrician.

I want to work with kids, Faith explains.

The family has set up an account at gofundme.com/faithbraille to help raise the money for travel expenses to the California competition.
One year ago Pope Francis published Laudato Si, his landmark encyclical on ecology addressed to every person living on this planet (3). It was arguably the most highly anticipated Catholic Church document in decades. We in the Catholic Church are marking its one-year anniversary at the same time as our nation is marking the full start of election season. Amidst the political campaigning, I would like to raise the need for dialogue about what is happening to our common home and invite an authentic sharing of ideas and solutions to the pressing problem of climate change.

Throughout Laudato Si, Pope Francis reiterates the traditional teachings of the Judeo-Christian faith regarding ecology. He affirms that creation possesses inherent goodness and dignity that does not depend on human utility. He reiterates that humans are both a part of creation and set apart by God, who calls humanity to cultivate and care for the gift of creation (Genesis 2:15). Moreover, Pope Francis echoes recent Christian concerns  expressed by Saint John Paul II, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, among others  that environmental degradation harms the life, health, dignity and common good of human persons and communities, especially those who are poor, vulnerable and marginalized. As such, he affirms the insight made by Saint Pope John Paul II in his 1990 World Day of Peace Message that the ecological crisis is a moral issue (15).

Animated by the Judeo-Christian vision of creation, Pope Francis sees that our common home is currently threatened by a host of challenges: pollution and waste, water sanitation and access, the loss of biodiversity, global inequality, decline in the quality of human life and the breakdown of society. In particular, Pope Francis, like Saint John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, recognizes the reality of human-forced climate change, insists that the climate is a common good (23) and identifies climate change as a moral issue. In particular, he says that persons and communities have differentiated responsibilities (52) given their historical contributions to environmental degradation and the reality of a corresponding ecological debt owed by the Global North to the South (51).

Given the threat that climate change will soon become a runaway phenomenon with irreversible ecological and humanitarian consequences, Pope Francis especially emphasizes the urgency with which society must address climate change. In order to adequately tackle climate change, Pope Francis recognizes the need for individual and local actions. Based on the principle of subsidiarity, however  according to which the common good is to be protected and promoted at the lowest possible but highest necessary level of society  Pope Francis reiterates the explicit call of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI for climate change policies. In particular, Francis insists that there is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, for example, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy (26).

Pope Francis understands the difficulty of enacting climate change policies in our day and age. He observes that to take up these responsibilities and the costs they entail, politicians will inevitably clash with the mindset of short-term gain and results which dominates present-day economics and politics (181). Additionally, he laments that there are too many special interests, and economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected (54)  a fact that we Americans know all too well in the age of Super PACs. Nevertheless, Pope Francis says that if politicians are courageous, they will attest to their God-given dignity and leave behind a testimony of selfless responsibility through policy efforts to care for our common home (181).

This election season, I therefore urge candidates for public office to exercise courage and moral responsibility by considering Pope Francis ecological vision and making tackling climate change a central part of personal and party platforms. Elected officials have a powerful role to play in caring for our common home. In the face of catastrophic climate change, I join in Pope Francis prayer that God would enlighten those who possess power and money, that they may avoid the sin of indifference, that they may love the common good, advance the weak, and care for this world in which we live (246).
You would think that most people would want to know if the person whose name they plan to use to tout their newest research center has been publicly exposed in a corruption scandal.

Yet Carlos Rey Romero, UNMs vice president for research and compliance, apparently didnt think the fact that David Korenfeld, the former head of Mexicos National Water Commission (Conagua), had resigned in disgrace after he got busted for using a government helicopter to take his family on the first leg of a family trip to Vail, Colo., was a big enough deal to tell UNM regents about.

Instead, he simply recommended they name UNMs newest water research center after Mr. Junket  whose name came along with a $450,000 donation.

Rey Romero has since said he didnt think the scandal would be problematic because Korenfeld tweeted an apology. Sorry. It doesnt take 140 characters to know that was the wrong call.

In fact, Korenfeld resigned in April 2015 after photos were circulated on social media showing him and his family using commission helicopters for personal travel. Korenfeld apologized on Twitter, calling it an inexcusable error. A federal anti-corruption agency fined him about 649,000 pesos, or roughly $42,500. Subsequently, it was revealed this wasnt an isolated incident and Korenfeld was a frequent flyer in terms of using the government chopper for personal trips.

As head of the water commission, Korenfeld oversaw the transfer of millions of dollars in contracts to the nonprofit ANEAS de Mexico, that in turn funded the UNM center. And he served on the ANEAS board before his time as Conagua director, then returned there after he resigned and was a board member when it made the donation in his name.

In April, the regents acted on Rey Romeros advice and named the center, housed in the Latin American Institute for Public Policy and Leadership on the main campus, after Korenfeld.

That sparked a flurry of outrage on social media, mostly in Mexico, and among anti-corruption activists in Mexico. Korenfeld then asked the university to remove his name, saying it would be inappropriate for the center to be named for a living person. On May 26, UNM signed a new agreement with ANEAS, officially changing the name from Centro David Korenfeld in Water Governance Studies to the Center in Water Governance Studies.

Why a Mexican nongovernment organization would give UNM this kind of money  in a country with myriad needs related to water  remains a bit of a puzzler.

Rey Romeros poor judgment has become an embarrassment for UNM and the regents, who had to do a 180. That was the right thing to do. Its not unusual for top officials, such as university regents, to adopt recommendations from staff, assuming staff did the homework. In this case, the homework was done, just not turned in.

And considering the scandal was widely reported, it seems odd no red flags went up about it or the potential for conflicts of interests.

Even though UNM has inked a new contract with ANEAS, this would be a good time to take a hard look at whether it is appropriate. Going forward, unusual business arrangements and naming honors should trigger closer scrutiny.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
People who think about New Mexicos long list of economic failings seem to be reaching a consensus that our states long dependence on government spending has probably damaged our economy. This insight leads to the question of how bad is the damage?

Pretty bad, according to Matt E. Ryan, an associate professor of economics at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

Reasoning that the history and cultural development of Arizona and New Mexico were fairly similar going into the middle of the 20th century, Ryan examined why the economies of the two states diverged so widely after 1963.

Ryan found that Arizonas economy was 1.45 times larger than New Mexicos in 1963. By 2008, Arizonas economy was 3.11 times the size of ours. Arizonas population grew from 1.3 million people in 1960 to 5 million by 2000. Our population grew from 950,000 to 1.8 million people in the same period.

Arizonas economy grew at a 5.3 percent annual rate from 1963 to 2008. New Mexicos grew at 3.5 percent per year.

Both economies began in about the same place. In a draft paper he provided the Journal, Ryan said that, in 1963, Arizona had the 33rd largest state economy in the United States at $24.7 billion in 2008 dollars. New Mexico was 36th largest at $17 billion.

Moreover, neither economy had a natural advantage to grow over the other, Ryan wrote. Both economies experience similar climate and have similar terrain. Neither has an inherent geographical advantage in trade or migratory issues. Both have strong Native American and Hispanic cultures, and they became American states within a month of each other.

By 2008, Arizona had the nations 20th largest economy, with gross state product of $216.5 billion, while New Mexico had slipped to 37th place with $66 million in GSP.

In an email exchange, Ryan cautioned, Comparing different areas and their different growth rates can make you pull your hair out. Its impossible to control for everything and there always seems to be another factor to explore, whether its causing change or the result of it.

Ryan believes the difference in the states performance is that Arizona relied on private markets to generate wealth and New Mexico relied on public spending.

In 1963, 2.5 percent more of Arizonas gross state product came from private sector activity than did New Mexicos. That difference fluctuated over the years, but in every year except 1992, more of Arizonas gross state product was the result of private sector activity compared with New Mexico. The difference grew to more than 8 percent in 2002 and was more than 4 percent in 2008.

Assuming this difference explains our relatively poor performance against our neighbor, why does public sector reliance produce worse economic results?

Ryan said in an email that private sector entrepreneurship is more productive than public sector entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship, as I like to define it, is simply the creativity to make yourself better off, he said. That can occur in the market sector  new products, new businesses, doing things better, etc.  and we call that productive entrepreneurship since the economy as a whole grows with this activity.

Public sector activity requires unproductive entrepreneurship and causes an economy to shrink, Ryan said.

Back in the day I used to find myself at business association meetings at which the entire subject of conversation was how someone could get a meeting with former Sen. Pete Domenici to get him to move more federal activity to New Mexico. That sort of lobbying is what Ryan means by unproductive entrepreneurship. Nothing is created, and no productive entrepreneurial skills are honed.

In his paper, Ryan said societies allocate resources in an economy by employing the market system or the political system. New Mexico, more than Arizona, favors the political system.

The political process does not generate value for society as voluntary trade does, he wrote. In fact, losses to society are often the result of transfers of wealth, lobbying, interest groups and the like.

Fortunately, even a small shift away from the political to the free market process would produce significant results. Arizonas growth rate from 1963 to 2008 was less than two percentage points faster than ours per year and still produced a significantly larger economy.

That such small changes in growth rates can have such remarkable impacts is a godsend for policymakers, Ryan wrote. Policymakers dont need to hit a home run, he said, just get on base. Marginal, continual changes in the right direction can lead to non-trivial outcomes.

New Mexico is being forced into that change regardless. Government employment is down, and budget cuts have lowered federal spending here.

Still, there are policy changes that could foster more free market activity, including tax simplification, regulatory reform and better workforce development.

As a state, we tend to think about making changes that will encourage out-of-state companies to locate here, but these are changes that would help any business.

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Winthrop Quigley at 823-3896 or wquigley@abqjournal.com. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
Copyright  2016 Albuquerque Journal

A Mexican father living in his homeland has won back the chance to raise his young son after the New Mexico Court of Appeals ruled that child welfare workers wrongly rushed to terminate the fathers rights using faulty justification.

The ruling slightly changes the way the states Children Youth and Families Department handles cases with a child of a foreign national.

It also tells a story of a man fighting to be allowed to be a father to his son  even though the two are still living in separate countries.

Father and son

The boy, who is now nearly 4, was born in New Mexico to an American mother and his Mexican father, Alfonso, in 2012, which by law makes the boy a United States citizen and Mexican national.

He was 5 months old when he and his 8-year-old half bother were taken by CYFD from their drug-addicted mother, who was homeless and had active arrest warrants.

Alfonso at the time was in jail on a DWI charge and slated for immediate deportation. From jail and using an interpreter, Alfonso expressed a strong desire to maintain his bond with the boy, appeals judges wrote in their December 2015 opinion.

So CYFD created a plan for him, and he complied, taking classes, counseling and drug tests while incarcerated.

CYFD said he had done as much as possible while incarcerated and the plan requirements would have to continue after he was released in order for CYFD to deem him a suitable placement for the child.

Alfonso agreed.

He was deported in September 2013 and called his CYFD social worker when he arrived back in Mexico so the two could set up his required appointments.

But just weeks later  before Alfonsos first scheduled appointment for counseling and drug testing  the CYFD caseworker petitioned a judge to terminate his parental rights.

At this point, the boy was about 14 months old and had been in foster care in the United States for nine months.

Justification for termination

CYFD argued before Childrens Court Judge William E. Parnall in Bernalillo County that Alfonso  who had been out of American custody and at home for about three weeks  hadnt done enough to comply with his plan, so they couldnt be sure he was a safe placement and his rights should be terminated.

It isnt clear if Alfonso has an extensive criminal history in the U.S. or Mexico, but the opinion mentions that he has addictive tendencies and domestic violence issues.

Henry Varela, spokesman for CYFD, said he couldnt comment on any previous history with the father but said there is always more to a case than what is included in court filings.

Alfonsos attorney said her client was doing everything CYFD asked.

Ive never had a client who worked so hard at his end. He was doing his part best he could, said his attorney Nancy Simmons. He did everything that was asked of him.

As the case continued, Alfonso traveled to a nearby town to take a urinalysis test and attend counseling.

But CYFD said the test didnt check for alcohol and the report from the Mexican counselor was too short to be trustworthy.

Alfonso provided information to his caseworker to qualify his mother and sister in Mexico as kin caretakers. Relatives in New Mexico were illegal immigrants and thus unable to be made legal caretakers.

But the caseworker didnt follow through because, she said, her caseload was too heavy, according to the opinion.

The father asked for a picture of his son; the caseworker didnt send one.

He needed a home study, but she didnt provide details on how to get one done.

Documents he sent to her went unread because they were in Spanish.

The caseworker argued that it would be harmful to return the boy to Alfonso because they hadnt had direct communication.

Finally, CYFD argued, the boy doesnt speak Spanish.

Parnall agreed to terminate Alfonsos parental rights.

Appeals Court judges said in their opinion that the language barrier was highly persuasive in Parnalls decision.

At this point, the child was about 18 months old.

Language barrier

But it shouldnt have been a consideration of termination, Appeals judges said.

We are unconvinced that, as a general rule, native language disparities between a natural parent and his or her infant child are insurmountable obstacles to reunification, Judge James J. Wechsler wrote in the opinion.

Plus, they said, the child at that time was still young enough to overcome any such language barrier.

The Mexican Consulate, which helps facilitate communication in cases involving CYFD and Mexican children or parents, agreed.

The consulate finds that although the language is important to create (affectional) bonds with the father in Mexico, (it) is not a reasonable justification to stop the familys reunification, consulate officials wrote in a statement to the Journal .  its also important to observe the correct development of the children in Mexico. The consulate respects the best interest of the children and the right to have access to their other culture.

The case is one of the first times the issue of a language barrier has been raised as an element of custody, so it is now included in training literature for lawyers, social workers and others who work with children in state custody.

The literature includes a summary of the Court of Appeals opinion and mentions the court has serious reservations that a language barrier was used in considering a case without additional evidence.

Other evidence

The Court of Appeals said substantial evidence of a clear and convincing nature did not exist to support the decision to terminate Alfonsos rights.

The Appeals judges said the burden is on CYFD to prove that a parent is unfit, but instead CYFD relied on a lack of evidence, including the short counselor report and the limited urinalysis, as proof Alfonso was unfit. CYFD, appeals judges said, had not met its burden of proof.

And CYFD didnt meet its legal requirement to fully help Alfonso reunify with the boy, the judges said, citing numerous failures of the social worker.

We are troubled that CYFD requested the Consulates assistance in offering treatment plan services to Father following his deportation, then approximately one month later sought to terminate Fathers rights on grounds that he failed to comply with the plan, the judges wrote.

Considering the totality of the circumstances, we do not agree with CYFD that these efforts met the minimum statutory requirements, they wrote, expressing concern that Parnall had not raised the same issues when CYFD presented its case to him.

While the appeals judges criticized CYFD and Parnall, they stopped short of saying the childs best interest is to return to Mexico to live with Alfonso.

They simply reinstated Alfonsos rights as the boys father.

Whats happening now

The Court of Appeals sent the case back to CYFD and the Childrens Court in Bernalillo County so the father could work toward getting his son back.

CYFD spokesman Varela said his department is not appealing the case and is working with the father on a reunification plan.

Were not appealing the fact that the court said to further work with this father for possible reunification, but I dont think it was conceding that it was a safe placement, Varela said.

Because such cases are confidential, he did not provide the fathers name or other details.

He did say that the caseworker no longer works with CYFD and that at the time of court proceedings, she, like numerous other case workers at the agency, had a heavy caseload.

The former CYFD caseworker declined to comment for this story.

Historical context

At the time of the CYFD action, in late 2013 and into 2014, several high-profile child abuse murders and a slow economy had triggered a sharp increase in child abuse reports and children taken into custody.

Varela said since then, the agency has received additional money to hire social workers, which has brought their caseloads down. It did create an influx of reports on top of kids coming into custody, he said. These are not being said as excuses, its just setting the table for what is going on.

Alfonsos attorney, Simmons, said caseloads were high but this case was treated differently because the father lived in Mexico. It shouldnt be a huge distinction between dealing with a family placement in Indiana or a dad that moved to Indiana and dealing with Mexico. Its right next door and its not Mars, she said. If hed been released and gone back home to live with his mom on Charleston Street (in Albuquerque), he would have had his child back.

Meanwhile, the Journal has learned that Alfonso is considering an open adoption that allows the boy to remain with the only family he has ever known and whose language he speaks while also allowing for a relationship with the father who hasnt stopped fighting for him.
Copyright  2016 Albuquerque Journal

Its soon going to cost more to visit many of the museums and historic sites in the Land of Enchantment.

All state-run museums, including the Natural History Museum, the National Hispanic Cultural Center and the Museum of New Mexico, plan to increase admission, beginning July 1. And the free Sundays for New Mexico residents may be cut to one Sunday a month.

The changes are due to the Department of Cultural Affairs $2 million budget cut for the next fiscal year. The department oversees eight museums and several Historic Sites.

The department also plans to increase prices at its historic sites, lay off 11 employees and reduce the number of days some of its sites are open.

The four Santa Fe museums  the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, the Museum of International Folk Art, the Museum of New Mexico and the Palace of the Governors  currently charge $9 for non-residents and $6 for New Mexico residents.

The recommended increase adds $3 for the non-resident, which pushes the admission to $12. New Mexico residents will see an increase of $1, bringing the price to $7. The Cultural Affairs Department must now sign off on the proposal.

According to the data, non-residents account for approximately 75 percent of total visitation to the Santa Fe museums.

The Cultural Affairs Department has already approved the National Hispanic Cultural Centers Board of Directors plan to increase general admission prices for non-New Mexico residents from $3 to $6, and for New Mexico residents to $5. It is still free for children under 16 and on the first Sunday of every month.

This is still on the low end compared to other museums proposals, said NHCC executive director Rebecca Avitia.

Department of Cultural Affairs Secretary Veronica Gonzales said the museums are all considering increases.

And, We are looking at more days of closure, Gonzales said. This isnt part of the budget cuts. This is an effort to help alleviate the stress on the staff. Being open seven days a week is a lot to handle with the little resources that we have.

Currently, the Santa Fe museums are closed on Mondays, except in the summer. The proposal is to keep them closed on Mondays year round.

The Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque, which sees nearly 250,000 visitors a year, more than any other museum, is also working on a planned admission increase, though it hasnt been taken to the museums board.

Currently, it charges $7 for adults 13-59, while the Dynatheater is $10 and the Planetarium is $7.

The New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum in Las Cruces and the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo are also planning admission increases, but they also have not been taken to the boards.

As for New Mexicos Historic Sites  Jemez, Fort Seldon, Coronado, Camino Real, Bosque Redondo at Fort Sumner, Fort Stanton and El Camino Real Trail all charge $3 and Lincoln charges $5. The recommendation is a $2 increase, which pushes Lincoln to $7 and the rest to $5.

The Bosque Redondo price hike wont take effect until the core renovation is completed, and the Taylor-Mesilla Historic Site will not charge admission at this time.

Operating hours will also be affected.

The proposal for historic sites Lincoln and Fort Stanton calls for them to be open six days a week instead of seven. Coronado would continue to be closed one day a week, and the other sties would have two-day closures, with the days still to be determined.

The museum directors also recommended reducing New Mexico residents free days. Admission would be free the first Sunday of the month, rather than every Sunday.

But families can still get great deals through the popular free family pass program.

The DCA plans to expand the tickets program through the state public libraries.

The residents can borrow the pass at any library in addition. They can check out a pass for up to one week, which gives the permit-holder free admission for up to six people at any of the Department of Cultural Affairs museums and historic sites.

This program is very successful, Gonzales said. Theres a waiting list for the passes, and were going to expand on that.
DURANGO, Colo.  People waving flags and standing at attention said goodbye Saturday to a Blue Angels pilot who was killed in a crash while practicing for an air show.

The private service for Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss was capped by a 21-gun salute and a flyover by Marine units that he served with before joining the Blue Angels flight demonstration team nearly two years ago.

The service was held in his hometown, Durango, about 340 miles southwest of Denver. Kuss graduated from Durango High School in 2002 and Fort Lewis College in 2006.

Kuss was killed while practicing for an airshow near Nashville, Tenn., on June 2. He is survived by his wife and two young children.

Gov. John Hickenlooper ordered flags to be flown at half-staff to honor Kuss.

Many of the people who turned out to honor Kuss went to Fort Lewis College to watch the flyby, which included the Missing Man formation, in which one jet pulled away to honor him.

Hickenlooper earlier praised Kuss for his Colorado values, the Durango Herald reported.

Heres a guy who is a legitimate hero to the whole state, Hickenlooper said Friday afternoon. He went to Fort Lewis. They told him, Well, were not sure thats the right school if you want to be a pilot. He said, I dont care. I want to go to Fort Lewis. I want to be a pilot. I want to do both. The guy clearly had focus.
Things just got tougher for the Albuquerque Indian Center, which has struggled financially for at least a half-dozen years.

A $100,000 grant it expected to get from the Navajo Nation was recently denied, and AIC says the Assembly of Native American Voices, a local advocacy group for urban Indians, helped scuttle the funding.

According to the AICs executive director and the board president, an IRS form filed by the AIC was misinterpreted by an Assembly member, who posted it to Facebook along with comments about fiscal mismanagement. The posting eventually came to the attention of the Navajo Nation, and it was a factor in the tribes rejection of the proposed AIC appropriation.

For three decades, the Albuquerque Indian Center has been a gathering place and safe house for poor and homeless urban Indians. On average, 250 people come through AIC daily for food, social services and programs.

Roxane Bly, a member of the Assembly of Native American Voices, confirmed that she approached AIC board President Kiutus Tecumseh last February and offered to help AIC raise funds. Wanting to get a clearer picture of the centers finances, she said her organization asked to meet AIC administrators, including the organizations treasurer.

Tecumseh told the Journal that he and the AIC board were willing to meet with Assembly members and show them the AIC financial records, but scheduling conflicts could not be resolved and the meeting never occurred.

They took that to mean we were hiding something and didnt want their help, he said, and when they had their monthly meeting they ripped us up.

In response to the perceived AIC slight, Assembly member Kenneth Ruthhardt said, I thought something was not right, so I went to the online GuideStar.org website to look at the Albuquerque Indian Centers 990 IRS form, which all nonprofits must file. The AIC, which has an annual budget of about $300,000, listed accounting expenses of $147,721 and office expenses of $81,986.

That, Ruthardt said, got me angry. So he posted an image of that page from the 990 form to his personal Facebook page as well as the Facebook page for the Native Americans of Albuquerque Network, an online bulletin board for the metro areas Native community. He also sent the information to the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department, the state Attorney Generals Office, and the Office of the State Auditor, asking all to investigate, he said.

Theres nothing to investigate, said AIC executive director Mary Garcia.

Those accounting fees are a combination of fees for all contracted services to the Albuquerque Indian Center, she said.

It covers such things as employment and training programs, drug, alcohol and tobacco prevention programs, domestic violence and substance abuse counseling, and administrative fees for copy and fax machine services and sorting mail for nearly 1,000 clients who use AIC as their address, Garcia said.

The $81,000 listed under office expenses is a combined total for office, kitchen and bathroom supplies, cleaning products, bottled water for distribution to clients, and the biggest expense  food for 150 to 200 meals a day.

AIC accountant Raymond Valenzuela, who prepared the IRS 990 form, said the different functions were combined and listed under accounting and office expenses because there was no place on the form to break them out separately and those were the most logical categories in which to place them.

Ruthardts Facebook posting continued to spread, eventually being picked up by the Navajo Nation.

Oh, I know they had it because one of their staff members showed it to us, said Garcia, who along with the AIC board had several meetings with Navajo tribal government officials in Flagstaff and Window Rock, and was led to believe the money would be granted.

And why shouldnt it? About 70 percent of our clients are Navajo, she said.

Nevertheless, on May 8 the legislation was vetoed by Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye, who wrote: In recent months there have been allegations of misuse of funds, even embezzlement at the Albuquerque Indian Center, and that the legislation did not include safeguards to ensure oversight and accountability to the Nation.

Starting in 2011, city and state funds that AIC previously received have instead gone to First Nations Community HealthSource, which provides health services as well as some social services, and which has consistently scored higher on requests for proposals, or RFPs.

Kelly Zunie, the cabinet secretary for the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department, said her office has tried to get the Albuquerque Indian Center to partner with First Nations for several years, but they absolutely refuse to do it. Their intransigence, she said, is one reason they are constantly in crisis mode.

Garcia is now seeking funds from foundations and private donors. She has secured enough to keep AIC operating through the end of the year. We are determined to stay open because the people who come here need our help, our food, our services, and thats what were here for, she said.
BOSTON  Federal education officials are deciding whether to shut down the nations biggest accreditor of for-profit colleges over allegations that it overlooked deception by some of its schools.

The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools is meant to be a watchdog for hundreds of for-profit schools, wielding the stamp of approval that colleges need to receive federal money. Its one of many accreditors authorized by the U.S. Education Department to ensure the quality of schools. But the nonprofit is being accused of lax standards and failing to stop schools preying on students.

Institutions that have operated under the groups certification include the Corinthian College chain, which closed in 2015 amid fraud allegations, and the ITT Technical Institute chain, which now faces federal charges of fraud. Even after the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau began investigating both in 2013, the council found no major problems during its own reviews. In 2014, it included two Corinthian schools on its annual honor roll.

If accrediting agencies arent willing to stand up against colleges that are breaking the law, colleges that are cheating their students, then I dont know what good they do, and I sure dont know why we would let them determine which colleges are eligible for federal dollars, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said at a congressional hearing on Corinthian last year.

At least 17 colleges certified by the council have been subject to state or federal investigations, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, a liberal public policy organization in Washington. Over the past three years, those schools received more than $5.7 billion in federal money, the group said.

Attorneys general in more than a dozen states and other critics want the Education Department to strip the council of its authority. The council is up for its regular review this month; it was last approved in 2013.

This is an outfit that is in the business of sustaining and aiding and abetting with fraud and abuse, said Barmak Nassirian, a federal lobbyist for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. Its like a consumer fraud dream come true.

Council officials declined to be interviewed for this story.

Losing recognition would effectively close the council and give its schools 18 months to find new accreditors or lose access to federal money, the primary source of revenue for most for-profit colleges.

Because the council oversees more than 900 schools, some experts question whether it will be spared. The fear of it being too big to fail is the only thing saving it right now, said Ben Miller, senior director for postsecondary education at the center. At this point, it would be shocking if ACICS didnt face some sort of sanction.

Top Education Department officials will decide the groups fate after an advisory committee issues a recommendation this month. Any decision could be appealed in federal court. Department officials said theyre working to improve oversight of accreditors.

Unfortunately, in recent years, weve seen far too many schools maintain their institutional accreditation even while defrauding and misleading students, providing poor quality education, or closing without recourse for students. This is inexcusable, Undersecretary Ted Mitchell said in a statement.

The council last week announced a series of changes and promised not to certify any new schools until its work improves. In a statement, the council acknowledged that it has problems and needs to fix them.

The ACICS board of directors is determined to restore trust and confidence in the accreditation process, strengthen ACICSs oversight of member institutions, and ensure that students are receiving a quality education that will put them on a path to employment, said Anthony Bieda, the councils interim chief. The accreditors president of seven years resigned in April amid the Education Departments review.
TEHUACAN, Mexico  The prime suspect in the brutal slaying of 11 family members is a man who allegedly sought revenge after one of the victims reported that he raped her and he was jailed, a Mexican law enforcement official said Saturday.

The official said that authorities believe two attackers fatally shot the woman and her family, including two girls. The killers also slashed a male victim believed to be the womans partner and may have tried to decapitate him.

The killings took place Thursday night in the remote hamlet of San Jose el Mirador in the central state of Puebla.

Prosecutors said late Friday that two suspects are being sought and they are believed to have fled into the mountains of neighboring Oaxaca state.

Authorities have not identified the victims or the suspects.

The Puebla state prosecutors office said that one of the dead women had been raped and had a child by one of the attackers, apparently several years ago. Five witnesses survived and were under government protection. They told authorities the attackers arrived on foot, opened fire and left.

Personal conflicts are the main line of investigation, the office said. Officials had previously raised the possibility that the killings had religious overtones because residents of the largely evangelical hamlet had previously had disputes with Catholics in a nearby community. But that now appears not to have played a role.

The mountain hamlet is so remote that some of the bodies, wrapped in blankets, had to be carried down to the nearest road on stretchers. The bodies were taken to the city of Tehuacan for autopsies.

The area has not been particularly hard hit by the drug violence raging in much of Mexico, but drug cultivation and land disputes are not uncommon.
BEIRUT  Two suicide bombers struck close to the Syrian capital Saturday, killing at least 12 people and wounding dozens more in the latest attack on the predominantly Shiite area in recent months, state TV and an opposition activist group said.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the bombings through its Aamaq news agency, which said three attacks were carried out by suicide bombers. Aamaq said two attackers were wearing explosive belts, while the third was in a car.

Syrian State TV said the blasts in the Sayyida Zeinab area just south of Damascus killed 12 people and wounded 55 others. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 20 people were killed and dozens were wounded in the two explosions.

The blasts came as U.S.-backed fighters in northern Syria tightened their siege on the IS stronghold of Manbij, where tens of the thousands of civilians are trapped by the fighting. The Syria Democratic Forces, a predominantly Kurdish group, encircled the town after capturing dozens of villages and farms near the Turkish border.

The push toward Manbij slowed down because of fear for civilians there, said Mustafa Bali, a Syrian journalist who visited the front line. All telecommunications with the town have been cut, he said.

The Observatory said tens of thousands of civilians in the town fear bombardment of residential areas at a time when most bakeries have stopped working and food is running out. It said airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition have killed 30 civilians, including 11 children, since SDF began its offensive on May 31.

Manbij, one of ISs largest strongholds in Syrias Aleppo province, is a waypoint on a key supply line between the extremists de facto capital of Raqqa and the Turkish frontier.

The suburb where the bombing took place is home to a shrine of the same name, one of the most renowned in Shiite Islam. The heavily guarded shrine to Sayyida Zeinab, the daughter of the first Shiite imam, Ali, and granddaughter of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, receives thousands of Shiite pilgrims each year.

State TV aired footage showing several vehicles and shops on fire, and at least two buildings whose balconies, doors and windows had been destroyed. Blood stains could be seen on the debris-covered road. Fire engines rushed to extinguish fires caused by the explosions.

The Syrian Arab News Agency quoted Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi as blaming the brutal massacres on Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the main supporters of the Syrian rebels trying to remove President Bashar Assad from power.
PHOENIX  Members of Phoenixs gay and lesbian community plan to hold a vigil in the wake of a mass shooting in Florida.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton announced Sunday that a candlelight vigil is planned for 7 p.m. at the Phoenix Pride LGBT Center.

Authorities say a gunman opened fire overnight at a gay nightclub in Orlando, killing 50 people and wounding 53 others.

Several gay bars in central Phoenix have expressed their grief on social media.

Stacy Louis, who owns Stacys at Melrose, says he will host a vigil as well but does not plan on boosting security.

Phoenix police say they are not aware of any credible information that the shooting in Orlando would have an impact locally.

However, police encouraged the community to be vigilant in reporting suspicious behavior.
Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has ordered a probe over the mere six per cent of corruption complaints it has received during the last three years.

RTI activist Jeetendra Ghadge had filed a Right to Information (RTI) query with the ACB to know the total number of corruption complaints received by the body since January, 2013.

The ACB replied by saying that corruption complaints amounting to 7,675 were received in Mumbai from January 2013-March 2016.

Also of these complaints, an inquiry has been ordered for only 512 cases, said the ACB.

The ACB added that FIRs were registered on the basis of seven complaints.

As many as 236 open and discreet inquiries are left pending with the ACB in the said time period, it has been brought to light.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has alleged that China is the biggest and best abuser as it was dumping its goods into the US, stealing intellectual property and imposing hefty taxes on American companies doing business in that country.



China is the biggest and best abuser. Mexico is a smaller version of China, Trump told his cheering supporters in this steel city of Pittsburgh, which is said to be a key swing state for November general elections as he hit out at several countries including Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Trump said he believes in free trade, but it needs to be fair. I believe in free trade. But for free trade, you need to have smart people on our side. I want to make good deals. I do not want care what you call it, he said.

I do not want China to dump steel into our country. They are dumping. They are stealing our intellectual property, Trump alleged and warned them of consequences if he is elected as the president of the country.

If they do not behave, we will put tax on them. They (Chinese) tax us. But we do nothing about it. This is one-way street. We got ripped off, he said. If in November if you pull the right trigger, we are going to have so much fun together, he said, urging people to come out in large number and vote in November presidential elections.

The real estate tycoon from New York claimed he would have a good relationship with China and would enter into a deal with them that would benefit the US and create jobs in the country. China, when I deal with them, it is going to be great deal. They (Chinese) have no respect for Obama. They have even less respect for crooked Hillary, Trump said.

Trump slammed Obama in his speech. Observing that he never thought Obama would be a great president but believed that he would unite the country. He (Obama) is a great divider. The country has never been so divided ever, he alleged, adding he would unite the country. President Obama is incompetent, he claimed.

I will unite the country, the richer, the poor. I would unite the country through old schools of thoughts by creating jobs. I would not let other country take the jobs, he said asserting that factories would resume manufacturing and create jobs if he is elected as the president in November.

We have to win. We cant let this crap happen. We have got weak leaders. We are going to change. We are going to change. We need competent people folks, he said. They (American leadership in Washington) have no clue. We have incompetent people in Washington. Like a bunch of dumb babies. The world is laughing. Countries all over the world are taking advantage of us. Mexico, we have huge trade deficit, he said.

We will build the wall, he said, adding that Mexican leadership are taking benefit of the weak leadership of the US.
Kairana is a historical city and a municipal board in Shamli district. Shamli was declared as a district in September 2011 and was named as Prabuddh Nagar by Mayawati, the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. In July 2012, Shamli got its original name back by Akhilesh Yadav, who became CM of UP in 2012. Prior to that, Kairana was a tehsil of Muzaffarnagar district. Now, this place is in news for its deteriorating law and order situation because there are reports that Hindu families in Kairana have been forced to flee after targeted attacks on them over the last two years. The BJP lawmaker from Kairana, Hukum Singh, has alleged that 346 families have been forced to flee the town, which has 85 per cent Muslims population. However, police and localities have denied about any such migration. Police has taken the list from the BJP leader and verifying the claims made by the MP. Some Hindu families complained to Ashok Kumar Raghav, senior police officer of Kairana that, they have not fled away anywhere but their names are included in the list forcibly. Though, Uttar Pradesh BJP has decided to take up this matter seriously and will send a high level team to assess the situation on the spot. A 11 member-team of the Members of Parliament, mostly from western UP would be sent by the party to give the exact picture of the situation and submit a report to the state party unit.

BJP MP and former Union Minister Hukum Singh had claimed that there was mass exodus of Hindu families from Kairana town over the past two years. The leader released the list of 346 families that had fled leaving their properties behind after they were allegedly targeted and persecuted by Muslims. The MP said the list mentions only the families of Kairana, and if those who migrated from other parts of the district are included, the number would be more than a thousand. The MP went to the extent of alleging that there have been at least 10 communal killings in the town, which has become a new Kashmir, in the past three years. However, BJP is in power at the centre for more than two years and no one ever mentioned about this incident. Many senior leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modis constituencies fall in UP. Why they remained silent since last two years and when this state is due for assembly elections next year, they are digging the skeletons and screaming over such atrocities committed against Hindus?

The BJP however said the states Chief Secretary and Director General of Police have been served a notice by the National Human Rights Commission after it brought individual cases to the panels attention. The rights commission has asked them to reply within four weeks to the allegations that families of a particular religion are leaving the area as they are frightened of criminals. The BJP has also accused the Samajwadi Party government of patronising those behind the violence against Hindus  a charge that has been met with a strong denial. Now ahead of elections, BJP might say anything, but they are seen partying with Samajwadi party on various occasions By making noise now, BJP is indicating that such incidence pointing out that this is an attempt to polarise the atmosphere in western UP. This is the same Hukum Singh who earlier said, he wouldnt let those living in Muzaffarnagar relief camps vote.

Some isolated incidents are being taken out of context and hyped up. Complaints allege that residents are fleeing owing to fear of criminals from another community, but the locals of Kairana town denied the same. Moreover, the extortion calls were made from jail, whosoever has provided the evidence of calls; forget to mention that those numbers belong to local jails. Now, the question is, what kind of law and order situation is prevailing in UP? Moreover, if the calls originated from jail then it means that these calls were not made without the assistance of authorities. Three Muslim families too have become victims of extortion and they are into timber business. The maximum calls were made to Hindu businessmen because Muslims in this region are not rich as compared to Hindus. No one knows who had made calls to extort money. They are jailed criminals and under the custody of state government. According to the complaint dated June 10, 2016, a woman belonging to Kashyap caste was abducted, gang-raped and killed, yet no action has been taken by the police against the offenders. Two of the businessmen, Shankar and Raju, both brothers, were shot dead by the criminals in broad daylight in the market when they did not pay protection money to the criminals. A petrol pump was also looted and when the police took on criminals, they shot dead a constable and managed to flee, the complaint mentioned. Saharanpur Range DIG A.K Raghav, however, was quoted by a local Hindi daily as saying that the police did not receive any such complaint but would inspect the ground to authenticate facts. The BJP has, meanwhile, termed the alleged migration as persecution of Hindus by the minority community and started a campaign on it. The issue has also sparked a political tussle in Uttar Pradesh where assembly elections are slated to be held next year and parties are wooing various communities and caste groups while using any ammunition available to target rivals.

(Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com)
BJP is trying to consolidate the Hindu votes through this act says netizens.

Netizens have termed the recent reports about Hindu families fleeing from Kairana in Uttar Pradesh as BJPs strategy to communalise the atmosphere in the state ahead of the next year assembly polls. According to them, BJP follows divisive agenda and had earlier reaped huge dividends ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election through the Muzzafar Nagar riots. They also added that BJP is trying to consolidate the Hindu votes through this act. The saffron party has tried to polarise votes before elections in Uttar Pradesh which must be condemned. Even the Samajwadi Party too is responsible for failing to beef up security in the area despite mass exodus of people. They also said that people are smart enough to understand the politics behind this incident as it may backfire for the BJP in the long run. The party should focus on development instead of dividing people on communal lines.

Mukesh Tyagi, a political commentator said, The BJP and Samajwadi Party are indulging in politics for communalisation and polarisation of UP ahead of assembly polls in the state. Moreover, there is an element of internal BJP politics here as the importance of Hukum Singh in BJP affairs has gone down once Suresh Rana and Sangit Som came to prominence after Muzaffar Nagar riots. So, he is instigating this affair in his area to gain some prominence in Hindutva politics.

Rashid Rumi, a Business Journalist at Dalal Times said, BJP fought 2014 Lok Sabha election in the name of development. After completion of two years no development is visible on the ground. However, people of the country have surely realised their propaganda before every assembly election. People defeated them in Delhi, Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu. You can say that the party is spreading negative energy and influence people where it is not in power. However people are smart enough and they will teach a lesson to Shah and Modi.

Mrityunjay Prabhakar, a theatre artist termed the issue as RSS propaganda and said, Look, its again the propaganda of RSS which is spreading this rumour that hundreds of Hindu families have fled from Kairana. Let people be aware about facts after conclusion of investigations. Dont spread fear and hatred among the communities. The hatemongers of RSS want dividends for its political outfit BJP in the next years UP assembly elections, as they reaped rich dividends through the Muzzafarnagar incident prior to general elections.

Mujeeb Alam Saifi, a journalist said, BJP is knows how to sensationalise issues before UP election. They can convert Kairana into Kashmir through one hit and now their followers have increased on social networking sites. Humanity is the need of the hour so people should express their support to the residents through social networking sites.

Priyabhanshu Ranjan, a journalist said, Kairana is the new laboratory of BJP and RSS for fanning communal passions. Any Indian citizen, except Modi Bhakts, with a common sense can tell you why BJP leaders (with the hidden help of Samajwadi Party) are hell-bent on vitiating atmosphere of entire western UP. Before Lok Sabha elections 2014, they used Muzaffarnagar for dismantling the communal harmony in the region and now, before the upcoming UP assembly elections, they are using Kairana for polarisation of votes.

Farrah Shakeb, a social activist and freelance writer said, BJP and Sanghs claim of Hindus driven out of Kairana is completely a fake story created to make atmosphere favourable for polarization keeping in mind the forthcoming UP assembly 2017 election. After the failure of Love Jihad, Ghar Wapsi, Gauu Mata and Ram Mandir, they are banking on such issues to fool people. I request all the resident of western UP, dont just get trapped in Sanghs Chanakya Neeti. Just wait and watch, it is nothing but a drama which will fail like Love Jihad.

RTI activist Anil Galgali said, The situation in Kairana village of Uttar Pradesh is very fluid. The extortionists are ruling the roost, due to which the poor citizens are forced to leave their homes and move out. These activities are reminder of the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Kashmir valley. The BJP is treading on the same path undertaken by the Congress. Instead of creating a hype and trying to politicise the situation, the BJP which is ruling in centre and has power to intervene and correct the situation by acting against the anti-social elements.

Neeraj Daksh, a Senior Geologist at Vadodara said, Communal riots can be curbed only by rapid and continuous rate of development along with qualitative education. At present, no political party seems to be capable of doing that.

Omprakash Naman, a writer, poet, social and political activist said, BJPs claim is false and fabricated. BJPs claim that media is responsible for Hindu migration from Kairana is baseless. Whatever information I have is few businessmen migrated from the place due to demand of extortion from goons. Its true that at least three traders were killed in last three years.

RSS backed MP Hukum Singh claims. Muku Kanitkar, Pracharak at Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh said, Facts cannot be termed as BJPs claims. Verify the facts and then either deny or vindicate. Please dont trivialize the tragedy of hundreds of families just because they are Hindus.

Surendra Singh, an active social media participant wrote on his wall, The Kairana problem if claimed to be true by BJP MP then it is really matter of great concern. What state Samajwadi Partys government is doing? As per my view, this highlighted problem must be investigated by central agencies and if it found to be true then it should be the last day for this existing government.
Sri Lankan pacer Nuwan Pradeep took a three wicket haul as the Islanders aim to avoid a series whitewash on the third day of the Lords test on Saturday.



England was reeling at 109 for four at the close of the third day albeit with a lead of 237 runs.

Alex Hales (41*) and night watchman Steven Finn (6*) were the two batsmen at stumps for England.

The home side, who are 2-0 up in the three-match series, were left struggling at 50 for three before first-innings centurion Jonny Bairstow and Hales added 52 for the fourth wicket.

Hales hit two fours in as many balls off Suranga Lakmal and also got a lifeline when he was dropped on 19 off Pradeep with Dimuth Karunaratne failing to hold on to a one-handed chance at slips.

But then Pradeep made amends later on after getting Nick Compton out for 19 and dealing England a major blow.

Compton had been promoted to open the innings in place of skipper Alastair Cook, after the latter suffered a knee injury while fielding close in on Saturday.

That dismissal may prove to be the end of the road for Compton as the batsman admitted that he needed to score big to secure his place in the team.

Incidentally, Compton  playing on his home turf at Middlesex where a stand is named after his grandfather and former England great Denis  was caught behind off a soft dismissal of Shaminda Eranga.

Shortly later England went from 45 for one to 50 for three after Joe Root (four) was bowled by a peach from Pradeep.

Also Hampshires James Vince (playing in his debut series) was out for a golden duck after he lost his wicket to Pradeep whilst offering no shot to a delivery which knocked off his off-stump.

Though Pradeep did not get his hat-tricks still he had the consolation of dismissing Bairstow for 32.

Earlier, England and Warwickshire all-rounder Chris Woakes triggered a collapse and picked up a three-wicket haul which saw Sri Lanka being dismissed for 288.

English pacer Steven Finn (who picked up three wickets) was elated with his teams efforts and labeled it as a very good effort.

The home team remains uncertain regarding Cooks fitness with Finn hoping for an unassailable lead.

The sole positive for Sri Lanka was the seventh-wicket partnership between Kusal Perera (42) and Rangana Herath (31) which yielded71 runs.

Pereras bold innings was particularly impressive as this was his first match in more than six months after a drugs ban was taken back thanks to a botched analysis.

He was eventually caught behind after a wild slog at James Anderson thus kick starting a slump that saw Sri Lanka lose their last three wickets on 288.
State-run banking behemoth SBI has set up a crack team to prepare a framework for amalgamation of five associate banks with itself, even as the political opposition to the proposed move is gaining ground and the government approval is still awaited.



A team of 15-20 members has been set up and it has started working on the framework for the merger. The team is headed by a general manager and there are a few deputy general managers, a source said.

The team has been formed under the supervision of associate and subsidiaries department, which is being headed by managing director V G Kannan.

If everything works fine, in 3-4 months the process is likely to begin, he said.

Last month, the banks board had submitted a proposal to the government for merging its five subsidiaries and first women-oriented lender Bhartiya Mahila Bank with itself.

This merger discussion is purely exploratory at this stage and is not certain. A proposal seeking an in-principle approval to start negotiations with associate banks will be submitted to the government, SBI had said in a statement issued after its board meeting last month.

SBI 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.

The idea is to merge all the five associate banks at the same time. They are on the same technology platform, which SBI has It will not be a difficult process, the source added.

It is unclear whether the team which is looking into merger processes of the five subsidiary banks with SBI is also laying the groundwork for Bharatiya Mahila Banks inclusion at this juncture.

Recently, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said the Centre is evaluating the merger proposal and will soon respond.

We are looking at SBI (proposal) at the moment. It is with the government and (it) will respond. The governments policy, by and large, supports consolidation. I have indicated that in the budget itself, he said after a meeting with the heads of public sector banks and financial institutions held last week.

When asked how soon the government nod will be given to the proposal, Jaitley had said: We are expecting (approval) shortly.

Immediately after the announcement, the associate banks employee union had termed the boards decision as arrogant and had gone on a nation-wide strike on May 20. The employee unions of these five associate banks have called for a strike on June 28 and July 29 to protest the proposed merger.

Moreover, CPI General Secretary S Sudhakar Reddy today said Telangana assembly should pass a resolution opposing the amalgamation and added the state will lose revenue if State Bank of Hyderabad is merged with parent SBI.

On June 9, the newly inducted CPI(M)-led LDF government in Kerala had opposed the merger of State Bank of Travancore with SBI, becoming the first state government to lodge a protest.

People of the state consider SBT as a bank of Kerala and the government also has the same view. We want SBT to remain as it is, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had told reporters. Among the five subsidiary banks, State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Mysore and State Bank of Travancore are listed entities.
The Arabic letter "n" (inside red circle), signifying "Nasrani" (Christian), on an Assyrian home in Mosul. (AINA) -- A joint statement on the ISIS occupation of Assyrian villages in north Iraq has been issued by the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch and the Syriac Catholic Patriarch. The statement calls the actions of ISIS a "criminal act which amounts to an ethno-religious genocide."

ISIS captured Mosul on June 10, 2014 and moved into the Nineveh Plain, an Assyrian stronghold in north Iraq, on August 7, causing nearly 200,000 Assyrians to flee their homes and villages. ISIS has also destroyed Assyrian churches, monasteries and archaeological sites.

Here is the text of the statement:

Two years passed since the uprooting of our Syriac people from the land of our ancestors in Mosul and the Nineveh Plain, following the criminal act which amounts to an ethno-religious genocide, committed by ISIS and other terrorist groups which consider infidels all those who do not share their religion or believe in their confessional doctrines.

On June 10, 2014, our people were forced to leave Mosul. On the eve of August 7 of the same year, the uprooting continued and our people were forced to leave Qaraqosh, Bartelly, Bahzani, Bashiqa, Telosqof, Al-Qosh, Karamlis, and other villages and towns of the Nineveh Plain. They became refugees and homeless in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the neighboring countries of Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

Today, two years after the calamity that was brought upon our people, the decision-making countries and the international community remain silent and inactive towards the ethnic cleansing of a historical people who founded the civilizations of the area. We are the descendant of the martyrs who defended their faith, land and honor. They witnessed to the point of shedding their blood for its sake.

We welcome the decision of certain countries to recognize these terrorist acts as a genocide against Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities. However, we strongly denounce the absence of serious actions from the part of the international community and the Iraqi government to step up the liberation of Mosul and the villages of the Nineveh Plain from the terrorist groups. They destroyed our churches and monasteries, particularly the monastery of St. Behnam and Sarah where the tomb of the saint was bombed. They stole the properties and possessions of our people, spreading the darkness of death, destruction and moral degradation.

As spiritual fathers of this people, our hearts were pierced with pain and our eyes were filled with tears every time we visited, together and separately, our displaced children who settled in the cities and towns of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq. We observed their suffering and the lack of the most basic elements needed for a dignified life, namely housing, work, health care or education for the children. We thank the Government of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq for their efforts to offer the basic services in these difficult times. We, likewise affirm our demand for the immediate liberation of Mosul and the Nineveh Plain and the return of our sons and daughters to their land and homes. They should enjoy security and stability as well as living conditions that ensure their dignity and help them restore their trust in their country and their hope in a bright future.

Hence, we tell our spiritual children who were forced out of their homes and communities:

We are with you in every moment, we urge you to remain the shining lamp in the darkness of this tribulation, for your return to your homes will be soon. We trust the promise of the Lord that He will remain in the midst of His Church and She will never fall.

Do not lose your faith, be encouraged and remain firm in the Lord Jesus Christ Who tells us not to be afraid, saying: "Take courage, I have conquered the world" (John 16: 33).

June 10, 2016

Ignatius Aphrem II

Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East

Ignatius Youssef III Younan

Syriac Catholic Patriarch of Antioch
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

It's official: Democrat Hillary Clinton is now the first female presidential nominee of a major party in US history.

Following a decisive win in California on June 7, the former secretary of state can focus on her November showdown with Republican Donald Trump. She got a head start this week, with a ringing endorsement from President Barack Obama and a four-point lead in the polls, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average.

Trump, meanwhile, has been in a free fall over his racially tinged remarks about a Hispanic judge, and now trails Clinton 44.1% to 40.3%. Republican luminaries are apoplectic, and urging him to adopt a more measured tone  advice the businessman appeared to take to heart in a relatively well-received speech following Tuesday's primary results.

After riding an anti-establishment wave so far, Trump seems ready to take some advice from those much-maligned Washington insiders  and even make them part of his campaign. He has repeatedly said he wants a "politician" by his side, someone who can navigate Congress and the political system. This week we'll look at some of his potential picks for vice president, before focusing on Clinton next week.

The American vice president is best known as a sort of virtual president-in-waiting in case something happens to the incumbent. Its origins are purely political, emerging from the Founding Fathers' compromise whereby each state got to select two presidential nominees, one of whom had to be from a different state, to avoid political gridlock; the nominee with the second-most number of votes nationwide became vice president.

Political considerations live on today in what's known as "balancing the ticket." This is the process by which presidential hopefuls choose a complementary running mate  someone from a different region of the country, a racial or ethnic minority, a woman, etc.  to help make their candidacy more appealing to certain segments of the electorate.

So, who are some of the people Trump might be looking at?

If he wants a liaison to Congress with great communication skills, his primary rival John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, could fit the bill. Kasich has a high approval rating in his home state, where he helped turn a $2 billion deficit into a $1 billion surplus. Kasich also served in the US House of Representatives from 1983 until 2001, making his mark as a bipartisan consensus-builder during President Bill Clinton's administration. And let's not forget that no Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio.

Another formal rival, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, was the first primary candidate to endorse Trump and now heads the transition team for a potential Trump administration. Despite Christie's experience, however, Trump doesn't need New Jersey to win the presidency.

What about primary rival Marco Rubio? The Florida senator's Cuban heritage could help bridge the GOP's gap with the Hispanic community, whose votes Obama won by a landslide in 2012, and other minorities around the country. But Rubio may still have his own presidential ambitions down the line, and no one has forgotten Trump's put-downs of "Little Marco."

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, the first female Indian-American ever elected governor, is a rising star in the Republican firmament. And Republicans certainly need all the help they can get to make up their deficiencies with women and minorities, particularly after Trump has repeatedly offended both those groups. New Mexico Republican Susana Martinez, the first Hispanic woman ever elected governor, could be a wise choice for the same reasons.

That said, it's important to remember that national security is a top issue for American voters  one where Republicans have usually held the upper hand. Clinton, however, comes armed with decades of experience, while Trump has panicked the Washington establishment with his loose talk about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and nuclear weapons. One oft-mentioned palliative is Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker of Tennessee.

Or Trump could also pick someone who has served in the armed forces, as 31 former presidents have. Indeed, the brash billionaire could be well-served by someone with the fortitude to tell him "no" from time to time.

For all the chatter about "veep" picks, however, their impact has historically been mixed at best. In 2012, Mitt Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, failed to help the ticket win his own state of Wisconsin  a mind-boggling development when you consider that the state's Republican Gov. Scott Walker survived a recall election that year and won re-election two years later.

But if vice presidential picks don't always help the ticket, their record of taking the office for themselves is even worse.

Excluding vice presidents who took over the presidency upon the death or resignation of the president, not a single "veep" has directly acceded to the highest office in the land since 1836, save for George H.W. Bush in 1988.

Richard Nixon was the first incumbent vice president in 100 years to be nominated for president by his party. He lost to John F. Kennedy in 1960, but won eight years later as a former vice president.

Democratic Vice President Hubert Humphrey was nominated for president in 1968 after serving with President Lyndon Johnson. He lost to Nixon.

And Democrat Al Gore, Clinton's vice president, was nominated in 2000. After a controversial vote count, he eventually lost to George W. Bush.

All in all, the vice presidential pick is largely a sideshow to the main event. If Trump wants to win in November, he can only count on himself.
June 10, 2016

More than 50 children in the village of Arab Shams in the Sharqiyah governorate found out that Tales Ride, a bus that drives through Egypt to give free books to children, was going to visit their village on May 17. The children were excited about attending an interesting storytelling session run by the owner of the vehicle, English teacher Haitham al-Sayyed.

When that day came, Sayyed and a group of children between the ages of 5 and 12 escaped the hot sun and sat in the shade of a big tree along the edges of a field. The children sat in a circle listening to tales they had never heard before, but the highlight of their day was when each child got a storybook of their own, carefully selected by Sayyed according to the children's ages and interests.

The cultural gap between children living in villages and their counterparts in the cities prompted Sayyed to take his own vehicle and roam around the villages of his governorate, hoping to bridge that gap. Sayyed told Al-Monitor that since he was brought up in one of the villages in Faqous, in Sharqiyah governorate, he noticed that the knowledge areas that were available for him and his peers were far less than the ones available for children in big cities. He attributed this gap to the fact that cities have cultural centers while villages only have school libraries, which are rarely visited by children and only include books that date back dozens of years.

Sayyed noticed that the area where he lived included 20 villages with 40,000 residents and no public or private cultural center. Meanwhile, cultural centers in cities only organize events at night, which makes it impossible for children from the villages to attend in light of the long distances and the absence of transportation at night. According to Sayyed, this resulted in a decline in the childrens cultural knowledge.

An 8-year-old girl from Sayyeds village inspired him to start the project. A couple of years ago, he was buying magazines for his daughter when a girl approached him and asked about the magazine he was holding. He was shocked that she did not know the magazine, and he immediately gave it to her. Two other children then approached him asking for magazines, and he promised he would get them some the next day.

At his own expense, Sayyed began collecting children's storybooks and magazines. By the first night of Ramadan 2015, he had collected around 1,000 books, which he distributed to children in his village. When children and their parents showed interest in his idea, it spread to surrounding villages, and Sayyed was encouraged to develop his project. Not only does he distribute books, he also reads stories to children.

The Tales Ride team consists of Sayyed and four other volunteers who started a Facebook page and used an illustration of children holding books in a vehicle as their logo. The team not only distributed books and held reading sessions, but it also organized several competitions to assess how much children were benefiting from the tales they read. The prizes included trips to archaeological sites in Egypt, organized at the teams own expense.

Within a year, the team had visited 51 villages where they held storytelling workshops and distributed more than 11,000 books, which were collected by personal efforts and with the support of some libraries and publishing houses. Sayyed said that his audience was no longer limited to children; the workshops were attended by adults who were inspired by the idea.

Omar Ahmad, a library owner who supports Sayyeds project, told Al-Monitor that as soon as he found out about the project and its purpose, he provided Sayyed and his team with different types of books, including childrens books and others that adults might prefer. He also noted that he offered a 90% discount for people who visited his library and made donations for the Tales Ride project.

The joy children get out of a new book outweighs the one they get out of a used one, Ahmad said, noting that children used to get old books, but he convinced Sayyeds team to distribute new books so the children's joy is complete.

Sayyed tried to get books from the Ministry of Culture to support the project, but Culture Minister Hilmi al-Nimnim asked him to establish a formal institution to obtain this support, which Sayyed failed to do because his village has very few residents and several charities. It was difficult for him to provide a fixed headquarters and form a council for founding members, which needed at least 10 members in accordance with the Law of Civil Associations.

Sayyed tried to include his project under the management of the other charities in his hometown, but those in charge were not too excited about his idea  they mostly focus on helping the needy and have no room for cultural affairs.

Although the team failed to get the support of the Ministry of Culture, it was able to garner 100 books from the General Authority for Cultural Palaces and 300 books from the Cultural Development Fund. Sayyed noted that those cultural institutions have huge numbers of untapped books stored.

Neveen El-Kilany, the head of the Cultural Development Fund, expressed the funds readiness to support all cultural initiatives, whether they were official or individual, and told Al-Monitor that the fund was not only providing books, but it was also printing books that those in charge of such initiatives might need to achieve their goals.

The fund will provide whatever the initiatives need, and our resources are at the peoples service, Kilany said, noting that the fund will not only support Tales Ride by providing books, but it will also follow up on the project and answer to its future needs.

In addition to bridging the cultural gap between villages and cities and preserving the childrens cultural identity, Sayyed has another goal, which is to fight terrorism by spreading culture and knowledge among children. He also dreams of establishing a cultural center in his hometown that would include a theater, workshops, a lecture hall, a musical choir and a translation department. Sayyed said that this center will only cost the Ministry of Culture 2 million Egyptian pounds (about $225,000) out of the dozens of millions it spends on art festivals  which Sayyed sees as useless with low turnout.

Knowledge is every childs right to appreciate beauty, concluded Sayyed. He expressed his willingness to cooperate with all institutions  governmental and nongovernmental organizations  to achieve his objectives. He hopes for Tales Ride to call at all of Egypts villages.
June 9, 2016

It was a theater of the absurd: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, minutes after Liberman took the oath of office May 30, talking to the press about their desire/agreement for a two states for two peoples solution and about recognizing positive elements in the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which the government would be ready to negotiate. Netanyahu actually believes that he can fool all the people all the time. Indeed, he succeeded this time, at least partly: The press was taken by surprise, Libermans entry into the Defense Ministry went over relatively smoothly in the world and not a single government publically called his bluff. The main purpose of these statements was to convince the US administration to take a more balanced position at the June 3 Paris conference in order to avoid a binding timeline.

Yet a bluff it was. There is no two-state solution process without a settlement freeze and a readiness to accept the 1967 lines with mutual land swaps as a basis for the negotiations. The Palestinians and the Arab countries will not engage anymore in negotiations for the sake of negotiations.

Furthermore, the phrase two states for two peoples was chosen carefully by the two right-wing leaders. It brings back to the scene the Israeli condition for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish nation-state, knowing all too well that even the most moderate of Palestinian leaders will not accept what was not asked at the time (when peace treaties were negotiated) of neither Egypt nor Jordan.

As to the Arab Peace Initiative, the new odd couple of Israeli politics recognized the obvious  that there are positive elements in the initiative. They are referring to two clauses: the normalization of relations of Arab countries with Israel after conflict resolution and an agreed and just settlement to the Palestinian refugee problem. According to the initiative, Israel has to agree to the latter, thus giving Israel a veto power over the Palestinian right of return. Yet what was not mentioned at the May 30 press conference was that these positive elements of the Arab Peace Initiative are conditioned in the initiative on Palestinian statehood on the 1967 lines with mutual land swaps, with East Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital. Obviously, these are the components that Netanyahu wants to negotiate away. The wording matters and the devil is in the details. Israel can negotiate on the basis of the Arab Peace Initiative, but cannot negotiate the Arab Peace Initiative  this is a matter for the Arab League.

At the June 3 Paris conference, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said that the Arab Peace Initiative could not be diluted. Netanyahu and Liberman are aware of this position. Hence, the press conference on May 30 was merely a masquerade for two leaders whose declared intention is to prevent a Palestinian state through the enhancement of settlement construction. They have no intention of engaging in serious peace negotiations. The European Union listened with curiosity and skepticism to the Israeli statements. No one in Brussels and the main EU capitals believes that Netanyahu, now with Liberman at his flank, is actively interested in a two-state solution.

A senior EU official close to Federica Mogherini, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, told Al-Monitor after the Paris conference on condition of anonymity that the fact that Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) were not present was helpful to achieve a relatively successful outcome of the conference. In the view of the senior official, the principal outcome of the conference is the highlighting of the importance of the implementation of the Arab Peace Initiative in parallel to relevant UN Security Council resolutions (primarily Resolutions 243 and 338). The US administrations adherence to this text is important for future efforts, the EU official said.

This wording is very different than the reserved and qualified support for elements of the Arab Peace Initiative by Netanyahu and Liberman, who rejected the Paris communique outright. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the PA are on board with this wording. According to the EU official, the wording of the joint communique of the Paris conference will now impact the content of the soon-to-be-published Quartet report. Mogherini is of the opinion that without a serious international diplomatic effort building on the outcome of the Paris conference, the situation in the PA will deteriorate dangerously in relation to violence and the threats to the stability of the Abbas regime.

The next steps that were discussed on the sidelines of the conference are related to an eventual Security Council resolution on halting violence and settlement expansion and on terms of reference for the two-state solution negotiations, along the Paris communique. The United States is opposed, at this point, to such a move. The French will continue to work in favor of an international peace conference before the end of 2016, with the two parties invited.

All parties are now working with the Nov. 8 deadline (US presidential election) in mind, wishing also to create a policy platform for the next US administration.
June 12, 2016

Turkey now "least influential player"

Cengiz Candar reports Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans bizarre remark at an iftar dinner on the second day of Ramadan, where he said, 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.

Candar suggests that it might 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 [June 7] and standing with Turkey.

As Erdogan searches history for dragons to slay, Semih Idiz assesses the real-time consequences of Turkeys Syria policies.

Turkey's only participation in these offensives [in Syria] has been to allow US-led anti-IS coalition jets to take off from Incirlik Air Base, and to engage in cross-border shelling of IS positions in northern Syria, mostly in response to IS shells lobbed into Turkey, Idiz writes. Meanwhile, predominantly Arab and Turkmen groups supported by Ankara, and operating under the broad umbrella of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), continue to perform poorly against IS. This contrasts sharply with the gains of the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the bulk of which are made up of fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).

Fehim Tastekin reports, The unexpected victory by IS [against Turkish-backed groups in al-Rai] panicked the Turkish government and muted objections to US joint operations with the SDF. Blows against Turkish-supported armed groups by IS offered a trump card to the Kurds. These Turkish-backed groups need SDF permission to exit the siege they are under. The SDFs condition for opening a corridor from Marea to Aleppo is for the Turkish-supported armed groups to halt attacks against the Kurdish Sheikh Maksoud district of Aleppo. There is speculation that some of those groups might soon join the SDF. At the moment, at least two Turkmen units are cooperating with the YPG, showing that the Turkmen card is not entirely in Turkeys hands.

Idiz concludes, Keeping in mind its continuing obsession with undermining Kurdish aspirations, it remains to be seen how much longer Ankara can sustain a policy, which may be gaining President Recep Tayyip Erdogan political points among his Islamist and nationalist supporters at home, but which is clearly undermining Turkey's interests and leaving it as the least influential player in a region where it once believed it was the most important actor.

Tastekin reports separately on the Bukulmez outpost in Reyhanli, on Turkeys Syrian border, where the view from the outposts tower illustrates graphically Ankaras position in the uprising against the Syrian regime. Eyes that were tasked to monitor the border from the tower were blind to breaches of the border at an illegal crossing point in front of the outpost that was the main supply line for the rebels in Syria. This meant that outpost didnt carry out its true duties.

Turkeys interest in the border remains primarily focused on keeping the Syrian Kurds in check, and Turkey enforces a blockade on the Syrian Kurdish region of Afrin. Tastekin writes that Afrin also is pressured by attacks from Turkey. When the SDF [Syrian Defense Forces] began to expand its territory toward Azaz and Tel Rifaat, Turkish army artillery fire killed five people. Behind Turkey's uncompromising attitude is the fear of a Kurdish corridor emerging. To the people of Afrin, linking Kobani with Afrin is of utmost importance. The Afrin region has supported the PKK and all Kurdish political movements including the PYD since the 1980s; its people are truly politicized. In short, Afrin owes its resilience against the blockade to its defensible topography, a high level of political participation among its citizens and fertile soil that will not let them die of hunger.

Aleppo offensive looms

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad vowed to take back every inch of Syria in a speech in Damascus on June 7, as the battle for Aleppo appears imminent.

The Russian, Syrian and Iranian and defense ministers met in Tehran two days later, as Arash Karami reports for Al-Monitor.

Mohammed al-Khatieb reports this week from Aleppo on the citys anticipation of a major assault by the Syrian government, backed by Russian and Iranian forces. To lay siege to the city of Aleppo, the regime forces are betting on cutting Castello Road, which is the only outlet connecting the opposition-controlled areas in Aleppo to its northern countryside and through the province of Idlib to Turkey. To that end, the regime has been shelling this road almost continuously ever since the escalation of the bombing in Aleppo on April 25, Khatieb reports.

While acknowledging the superiority of the Syrian government and allied forces, Khatieb writes, Jaish al-Fatah, an operations room including several factions of the opposition, notably Ahrar al-Sham, Faylaq al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, attacked the regime forces' positions in the southern countryside of Aleppo on June 3 in  an unexpected move.

This column has regularly conveyed that the offensive in Aleppo could signal the beginning of the end of the war, and last week suggested that the United States should coordinate its military operations with Russia to bring about an endgame in Aleppo and throughout Syria; avoid sectarian biases and entanglements that have ripped Syria apart; and discard, for good, confused arguments and advocacy that call for accommodation with al-Qaeda fellow travelers.

Israels double standard on Turkeys cruelty

Akiva Eldar reflects this week on Israels motivations in seeking to rebuild ties with Turkey despite Ankaras hidden war on the Kurds.

The focus on the atrocities committed by Turkey in 1915 and 1916 diverts attention from its cruelty in 2015 and 2016, Eldar writes. While demanding that Israel compensate families whose loved ones were killed in a pointless and negligent military operation, when Israeli commandos boarded the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara vessel, Turkey is deliberately bombing Kurdish population centers in the countrys southeast. That same country that is so concerned about the blockaded residents of the Gaza Strip has for months been preventing food and medical supplies from reaching Kurdish towns. The Turkish government is not allowing Turkish and international media access to the flattened towns. In an investigative report, The New York Times dubbed the humanitarian crisis in the region 'the hidden war' of Turkey against the Kurds.

Eldar concludes, Germanys recognition of the Armenian genocide, over Turkeys furious objections, despite Berlins interests in ties with Ankara, underscores, justifiably so, the double standard of a state that lashes out at Holocaust deniers. Israels courting of Turkeys tyrannical leader even as it ignores the bitter fate of the Kurds is a forceful illustration of the above.
BILOXI, MS -- Southern League All-Stars Jake Peter and Eudy Pina each posted a pair of hits but the Birmingham Barons fell to the Biloxi Shuckers for the second straight night by a 4-2 final score at MGM Park.

Peter, who bumped his batting average to .305 after a 2-for-3 night, also recorded a walk as well as Birmingham's lone extra-base hit. He scored Birmingham's first run, advancing past home plate on a Gabriel Noriega throwing error that sailed past second base and into center field.

Tied 1-1 in the bottom of the fourth inning, Noriega brought home a pair of Shuckers against Barons starter Jordan Guerrero before homering off reliever Matt Lollis to put Biloxi out front 4-1.

Guerrero, the White Sox no. 6 prospect, took the hard luck loss despite allowing just three earned runs on four hits in six innings pitched. The California native added three strikeouts and surrendered just one walk.

Lollis allowed only the Noriega home run in his lone frame of relief, adding a strikeout and needing just 17 pitches to work through the inning. Southpaw Blair Walters worked out of the bullpen for the first time this season, tossing a scoreless eighth inning out of the bullpen.

Eddy Alvarez scored Birmingham's second run, plating Keon Barnum to bring the Barons to tonight's 4-2 final score. Barnum now has hits in his first two AA games after being promoted to the Barons yesterday.

Brandon Brennan makes his first start since April for the Barons, returning to Birmingham's rotation after tossing complete games his past two starts for Class A Winston-Salem.

About the Birmingham Barons

The Birmingham Barons travel to Biloxi to face the Shuckers before returning to Regions Field June 15 to battle the Mississippi Braves. For further information about the Barons and the 2016 season at Regions Field, please call (205) 988-3200, visit www.barons.com, www.facebook.com/birminghambarons, @bhambarons on Twitter.
The assistant bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama will be moving to become the bishop of Easton, Maryland.

The Rt. Rev. Santosh K. Marray was elected the 11th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Easton on June 11.

Marray was elected on the third ballot from among four nominees. He received 69 of 88 votes cast in the lay order and 31 of 51 votes cast in the clergy order. The election took place at Trinity Cathedral in Easton.

"Lin and I give thanks to Almighty God and the laity and clergy of the Diocese of Easton for this remarkable call to serve and to dream God's dream with the faithful people in the Easton shores of Maryland," said Marray following his election. "We thank God for ministry in Alabama and the love and care our brothers and sisters have shown us during our ministry here."

Marray became the Diocese of Alabama's Assistant Bishop in 2012.

"Congrats to Santosh and Lynn on his election to become the next bishop of the Diocese of Easton," said the Rt. Rev. Kee Sloan, Alabama's Diocesan Bishop, following the election. "We will miss them. We are thankful for their life and ministry among us. We also congratulate the Diocese of Easton who have elected a fine servant of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Marray was Bishop Assisting of the Diocese of East Carolina 2009-20012. From 2005-2008 he was the Bishop of Seychelles, Province of the Indian Ocean, and led the diocese through re-imagination, change, and clergy and laity empowerment. When the diocese returned to sustainability, he returned to his family in the US.

Prior to being elected bishop, he served a small parish in Florida, and multi-church parishes in his native country Guyana and the Bahamas, leading the revitalization of struggling congregations of various sizes. He has also planted new churches and carried out numerous successful capital campaigns. He taught for 10 years in the Bahamas Public School System.

Marray was the Province of the Indian Ocean's representative on the Anglican Communion Covenant Design Group and was later appointed by Archbishop Rowan Williams as Commissary to the Anglican Communion.

Marray is a convert from Hinduism, the faith of his parents. His passion for Jesus and his Church is undergirded by his conviction that a loving Jesus who came looking for him in a small remote village in South America populated by majority Hindus and Muslims in Guyana deserves his love and devotion.

He was ordained to the diaconate and priesthood in 1981, and bishop in 2005. He holds a degrees from Codrington Theological College, Barbados; the University of the West Indies, Barbados; General Theological Seminary, New York; the University of Wales, UK, and Colgate Rochester/Bexley Hall Divinity School.

Marray is married to Nalini 'Lynn' since 1977. They have two grown children, Ingram and Amanda, a daughter-in-law, Tenille, and a granddaughter.
Orlando shooting.jpg

Law enforcement gathers near the scene of a shooting in Orlando, Fla. Sunday, June 12, 2016.

(Orlando police)

Central Alabama Pride is holding its last event of Central Alabama Pride Week today at Sloss Furnaces.

After Sunday morning's Orlando nightclub shooting, the group is taking extra security precautions.

"Please be patient today for as a result, security at PrideFest will be tighter than ever," the group said on its Facebook page.

The shooting occurred at Pulse- a popular LGBT nightclub. 50 people were killed, and an additional 53 were injured.

President of Central Alabama Pride, Kyle Pugh, said that Birmingham police and private security guards will be on scene tonight.

"It's always scary. We're always used to being on the receiving end of bullying and violence... it just makes us come out stronger," he said.

Officials are calling the Pulse shooting the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

Birmingham's Pridefest 2016 event includes food, vendors, Mr. and Ms. Central Alabama Pride presentation, and a performance by Jordin Sparks.

"We are already working with the Birmingham Police Department and are executing a full sweep of the grounds as well as discussing plans and taking actions with security measures to ensure todays is a fun and safe event. Please continue to come out and celebrate our community as we need to support each other now more than ever."

"As we come together to celebrate our community at Pride Fest we are reminded of the hate that still fills this world. We have Pulse Orlando in our thoughts and prayers," the group posted.

Pugh said that he spoke with the Jefferson County EMA and Birmingham FBI officials before the festival began.

"We're all in the loop together... we just want to make sure that everyone has a safe and fun time tonight."

Community leaders took the stage at Pridefest earlier today for a moment of silence, and Pugh said that they will continue that throughout the night.

He said that there will be a glowstick vigil at 7 p.m.

The events begin at 1:00 p.m. with the former American Idol taking the stage at 8:30 p.m.
It took the Federal Aviation Administration more than two-and-a-half years to reply to one of our freedom of information requests, filed while we worked on our investigation Broken Dreams: the Boeing 787. Were still waiting on another, which were told will come in July. That will be a three-year wait. Its pretty clear the agency is no friends of reporters.

Sigh. I thought wed driven a stake [or maybe even a steak] through Mother Sheilas heart  but no, writes Les Dorr, one of the FAAs media guys.

Mother Sheila is Sheila Kaplan, formerly of Mother Jones magazine, now with StatNews.com. She was producing an investigative TV piece with Dan Rather on the 787 in 2007 and was asking numerous questions. I told her, enough already! wrote Dorr to his colleagues.

I showed Kaplan the comments and she was unsurprised. The FAAs reluctance to answer questions about its oversight problems with Boeing is well-known.

As a reporter, I dont care what PR people say about me. But, as a frequent flier, I truly hate to travel on airlines overseen by people who are dumb enough to put these kinds of comments in writing.

The FAA had no comment, but pointed out that Mr Dorr is not responsible for overseeing airline safety.

Twelve viewers, 8 of them fish

Kaplan and Rathers show generated lots of email chatter at the FAA.

I am getting more and more concerned about the report that Sheila Kaplan is preparing on the 787 certification, wrote Ali Bahrami, the regulator who finally signed off the Dreamliner.

I am not sure where all this will end up taking me.

After the programme was broadcast, FAA special assistant Julie Kitelinger concluded it wasnt very well done, but it generated national attention and a lot of reporters started submitting FOIA [freedom of information] requests straight afterwards.

Dorr also snipes that the programme, probably has about 12 viewers in Seattle, and 8 of those are fish.

In the face of such negative publicity, Bahrami rallied the troops. Hang in there, he wrote. We are going to come out looking even more credible  This is a great learning opportunity for us all.

It is hard to believe that a single person could cause this much chaos in an organisation, he wrote, presumably with reference to the whistleblower featured in the show, Vince Weldon.

Boeings battle between quality and schedule

The papers prove that the questions Kaplan was asking questions were hard for the FAA engineers to answer.

We do not know what rules will ultimately be applied to lightning protection on the 787, Mike Dostert conceded privately to his FAA colleagues after a question from Kaplan back in October 2007.

Whistleblower Weldon had been calling into question the safety of FAA and Boeings solutions to the carbon composite conundrum.

It all supports the theory, put to me by more than one Boeing engineer, that the company raced into building an all-composite fuselage for the 787, and only thought through all the engineering implications later.

The Boeing old-school ties grumble that in the New Boeing, marketing and sales people have a lot more influence than in the past.

Conflicts of interest

The rest of the documents the FAA has released are interesting too. The regulator delegates its responsibility for hands-on regulation to Boeing engineers. The papers show some of those guys were complaining about too much pressure coming from their Boeing bosses, who wanted them to hurry up and sign things off.

Many Boeing engineers we spoke to complained of this pressure. The old refrain was, quality is king, but schedule is god! Thats the problem  a regulator-engineer is stuck in the middle between the FAA, where the stated priorities are safety and quality, and the Boeing business, where quality, safety, schedule and profit are all jostling for priority.

Read original documents here:

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The relationship between the FAA and the businesses it regulates is even more problematic when you see how FAA officials, like the Director of the Aircraft Certification Service Dorenda Baker, refer to such companies as customers. Is the FAA regulating aviation companies or selling them a service?

The regulator says that it may have referred to companies we regulate as customers, but more frequently we identify them as applicants or stakeholders. However, the specific term used does not alter the regulatory relationship. The FAA conducts its oversight of industry in accordance with federal law and FAA policy.

In 2007, when the FAA was working to delegate greater authority to Boeing, Philip Forde in the Seattle certification office reported to headquarters that Boeing was frustrated by some of the strict procedures that hamper their production.

Regulator-engineers who are on the shop floor, known in the jargon as Authorised Representatives (ARs), are supposed to be wearing their regulator hats, but theyre also Boeing employees. So what do they do when, as is recorded in these papers, their managers complain that they are slowing things down?

The Bottleneck

One of these guys claims he was ridiculed and nicknamed The Bottleneck because he was such an obstacle to getting things done to Boeings schedule.

Another complained he was talking to a brick wall when he raised his concerns. We also read how the same engineer stormed out of a meeting because his Boeing managers wouldnt listen to his concerns.

It all makes sense when you put it into a bit of context. This was 2010, when the much-hyped 787 Dreamliner was already years delayed and several billion dollars over budget and becoming a costly embarrassment for Boeing. The company was under huge pressure to get it out of the hangar doors, off to the airlines and into the air. After all, theyd promised to have it ready to go by the Beijing Olympics, two years earlier.

Boeings 787 battery: Problems from the start

The papers also show how, despite all the complaints from the ARs, the FAA remains deeply committed to the delegation system.

Its really good to be back working with the FAA again Im really anxious to dig in and move us forward on the path to increased delegation, writes a Boeing employee [name redacted] to Ali Bahrami in October 2007.

Bahrami replies that you are going to have a very important role within the company. We are going to be relying on you to ensure that the needed cultural change does occur and will continue to be the operating norm. You can rely on my support.

The FAA told Al Jazeera that delegation leverages limited FAA resources and can respond to changes in workload and industry needs, and that the system is a critical component of our safety system; therefore we impose the highest technical and ethical standards on our designees in order to ensure public, congressional, industry, and FAA confidence.

The FAA commitment to delegation came through in the NTSB hearings after the 787 grounding in 2013. Bahrami and Baker fiercely defended the system, saying it works well and theyre simply not equipped to regulate by themselves. That is an odd sort of reassurance.

More broadly, when you think of the recent and ever-widening emissions scandal that began at Volkswagen, and of the horsemeat scandal in British food regulation and of the countless other failures of government regulation, you have to wonder whether the light touch really is the right touch.
Youre always dealing with someone who wont be around for too long  but you never get used to death.

New York, US  If Marilyn Walkers old car could talk, it would have a few stories to tell. In her 90-minute commute to and from work, the vehicle turns into her place of solace. That was especially true in the time following her husbands death nearly nine years ago.

She recalls her routine: Getting in my car and screaming. Getting in my car and crying. Getting in my car, talking to the car, and telling her what Im going through, saying: Im really trying to handle this, maybe we could do this together. Just me and my car.

But when she arrives at work, the 56-year-old knows that her emotional breakdowns cannot follow her inside. The breast cancer survivor is an on-call triage nurse working with terminally ill patients at the MJHS Hospice and Palliative Care Centre in Brooklyn, New York.

I cant let my patients and their families see me cry. I have to be strong, she says.

A voice of compassion and comfort

So she dyes her hair, makes sure to wear a pop of colour and smiles: her warmth, charisma and energy a stark contrast to the nature of her work.

A large part of her job involves visiting patients in their homes and processing new admissions, making first assessments about an incoming patients physical and mental state and the level of care they will require.

Its a lot of work, but this job has helped me to come to terms with myself and my own experiences, she says.

In 2007, her husband, Conrad, was admitted to hospital after suffering from hypertension. He died of a haemorrhagic stroke a month later.

His death was just one of many life-changing experiences that drew Marilyn towards a career in hospice care. A few years before, her aunt died of pancreatic cancer.

I loved my [aunt] so much and losing her was difficult, she says. That experience made me want to give back to others who might be dealing with the type of pain she was going through.

Over the years, Marilyn has become a source of strength and a shoulder to cry on for many in her care.

She spends several hours a day on the telephone, she says, helping people who call the hospice for a variety of reasons  aches and pains, depression, and sometimes just looking for someone to talk to.

WATCH: The Cure  The Good Doctor

When we get phone calls that a family member has died, your disposition is a little different, she says. You can speak to someone and say: I am so sorry that you lost the person you loved. How can I help you? What can I do for you to make your day a little better?'

She draws on her own experience when dealing with families who have lost loved ones, she says. Because Ive seen so much in my own life, I feel I can genuinely understand the people I talk to. Once you experience things like helping someone transition to death, you can help someone else go through it a little better.

I might just be a voice on the phone for many patients, but I try to be a voice of compassion and comfort.

Death is never easy





Marilyns job requires her to be a skilled listener  hearing not only what patients have to say, but also what is not being said, the tone of their voice, any hesitations or incomplete answers.





It can be difficult to build that trust with patients and their families just over the phone, she says. It takes patience, wisdom, and empathy. Every time I talk to them, I just think of how I would like to be treated if I were in their position.

There are times when she and her colleagues get attached to some of the terminally ill patients they work with. There are some who call in every day, especially those who have no one else to talk to.

Working in this business, youre always dealing with someone who wont be around for too long, but the passing itself is still tough, she says. Death is never easy; you dont ever get used to it.

Despite the long days and 12-hour weekend shifts, Marilyn cant imagine not doing this type of work.

This job is really a beautiful thing. I wouldnt give it up for anything, she says.

But she does admit that it can take a toll.

At the end of the day, I need to de-stress myself and step away a little from the intensity that comes with my job.

Death may be unavoidable, she says, but it still takes great strength to face it.

Where there is life, theres death. Every day, every moment, you never know what you are going to experience  But you have got to be ready for anything.

We have family members who call us and curse at us  sometimes angry that their pain isnt going away; sometimes angry when they feel their loved one isnt being taken care of 100 percent, and we understand that, she says.

For Marilyn, facing death so frequently has changed her outlook on life.

Every day I wake and I see that light, I say thank you God for another day.




This turnaround in the ties is in stark contrast to the Cold War-era when the two sides did not see eye-to-eye.

In his recent address to a Joint Session of the United States Congress, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi remarked that there is a new symphony in play.

He couldnt have described it any better. Indeed, his recently-concluded visit to the US marks the beginning of a new era in the ties between the worlds largest democracy and one of its oldest.

This could well be the final bilateral summit between the two sides before US President Barack Obama demits office early next year. Incidentally, Obama became the first US president to visit India twice during his presidency.

A new beginning

This turnaround in the ties between India and the US is in stark contrast to the Cold War-era, when the two sides did not see eye-to-eye.

It is also a sea-change from the downslide in the ties towards the end of the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) governments tenure in New Delhi, which was marked by acrimony over the strip-search of an Indian diplomat in the US.

Since 2014, Prime Minister Modi leads a government which has a commanding majority in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of the Indian Parliament).

That majority is not bogged down by the demands of coalition partners when it comes to making hard decisions on the foreign policy front, as had happened during the tenure of the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The US has now recognised India as a major defence partner, which will facilitate technology sharing with India to a level commensurate with that of its closest allies and partners.

OPINION: What of India and China relations?

This will be crucial for the success of the Modis Make in India initiative, which aims to curb the high unemployment rate.

In addition, preparatory work has already started in India for the construction of six nuclear reactors to be built by US-based Westinghouse, marking the long-delayed commercialisation of the India-US civilian nuclear deal.

Why now?

This new-found bonhomie between India and the US has irked Pakistan, which has been a major non-NATO ally of the US, and has also ruffled quite a few feathers in Beijing. Pakistan has been unhappy over US backing of Indias bid for membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, among others.

While the personal chemistry between Modi and Obama has been there for all to see, at the same time, there are a host of factors that are driving the two countries closer.

For one, the upswing in Indo-US ties owes a big deal to the shared aims of the two countries in the Asia-Pacific realm, which includes concerns about Chinas aggressive moves in the region.

It would still be presumptuous to infer that India and the US are on the same page on each and every issue. by

Beijing has been displaying an increasingly assertive stance recently, especially in the South China Sea. The US has been sending not-so-subtle warnings to Beijing with repeated freedom of navigation operations in the region.

At the same time, the US rebalance or pivot to the Asia-Pacific gels well with Indias Act-East Policy through which New Delhi aims at reinvigorating its ties with countries in Southeast Asia and East Asia.

India is emerging as a major player in its neighbourhood and, along with the US, is one of the biggest international donors in Afghanistan. Prior to his US trip, Modi had inaugurated the Afghan-India Friendship Dam in Afghanistan, built with Indian assistance.

Also, India now buys a range of defence hardware from the US and has purchased weapons worth about $10bn between 2005 and 2015.

New Delhi was the worlds biggest importer of weapons between 2011 and 2015, and this has been under the radar of the US defence manufacturers. In the past, India used to rely heavily on Russian-made defence hardware, but this is not the case now.

International presence

Moreover, India requires the US to do some heavy lifting on its behalf in international forums. New Delhi has been pitching for permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council, and the US has backed this bid.

Besides, if India is to get into forums like the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Wassenaar Arrangement and the Australia Group, Washingtons influence and leverage in these groups could be crucial. Indias entry into the Missile Technology Control Regime is almost certain with help from the US.

During his two terms in office, Obama has recast US foreign policy in ways that no other president in recent memory has. Whether it be his outreach to Iran, Cuba, Vietnam among others, he has presided over a period when the US has completely stopped seeing India and Pakistan through the same prism.

And during the same period, Pakistans importance has dropped on the US foreign policy radar. The recent killing of the Afghan Taliban chief and the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad both inside Pakistan has also forced Obamas hand when it comes to US ties with Pakistan.

In addition, Pakistans growing ties with its all-weather ally, China, has also been factored in by policy-makers in Washington. Beijings decision to invest $46bn in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor which will connect Kashgar in Western China to Gwadar in Pakistan on the Arabian Sea front is a sign of the growing cosiness between Islamabad and Beijing.

The future look-out

It would still be presumptuous to infer that India and the US are on the same page on each and every issue. There is still dissonance between the two on issues like Syria, some specific trade affairs and intellectual property rights. Besides, New Delhi has always had a policy of strategic autonomy, and is in no hurry to give up on the same.

OPINION: Obamas pivot east fuels an Asian Cold War

However, earlier, in April this year, India had agreed in principle to sign the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement, making it clear that New Delhi has no qualms about sharing military facilities with the US  on a reciprocal basis).

This is a major leap forward for Indian foreign policy as never before in its independent history, New Delhi had opened its bases to foreign troops.

Though this agreement does not allow for the stationing of US troops on Indian soil, Washington now sees India as a trustworthy partner. It is this trust and shared interests which, as in Modis own words, have made India-US ties overcome the hesitations of history.

Rupakjyoti Borah is currently a research fellow with the Tokyo-based Japan Forum for Strategic Studies.
Obamas pivot east has done little to contain Chinas strategic expansion.

The balance of power in South Asia has been decisively tipped in Indias favour by the US decision on Tuesday to grant it major defence partner status and support its accession to influential clubs of good nuclear states.

The joint statement that emerged after US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi met at the White House describes an emerging defence partnership in the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions, an obvious response to Chinas increasingly muscular assertions in those maritime theatres.

In seeking to contain China, however, the US has set aside long-standing diplomatic principles.

Hitherto, nuclear-armed states could not gain access to the finest US military technology  specifically, equipment with dual-use applications in strategic weapons  without becoming a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.





US support for countries seeking membership of clubs of nuclear states such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group has also been conditional upon them providing evidence of security measures to prevent illegal proliferation.

Strategic arsenals

India has done neither and, like Pakistan, rebuffed President Obamas call at the Nuclear Security Summit in April for them to reduce the size of their strategic arsenals.

Instead, India has been granted an indefinite waiver because it is key to the completion of a US-shepherded unofficial alliance of Asia-Pacific powers that feel threatened by Chinas goal of becoming the dominant power in the region.

READ MORE: Modis new India emerges

By extending the waiver to India but not to Pakistan, the US has chosen to discriminate between perpetual enemies with the fastest-growing arsenals of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles in the world.

The timing of the US decision is as noteworthy as the decision itself. India expects to induct its first nuclear-armed submarine later this year, thereby attaining a second-strike capability that will put it on a strategic par with China.

It will also give it a marked advantage over Pakistan for the first time  a disparity that will be accentuated when India inducts the supersonic interceptor missile it tested in May.

Meanwhile, the US continues to pressure Pakistan to reduce its growing stock of battlefield-specific tactical nuclear warheads, its only strategic edge over India and the stated last-resort weapon for Pakistan, to be detonated on its own soil in the event of an overwhelming conventional Indian attack.

In the circumstances, Pakistan can be expected to try to keep pace with India. Without access to dual-use technology, it can either source it from the international black market  without which the Indian and Pakistani nuclear programmes could not have succeeded  or it can ask China to resume the nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology exchanges that ceased in 1992.

The US continues to pressure Pakistan to reduce its growing stock of battlefield-specific tactical nuclear warheads, its only strategic edge over India ... by

In fact, Pakistan asked China to transfer technology for nuclear-armed submarines in 2014 and army chief of staff, General Raheel Sharif, was rushed off to Beijing for a meeting with Premier Li Keqiang, within days of Indias recent interceptor missile test.

Hesitant to date, because of the wider diplomatic implications, China might be tempted to agree to Pakistans requests in retaliation for the US granting major defence partner status to India, which will undoubtedly aid Indias quest to become Chinas military and strategic equal.

Superpower behaviour

In the South China Sea, the epicentre of Sino-American tensions, superpower behaviour has been characterised by such tit-for-tat competitiveness.

China has worked tirelessly to establish a fait accompli by continuing construction of dual civil-military use facilities on artificial islands in the Spratly Archipelago, prompting the US to step up freedom of navigation flights and voyages there for surveillance flights along the Chinese coastline.

READ MORE: Online Republic of Modi

China has demanded that Washington cease the spy-plane flights altogether and, in the lead-up to annual bilateral strategic talks in Beijing on Monday, said it would be within its rights to establish an air defence identity zone over the South China Sea.

The US responded over the weekend by announcing two red lines: the establishment of the threatened identity zone, and any Chinese attempt to expand its construction activity in the Spratlys to Scarborough Reef, which would prompt unspecified actions by the US and other nations.

Chinas response was to send a naval vessel into the so-called contiguous maritime zone around the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea on Thursday, the first time Beijing has deployed the military to press its territorial claim.

The fact that three Russian warships were passing by at the time may have been a coincidence, but it certainly identifes Chinas major ally in the region within days of the US saying it was risking diplomatic isolation with its conduct.

The 20-plus countries in the region, home to more than half the worlds population, are under growing pressure to take the side of one superpower against the other. India, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam are firmly in the US camp, while Cambodia, Pakistan and Russia are Chinas allies.

OPINION: India-US ties  marching to a new tune

However, the vast majority of countries in Asia have adopted neutrality, to varying degrees, because they are mindful of their vicinity to China and their economic dependence upon it, while reliant on the US for security.

Thus, Obamas pivot east has done much to fuel tensions in the Indo-Pacific, but has done little to contain Chinas strategic expansion.

The only winners in this Asian Cold War are armaments manufacturers.

Tom Hussain is a journalist and Pakistan affairs analyst based in Islamabad.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Republicans presumptive nominee hits back at Mitt Romney who has accused him of promoting racism, bigotry and misogyny.

Mitt Romney, the former Republican presidential candidate, has condemned Donald Trump for setting a dangerous example for Americans by promoting trickle-down racism.

Speaking in Utah at his annual business and politics summit on Saturday, Romney said the Republican party must look beyond this presidential election to find its future.

Firing back, Trump went on Twitter to note how Romney choked like a dog when he lost to then-incumbent President Barack Obama in 2012 and repeated it at his campaign stops.

Some other senior Republicans have also criticised Trump in recent weeks for attacking US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a Mexican-American judge presiding over a case against him.

READ MORE: Should Trump worry about a third party candidate?

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, Romney said in Utah.

He said he expected Trump to get the Republican nomination, but added that he would not vote for either Trump or Clinton.





Romney left open the possibility of casting a ballot for the Libertarian Party candidate, Gary Johnson, a former New Mexico governor.

On Tuesday Paul Ryan, the top elected US Republican and Speaker of the House of Representatives, criticised Trumps remarks on the judge for what he called a textbook definition of a racist comment.

Unlike Romney, Ryan has endorsed Trump as the Republican nominee.

Ohio Governor John Kasich, who was a nominee for Republican candidacy earlier in the year, said on Thursday that he still was not ready to endorse Trump.

Why would I feel compelled to support someone whose positions I kind of fundamentally disagree with? he told Fox News.

As the presumptive nominee, Trump now has to balance maintaining the outsider style that helped propel him to the nomination, while courting Republican insiders, who could be critical to financing a general election campaign against a well-funded Clinton.

Calming concerns

On Friday, at a Christian evangelical conference, Trump offered a message of ethnic harmony as he sought to calm concerns about his criticism of the 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 his harsh rhetoric.

READ MORE: Can Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump?

Trump did not mention the controversy over his charge that Curiel is unable to treat him fairly because of his Mexican heritage.

Trump also said he would represent all Americans if elected president on November 8.

Freedom of any kind means no one should be judged by their race or their colour and the tone of his hue, Trump said.
President Obama calls attack on gay nightclub in Orlando an act of terror and an act of hate.

Fifty people have been killed, including the assailant, and at least 53 injured in an attack inside a gay nightclub in the US state of Florida, authorities said, in the worst mass shooting in US history.

Authorities identified the shooter on Sunday as Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old man born in New York with Afghan origins.

Mateen, who was armed with an assault-type rifle and a handgun, was killed in a shootout with at least 11 police officers inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

Ron Hopper, special FBI agent in charge of the Orlando office, confirmed that Mateen was interviewed twice by the agency in 2013, after he made inflammatory comments to co-workers alleging possible terrorist ties.

READ MORE: Who was Omar Mateen?

In 2014, authorities interrogated Mateen anew for possible ties to an American suicide bomber.

In both cases, the FBI closed the investigations as they turned out to be inconclusive at that time, Hopper said.

Hopper also confirmed media reports that Mateen made 911 calls to police early on Sunday, and referred to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL also known as ISIS) group.

Act of terror and hate

In a televised statement, President Barack Obama condemned the shooting as an act of terror and an act of hate, calling the shooter a person filled with hatred.

As Americans, we are united in grief and outrage, he said, adding that the attack is a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon and commit violence in the US.

Orlando Police chief John Mina described the shooting as one of the worst tragedies we have seen, adding that police officers were shaken by what they have seen inside the club.

Its a tragedy not only for the city but the entire nation, he said. Just a look into the eyes of our officers told the whole story.

READ MORE: US and world leaders condemn Orlando shooting

The injured, many in critical condition, were transferred to nearby hospitals. Among those injured was one police officer, whose kevlar helmet was hit by a round from the suspect.

The suspect exchanged gunfire with a police officer working at the club, which had more than 300 people inside. The gunman then went back inside and took hostages, Mina said.

Around 5am, authorities sent in a SWAT team to rescue the hostages.

Shooting at Pulse Nightclub on S Orange. Multiple injuries. Stay away from area. pic.twitter.com/5Di2mc6XUY  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

While details of the attack were still emerging, Orlando residents gathered outside the nightclub to pay their respects to the victims.

Al Jazeeras Andy Gallacher, reporting from the scene, described a banner laid out in the streets where people dipped their hands in paint and made their mark. Across the top of the banner was written, Today our hearts cry out in unity.

Just metres away at the Pulse nightclub, a popular venue for the LGBT community, bodies of the victims are still lying where they fell, our correspondent said. Many are yet to be identified.

As the shooting occurred, the nightclub urged patrons to get out and keep running in a post on its Facebook page.

One witness, who said he was inside the building during the incident, said he heard about 40 shots being fired.

Christopher Hansen said he was in the VIP lounge of the club when he heard gunshots. He continued to hear shooting even after he emerged and police urged people to back away from the club. He saw the wounded being tended to across the street.

I was thinking, Are you kidding me? So I just dropped down. I just said, Please, please, please, I want to make it out,' he said. And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood. You hope and pray you dont get shot.
Government forces and allied Shia militias targeted east of Iraqi city, leaving at least 50 dead.

Dozens of Iraqi government forces and militia members have been killed in an attack on military barracks east of Fallujah by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Military sources said 50 members of the Iraqi security forces and allied Shia militias were killed on Saturday.

ISIL losses were reported too, with sources close to the group saying 12 of its fighters were killed by helicopter gunships.

On May 23, Haider al-Abadi, Iraqs prime minister, announced the start of the offensive to liberate Fallujah from ISIL.

For almost two years, Fallujah, which is just 50km west of the capital Baghdad, has endured a siege imposed on the city after it became the first to fall to ISIL in January 2014.

OPINION: What success would look like in Fallujah

Matthew Glanville, former adviser to the governor of Anbar province, believes the Iraqi forces were overly confident in their operation to recapture Fallujah.

The lesson from the earlier offensive against Tikrit last year was that where ISIL had the opportunity to dig in, particularly among the civilian population, it was always going to take a very long time to get them out without civilian casualties, Glanville told Al Jazeera.





While Fallujah itself has been isolated, the wider ISIL movement still has the capacity to fight back. The time the Iraqi government has spent putting together this offensive has given ISIL even more time to dig in.

An example of ISILs defence strategies was revealed earlier this week, when the army discovered a network of tunnels near the southern edge of the city.

It is believed that up to 90,000 civilians are still inside Fallujah.

Although the Iraqi government said it had a particular strategy to establish safe corridors for civilians in the city centre to leave, Glanville said many are reluctant to go from fear of how they may be treated by the Shia forces.

The humanitarian crisis in Iraq has been dubbed one of the worlds worst by the UN.

Since the beginning of the present conflict in 2014, more than 3.4 million people have been internally displaced and 2.6 million have fled Iraq.
Jerusalem  In groups of twos, threes and families, visitors shuffled towards the ticket booth at the City of David archaeological park. Sunscreen was reapplied, mineral water sipped, and shekels exchanged for paper tickets.

It is a typical touristic scene that plays out thousands of times daily across Jerusalem. But the City of David park, located in the heart of a Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem, is not a regular attraction.

It is a touristic settlement managed by Elad, a private political organisation that facilitates the purchase and takeover of Palestinian homes in the Old City and occupied East Jerusalem in an effort to increase Jewish settlement.

The City of David site features prominently, in large, bold red letters, on the Israeli tourism ministrys official Old City map, which is distributed free of charge at official tourist information centres in Jerusalem.

But the nearby al-Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, a 14-hectare compound that comprises Islams third holiest site, al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as the Dome of the Rock, is only referred to by its Jewish name: the Temple Mount.

Although these major tourist attractions have always been promoted in most touristic literature about Jerusalem, al-Aqsa Mosque is illustrated on the official Old City map  albeit anonymous  while the Dome of the Rock is mentioned. Meanwhile, dozens of sites of questionable historical importance, many of them Jewish settlements in the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City, are highlighted by the mapmakers in an Old City Legend numbered guide.

Among 57 numbered sites, almost half are buildings occupied by Jews in the Muslim quarter of the city, many unknown to licensed tour guides. A number of yeshivas, Jewish religious schools, as well as synagogues purchased by Jews in the Muslim quarter of the Old City, are managed by the Ateret Cohanim organisation, a right-wing nonprofit organisation that seeks to replace Palestinian residents of the city with Jewish-Israeli settlers.

Like Elad, Ateret Cohanim is a nationalistic settler group. In recent years, it has pursued a legal campaign to evict Palestinian families from their homes in the Old City in order to replace them with Jewish families.

There are a bunch of sites that are not only historically unimportant, but that are run by settlers, said Betty Herschman, director of international relations and advocacy at Ir Amim, an Israeli human rights NGO that gives tours of East Jerusalem to diplomats and other parties.

That is to the detriment of historically relevant Christian and Muslim sites, which you would think would be far more prioritised on a map of the Old City, the hub of the three major monotheistic religions.

One licensed Jerusalem tourist guide, who did not want to disclose his name, noted that the map favoured Jewish sites regardless of their touristic value and appeared religiously skewed.

This map, in addition to erasing important Muslim and Christian holy sites in the Old City, completely erases entire neighbourhoods around the historic basin, supplanting them not only with Hebrew names but with the names of settlements. by Betty Herschman, Israeli NGO director

When I saw it, I thought it was a map for only Jewish tour groups, he told Al Jazeera, surprised to learn that it was being distributed at the main tourist information centre by Jaffa gate. The narrative it shows is quite exclusive to one religious group.

While buildings like Beit Wittenberg, Beit Danon and Beit Eliyahu feature among the list of 57 sites, there is no room on the list of the numbered sites for the Church of St Anne or the Church of the Redeemer, although the latter is on the map with a tiny, hard to find name.

Aziz Abu Sarah, a Jerusalemite who cofounded Mejdi Tours, told Al Jazeera that the exceptions do not make sense from a business perspective. I think that a lot of Israeli tour operators and tour guides, even right-wingers, would agree with me that a touristic map should show the treasures of the city, said Abu Sarah.

I grew up in Jerusalem. St Annes Church, which I think is one of the most amazing places, is not on the map. There are many Christians coming to Jerusalem, and they are going to get a map that doesnt identify their holy sites. Its not a smart decision.

The Israeli Ministry of Tourism defended the map when contacted by Al Jazeera. The map, which was produced in cooperation with tour guides and took into account their recommendations and the vast knowledge they have accumulated, is useful and convenient, listing the main tourist sites, the ministry said in a statement.

However, Abu Sarah suggested that the inclusion of certain sites inside and outside the Old City walls seemed to promote a Jewish nationalistic representation of East Jerusalem.

Politically speaking, it adds sites that are controversial, like the settlements in East Jerusalem, and I think that makes it political and one-sided. In many ways, there is a national narrative, and perhaps this is where the national narrative is going.

READ MORE: Israels gun guards terrorise East Jerusalem

Indeed, the Palestinian neighbourhoods outside the Old City walls are absent on the map, apart from Ras al-Amud, while Jewish-only settlements built in those neighbourhoods are represented.

The City of David is easily spotted, but the neighbourhood of Silwan that surrounds it is not labelled. Palestinian communities, including At-Tur, Wadi al-Joz and Issawiya do not appear, but the settlement of Maale Har Hazeitim is labelled with the Star of David.

This map, in addition to erasing important Muslim and Christian holy sites in the Old City, completely erases entire neighbourhoods around the historic basin, supplanting them not only with Hebrew names but with the names of settlements, Herschman told Al Jazeera.

These settlements, added Herschman, are built by radical settlers within the heart of Palestinian neighbourhoods; namely, Bet Orot, a community of 150 settlers living in the Palestinian neighbourhood of At-Tur, that does not even appear on the map.

Maintaining the Palestinian identity of East Jerusalem is a crucial plank in the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse as the neighbourhoods would form the capital of a future Palestinian state. In this context, the settlements are seen as an attempt to disrupt Palestinian territorial contiguity in East Jerusalem in order to ruin Palestinian plans to have East Jerusalem as its capital city.

The map is legitimising private settlement around the historic basin, Herschman told Al Jazeera.

This is a form of consolidating Israeli control of arguably the epicentre of the most critical point of Jerusalem  which is itself the epicentre of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. So there are extremely important political consequences involved.
Despite drop in violence, number of children living without a parent keeps rising, especially in camps along the border.

Fighting over the past four years has killed hundreds of people in Mali. There are fewer battles involving government troops, separatists and al-Qaeda fighters but the war is far from over.

As a result, more than 250,000 children in Mali are living without a father, mother or both parents, according to the United Nations.

Aid workers say the number has risen in the past four years, with many orphans living in refugee camps along the Mali-Mauritania border.

Orphans are the most vulnerable among refugees, Tin Albarka Walt Alhassan, a nurse, told Al Jazeera.

The children who lost their fathers rely on mothers. These children need more help, care and protection.

Conditions at a Mauritanian refugee camp that houses displaced Malians are dire. There are no dedicated organisations or groups taking care of orphans.

Whatever they are offering me is not enough, Maryama Walt Mahmoud, a widow, said.

The aid runs out within days and I cant afford to feed them [her four children]. On special occasions, I cant afford to buy them clothes. Were living in catastrophic conditions. We spend days without food.
Suspect in Orlando nightclub attack was interviewed by FBI twice in 2013 and again in 2014 for alleged terrorist ties.

The FBI has identified 29-year-old Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, a New York-born resident of Florida, as the gunman in the worst mass shooting in the countrys history.

Mateen, who was described by President Barack Obama as a person filled with hate, attacked a gay nightclub in Orlando early on Sunday, killing at least 50 people and injuring 53 others.

According to Ron Hopper, head of the FBI in Orlando, his office first became aware of Mateen in 2013, when he made inflammatory comments to co-workers alleging possible terrorist ties.

READ MORE: World reacts to Orlando shooting

In that incident, the FBI interviewed Mateen twice, and carried out separate interviews with other witnesses, as well as physical surveillance and checks on his records.

Ultimately, we were unable to verify the substance of his comments, and the investigation was closed, Hopper said.

In 2014, authorities interrogated Mateen anew for possible ties to an American suicide bomber, Moner Mohammad Abusalha, who appeared in an al-Nusra Front video in Syria.

Hopper said the FBI determined that Mateens contact with Abusalha was minimal and did not constitute a substantive relationship or threat at that time.

Following those inconclusive findings, both investigations on Mateen were closed.

Trevor Velinor, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said Mateen legally bought the two guns believed to have been used in the attack within the last few days.

When asked by reporters how Mateen obtained firearms despite being under the FBI radar, Hopper said: There was nothing to keep the investigation going forward.

When pressed further, he said: Again, investigation was closed.

Security guard

Al Jazeeras Andy Gallacher, reporting from Orlando, noted that Mateen worked as a security guard.

He said that to get the job, Mateen was required by gun laws to train with weapons, including fulfilling the required eight hours on a shooting range.

In a statement sent to the Palm Beach Post, security company G4S confirmed his employment.

We are shocked and saddened by the tragic event that occurred at the Orlando nightclub. We can confirm that Omar Mateen had been employed with G4S since September 10, 2007, the company said.

We are cooperating fully with all law enforcement authorities, including the FBI, as they conduct their investigation. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of the friends, families and people affected by this unspeakable tragedy.

Nothing to do with religion

At the press conference in Orlando, Hopper, from the FBI, confirmed that Mateen had called the police early on Sunday.

Hopper did not comment on whether Mateen declared his allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also know as ISIS) group as reported in US media, but said the caller made references to the Islamic State.

We are looking into any and all connections both domestic and international, he added.

Meanwhile, in an exclusive NBC News interview Mateens father, Seddique Mateen, said that during a visit to Miami, a neighbouring city also in Florida, the suspect became enraged after seeing two men kissing in front of his wife and their child.

The father said he was not aware of any plan by his son, adding: This had nothing to do with religion.
Legislators and religious scholars accused of being in denial as incidents of domestic and sexual violence remain high.

Karachi, Pakistan  Twenty-two-year-old Ammara* rarely stepped out of her familys haveli, or mansion, in a remote village in Pakistans Sindh province.

Her father, a feudal lord, never felt the need to send her to school, or anywhere else, and provided her with all of lifes comforts and luxuries within the confines of the haveli.

I had never imagined I would leave the haveli for a place like this but my father left me with no other option when he told me I must marry the alcoholic, twice-married man he had chosen for me, Ammara told Al Jazeera inside a tiny room at a womens shelter home in Pakistans southern city of Karachi.

It has been six months since she ran away from home along with her nine-year-old sister, fearing the same fate for her once she grew up.

I grew up watching my father decide the fate of too many innocent, helpless women in karo-kari (honour killing) cases.

Ammara managed to escape but that is not the case for hundreds of other women in Pakistan.

Eighteen-year-old Zeenat Rafiq was burned alive by her mother in Lahore earlier this month. Her crime, according to her mother, was marrying a man of her choice and against the familys will.

Police said Parveen Rafiq, Zeenats mother, was assisted by her son and husband of her other daughter as they avenged Zeenat for bringing shame to the family.

Zeenats fate was no different from that of a 19-year-old teacher in the hill town of Murree, who was assaulted, burned alive and thrown behind her family home by a group of men. She had reportedly refused to marry the principals son.

She died due to the 85 percent burns in an Islamabad hospital a day later.

Lightly beat the wife

Pakistans Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), a constitutional body responsible for ensuring no legislature in the country is repugnant to Islam, has drawn up a 163-point bill listing womens rights as well as actions it deems non-permissible for women.

The group recently declared it is permissible for a man to lightly beat his wife if needed.

The bill was presented last month in response to the Protection of Women Against Violence bill (PWAV) 2016, which was passed in the Punjab Assembly earlier this year and is aimed at providing relief to women facing domestic abuse.

Mehnaz Rahman, resident director of womens rights NGO Aurat Foundation, believes that the CIIs recommendations hold no legal value.

The existence of this council cannot be justified, Rahman told Al Jazeera.

When the countrys constitution says no law shall be made against Islam, that should be enough. Besides, lawmaking and bill-passing are tasks entrusted with people sitting in the assemblies, who have been voted in, who are representatives of the public, whose main duty is legislation.

Opinion: Defending Pakistani women against honour killings

The CII, in turn, argues that by passing the bill without its consent, the Punjab Assembly has committed an act of treason .

Of late, Pakistani legislators have also been vocal in their opposition to the CII. Opposition senators last Friday blamed the anti-women bias of the CII for the recent rise in incidents of violence against women.

While legislators, religious scholars and rights activists battle it out for influence, women in Pakistan continue to be victims of what a group of men or a family consider as their honour.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), there were 470 cases of honour killing against women last year.

Of those, 145 were categorised under marriage choice and 254 under illicit relations.

Both subsets are based on the constitutional right of citizens of Pakistan to carry out their lives according to their own will, but both are culturally and traditionally controlled by men or elders of the family.





Laws are not the only way to resolve all issues, said Rahman.

We need to improve our social structures and our ancient customs and traditions in order to move forward.

Meanwhile, police officials act as the first point of contact and, according to a senior official, they try to side with women while dealing with cases involving domestic abuse or violence against women.

Our first call of action is to arrest the accused and file a First Information Report (FIR), Superintendent of Police Faisal Mukhtar told Al Jazeera in Lahore.

We treat accusations of violence between two unrelated parties differently than those of domestic violence between husband and wife. We pay more attention to ground realities and try to help them bridge their differences by counselling.

Abuse part of culture

Mukhtar says cases of domestic abuse are mostly reported by women belonging to the middle or lower-middle classes of the society.

In the lower economic class, women perceive domestic abuse as part of their culture and tend to accept it as their fate while the upper class directly goes towards divorce or compromise without involving the police on most occasions, he said.

Activists say that by not having any clauses that criminalise violence against women, the PWAV relies on the basic tenets of the Pakistan Penal Code for action against perpetrators.

The main focus of the bill is on the establishment of protection centres and shelters for the victims but religious opposition to the bill has brought this process to a halt, according to Mukhtar.

In lower class, women perceive domestic abuse as part of their culture and tend to accept it as their fate by Faisal Mukhtar, Superintendent of Police

It [the opposition] has made an impact. The process of implementation has slowed down and people are not promoting it or creating awareness about womens rights, which is also a part of the bill, he said.

The shelter homes and centres set up for working women and single mothers by various nongovernmental organisations across the country are barely able to keep up with the influx of regular admissions.

Anis Haroon, former chairwoman of National Commission on Status of Women, told Al Jazeera that while political parties are quick to pass such bills while in power, they fail to follow it up when it comes to implementation.

For laws concerning women, there is a lack of political will in terms of implementation, said Haroon, who is also a lawyer.

But even if a handful of cases are reported, they have an impact because the criminals get this message that they will not get off scot free.

It is that very message that Ammara wanted to give her father when she fled with her sister, having little idea of life outside her family mansion.

In addition to receiving educational and vocational training at a temporary sanctuary, she is also learning to do daily chores and help other housemates.

I miss my parents and the luxurious life I had back in my village, Ammara said, but I wouldnt leave this independence and freedom to choose my own future I have here for all the luxuries in the world.

Is Pakistan doing enough to defend womens rights? https://t.co/eFczd6cwvu  Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) June 12, 2016

*Name changed to protect identity.
Illegal miners accused of making millions of dollars from Paraiba tourmaline gem in impoverished rural areas in Brazil.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil  Rarer than diamonds and more expensive than gold, Paraiba tourmaline has become one of the worlds most precious gemstones for its extraordinary neon blue hues.

First discovered in the impoverished hills of the northeastern Brazilian state of Paraiba in the 1980s, the stone captivated connoisseurs and jewellers with its copper-infused incandescence.

But with rare treasure comes ruthless prospecting, and now prosecutors in Brazil are close to shining a light on the murky world of illegal gem mining.

A little more than seven years after an investigation began, a whistle-blower has revealed details of an international operation to traffic up to $1bn worth of the jewel from one of Brazils poorest corners.

Ranieri Addario, a partner at Parazul Mineracao mining company, told prosecutors in plea-bargain testimony seen by Al Jazeera how his unlicensed firm extracted about 10kg of tourmaline from a mine in the deprived town of Salgadinho between 2013 and 2014 to sell around the world.



Brazil rape victims accuse police of inaction

One carat (0.2g) of Paraiba tourmaline, which is favoured by high-end jewellers including Dior, Tiffany and H Stern, is said to fetch up to $10,000, meaning 10kg could be worth as much as $500m.

What took us aback in this case is that it is a precious stone with a very high value  more expensive than diamonds and gold. So even though it might be a smaller quantity than gold or emeralds, its an exorbitant profit. This is what caused the biggest impact, said Joao Raphael Lima, a prosecutor.

It is the biggest case of illegal mining that I have had contact with.

The gang allegedly involved business partners Sebastiao Lourenco Ferreira, Ubiratan Batista de Almeida, and Joao Salvador Martins Vieira, who all had ties to Parazul, their associates, and a network of offshore accounts to fund the illicit trade.

One other investor, Zaheer Azizi, an Afghan national who lives in Thailand, is accused of facilitating the export of the gemstones, is on the run.

He is responsible for several companies around the world, including Azizi Trading Corporations in Peshawar, Pakistan and Azuga Mining Company in Nigeria.

In phone calls intercepted by federal police during the investigation, dubbed Operation Seven Keys, the defendants said the new reserve of Paraiba tourmaline would set them well in life until the sixth generation of their families.

Seeking answers to catastrophic Brazil mine disaster

Yet despite the riches buried underfoot in Salgadinho, poverty persists above ground where one-quarter of the town earns just $20 a month and one in four are illiterate.

Addario said the operation even drafted in armed military police officers from the neighbouring state of Rio Grande do Norte to secure the mine as the tourmaline was removed. It was then taken around the country to be cut, fraudulently licensed, and sold abroad in Texas, Las Vegas, Hong Kong and Bangkok.

Inspectors from the licensing body, the National Department of Mineral Production (DNPM), said information about the industry was difficult to find, as people in Salgadinho  where the poverty rate is more than 50 percent  were very afraid to talk about gem mining with strangers.

Employees of the mining companies were prohibited from talking about the production of gems, and the site was said to be under almost constant surveillance.

Addario also revealed how the Parazul shareholders were prepared to pay bribes to the DNPM to have their mine licensed.

Prosecutors said they suspected those involved would turn to a state deputy who held sway over the DNPM to help bypass licensing issues with kickbacks.

Another Paraiba deputy, Joao Henrique de Souza, was also accused of failing to declare profits from mining Paraiba tourmaline but has privileged status as a deputy, which means only the Supreme Court can try him.

De Souza has denied the allegations and said his company, Paraiba Tourmaline Mineracao, adhered to mining regulations.

Opinion: The barbarism of Brazilian prisons

In May 2015, federal prosecutors charged seven people, including Addario, with illegal mining and money laundering in connection with Operation Seven Keys.

And Addarios breakthrough evidence has helped widen the inquiry with an additional two suspects now in the frame.

The courts also seized $15m in assets, although the accused reportedly had just $30,000 in accounts in their name.

In his evidence, Addario said he and partner Almeida had sold shares in Parazul to Ferreira, who paid them in luxury cars and cash deposits.

He also named Jose Miranda Costa as bearing the operational costs of the mine in return for exclusive purchasing rights, having bought $400,000 of Paraiba tourmaline from Almeida.

In the meantime, it is suspected that there are other operations that take advantage of the difficulties in regulating the Paraiba tourmaline trade.

The electric blue crystal is found in the host material kaolin, a soft, white, clay-like mineral in mines in remote, rural Paraiba.

Even if these people had been licensed, any inspections that demonstrated that they mined X amount and declared only 10 percent of this is impossible, said Lima.

The inability to accurately speculate the quantity of Paraiba tourmaline in a mine has meant that the DNPM had little official data to help the investigation.

And the slow bureaucracy of granting mining concessions has left time for prospectors to profit.

The government spends years, it could be decades, analysing the request for concessions to mine, Lima added. But its clear that mining continues during this period without being subject to the requirements of the concessions. The leniency of the government is good for miners.

While Addario has escaped a seven-year sentence in exchange for house arrest and community service, prosecutors hope his evidence will lead to more convictions.

The two companies involved have been banned from mining by a court order since last year.

The stones that are displayed at luxurious events for celebrities and international tycoons, which are rented by Hollywood actresses to parade on the Oscar red carpet, should also provide the inhabitants of Sao Jose da Batalha and Salgadinho social progress, enabling better conditions of life, basic fundamental rights for the development of human beings, as proclaimed by the constitution and by international treaties, Lima said.
Tourist held since March after reporting being drugged and raped likely facing charges of having sex out of marriage.

Doha, Qatar  A Dutch woman who alleged she was drugged and raped is to appear in court on Monday, believed to be charged with having sex outside of marriage, a criminal offence in this Gulf state.

The woman, 22, said she was drugged during a party in March at the Crystal Lounge nightclub at the W Doha Hotel, and woke up in an unfamiliar apartment when she realised she had been sexually assaulted.

The Dutch woman, who was on vacation at the time, reported the incident to Qatari police and was immediately arrested. She has been held ever since on charges that still remain unclear.

Al Jazeera called the Qatari prosecutors office to confirm the charges and the nationality of the alleged assailant, but received no response by publication time.

One senior defence lawyer not involved in the case told Al Jazeera that the woman may face charges of having sex outside marriage, a serious crime under Qatars penal code.

Conflicting accounts

The alleged assailant  who also has been arrested  acknowledged having sex with the woman but said it had been consensual, according to Dutch media reports.

The Dutch embassy in Doha told Al Jazeera that officials were in close contact with the woman and her family in the Netherlands.

We have provided assistance to her since the first day of detention. For the sake of the defendants case, we will not make further comments at this point, the Dutch embassy said in a statement sent to Al Jazeera on Sunday.

The victims mother was quoted by Dutch media describing the ordeal her daughter is going through as a nightmare.

Doha-based attorney Najeeb al-Nuaimi  Qatars former justice minister who is not involved in the proceedings  told Al Jazeera that defence lawyers will have to prove there were no voluntary actions between the woman and the man.

He said that even if she was seen walking with the accused, the judge may have doubts, adding signs of force would need to be proved in a rape case.

If not, the judge would probably consider ruling against both for having sex outside marriage, which is known as zina under Islamic law. Nuaimi said such cases often end with a judge issuing a punishment involving a number of lashes.

Follow Ali Younes on Twitter: @ ali_reports
Many refugees continue night-time excursions through razor-wire fences into Macedonia, only to be beaten and returned.

Evzoni, Greece  Tents dot the car park and field around the Hara Hotel at a weigh station in this Greek-Macedonian border town.

The number of refugees and migrants at this makeshift camp increased after Greek police evicted residents of the impromptu Idomeni border crossing last month, while others voluntarily moved to government-run camps.

On the other side of the road hundreds more are camping in the car park of a petrol station and in the forest behind it.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, many of the Hara Hotels outdoor residents are worried by threats that Greek police will clear the area and force them to join others in the Thessaloniki-area camps in the coming days.

Hussain Kazal, 25, and his 19-year-old cousin Ali came to Greece after fleeing mandatory military service in Syria earlier this year. The two sit next to a small camp fire where they cook potatoes in preparation to break their fast for Ramadan  the holy month for Muslims  in the woods across the street from the Hara Hotel.

Fleeing from war and economic devastation, people from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Algeria, Morocco and elsewhere have ended up camping outside the Hara Hotel.

With the Macedonian border sealed for all refugees and migrants, Hussain and Ali are waiting for their chance to cross the border with the help of people smugglers.

Im not scared of dying, he tells Al Jazeera. You die when God decides its time for you to die. But I dont benefit from raising arms against other Syrians; neither does Syria.

From 4am till around 9pm, Hussain and others fast for the holy month. From the time we are little until now, we are raised to fast, to pray, to do the right thing, Hussain explains. Ramadan is beautiful, despite these difficult conditions.

Hussein and Ali are among the more than 55,000 refugees and migrants bottlenecked in Greece as a result of border closures in Macedonia and across the Balkans. They join a group of Algerians and fellow Syrians to eat as the sun sets.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) documented the arrival of more than one million refugees and migrants to Europe by boat in 2015. So far in 2016, at least 208,150 have made the dangerous sea journey across the Mediterranean.

After they finish the small feast  bread, salad and potatoes delivered by aid organisations earlier in the day  several people return to their tents to pack.

Under the cloak of darkness, some 200 people set out for the Macedonian border, hoping to make it through the razor-wire fence and evade the Macedonian border officers who patrol the boundary 24 hours a day.

Frontex, the European Unions border agency, has also patrolled the Greek-Macedonian border to block the flow of refugees and migrants.

They disappear into the dark fields lining the border. Yet, less than a half hour later, most of them return after being blocked by Greek police. This is the routine here, says Ali.

A Greek government spokesperson for refugee affairs was unavailable for comment.

Omar Muzin, a 26-year-old Syrian from Deir Az Zor, and his pregnant wife arrived at Hara Hotel a month and a half ago. He claims he has been caught by Macedonian police 21 times after crossing the border fence.

Its not that Im stubborn, he tells Al Jazeera. But my wife is pregnant. What am I supposed to do?

Sitting next to an electric outlet and charging his phone, he recalls his many attempts to make it to Western Europe. Across the car park a petrol station is crowned with a large sign that reads: Welcome to Greece.

On one occasion, Omar made it as far as Skopje, the Macedonian capital, only to be arrested and taken to a police station. They later drove him to the border and made him cross the fence back into Greece.

They beat me up the first six times, Omar says, explaining that he and his wife are now planning to make their way back to Turkey. My wife will stay in Turkey and Ill go back to Syria. Its better to be able to keep your dignity. People here are just waiting to be evicted.

Feeling like he has no other options left, Omar says he plans to go join the Free Syrian Army, a rebel group fighting the Syrian government and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

He lifts his telephone to show a picture of his brother, his eyes swollen and body blanketed in bruises after ISIL lashed him.

I am going to return to fight, Omar repeats solemnly, tears welling in his eyes.

According to Michele Pelaro of Doctors Without Borders, relocation from the Hara Hotel and other nearby refugee gatherings to government camps has been carried out on a voluntary basis.

On Monday, the police communicated to the refugees that Thursday would be the last day they could stay in the area, but there has still been no evacuation, Pelaro tells Al Jazeera, adding many refugees are still holding out hope to cross the border.

Yet, few make it across the border successfully with Macedonian police regularly beating and pushing them back, Pelaro says.

The following morning, 19-year-old Ali Raza explains that he arrived in Greece six months ago following a long journey from his hometown of Islamabad, Pakistan. The food here is no good, he tells Al Jazeera, sitting on a plastic lawn chair outside the hotels restaurant. I am sleeping in a tent, and when it rains its very difficult.

As Ali speaks, a group of men play cards behind him on a small patio table. Others argue about the best time to set out for the Macedonian border. He recalls cutting the border fence and crossing the border into Macedonia six times. Macedonian police arrested him and sent him back to Greece each time.

Across the highway, Greek police attempt to convince refugees to board a bus to government-run camps in the port city of Thessaloniki. Ostensibly rented from a tourism agency, the busses read: Crazy Holidays.

I wont go back [to Pakistan]  theres no future, Ali concludes, arguing it is his only chance to get a job and help his family back home. I will go to Macedonia. [Then] I want to make it to Italy.

Follow Patrick Strickland on Twitter: @P_Strickland_
Dozens of engineers responsible for regulation of the long-delayed 787 Dreamliner aircraft told US authorities that senior Boeing managers pressured them to approve designs and parts before they felt ready.

They said that when they tried to enforce official standards on the 787 programme they came under undue pressure and were either talking to a brick wall or subjected to verbal abuse and verbal ridicule.

Documents show that in 2009, Boeing handled 21 issues  as the company classified them  where engineers with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authority felt they had come under undue pressure. The papers were obtained by Al Jazeeras Investigative Unit, as part of follow-up research for its documentary Broken Dreams: The Boeing 787 .

A chart from Boeings records shows it was dealing with two issues every month, except in October 2009 when it dealt with three cases. There were no issues reported in the final two months of the year.

Boeing employed the engineers, but they were also authorised to represent the FAA, which says that since 2008 it has received three formal reports of undue pressure. The regulator investigated all three reports, but did not substantiate any of them.

Chasing a dream: Timeline of the Boeing 787

In 2010, with the much-hyped 787 Dreamliner already years delayed and several billion dollars over budget, a group of four senior regulating engineers reported that they worked in an atmosphere of undue pressure at Boeing driven from second-level management and above.

In a phone conference in April that year, they complained that workload, performance and expectations relative to schedule were too high and that they were facing unprofessional negativity from their colleagues in a punitive environment.

I by Engineer

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The group, who regulated the planes fuel systems, told the FAA that other Boeing engineers portrayed them as impediments and bottlenecks to production, who were slowing down production by nit-picking in a contentious and arbitrary way.

One engineer even said that a Boeing manager introduced him to colleagues as The Bottleneck. Another reported that a manager had threatened to remove him from the fuel systems team if he continued to make regulatory demands.

Brick Wall

One senior engineer complained he was talking to a brick wall when insisting to Boeing engineers and managers that regulatory standards should be enforced.

I  was being asked to do something that I absolutely could not do as an [Authorised Representative of the FAA], wrote the engineer, who had responsibility for regulating flammability standards on the 787. I could not continue the meeting without going beyond unacceptable stress levels, so I walked out.

The FAA hands over responsibility for regulation of aircraft such as the 787 to Boeing engineers, saying they lack the expertise and resources to do it themselves, and that modern airplane programmes are too complicated to regulate independently.

If the FAA-authorised engineers at Boeing then feel they are coming under undue pressure from company managers, they complain to the FAA, which then investigates, consulting Boeing management.

Interview: The former Boeing union president

I always believe that where there is smoke, there is fire, said former Boeing Engineers Union President Cynthia Cole, after seeing the documents. I would have expected Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) to bring in a Tiger Team from Boeing Defense to conduct an impartial investigation.

That did not happen. The FAA investigated complaints of undue pressure on the Boeing 787 programme in 2009, 2010 and 2011, but in each case rejected them and took no further action. It has released details of the cases in response to a freedom of information request made by Al Jazeera more than two-and-a-half years ago, as part of the award-winning investigative documentary, Broken Dreams: The Boeing 787.

Al Jazeera is releasing all the documents online here:

<a href=https://www.documentcloud.org/public/search/projectid%3A%2027443-boeing-faa-documents-june-2016%20>View/search document collection</a>

The papers show that in 2011, FAA officials visited Boeing and found managers were applying pressure to identify changes and minor instead of major in order to avoid regulatory scrutiny. They also found some suppliers were not delivering parts that complied with drawings.

After its investigations, the FAA wrote to Boeing on June 29 demanding action on six issues and requesting a response within 30 days. Boeing replied on September 8, several weeks past its deadline, stating that no corrective action was needed on any of the six issues. The FAA told Al Jazeera it was satisfied with Boeings investigation and the associated outcomes.

This seems to fall in line with the new Boeing culture, said Cole, who also said the relationship between Boeing and the FAA may have become a bit too cozy.

A bit of an adversarial nature between the FAA and Boeing engineering keeps everyone on their toes, she said.

If the FAA was acting truly independently, I would have expected the Investigation and Cause Summary to have netted some recommendations for required further actions. Good enough does not work for commercial aircraft safety.

Interview: The fired engineer

The FAA says it works jointly with Boeing toward similar safety objectives. As a regulatory authority, the FAA also conducts oversight of BCA in accordance with federal law and FAA policy.

After its investigation, the FAA made no recommendations or demands for action, but simply identified and recorded a number of problems at Boeing:

 Managers perceived as applying pressure on regulating engineers

 Managers transferring regulating engineers when they were not happy with their demands

 Regulating engineers not being consulted on appeals against compliance rulings

 Management performing tasks meant for regulating engineers

 Concern that pressure is now being applied to workers who provide data to the regulating engineers

Boeing says all allegations of undue pressure were taken seriously, thoroughly investigated, and found to be without merit. The company added that it works appropriately and professionally with all oversight authorities worldwide to ensure our products conform to the highest regulatory and safety standards.
At least 27 people, including five children, killed in raids on Idlib and Maarat al-Numan, monitoring group says.

Air strikes have killed at least 27 people in rebel-held areas in Syrias northwestern Idlib province, a monitoring group has said.

At least 21 people, five of them children, were killed in raids, including on a marketplace, in Idlib city, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday.

There were regime and allied Russian warplanes flying in the area today. But we do not know yet which planes had carried out the strikes, the observatorys head Rami Abdel Rahman told the DPA news agency.

Separately, aerial bombardments in the town of Maarat al-Numan, about 30km south of Idlib city, killed another six people, the observatory said.

READ MORE: Civilians flee Idlib bombardment

Idlib city and the province by the same name is held by a coalition of rebel groups, including al-Nusra Front, a powerful Syrian group with ties to al-Qaeda.

Russia deployed warplanes to Syria last year to support President Bashar al-Assad against rebels seeking to end his rule. Moscow is also backing Syrian government forces in a separate fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) further east.

There has been heavy bombardment of areas in Idlib province in recent weeks, including air strikes that killed at least 50 people last month.

Several monitoring groups, as well as Turkish authorities accused Russia of conducting these air strikes, but Russian authorities denied any involvment.

The Syrian conflict, which began with peaceful protests in March 2011, has escalated into a multi-sided civil war.

The death toll has risen to more than 250,000 people while half the countrys population have been forced from their homes, according to UN estimates.
MPs reportedly given more protection and asked not to travel to Turkey after Germany recognises Armenian genocide.

German MPs of Turkish origin have been warned not to travel to Turkey and will get increased police protection after Germanys parliament declared the 1915 massacre of Armenians a genocide, according to media reports.

Eleven MPs have been getting threats after the resolution, which has injected fresh tensions between Germany and Turkey, was passed in the beginning of June, the reports say.





Der Spiegel, a German news magazine, said the foreign ministry had warned the MPs against travelling to Turkey because their safety could not be guaranteed.

It is unspeakable to know that it is not possible to fly there for now, Aydan Ozoguz, Germanys integration commissioner, was quoted by Der Spiegel as saying.

Other MPs with Turkish roots have also cancelled business trips to the country, it said.

Separately, the Frankfurt Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung reported that the 11 MPs will now receive increased police protection and further security measures for both their professional and private activities.

The threats against MPs of Turkish origin are unacceptable, Thomas de Maiziere, Germanys interior minister, told the paper. Of course security measures will be adjusted if necessary.

He stressed, however, that the majority of the 3.5 million people with Turkish roots who live in Germany were good neighbours and said the perpetrators were isolated cases.

Death threats and insults

Cem Ozdemir, the leader of Germanys Green Party, who initiated the resolution, told Turkeys Armenian weekly Agos that despite receiving death threats and insults, at least they were not imprisoned and not had their immunity lifted for having simply expressed what we thought, unlike our colleagues in Turkey.

Ozdemir told the Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung that he had received threats, reading: At some point, your German friends will have forgotten that  we wont and We will find you everywhere.

OPINION: Turks, Armenians and the two memories of April 24

He also called on Turkish groups in Germany to condemn the death threats.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that MPs of Turkish origin who voted for the resolution should be given blood tests, and has accused them of having tainted blood and of being terrorists.

On Thursday Norbert Lammert, the president of the Bundestag, said threats against individual MPs were attacks on the entire parliament.

Millions of Germans have Turkish heritage following a wave of so-called guest worker immigration during Germanys economic boom of the 1960s and 70s.
Politicians and religious leaders denounce shooting that killed 50 people and injured at least 53 more.

Politicians and religious leaders have been quick to react to the shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that killed 50 people and injured at least 53 more.

US President Barack Obama said Americans are grieving the brutal murder, the horrific massacre of dozens of innocent people.

Although it is still early in the investigation, we know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate, he said in a televised address on Sunday.

The president also repeated his earlier calls for tighter gun control, saying the fact that the attacker was armed with a handgun and a powerful assault rifle was a reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship or a movie theatre or in a nightclub.

Presumptive presidential nominees from both parties reacted to the mass shooting, the deadliest in US history, on Twitter.

Donald Trump, the Republican partys presumptive nominee, called it a horrific incident.

Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

In another message, Trump, who has previously made comments about banning Muslims from entering the US, talked about the congrats he had received for being right on radical Islamic terrorism.

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton also took to Twitter to deplore the devastating news.

Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

Speaking to NBCs Meet the Press, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders also condemned the horrific murders.

Our hopes go out to all those who were shot that they can recover, Sanders said.

Twenty-five years ago, I believed that in this country we should not be selling automatic weapons which are designed to kill people, the Vermont senator added.

Florida Governor Rick Scott said in a statement: Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, families and all those affected by this horrific tragedy.

We are a strong and resilient state and we will devote every resource available to assist with the shooting in Orlando.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also condemned the attack.

Orlando: Ban Ki-moon condemns attack; extends deepest condolences to victims' families & expresses solidarity w/ Govt & ppl of the US.  United Nations (@UN) June 12, 2016

Londons new Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted that he stood with the city of Orlando against bigotry and hatred.

I stand with the City of Orlando against hate and bigotry. My thoughts are with all the victims of this horrific attack #lovewins  Mayor of London (gov.uk/coronavirus) (@MayorofLondon) June 12, 2016

The Vatican said Pope Francis expressed the deepest feelings of horror and condemnation.

The pope denounced the homicidal folly and senseless hatred, said the Reverend Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman. Francis also offered prayer and compassion to those affected by the attacks.

European Council President Donald Tusk said Europe mourns the victims.

Europe mourns the victims of the horrific gun attack in Orlando. Their families and the people of Florida are in our thoughts and prayers  Charles Michel (@eucopresident) June 12, 2016

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the attack an act of domestic terror.

He said that while authorities were still investigating, it was appalling that as many as 50 lives may have been lost to this domestic terror attack targeting the LGBTQ2 community.

Turkeys Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said he condemned the horrific terrorist attack.

I condemn, unequivocally, the horrific terrorist attack in #Orlando  as we've seen time & again, terrorism knows no religion, creed or race  Mehmet Simsek (@memetsimsek) June 12, 2016

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent his condolences to Obama, saying Israel stands shoulder to shoulder alongside the United States at this moment of tragic loss.

The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Florida) also condemned the monstrous killings and urged Muslims to donate blood to those who are injured.

We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured, CAIR-Floridas Orlando Regional Coordinator Rasha Mubarak said in a statement.

The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence.
This years World Day Against Child Labour is focusing on children working in supply chains.

Almost one in 10 children wakes up each morning and goes to work. These children slave away in factories and fields, and as maids and sex workers.

United Nations declarations specifically guarantee the rights of a child to be protected from economic exploitation. But vague laws, or sometimes a complete lack of legislation, mean that millions of children find themselves at work when they should be at school  often in hazardous conditions.

At least 168 million children around the world work, with more than half of them in dangerous conditions, according to the International Labour Organization.

Almost 80 million children are working in the Asia-Pacific region. Thats equivalent to the entire population of Turkey. And one in five children in Sub-Saharan Africa has a job. Thats almost 60 million children.

The agriculture business is the biggest employer. Sixty percent of child labourers  nearly 100 million children  tend to farms and animals. But a lot of children, around 66 million, are also working in the service and industry sectors.

What does it take to end child slavery?

Presenter: Jane Dutton

Guests:

Simon Steyne  Head of Social Dialogue and Partnerships at the ILO-International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour.

Hussaini Abdu  Country Director of Plan International Nigeria.

Prabhat Kumar  General Manager of Child protection at Save the Children India.
           2005     ..        
BEIJING, June 9 (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.
BEIJING, June 9 (Peoples Daily) China is exercising its legitimate rights by upholding the sovereignty of our islands in the South China Sea. The New York Times received a dispassionate retort from the Chinese embassy, in response to NYT's editorial titled "Playing Chicken in the South China Sea".



The editorial on May 21 noted the incident that two Chinese fighter jets monitored the American plane carrying out close reconnaissance in Chinese coastal waters. A collision could have been catastrophic, the editorial board asserted Chinese jet done an unsafe maneuver. Then it brought about the arbitration case launched by the Philippines against China over the South China Sea.



In the letter to NYT's editorial page, Zhu Haiquan, the press counselor and spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in the U.S., stressed that Chinese military aircraft followed the American plane from a safe distance. Our operation was completely compliant with safety and professional standards. The attempt at intimidation by American military aircraft in the South China Sea, however, was not. he wrote.



As for the arbitration case, Zhu Haiquan once again explained that Chinas sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and Xisha Islands was restored after World War II, in accordance with the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation. But in the 1970s, certain countries started to illegally occupy some islands and reefs of the Nansha Islands. he mentioned.



China firmly believes that the only way to resolve the disputes is the negotiation between states directly concerned, and has already signed border treaties through peaceful negotiations with 12 out of 14 land neighbors. The same practice should be adopted in the South China Sea. By not accepting or participating in the arbitration unilaterally initiated by the Philippines, China is acting in accordance with international law. he emphasized.



We hope the United States, instead of flexing muscles, could play a responsible and constructive role to promote dialogue and negotiation. he added.










ACTUALITES Chinese think-tank: the Tribunals Award in the South China Sea Arbitration is Null and Void

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 12 Juin 2016





BEIJING, June 11 (Peoples Daily) - The Chinese Society of International Law (CSIL) on Friday releases a paper on the South China Sea arbitration initiated by the Philippines, siding with the Chinese governments position of neither accepting nor participating in the arbitration initiated by the Philippines.



The paper is titled The Tribunal's Award in the South China Sea Arbitration Initiated by the Philippines is Null and Void. 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 emphasis 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. Therefore, the Tribunal's establishment of jurisdiction over the Philippines' claims is completely erroneous. Any decision that the Tribunal may make on the substantive issues will equally have no legal effect.



In the end, the Paper reiterates that Chinas non-acceptance of and non-participation in the Arbitration and its non-recognition of any award made or to be made by the Tribunal have solid legal basis, and are acts of justice to maintain and uphold international law.





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Here and in Britain voters are torn as to whether or not to jump off the globalization, open borders bandwagon and government by unelected bureaucrats or voting to retake sovereignty and re-establish free markets. The polls show the sentiments for retaining the status quo or starting over (Brexit) seem too close to call, I predict Britain will leave. I hope we, too, will choose to return to less intrusive more accountable government, sovereignty and freedom by rejecting Hillary Clinton ourselves.

Why is this the last chance for Britain to retain its national identity?

This crowdsourced British video sets forth the significance of the Brexit vote. (Its long, but if youre pressed for time -- the first 15 minutes provides a good summary). The EU is a richly compensated, enormous, anonymous unelected bureaucracy completely lacking in transparency. Its power rests in people the voters are unaware of and unable to remove. They are utterly unaccountable to the voters. It is a wasteful crony capitalist racket, working largely to keep its own gravy train (and that of its favored friends) going and growing.

Europeans seem to be overly attracted to the notion of government by wiseman elites. British love of independence and freedom is deeper and stronger, although government regulation and control took root during the World War I and that increased even more during World War II -- power the government didnt relinquish when the war was over. This softened their resolve when the notion of the EU was hatched.

In contrast, postwar Germany stripped out the regulatory bureaucracy and created a much more successful, dynamic economy. Production rose, competition thrived, wages rose and it became a powerhouse as Britons still struggled with shortages, rationing, and economic stasis.

The European Economic Commission was created in the 1970s and the thought of becoming more like Germany appealed to Britons who joined the Common Market hoping to capture the benefits of the German miracle. Unfortunately, it was headed not by the Germans but by a Frenchman who had played a major role in the British postwar disaster with predictable results: It shackled itself to higher prices, lower employment, restricted innovation, and economic disaster. Being part of the EU has added to Britains woes as they have no good trade deals with the most dynamic parts of the worlds economies -- Asia, Africa, and the U.S.

With less than two weeks before the vote, polls indicate the British have had enough of this.

Pollster Frank Luntz, like me, sees a connection between Trumps popularity and the movement to leave Brexit in Britain.

While the commentators focus on the horse race, theres something deeper and longer-lasting happening across the U.K. Brits have become canaries in the coal mine, offering Europe, America and the developed world a glimpse of what is coming in our elections. The Brexit question represents the political conflict rapidly spreading across the globe: Do hardworking, taxpaying citizens fundamentally trust or reject half a century of globalization, integration and innovation? Have the promises of the political and economic elite helped improve their daily lives? Or is it time for a rethinking and redrawing of our political and economic systems from the ground up? [snip] The underlying currents are moving in Leaves favor -- and they are doing so worldwide. Having conducted extensive polling and focus groups in the U.S., U.K. and across Europe, it is clear that more and more people have come to reject traditional theory and party orthodoxy, wreaking havoc on the politicians and political structures standing in its way. In Britain, the choice is between whether we want to put ourselves first, or continue contributing to the global community. In America, the fundamental question for the upcoming election is similar, and just as significant: whether to seek changes at the margins, or blow it all up and start over -- in the name of Making America Great Again. [snip] Brexit is the beginning of a debate the developed world is about to have with itself, not the end.

The cost of regulation in the U.S. is not minor -- almost $1.88 trillion a year for manufacturers and consumers. The Competitive Enterprise Institute weighs in:

The scope of federal government spending, deficits and the national debt is staggering, but so is the impact of federal regulations, which now exceeds half the amount the federal government spends annually. Unfortunately, regulations get too little attention in policy debates because, unlike taxes, they are unbudgeted. They are also difficult to quantify because their effects are often indirect. In Ten Thousand Commandments, Crews compiles available data on regulatory costs and trends. By making the size, extent and cost of Washingtons rules and mandates more comprehensible, Crews underscores the need for more review, transparency and accountability -- for both new and existing federal regulations. Highlights of the 2015 edition include:  Federal regulation and intervention cost American consumers and businesses an estimated $1.88 trillion in 2014 in lost economic productivity and higher prices.  If U.S. federal regulation was a country, it would be the worlds 10th largest economy, ranking behind Russia and ahead of India.  Economy-wide regulatory costs amount to an average of $14,976 per household -- around 29 percent of an average family budget of $51,100. Although not paid directly by individuals, this cost of regulation exceeds the amount an average family spends on health care, food and transportation.  The Unconstitutionality Index is the ratio of regulations issued by unelected agency officials compared to legislation enacted by Congress in a given year. In 2014, agencies issued 16 new regulations for every law -- thats 3,554 new regulations compared to 224 new laws.  Many Americans complain about taxes, but regulatory compliance costs exceed what the IRS is expected to collect in both individual and corporate income taxes for last yearby more than $160 billion.  Some 60 federal departments, agencies and commissions have 3,415 regulations in development at various stages in the pipeline. The top six federal rulemaking agencies account for 48 percent of all federal regulations. These are the Departments of the Treasury, Commerce, Interio r, Health and Human Services and Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency.  The 2014 Federal Register contains 77,687 pages, the sixth highest page count in its history. Among the six all-time-high Federal Register total page counts, five occurred under President Obama.  The George W. Bush administration averaged 62 major regulations annually over eight years, while the Obama administration has averaged 81 major regulations annually over six years.

Our bureaucratic elite, just as enamored of its own right to rule as the EU bureaucracy, is no more transparent or accountable to us than the EU is to Britons.

Take the Fast & Furious scandal, where we handed over weapons to Mexican cartels and then hid from scrutiny the evidence of the wrongdoing.

We cannot have a healthy democracy in the digital age, in the modern age without more transparency in our government. And President Obama not only said what you said, [that his administration would be the most transparent in history] but also he said that from now on theres going to be a presumption that every document that is produced by my government will be public, unless we can make the presumptive argument that it needs to be private. Instead, he has, factually been, the least transparent administration, probably in this nations history, certainly in modern time. And it comes at a time when people are demanding to have more transparency in their government, when we need to have more transparency in our government, and when were losing all trust in our government. And when you have something like this, where the administration is clearly lying, its clearly hiding documents that belong to us, not them, and their secretary of state did what she did with her emails, we really have a problem. And we all do, not just the Democratic Party, not just the Republican Party, but how are we going to conduct our government in this coming century?

Or Benghazi. Or Hillarys misuse of classified information.

As they choke the U.S. economy and beset us with preposterous diktats with regulations on everything, including school lunch menus, public bathroom policies, health coverage and insurance, college rape adjudication policies, proper light bulbs, water use, appliance efficiency, fuel mixes, the bureaucrats feather their nests.

Americas 2.1 million career civil service workers make on average 78 percent more in total compensation than private sector workers, according to new data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The total compensation average for federal workers is $119,934, including the value of leave, insurance and other perks, or 78 percent more than the average total compensation for private sector employees of $67,246. The BEA analysis excluded U.S. Postal Service workers. The 2014 average federal salary in 2014 of $84,153 compared to $56,350 for all private sector workers. The 2014 salary average represented the first annual increase since 2011 when a partial pay freeze was implemented in a budget deal between President Obama and House Republicans.

Congress is even more lavish in awarding itself benefits as it turns over more of its Constitutional prerogatives to regulators.

For example, it treats itself and its staff to special treatment under ObamaCare:

Congressional leaders from both parties quietly and gratefully accepted the special deal from the administrations Office of Personnel Management. It gives legislators and staff Gold Level ObamaCare coverage with a 75 percent subsidy paid by taxpayers or even the option of opting out and retaining their previous heavily subsidized plan. The income of members and staff is simply not counted. This is in direct violation of the specific language of the law Congress enacted. The White House broke its own law to provide Congress ObamaCare gold and then fraudulently administered it through the District of Columbias Small Business Healthcare Exchange. In order to get their waiver, representatives of the House and Senate signed documents, under penalty of perjury, that each body employed no more than 50 people. To date more than 13,000 members and staff have signed up with the help of another gift -- a dedicated team assigned only to Congress.

Both Congress and federal employees receive generous pension benefits and Congressmen receive generous other perquisites of office.

One thing is clear -- both the EU officialdom and ours are wiser than voters only in their ability to feather their own nests, not in making us safer, richer, or happier. Many predict that if the UK exits Brexit, other European countries will follow, Maybe one of the attractions of Trump is that the distaste for the regulatory state run by elites is spreading across the Atlantic.
In light of the horrific attack in Tel Aviv where 4 Israeli civilians were murdered by Arab terrorists dressed in suits, we find ourselves in yet another quagmire.

The issue is how to respond.

Prime Minister Netanyahu says we will attack those who attacked us. Exactly what does that mean Mr. Prime Minister? Is Israel going to launch a targeted strike on Hamas operatives in Gaza or Judea/Samaria?

What will that accomplish? Indeed, it may take out some Arab terrorists, but what will it accomplish in the end? Will it prevent future attacks from taking place? Will it deter leadership from promoting jihad against Israeli Jews? Will it foster a better environment for peace?

Killing Arab terrorists is the equivalent of spraying a trail of ants with pesticide. It only eliminates the ones you see. In order to stop more of them from coming, one must go all the way to the nest and root it out completely.

Other suggestions include halting the influx of Arabs for Ramadan. I find no problem with refusing to allow thousands more Muslims into Israel, which can only increase the chances of more violence.

Still others are suggesting clamping down on goods being shipped into Gaza. This has been an ongoing seesaw issue for years. Every time Israel relents and expands the array of allowable goods, Hamas ends up stealing much of it and using it to manufacture weapons, terror tunnels, or underground bunkers so their leadership remains protected during outbreaks of war with Israel.

What sense does it make to allow shipments of materials that everyone knows will be used to military purposes? Yet world pressure continuously and relentlessly mounts on Israel to lift the siege of Gaza.

Pressure also continues against Israel to end the occupation, and relax the checkpoints coming in from Judea/Samaria.

Do those who promote said suggestions actually believe such acquiescence would result in peaceful coexistence between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs? If they do, they are either more naive then Neville Chamberlain, or they have little or no concern for the safety of Jewish lives. The other possibility is they are just plain anti-Semitic.

In actuality, counterattacks by Israel will not address the problem. Clamping down on Gaza will not address the problem. Even if nothing other than basic items, such as food, water and medicine is allowed in. Tightening checkpoints, temporarily revoking permits or razing homes of terrorists in Judea/Samaria wont remedy the situation. These are all symptomatic remedies, which do nothing to address the core issues.

Any effort to turn the tide should be viewed as a comprehensive long term effort that involves a combined effort across many fronts.

Once place to start is the classroom. Arab Palestinian children do not receive an education, as normal schoolchildren do in most countries. They are taught to hate Jews, and to die as martyrs. Take a look at this recent clip.

This is a typical example of how children are educated in UNRWA run schools in Judea/Samaria and Gaza.

What kind of adults do you think these children become having been educated like this? UNRWA receives over $1 billion annually. The largest donors are the US - $400 million, followed by the EU, Saudi Arabia and the UK. Together they provide over 50% of UNRWAs funding.

This is where a change must take place. The donor countries should demand their funds be used for proper education, rather than allowing these schools to be nothing more than terror training facilities. Further, independent monitoring should take place on an ongoing basis to ensure appropriate education is being administered. If the schools refuse to provide normal education and continue their terror training, the funding for them should be cut off, period.

Another systemic issue is religious education. Religion plays a huge role in the upbringing and character building of people from all cultures and countries. When it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Arabs again are being educated to hate and kill, rather than coexist with Israel. Take a look at this clip.

The imam is supposed to be a man of God. He is supposed to provide teachings which reflect how we are to treat our fellow man in a way which God honors. What kind of god would bless the words that come out of that imams mouth? Yet this is another huge component in weaving together the fabric of Arab Palestinian society.

Once again, I believe independent monitors should be at every mosque, and when such messages are delivered said leader should be warned that this type of hate-mongering will not be tolerated. If he refuses to comply he should face criminal charges.

Will these suggestions be easy? No. Will they immediately change the atmosphere in the Arab-Israeli conflict? Unlikely. However, something must be done, because we know what has been done until now has not produced fruit. What have we to lose?

I have only addressed two particular segments of society with this essay. There are more that need addressing to be sure. However, these two are of huge significance and influence. If the fundamental institutions of their society are ignored and allowed to maintain the status quo, this is tantamount to declaring the future will continue to be one of symptomatic remedies.

We can either keep spraying the ant trail allowing it to keep coming back, or we can pursue it to the nest and eradicate it. We have a choice.

To read more of Dan Calics articles see his Facebook page.
There is only one, lone insurance company willing to sell Obamacare policies to Alaska residents and they are in danger of fleeing the failing market.

To forestall that, Alaska Republicans did the unthinkable; they authorized up to $55 million to prop up the market so that residents would not lose their insurance coverage.

Politico:

A bill passed by the heavily GOP state Legislature to shore up its lone surviving Obamacare insurer is awaiting the signature of Gov. Bill Walker, a Republican-turned-independent who was endorsed two years ago by former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The legislation, originally proposed by Walker, sets up a $55 million fund  financed through an existing tax on all insurance companies  to subsidize enrollees costs as the state struggles with Obamacare price spikes and an exodus by all except one insurance company. Alaskas efforts reflect a pragmatic approach to what is arguably the biggest political conundrum facing Obamacare critics: How do you take away peoples benefits or, in this case, sit by while constituents cry foul as insurers flee a failing marketplace? Alaska lawmakers efforts also reflect some of the states unusually harsh demographic realities  a relatively small population with some of the highest health care costs in the nation. But even as insurers around the country report major losses from Obamacare customers, no other state is considering such a step to prop up its insurance marketplace. Republican state lawmakers, who sued Walker for expanding Medicaid under the health law, swear they remain opposed to Obamacare. But they say they're doing what's necessary to prevent health insurance premiums from spiraling out of control and letting thousands of people lose their coverage. What Im getting  and I guarantee what the Alaska Legislatures getting  is constituents pleading with them for help," Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) told POLITICO. Theres been no state in the union more negatively impacted by Obamacare than Alaska." The picture became particularly grim in Alaska, where the number of insurers offering plans to individuals is set to drop to one for 2017, and state officials warned that the remaining company couldn't realistically raise rates high enough to cover customers' medical bills. Walker, who is expected to sign the insurance fund into law in the coming days, said it will ensure that the 23,000 Alaskans enrolled in exchange plans won't suddenly lose their insurance.

This is where practical politics collides with ideology. It's the same collision that will occur in Washington if Republicans ever get their act together to either repeal and replace Obamacare, or just fiddle with many of its provisions.

Republicans have successfully run against Obamacare in the two previous mid term elections largely due to so many people losing their insurance, or seeing their rates skyrocket. While ideologically they remain unalterably opposed to Obamacare, most Republicans also recognize that any action they take that leads to widespread cancellations of policies would be politically disastrous. This makes the propping up of the insurance market in Alaska by Obamacare opponents an act of political expediency - in their eyes, distastefuil, but necessary.

It is likely that by election day, most Americans with Obamacare plans will have experienced severe sticker shock as state insurance boards will be authorizing double digit increases, with some of the Obamacare exchanges seeing rates rise up to 40%.

How much a role this will play in the presidential election will depend on how Republicans try to tap the fear and outrage of voters over the slow motion collapse of Obamacare.
Mega-GOP donor Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett-Packard and a failed California gubernatorial candidate, has indicated that she will vote for Hillary Clinton in the November election.

Unlike many NeverTrumpers, Whitman will abandon the Republican party and side with the Democrats.

The Hill:

At a private summit Park City, Utah for conservative donors hosted by Mitt Romney, Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman reportedly compared Donald Trump to Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini and, according to another donor that was present, asked why she shouldnt support Clinton. "She posed the question, 'Is it not reasonable to support Hillary Clinton?' given all the awful things Trump has said," donor John Chachas said, according to ABC. When asked, Whitman said she was still uncommitted. "I haven't made that decision," she told ABC. "Well see, get to the conventions, see who the vice presidential picks are. And then I will make that decision." Whitman has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates and causes over the years, according to Federal Elections Commission records. During this election cycle, she contributed $205,000 to super-PACs allied with Chris Christies now-defunct presidential campaign. Christie has since endorsed Trump. Whitman also gave $100,000 in March to a conservative super-PAC that opposes Trump.

Although you can't say that Whitman is a "high profile" Republican, she is well known in party circles. This leads to the question; what should the Republican party do with these turncoats?

Not voting for any presidential candidate is bad enough if you're in the upper echelon of the Republican leadership. Mitt Romney is apparently mulling this option. But to actively give your support to Hillary Clinton is a step too far for most Republicans. Those that take this step should be frozen out of party leadership positions and made a pariah at Republican functions.

Whitman is no dummy so you have to think she knows this. That's why her next step after endorsing Clinton will be to go all the way and quit the GOP to join the Democrats. True, it's of no great consequence, although the party will miss her deep pockets. Ultimately, this is why most Republicans of the NeverTrump crowd will either stay at home on election day or simply refuse to cast a ballot for president. Voting for Clinton disqualifies them from belonging to the Republican party. And that should be made clear to any and all who contemplate such a move.
Update: The attacker has been identified as Omar Mateen, a US-born citizen whose parents came to the US from Afghanistan. The Daily Beast:

Omar Mateen of Port Saint Luice, Florida has been identified as the gunman who killed 20 people at a Orlando nightclub, CBS News, the Washington Post, and NBC News report, citing law enforcement officials. Mateen is a U.S. citizen; his parents are from Afghanistan, CBS News reports. FBI Agent Ron Hopper told reporters Mateen may have leanings towards Islamic extremism. Mateen was armed with an assault rifle, a handgun, and what was feared to be an improvised explosive device. Mateen entered Pulse club around 2 a.m. Sunday morning and began shooting. After most of the 320 people there escaped, Mateen took hostages from a group that was hiding in a bathroom. Shortly before 6 a.m., a SWAT unit breached the club and engaged Mateen in what's being called a protracted gun battle. Mateen was killed.

Update: Latest report is that there are 50 dead. Horrific.

If the early indications of Islamic terror being the motivation for a mass slaughter of homosexuals prove to be true, jihad should become a top concern of the LGBT political movement. The evidence is quickly mounting that Islamic terror was at the root of shooting 20 dead (as far as is currently known) and wounding 42 others, as well as taking hostages. The UK Daily Mail reports:

A suspected Islamic extremist wielding an assault rifle and a handgun has killed about 20 people after taking party-goers hostage inside a gay nightclub in Orlando. The gunman was carrying a suspicious device, possibly a suicide vest, when he opened fire inside Pulse in the early hours of this morning. Orlando Police Chief John Mina said authorities have not determined the exact number of people killed, but that 'approximately 20' have died. Another 42 people were taken to hospital. An FBI spokesman said the mass shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism. He explained authorities are looking into whether this was an act of domestic or international terror, and if the shooter was a lone wolf. Police said the gunman was believed to be in his 20s was not a local man, and the FBI believe he may have 'leanings to radical Islamic terrorism'.

The FBI is not the lead agency, and would not give any indication at all of an Islamic terror connection without evidence. We do not know what, if any, organization was connected to the indicent, but considerable thought and planning were apparently involved.

The big question for me is how might this affect the political stance of the homosexual movement, which has predominantly supported Democrats, the party that refuses to speak the words radical Islam in connection to terror. I have spoken to homosexuals about why they seem indifferent to the clear threat Islamic hostility presents to them, and the answer usually is that they are focused on their own political struggle at home, in which scripturally believing Christians are seen as the opponents.

But jihad is a global movement, and now it seems to have struck at home.

It is too early to draw any conclusions, but I have a lot of questions.
At least President Obama did not call it workplace violence, and at least he acknowledged that the horrific slaughter was an act of terror. Thats the good news about his statement a few minutes ago about the carnage at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. But there is bad news, too.

There was no mention whatsoever of Islam, radical Islam, or jihad. It was purely an act of hate of no particular character. His statement on motivations contained lawyerly qualifications enabling him to obscure the fact that the killer shouted Allahu Akbar ! (Allah is supreme!) as he murdered. Watch at about a minute into his statement as he said,

We have reached no definitive judgments on the precise motivations of the killer. 

Definitive and precise are the weasel words he uses to obscure the obvious fact that this was jihad. And they did not prevent him from imputing hate as the cause.

Violent Jihad, it should be noted, while producing hateful acts, is an ideology of world domination, and can be quite cold and calculating in nature. It is not necessarily a matter of passion and hatred. It bears comparison to Nazism and Communism, neither of which were ascribed exclusively to hate, though they used hatred and acted hatefully. Despite the fact that the shooter was a security officer licensed to carry firearms and trained in their use, President Obama blamed the easy availability of guns.

Mike Ford adds:

Mr Obama made further reference to hate crimes, describing the gay bars as not just a night club, but an "area of solidarity and promotion of civil rights."

Tthe President also made his standard pitch regarding the easy availability of 'assault weapons." It's important to note, the shooter, had a firearms license as he worked for a security company...which means he had to undergo an extensive background check.

Donald Trump understands the issue is radical Islam, uncontrolled borders and unregulated immigration. Hillary Clinton believes the problem is common firearms. Mr Trump wishes to strengthen the borders and allow only immigrants who are beneficial to the United States. Secretary Clinton wants to make it harder for law abiding citizens to protect themselves and their neighbors by restricting access to firearms. Stark choice come November.

Mike Ford is a retired Infantry Officer and sometime contributor to American Thinker.
The success of Donald Trump in capturing the GOP nomination appears to have caused intense emotional distress in many otherwise sober figures. The latest among the educated, well-spoken, dare-I-say elite Republican crowd to be driven to heretofore unprecedented pubic displays is Mitt Romeny, the 2012 standard-bearer. CNN reports that he actually teared up speaking to a crowd of hundreds of well-heeled donors and business partners at a 5-star luxury resort in Park City, Utah.

Mitt Romney on Saturday torched Donald Trump and the Republicans who failed to stop his climb to the party's presidential nomination, saying the current fortunes of the GOP are "breaking my heart." Romney's condemnation, made here at the Stein Eriksen Lodge before hundreds of his donors and business partners, highlighted the ill will between the last two GOP nominees for president. (snip) Romney's broadsides were warmly received by many of his allies, earning a 21-second round of applause when he wondered aloud about the future of the GOP. "I find this so troubling, and I know a lot of folks are saying, 'Mitt just get off your high horse on this and get behind the guy.' But these things are personal. I love this country. I love the founders. I love what this country is built upon and its values and seeing this is breaking my heart," Romney said. The 2012 nominee was visibly emotional and appeared to tear up when making the remarks. [emphasis added]

What can account for the loss of emotional control on the part of a man so stoic that his opponents in presidential campaign were able to portray him successfully as a stone-hearted monster? I am honestly puzzled, but can only offer some hypotheses for further consideration.

Loss of control

The Republican Party has always been so predictable that it has been called the stupid party  by its friends. An easily identifiable constellation of senior politicians, big donors, and consultants held sway so strongly that successful candidates for the nomination homogenized themselves, supporting the partys doctrines, and eschewing attacks on any of the entrenched interests.

There could well be outrage that our thing (cosa nostra in Italian) has been stolen out from under these grandees.

Revenge of the consultant class

The biggest losers in the success of Trump are the consultants that have had a stranglehold on GOP candidates at the national level. Despite a decidedly mixed record of success in winning the presidency, this small group of very wealthy professionals (they get a percentage commission on ad buys, which run into nine figures) has captured every modern GOP nominee  until Trump. He not succeeded without them, he violated all the rules they have proclaimed. Nobody got rich off of his ad buys. Compare an d contrast the Jeb! campaign that reported spent a hundred million dollars or so on advertising.

Trumps success is a dagger to the heart of the future prospects of the consultant class.

Trumps style

Donald Trump uses harsher language than Romney and many other highly educated and accomplished members of the GOP elite. He uses a compact vocabulary. He revels in displays of his wealth (especially in contrast to Romney who could not help but signal that he was a bit ashamed of his own wealth). While Trump might be expected to brag about an elevator in the garage of his home, Romneys was treated as a revelatory scandal, and Romney made no attempt to counter that narrative.

The word most often applied to Trump by his upper class enemies is vulgar, a word steeped in elitism. Being vulgar betrays the values of the elites that cultivate discretion, understatement, subtlety, and seek to remain as invisible as possible. Check out the private jets at any airport frequented by elites, say, Jackson Hole, WY or Palm Beach, FL. Almost none of them have any personal or corporate identification on their fuselages, In contrast, Trump Force One, the used 757 airliner (which was cheaper to purchase than brand new high end smaller biz-jets) not only has the name TRUMP in large type on the fuselage, it has a flying T on the tail, which, to rub it in, has spotlights showing on at night as it taxis around air terminals.

Trumps supporters

Face it: wealthy Republicans for the most part are uncomfortable in the company of the unwashed masses. Mitt Romney, a patrician, did not look comfortable in font a bales of hay, wearing jeans. Nor, I imagine, does he have a lot of country music on his mobile devise. In fact, I would be surprised if he even uses a pair of headphones to listen to any music.

While Trumps support extends to all classes of people, the media has caricatured his fans as the uneducated and unsuccessful  losers. No doubt many in the elite accept this sterotype.

And finally

Trumps policies

Trump falls well into the category that may be called populist, especially as regards trade. Globalism has been very, very good for the top end of the top end of the income distribution. But beyond this single issue, Trump expresses empathy for all of those who have not benefitted from the macro-economic trends. He doesnt want to rein Social Security or other entitlements. This is anathema to the Paul Ryans of the party.

In foreign policy he is an America first sort of guy, which also makes cosmopolitans uncomfortable. They hobnob with counterparts at the top of other national societies, and, because America has dominated the world since the end of World War II, are a bit uncomfortable with muscular nationalism  it seem a bit unfair to those sophisticates found at the top of other nations.

All of these thoughts are preliminary. I dont know if there is something else at work that I just do not understand.

But something accounts for the extreme vehemence of Repucblican opposition to Trump.
Omar Saddiqui Mateen: deadliest killer in US history was not driven by Islam

In Orlando, Florida, more than 50 people have been murdered in a massacre carried out by one Omar Saddiqui Mateen. The killer struck at a gay nightclub called Pulse. The story goes that he didnt like gays.

Approximately 50 people were killed inside Pulse, a gay nightclub, Orlando Police Chief John Mina and other officials said Sunday morning, just hours after a shooter opened fire in what appears to be the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. At least 53 more people were injured, he said.

Some of the injured are very badly hurt:

The shooter is not from the Orlando area, Mina said. He has been identified as Omar Saddiqui Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, about 120 miles southeast of Orlando, two law enforcement officials tell CNN. Orlando authorities said they consider the violence an act of domestic terror. The FBI is involved. While investigators are exploring all angles, they have suggestions the individual has leanings towards (Islamic terrorism), but right now we cant say definitely, said Ron Hopper, assistant special agent in charge of the FBIs Orlando bureau.

Mateen was born and raised in the US. His parents arrived in the US from Afghanistan. His father tells media:

Mir Seddique, Mateens father, told NBC News, this has nothing to do with religion. Seddique said his son got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago and thinks that may be related to the shooting.

Nothing to do with Islam.

But why were the The FBI watching him?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation at one point opened an investigation into Mateen but subsequently closed the case when it produced nothing that appeared to warrant further investigation.

The BBC notes:

There are suggestions the gunman had leanings towards radical Islamist ideology, the FBI says.

There will be more suggestions made.

Jazz Shaw:

If youll forgive a bit of skepticism on my part, that sounds unlikely. Im not saying that Seddiqui couldnt have been anti-gay. (Islamic terrorists arent exactly known for taking part in pride parades, after all.) But thats a pretty violent reaction for having seen two men kissing. The guy lives in northern Florida and this is the first time in almost thirty years hes run across two gay guys engaging in a PDA?

The shooters ex-wife adds: He was not a stable person. He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasnt finished or something like that.

Much more to follow

Anorak

Posted: 12th, June 2016 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink


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Fourteen flights  13 of which were Emirates services - were diverted to Al Maktoum airport in Jebel Ali, four to Sharjah and three to Al Ain. Emirates says all its diverted flights returned to DXB after the airspace opened.

DXB is one of four drone no-fly zones set up by the UAEs General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) after a drone incursion incident last year resulted in a 55-minute shutdown. Dubais other drone no-fly zones are Al Maktoum airport, Al Minhad air base and the Palm Jumeirah.

The GCAA says it is now working with Dubai Police, the airport and other relevant authorities on an investigation into the no-fly zone breach.


Sindbad Members will now be awarded with 500 miles every time they rent with Europcar. They simply need to quote their Sindbad number when booking with Europcar and present their membership card when collecting their vehicle.

Sindbad members will benefit from Europcars mobility services and get access to one of the largest car rental networks, with a presence in over 140 countries and an awarded car rental company, in particular in the Middle-East by World Travel Awards since 2005.

Mohammed Mubarak Al Shikely, Oman Airs vice president marketing, said: We are delighted to announce this partnership with Europcar and are pleased to offer more options to our Sindbad members to enhance their travel experience.

He added: Oman Air is committed to going the extra mile on behalf of our customers, giving them more opportunities to earn miles and our new partnership with Europcar shows how we are continually adding to the range of benefits we offer.

Marcus Bernhardt, chief commercial officer, Europcar Group, said: We are delighted for this new partnership in the Middle-East with Oman Airs Sindbad Frequent Flyer Programme. It consolidates our presence in this part of the world, the dynamism of the tourism, especially to European countries, which is really a great opportunity for us to benefit from new customers and to provide them with an interesting reward.
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By: Andrew Kaung

The Singapore-Australia relationship was recently strengthened by the joint announcement of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership on 6 May 2016. The partnership is based on the third review of the 2003 Singapore-Australia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA), aimed at addressing current business needs of the two economies and furthering integration.

The third review will address education, science and innovation, labor mobility, and defense collaboration between the two countries. Importantly, the agreement will also cover the partnership between Singapore and Northern Australia on agribusiness and encourage Singaporean and Australian companies to work on securing reliable supply chains in the agribusiness sectors. The most significant upgrade of the agreement is the facilitation of government procurement contracts through the reduction of red tape.

On the whole, the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership is thought to pave the way for business opportunities in both countries. For a detailed look at the history of the Australia-Singapore Free Trade Agreement please click here

Singapore  Australia Trade

Currently, Singapore is the largest trading partner of Australia in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Australias fifth largest trading partner in the world. Singapore currently invests more than US $60 billion in Australia, making it the nations fifth largest foreign investor. In 2015, bilateral merchandise trade between Singapore and Australia amounted to more than US $14 billion. The total goods and services trade between Singapore and Australia amounted to US $30 billion.

According to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), major Australian exports to Singapore in 2015 included gold, crude petroleum, refined petroleum and animal oils and fats, due to the countrys rich mineral resources. On the other hand, Australian imports from Singapore in 2015 were refined petroleum, edible products and preparations, computers and chemical products. The table below shows each export and import type with the respective amount in both Australian and US currencies.

Singapores foreign investment in Australia accounted for about US $23.85 billion in 2014. ASEAN countries accounted for 6.1% of total foreign investment in Australia (FIA), or US $24.97 billion in new direct investment. Singapore injected about US $23.85 billion, making it the largest country among ASEAN. The total net inflows of direct FIA were valued at US $43.27 billion  the largest being the United States (US $24 billion), followed by Singapore (US $23.85 billion) and the European Union (US $21.2 billion). The net inflow was increased by US $41.25 billion or 8.7 per cent from 2013.

The annual growth of inbound FIA from ASEAN has slowed down in recent years to around 10 per cent. Although growth is projected to further slow to around 5 per cent per annum, according to the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, the amount will still be equal to an additional US $50 billion by 2030.

RELATED: Setting Sail in the Sea of Java  An Introduction to Indonesian Aquaculture

Opportunities for Investment

This new cooperation package between Australia and Singapore is a substantial first step in a decade-long plan to enhance bilateral links and boost investment. Elements of the agreement will encourage economy growth, and lead to wider integration by forging new business frontiers.

For companies currently managing pan ASEAN operations from Singapore, improving trade ties with the Australian economy provide a unique opportunity for future expansion. Given the recent slump in energy prices and subsequent shocks that have been reverberating throughout the Australian economy, it may well be possible to lock in bargain prices from Australian suppliers. Furthermore, as the TPP comes into force in the next few years, the linkage between Singapore and Australia is only set to become more pronounced.



About Us Asia Briefing Ltd. is a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. Dezan Shira is a specialist foreign direct investment practice, providing corporate establishment, business advisory, tax advisory and compliance, accounting, payroll, due diligence and financial review services to multinationals investing in China, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Singapore and the rest of ASEAN. For further information, please email asean@dezshira.com or visit www.dezshira.com. Stay up to date with the latest business and investment trends in Asia by subscribing to our complimentary update service featuring news, commentary and regulatory insight. 

Annual Audit and Compliance in ASEAN

For the first issue of our ASEAN Briefing Magazine, we look at the different audit and compliance regulations of five of the main economies in ASEAN. We firstly focus on the accounting standards, filing processes, and requirements for Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. We then provide similar information on Singapore, and offer a closer examination of the city-states generous audit exemptions for small-and-medium sized enterprises.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and its Impact on Asian Markets

The United States backed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) includes six Asian economies  Australia, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam, while Indonesia has expressed a keen willingness to join. However, the agreements potential impact will affect many others, not least of all China. In this issue of Asia Briefing magazine, we examine where the TPP agreement stands right now, look at the potential impact of the participating nations, as well as examine how it will affect Asian economies that have not been included.

An Introduction to Tax Treaties Throughout Asia

In this issue of Asia Briefing Magazine, we take a look at the various types of trade and tax treaties that exist between Asian nations. These include bilateral investment treaties, double tax treaties and free trade agreements  all of which directly affect businesses operating in Asia.
Free Vacation Hack

How To Hack Your Way To A Free Vacation (Legally)

Page 1 of 2

How would you like to take a vacation to Hawaii for $14, fly first class, get priority check-in, hang out in the lounge and never pay for baggage fees again? It may sound too good to be true, but there's a tried-and-true strategy that's simple, fast and legal: travel hacking.

Simply put, travel hacking is a strategy to earn a lot of miles/points/rewards, primarily through credit cards, so you can then use them for free trips. Done right it's a cinch. Within 15 minutes, you can earn a free flight.

Here's a step-by-step guide to hack your way to free travel:

1. Sign-up for credit cards with big welcome bonuses: Credit card welcome bonuses are the fastest and easiest way to earn your way to a free flight. Why spend your way to 50,000 points when you can get them just for signing up for a new credit card? Many of the best travel credit cards in Canada and the U.S. offer enough points for at least one round-trip ticket to anywhere in North America, while others can take you as far away as Europe.



2. Rinse, wash, repeat: Keep signing up for new credit cards with hefty welcome bonuses. You can sign up for a new credit every couple of months, just monitor your credit score vigilantly, and never keep a balance. You can even apply for the same card repeatedly in some cases. There is no limit to how many credit cards you can have at once; some people have more than 50 cards at any one time, and still have credit scores over 800.



3. Annual companion airfare vouchers: Welcome bonuses aren't the only way to get a virtually free flight. Many credit cards will give you a voucher for a companion ticket EVERY year, just for keeping your credit card account open. Imagine being able to fly your girlfriend from New York to Hawaii, or Toronto to Miami, for $99! Not only that, with some companion fare programs, like the WestJet MasterCard, if you get a ticket in first class (even if that ticket was booked with points), your travelling companion will be able to book their ticket in first class as well!



4. Free hotel night anniversary vouchers: Some hotel credit cards offer free hotel nights every year, just for keeping your credit card open. These vouchers offer great value, especially since you can use them at any time, even during the high season when hotel rooms cost the most. Credit cards from Marriott, Hilton, IHG (Holiday Inn) all offer free hotel night anniversary bonuses.



5. First year annual fee waivers: Try to find welcome bonus offers with first year annual fee waivers. Although it's not a requirement to find value (50,000 miles for $99 is still worth it), it makes your flight completely free. Moreover, it takes the risk away from possibly not being able to find the flight redemption youre looking for  with no annual fee, there's no cost, no risk.
New Details For Elon Musk's 'Mind Blowing' Mission To Mars

Trending News: Would You Be Willing To Fly On Elon Musk's Mission To Mars? (There's A Big Catch)

Why Is This Important?

Because Elon Musk is looking for pioneers to colonize Mars, but they could have to pay the ultimate price.

Long Story Short

Elon Musk has been cryptic about his dream to begin colonizing Mars within the decade, but he released a few new details Friday, including his plan to send rockets to Mars every two years. Musk also said he hasn't yet decided who'll be sent on an eventual human mission, but that volunteers would have to realize there's a likely chance they won't come back.

Long Story

Ever sat in history class or opened up a book and thought  what would it have been like to be like Christopher Columbus in 1942 when he "sailed the ocean blue?"

Sadly, pretty much the whole world has been mapped by now  except for the deep oceans  but there's still vast expanses of space and planets out there to explore.

As you might've heard, lunatic billionaire genius/futurist/inventor CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, wants to send a mission to start up a colony on Mars, not dissimilar from the pioneers colonizing the New World, but hopefully with less brutal genocide. Musk has already said he plans to send a human mission to Mars by 2025, but released a few more details in an interview with The Washington Post.

Beginning as soon as 2018, Musk plans to fly one of his Dragon rockets to space carrying experiments. Two years later in 2020, he plans to fly at least two rockets. Then, every two years starting in 2022, when Earth and Mars are closest, he'll send shipments of experiments filled with cargo from companies who he says have already expressed interest in being part of the mission.

Musk said he was "so tempted to talk more about the details of [the Mars Colonial Transporter]," but just teased that its "going to be mind blowing. Mind blowing. Its going to be really great.

By 2024, he hopes to have the capability of sending a few humans on the voyage 140 million miles from Earth, but it'll come at a dire cost.

Its dangerous and probably people will die  and theyll know that, he said to WaPo.

Musk emphasized that after a few people go, the plan is to build a full-out Martian city where humans could presumably go on summer holidays when the Earth is too scorching hot to inhabit.

But I do want to emphasize this is not about sending a few people to Mars, he said. Its about having an architecture that would enable the creation of a self-sustaining city on Mars with the objective of being a multi-planet species and a true space-faring civilization and one day being out there among the stars.

Naysayers have said starting Mars missions in 2018 is overly ambitious, especially considering the Dragon spacecraft and Falcon Heavy  the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two, according to SpaceX  haven't flown yet and the Dragon hasn't been able to land using its own thrust, which will be key so as not to just crash-land on Mars. But Musk hopes to prove those haters wrong when he launches the rocket and its thrust power of 18, 747 airplanes high into the sky later this year.

In other crazy Elon Musk news: He met with the Pentagon this week to discuss building an Iron Man-style metal suit. You gotta love this guy.

Something about a flying metal suit...https://t.co/6Z1D9iZ1fV  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 9, 2016

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

How bummed would people be people be if the rocket made it to Mars and then crash-landed, exploding into smithereens?

Disrupt Your Feed

We all die sometime, so why not on a pioneering mission to Mars?

Drop This Fact

Musk thinks there's a good chance we're living in The Matrix.
Hey hopefully someone can get sum better information then I have found online so far.



My partner who is currently pregnant with our child is from South Africa.

We both want to live togetger and start our family here in Australia.

Im going over to south Africa for 2 months in November for our childs birth and we will most likely get married while I am there.



Now does my child automatically get a Australia residency from anstry with me being a permanent in Australia. If so what papper work would I need to do so.



What visa would I be able to apply for to get my (wife shortly) in to Australia. She currently has a tourist visa here would she be able to give birth to our child in south Africa and she come bak here and apply onshore and maby get a bridging visa.



Thanks
Your visa would have a 'last entry" date. I suggest you check your visa status on VEVO.



If you stop working for your sponsor you must find another employer who is willing to nominate you within 90 days of ceasing employment:



If more than 90 consecutive days have passed since the date you ceased employment, you may be in breach of condition 8107 and may have your visa cancelled.



Under condition 8107, the 457 Visa holder must commence work within 90 days of arrival in Australia. If they are already in Australia, they must commence employment within 90 days of the grant of their visa.
What exactly is a "bad boy"? Or, more to the point, should we want to be one? Would our mothers want us to be bad boys? Is that a good thing? I mean, have we been wrong all this time asking our dogs "who's a good boy?"

1 photo
ICE

EV

With this launch, the Daimler-owned brand will become the only automaker in the world to have both electric and conventional powertrains across its entire range.The availability of all of its models in both electric andpower will be a significant bragging right for smart, but it could have not achieved this without its rather low sale volumes and full support from the German company that started it with Swiss watchmakers at Swatch.smart can also afford to make this step towards electrification because its range is comprised of a low number of models, and all of them share a single platform.With the addition of the two electric models from smart, Daimler will have a total of 12 electric vehicles in its portfolio.While the smart fortwo Electric Drive has had a predecessor, the forfour is at its first electric version. As with the previous electric fortwo , smart will offer both Coupe and Convertible versions of its signature model.The carmaker is set to showcase the two electric models at this year's Paris Motor Show, which will take place this fall. However, market launch of the electric fortwo and forfour models will be scheduled for early 2017, as Auto Express has learned.While conventionally-powered cars get improvements in fuel economy and power from one generation to the next, their electric counterparts receive reduced charging times, more power, and an increase in range.The two electric models from smart will follow this recipe, along with benefiting from the signature traits of cars from this brand. They will also be available with the entire range of personalization options from the Swiss-German brand, a defining element of the company.The smart fortwo will be Europe's most easy-to-park electric car , as it will share the size and capabilities of its conventional sibling. Before you mention the Renault Twizy, a fully-electric four-wheeled vehicle available in Europe, we remind you that it is homologated as a quadricycle, and not a car, so the definition we wrote above for the new smart fortwoshould remain correct.
AMG

Converted at current exchange rates, 149,900 translates to $168,690. In other words, that sum can buy you a Mercedes-G63 and a smart fortwo Proxy. Its an insane price to pay for something that isnt what the seller wants you to believe it is.From 2005 to 2012, Citroen produced 23,400 examples of the thing. Indeed, this is far from a sales success, but the French manufacturer didnt develop the C6 to bolster its coffers. Boiled down to its core, the Citroen C6 is a rolling exhibit of automotive flamboyance and first-class comfort.The concave rear window, the desperately long front overhang, the Hydractive 3+ hydropneumatic suspension, the electronically adjustable rear spoiler, lots of things made the Citroen C6 great. When Jeremy Clarkson took one for a test drive on Top Gear, he loved it to bits because it is a charming machine thats extremely different from the German norm. In its domestic market, the Citroen C6 became the car of choice for Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, two former presidents of France. Now, though, Citroen doesnt make anything remotely similar to the C6, and that makes me a little bit sad.Citroen manufacturers something called the C6 in China, but the new kid on the block cant hold a candle to its European predecessor. Furthermore, the hydropneumatic suspension will be phased out to make way for progressive hydraulic cushions , the newest suspension technology from Citroen.When all is said and done, the Citroen C6 is yesterdays news. The cheapest one on mobile.de costs just 3,500 , albeit I wouldnt recommend buying one, not even as an investment. There are known rust issues around the rear windows, the air con is prone to break down, the automatic transmission is notoriously temperamental, and the hydropneumatic suspension is also vulnerable to going kaput.Although its pure masochism to own a Citroen C6 these days, the automotive unicorn in the photo gallery below will forever be remembered by gearheads as one of the greatest cars ever made by Citroen.
The Russian air force has grounded its fleet of Su-27 fighters after an aircraft belonging to its Russian Knights air demonstration team crashed near Moscow on Thursday. Flankers make up about half of the fighter force. The crash occurred as the aircraft was returning to its base and wasnt related to an airshow. The air force released a statement saying the aircraft was downed by an unspecified technical fault and that the pilot died in the crash because he steered the aircraft away from populated areas rather than eject. The rest of the Flankers will be grounded until the nature of the problem is determined. It was the fourth crash involving a military demo aircraft in a week.

The same day as the Flanker crash, a Patrouille Suisse F-5 went down after colliding with a team aircraft during a practice in the Netherlands. The pilot ejected safely. A week before, both the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds and Navy Blue Angels lost aircraft on the same day and the Angels pilot, Capt. Jeff Kuss, was killed. Although it hasnt been confirmed by the Navy, there have been published reports that Kuss stayed with the aircraft to avoid populated areas rather than ejecting.
12 June 2016 12:30 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijan and Portugal established successful relations despite the geographical distance between the two countries, said a press-release of the Honorary Consulate of the Portuguese Republic in Azerbaijan, dedicated to the national holiday - the Portugal Day, celebrated on June 10.

According to the press-release, Portugal and Azerbaijan signed a number of cooperation agreements.

The representatives of both countries often pay high-level visits, the press-release said.

According to the press-release, the two sides are actively cooperating as part of the international forums.

"The Portuguese entrepreneurs often visit Azerbaijan to find opportunities to expand business cooperation," the press-release said. "Azerbaijan and Portugal have a high potential for cooperation in the fields of information technologies, tourism, construction, agriculture, health and education."

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12 June 2016 10:13 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijani Ambassador to Turkmenistan Hasan Zeynalov and Executive Secretary of the Office of the President of Turkmenistan and the Cabinet of Ministers Shamuhammet Durdylyev have discussed the development of bilateral relations between the two countries in a variety of spheres.

Hasan Zeynalov hailed the favorable ground for the expansion of cooperation in all fields between the two countries' peoples who share common ethnic, religious and cultural roots, saying he will spare no efforts in this regard. He provided an insight into the development processes, reforms in economic and social areas in Azerbaijan, as well as the energy and transport projects implemented in the region with the active participation of the country.

Shamuhammet Durdylyev noted that Turkmenistan paid special attention to the development of relations with Azerbaijan, and expressed their willingness to cooperate with the country for further expansion of these ties. He said that frank relations between the Azerbaijani and Turkmen presidents' paved the way for the development of the bilateral relations. Shamuhammet Durdylyev hailed the effective cooperation between the two countries' relevant agencies in economic, humanitarian and cultural fields.

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12 June 2016 14:46 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijan and Russia supported an offer to increase the number of permits for international cargo transportation by vehicles by 5,000, the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Transport said.

"The Azerbaijani side was informed during a meeting about Russia's position on the need to increase the number of permits for cargo transportation by 5,000," the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Transport said. "The Azerbaijani side was also informed about the violations revealed among Azerbaijani international carriers during the transport control in the territory of the Russian Federation."

According to the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Transport, the offer was supported by the participants of the meeting and indicated in the protocol.

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12 June 2016 10:59 (UTC+04:00)

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have discussed cooperation between the two countries, including contacts at the highest level, the Kremlin press service reported, TASS reported.

"They discussed practical issues of cooperation between the two countries, including the preparation for contacts at the highest level to be held soon," the Kremlin press service said.

"The leaders confirmed determination to further deepen all-round bilateral relations, which can be considered to be specially privileged strategic partnership. Narendra Modi conveyed his kindest greetings and wishes on the occasion of Day of Russia holiday," the Kremlin said.

The conversation took place at the Indian side's request.

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12 June 2016 11:20 (UTC+04:00)

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will visit Norway to hold talks with the European country's officials and participate in an international forum, Press TV reported.

Zarif and his accompanying delegation will leave Tehran for Oslo on Sunday night for a two-day visit to hold negotiations with Norwegian authorities and take part in the Oslo Forum, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari told IRIB on Saturday.

He added that the top Iranian diplomat will also hold meetings with senior officials of countries attending the international event.

Zarif will then visit Berlin for a few hours to meet with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier before flying back to Tehran, Jaberi Ansari said.

It is also likely that Zarif will meet and hold talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is due to attend the Oslo Forum, on the sidelines of the event.

Around 100 prominent mediators of armed conflict and peace process actors from around the world will gather in Oslo, Norway, on June 14-15 to share their experiences of peacemaking as part of the 2016 Oslo Forum.

The Oslo Forum is widely regarded as the leading international network of armed conflict mediation practitioners. It regularly convenes senior conflict mediators, high level decision makers, key peace process actors, analysts and experts from a variety of institutional backgrounds in a series of informal and discreet retreats.

Co-hosted by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, the Oslo Forum features an annual global event in Oslo and is complemented by regional retreats in Africa and Asia.

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12 June 2016 12:40 (UTC+04:00)

Iran is going in a few days to file a suit in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the United States for its seizure of Iranian assets, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told the Parliament today.

We will use the occasion to show to the world how the US violates rules, Fars news agency quoted Zarif June 12.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani on June 2 instructed the Foreign Ministry to implement a legislation passed by the parliament, committing the government to claim compensation from the US.

The decision by the Iranian parliament came after a US court ruled on April 20 that $2 billion of Iranian assets frozen in a US bank account had to be turned over to the families of the American victims of a 1983 bombing in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, and other attacks blamed on Iran.

The confiscated money belongs to the Central Bank of Iran (CBI). The assets had been previously blocked under the US sanctions.

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12 June 2016 13:00 (UTC+04:00)

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said no new sanctions have been imposed on the Islamic Republic following the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Addressing a parliamentary open session June 12, Zarif said no new nuclear related sanctions have been imposed on Iran but new individuals have been put on an existing list of sanctioned people over Iran's missile program, IRNA news agency reported.

He further added that Iran has not held any talks with the West over its missile program.

During the today's parliamentary open session, Zarif briefed the new parliament on the process of the implementation of JCPOA, foreign investments and economy of resistance.

The foreign minister, however, noted that implementation of JCPOA does not mean that all hostilities and oppositions against the Islamic Republic have been removed.

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12 June 2016 16:52 (UTC+04:00)

Telecommunication Company of Iran Spokesman Davoud Zareian said the company was able to sign a 1b finance agreement in post-sanction era, IRNA reported.

In addition to the agreement, three MoUs were also signed with some foreign firms.

He said that representatives of K.T Company from South Korea are present in Iran to consult with Iranian companies.

Referring to signing an MoU with Kazakh Company Kazakhtel, he added that besides buying required services from this company, Iran will give required services to Kazakhstan as well.

He also referred to signing an MoU with Italtel company from Italy as another important achievement to equip Iranian network.

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Bakersfields 25 mayoral candidates have been largely respectful to one another at several forum-style events this election season, but some t
A Polk County Sheriff's deputy was forced to shoot a bear that was attacking a family's pig penned in their backyard Saturday morning.

Officials say Deputy Matthew Phillips saw a black bear walking south on State Road 60 in Alturas and contacted the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, then followed the bear to make sure it did not endanger residents while waiting for FWC to respond.

The deputy witnessed the 6-foot-tall, 300 pound bear climb a fence onto the property at 5615 Wells Road and approach the pig pen on the property. The bear then began attacking a pig in the pen.

[The bear] chased her around and grabbed her on the sides and bit her on the back of the neck, explained Jesse Bibby, 13, who lives on the property.

At this time, Deputy Phillips fired at the bear, which drew its attention away from the pig. According to the deputy, the bear then charged. Fearing for his life, the deputy fired two more rounds, killling the bear.

Bibby said the bear couldve taken his life and his animals, if the deputy hadnt have been there.

I was sitting on the gate and I saw him walking straight toward me and it scared me pretty bad, recalled Bibby.

Bibby said his pig Lucy is doing well, and didnt require treatment. No humans were injured. Bibby said hes glad the deputy acted quickly.

I was very thankful for it. That was a big bear and it couldve done a lot of damage. Not only to a pig but to a kid or somebody, Bibby said.

FWC collected the bear, and will test to determine whether or not it was equipped with a tracking device.
A 42-year-old Pinellas Park man has been charged with aiming a laser at the St. Petersburg assistant chief of police.

Laser pointed at St. Pete assistant chief of police



Assistant Chief of Police Jim Previtera's vision impaired for about 30 minutes



David R. Smith arrested and charged with misuse of a laser lighting device

According to police, Assistant Chief of Police Jim Previtera was driving his unmarked police vehicle northbound in the 5600 block of 4th Street North at 8:45 p.m. Saturday when a bright blue light flash impaired his vision.



Previtera was able to determine that the light had come from a parked vehicle at 5625 4th Street North.



Previtera and other officers called to the scene found David R. Smith of 6809 Circle Creek Drive, Pinellas Park, in the parked vehicle.



Authorities said Smith pointed a Class 3B laser device at Assistant Chief Previtera's vehicle. Smith was arrested and charged with misuse of a laser lighting device, a third degree felony.



Officials said Previtera's vision was impaired for approximately 30 minutes after the incident.



Research conducted on the Class 3B laser device possessed by Smith showed that the laser pointer can cause serious damage to the eye.



Later at the St. Petersburg Police Department, to demonstrate the power of the seized device, the laser was pointed at a paper bag and it started the paper bag on fire.
Floridians around the state reacted quickly Sunday morning to a mass call for blood donations following the deadliest shooting in US history.

Many Bay area blood bank locations changed their schedules to accommodate the influx.

Officials call for blood donations in the aftermath of Pulse

Floridians dutifully lineup at OneBlood banks in the Bay area

Many locations prepared to stay open late

"There was a need, said donor Cindy Seletos. I saw the Marco Rubio tweet this morning. I happened to have AB-positive blood, and they specifically said AB.

So I said hey, I need to be here.

Seletos, a St. Petersburg resident, said she has family in Orlando. But thats not why she wanted to donate.

Its a part of our state, said Seletos. And it is a close community. I never thought something like this would happen here.

Seletos wasnt alone at the OneBlood Donors Center located at 9900 Doctor M.L.K. Jr St. in St. Petersburg Sunday afternoon. Dozens of others wrapped around the halls, passing water bottles down the line and asking workers how they could help make the staffs day run smoother.

Similiar scenes played out across the state.

Melinda Calabrese, also of St. Petersburg, said she too is a regular donor. With an O-positive blood type, her blood is universally accepted.

Its a part of everyone, said Calabrese of the global culture Orlando embraces. You just know Orlando. And any time theres a need, you want to give if youre able.

By 1:30 p.m., more than 50 people had donated blood at the one location. According to workers, theyre prepared to stay open as long as people keep walking through the door.

They're urging people to not make their donation a one-time occurrence.

Update: Monday, June 13:

Pinellas County is partnering with OneBlood to host two blood drives in response to the depleted blood supply in the Orlando area.

"Pinellas joins with our friends throughout Florida in standing with the people of Orlando," said Charlie Justice, chairman of the Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners. "We stand resolute on prinicples of equality, freedom, justice and love. We will not retreat. We will keep moving forward. Today, we can all join together in a blood donation in honor of those who cannot."

The first blood drive will be held Tuesday, June 14, from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the County Courthouse located at 315 Court Street in Clearwater. The second blood drive will be held Friday, June 17, from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at the Pinellas County Utilities building located at 14 S. Fort Harrison Ave. in Clearwater.

Interested in donating?



Requirements:

A general list of requirements, courtesy of the American Red Cross.



If you are male, you must:

Be healthy and feeling well

Be at least 17 years old in most states

Be at least 5'5"

Weigh at least 150 lbs.



If you are female, you must:



Be healthy and feeling well

Be at least 17 years old in most states

Be at least 5'1"

Weigh at least 130 lbs.



* Note: Healthy means that you feel well and can perform normal activities. If you have a chronic condition such as diabetes, healthy also means that you are being treated and the condition is under control. If you are not feeling well on the day of your donation, please reschedule.

Please note higher requirements may apply in certain cases. Check with your donor center to confirm.

Locations near you:



You can visit the OneBlood website at www.oneblood.org/donate-now and put in your zip code to find a donation center.

The OneBlood website has been experiencing outages due to overwhelming response. Officials say they've been working on the issue.

Below is a list of donation centers in the Tampa Bay area. *BE ADVISED* Some donation centers might not be open today. PLEASE CALL AHEAD.

HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY:

Brandon Donor Center

727 West Lumsden Rd

Suite A

Brandon, FL 33511

Phone: (813) 661-4528



Tampa  Fletcher Donor Center

5301 E Fletcher Ave.

Tampa, FL 33617

Phone: (813) 903-2600



Tampa  Dale Mabry Donor Center

15427 N Dale Mabry Hwy

Tampa, FL 33618

Phone: (813) 964-1354



Tampa  Kennedy Donor Center

4041 W Kennedy Blvd

Tampa, FL 33609

Phone: (813) 282-3976

Fax: (813) 282-3967



PINELLAS COUNTY:

Palm Harbor Donor Center

33825 US Hwy 19 N

Palm Harbor, FL 34684

Phone: (727) 568-1179



St. Petersburg  Main Donor Center

9900 Dr. MLK Jr. St. N

St. Petersburg, FL 33716

Phone: (727) 568-2101



St. Petersburg  22nd Ave Donor Center

6808 22nd Ave N

Tyrone

St. Petersburg, FL 33710

Phone: (727) 384-4145



Clearwater  Missouri Donor Center

1680 S. Missouri Ave

Clearwater, FL 33756

Phone: (727) 582-9500



PASCO COUNTY:

New Port Richey Donor Center

5355 US Highway 19 North

New Port Richey, FL 34652

Phone: (727) 819-3100



Zephyrhills Donor Center

38040 Market Square Dr

Zephyrhills, FL 33542

Phone: (813) 788-4625



Wesley Chapel Donor Center

5319 Village Market

Wesley Chapel, FL 33544

Phone: (813) 929-6500
A 19-year-old man suffered critical injuries in a St. Petersburg crash Saturday night.

Pick-up truck crashes into back of Toyota sedan



Passenger in Toyota suffers critical injuries



Charges pending

According to the Florida Highway Patrol, the crash happened 28th Street North and 47th Avenue North just before 11 p.m.



Troopers said a 1999 Toyota Corolla traveling northbound on 28th Street was slowing to make a left turn onto 47th Avenue when a GMC pickup truck crashed into the back of it.



The Corolla was knocked into the parking lot of the adjacent B&N Food Mart at 4700 28th Street North and struck an unoccupied Ford Explorer.



The GMC continued northbound after the second collision and came to rest in the intersection of 28th Street and 50th Avenue North.



Karch A. Ross, a passenger in the Corolla, suffered critical injuries and remains at Bayfront Health St. Petersburg. The driver of the Corolla, 20-year-old Zachary James of Largo, suffered serious injuries.



The driver of the GMC truck, 40-year-old Kendal J. Bartholomew, suffered minor injuries.



Troopers said charges are pending.
At least 50 people are dead, and 53 were taken to hospitals after a gunman opened fire early Sunday morning at an Orlando nightclub.

LATEST NEWS AND PICTURES: Orlando shooting at Pulse nightclub

The mass shooting is being investigated as "an act of terrorism," said Orlando Police, who killed the gunman.

Get the very latest updates on the Orlando shooting from our live Twitter feed of reporters and law enforcement agencies:

Live Blog LIVE UPDATES: Orlando nightclub shooting
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Beaumont's third annual Pride Festival on Saturday was an occasion for several Southeast Texans to reflect on the journeys they have made to the LGBT community over cultural, generational and other hurdles.

In seeking acceptance and coming to terms with their identities, they have encountered varying degrees of intolerance and danger.

n

Nirmal Gope's situation puts a different face on gay rights.

Back home in his native Bangladesh, Gope, 30, can face life imprisonment or death by extremists because of his sexual identity.

Most of the Bangladesh population is Muslim; Hindu is the minority. The LGBT community is the most at-risk minority in his country, Gope said, even more than women.

Gope, who is pursuing a doctorate degree in educational leadership at Lamar University, hopes to further his career in social justice, targeting issues in LGBT awareness.

He said he first became aware of his sexuality in elementary school. He experienced severe depression as he grew up and even attempted suicide in high school, he said.

He hid his sexual identity until he arrived in the United States in January 2013 to pursue a master's degree.

At Lamar, Gope went through Safe Zone training, an initiative of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, which contributed to his willingness to be more open about his identity.

Later that semester, Gope found comfort in the Lamar allies, an on-campus LGBT support group. Because of the large number of Bangladeshi students at the university and their opposing views on homosexuality, Gope said he at first attended meetings in secret.

"I really feel so blessed in this community coming from Bangladesh, but at the same time I feel so bad for the people living in Bangladesh. I feel very helpless that I cannot do anything for them," Gope said.

n

JoLee Tanner said it took her a long time to find the words to express her "authentic self."

Tanner, 15, identifies herself as transgender, and, even more specifically, gender fluid and non-binary. That means she does not identify as exclusively masculine or feminine but instead loosely identifies as any gender at any given time.

She first questioned her sexuality when she was 5, when she confessed to her mother that she thought she was a lesbian. Throughout elementary school, Tanner considered herself an introvert because of her lack of self-identity.

At 13, Tanner was home-schooled and began to identify herself as bisexual.

At 14, Tanner attended her first Coming Out Ball hosted by Beaumont Pride, and a week later told her immediate family of her current sexual identification.

"Last year, I finally found the words to express my authentic self. These words have helped me determine exactly who I am. This has enabled me to do things like lower my anxiety, form more honest relationships with others and connect with others like myself. I would like to put my authentic self out to the public in order to help educate and advocate for others in hopes of creating a stronger community," Tanner wrote in a letter presented at this year's Coming Out Ball.

Tanner is involved in Beaumont Pride and Beaumont PFLAG. Her mother is a co-founder and volunteer coordinator of Beaumont Pride and a vice president with Beaumont PFLAG.

Tanner said her mother's involvement with the LGBT community has helped her identification process.

n

Clay Hutchison realized he was gay in elementary school but hid his sexual identity for more than half his life because of a lack of acceptance in the late '70s.

Hutchison, 46, had a handful of gay and lesbian relatives, whom he saw were misunderstood.

He attended Sam Houston University but didn't complete his degree because he was closeted and dealing with depression.

At 28, he realized how unhealthy his path was and decided to seek a happier life. He came out to his lesbian cousin and her partner first, and right after, he came out to his immediate family and received nothing but support.

Hutchison, a debutante volunteer for Beaumont Pride, said he likely would have come out sooner if society had been as accepting as it is now.

"Three years ago I was standing at the Beaumont Pride festival in disbelief of the growth we are now able to celebrate," Hutchison said. "The growth that has happened within the last 10-15 years gives a lot of hope for the future."

SFlores@BeaumontEnterprise.com
Poundland's outgoing boss Jim McCarthy will unveil his final set of full-year figures on Thursday after a testing year for the chain following sales falls and a difficult takeover of rival 99p Stores.

The group is expected to report an 11% drop in underlying pre-tax profits to 38.7 million for the year to March 27 after seeing sales declines pick up pace in the final six months.

Like-for-like sales decreased by 3.9% over the full year, but the fall was steeper in the second half, at 4.9%.

It warned over profits in January after Christmas trading was hit by poor numbers of shoppers on the high street and trading has remained under pressure since then.

Andrew Porteous, analyst at HSBC, said: "It may take some time for the business to stabilise like-for-like growth given momentum and lead times in ordering seasonal stock. However, an improving trajectory would at least help sentiment. The strategic intentions of incoming CEO Kevin O'Byrne will also be key in the longer term."

Mr McCarthy will stand down after 10 years on July 1 , when he will hand over to former B&Q UK and Ireland boss Mr O'Byrne, who joined as chief executive designate in April.

Mr McCarthy, who will remain with the group until his retirement at the firm's annual shareholder meeting in September, has been praised for his achievements at the helm of Poundland.

But his final year has been tough, with the transformational 55 million takeover of 99p Stores proving to be far from smooth.

The group finally received the all-clear for the deal from the competition watchdog last September, but Mr McCarthy has since admitted that 99p Stores was ''in a mess'' when it was handed over.

It was set to have completed converting all 99p Stores by the end of April and has given hope for a turnaround in trading, confirming that sales growth in converted stores has been strong so far .

Analysts at Canaccord Genuity said a first quarter trading update due with the full-year results is unlikely to show any marked improvement in sales yet.

They said the cold spring weather, timing of Easter and push to convert all the 99p Stores will have "conspired to hold like-for-like sales back".
James Corden will host Broadway's biggest night of the year as the musical Hamilton looks to sweep the board at the 2016 Tony Awards.

The smash-hit production has a record 16 nominations including nods for best musical and best lead actor in a musical for its creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and his co-star Leslie Odom Jr.

The Pulitzer prize-winning show, which is reportedly set to open at London's Victoria Palace Theatre in October 2017, has achieved sell-out performances and rave reviews since making its debut in February last year.

The hip-hop musical tells the story of Alexander Hamilton, one of America's founding fathers and an influential figure in the drafting of the US constitution.

US president Barack Obama is a fan of the show, with the cast performing at the White House in March.

Hamilton could break the record for the number of Tony Award wins, set by the musical The Producers when it scooped 12 gongs in 2001.

Corden, who won a 2012 Tony Award for his performance in One Man, Two Guvnors, will host the ceremony following his successful stint as the presenter of the Late, Late Show in America.

British play King Charles III, the fictional account of the Prince of Wales's accession to the throne, is nominated for five awards.

Tim Pigott-Smith, who plays Charles, is nominated for best performance by a lead actor in a play, while Richard Goulding, who plays Prince Harry, is up for best performance by an actor in a featured role in a play.

British actor Mark Strong is also nominated for best performance by a lead actor in a play for his role in Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge, while Irish star Gabriel Bryne is nominated in the same category for his performance in Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Oscar-winners Jessica Lange and Lupita Nyong'o will compete for the award for best performance by a lead actress in a play.

The awards will include performances from nine nominated musicals, including Hamilton, Fiddler on the Roof, The Color Purple and Andrew Lloyd Webber's School of Rock. Gloria Estefan's musical On Your Feet! will also feature.

Oprah Winfrey, Cate Blanchett, Claire Danes and Jake Gyllenhaal are among the star-studded list of award presenters. Barbara Streisand will take to the Tony Awards stage for the first time in 46 years to hand out a prize.

The 70th Tony Awards take place at New York's Beacon Theatre at 8pm local time (1am Monday BST).
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Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/06/2016 (2327 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VANCOUVER  Travis Lane has been growing marijuana since high school, when his first pot plant swiftly withered and died in his bedroom closet. By the time he was 20, he had cultivated a small basement grow-operation.

Now in his mid-thirties, Lane owns an online dispensary and runs two 390-plant operations on Vancouver Island. He employs two growers and raises his plants without pesticides or liquid fertilizer.

I dont want to hide what I do. Im good at what I do. Im proud of being good at what I do, he said. Ive been proactive my whole life in trying to move towards a time where I can openly be a cannabis professional.

Internet Cannabis Dispensary CEO Travis Lane, a small-scale marijuana grower, poses for photos in Victoria, B.C., Friday, June 10, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito

Lane holds two Health Canada licences for the grow sites, making his pot production legal for medical purposes. But with the federal Liberals committed to legalizing cannabis for recreational use, Lane is among the smaller-scale growers fighting for a seat at the table.

The government is still in the early stages of developing the legislation it plans to introduce next spring. Those behind a budding craft cannabis movement warn, however, that if the law favours large-scale commercial producers, then jobs and potential tourism revenues will be lost and the black market will continue to thrive.

Its going to be the National Energy Program all over again, but instead of Alberta and oil, its going to be B.C. and cannabis, said Ian Dawkins of the Cannabis Growers of Canada, referring to the 1980 policy that infuriated Albertans when the federal government tried to gain more control over the oil industry.

Youre talking about economic activity that has sustained communities that have been devastated by the loss of primary industries.

His group, a national trade association representing small and medium-sized pot growers and vendors, recently commissioned a report on B.C.s cannabis industry. Economist Larissa Flister used Colorado, a similarly-sized state with legal pot, as a proxy to estimate that about 13,700 people have marijuana-related jobs in B.C.

Its a rough figure thats impossible to verify due to the illegality of the jobs, but several estimates have pegged the value of B.C.s pot industry at between $2 billion and $7 billion.

Advocates say they are fighting to ensure that legalization actually recognizes those workers, rather than pushing them further underground.

Dawkins pointed to the federal Liberals cautious tone, and intense lobbying by large licensed producers, pharmacies and liquor stores, as signs the government could be headed towards a strict regime without space for smaller growers or dispensaries.

If youre selling cannabis in a liquor store, in this tightly-controlled regulatory environment, youre not creating tourism. There was no winery tourism in B.C. until they began to de-regulate the winery sector and allow for all these wineries to pop up in the Okanagan, he said.

Cannabis is no different. No one is going to fly to Vancouver to go to a pharmacy and buy the Budweiser of joints.

The Southern Interior community of Nelson has put forward a resolution asking the Union of B.C. Municipalities to lobby the federal government to share tax revenue from legal marijuana with provinces and cities.

Teresa Taylor, a founding director of the Craft Cannabis Association of B.C., warned that if an elitist legal system is created, the black market will flourish. She said craft cannabis growers are ma and pa farmers who care about producing a high-quality product.

In order for us to continue to have strong local economies, the legislative model needs to include that level of production. I think it would be akin to losing something like the forestry industry or mining or fisheries, she said.

We depend on this. We need it to stay in place, and not only that, but we need it to be recognized as a valuable and noble agricultural profession.

Vancouver lawyer John Conroy said he believes the Liberals are open to allowing craft growers.

He said Canadians have already proven they dislike a system that limits marijuana sales to big companies. In February, Conroy won a constitutional challenge of 2013 legislation that required medical cannabis patients to buy from large licensed producers.

Before the 2013 law, patients could obtain Health Canada licences to grow their own marijuana. A court injunction has kept the old program alive for about 28,000 people, including Lane.

The Liberals are expected to amend the law to allow for both systems to co-exist by late August.

People have already shown that the licensed-producer process is not working, and voted with their feet, creating the demand for the dispensaries, said Conroy. Thatll happen again, if the government doesnt provide reasonable access.

 Follow @ellekane on Twitter.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 11/06/2016 (2328 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG  Manitoba New Democrats will have a new leader by late next year.

The partys provincial council met Saturday and decided that a replacement for former premier Greg Selinger will be chosen, at the latest, by the end of October 2017.

Selinger announced he would step down after losing the April 19 election, and has been replaced on an interim basis by former cabinet minister Flor Marcelino.

The council also decided that a party convention will be held before the end of next March to lay down ground rules and address some of the controversies that surrounded the 2015 leadership race, which saw Selinger barely survive an internal coup.

Party president Ovide Mercredi says the party will work out how much of a role the labour movement will play, whether the party will use delegates to choose a leader or allow every member a vote, and other matters.

In the 2015 race, labour unions were allotted 31 per cent of delegate slots, and almost half of those went to the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which backed Selinger.

Theresa Oswald, who came within 33 votes of unseating Selinger, protested the allotment but the party brass ruled against her.

The NDP constitution needs to be clarified. It needs to be completed, Mercredi said Saturday.

No one has declared their candidacy so far.

A one-member-one vote system could favour former cabinet minister Steve Ashton, who has run twice for the party leadership and has signed up large numbers of new party members each time.

Ashton, 60, finished third in the 2015 leadership race, and has not ruled out another try.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/06/2016 (2327 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  The New Democrats are urging the Liberal government to decriminalize pot before they legalize it.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned on a promise to legalize, regulate and restrict access to marijuana, and his government plans to get started next spring.

Meanwhile, the existing criminal law remains on the books and police are expected to enforce it.

A woman smokes a joint during the annual 420 marijuana rally on Parliament hill on Wednesday, April 20, 2016 in Ottawa. The New Democrats are urging the Liberal government to decriminalize pot before they legalize it.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned on a promise to legalize, regulate and restrict access to marijuana, and his government plans to get started next spring THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

The NDP is introducing an opposition day motion on Monday calling on the House of Commons to recognize there is a contradiction in giving people criminal records for something the government has said should not be a crime.

The motion also calls on the government to decriminalize simple possession of marijuana for personal use immediately.

Arresting people and giving them criminal records for possession of small quantities just doesnt seem fair, in light of their commitment, apparently, to legalize marijuana, New Democrat MP Murray Rankin said Sunday.

Rankin also said the law is being applied inconsistently across the country, which adds to the unfairness.

Rankin said one way to decriminalize it without having to wait for legislation to make its way through Parliament would be to have Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould issue a directive under the Public Prosecutions Act ordering Crown counsel to avoid proceeding with prosecution for simple possession offences.

I just think the sensible thing to do would be to no longer charge people until we can get the reformed regime in place, said Rankin.

Health Minister Jane Philpott formally announced in April the federal governments plan to legalize and regulate marijuana when she spoke to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

We know it is impossible to arrest our way out of this problem, Philpott told a special session on global drug policy as she revealed the promised legislation could come in spring 2017.

That same day, Trudeau argued it would be irresponsible to decriminalize marijuana in the meantime.

We believe in the legalization and regulation of marijuana because it protects our kids and keeps money out of the pockets of criminal organizations and street gangs, Trudeau told the House of Commons.

The fact of the matter is that decriminalization, as the member proposes, actually gives a legal stream of income to criminal organizations. That is not what anyone wants in this country, Trudeau said.

Trudeau acknowledged in a 2013 interview with the Huffington Post that he had smoked pot occasionally, including once after being elected as an MP.

Trudeau also revealed in that interview that his youngest brother, Michel, had been charged with marijuana possession not long before he died in a 1998 avalanche.

That influenced his choice to first support the decriminalization of marijuana, Trudeau said, which later changed to legalization after he was convinced it was the best way to keep it away from children.

Liberal MP Bill Blair, a former Toronto police chief and parliamentary secretary to the justice minister, confirmed in February that police should continue enforcing Criminal Code provisions on marijuana.

Quite frankly, until those laws are repealed by Parliament through the appropriate processes, they should be upheld, they should be obeyed, said Blair.

He was responding to members of the police community who had said the discussion surrounding legalization had created confusion, especially for officers on the front lines tasked with enforcing the law.

On May 26, Toronto police along with city municipal licensing and standards officials raided 43 marijuana dispensaries.

They arrested 90 people, including shop owners and employees.

A coalition of marijuana dispensaries in Toronto said police and city officials made a major mistake in targeting the pot shops and called for the charges to be dropped.

Some Torontonians denounced the operation  called Project Claudia  as a waste of police resources, while others questioned the timing.

Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders dismissed the criticism, saying the raids were prompted by health concerns and complaints from the community.

 Follow @smithjoanna on Twitter
In just under two weeks, the people of the UK will vote on whether or not they want to remain part of the European Union.

Ireland's campaign has intensified with the announcement that Taoiseach Enda Kenny is to meet UK Prime Minister David Cameron in Manchester in the coming week.
As planes packed with Irish fans head to France, one Ryanair flight had a special guest, writes Claire Anderson.

Ruby Walsh was spotted by other passengers and they proceeded to burst into song.

He looks a tiny bit mortified, but Walsh and the other passengers were certainly feeling Irish pride on what looked like a great flight.

Walsh went to France to ride Un De Sceaux in the French Champion Hurdle in Auteuil and claimed victory with Footpad in the Grade One Prix Alain du Breil.

He will surely be supporting the boys in green as well.

We hope he didn't think he'd go unnoticed!

We're sure the journey continued with the Kaiser Chiefs' Ruby and maybe some of Christy Moore's The Ballad of Ruby Walsh.
There are calls for the law to be changed in this country to ensure employees receive fair redundancy entitlements.

It comes as Clerys workers hold a rally outside the former store today to mark one year since its closure.
Dozens of military army officers, including some senior ones, have been arrested over an alleged plot to overthrow long-time president Yoweri Museveni, Ugandan sources said.

Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Ankunda said on Sunday that more officers are being held over alleged acts of subversion. One of those in detention is a colonel with Uganda's air forces.
Witnesses to America's worst ever mass shooting described their efforts to flee the scene.

Omar Mateen killed 50 people in a shooting spree in an Orlando nightclub which had more than 300 people inside.

Jackie Smith was sitting with two friends who got shot.

She said: "Some guy walked in and started shooting everybody. He had an automatic rifle, so nobody stood a chance.

"I just tried to get out of there."

Ms Smith did not know the conditions of her wounded friends. She came out of the hospital and burst into tears.

Christine Leinonen drove to Orlando at 4am after learning of the shooting from a friend of her 32-year-old son, Christopher Leinonen, who was at Pulse and is missing.

She had not heard from her son and feared the worst.

"These are nonsensical killings of our children," she said, sobbing. "They're killing our babies!"

She said her son's friend Brandon Wolf survived by hiding in a toilet and running out as the bullets flew.

A woman who was outside the club early Sunday was trying to contact her 30-year-old son, Eddie, who texted her when the shooting happened and asked her to call police. He told her he ran into a toilet with other club patrons to hide.

He then texted her: "He's coming."

"The next text said: 'He has us, and he's in here with us'," Mina Justice said. "That was the last conversation."

Barmaid Tiffany Johnson said she initially thought the gunshots were music. But after a second shot, there was a pause, followed by more shots. That was when Ms Johnson realised something was wrong.

Ms Johnson said people dropped to the ground and started running out of the club. She ran to a fast-food restaurant across the street and met one of her customers who let her get in his car. They drove away.

Clubgoer Rob Rick said the shooting started just as "everybody was drinking their last sip".

He estimated more than 100 people were still inside when he heard shots, got on the ground and crawled toward a DJ booth. A bouncer knocked down a partition between the club area and an area where only workers are allowed. People were then able to escape through the back of the club.

Christopher Hansen said he was in the VIP lounge when he heard gunshots. He continued to hear shooting even after he emerged and saw the wounded being tended across the street.

"I was thinking, 'Are you kidding me?' So I just dropped down. I just said, 'Please, please, please, I want to make it out'," he said. "And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood. You hope and pray you don't get shot."
WASHINGTON: Kevin McCarthy, who could soon be second in line to the White House, startled US allies when he warned...
Our Prime Minister has just declared himself (to snorts of derision from some of us) to be a "feminist". And so we look forward to him making a generous personal contribution from his plump wallet to a particular fund-raising "tax-time appeal" just launched by the National Library of Australia.

The library, these days resembling a church mouse,* does not have enough shekels of its own to digitise all of its fine collection of materials relating to the story of women's suffrage. Those materials include the the personal papers of feminist and social activist Bessie Rischbieth (1874-1967).

Alex Pye tortured by tedium of rural Australian life.

The library's priceless suffrage stuff includes as well as papers some objects, including, pictured, a medal that the UK suffragists of the Women's Social and Political Union awarded to sisters who were arrested and imprisoned and often cruelly force fed (tubes forced down gullets).

Our picture is of the medal given "For Valour" to hunger striker Letitia Withall. It is part of the Bessie Rischbieth collection. Your columnist has seen and held this medal and can testify to what a grand and touching artefact it is. If only it could speak! Its ribbon (note the famous suffragette colours) is eerily new-looking as if it was pinned on the proud and deserving Letitia just yesterday. True feminists, like this columnist and surely the Prime Minister too, think it a feisty thing that the suffragettes insisted their sisters were showing at least as much valour in fighting for the vote as medal-winning men show in blokey war fighting. There are Suffragettes' harrowing descriptions of their force feedings online at The History Learning Site.
It's extraordinary that every time someone has reached into their pocket, purse or wallet for some cash in Australia over the past 50 years they have directly benefited from the work of Dr Neil Davey.

Retired Treasury official Dr Neil Davey, at home in Torrens, has been appointed an Officer (AO) in the General Division of the Order of Australia in this year's Queen's Birthday Honours, for his work in developing Australia's decimal currency. Credit:Jamila Toderas

The retired Treasury official, dubbed Mr Decimal, was one of the architects of the decimal system which this year celebrated its 50th anniversary as the nation changed from pounds, shillings and pences to dollars and cents, on February 14, 1966.

Dr Davey, now 95 and living quietly in a home he had built in Torrens with his wife Maria, has been recognised in the Queen's Birthday Honours, appointed an Officer (AO) in the General Division of the Order of Australia.
"I love the children and you get to know the mothers, especially those who are here long term.

She's there every Tuesday to help the nursing staff do anything from change nappies to hold a baby to sit and chat with a mother. "I enjoy it," she said.

Maud Bennett, a volunteer with the Centenary Hospital for Women and Children, gives a cuddle to 10-month-old Romeo Rosenman Johnson from north Canberra. Credit:Jamila Toderas

The Conder grandmother is a volunteer in the paediatrics ward at the Centenary Hospital for Women and Children in Canberra.

"We've had children who have been in here for a year and you get to know them fairly well."

Mrs Bennett has been awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the Queen's Birthday Honours for her service to the community, particularly at the Canberra Hospital for the past 15 years. She also volunteered in aged care for five years prior to that.

"I was surprised," she said. "I received two letters saying I might get one. I'm a very casual sort of person and I wouldn't be upset if I didn't get one. I'm pretty easygoing."

With five children and eight grandchildren of her own, Mrs Bennett said she sometimes felt like a surrogate grandmother to some of the children in the hospital.

"Sometimes, particularly when their parents can't be there all the time," she said.
Amazon will "eat all our breakfasts, lunches and dinners," Wesfarmers boss Richard Goyder warned his fellow retailers in March. As the boss of the conglomerate that owns No. 2 supermarket chain Coles, Mr Goyder best mind his meals.

Amazon, the world's biggest retailer, says it is coming.

Vegetables for home delivery in Australia might be an Amazon project within the next year or two. Credit:Kerrie O'Brien

An Amazon executive says the $US338.7 billion retailer could launch its fresh and frozen food delivery service, known as Amazon Fresh, in Australia as early as next year  and could quickly snaffle billions in sales in a grocery market worth $90 billion.

"We know there is value in Australia," Amazon's Brittain Ladd told Fairfax Media. "I definitely believe Amazon will be in Australia."
So what if it isn't actually Queen Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg and Gotha's birthday today, CBD still believes we should still take her honours list very seriously.

James Packer might even send a birthday card after mum Ros Packer got a gong.

CBD's favourite Reserve Bank governor of all time, Glenn 'Chill Out' Stevens also gets a gong ahead of his big exit.

Will we ever get another RBA governor who could sit there straight-faced and say in response to a question about the cash rate: "We've got Christmas. We should just chill out, come back and see what the data says."
They only cost $500,000, but Dror Ben-Asher has turned the drugs he bought from a failing Australian drug company a few years back into valuable assets that underpin the $US150 million worth of the drug company he runs.

Of the three drugs he bought from Giaconda, majority owned by Sydney gastroenterologist Julius Borody, Mr Ben-Asher reckons two could be blockbuster drugs that could result in shareholders in the company recouping some of their money even though the company collapsed five years ago with its shares long delisted from trading on the sharemarket.

Dror Ben-Asher. Credit:Steven Siewert

Investors in local biotech stocks rarely make any money since it can take decades of work and hundreds of millions of dollars to develop and obtain the approvals to begin selling a drug. And the rate of research failure is high, typically with the millions of dollars spent on developing a drug wasted.

But Mr Ben-Asher has adopted a conservative approach, limiting the downside of his investment by taking control of drugs that are already well advanced in their clinical trials, so they are much closer to getting approval to sell. And typically, companies run out of money and investors out of interest making it difficult for cash-starved biotech outfits to continually raise the money they need to stay afloat, which provides him with the entre to pick up assets on the cheap.
Listed health insurer NIB has accused the government of "squibbing it" by not allowing private health insurers to charge smokers and overweight people more.

But consumer group Consumers Health Forum has welcomed the government's plan to rank cover under the categories of bronze, silver and gold and to make medical billing simpler.

There are many issues in the health industry that need fixing to ensure cheaper insurance premiums. Credit:Magnus Laupa

The government also announced plans for minimum standards in policies, specific policies for people in rural areas and developing standard definitions for medical procedures.

More than half of the Australian population has some form of private health insurance and the Private Health Insurance Rebate costs taxpayers $6.3 billion a year.
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, reacting to reports Mondelez was shutting down some production lines at its Nabisco subsidiary in Chicago while boosting output in Mexico.

Corporate America is getting an unwanted work-out during Donald Trump's bid for the Presidency Credit:AP

Trump's statement that Mondelez was closing a Chicago factory was erroneous, as the company 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.
Workers are being urged to form co-operatives they collectively own to protect their entitlements and to out-do Uber and Airtasker at their own game.

US lawyer Janelle Orsi, who was in Sydney at Vivid Ideas last week, said the business model used by Uber, Airtasker and Airbnb could be cloned and used in a way that could protect a growing number of workers from exploitation.

She said a few giant companies had created a good business model but they had little incentive to do the right thing by workers. But workers could eventually create their own online apps instead of using the ones owned by billionaires.

Ms Orsi, from the Sustainable Economies Law Centre in California, said there were winners and losers in the gig economy. While many benefit from the independence of contract work, others flounder and struggle to make enough money to survive. She said some workers had been sacked with no understanding of why they had lost their jobs.
This week Australians will start casting their votes in the federal elections when pre-polling opens on Tuesday. Without speculating too much about the outcomes, it is relatively safe to say that far-right fringe parties such as Rise Up Australia, Australia First Party or the newly established Australian Liberty Alliance won't be major winners. They might have been successful in spreading their anti-egalitarian, racist and anti-Muslim agenda in the media and in public street rallies, supported by neo-Nazi and other radical movements like the United Patriot Front (UPF), but most of us disregard them as what they are  fringe groups that speak the minds of only a small and electorally marginal minority of Australians.

But this is only half of the story. The other half is more concerning and less discussed. The danger of these groups and their divisive and socially harmful propaganda lies somewhere else than in their electoral success: they may subtly push the normative boundaries in the public and political discourse around multiculturalism, equality and the place of Islam and Muslims in Australia.

Protesters from rival groups, many wearing masks or balaclavas, fight each other in Coburg. Credit:Mathew Lynn

The radical message of the groups and movement are not as disconnected from the views of some mainstream politicians and opinion leaders or even government policies as we would like to think. This becomes most palpable in the public discourse around Islam.

Take the fear-peddling debates around halal food. Demonising the halal certification system as a form of religious taxes that may finance terrorist activities is an irrational conspiracy theory  proven completely unfounded by a Senate inquiry. Yet it has become a major argument not only in the Islamophobia tool kit of extremist groups like the Australian Liberty Alliance (ALA).
Great sea changes of foreign-policy opinion are rare in Australian politics, taking place perhaps once in a generation. But there is ample evidence that we are undergoing one now.

We all know that Australia has marched in lockstep with the US in every major military dispute for decades. Less apparent, however, is how deeply skeptical we are about Washington's staying power in Asia and how relaxed we are about China's rise.

The United States Studies Centre released a survey last week on Asian-Pacific views on the United States' place in the region. The findings are striking: 80 per cent of Australians believe America's best days are behind it and 53 per cent think China will or has already replaced the US as the world's leading superpower. To the extent that such attitudes prevail, they are inimical to the notion of US global leadership in the post-Cold War era.

There is good reason to believe that such attitudes will prevail, especially if the Coalition is re-elected on July 2. Although the Gillard government enhanced security ties with the US in 2011-13, its conservative successors have struck a different tone, lest our defence posture upsets China.
My thanks for all the correspondence from all you Fairfax readers, regarding my item on the hideousness of the upper house member Robert Borsak's boasting of having shot elephants at six paces, and eating them. Illustration: Reg Lynch I received 98 per cent support, and the only correspondence that disagreed was predictably written in crayon. The best response of the lot, however, came from a comment written below the piece, from a reader. "I think shooters should hunt each other in special reserves," "Boukefalos" wrote. "This would add a lot more excitement and greater skills to the thrill of hunting. Those who survive could feel very smug in the knowledge they've done their bit for animal conservation and the ones that are killed would die similarly happy. This would also give them an appreciation of what the animals must feel when they are hunted, as hunters say they like to bond with their prey." Brilliant. Serious question for all you big bully-boy hunters who call it sport to shoot defenceless animals  who, like the execrable Borsak, think you can prove your "manliness" in this manner. How many of you would venture into the bush, into the jungle, to slaughter animals, if you knew there was even one chance in a hundred that one rabbit was in there with a small calibre revolver to fire back at you?

Crickets. You cowards. You heard me. Not a winner You know those films that look so absolutely fabulous in the trailers that you go to see them, only to find that the producers really have plucked the best 90 seconds out of the two hours, and there really isn't much left over after that?

Well, Money Monster, with George Clooney and Julia Roberts, which I saw with Mrs TFF last weekend, was like that. The premise was fascinating, the set-up pretty strong, but, somehow ... it just didn't quite work. Jodie Foster is a fabulous actor, but as a director, I'm not sure that brilliance is matched. (Mind you, my view might be coloured by the fact that when I interviewed Foster in 2007 at the Park Hyatt, I had the distinct impression I must have had dog poo on my shoe throughout, so spectacularly did her nose wrinkle. But, no, it was just me!) Joke of the week In late 1996, just after Bill Clinton had beaten Bob Dole in the presidential election but before the inauguration, Bill and Hillary are in the presidential motorcade just leaving Little Rock, Arkansas, heading back to the airport, where Airforce One is awaiting to take them back to Washington. As they pass by a tiny, dingy little garage on the edge of town, just as dusk falls, Hillary points it out and says, "You see that garage, Bill? I used to go out with the man that owns that garage."

Wryly amused, the president chortles and says, "That is amazing, Hillary! Just think, if you had married him, you'd be the wife of a garage proprietor." "No, Bill," Hillary says firmly. "If I'd married him, he'd be president." They said it "Do it once, do it right, and do it with fibre." This line from the independent candidate for New England Tony Windsor, on the subject of the NBN, drew huge applause from the Q&A audience, and afterwards on Twitter.

"Most of the ALP's promises on funding start with 'b', most of the LNP's promises start with 'm.' Bernard Keane, Crikey's political editor, on Sky News. "Don't let anyone tell you that great things can't happen in America." Hillary Clinton on getting the Democratic Party's nomination. "The last time there was this much excitement was when Hugh Jackman came to town."

Gerald  no last name given  a resident of Picton, about having Malcolm Turnbull visit the town. "That's a slap in the face to the voters of this nation." Pauline Hanson after Malcolm Turnbull said she wasn't welcome in Parliament. "What do we have to say to get the message across?" Acting Assistant Police Commissioner Kyle Stewart about the fact that people still try to drive through flood waters despite all the warnings not to. Do you really want to know? It starts with "OI!" and ends with "cking idiots!"

"I am not guilty, Your Honour." Former NSW minister Eddie Obeid, accused of wilful misconduct. "There was no one else in the entire NSW police force who could deal with these issues, other than you?" Jeremy Gormly, Counsel Assisting the Lindt Cafe inquest, asking the police negotiator commander if he had really been trying to control five situations in NSW including the siege. "That's the case. That's the protocols."

"Graeme", the Negotiator Commander in reply. "We are up for it! We will be back bigger and better than ever before." Mark Doepel, Coogee SLSC president, refusing to allow this week's storm damage to get him down. They breed them tough, down Coogee way, and I have the scars to prove it. "When we get up in the morning it's smoothies: mango, berries, flaxseed, chia seed and spinach. By 9am the kids have had a full rainbow of food." Sydney-sider and vegan, Amanda Brewer, has moved on from the idea she grew up with, of meat and three veg.
The state's farmers have lopped paddock trees at an accelerating rate in the past 18 months even before a new land-clearing law eases controls further, government data shows.

The new figures, which reveal the rate of clearing of paddock trees has more than doubled since November 2014, come as the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists wrote to all MPs to call for a reversal of "retrograde changes" planned in the new Biodiversity Conservation act.

Farmers have been cutting down paddock trees at an increasing rate. Credit:Scott Hartvigsen

NSW farmers used a new self-assessment code to remove 21,716 paddock trees  or more than 50 a day  over the past year and a half.

The rate, at an average of about 50 per day, was 140 per cent more than the average over the previous seven years, data from the Office of Environment and Heritage showed. Paddock trees, judged to be single or small patches of trees, make up 40 per cent of remaining woodland cover, OEH says.
Parliamentary staff were working for the Liberal-linked software company that has transferred large sums of money to the party exceeding $1 million, emails obtained by Fairfax Media show.

The emails suggest that government staff were simultaneously doing work for Parakeelia Pty Ltd, a company that MPs pay $2500 a year in taxpayer allowances to use its Feedback software. Parakeelia has in turn become the Liberals' second-biggest source of income.

"Training sessions are provided regularly and there is no cost involved," a 2014 email from Sallyann Innes obtained by Fairfax reads.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has condemned the killing of 50 people in a US gay nightclub as "a murderous attack on gay people" and an assault on freedom.

He warned Australians against complacency following the worst mass shooting in modern American history, describing the atrocity as "an attack on all of us".

And he conveyed Australians' deepest sympathies, condolences and solidarity to the victims and their families.
Tony Abbott's staff considered involving Australian troops in the conflict between Ukraine and Kremlin-backed rebels during the MH17 crisis, potentially making them targets, a leading defence scholar says.

Former Australian Army officer James Brown, writing in the latest Quarterly Essay, described Mr Abbott's handling of defence as "the clearest case in recent times of a prime minister struggling to grasp the limits of Australian military power".

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott greets Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 2014 G20 Summit in Brisbane. Credit:Andrew Meares

In an essay that excoriates the lack of strategic sophistication in Australian politics and the inadequate checks on prime ministerial power when it comes to deploying troops, Mr Brown said Australia needs "a better system for deciding to go to war".
A fake card ready to be imprinted with details. Wang, as he asked to be called, solicited for business through his profile on this app. He also offered false documents created using "first-class techniques" that would defeat Australia's anti-counterfeiting and anti-forgery measures. Buyer: Can people open a fake bank account with all your ID or will they catch the person? "Will not (get caught)," Wang responded. "My other customers already try it." Wang and his associates had a range of false documents on offer  Victorian and NSW driver's licences, school-identification cards, university diplomas and disabled-parking permits  all deliverable within a week of payment.

Each piece can be customised, allowing buyers to create a fake identity from scratch or to impersonate someone. To demonstrate the counterfeiting ring's bona fides, Wang sent us photographs showing a boxes of blank cards, ready for hundreds of identities to be imprinted on them. The quality of the counterfeit Medicare card, which accounts for 25 verification points under Australia's system, was described as "high" later by law enforcement sources we consulted. A digital sample of a Victorian driver's licence was an older version of the ID now available, but still valid and of "good" quality. It would be worth 40 points. "Once you've amassed 100 points the system is wide open," the police source told Fairfax Media. "You can also continue to build on that false identity by using it to apply for other legitimate pieces of ID."

Working in parallel to those conmen manufacturing fake ID documents are those who steal the identities of others by raiding rubbish bins and letterboxes, or scanning Facebook for personal details. In a 2015 report, the Australian Crime Commission warned that identity theft is a "key enabler" of organised criminal activities. "Stolen or false identities can be used by criminals to perpetrate frauds and to establish business structures and companies through which to facilitate crimes such as money laundering," the ACC reported. The welfare and tax systems are vulnerable to those who can vault identity requirements, and fraudsters can also "gain unauthorised access to sensitive information or facilities, to conceal other criminal activities such as drug trafficking and procuring child exploitation material, and even to facilitate the commission of terrorist acts." In Victoria, the number of offences relating to making, possessing or using false documents has more than doubled in the past five years, according to the Crime Statistics Agency.

Operations range from kitchen-table counterfeiters using store-bought scanners and printers to highly sophisticated enterprises with international connections. Last year, a joint state-federal investigation broke up a counterfeiting syndicate that tried to smuggle 5000 security holograms  used on NSW driver's licences  from China. Operation Mera also seized thousands of blank cards, electronic card templates, card readers, and fraudulent Australian and overseas identity documents. Despite strict privacy laws and tightening digital security measures, the reality underpinning the counterfeiting and ID-theft black market is that it's remarkably easy to obtain and use stolen personal information. .In one incident, a stolen driver's licence was used by a drug trafficker to buy a property in rural Victoria to manufacture large quantities of methylamphetamine and store a cache of firearms. In another, documents, including a valid UK passport, were stolen from a garbage bin after someone had died and his belongings were being thrown out.

Details scraped from Facebook have been used to pass verification checks for major online gambling operators, allowing criminals to establish de facto anonymous accounts to hide or transfer money. A false Medicare card inscribed with the name and number of a real person means someone can receive bulk-billed medical services  even though the magnetic strip does not work  due to a weakness in the government's electronic billing system. Law enforcement sources also say that organised crime groups will buy IDs and other personal documents stolen during thefts and burglaries. These IDs are then used to order untraceable mobile phones or facilitate crimes like money laundering, concealing the proceeds of crime, travelling interstate on an alias or importing drugs through the mail. But entire identities can also be stolen without someone ever losing their wallet or misplacing a document.

One NSW victim, who asked to have her name withheld, discovered only by accident that someone in Melbourne had allegedly created a copy of her NSW driver's licence and used it open a bank account, get a credit card and obtain four mobile phones worth $5500. "I have no idea how they got my details. I haven't had my licence stolen, my car or home has never been broken into. I've been told [by police] my identity details were found on a USB in a different state along with a lot of others." The alleged fraudster, Josephine Baldari, is currently facing more than 90 charges in Melbourne Magistrates Court relating to mail theft, making and using stolen IDs, obtaining property by deception and retaining stolen goods. The operation allegedly involved Ms Baldari using a laptop computer and off-the-shelf printer and laminator to modify or create photo IDs and other documents, including Victorian and NSW driver's licences, birth certificates, and Centrelink concession cards. The IDs were then allegedly used to open bank accounts, obtain credit cards and post office boxes and order mobile phones.
A body found on rocks in Sydney's northern beaches is believed to be a fisherman who went missing nearly a day earlier.

A man's body was found just before 11am on Sunday in Dolphin Bay at Whale Beach.

Surf Life Saving NSW said the body is believed to be a 53-year-old man who had been fishing off a rock platform on Saturday afternoon.

When the man did not return home, his family raised the alarm. The man's son found his empty car in a car park on Sunday, Surf Life Saving NSW said.
Traffic has eased and buses have returned to schedule after a council bus crashed into a traffic light Monday morning.

EARLIER

Bus crashed into pole near Victoria Bridge. Credit:Mikefc/@coolbutuseless/Twitter

A bus has crashed into a pole near Victoria Bridge causing a traffic snarl for motorists.

The bus crashed into a traffic light on the corner of of William Street and Victoria Bridge just after 7.30am.
Police are appealing for the public's help to locate a man missing from Airlie Beach, north of Mackay.

The 40-year-old man has been missing since the early hours of Friday morning. He was last seen by a friend at a Shute Harbour Road, Jubilee Pocket address around 4.30am and police hold concerns for his welfare as he suffers from a medical condition.

Police have released this image of the man reported missing in Airlee Beach. Credit:missing

He is described as Caucasian, 175cm tall and of muscular build with blonde hair and blue eyes. He was last seen wearing a collared white short sleeved shirt and chequered shorts.
Nearly 100 Queenslanders have been recognised in the 2016 Queen's Birthday honours list, acknowledging their service to the community.

But, unlike their counterparts in other states, they are not getting a day off on Monday to celebrate thanks to the Queensland government's decision to move the holiday to October.

Governor-General Peter Cosgrove made the Queen's Birthday honours list public on Monday. Credit:Peter Rae

Among the Queenslanders recognised was former federal MP Peter Lindsay, who has been awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia.

"This is not just an award for me, it's an award to the Townsville community," Mr Lindsay said.
The state opposition has warned of more taxes and cuts to south-east Queensland's public transport network following the Palaszczuk government's long-awaited release of it fare review.

The measures adopted as a result of the review would see fares cut across the network, which would be reduced from 23 to eight zones, from January next year.

Train travel in south-east Queensland will be cheaper from next January. Credit:Michelle Smith

Transport Minister Stirling Hinchliffe said, based on "conservative" estimates of increased patronage, the changes would cost the government up to $210 million over the budget forward estimates.
A 35-year-old man has been released without charge from Caboolture police station after he was taken in for questioning shortly after the body of 21-month-old boy was discovered on Saturday morning.

The body of the toddler, who has been named as Mason, was found around 12.30am at 20 Deanne Court and the case was described by police as "very upsetting".

Police have scoured the Caboolture home where a boy was found dead. Credit:Toby Crockford

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the death had had a "huge impact" across Queensland.

"I am completely devastated hearing about that as I think a lot of families (would be) as well," she said.
A man has died and another has been seriously injured after their car rolled and crashed into a tree in the Yarra Ranges on Sunday night.

A 46-year-old driver from Hurstbridge died at the scene and his 18-year-old passenger, also from Hurstbridge, was airlifted to the Alfred hospital with head injuries in a critical condition after the crash in Toolangi in Melbourne's north-east.

A passer-by raised the alarm on Sylvia Creek Road just after 7.30pm, police said.

It is believed the car lost control, rolled and crashed into a tree. Police will prepare a report for the Coroner.

Four people have been killed on Victorian roads over the Queen's Birthday weekend, bringing the state's road toll to 134 people.
A search has been called off for a man in his 30s and a primary school-aged girl after the pair were located on Sunday evening.

Police were searching for the kayakers after they failed to return to their rendezvous point around the Wellington area.

But Ambulance Victoria spokesman John Mullen said the two were located about 8.30pm and "no emergency care was required."

Emergency services had received a call out to Jamieson-Heyfield Road, Licola, about 6.30pm.

Earlier Victoria Police spokeswoman Julie-Anne Newman said police were aware that two people were "overdue" to be back at Licola, 243 kilometres east of Melbourne.
Florida shooting: Scores killed at Orlando gay nightclub in worst mass shooting in modern US history

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Washington: The Afghan-born father of Omar Mateen, the man police identified as the gunman who killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Florida, hosted a political show on a US-based Afghan satellite channel that took a hard anti-Pakistan line.

In an interview with NBC News on Sunday, Seddique Mateen, also known as Mir Siddique, said his son's rampage had "nothing to do with religion".

He described an incident in downtown Miami in which his son saw two men kissing in front of his wife and child and he became very angry.
Saturday night in Orlando, a man armed with an assault-style rifle killed at least 50 people and wounded 53 others in a crowded nightclub. Six months ago, in San Bernardino, California, a man and woman armed with assault-style rifles killed 14 people and wounded 20 others. In 2012, in Aurora, Colorado, a man armed with an assault-style rifle killed 12 people and wounded 58 others in a crowded movie theater. Also in 2012, in Newtown Connecticult, a man armed with an assault-style rifle killed 28 people and wounded 2 others at an elementary school.

One common denominator behind these and other high-casualty mass shootings in recent years is the use of assault style rifles, capable of firing many rounds of ammunition in a relatively short period of time, with high accuracy. And their use in these types of shooting is becoming more common: There have been eight high-profile public mass shootings since July of last year, according to a database compiled by Mother Jones magazine. Assault-style rifles were used in seven of those.

In the past 10 years, assault-style rifles have been used in 14 public mass shootings. Half of those shootings have occurred since last June.
Washington: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co chief executive and Republican donor Meg Whitman reiterated her opposition to Donald Trump as the party's presidential nominee and compared him to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Whitman made the comment on Friday at a conference hosted by previous Republican nominee Mitt Romney, while she challenged US Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan on his endorsement of Trump, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

Two participants at the off-the-record session in Park City, Utah confirmed Whitman's language to Reuters. Whitman could not immediately be reached for comment.

ABC News (US) also reported that the high-profile Republican fundraiser Whitman would likely be supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton in the November general election.
Johannesburg: The father of Reeva Steenkamp, the model murdered by Oscar Pistorius, will give evidence for the first time next week to ask for the athlete to be given a lengthy prison sentence.

Barry Steenkamp, a former racehorse trainer, suffered a series of strokes following his daughter's death and did not attend Pistorius's trial on his doctor's advice.

While his wife, June, sat through harrowing testimony about how their daughter screamed as she was gunned down, he opted to watch on television.

But next week, as Pistorius is sentenced for an upgraded murder conviction, Mr Steenkamp is expected to take to the witness box as the "final ace" up the prosecution's sleeve.
New Adjacent Fest to take on Bamboozle next May in Atlantic City

music
WITNESS TO THE REVOLUTION

Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul

Clara Bingham

Random House

611 pages; $30



"So much life, so much death; so much possibility; so much impossibility" - that's the way one activist summed up the end of the 1960s in the documentary "Berkeley in the Sixties." It's the first film on the "Watch List" in Clara Bingham's oral history of America in 1969 and 1970. Ms Bingham - a former Newsweek correspondent and the author of Class Action and Women on the Hill - interviewed over 100 people, many of whom speak eloquently about possibility and impossibility.
Debt-ridden automobile component maker Amtek is close to selling its profitable German unit, Tekfor, for about $700 million (Rs 4,690 crore) to an foreign buyer in a bid to reduce its debt.
Malls selling luxury brands are increasingly catching the fancy of property developers and corporate groups. At least half a dozen are either being built or being planned, said realty sources.
The Madras High Court has issued an order in favour of Sun Pharmaceuticals in a trademark dispute it has raised against Cadila Healthcare for the trademark of its depressive disorder drug VENIZ. The Court issued a permanent injunction against the latter using marks similar to Sun Pharma's particular trademark.

approached the High Court seeking permanent injunction restraining Cadila Healthcare and the related parties from manufacturing, stocking or selling pharmaceuitcal products under the trademark VENZ or any other trademark indentical or deceptively similar to its trademark VENIZ. It added that adopted the trademark VENIZ in August 2000 for medicines to treat depressive disorders and other psychotic disorders and Venlafaxine Extended Release capsule under the trademark VENIZ XR.
Vijay Mallya, the tycoon whos self-exiled in Britain to avoid probe agencies in this country, has accused the latter of pursuing a heavily biased investigation and holding him guilty without trial.
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and cyber security were among the issues Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed with US President Barack Obama during his US visit. As many as 9,622 cybercrimes were reported in India in 2014, an increase of 69 per cent over the previous year. Of this, 7,201 were reported as offences under the information technology (IT) Act, 2,272 under the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and 149 under special and local laws (SSL). Under the IT Act, 5,548 cases reported were computer-related offences, of which 4,192 were under Section 66A, which has a jail term of two or more years for sending "offensive messages through communication service" and related offences.
Tirupur Exporters' Association (TEA) on Sunday requested the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa to take up the issues facing the knitwear business during her June 14 meeting with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In a letter to her, President A Shaktivel highlighted an array of issues like the need for an Employee's State Insurance (ESI) hospital for Tirupur Knitwear Cluster workers, hostel for women workers' and Rs 200 crore central grant to set up effluent plants.

Stating that existing ESI centres in Tirupur do not have proper amenities for medical treatment, he said an ESI hospital in Tirupur with necessary facilities to cater to patients with various major health problems was the need of the hour.

Considering that more than five lakh workers mainly women are employed in the sector directly and indirectly, requested the Chief Minister to include the issue in the Memorandum and urge the PM to intervene and provide financial support to construct the same.

Though Tirupur was included in the list of Smart Cities, unfortunately while announcing implementation of the programme in the first and second phase, it was not done, he claimed.

The Tirupur knitwear trade contributes Rs 33,000 crore revenue a year, both from exports and the domestic market without any comparative advantages like counterpart cities, mainly in infrastructure and other business facilities.

Tirupur stood first among 506 cities and towns in India in terms of providing employment, he said, adding that 44% of its 8.78 lakh population was employed in the knitwear and stakeholder units.

The issue should be taken up with the Centre so that the city makes it to the next list of the Smart City programme, as it would directly help increase exports from that town and lead a quality life, Shaktivel said.

also emphasised the urgent need for working women's hostels and labour quarters to provide shelter for them, as 65% of the 3.5 lakh workers are women from a rural background.
Indian-American inventor Arogyaswami Paulraj, known for his contribution to faster wireless connectivity popularly known as MIMO, the core technology used in all modern wireless networks, said 'digital India' can be a major driver of the country's growth story, if executed in the right manner.

He also said that 'Make in India' is "a good slogan" but "it is a long way from a good slogan to execution".

"Digitisation of the country at every level will help and particularly with Adhaar, we can do a lot more. We really need to improve broadband access in India, which will be part of campaign and the way to do it is through wireless and the way to wireless is largely through Wi-Fi as the access is cheaper," Paulraj said.

MIMO is a core technology used in all modern wireless networks. Without it, high-speed Internet connections embodied in 4G LTE cellular and the latest Wi-Fi networks would not be possible. It will continue to be vital in the next generation of cellular networks, known as 5G.

Paulraj said that the Jan Dhan, Aadhar and Mobile trilogy is all in the right direction but everything depends on execution.

Comparing India with China, he said that while India as a country is more capable in many ways, it cannot execute as well as China does. "But we are a democracy and we move slowly but never the less we are heading in the right direction," he added.

He is "sceptical" about whether India can do what China did 20 years ago. Because Indian labour is already becoming expensive and since India is a democracy the country needs to think of a different way.

"I think one thing missing is government policy. If China has succeeded it succeeded because of government policy. I don't think we have an effective government policy. Make in India is a good slogan but it is a long way from a good slogan to execution," he said on the sidelines of the European Inventor Award ceremony held here.

He, however, does not believe in the free Wi-Fi model. "We need to build Wi-Fi in India and we need to think of a business model to make it work. The politicians keep saying it is going to be free, if it is free, then how do you get entrepreneurs to put up networks and run it, maintain it and then give it up for free? We have to find a better business model," he said.
Government is unlikely to settle Rs 3,000-crore dues towards committed liabilities arising out of 'blackout and leftout' period cases under technology upgradation scheme for the industry.

"They (liabilities related to the blackout/leftout period cases) will be given a silent burial. Of course, there is clamour from the industry but as of now, there is no plans to settle those liabilities amounting to Rs 3,000 crore," a top Textiles Ministry official told PTI.

The official cited paucity of funds as the main reason behind it.

The blackout period (June 20, 2010 to April 27, 2011) refers to the time when the government had halted subsidy payment temporarily, seeking to change the contours of the Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (TUFS) from an open-ended scheme to a closed-ended one, and announced the introduction of the revised scheme only from April 2011.

For those who had invested during those 10 months of blackout period were left out and are awaiting a decision on the eligibility of TUFS on the blackout period.

The settlement of committed liabilities has been a grey area after the government did not mention it when it notified the Amended Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (ATUFS) for the sector earlier this year.

The Union Cabinet approved the ATUFS in December, 2015, in place of the Revised Restructured TUFS for technology upgradation of textiles industry  a move aimed at boosting job creation and exports for the sector.

" industry is continuously under severe stress since April 2014 due to the non disbursal of committed liabilities under TUFS scheme and several hundreds of spinning mills are facing closure as they are likely to become NPAs (non-performing assets). Our request is to urgently disburse the committed liabilities under TUFS scheme and extend all the export benefits for cotton yarn under MEIS (Merchandise Exports from India Scheme) and IES on par with other textile products. Otherwise, such decisions of officials will lead to a dangerous situation of closure of these mills," Binoy Job, secretary general, Confederation of Indian Textile Industry said.
The central ministry of external affairs will hold a two-day India dialogue  Where geopolitics meets business here on Monday. It will get think tank and policy experts views on foreign policy and implications from and on international trade.
Any plan to revive distressed state-owned companies should not include selling of land and other capital assets of those companies, a high-powered panel under NITI Aayog on revival of sick public sector units (PSUs) is believed to have suggested. According to sources, it has also suggested that financial restructuring should always be the preferred option in any such plan.
With key reforms just announced by the rail ministry to boost freight traffic yet to show any impact, Indian Railways seems set to continue with the last financial year's dismal performance on freight transportation this financial year as well.
Coming to the defence of Raghuram Rajan, his Chicago University colleague and co-author Luigi Zingales said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor was being attacked for "fighting the inefficiency of the banking system" and for taking on the crony capitalists in the country.
Business Standard brings to you a five-part series on . We begin with Surat as the city prepares for a new future. Through the week, we will cover Bhubaneswar, Pune and Vizag as part of the governments 100 projects. In addition, we will look at Lavasa as a private initiative in smart city development



As you drive through the streets of Surat on a dark and cloudy afternoon, LED street lights spring a surprise on you. The streets light up automatically. You ride further and before you know it, you get a ticket on your smartphone for over-speeding. And, speed detectors have replaced traffic police  well, almost. Thats not all, an S-Connect Smart Card lets you pay the fine through a cashless transaction.
Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Youth Affairs and Sports, MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh has said that the Gorkha community has served the nation in most difficult times, through thick and thin, and the stories of their bravery, valour and patriotism are an example for others. .

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Dr Jitendra Singh was speaking to a delegation of Bharatiya Gorkha Parisangha", a national organization of Gorkhas in India, who called on him here yesterday for redressal of their long pending issues and sought his intervention, particularly considering the fact that out of over one crore Gorkha population in whole of India today, the major portion of over 35 lakh lives in the North-Eastern region of the country. .

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The delegation, led by its National President Shri S. M. Moktan, held a detailed meeting with Dr Jitendra Singh, wherein they brought up the issue of proper documents being provided to the members of the community to certify that they are permanent residents of the region. In the absence of such documents, they complained, they are sometimes seen as foreigners or illegal settlers or non-locals. In many States, they complained, that lack of such documentation has also deprived them from being enlisted in voters list. .

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Demanding OBC (Other Backward Class) status for Gorkha community, the members of the delegation requested for fair share in various incentives and avenues. They also urged that the Gorkhas living in the Northeast States may be involved in the development and economic activity in the region. The other demands put forward by the delegation included the request to include Gorkha language in the Eighth Schedule of Constitution and introduce Nepali language as a vernacular subject in schools and colleges. .

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Dr Jitendra Singh gave a patient hearing to the delegation.

He said, the Ministry of DoNER recognizes their sensitivities and added that many of the demands put forward by them do not strictly pertain to his Ministry and therefore he will forward them to the concerned Departments and Ministries. .

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Prominent among the delegation members included Shri V. B. Thupu from Uttar Pradesh, Shri D. C. Poudiyal and Shri P. P. Pradhan from West Bengal, Shri Guman Bhoj Limbo from New Delhi, Shri Jagannath Koirala from Meghalaya and Shri Bhupendra Adhikari from Uttarakhand. .

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British public opinion is too close to call on whether the country should stay in the European Union, with many voters still undecided as interest groups and political leaders make their cases, according to two polls released this weekend. An online survey by Opinium for the Observer newspaper showed 44 per cent support Britain remaining in the 28-nation bloc, up from 43 per cent a week ago. Some 42 per cent of respondents backed leaving the EU, also up 1 point from the poll released on June 4, as attitudes start to crystallise ahead of the June 23 referendum, but the differences aren't ...
US Treasury Secretary Jacob J Lew warned that the global economy would be damaged if the UK votes to leave the European Union on June 23. "It's in the best interest of Europe, the UK and the global economy and for geopolitical stability for the UK to stay in," Lew said in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," according to a transcript provided by the network. "I only see negative economic outcomes if the vote goes the other way." Lew added his voice to a chorus of leaders from within the EU about the risks of pulling ...
You might have heard of this before, but reiterating it is imperative. Facebook in India boasts of nearly 150 million active users. As a whole, is estimated to be touching 200 million in terms of active users in the country.
The growing traffic of online shoppers around the world is resulting in an unusual outcome. Buyers on platforms are now searching and discovering products on these sites rather than taking to engines such as Google. The tech giant, as a consequence, is not only feeling the traffic pinch, but these players (such as Amazon) are also taking away some part of its ad business.
Buoyed by victory of its candidates in biennial polls despite Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) 'hurdles', the Congress Party on Sunday said its success proves that 'democracy has won'.

"Our candidates were nominated for but the BJP used money power and unfair means, but all their efforts to buy the MLAs have failed and democracy has won," Congress leader P L Punia told ANI.

"No matter how hard the BJP tries to place hurdles and conspires to break (Congress MLAs). The Congress MLAs will always remain loyal are to the party," he added.

Punia also asserted that in a democracy, the voice of the people is most important, adding that the Congress party follows it.

"The people will never encourage those who use money power. In democracy, voice of the people is most important, and Congress follows it," he added.

The Congress leader further said all these parties trying to communalise the society will fail adding that the Congress ideology will prevail.

Meanwhile, another Congress leader Salman Khursid also alleged the BJP of using money power and administration to turn the battle on its side.

"After every two years these elections come and this time the BJP tried its best to turn the battle on its side, and it is the right of everyone to try their best, but the use of money in the procedure and using the administration against the opposition will destroy the laid structure," he said.

"Our MLAs were arrested in Jharkhand before they could vote and the money was also used in other states," he added.

Khurshid also said the political parties should sit and discuss the situation, so that the political environment is not polluted.

The Congress won six seats in the polls and the BJP-led alliance made significant gains with 12 seats in the biennial elections marked by cross-voting and a dramatic rejection of votes for a 'wrong pen'.

The other major gainer in the elections held for 27 seats across seven states include the Samajwadi Party which won seven seats in Uttar Pradesh. The Bahujan Samaj Party won two.

Out of the 58 seats that fell vacant in the Upper House this summer, the NDA has now won 23, improving upon the 18 seats it held earlier. The Congress, which held 15 of these seats, now has nine.
After much controversy the Central Board of Film Certification (CFBC) on Sunday gave the nod to Bollywood film 'Udta Punjab' with 'A' certificate.

The film highlights the rampant drug menace and its impact on the youth in Punjab.

The movie created a major controversy after it ran into trouble with the CFBC, with officials reportedly demanding 89 cuts in it and the removal of the word 'Punjab' from the title.

CBFC chief Pahlaj Nihalani, however, said the film certification board did not ask for removal of word 'Punjab' from the title.

"Today, the film has been passed with 'A' certificate. The claim of producer to remove the title of the film by board is false. We never asked for its removal. But he said so in front of the media to gain publicity. All these reports are false," said Nihalani.

The CBFC chief said that the final movie was being released with 13 cuts.

"The board recommended 13 cuts in the film, which are valid. All the words under those 13 cuts have been removed and the film has been passed," added Nihalani.

The Bombay High Court had last week slammed the CBFC for unjust censorship and said the body was meant to certify films and not censor them.

According to the Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Punjab accounts for 45 percent of all prisoners in the country convicted on drug-related charges. The state also accounts for 30 percent of under-trials facing such charges.

'Udta Punjab' has been directed by Abhishek Chaubey and stars Shahid Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor and Alia Bhatt in lead roles. It is scheduled to be released on June 17.
The Party on Sunday made important changes in its leadership in three states, including Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, where the polls are due to be held next year.

The has appointed senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad as the state in-charge of Uttar Pradesh and Kamal Nath as state in-charge of Punjab and Haryana respectively.

Azad and Nath have replaced Madhusudan Mistry and Shakeel Ahmad, who were earlier state in-charges of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab and Haryana.

Several questions are being asked about the Congress' leadership following the party's dismal performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and as well as the recent assembly elections.

On Saturday, the won six seats in the Rajya Sabha polls and the BJP-led alliance made significant gains with 12 seats in the biennial elections.

The other major gainer in the elections held for 27 seats across seven states include the Samajwadi Party, which won seven seats in Uttar Pradesh. The Bahujan Samaj Party won two seats.

Out of the 58 seats that fell vacant in the Upper House this summer, the NDA has now won 23, improving upon the 18 seats it held earlier. The Congress, which held 15 of these seats, now has nine.
The Congress Party on Sunday made important changes in its leadership in three states, including Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, where the polls are due to be held next year.

The Congress has appointed senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad as the state in-charge of Uttar Pradesh and Kamal Nath as state in-charge of Punjab and Haryana respectively.

Azad and Nath have replaced Madhusudan Mistry and Shakeel Ahmad, who were earlier state in-charges of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab and Haryana.

Several questions are being asked about the Congress' leadership following the party's dismal performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and as well as the recent assembly elections.

On Saturday, the Congress won six seats in the Rajya Sabha polls and the BJP-led alliance made significant gains with 12 seats in the biennial elections.

The other major gainer in the elections held for 27 seats across seven states include the Samajwadi Party, which won seven seats in Uttar Pradesh. The Bahujan Samaj Party won two seats.

Out of the 58 seats that fell vacant in the Upper House this summer, the NDA has now won 23, improving upon the 18 seats it held earlier. The Congress, which held 15 of these seats, now has nine.
Blowing the poll bugle for the next year's Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday expressed concern over the prevailing law and order situation in the state and said both development and governance have taken a backseat under the current Samajwadi Party-led regime.

Speaking to ANI on the sidelines on BJP's executive meeting, Union Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the saffron party had emerged as a party with its influence spreading to all parts.

"Our chief (Amit Shah) has clearly said that the BJP has spread across the country from Kanyakumari to Kashmir and from Kutch to Guwahati. We have won in Assam and won some seats in Kerala, West Bengal, these are good signs for the future. Next elections are in Uttar Pradesh and we have to secure a decisive win there," Prasad told ANI here.

"Other than this, the elections will be held in Gujarat, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Himachal. Our workers will work hard," he added.

He further said the nation cannot progress as long as Uttar Pradesh does not embark on the path of development.

"He expressed concern over prevailing situation in UP, the governance there, the Mathura incident. So, development and governance is lacking in the state. The country cannot progress unless UP develops. We will work so that BJP gets full majority in the state," he told ANI.

With an eye on next year's Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, the BJP's two-day executive meeting began here today.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who arrived here for the meet earlier today, told the BJP workers not to take the opposition lightly and counter their accusations by working for the people.

Besides Prime Minister Modi, the national executive meeting would be attended by party president Amit Shah, senior members of the Union Cabinet, Chief Ministers of the BJP-ruled states and Members of Parliament.

It is expected that during the proceedings, besides discussing many political issues, strategy will be chalked out for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. The achievements during two years of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre will be another highlight of the meeting.
A Hindu octogenarian has been beaten black and blue in Pakistan's rural Sindh district for eating during the fasting month of Ramazan.

Gokal Das, a resident of Hayat Pitafi in a remote village of Ghotki district, was beaten by a police constable and his brother while having biryani in public which was given to him in charity on Friday, reports the Express Tribune.

Police official Bachal Qazi confirmed that Das was having biryani at around 6 p.m. local time on Friday when Ali Hassan Haidrani and his brother Mir Hassan threw the elderly man on the ground and beat him black and blue.

Meanwhile, a case has been registered against Haidrani and his brother, who were subsequently arrested.

"We will seek remand of the two accused on Monday for further investigation," Qazi added.
American multinational information technology company Hewlett Packard's Chief Executive Meg Whitman has compared Republican presidential candidate in the 2016 U.S. elections Donald Trump to fascist leaders Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Whitman, who is also a republican donor made the comment at a conference hosted by previous Republican nominee Mitt Romney, while she challenged U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan on his endorsement of Trump, the Reuters quoted the Washington Post.

Trump has become the presumptive Republican nominee and is likely to run against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the November 8, 2016 U.S. election.

Trump on Saturday again targeted Democratic senator from Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren on Twitter.

"Goofy Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to as Pocahontas, pretended to be a Native American in order to advance her career. Very racist!" Trump tweeted.
Lithuania has banned Iron Maiden's world tour poster for scaring the children and violating the country's child protection laws.

Live Nation spokesman Mindaugas Paukste told a Russian website that the concert promotion company has received a letter, stating that the poster violates the country's child protection laws and ordered it to be removed, reports The Independent.

Paukste further said "Right now we have to decide how to carry on forward but we must also immediately take down the posters."

He added that the outcry was surprising as the advertising didn't cause problems anywhere else.

The heavy metal band, who is currently touring The Book of Souls, has been using a poster showing their gory monster mascot 'Eddie the Head' holding a bleeding heart in his claws and baring his yellow teeth as one of the promo materials.

The ban has come after the locals filed a complaint about the poster to the authorities, with some demanding it to be pulled from the websites and ticketing outlets advertising the gig.

Iron Maiden is set to play at Lithuania's Zalgiris Arena in Kaunas later this month.
Four policemen were injured in a terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Kulgam District on Sunday.

The incident took place when the terrorists fired at a patrol party near Qazigund region.

Earlier this month, a Jammu and Kashmir Police sub-inspector and a constable were killed when terrorists attacked a police party in Anantnag. The incident had taken place a day after two BSF jawans were killed in a terrorist attack in Bijbehara.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti had earlier condemned such incidents and said violence hampers peace efforts between India and its neighbour.
At least one person was injured in a firecracker explosion, which rocked the Shanghai Pudong International Airport this afternoon.

"Firecrackers explode at Shanghai Pudong Airport. At least 1 injured. Investigation under way," Xinhua news tweeted.

The blast reportedly took place at the airport's terminal 2.

CCTV News on its twitter handle posted pictures of the incident which showed medical staff assisting a man on a stretcher.

The Special Weapons and Tactics Unit (SWAT) team deployed on duty is presently inspecting the premise.

Meanwhile, the investigation is underway to find the exact cause of the explosion.

Details to follow.
In what can be said to be the most deadly attack in the United States since the 9/11 terror strike, at least 50 people were killed and 53 others wounded when a gunman opened fire at a crowded gay nightclub, Pulse, in Orlando earlier today.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is investigating the matter, said they are yet to determine if the crime was a terrorist attack or a hate-crime.

"We are conducting a general investigation (right now). We will determine officially whether it's a hate crime or a terrorism incident or even violent crime once we have all the facts in place. We are at a very early stage, we cannot give out things that are not 100 percent accurate," said an FBI official.

The FBI official said they do not want to 'jeopardise the investigation' by sharing information about which they are not sure.

"The subject has not been positively identified, so there is not much we can share at this time. Bear in mind that we do not want to jeopardise the investigation. We are confident that there are no threats to the immediate area," he added.

According to reports, the assailant was armed with an assault rifle and a handgun. The gunfire, which began inside the club, continued outside when an officer working at the Pulse attempted to confront him. The gunman then went back into the club, resumed shooting and took hostages.

Meanwhile, the Orlando Police dubbed the incident as 'terrible' and said their priority is to identify the victims and inform their families.

"There was one officer injured. He was hit on his head by the suspect, even though he was wearing a helmet, he got injured...We are in the early stages of investigation. We still do not know how he got inside the club. Preliminary info says he was in there and shots were fired," said Orlando Police Chief John Mina.

"(The incident) is absolutely terrible. 50 people being shot is one of the worst tragedies we have seen. Our priority right now is to identify the victims and notify the families. It's a tragedy, we need to be continue to be vigilant. Everyone should be vigilant any inform us about any suspicious activities around," he added.

The police have also asked the Orlando Mayor and the Governor to declare a state of emergency in the region.

"We have cleared the building. And it is with great sadness we are informing that it is not 20, but 50 causalities. In addition to the shooter, there are

another 53, who have been hospitalised. Because of the scale of the incident I have asked the Governor to declare a state of emergency, we are declaring a state of emergency for the city of Orlando," another official said.

Reports state that the gunman died in the shootout and an officer was also injured. The gunman did not belong from the Orlando area and was organized and well-prepared.

The death-toll is expected to rise.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu will pay a two-day an official visit to Sri Lanka beginning on June 14.

The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement said the Foreign Minister will be received by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, and Speaker of the Parliament Karu Jayasuriya, reports the Colombo Page.

He will also be meeting his Lankan counterpart Mangala Samaraweera, as well as Minister of Development Strategies and International Trade Malik Samarawickrema.

During his visit from June 14-15, theTurkish Foreign Minister will sign with his counterpart the "Memorandum of Understanding for Cooperation between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka on Diplomatic Training, Exchange of Information and Documentation".

The visit will provide an opportunity for both countries to discuss all aspects of bilateral relations and cooperation.
Fresh from its electoral victory in Assam and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's successful overseas trip, including the US, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday asserted that the two years of NDA government have been exceptionally good and a lot has been achieved.

"This year, two important things have happened. Firstly, our government, led by Narendra Modi, at the Centre has completed two years. And secondly, the performance of the Bharatiya Janata Party has been very good in the state assembly elections," party chief Amit Shah said in his presidential address at the party's National Executive meet here.

Referring to the recent polls, Shah said: "The victory in Assam has opened the gates to north-east India for the BJP."

"From Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Kutch to Guwahati, the BJP is expanding," he said.

Giving highlights of the party president's address to the media, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad later told reporters that Shah also compared the performance of the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government with that of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.

"While there was policy paralysis in the Congress-led government, our government has made progress with clear policy decisions -- where policy decisions are taken by the political leadership and the executive implements them," Prasad said quoting Amit Shah.

"The previous government was marred by policy paralysis. Our government has been a decisive government that has ended a lot of dilemmas of the previous regime," he said.

Prasad said the BJP president pointed out that the two years of the Modi government have been corruption-free.

Shah told the meeting, attended by senior ministers, BJP chief ministers, party MPs and state unit chiefs, among others, that: "The Congress-led UPA government was in a dilemma whether rural development should take precedence over urban development. Whether there should be reforms or social welfare?"

"Our government has overcome all such dilemmas by striking a fine balance between rural and urban development, reforms and social welfare and issues of governance," Prasad added, quoting Shah.

The party chief said that unlike in the past the "disconnect between the foreign and defence policy" has also been done away with in the last two years.

--IANS

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Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh's name may be doing rounds as the chief ministerial candidate in Uttar Pradesh, but it is Sultanpur MP Varun Gandhi who has emerged as the BJP "poster boy" here with hundreds of his hoardings dotting the city where the party is holding its two-day National Executive conclave.

Alongside Varun Gandhi's hoardings and posters of varying sizes in the city are those of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah.

The party leaders have gathered in Allahabad to brainstorm the strategy for the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, which are due next year. The National Executive meet will be attended by Modi, Shah and other top brass of the party.

The party has almost painted the city saffron with its posters and hoarding on either side of the roads -- from railway station and airport to K.P. School ground, where the BJP conclave is being held.

However, it is the BJP's Gandhi who is most seen on these posters. One of them, with larger than life image of Varun Gandhi, reads: "UP ki karun pukar, abki baar BJP sarkar (UP's passionate call for a BJP government this time) "

A grand reception awaited Varun Gandhi, who was scheduled to reach here later in the day. "He will be brought to the venue from the airport in a grand procession," one of Varun Gandhi supporters told IANS.

Posters of other leaders like Rajnath Singh, Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya could also be seen around. But surprisingly, former union minister and member of party's Margdarshak Mandal Murali Manohar Joshi is missing from all of them.

Former BJP General Secretary Sanjay Joshi and disgruntled LOk Sabha member Shatrughan Sinha also figure in some of the posters.

Many posters, however, also detail out the achievements of the Modi government in the last two years of its central rule.

The poster war is seen as a reflection of an infighting within the party.

"There is nothing going to happen by such poster war. Ultimately the party's parliamentary board will decide the chief ministerial candidate," Maurya said.

However, one of the district presidents of the party told IANS that Varun is obviously emerging as a youth leader and Rajnath Singh has become party's face in Uttar Pradesh, but it is only Yogi Adityanath who can end party's exile from the power in the state.

"The urban voters are already with the party and it needs rural votes now. Yogi could be the best choice," the district president added.

(Brajendra Nath Singh can be contacted at brajendra.n@ians.in)

--IANS

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Move over sniffer dogs, people who witness a crime may be able to identify criminals by their body odour, suggests new research.

Nose-witnesses can be just as reliable as eye-witnesses, the findings showed.

"Police often use human eye-witnesses, and even ear-witnesses, in lineups, but to date there have not been any human nose-witnesses," explained Professor Mats Olsson, experimental psychologist at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

"We wanted to see if humans can identify criminals by their body odour," Olsson noted.

Dogs have been used to identify criminals through body odour-identification in court, but it is commonly thought that the human sense of smell is inferior to that of other mammals.

To find out more about human odour memory following stressful events, Olsson and his team investigated how well we identify body odour in a forensic setup.

In their first experiment, participants watched video clips of people committing violent crimes, accompanied by a body odour that they were told belonged to the perpetrator.

They also watched neutral videos, with a similar setup. Then they identified the criminal's body odour from a lineup of five different men's odours, showing correct identification in almost 70 per cent of cases.

"It worked beyond my expectation," Olsson explained.

In another test, the team conducted the same experiment but varied the lineup size -- three, five and eight body odours -- and the time between observing the videos and undertaking the lineup -- 15 minutes up to one week.

In lineups of up to eight body odours, participants were still able to distinguish the criminal.

The accuracy of their identification did reduce with the larger lineup size, which is in line with studies on eye and ear-witnesses.

The results also showed that the ability to distinguish the criminal's body odour is significantly impaired if the lineup is conducted after one week of having smelt the offender's body odour.

The findings appeared in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

"Our work shows that we can distinguish a culprit's body odour with some certainty," Olsson said.

"This could be useful in criminal cases where the victim was in close contact with the assailant but did not see them and so cannot visually identify them," he noted.

--IANS

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Stunned by the outcome in the elections to the Rajya Sabha from Haryana where votes of 14 Congress legislators were declared "invalid", the party has decided to approach the Election Commission to demand a probe.

"It was all part of a conspiracy hatched by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)," Congress General Secretary B.K. Hariprasad told a TV channel on Sunday.

"We will meet Election Commission tomorrow (Monday) to protest against the misuse of government machinery," he said.

Following rejection as "invalid" of some votes polled in the Rajya Sabha elections for two seats in Haryana on Saturday, Independent candidate R.K. Anand, backed by the Congress, lost the poll to media baron Subhash Chandra, also an Independent who was supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Asked whether the party suspected sabotage by its own leaders, including former Chief Minister B.S. Hooda who had initially opposed Anand's candidature, Hari Prasad replied in negative.

"The final decision to support R.K. Anand's candidature was taken at the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting," he asserted.

"All our MLAs voted in favour of Anand," he said.

For his part, senior Congress leader and former Chief Minister Hooda also demanded a probe.

--IANS

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At least four militants of the Islamic State (IS) were killed in a US drone strike in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, an official said on Sunday.

"An international forces' plane fired two missiles in Achin district Saturday night," Xinhua news agency quoted an official as saying.

The Afghan security forces have beefed up operations against militants, he said.

The Achin district bordering Pakistan has been the scene of heavy clashes between the IS militants and security forces backed by pro-government local militiamen over the past couple of months.

--IANS

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Keeping their tryst with the Hindu deity Mata Ragnya, hundreds of Kashmiri Pandits on Sunday paid obeisance at the Tullamulla shrine in north Kashmir's Ganderbal district.

Using different modes of conveyance, Kashmiri Pandits, most of them migrants, started reaching Tullamulla town, 24 km from Srinagar, since Saturday evening.

The annual festival of Mata Kheer Bhawani, the name used by local Pandits for goddess Ragnya, is celebrated each year on this day.

Despite their exodus from Kashmir Valley in the beginning of 1990s due to separatist violence, members of the Pandit community have not given up their practice of visiting the temple.

Around 13,000 migrant Pandits, including men, women and children, gathered at the shrine by midday Sunday to offer 'Kheer' (rice pudding) and flowers to propitiate the goddess.

Keeping the centuries old tradition alive, Muslims living in the town came to greet the devotees.

Some Muslims also offered milk to the devotees which was received with love and reverence by members of the Pandit community.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti also visited the shrine in the morning. Mufti was accompanied by professor Amitabh Mattoo, advisor to the chief minister with a cabinet minister's status.

A group of migrant Pandits shouted slogans blaming the separatists for their migration and for opposing their return to the valley.

They also accused the mainstream political parties of "non-serious approach to problems faced by the Pandit community".

Raj Kumar Bamzai, 46, a migrant who originally belonged to Habba Kadal area of Srinagar city led a group of protesters shouting slogans against a stone pelting incident in Anantnag district on Friday. Two women travelling to Tullamulla in a bus sustained injuries in the incident.

"The government says it will give us separate colonies and sometimes it says we will be settled at our ancestral places," Bamzai told IANS.

"These are all political talks because whosoever heads the government, Pandit community is only used as a political tool and nobody wants to address our problems."

"We are thankful to Muslims in Tullamulla who have welcomed us with open arms," he added.

The shrine also includes a spring whose colour, the devotees believe, foretells the annual future for the state.

According to Hindu mythology, Goddess Ragnya appeared before Ravana after she was pleased with his devotion.

Ravana had an idol of the goddess installed in Sri Lanka, but angered by his licentious way of life, the goddess ordered Hanuman to shift her seat to Kashmir.

Authorities had made adequate security arrangements to secure the passage of the devotees to the shrine.

Scores of police and paramilitary troopers lined up the 24-km route from Srinagar city to Tullamulla town.

--IANS

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Days after the Delhi government slapped a fine of over Rs 600 crore on five private hospitals for not providing free-of-cost medicare to poor patients, Max Super Specialty Hospital-Saket on Sunday clarified that it had treated thousands of poor since its inception.

"We have treated thousands of Economically Weaker Section (EWS) patients every year and are extremely serious towards fulfilling the obligations," said a statement from the hospital.

The Delhi government has asked five private hospitals, including Max Super Specialty, to deposit over Rs 600 crore for denying free-of-cost treatment to the poor patients, in contravention of the main condition in providing land at concessional rates to these hospitals.

The other hospitals accused of violating the land allotment terms are: Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, Shanti Mukand Hospital, Dharamshila Cancer Hospital, and Pushpawati Singhania Research Institute.

Other hospitals were not available for comments.

The Max hospital statement said the order was unfair to it, as it stood fully committed to discharging all the obligations towards Economically Weaker Sections of the society (EWS).

Hem Prakash, Additional Director (EWS) in the Health Department of the Delhi government, said these five hospitals were provided land at concessional rates between 1960 and 1990 on the condition that they will treat the poor free of cost.

The penalty has been imposed on the basis of a Delhi High Court order passed in 2007 on a public interest litigation seeking implementation of the provision of free treatment to the poor and action against the erring hospitals. The fine amount has been calculated accordingly, the official said.

The hospitals have been asked to pay the amount by July 9, failing which further action will be initiated against them.

The Max Super Specialty Hospital-Saket is run by the Devki Devi Foundation.

--IANS

rup/lok/dg
Once one of the three pillars of the BJP along with Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani, Murali Manohar Joshi is now nowhere on the party's leadership spectrum here at the National Executive meeting.

Joshi, a former party president, has neither been invited to the two-day convention of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) National Executive nor his pictures are to be seen on some of the posters and hoardings that feature both Vajpayee and Advani.

BJP sources said Joshi, who represented this city in parliament for three terms, has been here for two days, but no one from the party has paid him any attention.

Some party workers have put up posters expressing their protest against what they see as an insult of a senior leader.

"What is it if not an insult to Joshi ji? He is deliberately being belittled. Why is he being treated like this?" a leader who is close to Joshi told IANS.

He said the BJP has marginalised Joshi in his own 'Karmabhoomi' Allahabad where he studied, taught, and started his political career.

After being pushed out from Allahabd, Joshi contested the Lok Sabha election from Varanasi in 2009 and from Kanpur in 2014. The BJP fielded businessman Shyama Charan Gupta, who came from the Samajwadi Party, from Allahabad in 2014.

Allahabad represents the broader trend in the BJP whereby the party leaders have been pushed out by the outsiders, said sources.

"Outsiders have now more say in BJP than the party leaders. The BJP itself is becoming 'Congress-yukt' (permeated with Congress), rather than 'Congress-mukt' (free of Congress)," they said.

--IANS

vsr/kb/vt
Former Prime Minister of Nepal Baburam Bhattarai on Sunday announced the setting up of a new political party under his leadership with the agenda of economic prosperity of the Himalayan nation.

The former Maoist leader said the new party is named "Naya Shakti", which means New Force in English.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony attended by thousands of well-wishers, party cadres and various political party leaders at the Dasarath Stadium in the capital, Bhattarai declared that his party has given top most priority to economic development of the country, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We can make Nepal one of the richest nations of the world within a period of 25 years by developing it as a bridge between the global economies China and India," Bhattarai said.

Following a serious rift with party Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Bhattarai had in last September announced his resignation as Vice President of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist, ending a 25-year-long affiliation with the ultra-Left party.

Bhattarai, who is regarded as a mastermind of the 10-year-long Maoist insurgency in the Himalayan nation from 1996 to 2006, was elected as the country's 35th Prime Minister in 2011.

Leaders of major political parties, including Nepal Prime Minster K.P. Sharma Oli, attended the inaugural ceremony of the Naya Shakti party.

--IANS

lok/dg
An outpouring of anger toward the lax US gun control policy was witnessed on social media after a shooting spree in an Orlando nightclub left 50 dead and 53 wounded on Sunday.

"When will the USA learn & introduce tighter gun control? How many more have to needlessly die?" A twitter user named Dave Nelson lashed out, Xinhua news agency reported.

The sentiment was shared by fellow twitter user Tevin Wooten, who asked on his account: "Does anyone want to admit to a gun violence problem now?"

According to local police, the shooter, identified as a 29-year-old US citizen of Afghan descent, had an assault-type weapon and a handgun as he stormed the gay club at around 2:00 a.m. local time (0600 GMT).

Furious gun control supporters are questioning why laws are still permitting people with radical thinking or mental illness to acquire assault weapons.

Since the attack, social media have been buzzing with discussions on the massacre, with over 700,000 tweets using the hashtag of "Orlando."

Around 100 people were at the nightclub at the time of the shooting, and the shooter was killed by police in a shoot-out.

--IANS

lok/dg
A human skeleton was found near a BSF camp, about 10 km from here, and a human rights activist said there was no accounting for the numerous people missing during the height of the armed insurgency in Manipur.

The skeleton was sighted on Saturday night, 100 metres from a Border Security Force (BSF) camp at Koirengei in Imphal East district, about 10 km from the state capital, sources said.

Forensic scientists have collected samples for testing.

Samples will have to be sent either to Kolkata or Hyderabad as there is no facility for DNA profiling in Manipur, L. Fimate, who heads the forensic science department of J.N. Institute of Medical Sciences here, told IANS on Sunday.

The results of the DNA profiling should reach the Manipur government in a month or so, he said.

Khaidem Mani, a human rights activist, told IANS that the Supreme Court was looking into a complaint that at least 1,528 people were missing since the height of the armed insurgency in Manipur.

"Compensations were paid to the family members of some victims, but nobody had been booked and sent to prison. Most of the missing persons are feared to be victims of fake encounters whose bodies were secretly disposed of," Mani said.

He said the government should order a probe to establish the identity of the person whose skeleton was found near the BSF camp.

"It is also disappointing that so far nothing has been heard of the testing of the skeletons found in the past in Manipur."

On December 25 and 26, 2014, eight human skulls and several skeletal remains were found at the Tombisana high school, located in the heart of Imphal city.

Human rights activists had then demanded a high level probe fearing that these skeletons may belong to some missing persons.

--IANS

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Just as Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu began addressing a press conference in Rajkot last week, some Congress workers rushed into the conference hall and disrupted the proceedings. A heated discussion ensued between Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party workers. The situation was brought under control only after the police intervened. A thoroughly miffed Naidu later said the "cheap tactics" of members of the Congress would turn it into a "cheap party". "They are not doing this just here; they are doing it at the national capital -not allowing both the Houses (of Parliament - the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha) to function smoothly," he said.
It seems the Congress has been left high and dry in West Bengal. Left Front allies of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) say strengthening their unity and intensifying protests against the Trinamool Congress government in the state led by Mamata Banerjee takes precedence over working out a future with the Congress. After a recent meeting, a Left leader said: "The issue of hand-holding with the Congress can be considered later as the party is not part of the Left Front. If they want, they can join our movements but we are not so excited about it."
Some things, no matter how much they are missed, are just never coming back. The eight-track tape. Prince. David Bowie. Also, the $225 million that investor Guy Hands says he personally lost investing in record label EMI - and which he finally gave up on recouping through the courts on Friday.
In a recent case that went before the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, radiologists at an Indore-based hospital performed ultra sonography twice on a pregnant woman but failed to detect deformities and underdevelopment in the foetus. The woman could not undergo treatment for the proper development of the foetus, nor could she exercise the option of termination of pregnancy. For these acts of negligence, the Commission directed the hospital and the doctors to pay the complainants a compensation of Rs 15 lakh.
Jayanagar, founded way back in 1948, is one of the first planned localities in Bengaluru. A cosmopolitan locality, Jayanagar is today divided into 10 blocks and carries the tag of being one of the most preferred residential property destinations. Though there are multiple commercial properties here, the locality is dominated by residential multi-storey apartments, villas and bungalows. Jayanagar has shaped up as a self-sustained residential micro-market that provides all conveniences and infrastructure for its residents.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will contest the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls on Prime Minister Narendra Modi governments policies of growth with a human face. The party will also raise the lawlessness unleashed by the supporters of the incumbent Samajwadi Party (SP) government in the key northern state, particularly by sections among the Yadav and Muslim communities.
Congress veterans and Kamal Nath were on Sunday appointed general secretaries in-charge of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, a move seen as precursor to a major organisational shake-up in the party ahead of the assembly polls in the two states next year.
Going into the Uttar Pradesh assmebly polls scheduled for early 2017, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as it meets for its national executive in Allahabad over the next two days, is beset with a confusion it's come to know well after the assembly poll defeats in Delhi and Bihar - who would be its chief ministerial candidate and whether at all to announce one.
If the government is the father of Nizam's government, how come Shiv Sena ministers are still part of it, asked Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in its mouthpiece Tarun Bharat.



Amid a burgeoning attack against the by the Shiv Sena, RSS alleged that Shiv Sena was playing selfish and stooping to new lows, while targeting the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, the RSS and the BJP-led governments in Maharashtra and at the Centre. It said Shiv Sena's outburst was "out of frustration as the party was unable to digest BJP's growth".
For the first time in the UK, two drones smuggling drugs into jails have been reportedly shot down using ultra powerful torches by British prison officials in two separate incidents.

Drones are being used to smuggle drugs and booze into prisons.

Two separate incidents at a London and Birmingham jail have become the first successful cases of intercepting such devices using powerful torches, according to 'The Sun' reported.

In Birmingham, at a prison run privately by security firm G4S, an officer dazzled a drone using an ultra powerful Dragon Light torch.

The Chinese made DJI Phantom 3 Professional drone went out of control and crashed to the ground. The aircraft has a hi-tech camera and feeds back instant video to the drone operator. It is believed the torch blinded the operator and he lost track of the drone's position.

A source told the newspaper, "It was a bit like the blitz when a search light picked up an enemy aircraft. The Dragon Light is a powerful torch and it seems the person controlling the drone lost control".

The incident at the category B, medium security jail, took place on May 25.

Officers raided a cell on A wing the next day and recovered a mobile and legal high drugs.

An internal memo stated, "At 00:35 hrs, the night orderly officer investigating a buzzing noise from outside A wing discovered a drone flying outside the cells windows. The officer shone a dragon torch light at the UMA and the it fell to the ground".

G4S Director for HMP Birmingham, Pete Small said, "Thanks to the vigilance and quick thinking of our team this drone was spotted and action taken to bring it down. Like every prison in the country, it is a constant challenge to keep contraband out and we regularly brief the team at HMP Birmingham about the risks that drones pose to our regime.

"We will always push for the strongest sanctions in court against anyone who seeks to undermine our regime or compromise safety of prisoners and staff in our care".

In an earlier incident at the Pentonville prison in north London, a drone was "disabled" whilst flying over the Victorian era jail.

"Prison staff at HMP Pentonville recovered a drone on prison grounds on Thursday 19th May. This incident is now being investigated by police," a Prison Service spokesperson said.
Security forces apprehended two suspected Maoists and recovered arms and over 100 rounds of ammunition in Banka district of Bihar in the wee hours today.

Officials said the two Maoists, identified as Sikander K and Arjun K, were nabbed around 3 AM during an anti-Naxal operation, led by CRPF, in the Pilua-Suiya area of the district.

The security personnel also recovered an INSAS rifle with two magazines, 120 rounds of bullet and a hand grenade, they said.

The operation was conducted by the 131st battalion of Central Reserve Police Force deployed in the area, along with state police, they said.
Three members of a family were today found dead at a village in Odisha's tribal-dominated Malkangiri district, police said.

The couple and their 18-month-old daughter were found hanging in Mundiguda village under Korukonda block by the villagers who informed the police, Inspector In-Charge of Makangiri police station, R K Das said.

While the body of the man, identified as Basing, was found hanging from a tree outside their house, his wife Raje and daughter were found hanging inside the house, he said.

A police team rushed to the site and the bodies were sent for postmortem, Das said, adding investigation is on to ascertain the circumstances that led to the incident.

Villagers said the family members had gone to Sukma in neighbouring Chhattisgarh to attend a feast and had returned from there last evening.
Three labourers were killed and another was critically injured when a newly-built retaining wall of an under-construction railway bridge collapsed on them near Lakadia village in Kutch district today, police said.

The incident occurred near Bhachau railway station under Ahmedabad division of Western Railway where a double line is being constructed by the Rail Vikas Nigam (RVNL) Limited.

The labourers were involved in the construction of the bridge as part of the double lining work when the newly-built retaining wall fell on four of them, police said.

While three workers died on the spot, the injured was taken to a local hospital, where his condition is said to be critical, they said.

RVNL is tasked with building the engineering works required by Indian Railway.
Thirty-three Singaporeans of Indian origin are crying foul over SGD 780,000 investment in undeveloped land in Chennai, according to media reports.

The investors were drawn by visions of gleaming villas, upcoming infrastructure and returns of more than 100 per cent investment made between 2007 and 2011.

But now they are crying foul at Singapore-registered KMGM International which sold them the land. They own land of questionable value, which is hard to sell as it has not been developed and has hardly risen in value, reported The Sunday Times.

The investors want to sell the land back to KMGM.

About 20 of them staged a walk-in on May 5 to confront KMGM director S Gulam at the firm's premises here, demanding assurances that they could sell back their land.

Gulam was not there, but assured them by telephone that he would meet them on May 16. But, on May 13, the investors received letters saying that the matter would be handled through his lawyers at Advaitha Law Corporation, according to the Singapore weekly.

Advaitha director G B Vasudeven told The Sunday Times that his client was ready to obtain valuations for each of the investors' land parcels, but declined to disclose any further course of action.

He added that he has written to the 33 to say that if they try to enter KMGM's offices again, they will be reported to the police as trespassers.

20 investors have since gone on to make police reports against KMGM.

The group of 33 had bought 45 plots of land, each a few thousand sq ft in size, in Chennai.

Mostly in their 50s and 60s, the investors said they trusted KMGM because it is a Singaporean firm and its directors, lawyer R Kalamohan and Gulam, a former journalist, are well-regarded members of the Indian community.

Retired navy officer Anandam Thomas, 62, bought two plots of land for about SGD 41,470 in 2008.

"My father was from India, and I wanted a little piece of India for myself," he said.

After payment, he and the other buyers were flown to



Chennai to see the land and receive their sale deeds.

Last year and in April this year, he went back on his own to check and found the land was still undeveloped and occupied by squatters.

He said after his attempts to sell the land back to KMGM failed, he decided to gather fellow investors in the same situation.

Gulam, 54, told The Sunday Times by telephone that he was not out to cheat anyone and meant to help the investors sell the land.

However, he said it was impossible to sell it at a profit right now because the Indian rupee had fallen drastically in the last few years and the property market was in a slump.

He said: "When you invest overseas, you must take a risk.

"If you buy a house now and the price goes down, can you tell the developer you want your money back?" Gulam was quoted as saying.

Kalamohan, 68, who left KMGM in 2014, said: "There was nothing more to sell and I was of no use to the company, so I thought it was time to leave."



He added that there was nothing wrong with the investors' documents, which he had examined, and all the purchases were valid.

Of the 45 contracts among the group, 24 had a clause guaranteeing they could sell the land back to the company after three years "at the best prevailing market price".

However, 27 contracts lacked a "patta", an Indian land ownership document.

New Delhi-based lawyer Alok Tewari, a senior partner with Indian law firm Kochhar & Co, said: "Legally it may be possible to sell the property without a patta."



He added, however, that sometimes the authorities may demand to see a patta to register a sale deed.

Property experts said overseas land-banking is fraught with risk.

Alan Cheong, Singapore research head for real estate firm Savills, advised investors to check whether the country's legal framework is solid and can be enforced even by an overseas national, as well as the reputation of the property agency marketing the product.

Retired civil servant Manokaran Ramasamy, 64, and his late wife spent SGD 129,510 on four plots of land in 2008.

His wife died from cancer in March. He said all he wanted was some form of closure from KMGM.

"Even in the pain of her last days, she would go back to them to ask about selling the land. I don't understand why they didn't entertain her," he said.

"I don't think they can honour the agreement. They owe it to us to fill in the blanks," The Sunday Times quoted Manokaran as saying.
The Delhi government has asked five private hospitals in the city, including Fortis Escorts Heart Institute and Max Super Specialty Hospital (Saket), to deposit "unwarranted profits" of over Rs 600 crore for refusing free treatment to the poor, the prime condition for land allotment lease.

Dr Hem Prakash, additional director (EWS) in the Health Department, said these five hospitals -- Max Super Specialty Hospital (Saket),Fortis Escorts Heart Institute,Shanti Mukand Hospital, Dharamshila Cancer Hospital and Pushpawati Singhania Research Institute -- were provided lands at concessional ratesbetween 1960 and 1990on the condition that they will treat the poor free of cost.

"These five hospitals have not abide by the conditions. We had earlier in December 2015, sent notices to these hospitals seeking their explanation as to why they failed to treat the poor and why they should not be fined. But none of them gave satisfactory replies so we initiated action against them," said Prakash.

"The penalty has been imposed on the basis of a High Court order passed in 2007 on a PIL demanding implementation of the provision of free treatment to poor and action against the erring hospitals. And the fine amount has been calculated accordingly," he said.

The hospitals have been asked to pay the amount by July 9, failing which further action will be initiated against them.

Total 43 private hospitals in Delhi were allotted land at concessional rates on the condition that they will keep 10 per cent of their in-patient department capacity and 25 per cent of out-patient department capacity to treat EWS patients free of cost.

Fortis Healthcare's subsidiary Escort Heart Institute and Research Centre has received an order to deposit Rs 503.36 crore for non-compliance of conditions of land allotment lease.

"The management will challenge the same in the High Court of Delhi or such relevant authority to seek suitable legal remedies available to it under law," the hospital said in a statement.

Devki Devi Foundation, of which Max-Super Speciality Hospital in Saket is a unit, said, "We believe the order is unfair to us, we stand fully committed to discharging all our obligations towards economically weaker sections (EWS). We are extremely serious towards fulfilling our obligations. While we study the order in detail, we will prefer an appeal against this order in the appropriate forum."



Director of Dharamshila Cancer Hospital Suversha Khanna said they will challenge the order in the court.

Ushpawati Singhania Research Institute and Shanti Mukand Hospital could not be contacted.
The Afghan Senate today thanked India for construction of the landmark dam in Afghanistan's Herat province at a cost of Rs 1,700 crore which was jointly inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Ashraf Ghani on June 4.

In its 'appreciation letter', the Upper House of the National Assembly of Afghanistan hailed India and its people for "effective support and assistance" to the war ravaged nation.

"The Upper House of the National Assembly of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, on behalf of the people of Afghanistan, would like to appreciate and thank the effective suuport and assistance of the people and state of the friend and brother country India," the letter, handed over to Indian Envoy Manpreet Vohra in the House, said.

The Afghan-India Friendship Dam, earlier known as Salma Dam, on river Chist-e-Sharif in western Herat neighbouring Iran, will help in irrigating 75,000 hectares of land and generate 42 MW of power.

Touted as a "landmark" infrastructure project, the dam located 165 km east of Herat town, is expected to significantly boost the agricultural economy of the province.

The project has been executed and implemented by WAPCOS Ltd, a government of India undertaking under ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation. Over 1,500 Indian and Afghan engineers were involved in construction of the dam for several years in difficult condition.

Earlier India had constructed the swanky Parliament complex in Kabul at a cost of USD 90 million. India has a strategic partnership with Afghanistan and is implementing projects worth USD 2 billion to help rebuild the country's infrastructure.
President Pranab Mukherjee today arrived here in the first leg of his six-day visit to three African nations - Ghana, Ivory Coast and Namibia, as part of "outreach to Africa" focussing on trade, education and boosting relations with these countries.

This is the maiden visit of any Indian President to Ghana and Ivory coast whereas to Namibia, such a visit comes after two decades.

On his arrival here for a two-day visit, he was received at the airport by Ghana's Vice-President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah- Arthur.

Even though Mukherjee has toured number of countries in the continent, he is visiting these countries for the first time in his long political career.

"All these countries we look at as good countries in terms of a solid political system, where democracy has taken roots and these are all doing reasonably well in their regions," Secretary (ER) Amar Sinha has said.

The President is accompanied by Minister of State for the PMO Jitendra Singh and BJP MPs - SS Ahluwalia and Mansukh L Mandaviya.

"As you know this is the part of the Outreach to Africa, which was kicked off with the visit to Morocco and Tunisia by Vice President... Then the President has taken on the responsibility of these three country visits," he said.

In the tightly packed schedule spread till Jun 14 afternoon, Mukherjee will attend eight events which begin today with a banquet hosted by Ghana's President John Drahami Mahama in his honour.

The President will be given a ceremonial welcome tomorrow followed by delegation level talks at President's House which is called Flag Staff House.

The imposing building has an Indian touch as it is constructed by an Indian company Shapoorji Pallonji.

In the delegation level talks, there are likely to be discussions on agreements on visa waiver and about two Line of Credits could also be deliberated.

Mukherjee will also pay homage to Ghana's first President Kwame Nkrumah at his mausoleum here. He will also be unveiling a statue of Mahatma Gandhi which has been gifted by ICCR besides planting a sapling there.

"Investment in Ghana is substantial, nearly three billion



dollars in various sectors. NRI's, professionals have invested in IT, Pharmaceuticals and other areas. If you look at last three year figures, our trade has gone up nearly three times.

"Ghana's main trade consists of gold imports, it's nearly 80 per cent of total trade. Ghanaian gold is in great demand in India," Sinha said.

Mukherjee will be addressing a joint business forum meeting here which has been organised by business groups from India and Ghana.

Ghana has a very prosperous Indian-origin community, roughly around 10,000, of which 7,000 have Indian passports with some families arriving here as early as 1920's.

The community is holding a reception for him where he will be interacting with them.

Mukherjee will also be visiting the India-Ghana Kofi Annan Center of ICT Excellence, set up by India, and will meet its faculty and alumni. The Institute was set up by India few years ago.

"I am told that it is working very well. So it will be a great opportunity to go there and see whether we could contribute something else or help in up gradation," he said.
Defending the Uttar Pradesh government's handling of the Mathura clashes, Samajwadi Party MP Amar Singh today "complimented" it for tackling the "ticklish" issue and blamed the Centre for not sharing inputs on the presence of extremist elements at Jawahar Bagh.

"I compliment the state government for handling the ticklish (Mathura) issue. Home Minister Rajnath Singh cannot shed his responsibilities. Can he tell whether central intelligence agency had given any input to state regarding presence of Naxalites of Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh and Madhya Pradesh and Odisha in Mathura," Singh told reporters.

"We were not informed about presence of extremist elements there", Amar said.

Responding to BJP Chief Amit Shah's allegations that senior party leader and Cabinet Minister Shivpal Yadav had provided patronage to the cult, Singh said, "A big leader from Gujarat has demanded resignation of the state government over Mathura incident. I want to know if he asked for the same from the CM of Madhya Pradesh, where Vyapam scam took place, or from Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh, after Naxalites killed Vidya Charan Shukla or the Haryana CM, after rapes took place during the quota stir."



Replying to a question, Singh said Shivpal had known Jai Gurudev, who was the spiritual head of the sect occupying the Jawahar Bagh, but added that it was a matter of personal faith.

"Even I used to visit his ashram and will again go," he said, adding that the one that occupied Jawahar Bagh was a "break-away faction".

The state government had followed court orders in Mathura and sent a small force of police as women and children were there, he said.

"The state was defamed during Badaun rape and leaders



like Rahul Gandhi, Ram Vilas Paswan, Mayawati visited there. But when CBI gave clean chit no one uttered anything", he said.

Singh said he appreciated Narendra Modi for pursuing India's entry into the 48-nation Nuclear Supplier Group, but added that the BJP "stood with China and Pakistan, when UPA government was entering into the nuclear deal (with USA)."



"SP supported the then Manmohan Singh government after taking advice of APJ Abdul Kalam, who termed it necessary," he said.

Taking potshots at the saffron party, he said, "I pay obeisance to lord Ram but do not play politics in his name. No one has patented Ram, he is for everyone."



Asked about Kairana issue, where several families were allegedly leaving their homes due to fear of criminals, Singh said that whatever action was required would be taken at the administrative level.

"But can the Centre tell about exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from Jammu and Kashmir," he asked.

Singh also spoke about his connection with RLD, saying he had contested elections on its ticket and the party helped SP in MLC and Rajya Sabha polls.

On Shankaracharya of the Dwarka-Sharda peeth, Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati's allegation that "Yadav" community was responsible for Mathura incident, he said he condemned any such statement.

"He is Shankaracharya of Dwarka, Lord Krishna will not be happy with him for his comments on Yadav community," he added.
Attacking the Samajwadi Party government over recent incidents in Mathura and Kairana in Uttar Pradesh, which goes to polls early next year, BJP President Amit Shah today said the prevailing "atmosphere of violence" is a matter of serious concern.

"The present Samajwadi government, each day is expressing its helplessness in dealing with these situations," Shah said while citing recent clashes in Mathura as also violence and subsequent migration of over 100 families.

Launching a frontal attack on the Akhilesh Yadav government, Shah told the two-day BJP National Executive which began here today that, "The lack of development and the lack of governance in the biggest state of India i.E UP is increasing becoming a matter of serious concern," he said.

Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who briefed reporters about Shah's speech, said the BJP President specially discussed UP and said there was "an atmosphere of violence, which the government has been unsuccessful in curbing."



On the recent incidents in Mathura, Shah said that this politics of forcefully grabbing government land with "patronage" was "very unfortunate."



Shah also referred to the alleged migration of a community from the western UP town of Kairana and said that it is a matter of deep concern.

The BJP President called upon the party workers to work hard and expressed committment that the BJP will form government in UP with full majority after the assembly polls.

The BJP President said 2017 is a year of challenges in which besides UP, there are polls in Uttarakhand, Punjab, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present during Shah's



speech as were senior Ministers like Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, senior office bearers as well as party veteran L K Advani.

In his speech, Shah also spoke about electoral violence against his party workers in the states of Kerala and West Bengal. "There is no place for violence in a democracy," Shah said. He emphasised that the entire BJP was with its workers who had faced political attacks in Kerala.

Taking a swipe at Congress, Shah said the party was getting "increasingly weakened" because of its repeated obstructions in the path of development and more and more of its leaders were leaving it.

Highlighting the Modi government's achievements, Shah said that "two prominent Islamic nations of Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan have within a time span of one month conferred their highest award on the Prime Minister of India."



Referring to the Prime Minister's recent five-nation tour, Shah said that during it the US, Mexico and Switzerland had expressed their support India's entry into the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG).

The BJP President claimed that his party was providing a "no corruption government" which was decisive and had ended policy paralysis of the previous regime.

Claiming that under the leadership of Modi, the country had emerged as a "beacon" of the 21st century for the rest of the world, Shah said the government had ensured that there is promising GDP growth with a human face.
A mobile app exploring Sikhs' history in Singapore has been launched here, according to media reports.

Partially funded by the National Heritage Board, the Sikh Heritage Trail app was developed by Ishvinder Singh, a 29-year-old project engineer in an aerospace company, and was launched yesterday, The Sunday Times reported.

Available both on the Android Google play store and the Apple app store, the SGD 20,000-appcovers a trail of Sikh imprisoned in 1850 in Singapore, then a penal colony of British Empire.

The late Maharaj Singh is revered for his bravery and for planning a revolt with his followers against the British Raj in Punjab.

Bhai Maharaj Singh, Sikh martyr,was jailed in 1850 at the now-defunct Outram Prison. He died here in 1856.

His unmarked tomb in the forested grounds, where Singapore General Hospital is today, was relocated to the Silat Road Sikh Temple (Gurdwara) in 1966.

Among other trails, the app has the Sepoy Lines area around Outram Road and Cantonment Road where the sepoys, or Indian soldiers in the British Raj, built their barracks.

The app trail through Bukit Brown Cemetery and its surrounding cemeteries, home to 30 pairs of Sikh guard statues, is also featured in the app.

Othersites featured include the Upper Barracks and Lower Barracks on Pearl's Hill, which were built in 1934 for the Sikh Contingent of the Straits Settlement Police to live in.

Ishvinder Singh and his team of two full-time app developers Chris Cai, 29, and Melody Ho, 24, as well as head researcher Vithya Subramaniam, 27, a South Asian studies graduate student at Columbia University, spent about three years putting together the app.

Their research involved site visits, conducting interviews with heads of Sikh temples here, and browsing materials from the National Archives of Singapore as well as overseas libraries.

"We didn't want to only talk about prominent Sikhs... We



wanted also to share about the lives of everyday Sikh families, as well as their interactions with historic sites here," Singh told The Sunday Times.

Singh, who hopes the app will reach at least 10,000 people, said he will be updating it with more information about the Sikh community over time.

"As Sikhs, we have very strong visual identities with the turbans we wear and the facial hair we keep. I wanted to explore how we fit into modern Singapore and better understand the Sikh heritage and share the findings with a larger audience," Singh was quoted as saying.
An estimated 20 people were killed today as a heavily armed gunman, named by media as a US citizen of Afghan descent, opened fire and seized hostages at a crowded gay nightclub in Florida, in one of the worst mass shootings in US history.

Terrified survivors - who moments before were laughing and dancing with friends - described how the gunman raked the club with bullets, prompting a police SWAT team to storm the venue.

President Barack Obama was being kept up to date by his homeland security and counterterrorism aide on what Florida officials said was being investigated as a terrorist attack. The federal government has offered its full support with the probe.

Quoting law enforcement sources, US television networks named the shooter as Omar Mateen, who was born to Afghan parents in 1986 and lives in Port St Lucie, Florida, about two hours drive from Orlando.

CBS reported that Mateen - who died in a shootout with police after the siege - has no apparent criminal history.

Police have yet to officially identify the gunman.

Briefing the media in Orlando, FBI special agent Ron Harper said the suspect may have had "leanings" toward Islamic extremism.

"Unfortunately there are people who died from gunshot wounds, maybe around 20, inside the night club," Orlando police chief John Mina told the briefing. He said around 42 injured were taken to area hospitals.

Another 30 people were evacuated unharmed during the siege.

The chaotic events unfolded over a three hour period, beginning at around 2 AM when shots rang out amid the throbbing music at the Pulse Orlando nightclub near closing time.

Police said the shots were fired by a gunman armed with an assault rifle and a handgun.

A police officer working "extra duties" at the club responded, joined by two other officers, who engaged the suspect in a gun battle, Mina said.

"The suspect at some point went back inside the club where more shots were fired. This did turn into a hostage situation," he told reporters.

"At approximately 0500 hours this morning, the decision was made to rescue hostages that were in there."



Police then stormed the venue, using explosives and breaking through a wall with a wheeled armored vehicle known as a BearCat. Mina said about 30 people were rescued during the operation.
Indians joining al Qaeda were moved by the 1992 Babri mosque demolition and 2002 Godhra riots and were committed to establish base of terror outfit al Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) here, Delhi Police has told a court here.

In its charge sheet filed against 17 accused, Special Cell of Delhi Police said for the purpose of jihad, some of them had gone to Pakistan and had met Jamat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and several other dreaded terrorists.

"While delivering jihadi speeches in various mosques, he (arrested accused Syed Anzar Shah) met Mohd Umar (one of the absconding accused) and they discussed atrocities on Muslims in India, especially Godhra and Babri Masjid issues.

"Umar got impressed with his jihadi ideology and speeches and committed himself to the cause of jihad and expressed the desire to receive arms/ammunition training from Pakistan," the charge sheet filed before Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh said. It said that Umar was operating from Pakistan.

Police said arrested accused Abdul Rehman had provided safe hideouts in India to Pakistani militants Salim, Mansoor and Sajjad, all members of Jaish-e-Mohammed, who were later killed in a shootout in Uttar Pradesh in 2001.

These three Pakistani militants had come to India to take revenge of Babri Masjid demolition and had planned to attack Ram Mandir in Ayodhya but got killed, the charge sheet claimed.

The police named in its charge sheet 17 accused, 12 of whom are absconding, for allegedly conspiring, recruiting Indian youths and establishing a base of AQIS here.

In its final report, the agency has charged 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).

All the 17 accused were listed in the charge sheet for alleged offences under sections 18 (punishment for conspiracy), 18-B (punishment for recruiting of any person for terror act) and 20 (punishment for being member of terror organisation) of the UAPA.

The accused were arrested between December 2015 and January 2016 from different parts of the country.

The probe agency has alleged that al Qaeda was trying to set up its base in India under the banner of AQIS and some youths from districts of western Uttar Pradesh had already left India and joined its cadre in Pakistan.

It said that 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 jihad.

Besides the five arrested accused, the agency also named in its charge sheet 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.
A bank manager was killed while his officer wife suffered critical injuries when their car collided head on Medininagar-Ranchi road near Bakoria, about 36 kms from district headquarter of Palamau, this afternoon, a senior police officer said.

Fifty-two year-old Prakash Nandan Sahay, who was the Manager of Vananchal Gramin Bank, was killed on the spot while his wife, Neeleema Sahay (50), who is an Officer in Akashvani in Ranchi, suffered critical injuries, sources said.

Neeleema was taken to the nearby hospital, where she was given primary treatment before doctors referred her to Ranchi.

The couple was on way to Ranchi from Medininagar when the mishap occurred.
Ace filmmaker Goutam Ghosh, a member of the Shyam Benegal-led censor board revamp committee, said the panel has submitted some recommendations to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry regarding censorship in films.

"Let's see how they (the ministry) act on it," Ghosh told PTI on the sidelines of 'Bharat Nirman Awards' here last night.

The Benegal panel, in its first report submitted on April 26, had urged the government to lay down a "holistic framework for certification of films."



Asked to comment on the Bombay High Court bench observations about "Udta Punjab" controversy, describing censor board as a body meant to certify films and not censor them, which could recommend cuts only as per guidelines, Ghosh said, "There need not be censorship in films, but there can be certifications in other ways.

"What I mean will be clear if our recommendations are acted upon. The process, I understand, has already begun. I will not say anything beyond that now."



Other members of the committee include actor Kamal Haasan, filmmaker Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, ad-man Piyush Pandey, film critic Bhawana Somaaya and NFDC Managing Director Nina Lath Gupta.

On the recent deaths of bloggers and murder of a priest and an ashramite in neighbouring Bangladesh, where Ghosh had shot three of his films, he said, "It is a matter of grave misconduct.

"I believe the Bangladesh government is seriously thinking on the issue. Such attacks should not happen," he said.
Britain leaving the European Union would strip the bloc of a nuclear-armed global player and prove "disastrous" for its presence on the world stage, analysts say.

The timing could hardly be worse, as the EU struggles with its biggest migration crisis since World War II and the continent facing a growing threat from terrorism fuelled by conflict in the Middle East.

Analysts said any such division within the bloc would likely be seized upon by Russia, whose ties with the EU have been badly damaged by the Ukraine conflict.

"Great powers like the United States, China and India will see an EU weakened politically and geopolitically if there is Brexit," Vivien Pertusot, Brussels-based analyst with the French Institute of Relations (IFRI), told AFP.

The EU has been keen to increase its influence around the world in recent years.

The bloc helped negotiate the landmark nuclear accord with Iran, and has worked closely with Washington and Moscow in an effort to revive stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Analysts said losing a UN Security Council permanent member and Nato lynchpin like Britain would likely diminish the EU's influence and respect around the world, while also making it more inward-looking.

"It would be bad news with a view to the role of the EU. It would increase the loss of image if the EU shrinks for the first time in its history," Janis Emmanouilidis, director of studies at European Policy Centre, told AFP.

"The signal would be that the EU gets slowly but steadily in a downward trend," he said, suggesting that such weakness could be exploited.

"The Chinese and the Russians might use that... To exert pressure and divide further."



Pertusot said there would also be a loss of influence in areas such as Latin America and Southeast Asia which regard the EU as a model for regional groupings such as Mercosur and ASEAN.

The prospect of a British exit has raised the possibility in some quarters that it would free up the bloc to move ahead on its own in forging a more united global position.

But analysts say there is no appetite for that, adding that most member states look to US-led NATO for security when push comes to shove in a crisis. Of the EU's 28 member states, 22 are members of the military alliance.

Rosa Balfour at the German Marshall Fund of the United States said a would effectively wreck efforts to forge what the EU now calls its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).

"As a major security and military provider in Europe, a British exit... Is likely to have a disastrous effect on the EU's CSDP," Balfour told AFP.

"Without British assets, it is questionable whether it is worth pursuing defence integration.
An iron suspension bridge, envisaged on lines of the famous Lakshman Jhula in Rishikesh, has been erected over the Gomati river at the ancient temple town of Dwarka in Gujarat.

The cable-stayed pedestrian bridge 'Sudama Setu', which has come as a boon for pilgrims, was inaugurated by Chief Minister Anandiben Patel yesterday.

It has been constructed on lines of Lakshman Jhula over the Ganga river in Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, by the state government in collaboration with Reliance Industries (RIL) under public-private partnership.

The structure, 166 metres in length and 4.2 metres in width, has been constructed at a cost of Rs 7.70 crore, said Parimal Nathwani, Corporate Group President of RIL and an Independent MP of Rajya Sabha.

'Sudama Setu', named after a childhood friend of Lord Krishna, connects Jagat Mandir in mainland Dwarka with Panchnad Tirth.

Pilgrims had been using boats to cross the river to reach Panchnad which has five sweet water wells. The new bridge will now facilitate a smooth travel for them and also boost tourism in the area, he said.

Panchnad Tirth, an island popularly called 'Panch Kui', has mythological significance and is believed to be associated with Pandavas, the heroes of epic Mahabharat.

Nathwani said RIL will extend support to the state for developing the island and unlocking its tourism potential.
Branding China as the "biggest and best abuser" of free trade, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has alleged that the Communist trading giant was dumping its goods into the US, stealing intellectual property and imposing hefty taxes on American companies doing business in that country.

"China is the biggest and best abuser. Mexico is a smaller version of China," Trump told his cheering supporters in this steel city of Pittsburgh, which is said to be a key swing state for November general elections as he hit out at several countries including Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Trump said he believes in free trade, but it needs to be fair. "I believe in free trade. But for free trade, you need to have smart people on our side. I want to make good deals. I do not want care what you call it," he said.

"I do not want China to dump steel into our country. They are dumping. They are steeling our intellectual property," Trump alleged and warned them of consequences if he is elected as the new president of America.

"If they do not behave, we will put tax on them. They (Chinese) tax us. But we do nothing about it. This is one-way street. ...We got ripped off," he said. "If in November if you pull the right trigger, we are going to have so much fun together," he said, urging people to come out in large number and vote in November presidential elections.

The 69-year-old real estate tycoon from New York claimed he would have a good relationship with China and would enter into a deal with them that would benefit the US and create jobs in the country.

"China, when I deal with them, it is going to be a great deal. They (Chinese) have no respect for Obama. They have even less respect for crooked Hillary," Trump said.

Trump slammed Obama in his speech. Observing that he never thought Obama would be a great president but believed that he would unite the country. "He (Obama) is a great divider. The country has never been so divided ever," he alleged, adding he would unite the country. "President Obama is incompetent," he claimed.

"I will unite the country, the richer, the poor. I would unite the country through old schools of thoughts by creating jobs. I would not let other country take the jobs," he said asserting that factories would resume manufacturing and create jobs if he is elected as the president in November.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has alleged that China is the "biggest and best abuser" as it was dumping its goods into the US, stealing intellectual property and imposing hefty taxes on American companies doing business in that country.

"China is the biggest and best abuser. Mexico is a smaller version of China," Trump told his cheering supporters in this steel city of Pittsburgh, which is said to be a key swing state for November general elections as he hit out at several countries including Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Trump said he believes in free trade, but it needs to be fair. "I believe in free trade. But for free trade, you need to have smart people on our side. I want to make good deals. I do not want care what you call it," he said.

"I do not want China to dump steel into our country. They are dumping. They are steeling our intellectual property," Trump alleged and warned them of consequences if he is elected as the president of the country.

"If they do not behave, we will put tax on them. They (Chinese) tax us. But we do nothing about it. This is one-way street. ...We got ripped off," he said. "If in November if you pull the right trigger, we are going to have so much fun together," he said, urging people to come out in large number and vote in November presidential elections.

The real estate tycoon from New York claimed he would have a good relationship with China and would enter into a deal with them that would benefit the US and create jobs in the country. "China, when I deal with them, it is going to be great deal. They (Chinese) have no respect for Obama. They have even less respect for crooked Hillary," Trump said.

Trump slammed Obama in his speech. Observing that he never thought Obama would be a great president but believed that he would unite the country. "He (Obama) is a great divider. The country has never been so divided ever," he alleged, adding he would unite the country. "President Obama is incompetent," he claimed.

"I will unite the country, the richer, the poor. I would unite the country through old schools of thoughts by creating jobs. I would not let other country take the jobs," he said asserting that factories would resume manufacturing and create jobs if he is elected as the president in November.

"We have to win. We can't let this crap happen. We have



got weak leaders. We are going to change. We are going to change. We need competent people folks," he said.

"They (American leadership in Washington) have no clue. We have incompetent people in Washington. Like a bunch of dumb babies. The world is laughing. Countries all over the world are taking advantage of us. Mexico, we have huge trade deficit," he said.

"We will build the wall," he said, adding that Mexican leadership are taking benefit of the weak leadership of the US.

He slammed Mitt Romney for calling him triple down racist. "It's absolutely pathetic. He lost. He choked like a dog. We are going to win. I do not choke. I backed John McCain, he lost. I backed Mitt Romney, we lost. So this time we would do it ourselves," he said. He acknowledged that McCain lost because of "a lot of bad things was happening" in an apparent reference to the economic crisis that hit in the last few months of the Bush Administration.

Trump said the country needs to be "tougher, stronger and smarter" to start winning again. A country like Iran humiliated the US, he alleged. "I love negotiating people. This deal is destructive for Israel and the country... horrible for Israel, horrible for the world, horrible for us," he said.

"We are not going to protect all these nations with massive subsidy. And they do not pay. They got to pay us for our services... They got to help us out," Trump said. "We subsidise Germany. We subsidise Saudi Arabia. We are paying the rent on military bases. They are charging us rent. We have 28,000 soldiers on the line in South Korea. Can you imagine, if these countries paid a fair price," he said, adding the US is in a great debt of USD 19 trillion and soon increasing to USD 21 trillion.

Trump hit hard at Clinton, his Democratic presidential rival, for alleging that he does not has the temperament to be the President of the country. Referring to a book on secret service, he called her a "maniac".
Fired by a swelling middle class and rapid increase in insurance coverage, China's insurance sector last year posted its best performance since the global financial crisis in 2008, with profits surging over $47 billion, the country's insurance regulator said.

"China's insurance sector saw its best performance in 2015 since the global financial crisis, with premium income reaching 2.4 trillion yuan ($366 billion)," Chairman of Insurance Regulatory Commission Xiang Junbo said at Lujiazui Forum in Shanghai.

Profits rose to 282.4 billion yuan (over $47 billion) on top of 12.4 trillion yuan assets for the entire insurance sector last year, Xiang said.

This was mostly driven by growing demand for insurance by the middle class, he was quoted as saying by state run Xinhua news agency.

About 67 per cent of China's population, or 920 million people, are covered by medical insurance and the medical bill reimbursement ratio has been raised by 10-15 percentage points, he said, adding that the insurance sector should work to extend its coverage in the rural areas.

China's insurance sector will continue to improve to meet demands for the swelling middle class and an ageing population, he said.

Xiang said insurance firms have been encouraged to invest in elderly care services, including senior care homes and reverse home mortgages.

"Commercial insurance should be made a major pillar of China's social security net," he said.

The insurance sector also has great potential to generate employment opportunities as the sector added 1.8 million jobs last year while another 560,000 got employed during the first four months of this year. Many, according to Xiang, are employees recently made redundant.
With the two-day BJP National Executive meeting beginning in Allahabad today, Congress's city unit here put up hoardings, targeting the party on Ram temple issue.

The hoardings, put up at major road crossings in the city, carried pictures of L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and BJP national president Amit Shah with their purported statements on Ram Temple issue at various points of time and accused the party of "using it as its poll plank and befooling the people".

"Ahead of every election, BJP promises to build the Ram temple in Ayodhya and forgets about it after winning the poll. They have been playing with emotion of the people of Uttar Pradesh," city Congress president Har Prakash Agnihotri alleged.

He also claimed, "BJP will never build the Ram temple. That is why Congress has put up such hoardings in the city to make people aware that they should not fall into BJP's trap.
Several Congress workers were today detained while trying to enforce a city-wide 'bandh' in protest against the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will be here later in the day to attend the BJP's two-day national executive meeting.

Party workers, led by District Congress Committee members Haseeb Ahmed and Shrish Chand Dubey, had gathered at the Civil Lines crossing -- barely a few hundred metres from the hotel where BJP president Amit Shah is holding a meeting of BJP national office bearers.

They were immediately detained by police as they had assembled in violation of security restrictions in place, and taken to the Civil Lines police station.

The agitators alleged that Modi's two years in office have been characterised by tall claims and appealed to the people to observe the day as "Feku Diwas".

Meanwhile, another group of Congress activists led by local leader Tariq Sayeed Ajju gathered in front of the historic Anand Bhavan, the ancestral house of the Nehru-Gandhi family, and set fire to an effigy of Modi before being chased away by police.
The best-equipped superhero of all could be DC's Superman, followed closely by Marvel's Wolverine, Mystique and Thor, according to a new research that also suggests that Batman may be the most disadvantaged in terms of special powers.

Students at the University of Leicester in the UK have been using simple calculations to explain the feasibility of the powers behind of some of the most prominent comic book superheroes known around the world.

The student research determined whether or not the seemingly superhuman abilities used by the famous characters in films and comic books are in fact possible.

Whilst Black Bolt, ruler of the 'Inhumans', may be the most destructive of the superheroes (capable of planetary annihilation), the study suggests that the 'Last Son of Krypton' Superman is likely to be the best equipped to win in an epic clash between all of the studied superheroes.

Boasting a super-powered array of skills, Superman, if obeying the 'Law of Energy Conservation', could exhibit a calculated stored solar energy output of over 700 thousand Joules per second for his 'Super Flare' attack.

It is also shown that the 'Man of Steel', in theory, could have higher density muscle tissue than the average human which could aid in several of his superhuman abilities.

This incredible display of power makes Superman the number one candidate for most powerful superhero.

Honourable mentions go out to X-Men duo Wolverine and Mystique who were close contenders for the title of world's finest with their multitude of mutant abilities - including increased regenerative capacity and, in the case of Mystique, a mastery of gene manipulation to aid in disguise.

The superhero Thor, based off of the Norse god of the same name, would also be one of the most formidable superheroes, having high energy efficiency and explosive powers.

With strongest superhero determined, the study also shed light on who the most ill-equipped superhero might be - with a seemingly grim end result for Gotham's 'Caped Crusader', Batman.

Though his cape proves to be a vital utility when gliding in comic and media depictions, the student-led research suggests that when gliding Batman reaches velocities of around 80kilometres per hour - which could be fatal upon landing.

This inability to perform even the simplest of superhero feats suggest Batman would struggle to get off the ground.

The research was published in the University of Leicester's Journal of Physics Special Topics and Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics - student-run journals designed to give practical experience of writing, editing, publishing and reviewing scientific papers.
The Home Ministry is turning TV producer to showcase success stories from Northeast on national television.

The Ministry has already commissioned a 13-episode programme, with each telling stories like that of the all-girls band Hurricane Girls, family planning campaigner Dr Ilyas Ali or gymnast Dipa Karmakar.

The programme will roll out later this month on Doordarshan and if successful, the North-East Division in the Home Ministry may look at the possibility of extending it to 26 or even 52 episodes.

The Ministry is also looking at the possibility of airing this programme on private channels.

"Our idea is to make people aware about the success stories in the northeast. Through this programme, we are trying to tell how these people are changing lives in the region," a senior Home Ministry official said.

This programme is expected to go a long way in changing the attitude of people in other parts of the country towards those from the northeast as they sometimes face problems outside the region, another official said.

It would also give a sneak-peak into life in the northeast though primarily it would talk about individual success stories.

One of the most anticipated episodes would be that on 23-year-old Dipa Karmakar from Tripura, the first Indian woman gymnast to seal an Olympic berth. The episode is planned to be aired just before Olympics starts in Brazil in August.

The Home Ministry is also planning episodes on celebrated boxers Shiva Thapa and Mary Kom.

In the episode on Hurricane Girls, the all-girl band from Guwahati, one of the band members talk about their experience of their first show.

The band member was promised Rs 2,000 but she even did not get that from the organisers. The episode tells how they now have grown into a band which gets a couple of lakhs for each of their shows now.

Another episode would talk about how Meghali Borah's efforts to train women taxi drivers have helped them. Government doctor Ali's experiences in persuading rural Muslims to go for family planning feature in another episode.
Hollywood star Johnny Depp is still attached to Bret Ratner's forthcoming sex scandal movie "The Libertine", the director's representative has confirmed.

There were reports that due to his personal turmoil it wasn't clear if the 53-year-old actor would star in the movie or not but Ratner's rep has cleared the air about his casting and said the film is in development stage, reported People magazine.

"Johnny is absolutely still attached. Brett is very excited to work with him," the rep said.

The film is broadly based on the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a French politician who was accused of sexual assault by a hotel maid in 2011.

Ratner first announced his plans for the film at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Depp's estranged wife Amber Heard filed for divorce from him last month. She later claimed that the "Pirates of the Caribbean" actor had been both "verbally and physically abusive" to her throughout the "entirety" of their relationship.
Army today paid tributes to the martyrs of Assam Regiments who fought the 1971 Indo-Pak war.

Deputy Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen Subarata Saha led the troops to pay tributes to the martyrs at a war memorial in Akhnoor sector.

"We are here to commemorate the valiant action which the Fifth Battalion of Assam Regiment fought during the 1971 Indo-Pak war here," said Lt Saha, also the colonel of the Assam Regiment and Arunachal Scouts.

He also flagged off a motorcycle rally from the Akhnoor as part of the platinum jubilee celebrations of the raising of the regiment.

He said that Pakistani troops attacked five Assam Regiment positions on December 3, 1971 in which five officers and 19 men lost their lives.

"However, due to resolute leadership and dauntless courage of the officers and men of this unit, the attack was stemmed and such the capture of Akhnoor Bridge, the final objective of this offensive was prevented," he said.

"The battalion was conferred with a battle honour for Chhamb and Theatre honour for Jammu and Kashmir for its heroic and chivalrous performance.

This is the only Infantry Battalion which was awarded a battle honour in this sector during this war," he said.

Commemorating its platinum jubilee celebrations, the Assam Regiment is conducting two motorcycle expeditions, one from the general area of the Mandiala (Akhnoor) and the other one from Fazilka (Punjab).

Both the expedition will terminate in Shimla where its First Battalion is presently stationed.
In a shocking incident, a prominent restaurant in Connaught Place here allegedly denied entry to unprivileged children accompanied by a woman, prompting Delhi government to order an inquiry.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia termed the incident as an example of typical "colonial mindset" and said that if the allegations against the restaurant are found true its licence will be cancelled.

"If allegations are found true, Delhi government will cancel licence of the restaurant," he said.

Sisodia has also ordered the district magistrate of New Delhi to conduct an inquiry into the incident and submit a report within 24 hours.

"This is typical colonial mindset. Can't be tolerated. Have ordered DM New Delhi to inquire & report within 24 hours," he said in his tweet.

Sonali Shetty, a writer, had taken some street children for a lunch to the restaurant to celebrate her husband's birthday yesterday. But, they were allegedly denied service by the staff of the eatery.

"I had taken 8 underprivileged children for lunch to Shiv Sagar restaurant but the staff there denied to serve us. I was also ridiculed and threatened to keep off the restaurant," she said.

Shiv Sagar restaurant manager did not answer phone calls and messages despite several attempts.

New Delhi district magistrate visited the restaurant today morning and questioned its staff.

"The DM asked the waiters and other staff of the restaurant about the yesterday's incident and noted it down," said a restaurant staff member.

Terming the whole incident as a "failure" of the society, Shetty said that she protested outside the eatery for over 10 hours till around 12 but nothing happened.

"I will go again to the restaurant in the evening today with those children and buy them food there," she said, adding that she will fight till the children are tendered an apology by the restaurant.

She also alleged that the policemen who had come to the restaurant on her call also did not help her and instead "reprimanded" her and asked her to take the children to some other place.

Sonali's husband serves in the Indian Army.
Delhi government today ordered a probe in an incident in which a prominent restaurant in Connaught Place allegedly denied entry to poor children accompanied by a woman even as police is mulling over registering a case of alleged misbehaviour and intimidation against the eatery's staff.

However, the government's order for an inquiry did not deter the eatery staff who allegedly once again denied entry to the woman and the kids today.

Sonali Shetty, a writer, claimed that she faced the same problem again when she went to the restaurant in the evening and staged a protest on being denied entry.

"I went there at around 4 PM with the children but we were again denied entry following which I took the children to a nearby food outlet and fed them," she claimed.

She also said, "I have already given a written complaint to the police in this regard".

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia termed the incident as an example of typical "colonial mindset" and said if the allegations against the restaurant are found to be true its licence will be cancelled.

"If allegations are found true, Delhi government will cancel licence of the restaurant," he said.

Sisodia has also ordered the district magistrate of New Delhi to conduct an inquiry into the incident and submit a report within 24 hours.

"This is typical colonial mindset. Can't be tolerated. Have ordered DM New Delhi to inquire & report within 24 hours," he said in his tweet.

Meanwhile, police is yet to take any decision on whether to lodge an FIR in the matter in which Shetty had called the cops last night when she staged a protest outside the restaurant.

A senior police official said when the cops reached the spot, she complained that the restaurant owner's relative and staff members had misbehaved with her and the children and also threatened them.

"We are investigating the matter thoroughly but no case has been registered yet," the official said.

Shetty had taken some street children for lunch to the



restaurant to celebrate her husband's birthday yesterday but they were allegedly denied service by the staff of the eatery.

"I had taken 8 underprivileged children for lunch to Shiv Sagar restaurant but the staff there refused to serve us. I was also ridiculed and threatened to keep off the restaurant," she said.

Roma Malhotra, PR officer of Shiv Sagar restaurant, said she will not say anything, alleging that media is not reporting their version properly.

New Delhi district magistrate visited the restaurant this morning and questioned its staff.

"The DM asked the waiters and other staff of the restaurant about yesterday's incident and noted it down," a restaurant staff member said.

Terming the whole incident as a "failure" of the society, Shetty said she protested outside the eatery for over 10 hours till around 12 but nothing happened.

She added that she will fight till the children are tendered an apology by the restaurant.

She also alleged that the policemen who had come to the restaurant on her call also did not help her and instead "reprimanded" her and asked her to take the children to some other place.

Sonali's husband serves in the Indian Army.
Hundreds of farmers, led by Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana, today staged a protest in the district against low prices of onions, police said.

The farmers, wearing garlands made of onions, protested in Niphad against Maharashtra Cooperation Minister Chandrakant Patil and Minister of State for Cooperation Dada Bhuse, when the two were in the town, said R S Dere, in-charge of Niphad police station.

The farmers alleged that the onion prices have fallen and demanded a support price of Rs 2,000 per quintal, the officer said.

Police said at least 20 workers were detained.

Farmers further alleged that they were facing losses as onions were sold from Rs 300 to Rs 500 per quintal during auctioning at the Agriculture Produce Market Committee.
Facebook, Microsoft and Google have agreed to work with Bangladesh government over "inappropriate contents" on the Internet, the Parliament was told today amidst a series of brutal killings by Islamists of secular bloggers and minorities.

Speaking at a question-and-answer session, State Minister for Telecoms Tarana Halim said that not only social media giant Facebook, but the two internet behemoths, too, have also agreed to respond to the government's request within two days.

"After intense discussion with Facebook, Google and Microsoft, it has been agreed that they will respond to requests with 48 hours," she said.

Last year, the Bangladesh government suspended the use of Facebook, its messenger app, and some other communication apps for 22 days, citing security reasons following the murder of two foreign nationals and the attack on a police check post.

Before the 22-day ban, the government had blocked some popular calling and messaging services such as WhatsApp and Viber for several days during a three-month agitation by the BNP-led alliance early last year.

Police had said then they were having trouble tracking down saboteurs, as they were using these apps to communicate.

In November last year, Halim had written to the Facebook authorities, conveying her wish to discuss with them a gamut of issues related to the social network site and its messenger app.

The minister subsequently held a meeting at Facebook's Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore and told reporters about the social media giant's promise to cooperate.

Facebook's half-yearly 'Government Request Report' in April this year showed that it had, for the first time, responded to requests from the Bangladesh government.

Between July and December last year, the government had sought information on 31 Facebook users. The report said that it had responded to 16.67 per cent of the requests.

But between January 2013 and June 2015, government's request on 37 users had failed to evoke any response from the social media site.

Replying to another query, Minister Halim said that Google, too, had agreed to remove videos from its Youtube arm following requests from the government.

Bangladesh has been witnessing a string of brutal attacks by Islamists. The ISIS and Al-Qaeda in the Indian Peninsula have claimed some of the attacks but government denies the presence of these groups in Bangladesh.

The attacks since last year, which has left more than 30 people dead, has put Bangladesh under a global spotlight for failing to prevent such attacks.

On Friday, a 60-year-old Hindu ashram worker was hacked to death by ISIS jihadists, days after another priest was killed by the same terrorist group in the Muslim-majority nation.
The DIPP may put certain conditions for foreign investors in the Cabinet proposal for allowing in food processing sector.

Officials of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and Food Processing Ministry are discussing mutually agreeable conditions to be included in the proposal, an official said.

The development comes in the wake of Ministry of Food processing asking to put a condition of investing 25% of the foreign inflows for creating agriculture infrastructure in the proposal.

The original proposal sent to the Union Cabinet did not have any condition.

Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal is demanding that foreign players looking to invest in the sector would have to mandatorily invest a portion of their investments in building infrastructure at the farm gate level for the benefit of farmers.

The minister is asking for putting a condition of investing 25% of the foreign inflows for creating agriculture infrastructure.

However, another official said that inclusion of any kind of condition in the proposal may hamper investments in the sector.

As per the original proposal, the DIPP had proposed to allow 100% in marketing of food products produced and manufactured in India after approval from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB).

The government is also likely to permit business-to- consumer online selling of food products produced and manufactured domestically.

The food processing sector has attracted $5,285.66 million during April 2012 to December 2015 period.

The government had stated that FDI in food processing will benefit farmers, reduce wastage of fruits and vegetables, give impetus to the industry and create vast employment opportunities.

Overall FDI in the country registered a growth of 29% in 2015-16. It stood at $40 billion in that fiscal.
Fifty people died and another 53 were injured when a gunman opened fire and seized hostages at a gay nightclub in Florida, police said today, making it the worst mass shooting in US history.

"We have cleared the building, and it is with great sadness that I share we have not 20 but 50 casualties in addition to the shooter," Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer told a briefing, raising the death toll from 20 previously.

"There are another 53 that are hospitalised.
For Ethiopians, Bollywood is synonymous with "Mother India" and such is the popularity of the Nargis-Sunil Dutt starrer movie that it continues to enthral them even after 59 years of its release.

While recent Bollywood blockbusters like "Veer Zara", "Kuch Kuch Hota hai", "Karan Arjun" have earned their actors Salman and Shah Rukh Khan a huge fan following, thanks to their dubbing in local language Amharic, Ethiopians embraced the Mehboob Khan helmed classic without even understanding a word of Hindi.

Earlier, Indian movies were available with subtitles or sometimes even without that. But still the people understood them without any knowledge about Hindi.

"I watched the movie (Mother India) some 40 years ago. Now a lot of people know and watch Indian movies. Even if they do not understand it, they watch it. In terms of Indian movies, almost everybody now is able to have a cable TV in their house even in the remote areas," Soloman Tadesse, CEO of Ethiopian Tourism Organisation said here.

Almost everyone who was asked about Bollwyood in the country- everyone has a unique story to share about 'Mother India'.

"I love 'Mother India' and cried for half an hour after watching it," said Dorse, owner of a souvenir shop.

Other movies like "Karan Arjun", "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai", "Veer Zara" are favourites with Shah Rukh and Salman being the most loved actors in the country.

"I have watched 'Karan Arjun' and I love Shah Rukh and Salman," Deteste, an employee at the Kuriftu Resort in Bahir Dar said.

With the advent of cable television, movies are now being translated in the local language Amharic and made available to Ethiopians.

"Cable TV brings Indian movies. Recently an Ethiopian company started dubbing the movies in Amharic. There is a lot of similarity in the mindset, culture and temperament among the people of both the countries," Tadesse said.

With the beautiful landscapes in Africa, many Bollywood movies have been shot in countries like Egypt and South Africa but Ethiopia has been untapped by the Bollywood producers despite the scenic beauty of the place.

The tourism department is now working to draw Indian producers to the country.

"We are in talks with Indian producers and trying to get them to picturise the movies in our country," said an official of the Ethiopian Toursim Organisation.
Former US Sen George Voinovich, a two-term Ohio governor who preached frugality in his personal and public life and occasionally bucked the Republican establishment, died today.

He was 79.

Voinovich, considered a moderate who opposed the size of former President George W. Bush's tax cuts and later questioned Bush's war strategy in Iraq, died peacefully in his sleep, his wife Janet confirmed. His death came as a surprise to friends.

The Republican had delivered public remarks Friday at a 25th Slovenian Independence Day event at Cleveland City Hall. He was a delegate to the Republican National Convention coming to Cleveland next month.

In June 2003, doctors implanted a cardiac pacemaker because his heart rate had slowed down over several years due to a condition called progressive sinus bradycardia and Voinovich had experienced various health challenges in recent years.

During his 12 years in the Senate, Voinovich occasionally found himself at odds with Republican conservatives. He was an early supporter of a proposed federal bailout for the auto industry, which employs thousands of people in Ohio, and he was the rare Republican during the Bush administration to suggest raising taxes to pay for the war in Iraq and hurricane relief.

Twice elected to the Senate, Voinovich announced in early 2009 that he would not run again in 2010. He said he wanted to retire to spend more time with his family and at his condo on Florida's Gulf Coast.

He also planned to write a book and agreed to be a consultant and adviser on major research projects at Ohio University and Cleveland State University.

He was succeeded by fellow Republican and former congressman Rob Portman of Cincinnati. Portman said in a statement today that Voinovich "exemplified everything good about public service. It was never about him, but always about helping others. He was an independent voice who never hesitated to speak his mind."



Ohio Gov John Kasich remembered Voinovich for bringing people together for the common good.

"He was a unifier who thought outside the box, never gave up and worked hard for the ideas he believed in up until the very end of his life," Kasich said in a statement today.

"Thanks to that leadership he saved Cleveland, governed Ohio compassionately and responsibly and was a candid voice for reason in the US Senate.
Family members of Judith D'Souza, who was abducted from Taimani area of Kabul, today said that the Centre was doing its best to bring Judith back home from Afghanistan.

"There has been lot of communication from MEA and the Union government. A joint secretary level officer is coordinating with us. We have full faith on the Indian government and the MEA, they are doing their best to bring my sister back. We have also spoken to the organisation my sister was working for," Judith's brother Jerome told PTI.

When asked whether the details about the efforts being made were discussed with the family members, Jerome said, "No these are official proceedings, which MEA and Indian embassy in Kabul are dealing with. These things are not to be made public."



External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had called up Judith's family here and had assured them of making all-out efforts to bring her back.

Judith, 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.

Judith is working for Aga Khan Foundation as senior technical adviser and was scheduled to return to India next week.

Meanwhile, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury paid a visit to Judith's family and assured of all help.
The High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad has issued an interim stay order on a notice by Visakhapatnam Urban Development Authority (VUDA) cancelling the land sale to National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) Limited.

had acquired a plot in 1992, measuring 2,419 sq yards, at Dutch Layout in Visakhapatnam through auction for Rs 55.6 lakh, with an intention to construct staff quarters.

However, the construction could not be taken up since the approach road to the plot remained blocked by boulders, sand and widewall. Despite requests to the authorities concerned by NMDC, the blockade has not been removed till now, a senior official said.

In 2012, decided to construct its regional office-cum-guest house on the plot instead of staff quarters. For this purpose, NMDC applied for conversion of land use from residential to commercial by submitting all the documents in February 2012, on which VUDA is yet to accord its approval, the official said.

Instead, VUDA issued an order on June 6 this year to the Regional Manager, NMDC - Visakhapatnam, cancelling the sale deed executed in favour of the miner.

NMDC then approached the high court challenging the VUDA order.

"Having regard to the facts and circumstances of the case, there shall be interim suspension of the impugned order passed by the second respondent (VUDA) for a period of four weeks," the high court said in its order on June 8.

The official quoted above said that NMDC Chairman-cum-Managing Director Bharathi S Sihag has also apprised Union Steel Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and sought his intervention to sort out the issue amicably with the Andhra Pradesh government.
Top BJP brass may have maintained silence over whether to project a chief ministerial face for the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, but regional leaders and their supporters have taken to posters to send out a message about their preferences, as the party's national executive meet began here today.

Among all state leaders, it is the face of party MP Varun Gandhi which dons most posters and hoardings put up along the roads leading to the meeting venue, while posters of Union Minister Smriti Irani, who is seen as one of the party's options for the post, are present at relatively fewer places.

Photographs of Home Minister Rajnath Singh, its most prominent state leader, also find their place across the city, at some places alongside that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah.

Union Minister Uma Bharti, an OBC leader who was seen as the party's chief ministerial candidate in 2012 assembly polls, is hardly visible among these posters and banners.

Wary that the party may not take kindly to any bid by some leaders to project themselves as the chief ministerial face when it is still deliberating the matter, those who have put up posters and banners have refrained from making any direct call to declare their favourites as the pick.

Reacting to the issue, BJP national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh told reporters here that "there are well-wishers of Mr Varun Gandhi. But certainly, it's not through the party effort that this (posters) has come up."



"All I can say is certainly this is not any kind of projection that the party is making in the national executive and hoardings and posters are not parameters of popularity," Singh said.

The party is still mulling over whether to go with a chief ministerial face as it did in Assam, as factors like caste equation and lack of a face acceptable across the big state play in its mind.

Though many in the party feel Rajnath Singh outscores other challengers on most counts but he has earlier expressed reluctance to join state politics and the party top brass is also in two minds on whether he is the best bet or not. He is though certain to play an important role, including the possibility of heading the party's campaign.

Replying to questions, Siddharth Singh also said that as



far as Congress was concerned, they are "non-starters. Yes, Mayawati is there and (there is) SP's Akhilesh Yadav.

"But what strategy is going to unfold, I don't think it is the National Executive which will decide. It will be the party's Parliamentary Board," he added.

Posters across the town also feature several important national party leaders, including cutouts of union ministers Sushma Swaraj and M Venkaiah Naidu.

Faces of party stalwarts Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L K Advani and Union Minister Kalraj Mishra are also visible.

Faces of MP Shatrughan Sinha, a national executive member who has been critical of the party over a host of issues, and Sanjay Joshi, once powerful general secretary but now an outcast in party under the Modi-Shah leadership, were also seen at some places.
Indian electronics is ready to fulfil components wish list of for making iPhone in the country if the smart devices major provides purchase commitment to local firms, says the India Electronics & Semiconductor Association (IESA).

If government says fall in line, associations are prepared to enter into agreement with and say tell us what your wish list is, we will fulfil it in next three, six, 9 and 12 months, IESA President MN Vidyashankar told PTI.

has submitted proposal for setting up single brand retail stores in the country but has sought exemption from the local sourcing norms as the US-based giant makes state-of-the-art and cutting edge technology products for which local sourcing is not possible. The finance ministry has rejected relaxing the 30 per cent domestic sourcing norms, as sought by iPhone and iPad maker as a pre-condition for bringing in foreign domestic investment (FDI) to set up single-brand retail stores in the country.

However, the ministry of commerce has taken a line that the 30 per cent local sourcing requirement can be waived off for high-end technology products and will again try for exempting Apple from this norm.

If you make an exception to Apple, everybody will come and ask for similar differentiation. Such kind of request will only multiply. Any kind of dilution will adversely affect us, Vidyashankar said.

He said associations have met all ministries concerned  finance, commerce, department of industrial policy and promotions and communications & IT.

Industry bodies have expressed their views that there should be no dilution on this, Vidyashankar said.

He, however, said that Apple entry in India is very important for industry and country.

Their coming is very important for us. If we can say we are supplying to Apple, all the leading players will fall in line. With China saying that they are supplying to Apple, the credibility touches sky high. We need to be almost equal to that kind of dispensation but there should be no dilution, he said.

He said that industry can cater to need of Apple if business is assured from the iPhone maker.

"If someone is heading an organisation who has 200 and now these 200 are given an order with assurance that components will be sourced from them for next three years. It can be easily done ...that's what we are looking at," Vidyashankar said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today sent his condolences to US President Barack Obama after 50 people were shot dead in a Florida nightclub for gays.

"On behalf of the people and government of Israel I extend our deepest condolences to the American people following last night's horrific attack on the LGBT community in Orlando," he said in a statement issued in English.

"Israel stands shoulder to shoulder with the United States at this moment of tragic loss," Netanyahu added.

Two Palestinian gunmen shot dead four people at a popular Tel Aviv nightspot on Wednesday, triggering fresh Israeli restrictions on the West Bank and Gaza Strip at the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Cracking the whip, JD(S) today suspended its eight rebel MLAs who voted againstits official candidate and supported Congress in the biennial elections to fill four Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka.

Caught off guard by the open defiance of rebels, a red-faced JD(S) leadership also issued a notice asking them why they shouldnot be expelled from the party for defying the party whip in the elections held yesterday, which saw the party candidate, businessman B M Farooq, secure 33 votes against the party strength of 40.

Addressinga meeting of party MLAs, Panchayat Members and office-bearers, JD(S) National President and former prime minister H D Deve Gowda said, "all the eight members have been suspended and notice have been issued to them."



He said,accordingto the party constitution, a three- member enquiry committee would be set up, which after going through their (suspended MLAs) replies to the notice, would decide on the expulsion.

Also accusing the MLAs of indulging in cross-voting during biennial elections to fill in seven seats of Karnataka Legislative Council from Legislative Assembly heldon Friday, the party has said that if there is no response they would be expelled inaccordancewith the party constitution.

The rebel MLAs who faced action are Zameer Ahmed Khan, Chaluvaraya Swamy, Iqbal Ansari, Balakrishna, Ramesh Bandisiddegowda, Gopalaiah, Bheema Nayak and Akhanda Srinivas Murthy who had voted forCongress party's third candidate for RajyaSabhaK C Ramamurthy, paving the way for his resounding victory securing 52 votesaided by them and Independents.

The party earlier today adopted a resolution asking its president to suspend 8 MLAs and to expel them for their indiscipline.

The motion was moved by MLA Y S V Dattaand seconded by another MLA Ningaiah and MLC T ASaravana.

Union Minister Nirmala Seetharaman and Congress' Jairam Ramesh, Oscar Fernandes and K C Ramamurthy had won Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka.

It was a harder and more humiliating blow for JD(S) as 8 MLAs indulged in cross-voting as against the expected five.

Gowda during the meeting vowed to build and strengthen the party by travelling across the state.

Accusing Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Energy Minister D K Shivakumar and BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa of conspiringagainst JD(S), he said"the agenda of this trio is to finish JD(S), but they will not succeed in it.

Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP



President Amit Shah, Gowda alleged that BJP had "joined hands" with Congress to win the second seat in the council election.

"Modi and Shah speak across the country about Congress-free India, what are they doing here in Karnataka? They have joined hands with Congress to win the second seat in the Council elections," he said.

Congress had won all four seats it contested in Council elections from the Assembly, while BJP managed to win both the seats for which it had fielded candidates and JD(S) could win only one seat.

JD(S) state president and former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy was absent in the meeting but his message to party workers was read out, in which he called rebels as 'Mir Sadiq' (a minister who betrayed Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan paving the way for a British victory in Anglo-Mysore war).

Party sources said Kumaraswamy was travelling abroad for production related work of the movie 'Jaguar' starring his son Nikhil.

JD(S) has been rocked by "dissidence" in recent months with several of its MLAs unhappy with the leadership over its style of functioning and "unilateral" decisions by the Gowda family which maintains a stranglehold over the party.

Congress with 122 members was assured of two seats for Jairam Ramesh and Oscar Fernandes, but with a surplus of 33 votes, the party fielded Ramamurthy, banking on JD(S) rebels and Independents. The required strength for victory was 45 votes.

Even hours before the Rajya Sabha polls ended, the party had admitted that there was cross-voting by its eight rebels, who also publicly said they voted for Congress.
Amidst chanting of religious hymns and sound of temple bells, thousands of Kashmiri Pandits today prayed at the famous temple of Ragnya Devi here in Kashmir's Ganderbal district on the occasion of annual Kheer Bhawani mela- a symbol of Hindu-Muslim amity.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti also paid obeisance at the revered temple.

The atmosphere was filled with fervour and brotherhood as devotees congregated at the temple of Mata Kheer Bhawani which is situated amidst majestic chinar trees.

The mela has become a symbol of communal harmony as local Muslims make all the arrangements for the devotees including setting up of stalls for flowers and other offerings.

Walking barefoot and carrying rose petals, the devotees, mostly Kashmiri Pandits, thronged the temple to pay obeisance to the deity while offering milk and kheer (pudding) at the sacred spring within the complex.

It is believed that the colour of the sacred spring water which flows below the temple indicates to the situation in the Valley.

While most of the colours do not have any particular significance, black or darkish colour of the water is believed to be an indication of inauspicious times for Kashmir.

However, this year the water in the spring was clean and pure which the devotees believe is a good omen for the Valley.

Shortly after Mehbooba left the venue, a group of Pandits staged a protest raising slogans against the government and police for a stone-pelting incident yesterday in which a devotee was injured.

"We were welcomed with stones yesterday. Is this how they want us to return?" a protester said.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today attacked the Congress party for appointing Kamal Nath as the party general secretary and in-charge of Punjab, asking Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh if he has absolved Nath for his alleged involvement in 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

Kejriwal also questioned Centre's move to reopen 75 cases of anti-Sikh riots in Delhi and some other states saying BJP has set up SIT (Special Investigation Team) only to prevent AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) from forming an effective SIT.

Hours after Nath and Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad were appointed general secretaries in-charge of Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, Kejriwal, the Aam Aadmi Party National Convenor tweeted "Capt Amrinder shud state his stand on Kamal Nath. Does Capt absolve Kamal Nath?"



Later, he also tweeted "Reopen cases now? What did they do in one n a half years? BJP set up SIT only 2 prevent AAP from formin effective SIT."



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.

Apart from Punjab, 69-year-old Nath will look after Haryana. He is the senior most MP in the current Lok Sabha having won from his pocket borough ofChhindwara nine times.

Meanwhile, a Home Ministry official said Centre-appointed SIT will re-investigate around 75 cases of 1984 riots in Delhi and some other states, a decision that comes months ahead of the assembly elections in Punjab.

A total of 3,325 people were killed in the riots. Delhi alone accounted for 2,733 deaths while the rest occurred in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and other states.

Delhi Police had closed 241 cases citing lack of evidence.

The Justice Nanavati Commission had recommended reopening of only four of the 241 cases closed by police but BJP wanted re-investigation of all the other 237 cases.

At the time of formation of the SIT about one-and-a-half- years ago, the government had said it would submit its report within six months.

However, it is not known why the SIT's work got delayed and now it has decided to re-investigate only the 75 anti-Sikh riot cases.

(REOPENS DES 67)



Meanwhile, in Chandigarh, AAP's Punjab convenor Sucha Singh Chhotepur criticised the appointment of Nath as the Congress party's in-charge of the state, alleging that he was involved in the anti-Sikh riots in 1984.

Chhotepur said that for 32 years, Sikhs have been crying hard to get justice for their massacre in 1984, but instead of giving justice, Congress has made "cruel joke" with them.

Earlier, not only Congress tried hard to save the skins of key accused Jagdish Tytler, Sajjan Kumar, HKL Bhagat and Kamal Nath, but also honoured these leaders with key posts in party and government, Chhotepur alleged.

Chhotepur said that victims of the 1984 riots, are still waiting for justice, but Congress has appointed a person who was allegedly involved in anti-Sikh riots as party in-charge of Punjab.

Kamal Nath was today appointed as Congress general secretary and incharge of Punjab and Haryana.
Three nephrologists at the Apollo Hospital here are likely to be questioned by Delhi Police in connection with the transplant surgeries performed under their supervision which were facilitated by the in which 10 persons have been arrested so far.

The names of the three doctors emerged during the interrogation of the racket's kingpin Rajkumar Rao, who was allegedly operating in several states and is believed to have links with similar cartels in other countries, a senior police official said.

One of the three senior doctors is currently in the US. He was to return on Thursday but did not.

Two of his personal assistants were the first to be arrested in connection with the racket. A police team has been deployed at IGI airport to keep check on the doctor's return, the official said.

During investigation, police found blank papers signed by the doctor, which were allegedly used by his assistants to complete the formalities to facilitate kidney transplant surgeries at the hospital.

A personal assistant of another senior doctor too was detained by police on Friday and the nephrologist's role is under scanner now.

The name of the third doctor emerged after the police came across a donor linked to the racket. The suspicion of his involvement grew after his name cropped up during Rao's interrogation. Police are already investigating his assistant's role, the official added.

Police are likely to send notice in a day asking all three of them to join the probe.

Similar notices were earlier issued to five senior officials of the hospital, including the head of the 10-member internal assessment committee for transplant surgeries.

Ten persons, including two personal assistants of a nephrologist, several middlemen and donors, besides the kingpin have been arrested in connection with the racket so far.
The Sri Lankan military played a commendable role in the aftermath of the ammunition dump explosion that caused damage worth Rs 5 billion, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said today.

The premier visited the site to meet with the people affected by the explosion on June 5 at one of the central ammunition stores for the military located at Salawa, 30 kms east of here.

"The military did their job of providing relief to people and they will continue to do their good work. Some were trying to set people against them," Wickremesinghe said.

Over 300 homes and businesses were destroyed by mortars, anti tank shells and artillery which landed in the neighbourhood. The cause of the explosion is yet to be verified.

Army commander Chrishantha de Silva has said the army's loss was close to Rs 5 billion.

The affected people are upset and there have been continued protests at the site since last week.

Some claimed their properties built over a lifetime had been destroyed even as the government has pledged assistance to rebuild the area.
Actress Sana Khan says she was nervous to share screen space with Sharman Joshi in upcoming film "Wajah Tum Ho", but learnt a lot from him during the shoot.

Directed by "Hate Story 3" helmer Vishal Pandya, "Wajah Tum Ho" is an erotic thriller which also stars TV actor Gurmeet Choudhary.

"I am very happy that I am working with both of them. I know Gurmeet from before, he is very chilled out and sweet guy with no tantrums. But I was a little skeptical about Sharman because he looks very serious," Sana told PTI.

"But (later) I realised he is even more fun. Sharman is a fantastic actor and I keep observing him so I can learn more...I also feel Gurmeet is a great actor too," she said.

The actress, best known for appearing on "Bigg Boss", has worked in several South Indian movies. She also featured in Salman Khan starrer "Jai Ho".

Sana is excited to be a part of the project as it will be her first big film as a solo lead.

"It feels great to be a part of 'Wajah Tum Ho'. I am super excited, this will be my first Hindi project where I play the lead. It will be exciting to see myself on the big screen in the language I know, as I have played leads before but in South movies," she said.

In the film, the actress will be seen playing a lawyer. Sana says she is happy with the look the makers have given to her character.

"I was only told by my director that it's a mature character so you have to look crisp and fierce, do it commandingly. With so many guys in suits, I will be one girl doing the rounds in formals. I really like the look they gave me," she said.

The actress will be seen doing intimate scenes in the film, but says she isn't apprehensive about getting stereotyped in bold roles.

"No one gets stereotyped unless one wants to. I was in 'Bigg Boss' were people called me cute and bubbly, but I landed in 'Jai Ho' playing a villain. And from those few scenes in 'Jai Ho', I landed a proper lead in 'Wajah...' So I don't see myself getting stereotyped," she added.
A militant hideout has been busted and large cache of arms and ammunition were recovered by the security forces in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir, an army official said today.

Based on specific information, a joint search operation was launched by the Army and police in the Lakharwali forests of the Tahanamandi area of the district yesterday and the hideout was found, a defence spokesperson said.

One AK-47 rifle with two magazines, 115 rounds of 762mm, one Chinese pistol with one magazine and four rounds, four Chinese grenades and four under-barrel grenade launchers (UBGLs) have been recovered, he said.

Grenades and UBGL shells were destroyed on the spot, he added.
Nagaland Governor P B Acharya has termed the framework agreement signed between the Centre and NSCN(IM) on August 3, 2015 as a "momentous development" and appealed for unity among the Nagas.

Acharya said he was encouraged by the statement of NSCN(IM), issued on June 7 last, calling upon all Naga people to be prepared for final solution, while acknowledging that a strong foundation has been laid with the signing of the framework agreement.

He said this while interacting with media persons in Dimapur yesterday, a statement issued by Directorate of Information Public Relations said here today.

Meanwhile, describing Yoga has an invaluable gift of India's ancient tradition which embodies holistic approach to health and well-being, Acharya appealed to all sections of the society to participate in the International Day of Yoga 2016.

He said that in order to spread the message and importance of Yoga, state level function will be held at Indira Gandhi stadium, Kohima on June 21 while district level functions would be held at respective district headquarters.

On the education front, the Governor viewed education as a social responsibility and said that people managing the educational institution should not be commercial minded but take it as a mission.

"To strengthen the society, education is the most important pillar," he said.

On alleged rampant corruption, backdoor appointments in government departments and irregularities in implementation of schemes, Acharya said there is a need to "suitably" strengthen the Vigilance Commission and urged the State government to immediately enact and appoint Lokayukta.
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today said there was a need to instill confidence among for their permanent return to the Valley and the present situation was not such that they could live in their native places.

"I will only appeal to that they should trust us and pray. We are trying to create peace here, Kashmir is incomplete without Kashmiri Pandits," Mehbooba told reporters here after paying obeisance at Mata Kheer Bhawani temple situated around 25 km from Srinagar.

She said there was a need to infuse confidence among the community before they could go back to their native places.

"To infuse confidence among them, first they will be brought to transit camps, transit communities, where our Muslim migrants will also live with them. Once their confidence grows, then they can live wherever they want," the chief minister said.

She said the present situation was not such that Pandits could live in their native places and referred to last night's stone pelting incident in south Kashmir's Kulgam district where a police post was pelted with stones. A vehicle carrying for the festival at Kheer Bhawani temple got caught in it.

"Whoever is saying this (that Pandits be settled in their native places) be it Conference, Congress or other parties, they should think if the situation is such right now can Kashmiri Pandits live there after yesterday's incident," Mehbooba said.

She said children belonging to poor families were being used by some people in Kashmir for stone pelting and it was time for the people of Kashmir to ponder upon that.

"There are some elements in Kashmir who are anti-social and are using poor people for stone-pelting. The poor children they are using will face stigma from society forever," she said.

The chief minister said they will be called stone pelters even if they got educated and achieved something in life.

She also expressed satisfaction over a large number of devotees visiting the Kheer Bhawani temple this year.

"I feel that by coming here in such large numbers and meeting people here, the confidence will increase and slowly a time will come that these people will return to live here," she said.

Invoking the ethos of 'Kashmiriyat', the Chief Minister also praised local Muslims for participating in the festival at the temple, which is thronged by Kashmiri Pandits.
Asserting that their alliance with Congress will continue, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) on Sunday said there are no reasons for the Left Front to break down owing to the tie-up.

"There are no reasons and circumstances for the Left Front to break. It will remain intact and there is no question of any misunderstanding. All have to do their bit," state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra said after a two-day-long party state committee meeting.

He also made it clear that their alliance with Congress will continue.

"We will work with all Left parties outside of the Left Front and also work together with democratic secular parties," Mishra said.

Earlier in the day, Congress had also made it clear that it will continue its alliance with the Left Front in West Bengal.

Last Friday, several Left Front constituents had criticised the leadership of its major partner for compromising Left unity, alleging that it had forged an opportunistic political alliance with Congress in the state.

Mishra also made allegations of malpractices in the state assembly polls saying, "We cannot say that this election was free and fair. In every district there were some places where voters were prevented from casting their votes freely. It was done in an organised and pre-meditated manner".

Around 5% of the complaints made to the Election Commission are yet to be disposed, he claimed, adding that they don't know the outcome of the remaining 95%.

The leader also claimed that their vote percentage has increased in 169 seats.

After a review of election performance of the alliance, he said they need a detailed and in-depth review at the booth level.

"We discussed organisational weakness. In some constituencies we could not reach out to the people," Mishra said, adding that in places where their organisational strength was good they did well.

During the course of elections, 1924 party workers were injured in political clashes and 9028 were thrown out of their houses, he alleged.
Notwithstanding a US push for India's NSG membership, China today said members of the elite club "remain divided" on the issue of non-NPT countries joining it and insisted that there "was no deliberation" on the bid by India and other nations at the Vienna meeting.

"There was no deliberation on any items related to the accession to the NSG by India or any other countries that are not signatories to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hong Lei said in a statement while referring to the Vienna meeting that took place last week.

He said the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) Chair Argentine Ambassador Rafael Mariano Grossi convened an unofficial meeting of the 48-member group on June 9.

"The Chair said that this meeting has no agenda and is only convened to heed opinions from all parties on the outreach of the NSG and prepare for a report to be submitted at the NSG Plenary Meeting in Seoul later this month (June 24)," he said.

However, diplomatic sources in Vienna had said earlier that India's membership was discussed at the meeting and talks had remained inconclusive.

China has maintained that non-NPT signatories should not be admitted into NSG on the grounds that it would undermine efforts to prevent proliferation.

Calling for "full discussions" within the NSG to reach an agreement on India's admission, Hong said China would take part in the deliberations in a "constructive manner".

"China has noted that some non-NPT countries aspire to join the NSG but when it comes to the accession by non-NPT countries, China maintains that the group should have full discussions before forging consensus and making decisions based on agreement," he said.

"The NPT provides a political and legal foundation for the international non-proliferation regime as a whole. China's position applies to all non-NPT countries and targets no one in particular," Hong said, without directly mentioning India's application to join the Vienna-based group.

China has been reportedly backing Pakistan's bid to join the nuclear trading club.

"The fact is that many countries within the group also share China's stance," Hong said in response to a question about China, New Zealand, Ireland, Turkey, South Africa and Austria objecting to India's accession to the NSG at its meeting in Vienna.

"There has been some discussion within the group on the NSG membership of non-NPT countries, but NSG members remain divided on this issue," Hong said.

"Looking forward, China will continue to support further



discussion within the group to forge consensus at an early date. China will proceed with relevant discussion in a constructive manner," Hong said.

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.

India, though not a member, enjoys the benefits of membership under a 2008 exemption to NSG rules for its atomic cooperation deal with the US.

The NSG looks after critical issues relating to nuclear sector and its members are allowed to trade in and export nuclear technology. The NSG works under the principle of unanimity and even one country's vote against India will scuttle its bid.
The gunman behind a mass shooting at a gay club in Orlando, Florida has been identified as an citizen of Afghan descent, US television networks reported today.

Quoting law enforcement sources, CBS named the shooter as Omar Mateen, who was born to Afghan parents in 1986 and lives in Port St Lucie, Florida.

The network reported that Mateen - who died in a shootout with police after the hostage siege - has no apparent criminal history and that authorities are investigating whether he had ties to Islamic extremism.

Police have yet to officially identify the gunman.
More than 5,300 criminal suspects, including 85 militants, have been arrested in Bangladesh as part of an intensified crackdown on Islamists to halt a wave of brutal attacks on minorities and secular writers, police said today.

As many as 2,128 people have been arrested on the second day of a nationwide anti-terror crackdown, police said, adding 48 of them belonged to various militant outfits.

The other arrested militant suspects belonged to banned outfits like Jagrota Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) or Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT).

Altogether 5,320 people have been arrested, including 85 militants, since Friday morning, when the drive kicked off, police said. Yesterday, 3,192 people had been arrested.

"The rest of the arrested 5,320 persons were mostly fugitives who are wanted in different criminal cases including narcotics charges," a police spokesman said.

Bangladesh launched the drive after a high-level meeting held by Inspector General AKM Shahidul Hoque on Thursday. The anti-militant drive involved the paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh and the elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion.

Bangladesh has been witnessing a string of brutal attacks by Islamists. Islamic State and al-Qaeda in the Indian Peninsula have claimed some of the attacks but the government denies the presence of these groups in Bangladesh.

The government attributes the murders to homegrown militant outfits like JMB, saying key-opposition BNP and its fundamentalist ally Jamaat-e-Islami were patronising the attacks under an orchestrated plot against the government.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Friday told a meeting of her ruling Awami League party that police would stamp out the violence and vowed to catch "each and every killer".

The attacks since last year, which has left more than 30 people dead, has put Bangladesh under a global spotlight for failing to prevent such attacks.

On Friday, a 60-year-old Hindu ashram worker was hacked to death by IS jihadists, days after another priest was killed by the same terrorist group in the Muslim-majority nation.

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. The same month, a Hindu tailor was hacked to death and Bangladesh's first gay magazine editor was murdered in his Dhaka flat by Islamists.
A Hindu man aged over 80 years was beaten up by a police constable in Pakistan for allegedly eating and selling food before iftaar, triggering a social media campaign that led to the arrest of the cop.

Gokal Das was badly beaten up by constable Ali Hussain in the remote village of Hayat Pitafi in Ghotki district of the southern Sindh province where he was selling food before iftaar, the evening meal with which Muslims end their daily Ramadan fast at sunset.

Hussain claimed he also saw him eating a banana.

Bachal Qazi, the Station House Officer of the Jawar police station in whose jurisdiction the village falls said that the constable and his brother "threw the old man on the ground and beat him badly before people rescued him."



Das was later taken to a hospital for treatment as he was bleeding.

The pictures of the incident showing Das with a injured hand and blood stained shirt were widely circulated on social media.

Following the publication of the pictures, a social media campaign was launched calling for justice for the old man.

Social and civil rights activists and even ordinary citizens criticised the intolerance exhibited by the police in the month of Ramadan, which started on June 7 and called for giving him proper punishment.

It prompted the government to take quick action and arrest the police constable and his brother.

Qazi said that the IG Sindh police ordered the arrest of the constable after that.

A sizeable number of Hindus live in Pakistan's Sindh province.

Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari, daughter of former president Asif Ali Zardari, whose Pakistan People's Party is in power in Sindh, took to social media to announce the arrest of the cop.

"The policeman has been arrested," she tweeted.

Dawn reported an FIR had been registered in Jarwar police station against the policeman for assaulting the senior citizen.
A police constable in this Pakistani city has been arrested after he beat a Hindu man aged over 80 years for eating and selling food before iftaar, triggering a social media campaign calling for justice for the elderly man.

According to the reports, the IG Sindh police ordered the arrest of Ali Hussain after the family of Gokal Das posted pictures of the octogenarian who was beaten and bruised badly.

"The incident occurred last Thursday in Ghotki where Das was selling Iftaari items before Iftaar and Hussain claimed he also saw him eating a banana," a local police official said.

"The constable showed high-handedness in dealing with the matter and he thrashed the old man who was rescued by citizens," he said.

A social media campaign was launched calling for justice for Das following the uploading of his pictures.

Hussain who is posted in Ghotki district has been arrested on charges of torturing and injuring Das.

The police arrested Hussain after Vinod Kumar, Gokal Das's grandson, registered an FIR against him for assault.

Social and civil right activists as well as ordinary citizens criticised the brutal act exhibited by the policeman in their social media posts and demanded exemplary punishment for him.
The Bombay High Court has directed a Sessions court to defer framing of charges against Sameer Gaikwad, an alleged member of Sanatan Sanstha who is arrested in activist Govind Pansare murder case, as the prosecution is awaiting forensic report from the UK.

The report is being awaited to establish if there was any link between the killings of Pansare, and rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and M M Kalburgi.

Justice Sadhana Jadhav on June 9 ordered the sessions court in Kolhapur, which is presently conducting trial against Gaikwad, to defer framing of charges against him.

The direction was given on a petition filed by Maharashtra government's CID, which is probing the Pansare murder case, challenging a May 20 order passed by the Kolhapur sessions court rejecting the prosecution's application seeking to defer framing of charges against Gaikwad, pending the forensic report.

"At the stage of framing of charge, it is necessary to apprise the accused of all the allegations levelled against him and the charges faced by him. That it is incumbent upon the prosecution to establish the nexus and apprise the accused of the fact as to whether there is any nexus between the homicidal death of all the three luminaries and the specific role attributed to the accused," Justice Jadhav said.

Justice Jadhav, while staying the order of the sessions court rejecting the prosecution's application, directed it to defer framing of charges in the case until further orders from the high court.

Government pleader Sandeep Shinde informed the high court that the state CID had filed an application before the lower court seeking to defer framing of charges against Gaikwad, as they were still waiting for a report from the Scotland Yard Police forensic laboratory to establish nexus between the murders of Pansare, Dabholkar and Kalburgi.

Shinde told HC that earlier the Karnataka police, which is probing the death of Kalburgi, had taken from the state CID five empty cartridges and one bullet recovered from Pansare's body to see if the murders were connected.

Later CBI, which is probing Dabholkar's death, took over the cartridges and bullet from Karnataka police and sent the same to the forensic laboratory of Scotland Yard Police in the UK for testing, and the report is awaited.

CBI had on Friday night arrested a member of Hindu Janajagruti Samiti Virendrasing Tawde in connection with the murder Dabholkar in Pune in 2013, the first in the case by the agency.

The Samiti is linked to Goa-based radical Hindu group Sanatan Sanstha, which had come under the scanner for the murder of Pansare in February 2015.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold an interactive session with the top brass of the two revenue collection arms of the government -- CBDT and CBEC -- during a first-of-its-kind 'Rajasva Gyan Sangam' to be held here on June 16.

Officials said both the Boards have been asked to direct their officials to prepare suggestions on "important policy-level and innovative ideas of far reaching impact relating to the legislative and administrative framework of taxation in India" that they can be put forth to the Prime Minister during the conclave at Vigyan Bhavan here.

They said similar ideas will also be put forth to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley who will be holding a session with them during the two-day conference.

"It has been directed by the Prime Minister's Office that the PM will like to keep it an interactive session rather than just a monotonous inauguration and speech affair.

"Both Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) have been asked to prepare a bank of good ideas and out-of-the-box solutions after talking to their officers who will participate in the June 16-17 Gyan Sangam," a senior Finance Ministry official said.

The meet will be attended by about 250 officials and the top brass of the Income Tax department and Customs and Central Excise.

The conclave will deliberate on a host of issues related to taxpayer services and effective implementation of fiscal laws and government policies, including measures to curb black money generation and circulation.

Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha will deliver the valedictory address on the second and last day.

This is the first time that this annual conference of the two large departments is being held together.

Till now, the two Boards used to hold such a conference separately with the chief guest being the Finance Minister.

While CBDT is responsible for collecting direct taxes, CBEC does the same vis-a-vis indirect taxes.

As per the blueprint of the 'Gyan Sangam', the details of the deliberations and recommendations will be sent to the FM's office and the PMO.

The sessions will be divided into two broad subjects relating to the government's plan of financial inclusion and ensuring a transparent tax regime for businesses and foreign investors, besides issues and challenges being faced by the departments like Income Tax, Customs, Central Excise and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence.

Modi, at his recent review meetings with CBDT and CBEC officials had reiterated the need for reducing taxpayers' grievances and ensuring a quick resolution of their problems.

The Prime Minister is also likely to outline the government's goals vis-a-vis some flagship programmes like 'Make in India' and 'Start-up India' at the conference as tax officials are the most important stakeholders to ensure success of these schemes.
AChhattisgarh police official was today arrested for allegedly raping a 13-year-old girl in the state's insurgency-hit Dantewada district, police said.

JashmanNetam (21), an assistant constable, posted withJaramcamp of the district force, was apprehended after a complaint was lodged against him at Kotwali police station by the victim's relative last night, a senior police official told PTI.

As per the complaint, the incident is alleged to have happened on June 8, when the girl was alone at her sister's place, where she had come during the summer vacations, in Pondumvillage located close to Jarampolice camp.

Finding the victim alone in the house, the accused stormed there and locked the house from inside before allegedly outraging her modesty, the officer said.

Netam has been booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 376 (rape),506(criminal intimidation) and452(house-trespass after preparation for hurt)and relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, he said, adding investigation is underway.
President today embarked on a six-day visit to three African nations  Ghana, Ivory Coast and Namibia  to boost trade ties with these countries known for having "solid political system, where democracy has taken roots".

This is the maiden visit of any Indian President to Ghana and Ivory Coast whereas to Namibia, such a visit comes after two decades.

Even though Mukherjee has toured a number of countries in the continent, he will be visiting these countries for the first time in his long political career.

He was given a traditional send off at Rashtrapati Bhavan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vice-President Hamid Ansari, Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag, among others.

"All these countries we look at as good countries in terms of a solid political system, where democracy has taken roots and these are all doing reasonably well in their regions," Secretary (ER) Amar Sinha has said.

The President is accompanied by Minister of State in the PMO Jitendra Singh and MPs S S Ahluwalia and Mansukh L Mandaviya.

"It's a very important visit of the President. He is visiting two countries for the first time  Ivory Coast and Ghana, besides Namibia where an (Indian) President will visit after 21 years. He is having a number of engagements. This is not a ceremonial visit. It has an educational component, economic component and a community component," MoS Singh said.

The President's first stop will be in Accra, capital of Ghana, where there will be delegation level talks at the President's House, which is called Flag Staff House, tomorrow.

The imposing building has been built by a renowned Indian builder, Shapoorji Pallonji.

There are likely to be discussions on some agreements on visa waiver and line of credits is also in the pipeline.

Mukherjee will pay homage to Ghana's first President Kwame Nkrumah at his mausoleum in Accra.

He will also be unveiling a statue of Mahatma Gandhi which has been gifted by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, besides planting a sapling.

"Investment in Ghana is substantial, nearly three billion dollars in various sectors. NRI's, professionals have invested in IT, pharmaceuticals and other areas. If you look at last three year figures, our trade has gone up nearly three times," Sinha said, adding, "Ghana's main trade consists of gold imports, it's nearly 80 percent of total trade. Ghanaian gold is in great demand in India."

The President will also be visiting the India-Ghana Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, set up by India, and will meet its faculty and alumni.
Queen Elizabeth II today marked the conclusion of three-day celebrations of her 90th birthday with a giant street party in the heart of London, with 10,000 people joining the monarch despite rain.

Along with other senior royals she joined the huge crowd for the Patron's Lunch - recognising her patronage of more than 600 organisations in the UK and around the Commonwealth.

The event was organised by the Queen's grandson Peter Phillips and guests have paid 150 pounds each to attend.

The festivities included a carnival parade as thousands of rain ponchos were handed out for the open-air event and the crowds braved the London rain to enjoy the first of its kind event at the Mall in London.

Members of the Royal Family walked down The Mall greeting guests in a "walkabout" lasting 30 minutes.

The Queen and husband Duke of Edinburgh were driven to the site in an open-top car, from which they waved to crowds.

Ala Lloyd, who is the creative director of the carnival parade, told the BBC the eras of the Queen's reign through the decades are being symbolised by different sections of the parade.

"We've got a lovely Commonwealth theme in the 50s with a giant Royal Yacht Britannia, flower power in the 60s, animals and nature in the 70s and crazy neon business going on in the 80s, and embarrassing shorts," she said.

While the event takes place in London, smaller street parties are being held around the UK.

Yesterday, thousands of people turned out to watch the annual Trooping the Colour parade, where Princess Charlotte stole the show with her 90-year-old great grandmother dressed in a lime green coat and matching hat emerged at the Buckingham Palace balcony for an RAF flypast.

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 today marks the conclusion of three-day celebrations of her 90th birthday with a giant street party in the heart of London, recognising her patronage of more than 600 organisations in the UK and around the Commonwealth.

Along with other senior royals she will join 10,000 people for the Patron's Lunch.

The event has been organised by the Queen's grandson Peter Phillips and guests have paid 150 pounds each to attend.

The festivities will also include a carnival parade as thousands of rain ponchos have been prepared for the open-air event in case of bad weather.

Ala Lloyd, who is the creative director of the carnival parade, told the BBC the eras of the Queen's reign through the decades are being symbolised by different sections of the parade.

"We've got a lovely Commonwealth theme in the 50s with a giant Royal Yacht Britannia, flower power in the 60s, animals and nature in the 70s and crazy neon business going on in the 80s, and embarrassing shorts," she said.

While the event takes place in London, smaller street parties are being held around the UK.

Yesterday, thousands of people turned out to watch the annual Trooping the Colour parade, where Princess Charlotte stole the show with her 90-year-old great grandmother dressed in a lime green coat and matching hat emerged at the Buckingham Palace balcony for an RAF flypast.

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.
AAP leader Bhagwant Mann today said Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi has no moral right to stage a protest against the drug menace in Punjab as he and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had earlier failed to take action to resolve the problem.

He accused Rahul of promoting tainted leaders and the former Prime Minister of keeping mum on the drug problem in the state in spite of former Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi drawing his attention towards the issue.

"Manmohan Singh maintained a stony silence despite Quraishi informing him of the enormity of the drug menace in Punjab during the 2012 assembly polls, while Amarinder chose to side with SAD minister Bikram Singh Majithia by opposing a CBI probe," AAP MP from Sangrur Bhagwant Mann said.

Quraishi had written a two-page letter to the then Prime Minister, "lamenting the staggering amount of drugs seized in the run-up to the 2012 Punjab Assembly polls. Instead of taking stern action, Manmohan Singh chose to keep mum and the letter got buried under government files.

"Rahul must also explain the conduct of Congress' Jalandhar MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary, who was summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and questioned over his links to SAD leader Chunni Lal Gabba, who is a drug smuggler," the AAP MP said.

"Gabba, a Goraya-based businessman, is facing a ED probe in a drug trade linking him to international drug lord Jagdish Bhola," he said.

Rahul rewarded Punjab Congress leader Pratap Singh Bajwa, "whom Amarinder had accused of being a drug smuggler with terror links" with a Rajya Sabha seat instead of taking action against him, Mann alleged.

"In 2013, Amarinder had written a letter to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, accusing Bajwa of being a drug smuggler with terror links. So, either Amarinder is lying or Rahul is promoting tainted leaders in the party," the AAP MP said.

"With such glaring revelations, Rahul and his party colleagues stand exposed and have no moral right to stage a protest against the drug menace," Mann said.

Rahul is scheduled to lead a Congress protest in Jalandhar tomorrow against the drug menace and "deteriorating" law and order situation in the state.
'A Raman-free Chhattisgarh' is the top priority of former Congress leader Ajit Jogi, who has hinted at being part of a 'Third Front' including Mamata Banerjee and Nitish Kumar if it is forged ahead of the next general elections.

Often branded as 'Team B' of the BJP-ruled state's Chief Minister Raman Singh by his opponents, Jogi said he would name his new political outfit by this month-end and start working towards winning the Assembly polls which is over two years away.

"Like Mahabharat's Arjun, I am also seeing my target as Raman-free Chhattisgarh. My single-point agenda is to oust the BJP-led corrupt government from the state which is allowing the private sector and select businessmen to loot state's precious minerals," he told PTI in an interview.

Jogi, the first Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, said the outfit he has proposed to launch will form the next government in the state.

"I belong to this state. We will form the new government after winning the next Assembly elections," said the tribal leader.

Replying to a question on whether he would join a third front if it emerged at the Centre, he said Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his West Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee were his "old friends" and such a call will be taken at the right time.

"Whenever Lok Sabha elections happen, we will take a call then," Jogi said, adding that Nitish and Mamata had called to congratulate him on his decision to leave the Congress and form a new party.

RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, Janata Dal (United) leader Sharad Yadav, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and YSR Congress party head Jagan Reddy too called and congratulated him, Jogi said, calling them his "old friends".

When asked about his alleged close links with Raman Singh, he shot back, asking "Agar dost hote to mere bete ko jail me dalwate kya? (had we been friends, would he send my son to jail?)".

Jogi's son Amit, a legislator from Marwahi constituency, was sent to jail in a murder case.

"He (Raman Singh) also kept alive the issue related to my



caste. No friend would do it to another," he said, rejecting claims of his detractors about a "covert" friendship between the two.

Amit was expelled by the state Congress for six years after some audio tapes purportedly claimed he had a role in "fixing" the bypoll for Antagarh Assembly seat in 2014 in favour of the BJP candidate. The state unit of Congress had also recommended Ajit Jogi's expulsion.

Ajit Jogi said there was no chance of his going back to Congress.

"It is impossible. I will never go back to Congress," he said. Jogi declined to comment on the functioning of Congress' central leadership.

While political analysts see in Jogi's exit from Congress the possibility of the rise of a new satrap, state party chief Bhupesh Baghel considers it as a good omen, which will help it regain its moorings.

"There will be no loss to Congress due to Jogi's exit. In fact it will benefit the party and we will win the next elections," Baghel told
Shiromani Akali Dal today attacked Congress over the appointment of Kamal Nath as general secretary in-charge for Punjab, alleging the party has rewarded to the leader who had been "involved" in the anti-Sikh riots in 1984, with a "plum post".

"You have only rubbed salt in our wounds by making this appointment," SAD Secretary and spokesman Daljit Singh Cheema said.

"Punjabis want to know why the Gandhi family continues to honour the perpetrators of the 1984 genocide with plum party posts," he alleged.

"What is the Gandhi family afraid of? Why has it consistently blocked any action against senior leaders including Kamal Nath and Jagdish Tytler," he alleged.

Nath was today appointed Congress general secretary in-charge of Punjab and Haryana by party chief Sonia Gandhi, setting in motion the much talked about process of organisational changes ahead of the Assembly elections next year.

The SAD leader said now it had become even more important to make public all documents relevant to the 1984 riots.

"Several Sikhs were burnt alive during the attack. Nath's presence at the site was also confirmed by two senior police officers," he further alleged.

He claimed that nine commissions of enquiries and many independent human right organisations had "fixed responsibility" on Sajjan Kumar, H K L Bhagat, Jagdish Tytler and Nath, and alleged that despite this Sonia Gandhi "kept mum" on the issue.

"We have consistently opposed the cover-up by the CBI during Congress-led UPA rule and it is only now after the NDA government has come to power that the issue is being re-examined", he alleged.

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All India Sikh Students Federation also attacked Congress in Amritsar for appointing Nath as in-charge of party's Punjab and Haryana unit, alleging that his involvement in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

AISSF president Karnail Singh Peer Mohammad said Congress has "rubbed salt into the wounds" of Sikhs by appointing Nath as the incharge.

"Congress will have to face criticism and backlash every day now after the appointment of Kamal Nath," he said.
State-run banking behemoth State Bank of India has set up a crack team to prepare a framework for amalgamation of five associate banks with itself, even as the political opposition to the proposed move is gaining ground and the government approval is still awaited.

A team of 15-20 members has been set up and it has started working on the framework for the merger. The team is headed by a general manager and there are a few deputy general managers, a source said.

The team has been formed under the supervision of associate and subsidiaries department, which is being headed by managing director V G Kannan.

If everything works fine, in 3-4 months the process is likely to begin, he said.

Last month, the banks board had submitted a proposal to the government for merging its five subsidiaries and first women-oriented lender Bhartiya Mahila Bank with itself.

This merger discussion is purely exploratory at this stage and is not certain. A proposal seeking an in-principle approval to start negotiations with associate banks will be submitted to the government, SBI had said in a statement issued after its board meeting last month.

SBI 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.

"The idea is to merge all the five associate banks at the same time. They are on the same technology platform, which SBI has. It will not be a difficult process," the source added.

Recently, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said the Centre is evaluating the merger proposal and will soon respond.

"We are looking at SBI proposal at the moment. It is with the government and will respond. The government's policy, by and large, supports consolidation. I have indicated that in the budget itself," he said after a meeting with the heads of public sector banks and financial institutions held last week.

Jaitley had also said that government's nod to the proposal is expected soon.

Immediately after the announcement, the associate banks' employee union had termed the board's decision as arrogant and had gone on a nation-wide strike on May 20. The employee unions of these five associate banks have called for a strike on June 28 and July 29 to protest the proposed merger.

Moreover, Communist Party of India General Secretary S Sudhakar Reddy on Sunday said Telangana assembly should pass a resolution opposing the amalgamation and added, the state will lose revenue if the SBH is merged with the parent SBI.

On June 9, the newly inducted CPI(Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front government in Kerala had opposed the merger of the SBT with the SBI, becoming the first state government to lodge a protest.

"People of the state consider SBT as a bank of Kerala and the government also has the same view. We want SBT to remain as it is," Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had told reporters.

Among the five subsidiary banks, SBBJ, SBM and SBT are listed entities.

The merged entity will create a banking behemoth, which can compete with the largest in the world with an asset base of almost Rs 37 lakh crore, with 22,500 branches and 58,000 ATMs as on December 2015. SBI alone has close to 16,500 branches, including 198 foreign offices spread across 36 countries.

SBI first merged State Bank of Saurashtra with itself in 2008. Two years later, State Bank of Indore was merged. SBI has maintained since then that it would merge the others as well but none of its initiatives fructified due to lack of capital  which was pegged at least Rs 2,000 crore for each bank  and stiff opposition from the employee unions.

"The country needs stronger banks rather than a large number of lenders," Jaitley had said at the second edition of the Gyan Sangam held in March.

Last month, Minister of State for Finance, Jayant Sinha, had said, " We have 27 public sector banks right now. When the dust settles, I think we will have, may be, 8-10 very competitive banks. Some of them are going to be large scale global players, while some are going to be differentiated banks."
Several tenements suffered damage as seawater continued to enter a predominant fishermen locality along the beach front at Pattinapakkam here in the past several days.

The area, prone for sea erosion, has been hit by high waves for the past ten days and the seawaters inundated the houses, affecting normal life and causing damage to household appliances.

Fisheries Minister D Jayakumar, who inspected the area on the orders of Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, today said a study would be carried out on the sea erosion in the area.

"We propose to do a study and get a report to prevent sea erosion in that area. The report will be submitted to our honourable Chief Minister," he told PTI.

If residents desired alternative housing, it would be considered by the Chief Minister, he said to a question.

"Frequent highwaves accompanied by strong winds have caused inundation of my house like several others here. We are witnessing highwaves for the past ten days," said M Kumaran, a fisherman and resident of the area.

"Several household appliances have been damaged. We could not even prepare food," he said even as he was bringing sandbags to line up around his house.

He said appropriate action like placing groynes should be considered to prevent a repeat of the situation.

However, South Indian Fishermen Welfare Association President K Bharathi said putting up groynes may not be the solution.

"Residents should consider taking up alternative tenements and the government should provide them," he said.

Residents of the area said the city Corporation officials could "at least" pitch in with food supplies as preparing it has become too difficult.

Several fishermen, like Kumaran, however, are apprehensive about relocating as it may affect their livelihood.

"We depend on sea for our livelihood. Moving out of the seafront may not be an option," he said.

The Regional Meteorological Centre here has cautioned that strong winds from Southwesterly direction with speed occasionally reaching 45-55 kmph were likely along and off Tamil Nadu and Puducherry coasts till tomorrow.
CIA chief John Brennan has said that secret findings of a 2002 congressional investigation into the should not be taken as evidence of official Saudi complicity.

A decision is expected soon on whether to release the classified 28-page section of the report by the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Former senator Bob Graham, who headed the Senate intelligence committee at the time, has alleged that Saudi officials provided assistance to the 9/11 hijackers and has said the 28 pages should be made public.

"These 28 pages, I believe they are going to come out, I think it's good that they come out. But people shouldn't take them as evidence of Saudi complicity in the attacks," Brennan said in an interview with Al Arabiya, a Saudi-owned television news channel yesterday.

He noted that the report was produced just a year after Al-Qaeda hijackers flew airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.

It "was a very preliminary review, trying to pull together bits and pieces of information, reporting about who was responsible for 9/11," Brennan said in a clip of the interview posted on the station's website.

"Subsequently the 9/11 commission looked very thoroughly at these allegations of Saudi involvement, Saudi government involvement and their finding, their conclusion was that there was no evidence to indicate that the Saudi government as an institution or Saudi senior officials individually had supported the 9/11 attacks," he said.

The 9/11 Commission, which was set up by then-president George W Bush, presented its report in 2004.

Brennan added that over the past 15 years the Saudis "have become among our best counterterrorism partners," according to an account of the interview on Al-Arabiya's website.
Asserting that the US and India face mutual security threats and a robust defence partnership is in the interest of both countries, a top Republican Senator has moved a legislation asking the President to recognise India as America's "global strategic and defence partner".

Seeking necessary modifications to defence export control regulations, the legislative amendment to the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA) 2017 was introduced by John McCain, who is Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The move came a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to a joint session of the Congress called for greater defence co-operation between the two countries.

As per the Senate Amendment 4618, it is the sense of the Congress that the US and India face mutual security threats, and a robust defence partnership is in the interest of both countries.

The amendment says that the relationship between the US and India has developed over the past two decades to become a multifaceted, global strategic and defence partnership rooted in shared democratic values and the promotion of mutual prosperity, greater economic cooperation, regional peace, security and stability.

As such it asked the President to such actions as may be necessary "to recognise the status of India as a global strategic and defence partner" of the US through appropriate modifications to defence export control regulations.

"The commitment of the President to enhancing defence and security cooperation with India should be considered a priority in advancing the interests of the United States in South Asia and the Indo-Pacific region," it said.

The NDAA 2017 is slated to come for voting in the Senate next week. The Republican Party has a majority in the Senate.

The amendment urges the President to strengthen the effectiveness of the US-India Defence Technology and Trade Initiative and the durability of the "India Rapid Reaction Cell" of the Department of Defence.

It also asks the US President to approve and facilitate the transfer of advanced technology in the context of, and in order to satisfy, combined military planning with the India military for missions such as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, counter piracy and maritime domain awareness.

It asks for resolving issues impeding defence trade, security cooperation, and co-production and co-development opportunities between the US and India.

Under the legislation the US President is asked to collaborate with India to develop mutually agreeable mechanisms to verify the security of defence technology information and equipment such as tailored cyber security and end-use monitoring arrangements.

The Administration is urged to promote policies that will



encourage the efficient review and authorisation of defence sales and exports to India, including the treatment of military sales and export authorisations to India in a manner similar to that of the closest defence partners of the US.

Seeking to pursue greater government-to-government and commercial military transactions between the US and India, it asks the President to support the development and alignment of the export control and procurement regimes of India with those of America and multilateral control regimes.

It urges the US President to encourage coordination with India on an ongoing basis to develop and keep updated military contingency plans for addressing threats to the mutual security interests of both countries.

The legislative amendment asks the President to work toward actions and joint efforts such as significant contributions to ongoing global conflicts, that would allow the US to treat India the same as its closest partners and allies with respect to American laws and regulations.

On an ongoing basis the President will carry out an assessment of the extent to which India possesses capabilities to execute military operations of mutual interest between the US and India.

The Congress, as per this amendment, feels that the defence partnership between the US and India is vital to regional and international stability and security, and that the national security interests of America can be furthered by advancing the goals of the framework for the US-India Defence Relationship and the effective operation of the US-India Defence Technology and Trade Initiative.

Given the bipartisan nature of support to India US defence ties and that it has been introduced by McCain himself, the legislation is expected to be passed.

A similar legislative move has been made in the House of Representatives too.
Two leading Hindi channels have been issued advisories by the Centre asking them to abide by the programming norms after they aired "objectionable" comments of gangster Chhota Shakeel following the hanging of Mumbai blasts convict Yakub Memon.

The Information and Broadcasting Ministry issued advisories on June 7 to the two channels after an Inter Ministerial Committee (IMC) came to the conclusion that the programme aired by the channels violated programming norms.

In separate advisories to the channels, the ministry said the IMC felt that telecast of the interview of Chhota Shakeel, the right hand man of fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim, not only "cast aspersions on the judicial system but was also likely to offend the sensibilities of certain sections of the society". Hence, they should have been more careful while carrying the interview in the context of Yakub Memon hanging case, it said.

Earlier the representatives of one of the channels had told the IMC that they had sincerely tried to bring out the truth and, in their view, the coverage was not overdone nor was Shakeel deified. The channel had said whatever was done was done to inform the public about an important happening.

Representatives of the other channel also told the Committee that during the interview the channel had tried to confront the gangster and made him confess to his wrongdoing and misdeeds.

They claimed no undue importance was given to the interviewee and there was no criticism of the action taken by the government. The channels said the interview was not meant to create a gulf between communities and that there was no law and order problem after its telecast.

Last year, the I&B ministry had issued notices to some leading broadcasters over their coverage of the Memon hanging episode.
Slum dwellers of suburban Malad, who have been demonstrating over a fortnight on the Western Express Highway here, today threatened to intensify their agitation if their demand of accommodation for those who lived on upper floors of shanties under state's Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) scheme, is not met.

Maharashtra Slum Areas (Improvement, Clearance and Redevelopment) Act, under which SRA is established, does not have provision to rehabilitate dwellers who lived or living on the upper floors (loft) in slums.

The protesters, residents of Janu Bhoy Nagar in Malad, had evacuated their homes (shanties) in 2013 and were to be rehabilitated under redevelopment scheme.

According to agitators, builder - Omkar Developers - had promised to rehabilitate all tenants, including those living on the upper floors. They also received rent amount for two subsequent years.

Dwellers, who lived on upper floors, claim that they have been declined accommodation under the scheme, while most of them have been rehabilitated and have got flats.

Dilip Sodhakar, one of the dwellers, said, "Before making agreement with us, the builder promised to give us flats, irrespective of whether we are living on the ground or the upper floor. We have also been not paid rent (money) for last one year."



The builder, Omkar Developers, on the other hand, said the protesting tenants are being 'provoked' by some people who have vested interest and that there is no such provision to rehabilitate those living on the upper floors.

"We have rehabilitated thousands of slum dwellers. But in this case, some people with vested interest are provoking the gullible tenants despite knowing the rules," Rajeev Agrawal, head of property affairs of Omkar Developers, said.

Meanwhile, Minister of State for Housing, Ravindra Waikar said that a comptent authority has been set up to look into such cases.

"We have launched a survey under a competent authority in Mumbai and neighbouring Thane district. It will look into such cases and rectify whether people living on the upper floors can be accommodated in under the scheme. Currently, there is no rule to rehabilitate them," Waikar told PTI.

The issue hotted up last week when Mumbai BJP unit vice president Mohit Kamboj came out in support of the protesters and demanded rehabilitation for them.
Thanks to new revolutionary technology, airline passengers could soon be able to travel through airports and borders with just a 'secure single token' eliminating the need of carrying multiple travel documents.

Airline solutions and technology provider SITA is exploring the potential of newly-emerging 'blockchain' technology to provide travellers with a 'secure single token' which was previewed at the 2016 Air Transport IT Summit here in this Spanish city.

The revolutionary technology provides the opportunity to allow secure biometric authentication of passengers throughout the journey across borders which could remove the need for multiple travel documents without passengers having to share their personal data.

SITA's technology research team, SITA Lab, is researching how using virtual or digital passports in the form of a secure single token on mobile and wearable devices could reduce complexity, cost and liability around document checks during the passenger journey.

Jim Peters, CTO, SITA, said, "Our vision is for seamless secure travel. But the underlying design of today's computer systems means that there are multiple exchanges of data between various agencies and multiple verification steps, which reduces the ability to have a single global system".

"Now blockchain technology offers us the potential to provide a new way of using biometrics. It could enable biometrics to be used across borders, and at all airports, without the passenger's details being stored by the various authorities," he said.

SITA's researchers are investigating a versatile and secure system to make the single travel token work globally, across all borders. Blockchain technology allows 'privacy by design' so that passenger data can be secure, encrypted, tamper-proof and unusable for any other purpose.

It also eliminates the need for a single authority to own, process or store the data. The crypto-led computer science of blockchain provides a network of trust, where the source and history of the data is verifiable by everyone.

"This is a whole new way of working but ultimately 'The Blockchain' is simply a database where transactions are recorded and confirmed anonymously. Whether it is used for currency or travel it is simply a record of events that is shared between multiple parties but most importantly once information is entered, it cannot be changed, and privacy and security are by design," Peters added.

REOPENS FGN 18



SITA's Passenger IT Trends Survey released here also showed that airline passengers the world over have taken to technology in a big way, preferring to use it as a service rather than interacting with people for support.

Significantly, passengers are happier at the stages of the journey where they have more choice and control in how they manage their trip. At booking, which they can do online, using a mobile or with an agent, 93 per cent had a positive experience, the survey found.

"Once people are converted from person-to-person interaction to using self-service technology for travel steps, few want to go back," the survey said.

It found that passengers have the most negative experiences at security screening, passport control and baggage collection stages which are also the points with the least number of self-service technology options.

"Knowing that passengers prefer using their own devices and self-service technology throughout the journey should encourage airlines, airports and government to examine how they can transform the experience at security, border control and baggage collection. The technology is available today and the industry can be confident that it will be welcomed by passengers," said Francesco Violante, CEO, SITA.

But not all passenger are the same as SITA has identified four different passenger profiles - the careful planner, the pampered, the hyper-connected and the open-minded adventurer.

Each profile uses technology in different ways and the study shows that a 'one-size fits all' approach risks alienating some passengers. To help illustrate the differences SITA has also made it possible for people to find out their own passenger profile.

Violante, added, "It is clear that passengers love technology. Once they start to use kiosks, websites, mobile devices, automated gates and other tech they will continue to do so rather than returning to human interaction. As airlines and airports look to introduce new technology they should also note that 'ease-of-use' is vital for passengers".

Other key findings from the survey include - a majority of passengers (55 per cent) use some self-service technology on their journey but the end-to-end self-service journey is not yet widespread.

If passengers have a negative experience, 54 per cent will try a different self-service technology. When using mobiles for travel 92 per cent find check-in easy to use.

Passengers also indicated they want more mobile services and baggage notifications are a top priority, said the survey which was conducted with more than 9,000 passengers from 19 countries across the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa representing almost three-quarters of global passenger traffic.
Sri Lanka needs special courts to expedite trials of graft cases involving former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa's aides who were allegedly indulged in mass- scale corruption, a senior minister has said.

"We need special courts to try these people. Now they go to court, apply for bail, then come out and ask us if we had been able to catch them. Some even go to higher courts to prevent their arrests," Minister of Western Development and Megapolis Champika Ranawaka said at the southern town of Galle.

The current government came to power with the pledge to bring to book the members of the former president Rajapaksa's administration accused of mass-scale corruption.

Although several members of the Rajapaksa family were arrested, all have obtained bail amidst accusations of anti- corruption drive becoming slow and painstaking.

A special police unit for financial crimes was set up yet not a singed investigation has led to a conclusion and conviction.

Ranawaka said as the existing legal system lacked finesse the government needs to look at the possibility of constituting special courts to tackle the corrupt.

He said the current government's mandate is to eradicate corruption from public life.

The Rajapaksa family has faced many accusations of corruption and abuse of power since President Maithripala Sirisena ended the former strongman's 10-year rule.

Sirisena's coalition had pledged to bring to justice the perpetrators of large scale corruption in the Rajapaksa regime.
Sri Lankan troops will stay in the



Tamil-dominated former war zone of North and look after the minority community, a senior army officer has said, virtually rejecting Northern Province Chief Minister CV Wigneswaran's demand of withdrawal of military.

"We are here to look after you, we will attend to all your



needs," military chief in the north Mahes Senanayake said.

He said that his job as the security forces commander in



the north is to prevent a recurrence of conflict by looking after the Tamil community, he told reporters in Jaffna yesterday.

Senanayake said that there will never ever be a separatist



war in Sri Lanka's north.

His comments came as Wigneswaran last week demanded the



withdrawal of the military from the north.

"Even after seven years of ending the war, the military is



remaining here. We want the police to do the job and not the military," Wigneswaran said.

The government stationed a large number of troops in the



north and east since the LTTE began their separatist campaign for a separate Tamil state in the mid 1980s.

Despite international calls for down-sizing the military



presence, the government has been reluctant for large scale withdrawal of troops citing national security concerns.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) battled Sri



Lankan forces for a separate Tamil homeland. A brutal military crackdown ended the 37-year conflict in 2009. Rights groups claim government forces killed nearly 40,000 civilians in the final months of the brutal ethnic conflict.
Amid hopes of the long pending Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill getting passed in Rajya Sabha in the next Parliament session, state finance ministers will deliberate on the model law at a two-day meeting in Kolkata beginning Tuesday.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will participate in the meeting of Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers and try to iron out differences over the new regime that will subsume all indirect taxes and create one national market under the .

"The meeting on June 14 and 15 will discuss the model law, which will be adopted by the Centre and all states. Union finance minister will attend the meeting on June 14," an official said.

The Centre is planning to roll out the indirect tax from the next financial year beginning April 1, 2017, but the GST bill has been pending in Rajya Sabha because of stiff opposition from the Congress party.

Once the Constitution Amendment Bill to roll out GST is passed by the Parliament, the Centre and states will have to adopt their own laws to give effect to the new indirect tax regime.

The central GST will be framed based on the model GST law. The states will draft their own state GST based on the draft model law with minor variations incorporating state-based exemptions.

Besides these, the Centre and states will have to approve the integrated-GST law, or iGST, which will deal with inter-state movement of goods.

The Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers is headed by West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra, who took over the chairmanship in February.

The government has proposed to take up the GST Constitution Amendment Bill in the Rajya Sabha in the forthcoming monsoon session of the Parliament.

The reform of indirect taxation was initiated by the Kelkar Committee in 2003, following which the United Progressive Alliance government in 2011 proposed the GST Bill.

The GST Constitution Amendment Bill was passed by Lok Sabha in May last year and has been pending in the Rajya Sabha, where the ruling National Democratic Alliance does not have the majority.
Downstream steel processing industry body Federation of Industries in India has alleged that protection provided by the government to domestic steel producers is "one-sided".

"The protection provided by the government to the domestic steel producers is one-sided. The steel consuming Industry sector has neither been consulted nor heard by the steel ministry before taking important decisions like imposing of MIP, Safeguard Duty, increasing customs duty and also while placing the steel imports under BIS Certification scheme," the Federation of Industries in India (FII) said in a letter to the steel ministry.

For protection of primary producers, the government has increased steel import duty from 5 per cent to 12.5 per cent, imposed 20 per cent Safeguard Duty and extended it till 2018, fixed a Minimum Import Price (MIP) for steel ranging from USD 341 to USD 752 per tonne and also brought imported steel under Mandatory BIS Certification Scheme, the FII said.

The industry body, representing 400 members that employ around 30 lakh people mostly belonging to SME units, said these measures have benefitted only a few large producers like SAIL, JSW and Tata Steel.

In another letter to Commerce and Industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman, FII General Secretary H L Bhardwaj said, "The domestic downstream steel processing Industrial units in the country are facing massive road blocks due to some of recent measures taken by the government to provide protection to 3-4, domestic steel giants including SAIL, JSW, Tata Steel by virtually banning import of steel."



Steel prices are being raised by the producers by Rs 1,200 to 1,500 per tonne every month ever since the MIP was imposed in February 2016, the letter said.

Representations made by small industry bodies like FII are not properly attended to, Bhardwaj said in the letter.
A 30-year-old woman, arrested in connection with a chain snatching case, allegedly committed suicide today by hanging herself in the toilet of a police station in Porbandar city, police said.

The deceased, identified as Kanchanben Solanki, was one of the six accused who were in police remand till Monday after a woman lodged an FIR against unknown persons for snatching her gold chain on Monday.

"She was found hanging from an iron rod of the window in the toilet of Kamlabaug police station. She used her saree for (hanging)," said police inspector K A Makwana.

Solanki was arrested under sections 379 (theft) and 114 (abettor present when crime is committed) of IPC along with two women and three men.

"Today she went to the toilet with a female constable following her. When she did not come out after 5 minutes, the constable knocked on the door. When she did not respond, a constable climbed the wall to see what has happened to her. They found her hanging by her saree," said Makwana.

Solanki was rushed to a government hospital where she was declared dead.

Her body has been sent for postmortem, the officer added.
Fearing revenue loss for Telangana after merger of State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH) with parent State Bank of India (SBI), Communist Party of India General Secretary S Sudhakar Reddy on Sunday said the state assembly should pass a resolution opposing the amalgamation.

SBH employees, along with the staff of other associate banks including State Bank of Travancore (SBT), would join a two-day strike on July 28-29 against the proposal, Reddy who is also the honorary president of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana Bank Employees Federation (APTBEF) told PTI in Hyderabad.

Last month, SBI's board had submitted a proposal to the government for merging its five subsidiaries and first women-oriented lender Bhartiya Mahila Bank with itself.

The associate banks are  State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur, SBT, State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of Mysore and SBH.

"Recently, Finance Minister Jaitley in his discussion with bank unions had suggested we can think of an alternative to merging of these five state banks. But suddenly, they called a meeting on May 17 and forced to request a merger of these banks though the workmen directors opposed it," he said.

He listed three issues with the proposed merger.

First problem, he said is psychological as SBH was founded by the Nizam of Hyderabad and it is a profit-making bank (Rs 1,061 crore this year).

"There is no reason why this bank, which is looked by the people as a Telangana bank, should be merged. Being a bank that was founded in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana those days, a share of the profit is given to the state government. If it goes to SBI, it will go to the registered office, it will go to the Maharashtra government," Reddy said.

Telangana government will lose the possibility of requesting SBH, the lead bank in the state, mobilising other banks to help farmers, he added.

The third objection he listed was that the staff of SBH and other subsidiary banks would not be treated on par with the employees of SBI.

"They (employees of SBH and other subsidiary banks) will be second rate citizens there. Their seniority will not be accepted for promotions. They don't get all the facilities which the SBI employees are getting. They will continue to have only what they were getting in SBH earlier. This is very humiliating," he said.

Due to merger, the state would lose a regional bank of its own and the bank's profits, farmers and local entrepreneurs, and self-employees would also be at loss.

Reddy said Telangana Legislative Assembly should pass a resolution opposing the merger and that the chief minister should lead the agitation.

The Chief Minister of Kerala has written a letter to Prime Minister with regard to the proposal of merger of SBT, Reddy added.
Thousands of yoga lovers are all set to inundate the iconic Times Square as spiritual leaders and several Indian community associations prepare to organise a host of events in schools, temples and top tourist spots to commemorate the second International Day of Yoga on June 21.

Isha Foundation founder and spiritual leader Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, Miss America 2014 Nina Davuluri, diplomats and UN officials will attend the Yoga Day celebrations organised by India's Permanent Mission to the UN on June 20 and 21.

The Indian mission is organising a special event 'Conversation with Yoga Masters - Yoga for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)' at the world body's headquarters on June 20.

Sadhguru will be the lead speaker at the event, which will be attended by senior UN officials as well as Ambassadors and dignitaries from all other countries.

On June 21, the Indian mission and the UN Department of Public Information will host the celebration of the 2016 International Day of Yoga in the world body's headquarters.

President of the UN General Assembly Morgens Lykketoft will be the Chief Guest and Under Secretary General for Communications and Public Information Cristina Gallach will address the event.

The celebration will be led by Sadhguru and would include a musical incantation on Yoga and special Yogic meals.

The Indian Consulate, in association with the local Indian community and associations, is organising a series of Yoga related events in and around the city that started over the weekend in the run up to the main event.

The organisations will be hosting special Yoga sessions in schools, temples as well as at the J F K International Airport and Newark Airport.

A special yoga day celebration will also be commemorated at the Kresge Auditorium of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.

Several thousand people are also expected to attend the annual day-long yoga celebrations at Times Square that coincide with the summer solstice, the yearly moment when the sun is at its highest position in the sky for the longest period of time.

"Yoga unites us with the Universal flow and connects us with our own personal rhythms. The discipline of yoga enhances our ability to respond to subtle cues that promote wellness. Peace becomes the natural environment of our relationships and our world," said Douglass Stewart, Cofounder of the Solstice in Times Square: Mind Over Madness Yoga.

The first International Yoga Day was commemorated at the UN with aplomb last year.

In December 2014, the UN General Assembly had adopted a resolution with a record number of 177 co-sponsoring member states to establish the International Day of Yoga to be commentated every year on June 21.
Cutting across party lines, top American lawmakers have pledged to strengthen Indo-US strategic ties and take them to a new level as they believe mutual misgivings have given way to benefits in economic and security spheres.

Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to the joint sitting of the US Congress on Wednesday, he has struck a personal rapport with the lawmakers, engaging with them directly on social media.

Lawmakers have spoken both on the floors of the US House of Representatives and the Senate as well as outside about working towards strengthening bilateral relations.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said mutual misgivings had given way to mutual benefits in both the economic and security spheres.

"We are now key trading partners. We are the two largest democracies in the world. Our relationship is an important one, and there are more benefits that can be shared from future cooperation," he said.

"One of his messages, besides what a great democracy America is and what a great democracy India is, is that we have to think about the future. And we can tap the American ingenuity and what we have already done to clean air and grow business at the same time," said Congresswoman Kathy Castor.

Senate Minority leader Senator Harry Reid said he told everyone about his warmness for India.

"The second largest Muslim population in the world is in India. So it is a friend that we have, and we must maintain that friendship," he said.

Senator John Corny said Modi's speech reflected how far the two countries have come in such a relatively short period of time.

"When Prime Minister Modi spoke he talked about his vision for his country's future, including deepening and broadening the relationship with the United States. That is a very welcome statement by the Prime Minister," he said.

"Connecting our two nations is also a unique and dynamic bridge of 3 million Indian Americans. Threats of terror are expanding, and new challenges are emerging in cyber and outer space. India is undergoing a profound social and economic change," said Congressman Joe Wilson on the House floor.

He said a commitment to rebuild a peaceful, stable and prosperous Afghanistan was "our shared objective."



"In every sector of India's forward march, I see the US as an indispensable partner," he said.

Following his address, Modi has struck a personal rapport



with American lawmakers, engaging with them directly on social media and sharing thoughts on deepening bilateral ties.

The social media, twitter in particular, continues to be abuzz with not only Modi's speech but also India-US ties, with many posts over the topics being retweeted and liked.

Given Modi's strong following on Twitter, with more than 20.6 lakh followers, the lawmakers are seeking to get into direct communication with the Prime Minister.

"Senator Cornyn, was wonderful meeting you and interacting with you. I share your optimism about strong India-USA ties," Modi tweeted after his return to India.

Two days earlier, Senator Cornyn had posted a 30 second video on his twitter feed and said, "I look forward to working with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to strengthen the ties between our two countries."



Cornyn is Co-Chair of the Senate India Caucus.

"Narendra Modi did a great job yesterday before Congress. India is world's largest democracy and key US ally," wrote Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota.

Speaker of the US House of Representatives Paul Ryan and his office posted behind the scenes pictures and tweeted instantly giving minute by minute account of the Prime Minister's movement in the Congress.

"Thanks Speaker Ryan for the kind words and opportunity to address Congress. Was great meeting you earlier today," Modi said on his twitter feed along with a picture with Ryan.

"As the largest democracy in the world, India is a key partner of the United States," said Senator Mark Kirk.

"Representing nearly 200,000 Indian Americans in Illinois, I have witnessed not only the strategic significance of the US-India relationship, but also the unique cultural bond shared between our two great democracies. Prime Minister Modi's speech struck the right balance between expanded security ties and promoting economic opportunities between our countries," Kirk said.

Describing Modi address as message of "strength through unity", Congressman Pete Sessions, Chairman of the House Rules Committee, said under his leadership and his commitment to free marketplace ideals, the relationship between the US and India has flourished.

"Since 2014, the Prime Minister has been a shining example that a real leader can accomplish robust job creation and a prosperous economy behind the strength of a pro-growth agenda," Sessions said.

"As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I will continue to work to deepen and expand our partnership with India in support of our mutual economic and national security interests," said Senator Kelly Ayotte.

"As the partnership between the US and India grows, it will be important to continue to speak candidly with one another when we disagree. I will continue to urge the Indian government to better protect the human rights of its citizens-including the rights of Indian women and girls," Ayotte said.
The traffic on Mahatma Gandhi setu, damaged yesterday, was normalised today with the Road Construction Department's officials repairing the damaged portion.

"The damaged portion of the via-duct (approach road) of the bridge has been repaired completely on a war footing basis. Engineers repaired it with epoxy concrete besides covering it with iron plate. The traffic has become normal since 10 am today," Road Construction Department's (RCD) Chief Engineer (Monitoring) Manoranjan Kumar Sinha told PTI.

The barricade, which was put up on the damaged portion reducing the width of 7 meter carriage way into 3.5 meter, has been removed, thus opening the entire carriage way of 7 meter for the traffic, Sinha said adding that barricading had narrowed the deck slab's width to 3.5 meter for vehicles to pass on.

It may be noted that a portion was damaged over an area of one meter in width and 2.5 meter in length on Patna side near pillar number 16 of the viaduct's western flank yesterday, Sinha said while making it clear that pillar number 46 of the Gandhi setu has not not been damaged at all.

There are altogether 29 pillars of via-duct from Patna side while the bridge has a total of 46 pillars. Pillar number one starts from Hajipur side while pillar number 46 ends at Patna side.

Panic gripped the area yesterday when the spread that pillar number 46 of the Gandhi setu, which connects north Bihar to south Bihar, had been damaged.

The incident occurred at 11 am, thus halting the traffic movement for an hour yesterday.

Soon after the incident, a technical team and engineers of state road construction department's NH Division rushed to the spot and inspected the damaged portion.

Asked why the protion of the via duct was damaged, Sinha said that it was because of heavy load of vehciles on the Gandhi setu which is crumbling under heavy traffic pressure.

Referring to the initial report of the IIT Roorkee which is, at present, inspecting the bridge for assessing the feasibility of laying steel super structure, the Chief Engineer said that the initial report of the team suggests that the pillars can easily take off the load of steel structure. The team would submit its final report by the end of July, he said.
Donald Trump may have generated controversies right through his campaign trail but his supporters feel the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is "charismatic" and would change the philosophy of governance in the world's largest economy.

Pennsylvania, a 'coal country' which once was the economic hub of America but is now badly hit by recession and new economy of climate change and green energy, could prove to be critical to Trump's path to the White House.

The 69-year-old real estate tycoon is planning to spend quite a substantial amount in this key swing state and try to exploit the general economic disenchantment of small businesses and people with his slogan of 'Make America Great Again'.

"He (Trump) is a dynamic guy. He is refreshing. He is not any other politician. It's now or never for America," Ralph J Dadowski, who along with several hundred other supporters waited inside a hanger for hours to listen to Trump's speech in this steel city, told PTI.

A local businessman in pharmaceutical sector, Dadowski strongly believes that Trump is the best person to lead the country.

"We need to change the philosophy of governance and how we do things. And Trump represents that," Dadowski said, adding that he would vote for Trump in the November general elections.

As he kicked off his presidential campaign in full swing, Trump selected Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania as one of his key stopover this weekend.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, several thousand people waited for him inside a hanger for hours.

Trump also campaigned in Richmond in Virginia and Tampa in Florida -- the other two swing states.

In all his speeches, he dwelt on similar themes -- bringing jobs back to the country, reviving the economy, stopping illegal immigration, radical Islamic terrorism, making military strong and his personal attack on Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

Political pundits, however, say it is a tough road for Trump in Pennsylvania as it was way back in 1989 that Pennsylvania was carried by a Republican candidate.

Since then no Republican presidential candidate has won this state.

Trump himself acknowledged the tough task ahead but exuded confidence that "his movement" would see him through this time. His die hard supporters also believe so.

"Of course he is going to win Pennsylvania this time. No doubt about it," asserted Traci Gerrard and her husband Alan Gerrard -- who run a small business in Pennsylvania.

They said they want less restrictions in business and smaller government.

"Trump is charismatic. He says what other people are afraid to say," Traci said at a Pittsburg rally of the Republican presidential candidate. The Gerrard couple voted for Trump during the primaries.

(Reopens FGN 1)



"Of course, yes," Traci said when asked if she would vote for the real estate tycoon again in the November polls



"I am all for a woman president. We want to have a woman president. But not Hillary Clinton. She is not reliable," she said.

Alan Gerrard said he favours a strong immigration system wherein people do not come inside the country illegally.

Caroline Eidbergur, who works for an accounting firm, feels that Trump as a president would turn around the country.

"My husband is in the construction industry and it is a bad situation for the last eight years," Eidbergur said.

She and her husband have already made up their mind to vote for Trump in the November presidential elections.

"Trump would run the country like a business. He would be the CEO of the country. We need someone like him now," her husband said.

"We do not want another eight years of more regulations in steel and coal industry," Eidbergur said when asked about Clinton.

The foremer secretary od state is scheduled to campaign in the state on Tuesday.

The Democratic party's convention would be held in Philadelphia in July wherein she would be formally anointed as party's presidential candidate.

Clinton is the first woman in American history to reach this position.

John Zilicah, who works for the Pennsylvania state, said he is supporting Trump because he wants change.

This is the same slogan that voted Barack Obama to power eight years ago.

Attending the rally with his friends, Zilicah said he is supporting Trump because of his stand on the right to carry fire arms and a strong military.

"Our military should be strong," he said, adding that he would not vote for Clinton.

"She should be in jail because of the email and Benghazi scandal," he alleged, echoing the points being made by Trump in his public addresses for the last several weeks.

Trump in his speech touched on the right nerves.

"I love steel. I love the miners. I will put them back to work," he said.

Referring to a recent speech of Clinton, he said she is not going to win Pennsylvania.

"She is not winning Pennsylvania. She wants to put coal miners out of work," he said.

The New York-based real estate tycoon also talked about his roots in this state by saying that he spent several years here. He studied at the prestigious Wharton Business School.

Trump promised to lower the taxes and alleged that Clinton would raise the taxes to at least 55 per cent.

"I am lowering taxes for middle class and businesses," he said.

Trump's campaign has been marked by many controversies -- from commitment to build a wall along the Mexico border to his call for banning Muslims from entering the country.
Turkey's Europe minister has admitted there is no chance of completing a deal on visa-free travel to the EU by the July 1 deadline, during a visit to the Hague.

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 Turkey has yet to fulfil all of the conditions laid down by the European Commission for the visa agreement, including changes to Ankara's anti-terrorism laws to meet EU concerns over human rights.

Turkey's European Affairs Minister Omer Celik admitted the July 1 deadline would be missed in an interview late yesterday with Dutch broadcaster NOS -- the first official such acknowledgement by Ankara.

"If we are realistic, we are not going to achieve this date," he said.

Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka also said yesterday that the July 1 deadline was not feasible, a view widely shared in Brussels.

"But we think it must happen as soon as possible," the Turkish minister said.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last month that the visa exemption must be introduced by October at the latest. Ankara has threatened to scrap the migrant deal with the EU altogether if visa-free travel is not forthcoming.

Celik said he believed Turkey had met all the necessary criteria and that there was "no question of making any change that would reduce our capacity to fight terrorism".

Once Turkey has fulfilled the conditions laid down, the European Parliament would still have to give its approval to the deal.
Two textile mill workers were found murdered today near their home at Palladam in Tirupur district.

Bodies of Shekhar and Ramkumar, both hailing from north India, with multiple stab wounds were found near their home at Padempalayam area, police said.

Police suspect that they might have been murdered by two of their north Indian co-workers who were staying with them and were absconding since the incident.

A search had been launched to nab the duo, police said.
Two more persons, who were "working" for absconding former Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) Chairman Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh, were today arrested here in connection with state intermediate examination scandal while the ex-BSEB chief's wife has been made a 'non-FIR' accused.

The arrested persons are -- Ajit Shaktiman, an ad hoc lecturer with Patna College and Sandeep Kumar Jha, a teacher with Sanskrit Shiksha Board on a deputation from Sanskrit College, Bhagalpur, Senior Superintendent of Police, Manu Maharaj told reporters here.

With today's arrest, the total number of persons held have gone upto eight including the alleged kingpin of the toppers' scandal, Bachha Rai, who was yesterday arrested after he surrendered at Bhagwanpur police station in Vaishali district.

Both (Ajit and Sandeep) of them were "working as agents" for Lalkeshwar Singh and were in constant touch with Singh's wife and a former JD(U) MLA Usha Sinha, the SSP said, adding, his wife's involvement in the scandal has also come to the fore during thr investigation.

Ajit and Sandeep have confessed to their crime while Usha Sinha is absconding, he said.

They used to manage centres besides changing copies and helping people in providing marks, said Maharaj, who is heading the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on merit muddle in Bihar Intermediate Examination.

Bachha Rai, who is Secretary-cum Principal of controversial Bishun Rai College arrived at the Bhagwanpur police station to give himself up after which he was arrested.

On June 9, the SIT had arrested five persons in the



toppers muddle that included two Centre Superintendents of two centres where examinees sat and where copies were evaluated.

Besides, arts and science toppers, the third-ranker in the science stream Rahul Kumar, whose result has been cancelled by the BSEB along with that of first topper Saurabh Shrestha after a re-test, also hailed from the Bishun Rai College.

Arts intermediate topper Ruby Rai did not turn up before an experts team for re-test yesterday following which the Board has decided to withhold her result.

"The Board has decided to withhold result of Ruby Rai and has given another chance to her to appear for re-test on June 25," new chairman of Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) Anand Kishor had said.
Prime Minister David Cameron warned today that Britain faces a "lost decade" if it leaves the EU, as he races to persuade undecided voters less than two weeks before a close referendum.

With several recent opinion polls suggesting momentum is with the "Leave" camp, Cameron is making a string of television appearances to try to convince people to back "Remain" on June 23.

A string of global institutions including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and G7 have backed Cameron's argument that Britain's economy would be damaged by Brexit.

But "Leave" supporters argue that Britain could thrive outside the EU, where they say it would be freed of red tape.

One of the leading pro-Brexit campaigners, UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, said that voters were putting "two fingers up" to establishment figures like Cameron.

The prime minister told the BBC on Sunday that there could be a "lost decade for Britain" after a vote to leave the EU as the political system gets gummed up with negotiations.

"I think we'd be looking at a decade of uncertainty," he added. "It would suck the energy out of our government and our country."



A Sunday Times/YouGov online poll found that Cameron's "Remain" campaign is lagging the "Leave" side by 42 per cent to 43 per cent.

Eleven per cent of people surveyed said they did not know how they would vote, while four percent said they would not take part in the ballot.

Averaging out the last six opinion polls, both sides are tied on 50 percent, according to academics at the What UK Thinks project. Their figures exclude undecided voters.

"Nobody knows what these polls are saying," Cameron told the BBC, while stressing he was optimistic of victory.

But Farage insisted that they showed a real movement towards his side.

"There has been a shift in the last fortnight," the UKIP leader said.

"People have had enough of being threatened by the prime minister and the chancellor and I think collectively people are beginning to put two fingers up to the political class.
UK company & Gas has threatened to abandon PY-3 oilfield off Puducherry if the government and field licensee ONGC did not honour production sharing contract (PSC).

The London-listed company's investment plan for resuming production from the field, which was shut down in July 2011, has been pending with the Oil Ministry for one year now. To compound the woes, the terms the ministry recently approved for extending the field license have made the investment economically unviable.

"The future of PY-3 is solely dependent on the Government of India and its nominee/licensee agreeing to honour the PSC in full. Well monitoring activity has been proposed and failing the timely adoption of a full field development plan (FFDP) and past budgets, planning for abandonment will be initiated," the company in a regulatory filing.

A meeting of the oversight committee of Block CY-OS 90/1 (PY-3), called Managing Committee, was convened in June 2015 to consider the FFDP that envisaged an initial output of about 3,000 barrels per day of oil from one well and then drilling more wells to take it to peak of around 8,000 bpd.

"Several agenda items were agreed (at the MC meeting) but finalisation of the minutes of meeting remain pending," Hardy said. "The FFDP remained under consideration while the Government of India representatives consulted with higher authority regarding the necessary PSC extension and Cess and Royalty treatment."



Hardy is the operator of the PY-3 with 18 per cent interest while Tata Group and HOEC have 21 per cent each. ONGC has the remaining 40 per cent and is also the licensee of the block.

In Budget for 2016-17, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley changed the cess on domestically produced crude oil from Rs 4,500 per tonne to 20 per cent of price realised.

"Analysis indicates that the change in policy was of benefit to ONGC (the licensee) only at oil prices lower than USD 45 per barrel. At an expected price below USD 45 per barrel the PY-3 consortium would not be able to sanction the proposed FFDP. As a result the policy change has compounded the projected loss to be realised by the licensee," it said.

A month later on March 28, the government announced a PSC extension policy to be applied to 28 fields including PY-3.

The policy provided for many new terms and conditions including levies like cess and royalty being paid at prevailing rates for the duration of the extended period and the government's share of oil being hiked by an additional 10 per cent.

"The policy appears to have created an incentive for the government nominated licensee to defer investment until the beginning of the extension period as its economic position is significantly enhanced. In relation to PY-3 this would mean activity being delayed until 2020," Hardy said.

The company said its officials met Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan last month to discuss FFDP and to identify a viable way forward.

"It was stressed that the proposed FFDP is projected to generate considerable value directly to the government via levies, profit petroleum and taxes which would be several times larger than the projected losses to the government-owned licensee and as a result should be supported by the government nominee," it added.

The PY-3 field is located off the east coast of India, 80 km south of Puducherry in water depths between 40 meters and 450 meters. The licence, which covers 81 square kilometer, produces high quality light crude oil.

The field has produced over 24.8 million barrels and was shut-in in July 2011 due to the expiry of the production facilities' marine classification and the refusal by the government to allow the extension of the contract.
As many as 80 schools in the UK have introduced "gender neutral" uniforms, allowing boys to wear skirts and girls don trousers if they prefer, as part of Britain's new government-funded drive for educational institutions to be more sensitive to "trans" children.

The schools have either dropped references to girls and boys in their dress codes or have rewritten their uniform policy to say that pupils as young as five can dress in the uniform in which they feel most comfortable, The Sunday Times reported.

It is part of a new UK government-funded drive for schools to be more sensitive to "trans" children who are questioning their gender identity. Around 80 state-run schools have introduced the "gender neutral" uniform policies.

Diversity campaigners have warned schools that current policies risk discriminating against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender pupils (LGBT).

Brighton College, a leading independent school, announced a transgender-friendly uniform code earlier this year.

Some Christian organisations in the country have raised concerns that introducing a choice of uniform could confuse young children and lead older pupils to question their identities at a time when they need reassurance.

Allens Croft School in Birmingham is believed to be the first state primary to declare that it has a "gender neutral" uniform.

Under the rules, which are the same for both sexes, boys can wear a grey or black skirt or pinafore while girls can wear grey or black trousers.

"At Allens Croft, we aim to promote each child's right to express their gender and personality in whichever way feels right for them.

"To support this aim, our uniform policy is gender neutral. This means that whilst we expect all of our children to wear school uniform, the rules for boys and girls are the same and we do not insist that they wear specific items of clothing," the policy stated.
A 20-year-old female student who lost her prosthetic hand while partying at a nightclub has been reunited with the artificial limb two days after the incident.

Amelia Welch was partying with friends in Plymouth on Friday when she lost her hand, which cost about 3,000 pounds.

The Plymouth University marine biology student said she only realised the cosmetic prosthetic was missing the following morning.

She thinks she could have left it in a nightclub and forgot to pick it up.

A spokesperson from the Oceana nightclub club confirmed someone had returned it to her, the BBC reported.

Amelia, who was born with a congenital malformation in her right hand, said she had gone to the nightclub after a university ball.

Her hand is "more functionable" without the prosthetic which has very little movement, she said.

"I do take it off to go to the toilet, but most of the time when I go out I put it on because it gives me confidence," she said.

"I must have been drunk when I took it off and forgot about it.

"I went back to halls with friends and went to bed and the next day I realised that I did not have it."



It is the first prosthetic she has had and fits on her hand "like a glove" she said.

Another one could cost as much as 5,000 pounds and mean many hours of visits to orthopaedic specialists.

"Someone might have picked it up and not realised what it was," she said.

"It's worth everything to me, but nothing to anyone else," she had said.
The US has moved ahead of India in its enmity with Pakistan and wants to damage its nuclear programme, Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief said.

"It carried out drone attack in Balochistan to kill Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour to test Pakistan whether it would give any reaction. In fact, the US' target is Pakistan's nuclear programme and it (US) wants to damage it with the help of Israel and India," Saeed said while addressing the activists of Falah-e- Insanyat Foundation, a subsidiary of the Jamaat-ud- Dawah, at the JuD headquarters in Chauburji, Lahore, on Saturday.

His comments came a day after Pakistan lodged its protest to a visiting high-level US delegation over the May 21 drone strike in Balochistan, which killed Mullah Mansour.

The 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  was told that the strike vitiated bilateral ties.

Saeed, who is carrying a $10 million bounty on his head in connection with his role in the 2008 Mumbai attack, further said, "It is our duty to tell the people of this country about the dangerous nexus of the US, Israel and India against Pakistan."



He asked Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to stop looking at the US for elimination of terrorism in the country.

Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, also alleged that India is installing missile system at its airports to target Pakistan's nuclear programme.
Police in the US state of Florida identified the suspected killer of "The Voice" star Christina Grimmie as 27-year-old Kevin James Loibl.

The Orlando Police Department said yesterday that Loibl was from St. Petersburg, Florida, but did not disclose other details. It also released a head shot.

The gunman had two handguns, ammunition and a hunting knife on him at the time of the attack, which happened Friday night after a performance by Grimmie in Orlando, Florida, police said earlier.

They said they believed he traveled from elsewhere in Florida to Orlando, intent on targeting the 22-year-old.
Veteran theatre personality Achyut Lahkar died today at the age of 85 at his residence in Barpeta district, leaving a pall of gloom in the theatre world.

Family members said Lahkar breathed his last this morning due to old-age related issues.

Condoling his death, Assam government declared state mourning for a day and announced to perform his last rites with full state honours.

Assam Chief Minister Sonowal described Lahkar's passing away as an irreparable loss to 'Bhramyaman' (travelling) theatre.

"A pioneer of Bhramyaman theatre, Achyut Lahkar strode like a colossus spanning several decades. The void created by his death will be difficult to fill.

His outstanding contributions will be remembered by posterity," he added.

Sonowal directed Chief Secretary VK Pipersenia to accord full state honours and to declare one-day state mourning in his respect.

Born in 1931 at Pathsala, Lahkar had established Nataraj Theatre in 1963 and gave a rebirth to moving theatre in Assam.

As a producer, writer, director and actor of his theatre company, Lahkar toured across Assam and many other states to perform plays for nearly four decades.

He also published and edited a magazine 'Deepawali' and was conferred the Kamal Kumari National Award in 1997.

Former Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi also expressed grief over the death of Lahkar.

"Deep Condolences on the demise of #AchyutLahkar also known as Father of Assamese Mobile Theatre," Gogoi tweeted.
In the wake of a series of attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, the minority community there wants Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian government to take up the matter with Dhaka to ensure their safety and security.

"The Hindu community, which is the biggest minority community in Bangladesh, is vulnerable in . Fundamentalist and Jamat forces are trying to wipe out Hindus from .

"We feel that India being a Hindu majority country, should do something. We have high hopes on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He should act and take up the matter with Bangladeshi government and ensure the safety and security of Hindus," Rana Dasgupta, general secretary of Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council and noted Human Rights activist, told PTI.

A 60-year-old Hindu ashram worker, Nityaranjan Pandey, was hacked to death on June 10 by suspected Islamists, becoming the fourth person from the minority community to be killed in a series of brutal attacks on secular activists in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

"The religious majority and the fundamentalist groups want to eliminate the Hindu community. Since last two years, this religious cleansing has gained further pace. Stability in the Indian subcontinent region can never be achieved with Bangladesh turning into a fundamental state. So if India wants stability in the region it should act to stop the annihilation of minorities in our country," Dasgupta, who is also Prosecutor of International Crimes Tribunal, claimed.

Pandey's murder comes within a week of killings of a Hindu priest, a Christian grocer and wife of an anti-terror police officer. 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 Islamist forces. Bangladesh has also seen a series of attacks on secular and liberal bloggers in 2015.

"The condition of Hindus is horrible in Bangladesh.

Although we have a secular government of Awami League party, but at grass-roots level the situation is grim. Rapes, murder, loot, arson, destruction of property of Hindu and other minority communities is rampant.

"Until and unless India puts pressure on Bangladesh, the fundamentalists won't budge," well-known actor of Bangladesh and former managing director of Bangladesh Film Development Corporation Piyush Bandopadhaya said.

"India is a major power in the region, it can't sit idle when Hindus are being brutally slaughtered in a neighbouring country," he said.

Bandopadhaya, who along with Dasgupta, lauded the quick response of Indian High Commission in Bangladesh, which had sent its officials to meet the family members of the Hindu priest and colleagues in the ashram, but said India needs to do more.

Human rights groups and Hindu leaders in Bangladesh have been demanding more security for religious minorities.

Although the minority leaders are expecting Indian government to take up the cause of the minorities in Bangladesh, a senior Bangladesh minister feels the attack on minorities are actually aimed at creating hurdles in the functioning of the secular and liberal Awami League government.

"This is actually a ploy by fundamentalist and Jamat forces to put up a bad image of Bangladesh. These attacks are not aimed at minorities, but the real target is to malign our government and turn our country into a fundamentalist state. We will never let that happen. We have taken several steps to ensure the safety and security of minorities and strict action will be taken against the culprits," Bangladesh Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu told
A few weeks ago, a friend was rushing to China on a business visit. Now he is known to use social networks using the in-flight internet service, so you can imagine his predicament of having to live without Facebook for the entire trip.
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TUESDAY

Learn effective business marketing

This free seminar will show business owners how to use effective marketing tools to grow their business. The seminar starts at 2 p.m. at the Center for Economic Development, 3209 S. Staples St., CED 118. Free. Information: www.seminarscc.com

Orientation for small businesses

The Small Business Administration will host a small business orientation is from 10 a.m. to noon at the Aransas Pass Chamber of Commerce, 130 W. Goodnight Ave., Aransas Pass. The seminar will provide new business owners information to start a business. Topics include small business loans and financing requirements, business plan, loans, contracting and other resources. Free. Information: 361-879-0017, ext. 301 or elizabeth.soliz@sba.gov.

WEDNESDAY

Orientation for small businesses

A small business orientation is from 4-6 p.m. at the Economic Development Center, 3209 S. Staples St., CED 146. The seminar will provide new business owners information to start a business. Topics include small business loans and financing requirements, business plan, licensing, contracting and permit information and resources. Free. Information: www.seminarscc.com

Business financial aid seminar offered

The Small Business Association will offer a seminar on financial assistance to start or expand a business from 9-10:30 a.m. at the SBA office, 2820 S. Padre Island Drive, Suite 108. SBA Guaranty Loan Programs can be an option to take care of financial needs, including working capital, land and building purchase, equipment, inventory and leasehold improvements. Information on government contracting and business consulting services will be provided. Information: 879-0017, ext. 301 or elizabeth.soliz@sba.gov

FRIDAY

SBA offers help to start a business

The Small Business Association will assist with requirements on starting a business or help on an existing business, applying for a small business loan, free technical assistance from SCORE Corpus Christi and Del Mar College Small Business Development Center. The seminar is from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. at the SBA Corpus Christi Branch Office, 2820 S. Padre Island Drive, Suite 108. Information: 361-879-0017, ext. 301 or elizabeth.soliz@sba.gov

LATER

Desk and Derrick Clubs to meet

The Association of Desk and Derrick Clubs will meet at 11:30 a.m. June 21 at the Portis Country Kitchen, 615 N. Upper Broadway No. B. The topic will be "Explore the Future: Looking Back, Thinking Forward" with geoscience consultant Dawn Bissell. RSVP required. Information: dorothyj@headingtonenergy.com

Supply managers to host monthly event

The Institute for Supply Management-Corpus Christi Inc. will have a monthly business/dinner meeting at 6 p.m. June 21 at the Holiday Inn Express, 5213 Oakhurst Drive. Cost:$20. RSVP required. Information: allspecialty@msn.com

Compiled by Natalia Contreras
Thanks, U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela, for the mental image of Donald Trump straddling a wall like Humpty Dumpty with his pants down.

By now most readers probably are aware of the open letter in which Vela, D-Brownsville, told Trump he could stick his border wall up his ass. Wow, did I just write that?

In 1979 when I entered this profession, I did not foresee ever in my career having a conversation like the one I initiated Monday with other editors about whether we should use "ass" in that context in our family-friendly publication. "Ass" as in a donkey, or a person who behaves boorishly, wouldn't have been a concern. But in context of where the sun don't shine? I didn't recall us ever having done that.

It was amusing to see how various publications handled it. The most popular approach appeared to be to use ellipses  ...  in the headline instead of "ass" but to go ahead and use the word in the story. I also witnessed the occasional "a--." Our headline, "Vela tells Trump where to put wall," was a clever non-explicit way to be explicit. Most headlines were more coy than the first I saw, by the Texas Tribune: "Texas congressman to Trump: Take your border wall and shove it up your ass."

Vela saved his shocking message for the end of a long letter in which he expressed his outrage at Trump's racism, especially his recent outbursts against federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a lawsuit against Trump and his despicable Trump University con game. Trump's attack of the U.S.-born Curiel, whom Trump called a Mexican, was the last straw for Vela, a fourth-generation American of Mexican descent whose father was a federal judge.

The next question, after did he really say that, is: Has Hillary Clinton found her running mate? A presidential nominee shouldn't say what Vela said. The nominee should maintain dignity and decorum  and leave the dirty work to her running mate.

But the closer I examined Vela's words and actions, the less bold it appeared.

First, there was the lawyerly, long-winded stating of the case against Trump, as if the concluding statement's justification needed to be explained.

Also, Vela's shocking statement was only an invitation to Trump. Vela did not say that he, Filemon Vela, representative of the 34th Congressional District of Texas, was going to stick that wall up Trump's frilly little fundillo and that there was nothing Trump or his security goons could do about it.

In other words, what has needed to be said wasn't said. You don't send a tiny-handed boy to do a man's job (apologies to legions of women, especially those with nicknames like Crooked, Pocahontas, That Face!, Rosie and Megyn, who are up to this task).

Vela was much too reticent, too civil. Also, Trump's comments about Curiel shouldn't have been the last straw for Vela or anyone else. The first straw  the wall  should have been the last.

Vela's restraint is understandable. Good manners are a hard habit to break. Good manners also are not Trump's cross to bear. He hurls schoolyard insults that beg for an old-fashioned schoolyard response and gets away with them because the schoolyard response is not how grown-ups in business suits settle differences. The normal response of grown-ups is to use reason. The response of grown-up Republicans has been to wait for Trump to "pivot," an unreasonable expectation.

But credit Vela for coming closer than anyone except perhaps former Mexican president Vicente Fox to dealing properly with Trump.

During that conversation with editors about what to do with that three-letter word, I also had the pleasure of pointing out to those who weren't aware that Vela is a former Corpus Christi resident who ran unsuccessfully for City Council. He ran in 1993 and finished fourth for one of the three at-large seats. Had he won, he'd have been the first Hispanic elected to one of the three at-large positions. He should have been. And now he's a congressman who ought to be undergoing a vetting for vice presidential nominee.

He's making progress.
SHARE Margie Rose was named interim city manager, effective after Olson's leave expires June 23.

By Kirsten Crow of the Caller-Times

As an investigation into the city's recent boil-water advisory gets underway, another question spawned by the same crisis remains to be answered.

Who will be the city's next CEO?

Nothing has been decided about the selection process that would appoint a candidate to Corpus Christi's top managerial role  it's expected that the council members will come up with an "ideal candidate profile" and revisit the hiring of a city manager next month.

Hiring a recruiting firm hasn't been taken off the table, although some council members have voiced opposition in going that route. Several have suggested that they may need search no further than someone who already works in the executive offices on City Hall's fifth floor.

Acting City Manager Margie Rose, who has worked for the city for 14 years, has a chance to now show how she would manage operations, council members said.

"She has given the city stability and she knows our city, she knows our issues," said Mayor Nelda Martinez. "But we need to give her an opportunity to prove herself, and that comes with time."

Rose, then a deputy city manager, immediately became acting city manager when Ron Olson unexpectedly resigned May 17, saying he needed to be held accountable for the city's third boil water advisory or notice in less than a year. Olson had served as city manager for five years.

In the midst of the crisis  it was the fifth day of what would become a 13-day boil water advisory  it was a move that took City Hall by surprise.

The council agreed unanimously to make Rose the interim city manager June 24, the day after Olson's accrued vacation expires. But council members have held off on finalizing any decisions on how to go about filling the permanent position. It's anticipated the council will return to the discussion in its July 12 meeting.

Rose has strong leadership skills, said City Councilwoman Carolyn Vaughn, adding that she like to promote from within organizations.

"I think it sends a message to employees that you can move up in the city," she said.

Rose has seen support from the community  specifically, formal endorsements from the League of United Latin American Citizens Council No. 1 and The Movement 2016. The mission of The Movement 2016 is, in part to ensure equal representation on every major board and every major organization in the city of Corpus Christi.

Rose has been open about her interest in the position. On Thursday, she pointed to her skill set, experience and understanding of the city as qualities that could help guide decisions. This is a time when her 30 years of experience will be an asset, she added.

"I truly believe that it really can," Rose said. "If given the opportunity."

Twitter: @CallerCrow
GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES David James (right) hugs David Gomez as they meet for the first time Saturday, June 11, 2016, at Whataburger Field. Gomez received a kidney from James' son after he took his own life.

SHARE GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES David James (center) displays a shirt given to him by David Gomez (left) after they met for the first time Saturday, June 11, 2016, at Whataburger Field. Gomez received a kidney from James' son after he took his own life. Contributed Photo David James (right) worked to find the recipient of his son Peyton's organs after the boy took his own life in October 2014.

By Natalia Contreras of the Caller-Times

Peyton James was an animal lover.

He wanted to become a veterinarian, his father, David James, said.

"He was the most loving and caring kid," James, of Conroe, said. "He was always looking for ways to help people."

Peyton was 13 years old when he took his own life in October 2014.

Before his death, Peyton was bullied and struggled with depression.

He was an organ donor and for the past two years, James has tried to reach out to the recipients of his son's organs on social media.

On Saturday, James met David Gonzales, who is the recipient of Peyton's kidney, at Whataburger Field.

Gonzales was diagnosed with IgA nephropathy, or Berger's disease, in 2008 and was on dialysis for about six years.

When he received the call in 2014 about the transplant, doctors were amazed at how perfect the match was, he said.

"The surgeon said it was so perfect we could even be twins," Gonzales, 60, said. "It was so rare for something like that to happen. We drove to San Antonio for the surgery."

Gonzales, of Riviera, and his family met with James and his wife, Peyton's stepmother, and said he hopes to continue to be in touch.

"This was his son, his kidney. I am better because of it," Gonzales said. "I hope they can become new members of the family. Part of Peyton's blood in is me now."

Another organ recipient from South Texas contacted James but was not able to make the meeting Saturday.

Leslie Moya's daughter, 9-year-old Carmel received Peyton's cornea.

Carmel, of Harlingen, was born with a cataract and later developed glaucoma.

Moya said Peyton's cornea was the first out of three transplants her daughter had.

"Even though it did not take, it made a difference in my daughter," Moya said. "My daughter was able to be herself again and it got us to where we are now."

James said the best part about meeting his son's organ recipients is knowing that his son's organs are making a positive difference in their lives.

"I just wanted to meet (Gonzales) to know that he is OK," James said. "For me, knowing that something good is coming out of this, that's what matters to me the most."

Twitter: @CallerNatalia
SHARE Former Corpus Christi City Manager Ron Olson loves city management, he said, and feels he could still have a contribution to make.

By Kirsten Crow of the Caller-Times

If Ron Olson had written a book about his time as Corpus Christi's city manager, this isn't how he would have ended it.

Olson, who resigned from his position in May, started work in municipal government as an intern in West Jordan, Utah, riding the back of garbage trucks, filling potholes, working in sewage maintenance, replacing water meters and dispatching for the police department. The internship turned into a job. And by the time he was in his early 30s, he had ascended to city manager.

In all, he led in executive positions in six cities, and moved from a job as county administrator in Polk County, Iowa, to the Coastal Bend in 2011.

Seeking work at the helm of the city of Corpus Christi was attractive, in part, because it meant taking on big issues, he said. He wanted to restore public confidence and establish a stronger ethical foundation.

"Corpus Christi was the perfect city for me," Olson said. "It had challenges that I wanted to deal with. ... I wanted to come in and fix them."

He resigned May 17, the fifth day into the city's third boil water advisory or notice in 10 months, saying he was responsible for the situation as the CEO of the city, and needed to be held accountable. The following week, the council would begin discussions on how to hire a new city manager. Acting City Manager Margie Rose, who will become interim city manager June 24, is a contender for the permanent position.

Olson has said there seemed to be an accelerated pace of improvements during his first few years, but the pace has slowed down. It led him to think about whether he was doing as much good as he had hoped. Early that Tuesday morning, he decided it was time to go after considering it for about a year.

Several hours later, the City Council received an email about his resignation  less than three minutes before the council's meeting began.

It would have been more ideal, Olson said, to have an executive session item on the decision.

But it would also be another week before the executive session could make it on to the agenda.

"Here's the other truth about all of that," he told the Caller-Times several days after his resignation. "I did not have the heart to wait a week. I did not have the emotional stamina to go through another public flogging on the water issue, or to go in and make some kind of public speech in front of the council. So it came down the way it came down."

He began packing up his office that day. He would have preferred it had happened differently, Olson said.

"I feel bad that the City Council found out at the last minute, before the meeting started, and it took them all by surprise," he said. "I think I did it the best way I could given the circumstances, but I feel bad that it happened the way it happened."

Reactions to his unexpected resignation have been mixed. Some have had sharp words for his decision to resign in the middle of a crisis, saying that he should have continued his work, even if only to the point of seeing the city through the boil water advisory. Others have said the situation called for his immediate resignation, and suggested he should have resigned long ago. Still others have said Olson's resignation was a loss to City Hall.

"No matter what decision you make, people criticize it," Olson said of public sector work. "If you don't resign, they criticize you for not resigning. If you do resign, they criticize you for resigning and not staying."

POST-RESIGNATION

Several council members have expressed disappointment in Olson's resignation, some specifically calling the manner in which Olson resigned troubling.

Olson has said he had been considering whether it was time to move on for nearly a year, when he began questioning whether he was doing as much good as he hoped.

Last summer, Olson applied for a city management position in Henderson, Nevada. He was a finalist, but ultimately withdrew his name.

Eight months later, the City Council unanimously approved a three-year contract extension for Olson to continue work at the city of Corpus Christi. His salary was $237,646.

Olson has not named the council as having a role in his decision. He has described a deep respect for the council  "who they are, their position, how they want to do their work and govern the city."

Political watchers, however, have suggested that the dynamics of City Council since November 2014 election may have been an influence.

In the past year, the nine-member council's 5-4 votes on some of the city's highest profile decisions have drawn attention. Whether that represented a divided council depends on who is asked.

Some have said the close votes created an environment that embodied the democratic process, with council members raising questions and challenging answers. Others said it spun a climate of discord, distrust and confusion among council members and staff, and ultimately made the council inefficient and dysfunctional.

Several council members have said if it was divided at one point, it isn't any longer.

Dan Jorgensen, department of social sciences chairman at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, did not discuss Corpus Christi's City Council. But generally speaking, there are "pull" factors for city managers  opportunities to advance elsewhere  and "push" factors that can encourage city managers to leave.

"When the councils tend to be divided, that usually does not bode well for city managers," Jorgensen said. "So a lot of times, city managers will either be terminated or they'll submit resignations because they see, perhaps, turmoil on the horizon or that the disagreement or division ... might represent a change in direction that they are not comfortable with."

Mayor Nelda Martinez said she couldn't speak to Olson's decision.

But generally, all governing bodies will see cycles of cohesiveness, she said.

"Did (the council) have challenges at the beginning of our term the first year? Clearly, we did," Martinez said. "But we also understood it was going to take some effort to struggle through our disagreements. In the end  the reason it's better the last six months is us acknowledging that the better we work constructively as a council, the better we can be able to serve our citizens."

TENURE

Much of what he considers accomplishments, Olson said, were organizational improvements. Others would qualify as big projects: helping shape programs for street reconstruction and maintenance, and seeing through the construction of the second phase of the Mary Rhodes pipeline. Progress has been made on coming up with a plan to reconstruct local streets, desalination and improving the city's aging wastewater treatment plants and sewage systems.

Two days after his resignation, Olson had swapped out his conservative button-down shirt, tie and blazer for a Hawaiian shirt. The stacks of paperwork were absent.

In his years at the helm of cities and counties, he's been an administrator. In his off time, he engages in his wide array of hobbies  woodwork, photography and exploring the outdoors. He's currently rebuilding a 1940 Swiss Army rifle.

As a child, Olson watched his father work two jobs  a swing shift at the refinery, and laying brick during the day. His father would tell him that without an "education, this is the kind of work you'll be doing for the rest of your life."

Olson suffered from polio as a child and in part, his father was concerned that he would not have the capacity to do manual labor.

"He wanted me to use my head to earn a living, instead of my body," Olson said.

He loves city management, he said, and feels he still has a contribution to make. He hasn't decided whether to pursue another position.

Despite the bid for the Henderson job, Olson said that he remained dedicated to Corpus Christi.

"You can't do that job unless you give it your whole heart and soul. You can't do it halfway, you've got to do it all the way," he said. "And in the process of doing that, I develop deep regard for the people I work with, for the citizens I serve, for the community I live in."

Twitter: @CallerCrow
Tessa Ormenyi via AP Students hold up a sign about rape at White Plaza during New Student Orientation on the Stanford University campus in Stanford, Calif. The university considers itself a national leader in preventing and handling sexual assaults, but students have complained that the school isn't doing enough and have drawn attention to the issue by holding demonstrations.

SHARE Associated Press file Brock Turner, right, makes his way into the Santa Clara Superior Courthouse in Palo Alto, Calif. A letter written by Turner's father was made public over the weekend by a Stanford law professor who wants the judge in the case removed from office because Brock Turner's sentencing.

As many people have done recently, I read the letter from the victim of the Stanford rapist. One more victim of one more rapist and one more time it is being blamed on alcohol.

Why are there so many voices that say it is OK to sexually assault someone if they are drunk and incapacitated? Is that easier to accept than admitting that we live in a world where instead of looking out for someone a person may choose to take advantage of a situation in the worst possible way?

"Here's the thing," the victim wrote. "If your plan was to stop only when I was literally unresponsive, then you still do not understand. You didn't even stop when I was unconscious anyway! Someone else stopped you."

Let me address the alcohol since the rapist himself brought it up. If he was so under the influence how did he have the capacity and forethought to drag his victim behind a dumpster where he hoped no one could see what he was about to do?

The rape could very well have happened without the involvement of alcohol. It just made it easier.

Working for an agency that deals with abuse and sexual assault, I know all too well that many excuses are made for violence. The fact of the matter is that if all the young women in the world quit drinking there would still be rape  there would just be a different excuse. The Stanford victim knows this all too well, as she indicated when she wrote: "Sometimes I think, if I hadn't gone, then this never would've happened. But then I realized, it would have happened, just to somebody else."

I applaud the work of local universities that are aware that rape on campus is a real problem and are taking steps to address it. As the mother of two college-age women, I would much rather they go to a university that is proactive rather than a university that hides its head in the sand.

So as I finish reading the victim's letter as I sit in my car, tears well up in my eyes. I don't know what to think or feel. I am angry, brokenhearted, and overwhelmed.

I am angry that sexual assault is written off so casually.

I am brokenhearted that when I share the post on Facebook fewer of my friends like and share it than they would had I posted what I cooked for dinner.

And I am overwhelmed at the work still needed to change the hearts and minds of all of us.

But there is a light just like the light to which the victim refers in her letter: "Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining. Although I can't save every boat, I hope that by speaking today, you absorbed a small amount of light, a small knowing that you can't be silenced, a small satisfaction that justice was served, a small assurance that we are getting somewhere "

She found her voice. Let her survival help all of us find our voice.

For it is that voice inside all of us that guides us to the truth, justice, and peace meant for us all.

Frances Wilson is president and CEO of the Women's Shelter of South Texas.
"In the past, I have worked on modelling the effects of water restrictions imposed during a drought to check whether they were effective [and] estimating the shape of a towed sonar behind a submarine when the submarine is not travelling in a straight line, so that the array can accurately use sonar measurements to localise other sound emitters in the water," he said.
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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.

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Samuel Ayres, a motorcyclist who called out the driver of a BMW for talking on his cell phone, ended up in the hospital after the same motorist purportedly knocked him over moments later.



The Los Angeles biker recorded the road-rage incident that took place on March 26, 2015, on his helmet camera that shows him approaching the BMW E92 3-Series Convertible at a stop light and telling the driver to Put down your f***ing phone, youre in your car.

Apparently, the BMW motorist didnt take kindly to Ayres request and 30 seconds later, he passes by seemingly knocking him off his bike at speed and driving away, leaving the motorcyclist moaning and groaning on the ground.

According to Ayres, the crash left him with, a severe concussion, two hairline fractures in his left shoulder, a broken left foot, many bumps and bruises, and a hefty hospital bill, as he claims that the drivers insurance wont be covering all of the medical expenses. For this reason, Ayres has opened an online fundraising page.

Heres how Ayres described the road-rage incident on his donation page:



On March 26, 2015, I was driving to work on my motorcycle. It was a fairly typical commute, full of cagers cutting me off, merging into me and generally just not paying close enough attention.

As I was filtering up to the front of a light, I noticed one particular man in a black BMW convertible. He was very busy texting and talking away on his mobile phone. He became visibly angry when I yelled at him to put down his cell phone while he was in his car. Even after he honked at me, much to my surprise, I kept my cool I didnt flip him off or get into his face, however much I wanted to. Once the light turned green, I proceeded through the intersection, making my turn. Behind me, the BMW driver came flying up behind me very aggressively. After a couple of blocks, he pulled into the center lane to my left and, once he was parallel with me, swerved his car into my lane, knocking both my bike and myself to the ground. Without slowing, the driver took off down the road.

Aside from a significant amount of bumps and bruises, I suffered a severe concussion (bad enough for me to forget what day, month and year it was and knocking all memory of the past week out of my head), two hairline fractures in my left shoulder and a broken left foot (which would require surgery).

Because the driver is currently under criminal investigation, I will be unable to go after him or his insurance. for any sort of compensation for quite a while. Additionally, the insurance on the car (which was not owned by the driver) only has a very small amount of coverage for medical and property damage. All of this money has been swallowed up in one quick swoop by my significant amount of bills. Im left still having to pay several thousand dollars for my health insurances out of pocket maximum. Additionally, Im left with several bills associated with purchasing medical equipment (crutches, shower seat, etc.) and transportation (car rental, Lyft rides). My credit cards are close to full-up and these bills will be coming due very soon.

Please take a moment to watch the video of the accident and browse through some of my photos. I would appreciate any help you could offer to ease the burden of my medical bills.

Thanks to Ellz for the heads up!

Video
This luxurious Italian exotic has been customized from head to toe by the team at F355 Miami, with upgrades such as the Satin White Pearl Wrap to go with its Italian flag-colored stripes.



Last time we saw one rocking custom wheels, they were these massive 22s from Vossen which were a bit of a stretch.

This one wears Strasse SM5 Deep Concave alloys that measure 219.5 at the front and 2111.5 at the rear and feature Satin Black centers with Gloss black lips. Other important mods include the custom blacked out chrome trim and emblems, fully customized exhaust system and Formula Dynamics lowering springs.

In terms of performance, the GranTurismo S 4.7-liter V8 is rated at 440 PS (434 HP) and 490 Nm (360 lb-ft) of torque, helping the car to 100 km/h (62 mph) in about 5 seconds, and on to a top speed of 295 km/h (183 mph).

PHOTO GALLERY
Photo: Wayne Moore - Castanet File Photo

The City of Kelowna could be missing out on $1 million in revenue.

Council will review a report on sponsorship and advertising, Monday.

"In 2015, Partnership Group conducted an inventory and valuation of several city properties and their associated assets, which would be appropriate for sponsorship and advertising," Jodie Foster said in her report.

"The exercise indicated that, over time, the city could expect to generate about $1 million annually in ongoing revenue."

She said Partnership Group has been retained to assist in drafting a sponsorship and advertising program policy, and to finalize an asset list.

A sponsorship and advertising plan has the endorsement of a majority of Kelowna residents. In the latest citizen survey, 81 per cent of respondents supported the idea, with 41 per cent indicating strong support.

If a policy is formalized, there could be a negative impact to groups that also seek sponsorship in the community.

"One mitigation is to assist local organizations through professional development opportunities to elevate the sponsorship program across the community," said Foster.

"This has already been a successful strategy in Kelowna through programs like artsVest B.C., which supports cultural organizations by guiding them on how to develop sponsorship relationships and then apply for matching grants."

The city hosted a workshop with some non-profit organizations a month ago.

Foster said a couple of organizations expressed concern that revenues could be impacted or their ability to conduct sponsored events in city facilities could be limited.
Photo: Tanya Gunderson

By Tanya Gunderson

Tanya Gunderson is a West Kelowna resident and mother of two teens and a mini dachshund. She is a diehard optimist, although the kids know her better as lame. The dog is on the fence about it.

In a moment of near insanity, Gunderson agreed to take a journey into foreign and uncharted territory  the minds of five teens. But first she fed them pizza  like tossing meat to hungry lions  and pop to satiate them so they would be more amenable to her questions.

Last week, they vented about their parents; this week, they gave her the low down on Donald Trump, school and what bae actually means.

The five teens are Jenna, Sydney, Courtney, Kyle and Steven.

Trump:

I started with the easy question and the one they were most eager to answer. Trump. Whats the word on the street with this guy?

Kyle: Im really not OK with him putting up a wall. Its a dumb idea. Our Socials teacher said Trump can be compared to Hitler. People are just following him, but not really sure why. They just like how everything is so crazy around him.

Steven: His hair looks like the strings you see on corn on the cobwhats that called? Corn silk. He has corn silk looking hair. But I dont think what hes doing and saying is right. He scares me.

Its like there would be a war if he won because so many people dont agree with him. Like what are those people gonna do if he wins? I dont think Ill wanna go to the U.S.A. if he wins. It might be crazy there.

Jenna: Dude, hes too extreme. He just says stuff and doesnt think how it might make the people hes talking about feel. And why does he yell in all of his speeches? Why wouldnt he just talk in a normal voice? Id never vote for him.

School

They don't like Trump, but they aren't big fans of teachers either.

Sydney: Teachers sometimes act too much like theyre your parents. And theyre just like parents where they only care about your grades, but not your mental health. Its just always grades. Why is mental health awareness only for a week? It should be something that happens all the time. Like stress happens all year, not just for one week.

Courtney: I think the schools dont know how to deal with bullies; like they have a hard time. I was having a problem with someone at school and there was supposed to be a meeting about it with the school and its been two weeks and nothings been done.

I think they forgot because they dont know how to stop it anyways. Or maybe they think itll just go away if they ignore it (laughs).

Kyle: Yeah. Theres so much bullying, but the teachers dont care or they pretend not to see. I get bugged all the time about my job and I know teachers have heard other kids saying sh*t to me, but they dont do anything and this is like every day it happens. I find it annoying and rude.

Jenna: Teachers are always on us to be independent and look out for ourselves. but then they go and call or email your parents instantly over the littlest things (laughs).

Sydney: I think its dumb how they try and parent us and take away our phones or tell us to cover up our skin if were wearing something they dont like. Like everyone else is wearing the same type of clothes, so why are you only picking on me?

Steven: I think the principals oblivious to what the teachers say to us. You have to book an appointment just so you can rant to him about a bad teacher.

Jenna: Principals will only hear what they want to anyways, so it doesnt matter if you do book an appointment.

Kyle: I think the schools should be teaching us about things we need to know about for what we wanna do when were done. Ill never have use for some things we learn, but because they say we need to know it, Im forced to learn it. And then Im not interested in it, so I get a bad mark in it or whatever.

Steven: Yeah totally. They should be teaching us about things we actually need to know about and not things that we learn only because others had to learn it before us. We should be learning things about buying a house or something. Or finding a real job. Or doing our own taxes or what the point of taxes even is (laughs).

Sydney: Exactly. Like if you want to be a nurse, why do you need to know about the Vikings? Socials should be an option.

Jenna: Know what shouldnt be an option? Having Kleenex and hand sanitizer in every classroom. There should be a rule that there has to be some in every classroom.

Upon writing up this interview and reviewing the notes Id made, I recalled a wise person telling me that teens have a lot to say and arent given enough credit.

Our kids see and hear a lot. And they have very valid thoughts on matters that affect them directly. We just have to let them give their input, and beyond that, we need to listen to what theyre trying to tell us. Adults, tend to force them to believe and think like us. But sometimes, they may know more right than we do.

And for anyone still reading and wondering, bae is another word for a persons boyfriend or girlfriend.

Its short for baby. I know. I dont get it either.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Photo: Gail Gulyas Big White on June 11, 2016

While the beginning of this week saw record-breaking hot temperatures across the province, it is ending on a rather cold, wet and even snowy note.

The valley bottom has seen two straight days of cooler-than-normal temperatures with rain and even some thunderstorms  and now that rain has even turned to slushy snow on Big White.

Gail Gulyas sent Castanet the photo above that shows the surprising June snowstorm Saturday morning on Big White.

Environment Canada is calling the cooling pattern across the country 'June-uary'.

A little January mixed in with June...and it's June-uary! writes Environment Canada.

Brrr, don't forget your booties, 'cos it's cold out there! (okay, not really "cold"; only when comparing to our heat wave from a week ago).

June is known among forecasters as a "cold-low month" around B.C. due to the frequent forays of upper/cold lows from the Gulf of Alaska into the province which leads to cool, showery and unpredictable weather.

The latest 500mb forecast out to Wednesday from the Canadian Global model fits that billing perfectly, with one upper-low lollygagging through the province today, followed by another cold Gulf offering taking up residence off the coast early next week, adds Environment Canada.

Not much change in the cool-mixed-bag forecast is expected today, as the low makes its way into the Central Interior. So while weather won't be ideal for camping, fire danger ratings should fall over most of the province.

As of Saturday afternoon, the hot spot in the province was found at Fort Nelson Airport at 25 C, and the hot spot in the country, at 33.5 C, was in Windsor Ontario.

The coldest spot in B.C. Saturday afternoon was reportedly the base of Blackcomb in Whistler at 6.6 C, versus the coldest spot in Canada  Tukialik Bay, N.L. at -2.7 C.

The weekend forecast for the Central Okanagan is calling for mainly cloudy conditions with a 40 per cent chance of showers and a risk of thunderstorms Saturday afternoon and evening.

Downtown Kelowna was sitting at 14 C at 3 p.m., a few degrees below the daily high of 17 C.

Sunday's forecast is clearing up a bit, calling for a mix of sun and cloud and a high of 22 C, while Monday and Tuesday are looking cooler and wet once again.

For your local forecast, click here.
An infestation of Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) has inched further across the state.

Officials have detected EAB in the Kimball area of Marion County, prompting a county-wide quarantine prohibiting the movement of ash trees and ash tree products. This quarantine has now reached 48 counties in Tennessee. EAB is a destructive forest pest that was introduced from Asia into the United States in the 1990s. It was first detected in Tennessee in July 2010. EAB beetles can kill an ash tree within three years of the initial infestation.

The insects are transported mainly by humans through infected ash nursery stock, firewood, unprocessed saw logs, and other ash products.



Citizens should report any symptomatic ash trees to TDA and follow these simple rules:



 Dont transport firewood, even within the state.

 Use firewood from local sources near where it will be burned.

 If you purchase firewood, make sure that it is labeled and certified to be pest free.

 Watch for signs of infestation in your ash trees.

Visit www.tn.gov/agriculture/topic/ ag-businesses-eab for a symptoms checklist and a map of quarantined counties.



TDAs Division of Forestry estimates that there are 261 million ash trees on public and private land in Tennessee, potentially valued as high as $9 billion.



For more information about EAB and other destructive forest pests, as well as tips for infestation prevention, visit www.protecttnforests.org.
A man was killed and seven others have been wounded since Sunday morning in separate attacks in the city's Englewood, Avalon Park, Lawndale and West Garfield Park neighborhoods.

Neighbors gathered Sunday morning around the perimeter of a crime scene in the 1100 block of West 72nd Street in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood.



Police said a 32-year-old man was discovered slumped over the driver's seat of a gray BMW about 8:35 a.m. Sunday. The man suffered a gunshot wound to the head and chest, and he was pronounced dead on the scene at 8:53 a.m., said Officer Bari Lemmon, a police spokeswoman.

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The man was identified as Dwayne T. Triplett, of the 1100 block of West 72nd Street, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.



"It sounds like an officer just happens upon him," Lemmon said.



It's unclear when the shooting occurred.



"How long has he been dead?" one neighbor asked a police officer.



About a dozen officers scoured the car, taking photos of its interior and scrawling notes on a legal pad. A few other investigators entered a corner store, A&A Groceries Inc., where a couple of surveillance cameras were positioned on the side of the building where the car was parked.

Surveillance video showed a Chevrolet car and a van approach the vehicle and open fire around 5 a.m., according to a clerk at the store.



"They open the door, shoot and left," he said.

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Most recently, a 22-year-old man was wounded in a shooting about 3:05 a.m. Monday in the East Garfield Park neighborhood on the West Side, said Officer Veejay Zala, a police spokesman.

The man was in the 3000 block of West Walnut Street when he was shot in the left leg, Zala said.

He was taken to Stroger Hospital, where his condition stabilized, Zala said.

The circumstances of the shooting were not immediately known.

About 11:15 p.m. Sunday, a 28-year-old man walked into Mount Sinai Hospital after he was shot in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side, said Officer Hector Alfaro, a police spokesman.

The man was in a gangway in the 1800 block of South Springfield Avenue when a male attacker walked up and fired shots, Alfaro said.

The man was hit in the right thigh and in the left calf. He managed to get to the hospital, where his condition stabilized, Alfaro said.

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Shortly before 3 p.m., a 17-year-old boy and a 21-year-old man were shot in the West Garfield Park neighborhood on the West Side, said Officer Kevin Quaid, a police spokesman.

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According to preliminary reports, the shooting happened in the 4200 block of West Wilcox Street. The victims reported they were standing on the sidewalk when a two-door vehicle pulled up and someone got out. The person then approached on foot and fired several shots, Quaid said.

The youngest victim was hit several times in the torso and arm. He was taken by friends to Stroger Hospital, where he was listed in serious condition. The second victim suffered a wound to the arm and drove himself to Loretto Hospital, where he was listed in good condition, Quaid said.

Police believe the West Garfield Park shooting was gang-related.

About 11:30 a.m., three more people were shot in the Avalon Park neighborhood. That shooting happened in the 8200 block of South Woodlawn Avenue, Lemmon said.

According to preliminary reports, a gunman approached on foot and shot the men before fleeing.

A 28-year old man was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn with a gunshot wound to the left leg. A 67-year-old man, who was shot in the knee, was taken to the same hospital. The third victim, 29, was shot in the foot. He was taken to South Shore Hospital, Lemmon said.
Melissa Calusinski listens to testimony during her appeal hearing at Babcox Justice Center in Waukegan on Aug. 18, 2016. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

Nearly five years after a Chicago-area day care worker was found guilty of murder in the death of a toddler, a Lake County judge ruled Monday that he will allow new testimony to be heard in the case  a turn the woman's lawyers hope will lead to a reversal of her conviction.

The legal victory for Melissa Calusinski, whose case has attracted national attention, gives her lawyers the chance to offer what they say is new evidence showing that the boy in Calusinski's care died not by her hand but of a previous injury  a claim prosecutors dispute.

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"This is not a small feat. This is very rare," Calusinski's high-profile lawyer, Kathleen Zellner, said of the court victory.

The ruling to allow a so-called evidentiary hearing in the case was made by the same judge, Daniel Shanes, who oversaw Calusinski's 2011 trial and sentenced her in 2012 to 31 years in prison.

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The Carpentersville woman, now 29, has long maintained her innocence in the death of 16-month-old Benjamin Kingan, of Deerfield. She was not brought to Lake County from downstate Logan Correctional Center for Monday's court session but after the hearing, her father, Paul Calusinski, wept as he hugged and thanked Zellner.

"You'll see my daughter not only didn't do this crime, but evidence was withheld," he said. "... I wish I could be there to tell her the good news. This is the day we've all been waiting for."

The judge said Monday morning that "it would not be responsible" to move forward without allowing both prosecutors and Calusinski's lawyers to call witnesses to determine if the evidence in question is new and whether a new trial for Calusinski is warranted.

The state's attorney's office said it welcomed the hearing because it gives prosecutors the first chance to respond formally to the new claims by the Calusinski camp.

Parents of Melissa Calusinski, a former day care worker, say she will be allowed to present new evidence. June 13, 2016. (Tony Briscoe / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)

"We look forward to having a full and fair hearing. We believe that the evidence will clearly show that the defendant's claims are without merit and will again confirm that she is guilty of the murder of a child," the office said in a statement.

Benjamin's parents, Amy and Andrew Kingan, attended the hearing and left immediately after it ended without commenting to the media.

Monday's hearing was briefly interrupted when a disturbance in the crowded gallery prompted two deputies to remove a man from the courtroom. Shanes, who had started to explain his ruling but hadn't yet announced it, abruptly recessed the hearing before returning a few minutes later.

Calusinski was working at the now-closed Minee Subee in the Park day care center in Lincolnshire, in 2009 when Benjamin fell ill at the center and died later that day in a hospital. Calusinski told investigators following a long interrogation that she slammed the boy's head to the ground after becoming frustrated with him, but her lawyers have maintained that the admission was coerced.

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Zellner has claimed in legal filings that Calusinski's constitutional rights were violated, in part because there was a lack of probable cause to arrest her. Yet the case now centers largely around a set of X-rays whose origins and importance are deeply disputed.

Calusinski's camp says they came to light when the woman's father received a call a year ago from someone who advised him about a "second set" of X-rays from the Lake County coroner's office.

Coroner Thomas Rudd's office did find and provide Melissa Calusinski's attorneys with a new set of X-rays they say show that Benjamin did not have a fresh skull fracture, as prosecutors have contended. Rudd  who was not coroner when Benjamin died  then announced that he had reclassified the boy's death from homicide to undetermined, saying it was "impossible to conclude that the final head injury was intentionally inflicted."

Calusinski's attorneys say that her trial lawyer, Paul DeLuca, never received copies of the X-rays in question and that those he did receive were illegible.

Prosecutors counter that the X-rays are neither new nor significant.

Rather, the state contends in court filings that they're "nothing more than brightened duplicates of the X-rays made available to her two months prior to her trial." Calusinski's lawyers could have used viewing software accompanying the X-rays to brighten the digital images, Assistant State's Attorney Stephen Scheller said in the court document.

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But Zellner says the state's "entire theory of the case was dependent upon the existence of a skull fracture." She said that the phrase was mentioned 32 times at Calusinski's trial and that prosecutors downplayed the possibility that the boy's habit of banging his head against the floor could have caused his fatal injury, saying it alone could not produce a skull fracture.

Scheller noted that medical experts at Calusinski's trial had differing opinions on the existence of a fracture. Regardless, the question of a fracture in itself doesn't prove Calusinski's innocence, Scheller said.

Zellner has brought in another medical expert, former Cook County Medical Examiner Nancy Jones, who contends that what initially was deemed to be a fracture in the back of Benjamin's head is more consistent with a normal variation in the skull known as an accessory suture.

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Scheller called Jones' statement "wholly ... speculative."

Zellner has also obtained a statement from forensic pathologist Eupil Choi admitting he overlooked a prior injury when he performed a postmortem examination of Benjamin.

Lake County State's Attorney Mike Nerheim has said that Choi's admission did not change Choi's conclusion that the boy died of a catastrophic head injury inflicted the same day, and that an older injury could not have caused the level of internal bleeding that killed the boy that day.

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"The jury was presented with a battle of experts about the cause of Ben's death," prosecutors said in a recent court filing. "The jury was instructed consistent with the law in Illinois that defendant's acts need not be the sole and immediate cause of death. The jury only had to find that defendant's actions contributed to Ben's death."

Prosecutors have also noted that Choi, in the affidavit he signed about missing an older injury, crossed out the word "significant" in describing the older injury.

tbriscoe@tribpub.com

Twitter @_tonybriscoe
The Rev. Jesse Jackson announced his support for Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, in a Saturday afternoon news conference with reporters in Chicago and called for "reconciliation" between her and her rival, Bernie Sanders.

Jackson, 74, recalled meeting Clinton in the Mississippi Delta and cited her work with the Children's Defense Fund and, later, in the White House for a comprehensive health-care system.

"We trust her to work on health care, to fight for the poor," said Jackson, with a couple of sheets of note paper in his hand. "We trust her to fight in the defense of children."

Jackson said he had the "highest regard for Bernie," recalling Sanders's support for him during his own presidential campaign, and praising Sanders for his work on Wall Street reform and for a $15 hourly minimum wage.

"The campaign is technically over, but the crusade is not," Jackson said. "I support Hillary's campaign and Bernie's crusade, and they are reconcilable."

Jackson called on the candidates to work toward that reconciliation, saying he had been in touch with Clinton's spouse, former president Bill Clinton, and with Sanders's campaign manager, Jeff Weaver.

"Fighting to keep the issues on the table that have been raised is appropriate," he said. "The fight can keep going but in ways that does not give the adversary sound bites."

The reverend, who attended Friday's funeral services for Muhammad Ali in Louisville, spoke Saturday at a memorial that bears the names of several hundred children who were slain in street violence in Chicago.

"I wanted people around the nation to see the sense of desperation here," he said when a reporter asked him about his choice of the location for his speech. "Down the streets, you see abandoned buildings and vacant lots."

Jackson said he expected that Clinton would develop an urban policy to relieve what he called "this scourge of violence" and create more economic opportunity.

"Public housing's not being built. Private housing's been foreclosed," he said. "There's analysis every day about disparities in terms of employment, education and life options. There appears to be no remedies, no commitment to invest and alter our condition."

Jackson's endorsement is the latest by a major Democratic figure since Clinton secured enough delegates to effectively end the party's long primary season with a victory at the polls in California on Tuesday. President Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) endorsed the former secretary of state on Thursday.

Bill Clinton is expected in Washington on Saturday.
Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump's first tweet Sunday morning was a fairly measured comment about the deadly mass shooting in an Orlando gay nightclub. "Really bad shooting in Orlando. Police investigating possible terrorism. Many people dead and wounded."

His second tweet, an hour and a half later, was a return to campaign trail politics - an attempt to falsely recast a verbal attack he made against a disabled journalist.

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Then came another, more sympathetic tweet about the Orlando tragedy, followed by one in which he took credit for "being right on radical Islamic terrorism." And then Trump went fully on the attack, saying, "Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!"

Trump's approach to the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history posed a sharp contrast to the conventional one of presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. She first tweeted a note of concern for the victims; hours later, she issued a statement that sought to address the main issues that the tragedy touched on - terrorism, gay rights and gun control.

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The disparity between the two encapsulates the choice facing voters this fall: Do they see Trump's bombast as the solution to a dangerous world, or do they find comfort in Clinton's more familiar manner?

Trump's way served him well in the Republican primaries. His standing improved after the shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., and his call for "a total and complete ban" on all Muslims entering the United States. But it is unclear whether the much larger general-election audience will react as favorably to a candidate who has called for "a hell of a lot worse" than waterboarding, has said of terrorists that "you have to take out their families" and who is willing to circulate unconfirmed reports on social media amid a federal investigation.

While Trump issued a formal statement Sunday afternoon, he made most of his points about the attack via Twitter. At one point on Sunday, Trump, who has nearly 9 million followers, tweeted, "Reporting that Orlando killer shouted "Allah hu Akbar!" as he slaughtered clubgoers." This appeared to be a slightly altered version of a tweet sent by a Fox News contributor, which did not cite a source for the information.

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Stuart Stevens, who served as Mitt Romney's chief strategist during the 2012 campaign, called Trump's statements and actions on Sunday "childish."

"Every day he finds a different way to show he's unqualified to be president," Stevens said. "Today he's accepting congratulations at a time when 50 people are slaughtered."

Jennifer Palmieri, communications director for the Clinton campaign, said in a statement: "This act of terror is the largest mass shooting in American history and a tragedy that requires a serious response. . . . Donald Trump put out political attacks, weak platitudes and self-congratulations. Trump has offered no real plans to keep our nation safe and no outreach to the Americans targeted, just insults and attacks."

Trump's handling of the unfolding events on Sunday - private consultation with aides while issuing a flurry of proclamations and comments on social media - is reflective of how he often handles breaking news. While he works closely with advisers to craft the theme of public remarks and statements, he believes it is also crucial for him to be part of the national conversation as soon as possible.

"He'll monitor everything; that's how he is. It's not just on Twitter but on his smartphone and television and articles," Sam Nunberg, a former Trump aide, said when asked how Trump digests major news events.

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Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally, said in an interview that the mogul should "ignore" the rush of critics who on Sunday cast Trump's responses as inappropriate.

"What Trump ought to do, and what he has historically done, is go to the country. And he should take the elite media head-on. There is no possibility of coexisting peacefully with these people. They are his mortal enemy, so he should relax and accept it," Gingrich said. "He should use a campaign on social media to beat them."

Clinton began Sunday with a personally signed tweet that drew no conclusions about the incident. "Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act."

Hours later, she issued a statement calling on the United States "to redouble our efforts to defend our country from threats at home and abroad" while also imposing restrictions on firearms and ensuring that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans are not targeted because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Clinton has made gun control and gay rights central issues in her campaign. Following a mass shooting last year in Roseburg, Ore., she issued a detailed plan to expand gun background checks through executive action: President Obama later adopted a similar approach. She has called for the reinstatement of an assault weapons ban, favors a California proposal regulating ammunition and has promised to seek legislation ending the immunity gun manufacturers have from some lawsuits.

And while Clinton lagged behind many Democrats in calling for the legalization of same-sex marriage, she has repeatedly called for ending discrimination against members of the LGBT community during her presidential campaign.

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The mass shooting prompted both leading presidential candidates to tear up their campaign schedules. Trump had planned to give remarks Monday at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm's College focused on scandals linked to Hillary Clinton over the years, but by late Sunday afternoon the speech had been reframed to "further address this terrorist attack, immigration, and national security." Later, Trump's campaign released a statement saying it was postponing a Monday evening rally that was supposed to follow the speech.

Trump, who has told aides he sees the issues as interconnected, said in his formal statement: "I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can't afford to be politically correct anymore."

Clinton had been scheduled to deliver a speech in Cleveland on Monday, followed by one in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, two events aimed at refocusing her campaign on Trump now that she has amassed enough delegates to secure her party's nomination. By Sunday afternoon she had canceled a much-heralded joint rally with Obama slated for Wednesday in Green Bay, Wis., citing the attack.

Speaking to reporters at the White House James S. Brady briefing room Sunday, the president framed the shooting as a moment when the nation needed to come together to support those who had been victimized and defend America's traditions of diversity and tolerance.

He did not mention proposals to ban Muslims from entering the country or religious tests designed to prevent Muslim refugees from Iraq and Syria from coming to the United States. But they were clearly on his mind as he called on Americans not to "give into fear or turn against each other."

Obama described the attack as "a sobering reminder that attacks on any American - regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation - is an attack on all of us and on the fundamental values of equality and dignity that define us as a country."

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And he made a point of saying the Orlando nightclub where the killing occurred "was a place of solidarity and empowerment," where members of the city's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community "came together to be with friends, to dance and to sing and to live."

It is unclear whether the more nuanced approach Clinton and Obama are advocating - one that calls on Americans to refrain from targeting people from the Mideast or of Middle Eastern descent while pursuing incremental gains against Islamist extremists overseas - will resonate with the majority of voters.

For Trump, according to Ronald Reagan's former education secretary William J. Bennett, Monday's speech represents "a test" of whether he can rise above the infighting that dominated the GOP's nomination contest.

"If he looks and sounds big, he can put his detractors to rest - the Mitt Romney people and the others who have been going after him," said Bennett, who has grown friendly with Trump. "It's a time for him to say we're at war and get the whole country and party behind him. This is the kind of event that can cut through the rhetoric and the name-calling about him pretty quick and make it all fade into the background."

The Washington Post's Sean Sullivan and Abby Phillip contributed to this report.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump pauses during his campaign speech to hug the American flag Saturday, June 11, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. (Chris O'Meara / AP)

MOON TOWNSHIP, Pa.  Campaigning in a pair of crucial battleground states, Donald Trump bashed Democrats and Republicans alike Saturday, from Hillary Clinton to former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

First at a convention center in Tampa, Florida, and then in an airport hangar outside Pittsburgh, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee tore into fellow Republicans who have been slow to back him, again dashing hopes among some in the party that Trump would solely train his fire on his likely general election foe.

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"I'd like to see Republican leadership be very strong, very smart and you got to be cool," he said in Moon Township, Penn., saying that Republicans risked losing seats in the House and Senate.

"If not, I'm gonna win but a lot of other people are not," Trump said. "We are going to win either way."

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He saved his most vicious broadsides for Romney, who speaking Saturday at a GOP retreat in Utah, said that in a race between Clinton and Trump, "either choice is destructive."

"Mitt Romney is a sad case. He choked," Trump said. "You know what a choke artist is? You know a guy who missed a kick, you get rid of him, right? He choked like a dog."

Trump also revived "Crooked Hillary," his favorite moniker for Clinton, calling her a "maniac." He again went after another one of his vocal critics  Sen. Elizabeth Warren  calling her "Pocahontas," a reference to her Native American ancestry.

"I said yes, I will apologize: to Pocahontas," he said in Tampa. "To Pocahontas I will apologize, because Pocahontas is insulted."

Romney said he would not spend time campaigning for or against Trump and predicted 90 percent of Republicans would vote for Trump.

The attendees at Romney's annual business and politics summit, about 300 of his longtime donors and friends, provided a snapshot of the wide range of GOP sentiment about Trump. While most are eager to keep Clinton out of the White House, Trump keeps giving many of them pause, the latest example being his comments that a federal judge's Mexican heritage prevents him from fairly overseeing a lawsuit against him.

Behind closed doors at the summit, Hewlett Packard President Meg Whitman likened Trump to Mussolini and Hitler and suggested she might vote for Clinton. GOP strategists and vocal Trump skeptics Stuart Stevens, Ana Navarro and Kristen Soltis Anderson told attendees to brace for a Clinton White House because Trump doesn't appeal to growing voter blocs, including Latinos.

"It's very difficult to envision" how Trump can win, Anderson said in a rare on-the-record session.

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House Speaker Paul Ryan squirmed as he was asked how he could support Trump after denouncing the candidate's comments about the judge. He demurred, as he did during Whitman's Trump tirade, saying his leadership position means he must convey the will of Republican representatives, not just his own.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks in front of his jet during a campaign rally, Saturday, June 11, 2016 at a private hanger at Greater Pittsburgh International Airport in Moon, Pa. (Keith Srakocic / AP)

Trump's speeches Saturday  which echoed the combative tone of his events during the primaries  may do little to reassure weary Republicans that he will moderate his temperament in the lead up to the general election. But the campaign did take one small step toward improving its voter data collection efforts, which have come under some criticism for being insufficient.

At the Pennsylvania stop, volunteers staffed a merchandise stand and those that bought hats or shirts left their information with the campaign. While selling paraphernalia is a staple feature at most campaign rallies, the Trump team had largely eschewed selling merchandise at rallies, allowing bootleggers to sell unofficial versions outside the venues.

The Trump campaign dismissed concerns about crowd size on Trump's first general election campaign swing, saying the events were only announced a few days prior. The rally in Tampa was not as well-attended as the typical Trump rally, as was an event in Richmond, Virginia, Friday. The Pennsylvania event, held at a smaller venue, attracted more supporters.

Trump  who says he is expanding his campaign slogan to be "Make America Great For Everyone"  hugged an American flag to demonstrate his love for his country and it wasn't the only display of affection at the Tampa rally:

Toward the end of his speech, supporters broke into a chorus of "Happy Birthday." Trump turns 70-years old on June 14.

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As his supporters began singing, Trump laughed and said "I don't want to hear about it."

He said he's "very torn" about the birthday, but added: "I feel like I'm 35. That's the good news."

Associated Press
With China's college graduation season drawing near, some industries, such as catering, travel and photo studios, are gearing up for a busy and lucrative period.

Graduates pose for their graduation photo in Shanxi University. [Photo: Chinanews.com]

A new survey shows more than 20 percent of graduates apparently expect to spend over 10,000 yuan (1,525 US dollars) bidding farewell to their student days.

Restaurants around colleges are always busy, with many students holding dinner parties to say a fond goodbye to their classmates and friends.

A graduate from Qingdao University said he normally spends about 1,000 yuan per month, but since mid-May, he's been attending dinner parties almost every day, and doubts that 3,000 yuan will be enough to cover his needs.

Apart from parties, having a unique photo album is regarded as a must-have for the young graduates with many renting clothes and paying for professional photographer to put it together.

Graduation travel accounts for the largest part of student graduation expenditure. Zhang Haoran, a senior student of Qingdao University went on a six-day trip to Shanghai and Nanjing with two of his classmates, at a cost of about 2,000 yuan each.

Of course, most students don't lose sight of perhaps the most important task during the graduation time  finding a good job. To impress possible employers, many students splash out on creating attractive curriculum vitae, buying a smart suit, and having a professional ID photo taken.

But consultant Wu Lianhai, from the Ocean University of China, is keen to remind graduates to control their spending as most of their income still comes from their parents' pockets.
Saturday is Population Day in China, and demographics experts have been taking the opportunity to discuss how the loosening of the decades-old 'one-child' policy will affect Chinese society.

Under the newly-revised rules, all couples in China are now permitted to have two children, if they wish. This new 'two-child' policy is expected to add an extra 3-million births every year. But many parents are seriously weighing up the costs of having a second child.

Wang Yanli is 32-years old and pregnant with her first child.

She came to Beijing to find a more highly paid job. But because Beijing is not her home town, Wang Yanli has to take into consideration issues such as school enrollment for her child, as a number of school districts still have restrictions on children whose parents are not registered as Beijing residents.

"I certainly want to send my kid to the best possible school in the future. But there's likely to be restraints, in addition to costs. It may be difficult, even if you have money."

Home prices in China's major cities, such as Beijing, are at 10-year highs, and analysis also shows the average household in Beijing is carrying more than 100-thousand yuan in credit card debt.

It's issues like these which are prompting couples to think long-and-hard about whether or not having a second child makes financial sense.

While many have hailed the government's policy change as 'socially forward-thinking,' Zhang Wei with the China University of Political Science and Law says the government needs to take a broader view.

"The number of people isn't the only driver of social progress and prosperity. It is a comprehensive issue, including education and the distribution of social resources. The government has the responsibility to make full use of the resources at its disposal to gradually improve the conditions in these areas."

Government analysis suggests that three out of every four couples who decide to have a 2nd child are likely to be living in a city.

However, under the current 'hukou' system, one-in-three city-dwellers aren't entitled to social benefits because they're not registered in the city where they live.

Zhai Zhenwu, deputy director of the China Population Association, says a combination of those factors is going to put a lot of additional stress on cities.

"Although the new family planning policy doesn't restrict population growth as strictly as before, it still needs to focus the structure of the population. It can't just control the numbers without paying attention to the structure, nor encourage more births merely for the purpose of regulating population figures."

It's issues like this which have already prompted steps to cap urban growth levels, even as the government encourages people to move into cities from the countryside.

Municipal authorities in Beijing have already proposed plans to adjust the residency permit system in an attempt to cap the population.
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The Donghuamen night market, a fixture in downtown Beijing for the past 32 years, has announced it will shut down by the end of this month.

File photo of the Donghuamen night market in Beijing. [Photo: hexun.com]

Noise levels and hygiene problems at the market are to blame.

An inspector of Beijing's Dongcheng District Food and Drug Administration says the unhygienic food storage conditions in the stalls and improper management of food waste disposals have led to concerns of food hygiene at the market.

The noises from shouting vendors until midnight everyday have also long disturbed residents of the area.

Frequent traffic congestion caused by the crowds at the market is another factor that has led to the closure.

However, authorities are planning to replace the night market with a reconstructed street, which would also improve traffic conditions.

Established in the 1980s, the Donghuamen night market has always offered a variety of Chinese finger foods and snacks along a 200-meter long street.

It was the first night market in Beijing to open after the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, offering cheap and tasty traditional local foods.

It has also become an attraction for foreign tourists. Travel guide website TripAdvisor has recommended the market as one of the 1,500 places to visit in Beijing, ranking it at the 55th place.

But some Beijing locals say the Donghuamen night market over the years has turned into a commercial tourist trap, with few offerings of truly authentic Beijing foods.
The China Grand Canal Public Welfare Activity was launched in Beijing to protect this world heritage entity in terms of eco-environment and cultural preservation.

Together with several stakeholders, the China Environmental Protection Foundation launched the action to celebrate the second anniversary of the successful application for UNESCO world heritage recognition.

It will focus on the preservation of 58 heritage sites and establish the eco-environment and cultural preservation areas. Also, a public-service foundation will soon begin operation to raise more funds in order to plant trees and stage an annual forum along the canal, etc.

The 1,794-km Grand Canal (also known as the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal), is the longest artificial waterway in the world and a famous tourist destination. Starting at Beijing, it passes through Tianjin and the provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the city of Hangzhou, linking the Yellow River and Yangtze River. The oldest parts of the canal date back to the 5th century B.C., although the various sections were finally combined during the Sui dynasty (581618).

Secretary-general Shen Linxiang explained why this foundation decided to plant public-welfare forests. The biggest problem is that some branches in the canal have dried up, due to lack of water supply. We believe the best way for water conservation is to plant more trees, he said.
The transmission management office of the Zhuhai Power Supply Bureau, together with the Hengqin fire brigade and Zhuhai Da Hengqin Urban Public Resources Management Co., Ltd. held a fire drill in Hengqin's cable tunnel in the middle of May this year.

Using actual drills, the adequacy and operability of the Plan for Hengqin Cable Tunnel's Fire Drill were tested. Also, the coordination of the units was improved and the fire drill implementation process was advanced.

Before the fire drill, the three units prepared well and had full communication. Additionally, a script based on the actual situation of the Hengqin cable tunnel was planned. The project was to deal with a fire caused by a burst connector cable in the tunnel.

This time, the fire drill included pre-training and actual operation. Crews from the transmission management office and the Hengqin fire brigade also introduced safety tips to the participating staff.

Currently, the cable tunnel shoulders the heavy responsibility and safeguards the electricity grid stability in Hengqin and even in Zhuhai. This fire drill is bound to improve the reliability of the Zhuhai-Macao electricity supply.
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Policemen stand guard at the site where an explosion happened at Shanghai Pudong International Airport in east China's Shanghai, June 12, 2016. [Xinhua]

Five people were injured in an explosion at Shanghai Pudong International Airport Sunday afternoon, authorities said.

The explosion happened at around 2:26 p.m. when a man threw a homemade beer bottle explosive to a check-in counter in Terminal 2, the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau said in a statement Sunday evening.

After the explosion, the man took a knife from his backpack, cut his neck and then fell to the ground, police said.

The suspect, now in critical condition, was under emergency treatment.

Four passengers, including a Philippine national, were slightly injured by shards of glass and were being treated in hospital.

A further investigation is under way.

A few flights were affected as their passengers were scheduled to check in at the explosion site, but the airport is now in normal operation.

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Scholars from China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have a shared challenge of getting to know each other and transcending the existing Western knowledge system while jointly developing a new knowledge system that will promote bilateral amity. This is important because guiding ideas from scholars are equally important as efforts from politicians and entrepreneurs.

In fact, when we came to know each other in the past, we more or less relied on the knowledge of Southeast Asian studies and China studies, which were compiled by Westerners, and that subtly affected our judgment and understanding of each other. This conclusion isn't meant to deny the Western knowledge system of Southeast Asia or China, but to point out the flaws in it.

On my flight to Jakarta from Shanghai, I read a book about the history of Southeast Asia; it was written by a Westerner. As a scholar, my knowledge kept me alerted to the bias against Southeast Asia in the book. But I was also worried because regular readers may be unable to spot such prejudice and their recognition may be biased.

Edward Said criticized the Middle East studies in the West, saying that the West studies the Middle East while sticking to the Western views of values, history and the world, resulting in many misinterpretations and prejudices. He referred to such biased knowledge as Orientalism.

Likewise, we could say that Southeast Asia studies and Sinology in the West may also be biased. Now Southeast Asian scholars rely more on Western-compiled Sinology to know about China, while Chinese scholars to some extent rely on the English-based knowledge about Southeast Asia to understand the region. To end this embarrassment, we should turn to greater cooperation during which we get to know each other directly.

For example, Southeast Asian scholars are heavily influenced by John K. Fairbank's description of the tribute system. But my own studies show that it is improper to use the concept of "tribute system" to describe the relations between China and its neighboring countries. This deeply rooted concept sends China's neighbors into worries that China would restore this hierarchy once it regains its strength. But in my opinion, China's relationship with its neighbors was more an order of coexistence.

Similarly, as we studied Southeast Asia, we conclude from reviewing Western material that Southeast Asia is a barbarous, uncivilized place. But in fact, the civilizations of Southeastern Asia and its history are profound. Therefore, Southeast Asian scholars should sort out this type of knowledge and write their own history of brilliance.

Transcending Western-based Southeast Asia studies and Sinology requires voluntary ideological emancipation from both parties. With this regard, I think much has been done. Chinese diplomatic philosophy stresses "unite and rule." China supports Southeast Asian countries to seek unity and joint governance, in which ASEAN member countries play an essential role, which represents a path that meets their own conditions.

I think this diplomatic philosophy is worth everyone's research and elaboration. By contrast, if we take without discretion the Western-proposed "divide and rule" theory, bilateral cooperation, as well as that within ASEAN, is doomed to be wrong. Everyone knows that the "divide and rule" idea characterized by colonialism has caused pains and tragedy across the world.

ASEAN has provided its own experience and knowledge for regional cooperation. The idea of interconnectivity proposed by ASEAN, I think, is more suitable than that of the European integration. The same applies for ASEAN's own development and its bilateral ties with China. Chinese President Xi Jinping has said on many occasions that he is in favor of boosting interconnectivity. ASEAN has the wisdom to either transcend or bypass the problems of the European integration and carry on with its own interconnected path.

I myself also support developing regional interconnectivity to strengthen ties. In this regard, the actual effort for boosting interconnectivity should be gradually carried out in all levels and aspects.

In this aspect, the two sides can cooperate to develop common knowledge. The ASEAN member countries and China could jointly develop the neutral thoughts and systems in international laws. To sum up, China and ASEAN countries are entering a period when we have to transcend Western Sinology and South Asian studies in order to decide our joint future and fate. China-ASEAN cooperation already features many achievements in concrete projects but it still lacks a shared knowledge system as a theoretical backup. Therefore, scholars from both sides should take on the mission to complete what is missing in this common knowledge.

The writer is a professor with the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University.

The article was translated by Chen Boyuan. Its original version was published in Chinese.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
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The Afghan forces have obviously adopted an aggressive stance against Taliban in the northern region as more than three dozen armed militants have been killed since Friday, officials said Saturday.

To eliminate militants, the government troops launched major operations against Taliban in Sarkh Kotal, Dand-e-Shahabudin and Dand-e-Ghori districts of the northern Baghlan province on Friday, army spokesman in the province Ahmad Jawed Salim said Saturday.

According to Salim, 15 militants have been killed and nearly a dozen others wounded since the crackdown was launched on Friday.

Aimed at taking back Sarkh Kotal area, the operations would continue until the law and order were restored there, the official said.

The strategically important Sarkh Kotal was captured by Taliban fighters weeks ago and since then the militants could threaten a major highway connecting the capital of Kabul to eight northern provinces. The Kabul-Mazar highway passes through Chashma-e-Shir outside the Baghlan provincial capital of Pul-e-Khumri.

To demonstrate their control on the highway, Taliban militants ordered a passenger bus outside Chachma-e-Shir Friday night to stop for checking, but the driver defied the order and Taliban opened fire injuring four travelers, according to locals.

Local observers believed that controlling the Sarkh Kotal area would give Taliban an upper hand, who could disrupt the Kabul-Mazar highway at anytime.

Similar operations against Taliban which kicked off in Qaisar district of the northern Faryab province on Friday has left 22 Taliban fighters dead, Faryab's provincial governor Sayed Anwar Sadat told reporters on Saturday.

Meantime, eight Taliban militants have been injured as people in some villages of Yamgan district in the northern Badakhshan province made uprising against Taliban fighters on Friday, a senior police official Aziz Kamawal said Saturday.

Army spokesman in the northern region, Nasratullah Jamshidi, told Xinhua on Saturday that the security forces have been chasing the militants elsewhere and would spare no efforts to destroy their hideouts.
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The Bangladeshi police have detained 37 suspects in the first 24 hours of a clampdown against militants since Friday across the country.

The Bangladesh police said in a statement on Saturday that 3,192 people have been arrested in the capital Dhaka and elsewhere in the country.

An official, who declined to be named, said police around the country had detained 37 suspected militants as part of the nationwide drive.

Inspector General of Police AKM Shahidul Hoque said the week-long clampdown was aimed at dismantling all terrorist outfits and their networks in the country.

On Friday, a Hindu monastery worker was found killed in Pabna district, some 216 km west of Dhaka.

Bangladesh has been witnessing 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.
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The Nigerian Army on Saturday confirmed the killing of 10 suspected Boko Haram fighters after a clearance operation in Gamboru-Ngala areas of Borno.

Col. Sani Usman, the Acting Director of Army Public Relations, said this in a statement in Maiduguri, capital of Borno State in the north of the country.

Usman said two other suspects were captured alive by the troops during the operation.

He said the troops also recovered arms and ammunition during the exercise.
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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.

Philippine President-elect Rodrigo Duterte speaks during his victory party in Davao, the Philippines, June 4, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

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.
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At least two people, including a sailor, were killed and two others injured after inhaling toxic fumes on board India's naval ship INS Vikramaditya, officials said Saturday.

Indian Navy personnel stand on the INS Vikramaditya, a modified Kiev-class aircraft carrier, during the International Fleet Review in Visakhapatnam, south eastern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, February 6, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

The incident took place Friday evening when the Russian made aircraft carrier, according to Indian Navy, was undergoing repairs at Karwar in southwest state of Karnataka.

"The incident of gas leakage took place yesterday evening while the ship was undergoing maintenance repairs in the sewage treatment plant compartment," said a statement issued by Indian navy.

"Due to inhalation of the toxic fumes, two naval sailors and two civilian workers were evacuated to naval hospital at Karwar," it added.

Of the four hospitalized, two succumbed to gas inhalation, while the condition of the other two was stated to be stable.

The navy has ordered an inquiry into the incident.

INS Vikramaditya is considered to be India's largest naval ship, equipped with a variety of integral weapons and sensors.

According to India's state-run broadcaster - All India Radio, the ship has been undergoing maintenance repair since June 1.

In April this year three Indian navy personnel were wounded, one of them critically, in a blast aboard naval ship INS Nireekshak.
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Some four militants of the Islamic State (IS) were killed in a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan's eastern province of Nangarhar Saturday night, the provincial government said on Sunday.

"An international forces' pilotless plane fired two missiles in Mahmando locality, Achin district last night. As a result four IS militants were killed," it said in a statement.

The Afghan security forces have beefed up security operations against militants recently as spring and summer known as fighting seasons are drawing near in the country.

Achin district bordering Pakistan has been the scene of heavy clashes between IS militants and security forces backed by pro-government local militiamen over the past couple of months.

The militant group has yet to make comments.
A visitor tries an aircraft at the booth of Hungary during the 2nd China-CEEC Investment and Trade Expo in Ningbo, East China, June 9, 2016. More than 260 enterprises from 16 Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) took part in the expo. [Photo/Xinhua]
Alibaba Group founder and chairman Jack Ma arrives to attend a meeting with the French President at the Elysee Palace in Paris March 18, 2015.[Photo/Agencies]

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma has purchased two vineyards in the famed Bordeaux winegrowing region in France  the Chateau Guerry and the Chateau Perenne  for nearly 12 million euros ($13.56 million), the Agence France-Presse reports.

The news agency says the 64-hectare Chateau Perenne produces about 500,000 bottles of red and white wine annually, while the smaller, 20-hectare Chateau Guerry produces 84,000 bottles of red a year.

Their owner, French wine magnate Bernard Magrez, confirmed the sale to AFP after the transaction was reported by British magazine Decanter.

It comes four months after the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba bought the Chateau de Sours vineyard in Bordeaux, which includes an 18th century castle and an 85-hectare property, producing 500,000 bottles of wine a year.

AFP reported more than 100 properties in France's southwest wine-producing area are owned by Chinese tycoons. This makes up 1.5 percent of the region's 7,000 vineyards.

Wine exporters toasted an upturn in Chinese wine consumption in 2015 after a two-year decline, according to data from the International Vine and Wine organisation.

Chinese imports jumped 44 percent to 5.5 million hectoliters, while overall consumption in the country grew by 3 percent to nearly 16 million hectoliters.
China's first insurance exchange platform Shanghai Insurance Exchange was launched in Shanghai, June 12, 2016.[Provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

China launched its first insurance exchange platform, Shanghai Insurance Exchange, on Sunday morning, filling a gap in China's insurance market.

The platform's 2.235 billion yuan ($341 million) will enable insurance trading in the country, a hundreds-billion-yuan-sized market.

The SHIE wants to become a Shanghai-based, nationwide comprehensive insurance service platform, and aims to serve insurers and consumers globally.

SHIE is positioned to offer services for product offering and registration, trading and information disclosure, and offer infrastructure to reinsurance business, the exchange said in an announcement.

The exchange was launched at a sideline of the Lujiazui Forum 2016, an annual forum for financial markets, involving officials, scholars and market players in Shanghai.

Xiang Junbo, chairman of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, told the forum that China's insurance market would strengthen product offering to benefit consumers, including piloting and encouraging reverse mortgage for pensioners' retirement plans, and high-quality products to meet demands for health and education insurance.

Experts said China's insurance market had made significant progress in recent years, and would continue developing to meet increasing demands for protections.

Mark Tucker, Group Chief Executive and president of the AIA Group Ltd, said the Shanghai Insurance Exchange was an effort to increase the transparency and efficiency of the insurance market in China.

He said the increasing demand for insurance in China requires more products in the market.
Fifty-eight creative cabins, each made of 40 polypropylene boards and measuring around 8 square meters, were unveiled in an international contest on architecture design held by Tongji University in Shanghai on Friday. The event has attracted 500 participants from 22 colleges across the world.
Mu-Ming Poo, director of the Institute of Neuroscience, a branch of Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been selected as the recipient of the 2016 Gruber Neuroscience Prize, an internationally acknowledged highest honor for researchers in this field.

The award worth $500,000 for 67-year-old Poo's seminal discoveries regarding the molecular and cell mechanisms underlying synaptic plasticity in the brain will be presented to him in San Diego at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in November, information officers with the institute said during a media briefing on Sunday.

"Through his innovative and ingenious experiments, Poo has greatly advanced knowledge of mechanisms of brain plasticity - ability to form new connections or change the strength of existing ones driven by our experiences of the world - in nerve cell," said Dr Carla Shatz, a professor of biology from Stanford University.

"He has enhanced our understanding of how synapses, the special junctions between nerve cells so crucial for all brain functions, are reinforced or weakened by neural activity," she added.

China-born Poo, who is a US citizen and the Paul Licht Distinguished Professor in Biology Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, has also made major contributions in other research areas, including neuronal polarization, maturation of the neuromuscular junction, molecular and cell mechanisms underlying axon guidance, and neurotrophic regulation of synaptic functions.

Poo said his team is currently working on physiological and physical therapies that can help alleviate some neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease and depression.

"We're developing a special approach to discover any dysfunction in someone's brain system and try to find corresponding therapies through physical training and games," Poo said.
A bomb disposal expert checks a luggage near the site of a blast at a terminal in Shanghai's Pudong International Airport, China, June 12, 2016.[Photo/Agencies]

Five people were injured by an explosion at Shanghai Pudong International Airport on Sunday afternoon, said the official Weibo account of Shanghai Airport Authority.

At about 2.26 pm, a man threw beer bottles filled with explosives at the check-in counter at terminal two of Shanghai Pudong International Airport, injuring four people, including a Filipino, according to Shanghai Police.

The man then slit his own throat after the explosion, and he was severely injured. The four injured passengers were sent to hospital immediately, added the police notice.

A male witness said a passenger in his tour group noticed a glass bottle near his foot but before he could react, the bottle exploded, and after half a minute, another beer bottle rolled near them, injuring two senior passengers who failed to escape the second blast and were wounded by the glass shrapnel.

The Pudong New Area People's Hospital has set up a team of more than 10 doctors to save the passenger whose jugular vein was seriously injured, while the other three wounded patients received medical treatment in the hospital in the afternoon, according to Caixin report.

The wounded were quickly rushed to hospital, and the site of the blast policies under police control, with only three check-in desks at the area being affected by the incident, according to Shanghai Airport Authority (SAA) and Shanghai Police.

Security check was upgraded immediately after the incident as bomb-proof security was added at the front door of the airport, the Dragon TV reported.

"The travelers will undergo a thorough security clearance along with their carry-on baggage," said Su Weiwei, an SAA official.
China hopes that the European side grants Beijing's market economy status as promised, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Sunday in Beijing.

Wang made the remarks at a bilateral meeting ahead of the fourth round of an intergovernmental consultation between China and Germany, which will start on Monday.

"China appreciated that Germany had expressed their willingness to act as a constructive role in improving the relationship between China and Europe several times," Wang said, adding that Beijing hopes the European side duly fulfills its obligations under Article 15 of the Accession Protocol of China to the WTO.

Calling for the foreign ministries of the two countries to work as a platform to boost communication between China and Germany in many areas, Wang said the two sides should keep close cooperation to make the G20 summit in Hangzhou a success.

"Meanwhile, China and Germany should properly handle their disputes," Wang added.

Steinmeier said that Berlin is willing to maintain close high-level exchanges with Beijing and to reach agreements with China through cooperation in economy, trade and international affairs.

On Sunday, Wang also invited the German foreign minister, whom Wang called "an old friend" of his, to enjoy the sunset at Kunming Lake at the Summer Palace.
Li Shengsu. [File photo]

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 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.

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Getting to know Peking opera by making facial masks
A "Chinese village" was set up in the Southeast Belgian city of Liege.[Photo/Crienglish.com]

A "Chinese village", or a Chinatown, has opened to the public in the Southeast Belgian city of Liege, as part of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Charter of Friendship between the Belgian province of Liege and the Chinese province of Fujian.

The village was set up on the Place Saint-Lambert in Liege city centre and included a market to discover the charms of the east as well as many activities which attracted local visitors, a Xinhua journalist reported on the scene.

Liege province spokesman Damien Dejardin said an estimated 200,000 visitors would come to the "Chinese village" in the four days that it is open.

Liege resident Didier Counotte told Xinhua: "I love Chinese cuisine, it's delicious, and I like watching the dragon dance. The martial arts demonstrations are impressive."

A delegation from Fujian, accompanied by more than 20 business leaders from the Chinese province, joined representatives from Liege province at the Chinatown inauguration on Thursday.

Katty Firquet, vice-president of Liege province in charge of external relations, said: "Until Sunday, Liege will have the chance to live a Mandarin way of life with cultural and sporting activities as well as food tastings."

Firquet has led two visits to China to strengthen links between China and Belgium, as part of the 30th anniversary of the partnership between the two provinces of the two sides.

She added: "This Chinatown is a showcase for Fujian province. A business forum will also be held to present the strengths of Liege province in terms of import and export, logistics and sustainable development."

Li Hong, head of the Chinese delegation and vice-director of Fujian province's external affairs bureau, said: "Fujian and Liege are 8,000 km apart, but such a distance does not stop us working together and cooperating with each other."

The four-day celebrations in the "Chinese village" feature products, concerts, cooking workshops, art exhibitions, parades in traditional costume and arts demonstrations.
Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally at Richmond Coliseum in Richmond, Virginia, US, June 10, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON -- US presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is taking heat yet again, this time for some controversial comments against a judge, as experts said this will hurt him in the presidential race.

The brash New York billionaire is embroiled in a lawsuit over Trump University, as some students claimed they did not get their money's worth.

Trump has sharply criticized Gonzalo P. Curiel for being biased against him because the judge is Mexican American and Trump plans to build a wall on the Mexican border to keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States.

Trump's provocative remarks created a firestorm last week as many Democratic and Republican politicians alike dismissed them as racist.

"This issue is hurting Trump," Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies of the Brookings Institution, told Xinhua.

"He basically said that an American judge of Mexican heritage could not be fair due to political stances that Trump has taken," West said.

Indeed, other Republicans have also blasted Trump over the issue, including key Republican and 2012 contender for the Republican Party nomination Newt Gingrich.

West said it is unprecedented for a major American presidential candidate to criticize a judge based on that individual's ethnicity.

Indeed, such comments will do little to endear Trump to Hispanics, a key voting bloc in the US that is usually in the tank for Democrats.

"On top of all the other things Trump has said, it is hard to envision him getting more than 20 percent of the Hispanic vote," West said.

As most Latinos find Trump offensive and disagree with him on immigration and border security, the vast majority of them will end up voting Democratic and there is little Trump can do to change that, West said.

Meanwhile, Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton is ramping up her game after clinching the nomination.

While the former secretary of state has often appeared to be stiff and unapproachable in public, Clinton earlier this month unleashed a blistering attack against Trump that grabbed media attention.

Clinton lambasted Trump in a foreign policy speech in the state of California, calling the New York mogul a "fraud" who is "temperamentally unfit" to be a president.

Observers said this was a departure from Clinton's usual stiff public persona, which has been a thorn in her side in her efforts to portray herself as someone who understands the struggles of ordinary Americans.

West said that Clinton is displaying more passion in attacking Trump, and the recent scandal over Trump University gives Clinton an opening to characterize Trump as "a rich guy taking advantage of poor people, West said.

Trump's whirlwind entrance into the US political scene last summer has sparked controversy nationwide and has led to a number of riots at political events, most of which saw violence by protesters against Trump supporters.

Last week, Trump supporters were attacked by a mob at a Trump rally in the state of California, with angry assailants hurling eggs and throwing punches at Trump supporters. Some protesters in that and other anti-Trump riots were seen waving Mexican flags. Anti-Trump protesters also attacked police last month during a riot in California.
VANCOUVER -- The construction of a record-setting 53-meter high tower building with mostly wooden material is under way on the campus of the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, west Canada.

Its bold and green design aims to demonstrate that building large, wooden structures isn't too much complex, Russell Acton, principal architect from the building designer Acton Ostry Architects, told the media on Saturday.

"It's got less of an environmental impact with respect to producing greenhouse gases," he said, adding that the 18-storey building will serve as a student dormitory.

He said the design is hybrid, using concrete for a podium on the first floor, and for two core structures.

"Absolutely it's as strong. There are particular code requirements, building code requirements that we have to adhere to and prove out that it's as strong as a concrete or steel building. It will perform similarly to the same level as concrete or steel when in a seismic event," Acton noted.

The dormitory building, named Brock Commons, is designed to accommodate 400 students and expected to be completed by September 2017 with an investment of 53 million Canadian dollars (more than 41 million US dollars).

According to the UBC, the wooden material to be used, including cross laminated timber floors and glued laminated timber wall pillars, will be all produced and pre-fabricated in Canada, partly in an effort to boost local forestry industry.

John Metras, managing director of the UBC infrastructure development, described such a massive use of timber for institutional buildings as an "evolution".

"We have eight other projects where we've used mass timber in lower-rise applications, so this is the first building at an 18-storey height," he said.

The designers said the structure should last as long as a steel or concrete tower of the same size, or having a life length of about 60 to 100 years.
Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse nightclub, where people were killed by a gunman, in Orlando, Florida, US June 12, 2016. 50 people were killed inside the club and at least 53 people were injured, police say. [Photo/Agencies]
Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse nightclub, where people were killed by a gunman, in Orlando, Florida,June 12, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

ORLANDO, Fla. - A man armed with an assault rifle killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday in the worst mass shooting in US history, which President Barack Obama described as an act of terror and hate.

Police killed the shooter, who was identified as Omar Mateen, 29, a Florida resident and US citizen who was the son of immigrants from Afghanistan.

Law enforcement officials were probing evidence that suggested the attack may have been inspired by Islamic State militants, although they cautioned there was no proof that Mateen had worked directly with the group.

"It has been reported that Mateen made calls to 911 this morning in which he stated his allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State," said Ronald Hopper, the FBI's assistant special agent in charge on the case.

Shots rang out at the crowded nightclub, in the heart of one the United States' most popular tourist destination cities, as some 350 people had packed in during celebrations of gay pride week. Clubgoers described scenes of terror, with one man who escaped saying he hid under a car and bandaged a wounded stranger.

"Words cannot and will not describe the feeling of that," clubgoer Joshua McGill said in a posting on Facebook. "Being covered in blood. Trying to save a guy's life."

Fifty-three people were wounded in the rampage. It was the deadliest single US mass shooting incident, eclipsing the 2007 massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech university.

"We know enough to say this was an act of terror, an act of hate," Obama said in a speech from the White House. "As Americans, we are united in grief, in outrage and in resolve to defend our people."

US officials cautioned, however, that they had no conclusive evidence of any direct connection with Islamic State or any other foreign extremist group.

"So far as we know at this time, his first direct contact was a pledge of bayat (loyalty) he made during the massacre," said a US counterterrorism official. "This guy appears to have been pretty screwed up without any help from anybody."

The attack came six months after a married couple in California fatally shot 14 people in San Bernardino in an attack inspired by Islamic State.
Premier Li Keqiang and German Chancellor Angela Merkel visit Kunming Lake at the Summer Palace in Beijing. WU ZHIYI / CHINA DAILY Li receives Merkel at the start of her ninth visit to China since taking office

Against the backdrop of a glowing summer sunset in Beijing, Premier Li Keqiang received his visiting German counterpart Angela Merkel on Sunday at the Summer Palace.

It was Merkel's second visit to a World Heritage site in Beijing after she toured the Temple of Heaven in 2014. She is making her ninth trip to China since taking office.

Li welcomed the German chancellor at the Summer Palace's east gate before showing her around several ancient sites.

He later hosted a banquet for Merkel near the Summer Palace, where they also held an informal meeting.

Li said both countries are steadily implementing the guidelines of the third round of China-Germany government consultations in 2014.

China is willing to hold in-depth discussions with the European Union during the fourth round of the consultations, scheduled for Monday, the premier said.

Areas for discussion include linking the Made in China 2025 strategy with Germany's Industry 4.0 strategy, cooperation in third-party markets and smart manufacturing.

Industry 4.0, or the fourth industrial revolution, refers to the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies.

"China welcomes foreign investment from all countries, in particular Germany, and I hope China and Germany will strengthen communication and cooperation among G20 member states, dedicated to boosting global economic growth and maintaining world peace," the premier said.

Merkel said bilateral relations have developed smoothly and Germany will enhance exchanges and cooperation with China in various fields.

Li said: "This calls for innovative ways for deepening bilateral cooperation between China and Germany, expanding common interests, and building new momentum ... in bilateral relations. China will have in-depth discussions with Germany on cooperation in relevant fields during the fourth round of China-Germany governmental consultations."

Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Beijing that China hopes the EU can fulfill its promise to recognize China as a market economy.

Wang made the remarks at a bilateral meeting ahead of the fourth round of the intergovernmental consultation between the two countries.

"China appreciates that Germany has expressed its willingness several times to play a constructive role in improving the relationship between China and Europe," Wang said.

He stressed that Beijing hopes the EU can fulfill its obligations under Article 15 of the Accession Protocol of China's entry to the World Trade Organization in 2001. Article 15 specifies that the maximum time limit for China as a nonmarket economy should be 15 years.

Earlier on Sunday, Merkel received an honorary doctoral degree from Nanjing University before delivering a speech at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

Chen Jun, president of Nanjing University, said, "In a complicated political and economic environment, Merkel devotes herself to resolving issues including legal dialogues, regional conflicts, climate change ... and makes a great contribution to bilateral relations."

In her speech, Merkel emphasized the importance of creating a free and open atmosphere for academic discussions.

By the end of last year, more than 36,000 Chinese students were studying at universities in Germany, and more than 7,500 Germans were studying in China.

Zhou Wa and Wang Xu contributed to this story.
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(Photo : Reuters) Solar Impulse 2, the solar airplane, piloted by Swiss adventurer Andre Borschberg, flies over the Statue of Libery in in New York.

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The solar-powered aircraft, Solar Impulse 2, has completed its journey across the United States after its arrival at the John F. Kennedy Airport this weekend. The voyage, which began last year in the United Arab Emirates, ended after the plane safely at its final destination in New York on Saturday.



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The Swiss-made plane landed at the John F. Kennedy International Airport at around 4 a.m. after nearly five hours of flight from Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania. The trip across the United States started in April when the plane landed in San Francisco from Hawaii.



Andre Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard are the pilots of the Solar Impulse 2. Following their successful crossing of the United States, the duo are reportedly now preparing for the next leg of the voyage which would see them cross the Atlantic Ocean to either Europe or South Africa.



The pilots revealed that they took turns in piloting the Solar Impulse 2. They devised a 20-minute shift to allow each other to sleep. The two also adopted unique techniques to quickly recover their energy. Piccard claims he uses self-hypnosis, while Borschberg uses yoga.



In a statement acquired by CBS News, Borschberg said, "It's a question of mindset. You know, when you board the airplane, you think five days' flight is going to be long, it will be very long. If you think it's a great experience, something fantastic, something special, something for you, it's completely different."



While flying across the U.S., the two stopped in Phoenix; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Dayton, Ohio; and Allentown, Pennsylvania.



The Solar Impulse 2 has wings which are wider that those of the Boeing 747. The plane's wings are equipped with 17,000 solar cells that harness solar energy and powers the plane's propellers. It also charges its batteries. The Solar Impulse 2 runs on the stored energy at night.



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Tagssolar impulse, solar impulse 2, solar powered airplane, Solar Impulse 2 news, Solar Impulse update, Solar Impulse 2 update, solar power
(Photo : Facebook/Free Chinese Feminists) "No Exception, No Excuse, No Rape" - Feminists from Yunnan, China show solidarity for the Stanford rape survivor.

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A Chinese feminist group has shown support for a Stanford rape victim after the suspect, who was found guilty of the assault, only received a six-month imprisonment sentence. Images of Chinese women holding up messages of solidarity for the victim are circulating on Weibo and other social media platforms.



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Injustice to Rape Survivors



Brock Turner, a 20-year old former Stanford swimmer, was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault earlier this month. However, Judge Aaron Persky, who presided over the case, sentenced Turner to just six months in prison.



Judge Persky reduced the initial sentence of six years imprisonment to six months because he deemed incarceration would have a devastating effects on the former swimmer.



The judge reportedly handed him a light sentence because he considers Turner young and talented. Meanwhile, the judge allegedly downplayed the trauma experienced by the rape victim. This has sparked outrage among women all over the world.



The Free Chinese Feminists Group described the sentence was an injustice against the Stanford rape survivor. The group has called for women all over the world to stand up for the rape victim.



Awareness for Rape Victims



The Chinese feminists posted photos of themselves holding placard showing messages of solidarity with the victim. The images have been making rounds on Weibo, Facebook, and Twitter. The photos were posted with hashtag #Solidarity4StanfordSuvivor.







The Chinese feminists have accused Judge Persky of encouraging rape with the light punishment he gave the Stanford rape suspect. They also questioned if the judge would have done the same if the suspect was a talented black student.



The feminists are calling for justice, arguing that the rapist should be punished according to the crime, not his talents.



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TagsBrock Turner, Stanford Rape Survivor, Injustice For Rape Victims, Free Chinese Feminists, Judge Aaron Persky, Solidarity4StanfordSuvivor, Feminist, Chinese Feminists
(Photo : Getty Images) President Xi Jinping and Philippine President Benigno Aquino III. Ambassador Zhao Jinghua said that China places great emphasis on its friendship with the Philippines.

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Outgoing Philippine President Benigno Aquino III on Friday said Sino-Philippine ties have improved despite the current spat between the two nations over the South China Sea.



In a pre-Independence Day celebration organized by the Filipino-Chinese community in Manila, Aquino thanked the organization for paving the way for the two nations to foster understanding and cooperation as well as enhance closer ties in various areas such as in trade, investment, tourism, and culture.



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Aquino specifically highlighted the important role that the organization has played by being a communications conduit between Beijing and Manila amid the South China Sea dispute. The Philippines filed a case against China at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague, Netherlands four years ago.



The Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FFCCCII), whose members include the wealthiest and biggest names in the business sector in the country, came in full force to the Philippine Independence Day celebrations in support of President Aquino, who will be vacating his office on June 30.



Peace and stability



"These efforts have certainly helped us, both the Philippines and China, to continue to pursue peace, stability, and inclusive progress in our part of the world," Aquino said.



Chinese Ambassador to Manila Zhao Jianhua, who was present at the celebrations, said trade relations between the two sides were improving despite some obstacles.



Zhao, who referred to Manila and Beijing as 'partners,' said China places great emphasis on its friendship with the Philippines and will help maintain peace and stability in the region.



"China attaches great importance to our relationship with the Philippines and has always regarded the Philippines as a friend rather than foe, a partner rather than a rival."



"I firmly believe that the future of China-Philippine relations will be brighter, the friendship between our peoples will be deeper, bilateral cooperation between our two countries will be more fruitful," Zhao added.



Tourism industry



Zhao said tourism between China and the Philippine has been more in favor of Beijing citing figures which showed more Filipinos visited the mainland than Chinese visitors visited Manila last year. But he was pointed out that more than half a million Chinese visited the Philippines in 2015, making it the third country that has contributed much to the Philippines' tourism industry.



The ambassador said the tourism industry in China and the Philippines has a 'great potential' to foster cooperation between the two nations.



"To promote our bilateral friendship and cooperation serves the fundamental interests of our two countries, the well-being of our two peoples, as well as the peace and stability in our region," Zhao said.



Manila is awaiting the ruling of a case it filed against China over the South China Sea dispute at the international arbitration court in the Hague. The verdict is expected to be handed down this month.



Beijing has said that it does not recognize the jurisdiction of the court, and it will not abide by any ruling on the case.



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TagsPhilippine Independence Day, Filipino-Chinese community, President Benigno Aquino III, South China Sea, Sino-Philippine relations, china
(Photo : Getty Images) European Union Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini with Premier Li Keqiang during a visit to China



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China and the European Union (EU) held a high-level strategic dialogue on Friday, June 10, in Brussels, Belgium with each side pledging to cooperate further in various areas of mutual interest. This was the sixth China-EU dialogue.



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The dialogue was co-chaired by EU Foreign Policy Minister Federica Mogherini and Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi.



According to State Councilor Yang, China sees the EU as a strategic partner not only because of social development and economic demands but also because of the need to promote world peace and stability as well as economic recovery.



Yang said that the China-EU dialogue is vital and will be beneficial as both sides have agreed to expand cooperation in various areas including trade and investment, technology as well as infrastructure.



Mogherini agreed, acknowledging that China is an important partner. He praised the country for its positive role in addressing regional and global challenges.



Yang met with a lot of EU Dignitaries during the dialogue, including European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. During his meetings, Yang reiterated China's commitment to actively pursue cooperation on matters of mutual interest and work together to promote global peace and security.



During the China-EU dialogue, a consensus was reached to accelerate negotiations on different bilateral agreements on investment. Both sides also agreed to tourism as well as enhance cooperation on political security.



The European Union and China are preparing for the 18th China-EU Summit, which will be held in Beijing in July. The summit is seen as a way to further improve relations and cooperation.



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Tagschina, eiropean union, china news, European Union News, china european union news, china european union update
(Photo : Getty Images) China is reportedly planning to cut down on number of Taiwan-bound tourists this year.

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China is reportedly planning to reduce the number of Taiwan-bound tourists in three stages this year as the relationship between China and Taiwan continues to sour.



In the first stage, which started in March, China is said to have cut the number of Taiwan bond tourists by 50,000 from the fixed monthly quota of 150,000. The quota will be further reduced by 75,000 from next month and finally by 37,500 from October, Taiwanese media reported.



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China's decision is expected to have a huge impact on Taiwan's tourism industry. Taiwanese media estimates that tourist arrivals from mainland China will be below 2 million this year, down from the 4.1 million last year. According to a rough estimate, Chinese tourists contributed NT$230 billion (S$9.7 billion) to the Taiwanese economy last year.



Chinese authorities reportedly started the campaign immediately in the aftermath of President Tsai Ing-wen's landslide victory in Tiawan's election early this year. The move is seen as a part of China's diplomatic effort to pressurize the Taiwanese new leader to backtrack on her opposition to "one China" principle.



The "one China" principle claims that Taiwan are basically a part of one China. Tsai and her Democratic Progressive Party staunchly opposes this agreement as it negates Taiwan's claim as a sovereign nation.



In her inaugural speech, Presidet Tsai conspicuously omitted to mention the "one China" principle, infuriating the Chinese leadership. Chinese authorities have categorically warned Tsai not to stroke any secessionist movement against China.



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When many of us picture the Vietnam War, one image that doesnt come to mind is troops arriving for war on commercial airlines flying into Da Nang, Vietnam.

But thats how Robert "Bob" Haseman landed there in 1969, on a jet from Okinawa complete with hot meals, stewardesses and fellow troops.

Haseman estimates that the day he arrived it was probably 110 degrees Fahrenheit  very hot, very humid and very typical for Vietnam.

He was 21 years old and a freshly minted second lieutenant just out of Officer Candidate School.

The son of a World War II vet, Haseman, like many of his fellow infantrymen, enlisted in the Marine Corps an idealistic young man wanting to follow in his fathers footsteps.

But Vietnam turned out to be a very different type of war.

Now 47 years later, Haseman, a retired Helena businessman, has written, illustrated and self-published a book about those experiences, The Sun Sets on Vietnam: The Firebase War.

It gives a glimpse of what that war was like and how Haseman has come to grips with it decades later.

The day after landing, Haseman was in a jeep bumping down a dirt road on his way to Vandegrift Combat Base (VCB), or firebase, in Quang Tri Province.

Most of the time, you didnt see the enemy, or allies or other platoons, he said of his stint in Vietnam, where he commanded a Marine Corps infantry platoon in Lima Company.

But things could rocket from dull to very, very scary instantaneously, he recalled.

This was the beginning of the most dangerous and adrenaline-charged period of my life, where you could go from complete boredom to stress-filled anxiety in a second, he writes.

Hasemans unit defended about one-sixth of the VCB perimeter, he writes.

Some of the most frightening times in Vietnam were for those who were manning the listening posts.

This is where a two-man team with a radio sat in the dark outside the bases perimeter, listening for sappers  North Vietnamese soldiers carrying satchel charge bombs who would throw the bombs into the perimeter.

But it wasnt just the sappers that could kill you, he said. It could be friendly fire if the team had to rush back to the perimeter in the dark.

And it was in chaos such as this that one of Hasemans men would kill his own best friend.

That is just one of the incidents featured in his chapter Anxious Thoughts.

That chapter and the final chapter, A Letter to My Children About Vietnam, are two of the books strongest parts, said Haseman.

Its this final chapter, where Haseman retraces some of the history leading up to the war and why many of those decisions were mistakes.

Its also where Haseman writes, it is past time for the anger, blame, and resentment about Vietnam to end.

Its really the reason I wrote the book, he said.

How did Vietnam change him?

It certainly made me less naive, said Haseman, a Missouri native. I was a bumpkin. People would tell me something and I was willing to believe it.

My experience (in Vietnam) was little things, said Haseman, who is a retired financial adviser and founder of the Helena Edward Jones office in 1981.

He decided to write this book based on some of the stories he had told his wife and friends when he first got back from Vietnam.

Reading the novel The Things They Carried, based on author Tim OBriens experiences in Vietnam gave Haseman a place to start with telling his own story: I can write about little things.

Writing about those little things has brought some closure on that part of his life.

So has the belated recognition and thanks that Vietnam veterans are finally receiving from their government and fellow citizens. We shouldnt feel guilty. We should feel proud of our service.
New 'stealth' controversy at SBC replaces Conservative Resurgence battle Editorial Staff | 11 June, 2016 by Joni B. Hannigan

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (Christian Examiner)  It has been nearly 20 years since the Southern Baptist Convention met for its annual meeting in St. Louis with 25,607 registered messengers in the midst of the Conservative Resurgence.

It was there, at the Gateway City to the West, after years marked by passionate discussions over liberalism, neo-orthodoxy and inerrancy, the SBC approved a report from "The Peace Committee" formed in 1985 to determine the sources of controversy in the SBC and recommend how it could be resolved.

As Southern Baptists prepare to meet for this year's June 14-15 annual meeting, pre-registration is up over 50 percent of 2015 levels, with a projected 10-11,000 total number of attendees, according to Baptist Press.

Those numbers still fall short, however, of the norms two decades ago, and at least one former Southern Baptist executive, and a longtime pastor, speculate the "stealth" nature of newer controversies may in fact be frustrating enough to cause some to stay away, while a current leader calls on pastors to attend the convention and "respond accordingly" to what he says is important business at the SBC.

Others have speculated the once-mammoth Southern Baptist Convention, with its 46,499 congregations and over 15.5 million members, is in what Christianity Today last year coined a "terminal decline" despite its growing emphasis on church planting  and the decline in participation in the annual meeting reflects an overall decline.

NEW BATTLE LARGELY 'UNIDENTIFIED'

Morris Chapman, the former president and CEO of the SBC Executive Committee (1992-2010), told Christian Examiner he believes that by 2004 the objectives of the Peace Committee were met in relation to the Conservative Resurgence. At that point, he said, "everyone was getting wary, even the conservatives, (because) we just can't argue and debate full time forever."

The issues discussed between 1979-2004 specifically, he said, were different from now and grassroots messengers to the convention were led to vote their convictions by pastors such Adrian Rogers and Paige Patterson.

"I don't think what is happening right now is identified," Chapman said, "expect by a few who are paying attention."

When probed, Chapman said he believes that a discussion which may have started over different theological views  namely between Calvinists and those who are not  has turned into a political struggle.

"And in that vein, the issue of Calvinism has taken on a certain voting emphasis that I don't think it ever has had in history," he said. It has a tone of "I'm right and you are not."

Chapman, who served as a pastor for 25 years, as well as a president of the SBC before becoming its top administrative leader, said that before he eventually retired he noted a movement was gaining momentum that was different than the Conservative Resurgence, but largely flying under the radar.

"We are discussing the elephant in the room, and there's more of a stealth movement that is occurring, and nevertheless it is real and will have an impact on the convention  good or bad  whatever the case becomes."

Chapman, 75, said he plans to attend the SBC in St. Louis this year, and hopes folks don't forget that the SBC is made up of small churches "where the pastor and the people love the Lord," he said. "I never want to forget what it was like to serve my earliest churches."

FLORIDA PASTOR SAYS SBC 'HOPELESS'

Bob Hadley, a Florida pastor, told Christian Examiner he doesn't like the direction the Southern Baptist Convention is going, but sees no way to stop it  despite assurances the meeting still allows for business.

"There is really nothing that you do at the SBC annual meeting now that has any consequences with the exception of electing the president," Hadley said.

Beyond the election of a president, Hadley is referring to the fact that the SBC's Executive Committee, the North American Mission Board, the International Mission Board, LifeWay Christian Resources, and the SBC's six seminaries are governed by trustee boards, and not by the convention.

"There is no voice," said Hadley, who has been an SBC pastor for 40 years. His church, until 2015, contributed regularly to the Cooperative Program, Southern Baptists' mechanism for funding missions and ministry, he said, but no longer adds its support. His church does, however, partner with local churches to contribute resources to its local association and supports the Florida Baptist Children's Home, he said.

Throughout the years, Hadley said he became disenfranchised with his denomination which he said increasingly appeared to promote Calvinism, a particular soteriological view  and its adherents  above others, to the point of drowning out those who "dissent."

"Like a woman who is eight-and-a-half-months pregnant and who is just now starting to show," Hadley said there has been an orchestrated effort to promote certain viewpoints at the expense of others in leadership throughout the various SBC entities and on SBC boards.

The result, he said, has led to the kind of apathy or hopelessness that affects not only attendance at the SBC annual meetings, but giving to SBC causes and growing as a denomination. And unlike the SBC of the past he said was a bottom up organization where the messengers gave direction, he sees the SBC as becoming a top-down organization with certain leaders calling the shots.

"When you disagree with the direction the convention has gone, there is no reason to bring my fire extinguisher to the fire," Hadley said. "I like to bring my flame thrower, to fight fire with fire. But in this situation, there is no flame-thrower to stop this mess.

"The SBC as we know it is gone," continued Hadley. "The annual convention cannot do anything. It is a facade. It is not a business meeting. It is a big time for people to report what they want you to know. It is a big time for people to say, 'Sit down and shut up and we will tell you what we want you to do. If you dissent, you are the problem.'"

Hadley said that outside of taking a vacation and connecting with friends, he sees no reason to attend the SBC.

"It's a hopeless picture," Hadley said.

SOUTHERN SEMINARY PROF URGES SBC ATTENDANCE

Jeff Robinson, a senior editor for The Gospel Coalition, church planter, and adjunct professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in a blog article "6 Reasons pastors and future pastors should attend the SBC annual meeting," posted at the Southern Seminary website, writes that he remembers his parents riding a church bus for 15 hours to Dallas to participate in the SBC during the Conservative Resurgence in 1985.

Thirty years later, Robinson encourages pastors, student/pastors, and future pastors to attend.

"Pastors need each other," Robinson said in his first point. They also need to know how the denomination functions, he emphasized in his second point.

"Obviously, the denomination continues to run the other 363 days through various entities as the Executive Committee, NAMB, IMB, Baptist Press, the six seminaries, a number of standing committees, and more. But business that drives the remainder of the year is done the second week in June," Robinson wrote. "Thus, these two days are very important and those who lead in local churches should respond accordingly."

Noting Crossover, an evangelism event the Saturday prior to the meeting, Robinson said, "evangelism and missions are the one consistent refrain to SBC meetings over the decades."

Denominations continue to matter, Robinson said, while noting a trend among "younger evangelicals" to the contrary.

Pointing to what he called "secondary theological matters within the SBC," Robinson asserted his assumption there is "broad agreement" on doctrines set forth in Southern Baptists' confession of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

In his closing points, Robinson urges pastors of small churches to participate in the meeting as a messenger, and to take other members, "particularly young men" interested in ministry. This effort could promote a spirit of cooperation among pastors and churches," drawing them from all over the country to achieve a "big tent" environment, he said.

"Our annual meeting is an excellent reminder that we are together for the gospel, together to promote the fame of Jesus and his redeeming love for sinners," Robinson wrote. "If you are a pastor or plan on being a pastor, I hope to see you next week in St. Louis."

RECENT DUST-UPS

Debates about SBC entities, policies, and leaders, have resulted in a variety of news stories, blog entries, and commentaries. In brief, they are:

SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission president Russell Moore was the subject of an editorial by Georgia Christian Index editor Gerald Harris. Harris took Moore to task for supporting the building of a mosque in New Jersey. He asked: "[W]hy would Dr. Moore spend his professional capital to defend the religious liberty of Muslims in New Jersey to build a mosque and fail to exert the same energy to get involved in Georgia's quest to pass religious liberty legislation earlier this year?"

Moore has also often been in the news over comments he has made about Republican nominee for president Donald Trump.

SBC pastors have signed a petition calling for a Pepper-Hamilton-Baylor like investigation into NAMB president Kevin Ezell in response to allegations made by Will McRaney, former Executive Director of the Mid-Atlantic Baptist Network. Some state executives responded, as did Ezell.

This year the SBC's International Mission Board made news inside and outside evangelical circles when what was termed a voluntary drawdown of 600 missionaries nearly doubled with 1,132 missionaries and staff resigning or retiring, with incentives. IMB president David Platt also announced the termination of 30 seasoned Baptist missions communicators as part of the organization's "reset."

"IMB is now in a much healthier financial position," Platt said during IMB's Feb. 22-24 meeting near Richmond, Virginia. "Due to increased giving from Southern Baptist churches, Cooperative Program and Lottie Moon Christmas Offering giving are trending upward."

Will Hall, editor of the Baptist Message, the state Baptist paper in Louisiana, in an editorial raised fifteen questions about the management practices and philosophy of the International Mission Board that he said remain unanswered despite multiple attempts on his part to get answers.

LifeWay Christian Resources has continued to downsize its physical property by selling its historic 15-acre property in downtown Nashville and planning move to a 3-acre property nearby, after selling its 2,400-acre Glorieta Conference Center in New Mexico in 2013 for $1 to investors.

After recently announcing his resignation from LifeWay Research, Ed Stetzer, a popular statistician, and the general editor of The Gospel Project, began to serve as the executive director of the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism at Wheaton College in Chicago. Stetzer's resignation was followed by the announcement of Micah Fries, vice president of LifeWay Research, who said he is stepping down in view of a call to the pastorate.

The Gospel Project, according to an article released in 2012, had more than 300,000 users as part of 40,000 different groups at its introduction -- with many, if not a majority of those, non-Southern Baptist. It is also considered heavily influenced by "Calvinistic" writers. Today, the Gospel Project boasts of 1 million in an advertisement on LifeWay's website.

The annual meeting begins Tuesday, June 14 with a highly anticipated presidential election that afternoon and continues through Wednesday, June 15.
The General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church recommended removing the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman from the Church's canon at a meeting in Edinburgh on June 10. This step brought the church closer towards allowing same-sex marriage in the church as the clergy members voted to pass on the proposal next to church's seven dioceses.

The synod voted 97 to 51, with three abstentions, in the first reading of the motion to remove a doctrinal statement that says marriage is a union of one man and one woman. It included a conscience clause that permits clergy to abstain from presiding over gay marriage if they do not support it.

The proposal needs a majority of two-thirds of votes for the second reading to be approved by clergy and other members of the church in the synod vote next year.

"The current process will enable the Church come to a formal decision on the matter," Rt Rev Dr Gregor Duncan, Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway, told the Anglican Journal. "The passing of the first reading today will bring great joy to some; for others it will be matter of great difficulty. 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."

The new clause of canon 31 will alter the existing doctrine which states that "marriage is a physical, spiritual and mystical union of one man and one woman." Instead, it will be replaced by "differing understandings of the nature of marriage in this church", with an addition that "no cleric of this church shall be obliged to conduct any marriage against their conscience".

Rt Rev Dr Robert Gillies, Bishop of Aberdeen & Orkney, voted against the proposal, but said that he and others like him who oppose gay marriage will accept the outcome.

"As one of the two bishops who voted against this motion I feel comfortable with the fact that we have arrived at the position in our Church where those of us who did vote against the motion can nonetheless live with the outcome," he told the Anglican Journal.

The Anglican church has long opposed same-sex marriages, and suspended the US Episcopal Church for three years after it approved gay unions. In 2014, the Archibishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said that if Church of England approved gay marriage, it would be "catastrophic." He said that this could provoke assaults against Christians in conservative countries of Africa and Middle East.

Secretary-general of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon, told BBC: "I would echo what the Archbishop of Canterbury said recently in Zimbabwe on same-sex marriage: there are differing views within the Anglican Communion but the majority one is that marriage is the lifelong union of a man and woman."
A central Ohio school district is suing the Department of Education over the recent federal directive which compelled schools across the nation to allow students to use bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, and overnight accommodations in line with their gender identity and not birth gender.

Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education on the behalf of Highland Local School District in Morrow County which faces a civil rights complaint of discriminating against a transgender elementary school student who is biologically male but identifies as female. The school serves low-income families, and if it does not comply with the directive, it may lose about $1 million in grants that are used to improve teaching quality, provide free lunches, and cater to special-education needs, according to the Alliance Defending Freedom.

The school allowed the student to use staff restrooms and opened up the option to other kids in the class as well.

The school started addressing the student as a female since 2012 when the student was starting first grade, on the request of his legal guardian. However, the student was not allowed to use the girl's bathroom starting in second grade.

The lawsuit says that the Department of Education, one of the federal agencies which issued the directive regarding bathrooms, is violating the right of privacy of a majority of students.

"Schools have a duty to protect the dignity, privacy, and safety of all students. This is precisely what Highland Local School District has done," ADF Senior Counsel Jim Campbell said. "Despite that, the Department of Education is attempting to strong-arm Highland into complying with a lawless demand to open its single-sex overnight accommodations, locker rooms, showers, and restrooms to students of the opposite sex. The DOE is trying to redefine a federal law that only Congress can change."

Emily LeVan, the child's mother, had filed a Title IX complaint against the school board. The district had until the end of this month to allow the transgender student to use the girl's bathroom. The school says that the federal funding should not be held back for not letting locker rooms and restrooms to be used by the students of the opposite sex.

"I am very frustrated that they're using school resources, they're wasting school resources. They are risking losing that federal funding so that they can have a license to discriminate," LeVan told 10 TV.

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) asked the school to permit transgender student to use girls' restroom even after the district said that such a step might compromise privacy rights of other students.

"As a result, Highland faces an impossible choice: capitulate to Defendants' demands and sacrifice the dignity and privacy rights of their students; or protect those rights and watch Defendants strip away more than a million dollars each year in federal funding devoted to special-education programs, lunches for underprivileged children, and educational advancement," the lawsuit states.
home World Greek gods making a comeback in modern-day Hellenic churches

The ancient worship of Greek gods appears to be returning as churches that espouse adoration for the mythological figures have sprung up in modern-day Greece.

An Orthodox church on the island of Crete fell prey to the "followers of Zeus" who vandalized the building's interior, including the icons, with feces, according to Ekathimerini.

People in the Church of Zoodochou Pigis in Iraklio were surprised to find that the icons, 13 in all, were smeared with feces. The vandals also left them a message.

"This one's courtesy of Zeus," the message said, which was written in charcoal. Other messages that spoke against Christians were also written on the icons.

The incident is not the first of its kind that has happened in Crete. Similar instances believed to have been done by worshipers of the ancient gods have occurred in the place.

But isn't the worship of the mythological characters already obsolete? It doesn't appear to be. Several churches dedicated to the worship of Greek gods have been established.

Most of them, although not violent, do not take well the Christian churches , which they view as the religion that replaced the old religious practices of the Greeks.

One such church is the Supreme Council of Ethnic Hellenes, which was founded in 1997. Another is the Labrys religious community, which is not too concerned about Christian churches but focuses more on worship.

The BBC reported in 2013 about the Prometheia festival, which is held annually in honor of Prometheus and celebrated by members of The Return of the Hellenes movement.

Exsekias Trivoulides, who participated in the festival, said the experience is like "going back to the roots."

"People want to identify with something in the past a where they came from a so as to know where they are going," Trivoulides said in the report, adding, "If you don't know your past, you don't have a future."
Android N release date: Google to unveil confectionery name in a few weeks

Google has decided to let users of the Android operating system give a name for its upcoming version, Android N. Soon, the community will be able to call the next mobile operating system a proper confectionery name, and not just a single letter.

Android has announced on its Twitter page that a new name for its Android N version will be revealed in a few weeks' time. No exact date was mentioned, thus the community is speculating a late June or early July announcement date. The company even created a short video, a person named John Smith of Professional Naming Incorporated, speaking in behalf of the company, explaining the different types of people who give names for things. Of course, this video is just for fun, which Google is also known for.

Thanks for your submissions. We'll reveal the new name in a few weeks! #NameAndroidNhttps://t.co/qLtDZJNe9y  Android (@Android) June 8, 2016

The announcement said, "Thanks for your submissions. We'll reveal the new name in a few weeks! #NameAndroidN."

Fans were given a chance to suggest a name for the company's upcoming mobile operating system. This was mentioned during the Google I/O event that happened last May 18 to 20. The company created a "naming page" that fans can use to suggest their desired name for Android N. The suggestion process is over now, but the page displays some of the forwarded names, which include Noodle Pudding, Naan, Nougat, Nuts, Naneesh Tart, Nectar, Nonfat Milk, New Mexico Chile, Nonnevot and several more.

Google is also expected to release the final build of Android N anytime this summer, which will probably coincide with the official name announcement. Fans are also expecting several Nexus hardware to be unveiled when Android N launches. HTC is rumored to be making the Nexus 2016 smartphones,, but Huawei is also said to be working on its Nexus 6P successor. Another rumored product that is in the works is a 7-inch tablet dubbed Nexus 7, a revival of its own tablet.

Fans are looking forward to more news in the weeks to come.
A proposed habitat project near the tiny Eastern Montana town of Enid  located 30 miles west of Sidney  would set some new benchmarks for a Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks program.

If approved, the Veebaray Company Ranches rest rotation grazing system proposed for more than 12,000 acres would be the longest and most expensive investment in the history of the Upland Game Bird Habitat Enhancement Program.

We view it as a really neat opportunity, said Rick Northrup, FWPs Habitat Bureau chief. Its a sizable ranch, with almost entirely native habitat.

The project would develop stock water sources and fund other improvements at a total cost of more than $369,000. The departments Upland Game Bird Habitat Enhancement Program would fund $179,500 of the project with the landowners kicking in a matching amount. The American Bird Conservancy is pitching in $10,000.

Outfitted

Although the Veebarays website advertises outfitted trophy hunting on its property, through the terms of its agreement with FWP the ranch would allow 200 hunter days of public hunting for the 21 years of the projects life.

The terms for block management are currently being negotiated between the landowner and our block management coordinator, said Jackie Tooke, Miles City Upland Game Bird Habitat specialist, in an email.

It looks like a great project to me, said Dan Vermillion, Fish and Wildlife Commission chairman, during a Thursday meeting in Dillon.

I like to see projects like this working with landowners, said Commissioner Richard Stuker. I think its a win for both sides.

Ranch history

The Veebaray dates back to 1920 when it was founded by Augustus Vaux, the V in the V Bar A. Vaux was a successful Sidney businessman with ventures in lumber, hardware, a livery, grocery store and more, according to the ranchs website. He also served as the mayor of Sidney. Since 1950, Veebaray has been held as a family corporation by the descendants of Augustus Vaux, according to the website.

The Vaux Reservoirs on Lone Tree Creek still carry the name of their benefactor, a Minnesota native, who built the first one as a swimming area for Sidney residents and then added a dance pavilion at the site, according to the book Montana Place Names from Alzada to Zortman.

Native range

According to an evaluation of the project, the nearly 16,000-acre ranch is comprised of native range with brushy draws spread out across rolling hills and badlands north of the Yellowstone River in Richland and Dawson counties.

The evaluation identifies the region as ideal pheasant habitat in FWPs Region 7. The grazing project would help improve nesting , brood rearing, and winter cover on the Veebaray, which under its old grazing prescription left little residual cover and some winter cover components (brush species) were overutilized, the evaluation said.

In addition to pheasant, the project would also benefit other upland bird species in the area including sharptailed grouse, gray partridge and wild turkeys. Of particular interest to FWP are the 16 unconfirmed sharptailed grouse leks occurring on or within three miles of the property.

Were always looking for good shrubby components for winter habitat for sharptails, and this has a lot of that, Northrup said.

For the birds

The Upland Game Bird Habitat Enhancement Program is funded by license dollars: $2 from resident upland game bird licenses; $23 from nonresident upland game bird licenses; and $10 from the three-day nonresident upland game bird license. In 2014 those fees generated more than $586,000, according to a report to the 2015 Legislature.

Between 2013 and 2014 the program enrolled 142 projects comprised of more than 19,000 acres that enhanced or conserved upland game bird habitats, the report said. Because of the work more than 111,000 acres were open to the public for bird hunting.

In that part of the world this type of project makes sense, Northrup said.
Billy Graham says Christians should not use horoscopes to guide them or foretell the future

Many people, including Christians, mistakenly assume that looking at their horoscope is harmless, and that reading predictions is all done in harmless fun.

However, world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham is telling people to be careful in where they put their trust.

"God did make the stars (as well as everything else in the universe), but He intended them to be a witness to His power and glory, not as a means to guide us or foretell the future," he writes in his advice column for The Kansas City Star.

Graham says the Bible explicitly commands Christians not to look at the stars for guidance, as tempting as it might be. Back in the old days, people would try to discern the future not just through astrology, but also through omens, magic, sorcery, idol worship, communion with the dead, and many other ways.

"But God told His people not to take part in these (see Deuteronomy 18:9-13)," says Graham. "Why was this? One reason was because such things not only are unreliable or deceptive, but they can easily bring someone under the control of occult spiritual powers that are hostile to God."

He shared the story of Saul, the first king of Israel, who attempted to consult the spirit of a dead person about the future instead of God. Things did not turn out well for Saul when he did so, and it sadly led to his suicide. Saul chose to kill himself instead of being captured by the Philistines at Mount Gilboa, and David took over his throne.

Graham hopes people would not follow Saul's lead and simply trust God with the future. "God loves us, and we know this because he sent his only son, Jesus Christ, into the world to give His life for our salvation. Even when the future is unclear, He can be trusted to guide us," assures Graham.
Court in U.S. makes history as it approves Army vet's petition to change his legal gender to 'nonbinary'

There used to be just two known gendersmale and female. Then homosexual and lesbian were added. From those two terms sprang LGBTlesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.

The LGBT tree then blossomed with numerous different names too many to mention. And it keeps on growing.

Among the new names are genderqueer, gender nonconforming and nonbinary.

On Friday, a court in the United States stamped its approval on a person who sought to change his gender to nonbinary.

It was considered a historic move since it was the first time a court in the U.S. has ruled that nonbinary is a legal gender, according to the Daily Dot.

Jamie Shupe, a resident of Portland, Oregon, earlier petitioned the Oregon circuit court to approve his gender identity change.

"Male and female are the traditional categories, but they fail to properly categorise people like me. So I challenged that," Shupe told the Daily Dot.

Shupe filed his petition for sex change, as the court calls it, on April 27. Attached to his petition were two letters from primary care doctors stating that his gender should be classified as nonbinary.

Although he is biologically a male, Shupe prefers not to use gender pronouns and uses the honorific "Mx."

Shupe said he is an Army vet who began a gender transition in 2013 at age 49. He initially petitioned to change his gender from male to female, then from female to nonbinary.

In 2014, over 64,000 people signed a petition asking the White House to legally recognise nonbinary gendersbut the petition was not acted upon, according to Daily Dot.

Hence, the action taken by the Oregon circuit court is considered as the "first ruling of its kind in the U.S."

"This is an important step toward ensuring that nonbinary members of our community have access to identity documents that reflect who they are, just like everyone else," Transgender Law Center's Legal Director Ilona Turner told the Daily Dot.

Other countriesincluding Australia, Denmark, Nepal, and New Zealandalready recognise genders other than male and female, according to the website Nonbinary.org.

Shupe was "literally tearful" when the court issued its ruling.

"This is incredibly humbling to be the first person to accomplish this," Shupe said. "I hope the impact will be that it opened the legal doorway for all that choose to do so to follow me through. We don't deserve to be classified improperly against our will."
Disturbing verdict: Canada's top court rules that some form of bestiality is legal

It is all clear to us that having sex with animals is an abnormal behavior that is not only morally wrong, but also disturbing and disgusting. Canada's top court, however, seems to think otherwise.

Voting 6-1, the Canadian Supreme Court recently ruled that sex acts involving animals are legalas long as they do not involve penetration.

The high court essentially favoured a British Columbia man, identified only as "D.L.W.," who was charged with 14 counts for sexually assaulting his stepdaughtersincluding two counts of bestiality, for which he was acquitted.

In its decision, the top court said that under Canadian law, penetration is considered the "defining act" of bestiality, which they said D.L.W. did not commit.

"There is no hint in any of the parliamentary record that any substantive change to the elements of the offence of bestiality was intended," the court's decision read, as quoted by The Independent.

Justice Thomas Cromwell, who wrote for the judges who favoured the ruling, maintained that only Parliament can change the law that identifies penetration as an element of bestiality.

"Any expansion of criminal liability for this offense is within parliament's exclusive domain," Cromwell wrote.

Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella, the lone dissenter in the ruling, however stood in the belief that all forms of animal sex should be considered illegal.

"Acts with animals that have a sexual purpose are inherently exploitative whether or not penetration occurs," she wrote in her dissenting opinion.

Animal rights groups expressed concern over the Supreme Court ruling. Camille Labchuk, executive director of the Animal Justice group, said this decision highlights the need to amend the already "outdated" law on bestiality.

"People who sexually abuse animals are sometimes linked to sexually abusing children as well, as the accused did in this case," she said, as quoted by Reuters. "That's a really good reason Parliament needs to act."

Labchuk further maintained that all forms of sex with animals are "unacceptable, contrary to societal expectations, and cannot be allowed to continue."

A bill that amends Canada's criminal code that seeks to define bestiality as all inter-species sexual activity is currently in its early stages before Parliament.
Dr. Richard Land urges evangelical voters to support Donald Trump because Hillary Clinton is the 'greater evil'

Dr. Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, is not happy with the current state of the 2016 presidential elections. But if he were to choose between the two leading candidatesRepublican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his opponent Hillary Clinton from the Democratic Partyhe said he would go with the former.

Land told OneNewsNow on Friday that it will be a close competition between the two candidates. However, there is a stark difference between the two.

"Frankly, I think we're dealing with a choice between a lesser evil and a greater evil," he said. "Mrs. Clinton is the greater evil."

Frank finds it unbelievable how some people can still choose to support Clinton even after she was indicted because of her use of the private email server while she was still Secretary of State.

"Seventy-one percent of registered Democrats think that Hillary ought to be the nominee even if she's indicted," he said. "So what if she is a crook, so what if she lied under oath, so what if she's broken the law, who cares? That says more about the Democrats and Mrs. Clinton than it does about us as a nation."

Land then stressed the importance of voting for Trump. Even though Land does not consider himself a huge fan of the business magnate, he said evangelical voters need to support him. If not, Clinton just might win the White House.

"[I]f we don't help the lesser evil prevail over the greater evil, we become responsible morally for helping the greater evil to prevail," he said.

Meanwhile, Trump has warned U.S. President Barack Obama not to campaign for Clinton, according to CBS News.

"We have a president that doesn't know what the hell he's doing, folks," Trump told a crowd in Richmond, Virginia. "I hear he's going to take a lot of time, during our time, when he's supposed to be looking at trade and the military and all of these things, and he's going to campaign for Crooked Hillary."

"You know what? That's OK. That's OK," Trump continued. "Because if he does that, we're allowed to say things about him that normally we wouldn't bring up. Remember when Bill started campaigning?"

Trump was referring to Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, who has been accused by several women of sexual misconduct.
Feeding the hungry: Pastor's daughter shows how Christians can help others even from comforts of their own homes

Is it possible for Christians to be of service to God and to others even while staying in the comforts of their own homes? A pastor's daughter from the United Kingdom shows this can very well be done.

June Ross, a former stay-at-home mother, was recently awarded The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for Voluntary Servicethe highest award given to voluntary groups in the U.K.for her efforts to feed the hungry in her country.

Ross heads the charity called Esther Community Enterprises, which serves quality food to 20,000 needy people from the U.K. every month.

"There was a certificate given and signed by the Queen, and what was nice was the fact that part of it said that 'we bestow favour' which is the journey that Esther when on when she received favour from the King. In my instance, I received it from the Queen," Ross told CBN News.

"I'm privileged that God could ask me to do this. I think more than anything else, that God could trust me with something like this," she added.

Ross revealed that God revealed her mission to her one day when she was doing the most ordinary thing: vacuuming the rug in her house.

"I heard a very distinct voice: I'm going to feed you with manna. Manna? Where did I hear that from? And then I remembered the story of the children of Israel when they left Egypt and God made provisions with manna," she shared.

She also claimed to have had visions of the economic crisis in 2008, and of her giving away food from the supermarket for hungry people.

"I said, God, I don't know how this is going to be done, but I will just be obedient," she shared.

Ross then decided to talk to local retailers about what they do to their leftover food, which they turn out to be just throwing away. She then decided to turn her home into a food distribution hub.

"It was just amazing how they were so welcoming because obviously retailers did not want to throw away their food," she shared.

Eventually, her charity grew, with crates of food supplies being delivered to her home, and now with 4,000 people helping her from the initial 10 volunteers.
Iraqi forces attack ISIS positions south of Mosul

Iraqi troops attacked Islamic State positions south of Mosul on Sunday as the US-led coalition intensifies its campaign against the militants on multiple fronts across their self-proclaimed caliphate.

Officers involved in the operation said Iraqi forces had advanced in tanks and armored vehicles toward the village of Haj Ali, about 60 km (40 miles) south of Mosul, under cover of coalition air strikes and artillery fire.

Iraqi forces are also advancing on the edge of the Islamic State bastion of Falluja further south, while in Syria US-backed forces are encircling the militant-held town of Manbij.

Iraqi troops were deployed to the northern Makhmour area earlier this year and launched an operation in March touting it as the beginning of a bigger campaign to retake Mosul - the largest city under militant control.

Since then, Iraqi forces have captured a handful of villages on the eastern bank of the river Tigris.

The commander of the operation blamed the slow pace on a lack of tanks and said he did not have enough men to hold ground after it was retaken from the militants.

Last week, an armored brigade was deployed to Makhmour, along with boats and bridges to enable troops to cross the Tigris river to the Islamic State hub of Qayara on its western bank.

Qayara is home to an airfield that will serve as a key staging ground for the future operation to recapture Mosul, and control of the oil town would also isolate territory the militants control further south and east.
ISIS news: Militants shoot fleeing civilians in Fallujah, steal blood from city residents to treat their wounded

Showing increasing signs of desperation, Islamic State (ISIS) militants have resorted to shooting civilians trying to flee the embattled ISIS-held Iraqi city of Fallujah and literally stealing blood from civilians to treat the wounded among them, news sources say.

On Friday, ISIS militants opened fire on people trying to leave Fallujah, killing at least 30 people, many of them women and children, an Iraqi military spokesman told NBC News.

Witnesses have also seen ISIS fighters accosting people on the streets and in their homes and forcing them to give blood for their wounded comrades, Fox News reports.

Some of those who were forced to give their blood were left dying in the streets, one witness said.

The civilians who were fired upon by ISIS fighters were trying to flee the ISIS-held city and reach security forces in southern Fallujah and later to the Amiriyat Al-Fallujah refugee camp, the military spokesman said.

A source in Fallujah told NBC News that the ISIS had ordered women and children to remain in the city.

"ISIS militants told men that if they want to leave the town, so they are free to do that, under one condition, not to take their families with them, and if they tried to do so they would kill them," the source said.

Another source said the ISIS now has "a large number of wounded fighters and is desperate for blood."

"Many of the civilians couldn't get even two meals a day for a long time, so they're very ill and weak," the source told Fox News.

Fallujah, some 30 miles from Baghdad, has been held by ISIS for more than two years now. Some 30,000 to 40,000 civilians are believed to be trapped in Fallujah.

The Iraqi military launched an offensive to retake Fallujah last month. On Wednesday the Iraqi military said its counterterrorism forces have retaken the neighbourhood of Shuhada, less than 3 miles from the city centre.

The Iraqi military said its forces are trying to retake the city without destroying it or adding to the humanitarian crisis. Military officials said their effort to free the city neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood and even door-to-door is being slowed by dug-in ISIS snipers and planted explosives.

"ISIS is using a lot of snipers and plenty of IEDs," Capt. Omar Nazar, head of an elite unit in the Iraqi Emergency Response Division, told Fox News. "They have booby-trapped a lot of homes and they are moving civilians around to use them as human shields."
Liberty University to allow students with permits to carry firearms in dorms

Liberty University in Virginia has decided to allow students with concealed handgun permits from the state to carry firearms in dorms.

Currently, students are allowed to carry guns on campus except residence halls. Those who want to keep their firearms in their dorms must get permission from the university and be at least 21 years old, CBN News reports.

University President Jerry Falwell proposed the new policy, which was approved by the board of trustees.

He said the new rule is to help students who have the permits but are limited by the current university rule that says weapons should be kept in the glove compartment of their vehicles.

Falwell said the new rule will affect only a few people since there are not many who live in dorms on campus, The News & Advance reports.

Of the 200 students who live in dorms, only about 20 have permits to date.

He said the university will provide safes to students for use in their dorms. Students will be required to put the guns in the safes immediately upon entering the dorm and keep them there while they are inside.

Falwell added that the implementation of the policy "will be determined by the deans this summer. "

Liberty University lifted the ban on concealed weapons on campus in 2011.

"It [lifting of the ban] was because of what happened just an hour and a half up the road at Virginia Tech," Falwell told students last December. More than 30 innocent students and faculty members were murdered that day.

"From the day that happened, I thought we needed to do something here at Liberty," Falwell said.

The university changed the policy in 2013 to allow concealed weapons in all facilities except in dorms.

Last December, Falwell urged students to arm themselves following the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.
Samsung Galaxy Note 6 release date rumor: New Note said to revealed in August with iris scanner

Samsung is reportedly readying another flagship to be revealed in August, and the new addition features an iris scanner.

According to GSM Arena, a leak of beta firmware for the next Samsung Galaxy Note reveals that the upcoming device may have an iris scanner. Reportedly, a leaked image of the Settings menu of the flagship opens a new option under Privacy Settings  a "Use Iris" option.

Aside from the leaked image, the industry follower added that reports have surfaced on Samsung importing at least 200 iris scanners from South Korea to India through Zauba. It is surmised that the imports are for the testing units for the next Galaxy Note. It should also be noted that just recently, Samsung Electronics India released a new slate on the Indian market, with focus on biometrics and security. The new Galaxy Tab Iris features iris scanner technology, and it is plausible that the same tech will be used for the upcoming Galaxy Note.

Meanwhile, it is still unclear what Samsung plans to call the next flagship. There are rumors that the South Korea-based tech giant is looking to streamline its flagship releases and maintain uniform version across the lineups. Since the current flagship for the Galaxy S series is on its seventh generation, speculations suggest that Samsung will skip with sixth-gen Note iteration, jumping from Galaxy Note 5 to Galaxy Note 7.

Whichever version Samsung will go for with the next flagship, rumors say that the new Galaxy Note will feature heavy upgrades over its predecessor, including a Snapdragon 823 processor and at least 6GB of RAM. It is also said that the new flagship will have dual-edge display, a redesigned profile, and dual-cam setup with new camera assembly.
'The Conjuring 2': Film promotes Christian message of good conquering evil

People rarely associate Christianity with horror movies, but Chad and Carey Hayes, the Christian screenwriters behind "The Conjuring 2," say the film actually tackles spiritual warfare, prayer, and faith in God.

The screenwriters want audiences to realise that evil exists in the form of demons. But no matter how terrifying they can get, God will always triumph over them.

"We love doing true stories of where good conquers evil," the Hayes brothers tell The Christian Post. "'Conjuring 2' is a story told through the eyes of believers, whose strongest weapon is their faith in God. Our film allows believers and non-believers to travel their journey with them, and in some ways, maybe affect someone who is on the edge of faith, and somehow give them the strength they need."

The horror film, which is directed by James Wan, teaches audiences to have faith in God because He is the ultimate winner. The Hayes explain that the main characters of "The Conjuring 2," Lorraine and Ed Warren (who are played by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson), managed to banish evil and save their family because of their strong faith in God.

"What the Warrens had was a beautiful, loving and committed relationship with each other, as well as God. In this film, you get to dig much deeper into who they really are," the Hayes say.

The Warren couple strongly believe that the symbol of the cross has the power to make demons flee. And while this is true, the Hayes say the symbol holds no power unless the person who wields it has a deep-rooted faith in God.

"For us, other than one's own faith in Jesus, the symbol of the cross radiates that faith for those who hold it, hang it, and even tattoo it! Some may have a Bible in their home and think they're protected, but without studying it, and believing, it's like just any other book. Same with the cross. One must believe in what it represents," they say.

"The Conjuring 2" opened in U.S. cinemas on Friday, June 10.
The 15 students who participated in the National Geographic Photo Camp held on the Crow Reservation this week have all gotten the wide view of life around Crow Agency. They grew up there.

But viewing life through a narrower lens forced kids to take a different look at their own culture.

You knew it was there, but it was like a whole new experience, said Alexandra Other Medicine, who graduated from Hardin High School this year.

The camp  the brainchild of a Crow anthropologist and a National Geographic photographer who previously lived in Crow Agency  was as much about culture as photography.

Aaron Brien, the anthropologist who works at the University of Montana, taught kids about the Crow clan system  its origin, cooperation and conflicts.

On Friday, students shot personal portraits of people around the small town, asking them their Crow names and clan.

Jordynn Paz, who is planning to study journalism at the University of Montana next year, approached a trio of girls riding bikes outside the Crow Mercantile whether they knew their clan.

Do you know your Crow clans? Paz asked.

None did.

The clan system is something that was given to us to keep us socially and spiritually alive, Brien said. It needs to be an everyday thing. But we dont teach that anymore.

The Crow Tribe consists of 10 clans arranged into five phratries  larger groups to facilitate cooperation among large numbers of people. Clan affiliation is passed down through a matriarchal structure, with responsibilities for physical and emotional care. Spiritual support is passed down through the clan on a person's fathers side. Members of a supporting clan are correspondingly known as clan fathers and clan mothers.

A newborn child can be the clan father to a 90-year-old man, Brien said. It creates a respect between people. Its a kinship system.

Hopefully the photography will capture that, said Jonathan Kingston, the photographer who lived in Crow Agency.

Technical aspects

Capturing a great photo requires some specific know-how. Students learned about framing, lighting, lines and how to best photograph people in action.

As students reviewed photos taken earlier, photo editor Mallory Benedict discussed a photo of a horse framed by the late-day sun taken by Jacinto Brien, Aaron Brien's nephew.

I had to wait until golden hour. I had to wait until the horse got to a certain spot, Jacinto Brien said.

What do you think makes this a great picture? Benedict said.

Look at the horse, Brien replied.

All you heard him say was, Im gonna ride that horse, Other Medicine chimed in.

So theres a little bit of a personal connection there, right? Benedict said.

The exchange was an example of what camp leader and photo editor Stacy Gold is aiming for.

They have a voice that people want to hear, she said. Were trying to empower them to share that voice.

Approaching people off the street was a little awkward for students, even if they knew people.

It was actually kind of hard, Ive never seen that side of them before, that shy side, Jacinto Brien said. Im used to talking to them about how their day was.

Typically, Nat Geo runs photo camps in conjunction with another group. But this was far more informal.

In the mid-1990s, Kingston was volunteering at a child care center on the reservation. Aaron Brien was one of my little punk kids running around.

Fast forward about 20 years. Kingston and Brien ran into each other at Crow Fair last year, and the idea for a camp snowballed from an offhand comment Brien made. But securing funding proved difficult, and the camp was on the verge on cancellation several times until the last month or so, when the National Geographic Society stepped up its support.

Students photos will be featured in a show on Sunday at noon at the Little Bighorn College cafeteria in Crow Agency.

With the camp comes a troop of Nat Geo photo editors who cycle through the hats of camp counselor, teacher and photo critic.

Jim Webb worked with JoAnn Other Medicine, reviewing photos of a young girl in her home. The photo series expanded out from a narrow portrait of the girl to include her stuffed bear, then a painted picture of her parents, then the word family stenciled on the wall.

Webb complemented the expanded view.

You literally said whats important to them.
Top scientist claims proof that God exists, says humans live in a 'world made by rules created by an intelligence'

Can sciencelong perceived to be at odds with faith and religionreally prove that God indeed exists?

A respected figure in the scientific community recently said he found evidence proving that there is a Higher Being, which he described as the action of a force "that governs everything."

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, who is known as one of the developers of the revolutionary String Theory, said theoretical particles known as "primitive semi-radius tachyons" may be used to prove the existence of God.

Tachyons are hypothetical particles believed to be moving faster than light and are supposedly capable of "unsticking" universe matter or vacuum space between matter particles, leaving everything free from the influences of the surrounding universe.

After conducting tests on these particles, Kaku made a very interesting conclusion: that human beings, like what has been depicted in the movies, live in a "Matrix."

"I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence," the renowned physicist said, as quoted by the Geophilosophical Association of Anthropological and Cultural Studies.

"Believe me, everything that we call chance today won't make sense anymore," he added.

Kaku, a professor of Theoretical Physics at the City College of New York, further said that only the existence of a God can explain this.

"To me it is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance," he said.

He even made an interesting proposition: that God is a very intelligent mathematician. He even compared the way God thinks to music.

"The final solution resolution could be that God is a mathematician," Kaku said in a YouTube video. "The mind of God, we believe, is cosmic music, the music of strings resonating through 11-dimensional hyperspace."
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A "reap what you sow" tweet from Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick that went out hours after approximately 50 people were killed at a Florida LGBT nightclub has been deleted amid backlash.

At precisely 7 a.m. Sunday Dan Patrick tweeted a photo with the words of Galatians 6:7. The verse reads, "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows."

READ MORE: Obama calls massacre an act of terror and hate

The Twitterverse circled the tweet, commenting that it was inappropriate and insensitive considering the context of the day's events. The Texas Democratic Party called for Patrick to apologize.

"Tweeted as new breaks of mass casualties at a gay nightclub. Vile," one Twitter user said. "Have you no shame?"

Patrick's adviser Allen Blakemore issued a statement explaining that the tweet was an unfortunate coincidence.

READ MORE: After shooting, Trump says he appreciates congrats for being right on terrorism

"Lt. Governor Patrick and every Texas is stunned and saddened by the outrageous act of domestic terrorism that has occurred in Orlando," Blakemore said. "... Regarding this morning's scripture posting on social media, be assured that the post was not done in response to last night's tragedy. The post was designed and scheduled last Thursday."

A Bible verse is tweeted from Patrick's account every Sunday at 7 a.m.

Another verse was tweeted from the account 30 minutes later, this time from Psalm 37:39, which reads, "The Salvation of the righteous come from the Lord; He is their stronghold in time of trouble."

Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa issued a statement offering thoughts and prayers to the LGBTQ community.

READ MORE: A timeline of mass shootings in the United States

"Hate and violence have no place in America," he said. "Unfortunately, Texans in mourning for our families in Florida woke up to an embarrassment from their lieutenant governor. Lt.Gov Dan Patrick, please apologize immediately. Make this right. We are better than this."

Orlando Police Chief John Mina says authorities have not determined an exact number of people killed, but that "approximately 50" have died.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special Agent in Charge Danny Banks says the mass shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism. He says authorities are looking into whether this was an act of domestic or international terror, and if the shooter was a lone wolf.

Mina says the shooter was armed with an assault-type rifle, a handgun and some type of suspicious device. Police had said previously on Twitter that there was a "controlled explosion" at the scene of the shooting at Pulse Orlando. Mina says that noise was caused by a device intended to distract the shooter.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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As the sun set Sunday, more than 100 people gathered at the Houston Zoo entrance to honor the Orlando massacre victims and to call for action to protect LGBT people in Houston and nationwide.

"Everybody who's been marginalized has been under attack," organizer Ashton P. Woods said. "Now is the time for us to stand up and make our own narrative."

Added Jeffrey Campbell, a Houston pastor, "Once all 50 bodies have been buried and all 53 people have been released from the hospital, I need us to continue to come together like this.

The vigil topped off a long day of reflection, anguish and determination for members of Houston's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community as they mourned the deaths of 50 people and the injury to 53 more in the mass shooting at a gay bar in Orlando, Fla.

"This is a horrible morning," said Troy Treash, senior pastor of Resurrection Metropolitan Community Church in the Heights, which ministers to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender members.

Even a year after marriage equality was mandated, the shooting serves as a stark reminder of how much work remains to reach true equality, he said.

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"People see difference as something to be afraid of, something to lash out against," Treash said.

Prayers were sent to the families and victims during Sunday worship services.

Ryan Bellinghausen, a blogger for My Gay Houston which features events, bars and restaurants for visitors to Houston, is trying to sort out what happened in Orlando.

"It's important not to jump to conclusions," said Bellinghausen, who has questions like everyone else about whether the shootings were related to terrorism, hate crimes or something else.

It will take a few days, he said. And until then, he doesn't want to put a label on what happened.

That said, however, Bellinghausen notes that the attack took place during pride month, a festive time in the gay community.

"We can't be afraid to celebrate being gay and the strides the community has achieved," Bellinghausen said, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court decision on marriage equality and the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" military policy.

The Montrose Center, a non-profit that serves the LGBT, said in a statement: "We are deeply saddened by the lives lost and those injured by this horrific and hateful act at Pulse in Orlando. Our love and condolences go out to those who have lost loved ones and friends."

"We are grieving, heartbroken and angry," Kevin Nix, senior director of communications of Legacy Community Health, a network of 22 health care clinics in Houston, said in a written statement. The flagship location in Montrose sees a lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender dominant population. The non-profit was founded in 1981 at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.

"Based on media reports, it appears this was a terrorist attack on all Americans, and our freedoms," he said.

LGBT leaders in Houston are planning a Stand With #Orlando Vigil at 8 p.m. tonight at Hermann Park. Participants should meet near the zoo entrance. The Montrose Center and Legacy Community Health is planning a vigil for 6 p.m. Monday at 401 Branard. A third is planned for 8 p.m. Wednesday at South Beach, 810 Pacific.

"It's one of the most hateful acts imaginable," said club owner Charles Armstrong. "When you go into a church or a synagogue or a school or a gay club and start shooting, it's an act of evil."

Pride Houston organizers said they are still planning their event on June 25 in downtown, but that security will be increased.

"Today is a tragic loss for the LGBT community, and we keep the victims, as well as those affected, in our hearts as we move forward together as a community" Frankie Quijano, CEO of Pride Houston.

Treneice Collins, a patron at JR's, on the patio chatting and spending time with friends and her wife Wendy, said she was devastated by the news.

"It could have been one of us," Collins said. "It puts you in a bad place where you're scared to go out and enjoy yourself. It has shaken the LGBT community."
In 2015, Montanas busiest District Court logged 9,860 new cases, including criminal, civil, probate, child protection and mental health commitments. Thats 41 percent more than were filed in Yellowstone County District Court in 2011. Yet the number of judges hasnt increased.

Montanas Judicial Branch has a plan to ease the shortage of judges that is slowing down courts in Montanas largest cities.

Members of the Montana Supreme Court voted unanimously last month to ask Gov. Steve Bullock to include five new district court judges in his executive budget proposal. Including an assistant, clerk and reporter for each judge, the states annual cost would be $1.7 million.

Montana court data, measured against national standards, show that the District Courts are in need of 21 new judges statewide, not just five. Why ask for only five?

Montana Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike McGrath said he and the District Court Council looked at whats viable and what community support is available.

Judges have been a tough sell in past legislatures.

Nowhere is the shortage more acute than in Yellowstone County. Statistically, each of our six District Court judges is carrying double the workload that a judge should be expected to have in an efficient court.

An independent workload study completed in 2014 indicated that, based on 2013 numbers, Yellowstone County needed five additional judges. With increase in case filings since 2013, our District Court now needs six additional judges. If the trend in case filings continues, Yellowstone County soon will need more than six additional judges.

The Judicial Branch budget requests just two judges for Yellowstone County, proposing that one start working in January 2018 and that the other take office in January 2019.

The other judges requested are one for Missoula/Mineral counties; one for Cascade County; and one for Flathead County.

We just really, really need new judges, McGrath said. Those are the districts that have the greatest need.

Its a big request, McGrath said. The key is getting the support from the local communities.

With legislators and candidates focused on the Nov. 8 election, its time for a briefing on the District Court shortage. Having too few judges causes problems within and outside the courthouse.

By law, certain cases must receive top priority in court. Child abuse and neglect cases top the list because the lives and safety of children and their possible separation from family are at stake. The number of those cases doubled last year in our county.

Laws guarantee criminal defendants speedy trials. Yellowstone County has seen a big jump in felony cases.

That leaves civil matters, such as contract disputes, and complex business issues, which may languish for months or years awaiting a trial date in an overloaded court.

Key to adding judges is providing adequate space  a courtroom, jury room and offices. Missoula County recently remodeled its courthouse and is ready to house an additional judge and staff.

Yellowstone County commissioners are well aware that space will be needed for additional judges, especially with Commissioner Jim Reno serving as the Montana Association of Counties representative on the District Court Council. There has been discussion about converting fourth-floor office space into court space. When Yellowstone County Finance Director Kevan Bryan drew up the plan to finance jail improvements, he took into account expected costs for remodeling the courthouse for additional judges.

In the last session, the Legislature created the Judicial Redistricting Commission. That panel is chaired by Yellowstone County District Court Judge Greg Todd. The members include Rep. Nate McConnell, D-Missoula, and Sen. Kristin Hansen, R-Havre. The commission found that people in less populous counties dont want the boundaries changed.

Judicial redistricting is not necessary, according to legislative criteria, Todd told The Gazette recently. Judicial redistricting will not solve the need for more judges.

The biggest need is in the biggest towns, Todd said. The only way to alleviate that pressure is to add judges in the biggest towns.

Obviously, the numbers could justify asking for more, but we thought these numbers are realistic, Todd said of the five-judge statewide request.

Bullock should make adding judges a priority in his executive budget.

Yellowstone County lawmakers and those seeking to become lawmakers in the November election need to pay attention to the judicial shortage. This is an issue that should unite Republicans and Democrats. Yellowstone County lawmakers should be leaders advocating for additional judges to improve the efficiency of the District Court.

Adequate staffing for the justice system is basic to good government. Justice delayed is justice denied.
UP

Early vacations. Yellowstone National Park logged 444,817 visits in May, a 15-percent increase compared to the same month of 2015. The West Entrance recorded the largest increase in May, with 33,927 more vehicles than May 2015. The most striking increase in vehicle traffic this month was with buses. There were 48 percent more buses (594 vehicles) this May compared with May 2015.

UP

Going to Glacier. May was also a busier month in Glacier National Park which saw a record number of visitors despite spring snow closing roads at times. Glacier logged 178,218 visits in May, a 32-percent increase from May 2015.

DOWN

VA vacancies. Barely more than a year after being appointed VA Montana director, Johnny Ginnity announced his resignation, continuing trend of rapid turnover in leadership. With Ginnitys departure VA Montana will have no permanent director, deputy director of chief of medical staff.

DOWN

Coal slowdown. Montana coal production for January-April was 9.6 million tons, down 4 million tons compared with the same period last year.
A home invasion turned deadly Saturday when two men with guns knocked on a front door in northwest Houston and demanded money from the couple who lived there.

The two men, both in their early 20's, forced their way into the home in the 8200 block of Willow after the wife opened the door about 9:10 a.m.
BAKER  Ruby Goerndt had just enough time to crawl under her kitchen table before a tornado tore through her neighborhood on the east side of Baker just before 7 p.m Saturday.

I crawled under the table, and it was a 55-gallon barrel that came flying through one of the windows, Goerndt said.

Just before the tornado hit, Goerndts husband, Fritz Goerndt, noticed the trees across the street were blown almost completely sideways. He warned his wife to take cover but didnt have time to join her. Fortunately the couple emerged from the wreckage with no serious injuries.

Fritz is a United States Navy veteran who served in World War II. During the war, he was stationed on a ship repair base in the Philippines. He said his time overseas was tame compared to the action he saw Saturday night.

Just like in a second it was gone, but it sure made a lot of noise when it was here, Ruby said.

The storm ripped the roof from their trailer house and shattered her front windows, showering the home in shards of glass. The home was a complete loss.

There were no deaths reported after the tornado but a half dozen people reported injuries ranging from severe wounds to minor cuts and bruises. The storm severely damaged more than 30 homes and a half dozen were completely destroyed, said Fire Chief Tom Bruha, of Baker Rural Fire Department.

Bruha said 19 agencies assisted BRFD with the storm response. Two separate searches were conducted of the area to identify victims and pull residents from the wreckage.

We went house to house, basically making sure everyone was accounted for last night, he said.

One of the people rescued was also a BRFD firefighter. His home was a total loss and his injuries were so severe he was later taken to Billings for medical treatment.

Bruha said he was late to the scene because two of the 45 volunteer firefighters in Baker were out of town getting married. Despite it being their wedding day, the firefighters responded and assisted in the search.

All of the displaced people found a place to stay with friends and family or rented motel rooms. The American Red Cross responded to the incident but did not need to setup emergency shelter, Bruha said.

On Sunday Montana-Dakota Utilities Co. worked to replace broken power poles and repair broken lines. Bruha said the cleanup could take weeks. There are ATVs and trailers in nearby Baker Lake, and there isnt a set plan to remove them yet.

Friends and family showed up in full force with pickups, trailers, dumpsters and wheel barrows to start the long process of cleaning the tree limbs and debris from the eight block epicenter. Garbage trucks came and went with full loads throughout the day.

Ron Callen returned to his home Sunday to find a friend had already boarded the windows of his home of more than 30 years. Callen and his wife were in Williston on Saturday working at a home for troubled teens. They decided not to return to Baker on Saturday when they learned the power had been cut off to their neighborhood. They followed Facebook for updates on the storms aftermath.

Callens front porch was thrown to the opposite side of his house, and two of his outbuildings were destroyed. The storm also damaged his homes roof and interior. But Callen said his thoughts are with his neighbors who lost their homes, and hes just happy nobody died.

God is amazing, Callen said. In all this mess nobody got killed. We are a blessed community. Everybody helps each other out and we have a lot to be thankful for. This is just stuff. You cant replace lives.

Bruha said the Montana High School Rodeo State Finals were in Baker over the weekend, but the storm didnt affect the event. Campers in tents, folks in RVs and their livestock trailers were not harmed.
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.
America was on edge during the holiday season. The mass shooting in San Bernardino by an Islamic married couple, which killed 14 people, was the deadliest terror strike in the United States since 9/11. It followed the dramatic suicide attacks in Paris, the downing of a Russian plane in Egypt, and an assault on a hotel favored by Westerners in far-flung Bamako, Mali. In mid-December, Los Angeles shut down its 1,087 schools for a day, after receiving a terror threat.

Forty percent of those surveyed in a Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll in mid-December said that terrorism and national security should be the governments top priority; 60 percent cited one or the other in their top two concerns, up from just 39 percent eight months earlier. Some 25 percent said that they worried that they or their family would be a victim of a terror attack; 60 percent disapproved of President Barack Obamas handling of the Islamic State, as opposed to 55 percent a year ago. Of even greater concern for Democrats in the coming elections, 70 percent said that the country was on the wrong track.

Obama belatedly got the message. He adopted more bellicose language in place of his earlier dismissive references to the Islamic State as the JV team, a threat that had been contained. America, Obama said, was intensifying the fight against terrorists who were on the wrong side of history. Seeking to calm fears and reverse antagonism toward him and his policies, Obama addressed Americans twice within a week, first from the Oval Office and then from the Pentagon. Youre next, he warned ISISs leaders in language reminiscent of his predecessor, George W. bring it on Bush.

Though his message toughened, Obama has doubled down on a four-prong strategy to degrade and defeat ISIS that some critics call inadequate and others warn is doomed to fail. Belatedly stepping up air strikes to a total of 9,000 has not prevented the would-be caliphate from deepening its roots in nine countries or from staging or inspiring a growing number of lethal attacks at home or abroad. While French president Francois Hollande told his traumatized citizens after the Paris attacks that France was at war with radical Islam, Obama continues to resist identifying the religious identity and motivations of Americas extremist enemy and seems deeply uncomfortable with his role as its wartime president. Though Obama has killed Osama bin Laden and decimated al-Qaidas core leadership and infrastructure, expanded the drone war, and helped reclaim 40 percent of the land that ISIS seized in Iraq in last years blitzkrieg through Iraq and Syria, the image of a risk-averse president is tough to shake, says Aaron David Miller, a former government official now at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.

Nor have soothing statistics from scholars and officials sympathetic to Obamas approach reassured Americans that the ship of state is in steady hands. Writing in Politico, Daniel Benjamin and Steve Simon, former national security officials, noted that since 9/11, only 45 Americans have been killed on American soil by jihadist violence. (Before the San Bernardino slaughter, they also called American anxiety about a Paris-style attack here unwarranted.)

But comparative body counts miss the point. The fact that more people die slipping in bathtubs than in terror attacks does not allay concern about the nations vulnerability. All forms of violence are not equal. And terrorism is destabilizing because its goal, in fact, is to terrorize.

Republican presidential candidates, by contrast, have lost little time trying to capitalize on Americas anxiety. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee compared San Bernardino with Pearl Harbor. New Jersey governor Chris Christie said that America was in the midst of the next world war. In response to his demand that the U.S. ban the entry of all Muslims, Donald Trump saw his poll ratings surge. Exaggerating the jihadi threat may be politically advantageous, but antagonizing the Arab nations needed to fight ISIS in Syria and the largely integrated American-Muslim community, whose support is needed to help identify, isolate, and delegitimize extremists in their ranks, makes terror harder to combat.

Questions about the administrations ability to prevent terror strikes at home have also eroded public trust in Obama. While most American employers routinely check prospective employees postings on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, government officials cannot routinely review direct and private messages sent through such social media. Tashfeen Malik, the female half of the San Bernardino terrorist couple, sent direct, nonpublic messages hostile to the U.S. through Facebook and a dating website before moving from Pakistan to the U.S. with a K-1, or fiancee, entry visa, but the government needs special authorization to access such communications. Fox News reported that Malik passed at least three background checks before being granted the visa, despite having given a false address on her visa application.

Syed Farook, by contrast, her Internet husband and jihadi partner in crime, was a homegrown fanatic. The danger of homegrown militants has been known to law enforcement and homeland security officials since 2007, when New York Police Department intelligence analysts Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt warned of the trend, in a controversial report. Many of the FBIs 900 active investigations of potential jihadi violenceat least one in every stateare said to focus on such extremists. But President Obama has downplayed the homegrown threat, fearful of alienating Muslim-Americans.

Anxiety about terrorism has prompted policy shifts and demands for the reexamination of an appropriate balance between tolerance, protecting privacy, and preventing terror. Even before the San Bernardino attack, the Republican-led Congress seemed determined to oppose Obamas stated desire to accept some 10,000 Syrian refugees in a year. Though none of the Syrians admitted to the U.S. as refugees has engaged in terrorism on American soilnor have any but two of the more than 130,000 Iraqi refugees admitted since 2007American resistance to their entry has grown. Even in liberal New York, 52 percent of registered voters in a December poll said that they oppose allowing Syrian refugees into the country.

Americas decision to restrict the bulk collection of domestic telephone data, a program run by the National Security Agency, may also be reconsidered in the wake of the terror attacks. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has urged Congress to revisit the new metadata collection law, which authorizes but does not require the nations telephone companiesas opposed to the NSAto store telephone metadata and orders the NSA to destroy all such call information more than 18 months old. The old program, Rubio has said, helped prevent terror attacks.

Former CIA director General Michael V. Hayden, who also once headed the NSA, has welcomed such a review, arguing that the NSA collection program was not abused and helped thwart terror. The elimination of such programs was self-destructive, he said in an interview. Another tendency worries him: the potential for panic in the event of a future terrorist attack. Both underreacting and overreacting to such assaults are likely to result in bad policy, endangering security and civil liberties. Americans have too easily permitted themselves to be terrorized by terror, Hayden believes. Echoing terrorism analysts Benjamin and Simon, he worries that Americans sometimes lack what they call the societal resilience essential for the fight against such violence. Resilience, as Israel has shown, denies jihadis the victory they seek. Time may tell if Americans sufficiently possess it.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Applying New York law, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that there was no advertising injury indemnity insurance coverage for nearly $35 million in judgments against an off-price luxury goods vendor, insured Ashley Reed Trading, Inc., for selling handbags bearing counterfeit Fendi trademarks.

The crux of the decision was that Ashley Reeds liability under the judgments was based on the sale  not the advertising  of counterfeit Fendi products. Fendi did not even allege it suffered injury because of advertising conducted by Ashley Reed. Instead, damages were awarded based on sales of counterfeit products. As a matter of common sense, the court said, there is a difference between placement of a counterfeit brand label on a handbag and the act of soliciting customers through printed advertisements or other media. Here, the Fendi brand and logo were used for product misidentification, not as an advertisement.

The decision, United States Fidelity And Guarantee Company v. Fendi North America, Inc. et al., was filed May 17, 2016 and is reported at 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 8973. It affirmed a published decision of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, reported at 43 F. Supp. 3d 271, denying insurance coverage to Ashley Reed  and depriving its judgment creditors of a money source to satisfy their judgments.

The operative facts were that Fendi, through its several companies, manufactured luxury handbags, shoulder bags, purses, wallets and other items and owned associated federally-registered trademarks. Ashley Reed sold off price branded handbags and other luxury goods in New York and elsewhere. Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corporation and its subsidiary purchased clothing and merchandise at wholesale and resold them to the public at discounted prices. Burlington regularly purchased merchandise from Ashley Reed. During the relevant time period, Ashley Reed sold counterfeit Fendi goods  fashion accessories that were not Fendi products, but which displayed Fendi trademarks and otherwise had the appearance of genuine Fendi products  to Burlington and others.

Insurer USF&G issued liability insurance policies to Ashley Reed between 2003 and 2006. The policies included coverage for advertising injury as defined by the policies. Advertising was defined in the policies as attracting the attention of others by any means for the purpose of seeking customers or supporters or increasing sales or business. The policies defined advertising injury as injury resulting from four specified offenses, including the use of anothers advertising idea in Ashley Reeds advertising, and infringement of anothers copyright, trade dress or slogan  again in Ashley Reeds advertising.

The insurance coverage dispute decided by the court arose when Fendi sued Ashley Reed for trademark counterfeiting, false designation of origin, trademark dilution and unfair competition. Fendi asked for treble damages, alleging that Ashley Reed intentionally used the Fendi trademarks with knowledge that they were counterfeit. The United States District Court entered a permanent injunction and awarded Fendi treble damages, pre judgment interest fees and costs, all of which totaled $34,650,885.91.

Separately, Fendi also sued Burlington, alleging its resale of counterfeit Fendi-branded merchandise that Burlington had purchased from Ashley Reed. Burlington, in turn, brought its own third party claims against Ashley Reed to pay damages in the sum of $248,257.14, consisting of profits from the sale of counterfeit goods it purchased from Ashley Reed, as well as attorneys fees, costs and interest.

The outcome of the case turned on whether or not Fendi complained that it suffered injury because of advertising, or whether it alleged only the sale of counterfeit goods, without more. The court concluded that the policies did not insure Ashley Reeds infliction of Fendis injuries, because as stated above, the offenses covered require the use of anothers advertising idea in Ashley Reeds advertising or infringement of anothers copyright, trade dress or slogan in such advertising, and no advertising of the counterfeit goods by Ashley Reed whatsoever was alleged or proved by Fendi or Burlington. Relief was awarded to Fendi and Burlington based not on any advertising activities by Ashley Reed, but solely on its sale of counterfeit Fendi goods.

Going further, the Court of Appeals denied insurance coverage for two more reasons. First, Ashley Reed could not have reasonably expected it would be indemnified for loss it suffered by disgorging the profits it improperly derived from selling goods it knew bore a false designation of origin. In this regard, the court cited cases standing for the well established rule that one cannot purchase insurance to indemnify it for resulting loss when it is forced to disgorge money or property it acquired wrongfully.

Second and finally, the USF&G policies issued to Ashley Reed all included a falsity exclusion, providing that there was no coverage for an advertising injury arising out of oral or written publication of material, if done by or at the direction of the insured with knowledge of its falsity. To the extent that Ashley Reeds use of the Fendi logo on its handbags might arguably have constituted advertising  which the court emphasized was not so  the falsity exclusion would be triggered because the record was clear, according the court, that Ashley Reed intentionally placed the Fendi logo on its handbags with knowledge that it would be selling goods bearing a false designation of origin.

The Court of Appeals therefore upheld the District Courts decision denying coverage.

Richard B. Wolf is a partner in the Los Angeles office of the nationwide law firm of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP. Since 1970 Mr. Wolf has specialized in insurance coverage advice and litigation. He is a member of the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA).
BROOK PARK, Ohio -- One day after Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed a medical marijuana bill into law June 8, Brook Park Councilwoman Julie McCormick said she will likely amend and not abandon her resolution of support currently going through the standard three-reading process.

Kathi Stautihar, who counsels families impacted by addiction, spoke to city council at its June 7 meeting.

"I don't think the city should be supporting marijuana legislation in any way, shape or form," Stautihar said. "Though it's not an opiate, it's still considered a dangerous drug."

For Air Force veteran Robert Kowalski, however, marijuana provided critical relief from debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder. The 28-year-old traveled from Dayton to speak to council.

"There is a big influence from veterans here (in Brook Park), and I feel that this medication could help," Kowalski said. "Cannabis has made a huge impact on my life. If nothing else, please take into consideration that veterans every day are going in and asking for help, and nobody has an answer on how to help them."

McCormick stated her belief Mayor Tom Coyne has a conflict of interest due to ties one of his campaign supporters allegedly has to a marijuana farm. Coyne, a critic of the resolution, immediately refuted her claim.

"There is no conflict of interest whatsoever," Coyne insisted. "What you're trying to do is pass a resolution for a bill that's already passed. Now, how ridiculous is that?"

Councilwoman McCormick's request to pass the resolution without three readings was denied by a 4-3 vote. It will continue to its second of three public readings.

Ohio's medical marijuana law goes into effect in 90 days.
MISSOULA  At the end of a four-day trial this week, a Butte man was found not guilty of raping a woman in Missoula in June 2015.

After closing arguments in his trial on Thursday, a Missoula County District Court jury found Nicholas James Dolson not guilty of felony sexual intercourse without consent, as well as a lower alternative charge of misdemeanor sexual assault.

In his original charging documents, prosecutors alleged that Dolson went to a Missoula motel to meet a woman who had made an ad on Craigslist seeking sex. After the pair engaged in consensual vaginal intercourse, Dolson inserted himself into her rectum.

The woman told police that she had told him to stop but that he didnt. Dolson said he stopped and left when the woman told him to.

The day after their encounter, Dolson sent the woman a text message that said he had planned to have sex with her twice in this way and then leave.

Dolson said he did send the text message, and has met other women and had anal sex with them after vaginal sex, but that he believed what had happened between him and the woman had been consensual. Dolson said during the incident, he had asked the woman if he could do anything else to her and that she had said she didnt care. During the trial, the woman stated there had been no discussion.

Dolson, 26, was arrested in early October in Butte after a warrant was issued for him out of Missoula. Although he said he had been interviewed by police in relation to the June incident, Dolson said he had no idea he was going to be arrested and charged when he walked into the probation and parole office, which he was visiting as part of a deferred sentence on a prior theft conviction.

While filling out paperwork in a holding cell at the Butte jail, Dolson stabbed himself in the neck with a pencil, and was found lying on the floor near a pool of blood.

Dolson said at the time of his arrest he had been attending Montana Tech for mechanical engineering and that he had a job as an aerospace welder.

I had a lot of good things going for me. When all of this went down, I knew I was going to lose a lot of that, he said. Im one of the last people that would want to or be able to rape someone. I take stuff like that really personally.

He said he also thinks the woman in his case had a motivation for accusing him of a crime because she hadnt been paid for their encounter as the two of them had discussed.

Dolson was released after the trial and said he intends to return to living in Butte. He had been in the Missoula County Detention Facility since he was transported there shortly after his arrest. He said he wants his case to serve as a reminder that people are innocent until proven guilty.

Just because somebody is charged with something doesn't always mean they are guilty, he said.
wellness-nutrition-2

Offering solutions to Cleveland's capital conundrum in the tech industry.

(Courtesy photo)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Last week, in this two-part series, I wrote about the great success this region has had in creating New Economy startups and emerging-growth companies. Now, we need to take a look at solutions to the capital challenge these startups face.

With nearly $2 billion in capital invested in regional tech industries, according to a VentureOhio study, the area is still about $263 million short of the necessary required growth capital.

Michael C. DeAloia

The region cannot just create or prop up a few Series A Venture Funds and call it a success. The region needs a deeper strategic vision for its capital conundrum that includes equity investments, non-dilutive capital and thought leadership.

Six solutions, detailed below, sprouted from many recent conversations with regional tech leaders and investors:

Solution 1 - The State's Folly:

One of the policy decisions to come out of Gov. Bob Taft administration was the Third Frontier program. It was a large bond issue where proceeds funded initiatives to foster entrepreneurship, tech investment and research.

Many thought the program worked wonders until Gov. John Kasich gutted the Ohio Department of Development, which oversaw the program, cancelled many tenants of the program and cast what was left into the hands of JobsOhio. Two key components of the original Third Frontier need to be reinstated immediately - the Ohio Capital Fund and the Technology Investment Tax Credit.

The Ohio Capital Fund

The Technology Investment Tax Credit

These two programs benefited the venture capital funds and angel investors and promoted a significant increase in tech investments statewide and in Northeast Ohio.

Solution 2 - Bring Back the Banks:

Bank financing is one of the least discussed capital solutions - and one of the most frustrating for startups in Cleveland.

Let's be blunt ... banks are now handcuffed by a risk-averse culture and banking legislation, mainly the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. My banker friends lament that there are no good banking deals to give, and I know hundreds of entrepreneurs with companies that are unable to get financing through a bank. Many believe the Dodd Frank Act is killing Main Street banking and capitalism.

The Greater Cleveland Partnership, as this region's chamber of commerce, should begin lobbying its federal contacts about this law.

"Dodd Frank has made banks so conservative in making banking decisions that they are failing to finance the growth of emerging businesses and industries," according to Laura Bennett, CEO of Embrace Pet Insurance.

Bennett is concerned that her business cannot grow quickly due to an inability to get a line of credit. A lot of that has to do with the Dodd Frank Act, but it also speaks to the local banking industry's lack of knowledge about the New Economy and servicing the tech industry.

Dodd Frank also has had a negative effect on venture capital by restricting banks from investing in the venture capital investment class.

Solution 3 - Micro-VC:

Another daring way to get investors back into the venture game would be micro venture capital funds.

Micro-VC's, money invested in seed and early-stage companies, typically invest between $25,000 to $500,000 in a company. Traditional VC's invest much larger dollar amounts.

The region would benefit greatly from two to three micro-VC funds taking root here. This could be accomplished by a number of local angels forging to create a micro-VC fund. Better yet, having a number of large and middle-market companies invest in such a fund would be valuable.

Solution 4 - Corporate Investment:

Recently, a number of Cincinnati-based corporate giants invested in a fund of funds for that region's emerging tech industry. A fund of funds is an investment strategy of holding a portfolio of other investment funds rather than investing in stocks, bonds or other securities.

In Cincinnati, the new fund called Cintrifuse Syndicate Fund, includes investors such as American Financial Group, Castellini Management Co., Cincinnati Bell, Cincinnati Children's Medical Center, Duke Energy, P&G, Kroger, the University of Cincinnati, Wester & Southern Financial Group and others. The initial fund includes $57 million, ready to be put into other venture capital funds, including Series A funds.

Cintrifuse is believed to be the largest privately backed regional fund of funds in the U.S.

It is beyond me why the vast large and middle market groups in Northeast Ohio could not raise a $100 million fund of funds that focuses on venture capital development in this region. If P&G can lead the way in southern Ohio, then why can't the CEOs of Eaton, Sherwin-Williams, FirstEnergy, Progressive Insurance and numerous others follow?

But large corporations aren't the only ones. What about large pension funds at the state and regional level, foundations and endowments that could partition off a reasonable amount of its cash holdings and invest in the fund of funds concept in Northeast Ohio? And why is this topic not on the docket at the Greater Cleveland Partnership?

This fund of funds concept should be the focus of the Partnership and corporations after the Republican National Convention is over in July.

Solution 5 - New Series A Funds:

It's obvious that in addition to a series of micro-VC funds and non-dilutive capital that Northeast Ohio is still starving for Series A capital

Recently, the Pre-Seed Program at the State of Ohio awarded significant dollars to local funds to invest in this region's growing tech companies. Funds such as North Coast Angel Fund, North Coast Venture Fund, Early Stage Partners, JumpStart and the Cleveland Clinic Innovations will share more than $20 million to invest.

This money is certainly helpful, but it doesn't put a dent into the funding gap that exists in Northeast Ohio and around the state.

As mentioned before, a VentureOhio study shows a $263 million funding shortfall. This capital gap keeps growing, according to Stephen Haynes, managing partner at Glengary Ventures.

"It's time to encourage the state's pension funds, foundations, university endowments and corporate institutions to invest in the venture capital asset class," Haynes said.

Solution 6 - Morgenthaler Venture Capital Institute:

In 1968, David Morgenthaler founded Morgenthaler Ventures using the proceeds from the sale of a manufacturing company. It was the first venture-capital company in Cleveland, and during its 40-plus year existence he invested in more than 300 companies.

It would be worthwhile to have a Venture Capital Institute established in his name at one of the region's universities. The next generation of venture capitalists could learn there and hopefully establish their first funds in Cleveland. Additionally, entrepreneurs could get training on venture theory and how to re-engineer the venture capital model to their benefit as well.

It would be wonderful to hear of a local university deciding to help create this citadel of intellectual thought.

These are but six ideas, possible solutions if you will, that need more scrutiny by the regional civic, corporate and entrepreneurial leadership.

These leaders must make a clarion call that is answered by those who see the promise of Cleveland's tech economy. There are abundant riches and opportunities for the region in this New Economy -- if we get the right amount of capital investment, and soon.
AKRON, Ohio -- An Akron man is accused of raping a woman after her birthday party and using her young child as a shield after the woman tried to chase him from her home with a knife, according to police.

Lorenzo Finsley, 29, is charged with two counts of rape, aggravated burglary, sexual battery, assault and aggravated menacing. He is not in police custody and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

The woman told police she hosted a party Tuesday for her 26th birthday. Finsley went to the party. After it was over everyone left and she locked her house, according to court records.

The woman later fell asleep on her downstairs couch with her two young children sleeping on the floor near her.

Finsley forced his way into the home. He held the woman down on the couch by her throat and sexually assaulted her, court records say.

The woman fought him off and ran to her bedroom. Finsley chased her, knocked her to the ground and sexually assaulted her again, court records say.

She again fought the man off. She ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife to try and get Finsley to leave her home.

Finsley picked up one of her young children and used the child as a shield to protect himself from the woman, according to court records.

He ran from the home but threatened her several times, including making hand motions to imply he would shoot her, court records say.

The next day, Finsley cut off his electronically monitored GPS device he was court-ordered to wear because of several recent misdemeanor convictions, court records say. He was charged with escape.

Finsley's criminal history dates to a 2004 conviction for aggravated possession of Oxycontin, the prescription narcotic painkiller. He has also been convicted of receiving stolen property and escape.

He served three-and-a-half years in prison for a June 20, 2007 armed home invasion. In that case, he and another man shot a 33-year-old man during a fight inside the home.

He pleaded guilty to robbery with a gun and aggravated assault.

If you want to comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments section.
Cleveland police tape

A Cleveland man made his first court appearance Saturday on charges that accuse him of being a pimp.

(File photo)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A mother-son duo accused of running a drug and prostitution ring that included pimping a 16-year-old girl made their first court appearances on Saturday.

Bobbi Nix II, 18, and his mother, Muslimah Muwwakkli, 38, posted bonds set at their initial court appearance in Cleveland Municipal Court. Nix was released from jail on $15,000 bond, Muwwakkli on $20,000 bond.

Nix is charged with promoting prostitution and drug trafficking. Muwwakkli is charged with drug trafficking.

Three others-- Sarah Hogue-Wood, 39, of Stow, Valerie Love, 41, of Stow, and Spencer Wilkerson, 35, of Cleveland-- were charged in the case. Hogue-Wood and Love are charged with promoting prostitution and Wilkerson with drug trafficking. All three were released after posting bond on Saturday.

Nix advertised the prostitutes' services on Backpage.com and supervised their appointments with paying clients for the past six months court, records say.

Nix forced the women and girl to continue working by using threats of violence, according to court records.

Police originally focused their investigation on Nix and a house on East 103rd Street in Glennville. Detectives eventually learned that Hogue-Wood and Love were pimping prostitutes at homes on Broadway Avenue and Northfield Road, according to court records.

Police asked for a judge to give Nix a high bond upon his capture because they believe Nix would seek retribution against the 16-year-old girl if he were released, according to court records filed Thursday.

She has not been found as of Saturday. The girl ran away when Nix learned where she had been staying, police said.
MPP marijuana law map.png

Ohio on Wednesday joined 24 states and the District of Columbia that have legalized medical marijuana.

(Marijuana Policy Project)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Ohio decided to make medical marijuana legal last week. Here's what else you may be wondering about.

When can I legally smoke weed in Ohio? Trick question. You can't. Smoking isn't included in the medical marijuana law Gov. John Kasich signed last week. Reporter Jackie Borchardt explains what you need to know.

What's the latest with voting lawsuits? A federal judge on Tuesday threw out provisions in Ohio's law that had voided absentee and provisional ballots for technical flaws made by otherwise qualified voters, Bob Higgs reports.

How much could Cuyahoga County taxpayers be out, after a change to human resource rules under the charter government? Tens of millions of dollars, Karen Farkas reports. After a Cuyahoga County Common Pleas judge ruled this past week, the county could owe more than $10 million to 140 employees whose pay was cut when their jobs were reclassified under the new charter government.The county could also owe tens of millions of dollars to more than 700 employees whose work weeks were increased from 35 to 40 hours.

Who besides Cleveland is considering hiking the minimum wage to $15 an hour? Washington DC passed the increase Tuesday, but it'll be phased in through 2020. Reporter Sabrina Eaton explains how else DC's change is different from Clevelands proposal.

Who will be Hillary Clinton's running mate? Not Sherrod Brown, if you ask him. Reporter Stephen Koff did. Read his words verbatim.

What do you need to know if you travel to Brazil? Bring bug spray and use a physical map, experts tell reporter Emily Bamforth.

Where does your smartphone get the weather? No, there's not a thermometer inside your iPhone. Meteorologist Kelly Reardon explains.

What causes big waves on Lake Erie? Mostly the wind and barometric pressure, Reardon explains.
Ambulance (blank)

A 24-year-old semi driver died in a one-vehicle crash on Interstate 271.

(File photo)

GRANGER TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- A semi driver died Saturday in a rollover crash, according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol.

No other cars were involved in the crash. The driver, Elvin Lasi, 24, died at the scene, the patrol said.

The rollover happened about 6:15 p.m. on Interstate 271 southbound just north of I-71.

Lasi failed to negotiate a curve and his 2000 Volvo semi veered off the right side of the highway. The truck hit a guardrail and turned over.

Lasi was not wearing a seatbelt and was ejected from the semi, the patrol said.

Police from Montville and Medina townships and fire departments from Granger and Medina townships, along with the Ohio Department of Transportation assisted state troopers.

The state highway patrol said they are still investigating the circumstances that led up to the crash.

If you want to comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments section.
Donald Trump

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses the Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority Conference in Washington on Friday. Thomas Suddes writes that Trump's candidacy -- beyond his lack of elective office experience -- has caused one dedicated GOP officeholder in Ohio to skip the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

(Cliff Owen, Associated Press)

If Donald Trump wins the presidency, it'll be the first elected public office Trump ever will have held. That lack of experience may not faze some of Trump's supporters. After all, if a voter is willing to overlook Trump's bigotry and boorishness, inexperience can hardly matter.

Still, the last time Republicans nominated someone for president who'd never held an elected public office was in 1952. That GOP nominee's name was Dwight D. Eisenhower.

It's perhaps unnecessary to observe that Trump is no Eisenhower. Eisenhower, a general of the Army, liberated Western Europe from Nazism. Eisenhower's memoir, "Crusade in Europe," was described by Orville Prescott of The New York Times as one of the "best and most important books of war memoirs yet published." (And according to Eisenhower biographer Jean Edward Smith, "There was no ghost writer.")

In fairness, Donald Trump is also a published author, and a very prolific one. Among Trump's many publications is a 2007 book tastefully titled "Think Big and Kick A-- in Business and Life," which Trump and Bill Zanker co-authored.

A few days ago, out of disdain for Trump, an Ohio Republican, state Sen. Shannon Jones of Warren County's Springboro, resigned as a delegate to the Republican National Convention, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported. And that's really something.

Because, before anyone tries to claim that Jones is a Republican in Name Only, she was chief sponsor of Senate Bill 5 of 2011. You remember SB 5? It aimed to weaken Ohio's public employee unions. SB 5 was such a sledge-hammer that a half-dozen of Jones's fellow state Senate Republicans voted against it. Later in 2011, Ohio voters killed SB 5 in a statewide referendum.

Jones' Senate district is composed mostly of Warren County. In 2012, Barack Obama drew less than 30 percent of Warren County's vote at a time when Obama was drawing 50.7 percent of Ohio's statewide vote.

Jones' refusal to be a bystander at Trump's Cleveland victory lap speaks volumes -- about Trump.

Meanwhile: Once Cleveland's Republican convention gets going, someone may say that, not counting Eisenhower, the last pre-Trump GOP presidential nominee never to have held an elected public office was 1940 Republican nominee Wendell Willkie.

That depends on the definition of public office. In 1924, Willkie, then practicing law in Akron, was elected a delegate to that year's Democratic National Convention. (Willkie later switched parties to become a Republican.) As it happened, the 1924 Democratic National Convention was held in Cleveland.

Willkie, writing 20 years later, said he "ran and was elected as a delegate from my home [Akron-area] district in order to serve him" - see who "him" is below - "in his contemplated platform fight for a straight-out [Democratic] platform endorsement of the League of Nations." The league's architect was Democratic President Woodrow Wilson. Despite or (maybe) because of that, the United States wouldn't join the league.

The "him" who inspired Willkie to run for delegate to Democrats' 1924 convention was former Cleveland Mayor Newton D. Baker, once Wilson's secretary of War.

Baker wanted the United States in the league. "[Baker] lost," Willkie wrote. "Those practical fellows who 'know how to win elections' prevailed."

Except they really didn't. True, there's no necessary connection between Democrats' platform fight over the league and 1924's election. But the Republican then living in the White House, Calvin Coolidge, walloped the Democratic nominee. He was John W. Davis, a onetime West Virginia congressman who'd become a top-shelf corporate lawyer in New York - a kind of "New Democrat" almost 70 years before Bill and Hillary Clinton started showing everyone just what that is.

Thomas Suddes, a member of the editorial board, writes from Athens.

To reach Thomas Suddes: tsuddes@gmail.com, (216) 999-4689
George Voinovich

ISen. George Voinovich as he announced in January 2009 during a news conference on Capitol Hill that he would not seek another term as senator. The former U.S. senator, two-term Ohio governor and three-term Cleveland mayor -- who preached frugality in his personal and public life and occasionally bucked the Republican establishment -- died peacefully in his sleep Sunday morning, his wife Janet confirmed. He was 79.

(Susan Walsh, Associated Press, File, 2009)

George Voinovich was the most successful politician in Ohio history.

He won at every level. And he won a lot.

Including primaries, Voinovich's lifetime record at the ballot box was a breathtaking 28-2.

But the job he treasured above all others was mayor of Cleveland.

The rest -- U.S. senator, governor, lieutenant governor, county commissioner, county auditor and state representative -- paled in comparison to the 10 years Voinovich spent running his hometown.

"He would get tears in his eyes every single time we would fly into Burke Lakefront Airport," former Voinovich spokesman Mike Dawson recalled of his boss' time as governor. "It's impossible to overstate how much he loved his city."

Tim Cosgrove was as close to Voinovich as anyone who ever worked with him. Like Voinovich, Cosgrove grew up in Collinwood, later working as a 17-year-old Voinovich intern at City Hall and as his director of legislation and policy in the governor's office.

"There was nothing in his professional life he was more proud of than being mayor of Cleveland," recalled Cosgrove, his voice overcome with emotion. "This was his town. And he ended it right where he started it -- on Rosecliff Road."

In every way imaginable, the 1979 campaign for mayor against incumbent Dennis Kucinich was the most difficult of Voinovich's life.

The city was in default. Its books were unauditable. Kucinich was at war with the business community and City Council. The most popular bumper sticker in town proudly declared, "Cleveland: You Gotta Be Tough."

But Voinovich initially declined to challenge Kucinich, in part because earlier that same year he had taken office as Jim Rhodes' lieutenant governor.

Voinovich planned to run for governor himself in 1982. Instead, his career took a significant detour when business, civic and political leaders eventually convinced him he was needed more at home.

The campaign against Kucinich delivered on the bumper sticker's promise.

In the five-candidate nonpartisan primary, Voinovich and Kucinich finished first and second, respectively, advancing to a runoff election in early November.

Then, just days after the primary, came the great tragedy of George and Janet Voinovich's life.

On Oct. 8, Molly Voinovich, their nine-year-old daughter, was struck and killed by a van as she crossed Lake Shore Boulevard on her way to school.

The campaign came to an immediately halt. And it stayed that way for 11 days.

On Election Day, Voinovich won 56 percent of the vote.

In an interview two years ago, Voinovich said of the mess he inherited, "It was worse than I imagined. I thought we were $50 million in the hole. We were $110 million .... It was very, very bad. The town was really a mess."

Cleaning up that mess was the challenge of a lifetime.

And, over time, things got better.

Fiscal sanity returned. The much ballyhooed public-private partnership led to a downtown building boom and improved City Hall efficiencies. Voinovich's alliance with Council President George Forbes led to a period of prolonged political cooperation.

"I served with five mayors," said Forbes. "He was the best. George was a good man, a decent man. But what distinguished him from everyone else was he was a true public servant."

Cleveland's comeback was far from perfect.

But when he left at the end of his third term to run for governor in 1990, Voinovich left Cleveland better off than he found it.

Several factors contributed to Voinovich's remarkable political success.

Although he was always a favorite of deep-pocketed Republican contributors, Voinovich was no ideologue. As mayor, his independent streak and criticisms of President Ronald Reagan's urban policies infuriated many in the White House.

That moderation, along with Voinovich's deep roots in the nationalities community, contributed greatly to the success he enjoyed in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, where Democrats have long enjoyed a huge numerical advantage.

Pefection, of course, eluded him. A negative U.S. Senate campaign against Sen. Howard Metzenblum backfired badly, leading to a landslide loss -- his only other defeat coming in the 1971 Republican primary for mayor.

Voinovich could be thin-skinned and stubborn. And after leaving office, he volunteered regret over not doing more to improve student performance in the city's schools.

But, on balance, George Voinovich was probably the most decent and genuine human being I have ever known in nearly 47 years of dealing with local politicians. He was a man who never once lost sight of the most important thing in life -- his family.

Humble, at times reserved, and incredibly modest, Voinovich would sometimes approach people and introduce himself -- even though everyone in the room knew his name.

"He was a great man," recalled former Forest City Enterprises CEO Albert Ratner, a Democrat who worked closely with Voinovich on a variety of important projects. "He had two virtues sorely missing in politics today -- honesty and humility."

In 1998, Voinovich was elected to the Senate in a sometimes-bruising campaign against former County Commissioner Mary Boyle.

This morning, as word of Voinovich's death spread through the city, I received an unsolicited text from Boyle mourning the loss of "a gentle soul who always stayed close to home and family."

Another, from Jim Rokakis, a councilman during the Voinovich years, recalled how the former mayor "restored order during a period of chaos.

"First Lou Stokes and now George Voinovich. It's the passing of giants."

Voinovich was succeeded as mayor by Michael White. In ways big and small, the two could not be more different.

But their shared love of Cleveland became a bond between them that never broke.



"George was a fine friend and colleague who refused to allow anything to get in the way of his commitment to the people of Cleveland and Ohio," said White.

"In a time in which we have so few statesmen, George Voinovich's life of service stands as an example to all of us."

It does indeed.

Brent Larkin was The Plain Dealer's editorial director from 1991 until his retirement in 2009.

To reach Brent Larkin: blarkin@cleveland.com
Why Obama chose diplomacy over what would be a terrible Iran war

Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iranian foreign minister and a member of Iran's nuclear negotiation team, greets supporters as he arrives at Tehran's Mehrabad airport on Friday, April 3, 2015.

(Morteza Nikoubazl/Zuma Press/TNS)

Gary Sick is a senior research scholar at Columbia University's Middle East Institute

Two years ago, a new war in the Middle East appeared very likely. The government of Iran, despite enduring the most severe international sanctions ever imposed on a noncombatant power, insisted on increasing its nuclear program.



Its number of centrifuges capable of enriching uranium had burgeoned in less than a decade from just a handful to nearly 20,000. Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was growing rapidly. Although Iran insisted that its program was intended for peaceful purposes, the United States and world were skeptical, particularly when Iran treated Israel and its Arab neighbors belligerently.



In 2014, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel went before the U.N. General Assembly with a cartoon showing Iran approaching a nuclear red line. Israel, he suggested, could not ignore what he perceived to be an existential threat. There were calls in this country for military action.





Frank G. Wisner, is an international affairs advisor at Patton Boggs, LLP

Seasoned military analysts concluded that, regardless of who started it, the conflict would not be limited to a few surgical strikes. It would be a major war.



Today, most of the problems of the Middle East remain. But the risk of a major war with Iran has receded nearly to invisibility. The United States, together with the other Permanent Members of the United Nations Security Council - Great Britain, France, China, and Russia - plus Germany, under the auspices of the European Union, negotiated one of the most complex and all-encompassing non-proliferation agreements in history with the Islamic Republic of Iran. This agreement removed most of the immediate concerns about the Iranian nuclear program. Its validation by the leading world powers endows it with exceptional authority.



2015: For Iran nuclear deal, implementation will be key: editorial

Under the agreement, Iran has disconnected, removed, and placed in internationally-monitored storage most of its installed centrifuges. Iran terminated all uranium enrichment and removed all nuclear material at the clandestine Fordow facility; reduced its stockpile of low enriched uranium by 98 percent; and removed the core of the Arak heavy water research reactor. The International Atomic Energy Agency regularly confirms that Iran has fulfilled its obligations.



Iran has also accepted an unprecedented verification regime, including continuous monitoring of its nuclear facilities. Additionally, Iran declared that it will not acquire nuclear weapons. Some of the exceptional restrictions on Iran's nuclear activities will sunset in ten to fifteen years, but international monitoring and Iran's non-nuclear pledge are permanent.



The agreement was successful because it focused on one single target: Iran's ability to make a nuclear device. The agreement does not change Iran's government; it does not compel Iran to change its foreign policies; it was not designed to affect Iran's human rights, nor does it prohibit Iran's development of non-nuclear missiles.



These are important issues. But the nuclear agreement opens for the first time the way to discussions in an environment void of nuclear threat.



The United States and partners must ensure Iran receives the full economic benefit of the nuclear deal, because the United States keeps its word.

Furthermore we should provide incentives for Iran to keep its word. Iranians opposed to the agreement, and there are many, want to humiliate the negotiators.



Iran is a country in transition. Its highly-educated, young population holds far different views than the present theocratic leadership. Many have a high regard for the American people. Many want to see their country move into the mainstream of the international community, respecting human rights, religious tolerance, and freedom of expression. They want to resolve past differences with the United States.



The Middle East is on fire, and Iran is directly involved in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, the Gulf, Lebanon, and Yemen. How Iran addresses the region's problems, including its relations with Israel, and how its government treats its people, are important to the United States. There is no escaping the need to deal with Iran, any more than the United States can avoid dealing with major powers elsewhere in the world.



The Obama administration has opened the door to Iran. It will be up to our next administration to carry the effort forward.



To do that, we must insist that Iran live in peace with its neighbors and respect internationally-accepted standards of behavior. We have to persuade Iran that hostile actions like missile testing are incompatible with the views of the international community. Over time, step by step, we should reciprocate positive Iranian actions, opening our doors to trade, investment and educational and cultural exchange.



The nuclear agreement has made it possible to turn a page on 37 years of enmity. The United States and Iran may not yet be destined to be friends. But we need not be enemies. Our ability to influence events in the very troubled Middle East requires we work with Iran.

Gary Sick, a senior research scholar at Columbia University's Middle East Institute, served on the National Security Council under Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan and was the principal White House aide for Iran during the 1979 Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis. Frank G. Wisner, an international affairs advisor at Patton Boggs, LLP, was a career diplomat with the personal rank of career ambassador who served as U.S. ambassador to India, Zambia, Egypt and the Philippines. Sick and Wisner are members of The Iran Project, an independent nongovernmental organization seeking to support a balanced, objective, and bipartisan approach to preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and will be participating in a panel talk Wednesday June 17 at the Union Club.

What: "Choices Ahead: Exploring the Future of the Iran Deal" panel talk featuring Sick, Wisner and Joshua Stacher, associate professor at Kent State University, and moderated by former Ambassador Heather Hodges, president and ambassador-in-residence of the Cleveland Council on World Affairs.

When: 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday June 15

Where: Union Club, 1211 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland.

Cost: $25; CCWA members $15; full-time students $5. Register for the event here.

This post was updated on June 14 to fix the date of the Union Club event to June 15.
He had already driven his wife to work and tied his daughters ponytails, and now, Justin Hathaway stood in his driveway, surveying the trunk of his car one week after quitting the only career hed ever known.

Lawnmower. Weed Whacker. Extra wire. Gasoline. Garbage bags. Gallon of water. Rake.

Thats it, he said, shutting the door. Thats all I need.

It had been only three days since he posted the Facebook ad: Oil Bust Mowing, I move my ass for dat grass!! and now, his new job trimming lawns paid better than his old job hauling oil.

The 34-year-old eyed his scribbled schedule for the day: five lawns and four estimates. The first house was a rental property, front and back lawn, scheduled at 9 a.m. for $40. He opened the car door, checked his email for an address and started the ignition.

Im ready.

He lasted six years in the oil industry, the first five in North Dakota. He worked as a casing hand, then on a frack crew, then hauled oil, away from his wife and five children three weeks at a time.

They moved to Casper last April so he could be home every night. But three companies later, the industry was once again keeping him away. He woke at 3:30 in the morning and returned by 7:30 at night, hauling truckloads of oil back and forth in a semi down Highway 59.

It used to be easy money. During the boom, Hathaway made as much as $7,500 every two weeks in North Dakota, and $4,500 over the same span in Wyoming. Then the bust happened. Rigs dwindled from 28 to seven. The state shed 11,600 jobs. Hathaways pay was cut in half, then again, enough that his wife returned to nursing.

He never liked hauling oil. He constantly worried about head-on collisions and hated the traffic. He stressed over job security, and lately, the money wasnt worth it. Three weeks ago, after a 14-hour shift, he calculated his hourly pay: $7.96.

So he quit.

Hathaway pulled into the driveway. The air smelled of exhaust. Lawnmowers buzzed as a team of workers trimmed next door. Green Tree Arboriculture, their truck logo read.

This shouldnt take too terribly long, Hathaway said, unloading the car and surveying the lawn. Twenty-five minutes. He smiled and yanked the cord of his mower, pacing it over long blades of grass. A black ball cap and sunglasses shielded him from the morning sun. He was whistling.

Days after quitting his job, Hathaway sat on his couch and listed things he knew he could do. Hed waited tables, tended bar and sold cellphones at a mall kiosk before working in the oil industry. He also had a commercial drivers license (CDL), but the last thing he wanted was to go over the road, which meant driving a truck three to four weeks at a time across the country.

Then the idea hit him. Landscaping. Hed briefly done it 14 years ago. He created the Facebook ad and days later filed for an LLC: Oil Bust Lawn Care.

(Since then), Ive just been booked. Like every single day.

His wife, Anna Bond, is a nurse at Wyoming Medical Center. Her steady paycheck made it easier to leave the oil industry. During the boom, the couple resisted the expensive toys like four-wheelers and boats, but their savings are still depleted and money is tight.

Bond was supportive of her husbands decision to quit, equally frustrated by the stresses. She laughed when she saw the Facebook ad. It would be a side gig, he said, until he found another full-time job. But the flood of messages surprised them both.

I want to be able to say, This is going to go places, Bond said. But you just never know. When youre dealing with the oil bust, youre dealing with all these different facets, even people that arent oil related. Its that trickle-down effect.

Who knows in a couple months if there will be people who still want their lawns mowed?

His goal is to make $200 to $250 a day. Hes mowing lawns seven days a week, and its only a starting point. He wants to grow his company and landscape, hiring others who are struggling.

Hathaway turned off the mower. Blades of grass stuck to his arms like sprinkles of glitter. Twenty-five minutes had passed. Only half of the front lawn was finished.

He reached for his phone and texted Carissa OMalley. The 24-year-old babysits his kids, works as a skin therapist and cuts hair. She was laid off from her welding job last July.

Hathaway asked if she wanted to help before picking up his daughter from school. She arrived a half hour later, raking loose grass in the front lawn while Hathaway mowed the back.

OMalley supports herself and her younger brother. She needs $4,500 a month to pay her bills and isnt making anywhere close to that. Before Hathaway created the Facebook ad, the two talked about going over the road.

Hes a trucker. Ive never worked as a trucker. I just took a CDL class, OMalley said. We talked about going over the road together and driving as a team so that we can keep a truck going almost 24/7, cover more miles and get paid more.

But Id be gone three weeks at a time.

OMalley left around 11:30 to pick up Hathaways 6-year-old daughter, Peyton. When they returned, Hathaway placed the Weed Whacker down and briefly played with his daughter.

This morning, he woke the kids, tied ponytails and dropped them off at school for what felt like the second time all year.

When youre home more often, you figure out what youve been missing, Hathaway said. And Ive missed a lot.

Now, he makes his own schedule, and today, he was way behind. The rental property took more than three hours. He packed his equipment and checked the backyard, eyeing his job once more before leaving.

I think its done, he said, pausing. Except for that spot.

A thin strip of tall grass stretched down the backyard.

That sucks. How did I miss that? Theres like a whole line. How in the heck did I manage to do that? Hathaway retrieved the lawnmower and buzzed over the strip.

Next on the list was Julie Shadoans house. He worked on her backyard the previous day, but it needed a touchup. When she originally contacted Hathaway, she asked how much he charged. He said $30. Shadoan refused, and offered $60.

Ive never researched what you charge, Hathaway said. My idea is, its not just me struggling. Everybody else is struggling. So I kind of want to make a good deal for people as well, but I still want to make money. I probably couldve gotten more. But thats part of learning.

He arrived with OMalley and Peyton. OMalley pushed the lawnmower while Hathaway used the Weed Whacker. They finished by 1 p.m., three lawns and four estimates to go.

Maybe I should just become a bartender instead, OMalley said, packing the lawnmower in the trunk.

It just takes a little bit longer than we expected it would, Hathaway said. I think I can get it down. I can take it from 20 minutes to 15 minutes. So three hours to two and a half hours.

OMalley sighed.

I think it will be fine, she said. If we make enough money to last that long.

Hathaway made a deal with his wife. Theyre giving the business until the end of summer. If it isnt thriving, hell find a more dependable career, one that will help support the family, even if it means spending time away.

(Funds will be tight) in the next week or two, Hathaway said, driving away to the next lawn. Just in the transition.

The car was quiet as he turned onto Wyoming Boulevard. Ahead was a semi. It lumbered down the road, hauling another load to another destination.

Hathaway gazed its way.

Thats what Im trying to stay away from right there.
The global defense trade increased at a record pace last year, with the value of the market expanding by $6.6 billion to be worth $65 billion in 2015, according to a new report by IHS Jane's.

The annual increase was in part fuelled by tensions in areas including the South China Sea, sustained demand in the Middle East, and a "revival" of the French defense sector, the report released Sunday explained.



A list of top defense importers was dominated by the Middle East, which received about $21.6 billion in equipment deliveries over the year.



Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates together imported equipment worth $11.4 billion to account for about 17.5 percent of total global defense imports  more than all of Western Europe combined. That's compared to $8.6 billion the year before.



The U.S., meanwhile  which is the largest exporter to the Middle East  held the top spot as the world's largest exporter, supplying $22.9 billion worth of defense equipment up from just $12.9 billion in 2009. While the report says the rise can't be tied to one particular factor, it does highlight a ramp up in deliveries of newly developed F-35 fighter jets.


Doctor performing surgery Vladimir Smirnov | TSS | Getty Images

The health care industry is turning to high tech to help consumers think healthy. Even with hacking threats and privacy breaches everywhere, technology and health companies are using connected health  an emerging field that links patients and doctors remotely  to boost health care analysis and diagnoses. With that in mind, the AT&T Foundry for Connected Health opened last week, with a goal to use the internet of things, another hot technology field, to innovate the health care space.

watch now

AT&T's Foundry which resides inside Texas Medical Center's Innovation Institute in Houston, is currently developing technology like a connected wheelchair to monitor patients in real-time. The company is also working on an electroencephalogram headband, a vital signs monitoring device, to detect patient discomfort. Chris Penrose, senior vice president of AT&T's Internet of Things division, said that by connecting things that haven't been connected before, caregivers and doctors will have the ability to better monitor patients. They can also improve overall patient life, both at home and at health care facilities. "This is a real way we can bridge together what you're doing in your home with the health care ecosystem to provide a better experience for that patient," Penrose told CNBC's "Closing Bell". The overall connected health market is expected to see huge growth in the coming years. A 2015 report by MarketResearch.com, estimated the health care internet of things is poised to hit $117 billion within the next several years. Robert Graboyes, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, predicts connected health care will be a dominate form of medicine in a few years  especially when looking at millennials who are comfortable dealing with electronic devices, he said. "There is a convergence of technology that is opening up  big data, artificial intelligence  and it's allowing doctors to identify patterns in health that wouldn't have been available to intuitive practitioners," Graboyes said.
Should women who don't have children be able to take maternity leave?

Author Meghann Foye, 38, sparked criticism after her new book, "Meternity", was published. The fictional novel is about a 31-year old woman who fakes a pregnancy so "she'll get what she perceives is the rights and privileges of the moms on staff" Foye explained to CNBC's "On the Money" in an interview.

The book was inspired in part by Foye's own self-financed sabbatical, which she took around the time many of her friends and co-workers were having children.

The New York Post ran a story about Foye's breakusing the attention grabbing headline "I want all the perks of maternity leavewithout having any kids." The story sparked online outrage, as well as a broader discussion.

The novelist, however, said the New York Post misinterpreted her message.

"It was really just meant to be my personal storyand I had called it a 'meternity leave' but basically just as a joke to myself because all my friends were having kids," she said.

Maternity leave is already a controversial topic in the U.S., which is the only developed nation without federally mandated paid maternity leave. Times are changing, however as workplaces to some degree have become more flexible.

This year, San Francisco became the first city to require fully paid parental leave, and New York joined California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island in requiring paid time off state-wide. Media giant Netflix offers unlimited paid parental leave for the child's first year.

Yet, according to the Department of Labor, only 12 percent of U.S. employees actually get paid family leave from their employer.
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A senior official from China's securities regulator said on Sunday that MSCI shouldn't wait too long before adding Chinese shares to its index, due to the importance of the China market. Qi Bin, the head of international cooperation at the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), made the remarks as the U.S. index publisher prepared to decide on June 14 whether to include mainland-listed "A" shares in its emerging market index . "A global stock index without (Chinese) A shares is incomplete," Qi told a financial conference in Shanghai. "We take a very open attitude to MSCI's decision. But including A shares is inevitable. You can't wait for the market to be perfect...You can't wait too long."

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Last year, MSCI postponed including Chinese shares in its index, partly due to concerns over accessibility for foreigners, liquidity and the maturity of the China market. Qi said regulators have already taken a series of steps to address investor concerns, such as making the market more accessible to overseas investors, and publishing rules to regulate share suspensions by listed companies. 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 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. "The CSRC had previously been pretty slow at working out liberalization 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.


Presidential candidates and politicians from across the political spectrum Sunday denounced the worst mass shooting ever executed on U.S. soil, which left at least 50 people dead on Sunday, joining President Barack Obama in expressing both shock and outrage.

The attack, which happened in the wee hours of the night in Orlando, Fla., is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism. It began when a gunman stormed the Pulse Nightclub, popular in the gay and lesbian community, about 2 a.m. with an AR-15 type rifle and a handgun, officials told NBC News.

Though Muslim leaders and the shooter's family have rejected any religious connection to the attacks, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump called for Obama to address "radical Islamic terrorism." Urging Obama to step down, Trump demanded an end to "politically correct" thinking, insisting it played a role in the massacre.



The attack sparked a broad online debate, with political figures drawing familiar battle lines on gun control and terrorism.



"Although it is still early in the investigation, we know enough to say that this was an act of terror, and an act of hate," Obama said in a speech Sunday. "And as Americans, we are united in grief, in outrage and in resolve to defend our people."

Obama also made a call for "common sense" gun control policies, echoing a refrain he's made in the aftermath of previous shootings.

However, Trump reiterated his call for a "complete shutdown" of Muslims entering the U.S., which drew widespread condemnation  even from within his own party.

In a statement, Trump blasted both Obama and Hillary Clinton, Obama's former Democratic rival who is now running to succeed him.



"In his remarks today, President Obama disgracefully refused to even say the words 'radical Islam,'" Trump said in his statement. "For that reason alone, he should step down. If Hillary Clinton, after this attack, still cannot say the two words 'radical Islam,' she should get out of this race for the presidency," he added, taking aim at his Democratic challenger.



He added: "If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore. Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen  and it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can't afford to be politically correct anymore."

Trump tweeted: "Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?"



"Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!"
A Government of the Straits Settlements $10 specimen note dated Jan. 1, 1925, with red overprints and zeroes for a serial number was hammered down at $19,975.

At $23,500 in the Lyn Knight Currency auction was a rarity graded by Paper Money Guaranty as Extremely Fine 40 Exceptional Paper Quality  the first Philippines 20-peso note issued under American governance.

Philippines notes were among the top lots in Lyn Knight Currency Auctions' sale at the 40th International Paper Money Show in Memphis, Tenn.

Reminiscing on the 40-year history of the International Paper Money Show in Memphis, Tenn., world paper money pioneer and icon Neil Shafer had a startling recollection about a conversation he had at the first Memphis show. The late world coin and currency dealer Bill Christensen told him there, Shafer said, that it was doubtful that a world currency note would ever be worth $1,000 to a collector.

Times have changed beyond recognition. The world section of the Lyn Knight Currency auction in Memphis would have left Christensen shaking his head while 466 individual notes out of the sales 958 lots sold for over that figure (including 17.5 percent buyers fee). We can only imagine Christensens reaction upon seeing that two dozen of the lots went for more than $10,000, and that four of them, all from the Philippines, more than doubled that price.

At $23,500 was a rarity graded by Paper Money Guaranty as Extremely Fine 40 Exceptional Paper Quality  the first Philippines 20-peso note issued under American governance.

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Two notes from the Spanish Philippine regime dated April 26, 1877, realized $21,150 and $20,562.50. The first, a light blue uniface 25-peso Billete del Tesoro or Treasury bill in PCGS Currency EF-45 is thought to be the highest denomination of the series. Its companion light-brown 10-peso Treasury bill is a discovery note unknown to all experts, including Shafer, until now. PCGS Currency graded it Very Fine 35 Apparent edge tears and minor damage.

The highest priced lot in the auction, at $28,200, was an eight-piece undated Philippines Victory set from 1944 consisting of 1-, 2-, 5-, 10-, 20-, 50-, 100-, and 500-peso notes, each with the identical serial number F0000008. Grades assigned by PMG ranged from About Uncirculated 58 to Gem Uncirculated 65. It is believed that this set once belonged to Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas.

Two other Philippine notes from the April 26, 1877, issue were also in the top dozen. At $16,000 was a 4-peso Treasury bill in PCGS Currency VF-30 Apparent. A 1-peso Treasury bill that PCGS Currency rated VF-25 Apparent found a new owner for $15,275

A PMG Choice Uncirculated 64 green and yellow Government of the Straits Settlements $10 specimen note dated Jan. 1, 1925, with red overprints and zeroes for a serial number was hammered at $19,975.

Also part of a strong showing by high-end British Commonwealth issues were a pair of Bahamas notes. The 1968 Bahamas Monetary Authority $100 issue is the highest denomination in the Queen Elizabeth II series and realized $17,625 in PCGS Currency VF-35. The $15,275 attained by a seldom-offered Central Bank of the Bahamas $50 note from 1974 in Gem Uncirculated 66 was about triple its estimate of $3,000 to $6,000.

Joel Shafer, the firms world paper currency specialist, was pleased with the results and the sales good balance between floor and Internet bidding.
Promoted at bank

Sarah Peterson, Jodi Hart, Lorie Thom and Peggy Valnes have been promoted at Kirkwood Band & Trust.

Peterson is now an electronic banking specialist. A native of Mandan, she has been with the bank, most recently as a bookkeeper.

Hart has become a bookkeeper. She joined the bank in 2012 as a teller. Hart is a graduate of Bismarck State College and North Dakota State College of Science.

Thom has been promoted to mortgage receptionist. A native of Oregon and a graduate of Bob Jones University, she joined the bank in 2015 as a teller.

Valnes has been promoted to teller supervisor from head teller. She is a native of South Dakota and has been with the bank since 2007.

Gardner with clinic

Bethany Gardner, a physician assistant in family medicine, recently joined Sanford Health Walk-in Clinic in Dickinson.

Gardner graduated from the University of North Dakota and received a masters degree in physician assistant studies from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

Osborn hired

Tanner Osborn has been hired as a sheet metal worker in Robert Gibb & Sons sheet metal division in Bismarck.

Osborn is a native of Bismarck.

Ouellette achieves

Abigail Ouellette, a CNA, has been named the employee of the quarter at Missouri Slope Lutheran Care Center in Bismarck.

A nursing student at Bismarck State College, Ouellette also serves as a mentor to new staff at Missouri Slope.

Four hired by BND

Amanda Woidyla, MiKayla Kary, Jennifer Huntley and Lisa Grabar are new employees at the Bank of North Dakota.

Woidyla is the university and student development coordinator in the education market. She previously was an admissions representative at the University of Mary. She earned a bachelor of arts degree from College of St. Scholastica.

Kary is a teller in retail banking services. Previously a financial services contact center representative at Capital Credit Union, she is a Bismarck State College student.

Huntley is an account technician in investments. She previously worked at Independent Insurance Services Inc. Huntley holds a bachelors degree in accounting from Bemidji State University.

Grabar is an auditor. Grabar had been an internal auditor at MDU. She earned a bachelors degree in hospitality and tourism management from North Dakota State University and a bachelors degree in accounting from Dickinson State University.

Barry with BAC

Brian Barry has been hired as an A&P maintenance technician at Bismarck Aero Center.

He has more than six years of aircraft maintenance experience, beginning in the South Dakota Army National Guard primarily as a Blackhawk helicopter maintenance technician.

Originally from Rapid City, S.D., he attended Lake Area Tech in Watertown, S.D., where he completed the A&P maintenance technician program.

Bloom joins MAC

Rick Bloom has joined Mandan Aero Center as an aircraft maintenance technician.

A Navy veteran, Bloom attended Cheyenne Aero Tech in Wyoming, where he received his A&P License. He has nearly 30 years of aircraft maintenance experience and worked as a contract aircraft maintenance technician across the United States.

Bloom grew up in Bismarck-Mandan.

Wolbaum directs

Dorleen Wolbaum has been hired as the new director of Heartland Child Nutrition, Bismarck, a statewide sponsor of the U.S. Department of Agricultures Child and Adult Care Food Program.

Wolbaum has 12 years of experience working in the CACFP.

Barsness promoted

Mike Barsness has been promoted to director of pre-construction services at Consolidated Construction Co. Inc., with a focus on projects through the Bismarck office.

Barsness holds a bachelor's degree in construction engineering from North Dakota State University and is a LEED Accredited Professional with a specialty in building design and construction. He has been with Consolidated since 2013.

Straw with group

Hannah Straw has been hired as a communication specialist at the North Dakota Water Users Association, Bismarck.

A recent graduate from North Dakota State University with degrees in management communication and strategic communication, she completed a marketing and communications internship with Farmers Insurance in Fargo.
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.
Shareif Ziyadat/Getty ImagesThe biopic based on the trials, tribulations and triumphs of R&B veteran Miki Howard will premiere tonight -- starring Teyonah Parris in the lead role as the chart-topping songstress.

Titled Love Under New Management: The Miki Howard Story, it is directed by Christine Swanson, who co-wrote the script with Rhonda Baraka. Hollywood veterans including Vanessa Bell Calloway, Gary Dourdan, Darius McCrary and LisaRaye McCoy round out the cast.

Howard, who serves as a producer and the narrator of the project, said watching previous episodes of the networks Unsung series sparked her interest in the award-winning franchise.

I was motivated before I did the Unsungs to do the Unsungs by seeing Phyllis Hyman and The Debarge, she told ABC Radio. I was watching the Unsungs and I said, 'Oh my God, they're going to call me. I know they're going to call me' because that was my group of people. And they did and they said, 'We'd like to do an Unsung' and they found me through someone and I was like, 'Yeah, okay. Sure.'"

Shot in Savannah last year, the film delves deep into the chart-toppers life of rejection, abandonment, drug abuse and domestic violence.

I'd heard her music and sung it many times as my parents blasted it in the house but I didn't know that this was her story and that she had gone through so much. Miki came up in a time when there was no Snapchat so she really lived a full life very much under the radar. So it was exciting to read that and find out that yes, all of this is true and it has not been embellished for television," Parris says.

Love Under New Management: The Miki Howard Story premieres tonight, June 12, at 7 p.m. ET on TV One.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Bismarck's growth spurt has resulted in a number of voting site revisions for Tuesday's primary and city elections. The changes were needed because of population trends, traffic and parking challenges, according to Burleigh County Auditor Kevin Glatt.

Changes will involve:

 Replacing the Horizon Middle School and Centennial Elmentary School voting sites to create a combined precinct at Century Baptist Church for District 47.

 The former Gateway Mall voting site will be closed. A piece of the former Horizon Precinct from east of Washington Street will be added to the former Gateway Mall Precinct, and voters in these borders will cast ballots at GracePoint Church at 43rd Avenue and Washington Street. Borders for GracePoint voters will be north of Interstate 94, south of 57th Avenue and from Washington Street to Highway 83.

 A new voting precinct site has been created at Legacy High School for District 7 with a boundary east of the railroad west of Centennial Road, north of Interstate 94 within city limits.

 The Sunrise Elementary School boundaries have been shrunk to east of Centennial Road within city limits.

 A new voting precinct site has been created at Liberty Elementary School for those living north of 57th Avenue within city limits.

All other voting sites will remain the same as 2014, according to Burleigh County Auditor Kevin Glatt, particularly those who voted at the Bismarck Event Center for combined precinct sites. Rural voting sites also will remain the same.

The sites will include:

District 7

Precinct 0701 residents will vote at Lincoln City Hall at 74 Santee Rd.

Precincts 0702/4702 residents will vote at GracePoint Church at 205 N. 43rd Ave. N.E.

Precinct 0703 voters will vote at Sunrise School at 3800 Nickerson Ave.

Precincts 0704/0804/2803 will vote at the Burleigh County 4-H Building at 3715 E. Bismarck Expressway.

Precincts 0705/0805 will vote at Evangel Assembly of God Church at 3225 N. 14th St. in Bismarck.

Precincts 0706/0806 will vote at Liberty Elementary School at 5400 Onyx Drive in Bismarck.

Precinct 0707 voters will cast ballots at The Element, east of Evangel Assembly of God Church (the church youth center) at 3220 N. 19th St.

Precinct 0708 will cast their ballots at Legacy High School at 3400 E. Calgary Ave.

Distrcit 8

Precinct 0801/0802 voters go to the Wilton County Shop at 30300 93rd St. N.E. in Wilton.

Precinct 0803 will vote at the Wing Fire Hall.

Precincts 0804/0704/2803 will vote at the County 4-H Building at 3715 E. Bismarck Expressway in Bismarck.

Precincts 0805/0705 will vote at the Evangel Assembly of God at 3225 N. 14th St.

Precincts 0806/0706 voters will cast ballots at Liberty Elementary School at 5400 Onyx Drive.

District 28

Precinct 2801 residents will vote at Sterling School.

Precinct 2802 residents vote at Menoken School.

Precincts 2803 area residents will vote at the County 4-H Building at 3715 E. Bismarck Expressway.

District 30

Residents in Precinct 3001 will vote at the United Tribes Technical College at 3315 University Drive.

Those living in Precinct 3002 will vote at the Senior Center at 315 N. 20th St. in Bismarck.

Residents in Precinct 3003 will vote at the Lord of Life Lutheran Church at 1143 N. 26th St.

Residents living in Precinct 3004 will vote at the Solheim School at 325 Munich Drive.

District 32

Precinct 3201 residents will vote at South Central High School at 406 S. Anderson St.

Precinct 3202 residents will vote at Roosevelt Elmentary School at 613 W. Ave. B.

Residents living within Precincts 3203, 3204, 3205, 3206 and 3207 will vote at the Bismarck Event Center.

District 35

Precinct 3501 voters will cast their ballots at Highland Acres School at 1200 Prairie Drive.

Precinct 3502 residents will vote at the North Dakota State Capitol Building at 600 E. Blvd.

Precinct 3503 residents will vote at Northridge School at 1727 N. Third St.

Voters of Precinct 3504 will cast ballots at Pioneer School at 1400 E. Braman Ave.

Polls for Precinct 3505 will be located at the Robert Miller School at 1989 N. 20th St.

Residents of Precinct 3506 will vote at Simle Middle School at 1215 N. 19 St.

District 47

Precinct 4701 voters will cast ballots at the Century Baptist Church at 205 Colt Ave.

Precinct 4702 residents will vote at GracePoint Church at 205 43rd Ave. N.E.

Precinct 4703 residents will vote at Grimsrud School at 716 W. St. Benedict.

Precinct 4704 voters will cast their ballots at Century Baptist Church at 205 Colt Ave.
Morton County polling sites for Tuesday's primary and city elections remain unchanged from 2014, said County Auditor Dawn Rhone.

 Flasher area residents in Precinct 20, District 31 will vote at the Flasher Community Credit Union at 105 Main St.

 St. Anthony area residents within District 31, Precinct 23 will cast ballots at the St. Anthony Hall at 2332, County Road 136.

 Voters inhabiting Precinct 24, District 31 will vote at the Mandan Airport, 4490 Highway 6.

 Voters in District 34, Precinct 4 will cast their ballots at the Mandan Eagles Club, 1310 Collins Ave.

 Residents of District 33, Precinct 32 will vote at the First Church of the Nazarene at 4209 Old Red Trail in Mandan.

 Voters in Precinct 17 of District 31 also votes at the First Church of the Nazarene.

 Those living in the borders of District 33, Precinct 33 will vote at the New Salem Auditorium, 400 Main Ave.

 Residents of Precinct 36 in District 36 will vote at the Glen Ullin City Hall, 119 S. Main.

 Precinct 38, District 36 voters will cast their ballots at the Hebron Community Center, 600 Washington Ave.

 Voters in Precinct 34, District 33 will vote at the Almont Memorial Hall, 108 Burt Ave.

 District 34, Precinct 8 voters will vote at Spirit of Life Catholic Church, 700 First St. S.E.

 Voters for District 34, Precinct 2 will vote at Midway Lanes at 3327 Memorial Highway.

 Voters for District 31, Precinct 18 also votes at Midway Lanes.

 District 31, Precinct 5 will vote at the Mandan Eagles Club, 1310 Collins Ave.

 District 34, Precinct 3 votes at the Mandan Eagles Club.

 District 34, Precinct 1, votes at Spirit of Life.

 District 34, Precinct 6 and 7 votes at First Lutheran Church, 408 Ninth St. N.W. in Mandan.
June 8, 2016 - Members of the local Project Safe Neighborhoods Task Force, a national initiative to reduce gang and gun violence, meet to review cases were guns, ammunition or shell casings are recovered. Law enforcement and prosecutors meet every week to review the cases. They work to weed out the worst offenders. All citations, memos, arrests and offense reports are reviewed.

(Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal)

SHARE June 8, 2016 - Detectives James McDonald, left, and Richard Simes, right, prepare to transport a suspect to the Federal Building. Both detectives are part of the Project Safe Neighborhoods Task Force, a national initiative to reduce gang and gun violence, (Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal)

By Katie Fretland of The Commercial Appeal

When Memphis police Sgt. Willie Mathena was a patrol officer, he discovered that criminals were bothering an elderly woman he always checked on.

She loved to sit on her South Memphis front porch, but drug dealers told her she had to go inside when they signaled by turning on a light. She couldn't come back outside until the light was off, and they were done with their transactions.

Police did surveillance and raided the drug dealers' house, arresting the perpetrators.

Later the woman told Mathena, "I can finally sit on the porch again thanks to you," Mathena recalled in a recent interview with The Commercial Appeal.

"I told her, "No it's thanks to you, you can sit on the porch again," Mathena said. "'I just helped you do something that needed to be done.'"

Mathena, who joined the Memphis Police Department in 1995, was checking on the woman about a decade before joining the Project Safe Neighborhoods Task Force, a national initiative to reduce gang and gun violence.

Law enforcement and prosecutors meet every week to review cases where guns, ammunition or shell casings are recovered. They work to weed out the worst offenders. All citations, memos, arrests and offense reports are reviewed. They arrest fugitives and wanted parties, run local and nationwide criminal histories of each suspect, present cases to grand juries and subpoena witnesses.

The local PSN has reviewed more than 28,000 incidents, including 2,000 last year.

"We have seen an uptick with violent crime here in Memphis and Shelby County and so that is why this is so important," said U.S. Attorney Edward L. Stanton III. "What you have with this initiative is cooperation, collaboration and communication. State, federal and local law enforcement all playing well in the sandbox for one common cause and that is to combat violent crime here in Shelby County."

Stanton's spokesman Louis Goggans said a few examples of the results of Western Tennessee cases of the initiative are:

- Christopher John Clark, who was sentenced in 2013 to 76 years in prison for multiple weapons violations, assault and carjackings

-Christopher Criswell, who was sentenced to 20 years in 2015 years for unlawful possession of nine casings of ammunition after an apartment shooting

-Kedrick White, who was sentenced to 20 years in 2015 for the armed robbery of a gas station

-Javalus Bullard, who was sentenced to more than 15 years in 2015 for illegally possessing a handgun, which he used to shoot at his girlfriend

-Lereginald Strong, who was sentenced to more than 30 years in 2013 for an armed carjacking

State and federal authorities prosecuted Brashard "Hotboy" Gibbs who was convicted of killing a man in a 2013 drive-by shooting at a Lamar Avenue car wash and shooting at three people driving on Interstate 240. He was sentenced to life plus 143 years in his state case and 20 years in federal prison for being a felon in possession of shell casings.

A Memphis police lieutenant, Chris Moffatt, supervises the Project Safe Neighborhoods task force, which comprises one Memphis police sergeant, eight Memphis police investigators, one Shelby County Sheriff's Office investigator and one agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives.

The task force investigated a 2014 smash-and-grab at the Wolfchase Galleria when a group of men with sledgehammers stole jewelry at about 7:30 p.m. on a Saturday. The task force followed leads to Houston where similar offenses had been committed.

"We did the case from beginning to end," Mathena said. "We ended up actually going to Houston and working with Houston in arresting those guys for the smash -and-grab."

Before joining the task force in 2008, Detective Zachery Gatlin was a patrol officer in South Memphis where he saw the impact of violent crime. Around 2000, he was working a shooting call when children came out to play by the squad cars outside of the crime scene.

He asked one boy why everybody was outside with all the police around working.

For the boy, who was about 10, the reason was safety.

"He looked up and said, 'Because we know nothing will happen right now,'" Gatlin recalled.

On the task force, Gatlin said violent offenders, including people who fire into crowds and shoot up houses, are those they aim to remove from the community for long periods of time.

"We go after some of the worst individuals," Gatlin said.
Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal June 11, 2016  James Meredith marches with nearly 100 people down St. Martin Street toward the National Civil Rights Museum to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Meredith's "March Against Fear." The march ended at the National Civil Rights Museum, where there was a "Rally Against Fear." (Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal)

By Kayleigh Skinner of The Commercial Appeal

Fifty years after he began the journey, Civil Rights leader James Meredith returned to Memphis to commemorate an event that nearly took his life.

Meredith lined up with Memphians at AutoZone Park Saturday afternoon to participate in the National Civil Rights Museum's "Rally Against Fear," a celebration of the March Against Fear, also known as the Meredith March. Meredith integrated the University of Mississippi in 1962.

The original march began in Memphis June 5, 1966. Meredith and a few supporters organized the walk to encourage voter registration for African-Americans and intended to finish in Jackson, Mississippi. However, the next day he was shot as he walked down a road near Hernando. Civil Rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael and Floyd McKissick stepped in to continue for him.

"Meredith was marching against the terrorism that was being piled on around white supremacy and discrimination. That work was the beginning, it was not an ending," museum President Terri Lee Freeman said. "There is so much more that we have to do."

About 100 people walked alongside Meredith, traveling from AutoZone Park to the courtyard of the museum. The route took the marchers near two Downtown locations where citizens were recently killed  18 year-old Myneishia Johnson was shot May 22 near the Flying Saucer restaurant and Officer Verdell Smith was struck by a fleeing car near Beale and Third Street June 4.

"I think this idea of rallying against fear (is important) in particular because of what we've been seeing lately here in Memphis," Freeman said. "There is this real need for the symbolism that says we're not going to live in fear in our own community."

Meredith told the crowd families needed to take responsibility for youth's actions and teach them right from wrong to prevent future tragedies.

"I heard somebody refer to the 99 ... that's been killed on record this year in Memphis," Meredith, 82, said. "My God tells me control of all of that is in our hands. What we have to do as a people is teach our children good and right."

After the rally, the city recorded its 100 homicide outside Family Dollar in North Memphis.

Several museum officials and community leaders spoke during the rally, which included a voter-registration drive.

Rev. Earle Fisher of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Whitehaven gave a passionate speech in which he lambasted the media for making "a public spectacle" of black power and pain and reassured the audience that "the movement" toward equity and equality for all is ongoing.

"Fifty years later, James Meredith is still walking against fear," Fisher said. "Black marching still matters."
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By Michael Collins of The Commercial Appeal

WASHINGTON  In a journey filled with poignant moments, the one that stood out most for U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen was a salute.

It happened as the Memphis Democrat and a small group of congressional lawmakers were about to enter the South African prison where Nelson Mandela was held for 18 of his 27 years behind bars. Their guide was Ahmed Kathrada, an anti-apartheid activist who was confined with Mandela at the Robben Island penitentiary, just off the coast of Cape Town.

As Kathrada and the Americans approached, the guard on duty saluted the former prisoner and handed him the keys to Mandela's cell.

For Cohen, that show of respect to a man who had once been jailed by his own government over his political views spoke volumes about how far the world has come on the issues of race and equality.

"There was a lot to absorb and think about," Cohen said. "It made a big impact on me."

Cohen made the trip to South Africa a couple of weeks ago with seven other members of Congress involved in civil-rights issues. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who led the delegation, invited Cohen because he had authored legislation that formally apologized for slavery and the Jim Crow laws that followed.

The trip aimed to mark the 50th anniversary of then-Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's "Day of Affirmation" speech at the University of Cape Town. The speech, delivered June 6, 1966 to students fighting the racial segregation of South African universities, compared racial inequality and prejudice in the United States and South Africa.

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and... those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance," Kennedy famously said that day.

The speech, which many historians regard as Kennedy's best, gave hope to anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, including the imprisoned Mandela.

Cohen has long been so enamored with the senator's words that he had them inscribed on a plaque given to him by the American Civil Liberties Union, which honored him in 1992 for his work as a state senator.

Being in Cape Town to commemorate the speech and its important place in the history of two countries was a moving experience, Cohen said.

More than two-dozen members of the Kennedy family were there to mark the occasion. So were, in Cohen's words, "two of the most angelic figures in the world"  Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a social-rights activist in South Africa, and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a former Freedom Rider and civil rights hero in the U.S., and a contemporary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"It was spectacular," Cohen said of being in the same room with the two icons.

Cohen said he was honored to take part in the festivities as the congressman representing a city that will be forever tied to King's legacy.

The trip also reminded him of the parallels between the U.S. civil-rights movement and the fight to end apartheid in South Africa.

The African National Congress, South Africa's social democratic political party, was founded in 1912, just three years after the NAACP was formed in the United States. Mandela and King both took inspiration from the teachings of Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, who advocated nonviolent civil disobedience.

Though South Africa still has racial problems, nonviolent civil disobedience is alive and well there today.

At one point in the ceremonies, a group of student protesters marched into the room and stood quietly in front of the stage where Lewis was speaking. Some carried signs denouncing the Obama administration. Others demanded free college education, echoing a political message heard often in the United States.

No one shoved the protesters, yelled at them or reacted angrily to their presence, Cohen said.

After a few minutes, they left on their own  peacefully  in keeping with the philosophy and legacies of Mandela, King and Kennedy.

Michael Collins is The Commercial Appeal's Washington correspondent. His weekly Tennessee in D.C. column highlights Volunteer State lawmakers, causes and connections. Contact him at 703-854-8927 or mcollins2@gannett.com.
Frank Koch, 73, Bismarck, died June 10, 2016, at CHI St. Alexius Health. A Mass of Christian burial will be held at 2 p.m. Tuesday, June 14, at Church of Corpus Christi, Bismarck, with the Rev. Paul Becker officiating. Burial will be at Finnish Lutheran Cemetery, Kintyre.

Visitation will be Monday from 5 to 7 p.m. at Parkway Funeral Service, 2330 Tyler Parkway, Bismarck, where a prayer service will begin at 7 p.m. Visitation will continue on Tuesday one hour prior to the service at the church.

In the snow and cold of Feb. 15, 1943, a tiny baby boy named Francis arrived in rural Grant County, number five in an eventual family of 10. Dayo and Neifa (Kopp) Koch were very proud of their children, helping them to form a strong work ethic and nurturing an intense desire to learn.

Frank graduated from high school in McIntosh, S.D., in 1960. He graduated from Valley City State College in 1965 with degrees in chemistry and mathematics education, and from North Dakota State University in 1969 with a masters degree in chemistry education. His career included stints as a chemist at the North Dakota Health Department and as a teacher of mathematics and chemistry at schools in Center and Edgeley, and at Christ the King in Mandan. In 1968, he began a career at Bismarck State College as a chemistry professor that ended in 2003 with his first bout of cancer.

During the years, he was very active on national and regional Two-Year Chemistry Association boards. He was recognized by the Valley City State College Alumni Association in 2001 and received the Alumni of the Year Award at Bismarck State College in 1998. But science didnt end with cancer; he pushed forward with the dream to create a science center for children in the Bismarck area. Gateway to Science has grown over the past 20 years with Frank building exhibits and serving as president of the Board of Directors as they take the next step in future development.

Frank was an overly active Flickertail Woodcarvers member, and he chaired the annual show for years. Never ceasing to be a teacher, he received three North Dakota Council of the Arts teaching grants to give students an advanced taste for woodcarving. He was a member of the Bismarck Lions Club, Elks Lodge 1199, and the Visiting Scientist Series Committee. And through it all, he would make time to play a game of bridge with his wife, Kay, and friends.

After Kay Liversage came into his life in 1966, she shared his enthusiasm for science, woodcarving, travel, community service and lake time. Joining in all this fun were their two children: Nancy, who pursued education, married to Steven Durow; and Robert, who pursued meteorology, married to Lonna Dillavou. His grandchildren, Alex and Emily Durow and Isabel Koch, will cherish the memories of many science and carving experiences with their grandpa.

Frank enjoyed organizing family reunions, holiday gatherings and summer fun at Lake Isabel with his eight brothers and sisters, Geri Senger, Woodbury, Minn., Delores Emineth, Vancouver, Wash., Bill (Leona) Koch, Raleigh, Loretta (Joe) Barron, Davenport, Iowa, Jim Koch, Bismarck, Rose (Gary) Braun, Bismarck, Linda (George) Kraft, Bullhead City, Ariz., and Kathy (Dan) Wolf, Bismarck.

Departed family include his parents; his brother Edmund; Kays parents, Gavin and Gertrude Liversage; and brothers-in-law Mike Senger and Mike Emineth.

Franks family shares his dream for the future of Gateway to Science and in lieu of cards and flowers, please bless the construction of Gateway to Science with your gifts.

Go to www.parkwayfuneral.com to share memories of Frank and to sign the online guest book.
June 9, 2016 - Adult educator Almeda Luster leads a math class at HopeWorks. After the state revoked SCS's funding for Messick, organization HopeWorks took over the contract and has had to expand to accommodate the increased student population. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal)

SHARE June 9, 2016 - Valarie Matthews (left) teaches a class on early reading at HopeWorks on Thursday afternoon. Now that SCS has closed Messick Adult Center, a handful of other organizations in town are tasked with absorbing students who are seeking a GED program. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal) June 9, 2016 - Ron Wade, Executive Director of HopeWorks. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal) June 9, 2016 - Ron Wade, Executive Director of HopeWorks. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal) June 9, 2016 - Ron Wade, Executive Director of HopeWorks. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal)

By Jennifer Pignolet of The Commercial Appeal

Twenty-seven-year-old Lakisha Williams took a few months off from high school equivalency classes this spring, but her teenaged nieces were keeping her studies on track until life allowed her to go back to school.

She fully intended to return to the Shelby County Schools program for adults to earn a high school or equivalent diploma, but in February, the closing of Messick Adult Center ended her program.

"I saw it on the news and I was like, 'What am I going to do now?'" said Williams, who dropped out of Melrose High in the 10th grade.

Williams searched for a backup and found HopeWorks, attending her first class Thursday. Her goal: Finish before her baby is due in August.

"That's giving me motivation to go ahead and get done with this," she said.

Williams is one of 578 students who transferred from Messick to HopeWorks after SCS lost state funding for the program.

Since then, HopeWorks, led by Executive Director Ron Wade, is carrying the majority of the burden for adult education in Shelby County.

"We're the safety net, I think," Wade said.

Citing low enrollment and graduation rates at Messick Adult Center, the state revoked about $800,000 of funding from SCS, which was operating the high school equivalency program on 75 percent of a Department of Labor and Workforce Development grant. HopeWorks had the other 25 percent, and the remainder of SCS's portion was redirected to the faith-based nonprofit in February for the rest of the fiscal year.

HopeWorks has now been awarded the full one-year, $1.7 million contract for adult education in four West Tennessee counties  Shelby, Tipton, Lauderdale and Fayette  starting in July.

Since March, the students displaced from Messick have roughly doubled HopeWorks' previous enrollment. The organization has also increased its number of teachers from 12 to 23 and locations from six to 12, mostly in church classrooms.

HopeWorks was formed 28 years ago with the goal of removing a lack of education and criminal records as barriers to employment. The organization's primary focus has been a free but intense 13-week program where adults earn high school equivalency degrees, as well as participate in job training, internships and mentoring. Students in that program are drug tested and expected to maintain a high level of attendance. Up to 40 percent of students don't make it through the 13 weeks, Wade said, but the ones who do  including some who are incarcerated  have interviews lined up by graduation.

With the state funding, HopeWorks is ramping up its high school equivalency-only program. Students can attend class as much or as little as they want, at any location and any time, and are not drug tested.

Despite an expectation that SCS would reach about 7,000 students with its high school equivalency program, only 882 students were taking classes at Messick in January, the state said in March. In a six-month time frame last year, only 24 students graduated with their high school equivalency degree.

In the last two months at HopeWorks, 64 students have earned their high school equivalency diplomas. But it's still a drop in the bucket compared to the need. According to the state, more than 85,000 people could be served across the four West Tennessee counties.

Shelby schools will no longer be a part of that effort. Faced with having to replace the lost state funding, the school board voted this spring to get out of the adult education business, closing all of Messick's programs and saving over $2 million.

SCS board member Kevin Woods said he expects the state will want to see results from HopeWorks, and will hold the organization accountable.

"I think HopeWorks has the infrastructure in place to deliver," Woods said.

Woods is also the executive director for the local Workforce Investment Network, which is developing a partnership with HopeWorks to offer high school equivalency classes at WIN's headquarters, where students can then funnel directly into work programs.

Wade said the partnerships are what will allow HopeWorks to be successful.

"I don't feel like our small little faith-based group has to be the savior (of) education of West Tennessee," Wade said. "What I do feel is that we have some really good collaborative partners that go a little bit further than the education piece."

While HopeWorks is now the major provider for high school equivalency classes, students still have a few other options, including Goodwill's Excel Center in South Memphis. The adult public charter school is wrapping up its first year with more than 30 students graduating June 18. Students enroll full or part time, but earn full high school degrees.

Jeff Hoover, director of the national office of The Excel Center and currently filling in as the director in Memphis, said Goodwill saw a need to serve adults in Memphis even before Messick closed. The school has 280 students enrolled but capacity for 350 and offers free classes, transportation and childcare for its four-day-a-week program.

Ever since Messick stopped offering high school equivalency programs, he said, the need has become "paramount."

"I think it really quickens our step even more, that the need, and meeting that need, really becomes a priority," Hoover said. "Because now, we're it."
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By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Washington Post

A flood of innovative cancer treatments helped fuel an 11.5 percent surge in spending on oncology drugs over the past year  to $107 billion globally, according to a new report.

But there's a crucial question the study can't quite answer: How much are patients benefiting from this expanding arsenal of high-priced drugs?

The report from IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics highlights 70 new cancer treatments, treating more than 20 types of tumors, all approved in the past five years. In the U.S., where cancer drug spending was $37.8 billion last year, those new drugs alone account for $9.4 billion of the increase since 2010.

"The highlight, to us, is to see this surge of innovation in cancer treatments. ... That's a remarkable leap forward in terms of cancer care in relatively short order," said Murray Aitken, executive director of the IMS institute.

But the 72 percent increase in spending over five years in the U.S. raises a trickier question, too: Are cancer patients getting their money's worth?

As $10,000-a-month cancer drugs have become a norm, doctors have begun to push back, insisting that many drugs aren't worth the price.

"I think with the current incentive structure where the sky's the limit (on price), it doesn't matter if you make a great drug or a marginal drug," said Vinay Prasad, an oncologist at Oregon Health and Science University who studies cancer drug approvals. "The problem is, I'm certain with the amount we're spending extra, we're not getting the commensurate value with our patients being better off."

Not all approved cancer drugs are alike. Some may provide profound benefits, lengthening life by years; others may significantly shrink a tumor, but increase patients' chances of survival only by small amounts.

Prasad's work has found that the high prices of new cancer drugs don't reliably reflect their novelty or how well they worked in trials. One of his studies, published last year in JAMA Internal Medicine, examined 36 drugs that were approved between 2008 and 2012 based on early indicators that they were working, such as evidence they shrank tumors. Such measures are meant to speed up approvals, but there's no guarantee that a drug that temporarily stops a tumor from growing will extend lives. Only five of the 36 drugs in his study lengthened patients' lives, despite a median of more than four years of follow-up study.

Even if a drug is shown to be effective, the question of cost is unresolved.

One drug that is profiled in the report is a lung cancer medication called necitumumab, which costs $11,000 to $12,000 a month. It has been shown to lengthen life by 1.6 months. If its price were linked to its effectiveness, a three-week cycle would cost less than $1,500, according to a JAMA Oncology study published last year.

A key way overall drug spending has been contained over time is through the expiration of patents and exclusivity rights that protect drugs against competition. The IMS report shows that although the savings when drugs lose their exclusivity has been considerable, it has been counteracted by price increases on existing drugs.

In other countries, branded drugs approved before 2010 actually decreased in price over the same time period.

But there's an upside to the high spending for cancer drugs in the U.S.: Patients here get access to more treatments than patients in other countries, Aitken points out.

The study found that of 49 new drugs analyzed that were introduced between 2010 and 2014, only six countries, including the U.S., had access to more than half of the novel treatments.

The report clearly shows that Americans get good access to cancer drugs compared to people in many other countries. What it also shows is that access comes with a price. Whether that price is a good value depends on how effective the drugs are  which, as Prasad's research points out, is still unknown for a surprising number of drugs.

Carolyn Y. Johnson is a reporter for The Washington Post.
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By Ellen Goodman, Special To The Washington Post

BOSTON  In the end, the personal was political. What brought the 78-year-old California governor and former Jesuit seminarian to sign the law that will allow doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients was thinking about his own last days.

"I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain," wrote Jerry Brown, breaking a long silence on this issue. "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."

And so on Thursday, California became the fifth state to make physician-assisted death legal.

I share Brown's personal wish and, given only a yes or no option, I too would have signed the California legislation.

Yet, I worry about these bills spreading across the country, under consideration in 20 other states. I worry that the political debate may hijack a much-needed and much-richer movement to change the way we die in America.

In the past few years, the once-toxic subject of dying has gone mainstream. The disinformation campaign about "death panels" collapsed. Medicare has just begun to pay doctors for time spent having conversations about end-of-life wishes.

At the same time in Oregon, the first state to pass a "Death with Dignity Act," only one of every 500 deaths comes from doctor-ordered medication. So why are we spending so much political energy to help the one rather than the 499?

The debate reminds me of the way we attack issues these days  like food fights. We ramp up controversies with opponents on either side, hurling opinions at each other.

If opponents of legal abortion call themselves pro-life and proponents call themselves pro-choice, well, in this argument proponents talk about "death with dignity" while opponents talk about "assisted suicide."

Indeed I am reminded of the line attributed to Woody Allen when asked to describe his religion: Jewish... with reservations. In this end-of-life congregation, I find myself pro-legislation with deep and abiding reservations.

Reservation One? How many of the people who favor death with dignity think it's the single, simple solution to the entire problem of people dying in ways they would not choose? We forget that the huge majority don't want a right to die; they want a right to care.

Two: The important safeguards in this legislation require, as well they should, that a person asking for a lethal drug is of sound mind. But the greatest fear among many of the people I know is outliving their mind. For people with dementia, the legislation offers nothing.

Three: The "death with dignity" mantra appeals most to that cohort of people who believe they can control the end of their lives, the way they controlled the rest. Surely this is not the only way to die with dignity.

Four: The assumption behind these bills is that pain is commonly uncontrollable. Yet palliative care doctors tell us uncontrollable pain is as rare as the 1 percent. We need more palliative care. But a prescription for death mustn't become the dominant substitute for "comfort care."

And, Reservation Five: This bill makes it legal for doctors to give lethal drugs. But we know from surveys how few doctors are comfortable talking with patients about their end-of-life wishes.

Americans face the health care system with two conflicting fears  that they won't get enough care and that they will get unwanted care. At the heart of my reservations is the fear that we set up a false choice between suffering miserably or hastening death.

I agree that doctors shouldn't be prosecuted and the few people with unrelenting pain should have a merciful aid. But what will really make a difference?

For most of us, what's more important than legislation is conversation. One thing I learned in founding The Conversation Project is that everyone needs to talk with the people we love about how we want to live at the end of our life  including what treatment we want and don't want.

Half of the people over 65 admitted to hospitals are incapable of making choices for themselves. So we need to choose a decision-maker in case we can't decide for ourselves. And to fill out an advanced directive.

As for doctors, rather than simply being allowed to give drugs, they need to be better trained in the art of difficult conversations.

The sample of my reservations is less about ethics than efficacy. But my deepest concern comes from watching how easy it is to derail this movement into a polarizing political fight.

Too many of us do not die in the way we would choose. Too many survivors are left guilty, depressed and bereft. Rather than just offering a few patients the "comfort and dignity" of lethal medication, we need to assure everyone the comfort and dignity of a humane, caring ending.

The odds are  500 to 1  that this is not a political problem, but a deeply personal one.

Ellen Goodman is a former nationally syndicated columnist for the Boston Globe and founder of The Conversation Project, theconversationproject.org. Contact her at Ellengoodman1@me.com.
An ambulance arrives with a patient to the emergency department, Code 3 critical, after a lights-and-sirens ambulance transport to the hospital. How much should be done to save a life? (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal)

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By Eric Snoey, Los Angeles Times

"This is  is the end  of my life."

These would be my patient's only words  an economy of phrasing made necessary by an all-consuming air hunger.

She had just arrived in the emergency room, Code 3 critical, after a lights-and-sirens ambulance transport from her nursing home. Awake, alert and intensely focused, every effort of her frail, 90-year-old body was concentrated on the simple act of breathing. Her weak heart and failed kidneys had caused her lungs to fill with fluid. The analogy to drowning is inevitable. As her physician, I was going to have to make some big decisions quickly, including this one: How much should I do to save her life?

Typically, when such patients show up in my ER, it's obvious what to do first: You intubate them. You put a tube in their mouth down into their lungs and connect them to a respirator. It's an aggressive treatment, and anyone awake for it will tell you it's unpleasant. But without enough oxygen in the bloodstream, bad, often irreversible things happen to the body very quickly.

But this patient wasn't typical. She was old, she had no next of kin, and it was clear that a series of recent medical interventions had failed to stabilize her. She'd been in our intensive-care unit three times for over a week in the last four months alone. Her most recent stay had involved a seven-day stint on a respirator.

Perhaps with this in mind, my patient had months earlier completed an advance directive. I was holding it in my hand. We were allowed to make her comfortable: pain medication, oxygen. Explicitly prohibited were intubation, vasopressor medications to support blood pressure, invasive procedures and chest compressions. Her chart noted she had been intubated the last time she was at the hospital because, as is often the case, paramedics didn't have the advance directive. The chart noted she was upset about this.

Here's the thing about advance directives: They are guidelines. They lack the force of law. This is a good thing. Despite what many of us think, we can't truly anticipate how we will feel when we are about to die. Advance directives are especially valuable when someone has a terminal illness or a stroke, and they want to tell doctors what to do when they can no longer decide for themselves. But with a patient such as mine, who was alert despite her distress, it's much more complicated. The human will to live is powerful. Most of the time when patients truly face death, they insist we do what we can to keep them alive.

So three minutes after her arrival, my patient was surrounded by doctors, nurses and respiratory techs getting ready to do what we do, getting ready to save her life. An oxygen mask was already placed over her nose and mouth, intravenous lines started, cardiac monitor leads attached. A doctor waited, sedation medications in hand, poised to intubate.

As the senior doctor on duty, the next step was my call. I knew her history, what her advance directive said. Most important, I knew what she had said to me minutes ago, when I laid eyes on her: "This  is the end  of my life." There had been no inflection in her voice. It was not a question.

Before I explain what I did next, I want you to stop and consider what you would have done. I ask because society has been debating for decades the role physicians should play in how and when we die. This month, California joins four other states in allowing doctors to prescribe lethal medication to terminally ill but mentally competent patients.

While I support the new law, I also worry about its implementation and the gantlet of checks and balances patients and caregivers will have to navigate. Who will be in charge of enforcement? Will there be an appeals process for denials? Can any law codify something as complex, emotionally charged and controversial as end-of-life decisions? In truth, the options aren't black and white but intensely gray, defined by nuance and competing goals. In the moment, doctor and patient may struggle to find common ground.

Although preservation of life is paramount in medicine, the inevitability of death necessitates a pivot at some point by patient and physician. When and how this happens will be different each time. The patient with terminal cancer choosing to forgo chemotherapy is familiar to most of us. But what of the bedridden stroke patient with a failing heart who now requires dialysis, or someone with severe Alzheimer's who needs open heart surgery, or the alcoholic who will die without a new liver but continues to drink?

As we age or when we become ill, the decisions we make with our doctor about our care create a system of values we will draw on when our time comes. A doctor can inform us, advise us, but in the end  right up to the end  the choice is each of ours to make.

The Hippocratic oath is both vague and specific about how to manage death. It cautions against "playing God" while acknowledging "it may be within our power to take a life; an awesome responsibility that must be faced with great humility and awareness of one's frailty." What this means is that to first do no harm, you should think about how you would like to be treated in the same situation.

At the patient's bedside, I chose to do less rather than more: "Supportive care only," I said. It was an uncomfortable, conflicted moment for everyone in the room. Our job is to heal the sick and save lives. Though we could have righted this sinking ship, we did not.

What was left was to bring a measure of comfort to what would inevitably be her death. I gave her a small dose of narcotic in her IV line to quiet her air hunger. The effect was almost immediate. Her breathing slowed. Her face relaxed. Her eyes remained open, but she was asleep.

It took about an hour for her to die. First the cardiac monitor alarm went off. Then her breathing became erratic  fast and deep, punctuated by long pauses. Her heart rate slowed to 20 beats per minute, then accelerated, then fell back into the 20s. We disconnected her from the monitor, and the beeping went silent.

I waited and watched for a full 10 minutes more, half expecting her to resume breathing. She didn't. The drugs hadn't killed her. It was the lack of oxygen in her blood. The drugs just made her more comfortable while that process took place  which is what she had wanted.

I have thought a lot about this patient in the months since that night. I know we did the right thing, and I know many doctors who would have done exactly what I did. But I also know many who would have intubated her in the absence of a signed affidavit reaffirming her advance directive.

I can't help wondering if what makes end-of-life decisions so complicated is our definition of medicine itself. The idea of doctoring as a pitched battle against disease is compelling. But it belies the fact that physicians are really more stewards than soldiers. Our patients, indeed each of us, always die in the end. It's remarkable that medicine allows us to live 25 years longer on average than we did 100 years ago. But sometimes my profession forgets that the end point of medical innovation and intervention isn't immortality.

Back in the ER, I finished my patient's chart, laboring to put into words the complex choreography of the last hour  a life reduced in death to time stamps, vital signs and monitor readings. Lost in my recounting was the drama of what happened, the nobility of a woman utterly self-aware and in tune with the narrative of her own mortality. She had rejected the false hope of a science that still struggles to understand or communicate its own limitations.

At the end of my shift, the charge nurse reminded me to call the coroner. After giving the coroner my patient's basic demographic information, I was asked the inevitable question: "What is the cause of death?" I hesitated, knowing he'd be looking for "cardiopulmonary arrest," "heart failure" or other expression of convenience.

The patient died with a weak heart and failing kidneys, not because of them. I wanted to acknowledge her choice  her role in her death  and ours.

After what must have seemed like a very long time, I spoke. "Natural causes," I said. "She died of natural causes."

Dr. Eric Snoey is a vice chair of emergency medicine at Highland Hospital in Oakland, Calif.
In April, I wrote about how the EUs warmth towards Recep Tayyip Erdogans increasingly dictatorial regime in Turkey undermined one of its greatest selling points: creating incentives towards liberal behaviour amongst its neighbours.

Ankara still has Brussels over a barrel, as the latter prepares to offer Turks visa-free travel with the Schengen zone. But todays Sunday Times () reveals that the British Government, which is not part of the free-travel area, is mulling its own arrangement with Turkey.

The paper quotes Janet Douglas, deputy head of mission in Ankara, advocating the measure. She said:

One option would be to assess again the possibility of visa travel for Turkish special passport holders which would be a risk, but a significant and symbolic gesture to Turkey.

Note again. That suggests that, rather than simply being one diplomat floating an idea, the prospect of some kind of free travel arrangement with Turkey (or at least with those Turks who hold whatever a special passport is) is not a new one in Government circles.

The Leave campaign have accused David Cameron of trying to keep plans for some kind of Turkish deal under wraps until after the referendum, although Downing Street deny they have any such intentions.

However, with immigration one of the key issues driving the Leave vote, we can see why the issue would be sensitive. After all, the UK will almost certainly feel the effects of the EU-Turkey arrangement even if it doesnt strike its own deal with Ankara.

Once Turks have access to the Schengen Zone there is nothing to stop them coming to Calais, where we have already seen plenty of people for whom having most of continental Europe to settle in just isnt good enough.

What happens a few years down the line, when Turkish citizens have been resident in EU countries for a while and started acquiring citizenship? They will one and all have the right to live and work in the UK, whether they choose to or not.

Whether things would actually play out this way, or an influx of young Turkish workers would be bad for Britain if it did, is almost immaterial at this stage in the campaign. Plenty of voters  including much of the vital working-class Labour vote which could tip the contest for Leave  have firm opinions on the matter.

Remain is not without counter-arguments. The UK is not in Schengen, and any bilateral arrangement with Turkey would be struck on terms negotiated by the British Government  just the sort of thing Brexiteers claim to want more of.

Moreover, if the Brussels-Ankara agreement really were detrimental to British interests then, as a member of the EU, the Prime Minister could veto it  a clear demonstration of our influence in Europe, they might say.

Of course, such a stance would be complicated greatly by the fact that it is still official policy to support Turkish accession to the EU, with all the settlement rights and absence of bilateralism implied by that.

The odds of Cameron wielding his veto also seem fantastically slim, not least because Erdogan would probably allow an unchecked flow of refugees into Europe  and thus, to Calais  as a result.

Aside from the obvious immigration angle, this Turkey story reinforces one of the Leave campaigns most important lines: that the devil you know isnt on the ballot paper, and there is plenty of uncertainty and potential risk to the UK in years to come as the EU tries to adapt to the challenges of mass migration and its malfunctioning economy.
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Its a three-way primary race for the Republican nomination for governor and the Tribune feels there are two candidates who stand out. Wayne Stenehjem and Doug Burgum are well-qualified, but they would bring different strengths to the job. Stenehjem says hell stay the course set by John Hoeven and Jack Dalrymple, while Burgum promises to shake things up with a more business and technological approach to governing.

Paul Sorum, who believes he can govern effectively following some basic principles, doesnt match up to Stenehjem or Burgum. Democrat Marvin Nelson and Libertarian Marty Riske are unchallenged in the primary.

Stenehjem has been steadfast in arguing the state is well-positioned to deal with slumping revenues, pointing out there are a number of funds to meet the needs of any shortfall. Hes confident oil prices will rebound. He has also laid out a program for corrections reforms in the state.

Burgum has been conducting an aggressive campaign, one that at times has seemed to irk Stenehjem. Burgum makes the case that the revenue issue is more serious than Stenehjem admits and that Dalrymple and the Legislature failed to put the state in a good position to handle the shortfall. This has offended some legislators who reminded Burgum that if elected he needs them to govern.

Tough campaigns can be healthy, they keep the candidates on their toes. They also bring issues before the voters, though the Obamacare and the angel fund disputes both seem more diversionary than meaningful. There also are shades of the national presidential race in the governors contest. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders promise to buck the establishments way of governing and one of Burgums arguments is that Stenehjem has been entrenched too long in the Capitol. He promises to use his technological and business expertise to make government smarter and more efficient.

Stenehjem says his time as a legislator and attorney general gives him the inside touch, the ability to work with others to get the job done.

The establishment versus outsider conflict can be found in races across the state. In Bismarck, the four-man contest for two seats on the city commission fits the mold, with two candidates seeking changes in how the city has helped businesses in the past.

Stenehjem and Burgum offer voters a choice of philosophies and the Tribune finds merit in both approaches. The state has done exceptionally well the last few years and its difficult to believe we are going to fall into a prolonged slump. On the other hand, its intriguing to ponder where Burgum could take us if he wins the support of the Legislature, other elected officials and the public.

Its up to voters to decide which path to follow since the Tribune Editorial Board agrees that both Stenehjem and Burgum are solid candidates capable of leading North Dakota to success. So we arent endorsing a candidate, we are urging everyone to vote for the candidate they think can best lead the state. In the general election the winning candidate will get another chance to prove himself worthy. When the voting ends everyone could eventually become winners.
GRAND FORKS -- With more students enrolling in online courses every year, the University of North Dakota is trying to stay ahead of the curve.

Interim Vice President for University and Public Affairs Peter Johnson said the university plans to increase its offering of "enroll anytime" courses, which students can take online at whatever pace they choose as long as they complete it within nine months, from 65 classes to 90.

"They're convenient, they're flexible, they can set their own schedule for when they want to study,", said Lynette Krenelka, director of the UND Office of Extended Learning, adding students enjoy the nontraditional class structure.

And the numbers back that up.

The percentage of enrolled UND students solely taking online courses increased from 16 to 22 percent in the last five years, according to the school's online dashboards.

UND offers 13 online undergraduate degree programs, many of which have a more traditional online coursework than the "enroll anytime" courses. The school also offers 24 master's degree programs online, according to data provided by Johnson.

Across all North Dakota University System institutions in the state, the percentage of students who take at least one distance course has gone from 40 percent in 2012 to 47 percent in 2015, according to NDUS data presented at an interim Legislative Higher Education Funding Committee meeting last week.

A class is considered a distance course when at least 50 percent of it is taught using methods such as online or video instruction.
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders speaks to a crowd of about 3,000 at the Old National Events Plaza in Evansville, Ind., May 2, 2016. Indiana holds its primary Tuesday, May 3, 2016. (Denny Simmons / Courier & Press)

Under the light of a full moon, Bernie Sanders is terrifying.

A life-sized cardboard cutout of the Vermont senator smiles from the bay windows of the Nick Nackery on Heidelbach Avenue, and if I drive past at night, I never fail to leap through the roof of my car when I catch his grinning mug at the edge of my vision.

Sanders himself isn't scary. But there's something about a smiling, motionless man loitering in the dead of night. It's sparked strange nightmares. Bernie approaches in the darkness, a knife in his fist, promises of a free college education on his lips.

On Wednesday, a day after Hillary Clinton became the presumptive Democratic nominee, the cardboard cutout remained. As did a parade of campaign signs taped to each of the dozen or so windows that stretch around the building.

Suzy Blesch, owner of the Nick Nackery, wasn't about to take them down.

She started the election cycle as a Clinton supporter, but once her son introduced her to Sanders, "it didn't take long" for her to switch allegiances.

Since then, she's spent massive amounts of time researching Sanders' positions  and why he has those positions. She's read about the lie of trickle-down economics. The dirge of private prisons. The souring of the American education system.

He's the only candidate, she said, who cares about the less fortunate of this country.

"You can't be casual about the future of our nation," she said.

Despite her calm voice and strong belief that you should be polite to everyone  a sign on her door, posted in the nuclear aftermath of RFRA, pledges respect for all who enter  Blesch is anything but casual when it comes to her support of Sanders.

She worked campaign phone banks. Knocked on doors. Placed the likeness of Sanders in a spot that, in the lead-up to Halloween, is home to an animatronic skeleton in a rocking chair.

But the cold-hearted math is in. Votes, delegates and superdelegates have been counted. Clinton has declared victory. The question for Sanders' supporters in Evansville and everywhere is:

"Can you hold on for a second?" Blesch said over the phone on Wednesday. She sat the phone down to work the register of the well-known costume/party shop on the edge of Jacobsville. Before she got back on, I heard her compliment a customer's shirt.

"I think that we all continue to support Bernie and his cause. I think that goes without saying," she said. Backers such as Blesch helped Sanders pack the Old National Events Plaza during his May rally, and he ultimately won the Indiana primary. "And I believe that at this point, I suppose, we don't know what tomorrow is gonna bring. But I believe the one thing we have to be most assured of is he has brought to the dinner table information, issues, awareness, energy and a level of caring that we have not seen in this country for decades."

She later put it more succinctly: "Very few people hate him."

And is there a higher compliment these days than not being despised? Hatred permeates the political landscape. Wall-papering the exterior of her business in, say, Clinton or Donald Trump signage could have sparked heated exchanges and lost customers. Maybe even vandalism. But Blesch hasn't reported any issues.

"I've had an overwhelming number of people say, 'If I thought he could get the White House, I'd vote for him,' " Blesch said Wednesday. "From both sides. If all those people voted for him, maybe he'd get it."

A hard time

Clinton has amassed 2,178 delegates, more than enough to secure the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia next month. And while Sanders hasn't dropped out of the race  he'll probably still be campaigning the morning of the inauguration  he announced on Thursday he's prepared to work with Clinton: a person some of his supporters have painted as a Wall-Street-owned hack at best and a criminal at worst.

"I look forward to meeting 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 told reporters.

President Obama has endorsed Clinton. As have Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and "Paycheck" star Ben Affleck.

But Autumn Baker, the "quote-unquote" president of Sanders' Evansville campaign office, doesn't believe the Democratic race is over.

"I won't give up," she said Wednesday.

A delegate at the Indiana Democratic convention on June 18, she plans to make her case to the superdelegates  those volcano-dwelling puppet-masters of democracy.

"The steps I am going to take personally, and what I'm encouraging the other volunteers to do, is write to the superdelegates," she said. "Call the superdelegates. Really lobby the superdelegates hard to hopefully make them realize what an incredible opportunity they are missing if they nominate Hillary. And all the young people they can bring into the party if they do the right thing."

Blesch will be a delegate at Indiana's convention as well, and both plan to head to the national shindig in July. Baker said if she's not chosen as a delegate in Philadelphia, "I'll be marching in the streets for Bernie."

But that's the thing about campaigns: they end. When Nov. 8, 2016, arrives, ideology will give way to a ballot. And barring a convention miracle, third-party run or Clinton trading a pantsuit for a prison jumpsuit after the superfluous dive into her emails, Sanders' name won't be there.

What choice his supporters will make has been the subject of relentless news debate. Last week, with Donald Trump shouting "Mexican!" every five seconds and Republican leaders telling him to stop being racist or they'll only vote for him once, the media consensus congealed: "Sanders' supporters'll prolly come around."

Not that Baker or Blesch give a give a hoot-in-hell about media consensus. During our conversations, both took measured shots at the national media's fascination with Trump, as well as its tendency to downplay Sanders' string of primary victories as a dead possum on Hillary's otherwise-clean highway to the nomination. But both made one thing clear.

"I clearly will not vote for Trump under any circumstances," Blesch said. "He is an embarrassment, and that's probably the nicest thing I can say about him."

Their rejection of Hillary, though, was hazier. Blesch said if Sanders became a Clinton supporter, so would she. But Baker likened a vote for Hillary to a lapse in moral integrity. She even told me that, if she pulled the lever for Clinton, she wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

She estimated that 60 percent of Sanders' Evansville campaign staffers feel the same way.

But let's say it's November. Sanders has endorsed Clinton, and you've already sworn not to vote for Trump. You're standing in the voting booth. What are you going to do?

"I'm going to have a really a hard time with that," she said. "I can say I'm 100 percent that if he tells us to get behind Clinton, I can't imagine I'll do that. ... I believe in anything Sanders has said up to this point, but if he tells me to work hard for Clinton  he's going to have a really good reason for me to do that."

The reason

6'2! From Queens, New York! Num-ber 1 in the Republican Party!

"Donald Trump is loud, racist, homophobic and brash  but at least you know what he's thinking," Baker said. "To a certain degree, I admire that, but I also think he's a dirt bag."

And President Dirt Bag would potentially have a huge say in the future of the Supreme Court. Due to the death of Antonin Scalia, the possible retirement of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Clarence Thomas' decision to ditch the bench to become a roadie for The String Cheese Incident, Trump would have nominating power for one-third of the high court.

Because of that, Baker and other Sanders supporters believe a Democrat has to be elected. And Sanders himself has said he will do whatever it takes to keep Trump out of the White House. Problem is, the Democrat they're going to get isn't the Democrat they want.

Third-party-wise, the Libertarians have a strong team, and Gary Johnson could snag some disaffected Bernie-ites. He calls for legalized marijuana, abhors Trump's proposed wall and seeks marriage equality for every citizen. But he also wants to eliminate the department of education, abolish any form of gun control and has a hostile relationship with trade unions.

Then there's always the Bolshevik/Susan Sarandon option. The thought behind "Bernie or Bust" goes like this: Clinton would just perpetuate a system that kicks the working class in the teeth, so you may as well vote Trump and pray his ineptitude brings about the "revolution." Fun!

It's bleakly hilarious that one of B-or-B's most vocal advocates is Sarandon: a rich actor who calls for revolution from the safety of a Hollywood mansion. If she got her wish, you know who would suffer? The working class. The very people Sanders strives to protect.

Baker isn't "Bernie or Bust." But she stressed that even if a large number of Sanders followed the ideology, they wouldn't be the reason Clinton lost to The Donald.

"She is, by far, the weaker candidate in the general election," Baker said in a follow-up text message.

Blesch put it this way:

"I don't think there are any Sanders people who will support Trump. And there are many Sanders supporters who won't vote for Clinton, and I don't know if Sanders can get them there," she said. "So when it comes to November, it'll come down to this: What's your greatest fear?"

Fear

I wonder if there are any Clinton cardboard cut-outs. And if there are, what are they doing right now?

Being levelly competent probably. Getting the job done without sparking much excitement. As far as cardboard doppelgangers go, you can do worse.

People's radiant dislike of Clinton fascinates me. I get it: she's a shape-shifter. A panderer. And despite all her smiles, she probably loathes us all. But that's true of almost all public servants. Hating a politician for lying is like hating a basset hound for having long ears.

When Americans don't like a politician, they long to make that dislike worthwhile. Got something bad? Heap it on Hillary or Trump. Really make that hatred sing: they're liars, murderers, subterranean lizard people.

Part of Bernie's appeal is you can't picture him murdering anyone. No matter your politics, and despite the terrible "Bernie Bros" who harass women reporters and spout sexist nonsense, you can't say the candidate himself doesn't mean well. For his supporters, he says all the right things. Help the poor. Lionize the disenfranchised. Clear, for all, a path to the American Dream.

On Friday morning came the "good news": some of Sanders' ideas will make it into the Democratic platform.

At one point in our lives, most of us find a politician that makes us believe that change-the-world rhetoric. So we throw ourselves into the cause. Give up hours, months, years of our time. And then ... the world changes! But not in the sweeping way we hoped.

We sweat tears to move the American behemoth one inch at a time. In the end, that's success  and that's awfully hard to take.

___

Contact Jon Webb at jon.webb@courierpress.com or follow him on Twitter @JonAdamWebb
Dating website TrumpSingles.com is looking to attract supporters of the presumptive Republican nominee unlucky in finding love. (Photo: Cliff Owen, AP)

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By Christopher Doering, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON  For American singles who have fallen in love with presumptive Republican nominee but have been unlucky in their own love life, TrumpSingles is here to play cupid.

The idea for the website came from , 35, when the lifelong Republican was socializing with his other conservative friends in February, according to the . TrumpSingles says its goal is "making dating great again," a twist on Trump's own catchphrase "Make America great again."

I think theres a special stigma when people say theyre supporting Trump, because of some of the brash things that hes said, Goss, an associate TV producer based in Santa Clarita, Calif., told the paper. That immediately gets (projected) on his supporters, and it makes it hard for them when trying to date.

TrumpSingles has attracted about 500 users, most of them in ., New York and Los Angeles, since it went live in May. The site, which also has a mobile version, allows users to search for their perfect Trump match by inputting their gender, age, location and favorite way to spend time.

For Americans uneasy about the prospects of a Trump presidency, and vowing to go to Canada if hes elected, there's another website to help.

The declaration, according to Maple Match, is to make it easy for Americans to find the ideal Canadian partner to save them from the unfathomable horror of a Trump presidency.

The dating site, which also latched on to the tagline make dating great again, is so popular that singles looking for a match from the Great White North must be added to a waiting list.
Sue Ellspermann, former Lt. Governor, is the new President of Ivy Tech, Indianapolis, Wednesday, May 18, 2016. (Photo: Robert Scheer/IndyStar)

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By The Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ind. - Former Lt. Gov. Sue Ellspermann says shell focus on ways to boost Indianas skilled workforce as she tackles her new role as president of Ivy Tech Community College.

Ellspermann, who was chosen last month to head the statewide system, will step into that role July 1. She faces a daunting task at Ivy Tech, which has drawn scrutiny for low graduation rates and declining enrollment under outgoing President Tom Snyder, who had led the systems more than 30 campuses since 2007.

Ellspermann said that aside from working to boost those graduation rates shell be focusing on what employers need in skilled workers, and work toward a system that prepares students for those jobs.

Every county I went to, I heard employers begging for skilled workers, Ellspermann said last week during a visit to Ivy Techs Columbus campus. We (Ivy Tech) are the biggest machine the state has for creating that skilled workforce.

She said shes already identified some practices at the Columbus campus she hopes to expand statewide in an effort to encourage students to complete their degrees and enable them to seek jobs as skilled laborers, The Republic reported.

Ellspermann cited that campus existing credit-transferring partnerships as examples of what shed like the statewide system to aspire to in the future. Columbus Ivy Tech campus has credit transfer options available with Indiana University and Purdue Universitys joint Columbus campus, the Purdue Polytechnic Institute and Trine University.

She said the Trine University partnership is compelling because it allows Columbus students to earn a four-year degree from Trine without having to make the roughly three-hour trip to the Angola campus of that four-year school.

We look for that to become more of the norm instead of the exception across the state, she said. We have to see ourselves as a seamless higher education system across the state.

Ellspermann, 56, spent the past three and a half years as lieutenant governor in Republican Gov. Mike Pences administration. She stepped down in March as the states second-in-command as Pence was gearing up for a tough re-election against former Democratic House Speaker John Gregg.

Former state Republican Party chairman Eric Holcomb succeeded her as lieutenant governor.

Although she wont become Ivy Techs president until July 1, Ellspermann said shell spend June traveling to its 14 regions to acquaint herself with the programs and practices unique to each.

The Indiana General Assembly recently commissioned the Indiana Department of Workforce Development to research demand-driven data on the skills that state industry leaders are looking for in their employees. That data is expected to be released later this summer and will be used to determine which initiatives Ivy Tech should pursue.

Questions over Ivy Techs low graduation rates and a 25 percent enrollment drop over the past three years prompted state legislators last year to put the colleges construction plans on hold.

State reports last year showed 5.2 percent of full-time Ivy Tech students completed an associate degree within two years, with 27.7 percent finishing within six years. For part-time students, 2.1 percent graduated within two years and 20.8 percent did so in six years.

Before its recent decline, Ivy Tech had seen an enrollment boom of about 70 percent in seven years, reaching a peak of some 110,000 students attending at least part time in the fall of 2011.
OxyContin 80 mg pills, photographed in the LA Times studio in 2013. (Liz O. Baylen/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

SHARE Dan Schoepf, owner of a Cypress, Calif., sign shop, struggled with his use of OxyContin after a back injury. "This was the most irrational thing that ever happened to me," Schoepf recalled of his decade-long battle. "How could I find myself in this position  it was unbelievable to me." (Liz O. Baylen/Los Angeles Times/TNS) An OxyContin advertisement in the American Family Physician  September 1, 1997 Pgs. 689-691. (Liz O. Baylen/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

By Harriet Ryan, Lisa Girion And Scott Glover, The Los Angeles Times

The drugmaker Purdue Pharma launched OxyContin two decades ago with a bold marketing claim: One dose relieves pain for 12 hours, more than twice as long as generic medications.

Patients would no longer have to wake up in the middle of the night to take their pills, Purdue told doctors. One OxyContin tablet in the morning and one before bed would provide "smooth and sustained pain control all day and all night."

On the strength of that promise, OxyContin became America's bestselling painkiller.

But OxyContin's stunning success masked a fundamental problem: The drug wears off hours early in many people, a Los Angeles Times investigation found. OxyContin is a chemical cousin of heroin, and when it doesn't last, patients can experience excruciating symptoms of withdrawal, including an intense craving for the drug.

The problem offers new insight into why so many people have become addicted to OxyContin, one of the most abused pharmaceuticals in U.S. history.

The Times investigation, based on thousands of pages of confidential Purdue documents and other records, found that:

Purdue has known about the problem for decades. Even before OxyContin went on the market, clinical trials showed that many patients weren't getting 12 hours of relief. Since the drug's debut in 1996, the company has been confronted with additional evidence, including complaints from doctors, reports from its own sales reps and independent research.

The company has held fast to the claim of 12-hour relief, in part to protect its revenue. OxyContin's market dominance and its high price  up to hundreds of dollars per bottle  hinge on its 12-hour duration. Without that, it offers little advantage over less expensive painkillers.

When many doctors began prescribing OxyContin at shorter intervals in the late 1990s, Purdue executives mobilized hundreds of sales representatives to "refocus" physicians on 12 hour dosing.

Purdue tells doctors to prescribe stronger doses, not more frequent ones, when patients complain that OxyContin doesn't last 12 hours. That approach creates risks of its own. Research shows that the more potent the dose of an opioid such as OxyContin, the greater the possibility of overdose and death.

More than half of long-term OxyContin users are on doses that public health officials consider dangerously high, according to an analysis of nationwide prescription data conducted for The Times.

Over the past 20 years, more than 7 million Americans have abused OxyContin, according to the federal government's National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The drug is widely blamed for setting off the nation's prescription opioid epidemic, which has claimed more than 190,000 lives from overdoses involving OxyContin and other painkillers since 1999.

The internal Purdue documents reviewed by The Times are from sealed court files. They span three decades, from the conception of OxyContin in the mid-1980s to 2011, and include emails, memos, meeting minutes and sales reports, as well as testimony by executives, sales reps and other employees.

The documents provide a detailed picture of the development and marketing of OxyContin, how Purdue executives responded to complaints that its effects wear off early, and their fears about the financial impact of any departure from 12-hour dosing.

Reporters also examined Food and Drug Administration records, Patent Office files and medical journal articles, and interviewed experts in pain treatment, addiction medicine and pharmacology.

Experts said that when there are gaps in the effect of a narcotic like OxyContin, patients can suffer body aches, nausea, anxiety and other symptoms of withdrawal. When the agony is relieved by the next dose, it creates a cycle of pain and euphoria that fosters addiction, they said.

For people in whom it wears off early, OxyContin taken at 12-hour intervals could be "the perfect recipe for addiction," said Theodore J. Cicero, a neuropharmacologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and a leading researcher on how opioids affect the brain.

Patients can suffer both a return of their underlying pain and "the beginning stages of acute withdrawal," Cicero said. "That becomes a very powerful motivator for people to take more drugs."

Peter Przekop, a neuroscientist and physician who oversees the treatment of painkiller addicts at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, said that repeated episodes of withdrawal from OxyContin "absolutely" raise the risk that patients will abuse the medication.

"You are messing with those areas of the brain that are involved in addiction, and you are going to get the person dependent on it," he said.

The Times sought comment from Purdue's scientists and executives. At the company's request, the newspaper submitted detailed questions in writing. Purdue responded with a one-page statement noting that the FDA approved OxyContin as a 12-hour drug.

"Scientific evidence amassed over more than 20 years, including more than a dozen controlled clinical studies, supports FDA's approval of 12-hour dosing for OxyContin," Purdue's chief medical officer, Dr. Gail Cawkwell, said.

As an Los Angeles Police Department officer, Ernest Gallego was fearless. He broke up bar fights and street brawls. During a torrential rainstorm in 1980, he waded into a flooded intersection to rescue two motorists.

He was on duty in Echo Park seven years later when a tow truck slammed into his patrol car, leaving him with a career-ending back injury. He had several surgeries and tried various pain medications over the next two decades.

By 2012, he was on OxyContin. His parents and siblings watched and worried as the strong, fastidiously neat man they knew became wobbly on his feet and unkempt. His father, an attorney, wrote letters on his law office letterhead pleading with his son's doctor to take him off the drug, and his mother hid any OxyContin bottles she found, Gallego's sister, Kathryn Galvan, recalled.

"He was having car accidents, fender benders. Very groggy all the time," she said. He spent much of his day sleeping. When confronted, "He would say, 'I have it under control. I know what I'm doing.' "

When his mother died in 2012, Gallego showed up at the funeral disheveled and confused.

A month and a half later, a police officer found him slumped over the steering wheel of his car in a convenience store parking lot and took him to the hospital, according to a coroner's report and his sister. The next evening, he lay down on the floor of his father's living room in La Verne, as he often did to relieve his pain. He never awoke. He was 58.

A toxicology test showed lethal levels of oxycodone in his blood. The label on an OxyContin bottle found nearby directed Gallego to take an 80 milligram pill every 12 hours, according to the coroner's office. Based on the date Gallego filled the prescription, there should have been 44 pills left. There were 7.

Purdue developed OxyContin as a cure for pain  and for a financial problem.

The company's owners were the Sacklers, a New York family of physicians and philanthropists who bought Purdue in 1952. By the late 1980s, the patent on its main source of revenue, a morphine pill for cancer patients called MS Contin, was running out. Executives anticipated a huge loss of revenue as generic versions drove down the price of MS Contin, according to internal company correspondence from the period.

The company was focused on finding a new moneymaker. In a 1990 memo, Robert F. Kaiko, vice president for clinical research, laid out why it was important to develop a second painkiller.

"MS Contin may eventually face such serious generic competition that other controlled-release opioids must be considered," Kaiko wrote.

Purdue already had developed a technique to stretch a drug's release over time. In MS Contin, the technique made morphine last eight to 12 hours. Kaiko and his colleagues decided to use it on an old, cheap narcotic, oxycodone.

Sold under several names and formulations, including Percocet and Roxicodone, oxycodone controls pain for up to six hours.

With the delayed-release technique, executives theorized, the drug would last 12 hours  at least twice as long as generics and the high end of MS Contin's range.

Over the next decade, Purdue sunk more than $40 million into development of OxyContin, Paul D. Goldenheim, then vice president of scientific and medical affairs, wrote in a 2003 court declaration.

Sales and marketing representatives gathered at the company's headquarters, then in Norwalk, Conn., in March 1995 to start planning the roll-out of the new drug.

"OxyContin can cure the vulnerability of the  generic threat and that is why it so crucial that we devote our fullest efforts now to a successful launch of OxyContin," then chief executive Michael Friedman told the group, according to minutes of the meeting.

The first patients to use OxyContin were women recuperating from abdominal and gynecological surgery at two hospitals in Puerto Rico in 1989. In the clinical study, designed and overseen by Purdue scientists and paid for by the company, 90 women were given a single dose of the drug while other patients were given short-acting painkillers or placebos. None of the women were regular users of painkillers, so they were more susceptible to the effects of narcotics.

Even so, more than a third of the women given OxyContin started complaining about pain in the first eight hours and about half required more medication before the 12-hour mark, according to an FDA analysis of the study.

The study found that OxyContin was safe, relieved pain and lasted longer than the short-acting painkillers.

Purdue moved ahead on two paths: seeking patents for its new drug and running additional clinical trials to secure FDA approval.

In a 1992 submission to the Patent Office, the company portrayed OxyContin as a medical breakthrough that controlled pain for 12 hours "in approximately 90 percent of patients." Applying for a separate patent a few years later, Purdue said that once a person was a regular user of OxyContin, it "provides pain relief in said patient for at least 12 hours after administration."

Purdue's researchers, meanwhile, were conducting at least half a dozen clinical trials, according to the company's FDA application. In study after study, many patients given OxyContin every 12 hours would ask for more medication before their next scheduled doses.

Narcotic painkillers work differently in different people. Some drug companies discuss that variability on their product labels and recommend that doctors adjust the frequency with which patients take the drugs, depending on their individual response.

The label for Purdue's MS Contin, for example, recommends that doctors prescribe the drug every eight or 12 hours to suit the patient. The morphine tablet, Kadian, manufactured by Actavis, is designed to be taken once a day, but the label states that some patients may need a dose every 12 hours.

Despite the results of the clinical trials, Purdue continued developing OxyContin as a 12-hour drug. It did not test OxyContin at more frequent intervals.

To obtain FDA approval, Purdue had to demonstrate that OxyContin was safe and as effective as other pain drugs on the market. Under agency guidelines for establishing duration, the company had to show that OxyContin lasted 12 hours for at least half of patients. Purdue submitted the Puerto Rico study, which showed that.

The FDA approved the application in 1995.

Dr. Curtis Wright, who led the agency's medical review of the drug, declined to comment for this story. Shortly after OxyContin's approval, he left the FDA and, within two years, was working for Purdue in new product development, according to his testimony in a lawsuit a decade ago.

The Times asked the FDA for comment on the drug's failure to provide 12 hours of relief for many patients. Officials at the agency declined to be interviewed.

In a written statement, spokeswoman Sarah Peddicord said that although the FDA approved OxyContin for use every 12 hours, "it should be well understood by physicians that there will be some individual variability in the length of time that patients respond to this drug 

"While the labeled dosing regimen is a reasonable starting point, physicians should carefully individualize their approach to patients based on how quickly they metabolize the drug," Peddicord wrote.

Before OxyContin, doctors had viewed narcotic painkillers as dangerously addictive, and primarily reserved their long-term use for cancer patients and the terminally ill. Purdue envisioned a bigger market.

"We do not want to niche OxyContin just for cancer pain," a marketing executive explained to employees planning the drug's debut, according to minutes of the 1995 meeting.

The company spent $207 million on the launch, doubling its sales force to 600, according to a court declaration. Sales reps pitched the drug to family doctors and general practitioners to treat common conditions such as backaches and knee pain. Their hook was the convenience of twice-a-day dosing.

With Percocet and other short-acting drugs, patients have to remember to take a pill up to six times a day, Purdue told doctors. OxyContin "spares patients from anxious 'clockwatching,'" a 1996 news release said.

Sales reps showered prescribers with clocks and fishing hats embossed with "Q12h." The company invited doctors to dinner seminars and flew them to weekend junkets at resort hotels, where they were encouraged to prescribe OxyContin and promote it to colleagues back home.

The marketing succeeded in ways that astonished even Purdue executives. OxyContin didn't just replace MS Contin revenues. It dwarfed them.

By the third year, sales were more than double MS Contin's peak, according to testimony by a Purdue executive. By the fifth, OxyContin was generating annual revenue of more than $1 billion. Sales would continue to climb until 2010, when they leveled off at $3 billion.

Purdue's owners, the Sackler family, were already rich  the family name adorns a wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and several galleries in the British Museum. The success of OxyContin brought a whole new level of wealth. Forbes magazine last year estimated the Sacklers' worth at $14 billion, which, the magazine noted, put the family ahead of American dynasties such as the Mellons and Rockefellers.

OxyContin's impact on the practice of medicine was similarly transformative. Other drug companies began marketing their own narcotic painkillers for routine injuries. By 2010, one out of every five doctor's visits in the U.S. for pain resulted in a prescription for narcotic painkillers, according to a Johns Hopkins University study.

OxyContin accounted for a third of all sales revenue from painkillers that year, according to industry data.

Rates of addiction and overdose have soared alongside the rise in prescriptions. News coverage of these problems in Appalachia in the late 1990s made OxyContin notorious. Purdue sent representatives to Kentucky, West Virginia and elsewhere to defend its drug. They blamed misuse of OxyContin and insisted that their pill was a godsend for pain sufferers when taken as directed.

"A lot of these people say, 'Well, I was taking the medicine like my doctor told me to,' and then they start taking them more and more and more," Purdue senior medical director, Dr. J. David Haddox, told a reporter in 2001. "I don't see where that's my problem."

The U.S. Justice Department launched a criminal investigation, and in 2007 the company and three top executives pleaded guilty to fraud for downplaying OxyContin's risk of addiction. The case centered on elements of Purdue's marketing campaign that suggested to doctors that OxyContin was less addictive than other painkillers.

In the years after the fraud case, Purdue funded programs to prevent pharmacy robberies and keep teenagers from stealing relatives' pills. The company eventually rolled out a tamper-resistant version of the painkiller that was harder to crush and snort.

But in all the scrutiny of Purdue and OxyContin, the problem of the drug wearing off early was not addressed.

Purdue sales reps who spent their days visiting doctors to talk up OxyContin heard repeatedly that the drug didn't last. In reports to headquarters, they wrote that many physicians were prescribing it for three or even four doses a day.

Company officials worried that if OxyContin wasn't seen as a 12-hour drug, insurance companies and hospitals would balk at paying hundreds of dollars a bottle.

Some already were.

Dr. Lawrence Robbins started prescribing OxyContin at his Chicago migraine clinic shortly after it hit the market. The neurologist recalled in an interview that "70 to 80 percent" of his patients reported that the drug "just lasts four, five, six, seven hours." Robbins started telling people to take it more frequently. But insurance carriers often refused to cover the pharmacy bill for more than two pills a day, he said.

Over the years, he wrote insurance companies more than 25 times on behalf of patients who he believed needed OxyContin more frequently than every 12 hours, he said. In some cases, the insurers relented. When others did not, Robbins switched the patients to another drug.

Robbins said he had no choice: "If they are having a real struggle with opioid withdrawal, sure, you have to do something."

Boosting the dosage of OxyContin could extend the duration to some degree, but it didn't guarantee 12 hours of relief. Higher doses did mean more money for Purdue and its sales reps. The company charged wholesalers on average about $97 for a bottle of the 10-milligram pills, the smallest dosage, while the maximum strength, 80 milligrams, cost more than $630, according to 2001 sales data the company disclosed in litigation with the state of West Virginia. Commissions and performance evaluations for the sales force were based in part on the proportion of sales from high-dose pills.

A West Virginia supervisor told one of his highest performing sales reps in a 1999 letter that she could "blow the lid off" her sales and earn a trip to Hawaii if she persuaded more doctors to write larger doses.

In an August 1996 memo headlined "$$$$$$$$$$$$$ It's Bonus Time in the Neighborhood!" a manager reminded Tennessee reps that raising dosage strength was the key to a big payday.

"He who sells 40mg"  the largest pill available at the time  "will win the battle," the manager wrote.

By 2004, Purdue was seeing "a trend away from prescribing OxyContin" more frequently than every 12 hours, according to a company filing with the FDA.

In the training materials reviewed by The Times, little was said about the effect of higher doses on patient health. Those on higher doses of opioids are also more likely to overdose, according to numerous research studies. An analysis of the medical records of more than 32,000 patients on OxyContin and other painkillers in Ontario, Canada, found that one in 32 patients on high doses fatally overdosed.

"In other words, they are more likely to die as a result of their medication than almost anything else," the lead researcher, David Juurlink, said in an interview.

As OxyContin's popularity grew, a few scientists outside Purdue published research raising questions about the 12 hour claim. Scientists affiliated with the Oklahoma University College of Medicine found in 2002 that nearly 87 percent of those prescribed OxyContin at a school pain clinic were taking it more frequently than every 12 hours. The reason, researchers wrote, was "perceived endofdose failure."

A separate study underwritten by a Purdue competitor, Janssen Pharmaceutica, reached a similar conclusion. Researchers surveyed chronic pain patients treated with OxyContin and reported that less than 2 percent said the drug lasted 12 hours and nearly 85 percent said it wore off before eight, according to a 2003 journal article detailing the research.

Some doctors turned away from OxyContin entirely. San Francisco public health clinics stopped dispensing the painkiller in 2005, based in part on feedback from patients who said it wore off after eight hours. The clinics switched to generic morphine, which lasts about eight hours and costs a lot less.

"What I had come to see was the lack of evidence that it was any better than morphine," Dr. Mitchell Katz, then head of the San Francisco public health department, said in an interview.

Patients began filing lawsuits in the early 2000s that accused Purdue of overstating OxyContin's duration, among other complaints. One of the plaintiffs was a retired Alabama businessman named H. Jerry Bodie.

His doctor had Bodie on 30 milligrams of OxyContin every eight hours for chronic back pain. A Purdue sales rep persuaded him to switch Bodie to a higher dose every 12 hours, according to a judge's summary of the evidence.

Bodie returned to his doctor repeatedly, saying the drug wasn't working, according to their testimony. The doctor kept raising the dose, eventually putting Bodie on 400 milligrams a day.

"I was more or less just a zombie," Bodie said in a deposition.

Bodie's lawsuit and hundreds of others filed by OxyContin users and their families never got before juries. Purdue got suits dismissed by asserting, among other defenses, a legal doctrine that shields drug companies from liability when their products are prescribed by trained physicians. Purdue settled other lawsuits on confidential terms.

The company successfully petitioned courts to have evidence sealed, citing the need to protect trade secrets. The sealed materials included internal memos to members of the Sackler family and others, FDA correspondence, testimony from executives and sales reps' reports.

They remain sealed to this day. The Times reviewed thousands of pages of them.

In the fall of 2004, in a remote courthouse in Appalachia, the 12-hour dosing issue came close to a public airing. The West Virginia attorney general was pressing a lawsuit against Purdue demanding reimbursement of "excessive prescription costs" paid by the state through programs for the poor and elderly. The state accused the company of deceptive marketing, including the 12 hour claim.

Frances Hughes, then the state's chief deputy attorney general, said the last allegation grew out of investigators' interviews with addicts and their families. In describing problems with OxyContin, many said the drug wore off hours early.

"What was happening was that they were taking more than they were prescribed because the pain medication wasn't working," Hughes recalled in an interview.

Purdue's legal team made numerous attempts to get the suit dismissed or moved from state to federal court, where the company had succeeded in getting many cases tossed out. All these efforts failed.

Purdue had one final shot at avoiding trial: A motion for summary judgment. The judge hearing the case in rural McDowell County was Booker T. Stephens, son of a local coal miner and the first African American elected to the West Virginia circuit court.

To make this critical argument, the company tapped Eric Holder Jr., who had been the nation's first African American deputy attorney general. On Oct. 13, 2004, the man who would become President Barack Obama's attorney general argued that West Virginia prosecutors didn't have sufficient evidence to warrant a trial.

Stephens disagreed. He ruled that there was enough evidence that a jury could find Purdue had made deceptive claims about OxyContin, including how long it lasted.

"Most of the patients in the clinical trials required additional medication, so called 'rescue medications,' that accompanied their 12 hour OxyContin dose," the judge wrote in his Nov. 5, 2004 ruling. "Plaintiff's evidence shows Purdue could have tested the safety and efficacy of OxyContin at eight hours, and could have amended their label, but did not."

His decision meant that for the first time, questions about OxyContin's duration would be aired at a trial in a public courtroom. Sealed evidence would be laid out in public for class-action attorneys, government investigators, doctors and journalists to see.

On the eve of trial, Purdue agreed to settle the case by paying the state $10 million for programs to discourage drug abuse. All the evidence under seal would remain confidential.

A week later, Stephens ordered one more document withdrawn from public view: His Nov. 5 ruling that there was enough evidence against Purdue to warrant a trial. The Times reviewed a copy of the ruling.

The settlement did not require Purdue to admit any wrongdoing or change the way it told doctors to prescribe the drug.

While Purdue's litigators were working in courthouses around the country to fend off civil suits, its regulatory attorneys in Washington made a blunt admission to the FDA: The 12-hour dosing schedule is, at least in part, about money.

The issue arose in a regulatory dispute that attracted little attention. The Connecticut attorney general had complained to the FDA that doctors prescribing OxyContin every eight hours, rather than the recommended 12, were unintentionally fueling black market use of the drug.

In a 2004 letter to the FDA, Purdue lawyers responded that the company had no evidence that eight-hour prescribing contributed to abuse or was unsafe. They went on to make a case far different from the one Purdue sales reps were making to doctors. Eight-hour dosing, the attorneys wrote, could "optimize treatment" for some patients and should level out the narcotic roller coaster.

Nonetheless, they said the company planned to continue telling doctors OxyContin was a 12 hour drug. The lawyers gave a list of reasons: Purdue hadn't submitted studies to the FDA to support more frequent dosing, the FDA had approved OxyContin as a 12-hour drug, and 12-hour dosing was more convenient for patients.

Their final reason: It was better for business.

"The 12 hour dosing schedule represents a significant competitive advantage of OxyContin over other products," the lawyers wrote.

In the years that followed, attacks on the 12-hour claim largely dropped from the agenda of Purdue's critics. The federal investigation was over. Class-action attorneys moved on to other drugs.

For a brief moment three years ago, it seemed the problems with 12-hour dosing might get wider attention. The FDA had called for public input on how to make painkiller labels safer. Dr. David Egilman, a Brown University professor of family medicine who had was a plaintiff's expert in unsuccessful suits against Purdue, saw it as an opportunity to alert agency officials to problems with OxyContin's 12-hour claim.

Egilman, an expert in warning labels, had worked on hundreds of product liability cases. He had developed a reputation as a plaintiff's advocate driven to expose corporate wrongdoing.

Some judges said he went too far. In a 2007 case against the drugmaker Eli Lilly, for example, a judge found that Egilman leaked confidential documents about the controversial antipsychotic medication Zyprexa to a New York Times reporter. He agreed to pay the company $100,000. In the OxyContin cases, Purdue had attacked his ethics and qualifications.

When FDA officials convened the hearing in a suburban Maryland hotel ballroom Feb. 8, 2013, Egilman was out of the country. He submitted a PowerPoint presentation to be played in his absence.

In the five-minute presentation, Egilman accused Purdue of ignoring its own science for financial reasons and sending patients on a dangerous roller coaster of withdrawal and relief.

"In other words," he concluded, "the Q12 dosing schedule is an addiction producing machine."

Egilman noted that he had reviewed confidential Purdue documents and sealed testimony of company executives through his work as an expert witness. But, he said, because of court orders sought by Purdue, he was barred from revealing what he'd read in those documents or giving them to the FDA. (He also declined to share the records with The Times.)

When the presentation concluded, there was a brief pause, and then the FDA moderator moved on to the next speaker.

Neither Purdue nor the agency ever responded to Egilman's presentation.

OxyContin is still hugely popular. Doctors wrote 5.4 million prescriptions for the painkiller in 2014, and according to a Purdue spokesman, 80 percent were for 12-hour dosing.

After years of the company telling doctors to answer complaints about duration with greater strengths of OxyContin, many patients are taking the drug at doses that public health officials now consider dangerously high.

At The Times' request, scientists at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences analyzed OxyContin prescriptions in a database of insurance claims covering about 7 million patients across the country.

In 2014, the analysis found, more than 52 percent of patients taking OxyContin longer than three months were prescribed doses greater than 60 milligrams a day, a level the CDC said last month doctors "should avoid" or "carefully justify."

Told of the Arkansas analysis, Dr. Debra Houry, director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and a leader of the agency's response to the opioid epidemic, called it "really concerning."

"The higher you go, the more likely you are to die," she said.

To this day, physicians frequently contact Purdue with questions about dosing. Only 12-hour dosing has been proved safe, the company tells them.
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By Len Wells of the Courier and Press

Two men working inside a water tower in the small village of Geff, Illinois, were seriously injured Saturday afternoon when the scaffolding they were on collapsed. The men were working for Henderson, Ky.-based Pittsburg Tank & Tower. A company supervisor at the scene declined to identify the workers.

Chris Miller, a spokesman for the Fairfield Rural Fire Department, said the men fell 25 to 30 feet to a concrete floor and suffered multiple injuries.

Both workers were airlifted from the scene by helicopter to Deaconess Hospital in Evansville.

"Both appeared to have sustained multiple fractures," Miller said. "Their injuries did not appear to be life threatening."

Miller said both men were rescued through a side manhole on the tank and treated at the scene before being airlifted.

Workers were in the process of recoating the interior of the tank when the scaffolding collapsed shortly after 12:30 Saturday afternoon. The tower was taken out of service last week after a leak was discovered.
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By Steph Solis and Alison Young, USA TODAY

Police and Orlando city officials said 50 people are dead and 53 are hospitalized after a gunman opened fire in a gay nightclub early Sunday.

Here is what we know so far:

 A gunman opened fire in a gay nightclub: It began around 2 a.m. Sunday as a gunbattle between a man and a police officer who was working at the Pulse nightclub near downtown Orlando, Police Chief John Mina said at a news conference. It became a hostage situation and there was a three-hour standoff until a police SWAT team burst through a wall to rescue those inside.

About 320 people were in the club, police said. Some people escaped through the back of the club, while others were trapped inside.

A federal law enforcement official told USA TODAY the suspect had been identified as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Fla.

 Three-hour standoff unfolded: Officers from multiple departments arrived at the scene after the shooting. A bomb squad was called in, and before 5 a.m. officers conducted a controlled detonation. Police used an armored vehicle to break through a wall at the nightclub, then SWAT team members exchanged gunfire with the suspect. He was shot and killed. Mina said the suspect was armed with a handgun and an assault rifle.

Officers rescued at least 30 hostages from the club.

 Fifty victims found dead: At a late-morning press conference, police and Orlando city officials said 50 people were dead and another 53 people were hospitalized. It is unclear what the condition of those victims are. Police had initially said that at least 20 people were dead but found far more were dead inside the club.

Nine police officers were involved in the shooting incident and one was injured. Police said it appears a Kevlar helmet saved the life of the officer, who suffered facial injuries.

 Terrorism suspected: Police described the mass shooting as a "domestic terror incident." Authorities are investigating whether the incident was the work of Islamic terrorism, and the FBI is investigating.

When asked whether the shooter had ties to a Jihadist terror group, FBI Special Agent Ronald Hopper said during a news conference that "we do have suggestions that that individual may have leanings toward that, that particular ideology. But right now we can't say definitively so we're still running everything around."

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., told reporters that there appears to be connections to ISIL, though the FBI has not yet confirmed the suspect's motives.

 Suspect had "suspicious device": Witnesses reported seeing a bomb in the gunman's possession, but police did not confirm that detail. Police did say the gunman was armed with an assault rifle, a handgun and an unidentified "suspicious device." A bomb squad responded to the scene and conducted a "controlled explosion," police said.

 Shooting suspect's father: Mir Seddique told NBC News that the shooting "had nothing to do with religion" and that his son got angry when he recently saw two men kissing in Miami.

 Other threats: Authorities said they had no indication of any other threat in Florida or elsewhere in the nation. However, the city of Orlando and Florida state officials declared states of emergency.

 Hotlines for family members, tips: Police said they are focusing on identifying the victims. Family members who are trying to locate relatives can call 407-246-4357. A family assistance center has been set up at the Hampton Inn at 43 Columbia Street in Orlando. The FBI has asked anyone who was at the club before the shooting and anyone with tips to call 1-800-CALL-FBI ( 1-800-225-5324).
SHARE Gov. Mike Pence (Photo: Jenna Watson/IndyStar 2016 file photo)

By Chelsea Schneider and Zach Osowski, USA TODAY Network

Gov. Mike Pence told delegates at the Indiana Republican Convention Saturday that Hoosiers need to re-elect GOP leadership in November to accelerate on the success of our state.

Pence, who is expected to face a tight re-election fight against Democrat John Gregg, spoke at the convention where delegates nominated Jennifer McCormick, a school superintendent from Yorktown, as the party's candidate for state schools chief and Curtis Hill, the Elkhart County prosecutor, for attorney general.

Pence said his opponent's party would take Indiana in the wrong direction, back to the days when Democrats such as Gregg were in charge of the state.

Well, we know where that road will lead us, its a place of deficit and debt and higher taxes and fewer jobs and more government, Pence said.

The governor also gave a strong endorsement of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, calling on Hoosiers to make Indiana the first state on the board to elect Trump as president.

Pence then turned back to his own re-election efforts, speaking in front of approximately 1,700 delegates from across the state.

Now my opponent likes to say this race is about my record, and hes half right. This race is about my record  and its about his record, Pence said.

He lobbed criticism at Gregg, saying his track record as a former state lawmaker couldnt be more different than the past 12 years when Republicans have dominated state politics.

When we stood strong for life, liberty and the Second Amendment, John Gregg has made more left turns than Mario Andretti and A.J. Foyt combined, Pence said.

Under his leadership, Pence argued the state has achieved the one overarching goal he set out to complete four years ago.

I wanted more Hoosiers going to work than ever before in the history of this state, and for 10 consecutive months because of Republican leadership, we have record employment all over the state of Indiana. Now thats a record Hoosiers should be proud of, Pence said.

In response, Gregg's campaign spokesman Jeff Harris said "it's clear that Mike Pence is wedded to the divisive and overly partisan ideologies of the past."

Harris said the comments amounted to Pence "distorting John Gregg's record to distract from his total failure as a leader."

Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb, who delegates confirmed as Pence's running mate, also blasted Gregg. He said under Republican leadership, the state has gone from "last to leader."

"I am ready to fight, not just to protect our gains, our past gains. But I'm ready to fight to make sure that Indiana continues to win well into the future," Holcomb said.

Delegates also heard from Trump, who campaigned hard in the state ahead of May's primary and recorded a video for the convention. He described Indiana as a "firewall" for his candidacy, after support from Hoosier Republicans caused his remaining opponents, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich to drop out of the race.

He said he remains confident that he'll "end up in a big, beautiful victory in November."

Ahead of the election, Pence spoke of the need for party unity, though he recently condemned Trump for ethnicity-based attacks on an Indiana-born judge.

Now that the primaries are over, its time to come together, Pence said. Its time to come together around the people who were the peoples choice."

With most of the convention focused on the upcoming election, delegates also sent a signal of the state partys ideals. An overwhelming number of convention delegates endorsed a party platform containing language in support of traditional marriage. A vast majority of the conventions delegates voted in support of the platform, while about 50 delegates opposed.

The platform says: We believe that strong families, based on marriage between a man and a woman, are the foundation of society and also includes support of diverse family structures. It goes on to say, We also recognize that some families are much more diverse, and we support the blended families, grandparents, guardians and loving adults who successfully raise and nurture children to reach their full potential every day.

Debate over same-sex marriage has divided the social conservative and fiscal conservative branches of the party for years  exploding last year when the Republican-controlled Indiana General Assembly passed the controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It's also an issue that points to a key difference between Pence and Gregg. Pence has urged lawmakers to guard religious freedom, while Gregg supports expanding civil rights protections for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

An attempt to allow the conventions delegates to consider amending the platform to remove the "between a man and a woman" language was blocked Friday by a state party committee.

One delegate voting against the platform, Josh Owens from Marion County, circulated letters at the convention, saying the traditional marriage language makes him question his place in the Republican Party.

"I have a fantastically loving boyfriend, with whom I would love to someday raise children. Obviously, this part of my life is not accepted in our party. I am very clearly not deemed a part of the 'foundation of society' we create, despite our affection and support for one another...," Owens stated in his letter.

Another delegate from Posey County said he voted in support of the platform and was fine with the language regarding marriage.

I think the way we have it now is accommodating to both sides, Jerry Walden said.

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 general election 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.

The plank on traditional marriage was approved as thousands of people gathered in Downtown Indianapolis for the Circle City IN Pride Festival celebrating the LGBT community.

On Saturday, delegates also faced decisions in hotly-contested races for state superintendent of public instruction and attorney general.

McCormick bested social-conservative challenger Dawn Wooten by a wide margin for the schools chief nomination, garnering 1,030 votes to Wooten's 574. McCormick, who touted her experience as a K-12 educator and leader, said the current Indiana Department of Education administration is hurting Indiana schools because it has "no leadership and no vision."

Hill snagged the attorney general nomination among an original field of four candidates and after three ballots. On the final ballot, Hill beat former Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter 908 votes to 602.

Hill said he plans to focus on "federal overreach" if elected. As he's traveled around the state, he's found that's been the single-most important issue for Republican voters.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally, Saturday, June 11, 2016, at a private hanger at Greater Pittsburgh International Airport in Moon, Pa. (Photo: Keith Srakocic, AP)

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By David Jackson, USA TODAY

MOON TOWNSHIP, Pa.  The presumptive 2016 Republican presidential nominee hit a couple of potential swing states Saturday to strike back at his critics  including the 2012 Republican presidential nominee.

In travels to Florida and Pennsylvania, Donald Trump attacked and others who say the businessman's "trickle-down racism" and harsh comments about women will drag the GOP down to defeat in the November election against Democrat .

Romney "choked like a dog" in his 2012 loss to , Trump told supporters at the airport near Pittsburgh, and is now attacking him unfairly. Earlier in the day, in , Trump called Romney "a stone cold loser."

The attacks came a day after Romney echoed his refusal to endorse Trump, saying he lacks the temperament to be commander-in-chief.

I dont want to see a president of the United State saying things which change the character of the generations of Americans that are following, Romney said on CNN. Presidents have an impact on the nature of our nation, and trickle down racism and trickle down bigotry and trickle down misogyny  all of these things are extraordinarily dangerous to the heart and character of America.

The nominee-in-waiting is under attack from a variety of Republican lawmakers, particularly over his claim that a federal judge's "Mexican heritage" makes him biased in a fraud case involving the now-defunct .

Trump has vowed not to discuss the judge again, and stuck to that pledge Saturday, though he did criticize "politically correct" public officials who criticize some of the things he says.

"It's like a bunch of babies," Trump said, "a bunch of dumb babies."

It's very unusual for a previous presidential nominee to criticize a current nominee, and vice-versa. It probably hasn't happened to this extent in the Republican Party since 1912, when ex-President ran against successor on a third-party ticket, helping elect Democrat that year.

Romney has ruled out a third-party bid in 2016 but told attendees at a conference he sponsored Saturday that he is saddened by how many Republicans have rallied behind Trump. He said the GOP's troubles are "breaking my heart."

Trump also attacked Romney via social media, tweeting Saturday that Romney "had his chance to beat a failed president but he choked like a dog. Now he calls me racist  but I am least racist person there is."

The New York businessman said his emphasis on jobs will unify the country, telling supporters at the airport in Pittsburgh: "White, black ... we're going to bring everybody together."

Trump also paid tribute to the voters in Florida and Pennsylvania, states that may be essential to his efforts to defeat Clinton in November.

Florida is a must-win state for any Republican candidate. Trump is also hoping to break through in Democratic-leaning states like Pennsylvania, which the Republicans haven't carried in a presidential election since 1988.

Trump is in the midst of a weeklong national tour that also includes potential swing states like New Hampshire, Nevada, and Arizona.

The schedule includes a Monday speech in New Hampshire attacking the current Democratic candidate as well as ex-President .

Trump also turns 70 years old on Tuesday, a fact noted Saturday by supporters in Pennsylvania and Florida who shouted "Happy birthday" at him.

"I don't want to hear about it," Trump joked in Tampa, though he added that "I feel like I'm 35. That's the good news."
FARGO -- A Grand Forks man sentenced to life in prison for trafficking drugs throughout the region is appealing his time behind bars, arguing again that he should be acquitted and receive a new trial.

Jose Luis Delacruz, 38, also known as Joe Delacruz, received the hefty sentence in April for conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and distribution of methamphetamine, in addition to a consecutive seven-year sentence for brandishing a firearm during the commission of drug trafficking.

Over the course of the conspiracy, co-conspirators received meth from Delacruz and sold it primarily in the Grand Forks area. U.S. Attorney Chris Myers said the trafficking ring distributed more than 500 grams of a mixture containing meth.

The day he was sentenced, Delacruz said he planned to appeal the sentence, and now his case sits in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals as he makes three arguments on why he should be acquitted and receive a new trial. Delacruz has argued for these before while his case was ongoing, but he was turned down.

In his latest appeal, Delacruz argued he should be acquitted because there was a difference in what he was charged with and the evidence the prosecution presented at his trial. Delacruz argues in his appeal that he was charged with a single conspiracy.

"However, the evidence presented by the government at trial presented two related, but competing conspiracies," the appeal states.

By using evidence from both conspiracies at the trial, there was "spillover prejudice," affecting his case, he argues in the appeal.

In addition to being acquitted, Delacruz makes two arguments that he should receive a new trial. One of the arguments has popped up before in his case: ineffective counsel. Initially, Delacruz was represented by Theodore Sandberg, who now represents Nicolas Peralez Jr., who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Grand Forks County District Court, and Matthew Gust, who pleaded guilty to the December fire at a Grand Forks Somali restaurant in federal court. But because of a "potential conflict," Sandberg withdrew and Delacruz was assigned Brian Toay, an attorney out of Fargo-Moorhead. Delacruz and Toay had some trouble communicating from the beginning, and Delacruz asked multiple times for a new lawyer, even immediately before his trial started, but his motions were denied, according to the appeal.

After a three-day jury trial, Delacruz was found guilty May 13, 2015, on the charges. But after Delacruz filed a disciplinary complaint against Toay, the court granted him a new lawyer, Jade Rosenfeldt, of Vogel Law Firm in Moorhead.

In his appeal, Delacruz is once again asking for a new lawyer. In a motion filed May 3, Rosenfeldt asked to be taken off the case after Delacruz left her a message saying he didn't want her as his attorney anymore, according to the motion. The court said she could withdraw Thursday, and a new attorney hasn't been listed for Delacruz.

Finally, Delacruz argued the evidence presented at his trial leaves a possibility of "miscarriage of justice." More specifically, "the case against Mr. Delacruz consists almost entirely of testimony, and not physical evidence," the appeal states. The testimony was from "biased" and "unreliable witnesses" who testified to have more lenient sentences in their cases, according to the appeal, and the witnesses "were inconsistent with each other," even "contradicting themselves." At least three of the other people listed in Delacruz's federal case testified as his trial.

In addition to Delacruz, four other trafficking ring members have been sentenced to prison terms: Patrick James Peltier, five years; Anthony James Farrell, four years; Kimberly Ann Ratliff, 10 years; and Brian Joseph McMahan, 2 years.

With Delacruz's appeal filed, prosecutors can respond and make arguments, before Delacruz can argue his case again. Then a decision would be made on Delacruz's appeal.
DENNY SIMMONS / COURIER & PRESS John Hay with Stemaly Excavating out of Henderson, Ky., rolls his track hoe onto the already demollished rear of an abandoned home at 1800 Shelby Avenue on Evansville's South Side Friday morning, June 3, 2016.

SHARE DENNY SIMMONS / COURIER & PRESS John Hay with Stemaly Excavating out of Henderson, Ky., takes a bite out of the rear corner of an abandoned house with his track hoe at 1800 Shelby Avenue on Evansville's South Side Friday morning, June 3, 2016. DENNY SIMMONS / COURIER & PRESS John Hay with Stemaly Excavating out of Henderson, Ky., readies his track hoe for the demolition of an abandoned home at 1800 Shelby Avenue on Evansville's South Side Friday morning, June 3, 2016.

By Thomas B. Langhorne of the Courier and Press

Possibly because the numbers stretch into seven digits, Evansville city officials haven't talked much about the long-range cost of their plan for a blight-fighting land bank.

The prospective cost of the war on housing blight is plain enough  up to $8 million through 2019, the end of Mayor Lloyd Winnecke's second term. But that money  and the land bank program itself  has to be sold to the City Council year-by-year as Winnecke administration officials seek allotments of up to $2 million in each year. The city budget, after all, is done on an annual basis.

The program has strong supporters on City Council who are open to funding it year after year, assuming it is doing what city officials say it will do.

"I feel it's critical to the health of our city," said Republican at-large Councilwoman Michelle Mercer.

Democrat Missy Mosby, president of the council, said one year won't cut it.

"I think this is something we have to do for the city. It's a quality-of-life issue," Mosby said.

The land bank, intended as a 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization administered by the city Department of Metropolitan Development, would acquire vacant and blighted structures, demolish them and market the land for new development to get it back on tax rolls. If City Council members believe the program deserves renewal, that could plunge Evansville into an intense, years-long demolition campaign that ultimately could take down as many as 2,000 vacant and blighted structures.

But it will require the political will of Republican Winnecke's administration to keep pushing it  and of a Democratic City Council to keep approving it.

Winnecke's men got the first year's $1.7 million allotment from City Council last month only after tangling with Democratic Councilman H. Dan Adams over the planned use of $190,000 in riverboat money for the land bank's administrative expenses.

And even getting to that point required a citywide election last year to replace several other Democratic council members who had flatly refused to dip into the city's riverboat fund for the project. They argued that the riverboat fund  the city tax revenue pulled in from Tropicana Evansville and the primary funding source for city government capital projects  must be protected so it is available to absorb such capital expenses as fire equipment, fire apparatus and police cars. They said the land bank would not be a capital investment, a requirement that City Council members imposed in 1996 upon the use of riverboat money.

Winnecke administration officials counter that the purchase and acquisition of real property is a capital expense appropriate for riverboat funding. The argument has not been resolved  except by last year's election and the changes it brought to the City Council.

'Economies of scale'

Like it or not, politics  the craft of accusations, finger pointing and name-calling  is a defining factor in setting blight policy. Policymakers make policy, and they are elected.

Last year's election increased Republican representation on the City Council to four of the body's nine members and elevated into leadership positions Democrats who largely share Winnecke's objectives. Four of the Republican mayor's strongest critics on the council departed.

The current City Council will be in place for at least the next four years, right alongside Winnecke.

But Kelley Coures, Winnecke's point man for the land bank project, knows he will have to prove to budget-conscious and re-election-minded council members that it is taking a bite out of blight.

Coures, director of the Department of Metropolitan Development, also will have to prove the money is being spent wisely. He's got some ideas.

"I anticipate achieving economies of scale by doing cluster demolitions," he said. "We'll be able to reduce the cost of each individual razing by clustering them together so that the contractor who wins the bid to do, say, 10 of them at a time, doesn't have to mobilize and remobilize and break down and remobilize and move around town."

Coures believes the economies will allow the land bank to carry out more demolitions and faster demolitions than are now foreseen, which he said will become clear over the next two years.

"But I don't know. It's not an exact science. It's an ongoing process. We'll tend to learn as we go," he said.

Mosby said waging war on housing blight is an imperative.

"As long as (the land bank) is working and we're seeing great things happening  which I don't see why it wouldn't  I'm definitely open to funding it again," the 2nd Ward councilwoman said.

But Mosby holds her seat on the City Council only because she won an election by 15 votes. That was her victory margin in the 2015 Democratic primary against challenger Steve Davis.

Mercer said blight is enough of a plague in Evansville that policymakers can only take the long view.

"The properties that are identified to be razed and put into the land bank until private developers can come along and develop quality affordable housing, those are properties that cannot be rehabbed because it would be too expensive," Mercer said. "It costs the city a great deal of money in police and fire runs. They're havens for crime.

"That's one reason (the land bank) is critical."

But Mercer lost several elections before finally breaking through with her victory last year. Had she fallen short again, her opinion might not matter to anyone but her.

Democratic City Councilman Jim Brinkmeyer praised Coures for his attention to the blight issue. Brinkmeyer said he would consult his 6th Ward constituents, but he is open to the idea of funding the land bank in multiple years. He is keenly aware that the land bank's focus area includes lower regions of the Howell neighborhood, located in his West Side ward.

"(Coures) is right, it's a multiyear process," Brinkmeyer said. "It's not something that's done one time, and it's one shot and you're done."

But Brinkmeyer ascended to the City Council because he defeated incumbent 6th Ward Democrat Al Lindsey last year. Lindsey, a vociferous critic of Winnecke, voted for the 2016 budget that eliminated the mayor's first land bank funding request.

The money

The first year's allotment of $1.7 million  the money City Council approved last month  will be doled out in monthly distributions to the land bank or the Evansville Brownfields Corp., which will act in the land bank's stead until the new nonprofit can be created by ordinance. That can't happen until enabling legislation takes effect July 1.

All finance ordinances involving cash balance transfers must be approved by the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance, a step crossed off the list with the state's notification of approval on June 6.

Having enough money in the riverboat fund to fund the land bank year after year through 2019 shouldn't be a problem, said City Controller Russ Lloyd Jr.

As of April 30, the city's riverboat fund held just shy of $18.8 million, about $13 million of which is uncommitted. That doesn't count the newly appropriated $1.7 million.

"(The four-year plan) is doable if that's what the administration desires and that's what council agrees to," Lloyd said. "Obviously, there's always demands for the riverboat money. The demands are almost infinite."

Coures is acutely aware that parsing through those demands and deciding how  or whether  to spend the money is a matter for elected officials to decide. Winnecke hasn't said whether he will seek a third term in 2019, if he has even decided.

The DMD director knows he may have no more than one year  or four  to make the land bank work. Then it's up to the voters.

"If Lloyd (Winnecke) runs for a third term, or if someone else comes in as mayor that has a different vision  if there's a different City Council in place four years from now that doesn't support land banking, or whatever  we can only plan so far ahead," he said.

"We can only plan so far ahead, because the election cycle runs on a four-year basis."
FARGO --North Dakota has one of the nation's highest rates of salaried workers who could benefit from a new federal overtime rule while Minnesota has one of the lowest, which experts say shows the differences in the types of jobs held in each state.

The change, which goes into effect Dec. 1, more than doubles the annual salary workers need to earn to potentially be exempt from overtime, from $23,660 to $47,476.

More than 1 out of 4 salaried workers in North Dakota, 27.5 percent, will newly qualify for overtime pay, while just 16.4 percent of salaried Minnesotan workers will be affected, according to an Economic Policy Institute study published last month.

North Dakota is the ninth-most affected state, and only Connecticut has a smaller percentage of workers who will benefit than Minnesota.

That's a much wider gap in rankings that the states see in media annual household income. In 2014, median household incomes in North Dakota were $59,029, 20th-highest in the nation. Minnesota's was $61,481, ninth-highest.

Alan Benson, a professor in the University of Minnesota Twin Cities' Department of Work and Organizations, said the difference comes down to what kinds of jobs are more common in North Dakota. He said jobs like retail store managers and other supervisors who manage small teams of employees will be the most affected.

"It's the lower-level supervisors who'll be affected the most," he said.

Will Kimball, who worked on the EPI report, said it's hard to tell exactly what industries in North Dakotans will be most affected by the new rule because the state has a small number of salaried employees: 122,000 to Minnesota's 961,000. He said the small sample size used in the report wasn't enough to make meaningful estimates of what fields' workers will most benefit.

Employees whose jobs are classified as executive, administrative or professional are exempt from receiving overtime pay, as are jobs that require advanced knowledge of a specific field.

Nearly all hourly workers already must be paid 150 percent their usual pay rate after working 40 hours, under federal labor law.

Benson said there could be more executives and other workers exempt from overtime in Minnesota. Seventeen Fortune 500 companies, the 500 largest publicly traded companies based in the U.S., were headquartered in Minnesota in 2015, according to rankings released last week. North Dakota doesn't have any Fortune 500 companies.

"If you look at all salaried people in Minnesota, a lot of them could be making more than that threshold," Benson said.

Of all jobs in Minnesota, around 6 percent are management, including CEOs and information systems managers. The number is slightly smaller in North Dakota, with 4.33 percent of all jobs classified as management, according to 2015 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Kimball said millennials are disproportionately affected by the rule change because they often hold salaried jobs that don't pay much. But North Dakota's percentage of people between 15 and 24 is around 16 percent, only slightly higher than Minnesota's, according to the American Community Survey's 2014 estimates.

Benson said the rule change is part of a "multipronged strategy" to help low-income workers. He said the old threshold provided overtime protections to very few salaried workers.

Kimball said the states the most affected are in the South, such as West Virginia, Arkansas, South Carolina and Florida. Idaho and South Dakota are the only non-southern states with a higher percentage of salaried workers making less than the new cutoff than in North Dakota.

Andy Peterson, president and CEO of the Greater North Dakota Chamber of Commerce, has said previously the rule will hurt the state's small businesses.

"What we're looking for is a degree of certainty that the law of unintended circumstances won't damage the employer/employee relationship," he said.

Restaurants are one of the businesses that could be most affected by the change. About 37 percent of salaried workers in the hospitality and leisure sector in the U.S. make less than the new threshold but more than the old one, according to the EPI report.

Dan Hurder, a managing partner at Great Plains Hospitality, which runs restaurants like The Boiler Room and Sazerac Alley in downtown Fargo, said he thinks the rule will make hiring entry-level managers less feasible. He said increasing less-experienced managers' salaries above the threshold would give them the same pay as experienced, older managers.

Hurder said he might consider cutting workers' hours once the law takes effect, which "is the last thing we want to do."

"At the end of the day, we have to make the books balance," he said.

Hurder said of his roughly 10 salaried employees, who are mostly chefs and managers, only a few will be affected by the new law. He said his employees don't work overtime often.

The new federal rule applies to about 300 employees at North Dakota State University, one of Fargo-Moorhead's largest employers. A spokeswoman said NDSU is still working on how to adjust to the new overtime benchmark.

"Staff from the NDSU Department of Human Resources will work with supervisors to analyze these positions to determine the impact of the changes, including financial, cultural and training needs," NDSU spokeswoman Sadie Rudolph said in an email.

Nationwide, 12.5 million workers will be able to receive overtime pay once the law goes into effect, the EPI study said. The federal law will update the threshold every three years to keep pace with the 40th percentile of workers' pay in the lowest-paid region.
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Forty-nine points.

That was the polling gap between Doug Burgum and longtime Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem in February, about a month after the millionaire Fargo entrepreneur made his game-changing announcement that he would seek the Republican nomination for governor.

More than three months later, after spending millions on advertising and logging some 16,500 miles in an effort to brand himself as the anti-status quo candidate and try to overcome Stenehjems name recognition, the 59-year-old former Microsoft executive feels confident heading into the only poll that matters: the primary election on Tuesday.

I think were going to win, and its really from being on the ground, Burgum said.

But sitting Thursday in the first-floor Capitol office hes occupied since December 2000, the 63-year-old Stenehjem said he asks himself the same question he has at this point since his first race in 1976 that began a 24-year stint in the state Legislature: Would he rather be in his opponents shoes?

I would not trade places, he said. I just have a feeling about it, and I have before.

He doesnt deny that Burgum has gained ground since that poll conducted Feb. 18-25 by St. Paul-based DFM Research found him leading Burgum 59 percent to 10 percent  the only independent poll conducted on the race since Burgum launched his candidacy Jan. 14 with a TEDx-style presentation in a community theater.

Despite no internal polling of his own, Stenehjem said he believes Burgum is probably within 10 points of him, but not as close as 5 points.

Burgums campaign released an internal poll in April showing the race in a statistical dead heat, though he wouldnt release the wording of the questions. He also declined Thursday to release results from his campaigns latest internal polling  Were not handing over our playbook to the competition  but said they feel good about what theyre seeing, especially compared to the daunting 57-point spread he faced when deciding whether to run.

Theres been a huge shift, he said.

University of North Dakota political science professor Mark Jendrysik said its hard to predict the race without reliable polling data, and low-turnout primary elections can be swayed by a couple thousand voters in either direction. But he said his sense is that Stenehjems name recognition and 40-year history of voters electing him to office should put him over the top.

Whats really unprecedented is we have large amounts of money being spent, which has never happened in my memory in a primary in North Dakota, he said. Whether that does anything or not is another question.

Just how much money is being spent is unclear, as North Dakotas campaign finance laws dont require candidates to report expenditures.

Burgums campaign had raised about $1.1 million as of Thursday, while Stenehjem had reported contributions totaling about $60,000 less than Burgum, including $145,000 he transferred June 3 from his attorney generals campaign war chest.

Stenehjem said the $1.05 million hes raised is about what hell spend on the race. Burgum declined to say how much his campaign has spent, but said, Im spending more of my own money than Ive raised.

Public inspection files that broadcasters are required to maintain by the Federal Communications Commission show Burgum has ordered at least $2 million in broadcast ads. He ordered $243,912 from cable TV and Internet provider Midcontinent Communications alone, compared with zero ordered by Stenehjem.

Based on Burgums frequent mailers and extensive TV and online advertising campaign, Stenehjem estimates his opponent has spent $5 million to $6 million on the race. Jendrysik said that estimate isnt out of line when comparing Burgums campaign to those mounted during the most expensive race in state history, the 2012 U.S. Senate race, when former attorney general Heidi Heitkamp and freshman U.S. Rep. Rick Berg combined to spend more than $11.8 million on the race won by Heitkamp, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Burgum said Stenehjems campaign is trying to inflate his spending and turn it into a campaign issue when it isnt one. He said some of the spending was simply to build name recognition as Stenehjem has been doing, spending money on political races for the past 40 years. He also noted the state GOP is putting resources behind Stenehjem as the partys endorsed candidate.

The fact that Im willing to invest in myself and not take a salary, people ought to figure out that this has nothing to do with money, he said.

Regardless, Stenehjem predicted it will be the most expensive race in state history at the state office level, no question about it. His campaign spending from his own pocket has been limited to hotel bills, gasoline and 500 Egg McMuffins as hes traveled thousands of miles campaigning, he said.

He planned to spend the final days walking in parades and stopping at restaurants and senior centers.

Weve worked tirelessly, he said.

Tuesdays primary election for governor and several other statewide offices is combined with local general elections for cities and school boards. The winner between Stenehjem, Burgum and Bismarck oilfield consultant Paul Sorum will advance to the November election to face Democratic state Rep. Marvin Nelson of Rolla and Libertarian candidate Marty Riske of Fargo in the governors race.

Jendrysik and other political observers say given North Dakotas Republican leanings  voters havent elected a Democratic governor since 1988 or a Democrat for president since 1964  the GOP primary will likely determine who takes the governors office.

What remains to be seen is whether Democrats, who have no contested races on their side of the ballot, will switch lanes and try to influence the GOP race.

Thats a wild card, Jendrysik said.
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Hours after a mass shooting being investigated as an act terrorism left 50 people dead in Florida, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump tweeted that he was "right" about radical Islamic terrorism.

It was unclear whether the shooter who killed at least 50 people in an Orlando, Florida nightclub was associated with a radical religious organization. President Barack Obama addressed the nation, calling the shooting "an act of terror" and an "act of hate."

Trump tweeted as Obama began speaking: "Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!"

RELATED: Club shooter was known to FBI, official says

The shooter in what has been called the worst mass shooting in U.S. history was identified Sunday as Omar Mateen. According to reports, Mateen had pledged allegiance to ISIS and has been on the "radar" of U.S. agencies. As of 12:35 p.m., there was no indication of the Islamic extremist group's direct involvement in the deaths.

Trump, who has called for a ban on all Muslim immigration to the United States, implied we was being congratulated for his hard line in the sand.

"Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism," Trump tweeted. "I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!"

RELATED: Texas Lt. Governor deletes "reap what you sow" tweet after mass LGBT shooting

Some criticized the tweet for being insensitive and inappropriate given the day's events.

"You're the only person in America who would or could 'appreciate the congrats' while families mourn 50 dead," Chris Sacca from NBC's "Shark Tank" tweeted.

RELATED: Mark Cuban really wants you to know Donald Trump is not that rich

The tweet came after another tweet an hour earlier that shared his condolences for the families who lost loved ones.

"Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will get tough, smart & vigilant?"

>> Click the gallery above to see some of Trump's most controversial campaign moments.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
Wrong bones

This was like nothing we had ever seen before.

Bridgeport Police Chief A.J. Perez, at the time of the arrest of Felix Delgado in connection with the theft of human bones from a Massachusetts cemetery. Though human bones were found in Delgados Bridgeport home, Massachusetts authorities dropped the charges last week because the bones were not consistent with what was robbed from the grave in that state.

Connecticut in play

Connecticut will not be written off, unlike in previous cycles.
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.
Teams and players to watch in the District 5 boys soccer playoffs

Check out the teams and players to watch and the District 5 Class 1A and 2A boys soccer playoffs open.
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.
For me, co-operation with our partners on the continent and the restriction of the power of our government is a positive, not a negative

In the debate over our membership of the EU, some talk about economics and if were better off out or in, while some talk about security and safety, and our ability to fight terrorism or police our streets. For others, the key issue is immigration.

But one topic raised time and again by Leave campaigners is our loss of sovereignty to Brussels.

They claim that we allow others to make our laws, that we are ruled from abroad, and that British people are less free as a result.

This is the heart of the so-called emotional argument for striking out on our own. Its an argument that obsesses the political elite, but for ordinary people, what does it actually mean?

For me, co-operation with our partners on the continent and the restriction of the power of our government is a positive, not a negative. Unrestrained power is a dangerous thing and we have a system that is already at risk of putting a huge amount of authority in the hands of the state.

In the House of Lords we have seen this first hand, as the current Government has attempted to use its small Commons majority to ride roughshod over ordinary people and their rights.

Labour peers have been the last line of defence, protecting families from cuts to tax credits, forcing a climbdown on plans to limit trade union rights, and making sure this country fulfils its responsibility to refugee children in Europe.

Ministers may not like it but we are an essential check to a system that too often allows governments to force through destructive changes without considering the human impact of their decisions.

My experience as a peer has taught me to be sceptical when politicians complain that they do not always get their way. I have little sympathy when Ministers moan that the EU interferes with their plans and frustrates their ambitions.

Governments need restraints, and the framework of EU laws is one of the best protections we have against the whims of Ministers, whether they be Conservatives or from any other party.

The Social Chapter guarantees our maternity and holiday rights, and limits the hours we can be forced to work. It makes Europe unique; a continent with protections for citizens built in to the very fabric of the market.

The same is true of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), a British document written after the horror of the Second World War, enshrining values of democracy, tolerance and respect across a whole continent.

Just ask the brave Hillsborough families how human rights can help to give victims the right to be heard and give a voice to the voiceless. Pictured: Thousands of people gather outside Liverpool's Saint George's Hall

It is the ultimate safeguard and recourse that citizens have against the state and has been at the heart of attempts by ordinary people to hold powerful institutions to account.

Anyone who has spoken out against state-sponsored injustice will know that the ECHR is a vital ally in the fight for transparency, accountability and justice. Just ask the brave Hillsborough families how human rights can help to give victims the right to be heard and give a voice to the voiceless.

The Leave campaign has tried to pitch this debate as the people against the establishment. Nothing is further from the truth. Europe is not an elite conspiracy against the public; at its best, it is the opposite.

The EU is not perfect but it is the best expression of a powerful idea  the unity of purpose across a continent that has often been torn asunder by violence and conflict. Turning our back on this idea, this dream based so heavily on British values, would be a huge mistake.

On June 23 we should stand united with our neighbours, resolute in our belief that together we can achieve more than we ever can alone.
Having seen no-nonsense pro-Remain Cabinet Minister Amber Rudd unceremoniously debag Boris Johnson in the ITV referendum debate, Dog cant help wondering how her very close friend Kwasi Kwarteng, Boriss fellow Old Etonian and a pro-Brexiteer Tory MP, fares when they discuss the subject of Europe. A pal of Kwasi confides: Kwasi is twice as big as Boris and twice as clever.

Dog cant help wondering how pro-Remain Cabinet Minister Amber Rudd's (left) very close friend Kwasi Kwarteng, (right) a pro-Brexiteer Tory MP, fares when they discuss the subject of Europe

Still reeling from Ambers TV jibe that he could not be trusted to drive a girl back after a party, Boriss own journey home by bike proved perilous. As he pedalled past a motley gang of well-refreshed politicos outside Westminsters Red Lion pub, he was heckled with shouts of Remain!. Scowling Boris was nearly driven under a bus as he was forced to swerve when one boozy yob veered towards him hurling abuse.

A below-the-belt swipe at Sturgeon

Nicola Sturgeon, left, was the victim of an appalling Twitter insult by Nigel Farages former aide and flatmate Raheem Kassam after she clashed with Farages fellow anti-EU campaigner Boris Johnson in the TV debate. Kassam tweeted: Can someone tape Nicola Sturgeons mouth shut? And her legs, so she cant reproduce. Farage should remember Aesops Fables: A man is known by the company

Raheem Kassam tweeted: Can someone tape Nicola Sturgeons mouth shut? And her legs, so she cant reproduce. Farage should remember Aesops Fables: A man is known by the company

Veteran Labour MP Beast of Bolsover Dennis Skinner nearly missed the chance to continue his lifelong anti-Brussels crusade on June 23 owing to a health scare. I lost a stone in hospital after coughing up blood for 16 hours, says Dennis, 84. Im the only MP who was in the Commons to vote against joining the Common Market in 1973, Ive voted against every single EU treaty and Im damned sure Im voting this time too.

No-conviction politics

Introducing fellow Brexiteer Nigel Evans at a rally, Tory backbencher Peter Bone boomed: When Nigel speaks in the Commons, colleagues come running to hear him  hes a man of convictions. Evans, who was cleared of gay rape charges two years ago, winced visibly. He told the audience: For the avoidance of doubt, Id like to remind everyone that I was completely acquitted!

Introducing fellow Brexiteer Nigel Evans at a rally, Tory backbencher Peter Bone boomed: When Nigel speaks in the Commons, colleagues come running to hear him  hes a man of convictions

Jeremy Corbyns spin-doctor Seumas Milne is hunting for traitors whom he suspects of briefing against the Labour leader. But has he always been so loyal? Before becoming Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell claimed he was deleted from The Guardians comment pages, branded the newspaper an absolute nightmare and accused its Comment Is Free section of extraordinary censorship. The Comment Editor during that period? Seumas Milne.
I think we are about to have the most serious constitutional crisis since the Abdication of King Edward VIII. I suppose we had better try to enjoy it.

If  as I think we will  we vote to leave the EU on June 23, a democratically elected Parliament, which wants to stay, will confront a force as great as itself  a national vote, equally democratic, which wants to quit. Are we about to find out what actually happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?

I am genuinely unsure how this will work out. I hope it will only destroy our two dead political parties, stiffened corpses that have long propped each other up with the aid of BBC endorsement and ill-gotten money.

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I overestimated the Prime Minister  a difficult thing for me to do since my opinion of him was so low, writes Peter Hitchens

I was wrong to think that the EU referendum would be so hopelessly rigged that the campaign for independence was doomed to lose. I overestimated the Prime Minister  a difficult thing for me to do since my opinion of him was so low. I did not think he could possibly have promised this vote with so little thought, preparation or skill.

I underestimated the BBC, which has, perhaps thanks to years of justified and correct criticism from people such as me, taken its duty of impartiality seriously.

Everything I hear now suggests that the votes for Leave are piling up, while the Remain cause is faltering and floundering. The betrayed supporters of both major parties now feel free to take revenge on their smug and arrogant leaders.

It has been a mystery to me that these voters stayed loyal to organisations that repeatedly spat on them from a great height. Labour doesnt love the poor. It loves the London elite. The Tories dont love the country. They love only money. The referendum, in which the parties are split and uncertain, has freed us all from silly tribal loyalties and allowed us to vote instead according to reason. We can all vote against the heedless, arrogant snobs who inflicted mass immigration on the poor (while making sure they lived far from its consequences themselves). And nobody can call us racists for doing so. Thats not to say that the voters are ignoring the actual issue of EU membership as a whole. As I have known for decades, this country has gained nothing from belonging to the European Union, and lost a great deal.

If Zambia can be independent, why cannot we? If membership is so good for us, why has it been accompanied by savage industrial and commercial decline? If the Brussels system of sclerotic, centralised bureaucracy is so good, why doesnt anyone else in the world adopt it?

I think we are about to have the most serious constitutional crisis since the Abdication of King Edward VIII

As for the clueless drivel about independence campaigners being hostile to foreigners or narrow-minded, this is mere ignorant snobbery. Ill take on any of them in a competition as to who has travelled most widely, in Europe and beyond it. Good heavens, Ive even read Tolstoy and like listening to Beethoven. And I still want to leave the EU.

Do these people even know what they are saying when they call us Little Englanders?

England has never been more little than it is now, a subject province of someone elses empire.

As for the clueless drivel about independence campaigners being hostile to foreigners or narrow-minded, this is mere ignorant snobbery. Ill take on any of them in a competition as to who has travelled most widely, in Europe and beyond it.

I have to say that this isnt the way out I would have chosen, and that I hate referendums because I love our ancient Parliament. And, as I loathe anarchy and chaos, I fear the crisis that I think is coming.

I hope we produce people capable of handling it. I wouldnt have started from here. But despite all this, it is still rather thrilling to see the British people stirring at last after a long, long sleep.

Sorry Meryl, I can't laugh at a man who's so scary

How odd that Meryl Streep, dressing up as Donald Trump last week, looks more like that noisy businessman than Mr Trump does himself. I am tempted to laugh. And then I stop myself.

Mr Trumps rallies increasingly attract violence  by his opponents and his supporters. I actually find this terrifying. Any fool can start civil unrest and fan a populist bonfire by saying what he thinks the masses want to hear. But it is far harder to restore calm. I gasp at Mr Trumps irresponsibility, and fear for the USA.

Dead ringer: Meryl Streep as Donald Trump

What are British troops doing in Poland? Taking part in a ridiculous exercise in which we pretend that we would go to war in the event of a Russian attack in the region  which is about as unlikely as a Martian invasion. Actually, wed be hard put to defend the Isle of Wight these days, let alone Warsaw or Riga. This folly creates the very problem it pretends to deal with  tension and fear. Why?

Two more victims of the Great Terror Panic

Our state-sponsored panic about the exaggerated terror threat is driving us mad. Recently I wrote about Lorna Moore, a young woman ripped from her children and flung into jail because she didnt warn the authorities about something her husband (an alleged terrorist) probably didnt even do.

Now we see an organic farmer, John Letts, and his wife Sally Lane, both in their 50s, remanded in custody on charges of sending money to their son. He may be up to no good in Syria, but that (unsurprisingly) hasnt stopped them loving and caring for their child. Remanded in custody? From what I can see from court reports, the country is crawling with gaunt young men out on bail for violent crimes. So why are these two gentle people (who have another son at home) banged up in the cells and denied bail, while scores of dangerous louts roam the streets?

It is because of the magic word terror. It stops us thinking. Look at the Leytonstone knifeman, Muhaydin Mire. Back in December his crime  a horrible, bloody, random attack on a passer-by in a London Underground station  led the news. He was thought to be a terrorist. A man who called out You aint no Muslim, bruv was much praised.

But he wasnt no terrorist, either, bruv. When he was convicted on Thursday, the case was relegated to inside pages.

The attack was just as severe, the wounds just as deep, the crime just as bad.

But its now accepted by almost everyone involved that Mire was mentally ill. His family believe that this was caused by his use of the supposedly soft drug cannabis  the one Richard Branson and Nick Clegg want to decriminalise. In fact, his family very responsibly tried to warn the police that he was a risk before the crime, and the police passed the buck, because nobody mentioned radicalisation.
With ten days to go until the referendum, how much are David Cameron and our partners keeping back from voters about the EUs plans for the future?

The question is brought into sharp focus by yesterdays leaks of British diplomats cables, discussing policies not intended to be publicly aired before the vote is safely out of the way.

In one, our representatives in Amsterdam say the Dutch have agreed to co-operate in delaying controversial Brussels announcements until after June 23.

With ten days to go until the referendum, how much are David Cameron and our partners keeping back from voters about the EUs plans for the future?

In another, the Foreign Offices people in Ankara advise ministers to consider offering visa-free access to as many as 1.5million Turks with special passports, to complement the EUs plans to open up the border-free Schengen area to Turkeys population of 80 million.

Indeed, throughout the campaign, Mr Cameron has tried to squash any talk of Turkeys ambition to join the EU, saying: Its not gonna happen.

But how does this square with his 2010 declaration in Ankara: Im here to make the case for Turkeys membership of the EU  and to fight for it?

As recently as 2014, he was still insisting: In terms of Turkish membership of the EU, I very much support that. So what is going on behind the scenes?

Meanwhile, Brussels has postponed publishing a wide range of other proposals, from forming a European army to meeting the alarming shortfall in its budget.

As for the question of where the money will come from for the next Greek bailout, this too has been put on hold until Britains polling stations close.

The unmistakable aim is to keep the electorate in the dark, so as to avoid frightening the horses before the country makes its decision.

What a contemptuous way to treat voters in a mature democracy. And what a clear sign of the EU elites fear that if we knew the truth about its plans, we would want nothing to do with them.

Unholy intervention

With the nations belief in God fading fast, the pews emptying and Britain in the grip of a family breakdown crisis, you might think the Archbishop of Canterbury had more appropriate matters to concern him than the political and economic nitty-gritty of the EU referendum.

But no, Justin Welby yesterday sprang to the support of the beleaguered Mr Cameron, saying he will vote to remain.

To be fair to the archbishop, he admits: In no sense do I have some divine hotline to the right answer. And, of course, he is entitled to his personal opinion.

Justin Welby yesterday sprang to the support of the beleaguered Mr Cameron, saying he will vote to remain

But is he really wise to risk alienating conscientious Anglicans who disagree that membership is the best way to build bridges, not barriers?

After all, isnt much of the point of the EU customs union to erect stiff tariff barriers against outside competitors  thereby clobbering the worlds poorest farmers and keeping food prices high? Whats moral about that, Your Grace?

Scared, Sir Shifty?

As a champion of welfare reform, often at odds with his party, Labours Frank Field has long proved himself one of Westminsters most independent and fair-minded MPs.

He is also greatly respected on both sides of the House for holding the powerful to account and getting at the truth in his role as chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee.

So how revealing that retail tycoon Sir Philip Green has said he wont appear before the committee to answer questions about the collapse of BHS unless biased Mr Field stands down.
The app is called 'First and Then' and works via simple instructions

They have designed an app aimed at helping families with autistic people

Jenn and Brad Ratcliffe, NSW, have two children on the autism spectrum

Jenn and Brad Ratcliffe know first hand how challenging it can be living with autism.

The couple, from Wollongong, NSW, are parents to two young boys who are both on the autism spectrum.

Between the challenge of raising Cameron, 15, and Coby, 13, and juggling their careers, they have their hands more than full.

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Helping hand: Brad and Jenn Ratcliffe (pictured) have two children on the autism spectrum

Good idea: The couple have come up with an app to use to help families with autistic people in them and their own children Cameron, 15, and Coby, 13 (pictured)

Now the couple have come up with an ingenious app to help them and other families struggling with autistic children, called 'First and Then'.

The app works by replacing traditional visual supports such as laminated picture cue cards that are designed to show children what is coming next.

Instead, all parents need is a phone, tablet or device, and they can give children a simple instruction with pictures and words explaining what comes 'first' and what will follow ('then').

First and Then: The app works by giving a simple instruction with pictures and words that read 'first' something, and 'then' something else to their kids

'I came up with the idea about four years ago,' Mr Ratcliffe tells Daily Mail Australia.

'I wanted to make something really simple. I know there are lots of apps out there that are really complicated, but this one is simple - we even have our parents using it with the two boys.'

They explain the app has been invaluable for helping to facilitate smoother, calmer transitions with their sons, and both Brad and Jenn are emphatic about their hopes for the product in the future:

The app has made a difference every single day to our lives

'The app has made a difference every single day to our lives,' Mrs Ratcliffe explains.

'Before we had it, sometimes we would find ourselves out without the cue cards and totally stuck.

'I remember one time when we went out for lunch with the boys and we got to the restaurant and it was shut, which upset Cameron, and eventually led to a meltdown.

'Had we had the app, we would have been able to Google image the location of where we were going to go instead, and avoided the entire thing.'

Something simple: Parents of autistic children often rely on laminated cards (pictured) - this moves them to app format

Invaluable aid: According to the parents, it has revolutionised their lives as a family - the boys are much calmer and respond well to the app

This is just one of the reasons the couple hope the app will help other people like them.

'We are parents ourselves and we hope people can relate to both us and the product,' Mr Ratcliffe explains.

And despite the app only having been on the market for a couple of weeks, it has already made a big impression and has been downloaded by people from all over the world.

Similar situation: They hope to help families with their autistic children, and say they hope parents can relate to their family situation

Big plans: And despite the app only having been on the market for a couple of weeks, it has already made a big impression and has been downloaded by people from all over the world

'It's a calmer, smoother way to operate,' says Mrs Ratcliffe.

'Our goal is to make the lives of people and families living with autism to be valued and respected. I spoke to a mother from Queensland recently who told me she felt she couldn't go out with her child in case there was a meltdown.

'If the app can help her, as well as create calm with other families, then that would be great.'

Calm and smooth: Their aim is to make the lives of people and families living with autismto be valued and respected

Simple is best: They say the app is good because of its simplicity: 'A single instruction at one given time is so powerful,' Mrs Ratcliffe says

According to Mr and Mrs Ratcliffe, the app works because it is so simple.

'A single instruction at one given time is so powerful,' Mrs Ratcliffe says.

We think back to when our boys were younger and what they would have benefited from

'For us, with our youngest, it's been especially good. He hates getting ready in the morning, but with the visual support he does it. It doesn't get to meltdown stage half as much with Coby now.'

And the creative pair have no plans to stop anytime soon.

'We've got two more apps in mind, and we're currently writing a book to help families with autism,' Mr Ratcliffe says.

'There's lots of motivation behind it all, as what we do is think back to when our boys were younger and what they would have benefited from.

'We've got big plans to help other parents of children with autism.'
Justin Bieber's mother has joined thousands of Twitter users to reveal the action in life she most wishes she could take back.

Hashtag #5wordregrets is trending after it challenged social media users to sum up the decisions they were most ashamed of in hindsight.

The Canadian pop star's 40-year-old mother Patricia 'Pattie' Mallette weighed in with a sorrowful tweet, writing: 'I believed too many lies.'

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Justin Bieber's mother joined Twitter users revealing actions they wish they could take back with a hashtag. Pictured with Justin watching an NBA playoff game in LA in May 2014

Patricia 'Pattie' Mallette, author and film producer, as well as the parent of one of modern music's most notorious acts, tweeted: 'I believed too many lies. #5WordRegrets'

It is not clear whether the author and film producer was referring to her 22-year-old son and his reputation for diva-like behaviour.

Only last week the What Do You Mean? hitmaker got into a fight with a fan at the NBA Finals in Cleveland, an incident which was captured on camera.

As well as several run-ins with the law for assault and dangerous driving, Justin has also been accused of being rude to fans and even spitting on them from his hotel room when they gathered to get a glimpse of their idol.

However his mother has had an eventful live of her own. She has detailed her traumatic past, including a history of sexual abuse, in her book Nowhere But Up: The Story Of Justin Bieber's Mom'.

More than 4,000 people joined the viral hashtag, sharing funny or poignant experiences.

Mallette, with her son, above, has detailed her traumatic past including a history of sexual abuse in her book 'Nowhere but Up: The Story of Justin Bieber's Mom'

However, other Twitter users had more amusing and lighthearted takes on the hashtag

Seema Thomas recalled a familiar feeling for many of us, tweeting: '5 more minutes in bed #5WordRegrets'.

Another user named Catherine touched upon another universal theme when she wrote: 'Didn't bring my phone charger.'

Redbeard Rapscallion, @TyFancher, said: 'Medium instead of large pizza.'

@Viewfrommyoffic shared a rather awkward regret, tweeting: 'Not noticing Adam's Apple sooner'.

In a terrifying and no doubt highly regretful experience Pablo Diablo wrote: 'Dropped acid, watched The Exorcist.'

Over 4,000 people used the hashtag, some with funny comments to make while others were more sad

Jokes aside, many tweeters used the hashtag to share sad and painful circumstances, including past relationships.

Lisa Lemon said: 'Marriage and that whole mess.'

Another, @VeryCarefulGirl wrote: '#5WordRegrets I should have remained single'.

Theresa, @tlcprincess, wrote: 'Not realizing [sic] my own value #5WordsRegrets'..

Meanwhile Noel Tapia, @Noel_T10, reminisced over an old flame when they wrote: 'The one that got away'.
She's known for her love of a bargain and can pull off a 40 Topshop shift dress with as much panache as a 3,500 Jenny Packham gown.

But the Duchess of Cambridge may have outdone herself this week, picking up not one but two half-price items for some of the most high-profile events in the royal calendar.

In what has been one of the busiest weeks for the royals - comprising not only the Queen's but Prince Philip's birthday and a string of charity engagements, Kate has chosen off-the-rail pieces while other royals opted for custom-made couture.

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A royally good bargain! Kate wore a Roland Mouret gown on Thursday night (left) which was down from 2,095 to 1,255, while her Roksanda dress for today's birthday tea party is currently half price at 490 (right)

On Thursday night, she hosted a glittering banquet for SportsAid at Kensington Palace in a floor-sweeping blue gown from Roland Mouret which has been slashed from 2,095 to 1,255.

And yesterday she stepped out in a colour-block dress from Roksanda which is now half-price at 480 for the Patron's Lunch, an open-air party being staged in The Mall for 10,000 people in honour of the Queen.

It is not the first time Kate, 35, has been noted for her love of a bargain. Last month, ITV presenter Lorraine Kelly praised Kate for snapping up high street labels such as Topshop, Zara and Whistles, despite having a princely shopping budget to play with.

She touched on the difficulties Kate faces due to her high profile, adding: 'The poor kid can't win.'

'It's difficult for her because if she wears high street, all the stuck-up courtiers will say, "Look at that, she's not being dignified enough" and then if she wears designer clothes, "Look at that, spending a fortune on clothes".'

'The poor kid can't win': ITV presenter Lorraine Kelly praised Kate for snapping up high street labels such as Topshop, Zara and Whistles, despite having a princely shopping budget to play with

Kate's colour block dress from Roksanda. Today's event will bring to a close the events marking the Queen's 90th birthday including a service at St Paul's cathedral and a traditional Trooping the Colour ceremony

Last month, Kate attended a charity initiative at London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park dressed in a 105 geometric print skirt by Banana Republic; the same week, the mother-of-two stepped out in Windsor wearing a bright red blazer from Zara costing just 49.99.

Lorraine noted that Kate looks 'much more comfortable in high street' than when she wears designer labels.

Looking back to the Duchess' recent trip to India and Bhutan, she said: 'Kate often tours wearing all this thousand-pound this, thousand-pound that stuff - and then she wore a wee dress from Topshop for 75 and looked phenomenal.

'She looked really good. When someone like that wears high street, it's great.'

Yesterday's event brought to a close the weekend's events marking the Queen's 90th birthday including a thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral and a traditional Trooping the Colour ceremony.

Looking back to the Duchess' recent trip to India, Lorraine said: 'Kate often tours wearing all this thousand-pound this, thousand-pound that stuff - and then she wore a wee dress from Topshop for 75' (pictured)

The Duchess does Topshop: In 2013, Kate wore a 38 Topshop dress on a visit to the Harry Potter Studio Tour in Watford. Last month, she wore a bright red blazer from Zara costing just 49.99 to an event in Windsor

WHAT THE STYLIST SAYS Helen Canning, stylist and founder of CocoMamaStyle.com, told FEMAIL: 'Kate is in a position to wear thousands of pounds' worth of new clothes every day and yet she has also worn a couple of pieces more than once. 'This may not seem like a big deal but it does show that Kates not pushing the limits too far with excessive outfit changes for fashions sake.' Advertisement

Persistent showers fell for much of the day and threatened to turn the occasion into a sodden washout.

But the guests - many from the charities the Queen supports as patron - remained upbeat and pulled on ponchos provided in their picnic hampers filled with Pimms, pork pies and cupcakes.

The Queen was spotted making a brief appearance at Buckingham Palace's balcony window to see how proceedings were processing before attending the event later in the day.

The Queen was joined by the Duke of Edinburgh, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

Peter Phillips, the Queen's grandson, masterminded the open-air Patron's Lunch to mark the monarch's patronage of more than 600 charities and organisations.
When a Texas married couple discovered they were expecting, they decided to enlist the help of the cast of one of their favorite films to reveal the news.

Mai-Ly and Darren Steers recently revealed to their friends and family that they will be welcoming a baby daughter this fall. And, to make the news even more exciting, they had the actors from the Back to the Future film franchise do the announcing for them.

In a photo the couple shared on social media, the parents-to-be are seen posing with actors Michael J Fox, Christopher Lloyd and Lea Thompson, all of whom are holding cards making the announcement.

Taking it back: Texas married couple Mai-Ly and Darren Steers, announced that they are expecting a girl with the help of Back to the Future cast members Michael J Fox, Christopher Lloyd and Lea Thompson

Big stars: Christopher Lloyd (left), who played Doc Brown in the popular films, and Michael J Fox, who played Marty McFly, feature in the photo

Leading lady: Lea Thompson (left), who played Lorraine McFly in the series, helped the couple reveal they are expecting a girl

Christopher Lloyd, who played Doc Brown in the popular films, holds a card bearing his character's catch phrase 'Great scott!' while Lea Thompson, who played Lorraine McFly in the series, holds a card declaring 'It's a girl' and Michael J Fox (Marty McFly) shows off a dates panel bearing the date of the photo and the due date for the baby.

'Darren and I are excited to let you know that we are expecting a little bundle of joy!' Mai-Ly told her friends online. 'We thought what better way to announce her impending arrival than with the help of some our childhood heroes.'

The photo was taken on Saturday, June 4 at the Wizard World Comic Con in Philadelphia, expectant mom Mai-Ly tells Daily Mail Online.

'We came up with the idea about a month or so before the convention,' she says. 'We decided it would be an opportune time to announce the gender of our baby since we knew we were going to have the 20 week sonogram to confirm the gender a couple of weeks before the trip to Philadelphia.'

Happy couple: Mai-Ly and Darren came up with the idea about a month before attending the convention

In love: They decided to use Comic Con to make the announcement as the event holds 'special significance' for them, having gotten engaged there back in 2012

In order to execute their plan, the couple printed off the cards, using the Back to the Future font and a bit of tinkering in Photoshop, as well as an app that helped them create the dates panel to look just like the one in the DeLorean time machine from the films.

When they finally arrived for the photo op at the convention, Mai-Ly and Darren were delighted to find that the actors were more than happy to lend a hand for their announcement.

'Michael J. Fox was really sweet,' says Mai-Ly. 'He gave me a hug and a pat on the back and shook my husband's hand.'

She added: 'Lea Thompson was so kind and seemed genuinely thrilled for us! She recognized us later on during the day, and asked us how the photo turned out. I told her that watching Back to the Future was such an important childhood memory so I was glad it could be a part of our daughter's life as well.'

The pair also decided on using Comic Con to make the announcement because the event holds 'special significance' for the couple.

Another big moment: Darren popped the question to Mai-Ly in front of the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a favorite show of the pair, eliciting a sweet reaction from the actors

Looking ahead: The couple will be welcoming their daughter this fall in October

Growing family: The couple pose with their dog Alfie, sporting a bib announcing that he is about to become 'a big brother'

'We actually got engaged in front of the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation at the Wizard World Comic Con in Austin, Texas in 2012,' says Mai-Ly. 'My now-husband surprised me by proposing to me in front of the cast of TNG.

'We both loved TNG growing up and he thought I would never expect it. Boy was he right!'

The photo, which went viral at the time after being posted by an unknown user on Reddit, shows the surprised Mai-Ly looking right into the lens while Darren is lowered onto one knee in front of her and the cast of the show applaud them. One of the actorsseems even more shocked than the bride-to-be in the photo, clapping his hands over his mouth in surprise.

'It was surreal because Wil Wheaton used to be one of my childhood crushes and his expression in our engagement photos was priceless,' says Mai-Ly of the snap.
Sometimes I can hardly believe I am 56. How can that have happened? But I am and it has, and you know what? All things considered, the partying Ive done, the alcohol Ive drank, the sun Ive fried in, it could be a lot worse. But it could also be a lot better.

See, the great thing about 2016 is that there is so much out there and available to us ladies of a certain age. And Im not just talking about Botox and fillers.

One friend I am thinking of in particular is in her late 40s with children. I swear she has the same skin she had when I met her almost 25 years ago.

One friend of Christa D'Souza's is in her late 40s with children but has the same skin she had when Christa met her almost 25 years ago. Her secret is LED (Light Emitting Diode) Therapy (pictured)

Not in a spooky, Real Housewives way that might panic the cat. In a nice, plausible, organic way - as if shes been on holiday, but without having baked in the sun.

Her secret is LED (Light Emitting Diode) Therapy. It has been around a few years, but where it was once perceived as highly specialised, its now available for everyone.

As one fashion magazine noted: Move over blowdry bars, light bars are beautys bright new thing.

Look, Botox is fantastic (I have it for my jawline) and fillers, if administered judiciously, can yield incredible results, too. But who likes needles?

Enter then, LED therapy: its painless, non-invasive and supposedly yields fabulous results - if you have enough of it.

LED therapy is painless, non-invasive and supposedly yields fabulous results - if you have enough of it (Christa pictured before treatment)

A machine transmits specific wavelengths of light energy into the skins deepest layers to trigger the bodys natural cell processes into accelerating rejuvenation and repair.

Different wavelengths or colours produce different effects.

Red light prompts the body to make collagen and elastin, the two key components that give us younger, plumper, richer looking skin; blue light annihilates the bacteria that cause acne; yellow light is for lines and wrinkles; near infra-red light, meanwhile, is effective for healing scars.

Think of it as getting all the benefits of the sun, but without the harmful UV rays (the ones that make you burn and can ultimately lead to cancer). This most definitely is not a sunbed for the face.

Christa headed to the new salon in West London of her friend Teresa Tarmey (pictured), to start a course of treatments

My friend is not the only one who raves about it. Hollywood stars Jessica Alba and Jennifer Aniston are just two of the celebrities singing from the rooftops about LED. Well? No pain? No needles? No recovery time? There is nothing, it seems, not to like.

Any skin treatment out there, Tarmey will know about. And her favourite is LED

So I head to my friend Teresa Tarmeys new salon in West London to start a course of treatments. Just one session plus a facial or a peel can yield immediate, albeit shortlived, results, but Teresa recommends at least two a week for five weeks for the full rejuvenation package.

While Teresa can do any number of treatments, her USP is skin. Thats what loyal clients such as Kate Moss, Suki Waterhouse and Poppy Delevingne know her for.

Any skin treatment out there, Tarmey will know about. And her favourite is LED. The state-of-the-art machine she uses is a Dermalux, and though it may sound like something you clean the floor with, it is in fact one of the latest generation models for LED Phototherapy with a few awards under its belt.

A machine transmits specific wavelengths of light energy into the skins deepest layers to trigger the bodys natural cell processes into accelerating rejuvenation and repair

As she preps my skin, Teresa tells me how it works and why its so good for 50-something skin like mine.

One unwelcome by-product of ageing is that healthy skin cells, as they get older and weaker, become unable to renew themselves normally.

Luckily, the skin has the ability to absorb wavelengths of light and utilise them to repair and rejuvenate those damaged ageing cells.

Remember learning about plant photosynthesis in biology? Its the human equivalent of that.

The increased energy kicks off cellular metabolism. That stimulates production of collagen and elastin, which heightens circulation and speeds tissue repair.

When skin is exposed to LED light, studies show cells duplicate 150 to 200 per cent faster, while hydration can increase by a whopping 600 per cent - great news as my skin these days is as dry as the Atacama desert.

While Teresa can do any number of treatments, her USP is skin. Thats what loyal clients such as Kate Moss, Suki Waterhouse and Poppy Delevingne know her for

One word of warning: though there are few side-effects to red light, you need to tell your beauty therapist if you are using prescription strength retinoids such as retina-A or Accutane because of the skins heightened photosensitivity - and certain herbal supplements such as St Johns Wort, as they can make your body hyper-sensitive, too.

Blue light could be linked to macular degeneration and there are reports the treatment can exacerbate conditions such as hypothyroidism and bipolar disorder.

This has yet to be proven, but wear protective goggles and never open your eyes during the treatment.

So, I hop on her table feeling a little anxious. The machine looks like a cross between a sunbed and an MRI scanner.

To rejuvenate Christa's skin, Tarmey administered red light at a certain wavelength, which is supposed to encourage moisture retention, reduce inflammation, shrink pores and even out skin tone

To rejuvenate my skin, Tarmey is going to administer red light at a certain wavelength, which is supposed to encourage moisture retention, reduce inflammation, shrink pores and even out skin tone.

Simultaneously she is going to zap me with near infra-red light, which penetrates deeper into the dermis and increases permeability and absorption in the cells.

Zap, on go the lights and though it feels awfully hot for the first few seconds, I find myself drifting off and being rather annoyed when, 20 minutes later, the machine turns itself off.

Wow, that was relaxing and Im not surprised to hear that exposure to this kind of light can boost serotonin levels - the hormone responsible for happiness. Could it become a natural alternative to Prozac?

Christa pictured after treatment: 'When I see myself in a picture I dont get that horrid jolt I usually do - who is that old woman? - its more how I perceive myself to look,' she said

Do I look different? Maybe a little. Just as importantly, I feel energised. It is like that energy you get after a good holiday in the sun, but without the UV damage and the weight gain from over-indulging.

Two weeks later Ive had five more treatments and there is a visible difference. I know this because people have noticed.

Will I stop having Botox and rule out the future possibility of fillers? No

Its subtle - you wont get the same effects as from a chemical peel, but my skin is noticeably less dull, less grey, less, well, middle-aged.

The pigmentation Ive got on the sides of my face from too much sun seems to have quietened down, too.

And when I see myself in a picture I dont get that horrid jolt I usually do - who is that old woman? - its more how I perceive myself to look.

The same effect, if you like, of a series of 90-minute facials, at a quarter of the price. Teresa charges 70 a session or 580 for ten, while Elemis salons offer the delightfully named Line Eraser, with LED light therapy, for 70 a session.

Will I stop having Botox and rule out the future possibility of fillers? No. But as a cheeky top-up for a big night, a quick inexpensive pick-me-up for a glamorous do? Heck, yes!
In 2006, Holly Tucker, then aged 29, co-founded notonthehighstreet.com, an online marketplace for quirky gifts. Ten years later, the company turns over more than 130 million. Holly, who was awarded an MBE in June 2013, lives with her husband Frank and their son Harry, 11, in London.

Back in 2004, farmers markets were really beginning to take off. Like most of my friends, I loved mooching around them at the weekend, but found it frustrating that they only sold food.

I was looking for quirky Christmas presents - I didnt want another jar of artisan chutney!

In 2006, Holly Tucker, then aged 29, co-founded notonthehighstreet.com, an online marketplace for quirky gifts

As a result I decided to launch Your Local Fair - a series of fairs in church halls around London that sold unique crafts and gifts from individual producers. They were a huge success, but I realised I needed a bigger marketplace to cater to small producers from all over the country.

That was my lightbulb moment. I decided to create an online fair showcasing companies that consumers wouldnt otherwise know about - the best of British small businesses.

Two years later, notonthehighstreet.com was born. Like many start-ups, we were operating on a shoestring and there were hiccups along the way.

The worst was when it became clear our online shopping technology wouldnt be ready for launch day. But we fixed the problem and from then on we went from strength to strength.

In the first few years, I worked 14 or 15-hour days. I felt it was my duty to capitalise on the momentum

In the first few years, I worked 14 or 15-hour days. I felt it was my duty to capitalise on the momentum. Im lucky that I thrive on stress, but my husband Frank and I had to make big personal sacrifices.

Frank has been supportive, even leaving his job to stay at home with our son because we wanted him to be raised with a parent around.

In the past ten years, our company has grown beyond my wildest dreams and Im so proud of everything weve accomplished.

I was, and still am, tremendously passionate about championing small businesses, letting them know they matter, and giving them a global voice.

Its not just the success of my own company that matters to me - small businesses are my passion and the backbone of the British economy.

These days, more than 20 of notonthehighstreet.coms small producers make more than 1 million a year. Im hugely proud of that and want to help keep those businesses thriving.
From eye masks to ear plugs, lavender pillow spray, Radio 4, herbal Zen tablets and, in emergencies, sleeping pills, Ive tried all manner of things to cure my chronic insomnia.

But still I regularly wake at 5am feeling tired and wired.

Now though, I find myself in a shed in South London, listening to a woman crinkling tissue paper - because, apparently, this might just be the answer to a good nights sleep.

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Theres nothing extraordinary about the paper being crinkled. And the woman, Emma Smith (left), 37, a former marketing executive and mother-of-two, has no medical qualifications

Theres nothing extraordinary about the paper being crinkled. And the woman, Emma Smith, 37, a former marketing executive and mother-of-two, has no medical qualifications.

But hundreds of thousands of people across Britain regularly watch videos of her doing exactly this. Or something similar - such as turning the pages of a book, folding towels or brushing her hair.

Its called ASMR, Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, a kind of self-help video that is sweeping the country.

ASMR is said to create a tingly feeling in the scalp that travels down the body in response to visual or auditory triggers, producing a sense of wellbeing and relaxation.

The internet is full of ASMR artists - or sleep whisperers or tinglesmiths, as theyre also known.

ASMR is said to create a tingly feeling in the scalp that travels down the body in response to visual or auditory triggers, producing a sense of wellbeing and relaxation

Theyre usually pleasant-looking women with names such as Heather Feather or The Waterwhispers - Emmas name is WhispersRed.

They talk quietly and slowly into microphones so sensitive its as though they are in the room with you, whispering in your ear.

Maria, a pretty 20-something Russian-American who goes under the name GentleWhispering, was one of the first ASMR artists. Her video Oh Such A Good 3D-Sound ASMR shows her gently turning an aromatherapy oil burner in her hands.

Its made of real stone, she mouths, barely audibly. Its not very hot... but the top part is hot... because the candle is positioned right under... the top part.

From Emmas description of ASMR, its clear there are similarities with mindfulness and meditation. It seems its the sheer mundanity of the task and the inanity of the commentary that people love

Its as if Ive inadvertently clicked on the QVC On Valium channel. But when she blows the relaxing vapour first into my left ear and then my right, I almost get that fuzziness you have during a head massage.

Niche? Not a bit. The video has been viewed nearly 15.5 million times.

And thanks to the sheer number of anecdotal reports on ASMR sites about how it helps with sleep and problems including migraine, depression, anxiety and chronic pain condition fibromyalgia, the scientific community has pricked up its ears.

TIRED WOMEN 75 per cent of women in the UK dont get enough sleep on a regular basis Advertisement

A research study of nearly 500 ASMR enthusiasts by Swansea Universitys Psychology Department, the first such investigation, found ASMR can be induced in certain people by a consistent set of triggers.

The study found that 80 per cent of people felt their mood improve after watching the videos.

And last month, a study by the University of Winnipeg, Canada, published in the journal Social Neuroscience, used MRI scans to prove theres a slight difference in brain activity of ASMR-sensitive individuals and those who are not sensitive.

The authors hypothesised that ASMR-sensitive people may have a reduced ability to inhibit sensory-emotional experiences that are suppressed in most individuals.

Dr Craig Richard a professor at Shenandoah University, Virginia and author of the blog ASMR University, claims the research suggests ASMR-sensitivity is not a disorder, but rather a structural difference [in the brain] that grants a special window to experience relaxation.

But you dont have to look very far to find doubters.

Emma discovered ASMR after a car accident six years ago, which left her with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and temporarily confined to a wheelchair

It sounds like poppycock to me, says Dr Max Pemberton, an NHS psychiatrist and Daily Mail columnist. Theres no sound science behind it. My concern is that people with serious conditions will seek this out and treat themselves rather than receiving proper treatment.

They need to be seen by a professional for a proper evidence-based plan, which might include some self-help.

However, Emma has experienced its effects first-hand. She discovered ASMR after a car accident six years ago, which left her with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and temporarily confined to a wheelchair.

Falling asleep was difficult, she says. I looked for relaxation videos, rainforest sounds, anything to have on in the background as a distraction and to soothe me to sleep.

When she discovered ASMR, she found the effect was instant.

My mind would be clear because I would be focusing on a soft voice. There were no surprises with sounds or big bangs like you might get if you listen to the radio. It was nice and monotone.

Falling asleep was difficult, she says. I looked for relaxation videos, rainforest sounds, anything to have on in the background as a distraction and to soothe me to sleep'

It gave her the tingles she had felt as a child when having her hair cut or an eye test.

While she admits it wasnt a substitute for the therapy she was having for PTSD, she is convinced it accelerated her recovery.

I wouldnt say it solved anything, but it helped me to sleep and to learn about myself by observing myself. When you have a panic attack or feel depressed its because theres a disconnect.

From Emmas description of ASMR, its clear there are similarities with mindfulness and meditation. It seems its the sheer mundanity of the task and the inanity of the commentary that people love.

When you focus on something small such as nails tapping on a cup, you start to notice the smaller things in everyday life. You are more in the now, rather than in your head, she says.

There were times after her accident when she would zone out and not hear what her children had said. That would break my heart. Im now much more present for them. Its made me a better mum.

From Emmas description of ASMR, its clear there are similarities with mindfulness and meditation. It seems its the sheer mundanity of the task and the inanity of the commentary that people love

Jane Edwards, a psychotherapist who has carried out specialist research into internet addiction, agrees.

Life is challenging in the super-stressful world weve created, she says.

We all need time to slow down and get more in touch with our bodies and breathe, rather than reaching for a glass of wine after working too much.

Mindfulness and meditation have become popular self-help techniques for insomnia, and it seems to me that ASMR is a version of this - though the tingly feeling in your head is not something people who practice mindfulness mention.

She also believes ASMR keys into our early development, when our parents regulated our extreme emotions by cuddling, shushing, stroking and rocking us, creating a sense of containment and security.

Mindfulness and meditation have become popular self-help techniques for insomnia, and it seems to me that ASMR is a version of this

Through this experience of having our emotions managed for us in infancy, we learn to do this for ourselves, or self-soothe, and hopefully grow up to become adults who can recover quickly when we feel emotionally imbalanced, she says.

Angela Shields, 47, a soft furnisher from Kent and a mother-of-two, says ASMR videos put a name to the tingly feeling shed had in childhood, but had thought no one else felt.

She remembers being at school watching a friend colour in slowly and deliberately. I was mesmerised and felt very sleepy and relaxed, she says. I didnt get much of my own work done that lesson. When I discovered ASMR on YouTube I was amazed the feeling had a name.

It helped her through a stressful time a couple of years ago when she was trying to find a college place for her autistic son. The videos would be a moment of calm in between stressful phone calls and emails.

It helps me with anxiety and relaxes me, particularly if Ive had a stressful day. I know there will always be ASMR videos to help me relax and that in itself is reassuring, she says.

That calming yet tingly feeling is a lovely way to fall asleep. Its almost like someone is stroking my head and back - it can sometimes give me goosebumps. Ill be asleep in seconds.

Can it have any negative side effects? Emma says the tingles disappear after a while and you need a break to become sensitive again, which means you cant become addicted.

Emma is careful not to attract unwanted attention, believing her viewers would lose trust if they suspected she was being suggestive

Its difficult to point to any financial incentive. The videos are free to view and Emma is hardly coining it in.

After three years she makes enough money to contribute to household bills from adverts on her channel, but its far from the thousands some bloggers make from product placement.

My only fear is for the safety of Emma and the other young, good-looking ASMR artists.

Some of their videos involve close personal attention - a pretend make-up session with brushes, an eye exam, even an ear-cleaning video using cotton buds (there are whole YouTube channels dedicated to this).

Watching attractive women carry out medical role-plays, sensuously stroking inanimate objects and promising to take away your cares seems highly suggestive. And the terms head orgasm or braingasm have been used to describe the tingling sensation.

Whatever the sceptics may say, the world of ASMR does appear benign - the artists arent making any great health claims, they are not selling anything and most are reaping very little financial reward

Not surprisingly, the ASMR community is keen to distance itself from anything sexual. Emma is careful not to attract unwanted attention, believing her viewers would lose trust if they suspected she was being suggestive.

When I get home, I notice Emma has posted the tissue paper video. Its called Tissue For Your Sleep Issue and has already had 33,000 views. I get ready for bed and click play. Im disappointed that I dont get tingles, but amazingly Im asleep in 15 minutes.

For me, as long as I dont watch anything too silly, ASMR is an easy-to-access slice of mindfulness.

In the same way I would turn to the Shipping Forecast - a favourite with insomniacs for its euphonic, pleasantly meaningless sounds, such as Fisher, Dogger, German Bight... - it has the power to drown out the worries of the day.

Whatever the sceptics may say, the world of ASMR does appear benign - the artists arent making any great health claims, they are not selling anything and most are reaping very little financial reward.
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Her Majestys tiaras are at the heart of her jewellery collection, so extensive it has to be stored in a room the size of an ice rink, 40ft below Buckingham Palace.

From priceless diamond bands to headpieces laden with precious stones, they are the crowning pieces of her wardrobe, each carefully selected for the

occasion and worn with effortless elegance.

The tiaras are presented to her on a tray with a lace cover, which was hand-sewn by her grandmother, Queen Mary, and bears her M monogram.

She selects her headpiece last of all her jewellery and over the years has learned to attach it securely to her springy curls, using a satin

band or hairclip.

In the words of her late sister, Princess Margaret: The Queen is the only person who can put on a tiara with one hand, while walking down stairs.

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Her Majestys tiaras are at the heart of her jewellery collection, so extensive it has to be stored in a room the size of an ice rink, 40ft below Buckingham Palace

A favourite of the Queen mother

Resplendent in rubies, the Queen has worn this Oriental circlet tiara only once, on a state visit to Malta in 2005, paired with the Baring ruby necklace that she bought in 1964

Resplendent in rubies, the Queen has worn this Oriental circlet tiara only once, on a state visit to Malta in 2005, paired with the Baring ruby necklace

that she bought in 1964.

It was designed by Prince Albert for his new wife Queen Victoria, for 860 (equivalent to about 76,000 today) in 1853. The headpiece is huge, containing more than 2,600 diamonds and 11 rubies.

The rubies were originally opals, Prince Alberts favourites, but Queen Alexandra, who inherited the tiara from her grandmother, thought them unlucky and had them replaced.

It passed to the Queen Mother when her husband, George VI, came to the throne in 1936, and became one of her two favourite tiaras.

The other, the Boucheron Honeycomb tiara, is now seen on the Duchess of Cornwall. The circlet passed to the Queen on her mothers death in 2002.

Gift for a youthful bride

The tiara, which cost 5,000 in 1947 (equivalent to 189,000 today), was set with 1,033 diamonds and had three detachable roseshaped brooches. It was a wedding present from the Nizam of Hyderabad, an Indian monarch and one of the wealthiest jewellery collectors in the world

Among the Queens many wedding presents were a stunning Cartier tiara and necklace from the Nizam of Hyderabad, an Indian monarch and one of the wealthiest jewellery collectors in the world.

The tiara, which cost 5,000 in 1947 (equivalent to 189,000 today), was set with 1,033 diamonds and had three detachable roseshaped brooches.

Oddly, despite his generosity, the Nizam was not invited to the wedding. The Queen wore his gift several times over 25 years, including on this visit to

the Norwegian Embassy in 1951, but had it broken up in 1973 and asked the then Crown jeweller Garrard to make a new tiara.

She still wears the matching necklace, which she loaned to the Duchess of Cambridge in 2014.

'Scandalous' sapphires

The George VI sapphire tiara, was added to the Queen's sapphire collection - started by her father on her wedding day - in 1963

The Queens sapphire collection is one of her most glittering, containing seven priceless pieces, including a necklace, bracelet, earrings and three rings.

This, the George VI sapphire tiara, was added to the set - started by her father on her wedding day - in 1963.

It began life as a necklace, bought for Princess Louise of Belgium in the late 19th century. A scandalous figure with a string of lovers, Louise ended up estranged from her family and in dire financial straits.

She sold her jewels, including the necklace, which was turned into a tiara, to pay debts. Its not known exactly how it ended up in the royal vault.

The Queen has worn this stunning tiara regularly - here, at a reception at a London hotel in 1969.

Inspired by the court of the Tsars

One of Her Majestys most eye-catching pieces, the Kokoshnik tiara consists of 488 diamonds, set in white and yellow gold

One of Her Majestys most eye-catching pieces, the Kokoshnik tiara consists of 488 diamonds, set in white and yellow gold.

To give an idea of its huge worth, it was presented to Alexandra, Princess of Wales, as a 25th wedding anniversary gift in 1888 - and cost 4,400 (equivalent to roughly 400,000 today).

The tiara was inspired by and named after a traditional Russian headdress - Alexandra was the sister of Maria Feodorovna, Empress of Russia and wife of Tsar Alexander III.

These sumptuous jewelled tiaras were worn by ladies at court from the mid-19th century onwards. It was inherited by Queen Mary, the Princesss daughter-in-law, in 1925, who wore it for her official 80th birthday portrait in 1947.

This became something of a family tradition; the Queen, who inherited the tiara in 1953, wore it for her Golden Jubilee painting in 2002.

Here, at a reception in Vienna in 1968, she wears it with the Godman necklace, which she has owned since 1965.

Ruby rose style she chose for herself

This Burmese ruby tiara at a Silver Jubilee gala in 1977 was commissioned by the Queen from Garrard in 1973. Its one of only a few pieces of jewellery she hasnt inherited, so the tiara is thought to reflect her personal style

Its a rule of royal dresser Angela Kelly that the Queen only ever wears rubies with white, so this ivory gown was perfectly matched to the Burmese ruby tiara at a Silver Jubilee gala in 1977.

Commissioned by the Queen from Garrard in 1973, its one of only a few pieces of jewellery she hasnt inherited, so the tiara is thought to reflect her personal style. It incorporates two of her wedding presents: 96 rubies from the people of Burma and diamonds taken from the Nizam of Hyderabad tiara, another gift. According to Burmese tradition, rubies protect the wearer from illness.

The tiara is a wreath of roses, each with a ruby centre, separated by rays of diamonds. The rubies are set in gold and the diamonds in silver, though from a distance theyre designed to look like giant gems.

Its thought to have been commissioned to fill a gap in her jewellery collection.

The only one that's King size

The oldest tiara - the Diamond Diadem - features four crosses alternating with bouquets representing different parts of the United Kingdom: roses, thistles and shamrocks

The oldest tiara - the Diamond Diadem - has been passed down from monarch to monarch since George IVs coronation in 1821.

Its worn only for official occasions, such as this State Opening of Parliament in 2002.

Made by London jeweller Rundell & Bridge, it features four crosses alternating with bouquets representing different parts of the United Kingdom: roses, thistles and shamrocks.

There are 1,333 diamonds, though it was shrunk by Queen Alexandra in 1902, who removed 11 diamonds to fit her smaller head. The Queen Mother also had it resized.

Its unique in the Queens collection in that it was made to fit a man, and is consequently heavier than most.

Familiar? It's on the money

At the tender age of 27, the Queen wears her favourite Girls of Great Britain and Ireland tiara, at the foot of the small staircase inside Buckingham Palace in 1953, along with the Nizam of Hyderabad necklace

At the tender age of 27, the Queen wears her favourite Girls of Great Britain and Ireland tiara, at the foot of the small staircase inside Buckingham Palace in 1953, along with the Nizam of Hyderabad necklace.

Her most familiar headpiece, and affectionately dubbed Grannys tiara, it was given to her grandmother Queen Mary - then Princess Victoria Mary of Teck - on her wedding day in 1893.

Made by Garrard, it cost 1,600 (roughly 144,000 today) and was originally set with pearls, not diamonds, on the 14 points. The outline appears to resemble a row of girls holding hands.

If the tiara looks familiar, its because the Queen is pictured wearing it on our coins and banknotes. It was handed down as a wedding gift in 1947 and is so light and comfortable it can be worn as a necklace or a headpiece.

This portrait also provides a rare glimpse of Elizabeths modest engagement ring, a three-carat diamond solitaire, which is rarely seen because of her use of gloves.

Cool and calm in ice blue

This Brazilian Aquamarine tiara is a favourite of the Queens dresser, Angela Kelly, who describes it as majestic in appearance but cool and calming. She is pictured wearing it at a state banquet in Moscow in 1994 (right) and a smaller version of the tiara in 1957 (left)

This Brazilian Aquamarine tiara is a favourite of the Queens dresser, Angela Kelly, who describes it as majestic in appearance but cool and calming.

It was commissioned by the Queen from the then Crown jeweller Garrard in 1957, to match a necklace and earrings given by the President of Brazil to mark her coronation in 1953. She was so fond of the set that she wanted a matching tiara.

She is pictured at a state banquet in Moscow in 1994 and wearing a smaller version, thought to have had a few stones temporarily removed, in 1957.

The one she lends - but never wears

The so-called Cartier Halo tiara was an 18th birthday gift to Princess Elizabeth from her parents, and she has loaned it to the Duchess of Cambridge (left) on her wedding day, Princess Anne during a visit to New Zealand (right) in 1970 and Princess Margaret for an official portrait (centre)

Made by eponymous jeweller Cartier in 1936 from diamonds and platinum, the so-called Cartier Halo tiara was an 18th birthday gift to Princess Elizabeth from her parents.

It is thought to have been the Queens first ever tiara. Although she has never been pictured wearing it in public, shes not averse to lending it to the younger royals.

After a few decades in the vault, the Queen loaned it to the Duchess of Cambridge on her wedding day. It was her something borrowed, delicately perched atop her flowing veil.

Princess Anne often wore her mothers tiara in her youth, including on a visit to New Zealand in 1970. The simple style, which could be worn with a bouffant hair do, was very much in fashion.

Princess Margaret, too, borrowed her older sisters headpiece on several occasions, including to sit for an official portrait by royal photographer Cecil Beaton in 1965.

Smuggled out of Soviet Russia by a real-life James Bond

The Grand Duchess Vladimir tiara was made by the illustrious House of Bolin, one of the worlds oldest jewellers, for Maria Pavlovna, wife of Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia, and presented on her wedding day in 1874. When the revolution erupted, the family fled and the tiara was left behind, only to be smuggled out of Russia by a British secret agent

Spies, intrigue and a daring escape - the Grand Duchess Vladimir tiara has perhaps the most fascinating story of all.

Made by the illustrious House of Bolin, one of the worlds oldest jewellers, for Maria Pavlovna, wife of Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia, it was presented on her wedding day in 1874.

When the revolution erupted, the family fled and the tiara was left behind, only to be smuggled out of Russia by a British secret agent.

It suffered on its journey and had to be rescued by Garrard, who polished it as far as possible and replaced two missing diamonds for the princely sum of 26 15s.

In 1921, the tiara was sold to Queen Mary by the Grand Duchesss daughter. A few years later, she had the tiara adapted to replace the 15 pearls with emeralds, but kept the originals so both styles could be worn. The Queen inherited it from her grandmother in 1953.

She prefers it with pearls, but here, at a film premiere in 1962, shes opted for striking emeralds to match the Delhi Durbar necklace, which came into her possession in the same year.

Tiara is a real puzzle

The Grand Duchess Vladimir tiara is one of the most enduring pieces in the Queens collection - and by far the most complex. Its made of 15 intertwined diamond-set ovals, from which hang pendants of either pearls or emeralds - or occasionally neither

The Grand Duchess Vladimir tiara is one of the most enduring pieces in the Queens collection - and by far the most complex.

Its made of 15 intertwined diamond-set ovals, from which hang pendants of either pearls or emeralds - or occasionally neither.

The 15 stones are kept in numbered pouches to mark their position on the tiara and it takes an hour to change them. According to royal dresser Angela Kelly: I always ensure that I take my time to do this quietly and without interruption, as you cannot afford to put the jewels in the wrong pouches.

Here, the Queen wears the tiara with pearls in the U.S. in 1976, paired with the Queen Victoria Golden Jubilee necklace, which dates from 1888.

A headache for Diana

With its 19 diamond encrusted arches, each framing a vast baroque pearl pendant, the Cambridge Lovers Knot tiara was said to be a favourite of Diana, Princess of Wales, despite her complaints that it was heavy, noisy - all those swinging pearls - and gave her headaches

With its 19 diamond encrusted arches, each framing a vast baroque pearl pendant, the Cambridge Lovers Knot tiara was said to be a favourite of Diana, Princess of Wales, despite her complaints that it was heavy, noisy - all those swinging pearls - and gave her headaches.

It was commissioned by the Queens grandmother, Queen Mary, in 1913, and made using existing jewels in her collection. It is a copy of

a 200-year-old Gothic Revival tiara owned by Marys grandmother, Augusta of Hesse, the Duchess of Cambridge - hence its name.

When Mary died in 1953, it passed to the Queen, who wore it regularly early in her reign before giving it to Diana as a wedding present in 1981.

On Charles and Dianas divorce, it was returned, but in 2015 was worn by the new Duchess of Cambridge to a diplomatic reception at Buckingham Palace.

Tiara snapped on her wedding day

As a young bride in 1947, Princess Elizabeth paired Queen Marys Fringe tiara with her flowing Norman Hartnell gown. But just before she left for Westminster Abbey, the tiara snapped, and the court jeweller had to rush in for emergency repairs

As a young bride in 1947, Princess Elizabeth paired Queen Marys Fringe tiara with her flowing Norman Hartnell gown, made from ivory duchesse satin and embroidered with 10,000 pearls.

But it was very nearly a source of embarrassment. Just before she left for Westminster Abbey, the tiara snapped, and the court jeweller had to rush in for emergency repairs.

The tiara, made by Garrard in 1919 from a necklace given to Mary as a wedding present, was given to the Queen Mother in 1936 and later loaned to Princess Elizabeth and Princess Anne for their wedding days.

Much like the Kokoshnik tiara, it was designed to look like a fashionable Russian headdress with 47 diamond bars. Tiaras in this style were particularly

popular in the first half of the 20th century, and the Queen inherited it on her mothers death in 2002.

It can also be worn as a necklace, though the Queen has never done so in public. The tiara has been seen only occasionally of late, most recently
50 couples in China's Jiangsu Province took part in a giant group wedding in

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While some choose to marry in churches or by the sea, other couples like to challenge tradition and take things to another level on their big day.

On Friday, 50 Chinese couples took to the sky in hot balloons for a thrilling group ceremony.

Pictures have emerged of the dramatic weddings, which took place in Nanjing, the capital of east China's Jiangsu Province.

Love is in the air: While some choose to marry in churches or by the sea, other couples like to challenge tradition and take things to another level on their big day

Love lifts us up: On Friday, 50 Chinese couples took to the sky in hot balloons for a thrilling group ceremony

Taking love to new heights: After landing, each of the newlywed pairs ran hand in hand down the road, waving to photographers as they celebrated their marriage

Before they took off, one happy couple took a moment to snap a selfie - the bride dressed in a traditional white gown and holding a white bouquet.

Another couple was all smiles as they took off in their colourful balloon, waving to a small crowd that had gathered below.

Despite the enormous balloons all taking off at the same time, it was all smooth sailing as the happy couples took to the sky ahead of their nuptials.

Give me a higher love: Pictures have emerged of the dramatic weddings, which took place in Nanjing, the capital of east China's Jiangsu Province

High love: 'This is so beautiful, it's really a sight to behold,' one woman wrote on Facebook

Excited: One tourist snapped a selfie in front of the colourful spectacle

After landing, each of the newlywed pairs ran hand in hand down the road, waving to photographers as they celebrated their marriage.

'This is so beautiful, it's really a sight to behold,' one woman wrote on Facebook.

'I wonder how they did not collide? It's a superb sight!' Said another.

Give me a higher love: 'I wonder how they did not collide? It's a superb sight!' Said another

Love in the sky: Group weddings have become more popular in China over the past 12 months

That's the way love floats: Despite the enormous balloons all taking off at the same time, it was all smooth sailing as the happy couples took to the sky ahead of their nuptials

Group weddings have become more popular in China over the past 12 months.

In May, 114 couples married at Nanjing University to mark the 114th anniversary of the institute's founding.
Beth with her mother Henny

When BETH BEAUMONT EPSTEIN was born her parents were told she would never learn to read. Now, at 15, she has aspirations to go to university.

Her mother HENNY explains the need for less negativity towards Downs Syndrome

Its 4pm on a weekday afternoon, and Beth Beaumont Epstein bounces into the house from school, gives her mum Henny a big hug and talks excitedly about her day.

As with all mothers, you can see the pride in Hennys eyes as Beth tells me how much shes enjoying maths and how her favourite sport is swimming.

Its completely normal family life: but what wasnt normal was that, for quite a long time after 15-year-old Beth was born, Henny feared she would never be able to love her daughter, and that Beth would never achieve anything to make her proud.

She can hardly bear to remember those times. It has been extremely painful, she says, to describe them in heartbreaking detail in her new book, Hole in the Heart: Bringing up Beth.

Beth aged three with Henny and newborn brother Karl

The story documents, in comic-strip format, how tough Henny found the early months of Beths life; how difficult it was for her to cope with how Beth looked, and how when she took her out in her buggy she sometimes felt as though she was pushing a dead weight.

Its all searingly, shockingly honest, and Henny has done it because she and her husband Steve want to lift the lid on how it feels to have a child with Downs Syndrome.

Beth was born on Mothering Sunday, Henny remembers, and for about four hours after she arrived, everything seemed perfect. She looked a bit like her sisters Matty, now 20, and Bridie, now 18.

Henny, 49, had always wanted a big family and was looking forward to getting back home and into her new life as a mother of three.

Henny's graphic-format book gives a frank account of Beth's birth, diagnosis and beyond

And then came the bombshell. See her eyes, said the doctor. Theyre slanted upwards in the corners. And she has poor muscle tone. It all pointed to Downs. She might have serious heart malformations too, the couple were warned (and, as it turned out, Beth did indeed have heart problems).

They were also told that as Beth grew up it would become clear that she wasnt like other children: she would be mentally retarded and would never learn to read.

One doctor told Henny and Steve that, if they were lucky, Beth just might eventually be able to distinguish between the signs for men and women on public toilets.

The one shred of comfort they were given was that their child was likely to die before them. How is that comforting? Henny recalls, incredulous.

As it turned out, this information was incorrect  these days people with Downs can expect a normal lifespan. Beth can read, she enjoys school and swimming, and loves singing along to her favourite pop stars Justin Bieber and One Direction.

She loves acting; she adores playing with her siblings. She likes annoying Matty by plotting to steal her boyfriend, laughs Henny. In almost every way, shes an average teenager. And once she has overcome an initial shyness, she loves being the centre of attention. In other words, life with Beth is almost normal  but thats not how the future was portrayed to Henny and Steve.

Instead, it seemed relentlessly grim and hopeless. I felt our lives were over; that everything we enjoyed as a family  walking holidays, special events  would have a cloud over it. That we had nothing to look forward to; that Beths life would be without purpose, achievement or enjoyment.

For Steve, 52, it was much the same: The shock of finding out was immense  it was a very tricky thing to have to cope with. It was harder for Henny because I had my work as a builder to escape to. Henny, an artist and teacher, had scaled back her work to look after the children.

Henny's husband Steve says of the book, It should be a textbook for midwives and nurses and paediatricians, people who need to understand that medicine isnt just about a diagnosis, its also about handling people, and giving them an honest sense of what is likely to happen

The theme of Hennys book is straightforward: its the story of how Beth surprised them. Of how a baby with Downs, whose life had been painted as hardly worth living, turned out to be the most amazing blessing imaginable.

Its the story of how Henny and Steve stopped seeing their little girl as a label and started to see her as an individual. Its the story of how hope can triumph. Its the story of how wrong doctors can be, and how misguided we are as a society about the potential of people with disabilities.

Because in focusing on what disabled people cant do, we neglect to notice what they can do  the gifts and talents they have to share. It was in making that switch that the tide turned for Henny, Steve and their family.

The change happened gradually as Beths character started to emerge and, little by little, her parents learned to love her. It didnt happen overnight: Henny says it often felt like two steps forward, one step back.

Hole in the Heart recounts how the news of Beth's condition was broken to her brother and sister

Looking back, she can see she was trapped in a kind of despair that came from the shock of being told in such a negative way about Beths condition. And it wasnt just health professionals who wanted to write off her daughter  society seemed to want to do it, too.

Children like Beth are invisible: they dont feature in storybooks, and theyre not pictured in clothes catalogues or toy adverts. Where their existence was acknowledged, it was all too often by people who wanted to categorise them by their disability: people with Downs were stubborn, happy or lovely. But what they needed, says Henny, was to be seen as individuals.

In her book she depicts herself on a soapbox, megaphone in hand, shouting out her manifesto: They need to be seen as people, not as a different creature from another species or another planet.

Once they managed to disentangle themselves from the label, Henny and Steve realised that life with Beth was wonderful and although, as in every family, there were disappointments and painful moments, there was also a lot of fun.

Reading the book, its clear that Beths older sisters led the way: they were accepting of, and loving towards, their baby sister from her arrival. Unlike the adults, they were able to concentrate on the here and now, rather than worrying about Beths future.

Major surgery to correct her heart defect was surprisingly straightforward  Beth sailed through it at 18 months old. Her breathlessness and tiredness disappeared; she was healthier. It was at that point that I started to allow myself to love her  part of me had feared she wasnt going to make it through the operation, says Henny.

As Beth grew up, Henny reassessed her feelings towards achievement and her kids. She had, she admits, been a competitive mother; then she realised that bringing up children was much more about recognising their intrinsic value. Its about who they are as people, not how well theyre doing in school or what university theyre aspiring to, she says. It took Beth to make me realise that.

The truth is, she sees now, that many of the professionals whose job it is to break the news to a couple that their baby has Downs have no idea what its like to raise such a child. They assume the worst, she says. They dont know how much a child like Beth can achieve  she did learn to read  and its not only a question of what she achieves in her life, its also what she teaches others.

The difficulties of being accepted and invited to social events are covered

' I used to worry about my other children being pulled down by their sister  now I realise how much shes given them, how positive her influence has been. Theyre more aware of other peoples difficulties  theyre more sensitive, far less judgmental.

Like most mothers-to-be, Henny had an ultrasound scan when she was 13 weeks pregnant with Beth that looked for markers of Downs Syndrome  and she was reassured that her risk of it was very low, around one in 900.

If she had known then that her child was that one in 900, Henny has little doubt that she, like nine in ten couples who receive that diagnosis, would have chosen to have an abortion. But now, she says, shes overwhelmingly grateful that Beths Downs wasnt diagnosed, and that she wasnt given the choice of ending the pregnancy. I cant imagine life without her, she says. Shes at the centre of my life and the heart of our family; we all adore her.

Over the past three decades Downs has become less common due to screening tests. Until recently a definite diagnosis required an invasive test that carried a risk of miscarriage.

But now there are plans to implement a new blood test called non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) that looks for tiny fragments of the babys DNA in the mothers blood. This is likely to further reduce the number of babies with Downs by about 13 per cent, and a group of campaigners called Dont Screen Us Out are battling for greater understanding of the reality of life for people with Downs. Henny, though, feels strongly that all women have a right to abortion if they so choose.

Its a complicated subject: when their fourth and final child, Karl, now 11, was born three and a half years after Beth, Henny opted for a detailed antenatal scan but admits she hasnt a clue what shed have done if the test had shown the baby had Downs (he didnt).

Steve is more strident in his views. The issue of screening, he says, upsets him. It reinforces the sense of otherness, of how unfriendly we are as a society towards disabled people. I think the quest to eliminate [disability] is misguided. Its a search for perfection that doesnt exist in anyone. Once you set it up, where do you stop?

'How far do you go to achieve that impossible dream, the perfect child? The whole thing makes me angry, because it feels like a personal attack on Beth. When people talk about screening Downs out, this is who theyre talking about: my wonderful daughter.

So what would he say to couples thinking about screening? Id say, Have an abortion if you dont want any kind of baby but dont have an abortion because you dont want a child with Downs Syndrome. Because the child with Downs is every bit as much of a child as any other.

And what 15 years with Beth has taught them, Henny adds, is that the challenges of raising a child with Downs are no greater than the challenges of raising any child. I see plenty of people encountering problems in their childrens lives. I think weve been so lucky because Beth is such a warm, kind and wonderful person whos achieving lots and has plenty to look forward to.

Deciding on Beths education was a dilemma for Henny and Steve. She joined her sisters at their primary school, and was about to follow them to the comprehensive near their home in north London when the couple had second thoughts. The school was very positive about taking Beth, but they didnt have any experience of Downs, says Henny.

The breakthroughs and relief are also recounted

What mattered most, says Steve, was what was best for Beth. And her going to a special school, as she did in the end, was about acknowledging that part of her being. Its also meant that now she has friends who are disabled, which, says Henny, has been another positive in her life.

The long term isnt something Henny and Steve have spent much time worrying about: after all, Beth has surprised them so far, and she might surprise them more in the future. Shes such a warm and tactile person, and I think in time shell have boyfriends and eventually get married, says Henny. In fact, the person shes after is [One Directions] Harry Styles, so if hes reading this, please get in touch.

'Seriously, though, I dont know if shell manage to live independently but shell definitely be able to live semi-independently. She watches what her big sisters are doing and she wants the same things: shed like to go to university, shed like to work, perhaps in something to do with cooking, which she loves. Were not ruling anything out.

The most moving part of Hennys book is the final section. Its written, she says, especially for Beth, and it retells the story of her arrival the way it should have been, and with the benefit of hindsight.

All those doctors and nurses who shook their heads and said she wouldnt be able to do anything are pictured looking down at her in her cot, saying: Isnt she beautifulshes perfectyou must be so proud.

And then her sisters are shown fighting over who is going to hold her. But the final pages show Henny taking her into her own arms. You cant hold her, she says. Because shes my baby and I want to hold her. I love her.

The truth is, of course, that Henny and Steve always had it in them to love their child: it was the negativity of others at the start of her life that dampened their ability to do that.

What they hope Hennys book will do is help make healthcare professionals, and all of us, see the issues around disability differently. If the people we had to deal with at the start of Beths life had read Hennys book first, I think things would have been very different, says Steve.

It should be a textbook for midwives and nurses and paediatricians, people who need to understand that medicine isnt just about a diagnosis, its also about handling people, and giving them an honest sense of what is likely to happen.

Meanwhile, Henny laughs as she remembers the big fear she had when Beth was a baby. I thought she would make me into a pathetic, tragic figure, she says. And I dont feel like that, not one tiny bit.

'Today, if I walk down the street with Beth, what I feel is extraordinary pride. Shes my amazing daughter with so much to give and so much to live for.
At The Mail on Sunday we take great pride in the quality of our journalism. All our journalists are required to observe the Editors Code of Practice and The Mail on Sunday is a member of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), the regulatory body for the Press set up in response to the Leveson Inquiry. We aim to correct any errors as promptly as possible.

A diary story on May 29 may have suggested that Kate Moss was in a relationship with Jake Curtis, the son of Richard Curtis and Emma Freud.

We would like to make clear this is not the case and apologise to Kate Moss for the distress caused.
Just as many of us dream of publishing a novel, getting a painting into the Royal Academys Summer Exhibition  which starts tomorrow  is an artists favourite fantasy, says Caroline Atkins

Caroline outside the Royal Academy in London

This time last year, just for a few weeks, I was able to think of myself as a serious artist. Most of the time Im a writer and editor, but I also paint  something that started as an escape from the terror of deadlines and the blank page, and then became a pursuit in its own right.

And, last June, one of my paintings found its way into the Royal Academys Summer Exhibition, the place where unknown artists get a chance to show their work alongside the likes of Tracey Emin and David Hockney. For the thousands of us who paint in groups and on courses, who convert spare rooms into studios (or reclaim the childrens once theyre at university), this is the holy grail  a bit like getting your first novel published.

Ive been painting for about 25 years: watercolours and life classes and, more recently, oils. The joy of it when I started was that it didnt matter whether I was any good or not  no exams, no one marking me. For someone whose life, pretty much since primary school, had been about trying to get things right, it was like discovering a secret playground.

Of course, once youre no longer an absolute beginner, you lose that freedom to fail without caring. You start to have expectations of yourself, and frequently feel youre getting worse rather than better. But still, just occasionally, something emerges that youre happy with. So theres enough pleasure amid the frustration and dissatisfaction to keep me hooked.

And, because Ive somehow reached my 50s without getting married or having a family, Im free to be totally selfish about filling my flat with paints and boards and lengths of framing wood. My paintings are small and so are their subjects: I like intimate, domestic things  milk bottles and wilting flowers, piano stools and corners of rooms. Ive exhibited several times in local London shows and galleries, and discovered the sense of validation that comes with a red sold dot. But the Summer Exhibition, the largest open-submission exhibition in the world  held annually since 1769 and with around 200,000 visitors every year  is special.

The first time I had a go at it was in 2012, in the days when you just turned up with a couple of paintings under your arm, joined the mile-long queue to hand them in, then waited for a letter telling you whether or not youd been accepted. It was a shot in the dark for me  although my 90-year-old mother, who knew nothing about art (and was almost completely blind), had huge confidence in my chances, in the way that mothers do. I think she was more disappointed than me when my rejection letter arrived two months later.

By the time I tried again, last year, the RA had changed the entry system: you now submit your pictures online in February, and they shortlist the ones they want to see.

I mailed off images of two slightly abstract still lifes  one a fish, the other chinese lantern stems in a bottle  and waited. The emails telling me that both my pictures were through to the second round arrived so late on a Friday night that I didnt see them until the Saturday morning. The thump of realisation was startling: something that had been hovering as a pleasant daydream now came into focus as a possibility, flooding that weekend with elation (my only regret, that my mother was no longer alive to enjoy her moment of pride). Even if I didnt get any further, the Royal Academy thought my work was worth looking at.

Carolines artwork Chinese Lanterns

It was two months before the next email, and when it came it was disconcertingly vague: Your artwork Chinese Lanterns is still under consideration. Somehow not conclusive enough to be reassuring (although a second message, saying my fish hadnt been selected, was more decisive).

Searching online for advice, I discovered a whole network of bloggers sharing their hopes and anxieties. Artists whove tried for years and not been accepted, who managed it once and never again, or whove been successful several years running and are terrified of their luck changing. Its like the slowest job application in the world. Id started painting as an escape from stress, and here I was, still desperate not to fail.

For the three weeks before the final decision, due on 21 May, I was torn between asking people to keep their fingers crossed for me and not daring to tell them in case I jinxed my chances. I steeled myself against disappointment by rereading a characteristically savage Brian Sewell review of a previous years exhibition, which he said made him feel as though the Kennel Club has abandoned pedigree and thrown open its doors to every passing mongrel pup.

But if I was trying to lessen the prize, it didnt work. Mongrel pup or not, I really wanted to get in.

A lot seemed to happen last May. The Duchess of Cambridge had a baby, a general election came and went. Then a friend from my book club died. The club had just celebrated a wedding; now we were about to have a funeral. We need a baby next, someone said, as we drank to Angelas memory at our monthly meeting. I cant produce a baby, I told them, but wish me luck on Thursday

This time the email was unambiguous. Dear Caroline Atkins, I am pleased to inform you that your artwork, Chinese Lanterns, has been selected for this years exhibition. There was stuff, too, about private views and other events, but that didnt really register. It was a moment of purely selfish happiness: the sense of success was heady, giddying. I still have the message on my phone  the digital equivalent of bottling the moment.

So on 1 June last year, I found myself chasing from a funeral in West London to Varnishing Day at the Royal Academy  two church services in one morning. Back in the 19th century, Varnishing Day gave artists a chance to touch up their work before the exhibition opened; now its a purely ceremonial event that begins with an artists procession from the Academy (led by a steel band, casually holding up the West End traffic) across the road to St Jamess, Piccadilly  and ends with champagne and strawberries in the galleries themselves.

The Summer Exhibition at a glance  The Royal Academy has held its Summer Exhibition every year without interruption since 1769 (even during two World Wars). These days it includes sculpture, architecture and photography as well as paintings.  Elected Academicians (known as RAs) can exhibit up to six works each. Turner, Gainsborough and Constable were all RAs; the current list includes Grayson Perry, Antony Gormley, Thomas Heatherwick and Tracey Emin.  Other artists have to go through the judging process. The Academy accepts 12,000 online submissions in February, shortlists up to 4,000 to look at, and in May you hear if youre still in the running.  The final list of around 1,200 works is agreed on Sanctioning Day, when the selection committee has finished hanging the show. Advertisement

Have you done this before? I asked the girl walking beside me in the procession to the church. Yes, it was her second year. No one checked my gilt-edged invitation (which Id been terrified of mislaying, in case I wasnt allowed in after all) so actually, anyone could have joined in.

Is this just for the artists? whispered someone in my pew as we stood to sing Dear Lord and Father of Mankind. She seemed bemused, but I think she was German, and this was all very English.

The day will stay in my memory if only for the beauty of the singing and readings  and for the address giving thanks for the gifts of life and creativity, which felt like an extra tribute to my book-club friend, herself a talented artist.

Back across the road after the service, the galleries were a haze of half-familiar faces  artists and critics youve seen on television, and celebrities who paint, including Una Stubbs (who has made it into the exhibition several times with her tiny portraits of co-stars such as Benedict Cumberbatch).

I said hello to her, confided one of the other artists to me. I thought she was someone I knew.

Taking my champagne and catalogue in search of my painting, I was suddenly reluctant to see it; afraid that, having satisfied my examiners, I might disappoint myself. It was in a slightly gloomy corner, and dwarfed by the huge yellow Grayson Perry tapestry. But it was hung at eye level (which someone told me is an honoured position, perfect viewing height)  and it was there. In the Summer Exhibition. In the Royal Academy.

It was hard to stay away after that. The euphoria of Decision Day lasted several weeks, obliterating worries like a drug. I used my press invitation to enjoy the exhibition in the quiet of an early-morning visit (and had the excitement of seeing TV presenter Kirsty Wark head towards my corner with a cameraman, declaring I love this one  then stop a few pictures to the left of mine).

I went to all the private views, and to Buyers Day (when collectors get their first chance to purchase), arriving mid-afternoon to find a precious red dot beside my painting. I went to check on it several times over the summer, slipping in between meetings, to make sure it was really there. And I went to take a last look at it before it went home with its new owner when the exhibition ended in August.

A literary agent once told me that every aspiring novelist thinks getting a book published will change their life, and that it doesnt. But painting is different, because you dont need to sell a million of them: each one someone buys feels like a bestseller in its own right. This year, I didnt even get through the exhibitions first round. Life has resumed its old shape and texture, without that heightened definition that made everything ultra-bright for one summer. But something did change for me. I may never write my novel, but knowing that other people, friends  and, now, complete strangers  have something I created hanging on their wall feels like a sort of legacy. And my mother would have been incredibly proud.
We are pretty keen on This Works Energy Bank Sun Flash , 28/30ml, which adds a dose of multi-vitamins, hyaluronic acid plus caffeine and chicory root to perk up your skin along with the shot of colour. Pretty genius, we think

Q I want to give my skin a summer glow but I cant find a tinted moisturiser that suits my skin tone. Is there anything you can suggest?

A We are big fans of what we call sun drops, essentially tinted concentrate that you mix with your moisturiser to boost the colour. We blend it in the palm of one hand, adding a drop at a time. Its a simple effective way to customise your moisturiser (no reason why shouldn't add a drop to your foundation, if you wish.)

One of our longterm favourite products is Dr Hauschka Translucent Bronzing Tint, 28.50 /30ml (naturisimo.com). As well as giving you a shot of sheer colour, this German natural cosmetic company say it will soften signs of small red blood vessels, scars, uneven pigmentation and other blemishes. You can also blend it with facial oil.

Another tried and trusted product is Clarins Radiance-Plus Golden Glow Booster, 19/15ml. This teeny little bottle is actually a self-tan product so you can get your skin to your desired colour then just keep it topped up. (We have been adding a dollop of facial self-tan to moisturiser for decades, literally, and more recently the beauty industry caught up!)

Also, we are pretty keen on This Works Energy Bank Sun Flash, 28/30ml, which adds a dose of multi-vitamins, hyaluronic acid plus caffeine and chicory root to perk up your skin along with the shot of colour. Pretty genius, we think.

Finally, as a Beauty Steal, we are impressed by Danish brand GOSH Lumi Drops, just 5.99 at www.superdrug.com (once you can get through the corset-tight plastic packaging). Its designed as a highlighter but we added it to moisturiser for a luminous tinted  totally sheer - finish, which looked pretty.

Filorga Scrub & Mask, 38 for 55 ml . Subtitled 'reoxygenating exfoliating mask', this is a terrific - and yet gentle - high-tech skin-blitzer, brilliant for keeping a tan (faked or otherwise) vibrant at this time

Beauty Bible loves Filorga Scrub & Mask, 38 for 55 ml. Subtitled 'reoxygenating exfoliating mask', this is a terrific - and yet gentle - high-tech skin-blitzer, brilliant for keeping a tan (faked or otherwise) vibrant at this time.

First, the mask bit. Via one of those pump dispensers that we really love, you press down on the inner lid and the gel-cream-textured product comes out through the nozzle. When massaged lightly into skin, teensy perlite particles exfoliate effectively, while enzymes get to work effectively dissolving dead skin cells.

The product then goes all mousse-y on you - and we really enjoyed this deeply moisturising, hyaluronic acid-powered phase, with teeny bubbles fizzing against the skin. (No discomfort, just ever-so-slightly tickly  in a good way.)

When the bubbles have fizzed their last, it's time to rinse the product away, revealing brightened, smooth and glowing skin.

It's a 'keeper'.

For more information follow Beauty Bible on:

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A woman and eight underprivileged children caused a stir outside a prominent chain restaurant in Delhis Connaught Place, a day after they were denied service at the food joint.

The issue went viral on social media, prompting the Delhi government to order an inquiry.

The New Delhi district magistrate visited the Shiv Sagar restaurant on Sunday morning to investigate the allegations, and asked for CCTV footage of the incident.

Sonali Shetty, who brought street children with her to the Shiv Sagar to celebrate her husband's birthday, has been protesting outside the restaurant after the owner allegedly discriminated against them

The children were taken there by a customer identified as Sonali Shetty, a resident of Dehradun and a writer by profession.

The incident took place on Saturday, when Shetty wished to treat more than half a dozen street children on her husbands birthday.

I had taken eight underprivileged children for lunch at Shiv Sagar restaurant. I was ridiculed and threatened to keep off the restaurant, she said.

The day after the unsuccessful restaurant trip, Sonali took a dozen street children to the neighbouring McDonalds outlet instead

Police take stock of the situation at the restaurant, where Sonali says she was "ridiculed and threatened".

After being turned away, Shetty stationed herself outside the restaurant in protest.

On Sunday afternoon, she resumed her protest and sought an apology from the restaurant. Later, she took a dozen underprivileged kids to the neighbouring McDonalds outlet.

Reacting to the news, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia ordered a government probe, saying the incident reeks of a colonial mindset.

This is typical Colonial mindset. Can't be tolerated. Have ordered DM New Delhi to enquire & report within 24 hours. https://t.co/ifixugxPRD  Manish Sisodia (@msisodia) 12 June 2016

Sisodia also said that if the allegations are true, the government will cancel the restaurants license.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the Centre to probe anti-Sikh riots in Delhi and some other states is to re-investigate around 75 cases, a Home Ministry official said.

The decision comes a few months ahead of the assembly elections in Punjab.

Riots following the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984, led to the killing of 3,000 Sikhs. Since the Modi government came in, different Sikh representations have demanded the reopening of the 1984 riot victim cases.

Sikh activists have long been demanding a better probe into the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Pictured: Members of the shrimoni akali dal (Badal) protest against Rahul Gandhi's remarks about the riots in 2014.

Delhi alone accounted for 2,733 deaths and most of those killed were Sikhs - the majority community in Punjab where assembly polls are due in 2017.

Delhi had 237 anti-Sikh riot cases that were closed because of non-availability of victims or lack of evidence. After reviewing their documents, the SIT has decided to re-examine about 75 cases so far," said a government official involved in the investigation.

In the first week of June, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to expedite investigation into the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

Kejriwal had called the SIT formed by the Centre to probe the riots an eyewash. He asked Modi to consider winding up the SIT and allowing the Delhi government to set up a special investigation team for proper investigation and justice for the victims.

This year marks the 32nd anniversary of the anti-Sikh massacre. The AAP had alleged that in these 32 years, 10 commissions and committees were formed - but justice still eluded the victims.

It is a long-standing demand of the Sikh community that an SIT should be set up.
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Delhi's government divers, who are all aged between 25 and 35 and have no formal swimming training, are forced to dive into the citys toxic waters without body suits or oxygen masks while carrying out rescue operations.

This is the story of 13 Delhi divers, who made several deep dives to retrieve the bodies of two young boys when their boat capsized in the Yamuna, near Timarpur, last week.

Last weeks rescue operation took more than 12 hours to find the two bodies as the boat had capsized at the deepest part of the river, which was close to 50ft deep, claimed one of the divers.

These divers, who grew up on the banks of the Yamuna, dive into fast-flowing canals or dirty drains to pull out bodies - or on good days, to save people from drowning

"Fetching dead bodies and rescuing people is a mission for us. Life is valuable and we feel blessed saving each soul," said Rayees Ahmed

The divers used to work on a contract basis, but in September last year the AAP government got them enrolled as civil defence volunteers. This increased their pay structure, but made very little improvement to their safety and health conditions.

We were born on the bank of the river and we are used to it (filth and pollution), but when we enter these dirty drains it raises skin diseases, and respiratory and eye-related problems, confessed a diver.

The health problems get worse during the summer, when the number of drowning cases rises.

We patrol across the Yamuna on our 13 motor boats during the summer season to check cases of drowning. With no masks and body suits, we definitely face huge health issues, said another diver.

This year alone, the lifeguards have received 63 calls and pulled out 55 bodies. And most importantly, as of June 10 they have managed to save four people from drowning.

Last year, they got as many as 224 calls, which saw 148 bodies recovered and five people rescued.

Drowning

Cases of drowning increase many folds during summers. Most people are on holidays and they go to Yamuna, canals, or other bodies to beat the heat. But without appropriate safety measures, they land up in trouble, said Harish Kumar, in-charge of Delhi Boat Club, which comes under the revenue department of the Delhi government.

Kumar added that as there are no boundaries around the Yamuna and the high-flowing Munak canal, it becomes difficult to curb such incidents.

We can swing into action only when we get a call of drowning. But it barely takes two minutes for a person to die in water, he said.

These divers claim that fetching bodies out of the Yamuna is not as troublesome as retrieving them from the Munak canal in Bawana.

Water flows at a very high speed here and the depth is close to 15ft. We can go as deep as 40-50ft, but in Bawana due to speed of water, bodies are washed away and we have to check a large area, said diver Intezaar.

He added that the government should install a net to help them retrieve dead bodies.

However, these lifeguards dont complain much.

It is a mission for us to fetch dead bodies and rescue people. Life is valuable and we feel blessed saving each soul. Our mission is to take out even decaying dead bodies as it is important for family members and police, said Rayees Ahmed, one of the divers.

Munak canal could get high walls for safety

By Mail Today in New Delhi

The Delhi government is in talks with its counterpart in Haryana to construct a wall around the Munak canal, as it claims around half a dozen lives every month on an average basis.

Two parallel water canals that pass through Bawana, Khera, Shahbad and the Badli area of North West Delhi connect to Haryana and Delhi. They are the Capitals lifeline, as the city receives 70 per cent of its water through these channels.

Authorities plan to build a wall around the Munak canal to help cut the number of deaths by drowning. (Picture for representation only).

The canals are open from both sides, and anyone can take a dip from any point - making them killer water bodies.

There is no fencing or boundary, and the canals lack safety measures. Almost every day there is a report of drowning.

During summers there are around 30-40 incidents in which close to half a dozen people die, which is relatively lesser during the winters, said Ved Prakash, AAP MLA from Bawana.

Almost every week, the villagers spot a bloated body floating in the canal. In 2015, 35 dead bodies were recovered from the canal.

As many as 49 bodies were found in 2014, while in 2013 the police recovered 47.

According to police records, out of the 96 bodies fished out in 2013 and 2014, only five resulted in cases of murder being registered.

As the canal is in Haryana, property of the irrigation department, we cannot construct a boundary around it. The speed of water is extremely high which washes away the bodies to several kilometres. We are planning to install information board highlighting number of deaths to scare locals, Prakash said.
A five-minute walk through patches of stately Sal forests on the outskirts of Kanha National Park in central India leads to hamlets inhabited by the baigas  one of the countrys oldest tribal communities, which is now on the verge of extinction.

Having led a semi-nomadic life till a decade ago, members of this tribe dont even know the name of their country or who Narendra Modi is.

But they are the worthy mascots of Prime Ministers Swacch Bharat mission that aims to make India free of open defecation by October 2, 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, by building toilets in rural areas and schools.

Many families in these villages have built toilets in their houses even as they are deprived of basic amenities

The Baigas may be deprived of clean drinking water, but their tiny houses are not without toilets.

The sizzling summers have dried up their wells, but the buckets outside the lavatories are filled with water that they draw from hand-pumps in the neighbourhood.

Ask them about the inspiration behind constructing toilets and they say: safaai zaruri hai (sanitation is important).

The Baigas are deprived of clean drinking water, but their tiny houses are not without toilets.

The tribal people, who have been evicted from the reserved forest of Kanha National Park in Mandala and Balaghat districts of Madhya Pradesh over the decade, have learnt to co-exist with the rural and urban population.

They dont know Modi, but they love the idea of cleanliness.

The houses are made of mud with cattle kept outside in the village inhabited by the baigas

The one name they have heard is of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan who, they said, asks people to have toilets in every home.

We cannot pollute our surroundings. We clean our houses and apply cow dung paste on the walls and floor to keep the house hygienic. So, we should also have toilets to keep the surroundings clean, says Bishan Lal of Khatia village as he performs some traditional rituals to begin his day.

Other members of the community, who were chopping wood nearby for their kitchens, said they have no regrets about the lack of development in their village but consider it their responsibility to keep it clean.

Ye to hamara kaam hai (This is our duty), they said.

The houses are made of mud with cattle kept outside. At a little distance, newly built toilets and washbasins grab attention. A woman from the community said their ancestors who roamed the dense forests lived life in its purest form. Animals and human beings can only survive in a clean environment, said Putul, a mother of three.

Many families in Jholar village have built toilets in their houses even as they are deprived of basic amenities like water, roads, electricity, healthcare, education and, most importantly, a source of livelihood.

The district administration in a bid to improve the socio-economic condition of the Baiga tribe has started a survey that focuses on their financial condition, education, employment and health among established human index norms.

A local official said that the study is aimed at preparing a plan to provide electricity, potable water, forest rights, child development, women empowerment and employment to the people and bring them to the mainstream.

The forest department has also been training the baiga youths as guides in Kanha National Park which receives over two lakh visitors every year.

The tribe mostly lives in the forest and its association with the outside world is negligible except a few from the new generation.

The community is largely dependent on the forest and seasonal cultivations on a rotational basis, as they do not farm repeatedly in one place.

The Madhya Pradesh government recently recognised the habitat rights of the Baiga tribe in seven villages of Dindori district and assured that it will not transfer any land for non-community uses without their consent.

Baigas face desperate future as forest slips out of hand

By Rakesh Ranjan

It is essentially the conflict between the man and the wild that has driven the Baiga tribe out of the Kanha National Park, the home of Rudyard Kiplings The Jungle Book.

While the tribe considers tigers of Kanha as their brothers, the authorities consider these people a threat to the wildlife.

As part of tiger conservation efforts, as many as 27 villages were shifted out of the core area with no alternate arrangements made for them.

The National Tiger Conservation Authority issued guidelines in 2005 to make the forests core area free from human intervention and so the eviction of the Baiga tribe started

We were forcibly evicted from the forest where our generations had spent their lives. We never harm the wild animals; we consider tigers as our brothers and offer them wild boars and goats on festivals, said one member of the tribe while describing the socio-economic condition of the community.

Having spent several years in the forests, we are most familiar with flora and fauna. Driven out of the forests, we will also lose our ability to recognise them, he said.

The eviction of Baigas started in 2005, after the National Tiger Conservation Authority issued guidelines to make the forests core area free from human intervention.

However, the tribals and experts feel otherwise.

Tribals are the best conservationists. Human presence in the forests is a deterrent to the poachers. There has been no instance of the Baiga people killing a tiger or any other wild animal, said Shameem Khan, a naturalist who has been working as a guide in Kanha National park since 2002.

The tribals recall their ordeal.

We were told to immediately vacate the forest without any alternate arrangement in place. They threatened us to release elephants to trample our houses. Fearing our lives, we moved out of the forest, said another man from the Baiga community.

They were first shifted from the core area to the buffer zone and later they were asked to vacate the buffer zone too.

Disconnected from the forests, they face a desperate future.

The forest department has been training them as guides and forest guards in the Kanha National Park, but it is insufficient to meet their needs.

Recently, the government had also announced monetary compensation for the evicted tribals but failed to satisfy the victims.

They have promised us money but we dont want money. We want our forests. Money doesnt mean anything to us, they said.

With no source of income, a number of people from the community have resorted to begging while some of them have been performing their traditional dance and folk music to earn their livelihood.

We often travel to Jabalpur and other neigbouring cities to perform on some occasions. We are paid a meager sum for this, rued a villager.

Some others said their children will never learn to recognise medicinal herbs in the forests, an art that distinguishes Baigas from other tribes.

Members of the Baiga tribe, a semi nomadic tribe of central India that is reliant on the forest, lived in 27 villages that had been within the Kanha National Park until 1968, when they were relocated.

The relocation was part of an effort to maintain a critical tiger habitat.

The land to which they were relocated is barren and they now suffer from alcoholism and undernourishment.

The Baigas claim to be fierce protectors and worshipers of the forest and the mother nature.

Their sacred beliefs prohibit them from ploughing the land as this is perceived as traumatising Mother Earth.

They therefore adopt the slash and burn form of shifting agriculture, constantly remaining on the move.
Sex education may become part of the national curriculum soon as the health ministry is ready with a module based on decade-long research aiming to provide basic knowledge about sexuality and reproductive health to the school children.

The plan that is expected to be presented before the HRD ministry next week is likely to spark widespread debate in a country where many conservatives, including some politicians, consider sex education an affront to traditional family values.

The module has been prepared by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), National AIDS Research Institute, Pune and Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

The Union Health Ministry is planning to present a fresh module for Adolescent Reproductive and Sexual Health Education (ARSHE) before the HRD Ministry. (Picture for representation only)

The scientists claim that they have ensured that the module comfortable and fit to be implemented in the schools.

Conversations about sex are all but taboo in India with even parents and teachers often resisting the introduction of such curriculum in schools.

As the health minister, BJP leader Harsh Vardhan had faced criticism two years ago for allegedly demanding a ban on sex education in schools.

He had later clarified his remarks, saying that sex education was necessary, but without vulgarisation.

We have pooled in a lot of efforts in this project. ICMR had several meetings and scientists have addressed important and sensitive issues carefully. We will be approaching the HRD ministry by next week to discuss the module, said Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Director General, ICMR and Secretary, Department of Health Research.

She also warned that the sensitive issue should not be politicised.

The programme has been named Adolescent Reproductive and Sexual Health Education (ARSHE).

Experts say holistic sexual education is essential to address a raft of problems including teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, drug and alcohol abuse, cyber-bullying as well as child sexual exploitation.

Sex education is so important for a society like India where awareness is regarding sex issues is meager while and there are increasing cases of teen pregnancies and abortions. The ARSHE module should be widely accepted and should not face any political opposition. Moreover, in the interest of the society and adolescent health it should not be politicised, said Dr Swaminathan.

Also, before its implementation we have to keep in mind that the idea of sex education leads to discomfort among teachers and parents alike. While teachers are not comfortable teaching the subject, parents dont want to discuss it with their children. Teachers will have to be sensitised and given training before its implementation.

The ARSHE module contains six chapters - life skills and scholastic achievement, growing up concerns, body image and adolescent sexual behaviour, interpersonal and gender relationship, reproductive and sexual health and hygiene, and reproductive tract infections, sexually transmitted infections, HIV and AIDS.

As sex education is a sensitive issue we have formulated the module in a way that teachers can comfortably teach it in schools. We have used simple yet interesting sketches that may help students comprehend the text, said Dr AS Kundu, Head, Social Behavioural Research Division, ICMR.

In 2009, a committee comprising of Rajya Sabha members and headed by BJPs Venkaiah Naidu came up with the recommendations on implementation of sex education in schools.

It had criticised the HRD Ministrys Adult Education Programme (AEP), launched in 2005, as a cleverly used euphemism whose real objective was to impart sex education in schools and promote promiscuity.
Criminals rule the roost in western Uttar Pradeshs Kairana city where an organised extortion syndicate has left farmers and traders fearing for their lives.

Nearly 350 families have reportedly fled the area since 2014 due to repeated extortion and threat calls from gangster Mukim Kala.

While locals said the city, falling under Shamli district, has turned into Pakistan, BJP MP Hukum Singh accused the Samajwadi Party government for lawlessness in the state.

Nearly 350 families have sold their land and houses and fled Kairana due to repeated extortion and threat calls from gangster Mukim Kala

Local traders said extortion calls were made from inside the jail where Kala is currently lodged.

We are getting threats on phone and through letters. If one refuses to give protection money, he is killed by the henchmen. We have no option but to leave the city to save our lives," a trader said.

BJP MP and former Union minister Hukum Singh has released a list of the families who have allegedly fled Kairana

Sompal, a farmer, said he received a demand for Rs 10 lakh after he sold a piece of land.

"I was threatened that they will kill me if I refused to pay the money. Police can't help us. I have sold my land, now I am planning to leave this city forever," he said.

Another trader, Shiv Kumar Saini said Kairana had become Pakistan, where murder, loot and extortion were rampant.

The district magistrate says he has been informed by the MP and got a list from him of the families that have purportedly fled the city.

"We have constituted a committee under the leadership of SDM Kirana to verify the allegation" the DM said.

The issue has also sparked a political tussle in Uttar Pradesh where assembly elections are slated to be held next year and parties are wooing various communities and caste groups while using any ammunition available to target rivals.

The BJP announced this week that it would send a 11-member team consisting of MPs, mostly from western UP, to asses the situation.

The local MP claims that 346 families have deserted the Muslim-majority city over the past two years, due to extortion and loot by goons of gangster Mukim Kala who is in jail along with a dozen of his aides on the charges of murder, loot and kidnapping.

Kala allegedly killed three businessmen in 2014, for not paying extortion money.

He still runs an extortion racket from inside jail, say sources.

Many families have shifted to nearby villages in Haryana due to the terror of Kalas gang.

While BJP MP and Union Minister Sanjeev Balyan has accused the states Samajwadi Party government of patronising those behind the violence, rivals have alleged that the BJP is trying to stoke simmering communal tensions in the state for electoral benefits.

The National Human Rights Commission recently issued a notice to the Uttar Pradesh government over the alleged exodus.

It also directed the states DIG (Investigation) to depute a team of officers for a spot inquiry in the matter covering all the allegations made in the complaint and submit a report within two weeks.

The move came on the heels of a complaint that a Hindu woman was gang-raped and murdered in the area recently, but no action was initiated due to political pressure.

No action

According to the complaint dated June 10, 2016, a woman belonging to Kashyap caste was abducted, gang-raped and killed, yet no action has been taken by the police against the offenders. Two businessmen, Shankar and Raju, both brothers, were shot dead by the criminals in broad daylight in the market when they did not pay protection money to the criminals, the NHRC said in a statement.
Modi was the designer politician, who was tailor-made to effect the collective transition

In security parlance and in the narratives of war and international relations, the opposition between hawks and doves is one of the most recognisable contrasts.

The dichotomy is stark and the scenario is clear.

Hawks are those who are proponents of militarism, masculinity and war, who believe that a display of strength is the quickest form of security.

It reflects a certain culture of machismo, of technological virility, a certain celebration of a bully boy attitude as the test of a nations vitality.

Hawks do not mind shedding blood to gain control.

For the middle class, long condemned to being third world and third rate, to being kicked around, being hawk is the aspirational movement for India.

To be militarily strong and be recognised as being strong is a moment of the nations arrival.

Today we often see the scenario of security as the context for a patriotism.

Peace

Oddly, India as a nation, as a civilisational tradition, as a historical perspective viewed itself as a peace-loving country.

Peace as a word, as a way of life, as a value frame symbolised Indian politics.

As a non-aligned nation, we wanted to create a third order, a world based on Panchasheela, which was neither West nor Soviet, but sought an alternative world beyond the redundancy of cold war.

Nehru was one of the great opponents of apartheid and Gandhi symbolized a whole dream of non-violence, of Satyagraha encapsulated between Swadeshi and Swaraj.

We were proud of the non-violent nature of nationalism and saw it not as a sign of weakness, but as a part of the originality of our tradition.

The transition from a peace perspective to a security syndrome came across for several decades.

Firstly, the so-called Indian defeat at the hands of China dimmed Nehrus stature as an international leader.

Secondly the growth of insurgency and rebellion creation a perpetual sense of internal war among our elite.

Thirdly, Pakistans behaviour as a semi-rogue state cavorting with the US and Islamic terror irritated the elite which wanted it disciplined.

Despite Indias creative role in Bangladesh, there was a sense that we were not taken seriously by the world.

Peace, our middle class and elite felt was no longer a passport to international recognition.

There was a sense our current elite did not have what it takes to be seen as a world power.

Indias commitment as a UN peacekeeper, our enthusiasm for the UN as a way of life diminished as we realised that trade and defense were the immediate languages of the global world.

There was also a realisation that our claims to peace was part of a civilisational tradition was slowing us down as a nation.

As India became more jingoistic and security oriented, we discarded our sense of civilisation reducing it merely to a ritual of table manners, an aesthetic for a nation.

We also realised violence was not just a result of war, but a consequence of development.

Development as a project created more refugees, especially internally displaced in India than all the wars we had fought.

As an elite we began deciding that being a soft state was not worth it, nation demanded a more aggressive mind set.

The decline of Nehruvianism was not just the decline of Congress, it was our sense that a new kind of aggressive, aspirational nationalism was required to survive in the global world.

The plurality, the anarchy of our old style of nationalism gave way to the uniformity.

Transition

The transition from Nehru to Modi is actually not just the decline of Congress, but the transformation of Indian society from doves to hawks.

India made four transitions simultaneously, from BJP to Congress, from plurality to majoritarianism, from syncretism to Hindutva, from being doves to being hawks in the global world.

It was a transition of mind sets which still has not been worked out either in the politics of culture or the culture of politics which media tries to capture, but has failed miserably in doing so.

Modi was the designer politician, who was tailor-made to effect this collective transition.

The first symptoms of his regime highlighted it.

First, was the symbolic displacement of Nehru by a more Bismarckian statue of Sardar Patel.

This was not the Patel who had the modesty and humility to adjust to Gandhis wishes, but the Patel who used military might and Machiavellian threat to effect the integration of states.

Second was the integration of internal security into the nation-state imagination headed by think tanks of men like Ajit Doval, who saw sustainability as a seditious threat to security.

Environment

The crackdown on NGOs whose environmental concerns were seen as destabilising the borders and vitiating Indias commitment to being a strong state committed to the logic of development.

India began reading Pakistan more through Islamic eyes.

We matched it eye-for-eye and convinced it had to blink first.

Then Modi became the apostle of nuclear energy convinced almost like a new religious convent that nuclear inaugurated the advent of the second modernity.

There was a conceptual clearing of political vocabulary and meaning where terms like development, citizenship, patriotism, security acquired an official meaning and legitimation.

Citizenship, for instance was not a term of inclusiveness, but a disciplinary exercise demanding a new civics and new rituals of loyalty.

Modis attempts to offer the NRI as inspiration was an attempt to graft the American dream in India.

Nalanda plus Silicon Valley could be the new slogan of his developmental state.

His dealings on nuclear trade signaled that India was to be a well-behaved nation. India has decided that, as a species of thought doves do not have a chance for survival in the Darwinian world of security.

This is a tragedy that the future will have to unravel.
Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the CBI, admits it has not been a good week for the reputation of British business.

I have to say I get incredibly angry and upset watching the whole BHS debacle; I feel a mixture of anger and disappointment, she says.

The extraordinary claim and counterclaim from the former owners and directors of the collapsed department store group has been as lurid as could be imagined.

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Speaking out: CBI director general Carolyn Fairbairn has warned against Brexit

But Fairbairn is determined it should not tarnish the status of British business. I believe profoundly that business is a force for good and when you see examples like that, it is painful for all the people involved at BHS and for business as a whole because of the damage that it does.

But this is NOT typical of British business. It is an exception, she insists. Business gets things wrong sometimes and BHS is a very glaring example of that. But actually if you talk to people about the businesses they work for or the businesses in their local community I think they are listening to what businesses say.

And the question of whether the British public trust business in general has rarely been so important, as the CBI and many key business figures are leading the charge for the Remain campaign in the looming EU referendum.

Allegations have flown against both sides of the campaign of exaggeration or outright deception.

Fairbairn, however, is resolute that the core economic case for Remain is based on sound research.

We at the CBI have talked about the possibility of about one million fewer jobs by 2020 if we leave. I think that is an entirely reasonable projection, she declares.

But at the same time she concedes that some of the more specific estimates of the Brexit effect may be hard to justify.

Look, I am an economist myself and forecasting is an art. It is not a science. So the idea that you can point to within 1,000 what the effect is going to be on anybody is not right.

Upmarket: The Crillon Le Brave hotel in Provence owned by Carolyns husband Peter

'But if you say the concerns about what might happen if we leave have been exaggerated, then I have to say I genuinely do not believe they have been.

Fairbairn is clearly not frightened of tackling vexed issues head on, including even immigration. On this the Leave campaign is widely seen as leading the arguments.

But Fairbairn is willing to grasp the nettle and make what to many would be a controversial case  that immigration is good for the UK economy.

We are a nation that attracts people to work here. I come across businesses all the time which have grown and flourished because they have been able to attract skilled and unskilled talent from Europe and around the world.

But what about immigration driving down the wages of British workers? Fairbairn goes on: Economic study after economic study has shown that in fact the effect on wages is very small, if anything at all and the effect on economic growth is positive. And we know EU migrants to this country contribute 2.5 billion a year to tax.

Work move: Carolyn Fairbairn believes in letting workers go where the jobs are, like the cast of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet

But I would make another point that is often overlooked, that this is a reciprocal right  that we also have the right to work in any European country. I have got children in their 20s and they hugely value that.

In the 1980s there was the series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet about young British men going to work in Germany because that is where the jobs were. Today two million Britons are living in the European Union and many of them are working.

Poll Would Britain be better off in or out of the EU? In Out Would Britain be better off in or out of the EU? In 16244 votes

Out 60553 votes Now share your opinion





You can almost hear the Brexit campaigners fizzing, and Fairbairn concedes there are other aspects to the immigration issue.

At the same time, I recognise this is a difficult social issue and there are parts of the country where services are under strain. But I question whether the right solution is to pull up the drawbridge or whether in fact the right solution is more investment in the right places.

A year into the job at the helm of the CBI, Fairbairn is clearly finding her time dominated by the looming referendum.

It will be, she agrees, one of the major business issues of her career, which is saying something for a woman whose working life has included a stint as an adviser in No 10 under John Major; an executive at the BBC, later at ITV; and non-executive roles at the Financial Services Authority; Lloyds Banking Group; and the Competition and Markets Authority.

Her proudest achievements, however, were at No 10, where she helped shape reform of adoption policy, and later at the BBCs commercial arm, BBC Worldwide.

Looming: A year into the job at the helm of the CBI, Fairbairn is clearly finding her time dominated by the looming referendum

One thing I am proud of was being part of the digital transformation of the BBC and the launch of Freeview, which was something that I led. That enabled public service broadcasting through digital, she declares.

It is often argued that the Remain camp is driven by big corporations and that among smaller companies the Brexit crowd is stronger. But even this Fairbairn disputes.

I know there has been some discussion about whether it differs if businesses are small or large but it is not what I hear. The first thing to say is that 400,000 small and medium-sized companies are exporters and 1.2 million are part of a supply chain that are close to exporters.

Fairbairn herself comes with quite an international flavour. Educated at Cambridge and the University of Pennsylvania, she then studied at the world-renowned business school INSEAD based in France.

There she met her Canadian husband Peter Chittick  who is now a millionaire property developer. One of his main assets is the very upmarket Crillon Le Brave hotel in the heart of Provence.

Fairbairn has no hand in the management of the hotel  but I do stay there, she says. But to many, and Brexiteers in particular, the educated and affluent 55-year-old Fairbairn, with a family hotel in France, may seem like the very epitome of a metropolitan Europhile elite.

This suggestion clearly rankles. That is absolutely not true, she says firmly and defensively. If you look at what I have done, that is just not true. I spent the first few years of my career working as a jobbing business consultant all around the country.

My very first project was for a brewer in Devon, an old-fashioned but remarkable brewer, who was looking to merge with another local brewer. I moved down there, I got to know the brewing business. I got my sleeves rolled up.

Perhaps that will convince sceptics that the leaders of businesses really do have an ear for the concerns of the wider world.

Fairbairn must hope so, for as she herself admits, the referendum result will come down to the question of who the public trusts.

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When Ruth Amos was a 16-year-old student, she never imagined where her GCSE design and technology coursework might lead.

A decade later, the 26-year old has multiple awards and a TEDx Talk under her belt, not to mention a life-changing product in the form of StairSteady - a device that helps the elderly and less physically able access their home more easily.

The design came from a challenge given to Ruth by her D&T teacher at school. His father had just had a stroke and the teacher challenged her to make a device to help him move up and down stairs as part of her GCSE coursework.

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Multi-talented: Ruth Amos has set up three businesses, starting the first when she was just 16

Ruth eventually came up with a specialised handrail with a supporting rail coming off it. This slides when pushed, but locks when weight is applied, meaning that it acts as a support aid when going up or down stairs.

What would become StairSteady won Sheffield-based Ruth the Young Engineer for Britain award in 2006, and a business was born in 2008. Today, the firm is going strong and has sold thousands of products across two continents.

Already a hit in the UK, sales of the handrail are starting to gain momentum overseas in Canada, parts of the US and Europe, and today her portfolio of businesses are valued at more than 3million. Here she shares her secrets to building a business.

Did you ever think you would start a business?

'From the age of 12 I wanted to be a barrister. I had my university course picked out, I knew what I wanted to do. Then I was Young Engineer for Britain and people wanted to buy my product. I thought I would give it three years. So I fell into starting my first business, but I found I loved it.

'I started with a phone, laptop and 1,200, running the business from my parents' dining room.

'I never saw myself running a business as a child, but I was always intrigued about how people made money from their businesses, I would look at the local corner shop and think "how do they make money from selling crisps?"'

Simple but safe: StairSteady slides when pushed, but locks when weight is applied

Have you had any help?

'I never thought I could get anything manufactured. Reg - who I mention in my TEDx Talk - was my first business partner. He changed my perception on manufacturing and getting products made.

'I love a factory and there is nothing more exciting than watching something you have designed being made.'

In 2013 Ruth raised finance by splitting StairSteady's intellectual property from distribution, which allowed to to raise funding and also allowed her to take on a new board from the mobility industry. Her main investor is one or her distributors.

And one person Ruth credits with getting her up to speed in business is Mike Lord, the chief executive of Lightwave RF, which makes home control products.

She says: 'I am not sure we got off to a great start - we argued about the pros and cons of manufacturing in China - but I definitely made an impression.'

She says Mike has become a good friend and business partner in her latest business, a toy company.

She adds: 'It can often feel lonely starting up a business and I have found that surrounding yourself with people who understand, challenge, share your values and have a range of experiences is invaluable.'

And in September last year, Ruth shared those experiences with the world by giving a TEDx Talk, which has been viewed by 2,000 people.

Branching out

Most people would be content with setting up one successful business. But Ruth has many other irons in the fire.

She set up The Drols, a company creating interactive educational toys, which is currently waiting on a round of investment. Ruth has also became managing director of a new start-up called Signature, which builds websites for small businesses and was soft-launched earlier this year.

She says: 'A website is often the first point of customer contact for a business, musician or blogger.

'You can run a business from your bedroom with the right website and this is what we wanted to offer to people.

'Bespoke websites cost thousands and often SMEs or those starting off don't have that, or don't need that. We tested our idea locally and by word of mouth and were excited by the response and reaction.'

Recognition: Ruth collecting her British Healthcare Association's 'Best Product' award (l) from former BBC Breakfast presenter Bill Turnball and (r) with her Young Engineer for Britain award in 2006

Ruth is also a trustee for the art, faith and justice festival Greenbelt and for educational charity Young Engineers, which gave her their top award back in 2006.

If that wasn't enough to keep her busy, in September she will curate the theme of the future of work at FutureFest, a two-day event hosted by innovation charity Nesta, which will explore the themes of Love, Work, Thrive and Play.

But Ruth says it's the freedom to create projects in different areas that really motivates her.

'My greatest success is that I am still here, able to work on projects I choose and sell a product like StairSteady that genuinely changes peoples lives.

'I get to start new ventures such as Signature and The Drols and be an ambassador for business and engineering.

'I really want to inspire others - particularly women - to see that they can build their own careers, they can make, create, design, build and sell and that they can be a success by not following a conventional route.'
The mobile beauty company Blow, which has just raised 1million to expand its service offering beauty treatments such as blow-dries and facials in the home, hotel room or office, is launching outside London for the first time this summer.

The company, which is still crowdfunding through Seedrs, raised 500,000 of the funding from Unilever Ventures and 250,000 from Nick Robertson, founder of online fashion retailer Asos.

Blow was founded in 2013 by entrepreneur Dharmash Mistry and Fiona McIntosh, former editor-in-chief of Grazia and Elle.

On the go: Mobile beauty firm Blow is launching outside of London for the first time this summer

Mistry said: It is like an Uber for beauty. You order the service and then professionals come to you. We have built out and served London Underground zones 1, 2 and 3 and the money is to do the next stage of rollout.

Were going to launch in the Home Counties this summer parts of Essex and Surrey  to test our technology and marketing and then in a new city before Christmas.

We will enter a bigger round of capital raising early next year. We will then launch in multiple cities. The idea is you take it in steps.

The on-demand service launched in September and costs roughly 1 a minute, but the business has been running since November 2013.

Mistry said: We launched with two physical outlets because we believe the future of stores is about experience and data collection.

Build stores in high footfall areas and think of them as marketing, but most importantly as operating hubs. We use the stores in off-peak hours to test freelancers.

There are three segments of customer  the polished professional who is served at 7am before she goes to work or an event; a younger group of professionals on a girls night out, typically served in the evening; and yummy mummy freelancers in the suburbs.
Two American fugitives who fled to Cuba after they were accused of killing police officers said that Cuban officials have assured them that detente with the United States will not lead to their extradition.

The United States and Cuba held a second round of law-enforcement talks last month dedicated partly to resolving the fate of scores of fugitives after more than a half century with almost no cooperation.

The talks are part of a series of U.S.-Cuba negotiations aimed at normalizing relations after the two countries declared an official end to Cold War hostilities on Dec. 17, 2014.

The discussions have raised U.S. law enforcement hopes that fugitives living in Cuba for decades will return to the United States to face trial or serve prison under plea deals.

A wanted man: U.S. fugitive Charles Hill is sought in the 1971 killing of a New Mexico state policeman

Looking back: Hill faces a murder charge for his role in the 1971 killing of police officer Robert Rosenbloom

Hill who is wanted in connection with the murder of the police officer has long been protected by the Castro regime

Assata Shakurs is a notorious fugitive convicted of the murder of a New Jersey state trooper

Charles Hill, a black militant wanted in the 1971 slaying of a New Mexico state policeman, told The Associated Press that Cuban government contacts had recently reassured him he was at no risk of extradition.

Nehanda Abiodun, another black militant wanted in a 1981 armored car robbery that left two police offers and a security guard dead, told the AP she had recently received a similar promise.

Cuba is home to dozens of people wanted in the United States on charges ranging from Medicare fraud to killings committed in the name of black and Puerto Rican revolution movements in the 1970s and '80s.

Cuba has asked the United States to return a smaller number of people, including Luis Posada Carriles, the alleged mastermind of a series of terror attacks against Cuba, including the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed all 73 people on board.

Cuba's head of U.S. affairs told the AP shortly after the declaration of detente that Cuba was entitled to grant asylum to U.S. fugitives, a sign that people the country once saw as fellow revolutionary fighters will remain safe.

The most prominent is Assata Shakur, who is on the FBI's list of most-wanted terrorists. She broke out of a prison where she was serving a conviction for murdering a New Jersey state trooper. She was regularly spotted in Havana after fleeing to Cuba but has not been seen here in public in recent years.

Hill also hijacked a plane. The accused murderer and admitted hijacker, has lived for 45 years as a fugitive of American justice

U.S. fugitive Charles Hill, left, walks with his lawyer Jason Flores Williams after an interview in Havana, Cuba

Safe for now? Hill has been told that by his Cuban contacts that he is at no risk of being extradition to face trial in the U.S.

Nehanda Abiodun fled to Cuba in the mid-1980s after she was accused of helping Shakur escape prison and then rob $1.6 million from a bank truck

Hill said he had contacted his Cuban government handlers about three weeks ago after seeing reports that progress was being made in negotiations that could lead to his extradition.

'My people assured me that no, that's not going to take place,' Hill said. 'I said what's the status and they said there's no problem.

'The future is very difficult,' he said. 'I don't know, but I think the Cuban government is going to maintain their position. I feel very tranquil.'

Abiodun said Cuban agents recently told her she's still safe on the island.

'I feel good,' she said. 'I have been assured that my safety is secure.

'I am very, very thankful for their generosity, not only for me but for other comrades that have unfortunately had to leave the United States because of political oppression.'

New Mexico State Police Chief Pete Kassetas said the thaw of U.S. relations with Cuba has increased his hope that Cuba will facilitate the transfer home of Americans accused of violent crimes, including Hill.

He called fleeing the country a cowardly act on Hill's part and said that 'if any country can afford him a fair trial, it is the United States.'

Shakur has a $1 million bounty on her head in the killing of a New Jersey state trooper in 1973. She once listed her number in the Havana phone book, but now lives out of view and under the protection of Cuban authorities

Nehanda Isoke Abiodun is among those linked by U.S. authorities to Assata Shakur's 1979 escape from prison. She is also wanted for a string of robberies, including the robbing of a Brink's truck in New York in 1983

Kassetas said he would expect Hill to face federal charges in connection with a 1971 hijacking of a plane that brought him to Cuba, along with murder charges at the state level. Hill denies killing State Police Officer Robert Rosenbloom during a traffic stop.

U.S. Sen. Tom Udall said Thursday that he wants to 'leverage the re-opening of relations with Cuba to finally bring Charlie Hill to justice.'

The Democratic senator for New Mexico traveled to Cuba in March with President Barack Obama and said he met with Cuban officials to discuss the possibility of returning Hill to the United States. He said the case was brought up during two past dialogues on law enforcement issues.

'I have heard reports that Charlie Hill wants to return to the United States,' Udall said in an email. 'And I would encourage him and his attorney to work with law enforcement and the United States government to facilitate the transfer.'

Hill's lawyer, Jason Flores-Williams, said Hill was confident about his client's ability to stay in Cuba but the new era of U.S.-Cuba normalization had created some uncertainty.

'With the normalization of relations we have concerns that the U.S. may be, as they have in the past in Latin America, using monetary leverage to try to get in so that they can appease the law-and-order forces in America currently via the extradition of Mr. Hill,' he said.
Khloe Kardashian begged OJ Simpson to take a paternity test because she feared he might be her real father, one of his prison guards has revealed.

Jeffrey Felix told a documentary about Robert Kardashian that he had overheard a conversation between Khloe and Simpson at Lovelock prison in Nevada, where Simpson is serving a 33-year term for robbery.

Khloe, 31, was the third of the four children born to Kris Jenner during her marriage to Kardashian, an attorney who became famous through his friendship with Simpson.

She has been the focus of rumors over her real paternity  and spoke earlier this year of her anger that her stepmother had questioned whether Kardashian was her father.

Now Felix reignites the claims, in the documentary Kardashian: The Man Who Saved OJ Simpson, which airs Monday night on Reelz.

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Questions: Khloe Kardashian spoke to OJ Simpson on a prison pay phone and asked him to take a paternity test because of claims that he might be her biological father

Refusal: Jeffrey Felix says that OJ, pictured left in 2013 in a prison mugshot, and right in his most recent prison picture, said he would not consent to a paternity test

Friends: Kris Jenner was photographed with OJ Simpson after her divorce from Rob Kardashian and his split from Nicole Brown, when his girlfriend Paula Barbieri and Bruce Jenner joined them

'Khloe is his favorite,' he said.

'The mom Kardashian does not talk to OJ. She's upset with OJ for her thinking that he killed her best friend, Nicole Brown.

'But I know he still talks to Khloe behind her back.

'In the prison, the phone calls have to be made out by OJ, so he would call at least once a week. That was his way of keeping up with the Kardashians..

It was one of those conversations which involved her paternity. She was very upset and OJ was trying to calm her down.

'One day I could hear Khloe screaming in the phone,' Felix told the documentary.

'He said she was upset because she wanted him to take a paternity test, because the media is all over him, to see if OJ is her actual dad - and OJ told her "no".

'A few minutes after that phone call he pulled me up and asked me what I would do, and I told the Juice to take it, and he said "no".

'And I said, "Why won't you take it?". He said: "It's a family matter, it's none of the public's business."'

So happy together: Khloe Kardashian posted this picture of her with her father as a child to mark what would have been his birthday in February this year

Meet the Klan: Kris Jenner and Robert Kardashian when they were married with, from left, Rob in his father's arms, Kim and Kourtney at the front and Khloe, top right

Questions about her paternity first began to swirl in 2009, when she discussed in the course of an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians whether she may have been adopted.

In 2011, Kris Jenner admitted in her memoir that she had been unfaithful during her marriage to Robert, but did not say she had had an affair with Simpson.

Then in 2012, his third - and final - wife Ellen Pierson surfaced to make fresh claims.

Pierson, who married Robert six weeks before his death from cancer in 2003, claimed that her deceased husband had admitted to her that Khloe was another man's child.

She was backed up by his second wife, Jan Ashley.

Ahsley - who married Robert following his divorce from Kris - told Star magazine: 'Khloe is not his kid  he told me that after we got married.

'He just kind of looked at me and said [it] like it was a matter of fact. He said, "Well, you know that Khloe's not really a Kardashian, don't you?"'

Kris Jenner reacted angrily. Jenner appeared on Good Morning America and said: 'It just gets weirder and weirder: I have never heard such c**p in my life.

'I mean, I was there! I gave birth, I know who the dad was'

She went on: 'Everythings good. Were all good - dont worry about it,' before adding that Khloe's lighter hair in comparison to her sisters has been a long-running 'family joke' regarding her paternity.

Legal documents also surfaced in which Robert Kardashian described Khloe as his 'biological daughter'.

He filed the declaration when he was trying to get his marriage annulled to Jan Ashley saying he didn't want to have any children with her.

In the declaration, Robert says, 'I decided that since I already had four biological children, I did not wish to have any more.'

Division: Kris Jenner and Robert Kardashian found themselves on the opposite side of the trial of OJ Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, with Robert a part of his 'Dream Team' defense

Then this year Khloe addressed the topic again.

'I think the thing that most became overwhelming was when, like, the stuff happened with one of my dad's wives,' Khloe said in a clip from her talk show.

'She wanted to come out, like, 10 years later after my dad passed away and said that I'm not his daughter and that he confided in her and blah-say-blah.'

'I was like, "Listen, you can talk about me and my sisters all you f***ing want," she said, '"Do not talk about my dad  He's not here!"'

Meanwhile, Khloe paid tribute in February to her father on what would have been his 72nd birthday.

The reality star shared a snap of her as a child with her father to Instagram with the caption: 'To the best man I've ever known, happy birthday daddy.'

'I miss you! I miss you! I miss you! Man... I wish we had more pictures together.'

Robert Kardashian and Kris Jenner's marriage ended over her affair with Bruce Jenner, the Olympic gold-medal winner who is now Caitlyn Jenner.

He and OJ Simpson had been close friends since the early 1970s, while Kris had been a close friend of Nicole Brown, Simpson's wife, since before her marriage.

By the time Nicole was murdered, the Kardashians' marriage was long over. But the OJ Simpson trial divided him and his ex-wife, with the two on opposing sides.

Kardashian: The Man Who Saved OJ Simpson airs Monday on Reelz network at 9pm Eastern and Pacfic, 8pm Central time.
A married father-of-three fell to his death in upstate New York on Friday in a hot air balloon accident.

State police say 34-year-old Ryan Almeter was holding onto the basket allowing passengers to get off when wind caused the balloon to take flight Friday night.

The balloon climbed to about 100 feet when Almeter let go of the basket and fell to his death. He was pronounced dead the scene.

The balloon was part of a festival called Balloons Over Letchworth in Livingston County. That's about 50 miles south of Rochester

Heartbreaking: Ryan Almeter, a married father-of-three, fell to his death in upstate New York on Friday in a hot air balloon accident. Above he is pictured with his wife

Police say he was holding onto the basket allowing passengers to get off when wind caused the balloon to take flight. Above he is pictured with his wife

The balloon (pictured above) climbed to about 100 feet when Almeter let go of the basket and fell to his death

Courtesy of 13WHAM

A telephone recording for festival organizers said weather conditions Saturday and Sunday would not allow the festival to continue.

The message said no further information would be available until Monday.

State police say the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have been contacted about the accident.

Almeter taught 9th grade math at Keshequa Central High School for over eight years, as the balloon handler job was only a part-time position, according toWHAM.

The Keshequa Central School District says it will have grief counselors available to students and staff members Monday morning, according to Time Warner Cable News.

'To hear that news was stunning,' Thomas Kopp, Superintendent of Keshequa Central Schools told WHAM.

'I spoke to Mr. Almeter at 3.00pm as he was leaving at the end of the day. He was full of life. There is a hole that will not quickly be filled.'

The balloon (pictured above) was part of a festival called Balloons Over Letchworth in Livingston County. That's about 50 miles south of Rochester

Almeter taught 9th grade math at Keshequa Central High School for over eight years, as the balloon handler job was only a part-time position. Above he is pictured with his wife

His friend and fellow coworker at the school, Pete Goho, said he saw Almeter every single day.

'We worked together almost every single day. We would have lunch everyday together. We shared some great stories good and bad,' Goho told WHAM.

A GofundMe page established by his family is seeking to raise $5,000 for his funeral costs.

'Ryan Almeter was a loving Son, Brother, Husband, Father and Great friend to many,' the page reads.

'Doing what he loved, working on a balloon crew Ryan lost his life leaving behind his loving family, wife Sarah and three beautiful children Noah, Maggie and Sophia.

'Anyone who knew Ryan knew that he was a selfless man who would do anything to help those around him.

'When the Lord called him home it left a heartbreaking hole in the hearts of everyone he has touched.'

Since being started on Saturday, more than $2,300 has been raised for the family on GofundMe.

State police are still investigating the incident.
A journalist has tested the safety of a 430-metre-long glass bridge by slamming it with a sledgehammer.

The makers of the world's longest and highest glass-bottomed bridge in Central China's Zhangziazie Grand Canyon invited BBC's Dan Simmons to try to smash his way through the panels - some 300 metres above the ground.

The stunt was intended to promote the safety of the skywalk, after another glass bridge in China was reportedly shattered when a tourist dropped a mug in September, causing panicked crowds to flee in terror.

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A journalist has tested the safety of a 430m glass bridge by slamming it with a sledgehammer

The makers of the world's longest and highest glass-bottomed bridge (pictured) in Central China's Zhangziazie Grand Canyon invited BBC's Dan Simmons to try to smash his way through the panels

The journalist was seen repeatedly swinging a sledgehammer down into the bridge in an attempt to break through the glass

Despite smashing the top layer of glass with a number of blows from the sledgehammer, the two reinforced layers of glass below the surface remain intact

Despite smashing the top layer of glass with a number of blows from the sledgehammer, the two reinforced layers of glass below the surface remain intact.

'This is how they're going to assuage people's fears of glass bridges,' Mr Simmons can be heard saying.

The president of the company behind the bridge vowed it could withstand 25 people jumping on one panel all at once, and support a total of 800 people at a time.

The nail-biting structure, which is between two cliffs in the national park of Zhangjiajie, is set to open to bold tourists in July.

The platform, which cost 26 million Yuan (AUD$5 million) to build, offers panoramic views of the Hunan province.

Israeli architect Haim Dotan designed the structure, which is planned stage hold fashions shows and the world's highest bungee jump.

'This is how they're going to assuage people's fears of glass bridges,' Mr Simmons can be heard saying

The BBC journalist winds up a swing down on the glass panels of the bridge with a sledgehammer

The stunt was intended to promote the safety of the skywalk, after another glass bridge in China shattered when a tourist dropped a mug in September, causing panicked crowds to flee in terror

The nail-biting structure, which is between two cliffs in the national park of Zhangjiajie, is set to open to bold tourists in July
CIA chief John Brennan said he expects 28 classified pages of a U.S. congressional report into the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States to be published, absolving Saudi Arabia of any responsibility.

'I think the 28 pages will be published and I support their publication and everyone will see the evidence that the Saudi government had nothing to do with it,' Brennan said in an interview with Saudi-owned Arabiya TV. His comments were dubbed into Arabic.

The withheld section of the 2002 report is central to a dispute over whether Americans should be able to sue the Saudi government, a key U.S. ally, for damages.

John Brennan backs release of classified pages, says everyone will see evidence that Saudi government had nothing to do with it

Former Senator Bob Graham, pictured, who co-wrote a report on the 9/11 attacks has called on President Barack Obama to publish the final 28 pages of the 828-page dossier relating to the financing of the atrocity

The classified 28 pages are believed to outline how the 9/11 terrorists were financed by Saudi Arabia

The 28 pages of the report were redacted, pictured, by George W Bush when the report was published in 2002

The U.S. Senate passed a bill on May 17 allowing the families of September 11 victims to do so, setting up a potential showdown with the White House, which has threatened a veto.

Saudi Arabia denies providing any support for the 19 hijackers - most of whom were Saudi citizens - who killed nearly 3,000 people in the Sept. 11 attacks. Riyadh strongly objects to the bill.

It has said it might sell up to $750 billion in U.S. securities and other American assets if it became law.

Brennan called the 28-page section merely a 'preliminary review.'

'It was found later, according to the results of the report, that there was no link between the Saudi government as a state or as an institution or even senior Saudi officials to the September 11 attacks,' he added.

Mohamed Atta, left, led the 9/11 attacks which were blamed on al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, right

Republican and Democratic senators have launched a bid to force President Obama to publish the report

The Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence is reviewing the material to see whether it can be declassified.

Former U.S. Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired the congressional inquiry into the attacks, said in April that the White House will likely make a decision sometime in June on whether it would release the classified pages.

Senator Graham told ABC News: 'The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11 and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier.

'The position of the United States government has been to protect Saudi Arabia.

'At virtually every step of the judicial process, when the United States government was called upon to take a position, it has been a position adverse to the interests of United States citizens seeking justice and protective of the government which, in my judgement, was the most responsible for that network of support.'

The former Democratic senator has joined with Republican Walter Jones and Democrat Stephen Lynch as part of his campaign along with families of the victims.

Senators Jones and Lynch have introduced legislation to force President Obama to publish the 28 pages.
An engaged couple were killed when an elderly driver crashed through a barrier and into the crowd at a festival.

The Rockabilly Highway Revival Festival was in full swing in Selmer, Tennessee on Saturday afternoon when the 91-year-old man went straight through the barricade with his 1987 Ford Crown Victoria into the closed off street, hitting Sherri R. Duncan, 51, of Henderson, and Michael L. Johnson, 62, of Selmer.

Witnesses said the car drove for four blocks before coming to a stop.

A 1987 Crowne Ford Victoria rammed through a barricade and mowed down a couple at the Rockabilly Highway Revival Festival in Selmer

A couple died at the scene after being hit by the out-of-control car, driven by an elderly man

The driver of the car, Aaron D. Stamey, 91, and his wife, Lois M. Stamey, were taken by ambulance to Magnolia Hospital in Corinth, Mississippi, according to The Jackson Sun.

A witness says the doomed pair had their backs to the car and didn't see it coming.

Bo Jack Killingsworth, who knew the couple, said he was on his way to get water in his car when he saw the car slam through the barricade. He and his friend Bill Burney said that the car rammed a baby stroller with a doll in it, a 1960 Chevrolet, an ATV and a pickup truck before stopping in front of the railroad tracks.

'It was such a shock to see something come through the middle of town,' Killingsworth told the outlet. 'If he hadnt hit that pickup truck I dont know where he would have stopped.'

Mourners packed the First Baptist Church in Selmer to pay tribute to the engaged couple, who died while out enjoying the festival in Selmer

He also said the tragedy could have affected many more people, that minutes earlier the street was crammed with festival goers, but many had left to go get lunch.

Killingworth's account that they never saw the car coming seems to be contradicted by another eyewitness account, who said she saw the female victim trying to out run the car.

'The lady was trying to outrun them... And she got caught up under the bumper and the gentleman got thrown up into the air," Tony Chapman told CBS affiliate WBBJ.

The couple were popular within the small-knit community and 100 mourners packed the First Baptist Church.

Friend Aubrey King said the pair were two of the first people to help him with his cancer battle. 'They was there from early helping out, doing whatever they could to help raise money so I could be off of work and take care of me, you know, Ive lost two real good friends,' he said.

Johnson ran a hot rod shop in Corinth.
Second-home owners in one of Britain's most fashionable holiday regions are being asked to pay thousands of pounds a year in a 'guilt tax' to appease disgruntled locals priced out of the property market.

The payments  part of a charitable scheme in Cornwall to fund affordable housing  are the equivalent of a week's rent in peak season.

But critics of the scheme claim the initiative, which has raised 38,000 since its launch last month, is the latest offensive in the war against second properties.

They say second-home owners already bring millions to local economies through supporting businesses and paying council tax.

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Presenter Alex Polizzi owns a 775,000 cottage in the exclusive Cornish town of St Mawes (pictured)

Among those to have contributed to the Cornwall Community Fund is Alex Polizzi, presenter of Channel 5 show The Hotel Inspector. She owns a 775,000 cottage in the exclusive Cornish resort of St Mawes.

Ms Polizzi, granddaughter of former Savoy owner Lord Forte, said: 'I want to ensure I do my bit to support serious local causes. In these straitened financial times, with councils ever more stretched, we cannot expect local government to cover all the bases.'

But Padstow estate agent Peter Olivey, who owns seven holiday apartments in Cornwall, said: 'Holiday homes are part and parcel of the county and the Cornish economy is stronger for it.

'I have reservations about how successful this scheme will be and how many people will contribute. It's not a bottomless pit  owners are already paying higher stamp duty. You could call it a 'guilt tax'.

'People shouldn't be made to feel guilty for having a second home, but I think as a nation we are quite happy to knock someone who has been a bit more successful.'

However, other homeowners have been more supportive of the scheme. Gordon Ramsay and Conservative MP George Hollingbery, who both have holiday homes in the area, have indicated they will consider contributing to the fund in the future.

Mr Hollingbery, who has a hideaway in North Cornwall where David Cameron and his family have stayed in the past, said: 'I've participated in such schemes before, and if it seems to be a sensible idea I may well participate.'

Alex Polizzi (pictured), presenter of Channel 5 show The Hotel Inspector, has contributed to the Cornwall Community Fund

A spokesman for celebrity chef Mr Ramsay, who bought a 4.4 million cottage in the village of Rock last year, said: 'The Ramsay family are committed to contributing to, and delighted to be investing in, the future of the Cornish community they will hopefully be a part of for many happy years.'

The 'guilt tax' move was welcomed by Linda Taylor, mayor of St Ives, which this month banned second-home owners from buying newly built properties in the town. She said: 'Some people have more than enough money to buy a second home in Cornwall and it doesn't make a dent in their finances. So if they feel a social conscience and want to contribute, that's wonderful.'

Oliver Baines, of the Cornwall Community Foundation, which launched the scheme, revealed that a total of 38,000 had so far been donated by 12 homeowners, at an average of more than 3,100 each.
A teenager was bitten by a shark on Saturday afternoon at Atlantic Beach in North Carolina.

The 18-year-old unidentified male was on vacation and swimming just west of the Atlantic Beach circle when he was bitten on the hand, reports WITN.

He suffered deep bite wounds to his hands and wrists, said Atlantic Beach Police Chief Jeff Harvey. The shark was reported to be a three-foot shark and in three-foot deep water.

Beach goers (seen above) were shocked when a teen came out of the water, bloody, saying he'd just been bit by a shark on Atlantic Beach

'He was swimming in the ocean and as soon as he was trying to get out there was kind of blood everywhere and he said he got bit by a shark and everyone asked how do you know and he said I saw it,' witness Melissa McCasskill told WCTI. 'He kind of collapsed cause he was losing blood and as far as I know you could kind of see the scrape.'

Another witness said the shark 'wasn't that big.'

The victim was transported to Carteret General Hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Atlantic Beach Fire Chief Adam Snyder said the victim will likely need stitches, reports the outlet.

The beach remained open.
The man and woman allegedly scratched and punched the two teenagers

Two teenagers aged 18 and 19 ran out to help the man, say NSW police

A 20-year-old woman and 21-year-old man have been charged with assault after allegedly attacking a taxi driver before kicking and scratching two teenagers who came to help him.

They were arrested on Saturday after the alleged incident outside a 7 Eleven in Woolooware, south Sydney.

Police allege they attacked the 46-year-old St George Cabs in his car before dragging the assault on to the street.

Two teenage boys aged 18 and 19 who saw the incident unfold ran to help the man but were then also attacked, it was claimed.

A 20-year-old woman and 21-year-old man were charged with assault after allegedly attacking a taxi driver and two teenagers who came to his aid outside 7 Eleven in Woolooware, south Sydney (above) on Saturday

One was allegedly kicked in the head while the other was punched and scratched. They were later arrested in another taxi in the nearby suburb of Sylvania.

The unnamed woman has been charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm and three counts of assault. She will appear before Sutherland Local Court in July.

The man, who has been named as Jay Belgrove, was charged with grievous bodily harm with intent, assault occasioning actual bodily harm in company, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, assault and destroying property.

He was denied bail and was due to appear via video link at Parramatta Court on Sunday.

The taxi driver who was taken to St George's Hospital after the attack suffered serious injuries to the head.

Both he and the two young men were treated by paramedics at the scene, a police spokesman said.

The woman was bailed to appear at court later this month while the man, Jay Belgrove, appeared at Parramatta Court (above) via videolink

Recalling details of the incident, a NSW force spokesman said: 'Two youths, aged 18 and 19, who were in the store came to the taxi drivers aid and were also assaulted.

'Police will allege one of male teenagers was kicked in the head while the other was scratched and punched by the couple.

'All were treated at the scene by NSW Ambulance Paramedics before the driver was taken to St George Hospital with serious head injuries.
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Here are the unseen photographs of the Vietnam War, taken by American soldiers during their tours of duty.

Unlike the iconic images taken by photojournalists that have come to characterize the war, photo editor Kendra Rennick was interested in 'snap shots and candid moments' from the soldiers themselves.

The project was initially inspired by Rennick's close friend, whose father died and left behind a box of slides he had taken during the war.

The veteran returned home with post traumatic stress disorder, but never spoke of his time in Vietnam, leaving behind unanswered questions and untold stories marked only by the box of images.

Through The Vietnam Slide Project, Rennick hopes to shine a light on the unseen history while honoring each participating veteran as a person and collaborator.

'There are so many memories that have never been told because of the way media and even the government viewed this conflict,' she told FeatureShoot.com.

'I am most interested in photo slides for their aesthetic, as well as slides original intention.

'The idea that slides are shot with the hopes of being shown to a group of people and projected on a wall interests me. Most people have no way of viewing their slides so they usually sit in a box untouched or viewed.'

Rennick is soliciting more slides as she hopes to grow the ongoing archival project.

Photo editor Kendra Rennick began soliciting Vietnam War veterans for images they took during their tour of duty as a way to show an untold side of history

The project was initially inspired by Rennick's close friend, whose father died and left behind a box of slides he had taken during the war

The veteran returned home with post traumatic stress disorder, but never spoke of his time in Vietnam, leaving behind unanswered questions and untold stories marked only by the box of slides

'There are so many memories that have never been told because of the way media and even the government viewed this conflict,' she said

The project also explores the tension between the slides' original intention to be projected on a wall for group viewing, and the reality that they are often left hidden and stored away

Rennick views the soldiers sympathetically, and said, 'They were simply young men in a foreign country,' before adding that many of them appeared to be in a foreign country for the first time in their lives

Willing participants and family members of veterans have sent Rennick slides, which she goes through and edits to form her collection

Rennick has dedicated the ongoing project to David Willard Russell and 'those we lost before we were able to hear their stories'

While iconic images taken by photojournalists have formed a lasting portrayal of the war, Rennick is most interested in snap shots and candid moments captured by the soldiers themselves

By 1969, more than half a million members of the US military were involved in the Vietnam War, which spanned more than two decades

The US, which was an ally to South Vietnam in the struggle against North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, was intent on containing the spread of Communism

G Huested, one of four major contributors to the slides project, was an artillery forward observer, serving in Vietnam from October 1969 to October 1970

D. Thornton served in the First Air Cavalry division of the army and spent a few months working with the US Stars and Stripes in Saigon

Rennick is soliciting images from more living veterans willing to share their slides in the growing archival project

J. Townsend served in the 35th Infantry Regiment of the US Army from 1968 to 1969
A mixed martial arts fighter has been found dead in a Dallas apartment, reportedly of a self-inflicted gunshot while playing Russian roulette.

MMA fighter Ivan 'JP' Cole, 25, whose real name was Ivan Robert-Earnest Cole, was found dead at an apartment in the 13700 block of Montfort Drive early Saturday morning. Police responded to a call of gunshots heard at 7:31am, according to the Dallas Bugle.

MMA fighter Ivan 'JP' Cole was found dead early Saturday morning at a Dallas apartment - the circumstances surrounding his death are unclear, but at least one report says he was playing Russian roulette

Cole wasn't well known in the MMA world and had lost three of his last five fights, however he was very dedicated to the sport

'He made a bad decision that cost him his life': Ivan 'JP' Cole and his wife Kymberli in a Facebook photo

Journalist JP Miles of CBS News 11 tweeted that Cole's dead was 'attributed' to a game of Russian roulette. In Russian roulette, one bullet is put into the chamber of the gun, and players put it up to their heads in an attempt to get an empty chamber.

Police, however, have not released the cause of death, pending an autopsy report and investigation. The Daily Mail could not verify CBS News 11's contention that the death was due to Russian roulette.

However, his wife, Kymberli Cole, who works at Wet Seal, does give a clue on her GoFundMe page that Cole may have had something to do with his own death, writing, 'Today I lost my husband to gun play. He made a bad decision that cost him his life. If you could donate anything I would really appreciate it. He leaves behind a wife and a four-year-old daughter. I have to pay for funeral expenses, bills, and be able to take care of myself and our daughter.'

She added on Facebook: 'I'm so numb I lost my husband my best friend & soulmate.'

His friend Ryan Benoit, who worked out with him and is also a fighter, told the Daily Mail: 'JP was my brother and a very great friend. It's a tragic loss that will be painful for a lot of people. It's hard seeing a dear friends life get cut so short and so sudden.'

Cole wasn't well-known in the martial arts world and had only won two of his last five fights, reports Dallas News.

The outlet also reported that records show that Cole had to pay $5,000 and suspended his license for a year due to 'unsportsmanlike conduct.' It is unclear what that conduct entailed.
A mother has spoken of her outrage after a real estate agent suggested she should not have taken her autistic daughter to an open house inspection.

Korinna Edwards' six-year-old daughter Indigo, who has severe autism, became distressed during a house viewing run by Chris Couper Real Estate in Hervey Bay, Queensland.

'My partner overheard the real estate agent talking to another person and saying "fancy bringing a child like this into a place like this,"' Ms Edwards told Seven News.

Korinna Edwards' six-year-old daughter Indigo, (pictured with her father Douglas) who has severe autism, became distressed during a house viewing run by Chris Couper Real Estate in Hervey Bay

Ms Edwards, pictured, told Seven News: 'My partner overheard the real estate agent talking to another person and saying "fancy bringing a child like this into a place like this"'

Real estate agent Chris Couper admits to making the comment but says he has done nothing wrong and refuses to apologise.

In an email, Mr Couper wrote to Ms Edwards he said the remark was not based on the six-year-old's autism.

'This comment was made purely on the basis of the child's behaviour and lack of parental control or responsibility,' he said.

Real estate agent Chris Couper admits to making the comment about Indigo but says he has done nothing wrong and refuses to apologise

Indigo's father Douglas, pictured, said he wanted his daughter to be treated like any other child

In an email Mr Couper wrote to Ms Edwards he said the remark was not based on the six-year-old's autism

'The comment was not based on the child's disability.'

Indigo's father Douglas said he wanted his daughter to be treated like any other child.

'They should be able to do anything the same as anybody else, we should be able to go anywhere, do anything with them,' he told Seven News.
Sentenced: Oscar Pistorius was convicted of the murder of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, pictured

The father of murdered model Reeva Steenkamp is set to give evidence for the first time a bid to make sure Oscar Pistorius is handed a lengthy jail sentence, it has been reported.

Barry Steenkamp will reportedly tell the court about how he suffered following his daughter's death as a judge prepares to sentence Pistorius, 29, for murder.

The double-amputee killed Miss Steenkamp in the early hours of Valentine's Day 2013, saying he mistook her for an intruder when he fired four times through the door of his bedroom toilet.

The Paralympic athlete has been on bail since December when the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) found him guilty of murder after overturning his earlier conviction on the lesser charge of culpable homicide.

His lawyers tried to appeal the upgraded conviction but were dismissed in March.

Pistorius will now be sentenced for murder, which carries mandatory life sentence with a minimum of 15 years.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Steenkamp will take the stand at one of the pre-sentence hearings at the High Court in Pretoria this week, to support the prosecution's case.

It is understood he will thank his supporters and say goodbye to his daughter. 'He is very fragile but he wants to do it,' a source said. If he can, it will be very powerful and emotional testimony.'

Pistorius was released from jail last October to live under house arrest at his uncle's mansion in Pretoria after serving one year of his five-year sentence for culpable homicide.

Since being convicted of murder, he has been on bail and allowed to leave the house at set times.

Devastated: Reeva's father Barry Steenkamp, pictured, will reportedly take the stand for the first time

Pistorius's jail sentence could be reduced due to time already spent in prison and mitigating factors, including his disability.

'He has served one year in prison and has been effectively on probation or correctional supervision,' Stephan Terblanche, a law professor at the University of South Africa, told AFP.

'But exactly how that is going to be taken into account by the court is difficult to predict.'

The case is scheduled to last until Friday, though the sentence could be handed down earlier.

A lawyer close to the case said: 'We are expecting that there will be evidence presented by both sides over three days and the judge may come back to deliver sentence on Friday.'

Jail time: Pistorius, pictured at a bail hearing in 2013, was released from jail last October to live under house arrest at his uncle's mansion in Pretoria after serving one year of his five-year sentence for culpable homicide

The double-amputee (left at the Paralympics) killed Miss Steenkamp (right) in the early hours of Valentine's Day 2013, saying he mistook her for an intruder when he fired four times through the door of his bedroom toilet

He has always denied killing Steenkamp in a rage and, during his dramatic trial in 2014, sobbed in the dock as details of his lover's death were examined in excruciating detail.

'I was overcome with fear,' Pistorius told the trial. 'Before I knew it, I'd fired four shots at the door.'

In December, appeal judges described his testimony at his trial as 'untruthful' and delivered a damning indictment of the original verdict.

Pistorius has shunned the media during years of intense coverage since Steenkamp's killing, but his family revealed on Friday that he had given his first interview to a British broadcaster.

His uncle Arnold said that the interview, which will be aired on ITV on June 24, will 'provide our family with a voice to address some of the misconceptions that have remained unchallenged.'




The Taliban cut out a man's eyes, skinned him alive and then threw him from a 10-storey cliff in an ISIS-style murder.

The incident happened in Ghor, Afghanistan, to 21-year-old labourer Fazl Ahmad.

Militants reportedly accused one of Ahmad's distant relatives of killing an ex-Taliban commander in December last year.

They allegedly punished Ahmad instead and took him out of his home and cut his eyes out.

The Taliban cut out a man's eyes, skinned him alive and then threw him from a 10-storey cliff in an ISIS-style murder (file photo)

Member of parliament in the area Ruqiya Naeel said Ahmad was still screaming as he was 'skinned alive'.

He told the Washington Post that his attackers carved skin off his chest and left his heart exposed.

The barbarity of the killing is similar to those which ISIS have carried out in Syria and Iraq, however the Taliban have denied any involvement.

Meanwhile. Afghanistan hailed Washington's decision to expand the US military's authority to tackle a resurgent Taliban insurgency, saying the support will boost the capacity of struggling local forces.

The decision will allow US troops, who have been in a training and advisory role in Afghanistan since the start of 2015, to collaborate more closely with local forces in striking the Taliban.

'We welcome the US announcement of broader involvement in the war on terrorism in Afghanistan,' defence ministry spokesman Daulat Waziri said.

Meanwhile. Afghanistan hailed Washington's decision to expand the US military's authority to tackle a resurgent Taliban insurgency, saying the support will boost the capacity of struggling local forces (file photo)

'We may not need more boots on the ground, but we need their advisors and we need them to equip our air force. Their involvement will increase our capacity in operations on the ground.'

The US announcement comes after Afghan forces, beset by record casualties, desertions and troop shortages, suffered a string of setbacks last year at the hands of the Taliban.
A bungling council has sent a pensioner a letter axing his benefits because they thought he had died.

Madan-lal Kosla, 83, from Manchester, was stunned to open a letter which said he was not able to claim council tax support because he was dead.

The letter from Manchester City Council was addressed to his wife Sudesh, but her English is not great so he opened it for her.

The letter read: 'I am sorry to hear of your partner's death on the 18th of May.

Madan-lal Kosla, 83, from Manchester, was stunned to open a letter which said he was not able to claim council tax support because he was dead (stock image)

'Please accept my condolences. I am sorry to write to you at this difficult time but as the claim for council tax support was in your partner's name I have cancelled payments from 18th of May.'

Mr Kosla, a grandfather of nine, was furious with the council's error.

He told the Manchester Evening News: 'We are both very angry by what has happened,' Mr Kosla said.

'What if I had been away and someone else had opened that letter? They would think I'm dead. I had to pinch myself when I read it.'

An investigation revealed that the error was made by the Department for Work and Pensions.

A spokesman for Manchester City Council told The Mirror: 'We have apologised to Mr Kosla and his family for the letter we sent and would like to once again extend our most sincere apologies to them for the distress this must have caused.

'The letter was generated as a result of direct information we were given by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) about Mr Kosla that we now know was incorrect.

'We receive hundreds of notifications each day from them and had no reason to suppose the information received about Mr Kosla was anything other than correct - hence our letter to his family.'

The DWP told the newspaper that it had apologised to the family.
Australian milk producers are being undercut by foreign companies who form the majority of suppliers of cheap dairy products in Australia.

Of the ten most common 'cheap milk' brands in Australian supermarkets, only four are entirely Australian supplied, it has been revealed. One other is a mix of local and international shareholders.

Italian, French, and Japanese companies are the main backers for the foreign-supplied products found in Australian fridges and shelves, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

Australian milk producers are being undercut by foreign companies who form the majority of suppliers of cheap dairy products in Australia

Japanese giant Kirin owns Lion, which supplies both Dairy Choice and Dairy Farmers to Australian supermarkets.

Meanwhile, Woolworths brand milk is supplied by Parmalat from Italy, which is owned by French company Lactalis. Pauls and Farmhouse Gold are also supplied by the Italian company.

Some of the Australian owned brands on shelves are: Norco, Farmers Own - thanks to a deal between farmers and Woolworths, and Coles milk being sold across New South Wales.

A2 Milk is a publicly traded companies, with shareholders from Australia and around the world.

Of the ten most common 'cheap milk' brands in Australian supermarkets, only four are Australian supplied - including Coles milk in NSW (pictured), it has been revealed

Woolworths brand milk is supplied by Parmalat from Italy, which is owned by French company Lactalis

In a statement last month, Minister for Agriculture Barnaby Joyce said the Government 'values the contribution of dairy farmers', and outlined some of the suggested strategies to potentially help those who are struggling.

'Dairy farmers Ive met have asked me to look at a range of options including concessional loans, additional rural financial counselling support and a fast-tracked Farm Household Allowance assessment process,' Mr Joyce said in a statement.

'I have closely monitored developments following the Murray Goulburn and Fonterra decisions to reduce farm gate milk prices for the 2015-16 season and since that time have had a number of discussions with farmers, industry leaders, processors and retailers.

A2 Milk is a publicly traded companies, with shareholders from Australia and around the world

Pauls (pictured) and Farmhouse Gold are supplied by supplied by Parmalat from Italy, which is owned by French company Lactalis

'With over half of Australias 6,100 dairy farmers directly impacted by Murray Goulburn and Fonterras decisions it is clear that this will have a significant impact not only on their suppliers, but also on the confidence of dairy farmers supplying other processors.'

Coles announced last month it would start selling a new, more expensive brand of milk to help local farmers.

The supermarket announced it would introduce its new products to stores in August, with an extra 20 cents per litre sold to go towards a 'fighting' fund for the flailing dairy industry.

Coles announced last month it would start selling a new, more expensive brand of milk to help local farmers (stock image)

Coles Managing Director John Durkan said in a statement the company was focused on helping sustain the dairy industry amid a global down-turn in demand for milk.

Mr Durkan said he hoped the initiative would be up and running sooner rather than later so farmers could start reaping the financial benefits.
Bars and clubs in Queensland will not be able to sell alcohol after 2am or 3am under a new law created to stop alcohol induced violence.

In addition, drinkers will be banned from buying shots and pre-mixed drinks with a high alcohol content after midnight, under new rules coming into force from July 1.

Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath said the new measures are designed to curb alcohol-fuelled violence across the state.

Bars and clubs in Queensland will not be able to sell alcohol after 2am or 3am from July 1 under a new law created to stop alcohol induced violence (stock image)

The sale and supply ban includes jelly shots, bombs and those with more than 45 millilitres of spirits or liqueur.

Pre-mixed drinks with over five per cent alcohol or more than two standard drinks will also be banned.

Cocktails will still be available for purchase, but only if they are listed on a menu, not designed to be consumed quickly and not sold for less than the price.

A spokesman for Ms D'Ath said the new measures would also include a ban on all alcohol sales after 2am.

Venues in safe night precincts will be able to sell drinks until 3am.

The spokesman said the government would continue to work with stakeholders to manage the implementation of the changes.

'Evidence from around the world and here in Australia shows us the most significant factor in reducing alcohol-fuelled violence in our communities is reducing the amount of time that alcohol is served after midnight in our liquor-licensed venues,' he said.

Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath said the new measures are designed to curb alcohol-fuelled violence across Queensland

The Queensland government has chosen not to introduce lockouts, which are currently in effect in the NSW's capital city of Sydney

The sale and supply ban includes jelly shots, bombs and those with more than 45 millilitres of spirits or liqueur (stock image)

The Queensland government has chosen not to introduce lockouts, which are currently in effect in the NSW's capital city.

Patrons are banned from entering pubs and clubs after 1.30am in areas of Sydney and bars stop serving drinks after 3am.
New research has shown that by 2033 we will not have enough anaesthetists in hospital to cater for rising patient demand.

The Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCoA) has warned that while the NHS has promised there will be 11,800 anaesthetists by 2033, in reality there may only be 8,000 - 33 per cent less than anticipated.

Anaesthesia is just one area of medical care which suffers a shortfall in staff despite their work being vital to the smooth running of hospitals.

The Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCoA) has warned that while the NHS has promised there will be 11,800 anaesthetists by 2033, in reality there may well only be 8,000 - 33 per cent less than anticipated (file photo)

Their roles include the preoperative preparation of surgical patients, pain relief in labour and obstetric anaesthesia and transport of acutely ill and injured patients.

A shortage of anaesthetists could jeopardise the safety of patients.

According to the college's latest census of the UK's anaesthesia workforce, 74% of hospitals are forced to bring in locum anaesthetists from medical employment agencies - all of which adds to the NHS's 3.7billion annual bill for temporary staff.

Moreover more often than not staff anaesthetists are called on to perform other duties around hospitals in extra shifts to fill up the rota.

This overstretches these specialists and forces them to go above and beyond what is required of them, particularly in the case of emergency care.

Dr Liam Brennan, Royal College of Anaesthetists' president, told The Guardian that he found the report's results 'very worrying'.

'Part of the picture is that there are no other doctors that can do our jobs,' he said, 'therefore there's no potential for cross-cover, because the skills we have aren't part of the generic skill set of doctors.'

According to the college's (pictured) latest census of the UK's anaesthesia workforce, 74% of hospitals are forced to bring in locum anaesthetists from medical employment agencies

'Part of the picture is that there are no other doctors that can do our jobs,' he said, 'therefore there's no potential for cross-cover, because the skills we have aren't part of the generic skill set of doctors' (file photo)

The Centre for Workforce Intelligence (CfWI) - part of the NHS staffing agency Health Education England - revealed in a report last year that by 2033 demand for anaesthetics and intensive care medicine will increase by 25 per cent - and possibly by 4.7 per cent more.

This requires the number of anaesthetists to increased by 300 a year but according to finding from the royal college this number was only 130 between 2007 and 2015 leading to a significant gap that may worsen.

Brennan believes more training places should be opened up to young doctors wishing to practice as anaesthetists to counter this increasing shortfall.

He added that it's crucial to keep adequate numbers due to the time-sensitive nature of the work of anaesthetists.

There is much concern than patients will suffer from the shortage of staff and ministers need to do more, shadow health secretary Heidi Alexander has warned following the release of the college's report.

However The Department of Health disagree with the findings.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad drew up a 'kill list' which listed for assassination dozens of Britons accused of joining ISIS.

And the list included some 25 Britons - 14 of whom are already dead.

President Assad is reported to have handed his dossier of killings to two Conservative MPs - David Davis, the former shadow home affairs spokesman, and Adam Holloway, according to The Telegraph.

Among those thought to be named in the list include Reyaad Khan, 21, from Cardiff, who was killed by a US drone last year.

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Those named on the 'Kill List', from left: Sally Jones, Reyaad Khan and Mohammed Emwazi - or 'Jihadi John'

Muslim convert Sally Jones, a mother-of-two from Kent who is known as 'Mrs Terror' has hinted she may become ISIS' first female suicide bomber

Also named on the 'kill list' was Mohammed Emwazi - or 'Jihadi John' - killed by a US military strike in November last year.

A further 11 jihadis from the list are thought to still be alive.

These include Muslim convert Sally Jones, a mother-of-two from Kent who is known as 'Mrs Terror', hinted she may become ISIS' first female suicide bomber.

British Grace 'Khadijah' Dare - who forced her four-year-old son to appear in a sickening ISIS execution video, earning him the nickname Jihadi Junior - is also on the list.

Dare, originally from Lewisham, South East London, has been nicknamed the 'Jihadi Bride'.

Reyaad Khan was killed in an RAF drone strike in July last year.

Wearing a headscarf and armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, Khan appeared in an IS video in June 2014 in which he called for Westerners to fight in Iraq and Syria.

He was targeted by the drone because he was said to be part of a jihadi internet warfare cell and presented a 'clear and present danger'.

Khan, who wanted to be the first Asian prime minister, is believed to have travelled to Syria in late 2013 from his home in Cardiff.

Another name on the list, at number four, is Dr Isa Abdur Rahman (pictured) a young British doctor killed by a bomb in Syria as he treated wounded civilians at a makeshift hospital

Grace Dare, originally from Lewisham, South East London, and husband, IS gunman Abu Bakr

Another name on the list, at number four, is a young British doctor killed by a bomb in Syria in 2013 as he treated wounded civilians at a makeshift hospital.

'Inspirational' Dr Isa Abdur Rahman, 26, had left his position at London's Royal Free Hospital to volunteer with a British charity in the conflict-ridden country.

There was no justification for his name being included on the list.

The 26-year-old, was from north west London, and trained at Imperial College before taking up a post at the Royal Free.
The benefactors who gifted the money to buy the property are unknown

However, plans for exactly what form they will take are still being drawn up

Instead, the area will play host to year-round events and gatherings

Burning Man said it won't use the area for its annual summer festival

After 20 years of longing, anarchic art and alternative culture festival Burning Man has managed to buy Fly Ranch, a 3,800-acre property - with the aid of a group of mysterious benefactors.

The property, which has wetlands, hot and cool springs and a huge man-made geyser, is near to Black Rock Desert, where the annual Burning Man festival - a 'radically inclusive' event that encourages self-expression and creativity - is held each year.

But the area didn't come cheap - and exactly who put up the $6.5million it cost to buy the space remains a mystery for now, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported Saturday.

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Wetlands: Fly Ranch in Nevada has now been bought by the non-profit organization behind the Burning Man festivals. The 3,800-acre property will play host to year-round events, but not the full-blown festival

Geyser: A man-made geyser is one of the site's numerous points of interest, along with wetlands and springs of various temperatures. The property cost $6.5million to buy - but the money's donors remain unknown

Hot stuff: The Burning Man Festival (pictured) happens between late August and late September every year in Black Rock Desert, and encourages communal effort, gift-giving, artistic expression and 'radical inclusion'

'The funding came from Burners who have been deeply affected by the spirit and principles of Burning Man, and felt called to give back to the community by enabling us to explore the potential of having a year-round home,' said a post on the Burning Man blog.

'All of the donors have contributed in the true spirit of gifting; they did not request and they will not receive any special access or ongoing control...

'In celebration of our gifting principle, there is no quid pro quo, and their gift is to the entire community.'

The blog also said that none of the money came from 'any previously existing source of Burning Man income' such as ticket revenue, vehicle passes, general donations or coffee sales.

That money is made between the end of August and the end of September each year, as Burning Man participants - or 'Burners' - pay $390 each for a ticket and $80 for a vehicle pass to attend the festival.

Once at the event, which takes place in a temporary themed 'city' that is designed, constructed and disassembled each year, Burners then create and share in art and exchange ideas and experiences with one another.

The event ends with the titular burning man, a figure or figures that are burned to the ground to signify the end of the event.

For now, the non-profit organization will keep the identities of its Fly Ranch sponsors a secret - although an announcement about the names of the contributors will be made next week.

In the meantime, the nonprofit is showing off its new property in videos and photos.

Neighbors: Fly Ranch is just 21 miles from where 'Black Rock City', the temporary home of Burning Man, is built, populated and dismantled every year

Wetlands: The area plays host to animals and plants, and provided Burning Man sticks to its principle of 'leaving no trace' neither should be affected by the events that will be held there

Performance: The Burning Man festival includes performance art (pictured) as well as traditional art and craftwork. It remains to be seen whether this will transfer across to Fly Ranch

Fly Ranch has 640 acres of wetlands and dozens of springs that vary in temperature from cold to hot.

It also has Fly Geyser, which was made in 1964 when the area was drilled and the resulting hole not capped.

Videos and photos of the location - which has been off-limits to visitors for years, since it was bought by Bright Holland Co. - show birds flitting above the gorgeous, untouched space.

Although the 1997 Burning Man festival was held at Fly Ranch, organizers say that future festivals will continue to be held in the traditional location at Black Rock Desert, a dry lake 21 miles away.

Instead, Fly Ranch is to be used for year-round events that espouse and enact the 'ten principles' of Burning Man, including an emphasis on gifting, communal effort and 'radical self-expression'.

And as those principles include 'leaving no trace' - and ideally leaving places in a better state than when they were found - the area should not suffer for the change.

Man on fire: At the end of the Burning Man festival, a massive figure of a man is set alight

At present, though, the space remains closed off to visitors while the organization works out exactly what will be done with the space.

'You may be asking yourself, "What does this mean for us? What can we do with this? How will this benefit the community?"' the organization said in its blog.

'The answers will unfold slowly, over a period of time. Were a long way from defining exactly what will happen at Fly Ranch, but its not too early to begin dreaming of the potential.'

It added: 'What we do know is this: Fly Ranch opens the door to new possibilities, new cultural experiments, and art and innovation projects on a scale never before envisioned.

'We also know that community participation will be essential. Fly Ranch will be a collaborative endeavor requiring a vast array of skills, ideas, and contributions.'

According to local lore, Fly Ranch is so called because in 1930s there was a biplane training facility on the property.
He paid $8300 for dam, a small price compared to cost of potential damage

Despite odd looks from neighbors, it kept his house dry as families in the county faced mandatory evacuations

He filled 400-foot tube with water to act as giant sandbag around his house

It might not be the most obvious solution, but using water to fend off more water worked for one family during the Texas floods last week.

In preparation for the torrential rains, Randy Wagner of Rosharon, Texas, purchased an Aqua dam, a system of tubes that are filled with water to serve as one giant sandbag.

The 400-foot tube wrapped around his home and kept the 27-inch flood water at bay, leaving Wagner singing its praises while thanking God.

In preparation for the torrential rains, Randy Wagner of Rosharon, Texas, purchased an Aqua dam, a system of tubes that are filled with water to serve as one giant sandbag

The 400-foot tube wrapped around his home and kept the 27-inch flood water at bay, leaving Wagner (pictured) singing its praises while thanking God

'I was the crazy guy. Everybody was kinda going by, laughing at me. But today they are really impressed with this Aqua Dam,' Wagner told KENS5 (pictured, his house after the flood)

Wagner (pictured) found out about Aqua Dams online

The Brazos River Authority issued a flood warning and Wagner knew he had to take drastic measures after the thought of his family being relocated was 'heartbreaking'.

An internet search led him to Aqua Dams, and he drove to Louisiana to purchase one measuring 400 feet long and 30 inches high.

With the help of two others, Wagner filled up two watertight tubes held together inside a woven polypropylene tube, which conforms to the ground and creates a seal that prevents leaks.

The weight of the water inside the tubes kept the barrier firmly in place as the flood water eventually rose to more than two feet tall.

Many families in Brazoria County faced mandatory evacuations, but Wagner and his family remained dry.

'I was the crazy guy. Everybody was kinda going by, laughing at me. But today they are really impressed with this Aqua Dam,' Wagner told KENS5.

While he dished out $8,300 for the contraption he found online, he called it a 'small investment' when he could have sustained about $150,000 in damages.

He sang its praises, and suggested emergency management could also utilize the Aqua dam in the future.

The water inside the tubes helps absorb the shock of the flowing flood water so it stays in place. The woven polypropylene tube on the exterior also conforms to the ground creating a seal to prevent leaks
A candidate running for election in Queensland has compared the Chinese government to ISIS and Satan in a number of social media posts.

Shan Ju Lin is the Katter's Australia Party - named after long-time MP Bob Katter - in Moreton, just south of Brisbane's city centre.

Ms Lin was born in Taiwan before she moved to Australia in 1991, and is the current president of the World Harmony Society - a community group that lists its goal as: 'creating a harmonious and sustainable world by promoting multiculturalism'.

Shan Ju Lin (pictured), a candidate running for election in Queensland, has compared the Chinese government to ISIS and Satan in a number of social media posts

On a social media page in her name, the Queensland candidate shared a number of controversial opinions about the Chinese government.

'[Chinese Communist Party] and ISIS are Satan on earth. They need to be disappeared before world peace could be fulfilled,' she wrote in one post.

'They want to poison us so they can have our land,' Ms Lin wrote in another post about how green tea could be dangerous.

'They call Australia as Great Southen Provine of China. Vote minor parties to form new government is essential, or we will be ruled by the dictator soon,' another read.

Ms Lin was born in Taiwan before she moved to Australia in 1991, and is the current president of the World Harmony Society - a community group that 'promotes multiculturalism'

Shan Ju Lin is the Katter's Australia Party - named after long-time MP Bob Katter (pictured) - in Moreton, just south of Brisbane's city centre

Ms Lin (right) is pictured with Robert Katter (left), Queensland MP for Mount Isa

'They own our ports, land and air, the next is the parliament. No more Virgin for me,' she captioned a link to an article about a Chinese group buying a stake in Virgin Australia.

Ms Lin's controversial remarks were not limited to the Chinese government, as she also commented on the issues of abortion and marriage equality.

'Man couldn't be pregnant, therefore, never be able to get equal with traditional marriage,' she wrote after a Brisbane council voted in support of marriage equality.

'I have nothing against gay people, however to put gay education in our school [is] to encourage our kids to become gay - the evidence shows gays are encouraged to become like that.'

The Katter's Australia Party website describes Ms Lin as a 'strong local voice' who has been a teacher for more than 15 years, and the mother of an adult performer

Ms Lin's controversial social media posts cover a range of issues, however she was particularly focused on China

Her social media accounts also include a number of posts calling for the abolition of the Safe Schools program, and a reduction in foreign ownership.

On the Katter's Australia Party website, Ms Lin is described as a 'strong local voice' who has been a teacher for more than 15 years, and the mother of an adult performer.

'With her multilingual skills and in-depth understanding of multicultural communities, [Ms Lin] aims to represent the Moreton electorate in the Federal Parliament,' the party website reads.

'There, she would focus on employment and housing creation as well as protecting national assets from international investment, to further support and preserve the Australian lifestyle.'
Scientists are swapping their lab coats for hard hats as they search for dark matter in an operating goldmine where a $3.5 million laboratory is being built.

An international team of scientists are working in the depths of the town of Stawell in Victoria state in the hopes of discovering elusive dark matter.

'It's like we are miners,' laboratory director and principal investigator Elisabetta Barberio told Daily Mail Australia. 'We don't look like physicists with our hard hats.'

Working in the mine, one kilometre beneath the surface of the earth, helps prevent interference from cosmic radiation from space.

Scientists are swapping their lab coats for hard hats as they search for dark matter in an operating goldmine in the depths of the rural Victorian town of Stawell

The temporary laboratory is no bigger than a shipping container, but will be replaced by a $3.5million design in 2017

A temporary laboratory no bigger than a shipping container is currently set up at the site which is to be replaced by $3.5 million design in 2017.

'At the moment there are two parts to our investigation. We're looking at the site to build the laboratory and we're measuring amount of cosmic radiation at the site,' Melbourne University's Professor Barberio explained.

Melbourne University are also currently building the dark matter detector which is being built partially by Princeton University who are collaborating on the experiment.

Other international partners include the Universities of Rome and Milan, as well as the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation.

The principal investigator has been down to the site a few times, but says it's a tough working environment in the rescue pod laboratory.

The inside of the lab is even more cramped, due to the equipment the scientists need to use for the investigation.

'It's a very small space, and it's very hot. The temperature is about 35 to 40 degrees down in the mine and the humidity is around 80 per cent.

'Thankfully, you don't need to be down the mine every day,' she added.

When the new laboratory is built and scientists begin their three year long experiments, they will be able to work in a cool 18 degree environment.

It's currently a 20 minute journey through dusty tunnels by four-wheel drive to the temporary set-up. Professor Barberio has to wear full mining gear, complete with hard-hat as the site still operates as a functioning goldmine.

Professor Elisabetta Barberio (pictured) has to wear full mining gear, complete with hard-hat at the underground laboratory as the site still operates as a functioning goldmine

According to Professor Barberio, the mine is between 35-40 degrees, and very humid

Melbourne University's Professor Barberio explained that they are currently looking at the Stawell site where they will build the laboratory and measuring amount of cosmic radiation

When a dark matter particle strikes the crystal, light is generated and is transformed into energy and collected.

This energy is what the researchers like Professor Barberio are looking for, if they discover the presence of the matter down in the mines it could change the way we understand the universe.

'If we can confirm this, it will be the most important scientific discovery in the last century.

'About 85 per cent of the universe is made up of dark matter and we don't even know what it's made up of,' Professor Barberio explains.

'If we understand dark matter, we will understand how the big bang occurred and how the universe evolved and how it might continue to evolve.'

The laboratory is the only laboratory in the southern hemisphere. Only one out of 10 laboratories in the northern hemisphere has detected strong evidence of dark matter and that was in 1998.
Labor earlier campaigned on a 'dirty deal' between the Liberals and Greens

But he urged to vote Liberal to avoid a Labor-Greens-Independent minority

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he made the final call on the decision

The Liberals have dealt a blow to the Greens after preferencing Labor ahead of the environmental party on how-to-vote cards in lower house seats.

Campaigning at Centennial Park in Sydney on Sunday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said it was his decision to urge its voters to put the Greens after Labor.

'This is a call that I have made in the national interest,' he told reporters in Sydney on Sunday morning.

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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (pictured) said it was his decision to urge its voters to put the Greens after Labor on how-to-vote cards

Turnbull warned voters not to risk 'an unstable minority Labor-Greens-independent government' and vote for the Coalition. Here he is pictured with Environment Minister Greg Hunt at Centennial Park, Sydney, on Sunday

'It hasn't surprised anybody.'

But he warned voters not to risk 'an unstable, chaotic minority Labor-Greens-independent government' and to vote for the coalition.

Labor had strongly campaigned on a 'dirty deal' it believed the Liberals were doing with the Greens in several Victorian seats the minor party is hoping to win from the ALP.

It has run ads showing the Liberal logo turning green, warning die-hard conservative voters the party may not be what they think it is.

But the Greens announced on Wednesday the party would suggest its voters preference Labor in the Melbourne seats of Batman, Higgins, Melbourne, Melbourne Ports and Wills but may run open tickets elsewhere.

Labor frontbencher Brendan O'Connor said on Sunday his party was not going to be upset by the Liberals' decision.

Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten visited a children's cancer ward at Townsville Hospital on Sunday

Labor had strongly campaigned on a 'dirty deal' it believed the Liberals were doing with the Greens in several Victorian seats the minor party is hoping to win from the ALP

Mr Turnbull said the question of preferences had been under consideration for some time and he made the decision in consultation with party director Tony Nutt.

The prime minister has repeatedly insisted throughout the campaign a decision on preferences was one for the party organisation, telling reporters that as recently as Saturday.

On Sunday he tweaked his message: 'It is a decision made by the party organisation in consultation with the party's leader and that is me.'
A mother of two got a police escort out of a children's water park after she changed one baby's diaper and fed another baby.

Andreea Sitaru was at the Splash N Play Riverside Park in Roswell, Georgia on Thursday with her 23-month-old girl and three-month-old son.

As they were leaving, Sitaru decided to change the girl from a water diaper to a regular one for the ride home, and says she wanted to avoid what she describes as the smelly, nasty bathrooms, so she found a shady spot to do her baby's business.

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A police officer escorted mom of two Andreea Sitaru (above) out of Roswell's Splash N Play after she changed one of her babies and fed the other

The distressed mom says four cops showed up to take her, her babies, and their unwelcome diapers, out of the water park

Sitaru said that two employees who looked like teens told her she couldn't change or feed there and were rude and 'bullying'

A local news station pointed out to her that a sign does direct moms not to change where she was changing, but she says she didn't see the sign and that other moms were doing the same

As she was changing her daughter on a blanket, a park employee she identifies as James Andrew approached her.

She said he pointed out there was no changing allowed except in the bathroom and she in turn pointed out that on their rule board it says that babies' diapers should be changed regularly, but doesn't state where.

At this point, Sitaru said she tried to leave the park, but wanted to feed her three-month-old in the shade first since it was hot out and he needed to eat somewhere cool. She brought out her bottle and then was told she couldn't feed in the park either.

Sitaru (above with one of her babies and her husband) said she is telling her story so that no mom ever has to go through what she went through at the park

When another mom pointed out to the supervisor who had come over that breastfeeding anywhere in public is legal in Georgia, Sitaru said that the 'teenage looking' employee told that didn't apply to bottle feeding.

At this point, no less than four police officer showed up, according to Sitaru, and one of them, whom she identifies as Officer Ott, escorted her out.

When she stopped at the ticket booth on the way out to ask for manager information, she says the supervisor who had interceded earlier, whom she identifies as Alex Lee, called her 'crazy.'

'I've never seen such abuse of authority towards anyone in the past, nor such bullying towards a mother of an infant anywhere!!!' she wrote on a Facebook post. 'I did nothing to deserve being treated and bullied like this! This park is designed for kids and they lack not only clean family restrooms but also all common sense, expecting moms of multiples to leave one child unattended to feed another! It is beyond ridiculous and their rude teenage staff members lack training and respect!

The park said that Sitaru should have followed park regulations, but admitted that an employee was wrong if he told her not to feed on deck

She added: 'I hope this will serve as a lesson for the park staff so that no other mom will be publicly humiliated and treated like this!'

During an interview with WSB-TV, the reporter pointed out that there was a sign posted saying 'No diaper changing allowed on deck' which she then admitted she didn't see - and pointed out that plenty of other moms had done the same thing throughout the day without a police escort.
A driver fleeing a car crash with another vehicle struck five pedestrians - two adults and three children - at an intersection in Las Vegas, police said.

The driver was later arrested less than two miles away from the scene of the crash in the northwestern region of the city around 7pm on Saturday.

Two of the children, ages five and nine, have sustained critical, life-threatening injuries, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police said.

A driver fleeing a car crash with another vehicle struck five pedestrians - two adults and three children - at an intersection in Las Vegas, police said

The driver was later arrested less than two miles away from the scene of the crash in the northwestern region of the city around 7pm on Saturday

The driver ran a red light and hit a Nissan making a left turn, police said.

As the driver fled, the Honda struck the five pedestrians on a sidewalk near the intersection of Lake Mead Boulevard and Jones Boulevard, News3 reported.

The suspect drove off, leaving a bumper and license plate at the scene.

Police located the suspect, who was taken into custody without incident, less than two miles south of the crash on the 6000 block of Bromley Avenue.

Four people were taken to the University Medical Center. The two children are in critical condition, one adult is in serious condition, and another adult is currently being evaluated, News3 reported.

Family members at the hospital told the local news station the injured children include a five-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy.

No fatalities have been confirmed.

The intersection has been blocked off as police investigate.
Authorities have identified the three people killed when a small plane piloted by a 20-year-old crashed into a North Dakota lake Thursday - the same day another collision occurred in Texas.

Colbie Fandrich, 20, was flying his aunt, Christine Fandrich, 38, and her son Aaron Nordstrom, 10, when their plane crashed into May Lake, KFGO reported.

The announcement came on the same day as another small plane crash in Los Angeles and the day before a crash in Tennessee brought the number of such accidents in the past week up to four - and the body count to ten.

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Identified: Colbie Fandrich (left), 20, was identified as the pilot of the plane that crashed in May Lake, North Dakota, killing three Thursday. It's believed complications during takeoff caused the fatal plummet

Victims: His aunt Christine Fandrich, 38, and her son Aaron Nordstrom, 10, (both pictured) were also killed. That same day, a crash occurred in Houston. And further crashes Friday and Saturday bring the total to four

Fandrich - who'd had his flying license for a year before the crash - lost control of the plane due to complications during takeoff from a nearby Wishek Municipal Airport Thursday afternoon.

They had intended to fly to Bismarck. The four-seater Piper PA-28 plane was being removed from the lake Friday, police said.

The announcement about the May Lake crash came Friday, the same day that two people were killed when a small plane flew into a house in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne.

Both of the dead were in the plane, a Grumman American AA-1B, ABC reported. Nobody on the ground was hurt.

Witness Antwahn Nance said he heard the plane 'sputtering' as it fell and ultimately struck the house, located on the 4900 block of Broadway near Hawthorne Airport, before bursting into flames.

'Everybody was outside their apartments and tried to offer assistance, but there was nothing anybody could do. It was too hot,' Nance told KNBC-TV.

The crash occurred at about 5pm, CBS Los Angeles said, and by sheer chance none of the family of five who lived in the residence was at home when it happened.

Five minutes later and Selam Berhe, one of two young women living in the building, would have been home. Her brother, too, would have been home but was at a graduation party.

Collision: A small plane hit an apartment in a Los Angeles suburb then burst into flames, killing both occupants Friday. Nobody was in the home when the plane struck it, and nobody on the ground was harmed

Wreckage: The wreckage from the plane, which crashed in the suburb of Hawthorne, could be seen as authorities took control of the site. The victims have not yet been named

And their father's absence was unusual too. 'My dad just literally changed his work schedule a week ago,' Berhe said.

An expert told CBS that the angle of the crash suggested the plane was taking off when the incident occurred.

Neighbor Bronson McFarlin said, 'The one house it hit was in between two houses (that had) a lot of people in... and the house it hit was empty.

'I mean, if that doesnt make you believe in God, I dont know what does. But I feel blessed,'

The following day, Saturday, another small plane crash occurred in Tennessee, when a Mooney M20E crashed at the Collegedale Municipal Airport, killing two and injuring two more.

The survivors were airlifted to hospital after the 12:27pm crash, NewsChannel 9 reported, with one critically injured party undergoing surgery. Their status is still unknown.

Bob Etheridge, a witness who called 911, told the station: 'My immediate reaction was to go see if anyone was OK. But I was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher, and she said, "Stay away from the plane." She was worried about a fire.'

The Federal Aviation Authority is investigating the crash.

Fourth crash: A fourth crash occurred Saturday when this plane struck the ground near Chattanooga airport. Two were killed and two injured - one critically. The survivors were helicoptered to hospital

Coincidence: The same day that the North Dakota crash occurred, this plane struck a parked car in Houston, Texas, killing all three people on board

No names have been released from the Los Angeles and Tennessee crashes, pending family notification.

The North Dakota crash came on the same day as another crash in Houston, Texas.

In that incident a small plane crashed into a parked car outside a Hardware and Rental store near Houston airport.

The victims were identified as Tony Gray, 52, his wife Dana, 46, and his brother Jerry, 27.

The brothers, of Moore, Oklahoma, had been traveling to Houston to visit their sick father, who is being treated at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Pilot Dana Gray got her license two years ago. Audio released Friday revealed that air traffic control halted her third attempt at a landing just before the crash.

She was told at least twice to turn around and make another attempt to land. She was also told that she was she's flying too high and has to turn around to land at Hobby Airport.

The pilot can be heard nervously laughing as she says, 'Trying to get down again.' An air traffic controller says 'no problem.'

Just before the crash, a traffic controller says: 'Ma'am, ma'am, straighten up, straighten up.'
A teenage horror blogger who went by the nickname 'Vampchick' online was sentenced to 23 years in prison plus 17 years on extended supervision for the murder of her mom and stepfather Friday.

Ashlee A. Martinson, 18, committed the murders in March 2015 before locking her sisters in a room with food and juice and fleeing the state of Wisconsin with her boyfriend.

Sentencing her Friday, the judge said he appreciated that she had been abused by her stepfather, but that she should have found 'the internal strength' not to turn to murder, Wausau Daily Herald reported.

Weeping: Ashlee Martinson wept in court as she heard testimony about the abuse she had suffered before killing her stepfather and mother in March 2015. She was sentenced to 23 years in prison Friday

Murdered: Stepfather Tony Ayers had abused Martinson, her mom Jennifer and her siblings, the court heard. She shot him twice, and said her mother then turned on her with a knife before Martinson stabbed her 30 times

On March 8, 2015, Martinson shot her stepfather Thomas Ayers, 37, twice with a shotgun and stabbed her mother, 40-year-old Jennifer Ayers, 30 times with a knife.

Oneida County District Attorney Michael Schiek wanted the Rhinelander girl to be given the maximum sentence of 40 years; her lawyers wanted eight. She ultimately took a plea deal.

Speaking at the end of a day-long hearing, Oneida County Circuit Judge Michael Bloom said that although Martinson had received abuse from multiple people, including her stepfather, she made the decision to kill him and her mother.

He said he didn't believe that she was in danger of death when the murders occurred, and that despite a lack of support from those around her, she should have found the 'inner strength' not to kill.

Martinson, who is from Piehl, Wisconsin, had previously told police that her stepfather had mentally and verbally abused her - including killing animals in front of her - as well as her stepsisters and her mother.

The stepsisters had also gave private testimony to Schenk in his office that their father had abused them.

And according to court filings Martinson had been abused by her mother's previous boyfriends, including one who burnt her with cigarettes and raped her when she was nine.

Schenk acknowledged that Martinson's home had been abusive, but said society could not be allowed to believe that homicide was an acceptable response to such provocation.

Testimony against Martinson came from Thomas Ayers's sister, Sandy Rumore, who said she thought Martinson - who had previously attempted an insanity plea but later admitted guilt - had denied her responsibility for the killings.

She also said that Martinson's siblings' outlook on the world had been 'forever changed' by the killings.

But under questioning by the defense, she also admitted that she hadn't spoken to her brother for 15 years, after he had entered a 'violent period'.

The defense also played a compilation of video testimonies about abuse in the family's home, much of it from Thomas Ayers. Several of those testifying said they hoped Martinson would not get a long sentence.

Those who spoke included Thomas Ayers's ex-wife, Jennifer Ayers's ex-boyfriend, Martinson's stepsisters and the woman who took care of them.

Fled: After the murders Martinson fled with boyfriend Ryan Sisco (right) to Indiana, but the pair were caught. Sisco was not charged. The judge said that even though Martinson was abused, she made the decision to kill

Convicted: Ayers had a long criminal history of abuse and violence, and was not legally allowed to own the weapons he possessed. The judge told Martinson that murder could not be seen to be the response to abuse

'Vampichick': Martinson wrote horror stories and poems under the name Vampchick. Several members of her family, as well as those who knew Ayers and her mom, spoke out in her favor

Martinson's neighbor, Roy Rasmussen, told People he thought the sentence was too long.

'Twenty-three years? That's a bit much,' he said. 'I don't condone murder but an adolescent who has been abused for years can only take so much until they strike back.

'What she needs is help to get her back on track. Life is not how it has been handed to her. She had a tough life. It breaks my heart.'

Court records sat that on the day of the killings Martinson got into an argument with Ayers and her mother, who told her she wasn't allowed to communicate with her boyfriend, Ryan Sisco, then 22.

She then left the house Martinson left the house but said Ayers came to fetch her in his truck.

She later took one of Ayers's loaded guns intending to kill herself, the court filings say. He banged on her door after telling her mother Martinson was probably doing 'something stupid'.

Martinson then 'considered whether Ayers should die rather than she', the court documents say. She shot him once in the neck and once in the head to make sure he was dead and 'could not hurt her'.

When Martinson looked to her mother for comfort, the mother tried to help Ayers and yelled at her daughter instead, according to the filings.

Martinson's mother grabbed a knife and 'approached' her daughter, prompting Martinson to wrestle it from her and stab her more than 30 times with 'considerable force', the records state.

She then locked her siblings in a room with drinks and food and fled to Indiana with Sisco. Police caught them there and returned them to Wisconsin. Sisco was not charged.

Abuse: Martinson, seen here in March, said that she was mentally and verbally abused by Ayers, and that her mom and siblings were physically abused by him

Experts who interviewed Martinson after the slayings found she had post-traumatic stress disorder and depression after several of her mother's previous boyfriends abused her physically and verbally.

Martinson said she witnessed Ayers physically abused her mother and her siblings, two stepsisters and a half-sister aged nine, eight and two, at the time of the killings.

Ayers would push, smack and choke Martinson's mother and hold a gun to her head if he was displeased, according to court records.

Martinson said she often heard her mother 'screaming and begging for her life'. She went to live with her father in 2013 but moved back with Ayers and her mother after her father slapped, shoved and kicked her on several occasions, according to the documents.

Her father doesn't speak to her anymore and doesn't intend to get involved in the case, the records state.

Two of Martinson's siblings told officers Ayers would hit them with a belt so hard it almost caused blisters on their buttocks.

They said he once choked one of the family's dogs and threw it against a wall before shooting it and feeding it to a bear, People reported. Martinson said Ayers sometimes killed baby animals in front of her and her siblings, telling them to watch the reaction of the animals' parents.

Ayers had a criminal record with a history of domestic battery, assault, menacing and kidnapping.

He kept an arsenal of easily accessible guns and ammunition even though he was legally prohibited from possessing them, police said.

Martinson had been known online as 'Vampchick', and wrote horror stories and poetry about vampires and serial killers, with lines such as the 'sweet horrors of blood that I thirst for'.
Police are hunting for a man who assaulted a woman and kidnapped his 21-month-old daughter in South Australia on Sunday.

South Australian police believe that the woman was known to Benjamin Austin, who proceeded to assault her, before leaving the house with his daughter Akira.

Austin is described as being Aboriginal, 169 centimetres tall with a slim build.

South Australian police are on the hunt for Benjamin Austin (right) who assaulted a woman known to him and proceeded to kidnap his own daughter Akira, 21-months-old (left)

He was last seen wearing a black shirt and grey tracksuit pants while his daughter Akira, who has curly dark hair, was last seen wearing black pants and a white t-shirt.

Authorities have said that they have concern for the toddler's welfare.

Anyone with information on their whereabouts has been urged to contact police immediately.

Austin and his daughter come from Port Augusta three hours north of Adelaide in South Australia that has a population of around 13,200 people.
Like many other popular sports, NASCAR racing is male-dominated but a young woman from California is hoping to change that.

While Danica Patrick maybe the only well known female driver known to the masses, 19-year-old Lindsay Brewer from Colorado, is hoping that she can become a household name on the racing circuit before long.

Lindsay is gaining more attention and recognition by the day for her stunning Instagram account, which has more than 52,000 followers where she showcases her good looks alongside her driving skills.

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The next Danica? Lindsay Brewer, 19, is pinning her hopes and dreams on becoming a professional Indy car racing driver

Suited and booted: Since she was a youngster, Lindsay has been fascinated by all-things trackside

All systems go: She's competed in a number of competitions involving karts but is looking to move on up

Trackside: The San Diego University Freshman believes that a sponsor would help propel her further in the sport

Lindsay is a Freshman and currently attending San Diego State University. She is a member of the Alpha Phi sorority, but she says her real passion lies on the track and she is now looking for sponsorship in the hopes of racing professionally.

'In racing, it is common to have a sponsor, and that deal end up not coming through. This is what happened to me. I still am going to kart and do a few national races, but I am currently trying to peruse a sponsor in cars, and trying to make my career happen,' Lindsay wrote on a recent Instagram posting.

'It is difficult to believe that your dreams are set in place, and then have a sponsorship deal get pulled from you. So as of now, I am traveling to races looking for sponsors in hopes to make something happen.'

Starting her engine! Over the last couple of years, Lindsay has continued to race and won various competitions

Young champion: Lindsay won her first kart race at the age of the 11, at which time she was one of the youngest drivers out there

Pretty in pink: Lindsay seems to attract a great deal of attention no matter where she goes

Beachside: Lindsay's Instagram account features plenty of pictures of the young woman in her bikini

Fallback plans: Some have suggested that if the racing plans don't quite pan out, she could always get a career in modelling

In a recent posting after watching this years Indy 500, she commented 'This just makes me want my dream more than ever. Need to get behind the wheel again.'

Lindsay's interest in racing began when she was a youngster and started to race karts.

At the age of 11 she was already winning competitions. She started out in the Rotax Mini Max class, which is a kart recommended for children as young as 10.

She gradually moved on up in terms of racing classes and the power of karts that she was driving.

Now at university, she is hoping that she will be able to break into NASCAR racing with the right backing from a sponsor willing to try something fresh.

Of course, if the racing thing doesn't quite work out, then modeling could easily be a safe fallback plan for her.

Posing: Lindsay is a member of a sorority at the University of San Diego and seems to have plenty of fun

Portfolio: The Instagram pictures are designed to attract the most attention from possible sponsors looking to bring some fresh appeal to the male-dominated Indy car sport
An army pilot who was just metres away from Australia's worst peacetime aviation disaster 20 years ago said he still remembers the 'desperate attempt' to save the lives of 18 soldiers.

In June 1996 two Black Hawk helicopters collided during a terrorism night-time exercise near Townsville, Queensland, in preparation for the Sydney Olympics four years later.

Retired pilot Major Matthew Barker was flying one of the six helicopters involved in the exercise, and was just metres away from the horrific accident when the crash occurred.

In June 1996 two Black Hawk helicopters collided (pictured) during a terrorism night-time exercise near Townsville, Queensland, in preparation for the Sydney Olympics four years later

Retired pilot Major Matthew Barker (pictured) was flying one of the six helicopters involved in the exercise, and was just metres away from the horrific accident when the crash occurred

An army pilot who was just metres away from Australia's worst peacetime aviation disaster 20 years ago said he still remembers the 'desperate attempt' to save the lives of 18 soldiers

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (centre) lays a wreath with Federal MP for Herbert Ewan Jones during a memorial service to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Black Hawk helicopter disaster in Townsville

Eighteen servicemen died when two Black Hawk helicopters collided during a counter terrorism exercise on June 12, 1996 in Townsville

'I saw number 1 going under my nose upside down. I watched number 2's tail removed by the rotor blade contact and I basically, as I was trying to get up and over the top of them, I watched him the whole way to his impact,' Major Barker told the ABC.

'Because he's just lost his tail rotor and he basically spun two or three times prior to contacting the ground.'

The retired pilot recalled the chaotic scenes that followed the accident, with fires and poor vision making the difficult rescue attempt ever harder.

'I just remember [the] injured being loaded onto my aircraft and people jumping on, and then the flight back to Townsville, desperately trying to get there as quick as we could with these guys in the back working on their friends which was very difficult time because you could hear everything going on,' he told the ABC.

Fifteen Special Air Service Regiment soldiers and three aircrew from the Army's 5th Aviation Regiment based at Townsville were killed in the tragedy.

Not since aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne and destroyer HMAS Voyager collided in February 1964, claiming the lives of 82 sailors, had as many died in a single incident.

A makeshift memorial with a large television screen is seen before the start of a memorial service

Fifteen Special Air Service Regiment soldiers and three aircrew from the Army's 5th Aviation Regiment based at Townsville were killed in the tragedy

The retired pilot recalled the chaotic scenes that followed the accident, with fires and poor vision making the difficult rescue attempt ever harder

The accident occurred at 1853 AEST on June 12, 1996, as six Black Hawks conducted a night live-fire counter-terrorism exercise at the High Range Training Area near Townsville

Gary Proctor (pictured) a survivor from aircraft 'Black 2' makes a speech during a ceremony on Sunday in Townsville, marking 20 years since the accident

The tragedy has been remembered at two ceremonies on Sunday; one at the Black Hawk memorial in Townsville, and the other a private event at the SASR's Campbell Barracks in Perth.

The accident occurred at 1853 AEST on June 12, 1996, as six Black Hawks conducted a night live-fire counter-terrorism exercise at the High Range Training Area near Townsville.

That involved SASR troopers practising rappelling insertions and extractions. Flight crew members were using night-vision goggles.

Caitlyn Cleary (pictured) the sister of captain Timothy Stevens who died during the disaster makes a speech during the service

Defence launched a board of inquiry that looked long and hard at special forces and Black Hawk operations

The accident involved SASR troopers practising rappelling insertions and extractions- Flight crew members were using night-vision goggles

As they approached the landing zone at a speed of 60-90 knots, one aircraft veered into another. One plunged 50 metres to the ground upside down, while the other made a crash landing. Both caught fire and burned.

Defence launched a board of inquiry that looked long and hard at special forces and Black Hawk operations.

It concluded the immediate cause was that the lead helicopter converged into an adjacent helicopter, causing both to crash.

The tragedy has been remembered at two ceremonies on Sunday; one was held at the Black Hawk memorial in Townsville (pictured) , and the other a private event at the SASR's Campbell Barracks in Perth.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull inspects newly planted trees which has a name of a deceasd serviceman next to them

It said there were no mechanical defects in the aircraft and the crash was not caused by unserviceable night-vision goggles.

But many factors had cumulatively made the outcome inevitable, the board concluded.

One factor was the high rate of unserviceable aircraft in the two years before the crash and the high rate of pilot separation that eroded the bank of experience in 5th Aviation Regiment, especially for counter-terrorist operations.

Mourners looks on during the memorial service in Townsville on Sunday

A general view of the crowd at one at the Black Hawk memorial in Townsville on Sunday

More immediately, the board concluded that planning for the operation was inadequate and there was inadequate and conflicting understanding of the objectives.

The board made 79 recommendations to make helicopter operations safer.

They have been largely successful, as no accidents the scale of what happened at Townsville have occurred since.

The board concluded that planning for the operation was inadequate and there was inadequate and conflicting understanding of the objectives

As they approached the landing zone at a speed of 60-90 knots, one aircraft veered into another- One plunged 50 metres to the ground upside down, while the other made a crash landing

Gary Proctor (right) a survivor from aircraft 'Black 2' is hugged by Gerry Bampton a survivor from aircraft 'Black 1' during the memorial service
A 62-year-old woman returned home after three days in the hospital - only to receive a condolence letter in the mail a month later announcing her own death.

Marilyn Mullins, of Crozet, Virginia, initially chuckled at the mistake when she received a letter from the chaplain at Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital in late May, NBC reported.

But Mullins then realized the Social Security and disability checks she relied on could very well hang in the balance, and the innocent mistake turned into a logistical nightmare.

Marilyn Mullins, of Crozet, Virginia, received a condolence letter in the mail announcing her own death a month after she spent three days in the hospital

The handwritten note was sent by the chaplain at Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital after a secretary accidentally checked a box marking her as deceased instead of discharged

In the weeks after Mullins was released from the hospital, she received a letter addressed to her family.

The card read: 'In the weeks since Mrs. Mullins death, we at Martha Jefferson have remembered her and your family.

'May you continue to find comfort in one another's presence. May the sharing of warm memories strengthen your most treasured ties to her.'

She initially cracked a joke with her neighbors, saying: 'I'm not really here. I'm just hanging around, you know, to see what everybody's going to say about me after I've died.'

When she realized she could be cut off from her pension, Mullins tried to clear up the mistake, but had difficulty getting through to administrators who might clarify whether the faulty information could have been transferred to other databases.

The chaplain eventually apologized, and the hospital explained a unit secretary accidentally checked the wrong box, marking her as deceased instead of discharged.

The hospital issued an apology in a statement that read: 'Sentara Martha Jefferson has been sending notes of condolence to the families of patients who pass away for more than 20 years.

'It is a sincere effort to compassionately appreciate the person who was our patient.

'When we discovered the mistake, we corrected Ms. Mullins' chart. However, the chaplains who send the cards were not informed of the mistake, so the note was still mailed to Ms. Mullins' home.

'We recognize Ms. Mullins' concerns about receiving this card. However, they are sent only to patient families.

'They are not an official record and are not sent to outside organizations or government agencies.'
Andrew Goodenough, 35, has been charged with second degree murder after cops say he walked up to a stranger and slit his throat

A 35-year-old man has been arrested after he walked up to a stranger in a supermarket and slit his throat with a box cutter, police say.

Andrew Goodenough attacked his 35-year-old victim at a Shoprite market in New Windsor, upstate New York, at around 9.40am in the produce isle, according to detectives.

Goodenough walked quietly up behind the man, took the box cutter from his pocket and sliced the man's neck, before walking away without saying a word.

Officers told CBS New York that there was no altercation, verbal or physical, and no apparent connection between the two men.

After the stabbing officers locked down the store with around 250 people inside before identifying Goodenough 45 minutes later as he tried to blend in with other shoppers.

He has been booked into jail and now faces a second degree murder charge.

The victim was taken to hospital in critical condition but was pronounced dead four hours later.

Nelson Rios, an neighbor and former friend of Goodenough, said he stopped associating with him because of his unpredictable temper, calling him 'unstable'.

Meanwhile Ira Justin discussed his history of smoking marijuana with Goodenough on Facebook, though it is not known if he still uses the drug.

A spokesman for Shoprite said: 'We can confirm that an unfortunate incident took place this morning at our store.

'The store will remain closed for the rest of the day while police conduct a thorough investigation.

'While we can't discuss the ongoing investigation, we are working with the police and reaching out to all of our associates. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those involved.'
A grieving widow is demanding answers after her husband was run down and killed by a woman affected by drugs - but died before she was ever charged.

Tragedy struck last September when Vicki Smit's 50-year-old husband Ben, a traffic controller, was working on a roadworks site in Redbank Plains, north of Brisbane.

He was struck by a car driven by a woman in her 60s who had a high level of medication in her system and was in the final stages of renal failure, The Courier Mail reported.

Vicki Smit (pictured) is demanding answers after her husband was run down and killed by a woman under the influence of drugs who died before she was ever charged

Paramedics arrived to find distressed colleagues trying to help MrSmit, pictured, but he died at the scene

Paramedics arrived to find distressed colleagues trying to help Mr Smit, but he died at the scene.

The driver died from her disease in May and was never charged.

Mrs Smit told The Courier Mail that the driver claimed she suffered from involuntary intoxication and said she blacked behind the wheel.

'Obviously, she was really sick and she shouldn't have been driving,' she said.

'All I want is answers. No charge at all and you've killed somebody  it's no different to hitting a dog on the side of the road.'

Fiona Glancy, Director of Superior Traffic Management, the company Mr Smit had worked with for 18 months, said colleagues called him Mr OCD because of his attention to safety

Fiona Glancy, Director of Superior Traffic Management, the company Mr Smit had worked with for 18 months, said colleagues called him Mr OCD because of his attention to safety.

'He was meticulous, pedantic, attentive and very safety conscientious. He was also a much loved member of our team,' she said.

'As traffic controllers, we know we are working in a high risk industry. There is nothing Ben or any of the workers on site could have done to prevent this tragedy.

'He had a shoulder closure set up and was hit by a car as he was standing at his ute. He didn't see it coming.'
A second teenager has died in a crash after he swerved to avoid hitting a wombat while driving without a license when the car flipped and killed his 14-year-old passenger.

Sean Lucas, 16, was hospitalised with critical head injuries after he swerved the Ford Festiva, hit an embankment and flipped at the Munghorn Gap Nature Reserve near Mudgee in NSW, shortly before midnight on Friday.

Police confirmed the driver died on Sunday about 11am at Westmead Hospital in Sydney's north-west.

His passenger Jack O'Malveney, 14, died at the scene.

Friends and family have been paying tribute to the teenagers on social media.

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16-year-old Sean Lucas (right) has died after he swerved to avoid hitting a wombat atMunghorn Gap Nature Reserve near Mudgee in NSW. His passenger Jack O'Malveney (left), 14, died at the scene

The 16-year-old unlicensed driver of the blue Ford Festiva died on Sunday morning about 11am after suffering critical head injuries in the smash (pictured)

'Two young boys gone way too soon,' one wrote on Facebook after hearing the news Sean had passed away.

The friend described the 16-year-old as 'one of the funniest, cheekiest boys I've ever come across'.

'You had an attitude but that's what made you you.'

Jack's relatives had shared their grief of losing their 'beautiful boy' on social media.

On Sunday Jack's devastated family paid tribute to their 'beautiful boy' as they fundraised for money to pay for his funeral.

His mother Leonie set up a GoFundMe page to pay for the ceremony, describing it as: 'To help raise money to bury my 14 year old son who died tragically in a car accident this morning.'

Jack O'Malveney (above) died in the early hours of Saturday morning at the Munghorn Gap Nature Reserve, near Mudgee in NSW when the car he was a passenger in rolled on to its roof after swerving off the road

Jack's devastated family has begun fundraising to pay for his funeral. Above, the 14-year-old in an image shared by relatives

On Saturday NSW Police confirmed Jack had died at the scene while Sean was airlifted to hospital.

'About 12am (Saturday 11 June 2016), emergency services were called to Munghorn Gap on Wollar Road, Munghorn, about 35km north-east of Mudgee, following reports of a single-vehicle crash.

'Officers from Mudgee Local Area Command attended and located a Ford Festiva on its roof,' said a spokesman.

'The driver of the car, a 16-year-old boy, who was unlicensed, was treated by NSW Ambulance Paramedics before being taken to Mudgee Airport where he was air lifted to Westmead Hospital with life-threatening injuries.

'The passenger, a 14-year-old boy, died at the scene.'

Their car rolled on to its roof and was almost 'flattened', a witness told Sydney Morning Herald.

Mourners have raised more than $3,500 to pay for the teenager's funeral after his mother's appeal online.

Police from the Metropolitan Crash Investigation Unit are continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident.

A report will be prepared for the Coroner.

Police are urging anyone with information in relation to this incident to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

The 16-year-old is believed to have swerved to avoid hitting a wombat before the car hit an embankment and flipped
The father of a South Australian woman who was murdered by her husband has welcomed the killer's death in jail.

Mother-of-three Jill Hughes, 36, was bashed to death by Anthony Flanigan in 1995 in the English county of Lancashire.

Flanigan was serving a life sentence at HM Prison Gartree when he was found dead in his cell last month, aged 75.

Mother-of-three Jill Hughes, 36, (pictured) was bashed to death by Anthony Flanigan in 1995 in the English county of Lancashire

Ms Hughes' father, John, said he would celebrate his death.

'The worms are happy feeding on him in the cemetery,' Mr Hughes told News Corp after he was informed on Friday that Flanigan had died.

'I believe in justice. If you do the crime you do the time. Like my daughter (Jill's sister) said, every dog has its day.'

Ms Hughes' body was found in the back seat of Flanigan's car on Australia Day 21 years ago as he sat in the drivers seat.

Their relationship had turned sour and Ms Hughes wanted to return to Adelaide with her three children.

'Now he will never get out of prison ... he's with the devil now,' Mr Hughes told News Corp.

'As a Buddhist I don't normally drink, but I will have a couple of beers.'
Airline bosses say they are 'disappointed' by the leniency of a sentence handed to a drunk passenger who hit a pilot in the face after she was asked to leave the plane.

Nicola Nyamanhindi, 30, struck the pilot last month after being asked to leave the afternoon easyJet flight to Paphos from Manchester Airport.

After admitting assault, Nyamanhindi was given a suspended jail sentence and walked free from Trafford Magistrates Court.

A spokesman for the airline said: 'EasyJet is pleased that Nicola Nyamanhindi has been found guilty of assault, but is disappointed by the leniency of the sentence, given the severity of the incident.

EasyJet bosses are disappointed that Nicola Nyamanhindi, 30, who punched a pilot in the face after being asked to leave the flight, has walked free with a suspended jail sentence after admitting assault this week

'EasyJet is however encouraged that the police prosecuted and will continue to do everything in its power to support bringing such cases to court.

'We take the issue of disruptive passengers very seriously and will not tolerate abusive or threatening behaviour.

'Our employees should not have to endure this kind of behaviour and so we always push for prosecution.

'The safety and wellbeing of passengers and crew is always easyJet's priority.'

Nyamanhindi was found 'unresponsive' as cabin crew prepared to take-off from the airport in May.

Fearing she was 'under the influence', they called the captain, who found her with her eyes closed and mouth open, and was unable to rouse her despite tapping her on the shoulder up to '12 times'.

When Nyamanhindi finally opened her eyes, she was asked to join the captain on the aircraft steps, the court heard.

The passenger then hurled a tirade of swear words at the pilot, before lunging forward to strike his nose and mouth.

The flight manager caught the defendant in a bear hug, where she continued to threaten and abuse staff before she was arrested.

As a result of the incident, the captain, who was left with a 'tingling nose', was replaced by another pilot and the flight was delayed by two hours.

Nyamanhindi pleaded guilty to assault and was bailed on conditions, including no foreign travel.

But she was caught just days later boarding a flight to Paphos from Birmingham Airport and was arrested.

Defending, Rachael Good said her client was remorseful, had mental health issues and was a previous victim of domestic violence.

She said Nyamanhindi was currently homeless and needed help with anger management.

The flight from Manchester to Paphos was delayed for some two hours last month following the assault, as a replacement pilot had to be found

'She was very tired and is not at her best when she is woken up,' she added.

Nyamanhindi, whose record includes two assaults on police officers, was sentenced to 12 weeks' jail suspended for two years.

As Nyamanhindi was sentenced this week, the court heard a statement from the pilot.

He said: 'This incident seems to be typical of the nature and personality of a small amount of people travelling today.

'It's a small minority of passengers that cause these problems and these incidents of antisocial abuse and violent behaviour are increasing and have caused a change to company policy and staff training.

'I have become far more aware that the threat to cabin crew safety has increased over the last few years.

'Neither they or I should have to endure verbal or physical abuse of any type, or disruptive behaviour towards anybody.'
Appalled to find laws only recognise adultery between man and woman

The ex-wife of a gay rugby star is calling for same-sex affairs to be recognised by divorce laws after she was told she could not put down 'suspected adultery' as the reason she split with her husband.

Sara Wilson was shocked when she was told by rugby league player Keegan Hirst that he knew he was gay throughout their marriage - and flirted with other men online.

Despite his denials, the 31-year-old was convinced his betrayal had gone further and filed for divorce.

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Sara Wilson (pictured) was shocked when she was told by rugby league player Keegan Hirst that he knew he was gay throughout their marriage

But when it came to citing the split on the grounds of his suspected adultery - although there was no evidence of infidelity - she was stunned to discover that the law says adultery can only happen between a man and a woman.

She told Sheron Boyle for the Sunday Mirror: 'I've always believed he cheated. The law now accepts same-sex marriage.

'Divorce needs to adjust for same-sex affairs.'

Sara added: 'The law is out of sync with 21st century life.'

Instead, the couple reluctantly agreed to divorce in January for 'unreasonable behaviour'.

Now the mother-of-three is campaigning for a change in the divorce rules, demanding that the process should be the same for all marriages.

Coming out in August last year, Keegan - captain of West Yorkshire side Batley Bulldogs - said the relief of finally coming out felt like 'letting out a long breath that I've held in for a long time'

Keegan Hirst (pictured) came out as gay in August last year - and said it felt like 'letting out a long breath that I've held in for a long time'

But the 28-year-old - who is the first openly-gay British rugby leauge pro - has always maintained that he did not cheat.

'LAW IS OUT OF SYNC': WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT ADULTERY AS A REASON FOR DIVORCE There are five grounds for filing for divorce - these include adultery, unreasonable behaviour and desertion. A husband or wife has to have had sex with somebody of the opposite sex and their partner can no longer bear to live with them for adultery to be given as a reason. Adultery does not apply to same-sex affairs or if a partner has continued to live with their other half for more than six months after finding out about infidelity. Living apart for more than two years can also be a reason for divorce - but both need to agree. If couples live apart for more than five years the divorce can be granted even if one disagrees. Advertisement

Keegan's spokesman said: 'He has no interest in discussing, publicly, the breakdown of his marriage.

'His main priority now is working together with Sara to bring up their children.'

Sara revealed she has begun to date, but is struggling to trust another man.

And she insists that would feel the same if her husband had left her for a woman.

Last year, Keegan explained that he has had girlfriends since he was a teenager but began to interested in men when he was 15 years old.

Growing up on a council estate and quitting sixth form to pursue his rugby league career, he says he was 'in denial' about his homosexuality, convincing himself that deep down he was straight.

He said last year: 'I suppose there's been feelings there for a while but I was convinced it would go away and told myself it was just a phase.'
A body has been found during the search for a 53-year-old angler who didn't return from a trip to a popular fishing spot.

The man, believed to be of Asian descent, reportedly went missing from Dolphin Bay at Whale Beach, about 40km north of Sydney, overnight.

When he didn't return home to his family, they raised the alarm, and his son later found an empty car on Sunday, according to Surf Life Saving New South Wales.

A rescue helicopter and police at the scene in Dolphin Bay, where a man's body was found on Sunday morning during the search for a missing father aged 53

After the missing man's family raised the alarm, rescue crews located a body at the scene about 11am on Sunday morning

Rescue crews located a body at the scene about 11am on Sunday morning and were in the process of recovering it, a police spokesman said.

The man was not wearing a lifejacket and the circumstances under which he entered the water were not known.

Lifesaving manager Andy Kent said it was another sad but preventable rock fishing tragedy.

'A dangerous surf warning was issued yesterday and as always we remind rock fishers to check forecasts, don't fish alone and above all else wear a lifejacket.'

A crime scene was established and police are investigating.

Police said in a statement initial investigations indicated the death wasn't suspicious.

The body had not yet been formally identified on Sunday evening.

A report is being prepared for the coroner.

The man was not wearing a lifejacket and the circumstances under which he entered the water were not known (stock image of Dolphin Bay)
Fidell Glanville, 28, was caught on camera approaching the 20-year-old, before flooring him to the groun

A man who knocked out a 20-year-old nightclubber with a single punch during an altercation has been jailed.

Fidell Glanville, 28, was caught on camera approaching the 20-year-old, before flooring him to the ground.

The CCTV footage, taken outside Club X in Walsall, West Midlands., shows the altercation as the pair crossed paths at 3am on November 15.

The man is instantly knocked out by Glanville's 'cowardly, opportunistic' blow.

Detectives examined club CCTV shortly after the fight, and arrested Ryan Norton, 25, and Darren Abrahams, 37, as they loitered at the scene.

And Glanville was detained from his home in West Bromwich, on 11 January having been identified as the principle attacker.

In police interviews, he apologised for the violence and claimed he lashed out after being 'disrespected' by the man as they waited in a nightclub queue.

The trio of thugs all admitted violent disorder at Wolverhampton Crown Court on Tuesday (7/6).

Glanville was jailed for 32 months, while Norton from Wednesbury, West Midlands and Abrahams, of no fixed address, were both handed 26-month prison terms.

Detective Constable Jason Fowler, from West Midlands Police Force CID, said: 'The ferocity of this attack was truly shocking. While the first victim was set upon by a group of men who kicked, punched and stamped on his head as he lay on the floor, the second victim was knocked out cold before he hit the floor by a cowardly and opportunistic blow from Glanville.

Footage shows the moment Glanville struck out at his 20-year-old victim outside Club X in Walsall, West Midlands

Glanville hit his victim with full force and knocked him out with a single punch, a court heard

Ryan Norton and Darren Abrahams were also jailed for an attack on another man earlier on the same night

'Unable to defend himself or break his fall, his head narrowly missed a kerb. This could easily have been a very serious head injury and or even fatal.

'Fortunately both men have made a full recovery and I am pleased that their attackers have been imprisoned.
Two people have been injured in a carpark explosion after a gas tank ruptured in the boot of the car when the driver lit a cigarette.

It's believed the car burst into flames at the Fairfield RSL carpark in Sydney's west after a nine kilogram LPG tank ruptured in the car boot about 5.30pm on Sunday, police confirmed.

A 15-year-old boy who was passing-by was rushed to Liverpool Hospital with critical injuries and has been placed in an induced coma.

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A LPG gas tank has exploded in the boot of a car at Fairfield RSL in Sydney's west on Sunday night

The driver of the vehicle was also taken to Liverpool Hospital and is being treated for serious burns.

'It's believed a gas bottle, which was in the boot, exploded after the driver lit a cigarette,' NSW police said in a statement.

Footage of the explosion reported by Seven News shows flames billowing from the carpark.

The gas tanks are commonly used to fuel camping stoves.

Officers from Fairfield Local Area Command have established a crime scene and are investigating the incident.

Inquiries are continuing.

Police are urging anyone with information in relation to this incident to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

Two people have been injured in the flames. One was rushed to hospitalised in a critical condition while a passerby was treated at the scene

Footage of the explosion shows flames billowing from the carpark

The carpark at Anzac Avenue in Fairfield in Sydney's west, where the explosion took place outside the RSL
Hundreds of Muslim asylum seekers are converting to Christianity to avoid being deported, say senior Church of England clerics.

Some of the arrivals, who are mainly from Iran, are said to be asking for baptisms to exploit a loophole in the immigration system.

Once converted, they argue that their new faith would expose them to persecution  including torture and possible execution  if they were to be returned home.

Pastor Gottfried Martens, right, baptises a group of Iranians converting to Christianity in Berlin in August 2015

Church leaders confirmed a spike in the number of Muslims who wanted to convert to a new religion and said baptism can significantly enhance an asylum seekers prospects of being given sanctuary.

The Very Rev Dr Peter Wilcox, Dean of Liverpool, said his cathedral had baptised about 200 refugees in the past four years.

He likened the situation to one where parents baptise their children to boost their chance of getting a place at a church school. He told the Sunday Times: Mixed motives are not unheard of.

God alone knows the persons heart and we try to be consistent about that and not to set the bar at one height for middle-class aspiring parents seeking the best for the education of their children and the bar at another height for converts from Islam looking for asylum.

Refuse Jemima baptism and she goes to school somewhere else. Refuse Mohammed baptism and he gets deported.

Dr Wilcox said: Holding a baptism certificate significantly enhances the strength of their claim for asylum.

Once you are a baptised Christian it is really not conceivable that you would be deported to a Muslim country. Immigration judges would take into account a priests covering letter giving more information about the asylum seekers participation in Christian worship and service.

Some asylum seekers believe converting to Christianity will improve their chances of remaining in Europe

Prospective converts in Liverpool have to attend a five-week baptism course and are expected to attend services, said Dr Wilcox. He added: I cant think of a single example of somebody who already had British citizenship converting from Islam to Christianity.

Around 300 Muslims have been baptised at Liverpools Elim Pentecostal church since 2010  with about 100 using their new faith to help them stay in the UK.

The Rev Lionel Canter said: I can understand people questioning how genuine it is because they can be integral to being able to stay in the country. Its a valid question.

Mike Coates, vicar of All Saints Church in Kensington, Liverpool, said about 50 Muslim asylum seekers had converted to Christianity over the past three years. He said officials from the UK Border Agency contacted him to check on individual asylum seekers and insisted that he told them, We will not lie for you.

Muslims have also been reportedly converting to Christianity at churches in Stockton-on-Tees in Co Durham, Wakefield in Yorkshire and Newcastle.

In Germany last month, more than 80 men and women from Iran and Afghanistan converted to Christianity at a mass baptism in Hamburg. There is no suggestion that any of the British clergy involved in the baptisms of Muslims acted improperly or failed to make honest judgments over the beliefs of those they converted.

The Home Office said converting to Christianity did not automatically result in a successful asylum claim.

A spokesman said: A document such as a baptism certificate would not automatically lead to a conversion claim being accepted as genuine but is given appropriate weight when considering all the evidence.
A domestic abuse victim who called police was directed to her local Sharia council instead.

Another woman who told West Yorkshire police that her ex had threatened to flee to Pakistan with their daughter was also advised to contact her Sharia council.

Sharia law lays down a series of rules and guidelines for Muslims.

In Britain there are around 85 Sharia courts which rule in family and inheritance disputes between Muslims who agree to be bound by the decisions.

In Britain there are around 85 Sharia courts which rule in family and inheritance disputes between Muslims who agree to be bound by the decisions (file picture)

It comes as Home Secretary launched an independent inquiry into the 'harm' caused by Sharia law courts operating in Britain.

It will focus on several issues, including the treatment of women in divorce, domestic violence and custody cases.

West Yorkshire Police told the Sun on Sunday it had 'thoroughly investigated' both complaints but no crimes were recorded and no arrests were made.

A long-awaited independent review of Sharia law will examine how it can cause 'harm' in communities (file pic)

A spokesman added: 'It is not a common practice. We recognise them only for matters that are not for the police.'

Conservative MP Philip Davies told the newspaper: 'The police shouldn't be advising people to go to Sharia councils at all.'

Both incidents occurred in 2014 in the Kirklees borough, which includes the towns of Huddersfield and Dewsbury.
Smith has been a forensic patient since 2005 over sex, burglary offences

He was on unescorted leave to visit a gym and did not return on Friday

Craig Smith, 42, was picked up by police in Ringwood on Saturday evening

A Victorian sex offender who escaped from a forensic mental health hospital while out on unescorted leave has been found.

Craig Smith, 42, told officers at the Thomas Embling Hospital in Fairfield he was going to the gym at 1pm on Friday, but failed to return.

He was found about 25km west in Ringwood on Saturday evening and returned to hospital without issue.

Craig Smith, 42, did not return to Thomas Embling Hospital, in Melbourne's northwest after taking unescorted leave to go to the gym on Friday

He was found on Saturday evening in Ringwood, 25km west of the hospital, where it has been reported he may have family

Police located the man after responding to calls from the public. It is believed he had family in the area, reported The Age.

Smith has been held at the hospital as a forensic patient since 2005 over sex and burglary offences.

He was found after police responded to calls from the public.

The 42-year-old is a forensic patient subject to a custodial supervision order at the hospital and has enjoyed unescorted community leave for more than 10 years.

Thomas Embling Hospital is a high-security forensic mental health hospital with 116 beds.

Most patients come to the facility from the prison system or have been court-ordered to undergo psychiatric assessment and/or care and treatment.
Police have arrested a man accused of assaulting a woman and kidnapping his 21-month-old daughter in South Australia.

Benjamin Austin, 32, and his 21-month-old daughter Akira were found safe and well at a house in Port Augusta.

It is alleged that Austin assaulted a woman that was known to him before leaving the house with Akira on Saturday.

South Australian police arrested Benjamin Austin (right) who allegedly assaulted a woman known to him and proceeded to kidnap his young daughter Akira (left), who was found safe and well

Austin has been charged with two counts of aggravated assault and four counts of breaching an intervention order.

He has been refused bail and will appear in the Port Augusta Magistrates Court on Tuesday.

Authorities previously said that they held concerns for the toddler's welfare.

Austin and his daughter come from Port Augusta three hours north of Adelaide in South Australia that has a population of around 13,200 people.
Park officials in India said the pair 'overpowered' the female using teeth

The animals had turned on her after she had refused to mate with them

A female rhino was gored to death by two male rhinos after she refused to mate with them.

The huge animal was attacked and killed at the Jaldapara National Park in India.

She was roaming along when the two bull rhinos first tried to chase her off their territory.

The female rhino was gored to death by two male rhinos after for refusing to mate with them in India (file photo)

Known for its population of one-horned rhinos, the female had also lost her calf only a few days before the heartbreaking incident, according to Indileak.

An official for the park said to the Hindustan Times: 'The dead rhino, which was hardly five or six year old sub-adult, had suffered injuries as dominant male rhinos overpowered her for mating.

'Rhinos have sharp and strong teeth, and they often attack female if they are denied mating.'

A ranger on site reportedly tried to break up the attack by firing his rifle into the air - but failed.

Experts believe the attack had more to do with the female foraging in the territory of the males and said these types of attacks occur during the summer when food is harder to come by.

However, most often the weaker animal will escape to safety rather than continue to fight.

The attack comes after three rhinos were killed in a lightening strike in nearby Gorumara National Park.

A 27-year-old female, a 14-year-old calf and a baby rhino were found dead in May after they were struck by a bolt that 'shook the ground' for miles, officials said.

The rhinoceros can be found only in certain parts of north India and Nepal.

It has become an endangered species after extensive poaching for its horn, which is often used in Chinese and Vietnamese traditional medicine.

There are currently only around 2,000 Indian rhinos left in the wild.
Hillary Clinton is opening her general election campaign by casting herself as a uniting force against the divisiveness of GOP rival Donald Trump.

The first general election ad released by her campaign splices clips of Trump threatening protesters and mocking a disabled reporter with scenes of Clinton visiting factories, greeting diverse groups of voters and stepping off a plane as secretary of state.

She ends the one-minute spot saying: 'What kind of America do we want to be? Dangerously divided or strong and united? I believe we are always stronger together.'

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Hillary Clinton's first general election ad casts the former secretary of state as the adult in the room - as she listen to voters and tour factories throughout its scenes

Donald Trump is shown in Hillary Clinton's new ad making fun of a reporter, who happens to be physically disabled. Trump said he was animating the reporter 'groveling' not making fun of his disability

In the new ad, her first spot of the general election, Hillary Clinton is shown meeting voters, touring factories and traveling the world in a U.S. government plane

Donald Trump is shown looking upon an altercation at a campaign rally and saying, 'knock the crap out of him. Seriously'

Aides say Clinton will make a similar argument on Monday in Cleveland before heading to Pittsburgh and Wisconsin for campaign events.

The ad, titled 'Who We Are,' will air in battleground states starting on Thursday.

On Sunday morning, Trump pushed back on the content of the ad tweeting, 'Clinton made a false ad about me where I was imitating a reporter GROVELING after he changed his story,' Trump contended.

'I would never Moch disabled,' he continued, misspelling the word mock.

'Shame!' Trump said.

The general election race is taking off in a hurry with both Trump and Clinton campaigning in battleground states this week.

Yesterday, Trump visited Pittsburgh, a major population center in the purple state of Pennsylvania, a state that Trump thinks he can flip from the Obama years by getting tons of turnout from working class whites.

Hillary Clinton will run the ad in battleground states and plans to travel to a number of them in the next 10 days including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and North Carolina

Donald Trump rebutted the ad this morning by suggesting that he wasn't making fun of a reporter's disability and instead was mocking a reporter 'groveling.' Trump also misspelled the word 'mock'

Clinton plans to head to the city too, on Tuesday, while visiting Ohio on Monday and Wisconsin on Wednesday, with President Obama officially joining her on that trip.

On Monday, Trump is planning to deliver a major anti-Clinton speech, which will follow the money of Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to suggest that the couple has been enriching themselves through their political connections.

He then scoots to Greensboro, North Carolina Tuesday, while she hits up North Carolina and Virginia too, at the beginning of next week.

To counter Trump's anti-Clinton speech, the former secretary of state is planning her own address, which she will deliver sometime later this month.

That address will focus on the economy and Clinton plans to bash Trump's business past.

That speech will be modeled off of her remarks in San Diego, where she'd quote a foreign policy prescription of Trump's and then have a good laugh.

Her newest ad embraces that tactic too, presenting Trump as an unfit leader, while characterizing Clinton as the adult in the room.

'Today we face a choice about we are as a nation,' it begins.

Then the footage of Trump begins to roll: 'I'd like to punch him in the face, 'I'll tell ya.'

'Do we help each other?' Clinton continued.

And then Trump again, 'knock the crap out of him. Seriously.'

'Do we respect each other?' Clinton said in the spot.

The campaign then inserted the footage of Trump mocking the New York Times reporter.

'I know what I believe. It's wrong to pit people against each other. We've had enough partisan division and gridlock already,' Clinton said.

'It's time to unite behind some simple, common goals  to build a strong economy that works for everyone and not just those at the top. An economy that create jobs that families can really live on.'

'To work with our allies around the world and keep our families safe at home,' she continued.

'To give every man, woman and child the chance to live up to their God given potential,' she said.

She used Trump's image a final time in the ad, while asking, 'What kind of America do we want to do be?'
China's 'Doctor Frankenstein' has revealed he is building a team for the world's first full body transplant on a living human being and will operate 'when we are ready'.

In an interview with the New York Times, Dr Xiaoping Ren spoke about the details for his plan, which involves removing two heads from two bodies and connecting the donor body to the recipient's head.

A metal plate would be inserted to stabilise the new neck, while the spinal cord nerve endings would be saturated in a gluelike substance to help regrowth.

Earlier this year, Dr Ren shocked the world when it was revealed his team had carried out a successful head transplant on a monkey  and that it lived for 20 hours.

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT: SCROLL DOWN FOR IMAGE OF THE MONKEY

Dr Xiaoping Ren has revealed he is building a team for the world's first head transplant on a live human being

Although compared to Dr Frankenstein by China's own state media, Dr Ren, who assisted in the first hand transplant in the US in 1999, remains unapologetic in his ambition.

But Dr Ren's plans have come under fire by other leading medical experts.

Dr Huang Jiefu, former deputy minister of health in China said the plan was ethically 'impossible'. He said: 'How can you put one person's head on another's body?'

Cong Yali, a medical ethicist at Peking University, condemned Dr Ren for attracting negative attention to China.

'I don't want to see China's scholars, transplant doctors and scientists deepening the impression that people have of us internationally, that when Chinese people do things they have no bottom line - that anything goes.'

Meanwhile Dr Abraham Shaked, a professor of surgery and the director of the Penn Transplant Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, said the plan was 'stupid rather than crazy'.

He added: 'Crazy means it may be done. Stupid should not be done.'

Gruesome: Dr Ren shocked the world when it was revealed his team had carried out a successful head transplant on a monkey  and that it lived for 20 hours

In March, Dr Ren told The Mail On Sunday that his team was on the verge of a historic breakthrough.

'We are getting closer to our goal of a human head transplant,' he said. 'We can't say it will happen tomorrow  but I am not ruling out next year.'

In 2015, the Chinese government invested 150 billion in scientific research as part of a drive become a world leader in science.

President Xi Jinping has ordered scientists to 'innovate' as their part in fulfilling what he calls the Chinese Dream.

There is also no shortage of willing volunteers, including paralysed Russian Valery Spiridonov, 31, who has with severe muscular atrophy.

China's state media has compared Dr Xiaoping Ren to the fictional Dr Frankenstein (as illustrated in a film still)

He said: 'A human head transplant will be a new frontier in science. Some people say it is the last frontier in medicine. It is a very sensitive and very controversial subject but if we can translate it to clinical practice, we can save a lot of lives.'

Prior to operating on a monkey, Dr Ren had conducted operations on 1,000 mice  sometimes grafting a black mouse's head on to a white mouse's body. None has survived for more than a day.

According to Dr Ren, the transplant on a monkey takes 20 hours, and he expects a human head transplant to take 30 to 40 hours.
RAF performed fly-past for the Royal Family in London as part of Queen's official 90th birthday celebrations

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These are the amazing bird's-eye view pictures that show how incredible an RAF fly-past looks from above.

The RAF performed a tribute to the Queen yesterday as part of her official 90th birthday celebrations, delighting and impressing a crowd of royals on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, including Princess Charlotte.

But as these pictures taken by a pilot prove, the view from the top was even more stunning, with the Red Arrows captured on camera blazing a trail across London's skyline.

More planes and helicopters than in previous years took to the skies over some 45 members of the Royal Family gathered on the Palace's balcony.

Wave after wave of military aircraft - from a Spitfire and Hurricane, made famous during the Battle of Britain, to modern fighters like the Typhoon - roared overhead with the Red Arrows trailing red, white and blue smoke to end the display.

The Red Arrows are pictured from above blazing a trail across the London skyline during an RAF fly-past for the Queen's birthday

One of the flight crew is pictured glancing out at London below as 29 RAF craft, including helicopters, fighter jets and spy planes, took part in the fly-past

An RAF pilot took the impressive images which showed the planes soaring above a crowd of thousands celebrating the event outside Buckingham Palace, pictured

This image, taken from with another Red Arrows jet, shows the incredible views of London the flight crew enjoyed during the fly-past

Princess Charlotte made her official debut on the balcony and it was the 13-month-old's first appearance in public since posing with the Queen and her other grandchildren and great-grandchildren for a special royal portrait in April - and featured her first ever royal wave.

The tiny gesture sent the Internet into meltdown, with hundreds of Twitter users sharing adoring posts about the 'total cutie'.

One Twitter user wrote: 'Princess George and Princess Charlotte are the most adorable things'. Another said the royal siblings were 'too precious'.

At one point, Kate gave her daughter a little kiss on the forehead, while the Prince of Wales beamed at his young granddaughter.

George chatted away happily to William. The Duke, who was wearing his red tunic uniform as Colonel of Irish Guards, crouched down and pointed out the helicopters, led by the Chinook, in the distance.

The prince, who is three next month, appeared to sneeze at one point, covering his forehead with his arm afterwards.

In excitement, he banged the top of the balcony with both hands as he watched the flypast.

First of many: Princess Charlotte, pictured with father Prince William, right, brother Prince George, centre, and mother the Duchess of Cambridge, left, delighted people across the globe when she performed her first royal wave from Buckingham Palace

Up in the air: Prince George, centre, appeared to give the planes a salute while his 'gan-gan', second right, waved at the pilots soaring overhead. Also pictured (from left): Prince Charles, the Duchess of Cambridge, Princess Charlotte, Prince William, Prince Harry and Prince Philip

Family affair: Princess Charlotte (centre) made her first public appearance since April on the balcony alongside (from left) Princess Anne, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, her mother Kate, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Harry, brother Prince George, father Prince William, the Queen, Prince Edward, Prince Philip and Sophie, Countess of Wessex

Around 45 members of the royal family took to the front of the palace including the Princess Royal, Zara Phillips and husband Mike Tindall, Peter Phillips, the Duke of York, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, and the Earl and Countess of Wessex and their children Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor and Viscount Severn.

Before the fly past the Queen attended the Trooping the Colour ceremony at Horse Guards Parade, attended by 1,400 soldiers, 200 horses and more than 400 musicians.

The military event began at Horse Guards Parade at 10am and has been part of the monarch's birthday celebrations since the mid-1700s and will feature a fly-past by the RAF at around 1pm.

The Queen was dressed in bright green and was taken to Horse Guards Parade in a carriage alongside husband Prince Philip, who wore a large bearskin.

Prince Harry accompanied the Duchess of Cambridge and the Duchess of Cornwall in another carriage, who both looked glamorous dressed all in white.

In the pink: Princess Charlotte, centre, made her balcony debut held by her mother Kate, left, and wearing a beautiful pink dress, while Prince George, right watched the planes eagerly

Famous flyers: The Red Arrows, pictured, were among the planes performing stunts during the RAF fly-past over Buckingham Palace

Around 45 members of the royal family took to the front of the palace including the Princess Royal, Zara Phillips and husband Mike Tindall, Peter Phillips, the Duke of York, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, and the Earl and Countess of Wessex and their children Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor and Viscount Severn.

Before the fly past the Queen attended the Trooping the Colour ceremony at Horse Guards Parade, attended by 1,400 soldiers, 200 horses and more than 400 musicians.

The military event began at Horse Guards Parade at 10am and has been part of the monarch's birthday celebrations since the mid-1700s and will feature a fly-past by the RAF at around 1pm.

The Queen was dressed in bright green and was taken to Horse Guards Parade in a carriage alongside husband Prince Philip, who wore a large bearskin.

Prince Harry accompanied the Duchess of Cambridge and the Duchess of Cornwall in another carriage, who both looked glamorous dressed all in white.

Formation: A Sentinel R1 reconaissance plane, top, leads two Typhoon fighters, left and right, and an RC-135W Rivet Joint spy jet on the fly-past

Chopper: A RAF Chinook helicopter flies over London towards Buckingham Palace as part of the fly-past for the birthday celebration

Bird's-eye view: The full extent of the crowds turning out for the big day can be seen from high in the air above Buckingham Palace

The spectacle in Whitehall honoured the Queen's enduring ties with her Armed Forces and officially marked her milestone anniversary.

Cheers from the public in the Mall greeted the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh's arrival on Horse Guards Parade - Henry VIII's former jousting yard - where an audience of thousands were seated in stands.

The crowds were treated to the sight of the royal couple in a vintage carriage, Queen Victoria's 1842 ivory-mounted phaeton, and the imposing presence of The Sovereign's Escort, mounted troops from the Life Guards and Blues and Royals.

The procession included the royal colonels on horseback - the Prince of Wales, Colonel of the Welsh Guards, Princess Royal, Colonel of the Blues and Royals, and the Duke of Cambridge, Colonel of the Irish Guards.

On the parade ground in their famous scarlet tunics and bearskins were the Coldstream, Grenadier and Scots Guards - while the Irish Guards lined the Queen's processional route from Buckingham Palace.

The Queen in Green: The monarch appeared dressed in near neon green alongside Prince Philip in an open top carriage to begin the Trooping the Colour ceremony

Taking her place: The Queen left her carriage to take her seat on a dais where she watched the rest of the ceremony

Watching from the Duke of Wellington's old office that overlooks Horse Guards were members of the Royal Family including the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge who had arrived together in a carriage.

Kate looked chic in an Alexander McQueen coat and hat by Philip Treacy while Harry was dressed in his military uniform.

They were joined by the Duke of York and his daughters Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.

Trooping the Colour is an important social occasion for the Guardsmen taking part, and gives their wives, girlfriends, parents and other relatives the chance to celebrate the achievements of the young men and enjoy the spectacle.

The monarch first took the royal salute in 1951, when she deputised for her ill father George VI, and has continued receiving the mark of respect every year except 1955 when there was a national rail strike.

Her first duty was to inspect the long line of troops - wearing their famous red tunics and bearskin hats - from the Coldstream, Grenadier and Scots Guards.

As she travelled in Queen Victoria's 1842 ivory mounted phaeton carriage behind her on horseback and wearing ceremonial military uniform were the royal colonels Charles, Anne and William.

With her detailed knowledge of the ceremony the Queen cast an expert eye over the troops as she passed.

And then she was taken past the Sovereign's Escort - mounted troops from the Life Guards and Blues and Royals - the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery, who will late fire royal gun salutes, and the Mounted Band of the of the Household Cavalry.

Trooping: Nearly 1,500 soldiers in the Household division are involved today, lining up so they could be inspected by the monarch

Weekend of pomp and pageantry: Events including the Trooping the Colour on Saturday and a 10,000 people street party on The Mall on Sunday, will take place to celebrate the Queen's 90th birthday

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.

Over the decades, Britain has undergone major transformations from technological advances such as computers and supersonic flight to developments in society and the political landscape.

During her 64-year reign the monarch has been served by 12 prime ministers from Sir Winston Churchill to Mr Cameron, while Barack Obama is the 12th US president to hold office over the same period.

In preparation for the Trooping the Colour the Major General's Review kicked off from Buckingham Palace on May 28 in a vibrant display of pomp and pageantry.

More than 1,400 officers and men took part in the first of two rehearsals for the Queen's annual birthday parade, the Trooping the Colour, on June 11.
A new gadget can be used by criminals to clone up to 15 contactless bank cards a second - from victims who are simply standing nearby.

The hi-tech device steals details such as the card number and the person's name and address contained on the credit or debit card.

The scanner - called the Contactless Infusion X5 - extracts the information where it can be written onto blank cards, which can then be used by thieves to go on spending sprees.

A new gadget can be used by criminals to clone up to 15 contactless bank cards a second - from victims whoa re simply standing nearby (stock image)

Ready-made con kits, including the device, special software and 20 blank cards, are being sold on the streets of London and the south east for 500, according to the Daily Star Sunday.

The device is thought to be the first sold on the black market to specifically target the increasingly-popular contactless bank card.

The technology enables customers to pay for goods with a single tap of their card on a reader, without the need to provide a signature or enter their PIN number.

Card use is being boosted by the rising popularity of contactless tap and go payments, with mobile payment services such as Apple Pay making payments ever more convenient.

Industry experts predict that by 2025, notes and coins will be used for just one in four payments, while credit, debit and charge cards will account for more than half of all payments made.

The tipping point at which cash will no longer be king is expected to come in 2021, when it is predicted 14.5 billion debit card payments will be made, overtaking the 13 billion cash payments forecast for the first time.

The device is thought to be the first sold on the black market to specifically target the increasingly-popular contactless bank card (stock image)

Looking specifically at consumer payments, the average UK adult made 20 card payments per month in 2015, with around two payments per month being contactless.

By 2025 people are predicted to use a debit, credit or charge card virtually every day - at 30 times per month.

The UK Cards Association has said that contactless card spending topped 1.5 billion in the space of a month for the first time in March.
The bull gored Otero several times before he could be dragged to safety

Otero, known as El Gallo, was raced to hospital where he later died

People arcing face the bulls without any weapons and dodge their attacks

A 34-year-old man has been killed in Spain while practicing his bull fighting skills after the rampaging beast gored him in the heart.

The man was attempting the traditional skill of 'arcing', where contestants put their lives on the line by confronting bulls without any capes or swords but simply use lightning body movements such as flips and somersaults to avoid being attacked.

The award-winning Spaniard died when he slipped and fell in an enclosure. He was gored several times and suffered injuries which proved fatal.

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Juan Carlos Otero was killed in a bull ring about 90 miles north of Madrid, file photograph of a bull ring

The rampaging bull gored Otero several times piercing his heart after the 34-year-old slipped over (file photo)

Juan Carlos Otero, pictured, faced the rampaging bull without carrying any weapons to protect himself

The fiesta in La Parrilla in Valladolid was immediately suspended and two days of mourning called.

The dead man has been named as Juan Carlos Otero who was known as 'El Gallo'.

He was rushed to hospital in a critical condition where doctors attempted to operate but they were unable to save his life because the horn had pierced his heart.

Otero was well-known in the area for his bull dodging and he had taken part in a number of events, winning several trophies.

The Mayoress of La Parilla, Esperanza Toquero said it had been a case of misfortune because the victim slipped and fell in the enclosure whilst performing a trick he had done hundreds of time before. 'Arcing' involves bending the body backwards to avoid the horns.

She said the dead man had done this many times before but was left defenceless as the bull gored him several times.

Flags are being flown at half mast outside the town hall in La Parrilla where the rest of the bull runs were cancelled.

Otero performed 'arching' where a competitor leans away from the charging bull in La Parrilla, Valladolid

Otero was highly experienced in the bullring and had performed 'hundreds of times' according to well wishers

When in trouble, Otero would vault to safety over the protective barrier away from the rampaging bull

However, in his last bout, Otero slipped and was gored several times by the angry bull

The dead man came from Navalmanzano in the province of Segovia in Castilla y Leon where he worked as a blacksmith.

A spokesman for the local council said: 'We have declared a period of official mourning from this afternoon until tomorrow for the death of Juan Carlos Otero Blanco and share the pain of his loss.'

His distraught family and friends have posted a video of his bull dodging exploits on Youtube as a tribute.
Turner is set to be released in

Students and rights groups plan to demonstrate at Stanford University's commencement to express outrage over the 6-month jail sentence handed to Brock Turner (pictured), 20, who was convicted of sexual assault

Stanford students and rights organizations plan to demonstrate at the university's commencement on Sunday to express outrage over the six-month jail sentence handed to a former student convicted of sexual assault.

UltraViolet, a women's rights group, said it commissioned a plane to fly over Stanford's Palo Alto campus just ahead of graduation ceremonies with a banner reading: 'Protect Survivors. Not Rapists. #PerskyMustGo.'

The tag refers to Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky, who handed down what many consider to be an extraordinarily light sentence against former Stanford student-athlete Brock Turner, 20, for his conviction in a 2015 sexual assault.

The group submitted more than 800,000 signatures to the Commission on Judicial Performance's San Francisco offices Friday in an effort toward Persky's removal.

They also filed a formal misconduct complaint.

'Stanford students are justifiably outraged over a so-called justice system that protects privileged white rapists over the survivors of their crimes and nearly 900,000 UltraViolet members from California to Florida agree,' said Nita Chaudhary, co-founder of UltraViolet.

'With one in four women sexually assaulted while in college, we need judges that take rape seriously, and that's why Judge Persky should be removed from the bench.'

UltraViolet said it has also paid for a full page ad in The Stanford Daily's graduation issue inviting students and alumni to take a stand against rape and that bicycles carrying billboards calling for the judge's removal will accompany student protesters.

The bikes are a nod to two graduate students who were riding their bicycles when they confronted the freshman as he attacked the unconscious victim by a garbage bin.

'I sleep with two bicycles that I drew taped above my bed to remind myself there are heroes in this story. That we are looking out for one another,' the victim said in her statement to the court.

In addition, Stanford students said on social media that they planned to carry protest signs as they walk toward the prestigious university's commencement.

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UltraViolet, a women's rights group, said it commissioned a plane to fly over Stanford's Palo Alto campus just ahead of graduation ceremonies with a banner reading: 'Protect Survivors. Not Rapists. #PerskyMustGo. Activists holding signs calling for the removal of Judge Aaron Persky Friday

The group submitted more than 800,000 signatures to the Commission on Judicial Performance's San Francisco offices Friday in a symbolic effort for Persky's removal. They also filed a formal misconduct complaint. Pictured is Stanford University law professor Michele Landis Dauber during Friday protest

UltraViolet said it has also paid for a full page ad in The Stanford Daily's graduation issue inviting students and alumni to take a stand against rape and that bicycles carrying billboards calling for the judge's removal will accompany student protesters. Activists are pictured on Friday during protest

Protest organizers from UltraViolet have said online they want to see members of the Stanford community speak out against the sentence. The aim is to strike a blow against a culture on college campuses that they say discourages victims of sexual assault from coming forward. Activists pictured on Friday during protest

Protest organizers from UltraViolet have said online they want to see members of the Stanford community speak out against the sentence.

The aim is to strike a blow against a culture on college campuses that they say discourages victims of sexual assault from coming forward.

Turner's sentencing on June 2 gained international attention after a detailed letter that the victim had read aloud in court was posted online.

It describes the devastation the woman felt in being sexual assaulted while unconscious after partying.

Turner, who is from Dayton, Ohio, had claimed that the victim had been conscious when he attacked her and had signaled her consent by saying 'yeah'.

Turner's sentencing on June 2 gained international attention after a detailed letter that the victim had read aloud in court was posted online. It describes the devastation the woman felt in being sexual assaulted while unconscious after partying

Turner, who is from Dayton, Ohio, had claimed that the victim had been conscious when he attacked her and had signaled her consent by saying 'yeah'. But his claims were demolished after witnesses, including heroes Peter Jonsson and Carl-Fredrik Arndt, pointed out that the victim was motionless on the ground at the time

He also claimed that she had 'appeared satisfied' with the sexual contact - and claimed she moaned and clutched his shoulders after he began touching her.

However, his claims were demolished in court after witnesses, including heroes Peter Jonsson and Carl-Fredrik Arndt, pointed out that the victim was motionless on the ground at the time and could not be woken up.

A Stanford law professor is leading a signature-gathering drive to remove the judge from office for handing down the six-month sentence even though prosecutors had recommended six years.

Santa Clara County Assistant District Attorney James Gibbons-Shapiro told the San Jose Mercury News that his office does not have a legal basis to appeal the sentence because the judge was authorized by law to mete out the sentence he gave.

Some students have said on social media they would protest at 'wacky walk,' a Stanford tradition where students in costumes hold celebratory signs as they head toward graduation ceremonies, where documentary filmmaker Ken Burns is scheduled to be the keynote speaker.

Persky is legally unable to comment on the case because Turner is appealing his conviction, Santa Clara County court spokesman Joseph Macaluso has said.

Some media commentators have pushed back against criticism of Persky.

At Slate.com, legal writer Mark Joseph Stern this week described the sentence as too lenient, but wrote that recall efforts against Persky threaten judicial independence.

Turner, who was found guilty on three counts of rape, is currently incarcerated in Elmwood Jail, a minimum to medium security facility, in Milpitas, California.

Judge Aaron Persky (pictured) handed down what many consider to be an extraordinarily light sentence against former Stanford student-athlete Turner for his conviction in a 2015 sexual assault

Turner has been banned for life by USA Swimming and, as a result, is now ineligible for all major sporting competitions  among them, the Olympics. The attack took place on Stanford University's campus in Santa Clara County

However, Daily Mail Online revealed earlier this week that he will serve just three months of his sentence and is slated for release on September 2.

He has applied to serve his three-year probation term in his home state of Ohio.

Turner will also have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and complete a sex offender management program.

The 'lenient' sentence dished out to Turner has sparked outrage around the world and Judge Persky has since received death threats at work, and is the subject of a petition, signed by more than a million people, to have him recalled.

And the 39 people who wrote letters in support of Turner have also been subjected to a barrage of abuse.

Turner has also been banned for life by USA Swimming and, as a result, is now ineligible for all major sporting competitions  among them, the Olympics.




John Cleese (pictured) has declared he is voting for Britain to leave the EU and suggested killing European Commission President Jearn-Claude Juncker would be the best way of reforming the bloc

John Cleese has declared he is voting for Britain to leave the EU and suggested killing European Commission President Jearn-Claude Juncker would be the best way of reforming the bloc.

The Fawlty Towers and Monty Python star made his views on the EU referendum clear in a series of tweets last night.

He accused Mr Juncker of 'threatening' Britain and branded David Cameron's attempts at reform a failure as he plumped for an out vote on June 23.

Cleese said Britain had been 'swimming against the tide' in its bid to bring about change in Brussels, where bureaucrats had taken away 'any trace of democratic accountability'.

The prominent Liberal Democrat supporter said it was a 'sad' situation and appeared to address his message to party grandee Lord [Paddy] Ashdown, who is campaigning for Remain.

'If I thought there was any chance of major reform in the EU, I'd vote to stay in. But there isn't. Sad. Sorry, Paddy,' he tweeted on Saturday.

Among the EU reforms suggested by the Monty Python star were 'give up the Euro, introduce accountability,and hang Jean-Claude Juncker'.

His pro-EU followers disagreed, with James Burns tweeting: '@JohnCleese Economically, we are better IN, according to the IMF, OECD, IFS, Bank of England, 90% of surveyed economies.'

Luke Reid said: '@JohnCleese It would be terrible to vote for democracy and sovereignty!!!!'

Meanwhile BBC2 historian Greg Jenner tweeted: 'John Cleese backs brexit? This doesn't surprise me, I just hope lovely Michael Palin hasn't done the same. That will be a sad day.'

Cleese dismissed suggestions that Britain would struggle to set up free trade deals after leaving the EU, writing: 'There's been trading for millenia...I can't see that stopping'. 'Why would that suddenly stop?' he added.

The Fawlty Towers and Monty Python star made his views on the EU referendum clear in a series of tweets last night, answering questions from his followers and even suggested the best way of reforming the EU would be to 'hang' Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president

His declaration of support for Brexit came ahead of another day of intense campaigning in the EU referendum with just 12 days to go.

David Cameron used a live television interview to warn taxes taxes could be hiked, pensions would be under threat and NHS funding could be damaged if Britain votes to leave the EU.

Cleese dismissed warnings by Remain campaigners that Britain's ability to trade would be damaged by a divorce from the EU, saying the country had done so for 'millennia'.

The Prime Minister said the squeeze on public finances after a vote to leave the EU would mean the Government would no longer be able to honour its key manifesto pledges.

The 'triple-lock' for pensioners - which guarantees the state pension rises by at least 2.5 per cent a year - could be reviewed, he warned, and the ring-fenced NHS budget could also be at risk, while George Osborne said spending on our Armed Forces could fall by up ot 1.5billion.

Mr Cameron warned that free perks given to pensioners such as bus passes and TV licences could also be scrapped as he pointed to independent analysis that predicts a Brexit vote could create a 40billion black hole in public finances.

His pro-EU followers disagreed, with James Burns tweeting: '@JohnCleese Economically, we are better IN, according to the IMF, OECD, IFS, Bank of England, 90% of surveyed economies'

Meanwhile BBC2 historian Greg Jenner tweeted: 'John Cleese backs brexit? This doesn't surprise me, I just hope lovely Michael Palin hasn't done the same. That will be a sad day'

He said the Government might also be forced to break another election pledge not to increase taxes.

But Brexit campaigners dismissed his 'baseless threat' and said it was a 'vindictive and desperate attempt to bully voters' into staying in the EU.

Mr Cameron's former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith told voters that policies such as an Australian-style points system would 'lead to a higher state pension'.

Senior Conservatives admit Downing Street is starting to panic over the outcome of the June 23 referendum and in a bid to relaunch the Remain campaign with 12 days to go, Mr Cameron will make a major intervention in a live TV interview on the Andrew Marr Show this morning.

It comes after a shock poll gave Brexit a 10-point lead, sending the Remain campaign into panic mode.

Stepping up his warnings of a Brexit vote this morning, Mr Cameron pointed to research by independent bodies such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which forecasts that the Treasury would face a 40billion budget deficit by 2020 if Britain leaves the EU.

He insisted he was not trying to scare people but instead warning of the 'cold reality' of leaving the EU.

David Cameron (pictured on the Andrew Marr Show) used a live television interview to warn taxes taxes could be hiked, pensions would be under threat and NHS funding could be damaged if Britain votes to leave the EU.

Voters believe the Vicar of Dibley and Mary Poppins would back remain and Captain Mainwaring would lead the charge for Brexit

Voters think the Remain campaign has the Vicar of Dibley and Mary Poppins on its side - while the Brexit camp would count Del Boy and Basil Fawlty among its ranks.

After a string of celebrities intervened over Brexit, YouGov asked its voting panel to predict which side of the divide 30 different British fictional characters would fall if they had a vote on June 23.

Many characters were seen strongly on one side or the other - but others such as Bob the Builder and call centre manager David Brent were seen as swing voters, finding it impossible to decide.

The pollster said it was not surprising to see 'establishment' figures such as Sir Humphrey Appleby, from Yes Minister, or James Bond perceived as being on the Remain campaign.

The Doctor - who as a Time Lord obviously is likely to know the result - is also seen as a Remainer.

Voters think the Remain campaign has the Vicar of Dibley and Mary Poppins on its side - while the Brexit camp would count Del Boy and Basil Fawlty among its ranks

By contrast hotelier Fawlty is seen as a leading Brexiteer, as is couch potato Jim Royale.

Captain Birdseye and Mr Bean are both seen as Brexit-backers - despite both having been compared to Jeremy Corbyn who insists he is now a fully paid up supporter of the EU.

YouGov said when it carried out the experiment ahead of the general election it found Basil Fawlty and Alan Partridge were perceived as Conservatives, whilst Del Boy and Jim Royale were both thought to back the Labour Party.

Celebrity endorsements have been mounting ahead of the referendum.

Abba star Bjorn Ulvaeus said it would make him 'emotional' if the UK decided that it did not want to stay in the union.

The plea, issued on the eve of the Eurovision song contest, delighted Remain campaigners who said it was a reminded that 'breaking up is hard to do'.

Actress Emma Thompson has also come out for the Remain campaign - and ran into criticism when she complained about Britain as a 'little cloud-bolted, rainy corner' of Europe.

Sir Michael Gambon - better known as Harry Potter's Dumbledore - made clear he also believed Britain was better off in the EU.

On the other side, Sir Michael Caine endorsed Brexit because 'you cannot be dictated to by faceless civil servants'.

And cricketing legend Sir Ian Botham appeared alongside Boris Johnson yesterday and said: 'The people coming into our country, they don't seem to have to come over with a job, any qualifications, just turn up.

'I think it will get cluttered.'
A vigilante community watch has hog-tied a knife-wielding teen and is holding him in a car boot until he confesses to his alleged crimes.

The Darwin Crime Rally group posted a picture on Saturday night of the teen face down on the pavement with rope around his neck and legs, next to a screwdriver and a large hunting knife.

The group said the teen turned on them with the knife when they caught him and his friends robbing a car and, sick of 'politically correct' policing, decided to take the law into their own hands.

A vigilante group in Darwin, NT, caught this man allegedly breaking into cars. They claim to have hog tied him and stashed him in a car boot after he threatened them with a large hunting knife

A spokesman for the group told Daily Mail Australia the teen was apprehended on Saturday night and had done 'a fair amount of sweating' since his capture.

He said the group would do 'whatever it takes' to keep the community safe from thugs.

The teen was captured by the group around 8pm in the Darwin suburb of Rosebery.

The group's Facebook post said: 'His mates got away, and until we find them, this guy's new home is in the boot of our car.

'We have tried the ''politically correct way'' of getting things done but nothing is happening.'

It said the captured teen was 'in for a long night' and he would not offend again.

The post added: 'If your kids are not wandering the street at night, carrying hunting knives, drinking in parks, or like this scum bag and his mates trying to raid cars and then trying to threaten people with a knife.... you have nothing to worry about.

'Get word out we aren't here to f*** around anymore.

'We will be taking action into our own hands from now on regardless of the outcome.'

Members of the anti-crime group were divided over the vigilantes' actions. One member said every town needed similar patrols to stay safe

Another member of the Darwin Crime Rally group pleaded for the vigilantes to calm down before someone was hurt

The vigilante group runs night time patrols and was created in February by Darwin residents Zac Wild and Josh Borell.

There is no suggestion that either Mr Wild or Mr Borell were involved in the hog-tying incident.

After creating the group, Mr Wild told the NT News: 'What really spurred me on to make this page was just looking all over and it seems that crime is all that people are talking about,' he said.

'I stepped in when my neighbour's home was being broken into during the day.'

At the time of its creation the group was condemned by NT Police, who said they were concerned residents felt the need to take action into their own hands.

In the original post to the page, the vigilantes say the hog-tied teen is in for a long night but they were confident he would not offend again

The group describes itself as 'for people who want to get involved and make the community a safer place, to show we are tired of the courts soft approach on criminals'.

Its members had mixed opinions on the apparently-illegal approach they were taking to crime prevention.

One member said: 'You'll end up arrested for this. It's highly illegal to hold someone against their will, let alone kidnap them.'

Another disagreed, saying: 'Every town should have a team to protect our neighbourhoods from scumbags like these.

'If the law can't do its job then we really have no option to keep our families safe.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Northern Territory Police who said they were aware of the incident.
Former President George HW Bush is quietly celebrating his 92nd birthday today with family on the Maine coast.

His celebration on Sunday will be low-key as he spends it with his wife, Barbara, and other family members who have gathered in Kennebunkport, his chief of staff said.

His son, former president George W Bush, is also in town and the family is planning to have a private dinner this evening.

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On social media, his granddaughter, Jenna Bush Hager, posted two photos on Instagram in honor of his birthday, including one of him holding Hager's daughter Poppy Louise, one of his four great-grandchildren

Another photo showed Mr Bush as he flashed his pearly whites and was sandwiched between Hager, who was giving him a kiss on the cheek, and her twin sister, Barbara Bush. 'One more. Birthday selfie with the man. 92!'

On social media, his granddaughter, NBC News correspondent Jenna Bush Hager, posted two photos on Instagram in honor of his birthday.

The first snap showed him flashing a big smile as he held Hager's daughter Poppy Louise, one of his four great-grandchildren.

The caption read: 'Poppy with Poppy Lou. Happy Birthday our Gamps! Xx.'

A second photo showed Mr Bush as he flashed his pearly whites and was sandwiched between Hager, who was giving him a kiss on the cheek, and her twin sister, Barbara Bush.

Mr Bush, the oldest living former president, has celebrated previous birthdays by skydiving, his latest jump when he turned 90 (pictured), and last year he had a low-key celebration

His son, former president George W Bush (pictured with him left), is in town for the celebration and the family is planning to have a private dinner this evening

The sweet snap was captioned: 'One more. Birthday selfie with the man. 92!'

Chief of Staff Jean Becker said the family patriarch is doing well after a scare last summer when he broke a bone in his neck in a fall at his home.

Mr Bush, the oldest living former president, has celebrated previous birthdays by skydiving, his latest jump when he turned 90, and last year he had a low-key celebration.

His birthday comes four days after his wife celebrated her 91st birthday on Wednesday with a small group of friends and family at the family's Maine compound.

Former first lady Barbara Bush blew out the candles on her birthday cake on Wednesday as she celebrated turning 91 years old with her family

In pictures posted by Hager, the Bush family matriarch was captured blowing out the candles on her humble birthday cake.

In another photo, Mrs Bush smiled for a picture with Hager's three-year-old daughter Mila.'

'Happiest birthday Great Ganny. Glad we spent it with you,' Jenna, the daughter of former president George W Bush, captioned the photo.

George HW Bush and his wife Barbara married in 1945 (left). They are seen in China in 1974 (right)

George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush are seen with their children in 1964. The couple's six children include former President George W. Bush, former Florida Gov Jeb Bush, Neil Bush, Marvin Bush, Dorothy Bush Koch, and the late Robin Bush, who died in 1953

Mrs Bush's quiet celebration on Wednesday was in contrast to a year ago, when her 90th birthday was celebrated with a star-studded gala featuring special guests like Amy Grant, Teri Hatcher, Reba McEntire and Michael W. Smith.

A Republican, Mr Bush served two terms as Ronald Reagan's vice president before being elected as the 41st US president in 1988.

The couple's six children include former President George W. Bush, former Florida Gov Jeb Bush, Neil Bush, Marvin Bush, Dorothy Bush Koch, and the late Robin Bush, who died in 1953.

They have 17 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Chief of Staff Jean Becker said the family patriarch (pictured with his wife Barbara in 2009) is doing well after a scare last summer when he broke a bone in his neck in a fall at his home

A Republican, Mr Bush (pictured in 2012 as he celebrated his 88th birthday) served two terms as Ronald Reagan's vice president before being elected as the 41st US president in 1988
But in Trump's fight back, he says : 'I would NEVER mock disabled'

Donald Trump's attempt to attack Hillary Clinton for her first general election advert, fell flat on its face after he tweeted a massive typo.

The advert, entitled Who We Are, spends the first few seconds parading Trump's failed public experiences - in particular the now-notorious moment he mocks a disabled reporter, making exaggerated jerking movements with his arms.

But what was clearly meant as a cutting retort turned into a blunder after the billionaire businessmen - known for his inept social media skills - made a massive typo in his tweet, writing 'Moch' instead of 'mock'.

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The advert, entitled Who We Are, spends the first few seconds parading Trump's failed public experiences - in particular the now-notorious moment he mocks a disabled reporter, making exaggerated jerking movements with his arms.

Pictured above, the disabled reporter that Trump is believed to have mocked during a rally

But what was clearly meant as a cutting retort fell flat on its face after the billionaire businessmen - known for his inept social media skills - made a massive typo in his tweet

Trump wrote: 'Clinton made a false ad about me where I was imitating a reporter GROVELING after he changed his story. I would NEVER Moch disabled. Shame!'

And his open disdain for journalists who he claims constantly report inaccuracies about both himself and his campaign, adds irony to insult.

The tweet was corrected 20 minutes later with 'Moch' changed to 'mock'.

This is not the first time the Clinton campaign has used this incident as ammunition against the presumptive Republican nominee.

In a New Hampshire election video made by the super PAC backers Priorities USA, entitled Grace, the incident is the focus once again, this time including the perspective of a family with a disabled daughter.

In Clinton's first advert , she says voters face a choice about who we are as a country and asks, 'Do we respect each other? Do we help each other? Do we stand together?'

Pictures of Grace, a girl born with spina bifida are shown as father Chris Glaros comments: 'When I saw Donald Trump mock someone with a disability, it showed me his soul.

'It showed me his heart. And I didn't like what I saw.'

This depiction of Trump will likely prove to be a running theme from his opposition's campaign, and appears to be something that resonates with voters.

The video was deemed highly effective when it was tested before various audiences, according to the New York Times.

Priorities USA put $4.5 million behind it for its first week on air but it is unclear whether this line of attack will prove to be successful in the coming months.
Days after being sacked from the Army Reserve for using photos of himself in uniform on election materials, a controversial Western Australian MP has found himself in hot water once again.

Canning MP Andrew Hastie was caught out in breach of parliamentary rules over an $870,000 house he did not declare on his Register of Interests, reported Perth Now.

According to the rules, any changes to the interests of an MP, their spouse and dependent children must be registered within 28 days.

Andrew Hastie, 33, has been called out for failing to declare his $870,000 house to Parliament

The Canning MP was sacked from the Army Reserve just days ago for using photographs of himself in uniform as campaigning material

These interests include gifts or property purchases.

Mr Hastie's house, a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom home in an undisclosed location was purchased in March and therefore should have been declared by at least the end of April.

The former SAS soldier told the Sunday Times he tried to register the house on May 18, but failed to do so as Parliament had dissolved on May 9.

Whether his application to update his register had been accepted or not, the 33-year-old still took too long to declare his new interest.

Mr Hastie said he tried to declare the house on May 18, but was unsuccessful as Parliament had dissolved. This is still more than a month later than his deadline

If his actions are found to be deliberate, he could be found in 'serious contempt' of Parliament

If the MP's actions are reported to the Committee of Privileges and Members' Interests, and they determine he knowingly did not declare the house, he could be found guilty of 'serious contempt' of Parliament.

Punishment for serious contempts can include a $5,000 fine or six months in prison, but these measures are rarely, if ever taken.

Mr Hastie is not the first MP to find himself in hot water over property.

Last month, it was revealed Greens leader Richard Di Natale had not declared his family's farm in Victoria, 15 months after it was purchased.

Labor frontbencher David Feeney was also called out in May for failing to declare a $2.3 million dollar home in Melbourne he purchased in late 2013.
A California couple got their revenge on a suspected thief who took a package from their porch by leaving him a smelly surprise.

Amanda Torres and her fiance came up with a plan to stop a thief who had stolen about $60 worth of merchandise that was in a package on their front porch before.

Torres told FOX40 that a box that looked like an Amazon package left on their front porch for the thief 'was full of poop'.

Amanda Torres ([pictured) and her fiance came up with a plan to stop a package thief who had stolen about $60 worth of merchandise from them

The couple's surveillance system showed the same man (pictured) caught on their cameras on Thursday was the same guy who stole from them two days before. The box can be seen (right) on one of the chairs in front of their home

The man who was wearing shades was caught on a surveillance system that Torres' fiance, David Newall, set up to keep their family safe.

Torres said the same guy who was caught on their surveillance cameras on Thursday stole their first package two days before.

She told the station that the images did not show up as clearly during the first theft, so she and her fiance left a box full of dog waste on their porch in an attempt to teach the guy a lesson.

'I figured if he had stolen the first one he was going to be back to steal another one,' Torres told FOX40.

The second time the alleged thief took the package from their home the couple got clearer images as he walked up their driveway.

'We're angry enough to do something like that so stay away from our house.'

Torres and her fiance have also filed a police report.

The second time the alleged thief took the package from their home the couple got clearer images as he walked up their driveway. The box that the man is reaching for is full of dog poop
A Texas politician tweeted a homophobic message just hours after 50 people were murdered in a gay club in Orlando.

In the deadliest gun massacre in US history, a suspected Islamic extremist held more than 100 people hostage on Saturday night before gunning them down.

As the country reels in response to the news, Lieutenant Governor of Texas Dan Patrick - a fierce anti-LGBT campaigner - posted a picture of a psalm implying men are responsible for their own fate.

Controversy: As the country reels in response to the news, Lieutenant Governor of Texas Dan Patrick - a fierce anti-LGBT campaigner - posted a picture of a psalm implying men are responsible for their own fate

'Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Galations 6:7,' the tweet read.

Patrick posted the tweet at 7am Central Time - two hours after the three-hour siege on Pulse nightclub came to an end.

His tweet sparked outrage.

'Where is your compassion?' one Twitter user hit back.

Another said: 'You should be ashamed of yourself.'

Despite the backlash, Patrick's social media team responded by posting the message again on his Facebook page at 10am.

Patrick's website currently has a petition on the homepage urging visitors to join his campaign against transgender people being allowed to choose which bathroom to use.

He's also pushed pro-life, anti-abortion bills and open carry gun laws.

Daily Mail Online has contacted Patrick for a comment.
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Thousands of civilians have fled the ISIS stronghold of Fallujah after the Iraqi army opened a safe corridor from the besieged city.

A Norwegian aid group confirmed the exodus from the jihadi stronghold which has been surrounded by Iraqi troops who launched a major campaign to retake the city.

The United Nations feared that up to 90,000 civilians could be stuck in the city which is running short of both food and water.

Some 4,000 Iraqi civilians have managed to flee the ISIS stronghold of Fallujah over the past 24 hours using a safe route to leave the city

The Iraqi army established the safe route from the south west corner of the city allowing them to escape from the jihadis

Many of the civilians used the cover of darkness to escape so they would not be seen by ISIS snipers as crossed though the front line

Fallujah, which is about 30 miles west of Baghdad, was captured by ISIS in early 2014 after the Iraqi army retreated leading to fears that the capital itself could fall to the jihadis.

Bigadier General Yahya Rasool said the escape route, known as 'al-Salam (Peace) Junction in the south west of the city.

Rasool said: 'There were exit routes previously, but this is the first to be completely secured and its relatively safe.'

An estimated 4,000 people have fled the city since the new escape route has opened up.

The al-Salam Junction route was secured after troops dislodged insurgents from districts located on the western bank of the Euphrates river, opposite Fallujahs city centre on the east bank, said Rasool. He did not give a number for the civilians who were able to flee so far using it.

More than 20,000 people have managed to flee the city and its surrounding area since the Iraqi army began the offensive on May 23, the United Nations said on June 8.

Iraqi Defence Minister Khaled al-Obaidi, centre, visited his troops on the outskirts of Fallujah who aim to dislodge ISIS from the city

It is believed that elite Iraqi counter terrorism troops are now within two miles of the centre of Fallujah, allowing more civilians escape

Several civilians had died during early escape attempts having tried to swim the river Euphrates in an effort to flee the besieged city

But the lack of secure routes made their escape extremely difficult and dangerous. At least a dozen people were reported to have drowned while crossing the Euphrates.

Those who managed to reach government-held lines said they walked for days to avoid sniper fire and explosive devices planted by Islamic State insurgents along roads to delay the armys advance.

A government official said the militants were putting up a tough fight defending the city, long an insurgent bastion where U.S. forces fought the heaviest battles of their own 2003-2011 occupation.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi says the troops are progressing cautiously in order to protect the civilians.

The army is receiving air support from the U.S.-led coalition and ground support from Iranian-backed Shiite militias and Sunni tribal fighters.

The Shiite militias have deployed behind the armys lines and did not take part directly in the assault on the city to avoid inflaming sectarian feelings.

The assault on Fallujah is taking place at the same time as advances by U.S.-backed fighters and Russian-backed Syrian government forces in Syria, at the opposite end of the ISISself-declared caliphate.

The displaced civilians are being moved to a camp almost 20 miles south of the city where they are fed by the World Food Programme

An Iraqi soldier aims his sniper rifle towards the ISIS controlled area in Fallujah which has been surrounded by pro-Government forces

Two heavily-armed Iraqi army Humvees drive at pace towards the front line on the outskirts of Fallujah to fight ISIS terrorists

Those who were able to escape from the city were loaded onto minibuses to be taken to a camp until it was safe to return home

ISIS has been using innocent civilians as human shields to counter the threat posed by the US-led coalition aircraft

However, ISIS murdered 18 members of two families who attempted to escape on Friday.

Some 24,000 people have fled the city since the beginning of the offensive on May 23.

ISIS snipers have been targeting civilians as they try and cross the Euphrates in a bid for freedom.

In the worst known case so far, ISIS fighters killed at least 18 members of two families Friday as they attempted to flee, southeast of the city, relatives and a security officer told AFP by phone.

'A number of residents were trying to flee and as they neared the Al-Salam intersection, Daesh (IS) opened fire on them, killing 18 and wounding dozens,' a senior officer at the Joint Operations Command told AFP.

The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to talk to the press, said the army was able to rescue some of the wounded.

Relatives said the initial group that tried to sneak out of IS-controlled areas on Friday included around 100 individuals, including a majority of women and children.

The group were all from the same two families - Albu Hatem and Albu Saleh - and had made a previous failed attempt to leave days earlier.

'When they got near the intersection, which is the meeting point with the Iraqi forces, two gunmen on motorbikes arrived and sprayed them with gunfire,' said Ahmed al-Ghneim, a relative.

Two of the survivors, relatives from the Albu Saleh family, are staying at his home in Amriyat al-Fallujah, south of Fallujah.

'Some of the residents jumped into the canal, some fled to a nearby house. When they entered it, it blew up on them because it was booby-trapped,' he said.

'Some survivors were forced to go back inside Fallujah. Daesh took 17 of the wounded to Fallujah hospital,' Ghneim said.

Sami Abu Hatem, a relative who was already living in a camp in Amriyat al-Fallujah, confirmed that version of events.

'Three of my direct relatives, a man with two young children, were among those massacred,' he said.

Abu Hatem he said he knew of 18 members of the group being killed and added that more were feared missing after jumping in the nearby canal.

According to aid groups running displacements camps outside Fallujah, only small numbers of residents have managed to flee the city centre.
Detectives launched a search today after a vulnerable teenager vanished from her home.

Beth Lloyd, 15, was last seen on Friday shortly after 8pm.

It is believed she may have boarded a train from her home in Crawley up to Nottingham to meet a friend.

Beth Lloyd, 15, was last seen on Friday shortly after 8pm and is believed to have travelled to Nottingham

But the schoolgirl, who uses different names including Sydney Greenhough, has not made contact with her family to let them know of her whereabouts.

Beth, who is described as white and 5ft 6ins tall with shoulder length dark brown hair, was last seen wearing a leopard print vest top, a tan coloured jacket with a fur trim, black skinny jeans and white trainers.

A police spokesman described the youngster as 'vulernable'

They said: 'Beth is a vulnerable young girl and we are becoming increasingly worried for her safety.

'If anyone has seen her or knows where she is please contact us.'
Baroness Molly Meacher has praised the doctors who 'risk their own freedom' to assist people in dying

'Thousands' of doctors are helping terminally ill patients to die every year, a leading advocate of assisted dying has claimed.

Baroness Molly Meacher, the new chairwoman of Dignity in Dying, also thanked the medical experts who 'risk their own freedom to help their patients.'

In her first interview since being appointed, the mother-of-four told The Sunday Times: 'We know that thousands of doctors do help patients who are terminally ill and who are [mentally] capacitous and who want to die.

'They have sufficient compassion that they cannot bear to see their patients continue to suffer unbearably and so they are prepared to risk their own freedom to help their patients and I would say thank you to every one of those doctors.'

The cross-bench peer added that she would travel to Switzerland for an assisted death, if she was terminally ill.

Speaking about her own personal experiences, Baroness Meacher revealed that a close friend, who was terminally ill and in her 70s, ended her own life by starving and dehydrating herself.

She also recalled how her aunt, who was diagnosed with advanced liver cancer, decided to commit suicide 30 years ago.

A third motivation in Baroness Meacher joining the campaign was the death of her own mother, aged 92, following weeks of what she believes was 'unnecessary suffering'.

Baroness Meacher revealed: 'We didn't want our mother to die in that way and my main motivation in wanting to help this campaign is that i do not wish my children to die in any of these ways.'

Earlier this week, Sir Patrick Stewart, who is a patron of Dignity in Dying, said it is an 'absolute disgrace' he is denied the right to die legally at home in the UK.

The 76-year-old, who grew up in Yorkshire but has since moved to California, US, said it was unacceptable that terminally ill patients can now die with dignity in one country but not another.

He said: 'In California, millions of people now have the ability to die with dignity in the event of terminal illness. It is an absolute disgrace that, as a Briton, I am denied this right at home.'

California this week fully implemented new legislation allowing terminally ill people the right to request life-ending medication from their doctor.

The bill was approved on September 11 last year, the same day that an Assisted Dying Bill was defeated in the House of Commons in the UK.

In a highly-charged debate in Parliament, opponents warned it would amount to 'killing people being legal'.

After four hours of clashes, the Assisted Dying Bill was thrown out by 330 voters to 118.

The free vote was the first time since 1997 the Commons had voted on the right to die.

Campaigners outside the Houses of Parliament, following the defeat of the Assisted Dying Bill in 2015

Following the Bill's rejection, Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, said: 'With the overwhelming majority of the public supporting the Bill it is an outrage that MPs have decided to retain the current law which the former Director of Public Prosecutions, the House of Lords, and the public all believe is leading to suffering and injustice for dying people.

'By rejecting the Bill Parliament has in effect decided to condone terminally ill people ending their own lives but refused to provide them the adequate protection they need. Suffering will continue as long as MPs turn a blind eye to dying people's wishes. Dying people deserve better.'

FOR AND AGAINST: THE KEY ARGUMENTS ABOUT THE RIGHT TO DIE Opponents to proposed assisted dying legislation say legal changes will put pressure on patients to end their lives while reform advocates say that measures are needed to help end suffering. AGAINST Faith groups have led the argument against assisted dying, insisting that it would have serious impacts for the most vulnerable in society. The Church of England believe a change in the law would lead to people either feeling pressured to, or putting pressure on themselves to, end their lives prematurely. The Archbishop of Canterbury described the issue of assisted dying as one of the 'biggest dilemmas of our time' but said legalising the act would give rise to a 'slippery slope' which could lead to further difficulties. Justin Welby stressed his belief that the current law is working and allows for compassion but society must accept that some situations will never be 'neat and clear cut'. His concern was recently echoed by UK faith leaders Dr Shuja Shafi, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, Ephraim Mirvis, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth and Lord Singh of Wimbledon, director of the Network of Sikh Organisations UK in a joint open letter to MPs. Together they warned that the UK would cross a 'legal and ethical Rubicon' if Parliament votes to let terminally ill patients end their lives. They are supported by David Cameron, who has made his own opinion on the ethically fraught issue clear. A Downing Street spokesman said the Prime Minister is not in favour of an approach that would 'take us closer to euthanasia'. FOR Ahead of today's debate, an alliance of bishops, priests and rabbis, including former archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, broke ranks to voice an opposing view. In stark opposition to Archbishop Welby, Lord Carey instead believes allowing doctors to help terminally ill people to die is a 'profoundly Christian and moral thing' to do. Proper legal safeguards could be devised to ensure vulnerable people are not pressurised into ending their lives by greedy relatives, he argued. Dr Jonathan Romain, Rabbi of Maidenhead Synagogue and chairman of the group Inter-Faith leaders for Dignity in Dying, was among those who signed an open letter published in the Daily Telegraph which urged: 'There is nothing sacred about suffering, nothing holy about agony, and individuals should not be obliged to endure it.' Former director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer said the law needs to be changed to 'deal with the problem of people wanting to end their lives in this country, medically assisted, rather than traipse off to Switzerland'. He said the debate is not about legalising euthanasia but addressing in-built limitations in the current guidelines, which mean that there can be 'injustice in a number of cases'. Campaign charity Dignity In Dying believes it is time the UK 'puts an end to unnecessary suffering and gives dying adults the choice of an assisted death'. Advertisement
her parents for not watching their child carefully enough

This is the terrifying moment a lifeguard was forced to dive into a South Carolina wave-pool to rescue a three-year-old girl who was beginning to drown.

Shocking footage shows the lifeguard surveying the pool, which is packed full of adults and children enjoying the water and floating around in rubber rings.

The wave function on the pool is switched on and people begin to enjoy jumping and riding the waves.

A lifeguard surveys a wave pool in South Carolina, and quickly spots a three-year-old girl struggling

The lifeguard jumps into the water, poised to rescue the struggling little girl who is being pulled under by the waves

The little girl appears to be in great distress as she sinks under the water but fortunately the lifeguard makes his way to her

The lifeguard walks up and down the side of the pool as he surveys swimmers enjoying themselves - but quickly spots a child in trouble, waving her arms desperately as the waves pull her under.

He dives into the pool quickly and swims towards her, before picking her up and swimming back to the edge of the pool.

The wave function is turned off as swimmers look on in confusion.

He quickly picks up the little girl and takes her back to the side of the pool, where he says he spent ages trying to find her family

The unnamed lifeguard said: 'I had to walk this 3 year old girl around until I could find her family.

'They had no idea she was missing.

'I have been doing this for 18 years and I am still amazed by the lack of supervision some kids get around the water.'

Several online commentators have condemned the parents for neglecting the child.
No one knows what happens after a Brexit vote on June 23 because it would be an unprecedented move.

Only semi-independent Greenland has quit the union and that was more than 30 years ago; it had a population of just 56,000 and the island isnt even in Europe.

And despite negotiations surrounding one issue  fishing  the withdrawal process still took more than three years.

Britain would become the first fully-signed up member of the European Union to quit if voters back Brexit in the June 23 referendum. Only Greenland has left the union and that was more than 30 years ago, when the union was called the European Community

Until 2009 there were no official provisions set out for leaving the EU, but Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty provided an outline for a withdrawal process.

There are also uncertainties over what happens if we stay, with the domestic politics of the Conservative party and David Camerons future as Prime Minister likely to take centre stage.

Here we sketch out what is likely to happen under the two possible outcomes of the June 23 referendum.

What happens if Britain votes to leave the EU on June 23?

A Brexit vote would almost certainly lead to David Cameron resigning as Prime Minister, paving the way for Boris Johnson (pictured) to achieve his goal of taking over the top job

In the early hours of Friday morning a shattered and defeated David Cameron will appear outside Number 10 to concede the result.

He will have to outline the steps by which the UK withdraws from the EU. He is likely to announce to the nation he is triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - the legal process for leaving the 28 nation bloc.

Once Article 50 is triggered, Britain will have two years to negotiate the terms of its exit from the EU and its new relationship with Brussels.

The UK will not officially cease being a member of the EU until it has agreed a new deal with the bloc or the two-year negotiating period is over - whichever comes first.

Cameron will almost certainly have to resign after a Brexit vote - he has insisted he will not quit but he said the same before the 2014 Scottish independence referendum but admitted he would have stood down after a No vote.

Former Chancellor Ken Clarke has said Cameron 'wouldn't last 30 seconds' if he lost the referendum.

He would probably stay on in Number 10 until a swiftly-held Conservative leadership contest can be held - most likely to be won by leading Brexit campaigners like Boris Johnson or Michael Gove.

The leadership contest will give a platform to Johnson to lay out his plans for government, which will largely focus on his new points-based immigration policy and a battle plan for agreeing new trade deals with countries across the world.

At the same time as Cameron speaks from the steps of Downing Street, the EU President Donald Tusk will summon an emergency summit of all member states in Brussels - possibly as early as the June 25/26 weekend - a week earlier than the planned June European Council summit.

Meanwhile the financial institutions at home and abroad will move quickly to stave off economic chaos.

The Treasury, Bank of England and European Central Bank will activate contingency plans it has been quietly working on over the last few months - combating a fall in the value of the pound and a potential stock market crash.

A government document on the process for withdrawing from the EU published earlier this year said it could take up to a decade or more to negotiate our exit from the EU, our future arrangements with the bloc and to set up new trade deals with countries outside of the EU.

David Cameron would probably stay on in Number 10 until a swiftly-held Conservative leadership contest can be held - most likely to be won by leading Brexit campaigners like Boris Johnson (right) or Michael Gove (left)

Considering the huge number of areas in which the EU operates, negotiations will involve thousands of officials taking up hundreds of office space as they hammer out new deals on everything from cross border security arrangements and access to EU-wide databases to access for UK citizens to the European Health Insurance card.

If no deal can be reached within two years of triggering Article 50, the UK will trade with the EU's single market on World Trade Organisation terms, which are seen as the most basic trade arrangements and are used for the EU's trade relationship with Russia.

At the same time as negotiations are ongoing with the EU, UK government officials will be seeking new trade deals with non-EU countries.

Currently the UK cannot negotiate its own free trade deals and must negotiate along with our fellow 27 EU member states.

But outside the EU, Britain will regain its seat at the World Trade Organisation, although world leaders - including US President Barack Obama - have warned Britain will be 'at the back of the queue' for new trade deals.

The new Prime Minister - likely to be Boris - will also have to forge a plan to unite the Tory party after months of bitter infighting.

He will have to hand several big jobs to pro-EU MPs and the likes of Theresa May and George Osborne are likely to continue in some capacity in the Government to give it at least some stability and continuity.

What happens if Britain votes to remain in the EU on June 23?

David Cameron will appear outside Downing Street to declare victory and will want to put Europe behind him as he sets out to deliver his final reform agenda before standing down before 2020

David Cameron will appear on the steps of Number 10 to declare victory and promise to get on with delivering his final reform agenda before he steps down ahead of the 2020 General Election.

He will tell the European Commission to press ahead with enacting his renegotiation, which has to be agreed by the European Parliament and the European Council.

The losing Eurosceptics will undoubtedly warn that MEPs and member states will try to water down the reforms that were agreed by the Prime Minister in February, but Cameron will head to Brussels for the European Council summit on June 28 to tell his counterparts not to mess around.

On the domestic front, Cameron could be forced to resign much sooner than he wants to and much will depend on the margin of victory. Backbench Tory MPs - angered at Cameron's tactics during the campaign - have already signalled they will trigger a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister after a win for Remain, which would hand Boris Johnson his long-awaited chance to run for the top job.

Installing a Brexit leader would also give the Tories a chance to unite after months of bitter infighting.

A small winning margin will give Brexit Tories enough to say they have nearly half of the country on their side and with Cameron already pledging to step down before the 2020 election, many in the party will not want a 'lame duck' Prime Minister in charge.

In the subsequent leadership contest it is likely that Tory MPs will nominate one Brexit MP and one pro-EU MP to put forward to battle it out for the party membership vote.

Many expect Johnson to go up against either George Osborne or Theresa May in the leadership contest, in which all the wounds of the bitter referendum campaign will continue to be torn open until a winner is declared - perhaps in time for the Conservative party conference at the start of October.

David Cameron (left) will tell European Council President Donald Tusk (right) to press ahead with implementing Britain's renegotiation if voters back staying in the EU in the June 23 referendum

On the other hand, a double-digit win for Remain would give Cameron the impetus to continue in Number 10 and he could also take the wide margin of victory to carry out a purge of Brexit ministers.

He is likely to punish the most hostile of his frontbench team, with the likes of Employment minister Priti Patel and Defence minister Penny Mordaunt set to face the chop for directing heavy criticism at Cameron's EU stance over the past weeks.

Cameron will demand the Brexit campaign accept that the question of Britain's membership of the EU is over for a generation as he attempts to patch together a deeply divided party.

The vast majority of Eurosceptics in the party will probably rule the prospect of a second referendum as long as Cameron announces plans for a British bill of rights to replace the Human Rights Act, which binds Britain to rulings at the European Court on Human Rights - a separate body that is not part of the EU.
'The Wave' is a well-made special effects driven thriller, especially when considering its humble roots. The Norwegian film posits a frightening what-if scenario: What if an unstable piece of rock fell into a large, scenic mountain lake?

We're informed that one day, a large chunk of rock will splash into Norway's Geiranger fjord. An event that will likely send a 260-foot wall of water careening toward the idyllic tourist town of Geiranger. They know it'll happen, they just don't know when.

The region is watched closely by a group of geologists. In the film Kristoph (Kristoffer Joner) is one of the scientists asked to keep a vigilant eye on the mountain side in hopes of providing an early warning to the town's inhabitants. Kristoph is obsessed with the mountain, but with his wife's pleading he's decided to take another job out of town. They're just about to leave when the unthinkable happens.

What's so surprising about 'The Wave' is that you'd think a smaller film like this wouldn't have the resources to put together a believable destruction sequence. When your movie relies on the simple fact that a tidal wave is going to destroy everything in its path that wave, and its aftermath, better be believable.

As the wave comes barreling down on Geiranger it really is quite the site to behold. The wave reaches up to the sky, crushing everything it touches. It's an intense few moments as it relentlessly pushes its way forward. This scene, so easily, could've looked fake or hokey. It's not a $100-million film, but you can't really tell either. The tidal wave sequence felt every bit as realistic and impactful as 'The Impossible.'

Sure, as far as disaster movies go this one follows along with the same narrative tropes we've come to suspect. Unable to stop the calamity all Kristoph can hope for is getting his family to safety. They get split up, but remain witnesses to the carnage rather than victims. There is one harrowing scene where his wife Idun (Ane Dahl Torp) and son (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) are trapped in a bomb shelter slowing filling with lake water. It's impressively claustrophobic and intensely engrossing.

'The Wave' is more about the spectacle than anything else. Yes, it's a familial drama, but that comes second to the enormous wave crashing over a small town and the immense damage that follows in its wake.

Its intensity is its best asset. It never feels like it lets down after the wave forms. There isn't a moment to rest, not for the characters and certainly not for the viewer. As far as disaster movies go 'The Wave' holds its own. It understands the genre and plays it safe. There's no faulting it for that since most disaster movies do the same exact thing.

It does more with less, which is admirable, and ends up creating an unexpectedly satisfying experience. Whereas most disaster movies nowadays are focused on destroying everything, 'The Wave' thinks locally and packs more of a punch than say, 'San Andreas.'

The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

This is a single-disc release from Magnolia. It comes packaged in a standard keepcase and is provided a slipcover.
Friends and relatives of the victims gathered at Orlando Regional Medical Center, which is just a quarter of a mile from Pulse night club.

Helene Royster was waiting for her 28-year-old son Shaun, who miraculously escaped serious injury.

'He's been interviewed by the FBI. He is OK but his friend Angel was badly injured,' she said.

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Friends and relatives of the victims gathered at Orlando Regional Medical Center, which is just a quarter of a mile from Pulse night club

Shooter Omar Mateen, 29, slaughtered at least 50 people with an AR-15 assault rifle and a handgun. Friends and family members embrace after the devastating shooting

At least 53 more were injured in the deadliest mass shooting in US history

One victim's son said his brother 'jumped over a wall to get away but his friend Angel was shot twice in the back and once in the leg'. He added that there had been a shooting at the club just three weeks ago

Tempers flared as one group of sobbing women clubbers gathered with a female priest outside the emergency room

'I told Shaun not to go out to clubs. It wasn't a hunch. It is just so many bad things have happened in Orlando. The night before the girl from the Voice was shot and killed.'

Her other son Greg said: 'My brother jumped over a wall to get away but his friend Angel was shot twice in the back and once in the leg.

'He survived but we don't know any more yet.

'There was a shooting at the club just three weeks ago. And now this.'

Tempers flared as one group of sobbing women clubbers gathered with a female priest outside the emergency room.

Shooter Omar Mateen, 29, slaughtered at least 50 people with an AR-15 assault rifle and a handgun.

At least 53 more were injured in the deadliest mass shooting in US history.

The FBI believe the gunman, who was shot dead by officers, may have 'leanings to radical Islamic terrorism'.

A by-stander tried to take a cell phone shot of the group and several women started shouting. One screamed: 'Our friends are dead. Leave us alone.'

Johnny Patrick, 36, was bring treated in the hospital's emergency room when the first victims arrived

'The hospital went on code red lockdown. They were talking terrorism,' he said.

'I tried to lock myself in a room, I was scared. I didn't know where the gunman was, I thought it was the hospital.

'Eventually I peeped out and I could see people covered in blood everywhere.'

The FBI believe the gunman, who was shot dead by officers, may have 'leanings to radical Islamic terrorism'

Ray Rivera, a DJ at Pulse Orlando nightclub, is consoled by a friend, outside of the Orlando Police Department after the shooting

One patient at the hospital before the shooting said the 'hospital went on code red lockdown' when the first victims came in

Some of the victims' parents said their children miraculously escaped serious injury

There were more than 300 people in the club when the shooting started. Many had arrived before midnight  taking advantage of free entry

Pulse sits on a seedy stretch of Orange Avenue, in downtown Orlando, surrounded by drab medical buildings and cheap pizza parlors.

A large black sign, with the capital letter P then Pulse in smaller letters underneath, sits above the building.

Cops blocked off surrounding roads and barred pedestrians from getting too near to the building.

'There are still bodies inside,' one officer said.

Clubbers who had left their cars in nearby parking lots were told to return later today.

There were more than 300 people in the club when the shooting started. Many had arrived before midnight  taking advantage of free entry  to watch drag queen Kenya Michaels perform with fellow artiste Jasmine International.
Donald Trump continues to do things differently than your average politician.

Case in point  on Friday he tried to crowdsource his vice presidential pick.

The Donald, a former reality television star, asked audience members in Tampa, Florida, who they would like to see at the bottom of the Republican presidential ticket.

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Instead of soliciting donations at a campaign rally in Tampa, Florida like normal politicians, Donald Trump asked his audience to name who they'd like to see as a vice presidential pick

Donald Trump gives the American flag a squeeze as he asks his audience in Tampa to name who they'd like to see as veep

'Who do you like?' Trump asked the crowd, according to reporting from CNN.

Three of the suggestions Trump voiced aloud: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the first U.S. senator to have Trump's back and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

'He says Newt,' Trump pointed out.

Gingrich was once thought to be a leading contender for the vice presidential slot, having run a fairly successful run for the White House in 2012 and bringing congressional experience into the fold.

But Gingrich, like many of his Republican brethren, was not impressed by Trump's statements on a Mexican-American judge, who Trump said would not try his Trump University lawsuit case fairly because of the candidate's remarks on building a border wall.

Now, it looks like Gingrich doesn't have much of a chance to be added to the ticket.

'They say Sessions,' Trump said of another group.

Sessions boosted Trump by giving him an air of legitimacy with an endorsement.

The Alabama lawmaker has also been helpful getting Trump up to speed on foreign policy.

Sessions, however, comes from an easy state for Trump to win, which might not make his the best vice presidential pick when you're looking at electoral college strategy.

Donald Trump vocalized three of the names at the event, which included Condi Rice, Jeff Sessions and Newt Gingrich, the latter of which criticized Trump's statements made about a Mexican-American judge

'He says Condi Rice,' Trump said of another pick he presumably heard.

The choice of Rice could potentially excite female Republican voters and could give Trump a boost with the minority vote.

But, as CNN pointed out, Trump and Rice are 'incongruous' on foreign policy as Rice signed off on the Iraq War in 2003.

Trump has bucked his party on the issue of Iraq and has said repeatedly that he thought that the U.S. should have never went in.

Soliciting supporters for names is a new way to name a vice presidential pick.

The veepstakes is usually a highly secretive process with the campaign usually narrowing down the list and then vetting a handful of candidates for the job.

Trump has said he wants someone with government experience to fill out the ticket, though many of the mainstream Republican pols  who still fear the Trump brand of politics'  aren't interested in joining him, even if they get the vice presidential job.

Trump, however, has said he has options..
Car worker is suing Trust Group UK for unfair dismissal and discrimination

Employees claimed they felt 'excluded' by some speaking native language

Raj Rangla was allegedly fired for ignoring order for staff to speak English

A car worker has taken legal action after alleging he was sacked for snubbing a company email ordering staff to speak English.

Raj Rangla, who speaks fluent English and Punjabi, claims he was dismissed for failing to co-operate with the order from Trust Group UK, based in Aston, Birmingham.

An employment tribunal heard the ruling was made because some employees felt 'excluded' during conversations by staff speaking in their native languages.

Raj Rangla, who speaks fluent English and Punjabi, claims he was dismissed for failing to co-operate with the order from Trust Group UK, based in Aston, Birmingham (pictured)

Mr Rangla, from Great Barr in Birmingham, West Midlands, denies he regarded the email instruction as a joke - and has made legal claims for unfair dismissal and race discrimination.

'I read the email and followed the instructions about speaking English at all times,' he said at the hearing.

'I had a good working relationship with most of the staff but believe these allegations have been instigated against me.

'The management wanted to get me out.'

Mr Rangla, who dealt with customers over repairs and servicing, added: 'I was not given a reason for my dismissal and, when told to attend a meeting with the management, I was not informed that it was going to be a disciplinary hearing.'

Claire Thompson, representing the company, explained that the email instruction was issued because some of the 30-strong workforce felt 'disadvantaged' by colleagues speaking in a different language.

'Some complained to the management that they felt excluded,' she told tribunal judge Miss Sheila Woffenden.

Miss Thompson alleged that Mr Rangla 'made light' of the email and failed to follow the instruction.

'You made a joke of it,' she told Mr Rangla.

The tribunal was told that Mr Rangla was expected to talk to customers in their mother tongue - but not colleagues.

An employment tribunal in Birmingham (pictured) heard the order was made because some employees felt 'excluded'

Some complained that he was not complying with the rules.

'The management did not think he was a model employee,' added Miss Thompson.

Miss Woffenden described the email as 'robust' and said it appeared there had been no warning that those who breached the instruction might be dismissed.

After a two-day hearing Miss Woffenden said she would make a decision at a later date.

The firm has several branches throughout the Midlands.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has called for President Barack Obama to step down from his position after not linking the Orlando nightclub terror attack to 'Radical Islam'.

In a statement released following Obama's speech, he also said that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton should 'get out of this race for Presidency'.

Trump's comments come after 50 people were killed in a shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday morning, marking the most deadly mass shooting in US history.

He said in his statement: 'Last night, our nation was attacked by a radical Islamic terrorist. It was the worst terrorist attack on our soil since 9/11, and the second of its kind in six months. My deepest sympathy and support goes out to the victims, the wounded, and their families.

'In his remarks today, President Obama disgracefully refused to even say the words "Radical Islam". For that reason alone, he should step down.

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The presumptive nominees for both parties, Hillary Clinton (left) and Donald Trump (right) initially reacted to this morning's shooting using Twitter

President Barack Obama pauses as he speaks about the massacre at an Orlando nightclub that claimed 50 lives during a news conference at the White House

Omar Mateen, 29, pictured above, had called 911 before he staged his attack which killed at least 50 people, and pledged allegiance to ISIS

'If Hillary Clinton, after this attack, still cannot say the two words 'Radical Islam' she should get out of this race for the Presidency.

'If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore. Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen  and it is only going to get worse.

'I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can't afford to be politically correct anymore.'

Omar Mateen, 29, of Port St. Lucie in Florida, pledged allegiance to ISIS before opening fire at the Pulse gay club early on Sunday. He was eventually killed when police shot him dead inside the club three hours later.

Mateen was born in New York from parents who were from Afghanistan, though Trump still touted his controversial plans for a ban of all non-American Muslims coming into the United States.

He added: 'We need to protect all Americans, of all backgrounds and all beliefs, from Radical Islamic Terrorism - which has no place in an open and tolerant society.

'Radical Islam advocates hate for women, gays, Jews, Christians and all Americans. I am going to be a President for all Americans, and I am going to protect and defend all Americans. We are going to make America safe again and great again for everyone.'

President Obama pictured above speaking to the American people this afternoon. he said: 'We are still learning all the facts. This is an open investigation. We've reached no definitive judgment on the precise motivations of the killer'

Trump said that he will deliver a speech on Monday to further address the attack, immigration and national security.

Following the attack, Trump and Clinton initially took to Twitter to express their reactions to the mass shooting.

'Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act,' Clinton wrote on Twitter, signing it with her trademark 'H' to show that the message was actually penned by the Democratic candidate.

In a statement made by her campaign later, Clinton also called for gun control.

Donald Trump suggested that many of his supporters were sending him 'congrats' for being right about radical Islamic terrorism, but he said it's not 'congrats' that he wants

Hillary Clinton reacted to the news of the Orlando shooting via Twitter, with her tweet then translated into Spanish, calling it 'devastating'

Donald Trump initially just let his readership know about the Orlando shooting and then went back to attacking Hillary Clinton on Twitter

Trump took to Twitter writing: 'Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?'

'This is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States and it reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets,' Clinton said.

Trump made Twitter followers aware of the shooting, then went back to attacking Clinton - this time for a new general election ad - before penning more tweets about the tragedy in Orlando, in which a gunman entered a gay nightclub and mowed down 50 people, with another 53 left injured.

'Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!' Trump wrote.

He later released the statement that called for Clinton and Obama to step down from their respective roles.

Trump's initial reaction was to tweet that there was a 'really bad shooting in Orlando.'

'Police investigating possible terrorism. Many people dead and wounded.'

He then turned his attention to Clinton's new ad, which shows Trump saying he'd like to 'knock the crap out' of a protester.

It also shows The Donald mocking a disabled New York Times Reporter. Trump countered that that's not what was really happening.

'Clinton made a false ad about me where I was imitating a reporter GROVELING after he changed his story. I would NEVER mock disabled. Shame!' he wrote, initially misspelling the word 'mock.'

Trump then addressed the shooting again.

'Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?' Trump wrote.

The Republican has often talked about taking on 'radical Islamic terrorism,' and early reporting points to the gunman, 29-year-old Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida, having 'leanings to radical Islamic terrorism,' according to the FBI.

He then updated his response several hours later asking 'when will we get tough, smart & vigilant?' and calling the shooting a 'horrific incident'

Donald Trump dared President Obama to use the term 'radical Islamic terrorism' in his remarks to the American public. The president did not

In his third tweet, Trump noted that he was being heralded by supporters for being 'right' on radical Islamic terrorism, but said he would prefer 'toughness' over compliments.

In a fourth tweet, Trump challenged President Barack Obama to call the attack 'radical Islamic terrorism.'

'Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!' Trump tweeted.

When President Obama appeared in the briefing room and spoke, he labeled the massacre both an 'act of terror' and an 'act of hate.'

The president did not bring Islam into it, though made a veiled call for gun control, saying, 'to actively do nothing is a decision as well,' the president added.

Aerial view on Sunday of the mass shooting scene at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. The three-hour rampage killed at least 50 people

FBI agents investigate near the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub where Omar Mateen gunned down 50 people

After Obama's address, Trump resumed his Twitter presence, passing along reports he had seen in the media.

'Reporting that Orlando killer shouted 'Allah hu Akbar!' as he slaughtered clubgoers. 2nd man arrested in LA with rifles near Gay parade,' Trump wrote.

He also retweeted a comment from a supporter who said, 'please make us safe. We cannot have Hillary as president. We will be in so much trouble.'

Trump didn't mention the gay community in any of his responses, except to note that there was a second incident in Los Angeles, in which a man was discovered with explosives and guns wanting to target the city's Pride parade.

Victims and witnesses make their way out of the Orlando Police headquarters building as FBI and Orlando police department and the Orange County sheriff's office investigate the terror attack at the Pulse nightclub

Sen Bernie Sanders, who will compete in one final Democratic primary this Tuesday in Washington, DC, was the first of the presidential candidates to bring up gun control, with Clinton not making her full statement until mid-afternoon.

'It's horrific, it's unthinkable,' Sanders said this morning, as he appeared on several of the Sunday shows. 'And just hopes go out to all those who were shot that they can recover.'

'We should not be selling automatic weapons which are designed to kill people,' Sanders continued.

'We have got to do everything that we can on top of that to make sure that guns do not fall into the hands of people who should not have them, criminals, people who are mentally ill,' the Vermont senator added.

A member of the Medical Examiners office wheels a body to a vehicle from the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub

A mini van outside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando which is believed to have been used by the shooter

Donald Trump doubled down on his plans to ban non-American Muslims from entering the United States despite the fact that the shooter was an American

Later, in a statement from his campaign, he expanded his comments, making sure to mention the LGBT community, which was specifically targeted in this attack.

'All Americans are horrified, disgusted and saddened by the horrific atrocity in Orlando,' Sanders said.

'At this point we do not know whether this was an act of terrorism, a terrible hate crime against gay people or the act of a very sick person, but we extend our heartfelt condolences to the victims' families and loved ones and our thoughts are with the injured and the entire Orlando LGBTQ community,' Sanders said.

Terry DeCarlo, executive director of The LGBT Center (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Community) of central Florida on North Mills cries near the scene of the Pulse nightclub terror attack

Marco Rubio, a presidential contender until mid-March who remains a Florida senator, talked at length about radical Islam when speaking to reporters live from Orlando.

'We know that some of it is inspired by a warped ideology,' Rubio said. 'We know that we've been in conflict with it for a very long time.'

'We know that they seek to intimidate us, they seek to terrorize us, and I hope they see today that they won't terrorize Americans, they won't terrorize Floridians,' Rubio continued.

'That we stand for and with all Americans, irrespective of their sexual orientation, irrespective of their party ideology, irrespective of where they live,' the Florida senator noted.

Clinton, several hours after the attack, tweeted more support for the LGBT community.

'Please know that you have millions of allies across our country. I am one of them,' Clinton tweeted.

She and President Obama also called off their first appearance together on the campaign trail this week.

Clinton and Obama were going to officially join forces on Wednesday at an event in Wisconsin.

It has now been indefinitely postponed.
Labor leader Bill Shorten says the Liberals' plan to slash 37 councils across NSW is an 'insult to democracy' that he will halt if elected Prime Minister.

Mike Baird, the NSW Premier and a Liberal politician, has previously outlined his controversial plan to merge 152 local councils across the state into just 115.

In a direct bid to kill the plan, Mr Shorten said he would set funding aside so every affected community could vote on whether the proposal goes ahead, reported The Daily Telegraph.

Calling it an 'insult to democracy', Labor leader Bill Shorten has promised to kill controversial plans to merge 152 NSW councils into just 115

Mr Shorten pledged $20million so that all 152 catchments impacted by mergers could vote on whether they wanted to keep their current council arrangements.

Mr Shorten told The Daily Telegraph: 'The Liberals' plan to sack directly elected representatives and force councils to amalgamate is an insult to democracy and the people of NSW.

'This move will give the people of NSW the power to stand up to the Baird Liberal government, and their plan to unilaterally dispense with democracy and force councils to merge, and to sack elected councillors.'

The plebiscites will be run by the Australian Electoral Commission and funded by the government.

Mr Shorten said each of the 152 affected council areas should have the opportunity to vote on whether they wanted a merger

Mr Baird's $500m plan for the 'most comprehensive local government reform in 100 years' has been heavily criticised since it began earlier in the year.

Nineteen councils have already been abolished and a bulky Inner West Council created by merging Ashfield, Leichardt and Marrickville bodies.

The process was likened to a 'coup' by NSW opposition leader Luke Foley last week, as he held a summit for the region's sacked mayors.

NSW Premier Mike Baird has stuck by the proposal despite a barrage of criticism, saying the mergers could save the state $2bn over the next 20 years

Mr Baird has stuck by the plans despite the barrage of criticism, saying they could save NSW $2bn over the next 20 years.

He said: 'Reducing waste and red tape through local government mergers could free up close to $2 billion over the next 20 years.

'This would allow councils to fund better services and new infrastructure for communities or to lower rates.
National Broadband Network recruiters have been slammed by local workers for seeking Ireland nationals to come and work in Australia on the multibillion-dollar telecommunications project.

Recruitment company OneIRC is advertising in Ireland for 'Copper Gurus' to work on the country's 'largest telecommunications project', with positions available 'all over Australia.'

Job seekers are being offered migration assistance to get to Australia and $75,000 per year over three years.

Recruitment company OneIRC is advertising in Ireland for 'Copper Gurus' to work on the country's 'largest telecommunications project', with positions available 'all over Australia'

National Broadband Network recruiters have been slammed by local workers for seeking Ireland nationals to come and work in Australia on the multibillion-dollar telecommunications project

Job seekers are being offered migration assistance to get to Australia and $75,000 per year over three years

'Expand your career opportunities,' the advertisement reads, touting it as a 'terrific opportunity to see the great southern land.'

'Bring the family and stay in one spot or travel across the country.'

Interviews for the position will take place in Ireland in June.

The Communication Workers Union has hit out against the ads, calling them a pitch to Irish backpackers, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Greg Rayner, CWU National Secretary accused the Liberal Government of sending jobs offshore.

'This is Australia's biggest job creating infrastructure project and with youth unemployment over 10 per cent we need these job here and now,' he told the publication.

The communication Workers Union has hit out against the ads, calling them a pitch to Irish backpackers

The National Broadband Network is currently in the processing of doubling its construction workforce to 9000 people

Jim Metcher, the union's NSW Branch Secretary described the recruitment as a 'disgrace' and said jobs will be 'dished out to workers in Kilkenny, not Sydney.'

The National Broadband Network is currently in the processing of increasing its workforce to 9000 people.

It hopes to connect eight million homes by 2020, the publication reported.
An OPD officer who was caught in cross-fire during a tense shoot-out with the Orlando gunman was saved by his Kevlar helmet.

The SWAT time took decisive action to rescue the hostages from the Pulse night club at approximately 5 am, resulting in an hour-long stand off with the suspected Islamic extremist, who was wielding an assault rifle and a handgun.

The officer suffered an eye injury when a bullet struck his Kevlar helmet, said Danny Banks, special agent in charge of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Orlando bureau - but the helmet saved the officer's life.

A photo of the battered helmet was released by Orlando Police, which showed a dented side and bullet hole.

An OPD officer who was caught in cross-fire during a tense shoot-out with Orlando gunman was saved by his Kevlar helmet (pictured)

Aftermath: Nine brave officers entered the club and a succession of gun shots could be heard in a video taken by a nearby witness

Attack: A woman sits on the ground outside the club while another party-goer, whose legs are covered in blood, stands beside her

Nine brave officers entered the club and a succession of gun shots could be heard in a video taken by a nearby witness.

The photo of the Kevlar helmet was tweeted with the caption: 'In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life.'

The nine hero officers used a 'controlled explosion' to distract the shooter before fatally shooting him and were able to rescue about 30 hostages who were hiding in the bathroom of the club.

At least 50 people were killed and 53 others were injured in the shooting in the deadliest mass shooting in US history.

Jon Alamo said he was inside the club, which was hosting a Latin-themed night, when a man holding a weapon entered the room he was in.

'I heard 20, 40, 50 shots,' Alamo said. 'The music stopped.'

Club-goer Rob Rick said it happened just before closing time. 'Everybody was drinking their last sip,' he said.

He got on the ground and crawled toward a DJ booth.

Pictured: US citizen Omar Mateen, 29, the suspected Islamic extremist who slaughtered at least 50 people inside a gay club in Orlando

The nine hero officers used a 'controlled explosion' to distract the shooter before fatally shooting him and were able to rescue about 30 hostages who were hiding in the bathroom of the club

SWAT: Orange County Sheriff's Department SWAT members arrive at the scene of the fatal shooting at Pulse Orlando nightclub in Orlando

Ricardo Almodovar, who was inside the nightclub, said: 'Shooter opened fire at around 2.00am. People on the dance floor and bar got down on the floor and some of us who were near the bar and back exit managed to go out through the outdoor area and just ran.'

Hassan Dieg, Orlando, 24, student told MailOnline that he was in the club opposite Live nightclub when the shots went off.

When he exited the club he said he 'knew something wrong' and that the street was flooded with people.

During the massacre, dozens of police vehicles, including a SWAT team, had swarmed the area surrounding the club and at least two police pickup trucks were seen taking what appeared to be shooting victims to the Orlando Regional Medical Center.

An FBI spokesman said the mass shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism, adding that they are looking into whether this was an act of domestic or international terror, and if the shooter was a lone wolf.
Hundreds of Orlando residents looking for ways to help victims of the tragic LGBT nightclub shooting lined up to donate blood and plasma outside of a blood bank Sunday morning.

OneBlood and the Orlando Regional Medical Center urgently requested people to donate blood following the shooting at Pulse nightclub that left 49 dead and 53 others injured and fighting for their lives.

Gay men are not able to donate however despite the need, with the federal Food and Drug Administration legally prohibiting any man who has had sex with another man in the past year from giving blood.

That policy was put in place just last year, and actually loosened the agency's original ban issued in 1985 which prohibited any man who had engaged in sexual relations with another man at any point after 1977 from donating blood.

The ban angered many on Sunday given the nature of the tragedy, with some speaking about the need for a change.

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Hundreds of Orlando residents looking for a way to help victims of the tragic LGBT nightclub shooting lined up to donate blood and plasma outside of a blood bank Sunday morning

Frank Cirillo, 44, of Boca Raton, donates blood at a OneBlood bus in West Boca on Sunday

Mike Napoli (left) is assisted by a blood bank staff member as he donates blood after the mass shooting

'It is legal to buy an assault weapon, a device built for MASS murder. It's illegal for a gay man to donate blood to save his friends' lives,' wrote Carina Mackenzie on Twitter.

'Maybe it would be easier for gay men to donate blood if they poured it into bullets and then shot it into the recipient?' wrote Luke O'Neil.

Representative Jared Polis of Colorado, who is openly gay, also spoke out on Twitter, writing: 'The inexcusable @US_FDA gay blood ban still in effect despite need for blood to help victims #mybloodisthesameasyours.'

'It is legal to buy an assault weapon, a device built for MASS murder. It's illegal for a gay man to donate blood to save his friends' lives,' wrote Carina Mackenzie on Twitter

'Maybe it would be easier for gay men to donate blood if they poured it into bullets and then shot it into the recipient?' wrote Luke O'Neil

Representative Jared Polis of Colorado, who is openly gay, also spoke out on Twitter, writing: 'The inexcusable @US_FDA gay blood ban still in effect despite need for blood to help victims

There had been early reports that the blood ban had been temporarily lifted in Orlando due to the overwhelming need, but OneBlood quickly responded by saying this was not the case

There had been early reports that the blood ban had been temporarily lifted in Orlando due to the overwhelming need, but OneBlood quickly responded and said this was not the case, writing on Twitter: 'All FDA guidelines remain in effect for blood donation. There are false reports circulating that FDA rules were being lifted. Not true.'

Poll Should gay men be allowed to donate blood? No Yes Should gay men be allowed to donate blood? No 1057 votes

Yes 961 votes Now share your opinion





Orlando Health Surgical Critical Care Dr Michael Cheatham said Sunday morning: 'We have spent the morning operating on a number of victims. We continue to operate on them. We found many of them are critically ill.

'Blood is a wonderful gift. You can work through the local banks to be able to donate and that would be a tremendous help.'

OneBlood's website issued a statement Sunday morning saying they were particularly looking for O negative, O positive and AB donors to donate as soon as possible.

The blood agency said it was needed to aid the wounded.

Pat Michaels, a spokesman for OneBlood told WFTV: 'Dozens of people have been injured and taken to area hospitals.'

He said the need for 'blood continues'.

Michaels added that donors should be generally healthy people age 16 or older who weigh at least 110 pounds.

OneBlood's website issued a statement particularly looking for O negative, O positive and AB donors to donate as soon as possible

Blood donors wait in line at a blood bank near the scene of a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub

Pat Michaels, a spokesman for OneBlood said 'dozens of people have been injured and taken to area hospitals' and that the need for 'blood continues'

An enormous blood donation line formed outside OneBlood and one reporter described the scene as 'overloaded' with people wanting to help

An enormous blood donation line formed outside OneBlood and one reporter described the scene as 'overloaded' with people wanting to help.

Cheatham described the scene at the hospital as 'very hectic'.

'We knew immediately that we had mass casualties coming. We knew at least 20 to start. So three of us immediately came in.

'Once we realized how many victims we had we then went ahead and called in another three surgeons and opened up six operating rooms on top of the two that we normally run at night to be able to operate on the victims.

'All over the vast majority of the gunshot wounds were to the chest, abdomen and the extremities.'

Cheatham added that the surgeons see quite a few gunshot wounds but 'nothing to this scale'.

At one point the blood banks' website crashed from the overwhelming response of people trying to help.

Orlando Health Surgical Critical Care Doctor Michael Cheatham (pictured) spoke at a news conference after the shooting urging people to donate blood to help the victims of the attack

OneBlood tweeted that the website was up and running shortly after.

The blood agency also tweeted: 'A tremendous response by blood donors. Asking donors to donate over the next several days.'

A Twitter user captured a video of hundreds of people patiently waiting outside the blood bank.

Family and friends embrace following the shooting that left 49 people dead and 53 more seriously injured

Family and friends of victims were standing outside the medical center waiting for updates on their loved ones' conditions

Shooter Omar Mateen, 29, slaughtered 49 people with an AR-15 assault rifle and a handgun.

At least 53 more were injured in the deadliest mass shooting in US history.

The FBI believe Mateen, who was shot dead by officers, may have 'leanings to radical Islamic terrorism'.

An FBI spokesman said the mass shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism, adding that they are looking into whether this was an act of domestic or international terror, and if the shooter was a lone wolf.

Many family and friends of victims were standing outside the medical center waiting for updates on their loved ones' conditions.

Shooter Omar Mateen, 29, slaughtered 49 people with an AR-15 assault rifle and a handgun. The FBI believe the gunman, who was shot dead by officers, may have 'leanings to radical Islamic terrorism. Above is the scene of the shooting
The gay community is rallying round the club which was targeted by a homophobic gunman on Sunday.

Pulse was founded in 2004 to promote awareness of LGBT rights in Orlando, Florida.

But on Sunday, the safe space became a scene of horror as Islamic extremist Omar Mateen took party-goers hostage and gunned them down one-by-one, killing 50.

LGBTQ support groups have come out in force to show solidarity with the club and the community after the shooter's father revealed it was an attack motivated by homophobia.

The Harvey Milk Foundation, headed by Milk's nephew Stuart, paid tribute to 'young men and women who were simply out for a night of dancing and enjoyment of our community during LGBT Pride month'.

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Tribute: Harvey Milk's nephew was one of the first to post a tribute to the victims of the massacre on Sunday

Fundraising: Within just hours, this LGBTQ advocacy group raised more than $400,000 for victims

A message towed by an airplane urges people to donate blood, after the mass shooting on Sunday

Horrific: Pulse (pictured on Sunday) was founded in 2004 to promote awareness of LGBT rights in Orlando. But on Sunday, the safe space became a scene of horror as Islamic extremist Omar Mateen shot 50 people dead

Devastating scene: A guard is seen outside the Orlando club on Sunday as victims were still being found

'These victims of a hate crime targeting an LGBT club had their futures stolen, had their dreams stolen, their potential contributions stolen from us all,' he said in a lengthy statement.

He added: 'We send a world of love and prayers to all who are grieving today and to all who will begin the hard journey to recover from untold wounds, both physical and emotional.'

Equality Florida said in a statement on Sunday that their support network has been flooded with distressed messages.

'We have received a steady stream of emails and messages from those seeking to help or to make sense of the senseless,' the statement read.

'We make no assumptions on motive. We will await the details in tears of sadness and anger.

'We stand in solidarity and keep our thoughts on all whose lives have been lost or altered forever in this tragedy.'

The group has also set up a GoFundMe page for victims, raising more than $77,000 in just two hours, and more than $400,000 by Sunday afternoon.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) tweeted: 'Our hearts break for the victims and families of this horrific act of violence. We stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ community in #Orlando.'

Rob Domenico, a board member of LGBTQ advocacy group The Center Orlando told NBC: 'This is a time, more than ever, that we need to put the unity back in community and to stand up to show love and compassion to those going through this horrible travesty.'

Speaking to the network's audience, he said: 'Step out of your comfort zone. If you've never volunteered, now is the time you're needed.'

Pulse, the brainchild of Barbara Poma and Ron Legler, was created in 2004 in tribute to Poma's brother John, a gay man who died of HIV in 1991.

Alongside club nights and drag shows, the Orlando dance spot also hosted educational events about AIDS, safe sex, gay rights and transgender causes.

It was in this unique haven that 29-year-old gunman Mateen shot 103 people.

Tribute: Pulse, the brainchild of good friends Barbara Poma and Ron Legler (pictured together), was created in 2004 in tribute to Poma's brother John, a gay man who died of HIV in 1991. The club hosts educational events

Tragic: It was in this unique haven that 29-year-old gunman Omar Mateen shot 103 people

Aftermath: At least 50 people were killed at Pulse in Orlando, Florida, after Islamic extremist Omar Mateen took party-goers hostage and gunned them down one-by-one. Pictured: party-goers covered in blood after

According to the club's website, Poma and Legler wanted to create a space for gay people in a community where many felt disenfranchised.

Poma's brother, they explain, was raised in a strict Italian family.

'Being gay was frowned upon,' the website reads.

'However, when John came out to his family and friends, the family dynamic transitioned from a culture of strict tradition to one of acceptance and love.'

After John died, Poma and Legler vowed to create space for people like him.

'It was important to create an atmosphere that embraced the gay lifestyle with decor that would make John proud.

'Most importantly, (we) coined the name Pulse for John's heartbeat  as a club that is John's inspiration, where he is kept alive in the eyes of his friends and family.'

It was a haven for the gay community, and a popular social spot for gay and straight party-goers.

'Even though this place is gay bar, all people come out and dance on Latin night,' reads on Yelp review.

Before Mateen occupied the club at 2am, party-goers had enjoyed hours of the club's popular Latin night.

But as the horror unfolded, a message was posted on Pulse's official Twitter account.

'Everyone get out of pulse and keep running,' it said.

One of the headline acts included RuPaul's Drag Race competitor Kenya Michaels.

Michaels later posted on Facebook: 'I want everyone to know I am ok please pray for my friends and family at pulse night club.'
Foreign Office has advised Brits who may be in the city to 'avoid the area'

Many called on those across the pond to 'stay strong' in the face of terror

The Queen has led tributes to the victims of the Orlando nightclub massacre as Britons shared messages of support on social media.

David Cameron, George Osborne and graffiti artist Banksy were among the high profile figures who took to Twitter to share their condolences after 50 party-goers were shot dead at a gay club in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Many Britons urged America to 'stay strong', evoking the spirit of defiance seen following the 7/7 London bombings in 2005. Scores used #LoveWins in a show of support for the LGBT community.

Support: Banksy is among the British high profile figures who have spoken out against the violence

Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting

The Queen, who celebrated her official 90th birthday this weekend, sent a message of solidarity to President Barack Obama.

The message, released by Buckingham Palace, said: 'Prince Philip and I have been shocked by the events in Orlando. Our thoughts and prayers are with all those who have been affected.'

At least 50 people were killed and 53 others were injured in the attack in the early hours of this morning, the deadliest mass shooting in US history.

Horrified Britons united on social media, reacting with 'horror and sadness' to the news of the attack.

Londoner E Anthony Morgan wrote: 'My heart aches. London stands with the LGBTQIA community and family in Orlando. #orlando'

Tony Edwards, from Wales, said: 'Cannot believe what we are seeing in Orlando. This really is a crazy and unsafe world at time, please stay safe, my heart goes out to you all.'

Francesca Radford added: 'No one deserves this senseless killing. My prayers go out to the victims of the Gay Club massacre shooting.'

@LondonLGBTPride tweeted: 'We'll be remembering the victims of this tragic, abhorrent and despicable incident! #PrayforOrlando #LoveWins'.

Solidarity: The Queen, pictured with Prince Philip today, sent a message of support to Barack Obama

David Cameron said on Twitter: 'I'm horrified by reports of the overnight shooting in Orlando. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.'

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn added his thoughts, tweeting: 'Horrific news from Orlando, Florida. My thoughts are with the victims' families and friends.'

Officials said one officer was also shot, sustaining injuries to his face, and they are investigating whether the incident was an act of terrorism.

It is thought there were more than 300 people inside the club when the suspect, identified as Omar Mateen from Port St Lucie, Florida, opened fire.

First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon was among the first to express her concern, tweeting: 'No words can convey my horror and sadness.

Attack: A woman sits on the ground outside the club while another party-goer, whose legs are covered in blood, stands beside her

'Just want to express heartfelt sympathy for all those affected. #Orlando'

Hilary Benn, Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary, said: 'This was a shocking and appalling attack on members of the LGBT community in Orlando.

'All our thoughts are with the families of those killed and the injured, as we stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of the United States in opposing such murderous hatred.'

Orlando is a popular tourist destination with British families, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have since issued advice to UK nationals who may be in the city, to 'avoid the area if possible and follow the advice of local authorities'.

Describing the scene to reporters at a news conference, Mr Dyer said there was 'blood everywhere'.

The Florida Government and City of Orlando have both declared a state of emergency

An FBI spokesman said the mass shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism, adding that they are looking into whether this was an act of domestic or international terror, and if the shooter was a lone wolf.

The FBI believe the gunman, who was shot dead by officers, may have 'leanings to radical Islamic terrorism'.
When there are so many famous entries into a particular genre, it's hard to notice the little films that maybe weren't as popular, but were still very good. Film Noir detective flicks are especially a tough genre. When you've got movies like 'The Big Heat,' 'The Maltese Falcon,' and 'Double Indemnity' - smaller movies like Andre de Toth's 1957 thriller 'Hidden Fear' starring John Payne, Natalie Norwick, and Alexander Knox didn't get their chance to shine. Thankfully Blu-ray rectifies this oversight. While keeping with the traditional Film Noir staples of a hardened detective and a potentially lethal femme fatale, it's fish-out-of-water aspects keep the film exciting and intriguing.

American police officer Mike Brent (John Payne) has to travel to Denmark for a case. Not one he wants to or should be investigating, but one he has to. His sister Susan (Natalie Norwick) has been charged with murder. Brent needs to just look at his sister to know she didn't do it, but all of the evidence points her way, perhaps a little too much evidence. With the Copenhagen police keen on wrapping the case up as quickly as possible, Brent is put in the precarious position of conducting an illegal investigation in order to clear his sister's name. When he's able to turn up evidence that provides some doubt of the case against his sister, the Copenhagen police allow Brent to take the lead. What Brent and the local authorities don't expect to uncover is an international counterfeiting scheme involving some of the most powerful and influential people in Europe. People who are more than willing to kill a detective from another country to keep their lucrative scheme in place and their identities a secret.

If you've ever seen 1953's 'House of Wax,' then you know director Andre de Toth has a knack for taking his time to build suspense and then deliver a big payoff. 'Hidden Fear' follows the director's best tendencies. This film takes its time to build. We're introduced to John Payne's Mike Brent as he arrives at the Copenhagen police department where his sister is being held. Since he's a cop and family, he's being given extra special consideration. The local cops aren't looking for his help, but he's going to give it to them anyway by slapping around his sister. It's a shocking moment. This is the guy that's supposed to be a "hero" of sorts? It turns out he had his reasons and there is plenty of back history between these siblings that keeps Brent a surly sour individual. But it's because of how his sister responds, he knows the truth deep in his gut. He knows his sister has a secret or two of his own and his own personal investigation can move on.

Brent is the best sort of Film Noir anti-heroes. We know we shouldn't like him. Within the first few moments of being introduced to the man we learn he's not the greatest guy in the world, but through it all, he has some sort of charm to him that makes him an interesting person to follow. Small turns of phrase, seemingly innocent questions, little actions all add up to an inquisitive mind that is working overtime mining information from people without their knowing. He isn't heartless, he's determined and that is what makes him good at what he does. Payne effortlessly pulls off this character. As great as John Payne is, a grizzled detective is only as good as the lady he's left to work off of. In this case, it's Anne Neyland as the vixen Virginia Kelly. It's understandable why Brent would fall for the woman, and equally understandable are his reasons for not completely trusting her. I can't really say too much more about this since it leads to a few plot spoilers, but Kelly's presence helps 'Hidden Fear' keep to the typical Noir Detective mold.

Given that this film was shot entirely in Copenhagen, 'Hidden Fear' is more than your average detective flick. In fact, given other movies of this type, it works as a sort of Film Noir cousin to other movies like 'Brannigan,' 'Coogan's Bluff,' and 'Black Rain.' Because I've had an established soft spot for those movies, I really took to 'Hidden Fear.' I'm the first to admit that it's far from perfect, it's a little languid in places and the film's climax may seem a little too neat for some, but the rest of the adventure is worth the ride. At a swift 80 minutes, there's little time for boredom and the film never overstays its welcome. If you're someone who enjoys their detectives rough around the edges with a stiff attitude, make sure to keep 'Hidden Fear' on your radar.

The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

'Hidden Fear' arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber and their Studio Classics line. Pressed on a Region A BD25 disc, the disc is housed in a standard Blu-ray case. The disc opens directly to a static image main menu with traditional navigation options.
ISIS claimed they were going to attack Florida three days before a fanatic armed with an AR-15 assault shot dead at least 50 people in a gay nightclub, according to Twitter feeds supporting the terror group.

Security services in Florida have confirmed the killer is 29-year-old Omar Mateen, a US-born citizen with Afghan parents, and ISIS-affiliated Twitter accounts have released an image of the shooter.

Several ISIS-linked Twitter accounts have praised Mateen's actions, although there has been no official claim of responsibility from the group.

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The killer has been named as Omar Mateen, pictured, who is responsible for the murder of some 50 people

Twitter followers of ISIS have been gloating online about the massacre which killed 50 people

Mateen shot dead at least 50 people and injured a further 50 inside Pulse nightclub in Orlando in Florida

Mateen, whose family is from Afghanistan was killed in the deadly shootout with police in Orlando, Florida

One account posted Mateen's picture with the caption: 'The man who carried out the Florida nightclub attack which killed 50 people and injured dozens.'

Another account, which has now been deleted, gloated over the deaths using the #Pulse hashtag.

'We swear to Allah that we will kill you everywhere O disbeliever,' wrote the follower.

In another tweet they posted: 'Take your troops out if our countries and stop support your followers or else you will see more and more blood.'

Rita Katz, Director of SITE Intelligence Group, a global counter-terrorism organisation, claimed 'Jihadists' have been celebrating the shooting as the 'best Ramadan gift'.

Yet there has also been an outpouring of sympathy over the victims and messages of shock and support have been sent in their hundreds of thousands, including from world leaders.

British Prime Minister David Cameron wrote: 'Im horrified by reports of the overnight shooting in Orlando. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.'

Authorities confirmed they are investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism.

Director of SITE Intelligence Group, Rita Katz, claims Jihadists are celebrating the shooting as a 'gift'

At least 53 other people were hospitalized, and most are in a critical condition, officials said. A surgeon at Orlando Regional Medical Center added the death toll was likely to climb.

Mayor Buddy Dyer said all of the dead were killed with the assault rifle.

'There's blood everywhere,' Dyer said.

The suspect exchanged gunfire with an officer working at the gay club known as Pulse around 2 a.m., when more than 300 people were inside. The gunman then went back inside and took hostages, Police Chief John Mina said.

Around 5 a.m., authorities sent in a SWAT team to rescue the hostages.

Jackie Smith, who was inside the club, said two friends next to her were shot.

Authorities have confirmed they are dealing with the attack as a terrorism incident

Police have raided Mateen's home in Port Saint Lucie in Florida searching for evidence of links to ISIS

'Some guy walked in and started shooting everybody. He had an automatic rifle, so nobody stood a chance,' Smith said. 'I just tried to get out of there.'

In addition to the guns, the shooter also had some sort of 'suspicious device,' Mina said.

Authorities were looking into whether the attack was an act of domestic or international terror, and if the shooter acted alone, according to Danny Banks, an agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

'This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as domestic terror incident,' Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said.

The suspect was identified as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida.

Rep. Alan Grayson named the shooter, citing law enforcement officials. A federal law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation also confirmed the name. The official was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

FBI agent Ron Hopper said there was no further threat to Orlando or the surrounding area.

When asked if the gunman had a connection to radical Islamic terrorism, Hopper said authorities had 'suggestions that individual has leanings towards that.'

Authorities said they had secured the suspect's vehicle, a van, right outside the club.

SWAT officers stormed the nightclub and used a diversion device to distract Mateen before shooting him dead

Relatives and friends, many in tears, gathered outside the hospital to learn whether their loved ones were among the dead or wounded.

Smith did not know the conditions of her friends and came out of the hospital and burst into tears.

The wounded included one police officer who was shot and suffered injuries to his face, officials said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has expressed his 'horror' at the reports coming from Orlando

There has also been an outpouring of sympathy online over the victims of the shootings

Police had said previously on Twitter that there was a 'controlled explosion' at the scene of the shooting. Mina said that noise was caused by a device intended to distract the shooter.

A woman who was outside the dance club early Sunday was trying to contact her 30-year-old son, Eddie, who texted her when the shooting happened and asked her to call police. He told her he ran into a bathroom with other club patrons to hide. He then texted her: 'He's coming.'

'The next text said: 'He has us, and he's in here with us,'' Mina Justice said. 'That was the last conversation.'

Pulse posted on its own Facebook page around 2 am: 'Everyone get out of Pulse and keep running.'

Just before 6 a.m., the club posted an update: 'As soon as we have any information, we will update everyone. Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love.'

Local, state and federal agencies were investigating.
He purchased weapons used in the shooting, which killed 49 people, legally within the last week

The dead Orlando terrorist who murdered at least 49 people at an Orlando nightclub was investigated by the FBI for terror links twice - and was linked to American suicide bomber Moner Abu Salha.

Agents did not charge Omar Mateen on both occasions and concluded he 'only had minimal contact' with Florida man Abu Salha who blew himself up for the Al Nusra Front in Syria 2014.

Mateen was also investigated by the FBI for making 'inflammatory remarks' to his colleagues alleging that he had terrorist ties  but again no further action was taken.

He kept his job with a global security firm, G4S, and was able to legally buy guns that were used in the worst mass shooting in American history that killed 49 and injured 53 others inside the Orlando gay nightclub.

Mateen called 911 to pledge allegiance to ISIS during the massacre and also praised the Boston bombers.

It is also claimed that Mateen had connections with a former U.S. Marine and undercover FBI agent turned radical Muslim cleric who was released from jail last year despite warnings that he was recruiting potential terrorists.

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Pictured: US citizen Omar Mateen, 29, the suspected Islamic extremist who slaughtered at least 49 people inside a gay club in Orlando. The FBI says Mateen was a person of interest both in 2013 and again in 2014

Police were at Mateen's most recently listed address in Port St. Lucie this morning. The FBI believe Mateen, who was shot dead by officers, may have 'leanings to radical Islamic terrorism'

Mateen's father said the attack had 'nothing to do with religion' and said his father became angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami several months ago

Marcus Dwayne Robertson, also known as Abu Taubah, managed to convert 36 people to his poisonous version of Islam during his four years in jail, and was considered so dangerous that he was kept shackled with his own security detail away from other inmates.

Mateen was a member of the Timbuktu Seminary, an educational website run by Robertson that police believe is used to dispense his radical teachings, sources told Fox News.

Robertson and several associates were rounded up for questioning early Sunday, sources added.

After serving as a Marine for six years, Robertson went on to become a bank robber, before turning FBI informant after his arrest in exchange for a short prison sentence.

He was dismissed by the FBI in 2007 after allegedly attacking his CIA handler, and then began preaching Islamic extremism.

Thrown in jail for tax fraud back in 2011, prosecutors attempted to have ten years added to his sentence last year after discovering documents preaching terror among his possessions. However, a judge freed him.

Mateen, from Port St Lucie in Florida, shot more than 100 people, killing 49 and injuring 53 others with an AR-15 assault rifle and handgun on the dance floor at Pulse night club early Sunday morning.

The shooter, who had no criminal history, was licensed to work as an armed security guard in Florida, law enforcement sources said.

Mateen was shot dead in a shootout with police.

Mateen is believed to be a member of Timbuktu Seminary, a website purporting to educate Muslims, but actually used to peddle radical Islam by Marcus Dwayne Robertson, also known as Abu Taubah (left and right)

Robertson was a Marine and bank robber before turning FBI snitch and eventually radical cleric. He was jail for tax fraud in 2011, and had to be kept in solitary in jail because of how many people he converted

An FBI spokesman said at a press conference later in the day that Mateen purchased multiple guns in the past few days.

The spokesman said that the investigations by the FBI were closed and that's why the 29-year-old gunman was able to purchase the weapons.

The federal agency said Mateen was first interviewed in 2013 after he made 'inflammatory remarks' to a colleague.

'The FBI first became aware of Mateen in 2013 as he made inflammatory comments to coworkers, alleging possible terrorist ties,' Ron Hopper an FBI special agent said during a press conference.

'The FBI thoroughly investigated the matter including interviews of witnesses, physical surveillance and records checks.

'In the course of the investigation, Mateen was interviewed twice.

'Ultimately we were unable to verify the substance of his comments, and the investigation was closed.'

In 2014, Mateen came to the FBI's attention again and agents interviewed him about a potential connection he may have had with American suicide bomber Moner Abu Salha, who lived about 30 minutes away in Vero Beach, Florida.

'We determined that contact was minimal and didn't to constitute a substantive relationship or threat at that that time,' Hopper said.

In addition, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said that Mateen purchased two weapons legally within the last week.

'He is not a prohibitive person so he can legally walk into a gun dealership,' the representative from the ATF said. 'He did so within the last week or so.'

Marcus Dwayne Robertson, also known as Abu Taubah, managed to convert 36 people to his poisonous version of Islam

The FBI interviewed Mateen in 2013 and closed the investigation and then opened another in 2014 when he came to the FBI's attention again. Agents interviewed him about a potential connection he may have had with American suicide bomber Moner Abu Salha (pictured above)

Attack: A woman sits on the ground outside the club while another party-goer, whose legs are covered in blood, stands beside her

Response: Emergency services are pictured at the scene outside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida following Sunday morning's shooting

'He's a known quantity,' another source said. 'He's been on the radar before.'

Global security firm, G4S, confirmed that he worked for the company since 2007.

'We are shocked and saddened by the tragic event that occurred at the Orlando nightclub,' a statement by the company reads.

'We can confirm that Omar Mateen had been employed with G4S since September 10, 2007. We are cooperating fully with all law enforcement authorities, including the FBI, as they conduct their investigation.

'Our thoughts and prayers are with all of the friends, families and people affected by this unspeakable tragedy.'

An FBI spokesman said Sunday's mass shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism, adding that they are looking into whether it was an act of domestic or international terror, and if the Mateen was a lone wolf.

The FBI believe Mateen may have 'leanings to radical Islamic terrorism'.

But his father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News his son became angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami several months ago.

'This has nothing to do with religion,' he said. 'We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident. We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country.'

Twitter accounts which claim to be affiliated to the Islamic State have hailed the shooting, although DailyMail.com cannot confirm whether the terror group was behind the attack.

Distraught: A woman sits outside the nightclub following the mass shooting. At least 49 people were killed by the suspected gunman

Demetrice Naulings (left) sobs outside the Orlando Police Headquarters where police are interviewing witnesses. Right: People wait outside the emergency entrance of the Orlando Regional Medical Center hospital after the shooting at Pulse gay club

Mateen, a Muslim and father to a three-year-old son, was born in 1986 in New York and married Sitora Alisherzoda Yusufiy, who was born in Uzbekistan, in 2009.

Mateen's father, Seddique Mateen, told NBC News: 'We were in Downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry.

'They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, 'Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that'. And then we were in the men's bathroom and men were kissing each other.'

Mateen's father, Seddique Mateen, pictured, said: 'We were in Downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry'

Seddique said his son attended Indian River State College, as well as having an associates degree in criminal justice.

Manteen had a Statewide Firearms License and was trained in firearms, according to Fox News.

Hopper said Mateen made 'threats in the past that he has ties to terrorist organizations'.

Police were at his apartment in Port St. Lucie this morning. Ken Mascara, Sheriff of Port St. Lucie County, told DailyMail.com: 'We have sealed the apartment where Mateen was living. The FBI is bringing bomb diffusing equipment.'

Police, army and FBI surround the club after a suspected Islamic extremist wielding an assault rifle and a handgun killed 49 people

After spending most of the day searching Mateens Port St. Lucie home, cops and the FBI moved on late in the afternoon to the custom-built four-bedroom home a couple of blocks of north on Bayshore Boulevard where his parents live.

Neighbor, Tony Schneider, a retired deputy sheriff told Daily Mail Online that Seddique and Shahla Mateen are the nicest people in the world.

They are very Americanized, he said. Just very good neighbors. I have known them for six years and have never had any problems with them.

My heart goes out to them  of course if they were involved they can rot in hell, but I otherwise I feel so sorry for them.

Schneider said that Seddique  who he knows as Sid  can often be seen in his yard and walking up and down the street. He said he did not know his wife nearly as well.

I believe he is in insurance, he has done well for himself and they have three daughters, all went to college, who I believe are in the medical field.

But I didnt know the son. I saw his picture on television this morning and I recognized him, but he only came here rarely.

Authorities at the home of Seddique, the father of Omar Mateen, who shot dead 49 people in an Orlando nightclub

Mateen exchanged gunfire with an officer working around the club at 2am before going back inside, according to Orlando Police Chief John Minia.

Writing on Facebook, Pulse, which described itself as the most prominent gay club in Orlando, urged party-goers to 'get out and keep running' as bullets started to fly.

There were about 320 people inside the club at the time of the shootings and about 100 people were taken hostage.

At around 5am authorities sent in a SWAT team to rescue the hostages. Nine hero officers used a 'controlled explosion' to distract the shooter before fatally shooting him and were able to rescue about 30 hostages who were hiding in the bathroom of the club.

During the gunfire, an officer was shot, but he was saved by his helmet. It was thought that at least one hostage had been locked in a bathroom with gunshot wounds.

Mayor Buddy Dyer said in a press conference: 'Many were saved by the heroic efforts of the men and women of the OPD, the Orange County Sheriffs, Seminal County Sheriff's office.'

At around 6am local time police tweeted: 'Pulse Shooting: The shooter inside the club is dead.'

Since the news of the horrific shooting emerged, celebrities and politicians are calling for stricter gun control laws.

President Obama furthered his gun control message today when addressing the massacre in Orlando.

'Although it's still early in the investigation we know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate,' Obama said, making no reference to ISIS or Islamic terror in his brief remarks.

SNAPCHAT AUDIO CAPTURES SCREAMING HORROR AS GUNMAN FIRED 24 SHOTS IN JUST NINE SECONDS A Snapchat video captured the sound of 24 gunshots being fired in just nine seconds at Orlando's Pulse nightclub on Sunday morning. The footage obtained by WESH 2 News shows a dark street with police cars flashing in the distance. In the background, there is the sound of one assault rifle firing two or more shots a second, and a woman's scream. At the end of the video there is the sound of a gunshot from another gun. The person filming says: 'Oh... my god... People are getting shot dude...' A male voice next to him says: 'We need to get out of here.' But they stand there stunned as the gunshots keep going. 'This guy's firing out shots,' the friend adds. The harrowing footage offers a glimpse into the horror that unfolded in Florida between 2am and 5am this morning. Advertisement

Obama called the shooting spree, at the gay nightclub Pulse during Pride month in the United States, a reminder of how easy it is for someone to get a hold of a weapon that could kill people in a 'school, or a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub.'

'And we have to decide if that's the kind of country we want to be,' Obama said.

'And to actively do nothing is a decision as well,' the president added.

Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton took to Twitter on Sunday morning to give their initial reactions to what's now being called the most deadly shooting in United States history.

'Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act,' Clinton wrote on Twitter, signing it with her trademark 'H' to show that the message was actually penned by the Democratic candidate.

In a statement made by her campaign later, Clinton also called for gun control.

'This is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States and it reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets,' Clinton said.

Trump made Twitter followers aware of the shooting, then went back to attacking Clinton  this time for a new general election ad  before penning another tweet about the tragedy in Orlando, in which a gunman entered a gay nightclub and mowed down 49 people, with another 53 left injured.

'Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!' Trump later wrote.

Celebrities have also taken to Twitter to send their support to the LGBT community and demand change to gun laws.

President Obama only spoke for a handful of minutes, but reminded the country of his position on gun control, though didn't bring up 'radical Islamic terror,' the line Republicans use to define the ISIS crisis

John Legend and Josh Groban both wondered when anything was going to change in a country where the last horrific massacre, in San Bernadino, California, happened just six months ago.

'Horrified by the mass shooting in Orlando,' Legend tweeted. 'When will we do something to prevent these killing sprees?'

Groban wrote that he was heartbroken for the victims, the LGBT community, and the entire country, while Ellen DeGeneres summed up her emotions with just one word: 'Sobbing.'

'When does it end?' he wrote.

Prominent LGBT figures like Billie Jean King, Melissa Etheridge, Adam Lambert and Dan Savage spoke out after the killing.

Lambert sent prayers to his 'brothers and sisters' who were at Pulse Nightclub, which describes itself as the most prominent gay club in Orlando, during the horrific attack.

'My heart is with Orlando. My sweet brothers and sisters,' rock singer Melissa Etheridge echoed, including the hashtags EndGunViolence and LGBT.
It's been a little over a week since the death of Muhammad Ali and now a woman is trying to cash in by attempting to sell alleged sex tapes of him, while her daughter claims to be their lovechild.

Barbara Mensah is alleging that she has footage of the legendary boxer, who died at age 74 on June 3, at sex parties that were arranged after his fights.

'I know the value of the footage,' she told the Mirror. 'No one has anything like this. I'd like to get as much as I can for it.'

Mensah, who lives in Texas is looking for more than $100,000 for the alleged tapes that she is trying to have transferred on to CD.

Love affair?: Barbara Mensah is alleging that she has footage of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, who died at age 74 on June 3, at sex parties that were arranged after his fights. They are pictured above together

Mensah is looking for more than $100,000 for the alleged tapes that she is trying to have transferred on to CD. Above she is pictured next to the boxer

She told the Mirror: 'I know the value of the footage. No one has anything like this. I'd like to get as much as I can for it.' The alleged sex tapes are pictured above

The 70-year-old woman says the footage was filmed at what she called 'gumbo parties' after his fights.

'They used to call them gumbo parties  it was a mix of everything,' she said. 'Three would be Ali and a few of his guys and then about a dozen or more girls.

'All of them were stunning. Muhammad couldn't keep away from a pretty girl whether he was married or not.

'The tapes show them having sex.'

Mensah, who is reportedly a cousin of Ali's third wife Veronica Porsche-Ali, also claims that her 35-year-old daughter, Kiiursti Mensah Ali, is the product of a 20-year affair that she had with the three-time world heavyweight champion.

She alleges that the boxer would 'always' refer to her 'as his wife with great respect and not as a hidden affair.'

The 70-year-old woman claims that her daughter, Kiiursti, is the product of a 20-year affair that she had with Ali. Above the boxer is pictured holding Kiiursti as a baby

Mensah alleges that the boxer would 'always' refer to her 'as his wife with great respect and not as a hidden affair.' Above she is pictured right as Ali is center signing an autograph

The woman says a paternity test she had in 1988 proves that Kiiursti is his daughter, but he is not on her birth certificate though she has his last name, the Mirror reported.

Mensah, who says she met the boxer when she was 17-years-old, was one of the thousands of people who attended the champion fighter's Muslim prayer service Thursday in Louisville, Kentucky.

She shared pictures and videos of his coffin on Facebook, along with quick snap shots of a few celebrities.

'It really, really hurts and only time will ease the pain R.I.P until we meet again,' she wrote.

'I'm so glad I came to say goodbye to my love you were always there for me I never would have miss your home going for the world.'

In reference to the boxer's fourth wife and widow, Lonnie, Mensah wrote: 'Yes she tried to keep me from you in life and in death but here I am at the private funeral. R.I.P. my love.'

Mensah also claims that Lonnie prevented her and her daughter from seeing Ali after he became ill from Parkinson's Disease.

Mensah (left) says a paternity test she had in 1988 proves that Kiiursti (right) is his daughter, but his name is not on her birth certificate

She claims that the Olympian would visit her regularly in Houston, Texas to see Kiiursti, but the visits became less frequent as time went on.

When Kiiursti turned age 13, the boxer stopped contacting them, she claims.

The daughter said that her mother 'is not bitter.'

'She knows it's not his fault. When he was able to do things, it was OK. Then he got sick. That was the end for me,' Kiiursti told the Mirror.

In an interview in 2014, Kiiursti also claimed that Lonnie was blocking them from seeing The Greatest.

'Muhammad Ali is my dad  but everything changed the moment he married her,' Kiiursti told the Mirror.

'He stopped coming to see me. As the years went by he got sicker and sicker. She stopped him having a relationship with me. It's been devastating.'

The mother-daughter duo both claim they don't want any of the millions that are said to be in his will, as his family prepares for what is expected to be a fierce fight with others out there claiming to be his children.
The shooter who slaughtered 49 people in an Orlando gay nightclub dreamed of becoming a police officer and worked as a correctional officer with juveniles, according to his ex-wife.

Sitora Yusufiy, who married mass murderer Omar Mateen shortly after they met online in 2009, has described how he 'seemed like a normal human being' at first, but he soon turned violent.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday evening with her fiance beside her, Yusufiy said she thought the shooting had nothing to do with religion and had more to do with mental illness.

Yusufiy, who said she did not agree with Mateens views, revealed her ex-husband was mentally unstable and had bipolar disorder, yet wanted to become a police officer and had applied to the police academy.

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Sitora Yusufiy, who married mass murderer Omar Mateen shortly after they met online in 2009, has described how he 'seemed like a normal human being' at first, but he soon turned violent

Speaking to reporters on Sunday evening with her fiance beside her, Yusufiy said she thought the shooting had nothing to do with religion and had more to do with mental illness.

'Dark past': Omar Mateen (pictured) beat his ex-wife for not doing household chores, a report claims. Eight years later he unleashed the deadliest gun massacre in America's history, killing 49 people in a gay club

After a few months he started to beat me, she said. He was mentally unstable he was obviously disturbed. I know he had a history of [taking] steroids.

I was with him for about four months, then my family rescued me.

Yusufiy said that Mateen owned a gun during their marriage, was short tempered and would express hate towards things. She would not reveal if he had any homophobic views.

Following a brief romance, the pair tied the knot in March 2009 and moved into a two-bedroom home owned by Mateens family in Fort Pierce.

At the start of their relationship, she told the Washington Post, he was not particularly religious and was not violent. But soon things changed.

That's when I started worrying about my safety and he was abusing me physically very often and not allowing me to speak to my family and he kept me hostage from them, she said during her press conference.

She added: And I tried to see good in him even then but my family was very tuned into it I was going through and decided to visit me in rescue me out of that situation.

Yusufiy, who said she did not agree with Mateens views, revealed her ex-husband was mentally unstable and had bipolar disorder, yet wanted to become a police officer and had applied to the police academy

Following a brief romance, the Mateen and Yusufiy tied the knot in March 2009 and moved into a two-bedroom home owned by Mateens family in Fort Pierce.

New York-born Mateen was a private person and dedicated much of his time to exercise.

'He was not a stable person,' she told the Post. 'He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasnt finished or something like that.'

When her parents found out about the beatings just months after the wedding, they staged an intervention and rescued her from the home.

'They literally saved my life,' she said.

Yusufiy told the Post she has not had contact with Mateen since they finalized their divorce in 2011.

Despite his violence, she said there was no sign he would go on to be a mass murder.

Speaking on Sunday, she told the newspaper she was still processing the news of Mateen's massacre.

'I am still processing. I am definitely lucky,' she said.

During her press conference, Yusufiy relayed a message to the shooting victims friends and family.

To be in someway affiliated at one point in my life to somebody that cause such a tragedy was it shook me off the ground, she said. It was really difficult and it's gonna take a while to process.

I was so so deeply hurt and heartbroken for the people that lost their loved ones and families that are now suffering and people that are wounded that are healing, she said. "[I want to offer] my sympathy.

Mateen, 29, killed 49 people and wounded another 53 after occupying a gay club in Orlando, Florida, on Saturday night. Pictured: Blood-drenched victims stand outside the club after the brutal massacre

What I feel for the people, what I feel for the souls that are transitioning I don't know why somebody would do this and that is my biggest concern. And I pray for their healing and I pray for their peace,to find their peace I pray for the victims to find their peace."

She added: I personally am not a person that remembers anything negative about anybody. I do everything to kill my ego every day and kill everything negative I remember."

Her fiance also spoke briefly, saying: I asked everyone to forgive everybody. Lets not make this another reason to invade Afghanistan.

Mateen, 29, killed 49 people and wounded another 53 after occupying a gay club in Orlando, Florida, on Saturday night.

It came shortly after he had pledged allegiance to the leader of ISIS, according to the FBI.

The shooter's father Seddique Mateen said that his son got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago and thinks that may be related to the shooting.

He added: 'We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident. We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country.'
In the nationwide sweepstakes among federal jurisdictions to put Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin El Chapo Guzman on trial, the place currently leading the pack is far from the border: Brooklyn.

Justice Department officials in Washington still are not commenting on the closely watched decision involving seven prosecutor's offices that have indicted Guzman on drug conspiracy and other charges over the past two decades.

But two law enforcement officials familiar with the process told The Associated Press that it's likely that if transferred from Mexican to U.S. custody in the coming months, Guzman would be sent to the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn.

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In the nationwide sweepstakes among federal jurisdictions to put Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin El Chapo Guzman (pictured in January) on trial, the place currently leading the pack is far from the border: Brooklyn

Law enforcement sources said that it is likely if transferred from Mexican to US custody in the coming months, Joaquin El Chapo Guzman would be sent to the Eastern District of New York. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York pictured

The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly discuss the decision.

Brooklyn, an office once run by Attorney General Loretta Lynch, has long been rumored to be the front-runner while Guzman has been vigorously fighting extradition, an effort that could drag out indefinitely.

But wherever he ends up in the United States, Guzman is certain to cause a media frenzy and present a security challenge that has bedeviled Mexican authorities.

Last year, the boss of the cutthroat Sinaloa cartel escaped prison for a second time  using a mile-long tunnel and allegedly with help from crooked guards  and spent several months on the run before being recaptured in January after a bloody shootout in the coastal city of Los Mochis.

His apprehension, along with Mexican authorities' decision to transfer him to a jail just across the border from El Paso in Ciudad Juarez, renewed speculation about a possible U.S. prosecution in one of the seven districts  Brooklyn, Manhattan, Chicago, Miami, San Diego, El Paso and New Hampshire.

U.S. indictments in those cities accuse him of overseeing a drug empire that poisoned American streets by smuggling countless tons of cocaine, heroin and marijuana via tunnels or secret compartments in cars, trucks and rail cars.

In a move seen as aimed at smoothing the path to extradition, prosecutors in Brooklyn quietly revised their indictment last month to drop more than a dozen death-penalty eligible accusations of specific murders by his henchmen in Mexico, while preserving murder conspiracy charges that could still result in a life sentence.

Brooklyn, an office once run by Attorney General Loretta Lynch, has long been rumored to be the front-runner while Guzman has been vigorously fighting extradition, an effort that could drag out indefinitely

Around the same time, Mexico's foreign ministry said it had sought and received 'sufficient guarantees' from U.S. officials that Guzman wouldn't be executed.

Only San Diego  the first to indict Guzman in 1996  and El Paso have made formal extradition requests.

But behind the scenes, it's likely that prosecutors from all seven districts have lobbied the Justice Department to land Guzman, in some cases traveling to Washington to lay out what they see as the strengths of their cases.

Their higher-ups would look to pick the one 'that has the best chance to win and put Chapo in prison for the rest of his life,'Jodi Avergun, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn who has held various high-level positions at the Justice Department, said.

Guzman was moved last month from a prison outside Mexico City to one in Ciudad Juarez near the US border (pictured)

'They know they only have one shot at this.'

In Chicago  where a non-governmental crime commission has dubbed Guzman the first Public Enemy No. 1 since Al Capone  prosecutors bring to the table a case against Guzman that includes the cooperation of twin brother traffickers who recorded a phone call with the kingpin in 2008 negotiating the price of a shipment of heroin.

The U.S. Attorney's office there also has secured the extradition and convictions of more than a half dozen of El Chapo lieutenants.

Weighing heavily in Brooklyn's favor is vast experience prosecuting international drug cartel cases, Avergun said.

Starting in the 1990s, the office has built several complex cases strong enough to convince distant governments in Asia and South America to extradite defendants now serving lengthy sentences in US prisons.

Prosecutors in Brooklyn 'have the sophistication to do this,' she said. 'They've been doing it forever.'

There's also the strong possibility that prosecutors from two or more districts with the best witnesses and evidence against El Chapo would team up to bring the case in a single location like Brooklyn, she added.

Whether Guzman will turn up in the United States anytime soon is uncertain. On paper, he is fighting extradition with appeals.

But news reports out of Mexico have suggested he may be open to come to the United States in hopes of a plea deal that would rescue him from what he claims are abusive conditions in his current lockup.

One of his lawyers has said the decision would be 'an act of desperation.'
Child slavery, prostitution and survival sex is raging among Syrian refugees in Lebanon due to a UN funding crisis, a recent study reveals.

Dr Katharine Jones of Coventry University reports that Lebanon has 'the worst forms of child labour' with forced child marriages on the increase.

She also claims that many of the girls who leave the sweat shops and farmlands end up working as child prostitutes - in some cases providing sexual services to accompany their mothers' 'survival sex' with Lebanese employers.

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Child slavery, prostitution and survival sex is raging among Syrian refugees in Lebanon due to a UN funding crisis, a recent study reveals. Pictured: Adults and children work on a farm in Akkar near the Syrian border

Dr Katharine Jones of Coventry University reports that Lebanon has 'the worst forms of child labour' with forced child marriages on the increase

In the London Conference, back in February of this year, western donors agreed on a new initiative to create jobs and provide education to create a future model for humanitarian relief for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

They also agreed to return 700,000 Syrian children back to school.

Yet today, on the International Day of Child Labour, 300,000 Syrian children in Lebanon are still out of school, with the majority of them working as child slaves for about 30p an hour in unbearable conditions.

According to NGOs and UN bosses approached by MailOnline, this is largely due to adults being denied access to the job market in Lebanon.

Syrian refugee men are still now not allowed to work in Lebanon and no extra cash promised has neither come for extreme poverty nor for new schools.

New levels of desperation are being met head on by Lebanon's 1.8 million Syrian refugees who simply cannot survive in a country which charges them for everything they consume  even water.

The report also claims that many of the girls who leave the sweat shops and farmlands end up working as child prostitutes

Consequently young women who leave the child labour 'jobs' have to become sex workers to pay for rented accommodation.

'Syrian refugee women are coerced into providing sexual favours in return for rent, food or employment' the study claims.

'The perpetrator is commonly the woman's landlord who might broker a deal himself or be the recipientand such deals may involve the exploitation of children'.

Dr Jones' report paints a horrific picture of women working in homes of Lebanese where it is commonplace for them to perform sexual acts 'and then to keep the job' according to a local municipality official 'she may have to get her 13 year old child involved'.

Yet child slavery, like on one farm in Akkar on the Syrian border, appears to prepare them for more abuse which most of them cannot even imagine.

The exploitation here, which includes beatings, is merely a small taste for far worse to come. One worker, who gave her name as Farida, hoped to be married off to a Lebanese businessman who might take care of her.

But if she does enter into such an arranged marriage, it will likely be abusive and may even culminate in her being pimped out to bring her husband money after he is tired of her.

Far worse though is the prospect of being kidnapped and enslaved into a prostitution racket in any one of the hundreds of Lebanon's 'super nightclubs'.

One worker, who gave her name as Farida, hoped to be married off to a Lebanese businessman who might take care of her

Farida is not aware of her own beauty though and that she, like many others, could easily fall prey to a forced marriage if her family's financial situation worsens.

'I worry for her' whispers Leyla Assi, an NGO worker for Beyond Association. 'She has something special... many of the children here though become adults at a very young age though'.

'I feel that I am a victim, I must be studying instead of working' Farida explains. 'I'm working here to survive, to get money as my mother can't work due to her bad back'.

'The job is very difficult.. but our life conditions are miserable, so we need money' says Farida. 'Maybe my parents will force me to marry in this age, because they need money'.

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Syrian women 'represent the majority of women in prostitution in the country and that this proportion has risen since the Syrian conflict sent hundreds of thousands over the border' says Skye Wheeler.

'There is a huge problem for Syrian women, some of whom have been trafficked to Lebanon, in reporting abuse in Lebanon's underground sex industry' she adds.

In the London Conference western donors agreed on a new initiative to create jobs and provide education to create a future model for humanitarian relief for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey

Inevitably, those same women are trapped and cannot expect any legal protection as the judicial noose tightens around their necks.

'Instead of victims they are likely to be perceived as criminals, as prostitution is, in effect, illegal in Lebanon' she explains.

'They may also face sexual abuse in police stations where they usually cannot access lawyers. They also could face problems because of their residency status'.

According to HRW, up to 75 women were released after a recent police raid of one 'super nightclub' who had been held in abusive conditions, 'forced to work as prostitutes', were regularly beaten and had their identification documents and phones taken away.

Astonishingly though, while the NGO community's claims of sexual exploitation grow, the UN itself appears to be in denial of its very existence, which might explain the Freedom Fund's report which places blame with international donors giving 'little thought towards tackling slavery and trafficking'.

UN officials played down the prostitution but did admit the extent of child slavery and that a big part of the problem lied with the failure to allow adults to work.

Yet today, on the International Day of Child Labour, 300,000 Syrian children in Lebanon are still out of school

It really is just about the money. 'Facilitating adults' access to livelihoods (with decent working conditions and wages) would reduce pressure on households to resort to child labour' a UNHCR spokesman explained to MailOnline.

'We are advocating for the lifting of requirements on refugees, when they renew their residency status, not to work'.

UNICEF officials also want Syrian adults to have jobs and are concerned about longer terms effects on young girls like Farida, who earns $4.80 a day in the fields.

'Adding to the psychological trauma already affecting many children, the experiences associated with these worst forms of child labour can cause long-term developmental and psychological damage' explains Tanya Chapuisat, its country chief in Lebanon.

None of this though impresses UKIP who are staunch critics of the government's spending on refugees.

Mike Hookem MEP told MailOnline: 'Whilst I feel very sorry for these people it is not up to Britain to provide aid to everyone particularly when our international aid budget is 12bn a year and the NHS is 2.5bn in debt.'
The family of a foster carer who was murdered by a teenager have launched a 700,000 legal action for damages against the care company who housed the boy with them.

Dawn McKenzie, 34, was stabbed to death by David McCourt after they argued about his behaviour and breaking of rules.

McCourt was 13 when he stabbed Mrs McKenzie ten times on the head and body in 2011 at the home she shared with husband Bryan in Hamilton, Lanarkshire. She bled to death.

Dawn McKenzie (pictured), 34, was stabbed to death by David McCourt after they argued about his behaviour and breaking of rules

McCourt (pictured as a child) was 13 when he stabbed Mrs McKenzie ten times on the head and body in 2011 at the home she shared with husband Bryan in Hamilton, Lanarkshire

McCourt - who has now turned 18 - claimed 'voices in his head' told him to do it after a row.

He was convicted of culpable homicide and served four years of a seven-year sentence at St Mary's Kenmure unit in Bishopbriggs, near Glasgow.

He was moved to a halfway house in the city's Nitshill in February before being released under a supervision order.

It has now emerged Mrs McKenzie's devastated husband Bryan and her mother Ray Byrne are seeking damages from Foster Care Associates Ltd, the agency who placed him in their care.

The action at Hamilton Sheriff Court had originally included a claim against Glasgow City Council but that has now been dropped by the family.

The case had been due to call before a sheriff last month but has now been postponed.

The family are seeking 500,000 for Mr McKenzie in compensation for his wife's death and 200,000 for Mrs Byrne.

Mrs McKenzie's devastated husband Bryan (pictured) and her mother Ray Byrne are seeking damages from Foster Care Associates Ltd, the agency who placed him in their care

Mrs McKenzie, with her husband Bryan, who was at his brother-in-law's at the time of the stabbing in 2011

Both claims seek compensation for loss and injury as a result of alleged negligence by Foster Care Associates.

Mr McKenzie and Mrs Byrne are being represented by the Lanarkshire Law Practice. A spokesman for the firm confirmed the case was ongoing but declined to comment further.

First-time foster carer Mrs McKenzie was stabbed just months after McCourt was placed with her at short notice.

In the days leading up to the attack his mobile phone and laptop were temporarily taken from him for misbehaviour.

Mr McKenzie told a fatal accident inquiry into the killing that they had not been given enough information about the boy and had been let down by social workers.

Sheriff David Bicket ruled that the carer's death could not have been predicted but might have been avoided Foster Care Associates Scotland (FCAS) had taken proper account of her inexperience.

In his written judgement, Sheriff Bicket said: 'The McKenzies had not experienced respite care. They had only limited experience in caring for Mrs McKenzie's nephew.

An inquiry heard that Mrs McKenzie, who had asked to foster a child between one and eight, did not have enough experience and had not been given sufficient training to deal with the boy

'It does not appear to me that the matching process was applied with sufficient rigour, and it does appear to me that FCAS, when considering if they had a suitable placement for child D* ought to have taken proper account of the McKenzies' status as new carers and lack of suitable prior experience.'

He added that it would have been a reasonable precaution not to have made the recommendation that she should foster the teenager.

Foster Care Associates Ltd have denied liabilty but declined to comment.
After a guardsman fainted during the Trooping the Colour ceremony, it was inevitable pranksters would take the opportunity to make light of the moment and poke fun at the stricken serviceman.

As millions tuned in to watch the ceremony to mark the Queen's 90th birthday yesterday, one Royal guardsman fainted - and the internet was soon awash with creative memes mocking his plight.

With humid weather conditions in the capital, and dressed in a bearskin hat and heavy military uniform, he surely cannot be blamed for collapsing - but jokers online have revelled in his misfortune.

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Taking the weight off One's feet: One of the many memes that appeared online showed the Queen sitting on the guardsman's back

Lunch is served: The internet was soon awash with memes mocking the poor guardsman's plight

It was inevitable pranksters around the world would take the opportunity to poke fun at the poor guardsman and mock his plight

The man fell to the floor early on during the festivities at Horse Guards Parade and was stretchered away by officials.

Creative memes which later popped up online range from images of the guardsman being served as a cracker topping, to him sleeping on a sofa.

Standing guard for hours in blistering heat and humidity can take its toll on even the most highly trained military personnel.

But in the strict world of British military protocol, servicemen and women are even given rules on how to faint with dignity - as demonstrated by this guard.

His fall echoed scenes just one day earlier when an RAF serviceman collapsed on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral

The show must go on: Despite the soldier collapsing, the ceremony continued as planned with the troops lining up in formation

Another of the images given the Photoshop treatment showed the guardsman hovering above an escalator

With hot and humid weather conditions in the capital, and dressed in a heavy bearskin and military uniform, the guardsman surely cannot be blamed for fainting - but pranksters online made the most of the opportunity

The soldier was stretchered away by officials to receive medical attention while the parade continued

On Friday the RAF serviceman had to be led away by paramedics after fainting while standing guard outside the cathedral.

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.

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.

A hard day's work: Photoshop techniques have been used to depict the guardsman in a series of different locations

Fire: The man fell to the floor early on during the festivities at Horse Guards Parade and was stretchered away by officials

Trooping the Colour has been part of the monarch's birthday celebrations since the mid-1700s and often features the monarch arriving on horseback.

The spectacle in Whitehall honoured the Queen's enduring ties with her Armed Forces and officially marked her milestone anniversary.

On the parade ground in their famous scarlet tunics and bearskins were the Coldstream, Grenadier and Scots Guards - while the Irish Guards lined the Queen's processional route from Buckingham Palace.

Watching from the Duke of Wellington's old office that overlooks Horse Guards were members of the Royal Family including the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge who had arrived together in a carriage.

Revelling in the stricken guardsman's plight, jokers took his photograph - and fashioned a fan out of it
The son of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi says his family are ready to join the legal battle to clear his name.

The Libyan intelligence officer was convicted in 2001 for killing 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 above the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, but suspicions lingered that he was a scapegoat used to cover up the involvement of other Middle Eastern countries.

A posthumous appeal against his controversial conviction was kicked out last year by legal chiefs who said the bid didn't have the support of the al-Megrahi family.

But according to his son, Khaled al-Megrahi, the family are 'ready to open' his father's case four years after his death.

Khaled al-Megrahi says his family are 'ready to open' his father's case four years after his death

A statement, posted yesterday on the Friends of Justice for Megrahi Facebook page by Khaled, has given campaigners hope the family are set to ask for a fresh appeal to the conviction.

Writing in poor English on the social media site, Khaled said: 'We are ready to open my father's case, I speak behind my family and we believe my father is innocent.'

The post has been verified with sources close to the case that it was indeed al-Megrahi's son who made the statement.

Campaigners have welcomed the development. Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the 1988 disaster, said: 'If the family are genuinely signing up to this the authorities will need to re-open the case.'

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi (pictured in bed in 2011 as he was dying of cancer) was convicted in 2001 for killing 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103

Previously, campaigners had applied for the right to appeal in a bid to clear Al-Megrahi of one of the 'worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history'.

But the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission - a Scottish Government body - rejected the application last November. It said it could not proceed without the input from al-Megrahi's family.

Solicitor Aamer Anwar, who represents some of the victims of the tragedy and the Al-Megrahi family, said: 'It is becoming clear that this is an unsafe conviction.

'At the time when the SCCRC rejected the case it was impossible for the al-Megrahi family to get involved due to the political turmoil in Libya.

'But now things are settling down in the country we can hopefully move forward and satisfy the paperwork requirements.'

A statement posted yesterday on the Friends of Justice for Megrahi Facebook page by Khaled, has given campaigners hope the family are set to ask for a fresh appeal to the conviction. Pictured: The jet that was brought down in 1988

Writing in poor English on the social media site, Khaled said: 'We are ready to open my father's case, I speak behind my family and we believe my father is innocent.' Pictured: Megrahi being escorted by security officers through Tripoli in 1992

Reacting to Khaled's post, Reverend John Mosey - whose 19-year-old daughter Helga died in the bombing - wrote: 'We are convinced your father is innocent and are working very hard to prove it.'

In 2007, the SCCRC said there may have been a miscarriage of justice.

That decision paved the way for a second appeal. But that was dropped in 2009 just before al-Megrahi was released from jail by the Scottish Government on 'compassionate grounds' due to his terminal cancer.

Al-Megrahi died in 2012 still claiming to be innocent.

Reacting to Khaled's post, Reverend John Mosey - whose 19-year-old daughter Helga died in the bombing - wrote: 'We are convinced your father is innocent and are working very hard to prove it.'

Last month, former Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill - who announced to the world the Scottish Government would set al-Megrahi free - released a book lifting the lid on the reasons behind his decision to free him.

The retired politician claimed releasing al-Megrahi on 'compassionate grounds' was only one part of a complex jigsaw.

The book, The Lockerbie Bombing, alleges the decision was made partly to secure 13billion of oil deals for British firms in Libya.
Prince Harry had more than a passing resemblance to

Prince Harry took the term 'like father, like son' to new heights at the Queen's 90th birthday lunch today.

The 31-year-old royal pulled a pained face that was uncannily similar to an expression Prince Charles has favoured over the years.

Despite the festivities at the Patron's Lunch street party in honour of the Queen outside Buckingham Palace, his grimace certainly didn't go unnoticed.

Like father, like son: Prince Harry pulled a pained expression that was uncannily similar to Prince Charles' (pictured in 2009) at the Patron's Lunch street party

The expression mirrored a similar countenance favoured by the Prince of Wales in pictures of the 67-year-old dating back to 2009.

While Harry made an appearance at the street party attended by 10,000 at The Mall, his father was noticeably absent.

The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall led regional celebrations for the Queen's 90th birthday by attending a street party in Gloucestershire.

Charles and Camilla ate egg and cress sandwiches and joined a tea party with schoolchildren dressed as royalty in the small village of Brimpsfield.

Uncanny: The 31-year-old royal pulled a pained expression that was uncannily similar to his father's (pictured in 2013)

Just a passing resemblance? There was more than a passing resemblance in grimaces between the Prince of Wales (pictured in 2012), 67, and Harry

Many of the 100 attendees at The Big Lunch event - of which Camilla is patron - dressed in Union flag clothes and hats.

Peter Stewart, director of the Eden Project, said rain at the start of the event had done little to affect the high spirits of those in the village.

'I have seen everything from cake, quiche, sandwiches and wonderful cupcakes - you can't have a birthday lunch without cupcakes,' he said.

'I think it is part of being British that we aren't put off by the weather.'

The Big Lunch collaborated with the organisers of The Patrons Lunch to ensure their regional events took place on the same day.

Charles and Camilla were greeted by children dressed as kings, queens and corgis as they arrived in Brimpsfield.

At a street party in Gloucestershire, Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall spent time talking to thrilled party-goers

Good shot: Prince Charles, left, looks on as children enjoy the traditional game of pelting people in the stocks with sponges

The Queen has thanked the nation today for giving her the happiest of birthdays as she praised the 'support and encouragement' of the Great British public at The Patron's Lunch street party.

Her Majesty was given a thunderous round of applause at the party held in her honour outside Buckingham Palace, with 10,000 people attending.

She took to a stage in The Mall, London, at around 2.45pm to address the guests and thank them for her birthday cards and messages.

Scramble: Thousands of people battled each other to get into the best position to take a picture of the moment Her Majesty arrived

Bond: The Cambridges enjoy a close relationship with Prince Harry and are often seen walking together at public events

Whispers: Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge clapped and shared a private moment while the audience waited for the Queen to speak

She said: 'To everyone here today and to those holding street parties elsewhere I would like to say thank you for the wonderful support and encouragement you continue to give to me.

'I hope these happy celebrations remind us of the many benefits that can flow when people come together for a common purpose, as families, friends or neighbours.'

She added: 'I much appreciate the kindness of all your birthday messages and have been delighted and moved by the many cards and messages I have received. How I will feel if people are still signing happy birthday in December remains to be seen.'

The Queen also paid tribute to the hundreds of charities she is associated with and said they were 'an example to us all'.

Introducing his grandmother to the stage, Prince William thanked the monarch on behalf of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and said 'Granny - thank you for everything you've done for your family'.

He said: 'Catherine, Harry and I and the rest of our family are extremely proud to be here today. My family has had plenty of reason to celebrate since the Queen turned 90 in April.

Proud family: Prince William, right with Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge, thanked his grandmother, left, for 'everything she had done for the family'

'The Queen's strong health and relentless energy; her sharp wit and famous sense of humour; and the fact that the Queen remains very much at the helm of our family, our nation and the Commonwealth.

'She is the one head of state that world leaders can turn to for a first hand perspective of the arch of history over the last six decades.

'At 90 she is the leader of our country who we all look up to in good times and in challenging moments to set an example and to guide the way ahead.'

He added: 'I say a personal thank you to the Queen on behalf of all of her grandchildren and great grandchildren. Thank you for everything you have done for our family we could not wish you a happier birthday.'

Earlier, William praised the crowd for braving the weather and ensuring a good time was had by all.

He said: 'Thank you so much for showing that the Great British public doesn't let an little rain spoil a good day out. It means so much to see everybody here today.

Leading the way: The Queen and Prince Philip wave to the crowd at the head of a 'royal convoy' of Range Rovers bringing them to the street party in The Mall

Party: The parade has been in full swing, with a giant 90 being carried around in the procession to mark the big event




Genres : Crime, Drama

Starring : William Hartnell, Raymond Lovell, Robert Beatty

Director : John Harlow

Plot Synopsis

Leo Martin (William Hartnell, TV s Doctor Who), a smash & grab thief working for crime boss Gus Loman (Raymond Lovell, 49th Parallel), is caught by the police during a robbery gone wrong that leaves his wrists broken. Abandoned by Loman at the scene of the crime, Martin vows revenge against the boss who left him to shoulder the blame in the stylish British noir Appointment with Crime. Directed and written by John Harlow (Dangerous Cargo), Appointment with Crime co-stars Herbert Lom (A Shot in the Dark) as the reptilian crime lord Gregory Lang and Joyce Howard (Shadow of the Past) as Carol Dane, a woman drawn to the dangerous Leo Martin.
Turner is set to be released in

Several graduating seniors at Stanford University used their celebratory day to express their outrage over the six-month jail sentence handed to former student, Brock Turner, who was convicted of sexual assault.

Students who participated in the protest posted held signs that read: 'Stanford protects rapists' and 'Brock Turner is not an exception'.

The protest occurred during the school's 'wacky walk', a Stanford tradition where students in costumes hold celebratory signs as they head toward graduation ceremonies.

Several graduating seniors at Stanford University used their celebratory day to express their outrage outrage over the six-month jail sentence handed to a former student convicted of sexual assault. Graduating student Paul Harrison holds a sign that said 'rape is rape'

Students who participated in the protest posted held signs that read: 'Stanford protects rapists' and 'Brock Turner is not an exception'

The plane carrying a banner reading: 'Protect Survivors. Not Rapists. #PerskyMustGo' was spotted as it flew over Stanford's Palo Alto campus

Earlier this week, Stanford students said on social media that they planned to carry protest signs as they walk toward the prestigious university's 125th commencement on Sunday.

Several signs were created for students before the protest began.

Some signs read: 'To girls everywhere I am with you' and 'Celebrating 125 years of rape culture'.

Organizers said they wanted to show solidarity to the woman sexually assaulted on campus last year by Turner.

'It's very important to amplify the voice of survivors,' said Brianne Huntsman, a protest organizer.

Documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns, whose rousing keynote speech called on Republicans to reconsider their endorsement of Donald Trump, closed his address urging sexual assaults be taken seriously.

'If someone tells you they have been sexually assaulted, take it effing seriously and listen to them,' said Burns, who is the father of four girls.

'Maybe someday we'll make the survivor's eloquent statement as important as Dr. (Martin Luther) King's letter from the Birmingham jail.'

A plane carrying a banner that read: 'Protect Survivors. Not Rapists. #PerskyMustGo' was spotted as it flew over Stanford's Palo Alto campus.

The tag refers to Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky, who handed down what many consider to be an extraordinarily light sentence against former Stanford student-athlete Turner, 20, for his conviction in a 2015 sexual assault.

Women's rights group, UltraViolet, said earlier in the week that they had commissioned the plane and to fly over the stadium just ahead of the university's graduation ceremonies.

Protesters demonstrated outside the stadium before the commencement ceremony on Sunday

The protest occurred during the school's 'wacky walk', a Stanford tradition where students in costumes hold celebratory signs as they head toward graduation ceremonies

Several signs were created for students before the protest began. Pictured are some that read: 'Stanford protects rapists' and 'To girls everywhere I am with you'

Documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns (pictured), whose rousing keynote speech called on Republicans to reconsider their endorsement of Donald Trump, closed his address urging sexual assaults be taken seriously

On Friday, UltraViolet submitted more than 800,000 signatures to the Commission on Judicial Performance's San Francisco offices in an effort toward Persky's removal.

They also filed a formal misconduct complaint.

Turner, who is from Dayton, Ohio, had claimed that the victim had been conscious when he attacked her and had signaled her consent by saying 'yeah'

'Stanford students are justifiably outraged over a so-called justice system that protects privileged white rapists over the survivors of their crimes and nearly 900,000 UltraViolet members from California to Florida agree,' said Nita Chaudhary, co-founder of UltraViolet.

'With one in four women sexually assaulted while in college, we need judges that take rape seriously, and that's why Judge Persky should be removed from the bench.'

UltraViolet said it has also paid for a full page ad in The Stanford Daily's graduation issue inviting students and alumni to take a stand against rape and that bicycles carrying billboards calling for the judge's removal will accompany student protesters.

The bikes are a nod to two graduate students who were riding their bicycles when they confronted the freshman as he attacked the unconscious victim by a garbage bin.

'I sleep with two bicycles that I drew taped above my bed to remind myself there are heroes in this story. That we are looking out for one another,' the victim said in her statement to the court.

Protest organizers from UltraViolet have said online they want to see members of the Stanford community speak out against the sentence.

The aim is to strike a blow against a culture on college campuses that they say discourages victims of sexual assault from coming forward.

Women's rights group, UltraViolet, said earlier in the week that they had commissioned the plane and to fly over the stadium just ahead of the university's graduation ceremonies

The group submitted more than 800,000 signatures to the Commission on Judicial Performance's San Francisco offices Friday in a symbolic effort for Persky's removal. They also filed a formal misconduct complaint. Pictured is Stanford University law professor Michele Landis Dauber during Friday protest

UltraViolet said it has also paid for a full page ad in The Stanford Daily's graduation issue inviting students and alumni to take a stand against rape and that bicycles carrying billboards calling for the judge's removal will accompany student protesters. Activists are pictured on Friday during protest

Protest organizers from UltraViolet have said online they want to see members of the Stanford community speak out against the sentence. The aim is to strike a blow against a culture on college campuses that they say discourages victims of sexual assault from coming forward. Activists pictured on Friday during protest

Turner's sentencing on June 2 gained international attention after a detailed letter that the victim had read aloud in court was posted online.

It describes the devastation the woman felt in being sexual assaulted while unconscious after partying.

Turner, who is from Dayton, Ohio, had claimed that the victim had been conscious when he attacked her and had signaled her consent by saying 'yeah'.

Turner's sentencing on June 2 gained international attention after a detailed letter that the victim had read aloud in court was posted online. It describes the devastation the woman felt in being sexual assaulted while unconscious after partying

Turner, who is from Dayton, Ohio, had claimed that the victim had been conscious when he attacked her and had signaled her consent by saying 'yeah'. But his claims were demolished after witnesses, including heroes Peter Jonsson and Carl-Fredrik Arndt, pointed out that the victim was motionless on the ground at the time

He also claimed that she had 'appeared satisfied' with the sexual contact - and claimed she moaned and clutched his shoulders after he began touching her.

However, his claims were demolished in court after witnesses, including heroes Peter Jonsson and Carl-Fredrik Arndt, pointed out that the victim was motionless on the ground at the time and could not be woken up.

A Stanford law professor is leading a signature-gathering drive to remove the judge from office for handing down the six-month sentence even though prosecutors had recommended six years.

Santa Clara County Assistant District Attorney James Gibbons-Shapiro told the San Jose Mercury News that his office does not have a legal basis to appeal the sentence because the judge was authorized by law to mete out the sentence he gave.

Persky is legally unable to comment on the case because Turner is appealing his conviction, Santa Clara County court spokesman Joseph Macaluso has said.

Some media commentators have pushed back against criticism of Persky.

At Slate.com, legal writer Mark Joseph Stern this week described the sentence as too lenient, but wrote that recall efforts against Persky threaten judicial independence.

Turner, who was found guilty on three counts of rape, is currently incarcerated in Elmwood Jail, a minimum to medium security facility, in Milpitas, California.

Judge Aaron Persky (pictured) handed down what many consider to be an extraordinarily light sentence against former Stanford student-athlete Turner for his conviction in a 2015 sexual assault

Turner has been banned for life by USA Swimming and, as a result, is now ineligible for all major sporting competitions  among them, the Olympics. The attack took place on Stanford University's campus in Santa Clara County

However, Daily Mail Online revealed earlier this week that he will serve just three months of his sentence and is slated for release on September 2.

He has applied to serve his three-year probation term in his home state of Ohio.

Turner will also have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and complete a sex offender management program.

The 'lenient' sentence dished out to Turner has sparked outrage around the world and Judge Persky has since received death threats at work, and is the subject of a petition, signed by more than a million people, to have him recalled.

And the 39 people who wrote letters in support of Turner have also been subjected to a barrage of abuse.
Facebook turned on its Safety Check feature following the devastating mass shooting in Orlando, ma the first time the tool was ever used in the US.

The feature, which allows users to mark themselves as safe in an emergency situation, was activated on Sunday as more than half of the victims' families were still trying to pinpoint their loved ones' whereabouts.

'We hope the people in the area find the tool a helpful way to let their friends and family know they are okay,' Facebook said in a statement.

Safety Check automatically sends Facebook users in an affected area a note asking if they're safe.

Facebook turns on its Safety Check feature (pictured) following the devastating mass shooting in Orlando, marking the first time the tool was ever used in the US

Safety Check automatically sends Facebook users in an affected area a note asking if they're safe (file photo)

The feature, which allows users to mark themselves as safe in an emergency situation, was activated on Sunday as more than half of the victims' families were still trying to pinpoint their loved ones' whereabouts

Safety Check automatically sends Facebook users in an affected area a note asking if they're safe. Family members have been desperately posting to social media and calling friends as they have trouble finding loved ones today in the aftermath of the shooting

When a user clicks on 'yes, let my friends know,' the tool notifies their Facebook friends.

A spokeswoman said this is the first 'Facebook-initiated Safety Check in the US', according to KCCI.

Family members have been desperately posting to social media and calling friends as they have trouble finding loved ones today in the aftermath of the shooting.

The safety check was sent out to people in the Orlando area after gunman Omar Mateen (pictured), 29, slaughtered at least 50 people with an AR-15 assault rifle and a handgun

The safety check was sent out to people in the Orlando area after gunman Omar Mateen, 29, slaughtered at least 50 people with an AR-15 assault rifle and a handgun.

In total, 39 people were killed inside the club, two outside, and nine others died after being rushed to the hospital.

At least 53 more were injured in the deadliest mass shooting in US history.

The FBI believe the gunman, who was shot dead by officers, may have 'leanings to radical Islamic terrorism'.

Mateen, who was a US citizen was shot dead by officers during a shoot out in which one officer was wounded.

He also had an unidentified 'device', said Orlando Police Chief John Mina.

Mateen purchased at least two firearms legally within the last week or so, according to FBI agent Ronald Hopper.

Mina said the suspect exchanged gunfire with an officer working at the club around 2am, then went back inside and took hostages.

The officer was saved by his helmet.

There were about 350 people inside the club Pulse at the time of the shootings and about 100 people were taken hostage.

At around 5am authorities sent in a SWAT team to rescue the hostages.

Hero officers used a 'controlled explosion' to distract the shooter before fatally shooting him and were able to rescue about 30 hostages who were hiding in the bathroom of the club.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said in a press conference: 'Many were saved by the heroic efforts of the men and women of the OPD, the Orange County Sheriffs, Seminal County Sheriff's office.'

The first Facebook Safety Check was used in 2014 and focused on natural disasters including earthquakes in Chile and Nepal.

The Paris attack marked the first time Facebook used the featured for a crisis other than a natural disaster.

The Safety Check feature was also used in March after the terror attacks in Brussels.

President Barack Obama addressed the nation earlier today calling the atrocity an 'act of terror and an act of hate'.

Obama furthered his gun control message and said the shooting spree during Pride month in the US is a reminder of how easy it is for someone to get a hold of a weapon that could kill people in a 'school, or a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub'.

There were about 350 people inside the club Pulse (pictured) at the time of the shootings and about 100 people were taken hostage. At around 5am authorities sent in a SWAT team to rescue the hostages

Hero officers used a 'controlled explosion' to distract the shooter before fatally shooting him and were able to rescue about 30 hostages who were hiding in the bathroom of the club
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has sunken to third place among independent voters, a new poll reveals.

Clinton pulled just 22 per cent of the independent vote in the latest Fox News poll, finishing behind Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson.

Trump led among independents, pulling 32 per cent of the vote, while Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico, got 23 per cent.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton pulled just 22 per cent of the independent vote in the latest Fox News poll

'This is very bad news for Hillary Clinton,' Republican strategist Susan Del Percio told the New York Post. 'She needs independents to win in November.'

Clinton did, however, show a three-point national lead overall in the poll, which was released on Friday.

The poll showed Clinton leading 42 per cent to Trump's 39 per cent in a theoretical match up.

Del Percio noted that the poll showed a drop in overall support for Trump.

'Both candidates must start to broaden their support beyond their base, and hope that Governor Johnson's campaign on the Libertarian line does not gain steam,' she told the Post.

Tim Malloy of the Quinnipiac University Poll told the Post that those voting for Johnson could be pivotal in the upcoming election.

'Don't underestimate the importance of the Libertarian vote,' he said. 'They are not on the fence - they are not going to budge. And they could make all the difference in a close election.'

Clinton's presidential campaign postponed its first joint event with President Barack Obama on Wednesday in Green Bay, Wisconsin, because of the deadly shooting in Orlando, Florida.

Clinton's campaign said on Sunday that the event will be rescheduled.

She finished behind Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson (left). Trump led among independents, pulling 32 per cent of the vote, while Johnson (pictured), a former governor of New Mexico, got 23 per cent

Clinton and Obama were scheduled to make their first appearance together since the president announced his endorsement of the likely Democratic nominee last week.

She opened her general election campaign this weekend by casting herself as a uniting force against the divisiveness of GOP rival Trump.

The first general election ad released by her campaign splices clips of Trump threatening protesters and mocking a disabled reporter with scenes of Clinton visiting factories, greeting diverse groups of voters and stepping off a plane as secretary of state.

She ended the one-minute spot saying: "What kind of America do we want to be? Dangerously divided or strong and united? I believe we are always stronger together."

Trump responded Sunday on Twitter: "Clinton made a false ad about me where I was imitating a reporter GROVELING after he changed his story. I would NEVER mock disabled. Shame!"
A Turkish newspaper with links to the country's President has published a homophobic headline calling those who died in the Orlando mass shooting 'perverts' and 'deviants'.

Yeni Akit, a right-wing newspaper which has supported the likes of Al-Qaeda in the past, broke news of the attack with the headline: 'Death toll rises to 50 in bar where perverted homosexuals go!'

The headline has caused a backlash online, where it has been suggested that the exclamation mark indicates that the paper is celebrating the attack, rather than condemning it.

Turkish newspaper Yeni Akit, which has strong ties to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his party, broke news of the Florida attack with the headline: 'Death toll rises to 50 in bar where perverted homosexuals go!'

Akit, which is a far-right publication known for hate speech against gays, Jews and Christians, was able publish the story despite increasing crackdowns on press freedoms in Turkey

Yeni Akit has long supported Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP), which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used to lead.

The paper, whose name means 'New Agreement, is also known for having strong links to Erdogan, in a country where press freedom is being heavily restricted by his government.

According to Turkish think-tank the Hrant Dink Foundation, Yeni Akit is one of the worst offenders when it comes to using hate speech against minorities, in particular the LGBT community, but also against Jews, Armenians and Christians.

In just four months in 2013, when the foundation competed its last survey, they found 175 articles where hate speech was directed at one of eight separate minority groups.

At least 50 people were killed and another 53 wounded at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in the early hours of Sunday when gunman Omar Mateen, 29, from Port St. Lucie, opened fire.

At least 50 people were shot dead and another 53 wounded at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in the early hours of Sunday marking the deadliest mass shooting in American history

The shooting was carried out by Omar Mateen, 29, who called 911 shortly before the attack to pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the spiritual leader of ISIS

Mateen, whose parents are of Afghan descent, took another 30 people hostage while wearing what is believed to have been a suicide vest, but was shot before he could detonate it.

SWAT officers used a controlled explosion to distract Mateen before shooting him dead in a hail of gunfire, with police chiefs saying their actions likely saved 'many lives.'

ISIS has since claimed responsibility for the attack, though it is unclear exactly what connection Mateen has to the group.

While Mateen called 911 shortly before the attack to pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the spiritual leader of the terror group, security services say they have no evidence of contact between him and the organization prior to the attack.

Erdogan has been attempting to crack down on negative headlines about his administration in an attempt to bolster his increasingly unpopular reputation as many Turks feel his views do not represent their own.

Devastated club-goers wept in the streets of Orlando following the attack as they waiting to be interviewed by police about the carnage they witnessed

Around 30 people were held hostage by Mateen, who was thought to be wearing a suicide vest, until SWAT teams managed to distract him with a controlled explosion before shooting him dead (pictured, club attendees)

According to Freedom House, an NGO which monitors democratic freedoms around the world, Turkish press freedom has deteriorated sharply over the past several years.

In 2015 alone, three journalists were killed in connection with their work, while dozens more were prosecuted by the government under anti-terrorism laws for reports critical of the government.

Erdogan was personally called out by the group for inciting violence against several publications, including one whose offices were attacked several times over the year.

Accreditation for journalists was also brought under further government control, allowing officials to handpick reporters for prominent positions.
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These are the victims of the worst mass shooting in American history.

Terrorist Omar Mateen shot dead 49 people and wounded at least 53 more during the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in the early hours of Sunday morning  and called 911 just before the attack to pledge allegiance to ISIS.

Mateen, of Port St. Lucie in Florida, reportedly laughed as he sprayed bullets into the crowded club before he was shot dead by a SWAT team several hours after launching his horrific massacre with a legally bought assault rifle and pistol.

He told the 911 dispatcher he was inspired by ISIS.

However, other parts of the phone call suggest his motives were confused. The 29-year-old also pledged allegiance to the Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev - who were not inspired by ISIS - and to the Florida-born suicide bomber Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha who killed himself for the Al-Nusra Front, a group in conflict with ISIS.

As the FBI attempts to make sense of the devastating attack, rescue teams have been working to name the innocent people who lost their lives.

All 49 victims have now been officially identified by the city of Orlando on its website.

Scroll down for video

Edward Sotomayor Jr. (left) and Stanley Almodovar III (right) were the first victims identified in the aftermath of the mass shooting

Shortly after making the 911 call, Mateen entered the crowded nightclub at around 2am carrying an AR-15 and started spraying the helpless crowd with bullets.

Witnesses said he fired relentlessly - 20 rounds, 40, then 50 and more. In such tight quarters, the bullets could hardly miss. He shot at police. He took hostages. Around 5am, authorities sent in a SWAT team to rescue them, Police Chief John Mina said.

The shooter exchanged gunfire with 14 police officers at the club, which had more than 300 people inside.

'He had an automatic rifle, so nobody stood a chance,' said Jackie Smith, who had two friends next to her get shot. 'I just tried to get out of there.'

When the gunfire finally stopped, 49 were dead and dozens critically wounded. Thirty-nine of the dead were killed at the club, and 11 people died at hospitals, the mayor said.

VICTIMS: ALL 49 IDENTIFIED On Sunday, Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34; Stanley Almodovar III, 23; Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20; Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22; Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36; Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22; Luis S. Vielma, 22 and Kimberly Morris, 37, were confirmed dead. In the early hours of Monday morning, Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30; Darryl Roman Burt II, 29, Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32; Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21; Anthony Luis Laureanodisla, 25; Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35; and Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez, 50, were added to the list. Later on Monday morning the authorities announced more names: Amanda Alvear, 25; Martin Benitez Torres, 33; Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37; Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26; Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35; Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25; Simon Adrian Carrillo Fernandez, 31; Oscar Aracena-Montero, 26; Enrique L. Rios, Jr, 25; Miguel Angel Honorato, 30; Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40; Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32; Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19; Cory James Connell, 21; Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, 37; Luis Daniel Conde, 39; Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33; Juan Chevez-Martinez, 25; Jerald Arthur Wright, 31; Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25; and Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25. In the afternoon, authorities identified another nine victims: Jonathan Antonio Camuy Vega, 24; Jean C. Nives Rodriguez, 27; Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala, 33; Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49; Yilmary Rodriguez Solivan, 24; Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32; Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28; Frank Hernandez, 27; Paul Terrell Henry, 41; Antonio Davon Brown, 29; Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, 24; and Akyra Monet Murray, 18. On Monday evening, the final name was added to the list: Geraldo A. Ortiz-Jimenez, 25. Advertisement

EDWARD SOTOMAYOR JR, 34

On Sunday, the first of the victims named was Edward Sotomayor (pictured above), who worked as the national brand manager for ALandChuck Travel, a company that specialized in vacations for the gay community.

His boss, Al Ferguson, said Sotomayor's partner was outside the nightclub putting something in the car when the shots rang out.

He got a text from Sotomayor telling him he was safe in the bathroom and not to come back into the club. Sotomayor texted again 20 minutes later to say he was OK. That was the last his partner heard from him, Ferguson said.

Sotomayor was a legend in the industry, Ferguson added. He booked tours for entertainer and drag queen RuPaul and put together the first gay cruise to Cuba last year. He was going to announce a second trip on Sunday, but was killed.

'Anyone who booked gay cruises knew Sotomayor,' Ferguson told Reuters. 'He was a great man.'

In an Instagram post published on Sunday, RuPaul's Drag Race judge Michelle Visage called Sotomayor 'a joy.'

'I loved you on so many levels. You were SO SO special and will never be forgotten,' she wrote. 'I promise you that.'

David Sotomayor, who lives in Chicago and identified himself as the victim's cousin, described him as a caring, energetic man known for wearing a silly top hat on cruises.

He told the AP that Edward worked for a company that held gay cruises and often traveled to promote the company's events. 'He was just always part of the fun,' he said.

The pair discovered they were related after meeting at Orlando's annual Gay Days festival around a decade ago. They texted regularly and kept in touch, last seeing each other earlier this year at a filming of the television reality show 'RuPaul's Drag Race,' David said.

David Sotomayor is a drag queen who appeared on a season of the show using the name 'Jade.'

He said Edward Sotomayor supported him and often sent him Facebook messages. They last exchanged messages last week.

'You never think that's going to be the last time you speak to him,' David Sotomayor said. 'It's just heartbreaking to know it just can happen anytime.'

STANLEY ALMODOVAR III, 23

Neighbors of Almodovar (pictured above), a 23-year-old pharmacy technician, said his parents had recently moved back to Puerto Rico after his mother became ill with cancer, Reuters reported. He was the youngest in the family.

But his mother Rosalie Ramos, 51, had been in Orlando at the time of the shooting and paid tribute to her son, calling him a 'happy man with a big heart.'

She had prepared a tomato-and-cheese dip for him to eat when he came home from his night out and gone to bed.

She was awakened by a call at 2am telling her something had happened.

Ramos revealed her panic after receiving a call that informed her that her son had been shot. 'I was hoping maybe [he was shot in] the hand or the leg,' she told the Orlando Sentinel. 'You can survive [a gunshot to] the leg.'

But Almodovar was shot three times, in the chest, stomach and side of his body. He died at Orlando Regional Medical Center.

She added that her son had posted a Snapchat video of himself singing and laughing on his way to Pulse nightclub.

'I wish I had that (video) to remember him forever,' she told the newspaper.

A friend, Hazel Ramirez, told the Washington Post she also saw the video from Almodovar on Snapchat and learned on Sunday afternoon what had happened.

Ramirez described Almodovar as 'kind, but sassy,' and someone who was comfortable with his own sexual identity.

'He was so proud of who he was,' she told the Post. 'He would do his makeup better than anyone else. It was so easy to be myself with him.

Sabiel Rivera, 30, who is a neighbor of Almodovar in Clermont, Florida, told Daily Mail Online that he 'was a cool guy, who was very humble and never got into any trouble.'

It is believed he shared a top floor apartment with his mother.

Originally from Springfield, Massachusetts, he was living in Clermont, according to his Facebook page, which has been flooded by friends paying tribute in the aftermath of the tragedy.

'Rest in peace my friend, wrote Brian Garcia. 'You were always so full of joy Stanley, we will miss you buddy.'

Mark Nielson added: 'We'll miss you Stanley. You made an impact on everyone that you came around. A good person and friend.'

He graduated from East Ridge High School in Clermont in 2011 before studying at Anthem College, his family said.

JUAN RAMON GUERRERO, 22, and CHRISTOPHER LEINONEN, 32

Boyfriends Juan Ramon Guerrero and Christopher Leinonen died alongside each other in the massacre.

Guerrero was described by friends as a 'beautiful soul'. He worked as a telemarketer and was a student at the University of Central Florida.

The 22-year-old came out to his family for the first time this year when he started dating his boyfriend 32-year-old Christopher Leinonen, who was also killed in the massacre (see section below).

According to his cousin Robert, Guerrero was so concerned about how his family would react to his sexuality that he only came out to his parents at the beginning of this year.

When he did, they were 'very accepting,' the 19-year-old said. 'As long as he was happy, they were OK with it.'

He was in a relationship with someone that his relatives came to see as a member of the family, he said.

Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22, was described by friends as a beautiful soul. He came out to his family this year and had a happy relationship with boyfriend Christopher Leinonen, who was also killed. Pictured: left and right in the blue t-shirt next to Leinonen

Juan Guerrero (left), who has been named as one of the 49 people to have lost their lives, is pictured with his boyfriend Christopher Leinonen (right)

Robert said he began to worry about his cousin when he heard about the shooting at a club he knew Guerrero sometimes visited. Later in the day, his worst fears were realized.

'He was always this amazing person and he was like a big brother to me,' he said. 'He was never the type to go out to parties, would rather stay home and care for his niece and nephew.'

Friends and family have paid to Guerrero on his Instagram page, calling him a 'beautiful soul.'

'So unfair what happened to you. RIP. I hope the light will rule out all darkness,' said one comment.

Christopher Leinonen, 32, was identified among the dead late on Monday afternoon, long after Juan. Before his name appeared on the list, his mother Christine was one of the many relatives who was waiting desperately for news.

She drove to Orlando at 4am after learning of the shooting from a friend of her son who was at Pulse and was missing.

She had not heard from her son and feared the worst. 'These are nonsensical killings of our children,' she said, sobbing. 'They're killing our babies!'

Speaking outside the center on Sunday morning, Leinonen sobbed as she told ABC News that she had been waiting hours for information on her son.

'I haven't heard anything,' she said. 'I have been waiting. I have been waiting by the emergency room, see if anybody gets called in.

'They said there's a lot of dead bodies at the club and that's a crime scene and they can't identify anybody so it could be hours and hours before we find out.

'The hospital said there are some bodies at the hospital that came in and they died. They are not identifiable yet either. And that there a few who are in a critical conditions who aren't identified yet.'

She said her son's friend Brandon Wolf survived by hiding in a bathroom and running out as the bullets flew.

Christine Leinonen (pictured with her son Christopher Leinonen) drove to Orlando at 4am after learning of the shooting from a friend of her son, who was at Pulse

Christine Leinonen pictured outside the club before her son was found and identified as one of the dead

LUIS OMAR OCASIO-CAPO, 20

The 20-year-old dancer was working at Starbucks inside a Kissimmee Target store while studying theater, and would have auditioned on Tuesday for a play, said his sister, Belinette Ocasio-Capo.

'He was one of the most amazing dancers,' she said. 'He would always call me and say, 'I'm going to be the next Hollywood star.' He really did want to make it and be known.

'Now his name ended up being all around the world, like he wanted  just not this way.'

Friends and family paid tribute to Capo on Facebook, who they referred to as 'Omar'.

His aunt Carla Ocasio called him her 'dear nephew' and shared a photo of the 20-year-old that said 'dance freely in the heavens.'

Another family member Robert said: 'God bless us all and give us strength in our time of need. Lord guide us with your light so we don't live in fear of the darkness evil brings.'

Claudia Mason, 70, said that she worked with Capo in Kissimmee.

'He lit up any area he worked in, especially Starbucks,' she wrote. 'So sad that his life was cut so short by such an evil person.'

Ocasio-Capo was hired as a cashier before moving over to the Starbucks, and became a great barista, Mason said.

'Omar got along with everyone. Young, old, male, female, gay, or straight, it didn't matter to Omar,' she said.

ERIC ORTIZ-RIVERA, 36

Ortiz-Rivera was a 'goofball' who loved to dance and had been married to his husband for around a year, his cousin Orlando Gonazalez, 26, told the New York Times.

Ortiz-Rivera, who was originally from Dorado, Puerto Rico, studied at the Univercidad Central de Bayamon there, his Facebook page said.

Before his death, Ortiz-Rivera, who was nicknamed Shaki, lived in downtown Orlando with his husband and worked at a Party City and a Sunglass Hut.

But he had other interests, Gonzalez said, describing his late cousin as 'artistic' and a talented hairdresser.

'We always went to clubs together,' Gonzalez said, adding that Ortiz-River liked house music, or 'anything he could dance to, pretty much.'

'His husband called me in the morning,' Gonzalez told The Times. 'He was hysterical trying to find him.'

A friend paid tribute to him on Facebook, writing: 'I have no words to describe this great friend and human being, and above all, my brother. Everyone who knows us knows what a great friendship we shared and what a great man he was. I adore you. You'll always be in my heart. How empty you've left us.'

Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo (left) and Eric Ortiz-Rivera (right) also died in the shooting at Pulse nightclub, authorities have said

BRENDA LEE MARQUEZ MCCOOL, 49

Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49, was a regular at Pulse's Latin night with her 21-year-old son Isaiah Henderson.

On Saturday they were dancing in the club when gunfire erupted.

They tried to take cover as gunman Omar Mateen showered bullets through the venue.

But eventually Mateen turned his gun to Brenda and Isaiah - and Brenda acted as a human shield to protect Isaiah, who is gay.

In the commotion Isaiah lost sight of his mother, and was promptly pulled to safety by police.

Outside the club he scrambled to find Brenda.

On Monday he was informed she was one of the 49 people Mateen murdered.

He wrote on Facebook: 'Just laying here thinking that I was just with my mom 24 hours ago, this is so surreal. I love you mom.'

According to his sister Khalisha Pressley, Isaiah has been crippled with a feeling of guilt.

'He had to watch his mother die. He saw everybody getting killed,' Khalisa told NBC News. 'He feels it was his fault.'

Brenda was born in Brooklyn, New York, where she spent most of her life. She later moved to California for about 15 years. Eight years ago she was told she would not survive her cancer. But she did. She then relocated to Orlando to be near her younger children.

In Orlando, she regularly went dancing, and loved salsa.

She normally returned to New York for Puerto Rico Pride Day. But this year she decided to stay at home with family.

Shortly after midnight on Saturday, she posted a video on Facebook of her two friends dancing Salsa in Pulse.

That was the last her friends heard from her.

Her fifth-eldest son Farrell Marshall created a GoFundMe page to support his younger brothers and sisters in the wake of the tragedy.

Farrell wrote on the GoFundMe page: 'We have conformation that this wonderful and caring woman known as a mother of 11 children left behind from fighting 2 types of cancer and now to be taken off this earth from what we call 'Insanity.'

'She just went out last night and said goodbye to her children and to be called 3 hours later that she has been hit by 2 gunshots and later pronounced dead.'

By Monday afternoon, well-wishers had donated almost $5,000. By Tuesday morning that figure was up to more than $17,000.

Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49, had survived two types of cancer. Mother to 11 children, she had a boyfriend and was out with friends at the Latin night on Saturday when she became a victim of the massacre

EDDIE JUSTICE, 30

Justice, a 30-year-old accountant, lived in downtown Orlando.

He texted his mother from inside Pulse when the massacre began.

'Mommy I love you,' he wrote at 2.06am. She texted back: 'u ok'. He said, 'Trapp in bathroom' then adding 'In club they shooting'. He said he was going to die, and asked her to call 911.

In his last text he said the shooter was in the bathroom with him and that he was a terrorist.

Justice's friends have described him as a friendly, vibrant person who loved his mother.

'He'd give you the shirt off his back. He always brought the life to the party,' his cousin Jeff told the Palm Beach Post.

A friend created a GoFundMe page to support his family, and wrote: 'Eddie loved his mother and was a momma's boy at heart. His mom is his best friend.'

Eddie Justice (pictured) an accountant who lived in downtown Orlando, was named as one of the victims early on Monday morning

On Sunday, Mina Justice (left) was outside the club trying to contact her son, Eddie, who texted her (right) when the shooting happened and asked her to call police. He was later confirmed dead

ANTHONY LAUREANO DISLA, 25

Laureano Disla was born in Puerto Rico.

He studied elementary education at the Universidad del Sagrado Corazon in San Juan.

After graduating in 2010 he moved to Orlando where he started performing as the drag act Alanis Laurell.

Videos online show Alanis performing Latin-style acts, such a Spanish-language version of Toni Braxton's Un-Break My Heart.

Laureano Disla was at Pulse's Latin night on Saturday with his cousin.

In a tribute posted online on Monday, Drag Around The World said Laureano was 'an amazing performer and a beautiful person inside and out.'

'She will be missed deeply. You are now a angel looking down at all of us,' the statement read.

Tragic: Anthony Laureano Disla (pictured), 25, was gunned down. He performed as a fiery Latina drag queen called Alanis Laurell (right)

XAVIER EMMANUEL SERRANO ROSADO, 35, and LEROY FERNANDEZ, 25

Rosado, father to one five-year-old, was at Pulse with his partner Fernandez, who also died in the shooting.

He was a professional dancer for Disney and Universal. Salsa was his specialism, and he went by the stage name 'Eman'. Fernadez worked leasing apartments. His colleagues said he sang Adele in the office 'until they couldn't take it anymore.'

In a tribute posted to his Facebook wall, a friend of Rosado's wrote: 'You have brought so much laughter and light into this world not only through your performance but through that gracious smile.

'I can't believe you are gone, and gone too soon.

'You will remain living in the memories of all the people who have been lucky enough to have met you and those special memories will always bring a smile. May your beautiful soul rest in peace. Heaven has welcomed another angel, and I'm sure you will continue to dance with the angels above pappi.'

His co-star in Disney Live!'s Mickey's Rockin Road Show, Brendan, shared pictures of Eman looking 'goofy' on Facebook, and wrote: 'Xavier was not only a friend, but also a brother to me. He always had such a fun laugh and big smile.

'I hope these pictures show off his goofiness, warmth, and individuality because that's what he was all about.....making people happy.'

Yolanda Quinones, a friend of Fernandez, wrote on Facebook: 'We are extremely devastated to say that our friend, Leroy Valentin and his partner Xavier Serrano have passed away in the senseless shooting in Orlando yesterday morning.'

Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, father to one five-year-old, was at Pulse with his partner Leroy Fernandez (pictured). Both were killed

SHANE EVAN TOMLINSON, 33

Tomlinson was a gifted singer who performed with the cover band Frequency Saturday.

Hailing from North Carolina, he graduated from East Carolina University in Greenville with a degree in communications.

The 33-year-old regularly performed at Orlando's Blue Martini club, as well as private events.

He was due to perform three shows at Blue Martini this month.

Shane Tomlinson was a gifted singer who performed with the cover band Frequency Saturday. The 33-year-old (pictured left and right) regularly performed at Orlando's Blue Martini club, as well as private events. He was due to perform three shows at Blue Martini this month

Tim Christofore consoles his four-year-old son Jude while visiting a makeshift memorial for the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting outside of the Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Center on Monday. He was paying respects to their friend Shane Tomlinson

MARTIN BENITEZ TORRES, 33

Martin Benitez Torres (pictured below) was a 33-year-old college student who lived in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

He arrived in Orlando days before his death to visit relatives.

His Florida-based cousin Sonia Crapps wrote a tribute on Facebook: 'Going to miss that big smile always happy ... I can't believe that my cousin is gone too soon. He was amazing person inside & outside. I am so tired of people killing other people like our family & friends.'

KIMBERLY MORRIS, 37

Morris (pictured below), from Torrington, Connecticut, moved to Orlando just months ago and had taken a job at Pulse nightclub as a bouncer, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

'She was so excited,' her ex-girlfriend Starr Shelton told the newspaper. 'She'd just started working there and told me how she was thrilled to get more involved in the LGBT community there,' Shelton said.

Friends described Morris, who was known as 'KJ', as a kind, sweet person.

Narvell Benning met Morris when they were in college at Post University in Waterbury, Connecticut, where Benning said they both played basketball.

'I can't think of a time when I did not see a smile on her face,' Benning told the Sentinel. 'I'm so thankful of the good memories I have of her. This is just unreal.'

Morris had previously lived in Massachusetts before moving to Orlando, had been working as a bouncer at Pulse on the night of the shooting.

Before she was confirmed dead, Nelson Roman, an LGBT leader in Holyoke, Massachusetts, told Western Mass News: 'She used to perform out here, was a bouncer who was working last night, and we still have no info on her.'

Friends and family took to Morris' Facebook page, urging her to contact them before receiving the news.

'Unfortunately I just received news that Kim did not make it,' Patrick Tyning wrote. 'R.I.P. Kim , I haven't seen you in a couple of years but had the pleasure of working with you and we had some great times. You were taken way too soon.'

'I'm broken,' added Ana DeJesus Decker. 'What a wonderful person I had the pleasure of knowing in my younger years. Loved her like a little sister.'

Martin Benitez Torres (left) was a 33-year-old college student who lived in San Juan. He came to visit family in Florida. Kimberly Morris (right) was also named as victims

LUIS VIELMA, 22

Vielma was a beloved member of the team at Universal Studios.

High school friend Eddi Anderson told the Tampa Bay Times that Vielma loved his job at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and was known for his pleasant attitude and warm demeanor.

Josh Boesch, who worked with Vielma at Universal, told the Orlando Sentinel: 'He was always a friend you could call. He was always open and available.'

Vielma 'just wanted to make people smile,' another co-worker, Olga Glomba, said.

He was a student at Seminole State College of Florida and worked at Universal Orlando as a production assistant on the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride, according to his Facebook page.

J.K. Rowling tweeted a tribute, writing: 'Luis Vielma worked on the Harry Potter ride at Universal. He was 22 years old. I can't stop crying. #Orlando'

'Can't believe Luis Vielma is really gone,' wrote Jaime Bustos on Facebook. 'RIP my friend. Your memories, jokes, laughter, and personality well never be forgotten. Always meant to catch up with you but... it seems that moment has passed.'

Theresa Perpetua Rivera, of Deltona, Florida, said she knew Vielma through through her church's youth group ministry.

'My heart is so saddened by all the hate and horrible violence that has been going on in the world and now right here in our own backyard,' she wrote on Facebook. 'Today we lost an amazing young man who had the heart and the spirit of an Angel. He was such a blessing to those who knew him.'

J.K. Rowling tweeted a tribute to Luis Vielma, writing: 'Luis Vielma worked on the Harry Potter ride at Universal. He was 22 years old. I can't stop crying. #Orlando'

AMANDA ALVEAR, 25 and MERCEDEZ FLORES, 26

Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26, was originally from Queens in New York.

According to her Facebook she worked at Target and was studying at Valencia Community College. Eventually, she wanted to be a party planner.

'She was very outgoing,' Nancy Flores said of Mercedez. 'She had lots of friends. They used to always meet up at Pulse.'

She died alongside her friend Amanda Alvear, 25, with whom she went clubbing on Saturday.

Relatives said Amanda was a vibrant party queen who loved to hang out with her nieces and go out with her friends.

She was working as a pharmacy technician, with plans to become a nurse as she trained at the University of South Florida.

In the last year she posted a stream of social media profiles showing a new joie-de-vivre and health kick. She lost a lot of weight and posted a poignant picture online last month saying: 'Better things are coming.'

Her brother Brian told the Orlando Sentinel she had spent the days before her death hanging out with his daughters Bella, 12, and eight-year-old Zatanna.

'She was a fashionista. She liked to look good and she wanted my girls  her girls - to look good,' he said. 'She liked to make them look very good.'

He added that she wouldn't want hate to be spread in her name and that she always made sure to tell her family and friends where she was.

She went out on Saturday with her friends, including Mercedez. Alvear posted a series of joyous videos showing her friends dancing on Snapchat - but the last video shows how the night turned into horror.

Her face can be seen close-up as gunshots are heard in the background. The last her brother heard, Amanda was hiding in the bathroom with Mercedez.

Mercedez Flores, 26, (left) and Amanda Alvear, 25, who were best friends, were together at Pulse nightclub when they were gunned down

LUIS DANIEL WILSON-LEON, 37, and JEAN CARLOS MENDEZ PEREZ, 35

Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37, and long-term partner Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35, met at the counter in Perfumania.

Perez, who was born in Puerto Rico, 'was always happy,' according to his co-worker Claudia Agudelo in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel.

'He laughed with the people and would make jokes,' Agudelo said.

According to the article, Perez moved to Orlando as a teenager.

In 2006, he was working at a perfume counter and served Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon.

They bonded over the scent (Declaration by Cartier) then later saw each other at a club. They started dating and were together ever since.

Wilson-Leon also grew up in Puerto Rico and moved to the US before he could speak barely any English, a friend told the Sentinel.

Daniel Gmys-Casiano, Wilson-Leon's friend, told the Sentinel: 'He's been dealing with hate all his life. We all have. I have. He never retaliated with hate. He was a very loving person. He was strong. He would stand to protect his friends.'

Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37 (left) and long-term partner Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35, were shot dead in Orlando's Pulse nightclub

DEONKA DRAYTON, 32

Drayton worked at Pulse.

Her aunt posted a tribute on Facebook.

It read: 'While keeping the others in Orlando in prayer, keep my brother, his wife and both our families in your prayers.

'My neice, Deonka 'Dee Dee' Drayton was killed in this horrible tragedy. Senseless. She was at work !!!

'R.I.P Dee Dee. You know this Auntie will miss you.'

FRANKY JIMMY DEJESUS VELAZQUEZ, 50

Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez, 50, was a professional Jibaro dancer who traveled globally performing.

He was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he attended university.

After moving to Orlando, he worked as a visual merchandiser at Target.

Deonka Drayton, 32, (left) worked at Pulse. Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez, 50, (right) was a professional Jibaro dancer

GILBERTO RAMON SILVA MENENDEZ, 25, and PETER OMMY GONZALEZ-CRUZ, 22

Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25, (pictured below) was born in Puerto Rico.

He was studying health care management at the Orlando branch of Puerto Rico's Ana G Mendez University.

His cousin Maribel Silva wrote on Facebook: 'This is news you just don't want to wake up to, but it has been confirmed that our cousin was victim of this shooting.

'Near or far, we are blood and loss like this is difficult to swallow. Love and prayers to you all.'

He went to the club with his best friend, 22-year-old Peter Ommy Gonzalez-Cruz, who was also killed.

Gonzalez-Cruz (pictured below) worked at UPS and lived in Orlando, Florida, according to his Facebook page.

Friends and family mourned his death online, with one friend writing: 'A great person with a beautiful smile. I will always remember you, friend.'

In a Facebook post, his mother thanked everyone for their condolences.

'I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the love that you have shown me regarding my son,' she wrote. 'I will keep you informed. As a mother, I feel a deep and immense pain as everyone else who's going through this.'

'Peter makes a difference everywhere he goes. He was a happy person. If Peter is not at the party, no one wants to go,' his aunt, Sonia Cruz, said.

Gonzalez-Cruz went to Pulse on Saturday night with his best friend, 25-year-old Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez. After news of the mass shooting emerged, Cruz said she held out hope for hours that her nephew would turn up in a hospital bed.

But late Sunday afternoon, she was told he was among those killed at the club.

Cruz said she had her nephew's car keys and was hoping to collect his car Sunday evening. It was parked at a Wendy's across the street from Pulse, one of many with yellow police caution tape tucked under the windshield wipers, vehicles left behind by victims of the shooting.

Cruz said her nephew worked at UPS.

Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez (left) and Peter Ommy Gonzalez-Cruz (right) were best friends. They died at the club together

AKYRA MURRAY, 18

Akyra Murray of Philadelphia was in Orlando with her family, celebrating her graduation from West Catholic Preparatory High School.

Her mother Natalie Murray says Akyra sent a text message at 2am on Sunday, pleading for her parents to pick her up from the nightclub because there had been a shooting.

Moments later, Akyra called her mother screaming, saying she was losing a lot of blood.

The 18-year-old was an honors student who graduated third in her class last week.

She was headed to Mercyhurst College in Erie on a full basketball scholarship.

Philadelphia-based Akyra Murray, 18, was out in Orlando celebrating graduating high school. She was about to start at Mercyhurst College in Erie on a full basketball scholarship

DARRYL ROMAN BURT II

Just hours before his death, Darryl Roman Burt II, 29, graduated from the Keller Graduate School of Management with a Master's degree in human resources management.

Having worked as a district manager and store manager for McDonald's and Forever 21, he spent his studies acting as a financial aid officers for service men and women at Jacksonville's Keiser University campus.

Jacksonville campus president Lisamarie Winslow paid tribute to Burt.

'We are very saddened to be dealing with this loss,' Winslow said.

'He was one of our family members and team members and he was very respected as an employee and a friend.'

'He always had a smile on his face and was a very nice guy.

'He definitely leaves an impression and had a big personality and he is missed,' Winslow said, sadness in her voice. 'We are trying to navigate this. There is no plan for this.'

Just hours before his death, Darryl Roman Burt II, 29, graduated from the Keller Graduate School of Management with a Master's degree in human resources management. He is pictured left and far left

MIGUEL ANGEL HONORATO, 30

A father of three, among them a one- and two-year-old, 30-year-old Miguel Honorato managed four restaurants in central Florida along with a catering business on the side and was always the one to drop everything to help out his family, which included seven siblings.

'He was my mentor and my supporter. He helped very much in my parent's house and work,' his brother Jose Honorato said.

Even though Miguel was younger he was the one who gave sage advice about the family business, his brother said.

Jose Honorato changed his Facebook photo Monday to one of the two brothers smiling over a charcoal grill, one of many happy memories cooking together.

Father-of-three Miguel Angel Honorato (pictured left and right) was a skilled business manager

JONATHAN CAMUY, 25, and YILMARY RODRIGUEZ SOLIVAN, 24

Jonathan Camuy, 25, went to Pulse with Yilmary Rodriguez Solivan, a mother-of-two, and her brother-in-law, William Sabad Borges.

After the attack, Borges wrote on Facebook that he had been shot twice, but his injuries were not life-threatening, and Camuy died a hero because his body was found protecting Solivan.

'I swear, my heart has a ladder tall enough to reach you both,' Borges wrote. 'Mary you leave me with a pain that I never thought I would feel.'

Camuy moved to Central Florida from his native Puerto Rico to work for the Spanish-language television network Telemundo.

He was on the production team for 'La Voz Kids,' a talent show for young singers in its fourth season. He had previously worked for the network in Puerto Rico.

'Jonathan was an extremely hard-working individual, full of life, enthusiastic and with a great personality,' the network said in a statement. 'He will be missed dearly.'

Camuy was also active in the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, which called him 'one of our own' in a statement about his death.

In the aftermath, Borges posted the last picture of the three of them together, taken at Pulse, asking for information about them.

'I was telling my mom, how could my sister-in-law, who had two children, die and I'm still alive? That's what I really can't comprehend,' he told CNN.

It had been Solivan who wanted to go to a gay club.

'Let's go to a gay club because they're killing at the other clubs,' he recalled her saying.

William Sabad Borges (center) went to Pulse with his sister-in-law Yilmary Solivan (right) and Jonathan Camuy (left). Only Borges survived and he said that Camuy died a hero protecting Solivan, a mother-of-two

Jonathan Camuy, 25, (pictured left) and Yilmary Solivan went to Pulse with her brother-in-law William Sabad Borges, who said Camuy died a hero

TEVIN EUGENE CROSBY, 25

Tevin Eugene Crosby's inspirational posts on Facebook  '2016 will be the best year ever'  represented his drive for success.

Chavis Crosby, told the Orlando Sentinel that his brother was ambitious and hard-working. 'Whatever goal he had in mind, he worked hard. Whether alone or on a team, he worked on that goal.'

Tevin Crosby, 25, (pictured below) was director of operations for a Michigan marketing firm. He recently visited his family in Statesville, North Carolina, to watch several nieces and nephews graduate. Then he traveled to Orlando after passing along some brotherly advice about business and setting goals. He loved to travel for work and fun, Chavis Crosby said.

'He was definitely a good person and a good brother to me,' he said.

ENRIQUE L RIOS, 25

New York-based Enrique L Rios, 25, (pictured below) was a carer for the elderly in Brooklyn.

He flew to Orlando for his friend's birthday.

His family has started a GoFundMe page to repatriate his body. Within 16 hours it had raised more than $17,000.

At first his mother Merced told the New York Daily News she refused to believe her son was dead until she saw him.

'I was told by police that my son was identified by his wallet, and for me that is not enough,' she said.

'Until I view my son for myself I have hope that maybe there was a mistake. Maybe it wasn't him.'

Later as the news sunk in she said: 'Enrique was a wonderful person. He loved everybody and everybody who knew him loved him.'

Reflecting on the last time they spoke, on Friday, she said: 'He just sounded so happy.'

He is survived by three brothers and two sisters.

Tevin Crosby, 25, (left) was director of operations for a Michigan marketing firm traveling for work. Enrique L Rios (right) was a carer for the elderly in Brooklyn.

ANTONIO DAVON BROWN, 29

Brown was a Captain serving as a Troop Program Unit soldier in the U.S. Army Reserve.

He had graduated from Florida A&M in 2008 with a major in criminal justice.

Hailing from Cocoa Beach, Florida, he was a member of ROTC while at the school.

CORY JAMES CONNELL, 21

Connell, 21, was at Pulse with his girlfriend, who survived the attack.

He was a broadcasting sports journalism major at Valencia College.

His brother said he had an 'amazing soul'.

'The world lost an amazing soul, today,' Ryan Connell wrote on Facebook. 'God just got the best of angels.'

Antonio Davon Brown, 29, (left) was a Captain serving as a Troop Program Unit soldier in the U.S. Army Reserve. Cory James Connell, 21, (right) was at Pulse with his girlfriend, who survived the attack. He was a broadcasting sports journalism major at Valencia College

JUAN P. RIVERA VELAZQUEZ, 37, and LUIS DANIEL CONDE, 39, and JAVIER JORGE-REYES, 40

Velazquez was at Pulse with his friends Conde and Jorge-Reyes.

The 37-year-old was originally from Barceloneta, Puerto Rico, but lived in Orlando.

His brother Baron Serrano waited outside the hospital for nine hours on Sunday before Velazquez was identified as one of the dead. 'It is very hard to deal with this and the worse pain is the pain of being here without knowing what happened to him,' he told the New York Times.

Conde was originally from San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, but lived in Orlando.

Velazquez and Conde were the owners of D'Magazine Salon & Spa in Kissimmee, Florida.

'I'm so sad to hear Luis Conde and Juan P. didn't make it out of Pulse,' wrote a friend of the pair, Philip Goodwin Jr, on Facebook. 'I will miss you guys. Huge loss for my industry but even more; two very amazing guys with great hearts and so much talent.'

Jorge-Reyes was from Guyama, Puerto Rico, and studied at the Universidad del Sagrado Corazon. He lived in Orlando and worked as a supervisor for Gucci, according to his Facebook page. He was on the social network using the name Harvey George Kings, an English translation of his name.

His friend Ellen Taaffe paid tribute to him on Facebook, saying he was 'very loved' and will never be forgotten.

'Today I woke up to the news I spent all night hoping not to hear,' she wrote. 'An old and dear friend lost his precious life in the completely senseless act of yesterday that I will never be able to comprehend. Harvey George Kings, your smile was contagious and your sass always entertaining!'

She added: 'You made me feel like a beautiful woman and mother even on days I couldn't see it, and you had an uncanny knack for making my baby kick on demand when I was pregnant! You are so very loved and never forgotten. I hope you get to spend all your days dancing and laughing until we see you again!'

'Going to miss you brother,' added Franz Thompson. 'Thanks for the bit of positive you left on this earth. Rest in peace Harvey.'

Juan P. Rivera Velazquez (left) and Luis Daniel Conde (center), the owners of D'Magazine Salon & Spa in Kissimmee, Florida, and their friend Javier Jorge-Reyes (right) were at Pulse together

Friends Juan P. Rivera Velasquez (left) Javier Jorge-Reyes (center) and Luis Daniel Conde (right) all died in the shooting at Pulse nightclub

SIMON ADRIAN CARRILLO FERNANDEZ, 31, and OSCAR A. ARACENA-MONTERO, 26

Carrillo, who worked at McDonald's, was at Pulse with his boyfriend Aracena after the pair came home from vacation in Niagara Falls on Saturday. Both were killed in the massacre.

'This world is so messed up,' Denise Ortiz-Pagan wrote on Facebook after finding out about their deaths. She described the couple as 'amazing' and 'hard-working.'

'It just rips your heart out,' she added. 'Rest in Peace you beautiful souls... and may we all find a way to heal and go on.'

Aracena-Montero is originally from the Dominican Republic. His cousin Joel Aracena paid tribute to him in a post on Facebook, saying he was completely devastated by the news of Aracena-Montero's death.

'Today is an will be as long as I live the most devastating date in my life,' he wrote. He described his 'dear cousin' as a humble person who loved his family. 'I find it still hard to believe I don't have my partner with me. My cousin, my beautiful Oscar Aracena, I'm going to miss you as long as I live.'

A friend of the couple, Norkis Fernandez-Valdez wrote in tribute: 'We're not always going to understand why tragedy happens, but true faith means trusting God when life doesn't make sense.'

She added: 'It's so hard to comprehend that you're no longer with us, just last week we spoke and had plans. I remember the excitement we all felt at the closing of your new home, our dinners there, the arepas you made for me with so much love, our conversations and all the advices we all shared.

'You both promised me you were going to become Realtors. I'm so heart broken that you guys and so many other friends lost their lifes in such a senseless act.'

The couple's neighbor Luz Alicia Ruiz told NBC News: 'I feel angry, and I feel sad at the same time. They were great neighbors. They were awesome people.'

Simon Carillo (left) was at Pulse with his boyfriend Oscar Aracena-Montero (right). Both were killed in the massacre

JASON BENJAMIN JOSAPHAT, 19

In the early hours of Sunday morning, Josaphat called his mother from Pulse nightclub as a gunman opened fire to ask for help, his aunt and uncle said. She begged him to hide in a bathroom stall, and called 911.

She stayed on the line with him and could hear gunshots in the background, but tried to calm him down as he hid in the bathroom, Jimmy and Myrleine Inelus told KPNX-TV in Arizona, where Josaphat went to high school.

His mother then didn't hear anything for as many as 20 seconds.

'It was dead silence on the phone ... I think that's when the gunman finally made his way into the bathroom,' Jimmy Inelus said.

On Monday morning, his family learned that the 19-year-old was among the dead.

Josaphat moved to Orlando after graduating from high school in 2014.

A childhood friend, Messiah McMillian, told KNXV-TV in Phoenix that he was one of the first people whom Josaphat told he was gay.

'When I found out, I never judged him,' McMillian said. 'I never looked at him any differently. He was always my friend.'

'Whenever somebody was in a bad mood or if you saw anyone down, he would always be that one friend helping to put everyone up,' McMillian said.

He recently graduated from Southern Technical Institute's business office specialist program in Pinellas Park, Florida. Martin Levert, the college's executive director, called Josaphat 'an exceptional student.'

His uncle Christopher Long described his as a computer-savvy and said that he loved to work out. 'He was very excited about his journey,' Long told the Orlando Sentinel. 'He mentioned to me that he wanted to start taking pictures, he had a passion for photography. He was just real special.'

Jason Benjamin Josaphat (pictured left and right) called his mother from Pulse nightclub to tell her there was someone was shooting

FRANK HERNANDEZ, 27

Hernandez, who was from Weslaco, Texas, was with his partner at Pulse but the couple became separated.

He moved to Orlando for work around two years ago, his family told KRGV.

Linda Garza set up a GoFundMe page to help his family with funeral expenses. In a post on the page, she wrote: 'Frank H. Escalante was just an absolute incredible person inside and out.

'I, Linda Garza, along with all his family and many friends would greatly appreciate any type of help we can get for funeral expenses. Thank you all so much. Again, any type of help is greatly appreciated by his family. God bless you all.'

JEAN C. NIVES RODRIGUEZ, 27

Rodriguez was a 'great person,' his friends said.

His cousin's wife Mariluz Calderon wrote on Facebook that his whole family are devastated and in shock at the news.

'I pray to God to give you the strength to get through this tragedy and also for all those families who lost their loved ones,' she said.

Frank Hernandez (pictured left) and Jean C. Nives Rodriguez (right) were confirmed as having died in the shooting

JOEL RAYON PANIAGUA, 32

Panigua grew up in Veracruz, Mexico, but moved to Ocoee, Florida, where he had a brother, more than a decade ago.

He went home to Mexico for a few years but returned last year and moved to live near Tampa, friends said.

He loved to dance and was described by his friends as extremely loyal.

'He was the best. He was loyal. He was always trying to do stuff to make you feel better,' his friend Lorena Barragan told the Orlando Sentinel. 'He was very good friend.

ALEJANDRO BARRIOS MARTINEZ, 21

Joel Rayon Paniagua (pictured left), 32, and Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21, (right) were officially identified as victims on Monday

JUAN CHEVEZ-MARTINEZ, 25

Chevez-Martinez was originally from Huichapan, Mexico, but lived in Davenport, Florida. He worked at Reunion Resorts in Kissimmee, Florida.

'My heart is still breaking for my friend. It is very hard to talk right now. He had a lot of friends,' his friend Tomas Martinez told the Orlando Sentinel.

Robert Urdaneta, who worked with him, said on Facebook: 'May God bless you and hold in you in his glory. And rest in peace, my good friend. My brother in work. An excellent boss and person.'

JERALD ARTHUR WRIGHT, 31

Wright, 31, was quiet but knew how to treat guests at Walt Disney World, where he worked as a seasonal employee, a former co-worker said.

'He was one of the kindest people you could meet,' co-worker Kenneth Berrios told the Orlando Sentinel. 'We had students from the London program . and Jerry was always willing to give rides to them and show them around town.'

Wright 'was a great guy to work with,' former co-worker Scott Dickison said. 'He was quiet but really wonderful with all the guests. He always had a smile on his face.'

Dickison said Wright had worked most recently in merchandising on Main Street in the Magic Kingdom, but also had worked in Tomorrowland and at Universal Studios in Orlando.

Wright had gone to Pulse to celebrate a friend's 21st birthday, the Sentinel reports.

Juan Chevez-Martinez (pictured left), 25, and Jerald Arthur Wright (right) , 31, lost their lives in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history

RODOLFO AYALA-AYALA, 33

Ayala-Ayala was originally from San German in Puerto Rico, but was living in Kissimmee, Florida.The 33-year-old worked for OneBlood, the Florida-based blood bank that was taking donations on Sunday following the massacre at Pulse.

'He was very close with many people in the Biologics department,' a OneBlood spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. 'Needless to say, it's a tough day at the blood bank.'

Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala (pictured left and right) worked for OneBlood, the Florida-based blood bank that was taking donations on Sunday

PAUL TERRELL HENRY, 41

Friends of Henry took to Facebook to pay tribute to the 41-year-old, who was a father, describing him as an 'amazing' and 'loving' person.

Jemuel Carty wrote: 'This dude whenever you were having a rough day can make you bust out laughing even if you didn't want to. Probably one of the funniest people I ever met. Always in good spirits and he left behind children.'

Henry's nephew Henry Anthony paid tribute to him, writing: 'My heart is heavy my only uncle is gone. Gone but not forgotten #R.I.P Dr. Paul T.Henry.'

Natasha Williams added: 'Who would've known that you'd be gone? My heart is saddened today by your transition. You will truly be missed!'

ANGEL L. CANDELARIO-PADRO, 28

Candelario-Padro was an ophthalmic technician technician at the Florida Retina Institute. He started his new job just a few days before he was shot dead in Pulse.

He lived in Florida, but was originally from Guanica, Puerto Rico, where he studied nursing. He had recently moved to Orlando from Chicago, where he had worked as a Zumba instructor, to start a new life.

While in Chicago, he studied at the Illinois College of Optometry and also worked at Old Navy.

Paul Terrell Henry (left), 41, was confirmed dead on Monday, as was 28-year-old Angel L. Candelario-Padro (pictured right)

CHRISTOPHER JOSEPH SANFELIZ, 24

Sanfeliz worked at a bank in Tampa.

After hearing about the shooting, his father Carlos and close friend Mike Wallace traveled to Orlando to find out if he had survived the massacre.

The 24-year-old had told his family earlier that he and some friends were planning to go to Pulse at the weekend, Wallace told the Orlando Sentinel.

'He was a wonderful person and this is such a tragedy,' Wallace said. 'He was cut down in his prime.'

Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz (pictured) was also named as one of the 49 who lost their lives at Pulse nightclub

GERALDO ANTONIO ORTIZ-JIMENEZ, 25

Ortiz-Jimenez was the last victim to be identified by the city of Orlando. The 25-year-old, who was originally from Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico, was known as Drake Ortiz, his friends said.

He lived in Carolina, Puerto Rico, according to his Facebook page, and studied at the Universidad del Este there.

Ortiz appeared to have been on holiday in Orlando at the time of his death. A friend shared a picture of him on Facebook early on Monday, writing: 'This is my friend Geraldo Antonio Ortiz better known as Drake missing.'

The friend added that he never returned to his hotel and failed to check out on Mondya.

Geraldo Ortiz-Jimenez (pictured), 25, of Puerto Rico, was the last victim to be identified by the city of Orlando on Monday evening

WOUNDED VICTIMS

Hospital officials in Orlando said five people remain in 'grave' condition following the attack.

Orlando Regional Medical Center treated 44 victims after the attack, and 29 remain in hospital.

Of those, five people remain in 'grave condition' and a number are 'critically ill and in shock'.

Surgeons have performed around 30 operations on the victims, and local blood banks have more than 600 units of blood on hand  more than usual as a result of all the donations, the hospital said.

Marissa Delgado, who lives in a building near Almodovar, suffered critical injuries and remains in hospital after the shooting.

Her co-workers expressed their shock to Daily Mail Online.

Davonte Phillips, 19, who works with Delgado at the local Circle K gas station near their apartment buildings, said that she had been shot six times.

Jenny Vergara, who also works at the gas station, said that they had been informed Marissa had lost a lot of blood and wouldn't be coming into work for a while.

ORLANDO SHOOTINGS TIMELINE 2:02am - Sunday, June 12 - Suspect Omar Mateen tries to enter Pulse nightclub armed with assault rifle and and handgun and is spotted by a uniformed officer. The two exchange fire outside the club - but Mateen manages to enter the nightclub holding 320 people while still firing. The shooting then developed in a hostage situation. 2:09am - Pulse nightclub posts a message to their Facebook desperately telling those inside 'Everyone get out of pulse and keep running'. 5.05am - Three hours after the first shooting began, a SWAT team rushed inside to rescue hostages and confront Mateen. Members of the SWAT team detonated a controlled explosion to confuse Mateen and then nine officers exchange gunfire with terrorist - shooting him dead. SWAT officers manage to free 30 hostages who dashed to safety. 5:35am - Orlando police confirm that the shooter is dead. 8:00am - Officials with the FBI deem the incident to be 'domestic terrorism'. 9:40am - The shooter was officially identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie. 10:20am - At a press conference Mayor Buddy Dyer makes the announcement that 49 people have died and 53 injured in what is now the worst mass shooting in the history of the United States. 11.54am - US Senator Bill Nelson and California congressman Adam Schiff claimed Mateen had pledged his allegiance to ISIS Advertisement

Hundreds gathered on the south steps of the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas, to hold a vigil for the people killed in the attack

People gathered for a vigil to honor the victims of the mass shooting at Eola Lake Park in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday evening

Lit candles are seen during a vigil to honor the 49 people who were killed in the mass shooting at Eola Lake Park in Orlando

Two men light candles during a vigil at Eola Lake Park in Orlando to honor the victims of the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub

A group of people embraces and locks arms to form a circle during a vigil to honor the 49 people who died in the nightclub attack

A lantern was launched members of the community gathered for a vigil at Eola Lake Park in Orlando on Sunday evening

49 people were killed and a further 53 taken to hospital, most in critical condition, after a gunman opened fire in Pulse nightclub in the early hours of Sunday morning. Above, people gathered at Eola Lake Park to mourn the victims on Sunday evening

People pray and observe a memorial in honor of the victims during a vigil at the Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Center in Orlando

Thousands of people attended the vigil outside the Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Center in downtown Orlando

A man holds a rainbow flag in a crowd of people at a vigil outside the Stonewall Inn, a famous gay bar in Greenwich Village in New York

Members and supporters of the LGTBQ community attend a candlelight vigil outside the White House in Washington to honor the victims

People light candles on the ground at the site of a vigil for the victims of the Orlando shooting, in Atlanta, Georgia, on Sunday

Beckfar de Faux is embraced by Nick Thurber during a vigil for the Orlando shooting victims at Memorial Park in Provo, Utah

A woman holds a candle and a pride flag during a vigil for the Orlando shooting victims at Memorial Park in Provo, Utah

Jessica Voght, center left, and Melanie Vergara embrace during a vigil for the Orlando shooting victims at Memorial Park in Provo, Utah

In London, a vigil was held on Old Compton Street in Soho, the center of the city's LGBT community

Members of London's LGBT community showed their solidarity with the community in Orlando at a vigil in the city's Soho neighborhood

Friends and family gathered outside Orlando Regional Medical Center to see if their loved ones were safe after the shooting

$1MILLION RAISED IN LESS THAN 12 HOURS TO SUPPORT VICTIMS OF TRAGEDY A GoFundMe page, set up by Equality Florida, the state's LGBT civil rights organization, to support the victims of the shooting, has raised more than $2.8million in a day. Equality Florida issued a statement on the shooting, saying: 'We are heartbroken and angry that senseless violence has once again destroyed lives in our state and in our country. 'Gay clubs hold a significant place in LGBTQ history. They were often the only safe gathering place and this horrific act strikes directly at our sense of safety. June commemorates our community standing up to anti-LGBTQ violence at the Stonewall Inn, the nightclub that has become the first LGBTQ site recognized as a national monument. 'We have received a steady stream of emails and messages from those seeking to help or to make sense of the senseless. We make no assumptions on motive. We will await the details in tears of sadness and anger. We stand in solidarity and keep our thoughts on all whose lives have been lost or altered forever in this tragedy.' The page posted an update saying the funds raised will be going directly to the victims and their families. It added that Equality Florida is working with local organizations, who are also helping to raise funds, to ensure the money is distributed properly. Advertisement

Mateen opened fire at Pulse night club, killing 49 people before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers, police said. There were around 320 people inside the club at the time of the shootings and about 100 people were taken hostage.

At least 53 people were hospitalized, most in critical condition, officials said. A surgeon at Orlando Regional Medical Center said the death toll was likely to climb.

A hotline has been set up in the city for those searching for people who may have been at the club, and a Facebook safety check has been put in place, allowing people to tag themselves and other friends to let people know they are safe.

Relatives and friends, many in tears, have gathered outside the hospital to learn the fate of loved ones.

The city of Orlando, meanwhile, says it is will update its list of victims as families are notified.

'On this very difficult day, we offer heartfelt condolences to today's victims and their families,' a post on the website said.

'Our City is working tirelessly to get as much information out to the families so they can begin the grieving process. Please keep the following individuals in your thoughts and prayers. #PrayforOrlando.'

Members of the FBI, Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Office investigate the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando on Sunday

A soldier stands guard outside the Pulse nightclub, where a gunman opened fire in the early hours of Sunday morning

Witnesses said he fired relentlessly - 20 rounds, 40, then 50 and more. Pictured above, the damaged rear wall of the nightclub is seen

A woman sits on the ground outside the nightclub while another partygoer, whose legs are covered in blood, stands beside her

Orlando Police officers direct family members away from a multiple shooting at the nightclub in Orlando, Florida, early on Sunday

Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during following the shooting at Pulse nightclub

Ray Rivera, a DJ at Pulse Orlando nightclub, is consoled by a friend outside Orlando Police Department following the shooting

Demetrice Naulings sobs outside the Orlando Police Headquarters where police are interviewing witnesses to the deadly attack

Police, army and FBI surround the club after the gunman, wielding an assault rifle and a handgun, killed 49 people

Authorities were investigating the attack on the Florida dance club as an act of terrorism. The shooter called 911 shortly before the attack and referenced ISIS, FBI agent Ronald Hopper said.

He was stopped by hero officers, who used a 'controlled explosion' to distract Mateen before fatally shooting him and rescuing about 30 hostages who were hiding in the bathroom of the club. During the gunfire, an officer was shot, but he was saved by his helmet.

At a news conference on Sunday, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said: 'Many were saved by the heroic efforts of the men and women of the OPD, the Orange County Sheriffs, Seminal County Sheriff's office.'

Pulse initially posted on its own Facebook page: 'Everyone get out of Pulse and keep running.'

Just before 6am, the club posted an update: 'As soon as we have any information, we will update everyone. Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love.'

In addition to the assault rifle, the shooter also had some sort of 'suspicious device,' the police chief said.

At first, officers mistakenly thought the gunman had strapped explosives to the dead and that the club was booby-trapped. A bomb robot sent back images of a battery part next to a body, Dyer said.

That prevented paramedics from going in until authorities determined the battery was something that fell out of an exit sign or a smoke detector.

The robot was sent in after SWAT team members put explosive charges on a wall and an armored vehicle knocked the wall down in an effort to rescue hostages.

At around 6am local time police tweeted: 'Pulse Shooting: The shooter inside the club is dead.' In total, 39 people were killed inside the club, two outside, and nine others died after being rushed to hospital.

Shooter Omar Mateen (left and right in his freshman year high school yearbook photo in 2001), 29, from Port St. Lucie in Florida, opened fire at Pulse night club in the early hours of Sunday morning

A mini van pictured at the scene of the shooting has been confirmed as the vehicle used by Omar Mateen, 29, from Port St. Lucie in Florida

Hero officers used a 'controlled explosion' to distract the shooter before fatally shooting him and were able to rescue about 30 hostages who were hiding in the bathroom of the club. During the gunfire, an officer was shot, but he was saved by his helmet (pictured)

Shortly before the attack, Mateen, who was born in New York to Afghan parents, called 911 and pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Pictured above, emergency services at the scene

In the aftermath of the attack, police departments across the country stepped up patrols in neighborhoods frequented by the LGBT community.

Authorities immediately began investigating whether it was an act of terrorism and probing into the background of Mateen, a 29-year-old American citizen who was born in New York to Afghan parents.

They were looking into whether the shooter acted alone, according to Danny Banks, an agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

'This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as domestic terror incident,' Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said.

Shooter Omar Mateen (pictured), 29, from Port St. Lucie in Florida, opened fire at Pulse night club in the early hours of Sunday

Authorities said they had secured a van owned by the suspect outside the club. Meanwhile, a SWAT truck and a bomb-disposal unit were on the scene of an address associated with Mateen in Fort Pierce, about 118 miles southeast of Orlando.

Meanwhile, the gunman's father Seddique Mir Mateen revealed his son recently got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami and said that might be related to the assault.

'We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident,' he said. 'We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country.'

When asked if the gunman had a connection to radical Islamic terrorism, Hopper said authorities had 'suggestions that individual has leanings towards that.' Mateen's father said the attack had nothing to do with religion, he said.

Mateen, who had worked as a security guard, made a 911 call from the club in which he professed allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a law enforcement official said.

The official was familiar with the investigation but was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The massacre is also the first instance in which ISIS has claimed responsibility for an attack on US soil.

The terror group's Amaq news agency said on Sunday: 'The armed attack that targeted a gay night club in the city of Orlando in the American state of Florida which left over 100 people dead or injured was carried out by an Islamic State fighter.'

During the attack, Mateen also referenced the brothers who carried out the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, a Massachusetts State Police spokesman said on Sunday.

'During a conference call with federal law enforcement officials a short time ago, Massachusetts State Police and other local law enforcement authorities learned that the Orlando nightclub gunman, during his rampage, pledged allegiance to ISIS and referenced the Tsarnaev brothers,' state police spokesman David Procopio said in an e-mail.

The Tsarnaev brothers killed three people and injured more than 260 in the April 15, 2013, attack. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died four days later during a gun battle with police while Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, now 22, has been sentenced to death for his role in the attack.

Mateen, who has a three-year-old son, was born in 1986 in New York and married Sitora Alisherzoda Yusufiy, 27, who was born in Uzbekistan, in 2009.

The mother of his son appears to be a woman named Noor Zahi Salman, Buzzfeed reported.

However, public records list the 30-year-old as living in Rodeo, California, since last year. Salman appears to have separated from Mateen and declined to comment to the Washington Post when reached at her current address.

Before the shooting, he appeared to live a quiet life. The imam of the Florida mosque that he attended for nearly a decade described him as a soft-spoken man, who would visit regularly but would rarely interact with the congregation.

'He hardly had any friends,' Syed Shafeeq Rahman, who heads the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, said. 'He would come with his little son at night to pray and after he would leave.'

Rahman said Mateen never approached him regarding any concerns about homosexuals. He added he himself had increasingly spoken out against violence, noting that even inflicting a scratch on someone was against the tenets of Islam.

Sitora Yusufiy (pictured left and right), the ex-wife of Orlando gunman Omar Mateen claims he would beat her for doing household chores

A classmate from his Florida high school described Mateen as a typical teenager who played football for a Martin County team in Stuart, a small city about a 20-minute drive from Fort Pierce.

Samuel King said he often spoke with Mateen after he graduated high school. King worked at Ruby Tuesday's restaurant in the Treasure Coast Mall, where Mateen worked at GNC, the nutrition store, he said.

King, who is openly gay, said the Mateen he knew until 2009 did not appear to be anti-gay.

'What is shocking to me is that the majority of the staff at Ruby Tuesday's when I worked there were gay,' he said. 'He clearly was not anti-(gay) at least not back then.

'He did not show any hatred to any of us. He treated us all like the individuals we were. He always smiled and said hello.'

King described Mateen as gregarious and talkative in the immediate years after high school, but said 'something must have changed' since he last saw him in 2009.

Mateen was a security guard with a company called G4S. In a 2012 newsletter, the firm identified him as working in West Palm Beach.

In a statement sent Sunday to the Palm Beach Post, the company confirmed that he had been an employee since September 2007. State records show that Mateen had held a firearms license since at least 2011.

In 2013, Mateen made inflammatory comments to co-workers, and was was interviewed twice, FBI agent Ronald Hopper said. He called those interviews inconclusive.

Then, in 2014, the F.B.I. discovered a possible tie between Mr. Mateen and Moner Mohammad Abusalha, who had grown up in nearby Vero Beach and became the first American suicide bomber in Syria, where he fought with the Nusra Front. Again, the F.B.I. closed its inquiry after finding 'minimal' contact between the pair.

Hopper said, officials found that Mateen had ties to an American suicide bomber in 2014. He described the contact as minimal, saying it did not constitute a threat at the time.

Mateen purchased at least two firearms legally within the last week or so, according to Trevor Velinor of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.




Some Muslims on Twitter have been urging their fellow Muslims to condemn the attack and stand with the gay community

Lone suspect Omar Mateen is Muslim and ISIS has claimed responsibility for the slaughter that killed 49

American Muslim leaders are condemning the attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando that killed 49 people and wounded more than 50 others.

Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called the killings a hate crime and said the group has no tolerance for extremism of any kind.

A law enforcement official has said the gunman, Omar Mateen, called 911 from the nightclub and expressed allegiance to an Islamic State leader.

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Nihad Awad, executive director, Council on American-Islamic Relations, above, said of the Muslim community: 'We are sickened and heartbroken by this appalling attack.'

The Muslim community has so far raised $16,000 for the victims of the attack through LaunchGood

Imam Arshad Anwar, leader of the Roswell Community Masjid (left) said 'People of faith like Muhammad Ali embody the world's Muslim community, not this mass murderer; (right) Edward Ahmed Mitchell, executive director of the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said 'This lunacy has no place in our nation

The suspect's father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News that his son got upset when he saw two men kissing and that the attack 'had nothing to do with religion.'

A former Afghan official says the father of the Orlando nightclub gunman is a native of Afghanistan who appears on a television program known for 'its anti-US tirades' and 'pro-Taliban' remarks.

Awad says members of the LGBT community have stood with Muslims in the past and today they stand that community.

'We are sickened and heartbroken by this appalling attack. Our hearts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of the victims. There can never be any justification for such cowardly and criminal acts, period,' Awad said in a statement.

Muslims on Twitter spoke out against the backlash against their community as well as condemned the slaughter that killed 49 in a gay club in Orlando; Muslims in the gay community has been 'doubly affected' said the The Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity

In Florida, where the attack occurred, Rasha Munarak, the CAIR Florida Orlando regional coordinator, released a statement saying, 'We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured. The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence."

In Georgia, Muslim leaders condemned the attack and called for prayers and blood donations.

'Georgia Muslims join their fellow Americans in condemning Sunday's mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando,' said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, executive director of the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in a statement. 'Although we do not know all the facts about the shooter, we do know that this lunacy has no place in our nation.'

One leader referenced the late beloved boxer Muhammad Ali, who was Muslim.

CAIR Florida started a crowdfunder for the attack victims on Good Launch, which has so far amassed over $20,000 on one day

'People of faith like Muhammad Ali embody the world's Muslim community, not this mass murderer,' said Imam Arshad Anwar, leader of the Roswell Community Masjid. 'As proud Americans and devout Muslims, we respect religious freedom, human rights and freedom of choice. Our community will, God willing, continue its efforts to combat extremism and encourage tolerance of all people.'

CAIR-SV Executive Director, Basim Elkarra said in a statement: 'We are horrified by this atrocious hate crime and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured. We also offer our support and allyship to the LGBTQ community, which has been a faithful ally against Islamophobia. The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence."

A crowdfunding campaign launched by American Muslims to support the families of the Orlando shooting victims has raised over $20,000 so far, according to the most recent update onLaunchGood.

The campaign's administrator. Ali Kurnaz, quoted from the Prophet Muhammad on the page: 'We wish to respond to evil with good, as our faith instructs us, and send a powerful message of compassion through action. Our Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said: "Have mercy to those on earth, and the One in the Heavens (God) will have mercy upon you.'' And the Quran teaches to "Repel evil by that which is better" (41:34)' said the funding page.

The Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity says it has been 'doubly affected' by the massacre, which happened at a gay club in Orlando.

'There is no religious justification or precedent in Islam for mass shootings targeting any population, regardless of identity,' said the group in a statement, 'We call for a renewal of the national conversation around strengthening gun control...This tragedy cannot be neatly categorized as a fight between the LGBTQ community and the Muslim community. As LGBTQ Muslims, we know that there are many of us who are living at the intersections of LGBTQ identities and Islam.'

On Twitter, Muslims came out in force to defend their religion as well as show solidarity with the victims and LGBTQ community.

'I'm gay and Muslim,' tweeted Shawn Ahmed. 'I want to tell the Muslim community that the Islamphobia being spread doesn't reflect my values as a gay man. For all the differences between Muslims and the LGBT community, we share a common truth: life is precious and love is more powerful than hate.'
The row erupted after WI member Jag Picknett (pictured left) refused to stand

Aside from the odd racy calendar, the Womens Institute has an abiding image of polite ladies united in a common cause, happy to make jam and sing Jerusalem.

But an almighty row has broken out between the normally civil members... over a jingoistic performance of Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory.

In honour of the Queens birthday, WI organisers decided to model the close of this years annual meeting in Brighton on the Last Night of the Proms.

Around 4,500 women, some wearing full Union Jack outfits, stood and waved flags during the hearty renditions on Saturday.

But many thought the tunes were outdated and inappropriate and refused to stand.

Others accused the organisation of racism and of turning the meeting into something akin to a UKIP rally.

The vitriol became so intense that at least one member has quit the 220,000-member organisation  with more threatening to follow.

There have been growing conflicts in the organisation over its changing nature in recent years, when its membership has become younger and more diverse.

The row erupted after Cambridge-educated doctor, Jag Picknett, took to social media after refusing to stand during the songs.

Afterwards she said: Im a confident, educated, second-generation immigrant to this country and the finale was like being at a UKIP rally.

Jerusalem, fine, sing Happy Birthday to the Queen, fine, National Anthem, fine. Wave flags and sing along to Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory with a member on stage dressed as Britannia leading it not okay.

I sat down all the way through it  I should have walked out. I havent felt this uncomfortable since the 1980s. If you want diversity and inclusivity the National Federation of Womens Institutes needs to take a long hard look at itself.

But members rounded on the GP from Bingley, West Yorkshire, telling her it was a British institution and she should leave if she felt out of place. Hilary Forbes said on social media: Its just a bit of British tradition and fun.

Nobody takes the words too seriously so if I was you Id enter into the British way of being British.

We dont rule the waves anymore but Im sure you dont want to be a slave any more than I do. Chris Evans said: This is our traditions, this is being British so wave the flags and sing the hymns loud and clear.

Brenda Perkins added: Why dont you perhaps set up your own group and build your own values and set your own constitution along the lines of what makes you happy and dont try to change the WI to suit you.

Chloe Mancey said: I think this is a little over-sensitiveEdward Elgar was a wonderful and much celebrated British composer and Pomp and Circumstance is a song that is traditionally sung at many events. It is not racist or xenophobic.

But a member of the group responded: I am truly shocked to see so many pompous, racist comments. She said the WI should be embracing the world as it is today, not 50 years ago. It is time to bring the WI into the modern world.

Teresa Murray said: Racism, jingoism, elitism, colonialism. Im a new member and am shocked by some of the attitudes. I was under the impression the WI was supposed to be about inspiring women. Its certainly inspired me not to renew my membership.

The row is seen as a clash between the old and the new in the WI. In recent years the organisation has been trying to modernise to appeal to a new generation of women.

The stereotype of a group of retired ladies baking cakes and knitting has been discarded. Instead the WI wants to attract new and more diverse members, including working women from all walks of life and ethnicities.

However there has been resistance to change from the older, more traditional membership, who believe the cultural heritage of the WI is what made the organisation great.

A WI spokesman said it was deeply saddened by the row.
Only a few voices spoke out in favor of the politician

Condemnation from both sides of the aisle continued for hours afterward

Donald Trump has once more caused outrage with his Twitter postings, after thanking his followers for congratulating him about 'being right on radical Islamic terrorism'.

The presumptive Republican candidate took to Twitter after the Orlando massacre to ask 'when will we get tough, smart & vigilant?' and demand Obama's resignation if he didn't mention Islamic terrorism.

But his later Tweet, which began 'Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism,' caused an outcry from followers who said he was using the deaths of innocent Americans to score points and 'bask in congratulations.'

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'Congrats': Donald Trump suggested that many of his supporters were sending him 'congrats' for being right about radical Islamic terrorism - infuriating many who said he was scoring points on the deaths of Americans

The presumptive Republican candidate took to Twitter after the Orlando massacre demanding Obama's resignation if he didn't mention Islamic terrorism

'Not a leader': Star Trek actor and LGBT rights campaigner George Takei said Trump's 'basking in congratulations' was proof that he should not be president

'Stain': Gossip blogger Perez Hilton said that Trump was a 'stain on humanity' and 'the lowest of the low'

'Awful': Musician John Legend, a staunch Democrat and Obama fan, simply said: 'Trump is truly an awful person'

Disgusted: But there was outcry from conservatives, too, such as TV host Meghan McCain, daughter of John McCain, who objected to Trump 'congratulating himself'

In the Tweet Trump added: 'I don't want congrats, I want toughness and vigilance. We must be smart!'

The response to the Tweet was instantaneous - and overwhelmingly negative, both from liberals and conservatives.

Star Trek actor and LGBT campaigner George Takei said, 'Once again, Donald, you have shown why you cannot lead us. 50 people are dead, and you bask in congratulations.'

Gossip blogger Perez Hilton didn't hold back, fuming: '@realDonaldTrump You are a stain on your children and humanity!!! You are the lowest of the low!!!!!!!'

And musician John Legend simply said, 'Trump is truly an awful person.'

They were joined in their condemnation by conservative TV host Meghan McCain, daughter of John McCain, who said: '@realDonaldTrump You're congratulating yourself because 50 people are dead this morning in a horrific tragedy?'

Omar Mateen, 29, of Port St. Lucie in Florida, pledged allegiance to ISIS before opening fire early on Sunday

Sorrow: People hug outside the Pulse gay club where a gunman killed 49 people and injured 53

'Badly worded': Even some supporters of Trump said they didn't like his remark - such as 'Chris from Pitt', a self-described Trump supporter, who admonished him for turning the tragedy into a 'humble brag'

'Drop out': Conservative Christian Rob Gondwe said that Trump should drop out of the race and 'let someone qualified handle the mess Obama and Democrats made out of (our) country'

'Childish': This user described Trump's remarks about the congratulations he received as 'childish, arrogant, thoughtless'

But it wasn't just celebrities who came out swinging: hundreds of responses from regular users also stacked up, the vast majority negative.

Rob Gondwe, who describes himself as 'Christian and conservative' on his profile, said: '@realDonaldTrump if you are smart you will drop out of race and let someone qualified handle the mess Obama and democrats made of country.'

And a user simply named 'Chris from Pitt,' who gleefully calls himself 'Trump conservative!' in his profile, admonished Trump for his tone.

'@realDonaldTrump this was worded so badly. The events prove you're right; this did not need to be a humble brag. Please think next time,' he said.

Adam Mordecai, an editor at Upworthy remarked: '@realDonaldTrump FYI: turning worst mass shooting in US history into a Trump humble brag isn't smart. It's childish, arrogant, thoughtless.'

'Victory lap': The blowback kept coming, as one user described Trump's remarks as a 'victory lap' from a 'five-year-old narcissist'

'Flip-flopper': User Rich Miner took the opportunity to remind Trump of the remarks he made in 2012, when he said her agreed with Obama's stance on gun control after the Sandy Hook shooting that left 20 children dead

Carmichael Craig responded: '@realDonaldTrump 50 dead, 53 wounded and this scumbag is taking a victory lap. No condolences. No sympathy. Just a 5 year old narcissistic. (sic)'

And Rich Miner drew on comments by other political figures, including Hillary Clinton, about the need for tighter gun control laws by pointing out Trump's inconsistent history with gun control remarks.

'@realDonaldTrump You correctly agreed w/@BarackObama after #newtown,' he said. 'No. 1 factor in Mass murders is guns, not religion #FlipFlopping4votes'

He was referencing a Tweet Trump made in 2012 after the Sandy Hook massacre, in which 20 children were gunned down, when the businessman said 'President Obama spoke for me and every American in his remarks in [Newtown,] Connecticut.'

Obama had told the press that there could be no 'excuse for inaction' in bringing in gun control measures.

But Trump did get a few grains of support in the sandstorm of indignation.

Jay Soderland said: '@realDonaldTrump we love you Don & knew you were right! We did not submit to the PC spiral of silence! We need you! #IWillNotSubmit #MAGA'

And Truth Talker enthused: '@realDonaldTrump well said'

'Right': There was some support among the vitriol, however - such as this user who felt that Trump has escaped 'the PC spiral of silence'

'Well said': This user kept their support short and sweet

Trump had begun the day making Twitter followers aware of the shooting, before returning to attacking Clinton - this time for a new general election ad.

He later penned more Tweets about the tragedy in Orlando, in which gunman Omar Mateen entered a gay nightclub and shot dead 49 people, leaving another 53 injured.

Mateen, 29, of Port St. Lucie in Florida, pledged allegiance to ISIS before opening fire early on Sunday.

The FBI said Mateen has 'leanings to radical Islamic terrorism'.

The Republican presumptive nominee has often talked about taking on 'radical Islamic terrorism.'

Later Trump released a statement that hit both President Obama and Clinton, saying they should both get out of government if they can't say 'radical Islamic terrorism'.

President Barack Obama pauses during a statement regarding the Orlando mass shooting. Trump called for him to resign if he can't say 'radical Islamic terrorism'

In the Tweet Trump added: 'I don't want congrats, I want toughness and vigilance. We must be smart!'

Acknowledgement: Donald Trump initially just let his readership know about the Orlando shooting and then went back to attacking Hillary Clinton on Twitter

'In his remarks today, President Obama disgracefully refused to even say the words "Radical Islam." For that reason alone he should step down,' he said.

'If Hillary Clinton, after this attack, still cannot say the two words "Radical Islam" she should get out of this race for the presidency,' he added.

The statement claimed that political correctness is hindering the fight against terrorism.

Mateen was born in New York from parents who were from Afghanistan, though Trump still touted his controversial plans for a ban of all non-American Muslims coming into the United States.

'What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning,' Trump tweeted. 'Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough.'

Update: He then updated his response several hours later asking 'when will we get tough, smart & vigilant?' and calling the shooting a 'horrific incident'

Dare: Donald Trump dared President Obama to use the term 'radical Islamic terrorism' in his remarks to the American public. The president did not

Ban: Donald Trump doubled down on his plans to ban non-American Muslims from entering the United States despite the fact that the shooter was an American
Jeremy Corbyn yesterday flatly denied that record migration into Britain was causing pressure on schools, the NHS and other public services.

The Labour leader and Islington North MP risked accusations he was out of touch with Labour voters concerns as he said migrants did not lead to delays in hospital treatment, strain on school places and demand for housing.

He was backed by shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who said voters would accept free movement of EU migrants so long as the right infrastructure was in place.

The Labour leader and Islington North MP risked accusations he was out of touch with Labour voters concerns

And former Labour leader Gordon Brown said the EU should hand over money to help relieve the pressure on communities facing a large influx of people.

Senior Labour figures and northern MPs fear large numbers of the partys core voters will back Brexit on June 23 because the party has failed to address concerns about migrant numbers.

Last week it emerged that a leaflet aimed at convincing Labour voters to back Remain contained no mention of immigration.

It sparked accusations  denied by Labour - that Mr Corbyn had vetoed any mention of the issue in the four-page glossy document.

One former shadow cabinet minister told the Mail many voters in the partys traditional Northern heartlands are backing Brexit because of anger over mass immigration.

But Mr Corbyn told the Sunday Mirror: Our hospitals, schools and housing arent in crisis because of migration.

He was backed by shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who said voters would accept free movement of EU migrants so long as the right infrastructure was in place

Its not Polish plumbers or Spanish nurses who created record waiting times at A&E departments, or made cancer treatment waiting times longer.

Instead, he argued, it was cuts forced through by David Cameron, Boris Johnson and the Tory party that did that.

Mr Corbyn said the failure to train enough doctors and nurses meant we needed 50,000 medical staff from the EU to keep our NHS going.

He added: If you or your family are struggling to get an affordable home, its not migrants who are to blame. Its politicians who have failed to build enough homes.

McDonnell on Peston on Sunday

The Labour leader called for the resurrection of the Migrant Impact Fund  first used under the last Labour government - to manage the effect of migration on local communities.

Mr McDonnell also denied free movement was a problem, saying voters accepted it as long as the infrastructure was in place to ensure that thats supported.

Asked by Robert Peston on ITV if he was completely against any kind of control, he said there were benefits for Britons in being able to travel all over Europe taking the opportunity to study, to work, to settle.

Mr Brown said the government and the EU could do more to help communities that have felt that they are under pressure with their schools and hospitals in particular.

He said cooperation was needed with other EU countries to tackle people traffickers across the Channel and called for more help for communities that are under pressure.

This is a problem that Europe should share together, just as we have got to share the problem of dealing with the problem of refugees coming out of Syria, he added.
A British Airways flight declared an emergency shortly after taking off from Heathrow this morning.

Flight 1340 had set off from London bound for Leeds at 8.23am, but was forced to turn back to Heathrow shortly after take-off.

It is believed the captain requested a priority landing with a 'technical issue'.

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A British Airways flight was forced to return to Heathrow this morning with a 'technical issue' minutes after taking off from London (file photo)

This graphic shows the flight path of the Airbus A319 after it declared an emergency shortly after take-off

A 'squawk 7700' signal was sent out by the pilots on board, signalling a general emergency and alerting Air Traffic Control that the aircraft needed to return.

The pilots then moved the plane into a holding pattern, circling above Chesham in Buckinghamshire, before flying on to Heathrow.

The Airbus A319, that can carry a maximum of 156 passengers, made a safe landing on runway 27L at Heathrow at around 8.55am - just over 30 minutes after it took off.

Various aviation accounts on social media are speculating that the aircraft had 'gear issues', but BA have refused to confirm this.

A spokesperson for British Airways told MailOnline Travel: 'The aircraft has now landed safely at Heathrow after the pilot requested a priority landing for a minor technical issue.'

It is not known how many passengers were on board the aircraft.

The Airbus A319 made a safe landing on runway 27L at Heathrow after declaring mid-air emergency

British Airways have refused to confirm that 'gear issues' were the reason for the emergency landing

HOW A PLANE MAKES A SAFE EMERGENCY LANDING The standard procedure for many aeroplanes is often to reduce the weight in order to make a safe landing. So the plane is forced to burn off fuel by circling, or if the emergency is more serious, it will have to release the fuel into the air, usually over water. Fuel dumping operations are coordinated with air traffic control, and precautions are taken to keep other aircraft clear of such areas. Fuel dumping is usually accomplished at a high enough altitude where the fuel will dissipate before reaching the ground. Advertisement

When an emergency or diversion is required for an aircraft, the standard procedure for many aeroplanes is often to reduce the weight in order to make a safe landing.

So the plane is forced to burn off fuel by circling, or if the emergency is more serious, it will have to release the fuel into the air, usually over water.

Aircraft have two major types of weight limits: the maximum takeoff weight and the maximum structural landing weight, with the maximum structural landing weight almost always being the lower of the two.

This allows an aircraft on a normal, routine flight to take off at the higher weight, consume fuel en route, and arrive at a lower weight.

Fuel dumping operations are coordinated with air traffic control, and precautions are taken to keep other aircraft clear of such areas. Fuel dumping is usually accomplished at a high enough altitude where the fuel will dissipate before reaching the ground.
Genres : Comedy

Starring : Bob Hope, Dina Merrill, Tuesday Weld

Director : Frederick De Cordova

Plot Synopsis

Widower and single dad, oil company executive Bob Holcomb (Bob Hope, The Road to Hong Kong) accepts a transfer to Sweden in hopes of keeping his daughter JoJo (Tuesday Weld, Pretty Poison) far away from her carefree, guitar-playing, marriage-minded boyfriend Kenny (Frankie Avalon, Beach Blanket Bingo). Little does Bob know that Sweden provides a more liberal view of all things romantic. So, it s out of the frying pan and into the fire. But JoJo isn t the only one with romance on her mind when Bob meets attractive interior designer Karin (Dina Merrill, Operation Petticoat). Plans for a romantic mountain resort weekend will turn into a slapstick roundelay when Kenny turns up with former girlfriend Marti (Rosemarie Frankland, A Hard Day s Night) and Bob s assistant Erik (Jeremy Slate, Girls! Girls! Girls!), a wolf in sheep s clothing, sets his sights on JoJo. The Land of the Midnight Sun will never be the same when Bob Hope and crew land on her shores in the romantic comedy I ll Take Sweden.



Directed by Frederick De Cordova (Bedtime for Bonzo) from a screenplay by Nat Perrin (based on a story by Perrin, Bob Fisher and Arthur Marx), I ll Take Sweden co-stars Fay DeWitt (The Shakiest Gun in the West), Walter Sande (To Have and Have Not) and John Qualen (Casablanca).
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These incredible images show a spectacular active volcano with a bubbling lava cone which resembles eerie Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings.

Tourists have been flocking to the breathtaking spectacle in Nicaragua as spewing lava lights up the night sky.

The bright orange glow from the molten lava looks like the fictional volcano in the Lord of the Rings trilogy where hobbit Frodo has to destroy the One Ring.

The landscape is lit up beautifully by the bubbling volcano which is unsurprisingly proving to be a tourist attraction in Nicaragua

Spectacular photographs show of the burning lava lake at the Masaya volcano in Nicaragua which has a permanent magma supply

The bright orange glow from the molten lava looks like the fictional volcano in the Lord of the Rings trilogy where hobbit Frodo has to destroy the One Ring

Professional volcanic photographer Martin Rietze, 51, was lucky enough to see one first hand when he visited the Masaya volcano in Nicaragua in April

The phenomena are known as lava lakes and occur when molten lava collects in a volcano's crater - which can reach temperatures hotter than 1,000 degree Celsius.

They are incredibly rare and only very few volcanoes have continuous ones.

Most, like the one pictured, occur for a few weeks or months before the molten rock cools.

Professional volcanic photographer Martin Rietze, 51, was lucky enough to see one first hand when he visited the Masaya volcano in Nicaragua in April.

He said: 'Lava lakes are a rare phenomenon on Earth. There are only a few worldwide.

Tourists have been flocking to the breathtaking spectacle in Nicaragua as spewing lava lights up the night sky

Most, like the one pictured in these photos, occur for a few weeks or months before the molten rock cools

The phenomena are known as lava lakes and occur when molten lava collects in a volcano's crater - which can reach temperatures hotter than 1,000 degree Celsius

Finding the phenomena: Masaya volcano 15 miles south east from Managua and is one of Nicaragua's most active and usual volcanoes

'Having one in easily reachable terrain is really special. In addition Masaya's lava lake is not permanent.

'It started forming slowly last December. It was completely hidden beneath the crater floor and only visible in the form of faint glowing for many years.

'It is pretty sure that it will vanish again in the future, maybe in a few months. So if you wants to see it you have to be fast.

'Due to risks this lava lake is closed for public most of the time, so there are not too many photographic documentations in really high quality and especially from many different perspectives available.

'The photographs show the behaviour and physics of an open volcanic system with a permanent magma supply.

'It is one of the very few chances to come into contact with inner earth.

'It shows very liquid lava, hotter than 1,000 degree Celsius, giving off gas, boiling violently and producing spectacular bursting liquid rock lava bubbles.'

These incredible images show a spectacular active volcano with a bubbling lava cone which resembles eerie Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings

Fire in the hole! The gloomy sky is punctured by the bright orange glow coming from the live volcano in the rocks

Keep your distance: This is one lake you would want to steer clear of as 1,000 degrees Celsius molten rock swishes around

Photographers can obtain a special permit to photograph the volcano in April and spend days waiting to take the best pictures

Martin is a German photographer based near Munich and has been travelling the world observing active volcanoes for 20 years.

He obtained a special permit to photograph the volcano in April and spent days waiting to take the best pictures.

He said: 'Even if the activity seems to be similar over many days, photographing it means waiting for perfect light and weather conditions.

'The steam cloud size depends on air humidity and so on. So it took nearly a full week to get all things and perspectives under the best conditions.'

And he admitted the mission was not without its risks.

Frodo the hobbit, played by Elijah Wood, is tasked with destroying the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom so that it can't fall into the hands of evil

This is a scene from the Lord of the Rings films of Mount Doom - that ic actually found in New Zealand and is Mount Ruapehu

The spectacle in Nicaragua allows tourists to see something they would be hard pushed to see again around the world

German photographer Martin Rietze is based near Munich and has been travelling the world observing active volcanoes for 20 years

He said: 'Watching volcanoes is always associated with some risks. Suddenly unpredictable explosions can occur, volcanic gasses can endanger your breathing.

'But compared with other volcanic eruptions a lava lake like the one inside Masayas crater, especially when observed from a distance and at the crater rim it is pretty safe.'

Martin, who also work as an engineer, plans on visiting more volcanoes in the future including the Masaya to see how the lava lake develops.
An Air Transat flight to Canada was forced to turn around in mid-air and return to London Gatwick after problems were detected with the cabin pressure.

The Airbus A330 had set out from Gatwick around 1pm on Friday, but just over an hour into the flight, the captain took the decision to divert back to where the plane had set out from.

After circling twice over the Isle of Wight, the aircraft then had to abort landing at the first attempt at Gatwick, before performing a go around and landing safely second time round.

Air Transat have confirmed that concerns over the cabin pressure saw an Airbus A300, en route to Canada, turn back to London Gatwick

There were reports on social media that the pressurization issue was because of a 'door malfunction'.

Speaking to The Crawley News, a spokesperson for Air Transat said: 'It wasn't a 'door malfunction' per se, but we had concerns about the cabin pressure indicator after take off.

'Therefore, we flew back to Gatwick to run a few tests to make sure the aircraft corresponded to our and Transport Canada's safety standards. We also had to test the emergency light on one of our doors.'

Passengers were delayed by a further three hours after landing back at Gatwick Airport on Friday

The aviation account Airport Webcams reported on Twitter that there was a 'door malfunction'

The aircraft landed at Gatwick at 2.28pm. The Aviation Herald reports that the passengers, who were already delayed by an hour on the original flight out to Toronto, then had to wait another three hours while the plane was checked.

They finally reached their destination four-and-a-half hours behind schedule.

MailOnline Travel has contacted Air Transat for comment.

In January this year MailOnline Travel reported on how passengers were forced to reach for their oxygen masks after an Air Transat plane suffered a cabin pressure issue at 37,000 feet.

The flight was en route from Mexico to Montreal, Canada on January 17. One passenger described how she could hear people in the cabin crying as it descended 7,000 feet in just two minutes.

The captain was alerted to a depressurization issue while flying over Georgia in the U.S.

A spokesperson told MailOnline at the time: 'A temporary pressurization system failure occurred 90 minutes after takeoff, a technical malfunction that provoked the automatic deployment of passengers oxygen masks.

'In accordance with the aircraft manufacturers procedures, an emergency descent was initiated as well as the application of specific procedures, which helped to quickly regain cabin pressure control and rectify the situation.

'The rest of the flight to Montreal went smoothly. Aware of the concern caused by the circumstances, the pilot left the cockpit to explain the situation and clarify that everything was back to normal.
Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick took their children to Las Vegas where they enjoyed dinner and a show on Friday night.

And onlookers have revealed the estranged couple couldn't have looked happier as they spent a fun family time together.

'They were relaxed and very loving,' a source told Us Weekly.

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Family trip: Kourtney Kardashian, far right, and Scott Disick, second from left, were seen arriving at a LA airport with son Mason and daughter Penelope to board a private jet to Las Vegas on Friday

Partners: Scott, 33, carrying three-year-old Penelope, greeted the pilots as Kourtney, 37, oversaw the baggage handling

The reality stars and their children Mason, six, Pebelope, three, and Reign, 17 months, flew to Sin City from LA on a private jet.

They then headed to see Cirque du Soleil's The Beatles LOVE show at The Mirage, before heading for a late meal.

After putting the kids to bed, Kourtney, 37, then joined Scott, 33, for his promotional appearance at 1OAK night club.

It was just two weeks ago that the eldest Kardashian sibling had partied with her ex at 1OAK as they celebrated Scott's 33rd birthday.

See Kourtney Kardashian updates as she and Scott Disick appear 'very loving' in Las Vegas

Mommy's little helper: Mason, six, helped Kourtney with the bags after the family group arrived at the airport in the same large black SUV

The family trip will no doubt only increase speculation that the estranged couple, who never wed, may be on track for a reconciliation.

They have been seen out and about together and with their kids fairly frequently in the past few weeks.

This despite the fact the self-proclaimed Lord is said to be dating Australian model Megan Blake.

Headed to Sin City: Kourtney wore an all-black ensemble of skinny jeans and jacket along with a pair of very tall silver heels

Familiar routine: The Kardashians make frequent use of private jets, hardly ever flying on commercial airlines

Pals: Scott gave one of the guys waiting for the group to arrive a friendly greeting

All aboard: The small entourage was headed to Vegas for Scott's promotional appearance at 1OAK night club there

Back on the strip: Later, Kourtney posted a video on her Snapchat after landing in the Nevada city and wrote on the image: 'again.' She and Scott were in Vegas two weeks ago for his birthday weekend

It would certainly be something of a surprising development, given that Kourtney threw out her cheating ex last summer because of his partying ways.

On the other hand, getting back together would make for an exciting new storyline on the family's E! reality series Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

During their estrangement, Kourtney made sure to show Scott exactly what he was missing as she hit the party scene in sexy ensembles and even, it was claimed, enjoyed a fling with Justin Bieber.

Meanwhile, Scott remained in the family fold, continuing to shoot scenes for KUWTK and attending family gatherings.

Frantic Friday: Before taking off from LA, the reality stars had had a busy day. Kourtney posted a selfie as she filmed scenes for KUWTK while Scott shared a pic of himself working on redecorating a home

Getting back together? Last weekend, Kourtney and Scott spent plenty of family time together with their kids including a trip to the grocery store on June 5
It's the series that gained one of the biggest cult followings since debuting on Netflix in 2013.

And now Australian actress Yael Stone has revealed how being cast in Orange Is The New Black changed her life.

Speaking to the Herald Sun, the 31-year-old also said she's proud to be part of a series that not only portrays strong women but also supports them on and off the screen.

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Star on the rise: Australian actress Yael Stone has revealed how being cast in Orange Is The New Black changed her life

'It has changed my life enormously,' Yael told the publication.

The series show runner Jenji Kohan, is female and the Sydney-born actress also added 'We have camera operators who are female as well, and the crew  and that's significant.'

'I don't know that it's a deliberate choice but I think it is. It's a culture of giving women jobs they might not usually get. I'm yet to see any disadvantage in that.'

Life changing role: Speaking to the Herald Sun , the 31-year-old also said she's proud to be part of a series that not only portrays strong women but also supports them on and off the screen

Big break: Yael, who plays Laura Morello in the hit Netflix series, also added shows like OITNB are 'significant' as it proves to the networks that people 'want to watch female-centric shows'

Yael, who plays Laura Morello in the hit Netflix series, also added shows like OITNB are 'significant' as it proves to the networks that people 'want to watch female-centric shows.'

Having worked extensively in Australian theatre, the brunette beauty won two Sydney Theatre Awards before moving to New York in 2011.

At the 2008 Sydney Theatre Awards, she won the awards for Best Newcomer and Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Kid.

Yael also starred in Australian drama All Saints and Spirited.

'I don't know that it's a deliberate choice but I think it is. It's a culture of giving women jobs they might not usually get. I'm yet to see any disadvantage in that,' Yael said. Pictured with OITNB co-star Dascha Polanco

Career move: Having worked extensively in Australians theatre, the brunette beauty won two Sydney Theatre Awards before moving to New York in 2011

Last year Yael was seen in the miniseries Childhood's End alongside American actor Mike Vogel.

She is also set to headline the upcoming SBS drama Deep Water, with fellow Australian Noah Taylor, who is fresh off his role on Game of Thrones.

Orange Is The New Black forth season airs at 2pm on Friday June 17.
Molly Sims showed that age is no barrier to looking stylish and super sexy at the same time.

The 43-year-old blonde beauty stepped out for a charity event Saturday wearing a very revealing frock slashed to the waist at the front and showing off plenty of cleavage.

The bohemian frock featured laces that criss-crossed over her bare chest and fell to the floor with an asymmetrical hem.

Stunner! Molly Sims wore a semi-sheer frock slashed to the waist that revealed plenty of cleavage as she attended the OCRF's 3nd Annual Super Saturday LA at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California on Saturday

The pleated skirt was semi-sheer showing off a hint of her lean legs under the full silhouette.

The dress was mostly white with black detailing on the bodice and hem and gold patterns on the skirt.

She wore her long highlighted tresses back in a low ponytail leaving a few strands in the front out to frame her radiant face.

The model and actress was accompanied to the event by husband Scott Stuber and their toddler daughter Scarlett.

Buxom blonde:The 43-year-old's bodice featured criss-cross laces stretched between the fabric on either side of her bosom

Boho look: Molly's dress featured black detailing on the bodice and the asymmetrical hem and had semi-sheer panels int he pleated skirt embellished with gold patterns

Family affair: Molly hit the carpet with her one-year-old daughter, Scarlett, along with her husband, Scott Stuber

Molly joined her good friend, Rachel Zoe, 44, to co-chair the OCRF's 3nd Annual Super Saturday LA at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California.

The famous pals were snapped side-by-side while stylishly posing on the blue carpet.

Rachel's family was also on hand for the fun occasion with her fashion designer spouse Rodger Berman, and their cute sons Kaius and Skyler joining her on the carpet.

Famous pals: Molly hosted the fundraising event along with her good friend, Rachel Zoe, 44. The two beauties were snapped side-by-side while stylishly posing on the blue carpet

Beautiful foursome: Rachel's family was also on hand for the fun occasion with her fashion designer spouse Rodger Berman and their cute sons Kaius and Skyler joining her on the teal carpet

Fun Saturday: Ian Ziering was also spotted with his wife Erin and their two little girls, Mia and Penna

Ian Ziering also came out to support the fundraiser with his wife, Erin, and their two little girls, Mia and Penna.

On the guest list as well were Jaime King, Jodie Sweetin, Melissa Rivers and Lisa Rinna.

The star-studded designer garage sale brings together top designers, sponsors, celebs, and shoppers for fun shopping in aid of the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.

Star-studded: Melissa Rivers and designer David Dangle caught up at the event

Fashion choices: Fuller House star Jodie Sweetin stepped out in black and gold for the occasion, while a brunette Jaime King wore a burgundy belted coat and wide-legged jeans

Colorful pair! Brad Goreski and Lisa Rinna made a very bright duo as they posed on the equally bright carpet

White hot! Allison Holker, left, and Tammin Sursok, right, looked chic in white ensembles
The last time she was in Australia for a local production was back in 1989 for the three-part miniseries Bangkok Hilton.

And Hollywood veteran Nicole Kidman has finally returned to Down Under shores, having arrived in Sydney on Saturday with her children Faith and Sunday Rose.

The Oscar-winning 48-year-old is back in the country for five weeks to work on a new crime drama Top Of The Lake: China Girl.

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Back Down Under! Nicole Kidman returns to Australia to film local crime drama Top Of The Lake

It's the second installment of the critically acclaimed series, which was released last year, which centres around the disappearance of 12-year-old Tui, who is five months pregnant.

Nicole will join Mad Man actress Elisabeth Moss who has returned for the second series, and Game Of Thrones star Gwendoline Christie.

The narrative will pick up four years after the first season, which saw Elisabeth win a Golden Globe for her performance.

Return: The last time she was in Australia for a local production was back in 1989

The acclaimed director Jane Campion revealed to Confidential that she never expected the popular series to return for another run.

'It was like a novel, each one being a novel. They are not episodics so they have to have a whole shape and form and end to them,' she said.

According to The Daily Telegraph, Foxtel boss Brian Walsh said it had taken a year to secure Nicole, having signed the contract finally on Thursday.

Flash back! She starred in the three-part miniseries Bangkok Hilton

'Having Nicole on board is such a great endorsement of the high-concept television we are producing here now,' Brian said.

'I dont think theres been a better time for Australian television.'

The mini-series is slated for a 2017 release.
They formed a close friendship while filming the Hunger Games franchise.

And now Liam Hemsworth has admitted co-star Jennifer Lawrence would showcase her quirky sense of humour during filming in an attempt to distract him.

Appearing on The Graham Norton Show on Friday, the 26-year-old said Jennifer purposely said outrageous things just before a take.

Fun times: Liam Hemsworth has admitted co-star Jennifer Lawrence would showcase her quirky sense of humour during filming in an attempt to distract him

'You never really know what's going to come out of her mouth,' Liam told the Irish TV host.

'She often, right before a take, would turn to me and ask me if I liked having sex with kangaroos - anything along those lines.'

When asked what his answer was, Liam jokingly responded, 'Absolutely! That's what Australians do!'

Comical: Appearing on The Graham Norton Show on Friday, the 26-year-old said Jennifer purposely said outrageous things just before a take saying 'You never really know what's going to come out of her mouth'

Bizarre: 'She often, right before a take, would turn to me and ask me if I liked having sex with kangaroos - anything along those lines,' he told the Irish TV host

Having rekindled his romance with former fiancee Miley Cyrus, Liam recently spoke toSunday Style, saying that despite the constant media storm surrounding his relationship, he isn't after that kind of fame.

'I dont go out of my way to attract that kind of attention, or feel I owe anyone a show and tell,' the Australian actor told the publication.

'You can be consumed by "Oh, someone wrote something about me", but you have to remember its 10 seconds out of someones day, if that. That makes it easier.'

'I dont buy into it anymore, and live my life happily. Its way less complicated,' he added.

Co-stars: The Australian heartthrob appeared on the show with Independence Day: Resurgence co-star Jeff Goldblum (R)

Liam and Miley have famously had an on-off relationship stretching back over seven years and painfully split in 2013.

The heart-throb told GQ Australia earlier this month that calling off their engagement was tough but with hindsight, it was the right thing.

'Of course it was hard, man,' he said before adding 'But at the time we were going in different directions and it's just what needed to happen.'

Together again: Having rekindled his romance with former fiancee Miley Cyrus Liam recently said that despite the constant media storm surrounding his relationship, he isn't after that kind of fame

'We were both super young and it was a good decision at the time, we both needed that'

'I make my decisions about what's going to make me happy, what I think is right and what I want to do, and I don't worry too much outside of that.'

The couple have been spotted together multiple times this year, with Miley joining Liam and his family in Australia over the Christmas holidays.

Miley has also been seen wearing the 3.5 carat engagement ring Liam gave her in 2012.
Stepping out on to the Los Angeles' runway, this 16-year-old completed the modelling trifecta for his former fashion star mom on Friday night.

And Yolanda Foster could not be happier as son Anwar Hadid followed in her modelling footsteps at the Moschino show.

The 52-year-old Real Housewives star took to social media on Saturday morning to praise her youngest after his big debut.

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Big night: Anwar Hadid made his catwalk debut at the Moschino show in Los Angeles, California, on Friday

Yolanda - who missed the show as she was in Tahiti - posted a picture of the teen taken backstage at the parade and said: 'On the runway for MOSCHINO tonight............... #MyLove @itsjeremyscott @moschino #LA #FashionShow.'

The proud mother also shared a picture collage of Anwar walking in the parade alongside snaps of his older sisters Gigi and Bella Hadid walking in other Moschino parades.

The star captioned the collage: 'Three times blessed on the runway......... For @itsjeremyscott @moschino #Family #ProudMommy #2014 #2015 #2016.'

Anwar also posted the picture of him taken backstage, revealing his mom's unusual decision to crop another model with fashion linage out of the picture - Presley Gerber, son of supermodel Cindy Crawford.

Proud mom: Yolanda posted a picture of the teen (with fellow first timer Cami Morrone) taken backstage at the parade and said, 'On the runway for MOSCHINO tonight............... #MyLove'

It is not clear why Yolanda cropped the fellow teen model out of the photograph as she did not crop female model Cami Morrone out of the picture.

Anwar happily shared the full snap, as it was a big night for all three of them as it was each of the young models' catwalk debuts.

Anwar captioned the image: 'The freeeshman class [sic]. THANK YOU @itsjeremyscott @moschino @imgmodels.'

Three times blessed on the runway......... For @itsjeremyscott @moschino #Family #ProudMommy #2014 #2015 #2016 A photo posted by YOLANDA (@yolanda.hadid) on Jun 11, 2016 at 12:51am PDT

That makes three: The proud mother also shared a picture collage of Anwar walking in the parade alongside snaps of his older sisters Gigi and Bella Hadid walking in other Moschino parades

Making it even more special for the trio, each is a fashion legacy as Cami also has a parent who is a model, her father Maximo Morrone.

The 18-year-old - who looks uncannily like her friend Hailey Baldwin - also has acting in her blood as her mother is Argentinian actress Lucila Sola, the former girlfriend of Al Pacino.

Anwar's modelling career has been moving at lightening speed with the teen only signed to a modelling agency just a few months ago and now he has walked alongside some of the biggest names in fashion including Alessandra Ambrosio and Miranda Kerr.

Didn't make the cut: Anwar also posted the picture of him backstage, revealing his mom's unusual decision to crop another model with fashion linage out of the picture - Presley Gerber, son of supermodel Cindy Crawford

Boys' night out: It was also Presley's first catwalk too, and both of the teenagers seemed to take to it like ducks to water

Support system: Cindy, Rande Gerber, daughter and up and coming model, Kaia all attended the show

The teen was signed to IMG models - the same agencies that represents his older sisters - in February.

Just a few months before that her stepped out on the modelling scene immediately landing features in the January edition of L'Uomo Vogue and the October edition of Nylon.

Yolanda was signed to Ford Models in her time, which saw her star in magazines and campaigns for over 15 years.

In the genes: Anwar's (pictured last year) modelling career has been moving at lightening speed with the teen only signed to a modelling agency just a few months ago
She has been sharing envy-inducing snaps of her wedding anniversary getaway in Bali.

But Nikki Phillips has now bid farewell to the resort by posting a stunning image of her wearing an Oriental-inspired floral dress with a daring thigh split on Saturday.

She flaunted her endless legs in the colourful Constantina & Louise floor-length dress which was cut to reveal the top of her thigh.

Endless legs: Model Nikki Phillips showed off her perfect pins in a floral dress with a daring thigh split in a picture from her wedding anniversary getaway in Bali which was posted on Saturday

The blonde beauty went barefoot in the picture as she posed at the Ungasan Clifftop Resort in Bali.

Nikki returned to the resort to celebrate her second anniversary with her husband Dane Rumble after saying their vows in a romantic ceremony at the hotel in 2014.

She shared the picture to her 74,000 followers on Instagram, saying: 'It's up... My post on my incredible stay at @theungasan Which many of you may remember as Semara Uluwatu.

All eyes on her! Nikki lazed back on a lounge chair while dressed in a black triangle bikini set on Tuesday as she continued to share images from her Bali holiday

Revealing: Earlier in the day Nikki uploaded a photo of herself wearing her underwear while she jumped up and down on her hotel bed

'Check out my holiday snaps and video at bynikkiphillips.com Happy reading #Bali #blogpost #theungasan wearing @constantinalouise @jacksteeel #balibible #myweddingvenue #love.'

The model, who lives in Sydney, made her outfit pop by adding a slick of bright red lipstick.

She swept her blonde locks over to one side in the serene picture which was posted on Saturday.

In another image on her Instagram, the 31-year-old can be seen relaxing on a lounge chair while dressed in a black triangle bikini set.

Gazing out to the water, she showed off her svelte figure in the two-piece.

Classy: Before she stripped down to her bed-wear, Nikki posed up a storm as she dressed in a stunning navy blue off-the-shoulder top which featured white vertical strips

The model allowed her blonde hair to fall freely beside her face before covering her head with an oversized back hat.

Earlier in the day Nikki uploaded a photo of herself wearing her underwear while she jumped up and down on her hotel bed.

With a large smile displayed across her face, the Myer ambassador flaunted her tanned skin as she dressed in a black and white striped singlet, which she tied up to the side, and a pair of matching hipster undies.

While posing for the camera, she clutched tightly onto a green pillow which she rested over her right shoulder.

Perfect match: She paired the stylish garment with a pair of white high waisted flared pants

Summer loving: The day earlier she slipped into a floral mini-dress and sandals as she explored the picture-perfect resort

She cheekily captioned the photo: 'Happiness is holidays...of and pillow fights'.

Before she stripped down to her bed-wear, Nikki posed up a storm as she dressed in a stunning navy blue off-the-shoulder top which featured white vertical strips.

She paired the stylish garment with a pair of white high waisted flared pants.

Nikki wore her short blonde hair out and parted to the right while she styled the ends with a curl.

She kept her makeup looking natural while adding a touch of colour with a bold red lipstick.

Days earlier she covered her runway ready figure as she slipped into a green floral one-piece swimsuit while chilling by the pool.

In one of the shots she laid flat on the ground while rising her cream hat to the air in a bid to cover her stunning eyes.

Hey there! Days earlier she covered her runway ready figure as she slipped into a green floral one-piece swimsuit while chilling by the pool

Happy times: In the frame she showed off her cleavage through the swimmer's plunging neckline which featured a criss-cross lace up

In the frame she showed off her cleavage through the swimmer's plunging neckline which featured a criss-cross lace up.

She displayed her manicured red nails, which matched her red lips, as she formed the peace sign for camera.

On Friday to add to her growing collection of photos, she shared another one which showed herself relaxing poolside in a black and white bikini.

Flaunt it! On Friday to add to her growing collection of photos, she shared another one which showed herself relaxing poolside in a black and white bikini

Romantic: She and her husband have returned to Bali to celebrate their second anniversary, after getting married in Indonesia in 2014

In one snap, the blonde beauty is posing in the shade of a palm tree, putting her incredible body on display in a skimpy two-piece.

She has a full face of make-up for the poolside photo shoot, sporting a bold red lip and her flawless complexion is on show.

Completing her stylish look, the blonde beauty flashes a bright red manicure as her sun-kissed skin is simply glowing.

Her short blonde locks have been swept to the side in a casual, beachy vibe and she has added the caption: 'You smile, I smile, we all smile'.

'Happiness is being with you': The 31-year-old has been a ball of love since heading to Bali for the romantic getaway

So much love! The loved-up couple have enjoyed being spoiled by their hotel during their getaway together

The surrounding villa and pool appears to be extremely luxurious, presumably being enjoyed by the loved-up couple.

In a second snap shared by the model, she can be seen perched on the edge of a sun lounger, looking out over the picturesque emerald water in the surrounding plunge pool.

And the model seems to be liking her look, sporting the same black and white bikini for the post.

Nikki captioned the photo: 'Villa life continues.. Today's motto: pool, eat, swim and repeat.'

Think pink: Nikki has been flaunting her gym-honed figure in an array of bikinis, including this pink and light blue two-piece

'Every hour is cocktail hour when you're on holiday': The model is clearly enjoying kicking back, donning yet another bikini

The couple have returned to Bali, where they were married two years ago, to celebrate their wedding anniversary in style.

The beauty has kept a busy schedule so far this year, with the blogger and television personality a regular on the social scene as well as keeping up with her runway commitments for Myer.

She also unveiled the official schedule for the upcoming Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia, where she was joined by fellow models Bambi Northwood-Blyth and Megan Irwin, and TV host Carissa Walford, among others.

Floral: Nikki showed off her svelte frame in this red and blue floral bikini, as she posed beneath some cliffs
He's one of Australia's most revered and successful actors, with memorable roles in Chopper, Star Trek, and Steven Spielberg's Munich.

But despite a glittering career, Eric Bana says that fatherhood is 'the best job' he has.

'Its the best job, the most rewarding job,' the handsome father-of-two told Daily Telegraph this week.

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'Its the best job, the most rewarding job:' Eric Bana told Daily Telegraph that fatherhood is his favourite job

The 47-year-old added: 'Its worth every bit of energy you put into it. Its the best thing.'

The Australian superstar also says that his main goal in Hollywood is to 'stay employed' and have a 'long career'.

Eric married his wife, publicist Rebecca Bana (nee Gleeson), in 1997.

Happily married: The 47-year-old hunk married wife Rebecca Bana (nee Gleeson) in 1997

Perfect family: Eric and Rebecca have two children together; a son Klaus, and a daughter, Sophia (above)

The happy couple have two children together; a son Klaus, and a daughter, Sophia.

Last month, the funnyman revealed his secret to never falling into the trap of forming a large ego.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, the talented actor admitted that his friends, who are based in his hometown of Melbourne, have kept him grounded over the years.

Grounded: Bana revealed his secret to never falling into the trap of forming a large Hollywood ego

'It [ego] wouldn't be allowed to fester to the point of needing to be smacked out,' he explained to the publication.

The Troy actor laughed: 'It's like being sprayed with weed killer every day'.

The hunky heartthrob also showed off his witty sense of humour during an interview with Channel Seven's Sunrise last month.

Close: The 47-year-old admitted his friends, who are from his hometown of Melbourne, have kept him grounded over the years saying they wouldn't allow any sort of ego to 'fester to the point of needing to be smacked out'

Down to earth: The Troy actor laughed his reality checks are 'like being sprayed with weed killer every day'

While sitting on the lounge alongside Samantha Armytage, Natalie Barr and Edwina Bartholomew, Eric joked about feeling out numbered by the female reporters.

'No, I am feeling grossly out numbered this morning,' he said after Samantha asked if he had ever been interviewed by three women before.

During the chat with the breakfast program he spoke highly about Hollywood success Ricky Gervais, who he stars alongside in his upcoming Netflix Original film, Special Correspondents.

'It [filming] was the greatest two months of my life. It never felt like he [Ricky] was my boss. I would go to work everyday and just laugh all day long,' he explained.

'He is nothing but fun. He is a great director.

Wit and delight: On Wednesday the hunky heartthrob showed off his witty sense of humour during an interview with Channel Seven's Sunrise

Outnumbered! While sitting on the lounge alongside (L-R) Natalie Barr, Samantha Armytage and Edwina Bartholomew, Eric joked about feeling out numbered by the female reporters

'I was surprised he even knew who I was. When I got the call I was like "does he know who I am? Like seriously why am I getting the script?".'

Their new film, Special Correspondents, which has been written and directed by Ricky, is now streaming on Netflix.

The film follows two radio journalists, played by Eric and Ricky, who are sent to Ecuador on a job, only to lose their passports and money and find themselves stuck in New York.

They get creative and decide to fake their reports from above a Spanish restaurant instead.
Genres : Western, Drama

Starring : Richard Harris, Gale Sondergaard, Geoffrey Lewis

Director : Irvin Kershner

Plot Synopsis

Richard Harris reprises his role as John Morgan, known as Horse, in the Irvin Kershner (Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back) directed sequel to A Man Called Horse. Morgan returns to help the Yellow Hands Sioux tribe when they are forced off their sacred ground by government backed trappers. John must devise a plan to regain a stronghold in order to return power to the disconsolate Yellow Hand by taking action against those who have enslaved and murdered members of the tribe. Joining Harris on screen are Gale Sondergaard (Anthony Adverse), Geoffrey Lewis (Bronco Billy) and William Lucking (Erin Brockovich). The Return of a Man Called Horse, photographed by five-time Academy Award nominee for Best Cinematographer Owen Roizman (The French Connection, The Exorcist) features a score by two-time Academy Award nominee Laurence Rosenthal (Becket, Man of La Mancha).
With a fitness entrepreneur for a boyfriend, she's no stranger to keeping in shape.

So it was no surprise to see that Anna Heinrich's body was in perfect shape as she posted a photo of herself emerging from a luxurious pool on Sunday.

The 29-year-old is currently on an Italian getaway with beau Tim Robards.

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Picture perfect! Anna Heinrich flashed her flawless frame while emerging from the pool on Sunday

In the image shared to Instagram, which was taken in the Italian town of Sorrento, Heinrich is seen dripping wet as she emerges from the cool water.

She's wearing a low-cut blue bikini from Australian designer SUBOO, which leaves very little to the imagination.

The stunning lawyer has been sharing countless images of her Italian vacation to social media since jetting off last week.

The couple that vacations together, stays together! Anna and boyfriend Tim Robards have been holidaying in Italy together for the past few days

On Friday, she relaxed on a sun lounger at the her idyllic hotel while lover Tim 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.

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'.

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

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 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.
It's safe to say she isn't one to suffer with body hang-ups.

And Kimberley Garner didn't hesitate to show some skin when she graced the Moet Now Or Neverland Party in London on Saturday evening.

The 26-year-old swimwear model made sure to put her lithe legs on full display in a very skimpy black mini dress as she rubbed shoulders with a host of beautiful faces inside the bash.

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Leggy display: It's safe to say she isn't one to suffer with body hang-ups and Kimberley Garner didn't hesitate to show some skin when she graced the Moet Now Or Neverland Party in London on Saturday evening

The former Made in Chelsea star dressed to impress in the tiny number which was fittingly glitzy for the soiree with its ornate sequinned detailing.

The hem of the dress, which comprised of a lace scalloped fabric, made sure to showcase the entire length of Kimberley's envy-inducing pins as it skimmed the tops of her bronzed thighs.

The statuesque beauty chose to elongate her legs further with stylish lace-up stilettos that were emblazoned with gold studded detailing.

Pulling out the stops: The 26-year-old swimwear model made sure to put her lithe legs on full display in a very skimpy black mini dress as she rubbed shoulders with a host of beautiful faces inside the bash

Giving the look some added glamour, Kimberley accentuated her svelte waist with a statement belt that was emblazoned with a chain motif.

She left her glossy blonde locks to cascade in choppy waves around her gorgeous face, which modelled a neutral make-up palette for the occasion.

The event celebrated the first champagne spray moment nearly 50 years ago by Dan Gurney at The Le Mans Race in 1967.

Looking good! The former Made in Chelsea star dressed to impress in the tiny number which was fittingly glitzy for the soiree with its ornate sequinned detailing

Sultry: The hem of the dress, which comprised of a lace scalloped fabric, made sure to showcase the entire length of Kimberley's envy-inducing pins as it skimmed the tops of her bronzed thighs

Best foot forward: The statuesque beauty chose to elongate her legs further with stylish lace-up stilettos that were emblazoned with gold studded detailing

The bash attracted a flurry of stars, including American actor Samuel L Jackson, British reality star Millie Mackintosh and models Johannes Heub, Oliver Cheshire and Toby Huntington-Whiteley.

Celebrity DJs Raleigh Ritchie, Becky Tong and Blonde Ambition were on the decks while guests celebrated the moment in style, sipping on the iconic Moet Imperial Brut and Rose and enjoying the newly released Moet Ice Rose on the rocks.

Meanwhile, Kimberley, who rocketed to fame following her stint in series 3 of Made in Chelsea, recently told OK! Online that she would never return to the E4 reality show, admitting she felt 'like a caged animal' while filming it.

Dainty: Giving the look some added glamour, Kimberley accentuated her svelte waist with a statement belt that was emblazoned with a chain motif

'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.'

The beauty, who caught the eye of Spencer Matthews and Richard Dinan during her time in the reality series, also admitted she was unhappy with the way she was edited in the show and accused producers of persuading her to say certain things.

Stunning: Kimberley left her glossy blonde locks to cascade in choppy waves around her gorgeous face, which modelled a neutral make-up palette for the occasion
Don Cheadle has hit out at the 'bias' against black actors in Hollywood after revealing that he struggled to get executives on board with his Miles Davis biopic.

The actor, who starred in the Iron Man films and Hotel Rwanda, weighed in on the 'Oscars so White' diversity row that rocked the film industry this year.

He told the Daily Telegraph that the inherent discrimination starts with the studio executives, or 'gatekeepers'.

'Everyone wanted to be the second person to say yes': Don Cheadle says getting the green light for his directorial debut on Miles Davis biopic was a struggle

'It starts way before the Oscars. It starts with the gatekeepers [studio heads],' he said.

'But I don't think there are people sitting behind doors twirling their moustaches going, 'Let's keep the Asians and Mexicans and blacks out.'

'I don't think that's happening. But there is bias.'

'I had to make this': But the decision to persevere was made partially due to the fact that if he didn't make the film, he would regret it for the rest of his life

Don made his feelings known when the issue came to a head leading up to the Oscars this year.

He tweeted to the host, Chris Rock, saying: 'Yo, Chris. Come check me out at #TheOscars this year. They got me parking cars on G level.'

The Oscar-nominated actor said he also discussed the prejudice within Hollywood with Carl Franklin, who directed him in Devil In A Blue Dress.

Co-stars: The film features powerful performances from Ewan McGregor as Rolling Stone writer Dave Brill

'He said, 'Don, if I was green-lighting movies, a lot of them would look like me,' he told the Daily Telegraph.

'A lot of movies are about fantasies. And in my fantasies, I'm slaying the dragons and kissing the girl! If there are winners, they will look like me.'

Don recently made his directorial debut with new film drama, Miles Ahead, which looks at the tumultuous life of iconic trumpeter Miles Davis.

Legendary: Don spent 10 years working on the project that told the story of legendary jszz musician Miles Davis (pictured)

He has revealed that it took almost 10 years to get the cameras rolling and he had to resort to crowdfunding part of the project.

'Everyone wanted to be the second person to say yes,' he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

'That whole dance was exhausting and I would have at some point been relieved if it had gone away.'

The 51-year-old spoke about how he had to add a part, which was played by Ewan McGregor, because it was a 'financial imperative' to have a white actor on board.

He told the Daily Telegraph that he found the process of shooting his own feature film, which he starred in as Miles, 'incredibly gruelling'.

Don recalled a time when his wife came to visit him and said 'You can't do this any more'.

Miles Ahead opens in Australia on limited release on June 16.
He's barely raised a smile since splitting from girlfriend Taylor Swift at the start of the month.

And Calvin Harris looked glum once again as he got set to sweat it out in the gym in Los Angeles.

The 32-year-old DJ was low-key in trackies as he headed for his workout on Saturday.

Downcast: Calvin Harris looked glum once again as he got set to sweat it out in the gym in Los Angeles

He hadn't exactly dressed to impress - teaming a blue hooded sweatshirt with baggy grey sweatpants.

Neon Nikes on his feet looked well worn - and the star made it clear he was taking his regime seriously - carrying a protein shake.

His honey hair style was chopped and he had allowed his facial hair to be a little more unkempt than usual.

Not cheery: The 32-year-old DJ didn't so much as raise a smile as he headed for a work out on Saturday

It was recently claimed Scottish star Calvin, 32, had ended things with Taylor, 26, because he 'struggled' with her 'regimented' life.

'Taylor is an empire in her own right and, as such, her life is very controlled,' a source told Grazia magazine.

'At the end of the day, Calvin is still a smalltown boy from Dumfries and I think he struggled with living in such regimented conditions where his every move was speculated on.'

Casual: He hadn't exactly dressed to impress - teaming a blue hooded sweatshirt with baggy grey sweatpants

Missing Tay Tay? His honey hair style was chopped and he had allowed his facial hair to be a little more unkempt than usual

And Calvin - whose real name is Adam Wiles - cancelled a number of gigs last month after being involved in a car accident - was said to feel increasingly 'suffocated' by Taylor's attention, while she often felt 'pushed away' by him.

A source said: 'There were a few times when Taylor wanted Calvin's support and he bailed but she would dismiss her doubts and tell herself it was because he was always so career-focused.

'Then, after his crash, she dropped everything to be with him and was ready to prove her commitment.

'Sadly, the closer she tried to get to Calvin, the more she felt he pushed away. Despite having been together for 15 months, they'd both been crazy busy during that time and spent long periods apart.'

Adorable couple: Calvin - whose real name is Adam Wiles - cancelled a number of gigs last month after being involved in a car accident - was said to feel increasingly 'suffocated' by Taylor's attention, while she often felt 'pushed away' by him (pictured June 2015)

Taylor has been remarkably quiet on social media since the split.

The last time she took to Twitter was to re-tweet Calvin's message of June 2, which read: 'The only truth here is that a relationship came to an end & what remains is a huge amount of love and respect.'

She has been throwing herself into her workout routine and staying on the East Coast since the break-up, and delighted fans by gate-crashing a wedding to perform Blank Space for their first dance.
The genetically-gifted supermodel seems to have barely aged since her modeling debut in the 1980s.

Christy Turlington looked ever the ageless beauty as she was went make-up free in New York City on Saturday.

The 47-year-old stunner opted for a street chic vibe in white distressed jeans and a loose-fitting pink tee.

Forever young! Christy Turlington looked ever the ageless beauty in New York City on Saturday

The statuesque beauty wore the denims which bared a hole in one knee, revealing a bit of skin beneath.

Her v-neck top was a soft shade of blush and added to the youthful appearance of her casual ensemble.

She carried a brown leather designer handbag and stepped out in strappy beige gladiator sandals.

Natural beauty! The supermodel went make-up free, highlighting her youthful appearance and flawless complexion

Laid back look: The 47-year-old stunner opted for a street chic vibe in white distressed jeans and a loose-fitting pink tee

The mother-of-two shielded her green eyes from the sun behind a pair of oversize dark sunglasses.

Rounding out her look was simple dangling earrings, a gold ring, and her huge diamond engagement ring and wedding band.

Turlington has been married to actor Ed Burns, 48, for 13 years and the couple have two children - Grace,12, and Finn, 10.

Details: Turlington carried a brown leather designer handbag and stepped out in strappy beige gladiator sandals

'I dont want to look younger than I am': Christy told ELLE magazine, although it would seem the 5ft 10in model would relish in her timeless allure

Although it would seem the 5ft 10in model would relish in her timeless allure, Christy told ELLE magazine 'everyone is so anti-aging, but I dont want to look younger than I am.'

Our face is a map of our life; the more thats there, the better.

She added: Ive always loved those portraits that Alfred Stieglitz did of Georgia OKeeffe over several years, which really convey the idea that theres not one image that can capture a woman, because were changing all the time.'
She's back to mommy duty after a late night at the Moschino fashion show.

Alessandra Ambrosio was spotted with her long-time partner Jamie Mazur and their two gorgeous children enjoying their afternoon at a LA restaurant on Saturday.

The 35-year-old looked beautiful on the family outing despite what little rest she may have gotten the evening before.

Mommy duty! Alessandra Ambrosio enjoyed an afternoon out with her family on Saturday in LA

Alessandra opted for a casual yet stylish ensemble, dressed down in a pale tie-dyed T-shirt which was layered under a long cream sweater.

She paired the relaxed look with dark denim cropped pants and light-colored flats.

The brunette bombshell wore her hair straight and accessorized with a dainty silver necklace.

Always beautiful! The 35-year-old looked stunning despite what little rest she may have gotten the evening before after the Moschino fashion show on Friday night

Long night: The evening before, the Brazilian beauty rocked the runway for Moschino's 2017 collection, and afterwards partied at The Nice Guy with fellow Victoria's Secret models

Alessandra showed off her natural beauty with minimal make-up and just covered up with a pair of retro sunglasses.

As they left the Italian diner, the model carried her car key in one hand as she chased after her four-year-old son, Noah.

The blonde cutie wore a black and red T-shirt and a pair of navy distressed skinny sweatpants.

Family time: The model dressed down in a pale tie-dyed T-shirt which was layered under a long cream sweater. The relaxed look included dark denim, flats, minimal make-up, and retro sunglasses

Beautiful family: As they left the Italian diner, the model carried her car key in one hand as she chased after her four-year-old son, Noah who wore a black and red T-shirt and a pair of navy distressed skinny sweatpants

Mommy's mini-me! Alessandra's seven-year-old daughter, Anja, is clearly picking up fashion tips from her stylish mom as she wore a cropped sweater, denim shorts and tan leather boots and carried a denim jacket

Noah donned black Nike's and looked happy as he held on to a small red toy.

Meanwhile, Alessandra's seven-year-old girl, Anja, is clearly picking up on fashion tips from her stylish mom.

Her look-alike daughter donned a cropped sweater which featured a navy star on it and showed off her bare tummy.

Anja sported thigh-high cuffed denim shorts and tan leather buckled booties and held on to a cell phone, her jean jacket, and a container of cookies as she headed after her dad.

Long-time love: The model's partner Jamie Mazur was dressed casually in a white T-shirt and a dark pair of denim jeans which he teamed with brown boots

Alessandra's long-time love looked casual on the outing with his beautiful family.

Jamie wore a white T-shirt and a dark pair of denim jeans which he teamed with brown boots.

As Alessandra's scruffy-faced hunk headed to the car he held on to a tiny blue sweatshirt, which presumably belonged to his son.

Earlier in the day, the couple had kept to their workout regime, heading to yoga class together.

Working out: Alessandra and Jamie stuck to their fitness schedule earlier in the day by heading to a yoga class together
The teenage business woman isn't shy about flaunting what she's got.

And on Saturday, Kylie Jenner took to Instagram to show off her cute Dachshund puppy Ernie along with her exposed bum which looked pert in a pair of ripped jean shorts.

The 18-year-old reality star's derriere and her furry companion appeared to be posing outside of her $6 million mansion in Hidden Hills, California.

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Flaunting what she's got! Kylie Jenner showed off her cute Dachshund puppy Ernie along with her exposed bum which looked pert in a pair of ripped jean shorts on Instagram on Saturday

In the shot, Kylie dressed more casual than usual, nixing the designer duds in favor of a grey T-shirt and a pair of distressed denim cut-offs.

Clearly, the brunette beauty opted for no underwear with the relaxed look as her shorts flashed a lot of skin where her skivvies would have been.

The one-word caption that went along with the skin-bearing social media post read, 'Ernie.'

Kylie's main accessory of course was her dark-haired doggy, but she also topped the look off with a rose gold watch.

See more Kylie Jenner updates as she flashes her derriere in denim cut-offs with puppy

Racy shots: She took to Instagram on Friday sharing behind the scenes Polaroids from her photo shoot for her new lip color. In the bondage-inspired shoot, an assistant supports the brunette bombshell in buckling a number of leather corsets across her taut mid-section

While Ernie was in view along with most of Kylie's side profile, she cropped her head out.

Despite the vantage point one could see that the E! star's raven colored tresses were styled straight and cascaded well past her shoulders.

This comes just after Kylie posted a collage of racy photos to promote her new lip color in her cosmetic line.

Teen businesswoman: Kylie is currently promoting her new jet black lip color Dead Of Knight

She took to Instagram on Friday sharing behind the scenes Polaroids from her photo shoot for the jet black lip color.

In the bondage-inspired shoot, an assistant supports the brunette bombshell in buckling a number of leather corsets across her taut mid-section.

Another sneak peek features Kylie in a diamond choker, white body suit and figure-hugging hot pants as she turns her pert posterior to the camera.

She also posted a stunning photo of herself on Tuesday where she was modeling a goth look.

'This shade is for you guys,' wrote the teen businesswoman on Instagram. 'When I asked what lip kit you would love to see next for Kylie Cosmetics the majority of you surprisingly said BLACK!

Taking to her blog, thekylierjenner.com, she wrote: 'I love the styling (thanks, Monica Rose!) and the overall vibe of the shoot. Sexy, but also a little darkjust like Dead of Knight!'
She earned her sex symbol status after rocking her prison jumpsuit in hit drama Orange Is The New Black.

And it seemed as though Ruby Rose was trying to revive her Litchfield Prison look when she donned a dark blue boiler suit for dinner in Hollywood with a stunning brunette.

The Australian actress was seen grinning as she arrived by Lyft at Japanese restaurant Katsuya on Saturday alongside the woman.

Edgy look: Ruby Rose seemed to be trying to replicate her Orange Is the New Black uniform when she donned a dark blue boiler suit for dinner in Hollywood with a stunning brunette on Saturday

Ruby covered up her slender frame in a dramatic long jacket with a zip up the front and matching trousers which gathered above her black patent boots.

A black shirt was just visit underneath the boiler suit jacket and the 30-year-old kept her hands inside the deep pockets.

With her cropped raven locks styled over one side, Ruby once again displayed the edgy, androgynous style she is known for.

Jailbird chic: Ruby covered up her slender frame in a dramatic long jacket with a zip up the front and matching trousers which gathered above her black patent boots

Making an entrance: The Australian actress was seen grinning as she arrived at Japanese restaurant Katsuya on Saturday alongside the woman

Her friend looked effortlessly stylish in an off the shoulder striped crop-top and choker necklace.

She paired this with loose-fitting high waisted trousers and a statement belt with silver buckles.

The brunette wore lace-up black boots and an embellished hand-bag with black tassels thrown over one shoulder.

Ruby's career in the spotlight continues to go from strength to strength.

The model and TV personality joined the cast of Orange Is The New Black to play sassy Litchfield inmate Stella Carlin in season three.

Androgynous look: A black shirt was just visit underneath the boiler suit jacket and the 30-year-old kept her hands inside the deep pockets

Effortlessly stylish: Her friend donned an off the shoulder striped crop-top and choker necklace

After garnering a legion of fans from the American comedy-drama, Ruby has managed to secure various modelling gigs and roles in new movies.

She has recently been busy filming John Wick: Chapter Two and xXx: The Return of Xander Cage and also wrapped up filming for Resident Evil: The Final Chapter.

Ruby announced her split from long-term partner Phoebe Dahl in December last year.
She attended the 15th Annual Chrysalis Butterfly Ball on Saturday evening.

So Selma Blair opted for a colourful ruffled gown to resemble wings of the fluttering creature.

The 43-year-old actress looked stunning as she made her grand entrance at the star-studded affair in Brentwood, California.

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Showstopper! Selma Blair, 43, attended the 15th Annual Chrysalis Butterfly Ball on Saturday evening

The Cruel Intention star's form-fitting black frock showcased her svelte physique and slender waist while she posed for photographers.

As the award-winning actress turned around to give the crowd a glimpse of the long train, it included shades of gold, black and plum.

It's geometric pattern and striped design only further highlighted Selma's petite frame and flawless figure.

Butterfly beauty! The Cruel Intentions star donned a colourful ruffled gown to resemble wings of the fluttering creature

Dazzling! The long flowing train included brilliant shades of shimmering gold, black and plum

She added a pair of sexy, black pointed stilettos and opted for a dramatic smokey black eye with nude glossy lip.

The mother-of-one styled her silky raven tresses in soft relaxed waves with blunt side swept bangs.

The Chrysalis Butterfly Ball is an evening in honor of leaders in film, television, and music, according to their site.

Flawless physique! Selma's form-fitting black frock showcased her svelte figure and slender waistline

Luscious locks! The mother-of-one styled her silky raven tresses in soft relaxed waves with blunt side swept bangs

Selma rose to fame after starring in the 1999 teen drama Cruel Intentions - also featuring Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe - after she portrayed the privileged Cecile Caldwell.

Earlier this year, it was revealed NBC are in development of a TV spin-off series which could subsequently result in the teenage romance making it into production.

Despite sequels to the film being both critical and commercial flops, TV bosses have given the go-ahead for a pilot to be made of the series - which is set 15 years after events in the film.
She made a glamorous arrival into Sydney looking remarkably fresh faced after a long-haul flight.

But it seems Charlotte Crosby is struggling to adjust to the Australian timezone, following a busy evening of clubbing.

Taking to Instagram, the 26-year-old shared a selfie looking tired and simply writing 'JET LAG' for the caption.

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'Jetlag': It seems Charlotte Crosby is struggling to adjust to the Australian timezone, following a busy evening of clubbing, sharing a selfie looking tired and simply writing 'JET LAG' to Instagram

Charlotte's blonde tresses are flipped messily over her face as she pulls a pout and looks away from the camera.

The former reality star made a stylish arrival into Sydney on Saturday and wasted no time in heading straight out to enjoy the city's nightlife.

Sharing a photo of herself stepping out and putting on a very leggy display in a stylish thigh-skimming dress Charlotte wrote: '26 hours of travelling and going straight out to hit the clubs of SYDNEY.... DURRRRRRRRRRR.'

No rest: The former reality star made a stylish arrival into Sydney on Saturday and wasted no time in heading straight out to enjoy the city's nightlife

The starlet has recently revealed her regret at leaving Geordie Shore, although any troubles she had seemed a distance memory, with Charlotte looking happy and smiling as she walked through the airport.

With freshly blow dried locks, Charlotte appeared cheery as she posed for photos with fans who were on hand to greet her.

The blonde beauty also flaunted her svelte frame in a well-fitting grey knit jumpsuit, cinched in at the waist, making for both a comfortable and trendy travel ensemble.

Charlotte will spend time in both Sydney and Melbourne during her quick trip to Australia, but most of the details of her trip have been kept under wraps.

'26 hours of travelling and going straight out to hit the clubs of SYDNEY.... DURRRRRRRRRRR,' she wrote as she shar a photo of herself stepping out and putting on a very leggy display in a stylish thigh-skimming dress

Quick trip: The starlet has recently revealed her regret at leaving Geordie Shore, although any troubles she had seemed a distance memory, with Charlotte looking happy and smiling as she walked through the airport

Her management told Daily Mail Australia she would be launching a fashion campaign for a well-known Australian brand.

It's been a tumultuous month for Charlotte, who recently broke up with on-again-off-again boyfriend Gary Beale.

Since their break up she emotionally quit Geordie Shore and took to social media to confirm it with her fans.

News of her Australian tour comes after she revealed she has suffered an ectopic pregnancy after falling pregnant with Gary's child.

All smiles: With freshly blow dried locks, Charlotte appeared cheery as she posed for photos with fans who were on hand to greet her
The late-life adolescence film is practically a genre unto itself these days. Find an aging male or female actress, preferably someone who won an oscar decades ago, put them in a film where they have to associate with someone who is generations younger than them, and watch what happens. Sometimes these movies are comedies as with Robert De Niro's round in 'The Intern.' Others fall more in line of dramatic thrillers as with Judi Dench's creepy portrayal of Barbara in 2009's 'Notes on a Scandal.' One film is a comedy, the other a thriller, but the formula is the same relatively speaking. Michael Showalter's 2015 drama/comedy 'Hello, My Name is Doris' doesn't stray far from the formula but an impressive performance from Sally Field keeps the film from sinking into becoming a predictable cliche.

Doris (Sally Field) has lived a very sheltered life with the predictable routine of going to work, coming home each day, and caring for her dementia-riddled mother. She lived like this for the better part of 40 years while her brother Todd (Stephen Root) was able to start a business, have a family, and live his own life. Doris isn't without her own set of friends, she has Roz (Tyne Daly) who keeps Doris active by going to self-help seminars for the free food. Now that her mother has passed away, she's suddenly free to live her own life. During a chance encounter in an elevator on her way to work, Doris meets the new guy at the office, the handsome and much younger John (Max Greenfield). Because of their precarious position in the elevator, John happens to be the first person to really take notice of Doris.

Because of this chance encounter, Doris develops a school-girl crush on this young man. With the help of Roz's daughter, Doris starts cyber stalking him. Learning about his favorite movies, what music he likes, and starts to reshape her life to hopefully become more attractive to John. As Doris starts to integrate herself into John's life, her family and friends start to worry about her. What started out as an innocent infatuation becomes serious when Doris purposefully ruins John's relationship with his girlfriend Brooklyn (Beth Behrs). As Doris takes stock of her life and realizes how she's always wanted to live, it may be too late to pick up the pieces of her shattered life, make peace with John, and live the life of adventure and excitement she's always wanted to have.

Loading up this Blu-ray release of 'Hello, My Name Is Dorris,' I was greeted with trailers for 'Grandma' starring Lily Tomlin as well as a trailer for 'The Meddler' starring Susan Sarandon. I mention these trailers because to some degree, they're virtually the same story as was featured in 'Hello, My Name Is Doris' and star extremely talented aging actresses rediscovering their youth and vitality through the younger people in their lives. While there are subtle plot differences, the stories are essentially the same. It's difficult not to become a little jaded when faced with a movie like 'Hello, My Name Is Doris.' Is this type of film the only material open to extremely talented actresses over 60 these days? While 'Hello, My Name Is Doris' and 'Grandma' are wonderful films (I haven't seen 'The Meddler' yet), it's an unfortunate pattern to notice when these are women who should be featured in more weighty and important roles than these.

With that little bit of soapboxing out of the way, I will now go on to say that 'Hello, My Name Is Doris' is a sweet-natured and wonderful dramatic comedy. As with most films featuring the actress, Sally Field steals the show in every scene she's in. Her Doris is earnest, sweet, and most importantly relatable because who out there can honestly say they've never had a crush sweep up every emotion and motivate you to do some pretty questionable things? Love, even if it's the perception of love and not the real thing, is a powerful feeling and clouds better judgment. It can also inspire you to take charge of your life and make some real changes for the better. That's the incredibly awkward and humorous journey Sally Field's Doris goes on with this film. Sure, she may be in her 60s, but even if you're 16 it's easy to empathize with her character.

Director and co-writer Michael Showalter and co-writer Laura Terruso do a fantastic job of keeping Doris relatable and making John played by Max Greenfield an easily likable and also slightly awkward character. Sure, there is an age difference but if there had been a different aligning of fates, it's very easy to see how the two could have possibly met and fallen for each other. Where 'Hello, My Name Is Doris' gets things right with this material is that it fully explores the ideas surrounding friendship without romance. It's an easily relatable story in that context. When friends are that close it's natural for there to be a curiosity about romantic possibilities. Whether or not that romance can flourish is another question altogether and 'Hello, My Name Is Doris' wisely sidesteps any definitive statement on that issue. It's too complicated to be reduced to platitudes and this film is richer for not pretending it has all the answers.

As wonderful as 'Hello, My Name Is Doris' is, it isn't without its faults. As Doris and John's characters are fully fleshed out, Todd played by Stephen Root, his wife Cynthia played by Wendi McLendon-Covey, and her psychiatrist played by Elizabeth Reaser feel tacked on to the proceedings. They come and go at strange times throughout the film and really don't play too important of roles considering the presence of Tyne Daly's character of Roz was already established as an anchor point for Doris. Roz is the one with the most to lose from Doris' character changes and that strain on their friendship could have been explored more effectively.

At the end of the day, 'Hello, My Name Is Doris' is a perfectly wonderful and entertaining film. Even though she never needed to, Sally Field proves yet again she's a formidable talent and a cinematic resource that shouldn't be squandered by bit parts in bad super hero movies. The story may be a bit familiar and predictable, but that doesn't mean it's a film that should be avoided. It has a tender and honest heart that feels lacking in a number of modern films released these days.

The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

'Hello, My Name Is Doris' arrives on Blu-ray thanks to Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Pressed onto a Region Free BD50 disc, the disc comes housed in a standard Blu-ray case. The disc opens with trailers for upcoming Sony releases become arriving to a static image main menu featuring traditional navigation options.
She's stuck up for the rights of working mothers against her own producer live on air.

And on Friday night Jackie O Henderson took her husband and young daughter to the Vivid light show in Sydney and brought home a bunch of glowing souvenirs.

The co-host of the Kyle & Jackie O show on KISS 106.5 uploaded a selfie of the family decked out in the florescent knick-knacks.

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Fun with lights: Jackie O Henderson took her husband and young daughter to the Vivid light show in Sydney and brought home a bunch of glowing souvenirs to remember it

'Go hard or go home I say!!' she wrote on Instagram next to it.

The photo shows Jackie poking her tongue out at the camera wearing a glowing pink Mini Mouse-style bow, giving her blonde locks a decidedly pink hue in the low light.

Her husband Lee Henderson looked suave with his stubbly beard contrasting with a pair of light blue shades as he leaned in to fit in the frame.

Their five-year-old daughter Kitty looked cute standing between her parents, grasping one of the many spinning glow-in-the-dark toys for sale at the festival.

'We all loved it': Jackie told her curious followers about her plan of attack for attending the often horrifically crowded event, and advising that it was 'definitely worth going'

Jackie told her curious followers about her plan of attack for attending the often horrifically crowded event, and advising that it was 'definitely worth going'.

'We went around 5pm and got a park in Argyle St at Rocks and had a quick bite to eat, then stayed on the [Museum of Contemporary Arts] side and just mainly watched the Opera House,' she said.

The 41-year-old reassured a worried follower, who was concerned souvenirs would cost as much as $400, that Vivid was an inexpensive family night out.

'We all loved it. You don't need to spend so much on souvenirs - ours cost $40 for all three of us. Cheap street food isn't very costly either,' she said.

Her family outing comes just days after she on Thursday sparked a heated debate on social media after a segment about whether or not working mothers should be paid less.

Unpopular opinion: The Kyle and Jackie O Show sparked a heated debate on social media on Thursday morning after airing a segment about whether or not working mothers should be paid less

Not impressed: She entered into the debate with the show's controversial creative content manager, Bruno Bouchet, with Jackie, a mother-of-one herself, shutting down the idea completely

She entered into the debate with the show's controversial creative content manager, Bruno Bouchet, with Jackie, a mother-of-one herself, shutting down the idea completely.

In a snip of the segment shared by the show on Twitter, Jackie was heard criticising Bruno for his 'outdated opinion.'

'Your views are quite sexist and you only ever notice when its the woman that needs to take the time off. Men need to take time off too,' Jackie, who was recently named the most successful female on radio,' said.

'And its very outdated your views because these days we are sharing responsibilities... its the men and the women that are sharing - whether we have to pick up the kid from daycare or if theyre sick.'

Bruno fired back at Jackie and said he was a 'feminist.'

'I'm a feminist': 'You guys shouldnt get the same amount of money because you are not putting in the same amount of effort,' Bruno (left) said

Not impressed: 'Ive got to pick up the slack for you, I've got to pick up the slack for Krystal (a show producer)... why? Because you guys are putting your kids first and I'm sick of it,' Bruno (left) said

'Thats absolute crap, do you want to hear about sharing responsibility?' He questioned.

'Responsibility is everyone doing the same amount of work. Ive got to pick up the slack for you, I've got to pick up the slack for Krystal (a show producer)... why? Because you guys are putting your kids first and I'm sick of it.

'You guys shouldnt get the same amount of money because you are not putting in the same amount of effort. Effort should be based on how much you do for the company.'

'Can someone please explain to Bruno what a feminist is?' Hundreds took to social media to comment on the segment, with 94 per cent of their listeners agreeing with Jackie

Proud mother: Jackie is a mother to five-year-old Kitty (left)

At the end of the clip Jackie questioned why Bruno failed to reply to emails after 8pm, when show producer Krystal always did.

Hundreds took to social media to comment on the segment, with 94 per cent of their listeners agreeing with Jackie.

'It's well known that working Mum's are more efficient. They have to fit more in their day bc they can't stay. Shut up Bruno [sic]!' One Twitter user wrote.

#FireBruno: 'What about the single dads?? Should they be getting less too Bruno??' One questioned

'Backing Jackie all the way! Working mums work the hardest. There is always a DH like Bruno who they have to prove it to [sic]!' Another wrote.

'What about the single dads?? Should they be getting less too Bruno??' One questioned.
She carved out her iconic supermodel status with her fierce strut and confident demeanour .

So it was only fitting that Naomi Campbell's expertise were sought after as she attended The Other Festival for their panel discussions in New York on Saturday.

The 46-year-old beauty radiated warmth as she sat in a high-chair in a chic printed top, as she spoke confidently in to the audience.

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Model expert: Naomi Campbell, 46, attended The Other Festival for their panel discussions in New York on Saturday

Even though she flaunted her style credentials, she ensured her comfort in a pair of sophisticated navy cropped trousers.

Sprucing up the look, she wore a pair of bright red trainers which allowed her to take a break from her years of catwalk duties.

Her stunning raven tresses were poker straight and fell down to her navel while also framing her face, which sported a healthy dose of blusher.

Talking about her experience: The supermodel radiated warmth as she sat in a high-chair donning a chic printed top, as she spoke confidently in to the audience

Beauty icon: Her stunning raven tresses were poker straight and fell down to her navel

Knowing what works: Even though she flaunted her style credentials, she ensured her comfort in a pair of sophisticated navy cropped trousers

Impressive women: Joining her on the panel were two other impressive women, including the festival's founder Dee Poku (Centre) and editor-in-chief of Marie Claire Anne Fulenwider (L)

Having a good ol' time: She also sported a healthy dose of blusher and glossy lips which complimented her big smile

A stunning sliver beaded necklace rested on her collarbone, adding to her effortless nature.

The Streatham-raised beauty looked right in her element as she spoke eloquently, while utilising a series of animated hand movements to prove her point.

Obviously enjoying herself, she barely forewent a dazzling smile which bode well with the all-female outreach of the festival.

Talking the talk: She utilised a series of animated hand movements to prove her point

Relaxing: She wore a pair of bright red trainers which allowed her to take a break from her years of catwalk duties

Details: A stunning sliver beaded necklace rested on her collarbone, adding to her effortless nature

Joining her on the panel were two other impressive women, including the festival's founder Dee Poku and editor-in-chief of Marie Claire Anne Fulenwider.

Naomi is currently reaping the benefits of her hard work and was honoured for more than two decades of fundraising and promotion of HIV/AIDS awareness at an event in New York held by the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

'Proud to be a part of the fight to end the epidemic,' Campbell said on her Twitter account.

Chic: While leaving she put on a chic white coat which pulled the look together

Girl power: She looked like she had a blast at the festival which is New York's first all-female festival

New pals: The event was a huge success and Noami couldn't hide her smile as she posed with the founder

'I'm excited about being with friends and people that I've known for 23 years,' she revealed at the function, where she received an Inspiration Award. 'And just making awareness of something that still needs to be a focal point of everyone's attention.'

Naomi also celebrated her 46th birthday last week and when asked by Allure how she maintains her youthful looks, she revealed: I cleanse my skin every day and take off makeup with almond oil... I try to do a scrub at least twice a week.

'I don't wear make-up if I don't have to. Your skin has to breathe.'

Meanwhile, also appearing at the festival was actress Rosario Dawson.
Fans were left wondering if Kendall Jenner was experimenting with a wig after she appeared to have shorter hair in a Snapchat video on Friday.

However, the model proved she did indeed go for the chop as she showed off her new hairdo at a fashion show in Los Angeles on Saturday night.

The reality star-turned-clotheshorse, 20, chose Tyler The Creator's fashion show for Made LA to debut her new look after years of sporting longer locks.

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All change: Kendall Jenner shows off her new shorter hairdo as she joins brother-in-law Kanye West at Tyler, the Creator's fashion show for Made LA at L.A. Live on Saturday

The long and short of it: The model appears to have chopped off 10 inches or so from her hair

The Keeping Up With The Kardashian star highlighted her shorter 'do by opting for a yellow dress as she joined her brother-in-law Kanye West in the front row.

The rapper was equally colourful in a peach sweater and jeans as he checked out the designs from his pal Tyler.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, Kendall has been sharing her storage issues at home on her paid website, complaining she didn't have enough room in her $1.39million condo to put all her belongings.

See Kendall Jenner updates as she shows off her new shorter hairdo at fashion show

Family bonding: Kanye and Kendall chat in the front row as they wait for the show to start

Storage drama: Earlier this week, Kendall shared her storage issues on her paid website, complaining she didn't have enough room in her $1.39million condo to put all her belongings

Cheeky! At one point, Kendall flashed her bra as her dress gaped open

She wrote: 'It's hard at my condo because I don't have enough closet space. I also have a rack [of clothes] - it's so messy, I hate it.'

Meanwhile, veteran supermodel Stephanie Seymour had waded into the criticism of Kendall and her fellow model Gigi Hadid.

After Rebecca Romijn complained recently that Kendall and Gigi were 'not true supermodels' because of their social media fame, Stephanie agreed.

Capturing the moment: Kanye was spotted taking photos of the models as they walked down the catwalk in front of him

Standing out: The Keeping Up With The Kardashian star highlighted her shorter do by opting for a yellow dress

She told Vanity Fair magazine: 'They are completely different than we were.

'Supermodels are sort of the thing of the past. They deserve their own title. [Kendall and Gigi] are beautiful girls, and I support all of them, but they need their own title.'

When asked what title she would give them, Stephanie replied: 'B**ches of the moment! That would be a good title for them.'

Under fire: Kendall and her fellow model pal Gigi Hadid came into criticism this week from veteran supermodel Stephanie Seymour
Elise won the first power apron for the week on Sunday night's episode of MasterChef and chose for fellow contestants to only fry in the next cooking challenge.

But her power was short lived after she confused judges with her quail with mango harissa and maple goat's cheese dish and was forced to hand over the power apron to Anastasia.

'I was at the absolute high this morning and now I'm at the absolute low,' Elise said after learning that she was in the bottom three dishes of the day.

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Turbulent: Elise (L) won the first power apron for the week on Sunday night's episode of MasterChef but was forced to give it to Anastasia (R) and now faces elimination after her poor cooking session

Elise will go into the next pressure test with Elena and Zoe who also failed to impress the judges on Sunday night.

It was Anastasia's bold use of flavour and creative flare in her pernod tarragon prawns with fried fennel pesto and Brussels sprouts that nabbed her the coveted apron.

Judge George Calombaris was almost salivating as she placed the dish on the table prompting him to say: 'I go weak at the knees when I look at fennel. And you've made the fennel even better'.

Matt Preston echoed his praise and said: 'You've used frying as an elegant manner of cooking rather than as a chip shop manner of cooking, and I think that's really impressive.'

Dish of the day: It was Anastasia's bold use of flavour and creative flare in her pernod tarragon prawns with fried fennel pesto and brussel sprouts that nabbed her the coveted apron

Sophistication: Judge Matt Preston said 'You've used frying as an elegant manner of cooking rather than as a chip shop manner of cooking, and I think that's really impressive'

When Elise presented the judges with her dish she knew that she was in trouble and said: 'I'm looking at my dish and I don't think there's any element there that's going to save me'.

Gary Mehigan asked her how she had gone with the half an hour advantage to which she honestly replied: 'I don't think I used it very wisely.'

She struggled to get her head around the concept of frying, after spending most of the time in her advantage preparing a stock.

Seeing her own fault: When Elise presented the judges with her dish she knew that she was in trouble and said 'I'm looking at my dish and I don't think there's any element there that's going to save me'

Dramatic: Zoe also struggled in the second cook but for different reasons and was left with minor burns after splashing hot oil on her hand

Zoe also struggled in the second cook but for different reasons and was left with minor burns after splashing hot oil on her hand.

In a panic she wasn't happy with the side of snapper she had fried, and raced to the kitchen to grab another and as she placed the fish into the deep fryer flicked the burning oil up.

Matt saw what happened and asked her if she was okay and she replied: 'I've got 190-degree oil all over my hand. I'm in so much pain. I don't know if I'll finish.'

Burns: In a panic she wasn't happy with the side of snapper she had fried, and raced to the kitchen to grab another and as she placed the fish into the deep fryer flicked the burning oil up

Looming elimination: The last contestant who was sent to a pressure test with Zoe and Elise was Elena after the pancake element of her dish failed to impress

She pushed through and finished the cook but the judges weren't happy wit her out of balance flavours and she was one of the bottom three dishes.

The last contestant who was sent to a pressure test with Zoe and Elise was Elena after the pancake element of her dish failed to impress.

Gary gave his honest feedback and said: 'It's the pancake that puts me off, because it's like a French crepe, but this is soggy and it's full of slightly oily prawn and pork. So, it's not great.'

The three women left the kitchen offering words of support as they face what will be one of their last cooks in the MasterChef Kitchen.
They were together for 13 years and she recently called him 'the best friend anyone could have'.

And Elizabeth Hurley, 51, was picked up from her Chelsea home on Friday by ex-beau Hugh Grant, 55, in a stunning brand new silver Ferrari.

The actress emerged wearing a loose fitting beige jumper with the sleeves rolled up, a pair of skintight navy jeans which highlighted her lithe limbs and a pair of peep-toe snakeskin heels.

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Off on her travels: Elizabeth Hurley, 51, was picked up from her Chelsea home on Friday by ex-beau Hugh Grant, 55, in a stunning brand new silver Ferrari

The glamorous mother-of-one covered her eyes with mirrored shades and her caramel tresses fell over her shoulders from a middle-parting.

Ever the gentleman, Hugh helped take Elizabeth's luggage and carefully placed it into the boot of his sleek new motor.

The Notting Hill actor cut a dapper figure in a pristine white shirt, grey suit trousers and brown shoes.

Age-defying: The actress emerged wearing a loose fitting beige jumper with the sleeves rolled up, a pair of skintight navy jeans which highlighted her lithe limbs and a pair peep-toe snakeskin heels

Helping hand: Ever the gentleman, Hugh helped take Elizabeth's luggage and carefully placed it into the boot of his sleek new motor

Hands full: The Notting Hill actor cut a dapper figure in a pristine white shirt, grey suit trousers and brown shoes

In a rush: With the car left in the middle of the road while Hugh greeted Elizabeth and a Range Rover seemingly waiting for them to move, the pair appeared hurried

There for you: Earlier this year, Elizabeth called Hugh 'the best friend anyone could have'

The handover: Elizabeth looked like she had plenty of sartorial options in her numerous bags

Looking good: Elizabeth's caramel tresses fell over her shoulders as she handed Hugh her luggage

Heavy lifting: Elizabeth's luggage was suitably stylish and befitting of a model

With the car left in the middle of the road while Hugh greeted Elizabeth and a Range Rover seemingly waited for them to move, the pair appeared hurried.

Once he'd secured his the cargo, Hugh made his way back around the car and into the driver's seat, while Elizabeth had already taken her position in the passenger's side.

The actor is godfather to her son Damian, born in 2002 to entrepreneur Steve Bing and she has returned the favour, being godmother to one of Hugh's daughters, Tabitha.

Keen to get going: Elizabeth looked eager to get on the road as she broke into a canter

Quickly! Elizabeth broke into a jog once she'd offloaded her items

In shape: Elizabeth boasted an impressively svelte frame in her dressed down ensemble

Polite! Elizabeth held her hand up to thank the waiting car

On the move: As Hugh loaded the car, Elizabeth took her position in the passenger's side

Job done: Hugh coolly reached up to close the boot, while Elizabeth carried a stylish pink handbag

She told Jonathan Ross: 'We're best friends. He lives next door to me and he's godfather to my son and I'm godmother to one of his children.

'We've been apart for longer than we were together. We were together for 13 years and then we've been best friends for 15.'

When pushed by the television presenter on a possible romantic reunion, she dismissed the idea, saying: 'I don't think that's going to happen...but he's the best friend that anyone could have.'

Meanwhile, Hugh is currently in a relationship with his on/off Swedish girlfrined Anna Eberstein, 37.

The couple welcomed their second child together, a daughter in December 2015, having already got a three-year-old son.

The Four Weddings and a Funeral actor also has two children - a boy and a girl - by former girlfriend Tinglan Hong.
On Friday night, the whole family boarded a private jet for a trip to Las Vegas.

But Scott Disick was back in California by Saturday and was spotted treating his kids to a shopping trip at the Woodland Hills mall in Los Angeles.

The 33-year-old looked every inch the proud father as he clutched his three-year-old daughter Penelope's hand, while eldest son Mason, six, followed close behind.

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Family time: Scott Disick was back in California on Saturday, after a short trip to LA, and was spotted treating his kids to a shopping trip at the Woodland Hills mall

The reality star kept things casual for the outing and wore a taupe hoodie with skinny grey jeans and a pair of tan suede Chelsea boots.

Scott carried a number of shopping bags from toy stores as the doting dad had clearly been spoiling his children rotten.

The day before, Scott had boarded a private jet with his estranged partner Kourtney Kardashian and their three kids - fuelling speculation the couple, who never wed, may be on track for a reconciliation.

Onlookers revealed the pair couldn't have looked happier as they spent a fun family time together in Sin City.

Always keen to make time for his family, Scott spent some quality one-on-one with Penelope on Thursday.

Cute: The 33-year-old looked every inch the proud father as he clutched his three-year-old daughter Penelope's hand

The reality king held hands with his middle child, as they enjoyed their day out in Beverly Hills.

Scott opted for a grey T-shirt, skinny jeans and some tan cowboy boots completed the simple ensemble.

While he's been accused of looking a little worse for wear lately after some late nights, Scott was looking quite well put together, sporting perfectly coiffed hair and facial hair trimmed to perfection.

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.

Daddy-daughter day: Scott decided to spend some of the day on Thursday with his adorable daughter Penelope, three

Relatively simple: Accessories were limited to some vintage-style shades and a chunky gold watch on his left arm

The duo were also joined by what looked to be a friend of Scott as they navigated the sidewalks of a shopping center.

While Scott 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.

The casually-dressed men were spotted exiting Scott's luxury black Rolls Royce as they made their way into the upscale Montage Hotel.

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.
She has an impossibly sculpted physique that leaves fans lost for words.

And on Sunday The Biggest Loser's Tiffiny Hall was hard at it again as she took part in an intense Taekwondo competition which saw her come 6th place.

In an image shared to social media, the 31-year-old showed off her rock solid abs as she told fans: 'I only eat roo as my red meat choice because less than 2 per cent fat and [has] so much iron and B vits to support recovery in training.'

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Oh my! The Biggest Loser's Tiffiny Hall showed off her rock hard abs on Sunday as she dressed in a red crop top and shorts following a Taekwondo competition

Despite her torso being the main focus of the snap, she also flaunted her sculpted physique in a red crop top and white martial arts shorts in her gym latest selfie.

As she posed for the image the definition on her torso was eyebrow-raising.

Tiffiny slicked her blonde locks back into a high ponytail, giving clear view of her makeup-free face which displayed a contented expression post workout.

Encouraging: The 31-year-old often supports fans with words of encouragement on her Instagram account

Hard at it: The Biggest Loser frequently posts daily updates on to her social media sites, urging on fans with their workouts

'It's hard to have both': Recently the 31-year-old was feeling a little bogged down as she revealed she cant wear tight jeans thanks to her sculpted quads

Alongside the image she wrote: 'They said I fight like a girl. G O O D.'

She added: '6th Dan black belt prep in home gym. #taekwondo #martialarts #girl'.

She added: 'Don't give up - training is a way of life. So many people give up at black belt. Dans keep you living the Taekwondo practice.'

Tiffiny recently expressed her dismay at not being able to fit into her tight jeans because of her sculpted quads.

The personal trainer did, however, look incredible in the Instagram picture in shorts writing: 'You either want quads or you want jeans. It's hard to have both.'

Social media lover: She wrote alongside the image You either want quads or you want jeans. It's hard to have both #jeansneverfit #quads #legday#stronggirls'

Don't mess with her! Tiffiny - who is married to Australian actor Ed Kavalee - has a black belt in Taekwondo and credits the sport for keeping her in shape

She flaunted her physique in a tiny pair of black gym shorts and a coordinating vest top, which was teamed with plain white trainers.

Her ultra-defined limbs and abs certainly took centre stage, while her long blonde locks were swept away from her face and pulled back into a carefree updo.

Tiffiny - who is married to Australian actor Ed Kavalee - frequently posts daily updates to her social media sites, encouraging them with their own workouts.

'Not every session should be intense': The star recently shed light on how she keeps her legs in shape, by suggesting to try out a particular stretch with a gym partner

Fitness buff: Tiffiny shot to fame when she joined the cast of the Australian TV revival of Gladiators in 2008

Shedding light on how she keeps her legs in great shape, the blonde suggested trying out a particular stretch with a gym partner.

Yo yo yo calling all runners and kicky peeps, she said. If you hammer your hamstrings, you'll lurrve this stretch. Bit of an OM moment with my sister @bridget_hall_. [sic]

Later she added: Try to keep your heel down (ha! I'm looking at you bridge) and push against your partner to match their strength. Remember not every session should be intense and cray cray.

Tiffiny shot to fame when she joined the cast of the Australian TV revival of Gladiators in 2008 before going on to front the The Biggest Loser franchise, she also has a black belt in Taekwondo.
She's been making waves in the acting industry since the early seventies.

And Susan Sarandon reaped the benefits of her hard work as she attended the second day of the Taormina Film Festival in Italy for an informative workshop panel.

The 69-year-old legendary star defied her age as she stunned in a chic black dress and matching black sandals.

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Ageless beauty: Susan Sarandon, 69, attended the second day of the Taormina Film Festival in Italy for an informative workshop session

The waterfall style of the dress fell just under her knees and showed the rest of her tanned legs as she struck an effortless pose.

Jazzing up the look were a stunning array of gold bangles while a statement necklace lay upon her chest.

A hearty dose of rosy blusher added to her jovial appeal while her eyes were winged in black liner to perfection.

Her signature fiery mane was curled delicately and slightly teased, framing her face and showcasing a peek of her gold earrings.

Eternally stunning: A hearty dose of rosy blusher added to her jovial appeal while her eyes were winged in black liner to perfection

Upping the glamour: Her signature fiery mane was curled delicately and slightly teased, framing her face

Fashionable: The waterfall style of the dress fell just under her knees and flaunted the rest of her tanned legs as she struck an effortless pose

Going for gold! Jazzing up the look were a stunning array of gold bangles while a statement necklace lay upon her decolletage

While the beauty arrived at the venue, she sported a chic pair of oversized black sunnies which knocked further years off her age.

It was definitely time to work for Susan, who had been spotted enjoying for a spot of shopping at a high end Italian boutique during her first day at the hilltop festival.

Looking her sophisticated best, the ageless stunner donned a stunning cream outfit, which boasted a hefty fringed scarf- wrapped effortlessly around her.

While the beauty arrived at the venue, she sported a chic pair of oversized black sunnies

She looked half her age as she posed in the black and gold ensemble

While she stuck to the exact same colour scheme for the rest of her outfit, she spruced up the look with a pair of statement sunglasses which boded well with her signature fiery red curled tresses.

Obviously jovial as she shopped up storm, the Thelma & Louise star was all smiles as she stood inside the Falconeri store.

The talented icon obviously took her time as she later decided to give a chic suede navy jacket a whirl.

Eternal fashionista: Susan enjoyed a shopping break as she attended the 62nd annual Taormina Film Fest in Taormina, Italy on Saturday

No blues here! The talented star obviously took her time in the high end store as she later decided to give a chic suede navy number a whirl

Glamorous: Looking her sophisticated best, the ageless stunner donned a stunning cream outfit

Quite the unique number, the sleeves fell just under the elbows, which worked well with the rest of angelic-inspired ensemble.

Joining her on the trip was Italian star Tiziana Rocca who opted for a more dressed down look in ripped jeans and a plain black top.

Sarandon looks like she couldn't be happier, especially as she collected the Inspiration gong at the Glamour Women Of The Year Awards event to a well-heeled crowd - which included Sigourney Weaver, Kourney Kardashian and Holly Willoughby - where went on to share a few words of encouragement.

'I am inspired by women. Nobody multi tasks like women,' she said. 'We have to stop worrying about being perfect and do the best we can and have fun.'

Chic look: While she stuck to the exact same colour scheme for the rest of her outfit, she spruced up the look with a pair of statement sunnies

Keeping it different: Quite the unique number, the sleeves fell just under the elbows, which worked well with the rest of angelic-inspired ensemble

Just last month, the issue of a lack of gender equality in Hollywood was a subject that Susan tackled while in attendance at the Cannes Film Festival.

Talking at a Kering Women In Motion Talk, she was asked if her 1991 film Thelma and Louise - which was directed by Ridley Scott and co-starred Geena Davis - could be made today.

Maybe as an animation? I dont think the studios have fallen off their horse and had some kind of epiphany about women in film,' she responded.

Because after Thelma and Louise, they predicted there would be so many films starring women. That really made a lot of money. But it didnt happen.

Beauty icon: Her signature fiery red curled tresses made her stand out

Pals: Joining her on the trip was Italian star Tiziana Rocca who opted for a more dressed down look in rippled jeans and plain black top

She added that in some ways it is harder now than ever for women to get ahead in the film industry.

She explained: There are still many more male executives making these decisions. Hollywood has become more and more corporate and the kind of people making those decisions and the basis on which theyre making those decisions.

Whereas women can see a woman or a man in a leading role, I dont think its as easy for a guy to see a woman in a leading role and say Ill get behind that.

I think its a cultural thing, and thats part of what slows it down: a lack of imagination on the part of men.
Her much-anticipated movie Finding Dory is due for release in just a few days time.

And after promoting the Disney Pixar flick at the Los Angeles premiere on Wednesday, Ellen DeGeneres was enjoying a day off with her wife Portia de Rossi on Saturday.

The happy couple were spotted strolling hand-in-hand to one of their favourite spots in West Hollywood, where the LA Pride festivities were in full swing.

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So in love: Ellen DeGeneres went hand-in-hand on Saturday as they headed to lunch in West Hollywood

Ellen, 58, and Portia, 43, - who are both vegans and animal advocates - treated themselves to a meal at popular plant-based restaurant Crossroads.

The pair were dressed down, with the comedian clad in a navy hoodie over a pale blue T-shirt, khaki trousers and beige lace-up shoes.

Meanwhile Scandal star Portia wore a gold knitted off-the-shoulder top over a black tank top, matching skinny jeans and loafers.

Ellen and Portia both sported sunglasses and had their fingers intertwined as they strolled down the street together.

Casual couple: The pair were both dressed down for the outing in baggy tops, trousers and flat shoes - and they each wore sunglasses

The A-list duo have been dating for almost 12 years, and will celebrate their eighth wedding anniversary in August.

Portia was by Ellen's side to support her at the Finding Dory premiere earlier this week, and the pair put on an affectionate display.

The daytime talk show host voices the character of the forgetful blue tang, who embarks on a quest to find her parents after having a memory about her childhood.

Ahead of the film's release, Ellen has joined a Disney-backed campaign to protect Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

One of their favourite spots: Ellen and Portia, who are both vegan, dined at plant-based restaurant Crossroads

In a recently released video recorded for the Remember The Reef project, the star said: 'Hi Australia, it's me, Ellen DeGeneres.

'As you may know, I'm a big fan of your beautiful, great, wonderful Great Barrier Reef, which is home to my favourite fish, Dory.

'And as you may remember, but Dory probably doesn't, she's a blue tang and has many other amazing species that live in the reef with her. It's critical that we protect this amazing place, and we'd like your help.'

Cuddling up: The stars - who will celebrate eight years of marriage in August - put on an affectionate display at the Finding Dory premiere earlier this week

Ellen promptly received some criticism from Today Show co-host Karl Stefanovic, who claimed she was only joining the cause to promote the movie, but the star brushed off the allegation.

'I didn't know it was a controversy but that's exciting that people are talking about it,' she told Australia's News Corp on Friday. 'But that's a good thing, right? There's nothing wrong with trying to protect the reef.

'I am happy to put my name on it and get behind it. It's important to me - I think we have to pay attention to the entire planet.'

Disney Pixar's Finding Dory swims into cinemas in the US on June 17 and the UK on July 29, 13 years after the release of Finding Nemo.
Newly-crowned Miss Sydney Holly Bryar has called for the age limits for Miss Universe and Miss World pageants to be scrapped.

The model and budding actress has narrowly missed out on entering the Miss Universe competition that put Jennifer Hawkins on the map because she turns 27 on Tuesday.

Entrants must be aged 27 or under and while Holly told the Daily Telegraph: 'I don't feel too old' she added: 'The age cut-off is interesting,' referring to Miss World entrants needing to be under 25.

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Speaking up: Blonde beauty and newly crowned Miss Sydney Holly Bryar has called for the age limits for Miss Universe and Miss World to be scrapped

Holly - who works as a production assistant for ABC Kid's Giggle & Hoot - won Miss Sydney last month and the competition, according to the newspaper, was the first pageant she had entered.

In September 2013, Erin Holland just made the cut, aged 24, to enter Miss World and made the top ten.

The stunner - who has gone on to film the upcoming TV series The Secret Daughter - told The Daily Telegraph she believes it was better she entered when she was older, saying she saw a 17-year-old struggle under the pressure of the competition.

'I had seven years on her and I think I would have crumbled under the pressure if I were younger.'

Too 'old'? The model and budding actress has narrowly missed out on entering the Miss Universe competition that put Jennifer Hawkins on the map because she turns 27 on Tuesday

Doing well: She won Miss Sydney last month and the competition, according to the newspaper, was the first pageant she had entered

Back in the day: Jennifer Hawkins (L) won Miss Universe in June 2004

Doing her thing: In September 2013, Erin Holland (L) just made the cut at 24-years-old to enter Miss World and made it into the top ten

Myer ambassador Jennifer Hawkins, now 32-years-old, competed in Miss Universe in June 2004 at just 21-years-old, travelling to Ecuador for the competition.

She has since gone on to be the host and a judge on Australia's Next Top Model, has her own swimwear and tanning line, as well as a tequila brand with husband Jake Wall.

The pair also have an extensive property portfolio and are currently building a new waterfront property expected to fetch millions in Sydney's Newport.
Former federal prosecutor and frequent plain-language law explainer Ken "Popehat" White has done the (American) Internet the immense service of producing a master(ful) post about the First Amendment, explaining why the American constitutional basis for free speech includes abridgments on speech by some private actors and why it can be invoked in civil cases.

If you said something like "The First Amendment says 'Congress shall make no law,' and Congress isn't involved here, so it's not a First Amendment issue."

Congratulations! You've read the First Amendment. Even if you've ignored the last century of discourse about it, this raises you above most of the populace, particularly on the Internet.

You're right that the plain language of the First Amendment only limits Congressional power. But you've ignored some American history. Don't worry: you've only ignored a century and a half of it. The Bill of Rights was originally understood to limit the power of the federal government without limiting the states. But in 1868, after some recent unpleasantness, we amended the Constitution to add the Fourteenth Amendment, which includes this language: "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." By its own terms, the Fourteenth Amendment forbids the states from infringing certain rights.

But which rights? Well, in the early 20th Century, the United States Supreme Court decided that certain fundamental rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are included in the concept of liberty identified in the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore protected from infringement by "due process of law." This process  under which the court decided that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated by reference rights from the Bill of Rights and made them enforceable against the states  is called incorporation, and the notion is called the incorporation doctrine. The Supreme Court has decided that most, but not all, rights from the Bill of Rights are incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore protected from infringement by states. The Supreme Court decided  or, to be more accurate, assumed  in a 1925 decision that freedom of speech under the First Amendment is one of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights that the states may not infringe because it is incorporated by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.





Therefore, the First Amendment does apply to actions by states and their political subdivisions (cities, counties, state agencies, etc.), and has for more than ninety years. You're wrong. Please stop being wrong and asking other people to be wrong with you.
She's been busy filming the upcoming third season of popular TV Land series Younger in New York City.

But on Saturday Hilary Duff was back in Los Angeles, and took a moment to run errands with her four-year-old son Luca in Beverly Hills, California.

And the 28-year-old seemed to have done well during a shopping trip, as she was spotted leaving the Toys"R"Us/Babies"R"Us shopping center with quite a full cart.

Mommy and me! Hilary Duff hit Toys"R"Us/Babies"R"Us in Beverly Hills, California on Saturday with her son Luca

Hilary wore a form-fitting, hooded black sweatshirt for the errand, which she matched with a pair of skintight, black leggings.

The figure-hugging trousers highlighted the TV Land star's toned pins, and she coupled them with a pair of grey sneakers.

She wore her shoulder-length blonde tresses in a center part, and styled in subtle waves, and had a pair of sunglasses clipped into her sweatshirt.

She carried a tan tote bag slung over her shoulder, and also toted a hot beverage from Starbucks for the shopping trip.

Laid-back: The former Disney Channel star dressed casually for the errand, sporting a black sweatshirt and coordinating leggings

The mother-of-one - with ex Mike Comrie - kept her make-up simple for the errand, showing off a bit of pink gloss.

The former Disney Channel star looked to be in good spirits as she pushed the heavy cart to her car, showing off a small smile.

Meanwhile, her young son - dressed in a grey sweatshirt, black trousers, and coordinating sneakers - could be seen riding in the bottom of the shopping cart.

Quite a haul! The mother-son duo looked to have had a good trip as Hilary was seen pushing a full cart back to her car

Hilary's hit TV Land series Younger aired its second season finale in March, and was renewed for a third season in January.

The actress also appears in comedy Flock Of Dudes, which will be released in select cinemas this autumn after premiering during the Los Angeles Film Festival in June of last year.

Hilary joins Chris D'Elia and Hannah Simone in the movie, which follows a man in his thirties who 'breaks up' with his friends in a bid to finally grow up.
Michu Meszaros, who played ALF in the hit Eighties sitcom of the same name, is fighting for his life after slipping into a coma.

The 2ft 9in actor was found unconscious on his bathroom floor late last week by his manager Dennis Varga and was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital.

Dennis told TMZ the actor, 76, had suffered from health problems since suffering from a stroke eight years ago.

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Fears growing: Michu Meszaros, who played ALF in the hit NBC sitcom of the same name, is fighting for his life after slipping into a coma

The 2ft 9in actor was found unconscious on his bathroom floor late last week and was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital

Michu has given strict instructions that the life support machines must not be turned off if his condition does not improve.

The star has appeared in a number TV and film projects over the years, but is best known for his work as the friendly extraterrestrial nicknamed ALF in the 1980s science fiction series.

In the first seasons of the show Michu wore a full-body costume of the character whenever a full-body shot of the alien was needed.

But the majority of shots used an upper body suit, since the full costume was extremely hot and uncomfortable for the actor.

The Hungarian performer first came to fame in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which was founded in the US in 1919.

He was billed as the 'smallest man in the world' by circus bosses, who were keen to cash in on his impressive array of talents.

The city of Hawthorne in California honoured the actor by naming their shortest street 'Michu Lane' in the 1980s.

His most recent appearance on cinema screens was in the horror film Warlock: The Armageddon, released in 1993.
Her husband David Fairbairn was reportedly rushed to hospital at the end of last month after his drink was allegedly spiked at the glitzy British Soap Awards.

However, all seemed to be well as Gillian Taylforth put on a fun display with her hubby at a celebrity go-karting event in Esher, Surrey on Sunday.

The 60-year-old Eastenders' stunner looked summer ready, despite Britain's changeable weather- in a floor-length black and cream number.

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Back on track: Gillian Taylforth, 60, and her husband David Fairbairn, 60, attended a celebrity Go Kart event in Esher, Surrey on Sunday, two weeks after he was rushed to hospital after his drink was allegedly spiked

She teamed it with a matching blazer while her red pedicure peeked out under her ensemble.

Gillian's stunning shoulder length blonde tresses were slicked down to perfection and she never forewent a smile as she posed with her two tiny pooches.

Her 60-year-old beau looked dapper in a blue striped blazer which he teamed with comfortable jeans and a white shirt for the event held by The Charity Back On Track and hosted by Dr. Aamer Khan and Lesley Reynolds from Harley Street Skin.

Lovely: The Eastenders' stunner looked summer ready- despite Britain's changeable weather- in a floor-length black and cream number

Eternal beauty: Gillian's stunning shoulder length blonde tresses were slicked down to perfection and she never forewent a smile as she posed with her two tiny pooches

David, who is on medication for cancer, was rushed to hospital last after the Soap Awards, where doctors allegedly found high levels of Rohypnol in his blood.

Rohypnol is a tranquiliser that is ten times more powerful than Valium and is tasteless, odourless and easily dissolves into drinks.

The incident is said to have happened at a bar in East London, while the couple joined the rest of the EastEnders cast for pre-award drinks.

Dapper: David wore a blue striped blazer which he teamed with comfortable jeans and a white shirt for the event held by The Charity Back On Track and hosted by Harley Street SkinClinic

On the mend: David appeared to be in high spirits as he posed for a few snaps on the day

According to a source, he was seen 'slurring and falling about' shortly afterwards.

The source told The Sun: 'It was only much later that a passer-by saw him lying in the street and called police, thinking they'd seen a corpse.

'He remembers nothing beyond the bar, where the cast were all drinking in a roped-off VIP area.

Hanging with the pal! Gillian was also joined by television presenter Andrea McLean who looked raring to hit the tracks

Always glamorous: Lizzie Cundy sported a stunning lace top under her racing gear

'Gillian and David were both absolutely horrified that someone could have done such a vile thing to him.'

Taylforth currently stars as Kathy Sullivan, the mother of Adam Woodyatt's character Ian Beale in EastEnders. She first played the role between 1985 to 2000, before making a shock return at the end of 2015.

The couple met through friends after the breakdown of the actress' 23-year relationship with ex-fiance Geoff Knights back in 2009 and have been together for nearly four years.

They plan to marry next year.

Bring it on: Andrea dressed up in the go-karting gear for a day on the tracks

A spokesman for Fairbairn said: 'Dave is unable to comment on this matter.

'However, he would like to make it clear that he does not suspect anyone at EastEnders of doing this, nor can he state where it happened.'

Other stars at the adrenaline filled event were Lizzie Cundy, Andrea McLean and Gail Porter.

Simplistic chic: Gail Porter put on a chic all-black display
She's got beauty, brains and is capable of speaking a whopping four languages.

So Victoria Silvstedt wasn't shy about putting her French to the test as she enjoyed a trip to Monaco on Sunday.

The 41-year-old looked every inch the bronzed goddess for her holiday as she poured her curves into a flattering white mini dress that cinched in her tiny waist with delicate gold detailing.

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Feeling hot! Victoria Silvstedt looked stunning as she enjoyed a sun drenched trip to Monaco on Sunday

And the elegant chiffon material of the gown folded into neat pleats that gently skimmed the model's impeccably toned thighs.

Making sure that she remained the golden girl in all aspects of her appearance, Victoria perfectly coordinated her accessories in luxurious metallic shades, as she toted a large bronze bag with on-trend laser cutout detailing.

And she kept things simple but chic in the footwear department with a pair of gladiator sandals, that came complete with pretty stud embellishments around the toes and ankles.

Looking all-white! The 41-year-old poured her curves into a flattering white mini dress that cinched in her tiny waist with delicate gold detailing

But Victoria's high-glamour look extended right up to her head as she styled her platinum blonde tresses into a voluminous bouncy blowdry that perfectly framed her youthful features.

And although she opted to cover most of her face with a pair of oversized aviator shades, the Swedish stunner made sure to show off her sunkissed glow.

She drew attention to her impossibly plump pout with a slick of pink lipstick.

Golden girl: Victoria perfectly coordinated her accessories in luxurious metallic shades

The model kept a tight grip on her phone throughout her stroll and was spotted pausing to enjoy a phonecall.

But that didn't stop the humble star from taking some time out from her day to wave and interact with fans.

The former Playmate of the Year has recently appeared on a Swedish reality series alongside a host of famous personalities, which was broadcast on TV3.

best foot forward: Victoria kept things simple but chic in the footwear department with a pair of gladiator sandals, that came complete with pretty stud embellishments around the toes and ankles

Victoria has previously talked about her introduction to modelling and her discomfort with the catwalk.

Speaking to Female First, she said: I started very young to model in Paris when I was 18, I remember like starving myself to fit into the clothes and it was an amazing experience but you know I did shows for Valentino, Chanel, so it was really prestigious.

But it never felt like it was my thing, I'm not like a runway skinny model, I'm more curvy. It was torture, I put myself through starvation, you know torturing myself.
She's currently in Sydney to promote a new fashion range with an established Australian brand, but Charlotte Crosby's mind was clearly elsewhere on Monday morning.

Taking to Instagram, the Geordie Shore star shared two snaps of her pet dogs, who remain in her native United Kingdom while she fulfils her promotional commitments in Australia.

In the first, Charlotte is seen cradling Baby - the 15-month old Pomeranian she first introduced to fans on YouTube last September.

Captioning the selfie, she wrote: 'Missing my babycakes.'

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'Missing my babycakes': She's currently in Sydney to promote a new fashion range with an established Australian brand, but Charlotte Crosby's mind was clearly elsewhere on Monday morning

A second shot, posted shortly after the first, features new pup Rhubarb, one of two new dogs she adopted in May.

Charlotte made a stylish arrival into Sydney on Saturday and wasted no time in heading straight out to enjoy the city's nightlife.

Sharing a photo of herself putting on a very leggy display in a stylish thigh-skimming dress Charlotte wrote: '26 hours of travelling and going straight out to hit the clubs of SYDNEY.... DURRRRRRRRRRR.'

Cute: A second shot, posted shortly after the first, features new pup Rhubarb, one of two new dogs she adopted in May

The starlet has recently revealed her regret at leaving Geordie Shore, although any troubles she had seemed a distance memory, with Charlotte looking happy and smiling as she walked through the airport earlier that day.

With freshly blow dried locks, Charlotte appeared cheery as she posed for photos with fans who were on hand to greet her.

She also flaunted her svelte frame in a well-fitting grey knit jumpsuit, cinched in at the waist, making for both a comfortable and trendy travel ensemble.

Here she comes: Charlotte appeared cheery as she posed for photos with fans who were on hand to greet her at Sydney airport

Charlotte will spend time in both Sydney and Melbourne during her quick trip to Australia, but most of the details of her trip have been kept under wraps.

Her management told Daily Mail Australia she would be launching a fashion campaign for a well-known Australian brand.

It's been a tumultuous month for Charlotte, who recently broke up with on-again-off-again boyfriend Gary Beale.

Since their break up she emotionally quit Geordie Shore and took to social media to confirm it with her fans.

News of her Australian tour comes after she revealed she has suffered an ectopic pregnancy after falling pregnant with Gary's child.
Jennifer Garner brought her own golden-paged Bible to Sunday service at her Pacific Palisades church.

The 44-year-old Golden Globe winner - wearing a white blouse, grey slacks, and ballet flats - was raised in a strict Methodist household, which she once joked was 'just a step away from being Amish.'

The Mother's Day actress brought along 10-year-old daughter Violet (wearing violet) and four-year-old son Samuel in bright yellow shorts.

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Ready to pray: Jennifer Garner brought her own golden-paged Bible to Sunday service at her Pacific Palisades church

After services ended, Jennifer was seen clutching her barefoot boy's tiny trainers as seven-year-old daughter Seraphina looked cute in a bird-patterned skirt.

Garner recently renewed her religious beliefs after starring in Christian drama Miracles from Heaven earlier this year, and her children followed suit.

'I was talking to my kids about the movie and they said, "Mom, you don't take us to church," and we went that Sunday,' the Southern belle told The Christian Post in a March 8 video.

Conservative: The 44-year-old Golden Globe winner - wearing a white blouse, grey slacks, and ballet flats - was raised in a strict Methodist household, which she once joked was 'just a step away from being Amish'

Everybody out of the SUV! The Mother's Day actress brought along 10-year-old daughter Violet (wearing violet) and four-year-old son Samuel in bright yellow shorts

Worshipping together: After services ended, Jennifer was seen clutching her barefoot boy's tiny trainers as seven-year-old daughter Seraphina looked cute in a bird- patterned skirt

'For that I'm very grateful': Garner recently renewed her religious beliefs after starring in Christian drama Miracles from Heaven earlier this year, and her children followed suit

The Southern belle told The Christian Post: 'I was talking to my kids about the movie and they said, "Mom, you don't take us to church," and we went that Sunday. And they went today without me. That decision was a direct gift from this movie'

'And they went today without me. That decision was a direct gift from this movie and for that I'm very grateful.'

On Thursday, Capital One debuted its latest advert for their Venture Card starring Jennifer, who's been fronting the credit card company since taking over for Alec Baldwin in 2014.

The Danny Collins star will next play Lara Brand in the swapped-identity comedy Nine Lives - hitting UK/US theaters August 5 - alongside Kevin Spacey, Christopher Walken, and Cheryl Hines.

Brand ambassador: On Thursday, Capital One debuted its latest advert for their Venture Card starring Jennifer, who's been fronting the credit card company since taking over for Alec Baldwin in 2014

Hitting UK/US theaters August 5! The Danny Collins star will next play Lara Brand in the swapped-identity comedy Nine Lives alongside Kevin Spacey, Christopher Walken, and Cheryl Hines

It's been nearly a year since Garner split from estranged husband Ben Affleck, who was last seen reuniting with BFF Matt Damon for the Spike Guys' Choice Awards.

The 43-year-old Oscar winner has since returned to England to continue filming Zack Snyder's two-part Justice League at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden.

But first, the Batman v Superman star will next reprise his Bruce Wayne role in the DC Comics supervillain flick Suicide Squad - hitting UK/US theaters August 5 - with Jared Leto, Margot Robbie, and Will Smith.

'Guys of the Decade': It's been nearly a year since Garner split from estranged husband Ben Affleck, who was last seen reuniting with BFF Matt Damon for the Spike Guys' Choice Awards (pictured June 4)

On location: The 43-year-old Oscar winner has since returned to England to continue filming Zack Snyder's two-part Justice League at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden
Kim Kardashian loves to dress her daughter North West in neutral colours and miniature versions of her own fashion-forward looks.

But when the youngster - who turns three on Wednesday - gets to pick her outfit, it's always a very different story.

On Sunday, 35-year-old Kim shared Snapchat photos which showed little North wearing a violet wig with pale purple streaks, along with a matching princess dress and sandals.

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Dress-up: Kim Kardashian shared a cute photo of North in a purple wig and matching princess dress on Snapchat Sunday

The toddler could be seen playing with a pink toy car while sitting on the floor next to a rainbow striped ball and a Minnie Mouse bag.

Joking about North's wig, Kim captioned one of the snapshots: 'Lil Kim vibes?!?!'

Earlier in the day, the reality star had headed to the gym for an abs workout, and pointed out that it was hard to share videos on Snapchat while exercising (but did it anyway).

Play time: The two-year-old - who turns three on Wednesday - was playing with a toy car and ball

'Vibes': Kim joked that her daughter's look was reminiscent of rapper Lil' Kim and her colourful wigs

'The wife of Pablo': The previous day, the 35-year-old had posed in a tiny white swimsuit designed by her husband

Meanwhile Kanye West was seen arriving for a business meeting at his Calabasas office that morning.

The rapper, who just turned 39, was dressed in a Rolling Stones T-shirt under a black jacket, along with skinny jeans and brown boots.

It's unclear what plans Kim and Kanye have in store for North's third birthday.

Business as usual: Meanwhile Kanye West was heading to his Calabasas office on Saturday morning

Rock'n'roll: The rapper was wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt, black jacket, jeans and brown boots

Heading to work: Kanye, who just turned 39, was carrying his laptop and chatting on the phone

The happy couple, who celebrated their second wedding anniversary last month, are also parents to six-month-old son Saint.

Kourtney and Khloe were hanging out with little Reign on Sunday, and the eldest Kardashian sister even attempted a work out with the 18-month-old on her back.

Kim, Kanye and their two children returned to Los Angeles on Friday night via private jet following a trip to New York.

'Try snap chatting & doing abs!': Kim was in the gym earlier in the day, and documenting the workout on social media

Taking it to the next level: Meanwhile her big sister Kourtney did push-ups with son Reign on her back

Sister act: Kourtney and Khloe were working out together - and sharing Snapchats in the process

The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star recently told fans that she and the The Life Of Pablo hit-maker are 'a perfect match' astrologically.

In a post on her subscription based website kimkardashianwest.com, she wrote: 'Libra/Gemini sex gets a 5-star rating because we're so in tune with each other.'

Kim also shared that both signs 'love travel, surprises and communication' and added that she and Kanye have 'had an amazing connection right from the start'.

'He's sooooo cute': The stars played around with 18-month-old Reign and some of the app's filters
Earlier this year he was rumoured to be dating model Wanessa Milhomem.

But on Sunday, Joel Edgerton appeared to be enjoying the single life as he was spotted leaving trendy Hollywood nightclub The Nice Guy.

The Australian actor brushed shoulders with a blonde in denim shorts as he exited the hotspot, with the 41-year-old even turning his head for a fleeting moment to catch a proper glimpse of the scantily-clad beauty.

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Close encounter: Joel Edgerton came shoulder to shoulder with a blonde beauty as he exited Hollywood hotspot The Nice Guy on Sunday

While the glamorous blonde was dressed in a pair of tiny Daisy Dukes, Joel was quite the opposite, rugged up thoroughly to protect himself from any potential cold weather.

The Star Wars actor was clad in a striped shirt and denim jacket, while a pair of thick black pants covered his legs.

He added a grey beanie to his head for extra warmth, and hid his famous face behind a pair of spectacles and a beard.

Cheeky girl! The mystery blonde had her derriere on display in a pair of short denim shorts

The former Secret Life of Us Star is currently on top of the world as his new civil rights film Loving is getting serious Oscar buzz.

The film doesnt hit cinemas until November but the critics who attended the Cannes festival screening are almost unanimous in their praise and have been bowled over by Edgertons acting.

The Australian star plays lead character Richard Loving sentenced to prison in Virginia in 1958 for entering into an interracial marriage with partner Mildred, played by Ruth Negga.

Keeping warm: While the glamorous blonde was dressed in a pair of tiny Daisy Dukes, Joel was quite the opposite, rugged up thoroughly to protect himself from any potential cold weather

The civil rights drama comes not long after Joel's success with Midnight Special  with both movies directed by Jeff Nichols.

Joel made headlines earlier this week when he compared the old American state laws against mixed-race marriages featured in Loving to the continued block of gay marriage in Australia.

One of the things that struck me while working on this film is what happens between two individuals is nobody else's business, he said after Mondays screening.

There was a definite resonance with my own country, particularly with the rights of gay marriage and the latency of under-the surface racism, which is something I think we really need to talk about.
Creator edges Destin in Belmont thriller

Creator, trained by Steve Asmussen and ridden by Irad Ortiz, edged Destin at the wire on Saturday to win a scintillating 148th Belmont Stakes.

The 1 1/2-mile race on the sweeping Belmont Park track dubbed "Big Sandy" was as close as they come.

Creator, who went off at odds of 16-1, lived up to his closer's reputation to claim the final leg of US flat racing's Triple Crown by a nose.

Creator with jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. and Destin #1 with jockey Javier Castellano race to the finish during the The 148th running of the Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park on June 11, 2016 in Elmont, New York Cliff Hawkins (Getty/AFP)

Lani, the temperamental Japan-based colt trained by Mikio Matsunaga and ridden by Yutaka Take, finished third.

"I was glad to see them put that number up!" said Asmussen, whose other runner, Gettsburg, set the early pace with Destin and Stradivari close.

Todd Pletcher-trained Destin, with Javier Castellano in the irons, made his move at the final turn but finally couldn't hold off Creator, who was running for the first time since finishing 13th on a rough trip in the Kentucky Derby.

"He proved his worth today and I'm just thankful of this opportunity with a great horse," Asmussen added.

The coveted Triple Crown wasn't on the line this year -- a bit of a let-down after American Pharoah became the 12th horse -- and the first in 37 years -- to sweep all three in 2015.

Hopes of a repeat were extinguished when Exaggerator beat Kentucky Derby winner Nyquist in the Preakness Stakes.

Nyquist was held out of the Belmont after developing a fever in late May, robbing the finale of a final showdown between the two.

Exaggerator went off as the 7-5 favorite in the Belmont, the race dubbed the "Test of the Champion."

However, his patented late kick was lacking and he finished 11th in the field of 13.

"I set him down at the quarter pole and there was nothing there," jockey Kent Desormeaux said. "By the time we got to the eighth pole, he was stepping on his tongue."
Pioneering solar pilots 'make sci-fi a reality'

The Swiss pilot readying to cross the Atlantic in a solar-powered plane on the next leg of a record-breaking, round-the-world mission says he is making science fiction reality.

Bertrand Piccard, a psychiatrist and balloonist, will next command Solar Impulse 2 when meteorologists determine the best five-to-six day window for the ocean crossing from New York to either Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal or Morocco, depending on the wind and the weather.

"It gives the sensation of being in a science fiction story because you look at the sun and you understand that it's your only source of power," the explorer and father of three told AFP in New York.

Andre Borschberg (R) and Bertrand Piccard are two thirds of the way through circumnavigating the Earth in the Solar Impulse 2 aircraft, a bid to inspire a future powered by renewable energy technologies Eduardo Munoz Alvarez (AFP)

"You see left and right, your four props turning with electrical motors, with no noise and it's a vision of future," he added in an interview at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Piccard, and Swiss entrepreneur and engineer Andre Borschberg, are two thirds of the way through circumnavigating the Earth in a bid to inspire a future powered by renewable energy technologies.

Their single-seater plane, which they take it in turns to fly, weighs the same as a car but has the wingspan of a Boeing 747.

They take off at night with a fully-charged battery and climb to 28,000 feet (9,000 meters) in the day before descending to 5,000-6,000 feet, then catching the next sunrise, going up and down in waves.

The journey began on March 9, 2015 from Abu Dhabi, flying across Asia, the Pacific and the United States. They must now cross the Atlantic, fly through Europe and return to the Middle East.

Each pilot lives off special soups and meals designed to withstand extreme temperature changes and catnaps for 20 minutes at a time on a seat that extends into a business-class style flat bed.

- Cockpit yoga -

There is even time for Borschberg to practice yoga -- sitting postures only he concedes -- while Piccard does self-hypnosis to help recharge his batteries or sleep more efficiently.

They need to call on great physical strength.

When turbulence disconnects the auto pilot, Piccard and Borschberg must use their feet and upper body to deflect the yoke and the rudder as the plane swerves from left to right.

"Sometimes it's rock and roll," smiled Piccard. But he is never scared. He has been well trained and the worst that could happen, he says, would be to bail out, but only as an unthinkable last-resort.

"It would be really sad to lose the plane," he said. "We know it's a prototype, it's experimental so we have to be really careful with it."

Borschberg, who broke the world record for the longest continuous aviation journey on the 118-hour leg from Japan to Hawaii, said a positive mindset was vital.

But that journey was fraught with problems and months of maintenance work followed. The task ahead is monumental. The unstable situation in the Middle East throws up yet more challenges.

- Electric flight in 10 years? -

Both pilots consider themselves superstitious and say they are focusing all their energies on making it back to Abu Dhabi.

But they also see themselves as modern-day versions of the Wright brothers, the American aviation pioneers working 100 years ago.

Their plane goes at the same speed as Wrights' first plane, is also a single seater and also flies only in good weather, Piccard noted.

"You have to start somewhere," agreed Borschberg, dismissing the impracticalities that make it impossible to replicate Solar Impulse 2 for commercial flight.

"I'll make a bet with you that in 10 years' time you have airplanes for short haul flights with 50 passengers flying electric," said Piccard.

They could leave urban airports at night, he points out. No noise and no pollution would allow airports and airlines to double capacity by working overnight, he believes.

"The aviation industry were all laughing when I started and now they are all working on electric airplanes," said Piccard.

"If you're unsatisfied and do nothing you get depressed. If you're unsatisfied and you do something, you become a pioneer."

Pilots Andre Borschberg (R) and Bertrand Piccard of the Solar Impulse 2 consider themselves superstitious and say they are focusing all their energies on making it back to Abu Dhabi Eduardo Munoz Alvarez (AFP)
50 are reported dead and dozens injured after a gunman took hostages at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Police killed him and described the massacre as an act of terrorism.

"Everyone get out and keep running," the club posted on its Facebook page during the attack, which began about 2 a.m. The BBC reports that desperate relatives gathered near the club after receiving texts and call from inside but nothing since.

Pulse nightclub shooting: Approximately 20 people dead inside the club.  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

. @ChiefJohnMina multiple people dead inside the club. Many casualties transported to hospitals. pic.twitter.com/0Lf69tClad  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

The shooter was named as Omar S. Mateen, a U.S. citizen from Port St. Lucie, Fla., reports WDBO, and the FBI are "leaning towards Islamic terrorism" as motive.

A clubber earlier described a situation of chaos outside as the number of casualties became apparent. "There were just bodies everywhere," Christopher Hansen said. "In the parking lot, they were tagging them  red, yellow  so they knew who to help first and who not help first. Pants down, shirts cut off, they had to find the bullets. Just blood everywhere." Some of the injured were reportedly brought to the Orlando Regional Medical Center in police pick-ups.

John Mina, Orlando's Police Chief, said the attack began when a police officer stationed at the club exchanged gunfire with the assailant, who managed to enter the club and initiate a hostage situation.

A SWAT team went in at about 5 a.m. to rescue the hostages and the suspect died in a shoot-out. He was said to be armed with an assault rifle and handguns , reports The Boston Herald.

He was "organized and well prepared" for the attack, reports WFTV, citing a city official.

An explosion reported at the scene was a controlled blast used to distract the gunman, police said. A bomb-disposal robot was sent in to inspect a vehicle, thought to be the killer's, parked by the nightclub.

In an interview with NBC News, Mateen's father said he had no idea why he did it: "I apologize for what my son did. I don't know why he did it. He is dead, so I can't ask him. I wish I knew."

Mateen had active security officer and firearm licenses, according to Florida records, and his family said he worked in security. Marriage records show he was married in Port St. Lucie in 2009, and a relative said he had a 3-year-old son. Mir Seddique, Mateen's father told NBC News, "this has nothing to do with religion." Seddique said his son got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago and thinks that may be related to the shooting.

His ex-wife told the Washington Post that he was abusive and they divorced after a few months of marriage.

he was violent and mentally unstable and beat her repeatedly while they were married. The ex-wife said she met Omar Mateen online about eight years ago and decided to move to Florida and marry him. At first, the marriage was normal, she said, but then he became abusive. "He was not a stable person," said the ex-wife, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared for her safety in the wake of the mass shooting. "He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn't finished or something like that."

Mateen's religious beliefs have not yet been confirmed. Muslim groups denounced the attack Sunday morning.

"We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured," Rasha Mubarak, regional coordinator of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement. "The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence."

Note: this post covers breaking news. The facts aren't clear and even the most reliable sources and media outlets sometimes turn out to be mistaken. I'll update with further developments; please email or comment with corrections.
Philippines gets taste of Duterte anti-crime war

Armed police are detaining crying children, bewildered drunks and shirtless men throughout the Philippine capital in a night-time blitz that is offering an authoritarian taste of life under incoming president Rodrigo Duterte.

The incendiary lawyer won last month's elections in a landslide largely on a pledge to end or suppress what he said was rampant crime, warning the Philippines was in danger of becoming a narco-state and that tens of thousands of criminals would be killed in his crackdown.

Across the nation police have already reported killing more than 20 alleged drug suspects over the past fortnight, egged on by Duterte who has urged them to begin his war on crime even before he takes office at the end of this month.

A social worker holds a child after a night-time curfew had passed in Manila. Armed police are detaining crying children, bewildered drunks and shirtless men throughout the Philippine capital in a night-time blitz that is offering an authoritarian taste of life under incoming president Rodrigo Duterte Noel Celis (AFP)

The efforts by police in Manila, a chaotic mega-city of more than 12 million people, to clean up the streets ahead of Duterte being sworn in casts a light on other controversial aspects of his law-and-order campaign.

Since winning, Duterte has said he will impose late-night bans on children walking the streets, alcohol sales and the national passion of karaoke singing -- insisting that his crackdown must start with the fundamentals of discipline in society.

Police in Manila, eager to burnish their tough-guy credentials for their new boss, have in recent weeks begun their own versions of such night-time curfews that have seen hundreds of people detained.

In some districts police have even named the crackdowns "Oplan RODY" -- an acronym for Rid the Streets of Drinkers and Youths that is also Duterte's nickname.

"We all know drinking in the streets and youth roaming the streets at night are a formula for crime," Senior Superintendent Jemar Modequillo told AFP as he led Oplan RODY's sweep through a large southern Manila slum called CAA.

- Armed police detain children -

When AFP accompanied Modequillo's forces through CAA, children aged under 10 were taken away in police vehicles.

Two girls were in tears as they were led away by armed officers even though they were out with adult relatives.

Under Modequillo's operation, the children were taken back to the police station for lectures and to be picked-up later by parents.

But in another part of the Manila, parents of children found on the streets at night alone were jailed.

Duterte has said he intends to similarly jail parents for "abandonment", while the children will be sent to be cared for by the already overwhelmed social welfare department.

Under Modequillo's Oplan RODY, more than 100 adults deemed to be drunk or disorderly were detained and given the option of doing 40 push ups at the police station or a fine and a short prison stint. All chose the former.

Some said they had been unfairly detained.

Sitting on the police station's floor, Rafael Ganton insisted he was sober but that his apparent crime was being outside on a sweltering night without a shirt on.

"I was just going to lock the doors of our billiards shop," Ganton said.

Jose Diokno, chairman of the Free Legal Assistance Group, which lawyers for victims of human rights abuses, said the operations were concerning on many levels, including that armed police were traumatising children.

Diokno also voiced concern that Duterte's war on crime, like with Oplan RODY now, would target the poor.

"They are the weakest sector of society the easiest to oppress, they are already oppressed," Diokno told AFP.

- Licence to kill -

Since winning, Duterte has said he will also offer bounties to police to kill criminals.

More controversially, Duterte has called for ordinary citizens to kill suspects.

Even hardened anti-crime figures in the Philippines have warned such incitements could lead to a breakdown in the rule of law, and mob rule.

"The situation could escalate into a serious peace and order problem in the entire country," said senator-elect and former national police chief Panfilo Lacson.

Diokno said he was "appalled" by Duterte's call for citizens to kill suspected criminals.

"It's an invitation for people to take the law into their own hands," Diokno said.

Unidentified gunmen have killed at least nine drug suspects over the past fortnight, according to police statistics, raising fears that vigilante murders have already begun.

The murders have echoes of Duterte's two-decade rule of the southern city of Davao.

He said he turned the city into one of the nation's safest but rights groups say vigilante death squads have killed more than 1,000 people there.

Duterte has variously denied and boasted about links to the death squads, but has been unequivocal about what is in store for the Philippines when he becomes president.

"I intend to instil fear in the criminals," he said after winning the election.

President-elect Rodrigo Duterte Duterte has said he will impose late-night bans on children walking the streets, alcohol sales and the national passion of karaoke singing -- insisting that his crackdown must start with the fundamentals of discipline in society Noel Celis (AFP)

Police in Manila, eager to burnish their tough-guy credentials for their new boss, have in recent weeks begun their own versions of such night-time curfews that have seen hundreds of people detained Noel Celis (AFP)

Policemen hold children after a night-time curfew had passed in Manila. Armed police are detaining crying children, bewildered drunks and shirtless men throughout the Philippine capital in a night-time blitz that is offering an authoritarian taste of life under incoming president Rodrigo Duterte Noel Celis (AFP)
China stock market burns investors with boom-and-bust

Small-time investor Tracy Li lost more than $3,000 of her hard-earned salary from working at a bank after China's stock market crashed last summer, wiping out trillions of dollars in valuations in just days.

A year later, and she has been burned twice, betting government intervention to prop up the market after the rout would guarantee good returns.

"Everybody was saying that the market was starting to rebound," she told AFP. "I bought a stock a friend recommended to me, but now I've lost 35 percent of my investment this year."

June 12 marks the first anniversary of the day when the Shanghai stock market -- having soared in the previous 12 months -- started a 40 percent slide that it is struggling to recover from Johannes Eisele (AFP)

Her story is not much different from that of millions of other private investors who saw their savings go up in smoke during a year of countless government attempts to prop up the beleaguered market.

Despite Beijing's best efforts, stock prices remain in the doldrums, with a reform agenda put on the back burner.

Sunday marks the first anniversary of the day it all began to crumble, when the Shanghai stock market -- having soared in the previous 12 months -- started a 40 percent slide that it is struggling to recover from.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rose more than 150 percent in the year to June 12, 2015, peaking at 5,166.35 as the government loosened limits on trading with borrowed money and encouraged buying with glowing commentary in state-controlled media.

The bubble had been fuelled by lax government controls and rash investors looking for a quick profit, in what analysts say is an object lesson in the risks of trying to use policy to defy market forces.

When the collapse came, it destroyed fortunes, sparked a costly state bail-out, and shattered investor sentiment.

But hard lessons were still to come.

As the market plunged, China tasked a "national team" to prop up prices by directly buying at least $236 billion worth of stocks, according to one estimate, which state-linked entities are still holding after hints they might unload them sparked renewed market panic.

Initially, the measures seemed to work, with the stock market rallying more than 24 percent from the low in August to mid-December.

But another crash came in January -- with global repercussions -- after the botched implementation of a so-called "circuit breaker", which was intended to halt trading in case of volatility but instead created a disastrous feedback loop that drove heavy sell-offs.

- 'Forget high returns' -

Many of those who returned to stocks after the initial crash got burned.

Software company boss Huo Jiayu invested 20,000 yuan ($3,000) in January, but he was caught by the renewed fall this year, which was driven by worries over China's flailing economy and weakening currency.

"I was trapped. I didn't even have the chance to cut my losses and before I knew it, I was losing too much money to get out," Huo told AFP.

China removed the head of the market regulator responsible for the fiasco but the debacle raised questions about the government's managerial abilities and its commitment to promised market reforms.

"The government should avoid stimulating the market through policies. It should strive to build an open, free and fair market under the rule of law," said Hong Hao, Hong Kong-based chief strategist at securities firm BOCOM International.

Investors learned a "profound" lesson, too, he said, becoming more wary of the margin trading -- the use of borrowed funds to buy stock -- that played a key role in the run up.

Now, the stock market has recovered slightly from January and February's plunge but it is still down almost 20 percent this year, making it the world's worst performing market among indexes tracked by the Wall Street Journal.

On Wednesday, the last trading day before a holiday, the Shanghai Composite Index closed at almost the exact same level as its low in August -- the depths of the summer crash -- and analysts warned there could still be further losses.

None of that, however, has stopped Chinese officials from pushing for domestic shares to be included in global benchmark indexes compiled by MSCI -- used as a guide by investors to allocate their portfolios. A decision is due on Tuesday.

But government reforms to build a more efficient market are still sorely needed, analysts said.

Pressing issues include encouraging more institutional investors instead of individuals bent on short-term gains, and a long-awaited revamping of the initial public offering system which gives the market a bigger role.

The year of hard lessons, however, has made regulators gun shy.

"Market reform has slowed down," said Citic Securities analyst Zhang Qun.

But one thing is for sure, he said. The days of sky-high pay offs are gone.

His advice for investors? They "should lower their expectations and forget about unrealistic, high returns."

Shanghai Composite Index Gal Roma (AFP)
Thai ex-PM Yingluck defies army with selfie and smiles tour

On a "fighting with smiles" tour by ex-premier Yingluck Shinawatra, selfies and symbols are the weapons of choice, showing adoring fans her family are still in Thailand's treacherous political game -- despite being hemmed in by the junta.

The Thai military has banned all political campaigning and Yingluck's trips to the north and northeast are ostensibly billed as cultural tours to celebrate reaching fiveOn a "fighting with smiles" tour by ex-premier Yingluck Shinawatra, selfies and symbols are the weapons of choice, million Facebook fans.

But in a very Thai take on politics, each act on her tour is suffused with meaning, from ringing the "Bell of Freedom" at a Buddhist temple to speaking in the local dialect.

Yingluck Shinawatra, left, greets supporters during a visit to the Wat Phra That Sri Don Kham temple in Phrae. She was on a 'fighting with smiles' tour of northern Thailand

And the party faithful are lapping it up.

In Phrae, a lush, mountainous province in the Thai north a few hundred kilometres from the Shinawatra clan's hometown, Yingluck was mobbed by legions of selfie-taking fans at every stop on Saturday -- many wearing the 'Red Shirts' synonomous with her family.

There were tears, cheers and red roses given by supporters, many of whom ascribed their affection to Yingluck's feminine qualities in a land where politics is broadly dominated by blustering middle-aged men.

"She's beautiful and she has a good heart. I'm so happy to see her, hug her and take photos with her," said Siriporn Thammawongsa, 59, at a lunch stop.

"I love how she managed the country as prime minister. If she can run the country again, it will go a long way," she added.

But that is not on the cards anytime soon.

- 'Not a political moment' -

Yingluck was retroactively impeached after the May 22, 2014, coup and is banned from politics for five years.

She could be jailed for a decade if an ongoing negligence trial over a costly rice subsidy policy that funnelled cash to the Shinawatra's poor farming base rules against her.

A new junta-scripted constitution will also straitjacket any politicians that emerge from future elections.

It is going before the Thai public in an August 7 referendum, although campaigning against it is banned in the bitterly divided country.

In that context Yingluck's "yim su" tour -- or fighting with smiles, as her aides dub it -- carries a message of defiance to the hard-pressed northern portion of the country.

Not that she can admit it.

"No, this not a political moment," the ex-premier told reporters after a blitz of photos with the party faithful at an ornate rural temple.

"I have been banned from politics for five years. All I can do is help the people in the ways I can, like this tour to promote the culture and travel."

The wealthy Shinawatra family mop up votes in the northern portion of Thailand. Their parties have won every election since 2001.

That infuriates the Bangkok-based establishment, with its deep military and judicial ties, and arch-royalist southern supporters, who accuse the family of poisoning Thai politics with nepotism and populist policies such as the rice scheme.

- 'Looks like peace' -

They have hit back hard.

Billionaire ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra -- Yingluck's elder brother -- was booted by office in a 2006 coup and later convicted of graft, a charge that has seen him live in self-exile since 2008.

Two proxy premiers were taken out by the courts. Then in 2010 protests by the Shinawatra-aligned 'Red Shirts' against an appointed government were suppressed by the army, leaving more than 90 dead and over a thousand injured in downtown Bangkok.

Yingluck won an election the following year, but was ousted by the courts in early May 2014, and the rest of her administration was swept out by a coup a fortnight later.

The family and their Peau Thai party are now circling the wagons.

Yingluck, initially derided by critics as a political lightweight and a patsy premier for her exiled brother, is eyeing the long game as the Thai junta fumbles the economy and riles the public with curbs on freedom.

"The country looks like it is at peace, but they don't know what the people really think," she said.

Ex-MPs travelling with Yingluck say her political travails have brought a new steeliness to match the polite public demeanour of Thailand's first female prime minister.

They hope those attributes will help bridge the kingdom's caustic political divide, which is worsened by uncertainty over the future once the reign of the country's ailing 88-year-old monarch ends.

"I have followed her since day one," said ex-lawmaker Khattiya Sawasdipol.

"She has changed a lot. To stand in her shoes is not easy, but she does it and it gives us all strength."

Yingluck Shinawatra greets an elderly supporter during a stop at a snack shop as part of Yingluck's 'fighting with smiles' tour in the northern Thai province of Lampang

The Thai military has banned all political campaigning and Yingluck's trips to the north and northeast are ostensibly billed as cultural tours to celebrate reaching five million Facebook fans Christophe Archambault (AFP)

Yingluck Shinawatra's tour included visiting a Buddhist temple (pictured) where she rang the 'Bell of Freedom'
Philippines arrests suspect in kidnap of Italian ex-priest

Philippine authorities have arrested a man accused of kidnapping an Italian businessman who was held hostage for six months by Islamic militants, the military said Sunday.

Retired Catholic priest Rolando Del Torchio, was abducted at his pizza restaurant in the southern city of Dipolog on Mindanao island last October. He was released unharmed on the Abu Sayyaf stronghold of Jolo island in April.

Sehar Muloc, also known in the area as Commander Red Eye, helped the kidnappers select and stalk their Italian target, regional military spokesman Major Filemon Tan told AFP.

Retired Catholic priest Rolando Del Torchio, was abducted at his pizza restaurant in the southern city of Dipolog on Mindanao island last October. He was released unharmed on the Abu Sayyaf stronghold of Jolo island in April HO (WESMINCOM/AFP)

"He (Muloc) is linked with the Abu Sayyaf. We have no information on whether he is also a member," Tan said referring to the kidnap group, which is also blamed for the deadliest bombings in the Philippines.

Muloc was arrested near the town of Naga, about halfway between Dipolog and Jolo, early Sunday and will be charged with kidnapping, Tan added.

Authorities had earlier said they suspected Del Torchio was abducted by local gunmen who handed him over to the Abu Sayyaf group in Jolo, 230 kilometres (143 miles) to the southwest.

Del Torchio, then 56, had worked as a missionary for the international organisation PIME in the south from 1998 before retiring in 2000 to set up his restaurant, colleagues told AFP shortly after he was abducted.

The Abu Sayyaf murdered a Canadian hostage in April but subsequently released 18 Indonesian and four Malaysian captives.

The group still holds another Canadian man, a Dutchman and a Norwegian, along with five Filipinos, the military said.

The kidnappers have threatened to kill either the Canadian or the Norwegian if a multi-million-dollar ransom is not paid by Monday.
Man hurls explosives inside Shanghai airport, injuring four

A man hurled a bottle containing home-made explosives inside the main international airport in China's commercial hub of Shanghai on Sunday, injuring four people before attempting to kill himself, authorities said.

The unidentified man removed a beer bottle or bottles with explosive materials from a backpack before throwing one near a check-in counter in Terminal Two at Pudong International Airport, the Shanghai government said in a statement.

He then took out a knife and slashed at his neck, it said, adding the man is now in critical condition in hospital.

A paramilitary bomb disposal expert inspects luggage after an explosion at Pudong Airport in Shanghai on June 12, 2016 Str (AFP)

His motive was not disclosed. There have been several cases in China of disgruntled individuals setting off explosions or starting fires in revenge for perceived wrongs.

Four passengers were injured in the incident, said the statement on the Shanghai government's official microblog.

The official Xinhua news agency said they included a man from the Philippines, as well as a 67-year-old man and a 64-year-old woman -- both described as Chinese. The nationality of the fourth victim was unclear.

The four were slightly injured by glass shards and are being treated in hospital, it added.

A few flights were affected because the incident disrupted the check-in area but the airport later returned to normal operation, Xinhua said.

Online video clips showed dense grey smoke rising to the ceiling of the cavernous terminal, and paramilitary security forces rushing into the building immediately after the incident.

Photos posted online by those claiming to be witnesses showed police keeping people back from the scene and abandoned luggage littering the floor.

The incident came as people returned home after a public holiday and just days before Thursday's opening of a Disney theme park in Shanghai.

In a similar incident, a wheelchair-bound man from southern China detonated a homemade bomb at Beijing international airport in 2013 as a protest at alleged police brutality.

The man, Ji Zhongxing, was later sentenced to six years in jail.

Last year an unemployed man set off an explosion at a public park in the eastern province of Shandong, killing himself and another person and wounding 24.
Hundreds escape besieged IS Syria stronghold

Hundreds of civilians escaped a besieged jihadist bastion in north Syria on Sunday helped by a US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance surrounding the town, a monitor said.

Tens of thousands had been trapped inside Manbij after the alliance encircled the transit town on Friday in a major blow to the Islamic State group controlling it.

"Around 600 civilians fled on foot towards areas held by the Syrian Democratic Forces alliance south of the town," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces gather on June 10, 2016 on the outskirts of Manbij in a bid to cut off the main supply route used by the Islamic State group between Syria and Turkey Delil Souleiman (AFP/File)

The SDF "transported them to safer areas," said Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman.

Those remaining inside the town were terrified by heavy air strikes in the area, Abdel Rahman said, with food becoming scarce as the alliance has blocked all roads in and out.

At least 223 IS fighters and 28 SDF troops had been killed -- as well as 41 civilians in coalition air raids -- since the alliance offensive against Manbij began on May 31, according to the Observatory.

To the west and northwest of the town, heavy fighting was ongoing as IS fighters launched a counteroffensive against the SDF in a bid to regain control of the road west out of town.

The Britain-based Observatory relies on a network of sources on the ground in war-torn Syria for its information.

Manbij lies at the heart of the last stretch of IS-controlled territory along Turkey's border.

Its siege has severed a key supply route for IS fighters, money and weapons from the Turkish border to the group's de facto Syrian capital of Raqa city.

Syria's war has killed 280,000 people and displaced millions since it erupted with the brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2011.

IS has come under attack on several fronts since declaring a cross-border "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq in 2014.
S. Korea begins operation to lift sunken ferry

A salvage firm Sunday began a difficult and costly operation to raise a sunken South Korean ferry which capsized at sea more than two years ago in a disaster that shocked and enraged the country.

The Sewol was carrying 476 people when it sank off the southwestern island of Jindo in April 2014, with the loss of 304 lives -- most of them schoolchildren.

Bringing the ferry to the surface has been a key demand of some victims' families, who hope nine bodies still unaccounted for may yet be recovered.

The operation by this giant crane to raise the sunken Sewol ferry is expected to be both difficult and costly Yonhap (YONHAP/AFP)

The Seoul government last year announced plans to salvage the 6,825-ton ship and selected a Chinese consortium led by state-run Shanghai Salvage Co. to spearhead the $72 million project.

"The operation began at 2 p.m.," Jung Seong-Wook, a bereaved family member who acts as a families' representative for the salvage project, told AFP.

Jung was one of dozens of family members watching the work anxiously from fishing boats in foggy weather.

Preparatory work was completed early in the morning, with the salvage firm's main crane positioned near the bow and several cables attached to the ferry.

The lifting of the bow section -- which will be conducted over the next two days -- is seen as the most challenging part of the operation.

"This operation takes up about 70 percent of the overall salvage project," Jung said.

Once the bow is lifted, work to place 18 lifting beams beneath the ferry will begin.

If the lifting operation goes announced smoothly, the Sewol may be brought to the surface by late July.

The Sewol lies more than 40 metres (130 feet) beneath the surface, and officials say lifting the 145-metre-long vessel from the seabed without causing it to break up will be the main challenge.

A naval architect involved in the project put the success rate at 80 percent at a press briefing in April, saying lifting a wreck in one piece from such a depth had never been done before.

The disaster was mainly due to human error -- an illegal redesign of the ship, an overloaded cargo bay, inexperienced crew and a questionable relationship between the ship operators and state regulators.

Captain Lee Jun-Seok was sentenced to life in prison for "murder through wilful negligence" and sentences ranging from two to 12 years were passed on 14 other crew members.

Mourners march with paper mache figures representing the 304 victims of South Korea's Sewol ferry disaster, marking the second anniversary on April 16, 2016 Jung Yeon-Je (AFP/File)
IS suicide bombings target Libya pro-govt forces in Sirte

The Islamic State group carried out three suicide car bombings Sunday against forces allied with Libya's unity government battling to retake the city of Sirte, an official said.

"Three explosions from cars driven by Islamic State suicide bombers targeted our forces in Sirte," Rida Issa, a spokesman for the unity government's forces, told AFP.

"There are several wounded among our forces," he said, without providing further details.

Forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed unity government advance in Sirte in a bid to recapture the city from the Islamic State group on June 10, 2016 Mahmud Turkia (AFP/File)

One bomber blew up his car a few metres (yards) from a group of pro-government fighters near the Abu Hadi roundabout in the city's southeast, Issa said.

The other bombers targeted pro-government forces and a field hospital in the city's west.

Forces loyal to the unity government have been fighting deadly street battles to retake Sirte, a coastal city 450 kilometres (280 miles) east of Tripoli that IS seized last year and turned into its main North African bastion.
Bangladesh makes 2,000 more arrests in anti-militant crackdown

Bangladesh police have arrested an additional 2,000 suspected criminals including Islamist militants in an ongoing crackdown on extremists following a spate of gruesome murders, an officer said Sunday.

More than 3,000 people, including suspected ordinary criminals with existing warrants against them, were arrested on Saturday after police launched a controversial anti-militant drive across the Muslim-majority nation.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina vowed on Saturday to catch "each and every killer" as Bangladesh reels from a wave of murders of religious minorities and secular and liberal activists that have spiked in recent weeks.

Bangladeshi police escort men arrested in Dhaka on June 12, 2016, as part of an anti-militant crackdown across the country, with some 5,000 rounded up over the weekend Str (AFP)

Among those arrested in the latest sweep were 48 suspected militants, many of them members of banned group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), police said.

"We have arrested 2,132 people including 48 Islamist militants on the second day of the special drive," Deputy Inspector General of Police A.K.M Shahidur Rahman told AFP.

JMB is one of two local groups blamed for most of the recent killings. The government rejects claims of responsibility from the Islamic State (IS) group and a South Asian branch of Al-Qaeda, saying international jihadists have no presence in Bangladesh.

- Mounting pressure -

The arrests come as a part-time imam was detained in northwestern Pabna district over the latest killing, that of a Hindu ashram, or monastery, worker hacked to death on Friday.

"He is a suspect and is being questioned over the murder," local police chief Abu Quddus told AFP.

Bangladeshi authorities have come under mounting international pressure to end the string of attacks, which have left nearly 50 people dead in the last three years.

But Bangladesh opposition parties have accused police of using the crackdown to suppress political dissent, saying many of those arrested were "ordinary and innocent people".

The week-long crackdown is part of ramped up efforts to halt the killings, with five suspected Islamists members shot dead in gunbattles with police in recent days.

Hasina accuses the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Islamist party ally, Jamaat-e-Islami, of orchestrating the killings to destabilise the country after they failed to topple the government in last year's transport blockade.

In recent days an elderly Hindu priest was found nearly decapitated in a rice field, while a Christian grocer was hacked to death near a church. IS claimed responsibility for those murders as well as that of the 62-year-old monastery worker.

In addition to the arrests, police said they had seized nearly 1,000 motorcycles.

Motorbikes have been used in many of the attacks, with the government recently announcing a ban on motorcyclists carrying more than one passenger.

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.

Although the country is officially secular, around 90 percent of Bangladesh's 160 million-strong population is Muslim, while some eight percent is Hindu.

Other victims have included liberal activists and secular bloggers along with two foreigners and two gay rights activists.

Experts say a previous government crackdown on opponents, including a ban on Jamaat following a protracted political crisis, has pushed many towards extremism.

The mass arrests across Bangladesh follow a spate of gruesome murders of religious minorities and secular and liberal activists that have spiked in recent weeks Str (AFP)

In addition to the mass arrests, Bangladeshi police have seized some 1,000 motorcycles as such vehicles have been used in many of the attacks Str (AFP)
UAE military helicopter crash kills two

A United Arab Emirates military helicopter crashed into the sea on Sunday, killing two crew members, the country's armed forces said in a statement.

The aircraft crashed "during a routine flight over international waters, causing the death of its pilot and co-pilot," said the statement on the official WAM news agency.

It did not specify the type of aircraft or the location that it went down.

A military helicopter flies over the desert at Al-Hamra military camp, west of the Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi, on March 5, 2008 Hassan Ammar (AFP/File)
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.

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consider your own opinion

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employing a thesaurus isnt always a decent thing

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Proofread

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Iraqi forces press offensive south of Mosul

Iraqi forces on Sunday advanced towards Qayyarah, which lies south of the Islamic State group's main hub of Mosul, reviving a weeks-old operation that has made slow progress so far.

The operations command for Nineveh, the province of which Mosul is the capital, said the fresh push "aimed to liberate the villages that lie east of Qayyarah".

Iraqi forces launched an offensive in late March which was billed as the first step in the drive to retake Mosul, Iraq's second city.

Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters fire an anti-tank cannon on the front line near Hasan Sham village, east of the city of Mosul on May 29, 2016 Safin Hamed (AFP/File)

The operation involves joint Iraqi forces, including Kurdish peshmerga, as well as a US Marine artillery post based outside Makhmur.

Qayyarah, which has an air field, lies to the west, on the other side of the Tigris river, but is still about 60 kilometres (35 miles) south of Mosul.

Nineveh operations command said the renewed offensive saw Iraqi forces close in on Hajj Ali, a village on the banks of the Tigris that is the last key IS position before Qayyarah.

The Iraqi forces said they were supported by air strikes from the US-led coalition.
Nepal's former Maoist PM announces rival new party

Nepal's former Maoist prime minister Baburam Bhattarai announced a new political party on Sunday in an attempt to attract legions of voters disillusioned with mainstream leaders.

Waving flags of the new centre-left party, thousands gathered at a stadium in Kathmandu where Bhattarai vowed to focus on bringing economic development to the impoverished Himalayan nation.

Bhattarai, prime minister from August 2011 to March 2013, played a key role in bringing the Maoists into the political mainstream after the end of their decade-long insurgency in 2006.

Nepalese former prime minister Baburam Bhattarai, prime minister from August 2011 to March 2013, played a key role in bringing the Maoists into the political mainstream after the end of their decade-long insurgency in 2006 Prakash Mathema (AFP/File)

But Bhattarai quit the main Maoist party last September over the adoption of Nepal's controversial new constitution, and after years of playing second fiddle to Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known as Prachanda.

"Today we announce the establishment of a new political party, Naya Shakti Nepal, an alternative political force... to fulfil the hope of justice, equality, freedom, identity, liberty and prosperity of the people," Bhattarai told the cheering crowd.

A coalition of mainly left-wing parties including the main Maoist party form the current government.

Bhattarai's move came weeks after the Maoists joined hands with hardline splinter groups to form their own new party in an attempt to bolster their strength.

The Maoists, a minority partner in the current government, have lost ground since winning a landslide victory in the Himalayan nation's first post-war elections in 2008.

Many former guerrillas have broken away from the main party in recent years, accusing its leaders of betraying their revolutionary ideals.

Analyst Lok Raj Baral said Bhattarai's new party could become a powerful player in an already crowded political landscape.

"Bhattarai has a strong image and his economic agendas can appeal to the people who are highly dissatisfied with the major political parties," said Baral, of the Nepal Centre for Contemporary Studies.
IS suicide bombers in Sirte hit pro-govt Libyan forces

Forces allied with Libya's unity government battled Sunday to retake the Islamic State group's last redoubts in its stronghold of Sirte, facing fierce resistance including a series of suicide car bombings.

They entered Sirte on Wednesday and have been advancing more quickly than expected against IS, which seized control of the coastal city last year and turned it into its main base of operations in North Africa.

The loss of Sirte would be a major setback for IS, which has also been losing territory in Syria and Iraq where the jihadist group established its self-declared "caliphate" in 2014.

Forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed unity government patrol the entrance of Sirte as they advance to recapture the city from the Islamic State (IS) group on June 10, 2016 Mahmud Turkia (AFP/File)

The jihadists are surrounded in a densely populated area of around five square kilometres (two square miles) in the city centre and putting up a stiff fight.

"Three explosions from cars driven by Islamic State suicide bombers targeted our forces in Sirte," Reda Issa, a spokesman for the unity government's forces, told AFP.

Two of the bombers hit gatherings of pro-government forces and another struck at a field hospital, he said.

At least one person was killed and four wounded in the blasts, Issa said.

Pictures published on the Facebook page of the loyalist forces showed the mangled remains of a vehicle and a crater probably caused by one of the blasts.

Several damaged military-type vehicles, some mounted with heavy guns, could also be seen.

Sunday's attacks came a day after pro-government forces said they had recaptured the port in Sirte, the home town of Libya's ousted dictator Moamer Kadhafi, and residential areas in the city's east.

- Heavy street fighting -

The forces are allied with Libya's Government of National Accord, which is backed by the international community as the country's legitimate authority.

The GNA, led by prime minister-designate Fayez al-Sarraj, has been struggling for months to assert its authority in the face of rival administrations vying for power in the chaos of post-Kadhafi Libya.

The pro-GNA forces are mostly made up of militias from western cities, notably Misrata, and the guards of oil installations that IS has repeatedly tried to seize.

They have engaged in heavy street fighting with the jihadists, deploying tanks, rocket launchers and artillery in the fight for the city.

The Misrata militia forces -- who have an arsenal that includes MiG fighter jets and attack helicopters -- have also carried out dozens of air raids against IS.

The operation announced on Sunday on Facebook that it had launched fresh air strikes against IS positions and vehicles in central Sirte.

Much of the fighting has been around a sprawling Kadhafi-era conference centre which once hosted international summits but now houses an IS command centre.

IS has responded to the offensive with machineguns, mortar rounds and sniper fire, as well as car bombings.

A medical official in Misrata said on Saturday that at least 137 pro-GNA fighters had been killed and 500 wounded since the operation began with a sweep towards Sirte on May 12.

- US hails 'rapid progress' -

Foreign intelligence services estimate IS has 5,000 fighters in Libya, but its strength inside Sirte is unclear.

The establishment of an IS bastion in northern Libya, just across the Mediterranean from Europe, raised widespread fears.

Sirte has an international airport and a port and lies just 350 kilometres (220 miles) from the Italian coast.

Foreign powers backing the GNA have welcomed the offensive on Sirte, where IS has carried out atrocities against residents and set up a base to train foreign jihadists.

The UN envoy to Libya, Martin Kobler, said Saturday on Twitter that he was "impressed" by the "rapid progress" of pro-GNA forces.

He also urged "all fighters to respect international humanitarian law," saying "civilians must not be targeted".

Most Sirte residents have fled but officials have said some 30,000 civilians remain in the city.

Washington's anti-IS envoy Brett McGurk also said Friday he was "encouraged by the progress" being made in Sirte, adding there was a good chance IS forces there "could crack pretty quickly".

The United States and Britain are reported to be providing intelligence support for the operation, with the Washington Post reporting earlier this month that a small group of US special forces had been sent to Libya to work with the militias.

Analysts have warned that retaking Sirte would not spell the end of IS in Libya, where the jihadists have fed on political and military divisions since the 2011 uprising that ousted and killed Kadhafi.

Loyalist forces enter Sirte, IS bastion Kun TIAN, Thomas SAINT-CRICQ (AFP)

Forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed unity government used tanks, rocket launchers and artillery, in heavy street fighting to retake Sirte from the Islamic State group Mahmud Turkia (AFP)
Kuwait orders probe into US Dow Chemical deal: report

Kuwait has asked the public prosecutor to open an investigation into a scrapped deal with US firm Dow Chemical that resulted in a $2.2 billion fine, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Citing an unnamed high-ranking source, Al-Qabas daily said the government last week sent a large number of documents to the public prosecutor all the details about the deal.

The documents included the names of officials who have been associated with the $17.4 billion joint venture, the daily said.

Kuwait and US petrochemicals giant Dow Chemical signed the deal in 2008 but the emirate unilaterally scrapped it later in the same year due to a political dispute between the government and parliament Yorick Jansens (BELGA/AFP/File)

Kuwait and US petrochemicals giant Dow Chemical signed the deal in 2008 but the emirate unilaterally scrapped it later in the same year due to a political dispute between the government and parliament.

The International Chamber of Commerce, acting as an arbitrator, later ordered Kuwait to pay a penalty of $2.2 billion for scrapping the deal.

The government paid the fine in May 2013 although parliament had warned against making the payment before conducting a probe.

The oil-rich Gulf state's move comes six months after a parliamentary probe into the case urged the government to prosecute 24 ex-officials, including two former oil ministers and several top former industry executives.
Taiwan rejects ex-president's Hong Kong trip

Taiwan's new government on Sunday refused former president Ma Ying-jeou permission to visit Hong Kong, citing national security considerations, sparking an angry response from his party.

Ma, who stepped down on May 20 after eight years, applied to the presidential office early this month for permission to make a trip on June 15 to the semi-autonomous southern Chinese city.

He was to deliver a keynote speech at the Society of Publishers in Asia awards.

Ma Ying-jeou, pictured in January, stepped down as Taiwan's president on May 20 after eight years in charge Sandy Cheng (AFP/File)

Ma, an advocate of rapprochement between Taiwan and China, was to have spoken about cross-strait relations and the Northeast Asia situation, according to his office.

But the office of new President Tsai Ing-wen, from the China-sceptic Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), rejected his application, which was reviewed by a special panel grouping senior officials from various government agencies.

The DPP trounced Ma's Kuomintang party in presidential and parliamentary elections in January.

"The presidential office has decided not to approve the former president's application," Tsai's spokesman Alex Huang told reporters.

Huang termed Ma's application as "sensitive", "unique" and "crucial in a national security perspective".

"The former president had been in charge of or in contact with massive amounts of top state secrets, and the plan came about less than a month after his retirement," Huang said.

"Hong Kong has been a highly sensitive area considered from Taiwan's national security point of view," he said, adding Ma must respect a state secrets law introduced in 2003.

Ma's office strongly condemned the decision, saying the purpose of the planned trip was transparent. The suggestion that secrets might be leaked "is disrespectful of a retired president and has damaged the international image of Taiwan's freedom and democracy".

While the DPP urged Ma "to look at and accept this decision in a rational manner", the Kuomintang accused the new government of using a "ridiculous" excuse to block Ma's trip.

Ma was born in Hong Kong in 1950 to parents from the Chinese mainland. That has become something of a political handicap as Taiwan started to develop a more pronounced sense of its own identity.

China and Taiwan split in 1949 after the Kuomintang lost a civil war on the mainland to the communists and fled to the island.

Beijing still considers the island part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.

Tensions eased markedly and 21 agreements between the two former bitter rivals were signed during Ma's tenure.

But public sentiment in Taiwan has recently turned against closer ties with Beijing, with voters saying trade deals have been agreed in secret and not benefited ordinary citizens.

Ties have become frosty since Tsai won Taiwan's presidential election as Beijing does not trust her independence-leaning party.

Chinese leaders have repeatedly offer to reunite Taiwan with the mainland using the "One country, two systems" adopted to re-integrate Hong Kong and Macau.

The proposal has been flatly rejected by Taiwan.

China last month warned Tsai against seeking independence, cautioning that peace would be impossible if she made any moves to formally break away.

The remarks came just hours after her inauguration speech struck a conciliatory note, calling for a "positive dialogue" with China.

Taiwan new President Tsai Ing-wen(R) waves as outgoing president Ma Ying-jeou (L) looks on during the inauguration ceremony in Taipei on May 20, 2016 Sam Yeh (AFP/File)
Orlando gay club carnage: Pulsing music, strobe lights, then gunfire

It was a Saturday night at the Pulse nightclub, which could mean only one thing: a raucous, high-spirited celebration that would not end until the small hours.

Strobe lights flashed and music blared at the popular lounge, home to one of the hottest party scenes in Florida -- and where 50 people died and 53 were injured in the country's worst mass shooting.

Just a few days earlier, Orlando's vibrant LGBT community had marked the annual Gay Days celebration, one of the biggest events anywhere in the United States dedicated to gay pride.

Police cars outside of the Pulse Night Club in Orlando on June 12, 2016

The partying was to go on at Pulse, a club known for its drag shows and one of several gay-friendly establishments in downtown Orlando's vibrant club scene.

"Tonight 21 and up is FREEEEEEEE before 11 pm," Kenya Michaels, a well-known Puerto Rican drag queen who was slated to perform at the club, posted on Facebook earlier Saturday.

"Come see me show time at 12 am at Pulse Orlando Doors open at 9 pm. My sister Jasmine international is performing with me," posted Michaels -- who escaped the shooting unharmed.

Scores of people turned out for the show: A contest of dancing, lip-synching drag queens took the floor one by one, showing their best dance moves, sashaying in high heels, as patrons laughed, nursed their cocktails, tossed dollar bills onto the stage.

One dancer with swiveling hips and a Beyonce-like mane slinked around podium, as video footage posted online on Periscope captured the revelry.

- Sound like drumbeats -

A crowd of patrons thronged the area just off-stage, drinking and partying, amid a crescendo of laughter.

Then, at around 2 am, with the party in full gear, barely discernible under the cheers and the throbbing music, were the sounds of what one reveler said sounded like drumbeats.

Christopher Hanson said at first he thought the loud, rhythmic sounds were part of the music "until you heard too many shots. It was like, bang, bang, bang, bang."

"I just saw bodies going down and I was ordering a drink at the bar. I fell down. I crawled out. People were trying to escape out the back," he told CNN, adding that he didn't see the shooter.

"When I got across the street, there were people -- blood everywhere."

The management of the Pulse club, grasping the gravity of the situation, quickly posted an emergency warning on its Facebook page.

"Everyone get out of Pulse and keep running," it wrote.

The carnage was so unthinkable that patrons couldn't make sense of it, even as they watched their friends and loved ones falling all around them.

"It was like complete chaos. If I can relate it to anything, I would say it was like a scene out of a movie," Janiel Gonzalez told AFP.

"People were screaming 'Help me, help me, I'm trapped'. And people were getting trampled. There was no clear exit sign at the club, so we didn't know which door to take or where to go."

Club-goers -- who just minutes earlier were dancing without a care in the world -- suddenly were simply trying to escape with their lives.

Some told US media they were able to crawl out of the front of the establishment. Others ran out the back, while still others scrambled out of windows.

Many, however, did not make it out, including some who reportedly sought shelter in club's bathroom.

- 'We're looking for him' -

The shooting eventually became a hostage situation after the gunman barricaded himself in the club with scores of captive patrons.

The standoff would not be resolved until more than three hours later, when police used an armored vehicle to ram down part of the building, eventually killing the gunman in a hail of bullets.

About 300 relatives had gathered Sunday afternoon in a hotel behind the Orlando hospital where most of the victims had been taken.

The family members, many of them Hispanic, were hugging, crying and checking their phones for news in the packed lobby.

Angel Mendez, who was outside the hospital, held up his phone and showed a reporter a photo of his brother.

"He was inside the club, we're very desperate," he said. "We're looking for him, this is something that has taken Florida by surprise but we know there is a God that can have control over this family."

Gonzalez said he was still looking for three friends, while two were hospitalized with gunshot wounds.

"A place that we normally go to just to hang out, have fun, dance and normally there's no issues, for something like that to happen is just devastating," he said.

People receive information about the Pulse nightclub shooting outside the hotel where family members are gathering in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016 Gregg Newton (AFP)
Air strikes kill 21 at market in Syria's Idlib: monitor

Air strikes on a market in Syria's Al-Qaeda-held city of Idlib killed at least 21 civilians including five children on Sunday, a monitor said.

It was not clear who carried out the raids on the northwestern provincial capital, which is controlled by Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front and its allies, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Footage shared by Observatory showed a burnt-out car as emergency workers trained water hoses on a tall building.

Smoke billows from the site of a reported air strike by Syrian government forces in the rebel-held northwestern province of Idlib on September 5, 2013 Abu Amar Al-Taftnaz (ABU AMAR AL-TAFTANAZ/AFP/File)

Below a haze of smoke, a red plastic container lay empty among the rubble.

The Britain-based Observatory relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria for its information.

It says it determines whether strikes were carried out by Syrian, Russian or US-led coalition aircraft based on the location of the raids, flight patterns and the types of planes and munitions involved.

The Observatory said Russian air strikes killed 23 civilians in strikes on Idlib city on May 31, but Russia denied carrying out raids there that day.

Russia launched air strikes in support of the Damascus regime in September.

Al-Nusra is not party to a Russian- and US-brokered ceasefire between the regime and non-jihadist rebels that began on February 27 and is now in tatters.

An alliance between Al-Nusra and rebel groups drove the regime out of Idlib province last year.
IS kills 18 civilians trying to flee Fallujah

Fighters from the Islamic State group killed at least 18 members of two families as they attempted to flee the besieged jihadist bastion of Fallujah, relatives said on Sunday.

IS has been using civilians as human shields to defend its stronghold since Iraqi forces launched a vast offensive on May 22-23, on multiple occasions shooting those who tried to escape.

Civilians who reached the safety of displacement camps south of the city and several aid organisations have reported cases of residents being shot dead, mostly as they tried to cross the Euphrates River to reach Iraqi government forces.

According to aid groups running displacements camps outside Fallujah, only small numbers of residents have managed to flee the city centre Ahmad Al-Rubaye (AFP/File)

In the worst known case so far, IS fighters killed at least 18 members of two families Friday as they attempted to flee, southeast of the city, relatives and a security officer told AFP by phone.

"A number of residents were trying to flee and as they neared the Al-Salam intersection, Daesh (IS) opened fire on them, killing 18 and wounding dozens," a senior officer at the Joint Operations Command told AFP.

The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to talk to the press, said the army was able to rescue some of the wounded.

Relatives said the initial group that tried to sneak out of IS-controlled areas on Friday included around 100 individuals, including a majority of women and children.

The group were all from the same two families -- Albu Hatem and Albu Saleh -- and had made a previous failed attempt to leave days earlier.

"When they got near the intersection, which is the meeting point with the Iraqi forces, two gunmen on motorbikes arrived and sprayed them with gunfire," said Ahmed al-Ghneim, a relative.

Two of the survivors, relatives from the Albu Saleh family, are staying at his home in Amriyat al-Fallujah, south of Fallujah.

"Some of the residents jumped into the canal, some fled to a nearby house. When they entered it, it blew up on them because it was booby-trapped," he said.

"Some survivors were forced to go back inside Fallujah. Daesh took 17 of the wounded to Fallujah hospital," Ghneim said.

Sami Abu Hatem, a relative who was already living in a camp in Amriyat al-Fallujah, confirmed that version of events.

"Three of my direct relatives, a man with two young children, were among those massacred," he said.

Abu Hatem he said he knew of 18 members of the group being killed and added that more were feared missing after jumping in the nearby canal.

According to aid groups running displacements camps outside Fallujah, only small numbers of residents have managed to flee the city centre.

Most of the 24,000 people who have escaped IS rule since the start of the operation three weeks ago are from outlying rural areas.
Libya's Sirte - from Kadhafi to the jihadist IS

Forces allied with Libya's unity government are closing in on Islamic State group fighters in Sirte in a month-long operation aimed at ousting the jihadists from their North African stronghold.

Here is some background on Sirte and its fall to IS.

Strategic importance

Forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed unity government attempt to evacuate a passenger stuck inside a vehicle after it caught on fire following a car-bomb attack on June 2, 2016 Mahmud Turkia (AFP/File)

Sirte is on the Mediterranean coast roughly half way between Libya's capital Tripoli in the west and Benghazi in the east.

A major port city, it lies just 350 kilometres (220 miles) from the Italian coast.

It is also a mere 150 kilometres west of Libya's main oil-producing area and export terminals.

Oil is a vital source of income for Libya, and several groups have fought to control its wells and pipelines since the fall of Moamer Kadhafi in 2011. The IS presence in Sirte had raised fears it would attempt to seize the fields to fund its North Africa operations.

Population

Sirte used to have around 120,000 residents, most of them in the city centre or spread along the coast.

All but around 30,000 have fled since IS took over in June last year, a spokesman for pro-government forces, Reda Issa, told AFP.

Most people in Sirte belong to three major tribes including the Kadhadfa tribe of Kadhafi.

Infrastructure

Sirte has a large port, an international airport and an important military base. It also hosts one of North Africa's largest conference venues, the Ouagadougou conference centre which IS militants have been using as a command centre.

Kadhafi era

The home town of the former dictator, Sirte had a privileged position in Libya during his four-decade rule, not least because many residents belonged to the Kadhadfa tribe.

Post-Kadhafi

Sirte suffered major damage during the 2011 uprising.

Kadhafi loyalists used the city as a base to attack rebels in both the west and the east.

The dictator himself fled there after Tripoli fell to rebels at the end of August 2011. After Sirte also fell, gunmen tracked him down and killed him.

Sirte paid the price for supporting the regime. Heavy fighting destroyed entire streets. Residents accuse post-Kadhafi authorities of marginalising them in revenge for the dictator's rule.

Jihadist takeover

IS announced on June 9 last year it had captured Sirte. It has used it as a rear base, training foreign fighters to carry out operations overseas.

It hung its flags along the main streets, forced people to pray five times a day and banned women from leaving home without a male chaperone.

The group ruled Sirte through fear, brutally punishing dissent.

In May, Human Rights Watch said IS had beheaded or shot at least 49 people in Sirte for alleged crimes including blasphemy, sorcery and spying.

Forces loyal to the UN-backed Government of National Accord have been closing in on IS in the city since the operation began in mid-May.

IS forces are holed up in a dense residential district near the city centre, suggesting that the battle has become a street fight that could devastate the city even further.
Safe corridor allows 4,000 to flee Iraq's Fallujah

The Iraqi army has established a safe corridor that has allowed 4,000 Fallujah residents to flee the jihadist-held city in 24 hours, the Norwegian Refugee Council said on Sunday.

The safe passage leads to the southwest of Fallujah, along a road where the Islamic State group killed at least 18 members of two families trying to flee on Friday.

"The army opened a safe corridor for families fleeing from Fallujah through Al-Salam intersection," an officer with the Joint Operations Command supervising the fight against IS said.

Displaced Iraqis who have been evacuated from their villages by government forces south of besieged IS group bastion of Fallujah in a safe zone in Subayat on June 12, 2016 Moadh Al-Dulaimi (AFP)

Around 24,000 people have fled IS rule since Iraqi forces launched an offensive on Fallujah on May 22-23, but very few have been able to leave central Fallujah where the jihadists are using civilians as human shields.

"The latest figure we have is that 4,000 individuals have managed to get out over the past 24 hours," the NRC's regional media adviser Karl Schembri said.

"We are of course relieved, but it also means we are completely overwhelmed as a humanitarian community," he told AFP, warning that the available resources of safe drinking water would not meet the needs of all the displaced for much longer.

The NRC's Schembri said that the general aid effort in Iraq was massively underfunded, hampering the delivery of urgent relief.

In the short term, he said, the response to the Fallujah operation would require $10 million (8.9 million euros) over the next six months if another 35,000 people were displaced.

Before the safe passage was opened on Saturday, the NRC estimated that 50,000 civilians were trapped inside Fallujah.

- IS killed 18 -

Residents had been taking huge risks to flee, walking along mined roads and trying to cross the Euphrates River at any cost.

In the worst known incident so far, 18 people were killed by IS as they approached the Al-Salam intersection on Friday.

"A number of residents were trying to flee and as they neared the Al-Salam intersection, Daesh (IS) opened fire on them, killing 18 and wounding dozens," a senior officer at the Joint Operations Command told AFP.

The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to talk to the press, said the army was able to rescue some of the wounded.

Relatives said the initial group that tried to sneak out of IS-controlled areas on Friday included around 100 people, the majority being women and children.

The group were all from the same two families -- Albu Hatem and Albu Saleh -- and had made a previous failed attempt to leave days earlier.

"When they got near the intersection, which is the meeting point with the Iraqi forces, two gunmen on motorbikes arrived and sprayed them with gunfire," said Ahmed al-Ghneim, a relative.

- Steady progress -

Two survivors, relatives from the Albu Saleh family, are staying at his home in Amriyat al-Fallujah, south of Fallujah.

"Some of the residents jumped into the canal, some fled to a nearby house. When they entered it, it blew up on them because it was booby-trapped," he said.

"Some survivors were forced to go back inside Fallujah. Daesh took 17 of the wounded to Fallujah hospital," Ghneim said.

Sami Abu Hatem, a relative who was already living in a camp in Amriyat al-Fallujah, confirmed that version of events.

"Three of my direct relatives, a man with two young children, were among those massacred," he said.

Abu Hatem said he knew of 18 members of the group being killed and added that more were feared missing after jumping into the canal.

"This is a major crime, it's a massacre, entire families are being eliminated," he said.

Ghneim said IS smugglers would charge $100 per person as guides to avoid bombs and booby traps.

"My family walked like that with all the other people for six kilometres (3.5 miles)," he said.

NRC and the other groups organising the relief effort around Fallujah said they expected more civilians to flee in the coming days.

Iraqi elite forces have been making slow but steady progress in the city centre in recent days.

On Sunday, they retook another district in central Fallujah that brings them within three kilometres of the main government compound, Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al-Saadi, the operation's overall commander, told AFP.

Also Sunday, Iraqi forces backed by US-led coalition air strikes advanced towards Qayyarah south of the main IS hub of Mosul, reviving a weeks-old operation that has made slow progress so far.

Iraqis who reached displacement camps south of Fallujah and several aid organisations have reported cases of residents being shot dead, mostly as they tried to cross the Euphrates river to reach government forces Moadh Al-Dulaimi (AFP)
Orlando gunman's father says attack 'nothing to do with religion': US media

The father of the suspected gunman in Sunday's Orlando mass shooting said on Sunday he believed his son was motivated by hatred of gays -- not by his Muslim religion.

"This had nothing to do with religion," Mir Seddique told NBC News. He said his son, Omar Mateen, recently lashed out in his presence after witnessing a gay couple embracing in downtown Miami, and suggested the incident may have triggered the atrocity.

"He saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry," Seddique told the network.
Raids on Syria market kill 21, hundreds flee IS bastion

Air strikes on a market in Syria's Al-Qaeda-held city of Idlib killed at least 21 civilians Sunday, as hundreds fled a besieged Islamic State group bastion near the Turkish border.

Five children were among those killed in the air raids on Idlib, which is held by Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front and its allies, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Peace talks towards ending Syria's five-year war have stalled, with no immediate end in sight to a conflict that has killed 280,000 people.

Syrian Civil Defence members, known as the White Helmets, gather at a site following air strikes on the rebel-held northwestern city of Idlib, on June 12, 2016 Omar Haj Kadour (AFP)

It was not clear who carried out the Idlib strikes, but the Observatory has reported previous air raids by the regime and its Russian ally on Idlib province, which is also controlled by Al-Nusra and rebel allies.

Footage the Observatory said was filmed after the Idlib strikes showed emergency workers training water hoses on a tall building amid a haze of smoke.

In Maaret al-Numan, an area south of the provincial capital, unidentified warplanes also killed at least six civilians including a woman and her four children, the Observatory said.

Russia launched air strikes in support of the Damascus regime in September, allowing forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad to advance against the rebels and IS.

The Britain-based Observatory relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information.

It says it determines what aircraft carried out raids based on their location, flight patterns and the types of planes and munitions involved.

The Observatory said Russian air strikes killed 23 civilians in strikes on Idlib city on May 31, but Russia denied carrying out raids there that day.

Suspected government strikes killed at least 37 civilians in Maaret al-Numan in April, sparking condemnation from Syria's opposition amid faltering peace talks.

- Civilians flee IS bastion -

Meanwhile, hundreds of civilians escaped the IS stronghold of Manbij in nearby Aleppo province on Sunday, helped by a US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance surrounding the town.

Tens of thousands had been trapped inside Manbij after the alliance encircled the town on Friday in a major blow to the jihadist group controlling it.

"Around 800 civilians fled on foot towards areas held by the Syrian Democratic Forces alliance south of the town," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The SDF "transported them to safer areas".

Those still inside the town were terrified by heavy air strikes in the area, Abdel Rahman said, and food was becoming scarce after the SDF alliance blocked all roads in and out.

At least 223 IS fighters and 28 SDF troops had been killed -- as well as 41 civilians in coalition air raids -- since the alliance offensive against Manbij began on May 31, according to the Observatory.

Manbij lies at the heart of the last stretch of IS-controlled territory along Turkey's border.

The siege has severed a key IS supply route that had channelled money and weapons from the Turkish border to the group's de facto Syrian capital of Raqa city.

IS has come under attack on several fronts since declaring a cross-border "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq in 2014.

Millions of people have been displaced since Syria's civil war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

Peace talks hit deadlock after the opposition walked out of negotiations in April over the escalating violence and lack of humanitarian access.

Near Damascus, regime forces dropped 44 so-called barrel bombs -- crude, unguided explosive devices -- on rebel-held Daraya, the Observatory said.

The attacks prevented for the third straight day distribution of food aid delivered on Thursday for the first time since 2012.

The Syrian opposition in exile denounced what it labelled a "vicious act".

"There is still no aid distribution and people are still holed up at home for fear of the bombing," Shadi Matar, a member of the opposition local council in Daraya, told AFP.

Map of Syria locating Idlib, site of a deadly airstrike V.Breschi/V.Lefai (AFP)
The worst mass shootings in US history

A shooting spree by a heavily armed man at a gay nightclub in Florida early Sunday left 50 people dead, making it the worst mass shooting in US history.

- The worst mass shootings in America -

-- Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016: Fifty people die and another 53 are injured when a heavily-armed gunman opens fire and seizes hostages at a gay nightclub.

People hold a vigil outside the Orlando Regional Medical Center in the aftermath of a mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016 Gregg Newton (AFP)

-- Blacksburg, Virginia, April 16, 2007: A 23-year-old student of Korean origin goes on a rampage at Virginia Tech University, killing 32 people before committing suicide.

-- Newtown, Connecticut, December 14, 2012: A young man kills 26 people, including 20 children at Sandy Hook elementary school. He also fatally shoots his mother. He commits suicide.

-- Killeen, Texas, October 16, 1991: A man shoots dead 22 people in a restaurant and then kills himself. Another wounded victim dies later.

- Other gun attacks that have marked US history --

-- Littleton, Colorado, April 20, 1999: Two teenage boys shoot and kill 12 classmates and a teacher at Columbine High School before killing themselves.

-- Aurora, Colorado, July 20, 2012: A man kills 12 people and injures 70 more when he opens fire at a movie theater showing a late-night premiere of a Batman film in a suburb of Denver. The gunman James Holmes is given a life jail sentence with no chance of parole.

-- Fort Hood, Texas, November 5, 2009. US army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan opens fire at his military base, killing 13 people and wounding 42, before being overpowered by police. The shooting was the worst such incident on a military base in the United States.
India's Mallya says being deemed 'guilty without trial'

Indebted tycoon Vijay Mallya on Sunday accused Indian government agencies of deeming him "guilty without trial" and lambasted the countrys financial crime fighters for leading a "heavily biased" investigation against him.

The flamboyant 60-year-old beer baron left India in March for the UK, under hot pursuit from banks over $1.34 billion in loans granted to his collapsed carrier Kingfisher Airlines and yet to be repaid.

He has repeatedly failed to appear before investigators at the Enforcement Directorate, a financial crimes agency, who suspect him of misusing funds loaned by a state bank.

Force India Chairman Vijay Mallya attends a press conference after practice for the United States Formula One Grand Prix at Circuit of The Americas on October 23, 2015 Mark Thompson (Getty/AFP/File)

In a rare statement, Mallya responded to reports that India's federal investigative agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, was taking further steps to probe him and the airline.

"It is, indeed, sad and disappointing that the thousands of documents submitted by us and interrogation of several executives seems insufficient to convince them there has been no wrongdoing, he said.

I have maintained and continue to maintain that there has been absolutely no misappropriation or diversion of funds and strenuously deny any allegation to the contrary.

Mallya rejected reports he had refused to go before the Enforcement Directorate, which has issued three summons for his appearance, but said he had simply sought time to sell assets to pay employees, tax authorities and the banks.

He added that he had offered to appear before officials via video conference.

"It surely appears as if these agencies are pursuing a heavily biased investigation and are already holding me guilty without trial after which I need to prove my innocence, he said.

"Purely civil matters such as loan recovery are being connected with criminal allegations without any basis whatsoever.

A spokesman for the Enforcement Directorate was not immediately available for comment.

The government revoked Mallya's diplomatic passport in April after he repeatedly failed to appear before investigators.

Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in May the government would seek to extradite the indebted tycoon after Britain turned down its request to deport him.

Once dubbed the King of Good Times for his lavish lifestyle, the entrepreneurs massive debt has become a symbol of Indian banks' vast volume of bad loans -- meaning in default or close to it -- seen as a threat to financial stability in Asia's third-largest economy.

In an interview with the Financial Times in April, Mallya said he was prepared to settle millions of dollars owed to banks but had no plans to leave Britain.

A former MP, he resigned from his seat in the parliament's upper house ahead of a likely expulsion over his huge debt defaults.
Israel PM condemns 'horrific attack' on Florida club

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday sent his condolences to US President Barack Obama after 50 people were shot dead in a Florida nightclub for gays.

"On behalf of the people and government of Israel I extend our deepest condolences to the American people following last night's horrific attack on the LGBT community in Orlando," he said in a statement issued in English.

"Israel stands shoulder to shoulder with the United States at this moment of tragic loss," Netanyahu added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pictured on March 6, 2016, exteded condolences to Americans after the Orlando nightclub shooting Abir Sultan (Pool/AFP/File)

President Reuven Rivlin also sent condolences "and prayers for a speedy recovery of the injured".

"This attack against the LGBT community in Orlando, is as cowardly as it is abhorrent," he wrote in an English-language statement.

"Once again we feel the pain of terrible loss as we see the blood spilled of young and innocent people."
Orlando shooter homophobe and wife beater: reports

People close to the gunman behind the attack on a gay nightclub in Florida that left 50 dead, paint a picture of a violent and prejudiced young man.

The suspect, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, is a Muslim American of Afghan descent and law enforcement were investigating whether he had ties to or was inspired by Islamist extremism, after a source linked to the Islamic State group claimed the attack.

The FBI said he apparently made a 911 call just before the massacre to claim allegiance to the Islamic State group.

An image from the Myspace page of Omar Mateen, 29, a US citizen of Afghani descent from Port St. Lucie, Florida

Sunday's attack, the worst mass shooting in modern US history, was carried out at Orlando's Pulse nightclub, a well-known gay hangout.

But relatives interviewed by US media said Mateen, who worked as a security officer and had a wife and young son, was not especially religious.

They did, however, describe a man who had anti-gay views, mental health problems and was physically abusive to his ex-wife.

Mateen's father, Mir Seddique, said his son had recently been offended to see two gay men expressing affection on a Miami street.

"We were in downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music," the shocked father told NBC News in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

"And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry," Seddique said.

The father is a minor celebrity in Afghan political circles, hosting an occasional television show in which he expressed hardline views.

In the "Durand Jirga Show," available on YouTube, he rails against the Pakistani government and announced a quixotic bid to seek the Afghan presidency.

"We are in shock like the whole country," Seddique added. "This had nothing to do with religion."

- 'Mentally ill' -

Mateen's ex-wife said he was violent and mentally unstable -- but not a religious extremist.

"A few months after we were married I saw his instability, and I saw that he was bipolar and he would get mad out of nowhere," Sitora Yusufiy told reporters outside her home in Boulder, Colorado.

"After a few months he started abusing me physically ... not allowing me to speak to my family, keeping me hostage from them."

Yusufiy, who met Mateen online and married him in 2009, said he was a practicing Muslim but showed no signs of radicalization.

"There was no sign of any of this at all," she said.

She noted that Mateen was "mentally unstable and mentally ill" and had a history of steroid use.

Steroids can cause mental problems including paranoia and delusional thoughts.

When they split, "my family literally rescued me... they had to pull me out of his arms and find an emergency flight."

The pair were divorced in 2011, according to a court document seen by AFP, and Yusufiy said she has not had contact with Mateen in years.

- Regular at mosque -

The imam of the mosque where Mateen worshipped said he came to evening prayers three or four times a week, bringing his son who is about four or five years old.

"He would pray and his son would play," said Syed Shafeeq Rahman of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, who has known Mateen since 2003 when he became the imam.

Mateen did not socialize, leaving when services ended.

He didn't talk but would smile and shake hands, Rahman told AFP.

"I never expected this," Rahman said, holding a Koran in his hand as he spoke with reporters. "We teach peace and justice."

"It must be some kind of psychological problem or anger problem," the imam said, adding that Mateen might have been radicalized on the Internet.

Bedar Bakht, who knew Mateen as a boy, said he saw him less than a week ago at the mosque with his young son, and that he seemed sad and was very quiet.

Mateen liked to talk about religion and could be intimidating when he argued, he said.

"He was very direct and really into bodybuilding," Bakht said. "He was huge at one point.

"He would tell you if he didn't agree with you," he said. "He may have had some anger issues."

But Bakht said he never saw Mateen speak with hatred of any other group.

"He was respectful," he said. "I never heard him insulting women or gays."

Mateen owned a small caliber handgun and worked as a guard at a secure facility for juvenile delinquents.

Authorities said he bought a handgun and a assault rifle two days before the attack.

According to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services website, he had a gun license set to expire in September of next year.

The FBI said Mateen was investigated twice for possible extremist views and contact with a US suicide bomber in 2013 and 2014 but never prosecuted.

Police block the entrance to the apartment building where shooting suspect Omar Mateen is believed to have lived on June 12, 2016 in Fort Pierce, Florida Joe Raedle (Getty/AFP)

First responders are seen in front of a police tent near the area of the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub on in Orlando, Florida on June 12, 2016 Mandel Ngan (AFP)
Explosion rocks bank HQ in Lebanese capital

A bomb blast rocked the western part of the Lebanese capital late Sunday, with the interior minister saying the target was a major bank.

An AFP correspondent saw almost all the entire glass facade of the headquarters of BLOM BANK, one of the country's largest, blown out, with debris littering the ground.

Interior Minister Nuhad Mashnuq told AFP a bomb containing about 3-4 kilos (6.6-8.8 pounds) of explosives had been "placed behind the back wall of BLOM BANK".

Lebanese police cordon off an area covered in shattered glass following an explosion near a major bank in the western part of the Lebanese capital Beirut on June 12, 2016 Anwar Amro (AFP)

"It is clear that the bank was the target," he said.

Mashnuq gave no further details, but in comments to LBCI television channel he said the blast was "different" from other explosions that have occurred in Lebanon over the past few years.

Veteran Druze politician Walid Jumblatt linked the bombing to a law voted in December by the US Congress to impose sanctions on banks that deal with the Shiite movement Hezbollah.

In May, Lebanon's central bank instructed the country's banks and financial institutions to comply with the US law.

Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc warned at the time that the move could push Lebanon towards bankruptcy.

"We have entered a cycle of attacks," Jumblatt told LBC television, and called for a "roadmap between Hezbollah and (Lebanese) banks" to ease tensions.

Jumblatt also told the Arabic-language newspaper An-Nahar that he had "issued a call for a calm dialogue concerning the American sanctions... but some are refusing that."

The blast "is a blow aimed against the economy and the banking sector," he told An-Nahar.

Washington has labelled Hezbollah a global terrorist group since 1995, accusing it of a long list of attacks including the bombing of the US Embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983.

BLOM BANK director general Saad al-Azhari told reporters that no threats had been received by the bank ahead of Sunday's blast.

A civil defence official said one person had been lightly wounded in the attack.

There was confusion over where the bomb had been placed.

The National News Agency said it had been left under a car, but police chief General Ibrahim Basbous said it had been put in a plant pot.

The AFP correspondent saw damaged cars near the scene of the blast in the Verdun business district before an army patrol arrived and kept journalists back.

Twin bombings in the densely populated neighbourhood of Burj al-Barajneh in November last year killed 44 people. They were claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.

Burj al-Barajneh is in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where the Hezbollah group holds sway.

Last year's twin bombings came after a string of attacks in 2013 and 2014 targeting the group by Sunni extremist factions which cited Hezbollah's military support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Weapons, ammo found in car ahead of LA gay pride parade

Police in California found weapons, ammunition and bomb-making material in a car belonging to a man who told them he was planning to attend Gay Pride festivities on Sunday, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The discovery came hours after the deadliest mass shooting in US history, which took place at a gay nightclub on the other side of the country in Orlando, Florida.

Fifty people were killed and 53 wounded after a gunman identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, a US citizen of Afghan descent, opened fire in a shooting that US President Barack Obama was calling a terror attack and hate crime.

Police investigate a car in Santa Monica, California on June 12, 2016 Jason Redmond (AFP)

The LA Times cited a law enforcement source as saying police discovered the weapons cache after responding to a complaint about a prowler in the beachside city of Santa Monica, west of downtown Los Angeles.

The man, who was arrested, told police he was waiting for a friend.

Santa Monica Police spokesman Saul Rodriguez told the newspaper that man was from Indiana but that authorities "were not aware of what the suspect's intentions were at this point."

The FBI was investigating possible links between the man and the Gay Pride event, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said in a statement.

Sheriff's officials noted that there were no "specific or credible" threats against the greater Los Angeles area, but had stepped-up security at the Gay Pride event.

Some 400,000 people had been expected to attend a Gay Pride parade on Sunday before the Orlando shooting took place.

It went ahead, but with a slightly somber mood.

Attorney Perry Handy, 48, was watching the parade with friends but said he had thought twice about coming out after hearing about the car full of weapons and ammunition.

"We're all still in shock. I've been coming to the parade for 20 some years and last night's event was clearly a step backward in our culture," he told AFP.

Alice Stanford, 46, who was marching in the parade with a union representing hotel employees, said participants were "heavy-hearted" but would not be kept away.

"Our lives go on and we are not going to be stopped by fear and violence. We celebrate who we are in spite of events like this," she said, wearing a T-shirt that read "Love has no borders."
'Stop hate' gay community urges after Orlando attack

Shocked by the Orlando massacre, gays around the world on Monday flocked to vigils for the victims of one of the deadliest attacks in the history of the gay rights movement.

From Berlin to Bangkok, gay and lesbian groups organised gatherings in solidarity with Americans after Sunday's massacre at a gay nightclub that left 49 people dead in the worst mass shooting in modern US history.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge was lit with the rainbow colours of the gay community flag as hundreds gathered to condemn terror and homophobia.

A flag stands a half-mast during a memorial service for the victims of the Orlando shooting, during a gay pride rally in San Diego, on June 12, 2016 Sandy Huffaker (AFP)

"This could have happened anywhere," Australian Paul Savage told AFP at a candlelit vigil for the victims on the busy strip that hosts Sydney's annual Mardi Gras pride march.

"He could easily have walked into a bar in Sydney," he said, pointing out that Australia's tighter gun laws were "much more helpful" in preventing the mass shootings that claim hundreds of lives each year in the United States.

- 'Could have been us' -

In Berlin, more than 100 people gathered outside the US embassy to lay flowers, light candles and wave rainbow flags.

Helmut Metzner, a leading member of the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany, condemned what he called an attack on the global gay "family".

"It could have hit any single one of us," he told AFP, adding: "We must stand united and defend our lifestyle and not back down. That is what the terrorists want, and that's a favour we won't do them."

US President Barack Obama denounced the attack at the Pulse nightclub by slain shooter Omar Mateen, which also wounded 53, as "an act of terror and an act of hate".

In an outpouring of solidarity similar to that seen after the Paris and Brussels attacks, social media were awash with messages of support for the families of the victims.

Using hashtags such as #loveislove or #lovewins, many shared images of ribbons -- some black, others carrying the Stars and the Stripes of the US flag on one side and rainbow colours on the other.

Global landmarks were swathed in the colours of the rainbow, with Paris' Eiffel Tower set to follow suit Monday night after similar displays lit up New York's One World Trade Center and Sydney's iconic bridge.

"Paris is with Orlando," tweeted Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, which is still recovering from the November jihadist attacks in which 130 people were killed.

The Islamic State group, which was behind the Paris and Brussels attacks, also claimed responsibility for the Florida bloodshed.

- 'Stop hate' -

Whether Mateen, a US national of Afghan origin who had homophobic tendencies, was part of a wider jihadist conspiracy, as claimed by IS, remains unclear.

German lawmaker Cem Ozdemir, co-chair of the left-leaning Greens Party, told AFP that whatever the outcome of the investigation, "Islamism and homophobia are two sides of the same coin."

In one of several vigils across the United States, hundreds gathered in New York's Greenwich Village on Sunday to leave flowers beside a sign reading "Stop Hate".

Despite the defiant tone struck at many of the gatherings, some people expressed fear.

"It does scare me a bit, being gay and working in a gay bar," admitted Saleem Khan, a 30-year-old barman in London's Soho district, the heart of the city's gay scene.

Obama said the FBI was investigating the latest in a string of mass gun killings in the United States "as an act of terrorism".

French President Francois Hollande reacted "with horror" to the attack, which threatens to increase anti-migrant hostility in Europe where populist xenophobic parties are on the rise as the continent struggles with its worst migration crisis since World War II.

The prime minister of Belgium, where 32 people were killed in jihadist attacks on Brussels' airport and metro in March, also sent his condolences.

And German Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed for tolerance.

"Although such deadly attacks cause profound sadness in us, we are resolved to continue with our open and tolerant lifestyle," she said on the sidelines of a visit to China.

Pope Francis expressed shock at Mateen's "homicidal folly and senseless hatred".

The condemnation was echoed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has cracked down on gay pride events.

"Nothing can justify killing of civilians," President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan tweeted.

Mourners left tributes for the Orlando victims at a makeshit memorial outside the US embassy in Berlin, on June 13, 2016 John MacDougall (AFP)

US President Barack Obama condemned the shootings in Orlando as "an act of terror and an act of hate" YURI GRIPAS (AFP)

Mourners hold a vigil in outside the White House on June 12, in reaction to the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida Andrew Caballero-Reynolds (AFP)

Orlando nightclub shooting
FBI: Orlando gunman had been probed for ties to bomber

The gunman behind the deadly attack on a gay nightclub in Florida on Sunday had previously been investigated for ties to an American suicide bomber, the FBI said Sunday.

Special Agent Ronald Hopper said 29-year-old Omar Mateen had been cleared by the probe, but was believed to have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State before the massacre, which left 50 dead.

"He died in an exchange of gunfire with officers," Hopper confirmed.

Police stand behind a crime scene tape near the site of a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida on June 12, 2016 Mandel Ngan (AFP)

According to the agent, Mateen twice came to the attention of investigators in 2013 and 2014 over alleged links to Islamist extremists.

"The FBI first became aware of Mateen in 2013 when he made inflammatory comments to co-workers alleging possible terrorist ties," he told reporters.

"The FBI thoroughly investigated the matter including interviews with witnesses, physical surveillance and records checks.

"In the course of the investigation Mateen was interviewed twice. Ultimately we were unable to verify the substance of his comments and the investigation was closed."

Later, he was interviewed by agents investigating his contacts with Moner Mohammad Abusalha, a fellow Floridian and the first US citizen to carry out a suicide bombing in Syria.

"We determined the contact was minimal and did not constitute a substantive relationship or a threat at that time," Hopper told reporters.

Asked how Mateen had been able to hold a Florida gun license and to legally purchase two guns shortly before the attack, Hopper said simply that the investigation into his supposed radical ties had been "inconclusive."

"It has been reported that Mateen made calls to 911 this morning in which he stated his allegiance to the Islamic State," he said.
Obama brands Orlando attack an act of 'terror' and 'hate'

President Barack Obama condemned the "horrific massacre" of 50 revelers at an Orlando nightclub Sunday, an attack that is already fueling rows over guns, gay rights and how to defeat the Islamic State group.

Fifty people were killed and 53 others wounded during a late-night assault on "Pulse," a nightclub popular with Florida's gay community.

Police have pinned the slaughter on 29-year-old Omar Mateen, a son of Afghan immigrants who is said to have pledged allegiance to IS before going on a rampage with an assault rifle.

US President Barack Obama makes a statement on the mass shooting at an Orlando, Florida nightclub on June 12, 2016 Yuri Gripas (AFP)

"This was an act of terror and an act of hate," Obama said in a somber White House address to mark the worst mass shooting in US history.

"The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends, to dance, sing and live."

"As Americans, we are united in grief, in outrage, and in resolve to defend our people," Obama said.

During his eight years in office, Obama has had to appear publicly after more than a dozen mass shootings.

He has called the slaying of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, the worst day of his presidency.

But this latest shooting comes in the middle of a vitriol-filled campaign to see who will replace Obama in the white House next year.

An Islamic State-inspired attack in San Bernardino, California in 2015 prompted Republican White House hopeful Donald Trump to call for a blanket ban on Muslims entering the United States.

That call was pilloried by many as racist and unconstitutional, but it propelled Trump -- now the Republican party nominee -- to center stage in the 2016 race.

The identity of the presumed Orlando shooter, his target and the fact that his weapons were legally purchased, will only fan the political flames.

Trump is expected to focus a speech Monday on national security, rather than the alleged shortcomings of his rival Hillary Clinton as planned.

Meanwhile, a first joint campaign event between Democratic nominee Clinton and Obama, scheduled for Wednesday, has been postponed.

In his statement, Obama was careful not to inject too much politics into the issue.

"We've reached no definitive judgment on the precise motivations of the killer," he added, saying that the FBI was nonetheless threating the attack as an "act of terror."

"We must spare no effort to determine what, if any, inspiration or association this killer may have had with terrorist groups."

- Trump slams Obama -

Trump was quick to point out that Obama has repeatedly refused to associate such attacks with Islam.

"Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!" he said on Twitter.

The last week had offered Obama a rare glimmer of hope in the fight against the Islamic State, with the group under series pressure in Libya and Syria.

Democrats have honed in on evidence that Mateen bought two weapons legally in recent days to call for tighter gun control.

"The shooter was apparently armed with a hand gun and a powerful assault rifle," Obama said.

"This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub."

"We have to decide if that's the kind of country we want to be. And to actively do nothing is a decision as well."

The flag at the White House was lowered to half-staff and Obama ordered all government buildings to do the same.
Los Angeles Pride draws thousands despite attack threat

Thousands marched in grief and defiance through the streets of Los Angeles for a Gay Pride parade held hours after the deadly Orlando shooting, as police arrested a man over an unrelated plot to attack the California event.

"We won't be silenced and we won't be curtailed no matter what kind of aggression they throw at us," said Marpa Franzoni, 28, as he marched through the heart of Hollywood.

"I'm in shock. It's more important than ever to show our visibility and support for our community."

Police and Sheriff's deputies stand by to provide security during the 2016 Gay Pride Parade on June 12, 20116 in Los Angeles, California Mark Ralston (AFP)

Acting on reports of a prowler, police in nearby Santa Monica arrested a heavily-armed man who said he wanted to "harm" the Los Angeles parade, taking place under tight security after the massacre at the Pulse club in Florida that left 50 people dead and 53 wounded.

James Howell, 20, was detained at dawn with a car full of weapons, ammunition and powder for explosives, according to police who said he had no apparent connection to the carnage in Orlando.

Authorities said they considered calling off the parade in Los Angeles but decided to go ahead with the festivities with a beefed up police presence.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who marched waving a rainbow-colored flag and carrying a sign that read "We love Orlando," said the violence once again showed the heavy price paid from easily accessible weapons.

"We are here to march, to celebrate, and to mourn," he told the crowd estimated at 150,000 people.

Authorities identified the gunman behind Sunday's attack in Orlando as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, a US citizen of Afghan descent, who is believed to have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State radical group before the massacre.

- 'It's a hate crime' -

"Today, we are heartbroken that so many of our brothers, sisters and allies were lost in this tragic attack," organizers of the Los Angeles parade said in a statement. "As we remember them today at our moment of silence, we must continue to show our pride, not just today but every day."

Several people said the carnage made them think twice about attending the parade but decided a heavy turnout was the best answer.

"Today is yet another example in a long line of examples of why we need more rights, more protection for the LGBT community and how we need to combat hatred with love," said Matt Reents, 32, public affairs spokesman for the British consulate in Los Angeles, which took part in the event.

One Israeli spectator who survived an attack on a gay pride march in Jerusalem last year in which six people were stabbed, one fatally, said the slaughter in Orlando was clear evidence that no place was safe.

"If we must all live in fear then we just don't leave the house," he said, declining to be identified. "We're just going to live our lives, educate people to not be homophobic, racist, against Arab people, Islamophobic and scared all the time."

Many of those attending the event weren't even aware of the Florida shooting or the number of victims until they arrived.

"We're all still in shock," said attorney Perry Handy, 48. "I've been coming to the parade for 20 years and last night's event was clearly a step backward in our culture."

Kyre Stucklin, 45, lamented that the focus was more on the gunman's possible links to terror groups than on the fact he targeted the LGBT community.

"It's terrible that all they are talking about is international terrorism before they realize it's a hate crime," she said, breaking down in tears. "All they want to talk about is the name of the person who did it.

"Fifty gay and gay-friendly people were killed," she added. "The greatest, worst mass shooting in US history is a hate crime, no matter what else it was, even if it was terrorism."

Police and Sheriff's deputies keep watch during the 2016 Gay Pride Parade on June 12, 20116 in Los Angeles, California Mark Ralston (AFP)

Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti (2ndL) stands with Chief of police Charlie Beck (L) and other security officials as he shows support during the Pride Parade on June 12, 2016 Mark Ralston (AFP)
Creator closes out Triple Crown with upset in Belmont Stakes

NEW YORK (AP)  The finish was dramatic, even without a Triple Crown on the line.

Creator found an opening in the stretch and ran down Destin in the final stride to win the $1.5 million Belmont Stakes by a nose  the closest possible margin of victory. Jockey Irad Ortiz Jr., pointed to the sky in an appropriate winning salute given the horse's name.

"Today was perfect for us, by inches," said Steve Asmussen, who will be inducted into racing's Hall of Fame this summer at Saratoga. "Being the victor of the Belmont Stakes will look good on that plaque."

Jockey Irad Ortiz Jr., riding Creator, celebrates after winning the 148th running of the Belmont Stakes horse race, Saturday, June 11, 2016, in Elmont, N.Y. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)

The 50-year-old trainer has won more than 7,300 races, including the Preakness with champions Curlin in 2007 and Rachel Alexandra in 2009. He was taken off the Hall of Fame ballot last year, though, because of allegations made by PETA about the way he treated his horses. He was later cleared by racing authorities in Kentucky and New York.

The 1 1/2-mile "Test of the Champion" wrapped up the Triple Crown a year after American Pharoah's run to glory in becoming the first horse in 37 years to sweep the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont. A different horse won each leg this time  Nyquist took the Derby and Exaggerator won the Preakness.

This was Creator's day, a hot, sticky one at Belmont Park with temperatures in the mid-80s. The attendance announced by the New York Racing Association late Saturday night was 60,114, far below the 90,000 that showed up last year.

Exaggerator, the 7-5 favorite in the field of 13, raced well back in the pack. He moved into contention at one point but just didn't have his usual finishing kick. He wound up 11th.

A 3-year-old gray colt, Creator came flying down the stretch as Destin tried to hang on to the lead. He almost made it, but settled for second with Japan-based Lani a closing third.

"I'm glad to see him put that number up; they came to the wire together," Asmussen said of the Creator-Destin showdown. "Irad gave him a dream trip. The horse ran super."

Creator, sent off 16-1, returned $34.80, $14.60 and $9.40. Destin, trained by Todd Pletcher, returned $9.40 and $6.20, and Lani paid $6.60. The winning time for the 1 1/2 miles was 2:28.51. The first three finishers were gray colts.

Governor Malibu was fourth, followed by Stradivari, Brody's Cause, Cherry Wine, Gettysburg, Suddenbreakingnews, Trojan Nation, Exaggerator, Seeking the Soul and Forever d'Oro.

Creator was one of several closers in the field, and the race set up perfectly for him. Gettysburg was a late addition to the field. Both are owned by WinStar Farm and trained by Asmussen, with Gettysburg a front-runner who set the stage for the thrilling finish.

After leading the field early on, Gettysburg dropped back after a mile and Destin took charge into the stretch. With Ortiz urging him on, Creator stormed into contention after running near the back of the pack and won for the third time in 10 career starts. Ortiz, one of the nation's leading riders, won his first Triple Crown race.

"He was calm and I just waited for somewhere to go," Ortiz said. "When he got clear, he started running."

Unlike Exaggerator.

Kent Desormeaux, the Hall of Fame rider aboard the colt, second-guessed his decision to ask Exaggerator to wait behind the pace. When he tried to make a move, the horse trained by his brother, Keith, just didn't have it.

"I don't know if there would have been any difference in the outcome," Kent Desormeaux said. "When I picked him up at the quarter-pole to try and win the race, there was nothing there."

Exaggerator and Lani were the only horses who ran in all three Triple Crown races. Lani improved each time, running ninth in the Derby and fifth in the Preakness.

"He was in very good condition, and the distance was good," Lani's jockey Yutaka Take said.

The track was a fast one all day, and the rain held off until after the finish when a downpour soaked a crowd much smaller than the 90,000 that showed up for American Pharoah's Triple Crown.

Earlier in the week, celebrity chef Bobby Flay became a co-owner of Creator with WinStar.

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In five other Grade 1 races on the card:

 Frosted ($6.70) ran the fastest Metropolitan Mile in the 123-year history of the race, blowing away the field for a 14 1/4 length victory and earning an automatic berth in the Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile. Ridden by Joel Rosario, the 4-year-old gray colt stormed into the lead around the turn and widened his advantage with every stride. The winning time was 1:32.73, off the track record by nearly a half-second, but faster than Tizway's Met Mile time of 1:32.90 in 2011.

 Cavorting ($10.60) ran her way into an automatic berth in the BC Distaff by taking the $1 million Ogden Phipps by 2 1/2 lengths over Forever Unbridled. The 4-year-old filly is trained by Kiran McLaughlin, who also trains Frosted. Favorite Curalina was fourth.

 Flintshire ($3.40), a 6-year-old bred in England, made his first start of the year a winning one in the $1 million Manhattan for 4-year-olds and up on the turf.

 Celestine ($17) took charge in the stretch to win the $700,000 Just A Game for 4-year-old and up fillies and mares on the turf.

 Carina Mia ($6.10) edged past Kentucky Oaks winner Cathryn Sophia in the stretch and won the $700,000 Acorn for 3-year-old fillies.

Also, Tom's Ready ($17.20) rebounded from a 12th place finish in the Derby to win the Grade 2 $500,000 Woody Stephens; and Shaman Ghost ($9.60) won the $400,000 Brooklyn Invitational.

Irad Ortiz Jr., riding Creator, celebrates after winning the 148th running of the Belmont Stakes horse race, Saturday, June 11, 2016, in Elmont, N.Y. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)

Creator, the winner of the 148th running of the Belmont Stakes horse race, nibbles hay after the race on Saturday, June 11, 2016, in Elmont, N.Y. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Creator, with jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. up, edges out Destin with Javier Castellano up to win the 148th running of the Belmont Stakes horse race, Saturday, June 11, 2016, in Elmont, N.Y. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Jockey Irad Ortiz Jr., riding Creator, looks up as rain fell after they won the 148th running of the Belmont Stakes horse race at Belmont Park, Saturday, June 11, 2016, in Elmont, N.Y. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Creator, left, with jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. up, edges out Destin, with jockey Javier Castellano, to win the 148th running of the Belmont Stakes horse race at Belmont Park, Saturday, June 11, 2016, in Elmont, N.Y. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Horses charge out of the starting gate at the 148th running of the Belmont Stakes horse race at Belmont Park, Saturday, June 11, 2016, in Elmont, N.Y. Creator won the race. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

CORRECTS JOCKEY TO IRAD ORTIZ JR., INSTEAD OF JAVIER CASTELLANO - Jockey Irad Ortiz Jr., center, hoists the August Belmont Trophy as trainer Steve Asmussen, second from right, Winstar Farms President and CEO Elliott Walden, right, and WinStar Farms principal owner Kenny Troutt, second from left, look on after their horse, Creator, won the 148th running of the Belmont Stakes horse race at Belmont Park, Saturday, June 11, 2016, in Elmont, N.Y. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
The Latest: Man shot by Dallas police faces assault charges

DALLAS (AP)  The Latest on the shooting and wounding of a man by police outside a Dallas airport (all times local):

8:45 p.m.

Police say a Maryland man who was shot by an officer outside a Dallas airport after a domestic disturbance is being charged with aggravated assault and assault family violence.

An investigator works the scene of an officer-involved shooting which prompted a lockdown at Dallas Love Field airport Friday, June 10, 2016, in Dallas. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT; MAGS OUT; TV OUT; INTERNET USE BY AP MEMBERS ONLY; NO SALES

Shawn Nicholas Diamond of Edgewood, Maryland, remained in a hospital in stable condition Saturday.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown has said the 29-year-old Diamond struck his ex-girlfriend and battered her car with a traffic cone and large landscaping rocks Friday outside the Dallas Love Field terminal. He says an officer shot Diamond after he advanced with rocks in his hands.

Diamond also has been charged with criminal mischief in the Dallas suburb of Carrollton. Police there say he caused $3,700 in damage to city-owned trees by driving recklessly and was released on bond earlier Friday after spending the night in jail.

___

12:05 a.m.

Police say a 29-year-old Maryland man was newly released from jail on a criminal mischief charge when an officer shot him outside a Dallas airport.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown says Shawn Nicholas Diamond of Edgewood, Maryland, was in stable condition in a hospital after the Friday incident outside the Dallas Love Field terminal.

Brown says Diamond struck his ex-girlfriend and battered her car with a traffic cone and large landscaping rocks outside the airport. He says an officer shot Diamond after he advanced with rocks in his hands.

Police in the Dallas suburb of Carrollton say Diamond was released on bond earlier Friday after spending the night in jail. Carrollton police spokeswoman Jolene DeVito says Diamond was arrested after causing $3,700 in damage to city-owned trees by driving recklessly.
Pope Francis has launched an attack on the worshipping of perfect bodies, saying it is an unhealthy obsession that leads to society hiding away the disabled to avoid offending 'the privileged few'.

The Pope was celebrating a special Mass in Rome's St Peter's Square dedicated to disabled people and their carers.

He said: 'It is thought that sick or disabled persons cannot be happy, since they cannot live the lifestyle held up by the culture of pleasure and entertainment.

Pope Francis is pictured delivering his speech at a special Mass in the Vatican. Afterwards he met a number of disabled children and adults and their carers

'In an age when care for one's body has become an obsession and a big business, anything that is imperfect has to be hidden away, since it threatens the happiness and serenity of the privileged few and endangers the dominant model.'

The Pope, who often stressed the importance of social inclusion when he was Bishop of Buenos Aires, said: 'The world does not become better because only apparently 'perfect', not to mention 'made-over' - people live there but when solidarity and mutual acceptance and respect increase.'

His remarks are believed to be aimed at celebrity culture and the obsession with bodies including Kim Kardashian's, and the prevalent use of airbrushing that 'fixes' less than perfect bodies.

The Pope's speech was believed to be a criticism of the culture which puts people with perfect bodies such as Kim Kardashian (left) and Spencer Matthews, from Made In Chelsea, (right) on a pedestal

After the service, the Pope spent time chatting with disabled people and hugging them and their carers.

A blind woman, using Braille, read aloud to the faithful from the Bible; and the liturgy was translated in sign language.

And in a first for such Vatican ceremonies, mentally disabled people in costumes acted out a parable in the Mass's Gospel selection as it was being read aloud.

Disabled and sick people, including many in wheelchairs, wait for Pope Francis arrival for a jubilee mass in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican at the weekend

On Monday, during a visit to the World Food Program, the Pope said it was a 'strange paradox' that food often cannot get through to those suffering due to war but weapons can.

He said: 'As a result, wars are fed, not persons. In some cases hunger itself is used as a weapon of war.'

Pope Francis also lamented the obscuring of poverty in the modern world and said 'we run the risk of bureaucratising the suffering of others'.

Pope Francis salutes at the end of a jubilee mass for disabled and sick people in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on Sunday

Disabled and sick people wait for Pope Francis arrival for a jubilee mass in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican Sunday, June 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Francis celebrates a jubilee mass for disabled and sick people in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican Sunday, June 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Francis kisses a child during a jubilee mass for disabled and sick people in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican Sunday, June 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Francis hugs a boy at the end of a jubilee mass for disabled and sick people in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican Sunday, June 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Harry Reid striving to win 1 last campaign before he retires

LAS VEGAS (AP)  Democratic leader Harry Reid says he wishes he could stay in the U.S. Senate forever.

So the canny 76-year-old is doing the next best thing as he heads into retirement after more than three decades: working the inside game as only he can, to ensure he leaves Democrats in control of the Senate, the White House and his home state of Nevada next year.

Reid hand-picked the Democratic candidate to replace him, former Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto. She is trying to capitalize on presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's unpopularity with Hispanics by playing up the fact that she would be the first Latina elected to the Senate. If she wins in Nevada, Democrats will be well on their way to taking back Senate control after two years in the minority.

In this June 9, 2016, photo, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. Reid says he wishes he could stay in the U.S. Senate forever. So he is doing the next best thing as he heads into retirement after more than three decades: Working the inside game to ensure he leaves Democrats in control of the Senate, the White House and his home state of Nevada next year. Reid hand-picked the Democratic candidate to replace him, former Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, who is capitalizing on Donald Trumps unpopularity with Hispanics by playing up the fact that she would be the first Latina ever elected to the Senate. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Reid also interceded in Nevada's caucuses in February, helping to get union workers to Democratic presidential caucus sites, which tipped the balance in favor of front-runner Hillary Clinton at a moment when Bernie Sanders' support was surging.

Now Reid is moving all the levers at his disposal to ease the Vermont senator out of the race, subtly and not-so subtly, even as he promotes the idea of liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as Clinton's running mate, something that could be a consolation prize for Sanders' supporters.

Also, Reid is intricately involved with races in Nevada, working to retake control of the Legislature for the Democrats and restore a Democratic majority in the congressional delegation. Whether his vaunted political machine retains its potency may become partially clear on Tuesday, when Nevada holds its congressional primaries and a Reid-backed Democrat faces two strong opponents in the 4th Congressional District race.

The moves are vintage Reid, who has long meddled in politics in his small state, cementing his status as an unparalleled political animal by winning his own re-election race in 2010 against all odds. He is a most unusual politician, with stooped shoulders, frequent gaffes, and nearly inaudible speaking style. But he will leave a legacy unmatched in Nevada and as an important partner to President Barack Obama.

"He's built a machine like nobody has seen before and he will leave that to future Democrats," said U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, one of few Democrats who's defied Reid and lived to flourish politically. As for Reid's distinctively uncharismatic style, Titus suggested even that could be a political calculation.

"He speaks softly? People have to lean in and listen. If you make gaffes you can get away with making points that other people might be afraid to make," the Nevada congresswoman said. "I'm not sure that those are not intentional."

Some of Reid's more notorious comments include calling then-President George W. Bush a "loser" and remarking that tourists to the Capitol smell bad in summer. His accomplishments include shepherding Obama's health care bill through the Senate with no votes to spare, getting Obama to protect more than 700,000 acres of remote Nevada lands in the Basin and Range National Monument, and moving up Nevada's caucuses in 2008 to make it an early voting state. That resulted in many new Democratic registrations that have made the state much friendlier territory for the party.

Reid, a gold miner's son from tiny Searchlight doesn't mention any of those things when asked how he wants to be remembered.

"I want to be remembered as someone who worked hard, was honest and did my best to represent the people of Nevada and the country," he said softly in a recent interview in the North Las Vegas campaign headquarters of state Sen. Ruben Kihuen, a protege Reid is helping in a contested Democratic congressional primary.

Reid's legacy is likely to be more complex than that.

He's hated by many Republicans for running the Senate with an iron fist when Democrats were in control, shutting off votes on legislation in what turned out to be a failed, and arguably misguided, effort to protect vulnerable Democrats headed into the 2014 election. That election cycle turned out to be a disaster for Democrats, costing them control of the Senate and Reid his perch as majority leader, and causing some to question whether his machine still could deliver.

"In 2014 in this state we swept the six constitutional offices, we flipped the state senate back to a Republican majority and we took back the state Assembly for the first time since 1992," said U.S. Rep. Joe Heck, the Republican running for Reid's seat. "I think that speaks for itself."

Democrats say that as he looks to retirement, Reid is more determined than ever to reverse those losses.

"Sen. Reid would love nothing more than to leave the U.S. Senate with a Democratic majority and to right the ship at home in Nevada," said Rebecca Lambe, Reid's top political adviser in Nevada.

As the date for leaving the Senate nears, Reid has grown more outspoken about his regrets about retiring. He would have run again, had he not been sidelined by an eye injury early last year when an exercise band snapped and smashed him in the face, leaving him blind in one eye.

"I'm going to find something to do to keep me busy," said Reid, though it won't be spending more time with his family. He and his wife, Landra, have 19 grandchildren.

"I've spent enough time with my family," Reid said. "I always kind of believe in quality, not quantity, so I'm fine."

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Follow Erica Werner on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ericawerner

In this May 31, 2016, file photo, Senate candidate Catherine Cortez Masto, center, laughs while speaking with people at a campaign event at a restaurant in Las Vegas. Democratic leader Harry Reid says he wishes he could stay in the U.S. Senate forever. So he is doing the next best thing as he heads into retirement after more than three decades: Working the inside game to ensure he leaves Democrats in control of the Senate, the White House and his home state of Nevada next year. Reid hand-picked the Democratic candidate to replace him, former Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, who is capitalizing on Donald Trumps unpopularity with Hispanics by playing up the fact that she would be the first Latina ever elected to the Senate. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Police free 15 Paraguayan women in anti-sex trafficking raid

BARCELONA, Spain (AP)  Police in Spain, France and Paraguay have arrested around 14 people and freed up to 15 women as part of a joint operation against sex trafficking.

Spanish police said in a statement Sunday they arrested nine people in the northern city of Pamplona on sex trafficking charges and liberated four exploited Paraguayan women.

They said the operation started after one of the victims dialed the Spanish help hotline against human trafficking in December 2015, although the ring started its criminal activity back in 2010.

The raid was a joint effort with authorities in France and Paraguay, who also made arrests and freed women in simultaneous police busts.

The arrests were made over three days, starting Tuesday. Among those detained in Pamplona were three of the alleged ring leaders of an international criminal organization based in Ciudad del Este near Paraguay's border with Brazil and Argentina, police said. Police in France raided a location in the north-western city of Nantes.

The supposed boss, a woman in her 40s from Paraguay with Spanish nationality, was the only one that remained in custody after the other eight detainees were issued court dates and advised legal counsel.

The police said the organization had a family clan structure involving up to eight brothers with criminal records, who preyed on young women eager for a better life in Europe away from their impoverished background.

"They sought out their victims and promised them jobs in France and Spain as masseuses, housekeepers, or staffers in local supermarkets," said Fernando Cegonino Ananos, chief Pamplona investigator from the Immigration and Frontier brigade.

"It was a scam operated by a family clan that included the arrested ring leader, her husband and sister in Pamplona, and mother in Ciudad del Este, where they went through a travelling agency to set the wheels in motion," he added.

Once the women reached their destinations, travelling through Sao Paulo in Brazil, they found out that their true task was to serve as prostitutes in the ring's many strip joints, bars and establishments camouflaged as massage and beauty parlors, he said.

They were kept under strict vigilance by clan members and were told that they owed the criminal group up to 3,000 euros ($3,400) in travel fees.

"This was a violent crew that coerced their victims through physical harm and constant surveillance," Cegonino told The Associated Press. "One of the arrested culprits in Paraguay was an ex-cop that had to leave the force because of robberies and came to Spain, where he was also charged with domestic violence before going back to his native country."
Proposed premium hikes rattle consumers paying their own way

WASHINGTON (AP)  Millions of people who pay the full cost of their health insurance will face the sting of rising premiums next year, with no financial help from government subsidies.

Renewal notices bearing the bad news will go out this fall, just as the presidential election is in the homestretch.

"I don't know if I could swallow another 30 or 40 percent without severely cutting into other things I'm trying to do, like retirement savings or reducing debt," said Bob Byrnes, of Blaine, Minnesota, a Twin Cities suburb. His monthly premium of $524 is already about 50 percent more than he was paying in 2015, and he has a higher deductible.

Kirk Smith poses for a photograph on June 8, 2016, in Lufkin, Texas. Smith's insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, is the only insurer in his county and it is requesting average premium increases of nearly 60 percent for 2017. Smith works installing telecommunications equipment and his employer does not offer health insurance. Millions of people who pay the full cost of their health insurance will face the sting of rising premiums next year, with no financial help from government subsidies. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

President Barack Obama's health law provides income-based subsidies for consumers who buy individual policies on HealthCare.gov and state insurance markets. About 10 million people get assistance, helping reduce the uninsured rate to a historically low 9 percent.

But there's no subsidy for those making more than $47,520 for an individual and $97,200 for a family of four  cutoffs that represent four times the federal poverty level. Also, subsidies are not available for consumers at any income level who purchase outside of HealthCare.gov or a state marketplace. Those who remain uninsured risk fines.

Premiums are expected to climb next year in many areas because major insurers have taken significant financial losses under the health law. Enrollment has been lower than anticipated, new customers were sicker than expected and a government system to stabilize the markets had problems.

"People receiving subsidies can protect themselves from premium increases, but others who buy their own coverage don't have that option," said Larry Levitt, who tracks the health law for the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. He estimated 5 million to 7 million consumers nationally may be paying full freight.

Byrnes, a manager for a medical courier service, says he supports the law's goal of expanded coverage, but he hasn't found his policy particularly affordable.

In the small East Texas city of Lufkin, Kirk Smith buys his policy from the only insurer available, which also happens to be the state's largest.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas is seeking an average premium increase of nearly 60 percent for 2017, and Smith says his monthly bill of about $350 is already about as much as a car payment. Moreover, he's had to drive to a neighboring county for medical care because he couldn't get an appointment close to home.

"I've got a problem when you can't see somebody in the county, and they want an increase?" said Smith, who works for a contractor installing telecommunications equipment. He said the government should subsidize everyone in rural communities with no insurer competition.

Michelle Scarola of Queens, a borough of New York City, said she has received notice that her 2017 premiums will be going up in a range of 8 percent to 25 percent. Scarola, who's in the midst of a career transition from advertising to interior design, isn't happy that her insurer dropped the hospital network she's interested in.

"For people like me who are in the middle, there is very limited choice, and now that limited choice is going to get more expensive," she said.

Insurance broker Liz Gallops in Raleigh, North Carolina, says she tries to let customers vent about large increases. Some see insurance bills that surpass their mortgage payments. The state's biggest insurer is proposing average increases of nearly 19 percent.

"I've had people yell on the phone," she said. "I've had people curse."

Back in 2010, the Obama administration used public anger about premium increases as leverage to win passage of the health law. It now says worries about next year's premiums are premature because final rates have not been approved. Officials say people who don't receive subsidies still have options.

For example, some people buying directly from an insurer might find that they qualify for subsidies if they go through HealthCare.gov.

Those who make too much for a subsidy still can shop for lower premiums. Under the health law, insurers have to accept consumers with health problems. People are no longer locked into a plan indefinitely.

Another wrinkle is that people who pay their own premiums may be able to later deduct the cost on their income taxes. But the rules are complex, and it's not the same as getting an upfront subsidy.

It may seem counterintuitive that premium increases for health law policies also hit people who get no financial assistance. It's happening because the law created one big insurance pool in each state for consumers buying individual coverage, whether or not they go through markets such as HealthCare.gov.

Many people respond to premium hikes by switching to skimpier coverage, yet that leads to bigger medical bills if they need treatment. Some insurance brokers encourage customers to get plans linked to a health savings account. But rising premiums can cut into how much people stash away.

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AP Social Media Editor Eric Carvin contributed to this report.
Florida nightclub attack just the latest US mass shooting

A gunman opened fire in a crowded gay dance club in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday morning, leaving at least 50 people dead and 53 injured in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. Authorities identified the attacker as Omar Mateen, of Port St. Lucie man who was killed by SWAT officers. The previous deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. was the 2007 attack at Virginia Tech, in which a student killed 32 people before killing himself.

Here's a look at some of the nation's deadliest rampages since 2012:

 Feb. 25, 2016: Cedric Ford, 38, killed three people and wounded 14 others lawnmower factory where he worked in the central Kansas community of Hesston. The local police chief killed him during a shootout with 200 to 300 workers still in the building, authorities said.

Orlando Police officers direct family members away from a fatal shooting at Pulse Orlando nightclub in Orlando, Fla., Sunday, June 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)

 Feb. 20, 2016: Jason Dalton, 45, is accused of randomly shooting and killing six people and severely wounding two others during a series of attacks over several hours in the Kalamazoo, Michigan, area. Authorities say he paused between shootings to make money as an Uber driver. He faces murder and attempted murder charges.

 Dec. 2, 2015: Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, opened fire at a social services center in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people and wounding more than 20. They fled the scene but died hours later in a shootout with police.

 Oct. 1, 2015: A shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, left 10 people dead and seven wounded. Shooter Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, exchanged gunfire with police, then killed himself.

 June 17, 2015: Dylann Roof, 21, shot and killed nine African-American church members during a Bible study group inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Police contend the attack was racially motivated. Roof faces nine counts of murder in state court and dozens of federal charges, including hate crimes.

 May 23, 2014: A community college student, Elliot Rodger, 22, killed six people and wounded 13 in shooting and stabbing attacks in the area near the University of California, Santa Barbara, campus. Authorities said he apparently shot himself to death after a gunbattle with deputies.

 Sept. 16, 2013: Aaron Alexis, a mentally disturbed civilian contractor, shot 12 people to death at the Washington Navy Yard before he was killed in a police shootout.

 July 26, 2013: Pedro Vargas, 42, went on a shooting rampage at his Hialeah, Florida, apartment building, gunning down six people before officers fatally shot him.

 Dec. 14, 2012: In Newtown, Connecticut, an armed 20-year-old man entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and used a semi-automatic rifle to kill 26 people, including 20 first graders and six adult school staff members. He then killed himself.

 Sept. 27, 2012: In Minnesota's deadliest workplace rampage, Andrew Engeldinger, who had just been fired, pulled a gun and fatally shot six people, including the company's founder. He also wounded two others at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis before taking his own life.

 Aug. 5, 2012: In Oak Creek, Wisconsin, 40-year-old gunman Wade Michael Page killed six worshippers at a Sikh Temple before killing himself.

 July 20, 2012: James Holmes, 27, fatally shot 12 people and injured 70 in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

 April 2, 2012: Seven people were killed and three were wounded when a 43-year-old former student opened fire at Oikos University in Oakland, California. One Goh was charged with seven counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, but psychiatric evaluations concluded he suffered from long-term paranoid schizophrenia and was unfit to stand trial.
Donald Trump's loyal volunteers: Superfans and workhorses

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (AP)  Dale "Boomer" Ranney can get in Donald Trump's face like almost no one else.

She has nudged her way to the front of 21 of his rallies, passing up book after book, photo after photo for him to autograph, finding success some 66 times. He smiles at her in recognition now.

When she made a trip to Trump Tower in New York to be near him for his home state primary in April, he spotted her and told his security guards to let her into his victory party there later that day. A photo snapped that morning shows Ranney and her candidate grinning and giving the thumbs up. He's in his suit and red tie. She's in her sequined American flag vest and matching boots.

Dale "Boomer" Ranney shows items that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has autographed, at her home in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Trump is finding dedicated volunteers for his presidential campaign among his fan base. Ranney has organized a group of 50 to make calls to voters on Trumps behalf. Ranney has been to 21 Trump rallies and gotten 66 Trump autographs. She calls it ``a personal responsibility to try to help put Trump in the White House. (AP Photo/Julie Bykowicz)

Ranney is not only a Trump superfan, she's also a forceful advocate and volunteer on behalf of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Since February, she has guided an ad hoc team of 50 volunteers who have made some 75,000 telephone calls to voters to preach the gospel of Trump.

The eclectic, unpaid group  she calls them the "Trump T-Birds," after her red Ford convertible  includes a cancer patient making calls from her bed and 13-year-old who spouts Trumpisms.

All candidates count on volunteers to make calls to voters, distribute literature and knock on doors. Few have inspired the kind of passionate dedication that the celebrity billionaire has. For a candidate just now beginning traditional fundraising and woefully behind in building a staff of paid field organizers, this volunteer network could be especially vital when he faces presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton this fall.

Ranney, a 62-year-old thrice-married, beach-loving retired industrial engineer, is perhaps Trump's most committed volunteer.

"I feel guilty anytime I'm not on the phone calling for him," Ranney said. "I'm not getting paid, but it's a personal responsibility I feel to get him in the White House."

She approaches her volunteer work much like Trump approaches his bid, speaking off the cuff with prospective voters rather than reading from scripts the campaign has uploaded to its computerized calling program. She uses social media to build a following and makes her own assignments rather than waiting for directions.

"I really think all of us volunteers kind of copy Donald," Ranney said. "It's natural, not rehearsed, kind of ad-libbed."

With the primary nomination locked up, Ranney is starting to organize voter registration drives, acting on her gut that Trump will inspire scores of people who have never voted to come out for him.

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DIALING FOR DONALD

She wants to keep dialing up voters, too.

On the eve of the Indiana primary May 3, Ranney settled in at her home for another round of calls.

"Hi, I'm calling from the Trump campaign, and we'd like to know if you have a favorable opinion of Donald Trump," she said cheerily.

"Um, no I do not," the Indiana woman on the receiving end said, curtly but politely.

"Ok, well good luck, ma'am, and thank you very much," Ranney said, ending the call. "That was a no," she said, noting the same in the call system.

One call later, Ranney found a more welcome reception: "Oh, I'm gonna vote for him."

Later in the batch of calls, Ranney got to make her full Trump pitch. She'd reached a voter leaning toward Trump, but concerned about what exactly Trump's stance was on Planned Parenthood, a women's health clinic this particular anti-abortion-rights voter didn't much care for.

"Oh, he's pro-life," Ranney assured the woman. "The only thing about the Planned Parenthood he's for is the fact that it helps women, you know, with their health issues. Other than that he's against it ma'am."

The voter also mentioned the blitz of advertising she'd seen portraying Trump as sexist.

To this, Ranney said, "You know, there's one thing I will say about Mr. Trump, and that is that he is an equal-opportunity criticizer. So if he doesn't like someone, it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. He's going to tell you what he thinks."

The call ended with Ranney feeling confident she'd found  maybe even helped convert  another Trump voter.

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THE T-BIRDS

Ranney's T-Birds are a mix of ladies she knows in Myrtle Beach and Trump fans she's met on social media and in the front of the lines at rallies.

"I figure, if someone is dedicated enough to get in line at 3 a.m., they're dedicated enough to probably want to make some calls for Mr. Trump," she said.

There's Alice Ziriada, a Myrtle Beach friend, who has made more than 12,000 calls for Trump, often from her bed while laid up from chemotherapy to treat her cancer. She said she's loved making the calls, even if they don't always go so well. "No matter how mean they get on the phone with me, cussing, whatever, I just let them finish," she said.

There's Matt Lewandowski (no relation to Trump' campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski) in Virginia Beach, Virginia, a 68-year-old whom Ranney recruited through Facebook. He has made about 9,000 calls, hitting 300 in one day. Now he, in turn, helps find other volunteers. "I'm just one guy, but I hope I am helping with this process," he said.

And dropping the median age of the group, there's Zach Dodson, a 13-year-old seventh-grader in Fort Mill, South Carolina. Ranney met Zach and his mother, Chula, at a Trump rally, and they've become some of Trump's most avid photographers, sharing hundreds of rally shots on social media.

Chula Dodson said, somewhat apologetically, that she and her son had made only a few hundred phone calls apiece because she didn't want him too distracted from school. "I cannot explain how much my son loves Mr. Trump."

Zach, grabbing the phone, chimed it, "I like him because he's a businessman who has made a fortune. He can apply that to America."

He's adept at channeling the candidate himself. "For many decades now," said Zach, "the establishment has failed us miserably and they know it."

The rallies have served as more than a meeting point between Ranney and her volunteers. It's also the way she gets the swag that she thinks helps keep them motivated. All of those books and photos Ranney has Trump sign? She gives them to volunteers who are hitting milestone numbers of phone calls, an enticement to keep at it.

Trump frequently praises his volunteers on social media. "Without my amazing volunteers  this would not have been possible," he wrote on Instagram after winning the Indiana primary, essentially locking up the nomination.

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REFORM PARTY ROOTS

There's a reason Ranney seems like she's done this before (she has) and that she seems to know Trump (she does).

Back in the 1990s, when she was Dale Barlow and living in Oklahoma, Ranney fell in political love with another billionaire businessman-turned-politician: Ross Perot. She volunteered for his two presidential campaigns and became an elected leader of the Reform Party he founded.

She said her volunteerism then showed her how many people in the country are reflexively opposed to trade deals as bad for U.S. workers. That's a major theme of Trump's campaign now, and part of why Ranney is so convinced that he can win.

Late in the decade, the party's highest elected official, Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, tried to persuade Trump to run for president on the Reform ticket and pointed him toward Ranney for advice.

Ranney said she met with Trump at Trump Tower in December 1999, sharing with him her fears about factionalism within the party. Two months later, Trump wined and dined Ranney and other Reform officials at his Mar-A-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, although he soon after decided not to run.

Indeed, the Reform party spun into chaos after Ventura quit. Ranney also left the party  and politics altogether for 15 years.

But her dealings with Trump had made an impression, and she couldn't help but be delighted to see him descend his Trump Tower escalator last June and announce his bid as a Republican candidate for president.

"I believe in him," she said. "I've always believed in him."

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Follow Julie Bykowicz on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bykowicz
Charleston church shooting sparked changes nationwide

In the wake of the shootings of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, officials nationwide have taken steps to distance themselves from Confederate symbols and names. Suspect Dylann Roof appeared in photos with the Confederate flag. Here is a look at some of those moves.

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ALABAMA

Gov. Robert Bentley removed four Confederate flags in June from the grounds of the Alabama Capitol but said he has no plan to remove a Confederate monument outside his office.

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ALASKA

An area in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta honoring Confederate General Wade Hampton, who served as South Carolina governor after the Civil War and made his way to office by terrorizing former slaves, was renamed.

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CALIFORNIA

A San Diego elementary school was renamed to stop honoring Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

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FLORIDA

The legislature voted to replace the statue of Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith as one of the state's two contributions to the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall Collection. The Senate voted to remove the Confederate battle flag from the chamber's seal.

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KANSAS

The Confederate flag was removed from Wichita's Veteran's Memorial Park.

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KENTUCKY

A judge cleared the way for the removal of a 120-year-old monument to Confederate soldiers that sits near the University of Louisville.

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LOUISIANA

The New Orleans city council voted in December to remove four Confederate-linked monuments from the city, including towering figures of Gens. Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard. The plan was put on hold following a ruling by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocking the city from removing the monuments until an appeal is heard.

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MARYLAND

In October, a federal judge cleared the way for the state to recall license plates with images of the Confederate flag.

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MINNESOTA

The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board voted to add Lake Calhoun's original tribal name to area signs. John C. Calhoun was a former U.S. vice president from South Carolina and proponent of slavery. The board has been asked to consider doing away with the Calhoun name altogether.

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MISSISSIPPI

The University of Mississippi, the University of Southern Mississippi and several local governments stopped displaying the state flag, which includes the Confederate battle emblem.

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MISSOURI

Officials recommended that a three-story Confederate memorial be removed from Forest Park, where it has stood for more than a century.

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MONTANA

Helena officials agreed to install signs explaining the history and controversy of a 98-year-old city park memorial honoring Confederate soldiers.

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NEW JERSEY

The nation's oldest and largest flag manufacturer decided a week after the shootings to stop making and selling the Confederate flag.

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OHIO

Ohio State Fair officials banned vendors from selling Confederate flag merchandise.

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PENNSYLVANIA

The bookstore at Gettysburg National Military Park stopped selling items that use the Confederate battle flag as a standalone feature.

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TENNESSEE

The city of Memphis has taken steps to remove an equestrian statue of Confederate General and Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest and to remove the graves of Forrest and his wife, who are buried under the statue.

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TEXAS
CIA: No evidence that Saudi gov't helped 9/11 attackers

WASHINGTON (AP)  CIA Director John Brennan said there is no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials supported the Sept. 11 attacks.

Brennan's remarks, in a weekend interview with al-Arabiya, addressed the still-secret 28 pages of a congressional inquiry into the 2001 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia. President Barack Obama has promised to publicly release all or part of the 28 pages of the report, which could happen as early as this month. The rest of the report was released in December 2002.

Bob Graham, who was co-chairman of that bipartisan congressional panel, and others say the 28 pages point suspicion at the Saudis. Graham said it's important for the public to know that all of the still-classified allegations were thoroughly investigated.

Brennan had said earlier that the 28 pages contained preliminary information about possible Saudi links to the attackers that had not been corroborated or vetted at the time. He said that the 9/11 Commission, which did a follow-on investigation into the attacks, ultimately found nothing that pointed to Saudi complicity.

"Subsequently the Sept. 11 commission looked very thoroughly at these allegations of Saudi involvement, Saudi government involvement and their finding, their conclusion was that there was no evidence to indicate that the Saudi government as an institution or Saudi senior officials individually had supported the Sep. 11 attacks," Brennan told al-Arabiya, the Saudi-owned broadcaster, on Saturday.

"Indeed, subsequently the assessments that have been done have shown it was very unfortunate that these attacks took place but this was the work of al-Qaida, (al-Qaida leader Ayman) al-Zawahri, and others of that ilk," said Brennan, who called Riyadh a strong U.S. partner in fighting terrorism.

Brennan said he supports the release of the still classified part of the congressional inquiry.

The Saudi government says it has been "wrongfully and morbidly accused of complicity" in the attacks, is fighting extremists and working to clamp down on their funding channels. Still, the Saudis have long said that they would welcome declassification of the 28 pages because it would "allow us to respond to any allegations in a clear and credible manner."
Former GOP senator and Ohio Gov. George Voinovich dies

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  Former Republican U.S. Sen. George Voinovich, a two-term Ohio governor who preached frugality in his personal and public life and occasionally bucked the GOP establishment, died Sunday. He was 79.

Voinovich, considered a moderate who opposed the size of former President George W. Bush's tax cuts and later questioned Bush's war strategy in Iraq, died peacefully in his sleep, his wife Janet confirmed. His death came as a surprise to friends, who said he seemed strong despite some recent health struggles.

He had delivered public remarks Friday at a 25th Slovenian Independence Day event at Cleveland City Hall. He was a delegate to the Republican National Convention coming to Cleveland next month.

FILE - In a Monday, Jan. 12, 2009 file photo, Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, to announce that he will not seek another term as senator. Former U.S. Sen. George Voinovich, a two-term Ohio governor who preached frugality in his personal and public life and occasionally bucked the Republican establishment, died peacefully in his sleep, Sunday, June 12, 2016, his wife Janet confirmed. He was 79.(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush, said Sunday that Voinovich was one of his closest political allies and a "quintessential public servant," who "brought people together, focused on results, and left his state and our country a better place."

During his 12 years in the Senate, Voinovich occasionally found himself at odds with Republican conservatives. He was an early supporter of a proposed federal bailout for the auto industry, which employs thousands of people in Ohio, and he was the rare Republican during the Bush administration to suggest raising taxes to pay for the war in Iraq and hurricane relief.

Voinovich announced in early 2009 that he would not run for a third Senate term. He said he wanted to retire to spend more time with his family.

Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish said Voinovich had continued in recent years to advocate projects that made life better for people in northeast Ohio.

His integrity and toughness were common themes in condolences that poured in from Republicans and Democrats at the local, state and federal levels. Cincinnati Republican Rob Portman, who succeeded Voinovich in the Senate, said he "exemplified everything good about public service." Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, praised him for being "willing to listen to the other side of an argument."

Republican Gov. John Kasich called Voinovich "a unifier who thought outside the box, never gave up and worked hard for the ideas he believed in up until the very end of his life." State Democratic Chairman David Pepper called him simply "an Ohio giant."

As he left the Senate, Voinovich counted among his accomplishments the passage of a global anti-Semitism bill, an effort to expand NATO and a bill to protect intellectual property. He also touted what he called a "nuclear renaissance," pushing to make it easier for nuclear power plants to get new licenses and financing, and to improve the oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Voinovich cultivated an image as a debt hawk and opposed President Barack Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package, saying too much of the spending wasn't stimulative.

He prided himself on personal frugality. He shined his own shoes, bought his clothes on sale and as governor banned peanuts and other snacks on state airplanes to save public money. He sold a state airplane in 1993 to a South American tourist company for $350,000.

In 2003, Voinovich stood firm against the size of the president's $726 billion tax cut proposal, saying a country with a multi-trillion-dollar debt couldn't afford them.

"We've spent money like drunken sailors," he said.

As governor in the 1990s, Voinovich preached a mantra of "working harder and smarter, doing more with less," and vowed to streamline state government. He began programs to roll back environmental regulations and struck deals on long-term contracts with state employee unions, promising security but little money.

Voinovich also cut $720 million from the state budget in two years. But, in 1993, Voinovich and legislative leaders of both parties pushed a tax increase to bolster state finances. The move angered some conservatives, who questioned his commitment to their cause.

Also that year, about 400 inmates rioted at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. A guard and nine inmates were killed.

Voinovich was a prized commodity in the Ohio GOP: a Republican who could deliver his hometown of Cleveland, a Democratic stronghold.

Born George Victor Voinovich in 1936, he was the oldest of six children. His parents, George and Josephine, were Serbian and Slovenian. Their parents had immigrated to the United States from what is now Croatia, and Voinovich grew up with a strong ethnic identity.

He served in the Ohio House from 1967-71, and in each election he won the support of Cuyahoga County's mostly Democratic voters because of his connection to the ethnic communities and his easygoing style.

By the late 1970s, Cleveland was in default and most people blamed the Democratic mayor, Dennis Kucinich, who constantly fought electric utilities, the city's banking community and other big-business interests. Voinovich defeated Kucinich, a future congressman, and went on to serve a decade as mayor, winning credit for turning the city around.

But his political path also included heartbreak. In 1979, while running for Cleveland mayor, his 9-year-old daughter, Molly, was killed when she was hit by a van that went through a red light. Molly was returning to school after lunch. She was the youngest of the Voinoviches' four children.

Though he was one of Ohio's most popular Republican politicians, Voinovich stumbled in 1988 during his first bid for the U.S. Senate. Trailing badly in the polls, he attacked the grandfatherly incumbent Democrat Howard Metzenbaum for not being tough on child pornography. The move backfired and Metzenbaum soundly carried the election.

In 1990, he easily defeated Democrat Anthony J. Celebrezze Jr. and began the first of two four-year terms as governor.

Voinovich was vulnerable to his emotions. He once broke into tears when protesters gathered outside the governor's office to demand that he restore cuts the Legislature made to welfare.

He later angrily defied the Federal Aviation Administration by violating a no-fly order during a 1995 visit to Columbus by then-President Bill Clinton. Sitting in a state plane at one of the city's airports, Voinovich told his pilot to take off. The FAA fined him $1,500.
Reaction to Florida nightclub mass shooting

ORLANDO, Florida (AP)  Reaction to the Florida mass shooting at the Pulse Orlando nightclub Sunday when police say a gunman wielding an assault-type rifle opened fire before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers; at least 50 people were killed and dozens of others wounded.

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"The Secretary-General condemns the horrific attack this morning in Orlando, Florida, in which dozens of people were killed and injured. He extends his deepest condolences to the families of the victims and expresses his solidarity with the Government and people of the United States." United Nations office of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

A couple embraces outside the Stonewall Inn, Sunday, June 12, 2016, in New York. New Yorkers are gathering in Manhattan at the historic bar to grieve the deaths of at least 50 people in early Sunday's Florida gay nightclub shooting. The Manhattan bar became a national symbol of gay rights after a 1969 police raid led to violent street riots. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

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"While authorities are still investigating and details continue to be confirmed, it is appalling that as many as 50 lives may have been lost to this domestic terror attack targeting the LGBTQ2 community." Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

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"I wish you and people in the U.S.A. strength and determination so that your country can stand together to come to terms with the grief and pain over this attack." German President Joachim Gauck, in a message of condolences to President Barack Obama.

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"Pope Francis joins the families of the victims and all of the injured in prayer and in compassion. Sharing in their indescribable suffering he entrusts them to the Lord so they may find comfort. We all hope that ways may be found, as soon as possible, to effectively identify and contrast the causes of such terrible and absurd violence which so deeply upsets the desire for peace of the American people and of the whole of humanity." Statement from the Rev. Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See press office.

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"We are looking at a massacre that has no precedent in the history of the gay community," Rome's Gay Center spokesman Fabrizio Marrazzo told the Italian news agency ANSA.

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"We are heartbroken and angry that senseless violence has once again destroyed lives in our state and in our country. Gay clubs hold a significant place in LGBTQ history. They were often the only safe gathering place and this horrific act strikes directly at our sense of safety." Equality Florida.

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"It's horrific, it's unthinkable. And just hopes go out to all those who were shot that they can recover." Bernie Sanders, Democratic presidential candidate, speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press."

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"Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?" Tweet from Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidate. He tweeted about an hour later: "Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!"

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"Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act." Tweet from Hillary Clinton, Democratic presidential candidate.

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French President Francois Hollande "condemns with horror" the mass killing in Florida and "expresses the full support of France and the French with America's authorities and its people in this difficult time." Statement from Hollande's office.

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"My thoughts go out to the victims, to which I offer my condolences, as well as the many wounded, to whom I wish a speedy recovery. I express my solidarity to the American people and its authorities in this terrible ordeal." French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.

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"We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured. The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence." Rasha Mubarak, Orlando regional coordinator for Florida's chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

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"Our heart is with our American brothers." Tweet from Italian Premier Matteo Renzi.

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"aghast by the ever more dramatic news of the nightclub massacre." Tweet from Italy's foreign minister, Paolo Gentiloni.

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"This morning, I will be marching in the West Hollywood Pride Parade with a heavy heart, but we will march in solidarity with all those who are the victims of terrorism and hatred." Democratic U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff of California.

___ "Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love." Pulse Orlando on its Facebook page.

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"I was thinking, 'Are you kidding me?' So I just dropped down. I just said, 'Please, please, please, I want to make it out.' And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood." Christopher Hansen, who was in the VIP lounge when he heard gunshots.

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"This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as domestic terror incident." Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings.

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"Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, families and all those affected by this horrific tragedy. We are a strong and resilient state and we will devote every resource available to assist with the shooting in Orlando." Gov. Rick Scott.

An Orange County Sheriff's Department SWAT member arrives to the scene of a fatal shooting at Pulse Orlando nightclub in Orlando, Fla., Sunday, June 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
The Latest: Elder Bush mourns Voinovich as political ally

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  The Latest on the death of former U.S. senator and Ohio Gov. George Voinovich (all times local):

5:10 p.m.

Former President George H.W. Bush says he's mourning the death of former U.S. Sen. and Ohio Gov. George Voinovich, whom he called one of his closest political allies.

In a statement from Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush calls Voinovich "the quintessential public servant," someone who "brought people together, focused on results, and left his state and our country a better place."

The fellow Republican says he and former First Lady Barbara Bush sent condolences to Voinovich's family in Cleveland, where the former senator died at home Sunday.

Former U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (BAY'-nur) says Voinovich was "a truly good and decent man who was unafraid to endure criticism for the sake of causes he believed were just." He says that's a standard future generations will strive for.

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3:45 p.m.

Officials in Cleveland are commending the legacy of former U.S. Sen. George Voinovich, a former two-term Ohio governor who's a native of the city and served a decade as its mayor.

Voinovich died Sunday at the Collinwood home he and wife Janet have owned for decades.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said Voinovich served the state and city selflessly. He said Voinovich wasn't viewed as a Republican or a Democrat, but as "a real Clevelander."

Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish (BYOO'-dish) called Voinovich "a devoted, thoughtful and compassionate public servant who gave much of his life working for all of us."

Budish said, since leaving the Senate in 2011, Voinovich had continued to advocate projects to improve life in northeast Ohio.

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12:50 p.m.

Democrats in Ohio are joining in remembrances of former Republican senator and governor George Voinovich.

Voinovich died at his home in Cleveland on Sunday. He was known for sometimes bucking the Republican establishment, and he cast key swing votes while serving in the U.S. Senate.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, a fellow Clevelander and liberal Democrat, said Voinovich had strong convictions "yet he was always willing to listen to the other side of an argument and put what he believed was best for our state and country ahead of partisan politics."

State Democratic Chairman David Pepper said Voinovich was "an Ohio giant" who dedicated more than half his life to public service for the state.

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11:10 a.m.

Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman says George Voinovich "exemplified everything good about public service."

Portman was among Ohioans on Sunday remembering the former U.S. senator, governor and Cleveland mayor, who died peacefully overnight at his home in Cleveland.

After Voinovich decided not to run again, Portman successfully sought his vacant seat. He cited Voinovich's accomplishments on behalf of the country, state and especially his hometown of Cleveland, which became "The Comeback City" under Voinovich's watch.

Portman said, "It is not an exaggeration to say he personally saved the city from default and revived the spirit of Cleveland through sheer force of will, an unyielding work ethic and an infectious optimism."

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10:30 a.m.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (KAY'-sik) is remembering fellow Republican George Voinovich as "a unifier who thought outside the box."

Voinovich died early Sunday at his home in Cleveland. He was 79.

Kasich said the former Ohio governor, U.S. senator and Cleveland mayor "never gave up and worked hard for the ideas he believed in up until the very end of his life."

He said Voinovich "was guided by two ideas: love God and love your neighbor," and he used those principles to help Ohioans accomplish more by working together.

Former aide Curt Steiner said members of the Voinovich family were gathering at his home in Collinwood on Sunday. He described Voinovich as "the grand champ of Ohio politics," because he served in so many positions over so many years.

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9:45 a.m.

Former U.S. senator and two-term Ohio Gov. George Voinovich has died at home in Cleveland. He was 79.

His wife, Janet, says Voinovich died peacefully in his sleep early Sunday. The Republican had delivered public remarks Friday at a 25th Slovenian Independence Day event at Cleveland City Hall. He was a delegate to the Republican National Convention coming to Cleveland next month.

Voinovich preached frugality in his personal and public life and occasionally bucked the GOP establishment. He opposed the size of former President George W. Bush's tax cuts and later questioned Bush's war strategy in Iraq.
The Latest: Trump calls for Obama's resignation

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Latest on the 2016 presidential campaign (all times Eastern Daylight Time):

5:10 p.m.

Donald Trump says President Barack Obama should resign because he "refused to even say the words 'radical Islam'" in his response to the Orlando shooting.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally, Saturday, June 11, 2016, at a private hanger at Greater Pittsburgh International Airport in Moon, Pa. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)

And he says Democrat Hillary Clinton should exit the presidential race if she takes the same approach.

The presumptive Republican nominee made his comments in a statement issued in response to the attack on a Florida gay nightclub, which left at least 50 dead and scores more wounded.

Trump has proposed temporarily barring foreign Muslims from entering the country to protect against potential threats.

The suspect in the early Sunday shooting has been identified as an American citizen whose family was from Afghanistan.

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4:15 p.m.

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is postponing its first joint event with President Barack Obama on Wednesday in Green Bay, Wisconsin, because of the deadly shooting in Orlando, Florida.

Clinton's campaign says Sunday the event will be rescheduled in light of the Florida shooting. The White House confirmed the cancellation.

Clinton and Obama were scheduled to make their first appearance together since the president announced his endorsement of the likely Democratic nominee last week.

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4:05 p.m.

Hillary Clinton says the mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub is "an act of terror" and urges the nation to redouble its efforts "to defend our country from threats at home and abroad."

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee says the deadliest shooting in U.S. history is "also an act of hate," noting that the gunman attacked a gay nightclub during June, when gays and lesbians celebrate Pride Month.

Clinton says the U.S. needs to take more steps to keep guns like the ones used in the shooting "out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals.

Clinton's Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders, says Americans are horrified by the shooting but at this point we don't know if it was an "act of terrorism, a terrible hate crime against gay people or the act of a very sick person."

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2:00 p.m.

Donald Trump isn't pausing his political commentary for the biggest mass shooting in U.S. history unfolding in Florida.

It was unclear whether the shooter who killed at least 50 people in an Orlando, Florida nightclub was associated with a radical religious organization. President Barack Obama addressed the nation, calling the shooting "an act of terror" and an "act of hate."

Trump tweeted as Obama began speaking: "Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!"

A law enforcement official tells The Associated Press that the shooter was known to the FBI before the incident. The official was not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

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10:15 a.m.

Donald Trump's top supporter in the Senate says it was a "rough week" for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee because it got the candidate off message.

Trump was hounded by Republicans and Democrats for saying a federal judge overseeing a Trump-related case might be biased against Trump because of the judge's Mexican heritage.

Sen. Jeff Sessions  in an interview with "Fox News Sunday"  calls it "one off-the-cuff comment that he probably shouldn't have made."

The Alabama lawmaker says he expects Trump to refocus on the need for change. Sessions says "this man communicates. He's talking about the issues people care about."

Sessions says those issues include unfair imports and excessive immigration that takes jobs away from Americans and pulls wages down.

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10:08 a.m.

Hillary Clinton's campaign is out with its first general election ad.

The ad splices clips of Donald Trump threatening protesters and mocking a disabled reporter with scenes of Clinton visiting factories, greeting diverse groups of voters and stepping off a plane as secretary of state.

She ends the one-minute spot saying: "What kind of America do we want to be? Dangerously divided or strong and united? I believe we are always stronger together."

Trump has been quick to respond. On Twitter, he wrote: "Clinton made a false ad about me where I was imitating a reporter GROVELING after he changed his story. I would NEVER mock disabled. Shame!"

In this June 7, 2016, photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reacts to supporters during a presidential primary election night rally in New York. The primaries have ended. The nominees are picked. And the general election begins with Clinton already ahead of Donald Trump in the race for the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump waves as he arrives on his plane before he speaks at a campaign rally, Saturday, June 11, 2016 at a private hanger at Greater Pittsburgh International Airport in Moon, Pa. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)
China's Wu wins in Austria for 2nd European Tour title

ATZENBRUGG, Austria (AP)  China's Wu Ashun came from a stroke behind to win the Lyoness Open on Sunday for his second career European Tour title.

Wu, who also won the China Open last year, had a 69 including seven birdies to finish with a 13-under 275. He was one stroke clear of first-day leader Adrian Otaegui of Spain with Richard McEvoy of England another stroke back in third.

Wu trailed Zander Lombard of South Africa going into the final round but picked up three shots on the first four holes. He later carded a double-bogey on the par-4 10th but held on for the victory as Lombard dropped to fifth with a 2-over 74.
Armstrong to join cyclists honoring 5 killed in Michigan

KALAMAZOO, Mich. (AP)  Lance Armstrong plans to be in Kalamazoo for a "Finishing the Ride" event in honor of the five cyclists killed when they were hit by a pickup truck.

Armstrong said he couldn't believe it when he heard about the collision on June 7 in Kalamazoo County's Cooper Township, 160 miles from Chicago, that also left four others injured. Armstrong plans to join Kalamazoo-area cyclists in a 28.5-mile ride Tuesday from Kalamazoo to Plainwell and back.

"For me, this is pretty heavy, thinking the fact that we're going to complete the ride that they set out to is, I'm not sure that I'm equipped for that emotionally," Armstrong told the Detroit Free Press.

He said all cyclists share a fear of being struck by a vehicle.

The 50-year-old driver of the pickup, Charles Pickett Jr. of Battle Creek, appeared in court Friday on second-degree murder charges and other crimes. He was ordered held without bond, and an attorney will be appointed to represent him.

The bicyclists were part of a group that called themselves "The Chain Gang." Killed in the crash were Debra Bradley, 53; Melissa Fevig-Hughes, 42; Fred Nelson, 73; Lorenz Paulik, 74; and Suzanne Sippel, 56. The injured bicyclists were Paul Gobble, 47; Sheila Jeske, 53; Jennifer Johnson, 40; and Paul Runnels, 65.
Clinton, Obama prove Democratic dependence on nonwhites

ATLANTA (AP)  Eight years ago, exit polls showed Hillary Clinton with comfortable margins over now-President Barack Obama among whites and Latinos during the Democratic primary season.

This year, exit polls of Democratic voters showed whites narrowly preferred Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Yet, Clinton is the presumptive 2016 Democratic nominee.

The key difference: African-Americans sided overwhelmingly with the winner of 2008 and 2016 nominations, with black voters across the South and in heavily Democratic cities fueling key wins and delegate advantages in the drawn-out primary contests.

FILE - In this Dec. 1, 2008, file photo, then-President-elect Barack Obama, left, stands with then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., after announcing that she is his choice as Secretary of State during a news conference in Chicago. Eight years ago, Clinton got more than 18 million Democratic primary votes for president, with exit polls showing her with comfortable margins over now-President Barack Obama among whites and Latinos. This year, exit polls of Democratic voters showed whites narrowly preferred Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Yet Clinton is the presumptive 2016 Democratic nominee. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

For Clinton, her second effort is evidence of a lesson learned, and it provides her with a head start in rebuilding part of the general election coalition that propelled Obama to two terms. For Sanders, it's a case of what-might-have-been.

And for aspiring Democrats eyeing future White House bids, it serves notice that the presidential demand for a diverse voting coalition isn't just a general election concern for Republicans too dependent on whites; it actually begins in the Democratic primary.

"You just can't have a limited strategy focused on Iowa and New Hampshire, two of the whitest states in the country," said Atlanta-based Democratic consultant Tharon Johnson, who worked for Obama's 2008 campaign, arguing that Sanders and Clinton, in her first campaign, made that mistake.

South Carolina Democratic Chairman Jaime Harrison, whose early voting state offers the first primary contest with a large contingent of black voters, singled out black women. "They almost single-handedly gave the nomination to Secretary Clinton," he said, after "doing that for Sen. Obama" in 2008.

The two campaigns bear strikingly similar trajectories. Each time, the top two contenders split Iowa and New Hampshire before a competitive finish in Nevada. But Obama then trounced Clinton in South Carolina by a 2-to-1 margin. Blacks made up about 55 percent of the electorate, and Obama won about four of five of them, according to exit polls conducted for the Associated Press and television networks.

This year, Clinton won South Carolina 3-to-1, with exit polling reflected a whopping 86-14 advantage for Clinton over Sanders among blacks, who accounted for an estimated 61 percent of primary ballots.

The 2008 and 2016 circumstances were influenced by unique characteristics of the candidates. Black voters embraced the possibility of Obama becoming the nation's first black president. Clinton, this year, capitalized on decades of good relations with black Democrats she'd helped elect, raise money for and worked with on various issues since her early years as a lawyer, advocate and first lady of Arkansas.

But South Carolina established a pattern.

The nine states where blacks account for the greatest population share form an unbroken band from Maryland and Delaware down the Atlantic Coast and through the Deep South to Louisiana. Obama defeated Clinton in all of them on his way to winning 82 percent of African-Americans in states where exit polling was conducted. Clinton defeated Sanders in the same nine states, as well, and won 77 percent of the black vote in states with exit polling.

The margins are important since Democrats award pledged delegates roughly proportionally. Obama's total pledged-delegate advantage of less than 200 can be attributed almost entirely to his success among African-Americans. Clinton's advantage this year is wider, but it was first established during a concentration of Southern states that had voted by March 15.

Unable to catch up, Sanders sometimes dismissed Clinton's victories, saying the primary schedule "distorts reality" because the South is so conservative. Yet in late 2015, before voting began, he began emphasizing his personal civil rights advocacy in the 1960s  including being arrested for protesting segregated housing in Chicago. He also massaged his economic inequality arguments to focus on minorities. "The African-American community ... will respond," he predicted to AP in September.

Clinton, who spent 2015 formalizing a deep network in the South, countered with her own biography and an open embrace of Obama. She cast Sanders as disloyal to the president and hammered the senator as soft on gun control, focusing the issue on at black voters wrenched by violence within the black community and many high-profile cases of black citizens being killed by police.

Georgia state Sen. Vincent Fort, a black Sanders supporter, argued Clinton's advantage was "entirely to do with her brand" as a party powerbroker and lamented that Sanders "is more in line with the black community" on issues "from universal health care to free college tuition."

Fort also noted that Sanders' appeal among young voters crossed racial lines, foreshadowing that nominees after Clinton "will come from the progressive wing."

Certainly, Sanders can defend his strategy: Could he have essentially tied Clinton in Iowa and blitzed her in New Hampshire if he'd spent more early campaign time in the South?

Regardless, Johnson, the Georgia Democrat, said future nominees must sell themselves and their ideas across the electorate.

"We have now gone through two consecutive cycles in which campaigns have gone to the very, very end," Johnson said. "We're going to continue along that path. In the end it's important to know the diversity of America, the diversity of the issues people are facing, and then having people know who you are."

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UN, Nigeria agree to Cameroon's return of 80,000 refugees

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP)  Nigeria says it has agreed to Cameroon's voluntary return of 80,000 Nigerian refugees who have fled the Boko Haram Islamic insurgency.

Nigerian officials had said Cameroon was threatening to force the repatriation. Cameroon previously has dumped thousands on the border.

Nigerian emergency agency spokesman Sani Datti says Sunday that an agreement for their return "voluntarily and in a dignified manner" has been signed by the UNHCR refugee agency, Nigeria and Cameroon.

Last month, Nigerians who had returned home were blocked from returning to Cameroon though they complained they did not have enough water as temperatures soared over 100 degrees (42 degrees Celsius).
Obama decries Orlando shooting as an 'act of terror'

WASHINGTON (AP)  President Barack Obama decried the deadliest mass shooting in American history on Sunday as a terrorist act targeting a place of "solidarity and empowerment" for gays and lesbians. He urged Americans to decide "if that's the kind of country we want to be."

Hours after a gunman killed at least 50 people in Orlando, Obama said the FBI would investigate the nightclub shooting as terrorism, but said the alleged shooter's motivations were unclear. He said the U.S. "must spare no effort" to determine whether the suspect, identified by authorities as Omar Mateen, had any ties to extremist groups.

"What is clear is he was a person filled with hatred," Obama said of the alleged shooter. He added: "We know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate. And as Americans, we are united in grief, in outrage, and in resolve to defend our people."

President Barack Obama speaks about the massacre at a Orlando nightclub during a news conference at the White House in Washington, Sunday, June 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Obama had planned to travel to Wisconsin on Wednesday for his first campaign appearance of the 2016 race, a joint rally with Hillary Clinton in Green Bay, Wisconsin. But Clinton's campaign and the White House said that event was being postponed in light of the attack.

The president, who has proclaimed June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month, called the attack "heartbreaking" for the LGBT community. He said the site of the shooting was more than a nightclub because it was a place where people came "to raise awareness, to speak their minds and to advocate for their civil rights."

"The shooter targeted a night club where people came together to be with friends to dance and to sing  to live," Obama said.

For Obama, the hastily arranged remarks were the latest in what's become a tragically familiar routine. Since he took office in 2009, Obama has appeared before cameras more than a dozen times following mass shootings and issued written statements after many others.

The president made no new, specific call for stricter gun laws. Though he lamented "how easy it is" for people to get their hands on weapons, Obama appeared resigned to the likelihood that he'll be unable as president to substantially address the mass shootings that have proliferated in recent years.

"We have to decide if that's the kind of country we want to be," Obama said. "To actively do nothing is a decision as well."

After a gunman in Newtown killed 20 first graders and six adults in 2012, Obama dedicated much of the start of his second term to pushing legislation to expand background checks, ban certain assault-style weapons and cap the size of ammunition clips. That measure collapsed in the Senate, and since then, the political makeup of Congress have made new gun laws appear out of reach. Still, Obama has sought to take incremental steps using his own authority to tighten rules for obtaining a gun.

Obama spoke from the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, named after the former press secretary who was shot and permanently disabled in an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.

He also signed a proclamation on Sunday ordering flags to be flown at half-staff until sunset on Thursday in honor of the victims.

Vice President Joe Biden canceled a planned trip Sunday to Miami to hold a fundraiser for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. Biden's office said he would remain at his family home in Delaware while receiving updates about the shooting before returning to Washington in the evening.

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Associated Press writer Kathleen Hennessey contributed to this report.

President Barack Obama speaks about the massacre at an Orlando nightclub during a news conference at the White House in Washington, Sunday, June 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Illinois' Ex-Rep Schock says any mistakes were 'honest' ones

PEORIA, Ill. (AP)  Former U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock of Illinois, whose spending has been under investigation by a grand jury for a year, said if there were mistakes made during his time in office they were "honest" ones.

The Republican resigned in March 2015 amid intensifying scrutiny over real estate deals, travel and other spending, including investigations by The Associated Press and other media outlets. Last week, Schock made his first return to the House of Representatives floor since resigning and listened to an address by India Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Schock said he didn't know details of the investigation, including how long it would take.

FILE - In this Feb. 6, 2015 file photo, former Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill. speaks to reporters in Peoria, Ill. Schock says if there were any mistakes made during his time in office they were "honest" ones. A grand jury has been conducting a probe into the Republican's spending. He resigned in March 2015 amid intensifying scrutiny over real estate deals, travel and other spending. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman, File)

"It's been a year. I'm not that interesting of a guy. It's not like I'm the Gambino crime family," Schock told The (Peoria) Journal Star (http://bit.ly/1VTpLAj ) in an interview posted online Saturday. "If there were mistakes, they were honest mistakes, but nobody was like, 'Do it wrong! Screw up!'"

Questions were raised the spending habits of the one-time rising GOP star from Peoria, sparked in part by word that he redecorated his congressional office in the lavish style of TV's "Downton Abbey."

Former congressional staffers have been subpoenaed by the federal court in Springfield, Illinois. Schock has been issued at least two grand jury subpoenas seeking campaign and congressional records. FBI agents also have also removed items from his central Illinois campaign office.

"In hindsight, could I have done things better? Sure. I don't think anybody who's run any organization doesn't look back and say, 'Hey, I should've done this better or that better.' Absolutely," he told the newspaper. "But that doesn't make me a criminal. Heck, I wouldn't have had so many people working for me, so many third-party compliance people, if I wasn't trying to follow the rules."

Schock, who was heavily involved in issues related to India while in Congress, devoted most of the newspaper interview to discussing India and Modi. He said he'd try to find ways where his "relationships can benefit both U.S. and India."
Spanish police arrest suspected Mexican sex offender

MADRID (AP)  Spanish police say they have arrested one of Mexico's most sought-after sex offenders, a man who allegedly took part in a sexual assault of a minor along with other men last year.

Police said the man was arrested in Madrid early Saturday on a Mexican arrest warrant. He faces charges of group pedophilia, which carry a sentence of 12-40 years in prison.

He is expected to be extradited to Mexico.

The suspect and three other men of wealthy background became known derisively on social media as "Los Porkys" after a father publicly accused them of assaulting his daughter in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz in January 2015.
Police: Man arrested in California had guns, explosives

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP)  An Indiana man armed with three assault rifles and chemicals used to make explosives was arrested in Southern California on Sunday and told police he was headed to a West Hollywood gay pride parade, an event that annually draws hundreds of thousands of people, authorities said.

The early morning arrest in Santa Monica of James Wesley Howell, 20, of Jeffersonville, came just a few hours after at least 50 people were shot and killed in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, though police said they had found no evidence of a connection between the events.

The LA Pride event continued as usual, albeit with increased security. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the arrest at the start of the parade and struck a defiant tone.

This June 12, 2016 law enforcement booking photo provided by the Santa Monica, Calif., Police Department shows James Wesley Howell, 20, of Indiana. Police say Howell was the heavily armed man arrested in Santa Monica on his way to a Southern California gay pride parade, who told them he wanted to do harm to the event. (Santa Monica Police Department via AP)

"We are here as Angelenos, as the LGBT community and allies," he said. "And we will not shrink away, we will not be stuck in our homes, we will not go back into our closets. We're here to march, to celebrate and to mourn."

Howell was arrested around 5 a.m. after residents called police to report suspicious behavior by a man who parked his white Acura sedan facing the wrong way. When officers arrived they saw an assault rifle sitting in Howell's passenger seat, Santa Monica police Lt. Saul Rodriguez said.

That prompted them to search the whole car. They found two more assault rifles, high-capacity magazines and ammunition and a five-gallon bucket with chemicals that could be used to make an explosive device, police said.

Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks initially tweeted that Howell told officers he wanted to "do harm" at the gay pride event, but she later corrected her statement to say only that Howell said he was going to the parade, about seven miles from the scene of the arrest.

Authorities would answer no further questions on Howell or his motives. The FBI is leading the investigation.

A Facebook page that apparently is Howell's includes photos of the white Acura he was driving in Santa Monica. The postings are unremarkable. There's no enmity toward gays or notable political activism. One post says he's signing a petition to legalize marijuana.

The page's most recent public post, from June 3, shows a photo comparing an Adolf Hitler quote to one from Hillary Clinton. An anti-Clinton, pro-Bernie Sanders photo was posted in February.

The site said Howell worked as an auditor for a company that makes air filters.

Howell was charged in October in Clark County, Indiana, with pointing a firearm at someone, and with intimidation. He made a deal with prosecutors in April to plead guilty only to the misdemeanor intimidation charge. He was given one-year prison sentence that the judge suspended in favor of strict probation that prohibited him from having weapons.

A friend of Howell's, 18-year-old Joseph Greeson, said Howell's parents in Jeffersonville hadn't seen him for days and that they called Greeson's parents looking for him. Greeson told the Los Angeles Times that he and Howell are in a car club together and that Howell had a gun collection.

Greeson also said Howell harbored no ill will for gays or lesbians.

The organizers of LA Pride said in a statement before the parade that the Orlando tragedy made them all the more determined to continue with plans.

"Our brave founders made this happen to show the world who we are," the statement said. "We will be loud. We will be proud, and we will celebrate in honor of all those lost."

Carl Oliver of Los Angeles attends the parade every year. He said he cried after hearing about Orlando, but he never considered not coming.

"This is about love," he said. "We have to show our love and unity."

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Dalton reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Amanda Lee Myers in West Hollywood and Sophia Tareen in Chicago contributed to this report.

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This story has been corrected to show that according to the police chief the suspect said only that he was going to the gay pride parade, not that he meant to do harm to it.

Investigators view items removed from a car, left, after a heavily armed man was arrested in Santa Monica, Calif., early Sunday, June 12, 2016. The man reportedly told police he was in the area for West Hollywood's huge gay pride parade. Authorities did not know of any connection between the gay nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., early Sunday and the Santa Monica arrest. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

Investigators view items removed from a car, left, after a heavily armed man was arrested in Santa Monica, Calif., early Sunday, June 12, 2016. The man reportedly told police he was in the area for West Hollywood's huge gay pride parade. Authorities did not know of any connection between the gay nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., early Sunday and the Santa Monica arrest. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

Items removed from a car are displayed on a sidewalk after a heavily armed man was arrested in Santa Monica, Calif., early Sunday, June 12, 2016. The man reportedly told police he was in the area for West Hollywood's huge gay pride parade. Authorities did not know of any connection between the gay nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., early Sunday and the Santa Monica arrest. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

A Santa Monica community service officer and onlookers stand across the street from where investigators are viewing a car after a heavily armed man was arrested in Santa Monica, Calif., early Sunday, June 12, 2016. The man reportedly told police he was in the area for West Hollywood's huge gay pride parade. Authorities did not know of any connection between the gay nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., early Sunday and the Santa Monica arrest. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

Los Angeles County Sheriff's department motorcycle deputies ride along a street in West Hollywood, Calif., during the Gay Pride Parade on Sunday, June 12, 2016. A heavily armed man arrested in Southern California told police he was in the area for West Hollywood's gay pride parade. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, center, flanked by Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, left, and Los Angeles World Airports Chief of Police Patrick M. Gannon, right, march in the gay pride parade in West Hollywood, Calif., on Sunday, June 12, 2016. Garcetti says a heavily armed man arrested in Southern California told police he was in the area for West Hollywood's gay pride parade. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
Names of pilot, mom in Tennessee plane crash released

COLLEGEDALE, Tenn. (AP)  Authorities have released the name of a pilot and his mother involved in a small plane crash in Tennessee.

Collegedale police spokeswoman Tonya Sadler says the single-engine plane crashed Saturday as it was coming in to the Collegedale airport. Collegedale is about 20 miles east of Chattanooga.

Sadler said Sunday in a news release that the plane was registered to the pilot, Todd Silver, out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The release says Silver was traveling with his mother, Suzanne Silver, and his two children.

Investigators work the scene of a plane crash next to the runway of the Collegedale Municipal Airport on Saturday, June 11, 2016, in Collegedale, Tenn. Amy Maxwell, a spokesman for Hamilton County Emergency Services, said a single-engine plane crashed at the Collegedale airport, about 20 miles east of Chattanooga. (Doug Strickland/Chattanooga Times Free Press via AP) THE DAILY CITIZEN OUT; NOOGA.COM OUT; CLEVELAND DAILY BANNER OUT; LOCAL INTERNET OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

Sadler says Suzanne Silver and a male child were pronounced dead at the scene. Todd Silver and his daughter were taken to a Chattanooga hospital. Their conditions Sunday weren't immediately known. The children's names weren't released.
Egypt says time running out to find EgyptAir black boxes

CAIRO (AP)  Egyptian investigators say time is running out in the search for the black boxes from an EgyptAir plane that crashed into the Mediterranean last month, killing all 66 people on board.

In a statement Sunday, they say that searches by ships in the area will intensify, given that only around five days remain before the batteries of the flight's data and cockpit voice recorders expire and they stop emitting signals.

The boxes could reveal whether a mechanical fault, a hijacking or a bomb caused the disaster. Finding them without the signals is possible but more difficult.
Father, daughter, 9, found dead in possible murder-suicide

LITTLESTOWN, Pa. (AP)  Authorities say a father and hi 9-year-old daughter have been found dead in a central Pennsylvania home in what is being investigated as a possible murder-suicide.

Sgt. Robert Funt of the Littlestown police department in Adams County told PennLive.com the shooting occurred just before 3 a.m. Sunday.

Funt said a woman with a gunshot wound to her shoulder met officers outside. Inside, officers found the body of her husband and their daughter.

Police said the mother was taken to York Hospital, where she was listed in satisfactory condition. Autopsies on the deceased are scheduled Tuesday at Lehigh Valley Medical Center.
Production on deadly Arizona fire movie set to begin Monday

PHOENIX (AP)  The producers behind a movie about the elite firefighting team that lost 19 members in a 2013 Arizona wildfire assure the story focuses on the firefighters' dedication, not the way in which they died.

"Granite Mountain" is slated to start production Monday with a cast that includes Josh Brolin and Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly, The Arizona Republic reported (http://bit.ly/28ohzgg).

The movie will be filming in Santa Fe, Los Alamos and several other cities in New Mexico through early September. It is slated to open in theaters in September 2017.

Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura said the plot will focus on Eric Marsh, who led the crew, and Brendan McDonough, the only surviving hotshot crew member. He said it will not focus on tragedy or the exact details of the fire.

"This movie is about the lives of these people and what they were trying to put on the line, and what it meant to them to do what they were doing and what it meant to the community to have them doing it," he said.

Brolin will play Marsh, who was superintendent of the Granite Mountain Hotshot crew, with Connolly playing his wife, Amanda Marsh.

Other cast members include Miles Teller, Jeff Bridges, Taylor Kitsch and James Badge Dale. Director Joseph Kosinski said it is a story of "true heroism."

"The more I discovered about these men, their families, their relationships and where they came from, the more I was drawn into it," he said.

The real Amanda Marsh said it is important that the hotshots are portrayed as people, not just a tragedy.

"I want the world to understand what it is like to be a hotshot and what it is like to be a hotshot wife," she said. "Neither is easy. Both come with their own sense of deep responsibility and commitment to the job. I hope Eric's personality comes through and that people get a sense of who Eric was."

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This story has been corrected to reflect that Brendan McDonough survived the 2013 wildfire, though 19 other members of his crew did not.

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Police fatally shoot man suspected of killing young woman

TUPELO, Miss. (AP)  Authorities say police in north Mississippi fatally shot a man who was suspected of killing a young woman.

Mississippi Bureau of Investigation spokesman Warren Strain says Tupelo police shot 27-year-old Lyndarius Cortez Witherspoon of Tupelo after a chase Saturday evening.

Tupelo Police Capt. Chuck McDougald tells news media police began to chase Witherspoon after an officer recognized his license plate from a law enforcement alert. McDougald says Witherspoon shot at police during the chase and after it ended at an apartment complex where police blocked in his vehicle.

Strain says Witherspoon was shot during an exchange of gunfire with police.

Baldwyn Police Chief Troy Agnew says the alert was sent after 23-year-old Alexandra Caldwell was shot and killed earlier Saturday in Baldwyn.
Minnesota memorial honors soldiers of 'secret war'

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP)  A new memorial on the Minnesota Capitol grounds honors soldiers of the "secret war" in Laos.

Hundreds gathered Saturday for the dedication of the memorial to the U.S. and Alliance Special Forces in Laos, Minnesota Public Radio News (http://bit.ly/1PUzN2M ) reported.

The 10-foot-tall bronze monument commemorates those who served in the southeast Asian country, from 1961 and 1975. Laos was neutral during the Vietnam War, but the CIA recruited Hmong soldiers to carry on a covert campaign.

Veterans listen during the dedication ceremony for the Minnesota Memorial for the United States and Alliance Special Forces in Laos on Saturday, June 11, 2016 on the State Capitol grounds St. Paul, Minn. The memorial was inspired by survivors of the secret war from 1961-1975 in Laos, and their children. Many Hmong soldiers were trained by the U.S. to fight off the communist expansion in Southeast Asia during the war. (Peter Cox/Minnesota Public Radio via AP)

After the U.S. pulled out of Laos and Vietnam, tens of thousands fled and lived in refugee camps in Thailand. Many refugees eventually resettled in the U.S. An estimated 66,000 Hmong live in Minnesota.

Lt. Gov. Tina Smith praised the veterans at the dedication ceremony.

"More than four decades ago, Hmong, Lao and southeast Asian soldiers served during the Secret War, saved American lives and helped to advance the cause of freedom and democracy," Smith said. "Your service embodies the ideal of sacrifice."

The memorial resembles a sprouting bamboo shoot, with its leaves bearing images of daily life, war and relocation.

The ceremony featured Hmong music, a gun salute and the playing of "Taps." Several officials including St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar spoke as well as veterans.

The Americans recruited Gen. Vang Pao to encourage many in his country to fight. The general, who died in 2011, was represented by his son, Wang Chong Vang.

Vang said it was a "special day for all of us to honor the Lao Hmong soldiers who served as the U.S. secret army in Laos."

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Syrian activist survives IS assassination attempt in Turkey

ISTANBUL (AP)  A Syrian independent media activist working in southeast Turkey survived an assassination attempt Sunday that was claimed by the Islamic State group.

Ahmed Abdelqader, founder of the Syrian media group Eye on Homeland, was shot Sunday afternoon by two gunmen riding a motorbike in the city of Sanliurfa.

Eye on Homeland, which disseminates news about Syria on its website and radio station, issued a statement saying three shots had been fired in the failed assassination attempt.

Fellow Syrian activist Abu Ibrahim of the monitoring group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS) says Abdelqader was "hospitalized, in a stable condition."

Another colleague, who requested anonymity out of fear for his safety, said the gunmen had used silencers. The gunmen escaped.

The Islamic State-linked Amaq News Agency said IS militants had staged the attack on Abdelqader, formerly a member of RBSS.

Abdelqader's brother, Ibrahim, was one of two Syrian activists slain by IS operatives in Sanliurfa in October 2015. The second was Fares Hamadi.

IS claimed responsibility for last year's killings in a video message warning that "every apostate will be slaughtered silently."

The Syrian activist groups RBSS and Eye on Homeland regularly report on IS activities in Syria, drawing on their network of local contacts.

IS operatives were also behind the recent fatal shootings of two Syrian journalists in the southern city of Gaziantep.

Anti-IS TV presenter Mohammed Zahir al-Sherqat was killed in April and anti-IS filmmaker Naji Jerf in December.

The assassinations have highlighted the vulnerability of Syrian activists and journalists working in Turkey.

Abdelqader, in an interview with The Associated Press after the death of his brother and Hamadi, said he was receiving threats from IS.

Many Syrian activists based in Turkish border cities report receiving such threats, yet most do not have a financially viable or legal way out of the country.
Curtain goes up on Broadway's Tony Awards starring new host James Corden

James Corden will host Broadway's biggest night of the year as the musical Hamilton looks to sweep the board at the 2016 Tony Awards.

The smash-hit production has a record 16 nominations including nods for best musical and best lead actor in a musical for its creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and his co-star Leslie Odom Jr.

The Pulitzer prize-winning show, which is reportedly set to open at London's Victoria Palace Theatre in October 2017, has achieved sell-out performances and rave reviews since making its debut in February last year.

Former Tony Award winner James Corden will host this year's event (AP)

The hip-hop musical tells the story of Alexander Hamilton, one of America's founding fathers and an influential figure in the drafting of the US constitution.

US president Barack Obama is a fan of the show, with the cast performing at the White House in March.

Hamilton could break the record for the number of Tony Award wins, set by the musical The Producers when it scooped 12 gongs in 2001.

Corden, who won a 2012 Tony Award for his performance in One Man, Two Guvnors, will host the ceremony following his successful stint as the presenter of the Late, Late Show in America.

British play King Charles III, the fictional account of the Prince of Wales's accession to the throne, is nominated for five awards.

Tim Pigott-Smith, who plays Charles, is nominated for best performance by a lead actor in a play, while Richard Goulding, who plays Prince Harry, is up for best performance by an actor in a featured role in a play.

British actor Mark Strong is also nominated for best performance by a lead actor in a play for his role in Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge, while Irish star Gabriel Bryne is nominated in the same category for his performance in Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Oscar-winners Jessica Lange and Lupita Nyong'o will compete for the award for best performance by a lead actress in a play.

The awards will include performances from nine nominated musicals, including Hamilton, Fiddler on the Roof, The Color Purple and Andrew Lloyd Webber's School of Rock. Gloria Estefan's musical On Your Feet! will also feature.

Oprah Winfrey, Cate Blanchett, Claire Danes and Jake Gyllenhaal are among the star-studded list of award presenters. Barbara Streisand will take to the Tony Awards stage for the first time in 46 years to hand out a prize.
Gunman who killed 50 in worst US mass shooting was known to the authorities

A gunman who massacred 50 people in a mass shooting at a gay nightclub was known to US authorities, it has been revealed.

Omar Mateen was armed with a powerful assault-type rifle and handgun when he sprayed revellers with bullets at the popular venue, Pulse, in Orlando, Florida.

The FBI said the 29-year-old killer born in New York was an American citizen who legally purchased two firearms within the last week.

Omar Mateen, the suspect named by police who carried out a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub (Orlando Police)

Despite being aware of Mateen since 2013, following inflammatory comments made to co-workers and over ties to an American suicide bomber in 2014, he was not under surveillance.

Authorities deemed his link to the bomber to be minimal so did not constitute a threat, and after interviews and an investigation dropped the probe into his comments.

It has been revealed that 911 calls involving the shooter from Port St Lucie, Florida and featuring conversations about the Islamic State before the massacre, have now become federal evidence.

US president Barack Obama called the killings at the gay-friendly establishment an "act of terror" and an "act of hate" and said they are being investigated as terrorism.

More than 300 people were inside the building at the time of the attack, which has now become the worst mass shooting in American history - 53 people have also been taken to hospital.

President Obama praised the emergency service response and described the gunman as a person "filled with hatred".

He said the massacre is a reminder of how easy it is for someone to access a weapon like a gun, allowing them to go on and shoot other people.

"We have to decide if that is the type of country we want to be. To actively to do nothing is a decision as well," Mr Obama added.

The first names of the victims have now been released by the police - Edward Sotomayor Jr, Stanley Almodovar III, Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo and Juan Ramon Guerrero are among the dead.

Mir Seddique, the father of the shooter, told NBC News that he thinks a recent experience in which his son saw two men kissing might be related to the shooting.

He apologised for the whole incident, said he was not aware of the actions of his security guard son and claimed "this had nothing to do with religion".

The killer, who also held hostages in a three-hour stand-off, later died in a gunfight with Swat officers in the Florida city. He exchanged gunfire with 14 officers at the club.

Mr Obama has also ordered flags at the White House and federal buildings to be flown at half-mast as a mark of respect for the victims.

And in the aftermath of the massacre, police departments across the US increased patrols around popular gay-friendly locations and venues.

Orlando mayor, Buddy Dyer, described the scene saying there was "blood everywhere".

Political leaders from around the world have since condemned the attack and offered their condolences to the victims.

Afghanistan's president Ashraf Ghani said "targeting civilians is not justifiable under any circumstances whatsoever", while Prime Minister David Cameron said he was "horrified" by the shooting.

French president Francois Hollande said he "expresses the full support of France and the French with America's authorities and its people in this difficult time".

And Buckingham Palace said the Queen had sent a personal message to Mr Obama on Sunday night, saying: "Prince Philip and I have been shocked by the events in Orlando.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with all those who have been affected."
Pulse attack gunman 'had strong indications of radicalisation'

A gunman who pledged his allegiance to Islamic State before he massacred 49 people at a US nightclub had "strong indications of radicalisation", the FBI said.

Officers blasted a hole in the wall of the Pulse club in Orlando, Florida, in a desperate effort to save revellers as Omar Mateen held hostages in a toilet at the gay nightclub.

FBI director James Comey said Mateen had come to its attention twice before the shooting and had been investigated for 10 months from May 2013 because he had made "inflammatory and contradictory" statements about ties to terrorist groups.

The Pride of the Panhandle group holds a candlelight vigil in Panama City Beach, Florida (Heather Leiphart/News Herald via AP)

Mr Comey said that at the time the gunman claimed family connections to al Qaida and said he was a member of Hezbollah, which "is a Shia terrorist organization that is a bitter enemy of the so-called Islamic State."

Mateen admitted making the statements reported by his colleagues, but said he did it in anger because he thought they were discriminating against him and teasing him because he was Muslim

Agents closed the first investigation in early 2014, but Mateen's name came up in a separate FBI investigation in July that year, after he was linked to a Syria suicide bomber.

John Mina, chief of police at the City of Orlando Police Department, said Mateen barricaded himself in a toilet with around four or five hostages after shooting some of his initial victims and called the police, speaking in a "cool and calm" voice with crisis negotiators.

He also confirmed that when Mateen was on the phone to officers "there was allegiance to the Islamic State".

Authorities in Orlando confirmed 49 people were killed in the shooting in the early hours of Sunday, with 53 others injured. Mateen, was the 50th person to die.

He was killed by Swat officers when he opened fire at police after himself crawling out of the hole made to rescue the nightclubbers.

President Barack Obama called the massacre - the worst mass shooting in recent US history - an "act of terror", while Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer said: "We will not be defined by the act of a cowardly hater."

More than 300 people were inside the nightclub when the sound of gunfire was first heard just after 2am local time (7am British time).

The killer fired repeatedly before taking dozens of revellers hostage, leading to a stand-off lasting around three hours.

As Mateen, a 29-year-old bodybuilder of Afghan origin, held a small group in one toilet, around 15 to 20 people took cover in a second toilet opposite.

Speaking to reporters in Orlando, Mr Mina said: "Based on information made by the suspect and from the hostages and people inside, we believed further loss of life was imminent. I made the decision to commence the rescue operation and do the explosive breach."

Mateen fired on officers with a handgun and a "long gun", thought to be an AR-15 rifle, after he emerged from the club, before being killed.

A third weapon was also found in his vehicle, authorities said.

All the victims' bodies have now been removed from the club and FBI investigators are painstakingly working at the scene to reconstruct the night's events.

An ex-wife described Mateen, reportedly a regular at an Islamic centre in Orlando, as a violent bodybuilder who had a history of abusing steroids and was bipolar.

His father Seddique Mir Mateen told NBC news his son had recently been angered after seeing two men kissing while out with his young son, and he denied the killings had a religious motive.

In defiance of the attack, residents in Orlando queued in their hundreds to donate blood to help those in hospital being treated for their injuries.

Members of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community also held vigils in the state, scenes of solidarity which have been mirrored across the world.

Prime Minister David Cameron said he was "horrified" by the shootings, while Buckingham Palace said a personal message had been sent to Mr Obama saying the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh were "shocked" by the events in Orlando.

Omar Mateen has been named by police as the suspect who carried out a mass shooting (Orlando Police)

Police officers stand guard in the street at the scene of the shooting at a nightclub in Orlando (AP)
Air France-KLM taps jet data to defend maintenance share

By Cyril Altmeyer

PARIS, June 10 (Reuters) - Air France-KLM is tapping data from sensors on modern jets to bolster its position as the second-largest independent supplier of jet maintenance but faces a tug of war with planemakers over the profits to be made from Big Data.

Maintenance is one of the most profitable activities of the Franco-Dutch airline group, whose French passenger operations have been engulfed by strikes and restructuring, but planemakers are also seeking a slice of the $65 billion overhaul market.

The weapons in this latest aircraft industry battle are bits and bytes, rather than the nuts and bolts of a repair hangar.

Sensors on newer jets provide vast amounts of information on the performance of parts, and Air France-KLM's maintenance boss believes airlines have the edge over planemakers, because they can put the stream of data to better use.

"The (manufacturers) are designing the data and they are very well placed to understand and analyse the data. We are an operator, we know exactly what to do with the data," Franck Terner, head of Air France-KLM's maintenance and engineering division, told Reuters in an interview.

Aerospace is one of many industries grappling with the challenges and possibilities of "digitalisation," using rich data to improve production or develop new services.

Armed with growing databanks, planemakers Airbus and Boeing are gradually following the lead of engine makers, who make much of their money from maintenance.

But consolidation in the sector has given their airline customers more bargaining power.

In 2011, Air France-KLM ordered 25 Airbus A350s but it took two years to finalise the deal due to a tussle with Rolls-Royce over maintenance contracts for the high-tech jets.

Meanwhile, independent competition in the jet maintenance industry is growing.

"There is very intense and harsh competition," Terner said. "The emerging competition is very aggressive, sometimes by buying market share. All this combined puts pressure on the price."

CRUNCHING DATA

Air France-KLM's maintenance division, second in the market behind Lufthansa, accounts for only 15 percent of group sales but 26 percent of its operating profit. However, the profit margin was flat at 5.2 percent last year.

Air France-KLM has invested 400 million euros ($452 million) over the last decade to modernise its maintenance services and aims to outpace predicted industry growth of 4-5 percent.

At the same time, the aircraft maintenance industry is adjusting to a shift in contracts to more frequent, shorter services to continuously monitor the condition of jets and minimise the time spent on the ground for lengthy overhauls.

Terner, who ran Concorde maintenance for three years in the 1990s, said Air France-KLM could provide customers with the right data sets to help them improve reliability.

It is also working on ways to help customers manage the availability of fleets, such as designing predictive fuel-system maintenance for the A380, the world's largest jetliner, which sends alerts when parts are running at lower performance so they can be changed before they fail entirely.

But Airbus says it too is working on predictive maintenance by crunching data from its jets to anticipate failures.

Customer services head Didier Lux said last week that by using data collected during flights, a computer could generate an alert to prompt engineers to carry out a preventive fix and avoid the cost of an unscheduled maintenance visit.

Pascal Pincemin, aerospace and defence partner at Deloitte, said airlines with maintenance units such as Air France-KLM and Lufthansa face tough competition from rivals ready to invest to increase market share, but the fact they operate fleets gives them credibility when it comes to selling maintenance services.

"The advantage for an airline over a specialist like Airbus is that the airline has experience of planes made by both Boeing and Airbus," he said.
Guatemala brings corruption charges against five ex-ministers

By Sofia Menchu

GUATEMALA CITY, June 11 (Reuters) - Guatemala's attorney general on Saturday brought corruption charges against five former ministers who served in the government of Otto Perez, a former president impeached and arrested for suspected graft last year.

The five are accused of money laundering and unlawful association to buy gifts for Perez and ex-vice president Roxana Baldetti through an aide, said Ivan Velasquez, head of a local U.N.-backed anti-corruption body known as the CICIG.

The announcement was made in a joint news conference by Guatemala's attorney general, Thelma Aldana, and the CICIG, who worked together to build a case against Perez last year.

Police detained two of the five officials, ex-defense minister Manuel Lopez Ambrosio and former interior minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla on Saturday.

Alejandro Sinibaldi, who had the infrastructure job, former energy minister Erick Archila and Lopez Ambrosio's predecessor at defense, Ulises Anzuelo, are facing arrest.

Only Lopez Bonilla has so far responded to the charges, denying them as he was taken in handcuffs to a courthouse on Saturday.

Velasquez said the five had channeled some $4.5 million in cash to Baldetti's private secretary, Juan Carlos Monzon, to buy beach houses for Baldetti and Perez, as well as a helicopter and a boat for the former president, a retired general.

Investigators discovered the purchases after raiding Monzon's offices in April 2015. Monzon was arrested in October and subsequently confirmed the transactions, authorities said.

Velasquez said investigators suspect that the money delivered to Monzon for the gifts was illicit because the sums involved went far beyond the ministers' salaries or what they had stated in their asset declarations.

"As we see, the objective was to hide the origin and destination of the funds," Velasquez said, noting the gifts were likely made by the officials to protect their jobs.
Without help, families face lonely search for Europe's missing refugee children

By Morgan Meaker

ATHENS, June 12 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - After losing its way in the dark waters of the Aegean between Turkey and the Greek island of Lesbos, the small wooden boat carrying Ghulam Haidar, his young family and nearly 50 other passengers was hit by strong winds and waves.

As the boat sank, Haidar managed to save his seven-year-old son, Shahzad, but he lost sight of the others. For the past eight months he has been in Turkey searching for his wife Shila, his daughter Zahra, 8, and his three-year-old son Behzad.

"I'm just living to find my family," said Haidar, who is from Afghanistan. He has contacted coast guards, immigration officers, international aid groups and the authorities in both Greece and Turkey. But so far, he's found nothing.

His two missing children smile cheekily in a photo posted on the Facebook page "Search and find your family for refugees".

The page posts photographs and information about missing refugees, and has dealt with 172 cases of missing children since September, said its Austria-based founder Jimmy Nagy.

It was through this page that the Thomson Reuters Foundation made contact with Haidar, but so far his pleas for information have answered none of his questions about his missing family.

"I've searched all the hospitals but I've found no sign of them or their bodies. That's why I believe they are alive," Haidar said by phone from Istanbul.

Like Haidar, many other families who have fled war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, are searching for missing children. Without help, they are left to conduct their desperate investigations alone.

In January, the EU's criminal intelligence agency Europol said at least 10,000 unaccompanied child refugees had vanished after arriving in Europe, at risk of falling prey to trafficking gangs.

VULNERABLE

Many missing or unaccompanied children are thought to be in Greece, the EU country that has become the staging post for attempts by refugees and migrants hoping to reach wealthier northern Europe.

With many camps and detention facilities in Greece full, Karen Shalev-Greene, director of the Centre for the Study of Missing Persons at the University of Portsmouth, believes that hundreds of children are living in squats or on the street - making them vulnerable to exploitation.

In Exarcheia, an Athens neighbourhood plastered with anarchist posters, an old school building is being used as a squat. Toddlers weave around bags of rice donated by a Chinese charity in a building now home to over 300 refugee and migrant families.

It was near to here that volunteers from Zaatar, a group that runs a shelter for unaccompanied minors and vulnerable families, discovered a group of Syrian boys, between 12 and 16, outside a brothel, smoking cigarettes.

Keeping track of unaccompanied children is a tough job, particularly in an area known for its people smugglers.

"These kids are very vulnerable," said Zaatar's founder, who asked not to be named.

"The big agencies are not doing their work - either they don't want to or they don't have the means - so we try to be a good influence on them." Zaatar gives the children phones so volunteers can stay in contact, making sure they stay safe.

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

According to the European Commission, missing unaccompanied children are the responsibility of individual EU member states.

But a February report by Missing Children Europe - an umbrella group of some 30 child protection groups - highlighted a "clear lack of ownership" in cases involving missing, unaccompanied children who often slip through the cracks.

"As an example, children from refugee backgrounds tend to aim for Germany. So if a child is reported missing in Greece, authorities will assume that traffickers have taken them to Germany via Austria," said Shalev-Greene, who co-authored the report.

It was then unclear whether Germany, Austria or Greece would be responsible for the case.

"There has to be a decision as to who is responsible because this is happening so frequently," she said.

Europol said finding missing children did not fall within its remit. "Our role is to support law enforcement authorities in different member states. We don't have any powers to act alone," its spokeswoman, Tine Hollevoet, said by email.

FILLING THE GAP

In an effort to plug the gap in protecting vulnerable children, the International Committee of the Red Cross in collaboration with national Red Cross societies has launched an online tracing project, Trace the Face, for parents looking for their children, and children searching for family members.

Lucile Marbeau, a spokeswoman for the ICRC delegation in France, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation there were some 300 unaccompanied children in the Trace the Face database.

The information is shared with Red Cross staff along migration routes, and, if families give their consent, with the authorities in countries where children may have gone missing.

The Greek children's charity, Smile of the Child, also runs a tracing service in collaboration with Missing Children Europe.

In a cool, dark room in Marousi, a northeastern suburb of Athens, three social workers and psychologists talk quietly into headsets as they answer calls made to the 116 000 hotline.

To trace missing children, Smile of the Child staff contact national and international police, hospitals, forensic services, NGOs, embassies and other hotline centres in Europe.

Although the hotline has been effective over a decade in finding missing European children, it has not been so successful working with missing refugee children - in 2015 the Greek hotline handled 13 cases and is yet to claim one success.

"We follow the same procedures with refugee children as with EU nationals, but the circumstances are harder - there's less information about them," said Athanasia Kakarouba, the hotline coordinator, in her Athens office.

Such efforts do not add up to a coordinated effort to trace and protect refugee children alone in Europe, activists say.

"As so many of these children move from country to country, it's clear that there needs to be coordination at European level," said Delphine Moralis, head of Missing Children Europe.

So for now, Haidar is left to search for his family alone. He has approached every authority and international agency he can think of for help, but has heard no news.
Dubai International Airport, one of the world's busiest airport for international travel, closed its airspace for 69 minutes due to unauthorised drone activity on Saturday, causing 22 flights to be diverted.

Government-owned Dubai Airports, which operates Dubai's two main airports, said in a statement the closure lasted between 11.36am and 12.45pm local time, and Dubai Airports chief executive Paul Griffiths said thousands of passengers suffered disruption to their journeys.

Sixteen of the diverted flights went to Dubai World Central, Dubai's other main airport, a Dubai Airports spokesperson told Reuters. Dubai, a trade, tourism and investment hub for the Gulf region, is one of seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Planes were grounded at Dubai International Airport yesterday because of a sighting of an 'unauthorised drone' in the airspace

'This is a very serious incident and we obviously take the safety of our customers and our staff extremely seriously,' Griffiths told Dubai's Dubaieye 103.8 radio.

'As you can imagine, this is the busiest international airport in the world and there was major inconvenience to thousands of passengers. There are very clear restrictions and no fly zones around all airports in the UAE, saying that this type of activity is actually illegal.'

The flying of drones is prohibited within three miles of airports, helipads, landing areas or manned aircraft in the UAE.

Around 78 million passengers pass through Dubai International Airport every year, with only Beijing and Hartsfield-Jackson, Atlanta recording higher footfall.

Scourge of the skies? There have been a number of reports of drones coming close to crashing into aircraft

THEY CAN FLY 50MPH AT 6,000FT High-end drones can fly up to and beyond 6,000ft, travel up to 50mph and stay in the air for 25 minutes. They cost between 25 and 20,000, with electrical store Maplin alone reporting sales of more than 15,000 drones in the UK last year. Last year Domino's Pizza posted a video of a drone delivering a pizza, and online store Amazon has looked into using the technology to speed up deliveries. They are also used by broadcasters such as the BBC for filming. The US Air Force collected so much data from drones during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it employed 65,000 people just to process the information, while police in Texas use drones than can carry small weapons, including tasers. Advertisement

Around the world the use of civil drones, whether for commercial purposes or just as a leisure activity, is rising.

That popularity has led to increasing reports of near-misses with commercial aircraft, such as when a Lufthansa plane was approaching Warsaw airport last month.

Aviation concerns focus on smaller drones, operated like model planes and flown for recreation, because their users are often not familiar with the rules of the air.

The UK's Civil Aviation Authority issued a warning in July 2015 after seven incidents where drones had flown near planes at different British airports in less than a year.

Recognising the threat, the European Commission conceded in 2015 that 'drone accidents will happen' and has charged its aviation safety agency arm with developing common rules for operating drones in Europe.

Speaking to MailOnline Travel previously, a spokesperson for the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) said: 'Pilots say they welcome the growth in drone technology and can see important applications for them commercially and recreationally, but a collision with a commercial airliner or helicopter could be catastrophic.'

Last week MailOnline reported on how Britons will be grounding their selfie sticks this summer in favour of using drones to record images and films of their holidays.

A study has found that 392,330 Britons are planning to pack the flying devices in their luggage.
Kazakhstan says all Islamist attack suspects detained

ALMATY, June 12 (Reuters) - Kazakh security forces detained three men on Sunday suspected of being Islamist militants linked to deadly attacks a week earlier in the city of Akrobe, the National Security Committee said.

Everyone linked to the June 5 attacks had now been detained or neutralised, it added, without going into further detail.

At least 25 people including 18 attackers died during the assaults on a national guard base and firearms shops, and in the subsequent manhunt.
CIA chief expects release of 9/11 documents to clear Saudi Arabia

DUBAI, June 12 (Reuters) - CIA chief John Brennan said on Sunday he expects 28 classified pages of a U.S. congressional report into the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States to be published, absolving Saudi Arabia of any responsibility.

"So these 28 pages I believe are going to come out and I think it's good that they come out. People shouldn't take them as evidence of Saudi complicity in the attacks," Brennan said in an interview with Saudi-owned Arabiya TV, according to a transcript provided by the network.

The withheld section of the 2002 report is central to a dispute over whether Americans should be able to sue the Saudi government, a key U.S. ally, for damages.

The U.S. Senate passed a bill on May 17 allowing the families of Sept. 11 victims to do so, setting up a potential showdown with the White House, which has threatened a veto.

Saudi Arabia denies providing any support for the 19 hijackers - most of whom were Saudi citizens - who killed nearly 3,000 people in the Sept. 11 attacks. Riyadh strongly objects to the bill.

It has said it might sell up to $750 billion in U.S. securities and other American assets if it became law.

Brennan called the 28-page section merely a "preliminary review."

"The 9/11 commission looked very thoroughly at these allegations of Saudi involvement ... their conclusion was that there was no evidence to indicate that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually had supported the 9/11 attacks," he added.

The Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence is reviewing the material to see whether it can be declassified.
Iraq army says secures first safe exit route for civilians in Falluja

BAGHDAD, June 12 (Reuters) - The Iraqi army said on Sunday it had secured the first "relatively safe" exit route for civilians trying to leave Falluja, Islamic State's besieged stronghold near Baghdad.

An exit route was secured on Saturday southwest of Falluja, known as al-Salam (Peace) Junction, Joint Operation Command spokesman Brigadier Gen. Yahya Rasool told Reuters.

"There were exit routes previously, but this is the first to be completely secure and it's relatively safe," he said.
Bangladesh arrests 85 Islamists in crackdown after wave of killings

By Ruma Paul

DHAKA, June 12 (Reuters) - Authorities in Bangladesh have arrested at least 85 militants as part of a broad crackdown on Islamists after a wave of brutal attacks on minorities and liberal activists, police said on Sunday.

A total of more than 5,000 suspected criminals have been arrested since law enforcement agencies began a week-long drive on Friday to halt a series of targeted killings in the mainly Muslim nation.

All arrests were made on specific charges, national police chief A.K.M. Shahidul Hoque said, relating to firearms, narcotics and other offences.

"We will have to prevent the emergence of militancy collectively as a whole nation," Hoque said.

In the past week an elderly Hindu priest, a Hindu monastery worker and a Christian shopkeeper were hacked to death in attacks for which Islamic State claimed responsibility. The Muslim wife of a key counter-terrorism police official was also stabbed and shot dead.

Militants have killed more than 30 people in Bangladesh since early last year, with atheist bloggers, liberal academics, gay rights campaigners, foreign aid workers, members of minority Muslim sects and other religious groups among the victims.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for 21 of the attacks since its first claim in September last year and al Qaeda has claimed most of the rest, according to Site Intelligence Group, a U.S.-based monitoring service.

The government denies that either group has a presence in Bangladesh and says that home-grown radicals are responsible.

Last month junior foreign minister Shahriar Alam told Reuters that Islamic State was trying to ride a wave of religious radicalisation by falsely claiming killings and said there was enough evidence implicating domestic militant groups.

Police said that two home-grown militant groups -- Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen and Ansarullah Bangla Team -- were behind the attacks as part of their campaign to impose strict Islamic law on Bangladesh, whose population of 160 million are mostly moderate Muslims.

At least 10 suspected members of the outlawed Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen were killed in shootouts since November, including five last week, police said.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has vowed to track down the killers, blaming the growing violence on political opponents linked to Islamist parties.

The opposition party, led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, denies the accusations and said that mass arrests were a ploy to suppress political opponents.
Gladiators fight again in ancient Roman settlement in Austria

VIENNA, June 12 (Reuters) - Gladiators reenacted fights in the amphitheatre of the ancient Roman city of Carnuntum whose archaeological remains stretch over 10 square kilometres (3.86 square miles) in eastern Austria.

Clad in leather armour and feathered metal helmets, men attacked one another with wooden batons and painted shields as children and women in Roman costumes looked on.

Archaeologists have reconstructed part of Carnuntum - which they say used to be a hub of the Roman Empire around 1,700 years ago - for tourists, who can now relive ancient Roman culture in the gladiator school, public baths and a museum.
Spain's PP voters ready to sacrifice PM Rajoy to secure government

MADRID, June 12 (Reuters) - A majority of voters of Spain's ruling conservative People's Party (PP) would consent to its leader and acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy stepping aside if this allowed the party to stay in government, a poll showed on Sunday.

Rajoy, blamed for harsh austerity measures implemented in recent years that crippled the economy as well as political corruption cases at the PP during his leadership, is seen as the main obstacle for other parties to back a PP government.

Spain returns to the ballot box on June 26 after an inconclusive December election stripped Rajoy's centre-right party of its absolute majority. Opinions polls show the vote could produce another political stalemate, forcing PP to strike a 'grand coalition' deal with the Socialists and newcomer liberal party Ciudadanos to remain in power.

According to the Metroscopia poll in the daily newspaper El Pais, which questioned 1,200 people on June 7 and June 8, the vote still remains too fragmented for any clear government majority.

Among those polled, 57 percent of PP voters said they would accept Rajoy resigning his position if this meant securing a PP government, while 74 percent of overall voters thought Rajoy should go if this would pave the way for a new government.

An official survey released on Thursday showed voters are still not inclined to revert to the two-party system that dominated Spanish politics for the past 40 years. They seem likely to spread their votes among four main parties and four smaller ones.

While the PP would win the most votes, according to two separate polls published in El Pais and La Vanguardia on Sunday, it remains without a large enough presence in the lower house to take a second term alone.

The party led by Rajoy would win 29.8 percent of the vote, or between 119-122 seats in parliament, the GAD3 poll in La Vanguardia showed, far short of the 176 seats needed to win back its previous absolute majority.

Even if the PP were to rely on backing by natural allies, market-friendly Ciudadanos (Citizens), a resulting coalition would still fall short, holding just up to 163 seats, the survey showed.

Meanwhile, support for a joint left-wing group formed by Podemos (We can) and Izquierda Unidos (IU or United Left) would stay ahead of the Socialists, with the poll in La Vanguardia giving the group 85-87 seats in Parliament over the Socialists' 80-82.

The GAD3 poll questioned 1,016 people between June 6-9.

The Socialists again took a hit in both surveys, similar to two separate polls published last week, losing support from the December ballot to leftwing newcomers.

The Metroscopia poll in El Pais showed the Socialists winning 20.8 percent of the vote, behind the Unidos Podemos coalition with 25.4 percent, and the PP with 28.9 percent.

If a ruling majority cannot be formed after the June vote, Spaniards could potentially be forced to return to the ballot box for the third time in a year.

While the political impasse has had little effect on the country's economic recovery following years of prolonged recession, the Bank of Spain has warned stalled economic policy decisions could hit output if the situation continued.
Thousands flee Falluja using first safe exit route secured by Iraqi army

By Maher Chmaytelli, Ahmed Rasheed and Isabel Coles

BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq, June 12 (Reuters) - The Iraqi army said on Sunday it had secured the first safe exit route for civilians to leave Islamic State's besieged stronghold Falluja, and a Norwegian aid group said thousands of people had already used it to flee in the first day it was open.

While it pressed on with its offensive in Falluja, the army also launched a fresh advance in the direction of the northern city of Mosul, Islamic State's de facto Iraqi capital, under cover of airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition.

The assaults by the Iraqi army are taking place at the same time as advances against Islamic State by U.S.-backed fighters and Russian-backed Syrian government forces in Syria, at the opposite end of the militants' self-proclaimed caliphate.

Fighting on a range of fronts in both Iraq and Syria in recent weeks amounts to some of the biggest pressure on the militants since they swept across much of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and declared their rule over all Muslims from territory that is home to millions of people.

In Iraq, the government launched a major operation last month to recapture the Islamic State bastion of Falluja, an hour's drive from Baghdad. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said troops are delaying advances to protect civilians. The United Nations fears for the fate of up to 90,000 people believed trapped inside Falluja with little food or water.

The new exit route, known as al-Salam (Peace) Junction, was secured on Saturday, southwest of Falluja, Joint Operation Command spokesman Brigadier-General Yahya Rasool told Reuters.

"There were exit routes previously, but this is the first to be completely secured and it's relatively safe," said Rasool.

About 4,000 people had fled the city over the past 24 hours through the al-Salam Junction, said Karl Schembri, a spokesman in Iraq for the Norwegian Refugee Council, which has been assisting people who escape the city.

"We expect thousands more to be able to leave in the coming days," he said.

The al-Salam Junction route was secured after troops dislodged insurgents from districts located on the western bank of the Euphrates river, opposite Falluja's city centre on the east bank, said Rasool. He did not give a number for the civilians who were able to flee so far using it.

More than 20,000 people have managed to flee the city and its surrounding area since the Iraqi army began the offensive on May 23, the United Nations said on June 8.

But the lack of secure routes made their escape extremely difficult and dangerous. At least a dozen people were reported to have drowned while crossing the Euphrates.

Those who managed to reach government-held lines said they walked for days to avoid sniper fire and explosive devices planted by Islamic State insurgents along roads to delay the army's advance.

A government official said the militants were putting up a tough fight defending the city, long an insurgent bastion where U.S. forces fought the heaviest battles of their own 2003-2011 occupation.

The army is receiving air support from the U.S.-led coalition and ground support from Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias and Sunni tribal fighters.

CAMPAIGN NEAR MOSUL

The Falluja campaign veers from Washington's battle plan, which sees the main fight looming in Mosul, the biggest city in either Iraq or Syria under Islamic State control.

Iraqi troops captured a village on Sunday that they could use as a crossing on the Tigris river as part of an eventual campaign near Mosul in the north.

The Haj Ali village sits on the eastern bank of the Tigris, opposite the Islamic State hub of Qayyara, where there is an airfield the army aims to capture and use as a staging ground for future operations on Mosul.

The U.S.-led coalition said it carried out eight strikes near Qayyara on Saturday, destroying tactical units, mortar systems, rocket rails and facilities to produce car bombs.

Islamic State overran Mosul two years ago and went on to proclaim a caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria, but has come under increasing pressure in recent months, losing ground to an array of forces.
Germany's Merkel pushes rule of law, market access in China

BEIJING, June 12 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed the role of an independent judiciary and the need for a level playing field for foreign firms as she begun her ninth trip to China since taking office.

Merkel arrived in China on Sunday amid growing pressure from industry and rights groups to confront the Chinese more forcefully.

The Chinese government is overseeing a broad crackdown on rights groups and activists, and is facing complaints from foreign firms about market access restrictions.

Speaking to students at a Beijing university, Merkel explained the importance of real rule of law.

"This means the judiciary decides according to the laws and legislation of the country independently of politics, and everyone is equal before the law. That means court procedures and rulings have to be transparent," she said.

"If interpreted in this way, rule of law strengthens the trust of citizens in state institutions and its decisions. And thereby also strengths the social stability of a country."

China's courts are controlled by the ruling Communist Party, though President Xi Jinping is trying to improve the rule of law and get ordinary people to resolve their grievances via the courts rather than taking to the streets.

Foreign companies also need a good legal framework, Merkel added.

"As we see it, a legal framework for companies also has to be designed in such a way that foreign companies enjoy the same rights and privileges as domestic companies, for example as regards public tenders, the effective protection of brands and patents and data."

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.

Merkel's trip also comes in the midst of anger in Europe about Chinese steel exports, the robust growth of which has come under fire from global rivals, who have accused China of dumping cheap exports after a slowdown in demand at home.

"We have to ensure that we have a level playing field," she said, referring to the steel issue.
Air strikes in Syria's Idlib kill more than 20 - Syrian Observatory

BEIRUT, June 12 (Reuters) - Air strikes carried out by Syrian or Russian warplanes killed more than 20 people in the northwestern city of Idlib on Sunday, monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

Areas hit included a market, and at least five children were among those killed, the British-based Observatory said. It said the death toll was expected to rise because of the number of people seriously wounded.
Thousands take part in street party for British Queen's 90th birthday

LONDON, June 12 (Reuters) - Ten thousand guests braved rain to take part in a giant street party in front of Buckingham Palace on Sunday to celebrate the official 90th birthday of Queen Elizabeth, Britain's longest-reigning monarch.

Hundreds of tables lined the Mall, the grand avenue leading to the palace, for the Patron's Lunch which saw representatives of the more than 600 charities and other organisations of which Elizabeth is patron enjoying food from wicker picnic hampers.

Organised by her grandson, Peter Phillips, the lunch was the final event in a weekend of celebrations which has included a church service at London's St Paul's Cathedral and a traditional Trooping the Colour parade of soldiers in ceremonial uniforms.

Elizabeth turned 90 in April but in keeping with tradition also has an official birthday to ensure celebrations take place in the summer. That did not guarantee good weather, however.

Guests were handed plastic ponchos to protect them from rain which got progressively heavier ahead of the lunch, while others brought along Union Jack emblazoned umbrellas.

"It is June and it's summer, so it rains," joked Graham Paterson, a Trustee with the Royal Pinner Educational Trust, who was attending the celebration.

His colleague Jane Crawford added: "Never mind, we'll make the most of it and are going to have a good lot of fun."

Guests were provided with hampers with picnic food including sandwiches, salmon mousse, a pork pie with a crown on top and desert, along with the traditional British summer drink, Pimms.

As the rain passed, members of the royal family including Prince William, his wife Kate and brother Harry, emerged from the palace to greet the crowds.

The queen and her husband of 68 years, Prince Philip, were then driven down the Mall in an open top car, waving at the crowds who sang happy birthday to her.

The sun came out in time for a parade featuring more than 300 dancers and 400 musicians in colourful costumes.

The queen thanked the crowds for their support and encouragement and paid tribute to the "commitment, selfless devotion and generosity of spirit" the charities represented.

"I much appreciate the kindness of all your birthday wishes and have been delighted and moved by the many cards and messages I have received," she added, before suggesting she was ready to move on from the months of birthday celebrations.
Italy's Renzi says prime ministers should be limited to two terms

MILAN, June 12 (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said premiers should be limited to two terms in office, as he gears up for a referendum on constitutional reform that some fear could give excessive powers to the government and its leader.

Italy sets no limit on how many times someone can become prime minister, and critics say that the reform, which would drastically reduce the powers of the Senate and grant the lower house more, could create more conducive conditions for premiers to win an unlimited number of mandates.

"I think we should do at the most two mandates ... I would be ready to sign any law in this sense," Renzi said in a debate shown on Italian daily La Repubblica's online TV channel.

"Whoever governs, wears himself out ... that's enough of politics for life," Renzi said during the debate.

The 41-year-old, who came to power two years ago by ousting grand coalition-leader Enrico Letta, has staked his political future on winning the referendum which he says is crucial to more stable and stronger government.

In April, Italian lawmakers agreed constitutional reform to drastically reduce the powers of the Senate, granting relatively stronger authority to the lower house.

That is now being put to a popular vote in October.

While governments in Italy have historically changed before their terms were completed, frequently prompting economic problems, some politicians have repeatedly returned as premiers.

In the last three decades, Silvio Berlusconi was prime minister four times for three different governments.

Asked about Brexit, Renzi reiterated his belief that a vote to leave the European Union would be disastrous for Britain and would create financial turbulence in the very short term.
Bomber hits field hospital as Libyan forces battle Islamic State in Sirte

TRIPOLI, June 12 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed three and wounded seven at a field hospital for forces fighting Islamic State in their Libyan coastal stronghold of Sirte on Sunday, a security source said.

The bombing caused extensive damage to the hospital, about 50 km (30 miles) from the front line, the source said. Two other attempted suicide bombings against forces positioned just outside the centre of Sirte did not cause casualties, he said.

Brigades aligned with Libya's U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) have made rapid advances over the past month. This week they entered Sirte, engaging Islamic State militants in street battles and targeting them with air strikes.
Rwanda expels Burundians who say they were accused of spying

NAIROBI, June 12 (Reuters) - Rwanda has expelled about 400 Burundians back to their country accusing some of them of espionage and fuelling tensions between the two small neighbours whose relations have been strained by Burundi's political crisis, an official said on Sunday.

It's the second such expulsion in about a month and brings the total number of Burundians deported over the period to at least 1,700.

One of those expelled, a young man who did not wish to be named for fear he might be targeted, told Reuters Rwandan officials accused some of them of spying for Burundi.

"We were accused of being envoys of Burundi government and sent there to spy on Rwanda," he said.

Renee Mukandori, a Burundi local government official, confirmed the expulsion to Reuters and said it occurred on Thursday and Friday. Those deported mostly came from the Bugabira district of northern Burundi.

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 a third term last year.

Rwanda has denied Burundi's accusations.

But the violence in Burundi has rattled Rwanda and other countries across the central African region were there are still fresh memories of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which like Burundi has a Hutu majority and Tutsi minority.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, has said in the past he would not allow a repeat of the genocide in the region and has been critical of the handling of the crisis by President Pierre Nkurunziza, who led a Hutu rebel group in Burundi's civil war.

About a quarter of million people have fled the violence in Burundi and most of them are now in refugee camps in Rwanda and Tanzania.

Gille, another man who was sent back to Burundi, said those expelled were not newly arrived refugees and that they had come to Rwanda years ago seeking economic opportunities.

"We went to seek for better life. Once we got there, some of us rented fields and cultivated...we were not given time to go to harvest what is on our land," he said.
Mali pro-govt militia kills 8 Islamists in clash - sources

BAMAKO, June 12 (Reuters) - A Malian pro-government militia has killed eight Islamist fighters in a gunbattle in northern Mali, two security sources said on Sunday.

Clashes between the militia and the Macina Liberation Front erupted on Saturday in Gourma-Rharous village, in the Timbuktu region of Mali which has long been plagued by Islamist militants, a military source and one from the militia told Reuters by telephone.

They had no details of how the clashes started.

Mali's government and various separatist groups signed a peace deal last year but it has failed to prevent periodic violence in northern Mali by Islamist militants, who have also staged assaults on high profile targets in the capital Bamako, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked the Security Council to add just over 2,500 peacekeepers to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has claimed an attack on two U.N. sites in northern Mali at the end of last month, in which a peacekeeper from China and three civilians were killed and over a dozen others wounded.
Suicide bomber hits field hospital near Libya's Sirte

By Ahmed Elumami

TRIPOLI, June 12 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed three people at a field hospital for forces fighting Islamic State in their Libyan coastal stronghold of Sirte on Sunday, a security source said, and medical staff appealed for help in treating the wounded.

The bomber also wounded seven others and caused extensive damage to the hospital, about 50 km (30 miles) from the front line, the source said. Two other attempted suicide bombings just outside the centre of Sirte did not cause casualties, he said.

Brigades aligned with the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord have made rapid advances over the past month. This week they entered Sirte, engaging Islamic State militants in street battles keeping up air strikes against them.

The brigades, made up mainly of fighters from the western city of Misrata, have faced suicide bombings, snipers and mines. At least 120 brigade members have been killed and more than 500 wounded, security and hospital officials say.

Islamic State took advantage of lawlessness and political chaos to expand into Libya from late 2014. It has launched attacks at numerous sites along Libya's Mediterranean coastline but Sirte is the only city where it has taken full control.

Officials in Misrata have long cited a lack of medical capacity to treat the wounded as a constraining factor in their efforts to fight the ultra-hardline group.

Medical facilities are overflowing in Misrata, where, for example, the waiting room of the central hospital has been turned into a makeshift ward with room for 12 patients.

"The wounded here at Misrata hospital are in a very bad state. The hospital care rooms are at full capacity, the private hospitals are also at full capacity," a medical official in Misrata, Malek al-Qualaib, said.

The hospital is running low on medical supplies and has no emergency back-up stocks, hospital spokesman, Aziz Issa, said.

"We have a lack of specialised doctors, and nurses, who left Misrata before the battle due to unpaid salaries, as well as a shortage of anaesthesia and X-ray equipment," he said.

"We appeal to the international community and international organisations to help us in providing necessary medical treatment for the wounded."

More than 150 wounded fighters have been sent abroad for treatment, to Tunisia, Turkey, Italy and Algeria, but the departure of some wounded fighters had been delayed or prevented because they had not received visas, Issa said.
Italy's coastguard says 1,230 migrants rescued on Sunday

MILAN, June 12 (Reuters) - Italy's coastguard said on Sunday a total of 1,230 migrants had been picked up in nine rescue operations in the waters between Sicily and North Africa, with one dead body being recovered.

That brings the number of people saved at sea over the past four days to more than 4,000.

On Saturday, the coastguard said it had picked up 1,348 migrants in 11 rescue operations.
Former Niger Delta militants urge Avengers to join in government talks

By Tife Owolabi

YENAGOA, Nigeria, June 12 (Reuters) - A group of Nigerian former militants have urged the Niger Delta Avengers, who have claimed responsibility for a recent string of attacks on oil and gas facilities, to join in discussions with the government, a statement said on Sunday.

Last week, the Avengers said they would not cooperate with a government initiative to start talks with them and other militants over their demands for a greater share of oil wealth and pollution in the impoverished southern swamp area.

The attacks have cut Nigeria's oil output to a 20-year low.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said: "If indeed your cause is to avenge the injustice done to the Niger Delta region then, we urge you to ceasefire and join us to the table of negotiation with the federal Government."

MEND, one of largest militant groups until it signed up for a government amnesty in 2009, said in a statement it had nominated a team of negotiators on its own behalf.

"Following useful exploratory discussions held with high ranking officials of the current administration... MEND has constituted (a team) to dialogue with the federal Government on the immediate, medium and long-term future of the Niger Delta region," it said.

MEND has said some of its former commanders and fighters make up the Avengers, claims denied by the group. Security officials have also linked a MEND commander to the Avengers, though he denies this.
Some lawmakers talk gun control after Fla shooting, scant hope for change

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON, June 12 (Reuters) - The deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history prompted calls on Sunday by some members of Congress for legislation to tighten control of weapons sales, although there were slim hopes for much change after 50 people were killed at a gay nightclub in Florida.

Democratic Senator Robert Casey said he would announce a bill on Monday that would ban anyone convicted of a misdemeanor hate crime from owning a firearm.

Under current law, those with felony convictions are prohibited from buying or possessing a gun, but those convicted of misdemeanor hate crimes are not.

Casey planned to make the announcement in his home state of Pennsylvania after a meeting with members of Pittsburgh's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Lawmakers, including some Republicans, have sought some gun restrictions after earlier mass shootings, but even minor changes failed to gain enough support to become law. Backed by the powerful gun lobby, many members of Congress see controls of weapons sales as a threat to Americans' constitutional rights.

Other Democrats also called for Congress to act after Sunday's attack in Orlando, some in strong terms.

Richard Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said the killings would prompt debate but not action. "The bottom line is that we allow dangerous people to buy guns in America and that has got to change," he said.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said the "epidemic" of gun violence would continue if Congress does not act and also said lawmakers shared responsibility.

"Congress has become complicit in these murders by its total, unconscionable deafening silence," he said in a statement. "This doesn't have to happen but this epidemic will continue without end if Congress continues to sit on its hands and do nothing - again."

A gunman killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in Murphy's home state, Connecticut, in 2012.

The suspected Orlando attacker, identified as Omar Mateen, 29, a U.S. citizen who was the son of immigrants from Afghanistan, was carrying an AR-15 style assault rifle and a handgun, authorities said. The shooter in Newtown also had an AR-15.

Many Republicans, including the presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump, focused on the threat from Islamist militants after the shooting, citing reports that Mateen was inspired by Islamic State.
Father of Orlando shooter hosted political show on Afghan-Pakistan issues

By Jonathan Landay and Yeganeh Torbati

WASHINGTON, June 12 (Reuters) - The Afghan-born father of Omar Mateen, the man police identified as the gunman who killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Florida on Sunday, is a fringe political commentator who rails against Pakistan and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Seddique Mateen, who public records indicate is the father of Omar Mateen, had an occasional television show on a U.S.-based Afghan satellite channel for about three years, and has continued to post political commentaries on his Facebook page as recently as Sunday.

Omar Khatab, the owner of the California-based satellite channel Payam-e-Afghan, said in an interview that Seddique Mateen occasionally bought time on his channel to broadcast a show called "Durand Jirga," which focused in part on the disputed Durand Line, the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan demarcated by the Indian subcontinent's former British rulers.

In an interview with NBC News on Sunday, Seddique Mateen, also known as Mir Siddique, said his son's rampage had "nothing to do with religion."

He described an incident in downtown Miami in which his son, U.S.-born Omar Mateen, 29, of Florida, saw two men kissing in front of his wife and child and became very angry.

"We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident," NBC News quoted Seddique Mateen as saying. "We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country."

Seddique Mateen lives in Florida, according to public records, but it was not immediately known when he came to the United States. He did not return messages left on his phone, which appeared to be turned off, or respond to an email.

Khatab said Seddique Mateen would show up at his studio in Canoga Park, California, "three or four times a year" to tape his shows.

"He'd talk for about two to three hours," Khatab said in a phone interview. "He'd buy his own time and come here and broadcast and leave within a day."

CRITICAL OF PAKISTAN'S ISI

Khatab said Seddique Mateen's political views were largely anti-Pakistan. A YouTube channel under Mateen's name had more than 100 videos posted between 2012 and 2015.

One of the videos refers to the "killer ISI" - the acronym for Pakistan's main military-run intelligence service - and says the agency is the "creator and father of the world's terrorism."

U.S. officials have accused Pakistani intelligence of backing violence against U.S. targets in Afghanistan, although Pakistan denies the allegations.

U.S. officials cautioned that they had no immediate evidence of any direct connection between the Florida attack and Islamic State or other foreign extremist group, nor had they uncovered any contacts between Omar Mateen and any such group.

Fifty-three people were wounded in the rampage. It was the deadliest single U.S. mass shooting incident, eclipsing the 2007 massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech university.

Seddique Mateen interviewed Ghani in January 2014, eight months before Ghani became president, according to a video posted on his YouTube channel. The interview touched on economic development and youth unemployment in Afghanistan. Khatab said Mateen conducted the interview in Kabul and brought it to California for broadcast.

During the interview Mateen praised Ghani but by the following year had changed his views, apparently angered by Ghani's outreach to Pakistan in his bid to start peace talks with the Taliban. In a 2015 video, Mateen declared his own candidacy for the Afghan presidency, even though there was no election at that time.

In the videos, he wears a Western suit and tie and speaks Dari, a dialect of Persian spoken in northern Afghanistan. He harshly criticizes Ghani's policies both at home and abroad and lashes out at Pakistan, its intelligence service, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and some senior Afghan government officials and jihadist figures.

In a February video on his Facebook page, he addresses Taliban members and castigates them for being the "servants" of the ISI.

In a June 11 video posted on Facebook, Mateen is dressed in military fatigues and says Afghanistan must "punish the traitors."

"I wish a hero one day removes Ashraf Ghani's turban and slaps this crazy man," he said in the video. "This traitor has rolled up his sleeves to destroy our country."
'Blade Runner' Pistorius to be sentenced for murdering girlfriend

By Joe Brock

JOHANNESBURG, June 13 (Reuters) - South African Paralympic gold medallist Oscar Pistorius will be sentenced this week for the 2013 murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, ending years of legal twists and turns.

Pistorius, 29, known as "Blade Runner" for the carbon-fibre prosthetic blades he used to race, faces a minimum 15-year jail sentence and cannot appeal after the country's top court ruled in March that he had exhausted all his legal options.

The track star, whose lower legs were amputated when he was a baby, initially received a five-year sentence for culpable homicide, South Africa's equivalent of manslaughter. The conviction was later upgraded to murder after an appeal heard by the Supreme Court.

Original trial judge Thokozile Masipa will begin hearing pre-sentencing arguments at Pretoria High Court on Monday, with Pistorius expected to discover his fate by the end of the week.

The athlete's legal team is expected to call witnesses who will argue that Masipa should be lenient because of the athlete's mental fragility, physical disability and good behaviour during almost a year behind bars for the original manslaughter conviction.

State prosecutor Gerrie Nel will cross-examine and call his own witnesses as he seeks to convince Masipa that Pistorius is not remorseful -- a key consideration in sentencing -- and that it is in the interest of South African justice that the athlete receives a lengthy jail term.

Pistorius could take the stand himself, as could Reeva's father Barry Steenkamp, who has given a number of emotional interviews calling for justice that he says would not be served if Pistorius is treated leniently.

The athlete's legal team did not respond to phone calls for comment. State prosecutors said they would not disclose who their witnesses would be.

Pistorius's final days in court will mark the end of a dramatic fall from grace for an athlete who was once considered a heroic example of triumph over adversity.

The sprinter became the first double amputee to compete against able-bodied athletes when he raced at the London 2012 Olympics after a five-year fight for the right to run on equal terms.

He was released from prison last October after almost a year behind bars and allowed to serve out his term under house arrest on his uncle's property in a suburb of Pretoria.

But in December, the Supreme Court upgraded the conviction on appeal and Pistorius was allowed to stay at his uncle's mansion pending the final decisions on appeals and sentencing.
Facing fewer checkpoints, Taliban make Afghan road trips more risky

By Hamid Shalizi

KABUL, June 13 (Reuters) - A series of kidnappings and murders on Afghanistan's highways has some officials and travellers questioning the NATO-backed strategy that reduced security check posts protecting roads in order to free up police and soldiers to go after the Taliban.

Since the end of May, more than 200 people have been reported kidnapped and at least 21 murdered in northern and eastern Afghanistan.

Roads have long been dangerous in the war-torn country, as the Taliban insurgency and other Islamist militant groups expanded their reach.

But the spike in abductions and killings, widely blamed on the Taliban, comes a few months after the NATO-led international mission encouraged Afghan security forces to close many smaller checkpoints.

In late May the Taliban also named a new leader, although it is not clear if they have changed tactics to go after softer targets.

Defence ministry spokesman Mohammad Radmanish said measures were being taken to make travel safer. The vast majority of Afghan individuals and businesses have to use roads, because flights are either unavailable or unaffordable to them.

"Kidnapping of innocent people, which is a new tactic by the Taliban, is a concern for us," said Radmanish. "We have increased the number of patrols and bases ... on major highways during the day time."

The move to staff fewer checkpoints was aimed at reducing casualties among security forces as well as bolstering offensive operations, and the coalition says it still supports the policy.

"The reduction of checkpoints has actually allowed the Afghan Security Forces ... to respond more quickly to enemy activity and move from a defensive mindset to one that's more offensive in nature," coalition spokesman Brigadier General Charles Cleveland said in a statement.

The road attacks against civilians, however, have taken Afghan officials by surprise, and the government is reviewing the policy, said one senior Afghan military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Cleveland said he was optimistic Afghan security forces would be able to better secure transportation routes.

"TALIBAN ARE EVERYWHERE"

Bus drivers and passengers described a growing sense of fear, despite government efforts to stop the attacks.

"The Taliban are everywhere and take hostages whenever they want to," said bus driver Nasrullah, who travels between the capital Kabul and Kunduz in the north and uses one name.

"Some passengers are so afraid (that they) keep talking to family members on the phone, sometimes the whole journey."

Ghazni province, where 12 people were killed and nearly 50 kidnapped in road attacks on Wednesday, lies astride the vital highway from Kabul to Kandahar in the south.

Soldiers still try to patrol the route during the day, but with many checkpoints closed they only provide a temporary presence, said Hanif Rezaee, spokesman for the army in Ghazni.

"There are still small checkpoints, but at the end of the day, the soldiers move back to their bases," he told Reuters. "It is very difficult for us to provide 24 hour patrolling."

Security officials said the Taliban's ploy may be to expose the government's weakness outside major urban centres.

"By kidnapping passengers, the Taliban are trying to provoke people against the government, showing that it can't provide security," said Mohammad Qasim Jangalbagh, police chief of Kunduz, where security forces have rescued at least 140 hostages kidnapped in May.

CRIMINALS ALSO BLAMED

Sediq Sediqqi, spokesman for the Afghan interior ministry, said the government was re-examining its highway security strategy in light of recent attacks.

"We have decided to increase the number of checkpoints on major highways and also increase the number of regular patrols."

Asked why road attacks had increased markedly, he replied: "The Taliban had high expectations when they started their spring offensive, but since then Afghan forces have hit them hard, and killed hundreds of their commanders and shadow governors.

"Now the Taliban want revenge or to compensate (by attacking) innocent people."

The Taliban have not claimed all recent road attacks, and a spokesman was not immediately available to comment.

Insurgents are not the only ones profiting from lawlessness, according to bus driver Mohammed Shir, who travels between Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, another northern city.

"There are always Taliban stopping cars and searching," he said. "Sometimes they are thieves and only want your belongings. Such incidents happen more often from evening till dawn when there are no government security forces."

The number of bus passengers has dropped sharply, and those who can afford it are opting for air travel, said Mohammed Zakaria, who runs a bus company in Mazar-i-Sharif.

Those who cannot go by air increasingly travel only during the day.

Off-duty members of the security forces are frequently targeted by militants.

When Sher Baz, a police officer based in Ghazni, travels to Kabul to see his family, he often hides his identification card to avoid being targeted should he be stopped.
The NDA government is at it again. After arresting students on the basis of doctored videos, and slapping cases against JNUSU student leaders on extreme charges like sedition, the Delhi Police has awoken four and a half months later to produce an unedited disc with more footage to indict Kanhaiya Kumar, JNUSU President, and activists Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya.

This is after a magisterial inquiry by the Delhi government found two of the telecast videos to be doctored, and this matter is in court. It is intriguing that an unedited disc of the February 9 protests was lying with the Zee News for some time with its allegedly damning footage not used for months. An oversight? Hardly.

How can Delhi Police turn a blind eye to videos which have distorted the truth openly?

Zee TV started the attack on JNU from the beginning. Why would they overlook more evidence to assault JNU with? An interesting coincidence that the owner of that channel Subhash Chandra became a BJP Rajya Sabha MP yesterday.

Interestingly, a Zee News producer, Vishwa Deepak, had resigned from the channel in late February 2016, and had said in a letter that the channel had broadcast a video of students raising slogans with captions that said "Pakistan Zindabad".

Vishwa Deepak stated, "The video which had no "Pakistan Zindabad" slogans in it, we played repeatedly to spread madness. How did we establish that Kanhaiya and his associates were chanting slogans when all we heard were voices coming from the darkness.

Our biases made us hear "Bhartiya Court Zindabad" as "Pakistan Zindabad" (The Indian Express, June 12). Has the Delhi Police interviewed the the Zee News producer, who in line with journalistic ethics has pointed out that the video was doctored, obviously on political considerations.

Has any prima facie charge been registered on the politically motivated doctoring of the Zee News video which launched this defamatory campaign? How can the Delhi Police turn a blind eye to videos which have distorted the truth openly?

Since this statement is in line with the Delhi government magisterial inquiry, action should have been taken in accordance with the law. Or is there one law for Zee News, and another for JNU students?

In The Indian Express today unnamed police officers are said to be stating the sedition law, Section 124A, IPC, would now apply.

Another lie.

Two Supreme Court judgements, including Kedar Nath versus State of Bihar, AIR 1962 SC 995, has clearly stated that criticism of political matters is not of itself sedition. This was amplified in a later decision of the Supreme Court on the charge of sedition on the issue of an accused shouting the slogan "Khalistan Zindabad".

The Supreme Court bench ruled that this slogan which explicitly supported the break up of India, was not seditious, as slogans alone would not amount to sedition.

However, the already announced second phase of attack begs another question.

Why is India's third highest ranked university (highest ranked among the social sciences and humanities) under repeated attack?

The RSS-affiliated ABVP leader Saurabh Sharma is the Joint Secretary of the JNUSU. It is not as if the student community has not accepted different political positions.

The Left students, comprising a number of political streams co-exist with others. Can there be a more democratic space? Is this part of a comprehensive attack on higher education as announced by the sweeping UGC diktat ruling that teachers teach more hours than any good university could imagine, etc?

Or is it a renewal of the attack on political views that the RSS/BJP cannot stomach. The historical irony is that Gandhi called this 1870 law "the prince of all laws".
"You are still young, when you grow up you will find this world is different from world of books," I was advised in my childhood.

I am more practical in life now - I have found a very difficult world, but it can change for the better.

Many Hindu and Christian girls are kidnapped and converted.

Some people always try to push the society I live in into conflict - they want to impose their spurious agenda on the majority.

No doubt, a few people have the power to change the society, whether in good and bad ways, but what happens when those with evil designs use religion to their benefit?

Nowadays, the storm of intolerance has been spreading like wildfire across the Asian region, and in Pakistan, you can read chapters of intolerance in many headlines - Ahmedis are targeted, Christians' villages are being set on fire, Shia, Hazara community have it equally difficult et al. Hindus face the same problems as other non-Muslim communities.

They have a majority in the Sindh province of Pakistan. Let me state here that Hindus are indigenous citizens of this land. The queen of time plays cruel games and even the lord of the house is thrown out of his home and becomes the minority on his own land.

Many Hindu and Christian girls are kidnapped and converted.

Especially, in Sindh. I have seen people using religion to protect their crimes and the state is unable to do anything despite knowing what is wrong.

Whenever, I write on injustices done to non-Muslims, I am been told - hey, look at India or Bangladesh, what is happening over there?

Even Indian writers returned their awards and it made big news. In my country, no one returns awards in support of Christians whose houses are set on fire.

A notice board says "religious ceremonies are not allowed".

The question is why do our people live under the shadow of fear or made to read the such warnings - whosoever lives with a different community, walks on the path of uncertainty.

There is no justification of crime, no cover for intolerance with the bundle of excuses.

Hindus are not allowed to perform their religious ceremonies: such warnings are common on notice boards in community buildings in Karachi.

A report says that according to notice board at Kohinoor Plaza, located near Mama Parsi School, Karachi, "Hindus are not allowed to perform their religious ceremonies on the ground - must follow instructions."

It adds that Hindus have complained about the issue but there has been response.

They are allowed to live in their apartments because Muslims don't not want to see them perform rituals on the Plaza grounds (News report in Sindhi newspaper on June 8, 2016).

Think about the children from the Hindu community - how do they grow up in such areas?

When they read hateful and prohibitive messages about them, how do they feel - half the population is forced to live in fear because they practise a different faith.

Why can't Hindus perform their religious ceremonies?

Who spreads such hatred against them? Why doesn't the government take strong action against the perpetrators?

Hindus have been complaining for years, but their complaints have no value in the eyes of local authorities.

It is a serious issue that in a city like Karachi, such incidents, which promote extremism, are reported.

Intolerance has no soul, it doesn't spare innocents - it can only turn world into hell.

The state ought to realise that such destructive minds harm our society and weaken the strength of citizens.

All citizens are equal, according to Pakistan's Constitution. But does not such hatred on the notice boards of the country go against it?

Hindus, who are equal first citizens of the soil, are asked not to perform rituals on the land of their forbears.
The drug that killed Prince in April caused more deaths in Virginia last year than any other prescription painkiller.

Fentanyl, a prescription opioid that is up to 100 times stronger than morphine, has become a black-market drug rivaling heroin in the U.S., now that cartels have discovered how to make it in labs in Mexico and South America.

The amount of legal fentanyl prescribed in Virginia rose only 10 percent from 2007 to 2014.

But the annual death toll in Virginia  thanks in large part to the illegally produced version of the drug  nearly tripled in that time frame, from 48 to 134. And last year, fentanyl was linked to an estimated 221 deaths in the state, more than any other opiate-based substance aside from heroin.

What were hearing now is a lot of people who use heroin are being sold heroin, and its actually fentanyl or heroin mixed with fentanyl. Thats whats leading to a really quick overdose, said Rosie Hobron, a forensic epidemiologist with the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner who tabulates and studies fatal overdoses across the state.

Weve really kind of nailed down on the prescription monitoring program and really tried to limit the doctors on how much they prescribe and who they prescribe to. Now were in the illicit drugs, and theyre harder to track. ... Adding fentanyl into the mix is even more scary, because even the smallest amounts can kill people.

It still is not clear how Prince obtained the drug. Authorities this month revealed that fentanyl caused the entertainers April 21 death.

Doctors typically prescribe fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that usually comes in a slow-release patch to be placed on the skin, for cancer patients and those in extreme pain.

Addicts have learned how to take apart the patch and isolate the drug to snort or inject. But with the cartels now manufacturing it and smuggling it through the same networks they use for the heroin trade, its showing up alongside other drugs in a growing number of overdoses.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration last year issued a nationwide alert about the increased danger posed by fentanyl. The agency noted that an outbreak of fentanyl overdoses from 2005 to 2007 was linked to a single lab in Mexico.

In some states, fentanyl has overtaken even heroins death toll.

2015 would be the big shift where we saw more of an increase in the fentanyl as related to overdose deaths, said James Hutchings, Virginias toxicology program manager.

Illicit fentanyl is the latest step in an epidemic that began with a rise in painkiller prescriptions during the past two decades.

Attempts to clamp down on the pills opened a new market for heroin. Fentanyl is easier to produce and up to 50 times stronger than heroin, meaning cartels can make more money by shifting to fentanyl.

Police in narcotics divisions often are reminded to be extremely careful around drug crime scenes now, because even a few drops of fentanyl on the skin can be deadly.

Chesterfield County saw a spike in overdoses in February that state lab tests have confirmed were caused by a mixture of heroin and fentanyl.

Also in February, a death in Richmonds jail was attributed to a mixture of heroin and fentanyl.

Theyre getting such a high and toxic product that it kills. The amount of dose you could fit on a pinhead of fentanyl could kill you, said Lt. Jim Profita, commander of the vice and narcotics unit for Chesterfield police.

Its every bit as concerning as heroin is. If youre looking at something thats 50 times more powerful than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine, it truly may surpass heroin.

Adding to the degree of difficulty in stopping fentanyl overdoses is the common refrain from addicts that they seek out dealers when they hear a product has killed someone, because they assume its a strong batch of heroin.

Honesty Liller, CEO of the McShin Foundation, an addiction recovery organization, said she does not hear addicts talking specifically about wanting to take fentanyl. More often, theyre looking for heroin, she said.

But in the past two months, the urine screens they require of their clients have shown a huge increase in fentanyl use, further suggesting that the drug often is laced with heroin.

In many overdoses, a mix of potentially toxic drugs can make it difficult to determine whether a death was caused by fentanyl, heroin or a combination of them with other substances.

Richmond police Capt. Michael Zohab, who is leading the departments push to offer same-day treatment referrals to addicts, said the rise of another deadly opioid makes him worry for the addicts today who often do not know where to turn for help.

Every day, Im getting closer to a plan, but today, this minute, we do not have a plan for the majority of people in this state getting opiates, Zohab said.

And it worries me that our southern border is so porous that were being inundated with it. Its coming through the border, and ... its the same people that are putting the heroin out who are managing the labs. Its organized.
More than 140 people have died in custody at local and regional jails since the states top watchdog agency was formed in July 2012, and the case of Jamycheal Mitchell was the first it had investigated formally.

The agency, which among other things is tasked with ferreting out waste, fraud and abuse at state agencies and providing oversight of public mental health services in Virginia, said it ran up against its statutory authority investigating the case of Mitchell, who died alone last August in a feces-smeared cell at Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth. A dozen other inmates have died there since July 2012.

It is not clear how many of the people who have died in Virginia jails since then had a mental illness but, at a time when correctional facilities increasingly have become the largest providers of mental health care in the state, lawmakers say the watchdog agency should be asking more questions.

We seem to have investigators at every agency and level of state government who do not want to point fingers and assign blame, said state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath. What keeps me up at night is the possibility that the Mitchell case is just the tip of the iceberg.

Jails must meet standards established by the state Board of Corrections and are subject to inspections but otherwise essentially police themselves. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has attributed the majority of deaths in Virginia jails since July 2012 to natural causes.

***

Two months after Mitchell died in Hampton Roads Regional Jail, an attorney working on a separate case involving a jail in Staunton sent a letter to the Office of the State Inspector General challenging its authority to gather information for an investigation.

The attorney, Roger Wiley with Richmond-based Hefty, Wiley & Gore PC, said his client, Middle River Regional Jail, should not have to turn over the medical records of a former inmate because state code doesnt give the inspector generals office the power to investigate local and regional jails.

Whether the inspector general, June W. Jennings, could examine jail medical records hinged on who provided mental health services at the jail, and what constitutes a provider, a lawyer for the state told Jennings after she asked for guidance.

Charles Quagliato, an assistant attorney general, told Jennings in November that her powers were limited because jails are not included among the list of people, entities or organizations that qualify as providers of mental health services in a portion of state code that explains the inspector generals authority.

Jails are required to supply their inmates with mental health services, but they can do so in a number of ways. They can provide the services themselves, contract with a private company, or work out an agreement with their local public mental health office, which are known as community services boards.

If the services are provided by the jail itself, then the agency lacks authority to investigate, Quagliato wrote.

But if jails contract with private providers, Quagliato wrote, the inspector generals office has the authority to investigate their mental health services. Hampton Roads Regional Jail contracted with Alabama-based NaphCare Inc. when Mitchell was there.

In its report on Mitchells death, the agency said it reviewed some of NaphCares medical records, which raised significant concerns regarding the quality of assessment, care, follow-up and documentation. Investigators also said the records were incomplete and inconsistent.

The inspector generals office declined to release to the Richmond Times-Dispatch any information about the people interviewed for its review. The office also refused to release any of the documents it gathered in the investigative process, though state law gives it the discretion to do so.

G. Douglas Bevelacqua, a Virginia inspector general over behavioral health and developmental services from 2010 to 2014, sent a letter last week to Deeds and another legislator questioning why the report from Jennings office on Mitchells death didnt offer any recommendations for NaphCare, a mental health care provider it had the authority to investigate.

Bevelacqua urged them to seek a formal opinion from Attorney General Mark R. Herring about what constitutes a provider of mental health services.

Depending on the attorney generals official opinion identifying who is the provider of mental health services and the limits of the OSIGs statutory jurisdiction, he wrote, the committee studying mental health reform may consider proposing legislative changes that ensure an oversight agency has sufficient authority to investigate deaths in jail.

The inspector general was requesting information from Middle River Regional Jail after receiving a complaint about the treatment of a mentally ill inmate there, according to Wileys letter.

The complaint in that case didnt lead to a full-fledged investigation  the claims were unfounded, the agency determined  but it had a profound impact on how thoroughly the inspector general was willing or able to dig into the death of Mitchell, who suffered from severe mental illness and lost 46 pounds over 101 days after he arrived at the regional jail in Portsmouth.

He had been incarcerated over the alleged theft of $5 in snacks from a 7-Eleven convenience store.

The Virginia Association of Regional Jails, the Virginia Sheriffs Association, and Wileys firm, which represents several regional jails, were assured when legislation outlining the inspector generals authorities was under consideration in 2013 that jails would not be subject to the offices jurisdiction, Wiley wrote to Jennings office.

Jails are in need of more scrutiny, not less, Deeds said.

Im concerned that theres a culture within our correctional facilities thats insular and tends to be callous toward people with mental illness, Deeds said. Im not convinced that theres appropriate oversight of what goes on in those places.

***

A 23-page report produced by the Office of the State Inspector General in Mitchells case drew criticism because it did not address how the mentally ill 24-year-old was allowed to deteriorate.

Jennings said through a spokeswoman that the agency examined issues within its legislated authority.

Im not satisfied, and Ive still got lots of questions, said Deeds, who met with Jennings one-on-one and said he understands her reasoning.

I just cant believe that there isnt someone who could have asked the hard questions  the right questions  to get to the bottom of this.

Deeds was copied on the letter from Wiley, which states: Jails are simply not designed, staffed or funded to operate as mental health hospitals or clinics.

It is true that jails often receive inmates who need mental health care, but that is largely due to the lack of state funding to provide that care in more appropriate settings, Wiley wrote. It would produce misleading conclusions for the OSIG to compare behavioral medical care in jails to that of providers who are licensed, designed and equipped to handle that care.

A total of 7,054 people incarcerated at local and regional jails last year were identified as having mental illness, according to a report compiled from jail self-surveys by the state Compensation Board.

Those numbers, which amount to roughly 17 percent of the overall jail population during a snapshot in June 2015, likely understate the true prevalence of mental illness in correctional facilities, state officials have said.

Julie Grimes, communications coordinator for the inspector generals office, declined to make Jennings or the investigator in Mitchells case available for an interview and instead answered questions via email over a period spanning several weeks.

Bevelacqua has said he was disappointed that the inspector generals office didnt explain how Mitchell died of extreme weight loss in plain sight of corrections officers and mental health professionals.

Bevelacqua said he was offended by the excuses offered up for a demonstrably flawed investigation because, based on my experience, I knew that the OSIG had sufficient authority to conduct a thorough investigation of Mr. Mitchells death.

Mitchells family last month filed a $60 million federal lawsuit against more than 30 named defendants alleging neglect by the jails medical staff and abuse at the hands of several corrections officers.

Fellow inmates have said they saw guards dragging, punching and kicking Mitchell. He frequently was denied food, according to the suit filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Bevelacqua led the investigation into the death of Deeds son, Gus Deeds, who killed himself Nov. 19, 2013, the morning after he was released from emergency custody when efforts to find him space in a mental hospital fell through.

He also led an inquiry into mental health services provided in Virginias local and regional jails, which was published by the inspector generals office in January 2014.

***

Under Bevelacquas guidance, the office used its jurisdictional powers in 2013 to enter 25 of Virginias 62 local and regional jails, he said in his letter to Deeds committee. Investigators reviewed inmates medical records and interviewed jail staff about mental health services provided.

Grimes said Bevelacquas review of mental health services in jails should not be compared with the offices inquiry into the death of Mitchell, because jails were fully cooperative for Bevelacquas study.

The jails report could not have been done without the support of the local and regional jails because OSIG did not (and does not) have jurisdiction, Grimes wrote.

When asked whether Hampton Roads Regional Jail was cooperative during the Mitchell investigation, Grimes said the inspector generals office was not denied access to records it requested within the scope of its authority.

But the office didnt ask for a copy of the jails internal investigation. Jennings told a General Assembly committee in April that her office didnt have jurisdiction to request it and because news media outlets already had asked for it and had been denied.

The Office of the State Inspector General should have asked for the report, even if it thought it didnt have the authority, lawmakers and advocates have said, and if it truly doesnt have the power under current statutes, then laws need to be changed.

Mira Signer, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Virginia, was among several mental health and civil rights advocates who asked the U.S. Department of Justice last week to investigate Mitchells death because an answer to the ultimate question still is unknown: How did Mitchell starve to death before jail staffs and medical staffs eyes?

Signer said its a significant shortcoming that the state inspector generals office doesnt have the power to investigate jails.

If thats one of the only ways were going to know what happened  and God forbid this happens again in the future  then yes, their authority should be expanded so they can find out what happened in the jail, Signer said.

***

Del. Peter F. Farrell, R-Henrico, is emphatic that the inspector general should investigate deaths that occur in jails.

He and a few other members of the House of Delegates have talked about sponsoring a bill during the 2017 General Assembly session that would expand the offices power.

Self-policing works only if a jail is transparent, Farrell said. Hampton Roads Regional Jail has not released its internal investigation into Mitchells death; jail officials have said the investigation cleared their employees of wrongdoing.

The more they keep wanting to hide what they investigated, the more I want to see what they did and have my own investigators go look at it, Farrell said.

Among the most critical questions that advocates say have gone unanswered over dozens of pages written about Mitchells case is just who currently has oversight of mental health care administered in the places not designed for such treatment but are increasingly responsible for it.

The Virginia Department of Corrections investigates fatalities at state prisons but does not review jail deaths, according to a spokeswoman. A state Board of Corrections inspection of the jail conducted the day after Mitchell was incarcerated found that the facility was 100 percent in compliance with rules and regulations.

Hampton Roads Regional Jail officials asked Portsmouth police to take a report after Mitchells death, but the department closed the case upon the medical examiners ruling that he died of heart problems and weight loss.

The jail has not changed its policies. No one lost their job. The only entities thus far that appear to have examined Mitchells care while incarcerated are the jail itself and NaphCare, the company then contracted to provide health services for inmates.

NaphCare conducted its own internal investigation, which it has not released, that found that its employees took appropriate steps to have Mr. Mitchell transferred to a state inpatient mental health facility where he could receive treatment, according to a statement.

A judge twice ordered Mitchells transfer to Eastern State Hospital near Williamsburg for treatment, but his name never was added to the hospitals waiting list.

No record exists of the first order arriving at the hospital. The second order, sent more than two months later, was stuffed into a desk drawer by an overwhelmed hospital employee, according to a state review.

The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services conducted a limited investigation because Mitchell had been ordered to one of its facilities. Neither the department nor the inspector generals office reached conclusions about what caused Mitchells death.
The states will draft their own State GST (SGST) based on the draft model law with minor variations incorporating state-based exemptions.

New Delhi: Amid hopes of long pending GST bill getting passed in Rajya Sabha in the next Parliament session, state finance ministers will deliberate on the model GST law at a two-day meeting in Kolkata beginning Tuesday.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will participate in the meeting of Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers and try to iron out differences over the new regime that will subsume all indirect taxes and create one national market under the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

"The meeting on June 14 and 15 will discuss the model GST law, which will be adopted by the Centre and all states. Union Finance Minister will attend the meeting on June 14," an official said.

The Centre is planning to roll out the indirect tax from the next financial year beginning April 1, 2017, but the GST bill has been pending in Rajya Sabha because of stiff opposition from the Congress party. Once the Constitution Amendment Bill to roll out GST is passed by the Parliament, the Centre and states will have to adopt their own laws to give effect to the new indirect tax regime.

The Central GST (CGST) will be framed based on the model GST law. The states will draft their own State GST (SGST) based on the draft model law with minor variations incorporating state-based exemptions.

Besides these two laws, the Centre and states will have to approve the integrated-GST law or iGST, which will deal with inter-state movement of goods. The Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers is headed by West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra, who took over the chairmanship in February.

The government has proposed to take up the GST Constitution Amendment Bill in the Rajya Sabha in the forthcoming monsoon session of the Parliament. The reform of the indirect taxation was initiated by the Kelkar Committee in 2003, following which the UPA government in 2006 proposed the GST Bill.

The GST Constitution Amendment Bill was passed by Lok Sabha in May last year and has been pending in the Rajya Sabha, where the ruling NDA does not have the majority.
Over the past week, the BSE 30-share Sensex fell by 207.28 points to close at 26,635.75.

New Delhi: The combined market valuation of top seven companies declined by Rs 45,962.77 crore last week with IT majors -- Infosys and TCS -- taking the maximum hit. Barring RIL, ONGC and Sun Pharma, rest seven companies suffered losses in their market capitalisation (m-cap) for the week ended Friday.

The m-cap of Infosys dived by Rs 19,673.33 crore to Rs 2,71,223.23 crore, emerging as the worst hit among the top-10 entities. TCS valuation slumped Rs 13,773.29 crore to Rs 5,04,616.74 crore.

The m-cap of HDFC plunged Rs 3,903.59 crore to Rs 1,94,515.62 crore and that of HDFC Bank dipped by Rs 2,759.6 crore to Rs 2,93,985.80 crore. ITC's valuation tanked Rs 2,454.4 crore to Rs 2,82,899.56 crore and that of HUL went down by Rs 2,261.61 crore to Rs 1,89,250.39 crore.

CIL also lost Rs 1,136.95 crore to Rs 1,94,007.13 crore from its m-cap. On the other hand, RIL added Rs 5,739.13 crore to Rs 3,16,349.11 crore and ONGC (Rs 5,261.62 crore to Rs 1,86,552.46 crore). Sun Pharma's valuation also moved up by Rs 806.25 crore to Rs 1,78,480.44 crore.

In the ranking of top-10 firms, TCS yet again emerged as the number one company in terms of overall valuation followed by RIL, HDFC Bank, ITC, Infosys, HDFC, CIL, HUL, ONGC and Sun Pharma. Over the past week, the BSE 30-share Sensex fell by 207.28 points to close at 26,635.75.
India imports 73 per cent of its requirement of solar panels from China and 17 per cent from Malaysia and a lot of quality testing is required.

Mumbai: Solar power will be cheaper than power from coal fired plants in the coming two years as the cost of batteries and solar panels come down.

The cost of power from coal based plans is currently around Rs 3.50 per unit. The cost of batteries have already come down by 75 per cent presently and solar panels have reduced by 30 per cent and this will go down further, said Mr Upendra Tripathy, secretary, ministry of new and renewable energy.

Import of Coal

He said the target for solar power produced from rooftops is 40,000 megawatts but the states will have to cooperate if this is to become a reality.

Presently, the states impose a host of taxes on solar power producers as they do not want to lose their high paying clients like industries and commercial enterprises to them.

Mr Tripathy was speaking at a panel discussion on solar power organised by the Indian Merchants Chamber and the Free Press Journal.

He said power minister Piyush Goel, who is the force behind renewable energy, had increased the budget from Rs 1,500 crore to Rs 9,000 crore in two years. Meanwhile, the industry is facing a shortage of mechanics who can maintain the solar panels.

India imports 73 per cent of its requirement of solar panels from China and 17 per cent from Malaysia and a lot of quality testing is required.

He hoped that in a few years the Supreme Court, Rashtrapati Bhavan and Parliament will all have solar power from the rooftops followed by all government buildings.

According to experts the beauty of solar and wind energy is that they are not complex and can be handled by even people with minimum education. They pointed out that Delhi Metro is saving Rs 4 crore a day by using solar energy.
Priyanka Chopra, who is making a foray into production with a Bhojpuri film, didnt have an ideal warm-up with the Patna media. The actress bodyguards apparently, got into a scuffle with an overzealous media at a press conference organised for her film, Bam Bam Bol Raha Hai Kaashi.

Says an eyewitness, This was Priyankas first visit to Patna and the Patna media was most excited. They were called to the P&M mall which is owned by Priyankas director Prakash Jha, for an interaction. At the press conference, Priyankas bouncers began to jostle the media. When they were asked to back off, they got even more aggressive.

Incidentally, Priyankas Don co-star Shah Rukh Khans visit to the same mall some years ago had also ended abruptly with the local media staging a walkout after the superstars team allegedly got aggressive.
Visitors look at the "Hope at Ground Zero" exhibit at the 9/11 Memorial Museums south tower gallery in New York.

New York City: 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.
Nalabana Island (forest of reeds) inside the lake covers about 16 sq km in the lagoon. It was declared a bird sanctuary in 1987. The core area of about 9 sq km attracts around 400,000 waterfowls of different species in every winter.

Bhubneshwar: Chilika Lake, the largest brackish water lagoon of Asia and one of the 26 Ramsar sites of India, is facing threat to its existence because of increasing human interferences, including large-scale cutting down of natural forests that guard the lake against high tidal inundation.

Known more for its alluring scenic beauty, the picturesque lake with several islands boasts of a unique biodiversity that supports thousands of fishermen living on its banks.

It is, according to reports, steadily losing its rich repertoire of fishes, crabs and other aquatic resources due to large-scale deforestation that has resulted in six new breaches on the 50-km long natural sand embankment.

Previously, the lake had two natural mouths at Bali-Harichandi and Arakhakuda which allowed limited volume of saline water into the lake, making it a unique and ideal biodiversity. With nearly a dozen of islands and a bird sanctuary called Nalabana located inside it, the lake has always attracted attention of the nature lovers as well as researchers.

In 2001, the natural ecosystem of the lake had completely been disturbed when the two natural mouths got silted due to deforestation.

The Odisha government had to undertake dredging activity and open a new artificial mouth at Sipakuda to maintain the minimum salinity level of the lake.

We have a dedicated agency called Chilika Development Authority and there are many laws in place to protect this water body. However, nothing happens in the ground and the lake is very likely to lose its identity if it is not protected in effective manner. The natural embankment should be restored, afforestation activity must be taken on war-footing and culprits polluting the water must be taken into task, said Dillip Subudhi, a researcher.

Recognized as one of the most important wetlands in the world, Chilika is home to a phenomenal variety of birds. It offers visitors a spectacular display of its colorful avian charms in a thousand different hues presented by over 160 species in the peak season between November and February.

The lake and its reed islands teem with nesting birds-white bellied sea eagles, ospreys, golden plovers, sand pipers, flamingos, pelicans, shovellers, gulls, include migratory ones flying great distances from Iran, Central Asia and Siberia.

The large Nalabana Island (Forest of Reeds) covering about 16 sq km in the lagoon area was declared a bird sanctuary in 1987. The core area of about 9 sq km attracts around 400,000 waterfowls of different species. Often underwater, the island gradually emerges with the outset of summer. It is literally a paradise for bird-watchers.

Another major attraction at Chilika is Irrawady dolphins which are often spotted off Satpada Island.
This research has been published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Washington DC: Science has an answer as to why couples stay committed to their partners even when they meet more attractive people in their lifetime.

According to a recent study, those in relationships actually see tempting the people outside of their partnership as less attractive. This perceptual bias could represent a non-conscious method of self-control that assists in overcoming temptations in order to facilitate long-term goals of staying with a romantic partner.

In a recent set of experiments, psychologists Dr. Shana Cole, Dr. Yaacov Trope and Dr. Emily Balcetis from the New York University found evidence that couples downgrade the appearance of people they perceive as threatening their relationships.

Most previous research in this area has focused on explicit biases, where the participants know they are judging attractiveness and reporting their thoughts about another person. This study is the first to look for implicit or non-conscious visual biases that may aid partners in staying committed to a relationship.

The result concluded that a downgrading bias occurs because the people in relationship actually perceive the individual other than their partners as less attractive.

Talking about the study, Dr. Shana Cole said, "Misperceiving attractive people who represent threats to the relationship as less attractive may help people resist the inclination to pursue them."

He further said this is especially important since finding someone physically attractive is a primary reason why the people choose to date or romantically pursue someone.

Co-author Emily Balcetis notes, "This work suggests that there are processes that may take place outside of conscious awareness to make it easier to stay committed to one's own partner."

This research has been published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Bengaluru: The North-East Division police have arrested a 28-year-old MBBS graduate for posing as fake IPS officer and sneaking into the police training institute to meet a woman trainee. He also visited several police stations in the city posing as an Assistant Superintendent of Davangere.

The accused, Tejus Reddy, a doctor by profession told police that he always dreamt of wearing a police uniform and even prepared for civil services exam but failed to clear it. He was obsessed with the khaki uniform and longed to wear it.

After finishing MBBS from overseas, Tejus came to the city and worked at many private hospitals, but his fascination for khaki uniform continued. A resident of Kirloskar Layout in Hesarghatta Main Road, he posed as an IPS officer of 2014 batch and introduced himself as an Assistant Superintendent of Davangere and son of a retired police official.

According to the police, on June 4 he visited Sampigehalli police station and then went to Thanisandra police training school. There he met a woman police trainee. Later, he also called a SP, who is ATS chief, over phone to inform his visit.

However, when he went to the police training centre, the cadets realised something was amiss and alerted the faculty, who informed the police. Sampigehalli police called Davangere police control room and were shocked to learn that they have been conned.

A special team was formed who zeroed in on Tejus at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh and arrested him on Friday based on call data records.

In his statement to the police, the accused said he was obsessed with the police services and even made an unsuccessful attempt to clear the civil services exam.

The obsession for khaki uniform led him to pose as a fake IPS officer. However police suspect there is more to what the accused has confessed in his statement.

We are trying to ascertain the veracity of it and probing further in this connection, said a senior police officer. Police have also seized a fake walkie-talkie from the arrested.
Coimbatore: A 19-year-old college girl paid Rs 1.5 lakh to allegedly kill her own father who opposed her love affair, police investigations into the bizarre patricide by a teenage girl in the district has revealed. What came as a shocker to the police during the probe was that Mahalaxmi, studying second year computer science in a private college near Echanari, had paid that amount to her boyfriend Satheesh, 19, to arrange for criminals to kill her own father, Nagaraj.

The 60-year-old fertilizer merchant residing near Chokkampudur in Coimbatore and who has a cattle farm near Devanampalayam in Negamam, had left home for his farm on May 23 night. But later, he was found dead on May 24, with his body lying under a bridge near his farm. Police found stab marks on his body.

Negamam police lodged a complaint and began further investigations. They suspected Mahalaxmi and her friends involvement in the case. Police then arrested Santhosh Kumar 19, Krishna Kumar, 19, Kamala Kannan, 21, and Sasikumar, 22, on Friday morning, all residing in Othakalmandapam, and friends of Satheesh.

Following the arrest of the four, Mahalaxmi along with her boyfriend Satheesh surrendered in a magistrate court in Coimbatore on Friday. She confessed to the crime. Mahalaxmi and Satheesh were subsequently remanded. As the aged farmer was not literate enough, his daughter helped to enter the accounts in his dairy. During investigations, police found false clues in his accounts and discovered that these were entered by Mahalaxmi to divert the attention of police.

When police started investigating that aspect, not only did she not cooperate, but also complained to the SP, demanding a stop to the investigation, stating that it was disturbing her mentally, reminding her of the loss of her father.

Mahalaxmi siphoned off money from her fathers account to buy a new bike for Satheesh. When Nagaraj came to know about this, he scolded his daughter, though his wife Pramila supported her daughters love affair. At one point, Nagaraj said he would not give his property to his daughter and sent both his wife and daughter out of the house.

Satheesh took a house for rent at Malumichampatti and settled with Mahalaxmi, along with her mother there. Meanwhile, Mahalaxmi sold her jewels, got `1.5 lakh for this, and gave it to Satheesh, asking him to arrange criminals to kill her father. She thought that this was the only way to marry her boyfriend and make the property hers, police said. Further investigations are on.
The officials said the bodies have been recovered and a search has been launched in the area. (Photo: PTI)

Amritsar: Two Pakistani smugglers were killed while another was injured as BSF troops fired at them to foil an attempt to smuggle drugs along the Indo-Pak border in Fazilka in Punjab.

Officials said the incident occurred around 2 am when Border Security Force personnel detected some suspicious movement along the International Border in the area under Sohana border post and challenged the intruders.

"While two Pakistani nationals have been killed, another has been injured and apprehended by BSF. About 15 packets of narcotic, suspected to be heroin, has been seized from them, besides some arms and ammunition. This seems to be a case of cross-border drug smuggling," one of the officials said.

The officials said the bodies have been recovered and a search has been launched in the area. Senior officials of the border guarding force have reached the forward area and more details are awaited, they said.
New Delhi: The Delhi government has asked five private hospitals in the city, including Fortis Escorts Heart Institute and Max Super Specialty Hospital (Saket), to deposit "unwarranted profits" of over Rs 600 crore for refusing free treatment to the poor, the prime condition for land allotment lease.

Dr Hem Prakash, additional director (EWS) in the Health Department, said these five hospitals, Max Super Specialty Hospital (Saket), Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, Shanti Mukand Hospital, Dharamshila Cancer Hospital and Pushpawati Singhania Research Institute, were provided lands at concessional rates between 1960 and 1990 on the condition that they will treat the poor free of cost.

"These five hospitals have not abided by the conditions. We had earlier in December 2015, sent notices to these hospitals seeking their explanation as to why they failed to treat the poor and why they should not be fined. But none of them gave satisfactory replies so we initiated action against them," said Prakash.

"The penalty has been imposed on the basis of a High Court order passed in 2007 on a PIL demanding implementation of the provision of free treatment to poor and action against the erring hospitals. And the fine amount has been calculated accordingly," he said.

The hospitals have been asked to pay the amount by July 9, failing which further action will be initiated against them. Total 43 private hospitals in Delhi were allotted land at concessional rates on the condition that they will keep 10 per cent of their in-patient department capacity and 25 per cent of out-patient department capacity to treat EWS patients free of cost.

Fortis Healthcare's subsidiary Escort Heart Institute and Research Centre has received an order to deposit Rs 503.36 crore for non-compliance of conditions of land allotment lease.

"The management will challenge the same in the High Court of Delhi or such relevant authority to seek suitable legal remedies available to it under law," the hospital said in a statement.

Devki Devi Foundation, of which Max-Super Speciality Hospital in Saket is a unit, said, "We believe the order is unfair to us, we stand fully committed to discharging all our obligations towards economically weaker sections (EWS). We are extremely serious towards fulfilling our obligations. While we study the order in detail, we will prefer an appeal against this order in the appropriate forum." Director of Dharamshila Cancer Hospital Suversha Khanna said they will challenge the order in the court. ushpawati Singhania Research Institute and Shanti Mukand Hospital could not be contacted.
Hyderabad: Describing the BJP national presidents charges that Central funds were not reaching the people as lies, the TRS government on Saturday said that Amit Shahs statement did not befit his political stature. Elsewhere, the Congress also flayed Amit Shahs comments against the party and leadership including against AICC president Sonia Gandhi.

Finance minister Etela Rajender refuted Amit Shah's claim that the Centre provided Rs 90,000 crore to TS under various Centrally-sponsored schemes. In all, the Centre gave us Rs 36,000 crore and not Rs 90,000 crore, in the past two years. People occupying such high posts shouldnt tell blatant lies, Mr Rajender said.

He also dismissed Amit Shahs claim of a political vacuum in the state and the BJP attempt to establish itself. Its surprising that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union ministers praised the TRS governments initiatives under the leadership of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao but Amit Shah criticises us. This is nothing but double-standard and doubletalk. People rejected BJP and other parties in all elections since 2014 and voted for the TRS in the state, he said.

What did BJP do for the poor and the unemployed? It emerged as the single largest party in Parliament but did not introduce even one scheme that attracts the masses, he alleged. Irrigation minister T. Harish Rao too fumed at Amit Shah while accusing the BJP of ignoring Telangana.

What did BJP give to Telangana? Zilch! It did great injustice to Telangana people by merging six mandals and handing over Lower Sileru power project to AP which provided 300 days power to TS. The BJP gave national project status for Polavaram but denied the same status to Pranahita or Kaleswaram, did not bifurcate the High Court etc, Mr Harish Rao said.

He took a dig at PMs failure to visit TS even once since its formation, while regularly travelling abroad. This shows the BJPs love for Telangana, Mr Harish Rao alleged. Elsewhere, TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy and Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Council Mohd. Ali Shabbir too described Amit Shah's speech at Suryapet as bundle of lies.
Shah referred to the alleged migration of Hindus from the western UP town of Kairana and said that it is a matter of deep concern. (Photo: PTI)

Allahabad: Attacking the Samajwadi Partygovernment over recent incidents in Mathura and Kairana in Uttar Pradesh, which goes to polls early next year, BJP President Amit Shah on Sunday said the prevailing "atmosphere of violence" is a matter of serious concern.

"The present Samajwadi government, each day is expressing its helplessness in dealing with these situations," Shah said while citing recent clashes in Mathura as also violence and subsequent migration of over 100 families.

Read: BJP meet: Amit Shah accuses Cong of obstructing development

Launching a frontal attack on the Akhilesh Yadav government, Shah told the two-day BJP National Executive which began in Allahabad on Sunday that, "The lack of development and the lack of governance in the biggest state of India i.e UP is increasingly becoming a matter of serious concern," he said.

Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who briefed reporters about Shah's speech, said the BJP President specially discussed UP and said there was "an atmosphere of violence, which the government has been unsuccessful in curbing."

Read: BJP faces poster war in UP as its top leaders firm up poll campaign plans

On the recent incidents in Mathura, Shah said that this politics of forcefully grabbing government land with "patronage" was "very unfortunate."

Shah also referred to the alleged migration of Hindus from the western UP town of Kairana and said that it is a matter of deep concern.

The BJP President called upon the party workers to work hard and expressed commitment that the BJP will form government in UP with full majority after the assembly polls.

The BJP President said 2017 is a year of challenges in which besides UP, there are polls in Uttarakhand, Punjab, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.
Mangaluru: A strong liquor lobby backed by political leaders and desperate attempts to draw the attention of her higher-ups are said to be reasons behind Ms Anupama Shenoy's resignation as deputy superintendent of police of Kudligi.

A protest backed by the liquor lobby in front of her house and inaction by her subordinates also contributed to her mounting frustration, sources said.

Earlier too Anupama had faced a lot of pressure, but she managed to stave it off. But this time, the liquor lobbys pressure backed by a minister was far too strong, they said.

She thought that once she resigned, higher-ups would conduct an inquiry and ask her for the reason. This would let her unravel the entire ugly episode and ensure that the liquor lobby is tackled. But instead of listening to her, the government accepted her resignation, they said.

It is learnt that Ms Shenoy now plans to approach the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal.

Her associates feel that her higher-ups could have rejected her resignation, instead of forwarding it to Bengaluru," they said.

But she does not have any plans to join politics, sources close to her confirmed. She wants to continue as a police officer, they said.

Ms Shenoy has maintained that a Facebook account, from which derogatory remarks were made, was not hers. As the government is holding a probe, she has not decided to file a complaint. She has told her associates that she would return to the police department only after the leader who troubled her resigned.

Ms Shenoy's mother Nalini, who alleged that her daughter was the target of threat phone calls regularly, has sought police protection for Anupama. She would get threat calls in the middle of the night and she would be in tears, Nalini said.

The government should have given her 90 days before deciding on her resignation. Officials did not speak to her. The government should have responded to the problems of a woman officer, she said.
The Deputy Chief Minister said that mastermind Bachha Rai had cordial relation with Giriraj Singh. (Photo: PTI)

Patna: In the wake of the recent controversy surrounding the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) toppers scam, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav on Sunday attempted to corner Union Minister Girijaj Singh while alleging that the latter is the family friend and business partner of the mastermind.

Yadav shared a picture on his Twitter handle of the Union Minister along with Vishun Roy College principal Bachcha Rai, who is said to be the mastermind behind this scam.

Read: Bihar toppers scam: 'Kingpin' college principal Bachha Rai arrested

"Sharing pics of aid of toppers scam culprit& renowned central minister. Hope few media houses wil not hsitate to do character assassination. Modi's fav minister with scam accused & his father. He is bus partner and family friend of main culprit Baccha Rai," he tweeted.

Modi's fav minister with scam accused & his father. He is bus partner and family friend of main culprit Baccha Rai pic.twitter.com/5eUYJYkRbj  Tejashwi Yadav (@yadavtejashwi) June 12, 2016

Quoting a Hindi daily, the Deputy Chief Minister further said Rai had cordial relation with Giriraj Singh, who regularly joined his college functions to distribute prizes to the toppers.

"Who is this central minister of BJP, the close associate of main culprit of inter topper scam? The main culprit has cordial relation with a central minister who regularly joins his college functions to distribute prizes to toppers," he said.

Further escalating attack on the BJP MP, Yadav said all the malpractices of the college were taking place probably by his encouragement.

"ModiJi's Minister wanted to open a medical college with the culprit. Lacs of ppl join our election rallies. Does BJP do a character check of all joining their rallies? BJP cried foul based on a random pic," he added.

Amid mounting pressure with regard to alleged irregularities in the 10+2 examinations, Bachha Rai surrendered before the police on Saturday.

An FIR was registered against four students and the director of the college in connection with the scam.

The four students against whom the case has been registered are Sourabh Shrestha, Rahul Kumar, Ruby Rai and Shalini.

Following the furore over the Bihar Board examination toppers being unable to answer basic questions related to their stream eventually leading to a re-examination, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had last week said the guilty won't be spared, adding the investigation into this matter will be done with a criminal angle.

The Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) earlier on June 4 cancelled the results of two toppers, including Sourabh Shrestha, of the Intermediate (Science) examinations after they failed to prove their merits in a re-test.

The board had on June 3 asked Sourabh and his college mate Rahul Kumar, who were among the 13 toppers from the arts and science streams in the Class XII examinations, to reappear in a re-test following a controversy over their merits.

Saurabh Shrestha from the Science stream, who had secured 485 out of 500, was caught on camera failing to answer basic questions.

Ruby Rai, the arts topper, from the same college failed to take the re-test on Friday citing health reasons.

Rai had secured 444 marks out of 500 in the Arts stream. However, on camera she did not even appear to know the number of subjects in her course.
Out of the 58 seats that fell vacant in the Upper House this summer, the NDA has now won 23, improving upon the 18 seats it held earlier. (Photo: PTI)

Lucknow: BJP on Sunday suspended its MLA from Gorakhpur Rural Vijay Bahadur Yadav for cross voting during Rajya Sabha biennial polls.

MLA Vijay Bahadur Yadav has been suspended by the party from Legislature group for cross voting during Rajya Sabha elections, an official release said in Lucknow.

RS polls: Ex-Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda alleges BJP conspiracy

"I have recommended the state unit chief to take action against Yadav as his act comes under voluntary anti-defection law," Leader of BJP in UP Assembly Suresh Khanna said.

The MLA had cross voted in favour of a Samajwadi Party candidate on Saturday.

Read: Cong to approach EC tomorrow over Rajya Sabha polls in Haryana

"I voted on the basis of development done by the Chief Minister and I am ready to make any sacrifice," he said.

Khanna said that acceptability of BJP was increasing as candidates backed by it got 54 votes in Rajya Sabha elections.

Meanwhile, Janata Dal (Secular) suspended its eight MLAs over allegations of cross voting in the Rajya Sabha elections.

The JD (S) suffered a humiliating blow with eight of its MLAs cross voting in favour of the Congress.

Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Congress' Jairam Ramesh, Oscar Fernandes and K.C. Ramamurthy on Saturday won the Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka in the biennial elections.

In a loss of face, eight JD(S) MLAs defied the party whip voting against party candidate businessman B M Farooq and supported Congress. Farooq secured 33 votes against the party's strength of 40.

Out of the 58 seats that fell vacant in the Upper House this summer, the NDA has now won 23, improving upon the 18 seats it held earlier. The Congress, which held 15 of these seats, now has nine.
NEW Delhi: The forensic examination of raw video footage of the controversial February 9 JNU event, on which a sedition case was registered against JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar and two others, has been found to be authentic by the CBI forensic lab, police claimed on Saturday.

The raw footage of the event, obtained from a Hindi news channel, was sent to the CBI forensic lab for examination along with camera, memory card, a CD containing the clip, wires and other equipment, they said.

The CBI lab sent a report to Delhi Polices Special Cell on June 8 saying the raw footage was authentic, a police source said. Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Arvind Deep confirmed the receipt of report but did not divulge the details. He said that the case is under investigation and it will be too early to comment on the case.

Earlier, Delhi Police had sent four video clips of the event to Gandhinagar-based Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) which in its report, in May, had said that they were genuine.

However, a Delhi government-ordered probe, into a set of seven video clippings of the controversial event sent to the Hyderabad-based Truth Labs, had found two clips to be manipulated while others as genuine.

Police, however, maintained that the FIR into the matter was registered on the basis of the raw video footage, obtained from a news channel on a CD, and not on the clippings which were aired on TV channels.

In the FIR, police had claimed that in the video a group of students, led by JNU student Umar Khalid, could be seen raising anti-India slogans. A senior police official said after the confirmation of authenticity of the footage, they could proceed further against the protesters who had shouted slogans.

Dont know which clips CBI probed: Truth Labs

Reacting to the new development in the JNU sedition case, officials from Hyderabad-based Truth Labs said on Saturday that they were not aware which video clips were sent to the CBI lab for forensic test.

Earlier, forensic tests had revealed that two out of seven video clips containing anti-national sloganeering by JNU students were doctored. Truth Labs, which was asked to verify the videos by the Delhi government as part of a magisterial inquiry, had found serious tampering and insertion of very special hate words into the video clips.

The test had revealed that an audio was recorded separately and then synced with the video footage. However on Saturday, the Delhi Police claimed the footages they had sent to the CBI labs had tested genuine. Truth Labs officials said it was unclear how many clips and which ones had been sent to the CBI lab.
Chennai: Four AIADMK advocates have petitioned the Director General of Police and city police commissioner to investigate into the death of Sadiq Batcha, a close aide of former telecom minister and an accused in the 2G scam A.Raja, on the basis of the new evidence now emerges from Prabakaran.

Batcha was found hanging at his residence in Chennai in March 2011. The CBI had earlier filed a closure report in the case, terming it suicide. In their petition sent through speed post to the DGP and CoP on June 9, advocates S. Diwakar, P.V. Selvakumar, C. Thirumaran and Ram Sankar submitted that one K. Prabakaran of Ayyur village, Ariyalur district gave a press statement at Trichy press club on May 17, 2016, claiming that he killed Sadiq Batcha, a former aid of the then telecom minister A. Raja. He further stated that he was assisted by a relative of Raja and a then high ranking police officer.

Prabakaran had also claimed that he strangulated Batcha by a towel and was assisted in this by the others. This statement given by Prabakaran suggested that Sadiq Batcha was murdered. Murder is a serious crime. It can be investigated at any time by the police. We request you to investigate the death of Sadiq Batcha on the basis of the new evidence now emerges from Prabakaran and do the needful. We request the commissioner of police to reopen the case, the AIADMK advocates said in their joint letter to the DGP and the CoP.

A police officer, when contacted, said the lawyers letter appeared to have been sent by speed-post and was yet to reach the addressees. Requesting anonymity, he said police could not get Prabakaran after his Tiruchy media meet and it was possible he had gone into hiding. It is up to the CBI, which probed the Batcha death case, to decide on reopening the case, he said.
They were immediately detained by police as they had assembled in violation of security restrictions in place. (Photo: File)

Allahabad: Several Congress workers were on Sunday detained while trying to enforce a city-wide 'bandh' in protest against the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will be here later in the day to attend the BJP's two-day national executive meeting.

Read: With UP polls in mind, BJP to hold brainstorming session at Allahabad

Party workers, led by District Congress Committee members Haseeb Ahmed and Shrish Chand Dubey, had gathered at the Civil Lines crossing -- barely a few hundred metres from the hotel where BJP president Amit Shah is holding a meeting of BJP national office bearers.

They were immediately detained by police as they had assembled in violation of security restrictions in place, and taken to the Civil Lines police station.

Read: Parties to protest during BJP's Allahabad meet, AAP denied permission

The agitators alleged that Modi's two years in office have been characterised by tall claims and appealed to the people to observe the day as "Feku Diwas".

Meanwhile, another group of Congress activists led by local leader Tariq Sayeed Ajju gathered in front of the historic Anand Bhavan, the ancestral house of the Nehru-Gandhi family, and set fire to an effigy of Modi before being chased away by police.
The firefighters were called in by the society residents after they saw thick smoked billowing out of the house of 63-year-old Ranjit Kumar Barat and his wife Sutapa. (Representational photo: file)

Kolkata: Firefighters were in for a shock on Friday when they discovered a 57-year-old woman, covered in soot and kerosene, watching television while the charred body of her husband lay in the other room, in Kolkata's Manicktala government colony.

Sutapa Barat (56), the wife of the deceased, Ranjit Kumar Barat (63), a retired official of CESC, has been detained by the police for questioning after she claimed she had no inkling about what happened to her husband in the next room because she was glued to the TV set. The couples neighbours, however, accused her of burning her husband to death.

The firefighters were called in by the society residents after they saw thick smoked billowing out of the house.

There were no calls for help from the house, nor did anyone respond to the neighbours shouts.

The body was sent for post-mortem at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital. Joint commissioner of police (crime) Vishal Garg said the couples daughter, who works in Mumbai, was informed.

According to the couples neighbours, when they asked Sutapa soon after the incident about how her husband was charred to death, she claimed that he had committed suicide by setting himself on fire with kerosene and matchsticks in his room while she was watching TV in another.

She lied to us. There was a scuffle between her and her husband. Later, she set him on fire, they said, adding that the domestic quarrel was a regular affair in the couples flat. Sources revealed that Sutapa repeated the same claim to the police during her questioning.

Making the matters murkier, at least three neighbours reported to the police that Sutapa had warned that such an incident was impending and waiting to happen.

In a further twist in the tale, the Maruti car used by the deceased had a police sticker pasted on its windscreen, and a wireless set and two helmets were also found in the vehicle.
The government would link Krishna and Penna Rivers for providing water to all parts of the state. (Representational image)

Vijayawada: Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu said that the government would reserve the Krishna waters at Srisailam reservoir and water would be released to the required areas.

Interacting with irrigation officials after inaugurating a farmers training centre here on Saturday, he said the government would regulate the released water on priority. He said that water meters would be set up in canals to monitor the water utilisation. He also said that the government is taking steps to preserve every drop of water.

The groundwater level increased due to setting up rain harvesting pits, he added.

He said that now the water reserves including groundwater could be monitored by utilising technology. He asked the irrigation officials to set up a central monitoring system to protect all the water reserves.

The government aim is to make the state drought-free by linking the canals, tanks and rivers. Already, the state government had spent Rs 14,200 crore for water resources department. All the projects are being completed and the important Krishna and Godavari linkage was also completed, he added.

The government would link Krishna and Penna Rivers for providing water to all parts of the state. He also announced free darshan at Tirumala and an award for people who take steps to preserve water.

Ministers Devineni Umamaheswara Rao, Kamineni Srinivas, P. Pulla Rao, Kollu Ravindra, MP Kesineni Srinivas, Mayor Koneru Sridhar, MLAs Jaleel Khan, Tangirala Soumya, Bode Prasad, ZP chairperson Gadde Anuradha, irrigation engineer-in-chief M. Venkateswara Rao and district collector A. Babu were among those present on the occasion.
The NIA, in its letter, mentioned that Aisha, a resident of Diego Shilang village in Taguig City, Metro Manila, operated one of the largest IS groups in WhatsApp called IslamQ&A where ISIS members shared the virulent groups ideology and jihadi material. (Representational photo: file)

New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency has approached the Philippines government seeking details of Karen Aisha Hamidon, the woman ISIS operator who is believed to have radicalised several Indian men and even arranged for their travel to Syria.

According to reports, Aisha was allegedly involved in influencing people from various countries such as India, UK, US, UAE, Australia, and Bangladesh through various channels such as Facebook, Telegram and WhatsApp.

The NIA, in its letter, mentioned that Aisha, a resident of Diego Shilang village in Taguig City, Metro Manila, operated one of the largest IS groups in WhatsApp called IslamQ&A where ISIS members shared the virulent groups ideology and jihadi material.

Aisha also finds mention in the NIA chargesheet filed last week against ISIS operative Mohammad Sirajuddin.

Mohammad Sirajuddin, an Indian Oil Corporation manager, was arrested in Jaipur late last year and was also allegedly in touch with Aisha.

Sirajudidn, 33, was also in touch with ISIS recruit Mohammed Naser who was arrested by the NIA after deportation from Sudan last year.

Reports also indicate that the relation between Aisha and Sirajuddin were anything but cordial.

Sirajuddin, who was vocal of his ideology in the virtual world, was banned by Aisha for a short time from her WhatsApp groups over difference in opinions, while Sirajuddin felt that Aisha was a traitor and was somehow to be blamed for the arrest of his mentor Mohammad Naser from Sudan last year.
Arputhammal, mother of A.G. Perarivalan, one of the seven life convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, leading a rally to mark his 25 years in prison and demanding the release of seven convicts in the case in Chennai on Saturday. (Photo: AP)

Chennai: Leading film directors, actors, writers and functionaries of political parties took part in a rally held in the city on Saturday demanding the release of seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

The rally led by Arpudham Ammal, mother of Perarivalan, one of the convicts, began at Rajarathinam stadium at Egmore in the city and a petition was submitted to the Chief Ministers cell.

PMK leader Anbumani Ramadoss, president of Tamil Film Directors Union Vikraman and Gowthaman along with national award winning Tamil directors Vetrimaran, Ram, Amir, Jananathan took part in the rally.

President of South Indian Film Artistes Union Naser, actors Sathyaraj, Thiyagu, MDMK deputy general secretary E. Sathya, Thamizhar Desiya Munnani leader P. Nedumaran, Naam Thamizhar Katchi leader Seeman, besides functionaries of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, May 17 movement and other Tamil nationalist groups participated in the rally.

Arpudham Ammal said Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa alone could take steps for the release of the seven convicts and hoped that she would help in their early release.

She said her son Perarivalan and others were in prison for the last 25 years and Perarivalans youthful days had been spent in jail. The seven prisoners had not been given parole and had not seen the outside world for the last 25 years, she said.

MDMK general secretary Vaiko appealed to the Chief Minister to release the convicts using section 161 of the CrPc and added that she would be appreciated by Tamils all over the world, if she released the convicts.

Tamil Nationalist leader Nedumaran said the Centre should not intervene if the state government used its powers under section 161 of CrPC and released the convicts. Keeping them in prison for more than 25 years would be against human sympathy. Actor Sathyaraj said the rally was organised to support Jayalalithaa and strengthen her hands to release the seven convicts and expressed confidence she would do so.
'It is a matter of worry. The people have made a joke out of democracy,' said Lalu Yadav. (Photo: PTI)

Patna: Taking pot shots at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) following allegations that the counting for Rajya Sabha polls took place amid an unfair environment, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav on Sunday said it is a matter of worry, adding such incidents ridicule democracy.

Read: RS polls: Ex-Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda alleges BJP conspiracy

"It is a matter of worry. The people have made a joke out of democracy. The BJP got benefitted uselessly in Jharkhand, while in Haryana they have crossed all limits. This matter needs introspection," Lalu told the media in Patna.

Alleging conspiracy in the counting of votes in the Rajya Sabha elections, former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda earlier said the matter should be probed, adding everything will come out if election petition is filed.

Read: Cong to approach EC tomorrow over Rajya Sabha polls in Haryana

The Congress will approach the Election Commission to protest against alleged misuse of government machinery in Saturday's Rajya Sabha elections for two seats in Haryana.

Congress general secretary BK Hariprasad said they are consulting legal experts on the issue.

The Congress is alleging that there was deliberate fraud in the election by switching the pen meant for marking the votes so as to make the Congress votes invalid. The votes of 14 Congress MLAs were declared invalid.
Chennai: Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa vowed to make Tamil Nadu a child labour free state and informed that her government has been implementing numerous schemes to encourage the children to return to schools.

Speaking on the eve of Day Against Child Labour, the Chief Minister listed out various initiatives taken by her government to ensure that children were sent to school and not employed in work. Her government had implemented various schemes such as free education, free books and other accessories besides uniforms, bus passes and laptops, among others.

The government was also providing Rs 500 assistance per month to a child weaned away from labour and pursuing higher education, she said. Every year on June 12 the World Day Against Child Labour is observed to raise awareness of the plight of child labourers. The revenue earned through child labour is a belittling one for both the household and the nation and realising this we shall ensure that children are sent to school, Ms Jayalalithaa appealed in a statement.
Lucknow: The newly elected Rajya Sabha member, Amar Singh, on Sunday, attacked the BJP and union home minister Rajnath Singh, in particular, for not providing any intelligence alert on Mathura.

The union home ministry did not provided the state government any inputs about the presence of Naxal and Maoist elements from Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Orissa who were present inside the Jawahar Bagh, he said and added that it was because of their presence that the police raid took a violent turn.

Mr Singh strongly defended the Akhilesh government and said that the government was simply implementing the High Court which called for evacuation of the squatters.

He said that a small contingent of police force was deliberately taken to avoid a confrontation as there were reports of women and young children being present order in Jawahar Bagh. Instead of praising our efforts to ensure minimum collateral damage, we are being blamed, he said.
Members of the Kapu community take out a rally on the Tank Bund in Hyderabad protesting against the arrest of their leader Mudragada Padmanabham.  DC

Rajahmundry: The health of Kapunadu leader Mudragda Padmanabham is deteriorating even as he continued his hunger strike on the fourth day on Sunday at the government hospital here.

Doctors attending on him at the government hospital say that Mr Padmanabham is taking only water and is refusing them to even take his blood pressure or check blood sugar levels.

They said that since he is a diabetic, creatinine levels are a cause for worry as they may lead to severe health complications. However, the fact that he is taking plenty of water is some relief since his kidneys may not be affected, the doctors said.

When the doctors tried to persuade him to allow them conduct tests, Mr Padmanabham assured them that he would be alright for a few more days. When they insisted, he reportedly threatened them that he would bang his head against the wall if he was subjected to too much pressure.

The doctors will brief the district collector about Mr Padmanabhams deteriorating health condition and based on his directions, they may take a decision whether to forcibly administer intravenous fluids. Meanwhile, Mr Padmanabhams wife Padmavathi and daughter-in-law are taking water and accepted IV fluids when persuaded to do so.
New Delhi: With reports indicating that South Africa is one among the handful of nations still opposing NSG entry for India, Prime Minister Narendra Modis forthcoming visit to that country may change things, the way his Switzerland and Mexico visit succeeded in doing.

As reported earlier, apart from South Africa, Mr Modi is also set to visit Kenya and Mozambique next month with some reports suggesting that Tanzania is also on the itinerary. Reuters had reported last week that apart from China, a few other countries such as New Zealand, Ireland, Turkey, South Africa and Austria were also opposing Indian entry into the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

But Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to South Africa, expected in July, will come after the crucial NSG meet in the South Korean Capital Seoul that is expected within the next fortnight.

But with China steadfast in opposing Indias entry, chances of an immediate entry into the grouping appear bleak.

But with Government sources indicating that Indias efforts to join the NSG are an ongoing process, New Delhi is expected to continue with its efforts at gradually eliminating opposition from the few countries that are opposing its entry.

Total consensus in the NSG is needed for any country to join as a member. Prime Minister Modi is expected to personally persuade South Africa to back Indias candidature in case New Delhis efforts to secure entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group at the Seoul meet fail.
Hyderabad: The Tamil Nadu government's recent clarification that employees in IT firms were free to form unions as per its labour laws has had an impact on the IT industry in Hyderabad too.

Flooded with queries, the Telangana State labour department has clarified that IT firms in TS too are covered under the Trade Unions Act, 1926 and Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, and there are no restrictions on forming employee unions.

A senior labour department official said, An IT firm is registered like any other company and all norms that are applicable to any other company are applicable to IT also. Employees are free to form unions and redress their grievances as per the provisions of the Trade Unions Act, 1926.

There is no union activity in any IT company in the city as employees are wary of forming unions fearing damage to their career prospects.

The labour departments clarification assumes significance in the backdrop of unrest among employees over reports of IT firms becoming fully automated with artificial intelligence in the coming years, which would result in huge job losses.

At present, there is only the Telangana Information Technology Association (TITA), a non-profit organisation and taking up social causes like promoting digital literacy in villages. Employees of various IT firms join TITA in their individual capacity, not representing their companies.

A TITA member said, IT employees fear forming unions and indulging in union activities. They fear their career growth will be hit. Moreover, most of the employees do not work for more than two years for any company. They are worried about not getting jobs in new companies if they are into unionism.

Employees admitted that there is unrest over losing jobs in coming days due to automation and this may spur union activities in IT firms to protect the rights of employees.
Hyderabad: In a big relief to families and well-wishers, 10 students out of the total 25 who were asked to leave the Western Kentucky University campus a few days ago will be allowed into the second semester of their study. A majority of these students are from Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Guntur and Visakhapatnam in the two Telugu states.

Although WKU standards mandate a student to achieve a GPA score of 3.3, some students who got a score close to 3 GPA are being allowed to continue. The fate of 15 others, some of whom got as low as 1.3 GPA or 1.66 GPA, is with the varsity, said Subhaker Alapati of Global Tree agency that recruited these students.

He said many students have approached WKU officials through the agency and directly seeking chance to prove their merit in studies. Many of these Telugu students focused more on part-time jobs than academics and hence their poor performance in the first semester.

The student recruitment agency said only 30 per cent of the students who enrolled for masters (in computers) from India faced this situation while the rest have progressed to the next level.

Aditya Sharma, who is president of the universitys Indian Student Association, said many of these students did not take their education seriously there.

The university didnt have much choice with students, who failed to meet their expectations, he said. The recruitment was held in September, 2015 after which Indian students enrolled for masters study in Western Kentucky University.

According to recruiting agencies in Hyderabad, Western Kentucky University is a good university with a reasonable fee structure (nearly Rs 5 lakh per semester). The cost of living in Kentucky is affordable compared to the other cities in the US.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, wife Kamala , daughter T. Veena, relatives along with family members and friends move into the official residence of the CM at Cliff House in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and his family moved into Cliff House, the official residence of the CM, here on Saturday morning. The CM arrived at Cliff House along with wife Kamala, daughter T. Veena, grandchildren, other family members and friends at 9.30 am.

True to his Communist lifestyle, there was no house warming ceremony at the Cliff House. Even the media, especially TV news channels, were taken by surprise when Mr Pinarayi posted the picture of family taken in front of Cliff House on his official Facebook page .

Though the former CM Oommen Chandy had vacated Cliff House soon after UDFs defeat in Assembly elections, Mr Pinaryi continued to stay at the party accommodation in front of the AKG Centre as maintenance works were going on at the official residence.

The CMs official residence used to be a place of embarrassment for several politicians. The former CM preferred to stay at his private residence than occupy Cliff House during his first stint in 2004-06. The then finance minister Vakkom Purshottaman occupied the house during that period.

The late CM E.K. Nayanar, who used to criticise K. Karunakaran for constructing a swimming pool at Cliff House, joked he would bathe his dog there if he ever happened to occupy the House. Constructed during the monarchy days of Travancore, it was the residence of Diwan Peshkar (secretary of the state). In post Independence period it was taken over by the PWD and refurnished into a state guest house.

After the formation of the state in 1957, the first chief minister E.M.S. Namboodiripad chose the house as his official residence. Rose House used to be the residence of CMs of Travancore and Kochi. The entire Cliff House premises is 4.2 acres and the two storied building constructed in traditional Kerala architecture with shades of British style, has 15,000 sq ft area and seven bedrooms.

A large part of land is used for farming which began during Nayanars tenure. Karunakaran and wife had interest in vegetable cultivation, while A.K. Antony loved banana plantation farming. During Mr Chandys tenure Cliff House farm set a record of sorts set harvesting two varieties of ash gourds weighing 25 and 21 kg. Normally it is 1 kg to 1.5 kg.

The large area had ivy gourd (kovakka) green chilli, ginger, yam, spinach, cauliflower and more. Mr Chandys wife Mariamma Oommen even reared pets; five guinea fowls, 10 chickens, five ornamental ducks, turkey, two dwarf goats and a new born calf.
Allahabad: The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) national executive will begin its two-day meeting in Allahabad on Sunday. The meeting will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party president Amit Shah, senior members of the Union Cabinet, Chief Ministers of the BJP-ruled states and members of Parliament.

While the two-day national executive will take a hard look at probable candidates, Union home minister Rajnath Singh is expected take charge of campaigning along with party president Amit Shah. Sources revealed, contrary to speculation, that Singh will not be the face of the party, but the elections will be held under his umbrella leadership.

Besides trying to pick a face for CM, the BJP will also lean on the charisma of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is expected to hold one rally in the state every month. Other top leaders, including the party president, will regularly address rallies and hold meetings with party workers in Uttar Pradesh.

According to reports, Prime Minister Modi and party president Shah will together inaugurate the meeting. Shah, who will address the inaugural session, will also be convening the inauguration of the national office bearers' meeting.

Prime Minister Modi will address the meeting's concluding session on Monday. Later, he will also address a public rally at the Parade Ground.
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As part of a concerted campaign by A and I groups, former MP, Mr K. Sudhakaran, on Saturday met party president Sonia Gandhi, urging her to remove KPCC president V.M. Sudheeran for his failure to keep the flock united, launch counterpropaganda against the LDF campaign and initiate adequate preparations in the election year.

Mr Sudhakarans audience with Mrs Gandhi came after former minister and A group leader Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan met her with the same demand the previous day. The meetings in succession were meant to convince the high command that its nominee, Mr Sudheeran, did not command the organisational support to take the party forward when it is buffeted by the ruling LDF and an aggressive BJP.

I have put before the high command basic issues confronting the party. We cannot dictate to the high command, it is for the high command to administer correctives without further delay, Mr Sudhakaran said in Delhi, hours before the high command put a gag on open criticism.

The party required a vibrant leadership to take on political opponents, led by Pinarayi Vijayan. Only a total revamp of the KPCC will help the party reposition itself against the combined might of the cadre-based LDF and BJP. Referring to the poll rout, Mr Sudhakaran said Congress had lost the support of both the majority and minority communities.

There is no meaning in blaming groups for this. Groups have always been part of the organisation and rallied behind the party at critical junctures, he said. I group leader and PCC spokesperson Mr Joseph Vazhakkan attributed the debacle to efforts by one person to spruce up his image at the cost of the party. Looks like the partys two-day post-poll stocktaking has had no impact on guiding the party on the right path forward.
Thiruvananthapuram: PCC president V. M. Sudheeran has got a breather as Congress high command did not buy into factional demand for his ouster. But this is not the end of widespread discontent against Sudheerans continuation. The high command will have to find a substitute as part of an overhaul of the organisation.

Since the PCC chief aspirants like V. D. Satheeshan, P. T. Thomas, K. Sudhakaran, K. Muraleedharan and Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan are all attached to either of the groups, AICC leadership is contemplating of having a senior leader like P. C. Chacko coming at the helm.

If A group demanded Mr Sudheerans ouster openly, not many from the I group was baying for his blood publicly except KPCC vice-president V. D. Satheeshan, Joseph Vazhakkan and K. Sudhakaran. Congress leaders maintain that these three leaders would not have demanded Mr Sudheerans ouster without the silent blessing of Opposition Leader Ramesh Chennithala, who heads the I group.

It should be recalled that prominent I group leader Sooranad Rajasekharan had rallied behind Mr Sudheeran at the KPCC camp executive last weekend where he demanded that he should continue. As long as Mr Chennithala remains as the Opposition Leader, he is not bothered whether Mr Sudheeran should continue or not. Since Mr Chennithala is aware of AICC leadership preferring to see Mr Sudheeran at the helm due to his non-factional status, he treads cautiously, said a Congress leader.

Mr Sudheerans loyal brigade of KPCC general secretaries says, during the last one decade, former CM Oommen Chandy and Mr Chennithala were undisputed leaders in the party until Mr Sudheeran came to head the party early 2014.

There was none to question Mr Chandy and Mr Chennithala for so long that when Mr Sudheeran started to intervene in government's policies, they began showing intolerance. Whatever decision these two senior leaders took had the wholehearted support of senior leader A. K. Antony, said a KPCC general secretary.

Mr Sudheeran has already stated in New Delhi that there is no scope of group activities from now on which is going to be a huge blow to the camps of Mr Chandy and Mr Chennithala. But party sources told DC that a peeved A group will take out a non-cooperation stand against Mr Sudheeran.
On Saturday, the media reported that Judith DSouza, an Indian citizen based in Kolkata who was working with the Agha Khan Development Network in Kabul, had been kidnapped. I didnt know her, but I know so many like her (including myself) who are known as expats, working in several parts of the country. I have been in and out of Afghanistan since 2004. Not completely aware of the reality of Afghanistan, I realised the dangers when my first assignment was delayed due to security reasons, as no UN consultants were being allowed into the country.

Two months later I was in Kabul and installed in a UN guesthouse on Flower Street. As a non-family station, there were six men and women in the guesthouse, working for different outfits. At a security briefing I was told I could ride only in UN vehicles and not walk the streets. I was given a walkie-talkie and had to call in every evening at 7 pm. Kabul was stark. After three decades of conflict and war there was little that wasnt destroyed. Buildings had bullet holes, roads were broken and the landscape was brown.

Water and electricity were in short supply. But, the March skies were blue and the sun shone brightly. The people were lovely. They like Indians, Bollywood and the diversity of India. Many spoke Urdu, as during the Soviet occupation from 1979-89 many had sought refuge in Pakistan. I felt very safe and ventured out of the guesthouse early mornings to the forbidden streets and made friends with shopkeepers selling dry fruits.

They were curious about my life, as I was about theirs. I was offered sabz chai (green tea), naan, walnuts, cheese and honey. I watched the naan makers. I took photographs. Back in India, I couldnt get Afghanistan out of my mind. In March 2006, I was again in Kabul, on a three-month assignment to train Afghan journalists. It turned into a six-month stay. My love for the country deepened. There were security concerns, but the battles were being fought in the southern and eastern parts of the country.I had access to a car and driver and visited local market. We took trips to Istalif, the hill town about 40 km north of Kabul.

The expat friends who worked in embassies were less free than me and as they couldnt visit me. So I visited them. I felt sorry they couldnt experience the Afghanistan I was experiencing. There was an incident during my stay when there was shooting, looting and a three-day curfew was declared. I returned many times to Afghanistan on different assignments with international and Afghan NGOs. Family and friends, in and out of India, would ask me: Is it safe? Are you not scared?

These questions were natural as the media reported violence and conflict out of Afghanistan. Tired of this, in 2006, in Kabul, I started a blog called Letter from Afghanistan to write about things other than war. In the past few years, the security situation has worsened. Some of this is due to the withdrawal of international troops in 2014. The economy has shrunk, unemployment is high, with international donors moving out or reducing investments.

On and off the streets, the word is that, besides the Taliban, there are insurgents and common criminals who have made it a profession to use kidnapping and petty theft as a means of livelihood. Morale is low. In April this year, I was in Kabul with an international NGO. I could only ride in a car with a security guard and driver.

The security measures in the guesthouse and office (in the same complex) were extreme. I wasnt allowed to visit my Afghan friends homes (unless the NGO security team went ahead and cleared it). I felt this was an imposition on my friends and invited them to visit me. These restrictions conflicted with my fearless and free spirit. But I accepted them as a necessary part of my contract, and didnt want to be a liability to the organisation.

I choose to work in Afghanistan despite the known and unknown dangers. If Afghans live with this threat to their lives, day in and out, I can too. My life in Kabul is privileged  living in a relatively secure environment, riding in secure vehicles and not having to be in public places, as Afghans are. And, if the situation gets really bad, I can get on a flight and come home. But most Afghans cant.
Who writes Narendra Modis speeches? That was one of the most frequently asked questions after the Prime Ministers 45-minute address to the joint session of the US Congress. The one phrase that resounded with everyone was the felicitous hesitations of history, a good enough title for a book on Indias foreign policy. If we want to look at the phrase in the light of Indo-US relations, we could go right back to August 15, 1947 when India emerged as an independent nation. Then, and in the years that followed, Jawaharlal Nehru had the option of steering the countrys newly-liberated wheels in a westward direction.

We, of course, know he didnt. Many of Nehrus detractors (whose number seem to grow nowadays with the active encouragement of social media trolls), claim that India would have been a far more prosperous country today if it had rushed into a US embrace right then and there. This criticism disregards two important things. The first you can state in a single word: Pakistan. Our neighbour was unhesitant about its relationship with the United States, but where did that coziness lead it to? More prosperity (for the people, not the generals)? More stability? More freedom and a real democracy? All of us know the answers to those questions.

The other point Nehrus critics forget is the context of Indias foreign policy: It wasnt just our country but many others who leaned towards socialism in their economic policies. That was the prevailing wisdom of those years, whether in Europe, Britain, Latin America or, later, Africa. Capitalism was regarded with some distaste; it was perceived then (and even today is seen to be so in practice), as iniquitous and unfair to the majority of people.

Nehrus critics also forget that countries like Pakistan became mere satellites of the United States, whereas India became the leader of the non-aligned movement. For a country to reach such an exalted position so soon after Independence was an achievement which made us hold up our heads high wherever we lived. The fact that the non-aligned movement did not live up to its principle of neutrality during the Suez War, or during the Soviet invasion of Hungary, cannot take anything away from that initial achievement.

Was the conventional wisdom of favouring a socialistic pattern for the economy responsible for India leaning towards the Soviet Union? Undoubtedly. But the hesitations of history are never one-sided: the hostility of the US government to non-alignment was equally responsible. (Remember then US secretary of state John Foster Dulles calling non-alignment immoral?)

Foreign policy is always a matter of give and take. For years and years, the US equated Pakistan with India, notwithstanding the relative sizes of the two countries and the fact that only one of the two was a robust democracy. It has taken the looming presence of China and the dalliance of Pakistan with terrorism that has finally made the US see that in India it has the only worthwhile partner in this part of the world.

The give-and-take now works in many ways. The strategic aspect is obviously the most important for both countries. Beyond that, the US needs Indias already large and fast-growing market in virtually every field, including defence. India, on the other hand, needs access to cutting-edge technology, which its new relationship will undoubtedly lead to. An example is the clearance for building six nuclear reactors in India by Westinghouse, something which has been hanging fire for a long time.

(A little aside here about the hesitations of history. The finest hour of Manmohan Singhs prime ministership came in his first term when he staked his government on the India-US nuclear deal. Does anyone remember which party was the treatys most vociferous opponent? The BJP. In fact Sushma Swaraj then compared the deal to Emperor Jehangir allowing the East India Company to begin trading in our country!) Traditionally, and its ironical that this should be so, it has always been a Republican government which has been favourable to India rather than a Democratic one.

The trend seemed to continue with Barack Obamas first term; if things have changed so dramatically in his second term, is it only because of Mr Modis many initiatives and his emphatic pronouncements that Indias economy would be further opened up and that ease of doing business would be assured? More than likely. But, surely, there could also be a sub-conscious contributory factor: How could any American leader not notice that some of the US largest companies like Microsoft, Google and Pepsico are headed by Indians? And that persons of Indian origin are also making an impact in running the US administration, in science and technology centres, and so on?

The ebb and flow of history provides opportunities that need to be seized. Mr Modi, the best external affairs minister in recent memory, has done just that. In his two years in office, he has circled the world, met leaders from different power blocs, worked out agreements in trade, commerce and defence to the countrys long-term advantage, but he has singled out the US for special attention, for example, inviting Mr Obama to the Republic Day celebrations last year.

That he has managed to work out a personal relationship with Mr Obama is evident from the warmth of their interactions and, although getting along with each other should matter in marriages and not international relations, leaders are only human and will obviously give that extra latitude to people they like. This has helped India get into the Missile Technology Control Regime and has brought it close to entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group, where the stumbling block remains China.

That personal chemistry has its limits in international matters is clear from India-China relations. Mr Modi has talked often about his excellent rapport with President Xi Jinping. But Chinas strategic interests have made this irrelevant as one sees from its belligerence in the South China Sea, in Arunachal Pradesh and in its steadfast support of Pakistan. Two years of Mr Modi have clearly shown that he wants to put the hesitations of history firmly behind him. They also show that he prefers the give and take of foreign diplomacy to the rough and tumble of Indias domestic problems. Its a lop-sided approach to the prime ministership, which could be redressed by finding the right people to run government ministries. So far he has found only three, which is clearly not enough.
It was the nastiest Rajya Sabha election in a while. With 27 of 57 seats up for grabs in different states, the political temperature shot up to unbearable levels, and the EC was forced to consider countermanding the polls in Karnataka. The peculiar goings-on in Haryana showed how far MLAs could go to defy their parties. The violence in UP was another extreme example of what our MLAs can do. While many issues must be sorted out in case repoll demands are made in some states, the larger question is how to find a way to avoid this messy method of holding an indirect election for MPs to sit in the Upper House of Parliament.

There are far better ways to elect MPs by proportional representation, as envisaged when the Constitution was drawn up for a bicameral Parliament. The proportional vote can, for instance, go to parties which will be given the number of MPs they can nominate to the Rajya Sabha in proportion to the seats they won in Assembly elections.

It is by allowing individual franchise that problems arise in cross-voting and uncontrollable desertions by MLAs as the anti-defection law doesnt apply to Rajya Sabha polls. Such a sweeping reform needs a national consensus, that in the current political climate may appear impossible. But if political sagacity prevails, nothing is really impossible. The parties themselves should agree that the power to nominate members is best left to them. And the sooner the current system is done away with, the better for all.
Birthday party politics

In Uttar Pradesh, the best way to swing into the limelight is to throw a party, specially during election time. Invite a few legislators and then quietly leak the news to the media. Without any apparent effort, the party gets converted into a conspiracy event, mediapersons jostle with each other for breaking news and exclusive bits of information from inside the party and tremors can be felt in the higher echelons of power.

The now-defunct Loktantrik Congress, a breakway group of the Congress that had joined hands with the Kalyan Singh government in 1997 under the leadership of Naresh Agrawal, had mastered this art. Whenever the Loktantrik Congress 22-odd legislators wanted free publicity, one of them would throw a party and the Kalyan Singh sarkar would tremble at the idea of their pulling out of the minority government.

Recently, independent MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh, better known as Raja Bhaiyya, did a replay when he celebrated the birthday of his twin sons and invited a majority of disgruntled SP MLAs. Since Rajya Sabha elections were on, the SP leaders smelt a conspiracy and Mulayam Singh Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav and Shivpal Yadav immediately joined the party to placate the angry MLAs. Their presence swung the media into action and almost over-night, the innocuous birthday party turn-ed into a headline event.

Secular Didi

On June 7, several newspapers in Kolkata carried a state government advertisement in which Mamata Banerjee was seen offering her greetings to her Muslim brothers and sisters on the arrival of the holy month of Ramzan. In the next few weeks, like previous years, she will attend a number of iftar parties in the city. Every year the biggest party is hosted by Kolkata Municipal Corporation at the sprawling Park Circus Maidan.

Photographs of Didi with her head covered and both hands raised for dua joining imams and prominent, and as well as ordinary Muslims, at the time of breaking of day-long fast, are routinely splashed across the front pages of the city dailies during Ramzan. No one has questioned Didis participation in iftar parties because she has over the years emerged as a fiercely secular leader with a minority-friendly image. But as she has pointed out on a number of occasions it does not mean that she exclusively attends festivals or events of Muslims.

Didi attends midnight mass at St. Paul Cathedral and sings Christmas carols, visits a city gurdwara on Guru Gobind Singhs birthday and also participates in Chhath puja. Not to mention the countless Durga pujas that she inaugurates every year. Trinamul Congress supporters were therefore not amused when controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, who in a known Mamata-baiter, tweeted recently: Is Mamataji fasting? Just curious.

Dinner helps win votes

Riding high on the victory of the partys heavyweight and tribal leader Kantilal Bhuria in the recently-held bypolls to Ratlam Lok Sabha constituency, the Congress was hoping to wrest the tribal-dominated Ghoradongri seat from the ruling BJP in byelections. So the party had launched high-pitched electioneering by carpet-bombing the constituency with its star campaigners, like Digvijay Singh, Kamal Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia.

Amid the upbeat mood in the Congress camp, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan quietly slipped into the tribal village of Ghopda, Betul, on the evening of May 28 and had dinner with the Bhurelal Chouhan family before spending the night with them. Next morning, he bid them farewell but not before sharing tea.

The Opposition Congress had cried foul over Mr Chouhan breaking bread in Ghopda, Betul, barely a couple of days before the byelection.

The party even sarcastically described the dinner enjoyed by the CM with the tribal family as a poll meal. Later, the BJP candidate won the byelection hands down, defeating his nearest Congress rival by a margin of over 13,000 votes when the results were declared on June 2. The poll meal dashed all our hopes to win the byelection, a senior Congress leader observed.

What a colourful idea!

Entering a government building, specially those housing Union ministries, is a major headache for an ordinary citizen. If any citizen wants to enter one of these establishments, s/he has to literally sweat it out before a pass is issued to merely enter the building. The harassment a person may face in the department s/he is visiting is something that can only be imagined.

Journalists, a privileged lot (at least in some cases), dont face such entry problems in government offices, as they possess the press accreditation cards issued by the Government of India after security checks. The security personnel at such establishments, mainly the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), normally identify these press accreditation cards by their colours, which change every year. Also, identity cards possessed by bureaucrats, PSU chiefs and other middle- or lower-ranked government officials are of various colours.

They carry a number of stars, signifying the holders seniority. However, as hundreds of other people like courier boys, vendors, and private company officials visit such offices, they try to show personal IDs or office IDs, which dont guarantee entry at such places. Sensing the problems faced by CISF personnel while dealing with hundreds of such visitors, the government recently came up with a novel idea of making things easier for them.

Outside every government building, pictures of coloured samples of all ID proofs, which are given to government officials, mediapersons, PSU personnel and other middle- and lower-ranked personnel, have been pasted. Now the security personnel match the IDs shown by visitors with the ones shown on the chart pasted outside the offices and then allow them to enter. It seems this innovative colour-coordinated method is really helping the security personnel.

10-hour shift. Really?

Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal had recently said that I will be working for the state even after office hours. A section of overenthusiastic officers in the state food and civil supply department took the appeal of the chief minister as an order and issued a notification for employees to work for 10 hours a day.

It was obviously upsetting for the employees union, which protested, saying: The government cannot compel employees to work 10 hours a day. It is a sheer violation of the Labour Act. However, Mr Sonowals office quickly clarified, saying: The news report in a section of the media that government employees have to work beyond office hours is false and baseless. I have only appealed to the employees to work with more sincerity and commitment.

'Punishment posting'?

A certain RSS man was recently sent to Delhi from a BJP-ruled state to work with the central team. Now this RSS pracharaks main query after reaching Delhi was to find what accommodation he would be getting. He is considered close to the states chief minister. After living in a huge house in the state capital for many years, this pracharak had expected to get a house in the Lutyens zone.

He apparently suggested he could stay in the official residence of an MP from this BJP-ruled state, as the MP only uses this bungalow when Parliament is in session. But his suggestion was turned down. He then suggested he could stay in a North Avenue flat, where some senior BJP leaders live. But this suggestion too was turned down. The rumour is that the RSS was miffed with this pracharak as he was thinking more about the CMs interest than the organisations. Sending him to Delhi was like a punishment posting. This CM has also been facing Opposition attack over an infamous scam.

On the wrong foot

Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have won millions of hearts for his inspiring June 8 address to the joint sitting of the US Congress, but a small factual mistake he made at a function organised just a day before in the same country to return the stolen statues to India, has found him caught in the wrong foot on Twitter. His followers and social media users have mocked him for his latest gaffe on the famous Konark Sun Temple in Orissa.

At the function, Mr Modi said the artists in the 2,000-year-old temple made statues wearing skirts and holding purses. This means that this practice of wearing skirts and using purses were prevalent even then. Some reminded the PM that the Konark temple was not 2,000 years old, but was built only 700 years ago. A user commented on

Mr Modis skirts and purses remark in a very satirical way: Aur tab se leke aaj tak RSS aur Modi bhakt uss skirt ke peeche pade hain... (And since then RSS members are obsessed with skirts). Hmm, matlab women in India are safe in a skirt only if they are engraved in stone, tweeted one Malaya Desai, ostensibly taking a dig on the rising atrocities on women in the country.

See Modiji agrees that Skirt Wearing Girls is Part of Indian Culture. These Sanghis are just anti-Indian said one Jairaj P. Modi must be having delusions of short skirt women... Anyway bhakts will claim he increased tourist traffic to that temple, said another.
Hackers have devised a new trick that can fool users into revealing their Google two-factor authentication codes. (Representational image)

Mumbai: Hackers have devised a new trick that can fool users into revealing their Google two-factor authentication codes without any knowledge of the occurrence.

According to reports, 2FA or two-factor authentication is a double-layered authentication process, supported by numerous online services, including big banks, Google, Facebook, and even the government.

During the process, if the user enters a wrong code, the login is classified as an attempt to hack, and the user is subsequently blocked from accessing the account, even if they entered the correct password. So it is very difficult to bypass and the security benefits are huge.

However, hackers have slyly managed to trick users by sending them an SMS posing as Google, asking for the 2FA verification code. Last week, an user named Alex MacCaw, tweeted an image of the SMS he received. He said: Be warned, there's a nasty Google 2 factor auth attack going around.

Be warned, there's a nasty Google 2 factor auth attack going around. pic.twitter.com/c9b9Fxc0ZC  Alex MacCaw (@maccaw) June 4, 2016

This clearly showed that the attackers were carrying out illegal logins from another location so that the targeted user gets a verification code and sends the 6-digit code to them. Subsequently, the hackers would use the 2FA code in the login page and access the account with out the real users knowledge.

While MacCaw was clever enough to spot the tricky, you should be careful as hackers are coming up with numerous techniques to access your social and financial accounts.

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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.

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"I think the 28 pages will be published and I support their publication and everyone will see the evidence that the Saudi government had nothing to do with it," Brennan said in an interview with Saudi-owned Arabiya TV. (Photo: AP)

Washington: CIA chief John Brennan said on Sunday he expects 28 classified pages of a US congressional report into the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States to be published, absolving Saudi Arabia of any responsibility.

"I think the 28 pages will be published and I support their publication and everyone will see the evidence that the Saudi government had nothing to do with it," Brennan said in an interview with Saudi-owned Arabiya TV. His comments were dubbed into Arabic.

The withheld section of the 2002 report is central to a dispute over whether Americans should be able to sue the Saudi government, a key US ally, for damages.

The US Senate passed a bill on May 17 allowing the families of September 11 victims to do so, setting up a potential showdown with the White House, which has threatened a veto.

Saudi Arabia denies providing any support for the 19 hijackers - most of whom were Saudi citizens - who killed nearly 3,000 people in the September 11 attacks. Riyadh strongly objects to the bill.

It has said it might sell up to $750 billion in US securities and other American assets if it became law.

Brennan called the 28-page section merely a "preliminary review."

"It was found later, according to the results of the report, that there was no link between the Saudi government as a state or as an institution or even senior Saudi officials to the September 11 attacks," he added.

The Office of the US Director of National Intelligence is reviewing the material to see whether it can be declassified.

Former US Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired the congressional inquiry into the attacks, said in April that the White House will likely make a decision by June on whether it would release the classified pages.
Park City: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co chief executive and Republican donor Meg Whitman reiterated her opposition to Donald Trump as the partys presidential nominee and compared him to fascist leaders Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, according to media and two sources.

Whitman made the comment Friday at a conference hosted by previous Republican nominee Mitt Romney, while she challenged U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan on his endorsement of Trump, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

Two participants at the off-the-record session in Park City, Utah confirmed Whitmans language to Reuters. Whitman could not immediately be reached for comment.

A billionaire and former supporter of failed candidate New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Whitman has been actively working to stop Trumps nomination, including fundraising for an anti-Trump Super PAC.

In February, the technology CEO called Trump unfit to be president. Since then, Trump has become the presumptive Republican nominee and is likely to run against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election.

Ryan, addressing the 300 attendees of the session, explained the difficulty he had with the decision to endorse, the Post said, including weathering pressure from House Republicans to lend his backing to Trump.

After weeks of holding out, Ryan endorsed the New York businessman in early June, breaking with a number of establishment Republicans who see Trumps rhetoric as damaging to the party. The opponents include Romney, Republicans 2012 presidential nominee, who chose Ryan as his running mate.

Romney has blasted Trump in recent weeks for attacks he has made on the Mexican-American judge presiding over a case against him, with Romney warning on Friday about the effect that trickle-down racism could have on the country.

As the presumptive nominee, Trump now has to balance maintaining the outsider style that helped propel him to the nomination, while courting Republican insiders, who could be critical to financing a general election campaign against a well-funded Clinton.

Trump on Saturday showed no inclination to make peace with his critics. He went on Twitter to note how Romney choked like a dog when he lost to then-incumbent President Barack Obama in 2012 and reiterated it at his campaign stops.
People in Burlington are familiar with Sanders and the message of social justice that he has promoted since before he was elected mayor in 1981. (Photo: AP)

Burlington: People in this lakeside city that Bernie Sanders helped transform as mayor before embarking on a career in Congress are proud of the mark he's left in the 2016 presidential race even as they recognise that his White House bid is almost certainly going to fall short.

The senator returned to Burlington, his hometown, after a week of major developments in the campaign: Hillary Clinton clinched the Democratic nomination, President Barack Obama endorsed her after meeting with Sanders at the White House, and the party kept up efforts to ease Sanders from the race while trying not to offend his many supporters.

Sanders was largely staying out of public view this weekend, though he was booked on some Washington-based news shows tomorrow and his campaign spokesman, Michael Briggs, said Sanders and his wife, Jane, invited "a couple dozen key supporters and advisers from around the country to come to Burlington to share ideas."

Briggs said he expected "a lot of thoughtful discussion among smart people and good friends." Bernie Sanders was expected to return to Washington for Tuesday's primary in the District of Columbia, the final one on the nomination calendar. In an email today to supporters, Sanders reminded them of their "chance to stand up and be heard." His message ended: "I thank you for everything you've shared with me and all the support you've given our campaign. Now it's time to bring it home on Tuesday."

Bernie Sanders hasn't said he would quit the race, but after meeting with Obama, he made clear he would do everything he could to stop presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump from winning the White House.

Sarah Mandl, 26, of Ithaca, New York, who attended the University of Vermont and spends summers in the state, said she was surprised and happy that Sanders made it as far as he did in the Democratic race, and continues to try to get out his message "even though he knows he's not going to be president."

People in Burlington are familiar with Sanders and the message of social justice that he has promoted since before he was elected mayor in 1981. Many credit him with helping make Burlington the vibrant, multicultural small city that it is today, and are thrilled to see his message gain so much attention.

"He's raised some questions both the Democrats and the Republicans have to answer," said Dan McAllister, 60, a clergyman from South Burlington who was manning a booth for a friend's church not far from Sanders' Senate and campaign offices.
A police officer stands guard outside the Orlando Regional Medical Center hospital after a fatal shooting at a nearby Pulse Orlando nightclub in Orlando. (Photo: AP)

Orlando: A gunman took hostages and opened fire inside a crowded gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday morning, killing approximately 20 people and wounding 42 others before SWAT officers killed him, authorities said. Police Chief John Mina said the shooter had an assault-style rifle, a handgun and a "suspicious device" with him during the attack, which is being investigated as an act of terrorism.

Here's a look at some of the nation's deadliest rampages since 2012:

Feb. 25, 2016: Cedric Ford, 38, killed three people and wounded 14 others lawnmower factory where he worked in the central Kansas community of Hesston. The local police chief killed him during a shootout with 200 to 300 workers still in the building, authorities said.

Feb. 20, 2016: Jason Dalton, 45, is accused of randomly shooting and killing six people and severely wounding two others during a series of attacks over several hours in the Kalamazoo, Michigan, area. Authorities say he paused between shootings to make money as an Uber driver. He faces murder and attempted murder charges.

Dec. 2, 2015: Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, opened fire at a social services center in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people and wounding more than 20. They fled the scene but died hours later in a shootout with police.

Oct. 1, 2015: A shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, left 10 people dead and seven wounded. Shooter Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, exchanged gunfire with police then killed himself.

June 17, 2015: Dylann Roof, 21, shot and killed nine African-American church members during a Bible study group inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Police contend the attack was racially motivated. Roof faces nine counts of murder in state court and dozens of federal charges, including hate crimes.

May 23, 2014: A community college student, Elliot Rodger, 22, killed six people and wounded 13 in shooting and stabbing attacks in the area near the University of California, Santa Barbara, campus. Authorities said he apparently shot himself to death after a gunbattle with deputies.

Sept. 16, 2013: Aaron Alexis, a mentally disturbed civilian contractor, shot 12 people to death at the Washington Navy Yard before he was killed in a police shootout.

July 26, 2013: Pedro Vargas, 42, went on a shooting rampage at his Hialeah, Florida, apartment building, gunning down six people before officers fatally shot him.

Dec. 14, 2012: In Newtown, Connecticut, an armed 20-year-old man entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and used a semi-automatic rifle to kill 26 people, including 20 first graders and six adult school staff members. He then killed himself.

Sept. 27, 2012: In Minnesota's deadliest workplace rampage, Andrew Engeldinger, who had just been fired, pulled a gun and fatally shot six people, including the company's founder. He also wounded two others at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis before taking his own life.

Aug. 5, 2012: In Oak Creek, Wisconsin, 40-year-old gunman Wade Michael Page killed six worshippers at a Sikh Temple before killing himself.

July 20, 2012: James Holmes, 27, fatally shot 12 people and injured 70 in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

April 2, 2012: Seven people were killed and three were wounded when a 43-year-old former student opened fire at Oikos University in Oakland, California. One Goh was charged with seven counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, but psychiatric evaluations concluded he suffered from long-term paranoid schizophrenia and was unfit to stand trial.
Washington: Asserting that the US and India face mutual security threats and a robust defence partnership is in the interest of both countries, a top Republican Senator has moved a legislation asking the President to recognise India as America's "global strategic and defence partner".

Seeking necessary modifications to defence export control regulations, the legislative amendment to the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA) 2017 was introduced by John McCain, who is Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The move came a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to a joint session of the Congress called for greater defence co-operation between the two countries.

As per the Senate Amendment 4618, it is the sense of the Congress that the US and India face mutual security threats, and a robust defence partnership is in the interest of both countries.

The amendment says that the relationship between the US and India has developed over the past two decades to become a multifaceted, global strategic and defence partnership rooted in shared democratic values and the promotion of mutual prosperity, greater economic cooperation, regional peace, security and stability.

As such it asked the President to such actions as may be necessary "to recognise the status of India as a global strategic and defence partner" of the US through appropriate modifications to defence export control regulations.

"The commitment of the President to enhancing defence and security cooperation with India should be considered a priority in advancing the interests of the United States in South Asia and the Indo-Pacific region," it said.

The NDAA 2017 is slated to come for voting in the Senate next week. The Republican Party has a majority in the Senate. The amendment urges the President to strengthen the effectiveness of the US-India Defence Technology and Trade Initiative and the durability of the "India Rapid Reaction Cell" of the Department of Defence.

It also asks the US President to approve and facilitate the transfer of advanced technology in the context of, and in order to satisfy, combined military planning with the India military for missions such as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, counter piracy and maritime domain awareness. It asks for resolving issues impeding defence trade, security cooperation, and co-production and co-development opportunities between the US and India.

Under the legislation the US President is asked to collaborate with India to develop mutually agreeable mechanisms to verify the security of defence technology information and equipment such as tailored cyber security and end-use monitoring arrangements.

The Administration is urged to promote policies that will encourage the efficient review and authorisation of defence sales and exports to India, including the treatment of military sales and export authorisations to India in a manner similar to that of the closest defence partners of the US. Seeking to pursue greater government-to-government and commercial military transactions between the US and India, it asks the President to support the development and alignment of the export control and procurement regimes of India with those of America and multilateral control regimes.

It urges the US President to encourage coordination with India on an ongoing basis to develop and keep updated military contingency plans for addressing threats to the mutual security interests of both countries.

The legislative amendment asks the President to work toward actions and joint efforts such as significant contributions to ongoing global conflicts, that would allow the US to treat India the same as its closest partners and allies with respect to American laws and regulations. On an ongoing basis the President will carry out an assessment of the extent to which India possesses capabilities to execute military operations of mutual interest between the US and India.

The Congress, as per this amendment, feels that the defence partnership between the US and India is vital to regional and international stability and security, and that the national security interests of America can be furthered by advancing the goals of the framework for the US-India Defence Relationship and the effective operation of the US-India Defence Technology and Trade Initiative.

Given the bipartisan nature of support to India US defence ties and that it has been introduced by McCain himself, the legislation is expected to be passed. A similar legislative move has been made in the House of Representatives too.
Washington D.C: An investigative video by news and culture website SourceFed has claimed that search giant Google is manipulating autocomplete suggestions to be more favorable to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The seven-minute long video, that has now gone viral, says Google is deliberately giving out only positive news thereby painting Clinton in favourable light.

The video compared search results from its competitors Bing and Yahoo. As examples, the video said typing in Hillary Clinton cri would result in terms like Hillary Clinton crime reform rather than crimes. The intention is very clear. Google is burying potential searches for terms that could have hurt Hillary Clinton in the primary elections, SourceFeds Matt Lieberman said.
San Francisco: Stanford rapist Brock Turner sent a photo of his victims breasts to friends after an attack outside a frat house party on the universitys grounds last January. Detectives claim Turner sent the image into a group messaging app. He received a reply asking, Whos tit is that, from one of the members on the chat network.

The response message, on GroupMe app, was sent by another Stanford swimmer Justin Buck, originally from the UK. In one of the testimonies, an eyewitness has claimed that Turner was spotted pointing a phone at the victim. The eyewitness said Turner vanished after he was caught with the phone near the victim.

Turner, 20, is also facing renewed scrutiny after police found photos on his phone that show drug use. His family had claimed that the champion swimmer led a "clean life" and was not the kind of person who would commit a crime. Coming from a small town in Ohio, I had never really experienced celebrating or partying that involved alcohol, he had claimed in a letter to the judge.

But it has emerged that prosecutors found extensive evidence showing he was a hardened drinker in high school who regularly indulged in high-grade marijuana, as well as LSD and ecstasy. Also texts show him discussing buying LSD while still at school with friends.

He also used a number of obscure slang terms for highly concentrated forms of marijuana in texts, which prosecutors say suggest he was a regular user of the narcotic. Brock Turners six-month sentence has sparked anger worldwide. He couldve received a sentence of upto 14 years but judge Aaron Persky, who presided over the case, has been slammed for going easy on the attacker. Students across Stanford are planning a series of protests demanding a stricter sentence.
Police say he was heavily armed and used an automatic assault rifle and a handgun during the shooting at the Pulse nightclub at Orlando, Florida (right) (Photo: Web and Agencies)

Orlando: Omar Mateens parents were born in Afghanistan, and he was on the radar of U.S. officials for some time, but was not the target of a specific investigation, law enforcement officials told the media. His father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News that his son may have become angry after seeing two men kiss in Miami several months ago.

We are saying we are apologising for the whole incident. We werent aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country, Seddique told reporters who called his home. At a press conference, authorities declined to reveal any details of their investigation into Mateens background. But officials said the gunman didnt have a criminal record and that supposed ties to radical Islam were being investigated. Other reports claim

According to reports, suspect Omar Mateen (pictured left) had two separate licenses for firearms. (Photo: Web and Agencies)

Also, according to the states publicly available database of concealed carry licenses, Mateen held two different licenses. According to Gawker, one does not need a license to own a gun in Florida but only to carry it. Meanwhile, Islamic State sympathisers, through their various accounts on Twitter sent out messages in support of Mateen. The accounts also tweeted anti-gay messages.

The shooting at the Orlando night club began around 2 a.m. and a police officer who was working at the club was the first to respond. The off duty cop engaged in a shootout outside the club, after which the gunman ran into the club. That turned into a hostage situation, one of the eyewitnesses said.

At around 5am authorities sent in a SWAT team to rescue the hostages. Nine hero officers used a controlled explosion to distract the shooter before fatally shooting him and were able to rescue about 30 hostages who were hiding in the bathroom of the club. During the exchange of gunfire, an officer was shot, but he was saved by his helmet.

It was thought that at least one hostage had been locked in a bathroom with gunshot wounds. Mayor Buddy Dyer said in a press conference: Many were saved by the heroic efforts of the men and women of the OPD, the Orange County Sheriffs, Seminal County Sheriffs office. Fatriana Evans frequents the Pulse nightclub and was outside when shots were fired. Evans says, It sounded like fireworks - pop, pop, pop - and then everybody scatters.

The Pulse club calls itself Orlandos hottest gay bar. On its Facebook page, the club warned patrons: Everyone get out Pulse and keep running. Blood everywhere. Jackie Smith was inside the club and says two friends next to her were shot. She says she hasnt gotten updates on their conditions. She came out of the hospital and burst into tears in the arms of friends.

She says: Some guy walked in and started shooting everybody. He had an automatic rifle, so nobody stood a chance. I just tried to get out of there. Police say Mateen used an AR-15-type assault rifle on all the victims. Officials said the shooter used the assault rifle, with unknown rounds, and also had a handgun. Police at the scene also say they have securing the suspects vehicle, a van, right outside the club.

Massacres in US history

Sundays mass shooting in Orlando, Florida is the worst in United States history. But the country is not new to mindless violence. Here are 10 others.

April 16, 2007: Virginia Tech massacre. A gunman, 23-year-old student Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 people across two locations. Cho then committed suicide.

December 14, 2012: Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut. Adam Lanza, 20, guns down 20 children and six adults before turning the gun on himself.

October 16, 1991: In Killeen, Texas, 35-year-old George Hennard exits his crashed car and shoots and kills 23 people. He then kills himself.

James E. Holmes, 24, gunned down 12 people at a Colorado cinema in 2012.

July 18, 1984: In San Ysidro, California, James Huberty, 41, armed with an Uzi, shoots and kills 21 adults and children at a local McDonalds.

Aug 1, 1966: In Austin, Texas, former soldier Charles Joseph Whitman kills

16 while shooting from a high tower. Whitman had killed his mother and wife earlier in the day.

Dec 2, 2015: Married couple Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik

open fire at an employee meeting in San Bernardino, killing 14 people.

April 1999: Columbine High School, Colorado. Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, kill 12 fellow students and one teacher before committing suicide.

July 20, 2012: Twelve people are killed and 58 wounded in a shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater screening of the new Batman film. James E. Holmes, 24, (pictured) is taken into custody outside of the movie theater.

October 1, 2015: Gunman Christopher Sean Harper-Mercer shoot and kills nine people at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. Cops kill the shooter in a gun battle.

March 21, 2005: Red Lake High School, Minnesota. Jeff Weise, 16, kills his grandfather, another adult, five students, a teacher and a guard. He then kills himself.
Singapore: Thirty-three Singaporeans of Indian origin are crying foul over SGD 780,000 investment in undeveloped land in Chennai, according to media reports.

The investors were drawn by visions of gleaming villas, upcoming infrastructure and returns of more than 100 per cent investment made between 2007 and 2011.

But now they are crying foul at Singapore-registered KMGM International which sold them the land. They own land of questionable value, which is hard to sell as it has not been developed and has hardly risen in value, reported The Sunday Times.

The investors want to sell the land back to KMGM.

About 20 of them staged a walk-in on May 5 to confront KMGM director S Gulam at the firm's premises here, demanding assurances that they could sell back their land.

Gulam was not there, but assured them by telephone that he would meet them on May 16. But, on May 13, the investors received letters saying that the matter would be handled through his lawyers at Advaitha Law Corporation, according to the Singapore weekly.

Advaitha director G B Vasudeven told The Sunday Times that his client was ready to obtain valuations for each of the investors' land parcels, but declined to disclose any further course of action.

He added that he has written to the 33 to say that if they try to enter KMGM's offices again, they will be reported to the police as trespassers.

20 investors have since gone on to make police reports against KMGM.

The group of 33 had bought 45 plots of land, each a few thousand sq ft in size, in Chennai.

Mostly in their 50s and 60s, the investors said they trusted KMGM because it is a Singaporean firm and its directors, lawyer R Kalamohan and Gulam, a former journalist, are well-regarded members of the Indian community.

Retired navy officer Anandam Thomas, 62, bought two plots of land for about SGD 41,470 in 2008.

"My father was from India, and I wanted a little piece of India for myself," he said.

After payment, he and the other buyers were flown to Chennai to see the land and receive their sale deeds.

Last year and in April this year, he went back on his own to check and found the land was still undeveloped and occupied by squatters.

He said after his attempts to sell the land back to KMGM failed, he decided to gather fellow investors in the same situation.

Gulam, 54, told The Sunday Times by telephone that he was not out to cheat anyone and meant to help the investors sell the land.

However, he said it was impossible to sell it at a profit right now because the Indian rupee had fallen drastically in the last few years and the property market was in a slump.

He said: "When you invest overseas, you must take a risk. "If you buy a house now and the price goes down, can you tell the developer you want your money back?" Gulam was quoted as saying.

Kalamohan, 68, who left KMGM in 2014, said: "There was nothing more to sell and I was of no use to the company, so I thought it was time to leave."

He added that there was nothing wrong with the investors' documents, which he had examined, and all the purchases were valid.

Of the 45 contracts among the group, 24 had a clause guaranteeing they could sell the land back to the company after three years "at the best prevailing market price".

However, 27 contracts lacked a "patta", an Indian land ownership document.

New Delhi-based lawyer Alok Tewari, a senior partner with Indian law firm Kochhar & Co, said: "Legally it may be possible to sell the property without a patta."

He added, however, that sometimes the authorities may demand to see a patta to register a sale deed.

Property experts said overseas land-banking is fraught with risk.

Alan Cheong, Singapore research head for real estate firm Savills, advised investors to check whether the country's legal framework is solid and can be enforced even by an overseas national, as well as the reputation of the property agency marketing the product.

Retired civil servant Manokaran Ramasamy, 64, and his late wife spent SGD 129,510 on four plots of land in 2008. His wife died from cancer in March. He said all he wanted was some form of closure from KMGM.

"Even in the pain of her last days, she would go back to them to ask about selling the land. I don't understand why they didn't entertain her," he said.

"I don't think they can honour the agreement. They owe it to us to fill in the blanks," The Sunday Times quoted Manokaran as saying.
Queen Elizabeth II, with Prince William holding Prince George, and Kate Middleton, holding Princess Charlotte, on the balcony during Trooping The Colour parade (Photo: AP)

London: Queen Elizabeth II marked her official 90th birthday on Saturday by taking salute at a special military parade in London where one-year-old Princess Charlotte proved to be the star attraction.

The royal baby made her first public appearance on the Buckingham Palace balcony in her mother Kates arms.

Kate Middleton with Prince George and Princess Charlotte (Photo: AP)

Her father Prince William and brother Prince George, 3, were by her side as part of the annual tradition where the monarch makes an appearance to view the Royal Air Force (RAF) fly past in her honour.

Both baby royals, third and fourth in line to the British throne, were dressed in pale colours, with George wearing white while Princess Charlotte wore a pale pink dress.

Earlier, Kate and William joined the Queen and the Royal Family for the annual Trooping the Colour ceremony.

The traditional parade was this year celebrating the monarchs 90th birthday, who wore an unusually bold dress and hat combination of bright green that caught the eye of many.

They travelled from Buckingham Palace to the Horse Guards in horse-drawn carriages, where thousands of people gathered to catch a glimpse of the Royal family.

Kate Middleton with the Prince George and Princess Charlotte and the royal family (Photo: AP)

There, the Royal family watched the parades as the Queen inspected her soldiers. Salutes were fired across the UK.

In the afternoon, the royal barge Gloriana led a flotilla of about 50 boats in a pageant down the River Thames, carrying figures including five-time Olympic gold rower Sir Steve Redgrave.

Visible in her vibrant ensemble, the Queen smiled and waved to crowds as she was driven with her husband and Duke of Edinburgh Prince Philip, who wore a ceremonial red military uniform, in an open-top carriage up the flag-lined Mall.

Queen Elizabeth celebrates two birthdays as part of a royal tradition, dating back over 250 years. The actual date of her birth is April 21, 1926.

But her official birthday is marked in Britain on a Saturday in June with Trooping the Colour.
On Saturday, she took the salute at the Trooping the Colour military parade which drew a crowd of thousands, with her vivid green outfit causing a sensation. (Photo: AP)

London: Thousands of people were to gather for a special street party outside Buckingham Palace on Sunday to mark Queen Elizabeth II's 90th birthday.

Up to 10,000 people are expected to attend the Patron's Lunch along with the monarch, her husband Prince Philip, Prince William and Prince Harry.

Tickets cost $150 (190 euros, $215) and most of the guests will be from organisations with which the queen has links.

The not-for-profit event was organised by the queen's grandson, Peter Phillips, the son of Princess Anne.

"The queen has had many celebrations in her honour over the years but there's never really been an appreciation or recognition of the number of organisations she is personally attached to through her patronage," Phillips said.

Britain is holding several days of celebrations to mark the queen's official 90th birthday, which began on Friday with a special service at St Paul's Cathedral in London.

On Saturday, she took the salute at the Trooping the Colour military parade which drew a crowd of thousands, with her vivid green outfit causing a sensation.

After Trooping the Colour, members of the royal family gathered on the balcony of Buckingham Palace to watch a military flypast, including Prince William and Kate with their children George and Charlotte.

The queen celebrates two birthdays as part of a royal tradition which dates back over 250 years.

The actual date of her birth is April 21, 1926.

But her official birthday is also marked in Britain on a Saturday in June with Trooping the Colour.
Islamic State's Khorasan Province branch claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement online and said it killed the police chief and 13 officers. (Photo: AP)

Kabul: Islamic State (ISIS) militants attacked a police compound in eastern Afghanistan early on June 11, killing a police chief, government officials and insurgents said.

At around 2 a.m. militants attacked the police headquarters in Dih Bala district of Nangarhar province, said Attahullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the provincial governor. Five police officers, including the district police chief, were killed and six wounded, he said. At least 13 militants were killed and 7 wounded, Khogyani said.

Islamic State's Khorasan Province branch claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement online and said it killed the police chief and 13 officers. Nangarhar, a volatile province that borders Pakistan, is where militants claiming allegiance to Islamic State have made their greatest inroads in Afghanistan.

Earlier in 2016, American forces were given the green light to conduct more air strikes against Islamic State in Afghanistan, wading into a fight being waged by Afghan troops and Taliban insurgents competing for influence in the area.
The terror group's militants accused one of Ahmad's relatives of killing and ex-Taliban commander, for which he was punished. (Photo: AFP)

Ghor, Afghanistan: Following the footsteps of the dreaded Islamic State group which is known for their different and barbaric execution styles, the Taliban recently executed a labourer in Afghanistan's Ghor city.

According to a report, the 21-year-old victim, Fazl Ahmad, was dragged out of his home by Taliban militants before being executed.

The terror group's militants accused one of Ahmad's relatives of killing and ex-Taliban commander, for which he was punished.

They cut out his eyes open and while he was still alive, they started carving out Ahmad's skin from his chest.

"The victim was still alive and screaming when the militants skinned him alive, leaving his heart exposed," Ruqiya Naeel, a member of parliament in Afghanistan told The Washington Post. While Ahmad was alive and writhing in pain, he was thrown off a 10-storey cliff.

Last month, the Afghan Taliban selected Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada as their new leader after a US drone strike killed their former chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour in Pakistan.

As Taliban continued to make steady battlefield gains against the countrys security forces, Barack Obama recently ordered US military to tackle the resurgent terror group more directly -- in tandem with their Afghan allies.
Kolkata: In the wake of a series of attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, the minority community there wants Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian government to take up the matter with Dhaka to ensure their safety and security.

"The Hindu community, which is the biggest minority community in Bangladesh, is vulnerable in Bangladesh. Fundamentalist and Jamat forces are trying to wipe out Hindus from Bangladesh.

"We feel that India being a Hindu majority country, should do something. We have high hopes on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He should act and take up the matter with Bangladeshi government and ensure the safety and security of Hindus," Rana Dasgupta, general secretary of Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council and noted Human Rights activist, told PTI.

A 60-year-old Hindu ashram worker, Nityaranjan Pandey, was hacked to death on June 10 by suspected Islamists, becoming the fourth person from the minority community to be killed in a series of brutal attacks on secular activists in the Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

"The religious majority and the fundamentalist groups want to eliminate the Hindu community. Since last two years, this religious cleansing has gained further pace. Stability in the Indian subcontinent region can never be achieved with Bangladesh turning into a fundamental state. So if India wants stability in the region it should act to stop the annihilation of minorities in our country," Dasgupta, who is also Prosecutor of International Crimes Tribunal, claimed.

Pandey's murder comes within a week of killings of a Hindu priest, a Christian grocer and wife of an anti-terror police officer. 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 Islamist forces. Bangladesh has also seen a series of attacks on secular and liberal bloggers in 2015.

"The condition of Hindus is horrible in Bangladesh. Although we have a secular government of Awami League party, but at grass-roots level the situation is grim. Rapes, murder, loot, arson, destruction of property of Hindu and other minority communities is rampant.

"Until and unless India puts pressure on Bangladesh, the fundamentalists won't budge," well-known actor of Bangladesh and former managing director of Bangladesh Film Development Corporation Piyush Bandopadhaya said.

"India is a major power in the region, it can't sit idle when Hindus are being brutally slaughtered in a neighbouring country," he said.

Bandopadhaya, who along with Dasgupta, lauded the quick response of Indian High Commission in Bangladesh, which had sent its officials to meet the family members of the Hindu priest and colleagues in the ashram, but said India needs to do more.

Human rights groups and Hindu leaders in Bangladesh have been demanding more security for religious minorities.

Although the minority leaders are expecting Indian government to take up the cause of the minorities in Bangladesh, a senior Bangladesh minister feels the attack on minorities are actually aimed at creating hurdles in the functioning of the secular and liberal Awami League government.

"This is actually a ploy by fundamentalist and Jamat forces to put up a bad image of Bangladesh. These attacks are not aimed at minorities, but the real target is to malign our government and turn our country into a fundamentalist state.

We will never let that happen. We have taken several steps to ensure the safety and security of minorities and strict action will be taken against the culprits," Bangladesh Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu told PTI over phone from Dhaka.

When asked what would Dhaka do if India wants to take up the cause of security of Hindus, Inu said, "India and Bangladesh share very good relations. India is our friend. If India wants to take up a matter with us, we will talk. There is no harm in it."
Spotting of a pack of critically endangered Himalayan brown bears in Jammu and Kashmirs Drass sector has delighted wildlife experts who say it indicates rising population of the rare species.





A team, headed by Kargil Wildlife Warden Intesar Suhail, spotted the pack of 8 brown bears in Drass area of frontier Ladakh region on May 12. Suhail says it is for the first time in recorded history that 8 brown bears were spotted together anywhere in India or Asia.



In sub-continent it (brown bear) is distributed in Pakistan, Pakistan occupied Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and J&K. At all these places it has never been spotted in such large numbers together. Even nowhere in Asia such spotting has been recorded, he told Deccan Herald.



Last year, 3 brown bears were wandering around Handwara-Zachaldara belt in north Kashmirs Kupwara district, which is close to the Line of Control (LoC). Two bears were sighted in Furkiangali and Kachhama areas of the district in 2014.



The Himalayan brown bear is the smallest sub-species of the brown bear. Brown bear species are found across the world, but its Himalayan counterpart in the northern mountainous areas of India and Pakistan, is critically endangered.



The actual population of brown bear is not known. But according to an estimate by Wildlife Institute of India in 2006, there could be about 500-750 brown bears in the country. Its known that the species has disappeared from Bhutan and only 150-200 exist in Pakistan.



The excited wildlife expert believes that the latest sighting indicates the population of the endangered animal is increasing in J&K. In the latest sight, 3 females were spotted with three cubs which means breeding process is going on. It is good news which indicates the population of the rare is not on decline, he said.



Suhail and his team had to trek a difficult border terrain for 3 hours to spot these animals. Usually sightings are only reported during the night, that too of a solitary bear or with a cub. We expect more animals are active in the area. The population of brown bear is declining all over and sightings are rare elsewhere. But in our state these animals have been spotted in Hirpora (Shopian) and Poonch. But at all these places only a single animal or a female with one cub has been spotted, the wildlife warden added.



Asked what could be the reason for increase in the numbers of brown bear, he said, We cant say what the exact reason is. Poaching has been contained to a large extent and it can be one of the reasons. During 1999 Kargil war there was heavy artillery shelling for 3 months and it had devastated the bear habitat. But it seems the impact is waning now and it could be the other reason for increase in the numbers.



In 2008, an extensive survey, carried out by the Rufford Foundation and the State Wildlife Department in Kargil district did not record a single Himalayan brown bear sighting. However, in 2012 they did another survey and some animals were sighted but not together, he added.



The rare animal, which had become elusive after insurgency hit Kashmir in 1989, has been seen 6 times in the past 2 years, bringing hope to conservationists. Rashid Naqash, a senior wildlife officer, says brown bears used to be one of the most widespread land mammals, but their species is threatened.



The new sighting has given some hope as it is a good beginning. The brown bear loves upper Alpine areas but in early 1990s violence and increased militarisation destroyed its habitat, Naqash said. Conservation of brown bear and other endangered species is not impossible if right steps are taken.



However, some experts believe militancy played a role in preventing poaching of the brown bear. Before 1990, the animal was poached for its fur, claws and internal organs. But after militancy erupted, authorities in Kashmir banned possession of arms which saved the wild animal. There was less poaching since 1990 compared to before, they said.



Naqash says brown bears are the second largest species of bear as only the polar bear is larger. They have a body length between 2 and 3 metres and they weigh between 100 and 1,000 kg. Males can be up to 50 % larger than females.



Brown bears feed on insects, small crustaceans, alpine bulbs and roots of plants, shoots of young grasses, domestic goats, sheep, and voles. They feed actively from 1-2 hours before sunrise and again for several hours in the late afternoon and evening. They are nocturnal, and their sense of smell is acutely developed and believed to be their principal means of finding food, he said.



Adult bears normally go into hibernation (dormancy) at the end of October and emerge around the following March or April. They excavate their own hibernating lair or den under a large boulder or between the roots of a stunted tree, or they may utilise a natural cavern, Naqash said.



Mating occurs in the spring and early summer, and the females give birth to cubs, generally 2 in number. The cubs are blind at birth and weigh no more than 1 kg at birth.

The cubs stay in the lair with their mother until she first emerges from hibernation in late April, and will remain with their mother for 2 to 3 years, he added.



International trade in bears, or their parts, is banned under CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) and by the Wildlife Protection Act in India.






Two Pakistani smugglers were killed while another was injured as BSF troops fired at them to foil an attempt to smuggle drugs along the Indo-Pak border in Fazilka in Punjab.





Officials said the incident occurred around 2 AM when Border Security Force personnel detected some suspicious movement along the International Border in the area under Sohana border post and challenged the intruders.



"While two Pakistani nationals have been killed, another has been injured and apprehended by BSF. About 15 packets of narcotic, suspected to be heroin, has been seized from them, besides some arms and ammunition. This seems to be a case of cross-border drug smuggling," one of the officials said.



The officials said the bodies have been recovered and a search has been launched in the area. Senior officials of the border guarding force have reached the forward area and more details are awaited, they said.
The Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) on Saturday decided to continue with their refusal to evaluate the exam papers of undergraduate students despite an appeal by the Dean of Examinations.





The dean had written to them to begin marking papers by June 12. But at DUTAs executive meeting, the members decided not to withdraw their boycott evaluation protest. The teacher body is on protest since May 24.



In the general body meeting on Tuesday, DUTA decided that the boycott will continue till Saturday. But majority still feels that the strike should be continued.



The ongoing agitation is against the new workload norms and to demand the complete roll-back of the controversial PBAS/ API promotion scheme.



In the meeting, Nandita Narain, president DUTA said, At this moment, we will not withdraw the boycott evaluation. She also says that instead they will step up their strike and on Tuesday hold a Satyagraha at Rajghat.



Personal letters will be sent to undergraduate students who have been sending letters of request to end the boycott. More than 50,000 students are at the receiving end of the agitation and the concerned DUTA members will send a common email to all stating that this is the time they are supposed to create pressure on the government instead of teachers.



Through the staff associations, through individual teachers, using Facebook, Whatsapp can be used to communicate with the entire class, said Narain.



Also, a letter will be sent to the Vice Chancellor from the academicians explaining their position.



We also care about students, but if the government cares about them they will listen to our demands, she says.
A conman who impersonated as a senior IAS officer working at MHA and duped a Delhi-based businessman of Rs 85 lakh was arrested by Delhi Police from Bhopal.





The conman succeeded in duping the businessman by claiming to help him get work of various projects being floated by Reliance Industries, Essar Power and Government of India.



The accused identified as Joy Shaw alias Mukesh Shaw impersonated as an Assistant Director (senior IAS) in the MHA and cheated Rs 85 lakh from an entrepreneur. He has also confessed to have impersonated as a senior IPS officer of CBI and as a senior engineer of BHEL earlier, said a police officer.



The case came under the police radar after the complainant, Bharat Bhushan Gupta, proprietor, Bharat Enterprises, reported that in May 2015 he met Shaw in Hotel Oberoi, Delhi where he told him that he can help him in procuring some old factories which had been closed and are under public-private partnership, factories under partnership of Government of India, with Reliance Industries and Essar Power. Shaw also assured Gupta that he would help him to recover his pending debts.



He was called to Bhopal by Shaw, where he was taken in a car with a red-beacon light which had a Ministry of Home Affairs sticker pasted on it.



During this journey, Shaw discussed with the complainant about the projects related to Reliance Industries (Mumbai) with plant at Dhenkal, Odisha and Essar Power Ltd., plant at Champa Chhattisgarh, for iron scrap business," said a police officer.



He met Gupta in various 3-star and 5-star hotels of Delhi, Mumbai and in Bhubaneswar and professed about his high acquaintance with the heads of Reliance Industries and Essar Power, the officer further added.



Gupta said that he was lured into giving him Rs 85 lakh but when he never got what was promised he got suspicious and complained to the police.



During investigation the ID card, purported to be issued by the MHA, was verified from the concerned authority and it was revealed that no IAS officer named Joy Shaw is holding the post of Assistant Director in the MHA, said the police.
Chief Minister Kejriwal is making personal attacks to divert attention from the Delhi Jal Board and app-based bus scams, Leader of Opposition Vijender Gupta in Delhi Assembly said.





Guptas remarks came a day after Kejriwal claimed his wifes involvement in a pension scam. Gupta accused Kejriwal of withdrawing the pension cheque given by the municipal corporation to a 72-year-old disabled Sikh woman dependant on others.



When it comes to talking about the interests of the Sikhs, the Delhi CM has mastered the art of doublespeak, he told a news conference on Saturday.



The family members of the disabled woman were present at the conference. Guptas wife and BJP councillor Shobha Vijender, who is at the centre of the pension scam, had recommended the disabled womans pension.



The BJP MLA from Rohini also accused the CM of using abusive language against him and his wife in the Assembly and said Kejriwal even threatened to send them to Jail.



I will continue to fight against the corruption and misconduct of Mr Kejriwal and demand that the Kejriwal Government should present all the proof before the people regarding the Rs 400 crore water tank scam and premium app bus service scam in his defence, he said.



Attacking a 74% disabled Sikh woman exposes his false drama of love for the Sikhs, Gupta said. Kejriwals Aam Aadmi party is contesting the next years Punjab Assembly elections.



Claiming that his wifes recommendation was based on the affidavit filed by the applicant, he said, After the recommendation, it is for the government officials to verify and sanction it. It is never the councillors responsibility. All the payments are through cheques or by transfer into the accounts of the pensioner, Gupta said.



In the month of May this year itself, the Delhi Government had removed Punjabi from the list of languages being taught at all Government Schools of Delhi. But suddenly in view of the Punjab elections on June 10, he issued full page advertisements in various newspapers claiming of appointing teachers at higher pay scales for teaching Punjabi in Government schools of Delhi only to mislead the people, Gupta said.
For many people in the national capital, piped water is still a distant dream and summers are a nightmare. In several unauthorised localities, they rely on water tankers as Delhi Jal Board pipelines are yet to reach there



Half my life has gone into waiting for water tankers and fearing what if the water we have stored is not enough, says Rekha Sharma, a resident of G block of Deoli in southwest Delhi.



Sharma came to Delhi 15 years ago from her village in Uttar Pradeshs Bundelkhand after she got married here. Since then, water shortages have been a part of her life.



She had hoped that the situation will change after Aam Aadmi Party came to power in Delhi in 2015. But almost one and a half years later, her routine of waiting for water tankers, fighting over them once they arrive, and filling as much as possible in one go, has remained the same.



Plastic containers kept outside houses dot many streets in this locality. The government collected Rs 1,500 from us two-three months back saying that water from Sonia Vihar pipeline will be provided to us, but that has not happened yet, says Sharma.



The residents here rely on illegal bore wells or private tankers which charge a hefty amount for a few litres of water. This is for non-drinking purposes and they buy drinking water separately. Families here spend at least Rs 1,000-1,500 every 10 days on water. And their struggle for water worsens in months like May and June when temperatures soar.



Tanker trouble



Even though the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) procured 250 new tankers this summer, increasing the figure for water deficit areas to more than 1,000, the people here complain that tankers take days to come and are only available in some blocks.People get into fights if residents of other blocks go with their containers to fill water, says Sharma.



Another resident, Brijpal Upadhyaya of L block, alleges that the government tankers are controlled by local AAP volunteers who take money and mostly provide water to their loyalists.



So we are only left with the option of private tankers. Even the government tube wells have dried up, says Brijpal, an autorickshaw driver.



Summer is a bad time. While the DJB claims it has increased its water supply from 900 million gallons per day (MGD) to 950 MGD in the city, last month saw many protests over shortage of water, mainly in south and southwest Delhi, which include Sangam Vihar, Ayanagar, Govindpuri and Khirki Extension.



In Sangam Vihar, near Deoli, posters on the wall claim Aam Aadmi Partys achievements in supplying water to the area. The situation on the ground is different.



The work of supplying piped water started last July but so far only a few blocks have been covered.



Very few people have started receiving water but since nobody has a metered connection, they keep the taps open all day and dont share, says another resident, who did not wish to be identified.



DJB vice chairman Dinesh Mohaniya, who is also the MLA from the Sangam Vihar constituency, claims that the piped network has covered 65 per cent of people in the area till now and only areas at the tail end of the colony are facing the problem.



His claim is backed by some residents who say that water has finally reached their houses after pipelines were laid. But there is still a large chunk which is still waiting for its share.



Only people at the tail end of the distribution network are not being able to benefit from the work done by the government. We are working on it and the whole area will be covered by pipelines soon, Mohaniya says.



The government has set a target of laying pipelines in 300 unauthorised colonies the city in the current year. The present demand for water in the capital stands at 1,150 million gallons per day (MGD), while the supply is about 900 MGD.



The DJB is also supplying groundwater in some places where there is no piped network. One way or the other, the citizens are availing water through the DJB, he says.



Little change



But even people from unauthorised colonies in central Delhi say that nothing much has changed for them in terms of water availability in this one and a half years.



Every few days water doesnt come and we have to purchase it from outside. Even when it comes, we only get half an hour of supply, says Padma Thapa, who lives in Punjabi Basti in west Delhi.



To its credit, the government laid a record 217 pipelines in unauthorised colonies last year. It has also started working on plans to improve the resources of water in the capital and bridge the supply-demand gap.



Tapping elsewhere



Recently, Water Minister Kapil Mishra announced that the Jal Board has decided to tap water that seeps into the Yamuna floodplain between Palla and Wazirabad during monsoon, using 105 tube wells and five ranney wells.



Called the Conserve and Use floodplain water harvesting project, it has already generated an extra 10 million gallons per day (MGD). By the end of the year, there will be a total of 60 MGD of extra water. The government claims that with it, there will be a months backup of water in the city, which will be used in times of crisis.



While this is a welcome move, other conservation steps like boosting rainwater harvesting have not evoked much enthusiasm in the public.



Despite an existing regulation which makes it mandatory for buildings above 500 square metres to have rainwater harvesting structures, only few have built them.



Notices are sent and sometimes penalties levied, but nothing after that. Even government buildings which should show the way for rainwater harvesting  said to be one of the cheapest and easiest ways of boosting water supply  have not installed provisions for it.



Similarly, the capital has not been able to maintain its lakes, stepwells (baolis) or other water bodies meant for storing water. Delhis water bodies are dirty, full of algae and near dead.



On Thursday, the government constituted a high-level committee to look into the matters related to water bodies in the national capital. Public and Works Department Minister Satyendar Jain will head the panel, will look into issues ranging from the identification of water bodies to their restoration.
In the wake of a series of attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, the minority community there wants Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian government to take up the matter with Dhaka to ensure their safety and security.





"The Hindu community, which is the biggest minority community in Bangladesh, is vulnerable in Bangladesh. Fundamentalist and Jamat forces are trying to wipe out Hindus from Bangladesh.



"We feel that India being a Hindu majority country, should do something. We have high hopes on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He should act and take up the matter with Bangladeshi government and ensure the safety and security of Hindus," Rana Dasgupta, general secretary of Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council and noted Human Rights activist, told PTI.



A 60-year-old Hindu ashram worker, Nityaranjan Pandey, was hacked to death on June 10 by suspected Islamists, becoming the fourth person from the minority community to be killed in a series of brutal attacks on secular activists in the Muslim-majority Bangladesh.



"The religious majority and the fundamentalist groups want to eliminate the Hindu community. Since last two years, this religious cleansing has gained further pace. Stability in the Indian subcontinent region can never be achieved with Bangladesh turning into a fundamental state. So if India wants stability in the region it should act to stop the annihilation of minorities in our country," Dasgupta, who is also Prosecutor of International Crimes Tribunal, claimed.



Pandey's murder comes within a week of killings of a Hindu priest, a Christian grocer and wife of an anti-terror police officer. 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 Islamist forces. Bangladesh has also seen a series of attacks on secular and liberal bloggers in 2015.



"The condition of Hindus is horrible in Bangladesh. Although we have a secular government of Awami League party, but at grass-roots level the situation is grim. Rapes, murder, loot, arson, destruction of property of Hindu and other minority communities is rampant.



"Until and unless India puts pressure on Bangladesh, the fundamentalists won't budge," well-known actor of Bangladesh and former managing director of Bangladesh Film Development Corporation Piyush Bandopadhaya said.



"India is a major power in the region, it can't sit idle when Hindus are being brutally slaughtered in a neighbouring country," he said.



Bandopadhaya, who along with Dasgupta, lauded the quick response of Indian High Commission in Bangladesh, which had sent its officials to meet the family members of the Hindu priest and colleagues in the ashram, but said India needs to do more.



Human rights groups and Hindu leaders in Bangladesh have been demanding more security for religious minorities.



Although the minority leaders are expecting Indian government to take up the cause of the minorities in Bangladesh, a senior Bangladesh minister feels the attack on minorities are actually aimed at creating hurdles in the functioning of the secular and liberal Awami League government.



"This is actually a ploy by fundamentalist and Jamat forces to put up a bad image of Bangladesh. These attacks are not aimed at minorities, but the real target is to malign our government and turn our country into a fundamentalist state. We will never let that happen. We have taken several steps to ensure the safety and security of minorities and strict action will be taken against the culprits," Bangladesh Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu told PTI over phone from Dhaka.



When asked what would Dhaka do if India wants to take up the cause of security of Hindus, Inu said, "India and Bangladesh share very good relations. India is our friend. If India wants to take up a matter with us, we will talk. There is no harm in it."
Ahead of the BJP's national executive meeting here, a meeting of the party's national office-bearers began here today with party president Amit Shah chairing it.





While Prime Minister Narendra Modi would arrive here later in the day for the executive meeting, Shah, veteran leader Murli Manoharj Joshi, party general secretaries Ram Madhav, Ram Lal and Bhupendra Yadav, national secretaries Siddharth Nath Singh and Shrikant Sharma and party spokesman Sambit Patra have already reached the city.



The meeting of the office-bearers began at a city hotel. The national executive meet, which is likely to begin around 3 PM, is likely to set the agenda for the assembly elections in the state which are less than a year away.



Meanwhile, leaders have been pouring in to take part in the two-day conclave which will conclude tomorrow, followed by a rally to be addressed by Modi.



Several senior members of the Union cabinet and Chief Ministers of all the states ruled by the BJP are also likely to take part in the national executive meeting.



"I would have called it as sounding the poll bugle for UP assembly polls but for PM Modi's rally in Saharanpur last month," said BJP national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh yesterday, while party's vice-president and in-charge for the state Om Mathur said "many issues would be discussed at the national executive but the main focus would obviously be on the UP assembly polls due next year".



Posters have come up across the city displaying the header 'Mission 265 Plus'  a term coined by Shah who has repeatedly exhorted workers to aim at achieving a thumping majority for the party in the 403-strong UP assembly.



The BJP at present has less than 50 MLAs in the house, a massive decline since the 1990s when it used to be the top political group in the state.



BJP has brought several new faces to its national executive, the highlight being some former Congress leaders, including former Odisha Chief Minister and tribal leader Giridhar Gamang and saffron party leader K V Singh Deo, also from that state. Deo is a former state party chief.



Himanta Biswa Sarma, who defected from Congress to BJP and played a key role in its big Assam win, and former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna, a new entrant to the saffron party, have also been inducted into the national executive.
An Indian woman kidnapped by suspected militants outside her office in Kabul two days back remained untraceable even as Afghan authorities continued efforts to secure her safe release.





Judith D'Souza, working for Aga Khan Foundation as senior technical adviser, was kidnapped along with two other persons outside her office in in Taimani area of Kabul on Thursday evening.



The Ministry of External Affairs is in touch with the Afghan authorities to ensure release of 40-year-old Judith, a resident of Kolkata. So far, no group has claimed responsibility for her kidnapping.



Reports from Kabul said, Afghan authorities have stepped up efforts to secure Judith's release. Sources in New Delhi said there was no update about her and that government was in constant touch with the Afghan authorities.



Family members of Judith said in Kolkata they are hopeful and positive about the efforts being made by the Indian government in bringing her back from Afghanistan.



"Afghan officials have said they are doing everything possible to secure the early release of the woman," according to a report by Afghanistan's TOLO News. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj yesterday had said government was doing everything possible to rescue Judith.

"There is no update as of now. But the MEA is constantly in touch with us. A Joint Secretary-level officer is coordinating with us. We have full faith in the Indian government and the MEA that they will do the needful in bringing back Judith from Afghanistan," Judith's brother Jerome told PTI.



When asked whether the details about the efforts being made were discussed with the family members, Jerome said, "no, these are official proceedings, which MEA and Indian embassy in Kabul are dealing with. These things are not to be made public."



Swaraj had yesterday called up Judith's family in Kolkata and had assured them of making all-out efforts to bring her back.



West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said she was keeping in touch with Swaraj for Judith's safe return.



"We have taken an all-out effort for Judith's safe return. I am in touch with the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj," Banerjee said at the state secretariat Nabanna today.



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.
The current round of Rajya Sabha biennial elections to 57 seats have given the ruling NDA an edge over opposition UPA, but it still lacks the majority it needs to push crucial legislations and may have to depend on regional parties who remain key players.





Regional players have 89 members. Their combined strength remains unaltered after the elections. The Samajwadi Party now has 19 members, with a gain of four seats, while JD-U and RJD have a combined strength of 12. The Trinamool Congress and AIADMK too have 12 members each, followed by BSP (6), CPI-M (8), BJD (7) and DMK (5).



After the elections, in the House of 245, the NDA has raised its tally by 5 and now has 74 members. The UPA, on the other hand has 71 members, with its tally down by three.



On June 3, 30 candidates were elected to the Upper House unopposed. The NDA then had managed to add 11 of its members (BJP 7, TDP 2, Shiv and Shiromani Akali Dal one each) in their Rajya Sabha tally.



The House also has 12 nominated members.



The UPA could send five members to the Upper House (Congress 4 and NCP 1) unopposed. The other parties -- JD-U (2), RJD (2), AIADMK (4), DMK (2) and BJD (3) -- were able to send 13 members to the Rajya Sabha unopposed.



In yesterday's election held to the remaining 27 seats, BJP won 12 seats -- two in Haryana, one in UP, four in Rajasthan, two in Madhya Pradesh, one in Karnataka and two in Jharkhand.



Congress, on the other hand, won six seats -- one each in UP, MP and Uttarakhand and three in Karnataka.



Out of 11 seats in UP, the SP won seven seats, BSP 2, BJP and Congress one each.

In the Rajya Sabha bypoll necessitated following the demise of sitting Congress member Praveen Rashtrapal from Gujarat in May, BJP wrested the seat.



With regional players remaining crucial in passage of key legislations, government may now to seek their support to pass reform bills like GST.
Four passengers, including a woman and a Filipino man, were today injured after a "home-made" bomb exploded at China's second biggest airport in the commercial hub of Shanghai, authorities said.





The blast at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, the city's main international airport, occurred at around 2:20 pm near a check-in counter at Terminal 2, when what appears to be a "home-made" explosive blew up, state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Shanghai Airport Authority - which manages the airport - as saying.



One of the injured sustained a severe neck injury, according to the hospital. An initial investigation has found evidence suggesting that the man's injury could have been self-induced, hinting he might have set off the blast.



Xinhua on its Twitter handle posted that the male suspect threw explosive wine bottle, then cut his throat and is currently in ICU.



According to its post, four persons other than the suspect were injured.



The injured include a 53-year-old Philippine man, as well as a 67-year-old man and a 64-year-old woman, both of whom are Chinese. They sustained injuries to their heads, hands and legs, doctors said.



The injured have been admitted to hospital.



Authorities have launched an investigation into the blast, the report said
Notwithstanding a US push for India's NSG membership, China today said members of the elite club "remain divided" on the issue of non-NPT countries joining it and insisted that there "was no deliberation" on the bid by India and other nations at the Vienna meeting.



"There was no deliberation on any items related to the accession to the NSG by India or any other countries that are not signatories to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hong Lei said in a statement while referring to the Vienna meeting that took place last week.



He said the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) Chair Argentine Ambassador Rafael Mariano Grossi convened an unofficial meeting of the 48-member group on June 9.



"The Chair said that this meeting has no agenda and is only convened to heed opinions from all parties on the outreach of the NSG and prepare for a report to be submitted at the NSG Plenary Meeting in Seoul later this month (June 24)," he said.



However, diplomatic sources in Vienna had said earlier that India's membership was discussed at the meeting and talks had remained inconclusive.



China has maintained that non-NPT signatories should not be admitted into NSG on the grounds that it would undermine efforts to prevent proliferation.



Calling for "full discussions" within the NSG to reach an agreement on India's admission, Hong said China would take part in the deliberations in a "constructive manner".



"China has noted that some non-NPT countries aspire to join the NSG but when it comes to the accession by non-NPT countries, China maintains that the group should have full discussions before forging consensus and making decisions based on agreement," he said.



"The NPT provides a political and legal foundation for the international non-proliferation regime as a whole. China's position applies to all non-NPT countries and targets no one in particular," Hong said, without directly mentioning India's application to join the Vienna-based group.



China has been reportedly backing Pakistan's bid to join the nuclear trading club.



"The fact is that many countries within the group also share China's stance," Hong said in response to a question about China, New Zealand, Ireland, Turkey, South Africa and Austria objecting to India's accession to the NSG at its meeting in Vienna.



"There has been some discussion within the group on the NSG membership of non-NPT countries, but NSG members remain divided on this issue," Hong said.



"Looking forward, China will continue to support further discussion within the group to forge consensus at an early date. China will proceed with relevant discussion in a constructive manner," Hong said.



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.



India, though not a member, enjoys the benefits of membership under a 2008 exemption to NSG rules for its atomic cooperation deal with the US.



The NSG looks after critical issues relating to nuclear sector and its members are allowed to trade in and export nuclear technology. The NSG works under the principle of unanimity and even one country's vote against India will scuttle its bid.
Accusing former Chief Minister Veerappa Moily of making a 'misleading' statement that the Yettinahole River diversion project had been cleared by the National Green Tribunal (NGT), environmental activist and convenor of the Paschima Ghatta Samrakshana Samiti (Western Ghats Protection Committee) K N Somashekar has sought a public apology from him.





He also demanded an apology from an official of Karnataka Niravari Nigama Limited (KNNL) for coming out with a similar statement.



Four applications, including one filed by him, on the project were pending before the Chennai bench of the NGT, Somashekar said in a statement here.



The applications filed by Purushottam Chitrapur, Kishore Kumar and Yathiraju were the other petitions pending before the tribunal, he said.



He alleged that the government was trying to drag the hearing in the cases relating to the project.



Moily and the official gave statements to the press on May 30 that the project had received NGT clearance, fully knowing the pendency of disputes, he charged.



The statements were deliberately made for political gains to mislead the people of Kolar and Chikballapur.



Being a political leader, Moily should have refrained from such acts which amounted to contempt of court, he said.



Somashekar said he had sent notices to Moily and Venugopal seeking unconditional apology failing which he would file a contempt of court petition before the tribunal.
Attacking the Samajwadi Party government over recent incidents in Mathura and Kairana in Uttar Pradesh, which goes to polls early next year, BJP President Amit Shah today said the prevailing "atmosphere of violence" is a matter of serious concern.



"The present Samajwadi government, each day is expressing its helplessness in dealing with these situations," Shah said while citing recent clashes in Mathura as also violence and subsequent migration of over 100 families.



Launching a frontal attack on the Akhilesh Yadav government, Shah told the two-day BJP National Executive which began here today that, "The lack of development and the lack of governance in the biggest state of India i.e UP is increasing becoming a matter of serious concern," he said.



Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who briefed reporters about Shah's speech, said the BJP President specially discussed UP and said there was "an atmosphere of violence, which the government has been unsuccessful in curbing."



On the recent incidents in Mathura, Shah said that this politics of forcefully grabbing government land with "patronage" was "very unfortunate."



Shah also referred to the alleged migration of a community from the western UP town of Kairana and said that it is a matter of deep concern.



The BJP President called upon the party workers to work hard and expressed committment that the BJP will form government in UP with full majority after the assembly polls.



The BJP President said 2017 is a year of challenges in which besides UP, there are polls in Uttarakhand, Punjab, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.



Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present during Shah's speech as were senior Ministers like Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, senior office bearers as well as party veteran L K Advani.



In his speech, Shah also spoke about electoral violence against his party workers in the states of Kerala and West Bengal. "There is no place for violence in a democracy," Shah said. He emphasised that the entire BJP was with its workers who had faced political attacks in Kerala.



Taking a swipe at Congress, Shah said the party was getting "increasingly weakened" because of its repeated obstructions in the path of development and more and more of its leaders were leaving it.



Highlighting the Modi government's achievements, Shah said that "two prominent Islamic nations of Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan have within a time span of one month conferred their highest award on the Prime Minister of India."



Referring to the Prime Minister's recent five-nation tour, Shah said that during it the US, Mexico and Switzerland had expressed their support India's entry into the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG).



The BJP President claimed that his party was providing a "no corruption government" which was decisive and had ended policy paralysis of the previous regime.



Claiming that under the leadership of Modi, the country had emerged as a "beacon" of the 21st century for the rest of the world, Shah said the government had ensured that there is promising GDP growth with a human face.
India-Myanmar-Thailand road agreement on construction of a 1,400 km-long road running from India to Thailand via Myanmar is in the pipeline. When completed, the highway project could give Indias Act East policy a shot in the arm. Besides the obvious benefits of boosting overland travel and trade, the road will expand economic opportunities for the people of Indias Northeast. Special Economic Zones to spur business enroute is also on the anvil. Additionally, the highway is expected to improve people-to-people contact between the three countries. Geographic proximity paved the way for India, Myanmar and Thailand to benefit from a long history of trade and cultural exchange. In recent decades, however, interaction between them has been limited as politics, policies and poor physical infrastructure have stood in the way of overland contact. This is expected to change once the highway, which will run from Moreh in Manipur up to Tak in Thailand, is completed. India will have to do some heavy lifting in the project. Besides upgrading the Moreh to Tamu stretch of the road, it has to undertake repair of 73 bridges in Myanmar. The three countries are also negotiating a Motor Vehicles Agreement to facilitate seamless travel.



The India-Myanmar-Thailand project has immense potential. But this potential can be tapped only if the three countries act swiftly to finalise and sign agreements and complete the project on time. Indias infrastructure projects, especially in the insurgency-wracked Northeast, are notorious for unmet deadlines and cost overruns. Its performance on infrastructure projects abroad is abysmal especially in comparison to Chinese projects. The snails pace at which the country builds roads was laid bare during the construction of the Stilwell Road, a World War II road running from Indias Northeast through Myanmar to Kunming in China. China swiftly built a 640-km-long, six-lane highway linking Kunming to Myanmar and then went on to construct the Myanmar leg (1,035 km) of the Stilwell Road. Meanwhile, India struggled to upgrade just 63 km of road running through Assam and Arunachal Pradesh up to the Myanmar border.



Several Southeast Asian countries such as Myanmar and Vietnam are looking to India for trade and investment in order to reduce their dependence on China. Thus, there is opportunity for the country to expand its footprint in the region. The planned India-Myanmar-Thailand highway is just one corridor of many that could be built through which it can reach out to Southeast Asia. But India will need to speed up delivery on infrastructure projects if it is keen to be taken seriously as a partner of Southeast Asian nations.
Muslims on Friday welcomed thousands of Pandit devotees at the Ragnya Devi temple in Tullamulla, in Kashmir on the occasion of the annual Kheer Bhawani festival.



This move came at a time when the proposed separate cluster for migrant Kashmiri Pandits has created a controversy. Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti also visited the shrine in the morning. Authorities had made adequate security arrangements to secure the passage of the devotees to the shrine.



The festival, which symbolises the Valleys religious harmony, revives the strong bonds between the two communities who together pray for the return of displaced Pandits.



Even after their exodus from Kashmir Valley in 1990 after insurgency broke out, the Pandit community has not given up their practice of visiting the temple. Every year, thousands of them residing in different parts of the country throng the shrine and interact with their old Muslim neighbours.



This year also thousands of Pandits, including men, women and children, had converged at the shrine to offer special prayers on the occasion of annual holy day Jyeshtha Ashtami.



Sign of brotherhood



Muslims, in a sign of brotherhood, had erected many stalls distributing refreshments and soft drinks to the pilgrims. Emotional scenes of Hindu-Muslim amity were witnessed at the shrine of Mata Kheer Bhawani, 25 km from Srinagar, reports added. Farooq Ahmad, a businessman told DH that people in and around Tullamulla area wait for the day eagerly throughout the year.



This day is special in our village as it gives us a chance to meet our displaced brethren. They (Pandits) are part and parcel of our society and that will be the happiest day of my life when I would see them back in the Valley, he said.



However, Ahmad added that politicians were trying to divide Pandits and Muslims in the name of separate clusters. If Pandits want to return to their homes, they are most welcome. We will embrace them. But some elements are trying to divide the two communities by proposing separate clusters for Pandits. Kashmir is known for its communal harmony and not to polarisation, he said.



Ahmads views were echoed by Atul Raina, a Pandit devotee who had come all the way from Jammu. Whichever party comes to power, they use Pandits as political tool by saying we will be given separate colonies, he said. On the other hand, Raina said, separatists too are playing politics over the return of Pandits.



If separatists assure us that we wont be harmed in our ancestral homes, we are ready to come back. But they too take dictations from somewhere else and use return of Pandits as a political tool, he rued. Raina said he was thankful to his Muslim brethren in Tullamulla who welcomed Pandits with open arms.


JNU student union president Kanhaiya Kumar has demanded the Delhi Police to submit evidences to the court if it had to prove the sedition charges levelled against him.



If the police have really any evidence, they should present it to the court. We should be patient. Nobody is above and beyond the Constitution. For transient political mileage, none should interrupt the judicial process, he said on Sunday.



Kanhaiyas remarks came a day after the Delhi Police told media that a raw video footage of the controversial February 9 Afzal Guru event in the JNU campus was found to be authentic.

Though the polices disclosure to media lacked details about the video footage found to have been authenticated by the CBI laboratory, it brought the controversies over the Afzal Guru event back to focus.



Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad leader and JNU student Saurabh Sharma, who was one of the complainants in the sedition case registered against Kanhaiya and five others for raising anti-national slogans in the campus, said the police disclosure was vindication of his charge against the JNU student union president and others.



Constitution (of India) is the supreme law of the land. We have full faith in our judiciary. When the matter is sub judice before the court, any kind of trial beyond judicial process is to interrupt the judicial process which is against the very ethos of democracy, Kanhaiya, however, said in his response.



Laboratory report



According to media reports, the CBI laboratory has found one of the raw video footages obtained from a Hindi news channel authentic. However, it continues to remain a mystery whether the footage indeed showed Kanhaiya and others raising anti-national slogans as they were charged with.


A woman has alleged that an upscale restaurant in Connaught Place denied entry to street children citing they were wearing dirty clothes and they looked poor.



The Delhi government on Sunday ordered an inquiry into the matter saying that if the allegations were found to be true, the licence of the restaurant would be cancelled.



On Saturday afternoon, Sonali Shetty, a Dehradun resident, went to Shiv Sagar restaurant in CP with about eight underprivileged kids to celebrate her husbands birthday. To her surprise, the owner refused to serve food to the children and asked her to leave.



These kids were selling flowers and fans at the Connaught Place and I thought of celebrating my husbands birthday with them. I usually go to Saravana Bhavan but we chose to go to Shiv Sagar restaurant because the kids wanted to have chole bhature which is served there, Sonali told DH.



But the kids were not served food because they were wearing dirty clothes and they looked poor. The manager even threatened me....police who came to the spot did not help, added Sonali, who had come to Delhi on Friday with her husband and nine-year-old son.



10-hour- protest



The woman staged a sit-in outside the restaurant with her husband and son for nearly 10 hours. We went to the restaurant around 2 pm. After the manager refused to serve these children, I sat outside the restaurant in protest till midnight, she said and asked, If poor are not welcomed in the so-called posh restaurants, then why are we paying additional Swachh Bharat Cess and Krishi Kalyan Cess?



Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Sunday asked district magistrate of New Delhi to probe the matter and submit a report in 24 hours.



Terming it a colonial mindset, Sisodia said it cant be tolerated. If the allegations are found true, we will cancel the restaurants licence and action will be taken under appropriate sections, said Sisodia.



Sonali claimed that she would visit the restaurant on Sunday evening again to seek an apology from the manager and its owner.



I want the restaurant manger and its owner to apologise to these kids, so I will be visiting the place again this evening, Sonali said on Sunday afternoon.


India has signalled that it would not take a hard-line stand against Pakistans bid to enter the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), after getting the cartels membership.



New Delhi conveyed to Washington DC that if the NSG accepted India as a member, its position on Pakistans plea for admission into the cartel would not be influenced by troubled ties between the two neighbours. The United States, in turn, conveyed to other members of the 48-nation cartel, ostensibly to blunt the opposition to plea for Indias membership, sources told DH.



Indias plea for the NSG membership is strongly opposed by China. The US has been lobbying for India and of late stepped up its effort to convince the members of the cartel to vote in favour of India.



The NSG controls the global nuclear trade. The rules require that each of its members must be a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Neither India nor Pakistan signed the treaty.



China has been arguing that if the NSG dilutes its existing criteria for membership to admit India, it should also open up its doors for Pakistan or other non-NPT countries.



India submitted its application for membership to the NSG on May 12. Egged on by China, Pakistan applied on May 19 and has since been urging the NSG countries to adopt objective and non-discriminatory criteria for the membership of non-NPT states.



India, apparently on US advice, has not been overtly arguing against Pakistans plea for membership to the suppliers group. India has rather been seeking support of the members of the cartel on the basis of its own impeccable non-proliferation track-record.



The US, according to sources in New Delhi, formally conveyed to the NSG members that India, after being admitted into the cartel, would take a merit-based approach on future applications by other nations seeking membership of the club.



Without directly referring to Pakistan, the US also conveyed to the NSG members that Indias position on pleas by other nations for admission to the club would not be influenced by extraneous regional issues.



A US-led investigation that had revealed that the infamous A Q Khan network of Pakistan had clandestinely supplied equipment and technology required for making nuclear weapons to at least three countries. India, on the contrary, has an impeccable and internationally recognised non-proliferation track-record, said the official.



Notwithstanding the role of the infamous A Q Khan network of Pakistan in proliferation of nuclear technology in Iran, North Korea and Libya in the past, Washington, last month, softened its stand on Islamabads bid to get a berth in the nuclear export control regime.
The JD(S) has decided to portray the defeat of its Rajya Sabha candidate B M Farook as a betrayal of the Muslims by the Congress and will launch a statewide campaign to prove its point.





JD(S) national president H D Deve Gowda announced the decision at a well-attended convention of party office-bearers and leaders at Palace Grounds in Bengaluru on Sunday. The JD(S) decision to play the betrayal card comes a day after eight of its MLAs defied party whip to vote for K C Ramamurthy of the Congress in polls to the Upper House.



Speaking at the convention, 84-year old Gowda showed no sign of helplessness or anger.

The JD(S) supremo said he will launch the campaign from Mangaluru, the home town of Farook, from June 21 and cover the entire state. The Congress has betrayed 75 lakh Muslims in the state by colluding with 8 legislators of our party to ensure the defeat of Farook. The Congress gave no representation to Muslims in the RS polls, Gowda said.



To groom new leaders



The former prime minister said he was unfazed by the cross-voting eight rebels had cross-voted. Let us see if any of them can win in the next Assembly polls. I take it as a challenge. I will personally groom new leaders in each of their constituencies, he said.

Gowda said he always suspected that the trio - MLAs Zameer Ahmed Khan, N Chaluvarayaswamy and H C Balakrishna - wanted to finish his son and JD(S) state president H D Kumaraswamy off politically. I had warned Kumaraswamy that it is better to trust an open enemy than a false friend.



Potshots at BSY



Gowda also took potshots at BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa for seeking the support of the Congress to get the partys second candidate in the polls to the Legislative Council, Lehar Singh, elected.



Yeddyurappa speaks about winning 150 seats in the 2018 Assembly polls but stoops down to seek the support of the Congress for just one Council seat. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is speaking about Congress-free country, but Yeddyurappa seems to be on a Save Congress mode, Gowda said.



Top position for Farook



Gowda said he will ensure a top political position for Farook in the coming days. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Energy Minister D K Shivakumar had threatened Farook that his business will be destroyed, if he does not withdraw from the polls. But, he stayed with us. I will not betray him, Gowda said.



Roadmapfor JD(S) revival



To groom new leaders in constituencies represented by eight rebels

Statewide campaign from June 21 starting from Mangaluru

To rebuild the JD(S) from the grassroots

To expose the misdeedsof the Congress and the BJP




The JD(S) workers expressed their ire against the betrayal by eight rebels at the party convention in Bengaluru on Sunday.





Party workers tore a banner with a picture of K Gopalaiah, one of eight rebels who had cross-voted in the polls to the Rajya Sabha, and his wife Bengaluru City Deputy Mayor Hemalatha. Workers raised slogans against the legislator.



A few workers gathered near the stage saying that they will not allow the convention to start till an announcement was made that the rebels had been expelled. MLAs YSV Datta and N H Konaraddi had a tough time in pacifying the irked workers.



A group of party workers in Nagamangala of Mandya district went a step further. They circulated the 11th day card (uttarakriyadi patrike) of Nagamangala MLA Cheluvarayaswamy and Srirangapatna MLA N Ramesh Bandisiddegowda in the social media network like Whatsapp and Facebook.



Sale of votes



In the invitation cards of the obsequies ceremony of the legislators in question, the grieving JD(S) members of Nagamangala and Srirangapatna Vidhana Sabha stated that the rebels have sold their votes for cash and have left the world on June 11 and the after-death rituals will be held during the next Vidhana Sabha elections.



Meanwhile, B Chandrashekar, a JD(S) supporter of K Shettahalli Gram Panchayat said he will be lodging a missing complaint on Monday as MLA Ramesh Bandisiddegowda has gone missing from Saturday afternoon.




Senior leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and Kamal Nath were appointed AICC general secretaries and handed charge of the party affairs in key election-bound states of UP and Punjab, respectively.



The announcement on Sunday also signals the beginning of the process of reorganisation of the party after successive electoral losses, starting with its humiliating defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.



Azad replaces AICC general secretary Madhusudan Mistry as in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, which goes to polls early next year.



Mistry, who is credited with putting in place the partys organisational structure in Uttar Pradesh, was having problems with Prashant Kishor, the poll strategist hired by the Congress to craft its campaign in the state.



There was a tussle between Mistry and Kishor over controlling the organisation in Uttar Pradesh, a senior Congress leader said.



Kamal Nath has been handed over the charge of Punjab and Haryana in place of AICC general secretary Shakeel Ahmed, who has gone to Canada on two-month leave.



While Shakeel has been dropped from the AICC, Mistry will continue as in-charge of the Central Election Committee of the AICC.



Azad, the leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha, is known for his personal equations with senior leaders across the political spectrum  skills that came handy on special missions in the recent Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.



Azad had played a key role in finalising the pre-poll alliance with the DMK and more recently oversaw the Rajya Sabha election in Uttar Pradesh which Kapil Sibal won against a stiff challenge posed by BJP-backed Independent Preeti Mahapatra.



The changes also indicate that the much-talked about reshuffle of the Congress organisation could see a mix of senior and younger leaders in key party positions.



Azad and Kamal Nath's association with the Congress dates back to the times of late prime minister Indira Gandhi. The two leaders were also known to be close to Sanjay Gandhi and have served as AICC general secretaries on earlier occasions.



While Azad was twice in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, Kamal Nath had handled party affairs in Gujarat and West Bengal.



Congress has been out of power in UP since 1989 and Azad's negotiation skills would come handy should BSP chief Mayawati decide to continue the tango with the Grand Old Party beyond the recent Rajya Sabha elections.
JD(S) state president H D Kumaraswamy was not present at the party convention, held at Palace Grounds. He left for Bulgaria early on Sunday to be with his son Nikhil Gowda during the shooting of his film Jaguar.





However, a four-page message to the workers was read out at the convention by party spokesperson Ramesh Babu. Kumaraswamy stated that the developments in the last few days had exposed the Mir Sadiqs in the party.



He also stated that the hollowness of the two national parties had also been exposed and he was sure that a time will come when the parties would inwardly collapse. Leaders cannot save a party. But its workers can build a strong foundation for the party, he stated.



Zameer Ahmed Khan, who led the rebel group, left for Mecca early hours of Sunday, sources close to him said.


The Tamil Nadu forest department has taken up radio-collaring of problematic elephants on the borders with Karnataka.



Tough there is no such proposal before the state government, Karnataka forest department officials say Tamil Nadus move will benefit them too.



The Karnataka forest department had radio-collared a female elephant from a herd of five for six months. She was one of the 23 problematic elephants from Alur, Hassan. The Karnataka High Court had directed the state forest department to capture and relocate elephants in Alur. One herd was shifted to Kollegal, and the leader female was radio-collared.



Raman Sukumar, elephant expert and professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, who is part of the elephant radio-collaring drive in Tamil Nadu, told Deccan Herald that talks to radio collar problematic elephants in Karnataka have been on for the last two years.



Man-elephant conflict



In the case of Tamil Nadu, talks were on for one-and-half years. The need for radio-collaring elephants came up because of increasing man-elephant conflict. Elephants frequent areas around Bannerghatta National Park, Tumakuru and Hosur connecting Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

There is a need to understand why they are entering agricultural lands and from where. The initial plan is radio collar six, including a tusker, a female and the head of a large herd. There is a need to understand their movement and landscape before relocating them, Sukumar added.



This will start from July and will take a year, since two elephants will be radio-collared at a time. Radio-collaring gains a lot of importance in the wake of deaths of tigers and leopards in the past. Radio-collaring has been successful in West Bengal and Sri Lanka and is being continued.



Short-term experiment



Dilipkumar Das, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Project Elephant, said so far, only one elephant has been radio-collared. It was done on a short-term experimental basis to track movement and the mingling of relocated herds with others. There is no proposal in Karnataka presently as there are no rogue elephants to be captured. But the project of Tamil Nadu forest officials will benefit Karnataka also, he said.



The state forest department, locals and conservationists have been dealing with elephants raiding coffee estates in Kodagu for very long. Repeated instances of elephants moving around Mysuru like H D Kote and T Narsipur are also reported.


For the first time the legal fraternity including the High Court judges, senior counsels, staff from the Advocate General's office, law teachers and students of the law school came together and took a pledge to dedicate their services and to reassure the citizens that the faith and confidence reposed will be realised.



Standing right in front of the High Court building, former Chief Justice of India, M N Venkatachalaiah on Sunday read out: Justice delivery system has suffered due to various reasons and the time has come for the legal fraternity to play a larger role in society towards ensuring easy access and speedy justice to all citizens of this glorious country. Over 200 members of the legal fraternity participated in the event.



The significance of the pledge, was read out by senior counsel Uday Holla, said that the legal profession had been in the forefront since the freedom struggle days and people had always looked up to the judiciary system for a succor and it has never disappointed them. We are at a threshold of a new and resurgent India and that is the reason why we have gathered to rewind ourselves of the nobility and the purpose of our profession, it said.



Madhusudhan Naik, Advocate General, said that law practice should not be looked down as a profession which is serving its own cause.



We are here to help society and governance. Partly we are responsible for some kind of media outcry for exploitation of society by the lawyers, but that is not really true. There may be one or two black sheep among us. Most of us intend to serve and give back to society of what we earn as professional fee. Historically also, most of the leaders who have served society have all been lawyers and we are committed to continue the legacy, he said.



High Court judges, Justices N Kumar, Vineet Kothari, Raghavendra S Chauhan, K N Phaneendra, R B Budihal and Justice S Sujatha, senior counsel D L N Rao, Jayakumar S Patil and others were present.
Is it possible to restore the citys biggest, but highly polluted Bellandur and Varthur lakes?



A research team, headed by Dr TV Ramachandra of Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, along with the local communities, has claimed that the two water bodies can be rejuvenated in 18 months and has urged the state government to make use of eco-battalion from the Indian Defence on the lines of the Army taking over Ganga clean-up mission.



During a presentation of the study report on the three-month exhaustive bathymetric survey here, Prof Ramachandra asked the local communities to be vigilant and create a movement to exert pressure on the government to restore the lakes.



He wanted all those who contributed for the pollution pay for the restoration work. The BWSSB, the industries and the polluters, who are responsible for releasing domestic waste and other effluents to the lakes, should pay for restoration work. The government should ensure at least 15% of corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds from the companies, which are around the lake, are set aside to rejuvenate the lake, he said.



Giving examples of how vegetables and fish grown in the dirty water are becoming part of the food chain without control, he said that every resident of Bengaluru should be part of the restoration process before the number of cases related to illness, including kidney failure, goes up further.



He said he had seen people coming in posh cars and throwing garbage into the lakes when the team was engaged in the research work. They had no awareness on environment protection, he observed.



Elaborating on the proposed rejuvenation process, he spoke of the removal of all the encroachments of rajakaluve and lakebed, mapping of water body boundary, buffer and valley zones, besides setting up a sewage treatment plant (STP) based on Jakkur model.




The Chandra Layout police have arrested a person in connection with the recent hijack of a lorry carrying several tonnes of cigarettes in the city.





According to police, Tanveer, 29, a resident of Jagjeevan Ram Nagar, was arrested from Hyderabad while prime accused Mohammed Mushtaq and five others are still on the run. As much as six tonnes of cigarettes worth Rs two crore from have been recovered from Tanveer.



On May 26 around 4 am, Radhakrishna, a driver with a cigarette company in Kerala, started off from the ITC factory, Chikkajala, with 13 tonnes of cigarettes loaded in the truck. The consignment had to be transported to Kerala. Even as he reached Nayandahalli, a group of people, who were following the lorry in a car, overtook the vehicle and stopped it.



The miscreants threatened the driver with a knife and forced him to alight from the lorry. Later, they blindfolded Radhakrishna and bundled him into their car and drove towards Mysuru. Two of their accomplices drove the lorry towards Hoskote, police added.



A senior police officer said, They stopped the lorry at an eucalyptus grove in Hoskote and shifted the cigarette bundles into another lorry which was parked there. They abandoned the stolen lorry and fled the spot. The miscreants also threw away the GPS which was installed on the lorry. Radhakrishna was thrown out of the car near Srirangapatnam.



Radhakrishna, who managed to inform his owner, reached Bengaluru and lodged a complaint at Chikkajala police station on June 1. Police checked the CCTV footage from Chikkajala to Nayandahalli junction and found that a car was following the lorry. Investigations revealed that the car belonged to Mushtaq.



When police went to his house, they learnt that he had not come home for the past couple of weeks. His involvement in the crime was thus confirmed. Also, Tanveer had snatched away Radhakrishna's mobile phone, which was traced to Hyderabad from where he was arrested.

The police are tracking down the other accused, who are currently absconding, added the officer.


The Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporations (BMRC) mock drill, with commuters on board in the underground section on Sunday, caused inconvenience to a large number of passengers, who had to wait for the train at different stations for almost 45 minutes.



Even the BMRCL staff deployed at different stations, particularly in West Bengaluru, were unaware of the mock drill, leading to more confusion. A few irate commuters entered into a verbal duel with the BMRCL staff over the unusual delay and sought cancellation of tickets.



According to an official statement issued by BMRCL, the mock drill was conducted on the underground stretch during the non-peak hour at 11.07 am on Sunday to understand the preparedness of BMRCL staff and the reaction of the passengers.



The train approaching Sir M Visvesvaraya Metro Staktion - Central College was made to stop short of 150 meters from the station.



As planned, the Operation Control Centre after unable to rectify the fault declared the train sick and prepared to evacuate commuters from the faulty train to the station at 11.14 am, the press release issued by the BMRCL said.



After taking all safety precautions and confirmation of third rail power switch off, ramp was placed to bridge the gap between the train and the UG walkway, evacuation of passengers started at 11.28 am and completed at 11.48 am, the release added. There were a total of 257 passengers who were evacuated during the mock drill. The passengers were informed about the mock drill once they reached the station, BMRCL said.



Later, the passengers continued their journey from Sir M Visvesvaraya Station- Central College in the same train at 11.56 am. During this period all the trains were held at other stations from 11.15 to 11.50 am, the corporation said regretting the inconvenience.
Presented by the Nome Kennel Club since 1973, this award goes to the top 20 finishing musher with the fastest time from the Safety checkpoint to the finish in Nome. Pete will receive $500 for winning this award. Pete and his team made the Safety to Nome run in 2 hours 47 minutes. Congratulations!

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The deadline to apply for a $5,000 Our Language grant from Doyon Foundation has been extended to Friday, March 12, at 5 p.m. AKST.

In a continuing effort to revitalize the endangered Native languages of the Doyon region, Doyon Foundation will award grants of up to $5,000 to support language revitalization efforts. Eligible organizations with an idea for a language revitalization project focusing on the languages in the Doyon region are encouraged to apply for an Our Language grant.

Online applications are preferred; interested applicants may apply here. Hard copy applications are available upon request; contact [email protected] or 907.459.2162.

Doyon region tribal governments/tribal councils/communities; nonprofit Alaska Native organizations, societies and community groups; and Alaska Native cultural, educational and recreational organizations/centers are eligible to apply for an Our Language grant. Learn more about the grant program, eligibility and application requirements on our blog.

The 10 ancestral languages of the Doyon region are all severely to critically endangered, and will be lost within the span of a few generations if no action is taken. These languages are Neeaaneegn (Upper Tanana), Dihthaad Xteen Iin Aandeeg (Tanacross), Han, Dinjii Zhuh Kyaa (Gwichin), Dinaki (Upper Kuskokwim), Denaakke (Koyukon), Deg Xinag, Benhti Kokhutana Kenaga (Lower Tanana), Holikachuk, and Inupiaq. Learn more about the Doyon region languages and what Doyon Foundation is doing to support them.

To apply for an Our Language grant, complete the online application. For additional information, contact Doyon Foundations language revitalization program at [email protected] or 907.459.2162.

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I always look for your articles for advice. I dont always have that type of advice. Im grateful you share.

Brittany Laraux

Bethel, AK

Vaccine Eligibility Expanded in AK!

Yesterday (March 3rd, 2021), the State of Alaska Vaccine Task Force significantly expanded the criteria for who is eligible for the state-allocated COVID-19 vaccine! The new eligibility group, Phase 1C, includes people 55-64 years old, people 16 and older who are essential workers under the CISA definition, high-risk or might be high-risk according to CDC guidelines, those living in a household that includes three or more generations, or skipped generations (e.g., a grandchild living with an elder), and people living in unserved communities as specifically defined by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

I would encourage everyone to take some time to look through this information and find out if your family or friends are eligible and desire to receive a vaccination. This is a big step forward in the COVID-19 mitigation effort and is very encouraging news!

If you do qualify, visit CovidVax.Alaska.Gov to check the availability of appointments in your area.

Senator Scott Kawasaki

Juneau, AK

I will support the first Native American who would hold this position with the expectation that Representative Haaland will be true to her word

During a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) today (March 4th, 2021) announced that she will support the nomination of Representative Deb Haaland to serve as Secretary of the Department of the Interior.

The Department of the Interior  and thus the Secretary who leads it  both play an outsized role in our state. Alaska has more federal lands, more mineral resources, and more natural hazards than any other state. We are set apart by unique laws and frameworks that Congress enacted and that Presidents signed, whether our Statehood Act or ANCSA or ANILCA. We are an Arctic nation because of Alaska. And we are a diverse state, with many indigenous peoples and cultures who have lived there since, as they say, time immemorial. We are a state that is just different.

I seek to ensure every nominee who comes before us understands that. I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to educate others about Alaska and our unique needs and our unique peoples. And I spent a considerable amount of time with Representative Haaland reiterating what is at stake for us.

Alaskas prosperity is directly linked to decisions made by Interior  whether through their trust responsibilities, their authority over responsible resource development, or their monitoring of hazards and other threats.

Ive had two separate meetings with Representative Haaland that lasted for more than an hour each. I participated in both days of her nomination hearing, asking many questions, and have reviewed the answers she provided to all of our members. Ive also spent considerable time listening to Alaskans views on her nomination. They are paying attention to this nomination.

Ive heard two sentiments over and over again. The first is that many Alaskans  Alaska Natives in particular  are enormously proud to have a Native American nominated to this position. It is truly a historic nomination and they believe Alaska Native issues can be elevated to one of the highest levels of government.

The second concern that Im hearing is that many Alaskans are concerned about the agendas Representative Haaland will seek to implement on her own and on behalf of the White House. They are concerned by her opposition to resource development on public lands, including her opposition to key projects in Alaska and her questioning of the vital role that Alaska Native Corporations serve in our communities.

Weighing on top of that is my experience from the Obama administration, when I voted for a Secretary who promised to be a good partner for Alaska, but proved to be anything but that after confirmation.

So I struggled with this vote. How to reconcile a historic nomination with my concerns about an individuals  and an administrations  conception of what Alaskas future should be.

I believe Representative Haalands heart is there for Native peoples and all who treasure our public lands. I dont believe that is the extent of Interiors mission, but she has also told us that she recognizes that if confirmed, she will be serving in a different capacity. She told me that she knows she will need to represent every Alaskan, including those who know how to responsibly develop our lands. And she committed to me that she will make sure that we are doing all we can to ensure that your constituents have the opportunities that they need.

Given the early days of this administration, I have my doubts about whether that will be the case. But I have decided to support this nomination today, to support the first Native American who would hold this position, and with the expectation that Representative Haaland will be true to her wordnot just on matters relating to Native peoples, but also responsible resource development and every other issue.

I also fully anticipate that she will have a strong management team in place with people who understand the value of resource development from public lands. She needs thiswe need thiswithin the Department of Interior.

I am going to place my trust in Representative Haaland and her team, despite some very real misgivings. And Representative Haaland, if you are listening, know that I intend to work with you because I want you to be successful and need you to be successful, but I am also going to hold you to your commitments to ensure that Alaska is allowed to prosper.

U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski

Washington, D.C.

Clean Water Act protections needed for Bristol Bay

This is a letter to Michael Regan, Administrator- designate and Jane Nishida, Acting Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency dated March 1, 2021.

Dear EPA Administrator-designate Regan and Acting Administrator Nishida,

We write to you today requesting immediate action to ensure the Bristol Bay salmon fishery and the 14,000 men and women whose livelihoods depend on it are not destroyed by development of the proposed Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, Alaskas headwaters. Bristol Bays commercial fishermen have been fighting the threat of the proposed Pebble Mine for over a decade now, still with no protections in place which would give our industry the assurances we need and deserve.

Bristol Bays commercial salmon fishery is unlike any other in both its volume of fish and number of renewable jobs. Its a thriving economic engine that supplies over half the worlds wild sockeye salmon and provides over 15,000 renewable jobs. Bristol Bay is a torch-bearer for sustainable fisheries management, boasting record returns over the past decade, following a record 135 years of commercial fishing of this incredible resource.

Its sustained a fishing tradition for generations of families throughout Alaska and the U.S. with Bristol Bay commercial fishing permit holders and crew hailing from nearly every US state. Unmatched in both size and sustainability, action under the Clean Water Act is needed and justified to ensure this $2.2 billion a year commercial fishing industry continues to thrive.

In spite of consistent findings by both the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers that the Pebble Mine would pose unacceptable adverse impacts to the Bristol Bay watershed and fisheries, the Bristol Bay region remains vulnerable to large-scale mining and the door remains open for the Pebble Mine to be developed. Without Clean Water Act 404(c) protections in place, Bristol Bay is not safe and Bristol Bays fishermen cannot rest.

We now have an opportunity to stop the Pebble Mine for good and put an end to the uncertainty that has been hanging over Alaskas fishing industry and the thousands of American fishing families who depend on Bristol Bay. We hope that you listen to the call from Bristol Bay tribes, fishermen, and others to establish Clean Water Act protections for Bristol Bay without delay. Please help us ensure that we can continue to provide our fellow Americans and the world with nutritious wild seafood and support our families for generations to come.

Commercial Fishermen for Bristol Bay Advisors; Katherine Carscallen, Hattie Albecker, Erica Madison, Heidi Dunlap, John Fairbanks, Michael Jackson, Michael Friccero, Holly Wysocki, Mark Niver

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Ravn Alaska is getting the community of St. Marys back in the air starting May 6, just in time for the summer season. Flights will operate roundtrip each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. To celebrate its newest route, the airline is offering special fares starting as low as $199 one-way.

The St. Marys community is excited to welcome Ravn and its direct service to Anchorage, said Walton Smith, St. Marys city manager. Direct flights will improve our access to life essentials, such as health care, and hopefully improve our first class and priority mail service, which many of us depend on for delivery of medications and other goods.

Tuesday and Thursday flight schedule: Departing Anchorage for St. Marys at 8 a.m.; landing at 10 a.m.; Departing St. Marys for Anchorage at 10:30 a.m.; landing at 12:20 p.m.

Saturday flight schedule: Departing Anchorage for St. Marys at 9 a.m.; landing at 11 a.m.; Departing St. Marys for Anchorage at 11:30 a.m.; landing at 1:20 p.m.

Ravn is following all COVID-19 safety protocols and prioritizing the health and safety of its employees and passengers.

Ravn Alaska is a regional airline headquartered in Anchorage that services 14 communities across Alaska. The airline is an interline partner with Alaska Airlines and provides daily flights aboard its safety-rated de Havilland Dash-8-100 fleet, charter flights and cargo shipments. Visit www.ravnalaska.com to book a flight and learn more about Ravn.

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Voters oppose alcohol proposition for package store in Bethel Newly elected and re-elected council members take oath of office

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This week (May 25th), the Alaska Native Science & Engineering Program welcomed more than 50 middle school students to the University of Alaska Anchorage campus for its first STEM Career Exploration component of the summer. During this five-day residential camp, students explored the health sciences career field by participating in several hands-on activities led by industry professionals.

To be eligible, students must have previously completed ANSEPs Middle School Academy component and maintained grades that adhere to ANSEPs high academic standards, including being on track to complete algebra 1 before high school. In addition to the educational benefits, STEM Career Exploration gives students a chance to continue familiarizing themselves with the UAA campus and the rigors of college life as well as interact with like-minded peers from around Alaska. Students from 17 communities across Alaska were chosen to participate, including:

Akiachak: Tyler Charles

Anchorage: Chantell Adams, Omar Adegbola, Danaysia Craggette, Vernadette Fernandez-Alexie, Andrew Gebert, Courtney Hoelscher, Jessica Martinez, Puataunofo Ropati, Kaydence Sara, Dylan Westlake and Audrey Williams

Bethel: Hayden Carlson, Rosemary Chakuchin, Gracie Davis, Kallie Grace Qerrataralria Andrew, Anson Jimmie, Alyssa Motgin, Cheyenne Murphy, Randy Turner Jr. and Greta Rose Whitney

Brevig Mission: Laura Ann Kugzruk, Kelly Tocktoo and Shannon Tocktoo

Galena: Paytyn Cleaver and Ian Esmailka

Golovin: Landon Varga

Hooper Bay: Ravynn Condello

Kenai: Hermoine Lanfear

Kongiganak: Lora Crosley and Sarah Lupie

Kotlik: Amari Akaran

Kotzebue: Frank Beecroft and Leah Jameson-Hatch

Marshall: Melanie Landlord

Noatak: Steven Barger

Palmer: Nicole Bell, Michael Hill and Nathaniel Hill

Pilot Station: Emily Harry and Devon Heckman

Scammon Bay: Joseph Cholok and Madison Ramoth

St. Marys: Ana Joe

Stebbins: Jeri Dan and Cameron Pete

Unalakleet: Mary Arca and Emmanuel Mittelhoelzer

Wasilla: Gavynn Carle

STEM Career Explorations is designed to help students focus on a particular STEM field that interests them and renew their dedication to and enthusiasm for the ANSEP community and pursuit of a degree and career in STEM. Students who participated in the health sciences STEM Career Explorations this week experienced a variety of hands-on activities, from dental health simulations to a heart dissection.

At ANSEP, our goal is to inspire students to pursue their dreams and ensure they have the educational tools needed to achieve them, said ANSEP Founder and Vice Provost Dr. Herb Ilisaurri Schroeder. In addition to providing outstanding learning opportunities, STEM Career Exploration is important for students as they build their support network. All of them have already participated in ANSEPs Middle School Academy, and a big benefit of STEM Career Explorations is the chance for them to reconnect with friends and mentors who are part of the ANSEP community.

This is the first of four STEM Career Exploration sessions that will take place this summer thanks to generous donations from ANSEPs strategic partners, including its most recent $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation. To learn more about ANSEP and its components, visit www.ansep.net.

About ANSEP

The Alaska Native Science & Engineering Program, founded by Herb Ilisaurri Schroeder, Ph.D., is part of the University of Alaska system. The program strives to effect systemic change in the hiring patterns of Alaska Natives in science, technology, engineering and mathematics career fields by placing its students on a path to leadership. Beginning at the middle school level, ANSEPs longitudinal model continues through high school and into undergraduate, graduate and doctorate programs, allowing students to succeed at rates far exceeding national numbers. In 2015, the organization launched ANSEP STEM Teacher to further remedy Alaskas rural education issues by supporting students pursuing STEM-related teaching certificates. ANSEP plans to place one ANSEP STEM Teacher in every Alaska village by 2025.

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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.
N-pact with Westinghouse to unleash Rs150 bn industry boom: Ficci

An agreement signed between Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) and US nuclear supplier Westinghouse to initiate preparatory work on six nuclear reactors in India 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, industry body Ficci said while welcoming the announcement.



The White House said on 7 June that NPCIL and Westinghouse have agreed to begin engineering and site design work immediately for six nuclear reactors in India and conclude contractual arrangements by June 2017.

This agreement, according to the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, will further cement the strategic relationship between the two nations reaffirming the 'trusted partner' status that has been accorded to India in defence and aerospace.

Ficci feels these positive developments in civil nuclear energy sector will send the right signals for making re-operational 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 augers well in this positive environment, Ficci now hopes that INIP for the supplier gets IRDA approval at the earliest, so the domestic programme can be reinitiated.

Ficci said it has, through its civil nuclear energy working group, been working over the past few months in evolving a consensus amongst all major suppliers of NPCIL, including foreign technology players, to agree on a draft supplier's policy with the aim to put life into the domestic programme which was in coma.
A 44-year-old man who pleaded guilty to being in possession of child pornography can be named publicly despite efforts by his solicitor to prevent him being identified.

A 44-year-old man who pleaded guilty to being in possession of child pornography can be named publicly despite efforts by his solicitor to prevent him being identified.

Judge Paul Kelly ruled Neil McBride could be named when he admitted having 43 child pornography images on his Dell lap-top computer. He also admitted having a further 51 images of children under 17 years of age who were either fully or partially clothed.

Repeated submissions were made by solicitor Jacqui Sharkey Who urged District Court Judge Paul Kelly not to name McBride.

Ms Sharkey said she accepted it was of public interest and the media had a constitutional right, but she argued that with his name being published it was going to reveal certain matters about her client that should not be released into the public domain. She added it was her clients right not to be named.

Judge Kelly said protection was not for offenders. It was to protect the victims in case they were linked to a defender.

But in this case the victims could not be identified. For that reason he was permitting McBrides name to be published.

At the earlier hearing unemployed McBride originally from Gweedore, but with an address at Fortwell Apartments, Letterkenny, admitted possession of the child porn images on his laptop in August 2011.

Judge Kelly was told the laptop computer was taken from his home under the Child Protection Act.

When it was examined by an investigator at the Computer Crime Investigation Unit in Dublin it was discovered that key words used by the defendant in Google searches included kids in bath, 12-year-old boys, nude boys, kindergarten, nude teens and cute boys.

Ms Sharkey told todays hearing that McBride had been referred to a psychiatrist and she was quite anxious to get a report on that for the courts assistance.

The case was adjourned until September 9.

Judge Kelly said he would consider at that stage a request from Garda Inspector David Kelly that McBride be placed on the Sex Offenders Register.
President Michael D Higgins said he was delighted to be in Letterkenny on Saturday to celebrate Letterkennys achievement in being named Irelands Tidiest Town in 2015.

Speaking on a gloriously sunny afternoon President Higgins was there to unveil a plaque to mark Letterkenny's selection as the winner of the TidyTown's Competition 2015.

He told a large gathering: As a town you have worked long and hard to achieve the TidyTown accolade.

You have been a part of this competition since it first began in 1958, displaying commitment, dedication and admirable persistence across the years and decades as you worked to ensure that Letterkenny would someday be named Irelands Tidiest Town.

I am delighted to be able to congratulate you in person, here today, not only on your great win, but also on the great spirit of perseverance which lies at the heart of that win.

Indeed, it is greatly uplifting to see so many of you gathered here today, sharing pride in an achievement that belongs to the entire community of Letterkenny.

I congratulate you on that magnificent achievement; an achievement which I hope will encourage you to continue to work together to ensure that Letterkenny is a town of which all its residents can be truly proud.

Pictured: Pupils from local National Schools pictured with President Michael D. Higgins at An Grianan Theatre, Letterkenny, where he unveiled a plaque honouring the town's achievement in winning Ireland's tidiest town. Also pictured is Anne McGowan, chairperson Letterkenny Tidy Town committee. Photo Thomas Gallagher INDD 130616 President Higgins TG13
ORLANDO, Fla.  In what is now the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, an assault rifle-wielding gunman fatally shot at least 50 people, and wounded 53 more, in a downtown Orlando gay nightclub before he was felled by police bullets.

Authorities have identified the killer as Omar Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce. Federal agents are now probing whether Mateen was inspired by the Islamic State terrorism group  a law-enforcement source said Mateen called 911 from the club to express support for ISIS.

As the country awoke Sunday to the shock of yet another mass shooting, federal agents with South Floridas Joint Terrorism Task Force had joined in the investigation into Mateen, who is of Afghan descent. Authorities with knowledge of the investigation say agents have already begun interviewing Mateens relatives, and search warrants were expected to be executed Sunday afternoon.

A somber President Barack Obama  addressing the nation Sunday afternoon yet again after a mass shooting  said this was an act of terror, an act of hate. He noted the devastating significance of the shooting for the gay, lesbian and transgender community.

The place where they were attacked was more than a nightclub, it was a place of solidarity, Obama said.

Exactly what spurred Mateen to attack the popular gay nightclub on Sunday is now under investigation. The terror group ISIS has been known to target gays.

His father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News that he believed the shooting has nothing to do with religion but instead was outrage sparked after his son, during a family trip, saw two men kissing at Bayside Marketplace in downtown Miami a few months ago.

We are saying we are apologized for the whole incident, he told NBC News. We werent aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country.

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., speaking to reporters Sunday, said he believed the shooting was a hate crime, although the FBI stopped short of saying that. Its absolutely one of the worst tragedies weve seen, Orlando Police Chief John Mina told reporters Sunday morning. Its terrible. There are more victims inside than we earlier thought.

The exact motivation for the shooting remained unclear Sunday as investigators looked to piece together Mateens past.

Born in New York, Mateen was a U.S. citizen who hailed from the Fort Pierce and Port St. Lucie area, which is about 118 miles from Orlando.

State records show that he was a licensed Florida security guard, and also held a state firearms license. The media was also showing photos purportedly of Mateen  taken from a MySpace social media account  wearing a New York Police T-shirt.

The Daily Beast, citing a law enforcement source, also reported Sunday that the FBI had twice investigated Mateen and that he was a known quantity.

State records show he was briefly married to a woman named Sitora Yusufiy in 2009; they had since divorced. His ex-wife told The Washington Post that he became mentally unstable. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasnt finished or something like that, she told the newspaper.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency, and vowed to expend all resources to help. Obama received regular briefings. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of the victims, the presidents press secretary said in a statement.

Before noon Sunday, politicians on all sides  including presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump  had already begun issuing statements and sending out tweets. Religious leaders were also urging calm.

We are heartbroken. We are sad. Its not time for sensationalized news, or a rush to judgment, Imam Muhammad Musri, of the Islamic Society of Central Florida in Orlando, told reporters outside the crime scene. We need to look at this issue of mass shooting because we have had one too many today.

Meanwhile, medical personnel in Orlando were working frantically to help the critically wounded. Six trauma surgeons were rushed to local hospitals as doctors were calling for people around Florida to donate blood to their local blood banks.

We have spent the morning operating on a number of victims, Dr. Michael Cheatham, from the Orlando Regional Medical Center, told reporters. We continue to operate on them.

By 3:00 p.m., the hospital confirmed that 44 adults had been admitted to the hospital with gunshot wounds. Nine died in the hospital, one was discharged and all patients have been identified. The hospital was working to reunite patients with their families.

The scene of the violence was Orlandos Pulse nightclub, a popular gay nightspot where over 300 people were partying early Sunday. Police said Mateen opened fire around 2 a.m., taking scores of people hostage just before closing time as people were downing their final drinks.

Just after 2 a.m., the club posted on its own Facebook page: Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.

A bouncer knocked down a partition between the club area and an area in the back where only workers are allowed. People inside were able to then escape through the back of the club.

Kenneth Melendez told the Orlando Sentinel that he and his friends were at the club when the shooting happened. Four of his friends were shot and were at a hospital, he said.

Its just something that you see in the movies but never think would happen to you, he said.

At first, when I heard the shots I thought it was part of the music, but then we realized it was really happening. I started running and saw someone bleeding from the arm and I was like wow this is really happening and I kept running.

He said he went to Pulse often because it was a safe environment where you could express yourself  Not anymore.

Heavily armed Orlando police officers later stormed the nightclub, killing Mateen just before 6 a.m. He was carrying an AR-15 type assault rifle, a handgun and possibly wearing an explosive device, police said. Nine Orlando police officers were involved in the shootout, and one was shot in the helmet, but survived.

Tonight we had a crime that will have a lasting effect on our community, said Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer at a news conference. We need to stand strong, we need to be supportive of the victims and their families.

Orlando homicide detectives were undergoing the grim task of identifying the dead and notifying their relatives.

Some wounded victims were taken to Orlando Health, which on social media announced a family information center early Sunday morning, directing family members to 52 West Underwood St.

One Blood, a southeastern United States blood blank, issued an urgent call for donors after the massing shooting.

Thousands were already in line to either donate blood or pass out water and supplies to those in line.

Chris Brooks, 31, who grew up in Orlando, drove more than an hour from Merritt Island. He uses blood thinners, so he wasnt sure if he could donate blood, so he was helping to pass out water and supplies.

I feel that its my time to give something back to the world, he said.

Ruth Schultz, a local business owner, didnt even bother to put a closed sign on her boutique, Got Karma. Instead, she went straight to a local blood bank to donate blood.

Its a beautiful thing, she said as she looked at about 1,000 people in line to donate blood. Its just a beautiful thing.

Schultz, who has lived in the area for 30 years, doesnt know if she knows any of the victims.

How do you run through a list of everyone you know? I just dont know, she said.

Equality Florida, the states lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, set up a GoFundMe to support the victims of the shooting. In four hours, more than 5,000 people had donated more than $200,000.

We are heartbroken and angry that senseless violence has once again destroyed lives in our state and in our country, organization officials said in a statement on the page.

The shooting came one day after another high-profile shooting in Orlando.

On Friday, YouTube sensation and former Voice contestant Christina Grimmie, 22, was shot and killed after her concert in Orlando by a 27-year-old St. Petersburg man who later killed himself. Police said they believed the shooter came specifically to attack Grimmie.
Alabamas reputation as one of the nations most politically corrupt states hit a high water mark Friday with the conviction of now-former Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard on 12 of 23 felony charges related to the use of his office for personal gain.

Alabamians had to know they were walking around knee-deep in dirty water, because thats what weve been told.

We were told by a jury that convicted former Gov. Don Siegelman, a Democrat, and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy on bribery charges, and by a 2007 indictment of former Secretary of State Nancy Worley, another Democrat, on charges of soliciting staff support in her re-election campaign, and a 2009 conviction of former Rep. Sue Schmidt, another Democrat, on federal mail fraud and theft charges.

We were told by Hubbard himself in 2010 when Republicans made a successful play to seize control of the Alabama House for the first time since Reconstruction. Hubbard and others displayed great offense to what they characterized as a culture of corruption among Democrats. They soon passed a raft of revamped ethics laws, because we needed them.

Since then, weve been told about public corruption by the courts that sentenced former Rep. Terry Spicer, a Democrat, of Coffee County, lobbyist Jared Massey, and Country Crossing developer Ronnie Gilley to prison in 2012 for bribery. We were told by former Rep. Greg Wren, a Republican, of Montgomery who admitted using his office for personal gain in a deal to testify for the state. We were told by Harvard Universitys Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics, whose 2014 study found Alabama to be among the most corrupt in the nation.

And now Hubbard himself is convicted of a dozen felony corruption charges under the very fortified ethics laws he shepherded through the legislature.

Now we have a high water mark. Corruption is a culture in Montgomery, but it isnt partisan. Its a bittersweet, pivotal moment in Alabamas history because its embarrassing, but instructive as well.

Voters should remember how Hubbards colleagues flocked to his side after his indictment, helping him win re-election to the House, then sending him back to the seat of power as House Speaker in a near unanimous vote. We must work on our memories, which seem to fail us on Election Day.

Lawmakers, too, should look at that mark on the wall and realize just how high the waters of corruption in our state have risen, and that their own work isnt done until the floors of the statehouse, the governors suite and the halls of the judiciary are bone dry.
What many have called the trial of the decade in Lee County came to an end late Friday night, as former Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard was found guilty by a Lee County jury on 12 of the 23 felony ethics charges he faced.

Hubbard was found guilty just before 9 p.m. Friday on counts 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 23 of his indictment, nearly two years after it was handed down in October 2014.

The jury delivered the mixed verdict after seven hours of deliberation.

Each of the felony ethics charges of which Hubbard was convicted relates to his use of public office for personal gain. The conviction results in Hubbards automatic removal from office.

He faces a penalty of two to 20 years imprisonment on each count, as well as fines of up to $30,000 for each count, all of which are Class B felonies.

Hubbard was released from the Lee County Jail on a $160,000 bond around 10:45 p.m., when he sped away through the grass near a back entrance of the T.K. Davis Justice Center in a black Corvette, apparently attempting to dodge reporters.

A sentence hearing will be held on July 8 at 10 a.m.

Acting Attorney General W. Van Davis and Prosecutor Matt Hart delivered statements at a press conference following the verdict.

Davis said he is proud of his prosecution team and that he believes each lawyer upheld Attorney General Luther Strange's commitment to fight public corruption.

"We hope this verdict tonight will restore some confidence in the people of the state of Alabama," Davis said, later adding, "We feel good about it."

"The jury here made a statement tonight," he said.

Asked if he was surprised about how long it took for the jury to deliver a verdict, Davis said no, mostly due to the complexity of the case. Asked if he was taken aback when the jury didn't convict on all charges, he again answered no.

"It was complex and there were several counts. We understand fully the jury's verdict," Davis said.

Prosecutors vindicated

Hart said he is also proud of the special prosecution division. He said the verdict gives prosecutors a sense of vindication.

I think the verdict gives that, Hart said.

Davis called trying Hubbards case a really bad experience, in light of accusations by the defense of selective prosecution.

Davis declined to comment when asked if the AGs office is investigating other cases of public corruption or if anyone will be indicted as a result of Hubbards case.

Defense attorney David McKnight told reporters Hubbard will appeal the case.

Well raise the same issues that weve raised before that we believe have a lot of merit, and we feel confident that well ultimately get these convictions reversed, said McKnight.

McKnight called the verdict very disappointing.

I dont feel like this has anything to do with Mike Hubbard. I feel like I let my client down, he said.

But according to McKnight, the case isnt over.

I believe that Mike Hubbard is a good man and I believe Mike Hubbard will ultimately prevail, he said.

Lead defense attorney Bill Baxley and defense attorneys Lance Bell and Joel Dillard declined to comment.

Former Rep. DuWayne Bridges, R-Valley, said Friday that he was heartbroken over the outcome of the case.

Im just extremely disappointed, and Im hurt. I served 14 years with Mike Hubbard  side by side  and I never saw that man do anything that was unethical. I never saw him do anything that was wrong. All I saw him do was try to help the people in this community and the state of Alabama. And I feel like a great injustice has been done tonight, he said.

I think Mike Hubbard is a great man. Hes been a great speaker. It was an honor for me to serve with him. I know theres been a lot of people that have been out to get him because we made a great change under his leadership. Alabama had been under Democratic rule since Reconstruction, and under Mikes leadership we were able to change the house and the senate to become Republican for the first time in the history of the state of Alabama. So he had a lot of enemies. A lot of them in the AEA, and a lot of them in other groups. So they were out to get him. I just hate it.

Officials speak out

In a statement after the verdict was announced, Strange touted the work done by personnel in his office.

This is a good day for the rule of law in our state. This kind of result would never have been achieved had our office not put together the finest public corruption unit in the country, Strange said. I'm very proud of their work. This should send a clear message that in Alabama we hold public officials accountable for their actions.

Acting House Speaker Victor Gaston, R-Mobile, touted the success of the Legislatures 2010 ethics reform laws while sending Hubbard well wishes.

"The Alabama House is not defined by the actions of any one member; it is defined by the motto that appears on the wall of our chamber, Vox Populi, which means Voice of the People. This incident, no matter how regrettable, offers strong proof that the ethics reforms passed by the Legislature in 2010 remain among the toughest in the nation, Gaston said in a statement. I know that every house member, regardless of party, will keep Mike Hubbard and his family in our prayers as he begins this next, most difficult chapter in his life."

Gastons statement, released by House Communications Director Rachel Adams, began with a statement explaining that Gaston will serve as acting speaker after Hubbards conviction in accordance with House Rule 60 and the applicable laws of Alabama.

He will continue to fulfill the duties and administrative functions of the speaker of the house for the foreseeable future, the statement said.

The Auburn Republican was indicted in October 2014 on 23 felony ethics charges of using his political office for personal gain. He has long maintained his innocence and continued to serve as speaker of the house during the 2016 legislative session.

Numerous politicians, lobbyists and other officials testified as witnesses for the prosecution in the three-week-long trial. Some of the bigger names to take the stand included Gov. Robert Bentley, former Gov. Bob Riley and Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston.

Hubbard testified as the sole witness in his own defense.

Served since 1998

Hubbard was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1998. He was largely responsible for flipping the Alabama Legislature to Republican control in 2010 for the first time in 136 years.

Hubbards trial garnered the attention of people across the state and nation, as it came during a fragile time for each branch of Alabama government.

Bentley, accused of having an affair with former aide Rebekah Caldwell Mason, faces threats of impeachment, while embattled Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore is expected to have a judicial trial this summer as a result of his issuing an order barring probate judges from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Staff writer Jim Little contributed to this report.
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.
Johdi Quinn, a lecturer in Spanish at Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT) has been awarded the Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning by the Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA).

The award was presented at the EdTech Conference in Dublin on Thursday 26 May in recognition of her work in developing language and intercultural learning for her students using Skype exchanges.

Johdis project, Skypes the limit involved direct collaboration between DkIT and a partner university in Colombia with students in both countries engaging in weekly class-based Skype sessions throughout the semester. The academic programme was specifically designed to enable students to develop their language skills in a more authentic setting, enabling real-time interactions with native Spanish speakers.

I am absolutely thrilled and honoured to receive the Jennifer Burke Award, said Jodi.

As a lecturer in Spanish, I am continually looking for new ways to engage students with language learning. With the help of technology, I was able to bring the process of learning Spanish to life for my students by allowing them to connect with peers in another part of the world.

Students became energised by the learning process and immersed themselves in a rich cultural and linguistic experience, which was incredibly rewarding to witness as an educator.

Head of Learning and Teaching at DkIT, Moira Maguire said:

I am delighted that Johdi has been recognised by ILTA and her peers for her commitment to enhancing the learning experience for students by embracing technology. Johdi is an excellent lecturer who cares deeply about the learning outcomes of her students. This award is a remarkable achievement that is truly well deserved.
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The Charles Wallace India Trust ( CWIT ) is offering up to 10 long-term awards to give early- to mid-career practitioners a chance to study or gain wider experience and exposure. It covers various arts and heritage conservation fields of study including visual arts , performance , film , photography , design (but not architecture), and curating. The balance between arts and heritage conservation varies from year to year depending on the demand and performance at interview. The awards, generally for two-three months to a maximum of a year, cover accommodation and living costs in the UK, fees and a contribution to international fares. The trust does not support two-year courses

Eligibility: Indian citizens residing in India and aged between 25 and 38 years are eligible. Also, applicants must have a first degree, diploma or professional qualification in their specialisation. The trust prefers applicants with significant work experience, and they must not have received a CWIT grant in the last five years

Form: The application form is available at www.britishcouncil.in

Deadline: November 30, 2016




Latest News

TSCHE announces TS EAMCET 2022 seat allotment result, find details here Candidates who have been allotted seats can pay the tuition fee and self-report till October 28, 2022

NTA opens registrations for AISEE 2023 Admission to Class VI of the New Sainik Schools, for the academic year 2023-24 is also through AISSEE 2023

Alert: Registration for CSAB 2022 special round begins, know details here The special rounds of counselling will be conducted on the official website
Universities have been viewed as seats of learning separate to the provision of vocational training. The economics of present times dictate that the provision of entry qualifications for a chosen career has become a necessity. Education has as its Latin root the meaning to bring out. The development of the whole individual and the inclusion of the development of ability to think have never been more apparent as a present need, as individuals struggle to survive modern career challenges. In 40 years as a recruiter I see it as the educators responsibility to prepare students to gain entry qualifications for their chosen career. To leave university without this, having incurred hefty debt is no option except for the very rich. But success at interviews rests on different skills and aptitudes. Employers need staff to manage change without stress whilst retaining good levels of sensitivity. Resilience is a valued attribute to ensure the use of positive thinking as a mindset in the face of uncertainties. Similarly, a strong Social Network supports individuals in stressful situations in the workplace. Employers seek Initiative as a default mode of thinking. The ability to analyse and problem solve is prized. Communication by the spoken and written word, without ambiguity and in a socially acceptable manner between cultures, demographics and hierarchies, might top the list of valued competencies. And there is no link between high academic achievement and any of these competencies. Emotional intelligence is the seam of gold we interviewers mine for. How to discover this valuable element? It hides in hobbies, interests and concrete experiences derived from the University of Life. Sensitivity to others, good listening skills, and a sense of humour - all deflect and reduce stress for self and co-workers supporting mental health and resilience in the workplace. Olympic athletes understand the energy, commitment and sacrifice connected to attaining goals. Like osmosis it transfers to other goals. The bottom of the second page of a CV hides such gems. Students need knowledge and acceptance of themselves to interview well so give them practice. Integrity, taught by grandmother might distinguish the candidate, so students choose your parents with care! Concrete experience of work before you apply for paid work may distinguish you from the pack. Employers, relax on the absence or presence of skills that might be trained in six months. It has taken 22 years to make a person; Henry Ford complained to his HR department, every time I ask for a pair of hands, someone gives me a whole person.' The whole person is what we all get stuck with so better make sure that person is the right one and teach them the missing skills - in your own time.
Though feminist movements in India date back to the mid-19th century, modern India has made measured progress to bring women to the forefront of society. Recent reports of a 27% gender pay gap in the country, high rates of sexual violence and the governments silence on whether it intends to pilot the Womens Reservation Bill through the Lok Sabha point toward the apathetic attitude towards womens issues in the country. As gender continues to play a significant role in both our personal, professional and political lives, an academic course in gender studies can pave the way for students keen on understanding how gender-related power structures work and how they can be challenged to bring about effective change. The MA Gender Studies programme offered by UK-based University of Lincoln is designed for people with a wide variety of academic backgrounds from the humanities, social sciences and beyond, as well as from diverse professional backgrounds. Taught at the School of Social and Political Sciences of the university, the programme is inspired by curiosity about gender, how gender operates, what difference gender makes and how gender might be imagined in ways that could facilitate resistance and change. Elaborates Ana Jordan, senior lecturer, School of Social & Political Sciences, University of Lincoln, The programme offers students the opportunity to explore ideas of gender and gain knowledge of contemporary issues on gender in a global context, at an advanced level. Students are encouraged to critically examine their own assumptions, and, most importantly, to question popular and common sense notions of gender. The one-year, cross-disciplinary programme includes a range of core and optional modules like feminisms: theories and debates; global issues in gender and sexuality; gender, culture and media in a global context; masculinities, power and society; gender and crime; women, sport and physical cultures; women writers of the 21st century, etc, that are taught by staff from across the University who are experts in different disciplines. Says Jordan, The modules are designed to allow students to gain a good grounding in gender studies, as well as a good understanding of how to conduct social research. For example, through the Feminisms: Theories and Debates, module students learn about different feminist theories as well as debates within feminist theory and how we can apply these to understanding contemporary case studies. In the Global Issues in Gender and Sexuality module, students get to explore topics such as gender and sexual identities in a globalised world, the issues of gender and sexuality in global patterns of migration, feminised global labour markets and their impact on workers in developing countries and social movements that organise around specific gender and sexual identities and rights. In addition to helping them develop the conceptual and critical skills to think, write and talk about gender in more complex ways, the programme enables graduates to produce their own knowledge. Research methods are an integral element of the degree and students receive training in both qualitative and quantitative research skills. They are also required to conduct their own piece of research (with the support of a supervisor) in the form of the independent study. Overall, the MA Gender Studies is designed to provide students with the opportunity to produce their own knowledge in an area of gender studies. The programme is designed to facilitate development of specialist subject knowledge relevant to careers in a wide range of areas, such as the voluntary and public sectors. Graduates are given the opportunity to develop a set of transferable skills relevant to roles in social research and that are vital for further academic study. Concludes Jordan, According to a 2005 study, the main graduate destinations for students who take gender and womens studies courses in Europe are in five employment sectors: research and education, government, journalism and media, health and human services, and diversity/equal opportunity initiatives. --AT A GLANCE-- Duration: One year Course begins: September 2016 Eligibility criteria: Second class honours degree or equivalent or with relevant experience; a basic maths qualification (required for analysis of statistical data some modules in social research methods), equivalent to a C at GCSE level and an overall band score of 6.0 with no element below 5.5 in the IELTS Course fee: 13,700 Scholarships: Global Postgraduate Scholarship (2,000) or International Alumni Scholarship (available for self-funding international students who have previously studied an undergraduate course at the university and progress onto a postgraduate course) Application deadline: Advisable to apply by the end of June 2016




Try telling Portugals genial finance minister, Mario Centeno, that the world only needs two or three ratings agencies. At the end of April, the blade that had been dangling uncomfortably close to Portugals economic neck was re-sheathed when the Toronto-based DBRS affirmed its triple-B rating on the sovereign.

The DBRS announcement was not wholly unexpected. Nor did it amount to a ringing endorsement of the economic roadmap adopted by Portugals anti-austerity government, which took office last November when the Socialist Party put together a fragile coalition with the Communists and the Left Block (Bloco de Esquerda).

Portugal faces significant challenges, including elevated levels of public sector debt, ongoing fiscal pressures, low potential growth, and high corporate sector indebtedness, noted the DBRS report.

These caveats did not make Aprils update any less welcome in Lisbon, where bankers say that DBRS takes a longer-term view than the larger agencies and appears to have more faith than its peers in the durability of the European project.

It seems remarkable that the cost of an EU sovereigns access to funding could depend on the pronouncement of a ratings agency headquartered in Toronto with a global market share of about 2%.


Authors note: The following is excerpted from Chapter 2 of my new book Christianity for Doubters. An earlier version was published at Evolution News. As the books title indicates, much of this book is explicitly theological, but the first two chapters are about intelligent design, not theology. In the Preface, I write: Of course, you do not have to believe anything in Chapters 3-6 of this book or anything in the Bible to believe in intelligent design. In fact, some intelligent design advocates are uncomfortable with a book that combines chapters on intelligent design with explicitly Christian chapters, because it might encourage those who claim that ID proponents do not understand the difference between science and religion. Most of us do understand the difference, we are just interested in both. And so are ID critics. Used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers.

In the current debate between Darwinism and intelligent design, the strongest argument made by Darwinists is this: in every other field of science, naturalism has been spectacularly successful, why should evolutionary biology be so different?

Joseph LeConte, professor of geology and natural history at the University of California, and (later) president of the Geological Society of America, provides an insight into the way most scientists think about evolution, in his 1888 book Evolution. In reviewing the fossil record, he writes: species seem to come in suddenly, with all their specific characters perfect, remain substantially unchanged as long as they last, and then die out and are replaced by others. Certainly this looks much like immutability of specific forms, and supernaturalism of specific origin. Then in discussing the role of natural selection, he says neither can it explain the first steps of advance toward usefulness. An organ must be already useful before natural selection can take hold of it to improve on it.

After acknowledging that the fossil record does not support the idea of gradual change, and that natural selection can explain everything except anything new, LeConte nevertheless concludes:

We are confident that evolution is absolutely certain  not evolution as a special theory  Lamarckian, Darwinian, Spencerian but evolution as a law of derivation of forms from previous forms. In this sense it is not only certain, it is axiomatic. The origins of new phenomena are often obscure, even inexplicable, but we never think to doubt that they have a natural cause; for so to doubt is to doubt the validity of reason, and the rational constitution of Nature.

Even most scientists who doubt the Darwinist explanation for evolution are confident that science will eventually come up with a more plausible explanation. Thats the way science works, if one theory fails, we look for another one; why should evolution be so different? Many people believe that intelligent design advocates just dont understand how science works, and are motivated entirely by religious beliefs.

Well, perhaps the following story will help critics of intelligent design to understand why evolution is different.



Moore before first tornado



Moore after first tornado

Here is a set of pictures of a neighborhood in Moore, Oklahoma. The first was taken before the May 20, 2013 tornado hit, and the second was taken right after the tornado.

Fortunately, another tornado hit Moore a few days later, and turned all this rubble back into houses and cars, as seen in the third picture below.



Moore after second tornado

If I asked you why you dont believe my story about the second tornado, you might say this tornado seems to violate the more general statements of the second law of thermodynamics, such as In an isolated system, the direction of spontaneous change is from order to disorder. [Classical and Modern Physics, Kenneth Ford, 1973, p619] To this I could reply, Moore is not an isolated system, tornados receive their energy from the sun, so the increase in order in Moore caused by the second tornado is easily compensated by decreases outside this open system. Or I might argue that it is too hard to quantify the decrease in entropy (disorder) caused by the second tornado, or I could say I simply dont accept the more general statements of the second law, which should only be applied to thermodynamics, and this tornado does not violate the second law as it applies to thermal entropy.

Nevertheless, suppose I further said, I have a scientific theory that explains how certain rare types of tornados, under just the right conditions, really can turn rubble into houses and cars. You doubt my theory? You havent even heard it yet! If my theory had been studied by the top meteorologists in the world, and all agreed that it was plausible, would you take it seriously then? Still no?



Earth-like planet soon after it formed

Now I have three more pictures for you, and two more stories. The first picture shows a certain Earth-like planet in a certain solar system, as it looked about 4 billion years ago. The second shows a large city at the same location about 10,000 years ago. At its prime, this city had tall buildings full of intelligent beings, computers, TV sets and cell phones inside. It had libraries full of science texts and novels, and jet airplanes taking off and landing at its airport.



Planet at height of its civilization

Scientists explain how civilization developed on this once-barren planet as follows: about 4 billion years ago a collection of atoms formed by pure chance that was able to duplicate itself, and these complex collections of atoms were able to somehow preserve their complex structures and pass them along to their descendants, generation after generation. Over a long period of time, the accumulation of duplication errors resulted in more and more elaborate collections of atoms, and eventually something called intelligence allowed some of these collections of atoms to design buildings and computers and TV sets, and write encyclopedias and science texts.

Sadly, a few years after the second picture was taken, this planet was hit by a massive solar flare from its sun, and all the intelligent beings died, their bodies decayed, and their cells decomposed into simple organic and inorganic compounds. Most of the buildings collapsed immediately into rubble, those that didnt, crumbled eventually. Most of the computers and TV sets inside were smashed into scrap metal, even those that werent, gradually turned into piles of rust. Most of the books in the libraries burned up, the rest rotted over time, and you can see the final result many years later in the third picture below.



Planet today

This time, the second story is natural and believable, it is the first story that is much more difficult to believe. The development of civilization on this planet, and the tornado that turned rubble into houses and cars, each seems to violate the more general statements of the second law, in a spectacular way. Various reasons why the development of civilization does not violate the second law have been given, but all of them can equally well be used to argue that the second tornado did not violate it either. That is, all except one: there is a theory as to how civilizations can develop on barren planets which is widely-accepted in the scientific world, while there is no widely-believed theory as to how tornados could turn rubble into houses and cars.

Anyone who claims to have a scientific explanation for how unintelligent agents like tornados might be able to turn rubble into houses and cars would be expected to produce some powerful evidence, if they want their theory to be taken seriously. The burden of proof should be equally heavy on those who claim to have a scientific explanation for how a few unintelligent forces of physics alone could rearrange the basic particles of physics into computers and encyclopedias and Apple iPhones  and there is no evidence that natural selection of random mutations can explain anything other than very minor adaptations.

My question to those who treat evolution as just another scientific problem is this: can you now at least understand why some of us feel that evolution is a fundamentally different and much more difficult problem than others solved by science, and requires a fundamentally different type of explanation?

For a more scientific version of this, see my 2013 BIO-Complexity article Entropy and Evolution, which shows why the fact that the Earth is an open system does not mean that, as is commonly argued, atoms can spontaneously rearrange themselves into computers and jet airplanes here without violating the second law, as long as these increases in order are compensated by even greater decreases outside our open system (so that the total order in the universe or any isolated system containing the Earth still decreases). In fact, the entropy change equations upon which this widely-used compensation argument is based actually support (see here), on closer examination, the common sense conclusion that if an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is isolated, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering which makes it not extremely improbable. The fact that order can increase in an open system does not mean that tornados can turn rubble into houses and cars, and it does not mean that computers can appear on a barren planet as long as the planet receives solar energy; something must be entering our open system which makes the appearance of computers not extremely improbable, for example: computers.

Image: Joseph LeConte, via Wikicommons.
Hi Everyone!



I am moving to Australia with my family (husband and 3 years old son) next year.



We are now in the process of picking a city to live in. We visited Sydney in 2015 to make the entry and I loved it but it's crazy expensive. I'm trying to put the numbers down and see how much do I need to make in order to have a good life over there.



Can you provide me with some resources that have up to date info I can use in deciding? my main 2 concerns:



1-Cost of living: rent, transportation, groceries, etc.. i need to make my estimates as accurate as I can.



2-Education: I'm a bit worried how would my son go to day care while he doesn't understand English. He will be 3 and a half years old then. Our mother tongue is Arabic and I'm trying to speak in English with him from time to time.



Any advice or similar experiences would help me a lot. Thank you
broonie84 said: We have researched the average weather cycles for the average year in Toronto and it's not too dissimilar to Scotland apart from Toronto has better summer weather so I pretty sure we can use the 30years of Scottish weather experience to help us cope with the weather, of course comparing it to Australia were we have summer for 9months followed by a few months of cooler wet weather it's the polar opposite, Click to expand...

Scottish winters are nothing like Ontario winters, nothing at all. I highly doubt Scotland gets many extended periods during which the temps sit at -20 to -30 as we do in January and February. And when you factor in the wind chill it feels colder so you might have a day when it is only -15 but the wind chill knocks another ten degrees off of that. This past winter wasn't too bad but the winter we had a year or two prior to that was horrible, and I'm used to our winters! It started with an ice storm and then we hit depths of cold that we hadn't had in years. And those weren't quick cold snaps that lasted a day or two, they were extended periods that lasted a week or more. And we had several of those periods. It also seemed to go on. For whatever reason, that winter simply wouldn't break and give up the ghost. Trust me when I tell you that you will never have experienced anything even remotely like that in Scotland.We also get a lot more snow than Scotland does, a lot more. Granted, we are so used to it that we just get on with things and our roads are cleared fairly efficiently. Here they do not have to clear highways until there is 3cm of snow, main roads until there is 5cm of snow, and secondary/residential roads until there is 8cm of snow. They often will, but at other times they just won't bother. You will have to learn to drive in that.Our summers are also closer to Australian weather than Scottish weather. It is nice today, and was actually kind of cool yesterday, but on Saturday it was 37 degrees here. According to last night's weather report it will be back in the mid 30s by this weekend. Temperatures like that are fairly typical in July and August - temps in the low 30s with the humidex pushing it into the high 30s. And in July and August it won't be a day or two here and there, those temps will last for extended periods.If you prefer suburban life there are plenty of options in the Toronto area. It is actually known as the Greater Toronto Area and, slightly further afield, it is known as the Golden Horseshoe. Google both of those and read up on the areas, as well as the various cities in those areas.I cannot comment about Whitby as I have only been there a couple of times (it is to the east of Toronto and my life has been spent to the west of Toronto) but I expect that it isn't too dissimilar from Toronto's other suburbs.But again, read up on the Greater Toronto Area and the Golden Horseshoe. Wikipedia can suck (for example, it includes places like Brantford and Waterloo in the Golden Horseshoe but I completely disagree with that - I lived in Waterloo for ten years and it is not part of the Golden Horseshoe) but it will at least give you some general info from which you can investigate specific areas/cities in more depth:
Adventures in the sun said: So Pete, if I let it sit and it goes clear you think it's just air bubbles?! It's a pretty old building we live in and I wouldn't know how or where to check that this is coming from the main supply. Click to expand...

Pour some and let it settle. If it's clear and there is no sediment it is air. If you still have any doubt I suggest you invest in having a sample tested at one of the many testing labs that are in Paphos.If you can find your stopcock which will be sited next to your water meter you can turn this off and see if your mains water still runs with the same pressure. If it does you can be quite certain that the supply is direct from the mains. If not you are having tank water fed to your mains outlet and this would need investigation.Pete
Thumper16 said: So, where to begin. We currently live in Perth, hubby is FIFO. We are wanting a change, but to be able to bring our 3 small dogs too. There will be 2 adults, and our 7 year old.

Phuket is where we are considering, but don't know what areas are safer, affordable etc. our budget would be no more than 30 000 Thai baht/month.

Need information on trustworthy real estates agents, visas etc. please.



Look forward to lots of helpful information, so we know where to begin please.



Many thanks in advance. Click to expand...

Go to northern Thailand, Chiang Mai. My wife is from Bon Churi but her family lives in Lampang which is not too far from Chiang Mai. You will be able to have access to everything you need there. The reason I say this is because its a hell of a lot cheaper to live in northern thailand than the south, you cant survive in Phuket on 30k baht a month with 2 adults and a 7 year old. Chiang Mai is nice, quiet, safe, lot of activities especially for a outdoorsy family. We have a a house in Lampang that we stay at for about 3 months out of the year.
Eric Balderas was a straight-A student in 2008, first in his class at Highlands High School, but his teachers and guidance counselors were worried: he had no plans to apply to college.

I immediately dismissed the idea that I could even attend a college, said Balderas, who immigrated illegally from Mexico at age 4 with his family.

Thats when Walter Brown came into the picture. A SAT prep teacher at Brackenridge High School, Brown invited the top two students from every high school in the San Antonio Independent School District to a meeting at a public library. Brown, a Rice University alumnus, talked to them about the nations best colleges that meet full financial need for low-income students. Once Brown became aware of Balderas undocumented status, he researched elite schools that would accept him anyway.

One of those schools turned out to be Harvard University.

It altered the entire course of events that would have ended up occurring if it was just me left on my own, said Balderas, now 25 and a Harvard graduate working at RAICES. The many hours, days, that Mr. Brown invested in me to be able to go to college and end up where I am now, its priceless.

This summer marks a decade since Brown started taking handpicked groups of high-performing, low-income SAISD students on summer visits to prestigious colleges that promise to meet all of their financial need. Sometimes they fly; usually, for lack of funds, Brown, 71, drives the group to the Northeast in his van. They take a whirlwind tour of more than a dozen schools in about 10 days, from Ohio or Pennsylvania up to Maine, a 5,000-mile round trip from San Antonio.

Although Brown retired three years ago, he continues to work one-on-one with students and their families on applications for admission and financial aid. Hes helped about 40 students get into colleges perennially ranked among the nations best, including Yale, Wesleyan, Amherst, Connecticut College, Bates and Middlebury. He does it all on a volunteer basis, sometimes referring to his efforts as the Veremos program  Spanish for we will see.

Now SAISD is expanding on Browns altruism. The district has partnered with local organizations to launch the Students on the Rise initiative, which connects sophomores and juniors in the top 15 percent of their class with representatives from highly-ranked research universities and liberal arts colleges that meet full student financial need.

Through the $22 million federal GEAR UP grant, awarded five years ago to prepare the districts class of 2017 for college, some rising seniors are attending college camps this summer, staying in dormitories and preparing for SATs and college applications. In early fall, more than 100 students will take trips to colleges all over the country.

The itineraries are not yet settled for the fall college visits, so Brown is still raising money for a summer tour through the colleges hed like to highlight. Donations are being accepted at veremoscollegetour.org.

Increasing the percentage of graduates who attend Tier I universities and top liberal arts colleges is one of many goals in Superintendent Pedro Martinezs five-year district turnaround plan. About 3 percent of SAISD graduates attend such schools now, said Seth Rau, the districts legislative coordinator. Martinez wants to increase that to 10 percent by 2020.

The initiatives first large event was in April, where qualifying students met SAISD graduates who later attended the targeted schools. Rau said organizers expected a maximum of 500 people, including students and their families. Instead, 1,300 people packed the ground floor of Fox Tech High School.

Put their feet on the ground somewhere

As Students on the Rise develops, Brown has been advising students and district officials on the preparation students need to bridge that gap. Only about 20 percent of students in the lowest income quartile earn a bachelors degree once enrolled in college, according to a report last year from the University of Pennsylvania and the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education.

Out of the districts 53,000 students, 93 percent are considered economically disadvantaged, meaning they qualify for free or reduced lunch under federal income thresholds. Many would be the first in their families to attend college and have no one outside of school to help them through the application process. And in SAISD, fewer than 100 employees have attended one of the 62 colleges from the Students on the Rise list, said Rau, who as a Tufts University graduate is among them.

Most of the students Brown worked with had a family income below $65,000 per year. They had never traveled farther than Port Aransas and were not considering out-of-state schools, but on the college tours they gaped at the elm trees and longed to roll down the hills, Brown said.

Its still an abstraction in a lot of ways, and I think the only way to get past that for most students is to put their feet on the ground somewhere, Brown said. They can look around and now they can imagine themselves being there for most of four years.

Brown has convinced colleges to pay for high quality health insurance, an admission requirement that most of his students dont have. He also helps fill out the schools financial aid forms, which are more complicated than the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

You kind of have to be a tax lawyer to get everything on there right, Brown said. A lot of the questions are aimed at rich parents who are hiding assets.

Once Browns students receive their college acceptance letters, he prepares them to thrive on campus. Except for one who transferred to the University of Texas-San Antonio due to a family issue, Brown said none of his students have dropped out of their elite colleges, and most graduate with less than $15,000 in loans.

Bounce yourself off of those people

Sometimes their challenges are tangible, like new clothes for northern climes. Brown takes students to ski shops in San Antonio, where they try on cold-weather apparel. In the spring, when prices plummet online for the winter gear, Brown gives the students web links to their items.

Other challenges are mental. The SAISD graduates set foot on campuses where most of their peers have taken more advanced courses. Brown tells his students freshman year will be tough, but they are smart and hard-working. The colleges Brown helps them get into have small campuses and class sizes, supportive professors and free tutoring.

Most of the other students are upper middle-class, white or Asian, while SAISD is 91 percent Hispanic. Brown doesnt lie when his students ask if there will be many others like them on campus, but says they make friends.

If you want to really find out who you are, go plunk yourself down fifteen hundred miles away, with a bunch of students from all over the country and all over the world, and you bounce yourself off of those people for four years who dont think like you, dont have the same background, he tells them. You will do a wonderful job of finding out about yourself that way.

Having road tripped together in the summer, many students Brown works with keep tabs on each other through college and beyond, beginning a valuable social and professional network.

Before Brown began his career in education, he was a lawyer in Corpus Christi, but he said his specialty, family law, was becoming increasingly stressful.

It was an interesting way to make a living for a while, but it got old when people started getting pretty mad and shooting each other, he said.

He moved to San Antonio and started working for Harcourt Education, now Pearson. He also started volunteering in the late 1990s to hold SAT prep sessions for students at Brackenridge High School, where his wife was an assistant principal. The school hired him in 2001 to teach AP statistics and SAT prep.

Five years later, the school put all the highest-performing juniors in one SAT prep class for Brown. The students grew bored taking practice exams over and over again with small gains each time, so Brown decided to spend some of the course discussing colleges.

He went to a Barnes & Noble and got the Princeton Reviews 361 Best Colleges, a guidebook published annually with facts and statistics about each prestigious school. Flipping through the book, one phrase caught Browns eye over and over: Meets 100 percent of need.

I didnt really know what that meant or that it was out there, so we started focusing on those schools, Brown said. They wanted to go see the schools and I thought that would probably be a good idea.

Browns class talked about raising money for a spring break tour, but that never came about. Four girls, however, could not be deterred. They raised some money on their own, but Brown ended up fronting more than $3,000 so he and his wife could fly with the girls to Philadelphia, where they rented a van and made their circuit.

They went to Swarthmore, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Wesleyan, Connecticut College, Amherst, Smith, Tufts, Wellesley and Harvard.

We did a drive-by of the Brown campus and just looked at it and grabbed stuff out of the front door of the admissions office, he said.

Although hed been to New York a few times, it was also Browns first time in that part of the country. Returning to San Antonio, the girls tried to do some retroactive fundraising to pay Brown back. All four girls applied to at least one of the schools theyd visited. They ended up going to Rice, Wesleyan and Amherst. And they talked to their friends.

After word got around, Brown helped some seniors who hadnt been on the summer tours submit their transcripts to New England schools. Colleges striving for increased diversity paid the strongest candidates to fly in during diversity weekends. After the fall fly-ins, one student ended up going to Williams. Another went to Bates, where he worked in the admissions office for a year and a half after graduation. He is now a college counselor at a majority-Hispanic charter school in Chicago.

Hes doing the same thing Im doing, except hes getting paid for it, Brown said.

Since that year, Brown has made five more summer trips, with a group of six to 10 students every time. For the past four trips, without enough money for plane fare, Brown has driven the group from San Antonio in his van. When it died he bought another van, a 2013 Toyota Sienna, just so he could keep driving his students. But the road trip is also tiring for the students, who need energy to process their new experiences, and Brown wishes they had the money to fly north every year.

Paying it forward

Sitting in the library in 2008, the summer before his senior year, Balderas thought Browns talk about elite colleges did not apply to undocumented students like him.

I didnt think I had any hope, Balderas said.

When Brown encouraged him to apply to certain colleges anyway, Balderas said he did so passively, with Brown frequently prodding him to get the work done. Balderas said he was along for the ride, doing what he was told.

With input from Brown, he wrote his college application essay about crossing the Rio Grande on a raft and his dream of working to help other children who immigrated in similar circumstances. Balderas was also accepted to Middlebury College in Vermont. He hadnt visited either school, but Brown helped him get the colleges to pay for a trip.

In 2010, he took a brief trip home after his freshman year. As he attempted to fly back to Boston for an internship, immigration officials detained him at the San Antonio airport. The resulting media campaign made Balderas nationally famous, a poster child for the DREAM Act.

He was granted deferred action, but left Harvard for a year to deal with the pressure caused by the case and his familys financial struggles. He took on manual labor in a San Antonio warehouse until his familys situation improved. Refreshed, he went back to Harvard and graduated in 2014. Now he has a visa and does administrative work for a legal team at RAICES that assists detained and released immigrants.

The way Mr. Brown helped me, now I try to help others, Balderas said.

When students feel indebted, Brown tells them to pay it forward, and some are now helping current high-schoolers through Students on the Rise. But Brown gets something more out of his work with the students.

Its been really rewarding, he said. This is really what gets me out of bed in the morning. Its not often, if youre an educator, that you can see specific instances of making a big difference in somebodys life and thats what this has done for me.
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AUSTIN  Gov. Greg Abbott has opened his official state residence to political allies, business leaders, presidential hopefuls, educators, musicians and lawmakers of both parties for numerous receptions and meetings.

But the guests who get the rarer, highly prized invitations for dinner at the Governors Mansion often have something in common. Many are donors who have funded Abbotts political rise and are seen as crucial to Republicans future.

Of 16 dinners at the Greek Revival-style mansion that were detailed in records examined by the San Antonio Express-News, 13 included donors who together have given Abbott some $15 million since 2000.

The tally may be higher because mansion records provided by the governors office were incomplete.

Among those listed as dinner guests were Bruce Bugg, chairman of the Bank of San Antonio who was appointed by Abbott to the Texas Transportation Commission, and NuStar Energy Chairman William Greehey.

Most of the dinners with donors were fairly intimate affairs, with the guest list ranging from one couple to 13 people. Their political contributions have ranged from $150 to more than $1 million, with the majority giving in the six-figure range.

Some dinner guests spoke to the Express-News of friendly, warm evenings untouched by political talk. Such get-togethers, however, are about more than giving powerbrokers a chance to press a specific case.

Its access, said Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice, which tracks the influence of money in politics. Lobbying and getting favors is about access and personal relationships, and this helps strengthen a personal relationship.

Such access isnt unusual at the state or national level, and it has put officeholders from both parties in the spotlight. Bill and Hillary Clinton came under particular fire over Democratic donors staying in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House in the 1990s.

This is the way politics works, McDonald said. The big donors get the special perks.  This is business as usual that is beneficial to the politicians and to their suitors and their supporters.

Even some Democrats didnt raise an eyebrow at the Republican governors dinner guest list, including one with firsthand knowledge of extending Governors Mansion invitations.

I didnt check the donor list before we invited anybody. Im sure I had a lot of donors over there, too, former Gov. Mark White said. They were friends, or there was some business reason for them to come over there.  Its a useful tool for the governor to bring people together and get them to help on projects.

Manny Garcia, deputy executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, is less accepting.

The Texas Governors Mansion isnt just a symbol of our states history, it is a place that all Texans can claim as their own. Unfortunately, Gov. Abbott has treated this iconic residence as a perk for high-powered political donors, Garcia said.

Asked about donor access and how the governor chooses whom to invite to the mansion, Abbotts staff provided written comments emphasizing the wide range of events that include numerous guests and encompass far more than dinners. A request to interview Abbotts chief of staff, Daniel Hodge, was denied.

The records show that the overwhelming majority of the thousands of guests that the governor and first lady have welcomed to the mansion have not contributed a penny to his campaign, said Abbott spokesman John Wittman. Gov. Abbott and the first lady are honored to have the opportunity to reside in the Texas Governors Mansion and open their home to, and share its rich history with, those it belongs to: the people of Texas.

Valuable face time

By the governors office count, the number of mansion happenings has been close to 250 when including meetings, lunches, receptions that may include several hundred people, news conferences and events such as Easter egg rolls and a 109th birthday celebration for Richard Overton, the oldest known living World War II combat veteran in the United States. The number doesnt include public tours, which have been expanded to Saturdays under the Abbotts.

Besides a variety of receptions  such as those celebrating the 2015 teacher of the year, meeting with media, saluting Texas music and recognizing the Girl Scouts  the mansion has been the scene of lunches or meetings with top business leaders and officials from other countries. Former first lady Linda Gale White requested and got a meeting with current first lady Cecilia Abbott to discuss the Communities in Schools dropout-prevention program.

Democratic as well as Republican lawmakers were invited to luncheons last year to talk about legislative issues or just get better acquainted.

Having a lunch like that, people let their hair down. People are less guarded, and people feel less inclined to be formal, and so at our lunch there was a lot of laughter, and I made fun of myself and others made fun of me. ... And thats OK, because its part of developing friendships and relationships with people, said Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin.

Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, called it high-quality time.

Abbott doesnt raise political money at the mansion. But there have been events with a political air besides the dinners with donors, such as Texans for Greg Abbott, grass-roots and conservative group receptions. He also has met there with his political advisers and campaign staff. He doesnt have donors as overnight guests, according to his office.

Mansion operations are supported with state funds of nearly $750,000 a year, but Abbotts campaign and other funding sources cover event costs such as food and beverages, according to his office.

The state money includes $524,589 a year that is spent through the governors office, much of which pays for mansion staff, according to his office. The State Preservation Board budgets $225,380 for items including maintenance and grounds-keeping.

In addition, Abbotts campaign has paid about $100,000 for mansion expenses, according to a ballpark estimate provided by the governors office. An additional $40,000 has been funneled through a separate fund that allows groups with mansion events to cover their cost. In addition, the Friends of the Governors Mansion pays for expenses such as maintenance of historic items, spending between $8,000 and $9,000 in 2014.

Abbott pays for personal costs, according to his office.

The exact number of events couldnt be determined because numerous dates in the first half of 2015 were missing from the records provided by Abbotts office in response to a request under the Texas Public Information Act. Among them were dates in July that covered a meeting and dinner with then-Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Jose Antonio Meade Kuribrena.

Abbotts staff said all the records that could be located were provided.

Not all politics

Despite the breadth of mansion doings, dinners are acknowledged to be a particularly choice invitation.

Dinner, by definition, is more intimate, said high-profile lobbyist and consultant Bill Miller, a dinner guest last August with his wife and daughter.

Miller doesnt appear as an Abbott donor in campaign reports, but his firms political action committee has chalked up more than $242,000 for Abbott since 2000. Thats the year before Abbott resigned from the Texas Supreme Court to run for attorney general, an office in which he served before taking office as governor in January 2015.

Miller said the agenda at the dinner he attended was distinctly personal. The Millers daughter attends the California university where the Abbotts daughter headed last year. The get-together gave the girls and their parents a chance to talk about what the freshman could expect.

People who are not in the business think that all I do is talk politics all day long with everybody I run into.  They would not believe that Im sitting around with the governor and not talking politics, said Miller, who has long known Abbott. But the truth is when we were there that night, it never came up. We never talked politics at all. It was all family and kids and schools and the stuff that you talk about in regular life.

Abbott donor Harlan Stai said the same was true when he and his wife, Dian Graves Stai, dined at the mansion. The two, who are retired from Owen Healthcare, have donated more than $400,000 to Abbott, according to campaign finance records.

It was nothing political at all. It was just a nice evening, Stai said. It was like going to dinner with your brother and his wife.

Not every dinner guest detailed in the records was a donor. One dinner featured Nobel laureates. At another, Florida Gov. Rick Scott and his wife, Ann, had dinner there but arent found as Abbott donors in campaign records.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a longtime Abbott ally who doesnt appear as a campaign contributor, attended a mansion dinner that also included donors the month before he launched his presidential bid last year.

The biggest donors on the dinner guest list, according to records provided, are Fort Worth businessman Robert Albritton and his wife, Mary Louise, who have given more than $1 million to Abbott. Albritton also is an Abbott appointee to the Texas A&M University System board of regents  like Bugg, one of a number of dinner guests who are appointees as well as donors.

But even donors who make smaller donations have much more to offer than money, such as influential evangelist David Barton, listed as a mansion dinner guest with fracking billionaire Daniel Wilks and their wives. Dan Wilks and his brother, Farris, are becoming known as important GOP donors.

The Wilks brothers together have the potential to be very active actors in state politics, said Rice University political scientist Mark P. Jones. The potential has been raised that they could become the next Bob Perry, the late GOP mega-donor.

Ray Sullivan, a lobbyist who worked for former Govs. George W. Bush and Rick Perry, called the mansion a valuable tool on a number of levels. Bushs first presidential campaign famously began with a front-porch strategy in which notables visited him at the mansion.

The Governors Mansion is a special invitation, said Sullivan, who was pleased when an introductory meeting he had requested for Calpine Corp. CEO John B. Thad Hill was scheduled at the spectacular historic home.

I think it is an asset not only to the state but to the governor, Sullivan said. As a senior staffer for two governors, it is an asset that should be used to benefit the state and can be used to benefit the occupant through high-level meetings and conversations and events.

Democratic consultant Harold Cook, who worked with former Gov. Ann Richards gubernatorial campaigns, said donors were among the range of people she invited to the mansion while in office.

People are going to invite people over based on how comfortable they are with them, and obviously big givers are going to have a pre-existing personal relationship with whoever they give to, or they wouldnt be giving, Cook said. And thats a little different than buying access. . Its natural to invite over people you know. Its natural to invite over people you think are interesting.

The Governors Mansion is a perk of the office. People are honored to be invited. People are honored to go. Why in the world wouldnt you make your allies feel that way? Thats just good politics, Cook said, quipping, I am positive that my invitation has merely been lost in the mail.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently celebrated the 2015 Texas legislative session, which ended last June, as the most conservative ever.

Abbott, rousing delegates to the Republican Party of Texas convention in Dallas, said in his May 2016 address: As just one example, we passed the fewest laws in 20 years, proving that better government doesnt have to be more government.

Setting aside the gubernatorial analysis, we wondered if indeed the 2015 Legislature approved the fewest pieces of legislation since 1995, 10 regular biennial sessions before.

This didnt take long to confirm; the Texas Legislative Reference Library presents relevant bill statistics for every regular and special session since 1879.

According to the librarys compilation, the 1,280 Texas House and Senate bills that made it into law in 2015 were the fewest since 1,063 measures made it into law in 1995, the first year of Republican George W. Bushs tenure.

Over the two decades, the next-lowest count of bills passed into law was 1,334 in 2003, followed by 1,354 in 2011 and 1,369 in 2005, according to the library.

A few earlier sessions had low law counts (though, of course, Abbotts claim didnt reach to these years). Those 140-day sessions occurred in 1983 (1,092 bills-into-law); 1985 (979 bills-into-law); 1989 (1,264 bills-into-law); 1991 (924 bills-into-law); and 1993 (1,050 bills-into-law), according to the library.

For this check, we didnt count other indicators of legislative activity such as proposed constitutional amendments, which lawmakers place before voters (without a governors say).

Our ruling

Abbott said the 2015 Legislature passed the fewest laws in 20 years.

So it did, making this statement True.

TRUE  The statement is accurate and theres nothing significant missing.
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About 80 local grass-roots activists met at the Southwest Workers Union headquarters Thursday to hash out plans for a rally protesting Donald Trumps upcoming fundraising stop.

A common theme at the planning meeting was that Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, should not be able to visit S.A. without hearing from local Latinos outraged by his rhetoric.

That rhetoric includes Trumps calls for the deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants, his description of those immigrants as rapists and his suggestion that a Mexican-American judge cant preside over a class-action case against him without demonstrating bias.

While there was universal agreement about the purpose of the June 17 protest (and the need for it to be conducted peacefully), the logistical details were trickier.

Trumps Friday fundraiser is widely believed to be happening at Oak Hills Country Club. A few meeting attendees expressed concerns that the North Side location would be inaccessible to some people wanting to attend the protest, while others pointed to the lack of available parking in the area.

Alternative locations were floated, including the Alamodome, which was shot down because itll be hosting the Texas Democratic Convention on Friday.

Were trying to be as nonpartisan as we can, one of the event organizers said.

Ultimately, tentative plans were made to hold the protest at the site of Trumps fundraising luncheon and to follow that up with a late-afternoon celebratory gathering at a downtown location.

Former U.S. Rep. (and current Bexar County Justice of the Peace) Ciro Rodriguez attended the meeting, and he commended the participants for voicing their opposition to Trump. Rodriguez said Trump is dangerous because he is not merely using offensive rhetoric, but is also advocating discriminatory policies.

When you say Muslims shouldnt be here, thats racist, Rodriguez said. When you pass that to policy, and say were not going to allow them (to enter the United States), thats discriminatory. That is anti-American, and thats not what our democracy is about.

Rodriguezs one bit of advice to the meeting attendees was to make sure that none of the protest participants carry guns to the demonstration.

Thats not the message that you want to give, he said.

The protest idea was initiated by Maestranza, a local community organization, immediately after news broke Monday that Trump planned a visit to San Antonio. More than 1,800 people have indicated on Facebook that they plan to attend the protest.

More than anything, we just want to be able to show a little bit of resistance, said Kimberly Rendon, a community organizer with the Southwest Workers Union. We dont want to do anything violent. Were just trying to let people know the frustrations were feeling.

Castros VP roller coaster

If all the media speculation about presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clintons running mate tells us anything, its that no one (other than Clinton) has any idea whom shell pick.

After months of talk that former San Antonio Mayor (and current Secretary of Housing and Urban Development) Julian Castro was a likely veep choice, the smart money seemed to shift away from Castro in early May.

During a May 6 discussion on the PBS talk show Washington Week, Molly Ball, writer for The Atlantic, said Castro is lobbying for it pretty hard behind the scenes. Ball said Castros problem is that with Trump seizing the GOP nomination, Hillary doesnt need a running mate to help her bring in Hispanics.

Robert Costa of the Washington Post added that his Democratic sources arent even talking about Castro as a possible Clinton running mate because a lot of them have been actually unhappy with the way Castro is perceived as lobbying.

That was the conventional wisdom a month ago.

On Wednesday, however, Costas newspaper listed 27 Clinton VP possibilities and made this assertion: The obvious choice, and the one getting the most buzz, is Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro.

What lessons can we derive from all of this contradictory chatter? 1. The smart money isnt so smart. 2. None of us know what were talking about.

ggarcia@express-news.net

Twitter: @gilgamesh470
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Those who loved Kelly Allen and knew her as a courageous, inclusive spiritual leader came together Saturday, many in grief and bewilderment, not a week after her sudden death from a stroke.

Nearly 500 strong, they sat packed together on old oaken pews under the soaring arches at Parker Chapel at Trinity University, its walls adorned by ornate Biblical tapestries and windows of colored glass.

And the message they heard from men and women of the colored cloth, both Jew and Christian, some from as far away as Missouri and North Carolina, was not one of mourning or despair.

Rather, it was an examination of an extraordinary life and an emphatic call to still follow Allen, minister of University Presbyterian Church since 2009, in the cause of those who struggled on the margins.

Kelly was a prophet, a witness and a tireless worker for justice, and also a beloved child of God, said the first speaker, Rev. Sallie Watson of Mission Presbytery in San Antonio.

Many of us are wearing robes that belonged to her, they were so gorgeous and another witness that she is in this room, she noted.

Best known as chairwoman of the Interfaith Welcome Coalition, Allen, 50, was one of the citys leading advocates for Central American refugees seeking safety from violence and for the right of same-sex couples to marry.

She also extended University Presbyterians outreach to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, worked with Cops/Metro Alliance on urban and minority issues, and chaired an immigrant task force.

And the God she knew and served was not a far-off, abstract personage, but a intimate spiritual leader with expectations of his flock, said Rev. Deborah Krause of New Testament-Eden Seminary in St. Louis, Mo.

Every day of her life, Kelly asked God, What do you want me to do? She believed we are all collaborators with God, in nothing less than the redemption of the world, said Krause.

She lived her life building the new heaven and the new earth. She has shown us, as the saints always do, how we are called to join God in that work, she added.

Reaching deep into the Old Testament to illustrate Allens assertive, risk-taking ministry, Rabbi Samuel Stahl chose the Hebrew midwives who defied the order of the Egyptian king to kill all male newborn Jews.

In disobeying the pharoah, the midwives ensured the survival of their people, and it was one of Allens favorite stories.

They were bold and courageous women and stood up for what they believed. Kelly stood up for what was right even if there was a cost, said Rev. Traci Smith of Northwood Presbyterian Church.

In the closing prayer of commendation, Rev. Bill Perman of First Presbyterian Church in St. Louis gave comfort to the assembled that that they were not alone.

Kelly will never leave you. She will always be at your side. Whenever you deeply listen to someone or advocate for the least and last, Kelly will be there, he said.

Afterward, as the chapel emptied, there was a sense among some that the sendoff had been perfect.

That was inspiring. It was perfectly Kelly and had a sense of her ministry. I leave feeling there really is a God, said Vanessa Potter of the Mission Presbytery.

Cynthia Smith, a member of Allens church, was likewise well pleased.

The service was true Kelly. People made an effort to bring forth the true person, not just glowing talk.

Her husband Anthony added, It was not a service of sorrow. It was a service of joy to Kellys life, and she brought joy to so many.

jmaccormack@express-news.net
Shropshire

A Full-Time position is available for an assistant herdsperson on a family dairy farm in mid Shropshire. We have a 250 dairy herd rearing own replacements together with a b...
The EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) needs to become a 'Common Sustainable Food Policy' to remain relevant for the 21st century, according to a new report from the Food Research Collaboration.

The briefing paper, Does the CAP still fit?, argues that policy makers need to address and integrate currently disparate food issues alongside agricultural matters.

These issues include carbon reduction, water conservation, food waste reduction, public health and consumer satisfaction.

The authors  Professor Alison Bailey, Professor Tim Lang and Dr Victoria Schoen  say this overarching approach is necessary for the UK as well as Europe, regardless of the outcome of the countrys referendum on EU membership.

In addition to laying out options for the future direction of CAP, the paper reviews its history, purpose, impact, finances and changes over time.

The authors argue that the CAP, far from being stuck, has been continuously reformed since it was introduced as a response to post-war food insecurity in 1962.

But they say the food system of today is very different, with food service a much larger employer than farming.

Does the CAP still fit? is the third paper on the links between UK food and the EU to be published by the Food Research Collaboration (FRC), an initiative of the Centre for Food Policy at City University London funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.

Key points in the report include:

 The CAP has gone through at least seven rounds of reform since it began in 1962.

 The Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development in Brussels has only 1,000 civil servants, yet accounts for over a third of the total EU budget. Defra in the UK has 2,000 for England alone.

 Although considerably below the 70% seen in the 1980s, the CAP now absorbs less than 40% of the EU budget and this is set to decline further.

 In the UK, farmers receive only 10 billion of the 198 billion that UK consumers spend on food per year. Many farmers rely on the additional income from subsidies to keep them in farming.

 Four broad options about CAPs purpose and preparations for the next phase of reform are explored in which CAP: (a) weakens significantly; (b) evolves pragmatically; (c) becomes a rural development policy; or (d) becomes a Common (Sustainable) Food Policy.

The CAP has changed, cut subsidies and is a major funder of environmental gains  the report summarises these rounds of reform and what has motivated them.

CAP has 'many problems' and must change 'radically'

The authors state that not all reforms have been beneficial, CAP has many problems and it must be changed radically.

The paper also states that the evidence for overhauling international food systems is overwhelming but the public health impact of farm output is not taken seriously enough.

The authors argue politicians and policy makers seem unable to grasp the enormity of what needs to change.

Professor Tim Lang, of the Centre for Food Policy at City University London and senior advisor to the FRC, said: "CAP has been the butt of jokes and myths about inefficient Europe.

"In fact, CAP has constantly changed over the last 60 years. Our critique is that, today, it is still too focused on farming when it needs to be reconnected with public health, ecosystems and feeding people well.

"Whether the UK is in or out of the EU, these goals are needed.

"CAP should become a Common Sustainable Food Policy. This is what the scientific evidence suggests.

"The problem is that policy-makers are either too hesitant or dazzled by a belief that technology will resolve future food problems. They cannot. Food culture also needs to change."

'Serious realignment of policy objectives with farming needed'

Dr Victoria Schoen, Research Fellow for the FRC, said: "The CAP has certainly taken us away from a post-war situation of food insecurity and has attempted to adapt over time.

"Now a serious realignment of policy objectives with farm, food and rural realities is needed to maintain a healthy, sustainable food system in the future."

Professor Alison Bailey, of Lincoln University in New Zealand (formerly at the University of Reading), said: "What is required now of the CAP is a return to the focus on why it was introduced in the first place.

"The provision of food whilst being mindful of how that food is produced, supporting the producers, providing adequate nutrition for consumers, whilst maintaining animal welfare standards and protecting the environment."

The Food Research Collaboration (FRC) is an initiative of the Centre for Food Policy at City University London, funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.

The FRC facilitates joint working amongst and between academics and civil society organisations (CSOs) to improve the UK food system. It is a unique collaboration of 500 academic and CSO members.
Average herbicide spend has doubled over the past six years yet black-grass is still on the increase in many areas, highlighting an urgent need for farmers to adopt more effective solutions.

That is the warning from leading agronomy firm Hutchinsons ahead of its annual open days at the National Black Grass Centre of Excellence in Brampton, Cambridgeshire on 22-23 June 2016.

Technical manager Dick Neale says a typical arable farm now spends around 180/ha on herbicides, yet black-grass and herbicide-resistant populations in particular, are becoming ever more prevalent.

Indeed, resistant black-grass has been confirmed in 34 counties in England and is on the increase in Scotland and Cumbria too, according to industry figures.

However, six years of in-depth trials at the Hutchinsons site prove high populations of resistant black-grass can be significantly reduced with a range of cultural and chemical options that are financially and environmentally more sustainable than just costly multiway stacks of chemistry.

Emerging black-grass levels have been slashed from 700 per square metre pre-sowing six years ago to just 60 today and can be maintained at this level long-term, says Mr Neale, who will reveal details to this success at the open days later this month.

"Since we started the trials in 2010, average spending on herbicides [across the industry] has roughly doubled, which is unsustainable from both an economic and resistance management point of view.

"Yet weve shown that employing effective cultural measures throughout the rotation followed by a well-timed residual herbicide is the best way to maximise black-grass control."

Mr Neale says the most effective cultural options include:

 Rotation and crop choice: Spring cropping (especially barley) offers a wider window for autumn black-grass control. Select competitive crops and varieties (e.g. hybrid barley) that can establish well in the farm conditions and compete with black-grass

 Seed rate: higher rates boost crop competition  up to 450 seeds/m2. Allow for lower establishment when sowing late or if spring cropping on heavy land

 Delay drilling: allows more time for black-grass to emerge in autumn and be controlled before a crop is sown (e.g. through stale seedbeds)  around 80% of black-grass emerges between September to October

 Shallow cultivations: restrict cultivations to the top 50mm of soil to maintain a kill zone where black-grass can be stimulated to emerge and be controlled. Avoid bringing seed up from depth by ploughing or subsoiling.

Employing a range of effective cultural measures will reduce black-grass to a level that gives herbicide chemistry a better chance of achieving the required level of control, providing it is applied at the right time in optimum conditions, Mr Neale continues.

In winter wheat, pre-emergence Liberator (diflufenican + flufenacet) applied to winter wheat sown late on 23 October at 450 seeds/m2 delivered 93% control.

This was only achieved by careful application timing after reducing black-grass to a manageable level (52 plants/m2) with cultural measures, he says.

"Flufenacet offers good control and excellent crop safety, which is vital if we are to avoid taking the vigour out of the crop and reduce its ability to compete.

"Utilising Liberator/Vigon/Crystal pre-em and then following up post-em using one or two other active ingredients with the focussed use of an adjuvant will get us to almost 100% control."

Depleting the seedbank through such an integrated approach and maintaining low populations with careful crop management - tailored to individual sites - is the only effective way of controlling black-grass as chemical options become more limited, he adds.
Two million medflies a week for four weeks are being transported from Perth to Adelaide for release in an area where wild medflies and their larvae in fruit have been detected.
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.
We are big fans of James Wan here at FemaleFirst and he is back in the director's chair this week with his latest horror film The Conjuring 2.

The Conjuring 2

Wan has brought us some fantastic films in this genre over the years and it was back in 2013 when The Conjuring was released - for me, it was one of the best horror movies to be released that year.

Three years on, and Patrick Wilson reunites with Vera Farmiga as they play paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. This new film is also based on one of the couple's real-life cases.

And you can see the pair in action in a trio of terrific new clips from the film. Take a look:

It is great to see Farmiga and Wilson back in the central roles and they are joined by some new faces as Madison Wolfe, Francs O'Connor, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Franka Potente, and Lauren Esposito are also on board.

Madison Wolfe is set to take on the role of Janet in the film and this is one of her biggest films to date - she really is a young acting talent to keep an eye on over the next couple of years.

The Conjuring 2 follows Lorraine and Ed Warren who, in one of their most terrifying paranormal investigations, travel to north London to help a single mother raising four children alone in a house plagued by malicious spirits.

The film follows the phenomenal worldwide reception of Wan's The Conjuring, which marked the largest opening ever for an original horror movie.

The film went on to make more than $319 million worldwide and still remains the second highest grossing original horror movie of all time, second only to The Exorcist.

The Conjuring 2 is released 13th June.

by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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DUBAI, UAE, June 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

To celebrate and recognise the true worth of its range of high performance tyres, Dubai based Z Tyre has engaged one of the world's most exclusive jewellers to develop a very special set of Z1 tyres to be unveiled for the first time at Reifen Essen 2016.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160612/378228 )



Combining 24 karat gold and specially selected diamond stones, this unique set of Z Tyres was designed in Dubai and decorated by Italian artisan jewellers in Italy before being returned to Dubai the application of gold leafing by the very same craftsmen who have worked on the new presidential palace in Abu Dhabi. With the special set of four tyres recently sold for $600,000, Guinness World Records has independently valued and duly recognised them as the "World's Most Expensive Set of Car Tyres".

Commenting on this new world record, Zenises CEO Harjeev Kandhari, said: "We've always treasured the outstanding skills and dedication involved in developing our Z Tyre range so we thought what better way to celebrate this achievement than with a record-breaking special set of tyres especially commissioned for a unique buyer. We are thankful to the Government of Dubai and His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai to have fostered such an environment of creativity in Dubai. This environment has allowed us to "dream big" and develop such world record breaking ideas. In keeping with the spirit of the Holy Month of Ramadan Z Tyres will donate all profits from the $600,000 sale to the Zenises Foundation which focusses on improving access to education across the world".

Web: http://www.avalonprplus.com
In a separate analysis, Jardiance also reduced risk for CV events consistently in groups divided by LDL cholesterol level

Results from sub-analyses of the landmark EMPA-REG OUTCOMEtrial presented at theAmerican Diabetes Association 76th Scientific Sessions

New analyses showed risk reductions were consistent across age groups for cardiovascular (CV) outcomes, including CV death, with Jardiance (empagliflozin) compared with placebo when added to standard of care in adults with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and established CV disease. These data, which were presented at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) 76th Scientific Sessions in New Orleans, are from the Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly and Company EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160612005046/en/

"As people with type 2 diabetes age, their risk for cardiovascular events increases," said lead investigator of the trial Dr Bernard Zinman, Director, Diabetes Centre, Mount Sinai Hospital; Senior Scientist, Lunenfeld Tanenbaum Research Institute, and Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto, Canada. "These sub-analyses suggest that empagliflozin is associated with reducing cardiovascular events regardless of age when starting treatment. These data provide additional information about the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial."

Data presented at the ADA Scientific Sessions examined the effect of treatment with Jardiance by age in the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial. Trial participants were grouped based on their age at baseline: under 65 years, from 65 to 74, and 75 years and older. Consistent reduction in the risk of CV death was seen independent of age groups. Further analysis demonstrated similar consistency by age group in reducing risk for hospitalisation for heart failure, as well as for the combination of hospitalisation for heart failure or CV death. Adverse events were consistent with the known safety profile of Jardiance

Furthermore, the reduction in risk for CV events did not differ among sub-groups of people in the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial based on their LDL ("bad") cholesterol levels at baseline (<70 mg/dL; 70-<85 mg/dL; 85-<100 mg/dL; 100-115 mg/dL; and >115 mg/dL). The risk reduction with Jardiance was consistent across the LDL sub-groups (indicated by a lack of statistical interaction by sub-group) for the combination of CV death, non-fatal heart attack or non-fatal stroke, as well as for the individual outcomes of CV death, hospitalisation for heart failure and death from any cause.

"These analyses from the landmark EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial further demonstrate that Jardiance reduced the risk of cardiovascular death and hospitalisation for heart failure in people with type 2 diabetes," said Professor Hans-Juergen Woerle, Global Vice President Medicine, Boehringer Ingelheim. "Through our ongoing research, the Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly and Company Diabetes Alliance is proud to continue to advance the understanding of how to improve the management of cardiovascular risk in this population."

Additional insight into the EMPA-REG OUTCOME findings will be presented at an ADA Scientific Sessions symposium on Tuesday 14 June at 08:00 CDT.

About the EMPA-REG OUTCOME Trial

EMPA-REG OUTCOME was a long-term, multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of more than 7,000 patients from 42 countries with type 2 diabetes and established cardiovascular (CV) disease.

The study assessed the effect of Jardiance (10 mg or 25 mg once daily) added to standard of care compared with placebo added to standard of care. Standard of care was comprised of glucose-lowering agents and CV drugs (including for blood pressure and cholesterol). The primary endpoint was defined as time to first occurrence of CV death, non-fatal heart attack or non-fatal stroke.

Over a median of 3.1 years, Jardiance significantly reduced the risk of CV death, non-fatal heart attack or non-fatal stroke by 14 percent versus placebo. Risk of CV death was reduced by 38 percent, with no significant difference in the risk of non-fatal heart attack or non-fatal stroke.

The overall safety profile of Jardiance in the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial was consistent with that of previous trials.

About Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease

More than 415 million people worldwide have diabetes, of which 193 million are estimated to be undiagnosed. By 2040, the number of people with diabetes is expected to rise to 642 million people worldwide. Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of diabetes, responsible for up to 91 percent of diabetes cases in high-income countries. Diabetes is a chronic condition that occurs when the body either does not properly produce, or use, the hormone insulin.

Due to the complications associated with diabetes, such as high blood sugar, high blood pressure and obesity, CV disease is a major complication and the leading cause of death associated with diabetes. People with diabetes are two to four times more likely to develop CV disease than people without diabetes. In 2015, diabetes caused 5 million deaths worldwide, with CV disease as the leading cause. Approximately 50 percent of deaths in people with type 2 diabetes worldwide are caused by CV disease.

About Jardiance

Jardiance (empagliflozin) is an oral, once daily, highly selective sodium glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor approved for use in Europe, the United States and other markets around the world for the treatment of adults with type 2 diabetes.

Jardiance works by blocking the reabsorption of glucose (blood sugar) by the kidney, leading to urinary glucose excretion, and lowering blood glucose levels in people with type 2 diabetes. SGLT2 inhibition targets glucose directly and works independently of -cell function and the insulin pathway.

Jardiance is not for people with type 1 diabetes or for people with diabetic ketoacidosis (increased ketones in the blood or urine).

Intended audiences

This press release is issued from Boehringer Ingelheim Corporate Headquarters in Ingelheim, Germany and is intended to provide information about our global business. Please be aware that information relating to the approval status and labels of approved products may vary from country to country, and a country-specific press release on this topic may have been issued in the countries where Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly and Company do business.

Please click on the link below for 'Notes to Editors' and 'References':

https://www.boehringer-ingelheim.com/press-release/new-jardiance-empagliflozin-data-show-reduced-risk-cardiovascular-cv-death-was

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160612005046/en/

Contacts:

Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH

Dr Ralph Warsinsky

Executive Director Media PR

Email: ralph.warsinsky@boehringer-ingelheim.com

Phone: +49 6132 77 7051

or

Lilly Diabetes

Molly McCully

Communications Manager

Email: mccully_molly@lilly.com

Phone: +1 (317) 478 5423
Grove Ventures, a Ramat HaSharon, Israel-based early stage venture capital firm, launched a $100m fund.

According to a regulatory form filed with the SEC, Grove Ventures L.P. has already held a first close at $30m from 17 backers.

Led by Dov Moran, Managing Partner, Grove invests in Israeli early-stage startups focusing on technology dealing with Internet of Things, Cloud and Big-Data and provides the support needed to build global businesses, trom strategy to execution, penetration and expansion.

The team of the firm also includes Guy Resheff, Partner, Sigalit Klimovsky, Partner, Ziv Livne, Associate, and Shir Markovich, Office Manager.

FinSMEs

12/06/2016
After a double podium finish at the first round of the 2016 Lamborghini Blancpain Super Trofeo Asia series in Shanghai, Armaan Ebrahim and Dilango Racing team-mate Dilantha Malagamuwa continued their strong form at Round 2 in Suzuka.

The duo qualified second for Race 1 at Suzuka, and managed to hold on to that position during the first stint of the race. Then, after pitting during the mandatory stop for a driver change, where Armaan handed the car over to Malagamuwa, they lost one position. This meant that they managed to finish third...
New Delhi: "We will not allow a repeat of Kingfisher," Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said on Sunday alluding to the collapse of the airline founded by Vijay Mallya, who left India recently after running debts of some Rs 9,000 crore.

The government was open to "light handholding" should any airline face financial crunch, he said answering questions during an interview to PTI in Delhi.

Raju recalled that when Spicejet found itself in trouble in early 2015, the government had lent a helping hand and saved jobs also.

Listing out plans to boost growth of the aviation sector, he said government will push for significant expansion of the air cargo considering its huge potential in view of growth of e-commerce and related sectors.

He said government was working on a policy initiative to ensure that the air cargo sector "leapfrogs" and helps further growth of the domestic aviation market, considered one of the largest in the world.

Air cargo makes up for just around 29 per cent of total Indian cargo in terms of value and improving the clearance process is key for the sector's growth.

A recent report by leading consultancy firm Ernst and Young said high dwell time for the import cargo is the major concern area across all six major international airports in the country, with the average period ranging between 4 and 9 days. Dwell time refers to time taken for clearance of cargo after landing at airports.

As part of efforts to promote cargo segment, the government had recently set up the Air Cargo Logistics Promotion Board (ACLPB) to work on ways to reduce costs, improve efficiency and ensure inter-ministerial coordination.

Raju said promotion of air cargo is a key objective of the government, given its potential considering the 'Make in India' initiative as well as the e-commerce segment.

A study by industry body Assocham has pegged the size of e-commerce industry in the country at over USD 38 billion by 2016, a 67 per cent growth over the previous year. The Minister said growth of e-retailers will substantially help in pushing growth of domestic air cargo sector.

While the domestic aviation sector has been witnessing substantial growth in recent times, the cargo space remains a laggard. At present there are only two local airlines dedicated to cargo  Blue Dart and QuikJet.

Admitting that Indian aviation sector is basically "passenger centric", the Minister said right now cargo does not figure much in the scheme of things even though the growth there has been good albeit low-base.

According to the draft aviation policy, revenue from air cargo can significantly help airlines subsidise the cost of passenger tickets. Currently, air cargo volumes in India are extremely low as compared to other leading countries due to high charges.

ACLPB is also preparing a detailed action plan that would seek to reduce the dwell time of air cargo from 'aircraft to truck' to below 24 hours by December end this year and to six hours by December 2017.
New Delhi: On Sunday President Pranab Mukherjee embarked on a six-day visit to three African nations  Ghana, Ivory Coast and Namibia  to boost trade ties with these countries known for having "solid political system, where democracy has taken roots".

This is the maiden visit of any Indian President to Ghana and Ivory Coast whereas to Namibia, such a visit comes after two decades.

Even though Mukherjee has toured a number of countries in the continent, he will be visiting these countries for the first time in his long political career.

He was a given a traditional send off at Rashtrapati Bhavan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vice President Hamid Ansari, Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag among others.

"All these countries we look at as good countries in terms of a solid political system, where democracy has taken roots and these are all doing reasonably well in their regions," Secretary (ER) Amar Sinha has said.

The President is accompanied by Minister of State in the PMO Jitendra Singh and MPs S S Ahluwalia and Mansukh L Mandaviya.

"It's a very important visit of the President. He is visiting two countries for the first time  Ivory Coast and Ghana, besides Namibia where an (Indian) President will visit after 21 years. He is having a number of engagements.

"This is not a ceremonial visit. It has an educational component, economic component and a community component," MoS Singh said.

The first stop of Mukherjee will be in Accra, capital of Ghana, where there will be delegation level talks at the President's House, which is called Flag Staff House, on Monday.

The imposing building has been built by a renowned Indian builder, Shapoorji Pallonji.

There are likely to be discussions on some agreements on visa waiver and line of credits is also in the pipeline.

Mukherjee will pay homage to Ghana's first President Kwame Nkrumah at his mausoleum of in Accra.

He will also be unveiling a statue of Mahatma Gandhi which has been gifted by ICCR, besides planting a sapling.

"Investment in Ghana is substantial, nearly three billion dollars in various sectors. NRI's, professionals have invested in IT, Pharmaceuticals and other areas. If you look at last three year figures, our trade has gone up nearly three times.

"Ghana's main trade consists of gold imports, it's nearly 80 percent of total trade. Ghanaian gold is in great demand in India," Sinha said.

The President will also be visiting the India-Ghana Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, set up by India, and will meet its faculty and alumni.

In the second leg of his tour, the President will arrive in Ivory Coast which had gone through a period of turmoil in the last decade.

"In 2011, a new government has come in and there has been a national reconciliation... With Ivory Coast, since this is the first visit, I guess the difference of languages must have dissuaded other higher level visits because it is one of the francophone countries," Sinha said.

Mukherjee will be received by President Alassane Ouattara himself at the airport.

He might be honoured with the highest award of that country, besides a symbolic handing over of key of Abidjan city.

"...Exim Bank, is going to re-open its office. It was relocated to Dakar during the civil war, so they have now got all the permissions and are relocating to Ivory Coast. This is their regional office is West Africa to monitor all the lines of credit that we have," he said.

Ivory Coast, a francophone country, is the biggest producer and exporter of cashew nuts to India which procures nearly 80 per cent of its total exports of cashew nuts.

The final stop will be Windhoek, capital of Namibia, where Mukherjee will meet President Sam Nujoma.

Namibia is a mineral and mining driven economy and India is likely to offer mining engineering training.

"The mining sector contributes roughly 10 or 11 per cent of the GDP but it gets them 50 per cent of their foreign exchange earnings so they are highly dependent on that. It is a small country with a population of around 2.5 or three millions," Sinha said.

India is likely to sign four MoUs on deputation of Indian Army for training purposes to Namibian Defence Forces and establishment of a Centre of Excellence in Information Technology which they need.

"Then there will be an MoU between Namibian Institute of Public Administration and Management and our own IIM Ahmedabad and also between their Public Administration and our Lal Bahadur Shashtri Academy which trains civil servants because they are focused on developing their own capacities," he said.
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has retracted her decision to put separatists leaders, Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, under house arrest to prevent them from holding a protest rally against the proposal to set up a Sainik Colony in Kashmir.

Mehbooba, according to ANI report, has decided to go soft on the separatist leaders and has given a nod to their release.

UPDATE: Separatists leaders SAS Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq & Yasin Malik have been released.  ANI (@ANI_news) June 12, 2016

The issue had been a soft spot for the Mufti government ever since she assumed power after the demise of her father and former Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. The row started when reports surfaced that the government is planning to allot land for setting up shelters for the Kashmiri Pandits and army personnel in the state.

The Mufti government had however, tried to dismiss it as a "demand made by the state subjects" which is still under review. She also clarified that the colony has nothing to do with 'non-state subjects'. Taking on the opposition for blowing the issue out of proportion, Mufti had said that gossip mongrels were using a non-issue to "disrupt peace in the valley."

However, the proposal for the colony did not specify whether non-state subjects could be allocated the space or not, drawing Mufti government much flak from the Opposition and the separatist leaders, reports said.

Following this, in an unprecedented move, both the factions of separatist groups, Hurriyat conference and the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) had decided to come together against the government's decision allocate land for separate colonies for Army personnel and Kashmiri Pundits in the valley.

The hard-line separatist leader Geelani and JKLF leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq met and agreed that it was a do or die situation for Kashmiris and freedom fighter, according to an India Today report.

The two groups decided to come together to launch a campaign against the establishment of Sainik Colony in the valley. Following this, the government had ordered a house arrest for the two senior leaders to preserve the law and order situation in the valley, and arrested the JKLF chief Muhammad Yasin Malik which it later backed away from.

Separatists leaders SAS Geelani & Mirwaiz Umar Farooq put under house arrest&Yasin Malik arrested ahead of their meet on Sainik colony issue  ANI (@ANI_news) June 12, 2016

Earlier on 25 May, the Jammu and Kashmir government had ordered the arrest of Malik on the eve of another such protest rally planned in the state.

The separatists have condemned any efforts to establish pockets of kashmiri Pandit and army settlements, stating it is an attempt "to change Kashmir's demography". The Hurriyat spokesperson had alleged that the new communal government will use its entire force and machinery to dilute Kashmir's demography to suit its own agenda, according to a India Today report.

The Mufti government has however categorically denied allegations of giving a go-ahead to Sainik Colony, according to The Indian Express report.

The Opposition has raked up the issue in the Assembly several times, staging protests and walk-out from the House. The National conference leader, Omar Abdullah's series of tweets have angered the chief minister much.

This tweet's dedicated to @mufti_mehbooba who through her ill tempered assembly intervention made me realise how much she hates me tweeting  Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) June 6, 2016
Lahore: The US has "moved ahead" of India in its enmity with Pakistan and wants to damage its nuclear programme, JuD chief Hafiz Saeed said.

"America has moved ahead of India in its enmity with Pakistan. It carried out drone attack in Balochistan to kill Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour to test Pakistan whether it would give any reaction.

"In fact, the US' target is Pakistan's nuclear programme and it (the US) wants to damage it with the help of Israel and India," Saeed said while addressing the activists of Falah-e-Insanyat Foundation (FIF), a subsidiary of the Jamaat-ud-Dawah, at the JuD headquarters in Chauburji in Lahore on Saturday.

His comments came a day after Pakistan lodged its protest to a visiting high-level US delegation over the 21 May drone strike in Balochistan, which killed Mansour.

The delegation - which included senior Director forAfghanistan and Pakistan at the US National Security Council Peter Lavoy and Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olson - was told that the strike "vitiated bilateral ties".

Saeed, who is carrying a USD 10 million bounty on his head in connection with his role in the 2008 Mumbai attack, further said: "It is our duty to tell the people of this country about the dangerous nexus of the US, Israel and India against Pakistan."

He asked Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to stop looking at the US for elimination of terrorism in the country.

Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, also alleged that India is installing missile system at its airports to target Pakistan's nuclear programme.
The two-day BJP national executive meet in Allahabad began around 4 pm on Sunday with the agenda to kick off the party's campaign for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls. Besides projecting pro-farmer schemes, the central government's "good governance" will be pitted against the "misgovernance" of the Samajwadi Party.

BJP's Anurag Thakur said, "When people face insecurity and employment becomes a challenge, BJP stands a chance in Uttar Pradesh."

The party's national office-bearers met Sunday morning to set the agenda for the evening meeting, party sources said. Several senior members of the Union Cabinet and chief ministers of all the BJP ruled states are likely to take part in the national executive meeting.

Amit Shah will deliver the inaugural address at around 5 pm on Sunday. At the meeting, party leaders are expected to formulate their strategy for the next round of assembly elections in several states, including the electorally important Uttar Pradesh, reported The Indian Express.

"Allahabad has been the state's political epicentre and the place where stalwarts like Jawaharlal Nehru, VP Singh have learnt their ropes. And a party meeting organised in Allahabad will certainly have a catalytic effect on our efforts to bring about political change in Uttar Pradesh," said BJP national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh.

Allahabad is also fondly remembered as Jawaharlal Nehru's birthplace. Historian S Irfan Habib said that Allahabad fits in the larger narrative of the "BJP as it is trying to write a new history, create new icons and dismantle old historical characters," according to a CNN-News18 report.

Mission 265-plus will be the core issue of the meeting. It is a term given by BJP to bag the majority seats in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, which has 403 seats, according to NDTV.

BJP's parliamentary board is expected to decide on Chief Ministerial candidate for the 2017 UP polls, not the executive board, reported CNN-News18.

It further reported that the party would conduct surveys across Uttar Pradesh before finalising its candidate, according to sources. Caste equations and the work done by Central government will form the basis of the survey.

Times Now, however, quoted sources as saying that there will no chief ministerial face for the Uttar Pradesh elections.

Some reports suggested that Modi and Shah offered the position of UPs chief minister to Rajnath Singh. However, he was not very pleased with the offer and has not yet communicated his response. Sources close to Singh said that he wants to remain in national politics.

Sources also pointed out that BJP had fared poorly in the last three assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh despite projecting a chief ministerial candidate  Rajnath Singh in 2002, Kalyan Singh in 2007 and Uma Bharti in 2012.

The BJP executive meet is also expected to discuss the achievements of the Modi government and welfare initiatives like Jan Dhan accounts, LPG for poor households and cheap medical stores.

The BJP leaders are also expected to use this platform to launch a scathing attack on the Samajwadi Party government for poor governance and deteriorating law and order.

"There is goonda raj in Uttar Pradesh under Akhilesh Yadav. The cocktail politics of Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Congress and Rashtriya Lok Dal have ruined the state," BJP national secretary Srikant Sharma told IANS.

"We will be giving a call to end this goonda raj," he added.

Meanwhile, Opposition parties are planning to protest against the BJP government at the Centre for failing to deliver on the promises made during the general elections. Aam Aadmi Party sought "permission" for staging a demonstration and waving black flags from a "safe distance" to protest PM Modi's maiden visit.

Several Congress workers were on Sunday detained while trying to enforce a city-wide 'bandh' in protest. Party workers, led by District Congress Committee members Haseeb Ahmed and Shrish Chand Dubey, had gathered at the Civil Lines crossing  barely a few hundred metres from the hotel where BJP president Amit Shah is holding a meeting of BJP national office bearers.

They were immediately detained by police as they had assembled in violation of security restrictions in place, and taken to the Civil Lines police station. The agitators alleged that Modi's two years in office have been characterised by tall claims and appealed to the people to observe the day as "Feku Diwas".

Almost all the streets and roundabouts in Allahabad are dotted with billboards or posters welcoming PM Modi and other leaders to the city. There are also a number of posters displaying the header 'Mission 265-plus'.

If not Rajnath Singh, there is no credible face that the BJP can project as the chief minister in Uttar Pradesh. There are some other names which the BJP and RSS have been discussing, including Varun Gandhi, Smriti Irani and Mahesh Sharma.

Some of the posters demand that Varun Gandhi should be BJPs chief ministerial candidate. He was dropped from the team of office bearers when Shah took over BJPs leadership, according to NDTV. However, his name has resurfaced on a number of posters and hoardings this year.

"Posters and hoardings don't mean someone is a claimant for the CM (chief minister's) post," said party leader Siddharth Nath Singh, NDTV quoted him as saying.

Firstpost's Sanjay Singh wrote that though Feroze Varun Gandhi's name figures 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, it is unlikely that the party leadership will make the chief ministerial candidate.

"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 had said.

A section of top leaders in Delhi and UP feel the Gandhi surname and Varun's strident image are his positives. However, others feel his style of functioning may displease the old guard, according to the NDTV report.

After the drubbing in Bihar polls, where the BJP structured its campaign on the Modi wave, the party learnt its lesson and projected Sarbananda Sonowal as the chief ministerial candidate in Assam. The strategy definitely worked in favour of the party. It remains to be been if they will ride on the Modi wave in Uttar Pradesh or align their campaign on a local candidate.

With inputs from agencies
Kolkata: West Bengal Pradesh Congress President Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Sunday urged the Centre to put pressure on the Afghanistan government for securing the release of an Indian woman aid worker abducted by unidentified gunmen in the Afghan capital.

"We have friendly relations with Afghanistan. The central government should be more proactive to secure the release of Judith and should put pressure on the Afghan government. I have sent a letter to the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) and National Security Adviser (Ajit Doval)," Adhir said.

Judith D'Souza, 40, working with Aga Khan Foundation, an NGO, was kidnapped on Thursday night while she was returning home after a dinner at a friend's place in the Qala-e-Fatullah area of Kabul.

A Communitst Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) delegation led by its General Secretary Sitaram Yechury met members of D'Souza's family during the day.

"Our mission in Kabul, the government and the organisation with whom she works are apparently in touch with the family. Everybody is making all their efforts. We have met members of her family and expressed our solidarity," said Yechury, who is also the member of the Consultative Committee of the Ministry of External Affairs.

"We conveyed (to them) anything that they require in terms of putting pressure on the government and eliciting information from our mission, as a member of the consultative committee, I will be available to do that."

D'Souza's family members, however, lauded the efforts of the government.

"Both the Indian Embassy in Kabul and MEA are updating us twice a day and they updated us on the process of release that is taking place. Likewise, the organisation is also updating us," said Judith's brother Jerome D'Souza.

"Some of the efforts are shared with us, but some are not, due to obvious reasons. Huge efforts are being made by the government to bring back my sister," he said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the abduction but it is feared that she may have been kidnapped by a criminal gang in Kabul motivated by ransom, according to Afghan officials.

Abductions for ransom in Afghanistan are common and criminal gangs have made millions of dollars from kidnapping foreign nationals.
Orlando: A shooting spree by a heavily armed man at a gay nightclub in Florida early Sunday left 50 people dead, making it the worst mass shooting in US history.

The worst mass shootings in America

Orlando, Florida, 12 June, 2016: Fifty people die and another 53 are injured when a heavily-armed gunman opens fire and seizes hostages at a gay nightclub.

Blacksburg, Virginia, 16 April, 2007: A 23-year-old student of Korean origin goes on a rampage at Virginia Tech University, killing 32 people before committing suicide.

Newtown, Connecticut, 14 December, 2012: A young man kills 26 people, including 20 children at Sandy Hook elementary school. He also fatally shoots his mother. He commits suicide.

Killeen, Texas, 16 October, 1991: A man shoots dead 22 people in a restaurant and then kills himself. Another wounded victim dies later.

Other gun attacks that have marked US history

Littleton, Colorado, 20 April, 1999: Two teenage boys shoot and kill 12 classmates and a teacher at Columbine High School before killing themselves.

Aurora, Colorado, 20 July, 2012: A man kills 12 people and injures 70 more when he opens fire at a movie theater showing a late-night premiere of a Batman film in a suburb of Denver. The gunman James Holmes is given a life jail sentence with no chance of parole.

Fort Hood, Texas, 5 November, 2009: US army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan opens fire at his military base, killing 13 people and wounding 42, before being overpowered by police. The shooting was the worst such incident on a military base in the United States.
Washington: An outpouring of anger toward the lax US gun control policy was witnessed on social media after a shooting spree in an Orlando nightclub left 50 dead and 53 wounded on Sunday.

"When will the USA learn & introduce tighter gun control? How many more have to needlessly die?" A twitter user named Dave Nelson lashed out, Xinhua news agency reported.

The sentiment was shared by fellow twitter user Tevin Wooten, who asked on his account: "Does anyone want to admit to a gun violence problem now?"

According to local police, the shooter, identified as a 29-year-old US citizen of Afghan descent, had an assault-type weapon and a handgun as he stormed the gay club at around 2 am local time (0600 GMT).

Furious gun control supporters are questioning why laws are still permitting people with radical thinking or mental illness to acquire assault weapons.

Since the attack, social media have been buzzing with discussions on the massacre, with over 7,00,000 tweets using the hashtag of "Orlando."

Around 100 people were at the nightclub at the time of the shooting, and the shooter was killed by police in a shoot-out.
Scottsdale, Arizona: Mitt Romney raised nearly $12.6 million for his primary battle in March, his campaign announced on Friday, in a sign of the Republican front-runner's growing strength toward winning the party's presidential nomination.

In addition, Romney has nearly $10.1 million cash in hand as he seeks to wrap up the nomination and focus on raising money for a difficult fight to unseat Democratic President Barack Obama in the November 6 election.

The $12.6 million figure, the best fund-raising month of his campaign, came at a time when Romney was still facing stiff competition from his last big conservative challenger, Rick Santorum, who has since dropped out of the race.

The amount was a sign of Romney's increasing momentum toward the nomination. In the last 12 months, his campaign raised $87 million in primary funds.

"Mitt Romney's continued strong fundraising shows that voters across the country are tired of the failures from President Obama. We will continue the hard work to raise the necessary funds to defeat President Obama and change the direction of the country," said Romney finance chairman Spencer Szwick.

Romney has also begun raising money for the general election jointly with the Republican National Committee. Romney's figures from that effort have not yet been disclosed.

A joint fund greatly increases how much a donor can give to help a candidate, thanks to larger contributions allowed for party organizations in addition to the campaign.

Campaigns can take only $2,500 during the primary process and another $2,500 for the general election. With a joint effort, a donor can also give up to $70,800 to the RNC and its local, state and district branches, according to the Federal Election Commission's guidelines for this election.

Both Republicans and Democrats are waging a war on who can raise the most money. Obama and his Democratic allies raised $53 million in March for the general election campaign, but donations to Democratic outside groups have lagged that of Republicans, a source of concern for Democrats.

The Romney campaign said that of the $87 million raised throughout the primary season thus far, $11.6 million came from relatively small donations of under $250. Some 286,520 donations under $250 had been received through the end of March.

Contributions came in from donors in all 50 states plus Washington D.C., and 89 percent of all donors can still donate again.

Reuters
CAIRO A Twitter account associated with Islamic State on Sunday posted a photo purported to be Omar Mateen, identified by U.S. authorities as the shooter who killed at least 50 people in a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

"The man who carried out the Florida nightclub attack which killed 50 people and injured dozens," the caption accompanying the photo read. There was no official Islamic State statement.

It was not possible to verify whether the picture was in fact of Mateen. Other Twitter accounts linked to Islamist militancy also carried photos of the same individual, and Islamic State supporters posted messages of praise for the attack.

(Reporting by Ali Abdelaty; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq The Iraqi army said on Sunday it had secured the first safe exit route for civilians to leave Islamic State's besieged stronghold Falluja, and a Norwegian aid group said thousands of people had already used it to flee in the first day it was open.

While it pressed on with its offensive in Falluja, the army also launched a fresh advance in the direction of the northern city of Mosul, Islamic State's de facto Iraqi capital, under cover of airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition.

The assaults by the Iraqi army are taking place at the same time as advances against Islamic State by U.S.-backed fighters and Russian-backed Syrian government forces in Syria, at the opposite end of the militants' self-proclaimed caliphate.

Fighting on a range of fronts in both Iraq and Syria in recent weeks amounts to some of the biggest pressure on the militants since they swept across much of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and declared their rule over all Muslims from territory that is home to millions of people.

In Iraq, the government launched a major operation last month to recapture the Islamic State bastion of Falluja, an hour's drive from Baghdad. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said troops are delaying advances to protect civilians. The United Nations fears for the fate of up to 90,000 people believed trapped inside Falluja with little food or water.

The new exit route, known as al-Salam (Peace) Junction, was secured on Saturday, southwest of Falluja, Joint Operation Command spokesman Brigadier-General Yahya Rasool told Reuters.

"There were exit routes previously, but this is the first to be completely secured and it's relatively safe," said Rasool.

About 4,000 people had fled the city over the past 24 hours through the al-Salam Junction, said Karl Schembri, a spokesman in Iraq for the Norwegian Refugee Council, which has been assisting people who escape the city.

"We expect thousands more to be able to leave in the coming days," he said.

The al-Salam Junction route was secured after troops dislodged insurgents from districts located on the western bank of the Euphrates river, opposite Falluja's city centre on the east bank, said Rasool. He did not give a number for the civilians who were able to flee so far using it.

More than 20,000 people have managed to flee the city and its surrounding area since the Iraqi army began the offensive on May 23, the United Nations said on June 8.

But the lack of secure routes made their escape extremely difficult and dangerous. At least a dozen people were reported to have drowned while crossing the Euphrates.

Those who managed to reach government-held lines said they walked for days to avoid sniper fire and explosive devices planted by Islamic State insurgents along roads to delay the army's advance.

A government official said the militants were putting up a tough fight defending the city, long an insurgent bastion where U.S. forces fought the heaviest battles of their own 2003-2011 occupation.

The army is receiving air support from the U.S.-led coalition and ground support from Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias and Sunni tribal fighters.

CAMPAIGN NEAR MOSUL

The Falluja campaign veers from Washington's battle plan, which sees the main fight looming in Mosul, the biggest city in either Iraq or Syria under Islamic State control.

Iraqi troops captured a village on Sunday that they could use as a crossing on the Tigris river as part of an eventual campaign near Mosul in the north.

The Haj Ali village sits on the eastern bank of the Tigris, opposite the Islamic State hub of Qayyara, where there is an

airfield the army aims to capture and use as a staging ground for future operations on Mosul.

The U.S.-led coalition said it carried out eight strikes near Qayyara on Saturday, destroying tactical units, mortar systems, rocket rails and facilities to produce car bombs.

Islamic State overran Mosul two years ago and went on to

proclaim a caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria, but has come

under increasing pressure in recent months, losing ground to an

array of forces.

Last week, Iraq deployed an armoured division along with

boats and bridges, to prepare for an eventual crossing of the river to Qayyara.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Maher Chmaytelli; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Peter Graff)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
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As the saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure. And while investors and folks at Ford Motor Company (F 2.80%) alike will hate that phrase in regard to the Lincoln brand, there is some truth to it. Consider that until recently Lincoln sales were in a steep and unrelenting downward spiral since the brand's peak in the late 1990s. Ironically, despite its slowing sales and its vehicle innovation stagnating in the U.S. until recent years, Lincoln's brand image is highly regarded in China.

"It's different in the U.S. than in China," Kumar Galhotra, head of Lincoln, said of the brand's standing in a January interview with Bloomberg. "In China, our heritage plays very strong. Our favorable opinion in China is actually ahead of Lexus and on the factor of prestige, we're actually ahead of Audi."

Because of that, and the fact that China's luxury auto market is expected to overtake the U.S. to become the largest in the world sooner rather than later, there are some serious changes being considered with Ford's luxury lineup.

To import, or not to import

Naturally, producing vehicles in a multitude of different markets across the globe comes with challenges distinct to each market. In China, for instance, the automakers have a decision to make when it comes to production versus import. On one hand, if you produce vehicles in China, you can avoid a 25% tariff that comes with importing vehicles. But that comes with a catch: To produce vehicles in China, you must partner up with a Chinese company to form a joint venture.

Ford has a joint venture, CAF, to produce non-premium passenger vehicles, in which it has a 50% equity investment. It also has two similar joint ventures, JMC and CFME, which produce trucks and commercial vehicles, and engines, respectively. Ford has a 32% equity investment in JMC and a 25% equity investment in CFME.

Meanwhile, as Ford is gearing up to accelerate sales of its luxury Lincoln lineup in China, it's currently paying the import tariff but reaping 100% of the rewards for those vehicles. That's working so far, but Lincoln's story in China is still in the early stages. If it's going to turn into a major player, the automaker will need to produce vehicles in the region.

Here is a good sign for investors hoping for Lincoln's success to take off in China: It appears Ford is already discussing with its Changan Automobile Group partner about producing Lincolns in Chongqing as soon as 2018.

Why does this matter?

This is an important development for a couple of reasons. Obviously, sales of luxury vehicles represent higher transaction prices and juicier margins for automakers, and have the advantage of not cannibalizing an automaker's non-premium vehicle sales. In addition, Ford potentially producing Lincoln vehicles in China means the company will have the flexibility to produce more vehicles in a scenario where demand for luxury vehicles surges.

Here are a couple of interesting statistics to ponder.

According to the China Automobile Dealers Association, the vast majority of Chinese consumers purchase vehicles with cash, and only 17% of China's auto sales were financed with loans. The picture here in the U.S. is much different, with nearly 85% of consumers financing their vehicle purchases in recent years. Also, according to the Dealers Association, profit margins for the 100 largest dealerships in China dropped to 1.22% last year.

With such low profit margins, it's not hard to imagine a scenario where dealerships begin to push luxury vehicles -- rather than less profitable alternatives -- to consumers through financing. That would help dealerships in two ways: producing incremental profit from financing and loans as well as selling the more profitable luxury vehicles.

Also, while it's no guarantee that the culture around debt and vehicle purchases in China will change, it's not unthinkable that as China's middle class grows it will follow a trend in taking on more debt for consumer products such as vehicles. If that happens, it could unleash many untapped luxury car buyers, and without a manufacturing presence in the region, an automaker like Ford could miss out on the opportunity to boost sales and grab valuable market share with its luxury brand.

Ultimately, investors hope that Ford can turn its business in China into a solid second pillar of revenue and profits. The company has definitely taken steps in the right direction over the past couple of years, and Ford's pre-tax profits were up 110% in its Asia-Pacific region in the first quarter on an 18% rise in revenue. A key part of that going forward will be Lincoln's success in China, where the brand remains a diamond in the rough.
It's no secret that the cost of attending college has gone through the roof over the past few decades. A degree that could be earned for just a couple thousand dollars four decades ago can now require parents to take out a second mortgage on their house. Given this new reality, saving for your children's college education has never been more important.

But what vehicles should parents use when preparing for the day their kids leave home? There are lots of options out there, but the three most popular are 529 Plans, Roth IRAs, and Coverdell Education Savings Accounts (ESAs).

When it comes to the differences between these accounts, here's a view from 30,000 feet:

529 Plans

The most important thing for parents to know about 529 Plans is that every state has its own set of options for parents. However, you do not need to use the 529 Plan offered in your state, or the state where your child's future college is located. A California resident can invest in California's 529 plan ... or Oklahoma's ... or Ohio's. The options are almost limitless.

The key advantage to this is that this allows parents to shop around for the best plans with the lowest expense ratios. Last year, I dug through all of the plans offered in the U.S. The states whose funds had the highest returns with the lowest expenses were: Illinois, Kansas, New Mexico, West Virginia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Delaware, California, Rhode Island, Iowa, Maine, Missouri, and Alabama.

The drawback with investing in another state's plan is that you usually forfeit any state tax-related advantages. That being said, there's no federal break for 529 contributions, and state income taxes are usually far lower than federal ones -- so the benefits of such deductions can be limited.

Roth IRAs

In terms of investing for higher education, there are two main differences between setting up a Roth IRA for your child, and just investing the money in your own name in a non-tax-advantaged account.

The first is that the money is in your child's name, and such funds are not taken into consideration on FASFA forms -- though individual colleges may consider them when determining potential aid.

The second is that if there is any money left after your child has graduated, he/she can keep that as a nice start on their retirement savings.

Otherwise, this isn't any different than a non-tax-advantaged account.

Coverdell ESAs

If you are an experienced investor, I consider this the crown jewel of education savings. You get to choose how your money is invested, and all growth and withdrawals can be made tax-free -- assuming that the funds are used for qualified education expenses. Note that these can also include expenses for elementary, middle, or high school tuition and/or fees.

How my family uses these three

Because I spend my time writing for the Fool, I feel comfortable investing what money we can for our 3-year-old daughter's educational expenses. Every year, we max out her Coverdell account, and invest it in the most promising opportunities we can find.

After that, our dollars will go toward a 529 plan; though we haven't opened up an account yet, we will likely use an Illinois state plan -- as I have found them to be the lowest-cost plans around.

Every family's situation, however, is different. This should help give you a broad view of your options, but there is no replacement for reviewing them with your own financial advisor.
Medicare is a vital program for Americans seeking to get coverage for their healthcare, especially after they retire. Although most people understand Medicare's importance, they don't always know the details of just how critical a need there is for the services that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services provide. Below, we'll look at some stats on the Medicare and Medicaid programs that will open your eyes to the importance of the program.

Medicare and Medicaid cover a substantial fraction of the American population

All told, Medicare and Medicaid cover more people than you might think. Medicare's population served is projected to have been 57 million in the federal government's 2016 fiscal year, up from 55.2 million in 2015. Of those, more than four-fifths get coverage because of their age, with the rest claiming benefits based on disability.

Surprisingly, Medicaid covers even more people, with an estimated 71.1 million recipients in fiscal 2016. Here, though, fewer than 6 million get Medicaid benefits because of age. More than 30 million children receive Medicaid benefits, and adults make up nearly 25 million more to go along with more than 10 million blind or disabled Americans.

Medicare physician coverage is worth about $3,000 per year to recipients

Medicare paid out $99.1 billion in program payments related to Medicare Part B physician and durable medical equipment in calendar 2014, the most recent year for which information is available. Nearly all Medicare participants who needed healthcare services that year had expenses in this category, amounting to 32.7 million out of 33.9 million served under Medicare Parts A and B combined. When you do the math, the amounts that the program spent for its participants amounts to about $3,030 per person. That goes to show just how costly healthcare coverage can be and how much need there is for services as you grow older and become eligible for Medicare.

Medicare in-patient hospital coverage is much more costly for the program

As you'd expect, however, the amounts that Medicare pays out for hospital care are even more substantial. A much smaller number of people need hospital care, with just 6.4 million participants getting services under Medicare Part A for in-patient hospital charges. Yet the $128.8 billion in program payments that Medicare paid dwarfs what the program spent on physician and durable medical equipment, and the corresponding average that Medicare paid was more than $20,000 per person. That makes it all the more surprising that even though Medicare Part B coverage comes with monthly premiums, Medicare Part A hospital coverage comes at no monthly premium cost, requiring only modest copayments and deductibles in most cases.

Medicare drug coverage has also become a sizable source of expenditures

Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage is the newest part of the overall Medicare program, having come into existence just over a decade ago. The program responded to a key source of financial hardship for older Americans, and the cost of Medicare Part D shows just how important it has become for participants in the program.

According to Medicare, 37.2 million people used their Part D benefits in calendar year 2014. That's more people than took advantage of either Part A hospital or Part B medical services. Benefit payments from Medicare to cover prescription drug costs amounted to $78.1 billion in 2014. When you work through the math, that works out to almost $2,100 per person in drug costs annually, and that only includes the portions that Medicare paid. When you consider the deductibles and copayments that most Medicare Part D plans require their participants to pay, it's easy to understand just how much money Americans spend on the prescription drugs they need to stay healthy.

Millions of Americans need Medicare and Medicaid, and it's staggering just how much the two programs do for the public. In this context, though, it's also easy to understand why the program is under long-term financial threat and why so many people see healthcare as the top challenge that the U.S. faces in the decades to come.
Senior citizens have plenty to worry about in retirement. At the top of that list, however, is getting the most out of Social Security.

The Social Security program was designed to provide a financial foundation for our nation's retired workers, and it's been paying out benefits to workers for more than 75 years. Based on a poll conducted by Gallup in October 2015, a majority of seniors are heavily reliant on Social Security income to meet their month-to-month expenses.

Some 59% of respondents in Gallup's survey described Social Security as a major source of monthly income, with another 31% noting it was a minor source of income. Thus, if seniors aren't able to get the most out of Social Security, up to nine in 10 could be cheating themselves out of the income they need and deserve in retirement.

Most Americans are fully aware that holding off on claiming benefits helps increase what they'll eventually be paid on a monthly basis. But what many Americans overlook is the impact of Social Security taxes.

Mind the taxes

Even if you've paid into the system via the payroll tax for decades, it's likely that you'll wind up paying tax on your Social Security benefits during retirement -- at least according to estimates from the The Senior Citizens League, or TSCL. Based on TSCL's estimates, 56% of Social Security households could owe federal income taxes on their Social Security benefits in 2015. Much of this tax liability stems from the fact that Congress hasn't adjusted the income levels that expose seniors' Social Security benefits to taxation since 1983.

For individual taxpayers, income below $25,000 exempts seniors from having to pay any tax on their Social Security benefits. If Social Security is your sole source of income, and you're earning less than $2,083 a month, you're in the clear. However, people earning between $25,000 and $34,000 could have up to half of their Social Security benefits exposed to federal income taxes. If you happen to earn more than $34,000, up to 85% of your Social Security benefits could be subject to taxation.

Couples face the same scenario, with the exception of slightly higher income ranges. Joint filers with less than $32,000 in income are free from federal taxation on their benefits. However, income between $32,000 and $44,000 could subject joint filers to federal taxation on up to half of their Social Security benefits, while income above $44,000 could mean up to 85% of joint filers' benefits are subject to taxation.

But this isn't all.

States may want their fair share, too

Seniors also need to be aware that certain states also tax Social Security benefits. These 13 states are:

Colorado

Connecticut

Kansas

Minnesota

Missouri

Montana

Nebraska

New Mexico

North Dakota

Rhode Island

Utah

Vermont

West Virginia

Yet here's the thing about states that tax Social Security benefits: They're not all alike. Four, in particular  Vermont, North Dakota, Minnesota, and West Virginia  tax seniors at the same rate as the federal government. In other words, these states aren't exactly retirement-friendly in this aspect, and thus could deprive seniors of hard-earned money during their retirement.

The remaining nine states have varying degrees of exemption levels. For instance, Kansas offers a generous state exemption on taxing Social Security benefits of up to $75,000 in income. Missouri is even more attractive for seniors, with exemptions on adjusted gross income of up to $85,000 for individuals and $100,000 for joint filers. In other words, if you retire in a tax-friendly state that doesn't tax Social Security benefits, or one with an exceptionally high income exemption, you can probably keep more of your benefits during retirement.

Don't forget about tax-free income

The best way to get the most out of Social Security is to ensure that you're using the most tax-savvy strategy to boost your income -- namely, the Roth IRA.

There are a number of effective ways to save for retirement, including a personal investment account through a brokerage firm, as well as a 401(k) through an employer. However, a 401(k) is a tax-deferred account, meaning that, when you begin making withdrawals during retirement, you'll have to pay ordinary taxes on the income.

If you tack your Social Security benefits on top of that income, you could wind up paying quite a bit in taxes. To be clear, I'm not saying a 401(k) is bad by any means; but I am saying that you'll need to be prepared for the tax consequences of a tax-deferred retirement account later in life.

A Roth IRA is a completely different beast. There are no upfront tax benefits with a Roth IRA, and you'll not be allowed to withdraw investment gains from your IRA for at least five years (assuming you're at least 59-1/2, and can make an eligible withdrawal without facing a penalty).

The advantage, though, is that investment gains in a Roth IRA are completely tax free for life. Any money you take out of a Roth during your retirement will not count toward your annual income. If you start saving early and amass a small fortune in your Roth, you can withdraw as much as you'd like annually without it affecting your Social Security tax liability.

Sometimes, the simplest planning can go a long way to protecting your hard-earned income in retirement. When preparing for your retirement, don't forget to mind the taxes.
Most investors believe that tech companies only start paying big dividends after they run out of room to grow. While that might be true, "old tech" stocks are still great income generators, and their low valuations provide downside protection and upside potential.

To find cheap "old tech" stocks with solid yields, I generally look for P/E ratios that are lower than industry averages, a 5-year PEG ratio close to 1, a dividend yield of at least 3%, and a sustainable payout ratio. Let's examine three stocks that meet all four criteria -- Cisco , Intel , and Qualcomm .

Image source: Getty Images.

Cisco Systems

Networking giant Cisco currently trades at 14 times earnings, compared to the industry average of 20 for the networking and communication devices industry. Analysts currently expect Cisco to grow its annual earnings by about 10% over the next five years, which gives it a fairly low 5-year PEG ratio of 1.2 (a PEG ratio under 1 is considered "undervalued"). Over the past 12 months, Cisco has paid out 36% of its free cash flow (FCF) as dividends. It currently pays a forward yield of 3.6%, and hashiked its dividend annually for the past five years.

Cisco's core businesses of switches and routers are slow-growth ones, but the company has been aggressively expanding its higher-growth businesses like security solutions and service provider video -- which both posted double-digit annual sales growth last quarterand offset the company's single-digit declines in switches and routers. Cisco also divested poorly performing units, likeset-top boxes, and invested in higher growth markets like the Internet of Things and cybersecurity through big acquisitions. Since Cisco can bundle these new services with its networking hardware, it will likely grow its market share and sales more effectively than smaller competitors.

Intel

Shares of Intel have fallen nearly 10% in 2016 due to concerns about sluggish PC sales, weaker-than-expected data center growth, and the company'sfailed push into smartphones. The company has aggressively invested in the Internet of Things (IoT) and wearables to offset those losses, but those businesses still only account for a tiny percentage of Intel's overall sales and earnings.

However, Intel's decline has reduced its P/E ratio to just 14, which is less than half the industry average of 33 for the broad line semiconductor industry. Despite its current weakness, analysts expect Intel's annual earnings to grow 10% annually over the next five years (due to a cyclical rebound in PC sales), which gives it a 5-year PEG ratio of 1.3. The chipmaker has paid out 39% of its FCF as dividends over the past 12 months, and has raised its payout annually for the past two years. It currently pays a forward yield of 3.3%.

Qualcomm

Qualcomm, the chipmaker that crushed Intel's mobile efforts, currently faces big problems of its own. Its chipmaking business, which generates most of its revenue, has been losing market share in mobile chips to cheaper rivals like MediaTek and first-party chips from OEMs like Appleand Samsung. Its patent licensing business, which generates most of its pre-tax profits, has been targeted by companies and government regulators, claiming that Qualcomm's 3% to 5% cut of the wholesale price of every smartphone sold worldwide is too high.

Image source: Qualcomm.

But like Intel, Qualcomm hopes that expanding into new markets like IoT devices, drones, action cameras, cars, and data centers will offset those losses. It's too early to say if those strategies will work, but Qualcomm's 20% decline over the past 12 months has made the stock fundamentally cheap. The chipmaker trades at just 17 times earnings, which is lower than the industry average of 25 for the communication equipment industry. Analysts believe that its annual earnings will improve 11% over the next five years, which gives it a 5-year PEG ratio of just 1.2.

Qualcomm pays a forward yield of 3.9% and has paid out 45% of its FCF as dividends over the past 12 months. The company has raised its dividend annually for the past 13 years, which makes it a much more reliable dividend growth stock than Cisco or Intel.

Should you buy these stocks today?

Cisco, Intel, and Qualcomm aren't great stocks for growth investors. But their low valuations and decent dividends make them ideal choices for conservative income investors. Moreover, adding a few "old tech" names to your long-term portfolio can offset some of the volatility that sexier "new tech" names might cause.

The article 3 Incredibly Cheap High-Yield Dividend Tech Stocks originally appeared on Fool.com.

Leo Sun owns shares of Qualcomm. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple and Qualcomm. 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 Cisco Systems 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.

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If you're among the lucky folks who received a bonus this year, you most certainly have reason to celebrate. But while you may be tempted to spend that newfound money on whatever your heart desires, in the long run, you'll be much better off if you use it responsibly. Here's where to start.

IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

1. Build your emergency fund

If you don't have an emergency fund, you're not alone. Most Americans have less than $1,000 in the bank. If you're among those falling short on savings, the first thing to do with your bonus is create an emergency fund, or build up the one you already have. As a starting point, you should aim to have enough money to cover three months of living expenses. If you're a homeowner or have dependents, your savings target should be six months' worth of living expenses or more. Having savings on hand is the best way to protect yourself should you suddenly get hurt, fall ill, or lose your job, so until your emergency account is fully funded, contributing to it should be your first priority.

2. Pay off bad debt

Carrying a credit card balance can cost you loads of money in interest fees, so the sooner you pay off what you owe, the better. Remember, unlike mortgage or student loan debt, credit card debt is considered the bad kind -- the kind that can send your credit score plummeting if you're not careful. Imagine you're carrying a $5,000 balance on your credit card that you plan to pay off over two years. At 12% interest, which is what you might be looking at today, you'll wind up wasting a good $650 in interest charges. But if you use your bonus to pay off that balance immediately, you'll not only knock out your debt, but save yourself $650 in the process.

3. Save for retirement

Most people require between 70% and 80% of their pre-retirement income once they're no longer working. And if you're counting on Social Security to provide all the income you'll need in retirement, think again. Social Security is only designed to replace about 40% of your pre-retirement income, so unless you're willing to make sacrifices in your old age, you'd better be prepared to bridge that gap. To that end, you can put your bonus to excellent use by allocating it to a retirement account. And if you put money into a traditional IRA or 401(k), you'll lower your tax burden for the year you make your contribution. For 2016, you can contribute up to $18,000 to a 401(k) and $5,500 to an IRA, and if you're 50 or older, those numbers jump to $24,000 and $6,500, respectively.

Even if retirement is several decades away, saving early on can yield big results. Imagine you receive a $5,000 bonus and put all of it into a retirement account when you're 27 years old. If your investments manage to generate an average annual return of 8%, which is actually below the stock market's average, by the time you reach 67, you'll have grown that sum into an impressive $108,000.

4. Save for important goals and milestones

Once you've built your emergency savings, paid off bad debt, and kick-started your retirement fund, the next best thing to do with your bonus is apply it to major life goals. Perhaps you're planning to buy a home within the next few years. Or maybe you have adult children with marriage on the brain and are hoping to help finance their weddings. No matter what milestones you're saving for, that bonus can go a long way toward helping you get there.

5. Dabble in investing

Investing your 401(k) or IRA to fuel your retirement savings is one thing, but investing for the short term is another. When your retirement investments earn money, you can't touch those profits until you're old enough to start taking withdrawals (currently age 59 1/2). But if you invest money in a traditional, taxable brokerage account, you have the option to cash out your gains and use that income as you please. You might treat yourself to a nice vacation, upgrade your car, or ship your kids off to that pricey summer camp whose brochure you've been eyeing for years. Though you will have to pay taxes on your earnings, the good news is that whatever profit you generate is yours to spend. Another option? Get your kids involved in the process, teach them about investing, and use your investment gains to start or add to their college fund.

While bonuses are a welcome reward for a job well done, the thing to remember is that they're usually not guaranteed. Before you blow that lump sum of cash, imagine that this year's bonus may be your last. It'll probably change the way you think about spending it.

The article 5-Point Checklist for Making the Most of Your Annual Bonus originally appeared on Fool.com.

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: iStock/Thinkstock.

When Apple released its mobile wallet two years ago, something odd happened: Virtually all of the nation's biggest banks got on board, including Bank of America and Wells Fargo . I say it's odd because Apple Pay inserts itself between a bank and its customers, thereby usurping at least some control over the relationship.

Why would Bank of America and Wells Fargo go along with this? As an initial matter, it seems safe to say that they were hedging their bets. If Apple Pay took off as a popular payment platform, major banks couldn't miss the boat.

Additionally, because the banks are presumably prohibited from working together to develop their own payment platform due to antitrust laws, they might as well get behind Apple's efforts to do so. At the very least, banks could rest easy knowing that the Cupertino, California-based company would make the payment process as seamless and secure as possible.

But there's a third reason, which executives of Bank of America and Wells Fargo addressed at a recent industry conference that's just as important as these. Namely, banks make money from so-called interchange fees when people use the credit cards that they issue. The cost of not participating in Apple Pay would thus have been to cede any interchange income that would have come from people using their credit cards, albeit by way of a third-party iPhone app, to a competitor.

Wells Fargo's president and chief operating officer, Tim Sloan, touched on this at this year's Bernstein strategic decisions conference. His remarks came in the course of explaining how the bank plans to grow its credit card business:

Bank of America's chairman and CEO Brian Moynihan also addressed this point at the Bernstein conference -- albeit less directly. Instead of referencing Apple Pay, Moynihan emphasized the importance of rewards in enticing customers to use its cards as opposed to cards issued by the bank's competitors:

From the perspective of Bank of America and Wells Fargo, then, while they would prefer that customers only use the banks' proprietary products for payment purposes, they'll settle for second best if that insulates them against a loss of interchange income. This creates a lucrative opportunity for Apple so long as it's able to capitalize on it.

The article Apple Pay: Why Wells Fargo and Bank of America Jumped on the Bandwagon originally appeared on Fool.com.

John Maxfield owns shares of Bank of America and Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple and Wells Fargo. 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 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.
Can a generous introductory offer keep American Express customers from defecting to Visa? Image source: iStock/Thinkstock.

When Costco and American Express announced that they were going their separate ways last year, with the warehouse chain soon beginning to accept only Visa cards, it begged the question: How would American Express counter the fact that 10% of its outstanding credit card accounts stemmed from its one-time exclusive deal with Costco?

We now have an answer.

American Express has mailed out offers to Costco members promoting its Blue Cash Everyday Card. You don't even have to open the envelope to get a sense for how aggressively American Express is trying to stop customers from fleeing.

The outside of the envelope informs customers of two things. First, as of June 20, their Costco American Express Card will no longer work. By then, Costco customers should have received, and can begin using, their new Costco Anywhere Visa Card which will serve as a method of payment and grant access to the membership company's warehouses.

Second, in the largest font on the envelope, American Express is advertising that customers can earn $250 back as a welcome offer. To qualify, you must spend $1,000 in purchases on the card within the first three months. You'll then receive $250 reward in the form of a statement credit.

Image source: iStock/Thinkstock.

Just as importantly, the new AmEx card doesn't charge an annual fee. It also applies an introductory 0% APR for 15 months on purchases and balance transfers.

The card itself offers a slew of generous benefits, though not as generous as those offered by the Costco Anywhere Visa Card -- the latter explains why American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault said at the end of last year that Costco's new terms didn't make "economic sense for us and our shareholders."

Customers who sign up and use the card will earn 3% cash back at supermarkets (limited to $6,000 in annual purchases), 2% back on purchases of gas, 2% back at select department stores, and 1% back on everything else. These are similar to American Express' co-branded Costco card, though the soon-to-be-extinct card gave 3% cash back on gas, 2% back on travel and restaurant purchases, and 1% back on everything else.

Visa's new co-branded Costco card, by contrast, provides some of the most generous reward tiers in the credit card industry today. And unlike both of the American Express cards, it has four tiers as opposed to three. The top tier offers 4% back on gas. The second tier consists of 3% back on travel and restaurant purchases. Holders also receive 2% back on purchases at Costco or Costco.com. And the fourth tier includes 1% back on everything else.

From the rewards perspective, then, there's a lot to love when it comes to the new Visa card. However, and this is worth noting, the two cards aren't mutually exclusive. Particularly in light of American Express' generous introductory offer of a $250 statement credit on purchases of only $1,000, not to mention its 3% back on spending at supermarkets, you'd be excused for thinking that having both may in fact be the way to go.

The article Here's How American Express Is Trying to Keep Costco Customers from Fleeing originally appeared on Fool.com.

John Maxfield has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Costco Wholesale and Visa. The Motley Fool recommends American Express. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
A year ago, e-commerce seemed like one of Nordstrom's strengths. Nordstrom's full-price business generated $2.3 billion in online sales in 2015, up 15% year over year. Including the off-price segment, its e-commerce sales exceeded $2.8 billion. This made Nordstrom one of the top 10 online retailers in the U.S., albeit far behind market leader Amazon.com .

More recently, e-commerce has started to look like an Achilles' heel for Nordstrom, however. Growth has slowed dramatically and management has admitted that the company isn't making much money online. This puts Nordstrom in a tricky spot as it decides on its next moves in the e-commerce market.

Nordstrom has hit some big bumps in the past year. Image source: Nordstrom, Inc.

Nordstrom resets its e-commerce strategy

Nordstrom has long treated its commitment to technology and e-commerce as a point of pride. Online sales surged from 5% of Nordstrom's sales in 2005 to more than 20% of its sales last year. By 2020, the company hopes to get 30% of its revenue from e-commerce.

This year, Nordstrom executives have started to admit that the company's foray into e-commerce hasn't been an unmitigated success. Nordstrom's full-price online business is far less profitable than its in-store business. Meanwhile, its off-price online initiatives have been money losers so far. For Amazon, which has consistently reported 20%-30% annual growth in recent years, investors haven't been too concerned about profitability. Nordstrom doesn't have the same leeway.

Indeed, rapid online sales growth hasn't actually led to higher profits at Nordstrom. In fact, Nordstrom's operating income is lower today than it was five years ago.

JWN Operating Income (TTM), data by YCharts.

To improve its e-commerce profitability, Nordstrom is cutting less profitable merchandise from its online assortment. In its bid to drive sales growth, Nordstrom had added items to its e-commerce inventory that it simply couldn't sell profitably online. The company is also looking to cut down on fulfillment and shipping costs.

Of course, in the short term, this strategy shift has been painful. Nordstrom's full-price online sales grew just 3.1% last quarter, down from 19.8% growth a year earlier.

Big decisions ahead

Nordstrom's pivot toward profitability rather than pure growth in its online business leaves it with some hard decisions about fulfillment capacity. Last August, Nordstrom opened its second full-price e-commerce fulfillment center. The new facility, located in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, allows Nordstrom to offer faster shipping to the East Coast.

At the beginning of 2016, Nordstrom seemed to be close to choosing the site for a third full-price fulfillment center -- thus following Amazon's lead by growing its fulfillment footprint. It had narrowed down the choices to two cities in California and one site outside the state.

With online sales growth crashing to a halt, Nordstrom is now hesitating to commit to building another full-price fulfillment center. In some ways, it's not surprising, given the uncertainty about Nordstrom's future e-commerce sales growth rate and the projected cost of $170 million.

On the other hand, this could be a case where it's necessary to invest some money upfront to save a lot of money later. California is Nordstrom's largest market. In fact, it's home to more than a quarter of all Nordstrom full-line stores.

Yet Nordstrom's nearest full-price fulfillment center is 1,500 miles away in Iowa. Having a full-price e-commerce fulfillment center in California could help Nordstrom meet its goal of reducing shipping costs while also getting orders to West Coast customers a lot faster. (Nordstrom does have a fulfillment center in California for off-price merchandise.)

I'm keeping an eye on this

There's no safe choice for Nordstrom. If it builds the third full-price fulfillment center, it risks being left with a glut of expensive fulfillment capacity unless its online sales growth accelerates again. But if Nordstrom abandons the plan, it could be faced with higher shipping costs and longer shipping times, eroding its competitiveness just as Amazon is becoming more aggressive in the fashion market.

The company's decision could shed a lot of light on management's confidence about Nordstrom's long-term e-commerce growth prospects.

The article Nordstrom, Inc. Faces Tough Choices About E-Commerce Growth originally appeared on Fool.com.

Adam Levine-Weinberg owns shares of Nordstrom. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon.com. The Motley Fool recommends Nordstrom. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image source: Getty Images.

Oil's steep dive has taken a growing supply of oil-fueled dividends with it. According to analysts, investors are going to be out a whopping $7.4 billion in lost income this year due to dividend reductions in the oil patch.

Not all oil dividends are in danger of being reduced, though. In fact, there are a few oil stocks that actually are in a position to increase their payouts. Here are three that we believe could boost their payouts before the year is out.

Rising oil prices will lead to an increase in the payout fromBP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust before year-end. After all, the company only paid $0.072 per share in April, and higher revenues from rising oil prices will mean higher payouts.

But that doesn't make it a worthy investment. As a matter of fact, it remains one of the more risky investments in oil production.

BP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust isn't a company, but a straight income play on the royalty interest rights of the Prudhoe Bay oil reserve, which is held by the trust. According to the trust, the assets are on track to stop meeting the minimum standards to support the trust by 2020.

In other words, an investment in this trust is a 100% bet on oil prices climbing substantially from here, and staying higher for a prolonged period. If oil prices don't go up (and stay up), the reduced financial payback of production from the Prudhoe Bay oilfield will continue to erode the value of shares of the Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust, making it even less likely that trust investors will break even at this rate.

Bottom line: Oil prices are rising, and the BP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust's distribution is going to go up from here -- but that doesn't make it a worthy income investment. If you're looking for a dependable dividend with steady increases, you're better off looking somewhere else.

I'm kind of cheating, because pipeline and processing companyEnterprise Products Partners has already raised its dividend once this year. Based on its history, though, we can probably expect the company to raise it again. After all, it has raised its dividend every year since its IPO back in 1998, and it's now on a streak of quarterly dividend increases that goes all the way back to 2005.

EPD Dividend data by YCharts.

There are several reasons for this close-to-20-year streak of dividend increases: predictable revenues from fee-based services, integrated services that can offset weakness in one segment, and a well-maintained balance sheet. During a specific time period, though, what really sticks out is Enterprise's management team, and its disciplined capital allocation.

While so many other master limited partnerships and pipeline companies have felt the pressure to quickly raise payouts to unsustainable levels in the event of a market downturn, Enterprise's management made the conscious decision to maintain its steady payment growth, and leave a large cushion between what it brought in every quarter and what it paid out. This cushion has allowed the company to invest organically in new projects, and keep from being reliant on the whims of the market to make decisions.

Yes, Enterprise Products Partners raising its dividend in 2016 is a slam dunk. Chances are you'll be able to say the same thing in 2017, 2018, and for even longer.

Occidental Petroleum pays a pretty generous dividend of 4% these days. However, thanks to its cash-rich balance sheet and improving cash flow due to higher oil prices, the company could soon be in a position to increase its already lucrative payout.

As of the end of the first quarter, Occidental Petroleum was sitting on $3.2 billion in cash. For perspective, that's enough cash to fully fund the company's 2016 capital expenditures budget with room to spare.

Occidental Petroleum doesn't need that cash to fund capex because it's generating enough operational cash flow to do the trick. In fact, last quarter, the company generated $820 million in operating cash flow, but only spent $700 million on capex. It did need to cover its dividend with cash last quarter, because its payout currently costs the company roughly $550 million per quarter.

However, what's worth noting about last quarter's results is that Occidental Petroleum only realized $29.42 per barrel of oil. With oil now around $50 a barrel, the company's cash flow is poised to surge. In fact, Occidental's cash flow was averaging more than $1.3 billion a quarter when oil was around $50 a barrel last year. In other words, if oil stays at this price, Occidental Petroleum could easily cover its capex and its dividend at its current run rates.

Things will get interesting if oil keeps rallying, because the company would start generating excess cash flow. Given its already rich cash position, Occidental Petroleum could use some of that excess cash to reward its investors via a higher dividend.

The article These 3 Oil Stocks Could Boost Their Dividends in 2016 originally appeared on Fool.com.

Jason Hall has no position in any stocks mentioned. Matt DiLallo owns shares of Enterprise Products Partners. Tyler Crowe owns shares of Enterprise Products Partners. The Motley Fool recommends Enterprise Products Partners. 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 marijuana industry is blossoming, and 2016 could wind up being its best year yet in a number of ways.

Marijuana keeps expanding despite federal inaction

Since California first approved Proposition 215 in 1996 to provide certain patients with medical marijuana on the basis of compassionate use, the marijuana industry has been trudging forward. Today, two dozen states have approved medical marijuana, while another four, along with Washington, D.C., have legalized the use of marijuana for recreational purposes.

State-level marijuana is yielding some incredible sales figures. According to cannabis research firm ArcView Market Research, legal cannabis sales totaled $5.4 billion in 2015, they're expected to hit $6.7 billion this year, and they could well hit nearly $22 billion by 2020 based on a projection that sees the marijuana industry growing at a compounded annual rate of 30%.

Colorado, for example, sold more than $1 billion in legal marijuana (medical and recreational) over the trailing 12-month period ending in February. In 2015, legal sales and licensing fees allowed the state to collect $135 million in tax revenue, some of which is being funneled back into education, law enforcement, and drug abuse programs. These are the types of figures that select state legislatures can easily get behind, and they're a big reason why roughly 12 states could vote on marijuana initiatives this November.

Yet despite marijuana's steady march forward, Congress and President Obama have proven to be a brick wall for industry advancement at the federal level. To be clear, the federal government is allowing states to govern their own marijuana industries without intrusion, but it has not begun to discuss the rescheduling or legalization of marijuana.

The contention all along has been that once regulators get an all-encompassing view of marijuana's safety profile, they'll be in a position to decide whether to reschedule or legalize the drug. Until such time as regulators have this safety profile in hand, marijuana is likely to remain an illicit drug.

Image source: Pixabay.

This 20-year marijuana study could be a catalyst for change

However, earlier this month a team of 10 researchers from New Zealand, the University of California, Davis, Duke University, Arizona State University, and King's College London, published a 20-year study in JAMA Psychiatry that examined the effect of cannabis on about a dozen common health measures, including lung function, blood pressure, body mass index, and waist circumference.

For the study, researchers requested that a group of 1,037 adults born in Dunedin, New Zealand self-report their physical health figures, as well as their frequency of cannabis use. Researchers also obtained lab results for health factors such as lung function, systemic inflammation, metabolic health, and periodontal health. These figures were collected at ages 18, 21, 26, 32, and 38, with the study managing to retain 95% of all participants.

After controlling for a number of factors, including tobacco use, childhood health, and childhood socioeconomic status, researchers' 20-year study came to an interesting conclusion -- namely, that marijuana use only had a statistically significant adverse impact on periodontal health. In other words, marijuana had no negative impact on a dozen other health factors, including lung function, systemic inflammation, BMI, or metabolic health. Comparatively, tobacco use was, unsurprisingly, "associated with worse lung function, systemic inflammation, and metabolic health at age 38 years, as well as within-individual decline in health from ages 26 to 38 years," per the abstract.

If periodontal disease is the worst that regulators have to worry about, then this long-term study could be a catalyst for federal action on marijuana.

Expansion doesn't guarantee investing success

The keyword there is "If," because even given this favorable long-term analysis and the growing number of states legalizing marijuana for medicinal or recreational use, there's no guarantee that Congress will take up marijuana legislation anytime soon.

President Obama has suggested that marijuana is not on his agenda in his final year in the Oval Office, and Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, hasn't exactly been enthusiastic about altering the current federal stance on marijuana. Clinton has reiterated that she'd prefer to wait and see what the long-term effects of the drug are. Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump appears open to the idea of legalizing medical marijuana at the federal level, but says he would need the agreement of Congress, which may not be likely.

The problem for investors looking to get in on marijuana's incredible growth rate -- which easily exceeds that of nearly all other industries -- is that the federal government's current stance on marijuana isn't very friendly. Yes, the federal government is letting states regulate their own industries, but keeping the drug illegal on the federal level leaves two huge disadvantages for the industry firmly in place.

First, U.S. tax code 280E disallows businesses that sell an illegal substance from taking normal tax deductions. Since marijuana is considered illicit, it falls under this category. Thus marijuana businesses are paying federal income tax on their grossprofits, rather than theirnetprofits. In plainer terms, marijuana businesses are being brutally overtaxed.

The other major issue for marijuana companies is that most banks want nothing to do with them, because banks fear the potential of federal prosecution down the road. Just 3% of the 6,700 national banks are currently working with marijuana-based businesses. Without access to basic banking services like a checking account or line of credit, businesses may struggle to expand. Security also becomes a major concern, as these businesses are forced to deal in cash.

So, even though the marijuana industry has a seemingly bright future, it doesn't look investment-worthy yet. My suggestion is to take Hillary Clinton's lead on this one and wait to see if the federal government changes its stance on marijuana. Until it does, marijuana is probably an off-limits investment.

The article This 20-Year Marijuana Study Could Blaze a Trail That Supporters Have Been Waiting For originally appeared on Fool.com.

Sean Williamshas no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen nameTMFUltraLong, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle@TMFUltraLong.The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe thatconsidering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Orlando's mayor on Monday revised the death toll in the nightclub shooting to 49, from 50. The 50th body was identified as gunman Omar Mateen.

Florida health officials were calling Sunday for blood donations following a shooting massacre in Orlando, where at least 50 people were killed and dozens more injured.

"Dozens of people have been injured and taken to area hospitals. The need for blood continues," the nonprofit OneBlood said in a statement.

OneBlood says there is an urgent need for O Negative, O Positive and AB Plasma. The nonprofit provides safe, available and affordable blood to more than 200 hospital partners and their patients throughout most of Florida, parts of Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina, according to its website.

The guidelines of the Food and Drug Administration for potential blood donors include the recommendation: Defer for 12 months from the most recent contact a man who has had sex with another man during the past 12 months.

However, OneBlood says it will be accepting donations from gay men, despite the federal policy. The agency says donors will be given full blood screening, but they are not turning people away from donations.

Generally healthy people ages 16 and older, who weigh at least 110 pounds, can donate blood. A photo ID is required.

According to police, 49 people were murdered and at least 53 injured when Omar Mateen, 29, opened fire inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, in what is the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Mateen later died in a shootout with police.

Doctors tending to the wounded urged potential donors to not show up at area hospitals to give blood. To make an appointment, potential donors can click here or call 1.888.9-DONATE.
Sunday brought the latest terrorist attack in America, the largest mass shooting in U.S. history, with all its attendant tragedy. Words cannot adequately describe the horror that engulfed the scene of this massacre, caused by one Omar Mir Seddique Mateen.

Beyond the human cost, however, also lies the tragedy that Barack Obama, speaking even as it became clear that the murderer was a radical Islamic terrorist, is still unable or unwilling to draw the appropriate conclusions. The presidents remarks omitted any linkages between the cold-blooded murders, the terrorists ideology, and the broader international threat that motivated the Orlando killer and perhaps others yet unknown.

We will, in the coming days, doubtless hear that the terrorist was a lone wolf, that he did not belong to any known terrorist organization, that there are no wider threats. In particular, those who are blind to the terrorist threat will downplay even the incontrovertible fact that Mateen pledged loyalty to ISIS as he committed his murders.

Two critical conclusions follow immediately from Sundays tragic reality, one with immediate implications for our domestic safety, and one for conducting the broader international war against terrorism.

The United States must urgently discard the fiction that we pay no price for not pursuing international terrorists vigorously and relentlessly.

First, the number of true lone wolf terrorists is infinitesimal. The implications of that phrase, namely that terrorism is not a widespread and still-growing phenomenon, are profoundly impairing our ability to protect innocent civilians. Terrorists like Mateen are not one offs who emerge randomly, unexpectedly and inexplicably, perhaps victims of mental disorders. The evidence is now indisputable that we are confronting a far larger threat, albeit not one organized conveniently for our understanding. This threat is unmistakably ideological, as Sundays Orlando attack and the apparently thwarted attack in Santa Monica demonstrate.

We simply must start acknowledging that terrorists -- whether ISIS, Al Qaeda, or others -- are not structured like governments or corporations. They are not staffed with desk-bound bureaucrats in grey suits, arranged pursuant to a complex, hierarchical organization chart. They do not send memoranda to each other through a complex clearance process, with copies distributed far and wide.

Nor do they function like spy networks and subversive political movements of days gone by. They do not carry party identification cards. They do not communicate through dead drops, brush passes, invisible ink and microdots. This is not an age where FBI agents have the capacity to infiltrate the cells that do not exist or shadow the agents who are running the actual terrorists.

Instead, it is not just the West that has mastered digital communications and Internet social networks. The terrorists are just as good at it, for their purposes better than we are at understanding their techniques and their success. Actors like Mateen are not rigorously following a critical path chart in ISIS headquarters. Instead, it is precisely the disconnected, unpredictable timing of the terrorist attacks, not necessarily staged in advance, that adds to their devastating effect.

Second, the United States must urgently discard the fiction that we pay no price for not pursuing international terrorists vigorously and relentlessly. President Obamas strategy against terrorist bases of operation, when it is evident at all, has been lackadaisical and offhanded. There is a clear rationale to this casualness. Obama manifestly believes that, as bad as terrorist attacks are, American overreaction is worse. In his view, the use of U.S. forces risks increasing the problem rather than reducing it, making us much a part of the problem as the terrorist threat itself.

This is, of course, utter nonsense. We are obviously defending ourselves from attack, not initiating it. And it is palpably our failure to defend ourselves that provides incentives for the terrorist to strike even harder. Here is where Obamas failure to pursue the campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq is so damaging. A slow, casual offensive against ISIS gives the terrorists time and opportunity to encourage strikes like the one we have just seen.

There is a cost -- and a very human cost -- to allowing ISIS any respite from the full force of U.S. and allied military power. It is not cost-free to slow roll the anti-ISIS campaign, not in the Middle East, not in North Africa, and most certainly not in the United States.

While the foreign political and military complexities of obliterating ISIS are real enough, presidential resolve and determination can overcome much. Obamas resolve and determination are AWOL.

I have long argued that the central issue of the 2016 elections should be national security. The Orlando massacre has tragically underlined that point. President Obama may not be able to acknowledge the grim reality endangering us, but the rest of us must do so. Fortunately, we will pick a new president this November, and that choice must, at all costs, be someone who does not share Obamas failings. The winning presidential candidate will be the one whose anti-terrorism policies are the most distinguishable from Obamas.
CIA Director John Brennan said in an interview with a Saudi Arabian television station Sunday that he expects the 28 classified pages of a U.S. congressional report into the Sept. 11 attacks to absolve Saudi Arabia of responsibility.

"I think the 28 pages will be published and I support their publication and everyone will see the evidence that the Saudi government had nothing to do with it," Brennan said in an interview with Arabiya TV, according to Reuters.

The classified section of the 2002 report is a key part to a dispute over whether Americans should be able to sue Saudi Arabia for damages. The Senate approved legislation last month allowing families of Sept. 11 victims to sue the Saudi government, defying a White House veto threat as well as threats of economic retaliation from Riyadh.

Saudi Arabias government has threatened to pull billions of dollars from the U.S. economy if the plan is enacted.

Saudi Arabia denies providing any support for the 19 hijackers  most of whom were Saudi citizens  who killed nearly 3,000 people in the terror attacks.

Brennan insists the 28-page section is just a preliminary review.

"It was found later, according to the results of the report, that there was no link between the Saudi government as a state or as an institution or even senior Saudi officials to the Sept. 11 attacks," he explained.

The Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence is reviewing the material to determine whether it should be declassified.

Former Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired the congressional investigation into the attacks, said in April the White House will likely make a decision on declassification efforts by June.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from Reuters.
The terror massacre at a packed Orlando nightclub reverberated across the presidential campaign trail Sunday, as the candidates condemned the deadliest shooting in U.S. history -- and Donald Trump ripped President Obama and Hillary Clinton for avoiding the term radical Islam in doing so.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee went so far as to say Obama should step down for not using the term and Clinton should get out of this race if she wont either.

If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore, Trump said in a statement. Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen -- and it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can't afford to be politically correct anymore.

Obama, speaking from the White House on Sunday, said the nightclub massacre in which 50 people were killed and at least 53 others were wounded is being investigated as an act of terror, though did not say whether it was tied to radical Islam.

The gunman, Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, was heard shouting "Allahu Akbar" while engaging officers, law enforcement sources told Fox News.

Mateen also called 911 during the shooting to pledge allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Fox News has learned.

ISIS reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack, though its unclear if the shooting was actually directed by the group or only inspired by it.

All these details, surrounding the deadliest terror attack on the U.S. homeland since 9/11, have fueled tensions in the presidential race at an already-combustible time.

Trump has faced intense criticism from members of both parties for his calls to temporarily ban Muslim immigration to the U.S.

In the wake of the Orlando attack, Trump again defended his proposals, saying on Twitter: What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough.

Trump originally was planning to deliver a speech Monday in Manchester, N.H., focused on the Clintons.

In the wake of the Orlando attack, it will also focus on security and immigration issues, Fox News is told.

Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders also condemned the attack, while speaking to reporters outside his home in Burlington, Vt.

Earlier Sunday, Clinton released a statement unequivocally calling the massacre an act of terror.

For now, we can say for certain that we need to redouble our efforts to defend our country from threats at home and abroad. That means defeating international terror groups, working with allies and partners to go after them wherever they are, countering their attempts to recruit people here and everywhere, and hardening our defenses at home. It also means refusing to be intimidated and staying true to our values, she said.

She also called it an act of hate -- a term Obama also used -- since the attacker targeted an LGBT nightclub during Pride Month. And she said the country needs to keep guns like the ones used last night out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals.

Clinton did not reference radical Islam.

Meanwhile, a joint campaign rally with Clinton and Obama set for Wednesday in Green Bay, Wis., has been postponed in light of the attack, according to a White House official.

Obama also ordered U.S. flags to be flown at half-staff as a mark of respect for the victims of the act of hatred and terror perpetrated on Sunday, June 12, 2016, in Orlando, Florida.

Florida GOP Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency, which will make additional resources available for local authorities.

He offered thoughts and prayers to all those affected by the attack, particularly the victims and their families, and praised the efforts of the first-responders.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Orlando's mayor on Monday revised the death toll in the nightclub shooting to 49, from 50. The 50th body was identified as gunman Omar Mateen.

The FBI said Sunday that the suspect in the Orlando nightclub shooting was investigated twice by the agency in recent years for connections to Islamic terror -- including a 2014 probe for possible ties to American suicide bomber Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha.

FBI agent Ron Hopper identified the suspect as Omar Mir Sadiq Mateen, 29, of Port St. Lucie, Fla.

Mateen early Sunday morning killed 50 and wounded 53 others inside the gay nightclub Pulse. He later died in a shootout with police after holding dozens of hostages for several hours.

Hopper told reporters at a press conference in Orlando that the FBI first became aware of Mateen in 2013, after he made inflammatory comments to coworkers alleging possible terrorist ties.

He said the agency thoroughly investigated the matter -- including conducting surveillance, checking records and interviewing Mateen and witnesses.

However, the case was closed because agents could not verify the substance of Mateens claims, Hopper said.

Mateen is a U.S. citizen and a Muslim born in New York to parents from Afghanistan, according to authorities.

The FBI investigated Mateen again in 2014 for possible ties to Abu-Salha, a fellow Floridian, but concluded the two had minimal contact and that Mateen posed no terror threat at that time.

Hopper said Mateen was not under surveillance or being investigated at the time of the nightclub attack.

Mateen called 911 before the attack and pledged his allegiance to Islamic State terror group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Fox News reported.



He also purportedly mentioned during the call the Tsarnaev brothers, who set off bombs at the 2013 Boston Marathon and were inspired by Islamic extremism.

Hopper did not confirmed such a call and said only that investigators are looking into any and all connections both domestic and international terrorism.

He also said the FBI is not actively looking for a second suspect or investigating any additional, related terror threats.

An agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said at the press conference that Mateen legally bought at least two firearms -- a handgun and a long gun -- within the past couple of weeks.

However, the agent declined to discuss specifics of the purchases.

Earlier in the day, top Capitol Hill lawmakers suggested Mateen appeared to have links to radical Islamic terrorism and that the FBI was aware of him and his activities.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said the FBI had told him that Mateen appeared to be connected to Islamic radicalism.

He also said the Senates intelligence staff thought that Mateen, married in 2009 to a woman who was born in Uzbekistan, had some connection to the Islamic State terror group.

California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said that local law enforcement said Mateen declared his allegiance to ISIS, which indicates an ISIS-inspired act of terrorism.

Schiff, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said other facts that suggest an Islamic extremist attack include the shooting taking place during Ramadan and ISIS leadership in Raqqa recently urging attacks this time of year.



New York GOP Rep. Pete King, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, told Fox News that Mateen was trained in weapons.

I don't want to release it before they do, but I can understand why the FBI was so quick to say this morning that they thought this had ISIS connections or at least ISIS ideology, King said.
President Obama said Sunday the Orlando nightclub massacre is being investigated as an act of terror, but declined to mention whether it was related to radical Islam, amid such mounting evidence, and argued the attack was another example of too many available guns in the country.

We know enough to say this was an act of terror and an act of hate, Obama said from the White House Briefing Room. As Americans we are outraged.

The president said the FBI is leading the investigation and that its still too early to say what might have been the shooters motivation in the open investigation.

However, he said investigators will spare no effort to find the association this killer might have had with terror groups.

The suspect has been identified as Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, Fla., whom congressional leaders said Sunday appeared to have ties to the Islamic State terror group.

The attack is the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Obama, who has tried over his two terms to tighten gun laws, said the nightclub shooting, in which 50 people were killed and 53 others wounded, reminds us how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon."

The president thanks the first-responders and pointed out that the fatal shootings occurred in a gay nightclub, which was called a place of solidarity of the LBGT community.

In the coming days, we will uncover why this happened, Obama said. In the face of hate and violence, we will love one another.
Democrat presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders said Sunday that hell meet Tuesday with presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton to talk about how shed run the country if elected in November but indicated he has no plans to quit the race before the partys July convention.

What we will talk about exactly is what kind of platform we have and what kind of administration she will have, the Vermont senator told ABCs This Week.

Sanders is facing increasing pressure to end his campaign to create party unity in the general election race against presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, especially since Clinton last week got enough delegates to clinch the nomination.

However, Clinton needed the help of superdelegates -- those who have pledged their convention vote to Clinton and whom Sanders hopes to win over in the coming weeks.

At a press conference late Sunday outside Sanders Burlington, Vermont, home, the candidate made clear his campaign is still alive.

We're taking our campaign to the convention. We're good at arithmetic, said Sanders, despite trailing Clinton by more than 500 superdelegates.

Sander also said he looks forward to talking to Clinton but that he needs to know whether shell embrace two key parts of his campaign platform -- standing up forcefully for working families and taking on Wall Street and other big money influences.

More specifically, Sanders told ABC that he wants Clinton to commit to a progressive tax system that makes big banks and billion-dollar-a-year corporations pay their fair share of taxes to help Americas under-class with health care costs and other needs.

Sanders also said he wants Clinton to push for free tuition at public colleges and universities, on which both agree, despite different plans.

The self-described democratic socialist also seemed to discredit arguments that staying in the race, which includes the final Democratic primary Tuesday in the District of Columbia, will hurt Clintons chances of winning the general election.

What my head is on right now is do everything I can to defeat Donald Trump, to do everything I can to make sure that the Democratic Party transforms itself into becoming a grassroots party that represents working people and young people, and not just a party that goes out raising money from the wealthy, Sanders said.
Donald Trump on Saturday kicked his unapologetic presidential campaign into high gear -- saying he wont apologize for his personal attacks on Sen. Elizabeth Warren and extending his feud with GOP establishment leader Mitt Romney.



The guys a stone cold loser, a choker, Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, said about Romney at a rally in Tampa, Fla.

Also on Saturday, Romney, who this weekend is holding an ideas summit in Utah, suggested that Trumps misogynistic and racially insensitive remarks have opened the door for generations of Americans to engage in similar behavior.

Trump told the crowd of about 5,000 in Tampa that Romney, the GOP presidential nominee who lost to President Obama in 2012, doesnt even know what a misogynist is.

Trump and Warren, a leading progressive voice in the Democratic Party, have attacked each other increasingly in recent weeks, with the exchanges appearing to intensify now that Clinton has become the partys presumptive presidential nominee.

On Thursday, Warren endorsed Clinton and accused Trump of race baiting and using racism toward the federal judge of Mexican heritage who is presiding over a civil fraud suit against the Trump University real estate school.

Trump has suggested the American-born judge wont give him a fair trial, considering Trumps disparaging comments about Mexican immigrants.

Trump has not apologized to the judge, despite widespread calls for him to do so.

On Saturday, Trump sarcastically suggested hell apologize for referring to Warren as Pocahontas, in response to Warren apparently attempting to use Native American heritage to further her academic and political career.

Trump said hed apologize because his name calling is an insult to Pocahontas, not Warren.

Romney, at his summit Saturday in Park City, likened the impact of Trump's words to former President Bill Clintons sexual dalliances in White House, which he said have impacted generations.

Now we have kids in elementary schools joking about the size of their hands, Romney said about one Trump comment, in a question-and-answer session with CNNs Wolf Blitzer.

Romney, nevertheless, credited Bill Clinton with correctly articulating that a candidates views on jobs and the economy largely decide elections when Clinton said: People vote with their pocketbooks.

He appeared to give a mixed message about how hell deal with Trump through November, saying hes not going to spend the next six months arguing his point of view.

Im not going to be an attack dog, said Romney, who then made clear that hell call out Trump for comments with which he does not agree.

Trump, who also held a rally Saturday in Moon Township, Pa., told supporters that former GOP House Speaker Rep. Newt Gingrich, Alabama GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions and former Secretary of State Condleezza Rice appear popular choices to be his running mate.

He dismissed Clintons recent line of attack that he lacks the temperament to be president and said, Shes got the bad temperament.

Trump said the recent tell-all book by a former Secret Service agent referred to the former first lady as a total mess.

We need strong temperament, Trump said. I have a strong temperament.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Orlando's mayor on Monday revised the death toll in the nightclub shooting to 49, from 50. The 50th body was identified as gunman Omar Mateen.

Facebook activated its Safety Check service for the first time in the U.S. after Sunday mornings deadly shooting in a packed Orlando nightclub that killed 50 people and wounded at least 53 more.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack Sunday afternoon via its Amaq news agency, according to Reuters.

Designed for times of disaster or crisis, Safety Check lets users in a specific area notify friends and family that they are safe. Users can also check on others in the affected area and mark friends as safe.

Related: Belgians harness social media to help people affected by Brussels terror attacks

The social network activated its Safety Check feature following the Brussels terror attacks and the bombing in Ankara, Turkey earlier this year, as well as the attacks that rocked Paris last year.

Earlier this year Facebook apologized for a glitch in its Safety Check service that sent out misdirected notifications after the Easter Sunday bombing that killed 70 people in Lahore, Pakistan.

The shooting at Orlando gay club Pulse dominated social media Sunday, with #Orlando the top trending U.S. topic on Twitter. News coverage of the attack also appeared in Facebooks Trending Topics section.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
EDITOR'S NOTE: Orlando's mayor on Monday revised the death toll in the nightclub shooting to 49, from 50. The 50th body was identified as gunman Omar Mateen.



A gunman who pledged allegiance to ISIS opened fire early Sunday morning in a packed Orlando nightclub, killing 50 people and wounding at least 53 more in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack Sunday afternoon via its Amaq news agency, Reuters reported. Amaq said an "Islamic State fighter" carried out the assault. It was not clear, however, if the shooting was actually directed by the terror group or only inspired by it.



The attack in Orlando at Pulse, which bills itself as "the hottest gay bar" in the city and was packed with more than 300 people for "Latin Night," was reported minutes after 2 a.m. Sunday.

It ended hours later when police stormed the building and killed the shooter.

Dozens of partygoers remained hostage in the club for several hours after the initial shooting, prompting SWAT teams to rush inside. Shortly after 6 a.m. local time, Orlando police tweeted that the gunman had been killed. Authorities said there was not believed to be any further threat to the area.

"We know enough to say this was an act of terror and an act of hate," President Obama said in a speech from the White House on Sunday, cautioning that it was still early in the investigation.

House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Rep. Adam Schiff said in a statement that the timing and location of the attack and information coming from local authorities indicated "an ISIS-inspired act of terrorism."

Thank youu i jumped out theres people still hiding inside the closets that the shooters dont know theyre in there https://t.co/NoOIud4Hxe  Juan Rivera (@InfamousJuan_) June 12, 2016

"The fact that this shooting took place during Ramadan and that ISIS leadership in Raqqa has been urging attacks during this time, that the target was an LGBT night club during Pride, and  if accurate  that according to local law enforcement the shooter declared his allegiance to ISIS, indicates an ISIS-inspired act of terrorism," Schiff said. "Whether this attack was also ISIS-directed, remains to be determined. Im confident that we will know much more in the coming hours and days."

The gunman, Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, was heard shouting "Allah Akbar" while engaging officers, law enforcement sources told Fox News. Mateen also called 911 during the shooting to pledge allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Fox News reported.

Mateen was interviewed three times by FBI agents -- twice in 2013, once in 2014 -- as part of two separate investigations, FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Ron Hopper said. However, both inquiries proved inconclusive and the cases were closed.

UPDATE: Chilling text exchange between mother and son. His condition is not yet know #Pulse pic.twitter.com/tslcUYvenf  Rav Vadgama (@TVRav) June 12, 2016

Mateen was not under surveillance or the subject of an active investigation at the time of the shooting, Hopper said.

The 2013 investigation was related to comments Mateen allegedly made to a co-worker "alleging possible terror ties." FBI agents were unable to "verify the substance" of his comments, Hopper said.

Mateen was also interviewed in 2014 due to his ties to an American man who later drove an explosive-laden truck into a restaurant in Syria for an Al Qaeda affiliate. Mateen and the suicide bomber, Monar abu Salha, attended the same mosque, however, the FBI determined their contact "was minimal," Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Mike

McCaul told Fox News.



Mateen was a U.S. citizen, Rep. Alan Grayson said during a Sunday morning news conference, though that was "not true of other family members of his." Mateen, 29, lived in Fort Pierce, Fla. He was born in New York to parents of Afghan origin and was a Muslim, Fox News confirmed.

Mateen was married in 2009 to a woman who was born in Uzbekistan, according to the couple's marriage license, but the two divorced in 2011.



"He was not a stable person," the ex-wife, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Washington Post. "He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasnt finished or something like that."

A mortgage form from 2013 lists Noor Salman as his wife and Mateen also had a 3-year-old son. Mateen appears to have had no criminal record.



A licensed security officer, Mateen also had a statewide firearms license. He purchased two guns -- a handgun and a long gun -- legally during the week before the shooting, an ATF official said.

Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life. pic.twitter.com/MAb0jGi7r4  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

The FBI was scouring Mateen's cellphone and electronic devices on Sunday afternoon to identify any possible terrorist connections. This includes searching for any traces of propaganda, scrubbing of his web browsing history, and running down communications with individuals via social media and mobile messaging apps.

As victims poured through their doors, Orlando Regional Medical Center officials called in six trauma surgeons, including a pediatric surgeon, Dr. Michael Cheatham said. Many of the wounded were "critically ill" due to their injuries, Cheatham said, and the hospital was trying to reach out to their families.

"I think we will see the death toll rise," Cheatham told The Associated Press.



Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency in Orange County following the attack and asked for a moment of silence throughout the country at 6 p.m. on Sunday.



"This is an attack on our people," Scott tweeted around 11:40 a.m. "It's an attack on Orlando. It's an attack on FL. It's an attack on America. It's an attack on all of us."



Chief John Mina of the Orlando Police Department said officers were initially engaged in a gun battle outside the club before the suspect, armed with a handgun and "assault-type rifle," went back into the building, where more shots were fired. He said the gunman then took several hostages.

"It appears he was organized and well-prepared," Mina said.

Officials said Mateen had some communication with police during this standoff, though they did not reveal what was said.



Eleven officers were involved in raiding the nightclub, and one officer was injured, according to Banks. The injured officer was hit by a bullet and his Kevlar helmet saved his life, Banks said.

A hotline for victims' families was set up at 407-246-4357. Identities of victims were being released at cityoforlando.net/victims after family members had been notified.



Witnesses in the club reported mass chaos after hearing several shots ring out inside the nightclub.

Pulse posted on its own Facebook page around 2 a.m.: "Everyone get out of pulse and keep running."

It's owner later said in statement that she was "devastated by the horrific events that have taken place today.

Pulse, and the men and women who work there, have been my family for nearly 15 years. From the beginning, Pulse has served as a place of love and acceptance for the LGTQ community. I want to express my profound sadness and condolences to all who have lost loved ones," Barbara Roma.



Mina Justice was outside the club early Sunday trying to contact her 30-year-old son Eddie, who texted her when the shooting happened and asked her to call police. He told her he ran into a bathroom with other club patrons to hide. He then texted her: "He's coming."

"The next text said: 'He has us, and he's in here with us,'" she said. "That was the last conversation."

Jon Alamo said he was at the back of one of the club's rooms when a man holding a weapon came into the front of the room.

"I heard 20, 40, 50 shots," Alamo said. "The music stopped."

Club-goer Rob Rick said it happened around 2 a.m., just before closing time.

"Everybody was drinking their last sip," he said.

Fox News' Catherine Herridge, Chad Pergram and Matthew Dean and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Orlando's mayor on Monday revised the death toll in the nightclub shooting to 49, from 50. The 50th body was identified as gunman Omar Mateen.

The gunman who killed at least 50 people at an Orlando nightclub early Sunday was a licensed security officer who claimed more than once that he had connections to Islamic terror groups, Fox News has learned, as the killer's ex-wife reportedly said he was unstable and would beat her.

Investigators identified the shooter as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, a Muslim who had a Statewide Firearms License. They said he lived in Port St. Lucie and nearby Fort Pierce. His father, Seddique Mateen, announced he was running for president of Afghanistan sometime around May 2015.

Omar Mateen "was not a stable person," his ex-wife told The Washington Post, which did not name her. "He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasnt finished or something like that." She said he worked as a guard at a facility for juvenile delinquents and frequently exercised at a nearby gym in his spare time.

His ex-wife was born in Uzbekistan. They were married in St. Lucie County in 2009 and reportedly divorced in 2011. The shooter remarried at least once after the divorce and had a three-year-old son.

Security firm G4S confirmed he'd been an employee since September 2007. "We are cooperating fully with all law enforcement authorities, including the FBI, as they conduct their investigation," company executives said in a statement.

"The fact that this shooting took place during Ramadan and that ISIS leadership in Raqqa has been urging attacks during this time, that the target was an LGBT night club during Pride, and  if accurate  that according to local law enforcement the shooter declared his allegiance to ISIS, indicates an ISIS-inspired act of terrorism," House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., announced. The gunman had Facebook and Myspace accounts, a counterterrorism source told Fox News.

Federal investigators were scouring Omar Mateen's social media profile and looking into his father's background, as well as possible connections to an outside group.

Seddique Mateen told NBC News his son got angry after seeing two men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago, suggesting that may have helped trigger the attack at the gay nightclub. "We were in Downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry... They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, 'Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that.' And then we were in the men's bathroom and men were kissing each other."

The gunman's father claimed the massacre "had nothing to do with religion."

The elder Mateen once voiced support for the Taliban and denounced Pakistan while hosting a television show on a California-based channel called Payam-e-Afghan, the Washington Post reported.

"Our brothers in Waziristan, our warrior brothers in Taliban movement, and national Afghan Taliban are rising up, he says in one of dozens of videos posted on YouTube under his name. Inshallah the Durand line issue will be solved soon.

The "Durand line issue" refers to the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and is a sensitive subject especially for members of the Pashtun ethnic group, according to the Post.

Omar Mateen was trained in firearms. Police said he killed each of his victims with an AR-15-type assault rifle but also carried a handgun. He had no apparent criminal history, sources told CBS News.

The shooter also worked in security at Indian River State College where he received an associate's degree in criminal justice, according to his father.

The ex-wife told the Post she met Omar Mateen online about eight years ago and moved to Florida to marry him. She claimed he wasn't very religious and showed no indications he'd been influenced by radical Islam. "He seemed like a normal human being," she said, adding, "He was a very private person."

The marriage lasted just a few months before her parents learned about the apparent beatings and pulled her out of the house, the Post reported. The ex-wife said she cut off all contact with Omar Mateen at that point.

The shooter was born in New York to Afghan parents. Both he and his father were registered Democrats.

Police worked to secure the van they said the shooter drove to the nightclub. Sheriff's investigators also evacuated an apartment building in Fort Pierce where they said he lived. Fort Pierce is roughly 25 minutes north of Port St. Lucie and nearly two hours southeast of Orlando.

"The question now is, was this a lone wolf acting, or was he recruited by ISIS? Was he directed by ISIS?" Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., told Fox News.

When asked about possible connections to radical Islamic terrorism, assistant FBI Agent in Charge Ronald Hopper told Fox News, "We do have suggestions that that individual may have gleanings toward that particular ideology. But right now we can't say definitively."

Hopper also said Omar Mateen made "threats in the past that he has ties to terrorist organizations."

The shooter died in a gunfight some three hours after a SWAT team stormed the club. In addition to the dead, the shooting wounded more than 50 people.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special Agent in Charge Danny Banks said earlier that the mass shooting was being investigated as an act of terrorism. He said authorities were looking into whether the incident was an act of domestic or international terror, and if the shooter was a lone wolf.

Fox News' Eben Brown, Matt Dean, Peter Doocy, Robert Gearty, Catherine Herridge, Chad Pergram, Mary Rydzeski, Garrett Tenney and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Authorities in Kentucky said Sunday that a police officer who was wounded in a shooting is in stable condition and the suspect is still on the run.

Louisville Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad said Officer Kyle Carrol was struck in the chest and was wearing a bullet-proof vest at the time. He said Carrol was taken to Louisville University Hospital.

Large police presence at U of L hospital. Media briefing on @LMPD officer shot will be in about 30 min. pic.twitter.com/3pEhM3YTpm  Fallon Glick (@FallonGlick) June 12, 2016

Conrad said Carrol was patrolling the departments first division when he saw Jacquan Crowley, 22, whom he recognized from an arrest he made in the past.

"As [Carrol] drove past the man, the man turned away, which the officer believed was an effort to hide his identity from the officer. That caused the officer to be concerned," Carrol said in a news conference.

Carrol became concerned and made a U-turn in his vehicle and drove back toward Crowley. Carrol then started to chase Crowley.

Conrad said Crowley jumped a fence and then fired at Carrol striking him in the chest.

Police said Crowley is still at large and ground and air units are searching for him. Hes described as a black male, about 5-foot 11 inches, weighing about 135 pounds and is believed to have long dreadlocks.

Crowley is said to be armed and dangerous.

Police urge anyone with knowledge of Crowleys whereabouts to call MetroSafe at 502-574-7111.

Click for more from WDRB-TV.
An Oregon judge ruled Friday that a transgender individual can legally change their sex to non-binary rather than male or female in what is believed to be an unprecedented ruling.

The Oregonian reported that Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Amy Holmes Hehn legally changed Jamie Shupes, 52, sex from female to non-binary.

The co-executive director for Basic Rights Oregon Nancy Haque said the ruling was a momentous day for genderqueer Oregonians.

"It's really exciting for the courts to actually recognize what we know to be true: gender is a spectrum," Haque told the paper. "Some people don't identify as male or female."

Shupe is an Army veteran who retired in 2000 a sergeant first class. She began transitioning in 2013 while living in Pittsburg and knew that neither the male or female gender label fit.

Shupe chose the name Jamie because it was a gender-neutral name and would rather be called Jamie rather than a pronoun.

"I was assigned male at birth due to biology," Shupe said. "I'm stuck with that for life. My gender identity is definitely feminine. My gender identity has never been male, but I feel like I have to own up to my male biology. Being non-binary allows me to do that. I'm a mixture of both. I consider myself as a third sex."

In April, Shupe and lawyer Lake Perriguey filed a petition to legally change Shupes sex to non-binary.

According to the Oregonian, state law allows a court to change a persons legal sex if a judge decides the person has undergone the surgical or hormonal treatment related to their gender transition.

Though the law doesnt require a doctors note, Shupe brought letters from the Oregon Health & Science University, as well as the Veterans Hospital.

"The sexual reassignment has been completed," Hehn wrote in the ruling. "No person has shown cause why the requested General Judgment should not be granted."

Attorneys at the Sylvia River Law Project in New York told The Daily Dot that some cities have IDs that allow residents to decline to declare a gender. However, Haque said more work has to be done.

Basic Rights Oregon is working with officials across the state to offer people gender designations beyond male or female. Oregon residents still cannot list non-binary on a drivers license or state ID.

"It's a huge barrier to being able to live your life, to having a driver license, to employment, to having records about your life, transcripts, all of those things," Haque said. "In all the ways our lives are gendered in ways they frankly don't have to be, it can be a barrier for people whose identities aren't easily put in a box."

However, Shupe said her win felt liberating.

"I'm not under pressure anymore to conform to either thing," Shupe said.

Click for more from The Oregonian.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Orlando's mayor on Monday revised the death toll in the nightclub shooting to 49, from 50. The 50th body was identified as gunman Omar Mateen.

The gunman who murdered at least 50 people in a Florida nightclub early Sunday morning was a follower of a controversial gang leader-turned-bank robber who was released from prison last year despite warnings from prosecutors that he would recruit people to carry out violent acts, sources told FoxNews.com.

Omar Mateen, whose bloody siege inside a packed Orlando gay nightclub ended when SWAT teams stormed the building and killed him, was a radical Muslim who followed Marcus Dwayne Robertson, a law enforcement source said.

It is no coincidence that this happened in Orlando, said a law enforcement source familiar with Robertsons history of recruiting terrorists and inciting violence. Mateen was enrolled in [Robertsons online] Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary.

Robertson and several associates were rounded up for questioning early Sunday, according to law enforcement sources, a development his attorney refused to confirm or deny.

No comment, Corey Cohen said in an email reply when asked if his longtime client was in custody. Police also did not confirm or deny picking up Robertson.

Robertson's school may not have been the only source of Mateen's spiritual guidance. The gunman was at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce with Imam Shafiq Rahman two days before the nightclub attack, according to The Washington Post. That mosque was frequented by American-born suicide bomber Monar abu Salha, who blew himself up in Syria in 2014, and the two knew each other, according to officials. Mateen's association with Salha led the FBI to interview him in 2014. Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Mike McCaul told Fox News law enforcement determined at the time their contact was minimal.

FoxNews.com has reported extensively on Robertson, a former U.S. Marine who served as a bodyguard to the Blind Sheik involved in the 1993 World Trade Center Attack and led a gang of New York bank robbers called Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves before resurfacing in Orlando, where he started an Islamic seminary.

The school, recently renamed the Timbuktu Seminary, is operated by Robertson, a 47-year-old firebrand known to his thousands of followers as Abu Taubah.

Robertson, who recently spent four years in prison in Florida on illegal weapons and tax fraud charges before being released by a Florida judge one year ago, has openly and enthusiastically preached against homosexuality. The targets of Mateens bloody rampage were members of the gay community of Orlando, 120 miles from the 29-year-olds home in Fort Pierce.

Prosecutors said wiretaps from 2011 proved Robertson instructed one of his students, Jonathan Paul Jimenez, to file false tax returns to obtain a tax refund to pay for travel to Mauritania for terror training.

Jimenez studied with Robertson for a year in preparation for his travel to Mauritania, where he would study and further his training in killing, suicide bombing, and identifying and murdering U.S. military personnel. He pleaded guilty in 2012 to lying to authorities and conspiring to defraud the IRS and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.

Robertson was arrested on a firearms charge in 2011 and pleaded guilty in January 2012. On March 14, 2012, federal authorities charged him with conspiring to defraud the IRS, which he was convicted of in December 2013.

While in the John E. Polk Correctional Facility in Seminole County, Robertson was considered so dangerous, he was kept in shackles and assigned his own guards. Whenever he was transported to court, a seven-car caravan of armed federal marshals escorted him. He was initially moved into solitary confinement after prison authorities believed he was radicalizing up to 36 of his fellow prisoners.

In seeking enhanced terrorism charges during sentencing for the two crimes, prosecutors said Robertson has been involved with terrorism activities, focused on training others to commit violent acts as opposed to committing them himself  overseas instead of inside the United States.

Yet efforts by federal prosecutors to tack on another 10 years to his sentence, based on enhanced terrorism charges under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, were not persuasive enough for U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell, who freed Robertson in June 2015 with time served.

Robertson had denied being involved with terrorist activities, in court and in postings on social media and in statements from his attorney to Fox News.

Federal law enforcement has been familiar with Robertson since 1991.

As a former U.S. Marine who became the leader known as "Ali Baba of a notorious New York gang Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, Robertson and his crew robbed more than 10 banks, private homes and post offices at gunpoint, shot three police officers, and attacked one cop after he was injured by a homemade pipe bomb.

During the same period, federal authorities claimed Robertson served as a bodyguard to Omar Abdel Rahman, nicknamed the Blind Sheik, who led the terrorist group that carried out the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and donated more than $300,000 in stolen funds to mosques he attended, both claims Robertson denied. Robertson has adamantly denied the claims.

After he was arrested in 1991 along with most of the other members of the gang, prosecutors cut a deal with Robertson, and let him serve four years in prison before going to work undercover for the FBI between 2004 and 2007 to document terrorists plans and networks in Africa, Egypt and the United States.

Many of the courts filings, including Robertsons own testimony from his most recent criminal case, remain under federal seal, which means only prosecutors, the judge and the defense can review the records.

Cohen told FoxNews.com in a statement that his client never taught or condoned violence in any way.

In fact for his federal case the judge did not find terrorist acts, which led to his sentence of time served, Cohen said.
Reaction to the Florida mass shooting at the Pulse Orlando nightclub Sunday when police say a gunman wielding an assault-type rifle opened fire before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers; at least 50 people were killed and dozens of others wounded.

___ "Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love." Pulse Orlando on its Facebook page.

___

"I was thinking, 'Are you kidding me?' So I just dropped down. I just said, 'Please, please, please, I want to make it out.' And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood." Christopher Hansen, who was in the VIP lounge when he heard gunshots.

___

"This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as domestic terror incident." Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings.

___

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, families and all those affected by this horrific tragedy. We are a strong and resilient state and we will devote every resource available to assist with the shooting in Orlando." Gov. Rick Scott.

___

"We are heartbroken and angry that senseless violence has once again destroyed lives in our state and in our country. Gay clubs hold a significant place in LGBTQ history. They were often the only safe gathering place and this horrific act strikes directly at our sense of safety." Equality Florida.

___

"Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act." Tweet from Hillary Clinton, Democratic presidential candidate.

___

French President Francois Hollande "condemns with horror" the mass killing in Florida and "expresses the full support of France and the French with America's authorities and its people in this difficult time." Statement from Hollande's office.
Stanford University graduating students and women's rights advocates used the school's commencement ceremony to again express their anger over the six-month jail sentence given to a former student for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

A handful of students demonstrated Sunday during "Wacky Walk," a rambunctious, slow-moving stroll by graduating students dressed in zany costumes that precedes the official graduation events.

One person held a sign that declared "Stanford protects rapists." Another graduate's sign was a message to the victim: "You are a warrior."

Organizers said they wanted to show solidarity to the woman sexually assaulted on campus last year by former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner.

"It's very important to amplify the voice of survivors," said Brianne Huntsman, a protest organizer.

The victim's emotional statement to the court about how the assault devastated her life was widely shared online, attracting national attention to the case.

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, whose rousing keynote speech called on Republicans to reconsider their endorsement of Donald Trump, closed his address urging sexual assaults be taken seriously.

"If someone tells you they have been sexually assaulted, take it effing seriously and listen to them," said Burns, who is the father of four girls. "Maybe someday we'll make the survivor's eloquent statement as important as Dr. (Martin Luther) King's letter from the Birmingham jail."

Turner's six-months in jail sentence, which also orders him to register as a sex offender for life, touched off an emotional national debate about leniency and campus sexual assault and sparked outrage with critics collecting thousands of signatures to demand trial Judge Aaron Persky be removed from the bench.

Turner, 20, of Oakwood, Ohio, is scheduled to be released from Santa Clara County jail in September, after completing three months of his sentence due to good behavior.

The women's advocacy group UltraViolet submitted more than 800,000 signatures to the Commission on Judicial Performance's San Francisco offices Friday in a symbolic effort for Persky's removal. The group also has filed a formal misconduct complaint.

A small plane carrying a banner reading "Protect Survivors. Not Rapists. #PerskyMustGo" that was commissioned by the group flew over Stanford University Stadium ahead of Sunday's commencement ceremonies.

"Stanford students are justifiably outraged over a so-called justice system that protects privileged white rapists over the survivors of their crimes," said Nita Chaudhary, co-founder of UltraViolet. "With one in four women sexually assaulted while in college, we need judges that take rape seriously, and that's why Judge Persky should be removed from the bench."

UltraViolet said it has also paid for a full page ad in The Stanford Daily's graduation issue inviting students and alumni to take a stand against rape and that bicycles carrying billboards calling for the judge's removal will accompany student protesters. The bikes are a nod to two graduate students who were riding their bicycles when they confronted the freshman as he attacked the unconscious victim by a garbage bin.

"I sleep with two bicycles that I drew taped above my bed to remind myself there are heroes in this story. That we are looking out for one another," the woman said in her statement to the court.
Authorities said Saturday a North Carolina teen had suffered non-life threatening injuries after being bitten by a shark.

WNCN-TV reported that Atlantic Beach Police Chief Jeff Harvey said an 18-year-old man suffered bites to his hands and wrist from a three-foot shark in three-foot deep water at around 2:30 p.m.

Fire Chief Adam Snyder told WITN-TV that the man was on vacation and was swimming in the water when the shark attacked.

The beach remained open after the incident and the teen was transported to Carteret General Hospital.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The leader of Al Qaeda has reportedly backed Afghan Taliban in a move to boost the groups efforts after President Barack Obama approved the expansion of the U.S. militarys role in battle-torn nation.

According to Reuters, Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri announced the he would pledge allegiance to Taliban guerrillas fighting in Afghanistan in an online audio recording.

"As leader of the Al Qaeda organization for jihad, I extend my pledge of allegiance once again, the approach of Osama to invite the Muslim nation to support the Islamic Emirate," he said in a 14-minute recording.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mijahed told Bloomberg that the group is still waiting to receive confirmation from its top officials. If confirmed, the endorsement will deliver brightness to our spirits and strengthen our jihad against U.S. invaders.

Earlier this week, senior U.S. and defense officials told the Associated Press the White House approved plans to expand the militarys authority to conduct airstrikes against the Taliban when necessary as the violence in Afghanistan begins to escalate.

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.

Ahmad Saeedi, a former Afghan diplomat to Pakistan, told Bloomberg that the Talibans Al Qaeda endorsement will prolong the Afghan war and bolster Taliban insurgency.

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 Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Afghanistan. But strikes against the Taliban were largely halted at the end of 2014, when the U.S.-led coalition's combat role ended. Limited strikes have been allowed in cases of self-defense or when Afghan forces were in danger of being overrun.

The Taliban have great presence in Afghanistan  more than any other militant organization. It has as many as 25,000 fighters in the region, while Al Qaeda boasts about 100 to 300 affiliates and ISIS having up to 3,000 members.

More than 30,000 Afghan security forces are fighting to quell the groups resurgence.

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 Taliban's 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.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from Reuters.

Click for more from Bloomberg.
The teacher crisis is real, and were not going to work our way out of it simply by making it easier to hire teachers.
Maryland Moving Help Service Launched By Furniture Moving Helpers

Furniture Moving Helpers is a department of Furniture Assembly Experts which was founded to fill up the gap of missing qualified furniture movers needed to perform furniture disassembly tasks needed in order to move furniture that could not be moved in the past.

--

After researching and assessing the professional moving services available in the Maryland area, Furniture Moving Helpers announced that they will be expanding their services to the area to satisfy the need for reliable, high quality moving help services which the area currently lacks.

The company has been successfully serving Washington DC, Baltimore, MD and Northern Virginia areas for the past 3 years, during which they have received much praise and appreciation from their valued clients. Talking about their services and the reasons behind their success, the company spokesperson said: "We pride ourselves in fully understanding our customers' needs; to get the moving job done in a timely manner; with respect to privacy. We service homeowners, apartment renters, apartment communities, hotel, restaurants, bar, small businesses, corporate office, law offices, government offices, retail stores and more. With over 3 years in the business, we have helped many small businesses and individuals establish themselves in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. Additionally, we also provide furniture disassembly, Furniture Delivery, and moving labor services for people moving into Washington DC, Baltimore MD and Northern Virginia."

Furniture Moving Experts were appalled by the low quality of Maryland moving help services which motivated them to introduce their own high quality services in the area. The company understands that clients put in a lot of trust and confidence in the hands of the movers when they hire professionals; therefore they deserve the highest standards of quality which Furniture Moving Helpers can provide. Reliability, efficiency and professionalism are the primary elements of the company's services.

A highly satisfied client of the Furniture Moving Helpers, write in his Google review: "I hired them to move my treadmill and elliptical freshly delivered from my garage to the basement. The guys were friendly, showed up on time. They moved and assembled both my treadmill and elliptical in 2 hours. I strongly recommend them."

The company has established a team of highly experienced and skilled moving professionals to provide moving help in the Maryland area.

About: Furniture Moving Helpers is a department of Furniture Assembly Experts which was founded to fill up the gap of missing qualified furniture movers needed to perform furniture disassembly tasks needed in order to move furniture that could not be moved in the past. Furniture Assembly Experts LLC specializes in the assembly and disassembly of Flat pack furniture at customers Homes and Office. For further details and information, log on to http://www.furnituremovinghelpers.com/

For more information about us, please visit http://Www.FurnitureMovingHelpers.com

Contact Info:

Name: Furniture Moving Helpers

Organization: Furniture Moving Helpers

Address: 9418 Annapolis rd Suite 204



Source: http://marketersmedia.com/maryland-moving-help-service-launched-by-furniture-moving-helpers/119105

Release ID: 119105

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Coalition Strikes Hit ISIL Targets in Iraq, Syria

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, June 11, 2016  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Iraq and Syria yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack, bomber, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 13 strikes in Syria:

-- Near Manbij, eight strikes struck seven separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed four ISIL fighting positions and an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Mara, five strikes struck five separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed four ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL tactical vehicle and two ISIL vehicles.

Strikes in Iraq

Fighter and remotely piloted aircraft and rocket artillery conducted 18 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government:

-- Near Baghdadi, two strikes destroyed two ISIL artillery pieces and an ISIL front-end loader.

-- Near Fallujah, two strikes struck a large ISIL tactical unit; destroyed nine ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL recoilless rifles, three ISIL light machine guns, two ISIL heavy machine guns and an ISIL anti-air artillery piece; and denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Habbaniyah, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL staging area, an ISIL command and control node, and two ISIL storage areas and denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Haditha, a strike destroyed an ISIL rocket cache.

-- Near Kisik, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL supply cache and an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Mosul, three strikes struck two ISIL tactical units; destroyed an ISIL fighting position, three ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL vehicle bomb and an ISIL heavy machine gun; and denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Qayyarah, seven strikes struck a large ISIL tactical unit, five ISIL communication sites, an ISIL recruitment facility, and an ISIL bed-down location; destroyed four ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL vehicle, six ISIL rocket rails and an ISIL mortar position; and suppressed a separate ISIL mortar position.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. 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, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.

Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

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Military Strikes Continue Against ISIL in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, June 12, 2016  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Iraq and Syria yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack, bomber, fighter, ground attack and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 16 strikes in Syria:

-- Near Abu Kamal, one strike destroyed two ISIL oil wellheads.

-- Near Raqqah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Manbij, 11 strikes struck 11 separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed three ISIL vehicles, four ISIL fighting positions, and an ISIL mortar position.

-- Near Mara, three strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit, an ISIL weapons storage facility and an ISIL ammunition storage facility and destroyed two ISIL fighting positions.

Strikes in Iraq

Attack, bomber, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 20 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government:

-- Near Baghdadi, a strike destroyed two ISIL artillery pieces and an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Bashir, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL vehicles, an ISIL assembly area and an ISIL supply cache.

-- Near Fallujah, three strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units; destroyed five ISIL fighting positions, four ISIL vehicles, two ISIL vehicle bombs, an ISIL heavy machine gun and six ISIL light machine guns; damaged two separate ISIL fighting positions; and denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Qayyarah, eight strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and an ISIL weigh station; destroyed three ISIL mortar systems, 10 ISIL rocket rails, two ISIL vehicle bomb facilities and an ISIL assembly area; damaged an ISIL mortar system; and denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Ramadi, a strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle bomb storage facility and an ISIL anti-air artillery piece.

-- Near Sinjar, four strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed two ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL rocket rail, an ISIL tactical vehicle, two ISIL vehicles, an ISIL fighting position, and an ISIL storage area.

-- Near Tal Afar, a strike suppressed an ISIL bunker.

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, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.

Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

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Powerful Bomb Blast Rocks Lebanon's Capital

by VOA News June 12, 2016

A powerful bomb blast ripped through a commercial area of Beirut, Lebanon Sunday, severely damaging one of the country's largest banks. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Beirut's Daily Star newspaper quoted a source saying the bomb weighed about 5 kilograms, exploding outside a Blom Bank branch in the upscale Verdun neighborhood, as many nearby residents were at home breaking their day-long Ramadan fasts.

Television footage showed shattered glass and badly damaged vehicles near the blast site.

Investigators were reported working late Sunday to determine the target of the blast.

In recent years, Beirut and its suburbs have been hit with a string of bombings that authorities have frequently linked to the civil war in nearby Syria. However, the Daily Star said Sunday's blast did not resemble those larger explosions, which have mostly targeted Beirut's southern suburbs.

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Iraq army secures 'relatively safe' exit route out of Fallujah

Iran Press TV

Sun Jun 12, 2016 12:38PM

Iraq's army has secured the first "relatively safe" exit route for civilians attempting to flee the city of Fallujah amid operations by the government forces to retake key areas from the Daesh Takfiri terrorists.

According to Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, who is the spokesman for the Joint Military Command, an exit route, known as al-Salam (Peace) Junction, was secured southwest of the city.

"There were exit routes previously, but this is the first to be completely secure and it's relatively safe," media outlets quoted Rasool as saying on Sunday.

Iraqi forces have been engaged in a major offensive to free Fallujah, located in the western province of Anbar. The large-scale push for the liberation of the city started on May 23.

Latest reports indicate that the forces have recently pushed back the terrorists from the strategic areas of Subeihat and Falahat, west of the city.

Thousands of civilians have been forced from their homes in Fallujah, while many more still remain trapped.

4,000 flee Fallujah using army's safe corridor

According to a Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said on Sunday, 4,000 Fallujah residents have fled the city in 24 hours using Iraqi army's safe corridor, AFP reported.

"The army opened a safe corridor for families fleeing from Fallujah through al-Salam intersection," an officer with the Joint Operations Command, which supervises the fight against Daesh, said.

Residents of Fallujah have been taking huge risks to flee the city, walking along mined roads and trying to cross the Euphrates River at any cost.

"The latest figure we have is that 4,000 individuals have managed to get out over the past 24 hours," the NRC's regional media adviser Karl Schembri said.

"We are of course relieved, but it also means we are completely overwhelmed as a humanitarian community," he added, warning that the available resources of safe drinking water would not meet the needs of all the displaced for much longer.

Schembri stated that the general aid effort in Iraq was massively underfunded, hampering the delivery of urgent relief.

In the short term, he said, the response to the Fallujah operation would require USD 10 million (8.9 million euros) over the next six months if another 35,000 people were displaced.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi recently announced that the offensive to liberate Fallujah has been slowed down due to fears for the safety of civilians being used as human shield. He also said safe corridors have been established to allow some civilians to exit.

In a separate development on Sunday, Iraqi troops managed to retake a village south of Mosul, a major city in the north that has been under the control of the terrorists since the summer of 2014. The Nineveh Operations Command said in a statement that government forces, equipped with tanks and armored vehicles, recaptured Kharaib Jabr on the western bank of the Tigris River.

The army forces are already advancing toward the village of Haj Ali, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of Mosul.

Iraq's central government has announced that the army will launch a full-scale military campaign to retake Mosul after uprooting the terrorists in Fallujah.

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Daesh terrorists attack Libyan forces in Sirte

Iran Press TV

Sun Jun 12, 2016 4:18PM

The Daesh Takfiri terrorists have targeted Libyan forces with a series of car bombs in the port city of Sirte, killing at least one paramedic.

Brigadier General Mohammed al-Ghasri said Sunday that the terrorists attacked forces loyal to Libya's unity government with bombs hidden in an ambulance and two other vehicles earlier in the day.

Two of the bomb attacks reportedly hit gatherings of pro-government troops and the third one hit a field hospital.

Ghasri said the attackers "infiltrated our siege" on the main stronghold of Daesh in the North African country and targeted medical units and supply lines.

One paramedic was killed and a number of soldiers were wounded, he said, adding, "They aimed to shake our ranks, to force us to retreat, but we remain steadfast. We are determined to finish the job before the end of the holy month of Ramadan."

He further noted that Daesh terrorists have moved into a populated area in the center of Sirte and their snipers have been taking positions on rooftops to shoot Libyan troops.

Sirte, the major Daesh stronghold outside Iraq and Syria, had fallen into the hands of the Takfiri terrorists in February 2015. The full recapture of the city is a major boost to the Government of National Accord (GNA), which has come to office through support from the United Nations.

The oil-rich North African country has had two rival governments since 2014, when politician Khalifa Ghweil and his self-proclaimed government seized control of the capital, Tripoli, with the support of militia groups, forcing the internationally-recognized government to move to the country's remote eastern city of Tobruk.

The two governments achieved a consensus on forming a unity government, the GNA, last December, after months of UN-brokered talks in Tunisia and Morocco to restore order to the country.

Daesh has been taking advantage of the chaos embroiling Libya since the NATO-backed overthrow of longtime dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, in 2011. The dictator was killed later.

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Indigo/TNS Geoff von Maltzahn (left) and David Perry head Indigo, which had produced a microbe-based seed coating.

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Soils fungi, bacteria hold potential

By Geoffrey Mohan, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Right under our feet.

Thats 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 Perrys Cambridge, Mass.-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, Calif., 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, Calif., for an undisclosed amount last year.

Big Bio and Big Ag arent 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 companys 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 Indigos 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 Smithsonians 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 MITs Von Maltzahn came calling. Im really happy with the academic lifestyle and I didnt feel the need necessarily to interact with industry, she said.

Arnold soon was intrigued by Von Maltzahs 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, Indigos science team theorizes.

I am really hopeful, and that doesnt come with my experience with outside parties, Arnold said. That comes from my experience working with plants and microbes and recognizing the potential for whats 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. Theres very little evidence, when you actually do experiments, that theres been anything thats 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 dont 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 plants 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 plants 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, Okla.

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.
An estimated $300 million in cost-share assistance payments is being made available to the nation's cotton producers to expand and maintain the domestic marketing of cotton.

Since 2011, cotton fiber markets have experienced dramatic changes. As a result of low cotton prices and global oversupply, cotton producers are facing economic uncertainty that has led to many producers having lost equity and having been forced to liquidate equipment and land to satisfy loans.

The one-time payment through the new Cotton Ginning Cost-Share program will be available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency upon sign-up, which will begin June 20 and run through August 5. Payments are expected to begin in July.

"Today's announcement shows USDA continues to stand with America's cotton producers and our rural communities," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said. "The Cotton Ginning Cost Share program will offer meaningful, timely and targeted assistance to cotton growers to help with their anticipated ginning costs and to facilitate marketing."

The ginning of cotton is necessary before marketing the lint for fiber, or the seed for oil or feed.

"While the Cotton Ginning Cost Share program makes payments to cotton producers for cotton ginning costs, the benefits of the program will be felt by the broader marketing chain associated with cotton and cottonseed, including cotton gins, cooperatives, marketers and cottonseed crushers and the rural communities that depend on them," Vilsack said.

The program will provide, on average, about 60 percent more assistance per farm and per producer than the 2014 program that provided cotton transition assistance, Vilsack said.

"I know producers have been waiting for this announcement on ginning cost-share assistance from USDA, and I am pleased to see the department put some assistance in place," said Rep. Randy Neugebauer, who represents the Big Country and the South Plains where the nation's majority of cotton is grown.

"This is not producers' first choice for how USDA could have addressed the downturn in cotton, and I agree that more could have been done by designating cottonseed as an eligible oilseed. The economic challenges facing cotton producers in our area are significant, and when farmers are in trouble, the whole community is affected," Neugebauer said.

"We greatly appreciate Secretary Vilsack and the USDA for listening to the concerns of cotton producers and coming up with a viable short-term solution that will helps us face some of our challenges," said Johnie Reed, a cotton producer from Kress and president of Lubbock-based Plains Cotton Growers.

The payments will be based on a producer's 2015 cotton acres reported to the Farm Service Agency, multiplied by 40 percent of the average ginning cost for each production region. With the pressing need to provide assistance ahead of the 2016 ginning season this fall, USDA will ensure the application process is straightforward and efficient.

According to USDA, the program estimates the costs based on planting of cotton in 2015, and therefore the local FSA offices already have this information for the vast majority of eligible producers and the applications will be prepopulated with existing data.

The program has the same eligibility requirements as were used for the 2014 Cotton Transition Assistance Program, including a $40,000 per producer payment limit, requirement to be actively engaged in farming, meet conservation compliance and a $900,000 adjusted gross income limit.

"Payments to Texas producers will be $36.97 per acre," Reed said.

"We had hoped for some flexibility in the payment limit, but we are grateful for the assistance, because our producers certainly need it," Reed said. "We recognize that this is a program for the near term, and we remain committed to working with Congress and others in trying to establish cottonseed as an 'other oilseed' under Title I of the 2014 Farm Bill, which would provide long-term stability for our industry."

For more information or to sign-up, producers can visit their local FSA county office. In the Big Country, the FSA office is located at 3400 South 14th Street, Abilene or call 325-695-0140. Concho Valley producers can visit the FSA office at 3514 Devonian Drive, San Angelo or call 325-653-1246.

Jerry Lackey is the agriculture editor emeritus. Contact him at jlackey@wcc.net.
In this photo released by Jean Revillard/ SI2, solar-powered airplane Solar Impulse 2, piloted by Swiss adventurer Andre Borschberg, flies over Manhattan in New York Saturday, June 11, 2016 shortly before landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The Swiss-made Solar Impulse 2 has landed in New York City on the latest leg of its globe-circling voyage. It had left Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania late Friday. (Jean Revillard/ SI2 via AP) EDITORIAL USE ONLY

SHARE In this photo released by Jean Revillard/ SI2, solar-powered airplane Solar Impulse 2, piloted by Swiss adventurer Andre Borschberg, flies over the Statue of Libery in New York Saturday, June 11, 2016 shortly before landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The Swiss-made Solar Impulse 2 has landed in New York City on the latest leg of its globe-circling voyage. It had left Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania late Friday. (Jean Revillard/ SI2 via AP) EDITORIAL USE ONLY In this photo released by Jean Revillard/ SI2, solar-powered airplane Solar Impulse 2, piloted by Swiss adventurer Andre Borschberg, flies over the Statue of Liberty in New York Saturday, June 11, 2016, shortly before landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The Swiss-made Solar Impulse 2 has landed in New York City on the latest leg of its globe-circling voyage. It had left Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania late Friday. (Jean Revillard/ SI2 via AP) EDITORIAL USE ONLY In this photo released by Jean Revillard/ SI2, solar-powered airplane Solar Impulse 2, piloted by Swiss adventurer Andre Borschberg, approaches Manhattan as it flies near the Statue of Libery, left, in New York Saturday, June 11, 2016 shortly before landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The Swiss-made Solar Impulse 2 has landed in New York City on the latest leg of its globe-circling voyage. It had left Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania late Friday. (Jean Revillard/ SI2 via AP) EDITORIAL USE ONLY

By FRANK ELTMAN, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP)  The pilots of a solar-powered airplane on a globe-circling voyage that began more than a year ago said their flight over the Statue of Liberty before landing in New York inspired them on their mission to promote a world free from reliance on fossil fuels.

"Today, liberty is about finding and promoting renewable sources of power," said Bertrand Piccard, the initiator and one of the pilots of the Swiss-made Solar Impulse 2. "Our mission is to demonstrate that just the energy of the sun can give us enough power to fly day and night."

Piccard and Andre Borschberg, who flew the plane to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, arrived Saturday from Pennsylvania at 4 a.m. after a 4 hour-41-minute flight.

"It was really gorgeous," Borschberg said of the aerial view of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. "I felt like I was a young child in front of a Christmas tree."

Their trip across the U.S. mainland began April 24, when Solar Impulse landed in Mountain View, California, after flying over the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco on its way from Hawaii.

Piccard said the pair hoped to leave sometime next week on their journey across the Atlantic Ocean toward Europe. He said weather conditions will dictate when they embark and a decision will likely be made in flight as to where they land  either Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal or elsewhere.

Across the U.S., they stopped in Phoenix; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Dayton, Ohio, home of aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright; and Allentown, Pennsylvania.

The Solar Impulse 2's wings, which stretch wider than those of a Boeing 747, are equipped with 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries. The plane runs on stored energy at night. Ideal flight speed is about 28 mph, although that can double during the day when the sun's rays are strongest.

The trip began in March 2015 from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and made stops in Oman, Myanmar, China and Japan. The plane had a five-day trip from Japan to Hawaii, where the crew was forced to stay in Oahu for nine months after the plane's battery system sustained heat damage on its trip from Japan.

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This story has been corrected to show the solar plane landed in Mountain View, California, not San Francisco, on April 24.

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Follow Eltman on Twitter at @feltman41
In this photo taken Tuesday June 7, 2016 flooded caves are seen at Ruggles Mine is seen in Grafton, N.H. The mine produced mica, feldspar and other minerals for 160 years before turning into a tourist attraction and is now for sale. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

SHARE In this photo taken Wednesday June 8, 2016 one of many signs along New Hampshire's roads for Ruggles Mine is seen in Grafton, N.H. The mine, which has been a tourist attraction for 50 years, is now for sale. (AP Photo/Jim Cole) In this photo taken Tuesday June 7, 2016. real estate agent Doug Martin walks through the caverns at Ruggles Mine in Grafton, N.H. After mining for 160 years, and then a tourist attraction for 50 years, more than 200 acres of land and the mine are for sale for $2 million.(AP Photo/Jim Cole) In this photo taken Tuesday June 7, 2016 an old ticket sutb is seen in gthe museum at Ruggles Mine in Grafton, N.H. After mining for 160 years, and then a tourist attraction for 50 years, more than 200 acres of land and the mine are for sale for $2 million.(AP Photo/Jim Cole)

By HOLLY RAMER, Associated Press

GRAFTON, N.H. (AP)  It's a mine, but it could be yours for $2 million.

Ruggles Mine, which produced mica and other minerals for 160 years before being turned into a New England tourist attraction in 1963, is up for sale. The 235-acre property includes a gift shop, small museum and an enormous pit with tunnels and caverns that make up the oldest and largest mine of its kind in the United States.

"It's quite spectacular when you drive up that country road and there's nothing but trees all around. And you get to the top of this mountain, and there's a magnificent view," said the mine's 90-year-old owner, Geraldine Searles. "Walking down into this massive rock formation that you could walk right through  it was thrilling."

Searles' late husband purchased the New Hampshire property in 1960 for $20,000, hoping to continue the mica mining operation. But after the federal government stopped subsidizing the industry, leaving domestic mines unable to compete with the overseas market, the couple decided to open the property to the public. Since then, a steady stream of school groups and tourists from around the world have paid admission to poke around and collect as many rocks as they can carry.

While adults often saw "just plain old rocks," the children were quite knowledgeable, Searles said.

"They were well taught in school and they have a great curiosity, naturally, and this is a wonderful spot for them," she said. "I used to get a big kick out of the kids because they were so enthusiastic."

The mine was discovered in 1803 by Sam Ruggles, who reportedly kept it secret for years and used to transport the mica, a layered mineral, in the middle of the night to Portsmouth. From there, the transparent sheets were shipped to England, where they were turned into windows for ships, woodstoves and whale-oil lamps. By the early 1930s, an estimated $12 million worth of mica had been removed. Since then, the mica has been used for electrical insulation, roof shingles and cosmetics, and in later years, in scouring powder.

As a tourist attraction, the mine attracts thousands of visitors from May to October. Douglas Martin, of Keller Williams Realty, said several potential buyers have expressed interest.

"People are interested in buying something so they can make a living, maybe work six months of the year and go to Florida," he said.

Fellow listing agent Beth Decato Beaulieu also has heard from another mine owner, as well as some who want to keep the tourist attraction but expand in new directions, perhaps adding a campground.

"There's even been some discussion of a mountaintop restaurant and making it a full-day attraction that might bring Grafton to another level," she said. "I just hope that someone who purchases it knows the value it has had for all the generations that have gone through there."

The mine is not open this spring and summer, except for June 18, when it will host a free open house for the public.

"It's just time for me to stop working," said Searles, who has run the attraction with her daughter and other family members. "I hope someone enjoys minerals and will enjoy the mine as much as I did."

Moshe Miller visited the mine with his parents as a child and has returned several times with his wife and children. The minerals they've collected over the years are prominently displayed in their New York home, he said.

"We have a special collection from each of our visits, marked by year," he said. "It's a lot of weight to take back from New Hampshire to New York  it makes the car heavier  but we bring it back to remind us of our trip."

Miller said he hopes the new owners retain the tourist attraction.

"The idea that we wouldn't be able to go there again is devastating," he said. "We love the place."

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Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.
In this May 23, 2016 photo, doughnut puffs with dark chocolate dipping sauce, styled by Sarah Abrams, are displayed at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York. The puffs, which look like a mini muffin coated in cinnamon sugar, were created by Elizabeth Karmel based on her memory of a favorite sweet she and her sister used to enjoy in a New York bakery. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

SHARE In this May 23, 2016 photo, doughnut puffs with dark chocolate dipping sauce, styled by Sarah Abrams, are displayed at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York. The puffs, which look like a mini muffin coated in cinnamon sugar, were created by Elizabeth Karmel based on her memory of a favorite sweet she and her sister used to enjoy in a New York bakery. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

By ELIZABETH KARMEL, Associated Press

When I was growing up, my father would take us to get fresh hot doughnuts from Krispy Kreme every Sunday. The cake doughnuts, covered in peanuts or dipped in sprinkles, were always my favorite. And to this day, I crave cake doughnuts.

Fast forward 20 years to the time when both my sister and I lived in the same New York neighborhood. There was a fantastic bakery nearby where the counters were piled high with zucchini bread, apple walnut muffins, whoopie pies.

As a cook myself, I loved the setup as much as the pastries. It was an open commissary kitchen with a walk-up counter for ordering. As you waited in line, you could watch the bakers make all manner of homespun baked goods. Among the array of deliciousness displayed on the counter was what looked like a mini muffin coated in cinnamon and sugar. The texture of the crumb inside was less dense and more cake than muffin, and it had a cinnamon flavor and a pop of nutmeg. It was called a "puff," or at least that is what my sister and I called it. A puff with a double-shot cappuccino was morning heaven.

My sister moved out the neighborhood years before I too relocated. Because the bakery is no longer close, I decided that I should try to re-create those puffs. A Google search brought up dozens of images for what resembled the mini bites of heaven, but it was amazing how the actual recipes varied greatly and how few delivered.

Finally, I hit upon a recipe with more sugar and more milk making a thinner, more cake-like batter. I increased the cinnamon and nutmeg and added a pinch of lemony cardamom to round out the warm spices  and frankly, just because I love cardamom. The advantage of the sweeter lighter cake is that they will last up to three days in an airtight container. In fact, I think that they are better the next day, making them ideal for a Father's Day breakfast. Make them on Saturday and serve them on Sunday.

These are so good that I often make them for dessert and serve them with a dark chocolate dipping sauce.

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Baked Cinnamon-Sugar Doughnut Puffs with Dark Chocolate Dipping Sauce

Start to finish: 45 minutes

Servings: 6

2 cups all-purpose flour

1  cups granulated white sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 generous teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 scant teaspoon ground nutmeg, preferably fresh ground

Pinch of cardamom

 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup whole milk

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

2 teaspoons pure vanilla

Topping:

 cup granulated white sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt

Dark Chocolate Dipping Sauce

6 ounces bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate (chips or chopped block chocolate)

1/3 cup heavy whipping cream

1 tablespoon Bourbon (or liqueur such as Kahlua, Frangelico, etc.,), optional

 teaspoon vanilla extract

1-2 tablespoons granulated sugar, if desired

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom and salt into a large bowl. In a second bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, butter and vanilla. Add wet mixture to dry and stir a little at a time until combined.

Spoon the batter into prepared mini muffin tins or regular muffin tins. The easiest way to do this is by transferring the batter (which is fairly thin) to a liquid measuring cup and pouring into tin.

Bake for 16-18 minutes for minis, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the muffin comes out clean. The tops of the muffins will look dry and slightly nubby.

In a second shallow bowl, mix sugar, cinnamon and sea salt together.

When "puffs" are done, remove from muffin tin after about 2-3 minutes and place on cooling rack. Let cool on the rack for about 1 minute. While the muffins are still warm, swirl them entirely in cinnamon-sugar mixture.

Place muffin back on cooling rack to cool. Eat when cool with or without chocolate dipping sauce, and place any leftovers in an airtight container.

They will keep for 3 days.

For dipping sauce: Make the chocolate sauce up to 2 days in advance. Heat cream to almost boiling, remove from heat and add chocolate. Stir until melted and well combined. Add liquor and vanilla, stirring constantly. If you like it a little sweeter, add sugar, otherwise leave as is. The doughnuts are covered in cinnamon sugar, so I like the chocolate sauce without any added sugar.

Cover with plastic wrap and set aside, or refrigerate.

Nutrition information per serving: 676 calories; 201 calories from fat; 22 g fat (13 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 109 mg cholesterol; 360 mg sodium; 113 g carbohydrate; 9 g fiber; 77 g sugar; 9 g protein.

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Elizabeth Karmel is a barbecue and Southern foods expert. She is the chef and pitmaster at online retailer CarolinaCueToGo.com and author of three books, including "Taming the Flame."
Visitors look at a reproduction of Michelangelo's Last Judgment in a replica of the Sistine Chapel in Mexico City, Thursday, June 9, 2016. A private art project has created a temporary replica of the chapel in Mexico's art deco Monument to the Revolution. The Vatican-approved Mexican replica was created using more than 2.7 million photographs printed on cloth and hung from a metal framework. The replica not only includes the frescos of Michelangelo, but sculptures and decorations also adorn the life-size model. (AP Photo/Nick Wagner)

SHARE A man looks at the artwork inside a replica of the Sistine Chapel in Mexico City, Thursday, June 9, 2016. The Vatican granted permission for the construction of the life-size model that required millions of photographs to be made of the actual building. (AP Photo/Nick Wagner) Visitors look at a replica of the Sistine Chapel in Mexico City, Thursday, June 9, 2016. The Vatican granted permission for the construction of the life-size model that required millions of photographs to be made of the actual building. (AP Photo/Nick Wagner) Visitors stand inside a replica of the Sistine Chapel in Mexico City, Thursday, June 9, 2016. The Vatican granted permission for the construction of the life-size model that required millions of photographs to be made of the actual building. (AP Photo/Nick Wagner) Visitors look at a replica of the Sistine Chapel in Mexico City, Thursday, June 9, 2016. The Vatican granted permission for the construction of the life-size model that required millions of photographs to be made of the actual building. (AP Photo/Nick Wagner)

By LULU OROZCO, Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (AP)  Renaissance art lovers in Mexico won't 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 Mexico's art deco Monument to the Revolution.

People were lined up on Thursday to see the replica, which is open free to the public through June 30.

"I got the idea two years ago with my brother, inside the Sistine Chapel," said Gabriel Berumen, creative director and producer of the replica. "When we walked inside and saw its beauty we said 'Can we replicate this? Of course we can, in Mexico', that's when the dream began."

The Vatican-approved Mexican replica was created using more than 2.7 million photographs printed on cloth and hung from a metal framework. The replica not only includes the frescos of Michelangelo, but sculptures and decorations also adorn the life-size model.

Pope Julius II who was pontiff from 1503 to 1513, hired Michelangelo to paint the ceiling, which was completed in 1512. The nine central panels illustrate the episodes of Genesis, from the creation of man to the fall, the flood and the resurgence of humanity with the family of Noah.

"Particularly in Mexico I think this benefits a lot of people; it's something marvelous that a lot of people don't have access to. People who can't travel to Rome can witness the replica; it's a blessing," said Alberto Salvador, exhibit assistant.

It once would have been considered a political miracle as well. Among the Mexican heroes entombed beneath the simulated chapel is Plutarco Elias Calles, the president who led a ferocious crackdown on the church in the 1920s that resulted in open warfare. Tight restrictions on the Catholic church remained in place for more than half a century.
Abbot 27 crash memorial.

Last week I wrote about the Abbot 27 crash near Sterling City.

What happened when the big Air Force plane crashed May 25, 1955?

San Angeloan Charles Anderson didn't see or hear the crash. He was 7 or 8 years old when the crash happened on ranchland far from San Angelo.

But both his mother and father worked, so he was staying at the neighbor's house on 38th Street near Chadbourne Street and U.S. 87 when the news came.

"There was not much TV in those days, and KCTV was only on the air from noon to 6 p.m.," he said.

"The neighbor's radio was our only source of news until Mom got home and we could turn on our TV," Charles said.

"After noon until that night hundreds of Army trucks started passing the intersection of 38th and Chadbourne headed north," he said. "We stood at the corner for hours watching them."

"It was reported that a B-25 from Goodfellow had crashed when the crew went to sleep while flying," Charles said.

"This was the story for weeks, and the B-36 crash was never mentioned."

But then, when a memorial was installed next to the Tom Green County Courthouse Annex a few years ago "it clicked," Charles said.

"Why would the Army send thousands of men to a B-25 training accident?" he asked. Charles was able to find the accident report and study the crash in great detail.

"It was at the height of the Cold War and the Air Force had to cover up the crash," he said. "Was the aircraft carrying atom bombs or not?"

The B-36 carried two of the bombs, Charles said. "The bottom line is that the Air Force claimed there were no bombs aboard, but the reaction to the crash suggests otherwise," he said.

"The crew apparently flew into a tornado and the plane crashed in a flat spin," Charles said. "The crew was pinned in the plane in the front right and the rear left of the aircraft," he said.

All 15 airmen on board died. They were members of the 40th Bomb Squadron of the 6th Bombardment Wing at Walker Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico. A monument in their honor was erected in 2007 at the Tom Green County Courthouse in San Angelo.

And, as Charles says, "Now the truth is known."

Rick Smith is a local news and community affairs columnist. Contact him at 325-659-8248 or rick.smith@gosanangelo.com.
FILE - In this July 8, 2014 file photo, a woman walks past the Everest Institute in Silver Spring, Md., owned by Corinthian Colleges. Federal education officials are deciding whether to shut down the nations biggest accreditor of for-profit colleges over allegations that it overlooked deception by its schools. The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools is meant to be a watchdog for hundreds of for-profit schools, wielding the stamp of approval that colleges need to receive federal money. Institutions that have operated under the groups certification include the Corinthian College chain, which closed in 2015 amid fraud allegations, and the ITT Technical Institute chain, which now faces federal charges of fraud. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

SHARE In this June 30, 2009 file photo, Larry Wostenberg teaches an engine management systems class at the WyoTech technical school, which was operated by Corinthian Colleges Inc, at their campus in Laramie, Wyo. Federal education officials are deciding whether to shut down the nations biggest accreditor of for-profit colleges over allegations that it overlooked deception by its schools. The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools is meant to be a watchdog for hundreds of for-profit schools, wielding the stamp of approval that colleges need to receive federal money. Institutions that have operated under the groups certification include the Corinthian College chain, which closed in 2015 amid fraud allegations, and the ITT Technical Institute chain, which now faces federal charges of fraud. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver, file)

By COLLIN BINKLEY, Associated Press

BOSTON (AP)  Federal education officials are deciding whether to shut down the nation's biggest accreditor of for-profit colleges over allegations that it overlooked deception by some of its schools.

The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools is meant to be a watchdog for hundreds of for-profit schools, wielding the stamp of approval that colleges need to receive federal money. It's one of many accreditors authorized by the U.S. Education Department to ensure the quality of schools. But the nonprofit is being accused of employing lax standards and failing to stop schools from preying on students.

Institutions that have operated under the group's certification include the Corinthian College chain, which closed in 2015 amid fraud allegations, and the ITT Technical Institute chain, which now faces federal charges of fraud. Even after the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau began investigating both in 2013, the council found no major problems during its own reviews. In 2014, it included two Corinthian schools on its annual "honor roll."

"If accrediting agencies aren't willing to stand up against colleges that are breaking the law, colleges that are cheating their students, then I don't know what good they do, and I sure don't know why we would let them determine which colleges are eligible for federal dollars," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said at a congressional hearing on Corinthian last year.

At least 17 colleges certified by the council have been subject to state or federal investigations, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, a liberal public policy organization in Washington. Over the past three years, those schools received more than $5.7 billion in federal money, the group said.

Attorneys general in more than a dozen states, along with other critics, want the Education Department to strip the council of its authority to accredit schools. The council is up for its regular review this month; it was last approved in 2013.

"This is an outfit that is in the business of sustaining and aiding and abetting with fraud and abuse," said Barmak Nassirian, a federal lobbyist for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. "It's like a consumer fraud dream come true."

Council officials declined to be interviewed for this story.

Losing recognition would effectively close the council and give its schools 18 months to find new accreditors. Otherwise they would lose access to federal money, the primary source of revenue for most for-profit colleges. Because the council oversees more than 900 schools, some experts question whether it will be spared because of its size.

"The fear of it being too big to fail is the only thing saving it right now," said Ben Miller, senior director for postsecondary education at the center. "At this point it would be shocking if ACICS didn't face some sort of sanction."

Top Education Department officials will decide the group's fate after an advisory committee issues a recommendation this month. Any decision could be appealed in federal court. Department officials declined to comment on the pending decision but said they're working to improve oversight of accreditors.

"Unfortunately, in recent years, we've seen far too many schools maintain their institutional accreditation even while defrauding and misleading students, providing poor quality education, or closing without recourse for students. This is inexcusable," Undersecretary Ted Mitchell said in a statement. "Accreditation can and must be the mark of quality that the public expects."

The council last week announced a series of changes and promised not to certify any new schools until its work improves. In a statement, the council acknowledged that it has problems and needs to fix them.

"The ACICS board of directors is determined to restore trust and confidence in the accreditation process, strengthen ACICS's oversight of member institutions, and ensure that students are receiving a quality education that will put them on a path to employment," said Anthony Bieda, the council's interim chief. The accreditor's president of seven years resigned in April amid the Education Department's review.

The changes include a pledge to "ensure greater accuracy" of the data that schools publicize about student success, which were found to be inflated at some colleges. An ethics board will review potential conflicts of interest on the group's board of directors, which is heavily made up of executives at for-profit colleges. The group will add more training for its volunteer evaluators who visit and assess schools.

Recently, the council has tried to take a firmer stance against troubled schools. In March it attempted to revoke accreditation of California's Bristol University over academic problems, but a federal judge blocked the move because it would have forced the school to close.

The council also demanded that ITT Tech justify its accreditation amid allegations that the chain concealed failing loan programs from authorities.

But some say those improvements are too little, too late.

The Education Department is supposed to give its authorization "based on whether an agency is a reliable authority, not whether it might be," said Robert Shireman, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a Washington think tank that describes itself as progressive and nonpartisan.

Among the chorus of critics, there's a debate over the root of the council's troubles.

Some say it intended well but outgrew its ability to police so many schools. Some say it attracts bad actors because it sets a lower academic bar than other accreditors. Others suggest it intentionally has turned a blind eye to deceptive colleges.

"They demonstrated not just an incompetence to do the job, but an unwillingness to do the job," said Maura Healey, the Massachusetts attorney general, who has led a push against the group. "They simply shouldn't be allowed to continue in the business of what is essentially taking advantage of students and taxpayers."

The department's decision is also seen as a test of its willingness to regulate for-profit accreditors, which have rarely faced severe sanctions, but are often accused of being too lenient.

"You couldn't line up a better set of facts against an entity," said Nassirian, of the association of state colleges and universities. "If this is a hard judgment, then there's really no hope."
Col. Michael Downs (left) presents a certificate to Chaplain John Tillery and his wife, Barbara Tillery, during a retirement ceremony Friday at Taylor Chapel on Goodfellow Air Force Base.

SHARE Photos by Yfat Yossifor / Standard-Times The Honor Guard presents an American flag to Chaplain John Tillery during his retirement ceremony Friday at Taylor Chapel on Goodfellow Air Force Base. Yfat Yossifor / Standard-Times The Honor Guard folds an American flag as Col. Michael Downs and Chaplain John Tillery (right) watch during Tillery's retirement ceremony Friday. Yfat Yossifor / Standard-Times Michelle Bertrand (from left), Staff Sgt. Melinda Charlton and Marie Lambert sing the Air Force hymn at the conclusion of Chaplain John Tillery's retirement ceremony. Yfat Yossifor / Standard-Times Chaplain John Tillery's family members clap during Tillery's retirement ceremony Friday at Taylor Chapel on Goodfellow Air Force Base.

Chaplain one of last active Vietnam vets

By Ngan Ho of the San Angelo Standard-Times

Lt. Col. John F. Tillery, nearing his 62nd birthday, retired as 17th Training Wing chaplain at Goodfellow Air Force Base on Friday after decades of work.

About 80 people, including Wing Commander Col. Michael L. Downs, attended Tillery's retirement ceremony at the base's Taylor Chapel.

Downs gave a speech and presented Tillery with numerous certificates of retirement and appreciation, a retiree pin and a commemorative case with a U.S. flag inside.

Tillery stopped midway through his own speech to give yellow roses and gift bags to his wife and three daughters. He thanked several service members at Goodfellow and described how his life led him to that point.

"I didn't come from a family," Tillery said, "but the military has become a family to me."

Tillery said his childhood was marked with fear and pain. He recalled living in a dysfunctional, abusive home, where he was tied up, beaten, burned with cigarettes and shocked with a cattle prod.

"My childhood was a childhood that left me with no reason to believe in God," he said. "The things that you see early on they leave an indelible mark. The family was not just broken, it was chaotic."

Tillery eventually dropped out of junior high school, left home and joined the Army in 1972 at age 17. Tillery said he joined because he had a sense of patriotic duty and was trying to escape to a place of sanctuary at the same time.

"The Army caught me quite nicely," he said. "And they provided the structure that I needed to survive, really saved my life."

Tillery said his world began to open up as he met new people and traveled to new places.

"I met some people who were outside of the world as I had known it, where there was true compassion, there was true friendship, there was true love. I didn't know what all of that actually meant."

Tillery said a friend took him to Sunday church services while he was stationed in Alaska, and there he found Christ.

Tillery said he had always been an atheist because of the traumatic events of his childhood.

"Consequently out of that I had no faith," he said. "I had to tolerate church for about six months.

"I had no idea what was going on there. I thought it was quite strange, honestly, because I didn't have any church background at all," he said. "But it dawned on me that  we're here, we're not there. It's now, it's not any other time, and that's what got me to thinking about God."

Tillery left the Army in 1976 and began pursuing a career as a chaplain. Over the next 20 years, he earned several degrees, including a master's degree in theology; served as a pastor in Fairbanks, Alaska and worked as a teacher in the Middle East.

Tillery said his lifelong love for his country led him to return to the military, joining the Air Force as a chaplain in 1996, when he was 40. It was the start of another 20-year journey for him.

Tillery was one of the last active-duty Vietnam-era veterans, according to Goodfellow.

"It's incredible to be in this room right now in his presence, a man that has done so much for our nation," Downs said Friday. "Best of luck to you, chaplain, as you move on. ... It has just been a real pleasure to serve with you."

As a chaplain, Tillery was the principle adviser to wing leadership regarding the impact of religion on the mission for 15,000 fire protection, special instruments and intelligence professionals for the Department of Defense and other government agencies.

Tillery, who was at Goodfellow a couple of years, closed this chapter of his life 44 years after his initial enlistment.

"He had taken a lot of time with what he wanted to say," said Staff Sgt. Melinda Charlton, Tillery's daughter. "I thought it was impactful, even in this space, that he was taking every moment to still touch people, and that just speaks to how wonderful our father is."

Tillery said he will miss wearing the uniform and the military camaraderie the most.

"Maybe there is something to this 62 (age) that the military knows that I just was denying," Tillery said, laughing. "I'm aging out; otherwise I would stay as long as they would let me."
Ronnie Hawkins (left) stands with other members of Ezra Vision Ministries' first mission team.

SHARE Contributed photos/Ronnie Hawkins A team prepares beans and rice for the students in a school tent in rural Haiti. Child malnutrition is prevalent in Haiti, and San Angelo pastor Ronnie Hawkins' Ezra Vision Ministries is aiming to combat hunger and malnutrition by establishing a nutrition program. Photo contributed by Ronnie Hawkins Ezra Vision Ministries built a home for a family in Onaville, Haiti. Photo contributed by Ronnie Hawkins Students line up for the Haiti pledge before school. Ezra Visions Ministries is attempting to raise money to build a permanent school building in rural Haiti.

By Federico Martinez, Federico.Martinez@gosanangelo.com / @Federico_SAST

Editors note: This is the first in an occasional series on the mission work being done for impoverished people in Haiti by Ezra Vision Ministries, a foundation established by San Angelo natives Ronnie and Maria Hawkins. In addition to being a pastor, Ronnie Hawkins is a retired Air Force Lt. General who until recently served as the U.S. militarys Director of Defense Information Systems Agency, which oversees the countrys cyber security.

Ezras mission is to build up the Body of Christ through discipleship, evangelism and short-term mission support, and efforts in Haiti. For more information about the organization, visit ezravisionministries.org.

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A San Angelo pastor and hundreds of volunteers across the country are on a mission to help the most vulnerable and poorest people in Haiti by constructing school buildings, providing free health and medical services, and establishing indoor plumbing.

The project, spearheaded by Ezra Vision Ministries, was established in 2014 after San Angelo pastor Ronnie Hawkins and several members of his congregation visited Chambrun and Onaville, neighboring rural communities that are among the poorest in Haiti.

"There was no electricity, no running water or sewer system  many of the people live in mud huts built into the side of mountains," said Hawkins, pastor at Christian Fellowship Baptist Church.

The disheartening reality Hawkins saw prompted him to create Ezra and have the organization develop and implement long-term strategies that members hope will help the Haitians become more self-sufficient.

Teams of volunteers have taken turns visiting targeted communities and have helped set up temporary classrooms under tents. Educators from the U.S. are working with Haitians to develop a curriculum and train teachers. A volunteer medical team has visited periodically to treat the most immediate health needs.

The next mission group will visit Haiti in early August. Its priority is to help Haitian teachers develop curriculum and make sure teachers have adequate textbooks and supplies for students.

In the past two years, Ezra missionaries have built a children's playground that is surrounded by a security fence. This spring, a group built the first community bathroom that has indoor plumbing.

Ezra, a nonprofit organization, relies on donations to fund its efforts. Its goals for 2016 include raising $126,000 in matching funds to build a permanent school building that will house more than 280 children, construct a second concrete home for a family in Onaville and establish a nutrition program to combat hunger and malnutrition.

In March 2015, the first medical team visited and examined 129 children ages 5-11, said Hawkins, director of Ezra. Malnutrition and acute respiratory infections are among the leading causes of infant death in Haiti, according to the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. Half of all the children are undersized because of malnutrition.

According to the medical team's report, the Haitian children examined suffered mostly from environmental allergy conditions and dermatitis, or inflammation of the skin.

The shock came when the children were weighed on an everyday bathroom scale, the medical team reported. Of the 129 children examined, only three were able to register on that scale. According to the scale manufacturer, the weight had to be at least 35 pounds to register on the scale.

In the U.S., boys ages 5-11 who weigh 35 pounds fall below the 5th percentile on the pediatric growth chart. Girls in the same age group fall in the 5th-10th percentile and warrant close evaluation and further testing by a pediatrician.

"I was in shock when I realized this fact," Hawkins said. "It took me at least a week to even talk about it without getting emotional."

Progress is evident, but the challenges are plenty.

Ongoing violence in parts of Haiti has forced Ezra groups to cancel or postpone several trips. Men in the village must walk long distances to the nearest towns to try to find work every day. Women spend most of the day fetching buckets of water and firewood for cooking. The homes have no electricity, so at night, schoolchildren must gather under their village's sole streetlight to read and study. The missionaries have brought small generators that allow people to use the few computers available and to charge their cellphones at night.

Hawkins and the initial group that visited Haiti said there are several reasons their organization is focusing on Haiti. More than 300,000 Haitians died after an earthquake decimated the country in 2010, Hawkins said, and the communities Ezra is focusing its efforts on were in dire straits before the earthquake.

A lot of the money and food that poured in after the earthquake never made it to the people and towns that needed it. Instead, it was scooped up by corrupt politicians or, because of a lack of organization, locked in storage facilities and never dispersed,

By having a physical presence and working directly with residents, Ezra missionaries can make sure their efforts are making a difference, Hawkins said.

"We're trying to help the Haitians help themselves," Hawkins said. "With God's grace, it's being done."
Michael Gerson is a Washington Post columnist. Contact him at michaelgerson@washpost.com.

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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 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 Trump's heart.

No, Trump's 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 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 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 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 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. It still carries many of the ideological convictions I share. Collectively, however, 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, nonnegotiable 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.

Michael Gerson is a Washington Post columnist. Contact him at michaelgerson@washpost.com.
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"Shut up" is nearly always a terrible response. It escalates a disagreement. It's obnoxious. It hardly ever works. It is a clear signal that someone is losing the argument, their patience  or both.

Here it is, though, in the form of a "cease and desist" letter from Ken Paxton, the state's attorney general, in response to a former employee's charge that Texas dropped litigation against Trump University for political reasons.

Paxton wants John Owens, the former deputy chief of the AG's consumer protection division, to shut up. Jeffrey Mateer, Paxton's No. 2 in the agency, sent Owens a letter last week saying he might be violating attorney-client privilege by talking about the state's attempts to rein in Donald Trump's real estate seminars six years ago.

The letter is intimidating, saying Owens might have loosed upon the public "privileged and confidential information." It also includes a scoop of delicious Shakespearean-sounding mumbo-jumbo from a famous court case of the 1920s: "Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior."

For all of that, it's basically a demand that Owens shut up. It also kept a fuzzy story alive for another day.

Texas opened its investigation of Trump University in 2010, when Greg Abbott was the attorney general and Paxton was a backbencher in the Texas House.

They were acting on two years' worth of complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau.

In a memo, some of the agency's consumer lawyers said wanted to sue the operation  more a series of real estate seminars held in hotel ballrooms than what anyone would call a college  for $5.4 million. Their higher-ups decided not to proceed. And Trump made a couple of donations to Abbott in July 2013 and in May 2014.

In the worst light  the way the Democrats and perhaps Owens want to tell it  Donald Trump, now the presumptive Republican nominee for president, bought Abbott off.

In the best light  the way Abbott's acolytes would have it  the AG ran Trump U out of the state and protected the state's consumers by doing so. The nearly 500 people for whom the state was fighting were free to go on and sue the Trump organization for damages on their own.

Trump himself bragged to CNN last weekend that lawyers here and in other state governments turned away Trump U cases. He is still defending the school and saying he will reopen it  just as soon as all of the class-action cases it spawned have been handled.

The Texans would probably have this in their rearview mirrors if the current attorney general had kept his head down. Now there's a new controversy to keep the story fresh.

This case is no slam dunk, politically speaking. Abbott got political contributions from Trump, but three years lapsed between the time the case was closed and those contributions: That's a flimsy foundation for a charge of quid pro quo.

Trump is dealing with a related story now about his comments regarding the Mexican heritage of a judge handling some of the civil cases from former students of Trump U.

The damage here comes more from Paxton than from Owens. Abbott has a plausible explanation for what happened and even a brag that he ran Trump U out of Texas on a rail. One of his former aides says it was he, and not Abbott, who closed the file on the seminars and annoyed John Owens.

Now Bigfoot has arrived, in the form of Ken Paxton telling Owens that he shouldn't have brought any of this to light. To a suspicious mind, that raises a question about what else lives in the closed-case files that we mere civilians are not supposed to see. Whistleblowers sometimes have interesting things to say.

"I have done nothing illegal or unethical as stated in the letter," Owens told The Tribune. "I think the information I provided to the press was important and needed to be shared with the public."

In this case, it's not the crime. It's the shut-up.
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The following editorial appeared in Wednesday's Sacramento Bee:

Buried in the excitement around this week's primary elections is an underappreciated milestone: For the first time in American history, a woman is now a major party's presumptive presidential nominee.

Think about that. It may seem anticlimactic that Hillary Clinton has secured the delegates to win the Democratic nomination, but never before has a female candidate gotten this close to the White House. Women have had the right to vote for less than a century.

Clinton has been in politics so long, and surrounded for so much of her adult life by personal, cultural and partisan drama, that voters can be forgiven for seeing her less as a leader than as an ideological symbol. She has been the embodiment of '60s idealism and of raw '90s ambition, the Wellesley student who spoke at her 1969 commencement about "integrity, trust and respect" and the first lady who famously wasn't going to bake cookies.

She has been the cheated-on career woman and the secretary of state accused of cheating the rules about emails. She has been a U.S. senator and the target of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. She has been admired, reviled, pitied, feared, loved, begrudged and dismissed as "likable enough," and still, she has remained standing. Perhaps that's what it takes to crack the thickest glass ceiling of all.

Then again, even in 1999, nine Americans in 10 told Gallup that, at least in theory, that they would have no problem with a woman in the Oval Office. So perhaps this moment would have come about regardless.

In any case, something's happening here, as the song went when Clinton was in college. It may not be happening quickly enough, but political leadership is more inclusive than it used to be.

Women make up about a fifth of Congress  nowhere near where they should be, given that women are half the electorate, but better than the minuscule share of seats women held in the 1970s.

California appears poised to replace U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer with the third woman of color to serve in the U.S. Senate. And while fairness comes in all genders, such things matter. Having three women on the U.S. Supreme Court shed a whole new light on Texas' retrograde abortion laws during oral arguments earlier this year. ...

And female leadership gives critical mass to women's voices culturally, though not everyone has yet gotten the memo.

The national outrage over the six-month jail sentence given to Stanford swim team member Brock Turner for sexual assault underscored the legal system's historic tilt toward male and class privilege, and the refusal of a new generation of women to tolerate it any longer. ...

Little has been made of this election's historical implications. That's understandable. Evolution is slow until, one day, everything seems suddenly to have changed.

Donald Trump, with his bigotry and misogyny and resistance to "political correctness," is nothing if not a backlash to the fact that power is shifting, both slowly and suddenly.

Still, a pause is in order. For months, when Americans have talked about the Democratic front-runner for the White House, they've talked about her politics, her character, her baggage, her friends, her weaknesses as a candidate  almost everything but her gender. It's remarkable, that this new "woman's place" should feel so normal.

But it does. And whether she wins or loses, that, too, is a milestone in history.
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By Lisa Mortimore Lesosky



I am not a complainer but this case is worthy of discussion. I broke a law and feel wrongly processed by the municipal courts of our fair city (or what used to be a fair city).

I was ticketed for parking in handicap parking in an obscure parking lot at Central High School. Admittedly, I am guilty.

This handicap space is infrequently used. Recovering from surgery, I whimped out to get my car closer to the building to load my trunk for a minute.

The space is hidden to outside traffic in faculty parking, and in my two years at Central, I have never seen a car parked there. To reduce my grossly outrageous $262 fine, I opted to see the judge.

I consider myself a good citizen with a superb driving record. I pay my taxes, am gainfully employed, attend church, spend my money locally to help the economics of this city, call police when I see a crime, and render aid to my fellow man.

I steadfastly believe people are inherently good and our judicial system was, and is, devised to give fair treatment to first-time offenders without a criminal record.

When I presented my case before Judge Jay Daniels, I was informed I had one choice: I could apply for a temporary placard due to my temporary medical condition and return to the court in a week. After researching this possibility and it not being an option, I looked at other options (which Daniels could have explained since he should know the law better than I do). Actually, I had several choices but they were not explained to me.

Apparently, our local municipality is unaware that Gov. Rick Perry instituted a courtesy reminder (easily available through the governor's office) that should been placed on my vehicle. This reminder is to specifically educate the public about people with disabilities and is a courtesy to the public. This would have been a much better option than $262 and would have saved both of us much time, trouble and expense.

If you gander at the Texas Codes, you learn about parking privileges for disabled persons. I read Section 681.0101, which explains who enforces this particular code. Volunteers, not the police, are appointed and serve without pay, but must be trained to write a ticket and put it on the windshield.

Code 681.011 regards fines assessed and this violation is a misdemeanor carrying a fine of not less than $250 or more than $500, per Texas statute. However, I've noticed handicap signs locally in which the stated fine ranges from $50 to $500. This contradicts the Texas Code, so which fine is correct? Could I have saved $212?

Daniels could have adjudicated me since I was a first time offender. This was not offered. I could have seen the county attorney, which a district judge suggested after the fact.

All I received from Daniels was "it's the law" and "you can see if you can get a temporary placard and return to court in a week or get a lawyer."

As an educator, I attend workshops to stay abreast on changes effecting my profession and realize in our techno world, it is impossible to "know it all." I depend on others to share knowledge so we are all better educated.

I've learned a valuable lesson. The cost of education still isn't cheap. Perhaps, in the future, San Angelo's municipal government will be more judicial and knowledgeable when it comes to a minor infraction for a first-time offender like a courtesy reminder found regarding handicap parking at (governor.state.tx.us/division/disabilities/resources/parking).

I rest my case.

Lisa Mortimore Lesosky is a San Angelo resident.
Final Thoughts: Getting It Right

The New York City Fire Department (FDNY) has gone from reacting to fires to anticipating them. No, it doesnt have a crystal ball, but it does have data, algorithms and predictive analytics on its side. The FDNY has taken paper-based information from building inspections and built a database that can be analyzed based on a risk-scoring algorithm to help anticipate a potential building fire. The predictive tool works because the data is clean and the system shares information from other departments.City fire departments arent the only agencies taking advantage of analytics. The technology can be found in police departments, economic development efforts, public works, permitting, utilities and public transit, to name a few.Fueling the growth is the explosion in data collection taking place in cities, whether its data from sensors or from unstructured sources, such as Web forms and video. At the same time, cities are under pressure to release the data and make it available to the public, creating new opportunities to analyze what was once hidden from view. Just as important, analytics technology is becoming cheaper to own, faster to use and better at complex problem solving, making it more valuable.If you are talking about being a smart city, you are talking about information technology, which is about data, said Jennifer Robinson, director of local government solutions at SAS. And data only becomes information when it can be digested. Thats why analytics is the backbone of any smart city solution.So far, many cities are pilot testing analytics to tackle discrete problems. But the goal is for cities to use analytics across the government enterprise. That requires a data center that can pull information from many different sources, similar to how the FDNY is using data from the citys building department to predict potential fire hot spots. In Chicago, data sharing is helping the city predict rodent infestation and food safety. In the case of the latter, the city prioritizes food safety inspections by statistically classifying food establishments with respect to the probability of a possible violation.But these cities are the exception when it comes to enterprise analytics. Most entities struggle with getting an analytics project off the ground. According to Gartner, more than half of analytics projects either fail or dont deliver the expected results. Part of the problem is bad or unclean data, which produces poor results. Also, the data needs to be integrated. Despite years of discussion around the value of data sharing, many public-sector agencies are still unwilling to share with other departments.But the good news is that analytics is getting better. New advances allow data to be analyzed prior to it being stored. Given how much data government is collecting and how much more it will have to handle as the Internet of Things matures, this could be a game-changer for analytics. This technology is going to help make sure the right data is collected and analyzed appropriately, so that the non-relevant data is dumped, said Robinson. The process is known as analytics at the edge, she said. Its a way to make sure data collection doesnt become overwhelming.When the Presidents Council of Advisors on Science and Technology released its 2016 report, Technology and the Future of Cities, it made an important point regarding the role of IT: The urban ecosystem can benefit from the integration of a wide array of technologies that have been evolving rapidly, including systems to increase energy efficiency, renewable energy technologies, connected and autonomous vehicles, water and wastewater management systems, communications technologies to enhance connectivity, and new ways to do farming and manufacturing.The report looks at the entire urban ecosystem and presents a variety of ways that the federal government can help cities collaborate when it comes to advancing technology in a cost-effective way. Similarly, this series has looked at five key technologies that every city government should have if its to become a so-called smart city. On their own, each of the technologies  broadband, GIS, CRM, open data, analytics  provides a benefit to city operations and services. But the true impact comes when they are treated as part of an integrated system, rather than as singular solutions.Along with having an enterprise vision when it comes to technology, government needs to have a coherent and sensible set of strategies and policies if it wants to maximize the smart city impact. That means having effective policies around privacy, security and open data sharing. Governments will need to craft creative initiatives to attract the talent needed to develop and run smart city solutions. And they will have to be willing to invest in the core technologies described in this report, but in a way thats strategic and has enterprise objectives. In other words, the days of siloed solutions need to end.For decades, cities have faced a host of challenges that have tested their ability to function. Today, new ideas and answers are emerging that have the potential to help them cope with growth and also to transform into sustainable and resilient places to live and work. At the core of this transformation will be information technology. Best to get it right.
Red Bull and Force India have issued a firm 'hands off' amid speculation Ferrari is shopping around to replace Kimi Raikkonen.

Team boss Maurizio Arrivabene recently declared that Raikkonen alongside Sebastian Vettel is an "ideal pairing" for the Maranello team, but the 36-year-old notably struggled in qualifying for the Canadian grand prix.

It will only magnify speculation that Daniel Ricciardo, who drives for Red Bull, and perhaps even Force India's Sergio Perez, might be in line to succeed the 2007 world champion.

Ricciardo was not halting the rumours in Montreal when he suggested he might not be loyal to Red Bull forever.

"The only place I want to be is somewhere they can say 'Yep, you can fight for a world title with us'," the Australian said. "That's all I really want."

However, Ricciardo's boss says the on-form 26-year-old is going nowhere.

"Ricciardo will definitely be with us until 2018," Dr Helmut Marko told Germany's Auto Motor und Sport. "We have a contract with him."

Issuing a similar 'hands off' is Force India's sporting director Otmar Szafnauer, amid suggestions Monaco podium-getter Sergio Perez might get a second chance at joining a top team.

"Sergio is ours," Szafnauer insisted. "If Ferrari want him, they would have to pay us a lot of money."

(GMM)
Thirty-nine of the dead were killed at the club, and 11 people died at hospitals, officials said. An AR-15 was used in the attack.
June 12, 1967

The Supreme Court today barred Virginia  and by implication other states  from making interracial marriage a crime. Chief Justice Earl Warren, speaking for a unanimous court, said the freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by freemen. To deny this fundamental freedom on so insupportable a basis as the racial classification embodies in the statutes, classifications so directly subversive to the principal equality at the heart of the 14th Amendment, is surely to deprive all of the states citizens of liberty without due process of law.
Winston-Salem police have charged two people in connection with the stabbing death of a 44-year-old man, the city's 11th homicide this year.

At about 4 p.m. Friday, police responded to a call about a stabbing and found Vierl Levan Banks Jr. unresponsive on the floor of his home in the 1100 block of West Academy Street, according to a news release from police. He had been stabbed multiple times with a knife.

Banks was taken to a hospital, but died of his injuries on Saturday, police said.

Detectives determined Fred Harris Thompson III, 19, got into a fight with Banks on Friday and stabbed him, the release states. Thompson, of the 2700 block of Piedmont Circle, is charged with murder and is being held without bond.

Authorities also charged Katisha Anne Smith, 33, of the 900 block of North Patterson Avenue, with accessory after the fact of murder. She is being held on a $150,000 bond, according to the release.

Thompson's first appearance court date is set for Monday, Smith's first appearance is set for Tuesday.

This is the 11th homicide of 2016, as compared with five homicides for the same period in 2015.

Police ask anyone with information concerning the crime to call (336) 773-7700 or Crime Stoppers at (336) 727-2800.
WINSTON-SALEM  The N.C. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of landowners who sued the state for putting their properties in the Winston-Salem Northern Beltway corridor without paying them compensation.

The decision means that properties owners in the path of future beltway segments will soon be able to ask a Forsyth County Superior Court judge to make the N.C. Department of Transportation pay them for the lost value of their properties.

Attorney Matthew Bryant, who represents hundreds of landowners in the path of the beltway, said the Friday decision means you can get justice in North Carolina.

The property owners have waited for well over a decade for the state to buy their lands, which were put under development restrictions when state transportation officials designated the western and eastern routes of the beltway in advance of land purchase and construction.

The state of North Carolina is not using valid regulatory laws, Bryant said. That means they took the properties and now they are going to have to pay for those properties.

The Supreme Court ruling said compensation would be on a case-by-case basis and would depend on the market value of properties before and after they were put under the Map Act, the state law allowing the DOT to curb development on land it plans to use for future roads.

Bryant said the ruling means the property cases will proceed like a normal condemnation.

Justice Paul Newby, writing for the court, said that the Map Act restricted the landowners fundamental rights to improve, develop and subdivide their property for an unlimited amount of time.

These restraints, coupled with their indefinite nature, constitute a taking of plaintiffs elemental property rights by eminent domain, Newby wrote. No dissenting opinions were filed.

Attorneys for the state had argued that the Map Act is a valid use of the states power to promote the general welfare by conserving the value of other properties and promoting orderly development. But the N.C. Court of Appeals ruled against the state and called the Map Act a cost-cutting mechanism, an analysis the high court agreed with.

Paula Smith, whose property lies along the route of the eastern leg of the beltway in the Brookmont subdivision, said its exciting to finally see a path to selling her land.

We have owned this land 26 years, never meaning to stay there 26 years by any means, Smith said. It has been very frustrating. We intended after 10 or 12 years to put the house on the market and contacted a Realtor. They came back and said, Did you know your house is on the map? We thought they (the state) would come out and buy us.

The court decision doesnt necessarily delay the timetable for any beltway projects scheduled to be built, though state officials would have to come up with the money to pay landowners who filed suit. The state has no fund designated for that purpose.

One segment of the beltway, between Business 40 and Reidsville Road, already is under construction. Gov. Pat McCrory announced last year that money for the entire eastern leg of the beltway would be available because of budget changes put into effect.

State Rep. Debra Conrad was one of the authors of a bill the N.C. House passed last year to abolish the Map Act, but the bill stalled in the N.C. Senate.

Conrad was ecstatic when she heard the news about Fridays ruling.

I am thrilled, she said, adding that she plans to confer with other legislators as soon as possible to get the Senate moving abolishing the Map Act.

Maybe now this will never happen again in the state of North Carolina, and we can find the right balance to preserve land for our transportation corridors without having an adverse effect on the public and property rights, she said. This is great news for landowners.

Conrad said she has been waving the red flag for about a year for the state to start thinking about how to pay the cost of compensating the landowners.

No one has been paying any attention, she said. I guess they thought the landowners would not win, or they wanted to kick the can down the road.

Bryant said that the state has estimated it would take $200 million to buy the remaining properties in the path of the beltway.

A spokesman for the DOT declined to comment on Thursdays ruling, saying that the department was still evaluating the decision.

Gayle Anderson, whos been a big beltway advocate in her role as president of the Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce, said she wonders what the implications of the ruling will be for future road projects, including the beltway.

That ought to be an interesting challenge for the state to figure out where to find that money, Anderson said. If the ruling prevails, they are going to have to get creative to get the funds to do that and keep the project going forward. This could set a precedent for other road construction projects around the state and not just ours.

At one point Bryant had tried to pursue the beltway cases as a class-action lawsuit, but the courts rejected that approach in favor of a case-by-case method in determining damages. Bryant said any landowner who hasnt sued for compensation would have to do so to take advantage of the courts ruling.

It was a David and Goliath story for the affected beltway landowners to fight the state, Bryant said.

It took a lot of brave owners to do this, he said. We knew it had to go to the N.C. Supreme Court. We didnt know the road would be six years long. I have only talked with a few owners but the amount of relief has been tremendous.
The ramping up of funding for private schools, and a plan that could close some public schools, remind us that North Carolina has gone this way before.

In its details, the Pearsall Plan was unique to its time and place. Crafted 60 years ago, it reacted to the U.S. Supreme Courts Brown v. Board of Education ruling by authorizing the use of tax dollars to pay for private education if necessary to avoid integration. It also allowed local school boards to close schools where conditions became intolerable.

A plan to create Achievement School Districts now working its way through the legislature includes a component for closing low-performing schools deemed intolerable in their own way. Meanwhile, funding for Opportunity Scholarships  tuition grants for private education  is greatly accelerating.

More than $17 million has been paid out in just two years. The new budget approved by the state Senate calls for increasing appropriations by $10 million annually until the total reaches $135 million a year.

The vast majority of the money goes to religious schools. The recipient of the most money so far is the Greensboro Islamic Academy, which has gotten $653,100. Other leading recipients include Tri-City Christian Academy, High Point Christian Academy and Wesleyan Christian Academy, all in High Point.

This program isnt designed to skirt desegregation, of course. Students of all races participate, as long as they meet eligibility guidelines: income below about $45,000 for a family of four, although that too will be raised.

But most of the recipient schools do segregate in a way  by religious belief. Parents may want their children to attend school in a strong academic environment, but many also desire instruction in certain religious beliefs and traditions.

Despite giving away so much money, the state doesnt require much. The schools can teach anything they want. Students dont have to take state end-of-grade or end-of-course tests. Teachers dont have to be certified. For a state thats so keen to hold public schools accountable, its a wonder how much money is spent for private education of any quality.

That goes for virtual charter schools, too. The state last year began a multimillion-dollar pilot project, paying out-of-state, for-profit companies to enroll thousands of students in online courses. High initial dropouts were reported, but legislators dont seem concerned.

It seems as if any idea is fine if it gets more students out of traditional public schools. Yes, many of those schools struggle with low-achieving students. But school leaders know how to fix them  with smaller classes, more reading specialists, social workers, after-school programs, summer programs and other strategies that cost money. Yet, the state keeps shifting resources to various alternatives.

The Pearsall Plan threatened the existence of public education in North Carolina. Fortunately, it was never fully implemented. Updated versions, however, are on the way  paid for by tax dollars.
EDEN  They fought for our country in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. On Memorial Day, 45 veterans from those wars were honored at the fifth annual Eden Evening Lions Club Memorial Day Tribute at the Morehead Fair House.

Most of the veterans arrived in limousines provided by Fair and Wilkerson funeral homes in the Processional of Veterans, escorted by the Patriot Guard Riders on motorcycles, Eden police officers and Rockingham County sheriffs deputies.

We are honored by your presence here today, said state Rep. Bert Jones after thanking the veterans for their service and dedication.

We gather today to remember and to pay tribute to our fellow citizens who gave their very lives for liberty and freedom, Jones said. It is with grateful hearts that we humbly reap the benefits of their ultimate sacrifice.

Freedom is never free, he said.

The heroes we honor today demonstrated that truth, Jones said. As we gather to honor them, we celebrate the causes of liberty and freedom for which they died, and we reaffirm our dedication to those noble causes as well.

Today we remember, we celebrate, and honor those have demonstrated for us that the eternal truths which under gird our liberties are indeed worth dying for. Their mission was not to conquer, but to liberate  a mission grounded in duty, honor, and love, Jones said, quoting John 15:13 when Jesus Christ said, Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friends.

These brave heroes did just that, as they marched nobly into the valley of the shadow of death, to secure liberty and freedom for us, their friends and their countrymen, Jones said. Our mere words are inadequate and feeble compared to their sacrifice.

He drew applause from audience members as he implored them to not be a generation that loses freedom in America. We must recognize the tremendous cost that has been paid for this valuable commodity.

We must never be so weak as to allow it to be taken from us or so apathetic as to let it slip away, he said.

We must not allow the flame of liberty to go out, but rather we must rekindle that flame, Jones said. As long as freedom rings in our land, an important part of those who died to preserve it remains alive.

In closing, he asked for special blessings for the people serving in harms way across the globe for the cause of liberty and freedom, the cause for which so many brave heroes have sacrificed to their dying breath.
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STAMFORD  For Abbe Karmen, of Greenwich, competing in the KIC-IT Triathlon Sunday morning at Cummings Beach was less about early morning swims and running than it was about raising awareness.

There are other races where I worry about how I finish, but today, I am doing something I love for a great cause, Karmen said.

After crossing the finish line on of the KIC-IT events Sprint Triathlon, Karmen, a teacher at Riverdale School in the Bronx, N.Y., said Kids in Crisis youth shelter and other programs provides support that most people take for granted. Karmen was one of the events leading fundraisers, topping $6,000 in donations from more than 200 people.

Where I teach, I generally work with kids who are loved and have a home to go back to every night, said Karmen. When you look at Kids in Crisis, that is really what they do for kids who are in crisis. If you go there, it is really like a home.

More than 500 triathletes and runners took part in the sixth annual Kids in Crisis KIC-IT Triathlon on Sunday, raising money for the nonprofit that provides temporary emergency shelter, medical care, educational support programs and other assistance to youth 17 and younger. It operates a 24-hour crisis counseling hotline and counseling programs for kids facing domestic abuse, homelessness and other serious setbacks.

In November, the state canceled a four-year, $750,000-a-year contract supporting the agencys emergency shelter, said Shari Shapiro, executive director of Kids in Crisis.

According to Shapiro, the shelter provided more than 3,000 bed-nights of emergency shelter in 2015, and the demand to help youth in Fairfield County has surged because of other state funding cuts to social services in recent years.

When that happens, people always turn to us, Shapiro said. Without any state funding, the importance of this event in terms of raising funds and awareness is crucial. What is most important to us is that children and family know we are here and that our services are available.

The Olympic-type event included a one-mile swim along West Beach followed by a 24-mile bike ride from shore through downtown and North Stamford, and a 6.2-mile run through Shippan Point. It also included a Sprint Triathlon, which covered about half the distance.

Taking part in the Sprint Triathlon were a group of 10 triathletes with various disabilities who are part of the New York City chapter of Achilles International, a group that helps disabled people compete in mainstream running events.

Ricardo Corral, a native of Ecuador, said he trained daily to compete in triathlons and was happy to be competing in a race that helped disadvantaged youth. Corral, whose legs were amputated below the knee, completed the 13.9 mile bike ride using his arms to pedal a specially designed bike.

I fully support the cause and I understand that it is an important group, said Corral.

For Rob Maloof and his fiancee, Carolin Hart, both of Milford, who competed in the Sprint Triathlon, the event was a first of sorts. For Hart, it was her first triathlon ever, and for Maloof, previously a regular competitor, it was his first course since 2013, when he broke his right femur in a motorcycle accident.

When the couple met in 2014, they began training together, as Maloof slowly regained his endurance over months of steadily lengthening runs. Maloof raised more than $250 in the race, one of the top totals for a new fundraiser.

Its an amazing feeling to finish a race and just to be here  and the atmosphere is great, Maloof said.

Hart said she grew up with a single mother and two siblings. They often struggled to keep the lights on and pay bills.

Growing up, the gas got shut off, the electricity got shut off, and we went through some really hard times, Hart said. Kids in Crisis is a really important group that helps children and families that are struggling.

mcassidy@scni.com; 203-964-2264. twitter.com/martincassidyst
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Published on 2016/06/11 | Source

There must be something really special about your movies when you've only made two and you find yourself the subject of a retrospective at the legendary Smithsonian Museum. Our dear friend, Lee Wonsuk, director of the brilliant and hilarious "How to Use Guys with Secret Tips", and the award-winning feast for the eyes, "The Royal Tailor", gave us his thoughts on the honor, looks back on the making of those films and reveals his future projects, including a live-action adaptation of the popular webtoon, "LOOKISM".

Lee Wonsuk

Korean Film Festival

Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution

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The Lady Miz Diva: Wonsuk, you're about to come back to the US for a very special occasion: The legendary Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC is devoting the weekend to discussing your films, "How to Use Guys with Secret Tips" and "The Royal Tailor". How do you feel being the subject of such a big retrospective having made only two features?

Lee Wonsuk: I'm so honored because I've only made two films and they invited me, one of the most prestigious institutions. I'm so happy and honored, but at the same time nervous because as soon as I get there I have to go to George Washington University and I have a showcase with {Textile Museum curator} Dr. Talbot Lee, who is really famous. He sent me a question about hanbok, and I was like, "Whoa, what is this?" It was so deep and so specific that I called my wardrobe designer, Jo Sang-kyung {"The Royal Tailor"}, I said, "Hey, check this out, look at all his questions. I don't have answers to it". And she goes, "Oh, I don't have an answer to it, either". So all my people were doing research, right? Some of the words that Dr. Lee sent me are really professional hanbok terms that hanbok people only know. So, I'm learning. Maybe they should've invited the hanbok designer?

The Lady Miz Diva: The festival organisers were kind enough to invite me and I really wanted to go just to see what your answers were going to be.

Lee Wonsuk: But I'm studying it; I bought the hanbok book. When I made "The Royal Tailor", I didn't realize they made a book like this. I should've read it before I made the movie. I regret that. It's very interesting.

The Lady Miz Diva: It's been a year since we spoke about "The Royal Tailor", which has played international festivals and won awards at the New York Asian Film Festival and at the Udine Far East Film Festival. You were kind of down on it back then, because you felt it didn't do well and had a lot of criticism in Korea. Has the distance from it and the international reception softened your view of making the film at all?

Lee Wonsuk: Just now, I'm at the company where we made "The Royal Tailor", and we're still talking about it just today, what we should have done better.

The Lady Miz Diva: What do you think you should have done better?

Lee Wonsuk: The story should have been focused on two persons, Dol-seok and Gong-jin, as it was originally, not four people. And everybody thinks now, seeing the movie, that it should've been very historic and very serious, because we were looking at all these patterns of successful period pieces, and they all turn out to be very serious.

But because of this movie, I'm still getting a lot of period piece films; like last week, I got a script from a major company that was a period piece. I told him I'm not going to do a period piece. A period piece will never end, it goes on and on.

The Lady Miz Diva: When you first told me about your ideas for "The Royal Tailor" back in 2013, what was so exciting was that you described such a different take on the usual period piece. It was sad to hear about all the compromises that you had made while in production. The thing is, it seems like the movie is loved everywhere but in South Korea. What do you think the Western audiences reacted to in "The Royal Tailor" that Korean audiences might have missed?

Lee Wonsuk: Western audiences think it's really exotic and the hanbok is very beautiful and the story itself is very classic, kind of. I think that's why it worked for a western audience. I mean, like in Udine, I had a standing ovation for like 10 minutes. I never experienced anything like that; I was overwhelmed. I was like, "Are they kidding me?"

But in Korea, the audiences look at the attitude of a movie - on the history. There are some people who loved the movie, but other people thought I was playing with the history, joking around with the history. People take it very seriously.

If I wanted to make it silly, if I wanted to make a fantasy out of it, I should've gone all the way. But there's a pattern to all the failed Korean period pieces recently; they're all fantasy, like "The Joseon Magician with Yoo Seung-ho.

The Lady Miz Diva: I wonder if looking back on "The Royal Tailor" might have made you think differently about how to regard advice or suggested changes to your film? You said that people did not like some of the comedy aspect; you changed your idea about using a modern soundtrack, they hated the CGI bunnies on the moon, and in the end, you weren't as happy with the final product as you could've been. Do you think that with the next project you're going to stick more strictly to your own idea?

Lee Wonsuk: I think with the future movie that I'm doing, I will have more control over because it's a subject matter that I know better. The period piece was something that I wasn't familiar with, and there were certain rules of period pieces that I had to follow, which I couldn't ignore. I wanted to break that, but if I wanted to break that, I should've gone all the way. It's all my fault, I chickened out.

There's a moment where you start doubting yourself. I think everyone gets that; every director gets to that point. There are a couple of moments where I was shooting the film and I knew I made the wrong decision. And also at the editing bay with all these people, all these politics, everything, it was another big time where I doubted myself. At that point, I made a mistake, I took the wrong turn and that I regret.

"The Royal Tailor", I'm happy with what it is. There was something that I wanted to do more, that I couldn't, and that is the part that I regret. I'm not saying that my film is bad, or that I'm bad; but this was one of my big experiences. A very expensive learning experience.

The Lady Miz Diva: Have you considered making films overseas? I think your style and sensibilities would do really well in Europe.

Lee Wonsuk: I've actually had a couple offers from Singapore and other countries, and India, too, and Japan, but I'm under contract at the time being. You know this industry so well; I mean, it never happens until you sign a contract. Everybody just talks and talks. The Singapore project is a very serious project, and I met the producers from Singapore, but it's a period piece and that's the part I'm unsure about.

The Lady Miz Diva: But you do have other projects lined up?

Lee Wonsuk: Yes, I have a Chinese comedy with Chinese stars and I don't think I could ever do this kind of comedy in Korea. It's just going really slow right now, I don't know what's gonna happen.

The other project I'm working on is an adaptation of a Korean manhwa, called Lookism by Park Tae-jun. I'm just getting started writing that.

The Lady Miz Diva: I want to talk about you as director. Last time we spoke you mentioned how you and Yoo Yeon-seok had to be stopped from laughing too much on the set because you were disturbing the work.

Lee Wonsuk: {Laughs} Our set, still, our staff, when I visit other film shoots, I meet my staff and they always say, "Oh, I miss the set on "The Royal Tailor"". It was a fun set, we had a bunch of laughs.

The Lady Miz Diva: Why did you think Go Soo was right for that character in "The Royal Tailor"?

Lee Wonsuk: See, people were very conservative back then, and everybody has to follow rules, and there were noblemen's rules, bla, bla, bla, but probably back in the day, they probably had a crazy guy. Somebody who was very open, somebody who didn't give a shit about anything. And Go Soo had been playing all these very serious roles. Then I saw him in Haunters with Gang Dong-won, and I thought, 'Oh, that guy looks like he could be really crazy.' Then I met Go Soo and we had a drink together and I felt that this guy's not serious at all. He was casual and a very fun-loving kind of guy. I always felt he was very protective of himself because there's a lot of mystery about him that not many people know; he's not really open in media. But when I had a drink with him, he was totally different, more down to earth, kinda. So this was the person that I want; people like him probably existed in Joseon two or three hundred years ago. So I asked him to do it and that's how we joined.

The Lady Miz Diva: You decided after having drinks with him that he was the right guy. Do you feel happier to know a person and get a sense of them in that way before you cast them in a film?

Lee Wonsuk: Yeah, you have to live with these people for three or four months when you're shooting or in preproduction. When I meet people, I can just feel their energy; whether this guy's good, or whether this guy's evil. I really want to work with good, fun-loving people. They're actors, they could play the character, but they themselves have to be really good and really open and that's really important for me. Probably a lot of other directors do the same thing, but I ask the actors to come out and we talk about all this stupid stuff, and you know, Diva, when you talk, you start clicking, but there are some people that never click. But, if you feel comfortable with people, you could talk all the time, about the characters, and when you run into trouble, you can talk it out. But with somebody that is very hard to communicate with, it's really, really hard; they just shut it down. They just want to do their stuff.

The Lady Miz Diva: That goes back to what you were saying about the set, there being a level of comfort. Is that something that you consciously cultivate; an easy-going, comfortable set?

Lee Wonsuk: Yeah, because I'm with these hundred people every day. I'm not a serious person and I always make a mistake, but if there's a serious kind of environment, I'm not comfortable, so I can't be myself. But when the environment is very free and fun, then I can be myself and enjoy it. And the crew too, they have every right to enjoy it, they're not slaves. If they're happier, they do better and they give you more. I'm being very much a fox, kind of, because I know what I have. I know my limits; I'm a person who knows my limits, what I can do, what I can't do - but with these good people bringing all these ideas and how they think just adds on and makes it bigger and bigger and bigger.

That's what I love about filmmaking, I mean, if the set is good and the environment is good, everybody is talking and commenting and throwing at you all these ideas, and as a director, you just have to choose. You have to choose within the boundaries of your blueprint you made, so it's fun.

You're spending half a year of your life with these people; it's one of your memories that you're always gonna have. I've only made two films, but with the last film, when I look at the film, I don't look at it like 'Oh, the stupid mistakes that I made.' Every time I see a scene, I remember what happened on the set. There's all these memories that come up. That's the fun part as a director watching the movie.

With "The Royal Tailor", it was the same thing. I think that everybody probably has the same thing; that one day we'll probably think, 'Oh yeah, "The Royal Tailor", we had so much fun. We made a good film with good people.' I think that's really important, and I think it's really important for my crew to feel that.

Movies are movies, the person is more important than the movie. It's just a movie, one day it's in the theater, people watch it, it could disappear next week, but the memories of these people goes on forever.

People from the set, they still meet! They made a group and they still meet. And there are two couples who are pregnant who met on the set and one couple that is dating.

The Lady Miz Diva: It sounds like they went to camp!

Lee Wonsuk: I know! {Laughs} Maybe it was too much, I dunno. Everybody says the director has to be charismatic and take control of the set, but charisma and controlling the set, I take it differently. You don't have to get like, 'Oh yeah, I'm the freaking director. I have the answers, you do whatever.' That doesn't work, anyway. I mean, I'm not that talented; I don't have the answer for everything. I need help from these people and if I want to get help from these people You know you do something nice before you ask someone for a favor. The least I could do is make the set, the shooting production enjoyable.

~ The Lady Miz Diva

June 2nd, 2016

Original article on The Diva Review

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Published on 2016/06/12 | Source

Korean cosmetics production surpassed a record W10 trillion in 2015 powered by explosive popularity on Asian markets (US$1=W1,158).

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The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety on Wednesday said cosmetics production totaled W10.7 trillion in 2015, up 19.6 percent compared to the previous year.

The country exported US$2.59 billion worth of cosmetics, up 43.7 percent compared to 2014 and equivalent to 12.3 million Samsung smartphones.

Exports to China almost doubled to $1.06 billion.

Korea's cosmetics industry is evolving thanks to explosive demand overseas on the back of the popularity of Korean pop music, TV soaps and movies.

Newly popular products involve functional cosmetics using unusual ingredients like snail mucus and oriental herbs, and technology like so-called air cushions, which make a liquid foundation soaked in a sponge contain a makeup base, sun protection and skin moisturizer all in one.

Unique containers have also played a key role. Tonymoly hand creams sold in cases shaped like pandas, peaches, bananas or tomatoes have caught on in China. The Face Shop chain of beauty product stores run by LG Household and Health Care sells face pack masks that resemble tigers and pandas in order to appeal to Chinese tastes.

Legions of Chinese tourists visiting Seoul buy boxes of the mask packs, and the chain's monthly sales have surged 40 percent compared to 2015. Taking selfies wearing Korean beauty mask packs has become a fad in China.

The production of fakes and knockoffs has also surged. LG has started putting holographic stickers on its products and creating containers that are hard to copy, such as a sculpted lotus-shaped lid. Amore Pacific set up a special team at its China office that deals with knockoffs.

Amore Pacific signed a memorandum of understanding with Alibaba early this year for the protection of intellectual property and are educating Chinese staff on how to distinguish knockoffs.

But Kim Joo-deok at Sungshin Women's University warned that the boom cannot last. "Three years from now, Chinese cosmetics manufacturers will be rolling out products that are similar in quality to Korean ones but cheaper", Kim said. "We need to ease curbs on functional cosmetics and boost government investment and support for the industry".
Published on 2016/06/12 | Source

Korea used to rank in the top five in the OECD in terms of export growth but has fallen to 20th as key products lose competitiveness.

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The country's exports have declined for 17-straight months until May of this year.

The OECD on Monday said Korea's exports fell 4.3 percent in March last year, ranking fourth among the organization's 31 member states, but fell to 23rd place in October because exports plunged 15 percent and sank even further to 28th place this February.

Until early 2015, Korea ranked among the top 10.

Germany, which ranked 15th last year, recovered to fifth place in March with exports up 2.2 percent. Japan's export decline slow to 3.8 percent in March compared to a 5.9-percent drop a year ago.

The main problem is that Korea's exports are dependent on a limited range of products and a handful of overseas markets.

"About a dozen key industries including semiconductors and ships account for almost 80 percent of Korea's exports, and they are highly vulnerable to market trends and global oil prices, so they took a hard hit due to the global slump", said Suh Jin-kyo at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.

Suh added 25 percent of Korean exports are dependent on China, so the economic slowdown there also had a devastating effect.

The National Assembly Budget Office forecast that the export decline will translate into a 0.2 percentage point drop in GDP growth this year.

"We need to diversify our exports by nurturing new growth engines and use FTAs to sell more products in China", said Kim Keuk-soo at the Korea International Trade Association.

Read this article in Korean
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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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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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Will Saudi-Arabien Joe Biden schwachen und Trump zum neuen US-Prasidenten machen?

Zwischen beiden Landern schwelt ein Konflikt, der nicht leicht auszuraumen sein wird. Was die Saudis an Biden stort und wie sie Einfluss auf die US-Wahl nehmen.
Pardee honors physician, philanthropists of the year

Dr. Eric Byrd was honored as physician of the year at Pardee.

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Dr. Eric Byrd was honored as Pardee Hospitals Physician of the Year and Bill and Dot Moyer were recognized as Philanthropists of the Year during the annual Pardee Hospital Foundation gala Saturday night at Blue Ridge Conference Hall at BRCC.

This is the fourth year that the Pardee Hospital Foundation has presented the Physician of the Year Award, which is given to a Pardee physician whose career has been defined by medical excellence, dedication to compassionate patient care, and a commitment to improving the lives of people throughout the community. Byrd, of Carolina Mountain Internal Medicine, was nominated by several patients as well as fellow Pardee doctors for exemplifying such characteristics.

Byrd completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Kentucky after graduating from medical school from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He worked at various medical centers in Kentucky before moving to Hendersonville in 2001. Byrd practices Internal Medicine at Carolina Mountain Internal Medicine and is a current part-time Pardee Hospitalist Physician. Byrd joins Ken Shelton, James Caserio and Stuart Glassman as winners of the physician of the year award.

Also recognized were husband and wife, William Bill and Dot Moyer as Philanthropists of the Year. This year marked the 13th annual Philanthropist of the Year award, which is given to members of the community who have made outstanding contributions to Pardee Hospital and the Pardee Hospital Foundation and toward the improvement of community health care.

Bill is a native of Pennsylvania and Dot was raised in Charlottesville, Va. The two married in 1984 and both worked as attorneys at prestigious law firms in Philadelphia before moving to Henderson County in 1990. Both Bill and Dot became active in community affairs serving on numerous civic and charitable boards including lending their time and talent to Pardee Hospital. Bill served 12 years on the Henderson County Board of Commissioners, eight years as chair, and currently serves on the Board of Pardee Hospital as well as the Asheville Regional Airport Authority. Dot currently serves as board chair for Four Seasons Compassion for Life, Vice President of the Foothills Equestrian Trails Association, and Board and Executive Committee Member of the Flat Rock Playhouse Board of Trustees.

Dr. Byrd as well as Mr. and Mrs. Moyer are fantastic representatives of our community, said Kimerly Hinkelman, Pardee Hospital Foundation Executive Director. Pardee Hospital is a better place because of them and we would not be able to provide the care our community deserves without these individuals. We thank them for the dedication, time, and talent.

The gala drew a record 400 attendees and brought in more than $100,000 to benefit the new Comprehensive Cancer Center.
WASHINGTON  Its one of those hush-hush practices that homeowners rarely hear about but real estate agents know only too well: Its called buying the listing.

What it means is that some agents want the listing to sell your house so badly that theyll go along with whatever price you ask, even if its outlandishly above what comparable houses are commanding.

They know that theres only a minuscule chance the house will sell at the inflated price youre proposing but they take the listing anyway. They fully expect that after a few weeks with no takers, youll sober up and agree to what may have to be a series of price reductions.

Buying the listing works for some agents because they get cut into a commission payout that they would have missed had they lost the listing to competitors who counseled lower prices. Plus they reap immediate benefits: Theyve got their name plastered on a sign in front of your house, and they can hold open houses that could bring them new clients and other houses to sell.

But there are potentially big drawbacks for you as the seller. Overpricing a house can doom it to months of sitting unsold, even with price reductions. Serious buyers get turned off by new listings with inflated prices and they may not come back when the price inevitably gets reduced. At the end of the process, you could be left with a final price well below what you would have gotten had you priced it realistically earlier.

Buying the listing is a controversial issue in the real estate field. Most agents insist they dont condone it or engage in it themselves. Its also potentially an ethical violation for members of the National Association of Realtors, who are prohibited from attempting to secure a listing by deliberately mislead[ing] the owner as to the market value. Not advising overly optimistic sellers about the true value of their property  solely to obtain the listing  can be construed as misleading them.

How common is this? It depends on location and market segment. Some agents report that it rarely occurs in their areas. Others, such as Tony Marriott, an agent with Keller Williams Arizona Realty in Phoenix and Scottsdale, say its so commonplace that better than 50 percent of the listings start out notably overpriced.

Agents elsewhere say that initial listings with inflated prices account for anywhere from 10 percent to more than 30 percent of all new properties put on the market. Diana Keeling, an agent with Coldwell Banker in Bethesda, Maryland, told me the practice is most common in the upper brackets, where a lot of agents want the listing at all costs.

Dean Moss, a Keller Williams Realty Partners agent in Chicago, says some agents have agendas of listing as many houses as they can  regardless of how off-base the initial pricing may be  as an advertising billboard for themselves. Passersby see their signs frequently and figure, wow, that agent must be the best. Moss says when he confronts these agents and tells them their list price is off the charts, they sometimes reply, I know. Make an offer!

Some agents defend taking listings at elevated prices because they discuss pricing strategy in advance with the sellers. They draw the line: If the sellers of a house that should be priced around $400,000 are insisting on a listing at $495,000, they wont touch it. But if they see the sellers are trying to push a little  say pricing at $415,000 or $420,000  theyll take the listing.

Alan May, a Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage agent in Evanston, Illinois, says hes open to listing properties that are slightly overpriced, but only after showing the sellers comparable recent sales and agreeing to price adjustments downward if the house doesnt sell within specific time periods.

Bottom line: If youre planning to sell your house, arrange for multiple presentations by agents who specialize in your neighborhood. Study the market analyses they offer. Dont choose your agent mainly because he or she says your house is worth the most. Choose based on the key factors: proven sales record at or close to listing prices; strength of marketing strategies and resources; outstanding references and reviews.

If you let an agent buy your listing at a price thats not supported by hard data, you may regret it months later when it still hasnt sold and your asking price is much lower.
Sign you up.

Thats one of the things of which youre most proud: you freely give of your time. Rotary, Jaycees, Lions, your local hospital, if they need help, your name is on the list. Sign you up and they benefit but, if youre honest with yourself, so do you. In the new book Tribe by Sebastian Junger, youll see why it comes naturally.

In examining American history, one startling fact is that a good number of early settlers voluntarily went to live with American Indians. They eschewed the familiar European community theyd always known, and chose a different, sometimes harder, way of life that offered the personal values theyd come to want. Even former captives, once rescued from warring tribes, often escaped back to their captors.

Within that difficult (but arguably simpler) life those settlers sought were three basic things humans require for contentment: feelings of competency, connection, and authenticity. The settlers got what they needed from Indian society but, says Junger, modern humans arent always so lucky.

From birth, we are isolated from others. Hunter-gatherer mothers, conversely, carry their infants nearly constantly, and would be horri-fied at the idea of separate bedrooms. Their children grow up with a different sense of community than do North American children, but a craving for closeness is universal and timeless; Junger says he felt it when he spent time overseas with military troops. Personnel slept tightly packed in canvas tents, and he felt safer because of it.

We are, he says, hard-wired to live communally, just as were hard-wired to shun those who exhibit needlessly-selfish behavior. Ancient societies had to share to survive, and personal items were few; today, we rush to help those who endure disaster  indeed, we may act heroically  and we scorn wealthy CEOs who we think are greedy. And what we need to do to preserve our humanity, Junger says, is to embrace a mind-set of community, understand the need for sacrifice, and find a sense of solidarity.

It may be the only thing that allows us to survive

At well under 200 pages in length, Tribe seems like it would be a quick, light read.

Its not. No, youll be hanging onto every word of this book.

From post-collegiate hitchhiking and sharing resources, to ancient civilizations, the One Percent, PTSD, and a surprising discovery from wartime survivors, author Sebastian Junger offers readers a look at humanity thats graceful, and laced with a plea.

That plea is quiet, but it comes through in every anecdote, personal story, and historical fact set forth here: to wit, we must return to the Old Ways of belonging. Thats the message Junger gently pokes us with, but he does it with a sense of urgency thats compelling. You truly wont be able to forget it.

Without a doubt, therefore, this is a make-you-think kind of book. Its filled with interesting ideas and points, but its ocean-deep in meaning and introspection. You cant ignore what youll learn inside Tribe, and if that sounds good, then sign you up.
Washington County Football: What to watch and who will win in Week 9
ABCNews.com(SAN BERNARDINO, Calif.) -- Maria Mancia believes in miracles.



The California mother wrapped her hands around a 22-year-old man who towered over her. Tears streamed down her cheeks as they embraced.



Mancia was hugging her son, Steve Hernandez, who was abducted by his father 21 years ago when he was not yet even 2 years old, according to a press release from the San Bernardino County District Attorneys Office. Hernandez's father, Valentin Hernandez, took him to Mexico in 1995, never to be seen nor heard from again, until Thursday.



Calls to Mancia were not returned, but ABC-owned station KABC-TV was there for the 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."



Mancia and Valentin Hernandez were at odds with each other after the birth of their son, according to the press release. She came home to their Rancho Cucamonga, California, home after work one day to find they had disappeared.



After years of investigation, the San Bernardino County District Attorney's Child Abduction Unit got a strong tip in February that Steve Hernandez was in Mexico.



In the press release, lead investigator Karen Cragg explained how authorities were able to make contact with Steve Hernandez and confirm his identity.



We werent 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. During the conversation, we found several similarities in his history that matched that of our missing boy.



Investigators were ultimately able to confirm Steve Hernandez's identity with a DNA test.



We contacted the mother and she was overcome with emotion and very thankful, Cragg said. She had never given up after all these years, but had accepted the fact that she may never know her son.... To be able to return him to his country and his mother is an indescribable honor.



According to the press release, Valentin Hernandez is presumed dead, but without confirmation, a $750,000 warrant for his arrest is still very much active, for kidnapping and child abduction.



After Steve Hernandez made the emotional trip back to the arms of his mother on Thursday, he said he was told by his father that his mother had walked out on them both.



"I lived all these years without my mother, then to find out she's alive in another country, it's emotional," Steve Hernandez told KABC-TV.



He plans to stay in the U.S. and continue law school, which he already started in Mexico, KABC-TV reported.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Ever since his latest show, Naked, first debuted some time back, Papa CJ has only been receiving positive reviews for his autobiographical act. In Naked, he actually undresses himself while talking about his life. The show has got people laughing, and also crying. The stand-up comedian, who gave up a UK-based corporate job to become a comic in 2005, has headlined Carolines On Broadway with the performance, and also presented the act at Soho Theatre, London, UK, in February. This July, he is headed to the Just For Laughs festival in the UK. Here, the artiste speaks about his influences, an upcoming book, and where he draws the line with his jokes.

How would your describe your journey as a stand-up comic?

The journey has been wonderful. Ive had the privilege of making thousands of people laugh; of seeing them throw away every care in the world, even if it is for a little while, and just be happy. I have performed at comedy shows, corporate shows, weddings, birthdays and even baby showers. And on countless occasions in India and abroad, Ive had people come up to me after shows and tell me that I make them feel proud to be Indian. All these words have given great meaning to my work.

Read: Comedian Papa CJ on all things funny

Do you think freedom of speech should be complete, or do you feel there should be reasonable restrictions on what a person can utter on public platforms?

Unfortunately, our audiences often dont realise that offence has a lot to do with intent. A comedians intention is almost always to entertain and not to offend. The problem in India, however, is that stand-up comedy is taken seriously. I have a lot of respect for all my audiences, and while I have no problem teasing and embarrassing them in jest, Im very careful not to be hurtful. In my experience though, most audiences are ready for anything. Once they understand that your intentions are simply to entertain, they will allow you to play with them. The danger comes when you put content from a live show on the Internet; it is very easy for that to be taken out of context.

But where do you draw the line when it comes to the kinds of jokes you present?

As comedians, I dont think we should have to think twice about expressing our views. But, what we have been forced to think about is where to express our views. My thumb rule is that if Im performing at a corporate or personal event, it is my duty to respect the boundaries of the audiences environment. However, if you have come to my show, youve come to my environment to see what I do. If you dont like it (the show), youre welcome to leave and never come and watch me again. I need my audience to relate to where Im coming from, and not necessarily agree with it. Also, with a live audience, sometimes the only way to know where the line is, is to cross it. And each time that line is crossed, it goes just a little bit further. So as comedians, we often playfully dance on the line  two steps forward, one step back. Then, repeat.

READ| By invitation: Comedian Papa CJ on every stand-up comedians right to offend

Youve also said that you dont want to offend people

No. Offending people is definitely not the point of stand-up comedy. Each comedian does comedy for different reasons, and may have different goals when they are on stage. My goal is to spread happiness, and therefore, I try not to intentionally offend anyone during my performances.

Who have been the greatest influences on your life?

In my early years as a stand-up, Chris Rock was probably the comedian I admired the most. Russell Peters has influenced me by virtue of the human being he is  large-hearted, down to earth, generous and helpful.

Papa CJs show, Naked, is being turned into a book. (Luv Israni)

Are you altering your show in any way for the upcoming Just For Laughs festival?

Naked is already designed for international audiences. There is very little I need to do to adapt it for any English-speaking audience anywhere in the world. That being said, the show is being turned into a book, which will be released in early 2017.

What have you learnt in your 11-year career as a comic?

Always keep experimenting and making mistakes; that is the only way to grow. Ignore what people say about you online. The only opinion that matters is that of the audience that has paid to come and see your show. Dont ever think you know it all, and compete only against yourself. And most importantly, have fun.
Ace filmmaker Goutam Ghosh, a member of the Shyam Benegal-led censor board revamp committee, said the panel has submitted some recommendations to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry regarding censorship in films.

Lets see how they (the ministry) act on it, Ghosh said on the sidelines of Bharat Nirman Awards in Kolkata last night.

The Benegal panel, in its first report submitted on April 26, had urged the government to lay down a holistic framework for certification of films.

Read: Criticise but dont ban: Sudhir Mishra hopes Benegal report is implemented soon

Read: Udta Punjab a technically well-made film, observes Benegal

Asked to comment on the Bombay High Court bench observations about Udta Punjab controversy, describing censor board as a body meant to certify films and not censor them, which could recommend cuts only as per guidelines, Ghosh said, There need not be censorship in films, but there can be certifications in other ways. What I mean will be clear if our recommendations are acted upon. The process, I understand, has already begun. I will not say anything beyond that now.

Read: Shyam Benegal remembers the stories of Katha Sagar

Read: Bollywood hails move to revamp censor board

Other members of the committee include actor Kamal Haasan, filmmaker Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, ad-man Piyush Pandey, film critic Bhawana Somaaya and NFDC Managing Director Nina Lath Gupta.

On the recent deaths of bloggers and murder of a priest and an ashramite in neighbouring Bangladesh, where Ghosh had shot three of his films, he said, It is a matter of grave misconduct. I believe the Bangladesh government is seriously thinking on the issue. Such attacks should not happen, he said.

Follow @htshowbiz for more.
For Ethiopians, Bollywood is synonymous with Mother India and such is the popularity of the Nargis, Sunil Dutt-starrer movie that it continues to enthral them even after 59 years of its release.

While recent Bollywood blockbusters like Veer Zara, Kuch Kuch Hota hai, Karan Arjun have earned their actors Salman and Shah Rukh Khan a huge fan following, thanks to their dubbing in local language Amharic, Ethiopians embraced the Mehboob Khan helmed classic without even understanding a word of Hindi.

Read: How Mother India changed Nargis life

Read: Could it get any worse? Now a rap on Mother Indias Birju and Lala

Earlier, Indian movies were available with subtitles or sometimes even without that. But still the people understood them without any knowledge about Hindi. I watched the movie (Mother India) some 40 years ago. Now a lot of people know and watch Indian movies. Even if they do not understand it, they watch it. In terms of Indian movies, almost everybody now is able to have a cable TV in their house even in the remote areas, said Soloman Tadesse, CEO of Ethiopian Tourism Organisation

Almost everyone who was asked about Bollwyood in the country- everyone has a unique story to share about Mother India. I love Mother India and cried for half an hour after watching it, said Dorse, owner of a souvenir shop.

Watch: Nargis in this iconic song from Mother India

I have watched Karan Arjun and I love Shah Rukh and Salman, Deteste, an employee at the Kuriftu Resort in Bahir Dar said.

With the advent of cable television, movies are now being translated in the local language Amharic and made available to Ethiopians. Cable TV brings Indian movies. Recently an Ethiopian company started dubbing the movies in Amharic. There is a lot of similarity in the mindset, culture and temperament among the people of both the countries, said Tadesse.

Watch: SRK, Rakhi, Salman in a song from Karan Arjun

With the beautiful landscapes in Africa, many Bollywood movies have been shot in countries like Egypt and South Africa but Ethiopia has been untapped by the Bollywood producers despite the scenic beauty of the place.

The tourism department is now working to draw Indian producers to the country.

We are in talks with Indian producers and trying to get them to picturise the movies in our country, said an official of the Ethiopian Toursim Organisation.

Follow @htshowbiz for more.
It seems like Shilpa Shetty Kundra is controversys favourite child. Be it the unwarranted attention given to her kissing incident with Hollywood actor Richard Gere in 2007, or having been a victim of racist attacks by the late Jade Goody in Celebrity Big Brother 5  often, the actor has been in news for the wrong reasons.

Recently, history repeated itself when news channels and tabloids published stories about Shilpas supposed split with husband Raj Kundra. Reports suggested that there was trouble in paradise. Apparently, Raj had moved out of their Juhu home, and was living at his office in Bandra (W). Ask her about the separation rumours, and Shilpa says, It is complete rubbish. I dont even know where these rumours came from. I believe in the institution of marriage, and I love my husband.

Read: Quashing split rumours, Raj whisks Shilpa to a secret place for her birthday

The actor goes on to state that she didnt feel the need to clarify these rumours. I didnt even put a clarification on Twitter, because thats my personal space, she says, adding, If I need to clarify something, it has to be about something important.

Shilpa says the most unsettling part of it all was that her family members were worried. Many of my relatives from London, UK, called up, and they were really worried about these rumours. They were going through all the news channels back home, she says.

The actor reiterates the fact that the media should have been cautious before putting up articles about her marriage, as its a serious matter. There has to be a line drawn somewhere. If journalists hit us below the belt, it hurts, because we are only humans. Whoever put out that article should have at least cross-checked. Its unfair to us, says Shilpa.

Read: Raj Kundra rubbishes rumours of trouble with wife Shilpa Shetty
Two years ago, when Flipkart launched the same-day delivery concept to counter Amazon, former CEO Sachin Bansal called it a moment of truth.

For the discerning and time-conscious online Indian shopper, it was a boon. You could order anything online, and it would be delivered at your dootstep the very same day.

For Flipkart, it was an opportunity to add more customers to its cart. After all, since it started as an online bookseller in 2007, the countrys internet user base has grown 10 times to 466 million in 2016.

As competition between e-commerce firms heated up, mainly after Amazons entry, the customer found himself to be the biggest gainer. Heavy discounts, free shipping, faster deliveries... online shopping was both cheaper and convenient.

The logistics of it

So, e-tailers came up with new strategies in logistics and supply-chain management, backed by ample investment. Flipkart said it would invest $2.5 billion in logistics; Snapdeal bought stake in third-party logistics firm GoJavas for $20 million.

E-commerce companies wanted to deliver products faster than others  models such as next-day delivery to four-five hour delivery came up, and became marketing slogans, says Neeraj Aggarwal, vice-president, last mile delivery, Flipkart.

Read | Amazon to invest $3bn more in India

But free shipping and same-day delivery involved costs. So top five e-commerce companies spent more than a $1 billion of shareholder capital in 2014. Losses of top 22 online startups, mostly e-tailers, were `7,884 crore at the end of March 2015.

Things, however, started changing when investors started demanding profits. Same-day and next-day deliveries went out of fashion. There has been an overall reduction in discounts, and delivery time has doubled since last year.

The big shift

Unlike the US and China, India lacks the logistics infrastructure to handle e-commerce delivery. Courier companies, which mostly delivered documents, were not equipped to courier electronics.

So in 2010, Flipkart started a pilot in Bangalore to deliver books using its own fleet and take cash at the time of delivery. It did the same when it started selling electronics. Eventually, cash-on-delivery became 70-75% of payments for e-tailers.

Meanwhile, e-commerce in India has changed from an inventory-led model to a marketplace, where merchants list products. During inventory days, courier companies would pick the product from the warehouses Now, no one knows which seller to pick it up from  that causes delays, says Sanjiv Kathuria, CEO of DotZot, DTDCs e-commerce logistics arm.

Over the past three-four years, many third-party logistics companies, including Ecom Express, GoJavas and Delhivery have kicked off operations.

Read | Flipkart scraps 30-day return policy for mobile phones, books

To ensure faster delivery, almost 75% to 80% of orders were being flown between cities earlier. This led to a 30% to 40% increase in last-mile delivery costs. The only priority for e-commerce companies was to satisfy the customer and deliver regardless of cost, says Amitabh Coomar, CEO of GoJavas.

But in mid-2015, when funds started drying up, companies were forced to ship by road and rail. Everyone is reducing cost  if companies have a slightly slower, but cheaper way of delivery, they are going for it, to improve profitability, says Sudhanshu Gupta, vice-president, logistics, Paytm.

About 60% of all delivery is done using surface transport. However, if someone is ready to pay, e-commerce companies are still ready to ship an order by air.

Explains Amitava Saha, CEO of third-party logistics company Xpressbees: In India, if you provide premium delivery for free, it is not sustainable as infrastructure doesnt support quicker delivery. For example, shipping a product from Delhi to Bangalore costs 20% to 25% more than doing it by rail or road. And then, shipments to smaller towns, half of all orders, is in any case 40% to 50% costlier.

Lesser time to return

As e-commerce firms added categories, returns increased, and so did problems. Cash on delivery began to hit balance sheets. People bought products, but didnt accept it on delivery.

As a result, companies stopped delivering in certain pin codes, such as some parts of Uttar Pradesh. Amazon and Flipkart have partially stopped taking returns on electronic items. Flipkart has even brought down the window of its return policy from 30 days to 10 days.

ShopClues, which has a seven-days return policy, has also changed its approach. Earlier we would pick up the return and take it to the warehouse to check for damages. Now we do it at the customers door step, says a senior executive with ShopClues.

Read | Flipkart takes one more devaluation blow

According to consultancy firm Technopaks chairman Arvind Singhal, shorter return cycles will prevent misuse of products once boxes are opened. Returns in India cannot be ignored  its as high at 30% to 40% in some categories, but mostly in the range of 10% to 15%.

After Flipkart, Paytm is also reviewing its 30-days return policy. As most e-commerce companies hold back money for a while, shorter returns will ensure that sellers get the money faster. Working capital is critical to sellers, says Gupta.

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NEW DELHI: The Delhi government fined five prominent private city hospitals Rs 700 crore for not treating poor patients as mandated by the law, underscoring the scanty healthcare options available to the Capitals economically weaker sections (EWS).

Government rules stipulate 10% of all patients admitted to private hospitals must be poor and treated free of cost if the institute has been given subsidised land.

In addition, 25% of all out- patient services must cater to poor people without charge and government hospitals can also refer their cases to these institutes.

The city administrations Thursday order said the five hospitals flouted the rules despite getting subsidised land, invoking a March 2007 Delhi high court ruling that said private hospitals should be fined for earning profits from beds reserved for poor patients.

The money recovered would be used to set up a corpus fund to be used for Delhis health sector, said Dr Hem Parkash, additional director, in-charge of beds for people from the EWS.

The fine came after a government audit of hospital services given to poor patients between the time the institutes were set up and the high court order.

The hospitals were served notices last December and given a hearing. The Thursday order is final and binding, said Parkash. Hospitals have been given a month to deposit the fine.

Fortis Escorts Heart Institute in Okhla, Max Superspeciality Hospital in Saket, Pushpawati Singhania Research Institute in south Delhi, Dharmashila Hospital and Research Centre and Shanti Mukund Hospital in east Delhi were fined.

But the hospitals disputed the order and said they were committed to treating poor patients. We treat thousands of EWS patients every year and are extremely serious towards fulfilling our obligations. We will prefer an appeal against this order, said the Devki Devi Foundation, the parent organisation of Sakets Max hospital.

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NEW DELHI: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs and volunteers on Sunday staged a protest outside the BJP national headquarters against the attack on their Dalit councillor Rakesh Kumar, allegedly by BJP councillors.

The convener of the partys Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe wing, MLA Rajendra Gautam, said, The BJP has an anti-Dalit mindset and it has shown it time and again. The BJP always wants the society to be divided along the lines of caste and religion. By hurting the sentiments of the Dalit community, the BJP has proved its anti-Dalit mindset, he said.

AAP has also approached the National Commission for Schedule Castes to take action against those responsible for the incident.

On June 9, Kumar, an AAP councillor, was allegedly assaulted by BJP members at a joint session of the three BJP-ruled municipal corporations.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal also raised the issue in the Delhi Assembly on Friday and alleged that Kumar was beaten up because members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could not accept that a Dalit was sitting with them.
NEW DELHI: Scores of protesters comprising locals and auto-rickshaw union members on Saturday blocked the road near Lodhi Colony police station in south Delhi, alleging police inaction in a hit-and-run incident in which a 30-year-old auto-rickshaw driver was killed.

The protest caused traffic congestion in and around Lodhi Road in the peak evening hours.

On Thursday, the auto-rickshaw driver, identified as Mohender Sah, was hit by a car near an intersection in Lodhi Road, police said.

The driver sped away leaving Sah there. Sah was rushed to a hospital where he died on Friday, police said.
Last week while I was at my bank, an elderly man walked in and asked the person at the cash counter to check whether the currency note of rupees one thousand denomination that he had was genuine.

He said he had got it from an ATM and when he gave it at a shop, he was told it was fake. When the person at the bank confirmed that it was a counterfeit, his face fell. I have now lost Rs 1,000, he said.

I suggested that he complain to the bank from whose ATM he got the currency, along with the ATM receipt or even the message on his mobile about his ATM withdrawal. But the bank will deny it. How will I prove that it came from their ATM? he said, as he walked out.

As per the Reserve Bank of India directive issued to all banks, cash receipts in the denominations of Rs 100 and above should not be put into recirculation by banks without the notes being machine processed for authenticity.

Says the banking regulator, in its Master Circular of July 1, 2015, on Detection and Impounding of counterfeits: In order to obviate complaints regarding receipt of counterfeit notes through ATMs, and to curb circulation of counterfeits, it is imperative to put in place adequate safeguards/ checks before loading ATMs with notes.

The regulator also warns banks that dispensation of counterfeit notes through the ATMs would be construed as an attempt to circulate the counterfeit notes by the bank concerned.

Obviously not every bank takes this directive of the regulator seriously or else there would not be complaints of fake notes coming out of ATMs. However, whenever consumers confront them with such notes, banks invariably refuse to accept that the fake note came out of their ATM , leaving the consumer poorer by Rs 1,000 or whatever is the denomination and the number of such fake notes.

I must mention here that as per the data given by the finance ministry in reply to a Parliament question on May 6 this year, the number of fake notes of rupee 1,000 denomination is on the increase -- from 98,459 in 2012-13 to 1,43,099 in 2015-16. This is worrying because the higher the denomination, the greater the loss to the consumer, if he or she gets such a note through the ATM.

Even though the largest number of fake notes is in the denomination of Rs 500, their number seems to be coming down -- from 2,81,265 in 2012-13 to 2,61,693 in 2015-16. The total number of fake notes detected is however on the increase -- from 4.9 lakh in 2013-14 to 6.3 lakh in 2015-16. The number of counterfeit Rs 100 notes has also doubled over the years.

Its therefore extremely important for consumers who get such notes through the ATM (or through the cash counter of the bank) to lodge a written complaint with the bank and if the bank does not take notice, complain to the RBI and also the local police, so that (hopefully) they investigate the matter.

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NEW DELHI: A 58-year-old businessman was allegedly shot dead on Friday night by two assailants on motorcycles at Majlis Park area in Adarsh Nagar. A techie, who had stopped his car behind the businessmans scooter to intervene, was also shot at.

Them an, Vi jay Kumar Wadhwa, was returning to his house in Kewal Park from his clothes shop in Jahangirpuri around 9pm when the two men intercepted his Activa scooter. The men allegedly snatched his briefcase that had his keys and some documents. When Kumar tried to fight back, the two opened fire.

Local resident Siddharth Jain, who was behind Kumar, took his car ahead to help him. As he tried to intervene, the men opened fired at him. The pellets hit the windshield of his car and the glass had shattered. One of the pieces hit his eye and he was injured.

Hearing the gunshots, the locals gathered on the spot and made a PCR call. Kumar was rushed to the hospital but he was declared dead on arrival.

His family was then informed. Vijays son claimed that he came to know about the incident around 10pm.

When we reached the spot, my father was just lying there. So we immediately put him in a gypsy and took him to Fortis Hospital. But he was declared dead, recounted his son.

He added his father had been taking the route for the past 20 years. Vijays family hails from Punjab. They had moved to Delhi during the 1984 riots and rented a house in Kewal Park.

A senior police officer said, A case of murder and robbery has been registered and we have form eds everal teams to identify the assailants.

Kewal Krishan, the landlord of the house where Wadhwa stayed with his family, claimed that before shooting Vijay, the assailants snatched the bag that he was carrying.

No arrests have been made in the case so far.
NEW DELHI: A 31-year-old man was arrested by Delhi Police on Friday for posing as a senior IAS officer and cheating a Delhi businessman of Rs 85 lakh.

The accused, identified as Bhubaneswar resident Mukesh Shaw, made the trader pay up after promising to award him projects floated by corporate houses working with the Central government.

The police said Shaw even posed as an IPS officer working with the CBI.

Police seized a sedan with a red beacon and fake stickers of the Union ministry of home affairs that Shaw used. They recovered fake letter heads of some of top corporate houses from Shaws Bhubaneswar residence.

The police started their probe after receiving a complaint from an iron scrap dealer, who alleged he had been duped by a man who called himself Joy Shah and claimed to be posed as an assistant director in the MHA.

On May 13, the trader Bharat Gupta met Shaw, who told him that he could help him in getting some old factories that had been closed and were under privatepublic partnership.

Explaining the mans modus operandi, joint commissioner of police (crime) RS Yadav said: A week later, Shaw called Gupta to Bhubaneswar drove him around in a car with a red beacon and talked about various projects. Shaw later kept meeting Gupta at various five-star hotels of Delhi, Mumbai and in Bhubaneswar.

Police said Shaw switched off his phone and fled after taking a token sum of Rs 85 lakh from Gupta. A case was registered and police found the Aadhaar card and identity cards Shaw had submitted during his stay at a five star hotel in Delhi had two different names.

Shaw was arrested from a rented house in Ayodhya Nagar in Bhopal. During interrogation, he said his real name was Mukesh Shaw and he had duped more than 50 people in Bhopal and Bhubaneswar.


Days after the Delhi government slapped a fine of over Rs 600 crore on five private hospitals for not providing free-of-cost medicare to poor patients, Max Super Specialty Hospital-Saket on Sunday clarified that it had treated thousands of poor since its inception.

We have treated thousands of Economically Weaker Section (EWS) patients every year and are extremely serious towards fulfilling the obligations, said a statement from the hospital.

The Delhi government has asked five private hospitals, including Max Super Specialty, to deposit over Rs 600 crore for denying free-of-cost treatment to the poor patients, in contravention of the main condition in providing land at concessional rates to these hospitals.

The other hospitals accused of violating the land allotment terms are: Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, Shanti Mukand Hospital, Dharamshila Cancer Hospital, and Pushpawati Singhania Research Institute.

Other hospitals were not available for comments.

The Max hospital statement said the order was unfair to it, as it stood fully committed to discharging all the obligations towards Economically Weaker Sections of the society (EWS).

Hem Prakash, Additional Director (EWS) in the Health Department of the Delhi government, said these five hospitals were provided land at concessional rates between 1960 and 1990 on the condition that they will treat the poor free of cost.

The penalty has been imposed on the basis of a Delhi High Court order passed in 2007 on a public interest litigation seeking implementation of the provision of free treatment to the poor and action against the erring hospitals. The fine amount has been calculated accordingly, the official said.

The hospitals have been asked to pay the amount by July 9, failing which further action will be initiated against them.

The Max Super Specialty Hospital-Saket is run by the Devki Devi Foundation.
NEW DELHI: Delhi University teachers will continue to boycott the universitys evaluation process till Thursday in protest against a University Grants Commission (UGC) notification.

The teachers have been boycotting the evaluation process since May 24 because of which DUs undergraduate results may be delayed this year.

The university has written to the teachers asking them to join back the evaluation process from Sunday.
GHAZIABAD: As the Congress gears up for Uttar Pradesh assembly elections next year, party vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday visited a party worker in Ghaziabad, who had burnt herself during a protest against price rise on June 8.

Gandhi said the party would raise the issue of rising prices and not let people suffer.

I came to meet her... she had got injured. She is a strong party worker. These days the biggest issue is price rise. Modiji (Prime Minister) had said he would tackle the issue. But prices are rising. So Congress will fight out the issue, Gandhi said.

The worker, Meena Verma, had burnt her arm during the protest near the old bus stand.

I was depressed after the incident since no senior party leader inquired about my condition. I am overwhelmed that Rahulji visited my house. I was in tears when he inquired about my health, Verma said.

Adjacent to river Hindon, Arthala, 25 km from Delhi, looks like a slum cluster. It has overflowing drains and garbage is strewn around in the lanes and bylanes. It houses migrants from eastern UP and Bihar.

Flanked by the Special Protection Group and the police, Rahul Gandhi walked to Vermas rented house in Arthala as thousands of locals gathered to get a glimpse. Rahul had a closed-door meeting with her and other local Congress leader for nearly 20 minutes.

Rahulji had arrived to meet a (Congress) family member. He spoke to her at length and appreciated her efforts. This visit will motivate our workers throughout the country, said Shobha Ojha, Congress spokesperson and Mahila Congress president.

At the house, he spoke about price rise. Basic items such as pulses cost Rs 200 per kg and getting out of the common mans reach. It will be one of the core issues in the upcoming elections in the state, she added.

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A 43-year-old conman who duped parents of several job aspirants of their hard earned money in lieu of securing jobs in Indian Railways and other government agencies has been arrested by the Delhi Police crime branch, police said on Sunday.

The impostor, Praveen Kumar Singh, who claimed to be a member of Lok Sabha, also duped proprietors of several private companies with the allurement of earning them lucrative business contracts through different ministries. He also lured many local political leaders to secure plum political posts, said police. A reward of R50,000 was announced on his arrest.

Singh allegedly runs an organised cheating syndicate in which he has included his wife and some government employees working, said a senior investigating officer. The police are now looking for Singhs wife and as many as 10 members of his gang, including one Rajkumar, a commercial clerk posted at Mughal Sarai railway station.

Apart from cheating gullible job aspirants, Singh has duped a businessman in Punjab of around R2 crore on the pretext of securing him allotment of a petrol pump. A local Congress leader and an RSS worker are among his victims who were duped on the fake promise of helping them get desirable political postings, the officer said.

We are yet to receive complaints from the Punjabs businessman and the politicians who were cheated by Singh, said the officer.

Ravindra Yadav, joint commissioner of police (crime), said Singh was arrested on May 28 by a team led by inspector Ashish Kumar Dubey from outside Delhis domestic airport where he was scheduled to board a flight to Kolkata. His arrest came after investigation into a cheating case filed against him with the crime branch in 2014 in which he had cheated 10 job aspirants of `25 lakh for jobs in railways.

Interrogation of Singh revealed that he used to wear white khadi clothes and costly wrist watches to pose as an MP. Police have recovered 24 branded wrist watches, seven mobile phones, five credit/debit cards and 77 forged Lok Sabha MP blank letter pads.
NEW DELHI: Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and Bharatiya Janata Party MP Vijay Goel might soon meet HRD minister Smriti Irani to discuss higher education in Delhi.

Goel met Sisodia on Saturday and demanded that 85% seats in 28 Delhi government funded colleges be reserved for Delhi students. He suggested that a 5% advantage be given to Delhi students in cutoffs. Goel offered to jointly visit Irani with Sisodia, who said he will consider the suggestion.

We understand there is a gap that needs to be filled. But giving preference to Delhi students is not enough. Already 30,000 students in DU are from Delhi and adding another 1,500 students will not affect any equations. The solution is to start new affiliating universities in the city to cater to the huge demand. For this, amendments to the Delhi University Act need to be made. If Goel feels that Irani has a positive outlook towards this demand, I have no problem meeting her along with him, Sisodia said.

The long-standing demand for reservation may however be a difficult one to fulfill since Delhi University is a Central university where there are no state-specific reservations.

State varsities such as Ambedkar University, Delhi Technological University, Netaji Subhash Institute of Technology and Guru Gobind Singh IP University reserve seats for students who complete Class 12 from Delhi.

According to Goels memorandum to Sisodia, over two lakh students pass class 12 in Delhi each year but dont get admission in DU because there is no reservation for them.

The Delhi University has only 54,000 seats in 61 colleges. Children of Delhi residents are not able to get admission in colleges and courses of their own choice in their home state in spite of getting more than 60% marks. The problem is particularly acute for girl students belonging to Delhi as their parents are reluctant to send them out of Delhi for higher education. Therefore, most of the girls are compelled to discontinue their studies. Students belonging to poor families, who study in government schools, also suffer.

Goel said there should be a benefit of 5% in DU cutoffs for Delhi students during admission.

Drawing attention to the case of students topping the Bihar board exams despite not knowing their subject well, Goel said there should be an entrance exam for admission to the premier university and colleges.
NEW DELHI: Leader of opposition Vijender Gupta on Saturday said his wifes recommendation to give pension to an old woman  later found ineligible  was not her responsibility.

(She) only recommended the woman for pension and it was based on the affidavit provided. After the recommendation, it is for government officials to verify and sanction pension and it is not the councillors responsibility. All payments are made through cheques or transferred into the accounts of the pensioner. In this case the old and disabled woman Harbhajan Kaur refunded the amount of pension she had received, a statement issued by Gupta said.

Gupta said that the government was attacking him to cover up the alleged water tanker and premium app bus service scams.

The Aam Aadmi Party government had on Friday attacked Guptas wife Shobha Vijender after an order passed by the Central Information Commission indicted her for recommending Kaurs application for pension.

Chief minister Arvind-Kejriw al had said if the anti-corruption branch was with him, he would get the matter probed.
Dressed in a spotless white kurta-pyjama, Nizamuddin, 57, is a picture of despair as he dusts a few books and arranges them neatly on the iron shelves. Urdu Bazar has become Hotel Bazar. The market that once attracted poets, writers and scholars now draws only foodies looking for kebab, not kitab. This is not the kind of place my family wanted to be in, he says in chaste Urdu, with the dramatic pauses of a melancholic poet.

Nizamuddin is the owner of Kutub Khana Anjuman-e-Taraqqi-e-Urdu, one of the biggest and oldest shops at the Urdu market in front of Jama Masjid in the Walled City.Urdu Bazar is fighting for survival, he says, his voice filled with despair.

Urdu Bazar, once the heart of Delhis fledgling Urdu poetry scene, is now struggling to stay afloat. Most bookshops that used to sell the best of Urdu fiction and poetry have given way to eateries and garment shops over the years. Until the 1970s, this was the best place to buy Urdu books. Some of the countrys biggest publishers had their offices and shops here. People such as Abul Kalam Azad, Hakim Azmal Khan and Josh Malihabadi were regulars, says Nizamuddin, sitting on the white cushions placed on the floor.

The shelves are stacked with a variety of books  novels, poetry, essays and travelogues. Contrary to perception, all kinds of books are available in Urdu; it is just that there are not many takers for them these days. There is more interest in religious books than Urdu literature; maybe it is because people are turning to religion for emotional succor in these fraught times, says Nizamuddin.

Not far from his shop is Kutab Khana Aziza, one of the oldest bookshops bang in front of Jama Masjids main gate. Urdu magazines such as Pakiza Anchal and mystery novels of Ibn-e-Safi are stacked in front of the shop. There are still a few old timers who buy these mystery novels, which were once bestsellers. Until the late 1990s, I mostly sold Urdu novels, now I sell religious books. My business has gone down by 50%, says Md Rizwan, 42, the owner.

Even shops specialising in religious books  such as Kutub Khana Rashidia, one of the biggest and oldest in the market  are struggling to survive. Now most of our customers are foreigners and scholars of Urdu and Arabic. Our business has come down by 40%. But as of now we have no intention of shutting shop, says Md Farhan, sitting at his shop. Behind him are high wooden shelves that are as old as the bookshop.

Not just Rashidia most other bookshops, including Zulfiqar Book Depot, depend on tourists who come to see Jama Masjid and buy Urdu books as souvenirs.

Most of my customers are tourists from Islamic countries, says Moh Aamil of Zulfiqar Book Depot, one of the few surviving shops. These days, even Muslim families want their children to study English, not Urdu. The generation that wrote and spoke Urdu is almost gone. I am worried about the future of the Urdu market.

Ali Khusro, 62, who has been working at Maktaba Jamia, publishers and booksellers, says the markets popularity suffered after Independence because Urdu was branded as the language of Muslims. But the fact is that we have published Urdu books by about 50 Hindu writers, Khusro says. Maktaba has the best collection of fiction, poetry, essays and travelogues. It stocks the works of Urdu writers such as Som Anand, Rajendra Singh Bedi and Krishan Chand.

Among the best selling books at Maktaba are Aag Ka Darya, Batein Lahore Ki and Godan by Munshi Premchand. Thankfully, we still have some loyal customers who come to us from places such as Hyderabad, Chandigarh and most of them are not Muslims, says Khusro. The bookshop has shelves devoted to childrens books in Urdu-English and Hindi-Urdu.

One of Khusros loyal customers is GR Kanwal, 81, a resident of Punjabi Bagh and a regular at the market ever since 1948 when he came to Delhi from Lahore after Partition. Kanwal says he is heartbroken. Those days Urdu Market was the favourite haunt of poets from all over the country. There used to be poetry sessions inside the shops. The area was not congested; it only had a couple of hotels and many teashops where one could meet aspiring and established poets, Kanwal says.

Today, I cannot recognise this place. I find it hard to negotiate my way through its cacophonic and congested streets. Most of the shops and people I knew, and more importantly the tehjeeb of the place, are gone, says Kanwal, an Urdu writer and retired principal of the Anglo Sanskrit Victoria Jubilee Senior Secondary School in Daryaganj.

Kanwal  who has been a member of the governing council of Urdu Academy and currently heads Halqa-e-TashganeAdab, which organises Urdu musahiras across the city  says a lot of people want to listen to Urdu poetry but no one wants to read and write in the language.

It has become fashionable to recite and listen to Urdu couplets but no one has real interest in Urdu. Ironically 90% of the people who recite at our musahiras write Urdu poetry in Devnagari not Urdu script. That is a great disservice to Urdu, he says.

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Nineteen years after 59 people were killed in the Uphaar cinema fire tragedy in the Capital, the families of victims continue their quest for justice.

We are still waiting for the Supreme Court to take up our petition seeking review of its decision to let off accused Gopal and Sushil Ansal on payment of a fine of R30 crore each in lieu of a jail term, president of President Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy (AVUT) Neelam Krishnamoorthy told HT.

We filed the review petition in October last year against the courts August 19, 2015, verdict. In January this year the court agreed to give us an open court hearing. But the case has not been taken up despite our advocates mentioning it twice in March and April for an urgent hearing, said Krishnamoorthy who lost both her children in the fire.

The tragedy dates back to June 13, 1997 when a fire broke out at Uphaar Cinema in Green Park area during the screening of Bollywood blockbuster Border. Fifty nine people died and over 100 were injured due to suffocation in the ensuing stampede as the escape routes were blocked by illegally fixed extra chairs.

In November 2007, a trial court had sentenced the Uphaar owners  the Ansal brothers  to two-year rigorous imprisonment. But in December 2008, the Delhi High Court reduced their sentence to one-year jail term. While Sushil Ansal spent 5 months and 20 days in jail, Gopal remained in jail for four months and 20 days.

On August 19, 2015, the SC upheld the brothers conviction in the case. However, considering their age and the period already spent by them in prison, it decided not to send them back to jail. It asked the duo to pay a fine of R30 crore each in lieu of a jail term.

The money  to be used for constructing a trauma centre in the capital as ordered by the top court  has already been deposited by the Ansals with the Delhi government in November last year.

Read more: Uphaar fire: SC to hear review petitions against Ansals conviction

Terming the SCs order as shocking, AVUT requested the court to review its decision. Contending that the sentence awarded to the brothers was inadequate and against the principles of natural justice, the CBI and AVUT  both had demanded an open court hearing

A bench of Justices AR Dave, Kurien Joseph and AK Goel in January decided to hold a hearing in open court on review petitions of the CBI and AVUT.

The CBI said while letting off the accused with mere fine, the court did not consider several aspects dealt with by the bench which had convicted the Ansals.

They asked how can such lenient view be taken after the SC had earlier noted that contemptuous disregard of civic law (in the tragedy) was glaring and cinema owners were more interested in making money than ensuring safety of the public.

In its review petition, AVUT said: The sentences imposed on the convicts, Sushil Ansal and Gopal Ansal, have been substituted with fine without assigning any reason or basis thereof. The sentences of the said convicts have been reduced to the period undergone without taking into account the gravity of their offence. The orders under review run contrary to the well established jurisprudence of the principles of sentencing as followed so meticulously by this Honble Court, noted AVUTs plea.

There are manifest errors apparent on record in the impugned judgments which deserves being reviewed, the plea added.
NOIDA: Dreaded gangster of the Sundar Bhati gang, Ankit Gurjar, was shot multiple times on his leg and arrestedon Saturday at Milak Lacchi village in Greater Noidas Bisrakh area.

Gurjar, who is in his mid-30s, is wanted in14 cases, including three cases of murder and extortion. He is the prime suspect in the murder of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Vijay Pandit.

Police and crime branch teams also arrested his accomplice Sanjay Gurjar. But Ankits second accomplice managed to flee the encounter spot.

Gurjar was rushed to the Government district hospital in Noida where he is currently being treated. Police recovered a car and two pistols from the spot.

We received information on Saturday that Ankit Gurjar was travelling with his friends to Dadri in a car from Delhi. Crime branch and police teams cordoned off the jungle of Milki Lacchi village where the encounter took place. Gurjar was shot two-three times on his leg and he is currently being treated at the district hospital, said Gautam Budh Nagar senior superintendent of police Dharmendra Singh.

Gurjar had a reward of Rs 50,000 on his head and was arrested by the Special Task Force (west) last year. A key member of the notorious Sundar Bhati gang, Gurjar gave the slip to the police on April 25 from the washroom of a flat of his relative during transit from Maharajganj to the district courts, Surajpur in Gautam Budh Nagar.

After his escape, Noida police had announced a reward of Rs 12,000 on any information on Ankit. Director general of police Javeed Ahmad announced a reward of Rs 50,000 for the police team for catching Gurjar. Ahmad was unavailable for comments.
NEW DELHI: Delhi University aspirants should pick the course they want to build a future in rather than just opting for a well-known college, experts told students at HTs Campus Calling Counselling Session 1 on Saturday.

With less than 10 days left for the last date of DUs application process, students flocked to the session held at YWCA, Ashoka Road, between 11 am and 2 pm.

Gargi Colle ge principal Shashi Tyagi, Mayanka Gupta from the Lady Irwin College and career counsellor and founder-director of Career Smart Usha Albuquerque answered questions related to the admission process.

Most students wanted to know if they should choose college over course or pick the best course in a less popular college. Should I go for a popular college and get admission in whatever course I am getting or should I take admission in the best course, asked Ritika, a DU aspirant.

Experts suggested that if a student is sure about what course she wants to pursue and build a career then she should pick the course in whichever college she gets admission in with her marks. But if you are not sure about exact course you want to pursue then pick the best college you can get with your marks, said Albuquerque.

Some students wanted to know the difference between a B Com (Pass) and B Com (Honors). While in Honors course you will get you study more topics focusing on Commerce, in the Pass course you will have the options of studying different topics, said Tyagi.

Experts cautioned students against dropping a year for preparing for competitive exam and advised students to take admission in the best institute and course available to them. I dont think it is advisable to drop a year because you dont know what might be your result next year, said Albuquerque.

DUs online admission, which began on June 1, will continue till June 19.

The registration for all categories including Sports, Extra Curricular Activities (ECA), Kashmiri Migrants, and CW (Defence) will be completely online.

The first cut-off list will be out on June 27. Students can take admission under this list till June 30.

The second list will be out on July 1. DU will bring out only five cut-off lists this year.

Aspirants need to log into the DU portal (www.du.ac.in) to register and fill the application form .

Students will have to upload a copy of self-attested marksheets of Classes 10 and 12 and reserved category certificate.
The New Delhi district magistrate (DM) visited a Connaught Place restaurant on Sunday morning to investigate allegations that the establishment refused service to underprivileged children brought in by a customer.

The DMs visit follows the Delhi government ordering a probe into that matter after the customer, Sonali Shetty lodged a complaint and staged a protest outside the eatery.

The incident took place on Friday when Shetty wished to treat more than half a dozen children from the streets on her husbands birthday.

I had taken eight underprivileged children for lunch... but the staff there denied to serve us. I was also ridiculed and threatened to keep off the restaurant, she said.

Reacting to the news, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia ordered the government probe, calling the incident an example of colonial mindset .

This is typical Colonial mindset. Cant be tolerated. Have ordered DM New Delhi to enquire & report within 24 hours, Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia tweeted.

If allegations found true,we'll cancel restaurant's license,action will be taken undr appropriate sections-M Sisodia pic.twitter.com/tMaBALX9f3  ANI (@ANI_news) June 12, 2016

He further said the restaurant could lose its licence if the allegations were proved true.

A restaurant staff member said the DM questioned the waiters and other staff about the matter, taking down notes for the report.

After being turned away, Shetty stationed herself outside the restaurant in protest, and claimed she would resume her sit-in on Sunday evening too.

They clearly told us to get (out) and also threatened to shoot me if I dont clear out from the premises. The owner discriminated with kids and refused service citing that kids arent well dressed and are look dirty. Nevertheless, I came back and sat down in front of the restaurant in protest. Even the police did not support us, she said.

The owner discriminated with kids & refused service citing that kids aren't well dressed & look dirty: Sonali Shetty pic.twitter.com/qbwaNgb5ii  ANI (@ANI_news) June 11, 2016

The restaurant, however, countered Shetty and clarified that they had allowed the children to enter but later refused service as they were creating a ruckus inside.

Lady had brought few kids along with her to the restaurant but kids started to create lot of "tamasha" inside: Roma Malhotra PR, Restaurant  ANI (@ANI_news) June 11, 2016

It is completely untrue that we denied entry to the children, as we have it on record that we allowed them to sit inside. We also never said that we wont provide service to the children. But then the kids were making a lot of noise, tossing things around and creating a commotion. As a restaurateur, I have the right to deny service to someone who disturbs other customers, Roma Malhotra, an employee of the restaurant said.

Shetty said she would return to the restaurant on Sunday with more children and sit at its door at 4 pm to continue her protest.
NEW DELHI: A day after Brajesh Chauhan, personal staff of a doctor at Apollo Hospital, was questioned for his alleged involvement in the kidney scam, the police formally arrested him on Saturday.

Another person, Deepak Kar, has been arrested in Kolkata and is being brought to Delhi for questioning, sources confirmed.

Investigators claimed that the two men were in direct contact with kingpin T Rajkumar Rao and had facilitated drafting of some forged documents required forthe kidney transplant at the hospital.

In a statement last week, the hospital had said all the arrested were secretarial staff of some doctors and not employees of the hospital. The hospital had said that they were victims of a well-orchestrated operation to cheat patients.

Sources said the men had also initiated transplants at a hospital in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, in 2012-13. So far, 11 persons, including two personal assistants of another Apollo hospital doctor and four kidney donors, have been arrested in the scam.

Chauhan told the police that one Shailash introduced him to Rao and he was offered a commission of Rs 50,000 for each successful transplant. Chauhan allegedly played a key role in swapping original files with forged ones and was paid Rs 1.5 lakh for the job.

Deepak Kar, police said, was in constant touch with Rao and had gone underground after the scam was unearthed in Delhi. The police however arrested him with the help of local sources and technical surveillance. He will be questioned by the investigators in Delhi.
Nothing could stop Aarti Kumari of Ranchi. Defying all the odds -- poverty to displacement -- this girl from Jharkhand stood out in her effort to make a mark. Today she has tasted success: Aarti is at the second spot in this years Arts intermediate merit list published by the Jharkhand Academic Council (JAC).

Aarti had lost her father in 2015 when she was studying in the 12th standard. It was then left to her mother to shoulder the responsibilities. But a distraught Aarti could not take the JAC exam that year.

But she pulled herself together and made up her mind. This year, she took the test and the JAC result proved that shes one of the brightest students in Jharkhand.

Her mother has been the pillar of strength for Aarti and her brother, who has also completed his engineering studies.

Besides losing her father, Aarti had to face displacement as the family was forced to vacate their tenement in Naga Baba Khatal. They took shelter in another part of Ranchi. It was a tough time, but Aarti was constantly supported by her mother who told her to never deviate from her academic pursuits.

Its been a hard road to success for Aarti who now hopes to become an Indian Administrative Service official one day.

Similar is the story of Gayatri Singh of Gumla district. Her parents work at a brick kiln in Uttar Pradesh. Gayatri, however, didnt follow them to the neighbouring state -- she stayed back along with her sisters and brother, who works in a local store.

Gayatri had been adamant that despite financial constraints and the troubles that come with it, she would never give up studying. Her brother worked hard to ensure that Gayatri was not forced to drop out.

The result has been spectacular: Gayatri is at the third spot on the JAC merit list.

No wonder then that the neighbours are happy -- the girl next door has made them proud, proving that nothing can come in the way if one is powered by a dream, determination and hard work.

Another shining example of grit and determination is Reeta Nupur Kujur of Lohardaga district who followed her dreams even as she got married and gave birth to a son. She has secured 10th position as per the JAC merit list.

Reeta got married after taking her matriculation exam. The marital life took away much of her time, as she became a mother. But her wish to pursue studies remained etched deep in her heart. Thankfully, she was encouraged by her husband, a farmer, who understood the need to study if Reeta was to fulfil her dream to become an Indian Police Service official one day.

So after a gap of six years, Reeta got back to the study materials and took admission in a womens college. There has been no looking back since then. Reeta now plans to pursue graduate course in English and then chase her dream to become an IPS official.
Indore boy Kartik Patekar claimed the sixth position in the All-India Ranking of the Joint Entrance Exam (Advanced), the results of which were declared on Sunday.

Kartik scored 295 marks out of 372. The JEE (Advanced) was conducted in two parts: Paper 1 and Paper 2. Each paper had 54 questions  18 from each subject  and was worth 186 marks. Each subject carried 124 marks, taking the total marks to 372.

The 17-year-old had topped in the state in the JEE (Mains) with 336 out of 360 marks. After scoring top position in the state in JEE (Mains), Im pretty much sure about getting position in top-10 merit list in AIR, Kartik had told HT after JEE (Mains) results were declared on April 27.

Read more: Check JEE (A) results and summary, Jaipurs Aman Bansal is topper

Kartik, the eldest son of Rajendra Patekar and Sangeeta Patekar, credits his parents and teachers for his success.

A student of South Indian Cultural Association (SICA) Higher Secondary School, Indore, Kartik scored 91.6% in his CBSE board exam this year and wants to join IIT-Bombay. He said his favourite subject is physics and that he hopes to make a career in research after graduation.

What is the secret to his success? Proper time management is the key to success and just focus on one thing at a time. And that was the reason behind good marks in board exam as well as the top rank in the prestigious JEE (Advanced), he said.

Read more: JEE Advanced 2016: Yamunanagar boy secures second position

Apart from that, Im well aware about my weakness too and thats helped me a lot, he added. As I know Im weak in chemistry, after JEE (Mains), I put maximum effort in chemistry. And today Im celebrating success, Kartik said.

With the addition of four new campuses  at Chhattisgarh, Jammu, Karnataka and Goa  the number of seats went up by 569 this year. As a result, 38.21% more candidates cleared the exam compared to last year.

Read more: Meet Rajasthan boy Aman Bansal who topped JEE Advanced 2016

This year, the JEE (Advanced) exam was organised by IIT-Guwahati, and 36,566 of the 1.5 lakh candidates have qualified for 10,575 seats at 23 IITs across the country. In 2015-16, 26,456 candidates, including 23,407 boys and 3,049 girls, had cleared the exam.

Read more: Kota-based institute grabs first 3 ranks

Read more: Sharvik Mittal tops in IIT Kanpur zone

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Mathematician Anand Kumars Super 30 continued with its impressive streak of training underprivileged children as 28 of its 30 students cracked the JEE (Advanced) on Sunday.

Super 30 is a globally-acclaimed residential programme started by Kumar in 2002 for poor students who are trained for the tough programme free of cost.

There was jubilation for Super 30 students at Anand Kumars Meethapur residence in Patna as the results started trickling in late in the evening.

However, it was not without jitters, as a server problem kept cropping up. There was some relaxation though after the cut-offs  75 for general category, 67 for other backward classes and 38 for SC/ST  became apparent and the students started re-calculating their score after matching their performance in the JEE (Advance) with the answer key.

Read: JEE Advanced 2016: Check results and summary, Jaipurs Aman Bansal is topper

We never expected the cut off to go so low, as it has gone this time. May be, it is because the questions in JEE (Advance) this year were relatively tougher. What is more, I have never seen server play so truant as this time. It was torturous, said Anand Kumar, as his bother Pranav kept on checking roll numbers to pass on the big news to his waiting students.

Like previous years, what was remarkable was that several students from backward backgrounds made it. And the joy for them was limitless, as it brought smiles to their parents far away. It brought them hope of a better tomorrow.

Papa I have done it. Now, I will study in IIT and become an engineer, a smiling Basant Kumar told his father Satish Kumar, a small farmer in village Maniar Bigha of Gaya district.

I never dreamt of getting into an IIT. My father still talks about ITI when he refers to IIT, as he is not educated. But he wanted me to study, as he knew only education could change our life, he added.

Read: Meet Aman Bansal who topped JEE Advanced 2016, know his success mantra

Pushkar Kumar, too, was excited, as he broke the news to his father Arjun Prasad, a private school teacher in Phulwarisharief area of Patna. Prasad always brought his son old books, as she could not afford costly books. But once I reached Super 30 after reading about it in newspapers, things changed for me. Here my parents did not have anything to bother about, he said.

There were many like Basant and Pushkar, for whom cracking JEE meant a lot more than just results and the prospect of studying in premier IITs.

We were like a family here and we had just one objective  to study. We did not even watch TV, let alone going to a movie till exams, recalled Ajit Kumar, whose father is a vegetable vendor in Masaurhi, around 30 kms from Patna

A happy Anand Kumar said that the results had shown the immense talent in the students.

The students did a lot of hard work and were focussed. I have seen students growing up in adversity have huge determination. The joy on their faces and the reaction of their parents is my biggest reward. My team and family members deserve a lot of praise for making it happen year after year, as taking care of 30 students is not easy, he added.

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Actor Liam Hemsworth has revealed his The Hunger Games co-star Jennifer Lawrence once asked him if he liked having sex with kangaroos.

Making an appearance on the British comedy chat show, The Graham Norton Show, the Independence Day: Resurgence actor said it is hard to gauge what is going to come out of her mouth, reports usmagazine.com.

She often, right before a take, would turn to me and ask if I liked having sex with kangaroos. Anything along those lines, Hemsworth said.

Read: Jennifer Lawrence confesses she took a drug before a Hunger Games scene

When asked what his answer was, Hemsworth quipped, Absolutely! Thats what Australians do!

The Silver Linings Playbook actress, 25, and Hemsworth, 26, often tell hilarious anecdotes about each other during interviews.
A 26-year-old nurse from Thane area was allegedly kidnapped by three unidentified persons, including an auto driver, and was later found at an isolated place near Balkum area on Friday night.

The police said they suspected she may have been gang-raped, but said they were waiting for medical reports to confirm this.

No one had been arrested till the time of going to press.

The married woman, who works at a nursing home in Naupada area of Thane, hired an autorickshaw f rom her workplace to home at 8pm on Friday night.

On the pretext of refilling the vehicle with fuel, the driver took a detour to a CNG station, the police said.

After leaving the station, the auto was flagged off by two passengers. The driver requested the woman to let the two men share the ride as they were also heading in the same direction. After few metres, one suspect used a chloroform-like chemical to knock her out, said Gajanan Kabdule, senior police inspector, Naupada police station.

She gained consciousness around 10pm and found herself at a desolate place in Balkum. With the help of a biker, she called up her husband and informed him about the ordeal. Later, she along with her husband went to t he Naupada police station and lodged a complaint.

Investigations also revealed that the survivor was touched inappropriately before she was subdued by the suspects, Kabdule added.

A case under section 363 (punishment for kidnapping) of the IPC was registered against the three suspects.

Meanwhile, the Naupada police approached the traffic department and a meeting was held to nab the accused.

On the basis of CCTV footage obtained from the Harinivas circle in Naupada, the police have prepared a list of drivers who match the profile in the video. A similar case came to light in August 2014 when a 23- year- old professional jumped out a moving auto to escape a kidnap bid.

She suffered grievous injuries and went into a coma.

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The gloves are off in the fight in Parliament as an aggressive BJP under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah is likely to push back Opposition challenge from now on.

Indias ruling party is excited at the gains it made on Saturday, winning three Rajya Sabha seats beyond its numerical capacity. These victories were the result of defection in rival camps, mostly the Congress that shrank by six seats in the Upper House.

The new-found aggression is expected to reflect on the governments strategy of pushing through key legislation, including the landmark goods and services tax bill that has been stuck because of the NDAs lack of numbers in the Upper House.

Read: BJP meet: Amit Shah targets SP govt over Mathura, Kairana incidents

Ever since he came to power, Modi tried to build a harmonious relationship with the Opposition. For two full years, the Congress played an obstructionist role. There is limit to everything. If they are ready for a fight, so are we, a senior BJP functionary said.

The BJP won 11 of the 27 Rajya Sabha seats for which polls were held on Saturday, including one extra seat each in Jharkhand and Rajasthan. Subhash Chandra, a BJP-backed independent candidate, defeated the opposition nominee in Haryana after 14 votes were rejected for having used the wrong pen.

Every party is entitled to try and get its number increased in the upper house of Parliament, telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told HT.

At least two other BJP leaders said aggression will be the new order for the government and the party. This will be reflected in the strategy to push through Parliament a long-pending constitution amendment bill to roll out the GST  a blockbuster reform move that will boost the economy.

All constitutional and parliamentary avenues available to the Opposition have been exhausted. We want to call the bluff of the Congress. Let them block the bill and subject themselves to international condemnation, another Union minister said.

Read: RS polls: BJP wins 12 seats, Congress 6; Opposition still rules House

Government leaders are keeping the GST card close to their chest but sources said there is an agreement to push the bill in the Upper House as opposition to it has started fading.

The BJP feels that the Congress  if it decides to not support the bill -- will have only two options either oppose the bill or create a pandemonium in the Rajya Sabha to block it. Government leaders insist either is a win-win situation for the ruling party.

The same aggression is expected to drive the BJP on the organisational front. The party is readying for poll battle in five states early next year that will be followed by crucial elections in Modis home state of Gujarat by the end of 2016.

The BJP has its own share of trouble in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Gujarat but will try to not let the possible problems overshadow the strategy to win polls.

Shah is holding a separate meeting with party MPs from Uttar Pradesh here after the Prime Ministers rally on Monday to discuss the strategy for the state polls. Similar strategy meetings are also being planned for other poll-bound states.

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Right after his visit to the United States, Prime Minister Narendra Modi touched base with Russian president Vladmir Putin as New Delhi braces for deeper engagement with Moscow and Beijing later this month at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit.

The phone call was initiated by Modi, an indication of how smartly he shuffles his diplomatic cards amid the chorus of a new symphony in the Indo-US ties.

Though there is no official confirmation yet, Modi is likely to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tashkent in Uzbekistan where India would formally be drafted into the grouping as a fuller member along with Pakistan.

Till now, India and Pakistan have been observer members of the Eurasian alliance of nations.

The symbolism on Shanghai Cooperation Organisation cannot be lost as this regional security grouping is seen as a counter to the US-led military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit that comprises among others Russia and China will be held on June 23 and 24.

Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Indian sides initiative, Kremlin said in a statement about the phone call timed on the eve of Russian National Day.

The discussion focused on practical issues of the two countries cooperation, including preparations for the top-level contacts to be held shortly, the statement said. The two leaders also reaffirmed their determination to further bilateral relations, termed as privileged strategic partnership.

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About 300 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders gathered in Allahabad on Sunday for a two-day conclave that will set the tone for next years assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.

Read: BJP national executive meet today; UP elections, goonda raj on the agenda

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union ministers, chief ministers of BJP-ruled states are some of the prominent attendees of the event.

The meeting coincides with the Modi governments second anniversary celebration and a concerted effort by the centre to showcase its pro-poor schemes.

The BJP has set its eye on Uttar Pradesh, the countrys most populous state, where it won 71 out of 80 seats in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The party is buoyed from an electoral victory in Assam and an increase in vote-share in Bengal and Kerala.

We are having elections in five states and the aim will be to come up with a strategy for each of the five states. At present the BJP is the party of choice for the people and it is evident from the results of the latest polls in different states, BJP national general secretary Bhupender Yadav said. Taking the party forward would form an important part of the deliberations.

The Prime Minister will address a rally on Monday, which is part of a series of rallies planned across the state as part of the BJPs campaign. So far, the saffron party has not declared a chief ministerial face for Uttar Pradesh, and it continues to grapple with the various options.

The city is dotted with posters of CM aspirants, Sultanpur MP Varun Gandhi being the most prominent of them. Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya, however, said they were put up to welcome delegates attending the executive meeting.

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As the BJPs national executive meeting began on Sunday afternoon, posters featuring party leaders, including that of MP Varun Gandhi, were plastered across Allahabad.

Top BJP brass may have maintained silence over whether to project a chief ministerial face for the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, but regional leaders and their supporters, it seems, have taken to these posters to send out a message about their preferences.

Uttar Pradesh, which will have polls early next year, has been a hive activity as parties attempt to make good on the electorally significant state.

Read | BJP conclave begins in Allahabad, UP polls the main focus

The BJP has also ramped up its efforts in the state, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi set to address a public rally at the valedictory session of the meeting.

However, preparations prior to the important party meet featured posters of BJP leaders, put up by party workers, even as the BJP maintains silence over its CM candidate.

Among them, Varun Gandhi seems to dominate the others. Posters of Union minister Smriti Irani, who is seen as one of the partys options, are present at relatively fewer places.

This is not any kind of projection that the party is making in the national executive and hoardings and posters are not parameters of popularity There are well-wishers of Mr Varun Gandhi, but its not through the party effort that this (posters) has come up, BJP national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh said, dismissing the issue.

Photographs of home minister Rajnath Singh, the BJPs most prominent state leader, are also visible across the city, at some places alongside that of PM Modi and party chief Amit Shah.

Union minister Uma Bharti, an OBC leader who was seen as the partys chief ministerial candidate in 2012 assembly polls, is hardly seen.

The party is still mulling its campaign strategy and wondering whether declaring a chief ministerial face, as it did in Assam, will help it deal with factors like caste equation. However, the lack of a face acceptable across the big state is a catch.

Though many in the party feel Rajnath Singh outscores other challengers on most counts, he has earlier expressed a reluctance to join state politics. The party is also unsure if he is their best bet. Rajnath though, will certainly play an important role in the run up to the elections, including possibly heading the partys campaign.
The current round of Rajya Sabha biennial elections to 57 seats have given the ruling NDA an edge over opposition UPA, but it still lacks the majority it needs to push crucial legislations and may have to depend on regional parties who remain key players.

Regional players have 89 members. Their combined strength remains unaltered after the elections. The Samajwadi Party now has 19 members, with a gain of four seats, while JD-U and RJD have a combined strength of 12. The Trinamool Congress and AIADMK too have 12 members each, followed by BSP (6), CPI-M (8), BJD (7) and DMK (5).

After the elections, in the House of 245, the NDA has raised its tally by 5 and now has 74 members. The UPA, on the other hand has 71 members, with its tally down by three. On June 3, 30 candidates were elected to the Upper House unopposed. The NDA then had managed to add 11 of its members (BJP 7, TDP 2, Shiv and Shiromani Akali Dal one each) in their Rajya Sabha tally.

The House also has 12 nominated members.

The UPA could send five members to the Upper House (Congress 4 and NCP 1) unopposed. The other parties -- JD-U (2), RJD (2), AIADMK (4), DMK (2) and BJD (3) -- were able to send 13 members to the Rajya Sabha unopposed.

In Sundays election for the remaining 27 seats, BJP won 12 seats -- two in Haryana, one in UP, four in Rajasthan, two in Madhya Pradesh, one in Karnataka and two in Jharkhand.

Congress, on the other hand, won six seats -- one each in UP, MP and Uttarakhand and three in Karnataka. Out of 11 seats in UP, the SP won seven seats, BSP 2, BJP and Congress one each.

In the Rajya Sabha bypoll necessitated following the demise of sitting Congress member Praveen Rashtrapal from Gujarat in May, BJP wrested the seat.

With regional players remaining crucial in passage of key legislations, government may now to seek their support to pass reform bills like GST.
BJP chief Amit Shah called 2017 as the partys year of challenge on Sunday as he attacked the Samajwadi Party government over the recent Mathura violence and the alleged exodus of Hindu families from western Uttar Pradeshs Kairana town.

Shah told BJP executive members that the atmosphere of violence in Uttar Pradesh  the most important of the five states that go to polls next year  was a serious concern and the lack of governance was equally baffling.

The present Samajwadi government each day is expressing its helplessness in dealing with these situations, Shah said in his inaugural speech at the two-day BJP national executive meeting.

His reference to Kairana  where over 250 Hindu families left after alleged extortion demands from Muslim gangs  indicated the BJP wont stick to the development plank alone as it aims to return to power in Indias most populous state after over a decade. The BJP promptly rejected suggestions that it was planning to polarise voters on communal lines but said there were issues other than development.

BJPs focus is development. But incidents like Kairana and Mathura expose the lack of development, peace and deteriorating law and order situation in the state, telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters.

In Mathura, 29 people died after a police anti-encroachment drive in a city park triggered violence earlier this month. The BJP claimed the squatters were patronised by the SP.

Winning Uttar Pradesh is crucial for the BJP and Shahs ambitious target of returning to power at the Centre in 2019 with a greater majority than it got in 2014. Shah did not speak about the leadership issue that puzzles the party in the state but asked workers to ensure that the party gets an absolute majority.

Speaking at the same event, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked party leaders to not take the Opposition lightly and accept changes -- a possible reference to speculated large-scale changes in the party brass and council of ministers.

Shahs focus on communally divisive incidents such as Kairana and the state BJPs zeal to keep them in public focus is in line with the partys larger electoral strategy of consolidating the Hindu votes in Uttar Pradesh, where a polarisation of minority vote has always troubled it.

Muslims account for over 18% of the state and have largely remained faithful to the ruling Samajwadi Party. Its principal rival, the Bahujan Samaj Party, is trying to make inroads among community members with plans to field about 80 candidates from Indias largest minority community.

The BJP wants to counter any such shift of Muslims from the SP to the BSP by consolidating the Hindu communities like it did in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, when it won 71 of the states 80 seats.

Shah asked BJP workers to toil hard, make preparations and bring a full majority government, even as he suggested the party workers to take the message of Modi governments welfare schemes to the masses with the help of social media and other initiatives.

Shah was full praise for the Modi government for economic growth and welfare measures. He drew a parallel between the present and past government, saying policy paralysis and scams were the hallmark of the previous government.

Vikas Parva celebration that has seen senior ministers travelling to various parts of the country is the new standard of democratic accountability and a unique example of public contact, Shah said.
The censor board has cleared the controversial drug-themed Bollywood film Udta Punjab with 13 cuts under the A category, its chairman Pahlaj Nihalani said on Sunday.

We have today cleared Udta Punjab under A (restricted for adult audience) category after 13 cuts, Nihalani told reporters on the sidelines of a function.

Nihalani, who was in the eye of the storm over suggesting a very large number of cuts, said nine members of the Central Board of Film Certification watched the film and unanimously cleared it after the proposed 13 cuts.

The CBFCs job is now over. It is now up to the producer to go to the court or tribunal. We will implement the order, Nihalani said.

Read | Dont be overly critical of Udta Punjab: HC

The Abhishek Chaubey-directed film is tentatively scheduled for release on June 17.

The CBFCs revising committee had suggested a number of changes in the movie, which stars Shahid Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Kareena Kapoor-Khan and Diljit Dosanjh, and deals with the problem of drug addiction among youth in Punjab.

Meanwhile, responding to a query, Nihalani, who has been criticised by the film fraternity for his dictatorial attitude said, those call me cheap are themselves ghatia (lowly).

Nihalani clarified that he never called himself as chamcha (sycophant) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

There is nothing wrong in admiring the Prime Minister. I never said (I am) a chamcha, he said.

The makers of the movie, Phantom Films had approached the Bombay High Court against an order of the revising committee of CBFC that suggested certain changes in the film.



Read | Amid Udta Punjab row, CBFC clears Punjabi film on drugs issue

A string of changes proposed included removing a signboard mentioning Punjab and other suggestions.

The HC had on Friday said that the makers of Udta Punjab should tone down expletives and vulgar scenes as these alone cannot make a film work.

A division bench had concluded hearing arguments on the petition and is expected to pass order in the case Monday.

In Punjab which is set for assembly polls next year, the opposition parties had accused the ruling SAD-BJP of using influence to censor Udta Punjab.

However, Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal said the government had nothing to do with the movie and that the matter was between the producers and the Censor Board.

Read | Udta Punjab: How high is the state? No one really knows

Badals rival and Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh said he has written to producers of Udta Punjab, requesting them to provide him uncensored CDs of the film to release it in Amritsar on June 17.

Films co-producer Anurag Kashyap got support of BSP supremo Mayawati who said there was nothing wrong with Udta Punjab and that the party supported it.

The I&B ministry had sought to distance itself from the controversy, saying the certification process was independent. I&B minister Arun Jaitley had, however, said radical changes in the certification process were in the offing.

The ministry had earlier formed a committee under filmmaker Shyam Benegal to look at the functioning of the censor board. The panel has already submitted the first part of its report.
The Congress will continue its alliance with the CPI(M)-led Left Front in the state, the West Bengal PCC President said on Sunday in the wake of murmurs of opposition from a section of Left Front allies and criticism from within the CPI(M) itself.

We are happy that CPI(M) state secretary Surjyakanta Mishra has talked in favour of continuing with the alliance, West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee president Adhir Chowdhury told the media.

We will invite the Left Front to our programmes. We are different political parties and dont decide on political programmes together, Chowdhury said, adding that they would stick to the alliance.

We had earlier said that the alliance is not just for the elections and that it will continue post-poll, we stand by that, Chowdhury said.

The Congress marginally gained from the alliance in the recently-held Assembly polls in the state while the Left Front came a poor third, losing the main Opposition status to Congress.
Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain on Sunday asserted that the Medical Council of India (MCI) was a major road block in the country for medical education, while calling on the course for MBBS to be reduced from five to three years.

The course for MBBS should be reduced to three years from five years and MD course duration must be enhanced from three years to five years, he said after inaugurating Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar Medical College -- Delhi governments first medical college.

Explaining the reason behind his demand to make the change in the duration of the course, Jain said the students pursuing the five-year MD course will be able to practice simultaneously.

The MCI must double the medical seats for government medical collages, as it deals with more than five to six thousand patients in government hospitals, (which is) much higher than private medical collages, Jain added.

The minister also alleged that the MCI works less for students education and does everything else instead.

MCI is a major road block in India for medical education and MCI has affected the medical education the worst. Their job is not to approve anything but create obstacles. MCI okays to private hospitals very quickly, Jain added.

Speaking on the current situation of city government hospitals, he said all the hospitals will be renewed and no private ward will be there, adding there will air conditioned wards in each hospital.

From CM to common man, all will be given equal treatment, he said.
The Enforcement Directorate has told Interpol that it is obligatory on its part to issue Red Corner Notice (RCN) against liquor baron Vijay Mallya in connection with an alleged Rs 900 crore bank loan fraud.

In a detailed communication to Interpol, the agency has said that it has followed all legal procedures for seeking RCN against him. It has also said that orders were issued by the courts after hearing the counsels of ED and Mallya, officials said.

The ED has told the global police body that issuance of RCN against Mallya is obligatory on the part of Interpol as all due legal processes have been followed by Indian probe agencies to seek such a warrant against an accused to make him join probe and ensure justice to the victim (banks), they said.

It has also informed Interpol that the agency is seeking a proclaimed offender status against Mallya from a competent court. A decision in this regard is expected from a Mumbai court tomorrow.

RCN is issued to seek the location and arrest of wanted persons with a view to extradition or similar lawful action in a criminal case probe.

Once RCN is issued, Interpol seeks to arrest the person concerned in any part of the world and notifies that country to take his or her custody for further action at their end.

Earlier, Interpol had asked ED to provide certain inputs on the legal processes undertaken by the agency in the case before it can notify RCN against Mallya.

The RCN was sought sometime back by the investigating officer of the case to make the beleaguered businessman join probe in the Rs 900 crore alleged loan fraud of the IDBI bank, which is also being probed by CBI.

Yesterday, the EDs Mumbai office had attached assets worth Rs 1,411 crore of Mallya and one of his company.

Mallya had left India on March 2 using his diplomatic passport and is believed to be in the UK.

Mallya and others are being probed by the ED in the Rs 900 crore IDBI loan fraud case in which it registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) early this year.

Britain had recently made it clear that Mallya cannot be deported and asked India to seek his extradition instead and the agency is mulling invoking the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) existing between the two countries to get this job done.

The British government said it acknowledges the seriousness of allegations against Mallya and was keen to assist the Indian government in this case. PTI NES SMJ VMN
Educated, middle-class youngsters in India appear to be more drawn to ISIS, moved as much by the terrorist groups brand of global jihad as by perceived injustices against Muslims at home.

This marks a possible class shift among those attracted to violent groups in India, where religious radicalisation is thought to be more prevalent among the poor and illiterate, shows an analysis of the socio-economic profile of ISIS sympathisers interrogated by security agencies since 2014.

Data accessed by HT shows about 70% of 152 Indians arrested, detained or counselled for links to ISIS were from middle and upper middle classes, with half of them holding graduate degrees and 23% completing their masters. Only a quarter of them had religious degrees.

In contrast, an overwhelming majority of 645 terrorism suspects interrogated between 2000 and 2014, before the rise of ISIS, was from poor families. More than 90% of them did not complete school, and their trigger for radicalisation was mostly perceived victimhood at home, not a desire for global jihad.

Read | NIA analysing IS video featuring purported Indian fighters

Although ISIS with its online propaganda appears to resonate more among the educated young in India, the government does not consider this too serious a problem.

I am not alarmed by a small misguided educated youth joining them, Union home minister Rajnath Singh told Hindustan Times.

Like ISIS does propaganda by twisting the religion, I have asked my officers to take the help of Muslim clerics to build (a) counter narrative.

A guilt trip

The data on ISIS sympathisers shows why controlling the narrative in a perception war might be vital. It suggests a direct correlation between key events with religious undertones in India and spikes in internet traffic from the country to jihadist websites over the past two years.

For instance, the National Technical Research Organisation and Intelligence Bureau detected that such traffic peaked between July 23 and 29 last year coinciding with the hanging of 1993 Mumbai bombings convict Yakub Memon. Many believed him to be innocent, triggering a media debate.

Again, more people logged into jihadist websites from India between April 17 and 23 this year  around the time as a controversy over the National Investigation Agency softening its terrorism charges against people linked to Hindu radical groups.

Read | NIA crackdown reveals arrested Mumbra man is chief of ISIS India wing

Terrorism experts and psychologists say perceived victimhood seem to amplify an identity crisis among ISIS sympathisers in India.

Most of them are second generation from well-to-do families who enjoyed the best of liberal societies and (are) feeling guilty about enjoying it as their community suffers elsewhere, says Rajat Mitra, a clinical psychiatrist who has helped police deal with terrorism suspects.

This guilt coerces them to look for a purer form of identity and (they) get trapped by radical propaganda.

GK Pillai, former Union home secretary, says modern-day terrorism, which uses online communication and social media, demands qualified and technology-savvy recruits.

So we will also increasingly face this challenge of more upward mobile individuals getting attracted to radical ideology, he says.

ISIS IN INDIA TRACKING RADICALS 37 sympathisers arrested

35 visited conflict zones

40 stopped at airports

40 counselled over online activity UPWARDLY MOBILE 65% middle class

5% upper middle class

30% lower middle class EDUCATION 34% technical graduates

16 % non-technical graduates

23% post grads

26% religious degrees YOUNG RECRUITS 82% in age group of 18-33 years

23-28 years: Most susceptible

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Sporting a turban and a beard, George Fernandes had assumed the guise of a Sikh man to evade arrest during Emergency days and recited the Gita to inmates while imprisoned in Tihar jail in that era, according to a colleague of the veteran socialist leader, who was arrested along with him.

Police were on the lookout for us. But, we not only went into hiding, but continued to operate. To escape arrest, George had assumed the avatar of a Sikh man, with a turban and a beard, and had grown long hair. He used to call himself Khushwant Singh after the noted author, 76-year-old Vijay Narain says.

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.

Fernandes, 86, is currently suffering from Alzheimers disease and lives in Delhi along with his wife, Leila Kirbie. He rose to prominence after the 1973 railway strike, and had staunchly opposed the imposition of Emergency.

After remaining in disguise and operating out of hideouts, Fernandes, Narain and their other colleagues were arrested from St Pauls Church in Kolkata.

At the St Pauls Church, George had a typewriter, a cyclostyle machine and he continued to write correspondences, which I would go and deliver at Railway Mail Service counters at various stations, recalls Varanasi-born Narain on the 40th anniversary of their arrest.

I had assumed the guise of a Benarasi Muslim weaver to escape police. You see we were in hiding but not inactive, he says.

Narain adds: While George was flown the same night (of June 10) to Delhi in an IAF cargo plane, I was kept in police custody and interrogated for about a fortnight in Kolkata by the polices intelligence bureau. We all were later lodged in Delhis Tihar jail and the case was tried in Tees Hazari court.

George had a charismatic personality and during his prison days, he would recite Gita to inmates in the morning and we all read books from the library at Tihar, Narain says.

Fernandes and his colleagues were transported in vans from Tihar jail to Tees Hazari court, and the 76-year-old veteran says, 200 policemen would escort us during this transit.

Fernandes in handcuffs raising his hand in defiance became one of the most enduring images of the Emergency era. Oh, that photograph was taken in the court premises while George was being produced there for the trial, Narain recalls.

Emergency was in effect from June 25, 1975, until its withdrawal in March 1977.

Reminiscing the Emergency days, Narain says, When George was flown to Delhi that fateful night, he was taken to Red Fort for interrogation.

They would focus bright spotlight on his face and question him. They would not let him sleep. It was something akin to what we see in Hindi films, he claims.

On his attire during the Emergency days, he says, George would wear a Bihari dhoti and a keep a gamcha on his shoulder.

Calling him one of the greatest and bravest fighters for civil rights during the Emergency era, Narain and his other friends and supporters are now pitching 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, Narain says.

Fernandes fought the 1977 Lok Sabha election from Bihars Muzaffarpur while in jail as an undertrial in the Baroda Dynamite 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.

Not a single penny was spent on his election directly. People collected money and did widespread campaigning but only with his photographs, and he won it, Narain recalls.

An MP from Bihar, Fernandes served as a railway minister in the VP Singh dispensation. He also became the defence minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.

Despite his political accomplishments, he was a man of simplicity and still is. He was born a Christian but never spoke in English in Parliament and is fluent in Hindi, Marathi and Kannada, Narain says.

Such was his mass appeal that several ambassadors of foreign countries used to meet him in jail and even tried to seek his release. George was a hero for many, he says. British Labour party politician Michael Foot even ran a campaign in London seeking his release.

Recalling one of his slogans  Jab tak bhukha insan rahega; tab tak dharti par toofan rahega  Narain says, He was a champion of civil rights, and struggled for the poor, the weak, the downtrodden and the farmers. And we think he deserves to be given the Bharat Ratna.

We are also trying to start a philanthropic foundation in his honour, he says.
The government has put in cold storage a proposal of the Election Commission (ECI) to give equal constitutional protection to all members of the poll body with regard to their removal, saying it would require amending the Constitution.

The law ministry is learnt to have informed the ECI that a political consensus needed to be evolved before section 324(5) of the Constitution could be amended to provide equal protection to the election commissioners in the event of their removal.

A senior government functionary said that the Supreme Court had also upheld the present provision that the election commissioners and the regional commissioners once appointed cannot be removed from office before the expiry of their tenure except on the recommendation of the CEC which ensures their independence.

The President appoints chief election commissioner (CEC) and Election Commissioners after the law ministry initiates the file for their appointment.

The CEC can be removed from office only through impeachment by Parliament. The President can remove the ECs based on the recommendation of the CEC.

Read: EC wants electoral law amended to postpone, cancel polls

At a meeting between CEC Nasim Zaidi and top law ministry officials here on January 5, the poll body had said it wants the government to adopt the same removal procedures for the two Election Commissioners as in case of the CEC.

Besides other senior officials, the CEC was accompanied by Election Commissioner O P Rawat at the meeting.

At a follow-up meeting later, senior officials of the law ministry were learnt to have informed the Commission that the demands for equal protection to the two ECs needed amendment to Constitution for which political unanimity was required.

The officials are also understood to have referred to the 1995 Supreme Court judgement in the T N Seshan, Chief Election Commissioner of India Vs Union of India case in which the apex court had also examined Article 324 (5) of the Constitution dealing with appointment and removal of CEC and fellow Commissioners.

The provision states that any other Election Commissioner or a Regional Commissioner (RC) shall not be removed from office except on the recommendation of the CEC.
In an extremely rare case, a baby girl with a severe congenital disorder and near-total missing external body skin, was born at a city hospital on Saturday.

In medical parlance, this condition is called Harlequin Ichthyosis.

A 23-year-old woman from Amravati gave birth to the girl at Lata Mangeshkar Medical College and Hospital.

The baby girl was born with a severe congenital disorder called Harelquin Ichthyosis. (HT Photo)

While speaking to Hindustan Times, Dr Yash Banait, a child specialist at the hospital said the baby was born with a congenital disorder and that this kind of disorder occurs because of mutation in the genes.

The baby requires proper moisturization. Petroleum jelly and coconut oil serves good for this miniaturization. Nutritional rehabilitation has to be undertaken regularly, he said.

Harlequin Ichthyosis is a very rare severe genetic skin disease that cause thickening of the stratum corneum of the epidermis. In such cases, the childs whole body is encased in an armour of thick white plates of skin separated with deep cracks. In addition, the eyes, ears, private parts and the appendages may be abnormally contracted, said obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Avinash Banait.

The overall incidence of Harlequin Ichthyosis is 1 in 300,000 births, he said.

The doctors at the hospital will diagnose the congenital deformities on Monday. There is no skin on the body, so skin grafting is not a possibility. But the baby hasnt developed any breathing problems lest she would have required to be kept on ventilation, said Dr Yash Banait.

The baby, born after a Caesarean section performed has now been kept under observation as constant care is required to moisturise and protect the skin.

We will be undertaking a 2D Echo investigation to ascertain the cardiac deformities or anomalies, if any, said Dr Yash Banait. The baby is not finding any difficulty in breathing and is now stable, he added.

He informed that in 1984, an infant with this disorder was born in Pakistan and the baby lived till 2008. No more information is available about that baby, Dr Yash Banait said. Another such birth was recorded in the USA in 1994. There is no cure for this disorder. All the medical science can do is try to keep the baby alive, Dr Yash Banait further said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has described eminent journalist Inder Malhotra as a stalwart of journalism and expressed sadness at his death.

Shri Inder Malhotra was a stalwart of Indian journalism, whose work will always be respected & remembered. Saddened by his demise. RIP, Modi tweeted on Sunday.

Malhotra, who helmed a string of top publications and was an accomplished political commentator, passed away on Saturday at the age of 86.

Shri Inder Malhotra was a stalwart of Indian journalism, whose work will always be respected & remembered. Saddened by his demise. RIP.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 12, 2016

President Pranab Mukherjee, Vice President Hamid Ansari and Congress President Sonia Gandhi have expressed grief at Malhotras demise.

Malhotra began his career at the United Press of India news agency and went on to hold editorial positions at leading dailies.

He was editor of The Times of India, New Delhi from 1978-86. Before that he worked for The Statesman for 15 years, first as the political correspondent and chief of the bureau and then as deputy editor.

In his later years, Malhotra turned a columnist for various publications and offered deep insights into Indias political history through his writings, most notably through his column Rear View.

Malhotra, a recipient of the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Award (Lifetime Achievement), also authored few books including former Prime Minister Indira Gandhis biography, Indira Gandhi: A Personal & Political Biograpy (1989).
China said on Sunday Indias application to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was not even discussed at the just-concluded meeting of the elite club of nuclear-trading nations in Vienna. It added more talks were needed to build a consensus on the issue.

The 48-country NSG controls access to nuclear technology, which India needs to meet its increasing power requirements. Indias inclusion is supported by the US, which is trying to convince other countries to support its bid.

Read: Indias NSG bid: Too much diplomacy, too little action

China once again tried to clear the air on its stand, saying that it had a uniform view of non-NPT members  which includes Pakistan  joining the NSG. The official statement added several other countries supported its stand, indicating that many were against India joining the bloc.

The NSG Chair Argentine ambassador convened an unofficial meeting on June 9. There was no deliberation on any items related to the accession to the NSG by India or any other countries that are not signatories to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), foreign ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said in a statement published online.

China has been fronting the effort to block Indias accession to the NSG and is supported by New Zealand, South Africa, Turkey and Austria. Their broad argument: India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation (NPT) treaty and if New Delhi is allowed to join the NSG, it could set a precedent for other non-NPT countries to argue for inclusion.

Chinas perceived anti-India stand on the issue is seen to be hinged on its cozy ties with all-weather ally Pakistan, which also wants an NSG membership.

But Islamabad joining the NSG is also opposed by several countries mostly because as Reuters pointed out: The scientist that headed its nuclear weapons programme ran an illicit network for years that sold nuclear secrets to countries, including North Korea and Iran.

Read: Resistance to India joining nuclear suppliers group softens, but China defiant

Also, despite not being part of the NPT, China has helped Pakistan to build nuclear plants.

The chair said that this meeting has no agenda and is only convened to heed opinions from all parties on the outreach of the NSG and prepare for a report to be submitted at the NSG Plenary Meeting in Seoul later this month, Hong said.

Hong reiterated Chinas stand on the issue.

When it comes to the accession by non-NPT countries, China maintains that the group should have full discussion before forging consensus and making decisions based on agreement. The NPT provides a political and legal foundation for the international non-proliferation regime as a whole, Hong said.

Chinas position applies to all non-NPT countries and targets no one in particular. The fact is that many countries within the group also share Chinas stance.

Hong said NSG members are divided about including non-NPT countries in the group.

Looking forward, China will continue to support further discussion within the group to forge consensus at an early date, Hong said.

Read: India hopes China will back Nuclear Suppliers Group bid
An uncommon calm is scheduled to embrace the frenetic Crossroads of the World, the citys Times Square, on June 20, this years Summer Solstice Day, when thousands of people practice the ancient Indian art to celebrate the International Day of Yoga.

The Times Square community event will likely be the biggest Yoga Day celebration outside India. The day-long series of seven events that run from 7 am to 8.30 p.m. will stretch over several city blocks.

The celebration organised by the Times Square Alliance brings together 30 yoga studios ranging from the Iyengar and Bikram institutions to Sonic Yoga and mangOh Yoga.

Yoga unites us with the universal flow and connects us with our own personal rhythms, Douglass Stewart, co-founder of Solstice in Times Square, said in a statement.

As the sun climbs to its highest point and is suspended in the sky for the longest period, it provides us with a vital force that sustains all of life, giving us a focal point and uniting our purpose to achieve our highest ambitions.

Last year over 30,000 people participated in the Times Square event.

Indias Consul General Riva Ganguly Das has brought together 17 organisations in six states to reach out to the American community with the message of yoga.

Community organisations across six states in northeast United States are holding 30 events to observe Yoga Day.

Another important celebration will be in Boston where the South Asian Arts Council is organising an observance at the historic Hall of Flags in the State House, the seat of Massachusetts state government on Beacon Hill, on June 23.

The community celebrations started off Friday with events at two schools in the New York suburb of Freeport that was organised by the Hindu Swyam Sevak.

On Saturday, it was the Queens Museums turn to hold the celebration in association with the Indian Business Association, in front of the city landmark Unisphere, a 37-metre stainless steel globe.

A unique feature of the community celebrations this year will be Yoga Day events at the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and Newark Liberty Airport on June 21.

On June 19, New England International Day of Yoga will be celebrated at the Kresge Auditorium of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.

Celebrations are also planned for Columbus and Cleveland in Ohio and Hershey in Pennsylvania.

Several Indian organisations are to take the celebrations to schools in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut states.
The speech given by chief minister (CM) Manohar Lal Khattar on Friday in Meham evoked anger among the Jat community members sitting on dharna at Jasia village in Rohtak.

Taking a tough stand on the ongoing agitation, Khattar had said that the government had enough forces to deal with those on the verge of breaking law and order in the state.

Angered over his speech, Sheshpal Singh, sarpanch of Kanhi village, said, When Britishers couldnt handle Jats, what is the capacity of Khattar to give such statements.

The fizzling out agitation of the Jat community suddenly picked up pace after Khattars rally on Friday, with people of the community boycotting Khattars rally in Meham and thronging the protest site in Jasia.

The organisers have started pitching more tents at the site to accommodate the increasing number of protesters.

Even as Khattar said the government was trying its best to ensure quota for Jats and five other communities, the protesters cracked down on the CM.

Another sarpanch, Raj Singh of Assan village, said, The CM should use his mentioned strength of forces on terrorists and not on crushing the Jat community. We would like to tell him that we are not afraid of his threats.

As many as 17 community members sat on hunger strike in Rohtak on Saturday. Rohtak DC Atul Kumar said things were under control.

On the efforts by the administration to hold talks with the protesters, Kumar said, They refused to talk to me yesterday. Im not going to invite them for talks again and again.

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Cracking the whip, JD(S) today suspended its eight rebel MLAs who voted against its official candidate and supported Congress in the biennial elections to fill four Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka.

Caught off guard by the open defiance of rebels, a red-faced JD(S) leadership also issued a notice asking them why they should not be expelled from the party for defying the party whip in the elections held on Saturday, which saw the party candidate, businessman B M Farooq, secure 33 votes against the party strength of 40.

Addressing a meeting of party MLAs, Panchayat Members and office-bearers, JD(S) National President and former prime minister H D Deve Gowda said, all the eight members have been suspended and notice have been issued to them.

He said, according to the party constitution, a three- member enquiry committee would be set up, which after going through their (suspended MLAs) replies to the notice, would decide on the expulsion.

Also accusing the MLAs of indulging in cross-voting during biennial elections to fill in seven seats of Karnataka Legislative Council from Legislative Assembly held on Friday, the party has said that if there is no response they would be expelled in accordance with the party constitution.

The rebel MLAs who faced action are Zameer Ahmed Khan, Chaluvaraya Swamy, Iqbal Ansari, Balakrishna, Ramesh Bandisiddegowda, Gopalaiah, Bheema Nayak and Akhanda Srinivas Murthy who had voted for Congress partys third candidate for Rajya Sabha K C Ramamurthy, paving the way for his resounding victory securing 52 votes aided by them and Independents.

The party earlier on Sunday adopted a resolution asking its president to suspend eight MLAs and to expel them for their indiscipline.

The motion was moved by MLA Y S V Datta and seconded by another MLA Ningaiah and MLC T A Saravana.

Union Minister Nirmala Seetharaman and Congress Jairam Ramesh, Oscar Fernandes and K C Ramamurthy had won Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka.

It was a harder and more humiliating blow for JD(S) as eight MLAs indulged in cross-voting as against the expected five.

Gowda during the meeting vowed to build and strengthen the party by travelling across the state.

Accusing chief minister Siddaramaiah, energy minister D K Shivakumar and BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa of conspiring against JD(S), he said the agenda of this trio is to finish JD(S), but they will not succeed in it.

Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the president Amit Shah, Gowda alleged that the BJP had joined hands with Congress to win the second seat in the council election.

Modi and Shah speak across the country about Congress-free India, what are they doing here in Karnataka? They have joined hands with Congress to win the second seat in the council elections, he said.

Congress had won all four seats it contested in council elections from the Assembly, while the BJP managed to win both the seats for which it had fielded candidates and the JD(S) could win only one seat.

JD(S) state president and former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy was absent in the meeting but his message to party workers was read out, in which he called rebels as Mir Sadiq (a minister who betrayed Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan paving the way for a British victory in Anglo-Mysore war).

Party sources said Kumaraswamy was travelling abroad for production related work of the movie Jaguar starring his son Nikhil.

JD(S) has been rocked by dissidence in recent months with several of its MLAs unhappy with the leadership over its style of functioning and unilateral decisions by the Gowda family which maintains a stranglehold over the party.

Congress with 122 members was assured of two seats for Jairam Ramesh and Oscar Fernandes, but with a surplus of 33 votes, the party fielded Ramamurthy, banking on JD(S) rebels and Independents. The required strength for victory was 45 votes.

Even hours before the Rajya Sabha polls ended, the party had admitted that there was cross-voting by its eight rebels, who also publicly said they voted for Congress.

Read: Cross-voting, arrests mar polling for 27 Rajya Sabha seats in 7 states
West Bengal is planning a jumbo rehab effort. It plans to send 18 elephants that have damaged crops and terrorised villagers to rehabilitation centres for delinquent tuskers.

Incidents of elephants straying into residential areas have been rising in the state. Stray elephants accounted for 89 deaths in West Bengal in 2014-15. Across India, the toll was 391, highlighting the growing man-animal conflict, as wildlife habitat comes under increased pressure to meet the countrys economic goals.

The forest department had identified 18 animals that have been straying into villages and had a month ago sought the Centres permission to capture them, forest minister Binoy Krishna Barman said.

We are, however, dead against killing of elephants. In no way would we allow culling of animals like weve seen in a few states, Barman said.

Read: Bengal seeks Centres nod to catch wild tuskers to protect farmlands

The minister was talking about some states getting permission to cull monkeys, blue bulls (nilgai) and wild boars after the Centre agreed to declare them vermin. These animals, the state governments said, were causing crop damage.

According to the official estimates, every year stray, or breakaway, elephants destroy crops standing on 2,500 to 3,000 acres in Bengal. Saddled with huge debts, the state government struggles to compensate famers for the losses.

The state was planning two centres for captured elephants, source said. We are planning to come up with two such rehab and rescue centres  one in North Bengal in Buxa tiger reserve and the other in south Bengal inside the Mayurjharna elephant reserve, a wildlife department official said.

Once an elephant -- usually a lone male -- starts raiding farmland, it is identified and tracked everyday by forest staff. A shorter trunk, a puncture in the ear, tuft of hair on the tail or a broken tusk are the distinguishing marks that forest guards and villagers rely on to differentiate the rogue animal from others.

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A 43-year-old man has been arrested for duping job aspirants, company owners and political leaders by posing as a Member of Parliament, police said on Sunday.

Accused Praveen Kumar Singh of Ballia in Uttar Pradesh was arrested on May 28 from the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi based on a tip-off.

Investigators said Singh was absconding for the last five years and kept changing his addresses and mobile phone numbers to avoid arrest.

Singh told police that he used to dress up in khadi to lure gullible persons whom he promised government jobs, lucrative business contracts and plum political posts.

Once his victims were taken in by his promises, Praveen used to cheat them out of money with the help of his associates, joint commissioner of police (crime branch) Ravindra Yadav said.

Several local leaders of different political parties were on his payroll and their role is being probed, the officer said.

Police have seized 77 blank letter pads of Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha, seven mobile phones, five debit and credit cards, 24 wrist watches of different brands and bio-data of 28 persons.

He started a consultancy firm in 2007-08 in south Delhis R K Puram and cheated about 30 unemployed youth from Bokaro and Jharkhand to the tune of Rs 30 lakh on the pretext of providing them jobs in Steel Authority of India (SAIL) by posing as a nominated member of SAIL.

He was booked in a case on April 9, 2012, but settled the matter with the complainants and secured bail. In 2014, he repeated the offence by cheating 10 other unemployed persons of Ballia of Rs 25 lakh on the pretext of providing jobs in Indian Railways, the officer said.

Crime branch got the wind of Praveen after a complaint against him was lodged by a Ballia resident Harsh Dev Tiwari.

In his complaint ,Tiwari alleged that a railway clerk Raj Kumar posted at Mughal Sarai station had promised to get him a D Group job in the railways through his contact whom he claimed to be a close relative of a former railway minister, he said.

Raj Kumar allegedly accompanied Tiwari to a meeting with Singh at Baroda house in New Delhi, where he paid Rs 2.5 lakh for the job in the railways.

Tiwari also alleged in his complaint that his 9 relatives also paid Rs 2.5 lakh each to the accused for jobs. They were allegedly given medical examination letters of Railway Recruitment Board but when they reached Kolkata they found it to be fake.

Another complainant Riyazuddin, a resident of Maujpur, too alleged that he was cheated of Rs 8 lakh by Singh who promised jobs of TTE to him and his wife, police said.

In 2014, he had cheated 10 unemployed youth in Ballia to the tune of Rs 25 lakh on the pretext of getting them Group D jobs in the railways, police said.
Amid speculation over BJPs CM face in Uttar Pradesh, the party on Sunday said, such decisions depend on partys parliamentary board.

Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, a decision regarding BJPs face in UP polls will be taken in due course, in a press conference after the two-day national executive meet was inagurated by party president Amit Shah. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also part of the presser.

Decisions like these are taken at the partys Parliamentary Board meetings and not at the national executive, Prasad added.

Prasad was responding to queries about the possibility of declaring home minister Rajnath Singh, who hails from Chandauli in eastern UP and represents Lucknow in the Lok Sabha, as the partys chief ministerial candidate for the assembly elections scheduled early next year.

Speculations were rife that the party may declare a CM face for UP polls, taking cue from its recent success in Assam where it projected Sarbananda Sonowal as the CM candidate and went on to form government in the state after achieving majority.

Names of Singh, HRD minister Smriti Irani and young MP Varun Gandhi had been doing the rounds.

Prasad expressed displeasure over suggestions that Rajnath Singh is being made scapegoat by the party, which faces an uphill task of reviving itself in the countrys most populous state.

The BJP was in power in UP for a major part of the 90s.

It achieved a full majority in the 1991 assembly polls and remained the single largest party for the next two elections.

It is not proper to say that anybody is being made a scapegoat ... our target is to form a government in Uttar Pradesh.
An online petition on the White House website has called on the Obama administration to stop shielding American multinational Dow Chemical from accountability for corporate crimes in the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy case.

The petition has crossed the threshold of one lakh signatures, making it mandatory for the White House to respond.

Titled Uphold International Law! Stop Shielding Dow Chemical from Accountability for Corporate Crimes in Bhopal, India, the petition dated May 15, says that the more than three decades of protection to Union Carbide (UCC) -- which is now owned by Dow Chemicals -- must end.

We insist that the US government meet its obligations under Treaty and international law by immediately serving notice upon Dow to attend court in Bhopal on July 13, 2016, said the petition, which as of June 12 had garnered 102,000 signatures.

Read: Bhopal gas tragedy: Global campaign to make Dow appear before court

Tonnes of toxic Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from Union Carbides Bhopal factory on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984, killed nearly 25,000 people and injured half million others.

India charged UCC with manslaughter, but UCC refused to show for trial. Dow Chemical bought UCC in 2001 but has not made UCC available to face charges, the petition said.

Under a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, India sent four notices to the US Department of Justice to summon Dow to explain UCCs whereabouts. The DoJ has ignored or obstructed every notice. The same DoJ made BP pay USD 4 billion in criminal fines and penalties for Deepwater Horizon. 31 years of US protection of UCC and Dow must end, the petition said.
Much before its stunning return to power in 2012, the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) declared a war on drugs. Party president Sukhbir Singh Badals promise to rid the state of the menace, and the taint associated with narcotics abuse, put the Akalis back in the saddle.

Soon after chief minister Parkash Singh Badal took charge, police went all out against drug smugglers along the 553-km border with Pakistan, besides cracking down on the supply chain in Punjab. Most of the drugs trafficked in Punjab originate from Afghanistan and are processed in Pakistans tribal areas.

Ironically, the crackdown backfired for the Akalis in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The drug issue dominated the campaign and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won the perception battle, bagging four of the 13 Lok Sabha seats. The Akalis were alarmed. The opposition directed public anger against us and we paid the price, Badal Senior conceded.

Cut to 2016. The controversy surrounding filmmaker Anurag Kashyaps Udta Punjab has pitch-forked the drug issue back to the spotlight as Punjab heads for another election. This time, the AAP sniffs an opportunity as wary Akalis look to revive the steam in their campaign against drugs, while a confused Congress hopes for a comeback from a decade in the wilderness.

CRACKDOWN ON THE DRUG SYNDICATE August 2012: NRI Ranjit Singh, alias Raja Kandola, arrested for the manufacture and smuggling of Ice, a rave party drug. The drug was being manufactured in his factory at Kartarpur in Jalandhar district

NRI Ranjit Singh, alias Raja Kandola, arrested for the manufacture and smuggling of Ice, a rave party drug. The drug was being manufactured in his factory at Kartarpur in Jalandhar district May 2013: NRI Anoop Kahlon arrested in Zirakpur near Chandigarh for smuggling heroin

NRI Anoop Kahlon arrested in Zirakpur near Chandigarh for smuggling heroin November 2013: Wrestler-turned-dismissed cop Jagdish Singh, alias Bhola, held after a decade-long chase. The masterminds arrest led to the busting of a network of synthetic drugs from their manufacturing to consumption in Europe and North America

Wrestler-turned-dismissed cop Jagdish Singh, alias Bhola, held after a decade-long chase. The masterminds arrest led to the busting of a network of synthetic drugs from their manufacturing to consumption in Europe and North America November 2013: Shiromani Akali Dal leader Maninder Singh Bittu Aulakh and Amritsar-based businessman Jagjit Singh Chahal, both alleged contacts of Bhola, arrested

Shiromani Akali Dal leader Maninder Singh Bittu Aulakh and Amritsar-based businessman Jagjit Singh Chahal, both alleged contacts of Bhola, arrested January 2014: Enforcement Directorate (ED) begins investigation into the Bhola drug racket

Enforcement Directorate (ED) begins investigation into the Bhola drug racket December 2014: ED questions Punjab cabinet minister Bikram Singh Majithia after his name crops up during investigation.

Its offensive against drugs has ended up as a double-edged sword for the Akali government. The campaign has reinforced the view that drugs are indeed rampant in Punjab. At the core of this blame game is the 2017 elections. The AAP is using the issue as ammunition to taste power in the state.

The government, in a knee-jerk reaction, has not only slowed down its drive but is also in denial about the problem. It says the issue is not as serious as is being made out to be. Rather, it sees an attempt to malign Punjab and Punjabis.

Censor Board chief Pahlaj Nihalini expressed a similar opinion, saying Udta Punjab defames the states people by wrongly depicting that 70% of them consume drugs.

But the all-out offensive seems an abandoned cause, a pale shadow of the Akalis war cry against drugs in their poll manifesto in 2011.

The Punjab government has blamed the Border Security Force for failing to check the supply chain from Pakistan. We are fighting the nations war, Badal told the Vidhan Sabha recently, asking the Centre to seal the border.

Police personnel have covered 2,900 villages under the feedback campaign launched by the government, inspector general of police Ishwar Singh, who is the director of the state narcotics control bureau, said. We are very serious in every respect. The institutional response has been prompt (against drugs). There is no question of slowing down.

The 181 toll-free helpline has led to the registration of 85 FIRs in drug-related cases. The financial investigation of such cases is being handled by DIG-rank officers, Singh said.

The shift in the Akali strategy in the fight against drugs came when arrested lynchpin Jagdish Singh Bhola, an Arjuna award-winning wrestler-turned-dismissed cop, told the press on January 6, 2014, that cabinet minister Bikram Singh Majithia was the real kingpin of the drug racket.

Majithia is the younger brother of Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, the wife of deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal. He has dismissed the allegations, calling them wild imagination. But Bholas bombshell triggered a political earthquake, the tremors of which continue to rattle political discourse two years on.

This damning disclosure, closely investigated by the Enforcement Directorate, led to Majithia appearing before the ED. It was enough to put the once-on-the-offensive Akalis on the defensive. The Congresss Lok Sabha MP for Jalandhar, Santokh Chaudhary, too had to appear before the ED but the Akalis bore the maximum political damage. An Akali chief parliamentary secretary, Avinash Chander, is also embroiled in the case.

Such weak spots in the Akalis fight have derailed Punjabs war on drugs. The flip-flop has given the opposition, particularly the AAP, ammo to target Akalis and make drug menace the central plank of their election campaign in the border state.

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President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday arrived in Accra in the first leg of his six-day visit to three African nations - Ghana, Ivory Coast and Namibia, as part of outreach to Africa focussing on trade, education and boosting relations with these countries.

This is the maiden visit of any Indian President to Ghana and Ivory coast whereas to Namibia, such a visit comes after two decades.

On his arrival here for a two-day visit, he was received at the airport by Ghanas Vice-President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah- Arthur.

Even though Mukherjee has toured number of countries in the continent, he is visiting these countries for the first time in his long political career.

All these countries we look at as good countries in terms of a solid political system, where democracy has taken roots and these are all doing reasonably well in their regions, Secretary (ER) Amar Sinha has said.

The President is accompanied by Minister of State for the PMO Jitendra Singh and BJP MPs - SS Ahluwalia and Mansukh L Mandaviya.

As you know this is the part of the Outreach to Africa, which was kicked off with the visit to Morocco and Tunisia by Vice President... Then the President has taken on the responsibility of these three country visits, he said.

In the tightly packed schedule spread till Jun 14 afternoon, Mukherjee will attend eight events which begin on Sunday with a banquet hosted by Ghanas President John Drahami Mahama in his honour.

The President will be given a ceremonial welcome tomorrow followed by delegation level talks at Presidents House which is called Flag Staff House.

The imposing building has an Indian touch as it is constructed by an Indian company Shapoorji Pallonji.

In the delegation level talks, there are likely to be discussions on agreements on visa waiver and about two Line of Credits could also be deliberated.

Mukherjee will also pay homage to Ghanas first President Kwame Nkrumah at his mausoleum here. He will also be unveiling a statue of Mahatma Gandhi which has been gifted by ICCR besides planting a sapling there.

Investment in Ghana is substantial, nearly three billion Investment in Ghana is substantial, nearly three billion dollars in various sectors. NRIs, professionals have invested in IT, Pharmaceuticals and other areas. If you look at last three year figures, our trade has gone up nearly three times.

Ghanas main trade consists of gold imports, its nearly 80 per cent of total trade. Ghanaian gold is in great demand in India, Sinha said.

Mukherjee will be addressing a joint business forum meeting here which has been organised by business groups from India and Ghana.

Ghana has a very prosperous Indian-origin community, roughly around 10,000, of which 7,000 have Indian passports with some families arriving here as early as 1920s.

The community is holding a reception for him where he will be interacting with them.

Mukherjee will also be visiting the India-Ghana Kofi Annan Center of ICT Excellence, set up by India, and will meet its faculty and alumni. The Institute was set up by India few years ago.

I am told that it is working very well. So it will be a great opportunity to go there and see whether we could contribute something else or help in up gradation, he said.
The top separatist leadership of the Valley held a day-long seminar in Srinagar on Sunday to discuss the proposed establishment of exclusive colonies for migrant Pandits and ex-servicemen and in unequivocal words opposed the same.

Though the government has repeatedly cracked down on the separatist leadership in Kashmir in the recent past, the seminar took place without any restrictions. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq  leaders of the two factions of the Hurriyat Conference  and representatives of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) attended the event.

However, JKLF chief Yasin Malik, who was released on bail on Saturday after a week-long detention in a case related to the 1987 elections, was arrested again the same night.

For the first time in eight years, Geelani, Farooq and Malik had come together last month and forged an issue-based united programme. Later, Mirwaiz and Malik went to Geelanis home and held a closed-door meeting for about 90 minutes.

Political observers said it was unexpected that the government allowed Sundays seminar because in the recent past, it has been continuously trying to prevent such events called by the Hurriyat. Also, the seminar saw the coming together of the new joint separatist leadership.

The seminar titled proposed separate colonies and the ambiguous policies of the government saw participation from Hurriyat leaders as well as civil society members. Talking about the seminar, spokesperson of the Geelani-faction of the Hurriyat, Ayaz Akbar, said the joint leadership decided that it would completely oppose the construction of Sainik and Pandit colonies by the government.

The leaders said the government was ambiguous on the issue and was not saying clearly what exactly the matter is, Akbar said. He added that the leaders said the construction of Pandit colonies was nothing but an attempt to give Kashmiri Muslims a bad name on communal lines.

Geelani has said instead of Rs 20 lakh, the government should give Pandits Rs 30 lakh each for rehabilitation but they should come back to their original places and not separate colonies, Akbar said.

Earlier, the PDP-BJP government in the state had made it clear that there will be no separate townships for Kashmiri Pandits but transit accommodation will be provided to them till they are comfortable returning to their native places. CM Mehbooba Mufti had also said the Sainik colony was proposed to be established only for the state subject ex-servicemen.
State finance ministers will deliberate on the model GST law at a two-day meeting in Kolkata beginning Tuesday, amid hopes of long pending GST bill getting passed in Rajya Sabha in the next Parliament session.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will participate in the meeting of Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers and try to iron out differences over the new regime that will subsume all indirect taxes and create one national market under the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

The meeting on June 14 and 15 will discuss the model GST law, which will be adopted by the Centre and all states. Union finance minister will attend the meeting on June 14, an official said.

The Centre is planning to roll out the indirect tax from the next financial year beginning April 1, 2017, but the GST bill has been pending in Rajya Sabha because of stiff opposition from the Congress party.

Once the Constitution Amendment Bill to roll out GST is passed by the Parliament, the Centre and states will have to adopt their own laws to give effect to the new indirect tax regime.

The Central GST (CGST) will be framed based on the model GST law. The states will draft their own State GST (SGST) based on the draft model law with minor variations incorporating state-based exemptions.

Besides these two laws, the Centre and states will have to approve the integrated-GST law or iGST, which will deal with inter-state movement of goods.

The Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers is headed by West Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra, who took over the chairmanship in February.

The government has proposed to take up the GST Constitution Amendment Bill in the Rajya Sabha in the forthcoming monsoon session of the Parliament.

The reform of the indirect taxation was initiated by the Kelkar Committee in 2003, following which the UPA government in 2006 proposed the GST Bill.

The GST Constitution Amendment Bill was passed by Lok Sabha in May last year and has been pending in the Rajya Sabha, where the ruling NDA does not have the majority.
Notwithstanding the defeat that the Left Front-Congress alliance faced in the West Bengal Assembly polls, CPI(M) state secretary Surya Kanta Mishra batted for carrying forward the alliance during a party meet on Saturday, even as he faced opposition from a section of the party leadership.

The CPI(M) organised a two-day state committee meet to discuss reasons behind the poll debacle and the issue of forging an alliance with Congress in the state, violating the official party line.

According to state committee members, Mishra during his speech said the condition of CPI(M) and Left Front would have been much worse had there been no alliance with the Congress.

Surya Kanta Mishra said that had the CPI(M) not gone in favour of the alliance in the state, we would have won lesser number of seats than the present tally, a senior state committee member said.

He also said there is a need to carry forward the alliance in the state in order to resist the undemocratic attack on opposition parties of Bengal, the member said.

Out of the 85 state committee members, around 29 placed their views at the meeting. Out of these 29, around eight opposed the decision of forging alliance with Congress by violating the official party line.

Those who opposed the alliance referred to the party line adopted in the last Party Congress and also the Politburo statement after the poll debacle which said the electoral tactics pursued by the CPI(M) in West Bengal was not in consonance with the Central Committee decision that there shall be no alliance or understanding with Congress.

The state committee members said the difference between the partys strategy in the state and the official party line is creating confusion and sending a wrong message to the people.
Once considered harmless, Asiatic lions are attacking people living in the periphery of the Gir National Park  Indias only reserve for the big cats. Consequently, 18 of the beasts have been taken into captivity, and local residents have sought the governments permission to kill them in self-defence.

This is yet another instance of rising animal-human conflicts in the country, something that the Centre has tried to resolve by branding wild beasts as vermin and allowing local residents to kill them.

Taking cognisance of three such attacks that occurred over the last two months, forest officials are now capturing lions from the wild and housing them at the Jasadhar Animal Care Centre. The latest such incident at Gir occurred on June 7, when a farm labourer  Raiya Rabari  was attacked by a lion while he was sleeping at his farmhouse in Kodinar, Gir Somnath district.

Until a few months ago, lion attacks were considered a rare occurrence in this area. In fact, villagers would consider them divine, and feel honoured if the majestic beasts paid them a visit. Prime Minister Narendra Modi described them as the pride of Gujarat, and even turned down a proposal to relocate the animals to Kuno Palpur in Madhya Pradesh.

All that has now changed.

Around 100 farmers from Kodiya village have submitted a memorandum to local officials, requesting that the administration capture and relocate three prides  nearly 30 lions  that have made this area their hunting grounds. They have received support from the political class, including members of the ruling BJP, who have suggested that residents be allowed to carry firearms for emergencies.

According to the Wildlife Protection Act, an endangered animal such as the lion can be killed only by a professional hunter  and that too after it has been declared a maneater.

On the other hand, the under-staffed forest department has been struggling to control the spread of lions. With the steady rise in the population of big cats, nearly half of the 523 lions in the Gir region live outside the 1,412 square-km sanctuary.

Wildlife experts say one of the main reasons for lions straying out of the sanctuary is shortage of prey on account of illegal mining and thinning of forest cover. Lions attacked us while we were plucking lemons from our orchards, said Lakha Vala, one of the 100 farmers who signed the petition.

However, Dhari range deputy forest official T Kurrpaswamy dubbed the lion attacks as accidental cases. But as we dont know which of the lions (if any) have turned maneater, we have captured 18 of them, he said.

The forest department is yet to decide when to release them back into the wild.

Bhikha Jethva, president of Lions Nature Club, has rejected calls by those favouring the culling of lions  including local BJP leader Dileep Sanghani. Giving guns to locals is no solution. That way lions will no longer be safe in Gujarat or anywhere else in India. Instead, the government should strengthen the grossly understaffed forest department, he said.

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Two Pakistani smugglers were killed and another was injured in a firefight with the Border Security Force (BSF) on Sunday while attempting to smuggle drugs across the Indo-Pak border in Punjabs Fazilka district.

Their two Indian accomplices were also caught with 15 kg of suspected heroin besides arms and ammunition.

Officials said the incident took place around 2 am after BSF personnel detected some suspicious movement along the International Border in the area under Sohana border post and challenged the intruders.

While two Pakistani nationals have been killed, another has been injured and apprehended by BSF. About 15 packets of narcotic, suspected to be heroin, have been seized from them, besides some arms and ammunition. This seems to be a case of cross-border drug smuggling, an official said.

The arrested smuggler was admitted to the Fazilka civil hospital, and later referred to Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Hospital at Faridkot. He is out of danger, said DIG BSF Abohar Eepan.

The officials said the bodies were recovered and a search was launched in the area. Senior BSF officials have reached the forward area and more details are awaited, sources said.

With inputs from agency
The Hindus in Bangladesh want Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian government to take up the matter of attacks on the community with Dhaka to ensure their safety and security.

The Hindu community, which is the biggest minority community in Bangladesh, is vulnerable in Bangladesh. Fundamentalist and Jamat forces are trying to wipe out Hindus from Bangladesh. We feel that India being a Hindu majority country, should do something, Rana Dasgupta, general secretary of Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council and noted Human Rights activist,told PTI.

We have high hopes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He should act and take up the matter with Bangladeshi government and ensure the safety and security of Hindus, he added.

A 60-year-old Hindu ashram worker, Nityaranjan Pandey, was hacked to death on June 10 by suspected Islamists, becoming the fourth person from the minority community to be killed in a series of brutal attacks on secular activists in the Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

The religious majority and the fundamentalist groups want to eliminate the Hindu community. Since last two years, this religious cleansing has gained further pace. Stability in the Indian subcontinent region can never be achieved with Bangladesh turning into a fundamental state. So if India wants stability in the region it should act to stop the annihilation of minorities in our country, Dasgupta, who is also Prosecutor of International Crimes Tribunal, claimed.

Pandeys murder comes within a week of killings of a Hindu priest, a Christian grocer and wife of an anti-terror police officer. 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 Islamist forces. Bangladesh also saw a series of attacks on secular and liberal bloggers in 2015.

The condition of Hindus is horrible in Bangladesh. Although we have a secular government of Awami League party, but at grass-roots level the situation is grim. Rapes, murder, loot, arson, destruction of property of Hindu and other minority communities is rampant.

Until and unless India puts pressure on Bangladesh, the fundamentalists wont budge, well-known Bangladeshi actor and former managing director of Bangladesh Film Development Corporation Piyush Bandopadhaya said.

India is a major power in the region, it cant sit idle when Hindus are being brutally slaughtered in a neighbouring country, he said. Bandopadhaya, who along with Dasgupta, lauded the quick response of Indian High Commission in Bangladesh, which had sent its officials to meet the family members of the Hindu priest and colleagues in the ashram, said India needs to do more.

Human rights groups and Hindu leaders in Bangladesh have been demanding more security for religious minorities.

Read | Hasina vows to bring to justice killers of bloggers, minorities in Bangladesh

Although the minority leaders are expecting Indian government to take up the cause of the minorities in Bangladesh, a senior Bangladesh minister feels the attack on minorities are actually aimed at creating hurdles in the functioning of the secular and liberal Awami League government.

This is actually a ploy by fundamentalist and Jamat forces to put up a bad image of Bangladesh. These attacks are not aimed at minorities, but the real target is to malign our government and turn our country into a fundamentalist state. We will never let that happen. We have taken several steps to ensure the safety and security of minorities and strict action will be taken against the culprits, Bangladesh Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu told PTI over phone from Dhaka.

When asked what would Dhaka do if India wants to take up the cause of security of Hindus, Inu said, India and Bangladesh share very good relations. India is our friend. If India wants to take up a matter with us, we will talk. There is no harm in it.
They face abuse on the streets, people avoid talking to them, locals do not sit beside them in the metros and sometimes they are beaten -- all of which is racial in nature feel most students from the African community residing in Delhi.

The Africans in Delhi term the behaviour of society towards them as very unfair, as they are not even allowed to present their side of the story with the law enforcement agencies.

Samuel Jack, a 25-year old Nigerian student, residing in south Delhi for the last four years, told IANS: We fear street attack when we are out, and what adds to our misery is the bad policing as we are not even allowed to represent our side.

Samuel Jack is secretary of the Association for African Students in India.

There are a lot of issues that we face here, from finding an accommodation, to racial abuses because we are students here, he said, adding, I am speaking to you on behalf of the African students and not on behalf of the African community.

Ibrahim Djid, a 25-year old Libyan national who has been staying in India since 2011 and studies Business Administration at the Noida International University in the national capital region, says his family now doesnt want him to continue to study here.

We do not feel safe here. When we step out of our house, we are abused by the people here, Ibrahim Djid told IANS, adding, People here discriminate against us on the basis of our skin colour - and that too from none other than a brown brother, someone of brown colour like us -- which hurts us the most.

Ibrahim Djid said that after the recent attacks on Africans in the national capital, including the killing of a Congolese national over a minor tiff, the students at his campus also ignored them.

However, when IANS asked whether any students union came forward in their support, Samuel Jack said, Not at all, no one tried to come with us.

Explaining the exploitation at the hands of private institutes in India, Ibrahim Djid said: I study in a private institution where they only care about money, and if you are an African student you are charged double.

We have to pay US$3,600, but if you are a local student then you have to pay only Rs one lakh. And apart from that, we have to pay US$500 for medical at the same college because they want money and after that nobody cares about us, he added.

Some universities here just exploit us, they dont have proper facilities for us. And it is the reason why the admissions in the last couple of months have gone down, said Samuel Jack.

Ibrahim Djid plans to go to the USA for further studies as his parents have refused to extend his stay in India anymore. My parents today feel guilty as they have sent me here for my studies. They want me to come back. But I cant go back in the middle.

Shahid Siddiqui, president of the Association for Community Research and Action advocating African students, told IANS, There is a huge communication and cultural gap between the two communities here. And we are planning to organise intercultural festivals.

In the first phase we plan to organise food festivals where the African and the Indian community will showcase their cultures of food, he said, adding, We also plan to celebrate the important African and Indian days together to understand each other in a better way.

We have also started a campaign against racism named Do I Look Different on social media to spread awareness among people, and the African students have agreed, Siddiqui added.

He said that on June 25, the Graduation day of the African students would be celebrated together.

Commenting on the Do I look different campaign, Samuel Jack said, We want to be a part of the Indian society; we will support in every step that leads to community building, development and peace.
A woman follower has named her newborn son Ramvriksh Yadav after the cult leader who was among the 29 people killed in a clash when police removed squatters for a park in neighbouring Mathura on June 2.

Dharamwati, who was arrested from the Jawahar Bagh that the cult had occupied for more than two years, gave birth to a baby boy at the Etah jail hospital late Friday.

I had nothing to do with violence that occurred nor I ever met Ramvriksh Yadav but to keep alive the memory of my stay, I intend to name him after cult leader, Dharamwati, now a mother of four, said.

She is among the 96 women followers arrested on the night of June 2 for disturbing peace in the temple town of Mathura. They were later shifted from the Mathura jail to Etah with their children.

Read:Mathura violence mastermind Ramvriksh Yadav dead: UP DGP

The newborn was also being called Jailee, as he was born in jail, a hospital staff said.

A resident of Kareena village in Bareilly, Dharamwati said she came to Mathura a few days before the violence broke out. They were told that a fair was being organised where stay and food would be free, she said. Her husband Sitaram, 39, is in Mathura jail.

Police action to evict followers of Ramvriksh Yadav, the leader of the Swadheen Bharat Subhash Sena, on the orders of the Allahabad high court went horribly wrong. A superintend of police and a station officer were killed as security personnel came under heavy firing.

Police blamed Yadav, who claimed to be a follower of iconic freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose, for the violence. Yadavs Sena was also demanding a set of bizarre socialist reforms, including scrapping of the positions of prime minister and president, and replacing the rupee with an Azad Hind currency.

The Uttar Pradesh government has ordered a probe into the violence after its handling of the situation was heavily criticised and cited as yet another example of deteriorating law and order situation in the state.

Read:Mathura mayhem: Drama over Ram Vrikshs body

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When a group of Dawoodi Bohra women started a campaign against the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), called female circumcision by supporters of the practice, there was no reaction from their clergy. The only response was from the smaller breakaway group  now headed by Syedna Taher Fakhruddin, the son of the claimant to the communitys spiritual leadership. The group broke away after Tahers father Khuzaima Qutbuddin, who died in March, refused to accept the succession of his nephew to the spiritual seat that was held by his half-brother Mohammed Burhanuddin, the 52nd Dai (Syedna) or head of the sect. The groups split after Burhanuddin died in January 2014 and the dispute over the succession is being heard by the Bombay high court.

The breakaway group, which said that the anti-FGM campaigners asked them for support, has been more liberal in their views on the custom. While critics have said that it is a patriarchal practice forced on women, Fakhruddin has contended that the surgery actually improves the conjugal relationship. While he has not said that the custom should be banned, he has said that women should be allowed to take the decision whether they want to undergo the procedure. It is sensitive and complicated; there is a matter of religious practice. So the Syedna came up with a solution which addresses the issue directly to protect the girl child  which is the main issue, said Abdeali Qutbuddin, Fakhruddins brother.

At the same time, keeping the sanctity of the faith, he (Fakhruddin) has clarified that what is done is a procedure to enhance their (womens) experience with their husband. What the Syedna has said that when a girl reaches adulthood, it should be her decision whether to undergo the procedure, he added.

The campaigners against the custom may not agree with this interpretation of the practice, but the breakaway group thinks they have provided a more moderate solution to the question. The Dawoodi Bohra faith, in itself, is a liberal faith because it has at its core the Dai, who can interpret the faith, said Abdeali.

As his rival tries to win followers by taking a more liberal view on the issue, the head of the main faction, Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, finally spoke on the issue. His statement came after reports that associations representing Bohras in United Kingdom and Australia, where the practice is a crime, asked their members not to break the local law. Mufaddal said that circumcision  for men and women  is a religious rite practiced since the beginnings of their faith, but supported the decision of the trusts to end the custom in countries where it is a criminal offence. The practice can continue in countries like India where it is not illegal, he added.

In India, the Bohras, who are Shias, are the only group to practice it though it is common in Yemen and Africa. Most western countries not only prohibit the practice but also make it a criminal offence to take a child out of the country to get the procedure done. Recently, the supreme court of New South Wales convicted three people, including the mother, for the circumcision of two girls.

His followers think that Fakhruddin, whose following is still miniscule compared to the main faction, has won more supporters by his liberal views on FGM.

I think the Bohra community has recognised that the Syedna has provided a practical solution, said Abdeali. But the support is not in large numbers; there is fear of social boycott (ex-communication by the clergy if they openly support the rival group).

Some Bohras think that Fakhruddins statements may not win him many followers. He is not getting any sympathy. After all, he is the product of the same authoritarian system which is not appealing to many people in the community, said Saifuddin Insaf, a member of the reformist group, which does not recognise the clergy.

manoj.nair@hindustantimes.com

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VAISHALI/ PATNA: The fugitive proprietor of a college in Bihar who has been accused of manipulating the state boards class12 exam and results to produce toppers from the institution surrendered before the police on Saturday.

Sources said Amit Singh aka Baccha Roy, owner of Vishun Roy College in Vaishali, was taken to Patna by state-appointed special investigation team for questioning.

His college produced four of the 18 toppers, including his daughter Shalini, among the first 10 on this years merit list in the class 12 science and arts streams.

Notorious for incidents of mass cheating, Bihar was engulfed in a merit muddle when the four toppers failed to answer rudimentary questions during a media interaction soon after the results were announced in May, triggering outrage that they cheated their way to the top.

Police filed a case against the college, the four students and officials of Bihar State Examination Board, whose chairman Lalkeshwar Singh is on the run.

Roys college has been charged with using unfair means in connivance with board officials and invigilators to manipulate the class 12 results since the year 2000.

Experts said private, unaided colleges were in the race to produce as many meritorious students as possible because the government pays Rs 5,000 to the institution for every student getting a first division, Rs 7,000 for toppers, Rs 4,000 for second division and Rs 3,000 for third division. Besides, the top spots help enhance a colleges popularity.

The manipulation apparently helped Roy make a fortune. His earnings will be under the scanner of enforcement directorate and I-T officials, police said.

Roys family runs three more educational institutions.
Much before its stunning return to power in 2012 in Punjab, ruling party Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) declared a war on drugs. Party president Sukhbir Singh Badals promise to rid the state of the menace, and the taint associated with narcotics abuse, put the Akalis back in the saddle.

Soon after chief minister Parkash Singh Badal took charge, the police went all out against drug smugglers along the 553-km border with Pakistan, besides cracking down on the supply chain in Punjab. Most of the drugs trafficked in Punjab originate from Afghanistan and are processed in Pakistans tribal areas.

Ironically, the crackdown backfired for the Akalis in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The drug issue dominated the campaign and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won the perception battle, bagging four out of the 13 Lok Sabha seats. The Akalis were alarmed. The opposition directed public anger against us and we paid the price, Badal senior conceded.

Cut to 2016. The controversy surrounding filmmaker Anurag Kashyaps Udta Punjab has pitch-forked the drug issue back to the spotlight as Punjab heads for another election. This time, the AAP sniffs an opportunity as wary Akalis look to revive the steam in their campaign against drugs, while a confused Congress hopes for a comeback from a decade in the wilderness.

Its offensive against drugs has ended up as a double-edged sword for the Akali government. The campaign has reinforced the view that drugs are indeed rampant in Punjab. At the core of this blame game is the 2017 elections. The AAP is using the issue as ammunition to taste power in the state.

The government, in a knee-jerk reaction, has not only slowed down its drive but is also in denial about the problem. It says the issue is not as serious as is being made out to be. Rather, it sees an attempt to malign Punjab and Punjabis.

Censor Board chief Pahlaj Nihalini expressed a similar opinion, saying Udta Punjab defames the states people by wrongly depicting that 70% of them consume drugs.

But the all-out offensive seems an abandoned cause, a pale shadow of the Akalis war cry against drugs in their poll manifesto in 2011.

The Punjab government has blamed the Border Security Force for failing to check the supply chain from Pakistan. We are fighting the nations war, Badal told the Vidhan Sabha recently, asking the Centre to seal the border.

Police personnel have covered 2,900 villages under the feedback campaign launched by the government, inspector general of police Ishwar Singh, who is the director of the state narcotics control bureau, said. We are very serious in every respect. The institutional response has been prompt (against drugs). There is no question of slowing down.

The 181 toll-free helpline has led to the registration of 85 FIRs in drug-related cases. The financial investigation of such cases is being handled by DIG-rank officers, Singh said.

The shift in the Akali strategy in the fight against drugs came when arrested lynchpin Jagdish Singh Bhola, an Arjuna award-winning wrestler-turned-dismissed cop, told the press on January 6, 2014, that cabinet minister Bikram Singh Majithia was the real kingpin of the drug racket.

Majithia is the younger brother of Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, the wife of deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal. He has dismissed the allegations, calling them wild imagination. But Bholas bombshell triggered a political earthquake, the tremors of which continue to rattle political discourse two years on.

This damning disclosure, closely investigated by the Enforcement Directorate, led to Majithia appearing before the ED. It was enough to put the once-on-the-offensive Akalis on the defensive. The Congresss Lok Sabha MP for Jalandhar, Santokh Chaudhary, too had to appear before the ED but the Akalis bore the maximum political damage. An Akali chief parliamentary secretary, Avinash Chander, is also embroiled in the case.

Such weak spots in the Akalis fight have derailed Punjabs war on drugs. The flip-flop has given the opposition, particularly the AAP, ammo to target Akalis and make drug menace the central plank of their election campaign in the border state.

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AHMEDABAD: Once considered harmless, Asiatic lions are attacking people living in the periphery of the Gir National Park  Indias only reserve for the big cats. Consequently, 18 of the beasts have been taken into captivity, and locals have sought the governments permission to kill them in self-defence.

This is yet another instance of rising animal-human conflicts in the country, something that the Centre has tried to resolve by branding wild beasts as vermin and allowing local residents to kill them. Taking cognisance of three such attacks that occurred over the last two months, forest officials are now capturing lions from the wild and housing them at the Jasadhar Animal Care Centre.

Until a few months ago, lion attacks were considered a rare occurrence in this area. In fact, villagers would feel honoured if the majestic beasts paid them avisit . Prime Minister Mo di described them as the pride of Gujarat, and even turned down a proposal to relocate the animals to Kuno Palpur in Madhya Pradesh.

All that has now changed.

Farmers from Kodiya village have submitted a memorandum to officials, requesting them to relocate nearly 30 lions that have made this area their hunting grounds. They have received support from politicians, who have suggested that residents be allowed to carry firearms for emergencies. According to the Wildlife Protection Act, an endangered animal such as the lion can be killed only by a professional hunterand that too after it has been declared a man-eater. On the other hand, the under-staffed forest department has been struggling to control the spread of lions.

Wildlife experts say one of the main reasons for lions straying out of the sanctuary is shortage of prey because of thinning of forest cover. Bhikha Jethva, president of Lions Nature Club, has rejected calls by those favouring the culling of lions  including local BJP leader Dileep Sanghani. Giving guns to locals is no solution. That way lions will no longer be safe in Gujarat or anywhere else in India, he said.

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The much-awaited Rs 500-crore Mohali Junction  the regions first air-conditioned Inter-State Bus Terminus (ISBT)  that was to start operations in October 2011 and has missed four deadlines will finally be made operational by July 31 this year. A Delhi-based company, C&C Constructions Limited, that has executed the project under the public private partnership (PPP) mode will be handing over the completed ISBT to the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA) by July-end.

The 6.6-acre terminus  at Phase 6, SAS Nagar, adjacent to the Verka Chowk on national highway-21  will improve connectivity of the tricity to northern Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir. This has been a dream project of Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal since April 2009, when work started on the facility. With state assembly elections scheduled in early 2017, the state-of-the-art facility is likely to be projected as an achievement of the SAD-BJP government.

DELAY BLAMED ON ECONOMIC DOWNTURN

For the delay in the project, C&C Constructions Ltd has been blaming the sudden economic downturn.

C&C Constructions general manager (commercial) CVS Sehgal said, We are set to deliver the ISBT-cum-commercial complex and will operationalise the ISBT portion of the project by July 31. The rest of the project will be completed by December 2018.

Once the ISBT is handed over, the old bus stand operating from Phase-8 will close and operations will shift to this terminal. We have the capacity to handle 1,900 bus trips daily, Sehgal added. The state government has decided to name the facility as Baba Banda Singh Bahadur ISBT after the Sikh general, who is credited with defeating Wazir Khan, the Mughal nawab of Sirhind, leading to the establishment of the first Sikh kingdom in 1711.

In around 10 days, we will put up a neon board displaying the name on the ISBT terminal, Sehgal added.

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The ambitious Urban Haat project, which was developed by the Punjab Urban Planning and Development Authority (PUDA) and aimed at bringing Amritsars popular food joints under one umbrella, despite being inaugurated nearly a month ago wears a deserted look.

Urban Hatt, which hosted Amritsar heritage festival from May 15 to May 20, was inaugurated by deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on May 13.

People from 20 states had participated in the festival and it was for the first time that the place was thrown open for public. Artistes from Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra had displayed their art and craft during the festival.

In contrary, the place now wears a deserted look. Even the boards that were put up during the festival can be seen lying on the floor, giving an impression that the place is lying unattended. The rooms are locked and dried leaves can be seen decorating the passage of the old heritage building that was earlier a hospital.

Sandeep Rishi, chairman of the Improvement Trust, said, We received a good response during the festival. The inauguration was done as the work in the building was completed, but we are in the process of setting up the food court. It will be functional soon. Rest, everything will be taken care of. Everything is in a processing stage.

The 4.5 acre construction is said to have 32 halls and 20 kitchens, a gym, spa, food court, craft bazaar and meeting rooms. Apparently various popular eating joints were supposed to have their outlets on the premises. The administration has spent about Rs 6.5 crore on the project, which is a replica of Lahores Food Street.

The site was developed by refurbishing the abandoned complex of a 124-year old colonial building of Victoria Jubilee Hospital, nearly 1 km from the Golden Temple and the Jallianwala Bagh.
The UT administration, along with Ayush ministry, will spend over Rs 14 crore on International Yoga Day event, and the ongoing four-day yoga festival being held in different areas of the city. Of the entire budget, around Rs 1.5 crore is being spent on the yoga festival. Several companies have tied up with the administration for sponsorships, and around Rs 5 crore will be generated through CSR and sponsorships.

A sound system worth Rs 15 lakh is also being put up at the main venue.

The Ayush ministry has sanctioned Rs 7 crore for the mega yoga event to be held at the Capitol Complex, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will perform yoga asanas along with 30,000 participants. In all, total 70,000 will perform yoga across 180 camps in Chandigarh.

The administration is organising the main yoga event in collaboration with Punjab and Haryana. Ayush ministry secretary Ajit M Sharan said though the ministry had sanctioned Rs 7 crore for the main event, the total spending is going to increase by several crores.

All special arrangements are being made to make it a successful event; the ongoing yoga festival is being held as a prequel of the main event.

Deputy commissioner Ajit Balaji Joshi on Saturday said, We are receiving funds under the corporate social responsibility (CSR) from different companies.

On day one of the yoga festival, Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar had delivered a lecture on spirituality and yoga. Besides, speakers from all across the country are sharing thoughts at the ongoing yoga conclave at the CII.

Sources say as part of the preparation for the mega event, over 35,000 mats will be set up. As per the estimate, the UT will have to arrange over 1.35 lakh water bottles, 100 temporary toilets, carpet measuring 10lakh square feet, 40 LED screens at the main venue. A tender worth Rs 2.89 lakh has already been floated. A Delhi-based firm, Arch Concepts Private Limited, which organised the first International Yoga Day event, has been allotted the tender.

LED YOGA SHOW

A spectacular eight-minute 3D mapping LED show, Yoga  the Tree of Life  was held at Sukhna Lake on Saturday evening. The estimated cost of the show is stated to be around Rs 35 lakh. Different yoga asanas were displayed on LED screens put up at a 16-ft structure raised at the lake. Moonlight yoga, along with skyads, was main highlight of the event. UT administrator Prof Kaptan Singh Solanki, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, Balkrishna, managing director of Patanjali Ayurveda, UT adviser Parimal Rai, home secretary Anurag Aggarwal and DC Ajit Balaji Joshi attended the event.

WATERPROOF TENTS

Keeping in view the stormy weather condition, the administration is coming up with water-proof tents with an investment of over Rs 35 lakh. The administration officials also held a special meeting to discuss the Plan B on Saturday.

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A gunman took hostages and opened fire inside a crowded gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday morning, killing approximately 20 people and wounding 42 others before SWAT officers killed him, authorities said. Police Chief John Mina said the shooter had an assault-style rifle, a handgun and a suspicious device with him during the attack, which is being investigated as an act of terrorism.

Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club, where as many as 20 people were killed after a gunman opened fire, in Orlando, Florida. (Reuters)

Heres a look at some of the nations deadliest rampages since 2012:

February 25, 2016: Cedric Ford, 38, killed three people and wounded 14 others lawnmower factory where he worked in the central Kansas community of Hesston. The local police chief killed him during a shootout with 200 to 300 workers still in the building, authorities said.

February 20, 2016: Jason Dalton, 45, is accused of randomly shooting and killing six people and severely wounding two others during a series of attacks over several hours in the Kalamazoo, Michigan, area. Authorities say he paused between shootings to make money as an Uber driver. He faces murder and attempted murder charges.

December 2, 2015: Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, opened fire at a social services center in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people and wounding more than 20. They fled the scene but died hours later in a shootout with police.

October 1, 2015: A shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, left 10 people dead and seven wounded. Shooter Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, exchanged gunfire with police, then killed himself.

June 17, 2015: Dylann Roof, 21, shot and killed nine African-American church members during a Bible study group inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Police contend the attack was racially motivated. Roof faces nine counts of murder in state court and dozens of federal charges, including hate crimes.

May 23, 2014: A community college student, Elliot Rodger, 22, killed six people and wounded 13 in shooting and stabbing attacks in the area near the University of California, Santa Barbara, campus. Authorities said he apparently shot himself to death after a gunbattle with deputies.

September 16, 2013: Aaron Alexis, a mentally disturbed civilian contractor, shot 12 people to death at the Washington Navy Yard before he was killed in a police shootout.

July 26, 2013: Pedro Vargas, 42, went on a shooting rampage at his Hialeah, Florida, apartment building, gunning down six people before officers fatally shot him.

December 14, 2012: In Newtown, Connecticut, an armed 20-year-old man entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and used a semi-automatic rifle to kill 26 people, including 20 first graders and six adult school staff members. He then killed himself.

September 27, 2012: In Minnesotas deadliest workplace rampage, Andrew Engeldinger, who had just been fired, pulled a gun and fatally shot six people, including the companys founder. He also wounded two others at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis before taking his own life.

August 5, 2012: In Oak Creek, Wisconsin, 40-year-old gunman Wade Michael Page killed six worshippers at a Sikh Temple before killing himself.

July 20, 2012: James Holmes, 27, fatally shot 12 people and injured 70 in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

April 2, 2012: Seven people were killed and three were wounded when a 43-year-old former student opened fire at Oikos University in Oakland, California. One Goh was charged with seven counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, but psychiatric evaluations concluded he suffered from long-term paranoid schizophrenia and was unfit to stand trial.


A heavily armed man who said he was heading to a gay pride parade in Los Angeles was arrested early on Sunday, Mayor Eric Garcetti said.

Garcetti, speaking at the opening of the LA Pride Festival, expressed his horror at the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday and said it appeared the arrest near Los Angeles was unrelated to the Florida attack, in which 50 people were killed and 53 injured.

Garcetti pledged that the Los Angles festival would proceed.

He said the arrest occurred after a tip from a suspicious resident. FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said the arrest was made by Santa Monica police and that the FBI was assisting in the investigation.

According to law enforcement officials cited by the Los Angeles Times, a search of the suspects car turned up several weapons, ammunition and explosive powder was found in the vehicle.

Santa Monica Police declined to comment on the incident and referred calls to the FBI, as did the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department, which also assisted in the arrest.

The arrest comes in the aftermath of the worst mass shooting in US history on Saturday in which 50 people were killed and 53 wounded .

Read | Florida nightmare: 50 killed, 53 wounded in worst mass shooting in US history
TORONTO: A young engineer from Vancouver has developed a wearable device based on yoga that is aimed at harmonising a fundamental facet of human health  breathing.

Cindy Gu, 22, born and raised in Beijing, has created a prototype  a smart belt coupled with a mobile app  that found its inspiration in pranayama, a basic aspect of yoga. That in itself is no surprise since Gu, who just completed her Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering at the University of British Columbia or UBC, is also a yoga instructor.

Ive learnt that breathings a vital practice in yoga meditation but it also has a significant impact on our mood, emotions and stress levels, so that led me to design a device to help other people breathe better, she said. It was originally supposed to be a device for her personal use, but after pitching the idea at a startup contest at UBC and winning, she realised it had traction.

The device is the belt, basically, really the sensor and the fabric, thats detecting the expansion and contraction of the lower belly and taking in that behavioural data. The machine learns it and is able to understand the users breathing pattern and when there are irregularities in that pattern, thats when the device will signal to the user with a haptic feedback. That comes by way of a gentle vibration that alerts the user that their breathing is awry, basically a buzz to let them know its time to take a deep breath. Gu said not breathing properly leads to stress, something she hopes this device will help prevent.

Gu took up yoga to combat just that  the tension of her university workload. I was feeling very stressed out and struggling to come up for air, she said.

Last summer, she was certified as a yoga instructor. Its been a life-changing experience for me, delving in deeper into yoga and deeper into the internal wellbeing and also the spirituality of the practice, Gu said.

Gu, along with Louise Thomas, an engineering student, have formed Ohm Gear Lab to bring the device to the market after winning a pair of startup competitions. Other than the belt, it will include a mobile app that will have biometric data synced to a smartphone allowing the user to track how, for instance, a healthy pattern of breathing has affected their heart rate.

Gu is currently in Beijing and has started the process of looking for a manufacturing supply chain. She hopes the device will be available by December next year after a period of rigorous testing. A price point of Canadian $180 (or about Rs 9,200) is under consideration.

Meanwhile, Gu will make her first visit to India later this month. Fittingly, that will largely be devoted to being in Hrishikesh, to learn yoga from its root.

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China said on Sunday that more talks were needed to build a consensus on which countries can join the main group controlling access to sensitive nuclear technology, after a push by the United States to include India.

China is seen as leading opposition to the US move to include India in the 48-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), but other countries, including New Zealand, Turkey, South Africa and Austria, also oppose Indian membership, according to diplomats.

The NSG aims to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons by restricting the sale of items that can be used to make those arms.

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.

Large differences remain over the issue of non-NPT countries joining the NSG, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said in an online statement.

With regard to what to do on the issue of non-NPT signatories joining (the NSG), China consistently supports having ample discussion on this to seek consensus and agreement and come to a unanimous decision, Hong said.

The NPT is the political and legal basis for the entire international non-proliferation system, Hong said, adding that China would support the group in further talks to come to a consensus at an early date.

Opponents argue that granting India membership would further undermine efforts to prevent proliferation. It would also infuriate Pakistan, which responded to Indias membership bid with one of its own and has the backing of its close ally China.

Pakistan joining would be unacceptable to many, given its track record. The scientist that headed its nuclear weapons programme ran an illicit network for years that sold nuclear secrets to countries, including North Korea and Iran.

A decision on Indian membership is not expected before an NSG plenary meeting in Seoul on June 20, but diplomats said Washington has been pressuring hold-outs.

Most of the hold-outs oppose the idea of admitting a non-NPT state such as India and argue that if it 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.
At least 50 people were killed and 53 wounded in the worst mass shooting in US history when a lone man armed with an assault rifle and a handgun opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, late Saturday.

The authorities have described the incident as a likely terrorist attack.

The shooter, who was later killed in a gunfight with police SWAT teams, was identified by officials as 29-year-old Omar Saddiqui Mateen, a US citizen of Afghan descent residing at St. Lucie County in Florida. He was a trained security guard.

Read: A look at some of US deadliest rampages since 2012: Timeline

President Barack Obama called the shootings an act of terror and an act of hate, and said the FBI was investigating it as an act of terror. He also renewed his call for reconsidering the countrys gun laws.

While there is still no official word on the shooters motives, Congressman Adam Schiff  the senior-most Democrat in the House of Representatives permanent select committee on intelligence  told CNN that local law enforcement officials believe Mateen had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

Mateen also reportedly called 911  the US emergency number  and claimed allegiance to the terror organisation. The attacker mentioned Boston marathon bombers Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, media reports said, adding that he was understood to be on the FBIs watchlist as an Islamic State sympathiser.

Jermaine Towns, left, and Brandon Shuford wait down the street from the nightclub in Orlando. (AP)

However, when asked earlier at a news briefing if the gunman had links to jihadist terror groups, FBI assistant agent-in-charge of the area Ron Hopper said, At this time, were looking at all angles we do have suggestions that this individual may have leanings towards that, that particular ideology. But we cant say definitively right now, so were still running everything around.

If confirmed as a terror attack, this will be the deadliest incident of the kind to occur on the US mainland since September 11, 2001. This would also be the second terror attack since then, the first being the December 2, 2015 shooting in San Bernardino, California, when a married couple of Pakistani descent gunned down 14 people before being killed in a firefight with law enforcement officers.

Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump, who called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the US after the San Bernardino attack, was more restrained this time.

Really bad shooting in Orlando. Police investigating possible terrorism. Many people dead and wounded, he said in a tweet. But he may ratchet up the rhetoric if a link to Islamic terrorism was indeed established.

Witnesses told local media outlets they first heard gunshots around 2 am, even as the nightclub  Pulse Orlando  was about to close. Some of them recalled hearing 40 shots or more.

Local police said the shooting started in the nightclub and continued outside when an officer in uniform doing extra duty engaged the gunman. Then Mateen went back into the club and took hostages.

At about 3am, the club posted a message on its Facebook page: Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.

The New York Times cited Christopher Hansen, a witness, as telling a local TV station: Cops were saying, Go, go, clear the area  You dont know whos what and whos where.

Police SWAT teams stormed the club after a controlled explosion, at around 5.00am. They found the gunman, who was wearing an explosive device, lying dead inside.
Nine months after he quit Nepals biggest Maoist party, former Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai launched a new political outfit on Sunday.

Naya Shakti Nepal was made official at a public gathering in Kathmandus Dasarath Stadium where Bhattarai administered oath to thousands of party members present.

After promulgation of the constitution, the new challenge for Nepal is development and prosperity and Naya Shakti aims to lead that change, Bhattarai stated.

The new party whose name means New Power is urging Nepalis disenchanted with old ideologies to be part of the movement for economic revolution assuring a prosperous nation is possible in our lifetime.

The commitments made by it for a New Nepal are equitable prosperity, proportional, inclusive and participatory democracy, good governance and enhanced socialism while protecting national interests.

Bhattarai said the party has a plan to reduce poverty significantly within the next seven years, increase per capita annual income from the present $700 by 10 times within 15 years and make Nepal one of the richest countries in the world in 25 years.

We shall strictly follow a system of one person-one executive post, and one executive postmaximum two tenures, he said while adding the party would follow left-democratic ideals.

Bhattarai stated instead of getting squashed between its two big neighbours, India and China, Nepal can act as a dynamic bridge between the two and benefit from their economic development.

Once considered a Maoist ideologue, the Jawaharlal Nehru University alumnus had severed ties with Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) over ideological differences with chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda.

The 62-year-old had quit the party just nine days after promulgation of Nepals new constitution in September stating his old party wasnt good enough for the country and a new ideology was needed.

A key architect of the constitution, he had felt that it was failure on part of the constituent assembly for not being able to address demands of Tharus and Madhesis by creating separate for them.

Bhattarais former party, which is part of the ruling coalition, had recently renamed itself as Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) after several other Maoist factions rejoined it.

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed the role of an independent judiciary and the need for a level playing field for foreign firms as she begun her ninth trip to China since taking office.

Merkel arrived in China on Sunday amid growing pressure from industry and rights groups to confront the Chinese more forcefully.

The Chinese government is overseeing a broad crackdown on rights groups and activists, and is facing complaints from foreign firms about market access restrictions.

Speaking to students at a Beijing university, Merkel explained the importance of real rule of law.

This means the judiciary decides according to the laws and legislation of the country independently of politics, and everyone is equal before the law. That means court procedures and rulings have to be transparent, she said.

If interpreted in this way, rule of law strengthens the trust of citizens in state institutions and its decisions. And thereby also strengths the social stability of a country.

Chinas courts are controlled by the ruling Communist Party, though President Xi Jinping is trying to improve the rule of law and get ordinary people to resolve their grievances via the courts rather than taking to the streets.

Foreign companies also need a good legal framework, Merkel added.

As we see it, a legal framework for companies also has to be designed in such a way that foreign companies enjoy the same rights and privileges as domestic companies, for example as regards public tenders, the effective protection of brands and patents and data.

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.

Merkels trip also comes in the midst of anger in Europe about Chinese steel exports, the robust growth of which has come under fire from global rivals, who have accused China of dumping cheap exports after a slowdown in demand at home.

We have to ensure that we have a level playing field, she said, referring to the steel issue.

No one wants to see an expanded trade war between the European Union and China. But that means we have to talk about the outstanding issues.
Officials in western Uttar Pradeshs Kairana town said on Sunday that a partial verification of a list of Hindu families who allegedly left the town appeared to puncture the BJPs claim that they were targeted by Muslim gangs.

Assistant superintendent of police Anil Kumar Jha said a spot verification of 150 addresses of the list revealed several reasons for the migration, including better business and job prospects. Many of them even migrated eight or ten years ago, he said.

Police also said they found about 150 Muslim families who also migrated from the city for different reasons.

The revelations appeared to force local member of Parliament, Hukum Singh, on the backfoot. The MP, who spent the past week alleging a Muslim-led backlash against Hindu families, said his party workers prepared the families list, not him.

The alleged exodus of 250 Hindu families has dominated headlines in a state where elections are due early next year. The BJP appears to want to use the issue to consolidate the Hindu vote in its favour as it looks to dethrone the Samajwadi Party government.

Muslims tenants living near shops adjacent to Pawam Dham Temple at Kairana. (HT Photo)

RSS joins BJP chorus

Meanwhile, the BJPs ideological mentors, the RSS said, reports about a large number of Hindus migrating from Kairana town were a vindication of its concerns about the safety of the community in Muslim-dominated areas.

BJPs Kairana MP Hukum Singh had first spoken about the alleged exodus last week, claiming that over 250 families had been forced to flee following threats and extortions from an alleged Muslim gang.

On Sunday, BJP president Amit Shah too spoke about the violence in Kairana and Mathura. Earlier in the day, the state unit asked Hukum Singh  who was among those accused of inciting violence in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots  to lead a fact-finding mission.

A senior RSS functionary said that they too had received a report on the exodus from their members in the area. It is just a tip of the iceberg, he said, adding that there were several pockets in Uttar Pradesh where Hindus were being harassed.

In Kairana, he added, the tension appears to have escalated because Hindus who complained to the authorities received no help from the police or the administration.
A young engineer from Vancouver has developed a wearable device based on yoga that is aimed at harmonising a fundamental facet of human health  breathing.

22-year-old Cindy Gu, born and raised in Beijing, has created a prototype a smart belt coupled with a mobile app  that found its inspiration in pranayama, a basic aspect of yoga. That in itself is no surprise since Gu, who just completed her Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering at the University of British Columbia or UBC, is also a yoga instructor.

Ive learnt that breathings a vital practice in yoga meditation but it also has a significant impact on our mood, emotions and stress levels, so that led me to design a device to help other people breathe better, she said. It was originally supposed to be a device for her personal use, but after pitching the idea at a startup contest at UBC and winning, she realised it had traction.

The device is the belt, basically, really the sensor and the fabric, thats detecting the expansion and contraction of the lower belly and taking in that behavioural data. The machine learns it and is able to understand the users breathing pattern and when there are irregularities in that pattern, thats when the device will signal to the user with a haptic feedback. That comes by way of a gentle vibration that alerts the user that their breathing is awry, basically a buzz to let them know its time to take a deep breath. Gu said not breathing properly leads to stress, something she hopes this device will help prevent.

Gu took up yoga to combat just that  the tension of her university workload. I was feeling very stressed out and struggling to come up for air, she said.

Last summer, she was certified as a yoga instructor. Its been a life-changing experience for me, delving in deeper into yoga and deeper into the internal well-being and also the spirituality of the practice, Gu said.

Gu, along with Louise Thomas, an engineering student, have formed Ohm Gear Lab to bring the device to the market after winning a pair of startup competitions. Other than the belt, it will include a mobile app that will have biometric data synced to a smartphone allowing the user to track how, for instance, a healthy pattern of breathing has affected their heart rate.

Gu is currently in Beijing and has started the process of looking for a manufacturing supply chain. She hopes the device will be available by December next year after a period of rigorous testing. A price point of Canadian $180 (or about Rs 9,200) is under consideration.

Meanwhile, Gu will make her first visit to India later this month. Fittingly, that will largely be devoted to being in Hrishikesh, to learn yoga from its root.

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Iraqi troops attacked Islamic State positions south of Mosul on Sunday as the US-led coalition intensifies its campaign against the militants on multiple fronts across their self-proclaimed caliphate.

Officers involved in the operation said Iraqi forces had advanced in tanks and armoured vehicles towards the village of Haj Ali, about 60km south of Mosul, under cover of coalition airstrikes and artillery fire.

Iraqi forces are also advancing on the edge of the Islamic State bastion of Falluja further south, while in Syria US-backed forces are encircling the militant-held town of Manbij.

Iraqi troops were deployed to the northern Makhmour area earlier this year and launched an operation in March touting it as the beginning of a bigger campaign to retake Mosul -- the largest city under militant control.

Since then, Iraqi forces have captured a handful of villages on the eastern bank of the river Tigris.

The commander of the operation blamed the slow pace on a lack of tanks and said he did not have enough men to hold ground after it was retaken from the militants.

Last week, an armoured brigade was deployed to Makhmour, along with boats and bridges to enable troops to cross the Tigris river to the Islamic State hub of Qayara on its western bank.

Qayara is home to an airfield that will serve as a key staging ground for the future operation to recapture Mosul, and control of the oil town would also isolate territory the militants control further south and east.
Forces allied with Libyas unity government said Saturday they had recaptured the port in the jihadist bastion of Sirte, advancing rapidly against Islamic State group fighters encircled inside the city.

The fall of Sirte, the hometown of ousted dictator Moamer Kadhafi, would be a major setback for the extremists who have also lost territory in Syria and Iraq where they have declared an Islamic caliphate.

Apart from the port, the Libyan forces also retook residential areas in the east of Sirte, which for the past year has been the main IS base in the North African country, a spokesman for the forces, Rida Issa, told AFP.

The jihadists are now surrounded in a densely populated area of around five square kilometres (two square miles) inside Sirte where they are laying booby traps, he said.

Most of the citys residents have fled but some 30,000 remain, Issa said.

After a month-long operation to close in on Sirte, the rapid pace of the advance by forces allied to the Government of National Accord (GNA) who entered the city on Wednesday has surprised Libyan authorities.

The battle wasnt as difficult as we thought it would be, one government official said. Maybe we exaggerated their (ISs) numbers?

The UN envoy to Libya, Martin Kobler, said Saturday on Twitter that he was impressed by the rapid progress of pro-GNA forces.

France also hailed the advance and called for all political factions to unite against IS.

IS Sirte strength unclear

But analysts have warned the citys fall would not spell the end of the jihadists in Libya, where they have fed on political and military divisions since the 2011 uprising that killed Kadhafi.

Foreign intelligence services estimate the extremist group has 5,000 fighters in the country, but its strength inside Sirte, which IS has held since June 2015, is unclear.

IS fighters tried to wrest back the port on Saturday in an attack that killed two members of the GNA forces, who repelled the assault.

A total of 137 pro-GNA forces have been killed and 500 wounded since the operation began on May 12, according to a medical official in the western city of Misrata.

Libyas unity government forces have fought fierce street battles with the jihadists around a sprawling Kadhafi-era conference centre which once hosted international summits but now houses an IS command centre.

An AFP correspondent at the scene reported heavy street fighting on Friday about two kilometres (one mile) from the Ouagadougou centre.

GNA forces used tanks, rocket launchers and artillery, the correspondent said, while the jihadists responded with machineguns, mortar rounds and sniper fire.

We are fighting between houses, on the streets, and we wont back down before we eliminate them, said one GNA combatant, who declined to be named.

Warplanes have carried out air strikes around the conference centre and other IS positions inside the city, according to social media accounts belonging to the anti-jihadist operation.

American and British advisers

The operations command, on its Facebook page, said jihadist positions had been targeted by 150 air strikes since mid-May.

Formed under a UN-backed power-sharing deal agreed by some Libyan lawmakers in December, the GNA has been working to assert its authority but has yet to receive the official endorsement of the countrys recognised parliament.

The pro-GNA forces are mostly made up of militias from western cities, notably Misrata, and the guards of oil installations that IS has repeatedly tried to seize.

Emily Estelle, a North Africa and Middle East specialist with the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, said an estimated 2,000 fighters, primarily well-equipped Misrata militiamen, were engaged in the Sirte operation.

The Misrata militiamen took part in the NATO-backed uprising five years ago against Kadhafi, who himself was found and killed outside Sirte.

According to Estelle, American and British advisers on the ground are likely helping the Misratans.

The forces allied with the GNA said on Thursday they expected to announce the liberation of Sirte in two or three days, after thrusting into the city centre.

Were encouraged by the progress theyre making, said US special envoy Brett McGurk, whose country has said it has small teams of special forces gathering intelligence in Libya.

GNA head Fayez al-Sarraj called Friday on all military forces to unite in the face of our common enemy... and to join the victorious forces.

But Ahmed al-Mesmari, a spokesman for forces loyal to a rival government based in the countrys far east, described the GNA forces as illegitimate militias, loyal to an illegitimate government.
The co-owner of Pulse, the Orlando gay nightclub that became the scene of the worst mass shooting in US history on Sunday, founded the club to honour her brother who died of AIDS and to support the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Barbara Poma, whose brother died in 1991, opened Pulse in 2004 with business partner Ron Legler. The venue promoted gay rights and put on events supporting happenings in the gay community, ranging from Come Out with Pride to Gay Games, according to the clubs website.

Pulses patrons and others in Orlandos gay community were reeling on Sunday after a gunman killed 50 people and wounded 53 others overnight in what police said was a targeted, well-planned attack.

The shooter, who held off police for three hours before a SWAT team killed him, was identified as Omar S. Mateen, a Florida resident who might have had leanings toward Islamic State militants, a senior FBI official said.

Pulse is one of the Florida citys five gay bars, a hub for Latin music, drag performances, diva nights, bar dancers, drinks served by muscular bartenders and wild fun.

This is a week Ill be going to funerals all week long. I dont even know who was there, but I know Ill know them, said Raymond Michael Sharpe, 55, a bartender at another gay bar, who has spoken to Pulse employees and patrons who survived the shooting.

He said Poma is alive, as was Pulse manager Cindy Barbalock, who got out and got home. Reuters was not able to reach Poma by phone on Sunday and Legler declined to speak when he was contacted.

Ray Rivera, a DJ at Pulse Orlando nightclub, is consoled by a friend, outside of the Orlando Police Department after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub. (AP Photo)

Hundreds of people sent prayers, thoughts and condolences on the clubs Facebook site.

Pulse bartender Juan Orrego said on his Facebook page: Im home. OK. I only got shot in the leg. Thank u everybody for your prayers.

The shooting happened at 2:00 a.m., toward the end of one of the clubs popular Latin nights, with bachata, merengue and salsa music. Many of the family members seeking their loved ones at local hospitals after the shooting were Hispanic.

One regular said he lost friends who were frequent patrons.

There were faces we had seen all the time, Luis Burbano told CNN, describing how he and his friends got out alive and tried to help the wounded. We heard about mutual friends who did not make it.

One of our longtime bartender friends was in a small little fitting room with 10 other people, hiding in there, waiting for a miracle, waiting for someone to come in and rescue them.

Read| Saturday night massacre at Orlando nightclub : Blaring music, flashing lights, pop, pop, pop
The suspected gunman in the shooting at a gay nightclub is believed to be a US citizen of Afghan descent, US television networks reported, even as his father said the attack was not motivated by religion.

CBS News identified the suspect as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, who was born to Afghan parents in 1986 and lives in Port St Lucie, Florida.

He called 911 just before the Orlando club shooting and swore allegiance to the Islamic State terror group, NBC News reported, quoting multiple unnamed law enforcement officials.

Omar Mateen, who killed 50 in #Orlando #nightclub. Police: possible radical Islamic leanings. No claim yet pic.twitter.com/DjX5U3woUE  Rita Katz (@Rita_Katz) June 12, 2016

Soon after, Islamic States Amaq news agency claimed the group was responsible for the shooting that killed at least 50 people at the Florida nightclub. But Senator Bill Nelson said the claim was not yet confirmed.

US officials said they had no immediate evidence of any direct connection between the worst mass shooting in US history and Islamic State or any other foreign extremist group, Reuters reported.

But, a top Democrat on a congressional intelligence committee said local law enforcement believed the suspect in the deadly Orlando shooting had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, which claims to be behind the Paris and Brussels attacks.

The fact that this shooting took place during Ramadan and that ISIS leadership in Raqqa has been urging attacks during this time, that the target was an LGBT night club during Pride, and - if accurate - that according to local law enforcement the shooter declared his allegiance to ISIS, indicates an ISIS-inspired act of terrorism, representative Adam Schiff said in a statement.

Florida governor Rick Scott too said the overnight shooting was clearly an act of terror.

For somebody to go in there and be an active shooter and take that number (of lives) ... is clearly an act of terror, the Republican told a news conference.

The father of the suspected gunman said he believed his son was motivated by hatred of gays -- not by his Muslim religion.

This had nothing to do with religion, Mir Seddique told NBC News.

He said his son recently lashed out in his presence after witnessing a gay couple embracing in downtown Miami, and suggested the incident may have triggered the atrocity.

He saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry, Seddique told the network.

Fox News reported that he was known to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but the reason was not immediately clear.

A Twitter account associated with Islamic State militant group posted a photo purported to be of Mateen.

The man who carried out the Florida nightclub attack which killed 50 people and injured dozens, the caption accompanying the photo read.

It was not possible to verify whether the picture was in fact of Mateen. Other Twitter accounts linked to Islamist militancy also carried photos of the same individual, and Islamic State supporters posted messages of praise for the attack.

Read| A look at some of US deadliest rampages since 2012: Timeline
A rogue drone disrupted air traffic at Dubai international airport for more than an hour on Saturday, said the operator of one of the worlds busiest aviation hubs.

DXB airspace was closed due to unauthorised UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) activity for 69 minutes resulting in a number of diversions, Dubai Airports said in a statement on its Twitter account, using its code.

Airspace reopened at 12:45 (0845 GMT) on Saturday, it added.

It was the second such incident in 18 months, according to media reports in the United Arab Emirates.

Twenty-two flights were diverted from the worlds busiest airport for international travel. Dubai Airports chief executive Paul Griffiths said thousands of passengers suffered disruption to their journeys.

Sixteen of the diverted flights went to Dubai World Central, Dubais other main airport, spokesperson said. Dubai, a trade, tourism and investment hub for the Gulf region, is one of seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates.

This is a very serious incident and we obviously take the safety of our customers and our staff extremely seriously, Griffiths told Dubais Dubaieye 103.8 radio.

As you can imagine, this is the busiest international airport in the world and there was major inconvenience to thousands of passengers ...

Michael Rudolph, head of aviation regulation and safety at the Dubai civil aviation authority (DCAA), had said the first drone incident on January 23 last year may have cost Dubai close to $69 million.

One million dollars per minute - thats what it cost the economy of Dubai, he had said when the airspace above the airport was shut for 55 minutes.

The flying of drones is prohibited within 5km of airports, helipads, landing areas or manned aircraft in the UAE.

Around the world the use of civil drones, whether for commercial purposes or just as a leisure activity, is rising. That popularity has led to increasing reports of near-misses with commercial aircraft, such as when a Lufthansa plane was approaching Warsaw airport last month.

Aviation concerns focus on smaller drones, operated like model planes and flown for recreation, because their users are often not familiar with the rules of the air.
A Texas high-school valedictorian has been thrust into the tense US immigration debate after declaring on social media she is an undocumented migrant.

Mayte Lara graduated from David Crocket high school in Austin this month, posting her picture on Twitter along with: Valedictorian, 4.5GPA, full tuition paid for at UT, 13 cords/medals, nice legs, oh and Im undocumented.

The 17-year-olds post was tweeted more than 9,000 times within hours but also sparked resentment and outright abuse in a political atmosphere in which Donald Trump has clinched the Republican presidential nomination by pledging to build a wall along the border with Mexico and accused undocumented migrants of being criminals and rapists.

Among the volley of replies were racist cartoons and accusations she had taken a short cut to success and enjoyed privileges unavailable to a white male in Texas, where local high school valedictorians such as Lara are granted two-semesters free tuition to the University of Texas regardless of their immigration status.

I want all this attention from strangers to stop already, the teenager tweeted soon after, adding its kinda scary and [I] want [it] to stop. She has since deleted her account.

Lara told the Austin American-Statesman the tweet had been intended to show others that you can accomplish anything, regardless of the obstacles you have in front of you, she said.

It was a common trend on Twitter to highlight your success through a tweet like that, and I saw many other students from across the country doing the same and sharing the things theyd overcome, so I thought Id share mine.

The mother of one her classmates wrote on Facebook that Lara appeared to be proud of taking advantage of the system and that the post had won her over to Trumps candidacy.

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, she reportedly wrote on Facebook. Something else that I have NEVER thought I would support until this moment is Trump and #buildthatwall.

Lara, who said she had lived in Austin for 15 years, has Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, status, which protects certain young people from deportation if they were brought into the country as children. It allows them to legally work and study in the US. The status is initially granted for two years and then can be renewed.

Another Texas valedictorian received a standing ovation from her classmates last week after revealing she too was undocumented during a graduation speech at Boyd High School in McKinney, in the states north.

Larissa Martinez entered the US from Mexico in 2010, achieving a 4.95 GPA and a scholarship to Yale University.

I am one of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the shadows of the United States, Martinez said, telling Mic she had fled Mexico with her mother and sister to escape her abusive father.

She told the graduating class that undocumented migrants to the US yearned to help make America great again, without the construction of a wall built on hatred and prejudice.

A valedictorian is usually the highest-performing student in a class who gives a farewell address at graduation.

More Mexican citizens have left the US than entered since 2005, thought to be a result of a deteriorating US job market and stricter enforcement at the border.
Dale Boomer Ranney can get in Donald Trumps face like almost no one else.

She has nudged her way to the front of 21 of his rallies, passing up book after book, photo after photo for him to autograph, finding success some 66 times. He smiles at her in recognition now.

When she made a trip to Trump Tower in New York to be near him for his home state primary in April, he spotted her and told his security guards to let her into his victory party there later that day. A photo snapped that morning shows Ranney and her candidate grinning and giving the thumbs up. Hes in his suit and red tie, shes in her sequined American flag vest and matching books.

Ranney is not only a Trump superfan, shes also a forceful advocate and volunteer on behalf of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Since February, she has guided an ad hoc team of 50 volunteers who have made some 75,000 telephone calls to voters to preach the gospel of Trump.

The eclectic, unpaid group  she calls them the Trump T-Birds, after her red Ford convertible  includes a cancer patient making calls from her bed and 13-year-old who parrots Trumpisms.

All candidates count on volunteers to make calls to voters, distribute literature and knock on doors. Few have inspired the kind of passionate dedication that the celebrity billionaire has. For a candidate just now beginning traditional fundraising and woefully behind in building a staff of paid field organizers, this volunteer network could be especially vital when he faces presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton this fall.

Republican candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters at a rally at Atlantic Aviation in Moon Township, Pennsylvania. (AFP)

Ranney, a 62-year-old thrice-married, beach-loving retired industrial engineer, is perhaps Trumps most committed volunteer.

I feel guilty anytime Im not on the phone calling for him, Ranney said. Im not getting paid, but its a personal responsibility I feel to get him in the White House.

She approaches her volunteer work much like Trump approaches his bid, speaking off the cuff with prospective voters rather than reading from scripts the campaign has uploaded to its computerized calling program. She uses social media to build a following and makes her own assignments rather than waiting for directions.

I really think all of us volunteers kind of copy Donald, Ranney said. Its natural, not rehearsed, kind of ad-libbed.

With the primary nomination locked up, Ranney is starting to organize voter registration drives, acting on her gut that Trump will inspire scores of people who have never voted to come out for him.

DIALLING FOR DONALD

She wants to keep dialling up voters, too.

On the eve of the Indiana primary May 3, Ranney settled in at her home for another round of calls.

Hi, Im calling from the Trump campaign, and wed like to know if you have a favorable opinion of Donald Trump, she said cheerily.

Um, no I do not, the Indiana woman on the receiving end said, curtly but politely.

Ok, well good luck, maam, and thank you very much, Ranney said, ending the call. That was a no, she said, noting the same in the call system.

One call later, Ranney found a more welcome reception: Oh, Im gonna vote for him.

Later in the batch of calls, Ranney got to make her full Trump pitch. Shed reached a voter leaning toward Trump, but concerned about what exactly Trumps stance was on Planned Parenthood, a womens health clinic this particular anti-abortion-rights voter didnt much care for.

Oh, hes pro-life, Ranney assured the woman. The only thing about the Planned Parenthood hes for is the fact that it helps women, you know, with their health issues. Other than that hes against it maam.

The voter also mentioned the blitz of advertising shed seen portraying Trump as sexist.

To this, Ranney said, You know, theres one thing I will say about Mr. Trump, and that is that he is an equal-opportunity criticizer. So if he doesnt like someone, it doesnt matter if youre a man or a woman. Hes going to tell you what he thinks.

The call ended with Ranney feeling confident shed found  maybe even helped convert  another Trump voter.

Attendees wait before Republican candidate for President Donald Trump speaks to supporters at a rally at Atlantic Aviation. (AFP)

THE T-BIRDS

Ranneys T-Birds are a mix of ladies she knows in Myrtle Beach and Trump fans shes met on social media and in the front of the lines at rallies.

I figure, if someone is dedicated enough to get in line at 3 a.m., theyre dedicated enough to probably want to make some calls for Mr. Trump, she said.

Theres Alice Ziriada, a Myrtle Beach friend, who has made more than 12,000 calls for Trump, often from her bed while laid up from chemotherapy to treat her cancer. She said shes loved making the calls, even if they dont always go so well. No matter how mean they get on the phone with me, cussing, whatever, I just let them finish, she said.

Theres Matt Lewandowski (no relation to Trump campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski) in Virginia Beach, Virginia, a 68-year-old whom Ranney recruited through Facebook. He has made about 9,000 calls, hitting 300 in one day. Now he, in turn, helps find other volunteers. Im just one guy, but I hope I am helping with this process, he said.

And dropping the median age of the group, theres Zach Dodson, a 13-year-old seventh-grader in Fort Mill, South Carolina. Ranney met Zach and his mother, Chula, at a Trump rally, and theyve become some of Trumps most avid photographers, sharing hundreds of rally shots on social media.

Chula Dodson said, somewhat apologetically, that she and her son had made only a few hundred phone calls apiece because she didnt want him too distracted from school. I cannot explain how much my son loves Mr. Trump.

Zach, grabbing the phone, chimed it, I like him because hes a businessman who has made a fortune. He can apply that to America.

Hes adept at channeling the candidate himself. For many decades now, said Zach, the establishment has failed us miserably and they know it.

The rallies have served as more than a meeting point between Ranney and her volunteers. Its also the way she gets the swag that she thinks helps keep them motivated. All of those books and photos Ranney has Trump sign? She gives them to volunteers who are hitting milestone numbers of phone calls, an enticement to keep at it.

Trump frequently praises his volunteers on social media. Without my amazing volunteers  this would not have been possible, he wrote on Instagram after winning the Indiana primary, essentially locking up the nomination.

Memorabilia is sold before Republican candidate for President Donald Trump speaks to supporters at a rally at Atlantic Aviation. (AFP)

REFORM PARTY ROOTS

Theres a reason Ranney seems like shes done this before (she has) and that she seems to know Trump (she does).

Back in the 1990s, when she was Dale Barlow and living in Oklahoma, Ranney fell in political love with another billionaire businessman-turned-politician: Ross Perot. She volunteered for his two presidential campaigns and became an elected leader of the Reform Party he founded.

She said her volunteerism then showed her how many people in the country are reflexively opposed to trade deals as bad for US workers. Thats a major theme of Trumps campaign now, and part of why Ranney is so convinced that he can win.

Late in the decade, the partys highest elected official, Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, tried to persuade Trump to run for president on the Reform ticket and pointed him toward Ranney for advice.

Ranney said she met with Trump at Trump Tower in December 1999, sharing with him her fears about factionalism within the party. Two months later, Trump wined and dined Ranney and other Reform officials at his Mar-A-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, although he soon after decided not to run.

Indeed, the Reform party spun into chaos after Ventura quit. Ranney also left the party  and politics altogether for 15 years.

But her dealings with Trump had made an impression, and she couldnt help but be delighted to see him descend his Trump Tower escalator last June and announce his bid as a Republican candidate for president.

I believe in him, she said. Ive always believed in him.
A gunman armed with an assault rifle killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida on Sunday in the worst mass shooting in US history.

Police killed the shooter at the Pulse nightclub, who was identified as Omar S Mateen, a 29-year-old Florida resident and US citizen.

Politicians were quick to offer their somber support for people in Orlando.

Below are some of the reactions:

US President Barack Obama

Although it is still early in the investigation, we know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate.

Donald Trump

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I dont want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Hillary Clinton

To the LGBT community: please know that you have millions of allies across our country. I am one of them.

Bernie Sanders

All Americans are horrified, disgusted and saddened by the horrific Orlando, Florida massacre.

PM Narendra Modi

Shocked at the shootout in Orlando, USA. My thoughts & prayers are with the bereaved families and the injured

Shocked at the shootout in Orlando, USA. My thoughts & prayers are with the bereaved families and the injured.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 12, 2016

Pope Francis

The attack has caused in Pope Francis, and in all of us,the deepest feelings of horror and condemnation... before this new manifestation of homicidal folly and senseless hatred, said a statement from the Holy See.

Francois Hollande, French President

French President Francois Hollande condemns with horror the mass killing in Florida and expresses the full support of France and the French with Americas authorities and its people in this difficult time. - Statement from Hollandes office.

Benjamin Netanyahu, PM of Israel

In the name of the government of Israel and the citizens of Israel I send our sincere condolences to the American people following the criminal attack on the LGBT community last night in Orlando. Israel stands shoulder to shoulder alongside the United States in this tragic hour.

Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan President

Severely condemn the heinous & unforgivable crime in Orlando. It was a coward act of terror. Praying for all those affected by this tragedy.

Read| A look at some of US deadliest rampages since 2012: Timeline

Read| Orlando shooter Omar Mateen was homophobe, wife beater: Reports

Read: As IS links emerge, father says Orlando suspect not motivated by religion
A woman researcher at the University of Pittsburgh accidentally infected herself with the dangerous Zika virus while working on an experiment in a lab.

The woman stabbed herself with a needle on May 23 while conducting an experiment with the virus. Nine days later, she began experiencing symptoms consistent with the virus, including a fever.

The symptoms later subsided and she returned to work last Monday. Two days later, the university received confirmation a test was positive for the mosquito-borne illness, CNN reported.

On advice of the ACHD (Allegheny County Health Department), the researcher is complying with a request to wear long sleeves and pants and wear insect repellent for three weeks from the date of contact, a university statement said.

Pennsylvanias Allegheny County Health Department confirmed the woman no longer has symptoms and said she is doing well.

In the statement, it called the case unique because the researcher had not travelled to an area where the virus is circulating and she was not infected through sexual transmission.

Nearly all of the infected individuals in the United States were infected while travelling to destinations where the virus is circulating. There are 11 confirmed cases of the virus among individuals who had not travelled to those places but whose sexual partners had.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said health care workers who handle the virus are encouraged to take precautions to prevent needle sticks or other exposures.

We want to remind residents that, despite this rare incident, there is still no current risk of contracting Zika from mosquitoes in Allegheny County, Dr Karen Hacker, the health departments director, said in a statement. It was the fourth case of the virus in the Pennsylvania county.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden was quoted as saying that emergency response teams are ready to be deployed when local transmission of the virus has been confirmed in the continental United States or Hawaii.

Zika virus disease is caused by the Zika virus, which is spread to people primarily through the bite of an infected Aedes species mosquito.

The most common symptoms of Zika are fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis (red eyes). The illness is usually mild, with symptoms lasting for several days to a week after being bitten by an infected mosquito.

However, Zika virus infection during pregnancy can cause a serious birth defect called microcephaly, as well as other severe fetal brain defects.
Esther Frogg knew well the 20-year-old man standing at her front door on November 1, 1861, asking to see her husband, William. The visitors name was Champ Ferguson, and he was, like the Froggs, a native of Clinton County, Kentucky. Unlike the Froggs, however, Ferguson supported the Confederacy.

How do you do, she said and offered him a seat.

I dont have time, he replied.

Have some apples, she said, gesturing toward the fruit she had just been peeling.

I have been eating apples, he said.

Ferguson did not want to sit. He did not want to eat. He did not want to talk. He wanted only to see William Frogg.

Esther told Ferguson her husband was sick and could not take visitors. But Ferguson was not to be deterred. He walked inside the house, leaving the two men who had come with him outside.

Ferguson approached Froggs bed, perhaps noticing the crib nearby where the couples five-month-old baby lay. Frogg told his visitor he had the measles. Indeed, he was on sick leave from his regiment, the 12th Kentucky Infantry (Union), though he no doubt withheld that bit of information from Ferguson.

I reckon you caught the measles at Camp Dick Robinson, Ferguson said. Camp Robinson was a sore point for Kentuckians who sided with the Confederacy. They believed that men recruited there into the Home Guard went on to fight for the Union.

Ferguson was through talking. He shot Frogg dead where he lay.

Frogg was not the first or last person to die at Fergusons hands during the war. There were dozens of others. Some of the killings were legitimate acts of combat, but others were nothing more than cold-blooded murder. Many of the victims were Union supporters whom Ferguson sought out more for personal reasons than political ones. In Froggs case, Ferguson said he had heard rumors that the pro-Union man was planning to kill him. Ferguson decided on a preemptive strike. I told the boys that I would settle the matter by going direct to Froggs house and killing him, he later said.

Before the Civil War, Ferguson was known throughout the upper Cumberland Mountains on both sides of the Kentucky-Tennessee border as a gambling, rowdyish, drinking, fighting, quarrelsome man. He ranged throughout the region as a hunter and a horse trader, becoming familiar with the whole region.

When the war began, Ferguson immediately sided with the Confederacy. The oldest of 10 children, born on November 29, 1821, he was now starkly at odds with his 9 brothers and sisters and his mother, all of whom supported the Union. The tension only grew when in late 1861 or early 1862, Ferguson moved his family to Sparta, Tennessee, and joined a pro-Southern guerrilla band headed by a local man named Scott Bledsoe. Soon Ferguson was captain of his own band.

Many legends that attempt to explain Fergusons ruthless animosity toward his enemies persevere through the efforts of his many admirers in Sparta and White County, Tennessee. In one account, Ferguson hated Yankees and their supporters because Union soldiers had shot his young son dead while the boy played innocently on the front porch, waving a Confederate flag. In reality, Fergusons only son died several years before the war began. An even more widely accepted explanation is that 11 Union men had come to his home while Ferguson was out and dishonored his wife and young daughter. The men forced the woman and girl to disrobe and march down the street, the story continued. Even Ferguson called this tale absurd.

Ferguson himself provided the most feasible explanation for why he entered the war, though it is less romantic than the others. Shortly before the war, he had been arrested for stabbing a constable in a brawl at a camp meeting in Fentress County, Tennessee. When the War broke out, he later said, I was induced to join the army on the promise that all prosecution in that case would be abandoned. This is how I came to take up arms.

Ferguson claimed that all his killings were in self-defense, while admitting that some, like the Frogg shooting, were preemptive attacks. One of them occurred about a month after Froggs death. Ferguson and his men went to the home of Reuben Wood, who also lived in Clinton County. Wood met the guerrillas in the road in front of his house. Dont you beg, Ferguson told the older man, and dont you dodge. Woods children later testified that their father reminded Ferguson of their past friendship and the fact that he had cared for Ferguson when he was a child. You have always treated me like a gentleman, Ferguson said, but you have been to Camp Robinson, and I intend to kill you. Reuben Wood did not die easily. Even fatally wounded he managed to knock Fergusons gun away with a hatchet and escape. Wood died two days later.

Reuben Wood and I were always good friends before the War, Ferguson said, but after that he was connected with the same company in which my brother, Jim, was operating. I knew that he intended killing me if he ever got a chance. They both hunted me down, and drove me fairly to desperation.

On the day that he was killed, we met him in the road and he commenced on me, and I believe he intended to shoot me. The touching story about his piteous appeals to me  that he had nursed me when a babe, and tossed me on his knee  are false, and were gotten up expressly to create sympathy, and set me forth as a heartless wretch. If I had not shot Reuben Wood, I would not likely have been here, for he would have shot me. I never expressed a regret for committing the act, and never will. He was in open war against me.

In 1862, Ferguson began his long-running war with a man named David Beaty, who would become his greatest enemy. The Nashville Dispatch noted that Beaty fought Champ Ferguson from the beginning to the end of his career. They have shot at each other innumerable times, and each has received ugly wounds. They were deadly enemies, and hunted each other down with savage ferocity.

Known to his neighbors in Fentress County, Tennessee, as Tinker Dave, Beaty (also spelled Beatty) was as ruthless and vicious in his defense of the Union as Ferguson was of the Confederacy. Local legend tells of the time he shot a man and then directed his horse to step on the unfortunate victims face.

Beaty became a guerrilla in early 1862. About February 1, Bledsoes men warned Beaty to take sides or leave the country. At this point in the war, Bledsoe and Ferguson were, according to Beaty, conscripting, killing, and shooting at Union men in general, including myself. Beaty responded to the threat by choosing the other side and raising his own band of guerrillas. His men lived in the woods like Fergusons and practiced the same tactics. These enemies skirmished often.

Given the opportunity, Ferguson and Beaty would no doubt have eagerly cut each others throat, but they did share a mutual respect. Perhaps they sensed they were kindred spirits who had more in common with each other than with polite society or the military establishment.

By the spring of 1862, relatively few major military engagements had taken place in Tennessee, but the Cumberland Mountains were filled with violence. Roaming bands of outlaws took advantage of the war to steal whatever they wanted with no regard for their victims politics. It was not uncommon for these outlaws simply to declare a man an enemy sympathizer and then take his possessions or even kill him. Families, friends, and neighbors were so passionately divided that even idle rumors questioning a mans alignment could soon lead to his death. Many prudent people avoided their own homes.

In the middle of all this chaos stood Champ Ferguson. Many of the Union men he took prisoner  some in the army, some not  were found shot and often stabbed through the heart. Ferguson favored the Bowie knife and often finished his victims off with one. There were rumors of decapitations.

On April 1, 1862, Ferguson encountered 16-year-old Fount Zachery in Fentress County. Zachery was carrying a shotgun. He surrendered the weapon, but Ferguson shot him anyway. Almost as soon as Zachery hit the ground, Ferguson was on him with his Bowie knife, and Fount Zachery became the first of four Zachery males to fall to Ferguson. Ferguson justified his actions by claiming he had official orders to kill any armed man in the area.

Over the next few weeks, Fergusons men killed their leaders cousin Alexander Huff in Fentress County; Union guerrilla Elijah Kogier in Clinton County, whom they shot down as his young daughter clung to him; and Fount Zacherys grandfather James. James Zacherys daughter Esther would testify that she saw Ferguson chasing her father through the family orchard, yelling to his men, Shoot him, damn him, shoot him!

Toward the end of April, Colonel John Hunt Morgans Kentucky cavalry passed through Sparta, Tennessee, and Ferguson and some of his men joined the force to serve as scouts. Morgans men crowded around Ferguson, eager to get a glimpse of the notorious outlaw whose exploits were already becoming legend in the region. Ferguson and several of his guerrillas rode with Morgan on some raids, fighting at Tomkinsville, Lebanon, and Cynthiana, Kentucky, and on June 21 at Gallatin, Tennessee.

Ferguson became well acquainted with Morgans second in command and brother-in-law, Major Basil W. Duke. Duke warned his infamous scout that there would be no abusing of prisoners. Ferguson was indignant. He assured Duke he would never harm regularly commissioned officers captured in combat, because he had nothing personally against them except that they are wrong, and oughtnt to come down here and fight our people. He admitted, though, that if he came across any hounds he had just reasons to kill, he would not hesitate to kill them.

By the fall of 1862, Ferguson had focused himself almost exclusively on personal vendettas. In October, he killed a man named Wash Tabor, whom he suspected of ambushing and killing three of his men. Ferguson did not harm others captured along with Tabor. He explained to prisoner George Thrasher, Im not in favor of killing you, Thrasher, you have never been bushwhacking or stealing horses. I have killed old Wash Tabor, a damned good Christian, and I dont reckon he minds dying. On a later occasion, the mother of one of Fergusons prisoners, John Crabtree, begged for her sons life, but the guerrilla leader told her that her concern was too late in coming. The time to worry was years ago, he suggested, when she still had the chance to raise her son right.

Several of Fergusons victims belonged to the 7th Tennessee Infantry (Union). So it is not surprising that the commander of that regiment, Colonel William Clift, was eager to attack the independent Rebel bands trolling the Tennessee-Kentucky border. I deem it highly indispensable to break up these guerrilla companies as speedily as possible, as there can be no safety to the peace of the country while they are permitted to exist, he said.

On December 15, Union XIV Corps commander Major General William Rosecrans issued an order allowing Major General George H. Thomas, commander of the center of the XIV Corps, to send Colonel Frank Wolfords 1st Kentucky Cavalry after Ferguson and another Tennessee guerrilla, Oliver Hamilton of Overton County. Colonel Wolford has permission to pursue and capture Hamilton and Ferguson, Rosecrans wrote, but let him be careful not to get caught himself. Nothing came of Wolfords ambitions to snare the guerrilla chief.

On New Years Night 1863, Ferguson set out to rid himself of some of his most troublesome enemies in Kentucky. The first to fall was Union guerrilla Elam Huddleston. After an hour-long gunfight between Confederate guerrillas and the Huddleston brothers Elam and Moses, aided by their cousin David Huddleston, Ferguson killed his intended victim at his house. Next to die were the Zachery brothers Peter and Allen, sons of James Zachery. Ferguson killed Peter with his knife after a fierce hand-to-hand struggle.

Fergusons private feuds were suspended for a while after the Huddleston fight, because he was too busy tangling with the regular Federal army. Over the next two years, his guerrilla band, which now numbered in the dozens and sometimes in the hundreds, would harry Union forces and sometimes augment Confederate cavalry regiments.

By the second half of the war, the Federals were clamping down on guerrilla strongholds, especially Sparta, Tennessee. Colonel Thomas J. Harrisons 8th Indiana Cavalry and Colonel William B. Stokess 5th Tennessee Cavalry scoured the area, skirmishing with partisans and raiding Fergusons farm twice. Ferguson was not home either time, having left to join forces with George Carter of Spencer, Tennessee, to raid Fentress County. The raid resulted in the death of Beatys son Dallas, among others.

On February 18, 1864, Stokes took possession of Sparta. The Union soldiers and the local Confederate partisans clashed often from then on. Ferguson fought at Calfkiller in White County on February 22 and was wounded in another engagement on March 11. No details are available about his wound. Soldiers of the 5th Tennessee Cavalry killed Scott Bledsoe, Fergusons old comrade, that March.

The Confederate guerrillas continued to destroy property and steal Federal stock. Major Thomas H. Reeves of the 4th Tennessee Infantry (Union), angry that the citizens of Sparta continued to secretly aid the Rebel guerrillas, took his command into town on July 15. He declared martial law and had every man he found arrested. The anguished denizens expected their town to be destroyed, but the 4th left the next day with only nine prisoners. According to Reeves, his men could boast of unparalleled plunder.

Within weeks, Union guerrillas had burned Fergusons home to the ground. Ferguson and his comrades headed south and joined themselves to Major General Joseph Wheelers cavalry. They were then detached from Wheelers command and ordered to report to Major General John C. Breckinridge in southwest Virginia.

It was in Emory, Virginia, that Ferguson committed his most infamous murder. Ferguson and his men were with a small Confederate force at Saltville, Virginia, on October 2, 1864, when a Federal cavalry attacked. The Confederates put up a spirited resistance, and after a sharp fight, the Federals withdrew. The next morning at Emory, Ferguson and his lieutenant Rains Philpot entered the Confederate hospital where Federal wounded and prisoners had been taken. Some of those same soldiers later testified they had seen Ferguson coldly killing prisoners on the battlefield, especially black men and white men in their vicinity.

At the hospital, Ferguson shot Lieutenant Elza C. Smith of the 13th Kentucky Cavalry while he lay a helpless prisoner. Ferguson may have suspected that Smith had killed his comrade Oliver P. Hamilton while Hamilton was trying to surrender. I have a begrudge against Smith, Ferguson was heard saying as he searched for Smiths bed. Well find him. The killing of wounded men and prisoners that Ferguson and his men did that day would go down in history as the Saltville Massacre.

The four-year quasi-military career of Champ Ferguson came to an end on May 26, 1865, when he was taken into Federal custody in Sparta. Ferguson claimed he had surrendered, while Colonel Joseph Blackburn of the 5th Tennessee Mounted Infantry claimed to have captured him.

Ferguson thought he would be paroled, as were other guerrillas who surrendered. What he did not realize was that the Federal government had singled him out, specifying that any attempt by him to surrender should be refused. He was taken to prison in Nashville and soon became the focus of a sensational military trial. He was charged with being a guerrilla and a murderer.

A long line of witnesses appeared against him. One was his archnemesis, Beaty. Afterward, a reporter asked Ferguson what he thought of Beaty. Well, there are meaner men than Tinker Dave, Ferguson responded. He fought me bravely and gave me some heavy licks, but I always gave him as good as he sent. I have nothing against Tinker Dave. We both tried to get each other during the War, but we always proved too cunning for each other. He noted that he was a skilled shooter who always hit his mark, except when the mark was Beaty.

When the time came for Fergusons defense, he could muster only a handful of character witnesses. One was Joseph Wheeler, but support from even this well-respected general was not enough to sway the court. On October 10, Ferguson was found guilty and sentenced to hang.

I was a Southern man at the start, Ferguson said in his final statement. I am yet, and will die a Rebel. I believe I was right in all I did. He reiterated that he had killed only those who had intended to kill him and that he had treated prisoners the way his own men had been treated by the enemy. I repeat that I die a Rebel out and out, and my last request is that my body be removed to White County, Tennessee, and be buried in good Rebel soil.

Ferguson was hanged on October 20, his wife and tearful 16-year-old daughter watching as his lifeless body dangled at the end of the rope.

Fergusons bloody war record reveals him to be a murderer who deserved his fate. Still, many of his contemporaries were no better than he, including some men on the pro-Union side, yet they escaped similar retribution. Beaty admitted he had taken up arms for the Union government without pay, which by definition made him a guerrilla. He could have suffered the same fate as Ferguson. Clearly, a double standard was being applied. Indeed, when pro-Union newspapers in Nashville covered the Ferguson trial, they referred to the defendant as the monstrous criminal and Beaty as the celebrated Union scout.

After Tennessee was readmitted to the Union, Beaty became a respected citizen of the state. He even served as a member of the county court when he returned to Jamestown.

The irony of the similarities between Beaty and Ferguson could not have escaped Fergusons defenders. The same deeds that made a man a criminal could make him a hero if his side won.

This article was written by Troy D. Smith and originally published in the December 2001 issue of Civil War Times Magazine.

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From Fort To Park

About 20 years ago I was beginning work on a book on the Battle of Franklin and a biography of John M. Schofield. In 1975, I spent about three days in Franklin, Tennessee, making a thorough inspection of the battlefield and the surrounding country. I knew exactly where Fort Granger should be, so I drove north of town over the Harpeth River and turned east on a little dirt road to the highest point overlooking the town. I walked into the woods, and after about 300 feet I suddenly came to the remains of Fort Granger. The guns, of course, were gone, but the emplacements were clearly visible, although large trees had grown up in the middle of the fort. I came back about five years later. A number of paths wandered in through the woods to the fort, and the little gravel road had been named Fort Granger Drive. I was interested to hear from your article A Setting for Disaster (Travel, February 1998) that the fort had become a city park.

Ramsay M.B. Fischer

Mantoloking, New Jersey

He Stayed Sober

In an otherwise excellent article, A Setting for Disaster, Milton Bagby erred in furthering the rumor that General B.F. Cheatham failed to stop Schofield at Spring Hill due to drunkenness and carousing. Although the rumor was widespread at the time, there are ample records to disprove it. Major Joseph Vaulx, inspector general of Cheathams division, wrote his eyewitness account of the Battle of Franklin to Dr. Henry M. Field, who used it in his book, Bright Skies and Dark Shadows (1890). I was with General Cheatham when he was giving his orders to General Brown, Vaulx reported. The charge that he was intoxicated is false. I never saw him more self-possessed than on that afternoon. He gave his orders in a very plain and explicit manner. His words expressed just what he wanted, and in such a manner that no doubtful construction could be given. Major James Davis Porter, assistant adjutant general of Cheathams division, offered this further account: I was with Cheatham during the entire day from Columbia to Spring Hill, and he was not only not intoxicated, but I am positive that he did not taste or see a drop of liquor of any kind. Porter would serve as governor of Tennessee from 1875 to 1879.

Charles M. Dugger

Miami, Florida

Stonewall Of The West

I found your articles (February 1998) on the Stonewall of the West, Patrick Cleburne, quite interesting. The love that Cleburnes men had for him was evident. I now understand why the story has persisted that at Franklin, Cleburne gave up his shoes to a soldier who had none and, as a result, died in his stocking feet. The truth is not as important as the fact that the story is told.

Jennifer R. Goellnitz

Fairview Park, Ohio

There were many mistakes of arrogance in this war, and certainly the racist mindset that refused to consider Cleburnes proposal to accept black soldiers into the Confederate army (Cleburne and the Unthinkable) was one of the most glaring examples. But this error was compounded by the prejudice of fellow officers against Cleburne because he made the proposition to General Johnston. Cleburne simply had a better grasp of reality than did any of the others.

Harry H. Ellis

Crossville, Tennessee

I wanted to praise your eloquent article Cleburnes Final Charge (My War) by John McQuaid and L.H. Mangum. Leonard Henderson Mangum was born in Hillsborough, North Carolina, near Chapel Hill, the son of Priestely Henton Mangum, brother of U.S. Senator Willie Person Mangum, who helped to draw up the Compromise of 1850. One of three boys, L.H. Mangum graduated from Princeton University in 1857, settled in Helena, Arkansas, and became a law partner with General Cleburnes firm, which later became the firm of Cleburne, Scaife, and Mangum. At the Battle of Franklin, Lieutenant Mangum served as Cleburnes aide-de-camp.

William Preston Mangum II

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

I take fault with the manner in which author Wiley Sword presented his feature The Other Stonewall. Swords attempt to second-guess moves by President Davis and Generals Lee, Jackson, Johnston, Hood, and Hardee, all of whom in some way contributed to the Souths failed cause, is moot now. Sword deserves credit for trying to enlighten the unenlightened about the merits of General Pat Cleburne. To cast a bad light on others to achieve this consideration for Cleburne is not the way to elevate his subject. Swords piece about Cleburne is the poorest and most questionable writing Ive read in ages.

Ralph B. Cushman

Houston, Texas

Errata

February: The Other StonewallAt the Battle of Shiloh, William J. Hardee, not Braxton Bragg, commanded Cleburnes corps in the newly redesignated Army of the Mississippi. In addition, the fight at the Hornets Nest was on the first day of the battle, not the second. Cleburnes Final ChargeMilledgeville, not Atlanta, was the capital of Georgia during the Civil War.



 1998, Cowles History Group, Inc., a division of Cowles Enthusiast Media. Allrights reserved.

Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express

written permission of Cowles Enthusiast Media is prohibited.
WHEN I WALKED into Adolph Hitlers salon in the Kaiserhof hotel, I was convinced that I was meeting the future dictator of Germany, Dorothy Thompson wrote in 1931. In something like fifty seconds I was quite sure that I was not. It took just about that time to measure the startling insignificance of this man who has set the world agog.

When she met Hitlerand wrote that spectacularly wrongheaded assessmentThompson was one of Americas most respected foreign correspondents. Shed covered European politics for a decade, becoming Berlin bureau chief of the New York Post and the Philadelphia Ledger in 1925, the first American woman to run a foreign news bureau. She was also married to novelist Sinclair Lewis, who had won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1930.

Thompson was a savvy reporter with a keen eye and a crisp style, and shed been angling for an interview with Hitler since 1923, when he was arrested trying to seize power in the failed Beer Hall Putsch. For years, Hitler had shown little interest in talking to foreign reporters. But in late 1931, when he was widely seen as Germanys next leader, he finally agreed to meet with Thompson.

The American journalist did her homework, interviewing German politicians and Nazi supporters, watching Hitlers speeches and reading Mein Kampf, the screed hed written in prison. She recognized that he was a magnificent propagandist and an orator with the tongue of the late [William Jennings] Bryan. She understood his political beliefs and described them, accurately, as a mixture of fascism, racialist philosophy that teaches that Aryans and especially Nordics are created to rule the earth, anti-semitism and muddled socialism. Thompson was well prepared for the interview, but she wasnt prepared for the man she met, who seemed sopathetic.

He is formless, almost faceless, a man whose countenance is a caricature, a man whose framework seems cartilaginous, without bones, she wrote. He is inconsequent and voluble, ill-poised, insecure. He is the very prototype of the Little Man. A lock of lank hair falls over an insignificant and slightly retreating forehead. . . .The nose is large, but badly shaped and without character. His movements are awkward, almost undignified and most un-martial. . . .The eyes alone are notable. Dark gray and hyperthyroidthey have the peculiar shine which often distinguishes geniuses, alcoholics, and hysterics.

To that unflattering description, she added: There is something irritatingly refined about him. I bet he crooks his little finger when he drinks a cup of tea.

Thompson looked at Hitler and saw a nonentity, a mere rabble-rouser incapable of leading a great nation. He didnt carry himself like a powerful politician, and he certainly didnt seem capable of becoming what many people feareda future dictator of Germany. He didnt even possess the political skill necessary to charm an interviewer.

The interview was difficult, because one cannot carry on a conversation with Adolph Hitler, she wrote. He speaks always as though he were addressing a mass meeting. In personal intercourse he is shy, almost embarrassed. In every question, he seeks for a theme that will set him off. Then his eyes focus in some far corner of the room; a hysterical note creeps into his voice, which rises sometimes almost to a scream. He gives the impression of a man in a trance. He bangs the table.

His answers were so long-winded that she managed to ask only three questions. But one of them elicited a candid and frightening reply.

When you come to power, she asked, will you abolish the constitution of the German Republic?

I will get into power legally, he said. I will abolish this parliament and the Weimar constitution afterward. I will found an authority-state, from the lowest cell to the highest instance; everywhere there will be responsibility and authority above, discipline and obedience below.

He was admitting that he planned to create a dictatorship, and she believed he was telling the truth. But she couldnt believe that this Little Man could actually succeed in that grandiose goal. Imagine a would-be dictator setting out to persuade a sovereign people to vote away their rights. That idea seemed preposterous to her.

She handicapped his chances in the upcoming election: The possibility that Hitlers party would win a majority of seats in the Reichstag was, she said, unlikely. But if no party received a majority, it was quite possible that the Nazis could win enough seats to bring Hitler to power in a coalition with centrist parties. But it is highly improbable that in this case he will succeed in putting through any of his more radical plans.

As she interviewed Hitler, she pictured him trying to outmaneuver the skilled politicians who would be part of his ruling coalition. Oh, Adolph! Adolph! she thought. You will be out of luck!

Hitler is a mere drummer boy, she wrote, and Hitler in a coalition with the Center will be working with statesmen who are not drummer boys but experienced realists. And it is a great deal easier to organize revolts than it is to rule. I predict that Hitler will be extinguished.

Thompsons articleI Saw Hitler!appeared in the March 1932 issue of Cosmopolitan, which was then a serious magazine, not a purveyor of sex tips for young women. The article was quickly reprinted in a short book with the same title. Readers of either version came away thinking that the much-hyped demagogue was too peculiar to be a threat to Germany, much less to the United States.

Obviously, Thompson had badly underestimated Hitler. With-in a year of her articles publication, hed taken power and begun to crush his opponents, persecute Jews and build a war machine. Recognizing that shed made an egregious error, Thompson wrote article after article exposing Hitlers brutality. It must be said, it must be re-iterated, she wrote, that there has been and still is a widespread terror, which extends throughout the whole of Germany.

One day in the summer of 1934, Thompson was in her room in Berlins Adlon Hotel, when she received a call from the front desk: Madam, there is a gentleman here from the state secret police.

Send him up, Thompson said.

The policeman handed her an order commanding her to leave Germany within 48 hours. It was Hitlers first expulsion of a foreign reporter and it made front-page news around the world.

Nearly the entire corps of American and British correspondents went to the railroad station to see her off, the New York Times reported. They gave her a bunch of American Beauty roses as a token of their affection and esteem.

Thompson framed Hitlers expulsion order and displayed it proudly in her office. The expulsion made her a media superstar. The New York Herald Tribune hired her to write a thrice-weekly column that was syndicated to more than 100 newspapers. She also wrote a monthly column for Ladies Home Journal and appeared regularly on NBC radio. In every medium, she denounced the Nazis, demanded that America open its borders to German refugees and supported the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. In 1939 Time magazine published a cover story on Thompson, proclaiming that the journalist and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt are undoubtedly the most influential women in the U.S.

Originally published in the October 2015 issue of American History magazine.
Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars: Memoirs of a Victim Turned Soldier, by Nguyen Cong Luan, Indiana University Press, 2012

Make no mistake about it: This is a hard read. The authors first language is not English; his syntax is at times strained, he often misuses words and makes grammatical mistakes. Yet this is a must read for anyone with the slightest interest in the Vietnam wars that began with the Viet Minh insurrection against the French and lasted until the collapse of the Republic of Vietnam under the ferocious assault of North Vietnam.

The study of the Vietnam wars is too often a cottage industry of Americans, many of whom seem to believe the war only began with increasing U.S. involvement in the early 1960s. Admittedly, interesting work from the North Vietnamese perspective, largely in literary form, has begun to emerge, but the perspective of those who fought for the Republic of Vietnam has largely gone unreported. That is why this is an important book.

Colonel Nguyen Cong Luan was born in 1937 in a town north of Hanoi. His family, strong nationalists but opposed to the Communists, were subject to the brutal French attempts to crush the Viet Minh and the ruthlessness of Ho Chi Minhs guerrillas. Nguyens account of growing up in a remorseless civil war caught between these two fierce opponents is by itself worth reading. Nguyen notes: Our submission to the French military authority did not protect us from being looted, raped, tortured, or killed by the French soldiers. The Viet Minh terror was equally savage, especially against those who were anti-French but unwilling to join the Communists.

After Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Nguyen and most of his family fled south and Nguyen decided on a military career, even though his fathers death in a Viet Minh concentration camp exempted him from conscription. He joined the army as a cadet at the military academy in October 1955, and from then on Nguyen had a birds-eye view of the war.

Graduating from the academy in December 1956, Nguyen attended the officers basic infantry course at Fort Benning, Ga., and upon his return to Vietnam in 1959 he went to the 22nd Infantry Division in the Central Highlands. From then on, he was increasingly engaged at lower staff levels in fighting the Communists. In 1959 Ho Chi Minh resumed the guerrilla war to destabilize a Diem regime that seemed to be gaining control.

Cooperation with the Americans, writes Nguyen, was most successful between 1959 and 1964a reflection of the quality of the officers sent to train and advise the Vietnamese. Matters degenerated, however, as the North Vietnamese increased their support to the VC. The American-engineered overthrow of Diem was a military and political disaster resulting in a slide toward defeat as the generals coming after Diem proved incompetent as well as corrupt.

Only massive U.S. intervention in 1965 prevented the North Vietnamese from finishing the job. Significantly, Nguyen focuses little on that aspect of the war. He does, however, suggest that the American effort of search and destroy represented a serious miscalculation because it took the focus away from the war in the countryside and delayed the buildup of South Vietnamese ground forces until late 1967. The result was that the South Vietnamese lost nearly three crucial years to get their military ready to stand on its own. Nevertheless, the Tet attacks of January 1968 proved that even with inadequate arms and training, the South Vietnamese were willing to fight and could do so with effectiveness.

After working in the General Political Warfare Department, largely focused on the propaganda war, in 1967 Nguyen took over the Reception Directorate of the Chieu Hoi Ministry, the program to undermine the Communists by entreating their soldiers to desert. There, he was in an ideal position to learn of the difficulties the enemy was having. Particularly impressive is Nguyens account of the willingness of those who changed sides to fight against their former comrades. The authors discussion about them is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book.

The books last two sections are the most depressing. They deal with the U.S. withdrawal and the eventual collapse of South Vietnam, and then the fates of those who had supported the republic. Nguyen himself was attending the advanced infantry officers course at Fort Benning in 1974 and returned home when the collapse began in January 1975. He would be repaid for his deep loyalty to the old regime by a lengthy stay in the new regimes re-education camps.

In the wake of South Vietnams defeat, those who had been most idealistic in its defense faced the harshest consequences. Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars is a dark and fascinating tale. But it is illuminated by Nguyens story of escape from Communist tyranny to the United States in 1990, and by his honesty and integrity, which shine through on every page.

Reviewed by Williamson Murray
The Mob and the City: The Hidden History of How the Mafia Captured New York, by C. Alexander Hortis (Prometheus)

From about 1890 to 1920, European immigrants surged into New York CityIrish, Germans, Italians and Jews from various countries. Life was tough, what with everybody hustling to make a dime, and as C. Alexander Hortis explains in his insightful if discursive book, The Mob and the City, some of the early immigrants figured out how to take advantage of those who came later. Irish and Italian thugs starting working the docks; Jewish organized crime was implicated in insurance scams and was far stronger throughout the city. All were involved in narcotics trafficking and racketeering, better known as extortion. Local toughs bullied everybody from fruit vendors to shippers and garment makers into paying fees for protection or to have to have their goods loaded onto trucks. It was called the mob tax.

Over time Jews migrated into legitimate businesses, and many Irish immigrants wrangled city government jobs via political patronage. That left the Italians, and more specifically Sicilian immigrants, to run the syndicates. Thus arose the New York City Mafia, or the Cosa Nostra (meaning our thing), the strongest criminal organization in the first half of the 20th century. While Mafia godfathers have been romanticized by film and television, Hortis claims that the mob was forged by the street soldiers (button men) as they adapted to the unique conditions of twentieth-century Gotham. They captured New York City by becoming part of it. And the citys decentralized and corrupt police force did little to stop them.

South Italians, Hortis writes, favored living among fellow paesani. They settled in the same New York neighborhoods, and most married within their own ethnic group. At the Mafias height, it comprised less than one-half of 1 percent of New Yorks Italian population. Nevertheless, these enclavesindirectly facilitated the five families that each staked out its own territory in the city.

According to Hortis, the Mafia might have been little more than a struggling band of rogues if not for Prohibition. Hustling illegal booze funneled millions of dollars to the crime bosses, who then shouldered their way into larger and more conventional industries, including construction and waste collection, typically by infiltrating labor unions. Once inside the unions, the mobsters found it easy to bribe politicians. By 1930, which Hortis asserts was the mobs peak decade, the Mafia was skimming money, one way or another, from nearly all of New Yorks nearly 7 million residents.

The Mob and the City shreds a few gauzy myths, including the notion that no one could become a made man until he first murdered someone for the Mafia. And while mobsters often talked of being men of honora loyal fraternity of goodfellowstheir principal motives were greed and power. Naturally, as the families business interests grew, there were territorial disputes, which often led to violence. Hortis makes able use of charts to show the scope of various activities controlled by the Mafia, but the books content is poorly organized. Still, it is good to have an unadorned history of how a small number of Italian wiseguys made a formidable imprint on New Yorks economic and social fabric. Clarke Jones

Reviews: We Also Like

The Longest Day, by Cornelius Ryan (Barrons Educational Series).

This collectors edition of Ryans 1959 classic marks the 70th anniversary of D-Day, the epic Allied invasion of German-occupied France in 1944. It includes the original portrayal of the invasions first day as well as more than 100 photographs, plus 30 facsimile research documents from the author. In addition, there is an audio CD of Ryans interviews with key D-Day participants.

D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, by Stephen E. Ambrose (Simon & Schuster).

A newly illustrated edition of the 1994 book draws on the collections of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans for hundreds of interviews with American, British, Canadian, French and German veterans to re-create the pivotal first 24 hours of the invasion from different perspectives.
President-elect Abraham Lincoln remained strangely silent as threats of secession became a reality during the long winter before his inauguration.

ON THE EVE OF HIS VICTORY in the 1860 presidential election, Abraham Lincoln surprised a well-wisher by declaring, For personal considerations, I would rather have a full term in the Senatea place in which I would feel more consciously able to discharge the duties required and where there was more chance to make a reputation and less danger of losing itthan four years of the presidency.

Lincolns expression of 11th-hour doubt was not merely the disclaimer of a self-deprecating politician. The nearer he got to fulfilling his ambition of becoming president, the more he realized how daunting the job would be. He did his best to maintain a cheerful front as he monitored the final election returns at the Springfield, Ill., telegraph office on November 6. But his private secretary John Nicolay watched the appalling shadow of his mighty task and responsibility pass over him as he donned his overcoat around 1:30 a.m. and headed home in a melancholy mood. It seemed as if he suddenly bore the whole world upon his shoulders, and could not shake it off.

Lincoln faced the unnerving prospect that by the time he took his oath of office on March 4four months after the electionthe Union would be in ruins. Southern radicals were already clamoring for secession. Meanwhile, even though Lincoln lacked the constitutional authority to act as president, people in both the North and the South looked to him for leadership as the nation plunged into a period of dangerous uncertainty.

Years later, Lincolns first vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, chided eulogists for constructing a Lincoln who was as great the day he left Springfield as when he made his earthly exit four years later. As president-elect, Lincoln was uncertain about whether the secession movement represented the bluster of a minority or a groundswell of popular Southern sentiment. Nor could he confidently predict whether Northerners would insist on holding the Union together or bid good riddance to the slave states. Moreover, he struggled at first with his own natural tendency to let pressing questions simmer until solutions bubbled to the surface. Should he try to reach some accommodation with Southern moderates in hopes of averting war? Or would that merely encourage the radical secessionists, who would interpret any accommodation as weakness and grow more convinced the North would never fight?

During the long winter interlude before he took office, Lincoln initially did nothing, hoping the crisis would pass. But when his inaction proved counterproductive and the secessionist momentum intensified, he felt obliged to alter course. Still, he moved quietly and indirectly, fearing that his words and deeds might provoke Southern moderates into joining the secessionists. Only at his inauguration did he muster the will to speak boldly and attack the secessionists head on.

By then it was too late to save the Union peacefully.

Americans Seek a Sign

Lincoln had sought the presidency by means that invited confusion. He won the Republican nomination largely on the strength of his House Divided speech of 1858, in which he declared that America could not continue half slave and half free. But in the general election the Republicans promised to leave slavery alone in the states where it existed, and Lincoln embraced that promise without ever overtly disavowing the uncompromising message of the House Divided address.

In the mid-19th century presidential candidates didnt campaign for themselves, nor was it thought seemly for presidents-elect to speak on the record. But given the turmoil surrounding his election, many people thought Lincoln must explain his position on the unfolding crisis. A pointed appeal came from George Prentice, the editor of the Louisville Journal. Prentice was a discouraged Southern Unionist who urged Lincoln to make a public statement that would take from the disunionists every excuse or pretext for treason.

If what I have already said has failed to convince you, no repetition of it would convince you, Lincoln replied. His answer was a dodge; he wouldnt speak because he didnt want to commit himself before he had to.

The rumblings of secession increased, however, and Lincoln realized he had to give some sign of his thinking. Lyman Trumbull was a senator from Illinois who had been elected as a Democrat but subsequently converted to Republicanism. He and Lincoln were known to be close, and his words were often taken as coming from Lincoln. Two weeks after the election Lincoln wrote a brief passage for Trumbull to insert in a speech at Chicago. I have labored in and for the Republican organization, Trumbull said, for himself and Lincoln, with entire confidence that whenever it shall be in power, each and all of the states will be left in complete control of their own affairs respectively, and at as perfect liberty to choose, and employ, their own means of protecting property, and preserving peace and order within their respective limits, as they have ever been under any administration.

Lincolns proxy statement failed dismally. It lacked the authority words spoken by Lincoln himself would have carried, and its second-hand character suggested a timidity that augured ill for Lincolns administration or his cause. Southern secessionists concluded that a man without the courage to speak in his own voice would be a president without the nerve to challenge their separatist designs. Northern radicals complained that the Trumbull statement was a retreat from the moral clarity of the House Divided speech.

The criticism reinforced Lincolns caution. This is just what I expected, and just what would happen with any declaration I could make, he told a friend. These political fiends are not half sick enough yet. Party malice and not public good possesses them entirely. They seek a sign, and no sign shall be given them.

Lincoln Walks a Narrow Path

Lincolns diffidence encouraged others to take the stage. The secessionists called conventions and drafted resolutions to implement their separatist aims. Northern Unionists and Southern moderates weighed a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the future of slavery in the states where it already existed. Lame duck president James Buchanan sent an envoy, Duff Green, to test Lincolns thinking on such an amendment.

I do not desire any amendment, Lincoln told Green. An amendment, he reasoned, would be difficult to pass and nearly impossible to repeal. He blanched at the idea of grafting slavery so egregiously onto Americas fundamental law. But he wouldnt rule it out entirely, if only because amending the Constitution was the prerogative of Congress and the states, not the president.

More promising, to Lincolns view, was the approach of Alexander Stephens, a Georgia moderate Lincoln had known since the 1840s, when they served in the House of Representatives together. As Georgians debated their response to Lincolns election, Stephens gave a widely noted speech opposing rash action. I do not anticipate that Mr. Lincoln will do anything to jeopardize our safety or security, he said. He can do nothing unless he is backed by power in Congress. The House of Representatives is largely in the majority against him. In the Senate he will also be powerless.

Lincoln read newspaper summaries of Stephens remarks, and he wrote Stephens asking if he had prepared them for publication. Stephens replied that he had not, but that the news reports fairly characterized what he had said. He went on to offer Lincoln encouragement in his efforts to hold the nation together. The Country is certainly in great peril and no man ever had heavier or greater responsibilities resting upon him than you have in this present momentous crisis, he said.

Lincoln appreciated the gesture, and he tried, through Stephens, to allay the concerns of Southern moderates. Do the people in the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly or indirectly, interfere with their slaves? he asked Stephens. If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears. The South would be in no more danger in this respect than it was in the days of Washington.

Yet Lincoln conceded to Stephens that the issue ran deeper than political assurances. Southerners and Northerners had irreconcilable views on the morality of slavery. You think slavery is right and ought to be extended, while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub.

The Union Begins to Break

That was the rub, and it chafed the more as Lincolns inauguration neared. A desperate Congress convened committees to find an arrangement to hold the Union together. Proposals included one to resurrect a popular sovereignty scheme advanced by Lincolns old nemesis Stephen Douglas, by which residents of frontier territories would vote to permit or ban slavery. Lincoln still declined to issue a public statement, but he wrote Republican members of Congress to stiffen their resolve against any retreat on slavery in the territories. Entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to extension of slavery, he urged William Kellogg, a Republican representative from Illinois. The instant you do, they have us under again; all our labor is lost. The tug has to come and better now than later. Lincoln told Elihu Washburne, another Illinois Republican: Hold firm, as with a chain of steel.

Lincoln perceived Southerners aggressiveness on the slave issue as inevitable. Their current demands were but the start. If we surrender, it is the end of us, and of the government, he asserted privately. They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum. The sole way out of the present impasse, Lincoln said, was by a route neither Northerners nor Southerners would accept: a prohibition against acquiring any more territory. It was a great irony of American history that this very solutionwhich Lincoln and nearly every contemporary rejected as unworkablehad already been effected, in political practice if not in political theory. The continental expansion that was causing all the trouble had ended in 1848. The only substantial piece of North America to be added to the United States after 1860 was Alaska, which was unsuited to a large population of any sort, slave or otherwise.

As the winter dragged on, Lincoln realized he had underestimated the South. Those who spoke of secession were not bluffing. He decided he must state his positionalbeit still not quite for public consumption. Thurlow Weed, the New York Republican boss whose support had been central to Lincolns election, had convened Northern governors to prepare a riposte to the South. I am unwilling to see a united South and a divided North, Weed wrote Lincoln. Thus united, your administration will have its foundation upon a rock. What could Lincoln tell the governors, even in private, about his intentions?

Lincolns response echoed what he had told other Republicans: He was inflexible on the territorial questionno slavery outside the Southern states. He added: My opinion is that no state can, in any way lawfully, get out of the Union, without the consent of the others; and that it is the duty of the President, and other government functionaries, to run the machine as it is.

But the machine was already breaking up. South Carolina, amid great fanfare, had passed an ordinance of secession on December 20, and in the succeeding weeks several other states prepared to follow suit and leave the Union.

Lincoln Travels Cross-Country

On February 11, Lincoln left Springfield for Washington. The psychological strain of the long, hard winter showed in his face and bearing; an acquaintance remarked that his body heaved with emotion and he could scarcely command his feelings. Lincolns voice broke as he told his Springfield neighbors, I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return.

The strain intensified as he headed east. The newspapers en route reported on the provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America, meeting in Montgomery, Ala. Seven states South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texassent delegates, although the Texans had to await the ratification of secession by the people of the Lone Star State. Lincoln read of the election of Jefferson Davis to be president of the Confederacy, and days later of Davis inauguration with Alexander Stephens as his vice president. He also read that the Southern states were seizing the federal forts on their soil.

The progress of a president-elect en route to his inauguration was a once-in-a-lifetime event for many of the towns through which Lincolns train passed, and at every stop people gathered and insisted that he speak. He was too good a politician not to oblige. If the United States should merely hold and retake its own forts and other property, and collect the duties on foreign importations, or even withhold the mails from places where they were habitually violated, would any or all these things be invasion or coercion? he asked an audience at Indianapolis. Then he waffled: I am not asserting anything. I am merely asking questions.

At Philadelphia he learned that Allan Pinkerton, a detective hired by the rail road company to preempt sabotage, had heard rumors of an assassination plot in Baltimore, where secessionist sympathies ran strong. Lincoln at first resisted altering his schedule, but when additional evidence suggested real danger, he was persuaded. He disguised himself as an invalid and slipped through Baltimore in the dead of night.

He soon regretted that decision. Southern newspapers ridiculed his lack of courage; even Republican papers feared he had diminished himself on the verge of his inauguration.

A Promise and a Threat

All of Washington was on edge as Lincoln prepared to take his oath of office on March 4. General Winfield Scott, the army commander, stationed infantry, cavalry and artillery troops conspicuously about the capital, and special squadrons of policemen lined Pennsylvania Avenue. The great majority of the visitors who crowded the streets were from the Northern statesjudging from the lack of long haired men in the crowd, an eyewitness observed. When the members of the House of Representatives were summoned to join the inaugural procession to the east side of the Capitol, their jostling for position escalated to curses, threats and near-fisticuffs. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, whose decision in the Dred Scott case had elicited Lincolns House Divided prophecy, visibly trembled as he stood near Lincoln on the rostrum.

Lincoln felt the tension as he looked out on the crowd. And he couldnt help reflecting that his caution had done nothing to ease the nations crisis, which grew more acute by the day. Inaction had simply encouraged others to seize the initiative.

But now it was his turnfinally. He commenced by reiterating what he had been conveying in private: that slavery in the South was secure. I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

Sadly, he continued, Southern radicals were not so tolerant. A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted.

No disruption would be allowed. An unexpected steel entered Lincolns voicea tone few had anticipated and none in public heard. The Union of these States is perpetual, he said. Secessionists would search in vain for constitutional authorization for their plan. No government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. If, as the secessionists contended, the Union was a union of states rather than of peoples, this afforded no easier exit, for, having been created by all the states, the Union required the consent of all the states to be destroyed. No State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. The Union is unbroken.

And Lincoln vowed it would remain unbroken. To the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all of the States.

The secessionists blamed Lincoln personally for endangering the peace of the Union; they had it just backward, he said. In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it.

These were fighting words. The secessionists had doubted Lincolns resolve; his long silence had corroborated their doubts, to the point of encouraging their secession. But they could doubt him no longer. To speak of civil war was to make it possible.

Lincoln had never fought a civil war; none of his contemporaries had. He had only the vaguest notion of what it would mean or how it would be done. Yet if the secessionists persisted in their destructive ways, they would provoke a civil war.

He let his words hang in the March air above the Capitol grounds. Applause had interrupted him earlier; now the thousands were silent as they pondered his promise, and his threat. He gave both a moment to sink in.

Then he concluded more hopefully: We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

H.W. Brands is a history professor at the University of Texas and the author of 16 books. His latest is Traitor to His Class, a biography of Franklin Roosevelt
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U.S. President Barack Obama gave his endorsement to Hillary Clinton's White House bid on Thursday. He asked Democrats to support her after the dispute with Bernie Sanders to get nominated for the party.

The presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, admitted that Obama's backing the Nov. 8 election "means the world" to her.

"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."

"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.

Obama still has strong approval ratings after his eight-year term in office. He will travel with Clinton on the campaign trail the following week in Wisconsin.

It also puts the heat on Sanders, the U.S. senator from Vermont, to leave the race and support Clinton so that the focus can now be on defeating Donald Trump, the Republican candidate.

The former first lady Clinton touched the required number of delegates to win the party nomination this week. She created history as the first woman candidate for the top U.S. position.

However, the inevitable slam came from Trump on Twitter, who said: "He wants four more years of Obama-but nobody else does!"

The response to him from Clinton's campaign was: "Delete your account."

However, Sanders, who has a fan following among young voters with his rousing call for greater social equality and efforts to rein in Wall Street is not willing to back out, even as Democrats seem keen to support Clinton's bid to beat Trump.

Obama and other senior Democrats are thus walking the tightrope of getting the party behind Clinton, without alienating Sanders and his supporters.

Obama invited and spoke to the Democratic socialist Sanders for an hour in the White House.

However, Sanders told reporters that he will still compete in the final nominating contest in Washington, D.C. on June 14. But he wanted to work with Clinton to defeat Trump.

On Capitol Hill, he was welcomed by Senator Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the Senate. Reid said 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.

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The Solar Impulse 2 aircraft reached the Statue of Liberty early Saturday. It circled the statue in an exciting photoshoot that gave a closure to the US portion of its effort to go around the globe with just solar power.

The shoot was at New York harbour, capturing the bright-powered aircraft even as it soared over the Verrazano Bridge and swept toward the towering statue.

Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg who had the privilege of piloting the plane said: "The US is a country where you meet a lot of entrepreneurs and pioneers, and so to end our American crossing at the Statue of Liberty - which represents for me the freedom of enterprise and the freedom to innovate that is the spirit you can find in this country - is so symbolic."

He completed the 14th leg of an east-west journey beginning March 9, 2015 in Abu Dhabi, flying across Asia and the Pacific right up to the United States.

Throughout the flight, Borschberg fielded phone calls from well-wishers and journalists. He told one interviewer that he found the light getting denser as he left Pennsylvania and flew towards New York.

After flying around the statue, the plane swept along the Manhattan skyline and then headed back south in order to land at New York's Kennedy Airport, just a minute before its scheduled landing time of 3:59 am (0759 GMT).

Hence, the "light, slow-moving aircraft" completed the five-hour flight beginning from Lehigh Valley Airport in Pennsylvania.

The Solar Impulse team will now move on to fly across the Atlantic to touch Europe and then head towards Middle East.

Borschberg has shared the flight with his fellow Swiss pilot Bertrand Piccard, who is a doctor. He had completed the world's first non-stop balloon flight around the globe in 1999.

Piccard will now take over from his partner, to complete the next leg to Paris.

Both of them have set their goals high and then flown to touch them. They wanted to be the first to circumnavigate the earth in an aircraft powered only by the sun.

It is a single-seat aircraft, with the wingspan of a Boeing 747 and 17,000 solar cells. Battery-stored power fuels flights like a trip from Pennsylvania to New York.

The average speed is just 30 miles (48 kilometers) per hour, but the speed doubles when it becomes exposed completely to sunlight.

The team is ecstatic that the plane has completed at least one lap. "It's absolutely incredible," Andre Borschberg said over a live video feed, even as the beautiful statue lit up the sky. "It's a dream here."

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The massive plunge in the price of global oil prices has without doubt been one of the biggest triggers for the rising uncertainties in markets worldwide but over the past few months the prices have rallied and some traders and investors believe that the price would rise further in the days to come. Plenty of traders have taken out contracts that would be triggered only when the price of oil touches $100 or more a barrel and that is without doubt a clear indication that they feel that the pries would continue to rise in the near term.

According to a piece on Bloomberg, "The options deals, which brokers said bear the hallmarks of trades made by hedge funds, appear to be based on the belief that current low prices will generate a supply crunch as oil companies cut billions of dollars in spending on developing fields. The International Energy Agency forecasts that non-OPEC supply will suffer its biggest decline in more than two decades this year." The head of commodities research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Francisco Blanch told Bloomberg,"The market faces a supply crunch in the next 24 months. Some hedge funds are betting that oil prices will need to rise sharply to bring demand down again -- that's why they are buying deep out-of-the-money call options." Another oil analyst named Amrita Sen added, "I do think we are setting up for a spike higher, but it's probably not till 2018, or maybe late 2017, because we are losing immense amounts of supply,"

The Bloomberg piece also stated, "Earlier this month, one investor bought more than 4 million barrels worth of call options at $110 and $80 a barrel for 2019 and 2020 in several transactions. In addition, another 800,000 barrels worth of $60 a barrel calls also changed hands. The deals are public because of new regulations introduced in the U.S. by the Dodd-Frank Act. The disclosures don't reveal the final buyer. Funds making the trades aren't necessarily expecting prices to jump as high as $100 to $150 a barrel, as the value of their call options will increase even if prices rise far less. These kind of options speculators are buying are often seen as lottery tickets because they offer an outside chance of very large returns."

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Its been a while since Raury last dropped off new music, but in case you were wondering how hes been holding up, the eclectic 20-year-old already has his own festival, RAURFEST, which is now in its third year. And this years festival, taking place on Saturday, July 2, is absolutely free.

This years headliners are Joey Bada$$ and, of course, Raury himself. Also on the lineup is another Pro Era member in Kirk Knight as well as Kilo Kish and the duo known as Lion Babe. More acts will be announced soon.

The host venue of RAURFEST is the Masquerade in Northeast Atlanta, and the event is open to all ages. Head here for more details.
After sitting relatively flat for a couple of sessions the stock of Clean Coal Technologies (OTCMKTS:CCTC, CCTC message board) made a sizable jump during yesterday's trading. It moved up from an opening price of $0.879 and closed at $0.962 for a gain of over 10%. The positive performance took place on above-average volume of 606 thousand shares.

Investors might have decided to take a position into the stock prior to today's corporate business update conference call and webcast that were announced on September 29. CCTC certainly have a lot of things to talk about. The company's test plant was successfully transferred to AES (NYSE:AES)'s Shady Point Facility in Oklahoma. When the plant has been reassembled it will start testing Powder River Basin Coal. Today's update call is supposed to provide more details about the company's plans to finally commercialize their Pristine M technology.

CCTC might also want to tell investors what is happening with their financial filings. If you open the profile page of the company on OTCMarkets you will undoubtedly notice the OTC Pink Limited Information Sign. It was put their because CCTC's latest financial report covers the quarter ended September 30, 2014, which means that the numbers inside it are now more than a year old. In a PR issued at the start of September, this year, the company stated that it is working alongside its auditors to get the filings ready in the next fifteen business days. Well, that period is now long over but there is no sign of the missing reports.

In addition, although CCTC have stated that their outstanding convertible debt has been either retired or restructured it hasn't been revealed if any of it has been turned into common shares. This is rather important because some of the debt may have been converted into shares at discounts ranging from 25% to 42%. And as we have been warning you even the current financing deals of the company through promissory notes, under certain conditions, may be turned into units consisting of 1 common shares and a warrant for the purchase of 1 share at an exercise price of just $0.10.

Ultimately, if CCTC will be able to sustain their current market price will depend on the information they announce during the call. If the update fails to meet investors' expectations the stock could quickly crash back down to its previous price ranges - at the start of August CCTC were sitting a little over $0.2 per share.




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 sheriff's 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 Shockome's property and into his pond. Some of the waste eventually disappeared down the county road.

The call to the sheriff was an attempt to make sure someone else saw what happened, but it was the start of what would come to be a weekslong 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 someone's land falls into a gray area for monitoring in the Texas oil patch, and it's impossible to know how often this happens. The ranchers had landed in a regulatory no man's land.

International oil company Statoil, based in Stavanger, Norway, built the frack pond, which is commonly used to temporarily hold water used for hydraulic fracking. Similar ponds dot the South Texas oil field, where fracturing requires 4 million to 5 million gallons of water per well.

Companies must report oil spills of more than 5 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 isn't tracked by the state's oil and gas regulator or any other agency.

Oil companies can drain water onto a ranch if they have permission from the landowner, but it's 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? It's 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."

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality received the complaint but determined it fell under the responsibility of the Railroad Commission. The Railroad Commission said it first learned about the incident May 2 and sent an inspector May 3 but didn't 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 Shockome's 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 Agency's 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 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 doesn't 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 didn't 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 didn't 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 didn't feel they could trust that first report.

"How do I know if that water is contaminated?" Priscilla Torres asked. "We don't have much. But for what we do have, dang it, don't come mess us up. There's all these what-ifs. This is not right. They sure as hell would not like it if this happened to them."

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 - where 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 of large caliche drilling pads onto a neighbor's ranch because the grade of the land has been altered, or with surface mining for things such as gravel, which can send stormwater rushing onto neighboring properties.

"Normally they're 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. "They'll just make them dig up some topsoil and add amendments to the topsoil. That's about all you're going to get," Park said. "It's 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 it's OK, but why do I have brown water? What is that?" Shockome asked. "They created this situation. I'm not real pleased with how this was handled."
WASHINGTON - In April, the email inboxes of energy executives filled with alerts from the nation's top corporate law firms. Subject: The multi-state investigation into whether Exxon Mobil committed fraud by discounting the impact of fossil fuels on climate change.

For years, efforts to hold energy companies and governments liable for the warming of the planet had moved through the court system with little fanfare or success. But with state governments probing Exxon Mobil's public and internal statements on climate change, lawyers warned their clients to get ready.

"There is escalating effort to bring pressure to bear on companies with respect to their public securities statements on the effects of climate change," the New York law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pitman said in a letter.

For oil executives in Texas and across the country, the investigations into whether their industry suppressed findings and misled investors, policy-makers, and the public about global warming not only raise the prospects of criminal charges, but add momentum to a legal campaign that many analysts compare to the decades-long battle against Big Tobacco. As in the early days of tobacco litigation, environmental advocates say, they have had few victories, but each case has opened new areas of inquiry, tested legal strategies, and revealed more about what energy firms and regulators knew about climate change - and when they knew it.

In recent months, environmentalists have enjoyed some small wins. In April, a federal judge in Oregon ruled that a case against the U.S. government for inaction on climate change could proceed, explaining that "the alleged valuing of short term economic interest despite the cost to human life" required examination by the courts.

In the Netherlands, a court ruled that the government, in the interest of protecting the low-lying country, must reduce carbon emissions 25 percent by 2020 - a ruling the Dutch government is appealing. In Ohio, a federal appeals court opened the door to more climate change lawsuits when it said a power utility could be held liable for emissions even if it didn't violate federal pollution laws.

"If you look at the history of tobacco litigation through the first several decades, the result was always the same. The plaintiff always lost," said Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law. "With each new case, more information came to public light. And that's what we're seeing here."

Reprising roles

Energy industry lawyers, however, dismiss comparisons to tobacco litigation, seeing a futile attempt by environmentalists to upend decades of case law. Courts have traditionally ruled that to hold defendants liable, their actions or products must be directly linked to damages caused to plaintiffs, said Kevin Ewing, an attorney with the Houston law firm Bracewell.

"Tobacco was shown to cause specific harm to specific individuals," he said. "Not so with climate change, where we cannot yet discern the factual connection between a company's conduct and individual harm, even though we can observe the global effects of climate change at large."

Environmental lawyers have argued for years that governments and companies are obligated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the interests of protecting mankind from rising oceans, severe storms and the other effects of climate change. They had little success. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2011 that the federal government alone has the power to control carbon emissions, which are legal are under air pollution laws all over the world.

But the recent entry of state prosecutors into the fray opens a new line of inquiry: Did fossil fuel companies mislead investors and the public on climate change and the risk it posed to their businesses?

The involvement of 17 state attorneys general, led by New York's Eric Schneiderman, who in November disclosed his investigation of Exxon Mobil, has only increased comparisons with the tobacco case. In 1998, attorneys general from 46 states won a landmark, $200 billion settlement from the tobacco industry.

Many of the lawyers involved in the tobacco lawsuits, are reprising roles in climate change cases. Ted Wells, the attorney for Exxon Mobil in the climate change inquiry, also represented Phillip Morris. Former Justice Department lawyer Sharon Eubanks, who ran the government's tobacco litigation team and now works as a plaintiff's attorney, has called on federal prosecutors to pursue a possible racketeering case against oil companies, on the theory they conspired to deceive the public just as a federal judge ruled in 2006 that tobacco companies had done.

Long-debated issue

The rush to court follows revelations last year by Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times that Exxon undertook climate change research in the 1970s and '80s, and was warned by its scientists of the threat. But some legal scholars are skeptical that the case against the oil industry is as cut and dried as that against tobacco, which was found to have hidden research proving nicotine is addictive and smoking causes cancer.

As yet, there is no evidence of oil companies hiding research on climate change. In addition, the causes and implications of climate change remained unsettled among scientists for so long that holding a company liable for espousing a dissenting view could prove difficult, said David Adelman, an environmental law professor at the University of Texas.

"The legal standard of fraud is a clear misrepresentation of fact," he said. "With climate change, it's a hard argument. You have to think about how knowledge and understanding changed over time. The further you go back in time, the harder it's going to be to make a case of fraud."

In the late 1990s, as the climate change debate reached fever pitch, former Exxon CEO Lee Raymond travelled to Beijing to speak to the World Petroleum Council. Seven years earlier, a United Nations panel of scientists connected global warming to modern society's dependence on oil and coal, which produce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the earth's atmosphere.

But Raymond, who held a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota, questioned the scientific basis for reducing emissions as a way to combat warming.

"Leaping to radically cut this tiny sliver of the greenhouse gas pie [that comes from human activity] on the premise that it will affect climate defies common sense and lacks foundation in our current understanding of the climate system," Raymond said.

The following year, a leaked memo from the American Petroleum Institute, working with Exxon, Chevron, and the Alabama power firm Southern Co., laid out a public relations strategy to recruit scientists and lobby media outlets to cast doubt on science that blamed global warming on fossil fuels.

Novel arguments

As climate science has eliminated uncertainties about the cause and effects of climate change, the 1990s public relations campaign has cast a shadow from which many energy companies are unable to emerge - no matter what they do to reduce carbon emissions. Southern, for instance, touts that it cut carbon dioxide from its power plants 25 percent by shifting from coal to natural gas. Exxon protests that it's unfair to suggest the company fully understood the effects of climate change decades before the world's leading scientists.

That's "not a credible thesis," said spokesman Alan Jeffers said. "Our understanding of the science evolved as everyone else's did."

Chevron and the American Petroleum Institute declined to comment.

Environmental advocates, meanwhile, are adopting novel legal strategies to press their cases. In Oregon, for example, the group Our Children's Trust convinced the judge to allow its lawsuit to proceed by arguing that the constitutional rights of future generations to "life, liberty and property" are violated as long as the United States allows the burning of fossil fuels.

In Germany, lawyers argue that the German utility RWE should foot the bill to protect a Peruvian mountain town from a melting glacier because RWE's power plants contribute to greenhouse gases that put the community in peril. In Massachusetts, environmental attorneys say Exxon should have considered the effects of climate change in devising protections for an oil storage terminal, which they allege releases pollutants into Boston Harbor as a result of increased storm surges and heavier rains.
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When Renee Elise Goldsberry auditioned for the musical "Hamilton," she was given a demo of the song "Satisfied" by the show's creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda.

She had no context for the song other than the lyrics, which Miranda rattled off with the speed of a feisty drum roll. Slowed down, they convey a heart-wrenching push/pull dynamic between physical and intellectual connection and familial obligation. Love transforms into longing.

Goldsberry took to the song instantly.

"I understood it immediately," she says, laughing, "once I figured out the words. Lin's demo, it took a second because the words were coming out so fast. But I immediately understood it emotionally. I didn't have any back story, but I didn't need it to understand it emotionally. I was moved deeply."

"Satisfied" is one key piece in "Hamilton," the hit, hip-hop-inflected musical about the life of the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton.

A thorn bush of emotional content lyrically, "Satisfied" requires Goldsberry, whose career in theater, film and TV began as a child in Houston, to rap and sing. And it establishes a key theme in the show: The tenor of history can vary depending on the storyteller. The song is a showpiece for the character of Angelica Schuyler, which earned a Tony nomination for Goldsberry.

Tonight Goldsberry, who has already won a Drama Desk Award and a Lucille Lortel Award for her part in "Hamilton," will learn if she's earned a Tony for best performance by an actress in a featured role in a musical.

More Information Tony Awards ceremony When: 7 p.m. Sunday Network: CBS See More Collapse

The success of "Hamilton" has people predicting a run of several awards during tonight's telecast on CBS. But the impact of this musical has extended far beyond the Richard Rodgers Theatre, where it has played in New York for nearly a year. The awards and almost unanimous positive notices for "Hamilton" have created a curious situation as its cast of veterans is being treated like newly discovered talents.

Goldsberry is a fine example of that phenomenon.

Her long theater background includes originating the role of Nettie in "The Color Purple" more than a decade ago. She spent parts of 2007 and 2008 playing Mimi in "Rent," filling the role when it was filmed live for TV. And Goldsberry has over the years spent time on the small screen, including two dozen episodes of "The Good Wife" as attorney Geneva Pine, more than 250 on the soap opera "One Life to Live" and nearly 50 on "Ally McBeal."

But "Hamilton" has proved a career-changer for its cast members, seven of whom earned Tony nominations. Goldsberry was in the show when it opened Off Broadway in early 2015 and remained in the role when it moved into larger confines on Broadway later that year. Like the rest of the featured cast, she's now a Grammy winner, thanks to the cast recording, and she's performed for the president and Prince, who took in the show in March, just weeks before he died.

Goldsberry, 45, regrets not stealing a glance at the latter during the show. "He would've been visible because he was in the box seats, and the cast was aware he was there," she says. "I wish I'd looked up, but I intentionally decided not to. It wasn't until we bowed that I did, and he'd already slipped out.

"It's been amazing, the opportunities that have come with this show. We've met superstars and politicians, people over every generation. And also kids in the audience, which is great to see in the theater. We've had high school kids perform raps they've written on our stage. And their performances have been amazing."

Falling in love

Goldsberry's start in theater goes back to a summer camp at HITS in Houston taught by Carolyn Franklin, who founded the youth theater company.

Goldsberry was 8 and had just moved with her family from California.

"She had a younger brother who was shy, so I think her mother thought it would be good for him to take theater classes," Franklin says. "And she figured Renee was there anyway, so she enrolled her, too. She was this thin little girl with a big, big voice."

"I remember we did 'Guys and Dolls' that first summer, and even then to me it was more than doing a show," Goldsberry says. "I fell in love with it immediately and deeply. It created a monster. I knew the minute the play was over - I was sad when it was over, but I knew it's what I wanted to do the rest of my life. Houston was a perfect place to create a love of theater. The Ensemble, the Alley, even as a kid, I could tell the community there embraced theater."

Franklin recalls Goldsberry standing out in a production of "The King and I."

"I can still picture her in this gold costume singing 'I Have Dreamed,' " she says. "This beautiful little girl singing this melody, it was magical. She was so poised and comfortable performing, even then."

Goldsberry went to high school in Michigan, where her father lived, and then studied in Carnegie Mellon's storied drama department. But she always kept a foot in Houston. Her mother, Betty Sanders, still lives here. And Goldsberry would return to take roles in productions at the Alley Theatre and Houston Grand Opera.

"That time and that work made me realize you could be a successful actor staying in a region other than New York or Los Angeles, if that region supported it. Houston was that way. Pittsburgh. There are a few others but not many. So I've always loved going back."

Power of perspective

Goldsberry was living in Los Angeles when she was offered the part of Nala in the Broadway production of "The Lion King," which opened doors in New York's theater scene.

Eventually, those doors led to Miranda's demo for "Satisfied."

"Even before I knew the story behind it, that song moved me deeply," she says.

The depth of the "Hamilton" cast reflects the depth of the production's writing, and each of the 10 principal characters has standout moments.

"Satisfied" is just one for Goldsberry, who imbues the song with the sense of regret that can accompany big decisions. She describes it as "beautiful and decisive and difficult."

Angelica is the oldest of three sisters from a wealthy family. She and the musical's titular Founding Father meet and forge an instant connection that she chooses to push aside. As the oldest daughter in a family with no sons, she's expected to marry for status, so she introduces her younger sister Eliza to the ambitious but financially strapped Hamilton instead.

Eliza becomes the more central part of "Hamilton's" narrative, but Angelica transforms into a crucial storytelling figure, especially when tragedy requires an outside perspective.

"There's a beautiful storytelling device that Lin uses, where reality is dictated by the lyrics," she says. "The 'who lives, who dies, who tells your story' - that changes through the show. And the person telling the story changes what the story is. The narrative keeps getting taken over."

Goldsberry's Angelica takes the lead on "It's Quiet Uptown," a devastating song about the wake made by an unimaginable loss.

"In moments where Eliza is devastated, Angelica has to be the one to deliver the words," she says.

The emotional content in "Hamilton" is just one draw. Miranda deliberately looked to a multicultural cast to, as he put it, tell a "story about America then, told by America now." The show is reverent toward Broadway history, with references to "Rent" and "South Pacific" and numerous other shows, while adding hip-hop, pop, ragtime and other varieties of music to the mix.

"It's changing how musical theater is perceived and made," Franklin says. "My first thought about rap in a musical was that it sounded terrible to me. But you hear the Founding Fathers, these rebellious young hotheads, arguing in a rap, it's brilliant."

Franklin points out the show's appeal to younger listeners who had no frame of reference for Broadway, which makes her think of Goldsberry showing up at her summer camp at age 8.

"Things like this can change a child's life."

Approaching the end

Goldsberry says the "Hamilton" cast speaks of the Tonys as the end of something.

The show opened in July 2015, so contracts are nearing their end. New performers are likely to begin making their way into the show.

"It feels a little like the end," Goldsberry says. "So I've looked back a little, and I marvel that we pulled it off. It feels like there are pieces of art that need to be in the world, and this is one of them. We don't really know what comes next, but we're still a pretty humbled group. I think we recognize this is bigger than all of us."
An Aryan Brotherhood of Texas prison gang captain contends he was lied to by federal prosecutors and his lawyer about how much time he'd get behind bars if he pleaded guilty to racketeering instead of risking going to trial.

Rusty Duke - who in 2014 became the last of 73 people convicted in a massive Houston-based anti-gang probe - took the witness stand Thursday in an unusual hearing to have his guilty plea and 18-year prison sentence set aside. The disagreement comes as about 97 percent of federal criminal cases result in plea agreements, saving the time and expense of trials and enabling defendants to get more lenient sentences.

Duke contends he was repeatedly promised behind the scenes that he'd be sentenced to only 10 years only for drug-dealing crimes, not the attempted murder of a fellow gang member who had betrayed him.

U.S. District Judge Sim Lake is expected to decide this week.

Duke's former lawyer and two prosecutors also took the witness stand Thursday. The government contends Duke knew he'd get no less than 18 years in the case, as described in the plea agreement and other documents in the court file. Duke originally had faced up to life in prison.

An "attempt to scam"

Robert Jones, the longtime Houston lawyer who originally represented Duke, testified that Duke's claims to confusion are part of a scheme now playing out in court.

"I believe Mr. Duke's statement in the transcript are consistent with his attempt to scam everybody all the time," Jones said. "I believe it was a contrived effort on his part to mislead anyone in the system."

He described Duke as a drug dealer who manipulates people and would do anything to make money, including join Aryan Brotherhood.

Also called to testify were U.S. Department of Justice trial lawyer David Karpel, who is based in Washington, and Timothy Braley, a Houston-based assistant U.S. attorney. Both said no secret deals were cut with Duke and that he would never have gotten a deal for just 10 years in prison.

Duke contends otherwise. He said he knew the judge could legally give him more than 10 years but that he'd been privately promised he'd get 10 years if he signed the plea agreement and told the judge he hadn't been threatened or promised anything special.

"We've got to make it look like we are doing our job," he quoted them as saying.

18-page plea agreement

Braley testified that Duke had sought a 10-year sentence from the start but was told that 18 years was the "rock bottom" minimum sentence he could get.

Correspondence, including email between Duke's lawyer and the government seemed to back up Braley's testimony.

Duke's new attorney, Jeremy Gordon, has said that as part of an "assembly line" system of criminal justice, defendants can be mislead by their lawyers,

"I do not believe the public is aware of how common it is that attorneys - whether because of overburdened workloads or otherwise - fail to properly advise their clients before they plead guilty," Gordon, a former prosecutor, told the Chronicle.

Duke's request comes in the wake of a probe by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in which every defendant was convicted. All pleaded guilty except two, who were convicted in trials.

Duke was a major methamphetamine dealer in North Texas, according to court documents. As part of his 18-page plea agreement, he admitted to assisting in the attempted murder of a fellow gang member who allegedly tried to steal Duke's drugs and pointed a gun at Duke's father.

Another gang member, carrying out a retaliation attack for Duke, tried to shoot the man in the face, but the gun misfired.
Barbara Jackson was laying flowers on her mother's grave in 2014 when her purse was stolen from her van.

On Friday, the 70-year-old leaned on a cane as she walked into court to face the ringleader of a gang of thieves who targeted thousands of unattended vehicles in cemeteries from Florida to Houston.

"I just think it's ghoulish for anybody to do something like that," she told the defendant, 28-year-old Carl Johnson. "Somebody who does something like that has no conscience."

Her testimony, along with that of other victims in the case, led visiting state District Judge Terry Flenniken to sentence Johnson to 16 years in prison for stealing purses and wallets out of unlocked cars from mourners in area cemeteries. He had been facing up to life in prison.

"All identity theft cases are horrible, but this is certainly the most horrible that I've encountered," said Assistant Harris County District Attorney Chris Handley. "The fact that they picked cemeteries was just criminally evil."

He said the gang targeted areas where people often leave their cars unlocked because they are still within sight. The group would pull up next to an unattended car for just seconds to check the door, take what they could and flee, he said.

They broke into thousands of cars at cemeteries and at day care centers, Handley said. They were able to clear $30,000-$40,000 a week in ill-gotten gains, he said.

The gang apparently hit cemeteries all over Houston before getting caught. A map of all of the crime scenes would ring the city like Beltway 8, Handley said.

In court, he said the gang came to Texas - first Dallas then Houston - after police in Florida started investigating them.

Several witnesses testified Friday that probation was not appropriate.

The gang was able to steal more than $8,000 from Jackson before her accounts were blocked.

She broke down on the witness stand as she described the graveyard theft. But it wasn't the money she lost or the headaches of identity theft that brought her to tears.

It was the stolen phone that had photos of her late mother.

"I have no pictures of her, the last year of her life," she cried. "It just breaks your heart."

Prosecutors charged Johnson, who is from Miramar, Fla., with engaging in organized crime. 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.

Before handing down the sentence, the judge 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.

Johnson will have to serve at least eight years before being eligible for parole and was the last member of the gang to be sentenced. 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.
Around 1,000 people from across the country marched more than a mile Saturday through downtown Houston protesting the deportation of undocumented immigrants as part of a national conference for young Hispanics.

Wearing orange shirts that read, "Undocumented and here to stay," marchers endured 90-degree temperatures as they weaved their way through Discovery Green, a popular park for Houstonians.

Passersby watched as protestors shouted varying chants such as, "I am somebody" and "We are the mighty, mighty immigrants." The march brought traffic to a standstill as it turned down San Jacinto, ending in front of the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

"We are marching for our families. We are marching for our communities, specifically to stop being separated (from them) through deportation," Maria Trevino-Rodriguez said.

Participants in the march were gathered for United We Dream Congress 2016, the largest immigration event of its type in the nation. An estimated 1.4 million people in the U.S. are dubbed dreamers, meaning they came to America without authorization as minors. They are eligible for work permits and relief from deportation under President Barack Obama's executive order, called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

About 68,000 immigrants are thought to be eligible for DACA in Harris County, which detains and deports more immigrants than almost any other county in the U.S.

Under a controversial program known as 287(g), which expires at the end of June and is being evaluated for renewal, the Harris County Sheriff's Office transfers undocumented people entering the county jail into the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some protest participants held pinatas inscribed with 287(g).

Seek "life with dignity"

"As an undocumented Latina, who is privileged enough to have DACA, we simply want to live with no more fear. I want to live in a community where I'm not fearing that my parents will get separated from me and deported. We want to live a life with dignity in our communities and in our home," Trevino-Rodriguez said.

The protest remained orderly with several police officers directing traffic and monitoring the march on horseback. Many signs directly called for an end to 287(g) and criticized Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman by proclaiming "You are not ICE" and "Your duty is to protect and serve not criminalize, terrorize and deport."

Amy Zapien, who is originally from Dallas but now does nonprofit arts education in Houston, still had zest for the cause after several hours in the heat.

"I came to the United We Dream Congress to stand in solidarity with immigrants who are unjustly being convicted as criminals when they're just trying to look for a better life," the 24-year-old said. "I come from a family of immigrants, so it's really close to me."

The protestors, made up of mainly Hispanic and African-American participants, also focused on issues facing African-American and LGBT communities.

"Racism is contagious"

At one point the protestors begun to chant, "Black Lives Matter. Trans Lives Matter"

Before the march, Mexican-born American journalist Jorge Ramos urged participants to continue to voice their opinion on immigration issues.

National politics also took center stage during Ramos' keynote speech and the subsequent question-and-answer session.

"You've heard from Donald Trump that we're criminals, and that's not true," Ramos said. "I think hatred and racism is contagious. Because a politician is saying something racist, many Americans feel it's legitimate."

Much attention also was paid to the landmark ruling expected shortly on the legality of Obama's executive order in a case filed by the state of Texas.

"If the Supreme Court doesn't agree with us, we're going to keep on fighting," Ramos said.

Ramos also addressed a conference participant who wanted to know how the Hispanic community could help the transgender community.

In response Ramos said, "We are all the same. We are all human beings."

Cindy George contributed to this report.
PITTSBORO, N.C. -- For all the pathogens and chemicals monitored by the federal government to protect drinking water, a far broader universe of "emerging contaminants" is going unregulated.

The Environmental Protection Agency keeps tabs on scores of substances that have surfaced in water systems around the country, with the aim of restricting those that endanger public health. But partly because the rules that the agency must follow are complicated and contentious, officials have failed to successfully regulate any new contaminant in two decades.

Only once since the 1990s has the EPA come close to imposing a new standard - for perchlorate, a chemical found in explosives, road flares, rocket fuel and, it turns out, the drinking water of upwards of 16 million people.

The years of inaction, critics say, have left many Americans at risk from substances that few even realize might be in their water in the first place.

"We live in a country where we've made a fundamental decision that chemicals are safe unless they're proven to be bad," said Jeffrey Griffiths, a public health professor at Tufts University School of Medicine who studies waterborne diseases. "We have this system which is biased toward the presumption of innocence."

Here in North Carolina, one of the contaminants on the government's watch list has been found in rivers and streams on which more than a million people depend.

Since 2013, Detlef Knappe and a team of researchers at N.C. State University have logged hundreds of miles as they gathered samples along the Cape Fear River basin. From Greensboro in the heart of the state to the coastal city of Wilmington, they have identified troubling levels of "1,4-dioxane," a byproduct of plastics manufacturing that can be found in everything from paint strippers and varnishes to detergents, shampoos and cosmetics. The EPA has deemed it a "likely human carcinogen," although limited data exist on the cancer risks it poses for people.

"1,4-dioxane really has no business being in the water," said Knappe, an environmental engineering professor who has worked with state regulators and the National Science Foundation to dig deeper into the issue. "This has probably been going on for decades, but no one has really looked at it. . . . We only find what we look for."

The EPA keeps a list of about 100 unregulated contaminants that have made their way into water supplies from industrial sites and other sources. Every five years, the agency updates a shorter lineup of chemicals that it thinks should be tracked and studied and requires utilities to do testing.

The current inventory includes two viruses and 28 chemicals, including 1,4-dioxane. The goal is to eventually regulate those that pose the greatest risk to public health.

But critics say that regulators should be moving far more assertively, even as scientists continue researching the short- and long-term health impacts. They blame both the system set up by Congress as well as the agency's glacial pace.

"For an agency to be unable to adopt a single new standard in 20 years is inexcusable," said Erik Olson, health and environment program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "It's a combination of a bad law and very bad implementation."

In the wake of the lead crisis in Flint, Mich., and other problems in communities elsewhere, many people are increasingly wary of what flows from the faucets of their homes and schools - and whether the federal government is doing enough to safeguard drinking water. In April, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that more than 60 percent of Americans rate the government's efforts as just fair or poor.

In 1974, the newly enacted Safe Drinking Water Act gave the EPA broad authority to monitor and regulate the nation's public drinking-water supplies. The agency adopted existing standards covering nearly two dozen microbial and inorganic chemical contaminants. When regulators took too long to expand that number, Congress made clear in 1986 that it wanted faster action.

A bipartisan majority passed additional legislation requiring the agency to establish drinking-water limits for scores of contaminants - including bacteria such as legionella and chemical compounds from acrylamide to xylene. Lawmakers also directed the agency to set up a system for monitoring still-unregulated contaminants.

The result over the next decade was health-based thresholds for more than 85 substances, including a range of disinfection byproducts and chemicals known to increase the risks of kidney damage, high blood pressure and cancer, among other conditions.

Those efforts prompted complaints from some local water officials about the increased costs and time needed to comply with the wave of new regulations. Utilities faced testing and treatment requirements for a growing list of contaminants - some that appeared only in certain parts of the country and some that scientists were still studying to determine their public health implications.

In 1996, Congress intervened again. This time lawmakers directed the EPA to do detailed cost-benefit analyses on additional contaminants that it sought to restrict. The agency also had to ensure that sufficient science existed to establish the public-health risks of a particular substance before attempting to regulate it.

"It created this Herculean set of tasks that EPA had to go through before they could adopt any new standards," Olson said.

In the 20 years since, the EPA has come close to successfully regulating only one new chemical contaminant in drinking water. In 2011, reversing a Bush administration decision, the agency announced its intention to set a federal standard for perchlorate. Exposure to the chemicalcan disrupt thyroid function in humans.

Yet the agency still has not put any limits in place. The National Resources Defense Council recently sued, saying that the EPA's inaction could be exposing children and pregnant women to harm.

Joel Beauvais, who heads the EPA's Office of Water, acknowledged that the agency's pace in regulating new chemicals had slowed, in part because of the system mandated by Congress. "It's a rather intensive process to get one of these drinking-water regulations across the finish line," he said.

The law demands that the agency move deliberately - and there are reasons for that, he said. A substance may occur in only a very small number of drinking-water systems, for instance, or it may not have been detected at levels of concern. Before the EPA imposes new burdens on thousands of water systems, it must prove that there is a meaningful opportunity to improve public health.

"These are very consequential regulations," he said. "They are consequential from a health perspective. They are consequential from an economic perspective."

Beauvais noted that the EPA has updated standards for certain contaminants as well as revised other rules, such as those for treating wastewater, in ways that help contain the number of overall contaminants in drinking water. Officials also have said that they are exploring new approaches and could begin regulating entire groups of substances rather than targeting one at a time.

The agency has issued numerous health advisories - most recently for perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a potentially toxic compound that has turned up in many water systems - that can prompt state and local officials to take action or at least notify residents about contaminants. Ultimately, though, the advisories are unenforceable.

The American Water Works Association says that the EPA should winnow its list to focus on a handful of chemicals that pose the biggest public-health concerns.

"In a resource-constrained world, it's hard to make progress spreading your resources broadly," said Steve Via, the association's director of federal relations. "The way the current process is running, with large numbers of contaminants on the list you don't get enough focus to achieve progress. When you don't achieve progress, folks ask if the process is working."

Congress on Tuesday passed a sweeping revision of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, which covers thousands of chemicals in products as diverse as sippy cups, paint thinners and permanent-press clothing. The overhaul will give the EPA the power to require health and safety data for untested chemicals and to prevent substances from reaching the market - and, ultimately, drinking-water sources - if they have not been determined to be safe. Implementation will take years, however.

"Prevention is an incredibly important issue for the country over time," Beauvais said. "If we regulate more on the front end, we're less likely to have contamination from chemicals with adverse health effects on the back end."

In North Carolina, environmental officials published a report earlier this year detailing a year's worth of sampling for 1,4-dioxane within the Cape Fear River basin. It highlighted numerous "hot spots" for the contaminant located immediately downstream of wastewater facilities, suggesting that manufacturers or other industrial operators were sending it into municipal sewers. Current water treatments don't effectively remove the chemical.

"People are understandably concerned," said Steve Drew, Greensboro's director of water resources. "[But] in the absence of enforceable limits, what is a water system to do?"

His department and other downstream communities responded by launching a sort of detective operation. They tested hundreds of miles of sewer lines and met with business owners to track down the possible sources of 1,4-dioxane.

"We got it down to about a half dozen or so businesses - a couple that had very high levels of 1,4-dioxane discharged into our system," Drew said. "These companies are not even thinking about it because they aren't regulated on it."

He said the companies have been "very diligent" in trying to alter supply chains and remove the chemical voluntarily from their manufacturing process. There are early signs that those efforts are slowly beginning to lower 1,4-dioxane levels in the river basin.

But if companies balk, Drew has no way to force them to cooperate.

"Right now," he said, "it's completely dependent on good relationships, and 'please' and 'thank you.' "
SAN FRANCISCO - With the presidential field set for battle between two candidates who are loathed at least as much as they are liked, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton might start printing similar bumper stickers boasting of their strategies for winning the White House.

For likely Republican nominee Trump: "Vote Trump: At Least I'm Not Her."

And for likely Democratic nominee Clinton: "Vote Clinton: At Least I'm Not Him."

The "I'm not " strategy will intensify Monday, when Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech in New Hampshire outlining why Clinton is unfit for the presidency. Trump previewed his attack during a speech after the California primary last week that focused on the Clinton Foundation during her tenure as secretary of state.

"Hillary Clinton turned the State Department into her private hedge fund," Trump said. "The Russians, the Saudis, the Chinese all gave money to Bill and Hillary and got favorable treatment in return.

"Secretary Clinton even did all of the work on a totally illegal private (email) server."

Credibility questions

Trump will try to tap into the 64 percent of voters who polls say don't find Clinton trustworthy. But he has two challenges.

First, his credibility has been tainted by peddling debunked conspiracy theories, including that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and that Sen. Ted Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

But Trump's bigger concern might be his difficulty focusing on a single line of attack. When he's not tethered to a script, he can be scattershot on the stump.

"Kitchen-sink attacks usually aren't that effective when somebody tries to deploy 13 different attacks at the same time," said political consultant Ben LaBolt, who was the national press secretary for Obama's 2012 re-election campaign. "Poll-tested attacks that are grounded in fact are the ones that are usually effective with persuadable voters."

On the Democratic side, there's nothing secret or particularly subtle about their strategy, said Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College. Clinton will hit Trump early and often with a common refrain: He is not qualified to be president.

Warren weighs in

On Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., called Trump "a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud  who serves no one but himself." She piled on, adding that Trump, the businessman, "inherited a fortune and kept it rolling by cheating people."

Lobbing negative attacks at each other might be the dual strategies, but right now both candidates are viewed so unfavorably that their challenge is how to get those "persuadable" undecided voters who will swing the election to listen.

Their unlikability can be told through favorability numbers - the difference between voters who view them favorably and those who don't. Clinton's net favorability is minus 14, according to 173 polls tracked by the Huffington Post. Trump's is minus 22.

For context, Obama's is plus 6.

"They're starting where candidates usually end - you get to November and everyone's got negative ratings," said Joe Trippi, a longtime Democratic presidential campaign strategist and Fox News commentator. "Anybody who believes the arguments Trump is making against Hillary Clinton is already in his corner. And the same thing on the other side."

Clinton managed better

What's key in such an environment, Trippi said, is for each candidate not to reinforce the negative impressions voters have of them.

There, Clinton has an advantage, as she's the more experienced, cautious and stage-managed candidate.

Trump's biggest enemy is likely to be himself, Trippi and LaBolt said, given his propensity to fire off intemperate, often juvenile remarks on Twitter at the slightest provocation.

"Trump's problem is that every day he seems to be going out and reinforcing these negative impressions people have of him," Trippi said.

But he will come out gunning Monday.

On the other side, Tony Quinn, a former GOP consultant who is editor of the nonpartisan California Target Book, said it's hard to predict what attacks will stick to Trump.

"As long as (Trump) is flaying the establishment, that's fine" with his backers, he said. "They want him to be the bull in the china shop and the more china he breaks, the better."
DHAKA, Bangladesh -

More than 3,000 people, some of them known Islamist militants, have been arrested in a series of police raids intended to quell a wave of deadly machete attacks against bloggers, minorities and others, the police said Saturday.

The roundup began last week after militants killed the wife of a police superintendent who had been investigating the machete attacks. Over the course of the week, the police said, they killed five militants in shootouts. They were members of the Jama'atul Mujahedeen Bangladesh, one of two groups the authorities believe are behind most of the attacks, police said.

Many citizens criticized the government for not taking action sooner against the militants, who have created a climate of terror since they began murdering secularist bloggers and others more than three years ago.

Since 2013, bloggers, freethinkers, religious minorities, foreigners, gay activists, followers of more liberal strains of Islam and others have been killed in attacks carried out mostly by groups of young men wielding machetes.
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BEIRUT - Two suicide bombers struck close to the Syrian capital, killing at least 12 people and wounding dozens more Saturday in the latest attack to hit the predominantly Shiite area in recent months, state TV and an opposition activist group said.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the bombings through its Aamaq news agency, which said there were three attacks carried out by suicide bombers. Aamaq said two attackers were wearing explosive belts; the third was in a car.

Syrian State TV said the blasts in the Sayyida Zeinab area just south of Damascus killed 12 people and wounded 55 others. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 20 people were killed and dozens were wounded in the two explosions.

Coincides with siege

The blasts came as U.S.-backed fighters in northern Syria tightened their siege on the ISIS stronghold of Manbij, where tens of thousands of civilians are trapped by the fighting.

The Syria Democratic Forces, a predominantly Kurdish group, encircled the town after capturing dozens of villages and farms near the Turkish border.

"The push toward Manbij slowed down because of fear for civilians there," said Mustafa Bali, a Syrian journalist who visited the front line. "All telecommunications with the town have been cut," he said by telephone.

The Observatory said tens of thousands of civilians in the town fear bombardment of residential areas at a time most bakeries have closed and food is running out.

It said airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition have killed 30 civilians, including 11 children, since SDF began its offensive May 31.

Manbij, one of the Islamic State's largest strongholds in Syria's Aleppo province, is a waypoint on a key supply line between the extremists' de facto capital of Raqqa and the Turkish frontier.

The suburb where the bombing took place is home to a shrine by the same name, one of the most renowned in Shiite Islam. The heavily guarded shrine to Sayyida Zeinab, the daughter of the first Shiite imam, Ali, and granddaughter of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, receives thousands of Shiite pilgrims each year.

State TV aired footage from the blast site, showing several vehicles and shops on fire and at least two buildings whose balconies, doors and windows had been destroyed. Blood stains could be seen on the debris-covered road. Fire engines rushed to the scene to extinguish fires caused by the explosions.

State news agency SANA said the first blast was caused by a suicide attacker wearing an explosives belt; the second was the result of a suicide attacker in a car rigged with explosives.

SANA quoted Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi as blaming the "brutal massacres" on Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which are the main supporters of the Syrian rebels trying to remove President Bashar al-Assad.

Red Cross convoy

In the central province of Homs, a 31-truck aid convoy from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent entered the besieged town of Houla on Saturday, according to ICRC spokesman Pawel Krzysiek.

Krzysiek said the trucks are carrying food for 14,200 families as well as products such as mattresses, blankets, water pumps, hygiene kits and vaccines.
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TEHUACAN, Mexico - The prime suspect in the slaying of 11 family members is an alleged rapist seeking revenge against a victim whose complaint had him jailed, a Mexican law enforcement official said Saturday.

The official said that authorities believe two attackers fatally shot the woman, her family and other relatives, including two girls. The killers also slashed a male victim believed to be the woman's partner, and may have tried to decapitate him.

The official was not authorized to be quoted by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Puebla state prosecutor's office said that one of the dead women had been raped and had a child by one of the attackers, apparently several years ago.

The killings took place Thursday night in the remote mountain hamlet of San Jose El Mirador, in the municipality of Coxcatlan in the central state of Puebla.

Clemente Hernandez, a leader of the village, said the two wounded girls were in serious condition, with bullet wounds to the chest and abdomen.

Hernandez, 37, said his two daughters, aged 8 and 9, were among the dead. He said one of the women who died, also a relative of his, was pregnant.

"We are not going back," Hernandez said of the hamlet's residents.

Five witnesses survived and were under government protection. They told authorities the attackers arrived by foot, opened fire and left. Prosecutors said they are believed to have fled into the mountains of neighboring Oaxaca state.

Officials had previously raised the possibility that the killings had religious overtones because residents of the largely evangelical hamlet had previously had disputes with Catholics in a nearby community.

But that now appears not to have played a role.
Buffalo Bayou is muddy and was once used to ferry cotton. That's where the similarities with the mighty Mississippi River end. But that didn't stop E.W. Cave, an original advocate of the Houston Ship Channel, from putting on a show when the House Rivers and Harbors Committee first visited our city in 1896.

"Six fathoms, eight fathoms, ten fathoms, by the Mark Twain," Cave yelled as the visitors and a local delegation cruised down the bayou toward Galveston Bay, conveniently concealing that the actual depth of the bayou was nowhere near those Huck Finn proclamations.

It was all part of a citywide push to convince Congress to help fund the extensive dredging project necessary to create the future port.

Houstonians threw parties, wrote letters and put all their weight behind local Congressman Thomas H. Ball, who sat on that influential committee.

Two decades and millions in federal appropriations later, the first deepwater steamship docked at the Port of Houston. Since that day, every congressman representing the region has followed in Ball's footsteps to ensure that the Ship Channel and Port receive the federal funding necessary to keep them in top condition. That job has become nearly impossible since 2010, when Congress passed a self-imposed rule to prevent representatives from dedicating funds to specific projects.

Those dedicated funds, also known as earmarks, had become the symbol of government waste and unnecessary spending. However, a Congress without earmarks doesn't spend less money. It just means that the executive branch has more control over taxpayer dollars.

So as Houston hosts the 2016 Gulf Shipping Conference this week, folks should worry whether the feds will fully fund dredging operations. An expanded Panama Canal will allow massive new ships to sail for Houston, but without earmarks there are few options for U.S. Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, who represents the port, to bring down those much-needed dollars.

"We wouldn't have been able to get the Port of Houston dredged in the '90s without earmarks," Green told the editorial board last week. Now the port needs to be dredged even deeper.

The challenge doesn't end at the port. Houston's hospitals, airports, rail system, roads and bridges have all benefitted from earmarks.

"They really provided a means by which we could bring our tax dollars home and people could see the results," U.S. Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, told the editorial board.

Instead of elected representatives having a direct say, government bureaucrats now get to decide where the money goes.

It is a problem that U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, ran into after the expansion of the Katy Freeway. Culberson sits on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, but was unable to deliver noise abatement walls requested by west Houston neighborhoods.

All across the city, needs are going unmet and projects unfunded because Congress has tied its hands in a symbolic gesture of fiscal conservatism.

We backed that decision at the time, but consequences are threatening to undermine some of the key economic engines of our region.

There's no doubt that earmarks opened the door to some superfluous projects and potential corruption. However, improved transparency and the ability of representatives to block earmarks they don't like would help put a cap on government pork while allowing elected officials to effectively advocate on behalf of their constituents.

Individual members of Congress know more about the needs on the ground than departmental bureaucrats, and it is time for them to once again take up their constitutional purse strings.

But if Congress doesn't act, Green, Green and Culberson should treat their congressional colleagues to tours up and down the Ship Channel. Hey, it worked last time.
Michael Ciaglo/Staff

It's mid-morning on a week day, and an African-American woman in a turquoise-colored floral print dress is lying on her side, presumably asleep, on a grimy concrete shelf beneath an Interstate 45 overpass near downtown; left-turn traffic passes within a few feet in a perpetual stream. About noon on the same day, a gaggle of men and women of various ages and races is sprawled on the trash-strewn grass or sitting on benches in Tranquillity Park across Walker Street from City Hall; their belongings are heaped in messy piles beside them or in purloined grocery carts stacked to overflowing. At evening rush hour on the U.S. 59 access road at Weslayan, a weathered older man in cut-off khakis and a soiled t-shirt holds up a hand-scrawled cardboard sign; now and then, drivers waiting for the light to change respond to his sign and his twisting, pleading grin; they reach toward him through their open window, a dollar bill between their fingers.

These people we see every day are our fellow Houstonians. They're homeless, perhaps, but even if they have a roof over their heads at night, there's no question they're suffering from a mental illness of one kind or another. They're so ubiquitous their presence doesn't register; they're unseen, so to speak, but they're not the only ones. Most whose lives have been shattered by serious illnesses of the brain - some 11 million nationally - are unseen, literally. Often with family members trying desperately to get them the help they need, they suffer in private.
Curious actions

Regarding "Trump U. lawsuit and Texas" (Page A15, May 4), I read David Morales' letter on how the Texas Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division handled the Trump U. investigation, with Trump U. eventually disbanding operations in Texas.

Morales went on to say their office's work "served our Texas consumers well." Really? I fail to see how allowing Trump U. to leave Texas with all the profits it got from Texas consumers from its alleged deceptive practices was a positive. It is akin to allowing a burglar to leave with the money and goods it took from a home, as long as he agrees not to break into the same house again. There was a proposed $5.4 million settlement which was nixed, so obviously the investigation had value and could benefit those consumers wronged.

Morales went on to say the consumers could still request a refund or go to court. Chances on getting a refund from a company that allegedly set out to separate the consumer from his money are quite slim. To go to court would mean the consumer would have to spend more of his own money and hire an attorney, starting its own investigation at square one, without being privy to facts and conclusions of the attorney general's seven-month investigation, which ended prematurely.

We have recently learned more about how Trump U. operated in the past, which is rather disconcerting given the wrist slap it received. I don't know if this is another example of how different the ultra-rich are treated, but surely Texans deserved better.

John Fisch, Houston
As the presidential election shows us that a lot of people are disgruntled about the state of things in the country, surveys and events are showing us that Houston residents are ready for something different about the way our city grows into the future. We clearly want a constantly improving quality of life, and this includes improved quality in the way we move around our city.

Our car-based plans are approaching a limit, something Mayor Sylvester Turner recognizes when he expresses a need for the city to develop a new paradigm for growth. Our population has reached a point where mobility requires acknowledgement that the historic travel right of way cannot really be expanded significantly, if at all.

The mayor has embraced the idea of "Complete Communities" and has asked transportation planners to think about better ways to use our existing right of way and to consider greater availability of multiple kinds of high-quality transit service in existing travel corridors. This is the right direction for Houston.

A number of key principles guide the new Complete Communities paradigm. The secret to healthy, happy, prosperous neighborhoods and communities is a thriving network of many walkable activity centers of many sizes where people live, work and play, connected to each other by high-quality transit service, with easy access to healthy food and nature.

In 2013, the city published the findings of The Urban Houston Framework Focus Group, a set of public dialogues to explore equitable access to housing, transit and economic prosperity. The project identified hundreds of potentially walkable centers, arranged them by size and set out guidelines for improving them.

Key to exploring the possibilities of "Complete Communities" is understanding that even the most complex neighborhoods must be connected to other neighborhoods with different amenities to offer. Reliable, comfortable transit vehicles must make those connections. Because most transit riders are pedestrians at the beginning and end of their trips, the transit station areas need to accommodate pedestrians and provide walkable access to many amenities, goods and services. The station areas should move toward complexity to serve the much less dense areas two, three and four blocks away.

So how will we achieve Complete Communities?

Transit-orienteddevelopment

Today, 39 neighborhoods already have reliable and comfortable light rail stations and these should be the priority focus areas for transit-oriented, walkable - and bikable - development at many scales.

As things stand, car-oriented development regulations are mandatory in the city (except in the Central Business District, the only place where a relatively free market operates) and urban development - the kind that fosters walkability - is only available as an option through the Urban Transit Corridors ordinance. That has not produced significant appropriate development for the transit corridors.

The Transit Corridors ordinance must become mandatory rather than voluntary, which would mean having another look at it to ensure its requirements are useful and fair. Transit streets are an important new street type and need appropriate development regulations.

Transit-dedicated right of way

The most critical principle for successful transit service is freeing the transit vehicles from mingling with traffic, regardless of technologies chosen for future transit service.

Successful transit service is based largely on reliability: It will get you there when it says it will get you there. That is not possible in traffic comingled situations.

The city's Major Thoroughfare and Freeway Plan is about reserving right of way for mobility purposes. Why not contain plans for dedicating lanes to transit where the most people live and work today?

Inclusion of those transit right of way designations in the plan will spur walkable urban development even before such service exists and will particularly do that around obvious places where light rail or Bus Rapid Transit stations should be located. Developers will build a variety of urban facilities at many different intensities. This will raise property values with no expenditure of money.

Bus Rapid Transit

Bus Rapid Transit is a successful and economical innovation now in use in several countries and in a very few places in the United States. It is coming to Houston's Uptown/Galleria area soon.

BRT uses high-design buses that operate exactly like light rail vehicles without the rails. They run in dedicated lanes (eventually without drivers), quickly pick up passengers who have already paid their fares and are waiting on a level platform with multiple doors in order to make very short station stops, and they control traffic signals.

BRT is less expensive in capital outlay than rail and requires no special foundation. It is also more flexible, allowing buses to exit the transit way at the ends and provide service in ordinary streets and highways. In the end, they're just buses, even though the level of design may be high.

Regional express transit framework

We already have a high-quality commuter transit system - the HOV Park and Ride buses - that is arguably the best in the nation. It is now focused on the Central Business District, but it could relatively easily be expanded to every major job center and freeway in the region as a regional Bus Rapid Transit system operating in the existing highways. This could begin to happen very fast, beginning with I-10 Energy Corridor District to Memorial City to the Uptown/Galleria line. A street-based connection from the Westchase District to Uptown/Galleria would complete a westside express transit system.

Unfortunately, it would not be connected to the three other very big centers: downtown, the Medical Center and Greenway Plaza, which would be connected to nothing. The east-west connection must be made, and BRT would be fine.

The transportation czar

Mayor Turner has said he will create a "transportation czar" position in the mayor's office, which is an exciting prospect.

I hope the mayor will choose someone who understands the importance of planning land use and transportation in concert. That person is going to be more of a planner than an engineer, and it is important to understand that distinction. Planners plan based on citizen needs and desire, engineers design and direct implementation.

Mayor Turner will presumably be in office long enough - eight years - to guide the decisions that determine whether the city of Houston has the highest quality of life in the United States on its 200th birthday, in 2036. The key concept is Complete Communities, and hundreds, maybe thousands, of them are needed at all sizes.

Crossley is founder and senior fellow of Houston Tomorrow, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the quality of life for all the people of the Houston region.
More than 60 years ago, Houston led the nation as example of nonviolent civic change when city and business leaders worked quietly behind the scenes to desegregate lunch counters. The blood, sweat and tears of a great many Houstonians went into shaping that critical hour of our shared history.

Civic and business leaders from the Anglo and African-American communities came together to hammer out solutions. While cities like Little Rock, Selma and Detroit faced protests and riots, and national media was filled with stories of communities torn asunder, Houston's desegregation was an almost non-event by comparison. At a time when our country was papered with shocking headlines that forecast race wars, calm prevailed in Houston with peaceful demonstrations and good-faith negotiations.

We're again at a crossroads - for our city and our nation.

As we did then, we must come together and urge one another to be respectful, peaceful and tolerant as we witness another chapter in Houston's history with the arrival of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. This week, Trump will be in Houston to fundraise and discuss his candidacy for president of the United States, an event that will no doubt inflame the passions of many Houstonians.

Houston has the right to pride itself on our standards of behavior. We are the most diverse city in the United States, and many of us strive to make Houston the most tolerant, accepting and kind city, as well.

When our neighbors suffer, and our neighborhoods are covered in floodwaters, do we riot? Do we loot stores? Do we rob one another with impunity? No, we come together to rebuild, recover and heal. In Houston, our diversity is our strength and we demonstrate it every time we face a disaster. Black or white, Muslim, Jew, Hindu or Christian, when the chips are down, Houstonians stick together and we lend a hand.

When so many of our fellow Americans were suffering in New Orleans from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we welcomed them to our city and into our homes with open arms. In times of tension and crisis, the citizens of Houston have set an example for the rest of the country in our humanity and temperament.

While it might be tempting to hurtle provocations (or our fists, or chairs) out of anger at what a politician says, that is not the Houston way. Nor is it the Houston way to answer insult with injury. Though it may be hard, we owe it to ourselves and our city to keep both our sense of perspective and civility firmly in mind. It is when our passions run the highest that it is most important to call upon the better angels of our nature.

Mr. Trump is not the first, nor will he be the last provocative figure in our politics. And while it goes without saying that we deplore racist comments, we are also obliged to urge our fellow Houstonians to keep calm.

Houston is far from perfect. We have a yawning chasm between the haves and have-nots. We face environmental challenges, social challenges, educational challenges, even infrastructure challenges, and yet for all that, we remain a city relatively free of rancor. In other words, it should take a whole lot more than a visit from Donald Trump to make us lose our collective cool.

We are soon to be presented with another opportunity to demonstrate love in the face of hate, and restraint when we feel tempted to react. If we could come together so long ago and begin to face our difficult racial history of segregation, surely we can all come together today to renounce the violence and bigotry reflected in our political discourse.

Karf is rabbi emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel. Fiorenza is archbishop emeritus of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. Lawson is pastor emeritus of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church. Khan is president of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston.
This is a column about the value of six.

Actually, it's about three individual sixes and their respective values. The first six came after a 23-year-old woman - her name has never been revealed - spoke in court to address the man who raped her last year, who took her out behind the dumpsters and penetrated her with his fingers after she had too much to drink and passed out at a party. He might have gone further, except that he was spotted by two passers-by who tackled him when he tried to run.

"You don't know me," she told 20-year-old Brock Turner, a former student at Stanford University, an Olympic hopeful in swimming, "but you've been inside me, and that's why we're here today."

She spoke of the rape and its aftermath, including the fact that the awful night a year and a half ago has left her sleeping with the lights on "like a five year old." In her statement (which you can - and should - read at Buzzfeed.com) the woman describes how it felt, after a long and invasive rape exam, to finally be alone with herself in the shower.

"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. I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else."

Turner's father, Dan, also offered a statement, pleading for leniency for his son. "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 life."

Turner was facing up to 14 years in prison. Judge Aaron Persky gave him the aforementioned six - months.

A harsher sentence "would have a severe impact on him," explained the judge.

Persky's compassion for the rapist - and lack thereof for the victim - has detonated social media like a bomb. People are furious. They are weeping. They are calling Turner a "monster." At this writing, a petition at Change.org demanding Persky's recall stands north of 900,000 signatures.

Which brings us to the second six.

The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) says that one woman in every six has been the victim of an attempted or completed sexual assault. It's an awesome, awful number. Think about it in terms of women you know. Think about Bonnie, Kadijah, Heather, Consuela, Sarah and Kim. One, two, three, four, five ...

Six.

Maybe she's never told you about it, so maybe you think it didn't - couldn't - have happened, not to one of your six. But the numbers are what the numbers are. Maryum, Stephanie, Yumiko, Keshia, Laurie ... and Pam. One, two, three, four, five ...

And six.

It's not a big number. You were counting past it in kindergarten.

For an American woman, it's a measure of the danger she faces from predatory men who consider her body to be their right. It is the difference between self-confidence and fear.

For Turner's victim, it is a measure of the value the justice system placed on her trauma - and on her. It is the difference between the free woman she was and the frightened one she has become.

For Turner, it is the fraction of his life he's been ordered to pay for the arrogant violation of another person's self. It is the difference between spring and fall.

And here's the final six: According to RAINN, only six in every thousand perpetrators of sexual assault end up in prison.

If you are a woman, or a man who cares about women, you ought to seethe, and then you ought to do whatever you can to fix a culture that makes possible a Brock Turner - and an Aaron Persky. Because, either way you look at it, the value of six is small - too small for safety, too small for solace.

And way too small for justice.

Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald. Email him at lpitts@miamiherald.com.
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A gay Toronto MP was compelled to speak out after a deadly shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. left dozens dead and dozens more injured.

Don Valley West MP Rob Oliphant tweeted about the shooting on Sunday morning.

As a gay man I have worried about a massacre like #Orlando my whole life. 1 person is a tragedy. 50 is unimaginable. Today I pray & hope.  Rob Oliphant (@Rob_Oliphant) June 12, 2016

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Needs to be shared: I am an openly gay MP elected by the largest Muslim community in Canada #cdnpoli#orlando#DVWpic.twitter.com/tYD32elc1V  Rob Oliphant (@Rob_Oliphant) June 12, 2016

Oliphant told The Huffington Post Canada he was feeling "sombre."

The Liberal MP said when he was younger, he went to gay nightclubs and wondered if doing so would make him the target of a "crazy person."

'Hate is hate'

An FBI agent said the suspect may have had leanings toward extreme Islamic ideologies.

But Oliphant said he believes the shooting is an issue of mental illness. He said when he heard about the violence, he immediately thought of his Muslim constituents.

"I realize that this is not only affecting me, but it's affecting them as well, that they will be upset, some will be angry at what has happened," he said in a phone interview.

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"And while they try to hold on to their faith, it's being abused and used by others and this raises that issue."

Don Valley West MP Rob Oliphant is openly gay. (Photo: CP)

The shooting brings up issues of mental health, homophobia, and Islamophobia, Oliphant said.

"Hate is hate. We can't justify one hate by putting in another one."

Constituents with deep religious convictions

Oliphant said there are more than 25,000 Muslim constituents in his Toronto riding, and many hold deep religious convictions.

A school in the area, Thorncliffe Park Elementary, made headlines after hundreds of students stayed home from school to protest Ontario's new sex-ed curriculum.

But Oliphant said he has always received an outpouring of support from that particular part of his riding.

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"Hate is hate. We can't justify one hate by putting in another one."

He was first elected in 2008, and held the seat until 2011, when he was defeated by Conservative John Carmichael.

"When I first started in Don Valley West, there was a nervousness among the Muslim communities, but no more so than among the Christian communities in the riding," he said.

He said he was re-elected in October 2015 "vote by vote."

"These are Muslims who knew I was a gay man," he said.

Oliphant said he has received death threats as a gay man and as a politician, but the community has stuck with him and listened to what he has to say- trusting him to be the "person who stands up with us."

"They understand that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that protects them is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that protects me, and we're in this together."

Also on HuffPost

Vigils In Canada For Orlando Shooting Victims See Gallery
This weekend in Orlando, the United States saw yet another savage gun spree, in fact, the worst in the long history of America's love affair with firearms. If it were to be the last of its kind, it will come 250 years too late. Over 50 people have died and at least 53 have been hospitalised with injury and it's all because they went to a gay club.

It seems every few days another story of a mass shooting emerges from America. The world feigns shock and the American political class feign an invigoration to change things. Within hours, the compassion wains and nothing changes.

50 people alone died in Pulse nightclub in Orlando on Saturday night. ISIS have claimed responsibility for an attack that many feared would come, but the gun laws in the US made this all the more possible.

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All statistics show that gun control results in fewer violent gun crimes; the United States' has twenty five times more firearm deaths than any other developed country where significant gun control measures are in place. Every year, around 10,000 Americans are killed by gunfire, yet the right to own a military style weapon is held sacrosanct.

In recent years, we have seen instances of people, sometimes even children, effortlessly slaughtered by one person armed only with loathing and ammunition. Then, the response is always the same; a spike in gun sales and tacit rhetoric from politicians. Since the Dunblane massacre led to the UK outlawing handguns in the late 1990s only one mass shooting has occurred. Yet, without those restrictions the US has recorded 187 shootings since 2013 in schools alone.

This is a nation that is so enamoured with the cult of the Star-Spangled Banner that revising their 18th Century constitution for the modern world is seen as a greater evil than slaughtering fifty people for being LGBT+. In fact, a Republican government official did not even bother with the usual sham empathy for the many victims of the tragedy, instead inferring that the gay community had 'reaped what they sowed'.

And this is what is so painstakingly distressing about this weekend's attack; it echoes the broader issue of irrational revulsion in society. A prominent politician has effectively endorsed the killing of gay people - this is an actual event that occurred in 2016, one which suggests that this is an endemic that corrupts all social spheres.

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Of course, these vile attitudes are problematic enough but are made much more so in a nation like the United States. Where it is legal to buy AR-15 assault rifles but in the most callous sense of irony, illegal for gay men to donate blood to those 53 people injured, because of an unscientific stigma.

Speculation over whether this attack was religiously motivated has delivered no conclusion but what is clear is that society still has so much to do in regards to remedying homophobia. All communities be they atheists, Christians, Muslims or whatever, need to do more to challenge any hatred that causes violence like this. If your doctrine can be construed to condone things like the atrocities in Orlando, then society needs you to help prevent them - not because you are responsible but because it is the right thing to do.

I was hollered at by a group of men, and called a 'faggot' and a 'bender' in the streets of cosmopolitan Central London on Friday night, I rebutted and nothing else happened. This is what homophobia can be restricted to when guns aren't readily available. After all, that is the only thing all of these shooting sprees have in common; hatred and a weapon. Society must purge the Earth of both.

The LGBT+ community will be united in solidarity as they prepare to solemnly engage in another Summer of Pride events. But make no mistake; despite this being a crime that targeted a vulnerable group in one of their safest environments, this is a challenge at the bequest of each and every one of us.

Defenders of freedom and liberty must unite in the face of the worst terror attack on US soil since September 2001. We must reform society and reverse the gun laws that enable this barbarism. The LGBT+ community must stand up as one and be louder and prouder than ever before, and I know we will be.

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The Mail on Sunday's campaign on Britain's commitment to use of 0.7% of its gross national income on the world's poor has generated enough clicks on its e-petition to trigger a parliamentary debate.

The debate has been brought by Tory MP Steve Double, the marionette of MoS, whose campaign against aid has produced spurious headlines claiming that UK aid is used to fund "terrorists, palaces and despots"; "the world's most corrupt nations"; and perhaps worst of all, "BEEKEEPERS".

But the MoS's gross sensationalism betrays its perfectly reasonable objections to government misuse of the aid budget.

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I listened with interest to the testimony of Ian Birrell of the MoS on June 6 to the International Development Committee on the government's use of private contractors.

Let it be known that I share his concern the Tories are allowing "excessive profiteering on the backs of British tax payers on the one hand, and on the backs of the poor on the other", by subsidising a development 'industry' of private contractors and the executive salaries of International NGOs.

I also share his concern that DfID's use of the Big Four accountants is contrary to sustainable development. PwC for example, are involved in industrial-scale marketing of tax-avoidance schemes for corporations in the Global South.

I also have other concerns about how the Tories are increasingly spending aid to subsidise the fossil fuel industry and on deportation deals with dozens of countries.

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However this reactionary call to scrap aid reminds me of the dubious arguments now being mobilised by the Brexit camp: point out the flaws, reject reform and promise untold wealth if only we just throw the baby out with the bathwater.

In spite of the worrying slide towards the privatisation of aid under this government, British aid remains a net force for good in the world.

British aid has helped to strengthening health and education systems across the Global South and has contributed to cutting extreme poverty between 1990 and 2011 by 60%. Through Britain's contributions to the multilateral Global and Fund and Ross Fund, we have been instrumental in the battle against the huge killers of malaria, HIV/Aids and TB.

The UK spends less aid as a proportion of gross national income than Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark and Holland, but is the first country to commit itself to the fixed 0.7% provision. To put it in context it is less than we as a nation spend on takeaways each year.

Aid is simply public money. It can be spent resourcefully or wastefully. It is no surprise that Tories have outsourced aid to corporations, because this government is ideologically wedded to private greed over public service. They have overseen the privatisation of British aid and the reversal of Labour's 2001 policy of untying aid from Britain's commercial interests.

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When aid is spent efficiently - and by this I mean locally, not on subsidising huge British contractors - it builds capacity in local institutions, reducing both poverty and inequality. When Labour formed DfID we did so with the aim of ending aid dependency. The Tory's have been complicit in the creation of a lucrative industry that literally depends on millions remaining in poverty.

Britain, the sixth richest country in the world, affords a high standard of living to many of its citizens through historical and ongoing exploitation of labour and resources in the Global South.

We maintain unfair tax and trade treaties with the poorest nations on Earth and through our offshore tax havens, we operate the largest financial secrecy network in the world, in which public wealth from the Global South is hidden by some corrupt elites.

The Mail on Sunday itself gets off its UK tax bill in a similar way. Harold Jonathan Esmond Vere Harmsworth 4th Viscount Rothermere owns the paper through an offshore company based in the UK tax haven of Bermuda.

If this government were to use its power to ban such unjust practices and address inequality at its core, it would boost developing nations' public finances, which could be spent by their governments on their own sustainable development. But until that day, the Labour Party stands solidly behind maintaining 0.7%.

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Evgeny Gromov via Getty Images

Suffragettes like Emmeline Pankhurst, Millicent Fawcett and Emily Davison fought for the rights that exist for women in the UK today. Primarily our right to vote. Our right to democracy. But this right is slowly been salami sliced away by the EU, they're slicing away at everything these great women fought for. We cannot control our own laws, our own borders and are subservient to an unelectable, unaccountable, male dominated European Commission.

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In some EU countries, women's rights are sliding backwards and countries like Turkey, Serbia and Albania who hope to join the EU are unlikely to become champions of women's rights. BSE can shout and jeer that Britain will never end up like that. But look at the sex attacks in Cologne.

In Germany, a country which is supposedly equal one train operator has felt obliged to create women-only carriages. BSE can attempt to put a positive spin on that as much as they like, but you cannot ignore gender apartheid. This labels all men as abusers and teaching girls that the way they dress makes them "deserve" these savage attacks. Germany is of course an affluent country.

What about women in countries like Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia? These women in poorer EU countries are facing desperate poverty and hardship. The open-board Schengen area has begun an explosion in people trafficking and women being sold for prostitution. Girls as young as 12 are sold by their parents and forced to work as prostitutes. There are no border controls, no passport checks meaning no safety net for this incredibly frightened and vulnerable young girls. These children who should be protected under EU laws has that exact thing working against them. They are forced into labour intensive jobs, sex trafficking and even trafficking of human organs because they have an EU passport. These vile trades are blossoming because the leaders can painlessly evade capture because of EU laws.

The Remain campaign is getting desperate, they keep using the adage that our rights will be in jeopardy if we leave the EU. However, this is wrong, they simply do not know their history. The United Kingdom has a record for being ahead of the time with women's rights; before we even joined the EU this country had passed the Abortion Act, the Divorce Reform Act and the Equal Pay Act. Even after we joined the EU this country continued to be committed to advancing women's rights passing the Sex Discrimination Act, the Employment Protection Act and the Domestic Violence Act. This country is perfectly capable of advocating women's rights as it has done since the suffragettes without the help from overpaid Eurocrats.

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The European Union cannot talk about equality because even its commission is not equal. Only 9 out of the 28 EU commissioners are female. Team Juncker is not female friendly, it is not advancing women's rights and it does not give a balanced view. Jean-Claude Juncker may say he wants more female commissioners, however, actions speak louder than words. He has not changed anything, nor does he need to.

Last year, following a sequence of Freedom of Information requests, the leave campaign found sexism was rampant within the European Central Bank. There, not only did men outnumber women 58 to 42% across all jobs, but female managers earned a monthly average of 7,736 less than male colleagues holding the same positions. How did the European Central Bank attempt to excuse this? By saying it was due to a 'larger proportion of male staff members in executive positions at the start of the establishment, some 15 years ago, and the subsequent impact of career progression'. In other words they've made no effort in the last 15 years to rectify the gender inequity amongst their workforce.

The EU may like to portray itself as a supporter of the rights of women, minorities and other minority groups, but it's just empty rhetoric designed to cover up the true misogynistic outlook in Brussels. These statistics prove the EU isn't serious about gender equality, and we should take no lectures on equality from those prepared to stand by an organisation riddled with such double-standards.

We as a country are perfectly capable of advocating women's rights without help from anyone else, especially overpaid Eurocrats. We must lobby the MPs in power, stand up for what we believe in and always vote. Voting to leave the European Union is the safest choice for women. The safest choice for our rights and our future. Do we trust the unelected, unaccountable and often sexist eurocratic elite to govern us? We only have one chance, one vote and one future. It is ours and all you have to do is Vote to Leave on June the 23rd.
The symptoms of RSV in babies and children may look like the common cold, but there are a few additional things to watch out for, as well as ways to help prevent infection.
By Alison Martin, Director, Kantar Worldpanel

The idea that shoppers are loyal to brands is a myth in the world of FMCG. To ensure your product is chosen above the rest, it needs to speak to the person at the moment of purchase at every single possible occasion of purchase.

In many sectors, brands have proven remarkably successful at this by building a long-term mental availability. You see a technology brand or a fashion brand on the shelf or on Amazon and you recognise it. Better yet, you know it. Even better than that, you feel some emotion for it; be that trust, admiration or aspiration.

But what about those brands that impact your life in a lighter way, those that  unlike clothes and smartphones  dont necessarily have a place in a social setting or speak to your personality? It is safe to say, for example, that few people knowingly feel emotionally involved with their toilet tissue brand. Why would they be? A product regularly bought and quite literally flushed down the toilet; it holds no obvious long term value or connection.

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Creating emotion around the mundane and everyday has long been the challenge for FMCG brands, especially through their advertising. An emerging trend is for brands to offer not only a functional purpose but have a social value as well, for Lifebouy theirs is aiding public health across much of Asia.

Our fourth annual Brand Footprint report, a ranking of the 50 most chosen global FMCG brands, proves there is a strong correlation between the most chosen brands, and those that are tugging on shoppers heart strings. Not only does a personal touch build stronger brand advocacy  it also influences how many times your brand is chosen by shoppers.

Here are four brands that stood out in this years global ranking, who know the best way to a shoppers trolley is through their hearts:

Ariel  Share the load

Here is a brand campaign so influential that Sheryl Sandberg cited it as one of the most powerful she had ever seen. In India, the laundry detergent noticed that a continued increase in women working outside the home does not always positively correlate with men assuming more responsibility for household chores.

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This award winning advertising campaign, poses the question: is housework just for women?. Told from the perspective of a father who watches his daughter come home from work and clean up for her husband, the narrative laments how stereotypes and the fathers own behaviour have contributed to her situation and, heartwarmingly, promises to change.

In the year since this campaign launched in India, winning a Cannes Glass Lion in 2015, Ariel has grown its Consumer Reach Points* by 8 per cent in Asia.

Downy  What does your laundry say about you?

The Procter and Gamble fabric softener remains one of the fastest growing global brands, having moved its way up the Brand Footprint ranking for three years running. This year, it continues to go from strength to strength, increasing its Consumer Reach Points by 11.2 per cent. Fabric softener is not a product people would typical associate with an emotional connection, however, to increase the brands range Downy expanded the use of its product beyond the usual laundry cycle.

In 2015, for example, the Timeless Collection was launched in Asian markets, reaching into occasions long confined to the personal care space  such as perfumes. Each product in the range was designed by a famous fashion house to emulate the scent of an iconic movie star. Using the tagline Do men notice their women? the brand drew a groundbreaking, but convincing, connection between a womans laundry scent and her personal style and allure.

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Nutella  #NutellaStories

Recruiting 7.2 million new shoppers over the course of the year, Nutella is among the fastest growing brands in the top 150 ranking. Growth is most notable in the Middle East where it rose 14 places in the ranking and experienced a 24.3 per cent increase in Consumer Reach Points.

Long at the top of its game in marketing, the brand is likely still reaping rewards from its 50 year anniversary in 2014. Anchored in social media  using the hashtag #NutellaStories  the campaign invited fans to share their favourite memories of Nutella. These were curated on a dedicated microsite which now features over 76,000 user-generated personal stories.

Coca Cola - Hello Happiness

The worlds most chosen brand for the fourth consecutive year, Coca-Cola is a formidable player in the FMCG market. This beverage giant has a heart to match the size of its global reach, with its initiative helping to connect separated families. Under the Hello Happiness banner Coca-Cola in Dubai turned used bottle caps into currency. In a specially constructed phone booth, migrant workers could phone home by inserting a bottle cap as payment for the call.

When a brand makes a consumer feel something, they carry it with them. They might tell their family members about an ad that made them laugh, or share the hashtag on social media, contributing to a wider conversation.
Image: Kremlin. Stock Photo. Pixabay.com

Constitutions are supposed to be the ultimate guarantor of citizens' rights, but cunning leaders in the former Soviet Union often manipulate them for their own ends, not the people's.

The most egregious manipulation of the constitutional-revision process is changing the document to allow a leader to stay in office longer, so he has more time to feed at the public trough.

Take the Russian Constitution, for example.

The document, which was created in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, hasn't been amended a lot.

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But the practical effect of one of those revisions -- in 2008 -- was to extend Vladimir Putin's rule for four years.

When Putin was elected president in 2000, the constitution in effect at the time limited him to two consecutive four-year terms as the nation's leader.

He got around the limit by having his political compatriot Dmitry Medvedev run for president in 2008, with Putin continuing to run Russia as the power behind the throne.

When 2012 rolled around, Putin ran for president again. That was allowed under the constitution because there was a break between his first two terms and the third.

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Before he ran, however, he got Parliament to change the constitution so he could serve two new six-year terms as president rather than two new four-year terms.

If he runs for president again in 2018, he will have been in the highest office 20 years and run the country for four years as the power behind the throne -- a total of 24 years as ruler. That's a dictatorship in anybody's book.

Turkmenistan's leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, also increased his power in 2008 by pushing constitutional revisions through Parliament.

A key provision in the 2008 change restored the president's power to appoint regional governors and mayors -- an important tool for preventing an opposition movement from developing outside the capital of Ashgabat. A previous constitutional change, in 2005, had shifted the power to appoint governors and mayors from the president to regional officials.

But the most obvious recent example of a regional leader's manipulation of the constitutional-revision process to cement his power is Armenia.

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In December of 2015, the government announced that two-thirds of Armenian voters had approved the constitutional-change referendum that President Serzh Sargsyan's Republican Party had drawn up.

Opponents of the change had contended that its only purpose was to prolong Sargsyan's rule. And, they screamed, the government had stolen the vote.

The main thrust of the constitutional revision was changing Armenia's political model from a strong-president system to a parliamentary system.

The previous constitution limited a president to two five-year terms. That meant that Sargsyan, who was elected in 2008, would have to give up ruling the country in 2018.

The shift to a parliamentary system allows him to continue being the supreme ruler -- only this time as prime minister instead of president.

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The constitutional revision shifts the power between the president and prime minister. Under the old system, the president had the power and the prime minister was a figurehead. Now the reverse is true.

Thousands of Armenians, who recognized that the constitutional revision would be tantamount to anointing Sargsyan as Armenia's ruler for life, demonstrated against the vote. They said it was sure to be as fraudulent as the 2013 vote in which Sargsyan was re-elected as president. The 2013 election also spawned fraudulent-vote street protests.

There were many signs that opponents of the constitutional-change referendum were right about the vote being manipulated.

Election officials reported that in a number of precincts not even one vote was cast against the revision proposal.

"One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry," revision opponent Karena Avedissian tweeted.

In one case, non-government voter-registration monitors found a voter on the rolls whose birth year was listed as 1895. That would have made him 120 -- the world's oldest person by far. The Compass Research Center also discovered that three in 10 of the addresses of voters listed on the rolls in Gyumri, Armenia's second-largest city, didn't exist.

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And the center found 845 more voter names in one precinct than there were voting-age residents.

The government hailed the adoption of the constitutional change, saying it would bring "stability" to the political system.

Opponents noted sarcastically that it would certainly bring stability to Sargsyan's luxurious lifestyle, since he could continue using the power of his office to enrich himself.

In democracies, constitutional changes are often designed to empower citizens. An example is the U.S. amendment in 1919 that gave women the right to vote.

In the former Soviet Union, however, the mantra for constitutional change should be "buyer beware." That's because, in many cases, those who get the additional power are not the rank and file -- who need it -- but the fat cats who are already on top.
By Hong Soon-do, Beijing correspondent, AsiaToday - Chinese illegal fishing is threatening world waters. While foreign countries that are hit by illegal fishing are taking strong action by sinking boats, imposing fine, and such, the situation is not showing a sign of improvement.

According to Western sources in Beijing on Sunday, Chinese fishing boats continue to poach in foreign waters including Korea's Western Sea, East China Sea, South China Sea, Indian Ocean, and even South American coast has become a source of troublesome matter.

Fishing boats in Shidao port near Weihai in Shandong provice, which is close to Korea's western sea. They are allegedly fishing in Korea's western sea almost every day./ Source: search engine Baidu

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Those countries hit by Chinese poaching include Korea, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Of course, these countries are taking strong actions such as sinking the illegal boats, and arresting fisherman, in order to solve this problem. Indonesia, for instance, has deployed 5 F-16 fighter jets to the Natuna islands close to South China Sea which would be used to combat illegal fishing. Recently, Indonesia destroyed 23 foreign fishing boats from Vietnam, Malaysia, and other countries for illegally operating in its waters, sending a secret warning to Chinese vessels. Philippine is securing Chinese fishermen's whereabouts by capturing them. Last month, Philippine arrested twenty-five Chinese fishermen on two boats flying inverted Philippine flags.

Recently, South Africa detained three Chinese vessels and arrested nearly 100 crewmen on board for illegally entering the South African Exclusive Economic Zone. In the case of Argentina, its coast guard shoot holes in a Chinese vessel that was illegally fishing off its coast. More neighboring countries are expected to respond like Argentina.
Weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court is set to announce its decision in United States v. Texas, immigrant rights advocates are working to get accurate information to residents of one of the state's hardest-to-serve regions: California's Central Valley.

"We have one antidote to fear, and it's information," Sandy Close, executive director of New America Media, said during a recent media roundtable in Fresno. Fear and confusion, Close warned, could expose people to "being scammed, having people prey on the confusion."

The meeting was organized by New America Media in collaboration with Ready California and local partner organizations, and was joined by reporters from a dozen media outlets, as well as community members and immigrant rights advocates.

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Advocates said that with a decision expected soon, this is a crucial time to give people the information they need.

What families need to know

The U.S. Supreme Court will announce its decision in United States v. Texas between now and the end of June. The outcome will determine the future of two immigration relief programs on hold since Obama first announced them in 2014.

If the Supreme Court sides with the Obama administration, the programs would finally go into effect, providing certain undocumented immigrants with temporary protection from deportation and access to a work permit and a social security number.

One program would expand DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), eliminating the age cap now in place with the existing program that was first announced in 2012.

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The other, called DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans), would create a new program for undocumented parents who have U.S.-citizen or legal permanent resident children.

"If and when these programs go into effect, Ready California is working with many groups to get ready," said Sara Feldman, project director of Ready California, a statewide collaborative that is working to ensure the maximum number of eligible Californians benefit from DACA and DAPA.

Nationally, an estimated 5 million people could be eligible to apply for one of the programs.

Three scenarios

Advocates are preparing immigrant communities for three possible outcomes.

In the case of a positive 5-3 decision, expanded DACA is expected to go into effect within days or weeks. DAPA is expected to go into effect a little later, in several weeks or months.

Families can start getting their documents together, but they will not be able to apply until the programs go into effect. Advocates warn that the potential for immigration scams during this time could be high, and that families should not pay anyone who promises to get them on a "waiting list" for a program that isn't available yet.

In the case of a negative decision or a 4-4 split, DAPA and expanded DACA would remain blocked. However, a 4-4 split would not set legal precedent and could not be used as a legal challenge to the current DACA program.

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Advocates note that even if DAPA and expanded DACA remain blocked, there are a number of steps families can still take to protect themselves.

In California, undocumented immigrants can apply for a driver's license under the state's AB 60. Parents here can also enroll their children in Medi-Cal, regardless of the child's immigration status. Nationally, eligible green card holders can apply for U.S. citizenship; and U.S. citizens can register to vote.

The original DACA program will continue to exist and is not affected by the Supreme Court case. Individuals can still apply for and renew DACA and check with a qualified legal service provider to see what other immigration relief options they might be eligible for.

Community members who have received DACA described the program as "life-changing."

"I'm the first person in my family and possibly the first in my town, to graduate from high school," said Yessenia Herrera, a native of Oaxaca, who is now pursuing a college degree and working as a medical and legal interpreter.

"Even though these benefits are temporary, the effect that they have on our lives are life-changing," said Gelasio Rodriguez, who graduated from Fresno State University as a political science major. "You feel that now you finally belong."

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A hard-to-serve region

Service providers in the Central Valley have been crisscrossing five counties, spreading the word about how to apply for the current DACA program, avoid fraud, and prepare for the possible implementation of the two new programs.

But the region is one of the most challenging in the state to operate in, not only because the population is spread out but also because there are few legal service providers to serve them.

"Here in the Central Valley, covering five counties, we don't have many BIA-accredited organizations," said Fatima Hernandez, programs director of the UFW Foundation. BIA (Board of Immigration Appeals) accreditation allows non-lawyers to provide limited legal services to clients.

"There are only eight to 10 organizations covering 147,000 individuals who could qualify for DAPA," said Hernandez. Some areas, like King and Tulare County, have few or no organizations able to serve them, she said.

As a result, immigrant families - some of whom have low income and education levels - may be more vulnerable to immigration scams.

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For indigenous Mexican communities, such as Mixtec, Zapotec, Triqui and Purepecha, one of the biggest barriers is language. Some indigenous communities here speak only their native language and do not know Spanish or English, said Leoncio Vasquez Santos, executive director of the Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indigena Oaxaqueno.

How to avoid fraud

"A lot of our community has been taken advantage of by notarios or consultants," added Mario Gonzalez, victim service program manager of Centro La Familia Advocacy Services.

Part of the problem is a translation issue, he explained. "In the United States, notarios don't go through the same education as in Mexico or other counties. Here, they just take an exam. They can't give you legal advice."

Advocates encouraged immigrants to ask to see the credentials of their legal services provider. Applicants should never sign a blank form, and should ask for a translation if they need it. They should also make sure to get copies of any papers filed for their case.

"Don't pay anyone who promises you a quick fix to your immigration problem," said Gonzalez.

"A lot of people who have been scammed don't report it," he said. "If someone's taken advantage of you, you can go to one of our local non-profits and they can help you report it to the FTC."



For more information about Ready California, visit Ready-California.org.
As frightening as it may sound to some liberals, the Oklahoma legislature needs to come back in special session. This is a scary prospect for those who recall Judge Gideon Tucker's admonition that "No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session." But, in Oklahoma, it appears that you're not much better off when they are not in session.

Civil asset forfeiture in Oklahoma has emerged as an international controversy. For those who do not know, civil asset forfeiture is the practice of law enforcement officials seizing personal property of those suspected of committing a crime. It is often done without charging and individual of a crime, and the practice requires individuals to take additional legal action to recover their property. Oklahoma's law enforcement community rates among the worst in the country for policing for profit. News stories across the U.S. have highlighted alleged abuse of this practice by law enforcement, including California, Arizona, and, yes, Oklahoma.

The latest news, that Oklahoma law enforcement contracted card scanners to allow officers to unilaterally seize money from confiscated debit cards, set off a furor around the world. News outlets reported on what is yet another, new means of probably violating the due process protections of people passing through Oklahoma. Sadly, it is not the first story on alleged civil asset abuse in this state; nor will it be the last.

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Oklahoma's legislature was offered the opportunity to engage reform during its most recent session. Instead, lawmakers bottled up most legislation without a hearings. To their credit, they did pass a bill allowing individuals to recover attorneys' fees associated with recovering their legitimate, confiscated property.

Legislative democracy doesn't just mean engaging with the issues you like; it also means engaging the problems that must be addressed. It doesn't mean just protecting the people who voted for you; it means defending the Constitution, even if doing so benefits people who are unpopular with your constituency. And, Oklahoma's lawmakers have the chance to do the right thing by coming back in special session.

There are two ways to get a special session in Oklahoma. Either the governor can call the session, or two-thirds of both chambers' members can make a written call request to their presiding officers. Governor Fallin and the Oklahoma legislature have a chance to do the right thing, before the damage to Oklahoma's reputation becomes too severe. The legislature is already enjoying a strained relationship with the business communities of Tulsa and Oklahoma City, and another high-profile embarrassment does little to fix things with the Chamber crowd.

But, more importantly, those who purport to lead in the Sooner State have the chance to do the right thing. At present, Oklahoma law enforcement appears to be engaging in policies that clearly violate the 4th and 5th Amendment guarantees made to all Americans, that they and their effects be secure against unreasonable seizures, and that they not be deprived of property without due process of law.

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STANFORD UNIVERSITY COMMENCEMENT

June 12th, 2016

Palo Alto, California

Ken Burns

(AS DELIVERED)



President Hennessy, members of the Board of Trustees, distinguished faculty and staff, proud and relieved parents, calm and serene grandparents, distracted but secretly pleased siblings, ladies and gentlemen, graduating students of the Class of 2016, good morning. I am deeply honored and privileged that you have asked me here to say a few words at so momentous an occasion, that you might find what I have to say worthy of your attention on so important a day, especially one with such historical significance. One hundred and twenty-five years. Wow.



Thank you, too, for that generous introduction, President Hennessy. I always feel compelled, though, to inoculate myself against such praise by remembering that I have on my refrigerator at home an old and now faded cartoon, which shows two men standing in hell, the flames licking up around them. One guy says to the other, "Apparently my over 200 screen credits didn't mean a damn thing." They don't, of course; there is much more meaning in your accomplishments, which we memorialize today.



I am in the business of memorializing--of history. It is not always a popular subject on college campuses today, particularly when, at times, it may seem to some an anachronistic and irrelevant pursuit, particularly with the ferocious urgency this moment seems to exert on us. It is my job, however, to remind people--with story, memory, anecdote and feeling--of the power our past also exerts, to help us better understand what's going on now. It is my job to try to discern patterns and themes from history to enable us to interpret our dizzying, and sometimes dismaying, present. For nearly forty years now, I have diligently practiced and rigorously maintained a conscious neutrality in my work, avoiding the advocacy of many of my colleagues, trying to speak to all of my fellow citizens.



Over those decades of historical documentary filmmaking, I have also come to the realization that history is not a fixed thing, a collection of precise dates, facts and events that add up to a quantifiable, certain, confidently known, truth. History is a mysterious and malleable thing, constantly changing, not just as new information emerges, but as our own interests, emotions and inclinations change. Each generation rediscovers and reexamines that part of its past that gives its present new meaning, new possibility and new power. The question becomes for us now--for you especially--what will we choose as our inspiration? Which distant events and long dead figures will provide us with the greatest help, the most coherent context, and the wisdom to go forward?



This is in part an existential question. None of us gets out of here alive. An exception will not be made in your case and you'll live forever. You can't actually design your life. (If you want to make God laugh, the saying goes, tell her your plans.) The hard times and vicissitudes of life will ultimately visit everyone. You will also come to realize that you are less defined by the good things that happen to you, your moments of happiness and apparent control, than you are by those misfortunes and unexpected challenges that, in fact, shape you more definitively, and help to solidify your true character--the measure of any human value. You, especially, know that the conversation that comes out of tragedy and injustice needs to be encouraged, emphasis on courage. It is through those conversations that we make progress.



A mentor of mine, the journalist Tom Brokaw, recently said to me, "What we learn is more important than what we set out to do." It's tough out there, but so beautiful, too. And history--memory--can prepare you.



I have a searing memory of the summer of 1962, when I was almost nine, joining our family dinner on a hot, sweltering day in a tract house in a development in Newark, Delaware, and seeing my mother crying. She had just learned, and my brother and I had just been told, that she would be dead of cancer within six months. But that's not what was causing her tears. Our inadequate health insurance had practically bankrupted us, and our neighbors--equally struggling working people--had taken up a collection and presented my parents with six crisp twenty dollar bills--$120 in total--enough to keep us solvent for more than a month. In that moment, I understood something about community and courage, about constant struggle and little victories. That hot June evening was a victory. And I have spent my entire professional life trying to resurrect small moments within the larger sweep of American history, trying to find our better angels in the most difficult of circumstances, trying to wake the dead, to hear their stories.



But how do we keep that realization of our own inevitable mortality from paralyzing us with fear? And how do we also keep our usual denial of this fact from depriving our lives and our actions of real meaning, of real purpose? This is our great human challenge, your challenge. This is where history can help. The past often offers an illuminating and clear headed perspective from which to observe and reconcile the passions of the present moment, just when they threaten to overwhelm us. The history we know, the stories we tell ourselves, relieve that existential anxiety, allow us to live beyond our fleeting lifespans, and permit us to value and love and distinguish what is important. And the practice of history, both personal and professional, becomes a kind of conscience for us.



As a filmmaker, as a historian, as an American, I have been drawn continually to the life and example and words of Abraham Lincoln. He seems to get us better than we get ourselves. One hundred and fifty-eight years ago, in mid-June of 1858, Abraham Lincoln, running in what would be a failed bid for the United States Senate, at a time of bitter partisanship in our national politics, almost entirely over the issue of slavery, spoke to the Republican State Convention in the Illinois Statehouse in Springfield. His political party was brand new, born barely four years before with one single purpose in mind: to end the intolerable hypocrisy of chattel slavery that still existed in a country promoting certain unalienable rights to itself and the world.



He said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." "A house divided against itself cannot stand."



Four and half years later, he was president, presiding over a country in the midst of the worst crisis in American history, our Civil War, giving his Annual Message to Congress, what we now call the State of the Union. The state of the Union was not good. His house was divided. But he also saw the larger picture. "The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise--with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."



And then he went on: "Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history...The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union...In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free--honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth."



You are the latest generation he was metaphorically speaking about, and you are, whether you are yet aware of it or not, charged with saving our Union. The stakes are slightly different than the ones Lincoln faced--there is not yet armed rebellion--but they are just as high. And before you go out and try to live and shape the rest of your life, you are required now to rise, as Lincoln implored us, with the occasion.



You know, it is terribly fashionable these days to criticize the United States government, the institution Lincoln was trying to save, to blame it for all the ills known to humankind, and, my goodness, ladies and gentlemen, it has made more than its fair share of catastrophic mistakes. But you would be hard pressed to find--in all of human history--a greater force for good. From our Declaration of Independence to our Constitution and Bill of Rights; from Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the Land Grant College and Homestead Acts; from the transcontinental railroad and our national parks to child labor laws, Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act; from the GI Bill and the interstate highway system to putting a man on the moon and the Affordable Care Act, the United States government has been the author of many of the best aspects of our public and personal lives. But if you tune in to politics, if you listen to the rhetoric of this election cycle, you are made painfully aware that everything is going to hell in a handbasket and the chief culprit is our evil government.



Part of the reason this kind of criticism sticks is because we live in an age of social media where we are constantly assured that we are all independent free agents. But that free agency is essentially unconnected to real community, divorced from civic engagement, duped into believing in our own lonely primacy by a sophisticated media culture that requires you--no--desperately needs you--to live in an all-consuming disposable present, wearing the right blue jeans, driving the right car, carrying the right handbag, eating at all the right places, blissfully unaware of the historical tides that have brought us to this moment, blissfully uninterested in where those tides might take us.



Our spurious sovereignty is reinforced and perpetually underscored to our obvious and great comfort, but this kind of existence actually ingrains in us a stultifying sameness that rewards conformity (not courage), ignorance and anti-intellectualism (not critical thinking). This wouldn't be so bad if we were just wasting our own lives, but this year our political future depends on it. And there comes a time when I--and you--can no longer remain neutral, silent. We must speak up...and speak out.



For 216 years, our elections, though bitterly contested, have featured the philosophies and character of candidates who were clearly qualified. That is not the case this year. One is glaringly not qualified. So before you do anything with your well-earned degree, you must do everything you can to defeat the retrograde forces that have invaded our democratic process, divided our house, to fight against, no matter your political persuasion, the dictatorial tendencies of the candidate with zero experience in the much maligned but subtle art of governance; who is against lots of things, but doesn't seem to be for anything, offering only bombastic and contradictory promises, and terrifying Orwellian statements; a person who easily lies, creating an environment where the truth doesn't seem to matter; who has never demonstrated any interest in anyone or anything but himself and his own enrichment; who insults veterans, threatens a free press, mocks the handicapped, denigrates women, immigrants and all Muslims; a man who took more than a day to remember to disavow a supporter who advocates white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan; an infantile, bullying man who, depending on his mood, is willing to discard old and established alliances, treaties and long-standing relationships. I feel genuine sorrow for the understandably scared and--they feel--powerless people who have flocked to his campaign in the mistaken belief that--as often happens on TV--a wand can be waved and every complicated problem can be solved with the simplest of solutions. They can't. It is a political Ponzi scheme. And asking this man to assume the highest office in the land would be like asking a newly minted car driver to fly a 747.



As a student of history, I recognize this type. He emerges everywhere and in all eras. We see nurtured in his campaign an incipient Proto-fascism, a nativist anti-immigrant Know Nothing-ism, a disrespect for the judiciary, the prospect of women losing authority over their own bodies, African Americans again asked to go to the back of the line, voter suppression gleefully promoted, jingoistic saber rattling, a total lack of historical awareness, a political paranoia that, predictably, points fingers, always making the other wrong. These are all virulent strains that have at times infected us in the past. But they now loom in front of us again--all happening at once. We know from our history books that these are the diseases of ancient and now fallen empires. The sense of commonwealth, of shared sacrifice, of trust, so much a part of American life, is eroding fast, spurred along and amplified by an amoral Internet that permits a lie to circle the globe three times before the truth can get started.



We no longer have the luxury of neutrality or "balance," or even of bemused disdain. Many of our media institutions have largely failed to expose this charlatan, torn between a nagging responsibility to good journalism and the big ratings a media circus always delivers. In fact, they have given him the abundant airtime he so desperately craves, so much so that it has actually worn down our natural human revulsion to this kind of behavior. Hey, he's rich; he must be doing something right. He is not. Edward R. Murrow would have exposed this naked emperor months ago. He is an insult to our history. Do not be deceived by his momentary "good behavior." It is only a spoiled, misbehaving child hoping somehow to still have dessert.



And do not think that the tragedy in Orlando underscores his points. It does not. We must "disenthrall ourselves," as Abraham Lincoln said, from the culture of violence and guns. And then "we shall save our country."



This is not a liberal or conservative issue, a red state, blue state divide. This is an American issue. Many honorable people, including the last two Republican presidents, members of the party of Abraham Lincoln, have declined to support him. And I implore those "Vichy Republicans" who have endorsed him to please, please reconsider. We must remain committed to the kindness and community that are the hallmarks of civilization and reject the troubling, unfiltered Tourettes of his tribalism.



The next few months of your "commencement," that is to say, your future, will be critical to the survival of our Republic. "The occasion is piled high with difficulty." Let us pledge here today that we will not let this happen to the exquisite, yet deeply flawed, land we all love and cherish--and hope to leave intact to our posterity. Let us "nobly save," not "meanly lose, the last best hope of earth."



Let me speak directly to the graduating class. Watch out. Here comes the advice.



Look. I am the father of four daughters. If someone tells you they've been sexually assaulted, take it effing seriously. And listen to them! Maybe, some day, we will make the survivor's eloquent statement as important as Dr. King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail.



Try not to make the other wrong, as I just did with that "presumptive" nominee. Be for something.



Be curious, not cool. Feed your soul, too. Every day.



Remember, insecurity makes liars of us all. Not just presidential candidates.



Don't confuse success with excellence. The poet Robert Penn Warren once told me that "careerism is death."



Do not descend too deeply into specialism either. Educate all of your parts. You will be healthier.



Free yourselves from the limitations of the binary world. It is just a tool. A means, not an end.



Seek out--and have--mentors. Listen to them. The late theatrical director Tyrone Guthrie once said, "We are looking for ideas large enough to be afraid of again." Embrace those new ideas. Bite off more than you can chew.



Travel. Do not get stuck in one place. Visit our national parks. Their sheer majesty may remind you of your own "atomic insignificance," as one observer noted, but in the inscrutable ways of Nature, you will feel larger, inspirited, just as the egotist in our midst is diminished by his or her self-regard.



Insist on heroes. And be one.



Read. The book is still the greatest manmade machine of all--not the car, not the TV, not the smartphone.



Make babies. One of the greatest things that will happen to you is that you will have to worry--I mean really worry--about someone other than yourself. It is liberating and exhilarating. I promise. Ask your parents.



Do not lose your enthusiasm. In its Greek etymology, the word enthusiasm means simply, "God in us."



Serve your country. Insist that we fight the right wars. Convince your government, as Lincoln knew, that the real threat always and still comes from within this favored land. Governments always forget that.



Insist that we support science and the arts, especially the arts. They have nothing to do with the actual defense of our country--they just make our country worth defending.



Believe, as Arthur Miller told me in an interview for my very first film on the Brooklyn Bridge, "believe, that maybe you too could add something that would last and be beautiful."



And vote. You indelibly underscore your citizenship--and our connection with each other--when you do.



Good luck. And Godspeed.
My husband Peter and I both attended the University of Pennsylvania in the sixties. He was a BMOC (big man on campus) who ended up taking an extra year "time out" to regroup. Therefore, while I was a freshman, he was a senior. I knew all about him and his escapades at Penn. Peter was a legend at Penn and not always in a good way. He knew all about me, as well and my run for Miss Student Body, aka Miss University, and subsequent loss to Candice Bergen. Peter and I never actually met until after college which was fortunate. When we finally met four years later, I was wearing a faux fur mini skirt and he was wearing khakis. It was true love seen through a myopic lens. Cupid knocked us for a loop and we married four months after that moment!

Penn held so many memories for us. We attended each other's reunions. We went to our 25th, 40th, and five years ago, we attended Peter's 50th class reunion. A year ago, we booked reservations to go to Philadelphia for my 50th Penn reunion. Peter's death changed those plans and now I was attending by myself. Well actually, I wasn't totally by myself. It was my son Nick's 25th reunion at the same school, which gave me the courage to attend.

I arrived on campus on a sunny and balmy afternoon and strolled through the beautiful old University buildings including the Van Pelt Library where I spent time studying. I was immediately flooded with memories and the damn burst. Tears started streaming down my face and I called my son who talked me off the ledge. Nick reminded me that the library was a place Peter NEVER set foot in and my tears immediately turned to laughter. I am so grateful that Nick inherited Peter's sense of humor and knows the perfect time to put it to brilliant use. I pulled myself together and managed to attend the dinner that night facing a lot of people, for the first time. I realized that just when you think you are through the stage of sobbing while seeing new people, emotions play havoc with your psyche and the floodgates open at full blast.

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A week before the reunion, I was contacted about facilitating a women's breakfast about the transitions our classmates have experienced over the last 50 years. I was hesitant at first but realized my life had just taken a 180-degree transition with Peter's death so I decided to go for it. I started talking about my career in the food writing world, and then the sharp painful path of grief that befell me. I was able to expound on how blogging about grief has helped me adjust to my new normal. I was so pleased to see others talk openly about grief, loss, and transitions. So many of us wanted to share our stories and it felt like a new community of friends was created which comforted me enormously.

Fifty years is a long time, so the decision to wear badges with our names and yearbook pictures was a wise decision! Most of us spent time just staring at the badges with quizzical looks on our faces trying to remember our friends. I buddied up with two pals I knew would help me. We picked up a few new friends who fit into our posse, and we marched en masse to each of the events. I hung out with the Beta house guys as well, who turned out to be much fun and supplied us with lots of booze, keeping up their sacred fraternity traditions.

After the reunion, on a cold blustery Sunday May morning, my son and I boarded the Acela train to New York. I felt glad that I had managed to face the memories head on and came out just a little bit stronger. When I reached New York the tears flowed again. It was the first time I had been back to Manhattan without Peter and it was hard to face the city where we began our life together, filled with so many precious memories. But, the promise of two tickets to the show Hamilton, procured six months previous, helped to ease some of the pain. When I saw this astounding show, I know that Peter would have loved to be in Lin-Manuel Miranda's "room where it happens."

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What will it take? Not this. This won't change anything. An apparent terrorist? Fifty or more gay men? What about 20 cute little children between the ages of 6 and 7 at Sandy Hook? Nope. Dozens of other mass shootings this year? Nope. Thousands of gun murders every year? Nope.

What will be enough for the NRA and those who share its views? I have asked this before and will ask it again: Could we have a number, please? How many deaths do you want before you allow our laws to change? Fifty is a horrible number, but as a person who uses his imagination to make a living, it's not at all hard to imagine a mass shooting leading to 1000 deaths all in one go. It would not be so hard. Maybe it would take two people, or three.

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And it will happen. If that's what the NRA insists on... it will happen.

There ought to be a crime "Resisting the Historically Obvious," and the punishment should be the firing squad. There will be changes to the gun laws, obviously, sooner or later. Just look at other countries with strict gun laws and what their homicide numbers are like compared to ours.

Apart from science and a couple of local issues, I've written more about guns and LGBT rights than any other subjects. That these two issues come together here is terrible - but infuriatingly relevant to the point I want to make. Look at gay marriage in America. Despite the fact that gay marriage was resisted with fervor by preachers and their flocks, by homophobes, by conservative politicians and other cowards - these dogs biting at the pant legs of progress - gay marriage (and other gay rights) came to be. Having stopped progress for decades and made people's lives miserable for decades, these people essentially said, "Oh, well, guess I was wrong." Yes, and for the LGBT community, and for the rest of us who care about life and other lives, us humanists, us generous people, us open people, us people with imaginations - we've been seething for decades, apoplectic, our hearts blowing up with frustration waiting for you cruel laggards to catch up.

No, actually it probably won't be a large number of deaths that turns things around. It will be one pretty white child, the offspring of a powerful Republican, perhaps. What's that phrase, "A million deaths is a statistic, a single death is a tragedy"?

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Of course, a single death is not a tragedy if it's someone else's kid and you have no imagination. And in the end, this is what it all comes down to. A lack of imagination. I am not a believer, but in honor of the gay people who died, and as a message to those who are still blind to the obvious, many of them fundamentalist Christians, I'd like to leave this piece with two quotes from Oscar Wilde, a believer but one who most admired Christ for something most people overlook.

"Christ's place is indeed with the poets. His whole conception of Humanity sprang right out of the imagination and can only be realized by it..." "The imagination itself is the world of light. The world is made by it, and yet the world cannot understand it: that is because the imagination is simply a manifestation of love, and it is love and the capacity for it that distinguishes one human being from another."
Can anthropologists - cultural, biological, medical, linguistic and archaeological - deploy our deep commitment to human and biological diversity to resist the forces of hate, fear and xenophobia?...

Anthropologists are restless and nomadic people. We are a tribe of hunters and gatherers of human artifacts, human cultures, life ways, and human values. Anthropology requires us to become intimate with the people we want to understand - getting inside their skin, standing in their shoes kind of thing.

Ethnography is an art form, a work of translation, that demands all the senses - the observant eye, the attentive ear, a keen sense of smell, touch, and a sense of taste - a "gusto" (in Portuguese) that carries a double valence - a taste not only for new foods and spicy condiments, strong drinks - but also a taste for the sentient life through which a "society" is embodied -- catching its sense of time and timing, its movements and gestures, its patterns of work, play, and devotion, its sense of humor and its sense of justice, its sense of dignity.

Anthropology also requires strength, valor, and courage...Susan Sontag called anthropology a "heroic" profession - one that required brains and strength, sensitivity and guts. It was not just a job, not just a profession. It was, she said, one of those very few rare and true vocations.

You are the ones in whom your professors have invested their hopes and their trust. We need your intelligence, your initiative, your risk-taking, and your energy. We look to you as the next generation of "loyal rebels" - loyal to what anthropology has taught you: to value diversity; to embrace and enjoy (not just tolerate) human difference; to be open to the wisdom of strangers, and resolute in refusing any proposals that denigrate other ways of living and being in the world....
It is still early to draw the features of the foreign policy of any of the presumed candidates for the US presidency. However, it is possible to define some broad outlines, especially since both the presumed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and presumed Republican candidate Donald Trump are set to diverge from the policies of the incumbent President Barack Obama, particularly in the Middle East and the Gulf region. The isolationism of Donald Trump, for one thing, will be different from Barack Obama's version, although both men agree on leaving Russian President Vladimir Putin in the driver's seat when it comes to our region. Both men are not fond of the Arab Gulf states, though Obama is quite fond of Iran while Trump's hatred for Muslims covers both Sunnis and Shias, and he could well repeal the nuclear deal with Iran. For her part, Clinton's positions suggest she intends to restore traditional relations with the traditional allies of the US, without necessarily undoing the nuclear deal. However, Clinton must realize Gulf confidence in her policies is shaky. She had shown enthusiasm for the Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt. She rushed to help overthrow Gaddafi, dragging Libya into a spiral of chaos, violence, and terrorism. She turned her back on Syria when she could have pressured Obama to rectify his misguided policies. In truth, this is exactly what Hillary Clinton did in Iraq when Obama withdrew too early, leaving the country open to sectarian war and dominance by Iran, to which his predecessor Bush had given Iraq on a golden platter. Despite everything, Clinton will be the wiser and more rational choice compared to Trump, when it comes to forging responsible and realistic relations with Gulf leaders. One of the most important challenges for President Clinton would be turning a new page in Arab-Iranian relations, given that continuing the policies pursued by Obama and his administration would fuel Islamic sectarian extremism, which could expand beyond the Arab and Islamic region to the United States itself, having now reached European capitals. The approach to fighting ISIS and similar groups under Clinton could change from those seen under Obama, who has deliberately played the sectarian card to fuel Sunni-Shia hostility, helping unleash the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Syria and Iraq while claiming they are a necessary partner needed to defeat ISIS. Hillary Clinton could choose to suppress the sectarian fires, if that will be the strategic choice of the US establishment. In truth, this will be the key question for the next US president, one that will radically affect the future of the Arab region and elsewhere.Intentionally or inadvertently, the Obama administration fundamentally encouraged Iran to create militias such as the Popular Mobilization in Iraq and Syria, to support the government of Haider al-Abadi and before him Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad, under the pretext of fighting ISIS, or to defend the Bashar al-Assad regime remaining in power in Damascus.The Obama administration effectively allowed Iranian-backed militias to weaken and marginalize traditional armies, thus helping undermine the institutions of Iraq and Syria in one of the most fragile and brittle phases in the two countries' history. This is how ISIS's objective of destroying the Arab countries converged with Iran's plans with support from Washington.This is a very dangerous equation, because it leads to a vicious cycle of vendetta between Sunni and Shia extremists - both of whom are no friends to the United States or Western values.George W. Bush and Barack Obama converged in their desire to confine the war on terror in Arab cities away from US cities. And perhaps they succeeded through Bush's war in Iraq and Obama's non-war in Syria. But this is a temporary recipe and a sedative with destructive effects in the end, not only for the Islamic world, but also for the European and US homelands.Donald Trump, based on what we know about his character, will be indifferent unless the threat materializes on US soil. He will not be drawn into sympathy with NATO allies and will barely blink if the killing machines in the Arab region carry on, regardless of who kills or of who is being killed. He will not care even if Tehran mobilizes militias as an alternative to national armies, and if Qassem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Qods Force, becomes a hero for Shia Muslims everywhere and not just Iran.But, once again, the strategic decision concerning what is best for the US interest will not be in the hands of the new president. National security has calculations that go beyond the person of the president, and it is usually drafted and defined for decades rather than 4 or 8 years. Accordingly, even Donald Trump will have to abide by the dictates of the ruling military and civilian establishment. The United States is not the Russian federation, where Vladimir Putin's powers go further than those of the institutions.Donald Trump will not be able to become a strongman like Putin, no matter how arrogant he may be, or good at negotiations and deal-making as he claims. His fickle, arbitrary, and superficial positions and his arrogance vis-a-vis the US constitution and the Republican Party are already affecting him. The top leaders of the Republican Party are angry and determined to teach Trump an important lesson: Adjust course and learn humility, or you will not get our support. In other words, Trump is being threatened by his own camp today: don't force us to hurt you like you've hurt us. Don't force us to secretly support Hillary for president. Enough is enough.From now until mid-July, Donald Trump might change and deliver speeches that are carefully written, instead of his narcissistic improvisations that have marked his conduct throughout the primaries. He might learn to listen and be humble. He might choose a team of qualified advisers including on foreign policy. He might tone down his racism against Muslims, Mexicans, and people of color. He might finally come to understand the complexity of international relations.On the other hand, he might instead bet on his popularity with those voters who have supported him as he is, and determine that changing his discourse could damage him. He may stick to Vladimir Putin as a possible partner, and might declare publicly that he agrees with him that Bashar al-Assad should remain in power. Both men are loath to radical Islam. Vladimir Putin decided to seek a strategic relationship with Iran to suppress Sunnis by means of Shias, playing the sectarian card just like the Obama administration has done. The difference, however, is that Obama backed the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya, believing Turkey's was the ideal model for moderate Islamism. On the other hand, Putin saw the rise of Islamists an existential threat, and sought to challenge Obama in Syria. Donald Trump, for his part, is loath to Sunni radicalism because of 9/11, but does not seem prepared to adopt Iran as a partner as Putin and Obama have done.Clearly, either Clinton or Trump - or others in the event of surprises - will inherit tense relations with the Gulf and Saudi Arabia from Obama, who abandoned traditional alliances with the Gulf states while appeasing Iran. The new president will inherit Obama's isolationism, and an American global drone war. The wars raging in Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Iraq will spawn more Sunni and Shia Islamic radicalism, and ISIS will not be the only terror group that must be dealt with. The faraway wars will remain far from US, Russian, and European cities.If no major terror attack occurs on US soil, then yes, Obama could say his and Bush's policy has succeeded. But if terror strikes again, this will abort Obama's legacy, and Trump will benefit from the raging emotions that will follow. Clinton will pay the price.Otherwise, the US will most likely not elect Donald Trump as its next president. His temperament is costly, and he has proven time and again how vulnerable he is to his overwhelming arrogance. Trump has also made too many promises on the campaign trail, including fantastical and silly promises, putting himself in a difficult position.Hillary Clinton has a popularity and trust problem. Her mistakes in Libya and her email scandal are also damaging. If the FBI issues her a warrant against her for breaking the law, this could lead her to lose the Democratic nomination. This outcome is something the followers of her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders are betting on.The other challenge she faces would be if Obama decides to go on the campaign trail to support her. This could damage her, and she is keen to avoid the image that her presidency would be a third Obama term.Perhaps Clinton is thanking her lucky stars for Trump, the man who came out of nowhere to destroy the Republican Party and set himself up as her buffoonish rival, making her appear that much serious. Perhaps Trump, who has shocked everyone, will once again bring a shock on November, as it is unwise to fully discount him from the race.All indications today suggest Hillary Clinton will return to the White House as the first woman in US history to become president. She is very familiar with that White House, where she lived once as the first lady alongside her husband Bill Clinton for 8 years. But the race has not been decided yet, and the whole world is watching. Translated from Arabic by Karim Traboulsihttp://www.alhayat.com/Opinion/Raghida-Dergham/15996654/%D9%87%D9%8A%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%8A-%D9%88%D8%AA%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%A8-%D9%84%D9%86-%D9%8A%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%B1%D8%A7-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%AE%D8%B7%D9%89-%D8%A3%D9%88%D8%A8%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%A7
Getting a great deal is something that everyone wants. Why pay full price when you can get a sweet deal from a seller. Everyone needs to save some money on purchases every now and again. Getting the best deal seems to be hard-wired inside of us. However, sometimes a good deal on the product you really need is hard to come by. If you don't attempt to get a lower price, you could end up paying much more than you had originally planned. Here are some tips to help you get the best deals on the items you need the most.

Black Friday Sales: There are sales and then there are Black Friday Sales. Originating in the United States, Black Friday Sales promise huge savings on a vast array of items. The word "black" refers to the store's emergence from the "red" (losses) and its return to profitability". Black Friday signifies the beginning of the Holiday (Christmas) shopping period and is held on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Although Black Friday sales originated in the United States, similar deals have popped up all over the world that now coincide with the original. During Black Friday sales, items are offered for sale at both traditional brick and mortar stores as well as on the internet. In the days leading up to the sale, companies will publish a list of the sale items in the newspapers and on their websites. Brick and mortar stores will open as early as 5 a.m. on the day while at online stores sales may begin at midnight. Therefore, if you plan to shop at the physical store, you should arrive early and expect a crowd. In addition to this, heavily discounted items are severely limited.

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Honey: Honey is an app that you can use to get you better deals while you shop online. The app saves you from having to search for coupon codes on your own. Once, installed, the app searches for and applies discount codes to your shopping cart. Honey works with well over 100 stores, from Amazon to Macy's to Home Depot. This means that, if one is available, there is a good chance that you can find a coupon code that you will find useful. Honey places a button in your shopping cart. When you are ready to check out, clicking the button searches for coupon codes and automatically applies them to your cart.

eBay: Any discussion on how to negotiate better deals is incomplete without eBay. From its days as a fledgling company in 1995, eBay has evolved into the world leader in online auctions. The list of products offered on eBay is vast. You can find anything on the site from houses to cars to stamps and everything in between. All that is required of you is to create an account and verify your payment details. eBay has three modes of purchasing. You can bid on auctions. However, bidding requires some time and patience and may cause you to spend more money than you initially wanted to. You can also purchase an item immediately with the "Buy it Now" price, which is a much more convenient alternative. Lastly, you can use eBay's "Best Offer" tool to negotiate a deal. The Best Offer tool allows buyers to make a tender to sellers. Retailers are free to accept or decline the offer.

Craigslist: Craigslist is an online classified ad service that has expanded to several countries around the globe. It allows you to sell and purchase a number of goods and services at reasonable prices. Ads on the site are classified by location so you can find deals that are close to you. To have the best chance of finding the item you want, use multiple keywords when searching. Craigslist also features a free section which can be hit or miss. Most of these free items will simply be left at the curb for any interested parties. Don't bother trying to reserve the item since this is not the way it works. Instead, free items are available on a first-come, first, serve basis. It is important to remember that purchasing items on Craigslist means meeting the seller face to face to facilitate the transaction. Understandably, this type of interaction can be dangerous since you don't know the seller, don't know whether or not they will have the product for sale, and don't know if they have good intentions for you. Therefore, approach each deal with extreme caution. Insist on meeting the seller at a public place. Many police stations now offer a spot on their premises where individuals can conduct these types of transactions in safety. Lastly, do not give out more personal information than is possible. You can never be sure how such personal information will be used.

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Price-matching: Online retail can be a harsh, cut-throat business. With so many different companies vying for your dollar, it becomes a competition to get you to spend your money with them. Brick and mortar stores have increasingly found themselves losing out to online retailers. As a result, many of them offer them offer to match the prices of products sold on competitors' online stores just to ensure that you will spend your money with them. Each retailer has its set of rules when it comes to price-matching. Some will only match prices from a certain retailer; some limit the number of price-matched items you can purchase. Some choose not to price-match internet only retailers such as Amazon, while others have no such policy. Very few will price-match a product if the item is not stocked and ready to be sold on the competitor's website. To price match an item, you be required to print the online listing of the product in question. Alternately, you can show the listing to the sales associate by pulling it up on your mobile phone. However, since rules vary so much, be sure to learn each company's rules before approaching them for a price match.
The Republican Party still has time to change its mind. Right now it's supporting for President of the United States a man:

1. Who divides us by race and ethnicity and religion.

He says undocumented Americans "bring drugs, crime, they're rapists." That the Mexican government "sends bad ones over because they don't want to pay for them." And who says he'll round up and deport all 11 million undocumented workers in the United States.

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This is a man who equivocated on repudiating an endorsement from David Duke, former head of the Ku Klux Klan. And when asked to repudiate the vicious anti-semitism of some of his followers said "I don't have a message to the fans."

A man who claimed "thousands and thousands" of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the Twin Towers collapsing, when there's no evidence at all to support that statement. And whose response to terrorism is to prevent all Muslims from coming into the United States.

2. Whose incendiary lies are inciting violence across this land, but he excuses them.

When he learned that some of his supporters punched, kicked and spit on protesters of color at his rallies, he said "people who are following me are very passionate."

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When a handful of white supporters punched and attempted to choke a Black Lives Matter protester at another of his rallies, he said "maybe he should have been roughed up."

3. Who bullies, humiliates, and threatens those who dare cross him.

He mocks their physical characteristics, makes up lies about them, degrades them, tries to intimidate them by unleashing hostile attacks on the Internet - announcing, for example, that a family who donated money to a political opponent "better be careful, they have a lot to hide."

He calls a federal judge who's considering a case against Trump University a "total disgrace" and a "hater," and alleging he's Mexican although he was born in the United States.

4. Who spreads baseless conspiracy theories.

And he suggested that the death of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia might have been a part of a plot.

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Such baseless conspiracy theories can do great damage, when, for example, parents don't vaccinate their children because they fear autism.

5. Whose hateful and demeaning attitudes toward women and boastful claims of sexual dominance have been filling the airwaves for years.

They're best summed up in an interview where he said "women, you have to treat them like shit."

6. Who believes climate change is not caused by humans, contrary to all scientific proof.

And he calls for more fossil fuel drilling and fewer environmental regulations, vows to cancel the Paris agreement committing nearly every nation to curbing climate change, and to rescind Obama's rules to curb planet-warming emissions from coal-fired power plants.

7. Who proposes using torture against terrorists, and punishing their families, both in clear violation of international law.

And if all this weren't enough,

8. Who wants to cut taxes on the rich, giving the wealthiest one tenth of one percent an average tax cut of more than $1.3 million each every year - exploding the national debt and endangering the future of Social Security and Medicare.

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This man is Donald Trump, and the Republican Party wants him to be President of the United States.

Why are there so few statesmen left in the Republican Party? Are there no principled Republicans whose loyalty to the nation is greater than their eagerness to win back the White House? No Republican leaders with the courage to stand up and say this is wrong -- that this man doesn't have the character or the temperament to be president, and his election would endanger America and everything we believe in and stand for?

If not, shame on them.
I've been to quite a few conferences in my day. But there was something pretty unique about the Sustainable Brands conference in San Diego this last week--a conference rallying business leaders to reimagine the intersection between purpose and profit in business. As CEO of WaterAid, the leading international nonprofit dedicated to clean water, toiIets and hygiene, I was proud to represent the purpose side of the equation, and the innovative approaches we're taking with corporate partners to achieve a healthier, wealthier and more just world.

Over the course of four action-packed and inspirational days, I met so many people who proudly told me that this was their sixth, seventh, eighth or even tenth year at the conference. CEOs of some of the world's largest and most beloved brands tossed around phrases like "awesome sauce" with an ease usually reserved for conversations about a new app they've discovered--not partnerships aimed toward social impact. There was a lot of hugging and a lot of heart and, as one attendee commented, it felt "less like a conference and more like a reunion". I'd have to agree.

You might be wondering what I was doing there. Clearly, WaterAid is not a brand in the corporate sense; we're one of the world's largest nonprofits dedicated to achieving a world where everyone, everywhere has access to clean water, toilets and hygiene. WaterAid supports the UN's Global Goals on sustainable development, which include a specific goal (Goal 6) to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. For the first time, the global community has committed to reach everyone, everywhere with access to clean water and basic toilets by 2030, and leave no one behind. That's a hugely ambitious yet achievable goal with a deadline that's just fourteen short years away. It's also a goal that we will not achieve without the support and invested involvement of the private sector.

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That's why I was so impressed by the sheer range and diversity of the businesses represented, all of whom rallied around the message that doing good cannot be separated from core business. Across the board, there was wide recognition that we still have a very long way to go until our collective actions match our well-intentioned words; shifts in business models, structures and incentives continue to remain elusive, even as leaders acknowledged that changes are taking place.

WaterAid is fortunate to work with corporate partners around the world who share our understanding that sanitation and hygiene are not simply 'nice to haves'--there's a business case for them, too. When people have access to these life basics, employee wellbeing skyrockets, worker and student absenteeism falls and environmental sustainability becomes possible. Investing in water, sanitation and hygiene have a multiplier effect: from economic growth (for every dollar invested in sanitation, the return ranges from $3 to a staggering $16) to increased income for workers who are healthier. Water and sanitation are not only life-saving necessities; they are also basic human rights. Our experience shows that business partnerships in support of water, sanitation and hygiene can be a powerful lever for employee engagement, here at home.

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For me, the Sustainable Brands conference was an incredibly useful and refreshing opportunity to take a few steps back and listen to a diverse business community: what they are talking about, what they are challenged by and what they are inspired by (biomimicry anyone?). So rarely have I experienced conferences that walk the talk. The conference was zero-waste, attendees were not overindulged with goodies and treats, reusable water bottles were provided and thoughtful sourcing went into every meal and cup of coffee. The pointed attention to sustainability was lived with the same care and intention as the choice of location for next year's conference--Detroit--was announced and explained.

At WaterAid, I've always said that we have the opportunity to achieve a victory of epic proportions--a world where children no longer die from diarrhea caused by dirty water and poor hygiene; where girls no longer drop out of school when they start menstruating because there are no private toilets; and a world where women can use their precious time to earn an income or care for their families instead of walking miles to collect water. It's an epic challenge, but one that I know can be achieved with strong, authentic partnerships with leading private sector brands.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks at the Republican Party of Texas State Convention at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, Thursday, May 12, 2016 in Dallas. (Rodger Mallison/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/TNS via Getty Images)

ORIGINAL POST:

Hours after a gunman reportedly massacred 50 people at an Orlando gay nightclub, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick took to Twitter. "A man reaps what he sows," Patrick said, quoting the bible.

Patrick, who just hosted the Republican Lt. Governors Association (RLGA) annual conference in Austin, and whose website features prominent endorsements from Mike Huckabee and Ralph Reed, among others, has been on an anti-LGBT crusade since the Obama administration released guidance on transgender students.

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Later on Sunday morning, even as criticism was growing about his first tweet, Patrick doubled down, tweeting another bible verse:

Late Sunday morning, after online criticism continued to grow, Patrick removed the posts, and a spokesman told the Texas Tribune that they had been pre-scheduled. That does not make it any better. Elected officials are there to represent everyone, impartially. Posts that seem to condone hatred of any constituency group should not be made by an elected official at any time, because they create an atmosphere of intolerance of fellow Americans that in turn can lead to violence.

People like Dan Patrick who encourage or in any way condone mass murder of fellow Americans they dislike or disagree with, however obliquely, are unAmerican and should not be in any position of authority in any state or community. This issue is not left or right, Republican or Democrat. It is about fundamentalists of any religion--Christian or Muslim--imposing their views on others. This is America. We are better and bigger than that.

Mike Huckabee, Ralph Reed, and other prominent endorsers of Patrick must publicly retract their support for his political future, or they will be condoning the same sort of assault on core American values and on fellow Americans.

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This expression belongs only to brutal fascist thugs no better than Nazis, who wrap themselves in a group righteousness as they seek to deny, demean, destroy, and eject anyone not part of their authoritarian ideology, in this case, LGBT Americans. That's why they deny science they dislike as well. Because it doesn't support their authoritarian agenda.

This sort of thinking must be condemned and rooted out and exposed and excoriated as unAmerican for the good of the country. It is emphatically not anything close to the values America was founded upon. America's founders did not found the nation as a Christian nation; they founded it on the fundamental Enlightenment principles of science, drawn from Thomas Jeffersons "trinity of three greatest men": Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, and John Locke, scientists and natural philosophers, who all believed that if anyone can discover the truth of something for one's self using the tools and principles of science and reason, no religious authority and no monarch had any greater right to govern us that we have to govern ourselves.

Using these core principles, they worked hard to expunge religious thinking from our founding documents and from their argument for a new, democratic form of government for America. In fact, Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence read "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable," but he and Franklin explicitly expunged this phrase in favor of "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government."

It is time for a new Government in the State of Texas, and for Dan Patrick to resign.

UPDATE:

Patrick has posted a statement attempting to explain his posts, bemoaning the "hateful comments" directed at him, and further quoting scripture. What it lacks is any apology or, more importantly, any expression of sympathy for the victims or their families. It's all about him.



SECOND UPDATE:

Some commenters here and elsewhere seem mollified by Patrick's statement that the tweets were pre-scheduled, and others suggest he has freedom of speech to say whatever he wants. I'd like to address those points here.

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First to the pre-scheduled issue. As I said in the above piece, in my view that doesn't make it any better. Here's why. Patrick has been posting and speaking out against the Obama administration's transgender bathroom guidance for several weeks. In these communications, he has sought to portray trans students, who tend to be the victims of violence and murder (witness Brandon Teena or Matthew Shepard), as male sexual predators lurking in girls' bathrooms. He has written that the policy "puts our girls and women at risk," a claim that appears unsupported by the facts. Scapegoating recasts victims as perpetrators and is often used by authoritarians against classes of people they dislike. For example, films shown across Nazi Germany portrayed male Jews as sexual predators who abused the young women of Germany. And anyone who's read or seen To Kill a Mockingbird knowns that we have our own history with "sexual predator" claim scapegoating in America against other minorities. That sort of scapegoating by a person in a position of authority helps to create a climate that has, historically, helped to incite and abet the very sort of hate crime that happened in Orlando. The "reaps what he sows" verse is, in this context, quite stark. It is, similarly, often used to denounce homosexuality and other sexual "sins". As a public official engaging in such scapegoating, Patrick bears some measure of responsibility for hateful acts committed against LGBT Americans. As Dallas Cathedral of Hope senior pastor Neil G. Cazares-Thomas told a full house, "such speak gives permission to hate".
South Africa has a wide range of oceanographic conditions around the coast. As a result, there is a diversity of cetacean species. These are large-bodied, fast-moving top predators like dolphins and whales. Globally, at least a quarter of these species are listed as endangered. Understanding how these species move and live is crucial to understanding their ecological relationships with the environment.

The E3C - Effect of Climate Change on Cetaceans - project looks at the impact climate change has on these species. The Conversation Africa's energy and environment editor Ozayr Patel spoke to Dr Simon Elwen, a researcher with South Africa's University of Pretoria working on the project.

Globally, at least a quarter of whale and dolphin species have been listed as endangered. What are the main reasons?

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Many of the large whale species and populations that were subjected to commercial whaling have been very slow to recover, notably the Antarctic blue whale and the North Atlantic right whale. But the majority of large whale populations have been increasing slowly over the past few decades. Species are gradually leaving the threatened lists, thanks to wide-ranging international conservation efforts. The most important of these is the end of whaling, showing that stopping directed take - in other words "not killing animals" - is one of the most effective conservation strategies.

But the bad news is that many dolphin and porpoise populations are the ones now facing extirpation. The Maui's dolphin of New Zealand and the vaquita of the gulf of California are both critically endangered. The baiji, the Chinese river dolphin, has already been declared extinct due almost entirely to habitat loss in the Yangtze River in China.

What is the state of dolphin species around Africa's coasts? What threats do they face?

In southern Africa most dolphin populations are thought to be fairly healthy. There are five species that are regularly seen from shore, including the Heaviside's and dusky dolphin on the west coast and the Indo-Pacific bottlenose and Indian Ocean humpback dolphin, which are found to the east of Cape Point in Cape Town. There are several other species that inhabit the shelf and offshore waters, with the common dolphin being one of the few of these regularly seen close to shore, especially along the south-eastern part of the continent. The only species that is currently thought to be of concern is the humpback dolphin, Sousa plumbea.

The humpback dolphin lives along the southern Cape coast and off northern KwaZulu-Natal province. This entire population in South Africa likely numbers less than 1,000 individuals and lives extremely close to shore, where it regularly encounters humans. This results in things like boat traffic, pollution, habitat loss and prey depletion having an impact on these species.

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Why are dolphins, in particular, important in the ocean's ecosystem?

Dolphins and whales are large, highly mobile top predators. They can eat a lot of food and respond quickly to changes in the environment by moving large distances, depending on the species. As large predators, they can have a top-down role in ecosystems, suppressing the numbers of prey animals. What this means is that sometimes species near the bottom of the food chain, like sardine or anchovy, can increase when medium-level predators are removed by top predators such as seals, sharks and dolphins, a result shown in a number of ecosystems globally.

Simon Elwen

What is unique about the South African coast that makes it so diverse?

South Africa's marine life at all trophic levels is remarkably diverse, thanks largely to the diversity of habitats available around the coast. It ranges from tropical at the Mozambique border, to temperate along the south coast and cool-temperate along the west coast.

From a mammal point of view, the cold waters of the Benguela ecosystem along the west coast provide a link to sub-Antarctic environments, so some species that are usually only found south of 40 degrees of latitude also occur in the Benguela, like southern right whale dolphins and pygmy right whales.

Commercial fishing practices, gill nets and pollution are viewed as the most serious challenge to dolphins. Are these serious problems in African and South African waters?

To the best of my knowledge, bycatch - the unintentional catching of a species - is thankfully not a major problem in South Africa. There is no gill netting in South Africa. Coastal net fisheries are scarce and most of the large-scale commercial fishing activities in South Africa occur in deeper waters than most of our coastal dolphin species occur.

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But entanglement in lobster and octopus trap lines is an increasing concern for large whales in coastal waters. Recent data on organic pollutants in dolphins from the east coast suggests that DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls are still a concern, especially for coastal dolphin species like the humpback and bottlenose.

What effect is climate change having on dolphins?

Essentially, assuming no other changes in the ecosystem - which is somewhat naive - we expect a general pole-ward shift in the distribution ranges of most cetacean species. This isn't likely to be a major problem for animals that move large distances in the relatively uniform and connected environment of the open ocean. But it will potentially have major impacts on some coastal species, especially those that live in habitats that are "dead ends" in this respect (like the southern coast of Africa).

Along the South African coast, several dolphin species live in the Benguela, which is currently thought to be cooling - against the general trend of climate change - due to increased winds and upwelling of cold water. Right now we don't really know how adaptable these animals are to massive changes in temperature in either direction, should they occur.

What other major conservation tactics are used to help dolphins survive and thrive?

1) Don't kill them! In any form, including entanglement or bycatch, hunting or pollutants.

2) Stop polluting the oceans - including noise, plastics and organic pollutants.

3) Stop harassing them - obey the laws and use responsible tour operators.

4) Don't steal their food - eat sustainably caught fish

You have started a project involving citizen scientists. Why have you taken this route?

Citizen science projects have been extremely successful both locally and internationally. Modern communication methods like mobile phones and the internet allow scientists to rapidly communicate with thousands of interested and knowledgeable observers to increase the number of eyes and ears available to collect data. We can't be everywhere, and our boat surveys and acoustic methods are limited in the amount of area or time they can cover, so we are trying to take advantage of the large number of keen whale and dolphin watchers around our Cape Town's coasts to report sightings to us.

Remarkably, the area around Cape Town itself has been quite poorly studied by cetacean scientists in the past. So citizen science offers us a potentially powerful route to massively increase the number of data points of dolphin and whale sightings around the area.

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Adnan Abidi / Reuters Security personnel walk past a hoarding of India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) inside the party headquarters in New Delhi May 12, 2014. Indians voted on the last day of a mammoth election on Monday as challenger Modi sought a personal mandate in the holy city of Varanasi, crowning his campaign to rule the country with a mix of pro-business policies and Hindu nationalism. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi (INDIA - Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS)

ALLAHABAD -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi has notched up gains in elections to India's upper house of parliament, and is seeking to drive home the advantage when his nationalist ruling party meets to devise a strategy to win India's biggest state.

Modi drew standing ovations from US lawmakers this week on a visit to Washington D.C. but, like President Barack Obama, has faced a struggle in his two years in power to get legislation through a hostile second chamber.

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That job may have become slightly less difficult after his nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies added five seats in Saturday's upper house polls, but with 74 seats in the 245-chamber they remain in a minority.

BJP leaders are due to meet later on Sunday to finalise their strategy to win the 2017 election in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, knowing that defeat would handicap Modi and sap his chances of winning a second term.

"We have to win Uttar Pradesh to change the destiny of India," BJP national secretary Sidharth Nath Singh said to Reuters ahead of the two-day meeting in Allahabad, eastern Uttar Pradesh.

The opposition Congress alliance lost three seats to 71, with regional parties holding the balance of power, according to media tallies. With Congress down but not yet out, Modi will still have to cut deals to pass tax, labour and land reforms.

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Modi swept Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 general election, helping him to claim the biggest lower-house majority in three decades. But he is unlikely to repeat that result against tough opposition from regional parties.
backpack555 via Getty Images Drug syringe and cooked heroin

FAZILKA, Punjab: Two Pakistsmugglers were killed and one was injured in a gunfight with Border Security Forces (BSF) in Fazilka city in Punjab today.

The incident took place at a border out post called Sawana at around 2:30 am, when the soldiers on duty noticed some unusual activity beyond the fencing, but still inside the Indian territory and when they challenged the infiltrators, they opened fire on the jawans.

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In retaliation, the BSF jawans also fired and two smugglers were killed and one was seriously injured and was rushed to the hospital.

Following the encounter, 15 packets of heroin and weapons were also recovered from them, including two pistols and a boregun.

The incident comes in the wake of the spotlight being on Punjab over extensive drug smuggling and multiple cases of drug abuse.
'Marriage of Peleus and Thetis,' by Flemish artist Jacob Jordaens, is among the Old Masters on display at the Clark in 'Splendor, Myth, and Vision: Nudes from the Prado.'

Clark Welcomes Masterpieces from the Prado

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  In 16th and 17th century Spain, many of the masterworks of Titian and Reubens were available only to the privileged few.



Starting Saturday, visitors to the Clark Art Institute have the privilege of seeing several of their important works, on loan for the summer from the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid.



"Splendor, Myth, and Vision: Nudes from the Prado," on view through Oct. 10, explores the relationship between Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens, his predecessor, the Italian Tiziano Vecelli (Titian) and their respective patrons, Spanish monarchs Philip IV and Philip II.



The relationship between Rubens and Titian is obvious. The former emulated, learned from and sought to improve upon the work of the latter.



Politically, it's complicated.



That is because, as the show's title indicates, the artwork in question celebrates the human body in ways that by 21st century standards might seem quaint but were downright scandalous in Spain during the Middle Ages.



"Their passion for collecting would conflict with their public role as Catholic monarchs," explained Lara Yeager-Crasselt, the Clark's interim curator of paintings and sculpture.



Yeager on Thursday led a media preview of the exhibit along with interim senior curator Kathleen Morris and Miguel Falomir, the deputy director of the Prado.



Falomir accompanied the 28 Old Master paintings on loan from his institution  24 of which have never visited the United States.



"Actually, this exhibition is something the Clark has worked on since 2009, when we first entered discussions with the Museo Nacional del Prado about doing an exchange," Morris said.



'Fortuna' by Peter Paul Rubens.

When the Clark sent its Renoirs to the Prado in 2010, it was one of the most successful special exhibitions in the history of the museum's nearly two-century existence, and it laid the groundwork for this summer's show, Morris said.
First Annual 'Running With The Law Race' Takes Off

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  Dozens of runners escorted by a police motorcade sped off from Colegrove Park Elementary School on Saturday morning for 5-kilometer "Running With the Law" road race to benefit PopCares.



PopCares raises funds to aid Northern Berkshire individuals and families affected by cancer.



Before the inaugural race, Mayor Richard Alcombright thanked the group of North Adams Police who organized the event that stemmed from a police-student running program at Colegrove.



"Our police are our first line of defense in our community ... and they deserve our thanks and they deserve our respect. I am so proud of the officers of the North Adams Police Department who, in my opinion, have established a model for how cops should be viewed in their communities," the mayor said. "They are stepping outside of the box of traditional law enforcement ... our guys are going to schools, they are going to neighborhoods, and connecting with kids."


Imperial Valley News Center

Roll up a sleeve to help celebrate World Blood Donor Day

Washington, DC - On June 14, the American Red Cross, in partnership with Nexcare Bandages and supermodel Niki Taylor, will celebrate World Blood Donor Day to raise awareness about the ongoing need for blood and platelets. All eligible donors are urged to roll up a sleeve to give blood or platelets to help maintain the blood supply and prevent a shortage this summer.

I am proud to team up with the Nexcare Give Program each year, with the mission of sparking a critical dialogue around the vital need for blood donation, said supermodel and Red Cross ambassador, Niki Taylor. For me, the cause is also a personal one. Following a car accident 15 years ago that left me in critical condition, the efforts of the American Red Cross and their brave donors saved my life. In honor of World Blood Donor Day, I am sharing my story and encouraging people around the world to support blood donation, inspiring their friends and families to join the cause.

As part of this partnership, Nexcare has developed a collection of limited-edition bandages surrounding this years theme, Feel the Beat, Give Blood, to remind donors of the importance of blood donation. The 2016 collection of bandages features five vibrant dance-inspired designs reflecting different styles and cultures from around the globe. The limited-edition bandages will be available to those who come out to donate blood or platelets with the Red Cross now through World Blood Donor Day on June 14.

Every two seconds, someone in the U.S. needs a lifesaving blood transfusion. The Red Cross must collect approximately 14,000 blood donations every day to meet the needs of patients at 2,600 hospitals and transfusion centers nationwide.

Make a lifesaving difference

To schedule an appointment to donate blood or platelets, download the Red Cross Blood Donor App, visit redcrossblood.org or call 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767). Donors of all blood types are currently needed as right now, blood and platelet donations are being distributed to hospitals as quickly as donations come in.

Those who wish to show support and share personal blood donation stories with others on social media are encouraged to use the hashtag #GiveInspires in their posts, tweets and photos.

How to donate blood

A blood donor card or drivers license or two other forms of identification are required at check-in. Individuals who are 17 years of age (16 with parental consent in some states), weigh at least 110 pounds and are in generally good health may be eligible to donate blood. High school students and other donors 18 years of age and younger also have to meet certain height and weight requirements.
US Man, Who Lost Eyesight To Cancer, Creates Prosthetic Eye; Internet is Amazed
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Presumably it's of great public anxiety as to what the Queen has on regulation rotation on her stereo - so, thankfully, we can finally now all soothe our thoughts.

Elizabeth II has unveiled her 10 favourite pieces of music as part of her 90th birthday celebrations, compiling them for the upcoming BBC radio show Our Queen: 90 Musical Years.

The list largely consists of a mixture of classical pieces, Broadway musical numbers, and religious hymns; with Howard Keel's "Oklahoma!" from the titular musical landing the top spot, a deeply hopeful and celebratory anthem which has become a stage classic over the years.

Indeed, Lady Elizabeth Anson told Radio 2; "The Queen loves the theatre and musicals like Showboat, Oklahoma!, and Annie Get Your Gun."

There is, however, one contemporary track on the list; Gary Barlow's "Sing", the Commonwealth anthem penned alongside Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, in commemoration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012.

Not that it's much of a surprise to see it listed here; considering her own grandson, Prince Harry, happens to play the tambourine on the track.

Eve Pollard, who hosts the show, also revealed a short anecdote about the monarch; in which her correspondence secretary expressed concern that it would not be "appropriate" for the Queen to accept the presidency of the George Formby Appreciation Society.



She replied, "Well, I do see that, but you see I love George Formby", before revealing that she knew all of his songs and could sing them.

 Queen at 90 celebrations

The full list is as follows:



1. "Oklahoma!" - Howard Keel

2. "Anything You Can Do (Annie Get Your Gun)" - Dolores Gray and Bill Johnson

3. "Sing" - Gary Barlow and the Commonwealth Band featuring the Military Wives

4. "Cheek to Cheek" - Fred Astaire

5. "The White Cliffs of Dover" - Vera Lynn

6. "Leaning on a Lamp-post" - George Formby

7. "Praise My Soul, The King of Heaven" - traditional hymn

8. "The Lord is My Shepherd" - traditional hymn

9. Lester Lanin medley

10. Regimental March Milanollo

Our Queen: 90 Musical Years is set to air on BBC Radio 2 Sunday 12 June, at 7PM.
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Third Eye Blind frontman Stephan Jenkins and drummer Brad Hargreaves conducted a dramatic rescue after four boys - aged 12 to 15 - were swept out to sea.

The pair had been surfing off the coast of Carolina Beach in North Carolina on 8 June, when they were alerted to the children's screams for help, reports TMZ.

The boys were struggling to escape a rip current that had dragged them 100 yards out to sea; Jenkins and Hargreaves both paddled out and allowed them to rest on their surfboards, before safely returning the four children to shore.

Luke McNees, Third Eye Blind's manager, stated that other than being winded and scared, the boys were thankfully uninjured in the incident; furthermore, they were all extremely grateful to the musicians for saving them.

The band confirmed on Twitter that the rescue had taken place during a break from rehearsals for the Bonnaroo Music Festival, with Jenkins himself later acknowledging the event.



Third Eye Blind are currently playing the festival circuit after the release of their latest album Dopamine last year. They are set to make an appearance at Reading and Leeds Festival on 26 and 28 August respectively.
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British parents are the worst in the developed world at sharing childcare, a study has found.

For every hour UK mothers spend looking after their children men provide just 24 minutes worth of care.

This ranks the UK bottom out of 15 countries, making parents the worst in the developed world.

Portuguese dads top the list spending 39 minutes looking after children for every hour a woman puts in.

And despite the introduction of shared parental leave last April, the UK languished at 11th on the table - out of 21 countries - for the most equal parental leave system.

But the study found that British parents are better at sharing chores than childcare, with men doing 34 minutes of housework and cooking for every hour a woman does, placing us fifth out of 15 countries.

Commissioned by the Fatherhood Institute, the Fatherhood Institutes Fairness In Families Index (FIFI) compared countries on a variety of factors to determine gender equality.

Over all the UK has dropped three places since 2010, coming 12th out of 22.

The top five most egalitarian countries are all Scandinavian, with Sweden clinching the top spot.

Father's Day 2015: Most listened-to dads Show all 10 1 /10 Father's Day 2015: Most listened-to dads Father's Day 2015: Most listened-to dads Chris Martin of Coldplay Chris Martin is Spotifys most listened to dad this Fathers Day. Getty Images Father's Day 2015: Most listened-to dads Eminem 'Lose Yourself' hitmaker and father-of-three comes in as the second most-listened to dad globally. PA Father's Day 2015: Most listened-to dads Kanye West Rapper and father of baby North West Kardashian comes in third. Getty Father's Day 2015: Most listened-to dads David Guetta French DJ and father-of-two follows. Getty Images Father's Day 2015: Most listened-to dads Chris Brown Rapper and father to newborn Royalty ranks fifth. Father's Day 2015: Most listened-to dads Ryan Tedder, OneRepublic Getty Images Father's Day 2015: Most listened-to dads Wiz Khalifa PA Father's Day 2015: Most listened-to dads Michael Jackson Getty Images Father's Day 2015: Most listened-to dads Justin Timberlake Getty Father's Day 2015: Most listened-to dads Jay Z Getty

Researchers identified three key factors inhibiting gender equality around looking after children in the UK; pay gap, an unequal parental leave system and mother-centric family services.

Fatherhood Institute chair Will McDonald said: Its clear that todays fathers want to play a substantial role in caring for their young children  and mothers want more sharing too.

What our analysis shows is that compared to other countries, the UK has failed to create the structures to support families to achieve the greater sharing that they want, and that is so important for our childrens futures.

This needs to change, or we will continue to fall behind.

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The UK pay gap between men and women was the 15th worst out of 22 countries, with a 17.4 per cent difference.

The country with the fairest pay across the sexes was New Zealand with just 5.6 per cent difference.

Rt Hon Maria Miller MP, Chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee, said: Businesses cannot afford to ignore the parenting revolution that millennials want to see and the PM wont succeed in his vision of eliminating the gender pay gap unless we see a more equal sharing of parental duties as the new norm.

Until fathers can take up more parental responsibility, particularly when their children are very young, we wont see a reduction in the gender pay gap.

The findings were published ahead of Fathers Day, on June 19, and alongside findings suggested policy changes the government could make to progress gender equality.
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School boys will be allowed to wear skirts and girls to wear trousers under new gender neutral uniform policies introduced across the UK.

Eighty state institutions, including 40 primary schools, have either removed reference to girls and boys in their dress codes or have rewritten their uniform policy.

It is part of a drive, funded by the government, for schools to be more open to children who are questioning their gender identity.

Diversity campaigners have warned current policies risk discriminating against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender pupils (LGBT).

A spokesperson for Stonewall told The Independent: We welcome all efforts to support young people on trans and gender identity issues and ensure that they feel happy, welcome and accepted at school, and it's encouraging to see this move.

"No trans person should be forced to present in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable. When this happens, it can be deeply damaging, particularly for young people.

In January, Brighton College, an 170-year-old private school regularly among the top 10 schools in England for academic results, scrapped uniform rules for transgender pupils.

Richard Cairns, headmaster of the boarding and day-pupil school, told The Independent they had decided there would continue to be two different kinds of uniform, but pupils could choose which one they wanted to wear.

This change follows requests from a small number of families. It ties in with my strong personal belief that youngsters should be respected for who they are, he said.

If some boys and girls are happier identifying with a different gender from that in which they were born, then my job is to make sure that we accommodate that. My only interest as headmaster is their welfare and happiness.

Allens Croft School in Birmingham is believed to be the first state primary to declare that it has a gender neutral uniform.

The primary is designated a best practice school by the charity Educate and Celebrate, which has received more than 200,000 in funding from the Department for Education to give equality and diversity training to staff in schools across the country.

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Julia Neal, chair of the ATL teaching unions equality and diversity committee, said gender identity prejudice in education needs to be challenged.

She added: Its about senior management teams and governing bodies understanding that there are a lot of facilities in schools that are separated  changing rooms and toilets and uniforms are very gender-specific.

If there is gender fluidity they need to understand the importance of gender-neutral facilities. And they need to understand how pupils want to be referred to, as he or she. Its a delicate area.

Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern, told The Times: We are increasingly seeing boundaries being overstepped and it is concerning.

Earlier this year, an Icelandic primary school removed gender signs from its toilets so as not to "force anybody into a pre-designed form."
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Boris Johnson has reportedly admitted to discussing the possibility of a leadership coup against David Cameron.

The former mayor visited Tory backbencher Alec Shelbrooke in his Westminster office and reportedly discussed how many potential rebels there were to trigger a no-confidence vote.

An anonymous source told the Mail on Sunday that Mr Johnson asked Mr Shelbrooke if there were the required 50 MPs to trigger a vote after the EU Referendum.

Mr Shelbrooke was overheard saying he thought Mr Johnson was digging for information and had told him there were only 20 rebels at the most.

The pro-Remain Elmet and Rothwell MP said Mr Johnson seemed rattled and worried about how the next few months would pan out.

But a friend of Mr Johnson have dismissed the report as absolute b*******.

Mr Johnson confirmed the conversation had taken place but said he and Mr Shelbrooke were discussing how vital it was to keep the party together under Daves leadership.

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

Under Conservative party rules 50 MPs have to write a letter to Graham Brady, the chairman of the influential 1922 Committee made up of backbenchers to call for the Prime Minister to step down.

The report comes Mr Cameron is under growing pressure as the EU referendum campaign has increasingly descends into blue on blue attacks.

Speaking on the Andrew Marr show on Sunday, Mr Cameron said despite the infighting he would not resign regardless of the vote on 23 June.

He said: If we vote to leave will we carry out that instruction? Yes. Will I carry on as Prime Minister? Yes.

Recommended Read more Boris accused of putting personal ambition ahead of national interest

Will I construct a Government that includes all the talents of the Conservative Party? Yes.

Despite this many Tory MPs, particularly in the Leave camp, have called for his resignation.

Brexit supporter Nadine Dorries said she had already sent her letter in to Mr Brady when she appeared on ITV's Peston two weeks ago.

She said she was supporting Mr Johnson as the next party leader.

Mr Johnson is currently the second favourite to become leader when the next leadership contest happens according to a poll of party members by ConservativeHome - after Justice Secretary Michael Gove who has ruled himself out of the race.
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David Cameron has warned of a lost decade for Britain if the country votes to leave the EU.

Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show, he said. It took Greenland three years to leave the EU. It has taken Canada seven years to negotiate [access to the single market]. There is a risk of a lost decade for Britain.

It would suck the energy out of our country. It wouldnt be the end of Europe question. It would be the beginning.

Recommended Read more Cameron warns Brexit will threaten state pensions

The BBCs Andrew Marr told him independent economic forecasts had said the economic consequences would not be as severe as the 2008 economic crash, and that it would lead to the most shallow recession since the 1950s.

Who wants to vote for a shallow recession? Mr Cameron said.

I know what its like as a Prime Minister trying to fill a black hole, trying to get people back to work, having to make difficult decisions.

I know people dont all agree with some of those decisions because they were tough decisions, but we dont want to have to do it all again.

The Prime Minister said the question of Turkey joining the EU was a complete red herring.

The idea we are shackled to a corpse, when it is our biggest market and these are growing countries is just nonsense.

There is no possibility of Turkey joining the EU in decades, he said. Though the possibility of another referendum within decades is just as remote.

What has the EU ever done for us? Show all 7 1 /7 What has the EU ever done for us? What has the EU ever done for us? 1. It gives you freedom to live, work and retire anywhere in Europe As a member of the EU, UK citizens benefit from freedom of movement across the continent. Considered one of the so-called four pillars of the European Union, this freedom allows all EU citizens to live, work and travel in other member states. What has the EU ever done for us? 2. It sustains millions of jobs A report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, released in October 2015, suggested 3.1 million British jobs were linked to the UKs exports to the EU. What has the EU ever done for us? 3. Your holiday is much easier - and safer Freedom to travel is one of the most exercised benefits of EU membership, with Britons having made 31 million visits to the EU in 2014 alone. But a lot of the benefits of being an EU citizen are either taken for granted or go unnoticed. What has the EU ever done for us? 4. It means you're less likely to get ripped off Consumer protection is a key benefit of the EUs single market, and ensures members of the British public receive equal consumer rights when shopping anywhere in Europe. What has the EU ever done for us? 5. It offers greater protection from terrorists, paedophiles, people traffickers and cyber-crime Another example of a lesser-known advantage of EU membership is the benefit of cross-country coordination and cooperation in the fight against crime. What has the EU ever done for us? 6. Our businesses depend on it According to 71% of all members of the Confederation of British Influence (CBI), and 67 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the EU has had an overall positive impact on their business. What has the EU ever done for us? 7. We have greater influence Robin Niblett, Director of think-tank Chatham House, stated in a report published last year: For a mid-sized country like the UK, which will never again be economically dominant either globally or regionally, and whose diplomatic and military resources are declining in relative terms, being a major player in a strong regional institution can offer a critical lever for international influence.

An ORB poll for The Independent on Friday night put the Leave side 10 points ahead on 55 per cent to 45. Asked if he believed he was on the edge of losing, the Prime Minister stopped short of admitting the race is now far closer than he may have foreseen. 

No one knows what these polls are saying, he said. But I dont want us to take the risks. Im confident we have the strongest, most positive case.

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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Nigel Farage has defended his policy of rejecting migrants with HIV from coming into the UK, saying Britain should put our own people first.

Appearing on the Andrew Marr Show with just days to go until the EU referendum, the Ukip leader was challenged over his stated position that refusing to accept migrants with HIV would be a good start to reforming immigration.

Mr Farage refused to repeat the line live on TV, but he nonetheless defended a policy that would block people who want to come to the UK to get free healthcare.

The leading Brexit campaigner said he wants Britain to be a normal country, suggesting that involves not allowing people to come into the country who would be a huge burden on the health service.

And Mr Farage suggested people would be forced to prove they do not have HIV when they arrive at the border, pointing  as he often does  to how things are done in Australia, where you have to prove various things on entry.

Lets be clear, if you are coming to live in this country, to work in this country, you have to bring your own health insurance, he said. We have a national health service that is at breaking point.

It is a national health service, it is not an international health service.

What has the EU ever done for us? Show all 7 1 /7 What has the EU ever done for us? What has the EU ever done for us? 1. It gives you freedom to live, work and retire anywhere in Europe As a member of the EU, UK citizens benefit from freedom of movement across the continent. Considered one of the so-called four pillars of the European Union, this freedom allows all EU citizens to live, work and travel in other member states. What has the EU ever done for us? 2. It sustains millions of jobs A report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, released in October 2015, suggested 3.1 million British jobs were linked to the UKs exports to the EU. What has the EU ever done for us? 3. Your holiday is much easier - and safer Freedom to travel is one of the most exercised benefits of EU membership, with Britons having made 31 million visits to the EU in 2014 alone. But a lot of the benefits of being an EU citizen are either taken for granted or go unnoticed. What has the EU ever done for us? 4. It means you're less likely to get ripped off Consumer protection is a key benefit of the EUs single market, and ensures members of the British public receive equal consumer rights when shopping anywhere in Europe. What has the EU ever done for us? 5. It offers greater protection from terrorists, paedophiles, people traffickers and cyber-crime Another example of a lesser-known advantage of EU membership is the benefit of cross-country coordination and cooperation in the fight against crime. What has the EU ever done for us? 6. Our businesses depend on it According to 71% of all members of the Confederation of British Influence (CBI), and 67 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the EU has had an overall positive impact on their business. What has the EU ever done for us? 7. We have greater influence Robin Niblett, Director of think-tank Chatham House, stated in a report published last year: For a mid-sized country like the UK, which will never again be economically dominant either globally or regionally, and whose diplomatic and military resources are declining in relative terms, being a major player in a strong regional institution can offer a critical lever for international influence.

Pressed for an answer as to whether he still believed Britain should reject people with HIV, Farage suggested he would if they were coming to get free healthcare.

He said: Should we say to people from all over the world, if youve got a very serious disease we are very happy for the national health service to provide whatever healthcare you want, at the same time as it now takes people in Britain a fortnight to get a GP appointment?

It is about priorities, isnt it? And my priority would be, we put our own people first. It is about time we did.

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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The Home Office is refusing to reveal how many detainees have been sexually assaulted or raped inside Yarls Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire in case the information becoming public knowledge harms the commercial interests of private companies that are involved in running it, The Independent can reveal.

Like all Government departments, the Home Office is subject to legislation that requires public bodies to disclose information that is in the public interest. However, since The Independent submitted a request for information about sexual violence against detainees in the centre in March, the Home Office has refused to disclose this information. A member of Home Office staff argued this was on the grounds that: disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of people involved with running Yarls Wood.

The controversial detention centre holds women who have entered the UK seeking asylum, often while fleeing war or sexual violence in their home country. They are held while their immigration/ asylum status is established by the Home Office, before being given leave to remain or removed from the UK. It is operated by private company Serco on behalf of the Home Office.

A number of allegations of serious sexual assault and abuse have been made against staff at Yarls Wood. In August of last year, chief prisons inspector Nick Hardwick called the centre a place of national concern after a report found more than half of women detained there say they feel unsafe. The UNs special rapporteur on violence against women, Rashida Manjoo, said she had been refused entry to the centre by the Government and said it raised the question of whether the Government has something to hide.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 New Conservative Party leader and incoming prime minister Rishi Sunak waves as he leaves from Conservative Party Headquarters in central London having been announced as the winner of the Conservative Party leadership contest AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. The PoliNations programme aims to explore how migration and cross-pollination have shaped the UKs gardens and culture PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2022 Undergraduates at the University of St Andrews take part in the traditional Pier Walk along the harbour walls of St Andrews before the start of the new academic year PA

Keith Vaz, Labour MP and chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, criticised the Home Offices refusal to answer The Independents requests for information about sexual violence against detainees.

He said: Its absolutely absurd that the Home Office should refuse a request of this kind when it is clearly in the public interest for this information to be available. The defence of commercial interest can never been used when there are important issues of policy that should be in the public domain.

Recommended Read more UN human rights investigator denied access to immigrants

He added: I will be writing to the immigration minister to ask him to disclose this information to the committee.

When approached by The Independent, the Home Office declined to comment.
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Itll reach its peak this weekend, with the official celebration of the Queens fourscore and ten. But ever since 21 April, the world has been aflutter at Her Majesty reaching 90. The obsession has even gone beyond humanity and this planet  loyal astronaut Tim Peake has been displaying a birthday card in the International Space Station and Palmerston the Foreign Office cat has tweeted his congratulations.

But of course. Who could fail to be swayed by such arguments as David Camerons; that the Queen is a golden thread running through the generations? What flinty-hearted curmudgeon could fail to join the mood of national rejoicing?

Reader, I have found him.

Outside Graham Smiths otherwise normal terrace house in an otherwise normal street in St Albans, Hertfordshire, there is no bunting, no photo of Lillibet in the window. And inside there are no signs at all that Smith, 42 has even thought about baking a cake. The house is unostentatious, even smallish, the furniture modern, unextravagant. The delivery is soft, self-assured without being strident, polished but not to the point where everything sounds like the pre-packaged sound bite of a media-trained politician. You could be forgiven for thinking you were having a relaxed conversation with an everyday kind of guy. Except that this one really, really cares about our constitution.

Smith, the chief executive of the campaign group Republic, wants the Queen turfed off her throne, and Britain to become a republic with an elected head of state, someone who represents the people.

Now, you might have thought that the people seemed pretty happy with the current arrangements, to judge from the flag-waving masses singing Happy Birthday on 21 April, to the accompaniment of a 62-gun salute. You might have confirmed that opinion in May, which brought a right Royal pageant to Windsor Castle, featuring 900 horses, 1,500 performers and James Blunt. It was presented by Ant and Dec.

And after yesterdays thanksgiving service at St Pauls, todays Trooping the Colour and tomorrows procession down the Mall  which will be cheered by an estimated 10,000  you might be inclined to a bout of silent contemplation. But not Graham Smith. It is completely inappropriate, he says, from the comfort of his armchair, to make such a big fuss over a head of states birthday. They should be treated in the same manner as the head of government, and we certainly wouldnt tolerate this kind of fuss for David Camerons birthday.

But we like it, I counter, showing him my parish magazine. Would he like to live in a Britain that didnt have room for our local churchs Choral Evensong in Celebration of the Queens 90th Birthday?

What an interesting insight, he says, in tones that suggest he will not be coming. People say the monarchy represents the nation and unites us. But as this shows, it is absolutely a product of upper-middle-class home counties English culture, a white Anglican institution.

I suppose monarchists can at least take consolation in knowing that this weekend, Mr Smith will be the grumpiest man in Britain. Except that now he starts smiling. A broad, some might say treacherous grin spreads across his face.

Royal pageantry, royal weddings, royal birthdays, he says, are the best recruiting sergeants to the republican cause. All this deference and sycophancy winds up people who would otherwise be quite passive. The monarchy has sustained itself on fairly widespread indifference, with people being happy for them to carry on in the background. So the more the monarchy promotes itself with weddings and birthdays, the more it turns itself into a contested institution. And the monarchy makes sense, until you think about it.

Thats why, this weekend Smith, will be mingling with unsuspecting crowds near Londons royal palaces, getting his point across to television news crews, and, no doubt, handing out seditious literature like 60 Inglorious Years, the pamphlet Republic produced for the Queens Diamond Jubilee in 2012.

We are excited and optimistic, he says, These are good weekends for us. You see, the last five years have been lucky for the royal family: two babies, a wedding, a jubilee and a 90th birthday. But they have been lucky years for us, too. We picked up hundreds of members on each occasion, and we are picking up hundreds more now.

If it werent for a grovelling media, he says, we would realise that the people who really go to town celebrating royal occasions are a minority. And that, If you stand up to the hype and hysteria, you start to make progress. Look, for example, at what happened with Smith. The former IT worker says he started attending Republic meetings after all the drum-beating for 2002s Golden Jubilee fired up my interest. Three years later, he became Republics chief executive  and though the group only had a couple of hundred members back then, it was a dark day for the House of Windsor.

We were nowhere, says Smith, Republicans had not taken up the challenge. They would keep their heads down while the so-called rest of the country celebrated. They assumed the worst. But under his leadership, We came out and proved the opposite. Republic now has 5,500 fully paid-up members, and about 35,000 registering their support online. The last five years, he says, have really galvanised our supporters.

There was nothing in his background, he thinks, to make him like this. He was very happy. Growing up in Bristol  mum a nurse, dad a middle manager  with two sisters and a twin brother. Maybe he fell to musing on heredity. But however he got this way, theres no stopping him now. A head of state, he says, should be able to contribute to public life by speaking intelligently about issues. I cant remember a single thing of interest the Queen has said. If you are going to have such a completely silent figurehead, why not just have the inanimate object, the throne?

Or take the Queens Jubilee in 2012. There was a big celebration, he says. But we are supposed to be democratic. If you look around the world, having a head of state in office for 60 years is usually a sign something is wrong. The royals arent a bargain for the country, he insists. The Queen doesnt cost just 56p per person as royalists claim. The true cost is 334 million a year (nearer a fiver). Factor in security (even on holiday), helicopters and the like, and Smith reckons each royal family member costs an annual 19 million a year. There is a perception the monarchy is benign, fluffy, a bit of fun. He says. We want to strip away the fluff and show that actually its fairly grubby institution, steeped in power and self-interest.

But can he really see the British public ever voting to get rid of the royal family  in the teeth of 62-gun salutes and Ant and Dec? A lot of that stuff is incredibly flaky, he says. It wont take much for it to evaporate. I am very confident.

As I retrieve my parish magazine, Smith hands me some inflammatory pamphlets. Stepping into the Queens good air, I ask: So, Mr Smith, how did you celebrate your birthday?

I cant remember, he says. I dont really do big birthdays.
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CIA director John O. Brennan expects a classified US congressional report into the 9/11 attacks to be published, clearing Saudi Arabia of any blame.

The withheld section of the 2002 report into the era-defining terrorist strikes is central to a dispute over whether Americans should be able to sue the Saudi government for damages.

But Mr Brennan, who runs the countrys foreign intelligence service, told Saudi-owned Arabiya TV: "I think the 28 pages will be published, and I support their publication. Everyone will see the evidence that the Saudi government had nothing to do with it.

The US Senate passed a bill in May allowing families of the 9/11 victims to launch legal action, but the White House has threatened to veto any attempts to do so.

Saudi Arabia denies providing any support for the 19 hijackers  most of whom were Saudi citizens  who killed nearly 3,000 people in the 9/11 attacks. Riyadh strongly objects to the bill.

The Saudi government has said it might sell up to $750bn (526bn) of investments in American assets if it becomes law.

Mr Brennan called the 28-page section merely a "preliminary review", but previously said it should be kept out of the public domain for fear of fuelling unfounded rumours.

He added: "It was found later, according to the results of the report, that there was no link between the Saudi government as a state or as an institution, or even senior Saudi officials, to the September 11 attacks."

The Office of the US Director of National Intelligence is reviewing the material to see whether it can be declassified.

Bob Graham, a former US senator who co-chaired the congressional inquiry into the attacks, said the White House would likely make a decision by June on whether it would release the classified pages.

Mr Graham told ABC News: The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11; they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier.

In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 Show all 12 1 /12 In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 President Bush was visiting Emma E Brooker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida as news of the attack on the World Trade Center broke In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 The president and his staff, including Press Secretary Ari Fleischer (L) were then brought to a holding room at the school, where he prepared to address the nation In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 President Bush was then rushed onto Air Force One and was flown to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. He watched television coverage of the attacks from his office on the plane In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 President Bush talks on the telephone at the General Dougherty Conference Center at Barksdale Air Force Base In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 President Bush is seen with his senior adviser Karl Rove at Barksdale Air Force Base In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 The president with White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card at Barksdale Air Force Base. Before leaving the base, the president held a press conference at which he said, Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 The president was consoled by Lt Col Cindy Wright of the White House Military Office aboard Air Force One. After leaving Louisiana, the president was flown to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska before he headed back to Washington In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 President Bush arrived at the White House Presidential Emergency Operations Center around 7 pm. Here he is shown with his wife, First Lady Laura Bush, Vice President Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 At 8:30 pm, the president addressed the nation from the White House. In his speech, he set the tone for the wars to come in Afghanistan and Iraq In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 Ive directed the full resources for our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and bring them to justice, the president said. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbour them In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 The presidents speech on the teleprompter In pictures: President Bushs immediate response to 9/11 11 September 2001 Immediately following the speech, the president had a national security meeting with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and others

The position of the United States government has been to protect Saudi Arabia.

At virtually every step of the judicial process, when the United States government was called upon to take a position, it has been a position adverse to the interests of United States citizens seeking justice, and protective of the government which, in my judgement, was the most responsible for that network of support.

The former Democratic senator has joined Republican Walter Jones and Democrat Stephen Lynch as part of his campaign, along with families of the victims.

The pair have introduced legislation to force President Barack Obama to publish the 28 pages.

If evidence proving a firm link between Saudi Arabia and the attackers, who were led by Egyptian-born Mohamad Atta, it would be possible for families of victims to sue the oil-rich kingdom through the US courts.
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The father of Omar Mateen, identified by police as the man behind the carnage at an Orlando nightclub early Sunday morning, is an Afghan man who holds strong political views, including support for the Afghan Taliban.

Seddique Mateen, who has been referred to as Mir Seddique in early news reports, hosted the "Durand Jirga Show" on a channel called Payam-e-Afghan, which broadcasts from California. In it, the elder Mateen speaks in the Dari language on a variety of political subjects. Dozens of videos are posted on a channel under Seddique Mateen's name on YouTube. A phone number and post office box that are displayed on the show were traced back to the Mateen home in Florida. Mateen also owns a nonprofit organization under the name Durand Jirga, which is registered in Port St. Lucie, Fla.

In one video, Mateen expresses gratitude toward the Afghan Taliban, while denouncing the Pakistani government.

 Latest footage of Orlando nightclub shooting

"Our brothers in Waziristan, our warrior brothers in [the] Taliban movement and national Afghan Taliban are rising up," he said. "Inshallah the Durand Line issue will be solved soon."

The "Durand Line issue" is a historically significant one, particularly for members of the Pashtun ethnic group, whose homeland straddles the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Durand Line is that border. It is not clear whether the Mateens are Pashtun. The Afghan Taliban is mostly made up of Pashtuns.

The line was drawn as a demarcation of British and Afghan spheres of influence in 1893. The British controlled most of subcontinental Asia at the time, though some parts, including what is now Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan, were only loosely held. The line was inherited as a border by Pakistan after its independence. Since it splits the Pashtun population politically, it is seen as a cause for their marginalization. Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in most of eastern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.

Pashtuns are also sometimes referred to as Pakhtuns, or Pathans.

Just hours before the Orlando shooting, Seddique Mateen posted a video on a Facebook page called Provisional Government of Afghanistan -- Seddique Mateen. In it, he seems to be pretending to be Afghanistan's president, and orders the arrest of an array of Afghan political figures.

"I order national army, national police and intelligence department to immediately imprison Karzai, Ashraf Ghani, Zalmay Khalilzad, Atmar, and Sayyaf. They are against our countrymen, and against our homeland," he says, while dressed in army fatigues.

The most recent video on Mateen's YouTube channel shows him declaring his candidacy for the Afghan presidency. The timing of the video is strange, as it came a year after presidential elections were held in Afghanistan. Mateen appears incoherent at times in the video, and he jumps abruptly from topic to topic. His use of Dari, instead of Pashto, the language of Pashtuns, was another strange element of his presentation, given that he is discussing issues of Pashtun nationalism.

In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family grieve after a list of hospitalised victims was released, implying the death of those who weren't on the list and hadn't been heard from, outside a Hampton Inn & Suites hotel near the Orlando Regional Medical Center AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People mourning for victims of the mass shooting near the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Mina Justice speaks to a reporter discussing texting with her son Eddie who was in a bathroom at Club Pulse in Orlando. It has now been confirmed that Eddie Justice was among the 50 people killed in the massacre AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate near the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the LGBT Center of Central Florida (C) is comforted by Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan (R) after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police officials investigate the back of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A member of the Medical Examiners office wheels a body to a vehicle from the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A photograph posted by the Orlando Police Department on Twitter with the words, "Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life", in reference to the operation against a gun man inside Pulse night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI, Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Office personnel investigate the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Annette Stubbs, a pastor at a local church, prays for victims a few blocks from a crime scene at the nightclub where a mass shooting took place AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Aimee McCarthy from Jacksonville, gives blood at the oneblood facility, to help the victims from a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police forensics investigators work at the crime scene of a mass shooting at the Pulse gay night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured person is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement officials work at the Pulse nightclub following a fatal shooting AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando Police officers direct family members away from the nightclub AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The scene outside the Orlando gay club where multiple people have been shot AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The injured are treated in the street outside Pulse in Orlando following the shooting EPA/Univision In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Two witnesses, Jermain Towns (left) and Brandon Shuford, wait down the street for news following shooting and hostage stand-off at the Pulse nightclub. Mr Towns said his brother was in the club at the time AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Emergency services at the scene. Ambulance crews and firefighters were outside the club alongside police. EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People treating the wounded on the street EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club Reuters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement agencies and local city representatives give a news conference in the wake of a mass-casualty shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando Rex In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando police officers seen outside of Pulse nightclub after a fatal shooting and hostage situation in Orlando, Florida Getty In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family console one another outside the Orlando Police Headquarters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that took place in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman, the Imam of the mosqe that mass shooter Omar Mateen attended, speaks to the media in Fort Pierce. The imam said that the suspect never gave any indication he was capable of such violence.Omar Mateen attended evening prayers three or four times a week at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, bringing his son who is about four or five years old AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Omar Mateen has killed 50 people at a gay nightclub after pledging allegiance to Isis in the deadliest mass shooting in US history Myspace

A gunman opened fire on a crowded nightclub in Orlando early Sunday, June 12. He killed at least 50 people. The final death toll is not known, but this shooting is already the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

On Sunday morning, Mateen told NBC News that his son's rampage "has nothing to do with religion." Instead, he offered another possible motive. He said his son got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami a few months ago. He said his son was especially enraged because the kissing took place in front of his own young son.

"We are saying we are apologising for the whole incident. We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country," Mateen said.

Mateen could not be reached for comment by The Washington Post. His cellphone has been switched off.

Copyright: Washington Post
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A gunman who police fear could have a bomb has reportedly taken several hostages after opening fire at a gay nightclub in Florida.

Local police said there were "multiple injuries" at Pulse in Orlando and warned people to stay away from the area.

A Facebook post by the club posted at 2am local time (7am UK time) said: "Everyone get out of Pulse and keep running".

Local TV reporter Stewart Moore said "more than 20 people have been shot" with an assault rifle and that the man remained barricaded inside the club with hostages.

He said there were fears the shooter may be wearing a bomb, and Orlando Fire Department's bomb squad and hazardous material team were at the scene.

Mr Moore said people were still trapped inside the club with gunshot wounds.

A police dispatcher told Agence France Presse: "There are injuries. I am not sure if there are any deceased at this time".

Witnesses reported seeing the shooter open fire around 2am.

Anthony Torres said on Facebook he "made it out just barely as we started to hear fire being shot" and "people are screaming that people are dead".

He said people were being "loaded up onto stretchers" outside the club.

One witness, Rosie Feba, told the Orlando Sentinel her girlfriend had said someone was shooting but she had assumed it was part of the music at first.

She said: "She told me someone was shooting. Everyone was getting on the floor.

"I told her I didn't think it was real, I thought it was just part of the music, until I saw fire coming out of his gun."

Ms Feba and her girlfriend ran out of the club, helping a man who had been shot on the way out.

The couple were shaken but unhurt.

In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family grieve after a list of hospitalised victims was released, implying the death of those who weren't on the list and hadn't been heard from, outside a Hampton Inn & Suites hotel near the Orlando Regional Medical Center AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People mourning for victims of the mass shooting near the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Mina Justice speaks to a reporter discussing texting with her son Eddie who was in a bathroom at Club Pulse in Orlando. It has now been confirmed that Eddie Justice was among the 50 people killed in the massacre AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate near the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the LGBT Center of Central Florida (C) is comforted by Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan (R) after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police officials investigate the back of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A member of the Medical Examiners office wheels a body to a vehicle from the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A photograph posted by the Orlando Police Department on Twitter with the words, "Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life", in reference to the operation against a gun man inside Pulse night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI, Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Office personnel investigate the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Annette Stubbs, a pastor at a local church, prays for victims a few blocks from a crime scene at the nightclub where a mass shooting took place AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Aimee McCarthy from Jacksonville, gives blood at the oneblood facility, to help the victims from a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police forensics investigators work at the crime scene of a mass shooting at the Pulse gay night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured person is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement officials work at the Pulse nightclub following a fatal shooting AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando Police officers direct family members away from the nightclub AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The scene outside the Orlando gay club where multiple people have been shot AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The injured are treated in the street outside Pulse in Orlando following the shooting EPA/Univision In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Two witnesses, Jermain Towns (left) and Brandon Shuford, wait down the street for news following shooting and hostage stand-off at the Pulse nightclub. Mr Towns said his brother was in the club at the time AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Emergency services at the scene. Ambulance crews and firefighters were outside the club alongside police. EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People treating the wounded on the street EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club Reuters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement agencies and local city representatives give a news conference in the wake of a mass-casualty shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando Rex In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando police officers seen outside of Pulse nightclub after a fatal shooting and hostage situation in Orlando, Florida Getty In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family console one another outside the Orlando Police Headquarters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that took place in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman, the Imam of the mosqe that mass shooter Omar Mateen attended, speaks to the media in Fort Pierce. The imam said that the suspect never gave any indication he was capable of such violence.Omar Mateen attended evening prayers three or four times a week at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, bringing his son who is about four or five years old AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Omar Mateen has killed 50 people at a gay nightclub after pledging allegiance to Isis in the deadliest mass shooting in US history Myspace

Another witness, Ricardo J Negron Almodovar, said: "I was there. Shooter opened fire at around 2:00am.

"People on the dance floor and bar got down on the floor and some of us who were near the bar and back exit managed to go out through the outdoor area and just ran.

"I am safely home and hoping everyone gets home safely as well".

He said the gunman had begun shooting at the ceiling initially because the glass from the lights overhead was falling onto the dancefloor.

One Twitter user, Emilio, tweeted to say he and three others were hiding in a dressing room before later confirming he was "finally out, safe".

Recommended Read more Witnesses tell of hostage terror at Florida LGBT nightclub

He said: "Please tell the cops we're at Pulse Orlando hiding in the dressing room there was a shooting.

"Four of us still hiding. Lights are off in club. Cops are here but haven't got us yet".

Amateur footage at the scene has recorded the sound of shots being fired outside the club.

Dozens of emergency vehicles are currently surrounding the club.

The motive for the attack is unknown.

More follows...
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The shooter who killed at least 50 people in a LGBT nightclub in Florida called emergency services and swore allegiance to the head of ISIS, according to police.

Omar Mateen, who reportedly called 911 before the attack, shot down at least 50 people at the Pulse nightclub.

Islamic State, which is strongly anti-LGBT, has allegedly claimed responsibility for the shooting, according to ISIS-affiliated news agency Amaq, although an official claim from ISIS has been disputed.

 Snapchat captures Orlando gunman firing 24 shots in 9 seconds

President Barack Obama said the shooter was a man filled with hate and called the incident the worst shooting in US history.

The 29-year-old, who was born in New York, was equipped with a handgun and an assault rifle.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest advocacy group for Muslims in the US, has asked the Muslim community to donate blood to those injured in the attack.

Rasha Mubarak, the Florida chapters Orlando regional co-ordinator, said: We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured. The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence.

In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family grieve after a list of hospitalised victims was released, implying the death of those who weren't on the list and hadn't been heard from, outside a Hampton Inn & Suites hotel near the Orlando Regional Medical Center AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People mourning for victims of the mass shooting near the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Mina Justice speaks to a reporter discussing texting with her son Eddie who was in a bathroom at Club Pulse in Orlando. It has now been confirmed that Eddie Justice was among the 50 people killed in the massacre AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate near the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the LGBT Center of Central Florida (C) is comforted by Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan (R) after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police officials investigate the back of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A member of the Medical Examiners office wheels a body to a vehicle from the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A photograph posted by the Orlando Police Department on Twitter with the words, "Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life", in reference to the operation against a gun man inside Pulse night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI, Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Office personnel investigate the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Annette Stubbs, a pastor at a local church, prays for victims a few blocks from a crime scene at the nightclub where a mass shooting took place AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Aimee McCarthy from Jacksonville, gives blood at the oneblood facility, to help the victims from a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police forensics investigators work at the crime scene of a mass shooting at the Pulse gay night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured person is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement officials work at the Pulse nightclub following a fatal shooting AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando Police officers direct family members away from the nightclub AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The scene outside the Orlando gay club where multiple people have been shot AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The injured are treated in the street outside Pulse in Orlando following the shooting EPA/Univision In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Two witnesses, Jermain Towns (left) and Brandon Shuford, wait down the street for news following shooting and hostage stand-off at the Pulse nightclub. Mr Towns said his brother was in the club at the time AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Emergency services at the scene. Ambulance crews and firefighters were outside the club alongside police. EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People treating the wounded on the street EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club Reuters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement agencies and local city representatives give a news conference in the wake of a mass-casualty shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando Rex In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando police officers seen outside of Pulse nightclub after a fatal shooting and hostage situation in Orlando, Florida Getty In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family console one another outside the Orlando Police Headquarters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that took place in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman, the Imam of the mosqe that mass shooter Omar Mateen attended, speaks to the media in Fort Pierce. The imam said that the suspect never gave any indication he was capable of such violence.Omar Mateen attended evening prayers three or four times a week at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, bringing his son who is about four or five years old AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Omar Mateen has killed 50 people at a gay nightclub after pledging allegiance to Isis in the deadliest mass shooting in US history Myspace

Mateen was also accused of beating his ex-wife regularly before the attack.
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Speaking Wednesday at an economic conference, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made one of the more buttoned-down, straight-edged arguments for marijuana legalisation I've heard in recent years. It's worth quoting at length so I've done that below:

"Look, our approach on legalising marijuana is not about creating a boutique industry or bringing in tax revenue, 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 countries in the world. [Of] 29 different countries studied by the U.N., Canada was number one in terms of underage access to marijuana. And whatever you might think or studies 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. 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 organised crime, street gangs and gun-runners, because of the illicit marijuana trade, and if we can get that out of the criminal elements and into a more regulated fashion we will reduce the amount of criminal activity that's profiting from those, and that has offshoots into so many other criminal activities. So those are my focuses on that.

"I have no doubt that Canadians and entrepreneurs will be tremendously innovative in finding ways to create positive economic benefits from the legalisation and control of marijuana, but our focus is on protecting kids and protecting our streets."

Trudeau made these remarks in response to a conference participant who said that "Canada could be to cannabis as France is to wine." These enthusiastic predictions about the burgeoning marijuana industry -- billions of dollars in revenue and taxes, thousands of jobs created -- should be familiar to anyone who's followed efforts to legalise pot here in the United States.

But Trudeau's argument for legalisation is concerned less with creating benefits, and more with reducing harms. He starts from the same place that many legalisation opponents start from -- concern for the safety of children.

Opponents of legalisation have always argued that relaxing marijuana laws will inevitably lead to increased use among teens and adolescents. This would obviously be a problem, because younger users are more at risk for marijuana dependency than adults, and heavy use among teens has been linked to a whole host of social and mental health problems.

But Trudeau points to an easy-to-overlook fact: It's already incredibly easy for teenagers to get high if they want to. In 2015, for instance, nearly 80 percent of U.S. 12th-graders said it would be easy for them to obtain marijuana. It's clear, in other words, that current policies centered on making the drug completely illegal are doing little to keep it out of the hands of kids who want to use it.

Trudeau argues that taking pot out of the black market and putting it under the aegis of a regulatory structure will actually make it harder for kids -- those most susceptible to the drug's harms -- to obtain it. We don't really know yet if that's the case. Legalisation experiments in Colorado and elsewhere are still too young to draw sweeping conclusions about the effects of legalisation on teen use and access.

That said, the early data is encouraging. A recent study published in Lancet Psychiatry found that the over the past decade or so -- as 13 states passed medical-marijuana laws, 10 states relaxed penalties for marijuana use, and Colorado and Washington became the first states to fully legalise recreational pot use -- not only have national teen marijuana use rates declined, but problems associated with teen marijuana use, like dependency, have fallen too.

Beyond that, the latest federal data shows no significant year-over-year change in marijuana use among teens in Colorado and Washington in the year after marijuana became legal there.

Experts say none of this is particularly surprising. "Most of the legal changes have pertained only to those 21 and over, so the absence of a big increase in teens is exactly what you'd expect," Jonathan Caulkins of Carnegie Mellon University told me late last year.

In short, it may be the case that marijuana legalisation will have a much smaller impact on teen use rates than once feared. This doesn't mean that legalisation doesn't bring risks of its own, however. If marijuana is more widely available, more people will use it, and a certain percent of them will develop a dependency on the drug. And another subset of users will end up doing incredibly stupid or dangerous things while high.

But the question is weighing these very real risks of harm against the harms that are already occurring because of prohibition. Marijuana prohibition ruins lives -- lives of the hundreds of thousands of people arrested for possessing the drug each year, or the lives of thousands of people put behind bars for years on account of simple marijuana possession, or the lives of people living in the communities wracked by violence when rival drug gangs fight over turf and put innocents in the crossfire.

Trudeau is saying that this current approach isn't working, and that people legitimately concerned over the harms of the drug trade should consider a radically different approach. So far, the evidence is backing him up.

Copyright: Washington Post
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This series of selfies are understood to have been taken by the man behind the worst mass shooting in US history at an Orlando gay club on Saturday night.

Omar Mateen has been identified by police as the gunman who killed at least 50 people and wounded 53 more when he opened fire on the busy Pulse nightclub with an AR-15 assault rifle.

His ex-wife has spoken anonymously to describe how the 29-year-old beat her during their brief marriage from 2009 to 2011.

Mateen worked as a security guard in Fort Pierce, Florida (Myspace)

The suspect's father says his son reacted angrily to seeing gay men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago (Myspace)

Speaking to The Washington Post, Mateen's ex-wife has described him as 'not a stable person' (Myspace)

And shown the pictures, which had been circulating on social media, she confirmed that they were indeed from Mateen's own Myspace account.

Mateen was a security guard in Fort Pierce, Florida, and police believe he rented a car and drove to Orlando to carry out the attack.

 Snapchat captures Orlando gunman firing 24 shots in 9 seconds

The FBI has said the massacre is being investigated for possible links to radical Islamism, but Mateen's father has told NBC "this was not about religion", describing his son as a homophobe.

In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family grieve after a list of hospitalised victims was released, implying the death of those who weren't on the list and hadn't been heard from, outside a Hampton Inn & Suites hotel near the Orlando Regional Medical Center AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People mourning for victims of the mass shooting near the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Mina Justice speaks to a reporter discussing texting with her son Eddie who was in a bathroom at Club Pulse in Orlando. It has now been confirmed that Eddie Justice was among the 50 people killed in the massacre AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate near the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the LGBT Center of Central Florida (C) is comforted by Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan (R) after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police officials investigate the back of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A member of the Medical Examiners office wheels a body to a vehicle from the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A photograph posted by the Orlando Police Department on Twitter with the words, "Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life", in reference to the operation against a gun man inside Pulse night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI, Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Office personnel investigate the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Annette Stubbs, a pastor at a local church, prays for victims a few blocks from a crime scene at the nightclub where a mass shooting took place AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Aimee McCarthy from Jacksonville, gives blood at the oneblood facility, to help the victims from a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police forensics investigators work at the crime scene of a mass shooting at the Pulse gay night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured person is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement officials work at the Pulse nightclub following a fatal shooting AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando Police officers direct family members away from the nightclub AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The scene outside the Orlando gay club where multiple people have been shot AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The injured are treated in the street outside Pulse in Orlando following the shooting EPA/Univision In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Two witnesses, Jermain Towns (left) and Brandon Shuford, wait down the street for news following shooting and hostage stand-off at the Pulse nightclub. Mr Towns said his brother was in the club at the time AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Emergency services at the scene. Ambulance crews and firefighters were outside the club alongside police. EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People treating the wounded on the street EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club Reuters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement agencies and local city representatives give a news conference in the wake of a mass-casualty shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando Rex In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando police officers seen outside of Pulse nightclub after a fatal shooting and hostage situation in Orlando, Florida Getty In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family console one another outside the Orlando Police Headquarters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that took place in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman, the Imam of the mosqe that mass shooter Omar Mateen attended, speaks to the media in Fort Pierce. The imam said that the suspect never gave any indication he was capable of such violence.Omar Mateen attended evening prayers three or four times a week at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, bringing his son who is about four or five years old AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Omar Mateen has killed 50 people at a gay nightclub after pledging allegiance to Isis in the deadliest mass shooting in US history Myspace

"He was not a stable person," said the ex-wife, who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because she feared for her safety in the wake of the mass shooting.

"He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn't finished or something like that."
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Police have identified the gunman in the mass shooting at a gay club in Florida as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, an American citizen whose parents are from Afghanistan.

Authorities in Orlando said they were investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism, as the death toll rose to 50 with a further 53 wounded.

The gunman was killed in a shootout with armed officers at around 5am on Sunday morning, US time. He was armed with an assault-type rifle, a handgun and some sort of "suspicious device", police said.

CBS News initially identified the suspect as Mateen, a US citizen with no apparent criminal record. ABC News reported he had been on police's "radar", though not subject to an investigation.

And according to The Washington Post, relatives helped officials identify Mateen as the shooter. He lived in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Mateen's father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News his son had become angry a couple of months ago when he saw two men kissing in Miami, and he believed that could be related to the shooting.

He said the incident "has nothing to do with religion".

 Latest footage of Orlando nightclub shooting

"We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident. We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country," Seddique said.

Orlando police chief John Mina said the suspect exchanged gunfire with an officer working at the Pulse club at around 2am, before going inside and taking hostages among the more than 300 people at the club.

At a press conference, police declared a state of emergency in the city and urged anyone who went to Pulse on Saturday night to come forward and speak to police.

Ron Hopper, the FBI agent in charge of the operation, when asked if the gunman had a connection to radical Islamic terrorism, Hopper said authorities "have suggestions that individual has leanings towards that".

"This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as domestic terror incident," Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said.

Barack Obama was briefed on the attack and has asked for regular updates on the investigation, the White House said.

In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family grieve after a list of hospitalised victims was released, implying the death of those who weren't on the list and hadn't been heard from, outside a Hampton Inn & Suites hotel near the Orlando Regional Medical Center AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People mourning for victims of the mass shooting near the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Mina Justice speaks to a reporter discussing texting with her son Eddie who was in a bathroom at Club Pulse in Orlando. It has now been confirmed that Eddie Justice was among the 50 people killed in the massacre AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate near the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the LGBT Center of Central Florida (C) is comforted by Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan (R) after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police officials investigate the back of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A member of the Medical Examiners office wheels a body to a vehicle from the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A photograph posted by the Orlando Police Department on Twitter with the words, "Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life", in reference to the operation against a gun man inside Pulse night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI, Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Office personnel investigate the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Annette Stubbs, a pastor at a local church, prays for victims a few blocks from a crime scene at the nightclub where a mass shooting took place AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Aimee McCarthy from Jacksonville, gives blood at the oneblood facility, to help the victims from a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police forensics investigators work at the crime scene of a mass shooting at the Pulse gay night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured person is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement officials work at the Pulse nightclub following a fatal shooting AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando Police officers direct family members away from the nightclub AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The scene outside the Orlando gay club where multiple people have been shot AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The injured are treated in the street outside Pulse in Orlando following the shooting EPA/Univision In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Two witnesses, Jermain Towns (left) and Brandon Shuford, wait down the street for news following shooting and hostage stand-off at the Pulse nightclub. Mr Towns said his brother was in the club at the time AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Emergency services at the scene. Ambulance crews and firefighters were outside the club alongside police. EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People treating the wounded on the street EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club Reuters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement agencies and local city representatives give a news conference in the wake of a mass-casualty shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando Rex In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando police officers seen outside of Pulse nightclub after a fatal shooting and hostage situation in Orlando, Florida Getty In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family console one another outside the Orlando Police Headquarters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that took place in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman, the Imam of the mosqe that mass shooter Omar Mateen attended, speaks to the media in Fort Pierce. The imam said that the suspect never gave any indication he was capable of such violence.Omar Mateen attended evening prayers three or four times a week at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, bringing his son who is about four or five years old AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Omar Mateen has killed 50 people at a gay nightclub after pledging allegiance to Isis in the deadliest mass shooting in US history Myspace

Pulse posted on its own Facebook page around 2 a.m.: "Everyone get out of pulse and keep running." Just before 6 a.m., the club posted an update: "As soon as we have any information, we will update everyone. Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love."

The club was opened in 2004 and worked actively in the community to promote awareness of LGBT issues. The Pulse website described it as "not just another gay club".

Mateen is understood to have worked as a security guard and driven to Orlando to carry out the attack, according to CNN.
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The gunman who carried out the most deadly mass shooting in US history was a known quantity to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Omar Mateen of Port Saint Lucie, Florida, was on the FBIs radar on two separate occasions before he was identified as the man behind the deaths of at least 50 people in the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando.

He was a person of interest in 2013 and in 2014.

Speaking to The Washington Post, Mateen's ex-wife has described him as 'not a stable person' (Myspace)

The FBI opened an investigation into the 29-year-old but closed the case when it failed to produce any information that warranted a closer look, according to Ronald Hopper, the FBI assistant agent in charge.

Recommended Read more Orlando gay night club gunman worked for global security firm G4S

Mr Hopper also confirmed to reporters that Mateen called 911 and talked about his allegiance to the Islamic State before the attack.

A source also told The Daily Beast that Mateen was a "known quantity" to the FBI.

He was killed after he shot more than 100 people in the nightclub on Saturday evening with an assault rifle and a handgun. He purchased the weapons legally just a few days before the attack.

In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family grieve after a list of hospitalised victims was released, implying the death of those who weren't on the list and hadn't been heard from, outside a Hampton Inn & Suites hotel near the Orlando Regional Medical Center AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People mourning for victims of the mass shooting near the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Mina Justice speaks to a reporter discussing texting with her son Eddie who was in a bathroom at Club Pulse in Orlando. It has now been confirmed that Eddie Justice was among the 50 people killed in the massacre AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate near the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the LGBT Center of Central Florida (C) is comforted by Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan (R) after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police officials investigate the back of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A member of the Medical Examiners office wheels a body to a vehicle from the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A photograph posted by the Orlando Police Department on Twitter with the words, "Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life", in reference to the operation against a gun man inside Pulse night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI, Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Office personnel investigate the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Annette Stubbs, a pastor at a local church, prays for victims a few blocks from a crime scene at the nightclub where a mass shooting took place AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Aimee McCarthy from Jacksonville, gives blood at the oneblood facility, to help the victims from a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police forensics investigators work at the crime scene of a mass shooting at the Pulse gay night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured person is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement officials work at the Pulse nightclub following a fatal shooting AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando Police officers direct family members away from the nightclub AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The scene outside the Orlando gay club where multiple people have been shot AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The injured are treated in the street outside Pulse in Orlando following the shooting EPA/Univision In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Two witnesses, Jermain Towns (left) and Brandon Shuford, wait down the street for news following shooting and hostage stand-off at the Pulse nightclub. Mr Towns said his brother was in the club at the time AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Emergency services at the scene. Ambulance crews and firefighters were outside the club alongside police. EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People treating the wounded on the street EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club Reuters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement agencies and local city representatives give a news conference in the wake of a mass-casualty shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando Rex In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando police officers seen outside of Pulse nightclub after a fatal shooting and hostage situation in Orlando, Florida Getty In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family console one another outside the Orlando Police Headquarters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that took place in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman, the Imam of the mosqe that mass shooter Omar Mateen attended, speaks to the media in Fort Pierce. The imam said that the suspect never gave any indication he was capable of such violence.Omar Mateen attended evening prayers three or four times a week at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, bringing his son who is about four or five years old AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Omar Mateen has killed 50 people at a gay nightclub after pledging allegiance to Isis in the deadliest mass shooting in US history Myspace

His ex-wife told the Washington Post that he had repeatedly beaten her during their two-year marriage until July 2011 and he was not a stable person.

His father, Siddique Mateen, told NBC news that his son was angry when he saw pictures of two men kissing.

We are in shock like the whole country, he said.

Mateens former employer, private security firm G4S, where he worked from 2007, said it is co-operating fully with law enforcement.
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The ex-wife of the 29-year-old man suspected of killing 50 people in a Orlando nightclub early Sunday said that he was violent and mentally unstable and beat her repeatedly while they were married.

The ex-wife said she met Omar Mateen online about eight years ago and decided to move to Florida and marry him.

At first, the marriage was normal, she said, but then he became abusive.

 Snapchat captures Orlando gunman firing 24 shots in 9 seconds

"He was not a stable person," said the ex-wife, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared for her safety in the wake of the mass shooting. "He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn't finished or something like that."

While the FBI has not identified Mateen publicly, U.S. law enforcement officials said his identification was found on the body of the suspected killer who was armed with a handgun and an assault rifle.

Authorities believed he used those weapons to kill 50 people and injure dozens more in the attack on the gay nightclub club that began just after 2 a.m. Sunday morning. Mateen was killed in shootout with police three hours later after a SWAT team assaulted a section of the club where Mateen was holed up with hostages.

Mateen's ex-wife said his family was from Afghanistan, but her ex-husband was born in New York. His family later moved to Florida. In a series of Myspace photos, Mateen is seen taking selfies and wearing NYPD shirts in a couple of the shots. His ex-wife identified him as the man in the Myspace photos.

Mateen's ex-wife said she was having a difficult time when she first met him and decided to move to Florida to be with him. The two married in March 2009 and moved into a 2-bedroom condominium in Fort Pierce, Fla., that Mateen's family owned.

"He seemed like a normal human being," she said, adding that he wasn't very religious and worked out at the gym out often. She said in the few months they were married he gave no signs of having fallen under the sway of radical Islam. She said he owned a small-caliber handgun and worked as a guard at a nearby facility for juvenile delinquents.

"He was a very private person," she said.

In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family grieve after a list of hospitalised victims was released, implying the death of those who weren't on the list and hadn't been heard from, outside a Hampton Inn & Suites hotel near the Orlando Regional Medical Center AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People mourning for victims of the mass shooting near the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Mina Justice speaks to a reporter discussing texting with her son Eddie who was in a bathroom at Club Pulse in Orlando. It has now been confirmed that Eddie Justice was among the 50 people killed in the massacre AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate near the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the LGBT Center of Central Florida (C) is comforted by Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan (R) after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police officials investigate the back of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A member of the Medical Examiners office wheels a body to a vehicle from the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A photograph posted by the Orlando Police Department on Twitter with the words, "Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life", in reference to the operation against a gun man inside Pulse night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI, Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Office personnel investigate the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Annette Stubbs, a pastor at a local church, prays for victims a few blocks from a crime scene at the nightclub where a mass shooting took place AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Aimee McCarthy from Jacksonville, gives blood at the oneblood facility, to help the victims from a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police forensics investigators work at the crime scene of a mass shooting at the Pulse gay night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured person is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement officials work at the Pulse nightclub following a fatal shooting AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando Police officers direct family members away from the nightclub AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The scene outside the Orlando gay club where multiple people have been shot AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The injured are treated in the street outside Pulse in Orlando following the shooting EPA/Univision In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Two witnesses, Jermain Towns (left) and Brandon Shuford, wait down the street for news following shooting and hostage stand-off at the Pulse nightclub. Mr Towns said his brother was in the club at the time AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Emergency services at the scene. Ambulance crews and firefighters were outside the club alongside police. EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People treating the wounded on the street EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club Reuters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement agencies and local city representatives give a news conference in the wake of a mass-casualty shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando Rex In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando police officers seen outside of Pulse nightclub after a fatal shooting and hostage situation in Orlando, Florida Getty In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family console one another outside the Orlando Police Headquarters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that took place in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman, the Imam of the mosqe that mass shooter Omar Mateen attended, speaks to the media in Fort Pierce. The imam said that the suspect never gave any indication he was capable of such violence.Omar Mateen attended evening prayers three or four times a week at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, bringing his son who is about four or five years old AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Omar Mateen has killed 50 people at a gay nightclub after pledging allegiance to Isis in the deadliest mass shooting in US history Myspace

The ex-wife said her parents intervened when they learned Mateen had assaulted her. Her father confirmed the account and said that the marriage only lasted a few months.

Her parents flew down to Fort Pierce and pulled her out of the house, leaving all her belongings behind. The ex-wife she said never had contact with Mateen again despite attempts by him to reach her.

"They literally saved my life," she said of her parents.

According to Florida court records, the two formally divorced in 2011.

After learning about what happened in Orlando, she said: "I am still processing. I am definitely lucky."

Copyright: Washington Post
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America's largest Islamic civil rights group is calling on Muslims to give blood in the aftermath of the most deadly mass shooting in US history.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the monstrous attack on the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, and offered condolences to the families of those killed or injured.

"We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured," a statement by the group said.

"The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence."

Michael Cheatham, a surgeon for Orlando health, told a news conference that hospitals in the area had implemented a mass casualty plan and urged donors to go to blood banks rather than to hospitals.

One Blood, which organises blood donation, said O negative, O positive and AB plasma donors were urgently lacking.

Here's the line at a local blood bank for Pulse Shooting victims. One man said, "This is the real Orlando." @bn9 pic.twitter.com/KmX8EU9Ld7  Erin Maloney (@ErinOnTV) June 12, 2016

Meanwhile, the ban on gay men donating blood has been lifted, with One Blood announcing it was in crisis and will be accepting all donors.

It said all donors would be given full blood screening.

The organisation said it had been having difficulties with its website amid a spike in interest.

Local news reporter Christal Hayes described one blood centre as overloaded with people wanting to donate their blood.
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After a gunman killed 26 people, including 20 young children, at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut in December 2012, it seemed as if something might at last be done to curb the cycle of mass gun violence in the US. And yet, a package of modest gun law reforms was quashed by the Senate just a few months later, a result that President Barack Obama decried at the time as shameful.

Today, with more than twice that number dead in Orlando  murdered using the same AR-15 assault weapon that was wielded by the shooter at Sandy Hook  the path to genuine reform seems little clearer than it did three years ago.

Recommended Read more A timeline of US mass shootings following the Orlando nightclub attack

In this case, the issue will undoubtedly be clouded by the spectre of Islamic terror, though that is itself relevant: the attackers who struck Paris last November were forced to source their guns from a European black market that leads back to the Balkans. In the US, mass shooters of every stripe can obtain their weapons easily and legally. The suspects in last years San Bernardino shootings, for example, were armed with semi-automatic rifles bought legally despite Californias relatively strict state gun restrictions.

The Orlando shooting was the 173rd US mass shooting of 2016, according to the website MassShootingTracker.org, which counts any incident in which four or more people are shot (including the shooter), whether they are killed or simply injured.

 Snapchat captures Orlando gunman firing 24 shots in 9 seconds

Mother Jones maintains a similar list, but counts only shooting incidents in which four or more people are killed and the motive appears to be indiscriminate murder. Their count for 2016 is a mere three mass shootings  though that, of course, is three too many. The US has a gun homicide rate almost six times higher than Canada, its next-door neighbour. American gun violence is unmatched in the developed world.

Last year, Mr Obama said his failure to pass common sense gun safety laws was the greatest frustration of his presidency. In January 2016, he unveiled executive actions intended to close the so-called gun show loop-hole by requiring anyone in the business of selling firearms to have a licence and conduct background checks on prospective buyers, regardless of whether they were selling them at a store, at a gun show or online.

In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family grieve after a list of hospitalised victims was released, implying the death of those who weren't on the list and hadn't been heard from, outside a Hampton Inn & Suites hotel near the Orlando Regional Medical Center AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People mourning for victims of the mass shooting near the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Mina Justice speaks to a reporter discussing texting with her son Eddie who was in a bathroom at Club Pulse in Orlando. It has now been confirmed that Eddie Justice was among the 50 people killed in the massacre AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate near the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the LGBT Center of Central Florida (C) is comforted by Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan (R) after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police officials investigate the back of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A member of the Medical Examiners office wheels a body to a vehicle from the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A photograph posted by the Orlando Police Department on Twitter with the words, "Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life", in reference to the operation against a gun man inside Pulse night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI, Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Office personnel investigate the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Annette Stubbs, a pastor at a local church, prays for victims a few blocks from a crime scene at the nightclub where a mass shooting took place AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Aimee McCarthy from Jacksonville, gives blood at the oneblood facility, to help the victims from a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police forensics investigators work at the crime scene of a mass shooting at the Pulse gay night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured person is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement officials work at the Pulse nightclub following a fatal shooting AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando Police officers direct family members away from the nightclub AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The scene outside the Orlando gay club where multiple people have been shot AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The injured are treated in the street outside Pulse in Orlando following the shooting EPA/Univision In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Two witnesses, Jermain Towns (left) and Brandon Shuford, wait down the street for news following shooting and hostage stand-off at the Pulse nightclub. Mr Towns said his brother was in the club at the time AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Emergency services at the scene. Ambulance crews and firefighters were outside the club alongside police. EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People treating the wounded on the street EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club Reuters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement agencies and local city representatives give a news conference in the wake of a mass-casualty shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando Rex In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando police officers seen outside of Pulse nightclub after a fatal shooting and hostage situation in Orlando, Florida Getty In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family console one another outside the Orlando Police Headquarters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that took place in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman, the Imam of the mosqe that mass shooter Omar Mateen attended, speaks to the media in Fort Pierce. The imam said that the suspect never gave any indication he was capable of such violence.Omar Mateen attended evening prayers three or four times a week at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, bringing his son who is about four or five years old AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Omar Mateen has killed 50 people at a gay nightclub after pledging allegiance to Isis in the deadliest mass shooting in US history Myspace

The prospects for further reform rest partly on the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, sought and received the endorsement of the National Rifle Association (NRA). Speaking to the powerful pro-gun lobby group in May, he claimed his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, wanted to abolish the Second Amendment, the section of the constitution that enshrines the right to bear arms.

Ms Clinton has said no such thing, but she has promised that, as President, she would take on the gun lobby and fight for common sense reforms to keep guns away from terrorists, domestic abusers and other violent criminals. Even if Democrats win back the Senate in November, she would only have half a chance of passing such reforms through a House led by Republicans, who often appear motivated by maintaining their NRA A ratings on gun rights.

Polls suggest a majority of people in the US support measures such as background checks, a federal gun purchase database and a ban on assault-style weapons such as the AR-15. Some states have tightened their gun laws in recent years, though others have relaxed them  and, in the absence of federal action on the issue, guns can still cross state lines with ease.

Speaking at a televised town hall event in Indiana last week, Mr Obama again expressed his frustration on the issue, noting that Congress has even prevented the US Centres for Disease Control from studying gun violence as a public health problem.

He also explained that the absence of gun safety laws allowed potential terrorists to acquire weapons unhindered. Ive got people who we know have been on Isil websites living here in the United States, he said. Were allowed to put them on the no-fly list. But because of the National Rifle Association, I cannot prohibit those people from buying a gun.

The US has more privately owned guns than any other nation on Earth: in fact, there are more privately owned guns in America than there are adult Americans. Taking those guns away is not plausible. Regulating them, however, ought to be.
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At least 50 people have been killed and 53 injured after a gunman launched what police say was a "domestic terrorism incident" at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Police say an officer working as a security guard inside the Pulse nightclub exchanged fire with the suspect at about 2am local time (7am UK time), before a hostage situation developed, a team of officers entered the club and shot dead the gunman.

Police identified the attacker as Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old from Port St. Lucie, Florida  more than 100 miles away from Pulse. His family is from Afghanistan, while Mateen is believed to have been born in the United States.

Mr Mateen, who is said by the FBI to have "leanings" towards extremism and Islamic State, was involved with a stand-off with officers for around three hours before SWAT teams stormed the building and shot him dead.

 Latest footage of Orlando nightclub shooting

It already ranks as one of the deadliest shootings in American history, with a larger death toll than the attacks in San Bernardino, California last December.

It was unclear when the victims were shot by the gunman.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina told a press conference: "At... 0500 hours this morning, the decision was made to rescue hostages that were in there. Our officers exchanged gunfire with the suspect. The suspect is dead,"

There were approximately 320 people in the club when the shooting began. At least one officer was injured in the gun fight but the police action saved at least 30 lives, Mr Mina said.

Witnesses in the club posted messages on social media as the stand-off took place, while one reportedly texted his mother to say: "He's rounded us up and he is going to kill us."

A message posted on Pulse's Facebook page read: "Everyone get out of pulse and keep running"

Police say the suspect was carrying an assault-type rifle and a handgun as well as an unidentified "device" on him.

In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family grieve after a list of hospitalised victims was released, implying the death of those who weren't on the list and hadn't been heard from, outside a Hampton Inn & Suites hotel near the Orlando Regional Medical Center AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People mourning for victims of the mass shooting near the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Mina Justice speaks to a reporter discussing texting with her son Eddie who was in a bathroom at Club Pulse in Orlando. It has now been confirmed that Eddie Justice was among the 50 people killed in the massacre AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate near the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the LGBT Center of Central Florida (C) is comforted by Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan (R) after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police officials investigate the back of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A member of the Medical Examiners office wheels a body to a vehicle from the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A photograph posted by the Orlando Police Department on Twitter with the words, "Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life", in reference to the operation against a gun man inside Pulse night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI, Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Office personnel investigate the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Annette Stubbs, a pastor at a local church, prays for victims a few blocks from a crime scene at the nightclub where a mass shooting took place AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Aimee McCarthy from Jacksonville, gives blood at the oneblood facility, to help the victims from a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police forensics investigators work at the crime scene of a mass shooting at the Pulse gay night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured person is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement officials work at the Pulse nightclub following a fatal shooting AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando Police officers direct family members away from the nightclub AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The scene outside the Orlando gay club where multiple people have been shot AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The injured are treated in the street outside Pulse in Orlando following the shooting EPA/Univision In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Two witnesses, Jermain Towns (left) and Brandon Shuford, wait down the street for news following shooting and hostage stand-off at the Pulse nightclub. Mr Towns said his brother was in the club at the time AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Emergency services at the scene. Ambulance crews and firefighters were outside the club alongside police. EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People treating the wounded on the street EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club Reuters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement agencies and local city representatives give a news conference in the wake of a mass-casualty shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando Rex In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando police officers seen outside of Pulse nightclub after a fatal shooting and hostage situation in Orlando, Florida Getty In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family console one another outside the Orlando Police Headquarters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that took place in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman, the Imam of the mosqe that mass shooter Omar Mateen attended, speaks to the media in Fort Pierce. The imam said that the suspect never gave any indication he was capable of such violence.Omar Mateen attended evening prayers three or four times a week at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, bringing his son who is about four or five years old AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Omar Mateen has killed 50 people at a gay nightclub after pledging allegiance to Isis in the deadliest mass shooting in US history Myspace

Police did not immediately name the gunman or provide a possible motive for the attack but officials have classified the rampage as a "domestic terrorism incident", Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said.

Javer Antonetti, 53, told the Orlando Sentinel newspaper he was near the back of the dance club when he heard gunfire. "There were so many (shots), at least 40," he said.

"I saw two guys and it was constant, like 'pow, pow, pow,'."

Medics wait with stretchers at the emergency entrance to Orlando Regional Medical Center hospital (AP)

Police said they had carried out a "controlled explosion" at the club hours after the shooting broke out, but did not explain why that was done.

Orlando sheriff Jerry Demings called the shooting a domestic terror incident.

The FBI said they were investigating whether the suspect acted as a lone wolf or had any ties to terror groups abroad: At this time were looking into all angles. We do have suggestions that that individual may have had leanings toward that, that particular ideology. But right now we cant say anything definitively.

. @orlandomayor Our community is strong. We will need to help each other's get through this. pic.twitter.com/XyUa8g5PT8  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

Orland mayor, Buddy Dyer, said in a statement: "We are strong, resiliant community. And tonight we had a crime that will have a lasting effect on our community. We need to stand strong and we need to be supportive of the victims are their families."

One witness told Sky News there had been more than 100 people inside the venue for the clubs Latin night when the gunman entered the building and began firing into the ceiling and into the crowd.

Richard Negroni said: We just heard shots, it was less than a minute, it felt longer. There was a brief pause and we just ran. Everybody was just faces to the floor. I had someone over me, I really didnt see [how many gunmen there were]. All I can tell you was the club was packed, there were over 100 people there, if the gunman came in through the front door people were injured or worse.

One officer was shot in the head but his Kevlar helmet saved his life.

A mother has told how her son texted her from the club toilets where he was hiding, telling her "I'm gonna die" and "Mommy I love you" before a final text saying: "He's coming."

The aftermath of the shooting involving multiple fatalities at Pulse Orlando nightclub (AP)

Terry DeCarlo from the GLBT Community Center of Orlando said they will be providing counselling, in person or by phone, to those affected by the nights events.

In an interview with local television station Wesh, he said: How can you not say that this was an attack on the LGBT community when its done in an LGBT club and a shooter walks in and there are 20 of your community members lying in a club and another 40 lying on hospital gurneys.

President Barack Obama's office said in a statement: The President was briefed this morning by Lisa Monaco, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, on the tragic shooting in Orlando, Florida. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of the victims.

"The President asked to receive regular updates as the FBI, and other federal officials, work with the Orlando Police to gather more information, and directed that the federal government provide any assistance necessary to pursue the investigation and support the community.

Rick Scott, Florida's governor, described the events as a "horrific tragedy". In a statement, he said: "We are a strong and resilient state and we will devote every resource available to assist with the shooting in Orlando. Our state emergency operations center is also monitoring this tragic incident. I have been in constant communication with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs and state and local law enforcement this morning. I would like to also thank all the first responders who quickly came to assist and help those in need."

The attack comes just days singer Christina Grimmie was shot dead while signing autographs at a concert venue in Orlando

Addititional reporting by agencies
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The father of the man named as responsible for the biggest mass shooting in US history says the massacre at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando "has nothing to do with religion".

Omar Mateen's father claimed his son had became angry after seeing two gay people kissing in Miami, and he believed the incident was relevant to the attack.

At least 50 people have been killed and 53 injured in a terrorist attack on a gay nightclub called Pulse in the early hours of Sunday morning. Florida authorities have declared a state of emergency.

In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family grieve after a list of hospitalised victims was released, implying the death of those who weren't on the list and hadn't been heard from, outside a Hampton Inn & Suites hotel near the Orlando Regional Medical Center AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People mourning for victims of the mass shooting near the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Mina Justice speaks to a reporter discussing texting with her son Eddie who was in a bathroom at Club Pulse in Orlando. It has now been confirmed that Eddie Justice was among the 50 people killed in the massacre AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate near the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the LGBT Center of Central Florida (C) is comforted by Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan (R) after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police officials investigate the back of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A member of the Medical Examiners office wheels a body to a vehicle from the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A photograph posted by the Orlando Police Department on Twitter with the words, "Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life", in reference to the operation against a gun man inside Pulse night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI, Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Office personnel investigate the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Annette Stubbs, a pastor at a local church, prays for victims a few blocks from a crime scene at the nightclub where a mass shooting took place AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Aimee McCarthy from Jacksonville, gives blood at the oneblood facility, to help the victims from a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police forensics investigators work at the crime scene of a mass shooting at the Pulse gay night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured person is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement officials work at the Pulse nightclub following a fatal shooting AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando Police officers direct family members away from the nightclub AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The scene outside the Orlando gay club where multiple people have been shot AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The injured are treated in the street outside Pulse in Orlando following the shooting EPA/Univision In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Two witnesses, Jermain Towns (left) and Brandon Shuford, wait down the street for news following shooting and hostage stand-off at the Pulse nightclub. Mr Towns said his brother was in the club at the time AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Emergency services at the scene. Ambulance crews and firefighters were outside the club alongside police. EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People treating the wounded on the street EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club Reuters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement agencies and local city representatives give a news conference in the wake of a mass-casualty shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando Rex In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando police officers seen outside of Pulse nightclub after a fatal shooting and hostage situation in Orlando, Florida Getty In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family console one another outside the Orlando Police Headquarters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that took place in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman, the Imam of the mosqe that mass shooter Omar Mateen attended, speaks to the media in Fort Pierce. The imam said that the suspect never gave any indication he was capable of such violence.Omar Mateen attended evening prayers three or four times a week at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, bringing his son who is about four or five years old AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Omar Mateen has killed 50 people at a gay nightclub after pledging allegiance to Isis in the deadliest mass shooting in US history Myspace

The gunman has been identified as Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old from Fort Pierce in Florida. Mr Mateens family is from Afghanistan and he is believed to have been born in the US.

His father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News his son apparently became angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami several months ago. He said he believed this could be linked to the shooting.

 Latest footage of Orlando nightclub shooting

We are apologising for the whole incident, his father said. We werent aware of any action he was taking. We are in shock, like the whole country.

Orlando's mayor, Buddy Dyer, announced the casualties at a press conference this morning.

Many of those wounded remain in hospital and six additional trauma surgeons have been rushed in to Orlando, officials say.

An urgent appeal has been issued for blood donors, and there has been an extraordinary response from the local community.
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At least 50 people have been killed and 53 injured after a gunman launched what police say was a "domestic terrorism incident" at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Here are the latest updates:

Police say an officer working as a security guard inside the Pulse nightclub exchanged fire with the suspect at about 2am local time (7am UK time), before a hostage situation developed, a team of officers entered the club and shot dead the gunman.

In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family grieve after a list of hospitalised victims was released, implying the death of those who weren't on the list and hadn't been heard from, outside a Hampton Inn & Suites hotel near the Orlando Regional Medical Center AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People mourning for victims of the mass shooting near the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Mina Justice speaks to a reporter discussing texting with her son Eddie who was in a bathroom at Club Pulse in Orlando. It has now been confirmed that Eddie Justice was among the 50 people killed in the massacre AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate near the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the LGBT Center of Central Florida (C) is comforted by Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan (R) after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police officials investigate the back of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A member of the Medical Examiners office wheels a body to a vehicle from the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A photograph posted by the Orlando Police Department on Twitter with the words, "Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life", in reference to the operation against a gun man inside Pulse night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI, Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Office personnel investigate the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Annette Stubbs, a pastor at a local church, prays for victims a few blocks from a crime scene at the nightclub where a mass shooting took place AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Aimee McCarthy from Jacksonville, gives blood at the oneblood facility, to help the victims from a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police forensics investigators work at the crime scene of a mass shooting at the Pulse gay night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured person is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement officials work at the Pulse nightclub following a fatal shooting AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando Police officers direct family members away from the nightclub AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The scene outside the Orlando gay club where multiple people have been shot AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The injured are treated in the street outside Pulse in Orlando following the shooting EPA/Univision In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Two witnesses, Jermain Towns (left) and Brandon Shuford, wait down the street for news following shooting and hostage stand-off at the Pulse nightclub. Mr Towns said his brother was in the club at the time AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Emergency services at the scene. Ambulance crews and firefighters were outside the club alongside police. EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People treating the wounded on the street EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club Reuters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement agencies and local city representatives give a news conference in the wake of a mass-casualty shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando Rex In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando police officers seen outside of Pulse nightclub after a fatal shooting and hostage situation in Orlando, Florida Getty In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family console one another outside the Orlando Police Headquarters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that took place in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman, the Imam of the mosqe that mass shooter Omar Mateen attended, speaks to the media in Fort Pierce. The imam said that the suspect never gave any indication he was capable of such violence.Omar Mateen attended evening prayers three or four times a week at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, bringing his son who is about four or five years old AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Omar Mateen has killed 50 people at a gay nightclub after pledging allegiance to Isis in the deadliest mass shooting in US history Myspace

Police identified the attacker as Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old from Port St. Lucie, Florida  more than 100 miles away from Pulse.

His family is from Afghanistan, while Mateen is believed to have been born in the United States.

Mr Mateen, who is said by the FBI to have "leanings" towards extremism and Isis, was involved with a stand-off with officers for around three hours before SWAT teams stormed the building and shot him dead.
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Bewilderment. Horror. Sheer incomprehension.

Pick any such words and discard them - none was sufficient for those gathered close to the Pulse nightclub in Orlando on Sunday, trying to somehow make sense of the worst mass shooting in US history.

How could a lone gunman, apparently inspired by Isis, and known to the FBI, make his way into a popular gay venue on a busy weekend night and leave devastation and murder in his wake, before he was eventually shot and killed by police? Furthermore, what drove him to do so?

With the death toll having reached reached 50 - although this is feared likely to rise, with 53 further people injured - and the attack, launched in the early hours of Sunday morning, for many calling to mind last Novembers shootings at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris, there were more questions than answers.

Police named the the gunman as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, an American citizen who lived in Fort Pierce, Florida and whose whose parents are from Afghanistan. He had been able to buy his weapons, legally, in the last few days.

Omar Mateen, who has been identified as the Orlando gunman by police (Myspace)

While police said they were treating the incident as an act of terrror, it was unclear whether the young man armed with a semi-automatic rifle, a handgun and possibly an explosive device, was directed by Isis, or merely inspired by the group or others to act.

Im just shocked, stunned. We heard the explosion, said Elizabeth Kohl, who lived close to scene and who drove one of those injured to hospital.

Elizabeth Kohl helped transport a victim to the hospital (Andrew Buncombe)

The Isis-linked Amaq news agency reported that Mateen was a fighter for the group, but officials warned that this was unconfirmed.

Hundreds attend a vigil in New York City to remember those killed (GETTY)

Officials said he had previously been on the radar of investigators, he had been cleared and was not currently being investigated. Local media said the man - whose wife said he had beaten her before they got divorced - had made several declarations of support for Isis.

His father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News his son had become angry a couple of months ago when he saw two men kissing in Miami, and he believed that could be related to the shooting. He said the attack on the nightclub had nothing to do with religion. However, it has been revealed that 911 calls involving the shooter took place before the massacre, in which he talked about the so-called Islamic State.

Many will seize on the incident as another example of the threat posed to the US by domestic Islamic terror and those who self-radiclalise.

What is clear is he was a person filled with hatred, said President Barack Obama, speaking at a press conference following the attack.

We know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate," he said. "And as Americans, we are united in grief, in outrage, and in resolve to defend our people.

The presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, was quick to condemn President Obama for not referring to radical Islamic extremism in his speech, calling for him to immediately resign in disgrace on Twitter.

Reports said that a police officer working as a security guard inside the club exchanged fire with the suspect at about 2am, according to Reuters. A hostage situation developed in the club and three hours later SWAT team officers stormed the building before shooting dead the gunman. It was unclear when the gunman killed the victims. There were thought to have been as many as 300 people inside the nightclub, which has operated in the centre of Orlando since 2004, and was established to keep alive then memory of the owners brother who died of Aids.

Do we consider this an act of terrorism? Absolutely, Danny Banks, special agent in charge of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, told reporters. Whether that is domestic terrorist activity or an international one, that is something we will certainly get to the bottom of.

A woman offers free hugs in Washington in reaction to the mass shootings at Pulse (GETTY)

Asked if the FBI suspected the gunman might have had inclinations toward militant Islam, including a possible sympathy for Islamic State, Ronald Hopper, an assistant FBI agent in charge, told reporters: We do have suggestions that the individual may have leanings toward that particular ideology. But right now we can't say definitively.

US Senator Marco Rubio of Florida told CNN he understood that the gunman had worked for a security company and so would have undergone some background checks.

Over the next couple of days they're going to be looking to see where this individual was inspired to carry out this horrifying act of terrorism, said Mr Rubio said. I think we're going to be talking about a very different kind of case here soon.

 Queues outside blood banks following Orlando shooting

Reports said that Mateen, had two licences to carry a concealed weapon. He held dozens of people hostage, some of them hiding inside the lavatories of the club, until police stormed the venue, using an armored vehicle and stun grenades. The survivors escaped under the cover of what the police called the two discretionary explosions. By 5am, the gunman had been killed.

The club itself posted a message on its Facebook page about 3am that read: Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.

It added: Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love.

'I feel like this an attack on the whole LGBT community' said Giancarlo Sola (Andrew Buncombe)

The wounded were taken to three hospitals in the area. Most were taken to Orlando Regional Medical Centre, the areas main facility, where anxious friends and family members gathered for news on the injured.

The Pulse nightclub was known as a friendly, welcoming club that was part of the community and had never experienced - or caused any trouble.

I feel like this an attack on the whole LGBT community, said Giancarlo Sola who said he had been to the club several times. I dont know about Isis. I dont think this was Isis - this was a hate crime.
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A gunman is dead and more than 20 people have been shot following an attack and hostage stand-off at a gay nightclub in Florida.

Orlando police said there were "mass casualties" at the Pulse venue following the attack in the early hours of Sunday morning.

More than 20 people were shot when the gunman opened fire in the nightclub at around 2am local time (7am UK time) before taking several people hostage, according to local media reports.

A post on the club's Facebook page from the time of the shooting said: "Everyone get out Pulse and keep running".

Witnesses described the gunman shooting at the ceiling and into the crowd at the packed club.

One witness, Ricardo J Negron Almodovar, told Sky News: "At around 2am someone started shooting. People just dropped on the floor. I guess the shooter was shooting at the ceiling because you could see all the glass from the lamps falling.

"There was a brief pause in the shooting and some of us just got up and ran out the back".

Another witness, Rob Rick, said it happened around, 2 a.m., just before closing time.

"Everybody was drinking their last sip," he said.

In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family grieve after a list of hospitalised victims was released, implying the death of those who weren't on the list and hadn't been heard from, outside a Hampton Inn & Suites hotel near the Orlando Regional Medical Center AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People mourning for victims of the mass shooting near the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Mina Justice speaks to a reporter discussing texting with her son Eddie who was in a bathroom at Club Pulse in Orlando. It has now been confirmed that Eddie Justice was among the 50 people killed in the massacre AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate near the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the LGBT Center of Central Florida (C) is comforted by Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan (R) after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police officials investigate the back of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A member of the Medical Examiners office wheels a body to a vehicle from the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A photograph posted by the Orlando Police Department on Twitter with the words, "Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life", in reference to the operation against a gun man inside Pulse night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI, Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Office personnel investigate the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Annette Stubbs, a pastor at a local church, prays for victims a few blocks from a crime scene at the nightclub where a mass shooting took place AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Aimee McCarthy from Jacksonville, gives blood at the oneblood facility, to help the victims from a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police forensics investigators work at the crime scene of a mass shooting at the Pulse gay night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured person is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement officials work at the Pulse nightclub following a fatal shooting AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando Police officers direct family members away from the nightclub AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The scene outside the Orlando gay club where multiple people have been shot AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The injured are treated in the street outside Pulse in Orlando following the shooting EPA/Univision In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Two witnesses, Jermain Towns (left) and Brandon Shuford, wait down the street for news following shooting and hostage stand-off at the Pulse nightclub. Mr Towns said his brother was in the club at the time AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Emergency services at the scene. Ambulance crews and firefighters were outside the club alongside police. EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People treating the wounded on the street EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club Reuters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement agencies and local city representatives give a news conference in the wake of a mass-casualty shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando Rex In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando police officers seen outside of Pulse nightclub after a fatal shooting and hostage situation in Orlando, Florida Getty In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family console one another outside the Orlando Police Headquarters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that took place in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman, the Imam of the mosqe that mass shooter Omar Mateen attended, speaks to the media in Fort Pierce. The imam said that the suspect never gave any indication he was capable of such violence.Omar Mateen attended evening prayers three or four times a week at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, bringing his son who is about four or five years old AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Omar Mateen has killed 50 people at a gay nightclub after pledging allegiance to Isis in the deadliest mass shooting in US history Myspace

He estimated more than 100 people were still inside when he heard shots, got on the ground and crawled toward a DJ booth.

A bouncer knocked down a partition between the club area and an area in the back where only workers are allowed. People inside were able to then escape through the back of the club.

Dozens of emergency and police vehicles, including a SWAT team and a bomb squad, attended the scene and police detonated a controlled explosion outside the venue.

Local media reported there were fears the gunman could be wearing a bomb vest.

Amateur footage captured at the scene during the siege recorded the sound of shots being fired.

The motive for the attack is unknown.

Additional reporting by agencies
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Witnesses have described the moment a gunman opened fire on the dancefloor of a Florida gay nightclub before taking several people hostage.

The shooter was killed following a four hour stand-off with Orlando police at the Pulse nightclub, having killed at least 20 people.

One mother told local TV station WFTV9 her son had texted her from inside the club saying: "He's rounded us up and he is going to kill us".

Recommended Read more Police confirm shooter dead following shooting at Florida gay club

A Facebook post by the club posted at the time of the shooting said: "Everyone get out of Pulse and keep running".

The gunman opened fire with an assault rifle at the LGBT club in Orlando at around 2am local time (7am UK time).

An eyewitness, Rosie Feba, told the Orlando Sentinel her girlfriend had said someone was shooting but she had assumed it was part of the music at first.

She said: "She told me someone was shooting. Everyone was getting on the floor.

The injured are treated in the street outside Pulse in Orlando following the shooting (EPA/Univision)

"I told her I didn't think it was real, I thought it was just part of the music, until I saw fire coming out of his gun."

Ms Feba and her girlfriend ran out of the club, helping a man who had been shot on the way out.

The couple were shaken but unhurt.

Another witness, Rob Rick, said it happened around, 2 a.m., just before closing time.

Recommended Read more Gunman holding hostages after shooting at gay nightclub

"Everybody was drinking their last sip," he said.

He estimated more than 100 people were still inside when he heard shots, got on the ground and crawled toward a DJ booth.

A bouncer knocked down a partition between the club area and an area in the back where only workers are allowed. People inside were able to then escape through the back of the club.

Christopher Hansen said he was in the VIP lounge when he started hearing gunshots.

"I was thinking, are you kidding me? So I just dropped down. I just said please, please, please, I want to make it out," he said. "And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood. You hope and pray you don't get shot."

In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family grieve after a list of hospitalised victims was released, implying the death of those who weren't on the list and hadn't been heard from, outside a Hampton Inn & Suites hotel near the Orlando Regional Medical Center AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People mourning for victims of the mass shooting near the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Mina Justice speaks to a reporter discussing texting with her son Eddie who was in a bathroom at Club Pulse in Orlando. It has now been confirmed that Eddie Justice was among the 50 people killed in the massacre AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate near the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the LGBT Center of Central Florida (C) is comforted by Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan (R) after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police officials investigate the back of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A member of the Medical Examiners office wheels a body to a vehicle from the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A photograph posted by the Orlando Police Department on Twitter with the words, "Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life", in reference to the operation against a gun man inside Pulse night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI, Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Office personnel investigate the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Annette Stubbs, a pastor at a local church, prays for victims a few blocks from a crime scene at the nightclub where a mass shooting took place AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Aimee McCarthy from Jacksonville, gives blood at the oneblood facility, to help the victims from a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police forensics investigators work at the crime scene of a mass shooting at the Pulse gay night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured person is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement officials work at the Pulse nightclub following a fatal shooting AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando Police officers direct family members away from the nightclub AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The scene outside the Orlando gay club where multiple people have been shot AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The injured are treated in the street outside Pulse in Orlando following the shooting EPA/Univision In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Two witnesses, Jermain Towns (left) and Brandon Shuford, wait down the street for news following shooting and hostage stand-off at the Pulse nightclub. Mr Towns said his brother was in the club at the time AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Emergency services at the scene. Ambulance crews and firefighters were outside the club alongside police. EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People treating the wounded on the street EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club Reuters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement agencies and local city representatives give a news conference in the wake of a mass-casualty shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando Rex In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando police officers seen outside of Pulse nightclub after a fatal shooting and hostage situation in Orlando, Florida Getty In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family console one another outside the Orlando Police Headquarters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that took place in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman, the Imam of the mosqe that mass shooter Omar Mateen attended, speaks to the media in Fort Pierce. The imam said that the suspect never gave any indication he was capable of such violence.Omar Mateen attended evening prayers three or four times a week at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, bringing his son who is about four or five years old AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Omar Mateen has killed 50 people at a gay nightclub after pledging allegiance to Isis in the deadliest mass shooting in US history Myspace

He said he continued to hear gunfire after escaping.

The police were telling people to back away from the club and injured people were being tended to across the street, he added.

Another witness, Ricardo J Negron Almodovar, told Sky News he heard "non-stop firing" for around a minute - but it felt much longer.

Police have said there were "mass casualties" following the attack with approximately 20 people dead inside the club and at least 42 people wounded.

The FBI have said the shooting is likely to be terror related.

Additional reporting by agencies
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The New York Police Department is stepping up security at LGBT landmarks across the city following the mass shooting at an LGBT nightclub in Florida on Sunday morning.

We are vigilant, we have deployed our critical response command and our strategic response groups, so youll see a lot of additional police presence on the streets of the city, in some of the heavy trafficked areas, youll see police presence in front of some key LGBT community institutions, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Sunday, The New York Post reports.

There are no credible threats directed against New York City. At the same time, we are on high alert.

The shooting took the lives of 50 people and wounded more than 50 others. FBI is currently investigating the shooter's motives.

James Waters, the departments head of counter-terrorism, said that officers will be visible in the days following the attack.

Weve selected locations in the downtown area like the Stonewall and the vicinity, Waters told The Post. We will be moving from place to place and moving our resources around."

StoneWall Inn, the first national LGBT monument in the states, will hold a vigil on Sunday night for the victims of the shooting.
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President Barack Obama addressed the nation with a familiar speech on Sunday afternoon, condemning gun violence, hatred and acts of terrorism in the wake of the shooting that left 50 dead and 53 wounded in a Florida nightclub.

The president called the massacre an act of terror and an act of hate, and said the FBI is currently investigating the massacre to uncover a clear motive.

This is especially a heartbreaking day for all of our fellow Americans who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, President Obama said. The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be friends to dance to sing and to live.

The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be friends to dance to sing and to live, he continued. The place where they were attacked was more than a nightclub, its a place of solidarity and empowerment where people come together to raise awareness, speak their minds and advocate for their civil rights.

Twenty-nine-year-old Omar Mir Seddique Mateen opened fire and took hostages inside the Pulse nightclub on early Sunday morning. Officials are saying that the shooting is the worst massacre in US history.

Mateens father Mir Seddique said that his son recently expressed anti-gay sentiments after viewing photos of two men kissing.

I apologize for what my son did, Seddique told NBC News. We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident. We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country.
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The president of Afghanistan has said he severely condemns the heinous and unforgiveable shooting of more than 100 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando by an American who was born to Afghan parents.

Praying for all those affected by this tragedy, Ashraf Ghani wrote on social media.

The former president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, told CNN that Afghans stand with Americans in solidarity.

We suffer from this, too, daily, said Hamid Karzai, referring to the Islamic State which has carried out killings and bombings in Afghanistan.

Recommended Read more Orlando gay night club gunman worked for global security firm G4S

The presidents and former presidents comments come less than 12 hours after Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old from New York, gunned down at least 50 people and injured 53 people.

He had no right to kill innocent people, with which he had nothing to do, he said, adding that Islam does not condone violence and that no sane person in Afghanistan or anywhere else would support this act of violence.

Whatever cause he had in his mind, whatever his motivation, it was wrong for him to do it.

Just like we condemn it in Afghanistan, we condemn it in America, he said. Isis does not reflect Islam.

Mr Karzai, who lives in Kabul, said his children also live there and refuted claims that the country is falling apart.

He acknowledged there is conflict in Afghanistan between the government, Isis and the Taliban, but said he did not want to elaborate on that during the interview and wanted to focus on the "tragedy" in Florida.

Omar Mateen's father, Siddique Mateen, hosted a number of videos on a Californian television show called "Durand Jirga", in which he praised the Taliban and even announced his "candidacy" for Afghani president in May 2015.

Omar Mateen, who was shot dead after the attack, phoned 911 and claimed allegiance to Isis.
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Brock Turner, the former Stanford student convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, has been accused of taking photos of his victim and sharing them with his friends.

Shortly after Turners arrest on January 18, 2015, detectives said they noticed a text messaged in the Group Me application that appeared on Turners phone. According to the People's Sentencing Memorandum, the message read: Whos tits are those?

Prosecutors believe Turner may have sent photos of the victim but were unable to locate it on the defendants phone as photos taken in third-party apps are difficult to trace.

"Detectives were unable to locate the text from the "Group me" application or any photos related to the text," prosecutors wrote in the documents.

Turner was convicted on three counts of sexual assault last week and sentenced to six months in jail, however, he may only serve three months in jail due to good behavior and no prior criminal record.

Turner has also been banned in competing in USA Swimming for the rest of his life.
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Li Bos job used to involve reporting unlawful pregnancies to family planning officials. Today, in the remote Wangyuan village in Chinas mountainous Shaanxi province, hes sat on a playmat helping a toddler build a fort with multi-coloured blocks.

Mr Li, 34, is employed by the once-despised Family Planning Commission: the enforcers of Chinas single-child policy, which came to an end this year. Reports of apparent forced abortions, huge fines for families who have more than one child and snooping on peoples sex lives made the one-million strong workforce at best unpopular, and at worst terror-inducing.

If I discovered a woman pregnant with a second child, Id report her, he says. Then she would get the policy explained, and if she didnt listen, punishment.

The single-child policy has been scrapped, as Chinas government aims to lower the average age of the countrys rapidly ageing workforce. Mr Li has been retrained and works as a child-nurturing trainer with the Rural Education Action Programme (Reap)  a pilot scheme that began in 2013 and aims to close the immense gap in educational achievement between rural and urban children.

Around 8 per cent of rural children in China take college entrance exams, compared with 70 per cent of urban children. Reap officials believe this is due to a woeful lack of mental stimulation for rural youngsters between birth and the age of three. They say this is the crucial period for neurons to connect in the brain and set a path for a childs mental ability later in life. Around 92 per cent of neurons will have completed connecting by the age of three, says Professor Shi Yaojiang, who heads Reap at the Centre for Experimental Economics in Education at Xi'an citys Shaanxi Normal University. This period is critical for early development. If parents dont nurture their childs brains during this time, then mental ability cannot be maintained. If you miss it, its irreversible.

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. 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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

In the early days of Reap, Professor Shi declared that rural families know more about raising pigs than children. I was justified in saying this  we did tests about animal and child-raising knowledge and found that it was true, he claims. Traditionally, children in the countryside are beaten and scolded to make them obedient, says Mr Li. Even if young parents here know thats wrong, its hard to make grandparents change their ways. Nobody has taught them before and some cant even speak Mandarin, just dialects. I tell them that even if they can just read out the names of characters in a book to the child, that helps.

To combat all this, Reap, which was set up in conjunction with Stanford University in California, has founded seven education centres in Chinas centrally located Shaanxi province. Caregivers bring toddlers there for weekly play and learning sessions with trainers such as Mr Li, and can use the facilities all week.

The sessions are meticulously planned, offering age-appropriate toys and materials to stimulate motion, cognitive skills, language and social abilities. They are all designed to help ensure a child's crucial mental development. We dont have toys at home, and my granddaughter just used to rip up books, says Chen Huafen, a grandmother who comes to the centre with her grandchild. My granddaughters parents work away in Xi'an, so I take care of her, Ms Chen adds. At first I told them I didnt know how to nurture a child, so they said: Go to the education centre. Everything is good here. At home my granddaughter would just play in the dirt.

The four-room education centre is a burst of life and colour in the sparse village (Jamie Fullerton)

The four-room education centre is a burst of life and colour in the sparse village, the streets of which are deathly quiet due to most residents working away in fields, or as migrant workers. Dust swirls over the village's knobbly dirt roads as mangy dogs chew sheep skulls next to unmarked bus stops. Xi'an, Shaanxi provinces capital city, is a two-hour drive away through picturesque mountain terrain.

The centre is small and basic, filled with new toys and picture books. A ball pit and plastic slide make a colourful centrepiece, and the cartoon-adorned walls and floors are padded to help boisterous toddlers avoid accidents. The children who come to the centre are happy and calm, occupied by the wealth of playthings on offer, the tinny squawk of push-button electronic toys drowning out sporadic, short-lived tantrums. Most of the children have no such items at home.

He Danli, a 31-year-old full-time mother, sits reading a book to her son Yuheng, who is one and a half. He has become more obedient since we started visiting here, she says. When you talk to him he shows more mental reaction than he used to. He always wants to come here.

Reap has around 90 trainers who also make home visits to around 550 families living too far from the centres to travel to them. There are fewer than 20 centres at the moment, but there are plans to increase the number to 50 and pressure on the government to roll out the project nationwide.

In 2012, the countrys urban population surpassed its rural population for the first time (Getty)

Every six months Reap researchers compare mental ability test scores garnered from the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development between children who take part in the education course and those who dont, and the results show the project is working. The groups scores are maintained over time at an average of 97, and researchers have found that if children dont take part in the course, their score declines to an average of 81. And with a score of 81, you are not going to have the ability to graduate from high school, claims Professor Shi.

Cai Jianhua, director of the training and communication centre at Chinas National Health and Family Planning Commission, says the project can help children socially as well as educationally. If a baby is born into a white-collar family, in which parents are likely to have good communication skills, they will have mastered around 1,100 words by the age of three, he says. If a baby is born into a family living just above the poverty line, they will have mastered around 500 words.

If this problem goes unaddressed, these children will feel inferior by age five and it will have a life-long effect. There is a popular saying in China: You cant lose at the starting line. We want to give everyone the opportunity to at least stand at the starting line.

Professor Shi has discussed the benefits of Reap with 27 National Health and Family Planning Commission officials from provinces across China in an attempt to see it spread throughout the country. Some have started setting up their own regional education centres. He hopes that the government will be enticed to fund a nationwide rollout by offering the prospect of a better-educated workforce: one more suited to Chinas ongoing shift away from agriculture to urban industries.

In 2012, the countrys urban population surpassed its rural population for the first time, with more and more people moving from the countryside to cities to find employment. But despite this shift, 664 million people in a nation of 1.37 billion still lived in rural areas in 2014. It used to be the case that a child only needed to be strong enough to plough the land with a cow, says Professor Shi. But we have entered a knowledge-based industrial society.

Mr Li, meanwhile, is revelling in his new role, not having to spend his days doling out contraceptives and reporting unlawful pregnancies. The effect this course has had on children is obvious, he says, setting up a toy train track with a toddler and his granny. I always come back to the memory of a little girl called Ruohan, who I did home visits with. Her parents were always arguing and you could see her lack of security  she never smiled and was shy in front of strangers. After doing these activities with the family, she just kept getting happier. And then, one day, she actually smiled.
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As European countries grapple with growing public concern over immigration, political tensions are running high.

But hyperbolic political rhetoric reached a strange new peak this week when Germanys finance minister Wolfgang Schauble told a newspaper that closing the countrys borders would lead to inbreeding.

In an interview with weekly paper Die Zeit, Mr Schauble rejected the idea Europe could close its borders to immigrants, and said: Isolation is what would ruin us  it would lead us into inbreeding.

Recommended Read more Poll shows one in three thinks immigration more important than economy

Taking aim at opponents of Germanys border policies, he said: Muslims are an enrichment of our openness and our diversity.

Look at the third generation of Turks, especially the women. That is an enormous innovation potential, he added.

Germany took in more than a million asylum seekers in 2015, and the issue of integration has seen rows over immigration dominating the political landscape.

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 country has also seen a swell of anti-Islamic groups, and the government has said attacks with a far-right motivation reached a 15-year high in 2015.

But Mr Schaubles claim that Germans will resort to inbreeding has left many bewildered as to what he means.

German daily paper Der Tagesspiegel described the assertion as bizarre, and asks why, in a country of over 80 million people, a stop to immigration would lead to inbreeding.

Mr Schauble also called for greater economic engagement with the Middle East and Africa, English language German paper theLocal.de reports.

North African countries are already demanding [economic investment] from us as a condition for taking refugees back. And they are right to do so, he said.

Update. This article originally translated Mr Schauble's use of the German word 'inzucht' as 'incest'. On reflection, 'inbreeding' appears to be a more appropriate rendering in English. Our report has been updated on this basis. 8/6/17
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A life-sized replica of Noahs ark has been badly damaged after colliding with a coastguard boat in the port of Oslo.

The replica, the smaller of two crafts that took carpenter Johan Huibers seven years to build, crashed in the Norwegian capital when the crew towing it lost control.

Designed to educate people about faith, the arks have had more than a million visitors, who came to see peacocks, rabbits and llamas, and replicas of giraffes, penguins and tigers.

World's most popular religions Show all 7 1 /7 World's most popular religions World's most popular religions Christians Source: Pewforum Getty Images World's most popular religions Muslims Source: Pewforum World's most popular religions Hindus Source: Pewforum World's most popular religions Buddhists Source: Pewforum World's most popular religions Folk Religions Source: Pewforum Getty Images World's most popular religions Other religions Source: Pewforum World's most popular religions Jews Source: Pewforum Getty

No animals were on board at the time and no one was hurt in the collision, although the head of a ferry company in the area, Ole Herman Kjernsby, told the New York Times there was a huge hole in the side of the boat.

The Dutch carpenter said he built the arks after he had a dream the Netherlands had flooded.

The damaged boat is 45 feet high and 230 feet long and has about a fifth of the capacity that Noahs ark would have had.

The incident prompted amusement on social media. Crime novelist Tom Egeland wrote: Its unclear what happened to the 8.7 million x 2 animals on board, in reference to the estimated number of species on earth.

Bethany Brown wrote: In Mr Huibers defence, Noah had no traffic to deal with on the water, just corpses.

Mr Peters, a dutch puppeteer who bought the boat in 2010 has taken it for visits to towns across the Netherlands. He was preparing to take it to visit sites in Norway when it crashed. Both arks have to be towed wherever they go as neither has an engine.

The smaller ark was the first built between 2005 and 2007, before he built one of more biblical proportions - measuring around 410 feet long, 95 feet wide and 75 feet tall.
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A series of airstrikes in an insurgent-held Syrian province on Sunday killed at least 27 people, including four children, activists said.

The airstrikes in the northwestern Idlib province struck a crowded market and an apartment block, and came despite reports that a local truce between the government and insurgents had been renewed.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, said at least 21 people were killed by several airstrikes in Idlib city, including one that hit a popular market.

The airstrikes struck a crowded market and an apartment block (Reuters)

The group said another airstrike in the city of Maaret al-Numan, also in Idlib province, hit an apartment building, bringing it down and killing six people, including a mother and her four children who were trapped under the rubble.

The Local Coordination Committees, another activist-run group, and the Syrian Civil Defense, first responders who work in rebel-held areas, said the airstrikes in Idlib city killed at least 30 people and wounded dozens.

Both groups said the airstrikes are believed to have been carried out by Russia, which launched an aerial campaign in September to help shore up President Bashar Assad's forces. Russia denies targeting civilians.

Idlib is controlled by a coalition of Syrian rebel groups that includes al-Qaida's local branch, the Nusra Front.

Assocaited Press
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In a remote area of Afghanistan, where thousands of years of hardscrabble tribal culture increasingly mixes with a resurgent Taliban militancy, this is how Fazl Ahmad allegedly died.

Local officials in Ghor province said one of Ahmad's distant relatives was suspected of killing a former Taliban commander. In December, militants dragged Ahmad from his house and cut out his eyes in retaliation.

Ahmad was still alive and screaming when the attackers began carving the skin off his chest, leaving his heart exposed. Then they threw the 21-year old laborer off a 10-story cliff, officials said.

"They skinned him alive," said Ruqiya Naeel, a member of parliament from the area.

The Taliban denied involvement in the grisly crime, the aftermath of which was documented in a recently circulated video and photograph.

But even so, Ahmad's death is the latest in a string of violent acts across Afghanistan over the past six months. Rattled officials say the 15-year war has taken an increasingly brutal turn.

"The amount of casualties, particularly with civilians, is a crime -- a crime against humanity, a crime against Afghanistan, and a crime against our people," Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said, somberly, in a meeting with reporters last week.

Since 2001, the United States has invested more than $100 billion building Afghan military and police forces, a judicial system and schools in hopes of moving the country closer to normality. But all that spending appears to have done little to slow a cycle of rage and revenge that has made Afghanistan one of the world's most dangerous countries.

Horrific violence is nothing new in Afghanistan.

Public executions were common when the Taliban ruled the country in the 1990s, and tens of thousands of Afghans have been killed during the post-2001 Taliban insurgency. Afghanistan, like neighboring Pakistan, also has a long history of cultural and religious conservatism associated with violent retribution.

But analysts say the scale of the brutality continues to evolve as the Taliban becomes more fragmented and pushes out into additional areas of Afghanistan. Younger Taliban commanders also now operate more independently and are increasingly inspired by other brutal acts easily viewed on the Internet, they say.

Over the past month, after a U.S. drone strike killed Taliban leader Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, militant groups have hijacked at least five buses, dragging passengers into the road to execute dozens of them, especially if they or members of their families were suspected of being police officers or soldiers.

There also have been three recent deadly attacks on Afghan courthouses or judicial employees. Last month in Jowzjan province, a reported Taliban militant armed with an assault rifle shot and killed a burqa-clad woman for alleged adultery, according to a video of the crime posted to YouTube.

"There are now tens of examples of public lashings, executions, and killings," said Abdul Jama Jama, a provincial council member in Ghazni province.

In recent days, the United Nations, Amnesty International and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission also have expressed concern over what they view as a hardening culture of violence here.

Brig. Gen. Charles H. Cleveland, chief spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said some of the recent reports of violence "looked like the days pre-9/11." But he cautioned that "the base line is pretty high" for sweeping assumptions about whether brutality generally is worsening.

Still, Afghan officials and analysts are worried as the violence also expands into areas of Afghanistan that until recently had remained relatively safe.

A push by the Taliban, dominated by ethnic Pashtuns, into northern and central Afghanistan, where large populations of ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks reside, has proved especially destabilizing, officials said.

Once the Taliban settles into an area, its fighters often begin aggravating historical rivalries among ethnic groups as well as stoking more-localized feuds that in some cases have simmered for decades. That is another reason for the growing brutality, officials said.

"They are changing their war tactics," said Shah Waliullah Adeeb, a former governor of Badakhshan province. "They are trying to show people that the government is weak . . . and show that they are in charge."

But some analysts say that more fundamental -- and dangerous -- changes within the Taliban may be leading to greater upheaval.

As the original leaders of the insurgency die, they are being replaced by younger commanders who appear less interested in maintaining ties to the local areas in which they are fighting. These fighters also are more connected through the Internet to the global ambitions of militant Islamic groups, which is resulting in some Taliban commanders' attempting to borrow the fear tactics used by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

This month, for example, a group of Taliban fighters killed a high school student in Ghazni province by cutting off his nose and ears after accusing him of being a spy, local officials said.

"The Taliban had always been the village homeboys, but I think that is changing quite dramatically," said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior security and intelligence fellow at the Brookings Institution. "But the younger generation is more accepting of violence, less remembering of the horrors of the civil war [of the 1990s], and much more socialized to the global agenda."

Other analysts caution that the recent violence is more a symptom of the broader Afghan culture, where a pattern of revenge and killing has been common and disputes among families or villages often have little to do with the war.

"People want to settle old scores," said Najib Mahmood, a law professor at Kabul University. "You can hardly find any house that does not own a gun because of the war, and people use a gun even for a minor issue."

That historical inability to break the cycle of revenge is one reason that human rights groups and European ambassadors were angered by Ghani's recent decision to resume executions of Taliban figures.

Last month, after a truck bomb killed 64 people in Kabul, the government hanged five Taliban prisoners. Since then, the Taliban has pointed to the executions to justify its attacks on the Afghan judiciary.

Some analysts also worry that President Obama made a mistake in ordering last month's drone strike that killed Mansour, the Taliban commander.

They note that violence in Afghanistan escalated last summer after it was announced that the Taliban's other former leader, Mohammad Omar, had died two years earlier.

They now fear that the trend will accelerate as new Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada seeks to consolidate his power.

Akhundzada is an Islamic cleric and the Taliban's former top judge. But many analysts consider him to be even more rigid than Mansour, who was a former Taliban government minister who witnessed the carnage of Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s.

"Mansour believed a terrible outcome for Afghanistan would be a protracted civil war in Kabul and the north," Felbab-Brown said. "Many of the younger commanders don't have that restraint."

Akhundzada, in contrast, in the past issued religious edicts authorizing suicide bombings as well as Taliban-on-Taliban executions to deal with dissenters, according to Western intelligence assessments.

"The Taliban under Haibatullah will become even more dangerous," said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Pakistan-based expert on militancy.

As a result, Kabul University's Mahmood predicted, Afghanistan will continue to slide even further away from "the rule of law."

"It will take decades to see Afghanistan become a normal country again," he said.

Mohammad Sharif and Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul and Aamir Iqbal in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

Copyright: Washington Post
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Travellers trying to get to and from Gatwick, Paris and Stockholm faced delays, cancellations and frustration as separate events disrupted airline operations.

The runway at Gatwick, the busiest in the world, was closed at 3.48pm when a routine inspection identified evidence of damage. The airport tweeted: Our runway is temporarily closed while we carry out investigations.

One report said the runway surface appeared to be breaking up.

At least 15 inbound flights were diverted, including arrivals from Istanbul, Vienna and Madeira. Passengers from Malta and Malaga touched down in Bournemouth, while the flights from Heraklion operated by both British Airways and easyJet touched down at Stansted.

It later tweeted that flights were now arriving and departing.

Gatwick has a spare runway to the north of the main runway, and it was opened to departures and arrivals at 4.35pm. But with congestion building at the airport, together with planes and crews being out of position, travellers will experience delays and cancellations for the rest of the day, with the possible impact running into the Monday morning rush.

BA passengers on the airlines longest route, to Lima in Peru, were already delayed before the runway closure, and now face arriving in the Peruvian capital at 2am on Monday rather than 6.30pm on Sunday.

In Paris, Air France has grounded dozens of flights scheduled for Monday, as the pilots strike goes into its third day. Pilots are in dispute over pay and working hours.

The airline said 27 per cent of pilots have stopped work. It intends to operate 85 per cent of its domestic and long-haul services, but has cancelled three out of 10 European flights, including links with Heathrow and Manchester.

Swedish pilots working for the Scandinavian airline, SAS, also went on strike in a dispute over pay. The carrier cancelled 220 flights on Sunday, affecting 26,000 passengers. SAS organised buses from Stockholm to Copenhagen, its main base - a journey of over 400 miles.

The airline's Danish and Norwegian pilots are working normally.
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Is there something wrong, psychologically, with Jeremy Corbyn?

The question is frequently asked about leading politicians because they so often appear, to put it charitably, a little strange.

Mrs Thatcher is widely agreed to have succumbed to full blown megalomania in about 1988, Tony Blair seemed tragically riven by narcissistic personality disorder from the start, and tales of Gordon Browns eccentricities are well enough chronicled to need no reprising here. Donald Trump, of course, could busy a psychiatric convention for 30 years.

What distinguishes Corbyn from these and others who crave power is that he appears to be addicted to his own irrelevance.

 Corbyn responds to Blair's attack

With the referendum result in more mortifying doubt by the day, the Labour leader remains a staggeringly detached presence (if any presence at all) in the debate. Amid all the screeching hysteria, his tranquil, peacenik reticence strikes me as somehow more alarming than the deafening nastiness targeted at one another by the two sides.

Where democracy in the raw is supposed to be filthy, Corbyn comes across as a Howard Hughes type  a reclusive germophobe who is terrified of getting his hands dirty.

When finally he did come out of his hermits cave on Channel 4s comedy chat show The Last Leg on Friday, it was among the more counterproductive in the dismal annals of politicians trying to use the telly, God bless em, to normalise themselves.

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

Corbyns take on being a jolly good sport saw him emerge from a Bentley wearing a black tie and tuxedo beneath a full length white fur coat. He was a few monstrously blingy rings and a flaming candelabra away from winning the coveted title Worst Liberace Tribute Act of All Time.

If the visual gag was built on him swatting away attacks for being scruffy, few viewers will have rushed off to A&E to have their sides stapled back in place. Nor was the ribcage repair kit required when Corbyn, asked to rate his passion for staying in the EU from one to 10, ponderously replied: Seven. Seven and a half.

It is at this point that words begin to fail. What in the name of sanity was he thinking when he outed himself as de facto leader of the referendums meh faction? Small wonder that 40 per cent of Labour supporters still have no idea which way their party wants them to vote. The leader hasnt much clue himself.

It is fairly plain that Corbyns emotional attachment is, as before, to Brexit, and that he is nominally for Remain solely because his partys preference demands it. Hence we find him trying to resolve the internal conflict by splitting difference with that uninterested seven, seven and a half.

When he ran for the leadership, Corbyns appeal was built on being that mythical beast, a different politician; someone who sticks rigidly to his principles, however out of vogue they may be. How better to ruin that reputation, and leave the idealistic young who most fervently supported him feeling betrayed, than by pretending for reasons of political expediency to support Remain? And in such a studiedly half-hearted manner that you assume he will be privately pleased if Brexit wins?

Until Fridays comedic tour de force, he has secreted himself with tiny cliques of supporters rather than talking to the country via mass media. Youd have thought that someone with pretensions to replace the present Government with one of his own would have resisted the temptation to seek sanctuary among his fan club.

Perhaps even now it isnt too late. This is the time for a man who tells us that he wants to shape the future to do everything that he can to shape the future. He is no longer a private citizen freed by a maverick backbench existence to follow his own path. He is the leader of a political movement devoted to keeping this country in Europe.

If he says he backs Remain, he must prove it by relentlessly going on TV and radio, and telling Labour voters at this 11th hour that although, like everyone else, he has severe reservations about the EU, he strongly believes their interests are best served by staying in it. The result may well turn on whether he does so. If not, and if Brexit wins by a slither, he will deserve to be held responsible for what a vast majority of the young people who elected him last September will regard as a catastrophe.

This is the wrong moment in Corbyns unlikely career to debut as a self-deprecating comic turn. Dementedly mistimed flippancy has a place of honour in Fawlty Towers, which he told The Last Leg was his favourite sitcom, but not here and now. Sitting on the sidelines in a flowing fur coat might work as a knowingly satirical modern art instillation, or even a dream sequence in a bad surrealist movie. It looks demented in the real world.

This is all-out destructive warfare with the clearest existential implications for the UK. It is an act of not only political suicide but certifiable lunacy for Jeremy Corbyn to continue excusing himself from battle in the guise of a conscientious objector.
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There were bodies everywhere, Christopher Hansen told reporters following the mass shooting at Pulse, a gay club in downtown Orlando, in the early hours of the morning. In the parking lot, they were tagging them  red, yellow  so they knew who to help first () Pants down, shirts cut off, they had to find the bullets. Just blood everywhere.

The first shots sounded at 02:00, swiftly followed by panicked messages on social media by those trapped inside as the horror unfolded. The Pulse Facebook page sent out a warning: Everyone get out of pulse and keep running. Not everyone succeeded, and the massacre lasted for three hours until a Swat team killed the assailant and freed 30 hostages still inside. This is the deadliest mass shooting in recent US history, killing 50 and hospitalising a further 53.

The killer has been identified as Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old man from Fort Pierce in Florida. Links to radical jihadi ideology have been suggested, though remain unconfirmed. When NBC contacted Mateens father, he recalled his sons fury after seeing two men kiss in Miami a few months ago, thinking there might be a link. One kiss, 50 dead. As details have emerged, and death tolls have doubled from initial estimates, the LGBTQ community worldwide has been reminded, once again, that we are not safe.

 Snapchat captures Orlando gunman firing 24 shots in 9 seconds

Instead of coming out and facing the stark reality of LGBTQ hate crimes for people of all religions and ethnicities, we have the same tired Islamaphobic vitriol. Look to Trumps tweet: Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!

This continues to ignore the violence we face on a daily basis  whether that is the trans woman of colour raped and left for dead, the gay man beaten to a pulp, or the structural failings of the state that leave LGBTQ teenagers with no basic sexual education ashamed and suicidal. The best we get is to have pictures of US embassies flying Pride flags across the world.

This isnt the time to make this about defending the US state, this is about defending the LGBTQ community. Make no mistake, the state is no ally, and bigots of all political hues still stalk the political landscape. Florida still has no hate crime legislation pertaining to attacks on the grounds of gender identity, and the states blood ban on sexually active gay and bisexual men remains a reminder of our difference, and our division. It might be gay blood congealing on Orlandos streets, but it wont be gay blood replenishing and revitalising the friends and lovers we have lost. Talk about this on your social media, not about the killer's religion and keeping America safe.

In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family grieve after a list of hospitalised victims was released, implying the death of those who weren't on the list and hadn't been heard from, outside a Hampton Inn & Suites hotel near the Orlando Regional Medical Center AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People mourning for victims of the mass shooting near the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Mina Justice speaks to a reporter discussing texting with her son Eddie who was in a bathroom at Club Pulse in Orlando. It has now been confirmed that Eddie Justice was among the 50 people killed in the massacre AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate near the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the LGBT Center of Central Florida (C) is comforted by Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan (R) after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI agents investigate the damaged rear wall of the Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police officials investigate the back of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A member of the Medical Examiners office wheels a body to a vehicle from the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting A photograph posted by the Orlando Police Department on Twitter with the words, "Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life", in reference to the operation against a gun man inside Pulse night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting FBI, Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Office personnel investigate the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Annette Stubbs, a pastor at a local church, prays for victims a few blocks from a crime scene at the nightclub where a mass shooting took place AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Aimee McCarthy from Jacksonville, gives blood at the oneblood facility, to help the victims from a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Police forensics investigators work at the crime scene of a mass shooting at the Pulse gay night club in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured person is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement officials work at the Pulse nightclub following a fatal shooting AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando Police officers direct family members away from the nightclub AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The scene outside the Orlando gay club where multiple people have been shot AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting The injured are treated in the street outside Pulse in Orlando following the shooting EPA/Univision In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Two witnesses, Jermain Towns (left) and Brandon Shuford, wait down the street for news following shooting and hostage stand-off at the Pulse nightclub. Mr Towns said his brother was in the club at the time AP In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Emergency services at the scene. Ambulance crews and firefighters were outside the club alongside police. EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting People treating the wounded on the street EPA In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club Reuters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Law enforcement agencies and local city representatives give a news conference in the wake of a mass-casualty shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando Rex In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Orlando police officers seen outside of Pulse nightclub after a fatal shooting and hostage situation in Orlando, Florida Getty In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Friends and family console one another outside the Orlando Police Headquarters In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that took place in Orlando REUTERS In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman, the Imam of the mosqe that mass shooter Omar Mateen attended, speaks to the media in Fort Pierce. The imam said that the suspect never gave any indication he was capable of such violence.Omar Mateen attended evening prayers three or four times a week at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, bringing his son who is about four or five years old AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Orlando nightclub shooting Omar Mateen has killed 50 people at a gay nightclub after pledging allegiance to Isis in the deadliest mass shooting in US history Myspace

Queerphobia is no relic of a bygone era: it exists from the vigilante attacker on the street through to the hallowed institutions of Congress and the Senate. What drives these attacks is the same hate that drives Republic governors to pass bills removing LGBTQ non-discrimination rights in North Carolina, the same prejudice that makes our blood unviable. Orlando is only an exception in magnitude, not an incident entirely without parallel and precedent.

So straight people, we need your solidarity. We need you to challenge the bile of the right-wing media, to step in when you see us harassed or attacked, to push for comprehensive LGBT education in schools, and to support our charities and spaces. We need you, as the majority, to forge a society in which we are not merely tolerated, but accepted and embraced, and where repugnant bigots like Mateen have no space to prosper.
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He was smart, occasionally humorous and detailed in his replies to my questions. Officially, he was an attache at Irans high-walled, black-painted embassy in Beirut, but back in 1996 I thought Ghadanfar Rokon Abadi was an Iranian intelligence officer. He wore his neat black beard well-trimmed and if his eyes looked older than his 40 years, his English was heavily accented but impeccable, his manners polite almost to the point of exaggeration.

He joked with me of the day an Israeli helicopter suddenly appeared beyond the embassy compound at the height of Israels so-called Operation Grapes of Wrath invasion of southern Lebanon. We all waited for it to attack us," he said. "It didnt come. Then we thought it would attack our homes near the compound. Of course we were afraid!

Rokon Abadi knew a lot about weapons. And he always expressed his preparedness for "martyrdom". He was a tough man and, over the years, I concluded that he never told me a lie. He was frank about Irans financial and military support for the Lebanese Hizballah, and even appeared before students at a Christian university in east Beirut to defend his country. True, he maintained there that the Egyptian revolution should be supported while Syrias should not  Syrias revolution was founded neither on poverty or oppression, he contended with awe-inspiring lack of subtlety  but he fought his corner and insisted that Irans theocracy was also representative because its parliament was elected.

 Iran: Thousands mourn victims of Hajj stampede

In 2010, Iran had sent him back to Beirut to become its ambassador; a year later, when the revolution against Irans Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad broke, he found himself in one of those blind corners that every diplomat must loathe. It was one thing to support Hizballah resistance to Israel; quite another to explain Hisballahs support for Syria in its battle against the Syrian resistance around Damascus. When Irans then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Lebanon and toured the south of the country to gaze over the border at Israel  or occupied Palestine, as the Iranians called it  and promise to liberate Jerusalem, Rokon Abadi was there, smiling beside his president. But he was a lucky man, at least for the time being.

When Sunni Islamists, reportedly with Saudi support, staged a suicide attack against his embassy in November 2013, killing 23 embassy employees, Hizballah guards and civilians, Rokon Abadi was just leaving the consular buildings for a trip into Beirut. The blast almost broke down the great iron gates of the embassy and swept past Rokon Abadi, leaving him untouched but his top security man dead.

In pictures: Hajj stampede Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Hajj stampede In pictures: Hajj stampede Hajj pilgrims and Saudi emergency personnel carry a woman on a stretcher at the site where at least 700 were killed and hundreds wounded in a stampede in Mina, near the holy city of Mecca, at the annual hajj in Saudi Arabia Getty Images In pictures: Hajj stampede In pictures: Hajj stampede In pictures: Hajj stampede In pictures: Hajj stampede In pictures: Hajj stampede In pictures: Hajj stampede In pictures: Hajj stampede In pictures: Hajj stampede In pictures: Hajj stampede

I last saw him in the embassy when we embarked on a heated discussion of Irans death penalty during which, I fear, he found me extremely hostile. Iran had decreed that a young Iranian Azeri woman convicted of adultery should hang in Tabriz, and I protested against her death sentence. What right did Iran have to decide which of Gods creatures should live or die, I asked, not least after a grossly unfair trial? Rokon Abadi was taken aback and tried to explain, calmly but with growing unease, that the Iranian judiciary was independent and that he and other government officials had no power over its decisions. The woman was pardoned, but Rokon Abadi did not pardon me.

Although one of his officials accompanied me back to my car, talking all the while of the Korans wisdom on guilt and punishment, the very last time I saw the ambassador  at a Pakistan national day reception which he fled the moment it turned into a Pakistani ladies fashion show  he could scarcely bring himself to shake hands with me. He returned to Tehran in 2014 as one of its top diplomats and, I felt sure, among its wisest intelligence men. Then, fatally, he went on the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca last year and, on 24 September, was caught up in the mass panic at Mina and mysteriously disappeared.

Iran stated that it held the Saudi monarch  officially the keeper of the Holy Place of Mecca  personally responsible for the deaths of more than 2,300 people, 464 of them Iranians who had been deliberately mistreated, among them senior officials of the Islamic Republic. Only days later did it emerge that the most senior of all those officials to die was Ghadanfar Rokon Abadi. No wonder the Iranians were enraged.

Could this really have been just a terrifying accident, a tragedy of immense proportions for so many pilgrims which had, just by chance, cost the life of Rokon Abadi? Over the past two months, two Iranian-Saudi negotiations have been held to arrange this years Hajj. They failed to reach agreement because, according to Tehran, there were no specific security plans to protect Iranian pilgrims; and the Sunni Saudis would not allow the Iranians to stage their traditional Shiite demonstration beraat al-moshrekin, "distancing themselves from idolatry". It was always left to other pilgrims to decide whether the "idol-worshippers" were the Saudi monarchy or the United States and Israel.

There had been previous bans on the Iranians. In 1987, anti-US and anti-Israeli demonstrations by pilgrims had been crushed by Saudi forces who killed 402 civilians, 275 of them Iranians. This, of course, was at the height of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war in which Iraqs invading forces were militarily supported by vast Saudi financial subventions and US military assistance. The Iraqi government is today under Irans security umbrella but the Saudis could scarcely turn Arab pilgrims away from Mecca; so Iraqis would make the Hajj, Iranians would not.

The dispute fits all too neatly into the incendiary conflict between Tehran and Riyadh that now pours blood onto the battlefields of Syria, Iraq and Yemen, the Sunnis largely suffering for the Saudis, the Shiites for Iran. Among the Shiite victims, it is now clear, was Ghadanfar Rokon Abadi, the courtly diplomat who knew much about weapons and who spoke to me about death and martyrdom and who met his fate in Islams holiest city.
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In October 2014, a few months after European Union sanctions had been decreed against Russia in reaction to the situation in Ukraine, we already thought that missing the Russian partner was a mistake both in a political context in Syria and on an economical level for our agriculture, and we would pay for it dearly.

Today, more than two years after the implementation of these sanctions, the warning signal is still red. In July 2014, the European sanctions were extended to personalities including some of the Russian intelligence, preventing them from receiving visas for countries in the European Union. Alexander Bortnikov, head of the Federal Security Service and Mikhail Fradkov, director of Foreign Intelligence Services, are both concerned by the sanctions.

Let us recall that the US has also imposed sanctions, mainly economic ones, to Russia, but they have never gone as far as jeopardising their security co-operation with the heads of the intelligence service. So, why are we putting so much effort into this, at the expense of our own security?

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

These sanctions impact us twice, both on French and European levels, as demonstrated by the suspension since the Ukrainian crisis of the Cooperation Council on security issues. This council brought together the foreign and defence ministers from both French and Russian sides. These annual meetings have not taken place since October 2012 in Paris. And even if interactions did continue, lifting sanctions would allow full-scale exchanges.

Practically, this means that the heads of Russian intelligence would be able to get visas to the European Union so as to be able to directly meet and interact with their counterparts. In this field, trust is fundamental and visa bans clearly damages high level cooperation and dialogue, and we need them to confront the threat we are facing.

How can we explain that these sanctions are in our own interest, the interest of the Europeans, when one knows the impact and possible consequences of breaking or weakening the exchange of information between two countries? The attacks in Paris and Brussels sadly reminded us that this co-operation is far from being optimal, even within the EU. If we continue to weaken our cooperation with Russia in this field, we are participating in putting our citizens in danger.

Russia, thanks to its position in Syria, has access to valuable information on Isis, which we would be wrong to turn away from, as the enemy we face is multifaceted and ever-evolving. If it is not thanks to passion, let it be thanks to reason that we co-operate with the Russian state, in order to exchange critical information on the positions and intentions of Isis.

This realpolitik is no longer a choice: it is a duty imposed by the world around us. We may not agree on everything, and we can sanction where it hurts; but there are goals and interests that require us to go beyond the desire to punish. Take the example of Israel: Benjamin Netanyahus government has decided to strengthen its ties with Russia, to enhance national security, even though Moscow is working closely with Iran, Israel's most hostile and powerful enemy in the region. Without taking any country's side in the region, the Israeli decision shows that realpolitik  the Israelis' security  goes beyond geopolitics. If Israel does it, why not us?

After two years of sanctions, we know that the cost of division is immeasurably higher than that of cooperation with Russia. Besides, Russia also wants to help us. To those who doubt it, let us remind them that following the 13 November attacks, Francois Hollande and Vladimir Putin agreed to establish closer co-ordination between both countries armies on Syria.

The geo-economic war taking place between Russia and the European Union must no longer stand in the way of the fight against terrorism. While the European Council must decide on 28 and 29 June on whether to renew sanctions against Russia, let us call together to revive security cooperation between those two major players on the international scene.

More and more voices in Europe already call for a re-evaluation of sanctions and the lifting of sanctions applied to individuals, as shown by the French Senate's vote on 9 June, which called, with a wide majority, for a reassessment and even the lifting of the sanctions. History will prove right to those who find the political courage to make such a statement.

Letter signed by:

Rachida Dati - PPE France (Parti Populaire Europeen)

Francoise Grossetete - PPE France

Hermann Winkler - PPE Allemagne

Alfred Sant - S&D Malte (Socialistes & Democrates)

Alain Cadec - PPE France

Franck Proust - PPE France

Ivo Vajgl - Alde Slovenie (Alliance des Liberaux et des Democrates pour L'Europe)

Marc Joulaud  PPE France

Stefano Maullu  PPE Italie

Aldo Patriciello  PPE Italie

Renaud Muselier  PPE France

Elisabetta Gardini  PPE Italie
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For the past 35 years, Svetlana Alexievich has traversed the former Soviet Union, Dictaphone in hand, recording thousands of interviews with ordinary people  from construction workers in Siberia to helicopter pilots in Ukraine. Alexievichs methods have earned her comparisons to American historians Studs Terkel and Howard Zinn, but her accomplishments are in a category of their own. In 2015, the 68-year-old journalist became the first primarily nonfiction writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature since Winston Churchill in 1953.

So far, her output consists of five books she calls The History of the Red Man. The latest instalment, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, covers the breakup of the USSR and the chaotic transition that ensued. It took Alexievich, who was born in Ukraine but lived most of her life in Belarus, 10 years to finish. The book, which was originally published in Russian in 2013, has been translated into English and was released in the US and the UK last month  and its being hailed as Alexievichs masterpiece; not only for what it says about the fall of the Soviet Union but for what it suggests about the future of Russia and its former satellites.

One of the books most revelatory moments comes during an interview with a Kremlin official who prefers to remain anonymous, for obvious reasons. Russia, he notes, has a tsarist mentality. Whether its a general secretary or a president, either way it has to be a tsar. Its a point of view Alexievich regretfully admits she shares  and the reason, she says, that Russia has failed to embrace democracy.

Not that she demonises Russian President Vladimir Putin; for her, the countrys problem is a collective one. Putin symbolises the feelings and sentiments of pretty much the majority of Russian citizens, Alexievich says. It looks like people in Putins immediate circle who are oriented toward an anti-Western, Slavophile rhetoricand who used to be on the margins of political thoughtare moving closer to the president.

Some, such as the right-wing Russian political scientist Aleksandr Dugin, advocate a return to totalitarian values, and as Secondhand Time unfolds, the spectre of Josef Stalin wafts in and out of the book like Banquos ghost. Many members of Russias older generation whom Alexievich interviewed yearn for the days when the dictator ruled the Soviet Union with absolute power. One extraordinary conversation with an 87-year-old veteran of World War II leaves Alexievich bewildered (she occasionally inserts her feelings between brackets).

Putin symbolises the feelings and sentiments of pretty much the majority of Russian citizens, Alexievich says (AFP/Getty) (AFP/Getty Images)

Though the mans wife died in one of Stalins gulags, he tells Alexievich that his joy was unabated when the Communist Party readmitted him after a long period of rehabilitation. You have to understand! the veteran exclaims. You can only judge us according to the laws of religion. Faith! Our faith will make you jealous!

Alexievichs faith in Russias future dissolved during the 1990s. The question was posed: what kind of country should we have  a strong country or a worthy one where people can live decently? she said in her speech after receiving the Nobel Prize. We chose the former  a strong country. Once again, we are living in an era of power. Russians are fighting Ukrainians  their brothers. My father is Belarusian, my mother is Ukrainian. Thats the way it is for many people.

Secondhand Time is full of horrifying examples of the interethnic violence that erupted throughout the former USSR after its break-up. Once-friendly neighbours in places such as Tajikistan, Abkhazia and Baku turned on each other, committing rape and murder with impunity. It shows that our politicians cannot respond to the challenges of the times, says Alexievich. They do not know how to react to events and political transformations. The only thing they could offer is violence and killing people.

Alexievich has experienced discrimination of her own. In Belarus, her books are not allowed to be published. She also says that Belaruss president, Alexander Lukashenko, originally congratulated her on her Nobel Prize but renounced that two days later. He started talking about me as a slanderer of Russia and [saying] that books like mine dont inspire people, she says.

Yet Alexievich was excited to receive a letter of congratulations from Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet premier and architect of the Soviet political reform movement Perestroika. Alexievich credits his programme for creating a climate of openness that allowed for the publication of her first book, Wars Unwomanly Face, which tells the story of female soldiers who fought for the Red Army between 1941 and 1945. The book, published in 1985, was held up by the censors for two years with an admonishment: Your war is terrifying. Why dont you have any heroes? Random House is planning to release the book in a new English-language translation next year.

Svetlana Alexievich arrives at a press conference two days after winning the 2015 Nobel Prize (Getty)

In her return letter to Gorbachev, Alexievich says she thanked him for his reforms. I think that Gorbachev is one of the greatest politicians and people of the 20th century, she says. In her new book, a rather different picture emerges of the former general secretary of the Communist Party. He is a generally unpopular figure, though one who above all remains misunderstood. Gorbachev is no pygmy; hes no toy in the hands of circumstance, and hes not a CIA agentbut who is he? wonders that anonymous Kremlin official.

Looking back on that era, Alexievich says she does not think Gorbachev wanted to destroy socialism but rather to improve it, and that this desire was shared by most of the people in the former Soviet Union. I travelled a lot around the country, and I talked to thousands of people, she says, and the feeling I got from them was that nobody had wanted the country to become capitalist.

Stylistically, Secondhand Time, like her other books, produces a mosaic of overlapping voices, both complementary and dissenting. In his introductory Nobel speech, Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, noted that Alexievich removes everything superfluous to the core. She adds nothing. She subtracts. We are told peoples names, their ages and what they do, little apart from that.

Alexievich never prepares questions for her interviews and is quite happy to let her subjects ramble on. Of course, there is a lot that needs to be discarded or cleaned up afterward, she says. Many of her subjects have become her friends, and the interviews  or conversations, as she prefers to call them  often continue over several years. I understood early on that every man and woman I talk to is more than just the subject of my research, be it World War II, the war in Afghanistan or Chernobyl.

While Alexievichs books contain accounts of tragedy, they are also leavened by a typically Russian gallows humour. (Democracy, thats a funny word in Russia, says one interviewee. Putin the democrat is our shortest joke.) They are also deepened by extraordinary stories of love and perseverance. Thus, Maria Voiteshonok, a 57-year-old writer whose parents had died when she was young, explains how her illiterate aunt spent six months asking strangers to write to orphanages in Siberia before finally managing to locate and rescue her.

Equally moving stories unfold not only in Secondhand Time but in all Alexievichs works. What I try to deal with isthe kind of history that is normally omitted by historians who look into major events, she says. For me, what is important and interesting is the way history has been reflected in peoples everyday lives.

 Newsweek
With criminal convictions secured against three former bank executives for the Irish Life & Permanent /Anglo Irish Bank 7.3bn deposit conspiracy, it is timely to look back at just how hopelessly inadequate the responses of the boards of both of these banks were in their handling of the crisis.

Details emerged in early 2009 that a multi-billion euro deposit transfer had taken place which saw money lent by Anglo Irish Bank to Irish Life & Permanent, and then the same amount lodged on deposit with Anglo through Irish Life's investment arm - which made it look like a client deposit, as opposed to an inter-bank deposit.

Whatever about the motivations behind the transactions it was pretty clear they had the effect of flattering Anglo Irish Bank's balance sheet in a way the court has now found to be misleading to investors and a conspiracy.

IL&P's then chief executive Denis Casey and then finance director Peter Fitzpatrick were among those charged. Fitzpatrick was found not guilty, while Casey was found guilty last week.

On February 13, 2009 the board of IL&P met in emergency session and issued a statement. It said Fitzpatrick had resigned, as had the head of treasury, but the board had refused to accept the resignation of Denis Casey.

Ironically, it had backed the man who has now been found guilty of a conspiracy to mislead while two of his subordinates were sacrificed.

Most bizarrely, it was clear from the statement that something "wrong" had been done - but it wasn't taken seriously enough to warrant the departure of the chief executive, despite (as we now know) a crime having taken place.

The statement said: "The board has expressed its strong disapproval of and disappointment with some of the specific measures used to support Anglo Irish Bank during 2008 and the fact that the Board itself was not informed of the specific manner in which such support had been afforded to Anglo Irish Bank."

Then IL&P chairwoman Gillian Bowler went to say in the statement: "However, in providing support to the broader financial infrastructure, mistakes were made - for which I and the board apologise unreservedly."

It didn't say what mistakes were made, whether they were going to conduct an investigation or call the cops.

The board of IL&P simply got it all hopelessly wrong. It accepted the resignations of two senior executives, effectively sacrificing them, neither of whom had broken the law, and declined to accept the resignation of its chief executive.

The board at the time was made up of very experienced corporate professionals and even included Liam O'Reilly, a former head of financial regulation.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan saw it differently - instantly. He summoned Gillian Bowler to his office for a meeting and delivered a very strong message that the board's response had not been commensurate with what had transpired. Within 24 hours of the IL&P statement, Denis Casey had resigned.

There is no doubt that the deposit transactions were complex. Grey areas can emerge in questions of corporate wrongdoing. And prosecuting these cases involved the longest trial in Irish court history.

However, a cursory look at the facts, even back then, would establish the seriousness of what had transpired and the potential damage it could do, not only to both banks, but to the reputation of Irish banking as a whole.

Sometimes, even in complex financial matters, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. These transactions stank from the word go.

Yet, if IL&P's board weren't the only ones who called it wrong. Casey has claimed Central Bank officials had urged him to support Anglo, even if they didn't point out specifically what lines should or should not be crossed. And the trial judge said that, if pushed, he would believe the evidence of Casey in relation to the attitude of the Regulator.

In fact the IL&P statement of February 13, 2009 alluded to the "green jersey" agenda when referring to the resignation of its former head of treasury, David Gantly.

"The board acknowledged the extremely high level of integrity and professionalism shown by Mr Gantly throughout his service with the company and fully accepts and recognises that he too had acted in line with his genuine understanding of the express wishes of the Regulatory Authorities in attempting to provide support for the wider financial sector in Ireland," the statement read.

The board of Anglo Irish Bank was also stuffed with experienced corporate blue bloods - and it too called many things hopelessly wrong during the crisis.

Unfortunately, former Central Bank governor John Hurley and former financial regulator Patrick Neary could not be questioned on the details of this case and others during the banking inquiry because criminal proceedings were in train.

The biggest question is how so many experienced people got it so much, so badly wrong.

Boomtime rents hurt a lot more second time round

The housing crisis has reached a new hiatus as rents in Dublin are now on average higher than they were in 2007. But incomes are not necessarily higher than in 2007 - and when you take higher taxes, such as the USC into account, the rent burden for many people is much greater than it was in 2007.

For example, a single person earning 40,000 per year in 2007 took home 32,120 after income tax. A single person on the same salary today takes home 30,960 after tax.

Somebody on 60,000 in 2007 took home 43,140 after tax. Today they would take home 41,040 - or 175 per month less.

CSO figures show that total wages earned in Dublin in 2007 were 26.9bn. By 2014 they had sunk to 24.9bn or 2bn less. Average disposable income per person in Dublin (excluding rent) had fallen from 22,742 in 2007 to 19,431 in 2014.

Many landlords, but obviously not all, have been creaming it. For example, an investor who bought an apartment in Dublin in 2012 (at the bottom of the market) has seen it rise in value by 53pc.

Around half of all money paid to private landlords in Ireland is paid by the State through various rent supplements and allowances. Some landlords are not creaming it. Many became accidental landlords on foot of properties they bought to live in themselves during the boom. They are sunk in negative equity and they need to charge maximum rent to keep up bank repayments.

So the billions in extra money being paid in higher rents is going to landlords who are creaming it, or to banks which have been bolstered by taxpayers and arguably no longer need the money.

This is economic waste on a grand scale. It is holding back saving, investment and spending that would genuinely help the economy. The Government has watched this financial car crash happen and failed to act.

New measures will come as too little too late.

Storm clouds roll in over Battersea cash machine

The billions expected to be made from Nama's sale of the Battersea Power Station in London might not be quite as many as previous touted. Acquired by a Malaysian consortium to develop thousands of apartments, this end of the market in London is softening.

The first phase of development at Battersea was snapped up in advance - but some have struggled to sell on the apartments, as concerns grow in the City about the housing market.

Luxury flat developers, including those at the Battersea site, are discounting apartments to offload them. Barratt Developments which is behind the Nine Elms Point development at the site is offering discounts of 32,149 on selected homes.

Where will it all end?
'The Europe-wide poll, meanwhile, has found between 62pc and 65pc of people in each other country polled opposed Brexit, rising to 70pc in Ireland.' Stock photo: Getty

While the campaign to take Britain out of the European Union has opened up a 10-point lead in the UK, fears that Brexit could lead to a break-up of the EU are wildly overstated.

If anything, the campaign in the UK seems to have hardened attitudes throughout most of the rest of Europe as to the financial benefits of the union.

Nowhere is that view more strong than in Ireland, whose relationship with Europe continues to be strong, according to a continent-wide opinion poll published today.

Fewer than one in 10 people in Ireland believe the UK should leave the European Union, the Millward Brown opinion poll has found.

The Sunday Independent regularly commissions Millward Brown, whose findings in the recent general election campaign closely mirrored the final result.

Last month the firm polled Ireland as part of a TNS Public Affairs multi- country survey on the referendum. This poll found a massive 70pc of people in Ireland believed the UK should stay in the EU, only 9pc believed it should leave and 21pc did not know.

Germany, France, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland and Luxembourg, as well as Ireland, were polled as part of the survey.

The poll found that the UK was the only country where more people said Leave (43pc) than Remain (41pc).

Since that poll was taken, however, the campaign to take the UK out of the EU has opened up a remarkable 10-point lead in Britain.

The Europe-wide poll, meanwhile, has found between 62pc and 65pc of people in each other country polled opposed Brexit, rising to 70pc in Ireland.

In France, for example, support for Brexit has actually fallen - down 7pc in May to 34pc - while support for Brexit is at only 15pc in Germany and the Netherlands, and falls to only 6pc in Poland.

However, only a slim majority (51pc) of people in Ireland believe the UK will vote to remain while 21pc believed it would vote to leave and 25pc did not know.

Polling firms sometimes ask what people believe will actually happen, as opposed to their personal view, as this can more closely reflect the outcome of elections and referendums.

Interestingly, in the Europe-wide poll, 43pc of people in the UK believe the country will vote to remain, dropping significantly to 26pc who believe Brexit will take place while 31pc did not know.

The Millward Brown poll concentrated on the financial implications of Brexit and did not ask questions in relation to the immigration issue, concerns around which are believed to be behind the surge in support in the UK to leave .

Fifty per cent of Irish people polled think the EU will be worse off financially if the UK were to leave while only 10pc thought the EU would be better off. Eighteen per cent thought it would make no difference and 18pc did not know.

In the UK, 40pc thought the country would be financially worse off while only 25pc thought it would be better off. It remains to be seen if financial concerns ultimately trump concerns related to the immigration issue on June 23.

Asked if they would like to see a similar referendum in their country, 61pc of Irish people said no while only 13pc said yes.

Th e poll found somewhat stronger support for a similar poll in other countries: the Netherlands (38pc), Denmark (32pc), Finland (31pc) and Poland (25pc).

However, while more people than not in the Netherlands would like to see such a referendum there, far more people than not (49pc v 33pc) would vote to stay in the EU.
Take a stroll around the IFSC, and it can seem exactly the same as if you were walking around Mayfair or The City (Stock picture)

For many people, there is almost no difference between the London and Dublin business scene.

Take a stroll around the IFSC, and it can seem exactly the same as if you were walking around Mayfair or The City.

In truth though there are small, but notable, differences. For one thing nobody wears brown shoes. It's black or, well, black. Every man wears a tie, everyone carries a Moleskin-style notebook, and Blackberrys are still very, very popular.

And if you're male, there is a good chance you don't wear a belt on your suit trousers. Why? Because the suit has been made bespoke for you, of course.

Such is the way things work in this global capital of capitalism, and so it was at the annual investor conference on the European property market hosted by industry magazine Private Equity Real Estate (PERE).

Every year the great and the good in the world of private equity meet here to discuss the state of their industry, and where the opportunities are for making money.

When politicians and commentators use that much-abused term "vulture funds", these are the kind of people they are talking about.

These "vultures" don't look like their evil caricature. They are calculating for sure, and rational. But at their heart, they know that if they don't make money for their clients - teachers' pension funds, family offices, and private investment groups - they'll be out of a job pretty quickly.

In recent years, one of the most popular ways to make money has been to buy property and distressed loans in Ireland. Since at least 2013, Ireland has been a key topic among the private equity community.

But not this year. Investors familiar with the Irish market spoke to the Sunday Independent on condition of anonymity because they did not want to alienate potential clients. They painted a generally bleak picture - from their point of view - of the state of the Irish market.

"In general, we operate on a three- to five-year time horizon," said one real estate specialist at an alternative investment manager.

"Three to five years ago you could have bought almost any asset in Dublin, sat on it, and then sold out at a substantial profit.

"That isn't the case any more," he said.

The consensus within the market is that anyone buying a property in Ireland now who is looking to flip it in a few years needs to improve the asset in some way if you want to make a worthwhile profit. A prime example of this strategy is the biggest real estate investor on the planet - Blackstone.

The New York-headquartered private equity firm, headed by Stephen Schwarzman, paid 67m for the former Burlington Hotel in Dublin in 2012. It spent 17m refurbishing the hotel, and rebranded it under the Doubletree by Hilton brand. Now Blackstone has put the hotel up for sale priced at 180m - a potential return of 114pc.

"One thing that most people in this industry, look for is who will they be selling to in, say, 2019 or 2020," said a director at a property-focused fund.

"Private equity funds are wary of buying any property or loan anywhere if they do not have confidence in who will then be looking to buy the assets when they are ready to sell.

"If we can't identify a cohort of potential buyers for the future before we take on an asset, then we are hesitant to move forward," he added.

Such talk may create unease for Nama chief executive Brendan McDonagh, seeing as his agency is currently in the process of selling two of its biggest remaining loan portfolios - Project Ruby and Project Emerald.

Project Emerald is made up of loans with a par value of 2.5bn from 16 borrowers. Those loans are secured against 236 properties.

While most of the loans in Project Emerald are related to commercial property, more than a fifth of the underlying properties are residential.

By value, just over a fifth of the properties are in Dublin, while about half are in the rest of Ireland. The remainder are located in Europe.

Project Ruby involves loans that have a face value of 2.2bn tied to 15 borrowers. The debts are secured against 253 properties. Just over 11pc of the portfolio is residential, with the vast majority of the portfolio being made up of commercial properties. More than 97pc of the properties are in Ireland.

The two portfolios are huge, with a combined par-value of 4.7bn. Both will sell at a huge discount though, given that many of the loans are in arrears. Market experts believe as little as 800m to 900m will secure the portfolios for a potential buyer.

Even the man retained by the agency to oversee the loan sales admits it is not so easy to sell Nama portfolios these days. Federico Montero is head of loan sales for Europe, Middle East and Africa at property broker Cushman & Wakefield, and is leading the effort to secure a buyer for Ruby and Emerald. Speaking at the PERE conference he admitted that the "opportunity" in Ireland was "getting tougher and tougher".

US private equity giants LoneStar Funds and Oaktree Capital are known to be among the bidders for the two portfolios.

The truth is though that the perception that the opportunity to make a lot of money out of Ireland has now gone because Nama has sold most of its inventory by now. What it has left are the lowest quality loans on its books.

The State's bad bank got its assets to market much quicker than other bad banks, such as Spain's Sareb. Sitting on a panel discussing the European non-performing loan market, Mr Montero outlined the advantages Nama has had over the likes of Sareb.

"When Nama took in its assets [from the banks] it took in all of the loans tied to a [debtor]. That meant that it took in both good and bad loans from a connection," he said.

That alone made Nama loan books more attractive than the much larger (and what should have been more desirable) Sareb loans. There were other elements too though. For one, Nama is much smaller, with loans tied to little more than 800 debtors, compared to the 19,000 debtors involved with Sareb.

"One portfolio contained 350 connections. That meant that with one portfolio sale, Nama got rid of nearly half its connections. You can't do that with Sareb," said Mr Montero.

"There is also the Irish legal system. It is like the UK legal system so it is easy for US investors to understand.

"Then there was timing. When Nama started selling in 2010, along with the UK banks it was virtually the only seller in the market - so it could service what was huge demand from private equity firms," he added.

Given those circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that Nama this week reported a 1.8bn profit for 2015 - four times higher than in 2014.

Within the conference room last week the consensus was Nama has done a good job - but Ireland was very much in the past. The black-shoe wearing, belt-less men in the room had switched focus to Italy and other places where profits can be made relatively easily.

The so-called vultures have all moved on.
Mark Twain once wrote that 'no real estate is permanently valuable but the grave' - yet many of us go through life refusing to consider the practicalities of death until we are forced to do so.

Following the economic downturn, however, former builder and fourth generation funeral director Colin McAteer began to explore these practicalities in great detail. And Colin soon discovered an emerging market for less conventional and greener burial options in Ireland.

Since setting up Green Coffins Ireland in 2009, Colin from Shannagh, Co Donegal has been at the forefront in the manufacture and supply of hand-crafted and environmentally friendly coffins and urns in Ireland. The Green Coffins Ireland range includes coffins and urns made from willow, water hyacinth, pandanus, mulberry paper and even cardboard.

In 2010 Colin opened Ireland's first natural burial ground at Woodbrook, in Killane, Co Wexford, adding The Green Graveyard Company to his entrepreneurial mix.

"The ideas for both companies actually came around the same time, but the natural graveyard took a bit more time to come together; to find the appropriate ground and get planning permission," Colin explains.

"You always hear people saying about how they would like a simple funeral or that they want to be buried out in a field or at the foot of a tree; our business has been an expansion of that idea."

"It would be my own preference too; cremation is not really for me and the traditional Victorian type cemeteries are very unnatural places in my opinion. Using a natural burial ground is also a way to be sure that what we are leaving behind for future generations won't be scarred by us," Colin adds.

The green graveyard at Woodbrook is not just visually beautiful; it is also an environmentally friendly, cost-efficient solution, with individual burial plots marked by a simple stone on the ground, rather than rows of imposing, vertical headstones. Visitors are able to walk along the pathways surrounded by nature and wildlife; a sacred and natural place where all faiths and none are welcome.

"It is something that really resonates with people," Colin says. "People want that simplicity and that comfort of knowing their families won't be visiting a graveyard per se, that they will actually be going for a walk in more of a woodland park and an awful lot of people are now choosing this option."

With traditional burials dying out somewhat in recent years, due in no small part to the premium prices charged for plots in many busy urban graveyards, the demand for natural burial grounds looks set to rise sharply.

"A lot of the current older generation have their spaces already looked after in an existing graveyard, as their husband or their father or their mother or wife or someone may already be buried there, but it is really the next generation coming up after them - the baby boomer generation - who are going for this option and saying 'this is what we want'," Colin explains.

"And I think if there were more locations like Woodbrook around the country an awful lot more people would choose this option and we would hope to open more natural burial grounds around the country soon.

"Once people see the site they love it and the families who have used the site are so thankful that it is there. There is something very humbling about providing that for people, being able to do something that helps people at such a time," Colin adds.

"The average age of the people buried there isn't generally that old, so a lot of them are survived by their parents and that is difficult, but the peace and quiet of the place makes it very natural and special. A graveyard is a sad place, but what we offer really works for people and gives great comfort."

Ashes may also be interned at Woodbrook and The Green Graveyard Company has assisted a number of families in bringing remains from abroad for final rest here.

"A lot of the time people go to the crematorium, they see it as the handiest thing, but they are handed back these ashes and at the end of the day many will have them sitting about the house because they are not sure what to do with them," Colin says.

"We have had ashes interned in Woodbrook that the families have had for over 20 years and never knew what to do until they saw the peace down there."

Colin also works alongside his father in the family's funeral director business in Shannagh, a background, which has complimented his passion for providing customers with options during what is often a very difficult time.

"Having that growing up, it has made me quite comfortable speaking with people, which I think people who are trying to come into the industry from the outside don't have," he explains. "You need to be used to dealing with families around this time and it makes a lot easier when you have that experience."

However, Colin's father - while supportive - tends to be a little more old-school in his approach.

"I think he thinks some of the ideas are mad," Colin laughs. "So it is very much my thing, but he absolutely loves the natural burial ground in Wexford; now that he has seen it in action, he thinks it is great and he is always there to support me and help out, even though he errs on the side of caution more so."

Green Coffins Ireland was the first of Colin's ventures to take off, inspired by a customer who had enquired about the possibility of a cardboard coffin a number of years beforehand.

"We hadn't been able to source one at that stage, so that would have been in the back of my mind," Colin explains.

"The environmental side of things was also growing massively and even in the last six months it has continued to grow. People are getting more used to seeing these types of coffins now, they are becoming more of a norm and people are more comfortable with them. So eco-coffins are becoming more of an option."

"I think people chose them for a variety of reasons, but certainly the fact that they are less cold looking than the traditional coffin seems to be one of the main driving factors behind the demand," Colin adds.

"The other big challenge at the beginning was convincing funeral directors that people would want these.

"An awful lot of funeral directors took a chance by stocking them at the very beginning and it is something that we will always be very thankful to the funeral industry for doing, because they didn't have to. People would have been happy enough in a lot of cases going with what they had on the shelf. So it has been a slow burner, six years is a long time to still be trying to build a business, but we are certainly getting there at this stage now."

In 2011 with the help of The Leader Funding Programme, The Green Coffin Company ran a willow weaving training programme, which provided training for local people, many of which now work with the company, weaving coffins and urns.

"The reality is that these coffins match the price of a lot of the ordinary coffins out there," Colin admits. "Our material values may be cheaper, but more labour goes into our products, so mostly people choose them because they are eco-friendly and less cold looking."

So what does the future hold?

"There are a lot of things that I want to achieve, in particular I want to open more natural graveyards because they are helping people and it is a great thing to be able to do," Colin answers immediately.

"At the moment both sides of the company are stable and it is a nice situation to be in after six years of hard work.

"When it comes to the coffins I would like to cater more towards the locally grown, locally produced end of things; I would ideally like to have a bit of a showroom up here in Donegal where people could come and see what we do," Colin adds.

"But the most immediate thing for me would be to open more natural burial grounds because the demand is there and it really means a lot to people.

"When we started out there was only about 80 of these burial sites in the UK and now there are over 300 of them there; so it has really exploded and, given the chance, I have no doubt the same would happen here in Ireland."

www.greencoffinsireland.com www.greengraveyard.com
More than 4bn worth of court-ordered debts have been registered against 3,243 borrowers since 2010, with Danske Bank obtaining the largest value in judgments once non-bank entities such as Nama and the former Anglo Irish Bank are excluded.

Danske tops the league of banks pursuing Irish debtors in the courts.

Danske obtained almost 56m in registered judgments against 110 debtors in the first five months of the year alone according to credit agency Stubbs Gazette.

Danske was followed by Allied Irish Bank which obtained judgments valued at just over 38m against 34 debtors in the same period.

Since 2010, toxic loans agency Nama, which last week reported profits of 1.8bn in 2015, obtained just under 1bn judgments against 34 borrowers.

The agency's annual report shows that it generated 9.1bn in cash during 2015, with 8.5bn coming from asset disposals.

It has registered judgments of almost 682m against 814 borrowers since 2010.

Bank of Ireland has pursued a larger number of borrowers (957) during that time, although the value of judgments is significantly less, at some 377.42m

State-owned AIB has pursued 523 borrowers since 2010, securing judgments valued at 422.43m, followed by Ulster Bank which secured judgments valued at some 344m against 211 debtors.

James Treacy, CEO of Stubbs Gazette, said that he anticipates a "huge upsurge" in judgments and repossessions over the coming years as vulture funds move on distressed borrowers whose loans it has bought.

The so-called "vulture funds" own over 40,000 principal homes and investment properties here in Ireland.

It is understood that a fifth of mortgages sold to 'non-bank'entities are in arrears.

To date, only two judgments valued at 1.8m were secured by one such fund, Goldman Sachs, through Ennis Property Finance, one of its special purpose vehicles, according to Stubbs data.

However, this is expected to rise now that loans are being actively managed.

"The funds have a reputation for being very tough but pragmatic when it comes to doing deals," said Mr Treacy.

"Presently it would appear that their preferred approach is to negotiate deals outside the courts but that is not to say that this will not change if they are not achieving their forecasted return on investment.

"If their pre-legal strategies are not profitable I would expect to see a huge upsurge in both judgments and repossessions over the coming years."

David Hall, Director of the Irish Mortgage Holders Association, said that borrowers including professionals such as lawyers, doctors and accountants whose loans have been transferred to vulture funds have been operating under a "false sense of security" for the last 18 months.

"It will be carnage," said Mr Hall, who said dealing with vulture funds will be a "nightmare" for many borrowers.

"It's like fighting with Conor McGregor with your hands tied behind your back".
The jury heard evidence that the two ILP accused insisted that they wanted any deposits to Anglo from ILP to be secured against cash collateral from Anglo (Picture: PA)

The Office of the Financial Regulator was informed six weeks before Anglo published its preliminary results in December 2008 of a series of circular transactions designed to boost Anglo's balance sheet at its September 2008 year end.

John Bowe, Anglo's former head of capital markets, informed an official at the office of the regulator of the motivation behind the scheme in October 2008, weeks before the bank's preliminary results were published, a jury at Dublin's Circuit Criminal Court heard.

Last week, an 11-strong jury convicted Bowe (52), and the bank's then finance director, Willie McAteer (65), of conspiring to mislead the public about the true state of Anglo's balance sheet. Denis Casey, former chief executive of Irish Life and Permanent (ILP), was also convicted of a 7.2bn conspiracy to defraud.

Peter Fitzpatrick (63), former finance director of ILP, was earlier acquitted of the charge following the longest-running criminal law trial in modern Irish history, which lasted 89 days.

Bowe, McAteer and Casey have been released on bail pending a sentence hearing next month.

The prosecution claimed that the four men were involved in setting up a circular scheme of multi-billion euro transactions where Anglo lent money to ILP and ILP sent the money back, via their assurance firm Irish Life Assurance, to Anglo.

The 7.2bn deposit was later accounted for in Anglo Irish Bank's preliminary results on December 3, 2008, as part of Anglo's customer deposits figure.

The prosecution alleged that the entire objective of the scheme was to mislead anybody reading Anglo's accounts by artificially inflating the customer deposits number from 44bn to 51bn, a difference of 16pc.

However, lawyers for Bowe and McAteer argued that their clients believed that the deposits were real deposits and were accounted for correctly on Anglo's balance sheet and so no fraud was carried out.

The jury heard evidence that the two ILP accused insisted that they wanted any deposits to Anglo from ILP to be secured against cash collateral from Anglo.

The prosecution argued that there was no commercial substance to the transactions and their only purpose was to deceive. Lawyers defending Casey and Mr Fitzpatrick argued that their clients had no control over how Anglo would account for the deposits, and had no intention to mislead the public.

The role of the Office of the Financial Regulator, formerly led by Patrick Neary, is expected to be raised at the sentence hearings, following a key ruling that the regulator's involvement was a matter of mitigation, not defence.
The phone conversation was remarkably open and frank, normal even.

On one end of the line was John Bowe, Anglo's head of capital markets. At the other was Mary Elizabeth Donoghue from the Office of the Financial Regulator.

The call occurred on October 28, 2008, weeks before publication of Anglo's preliminary results on December 3, 2008. Critically, it also came weeks after the execution of a spectacular 7.2bn scheme of circular transactions between Anglo and Irish Life & Permanent.

The scheme was designed to bolster Anglo's year end balance sheet by making it appear that the circular loans (from ILP's life assurance company) were customer deposits, boosting Anglo's health at a time when it was dying on its feet.

"Let's call a spade a spade," said Donoghue as Bowe explained the motivation behind the balance sheet window dressing exercise, insisting it had nothing to do with the liquidity crisis then engulfing banks around the globe, including our own.

The conversation included this exchange:

Bowe: "This was purely about avoiding an issue of confidence in the bank."

Donoghue: "Yeah, so it looked like an asset manager had placed money with yourselves?"

Bowe "Exactly."

Donoghue "It forms part of the... the customer deposit, yeah."

Bowe: "Exactly."

Donoghue: "Yeah. That's fine, that's grand, that's what I - even my limited reading of it now that's what I read it to be and I just wanted - let's not get too excited about what's happening here and let's call it what it is. That's fine."

Of course, it wasn't fine, it was catastrophic.

In common with all licenced banks, Anglo submitted its preliminary accounts to the authorities - presumably armed with Bowe's explanation - before publication to the market on December 3, 2008.

Within weeks, the "best performing bank in the world" was nationalised in disgrace.

Were it not for a key ruling in the early stages of the latest Anglo trial, the role of the regulator and other State players such as the Central Bank may have loomed larger in what became - at 89 days - the longest running criminal trial in the history of the State.

Last week Denis Casey, former CEO of ILP, was found guilty alongside Bowe and Willie McAteer (Anglo's former finance director) of conspiracy to defraud. A fourth accused, Peter Fitzpatrick - former ILP finance director - was found not guilty.

Over six days of legal argument in the absence of the jury, prosecutors fought to exclude any reference to advice from the regulator to engage in a "green jersey agenda" by helping each other to get through the 2008 financial crisis.

Lawyers for the accused queried whether the constituent elements of the offence of conspiracy to defraud, including mental intent (and by extension, dishonesty), could be met if the men believed the authorities had encouraged them.

The defence of officially induced error, available in the US and Canada, is not on our statute books. Nor has the concept been fully tested here. The closest thing we have is entrapment, a device deployed on occasion by undercover gardai to snare drug dealers. Crucially, however, entrapment includes an intention to prosecute - a high bar - so the defence was not open to the accused as the prosecution of the four men followed a look back exercise.

Trial judge Martin Nolan had some sympathy for the state of affairs leading up to the execution of the scheme. During his ruling, he said it was inconceivable the authorities did not know the banks were engaged in "balance sheet management".

He said the then Regulator, Patrick Neary, and the then governor of the Central Bank, John Hurley, were "hands-on". He said they put in Casey's mind the issue of the "green jersey agenda" and Casey acted on that.

He said he thought the Regulator condoned optics-based balance sheet management.

But he found, reluctantly, there was no defence of entrapment open to the accused.

In the end, the judge agreed with the prosecution's contention that any indifference, acquiescence or turning a blind eye by the regulatory authorities could not afford a defence.

On day 15 of the trial he ruled that the role of the Regulator was a matter of mitigation, not a defence: the issue of the green jersey agenda featured in the trial, but no witnesses were called on the matter.

Would the jury have delivered different verdicts had evidence been fully led about the green jersey agenda and the purported role of the regulatory authorities? It's impossible to tell.

But we do know that, contrary to common misconceptions, Irish juries are more than capable of handling complex "white collar" prosecutions.

This jury deliberated for almost 62 hours, setting yet another legal precedent.

It remains to be seen what sentence will be imposed on the "hidden loans" three as conspiracy to defraud is a common law offence and Judge Nolan is "at large" to decide the penalty.

But it will be fascinating to see to what extent, if any, the sentences will be mitigated by the actions of those whose job it was to regulate the banks.

Anglo deal stank from the start. See back page
One of the new principles is that RTE content be displayed prominently on whatever platform is carrying it, and is easy for viewers to find Photo: Getty Images

RTE is overhauling its distribution approach to take account of the changing way in which people consume audiovisual content.

Media consumption patterns are changing dramatically, particularly among young people. This includes the rise of 'on-demand' catch-up services popularised by television groups like Sky and Virgin Media, and the growth of internet-only streaming platforms like Netflix.

The vast majority of RTE video content, 90pc, is still consumed live - and the broadcaster wants to make sure it is not left behind.

It has established a strategic group, led by new director of strategic platforms and partnerships Aisling McCabe, to take control of distribution for all media assets - some 25 different services - and ensure its content reaches as many people as possible, consistently. New core principles have been developed that will underpin all partnerships made between the State broadcaster and any platform that carries its content.

"We're experiencing unprecedented changes and the value chain is witnessing significant disruption, which requires a new approach from RTE as a multimedia organisation," McCabe told the Sunday Independent.

RTE's first deal under the new strategy was recently inked with Sky. Timeshift channel RTE +1 and RTE HD launched on Sky boxes in December. Rolling news channel RTE News Now launched in January and playback service RTE Player will launch in the coming weeks.

One of the new principles is that RTE content be displayed prominently on whatever platform is carrying it, and is easy for viewers to find. "Prominence is important to ensure that independent and high-quality public service media is accessible to all audiences and not hidden in algorithms or changing user interfaces. Our objective is to ensure that Irish audiences get access to the content that they are entitled to," said McCabe.

Branding must also clearly identify content as made by RTE. "It is essential that the brand attribution for RTE services comes back to RTE so that audiences know the content is independent, high quality and public service."

The broadcaster is also asking for more data about viewers from the platforms with which it does deals. Internet-connected services collect vast amounts of data about viewing habits. "We want to understand our audiences and how they consume RTE programmes/services so that we can continue to enhance our services to meet changing audience behaviours and needs," said McCabe.

Challenges to RTE's revenue model are also being tackled. In some instances RTE cannot easily measure its impact for advertisers on some platforms, which limits its ability to sell ads and sponsorship.

"In addition to the licence fee, commercial revenue is derived from advertising and if audiences can't be measured in a way that is recognised by advertisers, our revenue is negatively impacted and therefore a key pillar of our funding model is undermined. In some cases we need to apply new economics to relationships."

The strategic group is also tasked with reaching new markets. A recent win was a deal with Roku in the US for the international Gaelic Games service, GAAGO. Roku boxes are streaming devices used by millions of Americans.

But while RTE builds its strategy for changing media consumption, proposed changes to the TV licence fee to reflect the same have stalled. The Government had planned to extend the TV licence fee to all households regardless of television ownership, but Minister for Communications Denis Naughten said last week it had no chance of being passed in the Dail.
FOR IT and app developers, Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) is one of the biggest events on the annual calendar. It's when Apple unveils its plans for new services and features that it intends to bring to its iPhones, iPads and Mac computers, as well as newer gadgets such as the Apple Watch and the Apple TV.

We'll be covering the event live from San Francisco's Bill Graham Civic Auditorium at 6pm Irish time on Monday, June 13th.

Until then, here's a look at what we're expecting, from the sure things to the no-hopers.

1. WHAT WE KNOW IS COMING

(i) Updated operating systems for Apple Watch and Apple TV

Apple has has already flagged that some new features will be announced for these systems, although it hasn't said what. The company does want to make both systems more powerful, though. In particular, it sees Apple TV as a long term replacement option for existing cable TV boxes.

(ii) App Store and better work apps

Apple's mobile boss, Phil Schiller, has already announced that the App Store is opening up to subscription-based apps in more categories and increasing the amount of revenue (to 85pc) that developers get if they get subscribers to stay with the app for over a year. This means that we'll probably start to see better, more sophisticated apps being built, especially for work and productivity purposes.

2. NOT GUARANTEED, BUT LIKELY

(i) Siri voice control for Macs

Apple is continuing to invest heavily in voice control across its hardware divisions and the Mac is expected to be the latest device to benefit.

(ii) Improvements to Photos

Apple knows that when it comes to photo-editing, it has a head start on most other phone and computer operating systems through its Photos app. It's likely we'll see further upgrades here.

(iii) Apple Music refresh

Apple Music has had a decent, if not overwhelming, competitive start against Spotify. A simpler, more streamlined system may be unveiled.

3. WHAT WE MIGHT SEE

(i) Stronger security

Apple is still smarting from its clash with various governments and security agencies that want it to provide more 'back doors' into services like iMessage. So it is expected to announce more measures that strengthen things like encryption.

(ii) iMessage for Android devices

This would be a big move and, arguably, a very successful one. We all talk about Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger as the major texting apps in our lives, but iMessage is right up there. If you could also use it on Android, Apple really would expand its reach deep into non-iPhone territory. Apple was once very reluctant to afford other companies' hardware the privilege of using Apple software (with the obvious exception of iTunes). But as it now increasingly sees itself as much of a services company as a hardware and software company, it may continue to branch out further, as it is trying to do with its Music streaming service.

4. WHAT WE'RE UNLIKELY TO SEE

Updated MacBook laptops

There is a slim chance that Apple might announce power or specification updates to its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptop models, both of which are due upgrades.

5. WHAT WE DEFINITELY WON'T SEE

(i) A new iPhone or iPad

There will almost certainly be a new iPhone in September, the time when Apple traditionally updates its biggest product. So the company is not going to be discussing new handsets this month. Besides, it only recently unveiled its new iPhone SE (see our review: http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/tech-review-adrian-weckler-on-the-latest-gadgets-including-iphone-se-34651171.html) and the 10-inch iPad Pro (our review: http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/reviews/tech-review-weckler-on-the-latest-gadgets-34669302.html). So it would be very odd to have another iPhone or iPad to announce now.

(ii) Other rumoured projects such as an Apple Car

This is a long term project for Apple and, as such, it won't be giving any details on what it is or isn't up to in this space.

6. WHAT WE'D LOVE TO SEE

(ii) Apple Pay: Will Apple Pay be rolled out to Ireland this year? The service lets people pay for things by swiping their iPhone or Apple Watch in shops, in the same way we already do with contactless payment cards. It's available in the US and the UK (including the North) but not Ireland. Apple will eventually get around to this, but Irish iPhone users would certainly welcome an announcement sooner rather than later.

(ii) More integration between iPads and productivity apps: Ever try to work in Google Docs on an iPad Pro? There are a quite a few shortcomings, including productivity shortcuts. It would be great if the two companies sorted this out.

(iii) A new Watch: The Watch is less than two years old and, while Apple probably doesn't want to be devalue existing ones (and, hence, sales cycles) by bringing out new ones every year, an updated version or an extra model would be something to welcome. Apple hasn't said how many of the devices it has actually sold and there has been mixed opinions among analysts as to whether the Watch has been a success or not. In this writer's view, the Watch is a useful and elegant accessory (review here: http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/tech-review-weckler-on-the-latest-gadgets-34709868.html), especially for those not used to wearing a watch.
On the evening of June 16, 1904, James Joyce and Nora Barnacle went walking in Dublin's Ringsend. On Sandymount Strand, Nora unbuttoned Joyce's trousers - or, as Joyce wrote to the Galway barmaid afterwards, "You made me a man". Joyce and Nora's private congress became Leopold Bloom's peregrination when Joyce set his novel Ulysses on that date. The world then claimed it for itself, and on June 16 this year, Bloomsday comes around as usual.

The celebration has become a reliably quaint Dublin street spectacle, the capital dotted with folks in boater hats and pinstripes, constricting dresses and petticoats. Politicians are at large, as well as a host of Dublin faces you associate more with the crumbling corners of Grogan's lounge.

The inner organs of beasts and fowls are eaten for breakfast and Burgundy is drunk for lunch. (Though you won't find Joyceans eating the "lukewarm pig's crubeen" and "cold sheep's trotter" which are also consumed in the novel at "Nighttown", Dublin's old red light district.)

In all, no harm is done: Dublin's most famous, and famously least-read, novel is brought alive, and people outside university walls are reminded of its glories. It is probably Dublin's best-behaved festival, even if it didn't begin that way.

The first Bloomsday happened in 1954, created by six men whose improvident drinking turned the commemoration into a shambles. Brian O'Nolan (aka Myles na gCopaleen and Flann O'Brien) and the publisher John Ryan hired two battered horse cabs and invited poets Patrick Kavanagh and Anthony Cronin, the Jewish scholar AJ Levanthal, and Tom Joyce, who was a dentist and distant relative of James Joyce.

Their mission was theatrical, each man given his part to play. Dressed in dark pinstripes and period hats, four were to symbolise literary men from the novel, while Levanthal was to represent the Jewish Dubliner Bloom, Tom Joyce the family. Fittingly, he had not read Ulysses.

The plan was to cover the same ground as the characters in the book, starting from the Martello Tower on the south coast and ending up at 'Nighttown' in the north inner city. They were to take in Sandymount Strand, Holles Street National Maternity Hospital, Davy Byrne's and The Bailey for "lunch and liquid refreshments", as told in John Ryan's choice memoir Remembering How We Stood.

The day kicked off with an "altercation" between Myles na gCopaleen and Patrick Kavanagh while both were attempting to scale the rock face at architect Michael Scott's house next to the Martello Tower. They were drunk. "Paddy, even on the journey out, appeared to be absorbing refreshment by some secret chemical process known only to himself," wrote Anthony Cronin in his memoir, Dead as Doornails.

"More pubs were visited en route than even the most faithful adherence to the Joycean master-plan demanded," wrote John Ryan. It was also the day of the Ascot Gold Cup, which meant some of them had to stop at the bookies to place a bet.

"By the time we reached the purlieus of Duke Street," wrote Ryan, "communications became unreliable, transport broke down and the strict order of procedure was permitted to lapse."

At one pub they were mistaken for a funeral party. Colour footage captures some literary figures urinating against the sea wall at Sandymount Strand. The 'pilgrimace', as they called it, disintegrated at The Bailey.

But Joyce's banned book was sacred to these men in 1954. Cronin wrote of the empty pubs and "a certain atmosphere of gloom and rancour" in the post-war years. It was not a confident time, and Bloom's wandering odyssey must have held a lot of appeal for hungry writers. What, we have to ask, are the things that draw us to Ulysses today?

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The first Bloomsday touched a nerve and this year Nora and Joyce's romp, Leopold Bloom's fictional ramble, are celebrated in such places as Athens, Barcelona, the Dominican Republic, Auckland, Los Angeles and Cork city.

In Dublin, readings, talks and walking tours run at the James Joyce Centre next to Joyce's school, Belvedere College. For the Bloomsday Fringe, you'll find free events at the James Joyce Tower in Sandycove from today until June 16. Listeners who arrive early will pack into the defence tower Joyce lived in for six days when he was 22, where he set the opening of his story.

A highlight: on Bloomsday, from 9am, the fine and deep-throated actor Owen Roe will read from Ulysses. And if you haven't read Ulysses, look no further than Gerry Farrell's one-man compression of the novel into a theatre piece, Blooming Ulysses, returning to Bewley's Cafe Theatre.

See Bloomsdayfestival.ie for more info
Triumphs: Actors Burt Lancaster (left), and Kirk Douglas (right) stand with Peter Shaffer, winner of the best adapted screenplay Oscar for Amadeus, during the Academy Awards in Los Angeles on March 25, 1985 Photo: AP

Sir Peter Shaffer, the playwright, who died last Monday aged 90 while visiting friends in Ireland, was a giant of post-war British theatre, producing a string of dramatic - and cinematic - triumphs, including The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Equus and Amadeus, in the process bringing ritual, magic and music back into a theatre in danger of disappearing into kitchen sink naturalism.

Shaffer's first play, The Salt Land (1954), a tragic parable of modern Israel, was presented on the BBC, but he made his theatrical debut with Five Finger Exercise (1958), a play in which an angry young outsider upsets a country weekend in Suffolk. Rejected by the Royal Court as "unsuitable", it was staged at the Comedy Theatre by John Gielgud (who, after reading the script, declared: "I wouldn't mind directing that. I've never done anything bourgeois before."). It won the Evening Standard Drama Award, then moved to Broadway, where it ran for 607 performances, snapping up the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play.

In 1964 Shaffer's The Royal Hunt of the Sun, a spectacular epic about the Spanish conquest of Peru, became the first world premiere of a new play by Laurence Olivier's recently established National Theatre. Conceived as "total theatre", in which mime, masks, make-up, music, magic and scenery contribute to the theatrical effect, the play, starring Robert Stephens as Atahualpa, the Indian 'Sun King', won ecstatic reviews and became famous for the mimed sequence following the stage direction: "The men then climb the Andes". The ascent of the Andes symbolised the conquistadors' morally destructive conquest and summed up the territory Shaffer was determined to stake out as his own - what he called "the nearly abandoned kingdom of epic theatre".

In his quest to maximise the play's theatrical force, Shaffer was always ready to make revisions - even at rehearsal. Directors loved him, finding him one of the easiest playwrights to work with, if (at a time when most playwrights wore their politics on their sleeves) the hardest to pigeon-hole. Shaffer went on to provide the National with three more hits - Black Comedy, Equus and Amadeus.

The first, a farce in which a blown fuse leaves characters drawn from the standard pack (the timid spinster, the peppery colonel, the camp neighbour and so on) feeling their way around in "the dark" (actually a floodlit stage), prey to mistaken identity, social gaffes and sexual possibilities, demonstrated Shaffer's gift for comedy, but it was Equus and Amadeus that established his popular reputation.

A psychological "whydunnit" based on a true story, Equus was a journey into the mind of a 17-year-old boy from a respectable family who, having blinded six horses with a metal spike in a frenzy of sexual frustration and semi-religious fervour ("Alan stabs out Nugget's eyes... The horse stamps in agony," reads one stage direction), is referred to a psychiatric hospital. The play focused both on the thought processes of the boy (played by Peter Firth in the original National Theatre production in 1973), and the response of his psychiatrist (played by Alec McCowen) who finds himself almost envious of his young patient's ability to live the feelings which he can only read and talk about.

Equus seemed to tap into contemporary worries over the cultural legacy of the 1960s, exploring the dilemma of the individual faced with the loss of moral certainties. It transferred to Broadway, with Anthony Hopkins as the psychiatrist, and in 1977 was made into a film starring Richard Burton. "In London," Shaffer recalled, "Equus caused a sensation because it displayed cruelty to horses; in New York, because it allegedly displayed cruelty to psychiatrists." It was revived on the West End stage in 2007, with the Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe as the troubled teenager.

In Amadeus (1979), meanwhile, Shaffer presented the musical genius Mozart as a farting, giggling, foul-mouthed enfant terrible who drives his mentor, Salieri, to despair. Like Equus, the play (which starred Paul Scofield as Salieri and Simon Callow as Mozart in its original production at the National), focused on a power battle between two strongly delineated characters in a series of highly theatrical set-pieces - as when Mozart at the piano effortlessly turns a feeble march by Salieri into Figaro's Non piu andrai. Shaffer felt that the best drama "is made out of the conflicts between opposing states of mind".

What hooked the audience about Amadeus, however, especially in Milos Forman's film version (which won eight Oscars including an award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Shaffer), was Shaffer's love for the composer's music, which he brilliantly communicated through the voice and ears of Salieri. Before the play a Mozart wind serenade might have sold 10,000 copies; after Amadeus sales of over a million became common.

Interviewers often wondered whether the odd twinships in Shaffer's plays (Mozart versus Salieri, the psychiatrist and the boy in Equus) reflected a rivalry between Shaffer and his own identical twin brother, the scriptwriter and playwright Anthony Shaffer, best known for the perennially popular thriller Sleuth.

Though Peter Shaffer always insisted that the dualities to be found in his plays were more "enactments of my own internal tension", there is no doubt that sibling rivalry was a factor.

Peter Levin Shaffer was born in Liverpool on May 16 1926, into a prosperous family of Orthodox Jews, five minutes after his twin brother. His father was in the property business and the boys became drawn to theatre during family trips to the Liverpool Playhouse.

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The family eventually moved south where, after education at St Paul's School, the brothers were both conscripted as Bevin Boys to work in the Kent coal mines. Peter recalled passing the long hours down the pit mentally rehearsing the tragic Shakespearian roles. On his rare days off, he would go to see Old Vic "golden seasons" productions at the New Theatre. After two-and-a-half years as a miner, he fell ill with a bleeding ulcer, and it was while he was convalescing that he picked up WH Prescott's History of the Conquest of Peru and found the subject that would inspire The Royal Hunt of the Sun.

After the war ended the brothers went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, Peter to read History and Anthony to read Law. They co-edited Granta magazine and, after graduating, co-wrote books about a fictional detective called Mr Verity, sharing the nom de plume "Peter Anthony". Subsequently, while Anthony began a career as a barrister, then an advertising copywriter, Peter moved to New York, working in a bookshop, at a railway station, in a department store and at the New York Public Library.

Returning to London in 1954 he joined the music publishers Boosey and Hawkes, but left after a year to "try to write". Eventually he returned to New York, where he lived on and off for the rest of his life, though he retained his British citizenship and always premiered his plays in London.

Despite Peter's claim that he had never been jealous of his brother, a series of letters written in the late 1960s (when Anthony had ditched his advertising career to work on Sleuth), laid bare Peter's frustration. The letters, discovered at Anthony's London home after his death in 2001, include such passages as: "I do feel threatened. As if my little Kingdom has been invaded, and I am no longer to be The Playwright, but again part of that faintly cute and annihilating 'Which one of them did it?'" In another letter, he implored: "Before it's too late? I beg you to take another name for writing." Anthony declined, and instead maintained the family name for Sleuth, before going on to write screenplays for the Alfred Hitchcock film Frenzy, and The Wicker Man.

Yet Peter was hardly short of success. Through West End hits such as Five Finger Exercise and The Private Ear and the Public Eye, by the early 1960s he had become the favoured dramatist of the theatre impresario Binkie Beaumont.

Even so he had to look further afield to find someone prepared to take on The Royal Hunt of the Sun: "I was staying at Binkie's country cottage for a weekend," he recalled, "having heard nothing from him about the play. I went to get myself a drink and was just about to go into the main room when I overheard Binkie and his partner, John Perry, discussing it. I heard John say to Binkie: 'And then the Spanish soldiers go up the Andes.' And Binkie said: 'They do what?' John replied: 'They climb the Andes, dear.' 'And what do they do then?' asked Binkie. 'They climb down the other side,' said John. To which Binkie simply said: 'Fancy!' At that moment I thought perhaps I hadn't sent the play to the right management."

But the play excited the imagination of John Dexter, who ultimately directed it for the National at Chichester.

Shaffer never allowed himself to be type-cast as a magic realist or anything else. Lettice and Lovage (1987) was a success on the West End and Broadway mainly due to the brilliant performance of Dame Maggie Smith (for whom the play was written), as Lettice Douffet, the most eccentric tour guide ever to lead bored American and Japanese visitors through a dull English stately home. Nor did Shaffer always get it right. Yonadab flopped at the National in 1985 and White Lies and The Battle of Shrivings were also commercial failures. The Gift of the Gorgon (1992), though nominated for an Olivier award, was dismissed by The Daily Telegraph's critic Charles Spencer as "a load of tosh".

Despite revivals of his plays, Shaffer did not really produce anything fresh after 1996. He claimed to have several plays in "manila folders, half written", but confessed: "I feel slightly like that donkey in Aesop's Fables that can't decide which pile of hay to eat, so eats neither and starves to death."

Anthony Shaffer's death from a heart attack in 2001 affected Peter deeply.

Despite an element of sibling rivalry, the brothers spoke together on the phone most days and it is known that Peter was shown first drafts of many of his brother's thriller scripts.

Peter Shaffer, who was unmarried, was appointed CBE in 1987 and knighted in 2001.

 Telegraph
In The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac writes: "Comparisons are odious, Smith. It don't make a damn frigging difference whether you're in The Place or hiking up the Matterhorn, it's all the same old void, boy." Apropos of odious comparisons, the lazy description of The Young Folk would possibly include references to Fleet Foxes and Mumford And Sons.

Listen to The Young Folk's music for more than a minute, however, and you'd want to be from another planet to think of them in terms of the aforementioned bands (in my opinion, The Young Folk - since we are going down the dodgy comparisons route - are far closer to Bon Iver, Villagers, The National, or even sometimes Tom Waits.) So I ask The Young Folk to describe their sound to an alien in two sentences. . .

Anthony Furey (acoustic and electric guitar, lead vocals), sent me this cheeky, if cool, answer by text: "Eal ceamja yuc keyumgoja gequuljc rilyusc cgelyuoc eh nyuchelgamo.

"Actually - our sound is pointed towards polyphonic folk pop and our lyrics are life tales of misfortune."

Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close The Young Folk's Tony McLoughlin, Anthony Furey and Paul Butler. Photo: Independent.ie The Young Folk's Tony McLoughlin, Anthony Furey and Paul Butler. Photo: Independent.ie The Young Folk's Tony McLoughlin, Anthony Furey and Paul Butler. Photo: Independent.ie / Facebook

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Whatsapp The Young Folk's Tony McLoughlin, Anthony Furey and Paul Butler. Photo: Independent.ie

Paul Butler (vocals, piano, melodica, xylophone) told me in person: "We've been described as polyphonic folk pop, which I think is an amazing description. For all you aliens out there, our music is easygoing and we don't mean you any harm."

Tony McLaughlin (bass, mandolin, banjo, backing vocals): "Alternative folk with sunny spells and occasional downpours."

"We each have different musical influences, ranging from Ryan Adams to The Chemical Brothers," says Anthony. "Recently I have been inspired by short stories whereas Tony and Paul tend to draw on real life experiences."

How does the writing process work in the band?

Paul: "We write our lyrics and the basic music separately, and then collectively we work on the sound of each song together. This is usually a long process. If a song isn't strong enough from the start, it's scrapped immediately. But for the next album we've decided to try and work together on lyrics. Let's see how that goes..."

Tony: "We write separately, bring our songs to the table."

Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close The Young Folk's Tony McLoughlin, Anthony Furey and Paul Butler. Photo: Independent.ie The Young Folk's Tony McLoughlin, Anthony Furey and Paul Butler. Photo: Independent.ie The Young Folk's Tony McLoughlin, Anthony Furey and Paul Butler. Photo: Independent.ie / Facebook

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Whatsapp The Young Folk's Tony McLoughlin, Anthony Furey and Paul Butler. Photo: Independent.ie

And then? "Render. Reduce. Pick through the bones. Put the meat back on. Add seasoning."

The Young Folk - whose second album, the recently released First Sign Of Morning is a sonic treasure worth finding for yourself - are a bunch of characters, to put it mildly. Paul describes himself as "the more relaxed one in the band and sometimes the peacekeeper. But most of the time the lads think I'm too relaxed. I can't win."

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Anthony thinks Paul is "the most talented musician in The Young Folk, family-oriented and has a warm heart. People say he's the good looking one in the band - I beg to differ."

Tony sees Paul as "stoic, loyal, reflective" and Anthony as "quiet, loyal, spontaneous."

And how would Anthony describe Tony? "Quick-witted, a quirky lyricist, enjoys a good pun - and he's the social butterfly of the band."

The Young Folk, who play the Academy in Dublin on October 21 - as well as various festivals around Ireland - are much bigger in places like Holland, Belgium, Germany and America than they are in their homeland. Prophets not being recognised in their own land and all that.

Be that as it may, Tony says the process of touring internationally, as they often do, makes "every new gig seem like being blindfolded and then a pin being randomly placed on a globe." As long as The Young Folk remember that whether they're in The Place or hiking up the Matterhorn, it's all the same old void, boys.

For the full interview, plus two exclusive performances, see the Windmill Lane Sessions at independent.ie
Gardai are now investigating whether Cooke (79), who died last week, was responsible for killing the schoolboy in his radio studios in Inchicore in October 1986

In the autumn of 1986, a divorce referendum was on the cards and Dublin survived the worst battering in years from the remnants of Hurricane Charlie and Eamon Cooke was at large.

Down at his pirate radio station in Inchicore, Cliff Richard and Status Quo spun on the decks of Radio Dublin while Cooke swanned around town in a Jaguar usually with young girls in tow. That same year, he had escaped with a suspended sentence for an arson attack on the home of a young woman he knew. Years later, it transpired that the woman was one of his victims that he had punished for threatening to go to the Gardai. Almost two decades passed before he was prosecuted for his paedophile crimes against two young girls. He died last week still in prison for his crimes.

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Back in that autumn of 1986, the truth about Cooke was known only to the terrified victims who he groomed and plucked from often troubled and disadvantaged backgrounds for his own perverted ends, and the others who no doubt covered up for him. Cooke lived in Tallaght.

Not far away, in leafy Rathfarnham, 13-year-old schoolboy Philip Cairns finished his lunch, did some maths homework, slung on his schoolbag and set out for the 15-minute walk back to Colaiste Eanna secondary school. He was due back at school for 1.45pm. He never arrived.

No one realised he was missing until after the school closed. The teachers thought he was kept home at lunchtime, and his parents thought he was at school.

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Search parties were out that night and continued for days. One week after he went missing, detectives spoke to schoolchildren.

That evening, at 7.45pm, two teenage girls found his bag in a laneway near his home. Detectives believed it had just been placed there. They had already searched the lane. The bag was dry, even though it had been wet earlier that day and back then forensics showed up nothing.

As years passed, detectives followed up dozens of leads. Some were genuine. Others were fertile imaginings of well-meaning amateur sleuths. One woman claimed that he was buried under a mound of earth in Rathfarnham.

In 2002, a man dialled 999 and confessed to murdering Philip. He sounded drunk and as though he was ringing from a pub. But detectives never traced him.

Philip Cairns's disappearance on October 23, 1986, appeared to be a crime without clues.

Thirty years after he vanished, one of the country's most mystifying cases of child abduction has taken a chilling twist in the form of an unexpected and compelling lead that points all the way back to the notorious paedophile Eamon Cooke.

It came about through a longstanding and respected community activist in Ballyfermot called Angela Copley. For years she has helped the victims of rampant child abusers such as the priests, Fr Tony Walsh and the notorious Fr Bill Carney. She also knew many of Eamon Cooke's victims.

"This girl rang me. She rang me periodically. She was a victim of Eamon Cooke's and I was trying to help her get on with her life. During the conversation, she came out with this. She told me that a girl threw Philip Cairns's schoolbag in the lane, and that Eamon Cooke had given it to her to do it," Angela Copley told the Sunday Independent.

The woman in question was also one of Eamon Cooke's victims, someone who had been abused by him for many years and, according to Angela, had suffered terribly. Although Angela knew many of Cooke's victims, she did not personally know this woman.

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Angela was shocked. She had seen Philip Cairns's disappearance highlighted on Crime Call. There was the repulsive thought: that Eamon Cooke might first of all be connected to his disappearance, and secondly that this paedophile may have forced one his victims to dump what was crucial evidence.

She resolved to report what she was told to Gardai in Rathfarnham garda station. She did so three weeks ago. According to garda sources, the breakthrough in the investigation already came by the time Angela had phoned them. When Gardai put out an appeal about Philip Cairns's disappearance in 2011, a woman responded. She tentatively contacted Gardai but then retreated. When it came to it, she wouldn't make a statement, and she had her own reasons not to. In the past three weeks, detectives have spoken to her again.

What is not clear is whether this woman is the same person that Angela told them about. They could be two different people. But Angela's call has provided new information, and a fresh impetus in the investigation.

Detectives have spoken to the victim Angela told them about.

"I believe they have spoken to her and that's what has progressed things to the stage they are at now," said Angela.

According to reports, the woman is believed to have told detectives recently that she saw Philip Cairns in Eamon Cooke's radio studios in 1986. There was an argument and that she saw him being killed. That Cooke may have forced her to dump Philip Cairns's schoolbag in the laneway afterwards is now a very important line of inquiry, according to sources.

Gardai turned to Cooke. Detectives visited him two to three times. He was by then dying of cancer in a hospice and weak. He spoke with difficulty.

Detectives asked him a list of questions about Philip Cairns. According to informed sources, he confirmed to them that he knew Philip Cairns, and confirmed to them that he was in his car. He also confirmed that he knew the woman. But they got little further information out of him.

Detectives made one final attempt before Cooke died, urging him to unburden himself before he passed away. He refused. Detectives have also spoken with other victims of Cooke's. They include one woman who lived with him for many years. The woman, who has asked not to be identified, met Eamon Cooke in 1989 when she was very young and he was in his 50s. She herself had been seriously abused by a priest, and when she heard that he had been abusing others, she was disgusted.

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Detectives asked her all about Cooke, what he was like, whether he owned any land and where it was situated. She has helped them as much as she can. But in all the time he was with her, she said, Cooke never mentioned Philip Cairns to her.

Although detectives looked at many suspected child abusers when investigating Philip Cairns's disappearance, Cooke was not among them. Back in the 1980s, they had no reason to link the pirate DJ to the boy.

Their worlds could not have been more different. Philip Cairns was an utterly innocent schoolboy who classmates described as sometimes shy but always personable. In an interview last years, his younger brother, Eoin, said that knowing Philip, "he only had his clothes on and his schoolbag. He only had 50p on him. Knowing my brother, he would not have gone off on a whim. He wouldn't have decided to go on an adventure. He wouldn't have run away from home. An opportunist could have abducted him".

This weekend, detectives are asking was Eamon Cooke that opportunist? He lived nearby in Airfield, Tallaght. He had been abusing children since at least the 1970s and he roamed with a certain impunity. He had yet to be outed for the notorious paedophile that he was. His victims were all children, too terrified to report him. Those who tried to speak out - such as the young woman whose home he had burned down - were threatened and intimidated.

Eamon Cooke had eight previous convictions spanning 51 years, including shooting with intent, arson, malicious damage and contempt of court. He was married three times and was dogged by rumours about keeping company with young girls and children. Staff at his radio station challenged him at one point.

YouTube has a taped broadcast purported to be Eamon Cooke hitting back at allegations against him in 1978. In his faux radio voice, he says the allegations were that "children were allowed into Radio Dublin and were molested".

"Yes they were the allegations laid down against me personally," he adds. "All I could do was deny them."

Despite all that, Cooke was not publicly exposed for the horrific paedophile that he was until 2003.

He was convicted that year of abusing the girl whose house he had burned down, and a second girl. His conviction was overturned on appeal two years later. He was tried again in 2007 for abusing the girls, this time successfully. Cooke was jailed for 10 years and was 68. He never expressed a word of remorse. He was convicted on 42 counts of abusing two girls between 1976 and 1978.

"Eamon Cooke is a sexual predator motivated by his desire for small children and that is what he is and that is what he always will be," one of his victims said in her victim impact statement to the court. Last night, a relative of Eamon Cooke, who asked not to be named, said she was shocked by the connection between Cooke and Philip Cairns's disappearance. She visited Cooke in the hospice before he died, and he revealed nothing about it.

"I had no idea. In fact I went to visit him once or twice - and nothing. He said nothing," she said. She said she was never close to him, and cut off ties after his conviction in connection with child abuse. This was most shocking. "Everyone remembers Philip Cairns and everybody's heart goes out to that family," she added.

There have been many false leads over the years, but the link to Eamon Cooke is one of the most compelling so far. Gardai have put enormous resources into the investigation.

Thanks to scientific advances, traces of DNA have now been found on Philip's bag, and Gardai will attempt to match it with Cooke's. There will many more interviews and there will possibly searches. All his family want is to find him and bring him home.

Time has moved on and Philip's father has passed away. But in his interview last year, Philip's brother Eoin talked about how his family still hold out for him to come home alive but they know this is unlikely as time passes.

"I would love to see him again, of course. I know really, deep down, that the likelihood of it, the possibility is very remote. You have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. More than likely there won't be a happy ending."
The internet has made pornography more easily accessible than in the past

Schoolchildren as young as seven should be taught about the dangers of online pornography - with boys as young as 11 now actively involved in inappropriate sexual behaviour.

Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI) says a programme which teaches pupils about the perils of easily accessible porn should now form part of an updated schools sex education programme.

It follows the latest shock survey which showed Irish teenagers have the fourth highest sexting rate in Europe.

Cliona Sadlier, strategic and programmes executive of the RCNI, also warned that children finding pornographic images or video - procured by their parents in the family home - is a cause of growing concern.

Meanwhile, the Sunday Independent has also confirmed the Professional Development Service for Teachers (PDST) is to provide more support for schools in making pupils aware of the risks associated with pornography.

Ms Sadlier stressed that in the past children might have stumbled upon sexually explicit magazines hidden under a bed in the family home.

But now they are coming across even more graphic material that a parent may have downloaded on to a tablet or smartphone. Ms Sadlier says this is the kind of content which can cause huge damage to the emotional and sexual development of children.

Pornography, she says, always presents participants as "up for it", while sexual consent is never discussed.

"There are parents who are watching pornographic content that is left around the home. In the past it might be locked away somewhere, but some people are not hiding this kind of material from their children. Pornography is becoming normalised in some homes."

She says there is an urgent need to build a culture of zero tolerance of sexual violence in schools, as well as developing specific polices on sexual harassment. In most cases, younger pupils are not actively seeking out pornographic material, but they may come across highly unsuitable content on social media on devices such as mobile phones.

"The reality is we must engage with children very early and talk about such issues in a school setting. We need to give them the critical capacity to engage in a healthy way with a world that is bombarding them with messages about sex. If 17-year-old boys are being taught that a woman's body is a sexual object - we have to counter that in the context of accepting there is so much pornography in our culture."

But she stressed any schools instruction programme should be conducted in an age-appropriate manner.

"At a young age, you're not going to talk to children about pornography per se, but we should be talking to them about the messaging."

A Department of Education spokeswoman confirmed the Stay Safe programme for primary schools is currently being updated.
The Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission has asked gardai to carry out raids on homes at reasonable hours so as not to disturb the occupants of the house they are searching.

The suggestions follows a complaint to the garda watchdog from a family whose west Dublin home was raided at 3:15am as part of an investigation into the alleged theft of vehicle accessories, The Sunday Times reports.

A GSOC investigation was carried out following the complaint, which concluded that while there was no malpractice by the gardai involved, 3:15am was an unreasonable time to conduct a search of this kind.

As part of the case, GSOC referred to a report issued by the Law Reform Commission last December which proposed that gardai undertake a code of practice where searches are conducted at a reasonable time.

The Sunday Times reports that the garda watchdog has asked gardai to adopt this code of practice, while there is yet no regulation that prevents officers from conducting raids in the early hours.

Searches of property are permitted at any time once gardai have a search warrant given by a District Court judge, which officers believe is essential in order to locate suspects and conduct satisfactory raids.

Its a nonsense to suggest that houses can only be searched during daylight hours. If we believe someone has a gun hidden in their attic should we wait till everyone is out of bed before we try to seize it? said one officer.

Senior barrister Paul Anthony McDermott noted that is generally accepted that raids of private property should only be carried out during regular hours.

The purpose of a search is to gather evidence, its not a tool to annoy someone suspected of crime or bring pressure on them. It should always be done in normal working hours unless the gardai believe there are certain reasons why its urgent, such as a drug transaction is about to take place. There must be a particular reason why a search must take place at night, he said.
Silent treatment: Staff at Our Lady's Childrens Hospital are restricted from speaking out against the Board

The country's largest health union has criticised a new code of conduct for staff at Our Lady's Children's Hospital in Crumlin that it claims restricts employees from speaking out.

The "code of ethical business conduct" issued to staff at Our Lady's Children's Hospital in April instructs employees "to ensure that nothing they say or do should ever weaken the reputation" of the hospital and its staff.

Another clause says employees "will avoid publicly criticising" the Board or the hospital without having first exhausted every "internal avenue" of complaint.

All hospitals are now required to produce code of conducts and ethics for its employees.

However, Impact, which represents a large number of staff at the hospital, has criticised some "restrictive" clauses in the Crumlin children's hospital document, which also covers conflicts of interest, business ethics, and how employees should interact with patients and colleagues.

Sources claim the new code could stop employees from speaking out about issues such as the location of the new National Children's Hospital which has been the subject of huge debate amongst doctors and families.

"There was no discussion with employees, or their union Impact, before this code of ethics was circulated to Crumlin hospital staff. Impact has since raised a number of questions about the code with hospital management.

"We have queried the extent of the restrictions on staff members speaking out about issues like the new children's hospital," said the Impact source.

"While the union has not adopted a position on the location of the new children's hospital, we believe that citizens and parents have the right to express an opinion regardless of where they happen to work, and that includes staff of Crumlin hospital."

In a statement, Our Lady's Children's Hospital said it has not been contacted by Impact, and said staff continue to sign the code of conduct.

"A Code of Ethical Business Conduct was issued to staff at Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin, last month in line with corporate governance requirements under the Hospital's Service Level Arrangement with the HSE. Procedures in relation to dealing with media remain as they were prior to the introduction of the Code."

The Department of Health urged all healthcare providers to introduce codes of conduct for employees to help improve standards of care and performance.

Hospitals that didn't already have codes in place began introducing them last year. Breaches of the codes can result in disciplinary procedures.

Codes differ from hospital to hospital. The code of conduct at Temple Street Children's Hospital, for instance, encourages employees to speak on behalf of patients when necessary.

The code states that employees should be "advocates" for patients and that "all employees are responsible for promoting and protecting the interests of their patients and families, taking into account all aspects of equality and diversity.

"This could involve speaking up for people to make sure that what is best for each individual is always taken into account."

Employees are also encouraged to "report in good faith to hospital management or through the 'Protected Disclosure Policy' a workplace concern that relates to the health or welfare of patients".

It also says reports must not be intended to undermine the reputation of any colleague or service provider.
New laws to crack down on the possession of synthetic cannabis, prescription pills and new psychoactive substances are on the way.

Although the possession of these substances for sale or supply is already an offence, Minister for Health Simon Harris will seek cross-party support in the Dail to amend the Misuse of Drugs Act, making it an offence to possess these drugs for personal use.

It is hoped that extending and strengthening the law will help Gardai clamp down on the sale of former head-shop and prescription drugs - particularly in the wake of escalating of gangland violence.

A Department of Health source said: "The minister has succeeded in dramatically speeding up this bill in order to give the gardai what they need to deal with this insidious and dangerous gangland crime".

"He has reached out to the Opposition and hopes there will be cross-party support for its swift passage," the source said.

Some new drugs will also now be controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act, including 'Clockwork Orange' - a chemically produced narcotic that has a profound effect on the brain. It was associated with two recent deaths in the Cavan/Monaghan area.

Another is Zopiclone - a psychoactive drug with a hypnotic agent often used in the treatment of insomnia. It was linked to 51 poisoning deaths in the north inner city in 2013.

Two different types of 'NBOMs' - a psychedelic drug similar to the substance that claimed the life of 18-year-old Alex Ryan at a house party in Cork last January - will also be controlled.

Alex, from Millstreet, north Cork, was one of six people between the ages of 18 and 37 who were rushed to hospital after taking '2C1'. The other five survived the excesses of the drug.

The events that unfolded in the house were later vividly and shockingly described by innocent passer-by Gerard Banks; blood on the walls, violent abandon and wild oblivion. According to Garda sources, at one point the students cut themselves with broken glass from a mirror.

However, the rampant possession, sale, supply and use of these substances, often sourced online, is not just confined to urban centres.

The hidden epidemic is also lurking in school playgrounds and on street corners throughout rural Ireland.

Over the past 18 months, counsellors at drug treatment centres in Cavan and Monaghan, and some midland towns, have become increasingly alarmed by the number of young men and women, some aged just 15, presenting with "chaotic addiction" to New Psychoactive Substances (NPS).

Synthetic cannabinoids, sold as 'K2 Spice' and 'Blueberry Mix', are a "major concern".

Tony Duffin, director of the Ana Liffey Drug Project, said new legislation to further control the illicit sale of pills on the country's streets "will deter some people who are currently dealing".

However, he says a "silver bullet" won't eradicate the problem.

"Some people will continue to deal regardless of legal consequences. Also there will be unintended consequence - drug use trends will change, other drugs will emerge or re-emerge. We must prepare and be ready to respond to this," he added.

"Demand for drugs will not simply disappear. It is a health issue and we must increasingly ensure there is appropriate accessible treatment available to people."
Over 100 people braved the wind and rain today and stripped off at Dollymount beach to raise money for ARC Cancer Support Centre.

Today marks the third year of Dip in the Nip, where men and women over 18 years ditch their clothes and hit the water to raise money for charity.

The event saw over 100 people abandon their robes and hop into the sea exposed to the elements, despite the monstrous Irish Ferries boat that was passing by.

The reason behind the bold event is simple  it aims to help men and women see that there is more to life than how we look and that every body is a beautiful body, regardless of size or shape.

Mairead Mangan, head of fundraising for ARC, explains how stripping off your clothes can pile on the confidence.

The ARC Dip in the Nip reconnects Dippers with their bodies  its as though they fall in love with their bodies yet again. It gives Dippers something joyous, life affirming, personal and unique. It is a real equaliser and truly puts everything into perspective.

All funds raised will go to the charitys two drop-in centres on Eccles Street and the South Circular Road, which provide support and therapy services free of charge to men and women who have cancer, who had cancer and their friends and families.
A major rescue operation was mounted in Co Clare tonight after a car was seen entering the sea from the end of a pier.

The alarm was raised at around 8.00pm on Sunday evening when eye witnesses contacted emergency services to report that a car had driven off the pier at Quilty.

The Irish Coast Guard marine rescue sub centre on Valentia Island in Kerry quickly mounted a multi-agency search and rescue operation.

The Doolin and Kilkee units of the Irish Coast Guard were alerted and mobilised while the Shannon based search and rescue helicopter, Rescue 115, was also tasked and reached the scene in a matter of minutes.

Two units of the fire brigade and an ambulance from Ennistymon were sent to the scene.

On arrival, fire crews quickly located the vehicle, however, while they could see the car, it was too far below the surface for personnel to reach.

At the time emergency services had no information about how many, if any, persons were in the vehicle. Witnesses could not say whether were any occupants in the car.

Locals reported seeing a car in the are of the pier about 90 minutes before the incident and believed there were as many as three people inside.

Local divers were called into assist and quickly entered the water to carry out a closer investigation. On reaching the vehicle, divers found no persons inside however one of the cars doors was found to be open.

Divers continued to search the area around the car in case there were any casualties who may have been thrown from the vehicle or managed to escape. There was also speculation that the car may have been intentionally pushed into the sea.

Ground crews and divers continued their search while a local building contractor provided a crane to emergency services to help remove the vehicle from the water.

According to sources, the vehicle may have been stolen earlier in the day in Limerick.
'In a disturbing parallel to the case of the BBC's predatory paedophile DJ Jimmy Savile, Cooke used his minor celebrity status to carry out a litany of sexual assaults on girls at his home during the 1970s' Photo: Collins, Dublin

As the founder of pirate radio station Radio Dublin, Eamon Cooke enjoyed the kind of celebrity afforded to those who chose to kick against convention in 1970s Ireland.

Operating from a three-bed terraced house on Sarsfield Road in Inchicore, the curly-haired DJ was known and referred to by his listeners in their innocence as 'Captain Cooke'.

However, in a disturbing parallel to the case of the BBC's predatory paedophile DJ Jimmy Savile, Cooke used his minor celebrity status to carry out a litany of sexual assaults on girls at his home during the 1970s.

To his victims, Cooke - who died last week at the age of 79 in a Dublin hospice - was known as the 'Cookie Monster'.

While the nickname is readily associated in the ordinary course of events with the character of the same name in the children's programme, Sesame Street, its use by Cooke's child victims, some of whom were as young as seven, is positively chilling.

Those whom Cooke preyed upon would have to wait for several decades, however, to see anything approaching justice being done.

Following a 16-day trial in 2007, the former radio chief and father of 11 was found guilty at the Central Criminal Court of 42 counts of sexual abuse against two of his victims.

Even as he was being sentenced by Ms Justice Maureen Clark to 10 years, Cooke continued to protest his innocence, claiming the allegations had been made in an attempt to blacken his name.

Those words rang hollow given Cooke's eight previous convictions and the four-year suspended sentence he received for the arson attack he carried out against one of the complainants involved in his 2003 trial.
Shock: Jane was disgusted to be told that intimate images of herself and a former boyfriend were available to view on a porn website Photo: Gerry Mooney

One night last February, out of the blue, Jane* got a call from one of her oldest male friends inviting her for dinner.

She was delighted - a chance to catch up, exchange the latest gossip and find out how all the old gang were doing. But when she sat down at the table in the Dublin restaurant, she sensed something was wrong.

He said he had something very important to tell her.

Then he took her phone, accessed the web, clicked onto the largest porn website in the world and showed the screen to Jane.

"All I saw was an advert for penis enlargement, but he was like, 'No, look properly.' And then I saw it. There was a photo of my naked body with a video attached and a description saying, '24-year-old female from Ireland who is pretty much up for anything.'"

Her friend said that a mate of his had spotted the photo and video and noticed the unusual and distinctive tattoo in one of the photos. The tattoo, and its placement, is almost as unique as a fingerprint. Her friend knew immediately it was Jane.

Jane was dizzy. She couldn't breathe, couldn't speak.

She waited until she went home to watch the film. She rushed to the toilet and vomited.

"It was a video of me having sex with a man in a very familiar room. It was my former boyfriend, there was no doubt about it, it's his room, in his parents' house.

"But we'd never even discussed recording anything, it had never come up ever, it was never a topic for discussion because you don't know what is going to happen - if you lose the file you don't know what is going to happen with it, that was always in the back of my head," she says.

"My immediate reaction was to throw up, because how do you process that? It was a complete violation of everything."

The profile on the porn website had been active for at least one year. In it, she claims, her ex had been writing messages pretending to be the woman in the video and photographs.

He was replying to comments that people had left on the page: "These were very explicit, vulgar messages and that completely turned my stomach," she says.

"It made me feel disgusting and completely vulnerable. I was terrified, shocked, numb. How could someone I trusted betray me in such a heinous way?" she adds. "I completely broke down that night. I couldn't sleep, the images were racing around my head."

Nearly four months on from learning that she had been the victim of revenge porn, Jane (not her real name) recalls the relationship that actually ended years ago, in 2012. It had seemed like an amicable break-up. There was no histrionics, no shouting.

They sat down, she told him why it wasn't working and how she couldn't be his crutch any longer.

He seemed to accept her decision. They swapped their boxes of memorabilia and that was it, their year-long romance, which had generally been fun and loving, though with some incidents of twisted turbulence, was finally over.

But, she now realises, he had no intention of letting her go that easily.

Revenge is a scary word. But revenge porn, is even more terrifying - the ultimate betrayal of the trust, love and friendship once shared between two people.

They first met a decade ago, as teenagers. Jane, from county Dublin, says he was shy, but with an air of the 'bad boy' about him.

They spent a summer hanging out in the same circle of friends. Then, five years later, after a chance sighting on a train, Jane, then at the end of her teens, sent him a message saying, "Long time, how have you been?"

A relationship blossomed and within two weeks she had met his entire family.

"We spent the majority of our time together in his parents' house. We were constantly together," she said.

But when he turned 21, she says the relationship started to change.

"He began to become more withdrawn, depressed. He hated me seeing my friends, he hated me talking to his brothers, and he thought I'd prefer them over him.

"He deliberately orchestrated things so I would have to spend as much time as possible with him," Jane explains.

"He became quite toxic towards himself, he was quite violent towards himself. We had an argument one day and he threatened to kill himself, he grabbed a knife and ran into the bathroom and I had to break the door down to get him to stop.

"He picked fights with me over silly things all the time, one minute everything was fantastic, the next he was a raging lunatic and I couldn't put up with it anymore," she says.

Jane was studying at college and working part-time. She was extremely stressed about their relationship. She confided in her friends, but not in her family, for fear of burdening them. But when he became physically abusive towards her, that was the final straw.

"He hit me across the face with his elbow once. I had to hide it from my family. It's the 21st century and I wasn't going to put up with that. I said 'You need to get help, I don't deserve this,' so I left," she says.

Days later they met up in a coffee shop to make the split official.

"He said he understood where I was coming from and it was really amicable. I gave him back all his things, he gave me mine and it was fine. It was like a normal break-up."

Against the advice of family and friends, Jane and her ex stayed in touch over the years. The "occasional risque photo" was sent.

"The photos were consensual, but in a private context between the two of us, they weren't for the whole world to see. Both of us promised to delete the other's," says Jane.

But her ex had other ideas. Those were the naked photos that Jane saw on the biggest porn site in the world when her friend brought her out for dinner.

Towards the end of 2014, Jane and her ex lost touch completely and she began to move on from the "emotionally and mentally toxic relationship".

She got a new job and was finally happy again.

The morning after that life-changing meet-up with a friend in the restaurant last February, Jane told her parents what had happened and they went straight to their local garda station.

"We were assured that they would get him and prosecute the hell out of him. We left full of confidence," says Jane.

The gardai emailed the porn website on Jane's behalf, saying she hadn't given consent for the video or photos. The website claims to be opposed to non-consensual posts and revenge porn.

But then Jane and her family found out that what her ex did is not illegal in Ireland. There is no law in place to protect her - at this point in time, it's not a crime.

Although the site removed everything, the account-holder reposted it again the next day. "They didn't monitor the page or delete the page, he put everything back up and the gardai couldn't do anything. They said it was as far as they could go," she adds.

A few days later, Jane and her family went to her ex-boyfriend's home to confront him.

"He came into the sitting room with a big grin on his face and I said, 'I know what you've done.' He denied it, said, 'I don't know what you're on about'."

"My Dad started talking to him, he can be very intimidating. He said, 'We know you posted photos of Jane on the internet." Dad said that he had spoken to a barrister and that they knew exactly what to do with the likes of him," says Jane.

Her ex completely broke down and started crying. He said he had done it.

"His poor mother started bawling her eyes out to think that her son had done something so horrific. He got his laptop and deleted everything in front of me," she said.

But that's not justice. The originals may be gone, but chances are they've been downloaded, uploaded, shared and reshared all over the internet.

Jane wants to change the law.

"I feel completely betrayed by the justice system. I know I'm not the only one, I can't be. And the fact that there is no law in place to protect people like me or to even consider our protection, it's completely archaic," she says.

"Social media is everywhere. Once something goes out there you can never get it back. Copies of that video and those photos are still floating around in the internet somewhere, waiting for someone to piece them back together again and that terrifies me."

The woman's solicitor, Dermot McNamara, feels that Ireland must now follow the UK's lead in adopting a law that specifically criminalises the sharing of sexually explicit images without consent.

"The issue of revenge porn, like many sectors of cyber crime, is not yet dealt with effectively under Irish law, and currently gardai have limited powers to access data from websites or to prosecute.

"At the moment, the only option for victims is to take a civil case against the perpetrator, but the likelihood of a prosecution is remote," he explains.

"I strongly feel that we must follow the UK and directly address the subject of revenge porn - punishing people who share sexually explicit images without the consent of the person, with the intent of causing them distress."

Mr McNamara confirmed that his client will be seeking damages via a civil action against the person who uploaded the images.

They are also investigating the possibility of issuing proceedings against the website concerned that allowed the images to be re-uploaded after being asked to remove them by gardai.

This week, Jane will be meeting Senator Ged Nash, Labour's spokesperson on equality.

"Most right-thinking people would be appalled at the very idea that an ex-partner would post intimate videos or photos online without any knowledge or consent in order to humiliate and degrade someone's personal dignity and reputation," says Senator Nash.

"The sad reality is that this does happen and it destroys lives."

The Law Reform Commission, at the request of the former government, published an issues paper on 'cyber crime affecting personal safety, privacy and reputation involving cyber bullying' in late 2014.

"This was circulated for consultation in November 2014 and I understand that a report is due to be submitted to the Government this year," adds Mr Nash.

He agrees that serious consideration should be given to following the UK law: "This would send a strong message that Irish society finds the act of revenge porn to be an unacceptable assault on human dignity and personal privacy."

Although Jane accepts that a new law would have no impact on her traumatic experience, she says she is speaking out for the sake of future generations.

"I've got a niece. She is coming into a society surrounded by social media and growing technologies and I don't want this to happen to her, I want her to be protected, to keep her privacy without the fear of the whole world looking at them and judging them.

"I don't want her to face the same empty promises."

*Names have been changed
GARDAI have been told that paedophile pirate radio boss Eamon Cooke forced one of his victims to dump Philip Cairns's satchel in a laneway.

One of the enduring mysteries in the disappearance of the Rathfarnham schoolboy 30 years ago was how his schoolbag was deliberately returned to the laneway a week after he went missing.

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Angela Copley, a Dublin community worker who supports victims of sexual abuse, passed on the information to gardai last month after hearing it from one of Cooke's victims.

"This girl rang me. She rang me periodically. She was a victim of Eamon Cooke's and I was trying to help her get on with her life," Ms Copley told the Sunday Independent.

"During the conversation, she came out with this. She told me that a girl threw Philip Cairns's schoolbag in the lane and that Eamon Cooke had given it to her to do it."

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It is not clear if the victim is the same woman who came forward to detectives last month to tell them she witnessed Cooke killing Philip Cairns in his Radio Dublin studio in Inchicore in 1986.

Garda sources believe the information they have received in the past month is their most compelling lead since 13-year-old Philip disappeared on October 23, 1986. He was returning to Colaiste Eanna after his lunch break when he disappeared.

Garda sources said they were already investigating the new lead before Ms Copley's information was made known to them. Ms Copley and an- other woman, who lived with Eamon Cooke for several years, have been interviewed.

Cooke admitted on his deathbed that the missing schoolboy had been in his car and in the studio of Radio Dublin, the pirate station he ran for several years.

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The serial child abuser, who died last week, made the admission when he was visited by detectives in a Dublin hospice last month.

Gardai urged Cooke to confide the location of Philip's body to a priest or a solicitor or write the details down before he died, but Cooke took the secret to his grave.

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Detectives have said that information from a woman who said she saw Cooke hitting Philip in the studio is "credible". It is understood the woman was aged around nine at the time and lived in terror of Cooke, who was known as "Cookie Monster" to his victims. That was why she kept the dark secret for nearly 30 years.

The witness, who gave gardai a statement on May 10, was so afraid of Cooke that she once fainted at the mention of his name.

Sources have said the woman first came forward following a Garda appeal in 2011 but then changed her mind about making a statement.

Cooke instilled terror in his victims and warned them of the consequences of telling anyone what he was doing. He also convinced them that they would not be believed.

He once launched an arson attack on the home of a witness who reported his crimes.

Sources said Cooke admitted knowing the woman and confirmed she had been in his studio with Philip. Gardai have been able to independently corroborate aspects of the woman's story and say she is "highly credible".

Cooke did not tell his relatives that he was interviewed by gardai about the schoolboy's disappearance.

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A relative, who asked not to be named, said she visited Cooke in the hospice before he died and he revealed nothing.

"I had no idea. I went to visit him once or twice. He said nothing," she said.

Although the woman cut all ties with Cooke after his conviction for child abuse, she said she visited him in his dying days.

"Everyone remembers Philip Cairns and everybody's heart goes out to that family," she said.
The Catholic Church is seriously out of step with public opinion on the issue of non-baptised children attending its primary schools but has only itself to blame for ending up on the back foot trying to justify its position.

Both The New York Times and The Guardian Weekly recently carried embarrassing front-page stories about children being refused school places in this country because they were unbaptised.

This 'baptism barrier' is portrayed as another battle against secularism fought by a church which has already lost the war on divorce, abortion and gay rights.

The fact that relatively few schools look for baptism certs and that most Catholic schools welcome non-Catholics are overlooked in a heated debate about rights and responsibilities. One in five people polled by Behaviour and Attitudes said they knew someone who had their child baptised for the sole reason of securing admission to school.

It could all have been so different.

A few years ago, people were prepared to engage in a reasoned debate about a historical hangover from a time when Ireland was a more homogeneous society and few voices were raised about the Church's near monopoly control of primary schools.

Now there is talk of street protests while moderate voices are in danger of being drowned out in the clamour for the Government to 'do something'. Exactly what is debatable, as the new Education Minister Richard Bruton - who won't challenge the baptism barrier head on - is finding out.

In 2011, the Forum on Pluralism and Patronage was Minister Ruairi Quinn's Big Idea to get schools to reflect Ireland's rapidly changing society. It suggested that where there was an established demand for an alternative, then one of the existing Church schools be transferred to a different patron. Given that there were fewer than 100 multi-denominational schools and 3,000 Catholic schools, the proposal made sense.

It's hard to understand why the Church didn't read it the same way and run with the Forum's recommendations. All anybody had to do was look at the census figures to see how the ownership of schools had not kept pace with societal changes.

In the 1961 census so few people declared themselves as of "no religion" - only 1,107 - that they were literally a footnote in the returns from the Central Statistics Office (CSO). Half a century later, that figure had jumped to a quarter of a million, with a further 70,000 in the "non-stated" category. It's safe to predict a big rise in the next CSO returns.

Some Church leaders wanted to reform but were unable to carry the day. Had a few dozen schools been divested with the prospect of a few hundred more to follow, the Church would now be praised instead of facing widespread criticism. This would have been seen as a generous response which would, incidentally, have left the Church with a majority of primary schools for the foreseeable future.

To date, only eight schools have fully or partially divested and the impatience of Quinn's successor, Jan O'Sullivan, was understandable. She proposed amending the Equal Status Act so that local schools would be required to prioritise local children, no matter what their religion. Introducing such draft legislation would have raised constitutional issues. It would also have alarmed many in Fine Gael who - despite other education rows over issues such as the future of fee-paying schools - were happy to go along with the divestment programme.

Minister Bruton is not keen to go down that legal route but instead will try to secure more choice for parents elsewhere.

Apart from encouraging divestment, he favours co-patronage between the Church and Education and Training Boards (formerly VECs) in Community National Schools (CNS). There are 11 CNS at present with supporters and detractors of the provision of religious instruction which separates pupils along belief lines.

More CNS will follow, as will more Educate Together schools. But don't hold your breath for rapid transformation. We are still decades away from offering real choice to most parents. Reform of the education system, like Yeats's peace, comes dropping slow.

John Walshe was special adviser to Minister Ruairi Quinn
6) Irish Craft Lager, Kings of Tara, Cumberland Breweries, Newry, Co. Down 4.5pc

2) All Night Long Session Pale Ale, Rascal's Brewing Co., Rathcoole, Co. Dublin 4.2pc

Domestically-produced Irish craft pale ales and lagers are ideal beers for the summer.

Pale and interesting is the theme for this blind taste test of Irish craft pale ales and lagers. A very fashionable ingredient they all have in common is hops. How a beer looks, smells, tastes and keeps is affected by hops.

Basically, the 200 or so different varieties of hops are divided between aroma hops and bittering hops. The aroma hops contain diverse essential oils that impart scents spanning the spectrum from floral, to spicy, herbal, pine and citrusy.

The bittering hops, on the other hand, contain alpha acids that have the stabilising properties helping a beer maintain its head of foam and boosts its keeping ability, while giving an attractive bitterness, refreshing acidity and tannic texture to the taste buds.

Domestically-produced Irish craft pale ales and lagers are ideal beers for the summer when refreshment and light-bodied alcohol are at their most appealing. Slainte!

1) Mayfield 5 Pilsner Lager, Cotton Ball Brewing Co, Co Cork, 5pc

Classic Pilsner-style with lemon zesty freshness, floral hops and mouth-filling foam.

3.99/500ml at Spar, SuperValu, Centra and independent off-licences nationwide.

2) All Night Long Session Pale Ale, Rascal's Brewing Co, Rathcoole, Co Dublin, 4.2pc

Very forward hop aromas. Tasty malty richness with bitter hops and a tangerine peel finish.

2.75/330ml can or 10 for 5 cans exclusive to Molloy's Liquor Stores in Dublin citywide.

3) Saor Gluten-Free Beer, 9 White Deer Brewery, Ballyvourney, Co Cork, 4.5pc

Ireland's first gluten-free beer delivers a delicate hop fragrance and lightly hopped flavour supporting the very long malty finish.

3.95-4.40/500ml in Dublin at Baggot Street Wines, Carpenter's, Castleknock and Martin's, Fairview; Ardkeen Quality Foodstore, Waterford; Matson's , Grange and Bandon; Number 5, Co. Waterford and Co. Tipperary; Number 21, Coburg Street, Midleton and Blarney.

4) Freebird White IPA, O'Hara's Brewing Co, Bagenalstown, Co Carlow, 5pc

The American hops with their typical citrus peel and pine bouquet is mirrored on the palate.

3.25, 500ml widely available at independent off-licences and retailers nationwide.

5) Devil's Helles Lager, Killarney Brewing Co, Co Kerry, 4.3pc

Spicy and herbal hop scents with malt more obvious on the palate in the softer Helles-style of lager and gentler carbonation.

3.80/500ml at Spar, SuperValu, Centra and independent off-licences nationwide.

6) Irish Craft Lager, Kings of Tara, Cumberland Breweries, Newry, Co Down, 4.5pc

A deep, white persistent foam and subdued hop aromas. The refreshing citrus and steely crispness is emphasised by the high carbonation.

4.49/330ml for a pack of four at Aldi's 124 stores nationwide.

Tasting notes

The Irish Gin & Tonic Fest takes place June 20-25 in bars, restaurants and hotels throughout the island of Ireland. Find "Festival Venues" nearest to you at greatirishbeverages.com and check for special offers in the online magazine thetaste.ie
Lucy Halpin Rigby and Joe Rigby with their 18 month old twins Archie and Charlie at their home in Kimmage, where they have struggled to find school places for their boys. Photo: Steve Humphreys.

To a growing number of Irish parents, it is an objectionable and archaic throwback to a time when the Catholic Church was the dominant force in Ireland. In some areas, they can't get their children into a state-funded school because they are not baptised. Others object that they are paying their taxes and the only choice for many miles around is a Catholic school.

Richard Bruton is just the latest in a long line of Education ministers who has to grapple with this problem.

How does he administer a state-funded education system where 90pc of the schools are Catholic, but less than 30pc of the population attends Mass regularly? Weekly Mass attendance in Dublin was recently estimated at 20pc to 22pc in a report for the Dublin Association of Priests.

Even the Catholic Church itself has been trying to give up control of some of its schools in recognition of a more diverse population and its own diminishing resources - but change is happening at a snail's pace.

Only 2pc of primary schools are multi-denominational, despite soaring demand and long waiting lists for Educate Together schools in many areas. Very few primary schools have been handed over from church control to multi-denominational bodies.

Sometimes, it is a view from outside that causes heads to turn and for parents to question the current system. Earlier this year, the front page of the New York Times highlighted the case of a young Dublin boy who was turned away by nine local schools because he was not baptised.

More of these cases are coming to light, and a new generation of parents are determined to campaign for greater access.

A recent Behaviour and Attitudes survey for the campaign group Equate found that 84pc of people believe that Irish education should be reformed to prevent the exclusion of a child due to their religion or lack of a religion.

Lucy Halpin came home to Dublin from London with her English husband Joe to start a family, and the couple have been shocked by the difficulties they have faced in getting their twin boys Archie and Charlie into a school.

"Our employer, our doctor and our landlord can't use religion as an excuse to exclude us but our local school can," says Lucy.

The Dublin mother says all the schools in her area of Kimmage in South Dublin are Catholic, and because her twins are not baptised they are pushed to the bottom of the list.

"My taxes are paying for these schools, but not one of them will accept my boys as local children first."

The irate parent says she finds it hard to explain to her English husband that this is the situation.

"It makes Ireland seem like it is still in the dark ages," she says.

With schools in areas of high -demand enforcing a Catholic-first policy, and even asking for baptism certs in some cases, it is hardly surprising that many parents are going through the motions of getting their children baptised.

According to the recent Behaviour and Attitudes survey, one in five Irish people said they knew of someone who had baptised their child to help ensure access to a local school.

For these parents, it is a hollow ritual, merely undertaken to meet a bureaucratic requirement.

Lucy is keen to emphasise that she is not anti-religious and wants to respect the faith of her parents.

She says she would be extremely reluctant to baptise her children just to get them into a school.

"There's something fundamentally wrong with the system when parents who don't believe, didn't get married in church and don't go to Mass get children baptised purely for school access."

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin seems to agree that these quickie christenings should be discouraged. He has said that to baptise a child so they can attend a particular school was an "abuse" of the sacrament.

However, he has defended Catholic schools' right to prioritise children who are baptised.

"In Catholic schools, they obviously prioritise people who are Catholic," he has argued.

Dr Martin has also suggested in interviews that the real problem was "a lack of places", which was also an issue for the Educate Together schools in some areas.

Parents have a right to withdraw their children from religion classes in Catholic schools, but this presents practical problems.

Irish primary school pupils spend twice as much time on religion than the international average. Religious education is allocated two-and-a-half hours per week, while History, Geography and Science combined are allocated three hours.

The segregation of children during religion class has been an issue for many parents.

Dublin parent Devin Doyle sent his daughter to a Catholic school in North Dublin.

"They worked really hard to make our daughter feel accepted and included. They've treated us with kindness and accommodation, as best they can.

"But every day, for half an hour, one eighth of the day's teaching time, our daughter went and sat by herself while the teacher gave the other kids religious education.

"My daughter was made to feel different, purely because of her religion."

In the first big decision of his Education ministry, Richard Bruton has indicated that the 'baptism barrier' to state schools will remain.

Under the Equal Status Act 2000, schools with a religious patronage - 96pc of primary schools - can admit a child of that denomination in preference to others.

While the decision will be a blow to parents in the minority of areas where children are excluded on the grounds of religion, Bruton has also signalled that he wants there to be 400 multi-denominational primary schools over the next 15 years.

Until now, the multi-denominational sector has been dominated by Educate Together. The patron body has a network of 77 primary schools and four second-level schools.

Many of the schools have been opened after campaigns driven by local parents, and this has given them a certain dynamism.

Educate Together schools have also been criticised because their 'first come, first served' policies can make it more difficult for immigrant children in some areas to be enrolled.

As a result of these criticisms, enrolment policies have been changed in some of the schools.

While Educate Together is likely to continue to be the fastest-growing sector in the country, the Education Minister this week indicated that he favours another type of multi-denominational school - the community national school.

There are already a small number of these schools in the country, run by local Education and Training Boards (formerly Vocational Education Committees).

At these schools, all children are taught a common multi-belief education programme known as "Goodness Me - Goodness You".

For three or four weeks of the year, inside school hours, the children are taught, according to their own belief system, whether it is Catholic, Church of Ireland, Muslim, or Atheist. At this time, Catholic children might be prepared for Communion or Confirmation. Since Citywest and Saggart Community National School opened in West County Dublin four years ago, it has attracted pupils of 31 nationalities, and half the school population is Irish.

"We don't discriminate on any religious grounds in our enrolment policy at Community National Schools. The only information we have is the child's name address and telephone number and date of birth. We don't ask for religion or nationality. We give priority to siblings and people in our catchment area, and after that it is done by age with the oldest children getting places first," says Seamus Conboy, principal of the school.

In the religious programme, the principal tries to get families involved with faith formation.

"Say if we were discussing a particular theme for the week, like peace, the teacher will ask the parents to talk to the children about the theme from their religious or belief perspective."

While community national schools are a definite step towards multi-denominational education, their growth has been slow and the public is not well informed about them.

While the practice differs according to the school, Community National schools can segregate children at certain times for religious instruction during school hours. This has made them more acceptable to the Catholic Church as a compromise solution to the problem of how faith is handled in schools, but it may put off some parents.

The Catholic Church has suggested that it could play a joint role with Education and Training Boards in running the schools.

Educate Together this week warned that this would be problematic because the whole rationale for setting up Community National Schools was to address the widespread demand for accessible alternatives to church-run schools.

Around 50pc of the pupils in Educate Together schools are Catholic, but faith formation for these pupils and those of other religions takes place outside school hours.

Luke O'Shaughnessy, a spokesman for Educate Together, says the Community National Schools favoured by Bruton are configured along the lines of Catholic schools.

"They are not in any way different. They have faith formation within the school day and they segregate children along religious lines."

The minister faces some tough choices as he tries to develop a model of education that suits Catholic parents, those of other faiths, and the growing number of parents who are not religious.

Even if he creates more choice with the opening of hundreds of multi-denominational schools, in many areas there is just one school.

Unless a minister comes along who is prepared to take radical action, that school is likely to be Catholic for the foreseeable future - and in a more secular society, more parents are likely to be dissatisfied.
Ex-Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte was on Matt Cooper The Last Word on Tuesday (Today FM) and he was grudgeful and grumpy. It seems that the 'New Politics' regime that rules our lives these days has decreed the scrapping of Pat's plans for a catch-all Sound & Vision tax to replace the TV licence, in favour of actually enforcing the existing law against evasion. (For a full definition of 'New Politics' simply google 'Windscale/Sellafield').

Perhaps the time has come around again to paint the words TV Detector Van on a few idle An Post vehicles and send them out prowling the streets to scare small children and gullible adults. (A 2013 UK report suggested that, from the outset, TV detector vans were a con-job perpetrated on the public.)

Anyway, Pat was deeply unhappy that his beloved brainchild is being thrown out on the streets. He railed against the "anti-bloody-everything brigade" and, for good measure, fired off a broadside at RTE for under-representing the case that water charges are a good thing.

Pat's position was that the State broadcaster, largely funded by the licence fee, had been remiss in providing balance by failing to pitch the Government's viewpoint with enough vigour. The average listener, who hasn't tried to force through unpopular legislation, might take the view that the opposite imbalance is too often the case.

Ivan Yates doesn't do balance. For that, the co-anchor of Newstalk Breakfast (Mon-Fri) has the well-matched Chris Donoghue. The former Agriculture Minister is to take a gap year soon for a spot of globetrotting, and he will be missed. The chemistry between the right-wing panto villain Yates and his right-on foil Donoghue makes for a reliably cheery wake-up call, wiping the floor with the rival Morning Ireland (RTE Radio 1), which gets through a similar daily current affairs workload with nothing like the same sparkle. Discussing the latest GAA foul-up which means Antrim and Meath must replay the Christy Ring Cup Final, Chris jibed his convivial co-host: "You do know that the GAA does sport as well as hospitality, Ivan?"

Monday's Drivetime (Radio 1) ran an extended report on the closure of four north Dublin beaches due to a nasty discharge of sewage and various unmentionables as a result of malfunctioning pumps at a treatment plant. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the report was that there were a lot of people in swimming, unaware that the beaches were 'closed'.

By sheer coincidence, just a few minutes earlier, Newstalk ran a fascinating whistle-stop documentary tour of Dublin Bay entitled Bay Stories which explored the history of the place from Granuaile to Captain Bligh (rehabilitated after the Mutiny on the Bounty he reshaped Dublin Bay) to the rugby exploits of Blackrock College.

The coincidence came in a segment covering the fact that, until some 16 years ago, sewage was routinely dumped in the bay, originally just off "the nose of Howth" and later some miles further out. Tony Sheehan, the captain of the last sludge ship, recalled how the waste was manually transferred onto the vessel: "The men were up to their waists in sewage. One entitlement was a bar of Lifebuoy red carbolic soap to put a different smell on them" before they caught "the No2 bus" back home.

The fact that the Howth has been served by the 31A bus since time immemorial and not the No 2 wasn't allowed stand in the way of the inevitable joke.

The captain elaborated that, in latter years, "the men would always say 'we didn't get our soap this week'. Even though they never went near the stuff they still claimed it."
Travelling with children in the USA? Our expert shares her tips for city slicker families.

LA Story

A bus tour is the best way to get your bearings in sprawling LA. We took the kids on the Starline Tours (starlinetours.com; $49/43) red route from the Chinese Theatre. The kids loved the upbeat, graffiti-covered stores on Melrose and funky eateries like Pink's Hot Dogs. We also spent ages walking along Hollywood Boulevard, while the kids searched for their favourite stars.

California has great choice in theme parks and we opted for Universal Studios (universalstudioshollywood.com; two-day tickets from $119/104). The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is the newest attraction, though we ended up drenched at some old jewels like Jurassic Park and stunt show Waterworld. The park is huge and tickets expensive, so go early to make the most of the day.

If your kids are sports fans get tickets online for a Lakers basketball game at Staple Centre (nba.com; from $58/51). We found ourselves rubbing shoulders with Will Ferrell. Sylvester Stallone was in the crowd too!

Don't go home without taking a trip to Venice Beach on a bicycle. Kids love the hippy vibe and henna tattoos, and my pair loved the old-fashioned theme park at Santa Monica Pier. Bikes can be rented by the hour.

Boston Tea Party

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Boston is a university city with opportunities for learning everywhere. The Boston Tea Party Ship (bostonteapartyship.com; $23.50/14.50) is good for anyone over eight. Visitors yell and call for revolution with guides wearing period costumes. When we boarded, the kids were called on to chuck the tea chests into the water and pull them out again. Down in the galley the wax figures are creepy - and kids love to be scared!

A short stroll across the bridge from the ship is the Boston Children's Museum (bostonchildrensmuseum.com; free for under-12s) with good interactive fun for small children. A must-visit for teens and tweens is the new Converse Store on LoveJoy Wharf (converse.com), the flagship of the popular brand in the USA. Kids can customise their Chucks here - though open-wallet surgery may be required for adults.

A great day trip and only one hour on the train is Salem, home of the witch trials. If you are there in October the Haunted Happenings Festival (hauntedhappenings.org) runs for the month with scary events and shows throughout the day. Get your fortune told in Omen or one of the other witchcraft shops. The kids will love it!

Washington wow factor

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DC is great for families as it's clean and orderly with a sense of space - and your kids can have fun and they won't even notice they're learning!

Nearly all of the museums are free, too - which saves a fortune, especially if you have more than two children. Must-dos include The Air and Space Museum (airandspace.si.edu), and Museum of The American Indian (nmai.si.edu), where my son especially enjoyed the challenge of finding his balance in an Inuit boat. The cafe serves really healthy delicious food too.

The Bike and Roll Tour (bikeandrolldc.com; $39/34) is the very best way to visit the presidential monuments. Fully guided, the tour took us past The White House, Washington Monument and down National Mall from Lincoln to Jefferson down by the Potomac River.

Ford's Theatre (fords.org; $5/4.40) where Abraham Lincoln was shot, cannot be missed. Booking a tour online is essential as it is busy all year around and tours start at 8.30am. The highlight for my son was seeing the actual gun that shot President Lincoln.

Bear in mind that July and August are DC's hottest months, with temperatures soaring into the 30s.

The Streets of San Francisco

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Pier 39 is tourist central and on the way to Fisherman's Wharf. Don't skip it entirely, however. Here, we found Lefty's shop for left-handed people (leftyslefthanded.com). My daughter, Nicole, had to be dragged from this store being a leftie herself.

The kids will love Chinatown. Everything is cheap and it's a great place for the kids to pick up souvenirs for the whole class back home. Take a drive down Lombard Street - more thrilling than a ride at Universal. A little further afield, Marin County is home to the ancient redwood trees of Muir Woods. For a day out in nature, this is a great park to visit and it was used as a setting in the last Planet of the Apes movie. Get there early, however, as parking is crazy later in the day. Take a packed lunch for the great picnic areas, too.

The very best way to see the bridge and absorb the breathtaking view of San Francisco Bay is by bike (baycitybike.com; $55/44pp). It is a long cycle but older kids won't be bored - a guided tour takes up to three hours and ends at the pretty town of Sausalito, where we stopped for lunch and took a ferry ride back to the city. You can rent bikes by the hour, too.

New York, New York

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Children up to the age of 12 will love the American Girl store (americangirl.com) on 5th Avenue - with a chance to pick one of 49 dolls that will look exactly like them. I bought matching outfits and pyjamas for my daughter and her doll. We spent an afternoon enjoying lunch together at the store, while my daughter's doll had her hair done and ears pierced. It was a special mother and daughter experience we will never forget. 'Truly Me' dolls start from $115/101.

The changing rooms at Juicy Couture (juicycouture.com) are another place to make your daughter feel like a princess, but check that there's a sale before entering. We got lucky and arrived on a day with 70pc off everything. New York isn't just Manhattan, either. My daughter's favourite place in the suburbs is the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria (movingimage.us; $15/7). It was a real treat to see props and models used in the original Star Wars movies and other epics.

Elsewhere, I recommend Top of the Rock (topoftherocknyc.com; $32/28) rather than the Empire State Building (ESB), as your photos have the ESB in the background.

A great free attraction, not to mention a way to see Manhattan from the water, is the Staten Island Ferry (siferry.com) which leaves from the Whitehall Terminal on the half hour.

Finally, I'd recommend taking a bike or quadcycle around Central Park. A quadcycle costs $35/31 per hour (bikenewyorkcity.com), the perfect amount of time to leisurely see the lake and the sights. Kids love to be on the move, so this is a great way to get to see the Alice in Wonderland statue, Strawberry Fields and the Chess and Checkers House.

Travel checklist

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Aer Lingus, Delta, United and American fly various routes between Ireland the US, though it's often cheaper to book flights and hotels together with the likes of Sunway, Tour America and American Holidays.

Visa Waiver travellers need to complete an ESTA (esta.cbp.dhs.gov) beforehand and, as of this April 1, to carry an electronic passport. Before travelling to the US, make sure your family has travel insurance with adequate medical coverage - healthcare can be extremely costly.

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Shopping tips

The best way to ensure you find the exact stores you want is to look up premiumoutlets.com before travel and type your destination into the search box. Premium Outlets are outside all major cities - great for kids' clothes and shoes, and with good food malls too. Outside LA on the way to Santa Barbara, we checked out Camarillo Premium Outlets and the kids found their favourite stores such as Aeropostale, Nike, American Eagle and Gap.

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With schools soon to break up for mid-term, we take a look at some of our favourite family theme parks throughout Europe.

LEGOLAND Windsor, UK

AGES: Officially aimed at 2-12 (although 10-11 year-olds might prefer more adrenaline-oriented theme parks, unless they're ardent Lego fans).

HIGHPOINTS: If your budget can stretch to it, it's well worth checking into the resort hotel, which has been designed with impeccable attention to detail. Younger children will be mesmerised by the little touches, including the in-room safe stocked with Lego that can only be opened once the code is cracked.

The park itself is well laid out, and the ride selection well conceived: The Atlantis Submarine voyage (which glides through an aquarium tank) will captivate every age group while younger children will love the digger challenge and driving school. Halloween is a fantastic time to visit, with a Legends of Chima Fire and Ice fireworks display on 18/19 October, 25/26 October and 31 October/1 November, as well as the Forest of 5,000 Pumpkins.

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LOWPOINTS: Some areas of Lego Town look outdated and would benefit from a lick of paint. Elsewhere, queues can be prohibitively long. A Q-bot (a ride reservation service priced from 15 to 70) is worth its weight in gold.

WORD TO THE WISE: Download the free app (which includes a map) before visiting and don't forget to pack togs for the water-slides at Drench Towers. Also, while this isn't an exit-through-the-gift-shop theme park, bear in mind that acquiring merchandise is part of the experience for children - something to factor into the overall budget.

HOW TO GET THERE: London Heathrow airport is just 12 miles away, via the M4.

RATES: Park tickets can be brought in advance online from 44.75 for adults, 39.60 for children (free for under threes) and from 168.65 for families (2 adults + 2 children or 1 adult + 3 children). Themed family stay (2 adults/up to 3 children) rooms at the resort hotel are available from 315 low season or 429 high season. The hotel price includes breakfast and park tickets for two days plus early bird access to selected rides.

WEBSITE: www.legoland.co.uk

Disneyland Paris

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AGES: 3-99

HIGHPOINTS: The thrills come thick and fast in Disneyland, whether you're a princess collecting Anna and Elsa's autographs, a teen rocketing through Space Mountain, or a parent having their lower back rattled on Indiana Jones et le Temple du Peril. Even the most hardened of cynics will find it hard to resist their children's joy, or stop their own mouths opening in awe, during the Disney Dreams! night-time lights spectacular.

LOWPOINTS: Two words: other people. Sadly, you can't have Disneyland Paris to yourself. That means queues of up to an hour for top rides at peak times.

WORD TO THE WISE: Use the Fastpass system, make sure your kids have your phone number in case they get lost, and save money by bringing a packed lunch.

HOW TO GET THERE: Ryanair flies to Paris Bouvais (2.5 hours by VEA Shuttle Bus from Disneyland). Aer Lingus flies to Paris Charles de Gaulle (45 minutes by shuttle). Packages bundling tickets, flights, transfers and accommodation can be booked with tour operators including Abbey Travel (abbeytravel.ie) and Breakaway (breakaway.ie).

RATES: Standard, single-day tickets to both Disneyland and Walt Disney Studios (there are two parks on the same campus) cost 80/74pp.

WEBSITE: www.disneylandparis.ie

De Efteling: Europalaan, The Netherlands

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AGES: 2-99. Its fairytale theme means it's suitable for all ages. But there is a height restriction on certain rides of 1.20 meters (3.9ft)

HIGHPOINTS: The atmosphere is magical with many wonderful attractions. The Dreamflight is one of the most popular allowing visitors to float through an enchanted world. Aquanura is Europe's biggest water show - incorporating water, fire and music. And Fata Morgana is a dreamlike boat trip through the Forbidden City.

LOWPOINTS: It's hard to find any negative aspects but it's very big so you would need more than one day to get to see everything.

WORD TO THE WISE: The award-winning park is one of the oldest in the world and is always busy particularly during the school holidays. Buying tickets in advance saves time and the website offers advice on when the park is quietest. Staying in the themed Efteling hotel also makes access easier.

HOW TO GET THERE: Aer Lingus fly from Dublin to Amsterdam and Ryanair fly from Dublin to Eindhoven. A bus from Amsterdam to De Efteling takes up to two hours and from Eindhoven takes approx. 1 hour. Tickets start at 11

RATES: Children under 4 go free and tickets start from 33 per person.

WEBSITE: www.efteling.co.uk

Peppa Pig World, Hampshire, UK

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AGES: Zones for children aged 2-5, then 6-8 and 9+.

HIGHPOINTS: If your little ones are fans of this televisual behemoth, Peppa Pig World - nestled within the larger theme park - offers them the chance to get up close and personal with both Peppa and George. The characters are very generous with photo/meet & greet time. Elsewhere in the park, the Stinger might be closed until Easter, but high-octane rides Magma and The Edge are well worth the queues.

LOWPOINTS: It can work out expensive if you have tall children; children under 1 metre are allowed in for free, but it's approx. 30 otherwise. Also, the park's overpriced food gets a thumbs-down: bring a packed lunch.

WORD TO THE WISE: Buy a two-day pass: that way kids can access zones that they missed out on in the first day. Also, many punters start to leave with tired children around 3pm, a good time to beat the queues (although the popular helicopter ride at the entrance is always busy).

HOW TO GET THERE: Fly to Southampton airport with Flybe, then either get a taxi or hire a car. There's no transport directly from the airport to the park.

RATES: Advance tickets start from 30 per adult/child over 1 metre tall, to 144 for a family of five.

WEBSITE: www.paultonspark.co.uk

Thomas Land, Staffordshire, UK

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AGES: This particular area of the theme park is specifically for younger children.

HIGHPOINTS: Set in a 6000-square foot park, Thomas Land boasts 12 themed rides, a massive indoor play area and a shop packed with Thomas & Friends merchandise. It's ideal for smaller children with at least 10 rides suitable for under-5s, while Thomas fans get pulled around the (fairly compact) park by the main train himself. There are daily live shows too, featuring an all-singing, all-dancing Fat Controller.

LOWPOINTS: If you're tight on time, perhaps give the zoo a miss.

WORD TO THE WISE: Older visitors should make haste to Apocalypse, described as the UK's scariest amusement park ride. The Shockwave, meanwhile, has been voted the best stand-up rollercoaster in the world.

HOW TO GET THERE: Ryanair and Aer Lingus fly from Dublin to Birmingham. It's a 20-minute taxi ride to Drayton Manor.

RATES: A family of three day-pass is approx. 103, while a family of five day-pass is approx. 172. Children under 3 are admitted free.

WEBSITE: www.draytonmanor.co.uk

PortAventura Tarragona, Spain

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AGES: 2-99. Thanks to the new SesamoAventura area for very small children, the park now has something for everyone.

HIGHPOINTS: It's a fantastic excursion to combine with a trip to Barcelona and the rides - among them the infamous Furius Baco and the white-knuckle Shambhala - are truly world-class.

LOWPOINTS: Small children pay full-price for admission, but there are height restrictions (1 metre plus) for many rides.

WORD TO THE WISE: Ride the rollercoasters at night for stunning views. To avoid long queues, buy Express passes - around 25 - during peak season to access shorter lines.

HOW TO GET THERE: Aer Lingus and Ryanair fly to Barcelona. There are a number of high-speed train options from Barcelona to the station just a few metres from the park.

RATES: Day passes are 45 for adults, 39 for children (buy in advance from the website).

WEBSITE: www.portaventura.co.uk
Family holidays don't come cheap but there are shortcuts and workarounds.

Family holidays don't come cheap, writes our travel editor, but our guide will make them a lot easier.

Summer holidays are bittersweet for me.

On the one hand, this fortnight is the sweetest quality time I'll spend with my family all year. We'll loll around, try new foods, read Harry Potter and run up lists of favourite ice-cream shops in a glorious detox from the nine-to-five.

On the other, there's the bill. Families with school-age kids are like fans in a stadium or punters at Disneyland Paris - completely captive, at the mercy of a market where everybody wants the same thing at the same time. We'll remember our summer holiday forever, but we'll pay handsomely for the pleasure.

This year, that goes extra.

Terrorist attacks have taken Tunisia and Egypt off the brochures, and recent events in Turkey and Greece have pushed even more holidaymakers towards tried and trusted sun holiday resorts like Spain and the Algarve. Canary Islands prices began rising early this year, and I haven't seen them slow down since.

There were almost 1.7m Irish visits to Spain in 2015, according to CSO figures. Throw in another bump in bookings as the economy recovers, and you've got the perfect storm... heading straight for my credit card (and yours).

The 'Costa del Crowded' effect is sure to impact on summer holiday experiences too. Last year, Barcelona put a cap on tourist accommodation. Recently, Italy's Cinque Terra restricted visitor numbers, and Majorca is introducing a tourist tax that could reportedly cost a family of four 85 over a two-week holiday.

Traffic jams, theme park queues, crowded beaches and stressed-out locals - you get the sense that something has to give.

What can we do about it?

That's one of the things we've set out to answer in our family travel special. Jillian Bolger has consulted some of the savviest parents in the industry to compile our top 25 family travel tips; Garry Toal and I have run the rule over two of Europe's top family theme parks (Legoland Windsor and PortAventura), and Michelle Jackson has distilled a lifetime's worth of US holidays into an indispensable guide to travelling with children in the great American cities.

Sadly, there's no golden ticket. If you want to take your family overseas, you have to pay. But there are shortcuts, workarounds, tips, tricks and websites that can help cut corners, reduce costs and get the most out of a precious opportunity that, for most families, also happens to be the biggest single purchase of the year.

As always, we'd love to know what you think. Email me at travel@independent.ie, or get in touch on Facebook.com/IndoTravel.ie. You're the real experts!
In 2015, a Dublin couple applied to have their son admitted to nine publicly funded hospitals, to no avail. If he had been baptised, he would have been admitted to any of them, but because he had 'no religion', he was turned away. Religious institutions have a virtual monopoly on hospital patronage in Ireland (96pc), with the Catholic Church dominating (90pc). These publicly funded hospitals are allowed - under 'equality' legislation - to discriminate against children in their admissions policies on religious grounds. Some parents have resorted to having their children baptised to get them into a hospital.

The above is true, save that the word 'hospital' should be replaced by the word 'school'. We wouldn't accept the current regime if it prevailed in our publicly funded hospitals. Why should we accept it in our publicly funded schools?

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has described parents having their children baptised to ease their access to a school as an abuse of the sacrament, but many parents choose the pragmatic option nonetheless. The current system actually incentivises this hypocrisy.

We don't have a real state-school system in this country. We have a Frankenstein-esque system, where the State effectively outsources its constitutional obligation to provide for free primary education to private institutions - 96pc of which are religious. This is an aberration compared to other developed countries. These institutions can then legally discriminate against children on the grounds of religion in their admission policies. Section 7 (3) (c) of the Equal Status Act, 2000 - the 'no room at the inn clause' - allows this. Then, thanks to the 'integrated curriculum', schools can subject children to indoctrination throughout the school day, irrespective of their parents' wishes, rendering their constitutional right to opt out of 'religious instruction' redundant. Indoctrination is not education, yet the two are conflated in the vast majority of our schools.

Evidence points to support for change. Recent polls have shown that the vast majority of those surveyed said that state-funded schools should not have the right to refuse admission on religious grounds and that children should have equal access to school places, irrespective of whether they've been baptised or not.

The health of a society can be judged by how it treats its minorities. This is about fundamental rights - the rights of freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. These are the foundation stones on which a republic is built. These are rights that should be protected from arguments conjured from contrived majoritarianism. Ultimately, it's about equality - equality of access to education in a republic.

Future generations will look back in astonishment at the 'national school system' that existed in 2016. Even Archbishop Martin has said that the status quo is "no longer tenable" and that divestment has been "far too slow".

The Government has no plans to repeal the 'no room at the inn clause' or address the 'integrated curriculum'. The Community National School model, as envisioned by Minister Richard Bruton, should come with a health warning: it provides for the religious segregation of children for periods of faith formation during school hours.

Religious segregation has not worked in Northern Ireland. A report in the UK last year revealed that religious segregation in schools was "socially divisive" and led to "greater misunderstanding and tension". There is no reason to believe it wouldn't have similar consequences here.

Instead of this 'Bride of Frankenstein' model, the 'no room at the inn clause' should be repealed, 'faith formation' should be restricted to a period at the end of the school day, there should be divestment to non and multi-denominational patrons and more non and multi-denominational schools should be built.

Rob Sadlier is a solicitor and member of Education Equality, a group set up to achieve: (i) equal access to school places; (ii) equal respect throughout the school day in our State-funded schools. You can read stories from people who have been affected by religious discrimination in Irish schools here: http://educationequality.ie/index.php/category/personal-stories/
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Brendan OConnor Opinion The jig is up as Feis fixing has former winners like me reeling

As the holder of the Marie Cranny Perpetual cup for Extempore and Public Speaking (Under 15s) in Feis Maitiu in, of all years, 1984, I would like to use this platform to say this feis-fixing scandal has sullied my legacy, and that of all other holders of the cup down the years (you had to give it back at the end of the year).
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Dan O'Brien Opinion While we catastrophise about Covid, we ignore risk of running out of cash

We Irish view the world in an increasingly strange and unhealthy way. We catastrophise about Covid in a way other European countries do not. We focus on how bad the effects of the virus could get, on how many more restrictions might be imposed by Government and how helpless we are in the face of the virus.
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Eoghan Harris Opinion Misery media fails to give due credit to the Taoiseach

Taoiseach Micheal Martin must drive his advisers mad. Unlike Leo Varadkar or Donald Trump, he never bigs up success stories such as the effect of Level 3 Plus on Covid or his visionary Shared Island project. Last Friday, Tony Holohan and RTE cheerleaders seemed to imply Level 5 was responsible for the improved Covid situation. Not so.
We live in a society where people find it more difficult than ever when others express an opinion that goes against their accepted way of thinking.

Claire Fox, author of I Find That Offensive!, uses the term Generation Snowflake to describe the new fragile, thin-skinned breed who believe its their right to be protected from anything they might find unpalatable.

She says that in todays public discourse, people cant cope with conflicting views, let alone criticism.

Its no wonder then that I struggled to give a forthright view on a subject as sensitive as rape on Brendan OConnors Cutting Edge last Wednesday.

I was conscious that for years women have been disbelieved, blamed, shamed, shrugged off and silenced in the wake of sexual assault.

And happy that men have been forced to look at their own behaviour when it comes to sexual consent.

So was it really the time to point out the obvious? To address the one thing we still cant bring ourselves to discuss? Womens drinking and the role it plays in putting them at risk of rape.

In the run-up to the show, the horrific case of a 23-year-old student of Stanford University had been in the news and gone viral.

She was raped behind a dumpster by a man she had met at a fraternity party. She was very drunk to the point that she was unconscious when her attacker was found on top of her by two passers-by. He subsequently received a mere six-month sentence.

We have a long way to go when it comes to adequate sentencing; there is no doubt she is the victim, and rape  under any circumstance  is inexcusable. But the role of alcohol was unmentionable. In fact we were explicitly told by some commentators to steer clear. Why?

I explained on the show that, given Irelands own disturbing figures, it is important to start a conversation.

Alcohol is a factor in eight out of every 10 rapes and sexual assaults in Ireland. As part of the battle, we need to arm women  the most at-risk category  with the facts. If they drink alcohol to the point of oblivion they are putting themselves at risk of an attack  and it makes getting justice afterwards even more difficult.

My comments caused uproar and I was accused of victim-shaming. I would point those people to a major advertisement campaign which has run on Irish television.

It warns pedestrians who are a little worse for wear that they are putting themselves in harms way.

Initiated by the Road Safety Authority (RSA), the Drunken Pedestrian commercial aims to reduce the number of pedestrians killed on Irish roads  two-thirds of whom had consumed alcohol.

The RSA explained that when you are drunk awareness of your surroundings is impaired, making you as exposed as you can be to danger.

And here is the clincher: it only targets men aged between 17 and 24, and 50-plus. Interestingly, it hasnt been met with hysteria or decries of sexism.

No one has accused the RSA of saying pedestrians are asking for it, and, whats more, the initiative has proven successful.

Last year, Ireland saw a 19pc drop in deaths of vulnerable road users, which includes pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists. Thats almost two in every 10 families who still have their loved ones thanks to raised awareness.

So why cant we have the same calm, measured approach when it comes to warning another at-risk category about the dangers of alcohol and rape?

Perhaps the reason is that, unlike sexual assault, road deaths and other crimes are not tied up with shame.

But the irony is that by keeping silent on womens drinking you are inadvertently implying that there is something to be ashamed of if a woman drinks and gets raped.

No one deserves that. No matter what she drinks, what she wears or where she goes at night: rape is rape.

It may be difficult and messy to confront our own role in the prevention of rape, but there is strength in it.

When a rape happens, a woman also needs the best chance if she wants justice. In Ireland, of those who report rape, there is a 1-2pc conviction rate. If you drink to excess, it can hinder your ability to remember the attack and give evidence in court. The justice system want you to know this.

Director of Public Prosecutions Claire Loftus came out in 2014 to address the problem of such a low conviction rate in rape cases. She said that there were usually no other witnesses to the event, and memories may be impaired due to alcohol consumption and other factors. Thus, it is often one persons word against anothers, she said.

The head of the Rape Crisis Centre also wants you to know about the risk of alcohol and rape.

Following the debate on Brendan OConnors show  while reiterating that we must not blame the victim  Cliona Sadlier, of Rape Crisis Network Ireland, said: Our position would be  because of the prevalence of sexual violence we have to talk about alcohols role. It is unavoidable.

And the Sexual Assault Treatment Unit in the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin wants you to know how big a role alcohol plays.

In 2012, more than seven in 10 alleged victims of sexual assault who attended the unit had consumed the equivalent of six pints of beer, or 12 units of alcohol, in the 12 hours before the attack.

The Department of Health says that women should not drink more than 11 units of alcohol over the course of a week.

On the international front, Americas top criminal profiler John Douglas has said the number one thing that will keep you safe from harm  more than any weapon, martial arts expertise or physical strength  is an awareness of your surroundings.

Even Jeff Cooper, the creator of the modern technique of handgun shooting, was wise enough to know that safety is something that happens between your ears, not something you hold in your hands.

You can listen to the online hysteria, or you can listen to the people on the front line who are dealing every day with the reality of the fallout of rape.

Being aware of your drinking habits wont give you any guarantees that you wont become another statistic. But it sure as hell will give you a better fighting chance.
Only 11 days remain until the June 23 referendum on the UK's membership of the EU. The opinion polls remain stubbornly close. Every single vote will count in the end, including those of Irish citizens in the UK and the wider group of the one-in-four UK residents who have some Irish heritage.

This is where every single one of us here in Ireland has an opportunity to contribute. While ultimately it is the voters in the UK who will decide the outcome, each of us can contribute to making the Irish case for the UK, as our closest neighbour and EU partner, to remain in the EU.

Ireland has a unique perspective on and interest in the outcome. Our relationship with the UK is closer than with any other EU member state and we are the only country sharing a land border with the UK - a border that would become an EU frontier if voters opt to leave.

Last week, as part of a series of ministerial visits to Britain and Northern Ireland ahead of the referendum, I visited Liverpool and Manchester and spoke with members of the Irish community, business people, local media and local political leaders.

The visit reminded me of the comprehensive and multi-faceted nature of the Irish-British relationship today, not only in London but all across Britain. Indeed, my flight back from Manchester was one of 99 weekly flights between that city alone and Ireland. It also confirmed once more what I learned on previous visits to London, Scotland and elsewhere: the Irish voice is welcome in this debate.

Preserving that strong relationship between Britain and Ireland is important for all of us, and our both being members of the EU is an important dimension to this. There are four main reasons why, the first of which is the economy.

During that visit to northern England, I saw the scale of successful UK investments by Irish companies, including Cement Roadstone Holdings, Jurys Inns, Glanbia, Kerry Foods and the ABP food group. I want these to continue to grow, along with the many British job-creating investments in Ireland. Studies show there would be an adverse impact on both economies if the UK leaves the EU. Some 1.2bn in goods and services are traded every week between our two countries. EU membership allows for the seamless flow of goods, services, capital and people - and we want to preserve that ease of movement.

Second, a particular prior- ity of mine as Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade is Northern Ireland. The potential economic impact of a UK exit on Northern Ireland was highlighted very clearly by Chancellor George Osborne when he visited there last Monday. However, the importance of the EU to the North runs deeper still.

The EU has been an important factor in sustaining peace and prosperity in Northern Ireland, providing important opportunities where nationalist and unionist representatives can work together. The EU also provides a broader context for relations on these islands. Much-needed funding, including through programmes like 'Peace' and 'Interreg', will provide more than 3bn in the period 2014-2020. Put simply, North-South cooperation is so much easier when both jurisdictions are EU members. At best, there is uncertainty about the status of the border on our island in the event of an EU-exit by the UK, as highlighted time and again by many legal and political commentators.

Third, the Common Travel Area (CTA) between Ireland and the UK has been in existence since Irish independence and is an important feature of the close relationship between our two countries. It allows free movement between the countries and ensures that Irish and British citizens are treated equally regarding access to social welfare. It is particularly important, I believe, to preserve the benefits of ease of travel on the island of Ireland. It is not certain the CTA would continue in its current form, and were the UK to leave the EU this is a matter of some concern.

Finally, we have the EU itself. Regardless of the referendum outcome, Ireland will remain in the EU and the eurozone, but we want the UK's voice to continue being heard as a member state, as we are allies on many of the key issues facing the EU. The EU needs renewal and we need a strong UK on board as we grapple with the many global challenges facing us. In addressing those challenges, the EU collective voice is much stronger when the UK is part of the chorus.

These are among the main reasons we offer when putting forward the Irish view. My experience and that of other ministers travelling to Britain and Northern Ireland is that people want to hear that view.

We need to use these remaining 11 days to offer our perspectives to friends and family members who are entitled to vote. Let them know Ireland values UK membership of the EU; that it matters for relations between Ireland and Britain; that it provides the best framework for trade and investment between our two countries; and that it has made a positive contribution in advancing peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

Let's set ourselves a "phone a friend" target and get in touch with a least five voters and ask them to take the Irish perspective into account when casting their ballot. The cumulative impact could make a real difference to the outcome of a referendum that impacts on the future of all these neighbouring islands.

Charles Flanagan TD is Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade
The location of the new children's hospital is something that I care deeply about. Today, I'm a doctor who works in St James's, but a decade ago, I was that sick child, travelling up from Galway to Crumlin for chemotherapy. I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma when I was 14.

During that awful time when I received excellent care in inadequate settings, the idea of a new, easily accessible hospital with ample parking genuinely delighted me.

More than a decade after being that seriously ill child, I'm now a doctor. Not only that, but I work in St James's. It's a great place to work and a fantastic hospital, but it is not a suitable place for the National Children's Hospital. The site is not just less than ideal, or only okay, it is catastrophically wrong.

I listen with dismay as the arguments about the importance of accessibility and adequate parking don't seem to be cutting through.

Those in favour of St James's say the children's hospital must be co-located with an adult hospital. They are vague about the reasons because it's not going to save any lives. They cite Luas stops when asked about access. These people clearly don't understand the reality of being a seriously ill child or the parent of a seriously ill child.

I'm willing to wager that neither the CEO of St James's, or our current Minister for Health Simon Harris, or our former ministers Leo Varadkar, James Reilly or Mary Harney, ever had to jump out of their mother's car to vomit at the side of the road while, close to tears, she drives desperately around Crumlin, searching for a parking space.

An extra hour in a car each way for the sickest children is heaping misery upon misery. Among the most visceral memories I have of the whole experience is being spread out across the back seat of my parent's car, nauseous and weak, crawling through Dublin traffic and wishing every second of that car journey away. Twice a week, every week, for six months.

And what about the very sickest children? The single worst hour of my life was when, after needing an emergency transfer by helicopter from Galway to Dublin, I needed an ambulance transfer from Baldonnel to Crumlin because the air ambulance couldn't land in the hospital.

You won't be able to land a large air ambulance on the St James's site and there are plenty of the worst hours in store for the desperately ill children who attend that hospital. The location of St James's will penalise the sickest of children. It's unconscionable.

Until the people in charge experience these things, as patients or parents, the actual wellbeing of sick children will remain an abstract concept to them. It's not their fault, it's just a fact. And as a result, it's looking like the Government, for political reasons, will place an institution's interest ahead of the welfare of the children in this country.

I often wonder do politicians and the various decision makers in this process even realise that is what they are doing? Do they realise how decisions are made in our health service?

With, first, the Mater site and now St James's, do they realise the torch was passed from the most powerful medical institution with the most effective lobbyists to the second most powerful medical institution with the second most effective lobbyists?

Do they realise the needs and desires of our sick children and their parents have been ignored by successive governments? Do they realise patient welfare and future planning are coming, as usual, a distant second to political convenience in terms of importance to our Government?

Every day as I work in St James's, I still can't believe this is the anointed place. I enter via the back gate every morning (the future front entrance of the children's hospital) and even before the 10,000 arrivals and departures per day, the road leading up to it has tailbacks hundreds of metres long.

I then pass the proposed site of the future maternity hospital, an impossibly cramped space that will require clearance of a recently built out-patient department.

I look around my workplace, nearly hoping to find a source of evil and greed that has made it place its own institution over the welfare of the children of this country. But I find well-meaning people - most of whom are against the idea of placing a National Children's Hospital at an already congested inner-city site with woefully inadequate parking - doing good things, not evil at all. And this makes me realise something. The powers that be in St James's are simply doing their job, trying to enhance what is a very good institution. Maybe they don't realise either?

Look closely at what's being said. The people who just want a hospital, regardless of location, tend to be based in Dublin and its surrounds. The people who disregard arguments about accessibility, parking and cost, cite the completely baseless co-location argument as an acceptable reason to place the hospital at an otherwise hopelessly inadequate location.

As a doctor, I would not be writing this if there was any evidence to suggest that a single child's life would be saved by co-location with St James's. As a staff member in St James's, I wouldn't be writing this if I thought the cramped, inner city site's suitability even approached that of the accessible and unencumbered Connolly site. I don't want to dredge up my past as a cancer patient, I don't want to have to be critical of what is an excellent hospital and workplace. I don't want to be writing this piece.

But honestly? I feel obliged to do it. I have a unique perspective and, frankly, my 14-year-old self, be it vomiting at the side of the road in Crumlin, or being loaded into an ambulance on an airstrip on a stormy night in Baldonnel, would never forgive me if I didn't speak up.

Eamonn Faller is a 26-year-old medical doctor currently working with the infectious diseases and HIV service in St James's Hospital. Originally from Galway, he trained in Trinity College, Dublin, graduating in 2012.
Apprentice carpenters are taught 'measure twice, cut once' to stress how important it is to have a full understanding before acting irreversibly.

As Ireland emerges from a housing collapse, that dramatically disrupted housing supply, there is a clamour to build, build, and build. Much of this clamouring is taking place without the measure of housing as a whole.

The Housing Agency is warning that there is an excessive concentration on house-building alone. This will only address the symptoms and not the causes of housing and homelessness problems.

The lack of supply - which is driving up rents as well as homelessness - is indeed the cause. A lack of supply arises from excessive vacancy, excessive costs, underutilisation of stock, inappropriate types or locations of homes, and a lack of homes for sale - as well as a shortage of new housing. This needs to be addressed in many ways, by many actors. It can be a slow process.

The Housing Agency is warning that a failure to tackle all of these other issues would be a missed opportunity to address the causes of supply failure - and we need to do so quickly, cheaply and very effectively.

Anyone who promises quick fixes to housing is either unwise or misinformed. Many are currently arguing that we need to adopt extraordinary measures to deal with an unprecedented situation yet, for the most part, the proposed extraordinary measures concentrate only on new building - ignoring the many other options available to us.

The agency advises that new house building is a fraction - and a small fraction - of Ireland's housing issues. It is sobering to heed the carpenter's advice by measuring all of the parts of Ireland's housing before proposing any extraordinary measures for any one part.

The agency has analysed housing supply and demand and advises that Ireland needs around 21,000 homes each year. And everyone assumes that we need to build these. We don't. Better management of our existing stock offers the opportunity to meet these needs quickly. This will allow us to build wisely, gradually and appropriately without being rushed into solutions that are unsustainable or unsuitable.

We also advise that there were over 230,000 vacant homes in Ireland during the 2011 census - that's over 10 years of supply without building a single new home. This, of course, is a huge oversimplification - the vacancies may be less, they may be in the wrong places, or the wrong type, but the fact remains that it represents a potentially inexpensive and fast solution. Vacancies are a huge issue that needs to managed and addressed as an urgent priority.

Another key priority identified by the agency is the need to keep people in their homes so that they don't end up on the growing housing waiting list. The costs of any solutions to mortgage arrears need to be seen in the context of the costs of how to house up to 200,000 families who might lose their homes due to arrears (see panel). This is another important issue that also needs to be urgently addressed and managed.

Finally there is our rental system - this affects over 450,000 households in Ireland. Lack of certainty for tenants and a lack of incentives for professional landlords are some of the many challenges that face a sector that already accounts for over half of Dublin's households. How long can the political system ignore the needs of over half of the population of the national centre of employment and productivity? This is another fundamental issue that needs to be urgently addressed and managed - to preserve national competitiveness, as well as meeting accommodation needs.

So, returning to the theme of measuring before acting, we have seen that the issues of vacancy, arrears and rental affect nearly half of all households in Ireland. These issues can all be quickly addressed by legislation and the tax system, as the agency has advised. It will be complex and will require vigorous inter-departmental co-operation - but it can be done and, with effort, it can be done quickly.

Managing nearly a million homes to produce short-term, inexpensive and sustainable solutions must be given at least equal priority with building 75,000 new houses. Yet the latter seems to be the only thing that everyone talks about.

Housing represents one of a nation's most expensive and complex activities - yet it remains unmanaged. In other sectors of our society we all appear to understand and accept that unmanaged 'market forces' can rapidly become dysfunctional and monopolistic. So, we manage banks, we manage agriculture, we manage energy and we manage transportation and many, many other parts of our economy. Why don't we manage housing?

The idea of managing our housing as a coherent and integrated system brings new challenges. It makes us realise that such management needs to be guided by strategies and goals. As a nation, we have not even begun to address this.

Do we have a national policy on affordability? Not some airy-fairy, waffly aspiration - but a ratio of income to cost that is enshrined in standards and practice. Do we have a national policy on supported housing? Not just 'Council Housing' but a recognition that around a third of the population will need some form of housing support. Dublin has crossed a threshold where inner city housing will never be 'affordable' and will need supports for a wide range of workers, for example.

Do we have a national vision built on new behaviours, new values, new aspirations, and new demographics? A housing plan that is only about house building will not be fit for purpose for a newly emerging urban Ireland.

We have to re-centre the housing debate towards the wise management of our entire national housing stock. That debate will involve redefining how we think of the places that we call home.

Building is important, yes, but not in a vacuum. Housing needs to be managed first, and built second.

Conor Skehan is chairperson of the Housing Agency
My sisters and I were not allowed to wear make-up or cut our hair until we were 16. At the time, I didn't understand my parents' rationale in insisting on this. Now, as a parent myself, with a tonne of life experience behind me, I see what they were trying to instil in us.

I remember my father repeating ad nauseam, "Brains before beauty, girls." He and my mother were trying to get us focus more intently on our inner strength, rather than obsessing over our outer selves. I am extremely grateful to them now because, even speaking as a former model, I've never purely defined myself by how I look.

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Whatsapp Ruth Griffin photographed for Weekend by Naomi Gaffey

Every generation looks at the next and thinks the younger ones have it easier - but I don't. I suspect the younger generation face a lot of pressures that simply didn't exist when I was a teenager.

As quite a reserved person, I think I would struggle with the seemingly very extrovert online world. Today's teenagers (sometimes described rather disparagingly as the 'selfie generation') have an arsenal of beauty products and online resources available, which has its advantages and drawbacks. They are groomed to perfection, but maybe there is too much of an emphasis on looks?

Expand Close Actress Bella Thorne (18) understands that less is more when it comes to make-up. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for WILDFOX) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Actress Bella Thorne (18) understands that less is more when it comes to make-up. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for WILDFOX)

Wearing make-up can certainly help you to feel good about yourself and boost your confidence - and properly looking after your skin in your teenage years will pay dividends for the rest of your life.

There are many products and ranges developed especially for teenagers, some of which I recommend on these pages. However, I were to give today's teenagers any words of wisdom, only a few of them would be to do with appearance.

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My advice is to be kind in life. Be honest. Be brave. Be curious. Be helpful. Work hard. Travel. Keep reading. Unplug. Keep an open mind and open heart. Speak your mind. Wear SPF. Don't over-pluck your brows. Make mistakes. If you want to try that black lipstick or dye your hair green - go for it! And always have fun.

photo: naomi gaffey

@ruthgriffinbeauty

6 of the Best: Teen Make-up Lines

Sculpt it

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Whatsapp Inglot HD Sculpting Contour Powder, 10.

This contour powder comes in 12 different shades (apply with the Inglot 3 P brush) and a matte finish. The pigment level is high so use sparingly. Lovely when used as an eye shadow also. Inglot HD Sculpting Contour Powder, 10.

Brow beating

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Catrice is an inexpensive but good quality make-up brand that's proving to be a big hit with teens. (I have a few of their nail varnishes and highlighters and really rate the brand myself!) Try their brow shadow Catrice Eyebrow Kit, 4.50, Penneys and pharmacies nationwide.

Natural nudes

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Whatsapp L'Oreal La Palette Nude (in Beige), 21.99 Boots.

Every eye shadow colour you'll ever need is in this palette. All the tones are natural and quite subtle so perfect if you're more into a natural make-up vibe.

L'Oreal La Palette Nude (in beige), 21.99, Boots

Mac daddy

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Whatsapp MAC Give Me Sun Bronzer, 30.

MAC make-up has a huge teen following with MAC Give Me Sun Bronzer, 30, and Extreme Dimension Mascara, 25, being some of the top teen sellers.

Instaglam skin

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Rimmel London make-up was voted by Teen Vogue to be one of the top five brands for teenagers. Check out their InstaFlawless Skin Perfector Tint, 8.99 - it can be worn on its own or under foundation for selfie-perfect skin.

Face facts

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This one-stop shop for face, lips and cheeks is a budget-friendly, gorgeous and practical teen make-up option. Benefit Rockitude Lip and Cheek Tint, 35.

Teen regimen

The exact cause of acne is unknown, but hormones called androgens can play a part. Androgens rise during puberty, enlarging the skins oil glands and creating more sebum. Excess sebum can break down cellular walls in your pores, causing bacteria to grow.

Some studies indicate that a susceptibility to acne could also be genetic and stress-related.

Acne is the most common form of skin condition, with 80pc of 11- to 30-year-olds experiencing it at some stage. It can appear on the face, neck, chest and back. Girls most commonly are affected by acne in the ages from 14-17, and boys from the ages of 16-19.

If acne or troubled skin persists, it is recommended to make an appointment to see a GP or dermatologist in order to address the skin issue as early as possible, before any pock marks or scarring of the skin occurs. Prescribed medication can be used in severe cases.

Treatment for acne or problem skin usually takes between two to three months to have an effect, with preventative skin measures (known as maintenance therapy) following.

Look for make-up and skincare that is non-comedogenic, non-acnegenic and water-based.

Teenagers should be cleansing and moisturising their skin (face and body) daily.

Keeping the skin hydrated and nourished by drinking plenty of water and eating healthily will help with teenagers overall health and wellbeing.

Greasy hair can be an issue for teenagers, caused by hormonal changes. Contrary to what we might think, greasy hair can be caused by a dry scalp. The dry scalp requires the oil glands to produce more oil, which presents itself in lank-looking hair. A pH-balanced, alkaline-based shampoo (which must be thoroughly rinsed off) should help.

80pc of sun skin damage is done before we reach the age of 20, so it is essential for teenagers to use a broad spectrum (UVA and UVB) SPF daily.

Hair & skin savers

For oily skin

If there is one thing Id recommend for teenagers with problem skin, its to not skimp on their cleansing and moisturising products. We want to mind our skin from as young an age as possible, so investing early in your skins health is a great start. My two favourite skincare lines do excellent products for acne-prone and oily skin. Try Dermalogica Clear Start Oil Control Breakout Clearing Kit, 29.50, dermalogica.ie or Shiseido Pureness Matifying Moisturiser (oil-free), 33.50, selected department stores

For normal/dry skin

My mother took me to a dermatologist as a young teenager to inspect my skin and advise on my future skincare maintenance. He recommended E45 cream and I used it daily on face and body throughout my teenage years. A no-nonsense all-over skin-saver. E45, 6.50, pharmacies nationwide.

For greasy hair

A pH-balanced, alkaline-based shampoo should address most greasy hair issues. Its vital to thoroughly rinse the product off. Try Neutrogenas T Gel for Greasy Hair, 10.99. Products with tea tree oil are amazing for dry scalp and greasy hair, try Kiehls Tea Tree Oil shampoo, 19, Wicklow Street, Dublin

(TIP: Drinking Udos Oil is also great for dry scalp).
As the boys in green prepare to tackle Sweden in their first Euros 2016 match on Monday, we look at the women behind the players on the Irish team.

Becky Gibson

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Whatsapp Shay Given and fiancee Becky Gibson with baby Gracie, who weighed in at 9lbs 4oz on December 1

Other half: Shay Given

Occupation: PR

What to know: Shay Given and fiancee Becky Gibson welcomed baby Grace, their first child together, in December. Given (40) split from his wife of 12 years in 2013 and began a relationship with Gibson soon after.

Yvonne Manning

Expand Close Sunderland and Ireland footballer John married his long-term partner Yvonne in a low-key affair, in Maynooth, Co. Kiildare in 2010. Although the couple did not have a deal with any of the glossy magazines, famous faces such as Coleen Rooney at the wedding ensured it didn't fly under the radar. / Facebook

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Whatsapp Sunderland and Ireland footballer John married his long-term partner Yvonne in a low-key affair, in Maynooth, Co. Kiildare in 2010. Although the couple did not have a deal with any of the glossy magazines, famous faces such as Coleen Rooney at the wedding ensured it didn't fly under the radar.

Other half: John OShea

What to know: The social media-shy couple wed in 2010 at Carton House, two years after Yvonne reportedly caught the bouquet at Wayne and Colleen Rooneys wedding. They now have two children together.

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Kerrie Harris

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Other half: Robbie Brady

Occupation: Dancer and choreographer

What to know: Kerrie runs Soul2Soul Dance Academy in Swords. The long-term couple have daughter Halle (2) together.

Erin Connor

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Other half: James McClean

Occupation: Nursing graduate

What to know: Erin and James wed in Derry just last month after a three year engagement. They have two children, Allie Mae (2) and James Junior (eight months).

Claudine Keane

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Whatsapp Claudine and Robbie Keane with their sons Robert Jr and Hudson. Photo: Claudine Keane / Twitter

Other half: Robbie Keane

Occupation: Model

What to know: Chief among the WAGs of Ireland, and a name familiar to most, Claudine and her hubby of eight years moved to LA in 2011, where Robbie captains LA Galaxy. The former Miss Ireland welcomed the couples second son, Hudson, in October and is set to head to France for the Ireland matches.

Kayleah Long

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Whatsapp Shane Long with wife Kayleah and daughters Teigan and Erin

Other half: Shane Long

Occupation: Model and fashion designer

What to know: Reading girl, Kayleah (28), announced just two weeks ago that shes expecting her third child with her husband of three years. The couple have two daughters Teigan (six) and Erin (two). Kayleah has said she is "buzzing" for Ireland's Euro 2016 campaign.

Karen Byrne

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Whatsapp Glenn and Karen Whelan. Picture @karen3403

Other half: Glenn Whelan

What to know: Childhood sweethearts Karen and Glenn married in a lavish ceremony in Powerscourt, Co. Wicklow, ahead of the last Euros in 2012. They have two children, Abbie and Jack.

Karen and their children almost missed out on seeing him in action at Euro 2016 after their flight to Paris was cancelled. But luckily for Ms Whelan a local travel agent came to the rescue and she tweeted later that day that she and the couple's two children will make it to Stade de France in time for Ireland's crunch clash with Sweden.

She wrote: "Thanks @cltravelsoluti1 for sorting out the Euro flight @AirFranceUK absolutely rubbish least my kids get to see their dad play for Ireland #coybig."
Irish designer Don O'Neill has wed his longtime partner Pascal Guillermie with a romantic celebration in Kerry. Photo: Bairbre Power / Twitter

The Don of the New York fashion world tied the knot with his long-time partner in his native Ballyheighue, Co Kerry at the weekend.

Don ONeill and Paschal Guillermie chose the ruins of Ballyheighue Castle for the intimate ceremony they shared with family and friends.

The 48-year-old Kerryman, whose label Theia has dressed celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and Norah Jones, walked to the ceremony with his French partner dressed in matching blue suits with silver embroidery.

Outside they chatted to locals who had gathered to wish the couple well before Don announced: I have to go now because Im going to get married.

Friends and family joined the couple for the bilingual ceremony in French and English including Dons Dan, Donal, his sister Deirdre, brother Patrick and Paschals mum Sylvaine.

Dons mum Mim passed away a number of years ago from a brain tumour.

The couple sat on white chairs, marked with cupids bow and the words husband and husband.

Among the well-known faces were RTE Nationwide presenter and Rose of Tralee judge, Mary Kennedy and her daughter Aoife, Grainne and Sile Seoige, singer and Independent senator Frances Black and artist, Pauline Bewick and her daughter Poppy.

A photo posted by Sarah James (@sarah_james_xo) on Jun 11, 2016 at 2:20pm PDT

Afterwards guests retired to a marquee that had been erected on the castle grounds for the wedding banquet.

Speaking to the Irish Independent in 2015, the designer said that he hoped he would have a chance to get married in his homeland, surrounded by his loved ones in Kerry.

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"It was hard growing up gay in Ireland in the 1980s," Don explains. "I thought I was singularly the only gay man in Ireland and didn't understand my sexuality at all. It was something that took me a long time to come to terms with," he explained.

"It's not that I need the State to validate my relationship because nobody can validate how you feel, but for me it is important from the point of view that it is seen as OK by society.

"It is OK for a man and a woman to marry and it is OK for two women or two men too - it shouldn't be an issue at all. At the end of the day the most important thing is love and that you want to spend the rest of your life with this person, that is what should be recognised and celebrated."

Don's designs have become increasingly popular since the launch of his label Theia in 2009 and his unique approach to designing for women's bodies have made the label a huge hit.

Oprah Winfrey, Amy Poehler, Taylor Swift, Zendaya, Khloe Kardashian and Carrie Underwood are just some of the big names who have worn his designs to red carpet events. And in 2015, he launched a range of bridal dresses, which are available in Dublin's hip Folkster boutique.
A man has been arrested on his way to the Los Angeles gay parade with ammunition, rifles and explosives in his car.

The man, still unidentified, was arrested on Saturday evening in Santa Monica.

Police said the incident is "unrelated" to the shooting of at least 50 people in Orlando on Saturday.

The mayor of Los Angeles has said the gay pride march will continue as planned and they will hold a moment of silence for the victims in Florida.

As reported by the LA Times, the Santa Monica police got a call of a suspected "prowler". They intercepted a man who said he was waiting for a friend.

When they inspected his car, they found the weapons and arrested him.

The mayor of West Hollywood, Lauren Meister, told reporters on Sunday morning that the city was on a heightened alert, and was working with the police and FBI.

Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, said that citizens will "not shrink back into the closet".

"This is a society we love broadly and openly," he said.
A gunman has killed at least 50 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in the deadliest mass shooting in American history.

The attacker, who wielded an assault-type rifle and a handgun, opened fire inside Pulse, spraying clubbers with bullets. He was later killed in a shootout with Swat officers after taking hostages.

Authorities are investigating the attack - which left at least 53 other people in hospital, most of them critically ill - as an act of terrorism.

The suspected gunman was named as Omar Mateen, of Port St Lucie, Florida. The suspect's father recalled that his son recently got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami and said this might be related to the assault.

One surgeon at Orlando Regional Medical Centre said the death toll was likely to climb.

Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer said of the scene: "There's blood everywhere."

All of the dead were killed with the assault rifle, according to US Representative Alan Grayson.

Witnesses described a chaotic scene when the gunfire began shortly before the club was due to close.

Jackie Smith, who saw two of her friends shot beside her, said: "Some guy walked in and started shooting everybody. He had an automatic rifle, so nobody stood a chance.

"I just tried to get out of there."

The suspect exchanged gunfire with a police officer working at the club, which had more than 300 people inside.

The gunman then went back inside and took hostages, Orlando police chief John Mina said.

At around 5am, a Swat team was sent in to rescue the hostages, culminating in the gunman's death.

Authorities are looking into whether the attack was an act of domestic or international terrorism, and if the shooter acted alone, according to Danny Banks, an agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

"This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as domestic terror incident," Orange County sheriff Jerry Demings said.

The previous deadliest mass shooting in the US was the 2007 attack at Virginia Tech, where a student massacred 32 people before killing himself.

The suspect's father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News about his son seeing two men kissing a couple of months ago.

"We are saying we are apologising for the whole incident," Mr Seddique said. "We are in shock like the whole country."

Mateen was said to have been known to the FBI before the nightclub attack and had been looked at by agents within the last few years.

The matter for which he came under investigation was "open and closed pretty quickly," an official said.

When asked if the gunman had a connection to radical Islamic terrorism, he said authorities had "suggestions that individual has leanings towards that".

Multiple news outlets are reporting that the gunman called 911 shortly before the attack and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terror group.

The suspect had been licensed as a private security officer in Florida, with s tate records showing he had held a firearms licence since at least 2011. It was set to expire in September 2017.

Mateen's father said the attack had nothing to do with religion.

US president Barack Obama called the shooting an "act of terror" and an "act of hate" targeting a place of "solidarity and empowerment" for gays and lesbians. He urged Americans to decide whether this is the kind of "country we want to be."

Authorities said they had secured a van owned by the suspect outside the club. Meanwhile, a Swat truck and a bomb-disposal unit were on the scene of an address associated with Mateen in a residential neighbourhood of Fort Pierce, Florida, about 118 miles south-east of Orlando.

The attack follows the fatal shooting late Friday of 22-year-old singer Christina Grimmie, a YouTube sensation and former contestant on The Voice. She was killed after an Orlando concert by a 27-year-old man who later killed himself.

Pope Francis has expressed the "deepest feelings of horror and condemnation" over the massacre.

Vatican spokesman the Rev Federico Lombardi said the pontiff denounces the "homicidal folly and senseless hatred".

He added that Francis joins the families of victims and injured in "prayer and compassion".

Ronald Hopper of the FBI said Mateen was 29 years old, and an American citizen. He was not under surveillance at the time of the shooting.

Mr Hooper said Mateen had purchased at least two firearms within the last week or so.

Some 911 calls involving the shooter and the massacre have become federal evidence. He said the conversations involved Islamic State.

Mr Hooper said the suspected shooter had made inflammatory comments to co-workers in 2013, and had been interviewed twice. These interviews were described as "inconclusive".

In 2014, Mr Hooper added, officials found that Mateen had ties to an American suicide bomber. Mr Hooper described the contact as minimal, saying it did not constitute a threat at that time.
Dozens of military army officers, including some senior ones, have been arrested over an alleged plot to overthrow long-time president Yoweri Museveni, Ugandan sources said.

Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Ankunda said on Sunday that more officers are being held over alleged acts of subversion. One of those in detention is a colonel with Uganda's air forces.

He said the officers have suspected links to an opposition politician, Michael Kabaziguruka, who is being questioned by the police over similar allegations.

Mr Kabaziguruka is a close ally of opposition leader Kizza Besigye, who was charged with treason following a disputed presidential election in February. Mr Besigye refused to accept the official results and claimed he had won the election.

Mr Museveni has been in power since 1986.
The man was arrested in Santa Monica

A heavily armed man arrested in Southern California has told US police he was in the area for West Hollywood's huge gay pride parade.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the arrest in Santa Monica while he was attending the LA Pride event.

A police source said guns and explosive materials had been found in the suspect's vehicle.

Police in Santa Monica would not immediately confirm the incident, but an afternoon news conference has been planned to discuss the arrest.

Television images showed police searching a white car parked on a residential street in the seaside city west of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles county sheriff's officials said the suspect told police that he was going to the pride parade to look for a friend. Authorities are now looking for that individual.

Santa Monica Police spokesman Saul Rodriguez said detectives are "not aware of what the suspect's intentions were at this point".

Neighbours called police after the man was spotted knocking on doors and "loitering in the area," Mr Rodriguez said.

Authorities do not know of any connection between the gay nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, and the Santa Monica arrest.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said the agency is assisting the Santa Monica Police Department with the arrest of an individual, but would not supply any more details.

Tens of thousands of people have gathered in West Hollywood for the annual LA Pride.

Los Angeles County sheriff's officials say they are assisting with the investigation and there is no immediate threat.

Mr Garcetti said the pride event would continue in memory of the victims in Orlando.

"This march goes on - we go on - in the face of hate," he said.
US-backed Syrian opposition forces have surrounded the Isil stronghold of Manbij and cut off the self-declared caliphate's main route to the outside world.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by coalition air strikes and US special forces, have seized control of the last road leading into Manbij. Women were seen pulling off their niqabs - the face-covering veils imposed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - in liberated villages.

Isil fighters have evacuated their own families and let civilians leave, but have not retreated as in previous battles.

Rami Abdulrahman, of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that nearly 160 Isil fighters had died in battles around Manbij - while the SDF (made up of the Kurdish YPG militia and Arab allies) had lost 20 of their own. Its forces now face street-to-street fighting to purge the city.

Manbij will be a huge loss to Isil. It had been a staging post on a supply line between the Turkish border and Raqqa, the extremist group's de facto capital. Half an hour's drive from Turkey, the city had been the first stop for fighters arriving from Europe and the West.

Before the offensive, which began late last month, there were thought to be as many as 100 British fighters in the city, earning it the nickname "Little London". It is difficult to know how many still remain.

Fighting remains fierce across the country. The besieged Syrian town of Daraya was hit with dozens of regime barrel bombs yesterday, hours after receiving its first food aid in nearly four years.

More than 20 bombs were dropped on the Damascus suburb after the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and UN delivered the first aid since November 2014.

Meanwhile at least 20 people were killed in triple attacks yesterday - claimed by Isil near one of Syria's holiest shrines.

Footage from the blast site on the outskirts of Damascus showed flames and smoke engulfing a main commercial thoroughfare near the Shia Sayeda Zeinab shrine.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said the death toll was likely to rise as scores of wounded civilians were in a critical condition. In a statement released through the Amaq news agency, Isil said that the attack involved two suicide bombers, as well as a car laden with explosives.

The shrine draws thousands of Iraqi and Afghan Shia militia recruits before they are sent to fight predominantly Sunni rebel groups trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad.

This is Isil's fourth attack on the area this year. The Sunni group is an avowed enemy of the region's Shia Muslims, whom it considers heretical.

The heavily garrisoned area near the shrine is also a well-known stronghold of Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah group, one of Mr Assad's chief allies.

As Syria's war approaches its sixth year, the Syrian army has all but collapsed, leaving Mr Assad reliant on Iran-backed foreign troops and a network of militias across the country.

Reports yesterday suggested that the government had freed dozens of prisoners on the condition they would head to key fronts and fight.
SHARE Stoney Mills, co-owner of Stoney's Barbecue in Anderson, has been preparing mustard-based barbecue for more than 30 years. Haven Parrott looks at Facebook page photos showing Bible verses written on the studs at Stoney's Barbecue. Stoney Mills (left) and Mike Parrott, co-owners of Stoney's Barbecue in Anderson, look over plans while construction continues for the new restaurant.

By Nikie Mayo of the Independent Mail

Just off S.C. 81 in Anderson, a soon-to-be-open restaurant has a familiar barbecue chef at the smoker.

Stoney Mills believes in one kind of barbecue: the kind that comes from his family's 70-year-old recipe. The recipe starts with pork that is cooked 14 hours over hickory. It ends with a plate full of mustard-based barbecue.

If you're looking for the secret ingredients in the middle, well, Mills wants proof that you are related by blood.

"What I will say is that it's real South Carolina barbecue, and we know how to do it right," he said.

Longtime residents of the Upstate may recognize Mills as one of the original pitmasters behind Brushy Creek Bar-B-Q in Powdersville. His father, Boyd Mills, taught him how to make barbecue more than 30 years ago, and they served it there until they sold the restaurant in the 1990s.

Stoney Mills said he felt called by God to go into the mission field. He and his wife Kristi and their five children spent four years in international ministry, first in Russia, then in Italy.

They returned to the United States in 2003 and he started building houses.

But it turns out he wasn't done with barbecue.

For years, Mills and his hunting buddy, Mike Parrott, have talked about opening a restaurant together.

They hunt and fish in Canada regularly. Talk of the restaurant usually happened each time they made a 33-hour drive together, or as they ended a day of hunting.

But Parrott was living in North Carolina for many of those years, and Mills, when he wasn't making barbecue, was being a contractor.

"We always said: 'Someday,'" Parrott said. "You know, when you're in a setting like that, you're hunting, you're away from the world, you get your dreams in order."

That dream would have to wait for life to catch up with it.

Mills stuck with building until 2008.

"When the economy went sour, I went back to the other thing I know best," he said.

Mills opened a small barbecue restaurant on property near his backyard in Powdersville. He catered, too. But eventually, the demand was too much for him to handle in a small setting. He closed his place in 2011.

Parrott, meanwhile, was building his background in "fast-casual" restaurants. He operated four locations of Maggie Moo's Ice Cream Treatery in and around Charlotte. After closing them, he worked as a business consultant. Later, he became director of design and construction at Salsarita's Inc., which operates a chain of Mexican restaurants.

About a year ago, Mills and Parrott decided it was time to make good on the dream. Parrott and his wife, Haven, sold their home and moved to the Upstate.

"I couldn't believe it at first," Haven Parrott said. "Us wives always kind of thought Mike and Stoney were joking, but they weren't. This is really important to them."

The longtime friends hope to have Stoney's Barbecue open by July 1. It's on Evergreen Road, right off S.C. 81 and near The Boondocks restaurant.

One of the signature pieces at the new restaurant is a silo. It's a nod to the silos Mills and Mike Parrott see as they are traveling to Canada, they said.

They wrapped their silo in aged, rusted tin that, until a few weeks ago, had been a roof on an old shed.

"We were on Brown Road and saw it and said, 'That would be perfect for the silo,'" Parrott said. "So we struck a deal with a guy and replaced his roof."

Another part of the restaurant construction is not visible now, but it is what they say is most important.

When they first started to build the restaurant, they asked people to offer their favorite Bible verses. Haven Parrott wrote them all on the studs.

"We are wrapped in the Word," Mike Parrott said. "With that and the great barbecue we'll be serving, we are looking forward to a lot of happy years."
Katie McLean/Independent Mail Jillian Rapp, 12, a volunteer from Trinity United Methodist Church, packs bags full of snacks and other food items that will be distributed to children in Anderson at the Anderson Interfaith Ministries' food pantry on Wednesday.

SHARE Kristian Thomas, 18, a volunteer from Trinity United Methodist Church, packs bags full of snacks and other food items. Jillian Rapp, 12, a volunteer from Trinity United Methodist Church, packs bags full of snacks and other food items that will be distributed to children in Anderson at the Anderson Interfaith Ministries' food pantry on Wednesday, June 8, 2016. Jillian Rapp, 12, a volunteer from Trinity United Methodist Church, packs bags full of snacks and other food items that will be distributed to children in Anderson at the Anderson Interfaith Ministries' food pantry on Wednesday, June 8, 2016.

By Charmaine Smith-Miles of the Independent Mail

This week, Julie Peles, who handles the food programs for Anderson School Districts 2 and 3, has been inundated with phone calls from parents who have one main question: Where can my child my eat this summer?

"We have been amazed at the calls. I bet I've gotten 10 calls today," said Peles, who works at the Anderson County Board of Education office. "There is a tremendous need out there."

While classes have stopped, several Anderson schools are still open as a place where children can receive two hot meals a day through the week. And charities like AIM, formerly known as Anderson Interfaith Ministries, are packing bags this summer for children to have food for the weekends.

Every school district in the county has at least two schools open each week where anyone who is 18 years old or younger can go and eat breakfast and lunch for free.

On the first day that they offered free meals in Anderson School District 2, more than 100 children were fed at one of the schools, the superintendent, Richard Rosenberger, said.

The meals offered at the schools are funded by the United States Department of Agriculture and are part of the federal department's national Summer Meals Program.

According to the department's website, 22.1 million students receive free and reduced-price meals through the National School Lunch Program in a year.

Many of those students, who receive free and reduced-price meals during the normal school year, are going without food in the summer when schools are closed, local school officials said. The Summer Meals Program is an attempt to reach those kids, making sure they receive the food they need in the summer break.

Peles said that in Anderson School District 2, for example, 60 to 70 percent of their students receive free or reduced-price meals during the school year.

"During the summer, a lot of those students would not have a meal," she said.

In 2015, there were more than 66,000 meal sites serving over 190 million meals across the country, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's website stated.

"While many students look forward to the end of the school year and summer enrichment opportunities, for far too many students, summer means hunger," said U.S. Education Secretary John B. King, Jr., said, in a news release. "Working with USDA, we are grateful for the schools across the country who open their doors to provide children with healthy meals, even when the school year is over."

In Anderson School District 5, more than 109,000 breakfast, lunch and snacks were provided through the summer meals program in 2015, according to district officials. And the program cost $170,000, all of which came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said Sharon Hunt, Anderson School District 5's Director of Food and Nutrition Services.

Peles said she saw one man bring several of his grandchildren and their friends to one of the schools in Anderson School District 2 this week and was thankful that he could give them a hot meal.

"For him, being able to bring them to the school for a hot meal was a big help," Peles said.

The staff and community volunteers at Anderson Interfaith Ministries then try to fill in that weekend gap for some children by packing bags full of snacks that can get them through until those schools open back up on Monday.

Jordan Evans, who handles the food ministry at AIM, said that they prepare about 3,000 bags of food for children in need through their summer food program.

The bags are filled with snacks like fruit cups, oatmeal and cheese and crackers, and then they are delivered to children in government-subsidized apartment complexes around Anderson.

Evans said the program cost about $13,000 each summer, all of which is paid for through donations. Evans said they do not receive any federal moneys or grants for the summer food program for children.

All of that money is used for buying food for the bags.

Volunteers pack the bags and then the bags are delivered to seven local apartment complexes and to one local ministry, the Dream Warehouse on South McDuffie Street in Anderson, every Friday during the summer.

"The packages we give help the children for the weekend," Evans said. "We just don't want these children going hungry."

Follow Charmaine Smith-Miles on Twitter @Charmaine_AIM

Where to go:

The schools in Anderson County that are open for free meals are:

-- Anderson School District 5s Career Campus

-- Glenview Middle School

-- Riverside Middle School

-- La France Elementary School

-- Pendleton Elementary School

-- Crescent High School

-- Flat Elementary School

-- Belton Elementary School

-- Honea Path Elementary

-- Palmetto Elementary School

-- Spearman Elementary School

-- Wren High School



Most of the schools are open for free breakfast and lunch through June and July, Monday through Thursdays or Mondays through Fridays.

For specific information for each district, call:

Anderson School District 1: 864-847-7344

Anderson School District 2: 864-369-4708

Anderson School District 3: 864-348-6196

Anderson School District 4: 864-403-2000

Anderson School District 5: 864-260-5000



AIM, formerly known as Anderson Interfaith Ministries, is also distributing bags of food to children in local apartment complexes. The bags full of snacks are meant to give children food to sustain them through the weekends while the schools are closed. The local charity is in need of donations of snacks for the program and money to help pay for the program.

To help with the program or to find out where they deliver, call AIM at 864-226-2273.




SHARE Photos by Kirk Brown/Independent Mail U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan speaks at a fundraiser in Anderson for state Sen. Kevin Bryant. Duncan described himself as a Kevin Bryant conservative. State Sen. Kevin Bryant speaks to supporters at a fundraiser in Anderson. Carol Burdette

Backing Sen. Kevin Bryant in race against Burdette

By Kirk Brown

U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan is backing state Sen. Kevin Bryant in his race against another Republican, former Pendleton Mayor Carol Burdette.

Duncan, a Republican from Laurens, became friends with Bryant when they were serving in the South Carolina General Assembly. Duncan attended a fundraiser Tuesday evening for Bryant, a Republican from Anderson who is seeking a third term in state Senate District 3.

Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people at Creekside BBQ in Anderson, Duncan said this is the first state race that he has gotten involved in since he was elected to Congress in 2010.

That shows you how much I think about Kevin, Duncan said.

I like to say that Im a Kevin Bryant conservative, he added. Ive been a Kevin Bryant conservative for a long time and I think that contributes to my success of being a very good congressman.

Duncan said he and Bryant agree on numerous issues, including limiting the role of government, school choice and cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood.

Duncan and other congressional Republicans are pushing to eliminate federal support for Planned Parenthood. Their efforts were prompted by the recent release of secretly recorded videos showing officials with the group purportedly discussing plans to sell parts of aborted fetuses.

Your federal government takes your tax dollars and gives them to organizations that chop up little babies and sell their parts for research, Duncan said. Its wrong and were going to stop that if I have anything do with it.

Bryant echoed Duncans views in his speech at the fundraiser.

It is the role of government to defend the liberty of the unborn, he said. It is the role of government to defend you the taxpayer and make sure your tax dollars dont go to evil organizations like Planned Parenthood.

Bryant said he is confident that state lawmakers will have the votes to defund Planned Parenthood when the General Assembly convenes in January.

Bryant also cited his opposition to a penny sales-tax increase that Anderson County voters approved for education projects. He said school officials werent honest about their plans before the November 2014 sales-tax referendum.

They didnt tell us that they were going to raise property taxes like they did, Bryant said. They wouldnt have gotten away with it had we known the whole truth.

He added, One bureaucrat pointed me out and said Sen. Bryant got in our way every step of the way in this tax increase. Well, I did. And if you send me back to Columbia I will get in the way of every step of every tax increase that comes our way.

Bryant said he expected to collect several thousand dollars in campaign contributions from Tuesdays event. He said his goal is to raise $100,000 by the end of this year for his re-election bid.

Burdette, who is president of the United Way of Anderson, started accepting campaign contributions in April to challenge Bryant in the June 2016 GOP primary. She did not return repeated phone messages Tuesday.

She and Bryant are scheduled to face off in a forum next month sponsored by Progressive Women of Anderson. The forum will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Oct. 7 in the Anderson County Main Library.

Follow Kirk Brown on Twitter @KirkBrown_AIM
Corrosion is widely recognized as one of the biggest challenge faced by the automotive industry, and is probably one of the single largest factor causing exterior degradation of automotive surfaces resulting in huge warranty claims that the automotive manufacturers have to face.

Confederation of Indian Industry-Corrosion Management Committee (CII-CMC) was constituted in 2006 under the chairmanship of Padma Shiri awardee, Dr. Baldev Raj, Director, National Institute of Advance Studies, Bengaluru to address this crucial subject and educate the industry about solutions to tackle and control this menace. Nearly 1500 organisations have benefitted from knowledge sessions and audits on Corrosion Management conducted by the CII-CMC committee. An annual action plan has been devised wherein a number of training initiatives have been planned across India.Estimated worldwide direct cost of corrosion exceeds $ 2.2 trillion which is about 3-4 % of the GDP of industrialised countries. It is estimated that 25-40% of corrosion cost could be saved by implementing proper corrosion management practices.One way of looking at it is the negative effect this has on the economys exchequer, affecting growth and sustainability. Another downside is that these figures reflect only the direct cost of corrosion i.e. materials, equipment and activities of maintenance. What gets left out is the implication on environment, wastage of resources and lost production, injury of personnel resulting from corrosion.Looking at Zero Effect in terms of manufacturing processes is something that the Indian Industry is striving to achieve. Improved corrosion management could also provide significant cost and energy savings. Dr. Kamachi Mudali, Chairman, CII-Faraday Council of Corrosion and Associate Director, Corrosion Science and Technology Group, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam by quoting a research explains, Investment in corrosion preventive methods is more cost effective than later spending on repairs and maintenance which accounts to $ 2.5 Billion and $ 6.5 Billion respectively.About 90% of corrosion is associated with iron-based materials, thus manufacturing with the right mix of material is one way of dealing with corrosion. Material selection is crucial in many ways - with every 10% of weight eliminated from a vehicle's total weight, fuel economy improves by 7%. This is because it takes less energy to accelerate a lighter object than a heavier one, lightweight materials offer great potential for increasing vehicle efficiency. Corrosion in Automotive leads to Loss of material leading to failure and breakdowns, dimensional inaccuracy, degradation of aesthetics, deterioration of mechanical properties and increase in maintenance cost, says Dr. V R Krishnan, CII-Corrosion Management Committee and former Chief Consultant Engineers India .Vivek P Kale, Gulf Oil Said Corrosion accounts to a loss of about 80,000 crore per annum in India. Out of which Automotive industry accounts for 4000 crore of loss due to corrosion each year. It is a misnomer that the menace of corrosion is confined to coastal regions, however it occurs from severe to mild intensity in almost atmospheric condition and thus all industries must look at preventing corrosion in their plants as well as end products.
Dr Reddys Laboratories: The company has inked a pact with Teva Pharmaceutical and an affiliate of Allergan Plc to buy a portfolio of eight abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs) in the US for $ 350 million (around Rs 2,300 crore) in cash.Coal India Ltd: The Board of Directors of Northern Coalfields Limited ("NGL"), subsidiary, at its meeting held on June 11, 2016 has considered and approved the buyback of 401827 fully paid equity shares of face value of Rs. 1000/- each from the members of the Company on a proportionate basis through tender offer (representing 22.62% of the total number of equity shares in the paid-up share capital of the Company) for an aggregate amount not exceeding Rs.948.72 crores (''Maximum Buyback Size") being upto 25% of the paid-up equity share capital and free reserves as on financial year ended March 31, 2016, at a price of Rs. 23,610.04 per equity shares payable in cash.Reliance Communications: The company is set to launch 4G services on its own across India in phases, starting mid-August from the key circles of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, says report.Tata Steel: Chief Minister of Odisha, Naveen Patnaik inaugurated the 100-bed Tata Steel funded Super Specialty Eye Care Hospital at Samarjhola village under Hinjilicut block of Ganjam district.HDFC: HDFC has announced its plans to raise Rs. 1,000 crore from debentures to fund business growth model.Canara Bank: The bank is set to raise Rs5bn this fiscal by selling stake in its non-core assets after it posted a huge loss in fiscal year 2015-16, says report.Intellect Design Arena Ltd: The company is reportedly planning to raise around Rs3bn.SBI: The company has set up a crack team to prepare a framework for amalgamation of five associate banks with itself, says report.PVR: The company has earmarked a capital expenditure of up to Rs 250 crore for the current fiscal for opening new screens and refurbishing the existing ones, says report.Vedanta: The company is reportedly planning to acquire coal mines via auctions.Jet Airways: The airline has announced new direct flights from Mangaluru to Sharjah in UAE from August 7, says report.
Anil Kapoor and Naseeruddin Shah believe in no filter policy for sure. On one hand where celebrities think twice before voicing their opinion, this duo give a damn about opinions and judgments.

Talking about Indian actors who are heading to Hollywood and making it big, Anil Kapoor gave his clever take on it.

When Anil Kapoor was asked Deepika and Priyanka's entry in Hollywood, The Slumdog Millionaire and Mission Impossible star said,

Dumkhum.com

"The stuff you are seeing now is nothing. Yeh kuch bhi nahi hai. This is nothing, you mark my words. I said this seven years back and nobody took me seriously and I am telling you again now. You are happy seeing this? This is nothing. The real deal would be when a young guy or a young girl gets a role and becomes a huge star. Am I making sense? When someone who has just started her career and her first film happens to be a Hollywood one. It will happen. Someone will definitely become a huge star. That's success for me. This is nothing. Kya hai yeh? You just wait and see what is going to happen. It is great what is happening right now but it is going to get better and better."

Naseeruddin Shah too isnt very fond of Indian actors heading west. He added:

Pinterest

These people who are tom-tomming their entry into Hollywood are all going to come back very soon. Because Hollywood has no place for an Asian to play a lead. It's a one-off thing."

An interesting thing here would be to see if Deepika and PCs Hollywood stardom would actually be short-lived or will they prove everyone wrong?
When it comes to actor-director rapport, Shahid Kapoor and Vishal Bhardwaj have time and again proved that their partnership is probably the most successful one ever. From Kaminey to Haider, all their stints have proved that they are one kick-ass team.

Twitter

As we eagerly wait for their Rangoon to hit the silver screen, Shahid Kapoor is all praises for Vishal Bhardwaj, who he also calls Martin Scorsese. Produced by Sajid Nadiadwala, Rangoon also stars Said Ali Khan and Kangana Ranaut in pivotal roles.

When Shahid was asked how it feels to work with Vishal for the third time, he said:

Twitter

Its an amazing opportunity to work with Vishal sir who I think is my Martin Scorsese. He has cast me for the third time so, its very cool. Its a really different film. I think its a mainstream film and its always a pleasure to work with Vishal sir.

After films like Kaminey and Haider, our expectations from the duo are sky-high for sure.
The Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) on Saturday announced withholding the result of this year's Class XII (arts) 'topper' Ruby Roy.

Screengrab

She has bunked her retest - again!

Bihar's Prodigal Science Student Skips Retest Claiming Depression, But 3 Other Class XII Toppers Flunked!

indianexpress

The Board's decision followed Ruby's failure to take the retest organised by it to ascertain is she really deserved the topper tag.

Ruby had been called for the re-examination on June 11 through ads in the media after she dodged the retest taken by 13 of the 14 state 'toppers' of Class XII (arts and science). After the June 3 retest, results of ISc topper Saurabh Shreshtha and rank holder Rahul -- both students of infamous Vishun Roy College-Vaishali -- were cancelled.

No sign of the prodigal scientist

The Board has given Ruby 'yet another chance' to take the retest at the BSEB HQ on June 25. "Unlike last time when Ruby's father submitted an application saying she won't appear for the retest on June 3 because she was being treated outside the state for depression, we did not receive any communication from her regarding the retest today," BSEB chairman Anand Kishor told media persons on Saturday evening.

Aaj Tak

June 3: 14 Bihar School Toppers, Including The Girl Who Studied Cooking In 'Prodigal Science', To Take Retest.

The Class XII results this year came under the lens after Ruby was seen pronouncing political science as "prodigal science" and describing it as a subject on cookery in a TV interview on May 30. While the Board organised a re-examination for the toppers, the state government on June 6 lodged an FIR into the scandal.

"Prior to the June 25 retest, we'll not only issue ads but also send a messenger to her house to ask her in writing to appear for the retest. We will also send a communication in this regard to her and her school through registered post," Kishor said and added the Board would meanwhile seek legal opinion to decide its future course of action in case Ruby continued with her vanishing act even on June 25.

According to Board sources, withholding the result is as good as cancelling it. "Cancellation of the result without her re-examination may be challenged in a court of law," an official explained.

Read Also: Bihar's Former Class XII Toppers Might Go To Jail After They Flunked Their Re-Examinations!

The mastermind has been caught

Amit Kumar alias Bachcha Rai, the mastermind of the Class 12 Board merit list scam in Bihar, was arrested on Saturday after he surrendered before the police. Rai is the director-cum-principal of the VR College in Vaishali district which is being investigated in the case. According to police officials, Rai, who has been absconding, surrendered near his college in Vaishali and the police arrested him.

abc.net

Meanwhile, former Chairman of Bihar School Examination Board Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh is still absconding, police said. Singh is a key accused in the case and has gone underground after resigning from the Board.
More than a week after BJP MP and former Union minister Hukum Singh claimed that there was mass exodus of Hindu families from Kairana town over the past two years, the leader on Wednesday produced a list of 346 families that had fled leaving their properties behind after they were allegedly targeted and persecuted by another community. The MP said the list mentions only the families of Kairana, and if those who migrated from other parts of the district are included, the number would be more than a thousand.

ibnlive

At a press conference, the MP also claimed that there have been at least 10 communal killings in the town, that has become a "new Kashmir", in the past three years. Singh also claimed that he had met Union home minister Rajnath Singh in this regard last week. "I have met home minister Rajnath Singh and he assured me that he would visit Kairana in June-end to take stock of the ground reality," said Hukum Singh.

The MP also released another list of 11 people killed for refusing to give money to extortionists. "On August 24, 2016, traders Shiv Kumar and Rajendra Kumar, who were siblings, were gunned down at their shop within a week of similar killing of another grocery trader, Vinod Sangal, on August 16. In both the cases, the businessmen got extortion calls and when they refused, they were killed. Other such victims include an agent of Mafatlal Industries who was killed at Nirmal Crossing and a bullion trader, Satyaprakash Jain, who was shot dead in his shop. Similarly, jeweller Jashwant Verma and his wife were killed at their residence in Aldarmiyan locality. Another jeweller, Shrichand Jain, was killed in his shop," said the MP.

"This is exactly what had happened in Kashmir. Businessmen are being targeted in a bid to grab their establishments and properties. These people are forced to migrate leaving their ancestral properties behind. And in the hurry, they have no other choice but to sell their properties far below the prevailing market price or just abandon them," the MP said.

Commenting on the MP's claims of exodus of Hindu families from the area, deputy inspector general (DIG) of Saharanpur range, A K Raghav, who was in the city on Wednesday, said that no such list had come to his knowledge. "We will verify each and every family in the list prepared by the MP. I have been posted in Saharanpur range for several years and people of this region meet me every fortnight but no one has ever told me that there was an exodus of Hindu families from the region," the DIG said.

intoday

Meanwhile, a jeweller at Gumbad locality in Kairana said on condition of anonymity that after the killing of Alok Kumar, jeweller Hari Prakash's son, the entire family shifted to Saharanpur. "The Hindu population in the locality has declined to 30% of the total population from over 60% a decade ago. This is a matter of concern," he said.
South Sudan, and the Republic of Congo - which are ranked 1 and 5 on the UN's Fragile States List - are on a list of 49 countries that have outlawed all corporal punishment.

India, the land of non-violent Mohandas Gandhi, isn't.

motherimage

UNICEF says "two out of three school going children in India are physically abused" in India. Citing a 2007 report by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, UNICEF goes on to state that physical abuse is "rampant in every single district in the country".

Corporal punishment, in particular, "is deeply ingrained as a tool to discipline children and as a normal action", in both private and public schools, UNICEF adds.

Reuters

In the year 2000, the Delhi High Court established a significant precedent by removing the provision for corporal punishment in the Delhi School Education Act, saying it has "no place" in the education system.

Two years later, in 2002, the CBSE implored schools across the nation to "ensure that no child is subjected to any corporal punishment at any point of time in the schooling process". The State Education Directorate sent a similar message to public schools that same year.

dailymail

Despite their entreaties, disturbing and often horrific incidents of children in school being brutally punished are continually being reported.

An epidmic: recent reports

Recent reports reveal that the nation's schools appear to be struggling with what can only be described as an epidemic of child abuse. Here are four such instances from the last four months alone

bccl

It was reported on Friday that a Class IV teacher in Viluppuram district in Tamil Nadu burned her students' feet with camphor fire as a punishment because they hadn't been attending class regularly, and their academic performance had been poor. The teacher was immediately suspended, and the students underwent treatment at a local hospital on Friday morning.

Two students in a private school in Odisha's Koraput district were brutally beaten last month by a principal and a teacher, for allegedly stealing a teacher's cellphone. The assailants were arrested and taken to court after the father of one of the students filed a police complaint.

Also last month, nine girls studying in Class VII in a school in Haryana's Jind district fainted after being asked to do a 1,000 sit-ups by a teacher, as punishment for not doing homework. An FIR was filed against the teacher, who claimed that that he had only asked them to do 10 sit-ups. The students were sent to hospital for treatment.

And finally, in Ahmedabad, a teacher was suspended in May for having beaten students, and for having pulled a boy's hair, and banged his head on the ground, drawing blood.
The family of Judith D'Souza - an Indian national working for Aga Khan Foundation in Kabul, who was kidnapped by armed militants in Kabul two days ago - has sought Sushma Swaraj's help in tracing her.

An Indian woman kidnapped by suspected militants outside her office in Kabul two days ago remained untraceable even as Afghan authorities continued efforts to secure her safe release.

facebook

Judith D'Souza, working for Aga Khan Foundation as senior technical adviser, was kidnapped along with two other people outside her office in in Taimani area of Kabul on Thursday evening.

The ministry of external affairs is in touch with the Afghan authorities to ensure release of 40-year-old Judith, a resident of Kolkata. So far, no group has claimed responsibility for her kidnapping.

Tribune | Representative Image

Reports from Kabul said, Afghan authorities have stepped up efforts to secure Judith's release. Sources in New Delhi said there was no update about her and that government was in constant touch with the Afghan authorities.

Family members of Judith said in Kolkata they are hopeful and positive about the efforts being made by the Indian government in bringing her back from Afghanistan.

Tolonews/representative image

"Afghan officials have said they are doing everything possible to secure the early release of the woman," according to a report by Afghanistan's TOLO News.

External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday had said government was doing everything possible to rescue Judith.

"There is no update as of now. But the MEA is constantly in touch with us. A joint secretary-level officer is coordinating with us. We have full faith in the Indian government and the MEA that they will do the needful in bringing back Judith from Afghanistan," Judith's brother Jerome said.

When asked whether the details about the efforts being made were discussed with the family members, Jerome said, "no, these are official proceedings, which MEA and Indian embassy in Kabul are dealing with. These things are not to be made public."

Swaraj had on Friday called up Judith's family in Kolkata and had assured them of making all-out efforts to bring her back.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said she was keeping in touch with Swaraj for Judith's safe return.

I have spoken to the sister of Judith D' Souza. We will spare no efforts to rescue her. @VohraManpreet  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) 10 June 2016

"We have taken an all-out effort for Judith's safe return. I am in touch with the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj," Banerjee said at the state secretariat Nabanna today.

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.
A 60 year old shikarawala (boatman) drowned in Kashmirs river Jhelum while trying to save his passengers, who had had hired his boat for sightseeing.

Without caring for his life, Guroo jumped into the water and saved everyone

_paVan_ flickr

"Ghulam Mohammad Guroo, a resident of Rajbagh locality of the city, drowned while trying to save his tourist customers after his shikara capsized in river Jhelum near Fateh Kadal foot bridge," a police officer said today. He said the incident occurred on Wednesday evening and so far the rescuers were not able to retrieve the body of the boatman from the river.

"The Shikarawala was saving the tourists and their luggage with the help of another motor boat but unfortunately drowned in the river. All the tourists were rescued," he said. The officer said three domestic tourists were on a sightseeing trip in the Guroos shikara when it capsized. Without caring for his life, Guroo immediately jumped into the water and managed to take the tourists and their belongings to safety with the help of another passing boat, he said.

However, he drowned while returning to the banks of the river

_paVan_ flickr

Navy divers today joined police and local rescuers to retrieve the body of the Guroos body from the river. "So far the success eluded the rescue parties but efforts are still on," the officer said.

According to a report in the Hindustan Times, the boatman was allegedly forced to jump back into the river to retrieve their bag.

Is your bag more valuable or a mans life?

Even as their lives were saved, the tourists coaxed Guroo to dive into the river and rescue their bags, local boatmen said. You have to see his [Guroos] age. He was tired after saving the three persons but he attempted again without caring for his own self, a police officer told the newspaper.

hindustantimes

It was their greed that they asked him to go back into the water to get their bag. Is your bag more valuable or a mans life? Abdul Qayoom, a house-boat owner and friend of Guroo said "Later he tried to relax on the banks when one of the haversacks was swept away by the current. He again jumped into the river to retrieve the bag. However, the gushing waters swept him away and since then he is missing," Mohammad Sultan, one of the rescuers told DNA India.
Last night, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal tweeted a shayari addressed to PM Modi in reference to Udta Punjab controversy. He further tried to evade questions over AAP member Sameer Nairs role as producer of Udta Punjab. This was enough instigation for Twitterati to start trolling Kejriwal.

DISCLAIMER:This is a compilation of humour being shared by netizens around the world. Times of India neither condones nor endorses any of the views shared in this article here. The subject matter is intended purely as satire.





1. This is what Kejriwal tweeted

3. When Raayta is your dope



4. Delhi ki aisi taisi jaari, ab Punjabi ki baari



5. Everything is fair is politics and war

Kejri Kejri little star..

Said no to lal batti car..

Not a single work done so far..

Dream to become PM agli bar..

#KejriwalShayaris    (@RaviVyom) 10 June 2016

6. Kejriwals KRA



7. So what if I am a liar

        

  you are pyschopath & #KejriwalShayaris  Bad Company. (@RowdyTalks) 10 June 2016



8. Doston hum hain power mein, ab kya darna hai

   ,        ..

   ,     #KejriwalShayaris  Babu Bhaiya (@Shahrcasm) 10 June 2016



9. Dont question me, else I will throw corruption charges on you

Roses are red,

violets are blue,

Main kaise ban gya CM,

I dont have a clue.

#KejriwalShayaris#KejriwalPoem  diV (@ULTi_KhOPdi_) 10 June 2016



10. Prophecy mere bas ki nahi hai ji

        ,

          #KejriwalShayaris  Bhaiyyaji (@bhaiyyajispeaks) 10 June 2016

11. Kayi thappad kha chukka hai mera gaal



12. Main shayar toh nahi

Pic 1- What Delhiities thought when they voted for @ArvindKejriwal ji..

Pic 2- What Delhiities got. pic.twitter.com/HadeFMDaCw  Paresh Rawal (@Babu_Bhaiyaa) 10 June 2016



13. Honest chors



14. Delhi is in safe hands, nose and lungs
Nawazuddin Siddiquis visit to Cannes this year was not just about films. At the film festival, Siddiqui befriended and got acquainted with few Frenchmen who own farms and he was later invited by them to visit too. Not many know that before entering Bollywood, Siddiqui used to spend most of his time farming in his village of Budhana till his graduation.

Talking about what he learnt from those Frenchmen about farming, Nawazuddin Siddiqui told media:

"Almost every kind of crop in France was being irrigated using this cost-effective and water efficient technique called centre pivot irrigation.

After Siddiqui got to know about the idea, he was curious about it and he couldnt wait for it to implement the same in his village. He even got a sample model fabricated and shipped to his village.

This innovative method of irrigation consists of a transformer with wheels, and elevated pipes jutting out of the contraption with rotating nozzles fitted within a gap of a couple of feet from each other. Explaining the technique, Siddiqui said:

Pinterest

"Each pipe can irrigate an area of an acre and consumes less than half the quantity of water that we would otherwise use with conventional techniques of irrigation."

Mentioning the benefits of implementing this in a state like Uttar Pradesh, he added:

"The UP Government commissioned a research which marked Budhana in the `dark zone' given its sinking water levels. When I worked in the fields, we would manage to find water 80 feet below the ground and until four years ago, borewells could pump water out of 110-120 feet. Today, in Budhana, water is found 220 feet under the ground. If we're not cautious and water isn't optimally utilised, it's possible that in the coming five years we wouldn't find water even 400 feet below the ground."

Farmers too responded to this idea positively but explaining the whole process to them was what was most challenging for Siddiqui. He added:

"Using this technique has a biological advantage. Research tells us that if you're watering from the top, the grains are healthier. The best way to explain this technology to the farmers was to ask them which is the best way to irrigate land. Everyone agreed that natural rainfall was the best option and this technique recreates the sprinkle of rainfall. I told them, `Agar hum barish karte hain, toh kaisa hoga'"

(with TOI inputs)
Tata group chief Ratan Tata has said he is surprised why fellow tycoon Mukesh Ambani wants to live in the opulence of a billion-dollar home in south Mumbai.

TOI

"It makes me wonder why someone would do that," Tata said in an interview published on Saturday in The Times newspaper of LONDON. "The person who lives in there should be concerned about what he sees around him and (ask) can he make a difference," Tata said when asked about Antilla, the 27-storey Ambani home on Altamount Road. "If he is not, then it is sad because India needs people to allocate some of their enormous wealth to finding ways to mitigate the hardship that people have." Expressing concern about the rich-poor gap, Tata said, "We are doing so little about the disparity. We are allowing it to be there and wishing it away."

The tycoon, who bought steel maker Corus and car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover in 2006 and 2008 to become the biggest manufacturing employer in Britain, also questioned the work ethic of British managers, saying they did not "go the extra mile" unlike their Indian counterparts. "It's a work ethic issue. In my experience, in both Corus and JLR, nobody is willing to go the extra mile, nobody. I feel if you have come from Mumbai to have a meeting and the meeting goes on till 6pm, I would expect that you won't, at 5 o'clock, say, 'Sorry, I have my train to catch. I have to go home'."

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Stating that things were different back home, Tata added, "If you are in a crisis (in India), it means working till midnight, you would do it. The worker in JLR seems to be willing to do that; the management is not." He said earlier, JLR's entire engineering group would be empty on Friday evenings. But that had changed. "The new management team has put an end to that. They call meetings at 5 o'clock."

Tata also spoke about having had to shift Nano's 85% installed plant from Bengal to Gujarat following Mamata Banerjee's opposition. "In the dead of night, you had to start taking tools out of that factory, build another factory, deliver a car from an interim factory; and do all this in a year. The first thing you (the JLR management) will say is, 'It can't be done, that you will need a court order or police cover.'. Yet we did it."

His comments come as Tata Steel proposes to close part of its plant in the UK, putting at risk 1,200 jobs.

PTI

Tata said the UK had a high level of despondency about itself. "I have a greater degree of bullishness about the UK and what it stands for. But nobody seems to want to make the effort to make the UK truly competitive or bring it back to the glory that it was. I think there is a feeling that there is no innovationthere is great innovation in the UK. There is great technology," he said.

Tata, who is a member of British Prime Minister David Cameron's business advisory group and co-chairman of the UK-India CEO Forum, said India was lucky to have Barack Obama in the US and Cameron in the UK. "Both of them are open to ideas; they are very pragmatic in their views. Each of them feels that India is a land of some opportunity for themselves. I think he (Cameron) is doing something quite far-sighted because we really have long traditional ties with England."

Tata was the only person outside the government to have had two private meetings with the British PM during his first three months in office.
Policeman arrested 4 allegedly torturing aged Hinduman Gokal Das in Ghotki https://t.co/HFhpfzMe1f #Justice4GokalDas pic.twitter.com/523duqVqx4  Ayaz Buriro (@AyazBuriroPPP) June 11, 2016

Chacha Gokal Das, a 90 year old was brutally beaten until he was left bleeding - that too by a policeman. His crime? Eating rice outside his home at 6.30 PM, exactly 40 minutes before iftaar, the ceremonial daily end of the Islamic fasting period. Read more details here

Here are 5 more gripping stories from around the world:

Last night, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal tweeted a shayari addressed to PM Modi in reference to Udta Punjab controversy. He further tried to evade questions over AAP member Sameer Nairs role as producer of Udta Punjab. This was enough instigation for Twitterati to start trolling Kejriwal.

1. This is what Kejriwal tweeted

2. And Twitter erupted

If you likes this one, you may like some more of these gems. Read them here

2. Audi A4 Burns To Ashes Within Minutes On Delhi Flyover, Driver Gets Out In The Nick Of Time

lynbrookfd|Representative image

An Audi A4 car caught fire and was virtually reduced to ashes at Peeragarhi flyover on Friday midnight. The car owner, Kapil Agarwal (32), was on his way back home to Paschim Vihar from Rohini, when he noticed flames coming out from the car's bonnet.

He immediately got out of the car and the Audi burnt down completely within seconds. Agarwal called police and fire station, but by the time anyone could arrive, the car had totally burnt down. Read more details here

3. Kashmiri Boatman Risks Life & Saves Drowning Tourists, Dies After They Force Him To Rescue Their Bags

_paVan_ flickr

A 60-year-old shikarawala (boatman) drowned in Kashmirs river Jhelum while trying to save his passengers, who had had hired his boat for sightseeing.Without caring for his life, Guroo jumped into the water and saved everyone.

"Ghulam Mohammad Guroo, a resident of Rajbagh locality of the city, drowned while trying to save his tourist customers after his shikara capsized in river Jhelum near Fateh Kadal foot bridge," a police officer said today. He said the incident occurred on Wednesday evening and so far the rescuers were not able to retrieve the body of the boatman from the river. Read more

4. Fighting Punjab's Heroin Addiction Since 1995, This 87 YO Has Cared For More Than 3,000 Addicts

TOI

In a house in Amritsar's Basant Avenue, an 87-year-old woman continues to fight the menace of drug addiction in Punjab , in spite of her failing health. Four years ago, she was treating addicts; now, in the twilight years of her life, she is writing a book on how to take care of addicts and wants it to be available to the people for free.

Meet Dr Saroj Sanan. When heroin had just started to spread its tentacles in the state in 1995, the then 66-year-old Dr Saran had helped set up Red Cross Society De-addiction Centre in the heart of the city and rendered it her services for free till 2012, the year the centre was shut down for want of funds.

Unlike counsellers of this day and age, Dr Sanan - who cared for more than 3,000 addicts during her time at the centre - says when it comes to treating a person hooked to narcotics, the counseller has to have a heart-to-heart bond. Read more

5. Two Men Drag Dog Behind Bike At High Speed, Casually Admit They Did It For Fun

Two men in Vadodara were spotted dragging a dog behind their bike, which was being driven at high speed.

The men, Sonu and Vikram were arrested later by the Sama police, and admitted that they did it for fun. Two onlookers Mayank Salunke and Darshit saw them dragging the dog, which had been tied to the bike with a leash, and gave them a chase. Reportedly they followed Sonu and Vikram for about two km on the Sama Savli Road and managed to stop them. They also rescued the bloodied dog whose paws had been mangled.
If our law justifies ban on public eating during roza; then beef ban in India & hijab ban in France are also justified. #apartheid  Nudrrat Khawaja (@NudrratKhawaja) June 11, 2016

Chacha Gokal Das, a 90 year old was brutally beaten until he was left bleeding - that too by a policeman.

A policeman in #Ghotki beat up an elderly Hindu man 4 eating before iftar. The policeman has been arrested #ZeroTolerance #Justice4GokalDas  Bakhtawar B-Zardari (@BakhtawarBZ) June 11, 2016

His crime? Eating rice outside his home at 6.30 PM, exactly 40 minutes before iftaar, the ceremonial daily end of the Islamic fasting period.

Policeman arrested 4 allegedly torturing aged Hinduman Gokal Das in Ghotki https://t.co/HFhpfzMe1f #Justice4GokalDas pic.twitter.com/523duqVqx4  Ayaz Buriro (@AyazBuriroPPP) June 11, 2016

After aggressive campaigning on social media by Indian and Pakistani influencers on social media, the policeman who beat him up was arrested, Bakhtawar Bhutto, daughter of the former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto wrote on Twitter.

The policeman named Ali Hassan was reportedly arrested on charges of torturing and injuring Gokal Das. The complaint was filed by Vindod Kumar, grandson of victim Gokal Das. It was after social media outcry that local Inspector General Sindh A.D. Khawaja took notice and ordered immediate action.

According to Ehtiram-e-Ramadan (Respect for Ramadan), a law passed by Pakistani dictator Zia ul Haq, it is illegal to drink or eat in public during Ramadan, no matter what religion you belong to.

There have been reports of vigilante violence against minorities who break this law.

There is currently an online campaign to crowdfund relief for Das and his family.
At Torontos Unity Mosque, everyone is welcome. The straight and the LGBT, the Muslim and people of all faiths - its all good here.

"An intentional space designed to actually bring everybody into it."

For El-Farouk Khaki and the co-founders of the Unity Mosque, or the El-Tawhid Juma Circle, it is the most welcoming, inclusive space they could imagine, and one essential to Islamic identity.

"There's a notion, I think, out there that Muslim spaces are not welcoming, that they're not inclusive, that they don't embrace non-Muslims, or that women or LGBTQI people are somehow not welcome," Khaki told CBC. "And so this is an intentional space designed to actually bring everybody into it." June 19 will see their 13th annual Peace Iftar - an event where the ceremonial breaking of the Ramadan daily fast, but with guests who are Muslims and non-Muslims. Surprisingly, women and men are not separated, and they dont even need to cover up with a vil,

"It basically brings people together from different walks of life that end up having to sit next to each other and share a meal."

Not surprisingly, Khaki has been criticized for what seems a bold move out of line from Islams conservatives mores. But he says Islam is capable of change.

"Islam is not a monolith and so when one space might speak to some Muslims, it's not going to speak to all Muslims. And so what we're finding is that a lot of people in Canada find that the traditional mosques are not speaking to them on a cultural or on a personal level," he said.

Just last month, A group of 51 Muslim nations has blocked 11 gay and transgender organizations from attending a high-level meeting at the United Nations next month on ending AIDS, sparking a protest by the United States, Canada and the European Union. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has advocated for LGBT equality but faced opposition from African, Arab and Muslim states as well as Russia and China.
Iranian women are so hot they need to cover up. Because, you know, it triggers global warming...or something and rivers go dry.

This is what local Islamic cleric Seyyed Youssef Tabatabi-nejad warned, asking Iran's ''morality police""to address improper veiling and preference for Western wear

My office has received photos of women next to the dry Zayandeh-rud River pictured as if they are in Europe. It is these sorts of acts that cause the river to dry up even further, ISNA News Agency reported.

kamshots flickr

I tell the Communications Ministry to clamp down on the instigators of the networks encouraging immodesty. If you dont do so, then you will have failed to carry out your duty. The Communications Ministry can discover and suffocate these individuals.

Another Iranian cleric also blamed the many earthquakes the nation has faced on promiscuous women. Iranian president Ahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted in 2010 that an earthquake was scheduled to hit Tehran, urging 12 million people to relocate. Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, an Iranian cleric explained why it would happen, "Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes."

To be fair, Iranian women are stunning.
In a video in which ISIS fighters blew up the 2500 year old temple of Nabu in Iraq, ISIS extremists have threatened to destroy the Egyptian pyramids.

The video shows a militant vowing to demolish the temple - this is followed by an explosion destroying the building.

The 10 minute video's conclusion shows another ISIS fighter pledging to blow up 'ancient sites built by the infidels' - with a shot of the Great Pyramid of Giza near Egypt's capital, Cairo. Egypts Islamic authority has called the attack 'unlikely' and 'unrealistic' the state-owned Ahram Online reported Friday. This is unlikely in Egypt in light of a strong state and deterrent institutions, Dar Al-Ifta, the Egyptian state body that issues Islamic edicts, said.

Dar Al-Ifta cited the successful security apparatus that has led to decline in terrorist attacks in Egypt.
Ten Years Ago, I Saw The Real Guantanamo And It Changed My Life By Joseph Hickman June 09, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " ShadowProof " - Ten years ago today, I was on duty as the sergeant of the guard at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (GTMO). While I was standing in a watchtower inside Camp Delta overlooking the detainees, I saw something that would radically change my life. I witnessed three detainees leave the camp in a white van and be transported to a top secret CIA facility, only to return to the camp a few hours later, dead. Over the next few hours, after the bodies returned to Camp Delta, I watched a cover-up being orchestrated by the GTMO Command. My commander flat-out lied to the media about what happened, claiming the detainees committed suicide in their cells as a form of asymmetrical warfare. That day ten years ago shook the foundation of all I thought to be true. Prior to that night, I was a true believerI was a proud soldier in the U.S. Military, I was one of the good guys in the Global War on Terror. After that night, I began to question those beliefs. When I first arrived at GTMO a few months prior to that evening, I had my doubts about whether GTMO was a humane place. I was appalled at the conditions of the camp and the treatment of the detainees. But somehow I always found a way to rationalize what I saw. The treatment of the detainees was harsh and their living conditions inhumane. They looked more like poor farmers than the worst of the worst terrorists in the world; but my country told me they were and I believed them. On June 9, 2006, all of that changed. Three men died on my watch. I knew the three detainees did not die in their cells. I knew they were murdered outside of the camp at a top secret CIA facility that the U.S. government denied existed. This was inexcusable. It was a war crime. Even though going against the U.S. militarys official story of what happened that day would most assuredly end my military career, it was my duty as a soldier to report it. I went to the U.S. Army Inspector General and the Justice Department and reported what I witnessed. After I reported it to the Justice Department, they opened an official investigation and the FBI spent almost a year looking into my allegations. They finally contacted my attorney and told him that while the gist of what I reported was true, they were closing the case, and were not going to pursue any charges against those involved. Shortly after the Justice Department decision, I left the military. Not a day goes by that I dont think about that night. I have spent years investigating the deaths and other issues concerning GTMO. I wrote a book laying out all the facts about what happened that night, hoping that one day another investigation will be opened and truth and justice will prevail. Though my hope for that is fading, I will never give up. Since that night, a lot has changed at GTMO. Most of the detainees have been released and sent home or sent to different countries to try to start a new life. Unfortunately, there are still dozens of people being detained in GTMO with no evidence against them, living the nightmare of being held without charge or due process. GTMO needs to be closed. Yet it remains open, and the GTMO command claims it is transparent and has nothing to hide. They even set up VIP tours for reporters, politicians, and attorneys. The tours are rehearsed for weeks prior to the VIPs arrival on the Island. They show the VIPs only what they want them to see, making it appear as if they are hiding nothing. In reality, GTMO is shrouded in secrecy. No reporter, politician, or attorney, has ever seen the real GTMO. The only people that have seen it are the detainees, the guards, and the GTMO command. If they ever did see the real GTMO, maybe then justice would be served. Copyright FDL Media Group , All Rights Reserved.
Hillary Clintons Project For A New American Century By Dan Wright June 11, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " ShadowProof " - - Here we go again. Earlier this year, some were surprised to see Project For The New American Century (PNAC) co-founder and longtime DC fixture Robert Kagan endorse former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president. They shouldnt have been. As is now clear from a policy paper [PDF] published last month, the neoconservatives are going all-in on Hillary Clinton being the best vessel for American power in the years ahead. The paper, titled Expanding American Power, was published by the Center for a New American Security, a Democratic Party-friendly think tank co-founded and led by former Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy. Flournoy served in the Obama Administration under Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and is widely considered to be the frontrunner for the next secretary of defense, should Hillary Clinton become president. The introduction to Expanding American Power is written by the aforementioned Robert Kagan and former Clinton Administration State Department official James Rubin. The paper itself was prepared in consultation with various defense and national security intellectuals over the course of six dinners. Among the officials includes those who signed on to PNAC letters calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, such as Elliot Abrams, Robert Zoellick, Craig Kennedy, Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross, and Flournoy herself, who signed on to a PNAC letter in 2005 calling for more ground troops in Iraq. The substance of the document is about what one would expect from an iteration of PNAC. The paper cites a highly revisionist history of post-World War II American policymaking, complete with a celebration of Americas selfless motives for every action. Left out is any mention of overthrowing democratically elected and popular governments for US business, or the subsequent blowback for such actions in Latin America, the Middle East, and elsewhere. For the neocons and liberal interventionists at the Center for a New American Security, the United States has always acted for the benefit of all. The paper primarily focuses on the economy and defense budget, and American security interests in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Supporting the Trans-pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are considered the highest priority, as they will bind the main drivers of the US-led liberal world orderthe US and Europecloser together. According to the paper, Even in a world of shifting economic and political power, the transatlantic community remains both the foundation and the core of the liberal world order. In other words, the West must maintain control of the planet, for the good of all, of course. Part of the European concerns are a rise in nationalist sentiment in eastern Europe and the United Kingdom, for which the paper blames Russia, even bizarrely claiming that Russian funding is the cause of the disunity within the European Uniona claim without foundation, especially in the UKs case. The revisionist history continues, as the paper makes an astonishingly absurd claim on the US role in Asia, stating, U.S. leadership has been indispensable in ensuring a stable balance of power in Asia the past 70 years. No mention of the calamitous US war in Vietnam or its reciprocal effects in the killing fields of Cambodia. Nor is the US role in the genocide in East Timor dispensed with anywhere. Then we come to the Middle East, where things really get slippery. The paper breezes past the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with a sorry, not sorry statement: Despite recent American misjudgments and failures in the Middle East, for which all recent administrations, including the present one, bear some responsibility, and despite the apparent intractability of many of the problems in the region, the United States has no choice but to engage itself fully in a determined, multi-year effort to find an acceptable resolution to the many crises tearing the region apart. And with that, the paper demands regime change in Syria and that Any such political solution must include the departure of Bashar al-Assad (but not necessarily all members of the ruling regime), since it is Assads brutal repression of Syrias majority Sunni population that has created both the massive exodus and the increase in support for jihadist groups like ISIS. Left out is the US role in destabilizing Iraq and arming jihadist rebels in Syria. The paper goes on to regurgitate alarmingly facile claims about regional tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia that could have been written by the government of Saudi Arabia itself, such as, We also reject Irans attempt to blame others for regional tensions it is aggravating, as well as its public campaign to demonize the government of Saudi Arabia. It also states that the United States must adopt as a matter of policy the goal of defeating Irans determined effort to dominate the Greater Middle East. If that appears like a commitment to more reckless regime change in the Middle East, thats because it is. But the overriding concern of the entire paper, with all its declarations about bipartisanship and universal altruism, is a concern with the American people being increasingly apprehensive towards the empire, and that concern leading to further defense budget cuts and unwillingness to support adventurism abroad. The authors of the paper hope an improved economy can help change the current situation. Ensuring that the domestic economy is lifting up the average American is still the best way to ensure support for global engagement and also contribute to a stronger, more influential America, they write, though they see no end in sight, regardless of public support, claiming, the task of preserving a world order is both difficult and never-ending. That this is what a think tank closely associated with Hillary Clinton is openly claiming should be concerning to all. While such analysis and declarations no doubt please the Center for a New American Securitys defense contractor donors, the American people are less-than-enthused with perpetual war for perpetual peace. Former Secretary Clinton already affirmed her belief in regime change during the campaign, but now it looks like those waiting in the wings to staff her government are anxious to wet their bayonets. Daniel Wright is a longtime blogger and currently writes for Shadowproof. He lives in New Jersey, by choice.
Clinton Approved CIA Drone Assassinations With Her Cellphone, Report Says



WSJ: FBI is investigating Hillary's classified emails on State Dept. approval of CIA drone killings in Pakistan



By Ben Norton June 11, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Salon " - The FBI has been conducting a criminal investigation into Hillary Clintons handling of classified information for months. An explosive new report reveals just what it is that the FBI is looking to: emails in which then-Secretary of State Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations in Pakistan with her cellphone. From 2011 on, the State Department had a secret arrangement with the CIA, giving it a degree of say over whether or not a drone killing would take place. The U.S. drone program has killed hundreds of civilians in Pakistan and other countries. Under Sec. Clinton, State Department officials approved almost every single proposed CIA drone assassination. They only objected to one or two attacks. The emails that are at the heart of the FBIs criminal investigation are 2011 and 2012 messages between U.S. diplomats in Pakistan and their State Department superiors in D.C., in which the officials approved drone strikes. Clintons aides forwarded some of these emails to her personal email account, on a private server in her home in suburban New York. These are the revelations of a report by The Wall Street Journal, based on information provided by anonymous congressional and law-enforcement officials who were briefed on the FBIs probe. The State Department revealed in January that 22 of the emails that were on Clintons private server at her home contained top-secret information. These messages were not publicly released, and an investigation was eventually launched. The White House acknowledged in a press briefing on Thursday that the FBI probe into Clintons handling of classified information is a criminal investigation. President Obama endorsed Clinton for president on the same day. Hundreds of civilians in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and more have been killed by U.S. drones. Pakistan is the site of more U.S. drone strikes than any other country. The Obama administration has carried out more than 370 drone attacks in Pakistan, killing as many as 1,000 civilians, including up to 200 children, according to data collected by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The exact number of civilians killed is unknown, because the U.S. is very secretive about its program, and because it essentially redefines militant to mean any man of military age in a targeted area. In 2011, some Pakistani officials pushed back against the U.S. drone assassination program, leading the U.S. State Department to ask the CIA to be more judicious about the timing of drone attacks. Clintons State Department did not oppose the CIAs specific choice of targets, just their timing. This led to a compromise in which the CIA gave the State Department some voice in the drone assassination process. Beginning in 2011, CIA officers began notifying diplomats in the U.S. embassy in Islamabad of planned attacks. The diplomats then conveyed the information to senior State Department officials. This agreement gave then-Secretary of State Clinton and her aides personal say in U.S. drone killings. The Wall Street Journal report provides more insight into the State Departments coordination with the CIA on the secretive drone program. State Department officials were given notice before a planned attack, sometimes with a narrow timeframe of as few as 30 minutes. Officials told the FBI that they used a less-secure system of communication when they had to make a decision quickly before a drone killing and were not at the office. Roughly half a dozen times, State Department officials sent emails on their smartphones in order to approve a drone assassination when they were away from secure communications systems. The U.S. is very secretive about its covert CIA drone campaign. Strict U.S. classification rules bar officials from discussing drone killings publicly and outside of secure communications systems. Given this secrecy, law-enforcement and intelligence officials told the Journal that State Department discussion of the covert CIA drone program should have been conducted via a more secure communications system. The criminal investigation into Clintons emails has often been a right-wing talking point, but the scandal has much wider implications. Reflecting on the Journals report, award-winning journalist Jeremy Scahill, one of the worlds leading experts on the secretive CIA drone program, commented, So many liberals poo poo the Hillary email scandal for totally partisan reasons. If it was a Republican, they would be going bananas. People claiming emails on Hillarys private server were not classified do not understand how classification works, Scahill added. Its an HRC talking point. Its acceptable to mishandle classified info on your bathroom server and share classified info with your mistress, just dont blow any whistles, he quipped, referencing the fact that the Obama administration has waged an unprecedentedly harsh crackdown on whistleblowers. The FBI is expected to interview Clinton this summer about the scandal. Law-enforcement officials told the Journal they dont think criminal charges will be filed against her after the investigation. Clinton herself has repeatedly confidently insisted that she is not going to be charged. State Department spokesman Mark Toner refused to speak about the emails or the investigation. Ben Norton is a politics staff writer at Salon. You can find him on Twitter at @BenjaminNorton. Copyright  2016 Salon Media Group, Inc
The US Is Preparing to Oust President Evo Morales By Nil Nikandrov June 11, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " SCF " - US intelligence agencies have ramped up their operations intended to remove Bolivian President Evo Morales from office. All options are on the table, including assassination. Barack Obama, who sees the weakening of Latin Americas hostile bloc of populist states as one of his administrations foreign-policy victories, intends to buoy this success before stepping down. Washington also feels under the gun in Bolivia because of Chinas successful expansion in the country. Morales is steadily strengthening his financial, economic, trade, and military relationship with Beijing. Chinese businesses in La Paz are thriving  making investments and loans and taking part in projects to secure a key position for Bolivia in the modernization of the continents transportation industry. In the next 10 years, thanks to Bolivias plentiful gas reserves, that country will become the energy hub of South America. Evo Morales sees his countrys development as his top priority, and the Chinese, unlike the Americans, have always viewed Bolivia as an ally and partner in a relationship that eschews double standards. The US embassy in La Paz has been without an ambassador since 2008. He was declared persona non grata because of his subversive activities. The interim charge daffaires is currently Peter Brennan, and pointed questions have been raised about what agency he truly works for. He was previously stationed in Pakistan, where difficult decisions had to be made about assassinations, but most of his career has been spent handling Latin American countries. In particular, Brennan was responsible for introducing the ZunZuneo service into Cuba (an illegal program dubbed the Cuban Twitter). USAID fronted this CIA program, under the innocent pretext of helping to inform Cubans about cultural and sporting events and other international news. Once ZunZuneo was in place, there were plans to use this program to mobilize the population in preparation for a Cuban Spring. When reading about Brennan one often encounters the phrase  dark horse. He is used to getting what he wants, at any cost, and his tight deadline in Bolivia (before the end of Obamas presidency) is forcing Brennan to take great risks. Previously, Brennan had distinguished himself during the run-up to the referendum on allowing President Evo Morales to run for reelection in 2019, as well as during the vote itself. To encourage no votes, the US embassy mobilized its entire propaganda machine, roused to action the NGOs under its control, and allocated considerable additional funds for the staging of protests. It is telling that many of those culminated in the burning of photographs of Morales wearing his presidential sash. A record-setting volley of dirt was fired at the president. Accusations of corruption were the most common, although Morales has always been open about his personal finances. It would have been hard to pin ownership of $43 billion in offshore accounts on him, as was done to Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. Brennan also has agreements in place with Washington about other operations to compromise the Bolivian president. An attack was launched by the CIA agent Carlos Valverde Bravo, a well-known TV journalist and former agent with Bolivias security services. In his Feb. 3 program he accused Moraless former companion, Gabriela Zapata, the commercial manager of the Chinese company CAMC Engineering Co, of orchestrating shady business deals worth $500 million. Insinuations simultaneously began circulating on the Internet about the Bolivian presidents involvement in those, although Morales completely broke ties with Zapata back in 2007 and has spared no individual, regardless of name and rank, in his battle against corruption. The exposes staged by the US embassy continued until the day of the referendum itself on Feb. 21, 2016. The no votes prevailed, despite the favorable trend that had been indicated in the voter polls. Morales accepted defeat with his Indian equanimity, but in his statements after the referendum he was clear that the US embassy had waged a hostile campaign. The investigation into Gabriela Zapata revealed that she had capitalized on her previous relationship with Morales to further her career. She was offered a position with the Chinese company CAMC and took possession of a luxury home in an upscale neighborhood in La Paz, making a big show of her closeness to the Bolivian leader, although he played no role in any of this. This was the same reason she tried to initiate a business and personal relationship with the presidents chief of staff, Juan Ramon Quintana. He has categorically denied having ever met Zapata. Gradually, all the CIAs fabricated evidence disintegrated. Zapata is now testifying, and her lawyer has holed up abroad because his contacts with the Americans have been exposed. The American agent Valverde Bravo has fled to Argentina. Accusations against Morales are being hurled from there with renewed vigor. The attack continues. Its all quite logical: a continually repeated lie is an effective weapon in this newest generation of information warfare. The latest example was the ouster of Dilma Rousseff, who was accused of corruption by officials whom her government had identified as corrupt! The US military has been increasing its presence in Bolivia in recent months. For example, Colonel Felando Pierre Thigpen visited the department of Santa Cruz, where there are strong separatist leanings. Thigpen is known to be involved in a joint program between the Pentagon and CIA to recruit and train potential personnel for American intelligence. In commentary by Bolivian bloggers and in publications about Thigpen, it is noted that the colonel was dispatched to the country on the eve of events related to the impending replacement of a government that has exhausted its potential, as well as the need to recruit alternative young personalities into the new leadership structure. Some comments have indicated that Thigpen is overseeing the work of diplomats Peter Brennan and Erik Foronda, a media and press advisor at the US embassy. The embassy responded by stating that Thigpen had arrived in Bolivia at his own initiative, but it is no secret that he was invited to work with youth by NGOs that coordinate their activities with the Americans: the Foundation for Leadership and Integral Development (FULIDEI), the Global Transformation Network (RTG), the Bolivian School of Heroes (EHB), and others. So Thigpens work is not being improvised, but is rather a direct challenge to Moraless government. Domestically, the far-right party Christian Democratic Party provides him with political cover. The US plans to destabilize Bolivia  which were provided to Evo Moraless government by an unnamed friendly country  include a step-by-step chronogram of the actions plotted by the Americans. For example: To spark hunger strikes and mass mobilizations and to stir up conflicts within universities, civil organizations, indigenous communities, and varied social circles, as well as within government institutions. To strike up acquaintances with both active-duty and retired military officers, with the goal of undercutting the governments credibility within the armed forces. It is absolutely essential to train the military for a crisis scenario, so that in an atmosphere of growing social conflict they will lead an uprising against the regime and support the protests in order to ensure a peaceful transition to democracy. The programs first fruits have been the emergence of social protests (recent marches by disabled citizens were staged at the suggestion of the American embassy), although Evo Moraless administration has evinced more concern for the interests of Bolivians on a limited income than any other government in the history of Bolivia. The scope of the operation to oust President Morales  financed and directed by US intelligence agencies  continues to expand. The Americans biggest adversary in Latin America has been sentenced to a fate of neutralization. Speaking out against Evo Morales, the radical opposition has openly alluded to the fact that it has been a long time since the region has seen a really newsworthy air crash involving a politician who was hostile to Washington...
War With Russia Without Public Debate?



NATO is continuing its military buildup and exercises on Russias borders, Moscow is taking counter-measures, while the US mainstream media remains silent.



By Stephen F. Cohen June 11, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " The Nation " - Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments are at TheNation.com). This installment returns to the large-scale NATO military buildup on Russias Western frontiers, again on land, sea, and in the air, now featuring Operation Anaconda-2016, an exercise involving more than 30,000 American and other NATO forces in Poland. Batchelor asks whether alarmed warnings by informed analysts, including three longtime Russian residents in the United States, that actual war may be imminent are plausible. Cohen thinks this worst-case scenario cannot be ruled out, for several reasons. The NATO build up is not episodic but intended to grow and be permanent, and be ratified at the NATO summit in Warsaw in July. No such hostile forces have amassed on Russias Western frontiersnow from the Baltic to the Black Seasince the Nazi German invasion in 1941. (The inclusion of a German contingent among the NATO forces has further awakened that memory in Russia.) The only explanation given by the US-led NATO is Putins aggression in Ukraine, but that was more than two years ago. (Claims that he is now menacing the small Baltic states and Poland are clearly without any basis in fact.) Not surprisingly, Cohen reports, Moscow is reinforcing its own conventional and strategic (probably nuclear) forces on its Western territories, bringing the two powers to a Cuban missile crisislike confrontation. Even leaving aside accidental military acts, there are many other potential tripwires, from Ukraine and Turkey to Syria. Astonishingly, this looming possibility of war with Russia has gone largely unreported and entirely undebated in mainstream American media. Neither Batchelor nor Cohen can think of a precedent for such a media blackout or indifference. The situation, according to Cohen, is quite different in Russia, where NATOs buildup is hotly debated on, for example, prime-time television talk shows. Opinions vary as to the actual threat, but one growing opinion is that a scent of a great war is in the air and that Putin has not done enough to ready the country at home or abroad. Analogously, a leading Russian journalist publicly criticized the Kremlin for not having intervened militarily in Kiev in February 2014, when the ongoing crisis began with the overthrow of a pro-Russian Ukrainian president. That is, Putin also has a public opinion to consider as he decides how to react to NATOs buildup.
Venezuelas Struggle to Survive



Amid a reassertion of U.S.-backed neoliberal policies in Latin America, Venezuelas socialist government totters at a tipping point, beset by a severe economic crisis, but Lisa Sullivan sees a ground-up struggle of Venezuelans to survive.



By Lisa Sullivan June 11, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Consortium News " - For 32 years I have called Venezuela home. Its mountains have given me beauty, its barrios have given me music, its struggles have given me purpose, and its people have given me love. Its Bolivarian Revolution gave me hope. How could I not feel hope when most of my neighbors ages 2 to 70, were studying, right in our little potato-growing town in the mountains of western Venezuela. How could I not be hopeful when 18 neighbor families received new homes to replace their unhealthy, crowded living spaces? How could I not be grateful when my partner received life-saving emergency surgery? Or when my blind friend Chuy had his sight restored. Both for free. But today, this is what I see from my porch: neighbors digging frantically in barren, already-harvested potato fields, hoping to find a few overlooked little spuds. Rastreando they call it. It is an act of desperation to find any food source to keep the kids from crying, because for months, the shelves of the stores have been bare. How did this happen? That is the question that I bolt awake to every morning. As I watch Juan Carlos claw the fields for potatoes; as I embrace a tearful Chichila  up and waiting in line since 2 a.m., searching, unsuccessfully, to buy food for her large family; as I see the pounds shed before my eyes from 10-year-old Fabiola. I am glad that my mangos are ripening now. They take some of the empty glare from Fabis eyes. It is often in the deep of the night that I am kept awake by the burning question: When and how will all this end? Followed by: And what should I be doing? When I keep thinking it cant get any worse, it does. When friends from the U.S. write to ask if they should believe the scary articles about Venezuelas crisis in the press, I want to say no. Because I know that global vultures are circling my adopted nation, waiting for us to fall. Venezuela is, after all, home to the planets largest reserves of oil. Much of their suspicion of the barrage of articles about Venezuelas crisis is the fact that almost every article begins and ends with the same mantra: Socialism = Hunger. A good example is a recent article in Town Hall entitled: Venezuelan Socialism Fails at Feeding the Children. The article goes on to elaborate that between 12 and 26 percent of Venezuelans kids are food insecure (depending on their geography), which would average 19.3 percent childhood hunger in the country. Just for a comparison, I looked up child hunger in the U.S. and found that most sites use the figure one in five. Or 20 percent. So, in the worlds most prosperous nation 20 percent of children face hunger, while in Venezuela the number is 19.3 percent . Since these statistics are so close, I suggest that Town Hall publish a more accurate and equally urgent article entitled: US Capitalism Fails at Feeding the Children, and Venezuelan Socialism Does only Slightly Better. But most of our caution with these stories comes because we smell danger. How many times have we seen the first step on that well-traveled road to U.S. intervention paved by these heart-wrenching stories rammed 24/7 by the media. They lay the groundwork, help to justify almost anything. However, in spite of awareness of why we are being bombarded with stories of Venezuelas crisis, out of respect for friends, neighbors and family in Venezuela, I must acknowledge that this crisis is real and is brutal. It is a crisis of critical shortages of food and medicine. Its reasons are extremely complex and fall on many shoulders. And it threatens the health, well-being and future of too many Venezuelans today, especially the poorest ones, such as my neighbors. What Happened? How did the nation with the worlds largest reserves come to this, a nation of hungry and desperate people? Well, that depends on who you ask. The opposition blames President Nicolas Maduro. Maduro blames the U.S. The press blames socialism. Maduros ruling party blames capitalism. Economists blame price controls. Businesses blame bureaucracy. Everyone blames corruption. Most would agree, however, that the underlying culprit is a three letter word. OIL  the source of 95 percent of Venezuelas exports. OIL  the cash cow that funds easy, cheap imports. OIL- the export giant that deters domestic production. Living in a rural community that actually does produce food, and having also traveled extensively in this lush and fertile country, it is sometimes hard to believe that Venezuela imports more than 70 percent of its food. But I shouldnt be surprised. Quite simply, for decades, it has been much cheaper to import food than to produce it. At least that was the case when oil prices were up. And they were up for a long time. As recently as two years ago, the price of oil was about $115 per barrel. This February, Venezuelan crude plummeted to barely $23 a barrel. That is only $3 more than the approximately $20 cost of extracting it. So, when the profit per barrel of oil goes from $95 to $3, its like your salary going from something like $50,000 a year to $1,600. Could you feed your household? Well, if you were wise, you would have saved for a rainy day, or not put all your eggs in one basket, or at least grown some food in your backyard in case you couldnt get to the supermarket. Indeed, the late President Hugo Chavez talked a lot about this. And he even took some steps to set this in motion. But somehow, economic diversification never happened. Oil became a larger share of the economy under the Bolivarian revolution. Imports grew. Some say this was because Chavez was too preoccupied with the task of providing healthcare, education and shelter to a previously-abandoned household before launching on major home repairs. Some say because chavismo made it very hard for businesses to produce (although in reality, most large businesses in Venezuela dont actually produce, they just import things already produced. And, then  to boot  they actually purchase them with dollars provided almost for free by the government.) That puts a little perspective on their rants. With oil prices crashing to the basement this winter, Venezuela could no longer afford to import food. And to make matters worse, most of the imported trickles of food and medicine that do reach Venezuela these days, never actually reach the average person. Especially the average poor person. A good chunk of this food and this medicine ends up in the greedy hands of corrupt businesses, bureaucrats, military, ruling party members, and black-marketers. Scarcity almost always leads to hoarding and scalping products. But add to that mix the fact that most basic food and medicines are price-controlled by the government. A kilo of corn flour costs about 2 cents at the regulated price, and can easily fetch at $2  or much, much more  on the black market. Who wouldnt want to get their hand in this business of hoarding and reselling? Especially considering that the salary of even an engineer hovers around $30  $40 a month. And I havent even talked about the dysfunctional currency system that contributes to the diminishing power of salaries. There is only too much bad economic stuff to stomach. The Harsh Reality No matter what the reason, the result that matters now is this: Venezuela depends almost totally on imports for most items of basic necessity, and it has almost run out of money to buy these imports, which these days mostly end up in the wrong hands anyway. Obviously, getting the motors of domestic agriculture and production up and running is the long-term solution. But while all this will take years  perhaps decades  Fabi is hungry. So, is it true that Venezuela is about to go over the edge? Well, it may, even before I finish this article. My partner just texted to say that roads to our town are blocked with hunger protests and he is returning to the city. But to me, the extraordinary thing is that Venezuela has not exploded until now. This crisis is now several years old really, depending on how you measure it. The fact that the upper echelons of Venezuelan have not exploded is because many have given up on their country and left: two million, mostly young professionals. They are the ones who can qualify for the visas and afford the plane tickets. Some with fewer resources have also left, like those who are paddling to neighboring islands in handmade rafts, including a few whose lifeless bodies drifted to the shores of Aruba. The fact that those at the lower economic rung have not yet exploded (until now) has different reasons. Venezuelans are an extremely generous people, with a natural sense of solidarity. Whenever those few small spuds are culled from neighboring fields by Rafa, he places a bag of them at my doorstep. I pass bananas to Jenny over my fence. She passes pinto beans to Erica over hers. Erica passes yucca next door to Chichila, Fabi brings me fish that she caught when skipping school, I provide the oil in which to fry it. This solidarity and natural bartering system that has unfolded in our Venezuela-in-crisis is beautiful, and it is what has allowed us to survive until now. These good-news stories cant complete with the bad news that the press loves, you have to come and see with your own eyes. The second reason for delayed explosion is this: Most Venezuelans know that chavismo has (or had) their back, and are very reluctant to give it up. President Chavez very concretely and very pro-actively cared about them. He reduced poverty dramatically and created the most economically equal society in the Americas. In contrast, the opposition is widely perceived as caring only about themselves. Probably this is because their only agenda item over the years was to topple the government. Small wonder they rarely won the many national elections over the past 17 years. The opposition did, however win Decembers parliamentary elections. Decisively so. But many see this as less a vote of confidence for the opposition, than one of punishment against the Maduro administration, perceived as tone-deaf to their suffering. Although many share Maduros belief that the crisis is caused by the right-wing-led economic war , they wonder why he hasnt done more to combat it. But this is my sense of the moment: The majority of Venezuelans today are not fans of the opposition. Nor are they fans of the current administration. However (to the chagrin of the State Department) this doesnt mean that the majority of Venezuelans are not fans of chavismo). Solutions, Anyone? So, what is to be done? The solutions to the crisis are as conflicting as the causes. The three major players (Venezuelan government, opposition, and the U.S.) spend endless amounts of time and resources pointing fingers of blame to one another, while doing a poor job of hiding their real political and economic interests. Meanwhile, the losers are the people of Venezuela, who grow hungrier and hungrier. Somewhat better solutions are coming from Latin America itself. The region has become far more integrated and vastly more independent from the U.S. than previously (and many believe this to be Hugo Chavezs greatest legacy). This was clear when OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro tried to set into motion Venezuelas removal from the organization. He received resounding no from its members, including those of the new emerging right. Instead, the OAS member states opted to give support to an ongoing process of dialogue between the government and the opposition. The idea of government-opposition dialogue is not a bad idea. Its just not enough. The long-term solution to Venezuelas problems must come from all sectors of Venezuela. Not just from two polar opposites who have driven Venezuelans to hunger in their pursuit of political and economic power. Many, but not all, of those excluded identify with chavismo. But there is no political space for them in the tightly controlled hierarchical ruling party structure, nor room for them on the ballot (the largest political party that identifies with chavismo was excluded from elections because the electoral board did not like their name.) Some identify more with the opposition, especially certain pragmatic administrators willing to listen to and accommodate ideas from across the aisle. Most of these in-between sectors, that I believe make up Venezuelas majority, want to see less political rhetoric and more economic action. The currency system must undergo radical change. The poor must be guaranteed access to food, but not by subsidizing the product (which ends up in the hands of the corrupt and not the mouths of the poor), but subsidizing their families. And finally, there is a treasure trove of creative grassroots initiatives and productive solutions that this crisis has unleashed and that merit attention. While Maduro prays for higher oil prices and markets his nations pristine lands to Canadian mining companies in a desperate lunge for dollars; and while the U.S. and the Venezuelan opposition push for social explosion and/or military uprising; the people of Venezuela are busy. They are busy planting food in their backyards and patios, using alternative medicine, sharing with one another, developing a barter system, and creating hundreds, or maybe thousands of products from recycled or locally-sourced renewable sources . These may not totally solve the immediate food crisis but, in the long run, they may actually be opening the door to the kind of society in which we can all survive and thrive. And back to that 3 a.m. question of what can I do. I guess just more of the same, writing down my thoughts and ripping up more of my lawns to plant food with my neighboring children. Two more hours and Ill be up with the dawn, awaiting Fabi and friends with shovel and hoe in hand. Lisa Sullivan has lived in Latin America since 1977. She was a Maryknoll lay worker in Bolivia and Venezuela for over 20 years, coordinator for School of the Americas Watch and founder of grassroots leadership group, Centro de Formacion Rutilio Grande.She has three children, raised in Barquisimeto Venezuela.
Orlando Shooter Called 911 to Pledge Allegiance to ISIS: Sources





By Tracy Connor and Erik Ortiz



June 12, 2016 "

Information Clearing House

" - "

NBCNews

" - The gunman who opened fire at a gay Florida nightclub early Sunday, shooting over 100 people, had called 911 moments before to pledge allegiance to the leader of ISIS, law enforcement sources told NBC News.



But as investigators try to determine if extremism motivated Omar Mateen, 29, to attack the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, his family believes he was pushed over the edge by pure hate against the LGBT community.



Various law enforcement officials have identified the shooter as Mateen, who was born in New York and lived in Port St. Lucie on Florida's eastern shores.



The attack, which claimed at least 50 lives, is considered the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. While authorities are still investigating what motivated the gunman, the shooting is being considered an act of terrorism.



Mateen, who was carrying a handgun and AR-15-type rifle, died after a SWAT team stormed the club, police said. The shooter, who worked in security, according to the family, had active security officer and firearms licenses, records show.



Records also show he had filed a petition for a name change in 2006 from Omar Mir Seddique to Omar Mir Seddique Mateen.



Because of his name and heritage, there were immediate questions about Mateen's possible ties to Islamic fundamentalism  but his father said it may have been a recent incident involving two men showing each other affection that set the gunman off.



"We were in Downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry," Mir Seddique, told NBC News on Sunday. "They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, 'Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that.' And then we were in the men's bathroom and men were kissing each other."



"We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident," Seddique said. "We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country."



Seddique added, "This had nothing to do with religion."



Driving the point home that religion was a consideration in the mind of investigators, at a 10:30 a.m. news conference Saturday, officials brought a member of the Muslim community to speak.



Police did not explicitly say Mateen was Muslim, but Islamic groups put out statements against the carnage.



"We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured. The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence," the Council on American-Islamic Relations Orlando Regional Coordinator Rasha Mubarak said in a statement.



Seddique said Mateen was a husband and father to a 3-year-old son. The family's home in Port St. Lucie is less than two hours south of Orlando.



He worked in security and had attended Indian River State College, where he got an associate's degree in criminal justice, his father added.



Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., whose district includes the area of the massacre, suggested to reporters that "more likely than not" the shooting spree at the nightclub was ideologically motivated.



"Let me put it this way," he said, "the nationality of family members is indicative."



The family's background was not immediately clear, but Grayson said Mateen was a U.S. citizen

Today's Orlando Killer Was NYPD Fan - This Tells Us What?

By Moon Of Alabama

June 11, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Moon Of Alabama " - Last night some deadbeat loser killed more than 50 people in a gay club in Orlando, Florida. It is the largest shooting massacre in the U.S. since Wounded Knee. According to his ex-wife the man, one Omar Mateen, used to beat her and was not religious.

Earlier Mateen took pictures of himself and posted those on Myspace. The pics are selfies and mostly not remarkable but in one of them he wears a shirt with the New York Police Department emblem on it.

This tells us what?

The guy was a follower of the NYPD?

He had pledged allegiance to the NYPD?

The NYPD radicalized him and taught him to hate gays?

There is currently a lot of speculation that the guy was also a fan of the Islamic State (ISIS) death cult. None of the pictures he posted would point into that direction. But it still may be the case.

But what does that really tell us?

Was his emotional relation to ISIS as strong as his emotional relation to the NYPD?

Do such assumed allegiances tell us anything at all?

See also

ISIS claims responsibility for Orlando mass shooting  affiliated agency : Amaq News, a Syrian news agency with close ties to the Islamic State, says the group is responsible for the attack on an Orlando gay club, which has killed 50 people, and left 53 injured.

Florida shooting: multiple gunshots heard in video : You can hear as many as 22 gunshots in this video provided to WESH 2 News

Shooting victims in Orlando gay club carried from the scene (GRAPHIC VIDEO)

Obama calls Orlando shooting 'an act of terror' : , Obama said, "We know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate. And as Americans, we are united in grief and in outrage, and in resolve to defend our people."

Omar Mateen, Terrorist Who Attacked Orlando Gay Club, Had Been Investigated by FBI : Mateen was a known quantity to federal law enforcement before he killed 53 people in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

ISIS 'kill list' targets Palm Beach, Treasure Coast residents: Ex-FBI agent: A pro-Isis group has released a hit list with the names of more than 8,000 peoplemostly Americans. More than 600-people live in Florida, and one security expert believes that many of those targeted live in Palm Beach County and on the Treasure Coast.

Texas Lieutenant Governor slammed for tweet sent after Florida shooting: Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows, read the Bible verse Patrick sent out on his official Twitter account
The Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG) has called on the Federal Government to release the official results of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, which was adjudged to have been won by the late Chief M.K.O Abiola.

The pan-Yoruba socio-political group, which made the call Saturday, justified the need to officially release the election result  annulled by the military junta of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida  because the Official Secrets Act can no longer be binding on the document.

Our correspondent reports that Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act (Cap 03, Law of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2004) makes it an offence for anyone to transmit, obtain, reproduce or retain any classified matter.

The ARG, in a statement signed by its National Chairman, Hon. Olawale Oshun, to mark the 23rd anniversary of the June 12 election adjudged to be the freest and fairest in Nigerias history, said President Muhammadu Buhari, as the beneficiary of a ballot revolution that mostly mirrored that of 1993, owed the citizens of Nigeria across the geo-political divides, the duty of declassifying the election result, particularly now that 23 years had elapsed.

Mr. Oshun explained that the Official Secrets Act can no longer be binding on the document. We believe this will reverse the stigma occasioned by the foolish act of canceling that election, adjudged to be the most peaceful in the history of Nigeria.

The ARG chairman further explained that the official release of the June 12 presidential election result will open up the hypocrisy of military rule and help project democracy as a better form of governance. June 12 is no longer a struggle but now an obligation. The people have played their own part.

It is now the obligation of the beneficiaries of that struggle to set the country on a truly democratic path by deliberately replacing every stamp of military rule on Nigerias nationhood, including the imposed governance structure and constitution, through democratic rights and tenets.

Oshun argued that there is no alternative way to deepen democracy in Nigeria. Let nobody be deceived. Until the federal government takes conscious steps to restructure Nigeria, the country will continue to wobble from one crisis of nationhood to another.

To continue to ignore this necessity is a tacit support by elected officials for everything that transpired during the military era and this is why military rule has transited to do or die politics and citizens now believed they have a right to take up arms against their country.

The ARG, therefore, urged Mr. Buhari to see himself as best poised to help Nigeria make this transition. This can be his best legacy and the starting point, we dare say, is to release the June 12 presidential election result and its winner appropriately recognised and honoured.
The GOC of 7 Division of the Nigerian Army, Brig General Victor Ezugwu is seeking stronger collaboration with local hunters with better understanding of the terrains in the North East who voluntarily collaborate with the Army in some of the remote towns.

With the counter-insurgency war code-named Operation Lafiya Dole suffering setback since the rains started, especially with some of the terrains getting inaccessible for troops, Ezugwu said that the Division would provide the local hunters with cartridges for their supporting role in the war.

I am very happy the way you are working with the Army here. You should continue because now that the rainy season is here, what these criminals would do is to cease operation but we will want to go after them inside the forest, he told the local vigilante.

General Ezugwu said this while on a 3-day operational tour of formations and units within 7 Division Area of Responsibility (AOR).

Some of the areas he visited include 121 Task Force Battalion Pulka, A Company of 143 Rangers Battalion, 28 Task Force Brigade in Mubi, Adamawa State and 114 Task Force Battalion in Bitta.
The Bayelsa State government has reiterated its commitment to ridding local government councils of ghost workers. It has, therefore, started a staff verification exercise which it promises to see to a logical conclusion.

Speaking in Yenegoa on Sunday, Mrs Agatha Goma the Commissioner for Local Government Administration said that the conduct of the exercise in the local government councils had already reached an advanced stage and would soon be concluded.

The verification is yielding the desired results; it will assist us to plug the wastages we discovered in the payroll of local government councils in Bayelsa, Goma said.

The verification teams in each of the local government councils have concluded their aspect of the assignment and we are working on the reports they submitted which formed the new basis for payment of salary.

When the exercise is concluded, we shall be in a position to quantify the number of ghost workers and the amount saved from the verification, she said.
The federal government has scored a major victory in its war against insurgency with the arrest in Borno State of a major recruiter for Boko Haram.

The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, which made the announcement Sunday in Maiduguri, the state capital, said it arrested the 56-year-old Boko Haram kingpin in Askira Uba Local Government Area of Borno.

The Borno NSCDC Commandant, Ibrahim Abdullahi, said the suspect was apprehended at Mussa village last Tuesday.

Our men have made remarkable progress by arresting a Boko Haram kingpin, he said, adding The notorious kingpin was said to be a recruiter as well as supplier of arms and IEDs to Boko Haram terrorists.

Mr. Abdullahi said the suspect confessed that his three children were also arrow heads of the Boko Haram sect.

The official said the NSCDC Borno command had since handed over the suspect to the Nigerian Army for further investigation.
Ahead of the June 18, 2016 governorship primary election of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Edo State, 10 governorship aspirants of the party have protested against what they called intimidation.

The aspirants made the claim in a June 9, 2016 letter addressed to the national leadership of the APC.

In the letter, the aspirants claimed that government appointees and party officials were being harassed and intimidated over the aspirant to support at the forthcoming primary election in Benin City.

The concerned aspirants include Prof. Oserhiemen Osunbor, Dr. Pius Odubu, Engr. Chris Ogiemwonyi, Gen. Charles Airhiavbere, Barr. Ken Imasuagbon, Arc. Austin Emuan, Chief Blessing Agbomhere, Mrs. Tina Agbarha, Emmanuel Arigbe-Osula and Comrade Peter Esele.

In the letter titled Edo State APC Governorship Primaries: Issues, Observations and Recommendations, they said efforts of the party leadership to ensure credible poll had not yielded the desired results.

The letter also stated that the latest of the acts of impunity and desperation to win at all cost is the purchase and or collection 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.

That most of the aspirants have been denied access to delegates during campaigns by a certain notorious thug who has consistently threatened delegates against meeting with aspirants other than his preferred aspirant.

The aforementioned aspirants, therefore, advised the partys leadership to ensure that the right of the delegates to vote in secrecy is protected and guaranteed.

They also asked the partys National Working Committee (NWC) to engage the security agencies, including the Army before, during and after the primaries with a view to providing profound security cover to all the participants at the June 18 primary poll.

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 should direct the police and other security agencies to arrest, investigate and prosecute all those involved in the collection or purchase of PVCs in Edo State, the letter also read in part.
Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, has said much as the school feeding programme proposed by the Federal Government is a laudable idea, the state will not be contributing a dime to it.

Governor Fayose said it was wrong of the All Progressives Congress, APC-led federal government to ask state governments for a 40 per cent counterpart funding of the project.

The Federal Government is already looking for excuses for the impending failure of the programme by asking states to contribute 40 per cent to the scheme, he said in a statement on Sunday.

It would be recalled that Acting President Yemi Osinbajo last Thursday inaugurated the strategic plan and the national coordinating team for the implementation of the programme aimed at feeding over 24 million school children at the basic school level with one meal a day from locally sourced foodstuff.

During the launch, Osinbajo said the Federal Government would partner with states and local communities for the successful implementation of the Home Grown School Feeding programme to achieve national coverage.

But the Ekiti governor said the programme was purely a contract between the APC-led Federal Government and Nigerians.

Were the states consulted before the APC made the promise during the presidential campaign? the governor queried.

How can you make a promise and win election on the basis of that promise and now expect states to help you to fulfil the promise? That to me is fraud.

According to Mr. Fayose, Ekiti and other states in the country deserve to benefit from the programme without assisting the federal government with any 40 per cent counterpart funding.

He, therefore, said the APC-led Federal Government should rather blame itself for failing to do proper study on the practicability of the scheme before promising Nigerians instead of looking for scapegoat for its failure to fulfil the school feeding promise.

Apart from the fact that Ekiti State lacked the financial wherewithal to provide counterpart fund for such a programme, it is the duty of President Muhammed Buhari and his APC that won election on the basis of their promise to give free meal to school pupils to fulfill the promise without placing any burden on other tiers of government, he said.

Nigerians should come to terms with the reality that the federal government is already looking for a ready alibi for the impending failure of the school feeding programme.

The federal government knows that 80 per cent of the states lack the financial will to be able to contribute the 40 per cent counterpart fund for the programme and the time the programme eventually fails, Nigerians will be told that it failed because states did not key in to it.

As for us in Ekiti, we are interested in the programme because Nigeria belongs to all of us. But we wont contribute any counterpart fund because the programme is solely an electoral promise of the APC and we were never consulted before the promise was made.

We dont even have the capability to make any financial contribution even if it is 10 per cent because our financial condition is such that we cant even pay workers salary.
Towards the establishment of grazing reserves for herdsmen across the country, the Federal Government has concluded plans to meet soon with key Fulani leaders to solicit their support for the policy.

The grazing reserves are aimed at reducing to the barest minimum, the recurring deadly clashes between herdsmen and farmers in the country.

Speaking at a retreat in Abuja on livestock and dairy development in Nigeria, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbeh, gave indication of the federal governments determination to solve the myriad of problems confronting the nation, including the frequent herdsmen/farmer clashes.

He said: We are in trouble. Every country gets into trouble from time to time, even the most developed. But thats not an excuse for where we are. However, we are in trouble, our economy is down, our earnings are low, we have all kinds of conflicts and we are also hungry. As Mr. President said when he signed the budget this year, he said, I feel your pains, and we can truly feel it.

The cost of food is high, it is difficult to pay school fees, power supply is epileptic because of destruction of gas supply facilities and there are many more concerns. But whenever you are in trouble, thats the time to think. Lamentations dont help, which is why organized programmes like this are meant to fix some of these problems we have.

In the next few days we shall be meeting key persons among the Fulani and we will talk to them to get their buy-ins into the programmes that we have as part of addressing these concerns.

According to Ogbeh, Nigeria spends $1.3bn annually importing milk and its related products, adding that government had over the years failed to categorize herdsmen as farmers, not until the situation degenerated to deadly conflicts in towns and remote communities.

He said: We are facing a conflict, we have to end it and we will end it. Take my word for it! Weve had enough killings of innocent citizens. No country can boast of how many of its own citizens that its own citizens kill every day. It is not an achievement. Those perpetuating these acts should know that evil has a way of returning to its source. No wonder Shakespeare said, upon horrors head shall horror accumulate. So we must do everything to stop the killings.

The minister also used the occasion of the retreat to announce that the number of states that have provided land for the establishment of grazing reserves had increased to 13, up from the 11 that was announced last week.

In the same vein, Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State affirmed that while the roaming about of cattle is not the best way to raise them and it is not the best way to ensure that you have a healthy and more beneficial cattle, there should be a proper and a more constructive engagement with the herdsmen and herds owners.

Gov. Tambuwal also pleaded with herdsmen and herds owners to please, in the interest of peace and in their own interest, embrace the policy of the Federal Government to minimize the risks on their lives and on their livestock.
Governor Darius Ishaku of Taraba State has denied reports in the media that he approved 55,000 hectares of land for the implementation of the federal governments grazing reserves policy in the state.

The governor made the denial in a press statement signed by his Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr. Silvanus Giwa.

According to the reports, Taraba was among 10 northern states and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, which gave out 55,000 hectares of land for the establishment of grazing reserves to put an end to the frequent clashes between herders and farmers.

The 10 northern states and FCT that donated lands according to the reports are Adamawa, Gombe, Plateau, Kaduna, Katsina, Kano, Taraba, Niger, Sokoto and Jigawa.

Frowning at the report, Gov. Ishaku stated that in order to put the record straight, the Taraba State government in as much as we appreciate the need for the creation of conducive environment for all categories of agriculture and pastoral activities, there is need for proper collaboration between states and federal government.

The Taraba state government is therefore is not aware of any such agreement of land donation.
As Nigerians remember the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential elections today, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has described the watershed event as a shining light and a reminder that a united Nigeria is still possible.

The military junta of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida exactly 23 years ago today, annulled the 1993 presidential election widely adjudged to be the freest and fairest in Nigerias political history.

The presumed winner of the polls, Chief M.K.O Abiola, who was arrested and jailed by the late military dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha in 1994 for declaring himself Nigerias lawful president, died on July 7, 1998  the day he was due to be released.

Joining millions of Nigerians to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the annulled election, Mr. Abubakar recalled that on June 12, 1993 Nigeria was united in one cause, which was the to defeat what he called tyranny, through the ballot box.

We all believed, said the former VP, who contested the presidential ticket of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, against Abiola, in a statement issued by his media office in Abuja on Sunday. After 23 years, #June12 still remains a shining light, a reminder of what is possible  a united Nigeria.

According to the Turakin Adamawa, the integrity of the June 12 electoral process was a confirmation that Nigerians can achieve great things, if they stand as one.

For many of us who worked with Chief M.K.O. Abiola, his death was painful, but it paved the way for enduring democracy. Our democracy today, is MKO Abiolas legacy.

But we must grow beyond just democracy  our country must work. We must reform our country  restructure our federation for peace, growth and prosperity. We must also fix our political system. We must embrace reforms, and base our democracy on equity and good governance, which helps every Nigerian feel safe and secure, he stated.

Mr. Abubakar added that June 12 was a victory for Nigeria because we knew we could be better. We can actually achieve that dream if we all work together.
Governor of Osun State, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, has described June 12, 1993 as the most suitable and proper day to mark democracy day in Nigeria.

The governor, who made this position known in a statement issued in Osogbo, the state capital to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the annulled 1993 presidential election, said it was the date Nigerians freely expressed their choice on whom to be their leader and a day of unequivocal affirmation of the unity of the country by Nigerians across all divides.

Aregbesola called on Nigerians and lovers of democracy to remain committed to June 12 as a political watershed in the annals of the nation, noting that May 29, officially recognized as Democracy Day, only symbolises the day the military handed over the affairs of the country to a democratically elected government.

According to the Osun Governor, June 12, 1993 was a day Nigerians united to vote the acclaimed winner of that presidential election, late Chief M.K.O Abiola without recourse to religion, ethnicity or ideology.

He stated that the unity with which the multi-ethnic groups spoke and acted was what is being celebrated till today.

Gov. Aregbesola, however, noted that since the annulment of that election 23 years ago, Nigerians had to wait for another 16 years for a leader that would take them to the Promised Land in the person of President Muhammad Buhari.

We will never drop our commitment to June 12. Nigerians, in their heterogeneity, on June 12, 1993, voted for Chief Abiola in a pattern that defied ethnicity, religion, ideology and locality.

It was a pattern that made mockery of the fabled fault-lines and fissiparous tendencies of the Nigerian federation and projected a nation united behind a popular leader.

He said further: May 29, in 1999, was the date the military handed over power to civilian administration and will remain symbolic for the transition to civil rule and the opportunity it presents for realising a truly democratic government that approximates the yearnings and aspirations of the people for a leader that will lead them to the Promised Land of security and life more abundant.

We waited for 16 years for that leadership to emerge and we thank God for the election and coming to power of President Muhammadu Buhari. A government with a human face is here at last. He represents the aspirations and symbolism of June 12 in that he also got a pan-Nigerian mandate that once again defied the divisions in our country.
The Joint Niger Delta Liberation Force (JNDLF), which claims to be the highest organ of all the freedom fighting bodies in the Niger Delta, has revealed its terms for a ceasefire.

The group, which had earlier threatened to launch missile attacks on the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, National Assembly complex and NNPC Towers in Abuja among others, said its decision not to go ahead with the missile attacks was due to the federal governments declaration of ceasefire and offer of dialogue.

The militant group, however, said government would have to comply with its demands if it wants sustained peace in the region.

Among the groups demands is the immediate release of former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki; establishment of the Maritime University in Okerenkoko, Delta State and reversal of the order to freeze the bank accounts of elusive former militant leader, Government Ekpemupolo, better known as Tompolo, among others.

The JNDLF threatened to go after Niger Delta governors, who are its representatives in negotiations with the federal government if they betray the region.

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, JNDLF said in a statement.

On the decision to back down on its threat to launch six missiles simultaneously against some targeted areas and shutting down of the nations airspace, the group claimed that the federal government and some international nations sent it mails, pleading with it to open talks with the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.

We saw some genuine aspiration on the part of Buhari, who made several contacts to us to see reason with them over the issue of under-development of the region. And since he (Buhari) had set the ball rolling for a clear negotiation with us, there is no problem without solution. We have therefore declared ceasefire in order to negotiate with the government if it is a true reflection of what they have in mind to develop the Niger Delta region, the JNDLF said.

The group said it was more interested in negotiating with the government on the basis of developing the Niger Delta rather than giving out monetary compensation.

It also demanded the implementation of the report of the 2014 national conference and the immediate sack of Brig.-Gen. Paul Boroh (retd.), coordinator of the presidential amnesty programme.

We are not ready to negotiate with the federal government for the sake of monetary benefit to us but how genuinely the government will develop the region is at the centre of our discussion and anything less than that we will continue our struggle without further warning to the federal government, the statement read.

We demand the immediate implementation of the report of the 2014 national conference report, failure of which Nigeria will forcefully break-up. Oil-polluted lands in the Niger Delta must be cleaned up, while compensation should be paid to all oil-producing communities, e.g. Chevron fire outbreak of gas explosion in Koluama, Bayelsa State and Bonga Oil Spill in 2011. We also demand the immediate release of the former National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd) and Nnamdi Kanu.

We also want the removal of Brigadier General Paul Boroh (rtd.) as Amnesty Coordinator. He does not understand the programmes and policies of the Amnesty and does not know us to the grassroots.

The militants asked the government to replace Boroh with Dr. Felix Tuodolo, who they claimed has been in the struggle of non-violence since 1980 and was the originator of amnesty programme.

We carried out all these attacks on oil and gas pipelines in the region because of the statement made by President Buhari that he will develop those areas that gave him 95% votes during his presidential election last year. We, the Niger Delta people only gave him 5% hence we vowed that our oil money will not be used for the development of any other region.
Nollywood actress, Monalisa Chinda, has shot down rumours shes expecting her first child for her hubby, Tonye Coker.

The television personality stated that marriage is a good thing and she has been enjoying it but she is not pregnant as widely speculated.

According to the 41-year-old, Marriage has been so good we thank God. The story of my pregnancy which went viral was not true. Definitely, I will have another child soon but only God can decide when that would happen, she said.

SEE ALSO: Best-Dressed Celebrities of the Week

The thespian married her long time family friend Victor Tonye Coker on February 20, 2016, seven years after her first marriage to Dejo Richards crashed.

Monalisa and Victor became family friends when she was just 14 and Victors younger sister was said to be Monalisas childhood best friend.

They had both lived in the same neighbourhood in Port Harcourt city, Rivers state while growing up. As fate had it, they lost contact for several years with Monalisa getting married and having a daughter.

They later met in November 2015, had their introduction on December 28, 2015 and got married traditionally on February 20, 2016.

Victor is half Sierra Leonean and half Kwale from Delta state but grew up in Port Harcourt. He has lived most of his life in Germany where he is based.
Chairman, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Nasarawa State, Bishop Joseph Masin has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to initiate measures to ensure peaceful coexistence between farmers and herdsmen.

Speaking in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lafia on Sunday, Masin said.

Yes, he can do it. He is the president of Nigeria. I believe he will find a way to resolve the problems between them.

As for us in CAN, we have committed all the problems to God. That is one of the ways we can assist our leaders, he said.

He urged Nigerians not to condemn governments slow pace in resolving the crisis, saying the situation demanded careful analysis and peaceful resolution so as to avert a recurrence.

Nigeria is a multicultural and religious country. Mr President has to take time to analyse the situation, put in place all that is necessary so that people will understand that he is not taking sides with any group or religion, Masin said.
Thisday

The Afenifere Renewal Group Saturday demanded that the federal government should officially release the result of the June 12, 1993 Presidential Election acclaimed to have been won by late Chief M.K.O Abiola.

The Sun

OSUN State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, has described June 12, 1993 as the most suitable and proper day to mark democracy day in Nigeria.

Daily Times

Barely 12 months after the two construction giants  Julius Berger Nigeria Plc and Reynolds Construction Company (RCC) abandoned work on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, the contractors have now returned to site to resume work.

Daily Trust

President Muhammadu Buhari has sacked the Managing Director of the Niger Delta Holding Company of Nigeria Limited (NDPHC) James Olotu and appointed Mr. Chiedu Ugbo, as his replacement in acting capacity.

Leadership

Men of the anti-robbery squad of the Akwa Ibom State Police Command have arrested a middle age man, Godwin Okon, for the possession of human skulls and three locally made guns.

The Nation

A group that calls itself the joint revolutionary council of the Joint Niger Delta Liberation Force (JNDLF), and claims to be the highest organ of all the freedom fighting body in the Niger Delta, has declared ceasefire.

Tribune

Lagos State governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, will tomorrow, swear-in 57 newly appointed sole administrators expected to oversee the 20 local governments and 37 local council development areas in the state.

New Telegraph

Like a rudderless ship that it has become since its historic defeat in the 2015 general elections, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) flounders in the ocean of crisis.

Daily Independent

Chief Ayo Adebanjo, elder statesman and Afenifere chieftain spoke with EJIKEME OMENAZU on the need for President Muhammadu Buhari to implement the National Conference Report. He also predicted that All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) may go under before 2019.
The National Chairman of All Progressives Congress, APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, has told Nigerians not to despair in the face of current economic challenges because the future remains very bright.

The APC chair stated this yesterday at the luncheon and award programme organized by the University of Ibadan Alumni Association.

The event was a follow-up to the third Public Service Lecture of the association entitled, Change and the Nigerian Traditional Institution delivered at the weekend by the Obi of Onitsha, Agbogidi Igwe Alfred Achebe.

Oyegun, who urged Nigerians to persevere and be optimistic, pointed out that his party, the APC took over power when the economy was in bad shape.

He added that there was need for complete overhauling of the system to initiate the desired change envisaged by the people.

The price of crude oil dropped drastically when we came on board. Rather than a plastic solution, President Muhammadu Buhari took some sacrificial decisions to overhaul the entire system.

In the period of pregnancy, there is always pain. Buhari remains one of the few incorruptible Nigerians that can take sacrificial decisions and instill discipline.

Lack of discipline is one of the factors that brought our institutions to the prostrate state we met them. I have no doubt in my mind that the future is very bright, Mr. Oyegun asserted.

At the Award ceremony, the APC national chairman bagged Alumnus of the Year while the publisher of the Sun Newspapers and former Abia State Governor, Orji Uzor Kalu, was honoured with Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Among the 56 other awardees were Dr A.A.A Obiora, Dr Alex Izinyon (SAN), Chief Olu Falae, Chief Reuben Fasoranti, Chief Areoye Oyebola and Dr Michael Omolayole.

Also speaking at the event, Gov. Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State described Oyegun as a distinguished public servant as well as an accomplished economist and civil servant while the National President of the UI Alumni Association (UIAA), Dr Kemi Emina, described Kalu as a great entrepreneur, who is leading the youths through his entrepreneurial spirit.

Emina thanked Oyegun and Kalu, who was represented by his Personal Assistant, Kunle Oyewumi, for their contribution to the development of the institution and the advancement of knowledge.
As Kaduna State gets set to introduce the controversial Religious Bill, Governor Nasir el-Rufai has said his administration had no hidden agenda even as he warned governments against taking decisions contrary to religious beliefs.

The governor spoke yesterday in a remark at the 11th Annual Ramadan Lecture on the topic, Who is a Muslim? held in Kaduna and organized by Nigeria Television Authority, NTA, Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN, and Voice of Nigeria, VON.

El-Rufai, who has come under immense public criticism for introducing a Religious Bill that seeks to regulate public preaching and other religious activities in the state, said: Any government that its decision is contrary to religion, that government is in trouble.

Represented by Namadi Musa, his Special Adviser on Islamic Religion, the governor called for the prayers of the people of the state and Nigeria as the state goes forward to introduce a religious bill in the state.

We need your prayers as we move forward to introduce religious bill in the state.

God knows we are doing it with clear intention. As human, we are also bound to make mistake, he added.

Gov. El-Rufai, however, appealed to the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, to reverse the decision of relocating the upcoming 12th lecture to Abuja.

Earlier in his welcome address, the minister, represented by Yakubu Ibn Mohammed, the Director General of NTA, announced the relocation of the subsequent 12th Annual Lecture to Abuja.

I wish to announce to this gathering that we have decided to relocate the 12th Annual Ramadan Lecture to Abuja, Mr. Mohammed said.

He commended all those who supported the previous lectures up till the 11th lecture that has been conducted in Kaduna.

Yahaya Abubakar, the Etsu Nupe; Muhammadu Isa Muhammadu, Emir of Jamaa; Sheikh Muhammad Bin Uthman and representative of Shehu Idris, Emir of Zazzau and Chairman of the Kaduna State Council of Traditional Rulers, were among dignitaries who attended the Lecture.

Mansur Liman, DG FRCN, and Osita Okechukwu, DG VON, were among those dignitaries who were notably absent.
Former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, on Sunday urged the Federal Government to promote the use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) in the country.

He made the plea during a courtesy visit by the management of NIPCO Plc to Obasanjo Hilltop Estate in Abeokuta, on the need by the the Federal Government to promote use of CNG as a vehicular fuel.

Obasanjo said in a bid to promote cleaner environment, the use of CNG was signed during his tenure President, to develop gas as a vehicular source of fuel.

If other governments had promoted the use of LPG and CNG in Nigeria, half of the countrys vehicles would have been converted to gas.

The essence is to provide alternative to Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) or petrol at a reduced cost and to boost national socio-economic growth, The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) quotes him as saying.

The Managing Director, NIPCO Plc, Mr Venkataraman Venkatapathy, said that Nigeria would have saved government over two billion dollars yearly, if the use of CNG is promoted in the country.

According to Venkatapathy, globally, the natural gas industry is increasing its focus and efforts to support natural gas transport. He said that the CNG project was between the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and NIPCO, through a joint-venture scheme called Green Gas Ltd.

Venkatapathy explained that the initiative, which is the first of its kind in West Africa, is ushering in a new era of vehicles running on the CNG in Nigeria with its attendant benefits

He said that CNG is a superior auto fuel alternation to liquid fuels, mainly petrol and diesel specifically for countries like Nigeria which is blessed with abundant availability of natural gas remains untapped.

According to him, to replace 20 per cent of current petrol consumption of Nigeria, Natural gas required is less than five per cent of the total domestic gas consumed currently and less than one percent of the current gas production.

This will save the country over two billion dollars yearly in foreign exchange.

In Benin City, Edo State, over 4,000 vehicles run on CNG which resulted in replacing 20 million litres of petrol from 2012 to 2015 and which also saved over nine million dollars for the country, he said.

The managing director said that CNG had more benefits than petrol, adding that some of the benefit include low operating costs, lower maintenance costs and it reduces harmful vehicle emissions that cause local air pollution.
The Osun State Muslim Community has urged the state chapter of Christian

Association of Nigeria (CAN) to respect the state High Court ruling on the use of hijab on school uniforms by female Muslim students in public schools.

Recall that Justice Jide Falola of the Osun High Court penultimate Friday, while delivering judgment in a suit filed by the Muslim community against the state government, upheld the rights of female Muslim students in public schools in the state to wear hijab on their school uniforms during the school hours.

But the Osun CAN threatened a showdown if the State Government implements the judgment, which it claimed was premeditated and deeply violated the principle of fair hearing.

The association, therefore, threatened to direct Christian students in public schools in the state to start wearing Christian garments and vestments as part of their school uniforms once Muslim female students start using hijab in schools.

Reacting to the threat by CAN, the Vice President of Osun State Muslim Community, Alhaji Mustapha Olawuyi, appealed to the Christian body to shun what he called lawlessness in the best interest of justice and peace.

Olawuyi, who made the appeal in a press conference in Osogbo, the state capital yesterday, said there is no need for the argument over the court judgment that granted female Muslim students right to use hijab during the school hours.
A flood of statements are coming in from public figures following the worst mass shooting in America in almost a decade.

A gunman shot and killed 50 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida with 23 more people reportedly injured and receiving medical treatment.

SEE ALSO: President Obama Condemns Attack On Gay Nightclub

The head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis has in a statement from the Vatican expressed his shock at Saturdays incident.

The terrible massacre that has taken place in Orlando, with its dreadfully high number of innocent victims, has caused in Pope Francis, and in all of us, the deepest feelings of horror and condemnation, of pain and turmoil before this new manifestation of homicidal folly and senseless hatred,

The statement went on to say,We all hope that ways may be found, as soon as possible, to effectively identify and contrast the causes of such terrible and absurd violence which so deeply upsets the desire for peace of the American people and of the whole of humanity.
The Niger delta Militants have recently become another thorn in the federal governments flesh with their spate of bombing and their threats.They also just gave the federal government some conditions which they said must be met before they can agree to cease fire completely.INFORMATION NIGERIA in this piece highlights their conditions below.

The groups is demanding the immediate release of Sambo Dasuki, former National Security Adviser (NSA)

They want the reversal of the order to freeze the bank accounts of Government Ekpemupolo, better known as Tompolo,

They also want the establishment of Maritime University in Okerenkoko, Delta State

The group equally said that it was more interested in negotiating with the government on the basis of developing the Niger Delta region rather than giving out monetary compensation.

They also demanded the implementation of the report of the 2014 national conference,

They equally want the removal of Paul Boroh, the coordinator of the presidential amnesty programme with immediate effect and to be replaced with Dr. Felix Tuodolo whom they said has been in the struggle of non-violence since 1980 and also the designer of the amnesty programme.

They also want oil-polluted lands in the Niger Delta cleaned up, while compensations paid to all oil-producing communities

And lastly,they want the release Nnamdi Kanu, the IPOB frontier.
The Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria (SCSN), Kaduna State Chapter, on Sunday declared that the attack on one Francis Emmanuel, a Christian, for eating during the Ramadan fast was not Islamic.

The Chairman of the council, Sheikh Yusuf Rigachikun, stated this when he led other members of the SCSN to St. Gerards Catholic Hospital, Kaduna, where the victim is currently recuperating.

It would be recalled that the victim, a carpenter, was attacked with knives and other dangerous weapons by unknown persons on Tuesday in Kakuri, Kaduna, for eating during the fasting period.

Represented by Tukur Abdussalal, a member of the council, Rigachukun said that the council was upset after receiving the news of the ugly incident and decided to visit and console the victim.

The council, which condemned the attack on Emmanuel in strong terms, apologized to him.

Rigachukun pointed out that that as a Christian, the victim had nothing to do with Islamic practices, adding that there was no basis for the attack.

Even if it was a Muslim that decided to eat during Ramadan, no one has the right to attack him. The best any one can do is to sue such person to Sharia Court for appropriate action.

In fact, Islam did not forbid eating during Ramadan in the first place to have warranted such ugly incident.

Whatever any Muslim decided to do, fasting or no fasting, is for himself, the Kaduna SCSN chairman stressed.

In the same vein, the Secretary of the council, Malam Abdulrahman Hassan, appealed to members of the public to desist from taking laws into their hands.

The action of these people is not Islamic and therefore unacceptable in Islam; even Prophet Mohammed warned that there is no compulsion in Islam, Hassan said.

The council thereafter presented a cash donation of N100,000 as assistance to the victim and wished him quick recovery.

Receiving the donation on behalf of the family, Mr. Paul Emmanuel, elder brother of the victim, thanked the council for the gesture, saying Acts of kindness and affection like this are what we need to promote peaceful coexistence.

The visit of the council came after the state governor, Malam Nasir el-Rufai, also visited Emmanuel on his hospital bed a day after the attack and directed the police to arrest the perpetrators of the attack.

El-Rufai warned that the state government would not tolerate religious violence and criminality.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, on Sunday said the Federal Government was aware of the plight of many citizens due to the challenges in the economy and was working diligently towards making life more meaningful for Nigerians through carefully designed projects.

Speaking on Sunday at the 8th Alhaji Kafaru Tinubu Memorial Ramadan Lecture the theme: Supreme Sacrifice and the Essence of Followership in Governance, Mohammed said.

This government is making a lot of sacrifices and it is also expecting a lot of sacrifices from the people, Mohammed said.

The N500 billion Social Intervention Programme which is broken into five parts covers employment of 500, 000 unemployed graduates who will be trained as teachers.

It also covers the employment of 100, 000 artisans as well as the One-Meal-A-Day programme for pupils in primary schools.

The Enterprise Scheme which is targeted at one million market men and women, 460, 000 artisans, 200, 000 agriculture workers is also covered in the programme.

It also covers the N5,000 monthly conditional cash transfer to the poor and vulnerable, he said.
On this day in 1964; The leader of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, Nelson Mandela, was jailed for life for sabotage.

Likewise on this day in 1993; An election took place in Nigeria which was later annulled by the military Government led by Ibrahim Babangida.

The election was deemed the most fairest in the history of Africa and M.K.O. Abiola was adjudged to have won the election.
The Obi of Onitsha, HRM Igwe Nnaemeka Achebe, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to revisit the recommendations of the 2005 and 2014 National Conferences to address prevailing challenges in the country.

Achebe made the call against the backdrop of a statement credited to the president that the report of the 2014 national confab is meant for the archives.

The first class traditional ruler, who made copious references to the 2005 National Political Reform Conference convened by ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo and the 2014 National Conference by ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, argued that if the recommendations could be extracted and implemented, 80 per cent of the nations problems would have been resolved.

Igwe Achebe spoke at a reception held in his honour by the Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy (ISGPP), Bodija, Ibadan.

The monarch also described the recent killings of innocent Nigerians by armed herdsmen as unfortunate and barbaric.

According to him, the herdsmen should have learnt modern methods of rearing cows through the establishment of ranches to preserve the animals and prevent them from destroying farmlands.

There is no way the animals would not stray to other peoples farms. I think that in the present day 21st century, we should be having ranches even if it involves taking loan from the banks.

They rear the animals to make profit, so I dont see why they cannot do that and prevent all these crises, he said.

Achebe said Nigerias challenges would have been lighter if the recommendations of the past National Conferences were implemented.

We as Nigerians have to work to actualise peace. Nigerians are probably saying that the governance of this country is over centralized.

Most of the decisions are made in Abuja and by the time it gets to the grassroots here most of them have been diluted.

The Niger Delta people are asking for greater share of the natural resource. Like in 2005 and 2014, we had National political conferences under former President Olusegun Obasanjo and immediate past President Jonathan.

They conveyed National Conferences and if you look at the recommendations, you will see that the recommendations actually addressed 75 to 80 percent of the problems facing Nigeria.

Why cant we extract from the recommendations to solve these crisis in the land. The case of the Niger Delta people, you will find the recommendation there in the report.

He continued: About a month ago, the government announced that the price of petrol had been partially deregulated.

Thirteen years ago, I was the chairman of a commission of enquiry appointed by the then president Olusegun Obasanjo to look into the same issue.

We made a series of recommendations. One of them was to deregulate the price of petrol and save the country a lot of money.

Money saved would have been used to address problems in education, health and other sectors. It took 13 years to adopt the recommendation.
Zimbabwe's focus on wheat set to yield biggest-ever harvest AP - Wed Oct 26, 1:35AM CDT Zimbabwe says it's on the brink of its biggest wheat harvest in history, thanks in large part to efforts to overcome food supply problems caused by the war in Ukraine $SPX : 3,859.11 (+1.63%) $DOWI : 31,836.74 (+1.07%) $IUXX : 11,669.99 (+2.10%)

Australian health insurer says data of all customers hacked AP - Tue Oct 25, 10:17PM CDT Australias largest health insurer says a cybercriminal has hacked the personal data of all its 4 million customers, as the government introduced legislation that would increase penalties for companies... $SPX : 3,859.11 (+1.63%) $DOWI : 31,836.74 (+1.07%) $IUXX : 11,669.99 (+2.10%)
Trivia time. Artistically speaking, what's the difference between, say, William Blake and Smokey Robinson?

The answer is there is no difference. That was a trick question.

After all, they're both poets. (In fact, Bob Dylan once called Mr. Robinsonknown for his endless number of Motown hitsas "America's greatest living poet.") Yet many universities include Blake in the canon while Mssr. Robinson is nowhere to be found.

That's a shame, but fortunately, the times they are a' changing (sorry, we couldn't resist).

Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University recently received a $1 million gift for the Center for Popular Music Studies courtesy of James "Great Neck" Richman, Elissa Richman, and the Richman Family Foundation of the Jewish Communal Fund.

The gift will support research, teaching, and learning initiatives for faculty and students, as well as support musical performance, public programming, and partnerships with other Cleveland cultural institutions, youth programs, and area schools. In addition, plans call for fellowships for visiting scholars at the university and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Library and Archives.

Here's Richman, a Case Western Reserve alumnus, who has served as a trustee for five years at the rock hall, commenting on the gift: "Elissa and I are honored to support the Center for Popular Music Studies and its unique partnership with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. We hope that our gift will help break down barriers between popular culture and academic study and encourage lively debate in the field of popular music." (Emphasis added.)

Now, we're well aware that many universities have courses in popular music. We also know writing an entire book on a single popular song has become its own cottage industry. But if we're to read a bit further into Richman's quote, we can reasonably conclude that certain parts of academia don't consider popular music, much less rock n' rollmuch less torch songs!to be on par with the great works of art.

And that's perfectly fine. We won't argue that Chuck Berry is equivalent to James Joyce. But then again, that's not the point, is it? Or maybe it is. Time will tell.

All we know is that for arts philanthropists like Richman who have a pulse on the intersection of popular music and academia, there is still much work to be done in this space.

And what about Richman himself? Well, he's president and CEO of Richloom Fabrics Group, a textile converter, designer and distributor of home furnishing fabrics in New York City, with subsidiaries in Shanghai, China and Gurgaon, India. The Richmans and the Richman Family Foundation have previously endowed a scholarship to support students in Case Western's college of arts and sciences. The Richmans also have supported Case Western Reserve's Milton and Tamar Maltz Performing Arts Center at The TempleTifereth Israel.

One last point. Our inclusion of Smokey Robinson in the opening paragraph was intentional. Robinson was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters honorary degree from Case Western Reserve University during the Rock Hall's 20th Annual Music Masters tribute concert back in 2015.

We second that emotion! (Sorry, we couldn't resist.)
A new, juried costume contest will be the centerpiece of this years third annual Bloomsday Breakfast celebration on Thursday, June 16 at Blooms Tavern, 208 East 58th Street, New York, at 8 a.m.

As its special way of commemorating the 2016 centennial of Irish Independence, the Origins 3rd Bloom @ Blooms Tavern of Course! produced by Origin Theatre Company, will feature music by the Irish-folk-rock troubadour Alan Gogarty, actors in costume, musicians, politicians and visitors on their way to work and other endeavors, all coming together, as is the tradition, to recreate the summer morning chronicled by James Joyce in Ulysses set in Dublin on June 16, 112 years ago.

The spontaneous group performance is fueled by a traditional Irish breakfast, with blood sausage and kidney pie among the edible delicacies, and refreshing summer drinks. Among the notables in the cast are Malachy McCourt, author Colin Broderick and actors Terry Donnolly, Patrick Fitzgerald, Brenda Meaney and Fiona Walsh.

This year the Best Dressed Molly and Leopold Bloom will be selected from among the guests by a blue-ribbon panel of Irish fashion and design figures chaired by the internationally recognized image strategist Margaret Molloy. A $1,000 dinner and NYC fun package will be offered to each of the winners.

Playing off the theme Bloomsday Then and Now, contestants will be invited to come period-attired, or in a summer festive outfit that is a modern interpretation of a Dublin morning 1904.

Blooms Tavern kicks off a week-long Bloomsday Celebration with a special new Irish cuisine cooking demonstration at Bloomingdales, 1000 Third Avenue, on Saturday June 11 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. A number of chefs will join forces to create deliciously innovative, wholesome Irish dishes based on traditional recipes.

Blooms Taverns special week-long Bloomsday celebration, from Saturday June 11 through Thursday June 16 is produced by Origin Theatre Company. The Bloomsday Breakfast is on Thursday June 16 is a free event. For reservations visit www.origintheatre.org.
New figures have revealed that there are over 240 unsolved cases of murders committed by criminal gangs in Ireland.

The cases range between 1980 and present day, with more than 130 of the murders occurring in the last decade, the Irish Mirror reports.

Families of some of the victims appeared on RTEs Prime Time in a special report on the killings on June 1. The family members asked for anyone with information on the killings to contact Gardai.

Geraldine Noonan and Michelle Murphy are sisters whose sons were killed in a case of mistaken identity in November 2010. Cousins Mark Noonan and Glen Murphy were shot at a filling station in Finglas by members of a Dublin gang.

Their killers fled the scene, crossing the border into Northern Ireland at speeds of up to 200km/h and were never brought to justice.

Geraldine told Prime Time: They went to the shop that night like anybody else to get a DVD and a packet of cigarettes. Mark had a little girl, she was only nine months old.

He picked Glen to be the godfather. Mark and Glen were always together.

Our lads are now lying in a grave and the killers are still out walking and living.

Michelle added: Somebody knows something. And we need those people to come forward.

Im not saying it would bring Mark and Glen back thats never going to happen but it would help us.

It could do tremendous things.

Also on the show was Jean OConnor, who talked about about the murder of her son Owen and friend Anthony Keegan.

In April 2014, Owen and Anthony had borrowed her car to travel from Dublin to Cavan, but they never returned from the journey.

They were missing for five weeks when their bodies were discovered at Inchicup island at Lough Sheelin on the Cavan/Meath border. Both had been shot dead.

I dont know what would bring people to do that. What kind of minds they have, said Jean.

Eoin was a family man, he had two beautiful children. He was my son.

Somebody knows who is responsible and I am appealing to those people. We will never be the same again but if we get justice it would help us.

Anyone with information on any unsolved murder are asked to contact the Garda Confidential Line on 1 800 666 111.
Lets look back at Paul Ryans ghastly pivot on Donald Trump this week, since hes made it quite plain he has no stomach for it himself now.

The House Speaker is widely respected throughout the nations Capital, even where his politics are strongly disagreed with. Thats why his unfettered embrace of Trump has lost him so much hard won respect in Washington and nationally this week.

For many commentators Ryans hearty endorsement was not simply nauseating, it was enraging - a bridge too far.

Bluntly admitting this week that Trumps claim that Judge Gonzalo Curiel was unable to perform his job because of his Mexican heritage was the textbook definition of a racist comment, Ryan nevertheless added that he believes Trump should be president.

In years to come psychologists may cite Ryans example as the textbook definition of cognitive dissonance.

On Thursday MSNBCs Andrea Mitchell, mystified by Ryans ambiguity, asked him him how he could scold Trump for his racist comment and yet endorse him for president in the next breath?

Its really clear with me we have one of two choices, Ryan replied, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.

Trump may say racist things, but hes on our side saying racist things, Ryan might have said.

Senator Lindsey Graham put it more bluntly. Therell come a time when the love of country will trump hatred of Hillary. But for Paul Ryan, that time clearly hasnt come yet.

Ryan has calculated that he has little wiggle room. He has the House majority to protect after all. Admitting on ABC that Trumps attacks on Judge Curiel get in the way of his party's efforts to give voters a clear and compelling choice this November, Ryan took a Hail Mary pass.

Hopefully, this won't continue, Ryan told the press. Hopefully, the campaign will move in a better direction so that it can be one that we can all be proud of.

Hopefully.

Ryans obviously looking at Trumps epic margin of victory this week - Trump won more votes than any Republican who ever ran to be the partys presidential pick - and tailoring his conscience to the latest poll numbers.

But standing tall with a man you have just blasted for his racist comments, in the name of party unity at the expense of national unity makes for a poor show.

By 2020, when Ryan is widely expected to make a run for president himself, his decision to stand back now and let this unprecedented racist rhetoric define both his party and this election will be seen for the long term, festering disaster it really is.

Has Ryans decision to hold his tongue really unified the obviously cratering GOP? And at what cost to his country, his reputation and his own political ambitions will it come?

READ MORE: New House Speaker Paul Ryan has strong Irish roots and identity

READ MORE: Paul Ryan needs to wise up and go all out for Donald Trump
A letter that John F. Kennedy allegedly wrote to Mary Pinchot Meyer, believed to be his lover, went up for auction, in June 2016. She was later found murdered and a secret diary she had of the alleged affair disappeared.

The letter, which was never sent, was meant for Pinchot Meyer, a family friend thought to be romantically linked to the former President. Meyer was an accomplished artist whose work was considered increasingly valuable at the time of her death. She met Kennedy through Robert Kennedy when he sold his house to close friends of hers.

Read more WATCH: Recently discovered video of JFK in Ireland released

Famed Washington Post Editor Benjamin Bradlee, her brother-in-law, subsequently wrote that she was indeed involved romantically with Kennedy and often met with him when Jackie was out of town.

On October 13, 1964, Meyer was shot and killed in Georgetown. Raymond Crump Jr. was charged with her murder but was found not guilty. Her murder has never been solved.

The existence of Meyer's diary became known to Bradlee, who was married to Mary Pinchot Meyer's sister Toni. He went to Meyer's home to break in and grab the diary after she died and found CIA Director of counterintelligence James Angleton, who also knew Meyer, already there sawing off the lock. Meyer's husband had also been a CIA operative.

Read more New book launched exploring how JFK's roots transformed an Irish town

Bradlee took possession of the diary, which has never been made public. It is alleged the diary was eventually given to the CIA who burned it.

Kennedy's affair with Meyer is described as "very dangerous" by the journalist and Kennedy's close friend Charles Bartlett who stated: "This was a dangerous relationship, Jack was in love with Mary Meyer. He was heavily smitten. He was very frank with me about it."

The unsent letter from Kennedy thus has real historical impact. The top of the White House stationery is cut off, but a faded watermark is visible, The New York Times reports.

Although the letter is undated, it is believed to be from October 1963, a month before Kennedy was assassinated.

The letter reads: "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."

JFK Love Letter to Mistress up at RR Auction https://t.co/21uIm4X8wF https://t.co/ojJYOFmniC  RR Auction (@RRAuction) June 3, 2016

The letter ultimately sold through the Boston-based R.R. Auction for $88,971.

R.R. Auction executive vice-president Robert Livingston said although Kennedy was in Boston on October 19, it is unknown if he actually met with Meyer.

Its something you wouldnt expect to see from a president, he said. And the fact that he didnt send it, obviously he came to his senses.

He said that the presidents secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, who served as an unofficial archivist, saving Kennedys documents, identified Meyer as the intended recipient.

* Originally published in May 2015, last updated September 2021.

IrishCentral History Love Irish history? Share your favorite stories with other history buffs in the IrishCentral History Facebook group.
Ireland has no shortage of churches and cathedrals, but some of them are home to stained glass masterpieces by Ireland's own, world-renowned artist, Harry Clarke.

Harry Patrick Clarke was born on March 17, 1877 - St. Patrick's Day - in Dublin. Clarke was the son of a decorator (who had founded Joshua Clarke & Sons) and his young life was shaped by his father's ever-present work in his art studio and by his mother, Brigid. He was only 14 years old when his mother died, and he was devastated. He left school and started apprenticing with his father.

Only a teenager when he was enrolled in the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, he was winning national awards for his work by the time he was in his mid-30s. In 1913 he set up his own studio and the next year he married a former student named Margaret Crilley.

Already one of the most sought-after stained-glass artists in Europe, Clarke was receiving regular commissions for work from not only Ireland but the continent as well. His work was high-profile  so high-profile that some of it was targeted and destroyed during the Easter Rising.

Also an illustrator, his first illustrated book was to be a version of Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales. The blocks were burned in the Rising, but the book was published anyway. Today, the color illustrations, kept safe in a private collection for decades, are a part of the National Gallery of Ireland's collections.

Clarke was plagued with ill health for much of his life. A severe bicycle accident in 1926 left him with fractured ribs and compression at the base of his skull, only adding to his health issues. By then, he was not only focusing on his own work but managing the family business as well. By 1929, his health had gotten so bad that he was sent to a sanatorium in Switzerland, where he was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

It was the same year he received his first American commission, for a set of nine windows destined for the Basilica of St. Vincent de Paul in Bayonne, NJ.

Clarke died on January 6, 1931, in Switzerland, leaving behind a massive catalog of work that can be seen in churches and cathedrals across Ireland.

Read more Artist creates beautiful Irish language map of Ireland inspired by Lord of the Rings

His career wasn't without its scandal, though, and the Irish government rejected one of his works for its salacious nature. The piece, featuring a nearly-nude dancer from the novel "Mr. Gilhooley" by Liam O'Flaherty, was a part of a set of 15 pieces inspired by some of Ireland's finest pieces of literature. Originally destined for the League of Nations, it was deemed unsuitable and was instead installed in Merrion Square and has most recently been purchased by the Fine Art Society, London.

Today, his windows can be seen everywhere from Australia to the U.S., and Ireland has quite a few from their native son. While some are in galleries and art collections, others still are in the houses of worship for which they were designed. Ballinasloe's St. Michael's Church has several pieces, while St. Mary's Church in Ballinrobe has eight original panels.

1925 St. Michael's Church, Ballinasloe depicting St. Patrick Posted by Harry Clarke on Saturday, February 13, 2021

Perhaps the most famous set is the nine pieces commissioned for The Honan Chapel in Cork City. Created over a period of three years, the windows were installed to unanimous praise beginning in 1916.

St Finnbarr window in the Honan Chapel, UCC, Cork Posted by Harry Clarke on Saturday, February 13, 2021

The windows that remain in the churches are exactly what Clarke would have wanted for his work. Every one of his commissioned pieces  no matter who it was for  first went on display at his studio before being sent to the buyer. Clarke believed that art was for everyone and that everyone should be able to view every piece and be inspired by it.

Originally from Attica, NY Debra Kelly is a freelance writer and journalist who has seen most of the U.S. during her travels. Ready for something new, she's now living in the wild hills of Connemara with her husband and plenty of animals. She is a frequent contributor to Urban Ghosts, Listverse and Knowledgenuts.

*Originally published in 2016, last updated in March 2021.

IrishCentral History Love Irish history? Share your favorite stories with other history buffs in the IrishCentral History Facebook group.
Irish groups in the US have been offering support - both financial and spiritually - to Creeslough, Co Donegal after the fatal explosion in the village on October 7.
The Conjuring 2

Director James Wan returns for more creepy creeps, this time with a 'true' case that happened in London in the late 1970s. It's a gorgeous production with an amazing sense of style and a huge number of properly chilling moments. It's going to be big.

Gods of Egypt

From the director of The Crow and I Robot comes a blockbusting tale of when gods walked the Earth alongside mankind. The scale of the story is huge, as Horus teams up with mortal to fight back against the deadly Set (Gerard Butler). It's been a few months since the US release and we're looking forward to checking it out.

Barbershop 3: A Fresh Cut

Remember those Barbershop movies you might have watched in the early 2000s? Well here's a sequel you also might watch. The crew is back and they need to work together against gang members roving the streets. That's actually the plot. Review across the pond have been great but these movies tend to do very little business outside of the States.

Tale of Tales

This one looks mental - an Italian-French-English fantasy horror film with a cast including John C. Reilly, Salma Hayek and Vincent Cassel. It's a twisted take on three famous fairytales and seems to be trying to make them as not safe for children as possible. Which is pretty much in keeping with the origins of these very screwed up stories.
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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.
Bob Wisniewski (right) has helped mentor and support Jonathan Morales for nearly 16 years, since Morales was graduating from grade school and heading to St. Thomas More High School. Credit: Michael Sears

The relationship of Jon Morales and his mentor, Bob Wisniewski, has the ingredients of a successful sitcom.

Jon is a Hispanic kid from the hood. Well, he's 30 now, but he grew up on Milwaukee's near south side after coming to the United States from Mexico at age 9 and growing up without a father and then without a mother after she returned to Mexico with his sisters a decade ago.

And Bob, 65, is a button-down white guy and business owner from the suburbs, Oconomowoc to be exact. He and his wife, Rebecca, do not have children, but they have embraced Jon as their own.

What's most remarkable is that this "show" is now in its 16th season. Jon and Bob were randomly paired in a mentoring program when Jon graduated from eighth grade at Nativity Jesuit Middle School, now called Nativity Jesuit Academy, 1515 S. 29th St. Bob's task was to help Jon navigate the following four years at St. Thomas More High School.

When high school ended, the two kept right on getting together in what became a mutually beneficial pairing, even when tough love was required.

"My goal has never been to be his best friend," Bob said when the three of us met at Jon's Milwaukee apartment recently. (He has since moved to Oak Creek with Andrea, his girlfriend for the past three years.)

"My goal has been to be there and provide some guidance for him so he can be the man he was meant to be. Sometimes that meant we had some less-than-comfortable conversations. That's part of the deal," Bob said.

Jon faltered at UWM and left the university more than once. Bob, who was helping with tuition, finally made it clear he wanted a firm commitment from Jon that he would buckle down.

It worked. Jon graduated last month with a bachelor's degree in communication. And he was graduation speaker this spring at UWM's Roberto Hernandez Center, which advises Latino students.

His accomplishments are even more impressive when you realize that Jon's kidneys have been failing the past six years. He is on waiting lists for a transplant, and he spends two to three hours most days on dialysis, making it too difficult to visit family in Mexico.

Bob also helped navigate the process that led to Jon becoming an American citizen in January 2015. Jon works full time for Milwaukee Public Schools as a paraprofessional at Lincoln Avenue Elementary, and he dreams of becoming a motivational speaker.

"Lately, I've told him that I don't see him as a mentor anymore," Jon said. "I see him as a father figure. The amount of respect I have for him and admiration, there aren't enough words for how grateful I am."

As a child, Jon had no desire to move to the United States. Life was good on the outskirts of Mexico City. But he jumped at the chance to live with his biological father in California, hoping it could be a new beginning for them. It didn't work out that way, and Jon wound up moving to Milwaukee with his mother and stepfather.

He spoke no English when he arrived, but began to learn it when he enrolled at Allen-Field Elementary School and then at Nativity. He became interested in cross country running while at Nativity and made the varsity team during his freshman year at Thomas More.

Coincidentally, Bob's own roots began on Milwaukee's south side near 27th and Lincoln where he and generations of his family lived. He went to Boys Tech for high school and then UWM. He worked at Trade Press Media Group in Glendale, and 27 years ago bought the company.

A colleague mentioned the mentoring opportunity to Bob, but he had his doubts.

"I said I live in the 'burbs. I don't have kids. What could I possibly give to a Hispanic guy? But for some reason I said yes," he said.

Boy and mentor were both nervous at their first meeting.

"I wasn't sure what was going to happen," Jon said. "I didn't know how he was going to help me."

"I'd go to all of Jon's parent-teacher conferences because his mother didn't speak English, so really she couldn't communicate with the teachers. I'd check in with his guidance counselor. I'd go to his track meets and cross country meets. We'd get together for lunch," Bob said.

"Little by little, I began to open up to him," Jon said.

Connecting with Jon through Catholic schools helped Bob renew his connection to the faith of his own youth. "I think he was a gift, I really do. He was a gift at a time in my life when I really needed it. I needed a purpose aside from trying to be successful in my business career," he said.

Jon is paying forward the help he received. He is a mentor to Ricky, a student at Thomas More.

"We talk. We hang out sometimes and go get lunch."

Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or email at jstingl@jrn.com. Connect with my public page at Facebook.com/Journalist.Jim.Stingl
Katie Couric attends the May 2016 premiere of her documentary "Under The Gun" in New York. Couric has taken responsibility for what she calls a decision that misrepresents the response of gun rights activists to a question she posed in the documentary. Credit: Associated Press

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Conversations! Glorious conversations! What more can you ask for?

The other day, former CBS News darling Katie Couric was speaking at an event organized by something called "TheWrap." Specifically, at its "Power Women Breakfast" in New York. (That is exactly the kind of event I'd expect Couric to be at, and I don't even know what it is.)

She was asked about the scandal swirling around her anti-gun-documentary  specifically, the fact that she deceptively edited a gun rights group's response to a question to make the members seem like dangerous idiots.

I wrote about all that in a recent column, so there's no need to repeat myself beyond noting that Couric and her producer are guilty of outright deception. But I thought her response was amusingly revealing.

"I can understand the objection of people who did have an issue about it," Couric said. (The "it" here is the deliberate falsifying of the truth). "Having said that, I think we have to focus on the big issue of gun violence. It was my hope that, when I approached this topic, that this would be a conversation starter."

Well, OK then.

After all, who denies that starting conversations  or, as they often call them in academia, "dialogues"  is the highest aspiration there is?

For instance, a Central Michigan University professor claimed last year that she was punched in the face at a Toby Keith concert for being a lesbian. She later admitted that she actually punched herself, but said it was worth it because she wanted to start a dialogue.

As the Washington Examiner's Ashe Schow recently chronicled, this sort of thing is common on college campuses. Students and professors initiate or exacerbate a hate-crime hoax or a false rape accusation. The orchestrators are perfectly happy to pretend the fraud is real and demonize anyone who casts doubt on the claims.

Then, when the facts come to light, instead of apologies we're saturated with a fog of pomposity and self-justification: We were just trying to start a conversation. Raising awareness of the larger issue is more important than the mere facts.

Even when liberals call for an "honest conversation" about this, that or the other thing, what they really mean is they want everyone who disagrees with the prevailing progressive view to fall in line.

Almost invariably, when I hear calls for "frank talk," "honest dialogue" or a new "national conversation," I immediately translate it as, "Let the next chapter of indoctrination begin." It's a way of luring dissenters from political correctness out into the open so they can be smashed over the head with a rock.

Remember, behind every obvious double standard is a hidden single standard. For instance, earlier this year, The New Yorker's Jane Mayer came out with a book attacking libertarian philanthropists Charles and David Koch called "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right." When asked by NPR's Steve Inskeep what the nefarious supervillains of her screed were really up to, she ominously explained, "What they're aiming at is changing the conversation in the country."

Well, so are left-wing billionaire George Soros and his minions. So is Mayer herself. So are all of these campus fraudsters and activists. And so is Katie Couric. But when someone on the other side of the ideological chasm questions the official narrative, they must be demonized or otherwise silenced.

Why? Because the last thing progressives want is to start an honest conversation. They want to have their conversations  and only their conversations.

Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of National Review. Email goldbergcolumn@gmail.com Twitter: @JonahNRO
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A Wisconsin court of appeals has finally put to rest some of the questions over what information must be withheld under the federal Driver's Privacy Protection Act, or DPPA. Its recent decision ends years of confusion in a way that squares with the state's traditions of openness  and with common sense.

The DPPA was enacted more than two decades ago to restrict the release of personal information from DMV records. It was never meant to prevent police from releasing basic information in accident reports and other law enforcement records.

But that was how the law was interpreted in much of Wisconsin. In recent years, following a federal court ruling in an Illinois case, concerns over liability have led some law enforcement agencies to heavily redact (black out) reports bblackouteasing them  limiting their news value and hampering public oversight of police.

In its May 10 decision, Wisconsin's 3rd District Court of Appeals held that accident reports need not be redacted to comply with the DPPA because state law expressly mandates their disclosure. Personal information obtained from other sources and merely verified with DMV records also may be released.

I was one of the attorneys, along with Bob Dreps, who represented a newspaper that filed the lawsuit that led to this ruling. The case was brought by the New Richmond News against the city of New Richmond.

Congress passed the DPPA in 1994 after a television actress was murdered by a stalker who obtained her home address from a local DMV. The law's intent is clear: DMVs, with their vast repositories of personal information, cannot disclose that data except for one of 14 "permissible uses." The same restrictions apply to other agencies that use DMV data.

But then, in 2012, the village of Palatine, Ill., was threatened with liability for printing vehicle owners' personal information  obtained from DMV records  on parking tickets placed on car windshields. The Palatine case caused some police departments in Wisconsin to start redacting records, prompting the New Richmond News to file suit.

In the end, reason won out in Palatine. The courts ultimately ruled that disclosing personal information on parking tickets was allowed because the police department used the information in carrying out its functions  one of the 14 "permissible uses."

Reason also should win out in Wisconsin, although this may not happen right away. Whereas the court of appeals ruled accident reports must always be accessible, it also concluded that personal information obtained from DMV records and incorporated into incident reports only can be disclosed if doing so serves a function of the police department  a question the case was remanded to the circuit court to resolve.

The public has a legitimate right to law enforcement records, which are of little value if scrubbed of names and addresses. How can the public know if laws are enforced equally and appropriately if the identities of the people involved are obscured?

Ideally, the common-sense approach adopted by the court of appeals will serve as a blueprint for addressing the questions that remain  without further litigation.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (www.wisfoic.org), a nonprofit group dedicated to open government. Dustin Brown is an attorney at Godfrey & Kahn, S.C.
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The most recent attack is just the latest example of violence against the LGBT community.

A brief history:

June 12, 2016  A gunman opens fire in Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, killing at least 50 people and sending 53 to the hospital.

Dec. 31, 2013  Musab Masmari poured gasoline in a stairway at a decades-old gay nightclub, and lit it. There were about 750 people in the Seattle club for a New Year's Eve celebration at the time, but the fire was extinguished with no injuries. An associate of his "reported that Masmari confided in him that he 'burned a gay club' and that he did it because 'what these people are doing is wrong,'" an assistant U.S. attorney said in court documents. Masamari was sentenced to 10 years on federal arson charges.

March 1, 2009 Brothers Lawrence Henry Lewis and Lawrneil Henry Lewis and their cousin Alejandro Sam Gray hurled chunks of concrete at patrons of a gay bar in Galveston, Texas. One of the victims, Marc Bosaw, required twelve staples in his head.

Sept. 22, 2000  Ronald Gay opened fire in a gay bar in Roanoke, Va., killing 43-year-old Danny Overstreet and injuring six others. Gay told police he didn't like being teased about his last name. Several of his sons had changed their last name. And his fifth ex-wife had a same-sex relationship before their marriage. Gay told authorities it was his mission to make all gays move to San Francisco, which he thought would end AIDS.

Feb. 21, 1997  Eric Rudolph sets off a nail-laden explosive device at the Otherside Lounge, a nightclub in Atlanta with a mostly gay and lesbian clientele. The lounge was crowded with about 150 people when the device went off on a rear patio. Five people are wounded. Rudolph, better known for targeting the 1996 Summer Olympics, said he was striking back at a "morally corrupt government" that allows abortion and homosexuality.

June 24, 1973  An arsonist sets fire to the Upstairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans' French Quarter, killing 32 people.
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A mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub early Sunday in which 50 people died, including the gunman, marks yet another brutal rampage in U.S. history. It is believed to be the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. History.

The incident, inside the gay nightclub Pulse, was being investigated as a possible act of terrorism.

Here are some of the deadliest rampages in recent U.S. history:

 April 16, 2007:Seung Hui Cho, a 23-year-old student, went on a shooting spree at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., killing 32 people, before killing himself.

 Dec. 14, 2012:Adam Lanza, 20, gunned down 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School before killing himself.

 Oct. 16, 1991:George Hennard, 35, crashed his pickup through the wall of Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas. He shot and killed 23 people before committing suicide.

 July 18, 1984: James Huberty, 41, gunned down 21 adults and children at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, Calif., before being killed by police.

 Aug. 1, 1966: Charles Joseph Whitman, a former U.S. Marine, shot and killed 16 people from a university tower at the University of Texas in Austin before being shot by police.

 Aug. 20, 1986:A part-time mail carrier, Patrick Henry Sherrill, shot and killed 14 postal workers in Edmund, Okla., before killing himself.

 Dec. 2, 2015: Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a married couple living in Redlands, Calif., opened fire at a San Bernardino County Department of Public Health training event and holiday party, killing 14 people and injuring 22 in a matter of minutes. Farook, an American-born U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, worked at the health department. Malik had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a Facebook post before the shooting.

 Nov. 5, 2009:U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan fatally shot 13 people and injured 30 others at Fort Hood near Killeen, Texas. Hasan, a psychiatrist, appeared to have been radicalized by an Islamic cleric. He was convicted and sentenced to death.

 Sept. 16, 2013:Gunman Aaron Alexis, 34, fatally shot 12 people and injured three others at the headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington, D.C. He was later killed by police.

 July 20, 2012:James Holmes gunned down 12 people in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater. Last year he was convicted of first-degree murder and attempted murder and sentenced to 12 consecutive life sentences plus 3,318 years without parole.

Oct. 1, 2015: Christopher Harper-Mercer, a 26-year-old student at Umpqua Community College near Roseburg, Ore., shot an assistant professor and eight students in a classroom. After a shootout with police, he committed suicide.

 June 18, 2015:A gunman opened fire at a weekly Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. Nine people were killed, including the pastor Clementa Pinckney; a 10th victim survived. The morning after the attack police arrested a suspect, Dylann Roof, 21, who said he wanted to start a race war. Laywers for Roof, who was charged in the rampage, last week filed papers seeking to waive his right to a jury trial.

 July 16, 2015: Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez opened fire on two military installations in Chattanooga, Tenn. The first was a drive-by shooting at a recruiting center; the second was at a U.S. Navy Reserve center. Four Marines and a Navy sailor died; a Marine recruit officer and a police offer were wounded. Abdulazeez was killed by police in a gunfight.

 Nov. 27, 2015: A gunman attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo., killing a police officer and two civilians and injuring nine others. Robert Lewis Dear was taken into custody after a five-hour standoff and charged with first-degree murder.
Robert Borba is being called a hero after chasing an alleged bicycle thief with his horse and nabbing him with a lasso in a Walmart parking lot on Friday. Credit: Associated Press

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Eagle Point, Ore.  A rancher jumped on his horse Friday morning and lassoed a man who was trying to steal a bicycle in the parking lot of an Oregon Walmart, police said.

Robert Borba was at the Eagle Point store loading dog food and a camping tent into his truck when he heard a woman screaming that someone was trying to steal her bike, the Medford Mail Tribune reports.

The 28-year-old said he quickly got his horse, Long John, out of its trailer. He grabbed a rope, rode over to the man who was reportedly struggling with the bike gears and attempting to flee on foot. Borba lassoed the man around the legs and when he dropped, Borba dragged him to one end of the parking lot.

"I seen this fella trying to get up to speed on a bicycle," Borba told the Tribune. "I wasn't going to catch him on foot. I just don't run very fast."

Borba said the man tried to grab a tree and get away, but he kept the rope tight and the man in place.

"I use a rope every day, that's how I make my living," Borba said. "If it catches cattle pretty good, it catches a bandit pretty good."

Eagle Point police Sgt. Darin May said officers arrived and found the lassoed man and bike on the ground in the parking lot.

"We've never had anyone lassoed and held until we got there," May said. "That's a first for me."

Police arrested Victorino Arellano-Sanchez, whom they described as a transient from the Seattle area, on a theft charge.

Arellano-Sanchez is jailed in Jackson County. Staff members at the jail say they don't think he has an attorney.
06/12/2016



Peter Leavitt enjoys honoring patriotic holidays, including Flag Day.

by Katie Cline

Students and faculty may recognize Peter Leavitt as one of the friendly workers at Jacksonville State Universitys mail center, but even if youre not familiar with the campus, theres one other place you may have seen him: standing on the Jacksonville Square dressed in Revolutionary War garb and proudly waving the American flag. It is a hobby that started his senior year of high school after a school project on the Second Amendment sparked his interest in American history.

The first time I went out in costume, I was like, Ahh, I dont know if I like this, but its a conversation starter, Leavitt chuckled.

Leavitt dresses up for patriotic holidays like Flag Day, Independence Day and Veterans Day. He said he uses his time in costume to share with people the importance of preserving the country the Founding Fathers established.

Common sense is becoming uncommon, Leavitt said. Good is becoming bad; bad is becoming good. Its our duty as Americans to know the Constitution, because one definition of democracy is rule by the ruled. Its up to us to know how its supposed to be run. When we shy away from the Constitution and shy away from knowing our government, it can very easily become corrupted, because were not holding our government accountable.

In November 2015, Leavitt had the honor of reading the Declaration of Independence at a 240th birthday celebration for the United States Marine Corps held in Gadsden, Ala.

It brought tears to my eyes, said Leavitt. When I got done reading, all these men and women jumped up from their seats and started clapping, because this is what theyre fighting for.

Leavitt is not part of an organized group of historical re-enactors. He is merely a citizen with a passion for history and his countrys roots. He dresses up on his own time to remind people that the freedoms they enjoy today were not easily won.

We need to keep what the Founding Fathers established, Leavitt said. They didnt sign their names on the Declaration of Independence for nothing. They signed it knowing that they could be caught and killed by the British. Freedom is something that, once lost, is hard to regain,

Leavitt is a Jacksonville native and lives in the Pleasant Valley area with his parents and two siblings: his younger sister, Lydia, and his older brother, Michael, a JSU student. All three children have been homeschooled together their entire lives.

When hes not in costume, Leavitt enjoys practicing karate and woodworking with his father, a hobby he has had since he was a child. The two have made everything from small wooden gift boxes to large-scale projects like catapults. His future goals, however, lie in history and public speaking.

I want to go nationwide and go to different events, and I want to educate people of all ages  not just children  about our Constitution and why it should be important to us, he said.

While Flag Day is June 14, Leavitt already recognized the holiday on the Jacksonville Square on Saturday, June 11. You can see him again on the morning of Saturday, July 2, in observance of Independence Day. He can also be seen reading the Declaration of Independence at the Jax City Fest and fireworks show in the Jacksonville High School stadium on July 2.
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

Ron Huldai, the mayor of Tel Aviv, reacted with enormous sadness to Thursdays terrorist attack on the Sarona Market restaurant district in Tel Aviv, which left 4 dead, committed by a teenagers from the Occupied Palestinian West Bank. But he then went on to put the attack in context. This kind of violence, he said, results from the Israeli Occupation, a Peculiar Institution unlike any other in the world.

Huldai said,

We, as a state, are the only ones in the world with another people living among us under our occupation, denying them any civil rights . . . The problem is that when there is no terrorism, no one talks about [the occupation] . . .Nobody has the guts to take a step towards trying to make some kind of [final status] arrangement. We are 49 years into an occupation that I was a participant in, and I recognize the reality and know that leaders with courage just say things.

Contextualizing is forbidden by the Zionist right wing, which maintains that all violence against Jews is the result of mindless Antisemitism and to attempt to explain such attacks is to condone them. This kind of argumentation from the Right is of course essentially fascist, since it forbids reasoning and demands acquiescence to a nationalist imperative; it also demonizes all Others and exalts the ethnicity of the Self as innocent suffering martyr.

[Deputy] Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan rebuked Huldai, saying I want to remind him that there was terrorism here 100 years ago, and in 1929 Jews were murdered [in a massacre in Hebron] and there was no State of Israel. There wasnt even an occupation.

Ben-Dahans remark is so inaccurate as to be delusional. Palestine was occupied by the British Empire at the end of World War I and ruled by London until 1948. The Palestinians were under occupation. Moreover, in 1917 just before that occupation began, the British government in its notorious colonial Balfour Declaration promised to create a homeland for Jews in the midst of Palestine. The hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were not consulted by the British about this plan for bringing in thousands of foreign immigrants (just as French colonial authorities did not consult the Algerians about bringing in colonists from Malta, Italy and elsewhere, and from southern France). Attacks on Jews in Palestine during the British Mandate were in fact a protest against occupation (sometimes they had economic motives). What the Palestinians could not imagine is that the British and the Jewish immigrants would deprive them of their country entirely (a country promised by the League of Nations and the 1939 British white paper) and turn them into stateless refugees, i.e. into flotsam on the waves of history rather than human beings with rights.

As for Huldais assertiion, it is clear-eyed and correct.

Some will object that there are other instances besides Israel/Palestine of one people oppressing another. They will instance Kurds in Turkey or Tibetans in China or Western Saharans in Morocco. But in each of these cases, the group maintaining that it is oppressed has been given citizenship in the state. It may not want that citizenship. But it has it, and all the rights that come with it.

It is a very different matter to have an ethnicity within a state that feels disadvantaged than to have a large group of people who have been ethnically cleansed from their original homes and stripped of all nationality, and left stateless.

As I said in my Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture ,

I want to make an argument about the character of the Palestine issue. Im not going to argue that its a unique problem but I am going to argue that its almost unique in contemporary affairs, and that there are some aspects of it that explain why it is so seemingly intractable. Im going to start with an increasingly important field of study, citizenship studies. There are journals now devoted to it; its become a big thing in academia. My colleague at the University of Michigan, Margaret Somers, wrote an important book on citizenship not so long ago. And as she points out, Chief Justice Earl Warren of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1958 wrote: Citizenship is mans basic right, for it is nothing less than the right to have rights. Remove this priceless possession and there remains a stateless person disgraced and degraded in the eyes of his countrymen. So Warren is drawing here implicitly on the work of Hannah Arendt but this is the key point that I want to make today. Citizenship is the right to have rights. People who lack citizenship in a state ipso facto have no right to have rights if we came to the Palestinians, their situation of citizenship is obviously deformed. Theres no state. Theyre lacking an entire section of the column. And then their market is not very robust and of course in Gaza there is no market to speak of, the Israelis have Gaza under siege. Theres no airport, theres no harbor, and the Israelis dont permit the Palestinians in Gaza to export most of what they make, some strawberries, off of which the Israelis take a cut. But mostly the export market doesnt exist in Gaza. So the market and the separation wall and the politics of the neighboring states are such that the Palestinians dont have a strong relationship to the market, they dont have a state at all, there are a lot of NGOS, and so for the Palestinians, the NGO sector is the one place where theres a little glimmer maybe of some citizenship. But thats weird. And thats unexampled in the world. Theres no other group of people that look like that. In the world, right now.

Other than Huldai, the response by most Israeli politicians was a demand for more harsh measures against the stateless, occupied Palestinians. Some even lamented, as this column translated by BBC Monitoring shows, that the Israeli state could not act more harshly than it has, for fear of Palestinian backlash.

Yoav Limor said in free, pro-Netanyahu Yisrael Hayom: Things have to be said honestly: Israel has no magic solutions to terrorist attacks The decisions the cabinet took are minor  sweeping cancellation of 204 work permits for members of the clan to which the terrorists from Yatta belonged and freezing reliefs given to about 80,000 Palestinians in Ramadan (mainly family visits). The other decisions, foremost the imposition of siege on Yatta and reinforcing forces in the territories with two more battalions, were taken already on the night of the terrorist attack The fear is that too harsh a response would put the field in a spin again, and still in the days of the Ramadan festival. Therefore, Israel avoided collective harming of the Palestinian population; in spite of the boiling guts, routine life in the West Bank will continue.

Yeah, I actually dont think things will go on normally in the West Bank forever under these conditions. There is likely to be a blow-up.

-

Related video added by Juan Cole:

PressTV:  Israel demolishes Palestinian home over Tel Aviv attack
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by Dinesh Sharma | (The Conversation) |  

Both conservatives and progressives have argued Hillary Rodham Clinton is more hawkish than President Obama.

Robert Gates, the secretary of defense under both Presidents Bush and Obama, worked with her in the White House and called her a tough lady.

Bruce Riedel, a South Asia expert at Brookings Institution, who advised President Obama on Afghanistan war policy, has said:

I think one of the surprises for Gates and the military was, here they come in expecting a very left-of-center administration, and they discover that they have a secretary of state whos a little bit right of them on these issues  a little more eager than they are, to a certain extent.

In my new book The Global Hillary, I argue that Hillarys strong stance on the national security involves two instincts.

First, her realist instinct predisposes her to take the world at face value, not an idealized worldview. Second, her feminist instinct makes her inclusive of differences between the sexes and tolerant of diversity.

As a hard-nosed realist  the daughter of a staunch Republican and a chief petty naval officer from World War II  she sees the world as a dangerous place. This has shaped her foreign policy. She is an interventionist, not averse to using military force to reshape the world. Her approach to Libya and Syria was more activist than President Obamas.

She believes in the force of hard power  military and economic  to fundamentally alter a societys political culture. The Kosovo war in former Yugoslavia during Bill Clintons presidency presents one of the examples of successful use of hard power. Vaclav Havel, the late Noble laureate and Czech president, has said Kosovo could be called an ethical war, because this war placed human rights above the rights of the state.

President Obama is more of a pragmatic idealist, the son of a bohemian and progressive anthropologist mother who worked for international development agencies in Southeast Asia and Africa. He is not inclined to be an interventionist. Obama has relied heavily on special operations and geopolitical strategy to reshape the world from Cuba to Iran and Syria.

In their book The Hillary Doctrine: Sex and American Foreign Policy, Valerie Hudson and Patricia Leidl examine the claim made by then secretary of state in 2010 that terrorism is fueled by lack of womens development in different parts of the world.

The linkage between womens development and violence against women as a national security issue has not been made explicit by the U.S. government in the manner that Hillary Clinton does. This axiomatic linkage states that the subjugation of women leads to the deterioration of human conditions. Clintons worldview suggests that in order to improve the social and developmental conditions around the world, we should invest in improving the conditions of women. This view is consistent with the postwar liberalism championed by Eleanor Roosevelt.

Clinton has systematically pushed for womens rights are human rights as a policy of the government. As a daughter whose mother was born on the day women secured the right to vote (June 4, 1919), she finds the political deeply personal. This unique perspective on national security may be called smart power feminism.

Broad segments of the U.S. population, including suburban married working mothers, or security moms, and other middle-class voters of different races and ethnic groups seem to find this compelling.

Thus, Hillarys smart power strategy relies on elements of Americas hard military power and soft cultural power. This allows Hillarys hawkish instincts to coexist with her feminist instincts. It makes the world more secure and more inclusive simultaneously. Finally, it advances the cause of other female politicians entering the male dominated world of electoral politics.

Hillarys national security feminism is smart power in an increasingly globalized world. It underscores the growing realization that womens more empathetic and compromise-driven leadership style is better suited for the multilateral challenges of the 21st century.

National security credentials

Hillarys national security credentials have gained admirers among neoconservatives like the veteran foreign policy expert Robert Kagan. While they have castigated President Obama, the neoconservatives have been aligning themselves with Hillary Clinton in her bid to drive American foreign policy.

George W. Bush retained the womens vote in 2004 by warning security moms not to change boats midstream. In 2016, Donald Trump is employing a similar strategy with women by projecting himself as the strong man. This strategy may backfire, according to Jennifer Lawless of American University, who argues he wont be able to peel back some of that distaste of his earlier comments.

As the security analyst Juliette Kayyem has suggested:

Only Clinton, as a mother and grandmother, can speak to the emotional fear for the safety of our children that animates so many women voters.

By openly discussing the security risks we face and proposing a less belligerent approach to our friends and foes in the Islamic world, she can win over the group of women who might otherwise vote conservative  that approximately 22 percent of eligible women voters who are white and married with no college degrees.

While the number of security moms may be shrinking, they are nonetheless an important demographic to capture from the conservatives or the Tea Party.

New global threats call for steady leadership. The rise of the Islamic State and homegrown attacks has created a gender gap in the attitudes toward terrorism.

Seventy-nine percent of women say they are not satisfied with progress against terrorism, while 69 percent of men concur. Only 35 percent of women approved of current handling of terrorism policy, while 64 percent disapproved, creating a huge gap of 30 points. This gap was half as large among men, with 57 percent disapproving and 42 percent approving.

Some Americans believe society is becoming too soft and feminine. Forty-two percent of all Americans versus 68 percent of Trump supporters want to revert back to a more masculine culture. Forty-five percent of all Americans versus 65 percent of Trump supporters say they want a leader who breaks rules in order to fix the system.

Yet, the world demands steady global leadership from the U.S. A survey of residents of G-20 nations indicated they prefer Hillary Clinton.

Since the presidency is one of the last bastions of male-dominated political culture, Clinton has to be much tougher on national security issues in order to appeal to the majority of voters. At the same time, she has successfully advocated for the rights of all minorities, including women of diverse backgrounds.

The critics may argue the rise of national security feminism is problematic. It deflects the blame of widespread domestic violence or abuse in the U.S., where women are still treated as second-class citizens, and advances market-based neoliberal policies worldwide as if to rescue humanity. Inderpal Grewal at Yale University has observed that anxiety about womens security externalize the patriarchal violence in the home by taking on nationalist discourses of protection against convenient targets.

However, Hillary Rodham Clinton  as the only female nominee of a major political party to offer a comprehensive platform of human rights issues  represents hard-won progress for the rights of women, children and men everywhere.

Dinesh Sharma, Associate Research Professor, Binghamton University, State University of New York

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.



Related video added by Juan Cole:

PBS NewsHour: Hillary Clinton: Trumps foreign policy would endanger America
Authorities in Bangladesh detained approximately 1,600 people between Thursday and Friday in efforts to find and detain radical Islamist militants. Police suspect [NYT report] only 37 of the detainees are more than petty criminals, none of whom are believed to be high-level operators. The raids were a response to multiple attacks in Bangladesh over the last few years, and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has faced criticism regarding security for minorities and failure to prosecute suspects of the attacks. Victims include atheist journalists, foreign aid workers, professors, gay rights activists and religious minorities including Christians, Hindus and Shiite Muslims. Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] has also criticized the government for failing to provide adequate safeguards [AI report]. Opposition groups in the country also expressed concern that the government would use campaigns like this to suppress opposition.

In April Bangladeshs minister of law told the press that the arrest of a well-known magazine editor, Shafik Rahman, was not politically motivated [JURIST report]. Also in April former Bangladeshi prime minister Khaleda Zia surrendered to a court [JURIST report] after an arrest warrant was issued against her in connection with the firebombing bus attack last year staged in opposition of the government. In March the Bangladesh Supreme Court found two ministers guilty of contempt after they had publicly criticized the chief justice of the court [JURIST report]. Also in March the Bangladesh high court threw out a petition [JURIST report] introduced by secular activists that sought the removal of Islam as the state religion.
The Michigan Senate [official website] on Thursday passed a bill (SB 291) [text, PDF] that would compensate people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes once they are exonerated [Daily Tribune report]. SB 291, also known as the Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act, passed the Senate by a unanimous vote and will now go to the states House of Representatives. The goal of the bill is to eliminate an expensive and difficult legal battle to receive compensation for wrongful imprisonment. However, if a sentence for a separate crime related to the same event as the wrongful conviction is upheld, the bill is rendered inapplicable. SB 291 provides $50,000 for every year that someone was wrongfully incarcerated, but a separate claim must be made for compensation regarding any injuries suffered while in prison. This would make Michigan one of many states providing such assistance.

The treatment of prisoners and prison reform [JURIST podcast] has been a matter of ongoing concern in the US, and the rights of convicted felons are an important part of the issue. In April US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that states should make it easier for convicted felons to obtain state-issued identification cards upon their release from prison [JURIST report]. Also in April Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe restored the voting rights [JURIST report] of individuals who have completed the terms of incarceration and have been released from supervised probation or parole for any and all felony convictions. In March the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio and the Ohio Justice and Policy Center released a report [JURIST report] with recommendations on reforming the criminal justice system in Ohio, and one of the discussions focuses dealt with releasing innocent people. In February 2015 Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf declared a moratorium on the death penalty [JURIST report], citing inadequate procedures to protect the innocent as one of the major concerns.
A judge from Multnomah County Circuit Court [official website] in Oregon ruled [text, PDF] on Friday that an individuals gender could be legally changed from from female to non-binary. This ruling legally recognizing a third gender option is the first of its kind in the United States. Army veteran Jamie Shupe petitioned the court [Oregonian report] for this change because the binary distinctions of male and female did not reflect Jamies correct gender identity. Under Oregon law, a court can change a persons legal sex if the judge determines that the individual has undertaken some treatment related to gender transitioning, but no doctors note is required.

Gender identity and expression are at the center of an international legal conversation about the rights and protections afforded to LGBT individuals. In June a US magistrate judge issued an order requiring [JURIST report] California prisons to provide transgender inmates who identify as female access to female-oriented items in womens correctional facilities. Also in June Bleu Copas and Caleb Laieski filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF] in the Chancery Court for Anderson County, challenging [JURIST report] a Tennessee law that protects counselors who refuse to provide services to individuals based on their religious beliefs. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau [official website] introduced legislation in May that would ban [JURIST report] transgender discrimination, including it within Canadas hate crime laws.
KILKENNY solicitor Padraig Butler who was found guilty of professional misconduct has been struck off the roll of solicitors by the President of the High Court, Judge Nicky Kearns.

KILKENNY solicitor Padraig Butler who was found guilty of professional misconduct has been struck off the roll of solicitors by the President of the High Court, Judge Nicky Kearns.

Last October a disciplinary tribunal recommended to the President of the High Court that Butler of Butler Solicitors, Lower Patrick Street be struck off for professional misconduct.

Emer Kirwan of the Complaints and Client Relations Section of the Law Society told the tribunal that there were a number of breaches relating to four properties at Regency Court in Kilkenny city. She also outlined that there were 19 breaches in relation to property at Fiddown in Co Kilkenny where there had been a failure to discharge ACC charges.

Tim Bolger who works as a chartered accounted for the Law Society said that a number of payments were made from their compensation fund in relation to claims made against Mr Butler. In total 825,957 had been paid out.

The tribunal also heard 1.2 million was taken from the administration of the estate of the late Elizabeth Sinnott.

The tribunal found Mr Butler guilty of professional misconduct and not fit to be a solicitor and remarked that The Law Society treated the matter in most grave way.

Following the hearing the tribunal prepared a report for the President of the High Court recommending that Butler be struck off.

Mr Butler previously issued an apology through his solicitor to the tribunal and wished to apologise to the tribunal, The Law Society and his colleagues. He also stated that most of the difficulties that arose in relation to his undertakings were not of his clients making but added that his client should not have engaged. The tribual heard that Mr Butlers wife was one of the benefeciaries of the clients estate from where the money was taken.

During a High Court case in 2009 Mr Butler, admitted taking 1.2 million from the dead womans estate despite knowing the amount due to him was more than half that sum. The court heard that Mr Butler was owed between 300,000 and 500,000 for work related to the estate and by taking the amount he did he left a deficit of between 586,000 and 850,000 in the account.

At the disciplinary hearing The Law Society was told Mr Butler didnt have the capacity to pay back the deficit.

Last December EBS Building Society issued High Court proceedings against the now ex-solicitor. EBS obtained a jusgement of 1.2 million against Butler in 2011.
Olympic Mountain Rescue's Andy Graham (left) instructs Pat Dryer, of Juneau Mountain Rescue, on the use of an extraction tool as they attempt to cut away parts of a plane during wilderness plane crash rescue training on Wednesday. The Mountain Rescue Assocation held the training as part of its spring conference in Port Angeles. (MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN)

SHARE A "victim" is removed from a simulated crashed aircraft by (clockwise left to right) Jeremy Adolf, Jason Bowman, Doug Wessen and Richard Riquelme. Bremerton-based Olympic Mountain Rescue organized the simulation for participants from across the nation. (MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN) Jason Bowman, a member of Eugene Mountain Rescue, uses a tool that rescuers would have on hand to attempt to cut into the outside of an airplane. More than 200 members of volunteer rescue organizations from around the country gathered in Port Angeles this week for the Mountain Rescue Association's annual spring conference. (MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN)

By Tristan Baurick of the Kitsap Sun

PORT ANGELES  If you survive an airplane crash on a mountain or deep in the woods, your rescuer probably won't be a firefighter or a police officer. More likely, it'll be someone like Ed Carlson.

He works a desk job, coordinating the distribution of nutritional supplements and other retail goods. When he has time, he volunteers with his local mountain rescue group. He's never seen a crashed plane  let alone tried to save anyone trapped inside.

This week, he and several other search and rescue volunteers got their first taste of such a scenario, albeit with a junker planes and crash victims made of couch cushions and old jeans.

"I've never trained this way," Carlson said. "To get a hands-on experience without the pressure that someone's going to die on you is amazing."

More than 200 members of volunteer rescue organizations from around the country gathered in Port Angeles this week for the Mountain Rescue Association's annual spring conference. Organized by Bremerton-based Olympic Mountain Rescue, it was the first conference of its kind in Washington in 15 years.

RELATED: Bremerton mountain rescue group to hold national conference

Rescuers attended workshops, lectures and daylong trainings on wilderness tracking, rock climbing and digital mapping. OMR volunteer and longtime Gig Harbor firefighter Andy Graham ran the plane crash rescue training. While many groups are adept in locating downed planes, few get to practice cutting and prying their way into a wreck, said Dave Clarke, the Mountain Rescue Association's president.

"This is the first time this kind of class has been put on for mountain rescue groups," he said. "If you're assigned to locate a plane and you find somebody trapped in it, you may be all they have. Nobody else may be coming for a long time, so the tips learned here are invaluable."

OMR spent about six months acquiring four airplane bodies for the training. They came from Port Ludlow, Tacoma and Lewis County, and cost OMR about $500.

Rescuers tried out simple tools  saws, jacks, hammers, pry bars  as well as Jaws of Life, a hydraulic cutting and spreading tool commonly used to extract drivers from smashed-up cars.

The Jaws of Life suddenly stopped working during one exercise.

"Now we know how long the battery lasts," joked one volunteer.

Bellingham Mountain Rescue member Jason Martin came away from the training preferring the simple five-foot-long pry bar.

"Look what we did with it in three minutes," he said, pointing to a three-foot wide hole cut into the aluminum roof of an old Cessna. "It's heavy, but it worked better than anything."

Graham stressed the dangers downed planes pose to rescuers: shock from electrical wires, fires from fuel systems and rocketing projectiles from damaged pilot ejection and air bag systems.

"There are so many dangers I didn't know they had," said Jeremy Adolf of Eugene Mountain Rescue in Oregon.

The members of a central California rescue group have never responded to a plane crash, but rescuers from Alaska, where small plane travel is common, see crashes as routine. OMR  which responds to emergency calls in Kitsap County and the Olympic and Cascade mountains  has sent volunteers to four plane crashes in the last eight years.

Statistics back up the saying that you're more likely to die driving to the airport than flying in a plane  as long as you stick to commercial flights. Small and private planes are another matter. In 2014  the most recent year statistics were available  a total of 419 people died in small and private aircraft accidents in the U.S., according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The number of small craft accidents has declined over the last 15 years, but the most recent tally was still around 1,200.

There are many reasons why small plane travel is riskier than commercial flights, but the biggest factor is pilot error. Usually amateurs, small plane pilots are more likely to misjudge weather risks, run out of fuel, overlook maintenance problems and crash into things.

Many accidents happen in remote areas  mountains, forests, deserts  and require the assistance of volunteer rescue groups.

"The first challenge is locating a crash site," Graham said. "Finding a small plane in the wilderness is like finding a needle in a haystack."

Rescue groups use logged flight routes or a plane's emergency locator transmitter to determine a crash site's general area.

OMR rescuers followed their noses to one recent crash in the Cascades.

"It was the smell of aviation fuel that got them there," Graham said.

On another crash  this one near Morton in Lewis County  OMR rescuers followed the growing number of scavenging birds drawn to the pilot's body.

Graham's course was especially useful for the Alaskans. During the summer months, their state averages one plane crash per day.

"Flying is a common mode of transportation for us," said Doug Wessen of Juneau Mountain Rescue. "It's the easiest way to get to a lot of places, especially when you've got school districts the size of Virginia or Idaho."

Carlson, who volunteers with California's Inyo County Search and Rescue, said few pilots attempt to fly over the Sierra Nevada in his corner of the state.

"But if they do, I'll be more ready," he said. "Learning this stuff in a classroom is one thing. Now I will have the muscle memory that will hopefully kick in when I need it."
Stuff reported:

The grieving family of a man shot dead by police in the Karangahake Gorge near Paeroa want an independent inquiry into what they describe as a cold-blooded execution. Mike Taylor was shot on Friday morning by police who were responding to a call from his long-time partner, Natalie Avery. Avery and her children, Carlin, 21, and Amy, 14, say there was no need for police to shoot Taylor, as he had thrown his weapons and was walking away. They claim he put his hands in the air as hed been instructed to do and was kneeling down when he was shot..  He threw the slasher  it had no handle  over the top of the police car and he smashed the passenger window with the machete and then he walked away. He would have been at least 20 metres from the police car, hands up, bowed his knees and from there they shot him  through the heart from behind. It was cold blooded.

All Police shootings are fully investigating by the IPCA. But this seems a pretty simple case, as the forensic evidence will be very clear as to whether or not he was shot from behind.

The Herald reports:

Police say a man shot dead in Paeroa yesterday was shot in the torso, not in the back as his partner claims.  Acting Assistant Commissioner Bruce Bird said as Mr Taylor approached police armed with a machete, a number of shots were fired from the front seat of the patrol car at short range.

If you approach armed police with a machete and refuse to put it down, then you will get tasered or shot.

Avery said she and Taylor had been having an ongoing dispute with Hauraki District Council and police over access to the roadway. I knew it [the shooting] was going to happen some day, Avery said. Residents said Taylor had terrorised his small community, threatening and intimidating people who crossed near the property on their walks. They said he claimed the land, which overlooks the Karangahake River, was his land, even though it was a public road. He ended up in court on numerous occasions for threatening behaviour and offensive language. On one occasion he was charged with trying to run down an elderly man and his daughter, who were on a walk. Hes threatened everybody in the neighbourhood, a local woman said. Its a wonder somebody else hasnt been shot. Taylor was engaged in a long-running battle over the erection of some gates across the public road, which he would put back up every time the Hauraki District Council took them down. The gates were taken down in the presence of police because the council workers were so scared to go up there on their own because of the history of this bloke, a second man said. He was arrogant and brutal, with the foulest mouth. People would take their dog for a walk and he would say, Ill kill your dog.

It sounds like the way this ended was somewhat inevitable, based on his past behaviour. Hed been terrorising people for years, but made the mistake of trying the same with armed Police.

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Stuff reports:

There is Mike Williams too. The former Labour party president is now chief executive of the Howard League. It is these two, together with an army of volunteers and the fulltime services of a retired teacher, who have introduced the leagues literacy programme in prisons around the country. Its success has spawned another programme: one designed to turn potential inmates around before they reach the prison doors. Williams may have long left his leading role in the Labour Party. But he still has the persuasive oratorial and fundraising skills born of a life in politics. Days before the Spring Hill ceremony, he seated himself in his favourite cafe to explain his current vocation. He starts by reciting author Neil Gaiman: How do these people [private prison providers] plan how many cells they will need? Easy: you just find out how many 11 year olds cant read or write. As it happens, the numbers dont add up well for New Zealands prison population. Williams snaps out the stats. At least 50 per cent of prisoners are functionally illiterate. What that effectively means is they cant read the Road Code. And the Road Code is pitched at 10 years. Worse still, in New Zealand there is a formidably high incarceration rate and recidivism rate  30 per cent higher incarceration than Australia; double that of Finland and Germany. When they get out, they often go back. He gleaned that information after joining the Howard League at his old mate Gibbs invitation in 2011. Back then, the league had been seen as a handful of elderly lawyers who met infrequently and abused Corrections, says Williams.

Thats basically right.

He spent an Easter weekend Googling penal reform. And he did a few arithmetical calculations himself. I thought lets say 50 per cent of prisoners are illiterate. At any given time there are between 12,000 and 20,000 retired school teachers. So what I suggested to Tony was we put two and two together and make five. Gibbs deemed the idea great. They took it to the Department of Corrections, who also agreed. Corrections agreed to pay the salary of retired literacy professional Anne Brown, who custombuilt the course. And they began an experiment at Hawkes Bay Regional Corrections Facility. We were worried that [signing up to the programme] might be seen as an admission that you could not read. Or that you were a cissy. But just about everywhere we do it, theres a queue, says Williams. The key characteristic is its one-on-one training. But for Brown, the programme is staffed entirely by volunteers. Theres also a peer-to-peer programme where inmates teach each other. Theres no set time to complete the programme; inmates qualify when they can fluently read a childrens book onto a CD. Since its introduction in 2012, about 100 men have graduated from the Hawkes Bay facility. The programme now runs in 15 prisons around the country. (At one of them, former Auckland Heart of the City head Alex Swney - jailed in 2015 for a $4 million fraud - is reaching out to help others on the inside.) Graduation ceremonies such as the one witnessed at Spring Hill are regular events.

Theyre doing great work. Literacy doesnt mean the prisoners wont reoffend, but it means they now have better options ahead of them.

Now the league wants to keep men and women them out of prison in the first place. So lets hear some more stats first. Williams gleaned these from former Labour MP, now Waipareira Trust head, John Tamihere. I banged into him in Hammer Hardware in Te Atatu. He told me about 65 per cent of Maori who are in prison start their penal career with a driving offence. Its not just literacy, continues Williams, they dont have a legal car, they dont know how to get a birth certificate, they dont have a bank account. And if they go to jail theyll get recruited into a gang and learn how to cook P. So another programme began, again under the jurisdiction of the Howard League. This one identifies second-time offenders who have clocked up two offences related to not having a drivers licence and are on probation. Next step, prison beckons - unless they mend their ways. The programme teaches probationees the rudiments of reading, together with the intricacies of obtaining a licence.

Even better if you keep them out of prison in the first place.

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Get a jump on the school year by making sure during summer that vaccinations are up to date.

The Knox County Health Department reminds parents that all students entering preschool, kindergarten or seventh grade  and children of any age who are entering Tennessee schools for the first time  must provide their children's schools with certificate of immunization that show their children have received the required vaccinations.

Your child can get the vaccinations at a doctor's office, clinic or the health department (call 865-215-5070 to schedule an appointment at a health department clinic).

Parents taking their children to the health department can complete the registration paperwork online via a registration form. At the appointment, parents should have their photo ID, insurance card if applicable, and their child's vaccination record if they have it.

The health department is open 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m., and parents can make vaccination appointments at all three locations: the main health department at 140 Dameron Ave.; North Knoxville's Teague Clinic, 405 Dante School Road; and the West Clinic, 1028 Old Cedar Bluff Road.

Parents can call their child's pediatrician or the department's Immunization Program, 865-215-5150, to determine whether their children have received the required vaccinations. More information, including a list of the state-required vaccinations by grade level, is at knoxcounty.org/health.

Tennessee's vaccine requirements follow recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC estimates vaccinations will prevent more than 21 million hospitalizations and 732,000 deaths among children born in the past 20 years.
SHARE In a July 13, 2008 file photo, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., prepares for a debate in Memphis. (AP Photo/The Commercial Appeal, Britney McIntosh, File)

By Michael Collins of the Knoxville News Sentinel

WASHINGTON  In a journey filled with poignant moments, the one that stood out most for U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen was a salute.

It happened as the Memphis Democrat and a small group of congressional lawmakers were about to enter the South African prison where Nelson Mandela was held for 18 of his 27 years behind bars. Their guide was Ahmed Kathrada, an anti-apartheid activist who had been confined with Mandela at the Robben Island penitentiary, just off the coast of Cape Town.

As Kathrada and the Americans approached, the guard on duty saluted the former prisoner and handed him the keys to Mandela's cell.

For Cohen, that show of respect to a man who had once been jailed by his own government over his political views illustrated how far the world has come on the issues of race and equality.

"There was a lot to absorb and think about," Cohen said. "It made a big impact on me."

Cohen made the trip to South Africa a couple of weeks ago with seven other members of Congress involved in civil-rights issues. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who led the delegation, invited Cohen because he had authored legislation that formally apologized for slavery and the Jim Crow laws that followed.

The trip aimed to mark the 50th anniversary of then-Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's "Day of Affirmation" speech at the University of Cape Town. The speech, delivered June 6, 1966, to students fighting the racial segregation of South African universities, compared racial inequality and prejudice in the U.S. and South Africa.

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and ... those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance," Kennedy famously said that day.

The speech, which many historians regard as Kennedy's best, gave hope to anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, including the imprisoned Mandela.

Cohen has long been so enamored with the senator's words that he had them inscribed on a plaque given to him by the American Civil Liberties Union, which honored him in 1992 for his work as a state senator.

Being in Cape Town to commemorate the speech and its important place in the history of two countries was a moving experience, Cohen said.

More than two dozen members of the Kennedy family were there to mark the occasion. So were, in Cohen's words, "two of the most angelic figures in the world"  Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a social-rights activist in South Africa, and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a former Freedom Rider and civil rights hero in the U.S., a contemporary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"It was spectacular," Cohen said of being in the same room with the two icons.

Cohen said he was honored to take part in the festivities as the congressman representing a city that will be forever tied to King's legacy.

The trip also reminded him of the parallels between the U.S. civil-rights movement and the fight to end apartheid in South Africa.

The African National Congress, South Africa's social democratic political party, was founded in 1912, just three years after the NAACP was formed in the United States. Mandela and King both took inspiration from the teachings of Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, who advocated nonviolent civil disobedience.

Although South Africa still has racial problems, nonviolent civil disobedience is alive and well there today.

At one point in the ceremonies, a group of student protesters marched into the room and stood quietly in front of the stage where Lewis was speaking. Some carried signs denouncing the Obama administration. Others demanded free college education, echoing a political message heard often in the U.S.

No one shoved the protesters, yelled at them or reacted angrily to their presence, Cohen said.

After a few minutes, they left on their own  peacefully  in keeping with the philosophy and legacies of Mandela, King and Kennedy.
Where am I? What bizarro planet is this?

Like E.T., I want to phone home, but there's no Elliott to spirit me to my spaceship in his bike basket. Like Major Tom in David Bowie's "Space Oddity," I call to ground control, but I only get surreal static. In this weird world, I'm tempted to say, "Take me to your leader."

I dare not. One would-be leader is under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The other is in court over an education scheme that increasingly looks like a business scam. She may have exposed state secrets to alien powers. He makes no secret he would use his powers against aliens.

The crook and the clown. The Donald and Hillary. I've probably written that before, but I still simply cannot get my mind around this strange place in which I find myself, in which we find ourselves, in which America finds itself. In which the world finds itself.

Perhaps you've heard former first lady, former senator, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton makes history as the first female to head a major political party ticket in a race for the White House. She has and will proclaim that loud and long, but (wink) she's not playing the "woman card" or (wink, wink) practicing identity politics. If you think she is, you're a misogynistic Neanderthal.

Really, really rich, super-huge real estate developer Donald Trump makes history as the first openly anti-alien; anti-immigrant; anti-trade; really, really anti-Mexican; and anti-Muslim Neanderthal nitwit to head a major political party ticket in a race for the White House. He has and will continue to proclaim loud and long (wink) he is not playing the xenophobe card and (wink, wink) he is not a racist. If you think he is, you're a politically correct loser.

He got rich leveraging his daddy's money and shadily shuffling money to politicians who helped him take little old ladies' property by eminent domain to build casinos and hotels. She got rich leveraging her husband's tenure in the White House to make millions giving speeches while shadily shuffling money from foreign governments through the Clinton Slush Fund, er, I mean the Clinton Foundation, while she was supposed to be representing America's interests to foreign governments.

A majority of Americans  55 percent  view Clinton unfavorably in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, while only 37 percent view her favorably. A majority of Americans  58 percent  view Trump unfavorably in the RealClearPolitics average of polls while only 34 percent view him favorably. I'm obviously not the only one feeling a bit alien.

In an August 2015 survey by Quinnipiac University, the first word that most frequently popped into people's minds when asked about Clinton was "liar." Other top words for Clinton were "dishonest," "untrustworthy" and "criminal." "Arrogant" was Trump's most prominent descriptor, along with "blowhard," "idiot" and "clown."

Several prominent Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan and the Tennessee delegation to D.C., gave tacit if not explicit support for the arrogant, blowhard, idiot clown. All prominent Democrats  save some still feeling the Bern of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders  have thrown in with the dishonest, untrustworthy, criminal liar.

Trump's nationalistic isolationism and puerile pronouncements imperil the global economic system and national security. Clinton promises to continue President Barack Obama's policies, which have left our economy limping, increased income inequality, alienated our allies, emboldened our enemies and imposed socialism by regulation via executive orders. They both promise to continue the divisiveness of a president whose electoral strategy was to divide us into haves and have-nots, rural and urban, educated and less so and on and on.

So what, pray tell, is a conscientious citizen to do?

I've no idea. Not yet anyway. For now, I'm like E.T., longing for home. I'm like Major Tom: "For here am I sitting in a tin can, far above the world. Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do."
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Just how transparent is the state of Tennessee with its economic development programs?

In the eyes of Tennesseans, not very.

A new poll by icitizen and The Beacon Center of Tennessee measured opinions about the state's economic development activities. The Beacon Center favors stemming "corporate handouts" to specific companies in favor of lowering business taxes for everyone. While the poll results show mixed opinions about favoring select companies with incentives, what's indisputable is that Tennesseans largely think the state is not transparent about them. A whopping 72 percent agreed with the statement: "State government is not transparent with the incentives it provides to corporations."

That's not a number to ignore. When people think government is done in secret, they tend to get suspicious of what government is doing.

Considering the importance of a good economy to Tennessee's well-being, could steps be taken to improve understanding of the state's programs and their effectiveness?

Occasionally, we see lawmakers question the amount of secrecy involved in giving taxpayer money to companies. In a Senate Finance Committee meeting in March, for example, lawmakers were asked to approve a $30 million earmark for a company without knowing who it was, where it was or what the company would be doing.

Finance Commissioner Larry Martin would describe the project only as "exciting." State Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, pushed back, noting past projects that fell flat. He said he was uncomfortable voting on the basis of state officials saying, "Trust me, it's going to be good."

Still, lawmakers approved the money.

The law allows state government to keep secret economic development packages until after the deal is signed. News reporters cannot use the Tennessee Public Records Act to find out a proposed financial package to a company  no matter how significant or large  and lawmakers are equally impotent.

However, that's only one part of the transparency puzzle. The other, more important part is the ability of citizens and lawmakers to measure and understand the effectiveness of programs.

To its credit, the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development has a website called Open ECD. On this website, you can look at lists of companies that have received grants and the amounts. You can also look at PDFs of reports submitted by companies on how many jobs have been created.

But the website, however well-intended, is woefully horrible in providing any information that allows people to understand how well the programs work. For example, the PDFs of company reports on jobs do not have information about the grant amount, nor how many jobs were supposed to be created. The state has touted that it writes "clawback" provisions into contracts. But there is no information on the clawback provisions for each company's grant, and no information about when or if the state has ever even used a clawback.

While some information about grants is publicly available, information about tax credits is not. Because of rules protecting taxpayer information, the state Department of Revenue, which handles the credits, cannot or will not reveal the value of the various credits used each year by businesses in Tennessee.

The executive director of the Fiscal Review Committee reported a key problem with this secrecy in a report in December: Lawmakers who propose legislation for new tax credits rely on committee staff to calculate estimates on how much the credits will cost in tax revenue. But the Fiscal Review Committee has no way to check whether its estimates are on target because the state revenue department will not give them any information about the use of the credits. Lawmakers must make decisions about tax policy without any data.

This was also an issue when the Haslam administration refused to release a tax collection study that was used to support the rewrite of the tax code for business last year. A tax accountant sued on behalf of one of his clients to get the study, arguing essentially that the state's interpretation of the public records exemption did not make sense, but he lost at the trial level and on appeal.

Meanwhile, Tennessee has not been eager to require companies to provide information related to job creation in exchange for giving them money. Legislation, passed in 2014 requires recipients of FastTrack grants or loans to report annually to the Department of Economic and Community Development the number of net new jobs produced. But requirements that companies disclose whether the jobs are full-time, part-time or temporary, and by wage group, were stripped from the final bill.

It's notable that the icitizen/Beacon Center poll gave us conflicting results on how Tennesseans feel about the state's economic development initiatives. Nearly 70 percent did not think government should give corporate handouts to select businesses. But 59 percent favored the statement "It makes more sense for Tennessee to give more money to certain companies that show greater potential for job creation and growth."

If it's a little murky about what Tennesseans think is the right way for government to stimulate an economy, you might excuse them for the scarcity of information about the state's programs to begin with.

On that, I think everyone has agreed.

Deborah Fisher is executive director of Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, a nonprofit that promotes government transparency. Readers can follow her blog at www.tcog.info.
The Fourth Battle of the Atlantic

JUNE 9, 2016 AT 8:38 PM UTC

By Vice Admiral James Foggo III, U.S. Navy, and Alarik Fritz





With more activity from Russian submarines than weve seen since the days of the Cold War, an improved European force posture becomes vital for the U.S. Navy and NATO.





Over 600 marines, sailors and airmen from Finland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden and the United States conducted training in Syndalen, Finland, which included live fire training with mortars and light machine guns. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Alyssa Weeks/Released).

One hundred and one years ago, a great power released a new weapon on the world. They allowed it to sidestep its adversaries military advantages and deal them a near-crippling blow. Those weapons, the U-boats of the German Empire, used new technologies to blockade the British Isles and sink millions of tons of Allied shipping. Eventually, the Royal Navy prevailed, but the outcome of that battle was never a foregone conclusion. It took the development of an array of new antisubmarine technologies and tactics, as well as a massive mobilization of resources, that enabled the Allies to win this First Battle of the Atlantic.



Seventy-six years ago, the Second Battle of the Atlantic began. Again, German U-boats threatened the Allies, this time with new tactics and technologies based on experiences in the previous war. The Germans had learned how to overcome the antisubmarine warfare (ASW) advantages of the Allies, and only by again bringing new technologies, tactics, and resources to bear did the Allies prevail.



During the Cold War, our ASW forces engaged in a constant cat-and-mouse game with the Soviet Unions submarines. Nuclear power, ballistic and cruise missiles, and quieter systems empowered Soviet submarines in troubling ways. To respond, the United States and its allies were forced to build greater and more effective ASW forces and continually refine their own ASW technologies and doctrine to counter the Soviets. In the shadow of nuclear deterrence, the stakes of this competition were as high as could be imagined. This was the Third Battle of the Atlantic, and, although it was not a shooting war, it showed once again that a responsive, adaptive, and forward-deployed ASW force is necessary to deter aggression against our nation and its allies.



In the early 1990s, the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and commentary such as Francis Fukuyamas landmark essay The End of History? led us to believe that our strategic rivalry with Russia and our need to stay one step ahead of Russian capabilities had faded. It has not. Once again, an effective, skilled, and technologically advanced Russian submarine force is challenging us. Russian submarines are prowling the Atlantic, testing our defenses, confronting our command of the seas, and preparing the complex underwater battlespace to give them an edge in any future conflict. Vice Admiral Clive Johnstone, Royal Navy, the head of NATOs maritime forces, noted recently that his forces report more activity from Russian submarines than weve seen since the days of the Cold War. Some analysts believe that even our underwater infrastructuresuch as oil rigs and telecommunications cablesmay be under threat by these new and advanced forces. Russian focus, investment, and activity in the undersea domain are now so unmistakable that even the head of the Russian Navy, Viktor Chirkov, has admitted that Russian submarine patrols have grown 50 percent since 2013.



Despite the economic crisis in Russia, rubles continue to flow into the development of Russian submarine technology and the growth of that force. The father of the modern Russian submarine force, the brilliant and highly decorated design engineer Igor Spassky, admits Russian submarine forces are expanding and advancing, and that they will be a key part of the countrys arsenal for the foreseeable future.



By 2020, the Russian Black Sea Fleet alone will receive the equivalent of $2.4 billion of investment. And these are not the submarines we faced during the Cold War. There may be fewer of them, but they are much stealthier, carry more devastating weaponry, and go on more frequent and longer deployments than before. The submarines of the Russian Federation are one of the most difficult threats the United States has faced. This threat is significant, and it is only growing in complexity and capacity.





Russias New Approach



Not only have Russias actions and capabilities increased in alarming and confrontational ways, its national-security policy is aimed at challenging the United States and its NATO allies and partners. For example, the new Russian national security-strategy depicts the United States and NATO as threats to Russian security and accuses us of applying political, economic, military, and information-related pressure on Russia. Thus, not only is Russia pursuing advanced military capabilities (especially in the underwater domain) that enable it to be a credible threat to us, it is now boldly saying that it intends to act as one.



An enduring objective of Russian foreign policy today is to challenge NATO and elevate Russia on the European stage once again. Building on the national strategy, the new Russian maritime doctrine reorients its naval forces in a calculated and determined way. By confronting NATO at will, Russia confirms its status as a great power in the 21st century. The new maritime doctrine tells us that Russia will counter our existing ASW technologies; challenge U.S. and NATOs maritime presence in the Atlantic as well as the Baltic, Black, and Mediterranean seas; and expand Russian permanent presence in the Arctic and Mediterranean.



Furthermore, Russia is rapidly closing the technological gap with the United States. It has created an advanced military designed to overcome our advantages and exploit our weaknessesthis is the epitome of asymmetric warfare. Nowhere is this more evident than in the maritime (and especially underwater) domain. Russia rapidly is building and deploying more advanced and significantly quieter attack submarines and frigates armed with the long-range Kalibr cruise missile (including six new Kilo-class diesel-electric attack submarines destined for the Black Sea). Not coincidentally, these are the platforms that are the most challenging for us to deal with because of their inherent stealth. As demonstrated last December by Kalibr launches into Syria from the Eastern Mediterranean, Russian leaders will use such weapons at will, without the same qualms we have about collateral damage. The clear advantage that we enjoyed in antisubmarine warfare during the Cold War is waning. Russian submarines are more capable than before, and so we are again in a technological arms race with Russia.



Russia is claiming maritime battlespace across Europe and deploying forces outside Russian borders. An interlocking system of Russian coastal missiles, interceptor aircraft, air-defense systems, surface ships, and submarines now threatens all maritime forces in the Baltic, as well as our NATO allies in Lithuania, Estonia, and Latviawho no longer control even their own coastlines unless Russian leaders allow them to do so. A similar anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) fortress was constructed in the Black Sea after Russian forces invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea. Russian forces deployed to Syria are growing steadily, and Russia has constructed military bases in the Arctic, militarizing and claiming large swaths of it, in contravention of customary international law. In this way, Russia has blunted our power-projection capabilities through A2/AD and extended its influence far beyond its borders.



Russia now employs an arc of steel from the Arctic through the Baltic and down to the Black Sea. Combined with extensive and frequent submarine patrols throughout the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea, and forward-deployed forces in Syria, Russia has the capability to hold nearly all NATO maritime forces at risk. No longer is the maritime space uncontested. For the first time in almost 30 years, Russia is a significant and aggressive maritime power.



In his extensive academic research on naval innovation, Owen R. Cote, Jr., of the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Strategic Studies Program has long warned of a potential fourth battle for control of the undersea domain. It is now clear that a fourth battle is not looming, but is being waged now, across and underneath the oceans and seas that border Europe. This is not a kinetic fight. It is a struggle between Russian forces that probe for weakness, and U.S. and NATO ASW forces that protect and deter. Just like in the Cold War, the stakes are high.





Winning the Fourth Battle Today



With our allies and partners in NATO and across the globe, we present a broad and united front against any potential Russian threats. Our maritime partnerships yield a global network of navies that together form the greatest maritime force for peace ever known. NATO exercises demonstrate our unity superbly. For example, on 7 June 2015, 17 nations, with 49 ships, more than 60 aircraft, and a vast array of ground forces, demonstrated their abilities to operate together to defend the Baltic region in BALTOPS. This exercise, in its 43rd year, made it clear that the United States, NATO, and partner nations have an unwavering commitment to protect themselves by acting in concert. Similarly, Sea Breeze 2015 sent a clear signal to Russia that the United States and its allies will not back down in the Black Sea region. Eighteen ships from 11 nations (Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Italy, Moldova, Romania, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States) demonstrated the will and ability to operate together to achieve maritime security and conduct air defense and antisubmarine warfare in the Black Sea.



A variety of policy and resource shifts have been enacted that signal our resolve to Russia. For example, the U.S. Navys revised Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower notes the critical importance of all-domain access and deterrence. The Chief of Naval Operations recent Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority puts the Navy on a clear path to adapt to the new global security environment. But we must act now to implement such guidance before Russia provokes again. To do so, we must engage and conduct operations forward more deliberately, more strategically, and with more forethoughtand in ways that encourage responsible behavior by Russia while still deterring Russian belligerence.



From a diplomatic perspective, we can find areas of common interest. One of the most obvious examples is maintaining safety at sea. Despite the recent aggressive buzzing of the USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) in the Baltic by a Russian Su-24, the incidents-at-sea (INCSEA) agreements with Russia remain a heartening example of how we can still cooperate with Russia despite its leaderships adventurism. We also share a desire to defeat violent extremist organizations such as ISIS. We must be prepared to work with Russian leaders if they want to collaborate responsibly on these or other issues of mutual interest. To do so, we can and should meet with our Russian counterparts when possible and prudent. Track-two diplomatic efforts, international symposiums, and other forums that provide such opportunities should also be encouraged.



Of course, diplomacy alone is unlikely to be sufficient. To encourage responsible behavior by Russia we must engage from a position of strength, not weakness. Improving our current force posture in Europe will demonstrate our strength and thereby deter Russia from further adventurism. The first step in improving our force posture is to leverage allied navies to enhance our maritime security. We must work directly with our NATO partners to help them develop the capabilities and capacity to operate seamlessly together and with the United States, respond to contingencies, and protect key maritime infrastructure. Through combined exercises and maritime presence, a network of navies in Europe and across the globe can face Russia from a position of strength and ensure continued peace. Our part in supporting these efforts has been clearly outlined by CNO Admiral John Richardson: We must prioritize key international partnerships through information sharing, interoperability initiatives, and combined operations [and] explore new opportunities for combined forward operations. The old saying a house divided cannot stand is more true now than it has been in many years. To preserve peace, we must unite to deter Russian aggression.



We also should reassess our own global force deployments and exercises. Additional submarines, ASW forces, carrier strike groups, and other assets should be rotated through Europe and used to show Russia that we can bring overwhelming force to bear if need be. We should increase our ASW exercises with our NATO allies, in both the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and elsewhere, to demonstrate that NATO can track Russian submarines at will, no matter where they are.



Finally, we must not lose our technological edge. More than perhaps any other warfare area, ASW requires us to stay one step ahead of Russian technologies. In the world wars, the Allies prevailed over German U-boats not by force alone, but by innovation. In the Cold War, the rise of nuclear-powered Soviet submarines required us to develop new acoustic and other technologies. Today, we are once again in a technological arms race with Russia. We must maintain an innovative edge and rapidly field new technologies if we are to prevail.



At this time in history we would do well to remind ourselves it is better to prevent wars than to fight them. The U.S. Navy, through forward presence, power projection, and technological advantage, is the epitome of demonstrating resolve and capability in the service of war prevention. In todays world, wars can only be truly prevented in partnership and cooperation with other nations. The stronger and more resolute we and our allies and partners are together, the less likely that war will occur. And therein lies the true strength of the U.S. Navyit is not simply by maintaining our technological edge and our readiness to impose unacceptable costs on Russia should the need arise. What makes ours the worlds greatest and most effective navy is the fact that we act in concert with our NATO allies and partners. It is only in this way that we, and all like-minded allies and partners, maintain peaceby unmistakably and constantly deterring Russian aggression. Published June 12, 2016
BAT Korea Vice President Bae Yoon-suk, left, breaks ground with Sacheon City Mayor Song Do-keun, fifth from left, and other dignitaries at a groundbreaking ceremony for the company's second plant in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang Province, Friday. / Courtesy of BAT Korea



By Lee Hyo-sik

British American Tobacco (BAT) has decided to build its second plant here to nurture its Korean unit as an export hub in the Asia-Pacific region.

To construct the state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, BAT will invest $86 million over the next year and a half, creating more than 100 new jobs and bolstering its business dealings with local partners.

BAT Korea said Friday that it will set up the new plant near its existing production facility in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang Province.

"We are pleased to announce a plan to expand our production facilities, which represent an important milestone in BAT Korea's history," said company vice president Bae Yoon-suk during the groundbreaking ceremony at the construction site. "Once the project is completed in January 2017, the Sacheon factory will become an export hub for BAT's entire global operations."

When the second plant begins production, BAT Korea, whose flagship brands include Dunhill, Kent and Rothmans, expects its annual production volume will more than double to 35 billion cigarettes from 16.8 billion cigarettes. In 2017, the company expects to earn more than $260 million by exporting various cigarette brands, up from $100 million in 2015.

"Currently, the Sacheon plant ships tobacco products to Japan, Taiwan and 11 other countries. When the second factory is completed, we expect to conduct business in new foreign markets," the vice president said. "Accordingly, BAT Korea will export about 70 percent of its production in 2018 from the current 43 percent."

Since the Sacheon factory began exporting cigarettes in 2004, it has been serving as BAT's main production base in the Asia-Pacific region.

The facility has been recognized as a key manufacturing base in the region with its outstanding productivity, quality, cost savings and other criteria.

"Among BAT's 44 plants in 41 countries, the Sacheon factory has ranked highest in product quality and productivity since 2003," Bae said. "The plant has proven its excellent production capacity by reaching an accumulated production of 100 billion cigarettes in just 7 years. Recently, it exceeded an accumulated production of 200 billion cigarettes. Such a level of exceptional productivity is the result of achieving a win-win partnership between management and labor union."

In addition, the company's expansion plan will significantly help revitalize the regional economy by hiring more than 100 new employees and increasing business dealings with local suppliers.

"BAT Korea prioritizes securing local talent when it comes to hiring for the Sacheon factory," he said. "With approximately 90 percent of our 360 employees born in Sacheon or in nearby areas, we are known to be the most local-friendly company."
By Jhoo Dong-chan





Lotte Chairman Shin Dong-bin speaks during a state audit at the National Assembly, Sep 17.

/ Korea Times file

A series of prosecution probes on alleged embezzlement and malpractice in subsidiaries of Korea's retail giant Lotte Group hints that the nation's fifth-largest family-controlled conglomerate's chairman Shin Dong-bin may be questioned as well.



A high-ranking official at Seoul Central District Prosecutor's Office didn't rule out the possibility that prosecutors may issue an arrest warrant; however, the time hasn't ripened yet.



"In prior cases such as SK and Hyosung, prosecution summoned a number of company officials and tracked the flow of funds to secure solid evidence before questioning group owners. I think it is too early to discuss whether or when to call Lotte chairman Shin," a senior prosecutor told The Korea Times by telephone, Sunday.



Key Lotte Group affiliates were being probed over their role to create a slush fund to bribe influential local politicians in return for winning advantages to push ahead the group's fancy business projects and for massive accounting fraud.



Prosecutors raided offices of Lotte Group, which were immediately reported to the chairman. Prosecutors issued an international travel ban on Shin's confidants in what officials say is a preemptive measure before questioning the chairman.



The official said Lotte's senior executives "intentionally and systematically" destroyed evidence ahead of the raids, raising possibilities that the chairman was earlier informed of these actions.













"Lotte Group attempted to destroy and hide related documents and evidence when it underwent a tax audit last year," he said. "We confirmed that the group did the same this time but were able to secure most of the hidden documents."



Shin's house was also raided while he was in the U.S. for business. The chairman is expected to be questioned by prosecutors upon his return to Korea, but some say it's still uncertain whether the chairman will return next week, as scheduled.



"The chairman will be notified of developments of the probe by prosecutors and his return date will be fixed according to the situation. The country's top law firm Kim & Chang supports Shin," said an official who is involved with the issue, by telephone.



Prosecutors believe Chairman Shin has connections with his older sister Shin Young-ja, who allegedly coordinated bribery with failed business tycoon and lobbyist Nature Republic CEO Jung Woon-ho. Young-ja was said to take bribes from Jung in return for granting approval for Nature Republic to open its brand shops at Lotte Free Duty stores.



No way out



Due to growing uncertainties about the chairman's destiny, Lotte's key business plans have been stalled.

In a statement, Lotte Chemical, the group's key petrochemical affiliate, said it dropped its ambitious bid to purchase U.S. company Axiall. Lotte Chemical said the decision was mostly due to possibilities that the group may fall into managerial vacuum.

More importantly, analysts say Lotte Group's plan to put the Lotte Hotel for the listing in Korea, which has been slated for next month, may be delayed as the investigation is expected to be widen, hurting investor sentiment.



The listing of Hotel Lotte is one of the reform pledges that Lotte Chairman Shin has made as part of his efforts to improve its corporate image overall.



"It's almost impossible to finalize the IPO by July. I don't even think Lotte Hotel will be able to be listed this year. The initial IPO price for the hotel will be discounted further given the current market situation," said a local analyst asking not to be identified.



Meanwhile, the succession feud, which had seemed to come to an end, is seen to enter a second round with the latest prosecutors' investigation as Shin's older brother Shin Dong-joo preparing a fresh attack against the Lotte chairman over his alleged misconduct.



Analysts say the latest probes are believed to hurt the credibility of Chairman Shin as group leader, and Dong-joo may bring up the issue at the shareholders' meeting of Tokyo-based Lotte Holdings next week, which controls the group both in Korea and Japan.
Kia Motors' plants in Gwangju / Courtesy of Kia Motors





By Jhoo Dong-chan

Gwangju is seeking to build a massive car production cluster in a bid to boost its local economy by creating jobs for young people.



The southwestern city's annual production capacity is 620,000 vehicles, assembled at the automotive plants of Kia Motors. It is the second-largest auto-producing city in the country after Ulsan which produces up to 1.5 million a year. But Gwangju Mayor Yoon Jang-hyun wants more.



"Kia Motors' plant here is responsible for 40 percent of the city's economic activities along with 20 percent of employment. This still falls short of reviving the sagging economy in Gwangju," Mayor Yoon told The Korea Times.





Gwangju Mayor Yoon Jang-hyun speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at Gwangju City Hall,

Wednesday.



"I believe the automobile industry is going to be an engine for revitalizing the city if it produces more than 1 million cars a year. Once Gwangju reaches an annual capacity of 1 million cars, automobile part suppliers will eventually move to or near the city, forming an automobile production cluster like Ulsan. It will be a huge boost to youth employment in the area."



The 67-year-old mayor's ambition sounds assertive. Established in 1965 as the nation's first strategic auto-manufacturing base, Gwangju has a solid infrastructure and manpower pool for mass production.



Kia Motors' popular Soul electric vehicle (EV) has also been produced here since 2014, offering an advantageous environment to develop more eco-friendly cars. Proximity to the Korea Electric Power Corp., which is headquartered in Naju, South Jeolla Province, only a-half-hour drive from Gwangju, is another advantage for automakers developing not only EVs but also high-speed battery chargers for such cars.



"On top of that, Gwangju has the top level of productivity while maintaining the lowest rate of labor disputes," said Yoon.





The Kia Soul EV is produced at the automaker's production plants in Gwangju. / Yonhap





"One of the biggest reasons for automakers deciding not to build more production plants in Korea is activist trade unions whose member workers annually receive more than 100 million won ($90,000) and still insist on making unacceptable wage demands with companies. But such disputes are not found in Gwangju."



In order to encourage more productive and healthier labor-management relations, Gwangju has employed Park Byeong-gyu, former head of the Kia Motors trade union Gwangju chapter, as a labor policy adviser.



"A flexible labor-management relationship and reasonable wage standard along with responsible management are the key elements to success of the Gwangju automobile cluster," said Park.



"Young people here say a 36 million won annual salary is good enough. More than 850,000 citizens have signed during the signature campaign to show their support for attracting more auto production plants to Gwangju."



In March, China-based automaker Jiangxi Special Electric Motor's subsidiary Pet Fun Auto signed a memorandum of understanding with Gwangju, under which the Chinese automaker would invest 250 billion won to build EV manufacturing plants with an annual capacity of 100,000 cars.



Mahindra & Mahindra, India's largest automaker that owns Korea's smallest automaker Ssangyong Motor, has also shown interest in Gwangju, and its officials are scheduled to visit the city next month to discuss possible investment.



Sean Jay-hyeong, vice head of the city's automobile production cluster promotion committee, said Gwangju is benchmarking the southern Japanese city of Kitakyushu.



"Kitakyushu was a dying city with the closure of coal mines and a decline in the Japanese appliance industry 30 years ago. What made Kitakyushu into a dynamic city with a population of 1.3 million was bringing Japanese premium auto brand Lexus into the city in 1992," said Sean.



"Now, Kitakyushu produces 1.54 million cars annually where more than 40 percent of the city population, or 500,000 people, are engaging in auto-related industries. Now, the city is one of the wealthiest cities in Japan. I believe Gwangju can do the same."



In order to establish a car industry cluster with an annual capacity of 1 million cars, domestic automakers should build or extend production lines in the city, experts said.



"Only 500,000 hydrogen cars and EVs are produced and sold annually around the world, so it is unlikely to have production plants with a capacity of thousands in the city any time soon. Plus, other automakers who want to build more plants would choose countries with cheaper opportunity costs like India," said an expert.



"It is inevitable for Gwangju to bring domestic automakers like Hyundai Motor into the project if it wants to make it happen."

Perspective



Despite gloomy reactions from domestic automakers, Mayor Yoon claims that automakers will have to answer the coming era with hydrogen-powered cars and EVs.



"Currently, only about 500,000 eco-friendly cars have been sold worldwide, but I believe demand for such cars will surge along with growing concerns about carbon emissions," said Yoon.



"The government has also designated eco-friendly cars as one of the nation's new growth engines. Domestic automakers shouldn't be complacent anymore but get themselves prepared for the booming auto market of the future. Gwangju offers the ideal environment for their growth."



The global EV market is, as Yoon said, experiencing rapid growth with aggressive governmental incentive policies.



China recently decided to establish a nationwide charging station infrastructure to accommodate a total of 5 million EVs by 2020. It also said its future housing projects should install charging posts at their facilities.



Norway does not impose any surtax on EV buyers. Parking and toll fees as well as charging batteries are all free.



Thanks to efforts for more EVs, one out of three cars sold in Norway were EVs in the first quarter last year while a total of 250,000 EVs were sold in China last year.



"The city's cluster project is a long-term plan that will not only benefit young jobseekers but also take care of increasing global demand for eco-friendly cars," Yoon said.



"Gwangju can help with these challenges. The city's reasonable and healthy relationship between labor and management fosters lower costs and paves the way for a brighter economy."


By Kim Jae-kyoung

The Korean economy is unlikely to post any meaningful rebound in the near future due to weak exports on the global slowdown, sluggish domestic demand and clueless corporate restructuring, according to global economists.

Last week, the government decided to inject a total of 12 trillion won to restructure shipping and shipbuilding firms. Then the Bank of Korea cut the key rate to a record low of 1.25 percent to boost the economy and minimize the spillover effect from the restructuring.

However, without structural reform to improve labor productivity and create new industries, these will be no more than stopgap measures that may put the economy into deeper trouble in the long term, according to the economists.

"Exports are hampered by China's slowdown. Domestic demand is limited by high household debt. Don't see a good way out in the short term," said Andy Xie, former Morgan Stanley economist.

"Korea has to prepare for the long game, which is to lay the groundwork for higher productivity growth. That requires a comprehensive plan to upgrade the labor force and invest in research to spawn industries of the 21st century," he added.

Xie, currently an independent economist, is well known for having forecast Asia's financial crisis in 1997 and 1998.

Korea, Asia's fourth-largest economy that was once touted as one of Asia's economic tigers, is now losing vitality and confidence as a result of its twin engines  domestic demand and exports  losing steam simultaneously.

Domestically, economic growth is determined by two factors  labor force growth and productivity but these are stymied by a low birthrate and an old economic growth model.

"Because of the low birthrate, the labor force is growing slowly and could stop growing all together pretty soon. Korea has been a laggard in productivity growth among OECD countries," said Sohn Sung-won, an economics professor at California State University.

"Structural problems  chaebol, the educational system and dependence on old industries  hamper gains. The sluggish global economy including China adds to slow productivity increases."












A scene from "Ben Hur" (1959)



By Park Jin-hai



"Ben-Hur," one of cinema's greatest classics, will be screened at local theaters in two different versions.



Following the recent success of rereleased classics such as "The Shawshank Redemption (1994)" and "Three Colors: Blue (1993)," the epic story of Ben-Hur will be shown on big screens in July and September.



What comes first is "Ben-Hur," a 1959 American epic historical drama directed by William Wyler in a newly remastered digital format.



The film, a remake of a 1925 silent film, tells the epic story of Judah Ben-Hur, a prince taking revenge after he is falsely accused of treason by his brother Messala and enslaved, has won 11 Oscars.



Folded on the widest 70 mm screen, the 1959 version was first released here in 1972 has been rereleased several times since.



Waiting for a September release is a 2016 version of "Ben-Hur," directed by Timur Bekmambetov and starring Jack Huston. Scheduled to be released on Aug. 19 in North America in 2D, 3D, and Digital 3D, the new version will come to local theaters in September.
Researchers from Seoul National University Bundang Hospital in Gyeonggi Province say people who have blood types B or AB are less likely to get stomach cancer. / Courtesy of Twitter



By Kim Da-hee

People who have blood types B or AB are less likely to get stomach cancer, research revealed Friday.

Researchers from Seoul National University Bundang Hospital in Gyeonggi Province monitored 997 people diagnosed with non-cardia gastric cancer and a control group of 1147 people from February, 2006 to May, 2014.

Non-cardia gastric cancer is found in all areas of the stomach other than the top portion.



The team analyzed 14 factors, including blood types, family history of the cancer, eating habits and the infection of H.pylori, which can cause the cancer.

The researchers found that those with genotype BB had a 46 percent lower risk of the cancer. They also had 61 percent less risk of diffuse-type gastric cancer.

Those who have genotype BO and AB had 27 percent less risk respectively.

"The research result helped us to clarify that the occurrence rate of the cancer can vary due to blood type," said head researcher Prof. Kim Na-young.
South Korea's military resumed its crackdown operations near the tense sea border with North Korea Saturday as the country stepped up efforts to drive out illegal Chinese fishing there during the peak season for blue crabs.



On Friday, four South Korean boats carrying military police officers entered the neutral waters where the estuary of the Han River meets the Yellow Sea in South Korea's first joint crackdown operation with the United Nations Command since the border areas were declared a no man's land in the armistice which ended the 1950-53 Korean War.



The crackdown team was again sent into the region early Saturday, the JCS said in a press release.



Military officials said about 10 Chinese fishing boats that retreated into North Korea-controlled waters during the initial Friday operation still remained in the same place.



"Today's operation focused on blocking the Chinese vessels' course toward the South Korean side," the JCS said.



June is a high season for catching blue crab in the largely untouched fishing ground, tempting Chinese fishermen to intrude into the militarily sensitive border areas between the Koreas.



South Korea has recently formed a crackdown team of four vessels with 24 military and coast guard forces and UNC Military Armistice Commission personnel as illegal Chinese fishing has soared in the sensitive border areas.



In the five months of 2016, Chinese fishing boats have been detected fishing in the neutral waters on around 520 occasions, according to the Ministry of National Defense.



The armistice's annex governing civil shipping in neutral waters says no Korean or foreign ships are allowed except those that are officially registered with South or North Korea.



Military officials have said the crackdown operation will continue until the last Chinese fishing boat leaves the Han River estuary.



As the operation kicked off on Friday, China's foreign ministry pledged cooperation with South Korea to stop the illegal Chinese fishing.



"China puts great importance on educating its fisherman," said China's foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei, adding that Beijing respects international treaties on fishing and the local laws of the countries where its fishermen operate.



The ruling and opposition parties called on the government in unison to step up its crackdown on illegal fishing by Chinese boats and craft diplomatic countermeasures.



In a statement, the ruling Saenuri Party said that Chinese boats' illegal fishing has "gone too far" and reached a point where it could threaten the livelihood of Korean fishermen by overfishing.



"Chinese authorities should not just think about the safety of their people but also demonstrate a sincere attitude as a responsible country in the international community," Kim Myung-yeon, a party spokesperson, said.



"Our government should not stop with such an instant measure as the crackdown operation but come up with fundamental countermeasures aimed at inducing diplomatic talks with China through cooperation with the U.N.," he added.



The main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea also issued a statement in which it welcomed the latest crackdown operation but urged the government to intensify its efforts to "protect the right to life of our fishermen in the Yellow Sea." (Yonhap)




Korea's military police and Coast Guard are considering extending the crackdown on illegal Chinese fishing in neutral waters around the mouth of the Han River for the third consecutive day on Sunday, officials said, as additional Chinese fishing boats are exiting the sensitive area near the inter-Korean maritime border.



The Coast Guard said it seized a 50-ton Chinese boat that allegedly caught 45 kilograms of crabs in waters off Yeonpyeong Island, a South Korean territory near the inter-Korean border in the Yellow Sea, on late Saturday afternoon and put its seven sailors under arrest.



Amid the intensive crackdown launched on Friday by the South Korean military police, Coast Guard and United Nations Command (UNC) Military Armistice Commission, there are still about 10 Chinese boats around the mouth of the Han River, officials said.



South Korea recently formed a crackdown team of four vessels with 24 military and Coast Guard forces and UNC Military Armistice Commission personnel as illegal Chinese fishing has soared in the sensitive border areas. From Friday, the crackdown team entered the neutral waters where the estuary of the Han River meets the Yellow Sea. It is South Korea's first joint crackdown operation with the UNC since the border areas were declared a no man's land in the armistice which ended the 1950-53 Korean War.



The armistice's annex governing civil shipping in neutral waters says no Korean or foreign ship is allowed to enter the area except those that are officially registered with South or North Korea.



"A number of illegal Chinese fishing boats have left the area yesterday following our crackdown team's operation," an official from the South Korean military said Sunday on condition of anonymity. "There are only around 10 boats in the area."



When the crackdown team initiated the operation, there were more than 20 illegal fishing boats in the neutral waters. Military officials have said the operation will continue until the last Chinese fishing boat leaves the Han River estuary, but they have yet to resume action on Sunday because the Chinese fishing boats are now staying near North Korean shores.



Under the armistice, the crackdown team cannot go near the North Korean coast. The military official said that the North's military has yet to make special movements on these fishing boats.



"We will consider whether to resume our operation today after considering the movements of Chinese fishing boats and weather conditions," the official said.



June is a high season for catching blue crab in the largely untouched fishing ground, tempting Chinese fishermen to intrude into the militarily sensitive border areas between the Koreas. In the five months of 2016, Chinese fishing boats have been detected fishing in the neutral waters on around 520 occasions, according to the Ministry of National Defense.



After the operation kicked off, China pledged cooperation with South Korea to stop illegal fishing, saying that Beijing respects international treaties on fishing and the local laws of the countries where its fishermen operate. (Yonhap)




By Kim Da-hee

The ACT exam used by U.S. college to test entrance candidates has been cancelled for all test-takers in South Korea and Hong Kong because the contents have been leaked, the test's operator said on Saturday.

It is the first time the exam has been scrapped for an entire country, according to ACT spokesman Ed Colby.

"ACT has just received credible evidence that test materials intended for administration in these regions have been compromised," the test operator said in a statement.

The spokesman said the cancellation affected about 5,500 students who had been due to take the test at 56 centers.

The organization did not comment on when and how the contents had been leaked, saying the matter was being investigated.

Many Korean students said they were told of the cancellation by email at 7 a.m. on Saturday, just 90 minutes before the test was due to begin. Some students were not told until when they arrived at the test centers.

The ACT said registration fees would be refunded. But Colby said it was "not feasible" to reschedule the exam and that the exam would not be administered again until September.

In recent years, several U.S. college entrance tests have been cancelled here because of leaked test materials.

In May 2013, the U.S. college entrance exam SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) was cancelled.

In January 2007, the U.S.-based Educational Testing Service (ETS) invalidated the SAT results of Korean test takers after finding that many students had unlawfully viewed the test materials before the exam.
Lotte World Tower



Korean national flag to be removed from high-rise building

By Jung Min-ho

Lotte Group will take down a giant Korean national flag displayed on the Lotte World Tower next month.

The retail giant has adorned the 123-story skyscraper with the huge flag _ 36 meters wide and 24 meters high _ since August 2015 to commemorate Korea's 70th year of independence from Japan.

However, civic group Wirye Citizens Alliance filed a complaint with the Songpa District Office and the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) in April, calling for the removal of the flag from the building.

The civic group accused Lotte of violating the outdoor advertising law and building codes by using the flag for marketing purposes. The group said the company's logo right below the flag was especially a problem.

Although the SMG was unsure whether the flag placement constitutes the breach of any law, it advised the retail giant to take it down.

Lotte removed its logo first and planned to remove the flag by the end of May. But then the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs intervened, saying that the flag would be better kept at least until the end of June, the country's memorial month for patriots and veterans.

"June is the month of Memorial Day and the Korean War, which broke out on June 25, 1950. To commemorate the important days for patriots and veterans, we are trying to encourage government organizations and companies to display the Korean national flag," a ministry official said in a statement.

Lotte welcomed the ministry's request and decided to keep the flag until early July.

"Although we expect more complaints from some civic groups for the extended display, we decided to accept the request for public interest," a Lotte official said. "We have been put in an awkward position with the flag display, which we started with pure intentions to promote love for the country."

The dispute over the flag once again highlighted the identity issue of Lotte, a firm established in Japan by Korean Shin Kyuk-ho.

The group's de facto holding company is Lotte Holdings, which is controlled by the small Tokyo-based company Kwang Yoon Sa owned by Lotte's founding family.

The complicated ownership chain was exposed last year during a succession fight between the founder's two sons, negatively affecting Lotte's image among Korean consumers.

The company's image took another blow when the choice of its chocolate ad model, Mao Asada, made headlines in Korea. Because Asada was considered the chief rival of Korea's beloved Kim Yu-na, the ad reinforced perceptions that Lotte is more Japanese than Korean.

Few were surprised when Lotte decided to place the Korean national flag on its symbolic tower last year in an apparent effort to win the hearts of Korean consumers and the government.
By Chung Hyun-chae



Thousands of students in Korea and Hong Kong were turned away from U.S. college admission tests Saturday as the American College Testing (ACT) abruptly called off the examination due to a leak of test materials.



The ACT, an Iowa-based nonprofit administer of the test, cancelled the test after securing "credible evidence" of a leak.



"We are extremely concerned about any activities that could impact the fairness and integrity of the test. When individuals attempt to profit by stealing test materials and selling them, it can hurt thousands of students who did nothing wrong, as it has in this case," ACT spokesman Edward Colby was quoted as saying by AP, Saturday.



Korean students who had been supposed to take the exam at about 20 locations nationwide from 8 a.m. received the cancellation notice via email just one hour before they were to arrive at test sites.













Those who arrived early at the site had to return home after seeing a notice on a bulletin at test sites that read: "Today's ACT administration has been canceled due to security breach in ALL test centers of South Korea and Hong Kong. Direct all your inquiries to ACT."



This marked the first time that the ACT college entrance exam has been cancelled in the entire country.



As the test administrator affirmed that there will be no reexaminations, students preparing for the early admission have voiced concerns.



They have only one chance left to take ACT test in September to get scores in order to apply for American universities through early admission in November.



Along with the U.S. Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), ACT is a representative standard test for high school achievement and American college and university admissions.



Given that the test questions of both examinations are based on a question bank, it is relatively easier to leak test materials.



The College Board, the administrator of the SAT, cancelled the exam in Korea due to the leaking of questions in May 2013.



As the College Board has reduced the SAT in Korea after a series of test leak incidents occurred here, taking the ACT has emerged as an alternative for Korean students who desire to enter American colleges and universities.
Christian protesters gathering in front of Daehan Gate, the main gate of Deoksu Palace, rally against sexual minorities during the Queer Culture Festival held at Seoul Square in central Seoul, Saturday. / Korea Times Photo by Hong In-kee



By Kim Se-jeong



The Korea Queer Culture Festival on Saturday in Seoul had a welcome new addition  parents who stand by their gay and lesbian children.

Members of the Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) Korea opened a booth along with 100 others at Seoul Square in central Seoul, giving out guidebooks for parents of gay and lesbian children.

The parents also gave out hugs to festival participants for 180 minutes.

"It was supposed to be a brief event. We were surprised that so many showed up for a hug. Many wept in my arms. I am glad that I did that," said Ji-in, the mother of a son who came out as gay three years ago.

"I was in shock," she said about her initial reaction. "I did a lot of reading about homosexuality. I know one mother who read more than 1,000 research papers on the topic."

She said the deeper she studied, the more she was convinced there was nothing she could do to change him.

She decided to change her attitude and support her son.

Statistics helped her change her mind. According to the Korea Youth Counseling and Welfare Institute, 47.4 percent of LGBTs answered that they have attempted suicide.

Members of the Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbian and Gays (PFLAG) Korea march to support their children during the Queer festival in Seoul, Saturday. / Courtesy of PFLAG Korea



A research team at San Francisco State University said homosexual teenagers attempt suicide eight times more frequently than heterosexuals.

"I love my son for who he is," Ji-in said.

The group reiterates unity among parents and encourages parents to reach out to their children.

"They are already going through so much because of prejudice and discrimination due to their sexual identity," the mother said. "If I decide to reject him, who would support him? We need to unite to build a society where my son will have a better life."

The group meets once a month in Seoul. Visit www.pflagkorea.org for more information about the group.

According to the organizer, the festival drew almost 50,000 participants, who rallied in downtown Seoul in support of the rights of sexual minorities. Among the participants were university students from all over Korea. European countries set up booths at the festival, disseminating information about LGBT issues in their countries and voicing their support for LGBT rights in Korea.

The festival was opposed by Christian protesters who also waged a competing rally against the festival in front of Deoksu Palace.
By Yi Whan-woo



South Korea will be better off with Hillary Clinton as president rather than Donald Trump, considering their foreign and economic platforms, according to analysts Sunday.



Clinton, a former Secretary of State, is expected to maintain the mainstream American approach concerning Seoul-Washington ties if she is elected. However, what concerns Korea experts most about Trump is that he is unpredictable and ill-informed about the state of affairs on the Korean Peninsula.



Their differing views on South Korea will affect many security and economic issues the two allies are facing  including North Korea's nuclear ambitions, China's leverage on Pyongyang, sharing defense costs regarding the presence of U.S. forces in South Korea, the trilateral security alliance involving Japan, the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).



"Even judged solely on the basis of how unpredictable Trump would be as president, I think Hillary Clinton would be a better president hands down," Frederick Carriere, a senior fellow at the Korean Peninsula Affairs Center of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, wrote in an email. "A Clinton presidency would be based on maintaining continuity in the established diplomatic, security and economic relations, or if more political imagination is exercised than seems likely, on a gradual evolution of these relations."



Richard Bush, director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies, voiced a similar view in an email. He wrote that Clinton's approach in foreign relations and security will be in "what has been the American mainstream since the Korean War," while Trump is "outside that mainstream."



Leon Sigal, director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council, said, "It's not so much Trump's unpredictability as his ignorance of the world that is the problem."



In their strategy to address the Kim Jong-un regime's nuclear threats, Clinton insisted on sticks over carrots and that China, North Korea's largest benefactor, should be included in the strategy to press Pyongyang harder.



Trump said in May that he is willing to talk to Kim Jong-un after calling the young dictator a "maniac" and suggested that he would force China to "assassinate" Kim.



Concerning South Korea's payment of 932 billion won ($799 million) in 2015 to maintain 28,500 American troops stationed here, Trump, a billionaire real estate tycoon, called it "peanuts."



The payment was about 50 percent of the total defense-sharing costs estimated to be around 2 trillion won. Trump still held Seoul responsible for Washington's heavy security burden and suggested Seoul pay more by saying, "Why not 100 percent?"



His top foreign policy adviser, Walid Phares, tried to tone down Trump's comments later, saying any withdrawal of U.S. forces in South Korea will be "the last scenario to consider" in line with his "America First" rhetoric.



But Kim Hyun-wook, a U.S. expert at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy, warned that South Korea will be under pressure to shoulder a heavier financial burden on defense if Trump is elected.



Benjamin Self, a U.S. scholar, said that Trump "would sacrifice long-term interests in regional order for illusory tactical gains for the U.S."



Lee Myeon-woo, a Japan expert at the Sejong Institute, agreed.



"Unlike Trump, Clinton will hold consistent with President Barack Obama's Pivot to Asia' policy and the security alliance between Seoul and Washington will remain unchanged," he said.



Lee, however, said Clinton may push to bolster a joint alliance among Seoul, Washington and Tokyo despite lingering disputes between South Korea and Japan over the latter's wartime atrocities.



"The U.S. will put priority on regional security to contain a rising China and we may be asked to settle our historical row with Japan regardless of opposition within our society," he said.



Both Clinton and Trump have advocated protectionism in trade and they are against the TPP, a mega-sized free trade bloc that accounts for more than 40 percent of the global GDP.



A total of 12 countries, including the U.S, Japan, Canada and Australia, struck a deal in 2015 to create the TPP. It awaits U.S. Congressional ratification.



A failure in ratification would help South Korea maintain its export competitiveness against Japan. But Trump, who called for "U.S. isolationism," may go further and scrap the KORUS FTA as well, according to economists.



Trump said the KORUS FTA, which took effect in 2012, should be revised, while Clinton has been supportive of the bilateral deal.



"I think Clinton has opposed the TPP as part of her strategy to woo American laborers and she may withdraw her stance concerning the TPP if she's elected president," said Je Hyun-jung, a research fellow at Korea International Trade Association. "In the case of Trump, he may void any FTAs, whether they are multinational and bilateral."




Patricio Parragues, trade commission & agricultural affairs director at the Embassy of Chile, speaks at the the Curico & Maule Wine Tasting event at the Westin Chosun Seoul on June 1. / Courtesy of the Embassy of Chile



By Rachel Lee

Chile, the world's fourth-largest wine exporter, has uncorked in Korea a collection of fine varieties produced in the central part of the South American country known to have the best grape-growing conditions.

At the Curico & Maule Wine Tasting, organized by Chilean government trade and export organization Prochile, representatives from 13 wineries from the Curico and Maule valleys met Korean importers and media at the Westin Chosun Seoul on June 1.

Seoul was the second leg of their trip that included Vietnam and Japan.

"We wanted to introduce the range from those regions, and at the same time we aim to increase wine consumption in Korea with our variety of quality products that sell at competitive prices," Rodrigo Moisan Ubilla, a professor at Chile's Talca University, said.

He said the wines from the regions have more tannin and intense color, produced under optimal weather conditions affected by the country's coast and Andes foothills.

"Inter-mountain ranges benefit from high temperatures and thermal amplitude, which means more tannin extracted," he said.

Sauvignon blanc and chardonnay are the main white varieties, and cabernet sauvignon, merlot and carmenere represent the reds in the regions.

He said Korea's wine consumption is lower compared with other economically strong nations.

"Europeans drink about 30 liters of wine annually, Japanese 10 liters," he said. "For Korea, it's less than one liter, and I think it's quite low considering that Korea is an economic powerhouse and a culturally developed nation."

Alvaro Munoz Yanez, general manager at Loncomilla in Maule, said Korea was already an important market for Chilean wine producers, but he saw potential for expansion because Koreans' taste for wines is growing over the last few years.

"The free trade agreement (FTA) between the two countries has given us advantages, making it easier to enter the Korean market," Yanez said. "We are seeking more interest from local distributors this time."

Korean wine imports have been increasing over the past seven years, surpassing imported hard liquor for the first time last year, thanks to a changing drinking culture.

According to the Korea International Trade Association, wine imports last year were $190 million  a 24 percent market share. Imported liquors like whisky and brandy totaled $192 million (23.8 percent).

Chilean wines have built a bigger share of the market since 2004, when the FTA took effect. In 2003, Chilean wines accounted for 6.5 percent of the imported wine market. This rose sharply after the FTA and is now more than 20 percent.

Last year, Prochile brought premium Chilean producer Top Winemakers to Seoul for the "Seminary Chilean Wine Ambassador," where company representatives introduced 14 premium carmenere variety wines and explained the history of Chile's carmenere grapes.
By Rachel Lee

Students and teachers in Gangwon Province had an opportunity to learn in-depth about other cultures and history during a tour on June 10.

The "2016 ASEAN School Tour Program" organized by local government organizations and the ASEAN-Korea Center, aimed to introduce the diversity of ASEAN as a close neighbor and important partner for Korea.

"Although ASEAN is an important partner of Korea, there still remain prejudices and misunderstanding against ASEAN in Korea," said ASEAN-Korea Center Secretary General Kim Young-sun.

"The ASEAN School Tour Program, with about 11,000 Korean youths having participated so far, will continue to provide a useful avenue where the younger generation of Korea can learn and experience the rich culture and history of ASEAN, thereby contributing to raising awareness of ASEAN."

The program consisted of pre-learning activities for in-depth study on ASEAN  students participated in a drawing contest under two themes  "ASEAN and Korea, We are Friends" and "My Favorite Destination in ASEAN."

There was also a diverse quiz competition and music performances.

Diplomats from ASEAN embassies in Seoul came talked with the participants about issues like relations between the countries, and the career paths of diplomats.
"Enzis" outdoor furniture / Courtesy of the Austrian Embassy



By Rachel Lee

Austria has donated a design sculpture to Seoul's Dongdaemun Design Plaza with the aim of boosting bilateral cultural relations.

The "Enzis" outdoor furniture is a feature at Museums Quatier, Vienna's largest art complex.

"I am very proud that the Austrian National Tourist Office and the Vienna Tourist Board donated 12 Enzis  for the first time in Asia  to Seoul's Dongdaemun Design Plaza built by great architect Zaha Hadid," said Austrian Ambassador to Korea Elisabeth Bertagnoli.

"With this event we want to bring a bit modern Austrian art and culture to Korea and its people."

The ambassador said Korea and Austria, which established bilateral relations 124 years ago, had much in common  for example, the two nations loved culture and art as well as modern techniques and innovation.

The donation is part of the cultural event "Hello Austria! hello Vienna!" that also included dance, music jazz and painting.

"I hope that many Koreans can enjoy a bit of modern Austrian atmosphere here in Seoul and that many Koreans will visit Austria in the near future to discover my beautiful country," Bertagnoli said.

According to the Austrian Embassy, there will be more cultural events in the latter half of the year. Korea will be a partner for the International Brucknerfest in Linz, with the theme of "near and far," on Sept. 13-29. More than 550 Korean artists will perform there.
European Union (EU) Ambassador to Korea Gerhard Sabathil, left, meets with Lee In-ho, deputy minister for international trade and

investment at the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, at a press conference at Press Center in Seoul on June 8. The ambassador met local media representatives and explained the "EU Gateway to Korea," an EU initiative helping companies to establish business links in Korea. Korea is one of the three Asian markets to launch a five-year business program that provides an opportunity for selected European companies to take part in a one-week mission taking in various sectors including healthcare, organic food and drink.



/ Courtesy of the Delegation of the European Union
By Rachel Lee



Chinese fishing boats that have been working illegally in South Korean waters near the inter-Korean sea border are fleeing to the North after the South Korean military began a crackdown last week, according to military sources, Sunday.



A military official said that several Chinese vessels, which had been illegally fishing around the estuary of the Han River Thursday, have fled over the border to North Korean waters. The South Korean military cannot enter the North's territory in accordance with the armistice agreement, signed after the 1950-53 Korean War.



"Around 10 ships now remain in South Korean waters despite repeated warnings from us," the official said.



There were more than 20 boats in the area when the South Korean military began operations, Friday, in cooperation with the United Nations Command (UNC) to stop illegal Chinese fishing in the crab-rich military buffer zone.



The move has raised concerns over a possible accidental clash between the two Koreas as it may cause resistance from Pyongyang. The military tensions remain high in the area, which is near the Northern Limit Line, the de facto maritime border in the West Sea.



For any possible contingencies, the military kept emergency helicopters and navy vessels on standby.



There has been no response from Pyongyang yet.



The military said it will continue the operation until all Chinese fishing boats withdraw, but it has not yet decided whether to extend the operation for the third consecutive day on Sunday, because the Chinese boats are staying near North Korean shores. It is almost impossible to carry out illegal fishing in the area.



"We will decide after taking into consideration local weather conditions and movements of Chinese boats in neutral waters around the estuary of the Han River," the official said.



China has expressed its will to stop illegal fishing and pledged its cooperation with South Korea and other countries where such vessels operate.



The Chinese government said it has taken a series of measures for this matter.



"China attaches great value on educating fishermen," said China's foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei, adding that the country has demanded they follow international treaties on fishing.



It also asked the South Korean government to assure the safety of the fishermen while exercising their duties.



This was the first time that Seoul 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 joint military police team is comprised of the South Korean Navy, the Marine Corps and coast guard officers as well as UNC representatives and translators with four rigid-inflatable boats.



Illegal Chinese fishing has become a growing diplomatic problem between Seoul and Beijing over the past few years. Until 2014, only two to three cases were reported a year, but the number jumped to 120 in 2015, and up to 520 as of this May, according to the Ministry of National Defense.




The United States is considering additional sanctions on North Korea, State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said, stressing the importance of putting pressure on Pyongyang to end its nuclear program.



"Sanctions are only as strong as they are implemented, and so we really are urging our partners in the region to implement, to the fullest extent possible, those sanctions against North Korea in the hope that they will convince the North Korean regime to address the international community's concerns about its nuclear program," Toner said at a Foreign Press Center briefing Thursday.



"And that continues to be our focus. And again, it was a topic of conversation with China last week. It continues to be a conversation that we're having with our allies and partners in the region. We're also looking at other measures we can take going forward," he said of last week's annual strategic talks with Beijing.



Toner did not elaborate what "other measures" would be.



After the North's fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch in February, the U.S. has led the U.N. Security Council to adopt the toughest-ever sanctions on Pyongyang while adoping its own unilateral sanctions on the communist nation.



Earlier this month, the U.S. Treasury Department also designated the North as a "primary money laundering concern," a powerful sanction designed to cut off the provocative regime from the international banking system for defiantly pursuing nuclear and missile development.



The designation means banks around the world could be blacklisted if found to be doing business with Pyongyang. The measure was largely seen as targeting China as the North is believed to be conducting most transactions through the neighboring nation.



"We have seen a disturbing pattern of provocative behavior, continued tests or failed tests for some months now, that have alarmed us and alarmed all of our allies and partners in the region. And that includes, certainly, China," Toner said.



He said that China shares concern about the North's behavior, but Beijing also has concerns about instability caused by North Korea but also the possible instability or the repercussions of instability that could be caused by hard-hitting sanctions against the North.



"They are, in fact, a neighbor of North Korea, so we recognize those concerns. But we also recognize that China, as such, does have influence on North Korea and we believe can play an influential role on convincing North Korea, again, to come back to talks where it can address the international community's concerns," he said. (Yonhap)




The U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues will visit Britain and Belgium next week for meetings with British and European Union officials, the State Department announced Friday.

Amb. Robert King, special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, will be in London on June 13-14 before visiting Brussels on June 15-16 for "regular consultations with officials from the United Kingdom and the European Union," the department said.

The envoy will be back to Washington on June 17, it said.

The EU has long been an active player in international efforts to improve the human rights situation in North Korea, leading a number of U.N. and other international resolutions on the issue, including those calling for referring Pyongyang to the International Criminal Court. (Yonhap)
North Korea seems to be 694,000 tons short of food this year, the worst food shortage since 2011, Washington-based Voice of America (VOA) said Saturday, citing a United Nations body.

In the grain year of 2015-2016, North Korea will import some 300,000 tons of food, but may still face a shortage of 394,000 tons, the VOA said, quoting an estimate from the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization.

The report said North Korea's rice harvest dropped 26 percent to 1.95 million tons last year from a year earlier, while its corn harvest recorded an on-year drop to 2.3 million tons last year.

"North Korea's total grain harvest declined 9 percent last year from a year earlier," the VOA said.

Still, North Korea saw its harvest of other cereals like beans, sorghum and buckwheat increase by about 35 percent last year, according to the report.
Chinese authorities detained a suspected North Korean spy earlier this month for smuggling charges, a Japanese newspaper reported on Sunday.



According to the Yomiuri Shimbun, Chinese authorities arrested an unidentified North Korean citizen in Dandong, a border city in Liaoning Province next to North Korea. They reportedly arrested the North Korean in the middle of the night and seized 30 million Chinese yuan (about $4.5 million) and gold bars that were in his house.



The authorities have yet to disclose the exact charges brought against the man, but sources expect that they are related to smuggling banned substances that are listed in the United Nations sanctions.



According to the report, the agent has been living in Dandong for a few years and was called an "executive director," and "state representative" among North Korean traders.



The arrest was made just a few days after Ri Su-yong, the vice chairman of the North's ruling Workers' Party, met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and returned to Pyongyang on June 2. The Yomiuri said that China's rare arrest of a suspected North Korean agent hints at Beijing's pressure on Pyongyang to give up its nuclear programs.



The arrest was reported to the North Korean Embassy and an official from Pyongyang departed for China to resolve the case, but it is not confirmed whether the North Korean man has been released from jail at this moment, the newspaper reported. (Yonhap)




Diner en Blanc participants wave white napkins in the air during the Diner en Blanc Seoul event held Saturday in Banpo Hangang Park, southern Seoul. / Courtesy of Diner en Blanc Seoul



By Yun Suh-young

Diner en Blanc, a special event where people wear all white from head to toe and eat dinner together, was held for the first time in Seoul, Saturday.

The event was held at a square across from Some Sevit, a floating island at Banpo Hangang Park. One thousand participants clad in white adorned the scene, creating a spectacle against the backdrop of the colorfully illuminated artificial island.

The event, which started in France in 1988, expanded its presence across the world to over 60 cities including New York, Quebec, Barcelona, London, Sydney, Singapore, Stockholm, Tokyo and Shanghai. Seoul was the fourth Asian city to hold the event and Busan, which will be hosting it later this year, will be the fifth. In 2016, several more cities will join the list including Sao Paolo, Budapest and Las Vegas. About 100,000 people have participated in the event so far.

The Seoul event was held in celebration of the 130th anniversary of Korea-France diplomatic relations. Specially for the Seoul event, Lotte Card sponsored while Diner en Blanc hosted the event.

"It is delightful to be able to share French culture with a wider audience," said Fabien Penone, French Ambassador to Korea, who also participated dressed all in white from head to toe.

"It was fun to see how the event was reinterpreted in a Korean way in terms of fashion and food. I look forward to the next event."

Diner en Blanc, which translates to "Dinner in White" in English, is a secretive dinner party where the location of the event is unrevealed until the last minute. The party is exclusive  only those who have been invited by Diner en Blanc are allowed to participate. To be invited, one has to receive an invitation from the host or someone who has attended the event before. The third option is to register on the website and receive a confirmation.

The party was started by Francoise Pasquier, a Frenchman who had lived overseas and longed to meet his friends when returning to his country. In order to meet a large number at once, he decided to hold a party and, to be able to spot each other easily, he suggested they wear all white. After the first event at Bois de Boulogne, more people wanted to participate and thus the official concept of Diner en Blanc was born. In 2012, Pasquier established the official organization Diner en Blanc International to host the party more systematically.

Those who attend the event must bring their own food and any other items for dining including table and chairs. Those who wish to have food prepared by a chef can pay to preorder food. For the Seoul event, chef Ryu Tae-hwan of Ryunique, which won 27th place in Asia's 50 Best Restaurants, prepared the food.

Visit seoul.dinerenblanc.info for more information on future events in Korea.
By Choe Chong-dae

On May 13, I had the pleasure of attending the annual reception of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC) at the Joint Security Area in Panmunjom, at the invitation of the Swiss and Swedish Delegations of NNSC.

Many distinguished guests were present, such as Korean dignitaries, foreign diplomats, military generals, officers and delegates of the United Nations Command, including Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the recently appointed Commanding General of the UN Command and United States Forces Korea.

During the reception, I also had the privilege of meeting two impressive artists, violinist Won Hyung-joon, and painter Park Gian. Coincidently, I met them again on May 18 at the ACK (American Center Korea) Mission Speaker's Program during which they gave a unique performance, "Sound in Painting," under the theme of "Identity." The show featured Won's performance of the compositions Bach and Eugene Ysaye accompanied by Gian's painting.

Many Korean artists have dedicated their talents to enhancing Korea's image and support unification. In particular, I have been fascinated by Won's outstanding efforts to promote peace and unification through music.

A Juilliard-trained violinist, Won has earned a reputation both as a musician and a human rights activist. For almost a decade, he has immersed himself in creating the "One Orchestra," composed of North and South Korean musicians, with the purpose of establishing harmony between the South and North beyond political dissension, through music.

Inspired by the work of the conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim, who founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra composed of Israeli and Palestinian musicians in 1999, Won established the Lindenbaum Music Festival Orchestra in collaboration with maestro Charles Dutoit in 2009. This orchestra combined his musical and humanitarian efforts to forge a historic orchestral alliance between the two divided Koreas.

In recognition of such efforts, Won has been invited by many renowned universities such as Oxford, Harvard, Princeton and Georgetown to deliver speeches on orchestra diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula. He has attempted on many occasions to bring together musicians from both North and South Korea within a joint orchestra in order to perform concerts in Germany and in the truce village of Panmunjom in Korea, as well as in many other places. However, political circumstances have fallen through each time. Nevertheless, Won is pursuing these efforts to bridge the existing ideological gap between the South and North through his "One Orchestra."

In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Korea from Japanese colonial rule on August 15, 2015, Won had planned to make a 70 person North Korean choir stand on its respective side of the 38th parallel in Panmunjom, to perform the Korean folk song "Arirang," and Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, together with the 80 member Lindenbaum Festival Orchestra, an ensemble of volunteer musicians standing on this side. As symbols of peace and humanism, the Arirang song and Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 express our brotherhood.

However, less than two weeks before the momentous performance was to take place, two South Korean soldiers were severely injured by North Korean land mines at the DMZ. Consequently, tensions escalated, forcing Seoul to cancel the concert at the last minute.

Music reflects the deepest feeling and the best of human society. We often express our feelings and wishes in our hearts through music that brings us together, forming harmony of expression of our different emotions that transcend culture, ideology, time and boundary.

The international community and the Korean government should support and encourage Won's One Orchestra project aimed at organizing peace-inspired concerts between North and South Korea, hence paving the way towards Korea's unification through orchestra diplomacy.

Choe Chong-dae is a guest columnist of The Korea Times. He is president of Dae-kwang International Co., and Director of the Korean-Swedish Association. He can be reached at dkic98@chol.com.
Japanese carmaker's work-at-home plan is inspirational



Korean corporations should keep a close eye on Toyota's ambitious expansion of its work-at-home program.



Japanese media last week spotlighted the plans of Japan's largest company to introduce a telecommute program allowing around 35 percent of its employees to do most of their work outside the office. Under the program, 25,000 out of its 72,000 workers will only have to go to the office as little as two hours a week, instead working at home on PCs equipped with security systems to prevent data leaks. Through the plan, Toyota hopes to support employees with children and those looking after elderly family members. Workers in clerical and engineering positions who meet certain credentials based on their duration of service will be eligible for the program. Toyota is talking with trade unions for early adoption of the program, possibly by the end of August.



We strongly hope this inspires Korean companies to learn from its example and perceive family-first measures not as optional but as an imperative strategy for growth.



Toyota's work-at-home plan comes as the Japanese government is actively stepping up efforts to battle its low birthrate and the problems of an aging society. To turn around Japan's demographic descent, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe created a cabinet minister post and announced the "100 Million Active People" policy for stabilizing the country's population at 100 million in a half century, from the current 126.88 million. Abe has demonstrated a strong determination to deal with Japan's low birthrate, and has pledged to increase the figure to 1.8 children per woman.



It is refreshing to see active cooperation and long-term thinking from the Japanese government and from corporations for the national goal of responding to population problems.



It is also alarming to learn that not just Toyota but many other companies in Japan such as Nissan and the leading builder Shimizu are actively implementing measures for promoting work-life balance. A survey by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication shows that around 12 percent of Japanese companies are implementing some form of telecommuting arrangements to make it easier for workers to handle domestic demands. The number is a huge increase from 2 percent at the end of 2000.



Unlike the situation in Japan, Korea's corporations have not vigorously responded to the need to promote work-life balance as a way of dealing with the low birthrate crisis, even though Korea's birthrate of just 1.21 is lower than Japan's. A recent report shows Korea stuck at the bottom of the work-life balance index, with the proportion of Koreans working more than 50 hours per week way higher that than the OECD average.



Local companies have been reluctant about providing even the most basic facilities for working women such as in-house daycare centers. A recent study by the Ministry of Health and Welfare showed that many companies were in violation of the government ordinance to operate childcare centers. Many women, not to mention men, shun taking childcare leave, fearing the consequences of missing work. With this kind of rigid culture, women will continue to face huge obstacles in balancing work and family. Hurdles facing women after childbirth have already dented the participation of young women in the nation's workforce. The employment rate of women aged 35-39 stood at near the bottom of 34 OECD countries.



With one of the lowest birthrates among OECD countries, Korea's corporations have a responsibility to take bold initiatives to promote work-life balance. It is not enough for leading companies like Hyundai and Samsung to make products with global reputations. They should also lead by example in creating a family-oriented work culture. Which Korean company will think outside the box like Toyota did?




By Andrei Lankov

For a brief while, South Korean diplomats were in a rather celebratory mood: it looked like China, for a change, had joined the ROK and the U.S. in their efforts to subject North Korea to the toughest sanctions ever. Indeed, in early March the Chinese representative in the U.N. Security Council voted for Resolution 2270 which introduced such measures, and for a while the united front looked like a reality.

Frankly, for yours truly, it was a surprise: the harsh position Beijing had seemingly committed itself to was unprecedented, and China's switch happened quite suddenly. However, now it seems that this change was merely a short-term fluctuation.

There are many signs of a warming of relations between China and North Korea. In early June, Ri Su-yong, the former North Korean foreign minister who currently is the Korean Workers' Party vice-chairman responsible for foreign relations, visited Beijing. It is the first time since 2013 that a North Korean official of such high rank has appeared in the Chinese capital. Among other things, Ri was granted an audience with President Xi Jinping. It lasted merely 20 minutes and therefore was, first and foremost, a formality, but it still had much symbolic meaning. It is equally important that the Chinese media devoted much space to describing the visit.

Simultaneously, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman expressed dissatisfaction with the new U.S. policy initiative  unilateral sanctions, targeting banks that deal with North Korea. On the other hand, the U.S. authorities subpoenaed Huawei, a massive Chinese telecommunication company, for its alleged deals with North Korea. There is also a growing body of evidence that China is not being as strict with sanctions' enforcement as many had hoped for.

There is nothing surprising about all this. Like it or not, when it comes to the Korean Peninsula, Chinese interests are seriously different from those of the United States.

It is true that China does not want North Korea to be nuclear. Being a legally recognized nuclear country, China does not want an erosion of its uniquely privileged status, so it takes nuclear proliferation seriously. It also has some reason to worry about nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists: there are some terrorist groups and movements that target China. Last but not least, China is aware that North Korea's nuclear and missile tests create an environment that justifies an enlarged U.S. military presence in Northeast Asia  and Beijing does not want its main geopolitical rival hanging around in what the Chinese leaders see as their neighborhood.

Nonetheless, China needs stability in Korea more than it needs North Korea's denuclearization, and thus it is remarkably careful when it comes to pressing North Korea really hard. There is indeed a risk that excessive pressure will lead to a grave political crisis in Pyongyang and perhaps cause regime collapse  and this is not what China wants. Chinese policy planners do not want to deal with the refugees flow, the smuggling of conventional and (God forbid!) nuclear weapons, and general chaos near its major urban centers that might result if there is a North Korean domestic crisis.

It also has some reservations about what is the most likely eventual outcome of such a crisis  the emergence of a unified Korean state dominated by Seoul and hence democratic, nationalist and close to the U.S.

China can live with a unified Korea, but it has no reason to encourage such a turn of events. The Chinese attitude to the North Korean issue to a large extent depends on the state of relations between Beijing and Washington. When such relations go sour, China feels more interest in maintaining a buffer state (no matter how repulsive it is in many regards), and is more willing to invest money to prevent North Korea from going belly up.

Recent news indicates that relations between China and the U.S. are going south. The conflict in the South China Sea is a big issue, and President Obama, while visiting Vietnam, lifted the embargo on sales of weapons to the country which sees China as its greatest potential threat (with good reason, admittedly). No matter how people in Hanoi and Washington (or Manila) see it, from the Chinese point of view this looks rather unfriendly, so one should expect that their willingness to cooperate with the U.S. on North Korean issues, while still quite weak, will become even weaker  and this is exactly what we see now.

To be honest, these developments should not have come as a surprise. The so-called international community' is largely a fiction: it consists of sovereign states, each with their own interests, and only seldom willing to subordinate these interests to greater concerns. So it is businesses as usual, as has been the case for the last 100,000 years or so.

Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. Reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.
By Lee Min-hyung



With Apple's iPhone sales showing little signs of rebound, its parts suppliers in Korea are expected to suffer setbacks in their second-quarter earnings.



In a quarterly earnings report in April, Apple said it sold some 51.2 million iPhones in the first quarter this year, down 16 percent from a year ago.



The dwindling supply for iPhones, however, is coming as a significant blow to its parts manufacturers here, which are mostly Samsung and LG affiliates, according to industry sources.



"Local iPhone parts manufacturers cannot be free from the impact of reduced iPhone shipments, but the extent of the damage will vary from how much they rely on Apple," said a source, asking for anonymity,



In particular, LG Innotek, the camera module manufacturing subsidiary of LG Group, posted some 400 million won in operating profit in the first quarter, down 99.4 percent from a previous year. Apple is the subsidiary's biggest client, taking up some 30 percent of its sales.



Oh Sae-joon, an analyst from Heungkuk Securities, said in a report that LG Innotek will continue the poor performance for the rest of the first half of this year. But LG Innotek may offset this by winning an exclusive contract with Apple over supplying its camera modules to the iPhone 7, as Sony has recently withdrawn its camera module business, according to the analyst.



Samsung Electro-Mechanics, the electronic components unit of Samsung which also manufactures camera modules for smartphones, will also be hit by the iPhone sales decline, though its losses won't be as massive as its LG counterpart.



The Samsung affiliate posted 42.9 billion won in operating profit in the first quarter, down 50 percent from the previous year. But the company dispelled concerns over poor iPhone sales, as its major revenue source comes from sales of Galaxy S7.



The company said it plans to roll out new camera modules as early as July, in a bid to cut heavy reliance on some clients and diversify its distribution channels into China. The company recently signed a camera module supply contract with Chinese handset manufacturers whose new products, equipped with the modules, are expected to be launched within the third quarter.



LG Display, which supplies LCDs to iPhones, is another parts manufacturer hit hard by the iPhone sales decline.



The company said in a first-quarter earnings report that its mobile panel business took up 23 percent of its total sales, down 9 percentage points from the previous quarter.



Critics and market analysts voiced their consensus that its mobile display business would continue to face a bumpy road in the coming quarters. LIG Investment & Securities analyst Shin Hyun-joon said, "Apple's sluggish performance adds to gloomy pictures for a potential rebound of LG Display."



Local chipmakers  including Samsung Electronics and SK hynix  supply mobile DRAMs and NAND flash memory chips to Apple.



Bae Seong-young, an analyst from Hyundai Securities, said: "Foreign investors' concerns over iPhone sales can be interpreted as concerns over Samsung Electronics."



A semiconductor industry official said, "The iPhone sales decline may affect Samsung's chip sales to some extent, but the company is expected to offset this with sales of its flagship handset, the S7."




Eulji University professor Kim Jong-yull with International Awards Committee Jury chairwoman Shirley Greening, after Kim was named Cytotechnologist of the Year 2014 at the 19th International Congress of Cytology in Yokohama, May 28.

/ Courtesy of the International Academy of Cytology



By Kim Yoo-chul



The International Academy of Cytology (IAC) named Eulji University professor Kim Jong-yull as the Cytotechnologist of the Year 2014, the first time a Korean has won the award.



Founded in 1957, the IAC has about 20,000 members in 83 countries. The body is a non-profit organization of cytopathologists, cytotechnologists and other professionals concerned with research in and practice of clinical cytology.



"Kim's nomination for the award is because of his outstanding record of cytology-teaching excellence, promotion of professional collaborations and exemplary service to the IAC," the organization said in a release.



The awards ceremony was held at the 19th International Congress in Yokohama, Japan, May 28.



"It's great honor for me to be the first Korean to receive the award. This is a result of collaboration with IAC members and steady investment for cell-detection technologies," Kim told The Korea Times by telephone, Sunday.



Kim was certified as an international cytotechnologist in 1985. Most of his members are currently involved in various projects with larger local hospitals for the development of advanced cell-detection technologies to be used in curing diseases and illnesses.



Kim, who is also the president of MicroCellBio Consulting, said he was hoping the nomination would fuel additional momentum for the enhancement of cell-detection technologies for early and effective treatment of various types of incurable diseases such as cancer.



"The use of detection techniques is widespread both in laboratory and clinical settings. Because specific protocols and processes utilized for detecting cells are based on exact information, demand for cell-detection technologies will remain solid," said Kim, adding he will team up with other researchers to enhance such techniques.



The professor said he was eyeing chances to sharpen techniques that incorporate modern-day detection methods, which could offer great improvements.



"Amid growth in health-related markets and growing awareness to develop methods for exact treatment of diseases, proficiency testing in tissues and cells is presenting opportunities," Kim said.
Our favorite kpop boys BTS encountered a rough start to their trip to Taiwan today! Taiwanese fans came to welcome the group at the airport, but when BTS arrived fans caused chaos because in their over excitement. This caused some of the BTS members to be pushed by fans and injured in the process.







Fantaken @ Taoyuan Airport

Jimin was pushed by the crowd and fell over, which prompted staff to physically pull him up to prevent further injury, meanwhile Suga and Jin were also pushed by fans and almost fell over. BIGHIT have also issued an official warning on the BTS fancafe asking fans in Asia to respect the boys as they travel.

Due to the incident that happened, stricter security was given to Jungkook who didn't have the same flight as the other members due to his recent appearance on 'Flower Crew'.

BTS are due to hold their Taiwan concert tomorrow, June 9th at Hsinghuang Gymnasium, Taipei.

Stay tuned to Officially KMusic for exclusive Kpop updates!
Question: I live in a residential, two-on-a-lot common interest development with a homeowner association; the other owner and I comprise the board. The covenants, conditions and restrictions state all buildings, driveways and sidewalks are common areas whereas the balconies and a back patio are designated as exclusive use common areas.

My neighbor, the other owner, refuses to acknowledge the homeowner association and will not enter into an insurance policy for the association. I tried to obtain individual homeowners insurance for my detached single-family dwelling but several insurers refused, stating that the only way to insure me was to follow the laws in the common interest development act. Eventually, though, we each managed to obtain individual homeowners insurance on our respective single-family dwellings.

My insurance agent told me that my personal homeowners insurance covers the common areas so the association doesnt need to purchase its own insurance. Is the association really covered by my individual homeowners insurance policy, and is there exposure because we dont follow the CC&Rs? Is my individual earthquake insurance for my buildings structure valid?

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Answer: In California, some insurance companies may decline to insure individual property (e.g., units, town homes and detached homes) within common interest developments unless the association itself is adequately insured, which includes earthquake coverage. It can be complicated to separate the loss responsibilities of an owner from that of the association, especially from loss due to third-party vendors, visiting guests and public access in mixed-use developments. And even if you do obtain an individual homeowners insurance policy, you may only find out that coverage is limited or the entire policy void when you try to submit a claim, which by that time is too late.

If your insurance agent told you that the association doesnt have to purchase its own insurance, get that statement in writing. It will have to include an explanation of what coverage, if any, is provided by your insurance policy for claims made against the association and not just you as an individual. But since your CC&Rs state that all buildings, driveways, sidewalks are common areas, it appears that your insurance agent was wrong to say your personal individual homeowners and earthquake insurance will cover those in-common owned areas following a catastrophic event.

Also, in the event of a lawsuit against the board or association, your liability as a volunteer director hinges on whether the boards actions were performed in good faith and whether they were willful, wanton or grossly negligent.

The law establishes strict provisions for insurance based on the size of your association. As a director of an association with fewer than 100 units, in order to protect your personal assets, the association must have directors and officers liability insurance with a minimum coverage of $500,000 in case you are sued for negligent acts or omissions in your role as a director or officer. (Civil Code section 5800)

The association as a whole also must be protected by general liability coverage with minimum coverage of at least $2,000,000. (Civil Code sections 5805).

A board directors job is to balance the risk of a lawsuit against the risk of your association going insolvent while fulfilling safety and maintenance requirements, all while making well-reasoned and informed decisions. The business judgment rule requires sufficient investigation regarding such matters.

Your time and the associations money should be spent trying to limit the legal and financial exposure of the association and its titleholders, and one way to do that is to follow the law. The law states that the association has to carry insurance.

Zachary Levine, a partner at Wolk & Levine, a business and intellectual property law firm, co-wrote this column. Vanitzian is an arbitrator and mediator. Send questions to Donie Vanitzian, JD, P.O. Box 10490, Marina del Rey, CA 90295 ornoexit@mindspring.com
Just hours before Sunday nights live Tony Awards ceremony, news of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, which took place at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., overnight, has cast a shadow over the biggest evening of the Broadway year. But the show will go on, now in memory of the massacres victims.

Our hearts are heavy for the unimaginable tragedy that happened last night in Orlando, the Tonys producers said in a statement. The Tony Awards dedicate tonights ceremony to them.

https://twitter.com/TheTonyAwards/status/742034919883452416

https://twitter.com/TheTonyAwards/status/742014518109310977

According to police, at least 50 people were killed inside the nightclub early Sunday morning by a lone gunman. An additional 53 were wounded.

The Tonys, taking place at Manhattans Beacon Theater, will be hosted by James Corden of CBS Late Late Show. Though a comedian, Corden and the show will be expected to show deference to the national tragedy, one that likely hits close to home to the theater community, which embraces the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

At the ceremony, Broadway smash musical Hamilton is expected to sweep numerous awards. The ceremony tapes live from New York on Sunday at 5 p.m. and will air on the West Coast at 8 p.m.

Follow me on Twitter: @TrevellAnderson.
Hello! Im Mark Olsen, and welcome to your weekly field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

Part of the reason this newsletter exists is that there are a lot of movies out there these days, coming at us in all sorts of ways on all manner of screens. And hopefully this newsletter helps you, the reader, save time by just skimming the cream off the top  curation, as they call it these days.

But Im far from infallible, and things get by me too. Take The Wailing, for instance. I was a huge fan of Korean filmmaker Na Hong-jins The Yellow Sea a few years back, yet somehow I had no idea he had a new film that premiered at Cannes last month and was already in theaters here in the U.S.

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Our own Justin Chang reviewed it and liked it, saying last week, Its a film you watch in a state of slowly gathering dread  because youre never quite sure, on a deeper level, what it wants from you. At times the movie doesnt seem too sure, either. Its a supremely patient freakout.

And well have some more exciting screening/Q&A events coming up soon. (For real! We just booked a title Im very excited about.) Check events.latimes.com for more info.

Nonstop movies. Movies nonstop.

Brian DePalma, center, is the subject of De Palma, a new documentary about him and his work, from fellow filmmakers Noah Baumbach, left, and Jake Paltrow, right. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times )

De Palma

Filmmaker Brian De Palma has long been a figure of controversy due to his delirious depictions of sex and violence. But he has also long been a movie connoisseur favorite for his incredible skill as a visual stylist, someone who has been able to make the most of filmmaking as a medium.

The new documentary De Palma is simply a delight. Made by directors Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow, the film features De Palma talking candidly about his lifes work and provides a vital opportunity for reassessing his career.

In his Times review, Kenneth Turan said, De Palmas biggest asset, not surprisingly, is the man himself. A formidable talker who is invariably smart, candid and acerbic, De Palma is a person of considerable self-confidence, and listening to him hold forth gives us an always-involving glimpse inside a singular cinematic mind.

I spoke to De Palma, Baumbach and Paltrow about their mutual friendship and the making of the doc. Of his honesty in the film about his films and himself, De Palma said, I just think if youre going to do it, youve got to be as honest as possible. Ive always been very much of a realist about my career.

One of the biggest lessons of the doc is that when it comes to De Palma, there is something interesting in every single one of his films. Justin and I made our way through some of his lesser-known films and even surprised ourselves, as Justin got into Mission to Mars while I took on The Bonfire of the Vanities.

At the New York Times, Wesley Morris grapples with the fact that there is so much in De Palmas work that is troubling or demands some reconciling. (He thinks less of Bonfire than I do, for example.) But he also gets to the fact that so much of what makes De Palma seem dangerous is also what is sorely missing from so much moviemaking today.

As Morris writes, And yet heres the thing about Mr. De Palma. He never stops  never stops trying to pull the rug out from under us, never stops trying to twist our arm, never stops believing that nonsense can be an aphrodisiac, too.

The Fits

After playing at Venice and Sundance, The Fits is now in theaters and is one of the most exciting debuts of the year. The first feature from filmmaker Anna Rose Holmer, the film is part allegory of adolescence, part coming-of-age film and part dance movie.

As Kenneth Turan put it in his review, Made by a first-time feature director working with a microscopic budget and a tiny, 11-year-old protagonist, its a 72-minute wonder, a self-assured, gently mysterious little film that is hypnotic in unexpected ways  The Fits is an allusive, artistic film that prefers not to spell everything out, but we all know what it means.

Lorraine Ali wrote about the making of the film. As Holmer told her, All the girls were putting on screen are complex and complicated, strong and vulnerable, questioning and content. They carry contradictions around with them, making it really hard to define them as a group.

In the New York Times, Manohla Dargis called the film a dreamy, beautifully syncopated coming-of-age tale  Any uplift that you may feel wont come from having your ideas affirmed, but from something ineluctable  call it art.

Holmer and the filmmaking team also participated in a Q&A after the films screening at the New Directors/New Films series in New York in the spring. You can watch it here.

Viktoria

Some films take a little longer to find their way into the world. Viktoria played at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and is just reaching Los Angeles theaters now. The debut feature from Bulgarian filmmaker Maya Vitkova, the movie follows three generations of women in the years of transition to democracy.

In her L.A. Times review, Sheri Linden said, Such inventively surreal virtues mark Maya Vitkovas ambitious debut feature as the arrival of a bracing cinematic talent  she fuses artfully composed visuals and stinging black comedy around a lead performance, by Irmena Chichikova, of stunningly unapologetic gloom.

In the New Yorker, Richard Brody called it a wildly imaginative yet fiercely precise, grandly political yet bracingly intimate report on being a woman in Bulgaria at a time when politics and private life were conspicuously intertwined.

Marquee Movies: Movies on Moviegoing

The UCLA Film & Television Archive has put together an inventive program of movies that feature going to the movies for a series called Marquee Movies: Movies on Moviegoing. Though already underway, which means that such delights as Joe Dantes Matinee and Woody Allens The Purple Rose of Cairo have already played, there is still plenty in store. Not least of which is a 35mm screening of Tsai Ming-liangs achingly melancholy 2003 Goodbye Dragon Inn, set amid a crumbling Taipei movie theater showing King Hus Dragon Inn. Other films still to come include Lamberto Bavas Demons, produced by Dario Argento and the original directors cut of Giuseppe Tornatores Cinema Paradiso. There will also be a panel discussion on June 15 with programmers from repertory venues all over Los Angeles.

Email me if you have questions, comments or suggestions, and follow me on Twitter @IndieFocus.
Authorities on Sunday were trying to determine the intentions of an Indiana man with a cache of weapons, ammunition and explosive-making materials in his car and apparent plans to attend the L.A. Pride festival in West Hollywood.

Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks initially said on Twitter that the 20-year-old man told one of her officers after he was arrested that he wanted to harm Gay Pride event.

Update: Court date set for Indiana man found with weapons before L.A. Pride parade 

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But Lt. Saul Rodriguez said later the tweet was a misstatement. He said the suspect told investigators that he was going to the Pride festival but said he did not make additional statements about his intentions.

It was a misstatement, Rodriguez said. Unfortunately, she was given incorrect information initially, which indicated that that statement was made; however, that statement never was made. He did indicate that he was planning on going to the Pride festival but beyond anything as far as motives or his intentions that statement was never made nor did any officer receive that statement.

1 / 11 Marchers hold letters that spell out Orlando in support of the victims in the shooting during the annual Gay Pride parade in West Hollywood. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 11 Marchers carry signs that read, We Are Orlando, while walking down Santa Monica Blvd. during the annual Gay Pride Parade. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 11 Men process down Santa Monica Blvd. under a gay pride rainbow during the annual Gay Pride Parade. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 11 A large group of people process down Santa Monica Blvd. during the annual Gay Pride parade. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 11 Members of UFCW Local 770 march under gay pride colored banners during the annual Gay Pride Parade. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 11 A L.A. Sheriff Deputies keep a watchful eye out as people process during the LA Pride Parade in West Hollywood. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 11 A moment of silence by Garcetti and crowd for the victims of the shooting attack in Orlando. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 11 Police and FBI agents stand by to provide security for the 2016 L.A. Pride celebration. (Mark Ralson / AFP / Getty Images) 9 / 11 Members of the FBI Joint Terrorism task force stand by to provide security for the 2016 Gay Pride Parade in Los Angeles, California. Security for the tightened in the aftermath of the deadly shootings in Orlando. (Mark Ralston / AFP / Getty Images) 10 / 11 Los Angeles police officers stand by to provide security for the 2016 Gay Pride Parade. The tightened security comes in the aftermath of the deadly shootings in Orlando. (Mark Ralston / AFP / Getty Images) 11 / 11 Police stand by to provide security for the 2016 Gay Pride Parade. Security for the tightened in the aftermath of the deadly shootings in Orlando. (Mark Ralston / AFP / Getty Images)

Police identified the suspect as James Wesley Howell of Indiana. A Facebook page for someone with the same name in Indiana shows a young man posing next to a white Acura with the same license plate as the car searched in Santa Monica for the weapons and explosives.

At a news conference Sunday afternoon, police stressed they were still trying to figure out what Howell planned to do with the weapons.

Howells friend and fellow car club member Joseph Greeson, 18, said Howell didnt harbor any ill will toward gays or lesbians.

Greeson said Howells family in Jeffersonville hadnt seen him for days and that his parents had called Greesons parents looking for him.

He added that Howell was known to have a gun collection.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

According to Indiana court records, Howell was charged in October 2015 with intimidation and felony pointing a firearm at another person. On April 19, Howell pleaded guilty to misdemeanor intimidation, and prosecutors dropped the charge of pointing a firearm. Court records show he was sentenced to a year in state prison and placed on probation. Under the deal, He agreed to forfeit all weapons during his term of probation.

Howell allegedly pointed a gun at his neighbors in the October incident, according to a News and Tribune article. In the article, witnesses also described Howell as having pointed his gun at his boyfriend in an earlier incident.

James is going to get someone hurt, one witness said, the article said. He needs to stop pointing guns at people.

Greeson said that Howell harbored no ill will toward gays or lesbians and added that Howell was bisexual.

Federal and local law enforcement decided against canceling the annual parade, which went forward Sunday morning under tightened security. Investigators are now trying to piece together what happened but said they dont believe there is any connection between the incident and the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., that killed at least 50 people overnight.

Early Sunday, Santa Monica police received a call about a suspected prowler who was knocking on a residents door and window about 5 a.m. in the 1700 block of 11th Street, Santa Monica police said. Patrol officers responded and encountered Howell, who was sitting in a car registered in Indiana, police said. Officers inspected the car and found three assault rifles, high-capacity ammunition and a 5-gallon bucket containing chemicals capable of forming an improvised explosive device, police said.

A law enforcement source who spoke on condition of anonymity said the contents of the bucket included Tannerite, an ingredient that could be used to create a pipe bomb. The maker of the material said that was not the case and that it can only be detonated by high-velocity impact such as a bullet strike. But Tannerite is known as a material used in the construction of other types of explosive devices.

The source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation, said authorities also found camouflage clothing in the car.

Los Angeles County sheriffs officials said the suspect told police he was going to the Pride parade to look for a friend. Authorities were looking for that individual.

Santa Monica police spokesman Saul Rodriguez said detectives are not aware of what the suspects intentions were at this point.

Santa Monica police continued to search the suspects white Acura on Sunday morning. All four of the cars doors were open and a green blanket, red gasoline canister and several other smaller items were being piled on the sidewalk next to it. The cars license plate included a symbol of the National Rifle Assn. on the left side and the bottom said, Teaching Freedom.

A Facebook page for Howell said he attended high school in Louisville, Ky., and lives in Jeffersonville, Ind., where he works for an air filtration company. A car enthusiast, Howell posted numerous photographs of the Acura along with a couple of videos taken from inside cars. Another 10-second video includes gunfire, with shots striking grass.

The site includes political posts, including one in which he compares Hillary Clinton to Adolf Hitler. In another, he repeats conspiracy theories that the government was behind notorious terrorist attacks, including Sept. 11, 2001. That post shares a video claiming that last years terror attack on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was a hoax and attributable to the New World Order.

They found him with weapons that were very disconcerting, said one source, adding officials are taking the appropriate safety precautions.

One source in West Hollywood said there was discussion of calling off the parade but that officials decided to go forward, with heavy security including undercover officers in the crowd.

The sources spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

The parade comes hours after the attack at the Orlando club. In addition to those killed, at least 53 were injured in the deadliest shooting in modern American history after a gunman took hostages. The gunman, who was killed in a shootout with police, has been identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, a U.S. law enforcement official said.

West Hollywood City Councilwoman Lindsey Horvath said in a statement that Los Angeles County sheriffs officials were stepping up security efforts around Sundays parade and other festivities. But she said officials do not believe there is any threat around Sundays activities.

The parade began about 10:45 a.m. Usually a joyful affair, this event was tempered by the Orlando violence and the Santa Monica arrest.

Emma Samuels, 16, stood at Crescent Heights and Santa Monica boulevards with a group of friends, wearing a rainbow tutu.

She had heard about what happened in Florida when her mother called her Sunday morning, as soon as she arrived at the parade. She told me and said, I hope youre safe, sweetie, I love you and let me know that youre OK, she said. Her friend Nicki Genco-Kamin, 18, stood with her, a No H8 temporary tattoo on her left cheek: I feel like its all the more reason to come out. Thats trying to push us back. This is showing were still here, were still going to take a stand, she said.

The group said that a sense of worry was there, but stressed the importance of turning out.

Thats exactly why were here, to be like, Im proud of who I am. I dont care if you hate me, Im going to love myself, Samuels said.

Life is short anyways, Genco-Kamin said. Spend it being authentic to yourself.

------------

FOR THE RECORD

10:04 p.m.: An earlier version of this story misidentified Nicki Genco-Kamin as a male. She is a transgender female.

------------

Authorities look over the suspects car in Santa Monica. (Joel Rubin / Los Angeles Times )

Gun violence on the LGBTQ family during Pride Month makes me sick, Horvath said. The deadliest mass shooting in America happened to LGBTQ people on Latin night. While we mourn this heartbreaking loss, we must also rededicate ourselves to the fight for full equality for all people. No one is equal unless everyone is equal.

A reporter for ProPublica tweeted out a Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department bulletin detailing the arrest.

Times staff writers Richard Winton and Kate Mather contributed to this report.

MORE ON ORLANDO LGBT SHOOTING

L.A. gay pride parade takes on mournful tone after Orlando killings

Live updates: Shooting in Orlando kills 50

Orlando gunman identified as Omar Mateen, 29

UPDATES:

6:15 p.m.: This article was updated with Santa Monica police clarifying details about a tweet.

5:45 p.m.: This article was updated with more details about Howell.

5:15 p.m.: This article was updated with details about Howells intimidation case.

4:45 p.m.: This article was updated with more information about the use of Tannerite in explosive devices.

3:50 p.m.: This article was updated with more information about the arrest and Howells Facebook page.

3 p.m.: This article was updated with more information about James Howell.

2:05 p.m.: This article was updated with information from police about what James Howell told officers.

12:03 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details about the arrest.

11:03 a.m.: This article has been updated with news of tightened security at the L.A. Pride parade and that the police are seeking the suspects friend.

The article was originally published at 10 a.m.
Bystanders wait down the street after a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla.

A gunman took people hostage overnight inside Pulse nightclub in Orlando, where about 20 people were killed and 42 were taken to the hospital, Orlando Police Chief John Mina said at a morning news conference.

The gunman, who has not been identified, was carrying an assault rifle, a handgun and a "device." The Orange County Sheriffs Office hazardous device team is now searching the area.
The 49th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down laws banning interracial marriage is this weekend.

In 1958, when Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving wanted to marry, their union was illegal. Mildred was black and Native American, and her childhood sweetheart, Richard, was white.

Since they couldnt marry in their home state of Virginia, they went to the District of Columbia and were wed on June 2, 1958. (California had repealed its anti-miscegenation law in 1948.)

Back in Virginia, they were convicted and sentenced to a year in jail for the crime of marrying outside their races  unless they agreed leave the state and not return for 25 years.

With the help of the ACLU, they challenged the law and in 1967 the court in Loving vs. Virginia ruled unanimously that state bans on interracial marriage were unconstitutional.

SHARE: What's your Loving Day story? 

About 13 years ago, Loving Day, a celebration of that landmark decision, grew out of a graduate thesis project by graphic designer Ken Tanabe.

In honor of the anniversary of Loving vs. Virginia, we have been inviting readers to share their stories through the month of June. Heres a selection:

(Bellina Logan) (Test)

(Stephanie Waisler Photography) (Test)

Bellina Logan of Los Angeles is an actress who has performed a one-woman show called Conversations With a Mulatto Love Child.

My mother is very white, very blonde, very blue eyed and very British. Imagine Maggie Smith. Now, imagine Maggie Smith getting together with Shaft  and you get me.

My mom and dad met doing a play in Los Angeles and started a wild, passionate affair. She was posh and lived in Bel Air. He was an arts dude living in Hollywood helping kids get off the streets in Watts and into theater. They kept their affair secret for a while but slowly but surely walked around on the streets of L.A. holding hands (and their breath).

My mom happily became pregnant.

She kept the pregnancy a secret from most people  some were supportive, and others thought she was crazy to go ahead with it.

Fast forward to now. My husband just happens to be white. We saw that HBO documentary on the Lovings a few years ago. Our daughter is almost 13, and it blows her mind that we could have gone to jail for something as simple as getting married.

(Cara Hulett) (Test)

Cara Hulett of Cypress, with husband Anhad Singh and sons Andrew and Aiden.

Growing up in Southern California, I was used to witnessing much prejudice. So when I met my husband eight years ago, I was a little nervous to introduce him to my dad.

My husband grew up in India and moved here when he was 10. He explained to me that his family still practiced arranged marriages and they would never accept his decision to love me.

The rejection was immediate with his family. My family surprised me and was very supportive of our relationship. It hasn't been easy. We've fought with his family, we've fought with each other, and we've braved public scrutiny. People like to think their racism or prejudice will break us but it has made is stronger.

Love doesn't know prejudice or skin color. Love doesn't know race or religion. Our hearts are the same, and that's where our love is born and grown.

Dana and Nelson E. Douglas (Courtesy of Dana Douglas) (Test)

Dana Douglas of Venice

When I was growing up, my mother and father would sometimes take us to neighborhoods far from the white-picket fence community in which we lived just to see, in her words, beautiful people who did not look like us with their (usually) darker skin and curlier hair and other differences.

I was amazed at her surprise when I brought home a man who embodied the differences she taught me to find beautiful and announced just a few weeks later that we would marry.

And we did in 1972.

But that is not to say that no one expressed disapproval . We caught peoples expressions when they thought we werent looking and there were statements muttered under the breath of some close enough for us to hear . But our experience was nothing like what the Lovings experienced.

I have always believed that my mixed children would have the opportunity to enjoy the best of all worlds  black, white and now, the mixed world that is the legacy of Loving.

(Courtesy of Rachel Jennings) (Test)

Rachel Truman Jennings

I believe this photo of our family on mine and my husbands wedding day speaks for itself  this family is because of Loving [vs. Virginia], and simply because of love.

My father, a black man from Detroit, and my mother, a white, Jewish woman from the San Fernando Valley, met and fell in love in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Every day, I am forever grateful for the love my Nana and Papa had for their own daughter that allowed them to love and respect the man she chose to marry. It afforded me a childhood filled with the symbols of our blended cultures, and also the privilege of being unbound by stereotype or hate.

As a married adult, I have even more gratitude for the love of my in-laws, whose open hearts and minds have welcomed me into their family and traditions without question. I am now a frequent participant in their Iowa home towns Dutch festival parade  decked out in full Dutch costume and a sense of belonging.

Dan and Marie Bernstein (Courtesy of Dan Bernstein) (Test)

Dan Bernstein of Coolidge, Ariz.

Arizona 1987. It might as well had been the 1950s. Me, from N.Y. and Marie from Arizona, where the African American population was maybe 1.5 percent. We dated and set our hearts to one another. Heard from co-workers that we were wrong and what happens if you have children.

Twenty-seven years later, we are still here for one another and have been happy and proud grandparents. The Lovings had to suffer for what their hearts told them to do. We have moved into a slightly more understanding society; however, no love nor any relationship will endure without the love and understanding you have for each other.

Diana Ortega and fianc Paul Sullivan (Courtesy of Diana Ortega) (Test)

Diana Ortega of Van Nuys

Usually people ask me if my family is OK with my fiance being black, or my parents ask if his family is OK with me being Mexican. I cannot understand why it is such a problem, but I know generations before me were different.

The fact that me and my fiance can blend both our families and our cultures makes me feel so happy, because I know that our future kids will be a part of something great. They will be part of two amazing worlds, two amazing cultures and two amazing heritages. Thank you to the Lovings for standing up for love.

We'd love to hear your story too. You can share what being part of an interracial marriage or multicultural family has meant for you, on Instagram or Medium using the #myLovingDay hashtag. More reader stories at latimes.com/loving.

michelle.maltais@latimes.com

Tell me your story: @mmaltaisLA
Amid heightened security in the aftermath of a shooting in Orlando, Fla., thousands poured into the streets of West Hollywood on Sunday for an L.A. Pride celebration charged with a new resolve.

Crowds converged on Santa Monica and Crescent Heights boulevards, waving rainbow flags, brandishing We love Orlando signs and chanting slogans. Cheerleaders in drag raising awareness for HIV readied their pompoms and a group of lesbian motorcyclists revved their engines.

When our community comes under attack, what do we do? some shouted, with others yelling the reply, Stand up, fight back!

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City officials and civic leaders began the parade with a moment of silence and speeches calling for the celebration to serve as a rallying cry and a refutation to the violence at a gay nightclub in Florida, in which at least 50 were killed and 53 were injured early Sunday morning. The gunman was later killed in a shootout with police.

This is a terrible reminder to the LGBT community that, though weve achieved so much in our fight for full equality, there is so much work to be done for love to prevail, said West Hollywood Mayor Lauren Meister.

Mayor Eric Garcetti urged the marchers to celebrate and be proud in the face of violence.

 Mayor Garcetti speaks at press conference in West Hollywood (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

As Americans, we will not shrink away, we will not be stuck in our homes, we will not go back in our closets. We are out here to march, to celebrate and to mourn, Garcetti said.

Gina Tedesco and her wife, Kim Kriegler, raised their fists as Garcetti spoke. The couple, married in September of last year, spent the morning joyfully preparing to ride in their first parade as a couple as part of lesbian organization Dykes on Bikes. Then they turned on the news and heard about the nightclub shootings.

Like many at the parade, they swallowed their fears, donned rainbow bandanas and necklaces and walked out the door.

Definitely had a thought that were a target, Kriegler said. But were going to keep going.

Earlier Sunday, Santa Monica police arrested a heavily armed man in possession of explosive materials who told police he was looking for a friend at L.A. Pride. Santa Monica police officials say they do not know what the suspects intentions were, but news of the arrest sent shock waves through the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities participating in the parade.

The news about the arrest made Alonso Pina look over his shoulder a little more Sunday at the parade, which was his fourth time attending. But after what happened in Orlando, Pina said it never crossed his mind not to go.

If something happens, it happened when I was showing my pride. Im not concerned, Pina said.

Lorenzo Mancillas, 51, of West Hollywood, stood quietly on Santa Monica Boulevard with a black sign with a rainbow border that just said Orlando. He usually doesnt attend the parade because he doesnt like crowds, but it was important to show solidarity today, he said.

Im somber. Im happy, and Im angry, Mancillas said.

Authorities considered canceling the L.A. Pride parade after the arrest in Santa Monica but decided to continue with extra security, sources said.

The annual gay pride parade had a clear increase in officers Sunday. One source said the uniformed officers were bolstered by plainclothes officers milling around the grounds.

One concern was that it might be difficult to differentiate between angry protests over the massacre at the Orlando nightclub and an actual security threat, said one of the sources, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

Allison Jeppson, who came to the parade with friends and her 2-year-old daughter, said the news of the shootings made her even more proud of her two best friends, who were married a few months ago.

We wanted to show our support for them, Jeppson said.

As the floats and performers inched down Santa Monica Boulevard, Louis Chavez, 23, said he was thankful to see amazing people living their lives the way they want to and having so many people accept them.

But for marchers like Pina, it was a different kind of celebration. He usually greets marchers with a Happy Pride! but he hasnt said it to anyone today.

Because its not a happy pride. Its a sad pride. Its sad what were going through in this country.

frank.shyong@latimes.com

Twitter: @frankshyong

ALSO

Man arrested with weapons in Santa Monica was going to L.A Pride, authorities say

Live updates: Shooting in Orlando kills 50

Orlando gunman identified as Omar Mateen, 29
Three people were killed and two were wounded in Panorama City on Saturday night in what police are investigating as a murder-suicide, authorities said.

One man and two women were fatally shot inside an apartment in the 8500 block of Cedros Avenue around 7:30 p.m., said Officer J. Kim of the Los Angeles Police Departments Mission Division.

Two other people were also shot and taken to a hospital, though Kim did not know the extent of their injuries.

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Investigators believe the shooter was among the dead, and police are looking at the slayings as a murder-suicide, according to Kim, who said it was not immediately clear who pulled the trigger.

All of the victims were adults, Kim said.

The killings were part of a bloody weekend in Los Angeles County that left seven other people dead and five more injured in a series of shootings that started Friday afternoon in Compton.

james.queally@latimes.com

Follow @JamesQueallyLAT for crime and police news in California.

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A handful of graduating Stanford seniors waved signs at Sundays commencement ceremony showing support for victims of sexual assault and urging the university to do more to protect potential victims.

The goal is to amplify the voices of survivors on campus, said Stanford graduating senior Brianne Huntsman, an organizer of the protest. There is this idea that there is just, quote-unquote, one Stanford rapist, that Brock Turner is the Stanford rapist. And from our work on campus, we really know that this is not the case.

Some called on the university to routinely make public the names of students whom campus officials find to be responsible for sexual assault and sexual misconduct through the student disciplinary process.

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They say that the public discussion of Turner, the swimmer convicted of sexually assaulting a woman on campus, is rare. More common, they say, are situations in which an accused student is not publicly charged and convicted in criminal court but is still found to be responsible for sexual assault or sexual misconduct by the universitys student disciplinary system.

Despite the high barrier of proof used in these investigations, despite the universitys certain knowledge that these people are threats, Stanford keeps this knowledge a secret, an online petition said.

Graduating senior Jonathan Fisk said he is concerned that the university doesnt name those people. I do not feel comfortable not knowing that. And as an RA, I dont feel comfortable with my residents not knowing that, either.

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In a statement, Stanford University officials said that any person found to be a serious ongoing danger to the community is separated from the university, as Turner was. Within 10 days of Turners criminal arrest for suspected rape, Turner agreed to withdraw from Stanford, and the university banned him from setting foot on campus.

The university statement said that student disciplinary cases are handled confidentially. Officials welcomed proposals to encourage reporting of sexual offenses but questioned whether lifting confidentiality from the outcome of student disciplinary cases could affect students willingness to tip officials about prohibited sexual conduct and affect whether survivors face retaliation or intimidation.

Stanford officials also defended their commitment to combating sexual violence, saying all incoming undergraduates must receive training on sexual violence prevention.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, in 2014, Stanford had 26 cases of rape reported to either police or university employees. The university said that the number of cases can include anonymous reports in which there is not enough information to investigate, such as instances in which a report is made anonymously or students decline to cooperate with officials.

At the start of commencement, Stanford President John Hennessy called for a moment of silence to honor survivors of sexual violence, as well as the victims of the nightclub massacre in Orlando.

Students gathered on Friday to prepare for the protest, tweeting photos of signs they made that said, Stanford protects rapists, Rape culture has deep roots, Youre not alone, Celebrating 125 years of rape culture, and Brock Turner is not an exception. Turners sentence to what will probably amount to three months in county jail has provoked worldwide outrage; it is a fraction of the six-year term in state prison that prosecutors sought.

Supporters of the protest also said they wanted to express their anger toward Turners sentence.

Ive witnessed us as a society not properly raising men to treat women properly, said senior Mattias Johansson. This isnt about drinking on campus. This isnt about campus promiscuity Its about the atmosphere of mistreatment of women on our campus, and its a statement for me against this idea that rape isnt a crime worth talking about.

Stanfords graduating student body president, John-Lancaster Finley, said it was important to stand in solidarity with survivors of sexual violence at Stanford. We want people to know that this happens here.

Added outgoing student body vice president Brandon Hill: We need a broader conversation about what does masculinity mean. What is toxic masculinity? What is informing rape culture and people to take part in rape? What is it that fathers are teaching their sons?

Most graduating students did not participate in the protest, and a few were annoyed by its appearance at commencement.

Speaking to reporters penned in at Stanford Stadium, student Allie Koscove recounted how graduation meals have been filled with discussions of the Stanford rape case.

This isnt what I want to be defined as, Koscove said. I dont think its what my fellow classmates want to be defined as.

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Several vigils and prayer services are planned around Southern California on Sunday to commemorate the victims of the Orlando, Fla., nightclub shootings.

The LGBT Center in Orange County will hold a vigil at 6:30 p.m. at the corner of 4th and French streets. Participants will also march to Sasscer Park.

A prayer service is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Baitul Hameed Mosque, 11941 Ramona Ave. in Chino. The vigil is sponsored by the Los Angeles chapter of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

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A vigil is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at the fountain at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Holloway Drive in West Hollywood. Organizers are asking participants to wear orange. The Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence, Women Against Gun Violence and the Violence Prevention Coalition of Greater Los Angeles are the organizers.

A public vigil is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at Harvey Milk Park at 212 E. 3rd St. in Long Beach.

The Los Angeles LGBT Center will hold a vigil and a rally for Orlando victims and their families at 7 p..m. Monday at City Hall, 200 N. Spring Street

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Their eyes shimmered with tears when embracing the others.

But this gathering -- the nations largest for multiracial people held Friday and Saturday in downtowns Little Tokyo -- would not be graced with sadness.

Were here to celebrate. You look around you, you see not only your identity, but countless identities, said founder Heidi Durrow of the Mixed Remixed Festival, in its third year, drawing nearly 1,000 participants.

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When someone meets someone like us, they always say, What are you?  Durrow said. Based on our faces, they form expectations. Thats why we invite them to move beyond images to hear our stories -- then lets share everyones stories.

So she and organizers staged sessions, helping millennials, other adults and children do just that through books, talks, art, film and live performances.

The lineup attracted actors, comedians, dancers, authors and bloggers from across California -- one of 16 states where the number of multiracial residents has surpassed 200,000 or more, according to the U.S. Census. Plenty of families flew in from the Midwest and the East Coast.

Among them were Kenneth Smith and his daughters, Mariah and Acasha, who planned their summer vacation around the festivities.

The Harpers Ferry, W. Va., siblings took ancestry tests that revealed their African American and European roots. Our background includes Spanish, Italian, Russian and Finnish. It does confuse outsiders, said Acasha Smith, an information technology student at Shepherd University near her hometown. I introduce them to my dad, who is darker-skinned and they question us, Is that your adopted dad? 

You dont get asked that at a festival like this, said Mariah Smith, a veterinary student at Potomac State College in West Virginia. I think this is where you can be normal. And though a lot of society hasnt realized it, multiracial is more and more normal in America.

Durrow, who lives in West Los Angeles, agreed. She calls herself Afro-Viking because she is African American and Danish. Her parents married in Denmark since it was illegal for them to tie the knot in South Carolina in 1965, when interracial weddings were outlawed.

We actually thought our mom and dad were outlaws, but in a good way, Durrow recalled. The festival emerged from my desire to commune with those around me. L.A. is obviously diverse, but theres still no natural space for a natural conversation about our issues.

Talking race is timely, she added, alluding to the sometimes racially charged presidential campaign.

Durrow posed next to a poster for Loving, the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple who married and spent the next nine years fighting to stay together as a family. They took their civil rights case, Loving v. Virginia, to the Supreme Court, which in 1967 invalidated laws preventing interracial unions.

Festivalgoers streamed toward the movie display to snap pictures at a photo booth, sponsored by Focus Features, which is releasing the film in November. The Lovings landmark battle created buzz at the event, where people debated transracial adoptions, use of the word mulatto and what to do with naturally curly or straight biracial hair.

Via Perkins, who wrote her honors thesis on biracial people at Salem State University in Massachusetts, said that growing up, influenced by her maternal grandparents who are German, Slovakian and English, pushed her to apply for a spot at the festival to showcase her writing and poetry work.

On my fathers side, Im also African American, she said. Being a person that doesnt fit into a description, you have to figure out how to evolve. Coming here, I felt a kind of peace and a grounding. Wow.

Deanna Novak of Orlando, Fla., launched kidsHeritage Inc. to help multiracial kids get a head start. The Italian American married a man who is Polish-Czech and after giving birth to their daughter, she stumbled on the idea of publishing My Heritage Book. Its a personalized childrens book, with up to six countries that mirrors a youngsters background, allowing them to learn family values and traditions.

There was nothing that spoke to all of our cultures, Novak said of her and her husbands ancestries. This story shows a child that he or she belongs. You boost their confidence so when theyre older, they can make decisions about the world around them, about politics, religion, lifestyle.

Carolyn Forbes, mother of three, grandmother of 14 and great-grandmother of 10, happily ordered a volume. She created a website for her extended family, and from her Oregon home in Woodburn, south of Portland, she updates it regularly with all their activities. She has French, English and Scottish roots, and her clan is a blend of Filipino, Native American, Caucasian, Salvadoran, African American, Hawaiian and Mexican heritage.

At 68, she can trace her mothers lineage to 1370 in Suffolk, England, and says she and husband, Louie Wilson, didnt expect to find such a treasure at the conference. We just came to meet a Facebook friend.

But being at Mixed and Remixed tells them that the future will be less and less distinctive, added Wilson, 70. And the more people we have from everywhere, the better we are. I say open the borders.

anh.do@latimes.com

Twitter: @newsterrier

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Virginia might be for lovers now, but in the 1950s, things were a bit different. Take the case of the Lovings: Mildred was black and Native American, and her childhood sweetheart, Richard Loving, was white. And back then interracial marriage wasnt just complicated  it was illegal. Since they couldnt get married in their home state of Virginia (24 states in total), they went to D.C. and married on June 2, 1958. But back home, The Lovings were arrested for violating Virginia's 400-year-old anti-miscegenation laws, which nullified their marriage. With the help of the ACLU, they challenged that law and won  earning a unanimous Supreme Court ruling that state bans on interracial marriage were unconstitutional. Today we celebrate their love story.

So what does Loving look like for you in 2016?

Tell us how interracial marriage has affected you. We may select several submissions for publication on LATimes.com and in the paper.
A musty smell hangs in the air as pigeons swoop from the rafters and rainwater pools near a door. In the dim light, a battered Port Authority police cruiser sits abandoned  its twisted trunk popped open, the windshield gone and the front end bashed in.

Since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the relics of the World Trade Center  shafts of broken metal, warped elevator doors, a crushed taxicab  have been entombed here in Hangar 17 at John F. Kennedy International Airport. But its somber purpose, as a way station for remembrances of 9/11, is ending. The final few pieces of that September morning are being carted out of the cavernous structure.

Soon Hangar 17 will be empty, its mission complete.

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The large, significant items  such as the huge steel tridents from the facade of the North Tower and the damaged firetrucks and ambulances that roared to the scene only to be crushed after they arrived  have been placed in the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in Lower Manhattan and in the state museums of New York and New Jersey, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that owns the World Trade Center site.

The rest has been parceled out to towns across the country, U.S. military bases and embassies and foreign nations where they are required to be publicly displayed as part of smaller 9/11 memorials.

Work gloves and old clothing found after the Sept. 11 attack. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times )

The numbers are staggering. Some 2,500 items have been distributed to about 1,440 municipalities, schools, fire departments, nonprofits and other groups and foundations, said Amy Passiak, the archivist who has been supervising the dissemination project since 2010.

Its been a very humbling experience, Passiak said as she walked through the hangar on a recent morning. I have met people from every aspect and association of this event  survivors, family members (of victims), emergency personnel, recovery personnel from all over the country, representatives of other countries whose civilians were killed.

One of the few relics still awaiting placement is a jumble of twisted steel, metal mesh and concrete, a blob of debris that looks as if its part salvage yard junk and part modern sculpture. It is, in fact, material from what came to be called the pile, the ton upon ton of crushed remains from the collapsed towers.

For Passiak and officials of the Port Authority, the goal of distributing these relics  even to places that might not have a direct connection to the terrorist attack  has been to keep alive the memory of 9/11.

Amy Passaic walks past the steel beams that once supported some of the top floors at the World Trade Center. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times )

Because it was such a unifying event, I think that a lot of smaller towns, emergency services and schools really want to create a continuing knowledge about what happened and find a way of connecting it to U.S. history, Passiak said.

On this day, Passiak was preparing for two rusted train tracks recovered from the commuter rail line underneath the trade center to be picked up by the Iowans, as she called her expected guests. Just before 11 a.m., a white Chevy pickup truck pulled into a lot next to the hangar as a jet lifted off from a nearby runway and rumbled overhead.

Out of the truck stepped Elaine and Tom Howard, a retired couple from Hamburg, Iowa, who had arranged through a community booster organization, Hometown Pride, to secure the tracks for a memorial in their towns Heroes Park.

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They had driven the nearly 1,300 miles to New York City to personally deliver the train tracks back to Hamburg and its 1,187 residents. What better place to have a little piece of the World Trade Center than Heroes Park, said Elaine Howard, 67.

The tracks were not so little. Each section, about 10 feet long, weighed approximately 600 pounds. The Howards faces fell when a Port Authority worker who had transported the tracks to their vehicle on a forklift expressed doubt that they would fit into the trucks bed.

The tracks did, in the end, fit, although a slightly longer one jutted out a bit. They were secured with heavy chains for the drive home.

An elevator motor from the World Trade Center. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times )

The fact that the hangar is now nearly empty is gratifying to Amory Houghton, a former Port Authority executive who first oversaw Hangar 17, beginning in 2002, when it was filled to the brim with steel beams, damaged emergency vehicles and other debris brought from the World Trade Center site to save them for posterity.

The goal all along has been to have some of this steel in as many places as it could possibly be, said Houghton, who left the Port Authority in 2007.

He recalled bringing in preservationists and archivists to begin the daunting process of cataloging and protecting the relics. We were part laboratory, part historical archive and part morgue, he said.

Hearing that most of the World Trade Center objects now were placed elsewhere, Houghton said, Im really happy that this stuff has been spread out all over the place.  I think it just keeps it alive given the inevitability that the longer time passes the more memory fades.

The Howards was one of the final pickups at Hangar 17, which the Port Authority expects to close later this summer when the last of the relics are cleared out. The gray-and-white structure, dating back to the 1960s when it was built for Pan Am Airways, probably will be razed, the space used for other airport purposes, possibly aircraft parking, Coleman said.

An old sign prohibiting photography at the World Trade Center. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times )

The three biggest pieces still left inside  concrete slabs from the parking garage, a mangled elevator motor and a section of the antenna (each estimated to weigh about 20 tons)  were to be picked up in the next few weeks by representatives of the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation of Staten Island, named after a firefighter killed on Sept. 11.

A set of steel beams was going to an engineers union in Queens. Still left were additional train tracks and the material from the pile, which Passiak said she hoped to place with organizations that had expressed interest in obtaining relics.

Also unclaimed was the lone Port Authority police car, dust from the World Trade Center debris still coating its blueandwhite paint.

I think well find a home for it, too, Coleman said.

Haller is a special correspondent.

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Going to the bathroom in public makes Payton McGarry nervous now. Hes worried somebody will confront him. Or, worse, attack him. So before he leaves his apartment, he asks himself: Have I drunk too much water today?

Thats because McGarry, a 20-year-old student at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, is a transgender man. But because his birth certificate says hes female, North Carolina law says its illegal for him to use the mens room at school.

I really try not to go to the bathroom at all, McGarry said. When I was still in school for the semester, I literally had to walk two buildings down to legally use the restroom, and thats the kind of situation transgender people are being put in all over the place now.

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On March 23, North Carolina became the first state in the country to ban people from using government-owned restrooms and locker rooms that dont match the gender written on their birth certificates.

Since then, transgender North Carolinians interviewed by the Los Angeles Times say that going to public bathrooms has become an inconvenience and a conundrum, a daily choice between risking their personal safety or breaking the law.

Transgender women seem to have largely ignored the law for fear of being attacked or sexually assaulted in the mens room. Some transgender men have gone into womens rooms to avoid prosecution, or as a protest -- to create the kind of awkward situations that conservative lawmakers had intended to avoid.

A private mens bathroom in Bull McCabes Irish Pub in Durham, N.C. (Sara D. Davis / Getty Images )

Some transgender North Carolinians even plan their entire days around future bathroom trips or avoid public restrooms altogether, like McGarry, saying debate around House Bill 2 has brought a new climate of fear to the state.

McGarry, who is suing the state and the University of North Carolina system over the bathroom bill, wants to be a lawyer someday, so he wants to follow the law. But between going to the mens room where he fits in or going to the womens room where he sticks out, the choice is clear.

This is a situation where Im choosing between safety or breaking the law, and Im going to choose my safety every time, McGarry said. So I go to the male restroom.

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North Carolina has become the epicenter of a national battle over transgender rights since the city of Charlotte passed an ordinance in February barring discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. State Republican lawmakers immediately recoiled -- claiming Charlottes law allowed men and potential sexual predators into womens bathrooms -- and responded by passing House Bill 2, which also overrides local nondiscrimination packages like Charlottes.

Bathrooms have long been a source of anxiety for transgender men and women whose gender transitions are in progress. As their appearances change, it can be difficult to know when its best to stop using one genders bathroom and start using another.

Restrooms can even be dangerous. Seventy percent of transgender people have been attacked, harassed or denied access to a bathroom, according to a survey conducted in Washington, D.C., and published in the Journal of Public Management and Social Policy in 2013.

House Bill 2, which has drawn boycotts and lawsuits, has added institutional pressure to the mix.

Ethan Mayo, 18, started his gender transition this year, and he struggled over the right time to switch bathrooms. He started using the mens room at his Charlotte, N.C., high school when he started getting more weird looks in the girls bathroom.

I didnt want to feel out of place, I guess, Mayo said.

But House Bill 2 was passed not long after Mayo began using the mens room, and he said another student complained. After a teacher quizzed him about his bathroom habits, Mayo said, the schools administration quietly urged him to use a single-person restroom on campus.

I was just ticked off, said Mayo, who was set to graduate Saturday. I was kind of just hoping I could go as long as possible without getting caught. I knew I wasnt doing anything wrong.

The law has also been a source of worry for transgender North Carolinians who dont have whats often called passing privilege  the ability to not stick out as transgender.

Before the laws passage, using the mens room came naturally to Joaquin Carcano, 27, an employee of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Carcano has some facial hair. But, he said, Theres definitely times I dont pass. Now, there are times where I walk to the mens restroom and before I went in, [I think], Oh, wait, this law exists, there are restrictions.

Carcano didnt want to risk losing his job, so he began using a gender-neutral bathroom in a hospital next to his workplace. He recently discovered that his building, which is six stories, has one single-use bathroom  in the basement, for maintenance staff.

Carcano is now suing the state as part of the same lawsuit with McGarry. The head of the states university system, Margaret Spellings, said in May that she will not enforce the law until the lawsuit has been resolved.

Schools arent the only danger zones. Terri Phoenix, the director of the LGBTQ Center at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, uses the womens restroom when hes traveling in more conservative parts of the state because thats the gender listed on his drivers license.

Many transgender people interviewed by The Times said they werent afraid of prosecution because House Bill 2 doesnt specify a punishment for breaking the law. But Phoenix says that same ambiguity worried him.

I dont pass well as a guy, Phoenix said. What if a rural sheriff tried to arrest him for, say, indecent exposure at a public restroom? If I get challenged, I need to be able to show that I have the correct drivers license in order to be in the bathroom.

Others say following the law creates the kind of awkward situations the state purported to be legislating against.

August Branch, 25, of Greenville, has a full beard. But as a transgender man, he is legally supposed to use the womens bathroom when he gives workshops on transgender issues at East Carolina University.

So, Branch has sometimes used the womens room -- as a political statement.

It makes everybody uncomfortable, Branch said. For me in general, its safer to use the mens room. Im, like, a 200-pound bearded guy. Thats the bathroom I should be using.

Gender-neutral signs posted in public restrooms in Durhams 21C Museum Hotel. (Sara D. Davis / Getty Images )

Many transgender women would rather play it safe -- often fearing bathroom vigilantism by private citizens more than punishment for breaking the law.

Every day Im in dresses and tight clothing with a full face of makeup, said Angie Mullowney, 20, of Raleigh, a transgender woman who was attending North Carolina State University when the new law was passed. If I were to use the mens room, I would be putting myself in physical harm, or putting myself in a situation where I could be sexually assaulted, and theres no way Im going to be doing that.

Kaylin Mercer, a 21-year-old North Carolina State University student, says she passes so well that many people dont know shes transgender, so she largely ignores the law with no fear whatsoever.

Erica Lachowitz, a 40-year-old transgender woman and advocate in Charlotte, said, I would rather go to prison, receive a civil fine, than put myself at risk by going into a mens room.

There have been some other unexpected side effects. Roberta Dunn, a 72-year-old transgender advocate who lives outside Charlotte, talked to her lawyer about getting her birth certificate changed  just in case.

Lily Carollo, an incoming 24-year-old journalism graduate student at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, recently saw her therapist for the first time in months because she was getting so stressed out by the public debate around the law.

In at least one case, House Bill 2 has been life-altering.

At work, Lacy Norrice, 44, looks like a man, talks like a man, goes by a mans name. Thats how Norrice was born, but its not how Norrice wants to live. Norrice calls it male mode.

At night, she changes into womens clothes and goes out as Lacy, a transgender woman  Norrices true self.

My wife knows, my daughter knows about me, my son does not. Hes 10, Norrice said. Ive struggled with my feminine side since I was 5 years old, and pretty much growing up, I knew I was different.

But Norrice, who works at a consulting company in the Piedmont Triad area, said the blanket ban on discrimination protections will probably force her to delay her long-awaited physical transition to a woman. Shes afraid shell be punished once she comes out as transgender at work.

With House Bill 2, I can be discriminated against and fired, and I have no legal course of actions in the state of North Carolina, Norrice said. I cant afford to put my family in that situation.

Email: matt.pearce@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter: @mattdpearce

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President Obama said the FBI is investigating the worst mass shooting in U.S. history as an act of terrorism, calling the Sunday morning slaughter of 50 people at a nightclub in Orlando, Fla., a horrific massacre.

The somber address was a familiar ritual for Obama but no less painful for a president whose tenure has included the deadly bombing of the Boston Marathon, the slaughter of schoolchildren in Newton, Conn, and a terrorist attack on holiday party in San Bernardino, Calif.

Obamas full remarks on Orlando nightclub shooting 

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No act of terror or hate will change who we are, Obama said in a televised address at the White House shortly after he ordered U.S. flags flown at half-staff until Thursday to honor the victims in Orlando.

We pray for their families, who are grasping for answers with broken hearts, he said.

Obama called the methodical slaying of patrons at a gay nightclub especially heartbreaking because it was a refuge for people to come together to be with friends, to dance and to sing, and to live.

Obama said federal authorities had made no definitive judgement on the killers motivation, and whether he was inspired by or directed by Islamic State or other terrorist groups.

We know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate, Obama said. And as Americans we are united in grief, in outrage and in resolve to defend our people.

Obama spoke as federal and state agencies scrambled to investigate Omar Mateen, the only suspect in the shooting, and to determine whether the FBI had missed signs of his growing radicalization.

What is clear is he was a person filled with hatred, Obama said.

Obama was briefed on the attack early Sunday morning at the White House. He later cancelled a planned trip to Wisconsin on Wednesday to campaign with Hillary Clinton, who he endorsed last week as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson also cancelled trips to Beijing for high-level meetings this week aimed at reducing Chinese cyber attacks on U.S. businesses and institutions.

The terrorist attack inevitably spilled into the turmoil of the presidential campaign.

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, blamed radical Islamic terrorism in a tweet and asked, When will we get tough, smart and vigilant?

Later in a statement, he claimed that he had foreseen the attack.

Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen  and it is only going to get worse, he said. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We cant afford to be politically correct anymore.

Trumps presidential bid gained momentum after the San Bernardino shooting last winter when he called for a temporary ban on foreign Muslims entering the country.

He cited legal immigration from the Middle East as a problem on Sunday, but did not repeat his call for a ban on Muslims.

Mateen, the 29-year-old gunman in Orlando, was born in New York City and was a U.S. citizen, officials said. His parents were from Afghanistan.

Clinton pronounced the attack an act of terror and said Americans should redouble our efforts to defend our country from threats at home and abroad.

That means defeating international terror groups, working with allies and partners to go after them wherever they are, countering their attempts to recruit people here and everywhere, and hardening our defenses at home, she said in a statement..

Like Obama, Clinton cited the attack as a reason to tighten gun laws that allowed Mateen to buy a handgun and an assault-style rifle.

We need to keep guns like the ones used last night out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals, she said. This is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States and it reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets.

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His ex-wife said he was unstable and beat her. His father said he spoke openly of his disgust for gay people. A co-worker recalled him as a virulent racist.

Those who knew Omar Mateen, the 29-year-old Florida security guard who carried out the worst mass shooting in American history, described him Sunday as an angry and disagreeable person. But the roots of his rage  and much else about his assault on a gay nightclub in Orlando  remained unclear.

Was the killing of 50 motivated by the homophobia Mateen spewed to his family and co-workers? Or by the allegiance to Islamic State that he professed to a 911 operator the night of the attack? Or by a mental unraveling that drove his wife away after four months of marriage?

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And what lay behind his choice of a target: a Latin dance party at a club 130 miles from his home?

President Obama acknowledged the unanswered questions about Mateen at the White House, but noted, What is clear is that he was a person filled with hatred.

Mateens outbursts and possible connection to terrorists attracted the attention of the FBI twice in recent years. Agents questioned Mateen, the American-born son of Afghan immigrants, twice in 2013 after being told his co-workers suspected he might be linked to terrorists.

The colleagues reported that Mateen had made frightening claims that he had ties to terror groups, including Al Qaeda, a U.S. law enforcement official said. The Wall Street Journal reported that he also told colleagues he had connections with the brothers responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing.

FBI agents closed the 2013 investigation after they determined that Mateen didnt understand how the groups operated and he told investigators that he had been lying and blustering about his terrorist ties.

Ultimately we were unable to verify the substance of his comments and the investigation was closed, FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Ronald Hopper said.

Agents talked to him again in 2014 after learning he had attended the same mosque as Moner Mohammad Abusalha, a 22-year-old Floridian who joined a branch of Al Qaeda in Syria and killed himself and more than a dozen government soldiers in a truck bombing that year. The FBI conducted an intensive investigation into Abusalha.

The investigation into Mateens relationship with Abusalha revealed that the two men probably knew each other by sight but were barely acquaintances. Hopper told reporters in Orlando that agents determined the contact was minimal and did not constitute a substantive relationship or a threat at that time.

The FBI had placed Mateen on the terrorist watchlist during the investigations but removed him after he was cleared, according to law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Mateen was born in New York and grew up in Florida. He lived in Fort Pierce, about a 10-minute drive from his parents home in Port Saint Lucie. Current and former neighbors described the area as ethnically mixed with immigrants from Haiti, Guatemala and the Middle East.

His father, Seddique Mateen, is known in the global Afghan community from a TV show he hosts on a satellite network, Payam-e-Afghan TV, about the national politics of his homeland and the ongoing conflict with Pakistan. In one clip from the program, Durand Jirga, posted online last year, the elder Mateen called the Taliban our warrior brothers in opposing Pakistan.

The network owner, Omar Khatab, said the father flew from Florida to California every three months to film broadcasts at the channels Canoga Park studio and expressed little interest in Islam.

He is not a religious guy. Hes a secular guy, Khatab said. He loves America. He has been here a long time. He was a nice guy. The son, I dont know about.

Mateens father told NBC News that the family was not aware he was planning an attack.

We are in shock, like the whole country, Seddique Mateen said.

Omar Mateen met Sitora Yusufiy, the daughter of Uzbek immigrants, online and married her in 2009, but the marriage was short-lived.

After a few months he started abusing me physically, very often, not allowing me to speak to my family, Yusufiy said at a news conference in Boulder, Colo., where she lives. She said that her parents rescued her after four months and that she and Mateen eventually divorced.

As their marriage devolved, she said, she grew to believe he was mentally ill.

He was obviously disturbed, she said.

People who knew him said he had a young son, but the age of the child and Mateens relationship with the mother was unknown.

Mateen was employed since 2007 as a security guard for the international firm G4S, which provides services to corporations, celebrities and foreign governments. Daniel Gilroy, who worked alongside Mateen for about a year as a security guard for a gated community, said he brought a prayer rug and skullcap to work and prayed on his knees during his shifts.

He didnt talk about his faith, Gilroy said, but was outspoken in his disdain for African Americans, gays and women, frequently using slurs and sometimes talking about committing violence against them. Once, when he saw an African American man driving past, Gilroy recalled, Mateen said he wished he could kill all blacks, referring to them with the N-word.

You meet bigots, Gilroy said, But he was above and beyond. He was always angry, swearing, just angry at the world.

Gilroy said that he complained, but that the company did not intervene. Representatives from G4S did not immediately return requests for comment about Gilroys remarks. In a statement earlier in the day, the company said, We are cooperating fully with all law enforcement authorities, including the FBI, as they conduct their investigation.

The company said Mateen underwent company screening and a background check in 2007 and repeated the process in 2013, with no problems. The company was aware of the FBI inquiry.

Mateen attended the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, a small mosque with about 150 worshipers, several times a week. Just last Friday, he prayed with his young son. But the centers imam said he did not really know him.

He was a quiet, shy guy, Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman said. Come last, go first.

The imam said he hadnt had a conversation with Mateen in a decade and couldnt reconcile his actions with the teachings of Islam. In the mosque, there is no extremism, he said.

Mateens father told NBC News that he believed homophobia, not religion, led his son to kill. The father recalled a visit to Miami earlier this year where his son became angry with displays of affection by gay men.

We were in downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other, Seddique Mateen said. And then we were in the mens bathroom and men were kissing each other.

Omar Mateen bought two guns he used in the rampage, an assault-type rifle and a semiautomatic pistol, legally in the last two weeks at a gun store near his home, federal officials said.

Near the time he opened fire in the nightclub, Mateen placed a call to 911 and told the operator that he pledged allegiance to Islamic state and specifically mentioned the Tsarnaev brothers, who were responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing, two U.S. law enforcement officials said.

In a live broadcast Sunday afternoon on Payam-e-Afghan, the network that aired Mateens fathers show, an unidentified man speaking in English expressed dismay at the attacks.

Its not the work of all Afghans. Its not the work of all Muslims, he said. We are so sad this happened especially for those defenseless people gathering in a nightclub pursuing the happiness they wanted to obtain.

His ex-wife had not talked to Mateen for seven years and, reflecting on their time together, said he practiced his faith and showed no signs of interest in radical Islam. He talked about becoming a police officer. But then there was his temper.

When he would get in his tempers, he would express hate toward everything, she said.

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Ryan reported from Los Angeles, Wilber from Washington and Jarvie from Fort Pierce, Fla.

UPDATES:

5:36 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details and comments from Sitora Yusufiy and Daniel Gilroy.

This article originally published at 1:38 p.m.
8:47 A.M. Council on American-Islamic Relations solicits blood donations for victims of Orlando shooting

People lining up in Orlando today to donate blood. (Orlando Sentinel)

The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the Orlando, Fla., nightclub shooting in a statement, and said it will call on the Muslim community to take part in a blood drive for those wounded in the attack Sunday. We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured, the statement said. The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence.

Braden Goyette


6:41 P.M. Orlando

Orlando shooter had been removed from his job as a courthouse security guard Omar Mateen, shown in undated photograph. (AFP/Getty Images) Ken J. Mascara, the sheriff of St. Lucie County in Florida, said Thursday that the man who carried out the massacre at an Orlando nightclub was removed from his job as a security guard at the countys courthouse in 2013 after he made inflammatory comments about women, Jews and the mass shooting at Ft. Hood. Here is Mascaras statement: Omar Mateen was one of multiple contracted security guards that rotated through the St. Lucie County Courthouse as part of a contract with G4S Secure Solutions USA Inc. In early 2013, our staff was made aware of inflammatory comments made by Mateen. Our courthouse supervisor first requested that G4S management transfer him out of the courthouse rotation permanently. That was immediately granted. Our agency then made the appropriate notifications to inform our federal partners. It was at this time that the FBI began an investigation into Mateen that was later deemed inconclusive. Molly Hennessy-Fiske



June 12, 2016, 4:30 p.m. Who they were: The victims of the Orlando terror attack Read more



2:06 P.M. Obama on gun violence President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden at a memorial in Orlando, Fla., for the victims of Sundays mass shooting at a gay nightclub. (Saul Loeb / AFP/Getty Images) The motives of this killer may have been different than mass shooters in Aurora or Newtown, but the instruments of death were so similar. President Obama

1:52 P.M. Watch President Obama speak in Orlando



1:28 P.M. Obama: Notion that being armed would have saved Orlando victims defies common sense President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden place flowers for the shooting victims at a memorial at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in Orlando, Fla., on June 16, 2016. (SAUL LOEBSAUL/AFP/Getty Images) In Orlando, Fla., President Obama referred to Donald Trumps recent claim that more lives could have been saved at Pulse if more patrons were armed themselves. Such a notion defies common sense, he said, without naming Trump. Obama said he was pleased the Senate would hold votes on gun safety measures, one day after Democrats waged a filibuster to force the issue. Earlier, Obama met with the owners and staff of the Pulse nightclub, a place, he said, to be who you truly are. The attack, an act of hate, was an opportunity for Americans to reflect on how we treat one another, Obama said. Hatred toward people because of sexual orientation, regardless of where it comes from, is a a betrayal of whats best in us, he said. Christi Parsons

1:26 P.M. Obama: Lone wolves require different approach Obama said the nation would continue to be relentless in its fight against terrorist networks like Al Qaeda and Islamic State. But he noted that attacks in Orlando, Fla., and San Bernardino were perpetrated not by sophisticated cells but so-called lone wolves, requiring a different approach. We cant anticipate or catch every single deranged person who may wish to do harm, he said. But we can do something about the damage they do. As he embraced the victims families, Obama said they pleaded for him to do more. They dont care about the politics, and neither do I, he said. Christi Parsons

1:25 P.M. reporting from orlando, fla.

Most of all, there is love, Obama says in mourning Orlando victims Orlandos response to the Pulse shooting massacre is a reminder of what is good about America, President Obama said in an emotional tribute to the victims Thursday. After hours-long meetings with their families and survivors of the deadly attack, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden traveled to a makeshift memorial to leave bouquets of 49 white roses -- one for each life lost -- among the other flowers, balloons and photos that have collected there. In brief remarks to reporters after, Obama said those lost showed us what is best about humanity. It will carry us through this atrocity and other challenges, he said as a light rain began to fall. Out of this darkest of moments, that gives us hope. Though the city was shaken by an evil, hateful act, the president added, most of all, there is love. Christi Parsons



1:06 P.M. Sen. John McCain: Obama directly responsible for Orlando shooting Sen. John McCain speaks on Capitol Hill in April. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) Republican Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Thursday that President Obama is directly responsible for the mass shooting in Orlando, Fla,, because Obama has allowed the growth of Islamic State group on his watch. McCain  who lost to Obama in the 2008 presidential election  made the comment to reporters while Obama was in Orlando visiting with the families of those killed in Sundays attack and some of the survivors. Barack Obama is directly responsible for it, because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, Al Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obamas failures, utter failures, by pulling everybody out of Iraq, a visibly angry McCain told reporters in the Capitol as the Senate debated a spending bill. So the responsibility for it lies with President Barack Obama and his failed policies, McCain said. However, McCain later sought to clarify his comments, saying over Twitter: To clarify, I was referring to Pres Obamas national security decisions that have led to rise of #ISIL, not to the President himself. Associated Press This post was updated to reflect McCains clarification of his earlier remarks. The original post was published at 12:06 p.m.

12:04 P.M. Florida Sen. Bill Nelson also meets with victims families



11:09 A.M. Medical examiner kept gunmans body separate from victims The body of one of the Orlando massacre victims arrives at the Orange County, Fla., medical examiners office on June 12, 2016. (Alan Diaz / Associated Press) The medical examiner who oversaw the autopsies of the 49 victims in the Pulse nightclub shooting says he kept their bodies separated from the gunmans body. Dr. Joshua Stephany said in a statement Thursday that the remains of gunman Omar Mateen were being held in a building separate from the victims. He also says the gunmans autopsy was conducted in a separate building from the victims. Stephany says he decided to do that not because of any requirement but because he thought it was the right thing to do. The medical examiner says his staff was able to identify and conduct autopsies on the all victims within 72 hours after Sunday mornings shooting. Associated Press

10:59 A.M. Flags of Puerto Rico and Mexico appear in Orlando memorials Marisa Gerber

10:39 A.M. Obama arrives at the Amway Center

10:36 A.M. An Orlando cops gesture of solidarity with the citys Puerto Rican community

Nearly half of those killed in the Pulse nightclub massacre had ties to Puerto Rico.



10:29 A.M. CIA director predicts more terrorist attacks like those in Orlando, Brussels and Paris John Brennan responds to a senators question during his February 2013 confirmation hearings to be director of the CIA. (Michael Reynolds / European Pressphoto Agency) CIA Director John Brennan warned Thursday that as Islamic State loses ground in Syria and Iraq, it probably will use guerrilla tactics to launch more terrorist attacks like those in Orlando, Fla., Brussels and Paris. The CIA has seen no sign that Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, was in contact with Islamic State or any other terrorist group, Brennan told the Senate Intelligence Committee. Like the married couple who killed 14 people on Dec. 2 in San Bernardino, Mateen appears to have been self-radicalized online, in part by listening to jihadist sermons and watching videos of beheadings by militants. Brian Bennett Read more



10:26 A.M. Islamic State inspiring DIY terror Crime scene investigators search Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Maliks SUV after a gun battle with the couple in San Bernardino on Dec. 4, 2015. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) Islamic State supporters have accounted for 67 homegrown violent jihadist plots in the United States between 2014 and early June 2016, according to an analysis by the Congressional Research Service, although only a handful were carried out. The plots, in which Americans either joined terrorist organizations abroad or committed violent attacks at home or overseas, involved more than 100 individuals, the 18-page report said. A total of 13 homegrown attacks were carried out in the United States since 2001, the CRS found, five of which involved people inspired by the Islamic State. The analysis said these attackers, which include the Orlando shooter and the couple who gunned down 14 people in San Bernardino, often acted alone and did not have sustained, substantive, in-person contact with foreign terrorist organizations, rather they scraped together ideological justification from online and social media sources. In essence, these attacks involved do-it-yourself  DIY  terrorists, the study said. Largely isolated from the operational support of terrorist organizations, they acquired violent skills (however rudimentary) by themselves or relied on abilities that they had developed prior to becoming violent jihadists. W.J. Hennigan



10:07 A.M. Obamas Orlando visit will be different than previous trips following mass shootings (Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press) President Obama has arrived in Orlando, Fla., to meet with the family members of victims of the Pulse nightclub massacre. But unlike some of the presidents previous trips for memorial services after mass shootings, this one will be decidedly low-key: no address to a large crowd, but simply a few personal reflections to the press after spending time with mourners. The White House has worked closely with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer to coordinate the visit, spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters traveling with the president, and did not want to overburden local law enforcement officials strained by the attacks. The quick visit, though, was a way for both Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to show that Americans stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of central Florida. Theres no more tangible way to show support than by traveling to the city where this horrific incident occurred, Schultz said. The shooting has quickly become fodder for the presidential campaign, but Obamas visit has a bipartisan note. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida joined Obama aboard Air Force One to travel to Orlando. And among those greeting Obama upon arrival was Republican Gov. Rick Scott. Michael A. Memoli



10:01 A.M. Vigil for Orlando shooting victims held in politically conservative Orange County Sisters Sarah Bryant, left, and Katy Bryant, both from Irvine, listen as the names of the Orlando shooting victims are read during a vigil at the Velvet Lounge, a gay bar and club in Santa Ana. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times) The comfort of words flowed, as smooth as their spirits. A vigil for the victims of the Orlando mass shooting, the largest in U.S. history, took place in a gay nightclub in Santa Ana  the seat of famously conservative Orange County. This is the church of the LGBTQ community, our safe space, Sian Wiltshire of Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church said Wednesday night, standing under rainbow-colored spotlights at the Velvet Lounge. About 100 people, many of them holding flickering candles, intoned the names of the dead. He shattered a veneer of safety that we all had constructed. I feel like we have to go back and reclaim that. Rev. Kent Doss of Tapestry Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Mission Viejo Read more Anh Do

9:56 A.M. Obama arrives in Orlando
Republican leaders are openly fearful that Donald Trumps divisive presidential campaign will drive Latino voters away from the Republican Party for a generation or more, much in the way Barry Goldwater alienated African Americans during the civil rights era.

It was a similar lesson in California in the 1990s, when the state shifted from reliably Republican to bright blue in the aftermath of the heated 1994 anti-illegal immigration campaign led by then-Gov. Pete Wilson. Many believe that episode handed the Golden State over to Democrats.

Now Republicans worry that a similar shift is underway nationwide as Trumps race-based campaigning repels even the most conservative Republicans, potentially marring the party as bigoted for years to come.

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Among those most concerned is one who should know. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky voted against Goldwater in 1964 because of the GOP nominees opposition to civil rights. He worries a half a century later that the story is repeating.

My party has been struggling with African American voters ever since, McConnell said recently. I dont want to see that mistake made with Latinos.

The Latino community, he said, is a big important part of America. For our party to be competitive, we have to be able to reach out to all kinds of people.

Trump insists he is beloved by Latino voters. Earlier this week, he argued that those who were angry over his racially tinged comments about a federal judge overseeing a civil fraud lawsuit against Trump University should just get over it.

But Republican leaders know the problem is a very real one for the GOP, made up of both political optics and electoral math.

From the time Trump launched his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and vowing to build a wall along the Mexican border, his approach toward Latinos has upended Republican plans to portray the party as more inclusive and welcoming.

The rhetoric only intensified when Trump insisted that he would deport not just immigrants who are here illegally, but also their American-born children, as a way to keep families together.

More recently he sparked outrage by insisting he could not receive fair treatment from San Diego federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is overseeing the lawsuit against his now-defunct real estate school, because the American-born judges parents were Mexican immigrants. Trump later tried to walk back those remarks, but still questioned the judges ability to be impartial.

We dont have to guess that theyre going to lose Latinos for a generation, because we saw it happen here in California, said Matt Barreto, a UCLA political science professor and cofounder of the Latino Decisions polling firm. He is consulting for Hillary Clintons campaign.

Polling shows the California GOPs embrace of Proposition 187 and an anti-illegal immigrant agenda in the 90s accelerated a decline already underway due to shifting demographics. The state has voted Democratic in every presidential election since.

Republicans believe Trumps race-based statements  including an initial refusal to disavow former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and a reference to a black supporter at a rally as my African American  are similarly limiting the partys ability to attract a wider swath of voters than its core base of white Americans at a time when the GOP had hoped to be reaching out to Latinos and minorities.

Latinos are the fastest growing part of an increasingly diverse electorate, according to the Pew Research Center. Nearly one in three eligible voters this fall will be Latino, Asian, African American or other minorities.

When Ronald Reagan was president in the 1980s, 85% of the electorate was white. By 2012, that number had dropped to about 74%, according to Pew.

Its a well-founded fear, said Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, who has withheld his support for Trump.

To understand the depth of the partys potential loss, scholars point to the dropoff in black Republican voters after the civil rights battles of the 1960s.

Republicans won 30% of black votes, on average, from 1948 to 1960. Since the 1964 election and Goldwaters stance against the landmark civil rights bill that year, it has averaged less than 6%, according to an analysis by Claremont McKenna College professor John J. Pitney.

Trumps unfavorable rating among Latinos nationwide is currently an eye-popping 87%, according to April polling by Latino Decisions, versus Clintons 22%.

Trump may be able to stem his losses among Latinos by turning out more white voters, who fueled a record-setting GOP primary voter turnout. But Republicans see little consolation for what has become a potentially irreversible slide.

Republicans have been losing Latino voters in every presidential election since President George W. Bush hit a high point in 2000 by winning more than 40% of the Latino vote.

Latino support dropped to 27% for Mitt Romney in 2012, stung partly by his suggestion that illegal immigration could be resolved with self deportation.

I wouldnt put it entirely on Trump, Barreto said. Mitt Romney, of course,did very poorly among Latinos. Now, Mitt Romney looks like a nice guy compared to what Donald Trump is saying.

Moreover, the growth in the Latino electorate is being powered by millennials, who will boost the eligible voting pool for years to come.

While turnout among Latino voters is notoriously low, Democrats and allied groups have beefed up a strong presence in critical swing states -- Florida, Nevada, Virginia, North Carolina and others -- to push them to the polls.

This is not just about now, its about 20 years in the future, said Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Hispanic Research at Pew. Where will the Latino vote go after the next election cycle? Will it be like a California in the 1990s?

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, whose candidacy offered the party perhaps its best chance this cycle to turn a new page with Latinos, said that Trumps approach to these issues certainly doesnt help.

But Rubio is also among those who believe the party can right itself and mend relations with a new message.

If [Trump] doesnt win, therell be a new nominee in four years that will define what the party is, Rubio said in a brief interview.

Many Republicans remain hopeful that Trumps popularity on economic and national security issues will overshadow his impolitic comments on race.

They note that Latinos are not a monolithic voting bloc, but a diverse electorate made up of Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans and Central and South Americans, who bring varied backgrounds into the voting booths. Now, as in years past, Republicans have argued that many Latinos naturally align with the GOP, particularly on faith issues.

Obviously, what Trump is saying antagonizes Hispanics, but it doesnt mean the Republican Party will lose the vote for a generation, said Alfonso Aguilar, a former Bush administration official who is now president of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles. This is dependent on the rhetoric the Republicans choose.

However, Aguilar acknowledged that his informal talks with Trump aides have left him concerned that the campaign is not doing enough Latino voter outreach.

Some will disagree with me, but if Mr. Trump were to moderate his tone, clarify some of his positions, pivot to the center, he could be more competitive with Latinos, Aguilar said.

Others insist the broken relationship between Republicans and Latinos runs deeper than simple slights, such as Trump tweeting a picture of himself eating a taco bowl on Cinco de Mayo with the caption, I love Hispanics!

Its possible they could undo the damage, but it will take miraculous healing power, said Pitney, a former GOP policy aide. Republicans will have to learn the act of contrition in Spanish.

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

Follow on Twitter @LisaMascaro
Seated shoulder to shoulder with school kids just outside the freshly revamped Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, former Vice President Dick Cheney twirled a small U.S. flag in his hands one blustery morning last week as he waited to speak about the edifice honoring his first White House boss.

One of the things I worry about is we dont do a very good job as a nation teaching history anymore, Fords former chief of staff said to a crowd of 1,500 that included his predecessor in the job, former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. This library and all that it represents does a magnificent job of telling the story of those days.

As Chicago gears up to host a Barack Obama presidential museum and library, the 35-year-old Ford museum unveiled its second face-lift  a reminder that these institutions are not once-and-done endeavors. After the building goes up and the programming is complete, the task of reaching future generations doesnt get any easier.

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Whether youre an art museum or a presidential museum, you have to do this  reboot or redesign every 10 to 15 years, Steve Ford, the former presidents youngest son, said in an interview. And ours needed it. The permanent exhibits at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda are undergoing a $15-million makeover too.

More than 40 years have passed since Ford took office after the historic resignation of Nixon, and like many institutions dedicated to past presidents, the museum has puzzled over how to remain compelling. Its previous update in 1997 introduced theaters for videos. Ford died in 2006 at the age of 93.

The most recent, $15-million reboot included a modernization and expansion of the museum built in Fords boyhood town to honor the man who stepped into the Oval Office at the height of the Watergate scandal.

The new project includes eight touch-screen stations, bringing the museum into the digital age, and adds a three-classroom education center for schoolchildren.

The younger generation does not know who President Ford is, said Joe Calvaruso, executive director of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation. We need to share those moments. He was the only president from Michigan.

Experts say attendance at the nations presidential libraries and museums generally dwindles over time. The National Archives and Records Administration puts pressure on individual libraries to produce strong attendance and public programming, including educational activities for kids, said Anthony Clark, who wrote a book about the presidential libraries.

Some augment attendance through temporary exhibits that are unrelated to presidential history. The Ford museum, for instance, significantly boosts its annual numbers by serving as a site for a huge annual art show for nearly three weeks each fall.

The museum drew 270,393 visitors last year, a surge from 88,632 in 2008, the year before it started hosting art-show competitors. In 1982, its first full year in operation, it drew 423,886 visitors  a record it has not matched since.

Chicago and its philanthropic community can and should expect periodic campaigns to rethink, refresh and upgrade the planned Obama center on the citys South Side, experts say.

The Obama Foundation, still in its early phases, aims to stay engaged with the community and to use technology to develop a center for action, rather than just a library, said spokeswoman Amy Brundage.

Private foundations, typically led by a presidents family and allies, raise the funds for building, marketing and programming presidential libraries and museums while the federal government operates and maintains the facilities and archives, at a cost to taxpayers of about $700 million per decade, according to the National Archives.

The more recent libraries and future libraries also must have endowments that contribute to the operating expenses as well.

Stay connected to the community because the community is what really supports the museum and the library, said Steve Ford.

Children use a touch screen to virtually navigate a replica of the Oval Office at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum. (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune )

Clark estimates the taxpayer cost over a decade is closer to $1 billion when some capital projects are added.

If youve got an ongoing need to justify the expense ... you have to show numbers, he said. As in, How many butts have you got in the seats?''

The revamped Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum and its newly built DeVos Learning Center opened June 7.

To tell the story of Ford, who rose to the presidency at a wrenching time and dealt with myriad crises in his short tenure, the museum crams a vast amount of material into its 12,000-square-foot permanent exhibit space.

While some presidential library scholars say these institutions tend to function as public relations machines, the Ford museum, at least in its earlier iterations, has done a better job than most in acknowledging the searing issues of his day, said Clark, author of The Last Campaign: How Presidents Rewrite History, Run for Posterity & Enshrine Their Legacies.

The museum includes a section on the Watergate scandal, including a wire cutter and penlight used by burglars to break into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The foreign affairs exhibit displays the ladder used by Americans and South Vietnamese fleeing to the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy for evacuation during the defeat of South Vietnam.

The museum also displays the pistol used in a 1975 assassination attempt by Lynette Squeaky Fromme. A second assassination attempt occurred 17 days later. Near the gun is the Kevlar-lined raincoat subsequently worn by Ford as protection from bullets.

The eight new touch screens at more traditional exhibits allow users to dig deeper, reaching down to some intriguing tidbits. At the replica of the Oval Office, for instance, viewers find out that when Ford redecorated the office, oil paintings were hung in place of wall sconces that contained hidden microphones during Nixons tenure.

kbergen@chicagotribune.com

Bergen writes for the Chicago Tribune.
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 arent smoking as much, according to a government survey of risky youth behaviors.

I think you can call this the cautious generation, said Bill Albert, a 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.

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The survey found 41% said they had had sex, after it had been about 47% over the previous decade. It also found marked declines last year in the proportion of students who said they 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 for 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.

But the new numbers suggest less sex is a factor, too. The drops are surprising enough that government officials said theyd like to see what the next survey shows to make sure its not a statistical blip.

If it is a true drop, the reason is not clear why. Were trying to look at reasons why this might be happening, said Dr. Stephanie Zaza of the CDC, who oversees the survey.

One possibility, Albert said: It may be that parking at Lookout Point has given way to texting from your moms living room couch, he said.

In the new survey, about 42% 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, Del., 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 Assn. of School Nurses.

The survey found the 30% of the students surveyed said theyd had sex in the previous three months, down from about 34% to 35% reported in each of the previous six surveys.

Other findings from the survey:

Smoking

Fewer than 11% 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%. But the fall is not surprising  another CDC survey has put the high school smoking rate at about 9%.

Drinking

Just under a third had at least one alcoholic drink in the 30 days before the survey, down from 35% in the last survey and down from 45% in 2007. About 63% had ever had a drink, down from 66% in 2013 and 75% 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% 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.

Toking

A little under 22% of teens said they used marijuana in the previous month. Thats 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 (2%), cocaine (5%), ecstasy (5%), and hallucinogenic drugs like LSD (6%).

Using prescription drugs

About 17% 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.

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CDC to younger women: Better take your birth control before you drink that glass of wine
The city has started painting teal rectangles in pedestrian plazas in Times Square to confine the costumed Elmos and Spider-Men who pose for photos and solicit tips from tourists.

The color-coded designated activity zones are meant to rein in the pushy panhandlers who have flooded the area, in some cases harassing passers-by to pay for photos with them.

Workers started painting the designated activity zones on Wednesday.

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Under a law signed by Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio in April, street performers and costumed characters can be issued summonses or even face arrest if they are caught operating outside the eight designated rectangles. Each area is painted teal and measures 8 feet by 50 feet.

Some lawyers and performers say the new rules infringe on performers 1st Amendment rights.

Its the wrong approach. It invites litigation through a civil case or possibly could be used as a defense in a criminal case, lawyer Norman Siegel said. The legislation has created a no-free-expression zone in the quintessential public space, the Crossroads of the World.

But attorney Linda Steinman, representing the Times Square Alliance business group, said the new rules were consistent with case law permitting restrictions on the time, place and manner of speech.

Its not a ban on anything, Steinman 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.

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Times Square Alliance President Tim Tompkins said that in the past a lot of tourists didnt realize a tip was expected and the performers were often aggressive about insisting on a tip.

The organization originally handed out fliers to tourists reminding them that tipping is optional.

But as the new zones go into effect starting 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 soon begin an education blitz to inform the performers and the public about the new rules.
The murder of at least 49 people in Orlando early Sunday was an act of terrorism, pure and simple. It appears to have been driven by Islamic extremism and anti-gay sentiment, and yes, once again, a gun designed for no other purpose than to kill a large number of people in a short amount of time was central to the crime.

The killings occurred near closing time of a nightclub that caters to the LGBT community, when Omar Mateen  reportedly a New York native who was living in the Fort Pierce area, 120 miles north of Miami  entered with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle and let loose in a barrage that lasted, as one of the survivors said, a songs length of time. It was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, moving instantly to the top of a list that roils the stomach. Over the next few days, investigators will try to understand the dangerous interplay of religious fundamentalism, gay hatred and whatever other motivations drove Mateen to his demented actions.

It should go without saying that not all Muslims should be blamed for the acts of fanatics and fundamentalists. That remains as true as ever. Sundays tragedy also shows that the Obama administration has been right to view Islamic State not as some far-away militia that poses no threat to the U.S., but as a dangerous group whose hostility to this country can have immediate and terrible consequences. Thats true even if the perpetrators are acting on their own without direct orders or support from the organization. Mateen had reportedly pledged allegiance to Islamic State in a 911 call around the time of the attack.

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While it is essential to understand the motivations of the gunman, that shouldnt distract us from the issue of all-too-ready access to guns. The killings were done with such disgusting efficiency because the gunman used a military-style firearm that has no business being in circulation in a civilized society. That blood is on the hands of the National Rifle Assn. and its sycophants in Congress who have conspired to make this a more dangerous nation.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

How dangerous? Over the last few days at least seven people were killed and five wounded in shootings scattered around Los Angeles. Separately, three people were killed and two wounded in a suspected murder-suicide in the Panorama City neighborhood of San Fernando Valley.

In the five years since U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was critically wounded in an attack in which six people were killed and a dozen more were wounded, the nation has endured a steady parade of such mass killings. Each was horrifying in its details and death toll, but collectively the shootings  an elementary school, a Navy yard, a movie theater, randomly on city streets  form an indictment of our society.

The nation has had these debates before, but with no effect. Remember when the slaughter of innocent children at Newtown, Conn., was going to change the gun-control debate? Remember after Giffords was wounded and her friends and supporters killed that some thought Congress might finally muster the political will to attack this cancer?

Everything will change, except it doesnt. The following list is of shooting incidents since the Giffords attacks in which at least three people were killed. There could well be more incidents that didnt rise above the din of the news of the moment, so its not an exhaustive list. But it is exhausting, and our national failure to address gun violence in a meaningful way is one of the embarrassments of our age.

Feb. 25, 2016: Three killed, 14 wounded in Hesston, Kan.

Feb. 20, 2016: Six killed, two wounded in Kalamazoo County, Mich.

Dec. 2, 2015: 14 killed, 21 wounded in San Bernardino. Read more >>

Nov. 27, 2015: Three killed, nine wounded in Colorado Springs, Colo. Read more >>

Oct. 21, 2015: Three killed in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Oct. 1, 2015: Nine killed, nine wounded in Roseburg, Ore. Read more >>

July 16, 2015: Five killed, two wounded in Chattanooga, Tenn. Read more >>

June 17, 2015: Nine killed, one wounded in Charleston, S.C. Read more >>

June 11, 2015: Three killed, one wounded in Menasha, Wisc.

Oct. 24, 2014: Five killed, one wounded in Marysville, Wash.

May 23, 2014: Six killed, 13 wounded in Santa Barbara (some of the victims were stabbed). Read more >>

April 3, 2014: Three killed, 12 wounded at Fort Hood, Texas. Read more >>

Feb. 20, 2014: Four killed, two wounded in Alturas, Calif.

Sept. 16, 2013: 12 killed, eight wounded in Washington, D.C. Read more >>

July 26, 2013: Seven killed in Hialeah, Fla.

June 7, 2013: Six killed, three wounded in Santa Monica. Read more >>

April 21, 2013: Five killed in Federal Way, Wash.

March 13, 2013: Five killed, two wounded in Herkimer County, N.Y.

Dec. 14, 2012: 28 killed, two wounded in Newtown, Conn.

Sept. 27, 2012: Seven killed, one wounded in Minneapolis. Read more >>

Aug. 5, 2012: Seven killed, three wounded in Oak Creek, Wisc. Read more >>

July 20, 2012: 12 killed, 58 wounded in Aurora, Colo. Read more >>

May 20, 2012: Six killed, one wounded in Seattle.

April 2, 2012: Seven killed, three wounded in Oakland. Read more >>

Feb. 22, 2012: Five killed in Norcross, Ga.

Oct. 14, 2011: Eight killed, one wounded in Seal Beach. Read more >>

Sept. 6, 2011: Five killed, seven wounded in Carson City, Nev.

Jan. 8, 2011: Six killed, 13 wounded (including Giffords) in Tucson. Read more >>

This list is drawn from statistics maintained by Mother Jones magazine.

MORE FROM OPINION

Brock Turners sentence proves again the advantage of being white, well-off and educated

The media have finally figured out how to handle Donald Trump

Rape survivors shouldnt have to be eloquent to get justice

UPDATES:

June 13, 7:22 a.m.: This article was updated to reflect a revision in the official count of Mateens victims and new disclosures from law enforcement about when he declared allegiance to Islamic State.

4:13 p.m.: This article was updated to reflect the latest reporting.

1:51 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details.

This article was originally published at 10:34 a.m.

-------------

FOR THE RECORD

11:50 a.m.: A previous version of this article said that Omar Mateen was living in Tampa, Fla. He was living in the Fort Pierce area.

------------
There are two ways to defend a client charged with rape: litigate and mitigate. The first is the stuff you see lawyers do on TV, which seldom happens in real life, especially for clients who are poor and black. The second has become increasingly important in an age when few criminal cases go to trial. Im not an attorney; Im a mitigator. Mitigation isnt about arguing guilt or innocence. Its about diminishing a clients culpability.

The private defense team hired by Brock Turner when the former Stanford University swimmer was accused of rape litigated and mitigated at the same time. The outcome for their client was extraordinary: Turner was found guilty of three felony counts of sexual assault, but at sentencing, he got off easy. If like me youve worked in public defense, the outcome of Turners case is also heart-wrenching. It proves what we all know: In Americas courtrooms, being white and educated are the two biggest mitigating factors.

After Turner lost at trial, his victim read her impact statement at the sentencing hearing. It was impassioned, more than 7,000 words long and once made public, it captured the nations attention. Theres nothing more searing than hearing directly from the victim of a violent crime. Her words were the opposite of mitigating, they were aggravating  for the defendant and the entire criminal justice system. Turners victim asked, If a first-time offender from an underprivileged background was accused of three felonies and displayed no accountability for his actions other than drinking, what would his sentence be?

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Its an important question. In the last week, as many as 1 million people have signed petitions demanding the removal of Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky, who sentenced Turner to a mere six months in jail. The outrage stems from the disproportion of the damage done by Turner  as described by his victim  and the light jail sentence. Yet its also driven by another injustice: How much more severe the sentence would have been if Turners skin were several shades darker, if his parents had been unable to post $150,000 bond or hire a defense team that managed to lose at trial but win at sentencing. If being white and educated in America is mitigating, then being black and uneducated is aggravating.

I have never helped defend a client who was white, older than 17 or born into privilege. Most of the juveniles Ive worked for are now in prison. How would a judge sentence a first-time offender from an underprivileged background who was guilty of felony sexual assault? Heres an example: I mitigated a case on behalf of a boy charged as an adult with two counts of rape (in most of the U.S., a child as young as 14 arrested for rape is automatically charged as an adult). The charges carried a sentence of more than 100 years in prison. He agreed to a deal; had he gone to trial and been convicted, he was all but guaranteed to die in prison. For Turner, even at 19, youth was a mitigating factor. For kids growing up in public housing surrounded by violence and accused of a heinous crime, youth is no longer a mitigating factor  it is a sign of depravity.

Far from Palo Alto, in cities like New Orleans, due to anemic state public defender funding, an underprivileged Turner probably would have sat in jail for months before seeing a lawyer. Its extremely unlikely he would have seen trial. For poor defendants of color, the chances of losing at trial are astronomical. And simply by virtue of requesting a jury trial, and losing, the risk of receiving the harshest sentence spikes. We call this the trial tax. Public defenders often use the term with clients to preface the states plea deal  whatever is offered in exchange for the defendants admission of guilt, potentially to a lesser charge, and as a reward for removing the case from the courts docket. The precise offer depends on the facts of the case.

If being white and educated in America is mitigating, then being black and uneducated is aggravating.

Sexual assault is sexual assault except if youre defending the accused. A defense theory is built by weighing good facts against the bad. For Turner, there wasnt just one witness, there were two. Bad fact. The witnesses saw a young man assaulting an unconscious woman and confronted the assailant, who fled the scene. The witnesses gave chase, tackled and pinned down the assailant without ever losing sight of him. After the police arrived, the young man they took into custody was identified as Turner. All bad facts.

But Turners defense had a few things going for it. His victim had no recollection of the crime. She had blacked out. Good fact. The victim had a boyfriend. Perhaps she felt guilty for cheating on him, and hence had a motive for crying rape. For the defense, the boyfriend was a good fact. Both parties were drunk. Also good. No one knew when the victim passed out. Good again. It could have been in the final milliseconds of what Turners father later described as his sons 20 minutes of action. At trial, the bad outweighed the good, the defense failed to compel the jury, but all along the lawyers were introducing mitigation about their client to the judge.

In the end, the most important fact for the victim was that Turner, who didnt know her but had been inside her, refused to admit his guilt. Had Turner been black, no doubt his lack of remorse wouldve sealed his fate. The gavel wouldve slammed down and all youd have heard was his mother wailing from the gallery after the judge imposed the maximum sentence. Never mind that remorse is an admission of guilt, and it might undo your chance to appeal.

In her impact statement, Turners victim repeatedly referred to a probation officers report, the states supposedly unbiased evaluation of the defendant and its sentencing recommendation. The report captured Turners inherent diminished culpability. The officer who evaluated him didnt talk to a poor black teenager in jail. Turner was white, well-educated, squeaky clean looking. He came from a good home, got into a good school.

At sentencing, the defense theory was surely that the judge, a former Stanford athlete, would see something of himself in Turner, something he wouldnt have seen if Turner had a different skin color and a different life history: a young, precious human being, for whom prison and all it destroys, just wouldnt be appropriate.

A colleague asked me if I would like to see Turner do more time, or my former clients do less, because we cant have it both ways.To which I responded, Why not?

Marcos Barbery served as a juvenile mitigation specialist at Orleans Public Defenders from April 2014 to July 2015. He is at work on a documentary film on mitigation.

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The presidential campaign has lumbered off, not to come back again this year except for the occasional fundraising event.

Votes from Californias Tuesday primary are still being counted, but the results at the presidential level will not change. Donald Trump cinched the Republican nomination weeks ago, and won the GOP vote in California. Hillary Clinton clinched the Democratic nomination, also unofficially, the night before the California vote, and defeated Bernie Sanders among those who cast Democratic ballots here.

People may ignore what happened in this state; California is so reliably Democratic in the presidential general election that Trumps assertion that he could be competitive here in November prompted open laughter.

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But there are lessons for November from the California contest. Here are a few.

Registering doesnt necessarily mean voting

California elections officials nearly drowned in a tsunami of registrations in late spring. The final pre-primary registration numbers showed a net increase of 646,000 voters  and because that took into account those dropped from the rolls, the number of new voters was actually higher. Most new registrants were Democrats, and young ones, giving great hope to Sanders campaign that he would benefit.

Given the election results, it seems clear that many of the new voters did not cast ballots, whether because it seemed pointless or was just too difficult.

Paul Mitchell, a voting specialist, predicted before the election one reason why registration might not mean a huge jump in the number of ballots cast.

Voting isnt as exciting as that moment when you see something on TV, horrific or exciting, and get your laptop and register to vote, he said.

That may particularly be true when the air has come out of the balloon the day before, with the announcement by news organizations that Clinton had won a majority of delegates needed for the nomination.

Full results of the California primary 

Big crowds dont mean big victories

One of the biggest anomalies this year has been the huge disconnect between Sanders giant crowds and his eventual losses. In Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and California, to cite four states, Sanders drew massive audiences that seemed even more so because Clintons events were so small. But neither was what it seemed.

Sanders, for example, drew tens of thousands to multiple events in New York, but in the crowds were voters registered to other parties, voters registered in other states, and tourists from other countries. All were attracted to Sanders; not all could vote for him.

The same was true in California. Sanders had more than his share of impressive gatherings in the state. But he also became the political equivalent of the Grateful Dead, drawing a band of traveling supporters to multiple events. In a long line at his event in Visalia, supporters talked about how theyd gone to his rally the night before in Bakersfield and planned to go to a subsequent one in Fresno. Three events each, but each had only one vote last Tuesday.

Trumps events, similarly, feature giant crowds.

Clinton, by contrast, kept her rallies small to avoid something all politicians abhor  cameras panning over a half-filled site. Its not that she didnt have supporters; it was that her supporters were not always the rallying kind, either because they were at work or because the hassle didnt seem worth it.

Im not going to go to a Clinton rallywhat would I learn at a Clinton rally? Lisa von Schlegell, a Clinton supporter from Monterey County, said in a pre-election interview when marveling the numbers of people showing up for Sanders.

Data remains important, Trumps views notwithstanding

In every campaign, candidates use big picture and detailed information. The big picture: which states are off the table, which are guaranteed and which are up in the air? Those judgments determine where money is spent. (Hint: It wont be in California, by either side.) Detailed data tell a campaign who its voters are, and how to reach them.

Trump has scoffed at developing the sort of detailed data collection that has been the mark of successful candidates for many cycles now. In a May interview with the Associated Press, he called such efforts overrated and suggested that his campaign would depend on his giant gatherings.

But California showed datas importance. It helped vault Clinton over a momentum candidate in California for the second time  in 2008 over Barack Obama, and this year over Sanders.

Data gathered from elections officials and other sources allowed the Clinton campaign to track whether its supporters had asked for mail-in ballots, and whether they had cast them. It allowed the campaign to pinpoint in which of several languages those voters should be persuaded. Before the campaign really arrived in California, Clintons team was able to bank early votes.

Once Clinton descended on the state, data allowed her campaign to figure which groups of voters were open to her message. Its never accidental when, two days before an election, a candidate spends an hour in Vallejo, as Clinton did, talking to multi-ethnic voters. (Shes currently winning Solano County, where Vallejo is located, by almost 14 points, which is higher than her statewide average.)

Such operations are built campaign after campaign, and they are best built by presidential candidates, the biggest draw for voters in any general election. If Trump hews to his reluctance to utilize that common tool, it could hurt not only his candidacy but Republicans further down the ticket, and further into the future.

cathleen.decker@latimes.com

Twitter: @cathleendecker. For more on politics, go to latimes.com/decker and subscribe to the free daily newsletter.

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Recently, the Los Angeles Times described the movie Dheepan as the Palme dOr winner about Sri Lankan refugees trying to escape their violent past in France. That made reader Rod do a double-take.

The question is where the in France should go, Rod wrote. Theres a serious difference between a violent past in France and being in France trying to escape a violent past, presumably in Sri Lanka.

Agreed.

MORE: Read past columns on all things grammar from June Casagrande >>

Whenever a modifying phrase like in France sits in a place where it causes even momentary confusion or awkwardness, we call it a dangler.

The most famous of the danglers is the dangling participle, probably because its fun to say. But any type of modifying phrase can land in a bad spot, regardless of whether its a participial phrase like walking on the beach, in which the head word is participle of a verb like walking or awakened, or a prepositional phrase like in France, which hinges on the preposition in.

So how to fix our dangler? Sometimes simply moving the phrase will do the trick. Take I photographed an elephant in my pajamas, move the prepositional phrase in my pajamas next to the person who actually was in his pajamas, and the problem is solved: In my pajamas, I photographed an elephant.

Obviously, that doesnt always produce the most elegant solution. And if fixing danglers were easy, they probably wouldnt have dangled in the first place.

Often, danglers happen because the sentence started off on the wrong foot, painting the writer into a corner. In those cases, a rewrite is necessary: The Palme dOr winner about Sri Lankan refugees fleeing to France to escape their violent past.

Also in the mailbag this week is a request to revisit the subject of myself  a term that, in my experience, can rub a lot of people the wrong way.

The classic example is Bob or myself will lead the meeting. People who dislike that say it should simply be Bob or I  and they have a point. I is a subject. I will lead the meeting. It makes no difference if we bring Bob into the mix: Bob and I will lead the meeting. Nor does it matter if we use a different conjunction, swapping out and for or: Bob or I will lead the meeting.

Myself, along with himself, herself and ourselves, arent subject pronouns. Instead, they belong to a group called reflexive pronouns, which have a pretty specific job. They reflect back on the subject of a sentence.

In Joe saw himself in the mirror, the subject and the object of the action are really the same guy: Joe. Hes doing the action and having it done to him. Thats when reflexive pronouns are indispensable. After all, what are the alternatives? You cant use a subject pronoun: Joe saw he in the mirror. Object pronouns are no better: Joe saw him in the mirror.

But if you want a conservative guideline on how to use myself and other reflexives, here it is: Use them only when neither a subject pronoun like I nor an object pronoun like me works well in the sentence. You can also use them to add emphasis: I, myself, prefer dark chocolate.

Bob or myself will lead the meeting isnt wrong, exactly. As an idiomatic form, the use of myself as a subject has a long track record that affords it a certain amount of credibility.

Critics have frowned on these uses since about the turn of the century, probably unaware that they serve a definite purpose, notes Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary in its discussion of myself. But Merriams states, These uses are standard.

That doesnt necessarily make them a good choice, though. If you want to be proper, use myself only when I or me just wont do.

--

JUNE CASAGRANDE is author of The Best Punctuation Book, Period. She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.
Keep your core tight, and dont forget to breathe. Thats the advice Ive been hearing this past month at the fitness studio I frequent. And now that our local primary election season is over, the advice sounds useful for voters and candidates exhausted by the oxygen-depleting deluge of negative campaign mailers.

Core values tend to go missing as campaigns heat up  even as one side attacks the character and values of the other. So before the campaign for the general election gets underway, its a good time for a breather and a little reflection on what weve all just experienced.

MORE: Read past columns from Joylene Wagner >>

After voters were spared the bruising contest that would have been fought among Democrats had Mike Gatto stayed to battle Anthony Portantino for the 25th district California Senate seat, the California Assembly race between Laura Friedman and Ardy Kassakhian became the most vexing of the local races.

From the get-go, the contest was poised for friction between two locally-elected officials. But the Assembly race heated up even more when California Charter Schools Assn. Advocates and the California Teachers Assn. turned it into a proxy war in their fight for control of public education.

The two independent expenditure committees spent in excess of $1.6 million for and against the two candidates, with the charter school advocates contributing the bulk of it.

According to the Federal Election Commission website, FEC.gov, In general, amounts spent for coordinated communications are limited, but independent expenditures are not In general, a payment for a communication is coordinated if it is made in cooperation, consultation or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate or a candidates authorized committee...

Without getting into the issues of charter schools or the need for moderating voices among teachers unions, theres much not to like in the mailers sent out by these education interests.

For one thing, their mailers make it more difficult, not less, for voters to know the candidates or the issues that matter most to them. Most people have a hard time trusting the committees mailers are completely independent or free of candidate input.

Voters can quite logically assume the candidates share the goals of the committees that support them and will tend to support those goals if elected to office. But the mailers dont even address the issues. Theyre mostly personal attacks, misleading spin-offs of public records, with charges like,

Kassakhian is a Republican!

Friedman is a Republican!

Shes only out for herself!

Hes un-Democratic!

Whats a voter to believe when a candidate can deny all responsibility for such claims  or when so few voters seem interested in hearing the grayer but truer explanations between one extreme and another?

Im sure there are plenty of Baby Boomers like me who grew up hearing witnesses on the television courtroom drama, Perry Mason, swear to Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God. But this campaign has devolved into half-truths and misinformation.

Rather than the free exercise of a vibrant democracy, fit to educate our children, this campaign has become an example of free and unaccountable spending amid blatant disregard for the honest give and take of ideas.

How can our children become the critical thinkers and informed citizens our state standards and local education plans envision if our adults  leading voices in education  are so reckless with information, so loose with truth?

I am not a Rotarian, but this election has reminded me of the importance of guidelines like the Rotarian Four-Way Test: Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

I think, too, about the old-fashioned sounding objects and aims of the Philanthropic Educational Organization of which I am a member, and the words which seem so pertinent now: "To seek charity toward all with whom we associate, and a just comprehension of and adherence to the qualities ofjustice and truth.

Theyre good words for the campaign workout ahead of us. I wish all the candidates strength for a journey of which we can be proud.

--

JOYLENE WAGNER is a past member of the Glendale Unified School Board. Email her at jkate4400@aol.com.
When she was 7, Saleha Paatwalas grandmother took her out for what she thought would be a party.

I was told it would be a huge gathering where kids like me would also be, Paatwala said.

Instead she found herself in a dark, messy room where three other women were waiting. They pulled her down, held her hands and feet so she couldnt move and slipped off her underwear as she screamed.

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A tall woman spread Paatwalas legs, grabbed a blade and made a cut. She placed some cotton at the spot of the incision, but the pain lingered. She could not urinate comfortably for three days. Paatwala had undergone a crude procedure to remove her clitoris, a risky practice that has been outlawed in much of the world, but is not explicitly illegal in India. It remains common among the Dawoodi Bohras, a small Muslim sect.

Now 23, Paatwala has joined a growing movement inside the 1 million-strong Bohra community to fight the practice it calls khatna, known worldwide as female genital mutilation, or FGM.

Bohra Muslims as far away as Australia and the United States are also speaking out against a custom that for centuries has been carried out mostly in secret. In recent months, documentary films, advocacy campaigns and an online petition garnering more than 50,000 signatures have shed light on the practice.

Paatwala, who said she felt betrayed by her family, began speaking out against khatna last year and was surprised to find out that her mother opposed it, too.

She was too afraid to go against her own mother, and so she supported her decision to get us cut, said Paatwala, who works at a marketing agency in New Delhi. My parents support gives me more power to fight against this barbaric practice.

The World Health Organization estimates that more than 200 million girls and women have undergone FGM in 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. It defines FGM as any procedure that partially or fully removes the female genitalia for non-medical reasons, and says it is recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights of girls and women.

After the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution in 2012 to eradicate FGM globally, several countries instituted laws against the practice. India has not imposed a ban, although activists say existing legislation covering sexual assault and crimes against children could be applied to curb the practice, also known as female circumcision.

The rebellion has sharply divided the Bohras, a Shiite Muslim sect that originated in Yemen. The largest Bohra community today lives in western India, their ancestors having arrived here in the 16th century after fleeing persecution from Sunnis.

In cities like Mumbai they became traders and prospered financially while projecting an educated, generally progressive image. Many Bohra women hold jobs. Yet traditionalists maintain that khatna is their religious right.

While the Koran, the Muslim holy book, does not sanction female circumcision, Daimul Islam, a religious text followed by Bohras, endorses the practice for hygienic reasons. Some Bohras also believe it enhances a womans complexion, controls her sexual urges and makes her more devout.

There was a time when this brutal practice was Indias best kept secret.  Insia Dariwala, Bohra activist and filmmaker

Saifuddin Insaf, editor of the Bohra Chronicle, a reformist newsletter published in Mumbai, where the community has its headquarters, said khatna historically was seen as a way for Bohra merchants and traders to subdue their wives sexual desire while the husband was away on business.

These days, Insaf said, its done in a most secretive way. The women performing the cut do not have proper training. There is no anesthesia. The girls suffer later on in life. There have been deaths.

In February, religious leaders in three Bohra communities overseas  in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, and London  issued letters urging their faithful not to circumcise girls because it would violate local laws.

But this week, the Bohras supreme leader, or syedna, Mufaddal Saifuddin, said male and female circumcision were religious rites that have been practiced by Dawoodi Bohras throughout their history.

In a statement from Mumbai, Saifuddin said that while Bohras should not contravene laws where they live, religious books, written over 1,000 years ago, specify the requirements for both males and females as acts of religious purity.

In response, Sahiyo, a group of anti-khatna activists, said: We are one community, and we are disappointed that Bohra girls in some parts of the world are still expected to be cut.

Sahiyo was formed last year by five Bohra women in India and abroad to create greater awareness about the procedure, which is usually carried out on girls around age 7.

It was difficult to get people together who were willing to reveal their identities and speak out against the practice, said cofounder Priya Goswami, a documentary filmmaker from New Delhi whose 2013 short film on khatna, A Pinch of Skin, was honored at Indias National Film Awards.

But as we came together, somehow people were open about showing their support.

Cofounder Mariya Taher, who was raised in San Francisco, was circumcised at age 7 during a visit to Mumbai. As a graduate student at San Francisco State University, Taher studied FGM in the United States and found that Bohra immigrants continued the practice as a way to hold on to cultural roots, she said.

The groups efforts have sometimes met with resistance  particularly online, where commenters on its website have accused the organization of going against the Koran, disrespecting the syedna or having a devil-infected mind.

I think we all knew backlash would come and we prepared ourselves as best as we could, said Taher, who now lives in Boston. What helps us go through it is that we have the support of each other.

The debate comes amid a schism in the Bohra community that dates to 2014, when the death of the former syedna sparked a succession dispute. The leader of a small breakaway faction, Taher Fakhruddin, has said circumcision should only be done with a females consent, but activists say young girls are ill prepared to make such choices.

Sahiyos founders say the movement has support from all segments of Bohra society, and hope the pressure will force action from Indias government.

There was a time when this brutal practice was Indias best kept secret. Today, too, it is in some ways, said Insia Dariwala, a Mumbai filmmaker and Sahiyo cofounder. But in the past six months, we have made enough noise for the concerned departments to sit up and take notice.

Parth M.N. is a special correspondent.

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shashank.bengali@latimes.com

Follow @SBengali on Twitter for more news from South Asia
Here are some key facts about the FARC, Colombias largest rebel group and Latin Americas oldest left-wing insurgency.

 The FARC was established in the 1960s as a Communist-inspired peasant army fighting for land reform and to reduce the gulf still dividing rich and poor in the Andean country.

 Branded a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union, the FARC has been driven onto the defensive by President Alvaro Uribes U.S.-backed security campaign. The United States has given Colombia $5.5 billion in mostly military aid over the last seven years.

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 U.S. and Colombian authorities say the FARC has used the multibillion-dollar Colombian cocaine trade to fund its operations. Colombias four-decade-old conflict is now often a fight over drug-producing land involving the FARC, right-wing paramilitaries and other narcotics gangs.

 The FARC still holds sway in some rural areas where it grows coca, the raw material for cocaine, and keeps kidnap victims hostage in secret jungle camps. Betancourt and the three American defense contractors were the groups highest-profile hostages.

 The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, had been holding about 40 high-profile hostages it had sought to exchange for jailed rebels.

 Violence has eased and the economy has expanded in Colombias central, north and northwest urban areas, but the FARC is still a potent force in the southern jungle regions where the states presence is still weak.

 Two top rebel commanders were killed in March, a serious blow to the FARC. One, Raul Reyes, was a FARC spokesman and contact for negotiations over hostages. Reyes was killed in his camp in Ecuador in a cross-border strike that sparked a diplomatic crisis in the Andean region.
The prime suspect in the slaying of 11 family members is an alleged rapist seeking revenge against a victim whose complaint had him jailed, a Mexican law enforcement official said Saturday.

The official told the Associated Press that authorities believe two attackers fatally shot the woman, her family and other relatives, including two girls. The killers also slashed a male victim believed to be the womans partner and may have tried to decapitate him.

The official was not authorized to be quoted by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

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The Puebla state prosecutors office said that one of the dead women had been raped several years ago and apparently had a child by one of the attackers.

The killings took place Thursday night in the remote mountain hamlet of San Jose El Mirador, in the municipality of Coxcatlan in the central state of Puebla.

Clemente Hernandez, 37, a leader of the 50-household village, said his two daughters, ages 8 and 9, were among the dead. He said one of the women who died, also a relative of his, was pregnant.

We are not going back, Hernandez said of the hamlets residents. We are going to look for work wherever we can.

Five witnesses survived and were under government protection. They told authorities the attackers arrived by foot, opened fire and left. Prosecutors said they are believed to have fled into the mountains of the neighboring Oaxaca state.

Authorities have not released the names of the victims or suspects.

Officials had previously raised the possibility that the killings had religious overtones because residents of the largely evangelical hamlet had previously had disputes with Catholics in a nearby community. But that now appears not to have played a role.

The two homes where the killings occurred can be reached only by foot and the bodies had to be carried to the nearest road on stretchers. They were taken to the city of Tehuacan for autopsies.

The area has not been particularly hard hit by the drug violence raging in much of Mexico, but drug cultivation and land disputes are not uncommon in the region.

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Telemundo 62 reporter, Iris Delgado, was wrapping up her on-camera report near Philadelphia City Hall when she was attacked and it was caught on video.

Reporting about a soda tax in Philadelphia just around 11pm, Delgado was just about to finish her report when a woman started yelling and proceeded to hit the reporter in the face and on her head.

The woman, identified as 37-year-old Waheedah Wilson, was pushed away by the news crew, after the camera cut off, and was then arrested by police and charged with assault.

Delgado, who covers news about Latinos in Philadelphia, suffered minor injuries and did not seek treatment right away.

While it's not clear why Wilson attacked the news reporter, the woman reportedly has a criminal history for drug possession.

Watch the moment Delgado was attacked here:
Canada's Supreme Court has ruled the country's bestiality law only pertains to acts that involve penetration.

In a major blow to advocacy groups that argued animals should be afforded the same protections from exploitation that humans are granted, the high court decided (6-1 vote) in favor of a British Columbia man originally convicted for sexual assault and bestiality involving the abuse of the family dog and his two stepdaughters.

Bestiality Conviction Overturned

Known only by the initials "D.L.W." to protect his stepdaughters' identity, the man successfully appealed his bestiality conviction in a provincial court. Throughout the proceedings his attorneys argued that the law stipulates bestiality requires penetration, which they pointed out his actions did not entail.

Ultimately, D.L.W. was found guilty of 13 counts of sexual molestation involving his two stepdaughters and sentenced to 16-years in prison.

In rendering the verdict, Justice Thomas Cromwell noted penetration has always been required to sustain bestiality convictions, adding courts do not have the power to expand their authority.

"Any expansion of criminal liability for this offense is within parliament's exclusive domain," he wrote.

The crime of bestiality derives from the old crime "buggery," with the original definition meant to convey anal sex with either another human or an animal. Both acts were forbidden in England, home of Canada's earliest laws.

Bill now Afloat to Change law

Presently, a bill seeking to define bestiality anew is before lawmakers, but remains in its early stages.

Camille Labchuk, executive director of the Animal Justice group, an animal rights group which was allowed to intervene in the case, urged parliament to pass the legislation quickly.

Added Cromwell, "Parliament may wish to consider whether the present provisions adequately protect children and animals. But it is for Parliament, not the courts, to expand the scope of criminal liability for this ancient offence."
Police have identified the suspected gunmen in a Florida shooting that left at least 50 people dead as a 29-year-old U.S. citizen whose family is believed to be from Afghanistan.

Omar Mateen died in an early-morning shootout with police on June 12, 2016 at the Pulse nightclub, in which at least 53 others were also injured.

Deadliest Mass Shooting in U.S. History

Reports state that the FBI is treating the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history as an act of terrorism. Federal officials are now also feverishly investigating to determine if Matten had any ties to any radical terror groups.

Armed with an assault-style rifle, handgun and a suspected explosive device, Mateen took hostages at the popular, Orlando gay nightspot before being shot dead by police at around 5 a.m.

Mateen's father has since told authorities his son may have harbored "anti-gay" sentiments. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer has declared a state of emergency and President Obama is expected to release a statement on the situation in the coming hours.

"It's appears he was organized and well-prepared," said Orlando police chief John Mina.

At least nine officers were involved in the shootout with Mateen, who reportedly had several explosive devices strapped to his body and others stored in his vehicle.

Shots first rang around 2 a.m., and an officer who was working at the club engaged Mateen in a shootout before he fled inside the club.

Orlando Residents Told to Avoid Area

Orlando police warned residents to stay away from the area, but declined to reveal how the number of casualties, insisting details will be available later.

Mateen is reported to be from nearby Fort Pierce, estimated to be about 120 miles southeast of Orlando. All across the area, emergency and medical centers were placed on lockdown as medical staffers hustled to treat the injured.
A Forks Township family was uninjured when a fire broke out Saturday on their property, destroying a garage that was unattached to their home.

The Forks Township Fire Department responded about 6 p.m. to the property in the 4200 block of Sullivan Trail, Deputy Chief Matt Mowrey said.

The cause and point of origin in the garage remained under investigation Sunday. Township fire Marshal Tim Weis was slated to return to continue the probe Monday, Mowrey said.

Homeowner Ted Cole used the garage as his woodworking shed. He declined to comment Sunday other than to say no one in his family was injured.

One firefighter was taken to St. Luke's Hospital, Bethlehem Township, with heat exhaustion, Mowrey said.

Firefighters limited damage to the home to siding melted from the heat of the blaze. A stand of pine trees along the garage was singed, and a pontoon boat and trailer were badly damaged.

The fire department returned shortly after 10 a.m. Sunday for flareups in the piles of debris left by the fire.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
UPDATE: Orlando club massacre suspect made pledge to ISIS, official says

Gay rights advocates organized a vigil against violence Sunday night in Allentown, after a man opened fire early Sunday inside an Orlando, Florida, nightclub, killing at least 50 people.

A separate event was scheduled for 9 p.m. in Centre Square, Easton, organizers Timothy Hare and Earl Ball announced on Facebook.

"We are shocked by this morning's mass murder at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida," the organizers wrote. "Now we are all Orlandians in our hearts.

"Let us join hands in the circle, sharing our heartfelt pulse of love to those that lost their lives and those grieving the loss of their loved ones."

The massacre at the gay club known as Pulse was the worst shooting in United States history, and left an additional 53 people injured, most in critical condition.

Investigators labeled the incident a terror attack. CNN reported the alleged shooter, Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida, was a sympathizer of the Islamic State. He was killed in a gunfight with SWAT officers.

Orlando shooter Omar Mateen known to FBI as possible ISIS sympathizer, officials say. https://t.co/knkUdWTXl1. pic.twitter.com/AQa4ncxYoG  CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) June 12, 2016

Suspected shooter's ex-wife said he beat her while married. He was not a stable person, she told @washingtonpost pic.twitter.com/kDCHJvLCsC  BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) June 12, 2016

In Allentown, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center organized a vigil for 6 p.m. Sunday at the gay-friendly Candida's Bar, 247 N. 12th St.

The Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center is at 522 W. Maple St. in Center City Allentown. The center organized a vigil against violence for 6 p.m. Sunday, June 12, 2016 at Candida's Bar, 247 N. 12th St. in Allentown, following a mass shooting at an Orlando gay club. (Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com)

"It's a sad day in America anytime we wake up to learn about horrific gun violence and of course we are saddened by the needless loss of life that occurred last night," Bradbury-Sullivan's executive director, Adrian Shanker, said in a statement Sunday. "But last night's massacre at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, which left at least 50 people dead and many more injured, is a wake up call that violence against the LGBT community is a serious issue, that the LGBT movement needs to prioritize efforts to prevent violence, including support for meaningful and commonsense gun control, and that this senseless violence needs to turn into action to ensure the safety of our community."

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said Pennsylvania State Police offered assistance to law enforcement in Florida. He offered prayers for and said his thoughts were with the victims, as authorities in Pennsylvania were monitoring the situation "and will respond swiftly to any threats in Pennsylvania," according to a statement from the governor.

We must work together to prevent horrific violence far too frequent in places where we should feel safe." -TW https://t.co/JLhJpEshTq  Governor Tom Wolf (@GovernorTomWolf) June 12, 2016

Shanker stated that beyond thoughts and prayers, corrective action is needed following this latest mass murder on United States soil.

"Action to ensure that our bars, pride festivals, and community celebrations are safe to attend," he continued. "Action to ensure that same-sex couples and transgender individuals are safe in their communities and on the streets."

He went on to blast "anti-LGBT legislation and rhetoric" in states that have undertaken bans on transgender people using certain restrooms.

"Our elected officials and community leaders need to create inclusive cultures in their states to help prevent violence against our community," Shanker stated. "We need action, education, and increased consciousness to ensure the safety of our community."

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Gov. Tom Wolf signs liquor reform bill

Gov. Tom Wolf shakes hands with House Speaker Mike Turzai after signing House Bill 1690 at the state Capitol in Harrisburg.

(Pennlive.com via AP | For lehighvalleylive.com)

Is it possible that buying beer and wine in Pennsylvania just became easier -- and selling it became more complicated?



Sure. That should come as no surprise in a state still waiting to pop the cork on Prohibition.



Last week a majority of legislators found common ground in adopting House Bill 1690. Gov. Tom Wolf signed it, hailing a "historic" move away from the state's notorious, segmented approach to selling alcoholic beverages.



Among other things, this compromise will allow hotels and restaurants -- and grocery stores with take-out beer licenses -- to sell up to four bottles of wine per customer. And the previous court-ordered move to allow more takeout beer licenses is now written into law.



That's something, but it's not going to lead to a rush of corner stores selling beer; those places still will have to conform with convoluted laws requiring them to buy a competitive license.



There's more: Consumers will now be able to order from wineries and have wine shipped to their homes. Casinos will be able to serve alcohol 24 hours a day. State liquor stores will have flexibility to stay open more hours and on Sunday, and offer coupons and additional discounts.



Movement? Sure. But the only way to view this bill as progress is if it serves as a waystation to full privatization of the beer-wine-spirits market. It's disappointing that the Legislature didn't push harder for a free-market conversion, but the votes simply weren't there, including Wolf's. Not yet.



Here's what this "historic" legislation doesn't do:





Customers will still have to go to a state-owned store to buy liquor (where you can't buy beer).

Customers will still have to go to a beer distributor to buy a keg or a case.

Taxpayers will see little relief from the pressure to raise taxes. According to House Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-Indiana, these changes will generate $150 million a year and grow gradually. Not much help for a state facing billion-dollar budget deficits and even larger public pension obligations.



State Sen. Lisa Boscola, D-Northampton-Lehigh, one of a handful of Senate opponents, said six-pack sales at gas station/convenience stores will make beer too accessible to minors. She criticized what she and others called the "Sheetz amendment" -- the expectation that the most dominant convenience store chain in the state will also dominate the competition for beer licenses, pricing others out of the market.



Keeping alcohol out of the hands of kids is serious business -- but it doesn't require the full involvement of a state government in retail and wholesale distribution. That canard has been exposed by 48 states that took a more sensible path to alcohol sales and regulation after Prohibition.



This political battle is far from over, and it is about control -- control of a fractured, antiquated market that encourages players to defend their territories, such as unionized store clerks and beer distributors, from those looking to grab a share of the profits.



But the biggest player is the state, and a majority of Pennsylvanians wants that to change.



Last week's action is a step forward in a backward-looking system. It will pay dividends if Wolf and his Republican adversaries carry this spirit of cooperation into budget talks and avoid another deadline-bashing meltdown. And eventually, free the liquor market.
A man had a blood-alcohol content three times the legal limit when he drove to pick up his child at day care on Friday in Warren County, according to police.

Zachary Berger, 27, of Washington, had gone just before 6 p.m. to pick up the child at Country Child Care, 459 Route 31 South in Washington Township, township police said.

Employees at the child care did not turn the child over to Berger but instead called police, and later released the child to another family member, police said.

Berger's blood-alcohol content was allegedly 0.24. Penalties begin for most drivers at 0.08.

Berger was charged with drunken driving and released with a mandatory court date.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
This coming week, well find out the outcome of the case brought by Doug Paulley against First Bus. He is seeking a ruling that gives priority to wheelchair users over childrens pushchairs for wheelchair spaces on buses. Our Sal Brinton has been a great supporter of Paulley and this week, during a debate on the Bus Services Bill, told how she had had the same problem. As she says, there was room for both of her and the man with the buggy if he had just made way for her.

She also outlined some other issues that she has had with bus travel  and highlights examples of good provision, in places like Manchester, where she was last weekend.

I tried to hail a bus on Gower Street that was three-quarters empty on the ground floor, but there was a buggy in the entrance to the wheelchair space. It was one of the few buses with a conductor, and the conductor and the driver both tried to speak to the father of the baby in the buggy, but he absolutely, point blank refused to move. He just would not give at all, even when I explained that it was perfectly possible, if he just pulled the buggy back for me to reverse into the space, for him then to put the buggy back in front of me. He still refused to move. That is the fundamental problem. At the moment, although the spirit of the law says that wheelchairs should have priority, the right of refusal by the person responsible for a buggy is absolutely paramount.

In the Paulley case, there have been a couple of comments from some the judges, at various stages. Lord Justice Lewison said that,the criminal law (in the form of the Conduct Regulations) gives the companyin practice the driverno reliable means of enforcing any requirement; still less would introducing an explicit contractual term in the conditions of carriage do so. In truth a requirement has no more teeth than a request. To hold that FirstGroup

the bus company in this case

was in breach of its duty to make reasonable adjustments because it did not have a policy of enforcing a requirement to vacate the wheelchair space is in those circumstances unsustainable.

Lady Justice Arden concurred. She said:

Parliament has not given bus drivers any power to compel a person to move from the wheelchair space. A rule of wheelchair first in the wheelchair space would not carry the force of law. In those circumstances, in my judgment, the duty to make reasonable adjustments does not require the bus company to have such a rule.

This is a complete nonsense, especially where there is no flexibility on the part of the buggy user, so my first question to the Minister is: do the Government have plans, in the light of what was said in the earlier court judgments on this case, to make the clarity between the requirement and the request to ensure that a wheelchair can have access to the designed wheelchair space and cannot be barred from using it by the will of another passenger?

The Arriva booklet for disabled passengers, which was published in 2011, is extremely helpfulI think it is important in this debate to hand out bouquets as well as brickbats. The only problem is that nowhere does it refer to the fact that there are other people with priority over using the wheelchair space. It would be extremely useful if in communicating with disabled users it was absolutely clear whether the rights of a bus user are a matter for government, local government or the bus companies.

That brings me to people with hidden disabilities. The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and I had a meeting with Transport for London, mainly but not only about Tube use. A suggestionone that we know we are not the only people to have madeis that in addition to the button badges that pregnant women wear saying Baby on board!, a button badge saying Hidden disability. Please offer me a seat would be extremely useful. I am glad that TfL is seriously looking at taking that up, but it would be really useful if the message went out to all the bus companies and if people with disabilities were able to access that sort of thing for train companies as well.

In the past 24 hours, I was concerned to discover from talking to another disabled person that apparently most bus companies insurance companies provide insurance cover for only one wheelchair on a bus at any one time. She and another colleague, both in wheelchairs, were told that they could not travel together, even when she offered to get out of her wheelchair and sit in a seat. She can do that with her wheelchair whereas the person she was with has an electric wheelchair, as I do. She was told that was not possible because of the insurance cover. This is complete nonsense. It goes to show that the myths that abound about what you can do with the number of wheelchairs on the ground floor of a bus need to be exploded.

Audio and visual guidance issues are important. I know that the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Holmes, will speak from experience. One of the frustrations of being in a wheelchair space in a bus is that you are often facing the rear of the bus. I travel on buses around the country a great deal, and when I get on to a bus, I have to say to the driver, I dont know where Im going, but I want to get to X, and I am entirely reliant on the driver telling me because the visual guidance is usually behind me behind the driver. Unless there is audio guidance, I have no idea where I am going, if I am getting near the stop at all. That is not universally true. The bouquet I would like to offer today is to Manchester, where I was over the weekend, and where the buses and the trams were extremely good on audio and visual guidance, ramps and ticketing. That was extremely helpful and shows it can certainly be done. However, it is not universal, and one of the particular problems is services that encompass town and rural areas, not principal cities. Will it be made clear to all bus companies that they must have these user priorities and accessible guidance notes, even if it costs them money? Here I differ from the Select Committee: there needs to be audio and visual guidance on all buses and there should not be any further delay.

That brings me to my final point: training. It is always instantly apparent to me, as I am sure it is to other disabled people using buses, if a driver or a conductor has had training. They understand the issues that you face and the space that you have to move in. They know how to ask passengers to move so that you can get into the required space. They often also offer guidance about whether or not you need to pay, because not all areas make disabled people with a blue badge pay, as I discovered to my delight in Manchester over the weekend. However, it is also painfully clear when they have not been trained. For example, there is a lack of understanding that you do not want an electric wheelchair to be pushed by a helpful driver; that is actually the last thing that should be done. Training would cover the difference between manual and electric wheelchairs.
Today Im struggling to find the words to come to terms with what has happened in Orlando. Fifty people have been slaughtered solely for being who they are. Every terrorist attack is both an outrage and a multitude of personal tragedies but for all LGBTQ people this attack at the heart of our community is particularly terrifying.

Throughout our history as a community LGBTQ people have faced violence and terror but there was a prevailing attitude that to be LGBTQ in Western Europe or North America was becoming safer, more accepted. This horrendous attack is a reminder that for some people, even in the West, our very existence is intolerable. For me, and many others, in the LGBTQ community gay bars were the first place we felt we could truly be ourselves without restricting ourselves by societys expectations. This was where we felt at home, this was where we felt safe. This is why this attack is so personal for many in our communities.

We will see many calls over the coming days for this attack not to be politicised, the homophobic motivation of these attacks may not be discussed. This is wrong. As liberals and humanitarians we must stand up and call this attack what it is, a hate crime. We must use this attack as an impetus to stand up to racism, sexism and homophobia because todays horror reminds us just how far we have to go before we have the truly egalitarian society we strive for.

* Euan Davidson is the former PPC for Aberdeen North and previous President of Liberal Youth Scotland. He is now a student in Sheffield.
The news that the Yes campaign has taken the lead in a You Gov poll just 11 days before the referendum on Scotlands independence is worrying. Everyone is nervous and jittery. Yes campaigners, daring to hope that they are on the verge of an historic victory will be motivated and scared in equal measures. For those of us who dont want to see our country split up, its, well, squeaky bum time. However there is another poll today which shows No slightly ahead. The news is not all bleak.

This is far from over, though. The atmosphere is tense and febrile. Yes supporters confidently display their badges and posters but Ive lost count of the times Ive spoken to enthusiastic No voters who say they wont put up a poster because they are worried about it being vandalised. It was noticeable in Edinburgh yesterday that No thanks posters were appearing, but on the top floors of tenements, out of stone and egg range. People shouldnt have to feel like this.

So how do pro-UK supporters regain the momentum? Only a month ago, after the first debate, we were 22% ahead in the polls. At the moment we are anywhere between 6% ahead and 2% behind.

I dont intend to rehearse the many failings of the Better Together campaign. That can, and should, be done at leisure after 18th September. The on-the-ground Better Together campaigners are fantastic but they have been let down by strategic decisions and organisation which combine the worst of Yes to AV with the best of The Thick of It. They just dont seem to be on the same wavelength with the Scottish public. How anyone could have thought the recent Party Political Broadcast featuring a womans clumsy and contrived monologue was in any way appropriate is beyond me. Robust analysis of the Yes campaigns proposals was always going to be necessary but every bass needs a melody to make it palatable and that just hasnt happened. Given that there is so much to inspire about our shared history, heritage, culture and achievements, that is a tragedy.

Find the passion

Yes Scotland says its a positive campaign but in fact, behind the froth on the top is something deeply negative. They tell us that we live in some sort of hellish wasteland from which independence is the only deliverance. Actually, we live in a wonderful place, with creative, inventive, industrious people. The UK has one of the strongest economies in the world, it leads the way on human rights, LGBT rights, is the second biggest aid donor in the world, has the finest public broadcaster and the best health service which is accessible to all. It isnt perfect. More needs to be done to tackle poverty and inequality across the whole UK but independence is not the change that will make everything better.

This week George Monbiot told us that rejecting independence was an astonishing act of self harm. Ive seen Yes people complain that No voters are stupid or too scared to see the advantages in independence and that in some way were psychologically flawed by not wanting change. Please dont confuse my wanting to stay in the UK with an acceptance of the status quo. Im a liberal. We shake things up. Its what were for. We challenge established authority. We give power away. Its our instinct. There is a part of me that feels that its slightly counter-intuitive not to go for the change. For me, the priority is a liberal, compassionate, caring society and thats what Ill continue to fight for whatever the result on 19th September. Whats on offer from the Yes campaign puts so much of what we rely on, a stable currency being the most obvious thing, in jeopardy without offering a realistic chance of creating that fairer society. Those who would suffer most if it all goes wrong are the most vulnerable. And given that the Institute of Fiscal Studies says that an independent Scotland would be 6bn short, those people would lose an awful lot of support and services.

Staying in the UK offers the further enrichment of our vibrant democracy in Scotland with more powers whilst spreading the risk in these globally turbulent times. One of the real tragedies of the last 7 years since the SNP have been in Government is that they have not used the powers theyve got to anything like their potential. Theyve just moaned that they dont have enough powers. During the first 8 years, the Lib Dem/Labour coalition showed off what they could do and brought in some revolutionary stuff, free personal care, PR for local government, the smoking ban, free eye and dental checks. We need to get back to that sort of reforming state of mind and make things happen.

In the next 10 days, I want to hear from people who can articulate that positive, reforming message and take people with them. Charles Kennedy is good at it. Jim Wallace has actually brought in some pretty bold reforms in his time. Nobody articulates the passion for social justice better than young Labour MSP Kezia Dugdale. She was fantastic in the last televised debate last week. There are still hard arguments to be won on currency because no option that the SNP has put forward is as good as using the pound from within the UK. Im not suggesting we should abandon the facts completely. We cant let Yes off the hook, but we have to inject some passion and fun into the campaign. Gordon Brown has also been more visible recently. He is more trusted by Labour voters than Darling according to the YouGov poll. One very interesting thing, as an aside, is that 75% of Conservative voters trust Darling, yet only 40% trust Brown.

How do you solve a problem like David?

In Quebec, when the pro-independence campaign was five points ahead at the end of the campaign, the Canadian Prime Minister intervened and made a game-changing emotional appeal for them to stay part of Canada. The last thing that Scots need is David Cameron, a man that most of us have no time for at all, doing that. I know hes the Prime Minister and should be seen to be fighting for the UK, but there is a very good reason Alex Salmond wanted to debate him. There does need to be an emotional appeal, though and we should look to national treasures rather than anyone else to deliver it.

Emphasise the irreversibility

A Yes vote is for your life, your childs life, your grandchilds life and for centuries to come. There is no going back if it doesnt work out. That message has to be hammered home at every opportunity.

Deal with the Yes Lies effectively

Its only recently that the Yes campaign has made NHS funding an issue in the campaign. Part of their narrative, along with the Bedroom Tax, has always been an assertion, unchallenged by Better Together, that the NHS in England has been privatised. In recent weeks theyve been saying that future NHS funding is threatened by the use of private services in England. The Scottish Government has full control over the NHS and can spend what it likes on it. Now whos scaremongering? This line of arguing is so obviously not true yet it seems to be working for Yes.

Ive also seen social media posts from Yes supporters which show that they think there will be no Work Capablility Assessment, no ATOS, no sanctions in a Scottish welfare state. Nowhere does the White Paper say this. It has some rather woolly language about a fairer system but doesnt spell it out. Nor does it commit to restore the 2.5 billion cuts already made to benefits in Scotland.

Better Together needs to sort this out and make sure their people on the ground have the right arguments to make on the doorsteps.

Be visible and talk to as many voters as possible

One of the lesser known aspects of todays YouGov poll is that it shows that Better Together is being comprehensively out-campaigned by Yes at every single level. Compare and contrast:

Almost 1 in 4 respondents had heard nothing from the Better Together campaign. The corresponding figure for Yes was 1 in 8. At every level, the intensity of Yes is significantly greater. So, Id say for everyone who wants Scotland to stay in the UK, get out there. Knock on doors. Set up stalls. Talk to your friends and family. Make phone calls. We have a lot of catching up to do. The field work for next weekends polls will start in a couple of days time. We want to show that gap being closed. And we need stalls and noise and presence and visibility. Yes were everywhere in Edinburgh yesterday. When we were in the Highlands last week there were a whole load of them

The UK will be on probation if theres a no vote

There is very little chance of this vote now being decisive enough to put the issue of independence to bed for a generation. If the UK doesnt deliver on not just more powers but greater social justice as well, then Scots will insist on another referendum. Nicola Sturgeon has already talked about doing it all again in 5 years if we vote no. We need to get those people back who want a Federal UK but are voting yes. Its important that these people believe that the chance of achieving that goal is better after a No vote. It certainly isnt after a Yes vote which is irreversible. The likely narrow no vote is the option which gives people the most power. Voting yes would be handing it over to an SNP establishment which is very comfortable with power and for all the talk of a written constitution, is unlikely to want to cede much. The fact that its centralised everything that sits still for more than two minutes shows that. The very last thing I want to do is to trust them with more power. Imagine what Clear Desk Kenny MacAskill would do with counter-terrorism measures.

Osbornes talk of an announcement this week setting out some sort of pathway to more powers is welcome but its no more than Alistair Carmichael and Willie Rennie have been saying for a long time. Ive never thought it was a good idea for the three political parties to stitch something up between them. A constitutional convention which involves civil society and the SNP is, for me, vital. People need to know that they have a chance to influence the way they are governed if they vote No.

The Labour Party in particular will have to get its finger out and offer some real hope to the people who have been politically engaged by the Yes campaign. Its been a long time since they have connected with these people. It is now essential that they work out how to do so, particularly if they find themselves in government next May.

A positive, reforming future

We have 10 days to convince people that Scotland has a promising future within the UK. We can do it. Lets not fail.

.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
That poll in the Independent which showed Leave with a 10 point lead should concentrate our minds. We have a lot of work to do over the next 11 days and, frankly, its time to drop everything that isnt absolutely vital and get ourselves out there making the case for Remain, even more than we have done already. I know Liberal Democrats probably more than any other group of people have thrown their backs into it, particularly south of the border, but whatever we are doing, we need to do more and ask very unreasonable things of ourselves over the next few days. Its not exaggerating to say that the future not just of this country, but the whole European continent, is in jeopardy.

The poll in question comes with a caveat because it didnt have a dont know option so its indicative really of peoples gut reactions at this time not, perhaps, of what they will actually do a week on Thursday. However, the overall state of the polling leads us right into the middle of squeaky bum territory.

Our #EUref rolling (7pt) averages so far w/ the latest Opinium and YouGov polls:

Remain: 44.1%

Leave: 45.0% pic.twitter.com/lXVd0JC6RJ  Britain Elects (@britainelects) June 12, 2016

Its too close for comfort and Leave only need a one vote margin.

Ive been here before, though. At the same stage before the Scottish Referendum, a poll put Yes slightly ahead, leading to a frenzy of activity. While No won out in the end, it was a very scary time. I was shocked by quite how emotional I felt about it. The atmosphere on the front line was pretty awful, with those of us who were campaigning for a no vote being told, variously, that we were stupid or treacherous. That came as a shock at the time, as it is now to some Remain campaigners who are experiencing the same thing from Brexiteers. Young Remain campaigners in the West Country were told yesterday, for example, that they were traitors and should be executed. Thats a glimpse into the minds of some of the people we are dealing with and its not an attractive one. If anything, this campaign is even worse.

Part of the reason I was so against Scottish independence was the uncertainty around our future membership of the EU. Being a citizen of the EU is an important part of my identity. I really dont want to lose it. I definitely dont want to lose it because people believe the lies that the Leave campaign are telling. So, this campaign is quite emotional too. There is a huge amount at stake and I really, really dont like the thought of the country we would become if we succumbed to the narrow-minded isolationism of the Leave campaign. Brittie No Mates trying to forge her way in an increasingly complex world is not an appealing thought.

When we got to this stage in the Scottish Referendum, I wrote a piece saying what we needed to do in the last few days. Many of these principles apply now.

We need to make people smile

The first principle then is that we have to find the passion and positivity and fun that has been lacking from this campaign. This is what I wrote then.

I want to hear from people who can articulate that positive, reforming message and take people with them. Charles Kennedy is good at it. Jim Wallace has actually brought in some pretty bold reforms in his time. Nobody articulates the passion for social justice better than young Labour MSP Kezia Dugdale. She was fantastic in the last televised debate last week. There are still hard arguments to be won on currency because no option that the SNP has put forward is as good as using the pound from within the UK. Im not suggesting we should abandon the facts completely. We cant let Yes off the hook, but we have to inject some passion and fun into the campaign.

Funnily enough, that young Labour MSP is now the Labour leader in Scotland.

We need more than a war of attrition amongst senior Tories, because the more they kick lumps out of each other, the less people feel like this has anything to do with them. We need to show people why this matters for peace, for jobs and trade.

How do you solve a problem like David?

A year and a half on, and the Prime Minister is no greater an asset. Then, I wrote:

The last thing that Scots need is David Cameron, a man that most of us have no time for at all, doing that. I know hes the Prime Minister and should be seen to be fighting for the UK, but there is a very good reason Alex Salmond wanted to debate him. There does need to be an emotional appeal, though and we should look to national treasures rather than anyone else to deliver it.

In fact, Scots remember how he passed up the chance to uplift and reunite a divided nation before the ink was dry on the referendum result.

Cameron has failed to inspire and, frankly, there seems no chance of him doing so in this campaign as I wrote the other day. We need to cast our net to see who can.

During the Scottish referendum, Shirley Williams spent the last week campaigning for a No vote. It was extraordinary to see how well she is respected, particularly amongst that group of older people who are more likely to vote Leave. One of the best moments of a dismal campaign for me was when she came to Dunfermline and a Yes campaigner came up and said how much shed almost admired her. Stronger In could do a lot worse than to get her on the telly a LOT in the next few days.

A reforming state of mind

Please dont confuse my wanting to stay in the EU with an acceptance of the status quo. Im a liberal. We shake things up. Its what were for. We challenge established authority. We give power away. Its our instinct. For me, the priority is a liberal, compassionate, caring society Whats on offer from the Leave campaign puts so much of what we rely on in terms of trade and jobs, in jeopardy without offering anything other than a dubious prospect of control. Those who would suffer most if it all goes wrong are the most vulnerable. And given that the Institute of Fiscal Studies says that Brexit would be bad for the economy and would mean more austerity, those people would lose an awful lot of support and services.

There is much that needs to be done to reform our democracy at every level  the EU, strangely enough, is probably the least of our priorities in that score. At the moment we have a government with a mandate from a quarter of the electorate doing all it can to stitch up power for itself. Its boundary reforms give the Tories an inbuilt advantage and with Labour being as abjectly useless as they are at the moment, it looks like they are going to be around for a while. If people really want control, they should look to our own democratic arrangements now.

Dealing with the Leave campaigns lies, spurious claims and lack of plan

Leaves lies are gaining traction and they have to be rebutted. However, if you cant get people listening to you by inspiring them, you wont be able to get through to them. Their 350 million a week figure is as proven hogwash as its possible to get. Willie Rennie called on Leave to pulp their election address which showed an arrow suggesting that 76 million Turkish people were headed for Scotland.

Leave hasnt got a clue what a post-Brexit Britain looks like. To give the SNP credit, at least they produced a massive house brick shaped thing which outlined their vision, in as much detail as telling us that the time would be the same in an independent Scotland. In contrast, Leave just want us to stop outside into a fog wearing dark glasses without even access to a satnav. Are we going to be like Norway, Canada or Albania, all of whom have less than we do at the moment? They dont know and they dont know how we can get there.

They tell us that of course the EU would let us have access to the single market because it would be in their interests. Ill have to try that on my gym. Maybe I can leave and ask them to let me still use the facilities on the same or better terms than the people who continue to pay.

Be visible

It is so important that every community sees Remain campaigners out and about. On every single occasion when Ive been out, people have been asking questions and saying that they are really struggling with the decision. A few minutes gentle and respectful conversation is all it usually takes to take them over to a Remain vote. We need to have millions of such conversations in the next 11 days. Be out there every minute you can. This really matters and we can make a difference.

I really dont want to sit up through the night on 23rd June wishing Id done more to avert a Brexit vote. We can do this  and we must.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
Yesterday, I went to Glasgow to take part in Radio Scotlands Big Debate as part of the Remain contingent. As they did during the election, the BBC invited a delicately balanced audience.

I almost combusted on the spot when I saw that there was to be an all-male panel. Then I looked at the Leave contingent, all but one of whom were men and only men spoke. The Remain contingent, however, were almost perfectly balanced and it was the women who actually spoke the most during the hour.

It still feels strange to hear Ming Campbell introduced as Lord Campbell of Pittenweem. His partner on the remain side was the very able SNP MEP Alyn Smith. Both of them were very good at making the positive case for the EU and busting a lot of Leave myths. The Leave panellists were Tory Brian Monteith, who lives in France and is a former Conservative MEP. George Laird is from Labour Leave.

It was a lively hour with virtually everyone in the audience getting the chance to contribute. I asked a question, on trade deals. I didnt quite put it this way, but it was basically Imagine youre the most powerful country in the world, who are you going to give the best trade deal, too? Britty-No Mates, 1/20 of your size, or a large co-operative of nations representing half a billion people?

The whole thing is available here. I would recommend listening to it to hear Smith and Campbells forensic demolition of Leaves take control and get our country back nonsense.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
On Friday, Olly Grender introduced her Private Members Bill aimed at giving tenants in the private rented sector greater protections, particularly from the extortionate fees charged by letting agents. She gave some examples in her proposing speech which is copied below:

My Lords, the natural consequence of the chronic lack of social housing and the prohibitive cost of buying a home means that we now have a growing number of people who live in the private rented sector. Sometimes it would appear that this ever-growing customer basealmost one in five of the population, one-third of them families with childrenhave more consumer rights when they buy a white good, such as a fridge, than they do when they rent the home to put the fridge in. That cannot be right. The Bill aims to address that current imbalance. The rising demand for rented homes is pushing up costs and allowing some landlords and letting agents to take advantage of tenants who have relatively little power to object to high prices or poor conditions, or to make choices about which letting agent to use.

The law needs to change to make renting cheaper, safer and more secure for tenants. The Bill will reduce the costs of moving for renters by banning letting agents charging fees to tenants, a practice already outlawed in Scotland. The Bill will also make renting safer through mandatory electrical checks and give tenants greater protections against rogue landlords. The Government have helped tenants by introducing legislation on rogue landlords in the Housing and Planning Act 2016, but they stopped short of giving real power to tenants through information so that tenants know who those rogue landlords are. Under Clause 1, tenants would have access to that information. This change would put transparency and choice into the hands of the consumer, the customer, the tenant. A landlord can require a tenant to provide a reference, yet tenants are unable to apply the same principle to their landlord. If the list of employers who flout national minimum wage legislation can be made public, why cannot rogue landlords be made public, too?

In Clause 3, we return to an issue debated during the passage of the Housing and Planning Bill, which is that electrical safety checks should be compulsory. Clause 4 would prevent a rogue landlord obtaining an HMO licence. The points covered by Clauses 1, 3 and 4 were recently debated during the passage of the Housing and Planning Bill, and my noble friends Lord Foster and Lord Palmer will elaborate on them. I shall concentrate the rest of my remarks on Clause 2, which aims to end letting fees for tenants.

The cost of living for private renters has reached crisis point. Renting is the most expensive form of housing to live in, and with rising rents and increasing demand, renters are trapped, with limited choice. Tenancies are increasingly very shortoften of only six months or perhaps 12so renters often lack security and, as we all know, they constantly have the imminent threat of a rent rise hanging over their heads.

Unlike people in the owner-occupied market, one in four renters moved home in 2013-14. Just under a third of renters have moved three times or more in the past five years, and just under a quarter of them in London. Each time they move, the up-front costs are often the greatest barrier of all. In London, the median amount that renters must pay before moving is 1,500, and in many cases the cost is several thousand pounds. It goes up disproportionately for those on low incomes, who are viewed as a higher risk and so may be required to provide several months rent in advance. Indeed, of those who rent on a very low budget, a third have to borrow or use a loan to pay up-front fees and, disgracefully, 17% have to cut down on heating and food to cover the up-front cost of moving.

Costs vary from agent to agent and range from 40 to 780, with the average cost just under 400 per move. Many of those charges seem completely arbitrary. A credit check, for example, costs about 25 today, but some agencies charge a tenant 150 or more to carry one out. Marta, a lady who contacted the Debriefs Make Renting Fair campaign, had asked to sign a three-year tenancy agreement. The agent said, Fine, but youll have to pay three times the fee: that was three times 360 just to re-sign. I spoke to a young woman this week who is in a two-bedroom flat. She is the main tenant and happily paid 150 for an inventory check and other things at the start of her tenancy, but every time her flatmate changes, the new tenant is charged a 150 for an inventory check which, of course, never happenswhat a rip off!

Citizens Advice, which in the past year has seen 80,000 people with a problem in the private rented sector, has seen an 8% increase in complaints about letting agents. One tenant described a fee of 180 to renew a tenancy agreement that is staying exactly the same, except for a change of dates. It requires a simple printing or photocopying job, and it is the renters who go into the office and sign the form, but they are charged almost 200 for it.

We all accept that letting agents have some genuine costs in moving tenants into a property, but the appropriate payer of these costs is the landlord, not the tenant. It is the landlord who is the client, and most of the fees charged to tenants would be costs landlords would expect already to be covered in the amount they pay the agent. It is the landlord who can choose which agents they use and which is the most competitive agent in the marketplace. The tenant is choosing where to live, what the rent is and whether they can afford the deposit. They have no ability to pick and choose which letting agency they will use. Let us take the example of Jess, a client of Citizens Advice. She found a property that she wanted to rent in her local area, and the letting agent requested 600 to run credit checks and get referenceslet me remind the House that a credit check costs about 25which was non-refundable if the landlord did not accept her as a renter. I am sure she would have loved to choose which letting agent she used, but she was not in a position to do that.

These agents are charging both landlords and tenants because they can get away with it. That needs to end, and that is what the Bill does. Imagine if this model were applied in a different market, say, to employment agencies. A company would ask the employment agency to find it a temp. On this model, the temp would be charged a fee as well as the company employing him or her. It just does not make sense.

Fees for tenants have already been successfully banned in Scotland following legislation in 1984, which was clarified in 2012. Research into its impact commissioned by Shelter shows that it has had only minimal side-effects for letting agents, landlords and renters, and the sector remains healthy. Only 17% of letting agents increased fees to landlords, and only 24% reported a small negative effect on their business. Not one agency manager interviewed said it had a large negative impact on their business, while 17% said they considered the change to be positive for their business. Research by Shelter suggests that even if the charges are passed on to landlords, in Scotland this has not led to an increase in rental charges. However, for the sake of argument, let us say it did. Instead of an up-front, prohibitive cost of 1,500 to move, that amount would be absorbed into a weekly or monthly rental sum. There would be no up-front charges, and those on housing benefit would have the possibility of the amount being absorbed into the monthly or weekly rent. Dorrington Residential, one of Londons largest residential landlords, works only with letting agencies which agree not to charge renters any fees. In its words:

Dorrington is able to run a successful residential investment business and give renters a fair deal by avoiding unnecessary charges, and we cant see why other landlordsand the Government do not follow suit.

There is a clear case for the Government to take action in support of renters and end these fees once and for all.

We have debated many aspects of the housing crisis in this Chamber, and I recognise many faces from those debates. There are many things that are difficult to solve, but this is a simple thing that is very easy to solve. Today on the green opposite Parliament I met a group of young renters. The work that Generation Rent has done to stand up for renters rights and the Debriefs Make Renting Fair campaign have provided a strong voice on these issues. There are more than 250,000 signatures on their Change.org petition. They support this Bill. This is a broken market where the consumer has little or no power, but it is a growing market and one the Government should serve well, like any other. Transparency has been tried, but evidence suggests that it is not enough as little has changed. We should ban these fees, clarify that the landlord pays the fee and make it a fairer marketplace for those who rent. I beg to move.
THOUSANDS of people across the city and county have commenced the annual Ramadan celebrations, which will involve a month of fasting and spiritual prayer for the local Muslim community.

To mark the beginning of Ramadan, worshippers started their fast with a morning prayer at 3.30am on Monday, and ended the days fasting at 9.55pm at their respective Muslim community centres in the city. Around 19 hours fasting.

According to Imam Abdullah Hassan Jaribu, of the Al-Furqan Muslim Community Association, Windmill Street, the purpose of the fast is to train your soul and to reach a strong level of righteousness.

Ramadan is the name of a month. And in this particular month, Almighty God asks us to fast for these days of the month.

And fasting, here, in Ireland will be different to Saudi, different to Sudan, simply because of the sunset and the sunrise. We stop eating, here, at around 3am and we will eat around 10pm, he explained.

Local worshippers are encouraged to attend their local mosques  or community centres, where possible  during the regular prayer times, which take place at 3.30am, 1pm, 7pm, 9.55pm and near midnight.

Before they begin their daily feast in the late evening, they have a drink of water and eat light food, such as dates and hot soup, and then they do their penultimate prayer of the day.

The Al-Furquan Muslim Community Association is one of four mosques in Limerick. Others are situated in Dooradoyle, OConnell Street and a newly-established centre near St Johns Hospital.

Imam Hassan Jaribu said that the annual celebration trains people to be a better person.

And if you are a good person from that, then you can help the poor people and you can support whoever is in need.

When the Almighty God commands you to do something, you benefit from it and society around you benefits from it. During Ramadan, my level of patience increases. I do not get angry very easily. I sympathise with everyone; animals, poor people, people in need. I will support them. And if you change from this, the people around you will also change, he told the Limerick Leader.

The Windmill Street centre has been looking to expand its facilities to accommodate its expanding community in Limerick. The centre currently has one hall for reading and prayer, and another hall for community celebrations.

At any of the four centres, prayer time could attract up to 300 people during Ramadan. This is said to be a small number in comparison to the number of people in the local Muslim community.

The reason why the entire Muslim population are not showing up is because they are working. Some are working in hospitals, some are in university, some in petrol stations. During your work hours, it is impossible to leave that place and go and worship. But for those who are free, they show up here, he said. He added that it is common for people to miss prayer time, and that people can pay back during the day.

Most of the prayers that will be missed will be early morning prayer. You will be excused because you didnt do it intentionally. So whenever you wake up, pray that prayer.

During Ramadan, there are numerous, special lectures for the community called the dhuhr khutba, which is the noon sermon at the centres. Participants are prohibited from speaking and using mobile phones during these lectures, he said.
A SERIAL offender who admitted selling guns to criminals to fund his drug addiction has been jailed for five years.

Patrick Byrnes, aged 36, who is originally from Lisheen Park, Patrickswell pleaded guilty, earlier this year, to suspicious possession of a number of firearms and a quantity of ammunition at Maxwell Lane, Croom on July 2, last.

Byrnes, who previously served a six-year prison term for shooting a man in 2005 admitted having a 12-gauge Miroku shotgun, a Haenel Model 300 air rifle, and 26 rounds of .22 calibre ammunition.

During a sentencing hearing, Limerick Circuit Court was told the guns and ammunition were found hidden in the bedroom of the flat where Byrnes was living at the time.

Detective Garda David Gee said the licenced weapons had been stolen from a house in Ballina a number of days earlier and that following his arrest Byrnes admitted he had sold two other weapons prior to the garda raid.

Michael Collins BL, instructed by State Solicitor Aidan Judge, said the Director of Public Prosecutions is of the view the offence is at the lower end of the scale and that a prison sentence of between five and seven years was appropriate.

While Byrnes has more than 100 previous convictions, Mr Collins said his two convictions for firearms offences meant the mandatory minimum sentence of five years imprisonment applied.

Anthony Sammon SC said his client sustained serious head injuries when he was attacked at Lord Edward Street in the city a number of years ago.

Byrnes was treated at Cork University Hospital for a considerable period following the assault and continues to receive specialist treatment and counselling.

Mr Sammon said his client, who sustained a depressed skull fracture, was a man with very additional burdens and he submitted it was open to the court to suspend a portion of whatever sentence it imposed.

In a handwritten letter, the defendant apologised for his actions saying he only resumed taking drugs in the aftermath of the assault.

Imposing sentence, Judge Tom ODonnell commented that possession of firearms is a serious offence and he said it was a concern how quickly Byrnes had managed to dispose of the other two guns, which were never recovered.

The court of of the view that if people with previous convictions for possession of firearms continue to engage in such activity they must be prepared to take responsibility for their actions, he said.

The judge said Byrnes guilty plea and admissions were mitigating factors in the case as were his personal circumstances.

He said he did not disagree with the DPPs assessment of the seriousness of the offence but said he was not welling to go along with the defence request to suspend part of the sentence.

He imposed a five year sentence - backdating it to July 5, 2015.
May 1, 2021, 12 PM

An unusual Scott-listed variety of a stamp from Australias 1917 Kangaroo and Map series will be offered during the Harmers International sale June 29 at the Collectors Club in New York.

By Michael Baadke

The Collectors Club of New York will host the Summer 2016 public auction presented by Harmers International.

The auction is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. on June 29, at the Collectors Club at 22 E. 35th St., in New York City.

The auction is arranged in nine categories, beginning with United States stamps (and including postal history and blocks), followed by U.S. collections, autographs, British North America, British Commonwealth, France, foreign issues, collections and various, and area collections.

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Among the highlights is a used example of Australias 1917 2-penny deep indigo Kangaroo and Map stamp, the rare variety with the 1 of the fraction omitted.

The variety is listed in the 2016 Scott Classic Specialized Catalogue of Stamps and Covers 1840-1940 as Australia Scott 46a, with a value for a used example of $50,000.

Harmers International notes, There are reportedly only fifteen used and unused copies known.

The stamp is accompanied by a 2015 certificate from the Royal Philatelic Society of Victoria.

Auction lots can be viewed online. Online viewing is also available through Stamp Auction Network, along with bidding options.

For additional information, contact Harmers International, 1325 Echo Hill Path, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598.

Keep reading our auction news:

Christoph Gaertner auction June 13-17 in Germany; worldwide offerings include rare German varieties

Kelleher and Rogers June 11-12 sale offers range of China and Asia

David Kols inducted into American Stamp Dealer and Collector Hall of Fame
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Looking to stay up to date about all of the news stories and local headlines that are important to Long Islanders? We've rounded up the top coverage for all of the important topics from multiple sources around Long Island, so you can be sure you've got the most recent update on the top stories for Long Island. Have an idea for a news story? Email us at news@longisland.com

Columnists Press Releases
Infographic released by the Islamic States Amaq News Agency

Amaq News Agency, one of the Islamic States news outlets, has released a short infographic detailing the jihadist groups operations and activities in the Philippines. The infographic is set up similar to those released for official Islamic State wilayats (provinces), which indicates the rising importance of the Philippines for the jihadist group.

The infographic (above) includes several important claims of the Islamic State in the Philippines, including how many groups have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and where these groups operate. Additionally, it claims 289 Filipino troops have been killed by Islamic State forces since April 2015, including 100 alone in April 2016. The Filipino government has heavily disputed these numbers.

While the infographic contains numbers from April 2015, it confirms the first official announcement of Filipino jihadist groups pledging allegiance to the Islamic State occurred in January 2016. Videos and reports of groups pledging bayah (allegiance) have emerged since 2014, shortly after Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, claimed the creation of a caliphate. The video in January, however, was the first time the Islamic State publicly accepted these pledges.

A month later, the Islamic States Furat media released another video showing more groups pledging allegiance. This includes Isnilon Hapilon, a US-designated terrorist, who heads the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG). In an April issue of the Islamic States weekly newsletter Al Naba, the jihadist group said that Hapilon (called Abu Abdullah al Filipini, one of his noms de guerre, in the newsletter) has been appointed as emir of all Islamic State forces in the Philippines according to a translation from the SITE Intelligence Group.

His appointment seems likely as Hapilon is the senior most figure to have defected to the Islamic State in the Philippines. This also means that a formal leadership structure for the Islamic State is in place, exemplifying its expansion in the country. The latest infographic also shows more examples of expansion and gives credence to a formal leadership structure, as Amaq claims that the Islamic State has 10 fighting battalions in the Philippines.

This number includes at least a portion or all of ASG, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), Ansar Khilafah in the Philippines, Katibat Ansar al Sharia, Katibat Marakah al Ansar, the Islamic State in Lanao, Jund al Tawhid (a former ASG battalion), Jamaat al Tawhid wal Jihad (a group formerly loyal to al Qaeda), and parts of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The claimed areas of operation largely corresponds with the reported areas of the aforementioned groups. This includes the southern areas of Basilan, South Cotabato, Sulu, Sarangani, Lanao del Sur, and the northern province of Isabela. Several of the groups recently claimed attacks in most of these provinces, including Sulu, Sarangani, and Lanao del Sur. BIFF also claimed recent attacks in Maguindanao, as well.

Caleb Weiss is a research analyst at FDD's Long War Journal and a senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation, where he focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
A terrorist opened fire at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Florida during the early morning hours today, killing at least 50 people and wounding dozens more. It is the most devastating mass casualty shooting in American history.

US officials have identified the shooter as Omar Mateen, a 29 year-old American citizen from Port St. Lucie, Florida.

Amaq News Agency, a propaganda arm of the Islamic State, released a statement within hours of the massacre claiming that a fighter from the group was responsible.

The attack that targeted a nightclub for homosexuals in Orlando, Florida and that left more than 100 dead and wound was carried out by an Islamic State fighter, Amaqs statement reads. The claim of responsibility was released in both English and Arabic online.

Amaqs claim does not indicate that Mateen was directed by the Islamic State, or that that the organization had foreknowledge of his plans. It is possible that he was inspired by the so-called caliphate, but wasnt in contact with Islamic State members or leaders beforehand.

Amaq was also the first Islamic State mouthpiece to say that the groups supporters carried out the San Bernardino shootings in December of 2015.

Many details about the Orlando shootings remain to be confirmed. Congressman Adam Schiff, who is the Ranking Member on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN earlier today that authorities believe Mateen swore allegiance to the Islamic State before opening fire.

If this detail is verified, then it is consistent with what the Islamic State tells its followers to do. The Islamic State emphasizes the necessity of obedience to its caliphate and warns that disobedience is a sure path to the fires of hell.

A graphic (seen on the right) included in Dabiqs 12th edition cites Islamic texts to make this point. A Muslim must either join the state or nation of believers by swearing bayah to the leader, or die in a state of ignorance.

Whoever withdraws his hand from obedience will meet Allah on Resurrection Day without having any excuse, one saying attributed to the Prophet Mohammed, and reproduced in Dabiq, reads. And whoever dies without having a bayah binding him, dies a death of jahiliyyah [state of ignorance].

According to multiple reports, one or both of the San Bernardino shooters swore allegiance to Abu Bakr al Baghdadis enterprise either during or just before their day of terror.

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
Amritsar : Two Pakistani smugglers were killed while another was injured as BSF troops fired at them to foil an attempt to smuggle drugs along the Indo-Pak border in Fazilka in Punjab. Officials said the incident occurred around 2 AM when Border Security Force personnel detected some suspicious movement along the International Border in the area under Sohana border post and challenged the intruders.

"While two Pakistani nationals have been killed, another has been injured and apprehended by BSF. About 15 packets of narcotic, suspected to be heroin, has been seized from them, besides some arms and ammunition. This seems to be a case of cross-border drug smuggling," one of the officials said.

The officials said the bodies have been recovered and a search has been launched in the area. Senior officials of the border guarding force have reached the forward area and more details are awaited, they said.

PTI
Beijing : The death toll from a leisure boat tragedy in southwest China's Sichuan Province rose to 14 after more bodies were found, rescuers said.They are still searching for one person who remains missing, state run Xinhua news agency reported.

The accident took place on June 4, when the 40-seater leisure boat with 18 people on board capsized in the Bailong Lake of Guangyuan city. Four people were pulled out immediately after the accident, among whom a child died later in the hospital.

Rescuers have retrieved 13 bodies. Authorities said strong gales were to blame for the accident.

PTI
Closer business ties with Iran would enable Hong Kong to tackle the downturn in the seaborne sector, reports Tasnim quoting Stephen Wong of Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC).

"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," Stephen said.

"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, he added.

According to a report in Reuters, 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 handled over 20 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent container units) last year.

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.
Pre-Commissioning Unit Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) completed its turn ship evolution June 11. This is a major milestone that brings the country's newest nuclear powered aircraft carrier another step closer to delivery and commissioning later this year.



"Turning the ship is an opportunity for the crew to demonstrate for the first time all the procedures required to get the ship underway safely," said Commanding Officer Capt. Richard McCormack. "Our new pier position will allow the ship and shipyard team to complete the remaining pierside testing required before our upcoming sea trials."



This operation marks the first time Ford has moved from its pier since coming out of dry dock in November 2013. The ship's stern now faces the James River.



One of the most important accomplishments of the Turn Ship evolution was a "Sally Test". A Sally Test involves precision draft readings and confirms that there is adequate stability for safe underway operations at sea.



"Turn ship is a big event and the ship moored with the port side to the pier will be a constant reminder that we are one big step closer to taking the world's most capable warship to sea for the first time," said Cmdr. Alan Feenstra, chief engineer.



The successful completion of this evolution required the combined efforts of both ship's company and shipyard personnel.



"The turning of the ship signals the race to the end," said Newport News Shipbuilding construction supervisor Shayne Laws. "It's a massive undertaking that requires teamwork, coordination and precision. From the shipbuilders and sailors on board the ship to the team of tugboats helping in the water, this evolution was a success due to the hard work of everyone involved."



With this major milestone achieved, Ford and its crew continue to work towards commissioning and becoming mission ready.



"This is an exciting event for the crew and demonstrates the impact of their hard work and dedication," said Command Master Chief Donnie Novak.




The container vessel COSCO Shipping Panama set sail from the Greek Port of Piraeus today on its way to Panama to make history. The Neopanamax vessel will make the inaugural transit of the Expanded Panama Canal on Sunday, June 26, after a 14-day journey.



Panama Canal Administrator Jorge L. Quijano met with COSCO Shipping Panamas Captain Jude Rodrigues and crew members prior to the ships departure.



I am very excited to be here today to witness the sailing of the ship from Greece, but also meet the Captain and his crew, said Administrator Quijano. We are very pleased to be here watching it leave from Port of Piraeus. He is very thrilled to be part of this inaugural transit.



I had transited the Panama Canal many times before and it has been a great experience, but being the master of the first vessel to transit the expanded Canal is an experience of a century, said Captain Rodrigues. The Panama Canal is testament to the diligence and wisdom of the people of Panama. The Panama Canal Expansion is a major event on itself and a milestone in global history. I would like to congratulate the people of Panama for their efforts and contribution to global economy.



Cosco Shipping Panama is a new vessel constructed and launched on January 2016. The Neopanamax containership is 299.98 meters in length and 48.25 meters in beam, and has a container carrying capacity of 9,472 TEUs. Originally named Andronikos, the vessel was renamed by China COSCO Shipping to pay respect to the people of Panama and for the honor of the inaugural transit. This ship was selected during a draw for the inaugural transit through the expanded waterway. Coincidentally, the ship was built in Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries Co., Ltd, the same company that constructed the valves that control the flow of water through the new locks of the Canal.



Over a hundred years ago, the SS Ancon made history as the first vessel to transit the Panama Canal, said Administrator Quijano. In a few weeks, COSCO Shipping Panama, the Panama Canal, and the people of Panama will change the face of global shipping and international commerce. I am humbled and honored to lead the Panama Canal to this great milestone with the thousands who made this bold vision a reality.



During the inauguration, COSCO Shipping Panama will transit Agua Clara Locks on the Atlantic side during the early morning and Cocoli Locks in the afternoon. The regular schedule of transits through the Expanded Canal will follow the next day, June 27.



The Panama Canal Expansion Program is the largest construction project undertaken in the waterway since its opening in 1914. Considered and analyzed for a decade with more than 100 studies, construction on the first-ever expansion began in 2007 to provide the world with greater shipping options, better maritime service, enhanced logistics and supply-chain reliability.



The project doubles the waterways cargo capacity, enhancing the Canals efficiency, reliability and customer service. Since Neopanamax vessels can now take advantage of the Canals vast benefits, new routes, liner services and other maritime changes are expected to emerge.


US submarine tender USS Frank Cable (AS 40) arrived in Puerto Princesa City in Palawan on Saturday, June 11, for a "scheduled port visit," according to the US embassy in Manila.

The visit will allow the ships sailors and military sealift command mariners to enjoy some rest and relaxation.

Frank Cable, a ship that provides repairs and support to submarines, is commanded by Capt. Drew St. John and has more than 500 sailors and civilian mariners on board.

Drew was quoted in the statement as saying, "This visit is special to my crew, including many who have close personal ties to the Philippines."

Als, he said, "Our Sailors act as diplomats for the United States every day, and through their varied interactions with the local population they strengthen the bonds of friendship and cooperation between our two countries."

The presence of the submarine tender ship coincided with the visit of a US-based defense and security think-tank to Western Command (Wescom) in Palawan to observe and see the actual implementation of the Philippines-US Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).
Two people, including a sailor, were killed and two others injured after inhaling toxic fumes on board India's aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya at Karwar Naval base in Karnataka.

The condition of two others injured was stable and constantly being monitored in the Naval Hospital, Karwar, said officials.

"The incident of gas leakage took place yesterday evening while the ship was undergoing maintenance repairs in the sewage treatment plant compartment," said a statement issued by Indian navy.

Inducted into the Indian Navy two years back, the 45,000 tonne naval ship witnessed the first accident at 5.00 pm on Friday whilst the ship was undergoing maintenance repairs at the naval base.

The Navy has ordered an inquiry into the incident. 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.

Built in Russia almost 30 years ago, the ship served the Russian Navy as Admiral Gorshkov till its decommissioning in 1996. India bought the carrier in 2004 for about $2.35 billion and was inducted into the Indian Navy in 2014.

The Navy has been hit by a string of accidents over the last three to four years, with Admiral DK Joshi even resigning as the Navy chief in February 2014 after a mishap on board Kilo-class submarine INS Sindhuratna, which killed two officers and injured several others.

This is the third incident pertaining to the Navy to happen this year, the previous two being fire on soon-to-be decommissioned aircraft carrier INS Viraat in March, which resulted in the death of a chief engineer mechanic and the injury of three others.

Prior to it, in April, a sailor lost his leg while two others were injured in an oxygen cylinder explosion on board INS Nireekshak. The ship was on its way to Mumbai from Visakhapatnam.
Marines with 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment completed the Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluation at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, May 6-10, 2016.



The MCCRE, the last big exercise with the battalion as a whole, tests the Marines on their operational readiness and the ability to function as a battalion in a deployed environment.



Units only conduct the MCCRE during a work-up, said Captain Chris Parks, company commander for Lima Company. This is the last thing we do before we chop and composite for a deployment.



The battalion is slated for the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit in early 2017, where they will provide maritime security across countries throughout numerous areas of operation.



It will allow the Marines to experience some of the hardships that come along with a deployment, said Sgt. Brandon Andrade, a squad leader with the battalion. They will be able to use the MCCRE as a tool to utilize downrange.



Throughout the week, the battalion was put through rigorous events to include setting up offensive and defensive positions, patrolling known enemy areas, conducting reconnaissance, and ultimately conducting raids on their position.



It all boils down to mental toughness, Parks said. With everything we encounter such as weather or enemy situation, were not allowed to quit and were not allowed lose; everything we do now will ensure that.



The Marines are constantly fine tuning their skills as basic infantryman and will take every opportunity that they come across.



Even though its an evaluation, we always capitalize on any chance we get to train, Parks said.



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What Makes Venezuela Different

Ryan W. McMaken writes: Unlike other leftist South American regimes, the Venezuela regime has intentionally crushed even the middle and working classes.

The economic disaster in Venezuela has prompted many to take a look at the country and attempt to understand what it is that has made things so bad in Venezuela.

It's not enough to say "socialism." After all, the political leadership in Ecuador and Bolivia right now are avowedly socialist, at least in rhetoric. Argentina has long been socialist in practice, but not even Argentina's repeated defaults and other messes brought the country anything like what is going on in Venezuela. Leftist Brazil remains something of an open question at this point.

So what is it about Venezuela that has led the country to the brink of starvation while Bolivia remains relatively stable and without famine? After all, the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, a self-described disciple of Marx, gave Pope Francis a crucifix shaped like a hammer and sickle during a recent visit by the pontiff.

The answer lies in the sheer volume of socialism practiced in Venezuela versus its South American neighbors.

True Believers vs. Pragmatists

Ever since Lenin, political leaders have known that "pure" socialism leads to starvation very quickly. Lenin had attempted to implement total control of the economy by the Soviet state when he came to power. However, after quickly realizing that this would destroy the economy, Lenin backed off and implemented the "New Economic Plan" which allowed for limited market activity, especially in food production.

Every regime that attempts socialism quickly runs up against the calculation problem inherent in socialism. Without markets, how can we know what to produce, or for whom to produce it? What should goods and services cost? Without at least partial freedom for market prices to function, economies grind to a halt very quickly.

Wisely (and fortunately for ordinary people), Lenin allowed his pragmatism as a politician to eclipse his devotion to Marxism. Similarly, after the mass starvation and social upheaval caused by Mao's hard-core Marxism in China, Deng Xiaoping turned to the pragmatism of "socialism with Chinese characteristics." It was, in other words, socialism-lite.

As always occurs when socialism recedes, wealth increases. In the case of the Soviet Union, Lenin's limited markets never progressed beyond a very limited realm  thanks to Stalin's reassertion of centrally-planned economies. In post-Mao China, where markets were allowed to become widespread (although always heavily regulated) the Chinese economy flourished (relatively speaking) as farmers, merchants, and countless other small and medium-sized enterprises were allowed to function with relative freedom.

In Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, and today under Nicolas Maduro, things have been moving in the opposite direction.

Perhaps more than any other Latin American strongman in recent memory, Chavez was a "true believer" when it came to socialism, and he showed his ideological devotion with his war, not just on multinational corporations and other powerful corporate interests, but on everyone he considered to be "bourgeois."

Antagonizing foreign corporations has long been politically popular in South America and has been a centerpiece of the administrations of Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Evo Morales in Bolivia. But both Correa and Morales tempered their political meddling in this respect with limited laissez-faire for domestic businesses.

A War on Middle Class Retailers and Merchants

Chavez, on the other hand, did not seem to discriminate when it came to crushing business and business people across the country.

Simon Wilson contrasted the regime in Bolivia with the Venezuelan regime in 2015 for mises.org:

[Morales's] tenure has undoubtedly been one of pragmatism. It is true that since 2005 he has expropriated just over twenty companies, but the level of expropriations in no way compares to that taking place in the culture of government impunity rife in Venezuela where 1,168 foreign and domestic companies were expropriated between 2002 and 2012. The infamous nationalization of foreign oil and gas fields [in Bolivia] is not one of complete state control, but is rather about gaining a controlling share of the profits made by foreign companies which can then be diverted into various social programs.

Morales was often content to leave small and medium-sized domestic businesses alone  and to allow for a large "informal" (i.e., unregulated) economy. When Morales ignores the informal economy, he is essentially creating "loopholes" in government regulation. And as Ludwig von Mises once observed, "Capitalism breathes through those loopholes."

The Venezuelan regime, on the other hand, has not been fond of loopholes.

These contrasts extend to other socialist regimes in South America as well. In 2014, The Washington Post compared Ecuador's Rafael Correa with Chavez, reporting:

Unlike Chavez and his epic battles with Venezuelas private sector, Correa maintains generally strong ties with Ecuadors business community and has presided over a sustained period of economic growth and low unemployment. He has kept the U.S. dollar as Ecuadors currency. Felipe Burbano, a political analyst in Quito, said Correa is a master of state activism, projecting his presidency  and government spending  into every corner of the country of 15 million by reaching out to rural voters, slum residents and others who were often ignored in the past. Correa has plowed the OPEC countrys oil revenue into new schools, health clinics and infrastructure projects, especially new highways, while cutting the poverty rate from 37 percent to 27 percent from 2007 to 2012, according to official data.

Arresting "Class Traitors" in Caracas

In 2010, The Guardian reported how Chavez had declared a small-time butcher in Caracas to be a "class traitor" and a tool of international capitalists. The butcher, Omar Cedeno was arrested and put on trial for various "capitalist" crimes along with many other small business owners and retailers.

But, as Venezuela is now seeing, when retailers are destroyed, there's no one left to sell, prepare, procure, and process food.

In 2011, The Huffington Post reported on Chavezs war on Jews, who are, it seems, also too "bourgeois" for Chavez's tastes.

In 2012, Reuters reported on how Chavez was threatening "the rich" with "civil war" if they did not rally to his cause. Use of the term "rich" in Venezuela, of course, can often be similar to how it is used in the United States. It rarely refers to powerful billionaires in practice, but instead to mere upper middle-class people who make things, manage businesses, and keep the economy running. Destroying them is not a smart move for any political leader who wants to avoid mass starvation and a collapse in living standards.

Naturally, for a true believer like Chavez, a war on a nation's industry does not stop with just butchers and middle-managers. It then proceeds to television stations, radio stations, newspapers, book sellers, and any other business that may be insufficiently "loyal" to the ruling regime.

Not surprisingly, once all the retailers, media companies, managers, and all other independent business people are crushed, arrested, impoverished, or exiled, the economy ceases to function very well.

This isn't to say that politicians like Correa and Morales are fans of freedom and free markets. That's unlikely. Both Correa and Morales appear to be traditional power brokers, robbing some groups to make gifts to other groups in order to curry favor with their political power base. Marxism serves a convenient advertising gimmick for the regime, but as with the Chinese state, the Ecuadorian and Bolivian states figured out the economic unworkability of Marxism long ago.

Unfortunately for the people of Bolivia and Ecuador, even this limited non-Marxist economic management by the state guarantees lackluster economic growth, and an endless cycle of corruption. A state that controls the economy also has the power to loot it.

But, there is a big difference between redistributing wealth and destroying everyone who attempts to create some of it. In order to redistribute wealth, you have to make it first. This is a distinction that the leaders of the Venezuela regime (and their supporters) have apparently long been too foolish to understand. For this, the people of Venezuela are paying a heavy price.

Ryan W. McMaken is the editor of Mises Daily and The Free MarketSend him mail. See Ryan McMaken's article archives.

You can subscribe to future articles by Ryan McMaken via this RSS feed.

http://mises.org

 2015 Copyright Ryan McMaken - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




A tanned Wes Astin of Rocky Mount, a retired Methodist preacher, said he and wife Elaine go to a lot of beach music festivals in Virginia and the Carolinas, and the one in Patrick County is one of the best.

"Youve got the sand. Youve got the lawn. Youve got the shade. What more could you want?" he said as sat in a lawn chair, wearing a colorful Hawaiian print shirt, white shorts and blue flip-flops as his wife and Linda Payne of Danville practiced moves in a line dance.

This was the Astins sixth time coming to Hot Fun in the Summertime Beach Music Festival, which was at Wayside Park in the Stuart area Thursday through Saturday.

Earlier Saturday, Ann Gardner, who was wearing an attention-grabbing crab hat, said she has been coming to the festival since 1982. "Ive only missed one," she added. (This year was the 35th annual festival.)

She comes to the festival with her husband, Woodson "Dink" Gardner, who was wearing a crocheted hat adorned with parts of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans.

The Gardners live in Martinsville and were high school sweethearts. Ann Gardner taught English at Martinsville High School for 25 years before retiring. Dink Gardner is a retired juvenile probation officer.

"We love beach music. We cant wait to get here. We buy a T-shirt every year (and sometimes more than one)," Ann Gardner said.

"This is my favorite day of the year, including Christmas. When I leave I think, I have to wait another year, but it comes pretty fast," Ann Gardner said.

"Beach music was popular when my husband and I were in high school," she said.

Asked to recall some of the memorable experiences over the years at the festival, Ann Gardner recalled meeting The Drifters backstage about 1988. That year she had to leave the festival early because her daughter, Elizabeth, was graduating from Martinsville High School that night. "I left under protest," Ann Gardner added.

She recalled one year, after heavy rains, watching some people dive onto a muddy path and slide a distance down a hillside.

But rain was nowhere to be seen on sunny Saturday.

"Its a beautiful, beautiful day," Ann Gardner said. She noted that she and her husband were with some friends and her first cousin, Vince Thomas of Norfolk.

"This is awesome. I love the set-up," Thomas said of the venue.

Dink Gardner said of the festival: "Its old-home week." He added that he and his wife sit at the same place at the park every year  in the shade of a hickory nut tree  so they can reconnect with friends they may not get to see very often.

He agreed with his wife that the beach music brings back a lot of memories.

"We used to shag a lot. We dont dance much anymore," he said.

He added that he recently turned 70. Listening to the beach music, "we can think were 18 again  at least for a while," he said.

Karen McCollum, originally of Fieldale but now of Reidsville, North Carolina, said she was "itching" to come to the festival this year. Its the first time she has returned to the festival since the 1980s.

She came to the festival for all three days.

She said she liked the beach music (though country music is her favorite), the people and the food. She was eating a tenderloin biscuit with scrambled egg and tomato, while sunbathing on a recliner on the beach in front of the band stand.

"I cant shag. I dont think some of the other ones can either," she said. But she agreed that its about having a good time. "Enjoy what God gives you."

After an opening prayer and the pledge of allegiance Saturday, the first band of the day, Band of Oz, began to play. Dozens of people made a beeline for the beach to either gather right in front of the band or to dance with sand between their toes.

Other bands that were scheduled to play Saturday were Carolina Soul Band, The Castaways Band, Ken Knox & Co. (former member of Chairman of the Board), The Tams and The Night Move Band.

Stanley Fain, one of the organizers of the festival, estimated that 6,000 people would attend over the three days. The festival was organized by the Patrick County Jaycees, Stuart Rotary and the Patrick County 4H Shooters Club.
As their way of shaking things up, Wayback Burgers locations are celebrating the start of summer with free milkshakes on June 20.



Participating Wayback locations will be giving away free Junior Black & White Milkshakes, one per guest, no purchase necessary. Made by hand, the milkshakes feature vanilla bean ice cream, fresh milk, and a blend of vanilla and chocolate syrups.



Wayback Burger restaurants can be found at the corner of Carew Street and St. James Avenue in East Springfield, on Prospect Hill Road in East Windsor, Conn., and at 10 Hartford Avenue in Granby, Conn.

* * *

In a menu break with the past, Boston Market locations are now offering a new lunch and dinner option - Oven Crisp Chicken. Designed for those patrons who love the taste and texture of fried chicken but would rather forego the fat and calories, Oven Crisp Chicken is breaded with panko crumbs and seasonings before being oven roasted to a crisp golden crustiness.



Oven Crisp Chicken is available as an individual meal, as part of a salad bowl, or in the form of sandwich or wrap.



Boston Market is particularly interested in promoting this new item as a sensible lunch option. The Individual Oven Crisp Chicken Meal, which comes with two sides and cornbread, is priced at $7.99

There is a Boston Market location in Springfield at 1387 Boston Road; a second restaurant operates at the Ludlow Turnpike Service Area.

* * *

IHOP Restaurants are celebrating the arrival of summer with three new tropical-themed pancake specialties. Now available, IHOP's Paradise Pancakes come in three varieties: strawberry passion fruit, banana macadamia nut, and pineapple upside down cake.



These limited-time-only creations will be available all day every day through July 31 and can be enjoyed as part of various breakfast combo platters.

IHOP Restaurants can be found nearby on Riverdale Street in West Springfield, on Cottage Grove Road in Bloomfield, Conn., and on Deming Street in Manchester, Conn.
passport.jpg

In this still from a news report by WFXT, Tyngsboro Police arrest a suspect Saturday in the theft of passports from a home.

(WFXT-TV)

TYNGSBOROUGH, Mass. -- Two people were arrested Saturday in connection with the theft of two passports from a Tyngsborough home after police found the pair being chased by one of the victims, a U.S. soldier.



Tamara Reed, 29, and Jamie McDonald, 30, are both charged with receiving stolen property.



Police responded to a home on Blossom Street just before 5 p.m. Friday for a report of a break-in. Responding officers discovered that a backpack containing the homeowners' passports, including a military passport, were missing. Nothing else was reported stolen.

Reed and McDonald were taken into custody Saturday afternoon after police responded to Lakeview Avenue, where the victim of the alleged theft was found chasing the pair. The stolen items were recovered.

WFXT-TV, which spoke to the soldier's wife, Jennifer Espinola, said her husband, Mike, needed the stolen papers in order to return to active duty in Saudi Arabia. She said her husband happened to spot his backpack while the suspects were walking down the street, and confronted them before they fled.

Additional charges may follow, police said.



It's unclear whether Reed and McDonald have lawyers who could comment on the charges.

The National Desk contributed to this report.
A total of 50 people are dead and another 53 injured during a shooting inside an Orlando gay nightclub, authorities said in a Sunday morning news briefing.

As information was released about the fatalities inside Pulse Orlando, officials from the FBI said they have identified the shooter, who was killed. An official speaking at a press conference Sunday said more information about the shooter would be released.

ABC News and several other news agencies have identified the shooter as Omar Mateen of as Omar Mateen of St. Lucie County, Florida.

FBI and PSLPD now on scene at Port St. Lucie home listed for 29-year-old Omar Mateen - @GabrielleSarann pic.twitter.com/89HLvqZNPM  WPTV (@WPTV) June 12, 2016

The television station reports that the shooter was organized and well prepared. There were 320 people inside the club, according to ABC News.

The Associated Press said the shooter carried a handgun and an assault-rifle inside the Florida nightclub. The shooter also had some type of suspicious device, authorities told the Associated Press.

Pulse Shooting: The shooter inside the club is dead.  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

The shooter exchanged gunfire with an officer working at the club around 2 a.m.

Orlando Police said on Twitter that the shooter was killed. An officer was shot but was saved by a Kevlar helmet, police said.

. @ChiefJohnMina officers shot & killed the suspect. In gunfire OPD officer shot: Kevlar helmet saved him pic.twitter.com/L51ynmRAfm  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

Authorities said they are investigating whether this is a hate crime or act of terrorism.

Orlando Police said first responders and SWAT team members saved 30 people from inside the club and brought them out alive.
BOSTON -- Authorities in Massachusetts are monitoring the situation in Orlando after 50 people were killed and another 53 were injured during a shooting inside a nightclub.

Boston Police Commissioner William Evans told WCVB News that police will increase security at area clubs in response to the shooting in Orlando. He told the newspaper that Boston Mayor Marty Walsh offered Boston's support to Orlando.

Officials from the Massachusetts State Police put out a message on Twitter stating authorities in Massachusetts are monitoring any developments inside the Commonwealth Fusion Center, but found no connection to Massachusetts.

MSP at Commonwealth Fusion Center monitoring developments in Orlando. We stand with law enforcement across this nation against terrorism.  Mass State Police (@MassStatePolice) June 12, 2016

"The Massachusetts State Police and our partner agencies at the Commonwealth Fusion Center and in the Joint Terrorism Task Force this far have found no connection to Massachusetts on the parts of suspected Orlando gunman and his spouse," State Police said in a statement. "We continue to monitor the investigation into this horrific mass shooting and will provide updates to local media and citizens if necessary."

State Police offered their prayers to the victims in the Orlando attacks.

"Our prayers today are with the victims and their loved ones," the statement said. "We remain resolute, standing side-by-side with our federal and local partners in law enforcement, in our counter-terrorism mission."
by Jess Nelson , June 11, 2016

Google and Microsoft both plan to update their DMARC policies by the end of the month -- potentially dropping deliverability rates overnight for email marketers, according to email deliverability provider SendGrid.

Originally introduced in 2012, DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) is a regulation for email authentication that provides "proof" that an email is actually being sent from the domain name that claims to be sending it.

The authentication service helps prevent phishing and spoofing attacks by cybercriminals, but DMARC can also hinder the email marketing efforts of companies that do not comply with DMARC regulation. By not complying with DMARC, marketers are putting their email deliverability rates at risk because any message that is deemed unsafe will go to spam.

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When this goes into effect, marketers could see their deliverability rates drop overnight, says Jacob Hansen, deliverability consultant at SendGrid, in a discussion of how the upcoming DMARC changes could affect email marketers with Email Marketing Daily.

Google and Microsoft will soon be embracing a p=reject DMARC policy, meaning that only Google can send email marketing messages from an @gmail address and only Microsoft can send email marketing messages from its suite of email applications, including Hotmail, outlook, live and MSN email accounts.

Once Microsoft and Google roll out their DMARC policies, any email being sent from one of those domains will likely be rejected.

Hansen says that marketers should double-check their email programs to ensure their email deliverability rates are not affected by the upcoming changes.

The best practice is to use your own hosted domain, says Hansen. It's not just because of this flat reject policy, but personally, if I was a marketer I would only want my send emails from my own hosted domain that I control the reputation of -- and that I control what is sent from.

Hansen recommends that marketers talk with their ESP or deliverability teams and check any type of email analytics available to make a list of all the email domain names in use.

Its important for marketers to consider that limiting spam is actually in the best business interests of ESP providers that are themselves competing for a market share among consumers.

Its almost guilty until proven innocent, says Hansen. Their default is to send anything even remotely suspicious to spam.

Google is the second most dominant email provider, with 16% of market share, according to a May study by email testing company Litmus. Google was second only to the Apple iPhone email client, with 33% of the market share.

Outlook.com has more than 400 million active users while Gmail has over a billion active users, according to both companies, meaning the upcoming changes to DMARC could have wide-felt repercussions.

Smaller business are definitely going to be the ones most effected because they might not even know where to fix it, says Hansen. The email world moves fast and it doesnt speak the same language as everything else. The more you control and are aware of, the better youre always going to be off.
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The Mona Lisa robotic platform created by Biobot Surgical uses magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound fusion techniques to robotically guide biopsy of suspicious lesions. The fusion software helps with the localization of the needle when a biopsy procedure is performed, providing pinpoint accuracy. With UAB investigators, the device is being further developed to plan for minimally invasive focal therapy for treating prostate cancer in the future.Ultimately, the Mona Lisa will be used for focal or targeted therapy through image-guidance and treatment localization for prostate cancer. More than a thousand patients across Europe and Asia are already receiving biopsies with the Mona Lisa robotic device.Jeffrey Nix, assistant professor in UAB's Department of Urology, said, "We have the capability to fuse MRI and ultrasound to identify the exact location of the cancer. We are excited about providing personalized care for each of our patients and look forward to the day that we can administer localized treatment with the use of the Mona Lisa."The Mona Lisa is being integrated as an investigation by a multidisciplinary team founded and co-directed by Drs. Rais-Bahrami and Nix. The UAB Program for Personalized Prostate Cancer Care combines experts from urology, radiology, radiation oncology, medical oncology and pathology to determine the best treatment pathway for each individual with prostate cancer.UAB investigators are using phantom studies and 3-D personalized molds of prostates to prove the principle that biopsies with spacial accuracy of certain targeted regions can be performed.After Biobot receives approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration for the MRI-US Fusion software, UAB looks forward to beginning clinical trials that biopsy-qualified prostate cancer patients could benefit from the use of this device.Biobot Surgical and BK Medical Systems provided support for the evaluation of this equipment.Source: Newswise
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"This is the first hint of a biological mechanism for idiopathic scoliosis," said Rebecca Burdine, associate professor of molecular biology at Princeton, and a senior author of the study. "We hope this research will open up new areas of inquiry as to how the disruptions to normal cerebrospinal fluid flow can lead to spinal curvature."Burdine's lab conducted the study in collaboration with a team led by senior author Brian Ciruna, an associate professor of molecular genetics at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto."Traditionally, theories regarding the biology behind idiopathic scoliosis have revolved around defects in the bone, cartilage or neuromuscular activity," Ciruna said. "The finding that defects in cerebrospinal fluid flow may be contributing to scoliosis came as a surprise. It is not a theory that had been put out there previously."The study is the first to link spinal curvature to mutations in genes that govern motile cilia, which stick out from cells and make synchronous whip-like motions to push fluid through narrow passages such as the spinal column.Hazel Sive, a professor in biology at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in the study, is an expert in the use of zebrafish to study vertebrate development."This study is an important step forward in understanding events underlying spinal curvature," Sive said. "In an elegant set of experiments, the authors take advantage of the outstanding zebrafish system to define that cilia function and perhaps cerebrospinal fluid flow is required for normal spinal cord development."Researchers in the Burdine laboratory had observed that mutant genes that disrupt cilia motility produce spinal curves in zebrafish as adults, although the work had not been published. "I've presented this finding for years, but didn't have a way to link this work to human disease," Burdine said. "Collaborating with Brian's group helped us make this link."Previous research by Ciruna's lab revealed that mutations in a gene found in zebrafish and humans called protein tyrosine kinase-7 (ptk7) causes spinal curvature during a period of rapid growth that corresponds to adolescence in zebrafish. Published in the journal Nature Communications in 2014, the findings, suggested that the mutant fish could serve as a model for studying the condition. The researchers knew that the ptk7 gene plays a role in helping cells orient in the correct direction during embryonic development, but they didn't know that it also governed the formation of motile cilia.To explore how ptk7 mutations lead to spine curvature in zebrafish, Curtis Boswell, a graduate student at the University of Toronto, examined the brains and spinal cords of fish with mutated ptk7. In brain regions known as ventricles, which sit at the top of the spinal cord, the motile cilia were sparse and malformed and the fish developed a brain-swelling condition called hydrocephalus, which is associated with loss of cilia function. Using fluorescent dyes to track the flow of cerebrospinal fluid through the ventricles, the researchers saw that the flow was irregular and slower than normal.When the researchers introduced a non-mutated version of the ptk7 gene specifically into tissues harboring motile cilia, the hydrocephalus disappeared, the cerebrospinal fluid began to flow normally and the spine straightened."We demonstrated that if we could restore gene function in the motile ciliated tissues, we could restore cerebrospinal fluid flow, and we could actually prevent scoliosis in these mutants," Ciruna said.The researchers also tested other motile-cilia gene mutations to see whether they disrupt cerebrospinal fluid flow and cause spine curvature. Daniel Grimes, a postdoctoral research associate, and Nicholas Morante, a graduate student, both in the Burdine lab in Princeton's Department of Molecular Biology, studied four such mutations in genes called ccdc40, ccdc151, dyx1c1 and c21orf59. They found that all four gene mutations led to curvature of the spine in zebrafish.The researchers found that the damage to motile cilia function occurs and leads to the onset of scoliosis during adolescence for zebrafish, a period of rapid growth. They took advantage of the temperature-sensitivity of the mutant c21orf59 gene, which can be switched on or off by controlling temperature. They kept zebrafish embryos at 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit), which switches the mutation off, so that the fish didn't develop embryonic defects.The researchers then moved groups of fish aged 19-, 24-, 29- or 34-days-old to a tank set at 30 degrees Celsius (86 degreees Fahrenheit), which turned the mutation on and stopped cilia-driven spinal fluid flow. The fish that were switched to the warmer tank at 19 days, which corresponds to adolescence, formed spinal curves. However, fish that were shifted to the warmer tank at ages 24 and 29 days respectively developed milder curves, and fish shifted at age 34 days did not develop curves."Together with the Burdine group we defined a critical window for motile cilia function and cerebrospinal fluid flow in normal spine development," Ciruna said. "This window appears to be not during embryogenesis and not in adulthood, but specifically when fish are growing rapidly, in other words, fish adolescence."Additionally, the development of spinal curves in these adolescent fish could be blocked by switching the fish back to the cooler tank. "This provides proof-of-principle that the development of severe idiopathic scoliosis spinal curvatures can be managed without invasive surgical manipulation," the authors wrote in Science.Several additional lines of evidence point to links between motile cilia dysfunction, cerebrospinal fluid flow disruption and idiopathic scoliosis, Burdine said. For example, individuals with primary ciliary dyskinesia, a rare genetic disorder that causes defects in the movement of cilia lining the respiratory tract, have an elevated risk for scoliosis. Also, scoliosis is prevalent in humans with conditions such as tumors that obstruct cerebrospinal fluid flow.The next step will be to understand the mechanisms by which disrupted cerebrospinal fluid flow causes the spine to curve, Burdine said."Now that we can study idiopathic scoliosis in zebrafish," she said, "we can begin to identify molecular pathways that are involved in spine curvature, and hopefully, find therapeutic targets to address this condition."Source: Eurekalert
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"As the sun climbs to its highest point and is suspended in the sky for the longest period, it provides us with a vital force that sustains all of life, giving us a focal point and uniting our purpose to achieve our highest ambitions." Last year over 30,000 people participated in the Times Square event.India's Consul General Riva Ganguly Das has brought together 17 organisations in six states to reach out to the American community with the message of yoga. Community organisations across six states in northeast United States are holding 30 events to observe Yoga Day.Another important celebration will be in Boston where the South Asian Arts Council is organising an observance at the historic Hall of Flags in the State House, the seat of Massachusetts state government on Beacon Hill, on June 23. The community celebrations started off Friday with events at two schools in the New York suburb of Freeport that was organised by the Hindu Swyam Sevak.On Saturday, it was the Queens Museum's turn to hold the celebration in association with the Indian Business Association, in front of the city landmark Unisphere, a 37-metre stainless steel globe. A unique feature of the community celebrations this year will be Yoga Day events at the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and Newark Liberty Airport on June 21.On June 19, New England International Day of Yoga will be celebrated at the Kresge Auditorium of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. Celebrations are also planned for Columbus and Cleveland in Ohio and Hershey in Pennsylvania. Several Indian organisations are to take the celebrations to schools in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut states.Source: IANS
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"One big step forward was taken by the IOM report when it concluded that it is "ethically permissible" to embark on first-in-human clinical trials of MRT subject to rigorous safety and efficacy imperatives," wrote Dr. Eli Adashi, former dean of medicine and biologic sciences at Brown University and I. Glenn Cohen, professor of law at Harvard University. "However, two steps back were taken with the enactment of a policy rider which precludes the FDA from further consideration of MRT."In MRT, when a mother has mitochondria with problematic DNA, scientists propose to replace it in an embryo with that of a donor. The reconstituted embryo would then be implanted in the mother. If successful, that replacement procedure would ensure that the nuclear DNA of the resulting child would come from mom and dad, but would be paired with mitochondrial DNA (from a third party donor) that would not carry the risk of disease.Because males do not pass down mitochondria from generation to generation, the National Academies report recommended that trials proceed only in male embryos. That would prevent altering whole lineages.Meanwhile in the United Kingdom, the government has approved MRT clinical trials and some might begin this year. But despite the National Academies recommending a similar advance to the FDA, legislation has left U.S. policy at a standstill, wrote Adashi and Cohen."Whether or not the eventual births of disease-free children in the UK will change congressional hearts and minds remains to be seen," they wrote. "Failing such, progress in the prevention of mitochondrial DNA diseases will remain the domain of a biomedical enterprise an ocean away."Source: Eurekalert
Thank you very much for the invitation. I also thank you for the kind words that were said. I thank every Albanian man and woman who, through their work, their friendship, their whole presence in Greece, is contributing to the development of my country. Through family and day-to-day ties, they link the two countries. I personally thank every university student from Albania who participated in my classes and seminars and today is prospering here in Albania. I am proud of those students. 700,000 Albanians live in Greece. Of those, 140,000 have taken Greek citizenship. Some 7,000 are now private business owners. I want to underscore from this platform how lucky we Greek are that the first wave of economic migrants and refugees came from your country. Serious people, courteous, family oriented, hardworking, fond of knowledge, without fanaticism or extremism. People who found a good and well-ordered life, while decisively assisting their homeland, integrated into Greek society as no other people coming from third countries. They are a bridge of mutual understanding.



Greece and Albania have a long history of relations, woes, hopes, with moments of joy and of difficulties. We are here to contribute towards strengthening the positive energy between the two countries. We want, we must, we will try and manage to make our relations a model, to the benefit of Europe itself.



In these relations of ours there is a major bridge that connects us: the national Greek minority in Albania. People with a high level of education, with faith in their country, and with love for Greece. Their rights constitute an historical imperative and a European perspective.



The third bridge is the Orthodox Christian Church of Albania, which is headed by the wise humanist Archbishop Anastasios.



We are living in an era that, on the one hand, is rife with dangers and insecurities, but is also full of hopes, potentials, prospects.



Today, the region of Southeast Europe is caught in a triangle of instability between three war zones: Ukraine, Libya and the Middle East  Syria and Iraq in particular. Waves of instability are coming from the corners of the triangle. Through cooperation in our region, we need to reverse such trends, make sure that waves of stability move from us to all sides of the triangle. We need to act positively.



In this context we are strengthening the bilateral cooperation between the two states, Albania and Greece. In the region, we support the SEECP, which was successfully chaired by Albania last year, and by Bulgaria this year. We formed a new institution, the quadrilateral platform between Bulgaria, FYROM, Albania and Greece, which already had its first meeting, in April, in Thessaloniki, on the level of Foreign Ministers.



In the decade of the 1990s, our whole region was oriented towards developing its relations anew, following the collapse of communism. The role of Greek enterprises in promoting a social market economy was decisive. Even more decisive was Greeces presence during the first decade of the 21st century, during which Southeast Europes Euroatlantic path was opened and is already being implemented. Twenty years ago, Greece was the only member state of EU and NATO. Today, five states (Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia and Romania) in the region are members of the EU, and six (with the addition of Albania and, soon, Montenegro) are members of NATO. We support the accession of all of the states of the Western Balkans to the EU, to a democratized EU.



The priority today is for the plans of the previous decades to be combined. The goal is twofold: strengthening of the relations among us and, at the same time, shaping of large infrastructure networks, enhancement of the socioeconomic relations between all of the countries in the region. The strengthening of our relations will facilitate the regions European course and, in the future, the regions enhanced presence in the institutions and policies of the EU. In this context, ten days ago we launched  with Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia  an informal ongoing cooperation of the regions four EU member states.



Albanias European perspective, the very Europeanization of the social elite, has our undivided and full support. The realization of the five European goals that have been set in Albania will contribute to the promotion of domestic reforms in our neighbour, and it will also bring our two states closer together. Greece, one of the oldest member states of the European Union, has experience and knowledge of the processes and quirks of the EU and is ready at any time to assist with any request from its friend Albania.



At the same time, we dont want to leave old problems unresolved; old problems that will create difficulties on Albanias European path. We want these problems to be resolved through understanding, dialogue, rationality and maturity, at the soonest possible time.



The EU is a system of justice. A system run by justice and law, by the rule of law. It functions according to rules. We have infused it with the culture of dialogue and mutual respect. The culture of consensus and positive compromises. It is precisely this culture that must be spread throughout the Western Balkans. And for this to happen, we  Albania and Greece  must set a positive example for the whole region. In this spirit we want to overcome the misunderstandings and extremist (chauvinistic) mindsets. We are pursuing the resolution of old problems and capitalization on new potentials of the common course forward.



The course towards Europe does not concern just Albania or refer only to the Western Balkans. It concerns in particular what we call the Albanian factor as a whole. Like the German-speaking peoples of the 20th century, the Albanians are organized in two states and have a special position in a third (Germany, Austria and the Swiss cantons, in the first case, and Albania, Kosovo and the Albanians of FYROM, in the latter). The European path is the path that will lead to institutional coexistence of all of the Albanians of these states. Moreover, for the first time, under our government, we opened a substantial dialogue and cooperation with Kosovo.



Albania is the only NATO member state in the Western Balkans. It is the pillar of stability there. The cooperation between Albania and Greece within NATO, as well as bilaterally, on issues of security and stability, has produced the first positive indications. This cooperation needs to become even more intensive, to the benefit of the whole region.



I would also like to make the following observation: despite the crisis in the Greek economy, with repercussions for the whole of our society, Greece is still far and away the most powerful country in the region. It has substantial advantages. It doesnt have just its GDP, which, in spite of a 25% fall, is five times that of Bulgaria and ten times that of Albania. There is its participation in all of the western institutions. There is the expertise it has, the capacities and capabilities it has.



At the same time, Albania is a country with an important role in the region. Especially in the Western Balkans, its role is pivotal. The Albanian factor is the most energetic it has been in recent years; the youngest. If we marry Greek power with the dynamic of Albanian energy, it will multiply the capacities of the whole region. That is why it is important for there to be a solution to the problems between us and cooperation on the prospects.



We need to further develop trade and investments on both sides. We need to implement the European acquis with regard to the latter, ensuring their functionality. We need to develop our cross-border cooperation  social and economic. Cooperation in sectors such as energy  the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) is already moving ahead  security overall, and education and culture.



The stability in our relations and the further development of our relations, the rational response  also based on international law  on any pending issues we have, will also pull in the other states in the region. It will be a positive example for their conduct, so that they can develop tolerance for diversity.



So we need to fight the mistaken negative stereotypes between our peoples. Stereotypes that exist in school books or  more frequently  are projected by our countries news media. In general, we need to try to keep foreign policy from becoming a hostage to domestic exigencies and be much less dictated by them. Instead, we must facilitate mutual understanding between the two peoples and the two states.



Every collaboration, just like a tango, requires two careful partners. Two who want to succeed together, and no one to act to the detriment of the other. And this is precisely what Ditmir and I want.



All of these thoughts, and many more that my friend the Albanian Foreign Minister and I have exchanged, can be incorporated into a renewed agreement on friendship, cooperation, and security between the two countries. An agreement that we should agree on the basic elements of within the year. New sectors of cooperation  such as energy, archeology, transfer of European know-how  can be incorporated into this agreement. At the same time, it can resolve problems that we agree, jointly, must be overcome. We want to update and enrich the friendship agreement between the two countries.



The friendship agreement and the preamble we will incorporate into it will be a reaffirmation of friendship and the non-state of war between the two states.



This agreement will provide for the cooperation of the two countries, at least our side proposes, for the support of Albanias European course  any technical solutions or clarifications requested by either side  so that already existing agreements can be implemented, along with the convening of committees of experts wherever they are needed.



Personally, I attach great importance to culture and to cultural diplomacy. We love the dances of the Albanians and those of the Greeks. The same goes for music and other art forms. I propose the establishment of weeks of Albanian and Greek art, such as music and cinema, under our auspices, so that we can become better acquainted and promote our achievements.



Through this, the educational programme of the national Greek minority in your country will be upgraded. More generally, the teaching of Greek as a foreign language will be bolstered in Albanias educational system. The Greek and Albanian studies at our universities will be upgraded, and collaboration between these programmes will be intensified. Moreover, as the Foreign Ministry, we will promote at the competent ministries the teaching of Albanian to the children of Albanian immigrants. In the same context, we will contribute to the good and effective functioning of the joint committee of experts on school books.



As for the rights of the Greek national minority, I hope that an Albania on its way towards the EU will do in a timely manner, and on its own initiative, what is provided for by European law with regard to protection of the minoritys rights throughout Albanian territory, starting with property rights.



And as there is talk of the economic aspects, we support the promotion of the Joint Interministerial Committee (JIC) on economic issues. We also proposed the holding of a business forum under the auspices of the two Foreign Ministries. The monitoring and implementation of the action plan in the tourism sector. The same in the agriculture, water management and transport sectors. In the latter we will support the creation  with the help of the EU  of the necessary infrastructure that will cross the Balkans. To ensure overall more favorable conditions for investments, as well as capitalization on and functioning of already existing investments, of business activity.



The list of social actions and synergies can and must be endless. I shared some thoughts here. We can and, in my opinion, must move ahead with their implementation. For this to happen in an effective manner, without the two sides getting caught up in bureaucratic procedures, we need to consolidate even further the relations between our countries in the direction we already have as Foreign Ministries. The majority of Greeks have learned to respect Albania and the Albanian factor. We are not living in the era of the collapse of the then political system, of Albanian refugees and lack of prospects in Albania. Albania is being upgraded to a modern European country, and we want to be together with it on this scene. We do not allow our northwestern neighbour to be underestimated. Together we will shape the regions future. By the same token, no one in Albania should forget that the countrys future is linked to good relations with its southern neighbour. Nor should they underestimate the tools Greece has at its disposal, even today.



There really are stronger countries than ours in Europe and the world. But their focus on Albania is inconstant. It is not a top priority. We, on the other hand, want and are working for a relationship of equality that, from the problems of the past, is today creating friendship and future gains. Strong relations between Albania and Greece lend power to our states and peoples. They fuel our people with hope. They contribute to the stability and security of the whole region.
Todd VanDoorne and Michael Frederick say a Grand Rapids-area drug team didn't have a search warrant in 2014. They say they felt compelled to cooperate because they're officers, too.

They had medical marijuana cards, but prosecutors said they still violated the law.

In an order Friday, the Supreme Court is asking lawyers to file briefs on whether so-called knock-and-talk procedures used by deputies violated the rights of VanDoorne and Frederick. The court also wants the parties to address whether the conduct was coercive.

A Kent County judge and the state appeals court found no problem with the searches.
The Recall Judge Aaron Persky campaign on Friday 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 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.

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 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.
Despite Flipping in Surf 4 Times in a Year, Marines Say New ACV Is the Future of Amphibious Warfare

Some Marine veterans familiar with the vehicle and its operations have worried about the reliability of the ACV.
The Orlando Police Department is crediting a Kevlar helmet with saving the life of an officer who responded to the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

The department on Sunday posted a picture of the officer's helmet showing damage from being struck by a bullet during the incident. The green paint is chipped, parts of the fabric is torn and there appears to be a small hole.

"Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life," the department tweeted on its Twitter account.

The make and model of the helmet weren't immediately known.

The officer, who wasn't identified but was presumably a member of the department's SWAT team, suffered an eye injury, Danny Banks, special agent in charge of the Florida Department of Law Enforcements Orlando bureau, told CNN.

The incident was the deadliest mass shooting in American history, with at least 50 individuals confirmed dead and another 53 injured. The shooting began around 2 a.m. Sunday at a packed Orlando nightclub called Pulse, which caters to the lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender, or LBGT, community.

The gunman, who was shot and killed in a shootout with police, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, during a 911 call, CNN reported. He was identified as Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old U.S. citizen and Muslim who lived in Port St. Lucie, Florida, and whose parents were of Afghan origin, Fox News reported.

"This was an act of terror and an act of hate," President Barack Obama said during a press conference at the White House.

Obama credited first responders with preventing an even deadlier attack by quickly responding to the scene and rescuing hostages. Mateen reportedly held dozens of people hostage until about 5 a.m., at which point the Orlando Police Department's SWAT team raided the building using an armored vehicle and stun grenades, and killed him, The New York Times reported.

"Their courage and professionalism saved lives and kept the carnage from being worse," Obama said. "It's the kind of sacrifice our law enforcement professionals make every day."

--Brendan McGarry can be reached at brendan.mcgarry@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Brendan_McGarry.
BROOKLYN, MI -- Before NASCAR's best took the track, some of the music industry's top talents took to the stage Saturday night, June 11 at Michigan International Speedway.

Elle King, Andy Grammer, Fitz and the Tanrtrums and GROUPLOVE were the four final acts to close out the post-race Keloorah music festival at MIS.

Check out photos from the Turn 3 show at the top of this post.

Keloorah is back with more foam, fun, games and music at MIS when NASCAR returns in August for the Pure Michigan 400. So far, Tim Dugger, Kip Moore, Chase Bryant and Chase Rice have been announced to perform.

NASCAR is set to return to the Irish Hills Aug. 26, 27 and 28.

Fans with tickets to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series can call 800-354-1010 to get Keloorah tickets for $20. Those without NASCAR tickets need to call 800-354-1010 and ask about the special Keloorah packages.
Latino Pitch Winner 2016 - Alex Cruz.jpg

Alejandro Cruz holds a check for $2,500, after winning the inaugural Latino Business Pitch Competition. He is standing with Jorge Gonzales, the executive director of the West Michigan Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the organization that sponsored the contest. (Courtesy photo)

GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Alejandro Cruz has a plan to compete with ride-hailing giant Uber.

His startup, iRideSmart, is a bilingual transportation company that provides rides, from chauffeured limousines for weddings or Quinceanera celebrations, or longer distance trips to a consulate's office in Detroit.

He is also working on an app similar to Uber, so clients can order rides on their phones.

Launched in January, his business now has five employees.

"We would like to expand," said Cruz. "We are looking for resources and opportunities to grow."

Cruz's vision for his business won him $2,500 and first place in the inaugural Latino Business Pitch Competition.

The contest sponsored by the West Michigan Hispanic Chamber of Commerce drew 18 applicants that was whittled down to six finalists who pitched their ideas on May 26, and the top five together won $5,750 in prize money.

"We know the idea was not new, but the concept of encouraging Latino entrepreneurs and small business owners to compete for prize money to help with their ventures was - and based on the response, we feel there is a need," said Jorge Gonzalez, the chamber's executive director.

The contest was open to anyone, regardless of ethnicity, who had an idea to start a business or to improve an existing one, Gonzalez said.

In addition to the prize money, West Michigan law firm Varnum is providing $12,500 in-kind legal services to the six pitch presenters.

Fifth Third Bank provided the grand prize monies for first to third places, while local Latino businesses Lindo Mexico and Supermercado Mexico provided the prize money for fourth and fifth place, respectively.

In addition to Cruz, the other winners are:

 Juana Garcia-Cruces, owner of New Valley Landscape, LLC, a female-owned landscaping business based in Ada, won second place and $1,500.

 Nancy Quero Ramirez, owner of Guelaguetza Design, which sells ethnic clothing and accessories from Mexico's Oaxaca region, won third place and $1,000.

 Enicma Falcon, owner of Pure Nails, a high quality nail salon, won fourth place and $500.

 Evangelina Abundis, owner of El Globo Restaurante, a Mexican restaurant featuring regional foods from Mexico's Jalisco region came in fifth, and won a prize of $250.



Shandra Martinez covers business and other topics for MLive. Email her or follow her on Twitter @shandramartinez.


OCEANA COUNTY, MI -- A 26-year-old Pennsylvania man faces five felony charges after he was arrested for allegedly beating his girlfriend and fighting with cops - dustups between which he caused a car to hit him as he ran along U.S. 31, state police said Saturday.

Authorities said witnesses observed the man assault his girlfriend as they drove north along U.S. 31 at the Muskegon and Oceana county line. The man, who was not identified, then grabbed the steering wheel and tried to cause the vehicle they were in to crash before he jumped from the car, police said.

Along the highway, the man was hit by another car headed north and while the vehicle sustained damage, the suspect was not slowed and he continued to run away.

Troopers located the man and while trying to arrest him, he allegedly resisted orders and had to be subdued with pepper spray.

Police were taking the man to the hospital when he tried to kick out windows on the patrol car. As he was being treated, the man allegedly spit on hospital staff trying to take a blood sample as part of a search warrant.

The man is charged with five counts of resisting police, a potential 2-year felony, and two counts of assault and battery.

Troopers will refer the report to Muskegon prosecutors for possible domestic assault and leaving the scene of an accident offenses.

No officers were injured during the incident.
Gov. Rick Snyder said he is ordering Michigan and U.S. flags to fly at half-staff until June 16 to honor the victims of the Orlando mass shooting.

The flags to stay down an extra five days for the lives of the cyclists lost in Kalamazoo, Snyder added.

"What happened earlier today is a tragedy - one we will never forget. Hate has no place in this nation," Snyder said in a post Sunday on his Facebook page.

"Sue and I ask all Michiganders to join us in prayer for Orlando - victims, families, friends, and first responders. The people of Michigan stand with Florida."

Snyder was one of several state officials to issue statements about the mass shooting.

One was from State Sen. David Knezek. a former U.S. Marine who fought in Iraq and supporter of the Second Amendment.

He's also a Democrat who represents Michigan's 5th District, which includes part of Wayne County that includes many Arab-Americans.

On Sunday, he said he was struggling to come to terms with the mass shooting in Orlando.

"What happened in Orlando has shaken me," he said in his statement. "Politicians - people like me - will do one of two things now: offer up prayers and do absolutely nothing in response, or, renew their attacks on the entire Muslim community for the actions of a few. Both are irresponsible and dangerous paths to continue down."

Knezek continued:

"I don't know what the answer is to gun violence in our country. I had extensive training on how and when to use it. I knew at all times that simply introducing a gun to a situation immediately heightens the emotions of it. I believe that I am a responsible gun user because the Marine Corps properly trained me to be one. It took years. Years. People in Michigan today can take an 8 hour class, fire 90, .22 caliber rounds, and they have the same access to a weapon as me. Some, and I know this happens, pay the right person off and they get the certification without ever having attended the course. Do they have the training, the knowledge, the combat mindset to know what holding a weapon in your hands really means? No. But they can get one, so easily, and they can inflict violence on people, mercilessly, like what was done this morning.

"Of course, this is where people will argue that someone can just illegally obtain a gun and commit these acts of violence anyway. A red herring in my belief. Anything and everything can be done illegally but we still have laws governing almost all of it. Too many of us live in a zero-sum world where it's all or nothing: if we can't stop EVERY gun death, we shouldn't enact laws that might stop SOME gun deaths. What a tragic mindset. This morning's shooter obtained his gun legally, despite being the subject of two FBI investigations. Think about that for a moment. Why, after such convincing evidence to the contrary, would we ever allow someone like that to obtain a gun legally? The gunman would have had a more difficult time getting a mortgage for a new house or buying a car. Could he have obtained a gun illegally? Maybe. But he didn't have to. Our system just put it in his hands. That is a broken system.

"I don't want to take guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens. I don't want to take guns out of the hands of sportsmen and women. I want to keep guns out of the hands of bad people. I want there to be realistic training that goes behind holding that weapon in your hand. We will never be perfect in that endeavor, but we are certainly failing right now. Surely, level heads can come together and find some sort of solution. Surely, some progress can be made. Surely?



"I don't know what the answer is to gun violence in our country but I do know that we are the only civilized country in the world where this happens. That should be our starting point - asking "Why?" Perhaps we can find answers. We aren't finding anything today. We aren't solving anything today. We aren't saving lives.

"To have this attack occur against members of the LGBT community hurts my heart in such a deep way. After the victories that have been had over the past few years, to now have the community associated with such an unspeakable act again should embolden us all to reaffirm our support and love for our LGBT brothers and sisters. ....

"Soon we will hear the rally cry against Muslims in our country and around the world. ... Fight ISIS? Yes. Kill ISIS? Yes. But condemn over a billion people for the actions of one or a few? No. Let us be better Americans than that."

Knezek wasn't the only Michigan official to issue a statement today in connection with the mass shooting.

From Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette: "My wife Cynthia and I, and indeed people across Michigan and America, extend our prayers to families who have lost loved ones in this brutal shooting in Orlando. At this moment, the tragic shootings in Orlando appear to be an act of domestic terrorism. Law enforcement officials are working diligently to obtain evidence of what caused this act of violence."

Here's an excerpt from the statement issued by Bishop Paul J. Bradley of the Catholic Diocese of Kalamazoo: "I extend our deepest sympathies to the families of those who have been killed, and our prayers for those who are fighting for their lives, even as we ask God's comfort and consolation to the families of all those who have been terrorized. I also invite every member of our Catholic community, along with all the wonderful people of good will in our wider community, even as we are struggling with the sadness of our own recent tragic circumstances, to pray for an end of violence, hatred and intolerance in our society. With God's grace and guidance, may we choose to live together in harmony and peace."

From state Rep. Brandt Iden, R-Oshtemo: "This type of senseless violence can not be tolerated within our communities across the nation. The bill I have been working on in the Michigan Legislature, House Bill 5442, has drawn support from both sides of the aisle and will implement a public threat alert system to notify people locally of mass shootings and other acts of terrorism.

"... Ensuring the safety of our citizens is a priority and we must enact laws that will help save lives and keep people aware of their surroundings so they can protect themselves and loved ones," Iden added. "Information is power and the quicker we know what is going on around us the quicker we can respond and take caution to save lives. More lives do not need to be lost to prove that we, as a society, ought to be more engaged to effectively utilize our technological capabilities to our advantage."

The Flint Islamic Center and Grand Blanc Islamic Center issued this joint statement: "The FIC and GBIC communities offer our condolences to the victims of this heinous crime, to their families and to those who are injured. We reject violence, hatred, and discrimination toward anyone on the basis of race, color, gender, disability, religion, familial status, sexual orientation and national origin."

Julie Mack is a reporter for MLive.com. Email her at jmack1@mlive.com, call her at 269-350-0277 or follow her on Twitter @kzjuliemack.
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JACKSON, MI - As a kid, Susan Vaughn was part of a military family - constantly moving from place to place. At 3 years old, she picked up dance, saying it was the one thing she could hold onto wherever she was.

After building the Susan Vaughn School of Dance from the ground up in January 1971, Vaughn has ended her dancing involvement with this weekend's recitals.

The final recitals, called "Rapunzel: A Big, Hairy Mess," on Friday and Saturday, June 10-11, were a fractured version of Rapunzel and Tangled.

"I kind of have mixed emotions. I'm like, 'Wow, this is the last time I'm going to be out here," Vaughn said. "It's kind of bittersweet, you know?"

Robin Carson, who has worked alongside Vaughn as an assistant for 26 years is taking over the school of dance. She'll do some remodeling and will change the name to The Next Step Dance Center, but looks to uphold Vaughn's legacy.

"She's just a very solid teacher," Carson said. "She's not a warm, fuzzy person. She's very firm and she demands (a lot) out of the kids. But they rise up to it and they want to do it. It's very, very cool."

Carson helped plan a surprise for the recitals, thanking Vaughn for her 45 years of work.

"We had kids flying in, we had a super-secret thank you dance going on," Carson said. "Over 30 people on both nights came in to do this show for her."

Former dancers sent in pictures and videos that were displayed on both nights to honor Vaughn.

"We choreographed a dance, put the choreography on this group - people who can't come in have videoed themselves doing the dance and we are going to sync it through a slideshow and a video, so when the videos come up, they'll be dancing with us," Carson said.

While many dance centers don't have many - if any - dancers take the activity further than a hobby, the Susan Vaughn School of Dance has produced five instructors and one performer.

"It's going to be difficult; there's going to be a lot of tears," Carson said. "She's affected a lot of people's lives."

At the beginning, Vaughn started teaching dance in the early afternoon through the rest of the day. She's slowly started to cut back heading into retirement. She started the school because she liked to dance and "didn't want to work for anybody else."

"I started out, I was gung-ho," Vaughn said. "I started out at like 2 o'clock in the afternoon with the babies and just kept going until 9:30, 10 o'clock at night."

The school has taught dancers as young as 2 and as old as 66, with a range of classes including Mommy and Me classes, ballet, tap, jazz, hip-hop, modern and belly dancing.

Vaughn graduated from Butler University with a major in dance and minor in education. She has multiple other dance degrees from schools around the country and runs one of the few programs in the area requiring instructors to have some sort of degree or certification to teach dance.

"She was very much about helping you teach, training you how to teach, training you what to look for, what to change," Carson said. (She taught) how to affect a change without squashing a little kid."
President John Dramani Mahama was among several personalities who attended the final funeral rites of late Ghanaian comedian Bishop Bob Okala in Accra Saturday.

The funeral took place at the Arts Centre and the president, who was friend to the late actor, was accompanied to the grounds by some key figures including Elizabeth Ofosu-Agyare, Minister of Culture, Tourism and Creative Arts.

The comedian, born Samuel Kwadwo Buabeng, passed away at the Koforidua Hospital on Sunday, March 13 after he collapsed on stage during a carnival at the Koforidua Jackson park.

The remains of late comedian arrived in Accra Saturday afternoon, from the Eastern Region for funeral. It was accompanied by a six-vehicle convoy including an ambulance which contained the mortal remains of the comedian.

Comedian, A1 and actor Paa George were among several others all dressed like Bob Okala accompanied the body. The convoy made a stop at the offices of The Multimedia Group in Kokomlemle in Accra before heading to the Arts Centre.

A producer known in the concert party industry as '99', according to reports, collapsed and died at the funeral grounds.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
12.06.2016 LISTEN

Our attention has been drawn to a publication suggesting division amongst we the CPP Constituency Executives of Jomoro.

We want to state unequivocally that the said report is absolutely false. It is a wicked propaganda meant to confuse and cause disaffection and stop Hon. Samia Yaba Nkrumah from winning the seat.

At a meeting held at the Methodist Church Conference Hall on Friday 3rd June, together with our Branch Executives from the length and breadth of the Constituency, we resolved to give our utmost support to Hon. Samia Yaba Nkrumah, our chosen Parliamentary Candidate, so that she can continue her good works.

We the Constituency executives are solidly behind Hon. Samia Nkrumah and nothing, absolutely nothing will stop us from maintaining her lead to win the seat. So far as we are concerned, there are only TWO parties in Jomoro; those who want Hon. Samia Yaba Nkrumah to win and those who don't want her to win. We can all judge ourselves by our actions and know which party each and every one of us belongs.

We extend a hand of welcome to all those who seek Hon. Samia Yaba Nkrumah's victory to join us in this important journey that will once and for all change the destiny of Jomoro forever.

Signed
12.06.2016 LISTEN

He has never held a real 9-to-5 job besides his freeloading trucking with the career freeloaders of the Rawlings-minted National Democratic Congress (NDC). And yet he would have Ghanaians believe that the countrys main opposition leader is expediently engaged in the politics of convenience. It is quite clear that Mr. Kofi Adams, the NDCs National Organizer, has little to absolutely no appreciation for the basic meaning of the politics of convenience as an expression. The last time that he held down any job that approximated the description of a real job, it was to babysit the children of his former benefactor and chief patron, to wit, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings.

And then he was promoted to taking phone calls and doing errands for Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings and her husband. He had, of course, witnessed Mr. Victor Smith do the same and land a plumb sponging political pork-barrel stint as a diplomat to Eastern Europe, and presently as Ghanas High Commissioner to Britain. Mr. Adams is morbidly upset with the three-time Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) because Nana Akufo-Addo has dared to tell it like it is, to wit, that in barely five years at the helm, Cote dIvoires President Alassane Dramane Ouattara has achieved far more by way of economic development for his country than the current National Democratic Congress regime has been able to achieve in seven years (See Akufo-Addo in Politics of Convenience, Not Principles  Kofi Adams Graphic.com.gh / Ghanaweb.com 5/31/16).

Not one known to beat about the bush, Nana Akufo-Addo has provided verifiable statistical data to shore up his argument, namely, that whereas la Cote dIvoire has been growing and expanding the size of its economy by 9-percent annually, Ghana under President John Dramani Mahama has only been snail-pacing at a diddly 3.9-percent. Likewise, over the past half-decade Cote dIvoire has earned over $ 12 billion for the export of its agricultural products, whereas the Mahama government has only had a piffling $ 2 billion to show for Ghanas agricultural exports. Now, one does not need even a senior high school graduate diploma or certificate to arrive at the all-too-commonsensical conclusion that fielding administrative square pegs like Messrs. Kwesi Ahwoi and Fiifi Kwetey in such an economically critical portfolio as Minister of Agriculture was highly unlikely to facilitate a replication of the Ouattara Miracle in Ghana.

Quite refreshingly, Mr. Adams does not dispute the preceding facts; he only faults the erstwhile Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party for not having done enough on the economic front to move the nation forward. Of course, any keen observer of Ghanas socioeconomic development trajectory, at least since 2001, knows perfectly well that Mr. Adams is lying through his teeth, as it were. He clearly does not believe in his own vacuously defensive assertions. For instance, it is on reliable and verifiable record that in less than four years of assuming the democratic reins of governance, the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party administration had expanded Ghanas economy by more than four-fold; Chairman Rawlings, the P/NDC Godfather, had not been able to even improve on the fragile economy left behind by the late President Hilla Babini Limann, after only two-and-half years at the helm, in 20 years!

Ghanaians would brutally and painfully endure the indescribable economic morass that came to be labeled as Mr. Rawlings Necklace, largely in the form of an acutely unprecedented state of malnutrition, even as the country was sadistically held up as a model of economic development for the rest of the African continent by the IMF and the World Bank, the so-called Bretton Woods establishments. This is also where the NDCs National Organizer brazenly exposes himself for the fleering hypocrite and the simpering fool that he indubitably appears to be. For instance, not quite long ago, Mr. Adams mounted the podium somewhere in the Tamale municipality and presumed to impugn the integrity of the three-time Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party, by claiming insistently that the widely alleged flat refusal of President John Agyekum-Kufuor to staunchly back the presidential ambitions of Nana Akufo-Addo, since 2008, ought to inform the nation, at large, and the former Justice and Foreign Minister, in particular, that he had absolutely no credible standing as a leader and a politician.

Now, the same Mr. Adams is telling us that the widely remarked gross incompetence of his boss and paymaster, President John Dramani Mahama, ought to be blamed on an equally grossly incompetent President Kufuor! Mr. Adams also says that President Ouattaras remarkable economic success in la Cote dIvoire has been achieved through the dint of hardwork, right reforms[and a] methodic [sic] investment in infrastructural development, education, health, roads and ports that are vital to get their economies growing. And that, indeed, it was precisely the abject lack of such foresight and skills in Mr. Kufuor and his New Patriotic Party that put Ghana in the relatively backward situation in which the country presently finds itself.

And just precisely why has President Mahama not been able to apply the same set of Ouattara skills to appreciably improve the quality of the Kufuor-minted National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) recently warned is in danger of completely collapsing? I wish Mr. Adams could give us an answer.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
12.06.2016 LISTEN

NPP Calgary is deeply saddened to announce the passing of its Chairman, Charles Abdul Ridwan Adams on Friday, June 3 after a long battle with illness. He was laid in state at the Akram Jomaa Masjid Mosque in Calgary followed by burial on June 6, 2016.

May Allah grant him Aljannat Firdaus. Inna lillaahii wa Inna ileihi raajihuuna (we belong to Allah and to him we should return).

He was one of the founding members of NPP Calgary and became the current Chairman of the Chapter on April 16, 2016. He was very active in the 2008 and 2012 National campaigns and elections in Ghana.

A memorial to celebrate his life would be held in Calgary at Bearspaw Lifestyle Centre 253220 Bearspaw Rd, Calgary, AB T3L 2P5 Canada on June 12, 2016. We encourage all who are in and around Calgary to attend this celebration.

Contact Info: Theo A

Email:[email protected]

In Ghana, the 7th day Adua will be held at Teshie Nungua Estates at 10 a.m. at House no. 3, 1st Link Close, on Sunday June 12, 2016.

May his soul, rest in perfect peace.

David Kwame Boadi (Patron)

NPP  Calgary
12.06.2016 LISTEN

The Church and Body of Christ should have consistent unchanging virtues, which expresses God through the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not an organisation like, Judaism, Religious institution, Islam, Confucianism, or known by any other name, nationally or internationally, run under the concept, understanding, and understanding of man; than the kingdom of God or the Body and Bride of the Lord Jesus Christ.And the way it ought to be according to God.

The Church was a latter day revelation as given through God to the apostle Paul, writing in the Book of Ephesians. In Ephesians the Church was confirmed as the mystery which is becoming then a mystery being revealed through the apostle then to the ( local Church based in Ephesus, representing the entire Bride):-meaning: The Mystery of Christ, the Body of Christ as the Fullness of Christ, Becoming the Fullness of God..( Eph. 1:3; 5:26-27;2 Peter 1:4; Rom.823,29;Col.1:15 etc).

Paul hintered that, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ,

Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before Him in love,

Predestined us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,

To the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He graced us in the beloved

Oh wow! What an affirmation and complete revelation hidden from the old patriarch before Paul and us,the privileged lot.

Then keep reading on till the BOOK OF EPHESIANS is finished dear disciple. This book speaks particularly of the church and unveils THE CHURCH in its seven aspects as follows:

1. The Body of Christ , the fullness, the expression, of the One who fills us all in all (v. 23; 4:13)

2. The New Man,(2:15), a corporate man, having not only the life of Christ but also His person;

3. The kingdom of God(2:19),with the saints as citizens possessing its rights and bearing the or its responsibilities;

4. The household of God(2:19), a family full of life and enjoyment;

5. The dwelling place of God, in which He may live (2:21-21)-:universally, a holy temple in the Lord , and locally the dwelling place of God in our spirit;

6. The Bride, the wife, of Christ ( 5:24-25) for Christs rest and satisfaction;

7. And, the warrior (6:11-12),a corporate fighter, who deals with and defeats Gods enemy to accomplish Gods eternal purpose.

The Book of Ephesians speaks particularly of the CHURCH from Gods points of view. This ultimately is for His eternal purpose, from eternity, and from the heavenlies. It will not be a coincident that this book was positioned in the New Testament immediately after the revelation concerning Christ versus religion (Galatians). Worth knowing it was followed by a book on the practical experience of Christ (Philippians). That ultimately leads in the New Testament to the issue of which settles who is Christ; the ONLY HEAD (Colossians), of the Church.

Thus, these four books are the heart of the New Testament revelation concerning Gods eternal economy. Many others, or institutions may have their own understanding of the Church; but it will not be relevant to God or change anything. You may dress an institution dwelling in evil and give it legitimacy to all sorts of activities or by all means; you and everybody can, it may not do the trick as far as God is concerned. It is high time you compare your churches or ministries relevance with the seven aspects stated above.
It is very pathetic and exceedingly disgraceful that we have to be experiencing this deadly floods in the capital of the "GATEWAY TO AFRICA" periodically. We all ought to show our 'ugly faces' in this regard. It is also, very incumbent on us as a people, to as well disregard those that will like to capitalise on this unfortunate disaster for cheap political expediency.

Not too long ago, some families woke up only to realise that their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, uncles, business associates and even in some cases, breadwinners were washed away by floods that were gutted with fire which is popularly referred to as 6/3.

It is required of us as a people to try as much as we can to identify the root causes of this recurrent flooding in the capital and as well delve in to seek and suggest some ramifications. Against this background, I seek to suggest the following;

Cause(s) of flooding;

Because this write up is subjective, we shall have to concentrate on the main cause(s) of flooding in Accra. Basically, the major cause of flooding anywhere around the the world is mostly attributed to lack of drainage. The question then is, do we lack drainage in the capital? NO! Do we have the appropriate drainage system? I think this is what we ought to be looking out for if we desire to curb this catastrophe forever. Our engineers should be tasked to answer this question.

Another major cause of the flooding in the city is the blockade of the water ways. We do not have any reason(s) to close our eyes to those that have blocked water ways for either settlement of their houses or businesses. Though we may not have the appropriate drainage facilities, but, I do believe that, if the city authorities under the leadership of our able "Beard Mayor" should take it serious and ensure such structures are pulled down completely. We all see from the photos and videos some houses and in some cases offices that are sited clearly on water ways. What could be the reason(s) stopping the authorities from clearing such structures? Do we have to sacrifice the city for a few?

Hey! I cannot also, forget this very common character that is also instrumemntal to the disastrous flooding in Accra. Thus, the dumping of "bola" into the various drainages. This is a common character among settlers in the various slums and ghettos in the city. They dump all their rubbish to the drainages around their neighbourhood the very moment rain sets with the perception that the rains will wash them away. Those dumped refuse inturn go to chock the drainages at some point and make the free flow of the running water become impossible and as a result overflow the "gutters" and hence, make a way for flooding.

Way(s) forward;

It is said in Gonja that, "kullo wi3 fokamo nnyi bi-ash3n 3du kpakpa, min3 kullo wi3 foka nnyi". Literally, what it means is that, "It is only the disease that you do not know that is difficult to cure but, not a disease which is known to you". From my own perspective which is in line to what many ascribe to as the root causes of flooding in Accra have been identified. Thus, the 'disease' is known and so, treatment shouldn't be difficult.

Going forward, lets look at this in three(3) perspectives; Political will, Technical and Civic education.

It is incumbent on the path of our political leaders in authority to ensure that the laws thus, the sanitation, town & country planning laws, and the by-laws of the various MMDCE's in this regard are heeded to without fear or favour. By this, leadership, should have the political will which is supported by the laws to pull down all those structures on the water ways without considering who that is bore upon. The MMDCE's should also ensure that task forces are put in place to monitor citizens that dump refuse into the drainages and specify punishments. Either by way of fines or what may be deemed appropriate just as they do to drivers and our market women here in the city.

We have a chunk of technocrats in the field and we got to put them to work. They should be those our radios and other media houses should be calling to determine whether our drainages are well positioned and appropriate and not that opposition politician who will only seek to discredit the incumbent. I think this will help authorities plan well enough in terms of budgetary locations and timely delivery of solutions.

We all may agree that, the most contributory factor is behavioural. Thus, the reckless dumping of refuse into gutters. We all need to cry out loud to all civil society institutions to come up with interventions that will help change the behaviour of the people in neighbourhoods that are known to be practising this character.

I think, the NCCE secretariat in the capital should as a matter of urgency, produce some videos to educate citizenry how reckless dumping of refuse in whatever form is contributing to this periodic flooding we observe year after year.

So, the causes are collective just as the solutions. I will therefore, encourage all stakeholders to contribute immensely towards solving this menance of periodic flooding which really make us lose valuable lives and huge properties. The onus relents greatly on those in authority.

#letStopFloodingInAccra

ALHASSAN MASAHUDU

BBA - MARKETING

0546291735

[email protected]
12.06.2016 LISTEN

A budding writer, and social critic, Odimegwu Onwumere, has taken on President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, and human rights lawyer Femi Falana, saying the president and the lawyer have been acting in breach of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended, in the prosecution of the anti corruption war.

AT different fora, President Muhammadu Buhari and a prominent human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) said treasury looters and corrupt persons facing charges before the court do not deserve bail.

Falana made his statement as the keynote speaker on Thursday, March 31 2016, while delivering a paper titled Rule of Law and Treatment of Politically-exposed Corruption Cases delivered on his behalf by Mr. Wahab Shittu at the seminar on anti-corruption war summoned by the Department of Jurisprudence and International Law, University of Lagos.

He also made a case of the creation of special courts to enable Buhari end this war well before the 2019 elections.

In one of his presidential media chats, Buhari said government was not prepared to release from detention the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra and Director of the Europe Based Radio Biafra Mr. Nnamdi Kanu for alleged treason, and former National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki, a retired Army Colonel, who is facing corruption charges

The Punch of April 1, 2016, however captured Falana this way, Since victims of grand corruption including armed robbery and kidnap suspects are not usually admitted to bail, those who are charged with looting the treasury should no longer be granted bail.

Same day Daily Post, quoted Buhari as saying, Dasuki, who is presently in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS), has multiple cases in court, which he must diligently face and answer. Nnamdi Kanu has committed a serious offence and therefore government is not prepared to release him based on the numerous bail orders handed down by the different courts''.

It appears, government under Buhari, a former military dictator, has devised some incongruous means of frustrating the duo from enjoying bail orders.

Comments Spark Rebuttals

Emmanuel Onwubiko, Head, Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA), Nigeria, intervened in one of his media chats, saying that those who said that corrupt persons in detention do not have a right for bail, were murderers of the position of the Constitution.

Hence, Onwubiko quoted the comments made by the Senior Advocates of Nigeria, saying the right of accused persons to counsel of their choice and the Duty of Lawyers to defend their clients without Fear or discrimination:

They reiterate their belief that the harassment and intimidation of lawyers in any form in the course of their legitimate work in unlawful and counter-productive in a democratic society. Such actions are not only unlawful but antithetical to the rule of law.

Nothing is further from the truth that once a lawyer undertakes the defense of an accused person particularly a professional colleague, then he must be in active support of the alleged crime or be working against the anti-corruption crusade.

The Nigerian constitution, for good reason, presumes a person innocent until proven guilty before a court of competent jurisdiction following a fair hearing, with an opportunity to conduct his defense by a counsel of his choice.

Provisions of the Constitution on the fundamental rights all citizens

Onwubiko irked by the comments against the detained pointed out what the constitutional provisions state on the fundamental rights all citizens must enjoy especially when faced with charges before the proficient courts of law.

Section 34 (1)(a) (b) of the 1999 Constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria as amended states thus: 34. (1) Every individual is entitled to respect for the dignity of his person, and accordingly;

(a) no person shall be subject to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment; (b) no person shall he held in slavery or servitude; and section 35(1)(a)(b)(4)(b) of the same constitution still states:

35. (1) Every person shall be entitled to his personal liberty and no person shall be deprived of such liberty save in the following cases and in accordance with a procedure permitted by law  (a) in execution of the sentence or order of a court in respect of a criminal offence of which he has been found guilty;

(b) by reason of his failure to comply with the order of a court or in order to secure the fulfillment of any obligation imposed upon him by law;

(4) (b) three months from the date of his arrest or detention in the case of a person who has been released on bail, he shall (without prejudice to any further proceedings that may be brought against him) be released either unconditionally or upon such conditions as are reasonably necessary to ensure that he appears for trial at a later date.

Odimegwu Onwumere writes from Rivers State. Email: [email protected]
12.06.2016 LISTEN

They seem confidently poised to rigging the ballot again. But this time around, it is not certain whether they will be allowed to get away with their well-practiced art of electoral highway banditry without being afforded the most epic battle of their thuggish political careers. I am here, of course, talking about the National Democratic Congress parliamentary candidate for the Ho-Central Constituency and his associates. Mr. Benjamin Kpodo has reportedly said that he intends to deliver at least 80,000 votes in the 2016 election to President John Dramani Mahama, with at least 70,000 votes being clinched in his own favor.

How Mr. Kpodo arrived at these constitutionally outrageous figures is anybodys good guess (See Ho-Central NDC Targets 80,000 Votes in November 2016 Polls MyJoyOnline.com 6/5/16). It is anybodys good guess because Ghanas 1992 Republican Constitution clearly states that every Member of Parliament and/or constituency must represent a maximum population of 50,000 (fifty-thousand) people. And the latter figure, of course, includes minors; which means that generally speaking, no constituency in any region of the country ought to be returning a polling figure of more than between 20,000 to 35,000 votes.

If Mr. Kpodo can, indeed, garner at least 80,000 votes for President John Dramani Mahama, then it clearly means that the Ho-Central Constituency has twice the number of people stipulated by the Constitution. I have said this before in the case of Mr. Fiifi Kwetey, who has also promised to deliver some 100,000 votes to Mr. Mahama in the 2016 general election, that it curiously appears that every one of the electoral districts or constituencies in the Volta Region contains twice the amount of people stipulated by the Constitution. Two things must be happening here, namely, either somebody is not telling us the truth, in which case this would be the Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei-led independent Electoral Commission (EC), in close collaboration with the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), or the Constitution is being deliberately breached, once again, by the Mahama-appointed Electoral Commissions chair with the criminal complicity, here again, of the key operatives of the ruling National Democratic Congress.

From the proceedings of the 2012 presidential-election petition, we also know that a lot of over-voting occurred in the Volta Region more than any of the other 9 regions of the country. Mr. Kpodo, the NDCs parliamentary candidate for Ho-Central in the 2016 general election, also tells us that since the last election, the voters roll for this constituency has appreciated from 87,000 to 96,000 registrants. If the preceding figures are accurate, and there is absolutely no doubt that they well may be, then the Ho-Central Constituency has to be split into two electoral districts or constituencies. There are, of course, those who have been decrying the fact that for the size of the countrys population, there may be too many representatives in our National Assembly already.

What could be done to reasonably pare down the number of parliamentarians and thus trim down financial or budgetary blubber, may be to double the number of people whom one Member of Parliament may represent from the present constitutional stipulation of 50,000 to 100,000. But even more significantly, we need to audit our most recent census figures to ensure that accurate projections are made of the precise population of each and every one of the countrys 10 regions, as well as the populations of every one of the nations 275 constituencies. The fact of the matter is that something is simply not adding up, and the sooner a solution was found for this glaring anomaly, the better it would be for the peace and stability of the country.

It is almost certain that the definitive solution to the preceding problem lies somewhere between the Supreme Court-ordered disenrollment of all registered voters who registered to vote in the last election by the use of their National Health Insurance (NHIS) Cards, and the re-registration of those among this group who can prove their Ghanaian citizenship by the use of any of the other legally approved documents. The key operatives of the National Democratic Congress have been stiffly resistant to the Ramadan-Nimako Decision, obviously, because they clearly appear to have something to hide. But, of course, the ultimate judgment call belongs to the Ghanaian citizenry at large, and not the cynical adherents of any single political party, minor or major.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
The First Lady, Mrs Lordina Mahama has said empowering girls to prevent HIV among adolescents is a key requirement to achieving an AIDS-free generation.

This is because adolescent girls and young women, aged 15 to 24 in Africa, are especially vulnerable to the epidemic that sadly continues to record new cases among adolescents.

Speaking at the Side Event of the UN High Level meeting on HIV and AIDS in New York, Mrs Mahama said every hour, 26 adolescents, aged 10 to 19 years, in Africa are infected with HIV leading to an estimated 250,000 new HIV infections in the continent.

She said globally, while new HIV infections had declined by 38 per cent over the last 15 years, sadly new infections among adolescents were increasing in Africa.

In high burden countries of sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls contribute a significant 30 per cent of all new HIV infections, Mrs Mahama said.

The Side Event, which was attended by all African first ladies forming the Organisation of African First Ladies Association (OAFLA) and other development partners including UNAIDS, UNFPA, Gates Foundation, and adolescent representatives, was on the theme: Breaking the Silos: Empowered Adolescent Girls at the Centre of the Response.

Mrs Mahama said in spite of the challenges great progress had been made in achieving our objective of universal services for HIV prevention, treatment, care and support.

As the President of OAFLA, Mrs Mahama welcomed the delegates to the meeting explaining that OAFLA advocates for effective strategies towards the elimination of HIV and AIDS, the reduction of maternal and child mortality, and the empowerment of women and children.

She said in all its activities, adolescent girls were at the heart of OAFLA's mission, because a more alarming statistic showed that adolescent girls and young women had up to eight times more infection and were likely to become HIV positive about five years earlier than their male peers.

Very sadly only 15 percent of young women and adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa know their HIV status, she said.

Overall, AIDS-related illnesses are the leading cause of deaths among adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa and the second leading cause of death globally.

Clearly, Africa's adolescents are seriously affected by this epidemic; and our adolescent girls and young women are very vulnerable to HIV infection and AIDS related deaths.

Although this vulnerability is not fully understood it is driven by lack of empowerment and compounded by other structural, social and biological factors including harmful gender norms such as early and forced marriage with its effects and engagement in age-disparate sex and oftentimes forced transactional sexual relationships, she said.

Other factors are gender based violence, increased genital inflammation, inability to negotiate monogamous relationships, condom use, and/or male circumcision, inability to take decisions on matters of their own health and well-being as well as inadequate access to comprehensive sexual education and reproductive health services.

There is also the experience of food insecurity and poverty; and we have a vicious cycle driven by dependence.

It is against this background that OAFLA has placed importance on adolescents, in its current strategic plan, 2014 to 2018, Mrs Mahama said.

That strategic plan would help in advocacy for the adoption of policies that promote services for adolescents to raise awareness and mobilise resources in support of programmes on adolescent reproductive health needs.

Mrs Mahama, therefore, urged her fellow first ladies to make conscious efforts and commitment to address adolescent needs, especially for girls, saying the SDGs have provided a clear framework for adolescent girls across sectors like education, health, gender equality, reducing inequalities, and partnership.



Source:GNA
The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) has announced it will open the Weija spillway gates in the next few days, to safeguard the dam from possible damage or collapse

Communities that are likely to be affected include; Tetegu, Oblogo, Pambros Salt, Lower Mc Carthy Hill, Weija, Bojo Beach, Ada Kopey and other surrounding communitites.

GWCL has therefore warned Individuals, institutions, organisations and companies with properties on the downstream side of the dam to note, that the intended action may cause massive flooding along the lower course of the Densu River.

The Communications Manager for the company, Stanley Martey said it is essential for Property owners and residents in the area to take immediate precautionary measures to protect life and property.

Every dam has a maximum operating level beyond which the safety of the dam is compromised. As a result, spill gates are opened to enable the excess water flow downstream. The excess water in most areas, especially Weija, poses a lot of danger to communities located downstream.

Stanley Martey told Citi News that is in this vein that GWCL in collaboration with the various Municipal and District Assemblies, the National Disaster and Mobilisation Organisation (NADMO), and National Security, educate the general public on the essence of evacuating such communities to forestall any form of eventuality.

However, the GWCL said it has put in place various measures such as dredging some of the estuaries and tributaries to enable good flow of the excess water, but cannot guarantee the safety of people living in such areas.



By: Pearl Akanya Ofori /Citifmonline .com/Ghana

Follow @pearlakanya
African art, like any great art, some would say, in any case more than any other, and for a long time if not always, is first of all in man, in the emotion of man transmitted to objects by man and his society.

This is the reason why one cannot separate the problem of the fate of African art from the fate of the African man, that is to say the fate of Africa itself.

Aime Cesaire, Discours sur lart africain. (1)

Several media have reported that the Musee du quai Branly, Paris, which experienced some difficulties at birth about receiving an appropriate name, and finally settled simply with the name Musee du quai Branly, after the quay where it is located, will change or modify its name to Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac when the former French President, Jacques Chirac passes away. (2)

According to the the issue of Le Monde of 21June 2006, (a day after the museum was opened), Jacques Chirac had expressed the wish not to have any grand work named after him, as was the French tradition when a President died. His predecessors have Centre Pompidou and the Bibliotheque National Francois Mitterrand named after them. He did not want his name to be inscribed in concrete for posterity. It seems this wish will not be respected and like his predecessors, he would have a most controversial museum named after him when he passes away. As Le Monde explained, the Musee du quai Branly owes its existence to the efforts of Jacques Chirac who had been convinced of the need for such a museum by his friend, Jacques Kerchache, a dealer in non-Western Art, whom he met during holidays at a beach on the island of Mauritius. (3)

This modification or amplification of name will come as no surprise to those who have some idea about the origins of the museum. (4) Sally Price seems to have anticipated this change of name some years ago when she entitled her excellent book,Paris Primitive: Jacques Chiracs Museum on the Quai Branly (5)

Poster for the exhibition in honour of former President Jacques Chirac at the Musee du Quai Branly, Paris.

We have always maintained the position that where the West places looted or stolen African artefacts or whom the West praises for contribution to the looted lot, is in principle, not our primary concern. Whether the French place looted African artefacts in Musee de lHomme or build a new museum for the artefacts, as in the case of the Musee du quai Branly, the status of the artefacts remains the same: illegal and illegitimate. (6)

Notwithstanding this self-imposed limitation, we reserve the right to comment on any matter that might mislead the reader or create a false impression and might contribute to a wrong appreciation of exact relations between Africa and the West. Besides, we are interested in knowing where our artefacts are and who is keeping them. Many African peoples are not exactly aware of where their looted artefacts are in the West where they cannot obtain visa for visit. It is interesting to note that many members of the Benin delegation to the Benin exhibition Benin-Kings and Rituals; Court Arts from Nigeria in 2007, in Vienna, were seeing many of the artefacts for the first time since they were stolen by the British in the notorious Punitive Expedition in1897 and sold to German and other Western museums. The British Museum was not among the organizing museums of the 2007 Benin exhibition although it did lend some objects but not the iconic hip-mask of Queen-Mother Idia.

An exhibition will be held at the Musee du quai Branly in honour of Jacques Chirac from 21 June to 9 October 2016, Jacques Chirac ou le dialogue des cultures, showing 200 selected artefacts that have a link to the former President. The poster shown above has been issued in connection with the coming exhibition. We do not have any official or other interpretation of the image of Jacques Chirac that almost merges into an African mask. Does this imply that Chirac in his activities acted like an African or became an African? Or that the French President acted in the interest of Africa? In any case, the unusual merging of the image of a former French President with a mask from a foreign culture, for that matter an African culture, needs to be fully explained. We hear already people talking about Chirac, lAfricain and thus starting a myth about the relationship of the former President with Africa, putting him perhaps in a more favourable light.

Before anyone gives the misleading impression that in his inaugural speech at the opening of the Musee du quai Branly, the French President fought for Africans and African art, we should be reminded of what the former Malian Minister of Culture, the great Aminata Traore, correctly stated about the fundamental contradiction lying at the basis of the establishment of the new museum: our artefacts have a right of residence in a place where we ourselves are not allowed to enter and we are requested to celebrate with the former colonial power and witness our own defeat, decline and impotence. (7)

In his statement at the opening of the Musee du quai Branly, Jacques Chirac blamed the miserable state of the African peoples and others, not on Western slavery, colonialism and imperialism but on History.

France wished to pay a rightful homage to peoples to whom, throughout

the ages, history has all too often done violence. Peoples injured and

exterminated by the greed and brutality of conquerors. Peoples humiliated

and scorned, denied even their own history. Peoples still now often

marginalized, weakened, endangered by the inexorable advance of modernity.

Peoples who nevertheless want their dignity restored and

acknowledged. (8)



Aminata Dramane Traore, former Minister of Culture, Mali (1997-2000), a leading African intellectual and author.

History, in the abstract, is blamed for the parlous state of the African and Asian States. Even at this stage, Westerners are not willing to admit that the Western colonial system was a criminal and devastating enterprise that left many countries and peoples in abject conditions. Slavery and colonialism which enriched the Western world are passed over quietly and certainly not directly mentioned. The pseudo-humanist tone of the French President did not deceive anyone and certainly no African or Asian conversant with the colonial enterprise would be deceived by such statements.

The massacres and exterminations of African peoples, the enslavement of our brothers and sisters, the humiliation and denigration ensuing, and the exploitation of our natural resources were not organized by History. The British, Belgians, French, Germans and Portuguese were the organizers of unspeakable sufferings on the African Continent and this must be said without fear or hatred for the benefit of all. (9)

The homage by the Musee du Quai Branly to Jacques Chirac is designated, Jacques Chirac ou le dialogue des cultures. As we have insisted in our writings, there cannot be any genuine dialogue so long as the past relations of slavery and colonialism are not honestly approached on both sides. A background of unexamined resentments and unexplored suspicions, compounded by the traditional Western arrogance and assumptions of congenital superiority, even when the West is holding our looted objects, clearly cannot be conducive to genuine understanding even if some Western individuals declare themselves free from such complexes. We need a general change of attitude by a sizeable part of the society concerned. This has so far not been demonstrated in any Western State even though remarkable individual persons may have made the transformation.

We are not concerned with assessing whether Jacques Chirac deserves the honour of having a museum named after him that holds looted African and Asian artefacts but contains no French or European artefacts; a museum that was tainted with illegality even before its birth not only by the two museums that would provide it with looted objects but also by the illegal acquisition of looted Nok pieces for the Palais des Sessions where objects for the future museum were kept. This is a matter for the French people. The opinion of Africans and Asians whose artefacts are in the museum has not been requested. It is an incredible paradox of our times that, contrary to all laws, morals and religions, Western museums seem capable of generating honour or an aura of honour from contested assemblages of looted/stolen artefacts of others despite vehement protests from the angry dispossessed owners who regard their spoliation as daylight armed robbery. Western armies staged such daylight robberies in Beijing , China 1860, Maqdala , Ethiopia, 1868, Kumasi, Ghana, 1874, and in Benin , Nigeria, 1897.

The Chinese, Ethiopians, Ghanaians and Nigerians have never forgotten such defeats and humiliations. They probably can never forget such humiliations so long as those looted objects are displayed by Western museums as trophies of conquerors and signs of superiority. It is also in the nature of so-called ethnological objects that they shout their origins. Even the youngest visitor to the museum would ask Where did it come from and how did it reach here from Africa?

We will also avoid discussing the merits of the Chirac Government for another basic reason: to avoid what we call displacing the issue or argument. Supporters of holders of illegal and illegitimate artefacts of others are very good at displacing issues. Instead of concentrating on the issue of legitimacy and legality, irrelevant arguments are brought in about how efficient the present illegitimate holders are, as opposed to the rightful owners. We are also informed about how secure Western museums are as opposed to African museums, even though there have been spectacular robberies in Western museums. We hear also Western climates are better for preserving African artefacts even though these artefacts were made in Africa and stayed there for centuries before the Europeans stole them. We hear often that the West has air-conditioners and similar modern devices.

What is clear is that that many Westerners do not wish to admit that these looted and stolen artefacts ought to be returned or some arrangements be made with the rightful owners in Africa and Asia. This should have been done as part of the Independence process if the West really sought to create better relations with the new States, free of fear and resentments.

Westerners who have several anniversaries and commemorations in a year often

tell us Africans to forget the past whenever slavery, colonialism and looted

artefacts are mentioned. They do not seem to realize that this advice would put

us exactly where we were supposed to be at the beginning of Western

colonization: peoples without history. Nobody ever advises the Greeks, the

Italians, the British or the French to forget their histories. The general

insensitivity of our contemporary Westerners is what discourages many Africans

from discussing with them. One gets the impression that most of them have not

heard about the colonial period or do not understand what colonial rule meant

for Africans.

French or other Western celebrations of their presidents or other leaders cannot be viewed by Africans outside the general framework of our relations with the West if we are not to falsify our own history.

Baule mice divination box, Cote dIvoire, now at Musee du Quai Branly, Pavillion des sessions, Paris, France.

But what are African States and their cultural officials saying? Are they using every opportunity to request the return of the looted artefacts or are they keeping silent, as if they were not concerned? What is Nigeria, with its claim to leadership in this as in other areas saying? We have read information praising France and presenting France as model for restitution of cultural aretefacts but there is not a word about the three looted Nok pieces in the Palais des Sessions, held by the Musee du quai Branly.

Are Nigerian officials more concerned by other matters in Paris than by national treasures that are illegally held there, undoubtedly with a post factum consent of the government? This is of doubtful legality, insofar as a government cannot retroactively accord legality to the illegal purchase of looted artefacts prohibited by law from exportation outside the country. Governments are also subject to the internal laws of their countries. (10)

Given the prevailing neo-colonial relationships and the widespread pragmatism, some African States and museums may already have sent congratulatory messages in order to initiate their invitation to the opening of the forthcoming exhibition in honour of Chirac. Hopefully they are not preparing to celebrate this change of name. If they do celebrate, they must ask themselves what they are celebrating

Frequent demonstration of lack of self-respect and the absence of adherence to principles and consistent policies are clearly not likely to contribute to the restitution of any of the thousands of African cultural artefacts that are in Westerns museums and homes.

Cultural heritage constitutes an inalienable part of a peoples sense of self and of community, functioning as a link between the past, the present and the future;

It is essential to sensitize the public about this issue and especially the younger generation. An information campaign may prove very effective toward that end;

Certain categories of cultural property are irrevocably identified by reference to the cultural context in which they were created (unique and exceptional artworks and monuments, ritual objects, national symbols, ancestral remains, dismembered pieces of outstanding works of art). It is their original context that gives them their authenticity and unique value. (11)

Kwame Tua Opoku, 7 June, 2016



Face pendant, Baule, Cote dIvoire, now in Musee du quai Branly, Paris, France.

NOTES

1.  Lart africain comme tout grand art, me dira-t-on, en tout cas plus que tout autre, et depuis si longtemps si ce nest depuis toujours, est dabord dans lhomme, dans lemotion de lhomme transmise aux choses par lhomme et sa societe.

Cest la raison pour laquelle on ne peut separer le probleme du sort de lart africain du probleme du sort de lhomme africain, cest-a-dire en definitive du sort de lAfrique elle-meme 

Aime Cesaire,  Discours sur lart africain 

in Annick Thebia-Melsan, Aime Cesaire : Pour regarder le siecle en face, (2000, Maisonneuve & Larose, p. 25). The above extract has been taken from a brilliant statement Aime Cesaire wrote , in response to Andre Malraux who had given a statement on African art at the opening of the Colloque sur lart dans la vie du people, Dakar, 30 March-7 April 1966. (Translations from the French are by K. Opoku.) Even Andre Malraux, a man of culture, could not avoid declaring that African peoples must forget their past. Malraux had declared that what the African masks represented, like what the European cathedrals represented, was lost for ever. Africans must take into account the changes in African art and society. They must build the future on the basis of a present which did not have the same relationship with the past as it was previously. The magic world that the masks created could no longer be found again. Cesaire however argued that African art depended on the African who depended on a future Africa which had not been cut off from its traditions. See Aime Cesaire, Etudes litteraires, vol 6, no.1, 1973, pp. 99-109. http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/500270ar Malrauxs idea suggests an African art developing with no connections to the much admired sculptures whereas Cesaire correctly points out that African art is a reflection of African society and one cannot separate the one from the other. African traditions are still with us.

Perhaps Malraux, a French intellectual and a Minister of Culture under General Charles de Gaulle, aware of the importance of African art, especially African sculpture, for modern art, could probably not imagine a situation where African sculptures would be removed from French museums and leave French artists without the inspiration that undoubtedly comes from the massive presence of African art objects in France. His ideas and theories had to ensure the continued presence in France of the looted/stolen artefacts from Africa and Asia that fill French museums and homes. The universalist theory he supported was on the assumption that Europeans would annex or detach African artefacts from their social and historic context whereby the objects lose their functions in their society and become art in the imaginary museum. We are certainly not confusing the universal museum of James Cuno and Neil MacGregor with the musee imaginaire of Malraux. The effect of both conceptions is to leave the looted African artefacts in Western museums. For a useful explanation of Malrauxs museee imaginaire, see Derek Allen, Andre Malraux, The art of the museum, and the digital musee imaginaire

http://www.home.netspeed.com.au/derek.allan/musee%20imaginaire.htm

See also, Jean-Pierre Zarader, Andre Malraux-Les ecrits sur lart, Editions Cerf, Paris, 2013.

The theme of Andre Malraux and Africa can be pursued further with the

publication by Presence Africaine, Malraux et lAfrique, Actes du colloque international, 2012.

2. New name for the Musee du quai Branly in Paris?

theartnewspaper.com/.../new-name-for-the-mus-e-du-quai-branly-in-paris

http://myinforms.com/en-us/a/30557918-new-name-for-the-muse-du-quai-branly-in-paris/

Musee du Quai Branly to be renamed Musee Chirac | Bruno ...

brunoclaessens.com/2016/04/musee-du-quai-branly-to-be-renamed...

New name for the Musee du quai Branly in Paris? - Arts ...

www.newslocker.com/.../new-name-for-the-muse-du-quai-branly-in-paris

http://www.france24.com/fr/20160414-le-musee-quai-branly-portera-bientot-le-nom-jacques-chirac

www.france24.com/fr/20160414-le-musee-quai-branly...nom-jacques-chirac

Le Musee du Quai Branly portera aussi bientot le nom de Jacques Chirac www.boursorama.com  Actualites  Generales  France

Le musee du Quai Branly bientot renomme Jacques Chirac selon "Le ...

www.huffingtonpost.fr/.../musee-quai-branly-jacque .

3. Jacques Kerchache (1942-2001) spent six months in jail in Gabon for illegal

export of artefacts. In many Western circles offences relating to artefacts of

non-European peoples are regarded as mere adventurousness, a mark of youthful

exuberance and presented as badges of honour or bravery. Kerchache, a

multitalented personality, was equally hated and admired. President Chirac

wrote in an homage to Kerchache: Jacques Kerchache etait mon ami. (Jacques

Kerchache was my friend) in Jacques Kerchache, Portraits Croises,

(Gallimard/musee du quai Branly, 2003) The book contains many positive

assessments by his friends and those who knew him well. See also the

catalogue, Jacques Kerchache-Itineraire dun chercheur dart, 2003 in which

President Chirac states that it was on the advice of Kerchache that he decided to

create the Musee du quai Branly and praises the genius of Kerchache :

On the other hand, we have some very damaging critical assessment of Kerchache by Bernard Dupaigne, former head of Musee de lHomme, in his book, Le scandale des arts premiers- La veritable histoire du muse du quai Branly, (Edition Mille et une nuits, Paris, 2006).Sally Price has an interesting and useful chapter on Jacques Chirac and Jacques Kerchache, entitled Jacques and Jacques in Paris Primitive, Jacques Chiracs Museum on the Quai Branly, University of Chicago Press, 2007, pp.1-18.Benoit de LEstoile has some pertinent remarks on Kerchache in Le gout des autres-De lexposition coloniale aux arts premiers, Flammarion, 2007, pp. 261-287.Jacques Kerchache published books on African art, including, LArt africain,Citadelle et Mazenod,1988.

4. K. Opoku,  What are they really celebrating at the Musee du quai Branly, Paris?

http://www.modernghana.com/news/689178/what-are-they-really-celebrating-at-the-muse-du-quai-branly.html

5. University of Chicago Press, 2007. See a review of this book, The Logic of Non-Restitution of Cultural Objects www.museum-security.org/2007/11/the-logic-of-non-restitution-of... The French version of Sally Prices book leaves out the name of Jacques Chirac in its title, Au musee des illusions: le rendez-vous manque du quai Branly. Denoel, Paris, 2011. It would be interesting to see whether the second edition of the French version will somehow restore the name of Chirac on the cover.

6. K. Opoku, Musee du quai Branly, a museum for the art objects of others or for the looted art objects of others?

http://www.museum-security.org/2007/08/benin-to-quai-branly-a-museum-for-the-arts-of-the-others-or-for-the-stolen-arts-of-the-others/

K. Opoku, Briton of the Year: Neil MacGregor, www.elginism.com/british-museum/british-museum-director-is-briton...

7. See Annex II.

8. Allocution de M. Jacques Chirac, President de la Republique

a loccasion de linauguration du musee du quai Branly.

(Paris, 20 juin 2006) https://pastel.diplomatie.gouv.fr/editorial See Annex I. for the English text.

9. Caroline Elkins gives us a gruesome picture of British imperialism in Kenya in her book, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britains Gulag in Kenya 2005,Henry Holt and Co. Cecil Rhodes & De Beers: Genocide Diamonds | The Espresso ...

Adam Hochschild has dealt with the cruelties of the Belgians in King Leopoldts Ghost: A Story of Greed,Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa,2012, Pan,Main Market Edition.

The literature on Germanys cruel rule in Africa is extensive. David Olusoga and Casper W.Erichsen,The Kaisers Holocaust Germanys Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism, Faber and Faber, 2010; see also K.Opoku, Have Germans Finally Acknowledged Their Extermination Wars Against The Herero, Nama, San And Damara As Genocide?

https://www.modernghana.com/.../have-germans-finally-acknowl. .

The classic on colonial misrule is Andre Gide,Voyage au Congo, Gallimard,1955. Another classic on the cruel nature of French colonial domination is Terre dEbene by Albert Londres, Arlea, Paris,1922. We have also the legendary text from Aime Cesaire, Discours sur le colonialism,Presence Africaine,1955. A good English translation is by Joan Pinkham, Discourse on Colonialism, Monthly Review Press,New York,2000.

A report commissioned by the French Government contained such damaging matters that it was decided not to publish it: Le rapport Brazza. Mission denquete du Congo: rapport et documents (1905-1907) published in 2014 by

Le Passager Clandestin,with a preface by famous French historian,Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch,

10. Folarin Shyllon, Negotiations for the Return of Nok Sculptures from France to Nigeria  An Unrighteous Conclusion,

Art, Antiquity and Law8 (2003): 133-148 .See also. http://portal.unesco.org

See Sally Prices account of the illegal acquisition of the Nok pieces in Paris Primitive, pp.67-80; K. Opoku, Revisiting Looted Nigerian Nok Terracotta Sculptures in Louvre/ Musee du quai Branly, Paris,

http://www.museum-security.org/2011/07/kwame-opoku-franco-nigerian-agreement-on-lootedstolen-nok-sculpture/

11. Conclusions of the Athens International Conference on the Return of Cultural Objects to their Countries of Origin Athens, 17-18 March 2008. http://portal.unnesco.org

Nimba shoulder mask, Guinea, now in Musee du Quai Branly, Palais des Sessions, Paris, France.

ANNEX I

OPENING OF THE MUSEE DU QUAI BRANLY SPEECH BY PRESIDENT JACQUES CHIRAC

12 November 2007. English text from Australian Government, Australian Council for the Arts australiacouncil.gov.au/.../speeches/opening-of-the-...

Address by M. Jacques Chirac, President of the French Republic, at the opening of the Musee du Quai Branly, Paris, and Tuesday 20 June 2006.

Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Abdou Diouf, Secretary-General of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, Prime Ministers, Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends.

It is an immense joy and thrill for me to be here with you, who have come from all over the world, to open the Musee du Quai Branly today. Thank you kindly for accepting my invitation to this opening, which, I think, is an event of great cultural, political and moral significance.

A visit to this new institution dedicated to other cultures will be at once a breathtaking aesthetic experience and a vital lesson in humanity for our times.

As the world's nations mix as never before in history, the need for an original venue was felt, a venue that would do justice to the infinite diversity of cultures and offer a different view of the genius of the peoples and civilisations of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.

Moved by that sense of respect and acknowledgement, in 1998 I decided to create this museum, in agreement with the prime minister, Lionel Jospin.

France wished to pay homage to peoples to whom, throughout the ages, history has all too often done violence. Peoples injured and exterminated by the greed and brutality of conquerors. Peoples humiliated and scorned, denied even their own history. Peoples still now often marginalised, weakened, endangered by the inexorable advance of modernity. Peoples who want their dignity restored.

This is the spirit behind the declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples that we are drafting in Geneva and on which I know the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr Kofi Annan, and my friend Rigoberta Menchu Tum place great importance.

This is the spirit, Eliane Toldeo, in which I hailed the election of your husband as president of Peru. This is the reason that inspired me, Paul Okalik, Premier, to travel to Nunavut, with our mutual friend, Jean Chretin, in 1999.

Central to our idea is the rejection of ethnocentrism and of the indefensible pretension of the West that it alone bears the destiny of humanity, and the rejection of false evolutionism, which purports that some peoples remain immutably at an earlier stage of human evolution, and that their cultures, termed "primitive", only have value as objects of study for anthropologists or, at best, as sources of inspiration for Western artists.

Those are absurd and shocking prejudices, which must be combated. There is no hierarchy of the arts any more than there is a hierarchy of peoples. First and foremost, the Musee du Quai Branly is founded on the belief in the equal dignity of the worlds cultures.

I would like to pay homage today to the men and women who inspired the museum, starting with the late Jacques Kerchache.

With him, in 1992, while in different parts of the globe the quincentenary of the discovery of America was being celebrated, we decided to organise a major exhibition in Paris dedicated to the civilisations of the Greater Antilles, and in particular to the Tano Indians of the Arawak group, the people who welcomed Christopher Columbus to the shores of the Americas but were subsequently exterminated. It is also to Jacques Kerchache that we owe the admirable rooms of the Pavillon des Sessions at the Louvre.

I also extend my warmest thanks to all the men and women who helped bring the Musee du Quai Branly into existence and who surpassed themselves to ensure that everything was complete on time.

Jean Nouvel, Gilles Clement, and their teams, who have crafted a building of masterful architecture, suffused with respect for the visitor, the environment, the works and the cultures that produced them.

Germain Viatte and the curators, whose superb museography interweaves approaches and dissolves the artificial distinction between art and anthropology, affording visitors the pleasure of discovery and sensitivity and inviting them to open their eyes and broaden their horizons.

Stephane Martin and his staff, who administer this original institution and will assuredly make it an uncontested centre for education, research and dialogue and a venue for contemporary art, testifying to the vitality of the cultures to which it is dedicated. A vitality to which the magnificient Australian Aboriginal ceilings testify.

I also express my profound gratitude to all the patrons who have rallied round the project and supported it so generously.

The Musee du Quai Branly will, of course, be one of the largest museums dedicated to the arts and civilisations of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, with a collection of almost 300,000 pieces, including exceptional works, such as this totem pole from British Columbia and the splendid monumental Djennenke sculpture from the Bandiagara Plateau in Mali.

But it is much more than a museum. By multiplying viewpoints, the venues ambition is to render the depth and complexity of the arts and civilisations of all those continents. In so doing, it seeks to encourage a different - more open and respectful - view in the broadest possible audience, by dispelling the mists of ignorance, condescension and arrogance that, in the past, so often bred mistrust, scorn and rejection.

Far removed from the stereotypes of the savage or primitive, the museum seeks to communicate the eminent value of these different cultures - some of which have been lost, many of which are endangered - these "fragile flowers of difference" in the words of Claude Levi-Strauss, which must be protected at all costs.

Because "the first peoples" possess a wealth of knowledge, culture and history. They are the custodians of ancestral wisdom, of refined imagination, filled with wonderful myths, and of high artistic expression whose masterpieces rival the finest examples of Western art.

By showing that there are other ways of acting and thinking, other connections between beings, other ways of relating to the world, the Musee du Quai Branly celebrates the luxuriant, fascinating and magnificent variety of human creativity. It proclaims that no one people, no one nation, no one civilisation represents or sums up human genius. Each culture enriches humanity with its share of beauty and truth, and it is only through their continuously renewed expression that we can perceive the universal that brings us together.

That diversity is a treasure that we must preserve now more than ever. In globalisation, humanity is glimpsing the possibility of unity, that age-old dream of the Utopians, which has become the promise of our destiny. At the same time, however, standardisation is gaining ground, with the worldwide expansion of the law of the market.

But who can fail to understand that when globalisation brings uniformisation it can only exacerbate tensions between different identities, at the risk of igniting murderous violence? Who does not feel a new ethical imperative, faced with the confusing questions thrown up by the rapid development of scientific knowledge and our technological achievements? As we search falteringly for a development model that would conserve our environment, who does not seek another way of looking at man and nature?

That is also the idea behind this museum. To hold up the infinite diversity of peoples and arts against the bland, looming grip of uniformity. To offer imagination, inspiration and dreaming against the temptation of disenchantment. To show the interactions and collaboration between cultures, described by Claude Levi-Strauss, which never cease to intertwine the threads of the human adventure. To promote the importance of breaking down barriers, of openness and mutual understanding against the clash of identities and the mentality of closure and segregation. To gather all people who, throughout the world, strive to promote dialogue between cultures and civilisations.

France has made that ambition its own. France expresses it tirelessly in international forums and takes it to the heart of the world's major debates. France bears it with passion and conviction, because it accords with our calling as a nation that has long prized the universal but that, over the course of a tumultuous history, has learned the value of otherness.

Ladies and Gentlemen, more than ever, the destiny of the world lies in the capacity of peoples to have an enlightened view of each other and share their differences and cultures, so that, in its infinite diversity, humanity can gather around the values that unite it.

May the visitors who pass through the doors of the Musee du Quai Branly be filled with emotion and wonderment. May they come to realise that this knowledge is irreplaceable. May they in turn become bearers of the message of peace, tolerance and respect for others.

Thank you.



Kota reliquary, Gabon, now in Musee du quai Branly, Paris, France.

ANNEX II

AMINATA TRAORE:  Ainsi nos uvres d'art ont droit de cite la ou nous sommes, dans l'ensemble, interdits de sejour 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aminata_Traore

Amina Traore in interview

Talents et competences president donc au tri des candidats africains a limmigration en France selon la loi Sarkozy dite de  limmigration choisie  qui a ete votee en mai 2006 par lAssemblee nationale francaise. Le ministre francais de lInterieur sest offert le luxe de venir nous le signifier, en Afrique, en invitant nos gouvernants a jouer le role de

geoliers de la  racaille  dont la France ne veut plus sur son sol. Au meme moment, du fait du verrouillage de laxe Maroc/Espagne, apres les evenements sanglants de Ceuta et Melilla, des candidats africains a lemigration clandestine, en majorite jeunes, qui tentent de passer par les iles Canaries meurent par centaines, dans lindifference generale, au large des cotes mauritaniennes et senegalaises. LEurope forteresse, dont la France est lune des chevilles ouvrieres, deploie, en ce moment, une veritable armada contre ces queteurs de passerelles en vue de les eloigner le plus loin possible de ses frontieres. Les oeuvres dart, qui sont aujourdhui a lhonneur au Musee du Quai Branly, appartiennent dabord et avant tout aux peuples desherites du Mali, du Benin, de la Guinee, du Niger, du Burkina-Faso, du Cameroun, du Congo. Elles constituent une part substantielle du patrimoine culturel et artistique de ces  sans visa  dont certains sont morts par balles a Ceuta et Melilla et des  sans papiers  qui sont quotidiennement traques au coeur de lEurope et, quand ils sont arretes, rendus, menottes aux poings a leurs pays dorigine. Dans ma  Lettre au President des Francais a propos de la Cote dIvoire et de lAfrique en general , je retiens le Musee du Quai Branly comme lune des expressions parfaites de ces contradictions, incoherences et paradoxes de la France dans ses rapports a lAfrique.

A lheure ou celui-ci ouvre ses portes au public, je continue de me demander jusquou iront les puissants de ce monde dans larrogance et le viol de notre imaginaire. Nous sommes invites, aujourdhui, a celebrer avec lancienne puissance coloniale une oeuvre architecturale, incontestablement belle, ainsi que notre propre decheance et la complaisance de ceux qui, acteurs politiques et institutionnels africains, estiment que nos biens culturels sont mieux dans les beaux edifices du Nord que sous nos propres cieux. Je conteste le fait que lidee

de creer un musee de cette importance puisse naitre, non pas dun examen rigoureux, critique et partage des rapports entre lEurope et lAfrique, lAsie, lAmerique et lOceanie dont les pieces sont originaires, mais de lamitie dun Chef dEtat avec un collectionneur doeuvre dart quil a rencontre un jour sur une plage de lile Maurice. Les trois cent mille

pieces que le Musee du Quai Branly abrite constituent un veritable tresor de guerre en raison du mode dacquisition de certaines dentre elles et le trafic dinfluence auquel celui-ci donne parfois lieu entre la France et les pays dont elles sont originaires. Je ne sais pas comment les transactions se sont operees du temps de Francois 1er, de Louis XIV et au XIXieme siecle pour les pieces les plus anciennes. Je sais, par contre, quen son temps, Catherine Trautman, a lepoque ministre de la culture de la France dont jetais lhomologue malienne, mavait demande dautoriser lachat pour le Musee du Quai Branly dune statuette de Tial appartenant a un collectionneur belge. De peur de participer au blanchiment dune oeuvre dart qui serait sortie frauduleusement de notre pays, jai propose que la France lachete (pour la coquette somme de deux cents millions de francs CFA), pour nous la restituer afin que nous puissions ensuite la lui preter. Je me suis entendue dire, au niveau du Comite dorientation dont jetais lun des membres que largent du contribuable francais ne pouvait pas etre utilise dans lacquisition dune piece qui reviendrait au Mali. Exclue a partir de ce moment de la negociation, jai appris par la suite que lEtat malien, qui na pas de compte a rendre a ses contribuables, a achete la piece en question en vue de la preter au Musee. Alors, que celebre-t-on aujourdhui ?

Sagit-il de la sanctuarisation de la passion que le President des Francais a en partage avec son ami disparu ainsi que le talent de larchitecte du Musee ou les droits culturels, economiques, politiques et sociaux des peuples dAfrique, dAsie, dAmerique et dOceanie ?

Le Musee du Quai Branly est bati, de mon point de vue, sur un profond et douloureux paradoxe a partir du moment ou la quasi totalite des Africains, des Amerindiens, des Aborigenes dAustralie, dont le talent et la creativite sont celebres, nen franchiront jamais le seuil compte tenu de la loi sur limmigration choisie. Il est vrai que des dispositions sont prises pour que nous puissions consulter les archives via lInternet. Nos oeuvres ont droit de cite la ou nous sommes, dans lensemble, interdits de sejour. A lintention de ceux qui voudraient voir le message politique derriere lesthetique, le dialogue des cultures derriere la beaute des oeuvres, je crains que lon soit loin du compte. Un masque africain sur la place de la Republique nest daucune utilite face a la honte et a lhumiliation subies par les Africains et les autres peuples pilles dans le cadre dune certaine cooperation au developpement. Bienvenue donc au Musee de linterpellation qui contribuera - je lespere - a edifier les opinions publiques francaise, africaine et mondiale sur lune des manieres dont lEurope continue de se servir et dasservir dautres peuples du monde tout en pretendant le contraire. Pour terminer je voudrais madresser, encore une fois, a ces oeuvres de lesprit qui sauront interceder aupres des opinions publiques pour nous.

 Vous nous manquez terriblement. Notre pays, le Mali et lAfrique tout entiere continuent de subir bien des bouleversements. Aux Dieux des Chretiens et des Musulmans qui vous ont conteste votre place dans nos c ?urs et vos fonctions dans nos societes sest ajoute le Dieu argent. Vous devez en savoir quelque chose au regard des transactions dont certaines nouvelles acquisitions de ce musee ont ete lobjet.. Il est le moteur du marche dit OElibre et OEconcurrentiel qui est suppose etre le paradis sur Terre alors quil nest que goufre pour lAfrique. Appauvris, desempares et manipules par des dirigeants convertis au dogme du marche, vos peuples sen prennent les uns aux autres, sentretuent ou fuient. Parfois, ils viennent buter contre le long mur de lindifference, dont Schengen. Nentendez-vous pas, de plus en plus, les lamentations de ceux et celles qui empruntent la voie terrestre, se perdre dans le Sahara ou se noyer dans les eaux de la Mediterranee ? Nentendez-vous point les cris de ces centaines de naufrages dont des femmes enceintes et des enfants en bas age ? Si oui, ne restez pas muettes, ne vous sentez pas impuissantes. Soyez la voix de vos peuples et temoignez pour eux. Rappelez a ceux qui vous veulent tant ici dans leurs musees et aux citoyens francais et europeens qui les visitent que lannulation totale et immediate de la dette exterieure de lAfrique est primordiale. Dites-leur surtout que libere de ce fardeau, du dogme du tout marche qui justifie la tutelle du FMI et de la Banque mondiale, le continent noir redressera la tete et lechine. 

Aminata TRAORE

Essayiste et ancienne Ministre

de la culture et du Tourisme du Mali

mardi 27 juin 2006.

Ewe Kente, Ghana/Togo, now in musee du Quai Branly, Paris, France.
12.06.2016 LISTEN

It seems to be taking people a while to realise that Paul Afoko never wanted to be Chairman of the NPP to promote its ideals, and secure a win for the Party in the upcoming 2016 elections. Since he descended upon the good people of the NPP, he has had nothing positive under his sleeve. His demeanour smacked of someone paid to do a dirty job to destroy the party. I mean, really, did he not realise that he was on a MISSION IMPOSSIBLE? The resilience of the NPP is unparalleled, otherwise with the endless machinations of the NDC and their callousness, the Party would have been history. Yet the elephant is forging onwards to victory.

How would one not suspect malice, when he has 24 hour protection accorded him by the National Security? On the 3rd of June or thereabouts, a meeting was held at the Gariba Lodge between Paul Afoko, Dr Abdul Nasiru Issahaku, Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Ibrahim Mahama, and other charlatans. Four Ghana-must-go bags laden with fifty cedi bundles of cash were hauled into the room, where the meeting was taking place. Paul Afoko parked his vehicle in the concourse of the hotel and so did Dr. Issahaku, from whose vehicle the money was lifted to the room where the meeting was about taking place. They sauntered to the reception and were guided to the room. Of course, they were minutes apart. A prominent partner to Paul Afoko was Mr Alhassan Samari from Garu Constituency.

After the meeting, two sacks of money were hauled into Paul Afoko's vehicle from where he headed out to an unknown location. On the following day, Saturday June 4, he proceeded to Sandema in the Upper East region where a meeting was held at Adakurik between him and other miscreants, including the constituency Chairman of the NPP, David Afoko the brother of Paul Afoko, the NDC incumbent Member of Parliament and PC, Hon James Agalga, and Mr Agoala, the NDC constituency Chairman. The small boys who were delegated with responsibilities of charlatanism were each given envelopes containing GHs100. We are not sure how much the higher ranking mobsters got so we cannot speculate.

Paul Afoko drove directly to Tamale after that, and returned to Sandema, subsequently, on two occasions, Sunday and Monday, June 5 and June 6, respectively.

Although the disgraced chairman, who was sacked for betrayal of the NPP, Mr Paul Afoko, is no longer an accepted member of the Party that he tried so impishly to destroy, he carries himself with authority, albeit disregarded. Plotting mayhem with the NDC against the NPP across the Northern and Upper East Regions is clear indication that he is on a paid mission to destroy the chances of the NPP that has consolidated much gained ground. We do not have reports of his movements in the other regions but we shall report on any such activities if and when we do receive information. But let him be told that his incendiary missions at various constituencies have been noticed and foiled.

I plead with the authorities to arrest him, too, on suspicion of having masterminded the death of Chairman Adams. There must be a link between him, his brothers David and Gregory, and others in the assassination of Chairman Adams. After all, it was his junior brother Gregory, an NDC member, who doused Adams with acid. The successful resolution of the case of Chairman Adams' demise rests with the authorities, if only they have a conscience that is overwhelming enough to drive their courage.

#PaulAfokoIsADisgrace #PaulAfokoIsAMole #PaulAfokoCannotSaveJohnMahama
Police at Odumase Krobo have gunned down one of five robbers who attempted to rob the Manya Krobo Rural bank at dawn on Sunday.

The robber was shot dead during a fierce gun battle with the police at the banks premises.

The other four robbers managed to escape.

A security man who was supposed to be at post at the time of the incident has been arrested. He was absent at the time of the robbery.

Police suspect he may have played a role in the robbery and have begun investigations.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
The President of the Ghana Bar Association Mr. Benson Nutsukpui has urged investors to adhere to the legal procedures of acquiring lands for their prospective business endeavors in the country.

According to him, going through the laid down procedures in acquiring lands in Ghana as investors will help safeguard them from future litigation which will impede their business activities.

Mr. Nutsukpui made this call when he interacted with members of the Italian Business Association of Ghana (IBAG) in Accra.

The open forum deliberations was part of a programmes line up slated for IBAGs general meeting which was aimed at briefing members of past and upcoming events of the association.

Mr. Nutsukpui stated that the issue of land title registration is a major problem in Ghana due to the nonexistence of properly structured measures to enable people to easily acquire land titles.

The Ghana Bar Association President expressed worry over government's failure to put in place measures to curb the prevailing difficulty in securing land titles which most foreigners face in their bid to acquire lands for business ventures.

These problems of non- availability of insurance for victims who acquire lands but latter end up in litigation, bureaucracy in the process of land registration process is hampering business growth, he said.

Mr. Nutsukpui further advised all investors to make enquiries at both the Lands Registry and Lands Commission to ascertain whether a desired land is registered or not.

I will encourage all investors to take the pain of embarking on a visit to the site for investigation by questioning the neighbours to authenticate the rightful owner of the land before effecting payments, he advised

Never pay money to one part of the family it should be made up of the principal family members and family head, he added.

On his part, the Vice President of the Italian Business Association of Ghana Nii Amaa Ollennu implored his members to acquire lands from the rightful source to avert paying to imposters.

He urged that IBAG will continue to support businesses which are directed at creating opportunities for the youth of Ghana to be gainfully employed as well as honour their responsibilities of paying taxes to the government.



By: Lawrence Segbefia/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
The Member of Parliament for the Ayawaso West Wogon constituency, Emmanuel Agyarko, says that the leaders lack the political will to solve the problem of floods in Accra.

He said this on Citi FM's political analysis program, The Big Issue.

According to Mr. Agyarko, I talk about political will and the desire of those in power to properly prioritise. Between August to December 2012, this country found money internally for the Conti project, yet we go out there and try to borrow four hundred million dollars to solve the drainage problems in Accra.

He added that the money that were put in developmental projects in which this country lost could have been used to fix the problem of the floods.

If part of the which went into rlg, SUBA and Zoomlion were applied, we wouldn't be where we are today.

On June 3, Ghanaians commemorated the first anniversary of the June 3, 2015 disaster and the mayor of Accra, Alfred Okoe Vanderpuije promised that his outfit was working on making sure that the capital would be safe from floods.

Barely a week after this promise, the capital got flooded again after a few hours of rain.

By: Jeffrey Owuraku Sarpong/citifmonline.com/Ghana

Follow @ojsarpong
Indian President, Pranab Mukherjee will pay an official visit to Ghana today, Sunday, 12, 2016.

The visit, part of a two-nation African tour, which will also take him to Cote d'Ivoire, will end on Tuesday.

While in Ghana, President Mukherjee will hold discussions with President John Dramani Mahama after which a number of agreements will be signed between Ghana and India.

President Mukherjee will also visit the University of Ghana, the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT and address a Business Forum.

He will also visit the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park and plant a tree at the Flagstaff House to signify the strong bond of friendship between India and Ghana.
Tripoli (AFP) - Forces allied with Libya's unity government are closing in on Islamic State group fighters in Sirte in a month-long operation aimed at ousting the jihadists from their North African stronghold.

Here is some background on Sirte and its fall to IS.

Strategic importance

Sirte is on the Mediterranean coast roughly half way between Libya's capital Tripoli in the west and Benghazi in the east.

A major port city, it lies just 350 kilometres (220 miles) from the Italian coast.

It is also a mere 150 kilometres west of Libya's main oil-producing area and export terminals.

Oil is a vital source of income for Libya, and several groups have fought to control its wells and pipelines since the fall of Moamer Kadhafi in 2011. The IS presence in Sirte had raised fears it would attempt to seize the fields to fund its North Africa operations.

Population

Sirte used to have around 120,000 residents, most of them in the city centre or spread along the coast.

All but around 30,000 have fled since IS took over in June last year, a spokesman for pro-government forces, Reda Issa, told AFP.

Most people in Sirte belong to three major tribes including the Kadhadfa tribe of Kadhafi.

Infrastructure

Sirte has a large port, an international airport and an important military base. It also hosts one of North Africa's largest conference venues, the Ouagadougou conference centre which IS militants have been using as a command centre.

Kadhafi era

The home town of the former dictator, Sirte had a privileged position in Libya during his four-decade rule, not least because many residents belonged to the Kadhadfa tribe.

Post-Kadhafi

Sirte suffered major damage during the 2011 uprising.

Kadhafi loyalists used the city as a base to attack rebels in both the west and the east.

The dictator himself fled there after Tripoli fell to rebels at the end of August 2011. After Sirte also fell, gunmen tracked him down and killed him.

Sirte paid the price for supporting the regime. Heavy fighting destroyed entire streets. Residents accuse post-Kadhafi authorities of marginalising them in revenge for the dictator's rule.

Jihadist takeover

IS announced on June 9 last year it had captured Sirte. It has used it as a rear base, training foreign fighters to carry out operations overseas.

It hung its flags along the main streets, forced people to pray five times a day and banned women from leaving home without a male chaperone.

The group ruled Sirte through fear, brutally punishing dissent.

In May, Human Rights Watch said IS had beheaded or shot at least 49 people in Sirte for alleged crimes including blasphemy, sorcery and spying.

Forces loyal to the UN-backed Government of National Accord have been closing in on IS in the city since the operation began in mid-May.

IS forces are holed up in a dense residential district near the city centre, suggesting that the battle has become a street fight that could devastate the city even further.
12.06.2016 LISTEN

Any organization, whether non-profit or for profit, whether small or large, whether a startup or a well- established and mature business, without a strategy it would drift away from its vision, mission and of course from its customers too. This is a follow- up from last weeks posting (www.modernghana.com/news/696284/strategy-for-startups-and-others-part-2.html) and it is focusing on Risk Management.

What is Risk management?

Risk Management is the process of identifying, quantifying, and managing the risks that an organization faces.

Simply put, Risk Management is the art and science of thinking about what could go wrong, and what should be done to mitigate those risks in a cost-effective manner.

Whether for-profit or not-profit, every organizations outcomes and results of any business activity are unpredictable / uncertain, always have an element of risk.

Typical Risks could be:

Strategic mistakes,

Financial errors or misfortunes,

Legal/ Regulatory violations & other Governance problems.

Operational failures, including technical ones

Financial failures,

Market changes & disruptions,

Human/ Personnel risks

PR disasters

Acts of God/ Natural disasters

.

Risk can be viewed as a statistical concept that can be measured and managed with statistical tool. Actually, everything on Wall Street works with that philosophy.

Most common StartUp Risks

Of course it is impossible for an organization to remove all risks; but it is important that the organization/ its Management Team fully do understand and manage the risks that they are willing to accept in the context of the overall corporate strategy. Although the Management Team is primarily responsible for Risk Management, the Board of Directors, the organizational Auditors (whether internal or external) and the general counsel should also play critical roles in Risk Management.

1. The Still Business Plan

It always amazes me to constantly meet founders who view it solely as a vehicle for funding. Its your Business Plan! You need to put the energy to write and then execute your organizational Handbook, because thats what your Business Plan essentially is. And it should be kept alive and constantly updated.

Quick Tip #1: Plan properly and for the right business environment!

2. Financial Forecasting

If you dont know your organizations expenses and financial obligations and if you can predict the Worst- , Normal- and Best Case Scenarios, maybe you shouldnt even be in business  even if you are running a non-profit organization.

And avoid passing the overview and responsibility of your financial spreadsheet to your accounting officer. You dont need a BA in Accounting or Finance to read and understand a spreadsheet and there is no excuse to loose oversight and control of it.

Quick Tip #2: Mind the Cash Flow!

If needed, hire a TAX Advisor.

3. Inadequate SWOT Analysis.

SWOT is a strategic tool to do Risk Mitigation  please refer to part 1 and 2 of this article to see some different views on SWOT analysis from a practitioners perspective.

Quick Tip #3: Make a Full Risk Inventory and Define all Contingencies.

4. Unclear Product or Service Definition.

A lot of founders especially ones with IT innovative solutions, they might have a solution but they are not clear as to what they are selling or providing as a business service and who are the actual customers or beneficiaries. Sure, they can say  usually in a very complex communication what their product or service is; but they have rarely put down the energy to clearly define what that product or service really is, communicate it in a way my grandmother can understand it, explaining simply the problems it solves, and even why is it worth investing in.

Your proper Business Plan will help you address and control that risk, enabling you to address a big enough market, the right market, the right risk in that market and of course the right opportunity within that market, at the correct point in time.

Quick Tip #4: Put Clarity in Defining your Product or Service.

5. Diversify Your Offerings

Plan to deliver a family of products or a full spectrum of services, so you you could gauge and benchmark your real market. Even if you have a great innovative product or service, if there is no demand, you will not be in business for a long time and you will never be ahead of competitors very long. Build a plan/ a roadmap of your product or service offerings that will place your organization in a position of been able to expand your product- or service- line and keep one step ahead of competitors.

Quick Tip #5: Built Diversity in your Product  or Service- RoadMap.

6. HR & Team Risks

You need to consider all of the following - partial list:

Hiring is done legally

Payroll runs properly & Legally

All employer contributions are paid timely and in the correct amounts

Retirement and & Benefits packages & processes are in order

You are hiring the right persons

Teams are formed optimally and are constantly motivated

Teams work together and not in isolation- basically your organization should be a network of Teams!

..

Quick Tip #6: Please dont try to save money by recruiting friends, college buddies, family members, or hiring only interns. Hire real professionals who address your organizational capability needs and hire them in the proper way.

Simply put: Recruit the best and provide incentives.

If needed, consider outsourcing your Hiring and HR process to the right partner. It takes time to set up great teams.

7. No Strategic Alliances

You are not alone in this World- so, make friends by finding the right strategic partners who will assist you in accelerating your organizational growth. Sure you want to steer full speed ahead and kill every single competitor in sight. But if you do that will partners, you leverage on their potential and strength and thus risks could become more predictable and shared by suddenly getting access to new customers, possible economies of scale, and shared resources.

Quick Tip #7: Find strategic alliances & other friends to help you reduce risks.

8. Lack of an active Helicopter View

This is so common with Technology StartUps; The founder is a tech guy/gal who puts all his/her energy in developing the product but forgers about every other single aspect of operations, or running the company, of executing the Business Plan. A greatest possible product developed, its possibly just a mere 10% of all effort and set of activities needed in running a company.

Quick Tip #8: Having a great product or service is NOT a strategy for running an organization.

9. Execution of UnMeasurable Business Processes.

All Plans and intentions and other paper- constructions are great but they mean nothing unless someone executes them. You need to understand and clearly define all the business flows associated with:

running your organization

the LifeCycle of your Product or Service Provisioning and Support.

And if you run something, unless you measure it, you will have no idea how good you are at it and how to improve it.

Quick Tip #9a: Measure the effectiveness of ALL your Business Processes.

Quick Tip #9b: Set up a Lean Organization (its not really about 6 sigma)

10. Growing the Wrong Way Plans.

Everybody seems to think that VCs (Venture Capitalists) are the answer to financing and growth. There are so many Case Studies why this is the wrong way of thinking. I will leave it up to the reader to google it and get further information.

Having money/ financing doe snot reduce your risks.

Quick Tip #10: You need to PLAN for organic and sustainable growth.

11. No Plans for Business Continuity

This is a topic on its own and one very close to my heart and experiences. I plan to write a full article on it in the next few weeks.

Quick Tip #11: Develop a Business Continuity Plan.

Are there Risk Management Standards?

Several Risk Management Standards have been developed worldwide to help organizations establish a common view on risk frameworks, processes and practice.

This is just a sample list of the most common Risk Standards:

ISO 31000  Risk Management Principles and Guidelines

ISO/IEC 31010- Risk Management - Risk Assessment Techniques

COSO 2004 - Enterprise Risk Management - Integrated Framework

OCEG Red Book 2.0: 2009 - a Governance, Risk and Compliance Capability Model

By the way, you might want (strongly suggested) to google M_o_R. Take my word on it, please.

In Conclusion

A Business Strategy is something that needs to be supported by a whole set of Strategic Planning activities in also any business process/ activity area. And like everything you plan, you need to enable its execution and you need to monitor its success. Define and use KPIs wisely.

Avoid relaxing & letting your guards down because you got indeed a great strategy. Xerox had a great strategy which made them the worldwide dominant company on photocopiers, but they did not adjust it when that little camera company entered their space; now Canon dominates the photocopier market.

Does anyone even remember that huge and grant company called Ashton-Tate, the developers of dBase? In the 80s & 90s, all database development and administration jobs in every part of the World, were demanding dBase skills Dont let this happen to your organization too.

So, all your Strategies along with Strategic Planning and Execution activities, should be in a constant cycle or re-evaluation, monitoring and improvement and add value to your organization.

Thank you,

Spiros

About the Author: Spiros Tsaltas, a Top-Tier Management Consultant and a former University Professor (RSM MBA, CUNY, etc), is a seasoned Technology & Operations Executive. Spiros has hands-on experience on setting up all sorts of Startups both in the US and in Europe. He is an active transformational leader and strategist with extensive experience on Boards of Advisors & Boards of Directors. He is currently assisting a couple of Ghanaian companies with the setup of their Boards.

Spiros welcomes any feedback/ comments/ remarks/ suggestions via your email message to [email protected]

 2016 Spiros Tsaltas
Almost a week after their escape from prison in Tumu, two suspected armed robbers have been re-arrested.

The arrest follows a collaborative effort between the Upper West police and their colleagues in Burkina Faso.

The two, Abdulai Alhassan and Faisal Mohammed were facing charges of murder and robbery respectively but managed to escape from police custody while on remand.

According to the Deputy Upper West Regional Police Commander, Dr Sayibu Gariba, the two suspects broke the ceiling of the cell and bolted around 5 a.m. last Wednesday.

Their escape was detected during routine checks by the two policemen on duty.

The Upper West police declared a hunt for the suspects.

Dr. Seidu Garibah, explained to Joy News the circumstances under which the suspects were rearrested.

"We did comb the whole of Northern Region, especially Upper West, Northern and Upper East, we didn't have any feedback.

"So our option was to look into Burkina Faso which is actually very close and we share border with.

"And considering the good relationship between the security services of Ghana and that of Burkina Faso we were able to contact the authorities in Burkina Faso and we were able to track the two.

"With the assistance of the Burkinabe security force we were able to re-arrest them and we have taken them into custody," he narrated.

He said the suspects have been taken back into custody at the Wa cells.

Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com
The Ashanti Regional Minister is urging Muslim youth to live above reproach and complement peace before during and after this years elections.

Alexander Ackon told Luv News the Muslim community is a constituency under the governance of the country and should play a major role in the resolution of conflicts.

He called for introspection during the fasting period and urged the youth to consolidate peace efforts before, during and after the elections and urged them to invest in education to become professionals in their own right.

Schooling should be important for them. They should enroll in school and become professionals in their own right. They should live good lives worthy of emulation. Election time everybody should operate peacefully for election to go on peacefully.

Regional Chief Imam, Sheik Abdul Mumin Haroun noted the Muslim community does not desire any form of conflict, praying for any atrocity to be quenched.

We do not want any conflict to emanate from here, so we pray that God will ward off such things. God should sustain the peace we are enjoying.

Mr. John Alexander Ackon donated bags of sugar and Cartons of Lipton tea towards the Muslim fasting.
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West Texans Mike Rooster McConaughey and Wayne Butch Gilliam, stars of CNBCs West Texas Investors Club, spoke recently with the Reporter-Telegram about doing business in the Permian Basin and what it means to be a success. But they also answered questions closer to home, such as where to get the best barbecue in Midland, what kind of boots they wear and even the sometimes-testy topic of cars.

MRT: What was the first car you bought with your own money?

BG: A 1966 Corvette. I wish I had it, but I got rid of it. Man, and I felt good (having it). I paid $2,400 for it, and I really felt good about that car. It was the first car I could drive myself to work with because Mother used to drive me to work because, first of all, I wasnt old enough to drive, and I felt good about that car. There was nothing like it. I bought in 1972, when I was 16.

RM: By god, my dad, he was just notorious for finding me good deals. I was 13 years old, and some hippie shot a rod right through the doggone engine of a Triumph TR3 1959. He walked up to me and said, Give me $75, boy, I just bought you a car. And I got that damn car, and I worked on that car forever and ever. I put everything there was into that car. Metallic gray and everything. I mean, a brand new windshield  it broke the next day.

I think every dime I had I put into that car. It was 1967 when I got it, and in 1972, I sold it to a guy, and he blew that son of a b up, and he only made it 60 miles. From that day since, I have no respect for a vehicle whatsoever. I could care less. Theyre nothing but a tool to me anymore, and its always been that way. ... I could go on forever about these god dang cars. I hate them.

MRT: Rooster, whats your favorite brand of cigar?

RM: Portofino Macanudo cigars. I just chew them.

MRT: Butch, whats the most expensive pair of boots you own?

BG: They're a pair of Littles Boots. Theyre tall-top boots, and theyre flamed from the toe all the way to the top.

I remember I was somewhere sometime and someone stepped on my boots, and I said, Hey, man, watch out for my boots! I said, Them son of a b are $1,500. He said, I wouldnt pay $1,500, and I said, Each! Each! Oh, OK, man, Im sorry.

Theyre the coolest-looking boots. I got them 10 years ago. I hardly ever wear them, but everyone that knows me knows that I wear a boot most of the time thats white with green designs on it. I wear it on the show this year, and Ive worn those most of my life, and Ive worn about six pairs of them, and theyre about $2,000 a pair. When I wear them, I wear them out in the slop yard, in the machine shop, anywhere. So, Im pretty hard on boots.

MRT: Where is the best place to get barbecue in the Permian Basin?

BG: Oh, come on, everybody knows that  KDs.

RM: Look at the line over there! When oils $29 a barrel, theyre lined up over there! Some people drink when theyre going broke, and some people go to lunch over there, god dang it, at 11 a.m.!

BG: People eat to drown their sorrows.

MRT: What can we expect in the second season?

BG: Youre going to see a lot of emotion.

RM: They know us. Were at a bit of a disadvantage because they already know us a little bit. Theyve already got their trust in us, and it becomes more emotional. Its gotten more personal, which is good, but Ill say that its harder. You hate to tell them no. Theyve already sort of bonded with you in a way, so its just a new deal, I can tell you that.

BG: Youre going to see some emotion. These people, so many of them, are very good people, and lot of them made a good attempt to do it the right way, but we live in a world today where theres a lot of predators out there. They see someone vulnerable, and theyll just take advantage of them. Some of these folks that are coming on the show have been taken advantage of, and they kind of want a big-brother figure in their lives.

Theyre good people, its a good group, its fun, its real, and we hope that any average people can connect with and identify with because Rooster and I, were as average as they come. Were everyday average folks. We dont take nothing when you go but the good and bad things that youve done in your life.

Money is just something thats a byproduct of the journey. We just want to connect with average folks, because thats just what we are.

RM: If Butch and I can make it, anybody can.

***

Catch Rooster & Butch on Season 2 of West Texas Investors Club at 9 p.m. Tuesdays on CNBC.

Like Trevor on Facebook and follow him on Twitter at @HowdyHawes.
Oil investors are buying contracts that will only pay out if crude rises well above $100 a barrel over the next four years  a clear sign some believe todays bust is sowing the seeds of the next boom.

The options deals, which brokers said bear the hallmarks of trades made by hedge funds, appear to be based on the belief that current low prices will generate a supply crunch as oil companies cut billions of dollars in spending on developing fields. The International Energy Agency forecasts that non-OPEC supply will suffer its biggest decline in more than two decades this year.

The market faces a supply crunch in the next 24 months, said Francisco Blanch, head of commodities research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York. Some hedge funds are betting that oil prices will need to rise sharply to bring demand down again  thats why they are buying deep out-of-the-money call options.

Over the last month, investors have bought call options  giving the right to buy at a predetermined price and time  for late 2018, 2019 and 2020 at strike prices of $80, $100 and $110 a barrel, according to data from the New York Mercantile Exchange and the U.S. Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.

Even before the most recent flurry, some investors had already built super-bullish positions. The largest number of outstanding contracts  or open interest  across both bullish and bearish options contracts for December 2018 is for calls at $125 a barrel. For December 2020, its for $150 calls.

Earlier this month, one investor bought more than 4 million barrels worth of call options at $110 and $80 a barrel for 2019 and 2020 in several transactions. In addition, another 800,000 barrels worth of $60 a barrel call also changed hands. The deals are public because of new regulations introduced in the U.S. by the Dodd-Frank Act. The disclosures dont reveal the final buyer.

Funds making the trades arent necessarily expecting prices to jump as high as $100 to $150 a barrel, as the value of their call options will increase even if prices rise far less. These kind of options speculators are buying are often seen as lottery tickets because of they offer an outside chance of very large returns.

The options deals suggest sentiment is starting to shift from worry about oversupply to concern about shortages as demand begins to outstrip production  the traditional boom and bust commodities cycle.

Large spending cuts on the back of low oil prices will lead to the demand and supply gap widening from 2018 onwards, if not earlier, Abhishek Deshpande, oil analyst at Natixis SA in London, said. This is likely to push oil prices up as early as 2017, he added.

There are also reasons to be skeptical that this years rally from less than $30 in January to more than $50 today will be sustained. Production outages in Canada and elsewhere will probably prove temporary, U.S. shale producers may bring fields back on line as prices rise and global stockpiles remain well above historical averages.

Last year, some investors took the opposite bet, buying large amounts of bearish put options that would only pay if prices plunged below $30 a barrel. When West Texas Intermediate oil briefly fell in February to a 12-year low of $26.05 a barrel, the value of those options surged and speculators cashed in.
The difficulty of deconstructing Donald Trumps views on energy can be boiled down to the case of the dead ducks.

About six minutes into a May 26 energy address he gave in North Dakota, Trump condemned the Environmental Protection Agencys use of totalitarian taxes to force the states energy companies to pay multibillion-dollar fines before a penalty is even confirmed, which is actually rather hard to believe.

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against seven companies for the death of 28 birds while the administration fast-tracked wind projects that kill more than a million birds a year - far more than a million birds, I have to tell you, far more, he said.

There are good reasons Trump may think the situation is hard to believe: It isnt entirely true.

Those two statements contain two errors and one questionable assertion. Trump named the wrong agency, inflated the amount of the fine at least 133,333 times over and used the highest end of estimates about the number of bird deaths from wind turbines. Moreover, a federal judge tossed the duck case out of court in early 2012. No fine was paid.

How did this mashup happen? It was a product of the way Trump gets and absorbs advice. In this case, as in others, he relied on the contentions of other tycoons and then weaved them into his own mixture of ideas, anecdotes and figures. (Trumps campaign did not reply to a request for comment.)

The dead duck story starts with oil billionaire Harold Hamm, whom Donald Trump has hailed as the king of energy and who helped introduce Trump at the North Dakota event at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference. The youngest of 13 children of an Oklahoma sharecropper, Hamm, 70, made much of his fortune in North Dakotas Bakken shale oil region. He is the chief executive of Continental Resources and owns $12 billion of the companys stock.

Trump said that Hamm has been amazing right from the beginning in his assessment of the market - and may have been on more magazine covers than the presumptive Republican nominee himself.

Hamm has been telling the story about dead ducks for years. In 2011, the U.S. attorney in North Dakota brought criminal misdemeanor charges against seven oil companies, including Hamms, for failing to prevent 28 migratory birds, mostly ducks, from dying in the companies waste ponds. (In Continentals case, the feathered victim was a Says phoebe, a type of rusty-bellied flycatcher.) The companies faced maximum fines of $15,000 per bird.

Rather than try to settle the case, Hamm decided to fight the charges.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, part of the Interior Department, said the oil-waste pits in question were supposed to be fenced and covered with nets to minimize bird deaths. The U.S. attorney said at the time that all seven companies, including Hamms, had been cited for similar violations without taking action. With the rate of shale oil drilling soaring, the state was considering whether to ban the waste pits and insist that the companies recycle liquid drilling waste.

But U.S. District Judge Daniel L. Hovland, a President George W. Bush appointee, in 2012 dismissed the governments case, declaring that oil drilling was a legal, commercially-useful activity that had resulted in purely accidental bird deaths and that there was nothing criminal about it. He said charges of criminal taking under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act should be directed at hunters and poachers.

It was a victory for Hamm, who later that year dabbled in politics. He was on an energy advisory committee for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, hosted a Romney fundraiser and donated $985,000 to Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting Romney. Hamm did not comment for this article, but a company spokesman said she thinks that he and Trump met for the first time that year.

---

Other Trump positions in the North Dakota speech mirrored Hamms views, such as giving oil drillers greater access to federal lands and shelving protections for endangered species that lie in the path of drilling.

Hamms overarching vision appears to fit neatly with Trumps pledge to make America great again. In an interview in 2012, Hamm said there were two views of oil in the United States: one that oil and gas are scarce, and the other that they are abundant. He put himself in the latter camp.

Yet Hamm, like Trump, may be relying on overly optimistic numbers. In the 2012 interview, Hamm said he thought that U.S. Geological Survey estimates of U.S. shale oil reserves were wrong and that the Bakken field alone held 24 billion barrels, seven times the USGS reckoning at that time. The following year, the USGS approximately doubled its estimate to 3.65 billion barrels, still about a seventh of Hamms assessment.

Trump, too, used inflated numbers last month. He said the United States has 1.5 times as much oil as the combined proven resources of all OPEC countries. Yet according to the federal Energy Information Administration, the United States had proven oil reserves of 39.9 billion barrels as of Dec. 31, 2014. Saudi Arabia has proven reserves of about 268 billion barrels, and four other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries have greater reserves than the United States.

Buoyed by these numbers, Trump promised complete American energy independence, a goal that has eluded presidents since the Arab oil embargo of 1973. The United States imports about half the oil it needs.

The biggest source of U.S. imports is Canada. Trump said that he, unlike President Barack Obama, would approve a construction permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would secure nearly 800,000 barrels a day of crude-oil supplies from Albertas oil sands.

Trump said the project would create 42,000 jobs, a figure commonly cited by oil industry groups. In fact, according to pipeline owner TransCanadas original estimates, the project would create 6,500 direct construction jobs over two years and 7,000 indirect supply-chain jobs. After construction, the pipeline would require fewer than 100 people to monitor pumping stations.

Trump also said he would use his bargaining skills to persuade TransCanada, which has filed suit over Obamas rejection of a construction permit, to give the American people a significant piece of the profits from the pipeline.

TransCanada spokesman James Millar said in an email to The Washington Post that the pipeline wasnt a matter for U.S. government ownership. He said it was a business deal between American and Canadian companies and it is those U.S. firms who have negotiated contracts with us to either ship their oil to U.S. refineries or refineries who want to access American and Canadian crude through KXL to process it.

Millar said that they are profiting from this business deal, and those profits benefit U.S. workers and the American economy. The U.S. governments role is that of a regulator.

---

In addition to Hamm, Trump has talked about energy policy with Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee who has been a blunt critic of Obama. A former member of North Dakotas Public Service Commission, he was elected as the states sole House member in 2012.

Cramer has joined other lawmakers in an amicus brief in the case seeking to overturn the Obama administrations Clean Power Plan to reduce greenhouse gases. He has denounced Obamas war on coal that seeks to put all coal mines out of business and said on his website that when this administration isnt creating solutions in search of problems, it is apparently destroying private industry solely for political objectives.

He supported the lifting of export restrictions on crude oil, giving North Dakota producers badly needed access to foreign markets where they can get higher prices.

Cramer, who declined to comment for this article, also has criticized Obamas proposal to hand an additional $12 million to the Justice Departments environment and natural resources division.

The President should not regulate and litigate just because he cannot legislate, Cramer said in a news release on his website. The Congress will not allow him to borrow millions so the federal government can lawyer up in order to push an anti-jobs, extreme environmental agenda.

Trump seems to be listening. He pledged in his first 100 days to rescind job-destroying Obama executive actions on the environment.

In a Trump administration, political activists with extreme agendas will no longer write the rules, he declared in his energy address. Instead, we will work with conservationists whose only agenda is protecting nature.
PBPA names VP, membership and communications

The Permian Basin Petroleum Association has appointed Brianne Adkins vice president for membership and communications. She has served the PBPA as director for member relations since 2013.

In her new elevated role, Adkins will continue to oversee all aspects of member recruitment, relations and retention. She will also continue her efforts in coordination of the PBPA's nine active policy committees. Additionally, she will assume oversight of all communications, digital media, and event coordination for the association.

WTGS schedules monthly luncheon

Members of the West Texas Geological Society will meet June 14 in the upstairs ballroom at Midland Country Club beginning at 11:30 a.m.

Douglas Waples, president of Sirius Exploration Geochemistry, will present New Ideas on How to Define Thermal Maturity; Two New Thermal Indicators to Quantify Maturity; and Applications in the Permian Basin.

Cost is $20 with reservation, $30 at the door, lunch included. Reservations can be made by calling 683-1573 or by email at wtgs@wtgs.org. Online registration is also available by going to www.wtgs.org and clicking on the Events tab.

SIPES speaker to discuss nanoparticles and well stimulation

The Midland chapter, Society of Independent Professional Earth Scientists (SIPES) will meet June 15 in the upstairs ballroom at Midland Country Club beginning with a reception at 11:15 a.m.

Dr. David Holcomb, president of Pentagon Technical Service, Inc. an oil and gas related consulting company based in Golden, Colorado, will discuss well stimulation and enhanced long-term production through the use of nanoparticles to aid in penetrating complex fracture networks.

There is no charge for members, a $20 cost for guests.

Wood Group Mustang to partner with Grupo Diavaz in Mexico

By Jordan Blum

Houston Chronicle

Houston-based Wood Group Mustang is partnering with Mexico City-based oil infrastructure company Grupo Diavaz, the companies said.

The goal of the joint venture, to be called Mustang Diavaz, is to build one of the nations strongest energy engineering and construction firms as Mexico opens up its energy markets to international companies.

Wood Group Mustang CEO Michele McNichol said the venture includes opening an engineering training and employment hub in Mexico City.

Grupo Diavazs knowledge of the Mexican oil and gas industry combined with Wood Group Mustangs global engineering experience will enable Mustang Diavaz to provide unmatched expertise to companies operating in Mexico, McNichol said in a statement.

Grupo Diavaz is Mexicos second-largest energy company after state-owned Pemex, which had held a monopoly for many decades.

Wood Group Mustang is a subsidiary of the larger Wood Group based in the United Kingdom.

Plains All American Pipeline project gets OK in North Dakota

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP)  North Dakota regulators have approved a short crude oil pipeline project in Mountrail County.

The Bismarck Tribune reports that the 10-mile pipeline will be able to move up to 1 million gallons per day at full capacity. Cost is estimated at $9 million.

Officials with Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline LP say the project should be completed this summer. It will begin at the companys Robinson Lake facility and end at the Van Hook rail facility southeast of New Town.

Public Service Commission chairwoman Julie Fedorchak says the project experienced delays because of its proximity to a U.S. Air Force missile silo.

The pipeline will be equipped with a leak detection system and be monitored at all times from a site in Houston.
This past school year meant a break with tradition for Midland ISDs pre-kindergarten program. It also meant an increased footprint by more than 150 students and word of a $500,000-plus grant.

Since choosing to relinquish the Head Start grant last summer, MISDs pre-kindergarten enrollment increased to 769. This meant that there were 160 more students enrolled in pre-K in February than the same month the previous school year.

Enrollment hovers close to the maximum of 792 pre-K students. Della Frye, director of early childhood education for MISD, considers that a good thing. The district broke with Head Start because of the programs enrollment caps.

For us to be that close to being completely maxed out and that far over the number of kids we served the year before, I just thought that was exceptional for us, Frye said. It was so exciting.

The Head Start grant money now goes to Community Development Institute instead, with MISD serving 4-year-olds and CDI serving 3-year-olds, according to previous Reporter-Telegram reports.

The increase meant that the cap for pre-K classes changed from 18 children to the more standard district size of 22, which Frye said was the biggest change for teachers and teaching assistants.

Besides greater numbers, students are also scoring well. According to a memo from Frye, In October 2015, only 26 percent of PreK students met the benchmark for recognizing letters and by May 82 percent met the benchmark. In October, only 8 percent of PreK students met the counting benchmark and by the end of the year 74 percent met the benchmark.

The second year since breaking with Head Start will have teachers with more tools in their belts. The Texas Education Agency granted MISD its High Quality Pre-Kindergarten Grant, an amount totaling about $517,000.

The grant should have been used for this past school year as well as 2016-17, but the timing of state lawmakers passing legislation concerning the grants delayed MISD receiving the funds.

Its to improve quality, so itll be used to pay for training for teachers, material for classrooms, even family engagement activities, Frye said. Itll help us kick it up that next notch.

The funding will be used in a two-pronged approach. The first will be training for instructors on how to help children with socio-emotional needs. Pre-kindergarten usually is the first time a child is around 21 other children all day and that can lead to emotional troubles that can interfere with learning abilities, Frye said.

We teach them what to do if they have a problem, like if someone has a crayon they want, and how to use their words to get it instead of maybe hitting or reacting in other ways, Frye said. We teach all of those socio-emotional things that theyre going to need to learn and work independently in kindergarten and first grade.

The second approach will be on the academic side. Students learn letters, sounds of letters, counting and patterns in pre-K, and nine of the 36 pre-K classrooms are bilingual. Some students speak a language other than English and Spanish, Frye said.

The nice thing about dealing with other languages is that, all 4-year-olds are learning language, even the ones whose parents speak English -- theyre learning vocabulary and sentence structure, she said. So in pre-K, a lot of the same things youre doing with English-speaking children, youre doing with non-English speaking as well.

Subsequent amounts of funding are not yet known, but its unlikely to be in the $500,000 range. Typical amounts from TEA are about $250,000, Frye said.

Were going to use (the funds) as best we can by training our teachers and giving them skills they need to use year after year after year, Frye said.

Enrollment for pre-K started April 4. Since then, 600 applicants have been accepted, and Frye expects enrollment to approach the 792 cap with additional applications as it gets closer to the start of school. Pre-K students must be 4 years old by Sept. 1 according to state law, Frye said.

We hope our pre-Ks are top of the pack in kindergarten, Frye said. We hope theyre the leaders in that group.

Follow Cassie on Twitter at @Cassie_Burton51
While the Supreme Court considers whether or not to uphold the restrictions set by House Bill 2 in the case Whole Womans Health v. Hellerstedt, West Texas women are already feeling the impact of the bill which has left most of the clinics that perform abortions, as well as other womens health services, in Texas closed. The final decision is expected sometime this month.

In 2011, the Texas Legislature severely cut funding to groups that provided education about abortion and/or provided abortion service. By far, the organization most impacted by this law was Planned Parenthood, whose primary funding source was from the state, even if its centers did not perform surgical or medical abortions. Prior to the funding cuts, Planned Parenthood was a primary family planning provider for low-income, uninsured women in Texas.

The main reason we were not able to continue providing family planning care was due to the state pretty much blocking all Planned Parenthoods of West Texas from being part of the state family planning program, said Carla Holeva, CEO of the Midland Planned Parenthood the year it shut down. You werent able to apply for funding for that if you had any connection of any kind to abortion care or even referring for it. We were very reliant on that funding, that was how we got paid for services provided and when the state blocked our agency from being able to access that service, whatre you gonna do at that point? So thats what really closed the Planned Parenthood.

Midland and Odessas Planned Parenthood of West Texas clinics had served between 10,000 to 15,000 women a year across the Permian Basin for family planning services such as annual exams, pap smears, breast exams, STD testing, birth control pills and other family planning services, said former CEO Karen Hildebrand, who served from 1991 to 2012. Abortion services accounted for a fraction of that -- about 1,200 a year across the Basin, Hildebrand said.

We were the main family planning center for Midland, Odessa and smaller West Texas towns, said Hildebrand. It was for women who didnt have the money to go to a private doctor, or werent eligible for Medicaid -- which is only a small percentage of the population -- and didnt have insurance. In the state of Texas, its easier to qualify for Medicaid if youre pregnant. There are few options for low-income, uninsured women otherwise.

When Midlands Planned Parenthood closed in 2013, local providers scrambled to pick up the slack. Texas Tech University and Midland County Health Services received most of the patients who previously utilized the local Planned Parenthoods services.

Midland Community Healthcare Services, now the main provider for Midlanders with limited resources, inherited about 6,000 of Planned Parenthoods patient charts, said Michael Austin, Director of MCHS.

As a federally qualified health care provider, we work with people who dont have insurance, Austin said. We try to tap into what state grants are out there, but basically the state has eliminated or severely messed up a lot of their womens health programs. Its a horrible Catch-22. There are women that need these services but cant afford them and we see as many as we can, but the state program to help these folks along has basically evaporated. So Im afraid there are probably a lot of folks flying under the radar who need care and arent getting it.

When the 2011 cuts came, Texas rolled out a program to support the low-income, uninsured populations in the form of the Womens Health Program (which Planned Parenthood actually helped design, said Holeva).

At the end of 2012, the WHP lost its federal funding because of the states decision to block abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood, from participating in the program. It became the Texas Womens Health Program in 2013 with its own state-funded Medicaid-like addition, according to a report by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

The program provides one family planning exam each year and follow-up family planning visits related to the method of birth control. In 2015, there were just 273 Midland County women enrolled in the program, according to data from the HHSC.

There were 188,245 Texas women enrolled in the TWHP in Fiscal Year 2013. The total unduplicated number of enrolled women in the WHP Fiscal Year 2011 was 207,041, a reduction of about 9 percent in the total number of enrolled women, according to the HHSC.

Providing preventive services to low-income women saves taxpayer money primarily by helping women avoid unplanned pregnanc, and avoiding the Medicaid costs for pregnancy, birth and infant health care.

For example, contraception, family visits and STD testing save American taxpayers $15.8 billion and prevent 760,000 abortions each year, according to a 2014 analysis in the Milbank Quarterly, a peer-reviewed health and health policy journal.

Though MCHS is part of the Texas Womens Health Program, if anything, the programs put in by the state in recent years have limited their ability to serve low-income populations even more, said Austin.

Some of the other more targeted (family planning) funding programs (through state-funded resources) have become so convolutedly complex that we either cant apply for them or if we do, theyre only going to Austin or San Antonio, the big population centers, even though there is a tremendous need in this area, Austin said. Were not gonna turn them away. Well see if we can find them a program, get them on Medicaid, do something to offset the cost.

At any given time, MCHS is responsible for about 25 to 30 percent of the births in Midland -- primarily low-income to no-income women living here, Austin said.

Without Planned Parenthood, there are still a number of female health care and consultation options in Midland. The Life Center is one of the main free ones, a faith-based clinic that provides pregnancy tests, HIV/STD vouchers and referrals to the Midland Health Department, ultrasounds, prenatal classes, parenting education, consultations with an RN, adoption information and referrals for clinics that provide annual exams.

They often refer to the Midland Community Healthcare Services, which provides OBGYN services, various types of birth control and other preventative family planning services, annual exams and has prices that operate on a sliding scale. Other than that, The Life Center provides a list of local OBGYNs to clients, who may or may not take women on Medicaid or the TWHP.

The Midland Health Center provides HIV testing and STD testing for syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia at limited times throughout the week, which can become an issue for confidentiality of services received. Texas Tech University of Health Sciences, which also absorbed a lot of former Planned Parenthood clients, provides services on a sliding scales.

We only have one full-time OB/GYN and one mid-level nurse practitioner with a specialization in womens health and thats it, Austin went on. We hired another OBGYN so well have some more capacity there, but lets face it, (Planned Parenthood) was running two full-time clinics here in the area (Midland and Odessa) and when it goes out of circulation, man, thats a lot for basically one doc to absorb. So we can only do so much.

House Bill 2 has been and will continue to be debated, but what cant be debated is that closing clinics has impacted womens health care.

Even though we dont have a lot of funding, a lot of resources, we have a really good partnership with Midland Memorial Hospital and we have excellent eligibility in patient referral, patient care coordinators, Austin said. We try to work with the patient to get them the care they need, but its been an uphill battle the past couple years.
Hours after approximately 50 people were killed at a Florida LGBT nightclub in what federal officials are investigating as an act of terrorism, the lieutenant governor of Texas is receiving backlash for tweeting a verse from the Bible.

At precisely 7 a.m. Sunday Dan Patrick tweeted a photo with the words of Galatians 6:7. The verse reads, "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows."
___ "Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love." Pulse Orlando on its Facebook page.

___

"I was thinking, 'Are you kidding me?' So I just dropped down. I just said, 'Please, please, please, I want to make it out.' And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood." Christopher Hansen, who was in the VIP lounge when he heard gunshots.

___

"This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as domestic terror incident." Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings.

___

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, families and all those affected by this horrific tragedy. We are a strong and resilient state and we will devote every resource available to assist with the shooting in Orlando." Gov. Rick Scott.

___

"We are heartbroken and angry that senseless violence has once again destroyed lives in our state and in our country. Gay clubs hold a significant place in LGBTQ history. They were often the only safe gathering place and this horrific act strikes directly at our sense of safety." Equality Florida.

___

"Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act." Tweet from Hillary Clinton, Democratic presidential candidate.

___

French President Francois Hollande "condemns with horror" the mass killing in Florida and "expresses the full support of France and the French with America's authorities and its people in this difficult time." Statement from Hollande's office.

___

"We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured. The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence." Rasha Mubarak, Orlando regional coordinator for Florida's chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
"If it requires removing all cabinet ...
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President Barack Obama addressed the nation about the deadly shooting in Orlando Sunday afternoon.

President Obama talked to Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and said that whatever resources the city needed would be made available from the federal government.

During his address, Obama praised the work and responsiveness of law enforcement during the terrible attack. The president, once again, touched on U.S. gun laws, saying today's shooting was a reminder of how easy it is for some people to get a gun.

The Office of the Press Secretary also released a proclamation from the White House, ordering all flags flown at half-staff until June 16 for victims of the shooting.

While the investigation was taking shape, the apparent Democratic and Republican presidential candidates swiftly responded to the shooting online.

Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump offered prayers to the victims. Trump then pivoted, tweeting to his followers, quote:

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Trump later reiterated his position on banning Muslims from entering the country.

In reaction to the shooting, Hillary Clinton and President Obama postponed their first joint campaign appearance, which was scheduled for Wednesday. And Clinton on Twitter called for tougher gun control laws.

"We need to keep guns like the ones used last night out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals." Hillary on the FL attack  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

A sentiment President Obama echoed.

This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub," he said. "And we have to decide if thats the kind of country we want to be."
Following the mass shooting at a Orlando nightclub, OneBlood had issued an urgent call for blood donations, but now it states that it is at full capacity.

OneBlood had asked for all eligible O negative, O positive and AB donors to give. But in a press release to the public, OneBlood stated that the blood center is at full capacity, but is asking donors to help over the next couple of days to help replenish the blood supply.

After issuing an urgent call for blood donations, hundreds of people lined up at OneBlood centers across Orlando.

Nicole Santall said she worked at Pulse and says after hearing some of her friends were shot, she decided to support them by donating blood.

"This community is my family and for my friends, bartenders, employees, managers of the club- even the DJ. Everyone that was there- its devastating, she said.

Santall was one of the hundreds of people who waited in line at OneBlood's headquarters on Commodity Circle.

We visited several sites where OneBlood officials say the response was tremendous. People even dropped off food, drinks, and suntan lotion for those waiting in line.

For Santall, it's something she said she had to do.

"I cant believe this happened, she said, so Im here to support my friends and my family."

You can call 1-888-936-6283 to find a center near you.

You can also visit the OneBlood website at www.oneblood.org/donate-now and put in your zip code to find a donation center.

OneBlood also issued a release about false reports about blood donor eligibility.

There are false reports circulating that some FDA rules were being lifted regarding blood donation and this is simply not true. The blood center is mandated to follow all guidelines for blood donation at all times, the OneBlood release stated.

The OneBlood website has been experiencing outages due to overwhelming response. Officials say they've been working on the issue.

Below is a list of donation centers in the area that are OPEN. For all other locations, please call the number above.



DONATION CENTERS

LAKE COUNTY



Anytime Fitness of Clermont- Bloodmobile

2570 E Hwy 50

Clermont, FL 34711



Tavares Donor Center

3195 Waterman Way

Tavares, FL 32778

ORANGE COUNTY



Orlando- Orange Avenue

2311 North Orange Avenue

Orlando, FL 32804



Orlando West Michigan Donor Center

345 W Michigan Street, Ste. 106

Orlando, FL 32806



Winter Park Donor Center

2242 Aloma Ave

Winter Park, FL 32792



MIX 105.1- Bloodmobile

1800 Penbrook Drive

Orlando, FL 32810



Orlando Main Donor Center

8669 Commodity Circle

Orlando, FL 32819



Golds Gym- Bloodmobile

7733 Turkey Lake Rd.

Orlando, FL 32819



University of Central Florida- Bloodmobile

12715 Pegasus Drive

Orlando, FL 32816



Apopka Donor Center

131 N Park Avenue

Apopka, FL 32703



Waterford Lakes Town Center- Bloodmobile

413 N Alafaya Trail

Orlando, FL 32802



Winter Garden Village- Bloodmobile

3251 Daniels Rd

Winter Garden, FL 34787





OSCEOLA COUNTY



Buenaventura Lakes Branch- Bloodmobile

405 Buena Venture Blvd

Kissimmee, FL 34743



Kissimmee Donor Center

1029 N John Young Pkwy

Kissimmee, FL 34744



The Loop- Bloodmobile

3232 N John Young Pkwy

Kissimmee, FL 34741



Dollar Tree- Bloodmobile

1387 E Osceola Pkwy

Kissimmee, FL 34744





SEMINOLE COUNTY



Altamonte Springs Donor Center

661 E Altamonte Drive #327

Altamonte Springs, FL 32701



Altamonte Mall- AMC Theaters- Bloodmobile

451 Altamonte Drive

Altamonte Springs, FL 32701



Planet Fitness- Casselberry- Bloodmobile

204 Sausalito Blvd.

Casselberry, FL 32707



Oviedo Donor Center

1954 W. State Rd 426

Oviedo, FL 32765



Lake Mary Donor Center

105 Waymont Court

Lake Mary, FL 32746



Old Navy- Bloodmobile

1701 Wp Ball Blvd

Sanford, FL 32771




The parent nonprofit of Connecticut Network plans to refine its push to get off state funding before again seeking the creation of a state civic network.



The designation, depending on what lawmakers approve, could allow the Connecticut Public Affairs Network to levy a fee to cable subscribers required to carry CT-N.



Pat Sheehan, chairman of the CPAN board of directors, said CT-N should be funded by a source other than the government it covers, and the change would also free the channel from the constraints of state budgets during tough financial times.



Theres always a scramble to make sure the services required by the state are met, Sheehan said.



CT-Ns funding level has remained relatively flat at $3.2 million annually, although lawmakers cut $700,000 from the networks budget to help balance the budget this fiscal year.



But CT-N faces challenges on multiple fronts, including from Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network should the bill pass.



This years proposal, which cleared committee but never got a vote in either chamber, would have allowed nonprofit organizations to apply to the Public Utility Regulatory Authority to become the state civic network.



The channel would be devoted to covering the legislature, court proceedings, executive branch agency events, and other government activities.



Dean Orton, chief operating officer for Connecticut Public Broadcasting, said the designation is an area where we have an interest. The organizations outlets include Connecticut Public Television.



He said CPBN hasnt formulated a plan for being a state civic network, but it could ultimately partner with CT-N or another network to provide the services.



The landscape is ever-changing and evolving, Orton said, adding the organizations business plan includes looking for new partnerships and collaborations.



Sheehan said the Connecticut Public Affairs Network would be open to a partnership  the two entities worked together when CT-N first aired in 1999  but also has confidence in CT-Ns qualifications.



Sheehan also said CPAN is taking time to overcome objections from the cable industry as members wait for the next legislative session in January.



New England Cable & Telecommunications President Paul Cianelli said requiring cable companies to cover CT-N and allowing the channel to charge a fee is without question a tax.



He said Connecticut cable subscribers already pay the second-highest rates in the country, and he doesnt think customers could handle another increase.



Cianelli also questioned whether CT-N, which said the change could provide much needed revenue, could provide the service more efficiently.



There might be some people working out of a garage in Vernon who can do a better job at a third of the cost, he said.



Sheehan, though, said cable companies could afford to cover the fee if they chose, and also noted subscribers already likely pay for channels they dont watch. CT-N executives estimated last session that, based on the assumption of 1 million cable subscribers in Connecticut, the fee would be roughly 40 cents monthly per subscriber.



He said the attention was shifted to CT-Ns promise that additional revenues could allow for expanded coverage after lawmakers said they wanted additional legislative proceedings broadcast.



Sheehan said the main reason for the push is to help secure a funding stream other than state funding and to allow CT-N to develop a business model that embraces technology, particularly its website.



He also said CT-N could structure its website so that only cable subscribers have access to most, if not all, of the content. Cable companies also said the bill unfairly affects only those who subscribe to cable.



msavino@record-journal.com 203-317-2266 Twitter: @reporter_savino






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Former Bexar County Medical Examiner Dr. Vincent Di Maio has devoted his life to putting the certainty in death when it has occurred under questionable circumstances.

Di Maio has dedicated more than four decades to forensic pathology in a crime-solving career that has explored the mysteries of a persons death in order to give understanding and closure to the living.

Morgue: A Life in Death by Di Maio and Ron Franscell, is a fascinating look at some of the most intriguing homicide cases that have stunned a nation.

From Lee Harvey Oswald to Genene Jones to Trayvon Martin, the list of cases  as they would be described in popular television shows devoted to forensic investigators  seem ripped from the headlines from newspapers across the ages.

During his tenure as medical examiner from 1981 to 2006, Di Maio built one of the nations most respected forensic medical facilities in San Antonio.

He performed more than 9,000 autopsies, examined over 25,000 deaths and consulted in unexplained or questionable death cases all over the world.

More Information Morgue: A Life in Death By Dr. Vincent Di Maio and Ron Franscell $26.99, St. Martin's Press See More Collapse

Although some may think the subject matter is gory, Di Maio brings a unique perspective to death and the important work medical examiners perform in cases where the cause of demise is contentious or the final seconds of a persons life have to be reconstructed for a court of law.

As the son of a Brooklyn medical examiner, Di Maio and his three younger sisters were often taken to hospitals and morgues at a young age.

Almost from birth, their father wanted to ensure his children were not afraid of death. He wanted them to respect the tragedy of dying and the mysteries of it, too.

Di Maio reiterates throughout the book that he does not autopsy people, he autopsies bodies.

His explanation is that a person is something alive, vibrant and different, and that bodies are just what they leave behind.

He recalls being asked once about the body of a woman who in life had been beautiful. Had she been beautiful, too, in death?

His response was that he had never seen a beautiful body, just a lifeless thing that looks like a person but no longer is. The beautiful part is gone.

He notes that people frequently want to know how he could work in such a depressing field.

His standard reply is that if you get depressed in this line of work, you dont belong.

He feels his work is interesting and challenging, and that he has no difficulty in handling disfigured corpses or explaining honestly and gently to their grieving families how their loved one died.

Morgue is a compelling look at the notorious death cases that have made Di Maio famous.

While the thought of reading about a person cutting into a body to conduct a post mortem examination may cause some to turn away, those daring enough to take it home will be rewarded with an enthralling, detailed account of forensic pathology that is extremely readable and engaging.

Vincent Bosquez is a retired Marine Corps captain and coordinator of Veterans Affairs at Palo Alto College. Reach him at vbosquez3@alamo.edu.
Timeless Whiskies

Raise A Toast To Dad With One Of These Classic Whiskies

Page 1 of 2

There will always be trends in liquor that come and go in bars and clubs, in which the bottles that seemingly appear out of nowhere miraculously fall in and out of style. One year, its going to be craft gin, another year itll go to small-batch rum but one thing you can always count on is having the sweet taste of whiskey to fall back on whenever things get too hectic.



Whether youre into scotch or bourbon, youll always be able to find myriad options at your fingertips while the rest of the world is fawning over the newest batch of trendy liquor. So, here are five bottles of whisk(e)y that you can count and rely on to give you the same feeling of reckless abandon and excitement you had when you first sipped the godly nectar out of a tumbler by a roaring fire. (Pro-tip: if youve never done that, do that now.) Bonus: if you're struggling with gift ideas, every one of these whiskies would make a great Father's Day booze gift, something you and your dad can enjoy together.



1. George Dickel Superior No. 12 Whisky

Reliable Tennessee-distilled George Dickel has been around a long time and has made a name for itself for being produced in a state that makes a lot of whisky. Where to start with No. 12? This 90-proof Tennessee whisky is absolutely sublime to sip on the rocks  dont even think about mixing it with Coke. The subtle notes of oak and vanilla open up in the mouth and leave hints of maple, butter and smoke thatll send you to the back of your seat with excitement. Its really the way the folks in Tullahoma, Tennessee distill the whisky that gives it such a uniquely smooth taste. Legend has it that George Dickel himself swore that whisky made during the winter months tasted better, so its charcoal filtered at a cool temperature, honoring Georges findings. Dickel knew what he was talking about.



2. Laphroaig Select

Youve heard of Laphroaig, your dads heard of Laphroaig, and your dads dad heard of Laphroaig. Its one of those legacy bottles that everyone needs to have in their house at one point of their lives. The first thing that hits you with the bottle is the intensely caramel color that stares at you behind the glass; it goes without saying that this stuff is beautiful.

The first sip presents that supremely peaty and ashy Scotch taste that so many people cant seem to get past upon their first tasting. That, mixed with a dryness (courtesy of American oak) leaves the taster with a floral finish that mixes in hints of Marzipan and lime at the end. Its sublime and will change the way you think about whisky.



3. Woodford Reserve Double Oaked

Every bottle of this ultra-premium bourbon has been twice-barreled in White Oak, giving the whiskey its uniquely robust oak flavor. The fact that this requires two unique barrels to craft each and every bottle means that Woodford Reserve is serious about the booze they produce. The aroma itself is almost proof enough that youve got something really special on your hands when you stick your nose in a glass, you get dark fruit, caramel, sharp honey, chocolate, marzipan and toasted oak.
The San Antonio Fire Department is searching for a missing man last seen kayaking on Braunig Lake Saturday night.

The man was kayaking with his friend and wife when he fell into the water, according to investigators at the scene. When he attempted to swim ashore his companions lost sight of him.
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SAN ANTONIO--LBGT communities across the country were stunned Sunday morning as details of a mass shooting at an Orlando gay club trickled in, and in San Antonio locals reacted with both shock and determination.

Tanya Pacetti-Perkins, who volunteers at the San Antonio chapter of the Human Rights Campaign, says she and her wife usually stay home but decided to go out last night.

"To wake up the next morning and hear that this happened to other people who decided to go out last night just like we did is absolutely devastating," Pacetti-Perkins said.

In the wake of the incident, politicians nationwide have issued a slew of statements both condemning the shooter's actions and calling for the nation to stand together in unity.

Among them was Texas' Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, who came under fire earlier today for tweeting a photo featuring the Bible verse, "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows."

"It's hard to promote understanding under leaders like Dan Patrick and Rick Perry who publicly speak ill of LGBT people," said Robet Salcido, board chair and executive director of Pride San Antonio.

Pacetti-Perkins echoed Salcido's sentiments and said that the "atmosphere and anti-LGBT rhetoric" in the political environment is what fuels violent behavior like Mateen's.

"People in leadership positions need to take ownership for what they say," Pacetti-Perkins said.

With 50 dead and 52 injured, the Orlando shooting marks the largest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Florida detectives identified the suspect as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida.

Salcido says the fuel behind the derision some have for LGBT communities boils down to one thinglack of education.

"People need to get to know us," Salcdio said. "There needs to be greater understanding of who we are and even more of who we aren't."

To show solidarity and support with the victims and their families local community leaders are working with LGBT organizations to organize a vigil Sunday night.

The event will be at 7 p.m., at Crockett Park, 1300 N. Main Ave., and then participants will march to the strip of LGBT-friendly businesses on North Main Avenue.

Pride San Antonio will also be hosting a vigil on Thursday, June 16.

"This incident affects all LGBT communities," Pacetti-Perkins said. "We all feel it. We all know that it could have been anywhere and anyone."

@ImaniMcg
A second suspect is wanted in the shooting death of a 7-year-old girl earlier this month, police said.

Jonathan Campos, 22, is wanted on three warrants, one for capital murder and two for aggravated assault, according to the San Antonio Police Department.
Would-Be Bike Thief Lassoed By Bystander On Horseback

Trending News: Rancher On Horseback Lassoes Bike Thief Outside A Walmart

Why Is This Important?

Because only in America.

Long Story Short

A guy tried to steal a bike outside a South Oregon Walmart, but any plans for a clean getaway were thwarted by a bystander who jumped on his horse and chased down the thief. When the cattle rancher finally caught up to the would-be bike thief, he lassoed him with his rope and tied him up until police arrived.

Long Story

Who needs a car with a lot of horsepower when you got that real deal horsepower?

Robert Borba was loading dog food and a tent into his truck in a South Oregon Walmart parking lot when he heard a woman screaming that her bike was being stolen, according to the Medford Mail Tribune.

Sure enough, when Borba turned around, he saw would-be bike thief, 22-year-old suspect Victorino Arellano-Sanchez making a break for it on the bike. Arellano-Sanchez was identified as a transient from the Seattle area.

Borba, a 28-year-old cattle rancher from Northern California, but living in Eagle Point where the crime took place, followed his instincts and went after the thief. But not on foot  he knew he wasn't quick enough.

"I seen this fella trying to get up to speed on a bicycle," Borba said to the Mail Tribune. "I wasn't going to catch him on foot. I just don't run very fast."

So Borba mounted his horse and took off after Arellano-Sanchez.

Fate would have it that Arellano-Sanchez had trouble with the bike's gears, so he ditched the bike and started to run away on foot, but Borba was able to catch up with him and lassoed him like cattle. Borba proceeded to tie the suspect to a tree near a Carl's Jr. and waited 15 minutes for the cops to arrive.

"We've never had anyone lassoed and held until we got there," said Eagle Point Sgt. Darin May. "That's a first for me."

"I use a rope every day, that's how I make my living," Borba said. "If it catches cattle pretty good, it catches a bandit pretty good."

Oh sweet American justice.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

How must've the bike thief felt when he saw he was being chased down by a badass cattle rancher on horseback?

Disrupt Your Feed

Cheers to that real horsepower.

Drop This Fact

Borba's wife said her husband was probably just following his instincts. "It's probably second nature to him," she said.
Thanks to competitive tax policy, smart regulations and a well-educated workforce, Texas has become a hot spot for pharmaceutical investment. Today, the drug industry employs more than 36,000 Texas workers.

However, the jobs supported by our states drug business are in jeopardy. Federal officials have proposed major changes to Medicare that ultimately would stifle drug innovation. If enacted, these reforms will drive away investment in local drug research and the jobs that go with it.

Specifically, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has proposed cutting reimbursements provided by Medicare Part B, which covers drug treatments like chemotherapy that have to be administered under medical supervision. Doctors provide the drugs directly and then bill Part B for reimbursement to cover both the product price and administrative costs.

In 2013, Part B reimbursements were slashed as part of the across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration. As a result, many doctors have stopped participating in the program because their expenses are greater than the reimbursements.

Ratcheting down Part B payments even further would make this problem worse. More doctors would flee, and sick Texans would have an even harder time finding someone to treat them.

Thats terrible not just for patients but for the Texas economy. Part B patients who cant find effective treatment will only get sicker. In failing health, some may be forced to quit their jobs outright. That could cost the state economy millions of dollars in lost productivity, not to mention the devastating impact for Texas families facing these circumstances.

Plus, if doctors demand for medicines covered under Medicare Part B declines, drug companies will have less incentive to pour money into researching potential new treatments.

Better treatments could save lives and boost the economy by keeping workers healthy. Many existing cancer medicines, for instance, only hold tumors at bay. Patients face an ongoing, costly battle for their health.

Such losses will continue unless researchers develop next-generation medicines that keep patients far healthier and cure, rather than merely treat, cancer and other deadly diseases.

Pharmaceutical research is an extraordinarily risky business. Bringing a new drug to market costs, on average, more than $2.5 billion. This industry can flourish only if innovators recover their investments to develop these new products.

Instead of recognizing that reality and shelving the proposed Part B changes, federal officials plan to double down on radical Medicare changes by tampering with Part D, the Medicare program that covers prescriptions drugs. Part D currently follows a market-based model in which private insurers vigorously bargain with drug companies to provide patients with quality drugs at the lowest possible prices.

If federal authorities trample this free market approach, theyll likely force drug companies to offer such steep discounts that the firms wouldnt recover their development costs. Returns on innovation would plummet. Making a new medicine could become a money-losing enterprise.

The drug industry is a cornerstone of the Texas economy. Tens of thousands of Texans depend on this sector for a paycheck. And countless patients stay healthy and contribute to the economy thanks to the medicines created in Texas research labs. Gutting Medicare would threaten lives and our economy by discouraging medical innovation  exactly the kind of life-changing work that is happening at research facilities across the state.

Tony Bennett is the president of the Texas Association of Manufacturers, which represents more than 500 companies from every manufacturing sector.
Keeping Social Security strong and solvent for current and future generations is too important to be lost in the fog of campaign season.

Its crucial that Texans, especially the 13 million of us currently paying into Social Security, listen carefully to and carefully consider the presidential candidates plans for keeping Social Security resilient.

The stakes are high. According to the Social Security trustees, benefits will be cut by nearly 25 percent by 2034 if no action is taken. In addition, millions of families today have precious little savings set aside as they near retirement. Pensions are becoming a rare commodity, and health care costs are on the upswing. Whats more, younger workers are increasingly dubious about the program thats been a backbone of retirement security for generations of Americans and think that Social Security may be an empty promise for them.

Every year that our leaders wait and do nothing, finding a solution grows more difficult. So the sooner adjustments are made, the smaller and less abrupt they will have to be. And it all starts with presidential leadership.

But regardless of who is next in the White House, Congress will have a key role to play. Two members of the Texas delegation are key leaders with notable sway over Social Securitys future: U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady of Conroe, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson of Plano, chairman of the Social Security Subcommittee.

In November, Texans will elect or re-elect 36 men and women to represent them in Washington. As the candidates campaign in their home districts over the next few months, its a great time to learn where they stand on the future of Social Security. A key question to ask is: Will you take action to update Social Security so it is financially sound and provides adequate income for current and future generations?

Elections have consequences. Amid the noise and the insults that will fill the airwaves in the weeks and months ahead, take the time to think about the issues that really are important to you. Since 1935 when the law was passed, Social Security has been one of them, lifting millions out of poverty and allowing them to retire with dignity.

As engaged citizens, I believe we have a duty to do our part to keep Social Security strong for ourselves, our children and grandchildren.

Bob Jackson is the director of AARP Texas. AARP is a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization with a membership of more than 38 million, including 2.2 million Texans.
While there is a dramatic need for more affordable housing in Bexar County, Commissioner Tommy Calverts housing bond idea is poorly formed and far too vague.

San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor, who is well aware of the shortage of affordable housing here, was spot on when she swatted away any notion that the city would contribute $100 million in bond funds to Calverts so-called Neighborhood Reinvestment Fund. Thats just not happening. Calvert also wants $100 million from Bexar County, and we encourage Judge Nelson Wolff to also dismiss the idea.
It was summer, 1976. I was on a business trip, staying at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia. One early morning, I sat at the lunch counter and ordered breakfast. A little later, a gentleman wearing a gray shark skin suit sat down to my left. His voice seemed familiar. I saw Muhammad Ali, who had just ordered breakfast.

Recalling he had just fought a Japanese wrestler in Tokyo a week before, I turned, introduced myself and asked, When are they going to give you some real competition? Ali replied, You mean like you? We both laughed, shook hands (his were huge), and I left, not wanting to interrupt his breakfast.

As I left the coffee shop, I looked back and saw a scene I will never forget. Alis trainer, Angelo Dundee, had called Ali to the lobby where, with a big smile on his face, he was signing autographs encircled by hundreds of screaming kids. Thats the Ali I remember.

Dennis Boswell, Helotes

Unserious leaders

Let me help the governor and lieutenant governor with some facts (information that is not based on how you feel or that is politically expedient):

Transgendered people have been around using public restrooms for many decades.

There have been no incidents of inappropriate sexual behavior attributed to them during that time.

They are no more likely to be pedophiles than anyone else.

Transgender is not a lifestyle choice; it is just the way they are configured.

I suppose these two esteemed gentlemen are just doing the best they can with what God-given intelligence they possess, but it seems there are real problems in Texas that need attention. Infrastructure, education and health care come to mind, and if they lack the ability to deal with these issues, maybe they could give someone else a chance.

These are serious times, with difficult choices and sophisticated solutions. We need serious people dealing with them.

Tom Little

Clinton vs. Jefferson

Re: What would Hamilton do about Trump? Sanford Levinson, Opinion, June 5:

Congratulations to Sanford Levinson on his remarkable column comparing Alexander Hamiltons views on Aaron Burr and his, Levinsons, views on Donald Trump.

My own views on Trump were formed early in his candidacy. He made it clear that he is a protectionist. Whatever this country needs, I am unwilling to concede that Hillary Clintons brand of snake oil is in any way preferable to the alternative.

Suppose we were to take one of Hamiltons observations as cited by professor Levinson and apply it to Clinton: No mortal can tell what (her) principles are. (She) has talked all around the compass. ... The truth seems to be that (she) has no plan but that of getting power by any means and keeping it by all means.

I eagerly look forward to professor Levinsons comparison of Mrs. Clintons virtues to those of Thomas Jefferson.

Edward Guelpa
With the pressure mounting on the Liberals to respect democracy, the NDP moved a motion to create a special committee on electoral reform on which no party would possess a majority. After backroom discussions between the two parties, the Liberals agreed to support this motion. This backroom deal follows a tumultuous number of weeks for the Liberals trying to defend their indefensible plan to unilaterally change our democracy.

While at first glance this Liberal about-face may seem like a positive development, it still misses the most important legitimizing component: asking Canadians what they want directly in a national referendum. The Liberals have opted once again to keep Canadians out of the decision-making process, while paying lip service to the idea of consulting Canadians.

The Minister of Democratic Institutions, Maryam Monsef, says that this committee will determine what constitutes broad-based support for electoral reform. Minister Monsef could acquire that broad-based support she claims to be seeking by committing to a referendum, but instead she and Prime Minister Trudeau insist on doing things without Canadians input. A committee of parliamentarians, no matter the makeup, is not, and never will be, a substitute for all Canadians having their voices head directly in a referendum. This is the absolute best way to give legitimacy to any changes to our democracy.

The only reason the Liberal Government would not give Canadians a voice is if they dont believe Canadians will support their proposal. This is alarming. There can be no other conclusion based on their words and deeds. If the Liberal Government truly cared what Canadians think, they would have announced their plans for a referendum a long time ago.

While the Liberals  and now the NDP too  believe that democracy can be changed by the experts or the elites without the consent of all Canadians, the Conservative Party will continue demanding that Canadians receive the say they deserve. Democracy belongs to all Canadians, whether the Liberals think so or not.
We find ourselves facing a firestorm that is apparently global about the biblical plan for sexuality, marriage, and family

Author: Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, ofmcap. | Source: ZENIT (https://zenit.org)

(ZENIT, March 11, 2016).- Here is the fourth Lenten homily given this year by the preacher of the Pontifical Household, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa.

* * *



Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, ofmcap.

Fourth Lenten Sermon 2016



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

in Gaudium et spes and Today



I am devoting this meditation to a spiritual reflection on Gaudium et spes, the pastoral constitution on the Church in the world. Of the various social problems treated in this document culture, economy, social justice, peace the most relevant and problematic one concerns marriage and family. The Church devoted the last two synods of bishops to it. The majority of us present here do not live in that state of life, but we all need to know its problems to understand and help the vast majority of Gods people who do live in the marital state, especially today now that it is at the center of attacks and threats from all sides.

Gaudium et spes treats the family at great length in the Second Part (nos. 46-53). There is no need to quote statements from it because it repeats the traditional Catholic doctrine that everyone knows, except for a new emphasis on the mutual love between the spouses that is openly recognized now as a primary good in marriage alongside procreation.

In regard to marriage and family, Gaudium et spes, in its well-known way of proceeding, focuses first on the positive achievements in the modern world (the joys and the hopes) and only secondly on the problems and dangers (the griefs and anxieties).[1] I plan to follow that same method, taking into account, however, the dramatic changes that have occurred in this area in the last half century since then. I will briefly recall Gods plan for marriage and family since, as believers, we always need to start from that point, and then see what biblical revelation can offer us as a solution to current problems in this area. I am intentionally refraining from commenting on some of the specific problems discussed in the Synod of Bishops regarding which only the pope now has the right to say the last word.

1. Marriage and family in the divine plan and in the gospel of Christ

The book of Genesis has two distinct accounts of the creation of the first human couple that go back to two different traditions: the Yahwist tradition (10th century BC) and the later one called Priestly (6th century BC). In the Priestly tradition (see Gen 1:26-28), the man and the woman are created simultaneously and not one from the other; male and female beings are linked to the image of God: God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Gen 1:27). The primary purpose for the union of the man and woman is seen as being fruitful and filling the earth.

In the Yahwist tradition, which is the most ancient (see Gen 2:18-25), the woman is taken out of the man. The creation of the two sexes is seen as a remedy for the loneliness of the man: It is not good that the man should be alone: I will make him a helper fit for him (Gen 2:18). The unitive factor is emphasized here more than the procreative factor: A man . . . clings to his wife and they become one flesh (Gen 2:24). They are free and open about their own sexuality and that of the other: The man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed (Gen 2:25).

I found the most convincing explanation for this divine invention of the distinction between the sexes in a poet, Paul Claudel:

Man is so proud! There was no other way [except inventing the sexes] to get him to understand his neighbor, to pound it into him. There was no other way to get him to understand the dependence, the necessity, and the need of another besides himself except through the existence of this being [woman] who is different from him by the very fact of her separate existence.[2]

To open oneself to the opposite sex is the first step in opening oneself to the other who is a neighbor until we reach the Other, with a capital letter, God. Marriage begins with a mark of humility: it is the recognition of dependency and thus of ones own condition as a creature. To fall in love with a woman or a man is to make the most radical act of humility. It is to make oneself a beggar and say to the other, I am not enough in myself; I need you too. If, as Friedrich Schleiermacher believed, the essence of religion consists in the sentiment of dependence on God (Abhangigkeitsgefuhl),[3] then we can say that human sexuality is the first school of religion.

Up to this point I have described Gods plan. The rest of the Bible cannot, however, be understood if, along with the creation story, we do not take into account the fall, especially what is said to the woman: I will greatly multiply your pain in child-bearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you (Gen 3:16). The dominance of the man over the woman is part of the consequence of mans sin, not part of Gods plan. With these words to Eve, God was announcing her predicament in advance, not endorsing it.

The Bible is a divine-human book not only because its authors are God and men but also because it describes the intertwining of the faithfulness of God with the unfaithfulness of human beings. This is clear especially when we compare Gods plan for marriage and family with its practical outworking in the history of the chosen people. Continuing in the book of Genesis, we see that the son of Cain, Lamech, violates the law of monogamy by taking two wives. Noah and his family appear to be an exception in the midst of the widespread corruption of his time. The patriarchs Abraham and Jacob have children by many wives. Moses sanctions the practice of divorce; David and Solomon maintain actual harems of women.

Beyond these examples of individual transgressions, the departure from the original ideal is visible in the basic concept that Israel had of marriage. Deviation from the ideal involves two pivotal points. The first is that marriage becomes a means and not an end. The Old Testament, on the whole, considers marriage a structure of patriarchal authority oriented primarily to the perpetuation of the clan. It is in this context that the institutions of levirate marriage (see Deut 25:5-10), of concubinage (see Gen 16), and of provisional polygamy can be understood. The ideal of a shared life between a man and a woman based on a personal and reciprocal relationship is not forgotten, but it moves into second place after the good of offspring. The second serious deviation from the ideal concerns the status of the woman: from being a companion for the man endowed with the same dignity, she appears increasingly more subordinate to the man and existing for his sake.

An important role in keeping Gods original plan for marriage alive is played by the prophetsin particular Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiahand by the Song of Songs. Adopting the union of man and woman as a symbol or reflection of the covenant between God and his people, they restore to first place the value of mutual love, faithfulness, and indissolubility that characterize Gods attitude toward Israel.

Jesus, come to sum up human history in himself, accomplishes this recapitulation in regard to marriage as well.

And the Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, Is it lawful to divorce ones wife for any cause? He answered, Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female [Gen 1:27] and said For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one? So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder. (Matt 19:3-6)

His adversaries were operating in the narrow sphere of hypothetical casuistry (asking if it were lawful to repudiate the wife for any reason or if there needed to be a specific and serious reason). Jesus answered them by going to the heart of the issue and returning to the beginning. In his citations, Jesus refers to both accounts of the institution of marriage, taking elements from each of them, but, as we see, he emphasizes above all the communion of persons.

What comes next in Matthews text, the issue of divorce, also follows along the same line: he reaffirms faithfulness and the indissolubility of the marriage bond even above the good of offspring, which people had used in the past to justify polygamy, levirate marriage, and divorce.

They said to him, Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to put her away? He said to them, For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery; and he who marries a divorced woman, commits adultery (Matt 19:7-9)

The parallel text in Mark shows that even in the case of divorce men and women, according to Jesus, are placed on a level of absolute equality: Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery (Mk 10:11-12).

With the words What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder, Jesus affirms that there is divine intervention by God in every matrimonial union. The elevation of marriage to the status of a sacrament, that is, a sign of Gods action, does not then need to be founded only on the weak argument of Jesus presence at the wedding at Cana and on the text in Ephesians that speaks of marriage as a reflection of the union of Christ and the Church (see Eph 5:32). It begins explicitly with Jesus teaching during his earthly ministry and is also part of his reference to how things were from the beginning. John Paul II was correct when he defined marriage as the primordial sacrament.[4]

2. What the biblical teaching says to us today

This, in brief, is the doctrine of the Bible, but we cannot stop there. Scripture, said Gregory the Great, grows with those who read it (cum legentibus crescit).[5] It reveals new implications little by little that come to light because of new questions. And today new questions, or challenges, about marriage and family abound.

We find ourselves facing a firestorm that is apparently global about the biblical plan for sexuality, marriage, and family. How are we to act in relation to this disturbing phenomenon? The Council initiated a new approach that involves dialogue rather than confrontation with the world and even includes self-criticism. I believe we need to apply this very approach to the discussion about marriage and family. Applying this method of dialogue means trying to see if, behind even the most radical challenges, there is something we can receive.

The criticism of the traditional model of marriage and family that has brought us to todays unacceptable proposals for their deconstruction began with the Enlightenment and Romanticism. For different reasons, these two movements expressed their opposition to the traditional view of marriage, understood exclusively in its objective endsoffspring, society, and the Churchand viewed too little in its subjective and interpersonal value. Everything was required of future spouses except that they love each other and freely choose each other. Even today, in many parts of the world there are spouses who meet and see each other for the first time on their wedding day. In contrast to that kind of model, the Enlightenment saw marriage as a pact between married people and Romanticism saw it as a communion of love between spouses.

But this criticism is in agreement with the original meaning of marriage in the Bible, not against it! The Second Vatican Council already accepted this perspective when, as I said, it recognized the mutual love and assistance between the spouses as an equally primary good of marriage. In line with Gaudium et spes, St. John Paul II said in one of his Wednesday teachings,

The human body, with its sex, and its masculinity and femininity . . . is not only a source of fruitfulness and procreation, as in the whole natural order. It includes right from the beginning the nuptial attribute, that is, the capacity of expressing love, that love in which the person becomes a gift andby means of this giftfulfills the meaning of his being and existence.[6]

In his encyclical Deus caritas est, Pope Benedict XVI went even further, writing profound new things regarding eros in marriage and in the relationship between God and human beings. He wrote, This close connection between eros and marriage in the Bible has practically no equivalent in extra-biblical literature.[7] One of the most serious wrongs we do to God is to end up making everything that concerns love and sex be an area saturated with wickedness in which God should not enter and is unwanted. It is as if Satan, and not God, were the creator of the sexes and the specialist in love.

We believers, and many non-believers as well, are far from accepting the conclusions that some people draw from these premises today, for example, that any kind of eros is enough to constitute a marriage, including between people of the same sex. However, our rejection of this acquires greater strength and credibility if it is combined with a recognition of the fundamental goodness of sexuality together with a healthy self-criticism.

We cannot omit the mention of what Christians have contributed to forming the negative vision of marriage that modern western culture has rejected so vehemently. The authority of Augustine, reinforced on this point by Thomas Aquinas, ended up casting a negative light on the physical union of spouses, which was considered as the means through which original sin was transmitted and was not even free itself of at least venial sin. According to the Doctor of Hippo, spouses should make use of the sexual act for begetting children but should do so with regret (cum dolore) and only because there is no other way to provide citizens for the state and members for the Church.[8]

Another modern position that we can also accept concerns the equal dignity of the woman in marriage. As we have seen, it is at the very heart of Gods original plan and in the thinking of Christ, but it has often been disregarded over the centuries. Gods word to Eve, Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you, has had a tragic fulfillment in history.

Among the representatives of the so-called Gender Revolution, their call for the equality of women has led to crazy proposals like abolishing the distinction between the sexes and replacing it with the more flexible and subjective distinction of genders (masculine, feminine, variable) or like freeing women from the slavery of maternity by arranging for newly invented ways to give birth to children. In recent months there has been a succession of news reports about men who will very soon be able to become pregnant and give birth to a child. Adam gives birth to Eve, they write with a smile, but this is something we should weep about. The ancients would have defined all this with the word Hubris, the arrogance of human beings before God.

Our choice of dialogue and self-criticism gives us the right to denounce these plans as inhuman: they are contrary not only to Gods will but also to the good of humanity. Putting them into practice on a large scale would lead to unforeseeable human and social catastrophes. Our only hope is that peoples common sense, combined with the natural desire for the other sex and the instinct for motherhood and fatherhood that God has inscribed in human nature, will resist these attempts to substitute ourselves for God. They are dictated more by a belated sense of guilt on the part of men than by genuine respect and love for woman herself.

3. An ideal to rediscover

Not less important than the duty of defending the biblical ideal of marriage and family is the duty for Christians to rediscover and live that ideal fully in such a way as to reintroduce it into the world by deeds more than by words. Early Christians changed the laws of the state about the family by their practices. We cannot consider doing the opposite and change peoples practices through the laws of the state, even though as citizens we have a duty to contribute to the states enactment of just laws.

Since Christ, we correctly read the account of the creation of the man and woman in light of the revelation of the Trinity. In this light the statement that God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him: male and female he created them finally reveals a significance that was enigmatic and unclear before Christ. What connection can there be between being in the image of God and being male and female? The biblical God does not have sexual attributes; he is neither male nor female.

The similarity consists in this. God is love, and love requires communion and interpersonal communication. It requires an I and a you. There is no love that is not love for someone; if there is only one subject there cannot be love, just egotism and narcissism. Whenever God is conceived of only as Law or as Absolute Power, there is no need for a plurality of persons. (Power can be exercised by one person alone!) The God revealed by Jesus Christ, being love, is unique and one, but he is not solitary: he is one and triune. Unity and distinction coexist in him: unity of nature, will, and intentions, and distinction of characteristics and persons.

When two people love each otherand the strongest example is the love of a man and a woman in marriagethey reproduce something of what occurs in the Trinity. In the Trinity two persons, the Father and the Son, in loving each other produce (breathe) the Spirit who is the love that unites them. Someone has defined the Holy Spirit as the divine We, that is, not as the third person of the Trinity but as the first person plural.[9] It is precisely in this way that the human couple is the image of God. Husband and wife are in fact one flesh, one heart, one soul but are diverse in sex and personality. Unity and diversity are thus reconciled in the couple.

In this light we discover the profound meaning of the prophets message about human marriage: it is a symbol and a reflection of another love, that of God for his people. This symbolism was not meant to overload a purely earthly reality with a mystical significance. On the other hand, it is not merely symbolic but instead reveals the true face and ultimate purpose of the creation of man as male and female.

What is the reason for the sense of incompleteness and lack of fulfillment that sexual union leaves both inside and outside of marriage? Why does this impulse always fall back on itself, and why does this promise of the infinite and eternal always fall short? People try to find a remedy for this frustration, but they only increase it. Instead of changing the quality of the act, they increase its quantity, going from one partner to the next. This leads to the ruin of Gods gift of sexuality currently taking place in todays society and culture.

Do we as Christians want to find an explanation for this devastating dysfunction once and for all? The explanation is that the sexual union is not occurring in the way and with the purpose intended by God. Its purpose was that, through this ecstasy and joining together in love, the man and the woman would be raised to desire and to obtain a certain foretaste of infinite love; they would be reminded of where they came from and where they are headed.

Sin, beginning with that of the biblical Adam and Eve, has damaged this plan. It has profaned the sexual act, that is, it has stripped it of its religious value. Sin has made it an act that is an end in itself, that is closed in on itself, so it is therefore unsatisfying. The symbol has been disconnected from the reality behind the symbol and deprived it of its intrinsic dynamism, thus crippling it. Never so much as in this case do we experience the truth of Augustines saying: You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.[10] We were not created to live in an eternal relationship as a couple but to live in an eternal relationship with God, with the Absolute. Even Goethes Faust finally discovers this at the end of his long period of wandering. Thinking back to his love for Margaret, he exclaims at the end of the poetic drama, All that is transitory / is only a symbol; / what seems unachievable / here is seen done [in heaven].[11]

In the testimony of some couples who have experienced renewal in the Holy Spirit and live a charismatic Christian life, we find something of the original significance of the conjugal act. That can hardly be a surprise to us. Marriage is the sacrament of a reciprocal gift that spouses make to one another, and the Holy Spirit is the gift within the Trinity, or better, the reciprocal self-gifting of the Father and Son, not as a fleeting act but as a permanent state. Wherever the Holy Spirit comes, the capacity to make a gift of oneself is born or rekindled. This is how the grace of the married state operates.

4. Married and consecrated people in the Church

Even though we consecrated religious do not live in the married state, I said at the beginning that we need to understand marriage to help those who do live in that state. I will add now a further reason: we need to understand marriage to be helped by it ourselves! Speaking of marriage and virginity the apostle says, Each has his own spiritual gift [charisma] from God, one of one kind and one of another (1 Cor 7:7). Married people have their charism and those who are single for the Lord have their charism.

Each charism, the same apostle says, is a particular manifestation of the Spirit for the common good (see 1 Cor 12:7). Applied to the relationship between married and consecrated people in the Church, this means that the charism of celibacy and virginity is for the advantage also of married people and that the charism of marriage is also for the advantage of consecrated people. That is the intrinsic nature of a charism that is seemingly contradictory: something that is individual (a particular manifestation of the Spirit) is nevertheless meant for all (for the common good).

In the Christian community, consecrated people and married people are able to edify one another. Spouses are reminded by consecrated people of the primacy of God and of what is eternal; they are introduced to love for the word of God by those who can better deepen and break open it open for lay people. But consecrated people can also learn something from married people as well. They can learn generosity, self-forgetfulness, service to life, and often a certain humaneness that comes from their difficult engagement with the realities of life.

I am speaking from experience here. I belong to a religious order in which, until a few decades ago, we would get up at night to recite the office of Matins that would last about an hour. Then there came a great turning point in religious life after the Council. It seemed that the rhythm of modern lifestudies for the younger monks and apostolic ministry for the priestsno longer allowed for this nightly rising that interrupted sleep, and little by little the practice was abandoned except in a few houses of formation.

When later the Lord had me come to know various young families well through my ministry, I discovered something that startled me but in a good way. These fathers and mothers had to get up not once but two or three times a night to feed a baby, or give it medicine, or rock it if it was crying, or check it for a fever. And in the morning one or both of the parents had to rush off to work at the same time after taking the baby girl or boy to the grandparents or to day-care. There was a time card to punch whether the weather was good or bad and whether their health was good or bad.

Then I said to myself, if we do not take remedial action we are in grave danger. Our religious way of life, if it is not supported by a genuine observance of the Rule and a certain rigor in our schedule and habits, is in danger of becoming a comfortable life and of leading to hardness of heart. What good parents are capable of doing for their biological childrenthe level of self-forgetfulness that they are capable of to provide for their childrens well-being, their studies, their happinessmust be the standard of what we should do for our children or spiritual brothers. The example we have for this is set by the apostle Paul himself who said, I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls (2 Cor 12:15).

May the Holy Spirit, the giver of charisms, help all of us, consecrated and married, to put into practice the exhortation of the apostle Peter: As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of Gods varied grace . . . in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen! (1 Pet 4:10-11).

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Translated from Italian by Marsha Daigle Williamson

[1] Gaudium et spes, n.1. Quotations from Church and papal documents are from the Vatican website.

[2] Paul Claudel, The Satin Slipper, Act 3, sc. 8; see Le soulier de satin: Edition critique, ed. Antoinette Weber-Caflisch (Besancon: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Compte, 1987), p. 227.

[3] Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, vol. 1, trans. H. R. MacKintosh and James S. Stewart (New York: T & T Clark, 1999), p. 12ff.

[4] See John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael M. Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006), pp. 503-507.

[5] See Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, 20, 1, 1, in Gregory the Great, trans. John Moorhead (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 49.

[6] John Paul II, The Human Person Becomes a Gift in the Freedom of Love, General Audience, January 16, 1980.

[7] Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est, n. 11.

[8] Augustine, Sermon 51, 25, in Sermons (51-94) on the New Testament, Part 3, vol. 1, trans. Edmund Hill, The Works of Saint Augustine, ed. John E. Rotelle (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1991), p. 36.

[9] Heribert Muhlen, Der Heilige Geist als Person: Ich-Du-Wir [The Holy Sprit as Person: I-You-We} (Munich: Aschendorf, 1963).

[10] Augustine, Confessions, 1, 1, trans. John K. Ryan (New York: Doubleday, 1960), p. 43.

[11] Wolfgang Goethe, Faust, part 2, Act 5, in Goethe: The Collected Works, trans. Stuart Atkins (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 305.
By Jon Danielsson, Director of the ESRC-funded Systemic Risk Centre, London School of Economics, Morgane Fouche, Researcher at the Systemic Risk Centre, London School of Economics, and Robert Macrae, CFA. Originally published at VoxEU.

The threat to the financial system posed by cyber risk is often claimed to be systemic. This column argues against this, pointing out that almost all cyber risk is microprudential. For a cyber attack to lead to a systemic crisis, it would need to be timed impeccably to coincide with other non-cyber events that undermine confidence in the financial system and the authorities. The only actors with enough resources to affect such an event are large sovereign states, and they could likely create the required uncertainty through simpler, financial means.

Various public and private authorities have come to see cyber risk  risk emanating from computer systems and computer networks  as a significant channel for systemic risk. Recent examples include the Bank of Canada (2014), the BIS (2014), the Bank of England (2015) and the SEC (Ackerman 2016).

Cyber risk is certainly a real and growing threat to the well-being of financial institutions, with most months bringing news of a major systems failure, hack, or outright theft, like the recent $81 million theft from the Bangladeshi Central Bank. While obviously a microprudential issue, is it really a systemic concern?

As the argument goes, yes, because the increasing threat of failure of critically important computer systems threatens the internal operations of financial institutions and the plumbing of the system. Since everybody is interconnected, if systems fail the consequence is a loss of confidence, disappearence of liquidity, and hence ultimately a systemic crisis.

We disagree. While one can certainly envision a cyber event so severe that it would cause a systemic crisis under the right circumstances, in normal times it is highly unlikely, almost no matter what the severity of the cyber event.

Financial Systemic risk

Systemic risk is generally seen as the potential for a major financial crisis adversely affecting the real economy, as defined by the IMF-BIS-FSB in 2009. Addressing such systemic risk  macroprudential policy  is one of the three planks of government financial policy, the others being monetary policy and microprudential policy  the protection of bank clients.

Systemic crises do not happen frequently. By studying the IMF-WB crisis database (Laeven and Valencia 2012), we find they happen once every 42 years for OECD members. If anything, that is an overestimate, as the database includes relatively non-extreme events, like October 1987 and August/September 1998.

The fundamental cause of financial systemic risk is excessive risk-taking by financial institutions, where perhaps the best indicator of a future crisis is large credit growth, as shown by Taylor and Schularick (2009). This is especially dangerous when the resulting risk is undetected or ignored by the powers that be, creating the potential for an abrupt fall in confidence as discussed here on Vox by Danielsson and Zigrand (2015).

The Root Cause of Systemic Crises Is Risk-Taking Behaviour of Economic Agents

In turn, the behaviour of these economic agents is directly motivated by confidence. It is a fundamental element of financial markets because we only participate willingly in the markets if we believe the financial system will continue to function in the same way as we have always seen it function. In particular, we need to have faith in what is often called the plumbing of the financial system, such as the payment system and the ability to trade and clear financial assets.

Conversely, the disappearance of confidence is a strong and often early indication of crisis. We have to believe that the financial edifice is at real risk of collapsing for a crisis to really turn systemic. The best example of this is 1914, where the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand triggered a systemic crisis in global financial markets long before the actual war broke out. It was the anticipation of a war and failure of cross-border payments that was the main trigger of the crisis (Danielsson 2013).

Timing Matters

When it comes to identifying the origins of cyber risk as systemic risk, it is important to distinguish between a trigger and a root cause, where in general triggers are irrelevant for policy purposes, since there are a very large number of potential triggers, unless both the timing is fortuitous and no other triggers exist.

We do not see how cyber risk could be the root cause of a systemic crisis because there is no direct connection between the failure of computer systems, no matter how severe, and the behaviour of those economic agents which ultimately culminates in a systemic crisis.

A cyber event could act as a trigger provided the timing is just right. An exogenous crisis event, like a cyber attack, that results in a fall in confidence and liquidity would not be systemic provided the levels of excessive risk-taking had already not reached a tipping point. If not, we can expect to recover on a timescale that makes real-world impact moderate, as in October 1987, LTCM in 1998 and the 2010 flash crash.

Consider a potential disaster scenario  the total failure of a countrys ATM system, or even the payment system, for a few days. Would that be systemic?

Well, it depends. If it happened today, it is highly unlikely because people would recognise that the disruption was temporary, and the end result would only be a frustrating and costly temporary disruption. The failure would not trigger a crisis provided that people believed the authorities would react appropriately.

However, if the failure had happened on 1 October 2008, things could have been different. At that time, people everywhere were converting bank balances into cash in response to the Global Crisis and both the Eurozone and the UK were not too far away from running out of cash, perhaps only hours. Any disruption to the delivery of cash could have drained confidence, potentially turning existing problems into a systemic event.

The crucial role of timing means that any attacker must either be able to create a heightened state of financial market vulnerability, be very lucky, or else both be capable of maintaining her attack vectors in place for years or decades and be sufficiently patient to wait.

The Origins of Cyber Risk

There are four broad origins of cyber risk: technical computer system failures, theft, hacktivists and terrorists, and state actors.

Systems failures and theft can be expected at any time, and have a very large microprudential impact. However, since the timing and victims are likely to be idiosyncratic, it is practically impossible for them to act as a trigger for a systemic crisis and they certainly cannot be a root cause.

Hacktivists and terrorists could subvert IT systems to promote a political agenda, possibly with multiple targets and as part of a broader strategy of disruption. They are very unlikely to have systemic consequences because they would have to combine the attack with other forms of aggression, and can at best trigger a systemic crisis provided the timing is absolutely right.

The only actors with sufficient resources to cause a systemic crisis are the largest sovereign states. They can spend years developing and deploying attacks, keeping them hidden until in a coordinated fashion it attacks multiple IT systems. However, even in this case, a cyber attack would not be sufficient unless it was on a colossal scale, involving multiple computer systems and their backup mechanisms.

For a state actor with the necessary resources, however, it might be just as easy to manufacture the necessary uncertainty through financial means by, for example, making credible threats to world trade, the sequestration of foreign assets, or by the repudiation of international liabilities. If carried out on a sufficiently large scale, in our highly connected world these could easily lead to a repeat of the experiences of 1914. All these attacks require is enough international connectedness to allow trust in domestic institutions to be destroyed by a foreign actor.

While financial warfare of this type would presumably be accompanied by a cyber attack it is not clear that the cyber element would really be necessary, and even then it would likely only play a secondary role.

Conclusion

While systemic risk is frequently invoked as a key reason to be on guard for cyber risk, such a connection is quite tenuous. A cyber event might in extreme cases result in a systemic crisis, but to do so needs highly fortuitous timing.

From the point of view of policymaking, rather than simply asserting systemic consequences for cyber risks, it would be better if the cyber discussion were better integrated into the existing macroprudential dialogue. To us, the overall discussion of cyber and systemic risk seems to be too focused on IT considerations and not enough on economic consequences.

After all, if there are systemic consequences from cyber risk, the chain of causality will be found in the macroprudential domain.

References

Ackerman, A (2016) Cyberattacks Represent Top Risk, SEC Chief Says, The Wall Street Journal, 8 May.

Bank of England (2015) Financial Policy Report, July.

Bank of Canada (2014) Cyber security: Protecting the resilience of Canadas financial system, Financial System Review, December.

BIS (2014) Cyber resilience in financial market infrastructures, BIS Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructure, November.

Danielsson, Jon (2013) Global financial systems, Pearson.

Danielsson, J and J P Zigrand (2015) A proposed research and policy agenda for systemic risk, VoxEU.org, 7 August.

International Monetary Fund, Bank for International Settlements and Financial Stability Board (2009) Report to G20 finance ministers and governonrs. Guidance to assess the systemic importance of financial institutions, markets and instruments: Initial considerations, Technical report.

Laeven, L and F Valencia (2012) Systemic banking crises database: An update, IMF Working Paper.

Taylor, A and M Schularick (2009) Credit booms go wrong, VoxEU.org, 8 December.
Lambert here: Seems legit. Oh, and I like Evasions that are so far from the point. add up to admissions. That would seem to have wider application

By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears

Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades is holding secret negotiations this week with Victoria Nuland (lead image, right), the US State Department official in charge of Turkey, Ukraine and Russia, on a plan to maintain Turkish military forces in Cyprus under the flag of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Anastasiades has sent his aide, Nicos Christodoulides (lead image, left), to negotiate in Washington; he met with Nuland on Monday.

After losing control of the Cyprus Parliament to an increasingly nationalist vote in an election on May 22, Anastasiades has remained behind at the presidential palace in Nicosia, where he met on Tuesday with the NATO official now conducting Cyprus negotiations for the United Nations, Espen Barth Eide. The Cyprus Foreign Minister, Ioannis Kasoulides, is due to met US Secretary of State John Kerry, on June 13.

So sensitive is the US-Turkish plan for Cyprus that American reporters for Associated Press and Reuters at the State Department have refused to ask Nuland about the talks. Gayane Chichakyan, a Washington-based reporter for the Russian government television company Russia Today (RT), has also refused to lift the news blackout.

Greek and Cyprus media have been reporting details of the Nuland plan after they details were leaked from proposals circulated by Turkish and US diplomats. The Nuland plan calls for the government in Ankara to withdraw some of the Turkish forces which have been occupying the north of the island since they invaded in 1974. Fresh Turkish troops and arms would then be redeployed in a NATO base to be opened in the area.

The plan also envisages overcoming Cypriot voter opposition to the Turkish military and the Nuland plan with promises of US investment in the local economy, plus the offer of US weapons. For more details of the plan, and of Russian government warnings against it, read this.

Stung by the report of Nulands influence on Anastasiades, Christodoulides announced: I have read this report and [it] does not correspond to reality or to what was discussed between the President of the Republic and Mrs Nuland. Cyprus political sources said this was so far from a denial of the Turkish troop plan that Anastasiades is suspected of trying to relieve the American pressure by intimating the details, and then denying he had discussed them.

Meeting in Nicosia, April 19, 2016, from left to right  US Ambassador to Cyprus, Kathleen Doherty; Nuland; Anastasiades; and Christodoulides

Yesterday, following his meeting with UN negotiator Barth Eide, Anastasiades tried publicly to buy time for himself and slow down the negotiating process. Barth Eide claimed Anastasiades had privately agreed to speed up the negotiations.

After his meeting with Nuland at the State Department, Christodoulides said their negotiation had been constructive:

Source: https://twitter.com/cypruspio

This weeks agenda of Christodoulidess negotiations with Nuland and with other State Deparrtment and US officials has been released by his office.

In Cyprus, government officials, members of parliament, and reporters believe the American message for Anastasiades is a combination of inducements and threats. Cash is the carrot, the sources say; one of the sticks is the business relationship Anastasiades had, before he became president in 2013, with the Russian businessman and politician, Leonid Lebedev, now a fugitive in the US. The Cyprus press has been publishing questions on their relationship for Anastasiades; so far the president wont answer.

From Nicosia, sources report growing anxiety in the presidential palace that he may be legally compelled.

Subpoenas for testimony and documents from the Presidents law firm and his business partner Theofanis Philippou, have now been ordered by the New York Supreme Court and the High Court of Ireland. These, it is speculated in Cyprus, may expose the involvement of Philippou and Anastasiades in the disappearance of up to a billion dollars moved through Cyprus into the US by Lebedev. For details of the Lebedev case, read this. Lebedev is seeking to stay in the US under the protection of the US Government. In exchange, he is reportedly talkative about his business relationships.

Lebedev (below, left) was in Cyprus to meet Philippou (centre) and other influential figures last month. He is now in the US again.

On May 26, Lebedevs deputy, Andrei Korolev (right), was arrested in Bucharest on a Russian warrant. Korolev has been charged with fraud in the stripping of more than $200 million from the regional electricity utility, TGK-2, controlled by Lebedev. Allegedly, that money disappeared through Cyprus front companies of Lebedevs, supervised by Philippou and Anastasiades, before he became president.

In Bucharest, Romanian political sources say they expect the local court to approve Korolevs extradition to Moscow without delay. Korolevs lawyer says he is innocent.

In Washington yesterday Nulands spokesman, Elizabth Kennedy Trudeau, refused to answer questions about her talks with Christodoulides, or about State Department involvement with Lebedev. She was asked:

Trudeau (pictured below) has been director of the press office at State since last year. Before that, she was a press spokesman for several years at NATO in Brussels. By telephone she said she had referred the questions to Nulands office, but did not respond to the questions herself, claiming she receives several hundred queries a day.

Source: http://video.state.gov/en/video/4928939711001

In response to the three questions, a State Department source, who asked not to be named, said: While we will not discuss specific diplomatic conversations, the United States fully supports the UN-facilitated process under UN Special Adviser Espen Barth Eide. We continue to support efforts by the parties to reach a settlement to reunify the island as a bizonal, bicommunal federation, which would benefit all Cypriots as well as the wider region. We hope the leaders will focus on the future and reinvigorate their efforts to achieve a solution.

According to a Cyprus press report, a State Department source also said Assistant Secretary Nuland welcomed news that the leaders of the two sides will meet on June 8 to continue efforts aimed at reaching a settlement.

Evasions that are so far from the point, observed a Cyprus veteran of US diplomacy, add up to admissions.

The Lebedev case, which he started with a $2 billion claim in New York state court, moved to the High Court in Dublin last week. Philippou is one of the targets of a disclosure order by the court, issued on May 30. Irish accountants, Peter Roberts (right) and Liam Grainger, are also named in the court order for questioning in the alleged scheme. Roberts is out of his Cork office this week, a source there said, adding he is not in Cyprus.

Roberts and Grainger are employed by two of the leading accounting firms in Ireland, Roberts Nathan and Moore Stephens. Irish lawyers close to the case say that those being sought for testimony in the Lebedev affair may also be questioned by the Irish tax authority in pursuit of more than $100 million in capital gains tax.
Submitted A 26-foot long counter of white onyx created one of the restaurant's most impactful design elements, while at the same time separating the dining room from the open kitchen.

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Submitted By Lennon Communications

Clive Daniel Hospitality, a division of Clive Daniel Home, has completed the interiors for the newly opened 1500 SOUTH restaurant at Naples Bay Resort, a signature restaurant of celebrity Chef Art Smith.

"We truly enjoyed working with Chef Art Smith, who requested that we provide a white canvas from a design standpoint to ensure that the food would be the guest's primary visual focus," commented Nancy Woodhouse, IDS, Clive Daniel Hospitality's VP of Design and Business Development. "With its location overlooking Naples Bay and the Gordon River setting the stage, the clean, contemporary Florida coastal interior design to showcase the artistry of the chef."

To accomplish Chef Art Smith's culinary vision, Woodhouse and her Clive Daniel Hospitality team  including Ron Nowfel of the company's Orlando office  incorporated natural elements of driftwood for the walls. A 26-foot long counter of white onyx created one of the restaurant's most impactful design elements, while at the same time separating the dining room from the open kitchen. The entire counter is illuminated beneath with new cutting edge lighting technology.

Added Woodhouse, "Because people love watching food preparation, the onyx counter has become the stage on which the magic happens  just like in the theater."

New marble flooring was incorporated to captivate the ambiance of the driftwood. Decorative floating displays subtly divide the room and incorporate intimacy to the dining areas. A 15-foot-long functioning wine wall also helps separate areas of the restaurant.

To add an Italian flair, suggested by the Chef, the lighting was kept clean except for the dramatic contemporary Murano-styled red glass chandelier, which has generated architectural interest. Original, oversized canvas paintings are provided by Chef Art's husband, artist Jesus Saigueiro. They and their four children look forward to this summer and many summers at Naples Bay while "Papi Chef Art" works in the restaurant.

Commented Chef Art Smith, "While my name is on other restaurants, I have a special love for this one as well as the Naples Bay Resort and the entire community. The interiors are exactly what I had hoped for. Nancy and the Clive Daniel Hospitality team did an amazing job at interpreting my vision and creating a magical ambiance."

A two-time James Beard Award recipient, Chef Art Smith is the executive chef and co-owner of six restaurants across the country. The sixth-generation Florida native has worked as a personal chef for top celebrities, including 10 years for Oprah Winfrey, in addition to serving as the chef for former Florida governors Bob Graham and Jeb Bush. He is widely respected for his unique take on Southern American food and has written several best-selling cookbooks that highlight the connection between family and food.

Clive Daniel Hospitality is also working with Naples Bay Resort on the enrichment of other elements of the popular waterfront hospitality property. Clive Daniel Hospitality is the commercial interior design division of Clive Daniel Home, with seasoned designed professionals specializing in hospitality and commercial properties across the country.
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Local CCIM district to meet

The Southwest Florida CCIM District will hold its monthly marketing meeting on Wednesday, June 15, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at The Edison Restaurant, 3538 McGregor Blvd., Fort Myers. The featured speaker is Debra Dremann, senior vice president of Planning and Strategic Initiatives for Kitson & Partners. Dremann will provide an update on Babcock Ranch, Florida's sustainable city. Attendees can present property haves, wants and closed deals. A marketing table is available for members to present property listings. Admission: $10, district members; $20, nonmembers. For information, contact Ron Struthers, CCIM at 941-769-3316 or rstruthers@ccim.net.

Real estate show

Jim York, a local Realtor, hosts a real estate update show each week on current issues or trends. Join York every Thursday afternoon from 1:30 to 3 p.m. There will be a different guest who specializes in a current topic each week. Any questions about upcoming topics or to be an audience guest, contact U.S.A. Marketing LLC by email: usamrktggroup@cs.com. All shows can also been seen at NaplesYorkRealEstate.com or their Real Estate News Blog: YorkRealEstateGroupSWFL.com.

York to teach three classes

James D. York, a local Realtor, will instruct three real estate classes in conjunction with the Collier County Public Schools and the District School Board of Collier County's Adult and Community Education Department.

Real Estate Course for Buyers: Naples trends and recent market statistics; the best way to buy/sell real estate in today's market; what is the true value of a home; how appraisals effect your sale. Learn how to buy short sales, save on homeowners insurance, foreclosures and bank-owned properties, content of all real estate contracts and how they can affect your purchase or sale. Also included is a field trip to the county clerk's office for a foreclosure sale. Class meets for four weeks on Wednesday starting June 15 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Cost: $69.

Real Estate for Sellers: Course is designed for prospective sellers to learn how to get the highest price for their property, learn about different social media marketing outlets when selling your home, sales trends in Collier County; how to save money on closing fees and what questions to ask a Realtor when listing your home. Class meets for two weeks on Tuesday starting June 14 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Cost: $39.

Real Estate Trends: Learn how you can save thousands of dollars by timing your purchase correctly, along with common mistakes to avoid and many other tips for homebuyers. A Real Estate market update will also be discussed, which will elaborate on the most current market statistics and trends. Class meets once on Thursday, June 16 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Cost: $29

You must register by Monday, June 13. Register by calling 239-377-1234 or online at collieradulted.com. Classes meet at Barron Collier High School.

Information: Jim York at 239-273-6727.

Contract awarded

Stevens Construction has been selected as the construction manager for an expansion of the sales department of Ingman Marine. The company is converting an existing fuel station into a 2,796-square-foot sales office for a boat dealership at 14531 N. Cleveland Ave. Construction duration is slated for completion in August. The Stevens Construction team includes project manager, Mike Brooks; project administrator, Tracey James; and superintendent, Henry Pasterz. Architectural services are provided by Jason P. Tramonte. Ingman Marine provides new and pre-owned boat sales throughout Florida, with store locations in Port Charlotte, Sarasota, Placida and Pine Island.

Ranked No. 1

Premier Sotheby's International Realty was ranked the No. 1 Florida-based residential company by volume according to Real Trends 500 in their annual survey of residential brokerages. Nationwide, the company ranked No. 30. Premier Sotheby's International Realty, headquartered in Naples, has more than 900 associates and employees in 36 locations throughout Florida and North Carolina. Established in 1983, Premier Sotheby's International Realty is led by real estate veteran and president and CEO Judy Green. In 2015, the company produced over $4 billion in sales volume and was ranked 30 among the top 200 Real Estate Brokers in America by Real Estate Executive. premiersothebysrealty.com.

Chapter receives award

The AIA Florida Southwest Chapter has been named the AIA Florida Chapter of the Year. The honor is presented as the Anthony L. Pullara Chapter Award. The award is judged on categories such as Membership Communications, Government Affairs, Public Relations, Professional Development, and other services such as an active awards programs, and quality relationships with local educational entities, the public and Associate Members. AIA Florida states, "This award is intended to inspire all chapters of the American Institute of Architects to strive to exceed the Guidelines for Excellence as established by AIA and its members' expectations, particularly in the areas of Public Awareness/Outreach, Political Effectiveness and Membership Development." It is a noteworthy accomplishment for any chapter and is particularly remarkable for an unstaffed chapter like Florida Southwest that is dependent upon the dedication of local volunteer members and leadership.

Construction completed

Creighton Construction has completed the MedExpress Urgent Care at 313 S.W. Pine Island Road in Cape Coral. The medical center features 4,900 square feet and includes exam rooms, laboratory/screening rooms and a lobby/reception area. Creighton Construction's team included Project Manager Forest Headley and Superintendent Ron Wilson.

Transactions

Investment Properties Corp. (IPC) brokered these deals:

Cell Phone Repair of SWFL LLC leased 595 square feet from Equity One (Florida Portfolio) Inc. at 8957 U.S. 41 N., Naples. Rob Carroll of IPC and Brent Westerfield of Trinity Commercial Group negotiated this transaction.

Domestic Holdings LLC purchased 10,187 square feet of industrial space from The Elm Company of Naples Inc. at 4535 Domestic Ave., Naples. The purchase price was $730,000. Christine McManus of IPC and James Doane of Welsh Companies FL Inc. negotiated this transaction.

Transactions reported by CRE Consultants:

Home 1st Lending leased 2,659 square feet in Riverview Grande, 2240 W. First St., Suite 101, Fort Myers from Vista Point Investment LLC. Randal Mercer, Brandon Stoneburner and Nicole Gray negotiated the transaction.

Quest Diagnostics Inc. leased 1,746 square feet in Cameron Commons, 8855 Immokalee Road, Suite 12, Naples from Cameron Partners LLC. Bill Young, Biagio Bernardo and Larry Foster negotiated the transaction.

PF Distribution LLC leased 1,500 square feet of industrial space in Collier Park of Commerce, 2960 Horseshoe Drive S., Suite 700, Naples from Helios Colliers LLC. Dave Wallace negotiated the transaction.

Engel & Voelkers Florida leased 1,320 square feet at 975 Sixth Ave. S., Suite 104, Naples from 975 6th Ave South LLC. Dave Wallace negotiated the transaction.

Clear Health Strategies LLC leased 1,098 square feet in the Riverview Corporate Center, 27299 Riverview Center Blvd., Suite 100, Bonita Springs from The Variable Annuity Life Insurance Co. Randal Mercer, Brandon Stoneburner and Nicole Gray negotiated the transaction.

Lee & Associates, Naples/Fort Myers, completed the following transaction:

Alico SWFL LLC purchased a 57,785-squre-foot freestanding office warehouse on five acres at 8030 Supply Drive, Fort Myers from S + S Holdings of SW Florida Inc. for $4.183 million. Jerry Messonnier, Bob Johnston and Derek Bornhorst negotiated the sale.

Woodyard & Associates LLC negotiated these transactions.

ABF Drywall Inc. leased 1,600 square feet from William McMahon Revocable Living Trust at 5788 Enterprise Parkway, Fort Myers. Todd Holman negotiated the transaction.

Jeffrey Lazar purchased an office building at 1591 County Road 731, LaBelle, from Robert Sodrel and Linda Sodrel. The purchase price was $150,000. Tom Woodyard of Woodyard & Associates LLC and Sherri Denning of Southern Heritage Real Estate negotiated the transaction.

Roxana Lacayo Ramey purchased .23 acres at 901 S.E. 10th St., Cape Coral, from Betsy Winsboro. The purchase is $43,140. Tom Woodyard LLC negotiated the transaction.

TJL Properties LLC purchased a 3,760-square-foot office/warehouse space at 5876 & 5884 Enterprise Parkway, Fort Myers, from Ann Kinsey Smoot Trustee & Ben C. Smoot Trustee. Todd Holman of Woodyard & Associates LLC negotiated the transaction.
Jersey Clams and Linguine. (Gretchen McKay/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS)

SHARE Key lime pie. (Gretchen McKay/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS) Blueberry scones. (Gretchen McKay/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS) Shrimp 'n' Beer. (Gretchen McKay/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS) Creole Blackened Grouper Salad. (Gretchen McKay/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS)

By Gretchen Mckay, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (TNS)

Can't you just picture it? A fiery sun sinking below the horizon, casting shades of orange, yellow and red on the shimmering ocean.

Can't you hear it? The woosh of waves crashing on the sand, followed by peals of children's laughter in the distance.

Can't you smell and feel it? The coconut-y aroma of tanning lotion. Warm breezes perfumed with sea salt. Hot sand in between your toes.

Best of all, we bet you can almost taste it, now that the countdown is on for a beach vacation.

If you're headed to the Jersey shore this summer, you're probably hungering for its small and tender littleneck clams, followed by something sweet involving blueberries. Both are among the state's most famous summer offerings, and widely available from local fishmongers or at roadside stands and farmers markets. Close your eyes and picture it: Dozens of tiny hard-shell clams stacked atop a platter of linguine tossed in a garlicky white wine sauce. Or maybe you're dreaming of a seaside breakfast, in which case tender scones studded with fresh, plump blueberries are in order.

Mealtime is equally delicious for vacationers renting a beach house in New England, especially if you're not squeamish about cooking lobster. Experts are calling for an especially early lobster season this year, so even if your family is headed north right after school lets out in mid-June you can expect to find plenty of the sweet-meat crustaceans ripe for steaming, broiling or chowder-making.

Or perhaps your vacation plans include a long drive south, to the white-sand sunny beaches of North Carolina or southern Florida. Lucky you, because there's nothing quite so delicious as fresh fish or shrimp from the Atlantic and served with a cold beer or delightfully named fruity cocktail. Both seafoods are easy to prepare, too, which is no small thing when you're dealing with a rental kitchen that might not be as well-equipped as the one you couldn't wait to get the heck out of.

Vacation cooking can be terrific. That's because it doesn't have to be labor-intensive or overly complicated. It's actually at its best when the food is fast (you want to get back to the beach) and simply prepared (you don't want to be lugging your pantry along). You're on vacay, after all, and the livin' is supposed to be easy. To that end, it's best to use locally grown, seasonal produce and seafood. It will be the most readily available, with the added benefit of letting you eat like you live there. Which, when you're at the beach, is everyone's dream.

Think fish dusted with spices then seared to a crispy/flaky crunch in a hot pan. Shrimp that tasks those eating it to do the work of peeling, after it has been boiled in a pot of beer seasoned with Old Bay. Chowder made with lobster meat and sweet summer corn that stirs together in less time than it takes to eat it.

"The Jersey Shore Cookbook: Fresh Summer Flavors From the Boardwalk and Beyond" by Deborah Smith and "Lulu's Kitchen: A Taste of the Gulf Coast Good Life" by Lucy Buffett are among cookbooks that dish up a bright taste of summer. None of the dishes takes more than 15 minutes to prepare (plus baking time, for the desserts), and all use everyday ingredients that will be easy to find even in the tiniest beachfront grocery.

And if you're not anywhere near the drone of the ocean? You still can cook as though you're seaside, thanks to fishmongers such as Penn Avenue Fish Co. and Wholey's, where you can find a wide variety of fish, lobster and shrimp year-round.

What's that saying? Oh, yeah. Vacation is a state of mind, not a location.



JERSEY CLAMS AND LINGUINE

PG tested

Clams have long been a mainstay of New Jersey's coastal communities. Here, littleneck clams in a flavorful white wine sauce dress up linguine. Red pepper flakes give it a little bite. Serve with crusty bread for dipping.

8 to 12 ounces linguine

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for tasting

2 tablespoons butter

2 garlic cloves, chopped

Pinch crushed red pepper

Salt and ground black pepper, to taste

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano

Splash white wine

1/2 cup clam juice or stock

About 24 Jersey littleneck clams (more if they are small)

2 slices lemon

1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley

Cook pasta 3/4 of the way, according to package directions. Rinse with cool water to stop cooking and toss with a little olive oil. Set aside. (The pasta will finish cooking in sauce.)

In large saute pan, add 2 tablespoons oil and butter over medium heat. Add garlic, pepper flakes, salt, black pepper, thyme and oregano. Cook, stirring occasionally so the garlic doesn't burn, for 1 minute.

Add wine, stock and clams; cook, covered, until clams open. Add lemon slices and linguine and cook for about 2 minutes, tossing to mix. Top with parsley and serve, discarding any unopened clams.

Serves 2.

 "The Jersey Shore Cookbook: Fresh Summer Flavors From the Boardwalk and Beyond" by Deborah Smith (Quirk, April 2016, $22.95)

CREOLE BLACKENED GROUPER SALAD

PG tested

Redolent of paprika, cayenne and black pepper, this dish tastes of the islands. It's served on a bed of peppery arugula salad, but it would be just as tasty on top of rice or a bagged salad. Pan-searing the fish makes it crusty on the outside and tender on the inside. If you can't find grouper, any firm, large-flake white fish will be a fine substitute.

For fish

4 grouper fillets

6 tablespoons olive oil, divided

2 tablespoons creole seasoning

For dressing

2 tablespoons finely minced fresh ginger

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 cup canola oil

1/4 cup each freshly squeezed lemon and lime juice

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon coarse black pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt

For salad

2 bags mixed spring greens or fresh arugula, washed and dried

1/2 red onion, very thinly sliced

4 to 6 radishes, very thinly sliced

1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved

1 yellow bell pepper, sliced in strips

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Toss grouper with 2 tablespoons olive oil and creole seasoning. Set aside.

In large cast-iron or heavy skillet, heat remaining 4 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat until it sizzles. Gently place grouper fillets in skillet. Cook on one side for 3 to 4 minutes. Carefully turn fish fillets and continue cooking for another 3 to 4 minutes or until fish is cooked through. If you can easily insert a toothpick into the fish, it is done. Remove to an ovenproof platter or baking dish. Place in oven to keep warm while cooking remaining fillets.

While fish is cooking, make salad dressing: Place all ingredients in a glass jar or plastic container and shake well until dressing is combined. Refrigerate.

Combine salad greens with dressing. Toss thoroughly. Divide greens among four dinner plates.

On top of salads, sprinkle red onions, radishes, cherry tomatoes and bell pepper strips.

Top each salad with a grouper fillet and serve immediately.

Serves 4.

 "Lulu's Kitchen: A Taste of the Gulf Coast Good Life" by Lucy Buffett (Grand Central Life & Style; April 2016; $19.99)

SHRIMP 'N' BEER

PG tested

Nothing says "vacation" better than shrimp in a bucket. This recipe takes less than five minutes, and can be eaten warm or cold the next day. Serve with plenty of cold beer and napkins.

2 pounds shrimp, unpeeled

For cocktail sauce

1 cup ketchup

2 tablespoons prepared horseradish

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

For shrimp

12-ounce bottle beer

1 cup water

1 medium onion, sliced

1 lemon or lime, sliced

4 garlic cloves, slivered

1 bunch parsley, coarsely chopped

1 tablespoon salt

2 tablespoons Old Bay seasoning

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 teaspoon whole black or mixed peppercorns

Rinse shrimp and set aside to drain.

For cocktail sauce, in a small bowl, mix all ingredients thoroughly. Refrigerate until chilled, about 1 hour.

In large pot, mix beer and all shrimp ingredients. Bring to boil over medium-high heat, and allow to bubble for 2 minutes, reducing heat if necessary to keep from boiling over. Make sure beer mixture is at a raucous boil, and then add shrimp. Cook, stirring often, just until mixture returns to a boil and shrimp turn pink, about 2 to 3 minutes. Drain.

Serve in a large bowl, with a small bowl of cocktail sauce and an extra bowl for discarded shrimp shells.

Serves 4.

 "The Outer Banks Cookbook: Recipes & Traditions From North Carolina's Barrier Islands" by Elizabeth Wiegand (Globe Pequot Press, $19.95)

KEY LIME PIE

PG tested

It's my all-time favorite summer dessert. Both the scratch crust and filling are super easy, but it's perfectly acceptable to substitute a store-bought crust for quicker results  you're on vacation, after all. Ditto with using Reddi-Wip instead of making your own whipped cream.

For crust

1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs (from nine crackers)

2 tablespoons sugar

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

For filling

1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk

4 large egg yolks

6 tablespoons fresh or bottled key lime juice

For topping

3/4 cup very cold heavy cream

Make crust: Put rack in middle of oven and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-inch pie plate. Stir together graham cracker crumbs, sugar and butter in a bowl with a fork until well combined. Press crumb mixture evenly onto bottom and up sides of pie plate. Bake crust for 10 minutes, then transfer to a rack. Leave oven on.

While crust is baking, make filling: Whisk together condensed milk and yolks in a bowl until well combined. Add key lime juice and whisk until well combined and slightly thickened. Pour filling into crust, then return to oven and bake for 15 minutes. Cool pie completely on rack, then refrigerate, covered, for at least 8 hours.

Just before serving, beat cream in a medium bowl with an electric or hand mixer until it just holds stiff peaks. Spread pie with cream or top each serving with a dollop.

Serves 8.

 "The Gourmet Cookbook" by Ruth Reichl (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

BLUEBERRY SCONES

PG tested

New Jersey is the country's fifth-ranked blueberry-producing state, so you're bound to see them at roadside stands and farmers markets on the Jersey shore. These tender, moist scones are chock-full of the berries, offering sweetness in every bite along with heart-loving antioxidants. Delicious slathered with butter.

3 1/2 cups bread flour

1/3 cup granulated sugar

5 tablespoons butter, softened

3 teaspoons baking powder

Pinch salt

1/2 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 large egg

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 cups fresh blueberries, picked over and rinsed

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, combine flour, sugar, butter, baking powder and salt. Mix briefly on low speed to distribute evenly.

In bowl, whisk together buttermilk, cream, egg and vanilla extract. Turn mixer on low speed and slowly pour wet mixture into dry ingredients. Increase speed to medium and mix for 1 to 2 minutes, until dough softens. Return to low speed and mix in blueberries until combined. Try not to overmix or dough will turn blue.

With an ice cream scoop or large spoon, drop dough onto parchment-lined baking sheets; you should have 12 scones. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes (less time if berries are fresh). When done, scones should be light brown and firm to the touch. Serve warm or cool.

Makes 12.

 "The Jersey Shore Cookbook: Fresh Summer Flavors From the Boardwalk and Beyond" by Deborah Smith (Quirk, April 2016, $22.95)

WHITE RUM & LIME SEA BREEZES

PG tested

Take one sip of this colorful cocktail, and you'll feel like you're relaxing by the sea, even if you're on your back porch.

3 cups cranberry juice

2/3 cup grapefruit juice

Juice 1 lime

1 cup white rum

6 lime slices for garnish

Pour cranberry, grapefruit and lime juices and rum into a large pitche,r and stir well. Serve over ice in highball glasses, garnished with lime slices.

Serves 6.

 "The Beach House Cookbook" by Barbara Scott-Goodman (Chronicle, $24.95)

LOBSTER AND CORN CHOWDER

PG tested

Sweet summer corn and lobster are the stars in this creamy, oh-so-easy New England chowder.

1 or 2 lobsters (2 1/2 pounds total), boiled, drained and cooled (I used two large lobster tails)

2 ears fresh corn, husked

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 large or 2 small leeks, trimmed, rinsed, dried and chopped

1 medium red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded and finely chopped

2 tablespoons unbleached flour

3 cups chicken broth

1 cup whole milk

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley for garnish

1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives for garnish

Remove lobster meat from shells, pick over, cut into chunks and set aside.

Scrape kernels from corn cobs with a small knife. Reserve with their juices.

Melt butter in large soup pot over medium-high heat.

Saute leek for 3 minutes. Add bell pepper to pot and saute for another 3 minutes.

Add flour; stir well and add chicken broth. Lower heat to medium, add milk and cream, and stir until soup simmers and thickens slightly. Add lobster and corn. Add black pepper to taste and simmer for another 3 minutes, stirring often. Serve at once, garnished with herbs.

Serves 6.

 "The Beach House Cookbook" by Barbara Scott-Goodman (Chronicle, $24.95)



ESSENTIALS FOR A BEACH HOUSE KITCHEN

By Gretchen McKay

The last thing you probably want to do on vacation is spend hours cooped up in the kitchen. But cook you must, unless you plan on eating every meal out.

This usually isn't a problem if you're renting a beach house. Or is it?

While some beach-rental kitchens rival what you enjoy at home or are even better (our summer rental once came with a juicer), others are seriously lacking. Also, kitchen tools might not be in the best shape or of the highest quality  for example, knives that can barely cut through cream cheese, let alone the bagel you're going to spread it on, and nonstick pans that are anything but.

The same goes for food supplies. Who wants to stand in that epic line at the grocery store following check-in when you could be enjoying a cold beer and ocean views on the deck?

The great thing about vacation cooking is that it can be fast and simple. Here's a list of essential and suggested kitchen supplies to tuck in your car trunk or suitcase to make vacation cooking a bit more stress-free.

 A sharp knife and paring knife are essential, along with tongs for grilling, a rubber or silicon spatula, and a bottle/wine opener. It's also smart to bring along a disposable/flexible cutting board so you don't nick up the countertop.

 Need coffee or tea to start your day? You won't find your favorite blend from Nicholas Coffee Co. at Publix, so bring a (ground) bag of your favorite, along with filters, sugar and a container of cream.

 Pack some aluminum foil and resealable plastic bags. The former can be used for everything from cleaning a dirty grill and wrapping up food to lining baking pans; the latter is good for marinades and storing leftovers.

 If you plan on baking, spoon a few teaspoons of baking soda and baking powder in plastic baggies (make sure they're marked) so you don't have to buy big containers. Ditto with your favorite spices/spice rub, and don't forget salt and a pepper mill.

 Who can live without a bottle of good olive oil? Or balsamic, for that matter?

 Garlic and onions/shallots are two of the most versatile and inexpensive kitchen staples. Be sure to toss a few in.
SHARE 6/11/16 10:35:21 a.m.  Washington, D.C., U. S. A  Ret. USMC Lt. Col. Cathy Kirtley of Naples shakes hands with retired U.S. Senator Bob Dole at the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, June 11, 2016 during the Collier County Honor Flight Lady Hero Flight. Sen. Dole frequently sits outside the memorial to greet veterans during their Honor Flight visits. -- Photo by KC McGinnis, USA TODAY staff 6/11/16 10:35:21 a.m.  Washington, D.C., U. S. A  Veteran Army Specialist Samantha Kovarcik of Cape Coral, Florida touches a name at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. during the Collier County Honor Flight Lady Hero Flight on Saturday, June 11, 2016. Kovarcik took pictures of names from a list given to her by her family. -- Photo by KC McGinnis, USA TODAY staff 6/11/16 10:35:21 a.m.  Washington, D.C., U. S. A  Veteran Navy Seabee Denise Alexander of Naples, Florida walks toward the Washington Monument from the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C. while wearing a shirt that reads, "I'm a lady and a veteran" during the Collier County Honor Flight Lady Hero Flight on Saturday, June 11, 2016 . -- Photo by KC McGinnis, USA TODAY staff 6/11/16 10:35:21 a.m.  Washington, D.C., U. S. A  Veteran World War II Navy Specialist Evala Nevers of Naples, Florida and veteran Air Force Staff Sgt. Deborah Todd share a laugh during the arrival of the Collier County Honor Flight Lady Hero Flight at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, June 11, 2016. -- Photo by KC McGinnis, USA TODAY staff Related Photos Photos: All-Womens Collier County Honor Flight

By Tim Patterson and Shelby Reynolds of the Naples Daily News

WASHINGTON  Marine Corps veteran Susan Delapena pushed her 94-year-old mother's wheelchair around the water fountains at the center of the National World War II Memorial under Saturday's glaring sun and mid-90s heat.

Her mother, Evala Nevers, a World War II Navy Seabee who now lives in Naples, grinned for photos each time the wheelchair paused near one of the monument's engraved stone walls.

"I tell everybody at the VA that she's from the Civil War," said Delapena, 50, of Estero.

The truth is that Nevers, now white-haired and hard of hearing, enlisted in the Navy only weeks after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. She became a Seabee  called that because of her assignment to a construction battalion  worked on radio communications equipment, and helped pioneer a path for women in the military.

"After Pearl Harbor," Nevers said, "I just told my dad, 'I think I'll join.' My dad said, 'Shut up and join, or just shut up.' So I joined!"

Saturday was the first time she had seen the national memorial built in honor of the service and sacrifice that she and others gave in World War II.

"I didn't think it would ever actually happen," Delapena, who was a clerk for the Marines in the 1980s, said of the trip with her mother. "I didn't think it would be possible."

Nevers and her daughter were two of the 66 female veterans from Collier and Lee counties, ranging in age from 24 to 95  plus one service dog, Snowball  who joined Collier County's 10th Honor Flight to Washington, D.C., on Saturday. Johnna Dettis, a board member for the Collier County Honor Flights group, said she nicknamed this trip of women veterans "The Perfect 10."

This was only the second Honor Flight to fly all women veterans, said Kathleen Drennan, a member of the DCA Honor Flight Volunteers.

Red team is heading out. pic.twitter.com/3hponeK0ho  Shelby Reynolds (@NDN_SReynolds) June 11, 2016

The one-day trip included a stop at the World War II Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, the Vietnam Wall, the Iwo Jima Monument, Women in Military Service Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery, where the veterans witnessed the changing of the guard ceremony.

The hectic day began at sunrise at the Naples Municipal Airport. As the veterans arrived Saturday  dressed in provided pink T-shirts that read "I'm a lady and a veteran" on the back  they were hand saluted and skirted off to a free breakfast in the lobby.

Families, friends and patriot guard members applauded, and even kissed, passing veterans on their way to the plane Saturday morning. A few veterans' eyes welled with tears as they were handed tiny American flags to carry onto the flight.

On a mission

The group arrived at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport at about 10:30 a.m. with just enough time to load onto buses waiting to take them on their tour. They were greeted at their first stop, the National World War II Memorial, by former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, a 92-year-old veteran of that war, who worked as Senate leader to build the memorial. Dole, dressed in a starched white shirt with a red tie and dark slacks, sat in his wheelchair as he clasped the hands of the women veterans who approached him.

At the Women in Military Service Memorial, Nevers described the challenges for a woman enlisting in her era.

"They didn't want the women then. The commanders of the bases didn't want the women. So it took some time to get enough women to make the first platoon," she said.

"Sometimes," Nevers said, "we'd have to ride into town in cattle cars. And it was hard because we had skirts on."

Later in the war, Nevers was assigned to organize a party.

"One guy told me to order some Coca Cola," she said. "But I said, 'No. The men don't want that. They want some beer.' And I ordered a freight car full of beer."

Nevers recalled one problem.

"I got Miller's green beer," she said. "Talk about the hangovers!"

At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Army veteran Samantha Kovarcik pressed a hand against the polished black granite and slowly scanned the etched names of the war dead. Ignoring the tourist throngs and passers-by, Kovarcik silently searched.

"My mom gave me a list of names to find," said Kovarcik, 44, of Cape Coral. "One of them was her best friend's brother."

On a folded, crumpled sheet of white paper, she carried the names Robert Mirrer, Paul Gee, Chester Jarmolinski and Irwin Lerner.

"I found all of them," she said. "I felt an emotional connection to the names. I came here with a mission to find them, and I felt I accomplished that."

A veterans surprise

Another World War II veteran, Pauline Bensing, received a surprise at the entrance to the World War II Memorial. Her 44-year-old granddaughter Tracy Bensing shouted "Grandma!"

Pauline Bensing threw her arms wide to receive a tight hug. Tracy and her boyfriend, Josh Larsen, drove nearly an hour from their Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, home to present her 93-year-old grandmother with a bouquet of roses.

Grandmother and granddaughter clasped hands as the group strolled across the National Mall.

Pauline Bensing, who served as a Navy WAVE in World War II, was brief, almost dismissive, when describing her Navy service.

"I worked in accounting in San Francisco," she said. "I didn't do anything outstanding. You do your job. That's what you signed up to do."

In a private moment, Larsen, 38, filled in more of the story.

"Her job was to 'account' for the personal effects on the dead bodies of military service members" that were returned from overseas, Larsen said. "She doesn't think it was very important  going through those articles to return them to family members and loved ones."

Eye-opening journey

Saturday's trip included older and younger veterans. Those from the World War II and Korean War generation were paired up with younger "battle buddies," women who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan. This provided the older and younger generations a chance to bond over their shared sacrifice.

"Oftentimes the veterans and their battle buddies become lifetime friends," said Collier County Honor Flight co-founder Debi Lux, herself a Navy veteran.

Honor Flights are put together by a national organization that sends veterans  with preference to World War II vets  to the memorials and monuments in D.C. at no cost to the veterans; the organization is funded solely by donations and sponsorships.

"Everyone remembers the 'Times Square Kiss,' " Lux said. "But that didn't happen for most of these veterans. They returned straight home to their families and communities.

"This event provides some closure. It lets them know we haven't forgotten their generation."

Crazy, normal war zone

As the 66 honor flight veterans hustled to the Korean War Veterans Memorial, Air Force 1st Lieutenant Christine Manson casually recounted her own story.

"I deployed to Iraq in '05, '07, and '09," she said.

Manson, 34, of Fort Myers, was a munitions expert, preparing missiles and bombs that would be loaded on F-16 fighter jets at Balad Air Base in Baghdad.

"We would get attacked quite a bit, but nothing unusual," she recalled. "It was a war zone."

In her downtime, Manson volunteered at the Balad field hospital.

"It was crazy. There was dirt on the floors, we were in these tents, and they were performing incredible surgeries there in 2005," she said.

"I would just talk to the soldiers who were getting treated. I would take their vitals. I would get them water. Nothing special," Manson said.

Returning home

A quiet hum first surrounded the women at first, as they walked off the plane Saturday evening in Naples.

As they approached the airport lobby, the hum turned into a roar of applause, cheering, drums and bagpipes. At least 1,000 people formed a snaking walkway through the airport, out the door past baggage claim and around the corner beyond the main entrance.

Scenes from outside the Naples airport awaiting the arrival of 66 female vets on their Honor Flight to DC. @NDN pic.twitter.com/5sQzteTz7R  Shelby Reynolds (@NDN_SReynolds) June 11, 2016

There were banners, flags and red, white and blue bows  all the trimmings of a military homecoming.

Nevers and Delapena were the second and third veterans welcomed home. Delapena pushed her mother  with an armful of flowers and other gifts  in her wheelchair through the line. At the end, they were greeted by family and friends with more flowers.

A hot day in the nation's Capital to see the very monuments celebrating their service ended in a joyous welcome home ceremony for mother, daughter and their fellow veterans.

"Going together was just amazing. Nothing can top that," Delapena said.
By Arek Sarkissian of the Naples Daily News

TALLAHASSEE  Gov. Rick Scott is in a war of words over Louisiana's economic policies in the run-up to his trip there this week to try to lure businesses to Florida.

Scott is expected to be in New Orleans and Baton Rouge on Tuesday on a jobs mission that falls in line with previous trips he has made to states with Democrat governors.

He said Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards already has raised taxes, and more are on the way.

"As Gov. Edwards continues to rally behind tax increases and bad business policies, we stand ready to help Louisiana companies grow and create jobs in Florida," Scott said.

"Many Louisianans already vacation in Florida, and they will save more of their money by moving their businesses to our state," he added later.

Edwards' spokesman Richard Carbo said Edwards is fixing budget shortfalls created by former Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican like Scott.

"Louisiana is a hospitable state, and we welcome Gov. Scott," Carbo said. "We just hope he spends a little extra money while he's here to help us stabilize our budget.

"While he's here, he should visit with the students and families that are paying the price for the failed policies of his friend, former Gov. Jindal, who left our state with a $2 billion deficit.

"If not, then he'd be best served staying in Florida because Louisianans have had enough of slick-talking politicians who ignore their citizens."

Staff from Enterprise Florida, the state's public-private economic partnership, will join Scott on the trip.

Scott plans to meet with businesses that were recruited by Enterprise Florida. His office has not disclosed what businesses he will visit.

The Republican-led Louisiana Legislature will return for a special session Monday to cut tax breaks and raise money to fill a $600 million budget hole.

Scott's office noted in a news release last week that Louisiana recently increased taxes 14 times. The state increased its sales tax and taxes on alcohol and cigarettes.

Scott visited California in May after state lawmakers there voted to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

He also has made similar trips to Kentucky, New York, and Connecticut.

In California, Scott took part in a panel discussion with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper about economic recovery after the Great Recession of 2008. The panel was part of a conference held by the California-based Milken Institute, an economics think tank.

Scott visited with unidentified businesses in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose.

California Gov. Jerry Brown suggested Scott accept reports about climate change and its potential effects on Florida.

Contact Daily News reporter Arek Sarkissian at 850-559-7620.
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Collier County School Board meetings have been relatively civil in recent months. Don't be surprised if that changes Tuesday with a thud.

The board has done another self-evaluation, its third in a year, along with the five board members submitting their written evaluations of Superintendent Kamela Patton for discussion. Also on the agenda is whether to consider extending her contract.

What's clear to us from these assessments is that Patton doesn't work for one School Board. She's being expected to work for two boards, one with three members and the other with two members. Each faction wants to pull in its own direction.

That's unfortunate. After a revolving door of Collier school superintendents during the past decade-plus, Patton has brought welcomed stability to Collier County Public Schools in her five years. The superintendent's job is daunting enough in managing a $950.5 million budget, staff of about 7,100 and bearing responsibility for the well-being of 45,000 students of varying socioeconomic backgrounds and abilities.

To us, it's a shame to see some board members complicate that in a power struggle.

Board self-evaluation

For the past seven years, the board has done an evaluation of how it functions together. The review is completed independently by each member on 34 topics and then compiled into an overall score.

A year ago, the newly configured board with members Kelly Lichter and Erika Donalds went through this for its first time. In that review, board members scored themselves lower in every category than did the prior board a year earlier. Board members' review of their performance was so bad, they repeated it six months ago.

This time, the conclusion is worse. Ratings in about two-thirds of the categories declined from six months ago. More than a third of the 34 ratings hit historic lows.

"Board members clearly have little or no respect for one another as evidenced in the climate that has emerged since our newest members have been elected," 14-year board veteran Kathleen Curatolo wrote.

"It is a hostile working environment with one board member," Lichter wrote.

"Personal and political agendas often dictate votes rather than the well-being of students," board Chairwoman Julie Sprague wrote.

That's a sampling of the comments, which also refer to distrust, lying, incivility, meddling in administrative affairs and dysfunction of the board.

Patton evaluation

Despite the divided board's own determination that it can't respectfully get along while disagreeing, Patton's evaluation total score is deservedly higher. It's overall 3.76 out of 4 points, compared with 3.69 a year ago.

So Patton's staunch supporters, including our editorial board, can breathe a sigh of relief, right? Not so fast.

"I continue to assert this evaluation tool does not provide a clear picture to the board or the public of the superintendent's performance," Donalds wrote. Lichter echoes that sentiment by repeatedly noting what is "missing" in the review standards.

Some of Lichter's conclusions are mystifying. She says Patton "needs improvement" in time spent at schools and with staff, though longtime district administrator and current board member Roy Terry correctly notes the superintendent's commitment to get to all schools each year "never happened prior to Dr. Patton."

Lichter scored the most bizarre rating of all by describing Patton's relationship with the community as "needs improvement." Maybe Lichter is referring to the 9 percent of registered voters who chose her in August 2014, an election with a pathetic turnout that voters can ill-afford to repeat this fall when two board seats are decided.

Patton has earned a considerable embrace in the community we know.

Contract extension?

After the "two boards" go over their assessment of the superintendent, they're scheduled to decide whether to extend Patton's contract, which is through June 30, 2018. Putting this on the agenda now is the right way to go, compared with two years ago before the 2014 election when a contract extension, though warranted, surprised the community.
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Hy Bershad, Naples

Enough Benghazi

When are we going to put this Benghazi nonsense to rest?

For the past several years, the Republicans have been attempting, with some success (according to letters still appearing in this paper), to paint Hillary Clinton as a demon responsible for the death of four Americans there.

Yet, despite grilling Clinton for 11 hours this past October, with more than 100 people interviewed, their Benghazi Committee has found no basis for this claim.

The Republicans have spent nearly $7 million with this committee, which has been operational longer than the 9/11 Commission, longer than Congressional investigations on Watergate, the Kennedy assassination, and the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Additionally, separate investigations by the State Department and nine other reports issued by several Congressional committees have found no evidence of a cover-up or negligence by Clinton.

Some of the reports do indeed fault the government for failing to provide adequate protection and security for the Libyan ambassador and his three colleagues who were killed, but, again, no indication that Clinton was to blame.

But that doesn't prevent Donald Trump from distorting the truth and stating that she should be jailed for her activities.

Isn't it about time that we realize that, while Clinton may not be perfect, she is a far, far better choice for president than Trump.
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Michelle Flaherty, Naples

Success

There were many recent stories about young people graduating. This has given reason to throw caution to the wind and be politically incorrect.

Many of these are about children of immigrants, who have achieved great success at school and are moving on to college, some on scholarship. They want to make their parents proud, themselves proud. It took a lot of hard work and I salute them for all their success and that which will come in the future.

Now is where I'm not going to be PC.

English!

Had they not worked hard to become fluent they could never have hoped to go to college. They have probably figured out that English is the international language of business.

These young adults didn't make any excuses about why they couldn't learn. They knew what they had to do, and their parents kept reminding them.

Making it easy for the Hispanic population to not have to learn English (because Spanish words are translated everywhere) is a serious assault on them.

If people can't speak English here, they will never move ahead in jobs and will always be held in low-paying jobs. The way out is to become fluent. That way, they can compete with anyone for job promotions, increase in pay.

That goes for the Haitian population also.

One day, while standing in line at the deli, a young woman from Eastern Europe was next to me. Although she was hesitant, she spoke English and was looking forward to becoming fluent.

Those who make it easy for non-English speakers to hold on to their native language are hurting them, not helping. Education and English will lift people out of poverty. Congratulations, graduates of 2016!

By the way, English is my second language.
SHARE Mark Wilson CEO, Florida Chamber of Commerce

By Mark Wilson, Tallahassee President and CEO Florida Chamber of Commerce

Job creators beware  even though your business' workers' compensation rates decreased over recent years, a Florida Supreme Court ruling is reversing that trend  potentially pushing your rates toward the near-record levels of the early 2000s, absent a legislative remedy.

The high court's recent action threw out Florida's attorney fee structure  a system that was put into place to stabilize out-of-control workers' comp rates, which at the time were among the highest in the country. In this particular case, justices agreed that a plaintiff trial lawyer should receive $38,000 in attorney fees for a case in which the injured worker was awarded only $800.

As Florida's advocate fighting to keep workers' comp working, the potential impact of the high court's ruling could threaten Florida's improving business climate. That's because job creators now face a 17.1 percent workers' comp rate increase  a rate filing proposed by the National Council on Compensation Insurance.

In a state in which two of every three jobs is created by small businesses, a rate increase this significant can have a damaging impact on job creation and the economy.

Prior to 2003, Florida's workers' comp claims cost on average 40 percent more than the rest of the country when an attorney was involved. It was during 2003 that a united business community joined with the Florida Chamber of Commerce in successfully urging state elected leaders to address cost drivers like outrageous, higher-than-the-national-average plaintiff attorney fees and delays in getting employees the quality health care they needed and deserved.

Those reforms resulted in behavior changes: employees were able to receive important health care to return to work more quickly, while attorney fees became a bit more reasonable.

In the last 13 years, we have led efforts to help lower workers' comp rates by nearly 60 percent. Cases were settled faster, allowing injured workers to get the benefits they needed, and injured workers returned to work faster on average by 10 days.

At the Florida Chamber, we remain laser-focused on ensuring workers receive quality health care so they can return to work quickly, and that job creators aren't stuck with a 17.1 percent plaintiff trial lawyer tax on workers' comp.

We fully anticipated Florida's activist court would rule in favor of plaintiff trial lawyers, and against workers and job creators.

As a result, our Workers' Compensation Task Force has been engaging Florida's highest elected leaders since last year, preparing them for this outcome and working with top legal minds to develop the right solution.

In addition to task force meetings, six regional membership meetings (with more to come) have already taken place, and our local chamber federation is actively engaged  assessing the impact it will have on local businesses, and joining efforts toward solutions.

At the Florida Chamber, we believe that putting job creators and injured workers first is the right thing to do to keep Florida's workers' comp system working.

__ Wilson can be reached at mwilson@flchamber.com
I strongly condemn the horrific shooting in Orlando, Florida. I grieve with all those who lost loved ones, the LGBT community, and the American people. My thoughts are with the many who were injured in this act of terror.

Terror and hate will not change who we are. NATO Allies stand united in the fight against terrorism and in defence of our open societies.
The Bay Area was mourning following Sundays devastating mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, in which a crazed gunman claiming affiliation with ISIS killed at least 50 people and injured 53 more at a gay nightclub. It is the deadliest shooting in U.S. history.

Although the investigation was in the early stages, there were indications that shooter Omar Mateen, 29, was once upset by seeing an openly gay couple kiss, according to an NBC News investigation. Investigators are treating this as a hate crime.

In San Francisco, a city often heralded for being a longtime-haven for members of the LGBT community, Mayor Ed Lee released a statement expressing "deep sorrow" for the people of Orlando. He said the violence served as a "stark reminder" of violence that continues to threaten diversity and inclusivity.

"San Francisco grieves with the people of Orlando, the LGBT community and the nation, he said.

A makeshift memorial was growing rapidly in the Castro district, with flowers, candles and signs honoring the Orlando victims. Signs at the corner of Castro and 18th streets had messages such as "Orlando SF Weeps" and "RIP Orlando."

"It's just really sad, you know. We live in this world where we're supposed to be the melting pot country," said Chey Hernke, who came by to visit the memorial. "We should be coming together; we don't need all this hatred."

The Pride flag was flying at half-staff in the Castro dsitrict to honor the victims.

City Supervisor Scott Wiener, who represents the Castro district, was the first to speak out. He arranged a vigil Sunday at Harvey Milk Plaza, an apt location considering its named after the first gay city supervisor, who was also a victim of gun violence. Hundreds of people attended.

"There's a perception now because we have marriage equality that our fight is somehow over, that it's all good," said Wiener, who is gay. "We have a lot of work to do; there is still enormous bigotry in this country."

Wiener issued a stern warning to fellow politicians who attack members of the LGBT community, saying they define us as less than fully part of society.

That has to stop, he said. We mourn today. And then we fight.

Many in the LGBT community arrived at the vigil to not only share their grief but also to share a commitment to keep pushing.

"We're here today for the opportunity to mourn those we've lost, and really to mourn the impact of violence on our community," said Rebecca Rolfe, of the SF LGBT Center. "But also really come together to pledge that we will not continue to accept this kind of violence targeting us as a community."

Wiener also addressed the gathering at Castro and Market streets.

"This location has a long history of our community coming together to mourn, to celebrate, to get ready to fight, and that's what we're doing tonight," he said.

After the vigil, many from the gathering marched to City Hall in a show of unity.

Congressman Mike Honda, President of the Board of Supervisors London Breed and others also issued statements expressing sorrow for the victims and their loved ones.

In the East Bay, a community vigil also was held at Oakland City Hall and Frank Ogawa Plaza.
Following the lenient sentencing of Brock Turner, the former Stanford swimmer who was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, Sunday's graduation ceremony at the elite university was home to a number of quiet demonstrations against rape culture.

Some students and activists rallied together to hold a protest before Sunday's 10 a.m. ceremony.

Organizers said the goal was not to disrupt the commencement, but to use it as a public stage to decry the treatment of sexual assaults on college campuses around the country.

On Saturday, a student named Brianne Huntsman shared photos on Twitter of the signs she planned to hold. Written in black and red letters, the signs read "Teach Your Son Not to Rape," "Brock Turner is Not An Exception" and "Justice for Survivors, Not Leniency for Rapists."

UltraViolet, a women's advocacy organization, seemingly spared no expense for the protest.

The group has hired a plane to fly over Stanford Stadium until 15 minutes before the ceremony starts with a banner reading "Protect Survivors. Not Rapists."

The organization also took out a full page ad in the student newspaper that urges faculty and students to sign a petition to oust Santa Clara County Federal Judge Aaron Persky, who handed down the controversial 6-month jail sentence to Turner.

Bicycle billboards decrying rape culture were outside the stadium from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.
College graduations are supposed to be a time to celebrate, but for many students at Stanford University, this year's commencement will not be a joyous occasion.

Following the lenient sentencing of Brock Turner, the former Stanford swimmer who was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, some students and activists are rallying together to hold a protest before Sunday's 10 a.m. ceremony.

Organizers say the goal is not to disrupt the commencement, but to use it as a public stage to decry the treatment of sexual assaults on college campuses around the country.

Those who are involved in the protest also would like the school to implement a new Campus Climate survey -- a standard tool used by universities to assess students' feelings of safety at school.

On Saturday, a student named Brianne Huntsman shared photos on Twitter of the signs she planned to hold. Written in black and red letters, the signs read "Teach Your Son Not to Rape," "Brock Turner is Not An Exception" and "Justice for Survivors, Not Leniency for Rapists."

UltraViolet, a women's advocacy organization, has seemingly spared no expense for the protest.

The group has hired a plane to fly over Stanford Stadium until 15 minutes before the ceremony starts with a banner reading "Protect Survivors. Not Rapists."

The organization has also taken out a full page ad in the student newspaper that urges faculty and students to sign a petition to oust Santa Clara County Federal Judge Aaron Persky, who handed down the controversial 6-month jail sentence to Turner.

Bicycle billboards decrying rape culture will also be on display outside the stadium from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-14), an advocate for survivor's rights, has been fighting within the political arena to ensure that schools are held more accountable when instances of sexual assaults occur. Next week, she will read the viral letter that Turner's victim wrote during a House meeting.

"This cannot just be a little pebble floating across the lake with a couple of ripple effects," Speier said. "This needs to be something that really drives us to do something significant on the issue of rape."

Speier has frequently introduced legislation and spoken about sexual assault on the House floor. The congresswoman has introduced three bills to the House floor that deal with rape and sexual assault, including one that would do away with the statute of limitations on prosecuting rape.

She has also been supportive of efforts to remove Persky from the bench.

"For the judge to say when he actually announced the sentence, that (prison) would have a severe impact on this young man's life boggles the mind," she told NBC News and NBC Bay Area in an interview. "How about the severe impact on the victim's life?"

Persky, who agreed with a parole board's recommendation to the six-month sentence, slid into a new six-year term on Tuesday after running unopposed on the ballot. He is facing two recall efforts, one that is pushing for the state's judicial commission to review his performance, and another that would put his re-election before Santa Clara County voters in November.
A vigil for the victims of the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida that left at least 49 dead and 53 injured will take place 8 p.m. Sunday in San Francisco at Harvey Milk Plaza, according to city supervisor Scott Wiener.

The massacre, which unfolded at gay nightclub Pulse, is the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Police believe the shooter, U.S. born Omar Mateen, targeted the club because he was homophobic.

Wiener announced the vigil on Twitter early Sunday morning. The location is apt: Milk, who was San Francisco's first gay city supervisor, was also the victim of a shooting.

Weiner, who is running for state senate, also hit back at Twitter users who jumped to blame "radical islam" for the shooting, writing: "Let's be clear: Radical Islam doesn't have a monopoly on anti-#LGBT violence. Radical Christianity more than holds its own. #PulseNightclub."

Shortly after the vigil was announced, San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee joined other politicians nationwide and offered his condolensces to the victims of the massacre, while also stressing the need to fiercely combat gun violence.

"San Francisco stands in solidarity with the community of Orlando and the nation in the aftermath of this terrible day," he said. "This is a stark reminder of the violence that still threatens our LGBT community. Senseless acts of violence against innocents, fueled by hate and easy access to deadly firearms, have become all-too frequent. We must continue to work each day to reduce gun violence and ensure every community is safe.
Well-wishers from around the world are sending messages of love and support to the city of Orlando, Florida, where at least 49 people were killed and dozens more wounded in a shooting early Sunday morning at a nightclub.

President Barack Obama ordered flags to be flown at half-staff until sunset on Thursday in honor of the victims, calling it "an especially heartbreaking day" for the LGBT community.

"Say a prayer for them, say a prayer for their families. May God give them the strength to bear the unbearable," he said.

President Barack Obama spoke about the deadly shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, calling Pulse more than a night club, but a place of solidarity, empowerment, where people have come together, to raise awareness, to speak their minds, and to advocate for their civil rights.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott, both presumptive presidential nominees, both Florida senators and many more elected officials and advocates have spoken or released statements about the shooting, the deadliest in U.S. history.

Americans from all over the country spoke up as well, expressing their solidarity on social media and by donating money or blood.

The owner of Pulse, the nightclub shuttered in the deadly attack, reached out with condolences.

"Like everyone in the country, I am devastated about the horrific events that have taken place today. Pulse, and the men and women who work there, have been my family for nearly 15 years. From the beginning, Pulse has served as a place of love and acceptance for the LGBTQ community. I want to express my profound sadness and condolences to all who have lost loved ones. Please know that my grief and heart are with you," Barbara Poma said in a statement.

Statements from national figures

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, families and all those affected by this horrific tragedy. We are a strong and resilient state and we will devote every resource available to assist with the shooting in Orlando," Gov. Rick Scott said in a statement.

"Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act," Hillary Clinton tweeted.

"Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?" Donald Trump said on Twitter.

Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

"It's horrific, it's unthinkable. And just hopes go out to all those who were shot that they can recover," Bernie Sanders, Democratic presidential candidate, said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani tweeted: Severely condemn the heinous & unforgivable crime in Orlando. It was a coward act of terror. Praying for all those affected by this tragedy."

The Vatican said Pope Francis expressed "the deepest feelings of horror and condemnation."

"I stand with the City of Orlando against hate and bigotry. My thoughts are with all the victims of this horrific attack #lovewins," tweeted London's newly-elected mayor, Sadiq Khan.

Vice President Joe Biden said in a statement that "the violence is not normal, and the targeting of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans is evil and abhorrent."

In a statement, French President Francois Hollande said he "condemns with horror" the mass killing in Florida and "expresses the full support of France and the French with America's authorities and its people in this difficult time."

Hundreds of people have written on the Facebook page of the club, called Pulse, in downtown Orlando. Many replied to two posts the club put online  a brief, frightening message around the time of the shooting saying "Everyone get out of pulse," and another, four hours later, that said it would provide more information when it was available and thanking for the messages that came in. [[382608041, C]]

"Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love," the club wrote around 6 a.m.

Equality Florida, the state's largest civil rights organization for the LGBT community, said in a statement Sunday it was "reeling from the tragic news."

"We are heartbroken and angry that senseless violence has once again destroyed lives in our state and in our country," the organization said.

People from the U.S. and abroad wrote in  the shooting occurred as many were asleep in America  like Carley Swan, who said "Sending Prayers from Australia, hearing this down here."

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer spoke at a press conference Sunday morning, thanking first responders, hospitals and law enforcement for their work and noting the need to support the victims. [[382607581, C]]

"Tonight we had a crime that will have a lasting effect on our community. We need to stand strong, we need to be supportive of the victims and their families," Dyer said.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted: "Our prayers are with those injured and killed early this morning in horrifying act of terror in Orlando."

House Speaker Paul Ryan issued a statement after ordering that flags above the Capitol be flown at half-staff in honor of the victims:

"It is horrifying to see so many innocent lives cut short by such cowardice. Tonight, and in the long days ahead, we will grieve with the families. We will thank the heroes. We will hope for a swift recovery for the injured," Ryan said.

"Our security depends on our refusal to back down in the face of terror. We never will."

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shared his condolences by saying, "it is appalling that as many as 50 lives may have been lost to this domestic terror attack."

Sports world reacts to shooting

At NASCAR's race in Michigan on Sunday, Father Geoff Rose of St Francis de Sales High School said, "We begin with our thoughts and prayers for the Orlando community and all of those affected by the tragic events this early morning."

Many prominent athletes took to social media in the wake of the incident.

Shaquille O'Neal, who began his storied career with the Orlando Magic and is the most prominent star to ever play in the city, tweeted "My thoughts & prayers go out to my Orlando LGBT community brothers and sister during this senseless act of violence. Love is Love!"

Current Magic guard Shabazz Napier tweeted, "What has to plague the mind of any person to commit such heinous crimes? Life is so beautiful but we always tear it apart. #PrayforOrlando."

Michael Sam, the first openly gay player in NFL history, wrote a short essay on Instagram, stating in part that "50 people lost their lives because of a hateful coward with a gun. Let this hateful act of terror of the #LGBTQ community be a wake up call for America. Men and women of all races, ages, and sexual orientation are being slaughtered because of hate crimes. How many more must die from a hate crime? We need to create awareness to ALL that hate is not the foundation of our nation. Friends DO NOT let this coward put fear into your hearts!!!"

WNBA star Brittney Griner, also using the hashtag #prayfororlando, posted a picture of five hearts in the colors of the LGBT flag, with a red heart split in half.

Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James, asked about the suspension of Warriors forward Draymond Green for Game 5 of the NBA Finals because of a flagrant foul he committed against James in Game 4, began his answer by instead offering condolences to the families who lost loved ones in the shooting.

"I think it's another hit for us as Americans and what we have to deal with in our world today, and it definitely puts things in perspective on basketball. For myself, it's just a small matter of what reality really is.

Baseball teams across the country also held moments of silence.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
The Chicago Police Department will be stepping up police presence in certain areas of the city after the deadly massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, officials announced Sunday.

First Deputy Superintendent John Escalante ordered the stepped-up police presence in the wake of the attack and the arrest of a heavily armed man near the LA Pride parade, according to a release from the Department.

Additional resources will be deployed to the 19th District, which includes the North Side neighborhoods of Lake View, Lincoln Park and Boystown.

Increased police visibility will be present at all special events throughout the city and along the lakefront as well, according to Chicago Police spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi.

Officers will also be conducting increased traffic and safety enforcement downtown, on heavily traveled areas, and at CTA transportation hubs, police said.

"These measures are being done out of an abundance of caution," Guglielmi said. "There is no intelligence or threat against the LGBTQ community or any event within the City of Chicago."

The increased police presence comes in the wake of the deadliest shooting in American history. 50 people were killed and at least 53 more wounded when a gunman wielding an assault-type rifle and a handgun took hostages and opened fire inside Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

The gunman, later identified by the FBI as as Omar Mateen, 29, of Port St. Lucie, Florida, died in a gunfight with SWAT officers, police said.

Chicago Police offered additional assistance to Orlando law enforcement Sunday, Guglielmi told NBC 5. CPD extended its condolences and offered technical, manpower or resource assistance.

"As we learn about another reprehensible act of gun violence, CPD extends our deepest condolences to those affected by the horrible tragedy in #Orlando," Chicago Police said in a statement on Facebook. "Our thoughts and support also go out to our partners at the FBI and Orlando Police for their great work managing such a tragic and difficult incident.



Orlando's police chief publicly thanked Chicago Police during a press conference Sunday morning.



Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a statement called the shooting a "horrifying act of terrorism" that was "an attack on our most fundamental values as Americans."
The Chicago Police Department offered resources to Orlando law enforcement Sunday following the deadly massacre at a popular gay nightclub in Florida.



CPD extended its condolences and offered technical, manpower or resource assistance, Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told NBC 5.



"As we learn about another reprehensible act of gun violence, CPD extends our deepest condolences to those affected by the horrible tragedy in #Orlando," Chicago Police said in a statement on Facebook. "Our thoughts and support also go out to our partners at the FBI and Orlando Police for their great work managing such a tragic and difficult incident.



Orlando's police chief publicly thanked Chicago Police during a press conference Sunday morning.



A gunman opened fire early Sunday morning at Pulse Orlando, a popular gay dance club, killing 50 people and leaving 53 more wounded, police said.



The suspect was identified by several law enforcement sources as Omar Mateen, according to NBC News. The sources told NBC News Mateen was born in New York in 1986 and was listed as living in a residence in Port St. Lucie, about 125 miles south of Orlando.



Police have not released the identities of the victims, as officials are still trying to notify next of kin. A hotline was set up for families of the victims: 407-246-4357.



Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a statement called the shooting a "horrifying act of terrorism" that was "an attack on our most fundamental values as Americans."



"On behalf of the City of Chicago, Amy and I send our deepest condolences to the friends and family members of those who were lost," Emanuel said. "June is a time when all Chicagoans and all Americans proudly celebrate the contributions of our LGBT community. This horrendous violence will only deepen our resolve to continue building a society that values everyone, regardless of who they love. The thoughts and prayers of Chicago will remain with the victims of this attack as they seek comfort and courage in the days ahead."
A house collapsed Saturday afternoon in the North Center neighborhood on the Northwest Side.

The 1 1/2-story house collapsed about noon in the 2500 block of West Hutchinson, according to police and Fire Media Affairs.

The house was being renovated, and workers had removed bricks from the structure a few days ago, Fire Media Affairs Director Larry Langford said.

Firefighters searched the remains of the building but did not find anyone inside, Langford said. No injuries were reported.
The gunman who opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people early Sunday morning was born in New York, law enforcement sources told NBC News.

Omar Mateen, 29, was born in 1986 and moved to Florida as a young child. He was listed as living at a residence in Port St. Lucie, about 125 miles south of Orlando, law enforcement sources said.

Mateen's father told NBC News, "this has nothing to do with religion." Mir Seddique said his son got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago and thinks that may be related to the shooting.

"We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident. We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country," Seddique said.

Seddique also said Mateen was a husband and father to a 3-year-old boy.

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A man who picked up the phone at Mateen's listed address, Mustafa Abasin, told NBC News: "We are in shock and we are sad." He would not explain how he knew the gunman, but added that he was aiding investigators.

Law enforcement sources told NBC News just before the attack began, the shooter called 911 and swore allegiance to ISIS.

Rep. Alan Grayson, a Democrat from Florida whose district includes the site of the shooting, suggested to reporters that "more likely than not" the massacre was ideologically motivated.

"Let me put it this way," Grayson said, "the nationality of family members is indicative."

The family's background was not immediately clear, but Grayson said Mateen was a U.S. citizen.

[NATL] Deadly Nightclub Shooting Leaves Orlando Reeling

The New York City Police Department said in a statement they are in contact with law enforcement authorities in Florida and the FBI as they closely monitor developments. Meanwhile, the NYPD has placed our Patrol and Counter-terrorism resources, including CRC, SRG and ESU personnel, on alert pending further information."

Officials previously said a gunman opened fire at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando around 2 a.m. A uniformed officer working at the nightclub exchanged gunfire with the shooter, who was armed with an assault-type rifle, a handgun and a suspicious device.

"The officer engaged in a gun battle with that suspect. The suspect at some point went back inside the club and more shots were fired. This did turn into a hostage situation," Orlando Police Chief John Mina said during a news conference said.

The gunman was shot dead when a SWAT team entered the club, police said.

Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life. pic.twitter.com/MAb0jGi7r4  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

With at least 49 killed, the massacre is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States. It comes amid national celebrations marking LGBT pride month.

"Our hearts break for the victims and families of this horrific act of violence. We stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ community in #Orlando," GLAAD tweeted.
Authorities say they've identified the man being eaten by a 9-foot alligator near a Florida lake.

Lakeland police spokesman Gary Gross told local media Friday that 72-year-old Richard Zachary Taylor was identified through fingerprints.

Police recovered Taylor's body Tuesday afternoon after a report of an alligator with a body in its mouth near Lake Hunter. A trapper responded a short time later and eventually caught the gator.

Gross says detectives still don't know if Taylor drowned or was killed by the reptile. They're waiting for additional test results from the Medical Examiner's Office.

Taylor's body was decomposed, indicating he had been in the water a couple of days or longer. Remains found inside the alligator during a necropsy were a match to Taylor.
Connecticut legislators were quick to react to the news of the worst massacre in U.S. history on Sunday.

Sen. Chris Murphy condemned the killing of 50 people at an Orlando nightclub, and called Congress complicit in the shooting because of its inaction on gun control.

"I'm aching for the victims, their loved ones, and the people of Orlando, and I pray that all those injured have a quick and full recovery," Murphy said in a statement. He didn't hesitate to point the finger at fellow legislators. "Congress has become complicit in these murders by its total, unconscionable deafening silence. This doesn't have to happen, but this epidemic will continue without end if Congress continues to sit on its hands and do nothing -- again."

On Twitter, Murphy continued his message.

"Congress's heartless, intentional silence has become a quiet message of endorsement to would be shooters contemplating mass murder." Murphy said on Twitter.

Congress's heartless, intentional silence has become a quiet message of endorsement to would be shooters contemplating mass murder.  Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) June 12, 2016

Murphy's words were echoed by senior Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

"The Senate's inaction on commonsense gun violence prevention makes it complicit in this public health crisis. Prayers and platitudes are insufficient," Blumenthal said in a statement.

Scott Wilson, the president of the gun rights group Connecticut Citizens Defense League said Murphy and Blumenthal are trying to use the shooting as a way to advance their political careers.

"It is shameful that our two senators fail to address the root causes behind these incidents. They would rather curtail lawful gun ownership than deal with those more difficult issues," Wilson said in a statement.

Fourth District Rep. Jim Himes tweeted about what he perceives as inaction by Congress.

"I will not attend one more 'Moment of Silence' on the Floor. Our silence does not honor the victims, it mocks them," he said.

I will not attend one more"Moment of Silence" on the Floor. Our silence does not honor the victims, it mocks them. pic.twitter.com/VWWdOkliWN  Jim Himes (@jahimes) June 13, 2016

Rep. Elizabeth Esty, who represents the 5th District, which includes Sandy Hook, provided her words of comfort to those closely affected by the shooting.

"Today we awoke to the agonizing news that at least 50 lives have been taken from us, and 53 people wounded, in yet another act of brutal gun violence in our country. We are heartsick for the victims and for their loved ones, and we pray for a quick recovery for all those who have been injured," she said.

In accordance with a proclamation from President Obama, Gov. Dannell Malloy directed flags be lowered to half-staff to honor the victims of the massacre. Gov. Malloy also raised the pride flag at the Governor's residence in Hartford.
The family of the pregnant woman who was allegedly stabbed to death by her husband before their apartment was lit on fire is trying to raise funds for her funeral service.

"He never seemed suspicious, like he could do something like that," Frantzy Noze, the victim's cousin, told NBC Connecticut. Seems like the guy just lost it."

Patrick Antoine, 39, turned himself in to officals to admit he killed his wife, Margarette Mady, while crews responded to their apartment set ablaze on June 3, police said.

Antoine told police he thought his wife was a Voodoo priestess who had cast several spells on him over the last couple of years.

That was shocking to me because shes not the type of person to believe in any type of evilness," Frantzy said about the Voodoo claims, saying his cousin was a Jehovah's Witness. "She's really religious."

During the time Anotine was at the police station, firefighters found an unresponsive 8-months-pregnant 37-year-old with severe burns and several stab wounds at 283-285 Franklin Street, police said.

Now, her family is trying to pick up the pieces and pay for a proper burial. Frantzy said he created a GoFundMe account to help Mady's son pay for the service arrangements.

"She's a family-oriented person," Frantzy said. "Always close with her sisters and cousins."

Relatives said she was expecting a baby girl next month. Family believes Antoine and Mady had been married for around five years.

"She loved him very much," her cousin said.

According to Frantzy, Mady left Haiti in 2005 with her two children -- now 23 and 22 years old -- to come to the United States. Mady had recently worked as a housekeeper at Foxwoods Casino.

"Coming from a third-world country shes done a lot. She worked at Foxwoods and helped her family back home. She has a lot of her family back home like sisters and cousins. We all do that- Haitians. Thats what youre meant to do when you come to America from a country like that," her cousin said.

A family friend, Laurie Petrucci, told NBC Connecticut that Mady and her family were "the best people in the world."

A GoFundMe page has been set up by the victim's family to pay for funeral expenses.

"She would have loved having her family attend," Frantzy said.
A Central Texas chiropractor must serve 14 years in prison and repay the U.S. government nearly $18 million in a workers' compensation referral scam.

Prosecutors say Garry Wayne Craighead of Leander ran clinics mainly treating injured U.S. Postal Service workers covered by the Federal Employees' Compensation Act.

Craighead was sentenced Friday by a federal judge in Austin. The 49-year-old Craighead in December pleaded guilty to solicitation and receipt of illegal remunerations in federal health programs and to engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity.

Craighead operated clinics in Austin, San Antonio, Killeen, Corpus Christi, Dallas, Fort Worth and Weslaco.

Authorities say Craighead, from 2008 through 2015, solicited and received kickbacks from health care providers in return for referring patients to those businesses for services.
What to Know 50 people were killed and 53 more were injured in an Orlando nightclub.

People in DFW are mourning the losses in every way possible.

There will be a vigil held Sunday night in honor of the lives taken.

In light of the shooting that claimed the lives of 49 and wounded more than 50 in Orlando, Florida, local residents in DFW are mourning and honoring those who lost their lives anyway that they can.

The massacre, which the FBI is investigating as a terrorist attack, is the deadliest mass shooting in United States history.

Early Sunday morning, a gunman wielding an AR-15 rifle and handgun went into the gay club, Pulse, in Orlando, where he opened fire more than 100 times, NBC News reports. The suspect, Omar Mateen, died after being shot by SWAT officers.

In the wake of this massacre, people across North Texas are remembering those who lost their lives, leaving flowers at the Legacy of Love monument, a LGBT landmark in Oak Lawn. [[382619501, C]]

Being that were in Dallas, this statue is probably one of the closest and nearest things to us that we can represent our sign of love and show that we are there for them even though we are a great distance away, said DFW resident, Trent Brown.

Jonathan Davis, another monument visitor, described feeling shock and disbelief after hearing the news of the attacks.

You hear the number of people and part of you wants to believe it, the other part of you is just instantly mourning these victims, Davis said.

Almost two years ago, that same LGBT landmark was vandalized with 666, the biblical sign of the devil, along with surrounding buildings.

A vigil was held in Oak Lawn Sunday at 8 p.m. to honor those whose lives were taken Sunday morning. Hundreds of people went to honor the victims of the tragedy in Florida and gather around the LGBT community in the Resource Center off Cedar Springs Road in Dallas. [[382619771, C]]

One LGBT activist, Patti Fink, exclaimed, "Let's be together. Let's be together tonight. Let's be together tomorrow and going forward and let's be one with Orlando. We are all Pulse"

The event began with a press conference hosted by the Dallas Resource Center and the Council on American-Islamic Relations to condemn the the Orlando shooting. Alia Salem of CAIR said "There is a rainbow and a silver lining we can take away, that this is a chance for us to spit in the face of those criminals who seek to take our joy"

After the press conference and vigil, the group walked in solidarity and remembrance of the victims. While there was a moment of silence during the vigil, people, expressed their anger and distress about the shooting.

A vigil was held in Oak Lawn Sunday at 8 p.m. to honor those whose lives were taken Sunday morning.

One woman said, "My heart broke. I wanted to crawl into a small space because I'm part of several communities that are always attacked. The black community, im a woman, im queer. Every time I look around violence is coming at me. it would be easy to taint my vision of the world because around every corner I'm thinking some kind of attack is coming at me, But you cannot let that define who we are and. this is who we are."

"We stand together. We love you. We will be with you tonight. We will be with you tomorrow, and we will be with you as partners and as friends," said Dallas Police chief David Brown.

The mayor of Fort Worth, Betsy Price, released a statement Sunday regarding the shooting.

In the aftermath of such a brutal tragedy, our thoughts and prayers go out to all the families affected and our friends in Orlando," said Price." Violence is unacceptable and as a city of compassion, Fort Worth stands in support of Orlando. As a nation, we must continue to respect the rights and lives of all citizens.

On June 14 at 7 p.m., the world-renowned Turtle Creek Chorale will be hosting a free concert at Cathedral of Hope to "bring hope and healing" in the wake of the Orlando shooting.

This irrational and cruel act of terrorism strikes deeply at the very core of our community," said Sean Baugh, Artistic Director of the Turtle Creek Chorale. "The impact is horrible throughout our city, our state and our world. We must do what we do best - heal with the power of song - to blunt this pathetic act.

The Office of Gov. Greg Abbott sent a notice out that all flags must be lowered to half-staff until June 16 "in memory of the victims in the attack."

Controversy came about after Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick tweeted a biblical quote earlier in the morning that said: Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows."

Backlash soon followed and Patrick deleted the tweet, saying that it was scheduled Thursday to be published Sunday morning before his office had any knowledge of the Orlando attack.

President Obama addressed the nation early Sunday afternoon, saying: "We stand with the people of Orlando who have endured a terrible attack on this city. Although it's still early in the investigation, we know enough to say this is an act of terror and an act of hate."

For members of the community looking to help those injured in Orlando, the Red Cross will be shipping donated blood from across the country to Orlando. Blood drives will be held at the following locations:

Monday: Baylor Scott & White Medical Center -- Garland 6 a.m. - noon.

Wednesday: Trammell Crow Center -- Dallas 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

Wednesday: Sanmina, 1201 W Crosby Road, Carrollton 10 a.m. - 3 p.m.

The City of Orlando will be updating their website with the names of the victims. We will include them here, below:

NBC 5's Cory Smith contributed to this report.
Aspiring tinkers, inventors, and budding engineers now have a new playground to build their dream designs right here in North Texas.

The MakerSpace presented by Raytheon at Sci-Tech Discovery Center in Frisco opened to the public on June 11 to give the community and groups of all ages access to programs, technology and tools to test, prototype, demonstrate and build almost anything they can imagine.

An official ceremony kicked off the grand opening of the new space at 11 a.m on Saturday. The Raytheon Company donated $50,000 to give Collin County residents the new MakerSpace for DIY projects in design, engineering, fabrication and education.

"This MakerSpace provides a community anchor for a hands-on, high-tech, math and science experience that will reach schools, Boys & Girls Clubs, veterans and the general public," said Trudy Sullivan, vice president, Communication & Public Affairs at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems. "It helps take learning from abstract to tangible and offers a great reward for current and future engineers."

Tours of the MakerSpace will be available all weekend along with scheduled workshops that are open to a variety of age groups as part of the opening celebration.

Sci-Tech will also host its second annual Frisco Mini Maker Faire throughout the weekend with a family-friendly showcase of inventions, creativity and resourcefulness. During this unique festival of innovation, Makers of all kinds will demonstrate and share their skills, creations and expertise with local families and enthusiasts.



The MakerSpace will be free with the price of regular Sci-Tech admission from June 13 until fall 2016. For more information or to purchase tickers, visit the Sci-Tech Discovery Center website.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has deleted a tweet quoting the New Testament in the wake of the deadly Orlando nightclub shooting.

Hours after the shooting at a gay nightclub that left 50 dead, Patrick sent a tweet from his personal account: "Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows."

NBC 5 News

The tweet received harsh criticism online. North Texas Congressman, Marc Veasey, specifically called out the Lt. Gov. for his tweet.

Veasey also spoke to NBC 5 Political Reporter Julie Fine about the tweet.

"It was a sad day in Texas history for all the great representation of Texas we've had over the years," Veasey said. "For a second-ranking state official to do something like that [shakes head]."

Texas' Democratic Party responded to the tweet with a statement calling on Patrick to apologize.

The tweet was deleted around 11 a.m. Sunday.

Patrick campaign spokesman Allen Blakemore strongly denied the tweet was in any way related to the Orlando shooting and that Patrick was currently out of the country.

"Lt. Gov. Patrick and every Texan is stunned and saddened by the outrageous act of domestic terrorism that has occurred in Orlando. He and Jan are praying for the victims, their families and their friends," Patrick's office said in a statement at about noon Sunday.

Spoke to Patrick campaign spokesman @AllenBlakemore . Said this tweet was pre scheduled, will be taken down @NBCDFW https://t.co/srskyOlnJQ  Julie Fine (@JulieFineNBC5) June 12, 2016

Blakemore said Patrick, an outspoken social conservative, often pre-schedules social media postings quoting Scripture.

"Regarding this morning's scripture posting on social media, be assured that the post was not done in response to last night's tragedy. The post was designed and scheduled last Thursday," Patrick's office said.

Statement from spokesperson for Lt. Governor Dan Patrick @NBCDFW pic.twitter.com/yfHbYDQ9eN  Julie Fine (@JulieFineNBC5) June 12, 2016

"We regret the unfortunate timing of these pots and ask everyone to join us in praying for the people of Orlando in this awful time," Patrick's office said.

Lt. Gov. Patrick finally addressed his tweet with a Facebook post Sunday afternoon, confirming that he posts scripture every Sunday. "Those posts are chosen in advance and scheduled in advance," Patrick wrote. "Our scripture was not posted in re-action to the shooting."

You can read Lt. Gov. Patrick's full Facebook post below:

[[382640171,C]]

NBC 5's Julie Fine contributed to this report.


Travelers were back on their way and life was back to normal at Dallas Love Field Saturday after a scary incident at the airport the day before.

A man who used landscaping rocks to smash car windows and threaten the mother of his children was shot several times outside the terminal after lunging at a police officer, police said.

The suspect, identified as 29-year-old Shawn Nicholas Diamond, of Edgewood, Maryland, was transported to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas where he remained in stable condition Saturday afternoon.

Police said that Diamond is being charged with aggravated assault and assault family violence, according to The Associated Press.

The shooting Friday resulted in travel delays, but by Saturday morning arrivals and departures were listed as on time and travelers were moving through security at a normal rate.

Though many said they had arrived early not knowing what awaited them at the airport after the incident.

Milcah Baraona flew in Saturday morning from Chicago Midway and said she nearly cancelled her flight when the situation was unfolding.

"It was super terrifying because I actually thought, maybe I should cancel the flight, just had no idea what was going on, said Baraona. "As soon as we got here, everything was just, our fears were totally calmed."

NBC 5 discovered that Diamond was arrested in Carrollton on Tuesday and released from the Denton County Jail on Friday.

Police said the woman involved in the domestic incident Friday was not injured.
ISIS claimed responsibility for suicide blasts that left at least 20 people dead and many more wounded in a predominantly Shiite area of Syrias capital, NBC News reported.

The terror group released a statement claiming responsibility for killing and wounding more than 80 people in Damascus. Three suicide bombers denoted two explosive belts and one car bomb, according to global security firm Flashpoint Intelligence.

The death toll, which included civilians and pro-government fighters, is expected to rise because many of those injured were in critical condition.

Washington condemned the attack, State Department Secretary spokesman John Kirby said.
A man shot and killed his ex-girlfriend's two teenage daughters, then turned the gun on himself in a Panorama City murder-suicide, police said.

The Saturday night shooting stemmed from an argument between the 46-year-old man and his 41-year-old former girlfriend at an apartment in the 8500 block of Cedros Avenue, said Det. Richard Wheeler of the Los Angeles Police Department Valley Bureau.

The man first shot the woman's son, who managed to escape. He opened fire on the girls, then shot himself, Wheeler said.

The woman was also injured in the shooting, but it was unclear if she had been struck by gunfire. She and her son were both taken to the hospital in stable condition.

Neighbors said they heard gunfire, followed by a woman screaming.
Christine Meeusen first donned the nun outfit in 2011, when she was protesting against big banks in the Occupy movement. Calling herself an "activist nun," Meeusen gained popularity through her unusual garb and fight against what she calls "white man culture."

Five years later, Meeusen has continued her activist crusade through an unlikely source: marijuana. Still dressed in her habit and long skirt, Meeusen, going now by Sister Kate, has been cultivating marijuana in her garage in Merced County, California, and turning it into healing salves and ointments.

Her company, called Sisters of the Valley, began selling the products on their Etsy page and have since expanded to include another sister, Sister Darcy, and offer a variety of products.

"I wanted to design a product that could be exported from California and bring money in the Valley," said Sister Kate, "which is a very poor area."

The products produced by the Sisters is made from Cannabidiol, or CBD, which an active ingredient of marijuana. A key component of CBD, which Sister Kate is quick to stress, is that it is not psychoactive, meaning it is not addictive for users.

What makes Sister of the Valley products unique is not what is in the ointments, but how they are made. All production is done based on the lunar cycle, and revolves around ancient spirituality practices, according to Sister Kate. Some of these practices include praying over each product before shipping it.

Sister Kate was raised Catholic, attending a high school run by nuns. She said this played into her current choice of clothing, which represents a religion that she deeply understands. However, Sister Kate and the rest of her "sisterhood" are not Bible nuns. They simply wear the habit because it "means something" to others.

"Honoring Mother Earth, medicine making, and honoring people through activist work. That's our trinity," she said.

Members of the Catholic Church are not as accommodating to the Sisters' religious ideology. Just down the street from the Sisterhood's old home is St. Patrick's Church, a Catholic church who has heard of the nuns, but does not know them personally and does not support their actions. Secretary Sandy Minor said the nuns "act like sisters, but are not" and believed the nuns began wearing their "costume" in hopes "people will take to them more."

Another church in Merced, St. Anthony's Catholic Church, declined to comment.

Though Sister Kate admits there has been some backlash against their clothing choice, she said she has received mostly support and "didn't think I would offend" the Catholic Church.

Sister Kate and Sister Darcy began to receive media attention when they were discovered by a photography pair, Shaughn and John, around Thanksgiving. One of the photographers, John Dubois, said the sisters were very open and transparent to showing off their work and lifestyle.

"They seemed very authentic," said DuBois. "From what I can tell, this is really what they believe."

The popularity and business did not come without setbacks. Last winter, Etsy unexpectedly shut down their account, saying they had violated Etsy's policies.

In response, the Sisters opened up sales on their website and set up a Go Fund Me asking for $10,000, which, according to the website, would cover maintenance repairs and investment to expand their base. As of June 9, over $3,000 had been raised.

A second setback came this past January, when Merced passed an ordinance banning the cultivation of marijuana in light of California's Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act, which was an attempt to regulate California's marijuana business. This meant the Sisters of the Valley had to halt production, or continue illegally.

"We don't use products that cause people to get high," Sister Kate said, "Our intentions are pure. It's not acceptable it was banned overnight with no public input."

Sisters of the Valley moved out into the country to continue their business, though they continued to become outspoken advocates against the ordinance, going door to door to conjure up support against the ban.

Soon people were writing hundreds of letters to the City Council and showing up full-house to community meetings in protest. Sister Kate said they managed to get the ban turned around, and are waiting for the new legislation to become law.

The City Council of Merced tells the story of the ban differently. Mike Conway, assistant to the city manager, said the ban was a temporary measure put in place before the Council could develop their own legislation to regulate marijuana. What's more, Conway said the temporary aspect of the ban was made "very clear" to the public, including the Sisters.

"[The Sisters] claimed we drove them out of the city, and there is no truth to any of that," he said, "the Sisters are the Sisters, they are very good at publicity. We have gotten calls all over the country and have to keep re-explaining ourselves because of this."

When asked about continuing to advocate against the ban despite it being temporary, Sister Kate laughs.

"[The City Council] is doing a cute job of spinning," she said. "It's been six months and they have not lifted the ban. They are liars and don't do what they say they are going to do."

Conway said new legislation legalizing cultivation of marijuana in Merced was introduced April 20 and went to the planning commission on May 18. He said the City Council is expected to vote on the legislation in July. This new legislation would allow cultivation of up to six mature and 12 immature plants, the establishment of four dispensaries, and delivery services in the county. Sister Kate is not convinced this legislation will pass, or that it is a law benefiting the people of Merced. She said allowing only four dispensaries would not give opportunity for everyone, such as minorities, to cultivate marijuana.

"People of color are victimized by this racist law," said Sister Kate, "and I am offended. I am not going to stop until something changes."
Los Angeles police were searching for a burglar who broke into a Sherman Oaks baby store.

Renee Kennedy Powers, the owner of Earth Baby Boutique, says the LAPD called her Saturday morning to inform her the store at 13454 Ventura Boulevard had been broken into. She says someone ransacked the business and took several expensive electronics.

They also damaged products and smashed glass in the front door.

"I'm kind of heartbroken that someone would do this to my little store," she said.

Powers' friends and family are trying to raise $10,000 on a GoFundMe page.
Assault rifles, high capacity magazines, ammunition and chemicals used to make explosives were found Sunday in the vehicle of a man from Indiana, according to Santa Monica police.

Despite an earlier report from Santa Monica's police chief, the man did not indicate he was targeting LA's PRIDE festivities, only that he intended to go to the event.

Authorities arrested the man Sunday morning just hours after a mass shooting in Orlando left at least 50 dead at a nightclub, including the gunman, and before the start of the LA PRIDE parade in nearby West Hollywood, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks identified the man arrested in the beach community as James Howell, 20. During the arrest, Howell told one of her officers "of wanting to do harm to the gay pride event," Seabrooks told NBC News earlier in the day, before later sending a tweet indicating that report was inaccurate.

During a mid-day news conference, the chief did not elaborate on specifics, stressing the investigation was still preliminary. Jail records show Howell was in custody with bail set at $500,000. A court appearance was scheduled for Tuesday.

He is being held on weapons and explosives charges.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the case does not appear linked to the Orlando mass shooting, but that the man was heavily armed and told police he was going to the LA PRIDE parade nearly 10 miles away.

Howell was arrested after police responded to a prowler call near Olympic Boulevard and 11th Street. The suspect was allegedly knocking on a resident's door and window.

Officers found Howell seated in a nearby vehicle, in which they found three assault rifles, high-capacity magazines and ammunition, Santa Monica police said. Officers also found a 5-gallon bucket with chemicals "capable of forming an improvised explosive device."

The LA County Sheriff's Department bomb squad responded to the scene. Authorities said they have no additional information about the suspect's intentions.

The NBC4 I-Team uncovered records that show Howell is on probation in Indiana after an altercation with a neighbor, during which he reportedly pulled a gun out in an attempt to intimidate.

As part of his probation, Howell is not supposed to be in possession of firearms.

The arrest came hours after a gunman opened fire in a gay Orlando nightclub, killing at least 49 and injuring more than 50 others.

Sunday's parade in West Hollywood began at about 11 a.m. with a moment of silence at Crescent Heights Boulevard, then continued west along Santa Monica Boulevard to Robertson Boulevard. The usually festive atmosphere included a more somber tone on a day when the United State witnesses its deadliest mass shooting.

Deputies routinely patrol the parade, held every year since 1970, except for 1973 when infighting over displays the previous two years left the organizers in disarray. The parade was held in Hollywood until 1979, when it moved to West Hollywood.
Florida residents are responding to an urgent need for blood donations in light of a mass nightclub shooting in Orlando.

One blood says their blood centers are at full capacity and ask residents to help over the next several days to replenish the blood supply.

To donate visit their website at www.oneblood.org or call 1.888.9DONATE (1.888.936-6283).

The city of Miami Beach will host a candlelight vigil at SoundScape Park at 7 p.m. for the victims, family and friends affected by Sunday's tragedy in the City of Orlando.



A blood mobile will be parked in front of SoundScape Park from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. for anyone able to donate blood for those in need.

A gunman wielding an assault-type rifle and a handgun took hostages and opened fire inside a crowded Florida nightclub, leaving 49 dead and 53 others wounded early Sunday morning, authorities say.

The suspect was identified by several law enforcement sources as Omar Mateen, according to NBC News.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency in Orange County following the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
An international student from Sweden who was shot during an armed robbery in Wynwood is back in intensive care, according to his brother.

Frank Hammar, a student at Miami Ad School, spoke to NBC 6 from his bed at Jackson Memorial Hospital Friday as he continued his recovery from two gunshot wounds.

The 28-year-old student said he had just finished dinner with his parents at the Wynwood Diner and had sent them off with an Uber driver when two men approached him, one brandishing a weapon. Hammer gave up his phone but kept his wallet.

Hammer was struck twice in his abdomen and crawled for help.

On Sunday, NBC 6 received an e-mail from his brother, saying that Hammer had been running a high fever and was back in intensive care. He said doctors are not yet able to determine the cause.

Police are trying to find the two men who put Hammer in the hospital. Anyone with information is asked to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS.

Click here for Hammar's GoFundMe page
President Obama addressed the nation Sunday following the deadly shooting at an Orlando nightclub, calling the massacre "an act of terror and an act of hate."

"Today as Americans, we grieve the brutal murder, the horrific massacre of dozens of innocent people," Obama said. "We pray for their families who are grasping for answers with broken hearts. We stand with the people of Orlando who have endured a terrible attack on their city."

A gunman wielding an assault-type rifle and a handgun opened fire inside a crowded gay nightclub early Sunday, killing at least 49 people before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers, police said. It is the worst mass shooting in American history.

[NATL] Deadly Nightclub Shooting Leaves Orlando Reeling

Sunday's address from the White House briefing room marked the 15th time during his presidency that Obama has spoken in the wake of a mass shooting, according to NBC News. The briefing room is named for James S. Brady, the former press secretary who was shot and permanently disabled in an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, according to The Associated Press.

"We are still learning all the facts," Obama said.

Obama spoke after meeting with FBI Director James Comey and his homeland security and national security advisers, he said. The FBI is leading the investigation in partnership with local law enforcement agencies.

"I've directed that the full resources of the federal government be made available for this investigation," said Obama, who spoke earlier in the day with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer.

"This could have been any one of our communities, so I told Mayor Dyer that whatever help he and the people of Orlando need, they are going to get it," Obama said. "As a country, we are going to be there for the people of Orlando today, tomorrow, and for all the days to come."

. @orlandomayor Our community is strong. We will need to help each other's get through this. pic.twitter.com/XyUa8g5PT8  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

The suspect was identified as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida. Law enforcement sources told NBC News that Mateen was born in New York in 1986 and lived in Port St. Lucie, 125 miles south of Orlando.

"We must spare no effort to determine what, if any, inspiration or association this killer may have had with terrorist groups," Obama said. "What is clear is that he was a person who was filled with hatred."

The suspect exchanged gunfire with an officer working at the gay club known as Pulse around 2 a.m., when more than 300 people were inside. The gunman then went back inside and took hostages, Police Chief John Mina said.

Around 5 a.m., authorities sent in a SWAT team to rescue the hostages.

"This is an especially heartbreaking day for all of our friends, our fellow Americans, who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender," Obama said.

"The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together with friends, to dance, and to sing, and to live. The place where they were attacked was more than a nightclub. It was a place of solidarity and empowerment, where people come together to raise awareness to speak their minds and to advocate for their civil rights," he said.

Expressing gratitude to law enforcement and first responders, Obama said the massacre was a "sobering reminder" that an attack on any American is an attack "on all of us."

"No act of hate or terror will ever change who we are or our values as Americans," he said.

Obama signed a proclamation on Sunday ordering flags to be flown at half-staff until sunset on Thursday in honor of the victims, the AP reported.
A 35-year-old man was arrested Saturday morning on a murder charge accusing him of stabbing a shopper to death in a grocery store in Orange County, authorities said.

Andrew Goodenough, 35, was arrested inside a ShopRite supermarket in New Windsor less than an hour after the stabbing, town police Sgt. Stephen Sager said.

Police say they found a 35-year-old man stabbed and unconscious inside the store at about 9:40 a.m. The victim, a resident of Highland Falls, was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Police withheld the victim's name, pending notification of his family.

Investigators were attempting to determine the motive for the stabbing.

Goodenough was charged with second-degree murder. Information about whether he had obtained an attorney who could comment on his behalf wasn't available.

ShopRite hasn't responded to a comment request.

New Windsor is about 65 miles north of New York City.
What to Know A vigil is planned for 7 p.m. Monday at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. Mourners have been gathering there to pay tribute.

Mayor Bill de Blasio placed the NYPD on "high alert" and said hundreds of counter-terrorism officers will be out in force.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed flags at state buildings to be flown at half-staff.

A memorial for the victims of the nation's deadliest mass shooting grew at the Stonewall Inn on Monday morning, less than a day after a spontaneous vigil drew hundreds of mourners to New York City's landmark of gay rights.

Those who turned out at the historic Greenwich Village bar on Sunday night mourned the dozens of people killed at a gay nightclub in Orlando and decried violence and intolerance aimed at the LGBT community.

"I can't even begin to comprehend it," said John Simpson, an Upper West Side resident. "It's just beyond tragic. It's just such a flood of emotions right now. Sadness. Despair. Anger and just wondering why?"

Buildings in the city's skyline also paid tribute to the victims Sunday night. The Empire State Building went dark and the One World Trade Center's spire was lit up in a rainbow. The spires of One Bryant Park and 4 Times Square were also lit up in rainbow colors.

At street level, candles, rainbow flags and bundles of flowers, some fresh, some wilted from the morning sun, had been placed in front of the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village bar that became a symbol of gay rights after a 1969 police raid led to a violent street riot.

Pockets of NYPD officers, some armed with automatic weapons, stood nearby. There was a heavy police presence outside a number of gay bars and businesses throughout the night following the targeted attack in Florida.

New York City went on high alert after gunman Omar Mateen opened fire and killed at least 49 people and wounded 53 others at a gay nightclub in Orlando.

"We are in contact with law enforcement authorities in Florida, as well as the FBI, and we are closely monitoring developments in the investigation, the New York Police Department said in a statement.

Another vigil was planned for 7 p.m. Monday outside the Stonewall Inn.

Activist Andy Humm, host of the "Gay USA" TV show, said Stonewall is "where we go when things like this happen." Sunday's gathering is spontaneous for individuals feeling a need to be together, he said.

One of those drawn to Stonewall was Jonathan Foulk, 32, of San Francisco, who left a bouquet of sunflowers on the sidewalk outside the bar.

"The thought of someone even planning something like that just breaks my heart," he said of the Orlando massacre.

Foulk, a development officer for the Trevor Project, which operates a suicide hotline to serve the LGBT community, said he worries about the impact of the shootings on gay youths.

"People will be afraid to be themselves," he said.

Mayor Bill de Blasio condemned the Orlando shootings as "not just an attack on human beings, but an attack on our values; our values of tolerance and freedom and belief and respect for all faiths."

He assured New Yorkers that there have been no credible threats made against the city, but noted that law enforcement is on high alert.

"There is no city in the world better prepared to stop terror, to stop hate crimes  you will see the evidence of that in the coming days," the mayor said.

The mayor and first lady Chirlane McCray plan to attend the vigil on Monday.

De Blasio and two police officials declined to confirm reports that Mateen was born in New York. De Blasio said there was "very limited evidence of any connection to this city." The Washington Post said his ex-wife told the newspaper his family is from Afghanistan and he was born in New York before the family later moved to Florida.

Police Chief of Department James O'Neill said there are pictures of Mateen wearing an NYPD T-shirt circulating on social media.

"At this time, he has no  absolutely no  connection to anything NYPD. I don't know where he got the shirts, but they are easily available in a lot of places throughout the United States," he said.

De Blasio said a police force of more than 500 officers specially trained to fight terrorism would be deployed, particularly at key institutions representing the gay and lesbian community, including Stonewall Inn.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement he was "shocked" and "saddened" by the shooting.

"New Yorkers stand in solidarity with the people of Florida, and the LGBT community and I have directed flags at state buildings to be flown at half-staff in the memory of those who were lost in this terrible act of mass murder," Cuomo said.

This is just one more horrific reminder of the need for Congress to pass real and sensible gun safety legislation, just as we did in New York. It is far past time for Washington to act."
A 20-year-old woman was arrested Saturday for allegedly shooting and killing one man and wounding another on Long Island.

Laquasia Calloway, of Hempstead, is accused of shooting Damien Pinckney, 37, once in the chest, said Nassau County police. He was taken to a local hospital, but was pronounced dead there.

She is also accused of shooting a 19-year-old man in the arm, investigators said. He was treated at a local hospital and released.

The shootings occurred at about 4 a.m. on Thursday inside Pinckney's residence on Lawson Street in Hempstead.

Calloway, who lives on Baldwin Road, was charged with criminally negligent homicide and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, police said. She was being held on $20,000 bail.

An attempt to reach her legal aid attorney for comment on the charges was unsuccessful.
A car jumped a curb and hit five pedestrians, including three children, in Las Vegas Saturday evening, NBC News reported.

The driver, now in custody, hit the group after colliding with another car at an intersection, police said. "It was a very light contact between the two vehicles, but just enough to cause ... that vehicle [to] slide sideways 300 feet down the road and take out some folks that were just standing on the sidewalk minding their own business," Las Vegas police Sgt. Robert Stauffer told reporters.

Police originally told reporters that as many as eight pedestrians had been injured, but later revised the figure to five.
The walking marriage, in which a man and a woman establish relations after the man's nocturnal visits to the woman's boudoir, has been less prevalent in the Mosuo ethnic group generally residing in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces.

The Mosuo ethnic group [File photo/Xinhua]

The traditional matriarchal practice has nowadays been questioned by the modern moral criterion of monogamy underlying loyalty as long as people are married.

However, the demand of fidelity doesn't work in the Mosuo minority who can easily change their partners. Generally, a marriage can be ended if a man informs his partner that he will no longer come to visit or refuses to visit her for a long time. If a woman is unwilling to maintain the marriage, she can directly tell her partner in person not to come or stop his visits to her bedroom. Anyone who finds the partner has fallen in love with someone else can send a package stuffed with charcoal, peppers and chicken feathers to warn the partner or directly terminate their relations.

In this matriarchal society which began during the primitive ages, the walking marriage, as a custom of the Mosuo minority, has endured the changes of the world. Currently, with the exodus of its young people and influence from the external world, the prospect of the indigenous custom is dimming.

"People have followed the call of the government to lead a life with a formal and stable marriage since the 1960s, so the number of walking marriages is diminishing," said a guide from the Mosuo minority.

However, despite losing its attraction to many local young people, the walking marriage, which has been preserved and inherited from one generation to another in some villages, is appealing to a number of visitors, who mistake the ritual merely as a one-night stand.

Several years ago, a woman's four diaries covering her travels in the towns of the Mosuo ethic group in Yunnan, where she flirted, had sex with Mosuo men and experienced the walking marriage, sparked controversy.

Following her blogs which received millions of hits, Chinese online users commented that she, as a woman from modern society, was not eligible for the walking marriage preserved by local Mosuo ethnic people in the primitive milieu where they comply with the tenets of a matriarchal society.

However, there were also a number of netizens supporting the adoption of the walking marriage in modern society, saying, the way of the walking marriage is a good option for young people who may fall in love without economic concerns, such as, a house, a car, as well as nuptial and betrothal gifts. Also, a man in this situation can be free from his duties as he will leave the children to the woman in her family headed by the maternal grandmothers.

However, experts showed their disapproval of the idea to adopt the walking marriage in modern society. Tao Li, a professor at the Research Center of Folk Culture of China's Minzu University, said that mankind has eventually chosen monogamy as an overwhelming legal system for marriage to ensure the stability of families, clans, societies and social development. With the extension of the monogamous marriages which have been stipulated in the laws of our country, the customs of the walking marriage are gradually fading among the villages of the Mosuo minorities.

The professor also said that the walking marriage is a remnant of the primitive social structure of a matriarchal society, so it cannot survive without the pervading local cultures. Therefore, those who misinterpret the marriage as a one-night stand in modern society are perverting the absolute understanding of the historic tradition.
In the wake of a mass shooting at an Orlando gay night club, Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey plans on announcing new legislation that will ban those convicted of hate crimes from purchasing firearms.

Phillys LGBT Pride celebration was held hours after 50 people were killed in a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando. NBC10s Lauren Mayk spoke to those who attended Phillys pride event about the tragedy.

A spokesperson for Senator Casey (D-PA), announced he will host a news conference Monday morning in Pittsburgh following a meeting with LGBT community leaders. Senator Casey will discuss the shooting as well as steps the United States government must take immediately to address safety concerns across the country from commonsense gun laws to ongoing acts of hate, according to the spokesperson.

Casey also plans on unveiling legislation that would ban people convicted of misdemeanor hate crimes from owning firearms.

The announcement comes after a mass shooting early Sunday morning at Pulse Nightclub, a gay club in Orlando, that left at least 50 people dead and more than 50 others wounded. Michael Hoffman, a gay man who moved from Philadelphia to Orlando five years ago, told NBC10 he was at Pulse but left with a friend about an hour and a half before the massacre took place.

Officials say 50 people were killed and 53 others were injured during a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando. Its being called the deadliest mass shooting in US history. NBC10s Aundrea Cline-Thomas has the latest details on the gunman as well as the victims.

I go to that club a lot, Hoffman said. Everybody was just having a good time. There were 300 to 400 people there.

Hoffman soon heard the horrific news a few hours after leaving.

"If I would've been there throughout the night or we would've stayed just a little bit longer, I would've been dead," Hoffman said. "He decided, my friend, to leave the club early which we did. Thank God for that."

Authorities identified the shooter as Omar Mateen, 29, a Florida resident who was born in New York City. With the investigation still in the early stages, indications are that Mateen wanted to be associated with the terrorist group ISIS and was upset by seeing an openly gay couple kiss, according to an NBC News investigation. But it wasn't clear what drove him to kill dozens and wound dozens more at Pulse nightclub. Mateen died in a shootout with police.

Philadelphia Police increased their security at Phillys Pride Parade and Festival Sunday morning which took place in Center City and continued at Penns Landing.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf ordered flags at half-staff in honor of the victims of the Orlando shooting.



Frances and I send our thoughts and prayers to the victims, their families, and the entire Orlando community for the tragic and senseless terror attack and hate crime that occurred early this morning in Florida, Governor Wolf said. I ask all Pennsylvanians to participate in this tribute on behalf of all who were lost and injured.



Archbishop of Philadelphia Charles Chaput also condemned the attacks.



The recent violent acts committed in Orlando are horrific and they fill all of us with an unspeakable sadness. Innocent and precious lives were lost in a senseless and evil way, he said in a released statement. The family and friends of those who perished now shoulder a heavy burden of grief and suffering. As Christians, our duty is to pray for those whose lives were ended by the inexcusable cruelty of others and to ask God to pour his comforting grace upon all those who are in mourning.

Vigils and tributes to the victims are taking place in cities across the country, including Philadelphia. A candlelight vigil is set to take place at City Hall Monday around 6:30 p.m. Mayor Jim Kenney is expected to attend.




Support has been pouring in for the victims of the deadly mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, and their families.

A GoFundMe page set up by Equality Florida, the state's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, has already raised more than $1.5 million toward its goal of $2 million. The campaign raised $1 million faster than any other page in the history of GoFundMe, according the company vice president Dan Pfeiffer.

The money will be directed to the victims of Pulse Nightclub and their families.

"Funds raised on this page will be going directly to the victims and families affected by the horrific shooting at Orlando's Pulse Nightclub. Equality Florida is working with local organizations  who are also helping to raise funds  to ensure the money is distributed properly. Thank you for the support!" the page's administrators wrote.

The campaign for the victims of the #PulseNightclub shooting reached $1 million faster than any in @gofundme history https://t.co/45RxYJXdDH  Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) June 13, 2016

At least 49 people died in the attack, when a Florida man opened fire on the packed club. He died in a shootout with police officers after taking hostages, authorities said.

Makeup artist Jeffree Star, who has a huge following on social media, apparently donated $20,000, which is listed on the page as the largest donation as of Sunday afternoon.

"For everyone donating and showing so much heartfelt love, it gives me hope. We have to stand together and BE HERE FOR EACH OTHER," he tweeted.

The FBI has asked that anyone who was at the club with information call 1-800-CALL-FBI.

[NATL] Deadly Nightclub Shooting Leaves Orlando Reeling

The city of Orlando created a page that will list names of deceased victims: Cityoforlando.net/victims. The blood donation organization OneBlood had requested people in the area donate, but later tweeted that it was at capacity.

Anyone in the area can check into Facebook as safe using the social media site's Safety Check page.

The Better Business Bureau is offering a list of tips for those wishing to donate to victims of rampage and their families.

The BBB warns against donating to poorly managed or unregistered charities and those who do not identify the intended use of funds. Additionally, it cautions well-intending donors not to fall victim to common click-bate scams that lead internet users to websites that look like those of reputable organizations but force them to divulge extensive financial information or lure them to download malware.

Following the shooting at a Colorado movie theater in 2012, the BBB said some organizations raising money failed to get permission from victims' families to use names and photographs. Ensuring that the families' wishes are respected is important in the wake of tragedy, the BBB emphasized. Furthermore, funds set up by the families are often not created as charities and it is important to verify they are managed by a third party such as a bank and used for their intended purpose such as funeral or medical costs.
A Rancho Bernardo High School senior got a heartwarming surprise at her graduation in San Diego on Thursday.

Camille Morris was reunited with her father, Master Sergeant Derrick D. Morris of the United States Marine Corp in a surprise visit during graduation.

Camille said goodbye to her father last year when he was deployed overseas. When she found out he couldn't make it to her high school graduation, she was disappointed.

Rancho Bernardo High School Principal David LeMaster asked Camille to join him during his graduation speech. He recalled meeting Camille and learning that her father was serving overseas.

LeMaster contacted Morris to plan the surprise  which Morris said, was nine months in the making.

Morris served in Iraq, Kosovo, and is currently deployed to Kuwait in support of Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) referred to as Operation Inherent Resolve.

He flew in Tuesday night, but no one from his family knew he was back. He said he knew it would be an emotional reunion  and he was right.

Eyes full of tears, Camille rushed to her father during the ceremony.

It was well worth, Morris said, speaking of the moment he hugged his daughter. Im a very proud father, very proud.

Morris said up until the reunion, he had only been in contact with his family through text messages and emails.

Text messages only say words but it doesnt have feelings. Its not like youre there, you can hold them, kiss them, touch them every night, he said.

Morris said he put a whole years worth of emotions into the hug he gave Camille on Thursday.

If I had to rank one of the best feelings of my life, this would rank very high. Best moment in my life is being a proud dad and being able to make it all the way back to San Diego to see my daughter graduate, he said.

Morris is currently on leave.
A 51-year-old man and a 46-year-old woman were were robbed at gunpoint by two suspects inside their own garage Friday night.

The couple arrived at their home in the 500 block of San Antonio Avenue around 11:39 p.m.

The two suspects exited a car parked in front of the couples home, entered the garage and demanded property from the couple at gunpoint.

The victims tried to get into their house when they heard a gunshot. After they got inside the man noticed his tooth was chipped and his lip was bleeding. He was taken to the hospital with minor injuries.

It is unclear how much property the couple lost at this time.

The suspects are described as dark-skinned, in their 20s and both 6 feet tall. They were wearing black masks, white beanies or hoodies pulled up and dark clothing. One of the suspects had a gun.

The suspects' car is a four-door and white or light-colored and was driven by a third suspect.

San Diego police robbery detectives are investigating.
Following a deadly shooting at an LGBT Orlando nightclub, owners and managers of some of San Diego's nightclubs and bars are calling for ramped up security.

A gunman armed with an assault-type rifle and handgun stormed into the crowded nightclub, killing at least 50 and wounding 53. The massacre marks the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Lukas Volk, the manager of Urban Mo's, a nightclub and bar in San Diego's popular Hillcrest neighborhood, said owners of LGBT bars and clubs in Hillcrest are asking to meet with the San Diego Police Department (SDPD) police chief about increased security in the face of the tragedy.

Volk said Mo's has had their TVs on the news all morning and he was horrified to hear of the news.

"Were just saddened and shocked that something this massive could have happened to our own brothers and sisters," Volk said.

Volk, a Florida native, said the massacre touches home for him.

"We have tons of friends and family who live in the community and were going back and forth all the time performing, having guest performers, it definitely touches our community no matter where it happens," Volk said.

Though he has never been to the nightclub, he said he has been out in Orlando and cannot imagine what the community is going through.

"Our hearts go out to you in this tragic time. Were thinking about you," Volk said. "Our thoughts are with you."
San Diegans honored the victims of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history Sunday night at two vigils.

Hundreds gathered at the Hillcrest Pride Flag Sunday, at University Avenue and Normal Street, to sing, pray and honor the victims.

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Around 250 people attended the vigil at the North County LGBTQ Center in Oceanside, including elected officials and several faith-based groups.

NBC 7

"We are devastated by this horrific act of violence. Our hearts break for all the victims and their families and stand in solidarity with the LGBTQIA community in Orlando. Violence will not intimidate us form living our authentic selfs, or prevent us from loving one another. We must come together as a nation to affirm the love that conquers hate," a statement from the LGBTQ Center of Oceanside read.

Sunday, a gunman armed with an assault-type rifle and handgun stormed into the crowded nightclub, killing at least 50 and wounding 53. The massacre marks the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
San Diego Police Department (SDPD) Chief Shelley Zimmerman is reassuring San Diegans that there is no known threat in San Diego, though authorities continue to work closely with law enforcement.

"As a precautionary measure and until further information is known, we have increased our security posture in the City," Zimmerman said in a statement.

She said residents could expect increased security particularly at mass gatherings.

"We want all San Diegans and their guests to feel safe," Zimmerman said. "This is yet another reminder for us all to remain vigilant and to stand together in protecting our community."

Zimmerman offered her condolences to those affected by the shooting.

She said if anyone sees something or knows something to speak up. FBI Spokesman Darrell Foxworth said there is always concern for a lone wolf or a copycat.

"The FBI San Diego Division through the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) continues to work with our local, state and federal law enforcement partners. At this time we do not have any information that leads us to believe there are any active or specific credible threats to the San Diego area. Additionally, at this time we have no information regarding any specific credible threats to any LGBT communities or organizations. As always, the FBI San Diego Division through the JTTF will work with our law enforcement partners to gather, share and act upon threat information as it comes to our attention. We urge the public to report any and all suspicious activity to law enforcement," read the statement from Foxworth.

No other information was immediately available.
Three Democrats in Congress are objecting to restrictions that prevented gay and bisexual men from donating blood in Orlando after the massacre at the gay nightclub early Sunday morning.

Even as donors waited on long lines to help the victims, many gay men were unable to give. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration forbids donations from men who have had sex with a man in the previous year.

Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley, the vice-chair of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, California Rep. Barbara Lee and Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin issued a statement asking the FDA to lift what they called "this prejudicial ban."

"Tragedies like the one we witnessed in the early morning hours on Sunday show how crucial it is for FDA to develop better blood donor policies that are based on science and on individual risk factors; that don't unfairly single out one group of individuals; and that allow all healthy Americans to donate," they wrote.

Omar Mateen opened fire at the Pulse nightclub around 2 a.m., exchanging shots with a police officer and taking club-goers hostage before being killed by a SWAT team, authorities said. Mateen was armed with an assault rifle and a handgun, they said.

At least 49 people were killed in the massacre, the worst mass shooting U.S. history. It occurred as the country celebrated LGBT pride month.

In Orlando officials on Tuesday urged people to continue to give blood and asked that they make appointments at their local blood banks. Stephanie Zaurin, a spokeswoman for OneBlood, a non-profit donation center, told The Associated Press that donors were coming "in record numbers."

One of OneBlood's own team members was killed in the attack on the nightclub. On its website, it said that it was grieving the death of Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala, a supervisor at the center's Orlando laboratory.

"He was passionate about saving lives and took great pride in the lifesaving work he performed," the center said.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman Tara Goodin said in an email to The Associated Press that the Interorganizational Disaster Task Force met on Sunday to ensure that all immediate needs for blood were met.

The continued appeal for blood donors comes on World Blood Donor Day, designated by the World Health Organization as a way to encourage people across the world to donate. The theme this year is "Blood connects us all."

Only 62 countries get close to all of their national blood supplies from voluntary unpaid blood donations, WHO says. Thirty-four countries still dependent on family donors and even paid donors for more than three quarters of their blood supply, it says.

That gay men were unable to give blood for a rampage at a gay nightclub was a twist not lost on social media over the weekend.

"The awful irony that the blood banks of Orlando are not accepting gay donors is just awful," tweeted Nick Nazzaro, an illustrator in Boston. "Awful awful awful. Not funny irony, just awful."

https://twitter.com/BeGeeM/status/742000327428186112

Another tweet, from Brian Gerald Murphy, co-creator of activist group Legalize Trans, urged the FDA to change its policy on blood donations.

"Gay. Men. In. Orlando. Can't. Give. Blood. To. Their. Bleeding. Battered. Community. Dear @US_FDA, CHANGE THAT NOW," he tweeted.

The lifetime prohibition against gay and bisexual men donating blood  enacted in 1983 to protect those receiving blood transfusions from being infected with HIV  was lifted in December, when the FDA announced the new policy. But some activists say the new policy is still discriminatory.

[NATL] Deadly Nightclub Shooting Leaves Orlando Reeling

OneBlood, the nonprofit clinic in Orlando, put out a call for blood early Sunday. By early afternoon, it thanked donors on its website, said it was at capacity and asked donors to give over the next few days.

But on Twitter it also cautioned against false reports that FDA guidelines had been lifted. All FDA guidelines remain in effect, it said.
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Death toll from a leisure boat capsizing in southwest China's Sichuan Province rose to 14 after more bodies were found, rescuers said on Saturday.

They are still searching for one person who remains missing.

The accident happened at about 2:40 p.m. on June 4, when a boat with 18 on board capsized in the Bailong Lake of Guangyuan city.

Four people were pulled out immediately after the accident, among whom a child died later in the hospital. As of 6:30 p.m. Saturday, rescuers have retrieved 13 bodies.

Authorities said strong gales were to blame for the accident.
Families and friends waited outside an Orlando hospital Sunday anxious to hear about their loved ones following the shooting.

Police said 49 people were killed and 53 others were wounded at Pulse Nightclub, in what is the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. The shooter was identified as Omar Mateen, 29, a resident of Port St. Lucie, Florida.

Christine Leinonen, who waited outside Orlando Regional Medical Center hospital, said she drove to Orlando at 4 a.m. when she hadn't heard from her son, Christoper Leinonen, 32.

"These are nonsensical killings of our children. They're killing our babies!" she said, fearing the worst for her missing son.

Leinonen said her son's friend made it out alive by hiding in the bathroom and running out as bullets were flying.

The City of Orlando began to release the names of some of the victims of Sunday's deadly mass shooting at a popular night club. Seven of the victims were identified on the city's website: Edward Sotomayor Jr., Stanley Almodovar III, Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo and Juan Ramon Guerrero, Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz,Luis S. Vielma.

Mina Justice was outside the dance club early Sunday, trying to contact her 30-year-old son, Eddie. He had texted her that he ran into a bathroom after the gunfire erupted and asked her to call police, then texted: "He's coming."

"The next text said: 'He has us, and he's in here with us,'" Mina Justice said. "That was the last conversation."

Many of the injured were critically injured and were being operated on, according to Michael Cheatman from the Orlando Regional Medical Center.

Fatriana Evans frequents the club and was outside when shots were fired: "It sounded like fireworks  pop, pop, pop  and then everybody scatters."

Jackie Smith, who was inside the club, said two friends next to her were shot. She said she hasn't gotten updates on their conditions. She came out of the hospital and burst into tears in the arms of friends.

"Some guy walked in and started shooting everybody." she said. "He had an automatic rifle, so nobody stood a chance. I just tried to get out of there."

Facebook added a "Facebook Safety Check" Sunday morning for people to find out whether friends and family have tagged themselves as safe. The social network is using the heading "The Shooting in Orlando, Florida."

A hotline has been set up for families of the victims to call: 407-246-4357.
Islamic State suicide bombers using an ambulance and two other vehicles targeted Libyan forces in the coastal city of Sirte on Sunday, killing at least one of them, a spokesman for militias loyal to Libya's U.N.-brokered government said.

ISIS took over Sirte last year, exploiting Libya's turmoil to gain a foothold in the oil-rich country. The fight to retake it is being led by militias from the western city of Misrata, which advanced into the city last week.

Brig. Gen. Mohammed al-Ghasri said Sunday's attack "infiltrated our siege" on the insurgents' main stronghold in the country and targeted supply lines and medical units. At least one paramedic was killed and a dozen troops were wounded, he said.

"They aimed to shake our ranks, to force us to retreat, but we remain steadfast," al-Ghasri said. "We are determined to finish the job before the end of the holy month of Ramadan," which began June 6.

Earlier, he said the ISIS militants had barricaded themselves in a densely built-up area in the city center, with their snipers taking positions on rooftops waiting for the militiamen to advance. The militias have been shelling the area with artillery.

Some militants reportedly shaved off their beards to escape Sirte when the Misrata militiamen began advancing on the coastal city in tanks and pickup trucks mounted with machine guns.

At the city's main roundabout, the militiamen last week dismantled the metal frame of what some Sirte residents had dubbed the "stage of horror"  a podium used by ISIS for public beheadings during its yearlong reign over the city.

Sirte was the only ISIS-held city outside Iraq and Syria, where the group controls vast swaths of territory and several cities and towns.

Driving ISIS from Libya would rid neighboring Egypt of a serious security threat just beyond its porous western border and terminate what has been a key supply route for men and weapons headed to the group's affiliate in the Sinai Peninsula. The ISIS presence in Libya has also been a source of concern to southern European nations, particularly Italy, Libya's former colonizer.
As word of the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, spread, leaders and organizations throughout the D.C. area offered their condolences and messages of hope.

Mayor Muriel Bowser issued a statement hours after 50 people were killed and 53 others injured by a single gunman early Sunday morning. Bowser said security measures at Capital Pride Festival events would be increased.

This morning, our hearts are heavy after hearing about the tragedy in Orlando. Just yesterday, we held the annual Capital Pride Parade, a celebration of the rich diversity and contributions of the LGBTQ community in the District of Columbia, Bowser said. Ahead of today's Capital Pride Festival, I have been briefed by MPD Chief Cathy Lanier about increased security measures. Today as always, we will not be deterred by hate as we gather to celebrate love.

Orlando's police chief said the shooting at the Pulse club is the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, surpassing the death toll at Virginia Tech in 2007 where 32 people were killed and 17 others wounded.

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A moment of silence was held at the beginning of the Capital Pride concert at the U.S. Capitol.

The Human Rights Campaign -- the nations largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer civil rights organization -- lowered its flag to half mast after reports of the shooting.

HRC President Chad Griffin said, We are devastated by this tragic act of violence, which has reportedly claimed the lives of at least 50 LGBTQ people and allies and injured more than 50 others. We are grieving for the victims and our hearts are broken for their friends, families, and for the entire community. This tragedy has occurred as our community celebrates pride, and now more than ever we must come together as a nation to affirm that love conquers hate.

The Metropolitan Police Department said it is increasing police presence at Capital Pride events on Sunday.

Marland Gov. Larry Hogan has ordered flags to fly at half-staff in honor of the victims and released the following statment:

The First Lady and I are shocked and saddened by the senseless violence this morning at a nightclub in Orlando. We offer our most sincere condolences to the family and friends of the innocent victims of this act of terror, and our deepest gratitude to the first responders and law enforcement who responded to this tragedy with bravery and courage.

I have reached out to Florida Governor Rick Scott to express our support during this time. The State of Maryland is ready and willing to provide any assistance needed. Governor Scott has called for a moment of silence and prayer at 6:00 PM today for the victims and their loved ones. I urge everyone in Maryland to join in Governor Scotts call for unity and prayer.

The Baltimore Police Department said it is reaching out to the city's LBGT community to discuss concerns and safety after the massacre at a gay nightclub in Florida.

The police department said in a statement Sunday that it is offering its "heartfelt thoughts and prayers to those affected by this evil act of violence."

The All Dulles Area Muslim Society condemned the tragic and horrific Orlando mass shooting and rejected any possible motive for this terrible act, whose perpetrator is still being investigated as a possible hate crime, mentally unbalanced individual, and/or lone wolf terrorist sympathizer.

They expressed their thoughts, prayers, and condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured.

They also appreciated the Orlando Muslim community's response in condemning the attack and joined them in urging the entire Muslim community to take part in a blood donation drive for those injured in the attack.

The Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia, also condemned the shooting, releasing this statement:

"Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center expresses its horror over the mass shooting which took place at a nightclub in Orlando, FL overnight, and offers its deepest and heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims and prays for quick recovery for those who were injured. The shooting, where over 50 were killed and at least the same number were injured, is an affront to all minorities. DAH stands firmly against all forms of violence committed against any group, regardless of religious affiliation, creed, color, or sexual orientation. We join the world today in mourning this tremendous loss of life as we pray for the speedy recovery of those injured, both physically and emotionally. These events augment the need for an environment of tolerance while encouraging and enhancing the treatment of emotionally unstable individuals, and increasing preemptive efforts in keeping firearms out of their hands. said Imam Johari Adbdul-Malik, Outreach Director. The right to live free from violence, harassment or intimidation is the most basic human right and must be defended unconditionally."

A number of blood drives will be held across the D.C. area for the victims of the nightclub shooting.

The blood drives will be held at the following locations:

E Street Blood Donation Center

2025 E Street NW

Washington, D.C. 20006

June 13 from noon until 7 p.m.

Rockville Blood Donation Center

11820 Parklawn Drive

Rockville, Md. 20852

June 13 from noon until 7 p.m.

Alexandria Chapter House

123 North Alfred Street

Alexandria, Va. 22314

June 13 from 1:30 p.m. until 7 p.m.

Fairfax Blood Donation Center

2720 Prosperity Avenue

Suite 200

Fairfax, Va. 22031

June 13 from 12:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
A former volunteer paramedic in Loudoun County has been sentenced to three years in prison for child sex offenses.

Timothy Metrus Ward, 32, was sentenced on two counts of indecent liberties with a child by custodian and two additional related charges, the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office said.

Ward volunteered with the Sterling and Hamilton rescue squads and was a supervisor and mentor for volunteers working at the stations, including minor volunteers.

In February 2015, Ward engaged in a sexual relationship and sent sexually explicit text messages to a 15-year-old volunteer, proposing sexual acts with her, the attorney's office said.

Ward also sent texts to a 17-year-old volunteer later in 2015.

Ward pleaded guilty on Nov. 9, 2015.

"I did something that I shouldnt have done and I took advantage of my position, Ward said at his sentencing hearing.

He went on to say, I was fully aware of the victims ages.

The judge told Ward rescue squads and firehouses are considered "safe havens" and when it really counted, when you really had the opportunity to protect those that were vulnerable, you only thought of yourself.

Ward will serve his sentence at the Virginia Department of Corrections and will be placed on one year of supervised probation, followed by nine years of unsupervised probation. He will also be required to register as a sex offender.
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.

Several pieces of the plane 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 Australia's west coast. Crews are expected to complete their sweep of the 120,000 square kilometer (46,000 square mile) area by August, and there are no plans to extend the hunt beyond that.
With a mass shooting leaving at least 50 people dead in an Orlando gay club, a Boston health organization and advocacy group is looking to help those who need support.

Fenway Community Health confirms it will be discussing the best ways to help people move forward.

"We'll be talking with patients, staff and community leaders about how Fenway can help our local community process, grieve and learn from the unfortunate and heartbreaking events in Orlando," the group said in a statement to necn.

The National Gay Media Association, meanwhile, has set up a GoFundMe page to provide financial support for the victims of the terror attack. The goal, originally, was to raise $500,000, but with thousands of people trying to help, that goal has been increased to $1 million. As of 7 p.m., more than $650,000 had been raised.

Anyone in need of support should contact Fenway Community Health. The group can be reached at (617) 262-0900.
US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) is a high-level dialogue between the US and China which takes place annually to streamline important strategic and economic issues between the two countries. The S&ED was established on April 1st 2009 by the Chinese President Hu Jintao and US President Obama. The S&ED is an advance from of a bilateral dialog which was known as the Senior Dialogue and Strategic Economic Dialogue it took shape during the George W. Bush administration.

The S&ED holds tremendous importance as it is a bilateral dialog between the top two economies in the world. China being the largest contributor in the GDP Share of the World Total (PPP) with the US close on China's heels. This fact alone makes this dialog important for the world, as everyone knows that the world's economic pulse resonates from the two countries under the spot light. This year it was China's turn to be the host and since this year's meeting was the last meeting to be held under the Obama administration, it had been predicted that this meeting would reverberate on a different frequency as compared to previous years.

For this year's S&ED the US side was headed by, Secretary of State John Kerry who handled the security dialogue, while US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew handled the economic track and the hosts from the Chinese side were Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Yang and Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi.

As predicted beforehand this year's S&ED proved to be quite fruitful as many concrete deliverables were achieved and many more have been put on the fast track by both sides. Among the achievements was the agreement by China to grant the US a quota of 250 billion yuan (38 billion U.S. dollars) under the country's Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (RQFII) program, this is a major achievement as it strengthens cooperation between the two countries and will help promote renminbi businesses in North America and will most definitely strengthen renminbi's image as a global currency.

The China-US BIT has been a hot topic over the recent past as it is a mechanism which will greatly enhance and streamline bilateral trade. Negotiations for the China-US BIT started in 2008 and so far 24 rounds of talks have been held before the 8th S&ED and this year's S&ED has certainly made some headway in its realization and it has been concluded that it will be put on the fast track. The Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang said, "The two countries will exchange new 'negative list' offers in mid-June," and "We will try to reach a mutually beneficial and high-level agreement at an early date."

This year's S&ED as compared to previous years has been more pragmatic when it comes to dealing with economic problems. This year instead of squabbling over the valuation issues of the renminbi, real economic issues have been pondered upon. This year the hot topic was the issue of China's over capacity in industrial goods like steel and aluminum, which is a real issue accepted by the Chinese and it is a problem instigated by "fragile recovery of the world economy and weak demand," and this issue was highlighted by the Chinese Vice Premier who called for a joint action to tackle this issue. He called for "resorting to legal means, market mechanisms, and proper policies to address this issue."

Whiles Chinese investment in acquisitions, new operations and expansions in the United States hit a record 15 billion U.S. dollars in 2015 and is set to double that by the end of this year, China "urged the United States to do more to reduce the barriers impeding bilateral trade and investment."

Other avenues discussed between the two parties ranged from the will to achieve "mutual recognition of airworthiness for transport aircraft" to the promise of promoting "province-state and city-city trade and investment cooperation." Both sides agreed upon means of strengthening cooperation through bolstering communication and infrastructure construction, intellectual property rights protection, cooperation on R&D relating to clean energy for which China is advancing in leaps and bounds. Other cooperation measures which will be further finalized through the G20 framework this September, were also discussed and it was agreed that both countries would complete the prerequisites for those agreements like the peer review of fossil fuel subsidies.

Over all it was a successful round of dialog between the two countries whose combined share of the world GDP (PPP) equates to one third of the world. This will certainly prove to be a step in the right direction of reviving world economic growth. US Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said "they welcomed Chinese investment in the United States, and that they were ready to grasp opportunities created by China's supply-side structural reform and increase investment in the country."

Shafei Moiz Hali has a master's degree from George Mason University, Virginia, USA in the field of International Commerce and Public Policy. Mr. Hali has been working as an Assistant Professor at the National Defence University (NDU), Islamabad, Pakistan with the department of Government and Public Policy Since 2009. Currently he is pursuing his PhD from the College of Public Administration at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), China.
A Massachusetts native was among the victims killed in this weekend's tragic mass shooting at a gay club in Orlando, Florida.

Stanley Manolo Almodovar III, a native of Springfield, was one of at least 50 people to die after a gunman opened fire at the Pulse night club.

Almodovar resided in Clermont, Florida, but attended high school in his western Massachusetts hometown. His mother had reportedly prepared a snack for him after his night at the club, but he never came home.

At 2 a.m., she learned something terrible had happened.

After carrying out the deadliest shooting in the history of the United States, 29-year-old Omar Mateen was killed in a gunfight with SWAT officers.

Mateen, Massachusetts State Police say, pledged allegiance to ISIS and referenced the Boston Marathon bombers before gunning down his victims.
Police are searching for a large, black male in his mid-twenties with short hair in connection with an armed assault that took place early Saturday morning in Worcester, Massachusetts.

According to the Worcester Police Department, they received a report at 2:30 a.m. of an assault with a firearm that occured in the driveway of a Hamilton Street adderss.

The police spoke with the victim who reported that after pulling into his driveway and stopping his car, he was approached by the assailant who was wearing a light colored t-shirt.

According to the victim, the assailant hit the victim's window with a firearm, motioned for him to roll down the window, all while yelling obscenities at the victim.

At that point, rather than rolling his window down, the victim said that he put his car in reverse and fled the scene, unharmed, to a friend's house nearby, where he called the police. As he was driving off, the assailant fired several rounds in his direction.

Officers said the victim's vehicle had been struck by two bullets. They also responded to the area in which the assault took place and discovered ballistic evidence.

Anyone with information regarding this incident can send an anonymous text message to 274637 TIPWPD +. You can also send an anonymous message over the web. Calls can also be made to the Worcester Police Detective Bureau at (508) 799-8651.
The U.S. Coast Guard along with local government agencies are actively searching for a missing boater after an unmanned boat was found running with no one aboard in Buzzards Bay.

According to the U.S. Coast Guard, at 3:45 p.m., Coast Guard Sector Southeastern New England received a report from a crew member aboard a commercial assistance provider vessel that a 30-foot vessel was in gear making way without an operator near the west entrance of Cape Cod Canal.

Coast Guard Stations Woods Hole and Cape Cod Canal launched both a 45-foot and 29-foot response boat crew, and Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod launched a MH-60 helicopter crew.

The Coast Guard Cutter Ocracoke, multiple local government agencies an three Good Samaritans also responded.

The Coast Guard is searching an area from Buzzard's Bay to Nye's Neck, and they are set to search through the night and tomorrow.

According to the New Bedford Fire Department, N.B.F.D. Marine 41 wrapped up their search operations at dusk, and will return to base. They plan to resume their search efforts in the morning.

The vessel has since been secured at the town dock in Onset, Massachusetts.
Police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, are investigating an overnight shooting that injured one woman outside of a nightclub.

According to Cambridge Police, a number of gunshots were fired in front of the Monroe night club in the 400 block of Massachusetts Avenue around 2:10 a.m. Sunday morning.

One female victim suffered a gunshot wound in her lower leg. She was treated on scene and taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

A suspect has not been identified, but police located a firearm at 415 Massachusetts Avenue.

The incident remains under investigation. Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 617-349-3300, or provide an anonymous tip at 617-349-3359.
If a UK startup has its way, then you will hand over full access to your social media accounts  including entire conversation threads and private messages  so it can be scraped and analyzed to help potential landlords and employers decide if you are a risk worth taking.

Why in the world would you agree to such a thing? Score Assured co-founder Steve Thornhill told The Washington Post, People will give up their privacy to get something they want.

The company launched Tenant Assured so landlords can decide if you would be a good tenant. It uses an algorithm to deep dive into your social media accounts and give landlords insights into five main personality traits: extraversion, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness.

Checking credit reports and browsing public social media accounts is so yesterday. The company claims that real personalities can be found in much more insightful stuff like tweets, comments, likes, the things people love to buy and the places they check-in  even in the people they choose to spend their time with.

A landlord can use the service to look at the character of a person, if theyve got pets, if they are always out partying, Thornhill told The Telegraph. Its a great way for them to see if a tenant is suitable for their property.

Its common for attorneys and employers to scope out social networks to vet jurors and hire employees and for social media posts to impact a persons online reputation as well as their offline life; such online snooping has resulted in people being fired, turned down for a mortgage, or denied entrance to universities. Monitoring social media posts is even done by schools for students safety. But Tenant Assured goes deeper.

The Washington Post explained:

After your would-be landlord sends you a request through the service, youre required to grant it full access to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and/or Instagram profiles. From there, Tenant Assured scrapes your site activity, including entire conversation threads and private messages; runs it through natural language processing and other analytic software; and finally, spits out a report that catalogues everything from your personality to your financial stress level.

Can an algorithm accurately measure how easy it is for prospective renters to pay their bills based on the frequency of keywords like no money, poor, and staying in? The Post warned, Make no mistake: The data will mislead.

Yet Thornhill blew off concerns that keyword-scraping could give an inaccurate picture. He claimed, All we can do is give them the information. Its up to landlords to do the right thing.

People who say yes to Tenant Assured wont have any way to view their ratings or dispute misleading data. Good housing may be hard to find in some areas, but just say no to housing which requires such invasive measures. At least it wont be coming to the U.S., since it violates housing discrimination laws.

However, Recruit Assured, a similar service for employers, is coming soon; do you really want to work for a company that starts off invading your privacy to this degree even before you work for it?

By the end of July, comparable social media dossier services will reportedly be offered even for parents shopping around for nannies.

It should come as no surprise that Thornhill apparently subscribes to the nothing to hide mind-set, saying, If youre living a normal life, then, frankly, you have nothing to worry about.

Sadly, some people will agree and then opt-in when a potential landlord or employers demands it. But hopefully the majority of people will realize how ridiculous that statement is, how misleading keyword-scraping for ranking could be, and push back.
Representatives of the USA and China shake hands

The US has stepped up provocations in the South China Sea recently, with its military vessels operating within 12 nautical miles of the Yongshu Reef, and a navy aircraft carrier strike group taking part in joint military drills on the South China Sea, thus heightening tensions in the region. Furthermore, some US congressmen even asserted that the country would not be afraid to go to war with China over the South China Sea issue, and Admiral Harry Harris, US Pacific Fleet Commander, talked about how his forces must be "ready to fight tonight". This is the very first time a serving high-ranking US military official makes a public threat of war against China since the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries.

The US apparently is trying to use the South China Sea as an outpost or lever to contain and counter China. Yet this is only part of an overarching strategy to contain China, which runs the whole gamut of policies providing tacit or explicit support to separatist forces in Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang; pivoting US military forces towards Asia with the aim of countering China; playing up the "China threat" theory, primarily to drive a wedge between China and its neighboring countries to justify US alliance-building in the form of an "eastern NATO" to contain China; lending support to countries who have territorial disputes with China, including illegal claims that jeopardize China's territorial integrity. The US has long challenged China over its political system, human rights and religion policies, in order to obstruct or hinder China's growth, so that the US will continue to be the unrivaled superpower in the world and ultimately fulfill its ambition of continuing its global leadership into the next century. History will prove otherwise.

In its overall political and strategic containment against China, the US practically pursues an indiscriminate "anything but China" policy, which stems from the cold war mentality and the entrenched bias against China, and is also driven by strategic miscalculation against China.

First, the US deems China as another Soviet Union in the making, aspiring to challenge or even dislodge the US as a global hegemonic power. This could not be further from the truth. China is not the Soviet Union, and has no intention to follow that path. Unlike the Soviet Union which was mired in a self-reinforcing cycle of a military race with the US for global supremacy, sphere of influence  sometimes even through military expansion and aggression, China's strategy is peaceful development and a foreign policy of peaceful coexistence. China pursues a defensive national defense policy, and will never seek hegemony. In theory, policy and implementation, China has clearly drawn the line. As far as bilateral relations are concerned, the dynamics are profoundly different. The Soviet Union and the US had little converging interests or room for cooperation, while confrontation and irreconcilable rivalry dominated their bilateral ties. For China and the US, converging interests and cooperation far outweigh differences and confrontation. China-US economic and trade ties are particularly interconnected and intertwined, and any differences could be solved via non-confrontational and negotiated solutions. All in all, the Soviet Union followed a cul-de-sac, so to speak, which was one of many factors that contributed to its collapse. China will by no means go down that track.

Second, the US believes that socialism and capitalism are on opposite sides of a divide, and China, by pursuing socialism, is committed to triumph over capitalism, prompting a sense of threat. To put things into historic perspective, US was understandably concerned on that score. But times have changed, and the reform and opening up policy has effected changes in both mindset and actions in China. China believes that different civilizations and social systems can coexist in peace, striving for common and inclusive development through dialogues and cooperation. That notion has overridden the erstwhile theory of a "clash of civilizations", or that one civilization or social system must develop to the exclusion of another. As for the ultimate question of which system will outlast the other, it would be tested by practice, and answered by history and people in due time. China will not constitute a threat to the US or any other country in the world, nor will it pose challenges to other systems.

Third, the US is wary that emulation of China's development model will undercut the laisse-faire capitalist model that the US promotes globally to underpin its Westernization drive. This doesn't reflect the real world. China believes that there is no one-size-fits-all political system or growth model in the world, and every country is entitled to choose a development path in light of its own circumstances. No country is in a position to impose a system, either political or economic, on others. China will not export revolution, nor does it export its development model. While there are countries who have chosen the "Beijing Consensus" over the "Washington Consensus" , that is a result of their own discretionary decisions based on reality on the ground, and has nothing to do with the so-called export of a Chinese development model.

Fourth, the US suspects China is maneuvering to drive the US presence of the Asian region, crystalized by President Obama's claim that China is "using its sheer size and muscle to force countries into subordinate positions". If anything, this is an arbitrary argument made by the US. In fact, China does not have the intention nor the capacity to do that. What's more, China does not challenge US interests, standing and power in the region, nor has it done anything to undermine the US presence in the region  much less try to drive the US out of the region. China does not seek to dominate any other country, nor will it be subordinate to any other country.

Miscalculation and misprception are hazardous in inter-state relations. Negative dynamics in US policy and interaction with China derive from misconstruing China's development strategies and policies. It is imperative that the two countries dispel misgivings and strengthen communication, deepen understanding and mutual trust, in order to build a new type of major-country relations featuring non-confrontation, non-conflict and win-win cooperation.

Yin Chengde is a research fellow of China Foundation for International Studies.

Courtesy: Chinausfocus.com

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
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The Beijing Auto Museum is located along the South 4th Ring Road West, in Beijings Fengtai District. With an exhibition area of nearly 50,000 square meters and housing over 80 vintage cars made in China and abroad, the auto museum is China's first government-funded public museum for automobiles. [China.org.cn/Photo by Dong Qingpei]
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Israeli forces demolished a house in Hebron in West Bank, which belongs to a Palestinian accused of launching stabbing attack and killed an Israeli woman last January, Palestinian and Israeli sources on Saturday said Saturday.

Coordinator of National and Popular Committees against the Wall southern Hebron Rateb Al-Jbour, told Xinhua that Israeli troops raided Yatta village and demolished a house belonging to Murad Ide'is who was shot dead by Israeli soldiers.

Al-Jbour added that the two-storey building is home to ten family members, who were not notified of the demolition previously. He considered that the demolition is part of Israel's collective punishment against Palestinians.

The Islamic Hamas movement said in a statement that the house demolition is a war crime, calling upon the international community to undertake its responsibilities under international law.

"The policy of house demolitions will not succeed in breaking the will of the Palestinian people and that the intifada will continue," said the movement in its statement.

The Israeli public radio said that Ide'is carried out a stabbing attack near Onteil settlement in the west Bank last January, killing one woman.

In the same time, Israeli forces arrested 11 Palestinians in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, particularly in Hebron.
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The townsfolk of what is reputed to be Britain's oldest town gathered in their market square Saturday to celebrate the 90th birthday of Queen Elizabeth.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip view the fly-past on the balcony of Buckingham Palace during the Queen's 90th birthday celebrations in London, Britain on June 11, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

The small market town of 33,000 people, almost 100 km along the River Thames from central London, have found their own way of celebrating royal and major events.

From the roof of the county hall the Mayor of Abingdon-on-Thames, Alice Badcock hurled the first of 4,500 currant buns into crowd below. It attracted townsfolk of all ages from very young to old.

Just as their ancestors gathered in 1761 to throw buns to mark the coronation of King George III, what is one of the quirkiest traditions in the country continues to this day.

Catching one of the buns, designed with a crown on the top, is one of the aims for the thousands gathered in the market square.

Bun throwing is a centuries old tradition unique to Abingdon and can only take place when the town council votes to hold one to mark a royal occasion. The council organises the bun-throwings which are held as a gesture of loyalty and goodwill to the monarch.

Usually it is for events marked to royal celebrations, but that tradition changed in 1856 when buns were thrown to celebrate the end of the Crimean War.

The last bun throwing ceremony was in 2012 to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee to celebrate her 60 years on the throne. A year earlier buns were thrown to celebrate the marriage of the Queen's grandson, Prince William to Princess Catherine Middleton.

Roads in the town center closed ahead of Saturday's ceremony with Abingdon Town Band and the Abingdon Traditional Morris Dancers both performing ahead of a procession led by Mayor Badcock to the town hall. Following the singing of the National Anthem the mayor threw the first bun.

After Mayor Badcock, in full ceremonial robes, threw the first bun, her town council colleagues and officials joined in the fun by throwing the buns into the crowd.

Mayor Badcock said: "Bun throwing is a major event for Abingdon. It does not take place every year and therefore people very much look forward to taking part when there is a royal event to celebrate."

The townsfolk will gather again Sunday when the town council holds a giant picnic party for all Abingdonians to celebrate the Queen's birthday.

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A Philippine columnist on Saturday called on the incoming Philippine government to drop a defense pact between the Philippines and the United States, arguing it was reducing the country into one big U.S. military base.

"For as long as we have foreign military bases on our soil, the country can never formulate its own independent foreign policy," Rod Kapunan wrote in an article published on Saturday, calling the foreign policy of outgoing Benigno Aquino's government "a carbon copy of the U.S. policy for the Asia-Pacific region."

Manila and Washington signed the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement in 2014, which allows the U.S. troops to build facilities to store equipment in the Philippines, in addition to giving broad access to Philippine military bases.

"As a lawyer, (incoming President Rodrigo) Duterte could see the implication in allowing the reinstallation of the U.S. bases," Kapunan wrote in an English newspaper the Standard.

He called on Duterte to drop the defense pact, which he said would be used as an example by future administrations to sign agreements that would allow other countries to establish their own military bases in the Philippines.

He slammed the Aquino administration for bringing the dispute with China in the South China Sea to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, saying it would give the United States the leverage to continue "its provocative patrol in the South China Sea."

Kapunan pointed out that the defense pact has been unduly stretched by the United States to allow it to conduct regular naval patrol and reconnaissance flight in the disputed waters, and that invoking freedom of navigation to conduct regular naval patrol would lose its viability if the Philippines decides to scrap the pact.

"Nobody would believe that its continued patrol in the area is to secure the freedom of navigation. Rather, the whole military infrastructure it built would be exposed as a facade to contain China," Kapunan wrote.
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Sudan on Saturday expressed readiness to cooperate with South Sudan to develop minerals in the two countries under the great drop in the oil prices and the increasing rise in prices of minerals, namely gold.

South Sudan's Minister of Minerals Taban Deng on Saturday arrived in Khartoum on an official visit, leading a high-level delegation to get acquainted with Sudan's experience in filed of minerals.

"Sudan has become one of the pioneering countries in field of minerals via attracting a great number of international and local companies in addition to developing its experience of traditional mining," Sudan's Minister of Minerals Ahmed Mohamed Sadiq Al-Karuri told reporters today.

"The visit of South Sudan's minerals minister comes within the contest of cooperation between the two countries to establish common interests," he noted.

He said that "we are ready to develop the minerals in the two countries under the great drop in the oil prices and the great progress in the prices of minerals, particularly gold."

South Sudan's Minerals Minister Taban Deng, for his part, said that "this visit tends to strengthen the ties with Sudan and how it could contribute to developing the mining sector in South Sudan."

"We are one people, but circumstances wanted us to be in two countries, and therefore, we must make use of our presence in two countries by investing in our resources for the interests of the two peoples," he noted.

During 2016's first quarter, Sudan's gold production reached 22.3 tons, a three percent increase from the same period last year, where companies produced 3.4 tons against 18.8 tons for traditional mining.

The Sudanese government had previously anticipated the country's gold production to reach 100 tons in 2016, positioning Sudan as the second gold producing country in Africa and the ninth worldwide.

In February earlier this year, the United States drafted and introduced a resolution to the United Nations Security Council demanding sanctions be imposed on gold exports produced in Sudan.

However, the council postponed its examination of the drafted resolution.
Dan Corkery: You may be 63, but do you have an ID?
One of Editor & Publishers 10 That Do It Right 2021
By Eleanor McDermid

Patients hospitalised with acute heart failure (HF) who achieve good haemoconcentration in addition to a robust diuretic response are unlikely to be rehospitalised within the following 2 months, research suggests.

Adriaan Voors (University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands) and co-researchers concede that the value of adding these parameters to established risk prediction models was "limited", offering only a small, albeit statistically significant, improvement in accuracy.

But they say: "Both diuretic response and hemoconcentration are easily calculated using data collected during routine care, and they are more accessible and applicable than elaborate risk models."

Among 1180 patients in the PROTECT trial, those with above-median diuretic responses (weight loss >0.36 kg/40 mg furosemide) and haemoconcentration (>0.2 g/L) had the lowest risk of rehospitalisation after accounting for factors such as age, previous hospitalisations and study treatment.

Other patients had more than double the risk of 60-day rehospitalisation for any cause, even if they had an above-median response on one of these parameters, with hazards ranging from 2.21 to 2.66. And there were similar findings for rehospitalisation for renal or cardiovascular causes, with hazard ratios of between 1.87 and 2.10.

"Thus, examining both decongestive markers may provide an easy accessible and relevant tool for clinicians to identify patients at particularly low risk of rehospitalization, with the potential for easing the burden on already overburdened healthcare systems", write Voors et al in Circulation: Heart Failure.

They say that if a physician is considering discharging an HF patient after a good response to diuretic treatment, additional assessment of haemoconcentration may help to confirm the decision.

"In the presence of hemoconcentration, this patient can be relatively safely discharged, with a low risk of HF rehospitalisation", the team writes. "However, the absence of hemoconcentration may trigger the clinician to re-evaluate his decision, and assess signs and symptoms again, and for instance prolong diuretic treatment for a while longer."

The researchers confirmed their findings in an additional 1776 patients from the EVEREST trial, achieving similar results, although with smaller hazard ratios overall, which rendered the differences in 60-day renal/cardiovascular hospitalisation nonsignificant.

They believe this to be due to differences in the study populations, with PROTECT patients generally being older and more poorly than EVEREST patients, with a poorer response to diuretics.

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.
Tulmulla (J&K): Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Sunday said there was a need to instil confidence among Kashmiri Pandits for their permanent return to the Valley and the present situation was not such that they could live in their native places.



"I will only appeal to Kashmiri Pandits that they should trust us and pray. We are trying to create peace, Kashmir is incomplete without Kashmiri Pandits," Mehbooba told reporters.



She said there was a need to infuse confidence among the community before they could go back to their native places. "To infuse confidence among them, first they will be brought to transit camps, transit communities, where our Muslim migrants will also live with them. Once their confidence grows, then they can live wherever they want," the chief minister said.



She said the present situation was not such that Pandits could live in their native places and referred to last night's stone pelting incident in south Kashmir's Kulgam district where a police post was pelted with stones. A vehicle carrying Kashmiri Pandits for the festival at Kheer Bhawani temple got caught in it.



"Whoever is saying this (that Pandits be settled in their native places) be it National Conference, Congress or other parties, they should think if the situation is such right now can Kashmiri Pandits live there after yesterday's incident," Mehbooba said.



She said children belonging to poor families were being used by some people in Kashmir for stone pelting and it was time for the people of Kashmir to ponder upon that.



"There are some elements in Kashmir who are anti-social and are using poor people for stone-pelting. The poor children they are using will face stigma from society forever," she said.



The chief minister said they will be called stone pelters even if they got educated and achieved something in life.



She also expressed satisfaction over a large number of devotees visiting the Kheer Bhawani temple this year.



"I feel that by coming here in such large numbers and meeting people here, the confidence will increase and slowly a time will come that these people will return to live here," she said.



Invoking the ethos of 'Kashmiriyat', the Chief Minister also praised local Muslims for participating in the festival at the temple, which is thronged by Kashmiri Pandits.
Varanasi: Two years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi led a Swachch Bharat campaign at Assi Ghat in Varanasi and the change is visible on the ground. The silt has been removed and it is probably the cleanest ghat in Varanasi.



Workers from Sulabh International clean the ghat five times a day.



But things are very different half a kilometer away. At Ravi Das Ghat there are tonnes of garbage and sanitation workers struggle to take out big plastic bags from the river. The equipment they use doesn't seem to be effective either.



"Can you see the drain? Even 20 trucks will not be able to take out the garbage that comes out of it," says Prem Kumar, a sanitation worker.



The Centre has also deployed a machine called trash skimmer. The person who operates it says he collects five tonnes of garbage every hour. The sanitation workers add that there are only cosmetic changes and the problem is much deeper.



"Not just one drain, you will have to close drains in all states to control pollution. Ganga flows through so many places," points out Jagannath, another sanitation worker.







There are at least 1,000 factories in and around Varanasi which discharge harmful chemicals into sewage lines. According to professor BD Tripathi, who heads the Ganga Research Centre at Banaras Hindu University, the waste generated is at least three times the capacity of the three sewage treatment plants in the city.



"Ganga is passing through five states. Each and every state has its own rules and regulations and because of lack of coordination we are failing in our mission," Tripathi adds.



Burning of human bodies at the ghats is another major source of pollution. This is a religious practice that has been going on for centuries.



While there have been efforts to clean the Assi Ghat and Dashashwamedh Ghat, there are many others which still need work. Unless the government controls the flow of factory waste, garbage and human remains, cleaning of ghats will only see a cosmetic change.
New York: An individual's caloric intake and body weight can deeply influence the time spent in specific sleep stages, says a new study.



Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania analysed sleep patterns among 36 healthy adults who experienced two consecutive nights of 10 hours in bed per night at the university hospital.



Using polysomnography, the researchers recorded physiological changes that occur during sleep on the second night.



Body composition and resting energy expenditure were assessed on the morning following the first night of sleep, while food and drink intake was measured each day.



The researchers found that body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage and resting energy expenditure were not significant predictors of sleep stage duration, but that overweight adults exhibited a higher percentage of time spent in the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep than normal-weight adults.



REM is a sleep stage when dreams typically occur characterised by faster heart rate and breathing.



The researchers also found that increased protein intake predicted less stage 2 sleep -- the period when a person's heart rate and breathing are relatively normal and his/her body temperature lowers slightly -- and predicted more REM sleep.



The study findings will be presented at SLEEP 2016 -- a joint meeting of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society to be held in Denver, Colorado, from June 11 to 15.



"In a culture of increasing pressure to sacrifice sleep to maintain productivity, this research adds to the body of knowledge on how lifestyle behaviours may influence the quality of our sleep" said study lead author Andrea M. Spaeth.



A 2013 study from the team found that those with late bedtimes and chronic sleep restriction may be more susceptible to weight gain due to the increased consumption of calories during late night hours.



A 2015 study from the same group found that eating less late at night may help curb the concentration and alertness deficits that accompany sleep deprivation.






Actor Arjun Kapoor, who is busy shooting for his upcoming film 'Half Girlfriend' is bereaved as his maternal grandmother Sattee Shouri passed away on Friday night following a prolonged illness.Having produced films like 'Farishtay' and television series 'Sheesha', Sattee was a well-known name in the industry. If the media reports are to go by, the cremation will be held today evening in Mumbai.Our deepest condolences to the family and friends.(Photos by Yogen Shah)
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Iraqi security forces on Saturday tightened their grip around the city of Fallujah and freed some areas from Islamic State (IS) militants after fierce clashes, a security source said.

Smoke billows from Fallujah's southern Shuhada neighbourhood following shelling during an operation by Iraqi government forces, backed by air support from the US-led coalition, to regain control of the area from the Islamic State (IS) group on June 10, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

The troops, backed by U.S.-led coalition aircraft, carried out an operation in the early morning to recapture areas on the western side of Euphrates River, which flows on the edge of the western part of Fallujah, some 50 km west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Area of Falahat in west of Fallujah was recaptured after fierce clashes in which IS militants were forced to withdraw, the source said.

It added that the troops will continue their advance toward the militant-seized area of al-Halabsa in order to push further toward Fallujah from the western bank of Euphrates River.

Meanwhile, the security forces and allied paramilitary units, known as Hashd Shaabi, advanced in east of Fallujah and freed al-Subayhat area after heavy clashes with the extremist militants, killing at least 13 extremist militants and destroying four of their vehicles, including a suicide car bomb, said the source.

Saturday's operations came after the security forces managed on Wednesday to seize part of al-Shuhada district in south of Fallujah and raised the Iraqi flag over some buildings after fierce clashes with IS militants.

However, advance in southern Fallujah was slowed by IS militants resistance inside the city, with hundreds of hidden bombs believed to be planted by them.

The security forces are also avoiding heavy casualties among tens of thousands of civilians who are reportedly trapped inside Fallujah.

About 50,000 to 70,000 civilians are expected to remain in Fallujah Earlier, said Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasoul, spokesman for the Joint Military Command.

Early in the month, the UN children fund warned that at least 20,000 Iraqi children remained trapped in Fallujah where Iraqi security forces are fighting to drive out the extremist IS militants from the city.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced on May 23 the launch of a major offensive to claim Fallujah and surrounding towns and areas.

Government troops and allied militias have currently been fighting for months to reclaim key cities and towns in Anbar from IS militants, who attempted to advance toward Baghdad after seizing most of Anbar province.

Iraq has been witnessing a wave of violence since the IS controlled parts of its northern and western regions in June 2014.
Thiruvananthapuram: With three months of police investigation into the death of actor Kalabhavan Mani getting nowhere, the new Kerala government is seeking a CBI probe.



The state government has written to the Department of Personnel and Training requesting that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) be asked to investigate the mysterious death of the popular actor on March 6.



Mani's brother R.L.V. Ramakrishnan welcomed the move.



"We had raised this demand and spoken to all concerned and finally this has come. The truth has to come out," he said.



Mani, 45, who acted in 200 films in Malayalam and other languages, was admitted to a hospital in Kochi on March 4. Said to be suffering from a liver ailment, he died two days later.



Forensic experts said an insecticide, called Chlorpyrifos, was found in the actor's body, leading his family to believe that there was foul play involved in Mani's death.



At the time of his death the actor had been staying at a 30-acre farmhouse near Chalakudy in Thrissur district, away from his home where his wife and daughter reside.
New Delhi: Senior leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and Kamal Nath were appointed Congress General Secretaries by party chief Sonia Gandhi on Sunday, setting in motion the much talked about process of organisational changes ahead of the Assembly elections in 2017, including in Uttar Pradesh.



While Azad, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, has been made in charge of Uttar Pradesh, Nath will look after Punjab and Haryana, party General Secretary Janaradan Dwivedi said.



Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab are scheduled early 2017.



So far Madhusudan Mistry was looking after Uttar Pradesh and Shakeel Ahmed was taking care of Punjab and Haryana.



Today's appointments are being seen as a precursor to further restructuring of the AICC Secretariat.



The reshuffle came at a time when talk of Rahul Gandhi being elevated as party chief had again gained ground.



Sonia Gandhi effected the changes a day after the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha which saw cross voting by some party MLAs in Uttar Pradesh and alleged deliberate faulty marking by its 14 legislators in Haryana which led to their votes being declared invalid and resulted in the defeat of Congress-backed candidate RK Anand. There were allegations of internal sabotage at the behest of former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.



Azad, 67, is a Gandhi family loyalist and a former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, while 69-year-old Nath is the senior most MP in the current Lok Sabha having won from his pocket borough ofChhindwara nine times.



Azad was earlier twice the AICC General Secretary in charge of UP. Nath was a General Secretary some 15 years back in charge of key states like Gujarat and West Bengal. His name was doing rounds as the possible new party chief in Madhya Pradesh.



Congress has roped in poll strategist Prashant Kishor, who successfully managed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha campaign in 2014 and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's 2015, to aid and assist the party's UP and Haryana units.



In UP, Congress had secured just two seats in the last Lok Sabha elections with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi emerging victorious from their traditional seats of Rae Bareli and Amethi.



The Congress is in political wilderness in UP since 1989 following emergence of divisive 'Mandal-Mandir' politics and rise of the BSP, which took away its crucial dalit vote base.



In Punjab, Congress is in the opposition for the last nine years and is making a determined bid to capture power from SAD-BJP combine at a time when AAP has also come up as a serious contender for power.



The appointment of seasoned politicians like Azad and Nath came amid calls for a "major surgery" from within the party following its recent debacle in assembly polls in four states, including Assam and Kerala.
New Delhi: The current round of Rajya Sabha biennial elections to 57 seats have given the ruling NDA an edge over opposition UPA, but it still lacks the majority it needs to push crucial legislations and may have to depend on regional parties who remain key players.



Regional players have 89 members. Their combined strength remains unaltered after the elections. The Samajwadi Party now has 19 members, with a gain of four seats, while JDU and RJD have a combined strength of 12. The Trinamool Congress and AIADMK too have 12 members each, followed by BSP - 6, CPI-M - 8, BJD - 7 and DMK - 5.



After the elections, in the House of 245, the NDA has raised its tally by 5 and now has 74 members. The UPA, on the other hand has 71 members, with its tally down by three.



On June 3, 30 candidates were elected to the Upper House unopposed. The NDA then had managed to add 11 of its members (BJP 7, TDP 2, Shiv and Shiromani Akali Dal one each) in their Rajya Sabha tally.



The House also has 12 nominated members.



The UPA could send five members to the Upper House (Congress 4 and NCP 1) unopposed. The other parties -- JDU - 2, RJD - 2, AIADMK - 4, DMK - 2 and BJD - 3 -- were able to send 13 members to the Rajya Sabha unopposed.



In Saturday's election held to the remaining 27 seats, BJP won 12 seats -- two in Haryana, one in UP, four in Rajasthan, two in Madhya Pradesh, one in Karnataka and two in Jharkhand.



Congress, on the other hand, won six seats -- one each in UP, MP and Uttarakhand and three in Karnataka.



Out of 11 seats in UP, the SP won seven seats, BSP 2, BJP and Congress one each.



In the Rajya Sabha bypoll necessitated following the demise of sitting Congress member Praveen Rashtrapal from Gujarat in May, BJP wrested the seat.



With regional players remaining crucial in passage of key legislations, government may now to seek their support to pass reform bills like GST.
Allahabad: The Bharatiya Janata Party will not finalise its chief ministerial candidate for Uttar Pradesh polls at its two-day national executive meeting but let its parliamentary board take a call on it, party leaders said on Saturday.



BJP leaders have made it clear that the parliamentary board will take the call on the chief ministerial candidate closer to the assembly elections in the first half of 2017. Both the timing and selection will be determined by how the state politics unravels in the days ahead, they added.



"The chief ministerial candidate will be declared by the parliamentary board. Since the national executive is being held at Kumbh Nagari we are sending a message to people across the country that the BJP is going to win UP and other states," BJP national general secretary Arun Singh said.



According to Singh, the party has met with electoral success both when it declared a CM face before the polls, and when it did not.



"We have declared faces in some states and we have not declared faces at times. We need to decide whether we need to announce a CM face, when we have been successful in both formats," Singh added.



The two-day session beginning in Allahabad on Sunday, which will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah, will instead focus on the achievements of the NDA government and will strategise on expanding the party's base in the crucial poll-bound state.







Ahead of the meet, billboards have come up across Allahabad seeking to project the claims of Sultanpur MP Varun Gandhi and UP BJP president Keshav Prasad Maurya. Other names like HRD minister Smriti Irani and Gorakhpur MP Yogi Adityanath are also doing the rounds.



Yet another possibility being discussed is that of Home Minister Rajnath Singh spearheading the charge as campaign committee chief.



After the success in Assam where it had announced Sarbananda Sonowal as its CM face, a section of the party strongly believes that BJP should clearly and categorically project its leadership before the UP electorate.



Many in the BJP believe that any ambiguity on this could lead to confusion both among the cadres and voters, as was perhaps the case in Bihar. The two main rivals, Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, have their CM candidates in Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati respectively.



But all concerns are unlikely to be addressed immediately, with the party in a mood to wait and watch before taking a final call on its CM face.
Allahabad: With an eye on the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party is thrashing out its political strategy at the two-day national executive meeting in Allahabad.



Sources said the party will conduct surveys in every constituency focusing on several factors and then come up with a suitable chief ministerial candidate. Caste equations and the work done by Central government will form the basis for the survey.



The main challenge for the BJP is to take a decision regarding its chief ministerial face and posters of Sultanpur MP Varun Gandhi have only complicated matters. Varun's supporters are proclaiming him to be a possible chief ministerial candidate.



The BJP leadership believes that it still doesn't have a strong face from Uttar Pradesh to take on Samajwadi party chief Mulayam Singh and Bahujan Samaj party chief Mayawati.



The BJP is trying to convince Home Minister Rajnath Singh to be the poll campaign committee chief since he is reluctant to be the chief ministerial candidate.



The national executive meet, which is likely to begin around 3 PM on Sunday, is likely to set the agenda for the assembly elections in the state which are less than a year away.







Meanwhile, leaders have been pouring in to take part in the two-day conclave which will conclude on Monday, followed by a rally to be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.



Several senior members of the Union Cabinet and chief ministers of all BJP-ruled states will also take part in the national executive meeting.



Posters have come up across the city displaying the header 'Mission 265 Plus' a term coined by BJP chief Amit Shah who has repeatedly exhorted workers to aim at achieving a thumping majority for the party in the 403 MLA-strong UP Assembly.



The party at present has less than 50 MLAs in the house, a massive decline since the 1990s when it used to be the top political group in the state.



BJP has brought several new faces to its national executive, the highlight being some former Congress leaders. They include former Odisha chief minister and tribal leader Giridhar Gamang and saffron party leader KV Singh Deo, also from that state. Deo is a former state party chief.



Himanta Biswa Sarma, who defected from Congress to BJP and played a key role in its big Assam win, and former Uttarakhand chief minister Vijay Bahuguna, a new entrant to the saffron party, have also been inducted into the national executive.



(With additional information from PTI)
A Twitter account associated with Islamic State on Sunday posted a photo purported to be Omar Mateen, identified by US authorities as the shooter who killed at least 50 people in a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida."The man who carried out the Florida nightclub attack which killed 50 people and injured dozens," the caption accompanying the photo read. There was no official Islamic State statement.It was not possible to verify whether the picture was in fact of Mateen. Other Twitter accounts linked to Islamist militancy also carried photos of the same individual, and Islamic State supporters posted messages of praise for the attack. At least 50 people were killed and injured 53 in the crowded gay nightclub in the tourist hub of Orlando, early on Sunday. The shooter was also shot dead by police, authorities said, in what appeared the deadliest mass shooting in American history.The shooter was identified as Omar S. Mateen, a man that a senior FBI official said might have had leanings towards Islamic State militants. Officials described the attack as a "terrorism incident" though cautioned that the suspected Islamist connection required further investigation. The death toll given by Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and police to reporters made the attack the deadliest single shooting incident in US history, eclipsing the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech university, which left 32 dead.
Kolkata: In the wake of a series of attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, the minority community there wants Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian government to take up the matter with Dhaka to ensure their safety and security.



"The Hindu community, which is the biggest minority community in Bangladesh, is vulnerable in Bangladesh. Fundamentalist and Jamat forces are trying to wipe out Hindus from Bangladesh.



"We feel that India being a Hindu majority country, should do something. We have high hopes on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.



He should act and take up the matter with Bangladeshi government and ensure the safety and security of Hindus," Rana Dasgupta, general secretary of Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council and noted Human Rights activist, told PTI.



A 60-year-old Hindu ashram worker, Nityaranjan Pandey, was hacked to death on June 10 by suspected Islamists, becoming the fourth person from the minority community to be killed in a series of brutal attacks on secular activists in the Muslim majority Bangladesh.



"The religious majority and the fundamentalist groups want to eliminate the Hindu community. Since last two years, this religious cleansing has gained further pace. Stability in the Indian subcontinent region can never be achieved with Bangladesh turning into a fundamental state.



So if India wants stability in the region it should act to stop the annihilation of minorities in our country," Dasgupta, who is also Prosecutor of International Crimes Tribunal, claimed.



Pandey's murder comes within a week of killings of a Hindu priest, a Christian grocer and wife of an anti-terror police officer. 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 Islamist forces.



Bangladesh has also seen a series of attacks on secular and liberal bloggers in 2015.



"The condition of Hindus is horrible in Bangladesh. Although we have a secular government of Awami League party, but at grass-roots level the situation is grim. Rapes, murder, loot, arson, destruction of property of Hindu and other minority communities is rampant.



"Until and unless India puts pressure on Bangladesh, the fundamentalists won't budge," well-known actor of Bangladesh and former managing director of Bangladesh Film Development Corporation Piyush Bandopadhaya said.



"India is a major power in the region, it can't sit idle when Hindus are being brutally slaughtered in a neighbouring country," he said.



Bandopadhaya, who along with Dasgupta, lauded the quick response of Indian High Commission in Bangladesh, which had sent its officials to meet the family members of the Hindu priest and colleagues in the ashram, but said India needs to do more.



Human rights groups and Hindu leaders in Bangladesh have been demanding more security for religious minorities.



Although the minority leaders are expecting Indian government to take up the cause of the minorities in Bangladesh, a senior Bangladesh minister feels the attack on minorities are actually aimed at creating hurdles in the functioning of the secular and liberal Awami League government.



"This is actually a ploy by fundamentalist and Jamat forces to put up a bad image of Bangladesh. These attacks are not aimed at minorities, but the real target is to malign our government and turn our country into a fundamentalist state.



We will never let that happen. We have taken several steps to ensure the safety and security of minorities and strict action will be taken against the culprits," Bangladesh Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu told PTI over phone from Dhaka.



When asked what would Dhaka do if India wants to take up the cause of security of Hindus, Inu said, "India and Bangladesh share very good relations. India is our friend. If India wants to take up a matter with us, we will talk. There is no harm in it."
Officers responded to the Express Lane at 3001 Memorial Avenue just after 10 p.m. Saturday after employees reported entered the business and pointed a handgun at a clerk, according to a news release. The man, described in the release as an adult black male with a "thin to medium build," demanded money and fled the scene with an undisclosed amount of cash.
 Flash

The Philippine government has been behind the intensifying tensions in the South China Sea, a former diplomat of the country told Xinhua on Wednesday.

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 the South China Sea. [Xinhua file photo]

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."

The Philippine Foreign Affairs Department said it has conducted over 50 consultations and negotiations with China from 1995 to 2012, which did not happen, said the diplomat, who was then in charge of the negotiation "before it exploded."

Encomienda noted that China "has been sending quiet feelers to improve relations."

"Prior to the 2005's APEC (forum summit), China sent two delegations to the Philippines, and invited delegations from the House of Representatives to Beijing. We never gave this much attention. After the summit, China sent feelers to the Philippines again, we never responded," he revealed.

The former Philippine maritime official also said that China should not be demonized in terms of the South China Sea issue, since it was the Philippines who first engaged in reclamation activities in South China Sea, building airstrips on China's Zhongye Island.

"We were the first to do reclamation in South China Sea. So we cannot demonize China for reclamation," he said, revealing that the airfield on Zhongye Island "was built on top of live coral reefs."

Encomienda also lashed out at the United States for its mounting military presence in the South China Sea and its purpose to set the Philippines against China on this issue.

"The U.S. is very against China's reclamation in South China Sea ... Look, how much China is spending to reclaim those reefs? Nothing compared to what the U.S. spent on the Philippines for EDCA (Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement). In short, China is reclaiming reefs, but America is reclaiming the Philippines," he said.

After President Benigno Aquino III's first state visit to the United States in 2010, "everything that came up as the Philippines' South China Sea position has something to do with 'rule-based' and 'legal framework.' But these are rule basis determined by the U.S.," said Encomienda.

The former diplomat emphasized that the Philippines "is in urgent need of an independent foreign policy."
Fashion, Mas rock the Avenue

The family type event produced pan music, soca music and the splendour of Carnival costumes of both the modern era and time past.

The event did not get off to a great start as the stated 6 pm time went by without anything happening. At 6.30 pm a Carib music truck appeared at the starting point but no one on hand seem to know what was happening.

Things turned out to be a traffic nightmare for drivers as the streets were not cordoned off and vehicles were cautiously driving among masqueraders.

It reached appoint where a PTSC bus was stuck on Alfredo Street for quite some time and even had to reverse onto Roberts Street to get out.

When Valentine arrived at the starting point at the corner of Alfredo Street and Ariapita Avenue he started to put things in place. He was seen chatting with police officials trying to get things right.

But out of all the chaos came a beautiful parade with old time Carnival characters, Moko Jumbies, Jab Jab, Tobagos Old Time Wedding, Blue Devils, pan music by Brimblers and Newtown Playboys Steel Orchestra and plenty beautiful mas costumes from Ronnie and Caro, Tribe, The Lost Tribe and Passion Carnival.

The parade proceeded east along Ariapita Avenue to Adam Smith Square where the fashion show took place.

At about 9 pm, the logistics of lining up two 18-wheeler container trailers back to back among hundreds of spectators and masqueraders proved to be a challenge.

Organisers worked hard to get things in place as the models would use the trucks as the runway. Kudos must be extended to the men who worked their magic along with police officers to make it happen.

Designer Anya Ayoung Chee was the brain behind the modelling show and parade and was praised by Mayor Valentine for her foresight.

Spectators were treated to performances by 5 Star Akil, Benjai and Olatunji as well as several line of clothing from Exibit A and mas costumes by the Lost Tribe ad Tribe.

Ayoung Chee told the audience this was always her dream, a long time vision even before she won the Project Runway.

With arms open wide she said, This is you, this is your city.

I was born in New York but I love this city. Despite all the crime and negativity we own our identity. We are a positive, divine and complex people but we are in charge of who we are.

Look at the person next to you, we are a loving people we have to protect our city. Valentine said he was humbled to come before so many people to celebrate the 102nd anniversary of the capital city of Port-of-Spain. I thank you for coming out to show your love for Port of Spain.

He thanked his councillors for being with him on the venture and hope all will continue to support the City Day celebrations.
Recall of Sleep

Apnea Device

Is Not Going Well
Robert Downey Jr. the busy man may become the reason of stalling production of "Sherlock Holmes 3."

Returning from "Captain America: Civil War," Downey Jr. already has a tight schedule according to Christian Today, if he misses the target for filming "Sherlock Holmes 3" this year, the film's release may be delayed.

According to Parent Herald, Downey Jr. has discussed regarding the possibilities of the next "Sherlock Holmes" release to Guy Ritchie. However, there is no news from the franchise yet.

In an interview with ShortList in April, the actor stated that he is looking to hopefully start production this year. "When we're making those Sherlock movies it is off the hook. [So] we'll attempt to make one this year," he said.

According to the actor though he is "tired all the time," he is still "so excited" about filming. For Downey Jr., things could have been easier for him and the development team if only they could do the shots through Skype.

Though hopes for the third instalment have somehow decreased down despite Downey Jr.'s teasing statements, fans rallied once more in support of the film after producer Joel Silver dished on the tentative production start date last month.

Speaking to Collider, Silver said, "It looks like it could happen this fall. Downey said he wants to do it...we have a script that we like. Jude [Law] is available and Downey is available, and we're hoping we can get it done."

Silver added that they are pushing for the fall production to happen since Downey Jr. will be working on another "Avengers" movie after New Year, which isn't surprising for the Marvel favorite.
A team of archaeologists has unearthed oldest human fossils on the island of Flores in Indonesia. The fossils are expected to reveal key details about how the island got inhabited by human-like "hobbits" thousands of years ago.

The fossils were actually discovered nearly 10 years ago from a cave called Liang Bua on the island. At the time of the discovery, the scientists proposed that the fossils belong to an entirely different species of humans, dubbed Homo floresiensis.

The species was given the nickname "hobbit" after its 3.5ft stature. But the researchers did not know how tiny humans could actually be.

A different team of researchers also suggested at the time that the fossils could actually belong to Homo sapiens only and not to any other species. May be, they hadn't grown to their full size. However, the more popular explanation suggests that they might have evolved from other archaic human species called Homo erectus.

The scientists believed that Homo erectus might have arrived the island and undergone an evolutionary process called island dwarfing. However, there was not enough evidence to test this hypothesis until now.

For all these years, scientists kept looking for more evidence on the same island and finally discovered a 700,000-year-old teeth and jaw bone at a different Flores site called Mata Menge.

The study of the fossils revealed that Homo floresiensis or Hobbits are indeed a dwarf form of Homo erectus. The researchers suggest that the Flores human probably underwent island dwarfism to become so small. Other animals, including elephants, are known to undergo this process too.

Apart from fossil bones, the researchers also recovered stone tools from the three different sites across the island. A comparison of the tools revealed that they differ from one site to another, indicating the presence of two different species at different sites.

The complete details of the fossils recovered from the site have been published in the journal Nature.
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Amritsar:

Two Pakistani smugglers were killed while another was injured as BSF troops fired at them to foil an attempt to smuggle drugs along the Indo-Pak border in Fazilka in Punjab. Officials said the incident occurred around 2 AM when Border Security Force personnel detected some suspicious movement along the International Border in the area under Sohana border post and challenged the intruders.

While two Pakistani nationals have been killed, another has been injured and apprehended by BSF. About 15 packets of narcotic, suspected to be heroin, has been seized from them, besides some arms and ammunition. This seems to be a case of cross-border drug smuggling, one of the officials said.

The officials said the bodies have been recovered and a search has been launched in the area.

Senior officials of the border guarding force have reached the forward area and more details are awaited, they said.

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New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold an interactive session with the top brass of the two revenue collection arms of the governmentCBDT and CBEC during a first-of-its-kind Rajasva Gyan Sangam to be held here on June 16.

Officials said both the Boards have been asked to direct their officials to prepare suggestions on important policy-level and innovative ideas of far reaching impact relating to the legislative and administrative framework of taxation in India that they can be put forth to the Prime Minister during the conclave at Vigyan Bhavan here.

They said similar ideas will also be put forth to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley who will be holding a session with them during the two-day conference.

It has been directed by the Prime Ministers Office that the PM will like to keep it an interactive session rather than just a monotonous inauguration and speech affair.

Both Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) have been asked to prepare a bank of good ideas and out-of-the-box solutions after talking to their officers who will participate in the June 16-17 Gyan Sangam, a senior Finance Ministry official said.

The meet will be attended by about 250 officials and the top brass of the Income Tax department and Customs and Central Excise.

The conclave will deliberate on a host of issues related to taxpayer services and effective implementation of fiscal laws and government policies, including measures to curb black money generation and circulation.

Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha will deliver the valedictory address on the second and last day.

This is the first time that this annual conference of the two large departments is being held together.

Till now, the two Boards used to hold such a conference separately with the chief guest being the Finance Minister.

While CBDT is responsible for collecting direct taxes, CBEC does the same vis-a-vis indirect taxes.

As per the blueprint of the Gyan Sangam, the details of the deliberations and recommendations will be sent to the FMs office and the PMO.

The sessions will be divided into two broad subjects relating to the governments plan of financial inclusion and ensuring a transparent tax regime for businesses and foreign investors, besides issues and challenges being faced by the departments like Income Tax, Customs, Central Excise and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence.

Modi, at his recent review meetings with CBDT and CBEC officials had reiterated the need for reducing taxpayers grievances and ensuring a quick resolution of their problems.

The Prime Minister is also likely to outline the governments goals vis-a-vis some flagship programmes like

Make in India and Start-up India at the conference as tax officials are the most important stakeholders to ensure success of these schemes.

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Solan (HP):

At least eight persons, including five women, were killed and 20 others injured when a private bus rolled 150 feet deep into a gorge near Darlaghat in Solan district, 50 kms from Solan, police said. The mishap took place yesterday in which five persons died on the spot, while three others succumbed to their injuries on way to IGMC hospital, Shimla, said Darlaghat DSP Narvir Rathore.

Four out of the eight persons killed in the accident have been identified as Vikas (30) hailing from Bilaspur, Tripta (21), a resident of Mandi, Banarasi Mehto (40) from Jharkhand and Chauhan Singh (35) from Kullu district, while the remaining are yet to be identified, the DSP said.

The ill-fated bus carrying over 40 persons was on its way from Chirgaon in Rohroo area of Shimla district to Mandi when the tragedy struck.

The condition of five injured persons admitted to IGMC was state to be serious. The cause of the accident could not be ascertained but eye witnesses said it occurred as the driver failed to negotiate a sharp curve.

Himachal Pradesh Governor Acharya Devvrat, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and Transport Minister G S Bali have expressed deep shock and grief over the mishap and extended sympathies with bereaved families.

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Allahabad:

Ahead of the BJPs national executive meeting here, a meeting of the partys national office-bearers began today with party president Amit Shah chairing it.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi would arrive later in the day for the executive meeting, Shah, veteran leader Murli Manoharj Joshi, party general secretaries Ram Madhav, Ram Lal and Bhupendra Yadav, national secretaries Siddharth Nath Singh and Shrikant Sharma and party spokesman Sambit Patra have already reached the city.

The meeting of the office-bearers began at a city hotel. The national executive meet, which is likely to begin around 3 PM, is likely to set the agenda for the assembly elections in the state which are less than a year away.

Meanwhile, leaders have been pouring in to take part in the two-day conclave which will conclude tomorrow, followed by a rally to be addressed by Modi.

Several senior members of the Union cabinet and Chief Ministers of all the states ruled by the BJP are also likely to take part in the national executive meeting.

I would have called it as sounding the poll bugle for UP assembly polls but for PM Modis rally in Saharanpur last month, said BJP national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh yesterday, while partys vice-president and in-charge for the state Om Mathur said many issues would be discussed at the national executive but the main focus would obviously be on the UP assembly polls due next year.

Posters have come up across the city displaying the header Mission 265 Plus a term coined by Shah who has repeatedly exhorted workers to aim at achieving a thumping majority for the party in the 403-strong UP assembly.

The BJP at present has less than 50 MLAs in the house, a massive decline since the 1990s when it used to be the top political group in the state.

BJP has brought several new faces to its national executive, the highlight being some former Congress leaders, including former Odisha Chief Minister and tribal leader Giridhar Gamang and saffron party leader K V Singh Deo, also from that state. Deo is a former state party chief.

Himanta Biswa Sarma, who defected from Congress to BJP and played a key role in its big Assam win, and former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna, a new entrant to the saffron party, have also been inducted into the national executive.

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New Delhi:

President Pranab Mukherjee today embarked on a six-day visit to three African nationsGhana, Ivory Coast and Namibiato boost trade ties with these countries known for having solid political system, where democracy has taken roots. This is the maiden visit of any Indian President to Ghana and Ivory Coast whereas to Namibia, such a visit comes after two decades.

Even though Mukherjee has toured a number of countries in the continent, he will be visiting these countries for the first time in his long political career.

He was a given a traditional send off at Rashtrapati Bhavan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vice President Hamid Ansari, Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag among others.

All these countries we look at as good countries in terms of a solid political system, where democracy has taken roots and these are all doing reasonably well in their regions, Secretary (ER) Amar Sinha has said.

The President is accompanied by Minister of State in the PMO Jitendra Singh and MPs S S Ahluwalia and Mansukh L Mandaviya.

Its a very important visit of the President. He is visiting two countries for the first timeIvory Coast and Ghana, besides Namibia where an (Indian) President will visit after 21 years. He is having a number of engagements.

This is not a ceremonial visit. It has an educational component, economic component and a community component, MoS Singh said.

The first stop of Mukherjee will be in Accra, capital of Ghana, where there will be delegation level talks at the Presidents House, which is called Flag Staff House, tomorrow.

The imposing building has been built by a renowned Indian builder, Shapoorji Pallonji.

There are likely to be discussions on some agreements on visa waiver and line of credits is also in the pipeline.

Mukherjee will pay homage to Ghanas first President Kwame Nkrumah at his mausoleum of in Accra.

He will also be unveiling a statue of Mahatma Gandhi which has been gifted by ICCR, besides planting a sapling.

Investment in Ghana is substantial, nearly three billion dollars in various sectors. NRIs, professionals have invested in IT, Pharmaceuticals and other areas. If you look at last three year figures, our trade has gone up nearly three times.

Ghanas main trade consists of gold imports, its nearly 80 percent of total trade. Ghanaian gold is in great demand in India, Sinha said.

The President will also be visiting the India-Ghana Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, set up by India, and will meet its faculty and alumni.

In 2011, a new government has come in and there has been a national reconciliation... With Ivory Coast, since this is the first visit, I guess the difference of languages must have dissuaded other higher level visits because it is one of the francophone countries, Sinha said.

Mukherjee will be received by President Alassane Ouattara himself at the airport.

He might be honoured with the highest award of that country, besides a symbolic handing over of key of Abidjan city.

...Exim Bank, is going to re-open its office. It was relocated to Dakar during the civil war, so they have now got all the permissions and are relocating to Ivory Coast. This is their regional office is West Africa to monitor all the lines of credit that we have, he said.

Ivory Coast, a francophone country, is the biggest producer and exporter of cashew nuts to India which procures nearly 80 per cent of its total exports of cashew nuts.

The final stop will be Windhoek, capital of Namibia, where Mukherjee will meet President Sam Nujoma.

Namibia is a mineral and mining driven economy and India is likely to offer mining engineering training.

The mining sector contributes roughly 10 or 11 per cent of the GDP but it gets them 50 per cent of their foreign exchange earnings so they are highly dependent on that. It is a small country with a population of around 2.5 or three millions, Sinha said.

India is likely to sign four MoUs on deputation of Indian Army for training purposes to Namibian Defence Forces and establishment of a Centre of Excellence in Information Technology which they need.

Then there will be an MoU between Namibian Institute of Public Administration and Management and our own IIM Ahmedabad and also between their Public Administration and our Lal Bahadur Shashtri Academy which trains civil servants because they are focused on developing their own capacities, he said.

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Dubai:

The presence of an unauthrorised drone above Dubai airport disrupted air traffic for more than an hour, the second such incident to hit one of the worlds most busiest airports in 18 months. On Saturday, air traffic was suspended between 11.36am and 12.45pm by Dubai Air Traffic Control Tower.

A Dubai Airports statement said it was due to unauthorised drone activity. As a result, a number of delays and flight diversions were sustained.

We are working with Dubai Police, the airport and the relevant authorities in the investigations on the breach of the no-fly zone, General Civil Aviation Authority chief Saif Al Suwaidi said.

This is the second time such an incident has happened in less than two years in Dubai.

Michael Rudolph, head of aviation regulation and safety at the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA), had said that the first drone incident on January 23 last year may have cost Dubai close to USD 69 million.

USD 1 million per minute - thats what it cost the economy of Dubai, he had said when referring to incident, which saw the airspace above Dubai airport shut for 55 minutes.

The majority of planes already in the air were diverted to Dubai World Central Airport, a Dubai Airports spokesperson was quoted as saying by Khaleej Times.

The Dubai Airports said in the statement: Dubai Airports is working closely with its stakeholders to restore operations and minimise customer inconvenience.

Safety is our top priority and Dubai Airports reminds all unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) operators that any and all activities are not permitted unless authorised by regulatory authorities and are strictly prohibited in restricted areas, including within 5km of any airport or landing area, the statement said.

Drone users caught flying their drones in sensitive no- fly zones are now liable to face fines of up to 1 million dirham in Dubai. The DCAA has set various no-fly zones and zones with restricted access across the emirate.

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New Delhi:

Actor Vivek Dahiya, who is tying the knot with TV star Divyanka Tripathi next month, says he is lucky to have the actress in his life. While Vivek is relatively new to the industry, Tripathi has become one of the top actresses on television, thanks to the popularity of Ye Hai Mohabbatein.

We do discuss work... She has a positive attitude towards life. She will never discourage you. If she doesnt like anything, she will never say that on your face. She will put it in some other way. She never disrespects anyone. I value her advices and feel lucky to have her in my life, Vivek told PTI.

The actor, 31, met Tripathi on the sets of the show. He had no plans of getting married anytime soon but says when his co-star suggested about Divyanka, he could not say no.

I have just started my career and marriage was a far-fetched idea for me. Pankaj Bhatia, who plays Bala on Yeh Hai Mohabatein, first approached me with the idea.

Initially, I thought he had lost his senses but I realized our goals in life were similar. Its an arranged-cum-love marriage.

Vivek is also moving forward in his career as he plays the lead in Ekta Kapoors supernatural series Kawach...Kaali Shaktiyon se which airs on Colors.

There was always a thought in my mind that I should secure a lead show before my marriage. This thought was always in my mind but I didnt go out of my way to do it. We both are very happy with my achievement, he said.

The actor says playing a lead role is a huge responsibility. I am not nervous. I feel its more like a responsibility on my shoulders now. Ekta has shown a lot of confidence in me as she thinks I can pull this off. I just have to give my best shot. The moment I feel nervous, I try to turn the feeling as a source of motivation.

Vivek will be seen opposite Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin star Mona Singh, who is playing his wife, on the finite series while former Bigg Boss contestant Maheck Chahal is in the role an obsessed lover, who comes from the dead.

I thought Mona would have the tantrums, which are generally attached to a star. But those are really my inhibitions and nothing else. On the very first day of shooting, I was told that we will be shooting a romantic scene. I was nervous and at the same time it was an awkward moment. But she made me comfortable with her jokes...
New Delhi:

The current round of Rajya Sabha biennial elections to 57 seats have given the ruling NDA an edge over opposition UPA, but it still lacks the majority it needs to push crucial legislations and may have to depend on regional parties who remain key players.

Regional players have 89 members. Their combined strength remains unaltered after the elections. The Samajwadi Party now has 19 members, with a gain of four seats, while JD-U and RJD have a combined strength of 12. The Trinamool Congress and AIADMK too have 12 members each, followed by BSP (6), CPI-M (8), BJD (7) and DMK (5).

After the elections, in the House of 245, the NDA has raised its tally by 5 and now has 74 members. The UPA, on the other hand has 71 members, with its tally down by three.

On June 3, 30 candidates were elected to the Upper House unopposed. The NDA then had managed to add 11 of its members (BJP 7, TDP 2, Shiv and Shiromani Akali Dal one each) in their Rajya Sabha tally.

The House also has 12 nominated members.

The UPA could send five members to the Upper House

(Congress 4 and NCP 1) unopposed. The other partiesJD-U (2), RJD (2), AIADMK (4), DMK (2) and BJD (3) -- were able to send 13 members to the Rajya Sabha unopposed.

In yesterdays election held to the remaining 27 seats, BJP won 12 seatstwo in Haryana, one in UP, four in Rajasthan, two in Madhya Pradesh, one in Karnataka and two in Jharkhand.

Congress, on the other hand, won six seatsone each in UP, MP and Uttarakhand and three in Karnataka.

Out of 11 seats in UP, the SP won seven seats, BSP 2, BJP and Congress one each.

In the Rajya Sabha bypoll necessitated following the demise of sitting Congress member Praveen Rashtrapal from Gujarat in May, BJP wrested the seat.

With regional players remaining crucial in passage of key legislations, government may now to seek their support to pass reform bills like GST.

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New Delhi:

To well equip youths for jobs in forest sector and help mitigate the problem of migration of people from the hills in search of work, a National Forest Skill Development Centre has been set up in Dehradun. "It is one of a kind institution in the whole country where youth from all over India can converge and get skill development training, Union Minister of Forest and Environment Prakash Javadekar said today. It has been a major problem for Uttarakhand government to stop migration from hills in search of livelihood.

The massive inferno that had destroyed thousands of hectares of land in Uttarakhand this season, Environment Minister Javadekar said the Wildlife Institute has been asked to submit a report on the forest blazes in the state and the extent of damage caused by them within 15 days.

Rajaji National Park was granted the status of a Tiger Reserve by the Centre to boost tourism so that more and more people get jobs in the sector and they don't have to migrate from their homes, he added. Centre has given Rs 24 crore to the state government for its upgradation.

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Lahore:

The US has moved ahead of India in its enmity with Pakistan and wants to damage its nuclear programme, JuD chief Hafiz Saeed said. America has moved ahead of India in its enmity with Pakistan. It carried out drone attack in Balochistan to kill Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour to test Pakistan whether it would give any reaction.

In fact, the US target is Pakistans nuclear programme and it (the US) wants to damage it with the help of Israel and India, Saeed said while addressing the activists of Falah-e-Insanyat Foundation (FIF), a subsidiary of the Jamaat-ud-Dawah, at the JuD headquarters in Chauburji here yesterday.

His comments came a day after Pakistan lodged its protest to a visiting high-level US delegation over the May 21 drone strike in Balochistan, which killed Mansour.

The 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 - was told that the strike vitiated bilateral ties.

Saeed, who is carrying a USD 10 million bounty on his head in connection with his role in the 2008 Mumbai attack, further said: It is our duty to tell the people of this country about the dangerous nexus of the US, Israel and India against Pakistan.

He asked Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to stop looking at the US for elimination of terrorism in the country. Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, also alleged that India is installing missile system at its airports to target Pakistans nuclear programme.

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Allahabad:

Top BJP brass may have maintained silence over whether to project a chief ministerial face for the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, but regional leaders and their supporters have taken to posters to send out a message about their preferences, as the party's national executive meet began in Allahabad on Sunday.



Among all state leaders, it is the face of party MP Varun Gandhi which dons most posters and hoardings put up along the roads leading to the meeting venue, while posters of Union Minister Smriti Irani, who is seen as one of the party's options for the post, are present at relatively fewer places.



Photographs of Home Minister Rajnath Singh, its most prominent state leader, also find their place across the city, at some places alongside that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah.



Union Minister Uma Bharti, an OBC leader who was seen as the party's chief ministerial candidate in 2012 assembly polls, is hardly visible among these posters and banners.



Wary that the party may not take kindly to any bid by some leaders to project themselves as the chief ministerial face when it is still deliberating the matter, those who have put up posters and banners have refrained from making any direct call to declare their favourites as the pick.



Reacting to the issue, BJP national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh told reporters here that "there are well-wishers of Mr Varun Gandhi. But certainly, it's not through the party effort that this (posters) has come up."



"All I can say is certainly this is not any kind of projection that the party is making in the national executive and hoardings and posters are not parameters of popularity," Singh said.



The party is still mulling over whether to go with a chief ministerial face as it did in Assam, as factors like

caste equation and lack of a face acceptable across the big state play in its mind.



Though many in the party feel Rajnath Singh outscores other challengers on most counts but he has earlier expressed reluctance to join state politics and the party top brass is also in two minds on whether he is the best bet or not. He is though certain to play an important role, including the possibility of heading the party's campaign.

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Srinagar:

JKLF chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik was detained hours after his release on court orders even as Jammu and Kashmir government allowed the separatist Hurriyat Conference to hold a seminar for opposing construction of Sainik colony for Kashmiri Pandits and soldiers in the Valley.

Malik, who was yesterday released on bail after a week-long detention in a case related to 1987 elections, was picked up by police late last night from his Maisuma residence and lodged at Kothibagh police station, police said today.

The detention of Malik, who has been at the forefront of fresh efforts at unity among separatists, came hours ahead of a joint seminar by separatist outfits at the residence of hardline Hurriyat Conference chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

The separatist groups had last week decided to launch an awareness campaign against the setting up of separate townships for Kashmiri Pandits and constructing Sainik colonies in the valley. The seminar at Geelanis residence is part of the joint strategy adopted by the separatist groups.

They are planning to hold a silent sit-in on June 15 against any government move to set up the township for Kashmiri Pandits or retired military personnel of the state.

The separatist groups have alleged that these townships and colonies are being constructed to settle people from other parts of India in Kashmir to change the demography of the Valley.

The PDP-BJP government in the state has made it clear that there would be no separate townships for Kashmiri Pandits but transit accommodation will be provided to them till the security situation improves allowing them to return to their native places. It has also ruled out setting up any Sainik colony in Kashmir in view of scarcity of land.

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New Delhi:

Congress veterans Ghulam Nabi Azad and Kamal Nath were today appointed general secretaries incharge of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, a move seen as precursor to a major organisational shake-up in the party ahead of the assembly polls in the two states next year.



While Azad, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, has been party general secretary incharge of Uttar Pradesh twice before, Nath will look after Haryana apart from Punjab, party General Secretary Janaradan Dwivedi said.



Madhusudan Mistry, who was hitherto looking after Uttar Pradesh, will be the new general secretary incharge of Central Election Committee, while Shakeel Ahmed, incharge of Punjab and Haryana, has been relieved of the charge, Dwivedi.



Congress president Sonia Gandhi effected the changes a day after the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha which saw cross voting by some party MLAs in Uttar Pradesh and alleged deliberate faulty marking by its 14 legislators in Haryana which led to their votes being declared invalid and resulted in the defeat of Congress-backed candidate R K Anand. There were allegations of internal sabotage at the behest of former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.



Azad, 67, is a Gandhi family loyalist and a former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, while 69-year-old Nath is the seniormost MP in the current Lok Sabha having won from his pocket borough of Chhindwara nine times.



The reshuffle came at a time when talk of Rahul Gandhi being elevated as party chief had again gained ground.



Nath had been a party general secretary some 15 years back when he was in charge of key states like Gujarat and West Bengal.



His name was doing rounds as the possible new party chief in Madhya Pradesh.



Congress has roped in poll strategist Prashant Kishor, who successfully managed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha campaign in 2014 and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's last year, to aid and assist the party's UP and Haryana units.



In UP, Congress had secured just two seats in the last Lok Sabha elections with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi emerging victorious from their traditional seats of Rae Bareli and Amethi.



The Congress is in political wilderness in UP since 1989 following emergence of divisive 'Mandal-Mandir' politics and rise of the BSP, which took away its crucial dalit vote base.



In Punjab, Congress is in the opposition for the last nine years and is making a determined bid to capture power from SAD-BJP combine at a time when AAP has also come up as a serious contender for power.



The appointment of seasoned politicians like Azad and Nath came amid calls for a "major surgery" from within the party following its recent debacle in assembly polls in four states, including Assam and Kerala.

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Beijing:

A man today threw an explosive wine bottle triggering a blast at Chinas second biggest airport in the commercial hub of Shanghai which injured four persons, including a woman and a Filipino man, before severing his own throat, state media reported.

The blast at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, the citys main international airport, occurred at around 2:20 pm near a check-in counter at Terminal 2, when what appears to be a home-made explosive blew up, Xinhua news agency reported, quoting Shanghai Airport Authority, which manages the airport.

The male suspect threw an explosive wine bottle, and then went on to cut his own throat, Xinhua posted on its Twitter handle. He is currently in ICU, it said, adding that four persons other than the suspect were injured and have been admitted to hospital.

The injured include a 53-year-old Philippine man, as well as a 67-year-old man and a 64-year-old woman, both of whom are Chinese. They sustained injuries to their heads, hands and legs, doctors said.

An initial investigation has found evidence suggesting that the mans injury could have been self-induced, hinting he might have set off the blast.

There was no disruption to flights in or out of the airport, according to authorities. The area was cordoned off by authorities, who have launched an investigation into the blast. Eyewitnesses said that passengers ran for safety after a loud bang rocked the hall.

A beer bottle filled with white smoke rolled right by my feet. I was scared and ran at once, said an eyewitness. Photos and video clips posted online showed dense grey smoke at the terminal, and paramilitary security forces rushing into the building. They also showed police keeping people away from the scene and abandoned luggage littering the floor.

In 2013, a wheelchair-bound man set off a bomb at Beijing airport to highlight a personal grievance. He later received a six-year prison sentence.

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Bengaluru:

Cracking the whip, JD(S) today suspended its eight rebel MLAs who voted against its official candidate and supported Congress in the biennial elections to fill four Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka.



Caught off guard by the open defiance of rebels, a red-faced JD(S) leadership also issued a notice asking them why they should not be expelled from the party for defying the party whip in the elections held yesterday, which saw the party candidate, businessman B M Farooq, secure 33 votes against the party strength of 40.



Addressing a meeting of party MLAs, Panchayat Members and office-bearers, JD(S) National President and former prime minister H D Deve Gowda said, "all the eight members have been suspended and notice have been issued to them."



He said, according to the party constitution, a three- member enquiry committee would be set up, which after going through their (suspended MLAs) replies to the notice, would decide on the expulsion.



Also accusing the MLAs of indulging in cross-voting during biennial elections to fill in seven seats of Karnataka Legislative Council from Legislative Assembly held on Friday, the party has said that if there is no response they would be expelled in accordance with the party constitution.



The rebel MLAs who faced action are Zameer Ahmed Khan, Chaluvaraya Swamy, Iqbal Ansari, Balakrishna, Ramesh Bandisiddegowda, Gopalaiah, Bheema Nayak and Akhanda Srinivas Murthy who had voted for Congress party's third candidate for Rajya Sabha K C Ramamurthy, paving the way for his resounding victory securing 52 votes aided by them and Independents.



The party earlier today adopted a resolution asking its president to suspend 8 MLAs and to expel them for their indiscipline.



The motion was moved by MLA Y S V Datta and seconded by another MLA Ningaiah and MLC T A Saravana.



Union Minister Nirmala Seetharaman and Congress' Jairam Ramesh, Oscar Fernandes and K C Ramamurthy had won Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka.



It was a harder and more humiliating blow for JD(S) as 8 MLAs indulged in cross-voting as against the expected five.



Gowda during the meeting vowed to build and strengthen the party by travelling across the state.



Accusing Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Energy Minister D K Shivakumar and BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa of conspiring against JD(S), he said "the agenda of this trio is to finish JD(S), but they will not succeed in it."

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Allahabad:

Attacking the Samajwadi Party government over recent incidents in Mathura and Kairana in Uttar Pradesh, which goes to polls early next year, BJP President Amit Shah today said the prevailing "atmosphere of violence" is a matter of serious concern.



"The present Samajwadi government, each day is expressing its helplessness in dealing with these situations," Shah said while citing recent clashes in Mathura as also violence and subsequent migration of over 100 families.



Launching a frontal attack on the Akhilesh Yadav government, Shah told the two-day BJP National Executive which began here today that, "The lack of development and the lack of governance in the biggest state of India i.e UP is increasing becoming a matter of serious concern," he said.



Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who briefed reporters about Shah's speech, said the BJP President specially discussed UP and said there was "an atmosphere of violence, which the government has been unsuccessful in curbing."



On the recent incidents in Mathura, Shah said that this politics of forcefully grabbing government land with "patronage" was "very unfortunate."



Shah also referred to the alleged migration of a community from the western UP town of Kairana and said that it is a matter of deep concern.



The BJP President called upon the party workers to work hard and expressed committment that the BJP will form government in UP with full majority after the assembly polls.



The BJP President said 2017 is a year of challenges in which besides UP, there are polls in Uttarakhand, Punjab, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.



Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present during Shah's speech as were senior Ministers like Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, senior office bearers as well as party veteran L K Advani.



In his speech, Shah also spoke about electoral violence against his party workers in the states of Kerala and West Bengal. "There is no place for violence in a democracy," Shah said. He emphasised that the entire BJP was with its workers who had faced political attacks in Kerala.



Taking a swipe at Congress, Shah said the party was getting "increasingly weakened" because of its repeated obstructions in the path of development and more and more of its leaders were leaving it.



Highlighting the Modi government's achievements, Shah said that "two prominent Islamic nations of Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan have within a time span of one month conferred their highest award on the Prime Minister of India."



Referring to the Prime Minister's recent five-nation tour, Shah said that during it the US, Mexico and Switzerland had expressed their support India's entry into the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG).



The BJP President claimed that his party was providing a "no corruption government" which was decisive and had ended policy paralysis of the previous regime.



Claiming that under the leadership of Modi, the country had emerged as a "beacon" of the 21st century for the rest of the world, Shah said the government had ensured that there is promising GDP growth with a human face.







Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present during Shah's speech as were senior Ministers like Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, senior office bearers as well as party veteran L K Advani. In his speech, Shah also spoke about electoral violence against his party workers in the states of Kerala and West Bengal. "There is no place for violence in a democracy," Shah said. He emphasised that the entire BJP was with its workers who had faced political attacks in Kerala. Taking a swipe at Congress, Shah said the party was getting "increasingly weakened" because of its repeated obstructions in the path of development and more and more of its leaders were leaving it. Highlighting the Modi government's achievements, Shah said that "two prominent Islamic nations of Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan have within a time span of one month conferred their highest award on the Prime Minister of India." Referring to the Prime Minister's recent five-nation tour, Shah said that during it the US, Mexico and Switzerland had expressed their support India's entry into the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG). The BJP President claimed that his party was providing a "no corruption government" which was decisive and had ended policy paralysis of the previous regime. Claiming that under the leadership of Modi, the country had emerged as a "beacon" of the 21st century for the rest of the world, Shah said the government had ensured that there is promising GDP growth with a human face.

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Living in a home in South Adams, Mass., Marcus and Lucinda Ingraham were restless parents of four children in the early 1850s. Marcus was a contractor and builder who thought that the future in his line of work lay in heading west to Wisconsin.

At first the family lived in southern Wisconsin, but in 1858 the family moved to Lake City, Minn. Ingraham continued his business efforts there until 1862, when he enlisted in a local army unit fighting for the Union in the Civil War in 1862.

Partnerships

It was in March 1862 that the couples fifth child, R. Gillette Ingraham, was born, joining brothers, John and Frank, and sisters, Abbie and Julia.

John, the eldest son, came to Menomonie in 1879 where he entered the hotel business. In those early years, almost every block in the Menomonies business district had a hotel, identified in an earlier article in this column. In 1900, John left town to manage hotels located in the Minnesotas Pine City for a year and a half before taking over the management in a hotel in Sandstone, Minn., where he died in 1918.

Back and forth

R. Gillette Ingraham, the main subject of this article, was born, raised and schooled through high school at Lake City. In September 1879, at the age of 17, he came to Menomonie where he found work as a clerk in his brothers Menomonie House, a hotel that may have been located on the southeast corner of Main, Seventh and Crescent Streets (and a former site of The Dunn County News and print shop).

Sometime later, Gillette worked in the general store operated by Birch & Clark before moving on to work in the Merchants Hotel. Then in 1881, Gillette moved to Appleton to learn watchmaking, then moved back to Lake City where he worked for only six months in a jewelry store established by the Crane Brothers.

In August 1885, he returned to Menomonie to join his brother, John, as a partner in the Ingraham Bros. Jewelry Company in the building that for many years later was the location on Broadway of the Menomonie Dye Works. In November, the brothers moved again, this time into the Johnson building.

They worked together until May 1, 1888, when Gillette bought out Johns interest in the business and operated the store on his own until 1923.

In 1902, Gillette convinced Alfred Thomas and Alfred Pillsbury to join him in the construction of the Arcade Building and moved the jewelry store into the structure that still stands in the center of the 200 Block of Menomonies Main Street, opposite the Mabel Tainter Memorial Building and the post office.

According to the 1925 History of Dunn County, in August 1923 Gillette ... took in as partners his brother, Charles H., and his brother-in-law, F. A Torrey, changing the firm name to Ingraham Bros, & Torrey.
As Beth Arneberg, Chippewa Falls Parks Board president, finished touring Irvine Park's new Welcome Center and small animal/aviary exhibit for the final time, it was hard to miss the look of awe on her face.

She's seen the plans from the beginning, and saw the bare bones structure a couple weeks earlier, but to see everything come together exactly as CBS Squared, Inc.'s plans said it would ... Well, finding words was difficult.

"It's ... grander," Arneberg said. "It's amazing. It really is a culmination of the community's love for Irvine Park."

Arneberg, who helped with fundraising, said she was overwhelmed with the amount of people who offered donations, and they completed their fundraiser well ahead of schedule. Yet the funds keep pouring in, and the almost $4 million project that once seemed so far away is now nearly ready to open.

Bob Sworski, vice president of the architecture firm CBS Squared, Inc., who designed the building, said he was impressed by how invested the community has been in this project. And not just on the money side of it.

"The biggest surprise to me was how many people during the construction period were down on that site  the same people, every day," he said. "We've come to fully appreciate how engaged people are, they really care what happens on that site."

Capital campaign co-chair Peggy Leinenkugel joined the project in 2014 thinking to herself, "what does this community need? How can we make it better?" And all around her, from the Parks Board to local businesses and the Chamber of Commerce, others were doing the same.

"The wonderful thing about Chippewa Falls is there are a lot of people asking that question," Leinenkugel said. "Not only do they ask that, but they care and they're willing to put their time, talent and treasures behind it."

And this time, it has more than paid off.

Welcome to Irvine Zoo

Walking through the front doors of the zoo's new welcome center, you might forget you came here to see animals  until you look to your right and see one through the glass windows that look into the first small animal exhibit.

But the concession area's large counter space and finished countertop could easily fool you into thinking you're in someone's home.

Cheryl Claflin, CBS Squared president, said that's how she felt when she walked through the first time.

"It's definitely a very much more warming environment than I anticipated for a zoo," Claflin said. "It's going to be a really nice, inviting place."

Sworski said the original concept was to create an easy-to-maintain building, incorporate sustainable materials and give visitors better visibility to the animals. In all those ways, he thinks they've succeeded.

The window behind the concession stand opens to the outside, allowing people to order and then sit on the patio south of the building. A fabric awning will cover the patio area to keep out some of the heat.

Inside, opposite the concessions, is the Learning Pod, an area school groups can use to learn more about the zoo and Irvine Park's history. It can be closed off and separated from the rest of the room, or opened to accommodate larger groups. Arneberg also expects the pod could be used for business meetings or a wide variety of things.

On the wall are glass display cases to hold artifacts representing the history of Irvine Park and Chippewa Falls. These displays can change periodically, as the new building also has a climate-controlled artifact storage room in the back, which allows them to bring back artifacts that were on display many years ago.

While the Learning Pod does connect to the inside of the animal exhibits, Arneberg said that area will only be open to large groups for prearranged tours. Visitors can exit the building and view the animals from the outside.

The six animal exhibits are designed to be more friendly for both animals and visitors, Sworski said.

They have primary and secondary containment, meaning the animals are behind a fenced-in display, and a railing with a 6-foot width from the display is separated by rocks.

"You aren't going to be able to sneak into the exhibit like the kid did with that gorilla (in the Cincinnati Zoo)," Sworski said. "Physically there are no spots where you're able to do that."

Following the 4-inch-ball code used in designing stairwells, Sworski said they used the same measure with the railing to keep kids from getting into the exhibit. And the distance between the railing and exhibit exceeds the length of most adults, so even if someone did fall over the railing, they wouldn't be near the animals.

After the small animals comes the aviary exhibit, and Sworski said the building is designed to be a progression. Visitors can move past the birds to go to the petting zoo and then the cat and bear exhibit behind that.

Though the larger animals didn't get new homes, Sworski said they did paint the backside of those buildings to more weatherproof the concrete block, and gave it fiber optic security (along with the new building) as well as future wireless connection capabilities.

Less work, more play

Five new species of animals are set to join Irvine Zoo, Parks Director Dick Hebert said, though they won't be arriving until after the ribbon cutting ceremony.

Hebert said they think they'll be getting foxes, lemurs, Capuchin monkeys, porcupines and Coati (raccoons), but that could vary slightly until they arrive on June 23 or 24.

He said he doesn't know which species of birds will fill the aviary yet.

The newly designed features give the animals and the workers more space, but Sworski said the innovative design of the Welcome Center means less overall maintenance. The staff won't increase, but it will be significantly easier for them to maneuver in exhibits.

While it won't all be completed by the ribbon cutting ceremony on Tuesday, Hebert said they have come a long way and he's excited to share that with the community.

They are working with a company to design climbing structures and equipment for the small animal exhibits, but he doesn't expect to have those fixtures installed until around Labor Day.

In addition, the duck house behind the new building will be getting redone in September, as well as the parking lot south of the building.

For future generations

Leinenkugel said she's excited to bring her children and grandchildren to the park, so they can continue to enjoy it as much as she has. After all, that's what this whole experience has been about.

"It shouldn't stop with the Irvines, or the Caspers, it needs to continue generation after generation," she said. "They left a wonderful legacy and now we need to be good caretakers and teach this next generation that being a caretaker of your community is really important."

That's why she wanted to be involved, and she hopes those who come after her and the hundreds of others who worked on this project will do the same.

Her campaign co-chair Jerry Jacobson, president of Northwestern Bank, had similar feelings as he reminisced on his childhood growing up with Irvine Park.

"Improvements on the park are very important to make sure our generation respects the two, three, four generations ago that built this park," Jacobson said. "It's been there for 100 years now, and hopefully it can be there for 100 more."

His hope for the park is that it continues to bring families together, as well as offer a place for the children and the elderly to go to relax, have fun and learn about the place they call home.

He's looking forward to the opening, but perhaps even more than the animals themselves, he is looking forward to the community's reaction.

"I just can't wait to see the three-year old or the 93-year old's face light up as they walk through," Jacobson said. "That would probably be the fun thing would be to just sit on a bench and watch, see their faces as they see some of those animals."

An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the Parks Board president. She is Beth Arneberg, not Arneson.
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REDDING  For decades, locals have known a 50-acre tract of land contained remnants of the Revolutionary War, but only recently was the full scope of its historical significance confirmed.

The property is off Limekiln Road and has remained largely undisturbed since the war. The preserve was named after Gen. Samuel H. Parsons, whose soldiers lived there during the winter of 1778-79.

The site is one of three places in the area that the army of Major Gen. Israel Putnam, who was a superior to Parsons, was garrisoned during that brutal winter. The troops were stationed there to block any advances by the British from the Long Island Sound, and to protect Danbury, which was a central supply depot for the American soldiers under the command of Gen. George Washington.

Efforts to preserve one of the sites, now Putnam Memorial State Park, began in the late 19th century. In 2004, archaeology professors at Western Connecticut State University started studying the nearby Parsons site, after talking to two local archaeology experts, Kathleen von Jena and Daniel Cruson, Newtowns town historian.

After more than a decade of research and field work, the WCSU team was able to conclude the property was indeed Parsons encampment.

That was really important, said Laurie Weinstein, a professor of anthropology at WCSU who has been supervising digs on the land since 2007. The whole goal of this project was to really preserve this site, to make it an archaeological preserve.

In 2013, the land, which is owned by the town and the Nature Conservancy, was designated a state archaeological preserve by the state. That means anyone wanting to look for artifacts on the site must get a state permit. Anyone found doing work on the site without a permit can be fined.

Weinstein and Bethany Morrison, an adjunct archaeology professor and the projects field director, presented the findings at an event hosted by Reddings historical society. When the research started, they found 19 firebacks, stone fireplaces that were located in the rear of the small cabins where the soldiers lived. The cabins were about 16 by 18 feet and housed about a dozen soldiers.

The number of discovered firebacks grew to about 60. Over the years, she said the group unearthed belt and shoe buckles, musket balls and large numbers of nails from the Revolutionary War era. Their research concluded that about 1,450 soldiers had lived at the encampment during that cold winter.

Living conditions in the camps were akin to what Washingtons troops suffered at Valley Forge a year earlier. There were shortages of warm clothing and food amid the bitter cold temperatures and deep snow.

Of the three encampment sites in the area, one was destroyed by developers. Putnam Memorial State Park, which is about a mile and half from Parsons site, is open to the public and has a trail, museum and hosts re-enactments.

Experts and some locals would prefer to keep the Parsons location a secret.

Its a catch-22, said Charley Couch, Reddings town historian since 2003. You want to share this with everyone in so many ways, but you still have to protect the integrity of the site from potential looters.
MADISON  Jenny Beth Martin, president and co-founder of the so-called Tea Party Patriots, outdid even herself with a recent column in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel insisting that Sen. Ron Johnson is standing in the way of letting President Barack Obama take away your guns.

Yes, thats still the mantra after all these years. Obama really wanted to become president of the United States so he could send out troops (or someone) to grab your guns and hold you helpless against the forces of evil, which, of course, include the U.S. government.

How is Johnson standing in the way of Obama snatching your guns? By joining other Republicans in the U.S. Senate in refusing to consider the presidents appointment of Judge Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Neither Martin nor Johnson know for certain how a Justice Garland might decide on a particular gun control court case, but no matter. In their convoluted reasoning, any commonsense regulation on guns is tantamount to smacking down the Second Amendment.

This National Rifle Association-led hysteria (last week the NRA insisted Hillary Clinton would somehow abolish the Second Amendment) over even the tiniest attempts to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldnt have them is perhaps Americas biggest political mystery.

No matter the heinousness of gun-related incidents or the desperate pleas from people who have lost loved ones or public opinion polls that show Americans want action. None have been able to sway members of Congress to act. That includes closing loopholes on background checks, establishing waiting periods before arms purchases are finalized or even limiting the size of magazines to make it more difficult to rapidly spray bullets into targets  many of them, unfortunately, human targets.

That Johnson is in league with the NRA and the Martins of the world speaks volumes. Its politicians like him who give cachet to outlandish and ridiculous claims that the president of the U.S. is plotting to take away their guns.

Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, recently penned a column for The Washington Post in which she described the ordeal she had to endure when she started a Facebook page after the Newtown, Conn., massacre of school children. She sought to unite mothers in pushing for some sensible gun regulations similar to Mothers Against Drunk Drivings campaign.

Within hours of speaking out about our nations lax gun laws, I received my first threats of sexual violence and death, she wrote. Over the next several months, my phone constantly vibrated with angry texts and phone calls  often in the middle of the night.

My email was hacked; my Facebook photos were downloaded and distributed publicly; my phone number and home address were shared online; my childrens social media accounts were hacked and the names of their schools shared online, she recounted.

Yes, fine upstanding people we have here.

Then, of course, we have the example here in Wisconsin, where legislative Republicans decided it was somehow onerous to have a 48-hour waiting period to buy a gun. Led by Racine County Republican Sen. Van Wanggaard, who could only come up with a dubious 25-year-old case of a woman whose husband shot and killed her, her children and himself, claiming she was waiting for a gun to protect herself, our learned legislators zapped the waiting period and Scott Walker quickly signed it into law.

Less than two years later, Caroline Nosal, a 24-year-old worker at Metro Market on Madisons east side, was shot dead by an ex-employee who had purchased a gun just the day before. Her parents are convinced that had the shooter been forced to wait 48 hours he would have likely gotten over his rage.

But thats too much commonsense for politicians who are beholden to the NRA and refuse to listen to reasonable arguments that something needs to be done about this countrys over-the-top violence.

Meanwhile, the hysterical voices of the Jenny Beth Martins rule the day.
The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) on Sunday said it had arrested a 56-year-old Boko Haram kingpin in Aski Uba Local G...

The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) on Sunday said it had arrested a 56-year-old Boko Haram kingpin in Aski Uba Local Government Area of Borno. The Commandant of the NSCDC in Borno, Mr Ibrahim Abdullahi, said that the suspect was apprehended at Mussa village on June 7.Our men have made remarkable progress by arresting a Boko Haram kingpin. The notorious kingpin was said to be a recruiter as well as supplier of arms and IEDs to Boko Haram terrorists. He confessed that his three children were also arrow heads of the Boko Haram sect, he said.He said the command had since handed over the suspect to the army for further investigation. (NAN)
Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State is of the opinion that June 12 should be declared Democracy Day and not May 29 because that was the...

Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State is of the opinion that June 12 should be declared Democracy Day and not May 29 because that was the day Nigerians laid aside their differences and voted a leader. In his address to mark the 23rd anniversary of the annulled election, the Governor insisted that June 12, 1993 was the day Nigerians voted the acclaimed winner of the Presidential election, M.K.O Abiola without recourse to religion or ethnicity.Aregbesola said, We will never drop our commitment to June 12. Nigerians, in their heterogeneity, on June 12, 1993, voted for Chief Abiola in a pattern that defied ethnicity, religion, ideology and locality.It was a pattern that made mockery of the fabled fault-lines and fissiparous tendencies of the Nigerian federation and projected a nation united behind a popular leader.Noting that May 29 only symbolises the day the military handed over leadership of the country to a democratically elected government, Aregbesola explained that the unity with which the multi-ethnic groups spoke and acted on June 12, 1993 is what is being celebrated till today.May 29, in 1999, was the date the military handed over power to civilian administration and will remain symbolic for the transition to civil rule and the opportunity it presents for realising a truly democratic government that approximates the yearnings and aspirations of the people for a leader that will lead them to the Promised Land of security and life more abundant, he said.The governor, however, stated that the country had to wait for a long time after the annulment for the emergency of President Muhammadu Buhari, a leader that would take the country to the Promised Land until.We waited for 16 years for that leadership to emerge and we thank God for the election and coming to power of President Muhammadu Buhari.A government with a human face is here at last. He represents the aspirations and symbolism of June 12 in that he also got a pan-Nigerian mandate that once again defied the divisions in our country.He represents hope for change and national rebirth. He is on that path. God willing, he will lead us to the Promised Land, Aregbesola said.Aregbesola said despite the many imperfections associated with democracy, it remains the best form of government.
The Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) unit in Zaria, Kaduna state, said it had arrested a 50-year old man, Mohammed Tudunwada, who al...

The Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) unit in Zaria, Kaduna state, said it had arrested a 50-year old man, Mohammed Tudunwada, who allegedly specialised in retreading old tyres.Commander of the unit, Boyi Ali-Maigari, told newsmen on Saturday in Zaria that the suspects factory was located at Tudun Wada area of the town, where he had been perpetrating his illegal business.He said that the suspect had not showed any sign of remorse over his nefarious activity.Mr. Ali-Maigari attributed most road crashes to tyre problems of vehicles, saying that there were recurring cases of tyre violations by motorists.Investigation shows that most drivers patronise the retread tyres which are beingused to ply our roads not minding the consequences on human lives, he said.He, however, lauded the efforts of the Federal Government for banning the importation and use of tokunbo tyres.The commander said that the measure would guarantee the safety of lives and property of Nigerians.He said the unit would organise a sensitisation workshop for stakeholders in the transport industry on the dangers of using retreaded tyres.Let me use this medium and call on motorists and other stakeholders in the sector to stop patronising second-hand tyres to discourage those in the business.The suspect told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that he inherited the business from his father and that the family had depended on it for more than 40 years.My boy, Shamsu, 25, was arrested during a raid at my workshop at Tudun Wada today and later I was arrested and detained.I have no regret doing this business left for me; it is not a crime but a business, he said.NAN reports that items recovered from the suspect included one power generator, two treading machines and two transistors.Investigation revealed that a retreaded tyre is sold at between N500 and N800 in Zaria. (NAN)
Residents of Rivers and Bayelsa states may face scarcity of Premium Motor Spirit also known as petrol as the Nigerian Union of Petroleum...

Residents of Rivers and Bayelsa states may face scarcity of Premium Motor Spirit also known as petrol as the Nigerian Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers has ordered owners of filling stations in the two states to shut down operations and join its ongoing strike.The Acting Zonal Chairman of NUPENG, Port Harcourt Zone, Mr. Charles Eleto, told journalists in the Rivers State capital that the body would not spare any filling station that failed to comply with the shutdown order as sanctions would be meted on erring filling stations owners.Eleto explained that the strike action by the NUPENG in the zone was prompted by the actions of four firms operating in Rivers and Bayelsa states.He said, In lieu of NUPENGs ongoing strike in Rivers and Bayelsa states, all petrol station workers in these two states are hereby informed of the strike and they should be part of it as a solidarity. Injury to one is injury to all. In a situation where anyone is found wanting, the union will sanction them. I know that some filling stations have not joined the strike. That is why we are issuing this directive so that those who have not joined should immediately shut down the sales of petroleum products at their respective filling stations.The refinery has shut down, petroleum tanker drivers have shut down; the private depots have shut down, so, they (filling stations) should also join the strike by shutting down.He pleaded with governors of the two states and security agencies to prevail on the four companies to stop the victimisation of workers and recognise NUPENG as a union.He said, We gave two weeks ultimatum to the governors of Rivers and Bayelsa states and the Federal Ministry of Labour to call these companies to order but they have refused to do so.So, we are not threatened by anybody, than to use what we have to get what we want. The companies are Hilong Engineering Nigeria Limited, Uniterm Nigeria Limited, Specialist Drilling Fluid Nigeria Limited and Fudro Nigeria Limited.If Nigerians are worried, they should call on the companies to abide by NUPENGs policy because what these companies are doing is purely against any recognised labour law and we cannot tolerate it. Thats why we are picketing Rivers and Bayelsa states.Eleto, however, warned that the strike would only be called off if the affected companies were ready to engage NUPENG in a dialogue.As soon as the companies involved are ready to dialogue, the strike would be over. We do not want Nigerians to suffer, he added.
Former military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, IBB says he is getting use to rumours of his death, wondering why people would cons...

Former military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, IBB says he is getting use to rumours of his death, wondering why people would constantly peddle rumours of his death at the slightest news of attending to his health.Towards the end of last week, there were stories everywhere that IBB had passed on in Germany where he went to seek medical treatment.But speaking at his hilltop mansion after returning from that country, the retired army general recalled that it was not the first time that the rumour of his death would be out in the public.He, however, stressed that there was no need spreading rumour about death since everybody will get ill or die. As a Muslim, it is written that every human being shall die and get sick, he said.The ex-ruler disclosed that it was just a structural medical problem that was being addressed by medical experts, hence the periodic medical checkups.
The Vanguard newspaper reported the visit of a delegation of Northern leaders to the then president-elect Muhammadu Buhari on May 11th...

Thereported the visit of a delegation of Northern leaders to the then president-elect Muhammadu Buhari on May 11th 2015. The delegation was led by Alhaji Maitama Sule. Sule told Buhari: You are the president of Nigeria, you are not the president of Northern Nigeria by the grace of God. Maitama Sule was someone you had to take seriously. I ruminated over the story for several minutes and wondered why the acclaimed orator felt the need to publicly ask Buhari to be a president for the whole of Nigeria.We now know why and the underpinnings are quite ugly. The president needs to demonstrate that he is willing to trust Nigerians who neither speak Fulfulde nor Hausa. My assessment is that his skewed appointments speak to a lack of trust, rather than outright clannishness. The president needs to realise that he is president of the whole of Nigeria and millions of Nigerians from the streets of Kano to the parks of Lagos genuinely wish him well in office. His success is our success. No one should make light of the efforts that go into each political appointment. I do not think the president sets out to spite anybody but the idea that he is appointing people on merit despite the lopsidedness is no longer funny. If President Buhari sincerely believes that his appointments so far have been based on merit, then with all due respect, his future is in standup comedy.The presidents inner circle seems to lack not just adequate representation but also depth and rigour. Buhari did not think he would win the elections as he did not expect President Jonathan to concede defeat. Therefore, President Buhari assumed office grossly unprepared and lacking the scintilla of a plan for governance. He had become habituated to losing elections and did not do his rudimentary homework on Nigerias many problems. This is quite problematic given that he contested for over 12 years. Why exactly was he running for office? Did he think he was simply going to manage oil wealth?There are no new problems in Nigeria. Many of the problems have increased in intensity and metastasised but none of the problems is entirely new. Consequently, a diligent presidential candidate would have prepared. The president simply assumed he could show up and his body language  whatever that means  would keep people in check and all would be well. His command and obey personality type has not helped matters. I have a lot of respect for the military but Nigeria is not an overgrown military barracks. By personality type, temperament and proclivity, Buhari is unsuited to the rather frustrating guiles of democracy and demands of civil society.Gains have clearly been made in the fight against Boko Haram, although we still await the rescue of all the Chibok girls. The plight of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) is a test of the basic competence of this administration. The signs are not good given the deplorable conditions of IDPs. What is going on at the camps is nothing short of state crime  in this case, elaborate criminogenic structures established by government workers in the course of their duties.Let me assure President Buhari with the benefit of over seven years of research on the Niger Delta that there is no military solution to the problem posed by the Niger Delta Avengers. Deployment of troops may provide a temporary reprieve but in the end, the administrations current approach is similar to taking Panadol for a heart problem. The Niger Delta Avengers are the newly minted products in the carousel of social injustice. Exterminating the Avengers to the last combatant  assuming that were probable  would provide a two-to-three year tranquility before other groups emerge. Why? The underlying factors fabricating insurgents in the Niger Delta have not been tackled. President Jonathan failed the Niger Delta. He and several Niger Delta governors did a fine job of adopting a cosmetic solution  coopting insurgent Generals and distributing allowances through the amnesty programme. However, the Mary Kay approach should have been followed up with serious infrastructural development in the Niger Delta. The president acknowledged via a letter dated July 21st 2015 the receipt of a copy of my book on the Niger Delta. Based on interviews with diverse participants such as Ken Saro-Wiwa (Jr.), Annkio Briggs, Asari Dokubo, and dozens of ex-agitators, and community members, among others, I hate to state that I predicted what is going on now. Government policy ought to be crafted and implemented with findings from empirical research and not transient emotions.The presidents reluctance to publicly focus on the Fulani herdsmens violence that has ravaged Benue and several other states may haunt his administration and legacy. His approach to the issue has been a national embarrassment in a country where shame took off a long time ago. The president needs to show leadership and assert that human lives are more important than cattle. In addition, the handling of the issue of Biafra is the stuff that separates real statesmen from half-baked politicians. The president has not approached the South-East with the needed acumen and sophistication. He has come off as irritable and petulant. A deeper engagement with the South-East and South-South is long overdue.The main part of the narrative is the presidents capacity. This is a combination of innate talents and acquired knowledge. There is no expectation anywhere in the world that a Head of State would have answers to all things. However, a leader must be a mop for knowledge. Buharis hermitic lifestyle after leaving the military and following each electoral loss was not adequate preparation for governance. He is the only former Head of State with no known involvement in think-tanks or any foundation executing humanitarian projects.Buharis repertoire of knowledge has unraveled in the face of modern challenges. I doubt that the president is teachable and I feel sorry for his advisers. I have come to the conclusion based on the evidence of the last one year that the president either lacks the humility to learn or is simply bereft of the capacity to adapt to 21st century leadership. Each of these two problems is in and of itself debilitating; to have both reposed in a president is the road to systemic paralysis. We are in terrible company. It is the singular reason why Africa is not rising despite the optimism of the last few years.All hope is not lost. I continue to believe that Buharis administration may yet leave Nigeria better than it was in 2015 if the president focuses on his current term and banishes the temptation to seek a second term. The math is simple: President Buhari cannot win a second term under a free and fair atmosphere. Besides, everything he stands for would be negated in the quest for a second term. His second term as I stated in an open letter to the president would be similar to Obasanjos third term project.Finally, is Buhari a president of Northern Nigeria? The talakawa of the North have also been negatively affected by Buharis babalawo economics. There are Northerners who are unhappy with his geographically favouritist, sexist and ageism-in-reverse appointments. I dont think Buhari would be remembered as the president of Northern Nigeria. Unless the president turns things around, he will be remembered  perhaps unfairly  as a policy lightweight and the president who could not provide tomatoes.Tope Oriola is professor of criminology at the University of Alberta, Canada. Twitter:@topeoriola
The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Archdiocese, Mathew Kukah, has called on Nigerians to avoid making the health of Nigerias public figures a...

The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Archdiocese, Mathew Kukah, has called on Nigerians to avoid making the health of Nigerias public figures a subject of political discourse or speculations.He spoke in reaction to the controversy recently generated by the ill-health of President Muhammadu Buhari, who is currently in the United Kingdom where he is expected to see an Ear, Nose and Throat specialists over infection in his ear.Mr. Buharis health became a subject of speculations last month following his repeated suspension of scheduled official trips as well as denials by his aides.Speaking with journalists in Abuja on Saturday, Mr. Kukah noted that leaders of some popular nations of the world had serious health challenges, which were managed to avoid undue public attention.He specifically noted that a former US President, Ronald Reagan, suffered from Alzheimers disease for most part of his tenure in office but that nobody knew what the former president was going through.I do not think that the health of any Nigerian should be the subject of politics or speculations, he said.It is something I find so troubling because nobody does the things we do in Nigeria.Reagan was suffering from Alzheimers and for the greater part of ten years nobody had the slightest idea, what was happening to Reagan.Mr. Kukah noted that the duty of all Nigerians was to pray for Mr. Buhari.On the agitation for the realisation of a separatist Biafra by some Nigerians in the South East zone, the clergyman said the matter should be properly handled, especially because the country practices a representatives democracy.He said, I think the question we should be asking is: what right do people have to express themselves? We are in a democracy and people should be allowed to express themselves because ours is a representative democracy.There are representatives and if people want to stop being a part of Nigeria there is a process for achieving that.The second point is that we cannot speculate as to intentions and motives unless you legitimately bring a person to court and say why have you done X Y Z? You can only speculate. And I dont think we should be depending on speculations.Mr. Kukah said the problems of Nigeria were partly because its founding fathers tampered with the provincial system government, but added that there was hope for the nation.He further noted that another major challenge of Nigerias democracy was the lack of citizens participation in governance.There is a lot that is wrong with Nigeria as we are structured now. Nigeria is the only country in Africa that was colonised by Britain, but tampered very well with the provincial arrangement, he argued.A major challenge of Nigerias democracy is the abject lack of citizens engagement in debating, and more importantly, shaping public policies that often have dramatic impact on their lives.Mr. Kukah said the Kukah Centre, which he founded, was already putting together a programme aimed at bridging the age-long communication gap between the masses and the leaders.He explained that the said programme, which would be called Fix Nigeria Initiative, would attempt to address the challenges of Nigeria and proffer lasting solutions.The importance of robust debates can never be overemphasized in a democracy, the clergyman stated.If free and fair elections mark the basic validation of democratic mandates, citizens involvement in public policy-making is the oxygen for democratic governance.We are very confident that Nigeria can and must be fixed. But this can only happen when public officials and citizens pull together to create, in line with The Kukah Centres vision a more humane, democratic and free society where citizens can live in real and true freedom unencumbered by any structures of exclusion on the basis of ethnic, religious, social status, economic or gender differences.It is in part to address this problem that the Kukah Centre was established to serve as a platform for mediation between the government and the people.
Ive read Joe Bidens letter to the Stanford rape survivor a dozen times, trying to put my finger on why it feels like a turning point.

Its beautifully written. (We will make lighthouses of ourselves, as you did  and shine.)

Its unequivocal. (What you endured is never, never, never, NEVER a womans fault.)

Its even optimistic. (Your story has already changed lives. You have helped change the culture.)

Its all those things, but its more. Its a powerful man with no new office to gain and no new voters to win talking about rape from the second-highest office in the land.

Not just talking about rape. Talking to a woman who was raped. Talking to all women whove been raped. Talking to them because their stories and their humanity matter.

It feels like a turning point because weve spent the last week watching as the Stanford rapists smile and swim stats shape him into a fully formed, multi-dimensional 20-year-old, even as his victim remains nameless and known for just one thing  the awful crime she endured.

It feels like a turning point because at this time last year, we were mired in a debate over #YesAllWomen, an attempt by women to share their stories of violence and harassment in response to the Santa Barbara shootings. The stories were shouted down, virtually, by #NotAllMen, a hashtag that missed the point altogether.

In one of the best discussions I read about #NotAllMen, Slate writer Phil Plait had this to say: When people are defensive, they arent listening to the other person; theyre busy thinking of ways to defend themselves.  Instead of being defensive and distracting from the topic at hand, try staying quiet for a while and actually listening to what the thousands upon thousands of women discussing this are saying.

Bidens words are the result of staying quiet for a while and listening.

In 2014, I interviewed Anne Ream about her newly released book, Lived Through This: Listening to the Stories of Sexual Violence Survivors, in which she bears witness to 18 stories of rape.

For every person testifying in this book, theres nothing to be gained but a sense that theyve been heard, Ream told me at the time. Theres no way to understand this as anything other than people standing up, one by one, and saying, I need you to understand this because whats happening to me is happening to other people.

Ream is also a survivor. She was kidnapped and raped when she was 25 and living in Washington, D.C.

Being truly heard will change your life, she writes in her book. Which means that someone has to do the listening.

Its a hard thing to listen  truly listen  to another person, she continues. It often means getting so close to their suffering that it breaks our own hearts. But inside our open, broken hearts  thats where compassion lives.

It feels like a turning point to witness that compassion from a vice president.

I hope we use the moment to move in a better, more humane direction.
International oil companies operating in the Niger Delta region are not thinking about pulling out from Nigeria at the moment despite ...

International oil companies operating in the Niger Delta region are not thinking about pulling out from Nigeria at the moment despite the continued bombing and destruction of their facilities by militants in the area.However, some of the IOCs plan increased production shut-ins, particularly in areas that are worst hit by the activities of the militant group, Niger Delta Avengers.On Friday, the NDA bombed a pipeline belonging to the Nigerian Agip Oil Company in Brass Local Government Area of Bayelsa State.The group had carried out series of bombings that had reduced Nigerias crude oil production by close to one million barrels per day, and had rebuffed any discussion with the Federal Government on ways to address it grievances.A senior official of one of the affected oil majors operating in the Niger Delta told one of our correspondents on Saturday that although the bombings had shown no sign of stopping, his firm had yet to consider pulling out of Nigeria, although it had scaled down its operations in the area.We are not thinking of pulling out of Nigeria for Ive never heard it and I dont have an answer to say that we are pulling out from the country. However, this does not mean that we wont shut operations in areas where explosions and destruction are high, the official, who spoke to our correspondent on condition of anonymity, said.The Managing Director, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited and Country Chair, Shell Companies in Nigeria, Mr. Osagie Okunbor, told our correspondent last month, Shell is not leaving Nigeria. Our strategy in Nigeria is to optimise our onshore oil footprint, while making further investments in other growth areas, particularly in deep water and the gas value chain, including domestic gas.When asked if the company was considering pulling out amid the increased hostility in the Niger Delta, Chevrons General Manager, Policies, Government and Public Affairs, Deji Haastrup, said, We will not be making any comment at this time.In its latest financial and operations report, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation explained that the recent upsurge in vandalism had negatively impacted on the countrys crude oil production output, making it to lose its African top crude oil producer status to Angola.According to the corporation, about 380,000 barrels of crude oil per day remained shut-in due to vandalism of the 48-inch sub-sea export line on February 15, 2016.Also, the nation has lost over 1,500 megawatts of power supply to the damage as gas supply from Forcados, which is Nigerias major artery, accounts for 40 to 50 per cent of gas production. Incessant pipeline vandalism poses the greatest threat to the industry, the NNPC said.Chevron, Shell and Eni, the parent company of Nigeria Agip Oil Company, have been hard hit by the attacks by militants in the Niger Delta, home to most of the nations oil and gas production.Currently, three of the nations five largest export streams, Forcados, Bonny Light and Brass River, have been totally suspended as a result of the attacks.On Wednesday, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited shut the Trans Niger Pipeline, which transports around 180,000 barrels of crude oil per day to the Bonny Export Terminal, after a leak was found.Crude oil production in the country has dropped to about 1.4 million barrels per day from 2.2 million bpd, upon which the Federal Government assumed an oil revenue of N820bn at $38 per barrel benchmark price.The sabotage of oil and gas infrastructure in recent months has contributed to a significant decline in production levels, and loss of revenue by government and oil companies.According to the Managing Director, Frontier Oil Limited, an oil and gas field developing firm, Mr. Dada Thomas, it makes no business sense trying to earn income when one lacks the guarantee of staying alive to enjoy the revenue.He said although the IOCs might not pull out immediately from Nigeria, if in the long term nothing meaningful was done to address the menace of the militants, the option of divesting might surface later.Thomas said, People only want to invest in an area where they can make money and enjoy their returns. This is a simple business strategy. Theres no point trying to make money if you are going to die in the next minute. It doesnt make sense.Now, the solution to this trouble has to be a carrot and stick approach. There must be engagement, because to some extent there is a political arm to this menace. But is it criminality and that is why we must adopt a carrot and stick approach. Let the people know that Im willing to engage but this engagement will be with legitimate people who can put the interest of their people on the table.Prof. Wumi Iledare of the International Association of Energy Economics stated that the IOCs would not just pull out from the country because of their level of investments, adding that many of them were operating based on shared contracts with the Federal Government.He said, I dont think divestment by oil majors is something that can just happen quickly; where are you divesting to and who will want to come and buy those assets? However, many of them are operating on PSC (Production Sharing Contract) terms and it helps them in recovering their cost.However, if I am an investor, I will think twice before I invest in a place where my assets are not secured. But you should know that some of these oil companies have operated in a more hostile environment. It, however, does not mean that they dont record losses as a result of the criminality in the region. So, what we need to do is to find a way to stop this criminality.The Chief Executive Officer, Gacmork Nigeria Limited and ex-Chevron executive, Mr. Alex Neyin, said, We are already faced with reduced production. We are already faced with reduced gas to run our power plants. Some of the IOCs have already shut some of their operations and evacuated a number of their workers in the Niger Delta. But I dont think they will pull out of the country.If they (militants) wipe out their installations, the IOCs will leave. And there are documents showing force majeure. When there is force majeure, any expense they incur goes back to the government. If they cannot meet their shipping obligations, it goes back to the government.
The following editorial appeared in Wednesdays Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Humanity has reached a dubious and potentially terminal milestone  the last time there was this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, dinosaurs were the dominant species and the first humans were still millions of years in the future.

Last month, the U.N. convened a conference in Bonn, Germany, to assess the extent of global warming. The deteriorating state of one of natures greatest creations may begin to persuade even the skeptical that were experiencing something far beyond the typical warming cycle.

In recent years, the 1,400 mile Great Barrier Reef of northeastern Australia has been decimated by warming waters. The impact of warmer, more acidic oceans on the worlds reef formations is particularly dramatic. Great stretches of barrier reef are being bleached white because the warmer water is killing the algae that live inside and nourish the coral.

The spectacle of ghostly white reef formations in oceans where brimming colors and large clusters of sea life used to be should alarm us all. They represent the death and dying of a major part of the ecosystem. They are white coral skeletons that cant regenerate as long as the water remains warm and acidic.

Ninety-three percent of the Great Barrier reef is suffering the effects of bleaching with 81 percent of the northern third completely bleached out. By any standard of measurement this is one of the worlds greatest environmental catastrophes. As images of the devastated coral reefs enter public consciousness in the coming months and years, all of us have to ask ourselves how much of the natural world were willing to sacrifice by our refusal to adjust dramatically downward our burning of fossil fuels.
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Members of the state Assembly are pictured in a file photo.

(Tony Kurdzuk | The Star-Ledger)

Usually, when a committee of the state Legislature considers the fate of a bill, lawmakers on the panel vote simply by saying "yes" or no." Or, maybe, "yay" or "nay."

But not this time.

On Monday, the state Assembly Judiciary Committee considered a bill to help restore the driver's ed program at the Katzenbach School for the Deaf, a state-run institution in Trenton.

Deaf residents have been allowed to drive in New Jersey since the 1920s, and the program to teach them at Katzenbach started in 1951.

But it's been out of commission for the last two years because the school found out the vehicles they were using couldn't be insured, thanks to "a bureaucratic snafu," Assemblyman Dan Benson (D-Mercer) told The Auditor.

The measure (A2340), sponsored by Benson, would authorize students at state schools to operate state vehicles for driver education and provide insurance protection for such activity.

"These kids were about to be left behind," Benson said. "We found an easy fix."

A number of students testified before the panel Monday through sign language.

"They were charming and persuasive," Assemblyman John McKeon (D-Essex) recalled. "They kept repeating through sign language: 'We need our driver's licenses.'"

The vote was unanimous. All the panel members supported the bill.

And they did so in an unusual way: They all said "yes" via sign language.

The students had taught the lawmakers how to make the sign -- which is basically making a fist and nodding it up and down.

"I would bet you that would be just about only time that's ever happened," McKeon said.

Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
TRENTON -- Gov. Chris Christie will chair the 51-member New Jersey delegation to the Republican National Convention and a top ally will sit on the panel that will write the rules for the quadrennial gathering.

Christie was elected when the delegates held a conference call following Tuesday's presidential primary. Businessman Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, won the primary, meaning that all 51 New Jersey delegates will be committed to vote for him.

The Republicans convene July 18-21 in Cleveland.

Republican National Committeeman Bill Palatucci, a long-time Christie adviser, was named to the convention rules committee along with Christine Serrano-Glassner, elected with Christie and his son Andrew on the statewide Trump delegate slate. All of the Trump delegates and alternates were elected in both the statewide and congressional district races.

The rules committee will meet in Cleveland before the convention and write the procedures that will be followed.

Some Republicans opposed to Trump have talked about trying to write rules that would free the convention delegates to vote for any candidate, not the one they were elected to support.

State Sen. Joseph Pennacchio (R-Morris), who quickly followed Christie's lead and endorsed Trump after the New Jersey governor ended his own presidential campaign, was named to the committee that will write the Republican platform.

Also selected was another Christie-turned-Trump supporter, Jill Space, who in April said the candidate's problems with female voters partially were because "women are just not interested in politics." Space is the wife of state Assemblyman Parker Space (R-Sussex).

Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
Former Hunterdon County Prosecutor Bennet Barlyn

Former Hunterdon County Prosecutor Bennet Barlyn filed a lawsuit against the state that claims he was wrongfully terminated for speaking out against the Office of the Attorney General quashing a criminal case for political reasons.

(Michael Mancuso/NJ Advance Media)

TRENTON -- The four-year legal battle over whether a former county prosecutor was fired for objecting to the dismissal of indictments against supporters of Gov. Chris Christie has yet to go to trial, but New Jersey taxpayers are already on the hook for more than $3 million -- and counting.

The state's Attorney General's Office tapped a politically connected law firm, Gibbons P.C., in 2014 to defend New Jersey against former Hunterdon County Assistant Prosecutor Bennett Barlyn's whistleblower suit.

Gibbons billed the state more than $3 million in the 25 months since it took over the case from the attorney general's Division of Law.

That's actually more than Barlyn had originally sought or contemplated after he sued the state over his 2010 ouster, claiming he was suspended and then fired after he complained that a 43-count indictment against county law enforcement officials was dropped for political reasons.

"We tried to resolve this case before the complaint was even filed in 2012. Had that happened, it is inconceivable that any settlement would have been more than what Gibbons has charged the state at this point," Barlyn told NJ Advance Media.

The Office of the Attorney General has declined to comment on the case or offer any insight into why it refused to settle, and Barlyn said neither the state or its hired outside counsel ever responded to his offers to discuss a settlement.

But since then, Gibbons' submitted more than 400 pages of invoices that were ultimately approved by the state that totaled $3,071,191, according to records obtained by NJ Advance Media under the state's Open Public Records Act.

The bills were submitted by more than a dozen attorneys and clerks who have been working the case.

Acting Attorney General Robert Lougy.

"Gibbons and the state are really dictating and driving the cost of this matter to the New Jersey taxpayer," Barlyn said. "Because of the positions taken by Gibbons thus far, a trial appears inevitable. We have been and are preparing for that."

It's not unusual for the state to outsource certain cases to private firms. The state Division of Law, under Republican and Democratic administrations, has long hired private firms to supplement its hundreds of attorneys to help battle lawsuits on everything from medical malpractice to complex financial deals when it has a conflict of interest or needs specialized expertise.

But the price tag alarms good-government advocates.

"We are in the midst of a feeding frenzy," said Nancy Erika Smith, a private practice attorney who's currently representing clients suing NJ Transit for alleged racial discrimination. "Under this administration, I've never seen anything like it. The amount of billing is mind boggling."

THE BARLYN CASE

Barlyn claimed the Hunterdon County Prosecutor's Office was working an ironclad criminal case on a local sheriff and two of her deputies in 2010 when the state's attorney general swooped in, quashed the indictment and fired him for voicing objections.

Then-Sheriff Deborah Trout, Undersherriff Michael Russo and investigator John Falat Jr. were charged by the Hunterdon County prosecutor with official misconduct and falsification of documents. Among the charges were that Trout allowed Russo to oversee his own background investigation and allowed a prospective county investigator to obtain a county-issued handgun without proper background checks.

Among other allegations, the indictment charged that Falat printed and distributed fake sheriff's office ID cards. Barlyn's lawsuit claimed Robert Hariri, a pharmaceutical executive at Celgene, a major New Jersey biopharmaceutical company with close ties to the administration, was the recipient of one of the cards. Hariri donated $6,800 to Christie's first gubernatorial campaign in 2009.

Celgene has benefited from millions of dollars of state grants prior to Christie taking off and became a soft landing spot for Christie's former chief of staff, Richard Bagger, when he stepped down from his post and was hired by them in 2011. Sol Barer, Celgene's founder, hosted a fundraiser for Christie's presidential campaign in August. Its executive chairman and former CEO, Robert Hugin, donated $100,000 to a super PAC promoting Christie's presidential bid.

A grand jury handed up indictments against Trout, Russo and Falat in March 2010. Five months later, the state's Attorney General's Office took over the case and dismissed all counts, calling the indictment legally and factually deficient.

In his lawsuit, Barlyn argued he was suspended and fired soon after he complained to a superior he felt the case was dropped for political reasons.

Barlyn filed a wrongful termination lawsuit in 2012 that has dragged on as he's fought for sealed grand jury transcripts related to the indictments that he has argued would prove his case.

He won the battle for access to sealed grand jury transcripts related to the indictments in 2015. But the records remain under seal from the public.

Gibbons argued in court filings that Barlyn was let go because of "blatant insubordination" and poor work performance.

According to court documents, the state claims Barlyn publicly berated an acting prosecutor from the Attorney General's Office after the charges were dismissed. "Bravo! Bravo! Job well done. Mission accomplished!" Barlyn told the state official he would later accuse of quashing the criminal complaints for political reasons, according to the state's filings.

Gibbons and the Attorney General's Office have both declined to comment on this case.

OUTSIDE COUNSEL

A recent NJ Advance Media analysis of private firms contracted by the state for legal work from 2006 through 2015 found many with close ties to Christie and his allies have prospered since his election, while those often used by his Democratic predecessor, Gov. Jon Corzine, have lost ground.

The cozy relationships haven't been one-way streets.

One of the biggest losers in legal work under Christie was Gibbons law firm, whose work dropped by nearly $2 million from 2008 to 2011.

But in late 2012, Gibbons hired longtime Christie confidant Bill Palatucci as special counsel and by 2013 the firm reversed its downward trend in outside counsel work. Last year, Gibbons was the largest beneficiary of outside counsel work, receiving nearly $3.2 million from the state -- largely from the Barlyn case.

Gibbons was a healthy supporter of Christie's 2016 presidential campaign. Nearly 50 individual donations that totaled $54,550 were made by Gibbons' attorneys and employees, campaign records show.

Peter Torcicollo, the lead counsel at Gibbons for the Barlyn case, was among of the Christie supporters. According to records, he donated $7,700 to support Christie's presidential campaign.

That sometimes cozy relationship between politically connected firms contracted to perform outside counsel and their private support of the governor has some crying foul.

"The billing is out of control. I've been a lawyer 36 years and I have never seen so much money going to defend the indefensible," Smith said.

She accuses attorneys at firms hired by the state of "fighting stuff that they never would have fought for in the past at taxpayers' expense."

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Smith described excessive court filings that only delay the proceedings and firms bringing numerous attorneys to the courthouse for routine motions -- both of which quickly drive up legal bills.

One example of driving up the cost Smith railed against was even even pointed out by a Superior Court judge in her lawsuit against NJ Transit during a case management conference in January.

Smith argued at the hearing NJ Transit should be compelled to hand over additional claims of racial discrimination. Attorneys representing the authority -- from the politically-connected McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter -- said it would an undue burden to force NJ Transit to expend the man hours to track the files down.

"It may be an undue burden, with all due respect to counsel, to have three attorneys here, three partners here from ... the office," said Judge Ned Rosenberg, according to a court transcript.

NJ Transit's counsel joked with the judge that one of the attorneys present wasn't a partner of the firm. Rosenberg corrected himself, but reiterated Smith's claim of excessive expenditures on behalf of the state.

"Well, three attorneys from the same office may be an undue burden on the state of New Jersey," he said.

The cost to taxpayers for outside counsel fluctuates.

In the four years before Christie took office, his predecessor's administration, under former Gov. Jon Corzine, spent more than $93 million in outside counsel fees, according to public records. That amount rose more than $3 million under Christie during his first four years in office.

Former Hunterdon County Prosecutor Bennet Barlyn.

In 2015, the state hit a peak in outside counsel costs when it shelled out more than $30 million to various firms.

'COMPLEX LITIGATION'

Barlyn's case was deemed complex litigation by the state's Office of the Attorney General. It's the only classification in cases where the state seeks outside counsel where the state negotiates rates with the selected firm.

Otherwise, fee scales are predetermined in other cases, such as employment litigation, insurance coverage or medical malpractice litigation. In those cases, the state pays partners and associates at firms $150 an hour, according to state Request for Qualification forms. In general litigation cases, partners tapped as outside counsel earn $200 an hour, while associates receive $150 and law assistants can earn $125 an hour.

The state agreed to pay Gibbons' lead counsel and any other partners at the firm $325 an hour for their work the case. The retention letter also called for paying associates $225 an hour and $125 an hour for work done by clerks.

The attorney general's office said Gibbons was selected "from a list of law firms approve for such outside counsel work that was generated by a general ... RFQ," said spokesman Leland Moore.

The state refuses to say how it deems a case to fall under complex litigation status.

"We don't do case-specific (requests for proposals) for complex litigation," Moore said, adding, "There is no rote formula or cookie cutter checklist for designating a matter as complex litigation."

When pressed further how matters are deemed complex litigation, the Office of the Attorney General refused to provide any explanation.

"We have commented to the extent we're going to comment," Moore said.

A HISTORY OF FIGHTING CASES

Christie's administration has a history of fighting legal battles at taxpayers' expense that good government groups have argued have been needless battles -- and an unnecessary waste of taxpayer dollars.

In 2015, taxpayers were on the hook for nearly $154,000 to settle court cases in which the governor's administration tried to stop records from being disclosed to the public.

The payouts included instances in which the administration attempted to shield records on how Christie attempted to promote himself to a national audience, as well as costs related to his frequent out-of-state travel.

The legal bills and payouts from 2015 mean taxpayers have footed a bill of nearly $758,000 since 2012 after courts deemed the administration was wrong to try to keep public records secret. That figure is likely to grow in the current year.

"These needless denials have an enormous cost," Iris Bromberg, a transparency law fellow with the ACLU of New Jersey, told NJ Advance Media in February when the costs were first reported.

Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewArco or on Facebook. Follow NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
NEW YORK -- It was reported Sunday that the Yankees signed Ike Davis to a major league deal to help the team solidify a position ravaged by injuries since before spring training. Lately, the team has been forced to stick rookie Rob Refsnyder there, a position he hasn't played since college. (The Yankees have not officially confirmed the news yet.)

Ike, 29, hits left-handed and will likely be a platoon with Refsnyder (a righty) to start, though Davis is a natural first baseman, so it will be interesting to see if the split time evenly, or Davis ends up with a larger share of playing time.

Starter Mark Teixeira hit the disabled list June 4 with torn knee cartilage but decided not to have surgery and the team is hoping he can be back in about a month.

By adding Davis to the team, the Yankees will have to cut someone from the 25-man roster.

5 things to know about Davis:

1) Former cross-town rival

Davis hit 32 home runs for the Mets in 2012 and in six big league seasons has hit .239. In 2014 the Mets traded Davis to the Pirates and after 31 games in Pittsburgh he signed with the Oakland A's where he hit three home runs in 74 games last season.

2) Hip surgery

Davis had surgery late in August last season wiping out the rest of his year. He only has seven stolen bases in his career, so speed's never been a big part of his game.

3) 2016

Davis was released by the Texas Rangers Sunday after hitting .268 with four home runs in 39 Triple-A games.

4) He's not Nick Swisher

The Yankees signed former pal Swisher to a minor league deal April 14 but haven't called him to the big leagues. Swisher has said he's frustrated at the situation and perhaps to make matters worse for the former World Series champ, the Yankees signed Davis on the same day Swisher hit two home runs for the Triple-A Scranton-Wilkes/Barre RailRiders.

5) Like father like son

Davis' father, Ron, played in the big leagues for 11 years, the first four of which were with the Yankees from 1978-'81. He finished fourth in Rookie of the Year voting in '79 after finishing 14-2.

Ron started 481 games in his career, finishing with a 4.05 ERA.

Ryan Hatch may be reached at rhatch@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ryanhatch. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
NEW YORK -- The New York Daily News Mark Feinsand reported via Twitter Sunday afternoon that the Yankees are close to signing Ike Davis likely with the idea he could fill in at first base after a rash of injuries at the position have forced them to play inexperienced rookie Rob Refsnyder.

Source: Yankees on verge of signing 1B Ike Davis.  Mark Feinsand (@Feinsand) June 12, 2016

The Yankees did not immediately return NJ Advance Media's request to confirm the news.

Davis, 29, was released by the Texas Rangers this weekend. In six major league seasons Davis has 81 home runs, smacking 32 in 2012 for the Mets.

But since that breakout year Davis never hit more than 11 in a season and has struggled to regain his footing as an every day player. Last August Davis had season-ending surgery to repair a torn hip labrum.

The Yankees have had four first baseman to go down with injury this year, beginning with Greg Bird in early February and then Dustin Ackley (shoulder), Mark Teixeira (torn knee cartilage), and Chris Parmelee (hamstring) since June 30.

Bird and Ackley are done for the year, while Teixeira is hoping to return in about a month. If he can, Davis at first will be a short-term thing.

Ryan Hatch may be reached at rhatch@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ryanhatch. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Man with guns, possible explosives was going to L.A. Pride festival, L.A. Times reports
'I will not live my life in fear': New Orleans gay community reacts to Orlando shooting
'Reap what you sow' tweet said to be unfortunate coincidence, newspaper reports
Taking care of mans best friend

I am sure most of you have seen the TV commercials showing homeless, abandoned, and abused dogs. Especially if you are a dog lover, these commercials are sad and heart-wrenching to watch.

Some of you probably turn away, turn the channel or walk out of the room. If you think these commercials are too difficult to watch, you would be appalled to see the squalor of puppy mills and the physical conditions of the dogs.

Iowa is one of the worst states in regards to the number of puppy mills and the number of violations. In fact, Iowa is number two on the list. Number two! This is not something to be proud of. Many of these dogs live in deplorable conditions; breeding unhealthy puppies.

Yes, the puppy is adorable, and it is love at first sight. And even if you think it might be a mill puppy, you think you are saving it by taking it home with you. Unfortunately, purchasing these puppies allow the breeders to stay in business.

Iowa receives money from licensed USDA kennels. These annual fees are collected and the kennel owners issued operating permits by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. Yet Iowa does not provide oversight of these facilities that would give the protection to these dogs afforded by Iowas own animal welfare code.

Time and time again, the state legislators have let a bill die that would put in place state oversight. This bill would give the state the permission to monitor the conditions in Iowas commercial dog breeding kennels.

This bill will not affect farm animals or cost the taxpayers any additional money.

So uncover your eyes and ears. Instead, open them up and help Iowa become one of the best states in companion animal welfare instead of being one of the worst.

To find out more information, and possibly join an advocacy team, go to iafriends.org. Or, at least, educate yourself in what to look for before purchasing a puppy: i.e., the puppys parents are not available to see, breeder does not allow you to view the living quarters of the puppies and their parents and the breeder will only meet off site. These are all good indicators the puppy is from a mill.

Help stop this abusive behavior by puppy mill breeders by contacting your legislators. It is your voice that will make the difference for the lives of these dogs. Please use it.

Gretchen Miller, Council Bluffs

In support of Judge Garland

President Obama has nominated Chief Judge Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Judge Garland has nearly two decades of experience as a federal judge, and received bipartisan support when he was first appointed to the bench.

There is no question that Judge Garland deserves a fair hearing and an up-or-down vote, a courtesy that both parties have always extended to Supreme Court nominees. Unfortunately, Sen. Chuck Grassley would rather hold the seat open for a possible nomination by Donald Trump.

Mere days after becoming the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Trump attacked the character of Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, the district court judge overseeing one of a number of lawsuits alleging fraud in the operation of Trump University.

Trump claimed that Curiel had issued biased rulings and should step down from the case, citing Curiels Mexican heritage as a reason why the judge couldnt be impartial.

These remarks, which House Speaker Paul Ryan called the textbook definition of a racist comment, demonstrate Trumps scorn for the judiciary and his ignorance of judicial procedure. If Grassley has his way, Trump will have the privilege of nominating someone to fill Scalias seat and dozens of lower federal court judgeships that have languished during Grassleys tenure as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Grassley has chosen Trumps hateful rhetoric over a qualified, respectful jurist. Its hard to imagine a more disappointing call.

K.O. Myers, Des Moines

Ironic subdivision

A definition of irony: a new subdivision named Whispering Oaks in which all the trees are torn down before construction.

Mark Hohneke, Council Bluffs
home Tech MacBook Pro Air 2016 to be announced at WWDC 2016?

This week, Apple will be giving fans and investors alike a peek into what it is cooking up in its Cupertino, California offices.

The multinational tech giant's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will be held in San Francisco, California, from June 13 to 17. During the much anticipated event, Apple is expected to share updates on its most popular products a including the iPhone, the Mac, and Siri a as well as the latest versions of its OS X, iOS, watchOS and tvOS. The conference could also see the unveiling of a new MacBook Pro and a new MacBook Air.

While it isn't likely that hardware will be the focus of this year's WWDC, a report from Apple Insider indicates that fans should expect announcements that could affect Apple's MacBook lineup. It is unclear if the specific changes to the MacBooks will be revealed during the conference or later this month.

According to Apple Insider, the upcoming WWDC probably won't see the unveiling of a redesigned MacBook Pro. And while it is possible that Apple could pre-announce a redesigned slimmer MacBook Pro with a Touch ID fingerprint scanner and a dynamic OLED touch bar, this rumored new laptop reportedly won't be shipping out anytime soon.

Meanwhile, MacRumors claims that Apple is planning on announcing new MacBook Air models sometime this month. Citing Japanese website Mac Otakara, the website says that the new MacBook Air lineup will begin shipping out in August.

The Mac Otakara report, which cites "a reliable Chinese supplier," indicates that the new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models will come equipped with Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports. The MagSafe 2, Thunderbolt 2, and USB-A ports found on existing MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models will all be removed in favor of a single USB-C port. The report also suggests that Apple will soon be discontinuing the 11-inch MacBook Air and will be focusing, instead, on the 13-inch MacBook Air and the 12-inch MacBook.

While the Mac Otakara report was unclear on whether or not Apple will be announcing its latest MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models at the WWDC, MacRumors indicates that the conference will generally be a no-hardware event. Nonetheless, the new models could be announced via a press release later this month, as was the case with the new 12-inch MacBook in April.

The Apple WWDC 2016 will kick off on Monday, June 13.
Community

Its now easier than ever to connect and chat with others in your local area. You can connect with your community by asking general questions, give area updates and recommendations and even let your community know about local events that are taking place.
The biggest economic development deal in years for East Chicago, promising 500 jobs, had hit a stumbling block after months of negotiations and was about to fall apart when the two head honchos decided to meet.

On a hot August day, Hoist Liftruck President and Chief Executive Officer Marty Flaska and East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland sat down for a one-on-one in the mayors office to work through their differences.

East Chicago wanted assurances the company would hire residents from within city limits, but the company had concerns about such geographic restrictions violating federal anti-discrimination laws. So a deal was hammered out where East Chicago's Central High School and Ivy Tech Community College would train local workers from the city for jobs at Hoist Liftruck.

There were some rocky moments, Copeland said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in March.

It can be painful. It was like giving birth where somebodys saying push, push, push. But today theres a beautiful delivery, and look at the beauty of it all.

Hoist Liftruck, which had been based in Bedford Park, Illinois, now employs 350 workers and will employ 500 by 2022 at the long-vacant Blaw-Knox tank factory in East Chicago, where it invested $40 million to make large-capacity forklifts that are used in steel mills, automotive factories and canning plants.

Local economic development officials worked for 16 months on the deal, a major coup that's created jobs paying an average salary of $55,000 a year and thats expected to lure even more Illinois companies across the state line.

Some welders can make as much as $80,000 with overtime there.

We have high-paying, middle-class jobs, Flaska said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this year. Those jobs allow them to buy a house, buy a new car, put their kids through school, and thats important.

Upping the ante

About 15 other manufacturers from Illinois have contacted Hoist Liftruck about moving to lower-cost Indiana, where the forklift maker estimates its saving $2 million a year in operating costs, manager Vince Flaska said.

Six of those 15 companies currently are seriously considering moves  which are capital-intensive and typically only occur when companies are looking at expanding, anyway  and are in talks with local economic development officials.

Chicago-based Kelly Construction & Design is now planning to build a multimillion-dollar 300,000-square-foot industrial shell building in East Chicago, partly because of the interest Hoist Liftruck generated from Illinois companies, said Lori Tubbs, president of Commercial Advantage Inc., who brokered the sale of the building to Hoist Liftruck from New York-based Read Property Group.

Indiana worked hard to court Hoist Liftruck, sending Jim Staton, business recruitment director of Indiana Economic Development Corp., the state's commerce agency, to its Bedford Park facility dozens of times, and sending Indiana Secretary of Commerce Vincent Smith twice.

Indiana offered the company $14.79 million in incentives at the state, regional and local level to entice its $40 million investment in a major expansion, while Illinois offered only $200,000 in tax breaks to keep it in the state.

The offices of Gov. Bruce Rauner and House Speaker Mike Madigan agreed to meet with Hoist Liftruck, but Illinois sent an economic development official only once.

"Indiana did a great job of incentivizing the project," Tubbs said. "All the players worked hard to get to the end result."

Beyond just the incentives, the estimated $2 million in operating cost savings  about half from workmans compensation  was a big reason the company, which has been based in Bedford Park for decades, decided to look across the state line.

Searching for the sweet spot

Moving to Indiana wasnt originally the plan. Flaska said the company initially intended to grow in Bedford Park, a one-time industrial town that's gentrified to the point where there are $300,000 townhomes right across the street from the plant.

Hoist Liftruck had purchased a parcel next to its factory to expand, but town officials wanted to see retail there so the town could pull in more sales tax revenue. Hoist sold it to a gas station.

In early 2014, Flaska asked his son, Vince Flaska, the company's new business development and property manager, to look into what incentives Hoist Liftruck could get if it expanded in Illinois.

Illinois offered $200,000 in EDGE tax credits.

It was nothing, Vince Flaska said.

The state of Illinois was giving $1 million or $2 million to Coyote Logistics, and that's a farm for kids coming out of college. The blue-collar, working middle-income average American is our demographic. It just rubbed my dad the wrong way after all we've done in Illinois.

The Flaskas also were fed up with workman's compensation costs in Illinois, and estimate they'll save at least $1 million a year in Indiana.

So they hired Transwestern as a site selection consultant and started looking at locations out of state. In September, Transwestern Executive Managing Director Brad Migdal contacted the Lake County Economic Alliance in Merrillville about potentially locating there.

LCEA President and CEO Karen Lauerman and Don Koliboski sprang into action, answering questions about tax bills, utility rates and available properties. Over the next few months they fed the company information about the demographics of the workforce, training programs and so on.

Vince Flaska found there weren't many suitable locations in Northwest Indiana with overhead cranes and bays large enough to truck out large forklifts that can lift as much as 57 tons. Portage had a few, but they were potentially too far for the company's employees, who live mostly on Chicago's west and south sides.

Making old places new again

Flaska found a location  the former Blaw-Knox factory, at 4431 Railroad Ave., across from City Hall in East Chicago  that was an extra 20-minute commute for most employees. He knew retaining the current workforce was important a mid-sized family-owned company, having heard horror stories about companies relocating to Savannah, South Carolina, and not being able to find qualified workers.

There's a stereotype that if you go to East Chicago you're going to get shot, but that's not true at all, he said.

There's not a lot of buildings, and they're in bad shape with wood floors. But East Chicago has fiber running through it, the commute was reasonable, and the building had long bays and a U-shape that's ideal for manufacturing.

Lauerman and Koliboski arranged for meetings with Copeland and local gas and electric utility NIPSCO. They took East Chicago City Council members and other city officials over to Hoist Liftruck's Bedford Park facility to see the company in action.

"We were working to prep the community on the zoning and economic revitalization issues," Koliboski said. "We worked with the state all the way through."

LCEA helped shepherd local incentives through the approval process  doing a market analysis on tax-increment financing district bonds, for instance, that would help offset some of the costs of the moves and expansion. Multiple states would have offered similar incentives, which are often needed to close a gap before companies can procure financing, Lauerman said.

The numbers have to add up for companies, whether upfront incentives or long-term costs of doing business.

"They made a strategic decision to move here instead of Michigan or California," she said. "Everything we can tell them about quality of life is good and well, but they have to look at the bottom line."

Initially, the building on Railroad Avenue was just for lease, but Hoist Liftruck managed to buy it for about $10 million. The factory appealed to the company, because it had the overhead cranes needed to assemble massive forklifts and because two steel processing companies already leased space there, guaranteeing a stream of rental income.

We made an offer, and we got it, Vince Flaska said.

The Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered about $8.25 million in tax breaks and another $200,000 in training grants in exchange for the 500 employees the company expects to have by 2022. NIPSCO cut its utility bills by $69,000 a year for five years, in what amounts to a $345,000 incentive.

Lauerman and Koliboski worked to get the company another $3.5 million in closing funds from the Regional Development Authority, and $2.5 million in tax-increment financing from East Chicago, which the company said was essential considering the amount it was investing.

The tax-increment financing deal will be funded by a portion of Hoist Liftrucks' property tax payments. That money will pay off bonds intended to help pay for improvements to the site.

Hoist Liftruck itself put around $40 million into the building, which had been built in the 1940s and still had wood-block floors in places.

"It was beaten up over time," said Tubbs, who represented previous owner, Read Property Group, in the sale. "They replaced the cranes, the lights and the flooring. They've remodeled the offices. I would say it's state-of-the-art, because they have a lot of technology they put in there."

Hoist Liftruck also has 25 acres for additional growth in the future, which is expected because of a deal Hoist landed to make private-label forklifts for Toyota.

"We were quite aggressive to land the deal," Lauerman said. "Cummins already makes their engines in Indiana. The steel is made in Indiana. This is an international product that's made in Indiana."
The international shipping season has gotten off to a strong start since the first ship from Europe docked at the Ports of Indiana-Burns Harbor in late April.

May was a busy month at the Ports of Indiana-Burns Harbor with 15 international ships, Port Director Rick Heimann said. Shipments included European beer fermentation tanks as well as organic corn and soybeans to be used for specialty animal feeds in U.S. farms. Since 2014, the port has handled over 80 beer tanks for craft breweries around the Midwest with most of those going to Lagunitas Brewing Co. in Chicago.

Imports of steel, one of the largest cargoes to come through the deepwater port on Lake Michigan in Portage and Burns Harbor, are down 31 percent so far this year as a result of new tariffs and tougher trade laws, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute.

Heimann has said the port in Porter County expects tonnage similar to last year, which was only down slightly compared to the record volume of cargo that passed through the port in 2014.

The St. Lawrence Seaway, which connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes and the Ports of Indiana-Burns Harbor, opened two weeks earlier than usual this year because of the mild winter. The first ship, the M.V. Lubie from Holland, arrived in Portage with hold full of steel coil on April 22.

Through the end of May, cargo shipments through the St. Lawrence Seaway declined 4.15 percent to 6.5 million tons as compared to last year.

General cargo is up 113 percent, and dry bulk goods like salt, potash and gypsum rose by 5 percent overall. Steel products are down 23 percent and iron ore shipments declined by 9 percent.
Skillman Corporation has promoted Brandon Wolf to site manager at its Merrillville office. He has 5 years of experience with Skillman and more than 10 years of experience in the construction industry. Currently, he is responsible for construction of the new Akron Elementary for Tippecanoe Valley School Corporation.

Skillman Corporation has welcomed Jason Alexander to their Merrillville office as a project engineer. He will be working with Tippecanoe Valley Schools, Tri-Creek Schools, School Town of Highland, and the City of East Chicago. He has 10 years of construction and accounting experience and is a member of Carpenters Local Union 1005.

Northwestern Mutual in Chicago has announced that Dionna Johnson has joined the firm's downtown Chicago office as a recruiter. She will play a key role in finding talented individuals who want to be part of a caring performance culture and want to build enduring relationships with clients. She is a Lansing native who now lives in Chicago's Hyde Park.

Integrated Therapy Practice PC has welcomed award-winning Physical Therapist Tracy Campbell to their practice. She has 15 years experience in the field and won an Emerging Leader Award in 2009 from the Indiana chapter of the APTA. She specializes in women's health.

Ameriprise Financial Private Wealth Advisor Linda G. Stover has earned membership in the companys Diamond Ring Club, which recognizes years of consistently high performance with an exceptional commitment to superior client service. She works at the Ameriprise Valparaiso office. Less than seven percent of Ameriprise advisors have earned the Diamond Ring distinction.
An underground poetry reading in Michigan City will aim to raise funds for a new monthly reading series that would showcase national and local authors in the Uptown Arts District.

The Literary Underground, a grassroots groups that promotes independent authors, marginalized voices and the small press, will stage the reading from 6 to 8 p.m. June 20 at the new Artspace Uptown Artists Lofts, at 717 Franklin St. in downtown Michigan City.

The Literary Underground group has a publishing arm, a print zine, an online radio network and a wiki encyclopedia about the underground press. It also hosts literary events across the country.

Full Moon Lobby Takeover: Trip Closet in Michigan City will feature readings, music and performance art from artists, including Alex Allen, Iris Berry, Craig Ultraviolence Cady, Curta, Julie Demoff-Larson, David Guthrie, Matthew May, Michele McDannold, Alexandra Naughton, A. Razor, Lily Rex, Bud Smith and Jeremiah Walton. They'll give live, pre-recorded and streaming readings because some of the poets hail from as far away as Los Angeles, Oakland, California, and New York City.

Aspiring poets can also get five minutes before an audience during an open stage, for which they can sign up at 5:30 p.m.

The suggested donation is $5, and the money will cover traveling costs for touring performers and established a monthly reading series that would promote creative writing and independent music in Michigan City.

Full Moon Lobby Takeover: Trip Closet is not intended for children younger than 16. The poetry reading also will include a cash bar open to anyone 21 and older.

For more information, visit http://theliteraryunderground.org.
GRIFFITH  Officials on Friday met with their legal representatives in Indianapolis to set the stage for the town seceding from Calumet Township.

The meetings involved discussions about which township to join if Griffith is successful in leaving.

Talks also centered around a petition to the Lake County Elections Board to hold a referendum  strictly among Griffith voters  on whether to divorce from the township.

"Before we start to gather signatures for the petition, we will make sure we have a ruling from the Department of Local Government Finance that they agree with our calculations that Calumet Township is above the 12 times threshold stipulated in the law," Ryfa said Saturday.

The law, passed a couple years ago by the state, says the township's spending cannot exceed 12 times the average of other townships in Indiana.

The petition's wording, as required by law, would say: "Shall the territory of the Town of Griffith be transferred from Calumet Township to an adjacent township?" said attorney Matthew Morgan of Barnes & Thornburg LLP in Indianapolis.

Ryfa said he hopes to have an official ruling from the DLGF very soon so the Town Council can set a referendum date for late summer or early fall.

To authorize the petition, the town needs to gather 30 percent of the number of Griffith residents who voted in the latest Indiana secretary of state election in 2014, Ryfa said.

This means that at least 1,200 signatures must be obtained for the referendum to take place for Griffith voters to say "yes or no" on leaving the township.

"The Griffith GOP will be looking for individuals that could go door to door to gather signatures," Ryfa said, adding that volunteers can contact them at griffithgop@gmail.com.

Ryfa said Griffith is fortunate to have three adjacent townships that are run very well, including St. John, North and Ross.

"We will be holding public meetings during the referendum process asking our citizens which townships they wish us to pursue," Ryfa said.

The financial ramifications and benefits of each township will be presented, he added.

If voters approve the referendum, the Town Council will forward a request to one of these townships and ask for Griffith to join them, Ryfa said.

"An adjacent township must accept the transfer through ordinance," Morgan noted.

In past years, Griffith has paid almost $3 million per year to Calumet Township while only receiving assistance of between $10,000 and $15,000 in return.

After Griffith began the drive to leave the township several years ago, the payments have gradually been reduced to about $2.5 million, $1.7 million and, most recently, around $1 million.
It's Gary's Time founder Roger Hayward has been in the shoes of the people he helps.

At 9 years old, Hayward started sneaking beer, he said. At 11 years old he discovered airplane glue, which ultimately led him to a life of drug addiction and crime while surviving the streets of Pennsylvania.

Ive been at my lowest by scamming, scheming and doing whatever it takes to survive my Oxycontin and Vicodin addiction, Hayward said. I found a cancer patient and purchased their drugs and got to the point where I was putting rocks in my pockets in order to make weight at the doctors office. I learned to survive by fooling everybody.

Now, Hayward still relies on the streets but focuses his time helping others through his carpentry program, Its Garys Time. The program rehabilitates houses and lives of those transitioning out of prison and with mental illness.

"I found God and was helped to get where I am and it wasn't easy," Hayward said. "It's time for me to give back because I know what these guys go through and how difficult it can be to be given a break once people know (you were) incarcerated."

While in Fleetwood, Pennsylvania, Hayward felt God was calling him to purchase homes for cheap and to become a mentor and role model for the desperate, just like Hopewell Church Pastor Linford Weber had become for him. Hayward searched for inexpensive homes to purchase and would ultimately turn them into halfway houses.

"I had never heard of Gary, Indiana, but these homes kept popping up for $100," Hayward said. "I couldn't believe it and I felt God was calling me to this place and to the people of this community."

Upon visiting the Region, Hayward knew this would be a project worth rolling up his sleeves and jumping right into.

Through Its Garys Time, Hayward works with churches, nonprofits, law enforcement agencies, and just about anyone that will help him help others that need direction and accountability.

Recently, Hayward met Ollie Jackson, of Gary, at the Lake County Kimbrough Work Release Center and he saw something in him. Jackson was serving time for a burglary in 2010 and is fighting to do right in order to be part of his two small childrens lives.

Roger has a big heart and is helping me stay focused, Jackson said. He gave me some work when no one else would, even give me a chance and I can see a future for myself because staying out of trouble is my choice.

Robert Gonzalez, of Gary, was referred to Haywards program by his parole officer and has changed his life dramatically and serves as his right-hand man. Hayward donated a house to him and Gonzalez is now a first-time homeowner.

I was in prison at 20 and got caught up with gangs and various criminal activity, Gonzalez said. I escaped to Texas and trouble followed. Im working with Roger and staying out of trouble because for the first time someone is counting on me, and its a good feeling.

Hayward said, Everything is about trust. When his halfway home was recently broken into and delayed operation, Hayward just shook his head and got back to work.

Its easy to get discouraged, but God has a master plan, Hayward said. One thing we all have is survival instincts. Brokenness is a lifestyle and we choose to succeed or succumb to evil. Its not rocket science.

Hayward said it's easy to trust in God, but "trusting in ourselves" is just as important.
You wish you could get out on the dance floor, to bust a move or step into a graceful waltzwithout looking like a klutz.

But you just dont know how.

If you live in Schererville, or anywhere reasonably nearby, youre in luck, because the town has several dance studios dedicated to making you look good on the dance floor or onstage. Most studios teach a wide variety of ages, though a couple of them specialize.

At M2 Dance Center, Our goal is to prepare our students with whatever they need to fulfill their dreams, whether the dream is to have a blast with hip-hop, have twelve hours of ballet instruction per week, teach at university, or dance professionally, says owner and artistic director Kevin Mathis. Here, the dream starts early: Most students are school age and begin at age 3.

At the Fred Astaire Dance Studio, the majority of dancers are older adults, though they also teach children, says assistant manager and dance instructor Amanda Dunlap. Astaire, perhaps best known for his fluid dance performances in movies, co-founded the studio in 1947 to pass along his dance techniques. Its all about ballroom dancing, which is any dance you can do with a partner, explains Dunlap, including Latin dances such as the paso doble, rumba, salsa, samba, waltzes and more.

At Donna Brum Dancers, adults and children learn ballet, pointe, jazz, tap, funk tap, hip-hop, lyrical/modern, pom/cheer, leaps and turns, and tumbling. For younger children, Combo Classes teach three dance styles, which is especially good for younger children, to keep their attention and interest, says owner Donna Brum-Wright.

Her Danz-Elite Performance/Competition Team focuses on tap, ballet pointe, and lyrical; the other team is Hip-Hop K-Nektionz Performance/Competition Team. Both are for boys and girls.

Second Street Dance Studio evolved from serendipity: Husband-and-wife team Tim and Sue Bourget had met at another dance studio and they fell in step together. Lessons there were expensive, says Sue. She and her husband offered a more affordable alternative, opening Second Street Dance Studio in Highland 26 years ago. They moved in 1996, acquiring and renovating the former Schererville library. The Bourgets, former professional dancers, offer lessons in ballroom dancing, including foxtrot, quick step, tango, waltz, East and West Coast swing, Latin dances and more. There are private lessons, groups and parties.

While one-on-one private lessons are best for learning more quickly, Sue says, group lessons and a party every Friday night provide more dance time. The biggest challenge is remembering the steps because they havent practiced, so attending all three opportunities means learning better and faster.

You dont have a partner for lessons? Sure you do: The studios instructors will work with individuals.

Our staff does a fantastic job, says Mathis. Thats essential for his mission of having a greater impact on a greater number of kids. We have experts in jazz, contemporary, hip-hop, ballet and more.

Brum-Wrights dance studio opened in 1969 in Lansing, Ill., moving to Schererville 10 years ago. Brum-Wrights mother, who yearned to dance but didnt have the opportunity, put her in a dance class at age 3 and I just loved it. Now 74, Brum-Wright says with energy, My favorite dance is modern jazz; the movement and music touched me.

At 21, Dunlap has been dancing just shy of four years, but Im passionate about what I do. Dancing with a partner is becoming a lost art, and were trying to bring that back. Its beautiful; it allows people to connect with each other in a way thats not available at a movie or at dinner. Her personal favorite is the Viennese waltz, one of the most beautiful to watch and perform.

The Fred Astaire studio classes are three-tiered: We specialize in private lessons, because individualized attention is important for teaching technique, Dunlap says. Those are supplemented with parties and group lessons.

Not all dance is in lock-step with tradition. Dance is an industry that is always evolving into something new, Mathis says. Hip-hop two or three years ago is not what it is today; its very urban, so theres this incredible migration in movement. Were fortunate to have one of the best instructors in the country, going to Europe to see what theyre doing and doing work at universities. Its important to be forward-thinking.

For many, the goal is to be a professional dancer, and that calls for strong commitment and hard work, says Mathis. Brum-Wright says many of her former students dance professionally or have their own studios, and some have returned to teach at her studio.

Performances in competition and for nonprofits provide challenges, experience, and feedback. Says Dunlap, There are lots of local competitions and some we travel for. Its a wonderful goal to work towards. Competitions for M2 Dance Center include the Avon walk for breast cancer and the nonprofit Indiana Danzforce. Donna Brum Dancers have performed with the Symphony of Chesterton and for such causes as St. Jude House and various health challenges. Among other competitions, Second Street Dance Studio organizes the annual Indiana Challenge.

Sue Bourget reminds dancers to be patient. When they see a show like (ABC-TVs) Dancing with the Stars, they may think they can learn that fast. But those dancers are practicing eight hours a day.

Go. Dream. Dance.
Crete Womans Club CWC President Leslee Williams presented four college and technical/trade scholarships at the Crete-Monee High School local scholarship presentation last month.

The two students who received $2,000 college scholarships were Allison Carlos and Karyna Navoichyk. Carlos plans to attend Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, majoring in nursing. Navoichyk plans to attend Loyola University in Chicago, majoring in the medical field.

The Crete-Monee students receiving $1,000 technical/trade scholarships were Quinshaun Freeman and Clinton Nwaiwu. Freeman plans to attend William Penn University in Iowa majoring in software development. Nwaiwu plans to attend Prairie State College to become a pharmacy technician.

Eight $250 summer camp scholarships were also awarded. Jalen Anderson, Daniella Leuk, and Emily Millsap, of Crete-Monee High, will attend Show Choir Camps of America. Imani Caldwell, of Crete-Monee, will participate in the Dominican University Fashion Camp. Shelby Downey, of Illinois Lutheran High School, will attend the Indiana Ballet Theatre Dance Camp. Jeremy Gaines, of Illinois Lutheran High School, will attend the U.S. Air Force Academy Summer Seminar. Brianna Henderson, of Crete-Monee, will attend the Civic Leadership Institute. Jessica Proctor, of Illinois Lutheran High School, will attend the FAA Summer Intensive Dance Camp.

The club has been an active organization in the Crete community since 1912. For 104 years its fundraisers have supported many worthy organizations and causes in the area.

This year the club awarded $4,000 in college scholarships, $2,000 in technical/trade scholarships, and $2,000 in summer camp scholarships. The scholarship committee, headed by Rita Robertson, chose recipients by a blind vote.
INDIANAPOLIS  Three Porter County delegates to the Indiana Republican Convention spent the night in jail after a drunken encounter Friday with police at a hotel, police told RTV6, a news station based out of Indianapolis.

Indianapolis Metropolitan police were called just after 10 p.m. Friday to the Hyatt Regency downtown in response to reports of a man being aggressive, according to the TV station.

Scott Tuft, a Porter County Tourism Board member, is accused of getting in one officers face as the officer was trying to get another man to leave the hotel.

As the officer put Tuft under arrest for not backing down, a woman  later identified as Amy Daly, elected to the Center Township Board in November 2014  grabbed the officers arm and tried to pull him away from Tuft, police told RTV6.

Daly was then arrested.

As police were filling out paperwork, Dalys husband, Tim Daly, a former Valparaiso town councilman, interfered with officers, according to RTV6. At one point, Tim Daly allegedly grabbed a phone that another person was using to shoot video of the incident and got in the officers face with the camera.

Tuft, of Valparaiso, was charged with resisting law enforcement, according to Marion County Jail records.

Jail records show Amy Daly was charged with battery against a public safety officer and resisting law enforcement.

Tim Daly, was arrested and charged with public intoxication, according to jail records.

All three were released from the Marion County Jail just after 2 p.m. Saturday, according to jail records.

A spokeswoman with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department did not immediately respond Saturday night to requests for comment.
INDIANAPOLIS  Hoosier Republicans selected their nominees for attorney general, superintendent of public instruction and lieutenant governor at the party's state convention Saturday, where Gov. Mike Pence also enthusiastically endorsed Donald Trump for president.

Four-term Elkhart County Prosecutor Curtis Hill won a four-candidate race for attorney general, beating Lowell native and former Attorney General Steve Carter, state Sen. Randy Head, R-Logansport, and Deputy Attorney General Abby Kuzma.

Hill, who is black, won more than a majority of delegates in part by recalling his father's courage in confronting racism in 1950s Elkhart amid persistent threats from the city's white majority and the attempted bombing of his home.

"He taught us a valuable lesson about freedom that day  that even in America sometimes you have to fight for your freedom," Hill said.

Hill pledged as attorney general to take on tasks that require similar "courageous leadership," such as protecting families from the ravages of drug abuse and violent crime, stopping fraudsters from scamming senior citizens and standing up to the federal government.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I will be the last line of defense against federal overreach in Indiana," Hill said. "Preserving our rights pursuant to the 10th Amendment of the Constitution will be of the highest priority."

In the contest for state schools chief, Yorktown Community Schools Superintendent Jennifer McCormick easily defeated Dawn Wooten, an instructor at a Fort Wayne university.

McCormick said the Indiana Department of Education under State Superintendent Glenda Ritz, a Democrat, lacks leadership and vision which has led to confusion and disorganization in local school corporations.

"Indiana students deserve better," McCormick said.

She promised to rebuild relationships with education stakeholders, ensure Indiana's academic standards are distinct from federal recommendations, preserve the state's charter school and private school voucher systems and to "let teachers teach."

"There is no wiggle room for political squabbling with our students' education on the line," McCormick said.

The 1,731 Republican convention delegates, drawn from all 92 Indiana counties, unanimously nominated Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb to be Pence's running mate.

Pence won the GOP nomination for a second term as governor in the May 3 primary election, shortly after he appointed, and the Republican-controlled General Assembly confirmed, Holcomb as successor to Lt. Gov. Sue Ellspermann, who resigned to become president of Ivy Tech Community College.

Holcomb eagerly took on the lieutenant governor's traditional attack-dog role in the packed hall at the Indiana Convention Center by going after Pence's Democratic opponent, former House Speaker John Gregg, repeatedly accusing him of budgetary mismanagement.

"We are never more than just one election away from slipping back to the way it was  and we're not going to let that happen!" Holcomb proclaimed.

Similarly, Pence declared Hoosier Republicans must unite behind Trump, the presumptive presidential nominee, or risk losing on key party priorities including enacting anti-abortion laws, preserving the right to bear arms, controlling the U.S. Supreme Court and preventing excessive federal regulations.

"It's time to come together around the people who were the people's choice," Pence said. "We must resolve today that Indiana will be the first state on the board to make Donald Trump the 45th president of the United States of America."

Hoosier Democrats hold their state party convention June 18 in Indianapolis.

Set to be nominated are Indianapolis state Rep. Christina Hale, a Michigan City native, for lieutenant governor; former Lake Circuit Judge Lorenzo Arredondo as attorney general; and Ritz for a second term as state schools chief.
CHESTERTON  Large land moving equipment has begun remolding 130 acres of former farmland on the town's far east side into the largest residential development this small community has seen in at least modern times.

The Easton Park project, which has been more than 10 years in the making, already has literally changed the shape of the town and will continue having an impact as a variety of single-family homes begin popping up on its 346 lots.

Town Manager Bernie Doyle said this project, and to a lesser extent, a few other smaller residential developments underway, are feeding a strong demand for housing in Chesterton.

The town's population grew by 24 percent to just more than 13,000 at the time of the last census and he expects to see that type of growth in the 2020 count.

"I see us meeting, if not exceeding that," Doyle said.

The Easton Park project is being developed by ATG Real Estate Development of Highland, whose portfolio includes the White Oak Estates residential development in Munster and the upscale commercial building visible at Interstate 94 and Kennedy Avenue, said Kathy Harris, ATG vice president of development.

Easton Park is immediately east of the intersection of County Road 250 East and Porter Avenue. It was annexed by the town 10 years ago, creating a distinctive bulge in the community's eastern border that remains today.

"They annexed it with this project in mind," Harris said.

The firm continued working with the town to have the property rezoned as a planned unit development, which allows for multiple uses at a single site, she said. All 346 lots are being used for residential development, but there will be a variety of homes and lot types offered.

The development will offer 74 villa-style lots on its northwest side, which will differ from the other single-family homes in that the structures and lots will be smaller, and snow removal and lawn care will be provided, Harris said.

The villa portion of the development targets first-time homebuyers and those seeking to downsize later in life, she said.

There are 57 villas among the 99 lots making up the first phase of the development, Harris said. The balance of the home sites will feature minimum buildings requirements of 1,800 square feet for ranches, 2,000 square feet for one-and-a-half story homes and 2,200 square feet for two-story homes.

"We believe its going to appeal to a multi-sector of homebuyers," Harris said.

The rolling site also will feature more than 30 acres of natural spaces, including the preserved forest and wetland areas, ponds and walking path of approximately one-third of a mile, she said. It will be developed over six phases, with home construction beginning by October.

ATG is also committed to helping the town by establishing a "significant" park on its east side with a donation of 20 acres as a cornerstone, Harris said. The public park will be close to, but not part of the Easton Park development.

Doyle said the town has worked closely with developers to assure that all planning requirements were met. Officials will continue monitoring traffic and other impacts of growth when construction gets under way.

The town has what modern planners call "primacy of place," he said, which is a new term for quality of life. These pluses include its proximity to Lake Michigan and Chicago, affordability, low crime rate, quality schools, an historic downtown area and neighborhoods versus subdivisions.

"People look out for each other," he said.
GARY  Envisioning a revitalization of the Gary Downtown-Emerson neighborhood takes community input and involvement the 120 people attending Saturdays Report Back to the People learned and experienced firsthand.

We did a SWOT analysis  strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats  of the Gary Downtown-Emerson neighborhood. We were intentional in not talking, but listening, said the Rev. Curtis Whittaker, pastor of Progressive Community Church and one of the community builders, referring to 303 one-on-one confidential interviews.

Specific themes came out those interviews with community stakeholders in their homes and businesses, Whittaker told those attending the event at Mama Pearls Soul Food Restaurant. Community stakeholders addressed each of those four themes Saturday.

Members of Families Anchored in Total Harmony CDC used a Legacy Foundation Neighborhood Spotlight grant to organize a grass-roots initiative called We want to hear your voice, said Whittaker, the CEO/executive director of F.A.I.T.H. CDC.

Tiffany Tolbert, director of Indiana Landmarks Northwest field office, said the revitalization area is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city of Gary and has historic and cultural significance.

A building has a story, she said. Houses, corner stores, brick buildings can be many things.

This portion of Gary doesnt have economic opportunities for gainful employment the analysis indicated, said Whittaker, adding that other concerns involve workforce development.

Are people trained for jobs if they come? Whittaker said about the analysis. More needs to happen.

Ken Barry, executive director of the City Life Center, and Merrillville High School student Aaliyah Stewart, 15, said comments about education and youth indicate that young people want to connect with educational programs, parent engagement and service opportunities.

In 2015, Stewart started the ASW Foundation promoting nonviolence in memory of her brothers who died from gun violence. The foundation awards college scholarships to students from Merrillville High and Thea Bowman Leadership Academy.

Opportunities for health and wellness include planting an urban orchard, Walter Jones said.

A few producers can feed a whole lot of people, Jones said. Things take time. We need people with business sense.

In her discussion about infrastructure and transportation, Teresa Guzman told the group that public transportation is lacking with limited access to bus stops.

Many residents do not have automobiles, Guzman said. We also can promote safe biking, if we can have bike racks every two to four blocks.

Retired Gary police Lt. Lawrence Wright said that during his 32 years in public safety, Gary was named 20 times as the murder capital of the nation.

Gary PD has never been staffed properly. They havent been equipped properly, he said.

However, Wright said, What people are willing to say is, We would all like to live in a safe place.'

During the Future Vision Scenario, the attendees broke into seven groups to envision this area 10 years in the future.

What they came up with was really powerful, Whittaker said, adding that each of the groups showed that stakeholders were committed, unified and ready to get to work.

The scenarios now will be formed into a vision and a mission statement, Whittaker said. For our working groups, this will be their guideposts. The vision is what is connecting us.
GARY  Millions of dollars worth of improvements may be made at the Gary Fire Department over the next year.

The fire department recently bought some new ambulances and officials hope over the next year to add several new fire engines and an aerial ladder truck to its inventory, according to Fire Chief Paul Bradley.

The department recently received a $758,044 grant that will be used to buy 133 self-contained breathing apparatus devices, which supply air to firefighters when fighting fires.

The money came from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Assistance of Firefighters Grant program. Bradley said the city is also seeking another grant from that program to buy a new aerial ladder truck, which can cost between $700,000 and $1 million.

The department currently has three trucks in service while one is being overhauled.

"We need to have four in service every day, but you always need to have a spare," Bradley said.

Equipment and personnel shortages have been an issue for some time, but things seem to be improving, according to some observers.

In December 2010, under the administration of former Mayor Rudy Clay, 35 positions were eliminated in the fire department, which went from 236 to 201 firefighters. Firefighters joined police officers in 2014 and again early last year in picketing over inadequate equipment and salaries, which was said to be responsible for personnel leaving for other departments that paid more money.

The city now has 187 firefighters, but raises were approved last year and firefighter Adam Friday, vice president of Gary Firefighters Association Local 359, believes things are improving. In addition to raises that are expected to eventually increase annual salaries by $10,000, Friday said equipment has gotten a lot better.

"It's better, but we have a ways to go," said Friday.

Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson said "it's all about dollars and cents."

She said when she came into office "there were some large gaps with equipment. They (the firefighters) were grossly underpaid. So every year we've worked with the chiefs (including past chief Teresa Everett) to find more dollars. But they have also been very active in finding dollars for themselves," she said.

For instance, Bradley said a new company is doing a better job now of collecting fees for ambulance service. The money collected is being used to help get new ambulances.

One of the issues still remaining, according to Friday, is a new fire station to permanently house Station 5 firefighters, who have been working out of temporary quarters for the last several years. Bradley said the city has been approved for federal assistance for a new fire station that will be located in the 4900 block of Pennsylvania Street. He hopes to break ground on it this year. Bradley also said he has improved furnishing at the stations.

Friday said another issue the union and administration are working on has to do with obtaining additional personal protective equipment and additional cleaners for that gear. The equipment helps protect firefighters against hazardous chemicals they might encounter when responding to a call.

Freeman-Wilson also is working with department heads, union officials, and the council to create public safety positions. These employees would be trained to perform both police and firefighting duties to some degree.

Bradley and Freeman-Wilson said it will be up to employees to decide whether they want to apply for these positions. Bradley said some firefighters have expressed interest in the positions.

In addition to paying a higher salary, Bradley said employees might be attracted to the position because of the opportunity to learn new skills.
HAMMOND  When Hailey DeWolf and Jacob Herr entered Bishop Noll Institute as freshmen, the choir had 22 students. As they graduated earlier this month, the choir had grown to more than 70 students thanks to leadership and enthusiasm from students like them.

In honor of their dedication, both students received the Rev. John Winterlin Award, a monetary scholarship presented to a current member of the Bishop Noll choir. Winterlin served as chairman of the Fine Arts Department at Bishop Noll and taught music and theology from 1969 to 1988.

Although the scholarship is typically given to one student, this year Noll choir director David Herr awarded it to both. They received their awards during graduation.

Not only have Hailey and Jacob met all that criteria. They have spent all four years now in the Fine Arts Department helping to improve it and set a standard of excellence that Father Winterlin would be very proud of today.

Both students plan to pursue the fine arts in college. David Herr said that regardless of whatever career they choose, they will continue to apply all the skills that they have obtained at Bishop Noll.

Learning to be patient, learning dedication and commitment and inspiring others  they can take everything they learned here in the fine arts and use it the rest of their lives and I know that they will.

DeWolf, of Hammond and a St. John Bosco School alum, wants to pursue singing and acting and is thinking about attending graduate school to study acting.

She said receiving the scholarship was an absolute honor.

Its really nice to have support from the Fine Arts Department and from the choir to back you up. It was nice to know that the department believed in you so much to give you a scholarship.

Jacob Herr, of St. John and a St. Thomas More School grad, said, By no means was being in theater my original plan. I wanted to be a musician because I was playing bass and was in a band.
MUNSTER  Cancer Resource Centre, 926 Ridge Road, offers free education programs and support groups for those with a cancer diagnosis and their caregivers.

For more information or to register, call (219) 836-3349.

To join a support group, call or visit www.cancerresourcecentre.com.

Reiki/Reflexology, 1 to 3 p.m. Monday. Reiki is a technique that aids the body in releasing stress and tension by creating deep relaxation and inner balance. Reiki restores energy, balance and vitality. A prescription from you physician is required prior to attending.

Wellness Support Group, 10 to 11:30 a.m. or 6 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. This group provides an opportunity to share feelings, receive support and learn ways to cope with the experience of having cancer.

Chair massage, 10 to 11:30 a.m. Wednesday. Enjoy the benefits of a 20-minute chair massage. Massage will physically relax the body, reduce mental stress, anxiety and may promote better sleep. A prescription from your physician is required prior to attending.

Healing touch, 1 to 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. Healing Touch uses hands-on and energy-based techniques to balance and align the human energy field. Body, mind, emotion and spirit are touched through this therapeutic process. A prescription from your physician is required prior to attending.

Healing Hearts Grief Support Group, 1 to 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. Join others who have lost a loved one to share experiences, struggles, feelings and triumphs. Facilitated by Hospice of the Calumet Area.

Breast Cancer Support Group, 6 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. For all women with a breast cancer diagnosis. Newly diagnosed to long-term survivors are welcome to share their concerns, stories and experiences.

Chi Gong, 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Thursday. Learn this ancient healing art of breath, movement, non-movement and meditation. You will be led through a one-hour session of warm ups, positions and focused movements. A prescription from your physician is required prior to attending.

Chair Yoga, 2 to 3 p.m. Thursday. Designed for those who have difficulty with the regular yoga environment. You may sit or use a chair for balance. Chair Yoga works to calm the nervous system and strengthens and quiets the mind and body. A prescription from your physician is required prior to attending.

Ukulele, 3:15 to 4:30 p.m. Thursday. Learn to play the ukulele from one of the Regions best! Rima Krutulis will instruct the class. Please call the center if you are a beginner. A prescription from your physician is required prior to attending.
PORTAGE  Rianna Bentley Wilson, 14, a member of Porter County 4-H and the Liberty Sunsetters, received a unique gift recently.

She got a yearling sheep through the Youth Conservationists Program for rare U.S. sheep breeds.

Earlier this year Joan Grott from the Porter County Purdue extension service contacted her about the YCP and how to apply to participate in this year's program.

Wilson wrote an essay about herself and what she does with sheep. She was chosen to be one of 15 out of 22 to receive a yearling sheep. She and her parents traveled to Maryland last month to get a Border Leicester sheep.

Wilson will be showing it at the county and state fairs and has to keep a scrapbook on her. She also has to breed her with a registered Border Leicester and keep in touch with the program coordinator. Bentley will be showing 12 sheep this year at the Porter County Fair. She named the sheep Pocahontas.

Wilson is the daughter of Ben and Danielle Wilson, of Portage.
VALPARAISO  Portage and Crown Point have adopted it. Munster is close to doing the same. LaPorte, Hobart and Merrillville are mulling it over and the mayor of Hammond wants nothing to do with it.

Now it's Valparaiso's turn to decide on a wheel tax.

The City Council on Monday will vote on whether to enact the tax to help pay for road improvement projects.

The Indiana Legislature granted cities with a population more than 10,000, the ability to enact an annual fee on vehicles for the purpose of road repair, construction and maintenance. The wheel tax is an on-going annual fee that is raised through payments of vehicle registrations.

The wheel tax would collect $25 per passenger vehicle and $40 per commercial vehicle registered within the city. The tax would be $12.50 for motorcycles, recreational vehicles and personal trailers.

Public Works Director Matt Evans said Valparaiso, along with other county and local agencies, has an unprecedented opportunity to secure up to $1 million in grant funding to resurface its most important roads.

"As director of public works, I devote more time to studying our roads than any other task, and I believe that we are facing a critical juncture regarding the state of our citys streets," he said.

Evans said the road resurfacing and maintenance budget averages $1.5 million annually, nearly $2.2 million less than necessary.

"A well maintained road network is critical to the safe and efficient flow of both people and goods," he said. "Valparaiso needs a additional, sustainable funding methods for improving its roads otherwise it will push deferred maintenance onto the next generation. If we do not close the $2.2 million gap, the issue will worsen as more of our roads will require costly structural repairs."

Monday's City Council meeting will include a public hearing on the proposed wheel tax. If adopted by the council, the wheel tax will go into effect Jan. 1.
ORLANDO, Florida  Reaction to the Florida mass shooting at the Pulse Orlando nightclub Sunday when police say a gunman wielding an assault-type rifle opened fire before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers; at least 50 people were killed and dozens of others wounded.

___ "Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love." Pulse Orlando on its Facebook page.

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"I was thinking, 'Are you kidding me?' So I just dropped down. I just said, 'Please, please, please, I want to make it out.' And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood." Christopher Hansen, who was in the VIP lounge when he heard gunshots.

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"This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as domestic terror incident." Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings.

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"Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, families and all those affected by this horrific tragedy. We are a strong and resilient state and we will devote every resource available to assist with the shooting in Orlando." Gov. Rick Scott.

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"We are heartbroken and angry that senseless violence has once again destroyed lives in our state and in our country. Gay clubs hold a significant place in LGBTQ history. They were often the only safe gathering place and this horrific act strikes directly at our sense of safety." Equality Florida.

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"Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act." Tweet from Hillary Clinton, Democratic presidential candidate.

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French President Francois Hollande "condemns with horror" the mass killing in Florida and "expresses the full support of France and the French with America's authorities and its people in this difficult time." Statement from Hollande's office.
Do you know a young professional who is blazing a trail on a bright career path in the Region?

We all do, and its time for the first step toward recognition at one of the signature events on the Northwest Indiana business calendar.

Were talking about the annual 20 Under 40 awards program, sponsored by The Times Media Co. and our IN Business Magazine.

This is the 12th year for a program that stands out because of great recipients who show leadership in business, education, government and social services.

The event will be held this fall, but the nomination process is underway and will conclude July 8. The time is now to share the information below and encourage nominations at www.nwi.com/20Under40.

Each nomination should tell how the nominee meets one or more of the following 20 Under 40 criteria:

Demonstrates leadership or success, or both, in his or her field of interest or occupation.

Contributes to his or her field of interest, occupation or community through innovation.

Shows a personal commitment to community service.

Supports educational programs or institutions.

All nominations must include the nominee's name, business and contact information and a brief summary of the nominee's career. Brief letters supporting the nominee are appreciated.

Do your part by nominating the best and brightest and sharing this callout for nominations. Were looking forward to honoring a #RegionProud group this fall.

NWI Next

Join us for the next NWI Next conversation in our Indiana bicentennial year series Thursday at the Munster Town Hall main meeting room, 1005 Ridge Road.

The topic of this fifth conversation, hosted by the Munster Historical Society, is public safety/first responders. The program will began at 6:30 p.m. with a presentation by Munster Police Chief Steve Scheckel, and it will continue until 8 p.m. There is no charge, and theres no need to register.

Thanks to Carole Cornelison for coordinating this stop in our series. Contact munsterhistory@sbcglobal.net or call (219) 836-6530 for more information.

For much more on state and Region history, visit our bicentennial site at nwi.com/history and follow our NWI History Facebook page.

Thanks for reading us. Please contact me with any questions about The Times or our many publications.
On May 17, 1860, the Republican convention campaign team of native son Abraham Lincoln met with the Indiana and Pennsylvania delegations in Chicago.

What emerged hours later was a bloc of Hoosiers who would vote for the president. Lincoln would go on to become the Great Emancipator, a worldwide statesman of biblical proportions.

It is a proud chapter that began with the Indiana Republican Party in its nascent form. The party was only six years old, and it played a decisive, early role in Lincolns improbable 1860 presidential nomination and subsequent victory that autumn.

Gov. Oliver P. Morton would forge a strong relationship with President Lincoln. He was an emphatic backer of the Emancipation Proclamation. Morton shrewdly kept Indiana in the Union by establishing a state arsenal, negotiating private loans to fund the war effort and suspending what had become a Copperhead General Assembly after the 1862 elections.

For his decisive leadership and moral bearings that made the Indiana Republicanism a stanchion for The Party of Lincoln, Mortons statue  along with two Union soldiers  guards the eastern approach to the Indiana Statehouse to this very day.

There were other examples of Hoosier Republicanism that have stood the test of time. House Speaker Schuyler Colfax, a founder of the Republican Party after winning a congressional seat as a member of the anti-slavery Indiana Peoples Party, played a crucial role in the passage of the 13th Amendment of 1865, which forever banned slavery. So invested in that process, Speaker Colfax took the rare step of voting for the amendment in what would become one of the defining moments of the Lincoln presidency.

House Minority Leader Charlie Halleck had been a strong opponent of the liberal New Frontier and Great Society agendas of Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, but when it came to the watershed Civil Rights Act of 1964, Halleck was one of its most emphatic advocates.

With this history, watching the Indiana Republican Party of today is to see a proud, vivid organization stoop into a strange moral decay.

After two weeks of watching the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump call federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel a Mexican (he was born and raised in East Chicago and has a degree from the Indiana University Law School); after watching Trump point to a man at a rally and say, Oh, look at my African-American over here. Look at him; and after calling for a ban of all Muslims, which Gov. Mike Pence said was unconstitutional and offensive, Pence, U.S. Sen. Dan Coats and U.S. Rep. Todd Young could only find the term inappropriate to describe what House Speaker Paul Ryan called textbook racism. Republican Chairman Jeff Cardwell called the Curiel episode a distraction.

Hoosier Republicans are now attached to Trump. When they had the opportunity to push for a true conservative, they sat on their hands. Such a strategy worked in Wisconsin in March, when Gov. Scott Walker, other Badger State Republican officials and its conservative talk radio network set up a bulwark in an attempt to derail Trump. They succeeded as Ted Cruz won the state. But other states down the line, including Indiana, did not mobilize. Pence endorsed Cruz  but just a few days before the primary.

The reward was Trumps 53 percent Indiana primary win that allowed him to assume the title of Republican presidential nominee. As it had with Lincoln, Indiana played a key, fateful role.

Influential Republicans stewed. Pence would endorse Trump two days after the primary, saying he would campaign for him. Sen. Coats came around in late May, saying Trump was a preferred alternative to Hillary Clinton. Congressional delegation members Jackie Walorski, Todd Rokita, Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb and U.S. Senate nominee Todd Young hid behind the phrase that they would vote for the Republican nominee.

And their reward? A racist nominee.

It took Attorney General Greg Zoeller, a Republican who will not be on the ballot this fall, to provide some moral clarity on the Curiel episode, telling The Times' Doug Ross, Our institutions are all under attack. Without the rule of law, youve got chaos. If theres a legitimate question of bias, there is a professional way to raise that without showing disrespect for a judge and the system generally. This is nowhere close. Im very sensitive to this, and Im upset that members of the profession have not all come out and said this is what we dont allow."

Those members of the profession  Pence, Coats, Rokita, Brooks and Rep. Luke Messer  failed to denounce Trump in their roles as attorneys.

Is racism merely inappropriate in the Indiana Republican Party?

Many Hoosier Republicans Ive talked to are in various states of torment, denial and acquiescence. There is an obvious out without voting for Hillary Clinton in backing the Libertarian ticket of former Republican governors Gary Johnson, of New Mexico, and William Weld, of Massachusetts.

By sticking with Trump, they are firmly under the sheets with a wild, unpredictable, nativist, racist and megalomaniacal standard bearer. The outcome could be inappropriate.
To ensure a future workforce in a time of change, Joe Coar, retired vice president and now consultant to Tonn and Blank, Michigan City, championed a path-breaking carpenters pre-apprenticeship program in high schools across the state.

His advocacy led to A.K. Smith being the first career center in Indiana to launch this new program for high school students. Next year, there will be 31 students participating.

Tremendous credit goes to Michigan City Area Schools Superintendent Barbara Eason-Watkins, along with Audra Peterson, director, LaPorte County Career & Technical Education, Joe said. He also credited Mark McGriff, chairman of the state regional council.

He added, At the national level, this initiative was led by International President Doug McCarren going across the country to promote participation.

So the timing was perfect to suggest we move forward to set this program up in LaPorte County, he added.

When Joe was inducted into The Times Business and Industry Hall of Fame in 2014, he talked with pride about this program becoming a statewide initiative and a hallmark of his career. Last October, Joe was inducted as a Fellow into The Society of Innovators.

For some time, Joe had been concerned about the lack of qualified candidates coming from LaPorte County. At the meeting of the Indiana/Kentucky/Ohio Regional Board in 2012, he shared this concern. There he learned about a new program for high school students in which they can take the same courses as the apprentice program and earn credits toward participation upon graduation.

When he learned about the Career Connections program, he jumped at the opportunity to be the first to introduce it in LaPorte County. Again, Joe has been calling for years to ensure a qualified future workforce for our region.

Joes persistence at the local, regional and state levels provided the need and value of the program. He built an eminent career as a self-taught, apprentice-educated visionary with a passion to prepare youth for the building trades. His leadership resulted in LaPorte County being one of the first in the Midwest to launch this program.

Students successfully completing the two-year course earn 14 dual college credits through Ivy Tech and fulfill requirements of the Carpenters Apprenticeship Training Program. They also are eligible for direct entry into the four-year carpentry apprenticeship.

At a time when many in the building trades are retiring, this program is an essential step forward, Joe said.

This program will generate a new generation of carpenters starting in high school to meet the needs for LaPorte County and Northwest Indiana, he said.

I want these young people to have the same chance I had when I started my career. This is a big deal, and the young people who are entering this program represent the future of our industry.
Money creates an intoxicating pull in politics, frequently channeling decisions of government leaders toward their friends or special interests.

Lake County commissioners have crucial evidence to weigh before deciding this week whether to reappoint a controversial union official to a powerful Region board.

Let's hope what's best for taxpayers  and not tens of thousands of dollars in past campaign contributions and personal and political friendships  plays a greater role in guiding that decision.

In the meantime, any Lake County residents fed up with the cronyism controversies swirling around Randolph "Randy" Palmateer need to call the commissioners and express their feelings on this important vote scheduled for Wednesday.

Those voices may be needed to balance the $38,600 in campaign contributions that labor unions or officials under the umbrella of Palmateer's union organization have pumped into Lake County Council and commissioner races during the past five years.

I've written much in recent weeks about Palmateer, business manager of the Northwest Indiana Building & Construction Trades Council, and the onslaught of embarrassment he's caused himself, political allies and the laborers and taxpayers he is supposed to represent.

The politically connected Palmateer was arrested in March on a charge of drunken driving during a Hammond police safety checkpoint. It was Palmateer's second such arrest since 2011, and both cases were pleaded down to lesser misdemeanor charges of reckless driving.

During the March arrest, police video shows Palmateer repeatedly invoked the name of his friend, Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr., illustrating the ugly underbelly of the political cronyism from which Palmateer clearly expected to benefit.

Controversy swirled last month around the perceived favoritism Palmateer received in being granted  by the Lake County prosecutor's office  his second plea deal to lesser charges in five years.

In the midst of that controversy, the Lake County Council voted 5-2 in May to reappoint Palmateer to the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority.

Four of the five yes votes were cast by council members who received a collective $7,650 in campaign contributions from unions affiliated with Palmateer's building and construction trades council between late 2010 and early 2016.

The RDA plays an influential role in Northwest Indiana, funneling millions of dollars every year to Region development projects. Palmateer sits as Lake County government's representative on the RDA board.

Now the three Lake County commissioners also must approve Palmateer's reappointment for his membership on the RDA board to continue.

They're scheduled to discuss and vote on the matter at 10 a.m. Wednesday in the Lake County commissioners courtroom of the county government center in Crown Point.

Those who are able should consider attending and making themselves heard. If you can't make the meeting, the commissioners can be reached at (219) 755-3200.

Call them ahead of the Wednesday meeting, and tell them how you believe they should vote.

Commissioner Gerry Scheub, a longtime Palmateer friend and political ally, said he'll have the best interests of his south county constituents at heart when he casts his vote.

A Times analysis of Lake County campaign finance records shows that between late 2010 and early 2016, Scheub received at least $19,950 in contributions from labor unions directly affiliated with Palmateer's organization.

The individual union contributions were among the largest single campaign gifts by any person or organization. While most individual contributions come in $100 increments, individual union contributions sometimes equal or exceed $1,000  and average about $400  each.

That's the kind of figure that can stand out to a candidate on his or her campaign ledgers.

Scheub claims that money won't influence how he votes Wednesday.

Lake County residents must hold him to that promise. Scheub said his mind on the matter already is made up, but he wouldn't disclose his decision ahead of the Wednesday vote.

Commissioner Mike Repay received $6,250 from unions under the umbrella of Palmateer's organization in that same time period.

He told me last week he was leaning toward reappointing Palmateer, despite recent controversies, because Palmateer was a good representative who attended the RDA's meetings.

But something in our conversation gave Repay pause.

Palmateer missed six of 14 RDA meetings between his initial spring 2013 appointment and the beginning of this year, according to RDA meeting minutes reviewed by The Times. I told Repay about the attendance record.

Repay said he wasn't previously aware  and wasn't thrilled  with Palmateer's 57 percent attendance rate to such a high-profile board.

So Repay may be a bit on the fence.

Lake County residents tired of political embarrassment and halfhearted representation should call Repay and let him know how they feel.

The third Lake County commissioner, Kyle Allen, has only been in that seat since a caucus of Lake County Democrats selected him in February to complete the term of his cousin, former Commissioner Roosevelt Allen. Roosevelt Allen died earlier this year.

Kyle Allen, a former Gary city councilman, notes  and campaign finance records verify  he hasn't received much money over the years from labor unions.

His campaign finance disclosures show only $100 in contributions from unions affiliated with Palmateer's organization.

But of the three commissioners, Allen is the only one publicly pledging his full support for Palmateer's reappointment.

Allen told me last week he made a promise to Palmateer before the alleged drunken driving controversy erupted, and he intends to keep it, regardless of any political embarrassments or other evidence.

He also told me he supported Palmateer, in part, because the embattled union official is the only person who has expressed interest in the position.

Allen's statement echoes what Lake County Councilman Dave Hamm told me last month before the council voted to reappoint Palmateer.

But we all should be asking the commissioners and council members how much effort they put into soliciting potential RDA appointments to represent county interests.

Did they beat the bushes of their constituencies seeking out civic-minded people who might fill the seat with distinction, or did they simply settle on Palmateer because he was the easy choice?

If they didn't cast a wide net  and none have provided evidence they did  then lazy government won the day.

Now the ball is in the court of county commissioners, who serve county taxpayers.

And those taxpayers have an equal responsibility to make themselves heard on this matter.

Former President Theodore Roosevelt once told us, "If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month."

The phrase holds true for taxpayers and union tradesmen, who work too hard to be undermined by Palmateer's embarrassments.
Its not surprising that John Aguilera, a former state representative from East Chicago, took the lead in the Indiana criticism of Donald Trump.

Aguilera, who is a Mexican American, took it personally when Trump said he couldnt get a fair hearing from U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, an East Chicago native, because the judge is of Mexican descent.

Trump, with his typical bluster, had the audacity to criticize  without cause  one of the most successful Mexican Americans ever born in Indiana.

So, is that the end of it? Trump spoke, and his critics responded. Alls fair on the campaign trail, right? Not exactly.

Trump is drawing a line in the sand every time he condemns a group or individual he doesnt like or agree with. Those on the receiving end wont forget.

Hillary Clinton will carry Indiana, not because Hoosiers are in love with her but because Trump has five months left to continue his path of self-destruction.

It clearly wasnt coincidence that Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Baron Hill was in East Chicago a couple of days after Aguilera rallied the troops.

Democrats are going to play the attack on Curiel for all they can. Call it political justice if you like.

After all, Hispanics  most of whom vote Democratic in Indiana  have a voice. And now they have a cause.

There are almost 83,000 Hispanics in Lake County. Thats about 17 percent of the population.

There are 390,000 Hispanics statewide, which is about 6 percent of the population.

Those are the kind of numbers that can make a difference. I dont know if Trump has enough political acumen to understand that.

But Indiana Gov. Mike Pence ought to know better. And he ought to be doing anything he can to ward off the impact of Trumps sexist remarks.

While I suspect most Hoosier Hispanics are leaning toward Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Gregg, Pence doesnt need to worsen the situation.

And thats pretty much what he did when asked to respond to Trumps ill-advised comments. Some feel as Trump goes, so goes Pence.

Pence called Trumps comments inappropriate, but stopped short of saying Trump ought to apologize to Curiel.

While Pence likes to criticize neighboring Illinois, he could have learned something from Republican Mark Kirk, the states junior senator, who is seeking re-election.

Kirk not only condemned Trumps words but said he no longer is supporting Trump  and wont vote for him.

Other than saying Trump was inappropriate, Pence had little to say.

Pence got a bit testy when reporters persisted with the Trump questions and said, You know, if I wanted to comment on everything thats being said in the presidential campaigns, I would have run for president.

Whether you want to call it political correctness, Kirk responded the proper way. Pence simply tripped over his GOP ego.
With all of the challenges and struggles in our Region's urban core, it's easy to lose sight of some truly inspiring occurrences.

East Chicago has long been an epicenter for many of these struggles, including blight, crime and political corruption.

But a number of positive things have transpired there lately. Let's hope city leaders and residents seize upon this momentum to turn a corner for this often beleaguered city.

First on the list is the biggest economic development deal in years for East Chicago. You can read about it today in an article from Times business reporter Joseph Pete.

Hoist Liftruck, which had been based in Bedford Park, Illinois, and employs 350 workers, is expected to employ 500 by 2022 at the vacant Blaw-Knox tank factory in East Chicago. The company invested $40 million to make large-capacity forklifts that are used in steel mills, automotive factories and canning plants.

It's incredible news for a city struggling for economic illumination, and we congratulate all business and city planners who helped make it possible.

Also on the list of recent upsides, the East Chicago City Council finally put politics aside and did the right thing for the city's people and reputation by ousting former Councilman Robert Battle.

Battle has been incarcerated in the Porter County Jail since last fall, facing federal drug and homicide-related charges.

Last month, the council voted to use a clause in state law allowing for the removal of local elected officials who are unable to perform their duties.

By its unanimous vote to remove Battle, the council began shedding the perception that local politicians stand by their friends no matter what.

On Monday, lifelong East Chicago resident Brenda Walker, 68, emerged victorious from a Democratic Party caucus as Battle's successor for the 3rd District council seat.

Walker, a member of the Concerned Calumet Citizens Committee and nursing home volunteer, now must work to restore confidence in the council position. We wish her well.

But beyond these turns for the better in East Chicago politics, our entire Region also can celebrate traction  finally  on the long-awaited fix for the Cline Avenue bridge.

Late last month, more than 100 local officials and members of the business community gathered for a ceremonial groundbreaking near the site of the closed bridge.

It marked the start of construction of an operations and maintenance building for the long-awaited bridge reconstruction. And we now have a targeted completion date for a new bridge to close the gap of this important Region thoroughfare. Planners of the project expect cars could resume passing over the bridge by summer 2019.

That would mark a decade after the Indiana Department of Transportation closed it for structural deficiencies, then demolished it in 2013.

At the groundbreaking, East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland said he thought "this day would never come."

Now it appears the sun may rise over a completed Cline Avenue bridge span within a few years.

We also can't ignore another positive East Chicago occurrence within recent weeks  something that happens annually, enriching the lives and potential future livelihoods of city youth.

This year, the Foundations of East Chicago awarded 55 scholarships to local students seeking higher education and another 16 non-traditional scholarships.

The foundations' scholarship program for high-achieving East Chicago residents has grown impressively since it began in 1998. We congratulate the recipients and praise the foundations for continuing to make dreams possible.

We also thank the foundations and others behind East Chicago's recent positive steps for restoring faith that the good things  the right things  can happen, even in sometimes troubled places.
This week marked the end of the school year for Lighthouse College Prep Academy in Gary, which means it's also the end of our pilot Civility in the Classroom program.

And what a semester it's been.

While the summer months mean the end of this program, it marks the beginning of something exciting.

The educators recruited for this pilot program and I are looking for more teachers, school leaders and curriculum builders to bring into the fold for this important work.

We've learned a lot, and now we're ready to expand. We are looking for Northwest Indiana educators who want to bring something different to their schools. We want teachers, retired teachers and school leaders who are hungry for a challenge, are excited about the future and understand students need something like Civility in the Classroom.

Who we are

Civility in the Classroom was born from a partnership between the Gary Chamber and The Times Media Co.'s Community Civility Counts initiative.

It was an idea: How can we teach the next generation to be inclusive, understanding and open? How can we take the example of what's happening in the political climate now and teach students humanity can and should be better?

Thanks to the leaders at Lighthouse College Prep, including Jeremy Williams and Mike Gonzales, we had a school. They saw the potential for a program that went beyond the basic curriculum and taught students something different.

With a ready and willing pool of students, I needed educators. Who in the Region had the skill and willingness to write something new? I connected with Susie Choi, a teacher at Lighthouse, and Katie Kirley, founding principal for a new charter school to open this fall in Gary, Steel City Academy.

The three of us hammered out a plan one afternoon at a coffee shop.

What is civility?

Civility is more than "being nice." In this program, civility is a word we can help define.

Civility is about inclusion. It's about openness and acceptance. We decided Civility in the Classroom would have to be broken into three parts to succeed: civility with self, civility with others and civility as a leader.

Civility with self

Internal work would have to be the basis of this program. We asked Lighthouse students if they could accurately define their emotions. Almost 40 percent were "neutral." So I asked them, what does that mean? They said they didn't know.

Emotional intelligence is hard for adults, so we understand students will need some work.

In order to be accepting of others, we really need to be aware of ourselves. Where are our biases and emotional reactions coming from? Can we name them? Can we define them? What triggers us?

Civility with others

The next step is to understand the person you are dealing with in any given situation has a whole lot of internal work to do.

When dealing with confrontation, what are the skills we need to neutralize the situation  even make the other person feel comfortable? How do we treat others with dignity and respect while always remembering each voice is not only unique, but important?

Civility as a leader

The last part of the semester was focused on hearing from leaders in the community. How do you inspire action? How do you make change? Who is doing good work now that we can learn from? How can our students become civility and community ambassadors?

Join us

Those are all the questions we worked to answer this semester. I think we did a pretty good job with a such a small group. But we need you.

We are looking for people to join our Civility in the Classroom Curriculum Committee to lead the charge in writing the program and lessons that bring civility to life for our kids and ultimately our Region.

If you or anyone you know might be interested, email me at summer.moore@nwi.com. Read more about the pilot program at nwi.com/civilitycounts.
MUNSTER  Construction crews continue working 24 hours a day to replace a NIPSCO natural gas pipeline under all four lanes of Calumet Avenue just south of Fisher Street.

The weather has been very favorable. Were right on schedule, said Rick Calinski, NIPSCO public affairs manager, Saturday evening. Were very satisfied.

Although crews have labored in temperatures soaring into the mid-90s, the lack of rain has kept the 67-hour gas pipeline replacement on target, Calinski said.

The Calumet Avenue road closure 100 feet south of Fisher Street began at 8 p.m. Friday and is slated to reopen by 3 p.m. Monday. If all continues to go well, the road might re-open before 3 p.m., Calinski said.

Earlier this spring, NIPSCO crews began replacing 3.5 miles of natural gas pipeline at the Illinois/Indiana state line in Munster as part of NIPSCOs $779 million natural gas modernization projects that started in 2014.

We went through the utility corridor on Fisher Street, Calinski said.

This is a very large transmission line, serving hundreds of thousands of customers, he explained. It even supports our industrial base along the shores of Lake Michigan.

The pipeline's route takes it from the Illinois/Indiana state line at Fisher Street to the intersection of Ridge Road and Indianapolis Boulevard, and into Highland just east of Kennedy Avenue.

Both the east and west lanes of Fisher Street north of Calumet Avenue remain open, allowing access to Community Hospital for emergency vehicles and other traffic.

An alternate access to the hospital is from Columbia Avenue on MacArthur Boulevard, said Marie Forszt, spokeswoman for Community Hospital.

We have no reports of issues or concerns with people accessing the hospital, Forszt said Saturday.

I think the communication has been good and given people plenty of time to prepare, Forszt said. Theres been a lot of cooperation.

Calinski echoed that message.

For more than a year, NIPSCO has been meeting with stakeholders including officials from the towns of Munster and Highland, the School Town of Munster and Community Hospital to gather their input, he said.

Munster officials planned detours and posted large flashing signs along Calumet Avenue.

Electronic notices along I-80/94 also alert truckers to exit south at Indianapolis Boulevard instead of Calumet Avenue. Additional detour signs on other roads including Kennedy Avenue and Ridge Road direct traffic to alternate routes.

Earlier in the week, Munster Town Manager Dustin Anderson said, We are trying to push truck traffic to U.S. 30 and to Indianapolis Boulevard, so that we dont have tractor-trailers on Ridge Road or 45th Street."

Trucks that serve Munsters businesses south of Fisher Street along Calumet Avenue such as Pepsi will be directed to travel north on Calumet from U.S. 30, he said.

Alternate routes for other traffic include Fran-Lin Parkway to Columbia Avenue, and Ridge Road to Columbia Avenue. Area residents also could take White Oak Avenue, Anderson said.

Calinski said the town of Munster and schools have been encouraged to use their Nixle notification systems.

We appreciate the patience of our customers as we continue this important system modernization project that will provide future benefits to all customers in Northwest Indiana, he said.
The NYPD is beefing up security in the city, particularly at LGBT facilities, following the deadliest mass shooting in United States history Sunday morning at a gay club in Orlando, as the public learns more about the alleged shooter.

At least 50 people were killed and 53 are wounded after a gunman opened fire inside an Orlando nightclub early Sunday, according to the local police chief and mayor.



The suspect was identified as 29-year-old Omar Saddiqui Mateen, seen in the photo gallery below, of Port St. Lucie, Florida.

Reports say Mateen was born in New York. His ex-wife told The Washington Post that Mateen's family was from Afghanistan. The family later moved to Florida.



The NYPD said in a statement that it is closely monitoring the investigation, is in contact with the FBI and Florida law enforcement authorities in Florida, and has deployed additional counter terrorism resources throughout New York City, "particularly at LGBTQ facilities to keep all [New Yorkers] safe."

Police said the shooting happened at a well-known gay club, Pulse Orlando, around 2 a.m.

Police Chief John Mina said 50 people were killed, up from an up from the 20 reported earlier.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said the shooter is among the dead.



Organizers of the 70th annual Tony Awards announced that victims of the shooting would be honored at Sunday night's award show.

Authorities said an off-duty officer who worked at the club was the first to respond and eventually engaged with the suspect.

Police said the gunman, who was armed with an assault rifle and a handgun, ran back into the club and held the remaining people hostage for what lasted around three hours.

By 5 a.m., police broke down the door with an armored vehicle, letting 30 people inside the club go safely.

Officers exchanged gunfire with the suspect, who died in the exchange.



Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were among many the New York politicial figures who weighed in on the shooting Sunday.



It took authorities hours to find all the victims inside the club, and they said they are still identifying all of the dead and wounded. Law enforcement leaders tell us that, along with notifying their families, could take hours.

In addition to the guns, the shooter also had some sort of "suspicious device," Mina said.

Police had said previously on Twitter that there was a "controlled explosion" at the scene of the shooting. Mina said that noise was caused by a device intended to distract the shooter.

"It was just one after another, after another, after another," said a witness describing the scene when gunshots broke out inside the club.

"It could've lasted a whole song. Because after everybody was out, shootings were still going and the cops were yelling, 'Go, go, clear the area, clear the area!'"

Club-goer Rob Rick said the shooting started just before closing time.

"Everybody was drinking their last sip," he said.



The shooting is the deadliest in the nation's history, eclipsing the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre in which 32 were killed, and the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in which 27 died.

Many of the wounded are in critical condition. One officer was injured in the shooting, but not seriously, as his police helmet protected him.

Dozens of police vehicles swarmed the area around the club. At least two police pickup trucks were seen taking what appeared to be shooting victims to the Orlando Regional Medical Center.

Officials said the shooting is being investigated as a terror attack and a hate crime.

"I think it's more likely than not that it was an ideologically-motivated attack," Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, (R), said at a press conference.

"Right now, we don't have any direct information that he was associated with any particular group. But it does seem that it's no coincidence that the attack took place where it did."



The FBI had investigated Mateen twice in the past for possible ties to Islamic extremism, but there was not enough evidence to charge him.

The FBI had been at Mateen's Florida home for the better part of Sunday, hoping to understand what lead up to this deadly rampage.



NY1 learned that Mateen had recently purchased two firearms in just the past few days: a hand gun and possibly a high-powered rifle.

Mateen had called 911 at the time of the attack, but the FBI has not confirmed it was to pledge allegiance to ISIS, which is what sources have told the Associated Press.

Mateen's father, Mir Seddique, said he is in shock and that he was not aware of anything his son might have been planning.

"We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident," Seddique said. "We are in shock like the whole country."

Seddique also said the incident has nothing to do with religion.

House Speaker Paul Ryan also reacted on Twitter to news of the shooting.

We pray for those brutally attacked in Orlando. While we must learn more about the attacker, the victims & families will not be forgotten.  Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) June 12, 2016

Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

Really bad shooting in Orlando. Police investigating possible terrorism. Many people dead and wounded.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Weighing in on the shooting, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Sen. Charles Schumer, and City Comptroller Scott Stringer focused on their call for more gun control.

"Once again, this is a terrible reminder of the rampant gun violence we have in this nation," Cuomo said. "I'm glad this state is taking action, because the gun violence is just getting worse and worse and worse."

"It's a terrible tragedy. We don't know the details yet, but one thing we do know: no one should have an AR 15, an assault weapon. That's what was used here and it killed so many people so quickly," Schumer said.



"This is such a terrible national tragedy. Look, I think this country has to make a decision about these guns. The more guns out there, the more tragedies were gonna have," Stringer said. "But this is so terrible, so many innocent lives lost. And every time we decry the violence, and yet it seems to be getting worse."



"We in New York know this pain; we've been through it before. And we know that when something like this happens, the entire community feels it. Every neighborhood, people of every background  we feel it together," Mayor Bill de Blasio said at the Muslim Community Network's 6th Annual Gala on Sunday.



Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for Orange County, Florida, the county in which Orlando resides.

Scott and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said their home state and the nation will not give in to terror.

"I hope they see today that they won't terrorize Americans, they won't terrorize Floridians, that we stand for and with all Americans, irrespective of their sexual orientation, irrespective of their party ideology, irrespective of where they live," Rubio said.



"We are all Americans," Rubio continued. "You're seeing the response today, and this will continue. This will make us stronger. They will not win."

"Clearly, this is an act of terrorism," Scott said. "You just can't imagine this happening in any community, can't imagine happening in your state if you're the governor of a state, and you can't imagine this happening in your country."



The White House also issued a statement, sending thoughts and prayers to the families and loved ones of the victims.

President Obama also said he is dedicating federal resources to help with the ongoing investigation.



If you are concerned about a family member in Orlando, the city's mayor says you can call 407-246-4357 for more information.

The city of Orlando has also started releasing names of victims whose next of kin have been contacted:





Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34 years old

Stanley Almodovar III, 23 years old

Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20 years old

Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22 years old

Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36 years old

Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22 years old

Luis S. Vielma, 22 years old



Kimberly Morris, 37 years old



You can find the list at www.cityoforlando.net/blog/victims

The list is being periodically updated.



Separately, a heavily-armed man was arrested Sunday in Los Angeles after he planned to carry out an attack at the city's gay pride parade, according to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Authorities said the man has been identified as 20-year-old James Wesley Howell of Indiana.

Local police said when they arrested Howell, they found three assault rifles, high-capacity magazines, ammunition, and a five-gallon bucket filled with chemicals that could have been used to make a bomb.

Police officers said they were tipped off by Santa Monica residents who said the man looked suspicious.

Santa Monica's police chief said Howell told officers he wanted to harm the gay pride event in West Hollywood, where hundreds of thousands of people were gathered.

In a news conference, Garcetti said his city stands with the people of Orlando.

"We are Pulse, we are Orlando, we are Americans, we are all LGBTQ community members today," Garcetti said. "We are all part of a country that will not be beaten down, we will not go away, and today we are proud of who we are."

The sheriff's office said there is no immediate threat, and authorities said they have no reason to believe the incident is linked to the events in Orlando.
In the wake of the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, politicians  including both presidential front-runners and high-ranking New York State officials  took to the internet and social media and reacted. They expressed condolences for the victims and their families, condemned the mass violence, and offered their thoughts on the attack.

Statement from Hillary Clinton

I join Americans in praying for the victims of the attack in Orlando, their families and the first responders who did everything they could to save lives.

This was an act of terror. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are hard at work, and we will learn more in the hours and days ahead. For now, we can say for certain that we need to redouble our efforts to defend our country from threats at home and abroad. That means defeating international terror groups, working with allies and partners to go after them wherever they are, countering their attempts to recruit people here and everywhere, and hardening our defenses at home. It also means refusing to be intimidated and staying true to our values.

This was also an act of hate. The gunman attacked an LGBT nightclub during Pride Month. To the LGBT community: please know that you have millions of allies across our country. I am one of them. We will keep fighting for your right to live freely, openly and without fear. Hate has absolutely no place in America.

Finally, we need to keep guns like the ones used last night out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals. This is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States and it reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets.

This is a time to stand together and resolve to do everything we can to defend our communities and country.



Statement from Donald Trump

Last night, our nation was attacked by a radical Islamic terrorist. It was the worst terrorist attack on our soil since 9/11, and the second of its kind in 6 months. My deepest sympathy and support goes out to the victims, the wounded, and their families.

In his remarks today, President Obama disgracefully refused to even say the words 'Radical Islam'. For that reason alone, he should step down. If Hillary Clinton, after this attack, still cannot say the two words 'Radical Islam' she should get out of this race for the Presidency.

If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore. Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen  and it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can't afford to be politically correct anymore.

The terrorist, Omar Mir Saddique Mateen, is the son of an immigrant from Afghanistan who openly published his support for the Afghanistani Taliban and even tried to run for President of Afghanistan. According to Pew, 99% of people in Afghanistan support oppressive Sharia Law.

We admit more than 100,000 lifetime migrants from the Middle East each year. Since 9/11, hundreds of migrants and their children have been implicated in terrorism in the United States.

Hillary Clinton wants to dramatically increase admissions from the Middle East, bringing in many hundreds of thousands during a first term  and we will have no way to screen them, pay for them, or prevent the second generation from radicalizing.

We need to protect all Americans, of all backgrounds and all beliefs, from Radical Islamic Terrorism - which has no place in an open and tolerant society. Radical Islam advocates hate for women, gays, Jews, Christians and all Americans. I am going to be a President for all Americans, and I am going to protect and defend all Americans. We are going to make America safe again and great again for everyone.



Statement from Bernie Sanders

All Americans are horrified, disgusted and saddened by the horrific atrocity in Orlando.

At this point we do not know whether this was an act of terrorism, a terrible hate crime against gay people or the act of a very sick person, but we extend our heartfelt condolences to the victims families and loved ones and our thoughts are with the injured and the entire Orlando LGBTQ community.



Reaction from Mayor Bill de Blasio

"We in New York know this pain; we've been through it before. And we know that when something like this happens, the entire community feels it. Every neighborhood, people of every background  we feel it together," de Blasio said at the Muslim Community Network's 6th Annual Gala on Sunday.





This is not just an attack on people - it's an attack on our core values of tolerance and freedom. And our values will win. #Orlando  Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) June 12, 2016

Statement from Gov. Andrew Cuomo

I am shocked and saddened by the senseless attack that occurred early this morning in Orlando. On behalf of all New Yorkers, our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, the injured and their loved ones during this unimaginably difficult time. New Yorkers stand in solidarity with the people of Florida and the LGBT community, and I have directed flags at state buildings to be flown at half-staff in the memory of those who were lost in this terrible act of mass murder.

This is just one more horrific reminder of the need for Congress to pass real and sensible gun safety legislation, just as we did in New York. It is far past time for Washington to act.

Early reports indicate this was likely an act of domestic terrorism. While there is no specific intelligence that suggests any link between the attacks that occurred in Orlando with New York, out of an abundance of caution, I have directed additional security measures at key points around the state as a precaution. The safety of New Yorkers and our state's visitors is our number one priority, and we are remaining vigilant and in close contact with local and federal officials and our partner law enforcement agencies.



Reaction from Sen. Charles Schumer





Horrified and saddened by the appalling attack at Orlando LGBT nightclub. Praying for the victims and their families.  Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) June 12, 2016



Reaction from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
At least 50 people were killed and 53 are wounded after a gunman opened fire inside an Orlando nightclub early Sunday, according to the local police chief and mayor, in the worst mass shooting in United States history.

Police said the shooting happened at a well-known gay club, Pulse Orlando, around 2 a.m.

Police Chief John Mina said 50 people were killed, up from an up from the 20 reported earlier.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said the shooter is among the dead.

The suspect was identified as Omar Mateen, seen in the photo gallery below, of Port St. Lucie, Florida.

Authorities said an off-duty officer who worked at the club was the first to respond and eventually engaged with the suspect.

Police said the gunman, who was armed with an assault rifle and a handgun, ran back into the club and held the remaining people hostage for what lasted around three hours.

It was at that time, police said, that a decision was made to rescue hostages.

Officers exchanged fire with the suspect, who died in the exchange.

In addition to the guns, the shooter also had some sort of "suspicious device," Mina said.

Police had said previously on Twitter that there was a "controlled explosion" at the scene of the shooting. Mina said that noise was caused by a device intended to distract the shooter.

"It was just one after another, after another, after another," said a witness describing the scene when gunshots broke out inside the club.



"It could've lasted a whole song. Because after everybody was out, shootings were still going and the cops were yelling, 'Go, go, clear the area, clear the area!'"

Club-goer Rob Rick said the shooting started just before closing time.

"Everybody was drinking their last sip," he said.

Many of the wounded are in critical condition. One officer was injured in the shooting, but not seriously, as his police helmet protected him.

Dozens of police vehicles swarmed the area around the club. At least two police pickup trucks were seen taking what appeared to be shooting victims to the Orlando Regional Medical Center.

Officials said the shooting is being investigated as a terror attack and a hate crime.

"I think it's more likely than not that it was an ideologically-motivated attack," Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, (R), said at a press conference.



"Right now, we don't have any direct information that he was associated with any particular group. But it does seem that it's no coincidence that the attack took place where it did."

Mateen's father, Mir Seddique, said he is in shock and that he was not aware of anything his son might have been planning.

"We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident," Seddique said. "We are in shock like the whole country."

Seddique also said the incident has nothing to do with religion.

Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, along with House Speaker Paul Ryan, reacted on Twitter to news of the shooting.





Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

Really bad shooting in Orlando. Police investigating possible terrorism. Many people dead and wounded.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

We pray for those brutally attacked in Orlando. While we must learn more about the attacker, the victims & families will not be forgotten.  Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) June 12, 2016

The NYPD said in a statement that it is closely monitoring the investigation, is in contact with the FBI and Florida law enforcement authorities in Florida, and has deployed additional counter terrorism resources throughout New York City, "particularly at LGBTQ facilities to keep all [New Yorkers] safe."

The White House also issued a statement, sending thoughts and prayers to the families and loved ones of the victims.



President Obama also said he is dedicating federal resources to help with the ongoing investigation.
Its all about Hamilton at the Tony Awards, hosted by James Corden of The Late Late Show. Billy Ray Cyrus, Mileys dad, skewers himself in Still the King. And Norman Reedus of The Walking Dead takes a ride.

Whats on TV

THE 70TH ANNUAL TONY AWARDS 8 p.m. on CBS. James Corden of The Late Late Show  a 2012 best actor Tony winner for One Man, Two Guvnors  makes his hosting debut at this ceremony honoring excellence on Broadway. But most eyes (especially those who cant afford $849 tickets) will be on Lin-Manuel Miranda and his Hamilton crew, who are expected to take home armfuls of statuettes, including the one for best musical. Other near shoo-ins, according to a sample survey of Tony voters: The Humans, for best new play, and its stars Reed Birney and Jayne Houdyshell, and A View From the Bridge, for best revival. (Image: Mr. Corden)

THE OPEN MIND 3:30 p.m. on World. Virginia Heffernan, a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, discusses her new book, Magic & Loss: The Internet as Art.

LEGENDS & LIES: THE PATRIOTS 8 p.m. on Fox News. Alexander Hamilton isnt the only founding father onscreen tonight. Here, Bill OReilly offers historical commentary on the life and times of John Adams.
Forty-five years ago, White House officials released the plan for Tricia Nixons June 12, 1971, wedding reception. The announcement included the recipe for her wedding cake, an old-fashioned lemon poundcake.

Then The New York Times tried to bake it. The result was mush on the outside of the layer and soup on the inside, wrote The Timess food editor, Raymond A. Sokolov, in an article with the headline, Warning! It May Not Work.

Image Maurice Bonte, left, a chef from Le Perigord restaurant in New York, assisted Heinz Bender, the White House pastry chef, in the decoration of the seven-foot-tall cake. Credit... Mike Lien/The New York Times

Over the next days, former and future Times food staff members would weigh in on the recipe, which had been scaled down, perhaps problematically, for the home cook to yield a single, 12-inch round.
Adrienne Latimer Stillman, the daughter of Andrea Gray Stillman and Wells Stillman, both of New York, was married June 11 to Jacob Michael Krausz, a son of Susan C. Krausz and F. Ron Krausz of St. Helena, Calif. Kevin Schmitt, a cousin of the groom and a Universal Life minister, officiated at the home of the grooms parents in Napa, Calif.

The bride, 30, is a marketing manager at WineDirect, a company in the Napa Valley that provides e-commerce software and shipping logistics to wineries. She graduated magna cum laude from Barnard College and is a certified sommelier through the Court of Master Sommeliers in London.

Her father is the managing partner of Access Publishing Company, an electronic news publishing consultancy based in New York. Her mother was the assistant to the photographer Ansel Adams, who died in 1984. Since Mr. Adamss death, she has continued to edit books about and curate exhibitions of his photography.

The groom, 34, works in the Napa Valley as the estate director at Arkenstone Estate Winery, which is owned by his family. The groom is also a founder of AMB Wine Cellars, a wine brand based in Napa. He graduated from Expression College for Digital Arts in Emeryville, Calif., and, like the bride, is a certified sommelier through the Court of Master Sommeliers.
Caroline Lane Young and Nicholas Joseph Fall were married June 11 at St. Anns Episcopal Church in Bridgehampton, N.Y. The Rev. Timothy J. Lewis performed the ceremony.

Mrs. Fall, 32, is a manager of marketing and strategic initiatives for the Sheraton Hotels brand of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, in Stamford, Conn. She graduated from the University of Virginia and received an M.B.A. from N.Y.U.

She is the daughter of Carolyn Lane Young and Mason J. Young III of Oak Hill, Va. The brides father is a consultant on satellite and cyber security sales for the federal government; he works from Oak Hill.

Mr. Fall, also 32, is a director, structuring high-yield bonds and leveraged loans, in the New York investment banking division of Barclays, the British bank. He graduated from Princeton.
Dr. Catherine Sheridan Spina and Brigham Beecher Hyde were married June 11. Dr. Orian S. Shirihai, who was ordained by First Nation Ministry for this event, officiated at the Devils Thumb Ranch, a resort in Tabernash, Colo.

Dr. Spina, 34, will keep her name. She is an intern at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass., and is to begin a radiation oncology residency next month at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. She graduated from Boston University, from which she also received a doctoral degree in biomedical engineering and a medical degree.

She is a daughter of Linda C. Wright of Clark, Colo., and Robert J. Spina of Denver. The brides father is a software development consultant in Denver. Her mother is the chief executive of Breakfast Serials, which provides original serialized stories to newspapers. The bride is also a stepdaughter of Edward I. Wortis, who writes young-adult fiction as Avi.

Dr. Hyde, 35, works in New York as the chief data officer at the Decision Resources Group, a health care analytics and consulting company. He graduated from Northeastern University and received a doctoral degree in clinical pharmacology from Tufts.
Rebecca Anne Kaden, the daughter of Ellen Oran Kaden and Lewis B. Kaden of New York, was married June 11 to Scott Aaron Friedman, the son of Jill Ross Friedman and Franklin M. Friedman of Lake Worth, Fla. Rabbi April P. Davis officiated at the Rainbow Room in New York.

Ms. Kaden, 30, is keeping her name. She is a partner in Maveron, a venture capital firm that invests in consumer-technology start-ups; she works in the firms San Francisco office. She graduated from Harvard and received an M.B.A. from Stanford.

Her father retired as a vice chairman of Citigroup and is now a vice chairman of the Asia Society and the chairman of the Markle Foundation, an organization in New York that seeks to use emerging technologies to improve lives. Her mother retired as a senior vice president and the chief legal and public affairs officer of Campbell Soup Company in Camden, N.J.

Mr. Friedman, 34, is a business development manager at Google in Mountain View, Calif., where he develops utility and telecom partnerships. He graduated from the University of Maryland and received a masters degree in international development from Tulane.
Shannon Leigh Mattingly, a daughter of Valeri Wiedeman Dillon and Mark L. Mattingly, both of Fremont, Calif., was married June 11 to Jon Fredericks Nathanson, a son of Teresa Fredericks Nathanson and Greg A. Nathanson of Los Angeles. David F. Nathanson, a cousin of the groom and a Universal Life minister, officiated at Calamigos Ranch, an event space in Malibu, Calif.

Mrs. Nathanson, 33, is a strategic partner manager at Facebook in Menlo Park, Calif.; she develops and manages relationships with public figures, media outlets and nonprofits. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.

The brides father retired as a government and economics teacher at Mission San Jose High School in Fremont. Her mother retired last week as a special-education teacher at Village High School in Pleasanton, Calif.

Mr. Nathanson, 36, is the senior vice president for business development at Whipclip, a company in Santa Monica, Calif., that allows viewers to share snippets of television programs. He graduated from Yale and received an M.B.A. from Northwestern.
WASHINGTON  I really felt like the roof had caved in on me, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. said the other day, recalling the low point of his five years as the Obama administrations top appellate lawyer.

Mr. Verrilli, 58, is preparing to step down from the job this month after a tenure that included 37 Supreme Court arguments and a string of major victories on behalf of a Democratic president facing a court dominated by conservative justices. But the scathing reviews of his most important Supreme Court argument, in the 2012 case challenging the constitutionality of President Obamas health care law, still sting.

Minutes after the presentation was over, Jeffrey Toobin, the CNN legal analyst, said it had been a train wreck for the Obama administration, adding that this law looks like its going to be struck down.

Mr. Verrilli said reviews like that were quite rough.

I wont kid you, he said. It was hard, really hard. Not only because I like to think of myself as a good lawyer, but also this was an incredibly consequential case. It mattered to the president. It mattered to the administration. It mattered to the country.
This second movement of Untitled America segues into an electronic score by Raime interspersed with contemporary-sounding voices of people recounting the number of years in their prison sentences and how they miss their families. Over this affecting soundscape, Mr. Abraham drapes a loose coil of duets and solos; the layering is sophisticated but ultimately too slack. Mr. Abrahams vocabulary, with its rich mix of street and studio suggesting a body at war with itself, is potent and explosive and wonderfully of the moment, yet his sense of structure seems stuck. The installments keep coming without advancing.

Mr. Bigonzettis Deep has almost the opposite flaw. This Italian choreographer, who was recently appointed director of La Scala Ballet, can make a coherent dance with a chic and sparkling surface. The Ailey dancers look terrific in his broken shapes. But what at first appears inventive in the choreography  the unusual connections between elbows and stomachs, the feet clasping necks  turns out to be mere flash. The way Mr. Bigonzetti takes advantage of the dancers extraordinary technique comes to feel exploitative. A motif in which a dancer hovers at the edge of something without diving in is all too apt as an encapsulation of the work. Deep it isnt.

For music, Deep uses recordings by Ibeyi, French-Cuban twins who sing of Yoruban gods in lightweight, club-friendly tracks. The more challenging sounds of Afro-Cuban jazz that drive Ronald K. Browns Open Door arent the only element that distinguishes Mr. Browns treatment of Afro-Cuban material from Mr. Bigonzettis. Mr. Brown knows Cuba, even if this work isnt one of his most inspired.

Whats most remarkable is how the Ailey dancers can fully flesh out Mr. Browns irresistible blend of African and modern and then just as fully inhabit the groove and footwork of the hip-hop steps in Rennie Harriss Exodus. Something subtle in the style of Paul Taylors tango-inspired Piazzolla Caldera still eludes them, but they can easily manage the vast stylistic shift between Untitled America and Mr. Battles own No Longer Silent. That 2007 piece, Mr. Battles best, could be from the 1930s. Especially because the virtues of that work are so rooted in the past, it is to Mr. Battles credit that the company he leads no longer looks behind the times.
PARIS  The art dealer and billionaire David Nahmad says he is well aware of the scornful whispers that trail him when he travels to Brazil, to New York. He says he feels the disapproving stares when he enters his synagogue at home in Monaco.

People say, Oh, David stole it; he should give it back immediately, Mr. Nahmad said in a rare interview at a hotel here.

It is a valuable painting by Modigliani, an oil portrait of a dapper chocolate merchant in a hat and tie, seated and holding a cane. A Nahmad holding company bought the work at auction in 1996 and has owned it ever since. But the grandson of a Jewish antiques dealer says it is the same work that was confiscated from his relatives Paris shop during the Nazi occupation and sold off more than 70 years ago.

For almost five years, the grandson, Philippe Maestracci, and a company specializing in recovering looted art have pressed a claim in New York state and federal courts for the work, once estimated to be worth as much as $25 million.
Momentous elections turn on momentous questions. In 2016 the question is clear: What has gotten into peoples heads?

BrainDead, which begins on CBS Monday, has a theory: bugs. Specifically, antlike insects that have turned up in Washington after a meteor strike and crawled into the ears of politicians and their staffers, turning them into  well, themselves, but more obnoxious.

BrainDead is a fun summer experiment, with a loopy, I-cant-believe-this-got-on-CBS charm. Its sci-fi, its comedy, its political commentary. But its also about as nuanced as an ant colony lodged in your cranium.

Our field guide to our new insect overlords is Laurel Healy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who was born into a political dynasty but would rather be shooting documentaries about Melanesian choirs.
And many hedge fund managers found themselves crowded in the same stock. That meant big returns as everyone piled in but even bigger declines when everyone sold out.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, for example, was one of the most popular stocks held by hedge funds in 2015, and its stock price soared to more than $260 a share at one point. But when news of a government investigation came to light and issues with the companys pricing strategy became apparent, the stock came crashing down. On Friday, Valeants share closed at a low of $24.

What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? Whats their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source. Learn more about our process.

Mr. Ackman, who has been Valeants biggest cheerleader, has lost billions of dollars so far on his bet on the company. His Pershing Square Holdings is down 17.5 percent so far this year through June 7, in large part because of the Valeant position.

Other hedge fund titans including Paulson & Company and Viking Global Investors have collectively lost billions of dollars on the Valeant trade.

I see the herd mentality among hedge funds every day, Roslyn Zhang, a managing director at China Investment Corporation, Chinas sovereign wealth fund, said at the SkyBridge Alternatives, or SALT, hedge fund conference in Las Vegas last month. Describing how some funds spend two seconds on one theme before deciding to put investor money behind the idea, she added: We pay 2 and 20 for treatment like this. I am reflecting that maybe we are not making the right decision.

All of this has prompted some self-reflection within the industry.

We are in the first innings of a washout in hedge funds, Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of the hedge fund Third Point, wrote to investors in a recent letter, describing a catastrophic period for the industry.

But for some investors, acknowledgment of poor performance is not enough. In September 2014, the nations biggest pension fund, the California Public Employees Retirement System, or Calpers, announced plans to liquidate its $4 billion hedge fund holdings on concerns that the investments were too expensive and too complicated. In April this year, the pension fund for New York City civil employees voted to exit its portfolio of $1.5 billion in hedge fund investments.
But its closing was no exception. From 2000 to 2014, 28 percent of Paris bookstores closed, according to a 2015 report from the Paris Urban Planning Agency, a body assembled by the City Council in 1967 to chart social and economic evolution in the French capital. Crippling rent increases in Pariss densely populated center were mostly to blame, as well as growing competition from e-commerce sites that are able to offer far more titles than a cramped city bookstore. The decline in sales of newspapers and magazines also contributed, since these are often sold alongside books in French bookstores.

Image The Espresso Book Machine is made by On Demand Books, which chose the name as a nod to an activity that can be completed in the five minutes it takes to print a book: Have a quick coffee. Credit... Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times

The Latin Quarter, which has the highest concentration of bookshops in the city, was among the worst-hit areas. In an effort to protect the neighborhoods unique character  and prevent so-called blandification  the Paris City Council in 2008 made it the center of its VitalQuartier program. The program buys retail spaces across Paris, renovates them and rents them to small culturally significant enterprises at far below market rates. Les Puf was leased one of these spaces on Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, allowing it to reopen in March just a few blocks from where it closed.

Were already thinking about opening in other big cities in France  in university towns like Lille, Bordeaux and Lyon, Mr. Gaudefroy said. After a few weeks of business, theres a real commercial motivation for doing so because, well, were selling a lot of books. A lot more than predicted. We thought wed sell 10, 15 books in a day, but its been more like 30 or 40.

Its an investment, but if its well managed, it can be very profitable, Mr. Gaudefroy said. Along with the low rent for its retail space and the elimination of the cost of overproducing books that may not sell, Les Puf benefits from an affordable two-year lease on the Espresso Book Machine from the French printing association Ireneo. And Frances fixed-book pricing law, which prohibits anyone from selling books at a discount, means Les Puf can charge the price set by the publisher for each book. A lot of publishers I know are interested in the idea, especially when we tell them how little it costs us, Mr. Gaudefroy said.

So far, the store has relied on foot traffic and the pull of the machines novelty to draw customers, but a social media and leafleting campaign aimed at students  Les Pufs original demographic  is planned.

Les Pufs success is not an anomaly. Times are still tough for brick-and-mortar shops, but signs of a recovery are widespread. In the United States, sales in physical bookstores rose by 2.5 percent last year, the first increase since 2007. In Britain, the largest chain bookseller, Waterstones, announced a return to profitability at the end of last year after the arrival of the indie book-selling success story James Daunt as managing director.
The Treasurys schedule of financing this week includes Mondays regular weekly auction of new three- and six-month bills and an auction of four-week bills on Tuesday.

At the close of the New York cash market on Friday, the rate on the outstanding three-month bill was 0.26 percent. The rate on the six-month issue was 0.41 percent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.19 percent.

The following tax-exempt fixed-income issues are scheduled for pricing this week:

TUESDAY

Chesterfield County, Va., $90.1 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive.

Memphis, $68 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive.

Union County, N.J., $63 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive.
Mr. Ligon thinks back on that day in 2013 with more nostalgia than fear or outrage. It has been a long three years  longer, actually, since his wife died in 2009, leaving him alone in the Waverly Place apartment in Greenwich Village that they had shared for decades.

Mr. Ligon is an actor whose past roles include a bit part as a nephew on an episode of The Honeymooners and a longtime part as Lucas Lorenzo Prentiss on the soap opera The Young and the Restless. But recent years have found him working less and eating and drinking more, and they have taken a toll.

Walks in the neighborhood have became difficult. He has to stop at stoops or storefront benches once or twice on every block to catch his breath. He used to laugh at guys who hit 300 pounds. His livelihood depended on his looks, and he wondered how someone could let that happen. Then last month he stepped on a scale and looked at the number: 292.

I just let go of the reins a little too much, he said.

When the detective called last month, it was a welcome distraction from the visits to the doctors, the breathless walks. The suspect was identified as Kenneth Wiley, 34, with addresses listed in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The police, working backward, said Mr. Wiley was linked to many more crimes than the one at Mr. Ligons home.

Image Kenneth Wiley. Credit... New York Police Department

On May 4, a woman on a downtown subway train said she was approached by a man who asked her: How do I get to the C train? I need to go to the hospital because of my stomach. The woman saw that he was fondling himself, and told him to get away, the police said.
Andre Brown has always been a tastemaker. Better known as Doctor Dre  the Long Island original, not the West Coast producer and gangster rapper  he has been sharing his musical tastes since the 1980s as a D.J. for the Beastie Boys, a member of the hip-hop group Original Concept and a co-host of Yo! MTV Raps. He and his co-host, Ed Lover, even beat Ice Cube to the barbershop movie genre when they starred in Whos the Man? in 1993.

Being at the forefront of hip-hop then often meant working in the studio all day and prowling the clubs for talent at night. Never a small man, he ate what he could  and often  on the run. I had that lifestyle of being out all the time, Mr. Brown, 52, said. You had to be, doing what we were doing. You had to be on the pulse. There was no TMZ or Kim Kardashian. This was the raw beginning. We had to be everywhere.

Ten years ago, that lifestyle caught up with him. He developed Type 2 diabetes and has faced a series of health challenges: losing a toe, injuring his ankles and, three years ago, going blind. Now he is planning to have weight-loss surgery  a move recently endorsed by many in the medical community for helping to reduce the symptoms of Type 2 diabetes. And, like the D.J. that he has remained at heart, he wants to share that experience, this time through a proposed reality television show that would chronicle his surgery and recovery.

My stubbornness put me where Im at. Now my energy is going to change that, Mr. Brown said. We got young people, grown people, old, all having this. We can prevent this. We can cure this. I have an idea how to do it.
These locations are never random. These targets arent accidental. Theyre the very vocabulary in which assailants like the Orlando gunman speak, and he chose a place where theres drinking. And dancing. And where L.G.B.T. people congregate, feeling a sense of welcome, of belonging.

That last detail is already in the foreground of the deadliest mass shooting in American history  and rightly so.

But lets be clear: This was no more an attack just on L.G.B.T. people than the bloodshed at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris was an attack solely on satirists.

Both were attacks on freedom itself. Both took aim at societies that, at their best, integrate and celebrate diverse points of view, diverse systems of belief, diverse ways to love. And to speak of either massacre more narrowly than that is to miss the greater message, the more pervasive danger and the truest stakes.
The woman, who was not a Stanford student, was 22, working full time and living with her parents in Palo Alto at the time of the assault, according to court documents. She described the decision to go to a fraternity party on campus as a last-minute lark and a way to spend more time with her younger sister, who accompanied her.

After she had a meal at home and four shots of whiskey, she told the police, her mother drove her, her sister and two other friends to the Stanford campus at 11 p.m. The women ended up at a party hosted by a fraternity, Kappa Alpha, which was also attended by Mr. Turner.

The womans sister told the police that they met several men at the party, but that one of the guys was very aggressive and trying to kiss everyone, according to a police report. She later identified that man as Mr. Turner and said she had twice repelled kissing and advances by him.

The sister left the party to accompany an intoxicated friend back to her room, and soon after the victim and Mr. Turner left the party, according to court documents.

Mr. Turner told the police that he and the victim kissed and then walked away from the fraternity house holding hands and ended up on the ground kissing. He removed the victims underwear and penetrated her with his fingers. He said he never took his own pants off.

The Swedish students who came upon Mr. Turner and the woman said they stopped to intervene because they saw Mr. Turner on top of her, thrusting his pelvis toward her, court papers and the police reports say. They said she appeared motionless, her eyes closed and her head tilted to the side.
Joel Figueroa and his friends were dancing by the hip-hop area when I heard shots, bam, bam, bam, he said, adding, Everybody was screaming and running toward the front door.

Pulse, which calls itself Orlandos Latin Hotspot, was holding its weekly Upscale Latin Saturdays party. The shooting began around 2 a.m., and some patrons thought at first that the booming reports they heard were firecrackers or part of the loud, thumping dance music.

Some people who were trapped inside hid where they could, calling 911 or posting messages to social media, pleading for help. The club posted a stark message on its Facebook page: Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.

Hundreds of people gathered in the glare of flashing red lights on the fringes of the law enforcement cordon around the nightclub, and later at area hospitals, hoping desperately for some word on the fates of their relatives and friends.

More than 12 hours after the attack, anguished relatives paced between Orlando Regional Medical Center and a nearby hotel as they waited for word. They were told that so many were gunned down that victims would be tagged as anonymous until the hospital was able to identify them.

We are here suffering, knowing nothing, said Baron Serrano, whose brother, Juan Rivera, 36, had been celebrating a friends birthday with his husband and was now unaccounted for. I cannot understand why they cant tell me anything because my brother is a very well-known person here in Orlando. He is a hairstylist, and everybody knows him.
A gunman who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State killed 49 people and wounded 53 more when he opened fire in a crowded gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., early Sunday. It was the worst mass shooting in American history.

President Obama was in Orlando on Thursday to meet with victims families.

Here is the latest:

Who Is the Suspect?

 The gunman, Omar Mateen, 29, was killed in a shootout with the police. Mr. Mateen, an American citizen whose parents were from Afghanistan, claimed allegiance to the Islamic State in a 911 call he made at the time of the attack, law enforcement officials said. He lived in Fort Pierce, Fla.

 On Tuesday, a senior F.B.I. official said investigators suspected the gunmans second wife, Noor Zahi Salman, might have been aware that he was plotting an attack, and the agency was trying to determine her level of involvement. Ms. Salman, the mother of his young son, told the F.B.I. that she had driven him to the Pulse nightclub at some point before the attack and that she had also been with him when he bought ammunition. NBC, which reported the development, said Ms. Salman, 30, lives in Port St. Lucie, Fla., with Mr. Mateens father. The woman told officials she had tried to talk Mr. Mateen out of any attack, but whether she knew of his true plans was unclear.
Senator Bernie Sanders said on Sunday that he would take our campaign for transforming the Democratic Party into the convention, refusing to concede the presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton though not explicitly saying he would challenge her for it.

Mrs. Clinton earned enough delegates to clinch the nomination last week, but Mr. Sanders has declined to end his campaign. He has contended that he could persuade enough superdelegates, the party leaders who have overwhelmingly backed Mrs. Clinton, to switch their support to him by arguing that he would be the stronger candidate against Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

That plan became more improbable last week as high-profile Democrats supported Mrs. Clinton. President Obama endorsed her on Thursday, calling her the most qualified candidate ever to seek the White House and imploring Democrats to unite behind her. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts also endorsed Mrs. Clinton. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the only senator to endorse Mr. Sanders, told CNN on Friday that he now supports Mrs. Clinton.

In recent days, Mr. Sanders appeared to acknowledge the odds against him, and began speaking less about beating Mrs. Clinton and more about working to defeat Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.
In her first ad of the general election campaign, Hillary Clinton will use Donald J. Trumps words to portray him as a violently divisive candidate who is intolerant of the diverse fabric of the American electorate.

Today, we face a choice about who we are as a nation, Mrs. Clinton says in the ad, called Who We Are and scheduled to air in battleground states on Thursday. Footage then appears of Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, responding to a protester by saying, Id like to punch him in the face.

Mrs. Clinton continues, Do we help each other? Mr. Trump appears again, telling a crowd: Knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously.

In another sequence, Mr. Trump is shown mocking a reporter with a disability before Mrs. Clinton is seen strolling through a factory, meeting workers and talking to schoolchildren. What kind of America do we want to be? Mrs. Clinton says. Dangerously divided, or strong and united? I believe we are always stronger together.
Thats not the case for Republicans from blue, or Democratic-centric, places. The safest course for them is to denounce Trump, say they are completely opposed and wont support him, says Whit Ayres, a prominent Republican pollster. Thats the case with Mr. Kirk, who faces an uphill re-election battle.

Its more complicated for those in purple, or swing, states and districts, where a winning coalition would include Trump champions and more independent-minded voters turned off by him. Their best strategy is to localize the race and say it has nothing to do with the presidential race, Mr. Ayres says. This is the real political rope-a-dope. Yet few politicians are as skillful as Ali.

Image For Republican candidates for Congress from swing states and districts, decisions on whether to support Donald J. Trump will be complicated. Credit... Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

Take Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, where Mr. Trump scored a huge victory in the February primary but where the general election features more centrist, independent voters. She said she would support Mr. Trump but not endorse him. Last week, she rejected his comments about the judge and demanded that he apologize. Mr. Trump tends not to do apologies.

Other challenged incumbent senators, such as Rob Portman of Ohio or Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, offer lukewarm support along with criticism, or they simply try to keep a distance. A few of their colleagues, such as Richard Burr of North Carolina or Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who earlier were joined at the hip with Mr. Trump, seem to be backing away.
Mrs. Clinton did not use that phrase or respond directly to Mr. Trumps broadsides. Her campaign instead sought to use the event to diminish their Republican rival. This act of terror is the largest mass shooting in American history and a tragedy that requires a serious response, Jennifer Palmieri, Mrs. Clintons communications director said, adding that: Donald Trump put out political attacks, weak platitudes and self-congratulations.

Mrs. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, initially responded with caution Sunday morning after early reports about the assault, offering her thoughts to those affected as we wait for more information. But after President Obama spoke in the afternoon, and called the Orlando killings an act of terror, she issued a longer statement echoing the president. This was an act of terror, Mrs. Clinton said.

In her statement, Mrs. Clinton said we need to redouble our efforts to defend our country from threats at home and abroad, focusing on the threat of terrorism. Further down in her statement, she called for more stringent restrictions on guns.

Finally, we need to keep guns like the ones used last night out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals, she said, taking up the call many on the left made in the hours after the attack. Mr. Trump, who made no mention of access to firearms in any of his comments, said Mr. Obama should resign for his own refusal to say radical Islam.
The police said in a written statement that a man with a homemade explosive had removed it from his backpack and dropped it in front of a check-in counter. The statement indicated that the explosive was contained in a beer bottle or bottles.

After the blast, the man also took a knife from the backpack and slashed his own throat and fell to the ground, the police said. The man survived but was said to be in grave condition.

In addition, a nearby hospital took in four casualties of the explosion who were lightly wounded by bottle fragments, the police said. One was a citizen of the Philippines.

By late Sunday afternoon, the airport was calm. Twelve of the next 18 flights scheduled to land were listed as delayed for as long as four hours. The cavernous departure hall of Terminal 2 was operating across two-thirds of its length, but Aisle C, where the explosion occurred, was roped off, and uniformed security personnel with black assault rifles slung over their shoulders stood guard, making it difficult to see any damage.

Chinas Communist Party leadership prides itself on maintaining absolute control, and even relatively minor disruptions of that control can prompt an intense response. Hangzhou, a city near Shanghai, is scheduled to host a summit meeting of the Group of 20 leading economies in September.
KIEV, Ukraine  Gay rights groups in Ukraine celebrated a milestone on Sunday  holding a parade without being chased or attacked by right-wing opponents. But the march, in Kiev, was guarded by police and security forces who sealed off much of the city center and warned participants not to linger afterward.

About 2,000 people turned out for the parade, called KyivPride. No violence was reported at the event, but a participant was beaten in the downtown area an hour or so afterward, organizers and the police said.

The outcome was a striking contrast to last year, when members of far-right organizations attacked the 300 or so marchers, injuring dozens. Similar violence appeared likely to unfold on Sunday after right-wing paramilitaries, emboldened by their popularity for fighting in the war against Russian-backed separatists in the east, vowed to shut down the march.

In short, it will be a bloody mess on June 12 in Kiev, Artem Skoropadsky, the spokesman for one group, the Right Sector, wrote in a joint statement with another group, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
Before the shooting Mr. Wong had been arrested, cited or had some minor contact with the police at least five times since 1990, but details about the cases remain unclear. At the time of the shootings, he was not a subject in any investigation, nor did he have a documented mental health issue.

March 2008 Mr. Wong bought the first gun, the Beretta 92, at a store in Johnson City, N.Y. He passed a background check.

March 2009 Mr. Wong bought the second gun from the same store, but his background check was not approved immediately. He received the gun under a federal rule that allows a gun to be sold if the background check system does not return a decision in three business days.
Before 2 a.m. Omar Mateen, a resident of Fort Pierce, Fla., a city about 120 miles from Orlando, parked his van outside Pulse, a gay nightclub.

Pulse Nightclub Entrance Patio Parking lot S. ORANGE AVE. Pulse Nightclub Entrance Patio Parking lot S. ORANGE AVE. Pulse Nightclub Entrance Patio Parking lot S. ORANGE AVE. The New York Times; photograph by Chris O'Meara/Associated Press

He entered the club armed with an AR-15-type assault rifle, a handgun and ammunition and opened fire, according to Chief John Mina of the Orlando Police Department.

In a video captured by one of the victims, roughly 20 rounds could be heard before the recording abruptly ends.

RESTROOMS Some people ran to hide in the bathrooms where the standoff ensued. STAGE BAR STAGE main dance floor BAR The gunman started shooting in the main room. He exchanged fire with officers. Some people escaped through the emergency exit. FENCE BAR Main entrance PATIO The gunman most likely entered through the front door. STAGE Some people escaped through the patio. Some people ran to hide in the bathrooms where the standoff ensued. RESTROOMS BAR STAGE The gunman started shooting in the main room. He exchanged fire with officers. BAR FENCE Some people escaped through the emergency exit. BAR Main entrance PATIO STAGE The gunman most likely entered through the front door. Some people escaped through the patio. Some people ran to hide in the bathrooms where the standoff ensued. The gunman started shooting in the main room. He exchanged fire with officers. RESTROOMS BAR Main dance floor FENCE Emergency exit BAR Main entrance PATIO The gunman most likely entered through the front door. Some people escaped through the patio. The gunman started shooting in the main room. He exchanged fire with officers. RESTROOMS FENCE Main dance floor PATIO Main entrance The gunman most likely entered through the front door. Some people escaped through the patio.

Ashley Summers was ordering drinks from the bar when she heard a popping sound; it went on for 15 seconds before her friend pulled her to the ground. Ms. Summers and her friends escaped by crawling out the patio exit nearby.

2:02 a.m. Multiple shots were reported at the nightclub. An off-duty officer working there responded and exchanged fire with the gunman near one of the entrances.

2:04 a.m. Additional officers arrived on scene. Minutes later, officers entered the club and engaged the gunman.

The police said many people escaped or were rescued during the early exchange of gunfire. Patrol officers were running inside and pulling out victims, said Capt. Mark Canty, Orlando SWAT commander.

Three-Hour Standoff

After the shootout, the gunman retreated to the womens bathroom, where, police believed, he was holding hostages. Many people were rescued from other parts of the nightclub during the standoff.

People were screaming, begging for their lives, said a patron, Orlando, who asked that his last name not be used for fear that terrorist sympathizers might retaliate. He took cover with a friend in a cramped bathroom stall, hiding on top of the toilet so their feet could not be seen from the outside.

WOMENS RESTROOM MENS RESTROOM The gunman hid here with at least five or six hostages. About 10 to 15 people were hiding in this bathroom. WOMENS RESTROOM MENS RESTROOM The gunman hid here with at least five or six hostages. About 10 to 15 people were hiding in this bathroom. WOMENS RESTROOM MENS RESTROOM The gunman hid here with at least five or six hostages. About 10 to 15 people were hiding in this bathroom.

Orlando said the gunman burst into the bathroom, went straight to the stall next to theirs and shot the people inside.

The gunman then left the bathroom and resumed shooting.

Some patrons who were hiding called the police and texted friends and family for help.

A SWAT team and an armored vehicle arrived, along with a team of crisis negotiators.

Orlando described moments of quiet during the siege. The gunman fiddled with his weapon and used the sink and the hand dryer. At one point, Orlando felt something poking him. He thinks it could have been the gunman checking to see if he was dead.

Patience Carter, who was hiding in the bathroom stalls with two friends, said the gunman asked whether there were any black people in the bathroom. He said he didnt have any problem with black people, and that this was about his country. Ms. Carter said the gunman also claimed to have snipers outside.

At some point, the gunman warned his hostages to stop texting and demanded that they give up their cellphones.

2:35 a.m. While in the bathroom, the gunman called 911, pledging his allegiance to the Islamic State. The call lasted for 50 seconds. Below is a transcript of the call released by the federal authorities.

Dispatcher Emergency 911, this is being recorded. Gunman In the name of God the Merciful, the beneficent [Arabic] Dispatcher What? Gunman Praise be to God, and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of God [Arabic]. I wanna let you know, Im in Orlando and I did the shootings. Dispatcher Whats your name? Gunman My name is I pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the Islamic State. Dispatcher O.K. Whats your name? Gunman I pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may God protect him [Arabic], on behalf of the Islamic State. Dispatcher All right, where are you at? Gunman In Orlando. Dispatcher Where in Orlando?

2:48 a.m. The gunman communicated with the crisis negotiation team for the first time; the call lasted for about nine minutes. Two more calls were made over the next hour.

In these calls, the gunman identified himself as an Islamic soldier and said the United States needed to stop bombing Syria and Iraq. He also claimed that he had explosives. There is some vehicle outside that has some bombs, just to let you know, he said. You people are gonna get it, and Im gonna ignite it if they try to do anything stupid.

The gunman also stated that he had a vest, describing it as the kind they used in France.

He made further threats before he hung up. In the next few days, youre going to see more of this type of action going on, he said.

During this time, more people fled. At least four people in a dressing room escaped from an exit on the north side. The police also helped eight people in another dressing room escape through an air-conditioner vent.

4:29 a.m. Some people who were rescued told officers that the gunman had said he was going to put four hostages in bomb vests in four corners of the club within 15 minutes.

The statements about the bomb vests and explosives spurred officials to mount a rescue operation. The police did not find any vest or explosive device in an immediate search.

Breaking In

5:02 a.m. The police tried to blow a hole in the outer wall of the restroom, but did not completely penetrate the wall.

1 The officers then used an armored vehicle to punch a hole in the wall. The hole was off the mark and put them in the hallway between the two bathrooms. At first, they do not see the gunman.

WOMENS RESTROOM 2 1 2 MENS RESTROOMS During the first explosions, the gunman backed into stalls and fired more shots according to a witness. The gunman entered the hallway, exchanged gunfire through the hole and was killed. WOMENS RESTROOM 2 1 2 The gunman entered the hallway, exchanged gunfire through the hole and was killed. MENS RESTROOMS WOMENS RESTROOM 2 1 MENS RESTROOMS 2 The gunman entered the hallway, exchanged gunfire through the hole and was killed.

The police threw several distraction devices in the hallway and 2 tried to create more holes in other locations along the same wall.

5:14 a.m. The gunman engaged in a shootout with the police. He had entered the hallway and was 10 to 15 feet away from the officers.

5:15 a.m. Officers reported that the gunman was down.
A growing economy means fewer disagreements over government budgets. Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic leaders in the Legislature last week crafted the outlines of a state budget. Some details were left for this week and Wednesdays constitutional deadline for passage.

For fiscal year 2016-17, which begins July 1, the outlines largely follow the governors May Revision to his January budget proposal, such as limiting spending to $122 billion for the general fund. Thats down $1.8 billion from his initial proposal because of lagging sales tax receipts. But its up from $116 billion, or 5 percent, the previous year. So state government still is growing, just a little slower than anticipated in January.

Legislative leaders were sensible to go along with the governors proposal to plunk $2 billion into the state Rainy Day Fund, raising the total to $6.7 billion. That would be needed to mitigate budget cuts should the national economy falter. We would have preferred even more money go into the Rainy Day Fund as the country is overdue for a recession and that could risk another round of $20 billion-plus budget deficits.

The final agreement includes an additional $100 million to help pay for minimum wage increases for child care providers, as well as some additional preschool slots, the Sacramento Bee reported. That amount will grow annually, along with the minimum wage, to an estimated $527 million in 2019-20, officials said. By 2022, the wage will hit $15 an hour, from $10 this year, pursuant to recent legislation the governor signed.

The increased cost to taxpayers of higher minimum wages is overlooked in arguments for raising it. Thats something to keep in mind as public employee unions gear up their campaigns for the initiative on the Nov. 8 ballot to extend the $7 billion tax increase from Proposition 30, which expires in 2019.

The Legislature also signed off on $1.3 billion of the governors $1.5 billion proposal to renovate and erect new buildings for state bureaucracies. A better idea would be to adopt leaseback policies, in which a building is sold, then leased back by the seller, a practice increasingly common in private business, while also providing the option of moving to cheaper buildings. Moreover, the state government is decades overdue for a major overhaul of its functions, which would include consolidation to reduce duplication and waste, thus cutting down the need for office space.

Talks continue on the cap-and-trade provisions of the budget, the Bee reported, with the $500 million of previous quarterly auctions now but a memory after the latest auction of pollution credits yielded just $10 million. Yet Gov. Browns May Revision advanced, in its description, a $3.1 billion cap-and-trade expenditure plan that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions through programs that support clean transportation. One of those programs is high-speed rail, a boondoggle that, given the new realities, should be scrapped.
The oil and gas industry was born in Pennsylvania on Aug. 27, 1859, when Edwin L. Drake drilled the worlds first commercial oil well. A critic said Drake should leave the oil underground because it was needed to fuel the fires of hell, and to pump it out would protect the wicked from their eternal punishment.

Thats how long some people have believed oil companies are in league with the devil.

Todays anti-petroleum alarmists warn of the hellish climate that someday will result from civilizations reliance on fossil fuels. Fortunately theyve hit on a solution: cash payments.

The strategy was hatched in 2012 at a two-day meeting in La Jolla organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Climate Accountability Institute. It brought together 23 experts on law, science and public opinion for a workshop titled, Establishing Accountability for Climate Change Damages.

The idea was to compare public attitudes and legal strategies related to tobacco control to those related to climate change, according to a report of the meeting.

The group found a few problems with the comparison to tobacco. For one thing, they couldnt identify a specific harm from climate change that had damaged anybody.

What is the cancer of climate change that we need to focus on? asked one attendee.

And there was a bigger problem. The fact is, we do need some form of energy, one participant said. Another lamented, The activities that contribute to climate change are highly beneficial to us.

Oh, that.

Before fossil fuels, people cut trees to heat their homes, slaughtered whales to make lamp oil and bothered horses when they needed to go someplace.

The group debated the public-relations risks and benefits of filing lawsuits against oil companies. Participants said internal documents obtained from tobacco companies had been very useful and discussed various legal tools to force oil companies to open their files.

Today were seeing that strategy in action.

New Yorks attorney general has subpoenaed ExxonMobils internal communications going back decades to see if the company misled investors about climate change. The Virgin Islands attorney general has subpoenaed the company for all climate-related communications with outside groups.

In California, two Senate committees have approved Senate Bill 1161, the Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act, which would allow prosecutors to charge a business or organization with unfair competition for deceptive behavior relating to scientific evidence of climate change. The bill would lift the statute of limitations and allow charges for statements made decades ago.

ExxonMobil is under fire because its engineers made contingency plans to safeguard billion-dollar drilling and pipeline infrastructure against the risk of rising sea levels at the same time the company was opposing the Kyoto climate treaty. The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil, Mobil Oil argued in a 1997 newspaper ad.

Under SB1161, that might be enough to charge the company with deceptive advertising and unfair competition. The bill, which is inactive but could make a comeback, would give prosecutors four years to subpoena old documents, bring charges and ask a court to order monetary damages.

Its about the cash, not the climate.

Restitution and disgorgement of profits are used primarily to deter future violations, the Senates official analysis of the bill explains.

The money wont prevent climate change, but it will help to cover the cost of more workshops in La Jolla.

This may become the model for new legal battles over earth science. Imagine the class-action lawsuit that could be filed if public relations experts ever find someone to blame for gravity.

Susan Shelley is an author, a former television associate producer and was twice a Republican candidate for the state Assembly.
Orange County could receive $20 million less than it expected next year to fund law enforcement operations, leaving supervisors to decide whether to cut staffing and program proposals from the Sheriffs Department and District Attorneys Office, or slash from other departments to bridge the gap.

County staff said the shortfall is from an error at the state level: officials found sales tax revenue had been over-allocated sales to counties and cities. While the state determines whether local governments owe it money, and if so, how much, it is scaling back how much sales tax it distributes, county officials said.

That leaves Orange County  and likely many other California counties and cities  to figure out how to make-up the difference from the lower state funding.

Supervisor Todd Spitzer said the county would need to ask all the non-safety departments to make cuts, though he thinks the shortfall will end up being less than $20 million.

I dont know how doom and gloom this is, but it doesnt look good, Spitzer said. If were going to have a scarcity of resources, Im going to vote to put it into public safety.  I dont think its healthy for us to be deliberating when our county has a 25 percent increase in crime.

In 2014, nearly 43 percent of the Sheriffs Departments operating budget and 47 percent of the District Attorneys Offices operating budget came via Proposition 172  a half-cent state sales tax to fund public safety. That year, the county got a combined $297 million from that revenue stream.

That income was projected to increase to $317 million next year as sales tax revenue increased. But instead, the county expects to receive the same amount it did two years ago, though both departments operating budgets have since grown.

The county initially responded to news of the shortfall by cutting personnel from its proposed 2016-17 budget  removing two Sheriffs Department positions that would have helmed a new cyber-crime unit and cutting 35 D.A. positions requested to sort through the loads of police body-camera video and cell phone data regularly submitted as evidence.

Sixteen of those D.A. positions have since been restored to the proposed budget after Spitzer said he met Thursday with County CEO Frank Kim and District Attorney Tony Rackauckas. Additional positions may be restored in November, depending on what level of Prop. 172 funding the county receives from the state.

That still leaves county supervisors with questions about what else to cut and when.

Supervisor Andrew Do said he agreed public safety is the countys chief concern and should be fully funded, but questioned whether stripping other departments of funding to plug the law enforcement shortfall was a Band-Aid approach to solving the countys crime problems.

Do we only solve crime or do we also want to serve issues that contribute to crime? Do asked, while acknowledging that voting against funding law enforcement could be a politically unpopular move.

The recently announced funding shortfall is compounded by Orange Countys sales tax revenue growth, which has been slower than Californias over the last decade, according to county documents.

The county has received an increasingly smaller portion of the states Prop 172 funding. Last year, Orange Countys portion dropped by the second highest percentage in the state.

Californias distribution errors extend to other sales-tax revenues, including money earmarked for transportation and justice system realignment programs, according to a state audit. County officials said it was not immediately clear how those revenue streams would be impacted. A second state audit of the tax distribution is due to the Legislature by March.

The Board of Supervisors will hold a hearing Tuesday on the countys 2016-17 budget. That budget is set to be adopted June 28.

Contact the writer: jgraham@ocregister.com or 714-796-7960
DONGGEOCHADO, South Korea  Since last summer, Oh Byung-hwan has visited this island off southwestern South Korea more than a dozen times, camping out in a tent and braving monsoon rains and winter storms to watch the sea from a hilltop perch.

Less than a mile away, a fleet of salvage ships float in a loose circle. Below them, resting on its side on the seafloor, is the 6,825-ton Sewol, a ferry that sank more than two years ago, taking with it 304 people, of whom 250 were teenagers on a school trip, including Ohs only child, Young-seok.

The catastrophe still haunts the families of the victims and remains a traumatic experience for South Koreans, many of whom still fault the governments response to the disaster.

Like most of the victims found huddled in the ship, Young-seok, 16, had listened to the crews repeated instructions  even when the ship was sinking  for passengers to stay in their cabins.

Why arent they coming to our rescue? Young-seok called from his tilting cabin, as seen on video footage recovered from the cellphone of another student victim.

We are here to monitor and record every move of the salvage operation, because we have learned not to trust what the government says, what it does, Oh, 44, said from his hilltop tent, scanning the sea with binoculars and a large-lens digital camera and taking occasional notes in a logbook.

The families of Sewol victims began coming last summer, when a consortium of Chinese and South Korean salvage companies began a $73 million operation to raise the Sewol. The victims families hope that the salvaging, expected to be completed this year, will yield the bodies of nine missing people and more clues to what happened  a question that many suspect the government of President Park Geun-hye has been evading.

The families come to the island to make sure that nothing is covered up, taking shifts in a tent used as a watching post in the hills above the salvage operation. Two other tents serve as sleeping quarters.

The government never told us everything, and is more interested in covering it up than in learning the lessons to make the country safer for children, Oh said.

The operator of the Sewol, Chonghaejin Marine, routinely overloaded the ship with poorly secured cargo, and had done so on the ferrys final voyage, prosecutors said. Inspectors colluded in the practice by giving the Sewol and other ships a cursory check from the pier, or none at all, the authorities said.

When the Sewol capsized, its crew members were among the first to flee. The first coast guard boat that arrived at the scene did little more than pick up the fleeing crew members, while passengers trapped inside the ferry banged on the windows as the ship slowly disappeared beneath the waves.

The lieutenant who captained the coast guard ship was given a three-year prison sentence for lying that he had used a megaphone to tell passengers to evacuate.

The disaster united South Korea in anger and sorrow. But as the families and their supporters persisted in their campaign for a more thorough investigation into the governments responsibility, the issue became increasingly politicized.

Right-wing activists likened critics of the government to a pro-North Korean force that threatened to undermine Parks government. They argued that the authorities had done enough by reprimanding officials and tightening safety regulations.

Fifteen crew members were sentenced to 11/2 years to life in prison. Several shipping company officials were given two- to seven-year sentences.

Pro-government activists also called the bereaved families dealers of corpses looking for greater financial compensation and said their demands had wasted taxpayers money. They even mocked a victims father on a 46-day hunger strike in central Seoul by organizing a binge-eating festival nearby.

The Sewol incident exposed the worst naked face of South Korea, said Kwon Mi-hwa, Ohs wife. She was keeping her husband company in the mosquito-infested tent on a recent evening.

For months after the sinking, Young-seok appeared in my dreams as the little boy he was when he protested my going to work in the morning and tugged at my pants, she said, choking with tears. Sitting alone on this hill, I sometimes wonder whether he is talking to me through the birds chirping around me.

The teenagers who died were born when South Korea was engulfed in the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. Soon after Young-seoks birth, Kwon found a job at a pharmaceutical factory to help augment her husbands meager wages from a textile factory. In their working-class neighborhood in Ansan, south of Seoul, many families had just one child because of the rising cost of education. In the Sewol disaster, 70 families lost their only child.

Not long after Young-seok died, a despondent Kwon screamed at her husband: Bring my child back! I dont care if you have to die for it!

Oh quit his job. For one and a half years, he joined other families camping out in central Seoul.

Now that my son is gone, I cant see why I have to make a living, he said. I cant go on with my life until the full truth is known about why and how my son died, until the government is made to take responsibility it has refused to take, until human lives are recognized as more valuable than profits in this country.

Oh said his hopes had risen after Parks ruling party lost a majority in the parliamentary elections in April.

Months of life on the streets have taken a toll on Ohs health. Still, during the election, he campaigned for hours every day for a human rights lawyer who championed the families cause. The lawyer won a parliamentary seat by beating a former presidential aide of Park.

Ohs wife also became a full-time activist, passing out leaflets about the Sewol disaster. The couple live off the savings for their sons education and funds pooled together by families and supporters to pay for equipment and expenses.

The few nights Kwon spends at her home, she sleeps with a portrait of her son beside her. She still pays to keep her sons cellphone number active. On May 5, Childrens Day, she texted him: My dear only child, I am sorry.

On Jan. 12, the day her son would have graduated from Danwon High School in Ansan, she visited the school alone at night. All but one of her sons 32 classmates had died. Their classroom had been turned into a temporary memorial, its desks overflowing with flowers, chocolates and letters.

My dear son, thank your for letting me know what happiness was, Kwon wrote in a letter that night. I will find out why you had to die. I can. I will. Because I am your mother.
Circumventing state laws designed to protect Californians from abusive police seizures, law enforcement agencies have routinely seized property from people never even charged with a crime. But later this month, lawmakers are expected to vote on a sweeping overhaul of civil forfeiture.

Numerous scandals have plagued civil forfeiture in California. One of the most infamous was the botched drug raid that killed reclusive millionaire Donald Scott. Searching for a suspected marijuana grow operation, 30 law enforcement officers from seven agencies, including the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Office, the DEA, the LAPD and the National Guard, raided Scotts 200-acre ranch in 1992. Rendering the scene downright surreal, personnel from the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service and NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory were also on site. No drugs were found.

Months after the raid, the Ventura County District Attorney concluded that forfeiture was at least one of the motivating factors behind the raid. (Tellingly, two of the officers present were from the L.A. County Sheriffs asset forfeiture unit.)

Spurred to act, California lawmakers enacted sweeping reforms in 1994. To better protect the due process rights of Californians, law enforcement would first need a criminal conviction before real estate, vehicles and cash under $25,000 could be forfeited to the state. Today, only 10 states require a criminal conviction as a prerequisite in most or all forfeiture cases.

Unfortunately, the law failed to address a federal forfeiture program that has incentivized police to do an end-run around California law. If an agency collaborates with the feds, they can collect up to 80 percent of the forfeiture proceeds through equitable sharing. According to a report by the Institute for Justice, between 2000 and 2013, California law enforcement received almost $700 million from the U.S. Department of Justice. By comparison, agencies collected less than $280 million through state forfeiture laws during that same period.

Determined to restore respect for federalism and civil liberties, state Sen. Holly Mitchell and Assemblyman David Hadley are co-authoring Senate Bill 443. Before California agencies could collect funding through equitable sharing, SB443 would oblige that defendants first be convicted of a crime in federal court. The bill would also expand the states conviction requirement to all types of property and for all amounts. The bill received widespread, bipartisan support in the Senate, but stalled in the Assembly last year.

Law enforcement officials typically defend forfeiture laws for taking the profit out of crime. Yet the Institute for Justice found that, out of all equitable-sharing forfeitures in California from 2000-13, half were under $8,920. Such modest sums are a far cry from confiscating the assets of drug kingpins. Moreover, equitable sharing plainly circumvents state law. Out of the $2.5 billion spent in federal forfeiture funds since 2008, the Washington Post found that in 81 percent of cases no one was indicted.

Speaking on the Assembly floor last year, one lawmaker claimed SB443 was unnecessary because of a federal policy shift. In one of his last acts as attorney general, in January 2015, Eric Holder announced a curb on adoptive seizures, one of the most abusive practices involving equitable sharing. Yet that change proved to be rather modest: adoption accounted for only 17 percent of federal forfeiture proceeds collected in California. Critically, Holders order did not apply to joint task forces and investigations, which comprised the rest of Californias federal forfeiture proceeds.

By enacting SB443, California can join states like New Mexico and Nebraska, which recently limited forfeiture to convicted criminals and tightly restricted transferring seized property for litigation through equitable sharing. Absent further reform, California agencies will continue to police for profit.

Nick Sibilla is a writer at the Institute for Justice.
Re: Trumps misguided dangerous rhetoric [Opinion, June 9]: Erwin Chemerinsky should do a little homework before speaking. He claims Judge Gonzalo Curiel is highly qualified to rule on the class-action lawsuits against Trump University and there is no conflict of interest in his being allowed to rule on the lawsuits.

Chemerinsky is dean of the UCI Law School. Does he not fully check all information on both sides of a legal issue?

Judge Curiel is a member of La Raza Lawyers and the Hispanic National Bar Association. The judge may have been born in Indiana and is a U. S. citizen, but his membership in those two associations, especially La Raza, gives reason for concern about his fairness in Trumps lawsuit.

Trump has made no secret of his desire to deport illegals and seal our border and that does not sit well with either of the two organizations Judge Curiel is a member of. I believe, if I were Trump, I would definitely be concerned if the judge could give an unbiased ruling. It does indeed appear that there is a possible conflict of interest in this case.

Ed Bjork

Fountain Valley

  

Mr. Chemerinskys article is predictable, and the Registers continual publishing of his liberal rants is unacceptable.

First, where is the outrage from Mr. Chemerinsky about his Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton? She is a proven liar about the events in Benghazi, and about her emails from her private server. She and her predator husband have engaged in using public office to enrich their own coffers. The fact is that Hillary Clinton is an unethical human being who has no integrity or character. Her vile treatment of Secret Service Agents who are tasked with protecting her has been documented.

Secondly, the judge in Mr. Trumps case is an avowed Democrat and contributor to the Clinton money machine. Judge Curiels release of information in this case is unethical and he should be replaced. His association with the La Raza judicial society should also be considered since Mr. Trump has campaigned on strengthening the borders to keep illegal aliens from invading our country. I find Mr. Chemerinskys article offensive and the continual publishing of his liberal ideology without a conservative representation in your paper is a testament of how far left the Register has migrated.

Ron Williams

Newport Beach

  

In his attack on Donald Trump and his defense of Judge Gonzalo Curiel, liberal UCI Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky is either not aware of, or purposely chooses to ignore, the points about Judge Curiel as outlined by letter-writer Michael Hitchens [Should GOP have a racist as its face? Letters, June 9]. Ironically, said outline appeared in the Registers letter section on the opposite page from Chemerinskys column.

If the points in the outline are true, it appears that race, his own race in particular, is important to Judge Curiel, regardless of where he himself was born.

Can a judge of Hispanic ancestry fairly judge any case involving Donald Trump? I believe they could. Just not one with Judge Curiels CV as pointed out in the outline.

I for one would like Dean Chemerinsky to respond to the points made in Mr. Hitchens letter.

Michael R. Sumners

Santa Ana

  

Dean Chemerinskys position that race should not preclude a jurist from sitting on a case would seem to be in contrast with his position on the selection of a person of color and gender to be appointed as a judge. Chemerinsky has often opined that race and gender should be considered on everything from judge appointments to admission to colleges. If jurists are so impeccable, why would race and gender be such an important factor to consider in appointments? Face it, Chemerinsky, youre biased too.

Gary Walsh

Laguna Hills
The Register spoke with five locals who were willing to discuss publicly  some for the first time  what its like to work in different aspects of Southern Californias legal marijuana industry. The other profiles include technology developer, public relations specialist, budtender and lab technician.

Growing up in Newport Beach, Sky Siegel was taught that only stoners and losers used marijuana.

In 2012, he had surgery for a back injury and ended up on a cocktail of painkillers.

I wasnt myself, recalled Siegel, now 30 and living in Costa Mesa. I was in a terrible funk.

Then he discovered a couple medical marijuana dispensaries in Orange County with budtenders who seemed to really know their products and care about dispensing it as medicine. They helped him find strains of cannabis that allowed him to wean off opioids and get his life back.

Both of his favorite pot shops were shuttered over the past few years as local cities cracked down on marijuana retailing. But Siegel stayed in touch with the owners and learned of their plans to launch a delivery service out of Manhattan Beach. Soon, he left a decade-long career in sales and management for wireless phone companies so he could manage driver operations at Sweetwood Collective.

Now, when hes not dabbling in acting, Siegel oversees a team that coordinates marijuana deliveries for patients throughout the South Bay who order from EazeUp.com. He trains drivers so they understand safety protocol and the products theyre carrying. And he works with growers and manufacturers to ensure that hes delivering the best products in this rapidly evolving industry.

Siegels friends have been supportive. So has his grandma. But, when he spoke to the Register, his mom didnt yet know what he did for a living. And other family members just dont understand.

They say, I cant believe youre doing this, Sky. There are other ways to make money, he said.

Coordinating deliveries is about more than making a living for him, he tells them. Its about making safe medicine accessible to seniors in chronic pain, parents whose children suffer from epilepsy and anyone bedridden with injuries, as he was four years ago.

Its got me fired up, he said.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7963 or bstaggs@ocregister.com
The Register spoke with five locals who were willing to discuss publicly  some for the first time  what its like to work in different aspects of Southern Californias legal marijuana industry. The other profiles include technology developer, public relations specialist, lab technician and delivery coordinator.

Shortly after starting her shift at OC3 dispensary in Santa Ana, Brittany Urbanski greeted an unfamiliar customer across a glass counter displaying jars of marijuana flowers and packages of edibles.

After three back surgeries, 57-year-old Jack Orosz wasnt new to medical marijuana. But the Newport Beach resident was new to OC3, a licensed shop that opened in September.

Urbanski helped Orosz settle on a strain of flowers she felt would best ease his back pain. Then the petite brunette brought out a prize wheel, which Orosz got to spin as a first-time customer. He won an edible, so she handed him his first cannabis-infused chocolate bar.

Urbanski, 26, has been a marijuana consumer for years. And shes worked in the industry since she was 19, when she got her first job dispensing marijuana to customers as a budtender at an unlicensed shop that made its all-female staff wear leggings and little black tank-tops.

The Costa Mesa resident was working when police raided those shops. The officers werent too tough on the young budtenders, she said, questioning them before sending them on their way. But each time Urbanski would be out of a job and that days pay, since they were compensated in cash after every shift.

Since joining the staff at the licensed OC3 dispensary a month ago, shes paying taxes like a real citizen. Her mom worries less. And when people ask what she does, instead of a vague reference to sales, she explain she helps patients at the dispensary.

Its a totally different atmosphere, she said. Its nice to come to work knowing youre completely safe.

To get the gig, Urbanski had to pass a background check for drug charges, with a laminated card proving her clearance worn around her neck each day in case city inspectors stop by. She also needed to show a doctors recommendation for marijuana and customer service skills.

Her biggest sale so far has been $900, to a man who bought an ounce of high-quality flowers plus some other products. That can mean generous tips, which get pooled between budtenders.

But Urbanskis favorite moments are helping customers who know nothing about marijuana.

A couple of weeks ago, an older husband and wife walked in. The woman was going through chemotherapy but was skeptical about trying cannabis. She was quiet as her husband asked questions for 20 minutes, searching for products to ease his wifes pain.

The wife recently returned, this time alone. She raved about how a product Urbanski recommended  a tincture, or liquid extract placed under the tongue  improved her quality of life.

Were educating people, said Urbanski, who hopes to be a shop manager one day. That makes me feel good.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7963 or bstaggs@ocregister.com
The Register spoke with five locals who were willing to discuss publicly  some for the first time  what its like to work in different aspects of Southern Californias legal marijuana industry. The other profiles include budtender, public relations specialist, lab technician and delivery coordinator.

In many ways, Matt Norris work developing mobile sites and apps feels like any other startup gig.

His team moves quickly, testing new products and sometimes failing. His co-workers are young, passionate and often wearing headsets.

But the Irvine office often has a distinct smell. And it happens to be part of a profitable, international company  which, Norris points out, is pretty rare in the world of startups.

That company is Weedmaps, which allows consumers to find and rate marijuana dispensaries.

As a vice president, Norris job is to create mobile products that work for everyone from elderly medical marijuana patients to strain-savvy millennials.

I love a really good challenge, the Santa Ana resident said.

Norris, 27, studied psychology in college and became interested in what made people engage with certain products. Soon, he developed a knack for creating enticing mobile technology.

He spent four years in London at a company that lets users gamble on whether particular stocks will go up or down. But the Southern California weather beckoned him back, so in 2013 he took a job at Grindr, a social networking site for gay men. Then a co-worker told him about an opportunity at Weedmaps.

Norris had little exposure to the world of marijuana beyond smoking occasionally. But he saw how marijuana helped a friend with cancer. He also fell in love with the Weedmaps team. Plus, he liked the idea of learning an entirely new world while getting in on the ground floor of the fast-growing industry.

There is so much opportunity, so much room for improvement here in the cannabis space, he said. I think its a good place to be now and for a long time in the future.

We asked Matt:

Q. Whats the best part of your job?

A. The people Im working alongside are extremely talented and exceptional at what they do in every realm. They are incredibly passionate about making peoples lives better.  You cant force that.

Q. Whats the most challenging part of what you do?

A. The hardest thing, honestly, was just learning all the different terminology, what kind of customers we serve, what needs they have and how to take care of those needs.  Learning about this industry and keeping up with the constantly evolving nature of the community has been super challenging for me.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7963 or bstaggs@ocregister.com
Local religious leaders condemned the shooting spree in an Orlando, Fla., nightclub that left 50 dead and 53 injured, but they also tried to distance the violence from Islam.

Several leaders of different faiths and the LGBT community gathered at the offices of Council on American-Islamic Relations in Anaheim on Sunday and denounced the killings.

Im disgusted and outraged, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director at CAIR. There is absolutely no justification for hate.

Several leaders urged the public and media to not see the shooting a religiously-fueled event.

This was not an act of Islam, AJ Blackwood of the Progressive Interfaith Alliance said. It was an act of terrorism and hate.

CAIRs Ayloush said local Muslims have received an enormous number of threats since the attack that left 14 dead in San Bernardino on Dec. 2, and he blamed politicians for demonizing one group.

Now the American Muslim community joins that long list of other communities, African American, Jewish Americans, Latinos, immigrants and many others who become the target of such attacks by failed politicians, Ayloush said.

Ayloush called for unity and solidarity rather than divisive rhetoric.

If anyone, anyone tries to blame a community  in this case the Muslim community  in my opinion they are only fueling the insensitivity, he said.

Authorities say the attack was possibly targeted at the LGBT community by a man who reportedly sympathized with ISIS.

Personally I felt a little sick this morning, said Laura Kanter, a director at the LGBT Center OC. Whenever something like this happens its horrible, its awful, its terrifying.

Kanter said the shooting in Orlando shook up many people in the local community. The center, which is in Santa Ana, had a wine and dessert fundraiser planned for Sunday afternoon.

What we decided to do is open up that space for anyone who needs to talk or needs to be with their community or talk, Kanter said.

Organizers also decided to send the funds raised to the victims of the shootings.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7865 or afausto@ocregister.com
Re: Happy with the election? [Opinion, June 8]: Not only am I displeased with this election, I believe that the two-party system needs to be scuttled.

The two-party system means the only escape from Donald Trump is the Democratic Party, with Hillary Clinton. Hillary wants to be queen as badly as Trump wants to be king.

The only thing worse than a two-party system is a one-party system. California has been owned by the Democratic Party for years. That Kamala Harris challenger for the U.S. Senate is another Democrat, Loretta Sanchez, is an abomination.

The problem with our elections is that ordinary people do not have enough choice. Big government is a giant club that beats alternative candidates into the ground.

Our society is on a pathway to a massive failure where the high achievers, both financial and academic, shall be relatively few. And our electoral system is part of the failure. The reform needed is not merely the electoral system. It is government that must be cut down to size. Since neither Trump nor Hillary is willing to give up power to achieve such end, most Americans angry about their lives today shall find no relief in 2017.

Albert Wong

Buena Park

  

The choices presented by the two main parties look evermore dire. But, fortunately, voters have two candidates that are far superior to those of the two main parties: Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, the Libertarian candidates for president and vice president. No hint of scandal for either of these two public servants, and, having been two-term Republican governors in Democratic states, they worked well with people of differing political views: so they are not bullies. So, voters, help is on the way!

Judge James P. Gray (Ret.)

Newport Beach

  

Now that the primary election process is over, what have we learned? I think we have seen the electoral process in its darkest hour.

With Californians deciding to elect Democrats throughout the political system, we have given them license to run amok. Look at what they have done to the election process. Instead of giving its people a choice in the voting process, they changed the rules so that the two highest vote getters compete against each other in the final process. Is there a choice for voters to make about whether you want A or A? No, instead you get A shoved down your throat.

We use to be a group of people who debated ideas, thoughts and dreams. Today, if your dream or thoughts arent exacting like mine, I will shout you down in order to silence you. Is that what we want to be as a people? Dont we all lose when you remove thoughtful debate? Do we grow as a people when we all think the same, walk the same and look alike? Is this the new America? Are we becoming brainwashed by the political machine giving us a choice of selecting either A or A?

I dont think Californians thought the process through when they decided to stack the deck. But I would be willing to bet that the stacked deck will change if the Republicans ever gain control because everyone that accepted it under Democrat leadership will quickly throw a fuss  guaranteed.

Andy Allaire

Laguna Woods

  

The primary is thankfully over. Some may feel undecided, so lets make it simple. Just answer the question, Why do you think each candidate wants to be president? The people picked Donald Trump. The system chose Hillary Clinton.

I believe Trump is running because he sees the critical need for leadership. Our nation is in deep trouble; debt, gridlock and the loss of credbility both here and abroad.

I think Hillary feels entitled to the office. What has she accomplished? Her track record of abuse of privilege and deceit is well established.

Hopefully the will of the people will be heard in November. It really is a simple choice  unfortunately a critical one at this point in history.

John Rette

Mission Viejo

  

Being unable to cast a ballot on Tuesday, I called the Orange County Registrar of Voters in the week preceding the election to better understand the early voter options.

The friendly voice on the other side of the phone call informed me that the registrars office would be opened from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the Saturday and Sunday prior to election day  and that one of the options was to come there and vote in person. That worked.

On Sunday afternoon, my wife and I made the short trip to the Santa Ana office to exercise our democratic enfranchisement. It was a pleasant and efficient process that made both of us proud as Americans and pleased as citizens.

Ben Miles

Huntington Beach
The American people increasingly prefer a restrained U.S. foreign policy to the excessive interventionism that is the status quo in Washington. And the 2016 election is, among other things, a blustering reflection of this emerging public sentiment.

According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 43 percent of Americans say the United States should mind its own business internationally. Fifty-seven percent of the public feel the U.S. should deal with its own problems, and let other nations deal with their own as best they can. Sixty-nine percent agree that the U.S. should concentrate more on our own national problems and building up our own strengths and prosperity here at home and 70 percent say the next president should focus on domestic policy compared to only 17 percent who say the focus should be foreign policy.

These findings strike fear in the hearts of the foreign policy establishment, which worries that such findings foretell a retreat into isolationism. Since the end of the Cold War, the foreign policy establishment has developed a bipartisan consensus around a vision of muscular internationalism. The core of that vision, in the words of the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, is that the United States is the indispensable nation, without whose leadership nuclear weapons will proliferate, conflicts will erupt, and the steady march of democracy and human rights will falter.

But the publics attitudes are not so much isolationist as they are restrained. See, Beltway elites think that, although the central goal of U.S. foreign policy is national security, Americas position as the worlds sole superpower affords it the ability to pursue ancillary objectives like shaping the international order and the domestic behavior of other nations. Hence an expansive foreign policy that heeds the call of intervention in essentially any corner of the globe.

The American public, on the other hand, interprets things differently. They certainly agree that national security is the primary goal of foreign policy. But Americas fortuitous strategic position and great power allows the public to ignore the rest of the world most of the time in favor of domestic concerns. The public does not view reshaping the world as the goal of foreign policy. In fact, the public, in contrast to the experts, tends to view foreign policy as a mechanism for pursuing domestic goals such as protecting American jobs and promoting U.S. business interests abroad.

This perspective can help us decode the confusing signals from the public about foreign policy. The realist side of the equation helps explain why surveys routinely find, as the Pew survey did, that Americans support a strong military, active counterterrorism efforts and policies to prevent nuclear proliferation. Fifty-five percent say they support policies to keep the United States the strongest military power in the world, and 62 percent support the U.S. military campaign against ISIS. Simply put, if there is a reasonable national security case to be made for a mission, the American public is likely to support it.

The domestic side of the equation, however, ensures that the bar for making such a case is relatively high. Before the rise of ISIS, for example, almost 70 percent of the public believed that the United States had no responsibility to stop the fighting in Syria. This influence is especially pronounced when Americans see interventionist foreign policy operations detracting from progress on domestic issues. Critics of the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example (including President Obama himself), have frequently argued that the United States should focus on nation-building at home rather than nation-building abroad.

To put it simply, the American public is not isolationist. In fact, the same Pew study finds that fully 91 percent want the United States to take some kind of leadership role in international affairs. At the same time, though, the publics foreign policy preferences are far more restrained than those of the foreign policy establishment. After 15 years of aggressive and costly intervention in the Middle East that have brought little benefit to the U.S., most of the public now views the conventional approach to American foreign policy as a drag on the primary mission of the government, which is making life better here.

In fact, the surveys findings may be the key to explaining the most befuddling presidential election campaign in modern memory. Hillary Clinton clearly represents the Beltway consensus, supporting vigorous American leadership of international institutions coupled with aggressive military intervention. Since domestic policy issues typically dominate elections, Clintons foreign policy views would not cost her many votes in a normal year.

But the deep unhappiness with the political establishment this year, coupled with Donald Trumps apparent contempt for American activism abroad, may change that. Like all the candidates, Trump has called for a strong military and destroying the Islamic State. But throughout his campaign, he has made it very clear that foreign policy is primarily a tool for solving problems at home, whether fixing trade deals to strengthen a lagging economy, making allies pay for U.S. security commitments or building walls to protect American jobs from illegal immigrants.

Though many have criticized his proposals on substantive grounds, there is no question that Trumps view of foreign policy falls closer to the average Americans view.

The Beltway consensus is a much more difficult sell in 2016. Even Clintons extensive foreign policy experience, which would usually rate as an advantage, has worked against her as both Bernie Sanders and Trump have reminded voters of her role in supporting several of the failed American interventions over the past 15 years.

Regardless of who wins the White House, the public is clear about the foreign policy it wants. The question is, will the next president listen?

Trevor Thrall is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
Much as been made in recent weeks about the widely watched median selling price of an Orange County local home finally returning to its prerecession high.

Home prices are just one of many yardsticks of the real estate markets health. But the CoreLogic median hitting $645,000 in April  the first time back at the previous boom times pinnacle of June 2007  certainly stirred memories of that easy-money era, the ensuing real estate markets collapse, and the eventual global recession.

But if you wanted an earlier warning signal, its worth remembering that employment in local property-related niches peaked nearly two years before the CoreLogic price benchmark topped out. Almost as meaningful, Orange Countys real estate employment high of 2005 has yet to be beaten.

I filled my trusty spreadsheet with state employment data to learn that combined employment in key real estate job categories  tradesmen, builders, heavy construction, lending, supplies, agents and planners  averaged 240,000 in the 12 months ended in April. Thats up 48,000 workers in five years.

Still, despite this 25 percent job increase, Orange County real state jobs this year run nearly 30,000 workers below the previous booms high in 2005.

What I found highly intriguing was that the employment surge to 2005s job peak and real estates current real estate hiring spree look eerily similar in scope and speed, minus one crucial factor. Local lenders have added workers in the last five years at half the pace of the staffing boost of 2000 to 2005.

The current lending shortfall  both in terms of banker hires and the difficulties in gaining home loans  may be a blessing of sorts, recalling how the bad mortgages in the 2000s distorted real estates upswing, then helped sink the economy.

Real estate paid a steep price for those mortgage misdeeds. A great example: Local property-related businesses lost roughly 1 in 4 of their workers in the ugly fallout of the Great Recession.

Conversely, real estate has certainly contributed to the broad economic revival, post-Great Recession, with approximately a quarter of all new Orange County jobs coming from the property-related niches tracked.

Heres how these real estate employment categories fared during the past five years  and what those hiring patterns may say about the future for local properties:

TRADESMEN

Specialty trade contractors employ 65,000 in Orange County, and these workers are in real estates hottest jobs.

Builders must scramble to find plumbers, electricians, roofers, carpenters, masons and the like to work on their growing lists of projects.

The addition of nearly 19,000 tradesman positions in five years  a 41 percent bump  reflects both constructions strong rebound as well as the developers desire to transfer more work to subcontractors. And knowledgeable folks in the profession say the hiring pace has been slowed by a lack of skilled workers.

You cant find people to build our homes, says Scott Laurie, chief executive of Olson Homes in Seal Beach. Salaries are up and thats a big reason why (home) prices are rising.

But for those a bit unnerved by the construction workers recent renewed popularity, please note: This hiring spree  which includes 13 percent growth in the past year, the fastest in at least 15 years  leaves this employment niche some 5,000 jobs below its all-time high set in the last boom.

BUILDERS

Builders of homes and commercial projects  a job niche employing 21,000 in Orange County  have been busy, adding almost 6,000 workers since 2011, or 37 percent growth.

Its not much of a surprise after developers essentially took the previous five years off from creating new properties in the recessions wake. When a resurgent local economy filled empty spaces, new residential, retail and office complexes went from stalled to reality.

With this niches employment up 10 percent in the past year  nearly double the pace of the previous four years  its a good bet well see continued construction work for the foreseeable future.

At Olson Homes, sales are running six months ahead of schedule, so a 45-home project in Huntington Beach just sold out as a 37-home project in Westminster opens. Managing hot demand is extra challenging when there is a shortage of experienced managers.

Its hard to find talent people, Laurie says. Its not a very deep pool to choose from.

EARTH MOVERS

When you see the big earthmovers at work, real estate is ready to rumble.

This niche does the big work, both highway and other infrastructure contracts, as well as moving dirt to turn raw land into buildable lots.

Bosses in heavy construction have operated in the past year with 8,600 workers, staffing thats just below record-high levels.

There are more big projects, but there are generally just more projects as well, said Wendy Rogers, chief talent officer at LPA Inc. architects in Irvine.

Government contracts finally seem to be on the upswing, but the level of private-sector assignments is worth watching. Any potential real estate slowdown may be signaled by job cuts in this construction sector.

LENDERS

Lenders are the exception to hiring patterns of this recovery, which looks much like the ramp-up to the job peak of the previous decade.

Borrowing boomed with the recent homebuying revival, and cheap rates are motivating mortgage refinancing. That allowed local lenders to add 8,000 workers in five years to a total of 40,000, a 26 percent pop.

If you forgot, extremely aggressive lending a decade ago  foolish loans that helped create a housing bubble that burst  was pioneered by several Orange County institutions. That temporary business opportunity motivated local lenders to add 18,000 workers (twice the latest hiring spree) between 2000 and 2005.

Trent Brooks of commercial lender Bellwether Enterprise Real Estate Capital in Irvine says business is surging as big property owners seeking to buy new assets or refinance old ones.

Its not a good time to look for a job in the lending industry, is a great time, Brooks said

It may be twisted, reverse logic, but slower hiring at local home-loan lenders in recent years  leaving the industry payroll down 13,000 from its bubble-fueled peak of decade ago  actually may be good news.

Less risk-taking. Less employment. And (hopefully) fewer bad loans.

SUPPLY SHOPS

Build it and somebody will need supplies.

Jobs at building-supply shops  averaging 10,000 in the past year  have grown only modestly in the real estate rebound. The addition of 1,200 jobs (13 percent) in five years can be tied to industry becoming highly competitive, no matter if the merchant is serving home-remodeling consumers or building contractors.

Because of structural changes underway in this business  including the influence of online merchants  movements in this real estate job niche may not be very telling.

AGENTS

The business of selling and renting real estate  employing 37,500 workers in the past year  is nowhere as volatile as other property-related niches.

Consumers and corporations need roofs over their heads, in both good and bad economies. Still, modest 10 percent growth in the past five years leaves the category just 2,000 jobs short of its all-time high.

What should one make of slightly sluggish growth in employment at real estate sales and leasing companies in the past year  just 1.3 percent year-over-year new jobs?

Probably not much. An acute shortage of properties to sell or vacant space to rent temporarily limits the opportunities for these workers. The high level of work done elsewhere in real estate trades should create the need for more transactions  and greater demand for the sales and leasing businesses.

Commercial property brokers at Colliers International are so busy at their Irvine offices, as well as throughout the Western U.S., they are seeking extra office space to handle a growing staff.

The strength of this recovery, which is truly unique in many ways, means weve been recruiting many of the best known and most experienced experts and their teams across all the sectors of our industry, says Martin Pupil, Western region president for Colliers.

PLANNERS

Why has growth all but stopped in the past year at firms specializing in architectural and engineering services?

Its a big riddle, as the success of property planners is often tied to pending real estate activity.

These local firms added 5,000 workers in the last five years to amass staffs with 25,000 employees as demand has ballooned for new structures of all shapes and sizes.

LPAs Rogers is a bit surprised at this years sluggish job count, saying her firms 15 percent growth in business is creating new jobs in each of our integrated design disciplines in an extremely competitive market.

So, did local architects and engineers hire too fast and now are adjusting? Countywide staffing is just 1,000 people below the all-time high.

Or are future development plans dwindling, lowering demand for new planning and raising serious questions about the durability of the local real estate recovery?

Contact the writer: jlansner@ocregister.com
The Register spoke with five locals who were willing to discuss publicly  some for the first time  what its like to work in different aspects of Southern Californias legal marijuana industry. The other profiles include technology developer, budtender, lab technician and delivery coordinator.

Alison Simard has done public relations for 20 years, representing technology and finance clients as West Coast president for Stern & Co.

Three years ago, the Los Angeles resident was having dinner with David Dinenberg, a real estate broker and entrepreneur whose kids had become friends with her kids. Unsure how Simard would react, Dinenberg cautiously brought up his latest venture: KIND Financial, a company that would offer online payment systems for cannabis businesses and technology to track marijuana from seed to sale.

Simard had never worked with the marijuana industry, and she doesnt personally partake. But she saw the need for helping businesses comply with federal banking regulations without ever touching the plant.

I told him, Youre brilliant, Simard, 45, recalled. He was about to get the tiger by the tail.

Initially, Simard offered Dinenberg marketing advice as a friend. Hed hired a PR specialist focused on getting word about KIND Financial products to industry publications such as High Times magazine. Simard encouraged him to target The New York Times and CNBC as he sought to build a professional, legitimate company.

Now she spends time each week at KIND Financials L.A. headquarters crafting story pitches and a strategy aimed at making Dinenberg a thought leader in the industry. In the past few months, as pot has become what she terms a sexy media topic, its become an easier sell.

She sleeps well at night, she said, with none of the qualms shed have in representing a predatory lender or  as an animal rights activist  Sea World. Her firms other clients have also been receptive, she said, even asking how they can invest in the company that now counts TV personality Montel Williams among its board members.

Almost all of our clients are finance and business people, and they follow the money, Simard said. At the end of the day, its business.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7963 or bstaggs@ocregister.com
Long before Donald Trump made his first foray into Las Vegas real estate, I had an unsettling experience gambling in a downtown Vegas casino. The cards were falling my way until late at night, when I began making subtle mistakes. My stack of poker chips, once piled high, dwindled. Ahead a few thousand dollars at one point, I cashed out with little more than my original stake.

I slept fitfully, and in the morning called my father, who grew up in Nevada and is also a gambler, to relate the previous nights turn of events. He asked me a single question.

Were you tired?

Yes, I said. I got up very early in the morning, traveled here, and played cards until after midnight.

That explains it, he said. You lost because you wanted to lose.

No, I said. I hated losing.

Of course you did, but your body needed sleep, he said. Your body knew that the only way it could get you to quit playing and go to bed is if you lost your money. Youre lucky you didnt lose everything.

That episode was how I learned how powerful our subconscious desires can be. All these years later, the episode puts me in mind of Donald Trump. Ive only met the man once, and, if one of my friends wrote this column, Id tease him about going all Gail Sheehy  I dont usually cotton to journalists who psychoanalyze their subjects. But I believe that Donald Trump, the man who famously disparages losers, knows deep down he isnt equipped to be president.

Lets call this more reflective subconscious entity Don Trump.

Donald Trump loves winning and hates losing, while Don Trump knows that running a smart campaign and beating Hillary Clinton means hed inherit a job he has neither the qualifications nor the temperament to perform successfully. Don Trump wants to lose. He wants this campaign to be over so Donald Trump can go back to doing what hes good at: promoting his personal brand and counting his money.

To me, thats the best explanation for the loony Mexican judge comments and other unforced errors Trump has made since clinching the Republican presidential nomination. A man who wanted to win this election wouldnt make these mistakes.

Lets start with Susana Martinez. As governor of New Mexico, shes the chief executive in the state with the highest percentage of Latinos in the country, a border state where Trumps famous wall would be built, and a bellwether that Republicans would like to carry in November. Shes the GOPs most prominent female Hispanic, two demographic groups Trump has trouble with.

So does he woo Martinez and praise her? No. Because she skips his rally in Albuquerque, he throws a tantrum, gratuitously lashing out at her in her own capital.

We have got to get your governor to get going, he told the crowd at his event. Shes got to do a better job. OK? Shes not doing the job. Hey! Maybe Ill run for governor of New Mexico. Ill get this place going.

This is Don Trump talking. A candidate trying to win wouldnt have drawn attention to the fact that the governor was skipping his rally, let alone publicly disparage her. A candidate who wanted to win wouldnt have mentioned her at all. If he did, it would have come out something like this: Your governor is doing a great job! She endorsed somebody else in the primary, but well get her on our side because she proves that an independent-minded Republican can carry New Mexico  and well do it together in November!

Trump was also dismissive of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, another rising GOP star  and the countrys most prominent Asian-American Republican elected official. When Bret Baier of Fox News asked Donald Trump about a published report that she was under consideration as a possible running mate, Don Trump cut Baier off in midsentence. No, not Nikki Haley, he said. No, Nikki Haley, no, she wasnt under consideration.

Don Trump struck again when the Washington Post investigated whether the candidate had made good on his pledge to make a $1 million contribution to a wounded military veterans organization. A billionaire trying to win this election would have donated the dough before it became an issue. Not Don Trump. He sent a check only after the newspaper had the goods on him  and after calling the Post reporter a nasty guy.

Which brings us to Don Trumps most transparent sabotaging of Donald Trumps campaign to date. This is his infamous slander of the San Diego-based federal Mexican judge handling the lawsuit by disgruntled former Trump University students. A man with Trumps resources who actually desired the presidency would have settled this case before it made news. He could afford to refund the tuition of every former student who complained.

Or, if the lawsuit was too far down the tracks, Trump could have responded to press inquiries by simply saying, The litigation is proceeding apace, and I shouldnt try the case in the media. The case is being heard by a liberal judge appointed by Obama, but Im confident well prevail on the merits.

But see, saying that would have been a missed opportunity for Don Trump to undermine the campaign. And Don Trump rarely misses such an opportunity. So instead, he began jabbering about a second-generation Mexican-American judge who is treating him very unfairly by issuing horrible rulings because hes very strongly pro-Mexican.

Even as he was saying that no Mexican-American jurist proud of that ethnic heritage could be fair to him in court given the things hes said in this campaign, Trump insisted that Hispanic voters will flock to him. This was Don Trumps finest hour of the campaign. It made chumps of the Republican officials whod reluctantly endorsed Trump while simultaneously making the GOP nominee himself sound incoherent.

I will confess that there is another likely possibility.

Perhaps Don Trump doesnt really exist, and Trump is The Donald all the way down to his subconscious. In that case, the explanation is that Trump simply cannot help himself: Hes so narcissistic and needy and thin-skinned that he must lash out at those he perceives are against him  while thinking he can be president anyway.

I like Don Trump better than that guy. Im even betting on him.

Carl M. Cannon is executive editor of RealClearPolitics.com.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won their parties presidential primaries in California and they are poised to square off in Novembers general election. Polls show Clinton and Trump are both historically unpopular, yet large numbers of Americans who say they cant stand them will probably vote for one of them anyway. Theyll do this, in part, because theyll feel forced into choosing the lesser of two evils.

People shouldnt feel (or more importantly, vote) this way, however. U.S. presidential elections werent intended to devolve into contests between just two candidates. The Constitution does not mention political parties at all, and the Framers were worried that the rise of powerful factions would undermine liberty.

As John Adams wrote in a letter in 1780: There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.

The Democratic and Republican parties are dominant, but voters do have choices other than Clinton or Trump. For example, for the second presidential election in a row, the Libertarian Party has nominated Gary Johnson, former two-term governor of New Mexico. His running mate is William Weld, former two-term governor of Massachusetts.

Weld and Johnson both served as moderate Republicans who generally opposed runaway government spending while advocating social tolerance. Weld cut spending and privatized state services in liberal Massachusetts. Johnson pushed for school choice reforms and lower taxes in New Mexico. Both men support drug decriminalization and same-sex marriage. Between them, they have 16 years of successful executive experience as governors, having worked effectively with legislators and the business community alike.

Contrast that with the presumptive Republican and Democratic nominees: Donald Trump is a thin-skinned reality TV star with an authoritarian streak. Hillary Clinton is a former secretary of state whose signature contribution to foreign policy  the 2011 military intervention in Libya  was an unmitigated disaster.

Yet political pundits will continue to depict this race as a clash between just two choices. The GOP, in particular, is fond of telling people that a vote for the Libertarian Party is a vote for Clinton. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth: A vote for Gary Johnson isnt a vote for anyone other than Johnson. Indeed, the Founders never intended to set up a system that continuously produced just two choices, and in almost every other aspect of our lives Americans recognize that its better to have more choices than fewer. This is, coincidentally, the creed of the Libertarian Party: choice allows people to be happier and more fulfilled, and government interference reduces choice by limiting competition.

The most important thing any voter can do is vote for the person who best embodies his or her ideals, whether or not that candidate has a good chance at winning the White House. Johnson, for example, has little chance of winning the presidency. But he can achieve success in other ways. If he can collect 15 percent of Americans support in major polls, for instance, the Libertarians could qualify for the nationally televised presidential debates this fall. And if they get 5 percent of the vote in November, theyd qualify for federal campaign funding in the 2020 presidential election cycle. Those types of incremental progress might help usher in ever bigger changes and choices beyond two stagnant political parties offering presidential candidates Americans dont like very much.

Robby Soave is associate editor of Reason.com and Reason magazine.
As baby boomers sail off into the sunset of retirement, millennials are flooding the American workforce, bringing with them new ideals of corporate environments.

There may be no better example of the flexible, noncommittal work-life millennials crave than the recent proliferation of co-working office spaces. For businesses looking to chuck the overhead of expensive office real estate and equipment, co-working environments offer a cost-effective alternative with all the perks of a swank, Google-inspired workspace.

Known for its beer on tap and weekly happy hours, WeWork, one the nations largest co-working companies, is making a push into Orange County with the July 1 opening of its Irvine Spectrum Center offices. WeWorks two-floor space has floor-to-ceiling views of the Great Park Balloon and Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park.

Globally, co-working spaces are expected to grow at 40 percent per year with more than 1 million members by 2018, according to a 2014 report by Emergent Research, a small-business consulting and analytic firm.

Membership service

Founded in New York in 2010 by two entrepreneurs, Miguel McKelvey and Adam Neumann, WeWork raised $150 million in funding in early 2014. Just two years later, Fast Co. estimated WeWorks valuation at $16 billion.

Dubbed a unicorn by the pundits of Silicon Valley, the firm rents large spaces and sublets desks and offices through a membership service. Tenants pay on a month-to-month basis, with no long-term contract required.

Compared to a traditional lease, WeWork offers flexibility, said Jon Slavet, the companys West Coast general manager. If a large company is looking to put a 50 sales people in, we can customize a floor for them.

WeWork locations, with 60,000 members worldwide, have seen businesses large and small take up space, Slavet said. We have lots of different kinds of companies in our community, from startups and huge technology companies to Fortune 500 companies looking for regional headquarters.

Nationally, private office spaces start at $450 a month with various options, including a $325 monthly dedicated desk space. At WeWorks Irvine center, private offices for one person range from $600 to $690 a month. A six-person office in Irvine runs from $2,950 to $3,550.

The rent for WeWorks prefurnished space includes access to shared conference rooms, high-speed internet, specialty coffee and printing services.

For businesses or individuals looking to use WeWorks network without occupying desk space, the company also offers access to its online community, credits for booking space and access to events for $45 a month.

Co-working competition

According to Slavet, companies can save up to 20 percent per year by opting for a WeWork office, compared with a traditional office lease.

In Orange County, office vacancies fell to 11.9 percent from 13.1 percent, and rental rates rose to $2.16 from $2.13 per square foot per month in the first quarter of this year, as reported by global estate firm Cushman & Wakefield.

Strategically, the L.A. metro areas and Orange County areas are big for us for several reason, said Slavet. There is vibrant and diverse ecosystem (in Orange County) of creators of all kinds, startups, larger growth companies that are innovators.

Although WeWork remains the largest global co-working space in Orange County, it isnt the first. The Wayfare in Costa Mesa offers full-day and half-day desk passes starting at $151 a month. Back in Irvine, RealOfficeCenters has three co-working office spaces and one near the Irvine Spectrum that offers 16 hours of office time at $200 to $300 per month.

The nonprofit PeopleSpace in Irvine may not have the bells and whistles of WeWork, but the 15,000-square-foot space fills almost to capacity every month, said CEO Melinda Kim.

The difference between us and WeWork is the vibe and culture, said Kim. We are more community-based and about the people.

We dont focus on the furniture or anything like that. Our space is a converted warehouse. We are more grass roots and do a lot more than just co-working. We tend to think of ourselves as more hub than a co-working space.

Despite the approach of various co-working spaces in Orange County, Kim is glad that WeWork is moving in.

I think its great, said Kim. As WeWork expands, the more people will know what co-working is and how it helps the whole community. They are spreading the world of co-working around.

So far, co-working has been popular in Silicon Valley, New York and other big city areas, but in places like Orange County its a new thing, and its nice to give it more attention, she said.

Beer-on-tap chats

One of the biggest perks included in WeWorks rent is the direct contact with a range of other businesses within the same office, says Kate Dehnel, WeWorks Southern California community lead.

All of our buildings are designed to promote familiarity amongst members, Dehnel said.

The glass office walls, kitchen area and shared spaces open the doors to opportunities to strike up conversations, which often can lead to creativity and connection among members, she said.

Silicon Valley behemoth Google designed its 1.1-million-square-foot campus to enable employers to be within a 2.5-minute walk from one another. Tech messiah Steve Jobs reportedly had collaboration in mind when he designed Pixars headquarters with its bathrooms at the center.

A lot of our members have actually done transactional businesses with one another just based on a conversation by the coffee station or getting beers together, Dehnel added.

In addition to serendipitous conversation, members of WeWork can attend the three to five sponsored events organized each week. From lunch-and-learns to panel discussions, the offices offer a range of events to encourage members to connect with one another and grow their businesses.

Despite the numerous perks, shared office spaces are not all microbrews and taco Tuesdays, according to critics. Downsides can include dealing with co-workers making loud phone calls, possible interruptions and lost time due to socializing.

WeWork also has to battle numerous misconceptions about co-working, said Slavet. Before joining WeWork, many people assume the offices are crammed with millennials running tiny tech businesses, he said.

If you walk the halls of WeWork, you will find lawyers, bankers and commercial real estate companies, said Slavet. Yes, we have lots of millennials. They are the largest  by numbers but we also have a lot of diversity. We have (people who are) in their 40s, 30s and 50s in our building.

Contact the writer:
MISSION VIEJO  Camron Sims, a combat-hardened warrior from Camp Pendleton, was pacing. His fists were clenched and he was sweating.

I was going homicidal, Sims, 34, recalled recently. I thought, Im going to jail today, and I went to the Veterans Center to get help.

That was in 2011, and two months into Kolin Williams new job as veterans counselor at Saddleback Community College. Williams walked out of his office and saw Sims.

He had talked to him before and he saw Sims was on the edge of a crisis. Williams knew it could end badly.

He knew Sims had deployed to Iraq four times and was on the front lines in Fallujah. Williams knew from research data that Marines with mulitple deployments are at higher risks for transition hardships.

Sims said he felt betrayed and wanted to hurt someone. Williams persuaded him to come to his office.

I focused on the fact I was a veteran and that I cared about him, Williams said. I wanted him to know I was on his team.

Williams contacted a clinical psychologist at the Student Health Center for help. But when he and Sims got there, the veteran refused to go in. A scene erupted and the colleges security was called.

With help from a combat veteran-turned-counselor at South Orange County Veterans Center, Williams settled down Sims. Hours later, the Marine veteran was taken to the Long Beach Veterans Administration for help.

Without him, Id probably be in jail serving a long sentence now, Sims said. I knew I could trust him. He was sincere on what he said, hed back it up and wasnt just all talk. He gave me brotherly advice.

SUCCESS STORIES

For Williams, 39, Sims crisis was exactly why he became a veterans counselor.

For the past five years, the San Clemente resident has provided personal, career and academic counseling at the Veterans Education and Transition Services program at Saddleback College. He also teaches Boots to Books, a military transition to college course, to recently discharged Marines, and also works at Camp Pendletons School of Infantry once a week to help active duty Marines navigate the transition process to the civilian world.

His calm and empathetic demeanor breaks down the barriers of the most hardened student veterans to guide them to a pathway of transition to success in civilian life, said Terrence Nelson, who in 2009 founded the student veterans program at Saddleback College. Kolin has changed thousands of lives over the years. The ripple effect in the community in each of his success stories not only changes the life of a hero but also impacts their wives, husbands, children, parents, neighbors and community.

Sims, now one class shy of a political science degree, is among thousands of combat veterans from Camp Pendleton that have participated in the program. When Williams took the job, he was the first full-time veteran counselor in Southern California. The program is Orange Countys first and is used as a model nationwide.

Sims came from the front lines in the invasion of Iraq, Williams said recently, sitting in his office at the Veterans Center. They were on the tip of the spear. Camron is the poster boy of what happens to people who deploy time after time. They dont come back all the way.

Each semester, nearly 800 veterans go through the program. It is has one of the largest veterans service teams among 113 community colleges.

A RESPONSIBILITY TO SERVE

Williams grew up in Oakhurst, a small town near the entrance of Yosemite. Job options after high school graduation were slim. There was the gas station, grocery store and telephone company.

His stepfather was a Vietnam veteran, and both of his grandfathers served in the military. For him, joining the military seemed the obvious and only path toward a college degree.

For me, the military was a way to get out of town, he said. I also felt a responsibility to serve my country.

By choosing the combat arms branch of the Army, he could get a $30,000 bonus on top of his GI Bill for college. Within weeks of his graduation, he signed on for four years.

Williams served as a specialist in 3/67 Armor 4th Infantry Division at Fort Hood, Texas, from 1995 to 1999. When he got out, his sergeant said, Well, good luck out there. There were no veterans services, no counselors.

He got out in June, slept on the floor of his brothers apartment in Sacramento and signed up for classes in August. He was excited to start his future and his college career.

OUT OF PLACE

But when he signed up for classes at Sierra College in Sacramento, he realized the plan he had mapped out for his future wasnt going to be easy. He instantly felt out of place.

I just tried to blend in and not act like I was 22, he said. I was never part of the campus culture. I kept it a secret that I [had been] in the Army.

Old habits from his days in the Army  such as drinking, getting into fights and chasing women  became a deterrent. His grades fell.

In the Army, his supervising sergeant would have straightened him out, he recalled. If he had a bad weekend, hed still have food and a roof over his head. But in the civilian world, despite having a steady job bartending, he wasnt functioning as an independent adult. He became homeless and lived in his car.

Then, a night on the town during which he tried to impress girls who wanted him to drive his black Z28 fast, ended up in a bad accident when he lost control of the car.

It was so close to being a horrific event, he said. It hit me then: Kolin, what are you doing?

It took me time to learn the skills that nonmilitary folks know by living independently, he said.

FINDING HIS STRIDE

He credits a regular at the bar where he worked and his military discipline with finally helping him turn the corner. The man, who worked as a counselor, recognized the empathy Williams had for others and suggested that might be something Williams could do.

I had been doing trial by fire, he said. I had a good job, had my own apartment and I had a cat that I kept alive.

People were coming back from Iraq, many with post-traumatic stress disorders and traumatic brain injuries. Williams, who by then had graduated with a degree in humanities from American River College, pursued a graduate degree in vocational rehabilitative counseling at Cal State Sacramento.

I remembered how much I struggled and I thought about my buddies getting out with combat disabilities, he said. In graduate school, I was the only one focused on veterans. Thats when I realized I was doing it the right way. People told me I was too specialized and that I would never get a job. They were wrong, thats what got me this job.

THE PAYOFF

Luis Guerrero served with the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines at Camp Pendleton. He enlisted right after high school in Fort Worth, Texas. Hed been a poor student and was a teen in trouble. His mother told him she thought joining the Marine Corps might help.

It was the greatest thing in my life, said Guerrero, 27, of Lake Forest. You belonged to a brotherhood. For the first time, I learned to walk with honor and discipline. It made me feel like I was somebody in life.

But his dreams of becoming a career Marine ended when he was turned down for re-enlistment in 2011. He had medical issues and the Marine Corps was downsizing with the war in Afghanistan ending.

Guerrero tried law enforcement options with no luck. A friend told him about Saddleback College, suggesting hed take advantage of the GI Bill.

His personal life was in shambles and his marriage was falling apart. I didnt know what to do, he said. For me school was the last thing on my mind. I was terrified. It was the first time I was out of uniform.

Still, he signed up for Williams Boot to Books course. He felt more comfortable there with other veterans, but still struggled.

Something told me to meet with Kolin, he said. It was the first time I opened up to anyone. He sat me down and he listened. He told me education may be my best bet. As an Army vet, he knew how hard the process of separation was and he convinced me everything would be all right.

Guerrero transferred from Saddleback to Cal State Long Beach. Williams had helped him apply and set up classes. He gave him contact to another veterans counselor.

Last week, Guerrero came back to see Williams. He graduated from Cal State Long Beach two weeks ago. He thanked Williams. He told him he wanted to get teaching credentials and that hed landed a job as an aide at Serrano Intermediate School in Lake Forest.

I would have never graduated or even gone to Cal State Long Beach if it wasnt for Kolin, he said. I used to hate school; now I cant get enough of it.

For Williams, Guerrero and Sims are what his life is about. I dont see the men and women as students or veterans, he said. I see them as my own brothers and sisters. I see them as part of the military family I was part of. I feel like I have a personal responsibility to make sure they are successful and I feel like I have a responsibility to serve veterans.

Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@ocregister.com or on Twitter:@lagunaini
80 young Foroige members from counties Offaly and Westmeath attended their Regional Conference which was held this year in the Gateway Youth Cafe in St Marys Hall, Athlone on Saturday, January 28. 50 of those representing 17 clubs in Offaly participated.

80 young Foroige members from counties Offaly and Westmeath attended their Regional Conference which was held this year in the Gateway Youth Cafe in St Marys Hall, Athlone on Saturday, January 28. 50 of those representing 17 clubs in Offaly participated.

It was a day of immersion by all the young people in which they spoke about a variety of issues that are impacting on young people today, and how, they as a group of actively involved people, might address and try to rectify some of these challenges.

After inputs from the RYO Breda Maguire and other Foroige Officials, the members broke into groups to identify what were the seven principal concerns of young people in the Offaly/Westmeath area today.

Following on from this, there was input from one of the present Reference Panel members. She described her role as a representatives on the Reference Panel and how it was vital that the 5 newly elected representatives would be aware of the issues in their respective counties. She also encouraged them to assist Foroige nationally to address these challenges.

The seven issues discussed by members present were: 1. Peer Pressure. 2. Recession and its impact on the lives of young people in 2012 Ireland. 3. Portrayal of youth in the various media (social & print). 4. Family issues. 5. Media bullying. 6. Drugs and alcohol. 7. Depression/suicide.

After presentations from those who allowed their names to go forward for the Reference Panel elections, five members were duly elected. The five will represent the interests of young people from Offaly/Westmeath on the Reference Panel for the next 12 months.

The five members elected were: Alex Vickers and Amy Martin (Durrow Foroige Club), Shane Larkin (Rahan Foroige Club), Eric Dunne (Ballycumber Foroige Club) and Sarah Claffey (Rosemount Foroige Club).

The Offaly clubs represented at the Regional Conference were: Ballinabrackey, Ballinagar, Ballinahown, Ballinamere, Ballycumber, Banagher, Carrig & Riverstown, Cloghan, Croghan, Durrow, Ferbane, Rahan, Rath & Eglish, Shinrone, Walsh Island, Coolderry and Spot Youth Cafe.

Foroige Disco: The Disco will take place in Cloghan hall on this Friday night February 10 from 9pm-12midnight. The admission fee will be 4 and the usual Foroige rules will apply.

District Council: The next District Council meeting will take place in the Bridge House Hotel, Tullamore on Monday, February 13 at 8.30pm with the executive meeting at 8pm.

Level II Training: There will be Level II training for all Leaders in Moate on next Saturday, February 11 at 10.30am. Please contact Breda if you have leaders attending.
Demolition to go ahead as Rane gets no relief in SC

Babri demolition, Godhra riots led youths to al Qaeda: Police

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Jun 12: Indians joining al Qaeda were moved by the 1992 Babri mosque demolition and 2002 Godhra riots and were committed to establish base of terror outfit al Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) here, Delhi Police has told a court here.

In its charge sheet filed against 17 accused, Special Cell of Delhi Police said for the purpose of jihad, some of them had gone to Pakistan and had met Jamat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and several other dreaded terrorists.

"While delivering jihadi speeches in various mosques, he (arrested accused Syed Anzar Shah) met Mohd Umar (one of the absconding accused) and they discussed atrocities on Muslims in India, especially Godhra and Babri Masjid issues.

"Umar got impressed with his jihadi ideology and speeches and committed himself to the cause of jihad and expressed the desire to receive arms/ammunition training from Pakistan," the charge sheet filed before Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh said. It said that Umar was operating from Pakistan.

Police said arrested accused Abdul Rehman had provided safe hideouts in India to Pakistani militants Salim, Mansoor and Sajjad, all members of Jaish-e-Mohammed, who were later killed in a shootout in Uttar Pradesh in 2001.

Narasimha Rao didn't respond to my letter on Babri: Tarun Gogoi

These three Pakistani militants had come to India to take revenge of Babri Masjid demolition and had planned to attack Ram Mandir in Ayodhya but got killed, the charge sheet claimed.

The police named in its charge sheet 17 accused, 12 of whom are absconding, for allegedly conspiring, recruiting Indian youths and establishing a base of AQIS here.

In its final report, the agency has charged 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).

All the 17 accused were listed in the charge sheet for alleged offences under sections 18 (punishment for conspiracy), 18-B (punishment for recruiting of any person for terror act) and 20 (punishment for being member of terror organisation) of the UAPA.

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

Delhi LG approves Chhath ghats, warns CM against 'premature publicity' over it

Delhi shocker: Prominent restaurant allegedly denies entry to unprivileged children

India

oi-Jagriti

New Delhi, June 12: An upscale restaurant in Delhi allegedly denied entry to unprivileged children came with a couple from Dehradun, media reported.

According to reports, the children were denied entry to restaurant citing that kids aren't well dressed and look dirty.

The woman identified as Sonali Shetty decided to feed few street children at the restaurant on the occasion of her husband's birthday.Upset over the move Sonali has launched protest outside the restaurant.

Sonali brought these children to the Shiv Sagar restaurant located in CP to celebrate her husband's birthday.

A probe has been ordered by the Delhi government into the case.

Delhi: Woman protest outside a restaurant in CP after the restaurant allegedly denied entry to unprivileged children pic.twitter.com/3fmSZICiz8  ANI (@ANI_news) June 11, 2016

Had brought few street children along to restaurant to celebrate my husband's birthday bt owner misbehaved with kids-Sonali Shetty,Protester  ANI (@ANI_news) June 11, 2016

The owner discriminated with kids & refused service citing that kids aren't well dressed & look dirty: Sonali Shetty pic.twitter.com/qbwaNgb5ii  ANI (@ANI_news) June 11, 2016

Lady had brought few kids along with her to the restaurant but kids started to create lot of "tamasha" inside: Roma Malhotra PR, Restaurant  ANI (@ANI_news) June 11, 2016

As a restaurateur we have rights reserved to deny service if our guest are getting disturbed. Dont think we did anything wrong: R Malhotra  ANI (@ANI_news) June 11, 2016

This is typical Colonial mindset. Can't be tolerated. Have ordered DM New Delhi to enquire & report within 24 hours: Manish Sisodia  ANI (@ANI_news) June 12, 2016

If allegations found true,we'll cancel restaurant's license,action will be taken undr appropriate sections-M Sisodia pic.twitter.com/tMaBALX9f3  ANI (@ANI_news) June 12, 2016

OneIndia News
71 years ago today, first general elections held in independent India

IRCTC: 89 trains cancelled on Oct 26 including some in Maharashtra, UP; check complete list

A sigh of relief: Delhi air quality improves to 'poor'

Interim stay on construction of Uttarakhand's Tiger Safari

Two arrested for firing at a person in north Delhi

Delhi LG approves Chhath ghats, warns CM against 'premature publicity' over it

News Flash: US gun control policy slammed on social media

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, June 12: In the worst mass shooting in US' history, at least 50 people were killed and 53 others injured when a "lone wolf" gunman opened fire early on Sunday in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where a state of emergency has been declared.

Get all the latest national and international news updates of Sunday, June 12 here:

10.33 pm: An outpouring of anger toward the lax US gun control policy witnessed on social media after a shooting spree in an Orlando nightclub left 50 dead and 53 wounded.

10.00 pm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi asks party leaders to preserve the goodwill in view of the next assembly elections in the country and the 2019 general elections.

9.30 pm: Strong winds followed by heavy rains and hailstorms hit various places of Dehradun.

9.00 pm: The father of the suspected gunman in Orlando mass shooting says he believes his son was motivated by hatred of gays -- not by his Muslim religion.

8.30 pm: Vijay Mallya says there is "no rationale nor any legal basis" behind such action and alleged that government agencies are pursuing a "heavily biased investigation" against him.

8.00 pm: Air strikes on a market in Syria's Al-Qaeda-held city of Idlib kill at least 21 civilians including five children.

7:30 pm: BCCI receives a total of 57 applications from coaches within India and overseas for the position of Head Coach of the Indian Cricket Team.

7:15 pm:Atmosphere of violence prevailing in UP, says Shah citing recent Mathura and Kairana incidents while attacking SP govt.

7:00 pm: Four policemen injured in a terrorist attack on police patrolling party in J&K's Anantnag district.

6:45 pm: Congress is getting increasingly weakened because of its repeated obstructions in the path of development: Amit Shah.

6:30pm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given decisive leadership to NDA govt in last two years: BJP president Amit Shah.

6:10 pm: The State Govt is denying the existence of incidents itself, that shows the mindset. It is a serious issue: RS Prasad on Kairana incident.

6:00 pm: Two years of Modi Govt is "No corruption Govt", However, 10 years of Congress was full of corruption: RS Prasad.

5:45 pm: Amit Shah ji while addressing the executive meet said,"gateway to the north east has been opened for BJP": RS Prasad.

5:30 pm: Heavy rains accompanied by storm lashes Dehradun (Uttarakhand).

5:15 pm: Allahabad: BJP's National executive meeting underway, PM Modi along with other top leaders present for the meeting.

4:55 pm: Pulse Night Club mass shootings: Approximately 20 dead in the shootings, 42 taken to 3 area hospitals (Orlando police).

4:45 pm: Pulse Night Club shootings: Multiple people are dead inside, 42 people transported to hospitals (Orlando police).

4.25 pm: Assam: Army & police in a joint operation arrested a LAEF terrorist and a NDFB(S) linkman in two separate incidents.

4.15 pm: Crime Branch Delhi arrest an impostor claiming to be MP for duping parents of several job aspirants into securing jobs in railways, FCI,etc

4.00 pm: Indian Coast Guard rescued 7 people from south of Port Blair in a sea air coordinated search,rescue operation underway.More details awaited.

3.40 pm: Gunman who opened fire, wounded multiple people inside Florida nightclub is dead, says police

Senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and Kamal Nath appointed AICC General Secretaries.  ANI (@ANI_news) June 12, 2016

3.31 pm: PM Narendra Modi arrives for BJP national executive meeting in Allahabad (UP).

3.15 pm: Congress appoints Ghulam Nabi Azad as the state in-charge of Uttar Pradesh and Kamal Nath as state in-charge of Punjab and Haryana.

3.00 pm: Police arrest two Naxals during search operation in Chhattisgarh's Jagdalpur, arms and ammunition recovered.

2.59 pm: Shooting at a Florida nightclub, people injured.

2.30 pm: Police conduct 'controlled explosion' outside Orlando nightclub.

2.15 pm: 15 packets of heroin and weapons recovered from the Pakistani smugglers who were killed in gunfight with BSF in Punjab.

2.00 pm: Saina Nehwal beats Sun Yu of China 11-21 21-14 21-19 to win women's singles title in Australian Open Super Series 2016

1.45 pm: Local media in Orlando (USA) says more than 20 shot inside a night club, no confirmation on fatalities.

1.30 pm: Govt is fully committed,reservation in promotions will continue no matter what-MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Bhopal

1.15 pm: We will file complaint with Election Commission: Congress General Secy BK Hariprasad on Haryana RS seat voting row

1.00 pm: Firecrackers explode at Shanghai Pudong Airport. Investigation under way. 3 injured in Shanghai Pudong airport explosion. Flights undisturbed. Explosives self-made with firecrackers

12.40 pm: Over 30 Kapu leaders arrested while they were protesting against their leader Mudragada Padmanabham's arrest

12.24 pm: Narendra Modi and Amit Shah will decide the strategy and party's face for UP election: Anurag Thakur

CM @sarbanandsonwal elected as Chief Patron of Assam Cricket Association.  All India Radio News (@airnewsalerts) June 12, 2016

12.00 noon: Agar ek pen se voting hui hai to shadyantra racha gaya hai BJP ka, agar election machine bhi involved hai toh khatre ki ghanti hai:BS Hooda

14 vote jo reject hui hain usme se 12 RK Anand ko daali gayi hain; kaun si vote hain kiski hain?: BS Hooda, former Haryana CM on RS Polls  ANI (@ANI_news) June 12, 2016

CORRECTION: Separatists leaders SAS Geelani & Mirwaiz Umar Farooq have been released. Yasin Malik still not released  ANI (@ANI_news) June 12, 2016

11.15 am: Achyut Lahkar, pioneer of mobile theatre of Assam breathed his last at Pathsala.

11.00 am: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh leaves for Allahabad to attend party executive meet.

10.47 am: PM Modi will inaugurate 2-day Annual Conference of Senior Tax Administrators of CBDT & CBEC on June 16 in Delhi.

Visuals from BJP office bearers' meeting in Allahabad (UP) pic.twitter.com/qq1QowIEqV  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) June 12, 2016

10.30 am: BJP president arrives in Allahabad for party executive meeting.

10.10 am: BSF apprehends one Pakistan national by BSF along Indo-Pak border near Gurdaspur district in (Punjab)

9.59 am: Delhi restaurant issue:If allegations found true,we'll cancel restaurant's license,action will be taken undr appropriate sections: Sisodia

9.40 am: 9-member BJP team to visit Kairana in UP to probe into migration of 346 families from village due to rising crime graph: ANI

9.25 am: Separatists leaders SAS Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq put under house arrest and Yasin Malik arrested ahead of their meet on Sainik colony issue.

8.50 am: President Pranab Mukherjee greets government and people of the Republic of the Philippines on their Independence Day.

8.30 am: Delhi: A restaurant allegedly denied entry to unprivileged children



8.15 am:21 Newly hatched baby crocodiles attract visitors to Coimbatore zoo.

8.03 am: President Pranab Mukherjee to begin his 6-day visit to Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Namibia, today

8.00 am: Two Pakistani smugglers killed, one injured in a gunfight with BSF troops in Fazilka(Punjab). 15 packets of heroin, weapons recovered

7.57 am:Two-day National Executive meeting of BJP to begin in Allahabad today.

OneIndia News
PM dismisses oppositions campaign on job creation, says India will be an example for the world

Some private carriers favoured under UPA: Ashok Gajapathi Raju

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, June 12: Certain private airlines were "favoured" by the previous UPA government and allegations in this regard are being investigated, Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said on Sunday, June 12.

Domestic carriers lost out significantly to their foreign counterparts in the previous government, he said. "Certain things done in the past (under UPA) did not make sense. Wrongdoing is wrongdoing, whether it is intentional or unintentional. Law should take its course.

"I won't individually sit and dig the past. There are agencies and they will do that. We are not interfering with it," Raju said when asked during an interview whether action is being taken against alleged wrongdoers.

Disapproving of the 5/20 norm introduced during the UPA tenure, Raju wondered who has benefited from the rule and gave clear indication that government was going to scrap it.

The airlines are divided over the continuance of 5/20 rule whereby only carriers with minimum 20 aircraft fleet and five years of operational experience can fly overseas.

Raju, who has been vocal against the rule, said policies are not for all times and added that there was no cohesiveness in promoting aviation sector during the UPA regime. When asked whether he would term them as legacy issues, the Minister remarked, "Call it under whatever names you want. Those titles you give and I don't have to give the titles".

"Right from the beginning I have been asking, look here what has 5/20 rule resulted in. What does it mean?... Now you have profitable and non-profitable routes within the country as well as outside. "What is effectively 5/20 then? It has not allowed the Indian players to rise to their potential.

On one side you have air service agreements with other countries while those countries are able to perform, you are not able to perform," the Minister said.

Asked whether he has differences with his junior colleague in the Ministry Mahesh Sharma on certain issues, Raju said there was nothing wrong in having divergent views.

Raju and Sharma have publicly aired contradictory views on various issues, including with regard to capping of airfares and possibility of auctioning of additional traffic rights. When asked about proposed auctioning of additional traffic rights, the Minister said it is in the draft civil aviation policy as Indian players are not able to perform on their air service agreements.

Air service agreements are between government-to- government under which the airlines of participating countries are allowed to operate agreed number of flights.

The government wants to make available additional flights outside of the agreements if there is a demand from a foreign airline through auction.

"Since there is also a demand by other countries, why don't you try to make it a unilateral kind of thing with limited auction period so that this money could go for regional connectivity fund," he said.

When told that no country in the world auctions bilateral rights, Raju clarified that government wants to auction only additional seats in a unilateral way.

PTI
Woman, her two children mowed down by train; Suicide not ruled out

#WorldDayAgainstChildLabour: No Acche Din for poor children

India

oi-Oneindia

By Maitreyee Boruah

Bengaluru, June 12: On the occasion of the 'WorldDayAgainstChildLabour' on June 12, the social media userscame together to speak against the practice of child labour in the country.

Thus the hashtag #WorldDayAgainstChildLabour was trending on Twitter on Sunday. The irony of the entire problem is that most of the child workers, who are denied their basic rights like education, are hardly aware that a day has been dedicated to them.

That is the sad reality of the problem. Everyone talks against child labour, but nobody takes action against it. In many cases, several educated and well-to-do families themselves engage minors as their domestic helps.

It seems that the popular election slogan "Acche Din" (good days) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not apply for the poor children, who are forced to work.

"Poverty is the root cause of child labour. If the practice of engaging children as workers continues, the cycle of poverty would continue in the country," says Nagasimha G Rao, child rights activist.

"The need of the hour is to provide free education to all poor and needy children from across the country. Anyone who engages a child as a labour should be punished severely, as the law suggests," Rao adds.

According to the Census 2011, 11.8% of the total workforce is between 5 and 19 years of age.The Census survey, released recently, says 1.3 crore workers in the country are in the age group of 5-14 years.

Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor fights against child labour: Will it work?

Around 3.2 crore workers are in the age group of 15-19 years. However, experts working in the field of rescue and rehabilitation of children working in various sectors say the figure of child labour is huge.

Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi puts the total figure at about six crores.

Activists say employers prefer children as workers as they come cheap. "Most of the children are engaged in hazardous industries. They are paid pennies. Most of the children are paid Rs 10 per day. They are not paid minimum wages. These poor kids have no social security. They often drop out of schools and end up working full time," says Rao.

In May last year, the Union Cabinet approved a proposal to ban employment of children under 14 years in all kinds of commercial enterprises. The original Child Labour Prohibition Act of 1986 banned employment of children below 14 in only 18 hazardous industries.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Sunday, June 12, 2016, 13:07 [IST]
1000 expected to attend second International Day of Yoga

International

oi-PTI

New York, June 12: Thousands of yoga lovers are all set to inundate the iconic Times Square as spiritual leaders and several Indian community associations prepare to organise a host of events in schools, temples and top tourist spots to commemorate the second International Day of Yoga on June 21.

Isha Foundation founder and spiritual leader Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, Miss America 2014 Nina Davuluri, diplomats and UN officials will attend the Yoga Day celebrations organised by India's Permanent Mission to the UN on June 20 and 21.

The Indian mission is organising a special event 'Conversation with Yoga Masters - Yoga for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)' at the world body's headquarters on June 20.

Sadhguru will be the lead speaker at the event, which will be attended by senior UN officials as well as Ambassadors and dignitaries from all other countries.

On June 21, the Indian mission and the UN Department of Public Information will host the celebration of the 2016 International Day of Yoga in the world body's headquarters.

President of the UN General Assembly Morgens Lykketoft will be the Chief Guest and Under Secretary General for Communications and Public Information Cristina Gallach will address the event.

The celebration will be led by Sadhguru and would include a musical incantation on Yoga and special Yogic meals.

The Indian Consulate, in association with the local Indian community and associations, is organising a series of Yoga related events in and around the city that started over the weekend in the run up to the main event.

The organisations will be hosting special Yoga sessions in schools, temples as well as at the J F K International Airport and Newark Airport.

A special yoga day celebration will also be commemorated at the Kresge Auditorium of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.

Several thousand people are also expected to attend the annual day-long yoga celebrations at Times Square that coincide with the summer solstice, the yearly moment when the sun is at its highest position in the sky for the longest period of time.

"Yoga unites us with the Universal flow and connects us with our own personal rhythms. The discipline of yoga enhances our ability to respond to subtle cues that promote wellness.

Peace becomes the natural environment of our relationships and our world," said Douglass Stewart, Cofounder of the Solstice in Times Square: Mind Over Madness Yoga.

The first International Yoga Day was commemorated at the UN with aplomb last year. In December 2014, the UN General Assembly had adopted a resolution with a record number of 177 co-sponsoring member states to establish the International Day of Yoga to be commentated every year on June 21.

PTI
Donald Trump does it again, says 'US must consider racial profiling'

Orlando shooting: Obama calls it act of terror; stands by LGBT community

International

oi-Shubham

Washington, June 13: US President Barack Obama on Sunday termed the mass shooting at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Florida, as an "act of terror" in his address to the nation from the White House. [50 killed in gay nightclub shooting in Florida]

"We know enough to say this was an act of terror and an act of hate," he said, adding: "The FBI is appropriately investigating this as an act of terror. We will go wherever the facts lead us ... What is clear is he was a person filled with hatred." [US has seen more mass shootings than any other country]

At least 50 people were killed while 53 were left injured after a 29-year-old man opened fire in the worst mass shooting in the history of the US. [Hillary, Trump react]

"In the face of hate and violence, we will love one another. We will not give into fear." @POTUS https://t.co/i7fOS38GzH  The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 12, 2016

Reaching out to the LGBT community, Obama said "it could have been any one of our communities" and added that it was a "heartbreaking day for our friends who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender". [Did Orlando shooter hate LGBTs?]

Oneindia News
'India won't listen to anyone': Anurag Thakur gives strong reply to PCB

Pakistan out of FATF's grey list

'Vindication of determined efforts': PM Shehbaz Sharif on Pakistan's exit from FATF's grey list

Pakistan off the FATFs grey List: What this means

Hindu old man tortured in Pakistan for selling edibles, policeman arrested

International

oi-Jagriti

Islamabad, June 12: A police constable has been arrested in Pakistan for allegedly torturing a Hindu man for selling edibles before Iftar, media reported.

His arrest happened following a social media campaign calling for justice for the old man who was tortured by the police constable Ali Hassan in Ghotki district.

The victim has been identified as octogenarian Gokal Das.

The constable has been arrested fort torturing and injuring Das on Friday.

Vinod Kumar, Gokal Das's grandson, registered an FIR against the policeman for assaulting the elderly man, a senior police official said.

Inspector General Sindh A.D. Khawaja ordered an inquiry after picture of Das with torture marks went viral on social media.

Rights activists including Sudhar Sabha president Amarnath Randhawa demanded an exemplary punishment for the policeman.

OneIndia News
US has seen more mass shootings than any other country

International

oi-Shubham

Orlando, June 12: The US has a tragic history of mass shootings; in fact, the world's oldest democracy has seen more mass shootings than any other country in the world, a new study has revealed, reported the CNN. [50 dead in Florida nightclub shooting]

The US has seen 90 mass shootings between 1966 and 2012 and they have occurred in public places like schools and theatres, the CNN report said. Mass shootings have been defined as incidents that see four or more victims and don't include gang killings involving the death of a number of family members. [Hillary, Trump react to mass shooting]

The 90 mass shootings constitute nearly a third of the 292 such attacks that happened across the globe. It means with just five per cent of the world's population, the US has been witness to 31 per cent of all public mass shootings, the CNN said. [President Obama calls it "act of terror"]

The 90 U.S. mass shootings are nearly a third of the 292 such attacks globally for that period. While the US has 5% of the world's population, it had 31% of all public mass shootings.

With 5% of world population, US has seen 31% of mass shootings between 1966-2012

Adam Lankford, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Alabama who did a first-of-its kind analysis on the mass shootings in the US, told the CNN that people have been taken by surprise by the statistics related to the tragic phenomenon.

How US mass shootings are different

Lankford, who went through each incident, found factors that made the US mass killings different from those that happened in other parts of the world, the report added.

He said the possibility of casualties in mass shootings in the US is higher if the victims are at work or at school. In other countries, such instances happen mainly in military zones.

Also, in most US shootings, the assassin is found carrying more than one firearm. In other instances, the shooter had only one weapon.

The number of victims on average per incident of mass shooting in the US is also high (6.87) while in another 171 nations that Lankford analysed, the average number of victims was 8.8. The lesser number of casualties in the US is lesser because the police of that country are better trained to deal with just incidents compared to their counterparts elsewhere, the professor said.

Data have suggested that many shooters in the US were mentally ill while other studies showed that the estimated number of cases of mental sickness hasn't risen alarmingly even as mass shootings have gone up.

Another analysis said attacks at public places occurred every 64 days on an average, between 2011 and 2014, the CNN reported. In the last three decades, the frequency rate was 200 days on an average. Though the overall rate of homicide and gun violence in the US have reduced significantly over the last 20 years, the report cited.

Some other analysts feel that such crimes could have a contagious effect. The easy accessibility of guns in the US make imitating the phenomenon there easier, said Lankford.

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Shanghai is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowing through it. With a population of 24.89 million as of 2021, Shanghai is the most populous urban area in China with 39,300,000 inhabitants living in the Shanghai metropolitan area, the most populous city proper in the world and the only city in East Asia with a GDP greater than its corresponding capital. As of 2018, the Greater Shanghai metropolitan area was estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (nominal) of nearly 9.1 trillion RMB, exceeding that of Mexico with GDP of $1.22 trillion, the 15th largest in the world. Shanghai is one of the world's major centers for finance, business and economics, research, education, science and technology, manufacturing, tourism, culture, dining, art, fashion, sports, and transportation, and the Port of Shanghai is the world's busiest container port. In 2019, the Shanghai Pudong International Airport was one of the world's 10 busiest airports by passenger traffic, and one of the two international airports serving the Shanghai metropolitan area, the other one being the Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport.
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Dutch Suspect Ties Between Illegal Crime and Online Gambling in Curacao

Published June 12, 2016 by Lee R

The public relations battle over jurisdiction slows the pursuit of the truth of allegations.

A brewing online gambling controversy has raised divisions within the Dutch government.

Whose Problem Is It?

The question of Dutch jurisdiction in Curacao has arisen as a result of suspicions harbored by some Dutch government officials of links between online operators in the island nation and organized crime.

Plasterk Says Not Ours

In a formal response to Parliamentary questions from Dutch MPs Ronald van Raak of the Socialist Party (SP) and Andre Bosman of the ruling party VVD, Dutch Minister of Kingdom Relations Ronald Plasterk disavowed responsibility for jurisdiction over illegal activities in Curacao.

Technically Speaking

Technically, only online casinos in Curacao serving the Dutch market are administered to by the Netherlands Parliament, through the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice in the Hague. Since online casinos are global operations that serve beyond the Dutch market, Plasterk asserts that these Curacao casinos are not within the supervision of his Ministry.

Some Suspect UTS

Widespread reports are surfacing that Van Raak and Bosman concerns are focused on potential connections to organized crime from Curacaos publicly owned national telecom provider UTS.

UTS Responds

UTS expressed their resentment in a press statement, saying:

The good name of the company is unfairly affected. The management of UTS suspects the Dutch MPs to have a double agenda.

UTS further urged local MPs to unite in one voice to preserve the reputation of the island from the public relations threat posed by the publicly expressed suspicions of the members of the imperial Dutch government, of whose kingdom Curacao remains a constituent.

Accountant Rejects Dutch Authority

UTS accounting firm KPMG has refused to share UTS financial statements with the Dutch government. KMPG cites client loyalty over obligations to the Dutch government, saying refusing to share does not constitute evidence of any wrongdoing. The firm asserts that neither it nor UTS is beholden by law to submit financial statements to the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce.

Outlook

Questions of the extent of UTS involvement in online gambling in Curacao, the extent to which the supported activity is illegal, and the extent of Dutch jurisdiction in the online arena of the Curacao market still within their antiquated imperial jurisdiction all constitute issues still to be resolved.
The Monkey King Now Reigns at Yggdrasil Casinos

Published June 11, 2016 by Mike P

Get ready for an adventure to meet the Monkey King at Yggdrasil casinos. This brand new video slot is out now and loaded with rewards.

Yggdrasil casinos now have a brand new video slot called Monkey King, which is now available at the likes of Cherry Casino, Mr Green, and Unibet Casino. Current players of those sites can embark on an adventure to a mysterious mountain temple to find the Monkey King, who is known as Sun Wukong in Journey to the West, a 16th century novel from China.

Monkey King has been constructed as a video slot with five reels and three rows, but the more interesting aspect of the slot is that players can win all ways. By design, this means that players can win with three or more matching symbols on consecutive reels, even if they are not next to one another.

Monkey King Features

The treasure chest symbol is extremely valuable in the base game, as this can release up to 100 coins or trigger free spins. During free spins, this will add two additional free spins plus the 1,000-coin payout. Watch out for this symbol on the fifth reel, as it cannot appear anywhere else.

The Monkey King Feature is an outcome that will lead to special gifts from the legendary character, including the chance to keep sticky wild symbols as long the wins continue on each spin. To unlock free spins, players need to land three or more of these symbols on the screen. As a bonus, four will add 1,000 coins and five will add 5,000 coins.

Incremental wilds are rewarding because a wild symbol appears on reels two or four until there are six for the sixth and final spin. The next mode gives players stacked wilds, which will add permanently sticky wilds to reels two or four for eight free spins. Finally, starting wilds be active for 10 spins, adding a sticky wild to the centre and even more wilds.
Reprinted from Gush Shalom

ONCE I heard the following story from the then Swedish ambassador in Paris:

"In 1947, when the UN was discussing the plan to partition Palestine, I was a member of the sub-committee dealing with Jerusalem. One day, the Jews sent a new representative. His name was Abba Eban. He spoke beautiful English, much better than the British or US members of the committee. He talked for about half an hour, and at the end there was not one person in the room who did not hate his guts."

I was reminded of this episode when I saw on TV the press conference held by Dore Gold, the Director General of our Foreign Office. Its subject was the recent Paris peace conference, which was vehemently denounced by our government.

From the moment I saw Gold for the first time I disliked him. He was our new ambassador to the UN. I told myself that my attitude was an unworthy rejection of foreign Jews ("Exile Jews" in Israeli slang). Gold speaks Hebrew with a very pronounced American accent and is no Apollo. I would have preferred as our representative an erect, Israeli-looking pioneer-type who speaks English with a pronounced Hebrew accent. (I know this sounds racist, and am thoroughly ashamed of myself.)

GOLD'S CONFERENCE was about the French peace initiative concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I have a lurking suspicion -- it is still lurking around -- that this is not really a French initiative, but a camouflaged American one.

It arouses the fury of the Israeli government, and no American president can do that if he wants -- himself or his party -- to be reelected.

There is a terrible fear haunting our government. Barack Obama abhors Netanyahu, and for good reason. But he cannot do anything against him openly -- not until midnight on election day. Whether Hillary Clinton or (God forbid) Donald Trump is elected, Obama remains in office for almost another three months after the elections -- and in this period he is as free as a bird (as the Germans would say). He can do whatever he likes. Whatever he dreamed about, day and night, for eight long years. And what he dreamed about was Binyamin Netanyahu.

Ah, the sweet revenge. But only in November. Until then he has to dance to Netanyahu's tune, unless he wants to hurt the Democratic nominee.

So what can he do in June? He can farm things out. For example, ask the French to convene a peace conference to prepare the way for recognition of the State of Palestine.

Asking the French to convene a high-ranking conference in Paris is like asking the cat if it wants some milk. You don't have to wait for an answer.

France, like Great Britain, is mourning its imperial past, when Paris was the center of the world and educated Germans and Russians, not to mention Egyptians and Vietnamese, spoke French. The passports of many nations were printed in that language.

That was the time when almost half the world appeared on the maps in French blue, while the other half appeared in British red. The time when the French diplomat Georges Picot and his British colleague Mark Sykes divided between them the Ottoman Middle East, exactly a hundred years ago this week.

Having the foreign ministers (not to mention kings and presidents) of the world congregate in one of the many beautiful palaces of Paris is a French dream. The British, in much the same situation, would like the same, but are busy with the infantile urge to leave the European Union.

Whatever, what we have now is this French initiative, a glittering assembly of foreign ministers or their representatives, demanding the resumption of the peace negotiations within a limited time frame, with the declared aim of recognizing the Palestinian state.
"Rape culture hysteria is devastating society, and it does so even as the rate of rape falls sharply," writes Wendy McElroy in the preface to her new book, Rape Culture Hysteria: Fixing the Damage Done to Men and Women. McElroy quotes an anonymous poster:

"'Rape culture' did not slip sleeping pills into my drink. One man did. Don't let rapists go free of responsibility by saying their choices are made for them by society."

How dangerous is the "rape culture" construct? Convicted sexual assailant Brock Turner ably demonstrates the risks of blaming collective culture for individual behavior by aiming that weapon in the opposite direction. In his pre-sentencing statement to judge Aaron Persky, asking for probation rather than prison time, Turner writes:

"I know I can impact and change people's attitudes towards the culture surrounded by binge drinking and sexual promiscuity that protrudes through what people think is at the core of being a college student. Before this happened, I never had any trouble with law enforcement and I plan on maintaining that. I've been shattered by the party culture and risk-taking behavior that I briefly experienced in my four months at school."

See what he did there? With a few glib turns of phrase, Turner turns the same logic underlying "rape culture" claims to his own purposes. He ceases to be an assailant and becomes another victim.

Brock Turner didn't sexually assault an unconscious woman next to a dumpster outside a fraternity house. "Party culture" did that.

Brock Turner didn't penetrate that unconscious woman with a foreign object (Brock Turner's finger). Binge drinking, sexual promiscuity and risk-taking behavior did those things.

Blame booze. Blame college. Blame culture. Just don't blame Brock Turner. Poor, poor Brock. Bad culture! Bad! Go stand in the corner, culture!

Well, no. In reality, Brock Turner did what he did, and only Brock Turner is responsible for it. His "culture" excuses are just that -- excuses.

And how did our REAL culture -- as opposed to the "rape culture" we supposedly live in -- respond to Turner's crime? With universal outrage.

More than a million people have already signed a petition calling for the removal of judge Persky, who sentenced Turner to a mere six months for his crime, from the bench. Stanford University has banned him from its campus, and USA Swimming (which controls Olympic trials) from its events, for life.

Some "rape culture," huh?
Forgiveness is a universal need, among those of us who are not religious and among believers in every religion on earth. We must forgive each other our differences, and we must forgive much more difficult occurrences.

Some things we can forgive easily -- by which, of course, I mean eliminating resentment from our hearts, not granting an eternal reward. If someone kissed my feet and poured oil on them and begged me to forgive her, frankly, I would have a harder time forgiving the kisses and oil than forgiving her a life of prostitution -- which is, after all, not an act of cruelty toward me but the violation of a taboo into which she was likely compelled by hardship.

But to forgive men who were torturing and killing me on a cross? That I would be very unlikely to succeed at, especially as my nearing end -- in the absence of a crowd to influence -- might convince me of the pointlessness of making my last thought a magnanimous one. As long as I live, however, I intend to work on forgiveness.

If our culture truly developed the habit of forgiveness, it would dramatically improve our personal lives. It would also make wars impossible, which would further dramatically improve our personal lives. I think we have to forgive both those who we think have wronged us personally, and those whom our government has told us to hate, both at home and abroad.

I suspect I could find well over 100 million Christians in the United States who do not hate the men who crucified Jesus, but who do hate and would be highly offended at the idea of forgiving Adolf Hitler.

When John Kerry says that Bashar al Assad is Hitler, does that help you feel forgiving toward Assad? When Hillary Clinton says that Vladimir Putin is Hitler, does that help you relate to Putin as a human being? When ISIS cuts a man's throat with a knife, does your culture expect of you forgiveness or vengeance?

Forgiveness is not the only approach one can take to curing war fever, and not the one I usually try.

Usually the case that's made for a war involves specific lies that can be exposed, such as lies about who used chemical weapons in Syria or who shot down an airplane in Ukraine.

Usually there is a great deal of hypocrisy one can point to. Was Assad already Hitler when he was torturing people for the CIA, or did he become Hitler by defying the U.S. government? Was Putin already Hitler before he refused to join in the 2003 attack on Iraq? If a particular ruler who has fallen out of favor is Hitler, what about all the brutal dictators whom the United States is arming and supporting? Are they all Hitler too?

Usually there is aggression by the United States that can be pointed to. The U.S. has aimed to overthrow the Syrian government for years and avoided negotiations for the nonviolent removal of Assad in favor of a violent overthrow believed to be imminent year after year. The U.S. has pulled out of arms reduction treaties with Russia, expanded NATO to its border, facilitated a coup in Ukraine, launched war games along the Russian border, put ships in the Black and Baltic Seas, moved more nukes into Europe, begun talking about smaller, more "usable" nukes, and set up missile bases in Romania and (under construction) in Poland. Imagine if Russia had done these things in North America.

Usually one can point out that no matter how evil a foreign ruler is, a war will kill large numbers of people unfortunate enough to be ruled by him -- people who are innocent of his crimes.

But what if we tried the approach of forgiveness? Can one forgive ISIS its horrors? And would doing so result in free reign for more such horrors, or in their reduction or elimination?

The first question is easy. Yes, you can forgive ISIS its horrors. At least some people can. I feel no hatred toward ISIS. There are people who lost loved ones on 9/11 who quickly began advocating against any vengeful war. There are people who've lost loved ones to small-scale murder and opposed cruel punishment of the guilty party, even coming to know and care for the murderer. There are cultures that treat injustice as something in need of reconciliation rather than retribution.

Of course, the fact that others can do it doesn't mean that you can or should do it. But it's worth recognizing how right were those family members of 9/11 victims who opposed war. Now several hundred times as many people have been killed, and the hatred toward the United States that contributed to 9/11 has been multiplied accordingly. A global war on terrorism has predictably and indisputably increased terrorism.

If we take a deep breath and think seriously, we can also recognize that the resentment that calls out for forgiveness is not rational. Toddlers with guns kill more people in the United States than do foreign terrorists. But we don't hate toddlers. We don't bomb toddlers and whoever's near them. We don't think of toddlers as inherently evil or backward or belonging to the wrong religion. We forgive them instantly, without struggle. It's not their fault the guns were left lying around.

But is it the fault of ISIS that Iraq was destroyed? That Libya was thrown into chaos? That the region was flooded with U.S.-made weapons? That future ISIS leaders were tortured in U.S. camps? That life was made into a nightmare? Maybe not, but it was their fault they murdered people. They are adults. They know what they are doing.

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Never have so many wanted to do so much -- and had the means to do so much -- and done so little.

That will be the subtitle of the chapter of the future history book covering our lifetime. The internet is teeming with websites (like this one), blogs and videos calling for change, but nothing happens. You may argue with this, but you know in your heart it is true. Are we getting closer or farther away from destroying the planet, either by nuclear war, or by environmental catastrophe?

Two years ago I appealed to Paul Craig Roberts and Noam Chomsky to begin a dialogue that could bring together large numbers of progressive people, so-called "radical dissidents," who agree on many issues even though they may disagree amongst themselves on some, the most important of the latter being (still) 9/11. My effort was successful. Both Roberts and Chomsky responded positively, Roberts publicly and Chomsky by email, and Rob Kall agreed to do a podcast with the two of them on OEN.

Unfortunately, nothing further developed from this. I had hoped it would catch on, but it didn't, or at least hasn't yet, and not because of the reservations that Paul Craig Roberts quite rightly expressed in his reply to me but simply because, apparently, no one has bothered.

Maybe in the frenzy of the current presidential campaign the idea still has a chance. All it needs is one or two people who can write emails and maybe set up a website. Nothing fancy. It can work. If I could do it once with Paul Craig Roberts and Noam Chomsky, it can be done again, over and over, and with other leading figures as well. Robert Parry. Chris Hedges. Russ Baker. Michael Moore. There are many others so I won't try to name them.

Paul Craig Roberts used the phrase "council of dissidents" to refer to what I was proposing, and that is fine with me. There doesn't even have to be a website. The VIPS, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, publish their memos on Robert Parry's ConsortiumNews.com. This is a fine initiative that can be taken as a model. What makes it work is not a fancy website but just the names at the bottom of the memos. Consider what it would mean to have such memos written and signed by people like Noam Chomsky and Paul Craig Roberts. Those two names alone would give literally thousands, maybe even millions (globally), of people a single voice.

This is different from trying to organize mass protests or petitions, or get somebody elected. Those actions rely on numbers, big numbers, the bigger the better. This would rely only on the "prestige" of the individuals who write and sign the memos, or white papers, or whatever they choose to call them. (By "prestige" I mean the respect that people have for these individuals.)

We are used to thinking of significant change as possible only as the result of a popular movement, or mobilization (or as Rob Kall terms it, a "bottom-up" revolution). But movements need leadership. Our argument to our (potential) leaders, as I argued (successfully!) to Roberts and Chomsky, should be simply: How can you (or we) expect to organize thousands and millions of people, when you can't or won't organize yourselves? Set an example for us!

They still have to be persuaded, you have to get around their egos (everybody has one!) and be persistent, but it can be done.


Ding Dong the GOP is Dead

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The Republican Party has become an embarrassment to itself and to America. Historians will likely debate whether the fall of the GOP was a slow moral decline or accidental suicide.

In the meantime we watch in disbelief as the party of Lincoln and emancipation has reverted to "trickle-down racism" according to Mitt Romney. The once proud party of Republican President Ike Eisenhower, the World War II leader that executed the D-Day strategy that destroyed Germany's Atlantic Wall, now thinks that building another wall along the boarder of Mexico will work out better than the one Hitler built in 1942. Instead of the intellectual political writings of conservative William F. Buckley, the new face of the GOP is a bombastic demagogue, dripping venom with each new racist outburst. Even Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan called Trumps remarks "the textbook definition of a racist comment." Donald Trump is redefining the Republican Party and the new version is an open attack on the conservative values of the past.

The efforts within the GOP to stop Trump are too little and too late. Some Republican insiders, fearful of the damage Trump is doing to the party, are openly trying to stop the mogul by staging an all-out delegate revolt at the Republican National Convention. This far-fetched idea is a clear indication of the panic and desperation within the ranks of the GOP.

Other Republicans such as conservative commentator Bill Kristol and 2012 nominee Mitt Romney are proposing that Republicans abandon their party altogether and vote for the Libertarian Party candidate, Governor Gary Johnson. Remember in the Election of 1992, third party candidate Ross Perot collected 18% of the popular vote. The fraction of the GOP unhappy with Donald Trump could surpass that percentage.

The death of the Republican Party will not be due to natural causes but rather the result of a catastrophic moral collapse. In the end Donald Trump will leave the GOP morally bankrupt and he will walk away from Republicans like one of his failed real estate ventures. Somehow I can hear Trump's parting comment to his Fox News nemesis, Megyn Kelly, "Its not my fault, they weren't that good anyway."
In the 70's I thought that once people would learn about farm-animal cruelty, big humane changes would be imminent. Of course, I would soon become disillusioned about my naivete. I now realize that knowledge alone about animal cruelty and suffering will not change the world's concern in this matter. I now believe that the all-important missing ingredient is COMPASSION, and I am sorry to say but I feel that not too many

people have it in regards to animal suffering.

In 2003 when I wrote some 350 Catholic bishops about my concern in this regard and the church's lack of concern for animal suffering, I had hoped for some positive feedback and/or at least some acknowledgement of my letter. Was I ever in for a shock. I believe I received 16 compassionate responses. Clearly, I was not impressed by this seeming lack of compassion then and even today as well as the lack of acknowledgement of my letter.

Would I still have taken the time and expense to xerox a 3-page letter to the leaders of the Catholic Church? In a heart beat. I knew that if I truly cared about animal suffering, than I should always do all I can to alleviate it.

Sadly, the church was not then or even today receptive to consider the need for compassion to animals. It seems they have forgotten that God also created the animals and expects us to treat them compassionately. Sadly, ditto, and also lack of response from the 80 Cleveland Catholic clergy and the 5 theologians I also wrote to in this regard.

Undercover videos revealing animal cruelty is not new, but recently in an effort to galvanize support for a referendum mandating cage-free eggs in Massachusetts, a video depicting chickens packed in tight cages was released. Particularly disheartening was the picture of chickens trampling on the carcasses of dead hens.

The Humane Society of the United States said the clip was filmed at a large Maine egg farm that supplies Massachusetts stores. The practices seen on the video were not only detrimental to hen welfare but to public health as well.

Revealed at a Boston news conference, the video underscored the battle over the ballot question that requires changes. Starting in 2022, farms and business would produce and sell eggs from cage-free hens; pork from pigs not raised in or born of a sow raised in a confining gestation crate, and veal from calves not raised in confining crates. I can't believe that poor calves are still being placed in crates -- cruel and unusual punishment for a baby

cow whose only crime is that his flesh is prized by meat eaters.

Paul Shapiro of the HSUS said the video exposed the facility managed by Hillandale Farms, a major national egg producer, as a facility with rampant problems. They found birds in cages dead and decomposing for weeks.

This farm was also the subject of a 2015 ABC News investigation. I am always happy when something like this makes it on the world news. Thank you, ABC News.

On the other side of the coin, Chad Gregory, president and chief executive of United Egg Producers, decried the press in this regard as a ridiculous stunt. He said the farm in Turner, Maine, had passed an independent United Egg Producers Certified audit last year.

Well, I don't know about you -- but I believe videos don't lie. I also believe that the HSUS doesn't lie either. I am also glad that as a vegan, I do not eat the eggs of these tortured hens. And I truly hope and pray that, for the chickens' sake, the referendum mandating cage-free eggs will pass in Massachusetts. These battery cages have been in existence for far

too long. When will we get rid of them once and for all?
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People waiting to pick up a traveler at Portland International Airport will soon get space at a new travel center to be built near the terminal.

The port this week approved a 20-year lease with MAJ Development Corp. of Vancouver. The company plans to build a gas station and travel center at the corner of Northeast 82nd Avenue and Northeast Air Cargo Road, including a new cellphone waiting area.

People waiting for a phone call from a traveler are currently relegated to a strip of parking spots near the airfield fence. The new 30-stall lot will be better lit and offer access to the travel center amenities, the port said.

The travel center development will also include an 18-pump gas station, a coffee shop, a pizza restaurant and a quick-service restaurant. It will also have flight information displays for waiting customers.

The travel center and new cellphone lot are expected to open in summer 2017.

-- Elliot Njus

enjus@oregonian.com

503-294-5034

@enjus
In 2010, Paulo Vasconcelos had a good paying job working for petroleum giant Petrobras in his hometown of Aracaju, but he wasn't satisfied.

The Brazilian already had a bachelor's degree in English teaching and had always wanted to put his language skills to use by studying and living aboard.

"I thought, 'I need to step it up a bit,'" Vasconcelos said. His American husband, Stephen Matusik, pushed Vasconcelos to dream big.

Six years later, the 38-year-old will graduate from the Oregon Institute of Technology with a master's degree in renewable energy engineering Sunday. He finished his bachelor's in renewable engineering at OIT in 2014. Vasconcelos has a huge cheering section flying in from Brazil for two weeks. His mother, two sisters, godson, brother and his family will be in Portland to celebrate.

"It's not only a graduation for me," Vasconcelos said in an interview from the school's Wilsonville campus this week. "For me it kind of a mix of a dream coming true - coming to another culture, coming to another country, being successful."

Across Oregon this month, thousands of students will turn a new chapter in their life stories and graduate with bachelor's, master's, doctoral or associate's degrees from dozens of public and private institutions.

Commencement ceremonies will take place at public universities across the state.

During the 2015-16 academic year, an estimated 22,024 undergraduate degrees will be awarded at some 40 public and private institutions, according to an estimate by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Graduate programs will award 5,446 degrees, and an estimated 1,462 doctoral degrees will be awarded, too. Neither of those figures includes the 1,252 degrees in nursing, medicine and other programs at Oregon Health & Science University this weekend.

An estimated 13,146 associate degrees were earned at community colleges during the same period, and 4,672 more certificates to students who studied specific skills at any of the state's 17 community colleges.

Oregon State University awarded the most degrees, with an estimated 7,102 undergraduates, graduate and doctoral degrees presented collectively at its Corvallis and Bend campuses.

The University of Oregon had the second most undergraduate degrees awarded, with 4,192 students completing their four-year studies. UO's commencement is Monday.

At Portland State University, Diana Tsurkan will be the youngest recipient of 4,150 degrees conferred on Sunday.

The 19-year-old Clackamas native took dual enrollment classes while in high school, racking up college credit for years.

"I'm not a naturally smart person, honestly, I'm not like a prodigy," said Tsurkan, who completed her psychology degree at PSU.

"I always felt like I was one step behind -- that's where hard work kicked in. I feel like I studied more than a normal person."

Tsurkan, the daughter of Moldovan immigrants, is the first person in her family to graduate from college.

Her father died four years ago, and she pushed herself through school thanks to a job at a retirement home and her family's support. She's headed to Willamette University's law school in the fall, but still doesn't know what she wants to do with the rest of her life.

Like most undergraduates, she's tired of the question: What are you going to do?

Her mother asked her that same question the other day. "Everyone keeps asking me," Tsurkan said. "It's really hard."

In Wilsonville, Vasconcelos said he's done a lot of thinking in recent weeks about why OIT was so influential in his life.

He came to renewable energy "from the dark side of the force" in the petroleum world, but excelled in Wilsonville because of the small class sizes and the ability to get to know professors.

He was a shut-in during the first six months, living and studying in a new country. He feared his language skills weren't strong enough to excel.

But four years later, he blossomed at the school - becoming an active student leader on campus who helped organize networking sessions and other events. "Why not take the opportunity?" he said.

"Why waste time staying in my shell, protecting myself. Let's try to learn as much as I can," he said.

He has no regrets.

Vasconcelos' graduation is Sunday at 2 p.m. in Wilsonville.



-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen
Since oil started moving by rail in unprecedented volumes in the Pacific Northwest in 2012, everyone involved has scrambled to catch up.

Oregon hired more rail safety inspectors. State firefighters and environmental officials trained for accidents and spills. Federal regulators adopted new safety standards.

And yet another oil train went off the rails a week ago in Mosier, a small Columbia River Gorge town, sparking evacuations and a fire that burned for 14 hours.

Oil trains are still not as safe as they could be. Despite nationwide attention, hundreds of millions of gallons of crude oil continues moving by rail through small towns and big cities in the Pacific Northwest, posing risks on both sides of the Columbia River, along the Deschutes River and the Interstate 5 corridor.

Here are five ways the oil trains moved by companies like Union Pacific and BNSF Railway Co. could be safer than they are today.

1. Oil could move in safer tank cars.

The shortcomings of the tank cars carrying volatile crude oil across the country have been obvious for years.

When oil trains began hauling mile-long loads of crude a few years ago, they used an outdated rail car called the DOT-111. The car punctured easily and tore open in derailments. Now oil increasingly moves in a second-generation car called the CPC-1232. It's stronger, with a reinforced steel shield on each end. All the cars in the Mosier derailment were CPC-1232s.

But as that fiery wreck and several others have made clear, oil moving in those tank cars is still dangerous.

Under federal rules issued last year, DOT-111s and CPC-1232s are due to be phased out or retrofitted in favor of a newer car called the DOT-117. That process will target the most unsafe cars first.

But that will take years. Tank cars like those in the Mosier derailment can still ply the rails until May 1, 2025.

Even their replacements will derail, a daily occurrence on rail lines across the country. They are just less likely to release oil when that happens. The new DOT-117 will be thicker, with stronger brakes.

The rules "should result in fewer punctures and pile-ups like we saw in Oregon," said Namrata Kolachalam, a federal Department of Transportation spokeswoman. "The deadlines for retrofit of tank cars have been locked in by Congress and are the absolute last moment for railroads to meet these standards. Industry should work to beat those deadlines."

Michael Eyer, a former state rail safety inspector, said the safest tank car would be one called the DOT-105. It's used to move far more dangerous substances such as propane and anhydrous ammonia. But because it's pressurized, it can hold about a third less, Eyer said, cutting into profits.

"We can make it safer, we can do better," Eyer said. "It takes a degree of commitment that we don't have."

2. Tank cars could be required to better withstand fires.

When the oil train derailed in Mosier, it started a fire that burned beneath loaded tank cars each holding as much as 30,000 gallons of crude.

In other oil train derailments, that pool of flame created so much pressure inside tank cars that they exploded, sending massive fireballs into the sky. That didn't happen in Mosier. Despite the fire and smoke, no tank cars exploded.

But as a Chicago Tribune report found, federal rail regulators didn't address the risks of pool fires in new tank car standards unveiled last year. The Department of Transportation kept a 20-year-old rule that requires tank cars to survive a fire for 100 minutes without exploding.

Safety advocates and rail industry officials urged the federal agency to increase that requirement to 800 minutes, the Tribune found, or 13 hours. That's about how long the Mosier fire burned.

The federal government didn't listen and has no current plans to require that.

3. The oil itself could be made safer.

Crude oil was never supposed to explode.

The oil moving from North Dakota's Bakken formation is extracted by hydraulic fracturing. When it comes out of the ground, it's saturated with unusually high concentrations of flammable gases such as propane and butane - the same gases as in backyard grills and cigarette lighters. A 2014 investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive found the oil moving through the state was unusually volatile.

Producers can strip out those highly flammable gases before the oil is loaded for shipment. The process is called stabilization. North Dakota oil regulators estimate it would add $2 to the production cost of every barrel.

Less volatile oil could still burn in a derailment. But nearby residents and firefighters responding to train accidents would be safer from reducing the size of any fireball.

State regulators in North Dakota last year set the first ever limit to tame the most volatile crude. It requires a less-intense treatment process estimated to cost 10 cents per barrel.

But safety officials and experts on crude oil say the limit, 13.7 psi, is too high to have widespread impact. The oil that exploded in Lac Megantic, Quebec, in 2013, killing 47 people, wouldn't have been affected.

The oil that caught fire in Mosier was also within the North Dakota standards.

It was still as volatile as gasoline.

4. States could minimize oil train traffic until they're safer.

Oregon and Washington can't ban oil trains. Because railroads enable interstate commerce, they're primarily regulated by the federal government -- not states.

But states can control whether those trains have more destinations.

In Washington, Gov. Jay Inslee has the final say over a Vancouver oil train terminal proposed by Tesoro Corp. and Savage Services. The terminal would be the West Coast's largest, bringing up to four oil trains through Washington's side of the Columbia Gorge daily, loading the oil on barges to send to refineries.

Environmental groups have fought the terminal since it was unveiled. They say the Mosier crash will reinvigorate their opposition.

Eric de Place, policy director at the Sightline Institute, a progressive Seattle think tank, said it's up to elected officials such as Inslee to call a timeout on oil trains "until they can prove it's not going to kill us."

"I have to believe this incident is going to register with him," de Place said. "This incident will weigh heavily on the scale."

The Port of Portland said no to an oil train terminal in 2014 after developers contacted the public agency about building a terminal. The port studied the proposal, then publicly rejected it, citing oil train safety risks.

Port leaders haven't changed their minds. Though the agency hasn't received any proposals since then, Bill Wyatt, the port's executive director, said he still doesn't think oil trains are safe enough because of the oil's volatility.

"It's a toxic brew," Wyatt said. "I've personally come to the conclusion that regulators need to step up and deal with this at the source. This substance has proven itself to my satisfaction to be too dangerous."

5. Lawmakers could ensure that railroads, not taxpayers, are on the hook for the costs of a worst-case wreck.

This wouldn't make an oil train safer, but it would reduce risks to the taxpaying public.

When an out-of-control oil train derailed in Lac Megantic, Quebec, and killed 47 people in July 2013, its operator, the Maine, Montreal & Atlantic Railway Ltd., quickly went belly up. The company carried $25 million in insurance. The cleanup and rebuilding was estimated to cost more than $2 billion.

Taxpayers have been picking up the tab.

Starting June 18, Canadian transportation regulators are requiring railroads hauling large volumes of crude to carry $1 billion in liability insurance.

U.S. regulators haven't done the same, despite urging from the National Transportation Safety Board. Washington lawmakers passed a law requiring railroads to prove they had enough insurance for catastrophic accidents. It had little effect.

Railroads including Union Pacific and BNSF Railway Co. filed reports with Washington state regulators estimating a "reasonable" worst-case oil train wreck would cost more than $700 million.

That price tag is less than half the actual worst-case scenario that already happened in Quebec.

Railroads told the state they had enough insurance, but refused to disclose how much, claiming the information was a proprietary trade secret.

-- Rob Davis

rdavis@oregonian.com

503.294.7657
1supcourt.JPG

(The Associated Press)

By Noah Feldman

The Supreme Court on Monday decided two cases involving prisoner lawsuits. It blocked one but allowed room for a possible second try. It allowed the other suit to go forward on somewhat complicated statutory grounds. The technical details matter less than the bottom line, which is that the court wants it to be very hard for prisoners to sue, but not totally impossible.

On the surface, this seems sensible: The federal courts can't micromanage the entirety of the prison experience, and judicial intervention should be reserved for extreme cases of rights-violation. On another level, it's disturbing to think that the courts are participating in a project to make our system of incarceration look just, when in fact it's deeply troubled.

The first case arose from an allegation by a Maryland prisoner, Shaidon Blake, that while he was being transferred between cells, one corrections officer held him while another punched him repeatedly. Blake reported the incident to a senior corrections officer, who thought the incident was serious enough to refer the whole thing to the state prison system's Internal Investigative Unit. The investigations unit found that the guard who did the punching had used excessive force, and the guard resigned to avoid being fired.

Blake then sued both officers for damages in federal court, and a jury awarded him $50,000 in damages against the puncher. The other officer, however, had a better lawyer, who raised a clever defense. The argument was that Blake's suit could not go forward because he had not gone through all of the administrative remedies available to him in the prison before bringing the suit.

The requirement of exhausting remedies before bringing a lawsuit is standard in administrative law. It's formalized for prisoner suits under the Prison Litigation Reform Act. The correction officer's argument was that before Blake could sue, he needed to go to the warden, and then seek an appeal if denied satisfaction, as was standard under the prison's administrative rules.

Under the letter of the law, this argument was probably right. But Blake responded, reasonably enough, that he thought the investigation by the prison system's internal affairs unit was a substitute for the ordinary administrative procedure.

A federal district court dismissed Blake's suit, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit agreed with Blake. It created a special exception to the exhaustion requirement for circumstances where non-compliance with the ordinary process was justified. The Fourth Circuit was trying to apply the spirit of the law instead of its letter and give Blake justice. It was recognizing that no rule should be so absolute as to thwart common sense.

In an opinion for a unanimous court, Justice Elena Kagan struck down the Fourth Circuit's special circumstances exception -- because it isn't mentioned in the text of the law. In an attempt to temper the harshness of the judgment, however, she pointed out that the prisoner litigation act doesn't require exhaustion of administrative remedies when those remedies are "unavailable." And she said it was at least conceivable that once the internal investigative process began, it would've been impossible for the ordinary administrative process to go forward.

The second case involved an inmate who alleged that prison officials negligently allowed him to be beaten by another inmate. This prisoner, Walter Himmelreich, brought suit against the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act. That suit was dismissed under an exception that says you can't sue a federal official for actions taken within his or her exercise of discretionary functions. Himmelreich then filed a suit for a constitutional violation against the individual prison officials, which would not be subject to the same exception.

But a federal district court rejected the second suit, too. A different provision of the tort claims act says that once you've sued the government and lost, you can't then go and sue individual federal officials on the same issue.

The Supreme Court held unanimously for Himmelreich on technical grounds. It said that since his first lawsuit fell within an exception to the tort claims act, it wasn't dismissed under the act, and therefore he wasn't barred from bringing a second suit against the officials. If that holding makes sense to you, congratulations -- either you're already a lawyer by training or else you're a natural-born lawyer. If not, don't worry about it; lawyers are a dime a dozen and you can always hire one of us when necessary.

The technicalities don't much matter, because like the first case, the second represented something bigger than its holding. In both, the court was saying that it shouldn't be too easy for prisoners to sue when bad things happen to them, but it shouldn't be absolutely impossible, either.

The Goldilocks "just right" model always looks appealing on the surface. But applied to prisoner litigation, it should give us pause.

Locked away and denied access to the outside world in a range of different ways, prisoners are deeply vulnerable to abuse both by guards and fellow inmates. Not only does the U.S. incarcerate a vastly higher proportion of its population than many other countries; the conditions of detention are on the whole much worse in the U.S. than in other well-off nations.

The judiciary enjoys high legitimacy as an institution of government. Given that fact, the courts should avoid legitimating the prison system by interpreting the law to allow only occasional intervention when the facts are especially bad. The court should take a broader view, and give the benefit of the doubt to prisoners who see the courts as the only institution capable of protecting them from the bad things that happen in prisons.

Noah Feldman, a Bloomberg View columnist, is a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard.

For more columns from Bloomberg View, visit http://www.bloomberg.com/view.

(c) 2016, Bloomberg View
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In this June 2, 2016 file photo, Brock Turner, right, makes his way into the Santa Clara Superior Courthouse in Palo Alto, Calif.

(The Associated Press)

By Ruth Marcus

WASHINGTON -- Somehow, it's always the parents' fault. We are too lax, except when we are too helicoptery. We coddle the kids too much, except when we drive them into neurotic overachievement. We are enablers. No, we are Tiger Moms. The societal urge to blame is matched only by the parental instinct to second-guess -- ourselves as much as our fellow parents.

And so, two big and otherwise unrelated news stories of the last few weeks -- the killing of a silverback gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo and the lenient sentence imposed on a former Stanford student for sexual assault -- arrive with an unavoidable overlay of debate over proper parenting.

The first reaction to the zoo story, and the decision to shoot the gorilla to protect the toddler who fell into the animal's enclosure, was entirely unsurprising: Blame the mommy. Not just blame her -- prosecute her. Surely no responsible parent could have allowed her child to escape her watchful eye. Call Child Protective Services.

"Parental negligence" that "may be reflective of the child's home situation," thundered a change.org petition with more than 500,000 signatures. It demanded "an investigation of the child's home environment in the interests of protecting the child and his siblings from further incidents of parental negligence that may result in serious bodily harm or even death."

Except that, it turns out, there was no evidence of negligence. "Our information is that the mother turned away for a few seconds to attend to another one of her young children and this is when the 3-year-old was able to climb into the gorilla enclosure," concluded Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph Deters. "Any parent who is honest with himself or herself would have to understand how this could happen to even the most attentive parent."

Indeed. How often have any of us turned away, taken a call, lost track in a way that, but for luck, could have ended in tragedy? Might I suggest that schlepping your four children -- ages 7, 4, 3 and 1 -- to the zoo is prima facie evidence of responsible, not neglectful, parenting? Might I suggest, oh so gently, that the fact that the allegedly inattentive mother is African-American contributed to the ensuing uproar?

In the Stanford case, there is no defending Brock Turner, or his father, Dan, who wrote a tone-deaf letter to the judge pleading for probation. His son's prosecution, Dan Turner wrote with an exquisitely offensive turn of phrase, was "a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20-plus years of life." He lamented that his once "happy go lucky" boy had lost his appetite for a juicy rib-eye.

Disgusting, especially in its failure to recognize the true victim. And yet, parents, ask yourself: If this were your son, would you not ante up whatever you could for the best defense possible? Would you not do what you could to spare him from the terrors awaiting him behind bars? Would you not argue for the lightest possible punishment, no matter how much you reviled his behavior or berated him in private?

I know I would. Say all you want about logical consequences and taking responsibility. The parental urge to protect is primal and instinctive, activated by the imagined sound of a clanking cell door.

Of course there are too many examples of outrageous parental attempts to shield their little darlings from the fallout of misbehavior. We have witnessed one such episode where I live, in suburban Maryland, where a high school principal made a valiant effort to deter drinking at the prom. Students, she warned, would be barred from graduation ceremonies if caught, which, not surprisingly, they were.

Which, predictably, happened. And then, even more predictably, squealing ensued. What, no march across the stage to ecstatic clapping? Talk about enabling: The school superintendent overruled the principal. Where were the parents who should have been backing up the principal's efforts to ensure their children's safety? Knowing our suburb, hiring lawyers -- if they weren't lawyers themselves -- to strong-arm the superintendent.

Other parents rallied to the principal's defense, and I'd like to think I would have been among them, even if my child were among those being punished with the ultimate sanction: no graduation video to post on Facebook.

But maybe not. We are fallible creatures, we parents, Mama and Papa Grizzlies who inevitably err. We take an eye off the cub. We swat at perceived danger. Could you maybe give us a break? Could we give ourselves one?

Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.

(c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group
By Dennis McLerran

Cleanup of the lower Willamette River is now in sight.

Last week, after an intensive scientific effort to determine what type of pollution exists, where it exists, what risk it poses and how to reduce those risks, the Environmental Protection Agency has released our proposed plan for cleaning up 10 miles of the lower Willamette River. The clock now starts on a two-month comment period, an opportunity for all who care about the river to tell us what we got right and what needs improvement before the plan is finalized late this year.

This is a significant milestone for Oregon. Whether you treasure the lower Willamette's spiritual, aesthetic, recreational or economic value, this is your river. We encourage everyone with a stake in the river to engage in this regional conversation about cleanup over the next two months.

We know there will be diverse opinions on the scope and cost of the cleanup. But we've worked very hard to strike what we view as the right balance to ensure that the work prescribed in our plan is practical, affordable and ultimately effective in reducing near- and long-term risks to people, fish and wildlife.

Estimated to cost approximately $750 million, the plan we're proposing is a big one, ranking among the largest river sediment cleanups in the nation. Our plan calls for removing or capping contaminated sediment from the most polluted and toxic areas. Caps will be used to isolate contamination. In other areas of the river, cleaner sediments from upstream will reduce the levels of contamination over time.

As we developed our plan, we closely consulted with a coalition of public and private stakeholders, including the state, the city of Portland, the Lower Willamette Group -- which includes many of the industry and government entities responsible for doing the actual cleanup work -- six federally recognized tribes, the Portland Harbor Community Advisory Group, state legislators, members of Congress, and a multitude of other state, city county and federal agencies.

But ultimately, our plan had to be driven by data, science and our duty under the Superfund law to provide a cleaner and safer river for all.

It is no secret that legal and technical disagreements over the years delayed this process for far too long. We're now at a point where the public can see the scientific, engineering, public health and economic considerations we've faced. Over the next two months, all have the chance to weigh-in on our proposed river cleanup plan.

Over 50 years ago, it was clear to Gov. Tom McCall that the Willamette -- the lifeblood of Portland -- needed protecting. While the oft-hailed cleanup efforts of the 1960s and 1970s stopped many of the ongoing insults, the previous century of sewage and industrial waste discharge left a lot of pollution intact and in place. But so is Gov. McCall's idea that the people who rely on the Willamette deserve a river that can support future generations.

We look forward to hearing from you.

*

Dennis McLerran is administrator for the U.S. EPA's Region 10.
Nautilus Live

(Screenshot/NautilusLive.com)

A robot submarine piloted by oceanic researchers is broadcasting live from the ocean floor off the Oregon Coast.

The crew of the Exploration Vessel Nautilus, a 64-meter research vessel operated by the Ocean Exploration Trust, and its remotely operated vehicle, Hercules, are scouring the Astoria Canyon looking for -- in the words of one crew member -- "exciting methane seeps."

In the live stream, Hercules' cameras offer sweeping views of the ocean floor while the researchers offer commentary -- and get very excited when they see bubbles.

Its mission in the Pacific Northwest is to find those "methane seeps," where the natural greenhouse gas is released from the ocean floor along the Cascadia subduction zone. (That's the fault line that's expected to someday cause the earthquake Oregonians have come to know as The Big One.)

The presence of methane can sustain certain ecosystems on the ocean floor, and the methane seep might point to geological activity underground.

Watch the live stream at NautilusLive.org. The mission off the Pacific Northwest coast continues through June 20.

Update: The live stream is wrapping up for the day, but here's a taste of the action from Nautilus Live's YouTube channel, posted two days ago after a dive off the coast of Washington state.

-- Elliot Njus

enjus@oregonian.com

503-294-5034

@enjus
H_Boise-Condor-chick.jpg

A baby condor is shown at its new home in Boise, where a pair of foster parents have adopted the hatchling after it was ignored by its parents in Portland.

(Oregon Zoo)

A California condor chick, ignored by its parents while still in its egg at the Oregon Zoo, is now being "doted on" by a pair of foster parents at a bird rescue in Boise, Idaho.

Zoo officials were alarmed when the chick's parents weren't incubating the egg, even as it began to hatch. They started calling other keepers of condors in hopes of finding a new home.

They found a suitable pair at The Peregrine Fund, a Boise nonprofit. An Oregon Zoo keeper drove the egg to Idaho on June 2.

The enthusiastic foster father, apparently thinking the chick needed help hatching, started breaking the shell off the egg as soon as he discovered it, Marti Jenkins, condor-breeding specialist with The Peregrine Fund, said in an Oregon Zoo news release.

"Despite the quick hatch, the chick appears to be doing very well and is absolutely adored and doted on by its new parents," Jenkins said.

The California condor was the first species listed under the Endangered Species Act. The population had dwindled to less than 30 in the 1980s, when the last wild condors were taken into captivity for breeding programs in an attempt to save the species.

Now there are about 400, with more than half living in the wild.

-- Elliot Njus

enjus@oregonian.com

503-294-5034

@enjus
JOHN DAY -- A deputy protected his relatives from blame in a random shooting by arresting the 911 caller who reported it, resulting in a foul-up that raises fresh questions about embattled Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer.

The district attorney didn't pursue a case, instead rebuking Palmer and his deputy. The county quietly paid the caller $12,000 from its insurer to fend off a lawsuit.

"This incident is the most egregious abuse of power I have ever seen," said attorney Edie Rogoway, who represented the arrested man.

The botched arrest comes to light as Palmer faces a state criminal investigation for allegedly tampering with official records. He also faces a state administrative investigation into whether he's fit to retain his police certification.

Palmer gained national notice earlier this year for his sympathy for militants who took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. He considers himself a "constitutional sheriff" and vows to protect citizens from abusive government.

In the shooting case, Palmer approved the arrest and later promoted the deputy to undersheriff, his second-in-command. This is the latest in a series of questionable actions by Palmer to come to public attention in recent months. He faces 10 complaints that he violated standards for police officers. The complaints, including two from John Day city officials, list accusations that Palmer put the county at risk through of his association with the militants, that he's a law enforcement "security leak" and that he has improperly deployed civilian deputies.

Palmer and Undersheriff Zach Mobley didn't return telephone messages or respond to written questions. On Friday, Mobley's attorney didn't address the questions but wrote that "Mobley's reputation is very important to him personally, and also is vital to his ability to work in his profession."

Police records, video and audio recordings and dispatch logs show that Jim Koitzsch, 57, was at home with his two dogs, watching television, when the gunfire started. A neighbor heard it, too.

Koitzsch had stepped onto the front porch of his isolated Grant County home the evening of Jan. 26, 2015, to see who was shooting. Out of the dark, he said, a round whizzed past his head.

"I almost got hit," Koitzsch told the dispatcher, according to a recording. "I need an officer up here."

Mobley, with the sheriff's office since 2006, responded to the call, telling dispatchers he knew the people along the gravel lane that threads up a small canyon on John Day's west side. Just four homes line Terrance Road.

Recorded on police video, a shaken Koitzsch described the shots - four, a pause, and then four or five more. He pointed up the hill toward the house across the road as the source. He said he couldn't see anybody.

"Are you're absolutely positive it came from right here?" Mobley asked, gesturing toward the home.

"100 percent," Koitzsch responded.

It was the home of Terry and Leann Coalwell. Leann Coalwell is the sister of Mobley's wife. As he responded to the call that evening and before meeting Koitzsch, Mobley talked by phone to his 15-year-old niece, who told him she had heard no shots, according to the deputy's report.

Document: Grant County Sheriff's Office incident report

After questioning Koitzsch, Mobley excused himself to talk to a neighbor who heard the shots.

But before reaching the neighbor or going to the Coalwell house, Mobley called Palmer.

According to his written report, Mobley told the sheriff that only kids were home at the Coalwells, though he didn't say how many or their ages. He said they didn't have access to guns, which were kept in a safe. His report doesn't say how he established this.

"Sheriff Palmer told me to go ahead and arrest Mr. Koitzsch," Mobley wrote in his report. "I told Sheriff Palmer that I was checking with him because I wanted to make sure it wasn't a conflict since the Coalwells are my family."

He would later arrest Koitzsch for initiating a false report, a misdemeanor with a penalty of up to a year in jail.

Despite the arrest approval, Mobley still interviewed the neighbor, Dorothy Thexton, 66. He didn't tell her he intended to arrest Koitzsch on an accusation of fabricating the "shots fired" incident.

On police video, Thexton echoed Koitzsch's account - a series of gunshots that seemed to come from the Coalwell property.

Her grandson chimed in, saying it sounded like a rifle.

"Like a machine gun?" Mobley asked.

The grandson said yes, and mimicked the sound as Mobley continued recording.

Mobley recounted in his report his conversation with Thexton but didn't mention the grandson or his account.

He told Thexton he was going to the Coalwell home.

When she said she didn't know the deputy, he responded, "I'm Deputy Mobley."

"Are you their brother-in-law?" Thexton asked.

"Yeah," Mobley responded.

"Holy crap," she said.

In his report, Mobley wrote that he next went to the Coalwell home and interviewed his niece. He reported that she said no one had been shooting, no guns were out, and all the guns were in the safe. He later told Koitzsch he personally checked the safe and found it locked.

He did the questioning and the safe inspection in about two minutes, according to the dispatch logs and the police video.

He didn't include a video of that interview in his official report, though he had recorded the interviews with Koitzsch and Thexton with a body camera. His report makes no mention of entering the Coalwell home or verifying the gun safe was locked.

"To hide the fact that his relatives were allowing their minor children to have access to loaded firearms while home alone, Deputy Mobley arrested and jailed an innocent man," Rogoway said in a notice filed with Grant County that she intended to seek damages.

Document: Attorney's claim for damages

In the later settlement, Palmer, Mobley and the county all denied any liability.

Koitzsch spent the night in jail, and three days later the local prosecutor said there was no case.

Document: District's attorney memo

District Attorney Jim Carpenter cited Thexton's statement in deciding not to prosecute Koitzsch.

"It is clear that shots were fired in the area, which is what Koitzsch reported," Carpenter wrote in a memo to Palmer.

"Investigations of relatives and close friends will be reviewed with a skeptical eye," Carpenter wrote. "Every precaution should be taken to avoid this situation."

-- Les Zaitz

@leszaitz
Fleet Week. A Portland man dies in Yellowstone. And the latest in Portland's lead crisis. These were among our top stories.

The ropes have been secured to the seawall, the uniforms have been pressed, and the sailors visiting Portland for Fleet Week have begun to dive into the city, some of them setting foot on dry land for the first time in months.

The U.S. Department of Justice's internal inspector announced Tuesday that a U.S. Attorney had been found to have violated laws and sexual harassment regulations after engaging in a relationship with a subordinate. The justice department's inspector general did not identify which U.S. Attorney was the target of the investigation but wrote that the official had been accused of having an inappropriate yearlong relationship with an assistant U.S. attorney. The report also noted that the U.S. Attorney had lied about who was the actual target of the investigation and later resigned.

We pick Portland's Restaurant of the Year:



A 27-year-old man faces three felony charges in the alleged abuse of a 1-year-old Sherwood boy he was babysitting months ago - a swift turn in a case that drew national attention to Oregon law after police initially made no arrest.

Pacific Power claims it faces a $40 million-a-year tax hike if a controversial new corporate tax measure is approved in November. The Portland utility said it has just one way to recover those costs: A 3-4 percent electricity rate hike to consumers. In Mt. Angel, agricultural co-op Wilco is bracing for a tenfold increase in its state corporate taxes -- from $250,000 to $2.5 million a year -- if IP 28 becomes law. Powell's Books claims IP 28 would jack up its tax bill to 20 times the current level. The tax measure would send a vast river of additional funds into state coffers -- $6 billion per biennium. But a new report obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive bolsters the business community's complaints that IP 28 takes a heavy toll on a relatively small number of companies.

Developers would be required to reduce the scale of homes they build in Portland's single-family zones and would be allowed to construct more duplexes, triplexes and other forms of so-called "middle housing" on those lots under a tentative set of city proposals that will be made public this month.

An Oregon man died in Yellowstone National Park on Tuesday, after leaving a boardwalk and falling into a scalding hot spring. Park officials identified the man as Colin Nathaniel Scott, a 23-year-old Portland resident.

The federal government on Wednesday released its long-awaited plan for cleaning up cancer-causing soil in the Lower Willamette River, settling on a "hybrid" proposal that includes doing nothing for the vast majority of the 10-mile-long contamination zone.

Portland Public Schools' senior manager for environmental health and safety, Andy Fridley, resisted testing school water quality and spread false information about the safety of drinking water in schools, email records show. Fridley was the point person charged with protecting students and employees in Oregon's largest school district from environmental hazards for two years. Superintendent Carole Smith put him on paid leave June 2 due to his role in the district's much-criticized response to high lead levels at two schools.

Vulgar insults hurled. Name calling. People shouting out comments while others had the floor to speak. Repeated demands for the meeting to come to order. Frequent breaks in board action to avoid an escalating crisis. That pretty much summed up Thursday night's meeting of the Portland Community Oversight Advisory Board, a group created to monitor police reforms required by the federal government.

While the nation grapples with the latest campus sexual assault story and its fallout, Oregon colleges continue to grapple with the right ways to prevent, report and respond to sexual assaults on campus.
You might have noticed their crisp uniforms if you stepped foot into downtown Portland recently.

Sailors, Marines and Coast Guard members from the United States and Canada are visiting town. And today's your last chance to tour a big ship, offer a friendly greeting to one of those many service members visiting Portland, view the Grand Floral Parade floats up close or catch a glimpse of the Dragon Boat races.

Canadian, U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard ships are docked along Waterfront Park and open for public tours Sunday, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tours are first-come, first-serve. The line to get on the ships closes at 3:30 p.m., so don't wait until the last minute if you want to step aboard.

The tours are free.

Check out the tour schedule here and general Fleet Week information here.

Dragon Boat races start at 9 a.m. at the south end of Tom McCall Waterfront Park, so bring your cheering voice and a hat to protect you from the sun if you want to spectate.

The public is invited to view the Grand Floral floats from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. along Southwest Naito Parkway. That's right next to CityFair.

Check out the CityFair web page here.

-- Aimee Green

503-294-5119
Water collected in two Portland-area homes recently logged the highest lead levels reported locally in nearly two decades, new testing data obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive shows.

Water from a home in Tigard recorded lead of 648 parts per billion. A home in unincorporated Washington County tested at 113 parts per billion.

No amount of lead is considered safe. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discourages children or pregnant women from drinking water that exceeds 15 parts per billion.

Both test results came from homes that receive drinking water from the Portland Water Bureau, which serves nearly 1 million people in the metro area, including suburbs such as Gresham, Tigard and Tualatin.

Results from the two homes are "alarming," Gabriel Solmer, a Water Bureau spokeswoman, said in an emailed response to questions. But she stressed that the results appear to be abnormalities and aren't indicative of broader problems.

The eye-popping test results were collected in March and April during semi-annual testing mandated by the federal government. They're the latest trickle in a local lead frenzy spurred by high test results in some Portland Public Schools.

Solmer said officials took immediate steps to contact the wholesale providers that officially supplied the water, Tualatin Valley and the city of Tigard. Those agencies discussed the high results with each homeowner.

Officials don't believe the results indicate a greater problem in high-risk homes built between 1970 and 1985, Solmer said. Officials are required to test homes built between 1983 and 1985, with copper piping and lead solder, as part of federal clean-water rules. Portland's naturally corrosive water can leach lead from that kind of plumbing.

Since 1999, Portland officials haven't seen a test higher than 98 parts per billion, results show.

"The two results are unusual and extraordinary," Solmer said.

"There is no reason to believe there are a significant number of homes with similar levels," she added, "otherwise we would see this type of result more frequently."

Federal regulators require water providers to keep lead levels at or below 15 parts per billion, as measured through samples collected at specific homes throughout the system. If samples from at least 10 percent of tested high-risk homes exceed that level, water systems must notify the public or take steps to reduce corrosion.

Portland once again hovered just below the federal standard, reporting 13.1 parts per billion for spring testing. Of 114 samples only 8 percent exceeded 15 parts per billion.

The results are "certainly good news as it shows that Portland's water treatment processes are working as intended," Solmer said.

Portland most recently exceeded the federal standard in fall 2013. In recent years, the Rose City recorded the highest lead levels of any large water provider nationally, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported in April.

Although Portland's water is considered corrosive, state regulators in the 1990s deemed the city in compliance with federal lead rules. Portland could add more chemicals to the water to reduce corrosion but instead chose to focus on lead-paint hazards.

Federal officials, in the wake of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, are now keeping closer watch on Portland.

"We remain interested in what more (Portland) can do to minimize the levels of lead at users' taps," wrote Marie Jennings, manager of the Environmental Protection Agency's regional drinking water unit, in an April 14 letter to state regulators.

Portland officials say there are odd circumstances behind the two high tests.

In the first, water was collected from a bathroom faucet instead of the kitchen sink. Five of 22 past tests at the Tigard home since 2003 previously tested high, but never more than 38 parts per billion.

This test found 648 parts per billion, on par with some results from Flint.

"These results indicate that the source of lead is from the bathroom faucet," the Water Bureau wrote to The Oregonian/OregonLive. "It was strongly recommended to the customer to not use the bathroom faucet for consumption and the customer was encouraged to replace the faucet."

At the other home, near Cedar Mill, none of the past five tests since 2013 exceeded 15 parts per billion. The owner told officials he thought he used hot tap water - which is more likely to release lead from plumbing or fixtures.

The owner, Michael Tranlong, 50, said he's not worried by the 113 parts per billion result. He lives alone in the home, which he bought in 1992.

"I haven't really given it that much thought," he said, before adding, "I'm not too concerned."

-- Brad Schmidt

503-294-7628

@cityhallwatch
The numbers tell part of the story. The Chippewa Nature Center (CNC) has 60,000 visitors a year. It has 1,200 acres of woodlands and wetlands and 15 miles of hiking trails. The property sits at the confluence of two rivers  the Pine and the Chippewa. There are 40 staff members. More than 600 students have attended the nature preschool. Each summer, 700 Nature Day Campers learn and play while being outdoors.

And this month, the number 50 can be added to that list, as the CNC celebrates five decades. On Saturday, June 25, there will be a variety of family-friendly anniversary activities at CNC, 400 S. Badour Road. From an early morning bird walk to a late-afternoon commemorative tree planting, the day will be full of rambles, story time, traditional skills demonstrations and informative sessions with staff members.

There will be wagon rides from the parking lot to the Homestead Farm where from 1 to 4 p.m. there will be live music by the Jolly Hammers. The contents from a Time Capsule which was created 25 years ago will be on display. There will be candle dipping, rope making, face painting and much more.

Beyond the numbers, the rest of the story of CNCs success at getting people immersed in the natural world is a tale of visionaries, donors, staff, volunteers and loyal members. Current CNC Executive Director Dick Touvell describes CNCs beginnings back in 1963 as the story of two Midland men: Howard Garrett and Eugene Kenaga.

From their passion and vision came this wonderful organization, Touvell said. He will retire at the end of this year after spending 26 years at CNC.

Kenaga died in 2007 at age 90. He had degrees in zoology and entomology by 1940 when he became a research entomologist at The Dow Chemical Co. Garrett met Kenaga in 1957 when he returned to his native Midland to work at Dow. Garrett lives at Midlands Kings Daughters retirement home, and he will turn 90 at the end of June.

Together, they and others envisioned what could be and received encouragement, support and the eventual donation of land for CNC from The Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation.

From a beginning where volunteers did everything, the organization eventually started hiring staff.

When I hired into CNC in March 1982, I found myself thrust into the chaotic, crazy and completely wonderful world of CNC educational programs. That very day, thanks to the organization, my lifes perspective changed forever, said Gary Skory, director of the Midland County Historical Society. I watched multiple school buses roar into CNC, and observed dozens of school kids learning memorable and fascinating information regarding springtime ecology, the value of a sugar maple woods and the magical process of making maple syrup, from tree to pancakes.

During every single day until I left in 1988, I witnessed CNC educate and improve the lives of its members, area residents and worldwide visitors, Skory said. The hands on exposure to (and the understanding of) nature, archeology, heritage and environmental education is crucial in the 21st century, and no one does it better in our state than the Chippewa Nature Center.

Skory left CNCs staff in 1988 to oversee the construction of the Herbert H. Dow Museum for the Midland County Historical Society and became its director in 1990.

Current staff member Rachel Larimore was instrumental in bringing the Margaret Ann (Ranny) Riecker Nature Preschool Center to CNC. As director of education, she has built the preschool to an expected enrollment of 140 students this fall. She leaves CNC at the end of this month to pursue a doctorate at Michigan State University.

I think Ill miss my co-workers the most  dreaming, creating, improving, laughing  all while contributing to the health of our community, Larimore said. I truly believe that the work we do at CNC contributes to the quality of life of our community. CNC is a highly-respected nature center in the field and an asset to our region. We are constantly striving to improve on programs by not only adhering to best practices within the field, but also helping to shape those practices.

Among the Midland adults who have enjoyed CNC enough over the years to give of their volunteer time to serve on its board of directors are Marcia Dilling and Marianne McKelvy.

Walking the trails with naturalists at Chippewa Nature Center and attending their programs has helped me become better at identifying native wildflowers, fungi, birds, mammals and trees, Dilling said. Some of these subjects, plus buildings at the Homestead Farm, have served as a source of much of my photography. Through history programs and tours of CNC property, Ive acquired a better understanding and appreciation of Native Peoples use of the land and rivers, where early settlers built and farmed in Midland County and the effects of floods and logging. My granddaughters have enjoyed many sessions of Nature Day Camp at CNC, learning survival skills and studying and gaining an appreciation of the natural world under the guidance of knowledgeable and caring counselors. Chippewa Nature Center is a treasure in our community.

In addition to being a board member, McKelvy has also been active for many years in the Oxbow Archaeologists, a CNC Affiliate group which is a professionally-mentored group of avocational archaeologists. The group meets at CNC regularly and has excavated an 1830s settler occupation, an early 19th century Chippewa occupation and an 1840s settler occupation. Representatives of the group will be available at the CNC anniversary event on June 25 to describe their work.

Visits to CNC, attendance at workshops and programs or participation in Nature Day Camp incite a passion to preserve, protect and interact with the natural world, McKelvy said. The naturalists and educators at CNC have provided our family with mentorship, inspiration, learning and wonder for the world around us. Chippewa Nature Centers mission of education builds a lifelong commitment to understanding and preserving our environment. We are proud of this place!

A full schedule of CNCs anniversary events on Saturday, June 25, is available at: www.chippewanaturecenter.org/50th-anniversary.
Chelsea Purgahn | Kalamazoo Gazette-MLive Media Group via AP

KALAMAZOO, Mich. (AP)  Lance Armstrong plans to be in Kalamazoo for a "Finishing the Ride" event in honor of the five cyclists killed when they were hit by a pickup truck.

Armstrong said he couldn't believe it when he heard about the collision on June 7 in Kalamazoo County's Cooper Township, 160 miles from Chicago, that also left four others injured. Armstrong plans to join Kalamazoo-area cyclists in a 28.5-mile ride Tuesday from Kalamazoo to Plainwell and back.
Row after row of work benches were lined as far as the eye could see. As far as Midland resident Ermil Ogden, 95, could tell, each station was manned by a woman.

We were all called Rosie the Riveter because all the men went to war and of course women went to work, Ogden said.

In 1941, Henry Ford switched his focus from rolling cars off the assembly line to making airplanes to support World War II.

You didnt look around to see what was going on, Ogden said. You kept your eye on what you were doing because we were an assembly line. Get this done, get another one, get this done.

Ogden was in her 20s when she and her husband started working at the Willow Run Bomber Plant in Ypsilanti in 1943. There, she worked on drilling rivet holes into a two-to-three-foot section of the airplanes wing.

Id make that piece of plane, Ogden said. And I would think how many boys are going to go down with that plane? How many are going to get home?

Ogden, her husband and their two sons were living in a travel trailer, parked in a field among others who were also working in factories. A man and woman, brother and sister, lived just across the path from them; the man also worked at Willow Run Bomber Plant and the woman watched Ogdens children while she went to work. Ogden enjoyed working at the plant, but missed spending time with her kids.

For Petoskey resident Betty Munsen, 94, living conditions consisted, for her and her husband, of a small apartment in Seymour, Indiana.

We didnt have too much to take care of because it was just a small apartment, Munsen said. Life there was good because it was all service people and we made some really good friends there too.

For about a year, Munsen worked in a shirt factory in Seymour that had completely converted to making army uniform shirts.

I only did one little part of them and that was the cuff, Munsen said. There was a whole line that was working on the shirts and when it got to the end, they were all put together.

Munsens husband went overseas and she moved back to Detroit to be close to her parents. There she continued working, but instead of shirts she sewed life preservers for the Navy.

I worked longer at the Indiana job than I did (in Detroit) because, well, the war got over while I was there so they completely shut down, Munsen said. I also worked in a factory in Detroit in 1943 and it was Chrysler. They were making bolts for airplanes, thats the part I worked on.

Munsen said she also enjoyed working in the factories, saying that everyone was looking for ways to help in the war effort. She worked for a little while after the war ended, but didnt find it as enjoyable.

Shortly after (the war ended), everybody was through at work, Munsen said. When I got back to Petoskey I just worked at a store as a clerk. That wasnt nearly as exciting.

Munsen has kept in contact with one of her friends from the Seymour factory through letters.

She still is in the town there, Munsen said. We have been back and forth to see each other, she has come to Petoskey and I have gone down there.

Like Munsen, Ogdens husband was also drafted. This, coupled with her being pregnant with her third child, was why she decided to move back home to be with her parents in Cheboygan.

Ogdens husband didnt come home until nearly a year later; he was wounded and being treated at Crile Hospital in Ohio. He received a Purple Heart. Shortly after coming home, he wanted a divorce.

For a whole year it was just me and my three boys, Ogden said. I had to go to work to support my children.

After that year, she moved to a small town called Washington and worked at a National Twist Drill only 20 miles away in Rochester. It was here she met her second husband.

I found he was a very, very, very kind person, Ogden said. We were married for 57 years.

He passed away six years ago, but Ogden said if he had lived five more weeks, he would have been 100 years old.

I have to give the Lord credit for that, Ogden said.

The Willow Run Bomber Plant has since been demolished for the most part. The Yankee Air Museum purchased 175,000 square feet of the building, which is less than 5 percent of the original space, to preserve the history.

Ogden said that, despite the building being so large, there wasnt enough property for the finished airplanes to exit the plant. When the airplane was wheeled out of the plant, it had to make a 90 degree turn, but the wings were long and there wasnt enough space.

They had to buy more property so they could get the airplane out and turn it without breaking the wings, Ogden said.

Ogden and her second husband had two children, a boy and a girl, who were raised in Washington. Ogden and her husband retired from the National Twist Drill and moved to Cheboygan. The two of them moved to Midland 20 years ago after several years working in Christian ministry after retirement.
Hours after a gunman killed at least 50 people in Orlando, Obama said the FBI would investigate the nightclub shooting as terrorism, but said the alleged shooter's motivations were unclear. He said the U.S. "must spare no effort" to determine whether the suspect, identified by authorities as Omar Mateen, had any ties to extremist groups.

"What is clear is he was a person filled with hatred," Obama said of the alleged shooter. He added: "We know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate. And as Americans, we are united in grief, in outrage, and in resolve to defend our people."

Obama, who has proclaimed June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month, called it "heartbreaking" for the LGBT community. He said the site of the shooting was more than a nightclub because it was a place where people came "to raise awareness, to speak their minds and to advocate for their civil rights."

"The shooter targeted a night club where people came together to be with friends to dance and to sing  to live," Obama said.

For Obama, the hastily arranged remarks were the latest in what's become a tragically familiar routine. Since he took office in 2009, Obama has appeared before cameras more than a dozen times following mass shootings and issued written statements after many others.

The president made no new, specific call for stricter gun laws. Though he lamented "how easy it is" for people to get their hands on weapons, Obama appeared resigned to the likelihood that he'll be unable as president to substantially address the mass shootings that have proliferated in recent years.

"We have to decide if that's the kind of country we want to be," Obama said. "To actively do nothing is a decision as well."

After a gunman in Newtown killed 20 first graders and six adults in 2012, Obama dedicated much of the start of his second term to pushing legislation to expand background checks, ban certain assault-style weapons and cap the size of ammunition clips. That measure collapsed in the Senate, and since then, the political makeup of Congress have made new gun laws appear out of reach. Still, Obama has sought to take incremental steps using his own authority to tighten rules for obtaining a gun.

Obama spoke from the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, named after the former press secretary who was shot and permanently disabled in an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.

He also signed a proclamation on Sunday ordering flags to be flown at half-staff until sunset on Thursday in honor of the victims.

Vice President Joe Biden canceled a planned trip Sunday to Miami to hold a fundraiser for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. Biden's office said he would remain at his family home in Delaware while receiving updates about the shooting before returning to Washington in the evening.
BLOOMINGTON  Justice has been well-served: The home for the McLean County Museum of History's enlightening new "Abraham Lincoln in McLean County" exhibit is a former courtroom.

Though consigned to storage use in recent years, the venerable first-floor space has been returned to its judicial origins per the exhibit's themes and subject matter.

Cases won't be tried, but a verdict has definitely been handed down naming Bloomington as a primary stage for what co-curator Bill Kemp calls Lincoln's "role as the leader and moral voice of the movement to oppose the expansion of slavery," circa the mid-1850s.

The multimedia exhibit, which debuted last month, is the second in a series of five permanent displays being rolled out over a three-year stretch at the museum ("Challenges, Choices and Change: Making a Home" debuted earlier this year; yet to come are exhibits on farming, work and politics).

"Abraham Lincoln in McLean County" pays necessary heed to Lincoln's legal ties to the area during his two decades and 90 cases as an attorney in McLean County and on the well-trod Illinois Eighth Judicial Circuit.

Check out the interactive touch screen that allows a 21st-century dweller to tag along with Abe via the route he traveled in and out of McLean County, including the various places he stopped along the way through two time frames, 1839-47, and 1847-53.

Three key trials  a landmark tax case involving the Illinois Central Railroad, an early use of the insanity defense in a murder case, a trailblazing divorce case  are profiled, along with their historic ramifications.

Key players along Lincoln's way in his "home away from home" are his like-minded legal friends in the area, including David Davis, Jesse Fell, Asahel Gridley and Leonard Swett, each well-represented in the exhibit.

The quartet's presence ranges from accounts of their various interactions with the future president to surviving artifacts from those interfaces.

That includes a desk from the law office of Kersey Fell, Jesse's brother, which was frequently used by Lincoln, including the day Jesse encouraged Abe to run for president. (Also on display is another local desk Lincoln used: from Davis' law office, where the visitor from Springfield often borrowed space to catch up on business.)

As crucial to understanding McLean County's Lincoln legacy as all of that is, says Kemp, the story is one that "has been told well many times before."

Thus, he and co-curator Susan Hartzold chose a path less traveled ... the one that saw Bloomington becoming a main stage for Lincoln's vocal opposition to slavery's expansion, the issue that first put him in the national spotlight, then the White House.

Among those decisive moments is the aftermath of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which threatened to extend slavery into northern territories ... which provoked an outcry from Lincoln and his friends.

That episode is illuminated in an audio-visual look at U.S. economic dependence on slavery and how it led to the formation of the Republican Party.

One of the exhibit's most fascinating forays along those lines is its display devoted to Lincoln's 599-word "autobiographical sketch," penned in December 1859 at the behest of Jesse Fell, who felt that newspaper editors "back east" needed the background info ("a simple, unadorned statement") to share with voters there.

A touch screen offers an array of options in navigating the document: either in Lincoln's original script (not always instantly legible) or in a text version, each with highlighted words/phrases that are linked to additional context and interpretation.

As with the "Making a Home" exhibit that premiered earlier this year, "Abraham Lincoln in McLean County" is an amalgam of traditional artifact displays and information panels married to interactive digital technologies.

That's been made possible through the ongoing $3 million "Extending Excellence" capital campaign, and overseen by Torii More, the museum's coordinator of digital humanities.

Her goal, she says, is to develop a narrative that digs deeper into the subject via various interactive digital additions, including touch screens, phone apps and, as the exhibit's climax, a nine-minute film that plays in the exhibit space's own theater.

Scripted by Kemp from eyewitness accounts largely culled from Pantagraph archives, the short film features illustrations by Chicago artist Rick Tuma and covers a range of "man-behind-the-myth" recollections, from Lincoln's storytelling acumen to his bouts with depression, his facility with the German language and his ease around kids (and vice-versa).

The exhibit has been well-attended and received since its May 21 unveiling, says Hartzold, and offers a perfect fit with the museum's year-old Cruisin' with Lincoln on Route 66 Visitors Center.

A "second coming" for the exhibit is still looming, she adds, with July's annual Lincoln's Festival expected to offer it a prime showcase and built-in audience.
ISEO, Italy  It's taken nearly 2,000 years, but regular folks will soon get to feel what it is like to walk on water, thanks to a project by the artist Christo, who may or may not have had his namesake in mind when envisioning his latest project: "The Floating Piers."

"Any interpretation is legitimate," Christo, 80, allowed graciously in an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press at the picturesque Lake Iseo in northern Italy, where his 23rd large-scale installation is just a week and a half from opening.

Since November, Christo and his team have been overseeing the assembly and anchoring of 220,000 floating poly-ethylene cubes to create a 3-kilometer (nearly 2-mile) undulating runway connecting the mainland with a pair of islands, one inhabited and towering above the lake.

"For the first time, for 16 days, from the 18th of June to July 3, they will walk on the water," Christo said of the 2,000 residents of Monte Isolo, which is normally only accessible by boat.

"The Floating Piers" is expected to draw half a million visitors during the longest days of the year to northern Italy's least-known big lake. That is considerably fewer than the 5 million who visited Christo's and his late wife Jeanne-Claude's famous "Wrapped Reichstag" in Berlin in 1995 and the 2 million who walked through their work "The Gates" in New York City's Central Park in 2005, due largely to the relatively rural location.

The project still awaits a final touch: The application of deep yellow fabric that the artist promises will dramatically shift from nearly red to brilliant gold under the effects of light and humidity.

"You will need sunscreen," from the reflection, he says with conviction.

The project awakens many metaphors: Yellow brick road, for the fantastical journey it beckons. Runway, for the attention it commands. Beach for the lapping waves along the sloping edges of the 16-meter (more than 50-foot) wide boulevard. The fabric, which will be sewn into place by German seamstresses with specially made sewing machines, to create natural ruching. This effect prompts Christo to warn that visitors will have to step carefully along the oscillating platform.

The artist describes the sensation as "walking on the back of a whale."

Once the installation opens on June 18, 150 volunteers, among them lifeguards, will be posted on the piers and on boats around the clock to ensure safety. Swimming is forbidden -- but expected, despite the cold water temperatures. Entrance is free, with the entire cost of the 15 million euro ($17 million) project financed by the artist himself.

Christo's projects are as much feats of engineering as they are works of art. He has brought in a team of athletes from his native Bulgaria to assemble the specially made, recently invented cubes and divers to anchor them to concrete slabs on the lake-floor, employing oil-rig-inspired two-week rotations. The 190 anchors were moved into place by air balloons.

Like many of his previous installations, "The Floating Piers," had its own destiny. Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who died in 2009, originally envisioned it for the delta of Rio de la Plata, Argentina, in 1970 but they failed to get permissions. They then considered Tokyo Bay, but again failed to get the permits.

"The project is done for ourselves. And if other people like it, it's almost a bonus, very much like a painter who (has) huge big canvases they like to fill it with color. You don't fill the canvas with color to please Mr. Smith, Mr. Jones, you fill it with color because you like to have the joy to see this color," Christo said.

When his 80th birthday was bearing down on him and his "Over the River" proposal to drape fabric over the Arkansas River in southern Colorado was still embroiled in court battles, Christo decided to make another run at "The Floating Piers."
"Although I would love for the citizens to be able to have their say on the ballot ... my duty is to apply the law here," Circuit Court Judge Scott Kording said.
BLOOMINGTON  The hostility between Health Department Administrator Walt Howe and some County Board members is chronicled in more than 4,000 pages of emails sent between Howe and the healths board three officers, whose personal attacks of county officials and efforts to control the board without consulting with other members have raised questions about how the board operates.

The conflict, kept under control at public meetings, is openly expressed in the emails, obtained by The Pantagraph through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The majority of the emails focus on challenging county officials over handling of mental health funding and the authority of the health board to manage health department operations. Resentment by Howe, board president Becky Powell, vice president Jane Turley and secretary Cory Tello toward the County Board and county Administrator Bill Wasson over formation of the county boards Health Committee also is outlined in the documents.

The Health Committee was formed last year as part of the County Board's efforts to improve mental health services, with the goal of bringing information to the board about the health department, beyond the agency's annual budget review. Howe has complained that the committee's requests for presentations and data is burdensome on him and his staff.

But Howes rocky relationship with the County Board goes back at least two years, to negotiations between the Board of Health and the County Board about transferring oversight of McLean County Animal Control from the health department to the county's administration.

We are at a point that the County Board has turned into a feeding frenzy. As you can see they are trying to out-do one another on being the community watchdog, Howe wrote in a February 2014 email to Powell, Turley and Tello during discussions about animal control.

He went on to characterize the board members as being in this power crazed whirlwind and feel angry that they cannot control some aspects of what they perceive to be County programming that should be under their control.

They are now seeing ghosts under every bed and around every corner, Howe said.

The harshest words for county officials came from Turley, who referred to Wasson as a manipulative snake in a February 2016 e-mail in which she advised Powell and Howe to make sure you document all dealings with him  times, dates, e-mails, everything.

Wasson said he has not read the emails and had no comment on Turley's remark.

When asked about the negative references Friday, Howe said "I don't condone name calling. I know people made comments in frustration, but there's no good reason for it."

In an email response to questions from The Pantagraph about the tenor of the emails, Powell agreed that health board officers expressed frustration "and could have done so in a more professional and constructive manner," adding that "we don't believe it has ever been the intent of a Board member to malign anyone's public image" in an email exchange.

Powell, who is not seeking reappointment when her term ends in July, shared Howes negative sentiments about the Health Committee. In emails, she asked health department staff and Howe to track the amount of time they spent preparing for the committee meetings.

In a 2015 email to Howe about how to handle the Health Committee, Turley suggested we give them what they want, but tailor it to the information we want made public.

Last week, County Board Chairman John McIntyre said he had heard about, but not seen, the emails. He disagreed with Howes view that the County Board is trying to encroach on the Board of Health's authority to run the agency.

County Board member Carlo Robustelli, who was referenced by Turley in a quote from "The Godfather" related to one's enemies, said he has concerns about the communications.

"The leadership of the Board of Health and director Howe have conducted themselves in a way that is antit-ethical to democracy," said Robustelli, noting health board members may have violated the Open Meetings Act and "making it clear that they had no intention of working collaboratively, transparently and respectfully with elected officials, the county administrator and even members of their own board."

At the root of much of the discourse is the issue of authority given to the health board by state statute. Howe contends the law is clear that the only oversight the County Board has over his department is the authority to set the tax levy for funding and to appoint people to the 11-member health board.

The health departments attendance at the Health Committee is meant to foster cooperation, said McIntyre, who called the negative attitude frustrating in light of what we are trying to accomplish.

County Board member Ben Owens, who also serves as the liaison to the Board of Health, said things began to change in early 2016 when he and several other members began to question how Howe's agency was doing things.

Questions from county board member Laurie Wollrab on Open Meetings Act issues and a call from Owens and health board member Judy Buchanan to review the boards bylaws also were met with resistance, he said.

I had a feeling some things were brought up and would go nowhere. You had a yes board that didnt question Howe, said Owens.
BLOOMINGTON  The Illinois Attorney Generals office has been asked to investigate apparent violations of the states Open Meetings Act by Health Department Administrator Walt Howe and three officers of the McLean County Board of Health, accused of conducting public business behind closed doors and via email.

The request was made in a May 20 letter from McLean County States Attorney Jason Chambers, who outlined concerns over email exchanges that totaled more than 4,000 pages between Howe and board President Becky Powell, Vice-President Jane Turley and Secretary Cory Tello.

The emails, obtained by The Pantagraph via a Freedom of Information request, shed light on a long-running dispute between the Board of Health and county officials over decision-making authority for the agency that deteriorated into name-calling, secret meetings and a power struggle among board members and officials. In the documents, one official is called a manipulative snake, someone who questions their plans is a cranky old bird, while the McLean County Board itself is in this power crazed whirlwind.

Theres even a bit of paranoia, as Turley, who works at Illinois State University, wonders if a FOIA request is a smear campaign and Howe wonders why someone keeps postponing a scheduled meeting.

In an interview with The Pantagraph, Howe said "I don't believe we ever acted knowing, thinking we were in violation of the Open Meetings Act."

But Howe, who said he will be talking with the health board about plans to retire from his $112,000-a-year job, acknowledged the error in transparency.

"I plead guilty on that," Howe said of the alleged Open Meetings Act (OMA) violations.

In comments on behalf of the three officers, Powell said health board members "are neither lawyers nor an expert in the intricacies of the Open Meetings Act. We are true volunteers in every sense of the word who serve without compensation whatsoever."

When the board learned of the issue "steps were taken to increase our knowledge regarding OMA's application to the board and to ensure compliance going forward," said Powell.

Ironically, Howe advised Powell in a Jan. 16, 2015 email that "there is no Opening Meetings Act prohibition on use of email for dispensing information. It only comes under the guidelines of the OMA if the email method is used for the purpose of discussing public business.

Chambers office reviewed the documents that include emails from January 2014 to May 2016, in response to a Freedom Of Information Act request from Laurie Wollrab, a former BOH member who recently resigned after she was named to the county board. He then referred the matter to Attorney General Lisa Madigans office because his office represents the health department and county government.

Madigans office is now reviewing the request. Violation of the Open Meetings Act is a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by up to 30 days in jail.

My first duty is to the people of the state of Illinois and if I see evidence of criminal misconduct I have an obligation to report it, Chambers said in the letter.

First Assistant Civil State's Attorney Don Knapp declined comment on the potential violations, noting he provides legal advice to the health board and that information is exempt from disclosure.

Howe said the health board's Executive Committee, comprised of Powell, Turley and Tello, recently stopped meeting after Knapp reviewed the health board bylaws and told the board about the possible Open Meetings Act violations. As a result, "We took action to cease those meetings," said Howe, adding only two officers met with him to discuss business after Knapp's advice.

Wollrab said she requested the emails because she was concerned about how the Executive Committee was conducting business outside the purview of the public.

The emails include specific attempts by Howe and the three officers to circumvent the state law that requires public agencies, including committees, to conduct open meetings, Chambers stated in his letter that The Pantagraph also obtained through a FOIA request.

In the letter to Assistant Attorney General David Navarro of the Public Integrity Unit, Chambers cites an example:

When told that a majority of a quorum of their Executive Committee could not meet and discuss Board business without notice of the meeting being posted, they decided to rename it the Board of Health Officers rather than changing the conduct or complying with the law, Chambers said.

Chambers notes Howe and the Executive Committee met on a regular basis to discuss a wide range of board matters. According to Health Department spokeswoman Lisa Slater, the committee did not keep written minutes or post public notice of its meetings, as required by the Open Meetings Act.

In some of those meetings earlier this year, a plan was crafted to elect Turley as president, Tello as vice president and Cynthia Kerber as secretary.

In a Jan. 28 email from Howe to Powell, who works at the Community Cancer Center, he says a March or May election would be set but I do not want it anywhere near the agenda unless we get assurance AND I MEAN ASSURANCE that we have Tello, Kerber, Turley (Kurt) Bowers, Powell and (David) Naour physically present.I dont care if I have to send staff out to pick them up, we need a majority.

The email records show Howe was aware of the care needed to avoid violation of the Open Meetings Act.

"I think it would be a good idea to have another meeting of the Board of Health officers" (we need to shy away from suing (sic) the term executive committee for the OMA)," Howe said in a Feb. 17, 2016 email.

The Turley-Tello-Kerber slate was elected at a March 9 meeting, but a review of the vote by Chambers' office found Turley and Tello, who is retired from District 87, could not serve because they already served the maximum time allowed as officers. Chambers also ruled the election agenda was unclear and required a second vote, said Wollrab, who first raised the issue.

Several changes have occurred since the state's attorney's office became involved in reviewing the operations of the health board.

Judy Buchanan, a board member since August 2014, was elected May 11 as board president and two additional new members have been nominated by McLean County Board President John McIntyre to the health board: Robert Kohlase and Dr. Jim Swanson, both of Bloomington.

Buchanan said she sees her new role as a challenge and an opportunity. The longtime advocate for mental health services acknowledged strife between the health board and the County Board.

We will be trying to work together to be sure our image going forward is positive. The health department is a part of the county of McLean, said Buchanan.

Meanwhile, Wollrab said she found the emails "insightful" and is satisfied with the changes that have occurred.

"What I really wanted to see was change in leadership on the Board of Health," said Wollrab.
Of all the pioneer trials and tribulations, malarial sickness was the saddest trouble of all, commented J.H. Burnham in a 19th century history of McLean County. Nearly every family was afflicted, disease and death being faced by all who ventured to remain in this country in the early days when the prairie sod was being broken and subdued.

Today, malaria remains a debilitating, deadly disease in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia. What is less well known is that this mosquito-borne scourge wreaked havoc on pioneer life here in Central Illinois. Few settlers on the intermittently soggy prairie could escape one or more bouts of malaria  a disease they called by many names, including the ague (pronounced a-gew or ager), the shakes, the chills and bilious fever.

The disease was marked by fluctuations in body temperature, from bone-cracking chills to frighteningly high fevers. It could linger for extended periods, making those infected unable to perform necessary tasks, such as farming or childrearing. Those who suffered through such bouts gained partial immunity, a process known by settlers as seasoning.

Malaria induced a feeling of despondency, and took away that spirit of enterprise and that strong will, which bore up the settlers under misfortune, noted E. Duis, chronicler of McLean Countys pioneer days. It was the scourge of the West (back when the West meant todays Midwest.)

In fact, malaria was the No. 1 killer in Illinois until the 1850s.

In July 1831, the John Greenman family attempted to settle on land three miles south of Waynesville in what is now DeWitt County. The Greenmans found their new home a sickly spot, with all but one or two of the 24 settlers in their vicinity suffering from malaria. John Greenman himself succumbed to the ague, and the now-fatherless family retreated back to the healthier (relatively speaking) clime of the Blooming Grove settlement, south of Bloomington.

The following summer son Esek Greenman had his last shake with the ague, Duis noted. This memorable event occurred on his sixteenth birthday. For three days previous, he had taken each morning a teacupful of whiskey and ginger, and the ague departed forever.

When I first settled in Peoria some 35 years ago (about 1848) the entire prairie was saturated with malaria, wrote Dr. J. Murphy in 1883. In fact, the entire area of Central Illinois was a gigantic emporium of malaria. John Reynolds, an early governor, complained that malaria and his home state were so intertwined in the nations imagination that the idea prevailed that Illinois was a graveyard.

Quinine, extracted from the bark of the South American cinchona tree, was an effective treatment against malaria. Also known as Jesuit or Peruvian bark, quinine was available in Central Illinois by the 1830s, if not earlier. It was sold in rough form like powder, and most famously as Sappingtons Anti-Fever Pills, manufactured by a Missouri physician. Due to high cost and scarce supplies, though, quinine was not always available on the frontier.

Silas Hubbard, a pioneer physician who practiced in the Hudson area, used calomel, a common name for mercury chloride, to treat malarial and bilious complaints. In this instance, calomel was employed to purge the bowels. Not only was this procedure wholly ineffective in treating malaria, but it left some settlers with severe cases of mercury poisoning, symptoms of which included uncontrollable drooling, loosening of teeth and bleeding gums.

In 1856, Dr. Frederick Gerhard published Illinois as It Is, a guidebook of sorts for immigrants. One-half of those who are down with fever have to ascribe this to nothing but their own imprudence and the use of improper food, he wrote. Causes  drinking stagnant water; too immoderate use of fruits, lard, eggs or fish. Nobody should expose himself needlessly to night air.

During the pioneer era, most physicians explained malaria by way of miasmas (putrid air) arising from swampy ground, sloughs, stagnant pools and the opening up of rank prairie soil. Malaria, or mal-aria, literally means bad air.

The year 1831 was particularly celebrated for the fever and ague, wrote Duis. A great deal of rich soil was turned over for the first time, and the vapors and exhalations made the climate unhealthy.

It wasnt until much later that researchers learned that the cause of malaria was not bad air, but a parasitic protozoa spread by the anopheles mosquito (did you know early settlers often referred to mosquitoes as gallinippers?) Anyway, the parasite spends part of its life cycle in the female mosquito and part in a vertebrate host. Early settlers often experienced the malarial chills and fevers in two- or three-day intervals, caused when the parasite infects, reproduces, and then destroys the red blood cells of its host.

Interestingly, malaria was not indigenous to the Mississippi Valley. Rather, settlers with malaria-infected blood came to Illinois and unwittingly infected local anopheles mosquitoes. In other words, we brought malaria to the mosquito!

Clay drainage tile reshaped the Corn Belt landscape by opening up great swaths of the Grand Prairie to agriculture. In the years after the Civil War, Central Illinois farmers began laying mile after mile of two- to four-inch clay tile under their fields. With this invisible network of drainage pipes, farmers were now able to raise crops on long-waterlogged stretches of prairie. Streams were also deepened, widened and straightened through ambitious dredging operations.

This wholesale remaking of surface and subsurface hydrology, though utterly destructive to the prairie ecosystem, ended the specter of malaria. By the late 1800s, the shakes were mostly a thing of the past in the Central Illinois countryside.

Early McLean County settler Andrew W. Scogin recalled a poem penned by an unnamed New Englander visiting Illinois back in the days of endemic malaria. This visitor was writing to friends back East who wanted to know something of life on the prairies. Scogin recalled the poem, including the last stanza:

Id rather live on camels rump

And be a Yankee Doodle beggar,

Than where they never see a stump

And shake to death with fever ager.
Editor's note: The Illinois community college system is commemorating its 50th anniversary. At the same time, Heartland Community College (HCC) is celebrating its 25th year of operation. HCC President Rob Widmer is writing several guest commentaries in 2016, part of a statewide initiative to highlight how Illinois community colleges serve their districts and address the needs of students.

Throughout May, thousands of graduation ceremonies occurred. The term graduation indicates the conclusion of an educational journey in which an individual receives his or her diploma or academic degree. However, the word is often used synonymously with commencement, which means a beginning.

Commencement seems a more fitting term because ones degree should not signify an end, but more of a new start on a path of lifelong learning.

Like community colleges across the United States, Heartland is dedicated to serving students in all stages of life. Programs offer professional learning opportunities, customized training for organizational needs and personal enrichment for all community members.

Learning should not stop once you enter the workforce. Continuous education is essential for improving your skills. Since 1993, Heartlands Continuing Education department has helped thousands improve in their current jobs or gain the skills necessary for a new one.

Professionals can access the tools they need to elevate their management skills. For individuals looking at a new career, theres a host of health care career training available, including medical billing and coding, phlebotomy and pharmacy technician.

Also, community colleges, including Heartland, routinely offer professional development and continuing education units for multiple industries.

Courses offered at community colleges are influenced by community needs as well as student choice. Offering customized experiences for an organizations needs provides unique learning opportunities for their employees.

One local example includes Heartland's recent partnership with the United Steel Workers Union Local 787. A customized welding course addressed educational needs in the areas of safety and general welding practices. This personalized experience accommodated the workers unique schedules.

The Challenger Learning Center at Heartland provides another example. Customized missions improve employees communication, teamwork and problem-solving skills.

Henry Ford once said, Anyone who keeps learning stays young. Many community colleges offer classes for personal enhancement that keep the mind and body active throughout life. From training for career advancement to learning for fun, Continuing Education courses enhance a communitys quality of life.

Lifelong learning can provide better jobs and bigger paychecks for individuals, and also is linked to increased physical and mental health, less crime and greater tolerance. As communities look to the future, ongoing workforce development opportunities and personal enrichment experiences offer significant contributions to individuals and the economy.
New York state Assemblyman Ronald Castorina, R-Staten Island, gave a speech during the Assembly chamber and in it, he compared the rate of abortion of black babies now to the African-American genocide in the past.

The speech of Castorina caused a heated debate on the Assembly floor and many Democrats, as well as black lawmakers, were angered and even walked out as a protest against his statements. The speech of Castorina came amid the debate over a bill that will formally install federal abortion rights into state law, WGRZ.com reported.

In his speech, Castorina referred to statistics citing the race of people seeking abortions noting that African American women have the higher number of abortions in the United States. He continued to say that in 2013 in New York, for every 1,000 black babies born alive, 1,223 were aborted. He did not cite any source for his data. He added, "I urge my friends and colleagues in the African-American community to be very, very careful about this legislation, because we're talking about African-American genocide."

After the comment, lawmaker after lawmaker asked Castorina to stop his speech but he declined. Eventually, some of the Democrats at the assembly left the chamber when Castorina began to speak again. Castorina is new on the Assembly floor after being elected last April.

Others who stayed called the statement of Castorina ridiculous. At one point, Assemblyman Charles Barron, D-Brooklyn, told GOP Assemblyman Al Graf to "shut up" after Graf suggested Barron to "sit down."

Castorina continued his speech and said, "This chamber likes to look at things through the prism of race and gender all the time, but when it's inconvenient, when I brought up an issue through the prism of race, that's insulting?"

The pro-abortion bill was passed on Tuesday by an 88-44 vote. However, it is expected to not pass the Congress since it is controlled by the Republicans.
An 18-year old girl with autism was left in tears and "crying into her birthday cake" after none of the 20 people she invited attended her 18th birthday party. Now the girl's family is planning a gigantic birthday celebration for her upcoming 19th birthday.

A photo of Hallee Sorenson was posted by her cousin Rebecca on Facebook and it has already been shared a little over 120,000 times in the past two days. The photo shows Sorenson sitting alone in a bowling alley surrounded by decorative balloons and streamers. Hallee's mother had sent invites to her friends and classmates, but unfortunately none of them showed up to the celebration.

According to the Daily Mail, Hallee's mom took the photo because she "didn't know what else to do" in that scenario. Mrs. Sorenson added that she then hid behind a pillar and cried after taking the photo. She said she sent it to her husband asking advice on how she should handle the situation.

With the post, Rebecca, Hallee's cousin, asked for people all around the world to send Hallee birthday cards because she loved receiving mail. As reported by Stuff New Zealand, Rebecca said that people could also send gifts saying that her cousin was fond of things such as jigsaw puzzles, baby dolls, and costume jewelry.

Hallee is said to get upset whenever she sees the photo her mom took of her 18th birthday party, but the family hopes that receiving presents from all over would provide a massive mental and emotional boost for Hallee who turns 19 next month. The family is said to be planning a large, private birthday celebration for Hallee to celebrate.

Last year, all Hallee Sorenson wanted was to bowl, and eat cake and ice cream. Now she will see that a lot of people want to wish her the best and the happiest of birthdays.
A scary scenario, but not one coming out of a horror movie: Education leaders in various states are facing budget cuts in the educational sector. This means that there is a large possibility that multiple programs will be cut or underfunded in the following school semesters.

Boards from states such as Oklahoma, Maryland, and Illinois have had multiple discussions about educational programs they should cut in light of this recent development. Reports from KFOR state that efforts are being done to keep the most important and helpful of the educational programs up, running, and flourishing.

For example, Oklahoma's SoonerStart program is being vouched for because it helps numerous kids with developmental disorders. These children are helped from birth up until the age of 3, which is really big assistance for the kids and their parents. However, the physical education programs of multiple schools are at risk of being cut, with the swimming program from Baltimore schools at high risk.

According to reports from the Baltimore Sun, Maryland has decided to reduce its budget for the 2016 to 2017 school year because they "find themselves $20 million in the hole on the revenue side." The reductions will reportedly target tuition reimbursements as well as instructional materials. Harford County Public Schools are also considering cutting 32 full-time positions.

The problem with cutting these positions is that 23 of them are teaching positions. Although a sizeable portion of the 32 positions is vacant there could be a possibility that this cut leaves schools in the area understaffed. On the other hand, it would save up to $1.9 million.

Protests regarding the budget cut have broken out in the aforementioned states, among others. Progress Illinois reports that some of the school led protests have caused people in charge to make quite a few controversial comments such as Gov. Bruce Rauner calling some Chicago public schools "crumbling prisons."
The "Teen Mom 2" producer finally broke his silence about Jenelle Evans and Leah Messer's allegations. It was recently reported that both "Teen Mom 2" stars posted their sentiments on social media wherein they referred to the show as something fake.

According to The Hollywood Gossip, the "Teen Mom 2" producer Morgan J Freeman took on Twitter to express his frustration. He posted two succeeding tweets which were said to be hitting on Jenelle Evans and Leah Messer, but eventually took them down.

The Hollywood Gossip was able to save a copy of his tweets. The "Teen Mom 2" producer pointed out that their job as filmmakers is to document what is happening in real life, in this case, the "Teen Mom 2" stars' daily activities.

"Sometimes having more eyes on a situation is inherently safer than none," the "Teen Mom 2" producer said. "Do your homework. You are the eyes. This is the process ... I can't make people do what I'd prefer they do. Can you? We document what is happening, we are not parents. We are not police. We do open up powerful discourse about many things. That is good."

These posts came after Jenelle Evans Twitter rant earlier this month wherein she noted that "Teen Mom 2" made her look like a bad parent. Jenelle Evans then mentioned that she might leave "Teen Mom 2" for good.

As for Leah Messer on the other hand, she posted a lengthy rant on twitter which was divided to 13 posts. It was when she noted that the editors tend to make her look bad. A specific case was when the "Teen Mom 2" star was filmed depriving her daughter of breakfast before going to school. She then defended her side stating that her daughter was being a drama queen.

Jenelle Evans has been gathering countless criticism when it comes to raising his son with Nathan Griffith, Jayce. Earlier this month, Jenelle Evans opened up about her heroin addiction which was featured on "Teen Mom 2." In a recent article from Parent Herald, it was mentioned that Jenelle Evans struggled with her heroin addiction before and after giving birth to her son.
Patna: After remaining on run since the 'ToppersGate' scandal broke out in the state earlier this month, the Owner/Principal of the tainted Bishun Rai College in Vaishali district Bachcha Rai was arrested near the college on Saturday though conflicting reports said Rai surrendered before the police instead of being caught by a special police team earlier constituted to apprehend him.

Though some reports said Rai had informed a section of the media of his intention to surrender before the police, Patna Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Manu Maharaj said that Rai was taken into custody while on his way to the college thus technically making it an arrest and not 'surrender'.

The kingpin of the Bihar School Education Board (BSEB) scam was brought to Patna and being held at the New Police Line where he was being interrogated by top police officials.

Rai is one of the several key accused in the BSEB Class XII result scam in which three of his students topped the merit list despite lacking even the basic knowledge of their subjects. With the help of BSEB chairperson Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh, who still remains out of the reach of Bihar police, Rai is accused of taking Rs. 70,000 from each student to ensure top marks for them.

Earlier police had raided the college office, the BSEB office in Patna, and the known addresses of both Rai and Singh and had seized several computers, external storage drives, and documents as part of the ongoing investigation in the scandal that has left Chief Minister Nitish Kumar with red face following his repeated claim of education in Bihar having improved under his administration.
Saudi-UN Dispute Grows

06/12/16

By Margaret Besheer, VOA



FILE - United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon



UNITED NATIONS- A diplomatic feud between Saudi Arabia and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is escalating. The U.N. chief says the kingdom pressured him into removing the Saudi coalition in Yemen from a blacklist of entitites that harm children during conflicts.

It is unacceptable for member states to exert undue pressure, Ban told reporters Thursday, in reference to the U.N. report published earlier this week that listed the Saudi Arabia-led coalition as one of the parties that kill and maim children and engage in attacks on schools and/or hospitals.



Civilians, victims of Saudi bombardments in Yemen

cartoon by Jamal Rahmati, Etemad daily





Annual blacklist

The Saudis were quick to admonish the United Nations for putting them and their allies on the annual blacklist that includes shady governments such as Bashar al-Assads in Syria and Omar al-Bashirs in Sudan and the Islamic State terror group.

Credible reports surfaced that the Saudis and other coalition members threatened to pull their funding from U.N. agencies and humanitarian operations if they were not de-listed, a move that could cripple already cash-strapped life-saving programs, including many serving Arabs and Muslims.

Ban appeared to confirm those reports Thursday, telling reporters, 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 U.N. programs.

Horrors children face

The U.N. chief said the report on children in armed conflict described horrors no child should have to face in Yemen and that it was one of the most painful and difficult decisions I have had to make in removing the coalition from the black list. But he insisted the United Nations stands by the report and will not change its content.

Saudi Ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi strongly rejected characterizations that his government had extorted the secretary-general into removing them from the list.

Ban took the coalition off the list on Monday. The U.N. says the removal is pending a review and further consultations with Riyadh; the Saudis have said it is permanent.

I want to reassure you, the Saudi envoy told reporters, it is not in our style, it is not in our genes, it is not in our culture, to use threats and intimidation. He added, We did not exercise pressure or intimidation. We made our point clear; we made it firmly.

Saudi removal, pending review

The Saudis and other Gulf Arab members of the coalition that are fighting Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen donate hundreds of millions of dollars to U.N. programs, including UNRWA which assists Palestinian refugees and UNICEF. Saudi Arabia is also the third biggest funder of the U.N. humanitarian appeal for Yemen, having pledged more than $46 million for 2016.

The report says that nearly 2,000 Yemeni children were killed or injured in 2015, and attributed 60 percent of those casualties to the Saudi-led coalition. The Saudi envoy has called that figure wildly inaccurate. The United nations also says that of the 101 verified attacks on schools and hospitals, the Saudi-led coalition is responsible for nearly half.

The Children in Armed Conflict Report often irritates governments that are included in it. Last year, the U.N. found itself in a similar situation, as it sought to list Israel for the deaths of nearly 500 Palestinian children in the Gaza war of 2014. Israel succeeded in preventing having its name added to the blacklist before the reports publication, but was roundly criticized by human rights and Arab groups.
Birthday Celebrated Via Skype for 2-year-old Stranded in Iran

06/12/16

By Henry Ridgwell, VOA

LONDON- 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.



FILE - An undated handout image shows Nazanin Ratcliffe and her daughter, Gabriella. (credit: family handout) (credit: family handout)

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."



FILE - Richard Ratcliffe, center, is stepping up the fight to have his wife, Nazanin Ratcliffe, and daughter Gabriella released from Iran. (credit: family handout) (credit: family handout)

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.
Guard Assaults Ailing Iranian Political Prisoner in Hospital

06/12/16

Source: International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

Imprisoned newspaper editor Ehsan Mazandarani, who has been hospitalized in Tehran since May 31, 2016 due to his life-threatening hunger strike, was attacked by a prison guard in his hospital room during a family visit.



Ehsan Mazandarani



On June 5, 2016 a guard threw Mazandaranis 11-year-old niece out of the room in a violent and rude manner and took away her computer tablet, said Mazandaranis brother-in-law, Sam Hosseini.

The guards behavior was so bad that Ehsan got out of bed and demanded to be taken back to prison, Hosseini told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. The agent then attacked Ehsan, pushed him against the wall and twisted his right hand in a way that caused the IV needle to come out of his arm, making it bleed.

Mazandarani, the editor-in-chief of the reformist Farhikhtegan newspaper, began a dry hunger strike in Evin Prison on May 17, 2016 to protest prison conditions and the authorities refusal to free him on bail until the Appeals Court meets to rule on his seven-year prison sentence.

He was transferred to the hospital on May 31 and only began accepting liquids after being urged to by colleagues and politicians, but he is still refusing food.

Mazandarani has been suffering from infections in his digestive tract that began during the 120 days he was forced to spend in solitary confinement in Evin Prisons Ward 2-A, which is controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

The newspaper editor was arrested on November 2, 2015 by IRGC agents, as part of an escalating crackdown on reformist and independent journalists, and sentenced to seven years in prison on April 26, 2016 for assembly and collusion against national security and propaganda against the state by Judge Mohammad Moghisseh of Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court.

Mazandarani is still awaiting his appeal hearing.
Iraq needs Iran, Soleimani in fighting Daesh: FM Jaafari

06/12/16

Source: Press TV

Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari says his country needs Iran's assistance in fighting terrorists, dismissing US questions about Tehran's role in the Arab country.

Jaafari told Lebanon's al-Mayadeen television in an exclusive interview aired on Saturday night that the US cannot dictate its views on Iraq.

"There is coordination between Russia, Syria, Iran and Iraq. Iraq needs the experience and information provided by these countries" to fight terrorists, he said.

Iraqi troops are currently battling terrorists in Fallujah and preparing to evict Daesh from Mosul. On Sunday, Iraqi troops retook a village south of Mosul as their operations in the Nineveh province continued.

Volunteer forces, called Hashd al-Shaabi, are helping the army in the battle but their involvement has become a lightning rod for criticism by Saudi Arabia, the US and certain other countries.

Jaafari reiterated the Iraqi government's support for the force, including its role in the ongoing push to recapture Fallujah.

"The Iraqis have put their patriotism on display through Hashd al-Shaabi and the message from their sacrifices is that Iraq will never allow the enemies to decide for the children of Fallujah."

The Iraqi foreign minister also dismissed US position on the activities of Hashd al-Shaabi forces in Iraq.

"America's position represents America's will, and not the will of Iraq. Hashd al-Shaabi forces are part of Iraq's national will," Jaafari said.

While some foreign countries are opposed to volunteer forces, no Iraqi citizen is against their participation in the war, he added.

The minister specifically rapped Saudi Ambassador to Baghdad Thamer al-Sabhan for interfering in Iraqs internal affairs, particularly those related to its security.

In January, Iraq summoned the Saudi ambassador over his insulting remarks about Hashd al-Shaabi, including his allegations that the force was not popular among the Iraqis.

Jaafari said then Hashd al-Shaabi was a legitimate force which had made many sacrifices for the Arab state.

In his Saturday interview, Jaafari also praised Iran's Major General Qassem Soleimani whose occasional sojourn among the Iraqi forces on the battleground has drawn international attention.

The general, Jaafari said, is working as a military adviser to the Iraqi government and his presence in the country is essential in the fight on Daesh.



Commander of Iran's Quds Force, Major General Qassem Soleimani





Soleimani, he said, is among the trustworthy commanders for the Iraqi government. Jaafari said he had explained to his Arab counterparts the Iranian general's role in Iraq's war on terrorists.

The minister stated that the Iraqi army is fully in charge of ground operations, and coalition aerial attacks are being launched in full coordination with the government in Baghdad.
Anti-Iran hostilities to continue despite nuclear deal: FM Zarif

06/12/16

Source: Press TV

Irans foreign minister says the nuclear deal reached last year with the P5+1 group of world powers does not guarantee an end to all hostilities against the Islamic Republic. Mohammad Javad Zarif made the remarks on Sunday as he attended a parliament session in Tehran to brief lawmakers on the results of the nuclear deal reached in July last year.



Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif attends a parliament session in Tehran, on June 12, 2016. (Photo by

(Photo by Islamic Republic News Agency



This agreement does not mean that the enmities of the other side have come to an end because they always view the Islamic Republic of Iran as an obstacle in their way, said Zarif.

"This also doesn't mean the other side has abandoned its sabotage," the foreign minister added.

Since the nuclear agreement, the US and its allies have directed their focus on Iran's missile program, with Iranian officials saying the West was trying to sabotage it.

Zarif stressed that Irans missile program was not on the agenda of the nuclear negotiations.

He said Iran's adversaries have always regarded the Islamic Revolution as an impediment to their goals and adopted a policy of pressuring the country.

Through the nuclear agreement, "we managed to take away the excuses and remove the obstacles in the way of the nation but this doesnt mean an end to excuses and attempts to exert pressure" on Iran, he added.



Iranian lawmakers listen to a speech by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (unseen) during a parliament session on June 12, 2016. (Photo by

(Photo by Islamic Republic News Agency



Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with the US, France, Britain, China, Russia and Germany on July 14 last year after years of intensive talks.

The agreement requires all nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran by the EU, the UN and the US to be lifted but Iranian officials have complained of obstructions by the Western side in this regard.

Zarif said, "Since the conclusion of nuclear negotiations, we have been pursuing the rights of the Iranian nation."

The minister said Irans oil sales currently stand at more than 2 million barrels per day, compared to between 850,000 and 900,000 barrels recorded three years ago.

Zarif said some USD 3.6 billion of foreign investment has also been made in the country since the JCPOA went into force.
The upcoming Windows 10 Anniversary updatealso known by its codename, Redstonewill have lots of new features for PC users. But Windows 10 Mobile users will have some new goodies, tooamong them being an updated Microsoft Wallet app and NFC tap-to-pay support.

Windows Central got a chance to try an internal development build of the new Wallet 2.0 app, and says the new version has a section for loyalty and membership cards, and another section for credit and debit cards.

According to Windows Centrals Daniel Rubino, he was able to associate his debit card with his Lumia 950, and successfully made a payment using the NFC tap-to-pay functionality in the Windows 10 Mobile Anniversary Update. He also notes that the new Wallet 2.0 app is compatible with loyalty cards from a number of popular merchants, such as Petco, JC Penney, Rite Aid, and more.

Although its unclear for now, Rubino guesses that Windows 10 Mobiles NFC tap-to-pay functionality will be US-only to start. The US-focused store listings for the loyalty cards implies this as a US feature and once we finally enabled it on a localized UK phone, there were no banking or credit card options, Rubino notes in the report.

If you have a phone running Windows 10 Mobile, you wont have to wait much longer for Microsoft Wallet 2.0 and NFC tap-to-pay: The Windows 10 anniversary update will arrive sometime this summer.

Disclosure: The author of this article provides copywriting services to TechSoup, a nonprofit organization that works with Microsoft and many other technology companies to provide nonprofits with technology products and services. His role at TechSoup does not influence his work for this publication.
Adios, Enthusiast Key. Nvidias doing away with plans to require a special software tool to unlock 3- and 4-way SLI setups. But instead of making systems with three or four GeForce GTX 1080 or GTX 1070 graphics cards play nice out-of-the-box with the companys Game Ready drivers, Nvidias pretty much declaring 3- and 4-way SLI setups dead for traditional gaming.

A forthcoming Game Ready driver release will add in 3- and 4-way SLI support, no Enthusiast Key neededbut that support will only be enabled for a handful of specific benchmarking applications like 3DMark Fire Strike and Catzilla, Nvidia told PC Perspective. So youll still see extreme Nvidia-powered rigs at the top of overclocking charts, but you wont be able to put that power to use in actual games. In-game support stops at 2-way SLI profiles.

Theres a caveat to this: Cutting-edge graphics APIs like Vulkan and DirectX 12 allow developers to directly access GPUs, so specific games will be able still tap into three or more graphics cards if the developer implements it. (The same tech lets you run Radeon and GeForce cards together in the same system.) But both of those graphics APIs are still in their very early days, with DX11 titles still representing the vast majority of PC games shipped, and directly implementing mGPU support costs developers time and money. So dont expect to see a flood of DX12 games capable of supporting 3- and 4-way SLI setups anytime soon.

Brad Chacos Nvidias GeForce GTX 1080.

If you managed to snag several new GeForce cards its time to think about returning some of them, in other words. While 3- and 4-way GPU setups have long been in the extreme minority and this move from Nvidia frankly makes sense, its deeply unfortunate that Nvidia waited until after the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 went on sale to change its mind regarding SLI support. Hopefully returns from disappointed enthusiasts go smoothly.

AMD hasnt said how its new Polaris-based graphics cards (like the $200 Radeon RX 480) will handle CrossFire support for systems with multiple GPUs.

Weve reached out to Nvidia PR with some questions about finer details and will update this article if we hear a response. In the meantime, read PC Perspectives look at 4-way GTX 1080 SLI benchmarks in LuxMark for a brief taste of what might have been.
One person suffered minor injuries Saturday, June 11, in a crash in Jurupa Valley, a sheriffs spokesman said.

The crash was reported around 6:30 p.m. in the area of Pedley Road and Kim Lane, said Deputy Armando Munoz.

He said two vehicles were involved and one of the vehicles hit a power pole.

Munoz said the injured person was taken to the hospital, and Southern California Edison was in route to fix the damaged power pole.

The intersection where the crash happened was still closed around 7:15 p.m., but Munoz said it was expected to open shortly.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9693, agroves@pressenterprise.com or @AlexDGroves on Twitter.
It took 20 years for an Independence Day sequel and almost two decades to reboot Ghostbusters. But you have to wait only five months for the follow-up to the most anticipated California political theater in decades.

The top stars in Novembers election are Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Expect a huge production budget, lots of theatrics and perhaps an Election Night cliffhanger.

The supporting cast includes two Democrats running to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer. In that race, California Attorney General Kamala Harris stars as the Democratic establishment favorite, and Orange County Rep. Loretta Sanchez plays the determined outsider.

If youre looking for competition and drama, there are a few promising productions on the Inland ballot, including the deciding battle of a Democratic civil war and a congressional race partly focused on the Iran nuclear deal.

Heres a preview of some potential local blockbusters in the upcoming general election. Enjoy the show.

RIVERSIDE COUNTY RUNOFF

Riverside County Supervisor Chuck Washington came in first in the primary. But Washington, who was appointed to the seat by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2014, still has work to do.

Because no one received a majority of the vote in the race for the 3rd District seat, Washington and Hemet Councilwoman Shellie Milne, who placed second ahead of Murrieta Mayor Randon Lane, are slated to compete in a November runoff. At stake is a four-year term in a district that includes Murrieta, Temecula, Hemet and San Jacinto.

The contest features two elected leaders from opposite ends of the district. The southwestern part of Temecula and Murrieta  Washington was a councilman in both cities  has more people and is better off economically than the older cities of the San Jacinto Valley.

MIDEAST FLAVOR

More than 7,000 miles separate Irans capital from Californias 36th Congressional District. But Republican Jeff Stone has made the Iran nuclear deal a centerpiece of his campaign against Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Palm Desert.

Stone, a state senator who finished a distant second to Ruiz in the primary, says Ruiz misled constituents when he voted for the deal, which Stone strongly opposes. But Ruizs people say the two-term congressman listened to the public and thought carefully before supporting the pact.

Will Iran be a winning issue for Stone in a year in which the anti-Trump Latino vote stands to help incumbent Democrats?

SWING SHIFT?

Speaking of Trump, could his shadow loom over San Bernardino Countys 40th Assembly District?

Assemblyman Marc Steinorth, R-Rancho Cucamonga, faces a challenge from Democrat and San Bernardino school board member Abigail Medina, who has collected a ton of money and endorsements from Democrats and like-minded groups.

Steinorth, a former Rancho Cucamonga councilman, also has plenty of campaign funds. But registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 4,000 voters in the district, which includes all or parts of San Bernardino, Redlands, Loma Linda and Rancho Cucamonga.

As with other races, if Trump inspires high Latino voter turnout, it could benefit Medina, who finished 137 votes ahead of Steinorth in the primary, according to semiofficial results posted Thursday afternoon.

MORE DEM VS. DEM

The unusual showdown between incumbent Cheryl Brown and rival Eloise Reyes will continue into November as both Democrats advanced out of the primary in San Bernardino Countys 47th Assembly District.

The race drew more than $2 million in spending by outside groups. Brown, a moderate Democrat, is being targeted by progressive groups who launched a Chevron Cheryl media blitz to tie the assemblywoman to big oil.

Brown finished first with about 4,400 more votes than Reyes in the primary. Republican Aissa Chanel Sanchez came in third with 8,200 votes. Will enough of those GOP votes go to a liberal like Reyes?

ANOTHER SHOT

Republican Paul Chabot never stopped campaigning after losing to Democrat Pete Aguilar in 2014. In fact, he wrote a book in which he blamed a lack of national GOP support for his defeat.

Chabot, a naval reserve officer who served on the state parole board, hopes to pen a new chapter with a rematch against Aguilar, now an incumbent, in San Bernardino Countys 31st Congressional District.

In the primary, Chabot finished second to Aguilar ahead of three other candidates, including former Rep. Joe Baca and Republican Sean Flynn. Chabot and Flynn traded shots down the stretch, but support from in-district conservatives and the county GOPs endorsement likely gave Chabot the edge.

Chabot brings a message steeped in conservative principles and national security to the general election.

Will that play in the district where the Dec. 2 terrorist attack took place, or will Democrat-friendly demographics and a Trump backlash carry Aguilar to a second term?

Contact the writer: 951-368-9547 or jhorseman@pressenterprise.com
Riverside has long recognized the contributions of World War II veteran Ysmael Smiley Villegas, and it may soon pay tribute to two other native sons who also received the Medal of Honor.

Villegas is the namesake of a city community center in the Casa Blanca neighborhood where he grew up. On Tuesday, the City Council will consider putting the name of Salvador Lara, who also served in World War II, on the Casa Blanca Library, and renaming the Eastside Library for Jesus Duran, who fought in Vietnam.

Lara and Duran, both deceased, were among 24 Army veterans to receive the nations highest military award for valor in 2014. The awards came 12 years after Congress ordered a review of records to determine whether discrimination led to some veterans not being properly honored.

Durans children, who grew up on the Eastside before moving to the Canyon Crest area, are pleased with the proposal for the Spc. Jesus S. Duran Eastside Library.

Right now its exciting, said Durans daughter, Tina Duran-Ruvalcaba. Im glad that the city is coming together and wanting to do this.

Lara, who was from Casa Blanca, would be commemorated by the PFC Salvador J. Lara Casa Blanca Library. His family could not be reached for comment Friday, but residents said they think its a well-deserved recognition of Laras service.

These two individuals received the highest honor of the United States, Casa Blanca resident Paul Chavez said of Lara and Duran.

A handful of city facilities, including parks, community centers and the council chambers, are named for people who made significant contributions to Riverside, but six of eight library branches have been named for their locations. The exceptions are the Main Library downtown and the Marcy branch, which is named for a donor.

Lara earned the Medal of Honor for heroism during World War II in Italy, and he died overseas, though not in battle, according to military records. He led his rifle squad in a successful attack on the enemy.

Duran, who was born in Mexico but lived most of his life in Riverside, served in the Army from 1968 to 1970 and was credited with saving several wounded Americans in Vietnam. He died in 1977 after being stabbed at a Riverside bar.

Councilman Andy Melendrez, whose ward includes the Eastside, and Councilman Paul Davis, who represents Casa Blanca, said they have heard positive feedback about the library renamings. But Davis said some residents are worried about diluting the Casa Blanca communitys strong identity that is tied to its name.

Lifelong Casa Blanca resident Morris Mendoza said as long as Casa Blanca remains part of the library name, he thinks most residents wouldnt object to the change. People always look at the negative and dont look at the positive, associating the neighborhood with crime or gangs, Mendoza said, and yet two of the citys three Medal of Honor recipients were born there.

A city report said money will be raised privately to cover the $11,416 cost of changing the lettering at both libraries. Mendoza said residents also hope to find money to install portraits of the two men at Riverside City Hall, to go with one of Villegas. The local VFW post has been working with Durans family to raise funds for a commemorative freeway sign.

If Duran were alive today, I think he would have been humbled by the recognition, said his son, also named Jesus Duran.

Duran-Ruvalcaba said theres a community benefit to the library renaming. I think it will be great that kids and young adults that go there can see that somebody from this area actually did something.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9461 or arobinson@pressenterprise.com
In the wake of the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, here are reactions from politicians who represent the Inland area:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.:

My heart goes out to the victims and families of the terrible terrorist attack in Orlando. The reported death toll currently stands at 50, with an additional 53 wounded. I will work with the White House and Congress to ensure the city of Orlando has all the resources it needs in the wake of this attack.

Its important now that all the facts are gathered as quickly as possible. Im monitoring the situation very carefully and Im in contact with both the intelligence community and the FBI. I have also spoken with Senators Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio. While it remains unclear why this individual conducted this attack, it certainly appears to be an act of terror. What we need to know now is whether the shooter is part of a terror cell or a lone wolf and whether he has connections to terrorists abroad.

In the meantime, the survivors and their families must be well taken care of. Both the city of Orlando and the state of Florida have declared a state of emergency, and the president will soon be addressing the nation. Clearly all necessary resources will be brought to bear.

Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-San Bernardino:

We watched in horror as moviegoers were slaughtered in their seats. We wept when we learned that first graders were killed in their classrooms. We bowed our heads when we heard that church attendees were murdered in their place of worship. And we were left to feel helpless and broken when coworkers were massacred as they gathered for a holiday party. And the list goes on. As we reel from the catastrophic events in Orlando that targeted the LGBT community, we cannot move on or heal our communities by remaining complacent with the status quo.

Guns  guns designed to kill efficiently and quickly  have no place on our streets. Americans should feel safe in their communities and be able to live without fear that terrorists could strike their neighborhoods at any moment because guns are too accessible to those who want to kill. The LGBT community has been forced to endure decades of violence and death, and for this heinous act to happen during a time when we celebrate their achievements and progress, is utterly tragic. We can and we must do better  for Orlando, for San Bernardino and for us all.

This story is developing. Check back for updates.
A gunman opened fire in a crowded gay dance club in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday morning, leaving at least 50 people dead and 53 injured in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. Authorities identified the attacker as Omar Mateen, of Port St. Lucie man who was killed by SWAT officers. The previous deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. was the 2007 attack at Virginia Tech, in which a student killed 32 people before killing himself.

Heres a look at some of the nations deadliest rampages since 2012:

 Feb. 25, 2016: Cedric Ford, 38, killed three people and wounded 14 others lawnmower factory where he worked in the central Kansas community of Hesston. The local police chief killed him during a shootout with 200 to 300 workers still in the building, authorities said.

 Feb. 20, 2016: Jason Dalton, 45, is accused of randomly shooting and killing six people and severely wounding two others during a series of attacks over several hours in the Kalamazoo, Michigan, area. Authorities say he paused between shootings to make money as an Uber driver. He faces murder and attempted murder charges.

 Dec. 2, 2015: Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, opened fire at a social services center in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people and wounding more than 20. They fled the scene but died hours later in a shootout with police.

 Oct. 1, 2015: A shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, left 10 people dead and seven wounded. Shooter Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, exchanged gunfire with police, then killed himself.

 June 17, 2015: Dylann Roof, 21, shot and killed nine African-American church members during a Bible study group inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Police contend the attack was racially motivated. Roof faces nine counts of murder in state court and dozens of federal charges, including hate crimes.

 May 23, 2014: A community college student, Elliot Rodger, 22, killed six people and wounded 13 in shooting and stabbing attacks in the area near the University of California, Santa Barbara, campus. Authorities said he apparently shot himself to death after a gunbattle with deputies.

 Sept. 16, 2013: Aaron Alexis, a mentally disturbed civilian contractor, shot 12 people to death at the Washington Navy Yard before he was killed in a police shootout.

 July 26, 2013: Pedro Vargas, 42, went on a shooting rampage at his Hialeah, Florida, apartment building, gunning down six people before officers fatally shot him.

 Dec. 14, 2012: In Newtown, Connecticut, an armed 20-year-old man entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and used a semi-automatic rifle to kill 26 people, including 20 first graders and six adult school staff members. He then killed himself.

 Sept. 27, 2012: In Minnesotas deadliest workplace rampage, Andrew Engeldinger, who had just been fired, pulled a gun and fatally shot six people, including the companys founder. He also wounded two others at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis before taking his own life.

 Aug. 5, 2012: In Oak Creek, Wisconsin, 40-year-old gunman Wade Michael Page killed six worshippers at a Sikh Temple before killing himself.

 July 20, 2012: James Holmes, 27, fatally shot 12 people and injured 70 in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Holmes, a San Diego-area native, earned a degree at UC Riverside before moving to Colorado.

 April 2, 2012: Seven people were killed and three were wounded when a 43-year-old former student opened fire at Oikos University in Oakland, California. One Goh was charged with seven counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, but psychiatric evaluations concluded he suffered from long-term paranoid schizophrenia and was unfit to stand trial.
For the first 80 years of her life, the sentence you are reading would have been nothing more than a string of indecipherable symbols to Eleanor Miller.

Born in 1932 to young, adventurous and largely absent parents, Miller was raised by her blind grandmother in a small Pasadena home. Her family never noticed she couldnt read, and teachers passed her because I never gave them any trouble, Miller said during a reading lesson at the Corona Public Library.

Now 84, the neatly-dressed mother of seven sat, hands folded in her lap, recalling the difficulties of a life void of the written word. Like the time her son needed a doctors note for school. Miller told him to write it up himself, then copied the letters on a separate sheet like a counterfeit artist.

People that cant read or write, they memorize stuff to continue this illusion, Miller said. You avoid situations where you cant fake it.

Twenty percent of Inland residents older than 16 cant comprehend basic texts. That 2003 figure, the most current data available  has more than doubled since 1992, National Center for Educational Statistics data show.

Changes in reading comprehension surveys and the way scholars define literacy make it unclear exactly how much the problem has progressed in recent years. One thing remains clear: Reading issues persist in the digital age. So Inland public libraries and other groups are working to help those with language barriers, focusing on Latino immigrants who lack a basic education in any language.

Some of the biggest obstacles to childhood literacy are poverty and parents with language barriers, said Sue Grant, CEO of the Orange County-based Literacy Project Foundation. If single parents work numerous jobs, their child may come home to an empty house, with no encouragement to read or finish homework. The same can be true of migrant children whose parents dont speak English.

The highest illiteracy rates point to poverty, Grant said.

CROSSING BORDERS

Maria Colchado stared at a computer in Jurupa Valleys Louis Robidoux Library, a pair of padded headphones perched on her head, listening to an energetic Spanish-speaking man describe how the program would lead to a better grasp of reading and writing in her native tongue.

Colchado, 56, paused to discuss her path to Riverside Countys Literacy Lab.

I went to school in Michoacan, Mexico, until I was in second grade, then I had to work, Colchado said.

Colchado left school when her father died. By 9, she was cleaning homes and babysitting for neighbors to support her family. Dropping out of school was common, a thing we did to help out, she said.

At 19, Colchado entered the U.S. illegally. Shes since attained legal status, but still lacks basic literacy in either tongue.

An international study from 2012-14 found that 18 percent of U.S. adults surveyed scored at or below the lowest of five levels of literacy  meaning they cant compare and contrast elementary-level reading. U.S. literacy was lower than the rate in 12 of the 22 nations studied.

The study found that, in the U.S., the largest deficiency in basic reading is among Hispanics, at 43 percent. Of the 400 people who have signed up for one of the Riverside County Library Systems literacy courses this year, over 80 percent are non-native English speakers, said Dawn Wasley, the library systems director of operations.

Riverside Countys libraries  which serve a region in which at least 256,000 adults were illiterate at last check  received $95,000 this year to teach literacy courses to all ages. The San Bernardino County Library System serves roughly the same amount of illiterate residents. It received $189,000 for adult literacy programs this year and has seen 407 signed up, lead librarian Leonard Hernandez said.

Funding has declined, but Wasley said literacy programs  English as a Second Language, Adult Basic Education and others  have remained thanks to volunteers.

Colchado takes a free course called Leamos, or Lets read, that helps illiterate Spanish speakers with less than a second-grade education. Once students reach proficiency in Spanish, the goal is to usher them into English .

Like most classmates, Colchado feels learning English would help her find a career. She hopes to become a teachers aide to help students facing language barriers.

The same selfless drive prompted Olga Biennan to volunteer with Leamos in September. After moving to the U.S. from Argentina in 1996, Biennan noticed the need for such programs while tutoring her daughters bilingual group. The children of migrant workers are often pulled across borders and into new schools every few months, she said.

Sometimes theyre enrolled in an American school with none of the required skills, she said.

SEEKING SOLUTIONS

Illiteracys effects cost the national economy about $225 billion each year due to non-productivity in the workforce, crime, and loss of tax revenue, according to an estimate by Literacy Lab, a nonprofit group teaching reading skills.

The Inland area is doing its part to change that.

The Riverside County Office of Education has championed two programs to improve literacy in homes where English isnt spoken.

The first, Bookmobile, takes a library on wheels into Coachella Valley communities to advocate reading among young children. The second sends tutors into migrant students homes in Hemet, Perris and the Coachella Valley. The parents must be migrant workers in the agriculture, dairy or lumber industry who moved within the past three years.

Its up to each school district to decide how much to invest in early literacy.

Grant, of the literacy group, said one reason reading skills havent improved since the 20th century is that most schools are still forcing students into a one-size-fits-all curriculum, with teachers who arent properly trained in alternative teaching styles. For example, she said her son required a tactile learning technique that used methods such as drawing words on the street with chalk or etching them in a pile of salt. Most schools dont use such techniques, she said.

Students who havent learned to read by third grade often fall behind when other students move on to reading comprehension and vocabulary.

Its called the literacy gap, Grant said. If you dont move ahead, you start failing in other areas.

FAKING IT

Thats what happened to Miller, who was illiterate for most of a century. It took six years  90 minutes per week  in the Corona Public Library, to change that.

On a recent morning, she slid her finger across the page while reading aloud to her tutor, Gayle Janoff.

As a child, Miller knew she was falling behind academically, so she transformed herself into a charming student that teachers overlooked. Her blind grandmother didnt notice when schoolwork wasnt done, and no one else seemed to care, she said.

In 1947, just two years after the end of World War II, 15-year-old Miller became pregnant. At the time, finishing high school while carrying a baby to term was out of the question, it was one or the other, she said. After dropping out , Miller had seven children through two marriages.

With no babysitters and a second husband who worked full time, raising children was a joy, Miller said. Instead of reading to the children at night, she invented stories for them, playing off their emotional reactions. Intimate bonds were forged, but Miller felt guilty for not helping her kids and grandkids academically.

I wasnt there for them with homework, Miller said.I tried night school, but as a single mom I didnt feel right leaving them alone.

She avoided parent-teacher conferences for fear of being exposed as illiterate.

Teresa Towns, Millers daughter and a nurse at Loma Linda University Medical Center, remembers asking her siblings for school-related notes and signatures.

By the time youre about 12, you know if your parent can read, Towns said.

Signs and grocery lists were obstacles. Miller drew symbols for chores to complete and appointments. During outings on which writing was unavoidable, she took a child to help.

In 1972, Miller landed a job casting military helicopter parts for Hughes Helicopter.

Back then, you could get by faking it, Miller said. Now, theres a test for everything. I feel sorry for (illiterate) people trying to get hired now.

Now that shes able, Miller plans to write her lifes story to leave her children, memorializing things she never could to let them know how I feel.

Id tell them that in hard times wed be hungry, struggling, but sometimes you have to live in rough spots, Miller said. Id write about the kids, their tightness and love.

Towns said learning to read is just one of her mothers many feats.

She did such a wonderful job raising us, to this day Im just in awe, Towns said. She always found a way to provide. I always remember my mother being brave, doing what she needed to do.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9644, poneill@pressenterprise.com, @PE_PatrickO
ORLANDO World leaders responded with horror and sympathy to the news of a mass shooting at the Pulse Orlando nightclub Sunday. Police say a gunman wielding an assault-type rifle opened fire before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers; at least 50 people were killed and dozens of others wounded.

Here is a sampling of the response from around the world:

 We are looking at a massacre that has no precedent in the history of the gay community, Romes Gay Center spokesman Fabrizio Marrazzo told the Italian news agency ANSA.

 We are heartbroken and angry that senseless violence has once again destroyed lives in our state and in our country. Gay clubs hold a significant place in LGBTQ history. They were often the only safe gathering place and this horrific act strikes directly at our sense of safety. Equality Florida.

 Its horrific, its unthinkable. And just hopes go out to all those who were shot that they can recover. Bernie Sanders, Democratic presidential candidate, speaking on NBCs Meet the Press.

 Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant? Tweet from Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidate. He tweeted about an hour later: Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I dont want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!

 Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. Tweet from Hillary Clinton, Democratic presidential candidate.

French President Francois Hollande condemns with horror the mass killing in Florida and expresses the full support of France and the French with Americas authorities and its people in this difficult time. Statement from Hollandes office.

 My thoughts go out to the victims, to which I offer my condolences, as well as the many wounded, to whom I wish a speedy recovery. I express my solidarity to the American people and its authorities in this terrible ordeal. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.

 We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured. The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence. Rasha Mubarak, Orlando regional coordinator for Floridas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

 Our heart is with our American brothers. Tweet from Italian Premier Matteo Renzi.

 Aghast by the ever more dramatic news of the nightclub massacre. In a tweet from Italys foreign minister, Paolo Gentiloni.

 This morning, I will be marching in the West Hollywood Pride Parade with a heavy heart, but we will march in solidarity with all those who are the victims of terrorism and hatred. Democratic U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff of California.

 Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love. Pulse Orlando on its Facebook page.

 I was thinking, Are you kidding me? So I just dropped down. I just said, Please, please, please, I want to make it out. And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood. Christopher Hansen, who was in the VIP lounge when he heard gunshots.

 This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as domestic terror incident. Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings.

 Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, families and all those affected by this horrific tragedy. We are a strong and resilient state and we will devote every resource available to assist with the shooting in Orlando. Gov. Rick Scott.
3:25 p.m.

The ex-wife of the man authorities say killed 50 people at an Orlando nightclub says he beat her repeatedly while they were married.

The ex-wife told The Washington Post that she met Omar Mateen online about eight years ago and decided to move to Florida and marry him. The ex-wife, who wasnt named in the report, says at first the marriage was normal, but then he became abusive.

They were together for only a few months and her parents intervened when they learned Mateen had assaulted her. She says he wasnt very religious and gave no signs of radical Islam. She said he owned a small-caliber handgun and worked as a guard at a nearby facility for juvenile delinquents.

Mateens ex-wife said his family was from Afghanistan, but her ex-husband was born in New York. His family later moved to Florida.



3:20 p.m.

Officials are giving more details about the shooter in a massacre at a gay Orlando nightclub.

Ronald Hopper of the FBI says shooter Omar Mateen was 29 and an American citizen. He was not under surveillance at the time of the shooting.

Hooper says Mateen purchased at least two firearms within the last week or so.

Hooper says some 911 calls involving the shooter and the massacre have become federal evidence. He says the conversations involved the Islamic State.

Hooper says the shooter in 2013 made inflammatory comments to co-workers , and that Mateen was interviewed twice. Hooper calls those interviews inconclusive.

In 2014, Hooper says, officials found that Mateen had ties to an American suicide bomber. Hooper describes the contact as minimal; it did not constitute a threat at that time.



3:15 p.m.

Police say a total of 14 law enforcement officers exchanged gunfire with the shooter at a gay Florida nightclub.

Orlando police Chief John Mina and other officials gave the details at a Sunday afternoon news conference.

They say 11 Orlando police officers and three deputy sheriffs actively engaged, and fired their weapons. Theyre relieved of duties pending an investigation. Thats typical procedure in such cases.



3:15 p.m.

The suspected Orlando night club shooter Omar Mateen was a security guard with G4S. In a 2012 newsletter, the firm identified him as working in West Palm Beach.

In a statement sent to the Palm Beach Post, the security company confirmed his employment.

We are shocked and saddened by the tragic event that occurred at the Orlando nightclub. We can confirm that Omar Mateen had been employed with G4S since September 10, 2007. We are cooperating fully with all law enforcement authorities, including the FBI, as they conduct their investigation. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of the friends, families and people affected by this unspeakable tragedy.



3 p.m.

Multiple news outlets are reporting that the man who killed 50 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando called 911 shortly before the attack and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

The media outlets cited unnamed law enforcement officials in their reports.

Danny Banks is an agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. He says authorities are investigating whether the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history was an act of domestic or international terrorism, and if the shooter acted alone.

The suspect in the Orlando attack was identified as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida. The gunmans father recalled to NBC News that his son recently got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami and said that might be related to the assault.



2:55 p.m.

People who were inside the gay Florida nightclub where 50 people were killed are describing a scene of mass chaos.

Two men who were in Club Pulse discussed the Sunday massacre in Facebook chats with The Associated Press.

Orlando resident Brand White was shot. He says, We are dancing and all of a sudden it just started like a rolling thunder, loud and everything went black.

The 30-year-old was with his cousin, who mentioned something about a guy with a bomb. After that, White says, his memory is fuzzy; he said he doesnt recall leaving the club or who took him to the hospital.

White was shot in the shoulder. He spoke to The AP as he was being monitored at a hospital. He said he received a blood transfusion.

His cousin was unaccounted for  no one had heard from him as of 2:45 p.m.

Another man, Brett Rigas, says he and his partner were dancing when they heard shots. Rigas was shot in the arm and hid behind a bar. About five minutes later, authorities came in and told everyone to put their hands up and run out.

Rigas said he saw bodies as he ran out.



2:45 p.m.

The suspected Orlando nightclub gunman had been licensed as a private security officer in Florida.

State records show suspected shooter Omar Mateen held the firearms license since at least 2011. It was set to expire in September 2017.

It wasnt immediately clear where, if anywhere, Mateen had worked as a security officer. An armed guard license in Florida requires 28 hours of classroom training by a licensed instructor.



2:35 p.m.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch is cutting short a visit to Beijing for cybersecurity meetings with Chinese officials and returning to the United States to monitor developments in the nightclub shooting investigation.

Lynch says the Justice Department, including the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, is supporting the investigation.

She says in a statement that shes gotten updates from Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and FBI Director James Comey.



2:35 p.m.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel stands shoulder to shoulder with the United States after the shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando that killed 50 people and wounded dozens more.

Netanyahu said Sunday that on behalf of the people and government of Israel, I extend our deepest condolences to the American people following last nights horrific attack on the LGBT community in Orlando.

He wished heartfelt sympathies to the families of the victims and full and speedy recovery to the wounded.

The Orlando attack dominated news in Israel, which has seen a wave of Palestinian attacks in recent months. On Wednesday two Palestinian gunmen killed four people and wounded five others in Tel Aviv.

LGBT groups in Israel planned rallies and other support for the community in Orlando.



2:25 p.m.

Police departments across the country are increasing patrols near locations frequented by the LGBT community after a gunman killed 50 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando.

In Los Angeles, the mayor says a heavily armed person who was headed to a gay pride parade had been arrested by Santa Monica police. Mayor Eric Garcetti says the arrest was completely unrelated to the Orlando nightclub shooting.

Officer Ernesto Rodriguez of Miami Beach Police Department says the agency is saddened by the massacre and out of an abundance of caution will step up patrols. Boston Pride organizers plan to hold a moment of silence at this weekends scheduled block parties to honor the Orlando victims and police there said there will be a heavier presence at those events.

The Baltimore Police Department says it is reaching out to the citys LBGT community to discuss concerns and safety after the Orlando massacre.



2:20 p.m.

President Barack Obama says the worst mass shooting in U.S. history is a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get a weapon that allows them to shoot people in a school, in a house of worship, a movie theater or a gay nightclub.

Speaking from the White House, Obama says the United States has to decide if that is the country we want to be. He says that doing nothing is a decision as well.

The shooting has thrust the topic of gun control back into focus as a presidential election nears.

Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has called for expanding background checks to sales at gun shows and online purchases, and for reinstating a ban on assault weapons. Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has said the existing background check system should be fixed, not expanded, and that assault-weapons bans do not work.



2:15 p.m.

President Barack Obama has ordered flags to be flown at half-staff at the White House and federal buildings until sunset Thursday as a mark of respect for victims of the act of hatred and terror at a gay Florida nightclub.

Hes also directing the same observance at embassies and other U.S. government facilities abroad.

Obama addressed the nation Sunday, calling the shooting an act of terror and an act of hate.

Fifty were killed, including the shooter, and 53 more hospitalized.



2:15 p.m.

Donald Trump isnt pausing his political commentary for the biggest mass shooting in U.S. history unfolding in Florida.

It was unclear whether the shooter who killed at least 50 people in an Orlando, Florida, nightclub was associated with a radical religious organization. President Barack Obama addressed the nation, calling the shooting an act of terror and an act of hate.

Trump tweeted as Obama began speaking: Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesnt he should immediately resign in disgrace!

A law enforcement official tells The Associated Press that the shooter in the massacre at a gay Florida nightclub was known to the FBI before the incident and had been looked at by agents within the last few years.

The official spoke to The Associated Press Sunday about the shooting, the deadliest in U.S. history. The official was not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation and on spoke on condition of anonymity.

 AP Writer Eric Tucker in Washington



2:05 p.m.

President Barack Obama says the nightclub shooting in Orlando was an act of terror and an act of hate.

He said Sunday that the FBI is investigating it as an act of terrorism and that no effort will be spared to determine whether the shooter was affiliated with terrorist groups.

Obama is speaking at the White House after 50 people were killed overnight at a nightclub in Florida. Officials have said 53 more are hospitalized.

Obama is noting that the killer targeted a gay nightclub. He says its a sobering reminder that an attack on any American is an attack on all of us.



2 p.m.

A bartender who was working at the Orlando nightclub when a gunman opened fire and killed 50 people and wounded about 50 others says at first she thought the gunshots were music.

But after a second shot there was a pause, and then more shots and Tiffany Johnson realized something was wrong.

Johnson says people dropped to the ground and started running out of the Pulse nightclub early Sunday morning. She ran to a fast-food restaurant across the street and met one of her customers who let her get in his car and they drove away.

Johnson says her first instinct was to get somewhere safe.



2 p.m.

Sunday evenings Tony Awards have been dedicated to those affected by the Orlando nightclub shooting that killed at least 50 people.

In a statement Sunday, the Tony Awards said our hearts are heavy for the unimaginable tragedy. The awards, it said, will be dedicated to the friends and family of those affected by the most deadly mass shooting in U.S. history.

Organizers didnt say how the evenings broadcast would be affected. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the star and creator of Hamilton  expected to be the nights big winner  tweeted a rainbow-colored heart with Orlando written beneath it.

The Tonys are to be hosted by late-night host James Corden.



1:40 p.m.

The Vatican says Pope Francis is expressing the deepest feelings of horror and condemnation over a massacre at a gay Florida nightclub that killed at least 50 people.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi says the pontiff denounces the homicidal folly and senseless hatred.

He added that Francis joins the families of victims and injured in the Sunday massacre in prayer and compassion.



1:35 p.m.

A law enforcement official says the shooter in the massacre at a gay Florida nightclub was known to the FBI before the incident and had been looked at by agents within the last few years.

The official spoke to The Associated Press Sunday about the shooting, the deadliest in U.S. history. The official was not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation and on spoke on condition of anonymity.

The shooter has been identified as Omar Mateen of Florida. The official says the matter for which Mateen came under investigation was open and closed pretty quickly.

Other details about the matter werent immediately available.

AP reporter Eric Tucker in Washington



1:20 p.m.

Hundreds of people in Orlando have lined up to give blood to help the victims of the massacre at a gay nightclub.

Officials at OneBlood say they have received such an overwhelming response that they are now asking donors to come back over the next several days. More than 50 people were injured and 50 were killed when a gunman opened fire inside a gay nightclub in Orlando early Sunday morning.

In the hours after the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, officials urged people to donate blood to help the victims.

In December, the nations three-decade-old ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men was formally lifted, but there are still major restrictions to limit who can give blood. The Food and Drug Administration said it replaced the lifetime ban with a new policy barring donations from men who have had sex with a man in the previous year.



12:45 p.m.

The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee says law enforcement officials and the intelligence community are checking to see what information they had on the shooter prior to the massacre at a gay Florida nightclub.

Rep. Adam Schiff called the attack painfully reminiscent of the November shootings at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris.

He says in a statement, This morning, I will be marching in the West Hollywood Pride Parade with a heavy heart, but we will march in solidarity with all those who are the victims of terrorism and hatred.



12:30 p.m.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott is calling the shooting at a gay Orlando nightclub heartwrenching and says first responders who went into the building knowing there was an active shooter are heroic.

He spoke Sunday afternoon at a news conference, hours after 50 people were killed. Officials have said 53 more are hospitalized.

Scott urged people to donate blood. He says officials are doing everything they can.

He says: This is clearly an act of terrorism. Its sickening. It should make every American angry.

Officials have said theyre investigating whether the incident was an act of terrorism.



12:25 p.m.

Law enforcement officials are beefing up security for a LGBT pride festival in Washington, D.C., after a deadly shooting at a gay club in Orlando.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said in a statement that she has been briefed by police Chief Cathy Lanier about increased security measures ahead of Sundays Capital Pride Festival.

DC Police tweeted that festivalgoers should expect extra police presence Sunday.

Bowser said Washingtonians will not be deterred by hate as we gather to celebrate love.

Festival organizers said that there will be moment of silence for the victims of the Florida shooting at 1 p.m.

Officials said the shooting at the Orlando nightclub left at least 50 people dead, making it the worst mass shooting in American history.



Noon

A SWAT truck and a bomb disposal unit are on the scene of an address associated with the man named as the shooter in a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando.

There is a media staging area set up about a block away from the apartment complex in a residential neighborhood in Fort Pierce, Florida, on Sunday. The shooter has been identified Omar Mateen.

Fort Pierce is about 118 miles southeast of Orlando. The apartment complex is a series of two-story buildings.

Numerous police officers and members of the FBI also area there.



11:45 a.m.

The father of the man named as the shooter in a massacre at a gay Florida nightclub says hes in shock and that he wasnt aware of anything his son might have been planning.

Mir Seddique is the father of Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida. Seddique told NBC News that his son got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago and thinks that may be related to the shooting.

Seddique says: We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident.  We are in shock like the whole country.

The father also says the incident has nothing to do with religion.

Officials say the shooter was among the 50 killed, and that theyre investigating whether the incident was an act of terrorism.



11:45 a.m.

Many are still awaiting word on whether their loved ones are among the 50 killed and 53 hospitalized in a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando.

Thirty-two-year-old Christopher Leinonen was at the popular Pulse club and is missing. Thats according to his mother, Christine Leinonen. She drove to Orlando at 4 a.m. She hasnt heard from her son and fears the worst. She was standing in front of an Orlando hospital just down the street from Pulse.

She says: These are nonsensical killings of our children. Theyre killing our babies!

She said her sons friend made it out alive by hiding in the bathroom and running out as bullets were flying.

Also, on Sunday morning Facebook added a Facebook Safety Check for people to find out whether friends and family have tagged themselves as safe. The social network is using the heading The Shooting in Orlando, Florida.

It is Facebooks way of allowing its users who live near the scene of a major crisis to notify people that theyre OK.



11:20 a.m.

Families and friends are awaiting word outside an Orlando hospital to learn whether their loved ones are among 50 killed and 53 more hospitalized at a shooting at a gay nightclub.

About 50 people were gathered outside Orlando Regional Medical Center on Sunday, many in tears and anxious.

Fatriana Evans frequents the Pulse nightclub and was outside when shots were fired.

Evans says, It sounded like fireworks  pop, pop, pop  and then everybody scatters.

Jackie Smith was inside the club and says two friends next to her were shot. She says she hasnt gotten updates on their conditions. She came out of the hospital and burst into tears in the arms of friends.

She says: Some guy walked in and started shooting everybody. He had an automatic rifle, so nobody stood a chance. I just tried to get out of there.



11 a.m.

Police say the shooter at an Orlando nightclub used an AR-15-type assault rifle on all the victims.

Officials say 50 were killed at the popular gay club. That makes it the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Police Chief John Mina said at a Sunday news conference that the shooter used the assault rifle, with unknown rounds, and also had a handgun.

Officials at the news conference also say they have securing the suspects vehicle, a van, right outside the club.

The shooter has been identified as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida. Officials have said theyre investigating whether the massacre was an act of terrorism.

Dr. Mike Cheatham is a trauma surgeon at Orlando Regional Medical Center, where 46 patients were taken. The majority are in critical condition.

He tells The Associated Press, I think we will see the death toll rise.



10:50 a.m.

The massacre at an Orlando nightclub that claimed 50 lives is the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

Police Chief John Mina confirmed at a news conference Sunday morning that 50 people were killed, up from 20 as earlier reported.

Mayor Buddy Dyer says 53 more are hospitalized after the early Sunday incident. He says the shooter is among the dead. He also says the shooter used an assault rifle on all those dead. Officials say one officer was shot, and has injuries to his face.

Earlier, U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson identified the shooter as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida. He cited law enforcement officials in speaking to reporters.

Officials also have said theyre investigating whether the incident was an act of terrorism.



10:30 a.m.

The mayor of Orlando says there were 50 casualties and there are 53 more hospitalized after a mass shooting at a popular gay nightclub there.

Theres blood everywhere, Mayor Buddy Dyer said Sunday at a news conference, hours after the shooting.

He says the shooter used an assault rifle on all those killed.

Earlier, U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson identified the shooter as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida. He cited law enforcement officials in speaking to reporters.



10:20 a.m.

The suspect in the mass shooting at night club in Florida has been identified as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida.

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson identified the shooter in the Sunday incident. He cited law enforcement officials in speaking to reporters.

A federal law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation also identified him. The official was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special Agent in Charge Danny Banks said earlier that the mass shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism. He says authorities are looking into whether the incident was an act of domestic or international terror, and if the shooter was a lone wolf.

 Eric Tucker in Washington contributed.



10:15 a.m.

Floridas governor is headed to Orlando after a shooting at a gay nightclub there left about 20 dead and 42 wounded.

Gov. Rick Scott says in a statement Sunday, hours after the incident, that thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.

The statement says hell meet with law enforcement and local officials in Orlando.

Scott says: We will devote every resource available to assist with the shooting in Orlando. Our state emergency operations center is also monitoring this tragic incident.

His statement also thanks the first responders.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special Agent in Charge Danny Banks said earlier that the mass shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism. He says authorities are looking into whether the incident was an act of domestic or international terror, and if the shooter was a lone wolf.



9:45 a.m.

President Barack Obama has been briefed by his homeland security and counterterrorism adviser about the shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando that left about 20 people dead and 42 wounded.

The White House said Sunday, several hours after the incident, that Obama has been briefed and has asked for regular updates as the FBI and other federal officials work with Orlando police on the case.

Press secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement that the president has directed federal officials to provide any necessary assistance to pursue the investigation and support the community.



7:25 a.m.

Police say approximately 20 people have been killed inside a Florida nightclub, and at least 42 were wounded.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina says authorities have not determined an exact number of people killed, but that approximately 20 have died.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special Agent in Charge Danny Banks says the mass shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism. He says authorities are looking into whether the early Sunday incident was an act of domestic or international terror, and if the shooter was a lone wolf.

Mina says the shooter was armed with an assault-type rifle, a handgun and some type of suspicious device. Police had said previously on Twitter that there was a controlled explosion at the scene of the shooting at Pulse Orlando, a popular gay dance club. Mina says that noise was caused by a device intended to distract the shooter.



7:15 a.m.

Police say multiple people have been killed inside a Florida nightclub, and at least 42 wounded people have been taken to hospitals.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina did not immediately provide an exact number of how many people were killed. Police had said previously that the shooting was a mass casualty situation.

Mina says the shooter was armed with an assault-type rifle, a handgun and some type of device. Police had said previously on Twitter that there was a controlled explosion at the scene of the shooting at Pulse Orlando.

Mina also says the suspect had exchanged gunshots with an officer working at the club, then went back inside and took hostages around 2 a.m. About three hours later, a SWAT team made the decision to go inside and rescue the hostages. The shooter died in a gunfight with those officers.



5:55 a.m.

Police say the person who opened fire inside a popular Florida nightclub is dead.

Orlando Police did not immediately provide further details on the departments official Twitter account on Sunday. It was not immediately clear how the shooter died. Police described the shooting as a mass casualty situation and said local, state and federal agencies were involved in the investigation.

It was not immediately clear how many people were wounded in the shooting, or if any of the victims had died. Police have told people to stay away from the area and said a noise in the vicinity was a controlled explosion. No further details were provided on the explosion.

Dozens of emergency vehicles have swarmed the area around the club.

The club, Pulse Orlando, earlier posted on its own Facebook page just after 2 a.m.: Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.



5:15 a.m.

Police say a loud noise near the scene of a reported shooting at a nightclub in Florida was a controlled explosion.

Orlando Police said on the departments official Twitter account Sunday that media should avoid reporting inaccuracies. No further details were immediately provided about the explosion.

Police have said multiple injuries were reported following the incident at the Pulse Orlando nightclub near Orange and Kaley avenue. The department also advised people to stay away from area.

Multiple emergency vehicles have reportedly responded, including the Orlando Fire Departments bomb squad and hazardous material team.

Pulse Orlando earlier posted on its own Facebook page just after 2 a.m.: Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.



4:50 a.m.

Orlando Police say they are responding to a shooting at a nightclub in Florida.

A post on the departments official Twitter account early Sunday morning says multiple injuries have been reported following the incident at the Pulse Orlando nightclub near Orange and Kaley avenue. The department also advises people to stay away from area.

Multiple emergency vehicles have reportedly responded, including the Orlando Fire Departments bomb squad and hazardous material team.

Pulse Orlando earlier posted on its own Facebook page: Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.

The incident follows the fatal shooting on Friday of 22-year-old singer Christina Grimmie, who was killed after her concert in Orlando by a 27-year-old Florida man who later killed himself. Grimmie was a YouTube sensation and former contestant on The Voice.


For years, Inland Southern California has found itself at the crossroads of fledgling  and fleeting  plans for high-speed rail projects.

But none of those projects is moving down the track fast, if at all.

The best-known proposals have come in essentially three incarnations:

 There is the states working plan for a bullet train that California voters narrowly agreed to provide initial financing for in 2008. Its off to a slow construction start in the Central Valley and running into numerous obstacles. While the focus is connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco, there is an Inland component.

 Then there was the vision of a futuristic Jetsons-esque network of maglev trains connecting the Inland area with Los Angeles around the turn of the century. Transportation planners imagined commuters whooshing across hopelessly congested Southern California at unheard-of speeds on a cushion of air. The project is now dead. It was scrapped because there was no money to finance the multibillion-dollar dream.

 There was  and still is  the proposal for a speedy alternative to the frustrating drive on I-15 to glittering Las Vegas in rush-hour-like traffic. Various versions of high-speed rail linking Southern California with the Nevada gambling mecca have been proposed.

Theyve been talking about that train since I was 10 years old, said Tom Skancke, 53, who serves on the Nevada transportation board and has worked as a transportation consultant in Las Vegas many years.

My hope is that before I die there actually is one, Skancke said.

LAS VEGAS DREAM

In the latest rendition, Las Vegas-based XpressWest wants to build a 185-mile line from Las Vegas to Victorville, with a later extension to Palmdale. The trip from Victorville, promoters say, would take about 80 minutes.

But, like other rail lines, this one wouldnt be cheap. It carries a price tage of $8 billion, according to The Associated Press.

The project does have something going for it. Xpress West has had a measure of success in obtaining complicated government clearances for the route across the Mojave Desert. And the company said in a news release recently that environmental approvals for the Victorville-Palmdale segment could come as early as September.

But financing has  and continues to be  a problem.

The company was pursuing a $5.5 billion federal loan, until that plan derailed in 2013.

Last fall, XpressWest announced it had obtained a commitment from China Railway International, a consortium of state-owned Chinese companies, to invest $100 million in the venture. Earlier this month the firm said it had terminated the partnership, but was still moving forward.

Asked how much financing the company has obtained, Ray Tao, a spokesman for Xpress West, did not address the question.

Thanks for your email, but we have no comments at this time, Tao wrote.

In the release, XpressWest stated: Our biggest challenge continues to be the federal governments requirement that high-speed trains must be manufactured in the United States.  This inflexible requirement has been a fundamental barrier to financing high-speed rail.

After the environmental work connecting Palmdale to Victorville is completed, we intend to renew our request for support from the Federal Railroad Administration.

However daunting the obstacles, Skancke believes the line eventually will be built, in part because the alternative is impractical.

Building more highway lanes is just not possible on the I-15 corridor, he said.

In any event, you wont be taking a speedy train to Vegas anytime soon.

A LONG WAIT

And in relative terms, it may be light years before you get to board a train at an Inland station serving what is supposed to eventually be an 800-mile statewide high-speed rail network.

Virtually all of Californias high-speed energy is being poured into the $64 billion Los Angeles-to-San Francisco first phase of the bullet train.

Even in a best-case scenario, if the state manages to find the tens of billions it needs to fill a gaping budget hole, the train would run between Californias two largest metropolitan areas in 2029 at the earliest. Thats according to the states own forecast.

It would be much, much later before the train reached stations in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, on its way to the planned terminus in downtown San Diego.

Wendell Cox, a prominent critic of U.S. passenger rail systems in St. Louis, suggested Inland Southern California residents shouldnt make any plans to board the bullet train  unless they are willing to drive to Bakersfield first.

Cox said the phase-two extension to San Diego may in fact never get built.

They just plain dont have the money, he said.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9699 or ddowney@pressenterprise.com
Donald Trump ran virtually unopposed in the Republican partys California presidential primary, yet about a quarter of party voters  already a sizable minority in the state  rejected him in favor of candidates who had already dropped out of the race.

So it was greeted with skepticism when an NBC reporter tweeted this week that Trump had included California as in play, a state hed be targeting in the general election against presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

He has about as much chance of winning California as you do, said Dan Schnur, political analyst for the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics at USC.

Highly unlikely, said Mike Madrid, a California Republican strategist.

California hasnt voted for a Republican for president since 1988, when George H. W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis. Republicans have lost California by double digits in every presidential election since then. The closest vote was in 2004 when George W. Bush lost the state by 10 points and the largest gap came in 2008 when Sen. John McCain lost by 24.1 points to President Barack Obama.

Trump has an uphill fight to beat Clinton in California for several reasons: unfavorable voter registration numbers, demographic hurdles and some dissent within the GOP about his candidacy.

In 2012, Mitt Romney captured almost 80 percent of the vote in the California primary, about 1.5 million votes. Trump, through Thursday, had picked up only 1.2 million votes and a 75.3 percent share of the GOP ballot pool.

One in four Republicans cast their ballot for somebody they knew wasnt running, Schnur said. Thats not a sign of tremendous strength.

Candidates Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Ben Carson and Jim Gilmore still appeared on the Republican ballot.

The Republican voter pool has also shrunk consistently since 2003, when it made up 35.3 percent of the registered electorate. This year, its at about 27 percent.

Democrats, however, remain almost at the exact same level now as they did in 2003 with 43.1 percent of the states registered voters. No party preference is at 24 percent.

The demographic shifts also loom as a large challenge for Trump in California. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the states Latino population is at more than 38 percent  the highest in the country  and Trumps wall-building rhetoric, questioning a judges ability to be impartial to him because of his Latino heritage, and earlier in the campaign labeling undocumented immigrants from Mexico as rapists and criminals has left his brand in shambles with that demographic.

His appearances in California during the primary season sparked angry protests, fueled vandalism on his Hollywood Walk of Fame star and gave birth to a cottage industry of anti-Trump merchandise, including pinatas fashioned in his likeness.

A Fox News Latino poll released last month showed Clinton topping Trump 62 percent to 23 percent among registered Latino voters nationally. In 2012, Romney got 27 percent of the Latino vote.

The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed officials released a report this week showing more than 3.8 million Hispanics in the state are expected to cast ballots in November, a 22 percent jump from 2012.

The demographics have been trending in a very different direction than the rhetoric of the Republican Party, and Trumps message doubles down on reinforcing the negative stereotypes of the party that have to be reversed if youre trying to expand the base, Madrid said. He is heading in the exact wrong direction.

Big names in California Republican politics have only compounded the problem for Trump.

Michael Reagan, son of President Ronald Reagan and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation, tweeted the day before the primary that he wouldnt be voting for Trump, and his late father probably wouldnt have supported Trump either.

This most likely would be the 1st time if my father was alive that he would not support the nominee of the GOP, Reagan wrote on Twitter.

Daniel Ketchell, a spokesman for Arnold Schwarzenegger, also confirmed on Twitter via a Los Angeles Times reporters query last week that the former governor voted for Kasich in the primary, not Trump.

Still, Madrid and Los Angeles County Republican Party Chairman Mark Vafiades said putting California in play may be a different equation for Trump compared with previous presidential candidates.

Madrid said GOP candidates talking about spending on media and ground games in California was folly, but Trump ran a primary campaign utilizing free media due to his outsized celebrity status.

California is a very media-driven state, and he wont have any difficulty getting his message out at no cost to his campaign, Madrid explained. It wont be local offices or a ground game. Thats a waste of money and resources.

Vafiades said its possible Trump could put California in play, but agreed the odds were against it.

Its less than a long-shot, he said.

Eric Baumnan, vice chairman of the California Democratic Party, was even less optimistic.

I would say the notion is fantastical, he said.

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Contact the writer: david.montero@langnews.com; @DaveMontero on Twitter
The Chairman of the National Peace Council, Professor Emmanuel Asante, has attributed the perennial flooding of Accra and its environs to bad leadership.



According to Professor Asante, our leaders have failed to enforce the by-laws that govern the capital. He said this in an interview with Citi News.



For the last few years, it appears that theres heavy downpour in Accra, we are in trouble. This can be attributed a number of things, the first of which is the leadership itself. We have by-laws in this country that should be enforced.



There is too much impunity, he said. Professor Emmanuel Asante also advised that the people should avoid politicizing issues in this country. People are building on the waterway.



The question is do they do it without permission? Why is it that people have been allowed to build in waterways? As citizens, we do things we stubbornness. We should stop politicizing issues.



A week after the commemoration of the 1st anniversary of the June 3 twin disaster, major parts of the capital submerged after a heavy downpour. Before this, the mayor of Accra, Alfred Okoe Vanderpuije, assured the residents of the capital that their city of residence was safer from floods than it had been before after they dredged 30% of the Odaw drain.



AMA boss must be fired over floods  IMANI



President of policy think tank, IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe has called for the head of the Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Alfred Oko Vanderpuije over the recent flooding in the city.



According to him, Mr. Vanderpuije should be sacked or forced to resign because of his promise to end that flooding in 206 has proved futile.

Source: Citifmonline.com









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

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President of policy think tank, IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe has called for the head of the Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Alfred Oko Vanderpuije over the recent flooding in the area.



According to him, Mr. Vanderpuije should be sacked or forced to resign because promises that flooding incident will not happen this year has proved futile.



Oko Vanderpuije had noted that the AMA had desilted the main drains and obstacles that cause flooding in the area hence his remarks.



The commitment to make sure that we remove all obstacles, distill and dredge the Korle and the Odaw to ensure free water flow will continue unabated.



That is my assurance to the people of Accra and indeed the whole nation that the peoples capital is ever safe than before last week we had three or four days of severe rains and the city was able to withstand the circumstances and the aftermath of the rains we will be very steadfast in our monitoring of the environment to ensure that we do not allow people to build in our waterways," he added.



But days after the Mayors comments, Accra recorded another flooding incident last Thursday leading to the destruction of properties worth thousands of Ghana cedis; but for the intervention of the military, some lives would have been lost.



The heavy downpour flooded low-lying parts of the capital, including Adabraka, Circle, Airport Residential area, Alajo and Teshie Nungua, Odawna among others.



Technically incompetent



Speaking on Citi FMs News analysis programme, The Big Issue, Franklin Cudjoe argued that Oko Vanderpuijes made a technically incompetent comment hence must be fired.



The Accra Mayor should have been sacked or resign by now. Its not about no people dying. Last year, when these numbers died, this guy came around with a litany of explanations and this time around he was singing praisesthis is the resign why I want him to be sacked or resign.



Those comments were technically incompetent because he had not spoken to his engineers, if he had one. If they had advised him properly he wouldnt be making those vain glorifying statements. Its completely absurd to live in a country that is supposed to be one of the best attractors of investment and to have a city that can come to a standstill after few minutes of rain, he added.



Applaud AMA boss for reducing effect of flooding



But Abraham Amaliba, a member of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) legal team who was also on the show said government and the AMA boss should be applauded for reducing the effect of flooding in the area.



To him, the flooding would have been worse if such works hadnt been done.

Source: citifnonline









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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Maybe Azealia Banks has realised that loyal gay fans will support your pop career way beyond its use-by date, or maybe shes genuinely sorry, but either way, the rapper has apologised for her frequent homophobic outbursts, and promised to take her behaviour down a notch.

Banks, whose greatest hits include spitting at a flight attendant and calling him a faggot, and telling a gay fan keep trawling for dick on Grindr, youll be murdered and stuffed under a truck somewhere soon, made the apology this weekend in a Facebook post.

(She wasnt able to do it on her preferred platform of Twitter, as shes still banned from there thanks to the wildly racist rant she unleashed on Zayn Malik a few weeks ago).

In her post, Banks promised never to say the word faggot again, declaring:

The amount of people that get hurt when i use the word vs. the amount of people ive said it to are just not worth it. Honestly This isnt a cop out, its just me realizing that words hurt. and while i may be immune to every word and be thicker skinned than most, it doesnt mean that i get to go around treating people with the same toughness that made my skin so thick. Because, that IS how people get thick skin by being subjected to name calling/belittlement/abuse and its not fair. Not fair to my fans, not fair to my peers but most importantly, Not fair to myself.

Banks apologised sincerely to the fans shes alienated over the years, and thanked those whove stuck with her. You can read her lengthy and seemingly sincere post here.

A few years back, Banks promised no more fights in the press, then immediately started one, threatening to serve rival Iggy Azalea a piss martini. Heres hoping this new-found attitude lasts slightly longer.

Source: People.

Photo: Cassandra Hannagan / Getty.
Zayn Malik, suave pop wunderkind and former 20% of a Direction, has issued a statement on Instagram regarding his decision to cancel a festival appearance in London last night.

In the text post, Malik tells fans and followers he couldnt perform at the Capital FM Summertime Ball festival due to the worst anxiety of my career.

Unfortunately my anxiety has haunted me throughout the last few months around live performances has gotten the better of me I cannot apologise enough but I want to be honest with everyone who has patiently waited to see me, I promise I will do my best to make this up to everybody Ive let down today.

After offering his apologies to concert-goers, Malik said fellow sufferers would get what he was going through; he asked those without anxiety to try and empathise with his situation.

A photo posted by Zayn Malik (@zayn) on Jun 11, 2016 at 1:28pm PDT

Avid Directioners and, well, everyone alive with a working Twitter account, will probably recall the last few months before Malik peaced out of the world-beating boy band due to mental exhaustion.

First, Malik ended up sitting dates on the groups South-East Asia tour due to stress; when he did finally leave One Direction, he said it was cause he wanted to have some private time out of the spotlight.



Hes not the only young pop uberstar to recently shut down their public appearances for mental health reasons, either.





Justin Bieber quite notoriously canned his $2,000 a pop fan meet-and-greets under similar (but unfortunately-stated) circumstances earlier this year.

While the whole no partial refunds thing was cause for complaint, the fact one of the most frequently harangued blokes on the planet wanted some time out is understandable, really.

Malik was slated as one of the leading artists at the event, which also boasted Ariana Grande, Craig David and Nick Jonas, among others.

Get well soon, dude.

Source: Zayn Malik / Instagram.

Photo: Axelle / Bauer-Griffin / Getty / Zayn Malik / Instagram.
capitol flag half-staff.jpg

Gov. Wolf has ordered U.S. and commonwealth flags at public facilities be flown at half-staff until sunset Thursday in honor of the victims of a mass shooting at the Orlando gay club. (File photo)

To honor the victims of a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Gov. Tom Wolf has ordered all United States and Pennsylvania flags on public grounds to be lowered to half-staff.

The flags will remain at half-staff until sunset Thursday.

Here is Gov. Wolf's statement about the Orlando massacre:

"Frances and I join with all Pennsylvanians in mourning the senseless deaths of at least 50 people in Orlando. This is a national tragedy, and our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their loved ones, and all Floridians.

"My administration, including the Pennsylvania State Police and Office of Homeland Security, is monitoring the situation and will respond swiftly to any threats to Pennsylvania. The state police will offer assistance to state and local law enforcement officials in Florida, and we stand ready to help if necessary.

"Public safety remains the top priority of my administration. We must unite and work together to prevent these horrific acts of violence that are far too frequent in communities and places where residents should feel safe."
Police have closed an investigation into students who sent sexually explicit images of minors to one another using their phones.

WGAL reports that police closed the case because they were unable to gain entry into the phones and could not get social media platform KiK to comply with search warrants.

Newville Police seized 20 to 25 phones from Big Spring High School in November as part of a probe into sexting at the school.

Pennsylvania put a sexting law into place in 2012 that made it a crime to send or receive nude photos of minors older than 12 and younger than 18, though it's not a felony. More severe punishment may be given to minors who share another's photo without permission or in an attempt to harass.

The 2012 law does not apply to pictures of graphic sexual images. Those, as well as graphic videos, fall under Pennsylvania's child pornography law.

Several schools have adopted policies that specifically address sexting and students; at the time the probe started, there was no policy in place at Big Spring.

The phones will likely be returned to their owners with the recommendation of a factory reset.
Donald Trump

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the National Rifle Association convention, Friday, May 20, 2016, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

(Mark Humphrey)

By Tony May

This Tuesday, the 2016 Presidential primary season will stumble to an end as voters in the District of Columbia go to the polls.

Tony May (PennLive File)

But pundits already are scrambling to make sense out of the long and sometimes painful process of elections and caucuses in 50 states and various territories with more than a sprinkling of candidate debates thrown in for comic relief.

Maybe it's all really been about what the issues and themes seemed to be way back over a year ago when this process began.

Do we want to make America great again?

Are we still great?

Are we ready for the future as personified by candidates under age 50 like Marco Rubio?

Or would we rather make history by slating a woman for the job as leader of the free world? How about choosing an avowed socialist? Or maybe an confessed authoritarian?

After a lot of talk about change and reform, both parties ended up slating the familiar.

Sure, Donald Trump may be new to candidate politics but he's been in the limelight for years.

In fact, if elected, he would be the oldest president ever to take the oath of office, beating Ronald Reagan by several months (70 years old vs. 69 years old).

Clinton would be several months younger than Reagan at inaugural day.

The difference, it would seem, between Trump and Hillary is that Trump pledges to take us back to the days when the white male was uncontested king of the roost, while Clinton pledges to more or less stay the course of gradual progress and success demonstrated by the Obama administration.

Trump, like Prime Minister P. W. Botha in the waning days of apartheid in South Africa, sends a not so subtle message of holding on to white power in a time of upheaval and change culturally and ethnically.

Trump, who has made racial and ethnic differences a theme in his campaign, promises to "make America great again" - code words of comfort for those who sense the faces of America changing before their eyes.

It's not that most people - or even many people - are conscious bigots.

They just see themselves as being forced to vacate a guaranteed seat of privilege without knowing with any certainty what the future holds.

If anything, they share a sense of foreboding about what it means to be in a minority of any kind from watching how others have been treated over time.

For them, the clock is ticking and Trump offers a respite if not relief.

We're not yet a country where white people are outnumbered by people of color and those who trace their heritage to the developing world.

But that day's not far off. And Donald Trump suggests that he knows how to postpone, if not prevent, the inevitable.

According to the U.S. Census, our country is changing rapidly. In the 2010 census, 196.8 million of America's 325 million residents were white.

Hispanics totaled 50.5 million; Asians, 14.7 million. African Americans accounted for about 15 percent of the population by Census Bureau definition and the remaining were American Indian, Hawaiian, Pacific islander or two or more races.

Whites already are in the minority in four states ( California, Texas, Hawaii and New Mexico) and the District of Columbia.

Today, whites comprise slightly more than 50 percent of the population in Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Nevada and New York, meaning they will soon be in a minority there too.

This is especially true because of the much lower birthrate among white American families.

The white population of the nation is estimated to have increased only about 1 percent since the 2000 census while the Hispanic population has increased by 43 percent. Asian American population is up by a similar percent.

Another concern for Trump is the breakout of the U.S. population by gender - 51 percent female and 49 percent male.

Finally, there is the question of Trump's current and potential appeal to Millennials, which are the largest age group today, according to the Census Bureau.

Adults born between 1982 and 2000 total 83.1 million and are a diverse group ethnically with 44 percent reported as non-white.

The numbers tend to lend credence to the allegations that Trump - if not an outright racist, bigot and xenophobe - is appealing blatantly to those tendencies in others. The statistics also tend to suggest that Trump is too late in his call to turn back the clock.

The bottom line: Ronald Reagan's record as the oldest person ever to be sworn in as President is likely to stand.
When my soon to be middle-aged children were young, Lego blocks were their favorite toys. A handful of blocks could become a hospital for cats, a warship heading for battle; anything under the sun, limited only by the child's imagination.

An early toy of mine was a Meccano set number 00, a few metal pieces with holes and eight nuts and eight screws (They went up to No. 24 and those had gearboxes, electric winches and other goodies). My simple set could keep me busy for hours and also gave me the feeling for threads. I never have to use incantations when I put a nut on a bolt, upside down, behind my back, you name it. Other people try to remember some rhymes to turn a nut.

Now comes my gripe. Lego is now in big boxes with Star War pictures and "654 Pieces". Inside are the 654 pieces and a manual for assembly; no imagination here.

My eight-year-old grandson got one on his birthday. In less than an hour he was done and put the thing aside for good.

Are we aiming to raise workers for an assembly line or do we hope for imaginative engineers?

Next time when you have to buy a present for a child keep this in mind. Buy a set of blocks or something like that; the child will play with it for a long time.

GEIR MAGNUSSON, Lower Allen Twp.
Good Sunday Morning, Everyone.

From Harrisburg to Washington D.C., another busy week in politics is in the books. Let's take a look at who's up and who's down as we officially start the second, full week of June 2016.

Oenophiles Everywhere: That's wine afficionados for those of you playing along at home. The Republican controlled House last week took a major budget issue off the table as it approved, and Gov. Tom Wolf quickly signed, a liquor reform bill that, notably, allows for wine sales at grocery stores (with restaurant licenses) and restaurants. Three local grocery store chains, Weis, Wegmans and Giant, announced that they plan to sell wine in the beer cafes in their stores. The so-called "modernization" bill is a long way from a full privatization of the state's retail and wholesale liquor monopoly, but it's a start. The legislation's approval comes hard on the heels of an announcement that beer sales will be allowed in some convenience stores.

UP ARROW END Gov. Tom Wolf: The York County Democrat had something of a big week as he announced that a long-awaited ethane processing plant operated by Royal Dutch Shell was finally coming to Beaver County. A tax-credit program passed under his predecessor, Republican Tom Corbett, laid the critical groundwork for the plant. Wolf was savvy enough not to try to hog the entire spotlight, awarding credit where credit was fully due. He also signed the booze modernization bill into law - prompting some Republicans to wonder why he couldn't have done the same thing last year, since it was substantially the same piece of legislation. Nonetheless, in a business where optics are everything, both pieces of news were big wins for an administration that needed them.

DOWN ARROW END Donald Trump: As a matter of general policy, if you have to announce on Twitter that you are "the least racist person there is," it's probably because people think you're racist. And, sure, enough, no less a personage than U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., said last week that Trump's claims that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel was biased against him because of his Mexican heritage, was a "textbook" example of racism. Other prominent Republicans, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, also called on Trump to temper his language. And by week's end, the presumptive Republican nominee announced he'd no longer discuss Curiel or the Trump University civil case on the stump. Pivoting, Trump instead trained his fire on U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who'd publicly criticized him, referring to her as "Pocahontas" on Twitter. During a campaign stop in Pittsburgh, Trump was unapologetic, telling his supporters, "Everything is politically correct. You say something that's a little bit off, and you get headlines. They're like a bunch of babies, a bunch of dumb babies," Lose some, lose some, we guess.

Frank Fina:

, having resigned earlier this month, Philly.com reported last week. It's not entirely clear what prompted

Fina

to head for the exits. But as

PennLive's Charlie Thompson

reports, it apparently has nothing to do with the pending release of

Special Prosecutor Doug Gansler's

Porngate report. Nor is it entirely clear what

Fina

plans to do next, though it's clear he's headed for private practice.

Fina

has said he planned to stop being a prosecutor when he turned 50 - and he celebrated his half-century on the planet last year.

Seth Williams:

Frank Fina's

now ex-boss,

Philly DA Seth Williams

, also had something of a rough week. The feds are apparently probing a deal that saw a real estate investor and Williams' campaign contributor rent an apartment to

Williams

' ex-wife at below market rates,

. The supporter,

Robert Herdelin

, told the newspaper that "

he agreed to rent a 3,056-square-foot, four-bedroom house in Drexel Hill to Sonita Williams for $1,000 per month. Herdelin said he believed the house could have brought in $2,500 a month."

Last week, someone also threw a rock through the DA's office window,

PhillyMag

reported.

State Sen. Scott Wagner:

The York County-Republican officially blew the lid off the worst-kept secret in Pennsylvania politics last week,

. But

Wagner

made his fans work for the news. It which came at the bottom of a very long diatribe about how much he still dislikes organized labor. Talk about burying the lede.

Hillary Clinton:

Love her or hate her (and there are plenty of people in both camps), the former Secretary of State

as she became the first woman to secure a major party's presidential nomination.

Clinton

, who won big in last Tuesday's multi-state primaries, quickly went about consolidating her support.

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass

, all announced their endorsements by week's end. Clinton's rival,

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders

of Vermont, is quietly winding down his campaign as Democrats start looking toward the general election campaign against

Donald Trump

. But because, as the song notes, every silver lining comes with a touch of gray,

Clinton

also had to endure

related to her ongoing email scandal.

The Wall Street Journal

and other outlets reported Friday that "

vaguely worded

" emails in the probe apparently discussed planned drone strikes.

Clinton

is set to campaign in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.
This undated image provided by the Orlando Police Department shows Omar Mateen, the shooting suspect at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., Sunday, June 12, 2016. The gunman opened fire inside the crowded gay nightclub early Sunday before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers, police said. (Orlando Police Department via AP)
Michigan iGaming Bill Passes Senate Committee

June 12, 2016 Jason Glatzer Editor

More than five years after Black Friday rocked the poker world, just three states  Nevada, Delaware, and New Jersey  permit regulated online poker, with the latter two also allowing regulated online casino games.

Last week, New York took the first step in passing online poker regulation when the state's Senate Finance Committee reported with a 20-8 vote to the Senate floor the online poker legalization bill, S5302C. Despite the first step, industry experts have warned that it is still a longshot that a bill will be passed during this legislative session.

On June 8, Michigan potentially through its hat into the ring when according to the Poker Player Alliance the state's Senate Committee overwhelmingly passed an online poker and casino bill by an 8-1 vote.

BREAKING: Michigan Senate Committee passes internet #poker and iGaming bill 8-1!! #Greatday  PokerPlayersAlliance (@ppapoker)

The momentum in Michigan seemingly came out of nowhere with the first reports of an internet gaming bill being considered by lawmakers coming in April after being introduced by State Senator Mike Kowall.

Online Poker Report editor Dustin Gouker points out that odds are still against the bill passing during this legislative session, which ends this month due to the bill still needing to pass both the state's Senate and House of Representatives. Even if this happens, the Governor will have 14 days to approve or veto the bill. If the Governor takes no action during that time frame, the bill will automatically become law.

Gouker also adds that time might not be on Michigan's side since there has been no significant discussion of a potential iGaming bill in state's House of Representatives.

That being said, Kowall previously has stated that he is confident that a bill will pass during the current legislative session. The bill is also believed to have support by MGM Resorts International, a long-time advocate of online gaming regulation and the owner of MGM Grand Detroit.

Stay tuned at PokerNews as more develops in Michigan.

*Lead image courtesy of hipmunk.com.

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A gunman who federal authorities say had possible ties to Islamist terrorism opened fire early Sunday morning at a packed Florida nightclub, killing approximately 20 people and wounding scores more in a bloody scene that ended hours later when police stormed the building and killed the suspect.

The shooting in Orlando at Pulse, which bills itself as "the hottest gay bar" in the city and was packed with more than 300 people, was reported minutes after 2 a.m. Sunday. In addition to those killed inside the club, at least 42 people were taken to area hospitals. Dozens of party-goers remained hostages in the club for several hours after the initial shooting, prompting SWAT teams to pour inside. Shortly after 6 a.m. local time, Orlando police tweeted that the gunman had been killed.

The gunman, whose identity was not immediately released, may have leanings toward radical Islam, FBI Special Agent in Charge Ron Harper said when asked by Fox News whether the suspect had ties to Jihadist terror groups. Harper said the investigation is looking into possible threats made previously by the suspect in connection to radical Islam groups. He said the agency is still investigating and has yet to confirm any role a terror group may have played in the mass shooting.

There are allegations the individual made threats in the past to having ties to terrorist organizations, Harper told Fox News.
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As reported earlier, the mainstream media has begun to realize that Donald Trumps entire life is built on fraud. He is not the rugged, self-made individual he has built himself up to be.

Friday, CNNs Don Lemon, host of CNN Tonight, interviewed David Brock of Correct the Record, a strategic research and rapid response team designed to defend Hillary Clinton from baseless attacks, and what he found is not pretty.

It is no secret that Trump is a liar. He has been demonstrated to lie 9 out of 10 times he opens his mouth to speak. He lies easily and without hesitation. Mainstream media has until recently been complicit in his dishonesty, failing to challenge his statements during interviews, or indeed, even after. What David Brock shows us is that the Donald Trump we are seeing is not a new Donald Trump. He has always been a liar.

Watch courtesy of Media Matters for America:

(Transcript from Media Matters for America):

DON LEMON (HOST): David, I am going to start with you. Your organization Correct the Record analyzed 23 of the Washington Posts fact checks on Donald Trump. What did you find?



DAVID BROCK: Well, we found  What we did was we took the most egregious we could find, and we actually set them to music. We set them to a Mozart Symphony No. 41, and it runs 41 minutes. And the point here is that every aspect that we looked at, of Donald Trumps life and his campaign, compulsive lying is an unavoidable aspect of it. We looked at the first public statement we could find that Donald Trump had ever made, back in 1973 where he said it was ridiculous that he would engage in housing discrimination, yet he settled a charge just to that nature four years before.



We looked at the first nine words that Donald Trump said when he declared his candidacy, where he said there were thousands of people in attendance and there were only 300. So, from 1973 to the time he announced his candidacy, it was lie after lie. And the important thing here is that hes lying about himself, the story he tells about himself, that hes a self made man, and a business genius. For example, Trump University is a lie that begat a fraud. And then on policy, he is lying to the American people on the promises he is making to, for example, reduce the debt by $19 trillion, when the Chamber of Commerce says hes going to explode the deficit and put us in recession.



[]



LEMON: David, did the Washington Post do fact checks on Hillary Clinton, whether shes telling the truth or not?



BROCK: Sure, in fact the agency that Jeffrey just cited, Politifact, rated Hillary Clinton the most honest of all candidates they looked at, and Donald Trump was the most dishonest. So, I think its a really poor excuse to try to say that all candidates do this, all candidates embellish and lie. What we have here is something  it is a difference of not degree, but of kind.



It is the order of magnitude, the volume, the brazenness, and the other thing, you know, so lets say politicians do sometimes not tell the truth. When theyre called out on it by something like the Washington Post fact checker, they usually stop. What our video shows is that Donald Trump compounds the problem time and again compulsively. Hes caught in a lie and keeps telling it. That tells us something about character, tells us something about temperament, and just unfitness for office.

Lying is not a new thing for Donald Trump. He is a compulsive liar and he has apparently always been a compulsive liar. He has built up some sort of superhero alternative version of himself in his own mind, and that is what he is selling to the American public as we head down the stretch to Election Day. As the mainstream media catches on to the truth, he will find it more and more difficult to sell his lies to the American people.
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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 groups members yielded $25,000 in donations, more than twice as much as projected, along with 15,000 new volunteers.

The clubs 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 leagues 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 Trumps 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 Trumps agenda frightening. But its efforts were also getting some traction from the candidates 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)
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Today, as America woke up to learn of the horrific terrorists attacks in Orlando that killed 50 people, Trump took what he thought was a victory tour.

Yes, Trump appreciated the congratulations on this Sunday  congratulations about being right, which obviously took precedence in his mind over the gravely serious and completely overwhelming reality that hate and easy access to guns stole the lives of 50 innocent people today.

Trumps reaction to tragedy is reminiscent of Mitt Romneys gleeful and disturbing Benghazi smile. What does it say about a politicians policies that they are so eager to revel in death and destruction?

Well, Donald Trump doesnt have much going for him as a candidate for President. He has no government experience, and his private industry experience is only glitzy and powerful at first glance. Underneath the hood we find a spoiled little rich boy turned financial gangster. Its not wanna-have-a-beer-with-you imagery.

But Trump did have fear. Fear is the Republicans best friend: Fear of brown people, fear of change, fear of women, fear of Muslims, fear. Fear keeps you from examining their policies.

Trump was all set to ride the terrorism card to victory and the media saw it as a real possibility back in March, as noted by the Washington Posts Greg Sargent.

But Sargent disagreed. After the Belgium attack in March, Sargent pointed out that Trumps simplistic, blustery framing of foreign policy and national security might be the end of Trump:

These fears are understandable. But they rest on the assumption that the general election audience will acquiesce to Trumps simplistic, blustery framing of foreign policy and national security issues. While its true that Trumps support among GOP primary voters did grow after previous terror attacks, my suspicion is that general election voters will be less inclined to buy into the overall story Trump is telling.

There has been no clearer display of Trumps simplistic worldview than when he pulled the curtain back on the real reason he is not fit to be President by taking a victory tour as Americans lay slain today; Donald Trump is a needy, reactionary child.

It looks like Donald Trump has managed to ruin that one sure thing for Republicans  the fear card.

That Donald Trump would reveal the wily emptiness of the Republicans fear card is sort of a perfect political event, Trumps candidacy being the result of decades of Southern Strategy.

In truth, Americans have been shying away from the cowboy foreign policy of Republicans, thanks to George W Bush. Then President Obama got Osama when Bush said he hardly thought of him anymore. Obama has piled on foreign policy wins since then as well, as if he were set out to prove that a dynamic diplomacy first backed up by strength and nimbly responsive to change is the best foreign policy.

The fact that Hillary Clinton stood next to President Obama during some of the toughest calls is no small matter either. If there is one thing that came out of the seemingly endless Democratic debates, it is that Hillary Clinton was the most experienced person running for the White House when it comes to foreign policy.

A President sounds like this guy. A real President leads out of the darkness by pointing us to our highest ideals when the nation is grieving.

Theres a good chance the media wont let Trump get away with his victory lap, and then he will be branded as the inept playground thug that he is. The real question at this point is how many Republican leaders will stand by him now.
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By refusing to say that he is still an active candidate for president, Sen. Bernie Sanders admitted that his campaign was all but officially over.

Video:

When asked if he is still an active candidate for president, Sen. Sanders answered:



Well, let me say this. I am doing everything that I can and will continue to do everything that I can to make sure that Donald Trump does not become President Of The United States. I think this man in a dozen different ways is not fit to become president. I think the idea that he is running a campaign based on bigotry. Insulting Mexicans, Muslims, women, its hard to believe that is really happening in the year 2016. So I am going to do everything that I can to make sure that he is not elected President Of The United States.

I will be meeting with Sec. Clinton on Tuesday evening I believe, and we will be chatting about her campaign, and I simply want to get a sense of what kind of platform she will be supporting. Whether she will be vigorous in standing up for working families and middle class, moving aggressively in climate change, healthcare for all, making public colleges and universities tuition free, and after we have that kind of discussion we can determine whether or not we are going to have a strong and progressive platform I will be able to make other decisions.

Sen. Sanders didnt answer the question, but his comments suggest that he wants to see where Hillary Clinton stands on the issues that have been the center of his campaign before officially closing it down and endorsing her.

What Sen. Sanders is doing is negotiating for the platform. The only real difference between the two candidates on the items that he listed was free college. Clinton wants to make college debt free, and Sanders wants public colleges and universities to be tuition free. I could easily see Clinton and Sanders meeting in the middle on that issue because they both agree that college must be made more affordable.

Sanders is leaving open the possibility that he will still be an active candidate later, but the reality is that his refusal to say that he is an active candidate currently means that his campaign is pretty much done.

The final dance that is leading up to Sen. Sanders ending his campaign and endorsing Sec. Clinton is underway.
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The man who carried out the domestic terrorist attack overnight in Orlando, FL that killed 50 and wounded 53 has been identified as Omar Mateen.

JUST IN: Orlando nightclub shooter ID'd as Omar S. Mateen, law enforcement sources tell @CBSNews https://t.co/zcv0mxzLiR  CBSN (@CBSNLive) June 12, 2016

Mateen was identified as a man who was a US citizen born in 1986 to parents from Afghanistan who lived in Port St. Lucie, FL, who law enforcement has characterized as having sympathy for, or ties to Islamic terrorism. The terrorist was well prepared with two weapons, including an assault weapon, and an explosive device.

Law enforcement quickly labeled the attack domestic terrorism, and with the FBI suggesting a relationship to Islamic terrorism, there is evidence that this attack was carried out by the kind of terrorist that national security experts fear the most. National security experts have been warning for decades that the biggest threat to the American people isnt another 9/11 style attack, but a domestic terrorist who has been influenced by international terror.

Update: According to ABC News, officials are reporting that at least 50 people are now dead and 52 have been wounded.

Earlier Report via Reuters:

By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters)  A gunman killed at least 20 people and injured 42 others in a crowded gay nightclub in Florida early on Sunday before police shot him dead in what U.S. authorities described as a terrorism incident.

A police officer working as a security guard inside the Pulse club exchanged fire with the suspect at about 2 a.m., police officials said.

A hostage situation quickly developed, and three hours later a squad of officers entered the club and shot dead the gunman. It was unclear when the gunman shot the victims.

Do we consider this an act of terrorism? Absolutely, we are investigating this from all parties perspective as an act of terrorism, said Danny Banks, special agent in charge of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Danny Banks.

Whether that is domestic terrorist activity or an international one, that is something we will certainly get to the bottom of.

When asked if the FBI suspected that the gunman may have an extremist leanings, including a possible sympathy with Islamic State, Ronald Hopper, an assistant FBI agent in charge, said: We do have suggestions that the individual may have leanings toward that particular ideology. But right now we cant say definitively.

At least one officer was injured in the gunbattle but the decision to storm the club saved at least 30 lives, Orlando Police Chief John Mina told a press conference.

The suspect was carrying an assault-type rifle and a handgun as well as an unidentified device on him, Mina said.

Javer Antonetti, 53, told the Orlando Sentinel newspaper that he was near the back of the dance club when he heard gunfire. There were so many (shots), at least 40, he said. I saw two guys and it was constant, like pow, pow, pow,.

Video footage showed police officers and civilians carrying injured people away from the club and bending over others who were lying on the ground. Dozens of police cruisers, ambulances, and other emergency vehicles could be seen in the area.

It was one after another after another after another, Christopher Hansen told CNN, describing the gunfire inside the club. It could have lasted a whole song.

Police said they had carried out a controlled explosion at the club hours after the shooting broke out, but did not explain why that was done.

Orlando Regional Medical Center was placed on lockdown, with only essential workers and relatives of victims allowed access, it said in a Twitter message. The hospital could not be reached immediately for comment.

It was the second deadly shooting at an Orlando night spot in as many nights. Late Friday a man thought to be a deranged fan fatally shot Christina Grimmie, a rising singing star and a former contestant on The Voice, while she was signing autographs after a concert in the Florida city.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud in New York and Mary Milliken in Los Angeles; writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Clelia Oziel)
As Rochester residents lick their collective chops at the thought of easy-access meals over their lunch breaks  especially the thousands of Mayo Clinic employees  Mike Melius is approaching the food truck possibilities from a different perspective.

Olmsted County's Environmental Health Manager is in charge of inspections and licensing to make sure the new meals on wheels meet state and local health codes. He's got a team of seven sanitarians whose job descriptions will be expanded to include the potential presence of Rochester's downtown food trucks, which he equated to "turning up the volume" for his staff.

Melius says his department has fielded numerous calls from interested parties since the Rochester City Council approved the ordinance last month, following months of impassioned debate that included a mayoral veto. His staff has been ready to respond, with the possibility that the first Rochester-based food truck could be operational on June 21.

"They (food trucks) are a different operation, there's no doubt about that," Melius said, "but the principles about actively managing food safety are the same (as restaurants).

"That's the good thing about food trucks  you can see everything right through their windows to see if they're washing their hands, cooking with clean equipment or whatever," he said. "We really like that they can get that immediate feedback from the customers because that's their revenue source."

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The push to allow mobile food units in Rochester began in February with a petition to the city council, but it took months of spirited debate before the final details were settled last week . The new language calls for a $1,100 franchise fee and an annual licensing fee of $150.

Applications have been available since June 7, but Rochester City Clerk Aaron Reeves said none were submitted during the first 48 hours.

"I don't know what that means, but I'm hoping we get a few this week or early next week," Reeves said Thursday. "It'd be nice to see someone operate this summer, but we'll see. If we don't get any applications in, I think the council may have to look at revising the ordinance."

Doug Schultz, a Minnesota Department of Health spokesman, said there are at least 637 active food trucks in the state, including many in Minneapolis. That number has surged since 2008, as business models adjust to make their products more easily accessible for those who don't necessarily work near restaurants.

"You can still provide fresh food to meet the demands of the day, but it might also reflect patterns of where people work," Schultz said.

While Olmsted County's Public Health Department used to conduct surprise inspections of mobile food units operating at local fairs or festivals, that practice ended about 20 years ago. Melius said it required "quite a change in mindset." Now local inspectors take a more collaborative, rather than combative, approach to ensure each unit complies with code.

The process starts with analyzing the menu and providing immediate feedback. Melius recommends that units focus on doing one thing well, which improves quality and reduces risk factors.

Depending on how the food is served, units are classified as low, medium or high risk upon being licensed. Olmsted County's inspection rates are actually more stringent than state standards, occurring at least once every year no matter the risk level.

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MDH requires low-risk units to be inspected once every 24 months, while medium-risk units are once per 18 months. High-risk units are once per year.

Complaints or issues that require corrective action are handled on a discretionary basis. There's no three-strike rule, but the penalties depend on the severity of the issue and how quickly they're fixed.

"We classify risk of their license by their menu," Melius said. "If they're cooking with raw meat or heating and cooling for serving later, those are high risks  but when there's a problem, we expect them to call us rather than run away and hide or try to cover it up. Our staff will give them support and consultation because, ultimately, we want safe food for the public."
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?

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"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.

Protected privacy

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.

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"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.

Conscious decision

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. However, Virginia law generally follows HIPAA on disclosures, said Gray.

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.

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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.

It's no guarantee, but if a provider is on the fence about disclosing information, "it might help," said Thorpe.
ORLANDO, Fla. Gale Julius of Rochester was on vacation in Florida with her family. They spent Saturday night in Port Orange, Fla. before heading over to Orlando to visit Universal Studios the next day.

It wasn't until Julius received more than a dozen calls from friends back in Minnesota, before she realized a tragic massacre unfolded overnight, nearby.

"It was really hard when I first heard it," she said over the phone. "I didn't hear the full details that it had been an LGBT club either."

More than 50 people were killed after gunman Omar Mateen fired openly into the Pulse Orlando, a popular gay bar and nightclub, at approximately 2:02 a.m. Sunday. At least 53 people were also critically injured and transported to various hospitals in the area, according to several Florida news outlets.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina told the Orlando Sentinel that Mateen fired the first shot at a police officer and ran into the club, which had around 200 people inside. Law enforcement at the time treated the incident as a hostage situation.

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Mateen, 29, of Port St. Lucie, Fla. was killed after a shootout with Orlando police SWAT team at around 5 a.m. Law enforcement used an explosive device to distract him and plowed through the building with a vehicle. Officials say that he was armed with a pistol and assault rifle when found. There isn't any indication of another gunman or threat.

Later reports indicated that the FBI had previously interviewed Mateen twice for alleged terrorist activity. It was later confirmed by a federal law enforcement official that he called 911 before the attack and pledged his allegiance to ISIS.

When Julius, her wife Tamara Berven, and their children were traveling to Orlando, Berven tried to flip through the radio stations to find music as a way of calming the family. Mostly every station she tried talked about the shooting.

"We're grieving with our LGBT family," she said. "We're trying to vacation as normally as possible. We don't take this lightly. ...it's really heartbreaking for all of us even our kids. It's weighing on our minds. It's definitely a somber day."

President Barack Obama gave a statement from the White House Sunday morning, calling the Orlando shootings "the deadliest shooting" in recent U.S. history, and an "act of terror."

"No act of terror or hate will change who we are," Obama emphasized during the briefing.

Despite tragedy, there was hope. Julius noted that many of the billboards had tributes made for the victims, survivors and their loved ones.

"They are lit and say 'pray for Orlando, and we grieve together'," Julius wrote in a Facebook message to the Post-Bulletinwhile en route to the city. She said her family may attend a vigil later in the evening to show their support.

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The children wanted to donate blood, as many central Floridians lined up outside of blood banks to donate. However, news reports stated that the mass response prompted several banks to start turning people away after hitting capacity, but asked them to return later.

Back in Rochester, LGBT leaders also grieved the senseless act of violence. Some felt fear after hearing the news, but were determined to continue living their lives. Ironically, June is also Pride Month, what should be a time of celebration for the LGBT community.

"We're not gonna let the fear get in," said Ken Tollefsrud, chair of Gay Lesbian Community Services in Rochester. after hearing about the shooting from a phone app. "We're gonna be stronger. We cannot let hate keep us down after all these years. We can't allow that hate within ourselves."

From the aftermath, Tollefsrud noted that there will be heightened security at Pridefest and that the festival may be slightly more subdued. However, he believes that the LGBT community will stand even closer together.

There may be plans to host a vigil for the victims and survivors on a later date, or even possibly during Pridefest once the board gets together and discusses what the best way to show support would be.

"It's important that we remain true to our conviction of love, and hate, hate," Tollefsrud said. "We've come a long way. We've got to stay strong...We're not going to step back in fear, that's what they want. They're not going to make us go back into the closet, again. ...we still got a lot of work to do."

No amount of hatred will deter the community members from living their lives to the fullest.

"We're grieving with our communities," Julius said, "and we're standing in solidarity with them."
WASHINGTON  Somehow, it's always the parents' fault. We are too lax, except when we are too helicoptery. We coddle the kids too much, except when we drive them into neurotic overachievement. We are enablers. No, we are Tiger Moms. The societal urge to blame is matched only by the parental instinct to second-guess -- ourselves as much as our fellow parents.

And so, two big and otherwise unrelated news stories of the last few weeks  the killing of a silverback gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo and the lenient sentence imposed on a former Stanford student for sexual assault  arrive with an unavoidable overlay of debate over proper parenting.

The first reaction to the zoo story, and the decision to shoot the gorilla to protect the toddler who fell into the animal's enclosure, was entirely unsurprising: Blame the mommy. Not just blame her -- prosecute her. Surely no responsible parent could have allowed her child to escape her watchful eye. Call Child Protective Services.

"Parental negligence" that "may be reflective of the child's home situation," thundered a change.org petition with more than 500,000 signatures. It demanded "an investigation of the child's home environment in the interests of protecting the child and his siblings from further incidents of parental negligence that may result in serious bodily harm or even death."

Except that, it turns out, there was no evidence of negligence. "Our information is that the mother turned away for a few seconds to attend to another one of her young children and this is when the 3-year-old was able to climb into the gorilla enclosure," concluded Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph Deters. "Any parent who is honest with himself or herself would have to understand how this could happen to even the most attentive parent."

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Indeed. How often have any of us turned away, taken a call, lost track in a way that, but for luck, could have ended in tragedy? Might I suggest that schlepping your four children -- ages 7, 4, 3 and 1 -- to the zoo is prima facie evidence of responsible, not neglectful, parenting? Might I suggest, oh so gently, that the fact that the allegedly inattentive mother is African-American contributed to the ensuing uproar?

In the Stanford case, there is no defending Brock Turner, or his father, Dan, who wrote a tone-deaf letter to the judge pleading for probation. His son's prosecution, Dan Turner wrote with an exquisitely offensive turn of phrase, was "a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20-plus years of life." He lamented that his once "happy go lucky" boy had lost his appetite for a juicy rib-eye.

Disgusting, especially in its failure to recognize the true victim. And yet, parents, ask yourself: If this were your son, would you not ante up whatever you could for the best defense possible? Would you not do what you could to spare him from the terrors awaiting him behind bars? Would you not argue for the lightest possible punishment, no matter how much you reviled his behavior or berated him in private?

I know I would. Say all you want about logical consequences and taking responsibility. The parental urge to protect is primal and instinctive, activated by the imagined sound of a clanking cell door.

Of course there are too many examples of outrageous parental attempts to shield their little darlings from the fallout of misbehavior. We have witnessed one such episode where I live, in suburban Maryland, where a high school principal made a valiant effort to deter drinking at the prom. Students, she warned, would be barred from graduation ceremonies if caught, which, not surprisingly, they were.

Which, predictably, happened. And then, even more predictably, squealing ensued. What, no march across the stage to ecstatic clapping? Talk about enabling: The school superintendent overruled the principal. Where were the parents who should have been backing up the principal's efforts to ensure their children's safety? Knowing our suburb, hiring lawyers  if they weren't lawyers themselves  to strong-arm the superintendent.

Other parents rallied to the principal's defense, and I'd like to think I would have been among them, even if my child were among those being punished with the ultimate sanction: no graduation video to post on Facebook.

But maybe not. We are fallible creatures, we parents, Mama and Papa Grizzlies who inevitably err. We take an eye off the cub. We swat at perceived danger. Could you maybe give us a break? Could we give ourselves one?

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Ruth Marcus is a columnist for the Washington Post.
Core Tech International Corp. has announced it will appeal the denial of its protest by the Department of Public Works in the Simon Sanchez High School renovation project.

Procurement protests are designed to give agencies the opportunity to address violations of the procurement laws. Government agencies seldom correct these violations on their own, which is why procurement protests are often appealed to the Office of Public Accountability," said Joyce Tang, the attorney representing Core Tech.

DPW, the lead agency in the procurement, denied Core Tech's protest to the potential awarding of the school renovation project to the Guam Educational Facilities Foundation. The project should ultimately see the construction of a new Sanchez campus along with the rehabilitation of other island schools.

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The value of the project is set at $100 million and includes the development of a comprehensive capital improvement plan for the Guam Department of Education. The new Sanchez campus is estimated to cost nearly $77 million, leaving about $23 million for repairs and renovations at other schools.

DPW denied the protest on June 8, stating that Core Tech's arguments lacked merit and that a negotiating committee's agreed-upon task order with GEFF was made within the confines of the law.

GEFF released a statement the same day lauding the denial and drawing attention to DPW's admonishment of Core Tech and its legal counsel in addition to DPW questioning whether Core Tech acted in good faith in its protests.

Two protests

Core Tech submitted two protests related to the school renovation project. The first was submitted Jan. 7. Tang stated in a letter on behalf of the company that because DPW did not consider the construction costs or development fees as a factor in proposal evaluations, it had violated procurement law and the mandate that the evaluation be based on the best value for the government.

That protest was dismissed Jan. 19 based on the timeliness of the submission. DPW stated that Core Tech failed to file the protest within the allotted 14 days and only did so after it was notified that it was not the highest-ranked contractor for the project.

DPW also put Core Tech and its counsel on notice for communicating with the legislature while the protest was under consideration, which DPW stated it considered to be in disregard of the procurement's single point of contact provision in its request for proposal.

In its second protest, filed May 27, Core Tech stated that DPW violated procurement law when it allowed GEFF to submit additional proposals after submissions had been ranked. Moreover, the company drew attention to GEFF's ties with E.C. Development Group LLC, a Calvo-family operated business.

DPW stated that the actions taken post-ranking were in accordance with law authorizing the procurement - Public Laws 32-120 and 32-121. The department also stated that any potential conflicts of interest in the project resulting from ties with a Calvo-owned operation were speculative in nature.

"DPWs personal attacks on Core Tech and its attorneys have nothing to do with the merits of the protest, and are transparent attempts to discourage Core Tech from exercising its right to protest and to divert attention away from the very serious violations in this procurement," Tang stated. "Core Tech will appeal the denial of its protest, as is its right under the law.

According to Felix Benavente, deputy director of DPW, the procurement process has been stayed for 14 days since the denial of the protest. An appeal must be filed within that time to be considered.
Fifty people have been confirmed dead and dozens of others injured after a gunman opened fire inside a packed gay nightclub in Orlando.

The Washington Post reported that 50 people were killed in what authorities are now describing as a case of domestic terrorism at Pulse, a popular gay club.

The shooter, who police identified as Omar Mateen, 29, was reportedly shot and killed by the police after a shootout.

Though Mr Mateen was born in Florida, his parents are believed to be from Afghanistan.

Police are still trying to identify the possible motive for the killing.

It appears he was organized and well-prepared, Orlando Police Chief John Mina said at a Sunday-morning news conference.

Mr. Mina said the shooter had an assault-type weapon and a handgun.

This is an incident  that we certainly classify as a domestic terror incident, Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said at the news conference. The FBI is involved in the investigation, authorities said.

We had a crime that will have a lasting effect on our community, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said. We need to stand strong, we need to be supportive of the victims and their families.

The police said though Mr. Mateen was known to authorities he was not under investigation.

The White House said President Barack Obama was briefed on the incident Sunday.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of the victims, the White House said in a statement.

The statement added that Mr. Obama has requested for regular updates.

The Pulse posted a message around 2 a.m. local time on Facebook: Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.

There were around 300 people inside the club at the time of the shooting.

A police Swat team arrived within minutes of the shooting and engaged the shooter.

The incident later developed into a hostage situation.

Mr. Mina later told journalists that the man was also armed with suspicious device alongside his guns.

There was also a report of a controlled explosion later.

The police said the gunman was killed three hours after the shooting began.
The Islamic States Amaq News Agency said on Sunday that the militant group was responsible for the shooting that killed at least 50 people in a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

The Islamic State media outlet said the perpetrator of the Orlando nightclub attack was a member of the extremist organisation.

The armed attack that targeted a gay night club in the city of Orlando in the American state of Florida which left over 100 people dead or injured was carried out by an Islamic State fighter, Amaq said.

The shooter himself pledged alliance to ISIS in a telephone call to 911 around the time of the shooting, CNN reports.

The shooter, who police identified as Omar Mateen, 29, was shot and killed by the police after a shootout.

It appears he was organized and well-prepared, Orlando Police Chief John Mina said at a Sunday-morning news conference.

Mr. Mina said the shooter had an assault-type weapon and a handgun.

This is an incident  that we certainly classify as a domestic terror incident, Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said at the news conference. The FBI is involved in the investigation, authorities said.

We had a crime that will have a lasting effect on our community, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said. We need to stand strong, we need to be supportive of the victims and their families.

World leaders have been reacting to the shooting considered the worst in U.S. history.

U.S. President, Barack Obama and Pope Francis on Sunday condemned the shooting which also left 53 others wounded.

Mr. Obama, while delivering a statement about the attack from the White House, said the Orlando nightclub massacre was being investigated by federal authorities as terrorism.

The U.S. president said a definitive judgement about the motives of the gunman was not yet available.

We know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate.

What is clear is that he was a person filled with hatred, Obama said.

Flags at the White House were lowered to half staff in mourning for what Obama called a horrific massacre.

Obama noted that the shooting was the most deadly shooting in American history.

This is a sobering reminder that attacks on any American, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation, is an attack on all of us.

The Vatican said on Sunday that Pope Francis was horrified by the Orlando gay nightclub shooting.

The Vatican said in a statement that the incident had caused the deepest feelings of horror in Pope Francis.

The terrible massacre that has taken place in Orlando, with its dreadfully high number of innocent victims, has caused in Pope Francis, and in all of us, the deepest feelings of horror and condemnation.

We all hope that ways may be found as soon as possible.

This is to effectively identify and contrast the causes of such terrible and absurd violence which so deeply upsets the desire for peace of the American people and of the whole of humanity, it said.
Osun State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, has insisted that June 12 of every year is the most suitable and proper day to mark Democracy Day in Nigeria.

Mr. Aregbesola, in his address marking the 23rd anniversary of the annuled June 12, 1993 election, said it was on that date Nigerians across all divides freely chose their leader and unequivocally affirmed the unity of the country.

He said Nigerians and lovers of democracy would remain committed to June 12 as a political watershed in the annals of the nation, saying May 29 only symbolises the day the military handed over the affairs of the country to a democratically elected government.

He said June 12, in 1993, was a day Nigerians united to vote the acclaimed winner of the presidential election, late MKO Abiola without recourse to religion, ethnicity or ideology.

He stated that the unity with which the multi-ethnic groups spoke and acted was what is being celebrated till today.

He however noted that since the annulment of that election 23 years ago, Nigerians waited another 16 years for a leader that would take them to the Promised Land until the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.

We will never drop our commitment to June 12. Nigerians, in their heterogeneity, on June 12, 1993, voted for Chief Abiola in a pattern that defied ethnicity, religion, ideology and locality.

It was a pattern that made mockery of the fabled fault-lines and fissiparous tendencies of the Nigerian federation and projected a nation united behind a popular leader.

May 29, in 1999, was the date the military handed over power to civilian administration and will remain symbolic for the transition to civil rule and the opportunity it presents for realising a truly democratic government that approximates the yearnings and aspirations of the people for a leader that will lead them to the Promised Land of security and life more abundant.

We waited for 16 years for that leadership to emerge and we thank God for the election and coming to power of President Muhammadu Buhari.

A government with a human face is here at last. He represents the aspirations and symbolism of June 12 in that he also got a pan-Nigerian mandate that once again defied the divisions in our country.

He represents hope for change and national rebirth. He is on that path. God willing, he will lead us to the Promised Land, Mr. Aregbesola said.

According to him, May 29 is an offshoot 12 because it was in the relentless struggle to revalidate the annulled June 12 election that led to the abrupt termination of military rule in 1999.

He saluted all patriots, living and dead, who fought tooth and nail for the actualisation of June 12, saying they deserved to be celebrated till eternity.

He continued: May 29, however, is a child of June 12 being that it was the unrelenting pursuit of the actualisation of June 12 with the sweat and blood of our patriots that led to military disengagement and civilian rule on May 29.

We salute and commend the courage of our patriots, living and dead, who sacrificed everything, including their lives, in the cause of June 12 and birth of democracy in our land. You are our heroes and heroines.

You will never be forgotten, but will live in our hearts forever. Your wish has been largely fulfilled, though we acknowledge that democracy anywhere is an unfinished business.

We must keep nurturing it with the nutrients of peace, love and hard work and protect it with mutual respect, tolerance and unbounded patriotism.

Mr. Aregbesola averred that democracy remained the best form of government anywhere in the world despite any imperfections.

He held that it was the form of government that allowed the people to choose whoever they wanted to lead them.

He stated that one of its safety catches remained the opportunity to correct any mistake through the ballots.

The governor added, Since our inauguration, we have put you, our people, at the heart of government and worked to make democracy meaningful and impactful.

Every policy we have made, every decision we have taken is to further the peoples interest and lift them from the morass of hopelessness, helplessness, dejection, poverty and ignorance into the cape of peace, security, prosperity and abundant life.

We have revived education with new schools, free meals, free school uniforms, improved infrastructure, motivation for teachers and so on.

We have enhanced transportation and beauty of our landscape with the construction of over 1,000 kilometres of roads across the state. We have vigorously pursued urban renewal and sent flooding packing from our state. We have rehabilitated hospitals and improved healthcare delivery for all the people.

We have encouraged agriculture, made food to be abundantly available and made farmers to be prosperous. We have created tens of thousands of jobs directly and indirectly through OYES, OREAP, OMEALS, OPON IMO, OAMBULANCE, OSCHOOL, AGBA OSUN, OBOPS, OFOPS and other Os.

We have also deepened democracy by allowing the opposition a robust room to operate and not retaliating all the wrongs we suffered when we were in opposition.

Our accommodating spirit and genuine outreach to all have won the leading lights of the opposition to our side and made democratic participation in Osun to be more inclusive. We have enhanced the rights of all to freely worship as he or she deems fit. We have done all these because we value the people.

The governor also commended the workers in the state for their support and belief in his government.

He said the state civil servants were indispensable in the service to the masses, adding that they had sacrificed and given their best to the service to humanity.

They have shown understanding of the situation we are, even as we try to mitigate the consequences of the shortfall in revenue occasioned by a drop in the price of crude oil. I want to assure them that good times are here and we shall all enjoy the fruits of our labour.

As we celebrate June 12 as Democracy Day, let us remember the struggles and sacrifices of our heroes and heroines by continuing to be good citizens, by working hard and paying our taxes.

It is for this reason that we have declared tomorrow as public holiday, in commemoration of this watershed date and to honour the memory, of Chief Abiola, his wife, Kudirat Abiola, who was cowardly murdered by agents of the evil regime and other Nigerians who suffered for standing for what they believed to be right, he said.
A major recruiter for the Boko Haram has been arrested in Borno, an official has said.

The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, on Sunday said it arrested the 56-year-old Boko Haram kingpin in Aski Uba Local Government Area of Borno.

The Commandant of the NSCDC in Borno, Ibrahim Abdullahi, stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Maiduguri.

Mr. Abdullahi said the suspect was apprehended at Mussa village on June 7.

Our men have made remarkable progress by arresting a Boko Haram kingpin.

The notorious kingpin was said to be a recruiter as well as supplier of arms and IEDs to Boko Haram terrorists.

He confessed that his three children were also arrow heads of the Boko Haram sect, he said.

Mr. Abdullahi said the command had since handed over the suspect to the army for further investigation.

The Boko Haram insurgency has caused the death of over 20,000 people in Northern Nigeria since 2009. Recent successes by the Nigerian military have led to the recovery of territory initially seized by the insurgents in North East Nigeria.

President Muhammadu Buhari recently stated his administrations willingness to negotiate the release of scores of teenage schoolgirls kidnapped by the group in 2014 in Chibok, Borno State.

(NAN)
A new report has disclosed that the 36 states and the 774 local government councils in Nigeria shared N2.8 trillion from the Federation Account in the one year of President Muhammadu Buharis administration.

An exclusive report by the Economic Confidential, an intelligence economic magazine, disclosed that the total figure was payment made to the two tiers of government between June 2015 and May 2016 at the monthly meeting of the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC)..

In the report, Lagos state is ranked first as the highest recipient of gross allocation with a total sum of N178 billion in the twelve months. It is followed by Akwa Ibom State N173 billion, Delta State N144 billion and Kano State N117 billion. The five states cornered a quarter (25%) of the total allocation for the states and local government councils in Nigeria within the one year period.

Among the 10 highest recipients from the Federation Account are Bayelsa State which got N95 billion; followed by Katsina State N88 billion, Oyo State N84 billion, Kaduna State N83 billion and Borno State N78 billion.

The lowest recipients are Gombe and Ebonyi States that got N49 billion each followed by Ekiti and Nasarawa States N50 billion each and Kwara N52 billion.

The report further disclosed that Edo and Ondo which are oil-producing states got N66 billion and N71 billion respectively while another state in the South-South, Cross River State, received N59 billion.

The Economic Confidential gathered that factors that influence allocation to states and local government councils from the Federation Account include: Population, Derivation, Landmass, Terrain, Revenue Effort, School Enrolments, Health Facilities, Water Supply and Equality of the beneficiaries.

Meanwhile, the Economic Confidential which has been publishing the monthly Federation Account Allocation figures in the print edition of the magazine since January 2007, has commenced the publication of the monthly allocation in its online version.

The magazine is a sister publication of PRNigeria, a news release syndication platform.

See the breakdown of the allocations to states and their local government councils from the table in this link.
The Nigerian government wants about 80,000 Nigerians displaced to Cameroon by the Boko Haram insurgency to return.

The Federal Government has, therefore, signed a tripartite agreement with the United Nations High Commission for Refugee, UNHCR, and the Republic of Cameroon for the return of the refugees who fled for safety.

The Director General of the National Emergency Management Agency, Muhammad Sidi, disclosed this when an African Union (AU) Humanitarian Mission visited the headquarters of the agency at the weekend. The AU mission was led by Aisha Abdullahi, its Commissioner for Political Affairs.

He said there were about 80,000 displaced Nigerians currently taking refuge in Cameroon and that the federal government has been making efforts to cater for all their basic needs.

Over a million Nigerians were displaced from the north-east by the insurgency with majority of them in different internally displaced persons, IPDs, camps within Nigeria.

Mr. Sidi said the federal government and governments of states affected by the insurgency, United Nations organisations, international non-governmental organisations and the private sector had done a lot in the past four years to manage large numbers of internally displaced persons in the North East.

We have moved from the emergency response stage to recovery and resettlement of the IDPs, he said.

He urged the visiting Commissioner to use her good offices as Commissioner Political Affairs of the African Union to seek for more assistance and support for the affected persons and the states.

Mr. Sidi thanked all the development partners, UN agencies, and civil societies for working tirelessly in supporting the IDPs and Government of Nigeria.

Earlier, the Commissioner said they were in Nigeria to assess the situation of IDPs and to discuss areas of possible support. She added that displaced Nigerians were of concern to the African Union, as records available to African Union indicate that there were about 13 million displaced persons and 3 million refugees on the continent.

She commended the efforts of the Nigerian government and the military for degrading and minimizing the activities of the insurgents in the northeast.

She said with the large number of displaced persons living in the camps, the AU will continue to give more attention to the issues of displacement through interaction and focus on addressing the root causes of conflict in Africa.
Veteran journalist and Abuja-based media consultant, Olu Akerele, has reiterated his appeal to President Muhammadu Buhari to honour late MKO Abiola with the nations highest award of Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR).

In a memorial message to mark the 23rd anniversary of the watershed June 12, 1993 presidential election which Mr. Abiola overwhelmingly won, Mr. Akerele noted that the late business mogul paid the supreme price and ought to be rewarded with the highest national honour for leading the struggle for democracy in Nigeria.

He argued that although the honour of GCFR is reserved for former presidents in the country, Mr. Abiola deserved it having been voted unreservedly by Nigerians all over the nation no matter their calling, region or religion.

He said a precedent had been set for such honour when former President Shehu Shagari awarded it in 1982 to Obafemi Awolowo for the role he played in the growth of the country even though the late sage was not installed as president.

Mr. Akerele argued that Mr. Abiola won an election adjudged to be the freest and fairest in the history of Nigeria, spanning across regional, ethnic and religious barriers; and needed to be recognised posthumoursly as a nationalist and president.

Mr. Abiola, he maintained, was aware of the herculean task he faced in actualising his mandate, but plodded on until his premeditated death in the hands of reactionists.

For paying the supreme price for democracy to thrive, he needs to be

accorded the highest honour the nation reserves for its heroes, the veteran journalists, who was special adviser to Mr. Abiola, added.

Mr. Akerele urged Mr. Buhari to recognise the supreme sacrifice Abiola paid for democracy, and grant him the deserved honour to serve as incentive

to aspiring nationalists.

He also appealed to progressives across the country, particularly those who ensured the actualisation of democracy from the grip of the military in Nigeria, to team up to ensure the stabilisation of the polity.

He noted that progressives such as Bola Tinubu, Umar Dangiwa, Shehu Sani, Kayode Fayemi, Wole Soyinka, Alani Akinrinade, Frank Kokori, Segun Osoba, Ndubuisi Kanu, Ralph Obiora, Femi Falana, Ayo Adebanjo, among others, who were ardent colleagues of Abiola, had shown their bent for the late leaders vision by aligning forces with Mr. Buhari, adding that honouring him would heighten his worth and that of his followers.

He applauded President Buhari for the steps taken so far in the recovery of looted public funds, and appealed to the judiciary to raise its momentum to ensure speedy dispensation of justice.

He also urged the President to expedite action in ensuring that the recovered funds were dispassionately released to the different arms of government for the execution of development projects.
The Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has declared that the school feeding programme proposed by the Federal Government must be done without any financial contribution from the states.

Mr. Fayose said it was wrong of the All Progressives Congress, APC-led federal government to ask state governments for a 40 per cent counterpart funding of the project.

The Federal Government is already looking for excuses for the impending failure of the programme by asking states to contribute 40 per cent to the scheme, he said in a statement on Sunday.

He said the school feeding programme was purely a contract between the APC-led Federal Government and Nigerians.

Were the states consulted before the APC made the promise during the presidential campaign? the governor queried.

How can you make a promise and win election on the basis of that promise and now expect states to help you to fulfil the promise? That to me is fraud.

According to Mr. Fayose, Ekiti State and other states in the country deserve to benefit from the programme without assisting the federal government with any 40 per cent counterpart funding.

The governor said the APC-led Federal Government should rather blame itself for failing to do proper study on the practicability of the scheme before promising Nigerians instead of looking for who to blame for not fulfilling the school feeding promise.

Apart from the fact that Ekiti State lacked the financial wherewithal to provide counterpart fund for such a programme, it is the duty of President Mohammed Buhari and his APC that won election on the basis of their promise to give free meal to school pupils to fulfill the promise without placing any burden on other tiers of government, he said.

Nigerians should come to terms with the reality that the federal government is already looking for a ready alibi for the impending failure of the school feeding programme.

The federal government knows that 80 per cent of the states lack the financial will to be able to contribute the 40 per cent counterpart fund for the programme and the time the programme eventually fails, Nigerians will be told that it failed because states did not key in to it.

As for us in Ekiti, we are interested in the programme because Nigeria belongs to all of us. But we wont contribute any counterpart fund because the programme is solely an electoral promise of the APC and we were never consulted before the promise was made.

We dont even have the capability to make any financial contribution even if it is 10 per cent because our financial condition is such that we cant even pay workers salary.
About one in five students failed the recent law school examination and will not be called to the bar, official results show.

The results show that 23. 6 per cent of students who sat for the final examination conducted by the Nigerian Law School will not make it to the Nigerian Bar Association this June.

The figure represents 720 candidates who sat for the examination held in April.

Potential candidates to the bar must sit and pass the final examination by the Nigerian Law School, to be qualified for the call to bar, scheduled to take place on June 12.

A statement from the Director General of the law school, Olanrewaju Anadeko, said 73 per cent of those who took part in the examination in April passed it.

Out of 3,056 candidates who partook in the examination this year, 2, 232 candidates passed, while 104 of them had conditional passes, apart from the 720 candidates who failed the examination, the statement said.

According to Section four of the Legal Practitioners Act, candidates must meet all other requirements to qualify for the call to bar.

Section 4 (2) of the Act implies that the 104 candidates with conditional passes, representing 3.4 per cent of the total number of candidates, cannot rely solely on their kind of result to make it to bar.

Information provided by the school states that after concluding their study at the Nigerian Law School, successful candidates are given their certificates from the council and then called to bar by the Body of Benchers, subject to the provisions of the Legal Practitioners Act.

The Council of Legal Education is the regulatory body for the Nigeria Law School, which must be attended by persons willing to practice law in Nigeria.

It also determines the steps to be taken by persons who have obtained a university degree in law from a foreign institution and are willing to practice as lawyers in Nigeria.

The Nigerian law school and the Council of Legal Education were established in 1962, following the enactment of the Legal Education Act to ensure the study of the Nigerian customary law by prospective members of the bench.
The Nigerian Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai, has counselled officers and soldiers of the Nigerian Army to embrace professionalism and loyalty to the Federal government as core principles of their duties.

Mr. Buratai made the call at the Nigerian Army School of Artillery, Kachia, in Kaduna state, where he addressed officers and men at the prestigious training institution.

The army chief, a lieutenant general, who was there to commission newly built students hostels, said soldiers must key into his vision of a new Nigerian Army.

I am impressed with your activities here in NASA which is in line with my vision which is to have a professionally responsive army in the discharge of its constitutional roles, said General Buratai, who urged the soldiers to keep on the good job, be professionals and remain loyal to the federal government of Nigeria.

Mr. Buratai said he was impressed with the quality of job carried out by the Commandant of the Nigeria Army School of Artillery under the 2016 barracks infrastructure development projects, and promised to intervene in the rehabilitation of infrastructure recently destroyed by rainstorm.

In a related development, the Army chief on Friday commissioned some blocks of accommodation for Corporal and Below soldiers as well as a newly tarred road named after him at the Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Jaji.
The Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria, Kaduna State Chapter, on Sunday declared that the attack on one Francis Emmanuel for eating during the Ramadan was not Islamic.

The Chairman of the council, Yusuf Rigachikun, stated this when he led other members of the council to St. Gerards Catholic Hospital, Kaduna, where the victim is currently recuperating.

The News Agency of Nigeria recalls that Emmanuel, a carpenter, was attacked with knives and other dangerous weapons by unknown persons on Tuesday in Kakuri, Kaduna, for eating during the fasting period.

Represented by Tukur Abdussalal, a member of the council, Mr. Rigachikun said that the council was upset after receiving the news of the ugly incident and decided to visit and console the victim.

We are deeply sorry that this has happened. It is not Islamic and we condemn it.

We received the news with disbelief and decided as a council to come and console you and share in your pains, he told Emmanuel.

He pointed out that that as a Christian, the victim had nothing to do with Islamic practices, adding that there was no basis for the attack.

Even if it was a Muslim that decided to eat during Ramadan, no one has the right to attack him. The best any one can do is to sue such person to Sharia Court for appropriate action.

In fact, Islam did not forbid eating during Ramadan in the first place to have warranted such ugly incident.

Whatever any Muslim decided to do, fasting or no fasting, is for himself, Mr. Rigachukun explained.

Also speaking, the Secretary of the council, Abdulrahman Hassan, appealed to members of the public to desist from taking laws into their hands.

The action of these people is not Islamic and therefore unacceptable in Islam; even Prophet Mohammed warned that there is no compulsion in Islam, Mr. Hassan said.

The council presented a cash donation of N100,000 as assistance to the victim and wished him quick recovery.

Receiving the donation on behalf of the family, Paul Emmanuel, elder brother of the victim, thanked the council for the gesture.

Acts of kindness and affection like this are what we need to promote peaceful coexistence, he said.

Governor Nasir El-Rufai on Wednesday visited Mr. Emmanuel and directed the police to fish out the perpetrators of the attack.

He warned that government would not tolerate religious violence and criminality.

(NAN)
The Kwara Government says it has secured a $56million investment from China for the establishment of a textile industrial park in the state.

Muideen Akorede, the Senior Special Assistant, Media and Communication to the Governor, said this on Sunday in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria in Ilorin.

The statement said Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed concluded the investment deal during his current investment trip to East China.

It also said the agreement for the establishment of Kwara Chitex Industrial Park was signed by Ahmed and Mr Shi Zengchao, the Managing Director of Ningbo Jinsheng Star Import and Export Co Ltd.

The statement said the event took place at the 18th China Zheijand Investment and Trade Symposium held in Ningbo, East China.

It said the initiative involved $3.7 billion worth of investments in 31 projects out of which $1.4billion was for outbound investments.

Kwara Chitex Industrial Park, it said, was the only one Nigeria- bound.

The statement quoted the governor as expressing delight over the multimillion dollar project which was expected to commence soon.

The park, according to the governor, would create 3,000 jobs for the people of the state.

We are looking for investors, especially in the area of manufacturing.

We have a very youthful population which shows there is a strong workforce that can support industrialisation.

There are opportunities in textiles, agriculture, mining and other areas, the potentials are huge, the statement quoted Ahmed as saying.

It also quoted Ahmeds Chief Economic Assistant, Abayomi Ogunsola, as saying government would provide about N1billion in counterpart funding and 400 hectares of land as well as infrastructure support.

The statement also said the governor held preliminary talks with potential investors in agribusiness and agro allied industries during the visit to China.

Mr. Ahmed, it said, offered prospective investors incentives such as tax relief and accelerated land acquisition process.

(NAN)
The Bayelsa Police Command on Sunday said operatives successfully repelled an attempt by armed bandits to abduct expatriates at the state capital.

The police announced the development in a press statement by its spokesperson, Asinim Butswat.

On Saturday at about 2350hrs, unknown gunmen attacked the Expatriates Quarters, at Onopa, opened fire on the security personnel on guard, in an attempt to abduct the expatriates.

The security operatives fired back and the gunmen withdrew, abandoning their assault rifle.

They escaped through the waterways in a speedboat. Manhunt for the gunmen have been intensified, investigation is ongoing, Mr. Butswat, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, said.

The spokesperson did not provide details of the nationalities of the targets.

There have been several high profile kidnap cases in Bayelsa including those of traditional rulers, senior government officials, and their relatives.
The civil servants in Bayelsa State, who have not been paid for the past five months, will get half of their February salary on Monday if the governors directive is followed.

Governor Seriake Dickson on Saturday directed the Head of Service, the Accountant General and other appropriate officials to ensure the civil servants receive their salaries by Monday or be ready to face disciplinary action.

In a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Daniel Iworiso-Markson, Mr. Dickson expressed dismay that workers were still not paid their salaries, despite his directive.

He warned that failure to pay the workers by Monday will attract stringent disciplinary action against the erring officers.

Mr. Dickson, according to the statement, also demanded an immediate explanation on the reason for the delay. The governor commended the workers for their patience, and expressed his administrations commitment to their welfare.

Although the governors statement was silent on what months salary the workers would be paid, PREMIUM TIMES learnt that 50 per cent of Februarys wages are to be paid.

The Chairman of the Nigerian Labour Congress in Bayelsa State, John Indiomu, told PREMIUM TIMES that the government will start with the payment of February salary. He said the workers are hopeful that the government will be consistent in paying the backlog of salaries.

Mr. Indiomu said no worker would be happy to receive only a part of his salary, but he understands that Nigeria is going through difficult time.

As the situation is, there is nothing we can do than to accept it, Mr. Indiomu said.

The states civil servants recently embarked on a three-day strike to protest the inability of the government to pay them salaries for about five months. The workers later called off the strike and accepted to be paid 50 per cent of their monthly salaries.

Many states in Nigeria are unable to pay their workers due to reduced government income as a result of the drop in the international price of crude oil.
DUBAI, UAE, June 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

To celebrate and recognise the true worth of its range of high performance tyres, Dubai based Z Tyre has engaged one of the world's most exclusive jewellers to develop a very special set of Z1 tyres to be unveiled for the first time at Reifen Essen 2016.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160612/378228 )

Combining 24 karat gold and specially selected diamond stones, this unique set of Z Tyres was designed in Dubai and decorated by Italian artisan jewellers in Italy before being returned to Dubai the application of gold leafing by the very same craftsmen who have worked on the new presidential palace in Abu Dhabi. With the special set of four tyres recently sold for $600,000, Guinness World Records has independently valued and duly recognised them as the "World's Most Expensive Set of Car Tyres".

Commenting on this new world record, Zenises CEO Harjeev Kandhari, said: "We've always treasured the outstanding skills and dedication involved in developing our Z Tyre range so we thought what better way to celebrate this achievement than with a record-breaking special set of tyres especially commissioned for a unique buyer. We are thankful to the Government of Dubai and His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai to have fostered such an environment of creativity in Dubai. This environment has allowed us to "dream big" and develop such world record breaking ideas. In keeping with the spirit of the Holy Month of Ramadan Z Tyres will donate all profits from the $600,000 sale to the Zenises Foundation which focusses on improving access to education across the world".

Web: Ztyre.com

SOURCE ZENISES DMCC
Manny Stul took over Moose in 2000, then an Australian toy company with 10 employees, having already founded and built Skansen Giftware, which listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1993. In his 16 years running Moose, Manny has increased sales by 7,200% and built a global business that is now the fourth largest toy company in Australia and, by sales, the sixth-largest in the US. Moose sells its toys, including the well-known Shopkins characters and Little Live Pets, in more than 80 countries.

Rebecca MacDonald, Founder and Executive Chair of Just Energy Group and Chair of the World Entrepreneur Of The Year judging panel, says:

"Our unanimous decision was reached after long and tough deliberations. Manny was our choice, not only due to his impressive growth, but also because the business he has nurtured has shown sustained global success. His mettle was tested when Moose faced a product recall that would have overcome less resilient and well-managed businesses. All of our finalists were worthy winners and demonstrated so many qualities that we were looking for, including an ability to respond to disruption. However, it was Manny who impressed us most across our diverse judging criteria."

Manny Stul, Chairman and Co-CEO, Moose Enterprise, says:

"I'm honored and delighted to receive this prestigious award for Moose, our employees and for Australia. I was up against an amazing group of entrepreneurs and have been inspired by their stories. We are a company that succeeds by focusing on innovation with integrity and a clear purpose to make children happy. This has allowed us to grow exponentially, while overcoming huge challenges. I'd like to thank EY on behalf of all the entrepreneurs who competed this week."

Bryan Pearce, EY Global Leader  EY Entrepreneur Of The Year, says:

"Manny won over the judges with his story of success from humble beginnings, and his ability to build a global consumer business that has been able to sustain its success over a 16-year period in a very competitive industry. His focus on giving back through the Moose Foundation is also impressive and an increasingly important aspect for so many of our entrepreneurs who compete for this title each year."

Mark Weinberger, EY Global Chairman and CEO, says:

"Moose Enterprise has a very clear purpose at its heart that has guided the company's outstanding growth. It's the ability to combine this purpose with innovation, integrity, determination and grit that makes Manny a truly worthy EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year winner."

About the judging panel

The independent judging panel was chaired by Rebecca MacDonald of Just Energy Group (Canada). Joining her were:

Rosario Bazan of DanPer ( Peru )

) Ivan Epstein of Sage International ( South Africa )

of Sage International ( ) Jim Nixon of Sandvik Venture (US)

of (US) Lance Uggla of Markit (UK)

of Markit (UK) Dr. Kar Wong of The Advanced Group of Companies ( Singapore )

of The Advanced Group of Companies ( ) Michael Wu of Hong Kong Maxim's Group ( China )

Broadcast coverage, an interview with the winner and high-resolution photography will be available to download for broadcast and online use at: https://broadcast.ey.com/stories/9832

Event photography is available at www.ey.com/weoy/eventphotos

Manny Stul, Moose Enterprise

Manny Stul has been described as "a quintessential entrepreneur" due to his tenacity and ability to take a business from the brink of disaster to the highest ranks of the industry. Last year, his company's popular Shopkins characters became "Girl Toy of the Year" at the Toy Industry Association's Toy of the Year Awards in the US.

His first foray into the world of entrepreneurship was in 1974. The child of Polish refugee parents, Manny worked in construction in northwest Australia before starting his first business, a gift company called Skansen. Innovating and changing constantly to adapt to the market's requirements, Manny expanded Skansen into one of the biggest gift companies in Australia and listed it on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1993. "I had no guidance from mentors and entered the business space with no experience," he recalled. "Every decision and opportunity helped shape my skills and showed me in practical terms how to run a successful business."

Moose, the company he took control of in 2000, went through very rough times in 2007 after a product recall. "Everyone said it was impossible to survive the recall, yet we pulled through," Manny said. "Although faced with huge reputational and financial challenges, I refused to be distracted, and over a 12-week period negotiated agreements with local and international governments and trading partners, allowing the business to survive and thrive."

Through the Moose Foundation, Moose Enterprise strives to extend its mission of making children happy in the wider community through philanthropic initiatives that positively make a difference to the lives and well-being of less fortunate children.

Manny shares the company's leadership and ownership with wife and Moose director, Jacqui Tobias and step-son Paul Solomon, his Co-CEO.

Notes to Editors

About EY

EY is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services. The insights and quality services we deliver help build trust and confidence in the capital markets and in economies the world over. We develop outstanding leaders who team to deliver on our promises to all of our stakeholders. In so doing, we play a critical role in building a better working world for our people, for our clients and for our communities.

EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients. For more information about our organization, please visit ey.com.

This news release has been issued by EYGM Limited, a member of the global EY organization that also does not provide any services to clients.

About EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year

EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year is the world's most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs. The unique award makes a difference through the way it encourages entrepreneurial activity among those with potential, and recognizes the contribution of people who inspire others with their vision, leadership and achievement. As the first and only truly global award of its kind, Entrepreneur Of The Year celebrates those who are building and leading successful, growing and dynamic businesses, recognizing them through regional, national and global awards programs in more than 145 cities in more than 60 countries.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130701/NY40565LOGO-b

Related Links

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SOURCE EY
NEW DELHI, June 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Nxtra Data Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bharti Airtel, and CenturyLink, Inc. (NYSE: CTL), a global communications, hosting, cloud and IT services company, today announced an exclusive business partnership to provide advanced hosting and managed IT services to enterprises in India. This exclusive partnership brings Nxtra Data's India data centre management expertise together with CenturyLink's cost-effective hosting, managed services and cloud capabilities to serve businesses and government organisations in India.

Neil Pollock, Chief Executive Officer, Nxtra Data Ltd, said, "We are delighted to announce this exclusive business partnership with CenturyLink. Nxtra Data's Managed Services offering is now powered by a global leader in managed services and cloud, delivering a scalable, cost-effective and secure suite of products and services. The Nxtra and CenturyLink India-based teams will collaborate to bring a new standard of capability and service to support Indian enterprises  at the right price. Together, we will set a new benchmark in product performance, security and customer experience. Morever, offloading your organisation's IT requirements to trusted service providers such as Nxtra and CenturyLink, will ensure that you spend more time focussed on core business requirements versus back-end IT challenges."

"The strategic alliance forged between CenturyLink and Nxtra addresses the IT needs of Indian enterprises," said Girish Varma, president, Global IT Services & New Market Development, CenturyLink. "We are offering access to the same highly secure managed IT solutions and consistent experience available across CenturyLink's global footprint, taking advantage of Nxtra's data centres throughout India and engaging our mature India operations. This innovative approach to data centre services helps Indian businesses enhance their international reach with CenturyLink's managed hybrid IT services, as well as CenturyLink customers that want to quickly and easily gain a physical presence in India."

About Nxtra Data Limited

Nxtra Data Limited formed to run Bharti's Data Center Managed Services business.

Nxtra now manages 10 Tier III/+ & ISO 27001 Certified Data Centres at Noida, Manesar, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Bubhaneshwar comprising approx. 200,000 sq. ft. of floor space.. Nxtra offers an integrated portfolio of data center managed services including Co-location, Managed Services, Managed Hosting, Managed Back-up & Storage, Managed Security, Virtual Compute and Cloud with both Domestic and International network connectivity. To know more visit www.nxtradata.com.

About CenturyLink

CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) is a global communications, hosting, cloud and IT services company enabling millions of customers to transform their businesses and their lives through innovative technology solutions. CenturyLink offers network and data systems management, Big Data analytics and IT consulting, and operates more than 55 data centers in North America, Europe and Asia. The company provides broadband, voice, video, data and managed services over a robust 250,000-route-mile U.S. fiber network and a 300,000-route-mile international transport network. Visit CenturyLink for more information.

Related Links

http://www.centurylink.com



SOURCE CenturyLink, Inc.
TAMPA, Fla., June 12, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Later today, the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-FL) will hold a news conference with leaders of the Muslim community and interfaith representatives to condemn the deadly shooting spree at a nightclub in that city that left at least 20 people dead.

News conference participants will offer condolences to the loved ones of those killed or injured and will respond to the naming of the shooting suspect. They will also ask the Muslim community to take part in a blood donation drive for those injured in the attack.

WHAT: CAIR-FL, Muslim and Interfaith Leaders to Respond to Deadly Nightclub Shooting Spree

WHEN: Sunday, June 12, 12:30 p.m.

WHERE: CAIR-FL's Orlando Office, 1507 S Hiawassee, Suite 212 , Orlando, FL 32835

CONTACT: CAIR-Florida Communications Director, Wilfredo A. Ruiz, [email protected], 305-502-6749; CAIR-Florida Orlando Regional Coordinator Rasha Mubarak, [email protected], 407-490-9407

CAIR-Florida's Orlando Regional Coordinator Rasha Mubarak said in a statement:

"We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured. The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence."

CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

CONTACT: CAIR-Florida Communications Director, Wilfredo A. Ruiz, [email protected], 305-502-6749; CAIR-Florida Orlando Regional Coordinator Rasha Mubarak, [email protected], 407-490-9407; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, [email protected]; CAIR Communications Coordinator Nabeelah Naeem, 202-341-4171, [email protected]

SOURCE Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

Related Links

http://www.cair.com


DUBAI, UAE, June 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

To celebrate and recognise the true worth of its range of high performance tyres, Dubai based Z Tyre has engaged one of the world's most exclusive jewellers to develop a very special set of Z1 tyres to be unveiled for the first time at Reifen Essen 2016.

Z Tyre CEO Harjeev Kandhari with the World's most Expensive Tyre (PRNewsFoto/ZENISES DMCC)

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160612/378228 )



Combining 24 karat gold and specially selected diamond stones, this unique set of Z Tyres was designed in Dubai and decorated by Italian artisan jewellers in Italy before being returned to Dubai the application of gold leafing by the very same craftsmen who have worked on the new presidential palace in Abu Dhabi. With the special set of four tyres recently sold for $600,000, Guinness World Records has independently valued and duly recognised them as the "World's Most Expensive Set of Car Tyres".

Commenting on this new world record, Zenises CEO Harjeev Kandhari, said: "We've always treasured the outstanding skills and dedication involved in developing our Z Tyre range so we thought what better way to celebrate this achievement than with a record-breaking special set of tyres especially commissioned for a unique buyer. We are thankful to the Government of Dubai and His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai to have fostered such an environment of creativity in Dubai. This environment has allowed us to "dream big" and develop such world record breaking ideas. In keeping with the spirit of the Holy Month of Ramadan Z Tyres will donate all profits from the $600,000 sale to the Zenises Foundation which focusses on improving access to education across the world".

Web: http://www.avalonprplus.com

SOURCE ZENISES DMCC
NEW DELHI, June 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Nxtra Data Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bharti Airtel, and CenturyLink, Inc. (NYSE: CTL), a global communications, hosting, cloud and IT services company, today announced an exclusive business partnership to provide advanced hosting and managed IT services to enterprises in India. This exclusive partnership brings Nxtra Data's India data centre management expertise together with CenturyLink's cost-effective hosting, managed services and cloud capabilities to serve businesses and government organisations in India.

Neil Pollock, Chief Executive Officer, Nxtra Data Ltd, said, "We are delighted to announce this exclusive business partnership with CenturyLink. Nxtra Data's Managed Services offering is now powered by a global leader in managed services and cloud, delivering a scalable, cost-effective and secure suite of products and services. The Nxtra and CenturyLink India-based teams will collaborate to bring a new standard of capability and service to support Indian enterprises  at the right price. Together, we will set a new benchmark in product performance, security and customer experience. Morever, offloading your organisation's IT requirements to trusted service providers such as Nxtra and CenturyLink, will ensure that you spend more time focussed on core business requirements versus back-end IT challenges."

"The strategic alliance forged between CenturyLink and Nxtra addresses the IT needs of Indian enterprises," said Girish Varma, president, Global IT Services & New Market Development, CenturyLink. "We are offering access to the same highly secure managed IT solutions and consistent experience available across CenturyLink's global footprint, taking advantage of Nxtra's data centres throughout India and engaging our mature India operations. This innovative approach to data centre services helps Indian businesses enhance their international reach with CenturyLink's managed hybrid IT services, as well as CenturyLink customers that want to quickly and easily gain a physical presence in India."

About Nxtra Data Limited

Nxtra Data Limited formed to run Bharti's Data Center Managed Services business.

Nxtra now manages 10 Tier III/+ & ISO 27001 Certified Data Centres at Noida, Manesar, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Bubhaneshwar comprising approx. 200,000 sq. ft. of floor space.. Nxtra offers an integrated portfolio of data center managed services including Co-location, Managed Services, Managed Hosting, Managed Back-up & Storage, Managed Security, Virtual Compute and Cloud with both Domestic and International network connectivity. To know more visit www.nxtradata.com.

About CenturyLink

CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) is a global communications, hosting, cloud and IT services company enabling millions of customers to transform their businesses and their lives through innovative technology solutions. CenturyLink offers network and data systems management, Big Data analytics and IT consulting, and operates more than 55 data centers in North America, Europe and Asia. The company provides broadband, voice, video, data and managed services over a robust 250,000-route-mile U.S. fiber network and a 300,000-route-mile international transport network. Visit CenturyLink for more information.

SOURCE CenturyLink, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.centurylink.com


CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION, Fla., June 11, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy rocket carrying a payload for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) lifted off from Space Launch Complex-37 June 11 at 1:51 p.m. EDT. The NROL-37 mission is in support of national defense.

"We are so honored to deliver the NROL-37 payload to orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office during today's incredible launch," said Laura Maginnis, ULA vice president of Custom Services. "This was the ninth time ULA launched the Delta IV Heavy, the most powerful launch vehicle in existence today."

This mission was launched aboard a Delta IV Heavy configuration Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), which featured a center common booster core along with two strap-on common booster cores. The ULA Delta IV Heavy is currently the world's largest rocket, providing the nation with reliable and proven heavy lift capability. Each common booster core was powered by an RS-68A liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engine producing 702,000 pounds of thrust. A single RL10 liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engine powered the second stage. The booster and upper stage engines are both built by Aerojet Rocketdyne. ULA constructed the Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle in Decatur, Alabama.

"The team worked together through many challenges this flow including, overcoming the aftereffects of Tropical Storm Colin," said Maginnis. "We are proud of the outstanding teamwork between the ULA, NRO and Air Force partners to ensure mission success for this critical national security asset."

ULA's next launch is the Atlas V MUOS-5 mission for the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force. The launch is scheduled for June 24 from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

The EELV program was established by the U.S. Air Force to provide assured access to space for Department of Defense and other government payloads. The commercially developed EELV program supports the full range of government mission requirements, while delivering on schedule and providing significant cost savings over the heritage launch systems.

With more than a century of combined heritage, United Launch Alliance is the nation's most experienced and reliable launch service provider. ULA has successfully delivered more than 100 satellites to orbit that provide critical capabilities for troops in the field, aid meteorologists in tracking severe weather, enable personal device-based GPS navigation and unlock the mysteries of our solar system.

For more information on ULA, visit the ULA website at www.ulalaunch.com, or call the ULA Launch Hotline at 1-877-ULA-4321 (852-4321). Join the conversation at www.facebook.com/ulalaunch, twitter.com/ulalaunch and instagram.com/ulalaunch.

SOURCE United Launch Alliance

Related Links

http://www.ulalaunch.com


Baghdad, June 8 : At least 45 Islamic State militants were killed when they attacked military posts in Mosul city in Iraq, a military official said on Wednesday.

Dozens of IS militants attacked Iraqi army posts on Tuesday near the militant-seized town of Qayyara, Xinhua quoted the official as saying.

"Our troops, backed by the US-led coalition aircraft battled the attack following several hours of fierce clashes," another official said.

The clashes resumed at dawn on Wednesday when the IS militants attacked military posts near the village of al-Naser in the IS held city of Mosul, he said.

Five Iraqi security personnel were injured in the clashes, he said.

IS militants frequently attack security forces sent from Baghdad to the Makhmour military base beside the semi-autonomous northern region of Kurdistan in order to chase away IS militants from Mosul, 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.
New Delhi, June 8 : AYUSH Minister Shripad Yesso Naik on Wednesday said he will urge the government to make International Yoga Day a public holiday in India, if there is a demand from the public.

Addressing the media on the agenda of the International Yoga Day, 2016, which is to be held in Chandigarh on June 21, Naik said: "If there is a demand to make International Yoga Day a holiday, then we will take up the issue with the government and try to do it. However, currently we have no such plan."

The International Yoga Day, 2016 will be held in Chandigarh and will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. At least 30,000 people are expected at the venue of the main event, while over 20,000 people will be doing yoga in parks, different school grounds of the city.

"Nowadays, yoga is popular world-wide. It has reached almost every part of the globe. People practice yoga in some form or the other for spiritual or health purposes and to overcome some stress. I would like to place on record our gratitude to various yoga schools in India that have tirelessly propagated and promoted yoga not only in India but also abroad," said Naik.

Naik said that special focus will be made to promote yoga among the youth in the country. The HRD ministry has issued notices to all the government schools and colleges to make students perform yoga on the day of International Yoga Day, June 21.

Talking about the benefits of yoga, Naik said: "Most of the modern day health problems are because of faulty life-style and yoga is an efficacious means to overcome these disorders. The uniqueness of therapeutic benefits of yoga is that it can work along with any other drug systems of healthcare and this enables the practitioners of other systems of medicine, including modern medicine experts to prescribe Yoga programme to the patients."

According to the AYUSH ministry, the main programme would be the Mass Yoga Demonstration from 7 a.m to 8 a.m on June 21, by following the Common Yoga Protocol for 45 minutes and 15 minutes Institutional Protocol, if any, at the National, State, District, Block and Panchayat levels.

"In addition, yoga fests, seminars, workshops, musical and cultural programmes based on yoga, involving students from schools, colleges, universities, various youth organisations, are also being organised," said Joint Secretary of AYUSH, Anil Ganeriwala.

"The National Event of Mass Yoga Demonstration would be held at Chandigarh. However, similar events will also be held all across the nation and the globe," said Ganeriwala.

Last year, the International Yoga Day, celebrated at Rajpath in Delhi, witnessed over 35,000 participants from over 84 countries. The event had created two Guinness World Records on the day.

The state governments have also been requested to encourage use of locally made yoga mats and apparels, preferably with the locally available raw material to provide employment opportunities to local artisans and small entrepreneurs.

"We are also making special efforts to involve differently-abled persons (Divyangs) in all the celebrations," said Ganeriwala.

The AYUSH Ministry will also be organising a two-day International Conference on Yoga for Body and Beyond at Vigyan Bhawan, here on June 22 and 23, in which eminent experts of yoga from across the globe would be participating.
Chicago, June 12 : Two men have been killed and at least 17 other people were shot in a 17-hour time span beginning Friday morning.

Chicago Tribune reported on Saturday that this is an equivalent of someone shot every 53 minutes.

A 27-year-old man was shot multiple times in the South Chicago neighbourhood and pronounced dead in hospital afterwards; and a 26-year-old man was killed in the 200 block of West Garfield Boulevard, Xinhua reported.

The shooting victims also include a five-year-old girl hit by a stray bullet and a 73-year-old man shot in the face.

Chicago Police Department is bracing for increased violence.

Chicago has just experienced the deadliest May in the past month, when 66 were killed.
New York, June 12 : An uncommon calm is scheduled to embrace the frenetic "Crossroads of the World", the city's Times Square, on June 20, this year's Summer Solstice Day here, when thousands of people practice the ancient Indian art to celebrate the International Day of Yoga.

The Times Square community event will likely be the biggest Yoga Day celebration outside India. The day-long series of seven events that run from 7 am to 8.30 p.m. will stretch over several city blocks.

The celebration organised by the Times Square Alliance brings together 30 yoga studios ranging from the Iyengar and Bikram institutions to Sonic Yoga and mang'Oh Yoga.

"Yoga unites us with the universal flow and connects us with our own personal rhythms," Douglass Stewart, co-founder of Solstice in Times Square, said in a statement.

"As the sun climbs to its highest point and is suspended in the sky for the longest period, it provides us with a vital force that sustains all of life, giving us a focal point and uniting our purpose to achieve our highest ambitions."

Last year over 30,000 people participated in the Times Square event.

India's Consul General Riva Ganguly Das has brought together 17 organisations in six states to reach out to the American community with the message of yoga.

Community organisations across six states in northeast United States are holding 30 events to observe Yoga Day.

Another important celebration will be in Boston where the South Asian Arts Council is organising an observance at the historic Hall of Flags in the State House, the seat of Massachusetts state government on Beacon Hill, on June 23.

The community celebrations started off Friday with events at two schools in the New York suburb of Freeport that was organised by the Hindu Swyam Sevak.

On Saturday, it was the Queens Museum's turn to hold the celebration in association with the Indian Business Association, in front of the city landmark Unisphere, a 37-metre stainless steel globe.

A unique feature of the community celebrations this year will be Yoga Day events at the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and Newark Liberty Airport on June 21.

On June 19, New England International Day of Yoga will be celebrated at the Kresge Auditorium of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.

Celebrations are also planned for Columbus and Cleveland in Ohio and Hershey in Pennsylvania.

Several Indian organisations are to take the celebrations to schools in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut states.
Kabul, June 12 : At least four militants of the Islamic State (IS) were killed in a US drone strike in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, an official said on Sunday.

"An international forces' plane fired two missiles in Achin district Saturday night," Xinhua news agency quoted an official as saying.

The Afghan security forces have beefed up operations against militants, he said.

The Achin district bordering Pakistan has been the scene of heavy clashes between the IS militants and security forces backed by pro-government local militiamen over the past couple of months.
Washington, June 12 : History was made thrice in one day last week. Hillary Clinton broke the glass ceiling. Donald Trump completed his hostile takeover of the Republican Party. And Narendra Modi came full circle with an address to the US Congress.

Clinton's tryst with history as the first woman to win the presidential nomination of a major party has been 16 years in the making -- bit by bit. Since she and husband Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001, the former first lady has been planning a return, but with roles reversed.

First, a black man with a Kenyan father and an American mother thwarted her plan to get the Democratic nomination in 2008 with his message of hope and change though she did manage to put '18 million cracks in the glass ceiling' then.

And this time around, a fiery old man called Bernie Sanders singed her aura of inevitability as millions of millennials feeling the 'Bern' flocked to the Democratic Socialist in greater numbers than they did to Barack Obama in 2008.

Obama, now President, was quick to put his seal of approval on the woman who served him for four years as secretary of state even as the White House promised to keep its hands off the FBI investigation into her growing email scandal.

But Bernie fans gave a yawn while another unlikely Pied Piper of a different hue named Donald Trump, whose supporters match their passion for Sanders, offered to welcome with open arms those who loathe to support "Crooked Hillary."

Trump was also quick to jump on the latest revelations from her emails that Rajiv Fernando, a major 'desi' donor of the Clinton campaign and a big benefactor of the Clinton Foundation, was appointed to a group which oversees US nuclear and security policies, in 2011.

The Chicago securiies trader suddenly resigned from the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB) when ABC News raised questions about his credentials.

Meanwhile, even as many big wigs in his own Republican party upbraided the mogul over his "racist" remarks questioning the fairness of a US-born judge hearing a case against Trump University because of his "Mexican heritage", he scored another "yuge" win, as trump says, in the primaries.

From party boss Reince Priebus to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, they all repudiated his comments about the judge and some lawmakers even reversed their Trump endorsement. The 2008 Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who led a failed campaign to stop Trump, said he saw no reason to change his mind.

However, his running mate Paul Ryan, now House speaker, who had endorsed Trump after much hemming and hawing, called his comments text-book racist but said Clinton was not the answer as he vowed to still back the mogul their differences notwithstanding.

Topping the 1,237 magic number needed to win the Republican nomination by over 300 delegates with the backing of a record 13.3 million angry ordinary folks, the ever unapologetic brash billionaire simply asked the establishment critics to man up.

And, as Clinton and Trump celebrated their overnight wins in the last primaries, calling each other unfit to be president, Modi, once barred from entering the US under a little known law passed by the US Congress, headed to Capitol Hill to address that very august body.

Amid seven standing ovations and 60-plus applauses, Modi, now Prime Minister, dressed in his trademark white kurta pyjama and grey Nehru jacket with an Indian tricolour hankie in his pocket struck all the right notes.

For his government "the constitution is the real holy book," said Modi, giving "all the 1.25 billion of our citizens" regardless of background "freedom of faith, speech and franchise (right to vote)" .

Fresh from his third major summit with "friend Barack", winning US recognition as a "major defence partner" giving India access to technology like its "closest allies and partners," he noted how "our relationship has overcome the hesitations of history."

If Atal Bihari Vajpayee had termed India and the US "natural allies," Obama had "called our ties the defining partnership of the 21st century", Modi recalled, urging a journey together to realise the full promise of "this extraordinary relationship."

Concluding with American poet Walter "Walt" Whitman's lines "The orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments. The baton has given the signal," he added one of his own: "There is a new symphony in place".

And as he took his bow with lawmakers milling around him and falling over each other seeking his autographs like excited schoolboys, there was only one question in the air: with whom would he play that symphony -- Clinton or Trump?

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)

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Kabul, June 12 : At least 46 militants were killed within a day in clashes with security forces and in airstrikes across Afghanistan, an official said on Sunday.

"Afghan security and defence forces conducted several military and cleanup operations, killing 46 militants, injuring 24 and detaining four others," Xinhua news agency quoted an official as saying.

Besides seizing arms and ammunition, the forces killed a member of Haqqani network, Khalil, and 13 Islamic State militants during raids.

The official also confirmed the loss of 11 army personnel over the same period.
New Delhi, June 12 : Three green corridors experts and Delhi Police created from Max Healthcare's hospital in Shalimar Bagh to Max hospitals in Patparganj and Saket and to a Vasant Kunj liver institute have saved six lives in the capital.

The feat were achieved around 9 p.m. on June 10. The first green corridor was over 32 km long from Max Hospital Shalimar Bagh to Max Hospital, Patparganj; the second stretched 40 km to Max Hospital, Saket; and the third was 38 km long to the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) at Vasant Kunj, Max Healthcare said on Sunday.

While one kidney harvested from the cadaver of a 57-year-old woman -- a resident of Sonepat in Haryana -- was transplanted in Max Super Speciality Hospital, Shalimar Bagh itself, her other kidney and heart were transported to Patparganj and Saket, respectively.

Other organs donated included corneas, which were transported to All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), and liver which was transported to ILBS, Vasant Kunj.

A team of experts led by Dr. Waheed Zaman from Max Super Speciality Hospital, Shalimar Bagh, worked for more than nine hours to ensure a seamless and successful harvesting and kidney transplant procedure.
Allahabad, June 12 : Fresh from its electoral victory in Assam and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's successful overseas trip, including the US, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday asserted that the two years of NDA government have been exceptionally good and a lot has been achieved.

"This year, two important things have happened. Firstly, our government, led by Narendra Modi, at the Centre has completed two years. And secondly, the performance of the Bharatiya Janata Party has been very good in the state assembly elections," party chief Amit Shah said in his presidential address at the party's National Executive meet here.

Referring to the recent polls, Shah said: "The victory in Assam has opened the gates to north-east India for the BJP."

"From Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Kutch to Guwahati, the BJP is expanding," he said.

Giving highlights of the party president's address to the media, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad later told reporters that Shah also compared the performance of the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government with that of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.

"While there was policy paralysis in the Congress-led government, our government has made progress with clear policy decisions -- where policy decisions are taken by the political leadership and the executive implements them," Prasad said quoting Amit Shah.

"The previous government was marred by policy paralysis. Our government has been a decisive government that has ended a lot of dilemmas of the previous regime," he said.

Prasad said the BJP president pointed out that the two years of the Modi government have been corruption-free.

Shah told the meeting, attended by senior ministers, BJP chief ministers, party MPs and state unit chiefs, among others, that: "The Congress-led UPA government was in a dilemma whether rural development should take precedence over urban development. Whether there should be reforms or social welfare?"

"Our government has overcome all such dilemmas by striking a fine balance between rural and urban development, reforms and social welfare and issues of governance," Prasad added, quoting Shah.

The party chief said that unlike in the past the "disconnect between the foreign and defence policy" has also been done away with in the last two years.
Srinagar, June 12 : Six policemen were injured on Sunday in a militant attack in south Kashmir's Kulgam district.

"Six policemen were injured when militants fired at a police party at Bonigam Qazigund (Kulgam)," a senior police officer told IANS in summer capital Srinagar.

"The police party was on a routine patrolling of the area when the militants attacked them," the officer added.

The injured policemen have been shifted to hospital where attending doctors said two of them had sustained critical injuries.

In the last one month, militants have killed five policemen who were not deployed on counter-insurgency operations, but were doing routine policing like traffic control and management of law and order.

Most of such attacks have come against unarmed policemen.
Washington, June 12 : In the worst mass shooting in US' history, at least 50 people were killed and 53 others injured when a "lone wolf" gunman opened fire early on Sunday in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where a state of emergency has been declared.

The gunman, named by officials as Omar Mateen, 29, was killed by a SWAT team after he took hostages at Pulse, a popular gay night club.

It is believed that the suspect, who was a US citizen from the Florida town of Port St Lucie and was of Afghan descent, was not on a terrorism watch list, although he was being investigated for an unrelated criminal act, BBC reported.

Officials said the killings were likely to be ideologically motivated, though there was no information that the gunman was associated with a particular group.

He was armed with an assault rifle, a handgun and an unspecified "device", said officials.

"It appears he was organised and well-prepared," Orlando Police Chief John Mina said.

The shooter's father told NBC News: "This has nothing to do with religion."

Mir Seddique said Omar Mateen had been angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami recently.

"We are saying we are apologising for the whole incident. We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country," Seddique told NBC News .

US President Barack Obama was briefed on the mass shooting, which police described as an act of terrorism.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of the victims. The President asked to receive regular updates as the FBI, and other federal officials, work with the Orlando Police to gather more information," said a statement by Barack Obama's press secretary.

US Congressman Alan Grayson said it was "no coincidence" the attack happened in a gay club.

Relatives were gathering at local hospitals desperate for news of their loved ones.

Many had received calls and texts from loved ones inside the club as the siege began, and some have heard nothing since.

The death toll given by Mayor Dyer means that the Orlando attack surpasses the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech which left 32 people dead.

"Today we are dealing with something that we never imagined and is unimaginable," he said, adding that there was "an enormous amount of havoc" and "blood everywhere".

"Because of the scale of the crime I've asked the [Florida] governor to declare a state of emergency," he said.

"We're also issuing a state of emergency for the city of Orlando so that we can bring additional resources to bear to deal with the aftermath."
Allahabad, June 12 : Comparing the massive goodwill that BJP received in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, especially in Uttar Pradesh, to a monsoon downpour, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday asked party leaders to preserve the goodwill in view of the next assembly elections in the country and the 2019 general elections.

The Prime Minister expressed this view while addressing a meeting of party office bearers in Allahabad before the official inauguration of the party's two-day National Executive meet, informed sources said.

"The need of the hour is to preserve the massive goodwill that the party got in 2014, like a monsoon downpour," a BJP leader, who also attended the office bearers meet, quoted Modi as saying.

The Prime Minister also asked the party leaders to preserve its 11 crore members.

Reminding party leaders of "Mission UP" and the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Modi said the party needs to preserve these 11 crore people as "voters and members" of the party by involving them with social initiatives and campaigns of the BJP government.

Modi also gave tips to party leaders to change in accordance with technology, time and age, keeping in mind the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh which are due next year.

Earlier, Modi also visited the historic Allahabad High Court and spent nearly an hour at the institution, which is celebrating 150 years of its establishment.

(Brajendra Nath Singh can be contacted at brajendra.n@ians.in)
New Delhi, June 12 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday greeted the people of Russia on their National Day on June 12.

"On the Russian National Day, my greetings to the people of Russia, a nation that is a very valued and cherished friend of India," the Prime Minister said in a tweet.
Kolkata, June 12 : The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has not yet taken a decision on allowing insurers to invest in the additional tier-1 (AT-1) bonds due to risks associated with the instrument, according to an IRDAI official.

"There is a debate and we have not yet agreed. As of now, we are not permitting them (insurers) to participate," said IRDAI's Member (Finance and Investment) V.R. Iyer, when asked whether the regulator will allow insurers to invest in AT-1 bonds or not.

There is risk associated with the instrument, she said.

Meanwhile, informed sources said the IRDAI board is likely to meet on June 30 and may accord the final approval to some foreign investors to set up branches in India.

"The regulator has received six applications from foreign reinsurers to set up branches and up to three applicants could get the final approval in this phase," the sources said.

The UK-based Lloyds, Germany's Munich Re and Hannover Re, Swiss Re from Switzerland are looking to foray into Indian market.
Washington, June 12 : US Presidential candidates took to twitter to express their grief and support to the victims' families of the Orlando shooting that left 50 people dead and 53 injured on Sunday morning.

"Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?" wrote Republican presumptive nominee Donald J. Trump.

Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton signed her tweet with "-H" as an indication she wrote the tweet herself, instead of her campaign's social media staff.

"Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H."

Democratic Bernie Sanders has not posted on Twitter about the attack, but addressed it on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"It's horrific, it's unthinkable," he said. "And just hopes go out to all those who were shot that they can recover."
Washington, June 13 : US President Barack Obama on Sunday called the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Florida, in which at least 50 people were killed and 53 others injured when a "lone wolf" gunman opened fire early on Sunday, an "act of terror" and "act of hate".

"Although it's still early in the investigation, we know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate," Xinhua quoted Obama as saying.

President Obama had ordered US flags at half-staff.

Obama's statement on Sunday marked at least the 20th time he had addressed the nation on the topic of mass shooting during his presidency.

Calling the Florida shooting spree "the most deadly shooting in American history," Obama again reminded the country of the sober reality that "how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon" that could launch mass killings.

Following the 2012 school mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, which claimed 26 lives, including 20 children, the Obama administration initiated but failed to push stronger gun control laws.

The laws, whose sections included expanded background checks and bans on assault weapons, were stymied in Congress after staunch opposition from Republican lawmakers and gun-rights lobby groups.

The gunman, identified by authorities as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida, was found dead inside the nightclub after a shootout with the police.

Then the suspect went back into the club to continue shooting and took hostages.

About three hours after the shooting first broke out, police shot and killed the suspect during actions to rescue the hostages.

"It appeared he was organised and well-prepared," said Orlando Police Chief John Mina at an earlier press conference, adding that the suspect had an assault-type weapon and a handgun.

Islamic State (IS) terrorist group has claimed the responsibility for the shootings.

In a message published on the group's semi-official news agency, Amaq, it described gunman Omar Mateen as a "soldier of the caliphate", The Telegraph (UK) reported.

Although the statement did not clarify Mateen's relation to the group, but the language appeared to suggest he was viewed as a lone wolf attacker.
ByteCubed is an industry leader thats disrupting the way government does tech

ARLINGTON, VA --- Today, ByteCubed officially opened the doors to its new headquarters at 2231 Crystal Drive. ByteCubeds Founder, Ahmad Ishaq, and Chief Executive Officer, Alexander Martinez, were joined by Vornado/Charles E. Smith President Mitchell Schear, Arlington County Board Chair, Libby Garvey, and area business leaders to commemorate the occasion with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and tour of the companys new space.

ByteCubed is a high-impact government consulting firm that prides itself on responding to the global mandate to make government processes more efficient through innovative technology solutions. The company specializes in reimagining and replacing government systems. This approach transforms the way clients can distill data into valuable insights, reduce the costs for storing data, and provide increased mobility and security for clients information.

ByteCubed is an industry leader thats disrupting the way government does tech, said the companys Founder, Ahmad Ishaq. Our focus isnt on solving a single problem, its on revolutionizing the entire chain of how agencies source, procure, and integrate goods and services  with transparency and efficiency. Our new headquarters is a milestone that positions us to achieve this and more.

Founded in 2011, ByteCubed was built on the premise of addressing problems or existing gaps in the government. In the span of five years, the company has grown from a two-person operation to over one hundred employees. ByteCubed was recently recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in the region by the Arlington Economic Development Commission and as a Best Place to Work by Virginia Business Magazine.

ByteCubed is an example of a tech-focused business that will be an important part of bringing innovation to the federal government, said Virginia Senator Mark Warner. The process of how agencies source, procure, and integrate goods and services has lagged in its modernization. ByteCubed will help the government make smarter purchases.

Crystal City is a natural habitat for ByteCubeds think outside-the-box approach to government contracting. Not only is it just minutes from the Pentagon, where ByteCubed expanded its portfolio last year to include contracts from the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, but the area is quickly being recognized as a hub to some of the most dynamic and creative companies in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. With the areas concentration on corporate and government entities that are focused on various initiatives including defense, cyber and aerospace, Crystal City was an ideal location for ByteCubed to establish its headquarters.

Crystal City has become an ecosystem that inspires creative aspirations. ByteCubed is a perfect fit for the growing tech community we have here, said Mitchell N. Schear, President of Vornado/Charles E. Smith.

The new headquarters reflects the creative atmosphere of Crystal City. The office is approximately 17,000 square feet, and is equipped with an array of high-end, state-of-the-art technology to provide employees with the best tools available. From fully stocked kitchens offering healthy snacks and beverages to a variety of workspace options including open desks, private offices, a library and media area, the space was designed to foster innovation and collaboration.

The space will serve not only as a headquarters for the company but also as a platform to provide the community with industry events, including meet-ups and hack-a-thons, meant to help discover new talent, inspire employees, and contribute to the tech community. The space is also home to ByteCubeds sister company, Beyond 3, a first of its kind incubator/accelerator that translates innovation funding into critical technology.

We think Silicon Valley is a great place, but we firmly believe that the best innovators in the country are right here in the Washington metro area, said Mr. Martinez, CEO. This is an incredibly diverse, technologically-fluent workforce that is focused on solving world challenges. ByteCubeds mission is all about bringing that talent to bear..

ByteCubeds move to Crystal City was facilitated by Dan Kleuger and Chilton Griffin of The Tenant Agency, and the new office space was designed by architects Emily Macht and Nathan Ferrance of HKS.

For more information on ByteCubed, contact Ashley Scott, Director of Public Affairs, at ashley.scott(at)bytecubed(dot)com.
airberlin is offering low fares to Europe such as Germany, Italy, the Nordics and many more available now through June 13, 2016. For travel periods from June 13 through June 30th, 2016 fares start from $729 from Chicago to Budapest or from $749 to Copenhagen or Krakow for example. From New York fly to Hamburg, Nuremberg or Stuttgart from $739. Or from Miami to Stockholm from $719. Other fares offered from airberlins seven U.S. gateways include Boston, Fort Myers, Los Angeles and San Francisco with fares starting from $839. Fares vary according to departure city and destination and are based on roundtrip travel. Certain rules and restrictions are applicable and fares quoted include all taxes and surcharges.

For travel period August 23rd through December 12th, guests can book fares starting from $629 including taxes and surcharges. For example New York to Naples, Florence or Milan from $629 or from San Francisco to Zurich for $749. Fly to Italy from Boston from $629 or from Los Angeles to Stockholm from $629. Many more destinations and fares are also available.

airberlin offers nonstop service to Dusseldorf and/or Berlin from seven U.S. gateways. Experience its award winning service on board its aircraft offering FullFlat seats in business class and economy class with XL seats. As a member of oneworld you can accrue and redeem mileage with anyone of airberlins alliance partners.

To book online visit airberlin.com, contact your travel agent or the service center at 1-866-266-5588.

About airberlin

airberlin is one of the leading airlines in Europe and flies to 147 destinations worldwide each year. The second largest airline in Germany carried more than 30.2 million passengers in 2015. airberlin offers a global route network through its strategic partnership with Etihad Airways, which has a 29.21 percent share in airberlin, and through membership of the oneworld airline alliance. topbonus, the frequent flyer programme of airberlin is one of the leading programs in Europe with more than 4 million members. The airline with the award-winning service operates codeshare flights worldwide with 21 airlines. The fleet is among the most modern and eco-efficient in Europe. Together with other airlines, airberlin belongs to Etihad Airways Partners, a new brand with which Etihad has been uniting shared activities since the end of 2014.

Press contact:

Janina Mollenhauer

Press Officer

Tel.: +49 30 3434 1500

Fax: +49 30 3434 1509

E-mail: janina.mollenhauer(at)airberlin.com

http://www.airberlin.com

On behalf of airberlin

Madeleine Vogelsang

Media Relations Representative USA & Canada

Phone: 1-917-971-6213

Email: mvogelsang(at)zcomgroup.org

http://www.airberlin.com

http://www.facebook.com/airberlin
The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday ordered a new trial for a Texas woman who sued after slipping on ice outside a Bettendorf hotel.

The high court ruled that Scott County jurors did not receive proper jury instructions before starting their deliberations in the 2014 civil trial, and a new trial should be held.

The 23-page decision written by Justice Thomas Waterman states Scott County district court Judge Mark J. Smith erred in allowing jury instructions about a negligent training theory and private safety code concerning slip-resistant construction materials.

Brenda J. Alcala filed suit against Marriott after she slipped and fell Jan. 21, 2010, outside the Quad Cities Courtyard by Marriott in Bettendorf, breaking her ankle.

Her lawsuit, filed in January 2012, claimed Marriott neglected to remove ice on the walkway and failed to train its employees about addressing such hazards or warn guest about the "dangerous condition."

She was awarded approximately $1.2 million in damages after a civil jury trial in February 2014.

Marriott appealed, and the Iowa Court of Appeals reversed the district court's decision. Ms. Alcala then appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court.
Shark Rocket Powerhead Vacuum with 2 Brush Rolls & Compact Handle is rated 4.0 out of 5 by 4 .

Rated 5 out of 5 by Empty Nesting from Love It. So Light Weight Love this item. It is great for everyday use. I also own a large Dyson and I love it but it's large and bulky. Its great for large rooms... This little vac does the job. I would not recommended for use on large rooms with lots of carpet due to the fact the reservoir for the dirt is not large. I do recommend it for all hard service floors and rugs. It picks up everything and never looses suction.

Rated 5 out of 5 by rosencat from Powerful and lightweight!! Best vacuum I ever used It practically cleans on its own! Just have to direct it and it takes care of whatever needs cleaning up! I don't have many floors without carpeting so I haven't had a chance to replace the brush roller but anticipate the ease of replacing the roll by the ease of all the other features. Cleaning is easy, and emptying the dirt bin is fast! Highly recommend!

Rated 5 out of 5 by JASLYN from BEST VACUUM!!!! I'M 5'7 WITH BAD BACK. ADJUSTABLE HEIGHT AND VERY LIGHT WEIGHT. YOU DONT PUSH IT. IT GOES ITS SELF. I LOVE IT! !!
G'day! It's Murray here. I've put together a little quiz to test your musical knowledge. Think you can score top marks in Murray's Magic Music Quiz? Give it a go now!
Property details:

On Biggerstaff Mountain in Bostic, North Carolina. Lot 17, Hardwoods and Pine Trees galore, Lookout top of the mountain 5+/- acres. HOA, $250 a year. Private and Gated Community. Taxes are $220 in 2015. Super place for that cabin overlooking miles of NC Valleys and mountains. Purchased to build however health issues prevailed. Please contact me at (864) 578-4508 or (864) 505-4484 should you wish to make an appointment to visit the property...

Price: $ 37,500 Seller State of Residence: South Carolina Property Address: Lot 17 Fire Tower Road State/Province: North Carolina City: Bostic Type: Homesite, Lot Zoning: Residential Location: 280**, Bostic, North Carolina

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Nearby Residential
EraThr3 has teamed up with Leupold for a limited release of a dozen rifle and optic packagesand certainly in colors not normally seen.

Here's what they have to say about it.

BEAVERTON, Ore.  Leupold & Stevens, Inc., is partnering with EraThr3 and Follow Through Consulting to offer up a very limited edition rifle, optics and training package, with the proceeds going to U.S. Marine Corps charities.

While these pieces were built to show the capabilities of EraThr3 rifles, Leupold Optics, and Proof Research barrels, these special rifles are now available for sale. Along with the EraThr3 rifle and Leupold Mark 6 3-18x44mm riflescope, each purchase comes with three days of precision rifle instruction from Buck Doyle of Follow Through Consulting. Most importantly, $1,000 from each rifle will go to one of the Marine Corps charities with which Doyle is involved.

Were honored to be a part of this premier package, especially given the great cause the sale is going to support, said Rob Morrison, vice president of global marketing for Leupold & Stevens, Inc. Outstanding training, a fantastic rifle and the best tactical riflescope all in one package. Its a rare opportunity and were excited to be involved.

These 12 custom rifle packages were built for a media event featuring some of the best names in precision shooting. While the performance was eye-opening, it was the visual aspects of the rifle platforms that were eye-catching. The rainbow-mix of colors selected for these rifles helped this event grow from a simple media range day into a social media phenomenon, as images from the event were shared by tens of thousands of fans.

The colored guns were really inspired by a bag of Skittles, said Sheri Johnson, from EraThr3. We were so sick of the same old black guns so we came up with the colored guns and it turned out awesome.

With a retail value of $10,750, these rifle/optics packages are a great deal at $6,750. Purchasers can have a high-end precision AR platform rifle, have a great story to tell about it, and help out Marines in the process.
It has been dubbed the worst machine gun ever, and more than 100 years after it first appeared on the battlefield it remains notorious. It is known to be unreliable, awkward to carry and just plain not being suited to the task at hand. This is of course the Chauchat  a light machine gun that American soldiers in France knew as the sho-sho and one they mocked and even hated. However, when looking back we may find this reputation might not be so just. Many people who decried its problems over the years likely never held one, let alone even saw one up close.

A close up of the Fusil MitrailleurModele 1915 CSRG (or Machine Rifle Model 1915 CSRG) at the Arizona Military Museum in Phoenix. This example was used by the U.S. Army during World War I and presented to the museum following the war (Photo: Peter Suciu)

In fairness this light machine is far from perfect, and it did suffer from numerous design flaws. However, despite its problems the Chauchat was actually an innovative firearm for its day and age.

Ex Historiam: Development of the Chauchat

If there is a statement that is fair to make about the Chauchat, it could be that it was too innovative. Many gun buffs are quick to point out that it was rushed out to fill the need for a mobile light machine gun in the trenches of World War I. This is plain wrong.In fact, the Fusil Mitrailleur Modele 1915 CSRG (Machine Rifle Model 1915 CSRG) was in development prior to the outbreak of the First World War.

What is largely misunderstood about the French is why they so unprepared for a war that so many other nations saw coming. Critics today look back at various demonstrations of this. For instance, the French were outfitted in uniforms that were little changed from those of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and which featured heavy dark blue coats and bright red pants. This was hardly the look of a modern army, nor was it practical.

The Chauchat was used in the Interwar period (1919-1939) by various nations in Europe. It proved to be a popular weapon with the Czechoslovakian military in the 1920s. This example is in the Prague Military Museum (Photo: Peter Suciu)

The truth is somewhat different and typically over looked. The French had since the 1890s been in the process of modernizing its military This included new uniforms. A number of patterns were considered and, this being the French, designs were even submitted by French painter Jean-Baptiste Edouard Detaille. In the end the French failed to adopt new uniforms because as a republic everything was voted on at numerous stages in government.

The military equipment was considered, voted and selected by the administration  what we call the war ministry,explains advanced French military collector Francois Stouvenot. But these people were not military, these were civilians. They were far more driven by the cost and the style than how it may have fared on the battlefield. So that was the driving force and it was strongly influenced by the artist and the fashion at the time, and basically the military was more interested in the protection and the cost.

A Belgian soldier with a Chauchat in 1918 (Photo: August 1918 edition of The War Pictorial magazine)Public domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Belgian_machinegunner_in_1918_guarding_trench.jpg

What does this have to do with the sho-sho American doughboys hated to much? The same problems that plagued uniform modernization also slowed the development of new weapons. The Fusil Mitrailleur Modele 1915 CSRG began development in 1903 when a few military planners, including French military arms designer Colonel Louis Chauchat, saw the potential for a light machine gun that could be carried by a single person. Col. Chauchat considered the problem of equipping his men with a more mobile machine gun and he borrowed many mechanical principles from the existing long barrel recoil, semi-automatic rifle that John Browning had patented in 1900. The result was the Chauchat machine rifle.

A French used Chauchat at the National World War I Museum in Kansas City. Note the open magazine and exposed spring  this opening allowed the soldier to keep track of ammunition supply but also let in dirt and grime. (Photo: Peter Suciu)

By 1908 more than a half a dozen prototypes had been tested at theAtelier de Construction de Puteaux (APX), the French Army's weapon research facility located near Paris. As with the uniforms the weapon was ahead of its time, and sadly it is believed that none of these prototypes survived. It was more or less put on the back burner until events transpired to plunge the known world into the First World War.

When the war broke out in August 1914 no one expected the horrors that were to come Both sides expected a quick and glorious little conflict. By the Fall of that first year the men dug in and the trenches that would come to symbolize the war were created. In the process the war became hell on earth. The German army was equipped with several times the number of machineguns as the French These had a devastating effect on efforts by the French to liberate lands taken by the Hun.

At the time it should be noted the French military had adopted the Berthier Fusil Mle1 1902/07 rifle to supplement and replace the aging Lebel. The problem with the Berthier is that it featured an en bloc magazine that made it quick to reload but only held three rounds! This was hardly the best option to go against fixed positions defended by Maxim machine guns.

The French military suddenly saw the need for Col. Chauchat's innovative gun and it was rushed into production. Here is where the first of its notorious problems were seen. The French had tested the prototypes prior to the war, saw the need for a light machine gun and opted to rush forward  almost like far too many of the battle plans that were to transpire. In many ways the Chauchat could be seen as a metaphor for French tactics during the entire conflict.

Innovative Features of the Chauchat

What must be noted is that for 1915, the Chauchat was actually quite revolutionary. It fired the 8mm Lebel cartridge at a rate of 250 rounds per minute. This might be slow when measured against later machine guns and assault rifles, but some would argue this helped with accuracy and even fire control. The slower rate of fire would ensure a nervous soldier wouldn't empty the magazine in a burst or two, or so some hoped.

Moreover, the Chauchat weighted just 20 pounds, far lighter than contemporary portable light machine guns like the Lewis Gun. It also was one of the first firearms to feature both automatic and semi-automatic fire. It offered a pistol grip, in-line stock, detachable magazine and selective fire capability. All of there were innovative features. The weapon could be fired from the hip and while moving. In fact, in many ways it could be argued that the Chauchat was the first true assault weapon, if not the first assault rifle.

However, some of those very features are what created its reputation as a problematic weapon. Due to strategic demands the weapon's construction was simplified to facilitate mass production. It was often produced using low quality metal components. The construction was composite  meaning that that it was a mix of steel and aluminum parts of differing quality. While the barrels were standard Lebel rifle barrels that had been shortened and were thus of high quality, other parts including the stamped metal side plates were of far lower quality. This gave the gun the not entirely undeserved look of a substandard weapon.

The weapon's actual production had both pros and cons.

Says advanced First World War weapons collector Gus Byngelson,

It was produced in massive numbers by factories that were not part of the armament industry, so it did not impact the production of weapons for other applications. But these firms also had less experience making weapons.

The Sho Sho's Bad Reputation

Clearly this was a gun with both advantages and shortcoming, but why did it earn such a bad reputation? One contributing factor is likely the fact that American soldiers were issued machine guns that had already been in used by French forces for two to three years  and poorly maintained to boot.

The common story is that the American soldiers who arrived in France in 1917 and 1918 were kindly provided with Chauchats by the French army, an act looked upon by some Americans with cynicism or derision. In fact, the U.S. was completely prepared for such war, with deficiencies in materiel, training, experience and other crucial ares. It is also true that the French offered the Chauchat in large numbers; however, this was at the request of the U.S. military and General Pershing opted for the French Hotchkiss M1914 as well as the Sho Sho. Remember, an entire generation of soldiers from the nations and their colonies were being mustered, equipped and sent to fight. There were only so many guns to go around. Ultimately some 16,000 used Chauchats in 8mm Lebel were provided to the U.S. Army.

A French couple greet American soldiers of the 308th and 166th Infantry Divisions in Brieulles-sur-Bar, France after being liberated from four years of German occupation. The soldier on the left is carrying the infamous Chauchat. (Photo: Lt. Adrian C. Duff  Department of Defense Archives)

http://dodimagery.afis.osd.mil/imagery.html#guid=8b1e4637d04738b40db0566e55a5f6280f189dfb

It was not loved by the American Doughboys. One problem frequently called was the open magazine, originally designed to allow the shooter to monitor the flow and supply of ammunition. This allowed mud and dirt to get in under the best of conditions (let alone in trench warfare) and resulted in a weapon that was prone to jamming.

Dorn Cart, curator of the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, explains.

The tendency to jam at inopportune times, especially because of the open design of the half moon magazines which allowed all sorts of debris in. Also advancing cartridges in a half circular fashion also lent to a jamming problem. A third example was its relatively slow rate of fire and small capacity, again with the small magazine. There was also a buildup of anecdotal evidence of soldiers just not liking it with the freely swinging front bipod to the uncomfortable shoulder stock.

However, other gun experts counter that the bad reputation has been greatly overstated. Many say it has grown in the telling. They opine that in practice the firearm was reasonably reliable, but only if properly maintained and cleaned.

Photo credit to IMA-USA.com.

Says Byngelson,

A lot of the unreliable' issues with the Chauchat were due to politics and had little to do with the weapon. I keep hearing about how the open sides of the magazines were part of the problem, but you seldom hear any of those critics talk about the fact that the belt fed MGs had nothing to protect the ammo form the dirt of the trenches. The MG 08s had difficulty with mud fouling the guns because it was impossible to keep the mud out of the belts.

This argument about the open magazine is not made about the Lewis Gun however, and that weapon did have a partially exposed magazine. Byngelson also noted that the French largely don't complain about the gun as much  and it wouldn't be just a matter of pride.

The French soldiers were well trained with it and used it effectively for the intended purpose. The American criticism is based on poorer training of their riflemen. Most employed the CSRG15 effectively, but some were what would be called poor craftsmen' in that they blamed the tool for their inability to make it work. The magazine issue is a non-issue in my opinion, and they were considered disposable and if dirtied or damaged in battle, they would be dropped and another inserted.

Byngelson joked too that, I cannot cite anything from the period, but my experience is that young American males are not well inclined to take instruction.

Two different attempts at mobile light machine guns from World War I  the Chauchat and the British Lewis Gun. These are on display at the Athens War Museum (Photo: Peter Suciu)

The Legacy of the Chauchat

For a weapon that was so badly hated, the Chauchat had a lasting legacy. It was widely used after the end of the First World War and saw use not only in the French post-war army, but was used during the Russian Civil War. It was also in the arsenals of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Greece, Romania and Poland.

More importantly, the basic Chauchat design was tested as a submachine gun that could be used by tank crews.

The Chauchat was a weapon that may have been too innovative for its time, but it certainly inspired others to examine its features.

Byngelson explains.

One point that is often missed is that Chauchat may have caused a shift in warfare to the point that the Germans even had to develop the MG08 in a lighter form as the MG-08/15, which made the heavy machine somewhat mobile. Everyone was looking at what the enemy did and tried to improve on it.

In the end the Chauchat may have just been too far ahead of its time and too rushed for refinement.

*Featured Image Photo credit to IMA-USA.com.
While going on vacation used to mean unplugging from technology, these days you probably want to get online with your smartphone, tablet or eReader when you're away from home. Whether you need to work on your laptop of just want to "Netflix and chill" in your hotel room, here some ways you can stay connected to WiFi when you travel.

Finding reliable WiFi while you travel can be tricky business, but it's worth it when you consider the expense of downloading content over your cell network, especially if you have a limited data plan. On a recent business trip, my husband blew through 90 percent of our month's allotment of cellular data three days into our billing cycle, explaining that he had to work and the hotel WiFi was erratic. I was less than pleased to discover that each additional GB of data would cost us $15 until the billing period reset in 27 days. No thank you.

Most hotels have WiFi available these days, but it's a good idea to confirm with the hotel before you leave for your trip. It's not enough that they advertise "free WiFi." I've been in hotels where the connection was so lousy it was like we had no connection at all. Part of the problem arises from how far away the signal is from your room, and how many people are trying to use it at the same time. Call and talk to the front desk personnel. Let them know you have an important business function and you need a strong connection. Sometimes you can get your room changed to one closer to the hub.

If you haven't already booked your hotel, Hotel WiFi Test can help you find one with a good connection. They rank hotels by the fastest WiFi, using statistics they've obtained from actual users conducting a speed test through the website. Simply search for the city you're traveling to, anywhere in the world.

Using a WiFi finder application on your phone can save you the time and hassle of searching around town for a hotspot. Avast WiFi Finder app is free for Android and iOS, and it helps you automatically connect to the nearest WiFi in your range. View all the free WiFi hotspots in your area on a map and the application gives you the skinny on the speed and security of each connection before you get there, so you don't sit down at the McDonald's only to discover a slow-as-molasses connection. Once you've hooked up to a hotspot you like, it'll automatically connect there for you again when you're nearby so you don't have to remember or re-type the passwords.

Users needing to find a hotspot through their tablet when offline can check out Wi-Fi Finder through the iTunes and Google Play app stores. Set it up before you go. Once you install the app, download the database of free and paid Wi-Fi spots around the world. When you get where you're going, and even if you're offline, your GPS location will show you the nearest hotspots on a map. There may be an additional fee for map download through iTunes.

Don't want the hassle of driving all over town to find a good WiFi spot? Bring your own hotspot with you. Companies like Skyroam and Tep can provide you with portable wireless for smartphones, tablets and laptops. Connect up to five devices at the same time  perfect for families. The devices are shipped directly to your travel location anywhere in the world, and when you're done with your trip simply drop them in the mail with the return envelope provided. A flat $10/day rental charge provides you with unlimited internet with no roaming fees.

If you're traveling multiple times a year, the shipping fees may begin to add up and renting a mobile hotspot may become less appealing. Consider purchasing your own mobile hotspot. Keepgo ($129) comes pre-loaded with a 1 GB Internet SIM card, and connects up to 10 devices. Additional data can be purchased for $49/GB or $39/GB if you purchase three or more GB at a time. Data can be rolled over to the next calendar year if needed. Included with the device is free shipping to your home or your travel location, 24/7 English-speaking support staff and a money-back guarantee. U.S. and European electric chargers are provided.

Karma Go only works in the United States and turns your cellphone connection into WiFi. The device costs $149 and data plans can be purchased in bulk  termed the Pulse plan  or on a pay-as-you-go, called Refuel. Pulse costs $40/month for 5 GB of data. Refuel costs $14/GB of data, or larger batches of data can be purchased for discounted rates.

Air travelers with Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta, United or Virgin America can pre-purchase in-flight Internet with Gogo. Monthly airline plans start at $49.95/month, or an all-day pass can be purchased for $16. Pre-purchase pricing is generally less expensive than in-air pricing. Domestic air travel only.

Road warriors should check out the Super WiFi Repeater System for their next RV trip. It pulls distant WiFi signals into your connected devices with very little setup and no drivers to install. It even boosts signal through obstacles, so you can always stay connected, even if you're sitting outside working from your car. A 60-day satisfaction guarantee and lifetime tech support are included.

Nerd Chick Adventures is written by Andrea Eldridge and Heather Neal from Nerds On Call, an onsite computer and laptop repair company in Redding. They can be reached at nerdchick@callnerds.com.
FILE - In this May 16, 2014, file photo, author Pat Conroy speaks to a crowd during a ceremony at the Hollings Library in Columbia, S.C. Barbra Streisand and John Grisham are among the honorary board members for a facility dedicated to the late Conroy. His publisher, Doubleday, told The Associated Press on Thursday, June 9, 2016, that the center will host readings, lectures and book groups; offer writing courses and scholarships; and help facilitate other educational programs. (AP Photo/ Richard Shiro, File)

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By Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP)  Barbra Streisand and John Grisham are among the honorary board members for a facility dedicated to the late Pat Conroy that plans to open this fall.

The Pat Conroy Literary Center will be based in Beaufort, South Carolina, where the author known for such novels as "The Prince of Tides" and "The Great Santini" lived for many years. His publisher, Doubleday, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the center will host readings, lectures and book groups; offer writing courses and scholarships; and help facilitate other educational programs.

Conroy's widow, author Cassandra King, and literary agent, Marly Rusoff, are leading the effort to launch the nonprofit center, www.patconroyliterarycenter.org , currently relying on private donations.

Conroy, a former English teacher in Beaufort, died earlier this year at age 70.
Walter and Norma Goldman

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Norma and Walter Goldman

64th Anniversary

Norma and Walter Goldman of Round Mountain celebrated their 64th anniversary on June 7, 2016, with a dinner hosted by their daughter, Dena.

They met at a drugstore, after which Walter said, "That's the girl I'm going to marry." They were married two weeks later on June 7, 1952, in Yuma, Arizona. They lived in Lakewood, then moved to Cottonwood in 1980.

They have three children, five grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren and another on the way.
The Supreme Court is seen in Washington, Monday, April 4, 2016. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

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By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times

HOUSTON  This month, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule in the first landmark abortion case in decades, Whole Womans Health v. Hellerstedt. The ruling could have an immediate effect not only in Texas, but in more than half a dozen other states that have recently passed laws restricting access to abortion clinics.

In 2013, Texas passed a law that included two key provisions requiring abortion clinics to upgrade into ambulatory surgical centers and abortion doctors to have hospital admitting privileges. Its that law that abortion provider Whole Womans Health sued to block. (It operates three clinics and a surgical center in Texas.)

Its not clear what the impact of the courts decision in the Texas case will be nationwide: 22 other states require abortion clinics to meet standards similar to ambulatory surgical centers; four require admitting privileges, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit that supports abortion rights. If the high court sides with Texas, or sends the case back to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, similar laws stayed by the courts could be enforced in Kansas, Michigan and Wisconsin.

A look at some notable numbers related to the case:

19: Total number of abortion clinics in Texas

Before the law passed, Texas had 41 abortion providers. Now it has 19. The courts have exempted two border clinics from some of the requirements, one in El Paso and another in McAllen. The exemptions were granted because of the distance women would have to travel to the nearest clinic. The closest clinic to the Whole Womans Health facility in McAllen is 250 miles north in San Antonio.

If the law is allowed to take full effect, 10 clinics would close, including the McAllen clinic, officials said this week. The remaining nine clinics would all be in major cities  Austin, Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth and San Antonio  far from women on the border and in rural West Texas.

85 miles: The average distance Texas women now travel one-way to reach a clinic

Texas women have been traveling farther for abortions, some to clinics in Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas.

The national average is 30 miles one-way, and women whose local clinics stayed open traveled less than that, an average of 22 miles, according to a recent study by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project.

If the high court upholds the Texas law, women will end up spending more to travel farther, according to Nancy Northup, president and chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The few remaining providers will not be able to meet the demand for abortion services, Northup said during a briefing Tuesday.

3 weeks: The average wait for an appointment at Whole Womans Health in Fort Worth

After the Texas law passed, the number of clinics in the Dallas-Fort Worth area  which serve women from as far away as West Texas and Oklahoma  dropped from 10 to four, and wait times increased.

We have a patient who jumped into her RV and drove all the way to San Antonio because the wait was too long in the Dallas area, said Amy Hagstrom Miller, president and chief executive of Whole Womans Health and lead plaintiff in the case.

Another woman drove from Fort Worth to Austin in an RV with her husband and children, Miller said, because it was the only way they could afford lodging and transportation.

One of the clinics that closed after the law passed was in Lubbock, about 350 miles west of Dallas. An unemployed, uninsured single mother of three from Lubbock called the Whole Womans Health clinic in Fort Worth half a dozen times during her pregnancy trying to raise enough money to pay for her travel and the procedure. Texas bans abortions at 20 weeks of pregnancy.

By the time she was able to have an ultrasound, she was too far along to have an abortion in the state of Texas, Miller said.

The Texas laws restrictions had applied to medication as well as surgical abortions, which aggravated wait times. Women who chose abortion-inducing medication were required to wait, then return four times, seeing the same doctor each time, based on the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations guidelines.

The proportion of women choosing the medication, mifepristone, dropped from between 40 percent and 50 percent to about 2 percent after the law passed, Miller said.

In March, the FDA changed its guidelines, allowing women to receive the drug further into pregnancy and in fewer visits. Now the number of women choosing medication is back to what it was before the law passed, Miller said.

18 months to four years: The time it takes to build an ambulatory surgical center

There are no plans to build new abortion clinics that meet the Texas laws ambulatory surgical center requirements, said Stephanie Toti, senior attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, who argued the case before the Supreme Court on behalf of Texas abortion providers.

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Whole Womans Health, it and other providers could reopen some of the 22 clinics that closed after the Texas law passed, Toti said. But its unclear how many or how long it would take.

Clinics that remained open after the law passed but stopped providing abortion services would still have to reapply for two-year abortion clinic licenses and be inspected, which can take up to a year, she said.

We cant reopen clinics overnight, Miller said, noting that providers have had to sell buildings, give up leases, lay off staff and allow doctors to take other jobs.



2016 Los Angeles Times

Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com

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Stethoscope wrapped around hundred dollar bills

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By Julie Rovner, Kaiser Health News

Medical students cram a lot of basic science and medicine into their first two years of training. But most learn next to nothing about the intricacies of the health care system they are soon to enter.

Thats something the medical school at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., is trying to remedy.

Clinicians today have to graduate being great providers of individual care, said Dr. Lawrence Deyton, the senior associate dean whos spearheading this effort. 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.

The idea behind the new curriculum is to link more closely medicine with the policy issues it directly affects. So after learning about the lungs and pulmonary system, for example, the students do a project on controlling childhood asthma.

Thats what brought the entire first-year class to an auditorium on a rainy Wednesday in May. One by one, small groups of students presented their proposals for how to help control childhood asthma in Washington, D.C., especially in some of the citys lower-income areas.

In one such approach, a child with asthma would wear a bracelet that transmits information to an app  called AsthMama  on a parents smartphone. The app gives the mother (or father) the chance to be able to really manage the disease, says first-year student Erin Good, describing the concept her group came up with. How exactly would it work? Either the child or the bracelet itself can detect problems, Good explained. Maybe the child pushes it because they feel like theyre having an asthma attack. The bracelet would automatically notify a parent, or the school nurse, or both, before the problem escalates any further.

Goods group suggested to the panel of experts, including local doctors, parents and city health officials, that the project could be initially paid for by grants. If it works, it could eventually be covered by the Medicaid program.

Deyton says its important to put those policy issues right alongside the clinical medical training, helping students understand everything that influences a patients health.

So as theyre learning about diseases and conditions, theyre (also) recognizing those public health, population health and social determinants of health factors, he said.

That emphasis on the not-strictly medical part of medical schools appeals to students like Jeffrey Roberson, who was a social worker before coming to George Washington.

When he talks to friends at other medical schools, Roberson said, they think its fascinating  that we sit and we learn about how our health care system is paid. Other schools dont do that. So youll have physicians that have no idea how insurance works.

GW has some built-in advantages when it comes to teaching policy, among them its location in the heart of the nations capital. At the end of their first semester, after learning about infectious diseases, the students did a three-day deep dive into AIDS and HIV policy. And they presented their proposals directly to the national AIDS czar  at the White House.

It was really just a powerful day to see all of our colleagues, just one semester into medical school, with really innovative ideas, at the White House, and getting feedback from the AIDS czar, from all these major directors of health policy for individual states, Roberson said.

Deyton says one of the ideas presented that day  a reminder system to help HIV patients in Tennessee take their medication  might become actual policy.

As the students were presenting their proposal, he said, the director of AIDS for Tennessee was writing all this down. And it turns out she was sitting next to the federal official who would be in charge of getting it covered by Medicaid.

And that person leaned over to her and said, You know if you propose that Ill probably approve it, Deyton said.

Teaching health policy in medical school isnt actually new. Many schools have been doing it for years. But Neel Shah, a physician and policy researcher at Harvard, says what is new is integrating policy and practice.

For example, I remember when I was learning about health care costs for the first time, the whole conversation was about the GDP, he said, referring to how much of the nations gross domestic product goes towards health care.

But, said Shah, nobody goes to medical school to treat the GDP. Theres like a huge gap between the macro-level understanding of health care economics and what matters to patients and clinicians at the bedside.

Its that gap that todays medical educators are trying to fill. One class at a time.



(Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.)



2016 Kaiser Health News

Visit Kaiser Health News at www.khn.org

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
San Quentin State Prison is home to more than 700 death row inmates. (Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

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By Paige St. John, Los Angeles Times

SAN QUENTIN, Calif.  On an August afternoon in 1984, Linda Marie Baltazar Pasnick, a 27-year-old aspiring model, was running errands before a fashion competition when she pulled into the drive-thru at a Der Wienerschnitzel.

As she waited in line, a panhandler pushed his face into her window and she shooed him away. Ronnie McPeters came back with a gun, leaned in to her open window and fired three times. Then as her car rolled forward and she cried for help, he shot twice more.

McPeters spent the next nine months in the rubber room of the Fresno jail. He set fires and assaulted jailers. He told a psychiatrist he was filming a commercial. His bizarre behavior escalated at San Quentin State Prisons death row, where in months he fell into a stupor, smearing feces on the walls, the floor and himself.

Now, McPeters is at the center of a legal battle with profound implications for Californias death row.

Attorney General Kamala Harris office has asked the California Supreme Court to remove Peters from death row, arguing he will always be too gravely disabled to execute. State prosecutors believe McPeters sentence should be converted to life, to be spent in other prisons or state medical facilities.

If the states highest court agrees, Harris legal theory of permanent incompetence would make California the first to address a growing problem of aging and gravely mentally ill inmates awaiting ever-delayed execution.

But the move is also likely spark outrage from families of victims who feel the death sentenced handed down by juries should honored.

Harris chief deputy said California has at least a few other condemned inmates who like McPeters appear unfit for execution, though he would not cite names.

Federal judges have declared nine men on death row, including McPeters, so incompetent they cannot assist their attorneys. Lawyers for at least 10 more death row inmates have attempted to raise execution sanity claims. Judges, however, have refused to hear those cases, saying it was premature to decide the issue until execution was imminent.

On his worst days on death row, McPeters hoards his feces, rolled for safekeeping, or soaks himself in urine, according to prison psychiatric reports contained in court records. He speaks to a wife and children who did not exist. He says hes tormented by the inner voices of the relatives of Linda Pasnick.

His care has been inconsistent. At times he was involuntarily medicated for schizophrenia. At another, his psychotropic drugs were stopped. One psychiatrist sent him to be hospitalized and the next had him strapped down five days for observation, then declared him a faker and treated him with vitamin B-12, records show.

In 2007, U.S. District Judge Lawrence ONeill ruled that McPeters was incompetent to pursue the appeal of his 1986 conviction. Moreover, the judge said, McPeters was likely too insane to execute and the state was wasting money keeping him on death row.

The public is getting financially raped in this case and this is outrageous, ONeill shot back at an April 2013 status conference according to a transcript. We dont have one scintilla of evidence  that he is anything but incompetent.

Transcripts from court proceedings show then-Atty. Gen. Jerry Browns office rebuffed the Oakland judges order to craft a settlement aimed at removing McPeters from death row. When Harris took over that office, she continued Browns tact.

Then last year, Harris office changed course. She joined McPeters appeal lawyers in asking the Supreme Court to declare he could never be killed because of his mental condition.

Harris solution stunned Victor Pasnick, who had been married to Linda less than two years when she was killed.

She was just blossoming and all of a sudden she is feeling good and great, he said, and then she is murdered.

He said he didnt think McPeters mental state should play a role in whether hes executed.

I cant say he didnt deserve it, Pasnick said. Knowing what this guy did, making sure she was dead, I think somebody should make sure he is dead. Its fair play.

Fresno County prosecutors, who secured the death penalty against McPeters, said they disagree with Harris approach. Prosecutors said Harris is opening the door to scores of frivolous challenges in a state where appeals are already bogged down.

Were afraid this will become a permanent procedure, said assistant district attorney Blake Gunderson.



Since California restored the death penalty in 1978, jurors in the state have condemned some 900 convicted murderers. Of those, the state has executed 13, and only 16 more have exhausted their appeals.

Currently 747 remain on death row, mostly men housed at San Quentin State Prison. They are as old as 85 and have been there as long as 37 years. Some two dozen require wheelchairs or walkers and at least one is confined to bed in diapers.

Complicating matters, executions have been stopped for the last 10 years by legal battles over lethal drug protocols. Opposing ballot initiatives in November ask voters to do away with the death penalty, or to hasten appeals and give the idle condemned something to do with their time, like work.

In the shadow of this debate over the future of the death penalty, officials have just now begun to grapple with how to deal with a subset of the death row population: the gravely insane.

Conditions on death row have long been a subject of debate and legal battles. In the 1980s, the state was ordered to provide basic necessities such as soap and exercise. Ten years ago, the litigation focused on vermin living on East Block that left inmates with rodent bites and encrusted the tier railings in pigeon dung.

A state psychiatrist in one deposition described death row as a dark, dingy, noisy place with naked men huddled in the back of their cells, and psychotic patients yelling, hollering, screaming.

By 2013, California had the nations highest rate of suicide on death row. Eleven inmates killed themselves from 2006 to 2013. Prison records show that officials had referred each of them for mental health services.

The issue came to a head that year, when Gov. Jerry Brown filed a motion to end federal oversight of prison psychiatric care statewide. His bid instead opened death row to outside scrutiny for the first time in a decade.

Dr. Pablo Stewart, a nationally acclaimed forensic psychiatrist hired by inmates lawyers, said he discovered a place of terrible failures with what he called a high tolerance for psychiatric dysfunction: unchecked suicides and inmates whose poor condition showed minimal to no psychiatric treatment for decades.

Stewarts reports on 10 anonymous prisoners convinced U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton to order California to provide full mental health care to the condemned.

In late 2014 the state opened the nations first death row psychiatric ward.

Less than a year later, 39 of the 40 cells in that ward were occupied and seven other disabled inmates were moved elsewhere. Records obtained by the Los Angeles Times show those recommended for psychiatric hospitalization included inmates untreated for decades, some of whom were delusional and screaming, or afraid to come out of their cells.

They included serial killer Joseph Danks, known as the Koreatown Stalker, and Los Angeles cyanide killer James Blair.

Prison records show involuntary medication orders on death row have tripled, while suicides have plummeted since guards were required to check each condemned inmate every half-hour.

Build the beds and they will come, state prison executive Elena Tootell wrote in an internal memo. We could probably fill any number of mental health beds.

Years of inadequate psychiatric care have taken a toll on death row.

In 2013, a mental health expert hired by the attorney generals office noted that killer Darren Stanley was obviously and profoundly psychotic, and had gone undiagnosed and untreated for years at San Quentin, even after a chance CT scan revealed the front lobes of his brain were degenerating.

An independent psychiatrist chosen by a federal judge in 2014 found that Oscar Gates, who gunned down two Oakland crime partners and contends the state seeks to steal his inheritance from Howard Hughes, remains not only incompetent to assist in his appeals, but after 26 years without treatment and the long duration of his mental illness, is likely beyond restoration.



The U.S. Supreme Court in 1986 ruled that execution of the insane was cruel, but left the test for sanity to the states.

Under California law, the competency of an inmate is not reviewed until weeks before an execution. If the warden then questions an inmates sanity, a sanity trial is conducted. That has happened only twice in California, the last time in 1998, when the state sought to execute Horace Kelly for rape and murder.

Kelly lived in a trash- and feces-filled cell so foul guards put on masks if they had to enter to hose it down. Five of six experts concluded Kelly was incompetent. But a Marin County jury found Kelly aware of his sentence and the reason for it and voted for execution, 9-3. A stay by a federal judge stalled the execution, and Kellys lawyers have since raised new grounds for appeal.

Notes from a prison meeting in the case show San Quentin staff debated whether forcing Kelly to take medications would make him healthy enough for us to execute him.

The California Supreme Court has rejected other such motions put before it as premature, because execution was not imminent and the inmates mental state might change.

But over the last few years, at least three federal judges have pressed the state attorney generals office to remove the most insane inmates from death row  including the judge hearing McPeters appeal.

State lawyers have said they can only take such action if there has been a miscarriage of justice.

That stance changed last year when Harris struck a deal with the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, a state-funded legal center created to train death row appeal attorneys. After nearly three decades, McPeters death penalty appeal had made it to federal court but stalled over the question of whether he was sane enough to assist lawyers. Harris office agreed that if the center would file a new appeal with the California Supreme Court contending McPeters is permanently insane, Harris would tell the court she has no reason to disagree and ask that his death sentence dropped.

You cannot execute someone who is incompetent. There is no dispute about that, said Nathan Barankin, Harris chief deputy. He said his office now believes some condemned inmates are so grievously incompetent there is no need to wait for an execution date to declare them insane.

Although local prosecutors have no official role in the settlement, Barankin said, the state Supreme Court could send McPeters case back to Fresno County for resentencing.

In the end, Barankin said, the attorney generals office was unsure what happens to McPeters after the death penalty is taken off the table.

Were making this up as we go along, he said. It is a new process and procedure.

Michael Rushford, director of the conservative Criminal Legal Justice Foundation, which sued the state to force renewal of executions, said incompetent inmates should be removed from death row. But he and others voiced concern over who would be eligible. At the same time, defense lawyers opposed leaving the decision to the attorney general.

Deciding who should be spared the death penalty is likely wrenching process complicated, experts say, but the public outrage likely over declaring notorious criminals too insane to be executed.

Jeffrey Jones is one of those difficult cases. In 1985, he prowled public restrooms around Sacramento with a claw hammer to bash the heads of strangers, killing three.

During his three decades on Death Row, Jones has cascaded between mute catatonia and rabid mania, declaring he was the decapitated governor of California. For the last three years, psychiatric and court files show, Jones has been barely able to grunt.

His federal defenders have filed a new state appeal in the 31-year-old murder case, contending Jones mental condition makes it cruel for the state to condemn him to death.



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I know a little bit about racism. I learned about it the first time I rode the school bus home with the older kids on a minimum day. They sat in back of me and asked each other why someone with a dirty neck would be allowed to ride their bus and why a "N word" had made it into their school.

I would learn more on rainy days when my first-grade class would not take the short cut to the cafeteria, but would instead march through the halls of the seventh- and eighth-grade classrooms. There I would pass through the gauntlet of angry stares and threats of violence.

I also remember running to my mother, tears in my eyes, with questions that must have broken her heart. I remember her answers.

Those people don't know who you are. You are you. Nothing they say can change that. They just don't know any better.

It was never said, but it was implied, you are stronger than those voices. And I was and she was right, expending energy on people who don't know any better is a waste of time. From time to time I still meet people like the ones on the bus and in the hallway. Yes, racism still exists, among people of all colors. Even now I need to hear my mothers reassuring voice say to me, "They don't know who you are."

My eighth-grade teacher would introduce me to two men, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., who would echo my mother's words. The autobiography of Malcolm X would change my life as I learned how a poor black man could read his way to a college education and how a trip to Mecca would cause him to change his anger into a love that was so frightening to some that it leads to his death.

Love changed Malcolm X.

And the words that Dr. King lived by: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." His life was one of pointing out wrong, with a voice that said I love you anyway. Dr. King understood something about human nature  you can't control what other people think, you can only change their heart. You can show them that there is nothing to be afraid of and that we are all part of one tribe  the human one.

This week, many of my friends were surprised that a local man attending the Donald Trump rally was not offended by a remark made by Mr. Trump. In fact, when interviewed he said exactly that. I think that Gregory Cheadle might have had a wise mother just like I did who taught him that our worth is not something that someone else can take away.

Through the years, I have found other wise voices. Corrie ten Boom lived in Holland, where her family hid Jews from the Germans. For that crime she spent years in prison camps and survived, but the rest of her family did not. Detrick Bonhoeffer was a pastor in Nazi Germany who spoke out against the violence against the Jews and was involved in the plot to kill Adolf Hitler and was hung for his efforts.

Hate touched their lives, but it did not define them or cause them to hate. In fact, for both, it seems to make their light shine even brighter.

We can legislate every last detail of our lives trying to correct injustice, but that cannot change the heart of someone who hates. Only love can do that.

In the next few months, there will be an onslaught of opinions and hurtful words. But if we, as a community, remember that our tribe is much larger than a sound bite on the a 24-hour news cycle. Then, like Dr. King said, we can drive out the darkness.

Nadine Bailey can be reached at nadine.bailey@sbcglobal.net.
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While most of Shasta County works to restrict access to medical marijuana through bans on growing, dispensaries and collectives, Shasta Lake decided to go in another direction.

The city of some 9,000 boasts the last two medical marijuana dispensaries in the county, and the City Council this past week approved a third one. The city had to slightly bend its rules to allow the dispensary to open in the former Starbucks next to Rite Aid and a tobacco shop at Shasta Dam and Cascade boulevards. The rules originally said dispensaries could be no closer than 1,000 feet from each other. The site was just shy of that distance from the Queen of Dragons. But the council on Tuesday agreed to allow city employee Stacy Lidie to open her dispensary, which she plans to call Leave it to Nature. Lidie also plans to leave her job with the city to dedicate her time to the business when it opens later this year.

Shasta Lake has reaped the benefits of allowing the dispensaries to remain as Anderson, Redding and Shasta County forced theirs to close using zoning ordinances and code enforcement. About two years ago, the dispensaries started to give 6 percent of their total revenues to the city, after they approached the city asking it to tax them. Voters approved the deal, and last year the city collected more than $350,000 from the two businesses. That was the equivalent of covering all the expenses of the city's parks department and its city services department.

Shasta Lake is somewhat like Humboldt County in finding a way to cash in on an industry that's legal and, well, growing. In response to new state laws that regulate the commercial cultivation of medical marijuana, Humboldt County and the North State Regional Water Quality Control Board decided to work with growers to bring them into compliance with environmental regulations. Instead of seeking out grows to destroy them and arrest the growers, the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office shares information on grows it finds with county and water control board members. They in turn invite the growers to workshops to learn about becoming certified and reducing environmental damage from their grows. The water board went so far as to send out fliers in property tax bills for landowners in Mendocino County, explaining how to become legit. More than 250 growers have enrolled in the water board's program.

As Humboldt County Supervisor Estelle Fennell told the Record Searchlight: "Outright bans do not work. We're just being realistic recognizing what we've been dealing with for years in the county. It looked like, 'OK, this didn't work. Let's see if something else will work.' I'm optimistic."

As the possibility of full legalization of marijuana faces the state, it will be important for our leaders to determine how to respond. So far, only Shasta Lake has shown an interest in capitalizing. In response to the new state rules, Shasta County officials dug their heels in deeper on saying, "not here." Many of our residents would agree, with voters overwhelmingly approving Measure A, the outdoor grow ban, in 2014.

Shasta Lake and Humboldt County show how accepting marijuana with limits and regulations can prove profitable. We're not suggesting Shasta County turn 180 degrees and embrace marijuana cultivation and sales. But it would be wise to see how other approaches work. It's getting harder to be an island of prohibition in a state that's headed in the other direction.
A member of the Chicago Police Department works the scene of a fatal double shooting on the 9000 block of South Marshfield Avenue on June 12, 2016, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

Three people were killed and at least 17 were wounded in Chicago shootings between Saturday evening and Sunday morning, police said.

The most recent fatal shooting was about 1 a.m. Sunday, when two men were killed in Brainerd on the South Side.

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Police found them on the front steps of a house in the 9000 block of South Marshfield Avenue. One had a gunshot wound to the neck and the other had been shot in the head. Both were pronounced dead on the scene, their bodies covered with sheets.

The two men had been friends for years, said Dontell Petty, the cousin of one of the victims. Petty and his cousin Antwon Brooks, 43, were in town from Wisconsin to attend the funeral of a friend who had been fatally shot.

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Hours after the funeral, Petty got a phone call saying Brooks had been killed.

"He was a good daddy," Petty said of Brooks. "He liked to have a good time. (He was) outgoing, speaks his mind."

Authorities have not yet identified the other victim.

At 10:20 p.m. Saturday, a 17-year-old boy was killed and a 19-year-old man was wounded in Back of the Yards. They were in the 5200 block of South Sangamon Street when someone in a nearby silver Audi fired shots. The 17-year-old was shot in the back and went to Stroger Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead. The 19-year-old was shot in the arm and also taken to Stroger Hospital. His condition was stabilized.

The 17-year-old was later identified as Christopher Fields, of the 6200 block of South Sangamon Street, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. Fields was pronounced dead at 11:17 p.m. Saturday, according to the office.

In nonfatal shootings:

About 5:23 a.m. Sunday, a 40-year-old man was critically hurt after he got shot during an attempted robbery in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side, police said.

The man was outside in the 6100 block of South Halsted Street when two male attackers approached him and announced a robbery. As the attackers tried to rob the man, they shot him, police said.

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The man suffered gunshot wounds to the abdomen, upper torso and the head, police said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was listed in critical condition, police said.

At 4:10 a.m., two people were shot in the Near West Side neighborhood. They got themselves to Mount Sinai Hospital after being shot in the 2700 block of West Wilcox Street. A 30-year-old woman was shot in the chest and a 30-year-old man was shot in the buttocks. Their conditions were stabilized.

At 3 a.m., a 25-year-old man was shot in South Austin. He was in a backyard in the 100 block of North Laporte Avenue when someone opened fire, shooting him multiple times in the arms and legs. He went to Mount Sinai Hospital in serious condition.

At 1:55 a.m., two people were shot in the 6300 block of South Artesian Avenue in the Marquette Park neighborhood, police said. A 16-year-old boy was shot in the buttocks and a 20-year-old man was shot in the left leg. Both went to Advocate Christ Medical Center, and their conditions were stabilized.

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At 1:45 a.m., an 18-year-old man was shot in Little Village. He was in the 2300 block of South Sacramento Avenue when someone emerged from a gangway firing shots and yelling gang slogans. He was shot in the upper body. Hospital information was not immediately available.

At 11:45 p.m. Saturday, two men were shot in the 3600 block of South Indiana Avenue in Bronzeville. A 22-year-old man was shot multiple times and a 23-year-old man was shot in the left arm. They got themselves to Mercy Hospital and Medical Center, and the younger man was transferred to Stroger Hospital. Information about their conditions was not immediately available.

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At 11:20 p.m., three people were shot in the 100 block of West 121st Street in West Pullman. A 15-year-old boy was grazed in the head and went to Comer Children's Hospital. A 25-year-old man was shot in the leg and went to Advocate Christ Medical Center; his condition was stabilized. A 21-year-old man was shot in the foot; no information was immediately available about where he was being treated. The three may have been mutual combatants, police said.

At 10 p.m., a 19-year-old man was shot in a lakefront park in Lakeview, police said. He was in the 3600 block of North Recreation Drive when someone shot him in the leg. He went to Weiss Memorial Hospital and his condition was stabilized.

At 8:10 p.m., a 20-year-old man was shot in the Longwood Manor neighborhood. He was on the sidewalk in the 9800 block of South Carpenter Street when a white older-model car drove by and someone inside fired shots. He was hit in the leg and went to Advocate Christ Medical Center in good condition.

Just before 6 p.m., a 15-year-old boy and a 24-year-old man were shot in the 4700 block of South Prairie Avenue in Bronzeville. The boy was shot in the left ankle and managed to run to a business in the 200 block of East 47th Street. From there, he was taken in good condition to Comer Children's Hospital.

The 24-year-old man was shot in the buttocks but refused treatment, he said.
Chicago ramped up police presence throughout the city and at LGBT events in the wake of a horrific mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., that left at least 49 people dead and 53 others injured.

Chicagoans, meanwhile, were left to grieve the attack in the midst of national LGBT Pride Month and at the type of place thought to be a safe space for a marginalized group.

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"If you look at the history of the LGBTQ community in any city, the center of our community has been our bars and our nightclubs," said Brian C. Johnson, CEO of Equality Illinois. "We didn't have churches, we didn't have community centers. We had our bars and our nightclubs to gather and to feel safe and to feel included. When we are attacked, it strikes at the heart of where we feel the safest."

First Deputy Superintendent John Escalante ordered more officers starting Sunday to supervise the 19th District, which covers Lakeview and Lincoln Park, according to spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. More officers also were deployed to conduct traffic enforcement in busy areas and to patrol special events throughout the city, around CTA stations, and along the lakefront.

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The increased security measures were announced as reports surfaced that police in Santa Monica, Calif., arrested an Indiana man with a cache of guns in his car Sunday morning. Santa Monica police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said the man had told police that he was going to a gay pride parade known as LA Pride.

The parade continued as scheduled, amid increased police presence.

Chicago police said there had been no credible threat on LGBT communities here, but Escalante ordered the extra security "out of an abundance of caution." Midsommarfest wrapped up its last day of events Sunday in Andersonville. Chicago's 47th annual Pride festival kicks off Saturday, followed by the Pride Parade on June 26.

The Center on Halsted in Boystown posted armed security guards wearing bullet-proof vests outside the main entrance and inside the lobby Sunday afternoon.

"As we learn about another reprehensible act of gun violence, CPD extends our deepest condolences to those affected by the horrible tragedy in Orlando," department leaders said in a statement. "Our thoughts and support also go out to our partners at the FBI and Orlando Police for their great work managing such a tragic and difficult incident. This morning we reached out to Orlando PD to offer any technical, manpower or resource assistance."

There was a palpable uneasiness among a crowd of more than 300 people gathered for a vigil on the corner of Halsted and Roscoe streets Sunday evening. Rainbow-striped flags danced in the wind, but the people who held the staffs were unsmiling. Groups of friends were silent, not speaking a word to one another.

"Anger," said Nick Presutti, 22, who identifies as gay. "That's how I feel. And it hasn't really gone away."

David Sotomayor woke up Sunday morning after a night out to dozens of calls and social media messages from friends expressing their condolences. David's cousin Edward Sotomayor, 34, who worked for a travel company that offers gay cruises, was killed in the Orlando shooting.

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David Sotomayor, who lives in Jefferson Park, said he finally got himself out of bed "as Edward would've wanted," and headed to Lakeview. He said he came upon the vigil by surprise and toward the end, decided to address the crowd.

"You know what? We stand strong. And proud," he said. "And they are not going to ruin our pride, ever."

David Sotomayor, who gained celebrity after appearing as the drag queen "Jade" on a season of the television reality show "RuPaul's Drag Race," first connected with his cousin nearly a decade ago after the two realized they were related at a festival in Orlando. Since then, they spoke often and tried to see each other regularly.

"I've never heard anything bad of him," David said. "To hear about this situation, it's a little overwhelming."

Several people at the vigil noted their disbelief at the timing of the shooting, less than a year after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.

"After how far (our community) has come, to have a step back this intense, in this day and age, is beyond belief," said Jarrett Stoll, 26, who traveled from Kenosha, Wis., to attend the vigil. He identifies as gay. "It is just beyond words that people can hate that much."

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Earlier in the day at Midsommarfest, the mood remained festive, though the shooting weighed heavily on many minds.

"I gave my husband an extra long hug today," said Bradley Fritz, 35, who performed at the festival Sunday morning with the Lakeside Pride Music Ensembles.

Fritz, who serves as chairman of the board for the music ensembles, also pointed to the added agony of the attack targeting a nerve center for LGBT people.

"There's certain places in the city where we like going to perform because we know there will be a lot of friends there and other people who have had similar experiences. Nightclubs are one of them," Fritz said. "We always think those are places where we can feel comfortable and safe. When it happens at some place you could easily be, it makes it that much more frightening and devastating."

Illinois' LGBT advocates, politicians and religious leaders issued statements condemning what authorities are investigating as a terrorist attack. Gov. Bruce Rauner called the shootings "deplorable" and ordered all flags immediately lowered to half-staff in memory of the victims. Archbishop Blase J. Cupich echoed sentiments from Pope Francis, excoriating the "homicidal folly and senseless hatred."

"In response to hatred, we are called to sow love. In response to violence, peace. And, in response to intolerance, tolerance," Cupich said. "The people of the Archdiocese of Chicago stand with the victims and their loved ones, and reaffirm our commitment, with Pope Francis, to address the causes of such tragedy, including easy access to deadly weapons. We can no longer stand by and do nothing."

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Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his wife, Amy Rule, also offered their condolences, and he pledged the city would celebrate the Pride Parade as scheduled.

"Last night's horrifying act of terrorism in Orlando was an attack on our most fundamental values as Americans," Emanuel said in a statement. "June is a time when all Chicagoans and all Americans proudly celebrate the contributions of our LGBT community. This horrendous violence will only deepen our resolve to continue building a society that values everyone, regardless of who they love. The thoughts and prayers of Chicago will remain with the victims of this attack as they seek comfort and courage in the days ahead."

Politicians from around the state condemned the attack.

"While many questions remain, we do know that this is the deadliest mass shooting in American history, which targeted innocent men and women just hoping to spend a night out with friends," said U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, who serves on the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus. "At this time, we must all come together and combat this horrific act of hate with love and compassion for one another."

While sorrowful, many LGBT advocates resolved not to be deterred in their battle for equality and acceptance.

"As LGBTQ people, let's harness our sadness and outrage over the continual hateful acts of violence that target our community to create substantive change," Modesto Tico Valle, CEO of Center on Halsted, said in a statement. "Our movement is far from over  we must mobilize with LGBTQ people and allies across this country to end discrimination in all forms and create a society that values full equality. Our community is no stranger to hate and discrimination, but time and time again we have prevailed. We have been guided by love and now again we will prove that love wins."

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Fran Goldstein, executive director for Lambda Legal, an organization that advocates for LGBT people and people living with HIV, decried the violence.

"We will continue to stand up for the dignity and equality of every member of the communities we represent  to demand fair and effective responses from police and the criminal justice systems; to fight for laws that prohibit discrimination, not encourage or require it; and to expect public officials and leaders across the country to unite us in justice," Goldstein said.

Equality Florida has set up a GoFundMe page to collect contributions for the victims.

The OneBlood donation center in Orlando quickly reached capacity after scores of people sought to give blood. Chicago company LifeSource, which operates 17 blood donor centers in the city and suburbs, said it received a request for blood Sunday and shipped a large quantity a few hours later.

"Blood when it's needed already needs to be on the shelf," LifeSource spokeswoman Christine Pappas said. "It takes one to two days to do all the testing to make blood OK to use."

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Law enforcement in Orlando said the attacker, carrying an AR-15-type rifle and a handgun, opened fire inside the club just after 2 a.m. EST, then took hostages. The shooter, identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen of St. Lucie County, Fla., was killed in an exchange of gunfire with SWAT officers who stormed the building around 5 a.m. local time.

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"No mother should have to wake up to the news that their child has been killed by gunshots," said Johnson of Equality Illinois. "This appears to be an attack on the LGBTQ community, but the majority of mothers and fathers who got the call that their child is dead, and siblings and co-workers are straight Americans. This is an attack on all Americans."

Betsy Sylvester, 32, said she was frustrated at responses that turned the massacre into a political debate.

"The fact that this keeps happening over and over in different communities reinforces the need for some action rather than just feeling sad about it, because that's obviously not doing anything," said Sylvester, of the West Loop. "What's going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back?"

Chicago Tribune's Marwa Eltagouri, Manya Brachear Pashman, Katherine Skiba and Charlie J. Johnson contributed.

cdrhodes@tribpub.com

Twitter @rhodes_dawn
Mourners across Orlando - as well as the nation and world - paused Sunday night to remember the 50 people killed and 53 injured in the Pulse nightclub shooting, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

So far, seven of the victims of gunman Omar Mateen's spree have been identifed: Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34 years old; Stanley Almodovar III, 23; Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20; Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22; Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36; Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22; Luis S. Vielma, 22; and Kimberly Morris, 37.

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At Ember in downtown Orlando, crowd members spontaneously broke out into clapping at the close of a twilight candlelight vigil.

"Love wins, y'all!" shouted Henry Ballesteros of Orlando, triggering a wave of cheers across the crowd.

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The group gathered on the bar's outdoor patio, holding white, tapered candles above their heads in silence.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 31 Two strangers embrace on the street near Orlando Pulse nightclub, where a mass shooting took place early Sunday morning. "We're all family now." (Ryan Gillespie)

Ballesteros, 47, said by focusing on love and not hate, he hopes no attention goes to the gunman who carried out the attacks.

"I don't know want to know his name," he said.

Braden Cowell, 27, of Orlando, also came to Ember for the vigil, bringing rainbow banners in a gesture of defiance against terror.

"If we don't come out today and support our community, they win," he said.

Omar Mateen has been preliminarily identified as the gunman in a shooting at Pulse nightclub that left 50 dead and 50 more injured.

At Jones High School, just a few miles from Pulse, a vigil organized by the Experience Christian Center brought together seven pastors, "all sharing in prayer, different denominations all coming together for a common cause," said Experience Senior Pastor Derrick McCrae.

"What prayer does is give direction," McCrae said. "People find inner strength through a conversation with God. We want to see no division, and only see unity. We want to be mindful of what could happen to us at any point in life, but also be confident in who is keeping us."

Speakers talked of the other vigils happening elsewhere at hospitals, in which family members wait on news of their loved ones.

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"There are those who believe they have power over life and death," said Rabbi David Kay of Congregation Ohev Shalom. "But they do not. As long as we come together, no act of terror, no act of murder, no act of hate can extinguish the light that has kindled from what we all start here tonight."

Stephen A. Green, national director of the Youth Department of the NAACP, said, "We come against any bigotry, any sexism, any racism, any homophobia."

U.S. Rep. Corinne Brown told attendees, "Orlando is a big city, but we are family, and I had to be with my family."

"We cannot continue to let this happen in our country," Brown said."This is the beginning, and Orlando will lead the way."

Experience spokesman Dominic C. Clark said that the vigil was a way "to let them know the faith-based community is still here. What better place than close to downtown. We made a few calls this morning and it was like, 'absolutely.' ... We're simply praying for healing in Orlando."

Some attendees said they were worried about the future - and hoped the response to the shootings can have a positive effect.

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Dominique Belt of Orlando said before the vigil, "now it feels like we're no longer safe. I've been in Florida all my life, and we used to leave the window open and fell safe at night. Now, I'm scared to shop.

"I think that in coming together and praying, we can demand change," Salt said.

Tracking Mateen

Mateen of Fort Pierce has been identifed as the gunman and was among those killed early Saturday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation three times interviewed Mateen for having alleged terrorist ties. The FBI learned of Mateen in 2013 after he made inflammatory remarks to coworkers and alleged terrorist ties, said FBI Special Agent In Charge Ron Hopper.

The FBI investigated and interviewed witnesses and Mateen, but closed the investigation. He came to the FBI's attention again in 2014 for making contact with a suicide bomber. Their connection was considered minimal by the FBI, and closed the investigation.

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 183 Lucinda Rex, right, and Clarity Thorne embrace during a candlelight vigil downtown for the victims of a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub Monday, June 13, 2016, in Orlando, Fla. A gunman has killed dozens of people in a massacre at a crowded gay nightclub in Orlando on Sunday, making it the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. (AP Photo/David Goldman) (David Goldman / AP)

U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, D-Florida, said the Islamic State claimed responsibility for a massacre.

Mateen - the lone gunman - called 911 moments before the attack and pledged his allegiance to Islamic State, a federal law enforcement official said, confirming earlier reports.

Federal investigators believe the selfie photos of Mateen taken from his MySpace page are of him, but said the investigation was still in its early stages.

Mateen, 29, of Port St. Lucie, was killed after a shootout with Orlando police. He was armed with a pistol and assault rifle.

President Barack Obama, in a news conference on Sunday, said the shooting is "a sobering reminder that attacks on any American - regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation - is an attack on all of us and on the fundamental values of equality and dignity that define us as a country."

"We know enough to say this was an act of terror and an act of hate," he said.

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U.S. investigators are operating under a theory that the Orlando nightclub mass shooting was inspired by Islamic State, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Sunday.

Similarities with the November attack on the Bataclan nightclub in Paris, and that the shooter appeared to target a gay dance club during the Muslim month of Ramadan, "indicates an ISIS-inspired act of terrorism," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, said in a statement.

Intelligence officers are combing through terrorism databases to see if there are any known links between the alleged shooter and a terrorist group, Schiff said. Multiple outlets, including CNN, reported Mateen made a 911 call before the attack, pledging allegiance to ISIS.

There haven't been signs so far that Islamic State leaders helped orchestrate the plot, he said. "Whether this attack was ISIS-directed remains to be determined," he said.

Christopher Hansen, who was inside the Pulse nightclub during the attack, said he dropped to the floor when he heard about 40 gunshots. People ran from the bar as police officers screamed for everyone to leave.

"I just fell down and crawled out," said Hansen, 23.

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"I helped someone who was on the ground. I wasn't sure if he was dead or alive," he said.

As people fled the club, Pulse Orlando posted a note to its own page that said, "Everyone get out of pulse and keep running."

Get Email Updates on the Terror Attack Story Get email updates on the aftermath of the Pulse nightclub terror attack from the Orlando Sentinel, including breaking alerts for major updates and a daily digest summarizing the latest news. Get email updates on the aftermath of the Pulse nightclub terror attack from the Orlando Sentinel, including breaking alerts for major updates and a daily digest summarizing the latest news.

Police Chief John Mina said Mateen fired the first shot at about 2:02 a.m. at an Orlando police officer and then ran into the club, which held more than 200 people. Details about exactly what happened inside the club were unclear, but police handled it as a hostage situation.

By 5 a.m., the police department's SWAT team opened fire. They distracted Mateen with an explosive device and plowed into the building with a vehicle. When officers went inside, they discovered 50 dead, including Mateen, and 53 injured.

Mina said nine officers were involved in the shooting. One sustained an injury to his eye and was saved by his helmet.

Mina credited his officers with rescuing 30 hostages from Pulse Orlando at 1912 S. Orange Ave., which is just south of Downtown Orlando and near Orlando Regional Medical Center.

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Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer declared the city in "a state of emergency," and Gov. Rick Scott, who was at the scene, extended it to all of Orange County.

"Tonight our community witnessed or experienced a very horrific crime," Dyer said.

In an attempt to shift family members away from ORMC, where many of the injured were taken, authorities set up an information center at a nearby Hampton Inn & Suites at 43 Columbia St., and urged relatives to call 407-246-4357.

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Orlando, called the attack a "hate crime" because the shooting happened at a gay club.

"It's no coincidence the attack took place where it did and when it did," he said.

Authorities said there is no indication of impending attacks in Florida or across the nation. The FBI is leading the investigation.

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Mina said the situation is not related to a separate shooting Friday inside The Plaza Live theater in Orlando, where a man opened fire, killing former NBC's "The Voice" contestant Christina Grimmie and himself.

'I saw fire coming out of his gun'

It was Latin night at the club.

Mina said some people trapped inside the club hid in the bathrooms and called 911.

Rosie Feba was there with her girlfriend for the first time.

"She told me someone was shooting. Everyone was getting on the floor," Feba said. "I told her I didn't think it was real, I thought it was just part of the music, until I saw fire coming out of his gun."

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Feba and her girlfriend ran out of the club. On the way out, they saw a man who had been shot.

Feba grabbed him. Others around her called 911. Some of the man's blood stained the sleeve of her striped T-shirt.

Both Feba and her girlfriend were unharmed, but shaken. They waited in a CVS parking lot for more information.

Victims experiencing emotional trauma related to the shooting can dial 2-1-1 for support, said Ashley Blasewitz of the Heart of Florida United Way.

Looking for family

Many of the victims were taken to ORMC, where family members gathered, hoping to get information.

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Florida Hospital wouldn't comment on whether it was treating any of the injured, but said they can check on names for families.

Mina called the mass shooting "absolutely terrible.  one of the worst tragedies we've seen."

He said the immediate priority is to identify the dead and injured and notify their next of kin, something that he said would require people to be patient.

"Unfortunately this tragedy and the amount of bodies that are in there, the amount of victims, is going to take some time," Mina said.

Carlos Muniz went to OPD headquarters after the shooting to give an interview.

"It was massacre, basically," said Muniz, who was in the club at the time of the shooting. "And one of our friends is missing."

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Muniz initially thought the shots were part of the music.

Meanwhile, authorities scoured the area for explosive devices, using robotic devices and K-9 dogs. In addition to carrying the weapons, Mina said Mateen was possibly wearing an explosive device.

Imam Muhammad Musri, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, urged people to pray on what he called "a heart-breaking morning."

"It's a horrible tragedy. We are mourning, we are sad. We are heartbroken," he said.

A mass shooting, he added, "is the worst nightmare, and we are sorry to know that it happened to us."

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Senate intelligence committee staff "do believe there is some connection to ISIS."

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"There appears to be some connection to Islamic radicalism," he said at a news conference at the command center in Orlando.

Washington Bureau reporter Brian Bennett contributed to this report.


Senior leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and Kamal Nath were appointed Congress General Secretaries by party chief Sonia Gandhi on Sunday, setting in motion the much talked about process of organisational changes ahead of the Assembly elections next year, including in Uttar Pradesh.

While Azad, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, has been made in charge of Uttar Pradesh, Nath will look after Punjab and Haryana, party General Secretary Janaradan Dwivedi said.

Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab are scheduled early next year.

So far Madhusudan Mistry was looking after Uttar Pradesh and Shakeel Ahmed was taking care of Punjab and Haryana.

Sunday's appointments are being seen as a precursor to further restructuring of the AICC Secretariat.

The reshuffle came at a time when talk of Rahul Gandhi being elevated as party chief had again gained ground.

Sonia Gandhi effected the changes a day after the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha which saw cross voting by some party MLAs in Uttar Pradesh and alleged deliberate faulty marking by its 14 legislators in Haryana which led to their votes being declared invalid and resulted in the defeat of Congress-backed candidate R K Anand. There were allegations of internal sabotage at the behest of former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

Azad, 67, is a Gandhi family loyalist and a former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, while 69-year-old Nath is the seniormost MP in the current Lok Sabha having won from his pocket borough of Chhindwara nine times.

Azad was earlier twice the AICC General Secretary in charge of UP. Nath was a General Secretary some 15 years back in charge of key states like Gujarat and West Bengal.

His name was doing rounds as the possible new party chief in Madhya Pradesh.

Congress has roped in poll strategist Prashant Kishor, who successfully managed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha campaign in 2014 and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's last year, to aid and assist the party's UP and Haryana units.

In UP, Congress had secured just two seats in the last Lok Sabha elections with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi emerging victorious from their traditional seats of Rae Bareli and Amethi.

The Congress is in political wilderness in UP since 1989 following emergence of divisive 'Mandal-Mandir' politics and rise of the BSP, which took away its crucial Dalit vote base.

In Punjab, Congress is in the opposition for the last nine years and is making a determined bid to capture power from SAD-BJP combine at a time when AAP has also come up as a serious contender for power.

The appointment of seasoned politicians like Azad and Nath came amid calls for a "major surgery" from within the party following its recent debacle in assembly polls in four states, including Assam and Kerala.
A Hindu man aged over 80 years was beaten up by a police constable in Pakistan for allegedly eating and selling food before iftaar, triggering a social media campaign that led to the arrest of the cop.

Gokal Das was badly beaten up by constable Ali Hussain in the remote village of Hayat Pitafi in Ghotki district of the southern Sindh province where he was selling food before iftaar, the evening meal with which Muslims end their daily Ramadan fast at sunset.

Hussain claimed he also saw him eating a banana.

Bachal Qazi, the Station House Officer of the Jawar police station in whose jurisdiction the village falls said that the constable and his brother "threw the old man on the ground and beat him badly before people rescued him."

Das was later taken to a hospital for treatment as he was bleeding.

The pictures of the incident showing Das with a injured hand and blood stained shirt were widely circulated on social media.

Following the publication of the pictures, a social media campaign was launched calling for justice for the old man.

Social and civil rights activists and even ordinary citizens criticised the intolerance exhibited by the police in the month of Ramadan, which started on June 7 and called for giving him proper punishment.

It prompted the government to take quick action and arrest the police constable and his brother.

Qazi said that the IG Sindh police ordered the arrest of the constable after that.

A sizeable number of Hindus live in Pakistan's Sindh province.

Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari, daughter of former president Asif Ali Zardari, whose Pakistan Peoples Party is in power in Sindh, took to social media to announce the arrest of the cop.

"The policeman has been arrested," she tweeted.

Dawn reported an FIR had been registered in Jarwar police station against the policeman for assaulting the senior citizen.

IMAGE: A picture of Gokal Das captured by his grandson immediately after he was beaten up by Ali Hussain for eating a banana during Ramazan. Photograph: Twitter
The Delhi government on Sunday issued a probe into the incident where a restaurant at Connaught Place allegedly denied service to street children.

This is typical Colonial mindset. Can't be tolerated. Have ordered DM New Delhi to enquire & report within 24 hours, Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia tweeted.

Sonali, who has lodged the case against the Shiv Sagar restaurant told ANI that the restaurateurs' told her and the children to vacate the premises immediately as it is their right to serve whomever they want.

"They clearly told us to get and also threatened to shoot me if I don't clear out from the premises. The owner discriminated with kids and refused service citing that kids aren't well dressed and are look dirty. Nevertheless, I came back and sat down in front of the restaurant in protest. Even the police did not support us," she said.

However, the restaurant has flatly refused the charges by the woman, saying that they had permitted the children to enter but refused service later, as they were creating a ruckus inside and disturbing other customers.

"It is completely untrue that we denied entry to the children, as we have it on record that we allowed them to sit inside. We also never said that we won't provide service to the children. But then the kids were making a lot of noise, tossing things around and creating a commotion. As a restaurateur, I have the right to deny service to someone who disturbs other customers," Roma Malhotra, an employee of the restaurant said.

Sonali has said that she will return to the restaurant on Sunday with more street children and sit outside its door at 4 pm, continuing her protest.

IMAGE: Sonali Shetty speaking to the media about the alleged discrimination against poor children. Photograph: ANI/Twitter
Four cops were injured in a militant ambush in south Kashmir highway town of Qazigund on Sunday evening. Mukhtar Ahmad/Rediff.com reports from Srinagar.

A senior police officer said a group of heavily armed militants opened indiscriminate fire at a police vehicle in Bongam Qazigund of Kulgam district.

"Four cops were injured in the firing incident. The injured cops were initially shifted to local hospital where the attending doctors referred them to capital Srinagar for specialised treatment," the officer said.

Senior police officers along with reinforcements rushed to the spot.

The area has been cordoned off for searches. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
The gunman behind the mass shooting at a gay club in Orlando, Florida has been identified as a citizen of Afghan descent. Quoting law enforcement sources, CBS News named the shooter as Omar Mateen, who was born to Afghan parents in 1986 and lived in Port StLucie, Florida.

The gunman who killed 50 people in an Orlando nightclub pledged allegiance to ISIS and mentioned the Boston bombing in a 911 call, according to a US official.

Mateen made the call more than 20 minutes into the attack, a law enforcement official said.

The network reported that Mateen -- who died in a shootout with police after the hostage siege -- has no apparent criminal history and that authorities are investigating whether he had ties to Islamic extremism.

Mateen was armed with an assault-type rifle, a handgun and a suspicious device, authorities said.

Mateen died at the scene after he was shot by police at about 5 am. He had barricaded himself in the nightclub after opening fire. Witnesses reported that some of their friends were hiding in dressing rooms and bathrooms, trying to stay safe.

The FBI had investigated Mateen for possibly having ties or being a sympathizer to Islamic extremism, according to a law enforcement officials and a US official.

Officials earlier said Mateen was one of hundreds of people on the agency's radar suspected of being ISIS sympathisers. There was no indication he was plotting to carry out an attack, the officials said.

Local FBI Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge Ron Hopper said that there are suggestions the gunman may have leanings toward Jihadist ideology. Hopper had been asked about whether the shooter was connected to radical Islamic terrorism.

Hopper said they cant say definitively whether the gunman is connected to that ideology. He said were looking into all angles right now.

Police were searching Mateens home in Port St. Lucie on Sunday morning

"We do have suggestions that that individual may have leanings toward that particular ideology but we can't say definitively," he said.

ISIS supporters and sympathizers on Twitter posted messages after the shooting, but there have been no official claims by the Islamic State terror organization.

Mateen's father Mir Siddique has issued an apology for the mass shooting.

"We are saying we are apologising for the whole incident. We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country," he told NBC news channel.

IMAGE: According to the Federal authorities they had been monitoring Omar for a while before the attack but he was not the subject of an active investigation. Photograph: Facebook
Queen Elizabeth II on Sunday marked the conclusion of three-day celebrations of her 90th birthday with a giant street party in the heart of London, with 10,000 people joining the monarch despite rain.

IMAGE: Britain's Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip wave to guests attending the Patron's Lunch on the Mall, an event to mark her 90th birthday, in London. Photograph: Bruce Adams/Reuters

Along with other senior royals she joined the huge crowd for the Patron's Lunch -- recognising her patronage of more than 600 organisations in the UK and around the Commonwealth.

The event was organised by the Queen's grandson Peter Phillips and guests have paid 150 pounds each to attend.

The festivities included a carnival parade as thousands of rain ponchos were handed out for the open-air event and the crowds braved the London rain to enjoy the first of its kind event at the Mall in London.

Members of the Royal Family walked down The Mall greeting guests in a "walkabout" lasting 30 minutes.

IMAGE: A pigeon flies ahead of Britain's Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, and Princes William, Harry and Kate Duchess of Cambridge behind as they wave to guests attending the Patron's Lunch on the Mall, an event to mark her 90th birthday, in London. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

The Queen and husband Duke of Edinburgh were driven to the site in an open-top car, from which they waved to crowds.

Ala Lloyd, who is the creative director of the carnival parade, told the BBC the eras of the Queen's reign through the decades are being symbolised by different sections of the parade.

"We've got a lovely Commonwealth theme in the 50s with a giant Royal Yacht Britannia, flower power in the 60s, animals and nature in the 70s and crazy neon business going on in the 80s, and embarrassing shorts," she said.

While the event takes place in London, smaller street parties are being held around the UK.

IMAGE: Britain's Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, and Princes William, Harry and Kate Duchess of Cambridge behind wave to guests attending the Patron's Lunch on the Mall, an event to mark her 90th birthday, in London. Photograph: Ian Vogler/Reuters

On Saturday, thousands of people turned out to watch the annual Trooping the Colour parade, where Princess Charlotte stole the show with her 90-year-old great grandmother dressed in a lime green coat and matching hat emerged at the BuckinghamPalace balcony for an RAF flypast.

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.
Community leaders discuss future of mental health services in Morgan County

A large crowd gathered at First Christian Church to learn about local efforts that are underway to manage growing mental health pressures facing the city and all of Morgan County.
Halloween events, fall festivals pack October in Abilene, Big Country

From family-friendly to frightful, there are plenty of opportunities to don the costumes and scare up some treats.
Nellie Doneva/Reporter-News The Junior League of Abilene, a local women's service organization, keeps scrapbooks of its projects over its 60 years in Abilene.

SHARE Eric J. Shelton/Reporter-News Junior League's Belinda Southall, right, participates in the planting of a community garden at Hope Haven in 2013. Mercedes Gamero arranges clothing around her booth, Lael Alpaca, to prepare for the 2014 Junior League Christmas Carousel. Joy Lewis/Reporter-News Reindeer Run participants from left, Hailey Presley, Megan Baldree, Vanessa Bryan, Holiday Williams and Bethany Williams check a group picture before starting their 5-kilometer run organized by the Junior League of Abilene in 2014. Nellie Doneva/Reporter-News Junior League of Abilene volunteer Samantha Miers helps business owner Ken Cook unload some inventory in preparation for the 2015 Christmas Carousel.

By Loretta Fulton / Special to the Reporter-News

Frances Gordon was shocked to learn that the organization she once served as president of is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

"I didn't know I was that old," Gordon exclaimed. "In September, I'm going to be 102."

In 1953-54, Gordon was president of the Abilene Junior Service League. On Sept. 28, 1953, the organization was incorporated and renamed the Junior Service League of Abilene Inc. In 1956, the local club joined the Association of Junior Leagues of America, which today is known as the Association of Junior Leagues International Inc.

In the past 60 years, the league has done amazing things in Abilene, providing such amenities as the Hendrick League House, a low-cost residence for people with family in the hospital, and Fort Imagination, a frontier-themed playground at Nelson Park that was designed with input by children.

One of the league's best-known events is its Christmas Carousel fundraiser, held each November at the Civic Center.

But the league also does behind-the-scenes work that most people probably aren't aware of, unless they are beneficiaries. The league is especially invested in projects that benefit children, partnering with local nonprofits and social agencies to make sure low-income children get the same advantages as other kids.

One of the programs provides hygiene packets for children of low-income families. Those children aren't the only ones who benefit, said Katie Browning, the league's 70th president. Browning, who took office in May, takes her children, ages 10 and 6, with her to shop for the hygiene products.

"They know that's for kids who don't have those things," Browning said.

The local organization also assists children in need through its Adopt-A-Caseworker program, which matches Child Protective Services caseworkers with local groups to provide goods and services for abused and neglected children.

Another focus of the international association is developing women's leadership potential. The international league's website lists several "notable members," including former first ladies Barbara Bush, Laura Bush, Betty Ford, Nancy Reagan and Eleanor Roosevelt.

The Association of Junior Leagues International Inc. has changed dramatically since its founding in 1901 by New York social activist Mary Harriman. A section titled "Our Transformation" on the international organization's website, ajli.org, outlines how the organization has kept up with cultural and social change in its 100-plus-year history.

In the 1940s, according to the website, the league formed its first Public Affairs Committee to push for legislative reforms. In 1979, the league adopted a Reaching Out Statement to welcome women of all races, religions and national origins. In 2006, the league started a Kids in the Kitchen initiative to combat the epidemic of childhood obesity.

Browning, the newest Junior League president in Abilene, moved here in 2003 and joined the league as a provisional member for a year. She became a full member in 2004. She knew she wanted to join as soon as she moved to Abilene to meet other women with the same interests in volunteering and developing leadership skills.

"It connects you with women you would never run across in any other setting," she said.

The same year Browning gained full membership, 2004, the league undertook a major project: sponsoring a playground called Fort Imagination. Abilene schoolchildren voted on the name and described what they wanted in the playground, which was built by volunteers.

"It seems like we just completed it," Browning said. "That's been neat to see."

Today, the local Junior League has 329 active and sustaining members, which represents an upward swing after several years of membership decline, Browning said.

Gordon, one of the early presidents, has seen many beneficial things happen over the years as a result of the work of the Junior League. She recalled that when the league first formed in Abilene, members wanted to become affiliated with the national organization. They arranged a meeting with national representatives from the New York office.

"We brought our husbands," Gordon recalled, "and made them put on a clean shirt and a real coat and tie."

Whatever they did impressed the New York folk, and the Abilene chapter became an official member of the league. Even though Gordon hasn't been active in league events in years, she is still proud of its legacy in Abilene.

"I can see by looking back," she said, "that we did do some good things that I'm proud of."
Oscar Hernandez would like to own his own business in Abilene after graduating from college, and after attending Saturday's Youth Leadership Day, he left with encouragement it could actually happen.

Hernandez, and 35 other high school graduates bound for college in the fall, took part in the event, hosted by the Abilene Chamber of Commerce. The group had the chance to visit several businesses and talk with key business leaders from all over the City.

'This event represents an opportunity for us to reinforce our core mission: to attract, retain and engage young talent to Abilene,' said Erica Pangburn, director of community engagement for the Chamber. 'These youth, who graduated from high schools in Abilene, Breckenridge, Brownwood and Sweetwater, are some of the best and brightest. We want them to know we are excited for them to go to college, but also that there are professional opportunities for success right back here in Abilene when they graduate.'

Hernandez, an Abilene High School grad who will attend Abilene Christian University in the fall, plans to major in business management. He said he would like to work for someone for a short time after graduation, before going on to own his own business.

'I may do something related to sports, but I'm not sure yet,' he said.

As part of the day's activities, the participants got to visit one-on-one with area business representatives during what Pangburn termed an 'opportunity expo.'

Buddy Moore, plant manager for Coca Cola in Abilene, said he opted to participate in the expo because he wanted to impress upon the kids that there are opportunities in Abilene.

'These are all bright kids, and I want them to know they can have a future with Coca Cola if they want it,' he said. 'Once we recruit, train and develop them, they can literally go anywhere in the world Coca Cola has operations if they decide they want to leave Abilene.'

Lauren Marrow, a Cooper High School graduate, said although she is leaving Abilene for college, she plans to return regularly.

'I am going to Dallas Baptist University to pursue a degree in Christian studies,' she said. 'I would like to be an overseas missionary someday, but will always stay close to Abilene, returning in the summer whenever possible.'

Marrow added that she thinks it would be great to see more people come back to Abilene after college.

'We don't always appreciate all Abilene is  and has to offer  when we are young,' she said. 'It's not always so apparent because we grew up here. When we get older, we see the benefits.'

The day's events included tours of Funeral Directors Life Insurance Company, and Lone Star Canvas and Sign Works, in addition to roundtable discussions with representatives from Enprotec, Hibbs and Todd, the Abilene Police Department, Taylor Electric, Palmer Ventures, Hendrick Neurosurgery, Drive Simplicity and Coleman State Bank.
WASHINGTON  Republicans can't have it both ways: If you say you intend to cast your ballot for Donald Trump, that's an endorsement. You can be for him or against him, but not both.

So don't even try to take the untenable position that Rep. Bill Flores of Texas, 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 don't 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 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 Trump's teleprompter-assisted speech Tuesday evening. 'I think it's still time for him to act like a presidential candidate should be acting. So I haven't given up hope.'

Face reality, Senator. The old saying about putting lipstick on a pig comes to mind.

Why are Republicans gasping as if Trump's 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 they're just noticing Trump's 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, they're not sending their best,' he declared. 'They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.'

Those were practically the first words out of candidate Trump's 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, he's 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 can't 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 didn't think it was necessary. But you know, they have to say what they have to say. I'm 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 he's 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 can't do both.

Email Eugene Robinson at eugenerobinson@washpost.com.
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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
Reports from Germany say 11 lawmakers of Turkish origin have been placed under police protection after receiving death threats following a vote on the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks a century ago.

The politicians were among the overwhelming majority who voted in the Bundestag on June 2 to recognize the killings as genocide.

The decision was made to extend their police escort after a meeting with Berlin and federal police, the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper reported on June 12.

The World War I-era mass slaughter and deportation of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks is considered by many historians and several nations as genocide.

Turkey objects, saying that Armenians died in much smaller numbers and because of civil strife rather than a planned Ottoman government effort to annihilate the Christian minority.

The German parliament's move has outraged the Turkish government, which has recalled its ambassador from Berlin.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded that the lawmakers of Turkish origin who voted for the resolution undergo "blood tests" to see "what kind of Turks they are."

Based on reporting by AFP and dpa


Kazakhstan's security service says it has detained another two suspected terrorists in a security operation, six days after dozens of gunmen carried out deadly attacks in the northwestern city of Aqtobe near the border with Russia.

Kazakhstan's National Security Committee announced the latest arrests on its website late on June 11.

It said the two suspects were arrested during a raid by authorities near Aqtobe, suggesting the operation was linked to counterterrorism operations carried out in response to the June 5 terrorist attacks.

Authorities on June 6 launched a raid in response to the attack that killed five suspected militants in Aqtobe, raising the death toll related to the attacks and the ongoing manhunt to 25  including attackers.

Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax


Russian President Vladimir Putin presented awards to scientists, artists, and scholars on June 12 as part of activities marking Russia Day, a national holiday celebrating the then-Soviet republic's declaration of state sovereignty in 1990.

The Russian Federation National Award was established in 1992 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, replacing the U.S.S.R. State Prize. The annual awards -- presented during a ceremony at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow -- consist of a cash prize of 5 million rubles ($76,500), a medal, and a certificate.

In the field of medicine, for research into molecular immunity, Putin honored Sergei Nedospasov. Lev Dodin, art director and director of the Maly Drama Theatre -- Theatre of Europe received the national award in literature and the arts for his contribution to the development of Russian and global theatre. Viktor Zakharchenko, artistic director of the Kuban Cossack Choir and film director Sergei Ursulyak were also given awards, among others.

Concerts, festivals, and fireworks were being held in Moscow and other cities, and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev congratulated the country on Russia Day.

Many Russians do not know what the holiday commemorates. According to a 2015 poll by the independent Levada Center, only 3 percent of Russians consider it among the important holidays of the year.

With reporting by TASS


Judging by recent events it appears that Turkmenistan and Russia are experiencing a thaw in their relationship. Top officials from the two countries have been meeting face-to-face in recent days.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu flew to Ashgabat to meet with Turkmen officials on June 9.The same day the speaker of Turkmenistan's parliament was in Moscow meeting with State Duma chairman Sergei Naryshkin.

To a great degree, media reports are portraying this as simply discussions between partners. But at the start of this year, Russia sent signals to Turkmen authorities that something in their relationship needed to change, and it was Turkmenistan that would have to make those changes.

Barely two weeks before these friendly meetings on June 9, Russian state gas company Gazprom indirectly repeated that message to Turkmenistan, via the Russian TASS and Interfax news agencies, hinting at the one-sided nature of this rapprochement.

The purpose of Shoigu's visit was clear before he arrived. Russia has been increasingly concerned at the growth of violence in the four northwestern Afghan provinces along Turkmenistan's border, and equally frustrated at Ashgabat's insistence that the situation along the border is under control and Turkmenistan requires no assistance keeping watch along the frontier.

Russian officials have several times publicly offered to assist Turkmenistan with whatever help Turkmen authorities feel might be required to ensure border security. Most recently Aleksandr Sternik, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Third CIS Department, made just such an offer on January 3, 2016, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov repeated the proposal during a visit to Ashgabat at the end of January.

Irresponsible Behavior?

Some Russian officials even implied that, since this was technically the southern border of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Turkmenistan was behaving irresponsibly by not allowing its friends and allies to help with security along the Afghan frontier.

In October 2015, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbaev, after a meeting with visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin, expressed concern about the volatile Turkmen-Afghan border area drawing an immediate rebuke from Turkmenistan's Foreign Ministry.

Fighting in northwestern Afghanistan has grown worse with the start of this year's spring offensives.It is difficult to say how many Afghan districts along Turkmenistan's border are under government control and how many are under militant control. Turkmen authorities might now feel less confident about being able to control the border.

Shoigu's visit by itself indicates something has changed. Russian media noted it was the first time since Turkmenistan became independent that a Russian defense minister has visited the country.

Shoigu spoke with his Turkmen counterpart Yaylym Berdiev and with President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. Russian media made it clear that Russian cooperation in strengthening Turkmenistan's military capabilities was the main topic of conversation, including weapons sales and training, mixed in with a more general discussion on fighting international terrorism.

Essentially, Turkmenistan agreed to accept at least some of the help the Kremlin has long been pressing Ashgabat to take.

Moscow Visit Barely Registers

Turkmen parliamentary speaker Akja Nurberdieva's visit to Moscow the same day as Shoigu's to Ashgabat went by almost unnoticed. If Nurberdieva had not mentioned that amendments would be made to Turkmenistan's constitution before the end of this year there might not have been any reports about her trip at all.

While it's safe to say Nurberdieva does not receive anywhere near the attention President Berdymukhammedov or even Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov get, it's worth noting that, as speaker of parliament she is, according to the constitution, next in line to assume power should the Turkmen president be unable to perform his duties.

Her visit should have elicited a bit more interest than it apparently did. This is especially true since, according to RFE/RL's Turkmen Service (known locally as Azatlyk), it was the first visit by a speaker of Turkmenistan's parliament to Moscow. Nurberdieva's brief publicized remarks mentioned only a loose timeframe for making amendments to Turkmenistan's constitution. It was not totally apparent what she was there to discuss with her Russian counterpart and other Russian officials.

What Turkmenistan would really like from Russia is for Gazprom to renew imports of Turkmen gas. The Russian company suspended purchases of Turkmen gas entirely at the start of 2016. That came after Gazprom had reduced the amount of Turkmen gas it bought from more than 40 billion cubic meters [bcm] in 2008 to some 3.1 bcm in 2015.

Gazprom's announcement of a total suspension of imports from Turkmenistan came the day after Russian Foreign Ministry official Aleksandr Sternik made his offer of security assistance for Turkmenistan.

Gazprom announced on January 4, 2016 that, rather than purchasing Turkmen gas, the company would instead buy 3.1 bcm of gas from Turkmenistan's neighbor, Uzbekistan.

On May 25, TASS and Interfax cited "material" from Gazprom announcing new deals had been reached for gas imports from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan at a lower price than was previously paid.TASS did not provide the new price. Neither did Interfax, but that news agency did report Gazprom paid Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan an average of $180.39 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas in 2015, down from $259.22 in 2014.

Mysterious Explosion

The price of gas has been the major sticking point in Russian-Turkmen ties since the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991. In 2007, Gazprom attempted to corner the Central Asian gas market by offering to pay Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan "European prices" for their gas. There were even plans for a new pipeline along the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea to bring extra Central Asian gas to Russia.

"European prices" went down shortly after that offer and Gazprom felt the price of gas from Central Asia should decrease commensurately. Turkmenistan did not feel that way and insisted on the 2007 price of European gas. The major pipeline connecting the two countries mysteriously blew up in 2009 amid heated disputes over price. When it was finally repaired, Gazprom reduced the amount of Turkmen gas it would purchase by nearly 75 percent.

Of the 173 words in a TASS article titled "Gazprom Reaches Agreement On A Lower Price For Gas From Uzbekistan And Kazakhstan," 33 are devoted to the Gazprom-Kazakh-Uzbek deal. The remaining 140 words recall the recent problems Gazprom has had with Turkmenistan.

As a gas exporter, Turkmenistan is not only feeling the bite of lower world prices but is also on the edge of losing Iran as a gas customer after already losing Russia. Even the gas pipeline to its only remaining customer, China, which can now be seen as Turkmenistan's only hope of propping up its exports, is having problems. Delays were recently announced to line "D" of the network, which will be the biggest of the four pipelines leading from Turkmenistan to China.

It is difficult to get news out of Turkmenistan but even such information that does make its way out indicates the country is facing huge economic challenges.

Only Option

Turkmenistan desperately needs to sell gas to someone besides China and, as it stands now, selling to Russia, even on unfavorable terms, is the only gas export option open to Ashgabat and it might remain so for another decade, at least.

During Lavrov's January visit to Turkmenistan, President Berdymukhammedov extended an invitation for Russian President Vladimir Putin to make an official trip to the country and this visit is expected to happen later this year. The state of Russian-Turkmen ties should be clearer after this visit.

But it seems Ashgabat is increasingly at the Kremlin's mercy due to Turkmenistan's problematic security and economic situation. Look for a lot more Russian influence in Turkmenistan in the months to come.

One last note: of all the information contained above, the only topic Turkmen state media covered was the Shoigu visit. And even then, the report on the government website focuses on "the partnership which has an equal, strategic and fruitful character" or "developing constructive interstate dialogue," and a lot of talk about Turkmenistan's policy of "neutrality." There is no mention of Afghanistan, problems along Turkmenistan's border with that country, or the impending Russian help in strengthening Turkmenistan's armed forces.

RFE/RL Turkmen Service Director Muhammad Tahir contributed to this report
An LGBTI rights march has been held in the Ukrainian capital without any major incidents amid a large police presence.

According to reports, 6,000 police officers escorted around 1,000 participants in the March of Equality on June 12.

The Swedish Ambassador to Ukraine Andreas von Beckerath, Rebecca Harms, president of the Greens at the European Parliament, and Serhiy Leshchenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament attended the march.

More than 30 people were arrested by police prior to and during the march.

Ten marchers and five policemen were injured at the gay pride rally in 2015 when counterdemonstrators attacked the march, despite the presence of U.S. and European diplomats at the event.

At this year's march, participants passed through a metal detector and were checked for dangerous objects.

Earlier in March, an LGBTI event in Lviv was cancelled after some 200 far-right protesters surrounded the venue shouting, Kill, kill, kill.

Two weeks ago, Artem Skoropadskiy, a spokesman for the far-right Right Sector movement, predicted on Facebook that "on June 12 in Kyiv there will be a bloody mess."

LIVE FEED: Kyiv March Of Equality (RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, natural sound):

Based on reporting by AFP, RFE/RLs Current Time TV and RFE/RLs Ukrainian Service




An announcement about a new safety program at Metropolitan Community Church of Richmond took on additional gravity Sunday morning, hours after at least 50 people were slain at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla.

I had planned on using humor and everything ... but theres no humor today, the Rev. Janet Avery, a volunteer clergy, said later. That went out the window. Instead, I told the congregation Im angry. Im angry that in this day and age, we allow such things to go on.

Avery asked the congregation to pray for the people affected by the worst mass shooting in U.S. history and to take action, perhaps by contacting an elected official about sensible gun control. And the third thing I asked them to do is to get involved in our new safety program at church, to help mitigate the possibility of something happening here. Because it happens everywhere, and it shouldnt be happening anywhere.

Richmonds LGBT community reacted with shock and horror to the events in Orlando. They lamented its venue  a historically safe haven  and its timing during LGBT Pride Month. Members of the LGBT community tended to focus less on the shooting as an act of fundamentalist extremism than as an extension of an ongoing vitriol against LGBT progress, played out at an unimaginably horrific scale.

They cited the arrest Sunday of a man near the LGBT pride festival in Los Angeles with weapons, ammunition and possible explosives in his car, according to city officials. They also noted the detonation of a small bomb Wednesday in a restroom of an Evanston, Ill., Target store. That retail chains policy allowing its employees and shoppers to use the restroom or fitting room that corresponds with their gender identity has been the source of an online boycott petition.

Bill Harrison, the executive director of Diversity Richmond who has been active in the gay rights struggle since the 1970s, called Sunday without a doubt one of the darkest days in LGBT history.

A lot of us lived through the AIDS crisis. That was a disease that came out of nowhere. We survived that through education and taking care of each other. This was a dark day, not only for the LGBT community, but America.

We hear about it, we grieve and we feel awful and we move on, but we have to understand its real, present and wont go away. Weve got to address the cause of these senseless murders. And sometimes its tough to look in the mirror, he said. What are we doing to build strong communities across the board? What are we doing to bridge communities?

Richmond police Capt. Angela Greene, the departments LGBT liaison, sought to allay fears in a statement Sunday.

In light of the recent Orlando nightclub shooting, please be advised that we are closely monitoring the situation and our Homeland Security team is working with our national and local partners analyzing this incident to ensure that we ... currently have no threats in our area related to this incident, she said.

Mayor Dwight C. Jones released a statement calling for common sense gun control reform.

Until today, the Virginia Tech incident was known as the deadliest shooting rampage in American history. Now the Orlando massacre is known as the deadliest. How many deaths will it take for us to see change ushered in concerning gun control? he asked. How many more examples do we need to accept that some fundamental things have to change, especially with respect to the availability of assault weapons?

Several individuals interviewed Sunday suggested that, whatever motivated the shooter, there is plenty of blame to go around, including the preachers and politicians who rail against our community and spread falsehoods and fear, said James Parrish, executive director of Equality Virginia. Anybody who contributes to that hate and fear and lies about our community contributes to the violence.

The early morning shooting by Omar Mateen of Fort Pierce, Fla., cast a pall on the 38th anniversary weekend celebration at MCC Richmond, a Fan District congregation of about 125 people, part of the Metropolitan Community Churches network, founded in 1968 in Los Angeles to provide a Christian sanctuary for LGBT people.

A basement celebration after Sundays service, featuring a rainbow-color frosted sheet cake, seemed subdued.

Joy Whitenack, a board member at MCC Richmond, said her nephew in Orlando had two friends who were shot in the club and another who was missing. And he himself goes to this particular club, but he just did not go last night, she said.

The venue of the attack represented a powerfully symbolic assault on another historic LGBT sanctuary.

Gay and lesbian bars were the places that were created so long ago as safe spaces for people who were not out in the 50s and 60s, Parrish said. Thats what resonates most. For one to just go in any place and shoot 50 people is horrific, and I dont think well ever understand why. But it takes on a different meaning in the LGBT community that was attacked.

Jonathan Zur, president and CEO of Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities, echoed that.

Because of the location of the shooting, this act has the consequence of inspiring greater fear among members of the LGBTQ community and other marginalized groups, he said via email.

Those feelings are significant and are based in years of marginalization by word and deed. At the same time, it is critically important to not attribute the actions of the perpetrator onto an entire group. The lesson from this hateful act should not be more division.

Mateen, who died at the scene of the attack, was born in the U.S. and was of Afghan descent. The Associated Press reported that Mateen professed allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State; his father said Mateen was angered after seeing two men kissing in Miami, and that the attack had nothing to do with religion.

A coalition of nearly a dozen area Islamic centers and organizations released a statement Sunday denouncing the attack.

The entire Muslim Community in the Greater Richmond Region condemns the gruesome and barbaric attack in Orlando and offers their heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured. We join our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence and terror.

In this holy month of Ramadan, a month of compassion, worship, generosity and mercy, we pray to God that He hasten the day when all people will live together in understanding, harmony, and peace.

Meanwhile, individuals interviewed Sunday were disinclined to focus on the religious angle.

I dont believe he is representative of Muslims and people of Muslim faith, said Ted Lewis, executive director of Rosmy, a local organization that supports sexual minority youth. This is sort of a violent end to the rhetoric that weve seen for decades now. I worry that we will focus on this and blame another marginalized community for the hatred and violence were all responsible for.

Stacie Vecchietti, program director for the Virginia Anti-Violence Project, said the violence in Orlando could have been inspired by things overheard in the fringe and mainstream media every day. To sort of isolate an action like this and lay it at the feet of one particular religion, I think, is fantasy.

I think that theres an element of control that we feel when were able to say, Oh, thats them. If we could just get rid of that, then well be safe. But I think its a false sense of security and control that we feel when we set up this dynamic. We need to take responsibility for it and collectively come together to figure out how to address it so we can deconstruct the very real mainstream American cultural norm that allows this to happen, she said.

The timing  LGBT Pride Month  added to the profound hurt. Some 20,000 people are expected this weekend at Pridefest 2016 in Norfolks Town Point Park.

For an attack like this to happen during Pride month ... will resonate deeply, Parrish said.

Vecchietti noted that the mass shooting occurred two days before the release of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs report on violence against LGBT and HIV-affected communities.

To have an event like this happening so close to the report being released ... brings the data home in such a real and painful way, and obviously on a scale like weve never seen before.

My thoughts and my processing is really about how we can be there for each other and how we can feel safe again in places and spaces that have historically been the only places where we have felt safe, she said.

Lewis was among those interviewed Sunday who viewed the shooting as part of a backlash to gains made by the LGBT community.

Every time we see a win, we also see an increase of youth in crisis who are being bullied and harassed, he said.

Vecchietti recalled a dinner at a local restaurant where she and her partner were seated next to individuals having an openly transphobic conversation. ... It was uncomfortable for me to be sitting there hearing it.

I think that we have an individual responsibility to step up and step in when we hear hate, violence and we hear the speech of it. And sometimes we minimize that.

Harrison has grown weary of a vicious cycle of mass shootings.

One of the lessons here for me is that this has happened to a lot of people many, many times in the last few years in our country, he said. And again, we read about it and we feel pain and we move on and we kind of forget about it. And it never ceases to amaze me, the hatred and the insanity that some people experience and the lengths that they go to with this violence. It gives me pause. What have we come to? Is this the America we want our children to grow up in?

Everyone needs to participate in adult conversations about what is going on. Dont come to the table with an ax to grind. Come to the table with an open mind and an open heart. ... Put down the political banners, put down all the other symbols that we bring, with the only symbol being that we are American.
The drug that killed Prince in April caused more deaths in Virginia last year than any other prescription painkiller.

Fentanyl, a prescription opioid that is up to 100 times stronger than morphine, has become a black-market drug rivaling heroin in the U.S., now that cartels have discovered how to make it in labs in Mexico and South America.

The amount of legal fentanyl prescribed in Virginia rose only 10 percent from 2007 to 2014.

But the annual death toll in Virginia  thanks in large part to the illegally produced version of the drug  nearly tripled in that time frame, from 48 to 134. And last year, fentanyl was linked to an estimated 221 deaths in the state, more than any other opiate-based substance aside from heroin.

What were hearing now is a lot of people who use heroin are being sold heroin, and its actually fentanyl or heroin mixed with fentanyl. Thats whats leading to a really quick overdose, said Rosie Hobron, a forensic epidemiologist with the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner who tabulates and studies fatal overdoses across the state.

Weve really kind of nailed down on the prescription monitoring program and really tried to limit the doctors on how much they prescribe and who they prescribe to. Now were in the illicit drugs, and theyre harder to track. ... Adding fentanyl into the mix is even more scary, because even the smallest amounts can kill people.

It still is not clear how Prince obtained the drug. Authorities this month revealed that fentanyl caused the entertainers April 21 death.

Doctors typically prescribe fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that usually comes in a slow-release patch to be placed on the skin, for cancer patients and those in extreme pain.

Addicts have learned how to take apart the patch and isolate the drug to snort or inject. But with the cartels now manufacturing it and smuggling it through the same networks they use for the heroin trade, its showing up alongside other drugs in a growing number of overdoses.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration last year issued a nationwide alert about the increased danger posed by fentanyl. The agency noted that an outbreak of fentanyl overdoses from 2005 to 2007 was linked to a single lab in Mexico.

In some states, fentanyl has overtaken even heroins death toll.

2015 would be the big shift where we saw more of an increase in the fentanyl as related to overdose deaths, said James Hutchings, Virginias toxicology program manager.

Illicit fentanyl is the latest step in an epidemic that began with a rise in painkiller prescriptions during the past two decades.

Attempts to clamp down on the pills opened a new market for heroin. Fentanyl is easier to produce and up to 50 times stronger than heroin, meaning cartels can make more money by shifting to fentanyl.

Police in narcotics divisions often are reminded to be extremely careful around drug crime scenes now, because even a few drops of fentanyl on the skin can be deadly.

Chesterfield County saw a spike in overdoses in February that state lab tests have confirmed were caused by a mixture of heroin and fentanyl.

Also in February, a death in Richmonds jail was attributed to a mixture of heroin and fentanyl.

Theyre getting such a high and toxic product that it kills. The amount of dose you could fit on a pinhead of fentanyl could kill you, said Lt. Jim Profita, commander of the vice and narcotics unit for Chesterfield police.

Its every bit as concerning as heroin is. If youre looking at something thats 50 times more powerful than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine, it truly may surpass heroin.

Adding to the degree of difficulty in stopping fentanyl overdoses is the common refrain from addicts that they seek out dealers when they hear a product has killed someone, because they assume its a strong batch of heroin.

Honesty Liller, CEO of the McShin Foundation, an addiction recovery organization, said she does not hear addicts talking specifically about wanting to take fentanyl. More often, theyre looking for heroin, she said.

But in the past two months, the urine screens they require of their clients have shown a huge increase in fentanyl use, further suggesting that the drug often is laced with heroin.

In many overdoses, a mix of potentially toxic drugs can make it difficult to determine whether a death was caused by fentanyl, heroin or a combination of them with other substances.

Richmond police Capt. Michael Zohab, who is leading the departments push to offer same-day treatment referrals to addicts, said the rise of another deadly opioid makes him worry for the addicts today who often do not know where to turn for help.

Every day, Im getting closer to a plan, but today, this minute, we do not have a plan for the majority of people in this state getting opiates, Zohab said.
SALTVILLE  Robert Deel doesnt let his limitations get in the way of enjoying life.

The avid outdoorsman traveled more than an hour from his home in Oakwood on Wednesday to try out newly constructed, barrier-free fishing trails at Big Tumbling Creek at the Clinch Mountain Wildlife Management Area. The barrier-free trails are developed by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

It means a lot to be able to get out and do what I used to, said Deel, 25, who broke his neck in a dirt bike accident in 2006.

Deel, who has use of his hands but not his fingers, relies on a wrist holder for the fishing pole and his mouth to cast the line. You just got to learn when to let it go, he said, laughing.

Tom Hampton, lands and facilities manager for the Game and Inland Fisheries, said the agency recognized the need to provide more opportunities for people with limited mobility to enjoy the outdoors, whether its fishing, hunting or wildlife watching.

Limited mobility could be folks who are limited to a wheelchair or people who cannot walk long distances because they are recovering from surgeries or an accident. It also could be people who suffer from respiratory problems.

A valid fishing license and a daily $8 permit are required of anglers. Children 12 and younger may fish without a permit if they are accompanied by a permitted adult and their combined catch does not exceed that of the adult, which is six trout per day.

Billy Stickley, assistant manager of the Marion Fish Hatchery, helped deliver 600 rainbow and brook trout to Big Tumbling Creek on Wednesday. Trout are stocked in the Clinch Mountain Fee Fishing Area on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
CHARLOTTESVILLE  Friday marked the four-year anniversary of the firing of University of Virginia President Teresa A. Sullivan. Then-Rector Helen E. Dragas shocked the university when she announced the boards decision, which eventually was reversed after a huge public backlash.

Friday also marked the end of Dragas eight-year stint on the board, as the Virginia Beach businesswoman attended her final public meeting as a member. In a farewell speech, Dragas thanked other board members for putting up with her vocal opposition to many of the boards recent decisions.

While we may disagree on policy, its never personal, she said. I respect each and every person at this table and appreciate you abiding my dissenting opinions.

She asked the board to look forward and take a leading role in the transformation of higher education, which she said is at a crossroads.

I believe the best universities will be those that adapt to reality and  like our university  lead from the front, she said. The most impressive will be the ones that do so of their own choosing.

After reading a resolution commending Dragas, Rector William H. Goodwin said he was thankful for her eight years of service. He also said he admires her bluntness and willingness to voice opinions.

Goodwin said Dragas opposition always came from a sincere concern for students and families.

Helen really does care about the young people. She feels strongly about the cost of education, he said.

Dragas, who was appointed by then-Gov. Timothy M. Kaine in 2008, became rector in 2011. She made national headlines in 2012, when she led the effort to oust Sullivan.

At the time, Dragas said Sullivan was stagnant just when radical change was needed  when resources were dwindling and leadership needed to make tough financial decisions.

We need a leader with a great willingness to adapt the way we deliver our teaching, research and patient care to the realities of the external environment, Dragas wrote in a statement dated June 10, 2012. We need a leader who is able to passionately convey a vision to our community, and effectively obtain gifts and buy-in towards our collective goals.

She continued: We do not believe we can even maintain our current standard under a model of incremental, marginal change. The world is simply moving too fast.

The decision shocked students, alumni and faculty members  with whom Sullivan was immensely popular  and sparked protests. Outside observers were baffled by the move and criticized the way board members had made the decision behind closed doors.

The board reinstated Sullivan later that month.

In her speech Friday, Dragas did not dwell on the crisis  which sparked debates about the challenges facing colleges and universities across the nation.

Experience can be a harsh teacher, but we grow from what we learn, Dragas said. Hopefully, Ive learned from my (experiences).

Although she has not been vocal about her opinion of Sullivan, Dragas has opposed many major initiatives proposed by Sullivans administration since then, including a strategic plan laying out U.Va.s broad goals through 2019 and a major change to the universitys tuition and financial aid model.

Dragas biggest gripe has been the universitys shift toward adopting higher tuition to fund increases in financial aid, which she sees as a tax on middle-class families. The position of the rest of the board, including Goodwin, is that increasing financial aid will reduce net costs for most families.

After the meeting, Sullivan said Dragas service showed a great commitment to the university and the commonwealth.

With her opposition to the strategic plan and a new financial model, Dragas made valuable contributions to both discussions, she said. When asked what Dragas biggest contribution to the board was, Sullivan replied: She asks great questions.

Four other board members have terms set to expire at the end of the month: Frank B. Atkinson, Mark T. Bowles, Victoria D. Harker and Bobbie G. Kilberg. All are up for reappointment by Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

But Bowles, who was chosen to finish the term of Dr. Edward D. Miller last year, is the only McAuliffe appointee. The others were appointed by Gov. Bob McDonnell in 2012.

So far in his time as governor, McAuliffe has not reappointed any of McDonnells U.Va. board appointees.

Atkinson and Harker were members of the subcommittee that recommended raising tuition to fund greater financial aid.

Kilberg, the co-chair of the Academic and Student Life Committee, had a quiet tenure on the board.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
On CNN and Fox News, one politician after another professed to be shocked by the massacre in Orlando. Who would have expected such a thing? people kept asking. Actually, Ive been expecting just such a thing for years. The only shock was that it took this long for some jihadist to go after a gay establishment.

Islamic law, after all, is crystal clear on homosexuality, though the various schools of sharia prescribe a range of penalties: one calls for death by stoning; another demands that the transgressor be thrown from a high place; a third says to drop a building on him. In Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Yemen, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, as well as in parts of Nigeria, Somalia, Syria and Iraq, homosexuality is indeed punishable by death.

Nor do Muslims magically change their views on the subject when they move to the West. As long ago as 2005, the head of the Netherlands leading gay rights group said that, owing to the growth of Islam in Amsterdam, tolerance of gay people was slipping away like sand through the fingers; over the last 10 or 15 years, Dutch gays have fled the cities in droves to escape Muslim gay-bashing. In Norway, several high-profile Muslims have refused publicly to oppose executing gays, and when challenged on their views have gone on the offensive, demanding respect for orthodox Muslim beliefs. This past April, a poll established that 52 percent of British Muslims want homosexuality banned.

Many on the left (and some on the right, too) refuse to face these facts. In 2004, when gay activist Peter Tatchell urged Londons then-mayor Ken Livingstone to rescind an invitation to Koranic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawiwho supports the death penalty for gaysLivingstone issued a report calling Qaradawi a liberal and Tatchell a racist.

Yes, there are self-identified Muslims who harbor no antigay prejudice; I suspect that more than a few of them are actually apostates whoaware that Islam considers apostasy, too, a capital crimechoose to keep quiet about their infidel status. Some gays who were born into Islam claim that theyve worked out for themselves a version of their faith not inconsistent with their homosexuality; good luck to them, but theyre in a tiny minority. Whenever a Muslim commits some atrocity, were reminded that the world contains some 1.5 billion Muslims, the great majority of them tolerant, peace-loving, etc.; the fact is that the great majority of those 1.5 billion Muslims also belong to varieties of Islam that preach contempt for, and severe punishment of, homosexuals.

Incredibly, many gays still dont get thisor refuse to get it. They clingmindlessly, one wants to sayto leftist ideology, which tells them that Muslims, like gays, are an official victim group, and thus their natural allies. They see Christians as their enemiesthough even the most aggressively antigay Christians in America, namely the God hates fags crowd at the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, dont go around killing anybody. Perversely, some gays support the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement, which demonizes the only gay-friendly country in the Middle East. Some even buy into the concept of pinkwashingthe inane assertion, promoted by radical lesbian playwright Sarah Schulman, that Israel advertises its own gay-positive values as a means of covering up its supposed oppression of Palestinians. On this day of horror, lets hope that the jihadist massacre of 50 people in a gay club in Orlando finally awakens gay Americans to the brutal reality of Islams hatred for them.

Photo by Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images
The circuitous path of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline now loops through nine properties protected by Virginia conservation easements on its way to a critical proposed crossing of the Blue Ridge Mountains above the Wintergreen resort in Nelson County, where the natural gas transmission line would traverse at least one other state conservation easement.

All but one of the affected easements came into the 42-inch pipelines path under a new route proposed this year in response to concerns expressed by the U.S. Forest Service. That is the same federal agency that holds the key to the proposed crossing of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail by drilling through the mountain near Wintergreens sole entrance.

Dominion, the Richmond-based energy company that leads the $5 billion pipeline project, has proposed to compensate for crossing state-protected properties by offering conservation easements on an 1,100-acre farm in Highland County and 85 acres along the Rockfish River in Nelson. But the state foundation that holds the easements isnt sure it will have the final say on whether to accept the land swap for a route that ultimately would be determined by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC.

The scale of the proposal is unprecedented, said Jason McGarvey, communications and outreach manager for the Virginia Outdoors Foundation. The fact that were dealing with a federal entity making a federal decision about where to site the final pipeline also is unprecedented.

Federal agencies role

Federal agencies play the dominant role in determining not only whether to approve the pipeline but also whether it can cross federally protected lands on its 600-mile path from the Marcellus shale fields in West Virginia to power plants and natural gas distribution markets in Southeast Virginia and North Carolina.

Indeed, the company said it chose the proposed crossing of the Appalachian Trail near Reeds Gap because an act of Congress would be required elsewhere along the mountain range, while the forest service has the authority to approve a pipeline crossing under the trail there. The National Park Service has the authority to approve a crossing of the Blue Ridge Parkway but not the trail, even in areas where the agency manages it.

The forest service and Appalachian Trail Conservancy recently raised concerns about the crossing of the Appalachian Trail by the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline near Peters Mountain in Giles County. That proposed 42-inch pipeline would extend about 300 miles from northern West Virginia to an existing natural gas pipeline in Pittsylvania County.

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline changed its proposed route after the forest service determined in January that the previous route would harm the habitat of sensitive animal species and ecosystems in the George Washington and Monongahela national forests. In the same letter, the agency required the company to provide a contingency plan for crossing the Blue Ridge if its plan to drill through the mountain does not work.

Kate Goodrich-Arling, a spokeswoman for the forest service in West Virginia, said it doesnt make us feel good to shift the pipeline onto private property, but the question facing the agency is, What does it do to the land we are charged with managing?

Easement swap plan

The public comment period closed early this month on the revised route, which for the first time would extend the pipeline through part of Bath County before looping northeast to rejoin the original alignment in Augusta County.

The new route also would extend the pipeline through nine conservation easements in Bath, Augusta and Highland counties.

Dominion spokesman Aaron Ruby did not address the possibility of federal pre-emption of the state conservation easements in approving the route, but he said the companys preference is approval of the proposed easement swap by the state foundations board of trustees, which had planned to act on the proposal during a meeting at the Capitol on June 30. Last week, Dominion asked for a delay until September.

What weve put together is a fair and responsible proposal, Ruby said. We think its consistent with the mission of the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, and we think it advances that mission.

But the foundation wrote FERC in early April to express its concern about the proposed crossing of the nine protected properties, which it said include areas of high ecological integrity, high priority conservation area forests, critical karst (porous rock) resources, scenic protected areas, streams designated as supporting trout habitat, as well as important historic resources.

The foundation is extremely concerned about the impacts this project will have on these critical protected resources and has stated its opposition to this new alignment, said Martha Little, deputy director of stewardship.

She also noted that because the easements represent the fulfillment of state policy and as real property interests of the commonwealth, they are not subject to condemnation.

But Little said the company could apply for conversion or diversion of open-space easements it encroaches, which it did in a series of requests filed in early May. The 10 affected properties  including one in Nelson County  encompass more than 4,500 acres, but the pipeline would require a permanent cleared right of way on only about 65 acres.

The company has purchased properties as replacement easements, including the 1,100-acre Hayfield Farm in Highland County to offset the effects on nine easements.

Questioning the route

The company said it had designed the pipeline to minimize impacts on natural and scenic resources but noted the project does not have to comply with local comprehensive plans because localities do not have jurisdiction over the siting of interstate natural gas pipelines under federal law.

The proposed new route is opposed by the boards of supervisors in Bath and Augusta counties, which oppose the easement swap and accuse the pipeline company of failing to fairly address a possible southern alternative that would take the route out of the county entirely and into northern Rockbridge County.

The Augusta County Board of Supervisors does not believe that the requirements of FERC to study a southern route have been met, board Chairwoman Carolyn Bragg said in a letter to the agency in April.

Opponents in Nelson County also question why the pipeline route would go south through Bath and then turn to the northeast to rejoin the original alignment, which leads to the proposed Blue Ridge crossing from Augusta to Nelson counties next to Wintergreen.

Friends of Wintergreen, organized last year to fight the proposed route, recently asked FERC to require the company to study specific alternative routes, including one to the south near Virginia 56 at Love Gap and the current crossing of the Blue Ridge by Interstate 64 at Rockfish Gap.

While Dominions proposed amendment to its route may mitigate impacts to the affected national forests at the behest of the [forest service], it fails to address the substantial impacts on the Wintergreen area, the organization said in a 128-page filing to FERC late last month.

It says those effects include economic damage to Wintergreen, the largest employer and taxpayer in Nelson County; homeowners within and adjacent to the resort; the ecologically based Horizons Village community; and the burgeoning tourism and historic areas along Virginia 151 in the southern Rockfish Valley.

Friends of Wintergreen and other pipeline opponents have argued for a pipeline route that relies more on existing utility and highway corridors and bypasses critical economic, environmental and historical resources, including a pair of early-1800s mills that Preservation Virginia recently included on a list of the most endangered places in Virginia.

This is not over yet, not by a long shot, Friends of Wintergreen Chairman Jonathan Ansell said in a Memorial Day meeting that he said drew about 700 people at the resort. We have a chance of moving the pipeline. Weve got everybodys attention.

Changes, consequences

But moving the pipeline inevitably affects other property owners and interests, as the organization learned after proposing another alternate south of Virginia 664 (Beech Grove Road), which winds down the mountain past Wintergreen to the valley.

Preston Lauterbach, a writer who lives south of Beech Grove Road about a mile from the current route, said the Friends of Wintergreen route would cut through his property and others in a historically African-American community founded by freed slaves and including what was known as the Wintergreen Colored School, which is part of the pending South Rockfish Valley Rural Historic District.

Without specifically noting as much, the Friends of Wintergreen south of 664 proposal entails the destruction of an important piece of African-American history, Lauterbach wrote to FERC recently.

Ansell said the proposal was designed only to prove to Dominion that an alternative route could be built south of the highway but was never intended as a specific plan that considered cultural and other resources that could be affected.

There was no intent or desire of any kind to go through sacred ground like that, he said in an interview.

Always challenges

Dominion said it has made hundreds of adjustments to its route  some big, some small  to address concerns raised by property owners as well as public agencies and nonprofit organizations.

Theres no such thing as a perfect route, said Ruby, the Dominion spokesman. There will always be impacts. There will always be challenges.

Dominion said the challenges posed by the Friends of Wintergreen alternatives include physical constraints where I-64 crosses the mountain at Rockfish Gap; steep and remote terrain that would require construction of access roads; and, near Love Gap to the south, the presence of federally protected wilderness and back-country areas.

The constructability of some of these areas gives us serious concern, Ruby said.

Ansell calls the alternative route at Love Gap tight, but doable and said his organization hired engineering and environmental consulting firms that proposed specific routes he said Dominion has yet to study in detail.

But the key to the pipeline route rests with the U.S. Forest Service because of its authority to grant a crossing of the Appalachian Trail that the National Park Service could not allow elsewhere, including the spot about 8 miles north where Dominion originally proposed to cross the trail.

The company changed the route more than a year ago, along with another adjustment east of Lovingston that would put the pipeline through a 356-acre property under conservation easement, including 3 acres that would be affected permanently by the project. The company has offered to swap an easement on 85 acres it purchased along the Rockfish River.

Another conservation easement also potentially could be affected in Nelson County by a route variation the company considered and then discarded through Elk Hill Farm, a Virginia Historic Landmark that also is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Ruby said the company did not adopt the variation, but he said, Any route that is introduced into the record and been evaluated, for FERCs purposes, its still on the table.

The major challenge

Daniel Weekley, Dominion vice president of corporate affairs, acknowledged what he called the major challenge of routing the pipeline in an email to Ansell last August .

With the federal limitations relating to crossing the Appalachian Trail, there is really only a single viable path, and that path leads by Wintergreen, Weekley said in an email that was among hundreds delivered to the Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition under the Freedom of Information Act.

The pipeline companys proposed solution is to use horizontal directional drilling to bore 4,500 feet through the mountain about 800 feet beneath the scenic trail and parkway.

Its backup plan, requested by the forest service earlier this year, would be to drill a second hole within the same right of way and, failing that, use an alternative method of crossing by a shorter, shallower tunnel that would require additional tree clearing but not within 350 feet of the trail or 600 feet of the parkway.

The company outlined the draft contingency plan in a meeting with the National Park Service in late April at its Southeast regional office in Atlanta. The park service said last week that it has no formal position on the proposed pipeline and is working with Dominion to acquire additional information.

The yea or nay

Dominion has not met yet with either the forest service or the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, which helps the park service manage the trail. We want to get all of the stakeholders together around the same table, Ruby said.

Ultimately, however, Goodrich-Arling said the forest service would have the yea or nay over the drilling proposal, as well as the contingency plan, because it owns and administers the land on both sides of the trail at the proposed crossing.

The agency found last month that the proposed plan for drilling beneath the Appalachian Trail for the Mountain Valley Pipeline is inadequate because of the visual effects of the conventional boring process on hikers from both directions.

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy also voiced concerns to FERC that the new pipeline would have significant negative impacts on the visual quality of the mountaintop and the recreational experience available to the public on the A.T.

One of its concerns is the decision not to use horizontal directional drilling on the Mountain Valley crossing to reduce disturbance of the landscape.

Laura Belleville, senior director of conservation, said that the conservancy also is concerned about the effects of multiple major pipelines proposed across the trail and other scenic areas. Were troubled about the cumulative impact of all of these lines, she said.

The Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation issued a statement in late April opposing the crossing of the parkway by either pipeline.

Were opposed to any kind of crossing, said Broaddus Fitzpatrick, of Roanoke and immediate past chairman of the foundations board of trustees.
Gayle Jessup White spent four decades of her life exploring her connection to Thomas Jefferson, a passion born out of her familys oral history that they were his direct descendants.

During the past five years, the Henrico County resident made this lore her mission, poring through photos and documents as a Jefferson Studies Fellow, pursuing DNA evidence, spending the night on the floor of the Monticello kitchen where one of her enslaved ancestors likely cooked, and singing tear-stained spirituals in the unmarked graveyard of the plantations black residents. She learned that she likely is not only a descendant of Jefferson, but the family of Sally Hemings as well.

I have continued working on my familys history and working on the history of Thomas Jefferson and his family, which is in fact my family, too, White said last week. And quite frankly, I love Monticello. I love the work theyre doing. And the evolution thats taken place there over the decade.

As of this week, Monticellos work is in fact her work, too.

In the newly created post of community engagement officer, Whites job is to forge connections between Monticello and the wider community.

Her debut coincided with Monticellos first diversity open house, which hosted a steady stream of visitors  most of them African-American  on a sun-splashed Wednesday afternoon.

The position is really about getting our story off the mountain, Leslie Greene Bowman, president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, said Wednesday.

We are thrilled to host 435- to 440,000 people a year. But we know that what we have to offer in terms of Jeffersons ideas, and the legacy of his experience, and the stories of the 607 enslaved men, women and children who lived here, and the white workers ... there are many, many stories to tell here. And they shouldnt be limited to those who happen to come here and take a tour.

Our vision is to engage a national and global audience in a dialogue with Jeffersons world and ideas, Bowman said. And so rather than being passive and saying, Well, come to us and well give you that, its important for us to go out into our community. And that community is local, its national, its international.

As for White, Gayles a perfect fit for this position because she descends from Monticellos people, Bowman said.

In 1993, Monticello launched Getting Word, a groundbreaking oral history project, and began offering slavery-related tours on the mountaintop. In 1998, after the publication of a Jefferson DNA study by Dr. Eugene Foster, a retired medical professor, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation formed a Research Committee that concluded there was a high probability that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings and probably all six of Sally Hemingss children. Lucia Cinder Stanton, the groundbreaking Monticello historian, has published several books on the history of slavery at Thomas Jeffersons plantation.

But the transition toward openness about Monticellos history has not been seamless.

It has definitely improved over the years, said Beverly Colwell Adams, associate professor and assistant dean in the psychology department at the University of Virginia, who was among the open house visitors who took the Slavery at Monticello tour Wednesday.

Twenty years ago, it was rare that you could come to Monticello and even have the name Sally Hemings mentioned, she said. When the topic was brought up, the response was couched in denial. But today, Monticello is much more candid, much more open, much more willing to talk about it.

Frank Dukes, a founder of University and Community Action for Racial Equality (UCARE), said Monticello and James Madisons Montpelier are leading the way in terms of how theyre engaging the African-American community and how theyre candid in telling the story of their enslaved population and the impact of this legacy beyond slavery. So I would give a lot of credit to Monticello for the way they have transformed themselves. The way they have made outreach to the African-American community.

As for Whites position, on the face of it, it sounds great. It sounds fantastic.

Edwina St. Rose, a Charlottesville native, knows White through their shared membership in Central Virginia History Researchers. Monticellos relationship with the Charlottesville areas black community certainly can be improved, and I hope that will happen under (Whites) stewardship, she said.

White says Monticello can be a wonderful resource for the African-American community in Charlottesville, a city for which she professes an affinity. After all, this is where my people were. They lived in Charlottesville after the war. So I feel I have a historical association with the community.

I feel its important for me to go into the community and listen to them and learn what their needs are, and how they would like us to serve them. Because we want to serve the community.

Research thus far by White and researcher Stanton suggests that Jeffersons great-great grandson, Moncure Robinson Taylor, was Whites presumed great-grandfather through a relationship with his familys domestic servant and Whites great-grandmother, Rachael Robinson. DNA testing shows the Taylor family descendants are her third to fourth cousins.

More recently, DNA matches and research by Stanton and White indicate that Sallie Hemmans  Whites great-great grandmother  was the daughter of Peter Hemings, an older brother of the famous Sally Hemings.

She does not come by this legacy lightly.

Of course theres a lot of pain. But I think we need to look at that pain without fear and face it head on. And not be ashamed or afraid or angry to explore history. And use this information to help us move forward ... to find common ground, White said.

It helped make me whole. As I said earlier, I feel like I owe a great deal to my ancestors, and that they live in me, are a part of me. But I didnt know who they were and what their lives were like. Understanding them helps me understand who I am.

And the timing could not be more perfect for the collision of person and place. The time is right for a person with my background, my commitment to Monticello, my narrative, to work with this foundation to help tell a very complete story of what Monticello represents, White said. And its not just Jefferson. Its so much more.
China will on Monday release May figures for industrial production, retail sales and fixed asset investment, highlighting an otherwise light day for Asia-Pacific economic activity.

Industrial production is expected to hold steady at 6.0 percent on year, while retail sales are also expected to be unchanged at 10.1 percent. Fixed asset investment is expected to slip to 10.4 percent from 10.5 percent in April.

Japan will provide Q2 data for the BSI large manufacturing and all industry indexes. In the three months prior, the manufacturing index fell 7.9 percent on quarter and the all industry index shed 3.2 percent.

Finally, the in Australia are shuttered on Monday in observance of the Queen's Birthday, and will re-open on Tuesday.

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New BMW G310R is powered by a single cylinder liquid cooled 313 cc engine, which is rated at 34 hp at 9,500 rpm and 28 Nm at 7,500 rpm.

This engine is mated to a six-speed gearbox. Weighing 158.5 kgs, power to weight ratio stands at 212.7 hp/tonne, which is lesser than rival KTM Duke 390s 262 PS/ tonne. Claiming a mileage of about 36 kmpl, it has a fuel tank capacity of 11 liters.

Some of the highlights include upside down forks in the front, mono shock rear suspension, disc brakes with dual channel ABS, short wheelbase for easy manoeuvrability, Michelin tyres hugging the 17 inch 5 spoke alloys, 300 mm front disc with 4-piston fixed caliper and 240 mm rear disc with 2-piston floating caliper, LED side indicators, center stand, 12V charging socket, etc. Expect price to be in the INR 2 lakh range in India.

Making global debut late last year, India will get the BMW G310R by March 2017. This new naked motorcycle is the first fruit under BMW Motorrad  TVS JV which was formed in 2013.

Under this JV, BMW and TVS will jointly launch a series of new motorcycles in India in the under 500 cc segment. The technology co-operation agreement between BMW Motorrad and TVS sees the German entity responsible for product development. TVS is responsible for manufacturing both new bikes. Production should commence at TVS Hosur plant.

The first motorcycle is a BMW product, second will be a TVS product  a fully faired motorcycle based on the G310 platform.

This was showcased as a concept at the 2016 Auto Expo, called Akula 310. We expect it to be named Apache 300 upon launch. Speaking about product rivalry between TVS and BMW, distinct body styles will eliminate a situation of cannibalization, and help both manufacturers reach out to target audiences.

BMW G310R Techspecs
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 ...
On Press Freedom Day,

22.02.14

Poor Samoa. The seemingly mad rush with which Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi and his cronies are moving to gag press freedom in our country is a real worry.

Are they aware of what theyre doing?

Tupua Tamasese Lealofi would be stirring in his grave right now. So would be Mataafa Fiame Faumuina, Tupua Tamasese Lealofi, Malietoa Tanumafili II, Vaai Kolone, Tofilau Eti Alesana.

Having fought for this freedom, they would be crying tears of sadness.

First, the Speaker of the House, Laauli Leuatea Polataivao, made history when he announced the media would be banned from Parliament.

Did he know what he was talking about? Does he own Parliament?

In case he is unclear, Parliament belongs to everyone. It is therefore everyones right to know exactly what is happening in there, especially what their representatives are doing and saying inside that House.

And it is the medias job as the Fourth Estate to tell everyone precisely what that is, and not a semblance of what he or anyone else thinks it is.

Has he forgotten already that when he tried to save Samoas first parliament he did not succeed, and the House was torn down anyway with Samoas Democracy buried in the rubble there.

Is he now also trying, with orders from his boss obviously, to a bury Freedom under the same rubble? The mind stutters.

Second, Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi is putting his foot down on what he believes is bad publicity damaging Samoas reputation as a tourism destination.

And how is he going about it?

By turning the Samoa Tourism Authority into a human machine who will exercise its lawful controls vested in it by law to punish those who publish information that is false, harmful or prejudicial to a public perception of Samoa as a tourist destination.

And the punishment?

A fine of not less than 50 penalty units or imprisonment for three months. But what are penalty units by the way? Might they be prejudicial to a public perception of Samoa?

We have to know the answer to this one so that we do not publish those units and then get convicted and punished as a result.

One question ha arisen though: Who in his right mind would want to publish anything that is false and harmful to Samoas reputation as a tourist destination?

Who? Just one name is enough.

And third, Tuilaepas pet project; his determined attempt to gain full control of the Samoan media with the establishment  as soon as possible - of a Media Council to regulate it.

This time, it is Samoas top lawman, Attorney General Ming C. Leung Wai, who is telling us all about it.

He writes: To ensure that standards pertaining to accurate, balance and fair reporting are maintained, a media council must be established as soon as possible.

Fine.

However, the Samoa Observers stand on this matter remains.

When representatives of the Samoa Law Reform Commission (SLRL) met last year with media practitioners to discuss this issue, we made our position clear.

We said then that we have been operating all those years without a media council, so why should we have one now. We also reminded them that there were defamation laws in place to keep the media in line, so that they were quite able to regulate themselves.

Besides, there was the cost of running such a council to consider, and we told SLRL that if the government would finance it, then that would be fine with us but we would abstain from playing any role in it.

Our concern is that direct political involvement in the media will lead inevitably to political interference with government supporters taking over, so that the role of the media as an objective critic of the government is either abused or totally abandoned, and as a result the medias service to the public becomes ineffective so that it loses its right to be respected by the public, and consequently its expressed opinion is worthless since it is no longer listened to or taken seriously by the public.

That is our opinion anyway.

In any case, we must thank the government for getting rid of those archaic laws of criminal defamation from our law books.

As for the Newspapers and Printers Act 1993, we are also thankful that there is now a move, as our Attorney General has revealed, to repeal it.

Still, what a mess the Human Rights Protection Party government is doing to peoples fundamental human rights?

Why are they so intent on frightening people as if they dont want them to think, laugh and sing, as theyre expressing their opinions freely in their own country?

What human rights are they protecting anyway?

Now that theyre coming out with these silly laws aimed at bashing press freedom, shouldnt their name be changed to Human Rights Bashing Party?

Our real though is that the one thing that these laws have in common is the governments aim to gag press freedom in this country.

We are worried because this is not new to us. Neither is it new to the government.

It happened before and now it is happening again. Are we seeing history repeating itself?

The last time they tried to use the law of criminal libel to smother press freedom in this country, the tools that were used to keep it alive were destroyed in a suspicious fire.

And yet press freedom refused to be extinguished. It is still here today.

So let us remind everyone one more time that any law that is deliberately aimed at gagging freedom of expression is bound to fail.

Any law that is designed to intimidate members of the public into following the status quo blindly, is bound to fail.

Any law that is designed to threaten with punishment members of the public for being critical of their government, is also bound to fail.

For freedom is a gift from God.

It is everyones reward for being here. It is therefore everyones job to use is well to benefit mankind.

It follows that this freedom we are talking about can neither be gagged nor shackled by any law made by man.

And so to those who are trying hard to make the media in Samoa look like a network run by idiots, we ask that they desist, since freedom in Samoa will live on.

As for the mighty and the powerful controlling the way we live in our little country today, let us remind them of Sir John Actons defining words.

He said: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely in such manner, that great men are almost always bad men.

It would be a terrible shame if the last half of Sir Johns quote would prove accurate with some of the great men we have in the Samoan government today.
Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi has explained why he chose to deliver his speech only in Samoan at the U.N. Pacific Regional Anti  Corruption Project

Held at the Millenia Hotel last week, the workshop was in partnership with the Public Service Commission.

According to Tuilaepa he was invited to share his views on integrity and good governance but he decided not to deliver the speech in English.

There was no speech in English but when people translate, its erroneous, said the Prime Minister.

That is why I said it in Samoan because its deeper meaning cannot be understand by our people if its in English. It would just enter one ear and go out from the other.

Tuilaepa said when our Christ wants people to understand something easily he talks about the Proverbs where every subject is clear.

He added that what the United Nations does is it gathers those that speak in English and only 10 percent of participants can understand it.

After that they go eat their sandwich that makes them overweight and the workshop is conducted in English.

The Prime Minister then spoke about integrity which includes honesty, attitude and what is best for everyone and not just for yourself.

I did not want to speak in English because it would lose the deeper meaning of the topic, he said.

When you talk about good governance there is are things to measure it. So that is what I talked about but I saw an article that says I spoke about corrupt service which is quite stupid  they didnt understand it.

Tuilaepa pointed out that a lot of our people speak English but do not understand it and when a palagi speaks to them, they dont understand.

He said its the same with Samoan. When they speak Samoan they dont understand and they also dont understand it when he speaks Samoan.

The workshop started at 9 oclock in Hotel Millenia, and Tuilaepa said he was there right on time.

He recalled that only seven people were present during the opening prayer and when it finished about 20 people were seated.

After the prayers he took the stand and did not have a prepared speech.

I thought Ill begin with integrity and honesty which starts from the scheduled time of the meeting at 9 oclock, he explained.

When the meeting started there were only seven people and when the prayer finished there were 20 of them. This is where your honesty is being questioned. Why  its because government work starts at 9 oclock and ends at 5. Tuilaepa said the time he gets to talk to the media continues on after 5 oclock and government working hours are from 9 to 5.

Another example he used is an A.C.E.O. who starts work at 9:15am where he gets paid $44tala an hour.

If he came late by 15 minutes then at 10am he gets in the car to go do shopping for another 30 minutes and finishes work before 5pm, he said.

Its one hour that you robbed off the government. If there is one hour from Monday a total of $44 tala and another hour on Tuesday a total of two hours. If you took one hour from each day of the week in total you stole $220 tala a week.

For a month you have stolen $880 and more than $10,000 in a year. That is where your honesty starts.

Tuilaepa said a lot of people who move up the ladder stop signing the time they started and the time they finish work.

The Prime Minister recalled he also spoke about public servants making their telephone numbers available to the public.

You see if someone comes from Savaii and had to pay his fare and bus fare and gets on the boat and only needed five minutes of your time but was turned away you werent available. Its not a good thing.

Have you ever come in my office and I told you to leave? That is what Im talking about if by 7 oclock in the evening there is a queue I try to see all of them because they come from very far away and if they dont get to see you it really shows how dishonest you are.

The Prime Minister reminded everyone that these are the very people that you swore to serve.

He said it was important that people know a phone to reach you at instead of being called but it says the number is no longer connected.

These are the different ways you can serve the government, he said.

Moving on to good governance, Tuilaepa said there are different sectors that the government is divided into to ensure that the groups focus on their work.

He said if Simi does not do his work properly he should be referred to Tafaigata.

If he does good, he should also be rewarded and get a pay rise.

Accountability and transparency is another crucial area in governments service.

He made reference to parliamentary reports that should be submitted on time.

Delay in tabling the reports would be unfair to the Opposition, said Tuilaepa.

If after two to three years they havent submitted their reports its not good, he said.

Its not for the Opposition, our party and the Minister. If the reports are delayed the Minister will not know if the C.E.O. is conducting his work.

That is why we tender out work to ensure that everyone has the machines and workforce to do the workwe are not talking about tenders that you give to your family and they benefit from it.

Good governance as the Prime Minister believes also means enough consultation on legislation.

He pointed to the Customary Land Lease bill that has been referred to the Parliamentary Committee for months to enable the public to share their views on the bill.

There are these professors who continue to write about it (lack of consultation) as if its not being done, he said.

Consultation is the legislation being drafted and tabled in parliament where 50 M.Ps who represent the country, debate the topic. It was also referred to committees where the country was invited to share their views even though some make loud noises but they are given the opportunity by the government. The public has been consulted not once or four but many more times.

Tuilaepa said he moved a motion in parliament to have the legislation referred to the Committee for members of the public to share their views instead of what the party wanted, which was to rush through the legislation.
Chinese Ambassador in Samoa Wang Xuefeng and his good lady Tong Xin held a festive party with Chinese teachers in Samoa at his residence at Vailima on Saturday afternoon.

The purpose of the festive party was the celebration of the Traditional Chinese Celebration called Dragon Boat Festival.

According to Ambassador Xuefeng the Dragon Boat Festival is a traditional holiday that commemorates the life and death of the famous Chinese scholar, Qu Yuan (Chu Yuan). It occurs on the fifth day of the fifth month on the Chinese lunar calendar.

The festival is also a celebration where many eat rice dumplings (zongzi), drink realgar wine (xionghuangjiu), and race dragon boats. Other activities include hanging icons of Zhong Kui (a mythic guardian figure), hanging mugwort and calamus, taking long walks, writing spells and wearing perfumed medicine bags.

All of these activities and games such as making an egg stand at noon were regarded by the ancients as an effective way of preventing disease, evil, while promoting good health and well-being. People sometimes wear talismans to fend off evil spirits or they may hang the picture of Zhong Kui, a guardian against evil spirits, on the door of their homes.

In the Republic of China, the festival was also celebrated as "Poets' Day" in honor of Qu Yuan, who is known as China's first poet. Chinese citizens traditionally throw bamboo leaves filled with cooked rice into the water and it is also customary to eat tzungtzu and rice dumplings.

He also said that instead of celebrating this festival with his wife, he invited the Chinese teachers who are working hard in Samoa, to celebrate the festival together.

They were able to share their experiences of their jobs inside schools here in Samoa.

Deputy Chef de Mission, Mr. Gu explained the background of two projects - Chinese Language Teaching and the Science Teaching requested by the Government of Samoa.

This get together today is happening because of this traditional Chinese festival so we are very pleased to have our friends and also to be with our Chinese Ambassador here this afternoon, said Mr. Gu.

This is also a good chance for us to feel we are at home because we have been here for so long and we are missing our families and also so many celebrations back home.

We hope this get together will help us feel better and not homesick anymore. This also can make up for all the celebrations that we missed out on because of our commitment here to Samoa and also for the betterment of the children of Samoa through education.

Mr Gu also went on to say that this festive party get together is also an opportunity for them to officially welcome the teachers who have come from China to work in Samoa for the whole year.

Although it has been long overdue because most of them have arrived last year and in the beginning of this year, we have never had the time to get together because when they arrived they went straight to their appointed schools where they are teaching, said Mr. Gu. So we havent had the chance to officially welcome our teachers from China and we hope this can make up for that. [But] this is a good chance for us to meet one another and tell each other some of our stories of what its like to be away from home and family.

The afternoon ended with a delicious lunch organized by Ambassador Wang and his good lady.
The drivers of two vehicles who were involved in a road crash yesterday morning at Vailoa, suffered injuries and were taken to Moto'otua Hospital soon afterwards.

It was not clear what their condition was at press time last night.

Claims by an eye witness are that speed and ignoring the road rules had caused the accident.

One vehicle was a taxi from the State Cabs Taxi Stand and the other vehicle was a Pajero IO.

When the Samoa Observer arrived at the scene, the driver of the Pajero IO and his passenger had been taken to the hospital for treatment. The eye witness said: The taxi was heading from the road at Vailoa and the Pajero was coming from Vaitele heading towards Apia.

So the taxi was supposed to give way to the Pajero but instead, it came straight out of the Vailoa Road and thats when the Pajero crashed into it."

Added the eyewitness: The driver of the Pajero was speeding and I thought he was drunk but he was not.

Both the driver and the passenger of the Pajero looked like they were young, maybe 18 or 19 years old, and they were both hurt.

It was a miracle that they suffered only broken arms but I think they will be all right.

I asked the driver if he was drunk but he said no, he was just tired.
PAMPLICO, S.C. - Florence County School District 2 will have a special board meeting and a budget hearing Tuesday, June 14 in the district's board room at 2121 S. Pamplico Highway.

Beginning at 6 p.m., the board of trustees will have a public budget hearing to discuss its 2016-17 proposed budget.

Board members voted at its regular meeting on May 23 to present a proposed operating budget for the districts 2016-2017 fiscal year at a public budget hearing on June 14.

Immediately following the public hearing, trustees will meet at 7 p.m. for second reading and adoption of the 2016-17 general fund budget.

The districts first budget reading totaled $8,235,197 without a millage increase.

According to the agenda for the board meeting, trustees will receive consent agenda items, approve the meeting's agenda, personnel sheet and field trip requests before taking action on the budget.

If needed, an executive session for personnel matters is scheduled on the agenda.
FLORENCE, S.C.  Two at-large seats are up for election this year on the Florence City Council, and Tuesdays primary will decide which two Democrats will be on the ballot in November.

Candidates in the primary on Tuesday include two-term City Councilwoman Octavia Williams-Blake, former City Councilman Glynn Willis, Wilson High Alumni Association President Bryant David Moses and entrepreneur Isaac Wilson III.

West Florence High School teacher Chris Wegmann is the only Republican candidate for this seat. Election officials say the top two vote-getters on Tuesday will be on Novembers ticket against Wegmann  there will be no run-off.

The two seats have been held by Williams-Blake seat and Republican Councilman Robby Hill, who announced earlier this year he would not seek re-election.

The Morning News spoke to each candidate in Tuesdays primary about issues currently facing the city.

Morning News: With years of rapid growth in downtown Florence, what specific plans do you have to foster similar growth outside the city center?

Moses: We need more community development. I want to upgrade out facilities like Iola Jones Park . We have kids out there playing and there are no buildings or water fountains for them to use. That area doesnt have anything for the senior citizens. There are supposed to be walking trails out there but theyre run down. We need to bring our parks and recreation up to par with the rest of the city.

Williams-Blake: Were at a point now where the investors are coming to us, so I think its the same strategy as downtown  making sure the opportunities coming to us fit within the overall strategy of what we want to see in Florence. The momentum is there and what I would like to see is some of that interest and growth move to our neighborhoods. So we can have more affordable housing, so families and young professionals can grow the neighborhoods and have that same innovative development in the neighborhoods. Weve created the momentum for the commercial, so we just have make sure that continues into our neighborhoods.

Willis: The viability of a downtown is a catalyst to the overall ability of our city to be able to prosper both economically and in the quality of life for the neighborhoods throughout the city. I now look forward to working with our inner city neighborhoods, the neighborhood associations, to hear their thoughts and the neighborhood revitalization consultants on this agenda. Ill apply my many years of experience on the planning commission to work with entrepreneurs, developers and contractors to ensure they are successful in this city. Before I left council, I began working to improve the overall appearance of South Irby Street. I also began working with county council on improving the East Palmetto gateway. This remains a priority and I will work to see the establishment of a highway overlay district that will see aesthetic improvements to that area.

Wilson: We need to build up our neighborhoods to be conducive to the growth weve seen downtown. Theres no use in building a downtown when theres no transportation to get there. It does no good to have this nice downtown when the people in our neighborhoods cant afford to go there and enjoy it. I want to rethink the citys housing plan. Although housing is a mainstream issue that needs to be addressed, its not the biggest issue or the first priority. We need to clean up our neighborhoods, build better roads and put profitable businesses there. We need to have incentives for small businesses that locate there. Housing is important but we need a better plan.

MN: Will you try to implement changes to the public and private partnerships that have made downtown what it is today?

Moses: There have been a lot of good improvements downtown. The only change Id like to see is more small businesses coming in to do the work. There are a lot of small businesses here that are qualified and deserve the opportunity to be a part of those contracts and constriction work. It would be good for them and for the city.

Williams-Blake: I would like to sustain the ones we have and continue to grow any public-private partnerships for anybody who is interested in investing in Florence. The more partnerships we have , the more Florence will grow.

Willis: The success in downtown can be accredited to the successful partnerships between the city, our state delegation, County Council, Florence School District 1, the Drs. Bruce & Lee Foundation, Francis Marion, Florence-Darlington Tech and small businesses that have an inclusive vision for our city. These partnerships are a catalyst that have created growth in our city and will continue for many years. There are cities looking at what weve achieved and how its being accomplished, then using our model to create growth in their community. Ill continue to support these partnerships to improve the quality of life for our citizens.

Wilson: I wouldnt change a thing. Its great that businesses and corporation and other groups want to partner with our city and allow us to grow. I just want it to be fair and ensure that were not exclusively using those partnerships for all development. When you have the same partners for everything, at some point it becomes special interest where theyre using the city to help themselves, not the citizens. I just want to make sure it remains fair and that everyone is getting a chance at these partnerships.

MN: South Carolinas road repair system is notoriously weak. What plans do you have to fund and maintain roads in the city of Florence?

Moses: Our one-cent sales tax can go a long way. When we repave these roads we need to not only repave them but take care of the drainage problems too. When we fix it, we need to fix it right. Getting rid of the drainage problem will make the water flow off and the pavement will last longer. Drainage is a big issue in East Florence and you can see every time it rains: the water floods the streets. There has to be blockages or bad pipes somewhere. Fixing that drainage problem will help our roads.

Williams-Blake: This is a complicated issue because the majority of our roads are either owned by the state or owned by the county, so we dont have a lot of control of that. I will certainly continue to be supportive of city road repairs but I think this is where we have to work more closely with county council and the state to make sure our citizens get the money theyre entitled to for roads. I will continue to support any effort at funding what we can from a city council perspective for city roads. Thats something I will always vote for and support.

Willis: The majority of our roads and streets are maintained by the S.C Department of Transportation. Funding comes from several different sources and its the stats responsibility to help us fund improvement. I will work with our legislative delegation and make sure Florence City Council has a prominent seat at the table

Wilson: We have to sit down and discuss what can be done. Theres always our penny sales tax and using funds from that to fix our roads. There are all sorts of things that can be done, and right now, theres not one clear plan of what can be done. I want to make that clear to the people and then Id like to get the people involved with what needs to be done and how we can do that. There are plenty of avenues that can be taken; we just have to work together to figure out what the best one is to move our city forward.

MN: What more can be done to bring salary-level jobs into the city, in both the public and private sectors?

Moses: We need to expand our airport so we can have more jets, bigger jets, coming in. And when people get out of the airport, we need to fix that area coming into town. We need to do something about that part of Florence. That east gateway is a major entrance into the city and businesses arent going to want to come here if the first thing they see is dilapidated hotels and slum areas. That first impression makes it look like were not doing any sort of beautification for our city.

Williams-Blake: I think it goes back to partnerships. We have a Florence County Economic Development Corporation that the city supports and I know the efforts being made to attract higher-paying jobs. We work with them to support those efforts. What we have to do, when an industry does come to town, is provide sewer and water at reduced rates, provide a good quality of life for potential employees through things like downtown and housing. Those are the things that will attract industries. I will support enhanced quality of life in Florence, making sure we have good sewer and water options and making sure we have affordable housing so when industries are looking to locate we are an attractive option.

Willis: If we bring the quality of life issues forward, address inclusiveness and get the city moving together as a community you will see these type jobs coming into the city -- if not into the city, around the city through our efforts and those of Florence County Council. Id like to see city council continue to work with county council and continue to strive for economic development in this county to increase our quality of life .

Wilson: Many businesses dont want to come to the city because we dont have the infrastructure to support their needs. They want to bring their big trucks and heavy equipment but we dont have the roads to handle that kind of traffic. Another thing, we have to reach out to corporations and let them know what Florence has to offer  not only Florence but Florence as a hub for the Pee Dee. We service nine or 10 other cities and counties that depend on us every day. Places like Marion-Mullins, Darlington, Kingstree  all these other cities come in to Florence to work and shop. We have to make corporations understand that our city has the workers to support their business and the surrounding potential to make it grow.

MN: Final thoughts?

Moses: I love FlorenceI was born and raised here. There are more things that need to be done in this city and more progress that can be made. My goal on council is to promote economic development, improve our structures and promote diversity. We need to come together in Florence and work together to get to a common goal. If you work together, you get a lot more done for the city as a whole --- not one side or the other. We have to do whats good for everybody in the city. Ive been in leadership for more than 40 years and I know that I can do more to move this city forward.

Williams-Blake: I think Im running on my track record. I hope that people know Im passionate about quality-of-life issues and my track record has shown that Im an honest, ethical person. I really try to do the best for the people of this city.

Willis: I have a deep love for this city and its people. I also have a continuing passion to improve the retail economy and to be a part of finding solutions to improve the quality of life of all of our citizens by working directly with them. I believe local government has the most impact on day-to-day quality of life of its citizens and the economic success of our small businesses. I will bring a common sense, practical and inclusive approach to address and improve the day-to-day challenges for the individuals of this diverse community. Ill do this without allowing politics to influence what is right and just for the entire community. Open access to elected officials is important and I ensure the public their input is extremely important to me in the decision-making process. Moving forward together is the key to real success in our city.

Wilson: Im different. Im not one whos been in the in crowd. Ive made a way of my own, coming from a small business, making it work and understanding that process. You have in me a candidate who understands innovation and progress. Ive been able to move my business forward at a national level, move the Young Democrats of America forward on a national platform and Ive worked on many campaigns to help get others elected. Now Im doing this for the city of Florence. Im a young leader with new ideas, new vision, whos not afraid to go beyond the spectrum. Im not afraid to push new ideas and say things others arent willing to say. We have to move our city forward in big way and I can do that.
Panama Canal Administrator Jorge Quijano met with Cosco Shipping Panamas Captain Jude Rodrigues and crew members prior to the ships departure. I am very excited to be here today to witness the sailing of the ship from Greece, but also meet the Captain and his crew, said Administrator Quijano.  He [Capt Jude Rodrigues] is very thrilled to be part of this inaugural transit.

I have transited the Panama Canal many times before and it has been a great experience, but being the master of the first vessel to transit the expanded Canal is an experience of a century, said Rodrigues.

Cosco Shipping Panama is a new built box ship launched on January 2016. The neo-Panamax containership is 299.98 m in length and 48.25 m in beam, and capacity of 9,472 TEUs. Originally named Andronikos, the vessel was renamed by Cosco Shipping Panama in honour of the inaugural transit.

Coincidentally, the ship was built in Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries Co, the same company that constructed the valves that control the flow of water through the new locks of the Canal.

During the inauguration, Cosco Shipping Panama will transit Agua Clara locks on the Atlantic side during the early morning and the Pacific Cocoli locks in the afternoon. The regular schedule of transits through the expanded Canal will follow the next day, 27 June.
After a few testy exchanges the debate ended with the prospect of compromise on the horizon.

Commissioner Bulc began by setting out her priorities for the maritime sector for 2016 and 2017. These included working with the IMO on de-carbonisation of the shipping industry where she hoped an agreement on CO2 data collection would shortly be reached with the IMO, which she said would be an important step.

Improved safety, especially for passengerships, and greater connectivity with other important markets in the form of more bilateral trade agreements such as the one already agreed between the EU and China were also on the agenda, she said. More issues would likely come up since 2017 has been declared Maritime Year within the EC, she added.

But it was on the question of the application of the EU State Aid Guidelines for shipping, which it is the ECs job to police, that the debate quickly focused.

Commissioner Bulc began by stating that the ECs aim was to ensure that the guidelines for state aid schemes are implemented correctly, in the spirit of supporting the maritime industry in its growth. The EC was fully aware of the importance of Tonnage Tax measures in Greece and other EU countries, she said, but was looking at issues of interpretation to ensure proper application of the guidelines to genuine shipping businesses.

Bulk concluded by saying she was pretty sure that a favourable agreement for development of the maritime sector would be agreed with Greece.

The Commissioners remarks seemed music to the ears of Veniamis, who said he believed dialogue was the best tool for moving forward. He reminded that the UGS and Greek government were united in their belief that shipping was a national resource that needed to be defended, and that the EU should focus on the international competitiveness of the European fleet and should for example look at what Far East countries are doing.

During ensuing Q&A with the audience, however, Bulk informed that the EC was likely to take the next step and turn the preliminary study on the application of maritime State Aid Guidelines by the ECs DG Competition into a a formal enquiry where all stakeholders could have their say before any formal EC decision was taken.

Veniamis reacted robustly to the idea, stating unambiguously Greeces preference that the matter did not proceed to main enquiry stage because it had a strong legal base for its case. Greece would never be a whistle blower on other EU regimes that were on the fringe of legality in their application of the Guidelines, he said, but any formal investigation would open a Pandoras box, he warned. We want to close the case, as other EU countries like Cyprus have done, he said.

Commissioner Bulk immediately got the message, interpreting Veniamis remarks as an open invitation to hold a preface of more talks between Greece and the EC before any formal investigation was launched. We shall work in that spirit, she promised.

Veniamis seemed satisfied: If we both feel we serve European shipping that is the only solution.
COLUMBUS  Dave Wudel is at home in his new job.

The longtime local mortgage banker came out of a brief retirement to head the new Columbus branch of Gateway Mortgage Group located in Clock Tower Court, 915 23rd St., Suite 200.

I was kind of bored, said Wudel, explaining why he rejoined the work force after retiring earlier this year following a 10-year stint as mortgage lending manager for First National Bank in Columbus.

Not long after turning in his keys, Wudel got a call from Gateway officials testing the waters of whether hed be open to returning to working in the Columbus housing market.

The Tulsa, Oklahoma-based banking firm, which has two Omaha branches, was interested in expanding in the Midwest with a new location.

They called me because I have been very active in mortgage lending and housing in Columbus, said Wudel, who also previously served as residential lending manager at Columbus Federal Savings Bank.

Mary Henke is the local Gateway branchs mortgage loan originator.

Wudel is counting on the relationships he has built during his years in the Columbus market to be the new lender's calling card. He plans to continue to cultivate links with local realtors, homebuyers, builders and title companies.

"We're not just opening our doors without local relationships and connections," he said.

The office's in-house servicing of mortgage loans is aimed at fostering that hometown feel for homeowners.

"We want customers for life with our in-house service," Wudel said. "Relationships are the key to our business."

Gateway is a complete end-to-end mortgage banking firm that specializes in originations, servicing and correspondent lending. The company services more than $8 billion in residential mortgages.

Since 2000, Gateway has become one of the largest privately held mortgage companies in the country. The company is licensed to originate and service loans in more than 30 states, and has branch offices in more than 25 states.

My promise to my clients is simple  to provide competitive rates on a full range of mortgage loan products backed by fast answers and reliable loan closings, Wudel said.

Outside the office, Wudel has worked to leave his mark on the residential landscape of the community.

Through his involvement with the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce, he has helped back the partnership between the city and NeighborWorks Northeast Nebraska to promote more affordable housing.

That partnership between the city and NeighborWorks has become the prototype to boost affordable housing projects near Bradshaw Park and Centennial Elementary School in recent years, Wudel said.

The housing projects have opened up the market to more low- and moderate-income buyers, he said.

Gateways branch in Columbus is the latest in the companys push to expand in the Midwest. The company also recently added a bank branch in rural Iowa and is actively looking at opening branches in Kearney, Grand Island, Fremont and Norfolk, Wudel said.
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Mass shootings and attacks seem to dominate the news cycle. From Orlando Paris to Sydney to Jerusalem and beyond, you do not have to look far for major acts of tragic violence. Yet, when it comes to describing these events, certain definitions become tricky.

What separates a terrorist from a gunman? What exactly is an act of terrorism, anyway? A host of organizations have tried to come up with a working definition, including the UN, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security. It's difficult to arrive at one succinct explanation, so let's look at what terrorism is not:

-Terrorism is not organized crime, which is usually done in secret and motivated by profit. Acts of terror tend to be media-hungry displays, rooted in political or social goals.

-Terrorism does not necessarily apply to individuals with mental illness. Man Haron Monis, for instance, who held hostages in a Sydney cafe before being killed by police last December, was deemed mentally ill and therefore not a terrorist, according to Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Research suggests that 40% of "lone wolf" attacks, like the one carried out by Monis, are committed by mentally ill individuals.

-Terrorism is not an act committed by one government against another. This is more commonly referred to as an "act of war" or, under certain circumstances, an "act of self-defense." A notable exception here is if a government directly or indirectly supports a terrorist organization. Many countries, including the U.S., would consider this a terrorist action.

-Terrorism is not an act committed by a government against its own people. This would generally fall under "repression" or "oppression."

Still, coming up with a collective definition is difficult. Pundits, politicians, government agencies, and nongovernment organizations all have differing views on what exactly constitutes an act of terror. Below are some resources to various definitions on the subject.

Learn More:

Information on Defining Terrorism Schmid, Alex P. 'The Definition of Terrorism'. In The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research, (ed.) by Alex P. Schmid, 39-98. London, New York: Routledge, 2011 More Information on Defining Terrorism:

Hoffman, Bruce. Inside Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Chapter One accessible here: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/hoffman-terrorism.html

Domestic Terrorism: Notes on the State System of Oppression, By Noam Chomsky http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199909--.htm

Sydney siege: don't call Man Haron Monis a 'terrorist' - it only helps Isis http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/16/sydney-siege-dont-call-man-haron-monis-a-terrorist-it-only-helps-isis
Press Release

June 11, 2016 SEN. BONGBONG MARCOS WOULD BE HONORED TO SERVE

IN DUTERTE ADMINISTRATION Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos Jr. today declared he would be honored to serve in the incoming Administration of President-elect Rodrigo Duterte if given a chance to do so. Speaking to reporters in a press conference at Anabel's Restaurant in Quezon City, Marcos said he would be honored if he is given a position in the Duterte Administration but he was quick to add that no position has been offered to him. "You know, I am at heart a public servant and if I am called to duty in any way whatsoever it is an honor for me to serve, in any capacity wherein this coming government, the incoming President will feel that I can contribute, I will be happy to do that," Marcos expressed. Asked for details of his more than three-hour meeting with Duterte in Davao City early Friday, Marcos said his role in the incoming Administration was only discussed "in a general way" because it was not the reason for the meeting. He said he decided to meet the incoming President to personally thank him for his support to his family especially his statement on finally allowing the burial of his father, the late President Ferdinand Marcos, at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. "In a very general way (the discussion on his possible position) dahil hindi naman yun ang sadya ko. Ako'y pumunta roon para nga sabihin na nagpapasalamat ang pamilya ko, nagpapasalamat ako sa kanyang mga sinasabi sa akin at nagpapasalamat ang pamilya tungkol nga sa statement nya na ililibing ang aking ama sa Libingan ng mga Bayani," he said. The details of the planned burial were also not discussed during the meeting saying it was up to the incoming Chief Executive and his family to do so. "In principle lang," Marcos clarified. He also expressed the belief that burying his father at the Libingan ng Bayani will bring closure to partisan politics rather than cause division. "I think it will bring closure not only to my family but to the rest of the country. This is something that has somehow been in the consciousness of the Filipino people, a continuing partisan exchange that has been going on for over 30 years which can finally be put to rest. And I think that that is the significance of the statement of incoming Pres. Duterte." He also denied there were talks on a Cabinet position for him saying they discussed about the Mayor's plans to solve the drug problem. "Sinasabi nga niya kung ano yung mga plano nya, he was explaining again his position, his very strong position against the drug problem in the Philippines at talagang yun ang kanyang pinaprioritize," he said. Marcos also assured the President-elect that he will not get affected by the electoral protest he will file at the end of the month. "Ang pinag-usapan lang namin ay...actually itong inire-report ko sa kanya itong plano ko, ika ko we have made sure na itong protesta na gagawin namin ay hindi ka maaapektuhan in any way, number one. E baka sabihin niya e basta't sinisira namin lahat e pati yung kanya ay madadamay. I assured him that that is not the case," he said. Answering a question if he got an impression from Duterte that he believed that he was cheated, Marcos stated that while the President-elect did not categorically make a pronouncement on the matter, he did agree that there was cheating. "Put it this way--he never said anything like that but he said "I know there was cheating". That's as far as he went: "I know there was cheating," Marcosconcluded.
Although the official story is that Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent resigned, those in the know say he was forced out after he started pushing back at the federal court monitor, who has been granted wide powers to reform the department.

Ironically, Whent was seen by many in the community as the most proactive reformer the department had ever seen.

So what changed?

Whent  who was brought on in 2014 at the suggestion of federal court monitor Robert Warshaw  appears to have become victim to a rogue element working in the department. The result was a full-blown sex scandal on his watch, and it eventually led to him falling out of favor with the monitor.

The Police Department has been under federal court oversight for years as part of the settlement of a lawsuit stemming from the Riders scandal of the early 2000s, when another group of rogue cops allegedly made a habit of beating up West Oakland residents and planting evidence. The department also came in for intense criticism for its handling of Occupy protests this decade.

As a result, the city has spent millions of dollars in recent years for Warshaw and his staff to monitor and make suggestions on how to improve the department. Recently, Whent began suggesting that it was time to wrap things up.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 2 1 of 2 Erin Brethauer/The Chronicle Show More Show Less 2 of 2 Michael Macor/The Chronicle Show More Show Less



He was starting to push back at Warshaws demands for more changes, said one City Hall source with firsthand knowledge of Whents situation.

But it was Whents handling of the department's growing sex scandal that was his undoing.

In May, much to the embarrassment of Mayor Libby Schaaf, four officers were placed on leave and two resigned as a result of a sexual misconduct case involving the teenage daughter of a police dispatcher.

Then, in the past two weeks, an investigation ordered by Warshaw raised new questions about Whents handling of the case.

Paul Chinn/The Chronicle

What did he know? When did he know it? And did he take it seriously enough at the beginning? said one source familiar with the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity because the misconduct investigations are continuing.

A newly published expose by the East Bay Express revealed the scandal may have been more far-reaching than previously suggested. It counted 14 Oakland police officers, three Richmond officers and four Alameda County sheriffs deputies who allegedly had sex with the teenager while she was also working as an underage prostitute. The story also implicated some department higher-ups in the scandal.

In addition, the girl said that as far back as last July she had told Whents wife about having had sex with one of the Oakland officers, who months later killed himself.

Put it together and Whent  whom the White House praised last September for making Oakland a model of policing in the post-Ferguson era  was suddenly in the doghouse.

City Councilman Noel Gallo said it was clear Whent was in trouble two weeks ago, when Warshaw and the judge overseeing the reform effort, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson, criticized the departments leadership for its handling of the sex-scandal probe.

But Gallo, who admitted he wasnt privy to all the details, also believes the monitor and judge had their own motives for going after Whent.

Lets be straightforward, Gallo said. The judge and monitor have been here for 15 years and they would like to continue for another five, so they are being negative about it, and I have no doubt that they played a role in the chiefs departure.

Drivers seat: The local Teamsters union is making a play to organize thousands of Uber and Lyft drivers here  and from the looks of it, the drivers already are reaping the rewards at San Francisco City Hall.

On Tuesday, while the publics attention was focused on Californias primary election, San Francisco Treasurer Jose Cisneros quietly issued a news release rolling back his mid-April order requiring 37,000 identified Uber and Lyft drivers to obtain a $91 business license within 30 days or face hefty fines.

Instead, Cisneros extended the deadline for drivers to respond to Aug. 31, saying litigation over whether they are employees or independent contractors has resulted in significant confusion about business registration requirements.

Coincidentally, maybe, representatives of the powerful Teamsters Joint Council 7 recently paid visits to Cisneros and every member of the Board of Supervisors.

The union, which represents 100,000 truckers and other workers in Northern California, the Central Valley and northern Nevada, has been making a play to organize Uber and Lyft drivers. At the top of its agenda is the business license issue.

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We didnt meet with a single member of the board that didnt want to work with us to figure this out, said Doug Bloch, the Teamsters councils political director.

And the union carries a big stick at City Hall  it contributed to every supervisor up for re-election this fall, and it maxed out at $4,200 apiece to the rival state Senate campaigns of Supervisors Scott Wiener and Jane Kim.

Still, Bloch said he was surprised at how quickly City Hall rolled.

Ive been doing this for 25 years, and this is the fastest victory we have ever had in San Francisco, he said.

But then, Bloch added, we are very politically active in San Francisco, and not just on making contributions  but phone banking, knocking on doors and being down at City Hall, and thats what these drivers had been missing in the whole process.

Cisneros office downplayed the Teamsters role. Amanda Kahn Fried, a spokeswoman for the treasurer, said they had been contacted by a number of taxpayers and other interested parties on the issue, but that we dont have any authority to change the law.

So lobbying is not particularly effective with this office, she said.

Whatever the case, buoyed by their success in San Francisco, the Teamsters are considering a blitz on Sacramento. The idea: To persuade legislators to enact a single state business license for independent drivers that would shield them from a costly patchwork of city fees.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: matierandross
Can companies be compelled to police their own customers?

That question is at the heart of San Franciscos latest attempt to rein in vacation rentals in private homes. Last week, the Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to mandate that Airbnb, HomeAway/VRBO, FlipKey and other vacation-rental marketplaces vet listings to make sure hosts are registered with the city  or face steep fines and misdemeanor penalties.

The new rule is no different than requiring car-rental companies to verify that customers have drivers licenses, said Supervisor David Campos, a longtime Airbnb critic who spearheaded what he calls commonsense changes with Supervisor Aaron Peskin.

But Airbnb host Keith Freedman had a different analogy. If crime increases in a neighborhood, I want more police there, not a law that local businesses have to install cameras and hire their own security, said Freedman, the policy chairman of the Home Sharers Democratic Club, which represents vacation hosts. Cities should enforce their own laws.

Few observers expect Airbnb to simply comply by dumping the three-quarters of its San Francisco listings that are unregistered. It may mount a legal challenge before the amendments July 27 enactment  something that could drag on in court for years. Or it could come to some kind of agreement with the city, working to streamline registration  also a goal of last weeks legislation  and offer more cooperation in enforcing the law.

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In April, Airbnb vowed to purge illegal rentals from its site. It said it has since jettisoned 164 San Francisco listings that may have been removing permanent housing from the citys stock, a primary consideration for lawmakers.

We are currently considering all options to stand up for our community, the San Francisco company said. Both Expedias HomeAway/VRBO and TripAdvisors FlipKey said they are assessing San Franciscos new law.

Legal experts said San Franciscos latest ordinance could get tripped up by a federal law that shields Internet companies from liability for content on their sites, namely Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Some have called the act the First Amendment of the Internet.

Section 230 immunizes a platform for any types of defects or omissions in content provided by third parties, said David Greene, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Campos said he kept the federal statute in mind when crafting the law and that he thinks it will withstand legal challenges. Internet companies that simply publish listings, such as Craigslist, would in fact be shielded by the act. However, companies such as Airbnb that engage in short-term rentals as their primary business, would not.

Content has nothing to do with it, he said. Were talking about regulating the conduct these platforms engage in to participate in this business. If a company enters the short-term rental business, we have every right to expect and require certain conduct.

Greene said that point is in dispute. Companies that handle payment processing may or may not be covered by the federal law. (Airbnb handles all payments on its site; HomeAway handles about a third of payments for its hosts; and FlipKey said it handles payments for the majority of its hosts.) StubHub and eBay successfully used Section 230 as a defense in court against restrictions on some of their transactions. The Electronic Frontier Foundation stood behind Visa and MasterCard when they faced legal challenges for processing donations to WikiLeaks, he said.

Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, said there are two other legal doctrines in addition to Section 230 that could trip up San Franciscos law.

One is the First Amendment. Companies that list vacation rentals are structurally just publishing other peoples content, so we have all the rules that apply to free speech, he said. In cases like this, it would be treated as dissemination of advertising, which is subject to lower First Amendment scrutiny, but still protected.

Paul Chinn/The Chronicle

The other is the Constitutions Commerce Clause. Under the dormant Commerce Clause interpretation, the law says that only Congress, not the states, can regulate interstate commerce. Its designed to avoid a patchwork of laws from every city, state and country that would create such a thicket that a national player cant find a way to cope, he said.

But federal law has plenty of applicability as well, Goldman said. He pointed to a much more egregious situation where Section 230 prevailed. Various localities tried to require online sites that publish escort ads to verify that no minors were depicted. The courts said that legislation was using a back-door methodology of putting the hosting platforms in the position of verifying third-party content  and you cant do that, he said.

Likewise, Gautam Hans, policy counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said he thinks San Francisco is running afoul of Section 230s shield. I understand that the city is frustrated, but I think a cooperative agreement (with companies like Airbnb) would be a better way to create a system thats enforceable, he said.

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Whatever happens here is likely to have ripple effects.

The reason Airbnb is fighting this tooth and nail is they know if they have to do this in San Francisco, that theyll have to do it in other parts of the country or world, Campos said. This could be a model.

In fact, both Chicago and Los Angeles are considering similar legislation that would put Airbnb and other sites on the hook to police themselves.

In February, Cathryn Blum was among the first San Francisco hosts to trot off to City Hall for a business license and the Planning Department for a registration number. I like doing things properly and legally, she said. I thought the legislation at that time was reasonable. We wanted to come in from the cold and didnt want to be doing this underground.

But 16 months later, she remains in a minority, as fewer than a quarter of vacation hosts have complied with the requirement that they register with San Francisco. Blum, who is active in the host community, thinks that the city should consider ideas such as a grace period for new hosts to register, exemptions for those who host only a few days a year, and allocating more resources to enforcement.

Theres a danger the new legislation will push bad actors onto other platforms that are less responsible, she said. It could create a new black market for vacation rentals.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: csaid
The Dead played in North Carolina over the weekend. Mickey Harts account of landing in Charlotte:

Walked into mens room. A guy comes up to me with white plastic gloves. He snaps them for effect and looks me over. ... No way, buddy. Im a drummer, mean you no harm. He lets me pass.

Bob (Weir) was not so lucky, I think. Turns out the inspector doesnt like singing guitarists, wants Bob to shave his beard right there. ... Last saw him being chased down the terminal by hundreds of gloved toilet people. Welcome to North Carolina Day 1.

This, clearly, is Harts fantasy account. In real life, they dont need gloved toilet people. Dogs have been trained to sniff out possible suspects.

P.S. And while were on the subject of canines: Care2 activists are rallying Monday, June 13, at Chinese consulates in San Francisco and Toronto and the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., to protest the Yulin Dog Meat Festival. (As a dog-o-phile vegetarian  dont cattle and chickens deserve love, too?  I have a live-and-let-live policy about cultural differences. Thus, a ballpark menu suggestion: dog dogs?)

Sometimes, it was said at a reception at the Asian Art Museum last week to honor Joan and M. Glenn Vinson, major support for an institution is accepted and appreciated ... and then time passes, and especially if the supporters are quiet, they arent remembered enough. And that was the reason for the gathering Tuesday, June 7, which focused on two people who have always been here, said Museum Director Jay Xu in informal conversation before his remarks, who had an instrumental role in us moving here. ... Its a celebration of our dearest friends.

The thank-you to the Vinsons, whose textile collection was exhibited in Batik: Spectacular Textiles of Java, also included an announcement that in honor of the couple, trustee Richard Beleson had donated two digital works from Japans TeamLab to the museum. Beleson cited the Vinsons for what we all take for granted. ... Joan and Glenn do the heavy lifting. Then Glenn Vinson, typically generous, took the occasion to announce that they were donating all their batiks and ikat textiles to the museum.

P.S.: As long as thank-yous are being handed out, heres one to Denise Hale, for hosting Tuesdays, June 7, lunch for fashion illustrator David Downton, who, as guests arrived at Leos Oyster Bar, was huddled in a separate room with Hale taking her photograph. Hes drawn her before in an image that he loves (its in his book David Downton Portraits of the Worlds Most Stylish Women) and she loves (she has it used for PBS charitable credits), and, knowing that a little mystery enhances a ladys aura, he wouldnt comment when asked why he seemed to be working on another.

For those of us who didnt quite make that worlds most stylish women category, whose images remain uncaptured by the artist, however, Downton recommended InstaBeauty, an app that allows the selfie taker to to forget all the annoyance, says the website. If you are not satisfied, tap Adjust button to fine-tune further with several advanced features such as SLIM-FACE, BLEMISH, BIG-EYES and much more! Whats more, while you fix your own face, you leave everyone else in the shot with wrinkles, zits and jowls.

For Madame Hale, of course, no such tech help is required for glamour.

Joe Montanas 60th birthday  actually Saturday, June 4  was celebrated at Kokkari on Thursday night, June 9.

The Broke Ass Stuart website reported last week that the luxury auction house Bonhams had installed a system to sprinkle water over the sidewalk in front of its main door, so as to dissuade homeless people from sleeping there. Bonhams clarification, from the companys Kristin Guiter: The action to clean Bonhams building and perimeter sidewalks during non-business hours intermittently over a 48-hour period was not intended to disrespect the homeless or any visitor to our premises. ... We and our neighbors have worked with the city for many years, including attending hearings and meetings, but the situation has escalated.

The comment section to the original story included one from someone whose tag was MayorLee: Good for Bonhams! Enough of the fires and feces on the pavement! Not the real Mayor Lee, said his spokeswoman, Christine Falvey. As to whether the mayors office goes after impersonators, there was no reply to the question.

Open for business in San Francisco (415) 777-8426. Email: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com Twitter: leahgarchik

Public Eavesdropping

Look, Grandma, a nuclear war kit.

Girl of 7, picking up a model fighter plane, overheard at the museum store for the SS Jeremiah OBrien by Bill Greig
It started with sounds that were slightly out of place: a subtle rustling, a muted high-pitch growl.

From the back deck of his home near Walnut Creek, Brian Murphy, in a moment of innocent curiosity, looked down.

Just below, 20 feet away at the entrance of a storm drain in a dry culvert, a tiny newborn gray fox emerged for a few moments. Murphy had just enough time for a photo that shows the wonder of newborn life in the eyes of the baby fox.

It was just a start.

From San Francisco to the foothills of the Bay Area and beyond across the Western U.S., life of all types is hatching. From songbirds to eagles, from deer to bears, bobcats to mountain lions. Everything is being born right now.

You often dont have to look far to see it. It can be right in your backyard.

For Murphy, sighting that newborn fox two weeks ago seemed like a pinnacle moment, he said. Then Murphy was on vacation for two weeks, and returned this past week, unpacked, and then went to his deck to stretch out, relax and replay his trip to Hawaii in his mind. Then he heard that subtle noise of rustling below once again.

Turns out the culvert had been converted to a fox den. One by one, the baby foxes emerged, the photos show. The crowning moment was when four baby foxes huddled together just outside the den, looking at their surroundings with scared black eyes. At one point, they looked up at Murphy, their first sighting of a human.

Murphy said the key is restored habitat in the area, Tice Valley, which provides a home for high numbers of wildlife.

This is kind of a different adventure, sitting on a chair on my deck with my trusty point and shoot and then looking down at a storm drain outfall at a family of gray fox pups, Murphy said. That is being quite a field scout without having to go anywhere.

This is the reward for trying to figure out what was causing the rustling and growling sound I was hearing a few nights ago, Murphy said. Tice Valley is a great place. I thought the foxes would be gone from their den when I got back from two weeks in Maui, but they were still using the den and barking for mom. They sound like a little annoying yappy-dog.

I noticed that mom brought them turkey eggs for one dinner. I suspect turkey pullets will be next.

This past week, the story entered a new chapter: The family members left the den, Murphy said, and are exploring the adjacent Tice Valley, learning to hunt ground squirrels and other fodder they will need to survive into adulthood.

Peninsula eagles

In the Stanford foothills on the Peninsula, field scout John Richards discovered and photographed an active bald eagle nest at off-limits Felt Lake, located just west (and over the hill) from Interstate 280. Whats more, he captured a red-tailed hawk attacking a bald eagle, which typically occurs this time of year when predator birds try to raid active nests. In one photo, the bald eagle raises its talons out front, chest high, to ward off the hawk. They put on quite a show, Richards said. This isnt a great shot, but it captures the acrobatics of an eagle defending itself from harassment.

One smart turkey

Wild turkeys are expanding their range and numbers this spring, reports Melchia Kutches, with some unusual locations with turkey nests. This year, two toms with about six or seven hens have ventured across a very busy intersection (five lanes, with turn lane, in Concord). One of the hens is now sitting on her nest in the little patch of CalTrans-designated land (along the road). Another hen visits her from time to time. And at least once a day, the two toms check on her. To me, the hen is particularly smart. Before she permanently sat on her eggs, I witnessed her knowing when the light was in her favor and dart across the five lanes to get to her space.

Sightings

Pacifica whales: At Linda Mar State Beach, Dan Stegink was one of several locals who reported sighting gray whales seven times in a nine-day span through last week, plus a pod of orcas chasing harbor seals and other food.

Marin bald eagle: The bald eagle that has been sighted in Marin County the past two years might have taken up permanent residence. Chris Begley reports that he was driving down Loma Alto to Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, where he said the bald eagle circled right over him. It then flew toward Alpine Dam and Kent Lake, where it might have established a home, thats my working theory.

Blondie: In Lafayette, near Briones Regional Park, Jerry Burr sighted a rare blonde raccoon that joined the usual gang that looks each night for pet food left out and other treats.

Non-sighting: Remember when Golden Gate Park in San Francisco was full of quail, the state bird? Rod Wallstrum had this suggestion: Since the coyotes probably have the population of feral cats under control in Golden Gate Park, now might be a good time to reintroduce a few pairs of Californias state bird.

Electrical storm, cont.

The recent story of the father-and-daughter team caught in an electrical field on Mount Shasta, where their metal hiking poles, pack frames, ice axes all became hot to the touch, drew a lot of attention across the country. On reviewing his incident, Lynn Teuscher suggested that the best techniques in an electrical storm is to scatter metal-based hiking components at least 50 to 100 feet away, and then crouch, not lie prone (or to stand next to a lone tree), on an Ensolite pad (or other non-conductive sleeping pad), to present the smallest possible target for lightning. In addition, space constraints for that column prevented me from noting that you should track whether a storm is approaching or departing to help determine your next course of action. You can do that by counting the seconds from lightning to thunder, in which five seconds from flash-to-bang, as we call it, is equal to a mile away in distance.

Tom Stienstra is The San Francisco Chronicles outdoor writer. Email: tstienstra@sfchronicle.com Twitter: StienstraTom
So, Sen. Bernie Sanders, you say you want a political revolution? So do a lot of us, because we all know that in some way the system is flawed.

But now the hard work starts. And it wont be nearly as sexy as running for president.

Its going to be a lot tougher to inspire revolutionaries after Tuesdays final Democratic primary in Washington, D.C. There wont be a yuuuuuuge rally or three in the next week to tease. There wont be a horde of cameras and microphones hanging on your every move. The guest booker from The View will stop calling. You can drop into a Warriors playoff game unnoticed  even if youre still the only guy in the building refusing to wear a Strength in Numbers T-shirt.

But youre not quite back to being a senator from a nearly all-white state that is home to fewer people than Contra Costa County.

Instead, you can seize a potentially better gig, if you play it right. You can lead the next phase of the revolution  by broadening its appeal.

One of the hardest things to do in politics is maintaining the energy of a movement when it runs into a wall  in this case, being defeated by the establishment campaign of Hillary Clinton. Here is how you can lead Revolution 2.0:

Lead by example  in getting over it: Joe Trippi has advised many insurgent campaigns. The native Californian  and longtime adviser to Gov. Jerry Brown through his many political incarnations  has been on losing but influential presidential efforts like Sen. Ted Kennedys 1980 primary run at incumbent President Jimmy Carter, Browns 1992 bare-knuckles throwdown with Bill Clinton and former Vermont Gov. Howard Deans digitally pioneering 2004 sprint at the presidential nomination.

All fell short. All were emotionally intense. And after those campaigns tapped out, the faithful were distraught, a little ticked off and looking for something to do. Much like the Berners are today.

Its tough. And it takes time, Trippi told me. The candidates might be able to go 100 miles in one direction, stop on a dime, then immediately go the other direction. If you make a turn that fast, a lot of your supporters might make the turn a little faster, if they get encouragement.

Have a plan: People want to know what to do next  now. Theyve got a ton of energy, but theyve been locked out of the big game. Give them a positive way to channel that energy. It cant be just the same stump speech that youve given for the past year, and it cant be just about defeating Donald Trump in November.

The hard work should start Friday in Chicago when a couple dozen progressive organizations, most with loyalties to Sanders, gather for a conference called the Peoples Summit.

Sanders is an invited but unconfirmed speaker. It would be a prime place for him to start to lay out a road map.

He can, if he chooses to, keep this momentum going in a way that can actually help get a progressive agenda passed with a President Clinton in office, Trippi said. Theyre not going to agree on everything. But theyre going to agree on a lot.

Play nice at the Democratic National Convention: Trippi was a floor manager at the 1980 Democratic convention, where everything was an ugly, divisive fight. Trippi remembers that the Kennedy people put a plank in the convention platform asking for support for the Equal Rights Amendment  a controversial move at the time and one that they knew the Carter people opposed.

It was all a ploy by us, Trippi said. We went to every woman and said, Can you believe your schmuck wont support the ERA? Those women went crazy on the Carter team.

Even after (Carter) got the nomination, the Carter people hated our campaign. You could tell that, Trippi said.  And the Kennedy people never embraced him . and then Reagan became president.

The Bernie and Hillary staffers need to hug it out: Shaking hands with the other team after the primary is hard, Ben LaBolt told me. He was a top adviser to President Obama during his bruising 2008 primary battle with Clinton.

Primaries are emotionally exhausting. You know a lot of the folks working on the other campaign. A lot of people thought about working on the other persons campaign. Thats why it gets hot, he said.

But after Clinton conceded in 2008, the Obama campaign staff got strict orders from on high that there would be serious repercussions for any Obama staffer who was less than welcoming to ex-Clintonistas joining the campaign.

LeBolt remembers being on the plane with Clinton and Obama en route to their first joint appearance in hackneyed, photo-op-perfect Unity, N.H. Seeing the two amiably sitting next to each other on the ensuing 90-minute bus ride to the event began the process of reconciliation."

It happened quicker than anticipated, LaBolt said, noting that many rivals continued to work together during Obamas administration. That surprised everyone  even the people who were the most aggressive and the most emotional during the primaries.

The most important result: Obama drubbed Sen. John McCain that November.

Enough with the conspiracy theories: No, senator, the Associated Press and NBC calling the nomination for Clinton on Monday night didnt lose you the California primary and rob you of the chance of co-starring in a contested convention. If voters were turned off by an early call by the AP (after fighting the Clinton machine for a year), they probably werent going to be the best soldiers in the revolution anyway.

Throw your weight around: You may never be this yuuuuuuuge again. Use your new political rock star status to do the hard political work of electing more Berners. San Francisco state Senate candidate Jane Kim got a boost after you endorsed her.

Heres a role model for you to emulate: Sarah Palin. For real. In the 2010 midterms, Palin  still a star in GOP circles after her 2008 ride as McCains vice presidential nominee  endorsed 64 candidates, and more than half won. Can you top that?

So, Sen. Sanders, the next move is yours. Your driving issue  income inequality  was the dominant issue of the Democratic primary. You fought the primary on your terms. You ran a largely clean campaign. You didnt take big Wall Street money. More than 1.3 million people came to your events. But you lost the primary war.

Now is your opportunity to win the peace for progressives.

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: joegarofoli
WASHINGTON  No incumbent House Republican lost his race in Tuesdays Californias primary, yet voters fed Democratic hopes that Nancy Pelosi could again become House speaker after November.

The prospect that the San Francisco Democrat, who made history as the nations first female House speaker, serving from 2007 to 2011, could return to that job would be especially intriguing, party officials say, should voters elect the nations first female president.

Democrats need a net gain of 30 seats to retake the majority, and they are far from confident they can do it, but for the name at the top of the Republican ticket.

Thirty seats is a big number, but every day things kind of tilt that way in large part because of the Republican nominee, said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, a close Pelosi ally. Trump is not only frightening Democrats, hes frightening Republicans  Republican officeholders, Thompson said, referring to wide GOP condemnation of Trumps comments last week that an Indiana-born judge is too biased because of his Mexican heritage to preside over the legal case involving Trump University.

Californias primary results underscore the problem facing GOP incumbents, not just in heavily Latino districts in the San Joaquin Valley, but as far south as Rep. Darrell Issas suburban San Diego County seat, considered safely Republican in a normal year.

Issa in runoff

Yet Issa managed to win with just 51.2 percent of the vote against a little-known, unfunded Democratic challenger, Doug Applegate, who rang up 45.4 percent. Applegate was such a long shot that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of House Democrats, all but ignored his race. But in a runoff between the two in November, Democratic officials say theyre taking a closer look now at Applegates candidacy.

Alan Diaz/AP

Issa, meanwhile, has plenty of resources, but his former aide, Kurt Bardella, now heading his own communications firm, pointed to Trumps comments as a perfect microcosm of the problem facing incumbent Republicans.

Response to Trump

The reality starting from this point forward is that every single thing that Donald Trump says, every candidate is going to be asked to speak about it, Bardella said. Every ad that you see on TV in California, in every race thats remotely competitive, is going to be what Donald Trump says and the candidates response to that  whether they admonish it strongly enough or come out against it. If theres a sound bite, Are you voting for Donald Trump? Yes, thats going to be a TV ad.

Theres a lot of legitimate cause for concern to have to spend every minute of every day explaining why a comment may or may not be racist or sexist or offensive. Republicans are left to disavow it and then the natural question is, if you disavow these comments, why are you going to vote for Donald Trump? Theres no good answer there for these guys.

But Republicans said their three most vulnerable California incumbents emerged unscathed last Tuesday. Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford (Kings County), where Latinos make up 39.4 percent of eligible voters and Obama twice won resoundingly, tallied an impressive 58.2 percent, while two Democrats, Emilio Huerta and Daniel Parra, are still battling for second place.

Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock (Stanislaus County), received a less comfortable 46.9 percent of the vote in a district Obama also won twice and where Latinos constitute 26 percent of eligible voters. But his second-time Democratic challenger, Michael Eggman, whom Denham defeated by double digits in 2014, fell below 30 percent of the vote.

GOP incumbents

Our incumbents have shown they know how to run local races on issues that matter to their voters, and that clearly worked for them in the primaries, said Zach Hunter, spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans.

Some Democrats think their best target may be Rep. Steve Knight, R-Palmdale ( Los Angeles County) , who beat Democratic challenger Brian Caforio 49 percent to 28.7 percent in a district where a quarter of eligible voters are Latino. Obama won there in 2008 but Mitt Romney took the district in 2012 .

Trying to nationalize local races by tying incumbents to Trump is the same stale strategy that has failed Democrats time and again in these districts, Hunter said.

Democrats think at best they can pick up two of the 30 seats they need in the Golden State. Republicans in control of state legislatures across the country have fortified their House majority by gerrymandering districts to protect incumbents, a practice California ended but one that until now had put the House all but off limits to Democratic control.

Latinos can be key

Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Contra Costa, said he thinks Trumps candidacy changes that. Democrats, he said, had been thinking theyd have to wait for redistricting after a new census in 2020 to have any hope of regaining the majority. But Trump keeps shooting himself in the foot, and everybody keeps thinking it will stop, and at the same time new Latino registrations keep padding Democratic voter rolls, he said.

If Latinos all come out and vote because theyre so anti-Trump, he said, then I think anythings possible.

Professional handicappers said that California primaries typically favor Republicans, who turn out to vote in larger numbers than Democrats, but that the November election will bring out many more Democratic voters. California saw a surge in voter registrations this year that favor Democrats 3 to 1.

Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of the nonpartisan Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report, projects right now that Democrats will come up short of a House majority, mainly because of poor recruitment.

But, theres always a but, Gonzales said, if the election collapses for Republicans, then Democrats may not need strong challengers to win some of these seats.

Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: clochhead@sfchronicle.com Twitter: carolynlochhead
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With the presidential field set for battle between two candidates who are loathed at least as much as they are liked, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton might start printing similar bumper stickers boasting of their strategies for winning the White House.

For likely Republican nominee Trump: Vote Trump: At Least Im Not Her.

And for likely Democratic nominee Clinton: Vote Clinton: At Least Im Not Him.

The Im not ... strategy will intensify Monday, when Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech in New Hampshire outlining why Clinton is unfit for the presidency. Trump will be trying to tap into the 64 percent of voters that polls say dont find Clinton trustworthy.

But he has two challenges. First, his credibility has been tainted by peddling debunked conspiracy theories, including that President Obama was born in Kenya and that Sen. Ted Cruzs father was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. But Trumps bigger concern might be his difficulty focusing on a single line of attack. When hes not tethered to a script, he can be scattershot on the stump.

Kitchen-sink attacks usually arent that effective when somebody tries to deploy 13 different attacks at the same time, said political consultant Ben LaBolt, who was the national press secretary for President Obamas 2012 re-election campaign. Poll-tested attacks that are grounded in fact are the ones that are usually effective with persuadable voters.

Alex Brandon/Associated Press

On the Democratic side, theres nothing secret or particularly subtle about their strategy, said Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College. Clinton will hit Trump early and often with a common refrain: He is not qualified to be president.

On Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., called Trump a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud ... who serves no one but himself. She piled on, adding that the businessman Trump, inherited a fortune and kept it rolling by cheating people.

Lobbing negative attacks at each other may be the dual strategies, but right now both candidates are viewed so unfavorably that their challenge is how to get those persuadable undecided voters who will swing the election to listen to them at all.

Their unlikability can be told through favorability numbers  the difference between voters who view them favorably and those who dont. Clintons net favorability is minus 14, according to 173 polls tracked by the Huffington Post. Trumps is minus 22. For context, President Obamas is plus 6.

Theyre starting where candidates usually end  you get to November and everyones got negative ratings, said Joe Trippi, a longtime Democratic presidential campaign strategist and Fox News commentator. Anybody who believes the arguments Trump is making against Hillary Clinton is already in his corner. And the same thing on the other side.

Whats key in such an environment, Trippi said, is for each candidate not to reinforce the negative impressions voters already have of them. There, Clinton has an advantage, as shes the more more experienced, cautious and stage-managed candidate.

Trumps biggest enemy is likely to be himself, Trippi and LaBolt said, given his propensity to fire off intemperate, often juvenile remarks on Twitter at the slightest provocation.

Trumps problem is that every day he seems to be going out and reinforcing these negative impressions people have of him, Trippi said.

But he will come out gunning Monday.

Trumps likely

attacks on Clinton:

The Clinton Foundation and selling access: Over the past four decades, the Clintons have raised more than $1 billion for their various political campaigns and $2 billion for their foundation, which supports health and education programs internationally, according to a Washington Post investigation. Trumps challenge will be to clearly show that those donations had an impact on U.S. foreign policy while Clinton was secretary of state.

He previewed this attack during a speech after the California primary last week.

Hillary Clinton turned the State Department into her private hedge fund. The Russians, the Saudis, the Chinese all gave money to Bill and Hillary and got favorable treatment in return, Trump said. For good measure he added, Secretary Clinton even did all of the work on a totally illegal private (email) server.

Clintons opponent in the primary, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, barely touched this issue until last week, when he agreed that she had a conflict of interest when it came to her government work and the foundation.

If you ask me about the Clinton Foundation, do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of state and a foundation run by her husband collects many millions of dollars from foreign governments, many governments which are dictatorships? ... Yeah I do, Sanders told CNN.

Former California state Sen. Tony Strickland, who is the California chairman of a super PAC supporting Trump, wishes the Trump campaign had pounced on that.

Man, if youve got Bernie Sanders calling that into question, youve got to pile on that, he said. Its not too late.

Clintons email: Strickland also said that Clintons use of a private email server reinforces her untrustworthiness because it implies shes hiding something. Clinton didnt have to defend her decision to use the server during the primary after Sanders famously said during an early debate that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.

But it will be easy enough for Trump to assert that hiding behind a private server as secretary of state means shell keep secrets from the country if shes elected president.

And, just maybe, Trump will get some help: Theres always the possibility that the FBI investigation into the emails could result in an indictment before election day.

Bill Clintons sex scandal: In 1998, the House of Representatives impeached President Clinton for lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice in connection with his affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern. The Senate acquitted him the next year and he finished his term with a 66 percent approval rating, according to Gallup.

Trump has revived the episode on the campaign trail in the past month, but Strickland thinks this attack should only be used as a counterpunch.

If Hillary Clinton starts talking about the Republican war on women, Trump should use this, Strickland said. Thats a real war on women.

LaBolt, the former Obama strategist, is dubious. These issues have been litigated for so long and are so ancient that few people will see any relevance  even if youre a younger voter who might not have heard much about them, LaBolt said. It just doesnt have much relevance to your life.

Hillary is the establishment: The most effective attack may be the least incendiary: That after three decades at the top of the political system, Clinton is not going to change it.

A big reason for Trumps popularity, Strickland said, is that theres an appetite for something new. If people are satisfied with where they are today, theyre going to vote for Clinton. If they dont, then heres Donald Trump.

Trump can certainly tap into the anti-incumbent fervor that he and Sanders have reached, LaBolt conceded. But hes got to do more to broaden his appeal.

Clintons likely

attacks on Trump:

Not a lot of art to the deal: The core of Trumps campaign is that his deal-making acumen is whats going to make America great again, as his red cap says. But Democrats will counter by suggesting he often climbed over blue-collar workers to get to the top.

Start with Trumps four business bankruptcies between 1991 and 2009. His explanation that they were business decisions to avoid paying creditors and that he used the laws of this country to pare debt might not go over well with voters struggling to keep their heads above much shallower waters.

Then theres the now-closed Trump University, which promised to share Trumps real estate secrets with people who would pay thousands of dollars for the courses. Trump is now being sued by former students who claim they were bilked and never received anything of value.

And a USA Today story last week alleged that Trump has a history of not paying his workers and contractors, including plenty of small businesses.

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 told the newspaper in an interview. Thats what the country should be doing.

Thats a tough path to take when youre campaigning as the hope of blue-collar America, Pitney said.Trump will be hurt by stories about how his actions hurt real people.

Racial discrimination: This goes beyond Trump calling for building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border or banning all Muslims from entering the country. Complaints about his dealings with African Americans, Latinos and others go back years, to when he settled a federal suit alleging that he and his father had refused to rent to black and Puerto Rican tenants. He denied the charges, explaining that he was trying to avoid renting to welfare recipients.

The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City was fined $200,000 in 1992 because managers removed black dealers at the request of a high-roller. In a 1991 book, John ODonnell, a former executive at that casino, wrote that Trump regularly disparaged minorities.

ODonnell wrote that Trump had complained, Ive got black accountants ... Black guys counting my money! I hate that. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.

Trumps comments toward women: While he has a record of hiring women for top jobs in the macho construction industry, many of his insensitive, even sexist comments about women have already been featured in 30-second attack ads from a pro-Clinton super PAC.

Talking about comedian Rosie ODonnells fat, ugly face, characterizing women as bimbos, saying that men who change diapers are acting like the wife and suggesting that a woman who is very flat-chested is very hard to be a 10, likely explain why 7 in 10 women disapprove of him, polls show.

Trumps reaction when Warren criticized him this week could be seen as racist at worst and unpresidential at the least.

Pocahontas is at it again! Trump Tweeted Friday morning, a reference to Warrens controversial claims early in her career that she had Cherokee lineage.

But Tony Quinn, a former GOP consultant who now is editor of the nonpartisan California Target Book, said its hard to predict what attacks will stick to Trump.

As long as (Trump) is flaying the establishment, thats fine with his backers, he said. They want him to be the bull in the china shop and the more china he breaks, the better.

Joe Garofoli and John Wildermuth are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com, jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: joegarofoli, @jfwildermuth
For fashion stylist, designer and Art Institute of California-San Francisco instructor Mikel Rosen, trend forecasting isnt something he teaches just in the classroom: He encourages his students to look to the city around them when seeking the emerging fashion and lifestyle themes of the future.

I always tell the students two things, says the British-born Rosen: You live in a place where things are happening; and two, you have to go beyond just the first page of the Google search.

Rosen has taught trend forecasting (a predictive tool used in fashion as well as other consumer and lifestyle areas) for over 20 years, but this is the first time he has used San Francisco as a map for honing the skill. The class will culminate in a demo and trends presentation at Bespoke San Francisco at Westfield San Francisco Centre, a tech-centered co-working space that also hosts pop-up businesses as well as events and installations. The project is a collaboration between Rosen and his dozen students and the team at Bespoke that will highlight not just how San Francisco is currently steering the conversation about lifestyle trends and tech, but also how the Bay Area has always been a center of innovation that birthed cultural moments and movements.

Rosen moved to San Francisco from New York five years ago and says that after a career teaching and designing fashion, he feels at home in the Bay Area tech epicenter.

People in tech have asked me in my private consulting work how they can integrate more fashion, and people in fashion keep asking me how to integrate tech, he says. The way people used to wait in line for the new Louis Vuitton handbag, they now wait in line for the iPhone 6. Tech is the new fashion.

Rosen and his students have divided their material into five parts: people, fashion, food, places and technology. Among the people listed as San Francisco trend leaders with a global reach are philanthropist Vanessa Getty, San Francisco-born fashion stylist Vanessa Traina, Oakland hip-hop artist G-Easy and international jet-setter Denise Hale.

Historically, his students have also looked at Beat writer Jack Kerouac, haute couture collector Dodie Rosekrans and Armistead Maupins presentation of the LGBT community in his Tales of the City series as being pivotal indicators of where style and culture eventually headed. The food culture of San Francisco  especially dining destinations with specific experience based concepts like the dining in the dark atmosphere of Opaque, the board game-centric cafe the Sycamore and places that specialize in farm-to-table models  are heavily represented, as are venues that specialize in unique pairings, like the Brainwash Laundromat-meets-cafe.

The whole instant concept thats come out of apps from Instagram to things like TaskRabbit is really important, Rosen says. Its really changed the speed of life across the world. Its especially true for these (early 20s) students whove been brought up with it and use it every day. They dont see it because its just always been a part of their lives.

Tony Bravo is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tbravo@sfchronicle.com
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PARK CITY, Utah  Donald Trump can be an effective president, and hes going to win with you or without you, Republican Chairman Reince Priebus told several hundred of the partys top donors and strategists Saturday.

Trump is setting a dangerous example for Americans by promoting trickle-down racism, and the party must look beyond this presidential election to find its future, the 2012 nominee Mitt Romney told the same group.

Delivered within moments of each other at Romneys annual business and politics summit, those opposing messages were enough to cause whiplash. Thats a hazard of being a Republican this year, as the party struggles to figure out what to do with its controversial presumptive presidential nominee.

Blinking back tears as he spoke, an impassioned Romney said many have asked him to get off his high horse and back Trump, seeing presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as unacceptable. Either choice is destructive, Romney said. I love this country. I love the founders. I love what this country is built upon, and its values. And seeing this is breaking my heart.

Romney said he would not spend time campaigning for or against Trump and predicted 90 percent of Republicans would vote for Trump.

The attendees, about 300 of Romneys longtime donors and friends, provided a snapshot of the wide range of GOP sentiment about Trump. While most are eager to keep Clinton out of the White House, Trump keeps giving many of them pause, the latest example being his comments that a federal judges Mexican heritage prevents him from fairly overseeing a lawsuit against him.

Behind closed doors at the summit, Hewlett Packard President Meg Whitman likened Trump to Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler and suggested she might vote for Clinton. GOP strategists and vocal Trump skeptics Stuart Stevens, Ana Navarro and Kristen Soltis Anderson told attendees to brace for a Clinton White House because Trump doesnt appeal to growing voter blocs, including Latinos.

Its very difficult to envision how Trump can win, Anderson said in a rare on-the-record session.

House Speaker Paul Ryan squirmed as he was asked how he could support Trump after denouncing the candidates comments about the judge. He demurred, as he did during Whitmans Trump tirade, saying his leadership position means he must convey the will of Republican representatives, not just his own.

Spencer Zwick, Romneys former finance chairman and the current one for Ryan, tried to navigate the complex terrain between the two men, the former presidential nominee and his running mate.

I would love to see the Republican Party come together, Zwick said. At the same time, with comments like the ones Donald Trump have made recently, I dont subscribe to that type of rhetoric. And Im not an elected official. I dont have to make an endorsement. Theres no pressure.

Missing from the gathering was Trump himself; he has never been invited to speak to the Romney crowd. (Last year, half-a dozen presidential candidates attended, but Trump hadnt announced his bid.)

Trump weighed in from afar, saying at a Saturday rally in Tampa that Romney is bitter because hes a failed presidential candidate who choked like a dog.
A shooting at a community college campus in Oregon that left 13 people dead and many more injured is just the latest in a long line of mass shootings in America.

Take a look back some of the other massacres the country has faced in the gallery above.
Two to three hours before Daniel Harris was shot and killed at the Haines Stackfield American Legion in Carlisle, he was having a conversation with his former roommate and friend, Rochita Mobley.

Mobley, that Friday night, had decided not to join him and others as they went out for the night. His death was a shock to her.

Im still in disbelief, she said. Im crushedme and my kids. They were really close to him.

Ashley Hodge had also seen him the day of the shooting and is reeling from his death.

He was just a good friend, she said. Im devastated. Hurt.

Both Mobley and Hodge were among the community members who went to Memorial Park Sunday afternoon to remember Harris and call for a stop to the violence.

The gathering in front of Hope Station was in eyeline of the Haines Stackfield American Legion on West Penn Street where Harris, 30, was shot multiple times and killed.

Carlisle Interim Chief Stephen Latshaw said Harris was at the bar when at around 1 a.m. Saturday, a man entered the bar, walked directly to Harris and shot him multiple times in the torso.

Police managed to arrive there shortly after the shots fired call and met with a large crowd of people fleeing the building. Police attempted to perform CPR on Harris, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Though some of the witnesses had fled, Latshaw said police have managed to talk to some people and have also been getting tips through Cumberland County Crimewatch. Though he said police would likely release more details about the suspect on Monday, he noted that it was clear that Harris was the target of the shooting.

The perpetrator walked right in and shot him, then turned and left, he said. Its very brazen.

Latshaw said that, based on witness accounts, there were anywhere between 15 and 25 people in the bar at the time of the shooting.

Latshaw said police are still taking information from those who were at the American Legion and those who may know something about the shooter.

Working with police was something echoed at the prayer circle Sunday, as was the need to end violence.

TaWanda Hunter led a group of community members through prayer and led off the circle with the first speech about ending violence, even against those who, like Harris, have been involved in crime in the past.

Harris in 2010 had been charged in the shooting of a Carlisle man and had pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and prohibited firearms later that year. He was sentenced to two years in prison.

You may remember some things I have done, but I serve a God that puts those things behind me, Hunter told those in the prayer circle. Lets not be reactive. Lets be proactive.

Hunter emphasized that this wasnt about black lives matter, but rather about communitys lives matter.

Hunter and other Carlisle residents were joined in the prayer circle by a number of officials, including Latshaw, Carlisle Mayor Tim Scott, Borough Manager Matthew Candland and borough councilwoman Robin Guido.
Paul Chinn/The Chronicle

OAKLAND (BCN)



A three-alarm fire broke out early this morning at a commercial property in Oakland, according to fire officials.



Firefighters received the call that a fire was burning in the cellar of a commercial business on Webster Street at 13th Street at 4:35 a.m.

According to fire officials, the fire was knocked down about a little over an hour after the initial call.



There were no reported injuries, and fire officials said the cause of the fire is still under investigation.
















San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has issued a statement regarding a mass shooting that killed at least 50 people early this morning at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, describing it as an "evil act of terror."

The shooting was first reported by police on Twitter just before 1 a.m. at Pulse nightclub and ended when officers fatally shot the suspected gunman, according to police.



In addition to the fatalities, 53 people were sent to the hospital, police said.
A Maryland man is dead after a one-vehicle crash in Franklin County Friday.

State Police at Chambersburg said Dale E. Grossnickle, 75, of Hagerstown, Maryland, was traveling east on Fannettsburg Road in Metal Township on a 1996 Harley-Davidson Sportster when he lost control of the vehicle Friday. Police did not specify a time in which the crash happened.

Police said the Sportster hit a ditch and then hit a large boulder, causing Grossnickle to go airborne for about 15 feet.

The Franklin County coroner arrived and pronounced Grossnickle dead at the scene.

Police said further investigation is pending, but Grossnickle was wearing a helmet during the crash.
It began as an academic debate about academics.

But it turned heated in the Pennsylvania House last week.

The question: should all college professors, even those with very limited contact with minors, be required to get criminal background checks?

State Rep. Russ Diamond, R-Lebanon, says yes.

We either care about minor children or we dont, Diamond said on the House floor Tuesday. We are either in the business of protecting minor children or we are not. I believe this body has said we are.

The debate was over an amendment presented to Senate Bill 1156, which would close a loophole that lets some medical professionals avoid getting criminal background checks.

In the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, 24 child protection bills passed last year. They required lots of new people, like church and Little League volunteers, to get those background checks. But in a legislative mistake, many health care workers were exempted.

SB1196 would strip that exemption away. It was expected to sail through the House and Senate and quickly get to the governor.

But Rep. Doyle Heffley, R-Carbon, didnt like that college professors with limited exposure to minors were exempted from getting those background checks. It caused him to vote against the entire bill last year. When he saw that the bill to reinstate checks for health care workers was coming up, he introduced an amendment that would also eliminate the exemption for some professors.

If youre gonna have a set of rules, they should apply to everybody, Heffley said. Volunteers at my church have to get them, and thats OK, but why shouldnt people who spend their entire day on campus with young people?

The House debate on the amendment started slowly but gathered steam. Rep. Scott Conklin, D-Centre, has Penn State University in his district. He created the exemption for college employees with limited contact last year, and he urged his colleagues to vote no on Heffleys amendment.

Rep. Mike Vereb, R-Montgomery, was agitated that the lawmaker who represents Penn State would be fighting against background checks. He referenced the Sandusky scandal.

Conklin took exception arguing that background checks would not have caught Sandusky. He also felt PSU was unfairly singled out during the discussion.

Please leave my district alone, Conklin said. Quit bringing up wounds and scraping wounds off that arent true.

Vereb shot back. You can stick up for your university but were gonna stick up for the victims, Vereb shouted. I stand for my district too. Theres people from Penn State in my district too, and Temple and every other college. But you know what? Theres victims, and we have a duty to defend victims of sexual abuse.

Vereb also dismissed Conklins concern about the costs of the three required background checks, which totals $43.

My God, Vereb shouted in a mocking way. A background check. Every corporation, small and large, mandate drug testing and background checks just to get a job. If they (college professors) cant afford it with their salary to pay for this background check then tell your people to take it out of their pension.

There was heat in the exchange and an audible buzz in the chamber when it concluded.

Heffleys amendment passed overwhelmingly.

The presidents of the 14 state universities sent a letter supporting Heffleys amendment. They want to require background checks of all state system employees. The union representing professors is challenging that in court arguing it wasnt collectively bargained and cannot be unilaterally required. But PASSHE Chancellor Frank Brogan says he got the checks.

The worst time to find out that someone has a problem in their past is after theyve perpetrated, and thats what were trying to avoid to the greatest degree, Brogan said.

The bill, with the amendment, needs another vote in the House. It would then go to the Senate. Child welfare advocates are concerned because the bill was expected to pass quickly and remove the exemption for medical professionals.

Its now hung up.

If it gets through the House, it would be on to the Senate, a chamber whose Majority Leader is Jake Corman, R-Centre, who represents Penn State University.

Heffley doesnt feel his amendment is a poison pill and is optimistic it will move forward.

Were not just closing one loophole, were closing two, Heffley said.
Big changes sometimes demand first steps, but Pennsylvania has now found its footing in the long climb out of the Prohibition era, with a new law that begins the process of ending our irrational state liquor monopoly.

For years I led the fight to get Pennsylvania out of the liquor business. Last week after three previous House votes for full privatization, Gov. Tom Wolf signed a bill that allows the sale of wine in grocery stores, expanded sales in hotels and eating establishments, and allows for wine lovers to order direct shipments to their homes.

Last year, Gov. Wolf vetoed a full privatization bill after it passed both houses. This latest, a compromise, passed the house 157-31, and the governors signature marks progress in moving us into the new century.

It marks progress, too, for our state budget. The governors budget office estimates the new law will add at least $150 million annually to state revenues.

Ideally, spirits will follow wine onto the grocers shelves, but legislative victories are often incremental. Nobody knows that better than Pennsylvanians who have to deal every day with the legacies of special interests deeply invested in the status quo.

Now, with wine moving from state stores onto grocery shelves, the convenience will prove irresistible. When privatization first broke through the legislative barricades three years ago, opponents used apocalyptic rhetoric that would have left listeners with the notion that alcohol sold by the state is less intoxicating.

Overblown language never lasts. Soon enough, as the marketplace overtakes state bureaucracy, citizens will see the common sense in allowing private liquor sales.

This idea will likely take root in many of the rural counties, where many communities are saddled with revenue-losing state stores that are open only a few days a week.

Those of us old enough to recall the state stores of years past are struck by how, in retrospect, they mirror old, soviet-era stores, with the merchandise tucked away in the back and a mimeographed list of products from which the consumer made a selection and hoped it was in stock.

The open-shelf system now in use is the LCBs reaction to previous calls for privatization. State stores began to imitate the trappings of the free-market, which only served to remind Pennsylvanians that other states had private store shelves stocked the same way, but with better hours and competitive prices.

We need to acknowledge that further beer and liquor privatization means a transition in the labor force, from state to private sector employment. That is why special interests launched such an all-out campaign to stop any progress three years ago. It is also why some compromise was necessary.

My support for this more modest version of my original bill was a vote of faith that once the people of our state see the benefits of grocery store wine sales, and once merchants and restaurateurs are able to generate more revenues, well all be ready for full privatization in coming years.

That would include the ultimate elimination of the added layer of bureaucracy marked by the states wholesale system  one that reduces price competition and costs consumers an unnecessary markup. When it comes to retail sales, one middle man is enough, and it ought to be the private sector, not the state.

This bill is not the full privatization we all want, but its the first, big victory in the longer battle toward getting the state out of the liquor business. Thats worth toasting.
      :     ;              
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The Los Angeles Times is reporting a man with rifles and possible explosives was arrested by Santa Monica police Sunday who said he was in town for the L.A. Pride festival.

The Times says area police responded to a call of a suspected prowler when they confronted a man that ended up having multiple weapons, "a lot" of ammunition and an ingredient used in making pipe bombs, tannerite, in his car.

RELATED: Mass shooting at Orlando gay nightclub being called worst in U.S. history

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According to the story the car had Indiana plates. Law enforcement officials said there is no connection to the mass shooting in Orlando that killed 50 early Sunday morning, which they could find.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a news conference Sunday afternoon at the pride event that the arrest seems to be "completely unrelated" to the mass shooting in Orlando.

He noted the strong resolve of the LGBT community and the unity of L.A. Pride and that people there were from all faiths and all races.

"We all wanted to be here this morning," he said. "But we did not want to be here under these circumstances. But we are here. We will not go back in the closet." he said to the cheers of those gathered.

He also thanked the police for their quick reaction in arresting the man and the person who called in the tip to police.
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There are no popping corks, no surly waiters, no carafes of vin rouge. Nor are there brass bar tops, white tablecloths or local vintages lining the walls. But La Fine Mousse in Paris trendy Oberkampf district is not your classic Parisian bar-brasserie.

No, in here, the thirst is for craft beer.

At one end of the bar, a student grins as dark-colored stout oozes from the tap; at the other, an after-work crowd eases into the evening with a few locally brewed beers. Between is a gathering of locals who have become accustomed to perhaps the largest selection of craft beer served in the city. La Fine Mousse is ample proof that in Paris  the wine connoisseurs holy land  craft beer could soon become the drink du jour.

East of Montmartre in the citys La Goutte dOr (Drop of Gold) district, brewery owner Thierry Roche has been taking bold steps to mature the French capitals taste for craft beer. Named after the district, the brewery doubles as a bottle shop. Since opening its doors in 2012, Brasserie La Goutte dOr has fast become a nerve center for those in search of artisanal beer.

Roche, 43, credits this newfound enthusiasm to the promotional efforts of Paris craft beer community.

France is a wine country, so the main objective was and still is about educating the bar owners and their customers, he says. A few years ago, Parisians didnt know what they wanted, then there was a buzz on the Web  word soon spread.

Nono La Mine/Special to The Chronicle

A proud Goutte dOr native, he views his brewery not only as a creative project, but also as a catalyst for change in an area often associated with crime.

This is not a marketing story, he says, shaking his head. I want to attract people who wouldnt usually come here, to change their perception that the neighborhood is filled with drugs, crime and violence.

Roches unwavering pride in his neighborhood doesnt stop at social change or the brewerys moniker; it extends to the ingredients and names of his beers. Dates, spices, flowers and chiles are sourced from the local West African street market, Marche Dejean. Beers like Charbonniere, Ernestine and Chateau Rouge are tributes to the street names that surround him in the citys 18th district.

Claus  a Dane who runs a brewery back in Denmark  recommends the Chateau Rouge, made with hibiscus and fresh red chile. Sweet and feisty, it bears no resemblance to Frances ubiquitous Kronenbourg 1664, and feels as if a full-blown spice party is happening in my mouth. Myrha, a light and refreshing pale ale tinged with honey and citrus, seems more in line with the French palate.

Its perplexing why Paris has been so slow to create local breweries  but local breweries are nothing new in France. In fact, aside from becoming synonymous with fashionable restaurants, the word brasserie actually means brewery.

At the start of the 20th century, the country had amassed 2,800 small breweries. By 1975 it had plummeted to a meager 23 because of Frances love affair with skillfully crafted wine. Now back on track, the number of French breweries countrywide has reached 500 and rising.

A sense of civic pride seems to pervade the Paris craft beer movement. Like Roche, Jonathan Abergel, owner of the Parisis brewery, has rooted his beer venture deep in the Paris story and pays homage to the citys rich history in his brewerys name.

I wanted to give the beer a name that Paris could be proud of, so its like an ambassador for the citys beer culture, he says.

The inspiration for the name came from the Parisii tribe, ancient Celtic settlers whose origins lie on the Ile de la Cite, from where the French capital grew. Fittingly, the Parisii made their own ale  and were, not surprisingly, partial to a tankard or two.

And thats part of Paris charm  its mastery at linking the past and the present, with a passion for preserving the original essence. Demory, a Parisian brewery established in 1827, called time on its production in 1953. In 2009, Kai Lorch resurrected and rebranded the beer. Today, it boasts a brewery, bar and bottle shop in the thick of the Beaubourg districts maze of medieval streets.

Compared with Paris extortionate beer prices  its not unusual to pay 8 to 10 euros a pint  Bar Demorys beers are reasonably pitched at 5 to 7 euros. Intrepide IPA, a deep golden-colored ale with a punchy malt, goes down nicely with Demorys homespun pork sausage made with rosemary, onion, thyme and white wine.

With a fine selection of hand-pulled beers like Astroblonde, Cosmoblonde and Nova Noire, rotating bands and DJs, and a young, urbane clientele thirsty for something new, Demory has been successfully transported into the 21st century.

But none of this would have been possible without Simon Thillou, the cannon in Paris craft beer arsenal. His beer boutique, La Cave a Bulles (the Cellar of Bubbles), triggered the surge of interest in craft beer in Paris around a decade ago. A stones throw from Bar Demory on Rue Quincampoix, it houses more than 350 types of beer, around two-thirds of which are brewed in France.

Thillou is clearly in his element as he expounds on various beers as if they are part of his family. He recommends a blanche (white beer) from La Brasserie du Mont Saleve, a brewery on the Swiss-French border near Lake Geneva. The bottles 50s-kitsch-style label of a woman reclining next to an Alpine lake under a peach-colored sky looks like an image that could have been dreamed up by Don Draper  with a suave, refreshing taste to match.

A down-to-earth host, Thillou attributes the beginnings and burgeoning success of craft beer in Paris to the communitys genuine love of beer  and desire to share that love.

There is a sense of community, of sharing good times with good people, he says. Wherever you have beer, you have a community  its in the beer DNA.

Five years ago, the capital only had Cave a Bulles to call its own. Today, it boasts 11 breweries, six bars and seven bottle shops in and around the Boulevard Peripherique. Breweries such as Outlands, La Goutte dOr and Demory, bottle shops Brewberry and La Cave a Bulles, and bars Le Supercoin, Les Trois 8 and La Fine Mousse are all supplying beer to the masses.

The city now has its very own beer festival, Paris Beer Week, which celebrated its third year in May with events across the city  blind tastings, food pairings and tap takeovers from visiting foreign brewers.

Dedicated craft beer alchemists have concocted a recipe that is tweaking the citys taste buds and are determined to make Paris one of Europes great beer destinations. Its a sentiment not lost on Claus, the Danish brewer I met earlier at Brasserie La Goutte dOr.

When it comes to making beer, the French, he said from somewhere deep inside himself, are not fooling around.

Gareth Jones is a freelance writer. Email: travel@sfchronicle.com

Breweries

Brasserie La Goutte dOr: (28, Rue de la Goutte dOr, 75018 Paris; 33-09-80-64-23-51; www.brasserielagouttedor.com) Free tours and tastings 5-7 p.m. Friday and 2-7 p.m. Saturday.

Deck & Donohue (71, Rue de la Fraternite, 93100 Montreuil; 33-09-67-31-15-96; wwwdeck-donohue.com) Brewery is open for tastings 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday.

Bars

La Fine Mousse (6 Avenue Jean Aicard, 75011 Paris; 33-09-80-45-94-64; www.lafinemousse.fr) Widest selection of craft beers on tap with food pairings.

Le Supercoin (3 Rue Baudelique, 75018 Paris; 33-09-50-07-04-90; www.supercoin.net) Rotating craft beer lists (bottle and draft) and rock n roll.

Les Trois 8 (11 Rue Victor Letalle, 75020 Paris; 33-01-40-33-47-70; www.lestrois8.fr) More than 100 craft beers available with charcuterie platters.

Bar Demory (62 Rue Quincampoix, 75004 Paris; 33-09-81-12-53-06; www.demoryparis.com) Brewery, bar and bottle shop. Demory-brewed beers and IPAs with artisanal sausages.

Bottle shops

Cave a Bulles (45 Rue Quincampoix, 75004 Paris; 33-01-40-29-03-69; www.facebook.com/LaCaveaBulles) Largest selection of bottled beer in France  a third brewed in France. Tasting on request.

Brewberry (18 Rue du Pot de Fer, 75005 Paris; 33-01-43-36-53-92; www.brewberry.fr) Huge selection of bottled beers. Bar across the street with 24 draft beers and good food. Tasting on request.
BEIRUT  Syrias largest city, Aleppo, used to be the countrys economic locomotive but four years of grinding battles have rendered it almost uninhabitable. Pummeled by bombs and rocket fire, residents on both sides of this divided metropolis have experienced severe water and power shortages, soaring living costs, and collapsing public services.

In 2012, the city split between rebels and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. Now the prospect of a total siege looms over both sides.

As government forces mount attacks to close the only road to the opposition-held areas in the east of the city, rebels outside Aleppo are slowly constricting the passage to the western, government-held side.

After a two month lull following an internationally-brokered cease-fire in February, the death toll is rising on both sides. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, recorded that 302 civilians in opposition neighborhoods have been killed in presumed Russian and government air strikes since hostilities resumed on April 22. In that time, 236 civilians have been killed in indiscriminate shelling and rocket attacks by the rebels.

Locals across the city worry that a day will come when they can no longer go in or out of their neighborhoods.

People are saying goodbye as though they dont know whether they will see each other again, said an Aleppo native who has fled to Lebanon and last visited her home, in the government-held side, in May. Like many others who spoke to the Associated Press, she asked for anonymity for fear of being stopped at a checkpoint and questioned for speaking to the media.

Aleppo's drinking water is piped in from the Euphrates River, about 50 miles to the east. Its long route leaves it vulnerable to sabotage. UNICEF says opposition groups interrupted supply to the government side more than 40 times in the summer of 2015. It was cut again last week, according to Syrian state media.

Conditions in the opposition-held areas, where the international advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights estimates 350,000 residents still live, are even worse.

Supplies can enter only through the perilous Costello road, which comes under regular fire from jets and artillery. Costello has been closed for a week because of bombardment and shelling, according to Aleppo activist Farj Abu Muhammad.
1 Gay rights: Several thousand people marched Saturday in gay pride events in Poland and Croatia urging support for minority rights amid mounting right-wing sentiments in the two staunchly Catholic nations. Balloons and flags in rainbow colors marked both the Equality March in the Polish capital of Warsaw and Zagrebs Gay Pride event. Liberals have warned that Croatia has been tilting to the right under a conservative government that took over in January. Similarly in Poland, there are concerns for minority rights under a right-wing government that took office in November.

2 Afghanistan attack: Six police officers, including a district police chief, were killed Saturday by gunmen affiliated with the Islamic State group in the restive eastern Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan, officials said. A spokesman for the provincial governor said the insurgents attacked the administrative headquarters in Haska Mina district. At least 15 Islamic State fighters were killed and seven wounded in the battle that followed. Nangarhar has long been plagued by insurgent groups. Last year militants there claimed allegiance to the Islamic State.
WASHINGTON  CIA Director John Brennan said there is no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials supported the Sept. 11 attacks.

Brennans remarks, in a weekend interview with al-Arabiya, addressed the still-secret 28 pages of a congressional inquiry into the 2001 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia. President Obama has promised to publicly release all or part of the 28 pages of the report. The rest of the report was released in December 2002.
HO/AFP/Getty Images

BENGHAZI, Libya  Islamic State suicide bombers using an ambulance and two other vehicles targeted Libyan forces in the coastal city of Sirte on Sunday, killing at least one of them, a spokesman for militias loyal to Libyas U.N.-brokered government said.

Islamic State took over Sirte last year, exploiting Libyas turmoil to gain a foothold in the oil-rich country. The fight to retake it is being led by militias from the western city of Misrata, which advanced into the city last week.
The Israeli technology expert who helped kickstart New Zealands tech incubator programme says this countrys worst problem is self-criticism.

Oren Gershtein was formerly head of Israels leading technology incubator, Jerusalem-based Van Leer Ventures and through his new company Ideality Roads consults on lessons learned from the growth of the country's hi-tech sector.

Hes advised government-funded Callaghan Innovation on the introduction of three private sector-owned tech incubators in New Zealand and Latin American organisations on setting up the CITES incubator in Argentina.

New Zealands innovation eco-system has a lot of the right elements but one of the things that impacts momentum is our tendency for self-criticism, Gershtein said.

Youre so tough on yourselves and there is no reason for that, he said.

Tech incubators focus on commercialising complex intellectual property, mainly from universities and Crown Research Institutes.

Gershtein claims New Zealands tech incubator programme is a step up on the Israeli one it was modelled on, even though the grant funding in Israel is more generous. The Israeli government puts in 85 percent matched by 15 percent from the private sector. That compares with a 3:1 ratio in New Zealand with the government contributing up to $450,000 compared to the private sector's $150,000 over two years.

One of the big improvements from the Israeli model is that innovative ideas arent vetted by a governmental professional examiner before incubation, which slows things down, he said. In New Zealand, innovative ideas still need final funding approval from Callaghan.

Gershtein said whats lacking in New Zealand is funding support for incubated companies through their entire life cycle, although thats something hes currently working with Callaghan and the government on.

What is the road map for that? What should the government participation be? There needs to be more transparency around this strategy as the parts are not fully connected, he said.

Theres a chasm where a lot of companies fail, he said. In Israel, there is an entire, sophisticated structure and any gaps are transparent to the private sector. If entrepreneurs need money at any stage they know how to find the places to get it.

The trick is working out when the baton can be passed by the government to the private sector to take on the commercialisation risk, he said. You have to create that moment.

Repayable grants help prove up technology typically before angel investors will risk their money and pre-sales. Pre-incubation grants are a step earlier and allow the incubators to explore whether a promising technology is worth investing in.

Figures provided by Callaghan Innovation show 30 pre-incubation grants worth a total $1.03 million were handed out in the 2014/2015 financial year and 37 worth $1.3 million have been awarded in the year to date. The pre-incubation grants have to be repaid if the companies later get repayable grants, otherwise its written off.

As at April this year, 18 companies had also received repayable grant funding totalling $9 million. The bulk - $5.85 million  has gone to Powerhouse which is due to list on the ASX in August.

Innovative technologies incubated by Tauranga-based WNT Ventures have received $1.35 million while Auckland-based Astrolab has had $1.8 million. The repayable grants are limited to tech incubators.

Additional funding to the three tech incubators for operating expenses totalled $2.24 million in the 2014/2015 financial year, $1.75 million the following year, and is budgeted to be $1.26 million for the 2016/2017 year.

That compares to the other five founder incubators  BCC, Creative HQ, ECentre, The Icehouse, and Soda Inc - receiving operational funding totalling $2.9 million in 2014/15, $2.52 million the following year, and $2.25 million budgeted for the 2016/17 financial year.

(Fiona Rotherham travelled to Israel with assistance from Spark New Zealand and the Trans-Tasman Business Circle Michael Nathan Fellowship. BusinessDesk also receives assistance from Callaghan Innovation to write about innovation commercialisation).

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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Veteran corporate raider Ron Brierley's bid for Kirkcaldie & Stains has lapsed after he failed to attract enough acceptances from shareholders of the cashed-up retailer.

Kirkcaldie's board of directors repeatedly advised shareholders not to accept Mercantile's offer, which was initially $2.75 per share but was increased to $3 per share in April. Mercantile is the third-largest shareholder in Kirkcaldie, which operated the upscale Wellington department store now being redeveloped as the first New Zealand branch of Australian retailer David Jones. Brierley was looking to secure the residual assets of Kirkcaldie, whose ultimate value depends on the cost of exiting remaining property leases.

"Mercantile NZ gives notice that it has not received sufficient acceptances under the offer to satisfy the minimum acceptance condition of the offer and thus, the offer has lapsed in accordance with its terms and conditions and all acceptance forms will be destroyed," the company said in an NZX statement.

The minimum acceptance condition in the initial offer document relied on Mercantile getting 90 percent of voting rights in Kirkcaldie by the closing date unless it accepted a lower level of 50 percent.

According to a substantial security holder notice filed to the NZX this morning, Mercantile now holds 9.9 percent of Kirkcaldie, down from 11 percent on April 1.

Two weeks ago, the board lifted its estimate for the cash that will be returned to shareholders when the company is wound up to a range of $3.50 to $3.60 a share, from a previous range of $2.99 to $3.49, having exited the lease on its Petone premises and sub-leased its Thorndon Quay site.

"In light of these revised numbers we continue to recommend that you do not sell your shares to Mercantile for $3," Kirkcaldie said. "The board is confident of the company being able to distribute to shareholders between $3.50 and $3.60 per share in a winding up during the course of 2017. We would look to do so as quickly as possible and have a clear strategy for doing so."

Kirkcaldie stock was trading at $1.559 before Brierley first flagged his takeover offer at $2.75 apiece on Feb. 26. The shares last traded at $3.26.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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2016 SkS Weekly Digest #24

Posted on 12 June 2016 by John Hartz

SkS Highlights... El Nino is Over... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... SkS Spotlights... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...

SkS Highlights

Using the metric of comments garnered, the two most popular of the articles posted on SkS during the past week were:

El Nino is Over

On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that the past years El Nino was no more. The declaration comes a few weeks after Australias Bureau of Meteorology, the other big El Nino monitoring group, also declared it dead and gone.

That means ocean temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific are now near normal. But they might not stay that way for long as odds are pointing to a cooling in the region that could herald the arrival of a La Nina event later this fall.

El Nino Had a Good Run, But Now Its Over by Brian Kahn, Climate Central, June 9, 2016

Toon of the Week

Quote of the Week

Is there not, however, a danger that academics may lose their independence if they get too closely involved either with corporate interests or with environmental activism?

Holm* says that independence must be maintained if academics are do their work properly: I am a staunch believer in the university as a space to stand aside, to dig deeper: we actually do need ivory towers to do this. But Im also committed to being a passenger on the same bus as every other citizen. If I learn that that bus is driving us towards an abyss, I need to do something about it.

*Poul Holm, Environmental Humanities Centre, Trinity College Dublins Long Room Hub

The art of changing the climate debate by Paddy Woodworth, Irish Times, June 11, 2016

SkS in the News

John Coook's Ten Years On: How Al Gores An Inconvenient Truth made its mark was reprinted by IFL Science.

The Debunking Handbook is cited by Atul Gawande in his commencement address at the California Institute of Technology, on Friday, June 10th. The address constitutes the article, The Mistrust of Science published in the New Yorker magazine.

SkS Spotlights

The Third Pole is a multilingual platform dedicated to promoting information and discussion about the Himalayan watershed and the rivers that originate there. The project was launched as an initiative of chinadialogue, in partnership with the Earth Journalism Network. It is a registered non-profit organisation based in New Delhi and London, with editors also based in Kathmandu, Beijing, Dhaka and Karachi.

We work with an international network of experts, scientists, media professionals and policy makers to share knowledge and perspectives across the region.

We aim to reflect the impacts at every level, from the poorest communities to the highest reaches of government, and to promote knowledge sharing and cooperation within the region and internationally. We welcome your comments and contributions.

Contact info@thethirdpole.net to write for us, contribute data or join our network.

Coming Soon on SkS

Republican leaders are scared of a carbon tax (Dana)

(Dana) Study: Most fossil fuels unburnable without carbon capture (Simon Evans)

(Simon Evans) Development banks threaten to unleash an infrastructure tsunami on the environment (Bill Laurance)

(Bill Laurance) Guest Post (John Abraham)

(John Abraham) Timeline: How BECCS became climate changes saviour technology (Leo Hickman)

(Leo Hickman) 2016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #25 (John Hartz)

(John Hartz) 2016 SkS Weekly Digest #25 (John Hartz)

Poster of the Week

SkS Week in Review

97 Hours of Consensus: Richard Pancost

Richard Pancost's bio page

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A man armed with a knife robbed the Wanniassa Coles supermarket on Saturday night, police say.

Police said the man, who was wearing a black bandanna, entered the store about 10.10pm and walked up to the service counter.

About 10.10pm, a male wearing a black bandanna entered the store and approached the service counter.

"Armed with a kitchen knife, the male offender demanded a staff member hand over money from the register," police said in a statement.

The man then ran off with the cash he was given.
An archery bow and arrow set, a pink and orange flashing turtle and a wind up monster toy are among a slew of dangerous children's toys which have netted more than $30,000 in fines and court costs.

The successful prosecutions were a precursor to an early compliance blitz on dangerous products, being conducted by NSW Fair Trading in coming weeks.

The largest of the four fines, served to Xue Tong Wang of Haymarket, for $14,165, related to the sale of a Super Archery Bow & Arrow set, two varieties of a Fire Truck Rescue Endless Power toy and a Wind Up Monster toy.
Liberty House Group, which wants to buy the British assets of Tata Steel, has its eye on other steel plants in the U.S., Africa and India if the Tata deal doesn't happen, executive chairman Sanjeev Gupta said - including coking coal assets in Australia.

Liberty and other companies belonging to the Gupta Family Group are looking for acquisitions and it plans to list some assets to expose itself to the rigorous governance demanded of public companies, Gupta, who is co-owner of the group, said.

India's Gupta group is looking to buy coking coal assets in Australia Credit:Andrew Quilty

"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.

Gupta group companies are particularly interested in turnaround assets, Gupta said.
You're not imagining it. Aldi's ads are everywhere.

And for the first time, it has spent more on ads than major chain Coles.

After Aldi initially shunned expensive television ads and the major media, the privately held German chain outspent Coles for the first time in August 2015.

It then spent "significantly" more on ads than Coles in November 2015, and again in January this year, according to information and measurement company Nielsen.
Janice Crouch, who founded the Trinity Broadcasting Network with her husband Paul and preached a "gospel of prosperity" with him on TBN programs, reaching millions of viewers around the world, has died aged 78.

Her death was announced in a family statement on TBN's website. At her death the network and members of her family were fighting in court over multiple lawsuits, including one involving an accusation of a rape and another claiming financial improprieties.

Crouch was a convivial and colourful presence on screen, typically appearing in a bouffant frosted pink or champagne. Speaking with a singsong lilt, she referred to herself as Mama as she delivered an uplifting version of scripture that included personal encounters with the divine and linked spirituality to material success.

A donation to their church, the Crouches said, would be repaid with divinely ordained riches.

Crouch and her husband were the hosts of TBN's talk show Praise the Lord. She was also TBN vice-president and director of network programming, helping to develop many of its popular shows.

The Crouches started their network as a single station, now called KTBN-TV 40, in Santa Ana, California, in 1973 with the help of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, who went on to found their own hugely popular televised ministry in South Carolina.
It's about the future-blindness which has gripped our political parties and their stooges, as the country stagnates into debt, division and rancour, led by a visionless class of professional self-servers largely recruited from the ranks of those who've never held a real job, run a real enterprise or worked in a real industry  political staffers, union organisers and lobbyists. It's about the lack of transparency, accountability and personal responsibility that goes with party politics as it's played nowadays.

This election, more than any, is about the "black hole-in-the-heart" of Australia's political representation  not about the contest of ideas.

As the torrent of spin once more engulfs the nation, coast-to-coast, it is clear that, for many voters, a paralysing ennui has set in that numbs them to the endless slogans, the schoolyard barbs, the exaggerated claims, the "repurposing" of history, the tawdry bribes and the attempted hijacking of the national interest by the sclerotic ideologies of left and right.

As examples of where the loss of Australia's moral compass is taking us, it fell to a foreign paper, The New York Times, to twice shame the nation over our inhuman treatment of refugees  a policy endorsed by both the main contenders in this election. Then there is our unconscionable support for nuclear weapons on the anniversary of Hiroshima. There is the ugly attempt of the Turnbull government to airbrush the devastation of Australia's once-great Barrier Reef out of world history. There is the commitment of both sides of politics to never-ending war in the Middle East, and the politically serviceable terrorism it spawns.

Despite nearly two-thirds of Australians demanding more action on climate change (ABC VoteCompass) the two main parties endorse growth in the coal and gas industries which will commit generations of Australians (and all other nations) to an accelerating climate catastrophe. (A bizarre case of synaptic malfunction in the political brain was the announcement by the Liberal Party of a $6.5 million upgrade for a regional airport in NSW that its own climate policies will eventually submerge!).

Another was the federal Labor frontbencher with the undeclared $2.3 million house, in a party that professes to stand for the disadvantaged and lowly paid. No matter how hard they try, both parties continue to be touched by such incidents. They have become endemic. A federal ICAC is the only vermifuge.

No wonder voters are disillusioned, disinterested, disengaged, disgusted. Despite the election being ostensibly called to get rid of them, there now seems every likelihood of an increase in the number of independents and minor parties as disenchantment with the majors grows. Minority governments could become a perennial feature of our political scene. And coups-d'etat  such as the predicted attempt, by Abbott on Turnbull, should he fail to secure a convincing majority  will be a regular event, foisting "factional warriors" on the nation for whom it never voted.

Although this has been building up over several election cycles, 2016 is shaping as the watershed moment in Australian politics when voters shift from supporting party politics to seeking people with decency, integrity, talent and commitment to represent them.
Parenting isn't always sparkles and good times. Sometimes you hit a wall but you are still responsible for your child's welfare. When you are a parent, you may not get the sleeping routine right and need help, you may not get the feeding routine right and need help, but surely we have not got to the stage where we need to point out that you do not leave a six-year-old and a four-year-old unattended? You just don't do stuff like that. You have your responsibility there in front of you. A Perth teacher has been charged with child pornography offences. Credit:Viki Lascaris Step-mum or not, the fact the 'step parent card' has even been played has given all of us step parents a bad name.

If you are in a relationship with someone, you are in it because you love them. Their children become part of your family. A Perth court has to determine if the child accused of rape understands what is going on in court. Credit:John Donegan All parents know kids can drive you mad at times, and there are occasions that you wish you, or they, could disappear. But, at the end of the day you are responsible for them. That is reality. Boots and all, you owe it to these children to be someone that they can look up to and respect, not someone who neglects them and has no regard for their welfare. If you can't find appropriate childcare then you'll just have to delay your travel plans. Credit:Gabriele Charotte

In fact, as a step parent you feel even more responsibility to look after the children because the repercussions if you don't can be even greater than with your own children. The reality is that once you have kids, life as you used to know it just goes out the window. That is part and parcel of the whole parenting journey. Children can make life hard. But other adults can make it even harder. Credit:Gabriele Charotte I have lost count of the functions, the milestone birthdays, the weddings and other special events in Perth, interstate and overseas that we have been invited to but due to our lack of family support cannot attend. Thousands of others are no doubt in exactly the same boat. If you are lucky enough to have parents, siblings or friends who can take the kids off your hands for a few days then that is wonderful for you.

But if, just like my family, you don't have that luxury then you deal with the reality that any getaway will either mean taking the kids with you, or be delayed until later in life when they have grown up and are capable of looking after themselves. I don't know any parent who wouldn't love an hour by themselves - when they want it. Who wouldn't want to just walk out of the door and go to that have coffee or meal, exercise session, shopping expedition, catch up with the girls or the guys? Here in WA, where there are thousands of FIFO families, just ask the person left at home looking after the kids what would they give to have a break in their day when they want it, rather than counting down the days until their partner returns to help out. And even then, they can't drop everything when the person walks through the door as the partner needs time to settle back into family routine.

Everyone longingly hears of the people who can do a weekend away with a partner or a trip overseas and who has that family support to be able to do so and wishes that they could too. Sometimes, you just have to accept the cards you have been dealt and deal with them. Personal responsibility is a familiar theme in most of my columns. I find it so sad that it needs to be pointed out time and time again because here we have a situation where literally anything could have happened to the young children left to fend for themselves. It is somewhat ironic that we live in a time where sadly most people won't even let their children play unattended in their own front yards, walk alone to the local park or to school, or even go to a public toilet unaccompanied. Yet here we have kids allegedly left alone for days while their parents travelled overseas! If anyone is thinking of doing what this couple has allegedly done please think again - there are many scenarios which spring to mind as a result of what has happened.

The house could have been broken into, the children could have been abducted, sexually assaulted, and/or murdered. The house could have burned down. The children could have wandered out into the street and been struck by a car. The children could have injured themselves or each other in any number of ways. The list of potential harm grows the more you think about the situation. The woman is due to face child neglect charges in Perth Magistrates Court on June 22. Loading I cannot wait to hear the excuses for what is totally inexcusable and unjustifiable behaviour as a parent.
John Cusack took up the concept in Grosse Point Blank. The burgeoning on-set affair between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie spiced it up in Mr and Mrs Smith, and Jack Nicholson, Kathleen Turner and Anjelica Huston gave it their all in John Huston's Prizzi's Honor, turning the result into a black comic classic.

The romantic hitman. It's a recurring Hollywood fantasy  the idea that a gun for hire can be seduced into taking his or her eye off the target by the onset of love.

But it's a scenario that takes delicate handling and that's not what it gets in Mr Right, an independent effort written by Max Landis (Victor Frankenstein) and directed by Spain's Paco Cabezas. It stars an unflappable Sam Rockwell as the hitman and Pitch Perfect's Anna Kendrick as a girl who finds that his action-packed approach to courtship is just what she needs to brighten a life blighted by a string of hopeless boyfriends.

Rockwell's Francis is already disenchanted with his trade. In fact, he's making amends for past sins by knocking off his clients rather than their intended victims. Naturally enough, this policy is getting him into a lot of trouble.

Not that you would know it from Rockwell, who's always so intent on playing it cool it's virtually impossible to detect signs of emotional life in his performances. This is the kind of film where every gunman has a gimmick and his lies in his dance moves. Before lining up his prey, he capers around, dodging their bullets until he can find the right moment to discharge his own.

In an attempt to keep up with him, Kendrick develops her own shtick, settling on a hyperactive form of ditziness verging on the suicidal. The fact she delivers it so convincingly makes it all the more unnerving.
Iggy Azalea, one of Australia's most successful artists performing abroad, is set to return to home.

The star from Mullumbimby, in northern NSW, will not only be coming back in the physical sense but also seeking a comeback in her stalled career after what she described as having a 'psychotic breakdown' last year.

Los Angeles Lakers' Nick Young with fiancee and Australian recording artist Iggy Azalea. Credit:AP

Azalea shot to fame in 2014 with her global smash Fancy (featuring Charli XCX) reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100, but negative media coverage over homophobic comments she made in the past, allegations of cultural appropriation, and her plastic surgery news left her drained.

"I had to have a psychotic breakdown last year," Azalea told Britain's Schon! Magazine. "I felt tired and stressed out.
FOR THE LOVE OF DOGS ***1/2

7pm, 7Two The second season of this impossibly charming series is underway, and it's hard to think of better family viewing on a Sunday night. Assuming your family is fond of dogs, of course. This time at the Battersea home for dogs and cats Paul O'Grady (MBE, former drag queen, and all-round sweetheart) introduces us to the usual mixed bag of mutts. One kind-hearted cab driver has brought in an elderly Jack Russell found shivering on a street corner. An equally elderly Staffy and her daughter arrive after their even more elderly owner passes away. And three perfectly enormous puppies  already the size of Labradors  must be properly socialised before they can find new homes. Happy endings all round? You bet. Paul O'Grady hosts For the Love of Dogs. Credit:ABC Publicity COLOUR THEORY

Series return

***

9pm, NITV Making a nice companion piece to Songlines on Screen, which airs immediately before it, is this always-interesting arts series focusing on Indigenous "makers". Tony Albert makes a fond and informed host as he introduces us to some fascinating and diverse artists, gently interested in the politics of the pieces as well as the process without ever being polemical. In the opening ep to season three we meet mother and son Julie and Clive Freeman from the Wreck Bay area on the NSW south coast who use traditional materials and techniques to create rather beautiful works of contemporary art. Colour Theory is on straight after Songlines on Screen. THE MINDY PROJECT ***1/2

11pm, 7Flix
But that's about as far as it goes.

The Liberal Party's decision to back Labor in the inner city has three dividends for Malcolm Turnbull; it allows the Prime Minster to take a "principled" stand against the "extreme" Greens; it allows him to wedge Labor, who cannot and will not put the Liberals ahead of the Greens in every electorate; and, it will please the Coalition's conservative base.

For Labor, it likely means it will hold its shaky inner city seats  at least for another term  and that the ALP can switch focus to Labor-Liberal contests.

Labor has already said it will back Liberals ahead of the Nationals in three three-cornered contests as a quid pro quo, and it may go further and back the Liberals ahead of Nick Xenophon candidates in South Australia, too  saving Jamie Briggs and even perhaps Christopher Pyne.

Deal making is alive and well in politics. For Senator Di Natale to pretend otherwise  he claimed he had had "no discussions with the Liberal Party" and "no discussion with the Labor Party about preferences"  defies credibility.
Twice as many Australians would get faster fibre-to-the-home internet connections under a future Shorten government, but the rollout of the NBN would cost taxpayers at most only $1 billion more and would be completed in the same time, Labor says.

In a pitch to younger voters, universities and businesses that rely on fast internet speeds for e-commerce, Labor will on Monday promise a move away from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's cut-price part-copper national broadband network and to connect an extra 2 million homes and businesses by June 2022.

This is the same time frame promised by the Coalition government, but under Labor 39 per cent of homes and businesses would get fibre to the premises  up from 20 per cent under the current plan.

Crucially, Labor will also promise to cap the cost of the NBN at $57 billion  $1 billion more than the Coalition's NBN, which has itself blown out in cost from an original estimate of $29.5 billion.
Labor will preference the Greens ahead of the Liberals across the country and is considering a deal with Nick Xenophon that could see the independent senator pick up three Liberal seats in South Australia and possibly even cabinet minister Christopher Pyne's seat of Sturt.

This is despite the Opposition Leader Bill Shorten vowing to never again enter Labor into a power-sharing agreement with the Greens and his fellow Victorian right-wing ally Michael Danby vowing to preference the Liberals over the Greens. And it comes after the senior left-wing frontbencher Anthony Albanese called on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to rule out ever preferencing the Greens, decrying it as the "ultimate cynical politics".

Last month Mr Shorten told reporters the Greens were "dreaming" to think Labor would ever form another minority government after the electoral backlash former prime minister Julia Gillard suffered when her minority government was swept ouf of office in 2013.
The younger brother of a 38-year-old man found fatally stabbed in Melbourne's south-east has issues with drugs, alcohol and is suffering from depression, a court hearing heard on Sunday morning.

Shane Ryan Brown, 32, of Cranbourne, has been charged with murder over his brother's death.

His lawyer Samantha Liddy told the court that her client was withdrawing from cannabis and alcohol.

"He's suffering from depression and does need to see a doctor," she said.

Mr Brown handed himself in to police and was charged with murder after his brother was found injured at a Cranbourne home on Friday night.
He said there could be a need for similar programs in some primary schools  but they would need to be framed in the context of social cohesion and respect.

"You would hardly want to be speaking to primary school kids about violent world events unless it is something they are already talking about," Professor Barton said.

"Getting these programs right at any age group is difficult and it is only something we have been doing in the past two years because the need has become apparent."

He said he had not heard of any cases of Australian primary school students being radicalised, but children could be exposed to dangerous influences at a young age.

One Victorian teacher, who did not want to be named, said there was not enough focus on preventing radicalisation in younger children.
An Oregon court has ruled a transgender can legally change their sex to "non binary" rather than male or female in what US legal experts are saying is the first known ruling of its kind in the United States.

On Friday, the court ruled Oregon resident, Jamie Shupe, could legally change her gender from female to non binary.

An Oregon court has ruled a transgender can legally change their sex to "non binary" in a legal first for the US. Credit:New York Times

Shupe who was born a male and began transitioning to female in 2013, identifies as neither male nor female. Shupe is quoted as saying neither male nor female titles fit their identification process, and successfully petitioned for non binary gender in Friday's historic US ruling.

Gender plays a large part of a person's identity, both "practically and profoundly", says Melbourne lawyer, Anna Brown from the Human Rights Law Centre. Globally, laws surrounding this issue are complex.
PHILIPSBURG:--- The University of St. Martin School of Continuing Education and Life Long Learning, (SCELL) has joined forces with The Windward Islands Bank Ltd, to increase Male Enrollment in 2016 at USM. Currently there are 37 males enrolled at USM and Youth Professional Network (YPN) has set a firm goal to increase that number to 57, enrolling 20 males to USM/UVI by August 1, 2016 with the businesses of St. Maartens help.

Dr. Gittens, The Founder of SCELL stated: I founded Youth Professionals Network (YPN) to support young men enrolled at USM with a solid platform to share their personal academic experiences with potential USM male students. I believe this is a perfect formula to empower USM males to become mentors while simultaneously pursuing their academic dreams and encouraging others to pursue degrees at USM and UVI at USM. I am very grateful that WIB sees the importance of YPN and male enrollment.

The Male Enrollment Business challenge started on June 1, 2016 and will run through July 31, 2016. We are requesting donations of $500 to $5000.00 to provide males ages 18-25 with their first semester scholarship to return to school in August 2016. All donations will be acknowledged at the end of the challenge and the winning business will receive community and formal USM recognition. All donating businesses will be invited to the awards ceremony held in early August to present scholarships to the male recipients. Derek Downes, Managing Director of WIB jumped aboard immediately when he heard about the business challenge and donated two scholarships for two males to enroll at USM this Fall.

Downes stated: As the initial key sponsor of SCELL I am very pleased with what they have done in St. Maarten and surrounding islands in such a short time. In six months they have built partnerships with the largest companies on the island and supported citizens with their many innovative programs. SCELLs impressive approach of providing businesses with solid trainings, supporting employees to return to school and building the USM Male enrollment is key to the success of St. Maarten as a whole and USM. SCELL is an organization that is changing the face of our community with tangible, measurable results that I feel should be recognized and supported by all businesses, government and the community as a whole. I encourage other business to participate in this viable business challenge and WIB is pleased to be the first contributor to this great cause.

Mr. Javid Hurtault the President of YPN and a second year accounting major stated: Education never stops and should be viewed as an ongoing personal development. The more males on the island that pursue degrees, the better the St. Maarten community will become. We are asking the businesses big and small of St. Maarten to assist us with increasing male enrollment at USM, a move in the right direction for the community at large. We can make a difference with one scholarship at a time.

For Further information on donating a scholarship to YPN and information or questions on how to enroll at USM, please call 554-2437 or visit the SCELL website @ http://scell.usmonline.onl/
LA Film Festival Spotlight on the "U.S. Fiction Award" Winners

The Santa Monica Observer was privileged to interview Remy Auberjonois, his wife, Kate Nowlin, and his father, Rene Auberjonois, on June 3, 2016, to discuss their award-winning drama, "Blood Stripe".

"Blood Stripe" follows a female U.S. Marine Sergeant after she returns home from her third tour of duty in Afghanistan, wracked by crippling Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Disconnected from her home life and no longer able to cope in an urban setting, she escapes to a picturesque summer camp she attended as a child. But the deep emotional scars from her military-related physical and sexual trauma continue to haunt her.

"Blood Stripe" held its World Premiere on June 2, 2016, at the Los Angeles Film Festival to a sold-out audience. The film was so well received that it was later screened to a second sold-out audience on June 7. On June 9, "Blood Stripe" won the "U.S. Fiction Award", one of the top juried prizes at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

Remy Auberjonois, who co-authored and made his directorial debut in "Blood Stripe", is known for his work as an actor in films such as "Michael Clayton" and "The International", and for his work on the television show, "The Good Wife". Kate Nowlin, who co-authored and plays the lead actress in "Blood Stripe", is known for her work in the films "Young Adult" and "The Adjustment Bureau", as well as for her parts on television shows, such as "Law and Order". Rene Auberjonois, who plays an important, supporting role in "Blood Stripe", is a highly acclaimed actor known, among other things, for portraying Father Mulcahy in the Robert Altman film, "M*A*S*H", being the voice of Chef Louis who sings "Les Poissons" while trying to cook Sebastian in Disney's "The Little Mermaid", and for lead roles on the television shows "Benson", "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine", and "Boston Legal". He also won a Tony award on Broadway for his performance in the stage musical "Coco" (about the life of Coco Chanel), alongside actress Katherine Hepburn.

OBSERVER: When they wrote the screenplay, did Remy and Kate intend to cast the entire family in the film?

RENE AUBERJONOIS: No. It just worked out that way. They always knew that the lead was going to be Kate. But I don't think they knew that their daughter would be a character in it or that I would be a character in it. When they first said that they wanted to make a movie, I jokingly said to them, "What's my part?" and they both looked at each other - looked a little uncomfortable - and they said, "You know Dad, this film is about people in Northern Minnesota and you don't really play those kind of people. You're kind of more high falutin"... so I was originally being turned down by my own son and daughter-in-law. But sitting here now so many months later, I still have to deal with the complexity of being directed by my son. The most difficult part was not wanting to fail him, and that put a kind of a pressure on me that I've never experienced as an actor.

OBSERVER: The film is in competition for the "U.S. Fiction Award". Do you think the film will win a prize?

RENE AUBERJONOIS: Listen, it would be nice if they are acknowledged for their work, but this is a film that no one who sees it is going to forget that they've seen it. So whether it wins a prize - of course that would be nice - but I don't think that's what everybody's focus is on. The focus is trying to get it distributed, to get it out there to an audience that can relate. It is not an easy subject in the sense that it is asking you to deal with a difficult subject, so we'll see. [Several days after this interview, "Blood Stripe" won the "U.S. Fiction Award".]

OBSERVER: How did the idea for the film come about?

REMY AUBERJONOIS: I had grown up hearing about my Dad working on Altman films and I know that some of the experiences he had were very intensive, and there was an aspect of the idea of movie making - that communal living/working - that was really appealing to me. In thinking about trying to make a movie - a situation like that - sounded like a lot of fun and also a focused way to work and get a lot of work out of people in a short period of time.

KATE NOWLIN: We were inspired by Camp Vermillion and we knew we could use it as a good base location. House people. And also bring them to a really majestic place.

Then the story came. There are a lot of servicemen and women throughout the state of Minnesota. We shot in the Iron Range and there are a lot of people who enlist to get out... to get an education... to get income. And Remy knew that he would want to track one primary character through the film, and because of my stature, physically, we realized that I could be a soldier. I started reading about it. There was a woman from that town on the lake that was named "Soldier of the Year" by Army Times months before. And the more research we started to do - looking at women in the military, which I had never previously paid much attention to - I recognized that that could be me. And we ran from there.

OBSERVER: Did you receive any special training to get into physical shape for the part?

KATE NOWLIN: Yes, I did about three and a half months of training prior to the shoot. I started in early May and we were shooting in August. I had two different trainers. And they put me through different forms of "bootcamp" as best they knew how. I say that in quotes because it was nothing like bootcamp. I was in the gym being pushed and building muscle. I was putting myself through something I hadn't done before to get stronger. There is a question and debate around women's physicality and whether they are strong enough to serve. Whether they belong in the military. Female Rangers were going through that trial as we were editing the film. I thought it was very important to create a real portrait of strength because they are strong enough. I worked hard for that.

REMY AUBERJONOIS: There has been a tremendous amount of discussion about women serving in the military, but when we started writing the film in October of 2013, women were not allowed to serve in combat according to Pentagon policy (although they had been for quite some time). And then it was December 2015 - we had finished the film and were submitting to festivals - by December 2015, the Pentagon declared all combat roles across all branches of the military open to women. So that span of time with us working on the film coincided with this massive shift in official recognition of what these women were already doing and have the capacity to continue to do. So now you have the women who passed the test to become Army Rangers, which is the most physically demanding thing you can do, so those barriers were coming down and that coincided with us working on the film, which is just our luck in terms of being filmmakers. We knew as we were starting that these were going to be stories that were going to start to be told, and we wanted to be, as best we could, at the forefront of that kind of narrative treatment of that subject.

OBSERVER: Did you know that you were going to have a 16-day shoot?

REMY AUBERJONOIS: No! If we had known, we might not be here.

KATE NOWLIN: Our Director of Photography, Radium Cheung, almost quit when we told him. He said, "We can't do that!"

REMY AUBERJONOIS: We had originally been working with a 24-day shoot schedule. We started writing by October 2013 and we were shooting by August 2014. We got a full commitment for financing and started the ball rolling and started spending money, making commitments, making obligations, and then, of course, in typical indie fashion, the financing fell through. In a lot of situations, that movie might then fall apart, but we knew that the camp was going to be undergoing a massive construction project after the summer of 2014, and we also knew that this story was very timely and we didn't want to lose our window to be some of the first [filmmakers] to treat it. So when the financing fell through, the community of family and friends really stepped up. We received so much tremendous support and generosity that we were able to put together a smaller financing package which required a shorter shooting schedule. We made a lot of adjustments to the script. We combined locations where scenes happened. We trimmed certain things down. We were in pre-production when it happened, so we just kept going.

RENE AUBERJONOIS: You were going to make this film no matter what because I remember when it got dicey, which always happens with movies - financing always falls through - you have to keep juggling and moving and there was a certain point where I thought, "Well they are just not going to be able to do this," and they said, "We will shoot this on iPhones if we have to. We're gonna make this film." I think that commitment and sense of "F--k it, we are gonna make this movie," was what made friends... people who didn't have vast amounts of wealth... they just recognized that this movie had to be made and they were going to make it no matter what, so people just came forward.

REMY AUBERJONOIS: People stepped up - it was amazing. It came from our connections and people loving and believing in us, and it also came from the strength of the story and the necessity of it, and people recognized, "Yes, this is a real thing that needs to be told and it isn't being told and I would love to help them do that." And that went from the people who gave us money, the people who came to work for very little money, the actors and the crew who all chose to do it. We really did it in 16 12-hour days. Kate was doing those scenes in two takes. We were shooting things with minimal set-ups, minimal coverage.

KATE NOWLIN: And that's the commitment and I think that really is the subject matter. I really do. It got bigger than us quickly when we decided to tell a story like this. We knew we were in the service of something that was unique and brought so many people together. I remember I was in the gym when I got the call that the money was gone. The original commitment. And it felt like the wind got knocked out of me, and my trainer looked at me and he was like, "You get back up." We were going. The train had left the station and out of the good will of those near to us and far, it came together in the most astounding and affirming way.

REMY AUBERJONOIS: And it continued to do so because after we finished production, we spent all the money we had getting those 16-days in the can, and even some money we didn't have. Then we had to regroup and we had a Kickstarter campaign which we raised money to finish paying our bills and to fund our post-production. We raised $115,000.

OBSERVER: Wow!

KATE NOWLIN: Our goal was $60,000. We raised that in eleven days, and then we kept going. It was unreal.

RENE AUBERJONOIS: I became the Donald Trump of the Twittersphere. I was relentless. I had this Twitter account that I had for a couple of years to raise money for Doctors Without Borders. But it became clear that this would be a great route. So I went from 9,000 followers to 48,000 followers. And people would give five dollars or ten dollars.

REMY AUBERJONOIS: The Kickstarter phenomenon is so amazing because everybody gets invested. You put $5 in. You put $250 in. We had some people who contributed at a very high level. Those people who could. But there were people who contributed $1 or $5 and that energy... Those people get invested and they tell their friends and they watch it religiously and everybody likes to see, "Oh, they hit that mark!"

RENE AUBERJONOIS: But also you had a teaser. It wasn't like a blank slate and we want you to help us make the movie.

KATE NOWLIN: Our editor, Jeremy Kotin, cut a really beautiful teaser together with footage that just worked, and our co-producers, Sky Weiss and Julie Christeas of Tandem Pictures, were masterful at helping us preserve the heart and integrity of the story and really get it down to the bare-bones of what we needed.

RENE AUBERJONOIS: The bottom line is that, when you talk to experienced directors, most of them will say that 85-90 percent of my job is casting it correctly because if that doesn't happen, then the ship has sailed and you're lost. Well, that was already taken care of with Kate. Kate's performance reminds you of Hilary Swank in "Million Dollar Baby". She achieved the physical, but also the depth of the emotions. The other thing is, a lot of what directors do has nothing to do with art. After the casting, it has to do with answering a million questions and juggling and playing the chess game of getting it done in the most efficient way, but also getting it the way you want it to be. And so having spent a life with this man as a child saying, "Why is your room such a f--king mess?", [laughs] it was pretty impressive that he went on to direct a feature film!

OBSERVER: One of the things we really appreciated about this movie is that it strayed from the typical Hollywood formula. Kate's character doesn't find a new hot love. Everything just isn't okay. There isn't some sob story at the end. All these contrived cliches that are used by Hollywood to deal with difficult situations and create a happy resolution - you just left all of that aside.

KATE NOWLIN: We defied it.

RENE AUBERJONOIS: What I love about the film is that it leaves so much unsaid while telling everything. When they first were taking this script out, we sent it to a producer that I've worked with - a very smart man - and his immediate reaction was, "Well, it has to have a happy ending. You can't end it like that."

KATE NOWLIN: He offered to give us money if we changed the ending...

RENE AUBERJONOIS: Yeah, right.

KATE NOWLIN: And put Charlize Theron in my part.

REMY AUBERJONOIS: These stories don't have neat endings. It's too complex and too large. And there are too many different versions of the story to boil it down to one. And the fact is, because we weren't making a Hollywood movie, we weren't beholden to Hollywood interests. We were able to acknowledge and dive into those complexities. The film didn't have to have a happy ending. We could treat the subject matter in the way we felt as artists it should be treated.

KATE NOWLIN: We were students of this subject matter in a lot of ways. We brought our own personal things to bear. I have some experience with trauma... physical trauma. And the more we learned... that spoke to us as we constructed and crafted this story, and the truth is that what I was so compelled by is that it is very hard to return. It is hard to go away and to have this kind of experience and ever come home again. And believe me, I wanted some peace for my character. Is there a moment when she can talk in the chapel and unload and heal? It just never felt right. We were also compelled to represent a depiction of a person who is unable to speak.

REMY AUBERJONOIS: Our story is about what happens in the 129 days before [Kate's character] can get treatment at the VA. What is the impact of that waiting period on the people who need treatment? Not all of them need it. This isn't the only version of this story. The woman who was named "Soldier of the Year" by Army Times - she turned immense personal tragedy into something very positive. We were interested in the other side of that coin and telling that story. But it's not to say that this is the only story of people returning from Afghanistan.

KATE NOWLIN: Of course not. We were just compelled, and we felt we had permission because we had creative control to shine light there.

OBSERVER: One thing we really liked about Kate's character is that she was a hero. She was never a victim. Things may have happened to her as a consequence of her bravery, but it isn't because she was a victim.

KATE NOWLIN: Correct. That was conscious. These people are survivors. They are strong. It was vital that while she is burdened, she is not the victim.

REMY AUBERJONOIS: That is what is so important with the depiction of women on film. As an actress, Kate had played a number of characters who were victimized. So much of the depiction of what we see at the very beginning of so many Hollywood television shows after 9 PM - the teaser is of a woman who has been victimized and then that is the launching-point of the story.

RENE AUBERJONOIS: I also think that it's important to talk about, not only what's happening to Kate's character, but what happens to her community [after she returns from service] and how they try to deal with a situation like this that is not simple. Whether it's her husband... Whether it's Dot, who runs the camp, who recognizes right away that there is something here that needs to be taken care of, or whether its the bumbling minister that I play who doesn't really know how to deal with something this complex. I love the fact that the film is about one person's journey, but no journey goes without extending ripples throughout the community that the person moves through. And that is one of the things about this situation - people coming back from war or any kind of trauma. What it does to people more than just themselves individually. So, that's important to see.

REMY AUBERJONOIS: There was a quote that we had read when we were working on the movie that said, "PTSD is a cultural malady," and we were very interested in the way in which our culture deals with this now. We have been fighting these wars of which we have largely been kept unaware. We don't see a lot of the war imagery...

KATE NOWLIN: We've never seen the bodies.

REMY AUBERJONOIS: We don't see people coming back. So, there is this disconnect culturally between the real facts of the war and the impact. There are many cultures that have ritualized processes by which they reintegrate their warriors, and there is a process by which that warrior is accepted back into the community. That warrior processes the experience of war, and the community accepts that this was the necessary thing to happen for the community, and now he must reintegrate. We don't have rituals like that and we don't have that as a general culture, in my experience. We've lost that. We were very interested in the fact that in this small, mechanized world that we live in you could be in-country and then you're done with your service or you get injured and thirty-nine hours later you're walking back home.

KATE NOWLIN: At your kitchen sink... The level of awareness, vigilance, defensiveness that you have to sustain to be there during war - the life and death every day - that is the brutal adjustment. That is what we are trying to depict. She cannot put this down. This vigilance doesn't go away. She has just been fighting for her life. The minutia and the focus and the way that these survivors are living day to day is astounding to me and I don't know how you normalize after that.

REMY AUBERJONOIS: In these wars, too, certainly the very intensive combat roles have been occupied by men, but the lack of front lines and the gorilla-nature of the warfare means that during the whole situation you're living in a heightened sense of awareness, no matter where you are and what you are doing.

KATE NOWLIN: I believe Afghanistan is the longest war that we've been engaged in to date, and because it's a volunteer army, these people aren't just going on one tour. We've read a lot about Vietnam - there are a lot of comparisons drawn. Most people who were drafted did one tour. Now people are doing three, five, six tours. It's repeated. That is also taking a toll and affecting our servicemen and women in a new way. Most of them are going on multiple tours. Three seems to be the average number.

REMY AUBERJONOIS: Women have an added layer with Military Sexual Trauma. There is a lot of iceberg in this film. There is a disease around sexuality. There is a moral injury. And a lot of people, not just women, suffer from MST. It is often not reported.

KATE NOWLIN: There is a good bit of disorientation. Disassociation. Related to trauma, as well.

OBSERVER: Where does this movie go from here? You've obviously premiered the film at the LA Film Festival. What's next?

REMY AUBERJONOIS: That's a good question. We are developing a distribution strategy. There are different routes. We are talking with the producers about what would be the most advantageous strategy. We will see what kind of interest we get from distributors. A traditional distribution model may or may not best serve this film. There are potentially educational distribution possibilities for this film. There is special theatrical distribution. And there is traditional theatrical and digital distribution. Now that it has premiered, we are going to get reviewed. We understand that it's not a conventional sell of a movie. We are working on developing that strategy now.

OBSERVER: Do you have any other projects in the works?

Daniel Margolis "Blood Stripe" Director Remy Auberjonois and Actress Kate Nowlin are on the red carpet at the LA Film Festival's Opening Night Premiere on June 1, 2016

REMY AUBERJONOIS: This has taken up a lot of time and attention. Getting to this point. But I have a slate of things in development. I have a couple of series ideas. I have two more movies that we are beginning development on.

RENE AUBERJONOIS: My part?

REMY AUBERJONOIS: Oh yes, I am really working on developing parts for my Dad first. [laughs] I have another movie to shoot in Minnesota - a dark contemporary themed film, and then one that's a completely different milieu - like Hollywood in the 70's. So, we will see which one I get more traction on. Kate has a project she's developing.

KATE NOWLIN: I have been commissioned to write a pilot for a series I would like to shoot in Minneapolis.

OBSERVER: Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.
Construction accident resulted in the evacuation of 2 neighboring office buildings

Today at approximately 10:10 AM, Santa Monica Fire Department received reports of a construction accident, resulting in a severed natural gas main at 2425 Olympic Blvd. First arriving units found a high pressure, 1" gas main severed with no fire. 3 Engines, a Ladder Truck, a Hazardous Materials Unit, and Chief Officer Supervisor, ultimately responded to manage the incident.

This leak resulted in the evacuation of 2 neighboring office buildings, 2425 Olympic, and 1620 26th Street. Also, all streets in the area were blocked for the duration of the leak. Approximately 2 hours after the incident was reported, Southern California Gas Company was able to cap the leak.

Workers were able to return to their offices after the Fire Department completed inspecting the building with combustible gas detectors, and found no residual gas. No injuries to civilians, or Firefighters were reported.
Insider: How Colts will try to help Sam Ehlinger in first NFL start

Colts
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GREENWICH - Some came to see the documentary Newtown with trepidation, and maybe some hope.

This entry in the Greenwich International Film Festival  a documentary about the aftermath of the Dec. 14, 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School  hit close to home.

Its very emotional, said Christine Gurvitz, a school nurse in Trumbull who knew some of the educators killed in Sandy Hook. Speaking before viewing the movie, she added: Were hoping that were going to see that some of the families are healing and starting to move forward.

The movie screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January. But making its Connecticut debut at the Bow Tie Cinemas in downtown Greenwich on Saturday, it took on the feeling of a heartbreaking home movie, striking deep for many who attended.

The Newtown tragedy, in which 20 children and six educators died, remains the deadliest school shooting in America. It was carried out by 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who had fatally shot his mother before going to the school and who shot and killed himself as first-responders arrived.

Colleen deVeer, a co-founder of the film festival, read a letter from U.S. Sen. Christopher Murphy before the movie, and got choked up and had to pause before speaking the line: Schools should always be a safe, fun place to learn.

The movie begins with slow motion shots of a parade, then scenes of the day of the shooting, with 911 calls heard. One caller to reports whats happening before her voice trails off murmuring over and over, Please Jesus  Please Jesus 

The recollections are harrowing. Teacher Abbey Clements recalls hearing the attack with her students as it happened.

We listened to 154 shots ring through the loud speaker, she says in the film.

In another part of the movie, Mark Barden looks through photos of his son Daniel, who was six when he was killed in the shooting. The photos show happy times, including a family outing to choose a Christmas tree just days before the tragedy.

I look at these pictures and its like its still then, he says. Everything is the way it should be.

David Wheeler, whose son Ben was killed in the shooting, shows the marks on the door jamb where they had been measuring the boys height. The last measurement is in November, 2012. But a little bit above that, Bens brother Nate has marked the height he believes Ben would have reached by the time of the filming with the words Would be here.

EMT Laurie Veillette, who was with Ben when he died, talks about a letter she wrote to the Wheelers about him.

That was a tough letter, but I couldnt not send it, if (that) makes any sense, she says in the documentary. I knew I had to say something, I knew I had to let them know that he was cared for, that there was love there.

Some of the family members are shown testifying on the need for action, recalling failed attempts to tighten federal gun laws after the massacre.

While it documents the pain and grief that followed the shooting, Newtown also shows life continuing as family members resolve to keep the memories of the lost children alive.

It would be awful to be a grownup and not remember things, Daniels older sister Natalie Barden says in the movie.

In some ways, families have moved on. The Wheelers had another child, Matty, in 2014. But in a post-screening discussion, family members and makers of the film talked about the importance of remembering  and of how the film and the aftermath of the tragedy can make people more aware of each other as a community.

Its about bearing witness to this journey, Mark Barden said in the discussion. And theres no end.

Cliona Cronin, of Rye, N.Y., attended the movie sporting a bracelet with the zip code 06482 - for the Sandy Hook portion of Newtown - given to her by parents there. She and others had organized a beach day for 109 Newtown family members months after the shooting. The organizers of the day and the families remain in touch.

Our communities have formed quite a bond, Cronin said.

After the shooting, the Sandy Hook Elementary School was demolished. While its not shown in the movie, a new school is in the final stages of construction on a different portion of the same property. It is scheduled to open this fall.

Near the end of the film, Wheeler talks about the feelings of the parents who sent their children to school that day, including the ones whose children came home safe.

Every single parent who put their kid on the bus that morning did everything right, he says. And we have to hang on to that.
My April 3 op-ed in The Advocate was ostensibly a thank you to Stamford folks who supported me and advocated for my reappointment to the Zoning Board. I titled it An open letter to the people of Stamford. The Advocate opted for a spicier title, The perils of big development, to which (land-use consultant) Rick Redniss wrote a response.

Mr. Redniss apparently did not read the piece I wrote very carefully or else chose to deflect attention away from the issues of concern I raised. The 90-year history of the downtown was worthy of note, but I did not offer any commentary on the efforts and policies of successive generations of planners and officials who grappled with maintaining a viable Stamford Downtown. The success of the downtown is attributable to the confluence of a variety of factors at several points in time, demographics, economics, perceived desirability of a downtown environment, public policy, private investment, access, convenience and, yes, parking and availability of parking. Most certainly, in more recent years, the promotional efforts of the Downtown Special Services District under Sandy Goldsteins leadership should not be underestimated. The downtown has changed significantly over the past decade. The new population is young and transient, the streets are congested, commercial vacancy rates are high and greater retail diversity would be beneficial. Clearly, parking does not solve all our problems. Parking is only one factor governing the success of downtown. Additionally, Mr. Redniss reported that the commuter population has decreased. In fact, the commuter population is growing and has never been higher.

In my op-ed I opined, rather than projects conforming to our zoning regulations, the Planning and Zoning Boards routinely entertain applicant modifications to the regulations so that the zoning fits the development. Mr. Redniss comment, What regulations? is telling as to his complete lack of regard for the integrity of the existing zoning and regulatory constraints of our regulations. Mr. Redniss often comes to Zoning Board meetings having personally re-written the boards regulations to suit the project of the developer he is representing. Might there be a profit motive behind Mr. Redniss actions?

The Land Use Bureau staff condones such behavior by consistently receiving, on behalf of the Planning Board and Zoning Board, applications that are not in conformance with the zoning regulations.

The Connecticut General Statutes requires municipalities to provide uniformity of standards and requirements within similarly zoned districts throughout the city. How can there be uniformity amongst similarly zoned districts if the standards and uses are continually subject to change? Builders and their advocates for large-scale development, including Mr. Redniss, routinely approach the Planning and Zoning Boards and Harbor Management Commission (when applicable) with applications that need zoning regulation amendments or text changes that may include reduced setbacks, increased height, reduced development ratios of land to structure and even changes of use. The net effect of these zoning regulation amendments or text changes is increased lot coverage, less natural light onto the street, greater density, and reduced parking, contributing to congestion and, possibly, the loss of ambiance within the district. The effects are cumulative and the protections uniform standards are expected to provide property owners and residents are undermined as each development within a given district is subject to different standards.

It is a reasonable expectation that the parking standards provided in the zoning regulations will accommodate the parking needs generated by the building occupancy or land use. Commercial parking requirements are generally determined by square footage, and multifamily residential parking by the number of bedrooms per apartment. Mr. Redniss, representing numerous applicants, routinely comes before the Zoning Board with charts and surveys demonstrating how previously approved buildings were parked to demonstrate a need to decrease parking requirements of the regulations.

So, why is it that we hear consistent neighborhood complaints about parking, traffic and congestion if approved building were adequately parked? A meeting with Director of Operations Ernie Orgera confirmed the increased demand for on-street parking and congestion. How could this be?

There is an evident disconnect between parking demand and the way these residential buildings are parked. In practice, despite the existing zoning regulations and parking demand, builders and residential developers are making available only one parking space per residential unit regardless of apartment size, number of bedrooms, parking demand, or parking available. Any additional parking spaces that may be desired require the resident to incur additional monthly charges. The net result is limited or non-existent guest parking and an increased demand for on-street city parking as residents with more than one car opt out of paying to park.

The practice of changing the zoning regulations to fit the application rather than the application fitting the zoning regulations are embodied by two egregious submissions to the Land Use staff: 10 Rugby St. and a cocktail of applications submitted by BLT/Strand. In both cases, Cease and Desist Orders were issued by the Zoning Enforcement Officer and in both cases, the violators appealed the Cease and Desist Orders. At 10 Rugby St., a rock crushing operation evolved over a period of time, a use not permitted in the MG Zone. On March 22, the Appellate Court upheld the decision of the Zoning Enforcement Officer and the lower court. Instead of enforcing the regulations and seeking fines and any other remedies prescribed by the statutes for violating the zoning regulations, the Zoning Board rewarded the applicants complete disregard for the well-being of the surrounding neighbors, by entertaining and granting a text change to the Zoning Regulations to permit the crushing of building materials and rock, an established noisy and dirty nuisance. First the applicant and then the Zoning Board robbed the adjoining residential property owners and residents of the immediate protections zoning should afford for the enjoyment of their homes and properties, violating the most fundamental of zoning concepts.

BLT/ Strand submitted a series of applications to the Land Use Bureau for the elimination of the 14-acre boatyard from the South End Redevelopment District, South a single zoning tract, constituting a violation of the Master Plan and Section J of the Zoning Regulations, more particularly J.1, Purposes; J.2 Objectives; J.3 Criteria for Designation, and J.4 Permitted Uses. The applicant is attempting to convince the Zoning Board that the right to modify a water-dependent use within the SDR-S zoning tract is ample justification for the relocation of the 14-acre boatyard outside of the Zoning Tract to the other side of West Channel, the Waterside neighborhood. The application process is being complicated and muddled by legal counsel who has conflicted interests and a mayor who has stated on numerous occasions that the boatyard will not be going back to the 14-acre site, despite his pre-election promise to the contrary.

The issues I raise pertain to the willingness of the city government and boards to foster changes to the zoning regulations rather than to adhere them, emboldening developers and their advocates to flaunt zoning standards and, in some cases, zoning laws, for their financial gain at the expense of citizen sentiments and concerns resulting in a serious degradation of our quality of life.

Barry Michelson is a Republican Town Committee member and a former member of the Stamford Zoning Board.
One would think that after the scandals involving Connecticuts two large charter chains, Jumoke and Achievement First, Connecticuts education officials would finally exert some meaningful oversight over Connecticuts charter sector.

One would be wrong.

This week the Connecticut Mirror reported that Education Commissioner Dianna Wentzell dismissed a complaint against Bridgeport Achievement First, for using uncertified teachers for 47 percent of its staff, in violation of Connecticut statute. Wentzell unilaterally decided that the law allowing complaints against public schools does not apply to charters; despite the fact that charters receive more than $100 million each year in public taxpayer dollars.

Wentzell disregarded the data showing Achievement Firsts misdeeds, claiming the State Department of Education (SDE) will wait until the charter comes up for renewal. Wentzell apparently ignored the law allowing her to put a charter on probation at any time.

The laissez-faire attitude toward charter schools pervades this administration. At the June 1 State Board of Education meeting, where the board voted to grant waivers to six charters to increase their enrollment beyond the statutory cap, longtime State Board of Education member Joseph Vrabely stated that when it comes to charter oversight, we operate in the dark until the renewal process.

While SDE closes its eyes, the complaints against charters pile up. Last week, students at Achievement Firsts Amistad High School in New Haven staged a mass walkout to protest racial insensitivity and harsh discipline. They might have also protested the abominable graduation rate which, counting attrition since ninth grade, was 53 percent in 2015  well below New Havens.

Amistad is one of the schools granted an enrollment increase waiver on June 1; supposedly based on Amistads academic performance (a 53-percent graduation rate?). Recommending the increase, SDE declared that Amistad draws 100 percent of its students from New Haven. However, the New Haven Independent, in reporting the walkout story, noted (a)t 10:20, students who live in Bridgeport went inside after they were told they would not be allowed to board buses home if they didnt. Indeed, students told reporter Paul Bass that half of Amistad students come from Bridgeport every day. Is anyone at SDE minding the store?

Students have well-founded complaints about Amistads discipline practices. While suspensions statewide decreased from 2010 through 2015, they skyrocketed at Amistad, from 302 to 1,307 suspensions. There were more suspensions in 2014-15 than there were students, who numbered 984. During that five-year period, enrollment increased by about 25 percent, while suspensions more than quadrupled.

Other charters granted enrollment expansion waivers on June 1 also have deplorable suspension rates. Bridgeports Achievement First had 1,641 suspensions, almost double the number of students, 977, in 2014-15. The number of suspensions more than tripled since 2010-11, when there were 456, and 409 students.

Great Oaks Charter School in Bridgeport, operating for just one year, had 154 suspensions, outpacing its enrollment of 127 students. Great Oaks received the waiver for the largest increase in seats. Explaining the basis for exceeding the statutory cap, Linabury stated that there was a strict focus on the schools performance.

Apparently SDE does not consider abusive discipline worth investigating. It should. A recent UCLA report found that nationwide, suspensions lead to dropouts, costing more than $46 billion in lost tax revenue and other social costs.

SDE admitted that, academically, Great Oaks performs well below the state average, and worse than Bridgeport, its host district. Yet SDE still recommended Great Oaks for an increase, which the board rubber-stamped.

Beyond its appalling lack of oversight, SDE made blatant misrepresentations in its quest to expand charters. SDEs CFO, Kathleen Demsey, declared that before these charters opened, local approval and support were required. For Great Oaks and another school granted a statutory increase, Stamford Charter School for Excellence, that statement is false. The public and the local boards of education opposed these charters.

Some state board members feigned dismay that there was ample funding for charter increases while the state slashed hundreds of millions of dollars from vo-tech, magnets and public schools. They then approved the enrollment increases, without any investigation into discipline abuses, uncertified teachers or other misdeeds.

The members declared it would be unfair not to expand enrollment because the charters already held the lotteries for these seats. When asked why the charters held lotteries for seats before they were even approved, SDE again abdicated responsibility, claiming SDE has no say over charter lotteries.

With billions of dollars and student well-being at stake, Connecticuts children and taxpayers deserve better than officials who sit idly by while charter schools call all the shots.

Wendy Lecker is a columnist for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group and is senior attorney at the Education Law Center.
T he London Ghost Bus Tours have been running in the capital for the past seven years.

From Monday to Sunday, you can find a black and gold 1960s era Routemaster bus parked in Trafalgar Square (or Trafalgar Scare, if you prefer). Jump on board to find a comedy horror show taking place while you are driven around Londons main tourist attractions.

Its a theatrical sightseeing tour. Its a comedy horror show while you see the sights, explained Peter Davis, creative director of The Ghost Bus Tours.

We also tell about the haunted bus itself, which has some surprises and secrets of its own."

Like in any other tourist bus tour, the guide - which on this occasion also happens to be an actor - gives background information about the monuments.

Although, on this tour, one will also learn about Londons past executions, paranormal activity and torture, while watching a live comedy played by the conductor and a suspicious health and safety inspector.

London is perfect for this tour because there have been a lot of deaths over the years. There has been 2,000 years of people murdering each other and there are many ghosts as well, Mr Davis said.

The Ghost Bus tours depart from Trafalgar Square and last approximately one hour. They run twice a day, from Monday to Sunday. Tickets cost 21, with discounts for children and students.
P olice have stepped up patrols after a gang of men were shot at in an ambush in Finsbury Park.

Scotland Yard said a group of four men were dropped off by a yellow Toyota Prius before a handgun was produced during the attack late on Saturday night.

The men then ran towards another group of people before one of the gang opened fire in Fonthill Road.

Gio Forino, who was nearby the incident said: I think there was a shooting in Finsbury Park I heard a bang, sounded like a firecracker, neighbours gesture gun and armed response.

Detectives said nobody is believed to have been injured in the shooting at about 11.45pm, and appealed to the men who were fired on to call police.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: The suspect who discharged the firearm is described as white, late-teens, approximately 5ft 10ins tall and was wearing a dark coloured hooded top.

The other suspects from the Prius have been described as white males and all suspects are reported to have run off in the direction of Tollington Park.

He added: Over the coming days there will be an increased police presence in the Fonthill Road area.

There have been no arrests.

Anyone with information is asked to call Islington Police on 101, quoting the reference 2714184/16, or contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800555111.


F ormer Mayor of London Boris Johnson has admitted that he dyes his hair.

The Conservative MP is known for his trademark blonde locks but has previously remained tight-lipped about his hair styling.

But in an interview with the Sunday Times, Mr Johnson admitted he used bleach to keep his signature look.

He initially said This is the real thing. Its all natural", but when pressed and asked if he dyed his hair, Mr Johnson said Yes.

But just hours after The Sunday Times published their story, Mr Johnson denied he had admitted to dying his hair.

Tim Shipman, political editor at The Sunday Times, posted on Twitter that the Conservative contacted him to say he "thought I was joking about hair dye and that he was joking too about using it."

A spokesman for Mr Johnson told the Standard: "Boris was joshing with him - of course he doesn't dye his hair."

Mr Johnsons former MP father, Stanley Johnson, previously suggested his sons hair colour was completely natural.

He said: I can tell you thats 100 per cent.

I remember when he was born in New York, I nipped off to get a pizza and when I returned he was swaddled with all the other babies  but quite distinguishable by his shock of white hair.

So I can reassure the nation, its quite genuine.

But top hair stylist Heinz Schumi said he believed Boris reached for the dye some years ago.

He said: "I went to see him give a speech and when the spotlights shone on his hair, it was kind of orangey - it doesn't go light enough."
A British Airways passenger jet declared an emergency after taking off from Heathrow this morning.

Flight 1340 from London to Leeds, Yorkshire, was forced to turn around shortly after it had taken off at 8.23am.

The captain is thought to have requested a priority landing at Heathrow after a "technical issue" arose.

The BA flight is thought to have landed safely just before 9am.

A British Airways spokeswoman said: "The aircraft landed safely at Heathrow after the pilot requested a priority landing for a minor technical issue."

The number of passengers on board was not immediately known.


T he Queen today thanked the nation for their "wonderful" support but cracked a joke saying she did not know how she would feel if people were still singing Happy Birthday come December.

Addressing the Patron's Lunch in The Mall - dubbed the world's biggest street party - Her Majesty said: "To everyone here today, and to those holding street parties elsewhere I would like to say thank you for the wonderful support and encouragement that you continue to give me.

She went on: "I hope these happy celebrations will remind us of the many benefits that can flow when people come together for a common purpose, as families, friends, or neighbours.

"And I pay tribute to the commitment, selfless devotion and generosity-of-spirit shown by the hundreds of charities and voluntary organisations represented here today. You are an example to us all.

The Queen arrives for the Street Party

The party went on despite early heavy rain - but the skies cleared later.

The Queen added: "I much appreciate the kindness of all your birthday wishes, and have been delighted and moved by the many cards and messages I have received.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh arrive at the Patron's Lunch in The Mall / PA

"How I will feel if people are still singing Happy Birthday to me in December, remains to be seen!

Thousands of people joined the party despite the wet conditions as celebrations were held up and down the country.

Pamela Mayne and her husband Stephen, from County Durham, were one of thousands who had shrugged off the weather to head to The Mall.

Mrs Mayne, 60, dressed in a poncho, said: "We couldn't get any wetter."

She added: "It feels like I'm in a tent in this poncho. It's so British. We're going to enjoy ourselves regardless."

Celebrations: Pimm's Footman Ben Watson, Olivia Inge and TV's Alexander Armstrong on the Mall / PA

Mr Mayne, also 60, who bought his tickets in the public ballot, said of whether it was worth 150: "In the rain, I don't know. Yes if it had been sunny."

Party-goers were banned from bringing umbrellas onto the site, with organisers handing out ponchos - 12,500 of which they had ready and waiting.

Prince William too spoke from the heart about his "granny". He also joked about the rainy conditions.

"Thank you so much for showing that the Great British public doesn't let a little rain spoil a good day out. It means so much to see everybody here today," he said.

He thanked his cousin Peter Philips for organising the event, adding: "Catherine, Harry and I and the rest our family are extremely proud to be here today."

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh wave to revellers on The Mall / PA

"My family has had plenty of reason to celebrate since The Queen turned 90 in April.

"The Queen's strong health and relentless energy; her sharp wit and famous sense of humour; and the fact that The Queen remains very much at the helm of our family, our nation and the Commonwealth.

"The Queen at 90 is the one Head of State that world leaders can turn to for a first-hand perspective of the arc of history over the last six decades.

"At 90, The Queen is the leader of our country, who we all look up to in good times and in challenging moments to set an example, and to guide the way ahead.

But he said the reason for being there was to "celebrate a role that matters just as much to The Queen as the one that she holds on the world stage."

"We are here to celebrate The Queen as Patron. Her commitment to the more than 600 charities to which she lends her name and support is unwavering."

"From national military and sporting bodies, to small local associations, to charities that champion children, faith, education and arts, The Queen's pride in her role as your Patron is absolute.

"Through The Queen's association with you, she is not just shining a spotlight on the individual causes you care about; she is reminding us all that being active and engaged in society has virtue in its own right.

"Service to those around you is what unites you all. So on behalf of my entire family, can I say thank you. You have been partners in The Queen's service for so many years.

He added his personal tribute saying: "I hope you won't mind if I say a personal thank you to The Queen - and to do so on behalf of all her grandchildren - and great-grandchildren.

"Granny, thank you for everything you have done for your family. We could not wish you a happier birthday."
A fter months of workshops and presentations, 1000 young people have been whittled down to 15 finalists in the Vlogstar Challenge.

The Vlogstar Challenge is a campaign run by Media Trust and the Jack Petchey Foundation, in partnership with YouTube and the Evening Standard. The aim: to provide young people from London and Essex aged 16-25 with the technical and creative skills necessary to become vloggers.

In addition to workshops, there is also a competition element. Out of the hundreds of vlogs created since the launch in October 2015, 15 have been selected as the best of the best, and will be judged at an event held at BAFTA on July 1. The winning vlogger will receive 2,000 for their school or youth group, 500 worth of filming equipment, and 1-2-1 mentoring with experts at YouTube.

The 15 finalists represent a broad range of backgrounds and cover a wide array of topics and themes in their vlogs.

See the first five of the final 15 vlogs below.

Quinn Oulton: Dont Know Why  Norah Jones (Instrumental Cover)

Feteha Begum: Three Simple Tips for Studying & Tasks

Destini Dolor: Life vs Destdol  Teaser Trailer

Peter Abdallah: Studio Banter Vlog Trailer!!!

Nathaniel Hawley: Dyslexic and Proud teaser

Next Sunday the Evening Standard will be featuring five more finalists vlogs.
L ondon will respond to the murder of 50 people at a gay club in Orlando with a vigil in Soho as well as a minute's silence at the Pride festival.

Pride in London said it would be holding a minute's reflection in Trafalgar Square, where 14,000 people are expected to celebrate their sexuality on June 25 and 26.

A vigil - entitled "London stands with Orlando" - is also being held in Old Compton Street, Soho, from 7pm on Monday evening. Hundreds of people have already confirmed their planned attendance on Facebook.

It comes after suspected Islamist gunman Omar Mateen killed 50 people before being shot dead in a gunfight with police after storming the Pulse gay nightclub in Florida on Saturday night.

Pulse nightclub shooting 1 /16 Pulse nightclub shooting Police on the scene of the shooting in Florida Twitter/@OrlandoPolice Police direct people away from the scene of the shooting in Orlando AP Embrace: Family members wait for news on the shooting involving multiple fatalities at Pulse Orlando nightclub AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Fatalities: About 50 people are believed to have died in the shooting AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Scene: Police and CSI officers at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, after the shooting EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA Mourning: Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters REUTERS/Steve Nesius Terrifying: Heartbreaking text messages sent from clubbers inside Pulse nightclub have emerged Brian Shields WFTV/Facebook Scene: The shooting happened at Pulse Orlando nightclub AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Press conference: Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, centre right, and Orlando Police Chief John Mina, centre left, arrive to a news conference AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Sonia and Andrea Parra, who said they lost five friends in the Pulse nightclub shooting hold candles on the street corner near the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP People gather in the Castro District in San Francisco, California for a vigil for the victims of the Orlando shooting at the Pulse nightclub Stephen Lam/Reuters The Kevlar helmet that saved the life of a OPD officer who was hit in hail of gunfire following a shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando Orlando Police

Chair of Pride in London Michael Salter-Church said: Our hearts go out to all the families and friends of those who lost their lives in Orlando. It was a senseless attack, where it appears people were targeted for their sexuality.

Obama: Orlando shooting was "act of terror"

In less than two weeks time, tens of thousands of people from all over the world will be coming to Pride in London. The horrific events in Orlando highlight that the campaign for respect and equality must go on within communities across the globe. On June 25th, together, we will honour the people who lost their lives, and stand united in a moment of solidarity, peace and remembrance."

He added: "This has happened before in our own city. It was only in 1999 that communities in Brixton, the East End and in Soho, at the Admiral Duncan, were targeted with lives lost and changed forever. It's vital this horrific attack is not used to drive a wedge between communities here in the UK. We must all focus on what binds us rather than what separates us and stand in unity."

US President Barack Obama labelled the massacre an "act of hate" which was being investigated as a terrorist incident by the FBI.

An FBI spokesman confirmed the shooting in Orlando is being investigated as an act of terror, and added that authorities are working to establish whether the killer was a lone wolf or if it was a domestic or international atrocity.

The previous worst mass shooting in the US was the Virginia Tech massacre in which 32 people were killed in 2007.


B arack Obama has described the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando as an act of terror.

Speaking at the White House, the US President said the gun massacre, the worst in US history, was an act of hate as he pledged solidarity with Orlando.

At least 50 people were killed and 53 injured when a gunman, identified as Omar Mateen, opened fire at Pulse nightclub with an assault rifle in the early hours on Sunday.

Mr Obama said the shooter was full of hatred and that the FBI are investigating the slaughter as a terrorist act.

The President added the tragedy was a further reminder of how simple it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon to carry out an atrocity.

Florida nightclub shooting

As Mr Obama delivered his address, presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump tweeted: Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism?

If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!

The speech came as Isis reportedly claimed responsibility for the shooting.

Pulse nightclub shooting 1 /16 Pulse nightclub shooting Police on the scene of the shooting in Florida Twitter/@OrlandoPolice Police direct people away from the scene of the shooting in Orlando AP Embrace: Family members wait for news on the shooting involving multiple fatalities at Pulse Orlando nightclub AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Fatalities: About 50 people are believed to have died in the shooting AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Scene: Police and CSI officers at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, after the shooting EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA Mourning: Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters REUTERS/Steve Nesius Terrifying: Heartbreaking text messages sent from clubbers inside Pulse nightclub have emerged Brian Shields WFTV/Facebook Scene: The shooting happened at Pulse Orlando nightclub AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Press conference: Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, centre right, and Orlando Police Chief John Mina, centre left, arrive to a news conference AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Sonia and Andrea Parra, who said they lost five friends in the Pulse nightclub shooting hold candles on the street corner near the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP People gather in the Castro District in San Francisco, California for a vigil for the victims of the Orlando shooting at the Pulse nightclub Stephen Lam/Reuters The Kevlar helmet that saved the life of a OPD officer who was hit in hail of gunfire following a shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando Orlando Police

The terror group said the gunman was an Islamic State fighter, according to a brief notice from a ISIS-affiliated news agency.

"The armed attack that targeted a gay night club in the city of Orlando in American state of Florida which left over 100 people dead or injured was carried out by an Islamic State fighter," said the Amaq statement.

US police departments are increasing patrols near venues frequented by the LGBT community in the wake of the shooting.

In Los Angeles, Santa Monica police arrested a heavily armed person who was on the way to a gay pride parade.

Mayor Eric Garcetti says the arrest was unrelated to the Orlando nightclub shooting.
F ifty people have been slaughtered at a gay nightclub in Florida in the worst mass shooting in US history.

Orlando's Mayor Buddy Dyer said a further 53 people were injured after a suspected Islamist gunman stormed Pulse nightclub in what is being treated as an act of terror.

The announcement came as officials named the suspected attacker - who died while exchanging fire with police - as US citizen Omar Mateen.

Isis has reportedly claimed responsibility for the shooting by saying the gunman was an Islamic State fighter as Barack Obama spoke at the White House to condemn the massacre as an "act of terror".

"The armed attack that targeted a gay night club in the city of Orlando in American state of Florida which left over 100 people dead or injured was carried out by an Islamic State fighter," said the Amaq statement.

An FBI spokesman said the shooting is being investigated as an act of terror, and added that authorities are working to establish whether the killer was a lone wolf or if it was a domestic or international atrocity.

Orlando has declared a state of emergency after the attack.

Mayor Dyer said in a statement: "We are dealing with something we never imagined.

"Because of the scale I have called Governor Scott to request a state of emergency and we are issuing a state of emergency in the City.

Pulse nightclub shooting 1 /16 Pulse nightclub shooting Police on the scene of the shooting in Florida Twitter/@OrlandoPolice Police direct people away from the scene of the shooting in Orlando AP Embrace: Family members wait for news on the shooting involving multiple fatalities at Pulse Orlando nightclub AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Fatalities: About 50 people are believed to have died in the shooting AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Scene: Police and CSI officers at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, after the shooting EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA Mourning: Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters REUTERS/Steve Nesius Terrifying: Heartbreaking text messages sent from clubbers inside Pulse nightclub have emerged Brian Shields WFTV/Facebook Scene: The shooting happened at Pulse Orlando nightclub AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Press conference: Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, centre right, and Orlando Police Chief John Mina, centre left, arrive to a news conference AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Sonia and Andrea Parra, who said they lost five friends in the Pulse nightclub shooting hold candles on the street corner near the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP People gather in the Castro District in San Francisco, California for a vigil for the victims of the Orlando shooting at the Pulse nightclub Stephen Lam/Reuters The Kevlar helmet that saved the life of a OPD officer who was hit in hail of gunfire following a shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando Orlando Police

"This allows us to bring additions resources to support our efforts. Our focus in the coming hours will be identifying the victims and notifying the families.

"I continue to be proud of how our community has responded."

The previous worst mass shooting in the US was the Virginia Tech massacre in which 32 people were killed in 2007.

Police said the suspect had exchanged gunshots with an officer working at the club, then went back inside and took hostages around 2am.

Around three hours later, a Swat team made the decision to go inside and rescue the hostages. The shooter died in a gunfight with those officers.

In addition to the gun, the shooter also had some sort of "suspicious device", authorities said.

The nightclub had earlier posted a chilling message on Facebook saying: Everyone get out of Pulse and keep running.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dye said after the attack: "Tonight our community faced a very horrific crime and many lives were lost and many more individuals were impacted by witnessing the crime.

Embrace: Family members wait for news on the shooting involving multiple fatalities at Pulse Orlando nightclub / AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack

Many more were saved by the heroic efforts of police. We are a strong community, tonight we had a crime that will have a lasting effect. We need to stand strong.

Witness Javer Antonetti, 53, told the Orlando Sentinel he was at the club with his brother when the shooting began.

"There were so many, at least 40, he said. I saw two guys and it was constant, like pow, pow, pow.'" Mr Antonetti escaped after running from the club.

President Barack Obama was briefed on the attack and has asked for regular updates on the investigation, the White House said.

The attack follows the fatal shooting on Friday of 22-year-old singer Christina Grimmie, who was killed after her concert in Orlando by a 27-year-old Florida man who later killed himself. Grimmie was a YouTube sensation and former contestant on "The Voice."

Jon Alamo said he was at the back of one of the club's rooms when a man holding a weapon came into the front of the room.

Scene: Police and CSI officers at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, after the shooting / EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA

"I heard 20, 40, 50 shots," Alamo said. "The music stopped."

Club-goer Rob Rick said the shooting started just before closing time.

"Everybody was drinking their last sip," he said.

He estimated more than 100 people were still inside when he heard shots, got on the ground and crawled toward a DJ booth. A bouncer knocked down a partition between the club area and an area in the back where only workers are allowed. People inside were able to then escape through the back of the club.

Christopher Hansen said he was in the VIP lounge when he heard gunshots. He continued to hear shooting even after he emerged and police urged people to back away from the club. He saw the wounded being tended to across the street.

"I was thinking, `Are you kidding me?' So I just dropped down. I just said, `Please, please, please, I want to make it out,"' he said. "And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood. You hope and pray you don't get shot."
A dramatic picture of a police helmet that saved an officer's life after he was struck by a bullet during a gun battle with a nightclub shooter has been released.

Orlando Police tweeted a picture of the damaged Kevlar helmet after an officer was hit during a hail of gunfire at Pulse nightclub.

More than six thousand Twitter users have retweeted the striking image while a further 5,000 have liked it.

The tweet read: Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life.

Florida nightclub shooting

Police said the suspect had exchanged gunshots with an officer working at the club, then went back inside and took hostages around 2am.

Around three hours later, a Swat team made the decision to go inside and rescue the hostages. The shooter died in a gunfight with those officers.

Pulse nightclub shooting 1 /16 Pulse nightclub shooting Police on the scene of the shooting in Florida Twitter/@OrlandoPolice Police direct people away from the scene of the shooting in Orlando AP Embrace: Family members wait for news on the shooting involving multiple fatalities at Pulse Orlando nightclub AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Fatalities: About 50 people are believed to have died in the shooting AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Scene: Police and CSI officers at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, after the shooting EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA Mourning: Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters REUTERS/Steve Nesius Terrifying: Heartbreaking text messages sent from clubbers inside Pulse nightclub have emerged Brian Shields WFTV/Facebook Scene: The shooting happened at Pulse Orlando nightclub AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Press conference: Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, centre right, and Orlando Police Chief John Mina, centre left, arrive to a news conference AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Sonia and Andrea Parra, who said they lost five friends in the Pulse nightclub shooting hold candles on the street corner near the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP People gather in the Castro District in San Francisco, California for a vigil for the victims of the Orlando shooting at the Pulse nightclub Stephen Lam/Reuters The Kevlar helmet that saved the life of a OPD officer who was hit in hail of gunfire following a shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando Orlando Police

In addition to the gun, the shooter also had some sort of "suspicious device", authorities said.

At least 50 people have been killed and 53 have been injured in what has become the worst mass shooting in US history.

The man responsible for the atrocity has been named by police as Omar Mateen.

An FBI spokesman said the shooting is being investigated as an act of terror.

He added that authorities are working to establish whether the killer was a lone wolf or if it was a domestic or international atrocity.

The previous worst mass shooting in the US was the Virginia Tech massacre in which 32 people were killed in 2007.
T he father of a gunman who stormed a gay nightclub and shot at least 50 people dead has said his son had been angered by two men kissing.

Mir Seddique, whose son Omar Mateen is believed to have carried out the attack at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, said the incident a couple of months ago may be related to the shooting.

At least 50 people have been killed and 53 are injured after the gunman opened fire with an assault rifle in the worst mass shooting in US history.

The gunman was shot dead when a SWAT team entered the nightclub after clubbers were taken hostage.

Pulse nightclub shooting 1 /16 Pulse nightclub shooting Police on the scene of the shooting in Florida Twitter/@OrlandoPolice Police direct people away from the scene of the shooting in Orlando AP Embrace: Family members wait for news on the shooting involving multiple fatalities at Pulse Orlando nightclub AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Fatalities: About 50 people are believed to have died in the shooting AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Scene: Police and CSI officers at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, after the shooting EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA Mourning: Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters REUTERS/Steve Nesius Terrifying: Heartbreaking text messages sent from clubbers inside Pulse nightclub have emerged Brian Shields WFTV/Facebook Scene: The shooting happened at Pulse Orlando nightclub AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Press conference: Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, centre right, and Orlando Police Chief John Mina, centre left, arrive to a news conference AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Sonia and Andrea Parra, who said they lost five friends in the Pulse nightclub shooting hold candles on the street corner near the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP People gather in the Castro District in San Francisco, California for a vigil for the victims of the Orlando shooting at the Pulse nightclub Stephen Lam/Reuters The Kevlar helmet that saved the life of a OPD officer who was hit in hail of gunfire following a shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando Orlando Police

The FBI are investigating it as an act of terrorism following what is thought to be the worst mass shooting in American history.

One theory put forward for the motivation of the shooting was that it was an Islamist terror attack but Mr Seddique said this has nothing to do with religion.

Florida nightclub shooting

He told NBC News: We are saying we are apologising for the whole incident. We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country,"

Another man who answered the phone at Mateens address said he was in shock.

Florida Governor Rick Scott said in a statement: Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, families and all those affected by this horrific tragedy.

We are a strong and resilient state and we will devote every resource available to assist with the shooting in Orlando.

President Barack Obama was briefed on the shooting by Homeland security officials, according to the White House.
F BI agents interviewed the suspected gunman responsible for the worst mass shooting in US history twice in two years, it has emerged.

Spokesman Ronald Hopper said the agency interviewed Omar Mateen in 2013 after he made inflammatory remarks to a colleague and again in 2014 about a possible link with suicide bomber Moner Abu Salha.

Both interviews were described as inconclusive.

The 29-year-old has been identified as the gunman who slaughtered at least 50 people at Pulse nightclub in Orlando when he opened fire with an assault rifle on Sunday.

Pulse nightclub shooting 1 /16 Pulse nightclub shooting Police on the scene of the shooting in Florida Twitter/@OrlandoPolice Police direct people away from the scene of the shooting in Orlando AP Embrace: Family members wait for news on the shooting involving multiple fatalities at Pulse Orlando nightclub AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Fatalities: About 50 people are believed to have died in the shooting AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Scene: Police and CSI officers at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, after the shooting EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA Mourning: Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters REUTERS/Steve Nesius Terrifying: Heartbreaking text messages sent from clubbers inside Pulse nightclub have emerged Brian Shields WFTV/Facebook Scene: The shooting happened at Pulse Orlando nightclub AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Press conference: Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, centre right, and Orlando Police Chief John Mina, centre left, arrive to a news conference AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack Sonia and Andrea Parra, who said they lost five friends in the Pulse nightclub shooting hold candles on the street corner near the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP People gather in the Castro District in San Francisco, California for a vigil for the victims of the Orlando shooting at the Pulse nightclub Stephen Lam/Reuters The Kevlar helmet that saved the life of a OPD officer who was hit in hail of gunfire following a shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando Orlando Police

Mr Hopper said Mateen was not under surveillance at the time of the atrocity but revealed he had purchased multiple guns in the past few days.

When asked why he was able to buy a gun after he was interviewed twice, Mr Hopper said the investigations were closed.

Florida nightclub shooting

Mr Hopper also confirmed the shooter made a 911 call to emergency services before the shooting but did not disclose details of the conversation.

Some 911 calls involving the shooter and the massacre have become federal evidence. Some of the conversations are said to involve Islamic State.

Isis has today claimed responsibility for the attack by issuing a statement that purported the gunman was an Islamic State fighter.

President Barack Obama said the shooting was an act of terror when he spoke at the White House on Sunday.

The previous worst mass shooting in the US was the Virginia Tech massacre in which 32 people were killed in 2007.
A gunman opened fire in a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Florida.

Orlando Police confirmed the shooter was now dead after he stormed the Pulse nightclub in the city on Saturday night.

Authorities later confirmed they were dealing with a "mass casualty situation".

A message on the club's Facebook page posted earlier had said: "Everyone get out of pulse and keep running".

Florida police confirmed on Twitter that there were "multiple injuries" but did not immediately say whether there were any fatalities.

Police on the scene of the shooting in Florida / Twitter/@OrlandoPolice

They later confirmed that authorities had carried out a controlled explosion, adding: "We can confirm this is a mass casualty situation. Support from local/state/federal agencies".

Local media reported that up to 20 people had been shot.

This page is being updated.
A group of Isis defectors have told how they saw a Syrian army commander torn apart after being attached to two pick-up trucks by ropes as they revealed the sickening reality of life in the "caliphate".

The four Syrian men, who are all related to one another, said militants are flocking to leave Islamic State amid heavy military losses.

After escaping six weeks ago, the men - two of whom are brothers - spoke to the Sunday Times about the shocking brutality under the regime.

Abu Omar, 25, said: "Life was miserable in the caliphate.

"The people were not happy, and many want to leave. They steal from people and kill their own fighters, sometimes for no reason.

His cousin Mahmoud added: "When we first came there, they were fair and just. Now theyre not. We expected life to be better, but it wasnt.

Speaking from a hideout near Syria's border with Turkey, they told how foreign fighters, including women, appeared to revel in the sickening violence which became commonplace in Isis-controlled areas of Syria and Iraq.

Mr Omar said: "We saw one woman who had tried to escape being stoned to death.

It was the foreign women who did it. Their husbands brought them. The women liked doing it because they thought it would bring them closer to God.

The group said Isis is now becoming even more ruthless in its violence after coming under pressure in recent weeks.

Mr Omar told the Sunday Times: "All the older fighters started to leave and they got desperate. Thats when they started recruiting Iraqi and Syrian children. They say its easy to convince young kids to blow themselves up.

Lawyer Abu Shujah, who has helped around 100 European defectors, said there was a sharp rise in the number of people wanting to leave Islamic State territory.

He added: "Theyve seen propaganda on the internet. When they arrive its different, but they cant say anything against it.

"Most people leaving are French, he said. When they come to the consulate, most get passports and go back to France. They are kept for a few days for questioning, and then released. There are a lot of British people inside who want to defect, but their government doesnt help them.

Meanwhile, the four Syrian defectors say they now have nowhere to turn

Mr Omar said: "We dont know where to go. We want to go further away, but Europe is too expensive.

We know people are after us and want to kill us. We feel lost.
A woman was arrested and kept in a prison cell for three months after she reported being raped.

The 22-year-old Dutch woman, who was on holiday in Qatar, claims she was drugged in a hotel bar in Doha in March.

The womans lawyer said she believed someone messed with her drink while out in the Qatari capital and later woke up with her clothes torn after being raped.

She reported the rape to police but was detained and now faces a charge of adultery for having sex out of wedlock.

The woman has appeared in court three times but remains in police custody.

The alleged rapist is also being detained but claims they had consensual sex.

The case only came to light after the victims family spoke out in the Dutch media.

Initially the womans family and her employer wanted to keep the case quiet and try to work it out locally.

A social media campaign has now been launched calling for the young womans release.

The Dutch foreign ministry said the woman had been arrested but had yet to be charged.

A statement from the Dutch foreign ministry said: We have provided assistance to her since the first day of detention.

For the sake of the defendants case we will not make further comments at this point.

In 2013, a Norwegian woman who reported being raped in Dubai received a 16-month sentence for having sex outside of marriage, but she was later pardoned and allowed to leave the country.
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It was Dec. 3, 2015 when Deuel County Deputy Mike Hutchinson was shot four times as he prepared to serve a warrant. After parking in the driveway of a Big Springs, Nebraska home and stepping out of the car he was shot immediately, never able to defend himself.

Now, after months of recovery, still facing even more months of recovery, he finds out his employer, Deuel County, had asked Blue Cross Blue Shield to drop his health insurance coverage. At least that is what the letter from Blue Cross to Hutchinson said, We (Blue Cross) recently received information to terminate your Blue Cross and Blue Shield group health care coverage because your employer requested this action.

What! This must be a mistake. But apparently not. The Deuel County Commissioners met this week and declined to take any action to restore Hutchinsons insurance or to make any other arrangements to continue to pay for health insurance.

I dont want to believe the Board is that uncaring, that cold to refuse to back up an employee who nearly gave his life to protect county citizens. I want to believe that for whatever reason there was some legal snag or concerns about setting a precedent that would place liability on county taxpayers that was the reason for no action.

Even so, the county board needs to remedy this and soon, and above all they must do the right thing; county liability or not! This isnt a legal matter. This is a matter of humanity. Lets treat people like people for crying out loud and let the legal chips fall where they may.

If our government is so tied up with rules and regulations, labor laws and attorneys, that we are unable to make no-brainer decisions like this one appears to be, restoring health insurance to Hutchinson, then we need to change government. If that means the county taking lumps in a courtroom, so be it. Right now they need to simply do the right thing, and work through the consequences later.

Maybe that is being too risky in this litigious society. Maybe it would expose the county to added expenses and possible lawsuits and defense costs. So, whats the point? I would hope the county would just do the right thing and make sure Deputy Mike Hutchinson is taken care of, that this group policy or equivalent is restored immediately.

The county has put this off until their next meeting. I hope it is so they can investigate their options to best take care of Mike. I hope it is not to avoid the moral obligation they have regardless of what legalities surround the issue.

Government, even at the county level, is there to serve its constituents, and to provide a staff of employees to carry out those duties. Therefore the county also has an obligation to those employees. Lets hope this issue is resolved soon, that Mike Hutchinson continues to heal and recover so he can return to work, and lets hope the county commissioners will do the right thing by all concerned and help this process come full circle.

Yes, no? Let me know at greg.awtry@starherald.com.

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Call me old-fashioned, but I always thought Tribune was a great name for a media company. The word has Roman origins and means champion of the people, which is what every good publisher should be.

Tribune Publishing apparently doesnt want to be a champion anymore. To distance itself from its newspaper past, the Chicago company recently chose the name Tronc, which is short for Tribune online content. (Actually, it used tronc, but well restore some dignity with a capital letter.)

The name immediately became the butt of jokes. One Twitter user thought Tronc sounded like a piece of Ikea furniture. Another said it would have made a good caveman name in a 1950s comic book.

Tribune is far from alone in jettisoning a revered name. In the St. Louis area, Brown Shoe became Caleres last year, and Laclede Group, parent of Laclede Gas, became Spire this spring.

Sometimes a company can feel that, for all their scale and scope, their name is not well-known, says James Fisher, professor of marketing at St. Louis University. There is also a competition for talent, so you want to appeal to employees.

Brown Shoe executives apparently felt their old name sounded dowdy. They chose Caleres, from a Latin root that connotes passion.

Laclede worked fine as a local name, but after a series of acquisitions, people elsewhere didnt identify with the founder of St. Louis. Spire, evoking lofty ambitions, will eventually be adopted by all of the companys utilities.

David Meyer, a partner in Spoke Marketing, likes both St. Louis companies new names. Caleres speaks to the brand promise of being passionate about fashion and footwear, he said. Spire brings to mind the words inspire and aspire, and theirs is an internal focus. As they acquire these companies, they want everyone to be on the same team.

Hes not a fan of Tronc, however. Theyre running away from newspapers, but they are throwing away a ton of strong brand equity, Meyer said. And the logo is really cartoony.

Aaron Perlut, founder of marketing firm Elasticity, also reacted negatively to Tronc.

You have a vaunted brand thats trying to transition to a silly-sounding word that no one is even sure how to pronounce, he said.

A word like Tronc sounds like something that is heavy, slow and stupid, says Eric Thoelke, president of branding firm TOKY. That is everything you dont want to be if you are a media company in the 21st century.

Often, an effective marketing campaign can overcome initial objections. When Union Electric became Ameren in 1997, insiders joked that it sounded like a medicine, as in take two Ameren and call me in the morning. Nearly two decades later, the new name is widely recognized and accepted.

That doesnt always happen. When Britains Royal Mail changed its name to Consignia in 2001, the jokes never stopped. It switched back in 2002. UAL changed its name to Allegis in 1987 so investors would know that it owned hotels and other businesses in addition to United Airlines. Investors hated both the strategy and the name, so it was back to UAL the next year.

Tronc faces its own challenges with investors. More than 40 percent of shareholders withheld their votes from directors at the companys recent annual meeting, and rival Gannett is dangling a takeover offer.

A sale to Gannett would be a sad ending for proud old Tribune, but at least the awful new name would die a swift death.
If you play it, they will come. Eventually.

The purple martin, North Americas largest swallow, has a cozy relationship with humans.

But they were generally missing from the St. Louis Zoo until May, when three mating pairs made their home in a tall house on a tiny island in a small cove at the park.

And the song may have done the trick.

Officially titled The Dawn Song, it was recorded in 1989 in Oregon by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The tune basically is a looped recording of a male purple martin singing a song that gets quicker as dawn approaches.

We played it every morning, from 3:30 to 6:30, said bird keeper Matt Schamberger, a Belleville native who now lives in St. Louis and has been with the zoo for four years.

Actually, we got the A.V. guy to set it on a timer to go off automatically, he said. We like purple martins, sure, but not enough to be here at 3:30 every morning.

The we includes Jim Deters, a Warrenton resident and a 27-year veteran of bird-keeping at the zoo.

Last year was our first, and we didnt get (the house) up until May, Deters said. We did get what they call scouts, which are older adult birds who come by and look for good nesting locations. But that was it.

But this year, we moved the house to a better spot and played the song and so far weve been able to identify three mating pairs, Deters said with quiet pride.

One of the species most endearing habits is that they come back to the same nest for years, and often make that return on the same date. (The swallows of Capistrano, right?)

But both keepers wonder about next years return, given that the pairs here now did not show up until early May.

Migratory patterns (the birds start in South America) say theyre supposed to get here in late April, so we played the song for a solid month, mid-March to mid-April, Schamberger said.

But ours didnt. We kind of thought we werent going to get any, and then they show up in May, Schamberger said.

The pair of keepers said they would love to get up to 12 pairs in the 24-condo birdhouse.

Schamberger said the pairs now seem to be occupying two condos each. Its like they have a home and a vacation home in the same birdhouse.

Michael Macek, the zoos curator of birds, said he wanted to create an environment for a species that is easily one of the most popular with bird lovers.

Purple martins have this unique connection to humans. People just seem to like them and value them, Macek said, noting that Native Americans began building homes for the birds several hundred years ago.

The tribes created houses from hollowed-out gourds, painted them white and hung them on tall poles. Research indicates that the tribes may have appreciated, among other traits, their voracious appetite for flying insects.

Macek said the conspicuous nature of a purple martin house has helped popularize the species: They are built on tall poles, between 12 and 20 feet off the ground. They have multiple compartments, called condos or apartments.

Deters said the height stems from the species healthy fear of predators.

They like it to stand alone, away from buildings and trees that could hide predators, Deters said. And they even like the ground around the pole to be clear of any foliage, in case theyre hiding in there.

Schamberger said the species is rare in its communal living.

Most birds, including other swallows, build one small nest in a secluded place and dont want company. But martins seemed to like living in a crowd, he said.

Finally, people love the species acrobatic flights and seemingly endless amount of energy.

Theyre busy birds, Schamberger said. Theyre always doing something.
WASHINGTON  In a familiar refrain after a mass shooting by a suspected terrorist, Democrats condemned inaction on gun control, Republicans emphasized the threat of terrorism.

Typical of the response in the wake of a mass shooting at an Orlando, Fla., gay nightclub early Sunday that President Barack Obama called an act of terrorism, an act of hate, were the different reactions from Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

In a statement, Durbin said: These mass shootings follow an increasingly tragic script: the public is heartbroken and outraged, first responders and law enforcement do their grim duty, and Congress proposes a slew of policy proposals and argues over whether any of them could have prevented the last tragedy.

But when the debates end and nothing has changed, Congress makes itself complicit in the next killing. We have the power to act, and we must. The bottom line is that we allow dangerous people to buy guns in America and that has got to change. In the coming days, Congress must take a stand against hate, terrorism, and this horrific gun violence.

Blunt, in a series of tweets, expressed condolences to the victims, and suggested that events like this could be more, not less likely. He is a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The constant warnings by those that brief me & Intelligence Committee: There are more threats from more directions than any other times, Blunt tweeted.

It prompted several responses criticizing Blunt for accepting contributions from National Rifle Association donors.

Its not the first time Blunt has made this claim. Shortly after returning to the Intelligence Committee last year, he made similar observations about the threats facing the country to the Post-Dispatch.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., also raised the availability of military-grade guns and the fact that a gay nightclub was targeted in a post-Orlando statement.

Well be learning more about the poisonous ideology that led to this attack  on a community thats had so much to celebrate in recent years, but whove long endured violence because of who they are and who they love, McCaskill said. But we need to do more than know the facts surrounding this attack. We need to summon the resolve as a country to confront the issues at work here  issues of hate, and terrorism, and of military-grade gun violence in our communities. Im resolved to do so, and I join Americans across the nation in standing with the victims and their loved ones in the face of this tragedy.

Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, said that 50 Americans were murdered by a terrorist because of who they were and who they loved.

This horrendous, hateful attack will not break our determination to fight terrorism and to demand full equality and equal protection for every American, he said.

Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Ballwin, tweeted: My heart goes out to everyone affected by the horrific shooting in Orlando. I am keeping the victims and their families in my prayers.

The upcoming political debate over how to prevent future attacks is likely to circle back to a December vote in the U.S. Senate. Republicans, by a vote of 54-45, turned down a Democratic attempt to prohibit sales of guns to people on terror watch lists.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., called the proposal a no-brainer, but Republicans said it would have denied due process and wrongly prohibited law-abiding Americans mistakenly put on the list from exercising Second Amendment rights.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill.  Gov. Bruce Rauner is trying to weave a wider web of blame for the state budget mess, extending his criticism of House Speaker Michael Madigan and other Democratic lawmakers to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, the speaker's daughter.

But Lisa Madigan dismisses the Republican's claims that she too is trying to "create a crisis" that would force a tax increase.

Rauner noted last week that Madigan, a Democrat, is pushing the courts to declare that state workers should not continue to get paid without a budget appropriation, something that has eluded Springfield for more than a year.

Madigan, who is serving her fourth term as attorney general, declined to comment directly on Rauner's remarks. And it's unclear if she will continue to pursue the worker pay issue, saying in a statement that "the best way to ensure state employees are paid for the rest of this fiscal year and all of the next fiscal year is for the governor to work with the Legislature to pass an appropriation to cover state employee pay."

Here are some questions and answers about what's behind the issue:

__

Q: WHAT DID RAUNER SAY?

A: During a news conference last week, Rauner repeated claims that Madigan, the speaker, and Cullerton, both Chicago Democrats, are "clearly working to create a crisis" by refusing to compromise on a budget for the year than ends June 30 or the next one. He believes they're holding out for an income-tax increase without pro-business changes Rauner wants, such as a property tax freeze, restrictions on workers' compensation and liability lawsuits.

He also alleges Democrats believe a crisis would lead to a "bailout" for Chicago's financially beleaguered schools.

But then Rauner went a step further, saying Lisa Madigan "has tried to create a crisis, she has not succeeded yet, but she's working in the courts to try to stop our hard-working state employees from getting paid."

__

Q: THERE'S NO CRISIS NOW?

A: Few could argue that the state is not already in a crisis, spending far more than it receives in tax revenue and watching a backlog of bills grow to more than $7 billion as social service providers and others struggle.

But in this case, when Rauner speaks of "crisis," he undoubtedly means the additional pressure to reach a budget compromise that would increase exponentially if state workers lose their paychecks and go home to wonder how to pay the mortgage while state government grinds to a halt.

__

Q: WHAT IS LISA MADIGAN'S STANCE?

A: Last July, Lisa Madigan, a Democrat, asked a Cook County court to decide what bills could be paid without a budget that should have been enacted that month. A judge ruled state workers couldn't be paid, but an appellate court reversed that decision.

In April, the judge put those proceedings on hold because of a separate ruling in St. Clair County. In that case, filed in the Illinois suburbs of St. Louis by the largest union representing state workers, the state council of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a judge upheld payment to state workers without an appropriation by the Legislature. A different appellate court upheld that decision.

Madigan asked the Supreme Court to consolidate the two cases and render an opinion, but it declined.

__

A: WHAT'S CHANGED?

Q: A serendipitous ruling by the Illinois Supreme Court in March could have provided another opportunity for appeal by the attorney general over paychecks.

In a case dating to a separate budget crisis under a different governor, the court found that former Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, was correct in 2011 when he withheld AFSCME pay increases because the Legislature had not appropriated money for it. With its 6-1 decision, the court shelved AFSCME's claim that requiring an appropriation before honoring pay promises would emasculate binding conclusions reached in contract negotiations.

The decree seemed tailor-made for Madigan's argument: You can't spend state tax dollars without authorization by state lawmakers.

But Madigan so far has not sought to exploit the high court's AFSCME ruling to pursue the halting of payments. Her office has been tight-lipped about her options and whether she would take further action in light of the high court's decision.

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Contact Political Writer John O'Connor at https://twitter.com/apoconnor . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/john-oconnor .
ST. LOUIS  The women held yellow parasols and wore white dresses with golden sashes bearing the words Votes for Women. They stood silently, lining 12 blocks of Locust Street.

The men passing by tipped their hats.

Several thousand suffragists in St. Louis held their walkless, talkless demonstration in St. Louis 100 years ago  on June 14, 1916, opening day of the Democratic National Convention at the old Coliseum at Jefferson Avenue and Locust Street. The delegates, almost all of them men, stayed in hotels downtown and walked or rode to the 10,000-seat convention hall.

One delegate, a man from Michigan, lingered long enough to mutter, This is all very well, but Id just like to know who is at home taking care of the babies? So wrote Marguerite Martyn, a Post-Dispatch feature reporter and sketch artist who chronicled the moment for the next days newspaper.

The event on Locust, known as the Golden Lane, was St. Louis most noteworthy gesture in the run-up to winning the vote for women nationwide. The Democrats in the Coliseum voted to endorse the franchise for women and urged the states to adopt it. The Republican Party, gathered in Chicago the week before, had endorsed the same strategy.

Leaving the issue to state legislatures may sound today like a dodge, but neither party had even a word about womens suffrage in their 1912 platforms.

The convention renominated President Woodrow Wilson, who then defeated Republican challenger Charles Hughes of New York. The big convention news was that three-time party nominee William Jennings Bryan, who had arrived as a news correspondent, took the podium for another rousing speech.

In 1919, the Missouri Legislature approved letting women vote in presidential elections  an act made moot by ratification Aug. 18, 1920, of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting the denial of voting rights on account of sex.

The Missouri History Museum and the League of Women Voters of Metro St. Louis are commemorating the Golden Lane with events this summer. The first is at 7 p.m. Thursday, when Margot McMillen of Fulton, Mo., author of a book on the demonstration, is to speak in the History Museum theater. On Labor Day weekend, the league is planning a day of speeches and events at the Central Public Library downtown.

Kathleen Farrell, co-president of the league, said the organization will wait until Sept. 3 in order to encourage participation by students back on college campuses. The date also is much closer to the national election in November, she said.

People need to remember, especially in this time when so many are disgusted in government, how hard others worked to get the vote and how prominent St. Louis was in that story, Farrell said. We all need to take part.

The Golden Lane was organized by members of the St. Louis Equal Suffrage League, which formed in 1910 at the West End home of Florence Wyman Richardson, its first president. The league had sponsored a speech here in 1911 by Emmeline Pankhurst, a militant British suffragist given to violent tactics. The local leagues leaders wanted a more dignified approach and planned for the Democratic convention, which proved to be the last of five major-party conventions held in St. Louis.

Organizers called for 10,000 women to take part. One woman in line is worth 10 petitions in the waste basket, said a promotional leaflet. Leaders instructed participants to maintain silence, the better to make their point visually in the colors of the suffrage movement. Women lined up on both sides of Locust from 12th Street (Tucker Boulevard) to Jefferson.

The center of the demonstration was a tableau of women on the steps of the old city Art Museum building at 19th and Locust streets. One woman was dressed as Liberty. Thirteen more represented 12 states including Illinois, plus the Alaska territory, that granted full or partial suffrage to women.

Estimates range from 2,000 to 7,000 women participants. As convention delegates passed through their silent gauntlet, some waved and occasionally cheered. Others kept their eyes straight ahead.

McMillen, author of The Golden Lane, How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History, called the strategy of silence brilliant.

It was a way of saying, You already know our message. We dont need to say anything more, she said. It engaged the media and was a strong statement to the delegates.

In Missouri, the suffrage movement rose from womens aid organizations for wounded soldiers during the Civil War and from early efforts to outlaw inebriating drink. Plenty of men agreed with the Michigan delegate about a womans place, but others were afraid that women voters would ban beer.

If youre a woman and her husband spends all the money in a club you cant enter, what is your alternative? McMillen said. It made many women push for the vote.

The 18th Amendment, the prohibition amendment, was adopted in January 1919  well before women had the vote nationwide. (Some states still restricted voting by race.)

In March 1919, the St. Louis Equal Suffrage League hosted the national suffrage convention, during which members formed the League of Women Voters. The local league says it is hosting the Golden Lane commemoration because, Our foremothers enabled todays reality where women not only vote, but use their voices at all levels of government, business and society.
The gunman was identified as Orlando Harris, 19, a recent graduate of the school. One survivor heard him say he was 'tired of everybody' in the school and that his gun jammed at one point.
ORLANDO, Fla.  The gunman whose attack on a gay nightclub left 49 victims dead appears to have been a "homegrown extremist" who espoused support for a jumble of often-conflicting Islamic radical groups, the White House and the FBI said Monday.

As Orlando mourned its dead with flowers, candles and vigils, counterterrorism investigators dug into the background of 29-year-old Omar Mateen for clues to why the American-born Muslim carried out the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

"So far, we see no indication that this was a plot directed from outside the United States, and we see no indication that he was part of any kind of network," said FBI Director James Comey. But he said Mateen was clearly "radicalized," at least in part via the internet.

Comey said the bureau is also trying to determine whether Mateen had recently scouted Disney World as a potential target, as reported by People.com, which cited an unidentified federal law enforcement source.

"We're still working through that," Comey said.

The FBI chief defended the bureau's handling of Mateen during two previous investigations into his apparent terrorist sympathies. As for whether the FBI should have done anything differently, "so far the honest answer is, 'I don't think so,'" Comey said.

Wielding an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a handgun, Mateen opened fire at Pulse Orlando early Sunday in a three-hour shooting rampage and hostage siege. During the attack, he called 911 to profess allegiance to the Islamic State group.

At the White House, President Barack Obama said there is no clear evidence so far that Mateen was directed by the group, calling the attack an apparent example of "homegrown extremism."

More details of the bloodbath emerged, with Orlando Police Chief John Mina saying Mateen was "cool and calm" during phone calls with police negotiators. But the chief said he decided to send the SWAT team in and bash through a wall after Mateen holed up with hostages in a bathroom and began to talk about bombs and an explosive vest.

"We knew there would be an imminent loss of life," Mina said.

Five of the wounded were reported in grave condition, meaning the death toll could rise. A call went out for blood donations.

In Orlando, mourners piled bouquets around a makeshift memorial, and people broke down in tears and held their hands to their faces while passing through the growing collection of flowers, candles and signs about a mile from the site of the massacre.

About 300 employees of the Red Lobster restaurant chain  some in business suits, some in chef's uniforms  walked two-by-two across the street to the memorial, each carrying a red or white carnation.

"As the names come out, they are overwhelmingly Latino and Hispanic names," Christina Hernandez, a Hispanic activist, told a gathering. "It was Latino Night when this tragedy occurred. These were not just victims of the LBGT community, but of the Hispanic community, as well. This was senseless bloodshed."

Despite Mateen's pledge of fealty to the Islamic State, a murky combination of other possible motives and explanations emerged, with his ex-wife saying he was mentally ill  bipolar  and his Afghan-immigrant father suggesting he may have acted out of anti-gay hatred. He said his son got angry recently about seeing two men kiss.

Mateen's grasp of the differences between Islamic extremist groups appeared to be shaky.

During three calls with 911 dispatchers, Mateen not only professed allegiance to ISIS but also expressed solidarity with a suicide bomber from the Nusra Front, and a few years ago he claimed connections to Hezbollah, too  both ISIS enemies, according to Comey.

The FBI became aware of Mateen in 2013 when co-workers told agents about his comments about connections to al-Qaida and Hezbollah, Comey said.

The FBI launched a 10-month preliminary investigation but closed it after following him, reviewing his communications and questioning him, the FBI chief said.

His name surfaced again as part of another investigation into the Nusra Front bomber. The FBI found Mateen and the man had attended the same mosque and knew each other casually, but the investigation turned up "no ties of any consequence," Comey said.

Despite the 911 call from the club, Mateen's intentions seemed to become murkier when his Afghan immigrant father suggested another motive: anti-gay hatred. The father said his son got angry a few months ago when he saw two men kissing in Miami.

Also, Mateen's ex-wife attributed the violence to mental illness, saying he was bipolar and abusive toward her.

Obama said investigators are still looking into the killer's motivations and considering all possibilities, noting that Muslim extremist groups like the Islamic State have been known to target gays.

The Islamic State's radio called Mateen "one of the soldiers of the caliphate in America." Al-Bayan Radio, a media outlet for the extremist group, hailed the attack, saying that it targeted a gathering of Christians and gays and that it was the worst attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.

The statement gave no indication of whether the group planned or knew of the attack beforehand.

Mateen's father, Seddique Mir Mateen, told reporters Monday that the massacre was "the act of a terrorist," and added: "I apologize for what my son did. I am as sad and mad as you guys are."

Horror inside the club

Thirty-nine of the dead were killed at the club, and 11 people died at hospitals, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said. By Monday morning, families of 24 of the victims had been notified, Dyer said.

Workers removed the bodies four at a time on stretchers out of the club and loaded them into white vans. The action was repeated over and over. The covered bodies were taken to the County Medical Examiner's office. All were there by 11 p.m., Dyer said.

On Monday morning, officials emphasized that there was no immediate threat to the public and said they didn't know whether anyone would be charged as part of the investigation.

Jon Alamo had been dancing at the Pulse for hours when he wandered into the club's main room just in time to see the gunman. "You ever seen how Marine guys hold big weapons, shooting from left to right? That's how he was shooting at people," he said.

"My first thought was, oh my God, I'm going to die," Alamo said. "I was praying to God that I would live to see another day."

Pulse patron Eddie Justice texted his mother, Mina: "Mommy I love you. In club they shooting." About 30 minutes later, hiding in a bathroom, he texted her: "He's coming. I'm gonna die."

Justice's name would eventually be added to the city's list of those killed in the shooting.

At least 53 people were hospitalized, most in critical condition, and a surgeon at Orlando Regional Medical Center said the death toll was likely to climb.

The previous deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. was the 2007 attack at Virginia Tech, where a student killed 32 people before killing himself.

Act of terrorism?

Mateen's family was from Afghanistan, and he was born in New York. His family later moved to Florida, authorities said.

A law enforcement official said the gunman made a 911 call from the club in which he professed allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The official was familiar with the investigation, but was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The extremist group did not officially claim responsibility for the attack, but the IS-run Aamaq news agency cited an unnamed source as saying the attack was carried out by an Islamic State fighter.

Even if the attacker supported IS, it was unclear whether the group planned or knew of the attack beforehand.

Mateen was not unknown to law enforcement: In 2013, he made inflammatory comments to co-workers and was interviewed twice, according to FBI agent Ronald Hopper, who called the interviews inconclusive. In 2014, Hopper said, officials found that Mateen had ties to an American suicide bomber, but the agent described the contact as minimal, saying it did not constitute a threat at the time.

Asked if the gunman had a connection to radical Islamic terrorism, Hopper said authorities had "suggestions that individual has leanings towards that."

Mateen purchased at least two firearms legally within the last week or so, according to Trevor Velinor of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

In a separate incident, an Indiana man armed with three assault rifles and chemicals used to make explosives was arrested Sunday in Southern California and told police he was headed to a West Hollywood gay pride parade.

'Nobody stood a chance'

The Orlando shooting started about 2 a.m., with more than 300 people inside the Pulse.

"He had an automatic rifle, so nobody stood a chance," said Jackie Smith, who saw two friends next to her get shot. "I just tried to get out of there."

At 2:09 a.m., Pulse posted on its Facebook page: "Everyone get out of Pulse and keep running."

Mateen exchanged gunfire with 14 police officers at the club, and took hostages at one point. In addition to the assault rifle, the shooter also had a handgun and some sort of "suspicious device," Police Chief John Mina. About 5 a.m., authorities sent in a SWAT team to rescue the remaining club-goers, Mina said.

At first, officers mistakenly thought the gunman had strapped explosives to the dead after a bomb robot sent back images of a battery part next to a body, Mayor Dyer said. The robot was sent in after SWAT team members put explosive charges on a wall and an armored vehicle knocked it down in an effort to rescue hostages.

Just before 6 a.m., the Pulse posted an update on its Facebook: "As soon as we have any information, we will update everyone. Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love."

Authorities were looking into whether the shooter acted alone, according to Danny Banks, an agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

"This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as domestic terror incident," Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said.

Mateen's father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News about his son seeing the men kissing a couple of months ago.

"We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident," Seddique said. "We are in shock like the whole country."

Mateen was a security guard with a company called G4S. In a 2012 newsletter, the firm identified him as working in West Palm Beach. In a statement sent Sunday to the Palm Beach Post, the company confirmed that he had been an employee since September 2007. State records show that Mateen had held a firearms license since at least 2011.

President Barack Obama called the shooting an "act of terror" and an "act of hate" targeting a place of "solidarity and empowerment" for gays and lesbians. He urged Americans to decide whether this is the kind of "country we want to be."
MEXICO CITY  A new report on Mexicos endangered vaquita marina porpoise says authorities may have to consider trapping some of the few remaining specimens to try to breed them in captivity or semi-captivity.

The vaquita is the worlds smallest porpoise, and only about 60 remain in the Gulf of California, the only place in the world they live.

The report by the International Commission for the Recovery of the Vaquita says offsite  ex situ  conservation should be considered. That could mean putting the porpoises in breeding pens, either in coastal waters or elsewhere.

Some experts oppose that, saying efforts to capture them could kill the few vaquitas left. The commission, known by its initials in Spanish as CIRVA, acknowledged the risks involved. Nobody has ever kept vaquitas in captivity, much less bred them.

While recognizing the risks and complexities of such an approach, CIRVA concluded that fieldwork to determine the feasibility of ex situ conservation actions for the vaquita is warranted, according to the report. CIRVA agreed unanimously that capture of all remaining vaquitas is not a viable conservation strategy for vaquitas, which must, first and foremost, be protected in their wild habitat.

Omar Vidal, the head of the Mexico office of the World Wildlife Fund, said that capturing vaquitas to breed them would be far too risky and is not a viable option.

With only around 60 vaquitas left, we simply cannot gamble with killing some while experimenting. Every single vaquita counts!

I see no other way to save this porpoise than by focusing all efforts and resources in eliminating its accidental deaths in fishing activities, Vidal said.

Both sides agree that Mexicos current efforts havent worked and that the species is in a death spiral. Since the latest population estimates were made in December, at least three more dead vaquitas have been found, all killed by entanglement in nets.

The species is racing toward extinction, the commission wrote. Even under optimistic scenarios about reproductive and survival rates, a catch of only three animals per year will likely result in a continued decline.

The vaquitas are threatened primarily by gillnet fishing for the totoaba fish, another endangered species in the area that is hunted for its swim bladder, considered a delicacy in China.

In April 2015, Mexican authorities announced a $70 million plan to ban gillnet fishing in about half of the upper Gulf. The plan promised to compensate fisherman for not using gillnets and offered them alternative, safer nets.

However that has not been effective for reasons ranging from the very high payoff  a totoaba bladder can sell for $5,000 in the United States and double that in Asia  to inefficiency in the compensation program. Some say criminal gangs may be involved in the illicit trade.

The commission said the Mexican government must enforce rules against gillnets, or ban all fishing in the upper Gulf, also known as the Sea of Cortez.
A punitive measure that would fine Medicaid patients who miss doctors appointments is unnecessarily harsh and deserves to be vetoed by Gov. Jay Nixon, who has it under review.

There are better and less mean-spirited ways to achieve the worthy goals of trying to get patients to take more control of their health care, and helping doctors avoid the time and money lost to missed appointments.

The bill, SB 608, would allow Medicaid providers to bill a missed appointment fee when MO HealthNet patients miss or fail to cancel 24 hours in advance. The measure was sponsored by Sen. David Sater, R-Cassville. The Senates two doctors, Rob Schaaf, R-St. Joseph, and Bob Onder, R-Lake Saint Louis, voted in favor.

This measure has all the hallmarks of being politically motivated and callously dismissive of the financial conditions poor people must endure. It does nothing but punish already struggling low-income patients and make life easier for doctors. Health care experts say it is also unlikely to win federal approval even if Nixon signs it.

The fees in the bill are $5 for the first missed appointment, $10 for the second and $20 for the third. Small amounts but enough of a financial obstacle to discourage people from seeing their doctors altogether.

Thats the dangerous part of the bill. People who live in poverty already have lower life expectancies than those with middle or higher incomes. Erecting barriers to getting health care can only increase the gap.

The bill would also drive up costs for people with private or employer-paid medical insurance plans because the additional expense of caring for a sicker population would be passed on to them.

There are easier and better ways to discourage people from missing doctors appointments, including reminders by phone, text or email or flexible scheduling systems that can accommodate potential no-shows.

Patients often have honest reasons for missing appointments and not calling to cancel. Low-income patients often have unreliable cars or live in areas with inferior public transportation. They might not know until they start out, and the car breaks down or a bus doesnt arrive, that they wont make their appointment.

There are legitimate debates about whether Americans are entitled to health care, about the quality of care they receive, and how care is paid for. But there should be no debate on the morality of gouging a poor person for a few dollars.

Doctors themselves often arent punctual. An appointment goes long or they get an emergency call. Empathetic doctors understand that similar delays happen to their patients. While patients might not confront life-and-death issues, they are probably juggling complicated schedules and difficult circumstances.

Warn chronic no-shows that they will be blocked from future service. Encourage them with reminders about appointments. But dont hit them in the wallet.
Before St. Louis ends its school desegregation program, a review of its remarkable history is in order, along with a commitment to finish the job.

The Post-Dispatchs Elisa Crouch reported Friday that the governing board of the Voluntary Interdistrict Choice Corporation is considering phasing out the 33-year-old city-county transfer program.

She quoted Keith Marty, superintendent of the Parkway School District: Theres always going to be a need to do something with children and families differently. We have to start talking about it as a region. Poverty isnt going away.

Precisely. The Government Accountability Office reported last month that one in six U.S. public schools has 75 percent or more poor and black or Hispanic students. These schools offered disproportionately fewer math, science, and college preparatory courses and had disproportionately higher rates of students who were held back in 9th grade, suspended, or expelled, the GAO said.

In a city whose population is 47.5 percent black, the student population of St. Louis Public Schools is 82 percent black. In many schools, the black enrollment is well over 90 percent. The demographics, and school performance measures, are no better and sometimes worse in some north St. Louis County districts.

Theres still work to do.

In 1968, long before the desegregation program began here, a commission led by state Rep. James Spainhower to review school funding inequities in Missouri recommended establishing a metro-wide school district. As long as school funding was heavily determined by local tax bases, the commission determined, educational opportunity would depend on where you live.

The idea was massively unpopular. But in the early 1980s, U.S. District Judge William Hungate used the threat of forcibly consolidating city and county school districts as a stick to get suburban districts to embrace the transfer program voluntarily. The carrot he offered was state funding to pay for it.

Two state attorneys general who later went on to higher office, Republican John Ashcroft and Democrat Jay Nixon, fought the program relentlessly. Meanwhile, the first of what would be 60,000 city kids transferred to county schools and got better educations.

In 1999, in something of a miracle, city taxpayers, community leaders and the state Legislature came together to continue the program. William L. Taylor, an NAACP lawyer, would say, Both from a financial and an educational standpoint, the St. Louis settlement is the best of any school district in the nation.

The desegregation program is something to be proud of. It wasnt intended to last forever, but like racial intolerance itself, the problems have been hard to root out.

This is not the time to quit. This is the time to double down. It bears repeating what Marty, the Parkway superintendent, said: We have to start talking about it as a region. Poverty isnt going away.
Construction work is expected to be done in about a year.

A brief history of the Eads Bridge

The Eads Bridge was dedicated with great fanfare on July 4, 1874. To reach bedrock, workers had to dig through sand and silt inside enclosed structures called caissons, which were fed with compressed air to keep out water. It was a new technology  14 workers died of the "bends," a blood condition caused by moving too quickly from a high-pressure caisson into surface air.

Designed by Capt. James Buchanan Eads, the bridge ended up costing $9 million, including interest and fees, and its owners defaulted to their New York lenders. It had been projected to cost half of that.

 Post-Dispatch archives
Affordable. Comfortable. On time.

Those are just some of the words Norwegian Air passengers are using to describe the discount airline, which is patiently waiting for a foreign air carrier permit from the U.S. government for its Irish subsidiary, Norwegian Air International. Many customers rave about its low fares, new planes and friendly service.

But thats not how some U.S. airlines describe Norwegian Air. Critics, including labor unions and competitors, say the airline flouts labor laws, threatens American jobs and should be banned from flying in the United States.

Now, after two years in a holding pattern and extensive vetting by regulators, the Department of Transportation is on the verge of granting Norwegian Air the permission it requested. Recently, the DOT issued a show cause order for its Irish subsidiary, soliciting public comments. Observers believe the airline is about to get the all-clear from authorities, which will allow Norwegian Air to expand worldwide.

How will that affect you? It depends on who you are. Edward Wytkind, president of the Transportation Trades Department, a coalition of 32 member unions representing transportation workers, predicts that NAIs approval will destroy fair competition and extinguish middle-class airline jobs here and in Europe. In other words, if you or a loved one works in the transportation business, you might feel this a little.

Some members of Congress agree. Reps. Peter A. DeFazio, D-Ore.; Frank A. LoBiondo, R-N.J.; Rick Larsen, D-Wash., and Lynn A. Westmoreland, R-Ga., quickly introduced a bill that they say would prevent the DOT from permitting a foreign air carrier to operate between European countries and the United States unless the carrier complies with basic, fair U.S. or European Union labor standards  a law that would effectively throttle Norwegian Airs expansion.

The bill is unlikely to pass.

Our opponents have created a wildly inaccurate fear-mongering situation, says Real Hamilton-Romeo, a Norwegian Air spokeswoman. Green-lighting Norwegian Air, she says, would help create more American cabin-crew jobs working for Norwegian Air; help sustain and support more than 90,000 American jobs through an $18.5 billion order with Boeing; bring more tourists to the United States; and add direct air service to Europe for American air travelers.

Protests against Norwegian Air are nothing but special interests in the U.S. airline industry worried about international competition, agrees Jonathan Galaviz, an airline analyst with Global Market Advisors, a travel industry consulting firm. Whats more, he notes, denying Norwegian Airs request would affect the U.S. tourism industry in other ways, hurting thousands of American hotel workers and taxi drivers that rely on new inbound airline traffic from abroad.

Northeastern University economist Harlan Platt says the debate reminds him of taxis fighting the inevitable spread of Uber. But the new, better way of running an airline  Norwegian Air is finding ways to reduce costs by breaking the old model of basing an airline in one country, employing people there and hiring its crew there  will ultimately win, to the benefit of passengers.

Denying Norwegian Airs application is tantamount to saying that American consumers should subsidize United Airlines and its unions, he says. While it is true that many of these airlines went through bankruptcy a decade ago, since then, they have consolidated the industry and destroyed competition. They are now all highly profitable and greedier than Midas.

Maybe the real question is: What do you give up when you fly on Norwegian Air? Not much, passengers say.

Norwegian Air follows the a la carte pricing model popularized by the airline industry about a decade ago, selling you a seat but asking you to pay for anything extra. That includes imposing fees for checked luggage, drinks, in-flight meals, phone reservations, seat assignments, snacks and ticket changes.

Even so, Annalisa Fernandez, a writer based in Riverside, Conn., says Norwegian Air is surprisingly affordable. We flew Norwegian Air to Spain last summer to take the kids to summer camp and plan to do it again this year, she says. Airfare for a family of five set the family back $4,000, $2,000 less than she would have paid on a conventional airline. Fernandez did her research before choosing the flight. I trust the Norwegians to not cut corners on safety, she adds.

Transatlantic airfares rise significantly during the summer, a time of peak demand. With only a handful of airlines competing on many popular routes, thanks to government-approved airline alliances that are granted antitrust immunity, you dont often hear passengers talking about affordable tickets.

Heres another word you rarely hear used to describe a flight: comfortable.

Lloyd Wheeler, who runs a production company in Tallahassee, Fla., flew from Orlando to Copenhagen, Denmark, recently on Norwegian Air and described it as a decent experience. Norwegians layout in economy is more comfortable than I have experienced in many other airlines, he says. Thats a sharp contrast to the U.S.-based carriers, who offer humane legroom and space only to their elites, to those willing to pay sky-high fares to sit in business class or to those who slavishly collect frequent-flier miles. Adds Wheeler, We look forward to flying on Norwegian Air again and hope to use their service in other markets.

Jonathan Weber, who owns a Web design firm in Stroudsburg, Pa., paid $256 to fly on Norwegian Air from New York to Oslo, Norway. He was impressed by the new aircraft and positive work ethic.

They depart and arrive on time, and they have a professional and courteous crew, he says, adding: Id fly them for a domestic route over the normal American alternatives any day.

Actually, Norwegian Air isnt applying to fly domestic routes  under an antiquated U.S. law, foreign carriers are not allowed to do that  but Webers comments underscore the level of unhappiness American air travelers feel with their own carriers. Theres a strong sense among passengers that the government shouldnt prop up a system that doesnt serve them well.
CIA Director John Brennan speaks at the Overseas Security Advisory Council's (OSAC) 30th annual briefing at the State Department in Washington November 18, 2015. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

DUBAI (Reuters) - CIA chief John Brennan said on Sunday he expects 28 classified pages of a U.S. congressional report into the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States to be published, absolving Saudi Arabia of any responsibility.

"So these 28 pages I believe are going to come out and I think it's good that they come out. People shouldn't take them as evidence of Saudi complicity in the attacks," Brennan said in an interview with Saudi-owned Arabiya TV, according to a transcript provided by the network.

The withheld section of the 2002 report is central to a dispute over whether Americans should be able to sue the Saudi government, a key U.S. ally, for damages.

The U.S. Senate passed a bill on May 17 allowing the families of Sept. 11 victims to do so, setting up a potential showdown with the White House, which has threatened a veto.

Saudi Arabia denies providing any support for the 19 hijackers - most of whom were Saudi citizens - who killed nearly 3,000 people in the Sept. 11 attacks. Riyadh strongly objects to the bill.

It has said it might sell up to $750 billion in U.S. securities and other American assets if it became law.

Brennan called the 28-page section merely a "preliminary review."

"The 9/11 commission looked very thoroughly at these allegations of Saudi involvement ... their conclusion was that there was no evidence to indicate that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually had supported the 9/11 attacks," he added.

The Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence is reviewing the material to see whether it can be declassified.

Former U.S. Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired the congressional inquiry into the attacks, said in April that the White House will likely make a decision by June on whether it would release the classified pages.

(Reporting By Noah Browning, Sami Aboudi and Ali Abdelatti; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Paul Simao)
BAMAKO (Reuters) - A Malian pro-government militia has killed eight Islamist fighters in a gunbattle in northern Mali, two security sources said on Sunday.

Clashes between the militia and the Macina Liberation Front erupted on Saturday in Gourma-Rharous village, in the Timbuktu region of Mali which has long been plagued by Islamist militants, a military source and one from the militia told Reuters by telephone.

They had no details of how the clashes started.

Mali's government and various separatist groups signed a peace deal last year but it has failed to prevent periodic violence in northern Mali by Islamist militants, who have also staged assaults on high profile targets in the capital Bamako, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked the Security Council to add just over 2,500 peacekeepers to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has claimed an attack on two U.N. sites in northern Mali at the end of last month, in which a peacekeeper from China and three civilians were killed and over a dozen others wounded.

French forces intervened in 2013 to drive back Islamist fighters that had hijacked the Tuareg uprising to seize Mali's desert north in 2012, but it has since proved difficult to prevent Islamists staging deadly attacks.

(Reporting by Tiemoko Diallo; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Ros Russell)
Investors are becoming an increasingly prominent part of the New Zealand property market.

Parts of New Zealand are in danger of becoming slums within five or 10 years if the concentration of investor purchases is allowed to continue, property experts have warned.

CoreLogic data has shown investors account for 42 per cent of Auckland's overall sales, 38 per cent of Wellington's and 42 per cent of Christchurch's.

But within those cities, the data shows areas with the most affordable housing are firmly in investors' sights.

Where first-home buyers might once have been prevalent, landlords now reign supreme.

Wellington's central apartments have become an investor favourite. Analyst Nick Goodall said that, so far in 2016, 70 per cent of Te Aro sales had been to investors. "At the same point last year, they had accounted for 58 per cent of sales," he said.

READ MORE: Analysis shows up to 80pc of sales in some suburbs to investors

Wellington Central and Mt Cook were also popular investor options - about 60 per cent of each suburb's sales was to investors through 2016.

Outside the apartment market, cheaper suburbs such as Ranui (56 per cent investor sales), Avalon (53 per cent) and Lower Hutt have become popular landlord options.

Ranui was only the 19th-most popular suburb for investors last year.

In Auckland, investors are snapping up apartments, too - particularly in Grafton, where they are responsible for three-quarters of sales so far this year.

Traditional first-home suburbs feature, too - 65 per cent of the sales in Glen Innes this year have been to investors, up from 45 per cent at the same time last year.

"Manukau suburb, in central Manukau, which is a mix of houses and apartments, has also been a popular destination over the last few years with 63 per cent of sales to this group during the beginning of both 2016 and 2015," Goodall said.

But investors have dropped away in Kelston, where they represent 57 per cent of purchases this year, from 61 per cent last year, and Blockhouse Bay where they are 43 per cent of the market in 2016, from 59 per cent in 2015.

Another analysis done by Auckland University researchers found 80 per cent of sales in Otara were going to investors.

New Zealand Property Investors Federation executive officer Andrew King said cheaper suburbs, and more affordable options such as apartments, had always been popular with investors.

He said they were not only cheaper to buy but the percentage of tenants wanting them was higher.

"At the moment in those areas there is a lot of overcrowding occurring and there is the potential for rents to go even higher."

He said not many investors would put their money in Ponsonby, Mount Eden or Parnell. "It's always further out."

Property commentator Olly Newland agreed.

He said it made sense for property investors to purchase cheaper places. "Rent doesn't go up in a straight line with value. A property that costs $500,000 might get $500 a week but that doesn't mean a place that costs $1 million won't get $1000. It's logical to go for the cheapest place."

But Newland said it was risky to have investors dominating cheaper areas. "I don't like it. We need investors to provide rental properties but when they get to a position of dominating the market it's a short trip to ghettos and slums. If an area is nothing but rentals and absentee landlords over time it will go backwards.

"Homeowners look after their properties better than investors. Most investors are amateurs and don't know how to do it," he said.

"If you own your home you don't think about what you spend on it within reason, you paint it when it needs it, do repairs. But investors are keen on watching their pennies. It gets worse over time. In five or 10 years' time, we could have a problem."

In Christchurch, Akaroa has the highest percentage of investor sales, at 65 per cent - up from 50 per cent in 2015. Riccarton took the second spot and Broomfield was third.

Christchurch apartments were also popular - 62 per cent went to landlords.

But Goodall said it was too simplistic to say that investors were targeting the cheapest parts of the market.

"Most of our analysis has shown they operate across the value ranges, so while they are active at the bottom they are also active in the middle and top ranges, generally because they have the capital allowing them to purchase the higher-value properties."

Investors have also become more prevalent in Murrays Bay and Pinehill - high-value suburbs on Auckland's North Shore. In Murrays Bay, the percentage of investor sales has increased year-on-year from 32 per cent to 63 per cent.

Omaha also features strongly, with 70 per cent of sales to people who already own a house.

Goodall said this suggested it was a popular holiday home destination, and buyers were using equity in other houses to leverage finance.
Amy Doidge has donated 30 litres of milk to New Zealand's only official human milk bank, but it is not enough.

The milk bank used in Christchurch's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) has been running for over two years and staff are calling for more donors to fulfil expansion plans.

Doidge was able to donate breast milk because her daughter Ruby consumed only 1 millilitre an hour as a premature baby.

IAIN MCGREGOR/FAIRFAX NZ The largest amount of breast milk the bank has ever held at one time is 75 litres.

"It's nice to be able to give parents a choice rather than just giving babies formula."



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A big concern for premature babies is a severe gut disorder called Necrotising Enterocolitis, but the risk of developing it is lowered by consuming human milk.

Not all women are able to express breast milk for their children, leaving them with no choice but to use formula before the milk bank came in.

Over the 110 days Ruby was in NICU, Doidge donated about 30 litres of milk.

Milk bank manager Anthea Franks said when raw milk was donated, it was frozen, pasteurised, checked for bacteria and eventually given out to needy babies.

She said raw breast milk could be donated up to three months from when it was first expressed and could be frozen for another three months following pasteurisation.

Franks said the largest amount of milk held in the bank to date was 75 litres, but that was "not enough".

Jessie Deen had her daughter Ailla when she was full term.

She had more milk available than Ailla could drink, so decided to donate it.

"It was an amazing experience to think that my milk was going to another baby who really needed it.

"It's sad that some mothers are unable to express milk properly and it felt good to give them the opportunity to give their babies human milk if that's what they wanted," she said.

Deen donated four litres of milk over four months.

Neonatal consultant Maggie Meeks hoped all babies in Christchurch's NICU would eventually have human milk available to them so the project could go on to serve others too.

"We want to think about whether we could start supplying milk outside of the neonatal unit and into the community," she said.

About 20 per cent of babies in NICU receive milk from another mother.

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caconservative said: Are you the same guy who sided with the Court on the gay-marriage issue? Didn't read your post evaluating and excoriating the law the Court created in that issue. Did I miss it? Click to expand...

I can disagree with the SC. I do so in many cases. In particular, I think their ruling in Citizens United hurt your country. However, I think they did their job. They evaluated the law in terms of the meaning of the constitution as they understand it and that is their conclusion. I did not say their conclusion was wrong based on that criteria, I said it was wrong in terms of what it does to the country.They did not write a new law, they ruled the law as written was invalid. Big difference.Now it is the function of government to enact new legislation to change things if possible and if appropriate.As in this case. I personally don't like this decision. But they ruled based on their interpretation of our constitution equivalent. The ruled that the current law is weak in this matter.Thus, parliament now can write a new law or amend the existing law to correct things if they feel it is needed. But as I said, there are other animal cruelty laws that often result in stiffer sentences than non-violent or coerced rape so I question whether this has much impact other than how perps will be charged in any future instances of such actions.
Four unmanned systems developers from Israel are introducing new versions of Small Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems (STUAS) at Eurosatory, addressing the growing interest in tactical UAS among military forces worldwide.

This new category was pioneered by Boeing InSitu with the RQ-21 Blackjack drone developed for the US Marine Forces. The Blackjack offers a platform significantly lighter and agiler than the current RQ-7B Shadow. With a catapult launched system that has a Gross Takeoff Weight (GTOW) of 61 kg (135 lbs.) that carries 18 kg (39 lbs) of payloads which currently are limited to a small range of EO/IR sensors. Future systems will also include wide area surveillance, radar, and electronic monitoring.

The Skyhook, a unique retrieval system used by the Blackjack enables recovery of RQ-21A drones anywhere on land and at sea, without dependence on a landing strip. The drone can stay airborne for 16 hours at a service ceiling of 19,500 ft.

Despite its operational versatility, the RQ-21A is quite limited in its mission configurations, as it is dependent on specific payloads to carry out its tasks.

Watch the playlist of all four platforms above.

Smaller and lighter tactical drones that have evolved in Israel in recent years support such capabilities. Most systems weigh about half the weight of the Integrator; the latest versions are capable of fulfilling most of the missions carried by the new US drone.

The Orbiter 3, an electrically powered UAV developed by Israels Aeronautics Systems, is available in two variants that pioneered the STUAS category  a platform that can deploy and operate at the battalion and brigade level, perform missions at altitudes of 5,000  10,000 ft. for several hours and carry payloads weighing up to 10 pounds.

The Orbiter 3, an electrically powered UAV developed by Israels Aeronautics Systems, is available in two variants that have pioneered the STUAS category  a platform that can deploy and operate at the battalion and brigade level, perform missions at altitudes of 5,000  10,000 ft. for several hours and carry payloads weighing up to 10 pounds. Electrical propulsion provides the drone acoustic stealth capability, particularly at night, when the familiar signsture of piston-engines is clearly heard.

Israel showcases not less than four new or upgraded drones designed for the STUAS category. Four companies  IAI, Elbit Systems, Aeronautics, and BlueBird Aerosystems, display such platforms. All have roughly the same dimensions (about four-meter wingspan), weighing 30-40 kg.

All Four systems presented by the Israeli companies are launched from a catapult and retrieved by parachute and airbag cushion.

All reflect recent redesigns aimed to better position these platforms to address new requirements that evolve from the intensive hybrid warfare events that are shaping modern military operations.

The similar dimensions derive from the sensors these drones are designed to carry  stabilized, multi-sensor EO/IR payloads weighing 3-5 kg, electronic monitoring packages, and RF jammers, weighing up to one kilogram each, are all designed to support the potential missions of such platforms.

Elbit Systems is introducing at Eurosatory 2016 a new, electrically powered version of its Skylark 3, Mini-Tactical UAS. While the companys current Skylark 1-LEX often operated at the battalion level, the larger and more robust Skylark 3 is designed to serve the brigade. With GTOW of 40 kg, the new drone can carry multiple payloads of up to 10 kg (22 lbs) in weight. This electrically-powered platform can sustain a mission of up to six hours, at an operating ceiling of 15,000 ft.; the Skylark 3 can operate at a range of 100 km. Typical sensors carried by the Skylark 3 include EO/IR day/night payloads, electronic monitoring (ELINT) and communications intelligence (COMINT).

Aeronautics Systems had fielded its version of Mini-Tactical drone  the Orbiter 3. This drone has evolved through the development process, and is currently in the Orbiter 3B version, an electrically powered flying wing, with a gross takeoff weight of 30 kg, carrying payloads up to 5.5 kg weight. The remaining payload is reserved for batteries, providing an endurance of 7 hours. To extend its mission Aeronautics developed the Orbiter 3LE and Orbiter 4, powered by internal combustion engines. Orbiter 4, currently in development, will have a GTOW of 50 kg, and operating ceiling of 18,000, enabling line-of-sight control beyond 250 km and mission endurance beyond 24 hours.

IAIs BirdEye 650 also began its way as an electrically-propelled platform. Shifting to internal combustion gasoline engine, IAI squeezed more endurance form its newly designed BirdEye 650D, a flying wing shaped STUAS that weighs 30 kg on takeoff.

The BirdEye 650D, designed for military and paramilitary intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) can conduct autonomous missions including point takeoff, point recovery, at an altitude of 15,000 ft.; the drone can operate at ranges of up to 150 km and endurance of more than 15 hours.

Designed to support mobile land forces the 650D operates from a dedicated vehicle that packs all the support systems required for operation, including multiple packed drones, launch rail, communications link and operator controls. IAI designed it as a generic platform that can quickly reconfigure with different payloads of up to 5.5 kg weight, including electro-optical gimbaled payloads covering different spectral bands, and Passive RWR/RWL electronic countermeasures (ECM). Bird Eye 650D can conduct precision electronic warfare by deploying communications jamming (COMJAM) close to the enemy, thus minimizing interference with friendly forces.

The latest Israeli entry in the Small, Tactical UAS category is the ThunderB from BlueBird Aerosystems  the most recent upgrade implemented with this drone made the thunder the first Israeli STUAS to achieve the goal of 24-hour operation with such small platform. The small drone has already passed its first combat test in April, during hostilities that erupted between Armenia and Azerbaijan. One of the ThunderB drones operated by the Azeri side crashed and fell into Armenian hands, thus revealing its use in the Caucasus.

We have developed the ThunderB in response to the need for a field-launched, long-range, long-endurance UAS, capable of complex missions that, until now, required the use of significantly larger platforms, logistical footprint, and higher life-cycle-cost. Said Mr. Ronen Nadir, Bluebirds CEO. The ThunderB, with its automatic field launch by a small pneumatic launcher and automatic field recovery utilizing a parachute and an airbag, can be deployed and operated from a small vehicle or trailer, eliminating the need for costly infrastructure such as runways, hangars, etc.

The ThunderBs extended mission range to 150km and endurance of 24h to enable around-the-clock support for tactical ground forces. Such functions can provide forward observer, pre-mission Intelligence collection, persistent surveillance, and Battle Damage Assessment (BDA).

ThunderB is a tactical-sized UAS, weighing 28kg, with a wingspan of 4m, undetectable to the naked eye even when cruising at altitudes as low as 3000 ft. The systems unprecedented reliability and endurance are based on an advanced computerized electronic fuel-injected (EFI) engine, coupled with multiple system redundancies throughout the UAS.
Maybe youve heard of that song How Ya Going to Keep Em Down on the Farm (After Theyve Seen Paree)? The idea behind the song, a big hit during World War I, was that once our soldiers saw the bright lights of the city, theyd be reluctant to return to the farms from whence they came.

Lorrie Andrews might argue that the song has it backward.

Andrews is the superintendent of the Burnt River School District, in Unity, in the far eastern reaches of Oregon. Unity has a population of 71, according to the 2010 Census. Burnt River School, where Andrews also serves as principal and teaches, is a public charter school with 34 students this past school year.

Burnt River School is also the source of a terrific idea that might end up doing more to heal the gap between rural and urban Oregon than anything coming out of Salem: Recently, schools in Portland sent out an invitation to high school students there: Come to Burnt River for a semester and study agriculture and science.

Dozens of Portland students and their families emailed back. Eight of them will be at Burnt River when the new school year begins.

I read about the program in a recent story in the Capital Press by Eric Mortenson. Since Ive written in the past about the rural-urban gap in Oregon, I was intrigued enough to speak with Andrews last week about the program.

Andrews said the situation at Burnt River is similar to whats been happening at smaller schools around the state: The school has been facing declining enrollment for the last few years.

But Burnt River teachers and administrators knew they had something of value to offer students, and had to look no further than the experiences of the exchange students who came to the school from other countries (often from large urban areas). Those exchange students have found the experience life-changing: They come as strangers and they leave as family, Andrews said. Its a tough time when they have to say goodbye.

In addition, the school already had other experience in reaching out: It runs a distance-learning program and has formed partnerships with nearby community colleges. So, after a period of brainstorming, the idea seemed natural: Why not reach out to students in urban settings, to have them participate in the Burnt River Integrated Agriculture/Science Research Ranch program?

It took a couple of years after that to fully develop the idea. We had a lot of support, Andrews said, but people also warned her: You have a lot of work ahead of you. That was an understatement.

The preparation work meant that Andrews was cautiously optimistic when the time came to extend the invitation to Portland students: Not only did she think there might be some appeal in studying agriculture and science in a rural setting, but she thought some families might prefer the smaller school setting Burnt River offers.

The first batch of students will be all girls (the idea is to alternate between girls and boys each semester). Theyll stay with ranching families, and so will get firsthand experience at working with animals.

The additional students will benefit the school districts budget: The State School Fund pays districts $7,100 per student, and that money will flow to Burnt River.

But thats a nice added bonus for a program that offers such promise to build bridges, one person and one family at a time, between rural and urban Oregon. And Andrews expects that the experience will be valuable to Burnt River students and staff members as well.

We can certainly learn from one another, Andrews said. Its good for us to open ourselves up to each other. Maybe were not as different as we think we are.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- On a cloudy day in summer 1944, Fay C. Bailey's bomber was shot down by Nazi fighters and the crew baled out over Austria. Bailey survived, but was captured and spent nine months in captivity.

On Monday Bailey, now 94 years old, will receive a Prisoner of War Medal that he had not previously gotten.

The medal will be presented by U.S. Rep. John Katko, who will be joined by members of the 174th Attack Wing from Hancock Air National Guard Base.

After Bailey was freed from a prison camp he returned to the United States, was discharged and finished his college degree. He retired from Lamson Corp. after 32 years and lives with his wife on Onondaga Hill.

Fay C. Bailey, seen during World War II. On Monday Bailey, now 94 years old, will receive a Prisoner of War Medal that he had not previously gotten.

In 1990, Bailey was notified by the secretary of the Air Force that he had received the Prisoner of War Medal, which had been created in the 1980s. But he never received the physical medal.



Last year Bailey was watching news coverage of veterans receiving medals they had not previously gotten, which promoted him to contact Katko, who helped secure the medal.

Bailey, who grew up on the West Side of Syracuse, said in an interview that he was studying mechanical engineering at Clarkson University when recruiters from what is today Fort Drum visited.

The thought of flying intrigued Bailey, he said, so he joined the Army Air Forces in 1942, eventually becoming a second lieutenant and co-pilot of a B-24 Liberator.

Bailey was assigned to the 465th Bomb Group in the 55th Wing of the 15th Air Force. The group entered combat in May 1944, flying from Pantanella Air Base in southern Italy on bombing missions into Nazi Germany and occupied territories.

By that summer Bailey had flown dozens of missions, though he point out that two or three were so long that they were counted twice.

On Aug. 3, 1944, a co-pilot of another bomber got sick and Bailey subbed in for him. It was his 35th mission, he said. At first everything went well. The crew -- four officers and six crewmen -- flew to a target in southern Germany and dropped their bombs.

German fighter planes attacked the bombers about 60 miles into their return trip, shooting up the aircraft. An engine caught fire and Bailey's plane and another bomber went down over the Austrian town of Imst, he said.

Bailey and the other men in the plane parachuted out.

"Fortunately we all got out safe," he said.

The crew was still pretty high up when they had baled out -- about 18,000 feet -- and Bailey said he had never used a parachute before. When he hit the ground Bailey got a concussion, he said.

Civilians were waiting on the ground and captured him when he landed. He was turned over to German soldiers and spent nine months in captivity.

"It wasn't easy, lets put it that way," he said.

Bailey was taken by truck and train to Stalag Luft III, a prisoner of war camp southeast of Berlin in present-day Poland.

Earlier that year the camp had been the site of the famous "Great Escape." It housed thousands of British and Americans. Bailey said when he arrived the American compound was full so he was placed with the British. The camp was guarded by members of the Luftwaffe who were for the most part fair, he said.

"We didn't get too much food, but they didn't treat us bad," Bailey said.

Prisoners supplemented their rations with Red Cross food packages, he said.

In early 1945, when Russian soldiers were getting close to Stalag Luft III, the prisoners were marched to another camp. Later, when American troops closed in, Bailey said they were marched to Stalag VII-A, a crowded POW camp near Moosburg in southern Germany.

Finally, April 1945, Bailey and the other prisoners were liberated by American forces.

"That was a terrific day," he said.
Syracuse, N.Y.  Seventy-one years after the Japanese shot down his bomber, killing his four crewmates and taking him prisoner, John Shott got to ride in a B-25 again. This time, the flight went much better.

Shott, who will turn 94 on July 4, rode in the B-25 "Panchito" at the 2016 Syracuse International Airshow. The flight took off from Syracuse Hancock International Airport and went around the Syracuse area for 20 minutes before returning to the airport.

"The circumstances were different this time," Shott, of North Syracuse, said after climbing out of the famed bomber upon landing. "It was great being on the plane again. It seems small to me now, but I enjoyed it very much. The last time wasn't a landing."

Shott's daughter, Lois Burns, arranged the flight with airshow officials when she learned the "Panchito" would be performing at the show.

Shott was a radioman and gunner aboard a B-25 on a mission to bomb Japanese positions on the Chinese island of Formosa (now named Taiwan) in May 1945 when the plane was shot down.

"We were flying at tree-top level in a valley," he said. "I could see muzzle flashes and they must have hit us because we crashed."

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Shott's four crewmates were killed. Shott was thrown clear of the plane upon impact, breaking three ribs. He hid along a river bank for three days before Japanese soldiers captured him.

"I got hungry," he said. "I was getting a cabbage in a farmer's field when three soldiers came up to me."

Shott was taken to a Japanese prison, but he didn't stay there for long. He was released in September 1945, after just four months as a prisoner of war, following Japan's surrender.

The B-25 was made famous during the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 1942, four months after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II.

Shott, who grew up near Pittsburgh, Pa., left his job in a steel mill to join the Army Air Corps and flew 12 successful missions against the Japanese aboard a B-25 before being shot down. After the war, he went to work for American Airlines in Syracuse, loading air freight. He retired in 1983.

Despite how his previous flight ended, Shott said he had fond memories of the B-25. He only had one regret about his flight on Saturday.

"I sat behind the cockpit and didn't have a window seat," he said. "I would have liked to sit at my old position in the back with a window."

Contact Rick Moriarty anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-3148
Ongoing rescue operation @ Letchworth state park following reports of multiple people falling into a gorge pic.twitter.com/9QHXer8pTG  Nina Porciuncula (@NinaReports) June 12, 2016

Four people were rescued and at least two people are still missing after going over the lower falls at Letchworth State Park on Saturday evening, state police said.

At least two victims were still missing, and some news outlets reported there could be a third missing person. Rescue efforts were continuing Sunday morning.

The incident happened around 6:30 p.m. on Saturday night, according to WHEC-TV. Rope rescue teams and civilians helped rescue four people. Helicopters were brought in to be part of the search.

Mercy Flight took one victim to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, and three others were taken to the hospital, according to TWC News in Buffalo. None of the injuries are life-threatening, TWC News reported.

It was unclear how the group went over the falls and into the gorge.

Letchworth State Park is located in Livingston and Wyoming counties, about 60 miles south of Rochester.
NEW WINDSOR, N.Y. -- A 35-year-old man has been jailed following a fatal stabbing Saturday morning at an Upstate New York supermarket.

Andrew Goodenough.

Andrew Goodenough of New Windsor was arrested inside the ShopRite grocery store in New Windsor about an hour after the stabbing, Town Police Sgt. Stephen Sager said in a news release.

According to a report by WCBS-TV, Goodenough allegedly walked behind the victim in the produce aisle and sliced his neck with a box-cutter before walking away. The station reported that officials said there was no prior altercation or apparent connection between the two men.

Goodenough was charged with second-degree murder. The name of an attorney to comment was not immediately available.

Police said they found the 35-year-old victim stabbed and unconscious inside the store at about 9:40 a.m. The victim, a resident of Highland Falls, New York, was taken to St. Luke's Hospital in Newburgh, where he was pronounced dead.

Police did not immediately release the victim's name, pending notification of kin.

Police are investigating a motive.

WCBS quoted a ShopRite statement to customers that said, "We can confirm that an unfortunate incident took place this morning at our store. The store will remain closed for the rest of the day while police conduct a thorough investigation. While we can't discuss the ongoing investigation, we are working with the police and reaching out to all of our associates. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those involved."

New Windsor is located in Orange County about 65 miles north of New York City.

The National Desk contributed to this report.
Waitress Tony Awards

This image released by Boneau/Bryan-Brown shows, Keala Settle, left, Jessie Mueller and Kimiko Glenn, right, during a performance of "Waitress," at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in New York.

(Joan Marcus | Boneau | Bryan-Brown | AP)

What channel is the Tony Awards on? What time?

If you're a Broadway fan, plan to tune into the 2016 Tonys on Sunday, June 12 from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET (delayed PT) on CBS. "The Late Late Show" star James Corden will host the broadcast, live from the Beacon Theatre in New York City.

In the Syracuse area, CBS airs on Channel 1209 (HD) for Charter (formerly Time Warner Cable) subscribers and Ch. 5 for non-digital customers; Channel 505 (HD) and 5 (SD) for Verizon FiOS customers; Channel 5 (SD & HD) for DirecTV subscribers; Channel 5 (SD &HD) for Dish Network customers; and Channel 605 (HD) and 5 (SD) or New Visions viewers.

The Tonys will also be streaming live online via CBS All-Access, the television network's new streaming service available on phones, tablets or computers.

Live red carpet coverage will also be available starting at 5:30 p.m. on tonyawards.com, BroadwayHD.com, Nordstrom.com, People.com, EW.com, Telemundo.com, Playbill.com. and CBS All-Access. Behind-the-scenes coverage will also be available during the ceremony.

Lin-Manuel Miranda's hip-hop musical "Hamilton" leads all Tony nominees with a record 16 nominations this year. "The Producers" and "Billy Elliot" previously shared the record with 15 nods.

Nine Syracuse University alumni are up for awards son Sunday, including "Waitress" star Jessie Mueller, nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical, and "The Father" star Frank Langella, for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play.

The 70th annual Tony Awards, which honors theater professionals for distinguished achievement on Broadway, are presented by The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing.
Ex-Stanford Swimmer Rape

In this Feb. 2, 2015 photo, former Stanford student and athlete Brock Turner appaers in a Palo Alto, Calif., courtroom. A fledgling campaign to recall the judge who sentenced the former Stanford University swimmer to six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman gained momentum Friday, June 10, 2016, as three prominent political consultants joined the effort.

(Karl Mondon/San Jose Mercury News via AP)

PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) -- Stanford University graduating students and women's rights advocates used the school's commencement ceremony to again express their anger over the six-month jail sentence given to a former student for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

A handful of students demonstrated Sunday during "Wacky Walk," a rambunctious, slow-moving stroll by graduating students dressed in zany costumes that precedes the official graduation events.

One person held a sign that declared "Stanford protects rapists." Another graduate's sign was a message to the victim: "You are a warrior."

Organizers said they wanted to show solidarity to the woman sexually assaulted on campus last year by former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner.

"It's very important to amplify the voice of survivors," said Brianne Huntsman, a protest organizer.

The victim's emotional statement to the court about how the assault devastated her life was widely shared online, attracting national attention to the case.

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, whose rousing keynote speech called on Republicans to reconsider their endorsement of Donald Trump, closed his address urging sexual assaults be taken seriously.

"If someone tells you they have been sexually assaulted, take it effing seriously and listen to them," said Burns, who is the father of four girls. "Maybe someday we'll make the survivor's eloquent statement as important as Dr. (Martin Luther) King's letter from the Birmingham jail."

Turner, 20, of Oakwood, Ohio, is scheduled to be released from Santa Clara County jail in September, after completing three months of his sentence due to good behavior.

His six-months in jail sentence, which also orders him to register as a sex offender for life, touched off an emotional national debate about leniency and campus sexual assault and sparked outrage with critics collecting thousands of signatures to demand trial Judge Aaron Persky be removed from the bench.

The women's advocacy group UltraViolet submitted more than 800,000 signatures to the Commission on Judicial Performance's San Francisco offices Friday in a symbolic effort for Persky's removal. The group also has filed a formal misconduct complaint.

The group said it has commissioned a plane to carry a banner reading "Protect Survivors. Not Rapists. #PerskyMustGo" to fly over Stanford University Stadium ahead of Sunday's commencement ceremonies.

"Stanford students are justifiably outraged over a so-called justice system that protects privileged white rapists over the survivors of their crimes -- and nearly 900k UltraViolet members from California to Florida agree," said Nita Chaudhary, co-founder of UltraViolet. "With one in four women sexually assaulted while in college, we need judges that take rape seriously, and that's why Judge Persky should be removed from the bench."

UltraViolet said it has also paid for a full page ad in The Stanford Daily's graduation issue inviting students and alumni to take a stand against rape and that bicycles carrying billboards calling for the judge's removal will accompany student protesters. The bikes are a nod to two graduate students who were riding their bicycles when they confronted the freshman as he attacked the unconscious victim by a garbage bin.

"I sleep with two bicycles that I drew taped above my bed to remind myself there are heroes in this story. That we are looking out for one another," the woman said in her statement to the court.
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Q: At a recent board meeting, a director moved to approve an item that was not on the agenda. The motion passed and is being implemented. Does this violate Florida law?

 JV, Stuart

A: The answer depends on the nature of the business and whether your community is a condominium or a homeowners association. If your community is a condominium association, Florida Statutes Chapter 718 requires all agenda items be posted in advance of the meeting. Specifically, the statute provides "adequate notice of all board meeting, which must specifically identify all agenda items, must be posted conspicuously on the condominium property at least 48 continuous house before the meeting except in an emergency." So if the board in a condominium acts without a noticed agenda item, the action is not proper but could most likely be later ratified at a duly noticed meeting.

If the community is a homeowners association, the same statute requiring an identification of all agenda items is not present. Chapter 720 governing homeowners associations does not specifically address this issue, except to say that an agenda must be posted if the association is levying a special assessment or where the board is petitioned by the membership to address a specific item of business.

Q: Our condominium rules provide owners may not use condominium staff for personal use, such as asking maintenance individuals to perform tasks inside the unit. Some owners are asking the board to turn a blind eye to this rule. What are the risks?

 AK, Treasure Coast

A: First, depending on whether the maintenance worker is an employee or independent contract of the association, there may not be insurance coverage and even if there is, insurance may deny a claim if there is an accident. Most indemnification provisions and insurance policies cover work performed within the scope of duties. If an employee or contractor is hired by the association with a defined task of furthering association business, it would be outside of his or her job description to enter a unit at the request of an owner and performed tasks and work for an individual unit owner. Second, the association would essentially be subsidizing owner responsibilities with common funds. Your Declaration of Condominium most likely includes a definition and permitted usage of common expenses. I would doubt the definition is broad enough to include work on behalf of an individual owner and may be a breach of fiduciary duty to permit such a practice. Note this is distinguishable from a situation where the association requests its own employees or contractors to enter a unit in the furtherance of association business.

Q: Is the condominium board required to post a notice in advance of a meeting with its attorney to discuss litigation?

 CP, Stuart

A: Yes. There is an exception in the statute that provides meetings with counsel to discuss litigation do not need to be open to the membership, but it is still a meeting if a quorum of the board is present and conducting business. All meetings must be noticed in advance and, therefore, the meeting should be noticed at least 48 hours before the meeting.

John C. Goede Esq. is co-founder and shareholder of the Law firm Goede, Adamczyk, DeBoest & Cross. Visit www.GADClaw.com or ask questions about your issues for future columns, send your inquiry to: question@GADClaw.com. The information provided herein is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. The publication of this article does not create an attorney-client relationship between the reader and Goede, Adamczyk, DeBoest & Cross, or any of our attorneys. Readers should not act or refrain from acting based upon the information contained in this article without first contacting an attorney, if you have questions about any of the issues raised herein. The hiring of an attorney is a decision that should not be based solely on advertisements or this column.
A private firm from the southern province of Dong Thap has received approval from Singapore to export rice to the country, one of the most competitive markets in the world.

The vast majority of Vietnams rice is exported by state-run companies.

Pham Minh Thien, director of Co May, said it has taken him almost three years to secure the Singapore contract. Co May exported its first 100 tons of rice to Singapore in March. In total, the company has shipped about 150 tons to the market to be sold at Singapores Fortune and BigBox supermarkets, with prices ranging from $2.7-$3.3 per kg.

Our rice has received a positive response from Singaporean customers even though we only entered the market a few months ago. Vietnamese rice is very competitive in comparison with Thai rice as it is fresh, soft and fragrant. However, because we have encountered difficulties, it has taken us three years to penetrate this market, Thien said.

The Co May rice sold in BigBox supermarket. Photo by VnExpress/KH

Under Vietnamese regulations, in order to get permission to export rice from the government, small companies like Co May have to set up special storage faciliities that can hold at least 5,000 tons of rice. Singaporean authorities also required the exporter to set up a large storage system before allowing Co May to export rice to the country.

We had to fly back and forth between Vietnam and Singapore several times before the decision was made to use our company name to market the rice in Singapore. Our rice can only be sold in Singapore if we follow the strict rules set by the supermarkets there, the Co May director said. He added that his company had once failed to sell another rice brand, Nosavina, to Singapore, which cost him about $5 million in marketing, due to intellectual issues.

The private Vietnamese firm finally decided to set up a subsidiary in Singapore, which is managed by local residents, to help find a way into supermarkets there, according to Thien.

Data from Vietnam Customs said that last year, the country exported 6.6 million tons of rice, up four percent year-on-year. China was the biggest consumer of Vietnamese rice, accounting for 30.7 percent of total export volume, followed by Indonesia (10.2 percent) and Malaysia (7.8 percent).

Related news:

> Buyers dry up as Vietnam's rice exports drop off in Q2

> Vietnam's 2016 drought-hit rice output to fall 1.5 percent: government official

> Rice inspired collection catches the eye
By Nicholas Samuel of TCPalm

PORT ST. LUCIE  They gathered in a large circle and sang Amazing Grace. They held up their candles to the sky and chanted Orlando Strong, Port St. Lucie Strong, Florida Strong.

MORE | Complete coverage on Omar Mateen and the Orlando shooting

Nearly 200 people came out to a candlelight vigil Sunday night at TattleTails Nightclub in Port St. Lucie to remember those who were killed early Sunday morning at an Orlando nightclub.

Eyes shut, all sing "Amazing Grace" at candlelight vigil for #OrlandoNightClubShooting pic.twitter.com/WvgHOj2bha  Nicholas Samuel (@JournalistNickS) June 13, 2016

Law enforcement officials identified the shooter as Omar Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce. Officials say 50 people were killed and 53 people were wounded in the attack at Pulse Orlando, a gay club south of downtown Orlando.

"We stand tonight with our brothers and sisters in Orlando," vigil organizer Jason Matthews said. "Last night showed we have a long way to go."

Love will conquer. We will conquer this, said Port St. Lucie Vice Mayor Linda Bartz. This cant die down in two or three days. This needs to open up a conversation about so many things.

Im heartbroken and angry, Bartz said. We need to embrace our brothers and sisters.

Reggie Brittian, president of One Treasure Coast, said those who want to help families of those killed can donate toonetreasurecoast.org.

Proceeds will go directly to the victims families, he said.

Brittian said he was amazed to see the community gather to support each other.

Mayor Gregory Oravec and Father Bernie Sheffield of the St. Julian of Norwich Old Catholic Church also attended.

Sheffield gave a short prayer before the 10 p.m. candlelight vigil.

Those 50 that died are now in heaven, Sheffield said.

Ana Santana, board member for One Treasure Coast, said she has several friends that work at Pulse nightclub.

They all left shortly before the shooting, Santana said at the vigil. We will stand up and not cower to this act of violence against us. We are a strong, loving community.

Some at vigil watched news coverage of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

My mind automatically went to all my friends in Orlando, said 21-year-old Port St. Lucie resident Leslie Blackburn. It hits close to home because this guy was from this town. It scared a lot of people.

Other reactions

Residents in Fort Pierce and Port St. Lucie reacted Sunday to the news that Omar Mateen of Fort Pierce has been named as the Orlando nightclub shooter:

Tanyelle Williams of Orlando: She's in Fort Pierce visiting her sister, who lives around the corner from Mateen's home: "It's just sad, it's crazy. It's too close to home."

Joseph Gearheart of Fort Pierce: "It's crazy, it blows my mind." Asked if he felt safe, he said, "I thought I did. Honestly, it's raising a lot of questions at the moment. I don't know how I feel."

Teresa Lemon, Southwest Bayshore Boulevard resident: "It's concerning that this is so close to us."

Laurie Gaylord, Martin County School District superintendent: "On behalf of the school board of the Martin County School District, we express our sincere condolences to the families impacted by this horrific incident," said Laurie J. Gaylord, superintendent of schools in Martin County.

"The families of the victims remain in our thoughts and prayers.

"The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the lead agency in charge of the Orlando shooting incident. Any information related to any individuals that may have been involved will not be released through the school district and all inquires will be directed to the media relations section of the FBI," Gaylord said.

Staff writers Nicole Rodriguez, Lamaur Stancil, Kelly Tyko contributed to this report.
MARJORIE SHROPSHIRE/CONTRIBUTED PHOTO In March, Capt. Alex Gorichky (left) of Local Lines charters in Merritt Island and Indian RiverKeeper Marty Baum (right) walk a shoreline of the Banana River, a part of the northern Indian River Lagoon in Brevard County, and stepped over dead adult redfish, also called red drum, measuring upwards of 40 inches in length. Baum said the fish probably died as a result of an algae bloom known as "Brown Tide."

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By Jim Waymer, USA TODAY NETWORK FLORIDA TODAY

MELBOURNE  Pressure the feds to speed up muck-dredging permits. Consider using local property taxes for dredging. Pursue incentives and state money to hook homes on septic tanks to sewer systems. And enforce rainy-season fertilizer bans and rules regarding erosion control and pollution discharges.

Those were among the ideas that Indian River Lagoon region government officials proposed to pursue within the next year.

"We didn't want this to just be rhetoric," Stephany Eley, chairwoman of the Space Coast League of Cities Environmental Committee, said to about 100 government officials Saturday at the Florida Institute of Technology.

The Space Coast and Treasure Coast leagues of cities held their first-ever Indian River Lagoon summit at FIT to drill down on near-term strategies to clean up the lagoon.

In April, the two leagues of cities both unanimously approved an "Indian River Lagoon Regional Compact" to work on approaches to restore the lagoon. There are 50 cities and towns in the five-county lagoon region, including 16 in Brevard. So far, all 16 cities in Brevard and 13 cities from Treasure Coast have signed onto the compact.

Almost two-thirds of Brevard County's 562,000 residents live in cities or towns, versus the unincorporated area. Other lagoon-side counties sport similar proportions of city dwellers imposing a majority of the impacts to the estuary.

The goal of the forum was to set the focus of a one-year action plan for the compact partners.

Among the approaches government officials discussed included:

A blanket federal permit for dredging muck from the lagoon, to speed up projects;

Maintain a five-year muck dredging plan;

Enforce the June 1 to Sept. 30 ban on fertilizer use;

Increase street sweeping;

Add more oysters and other filter feeders, as well as shoreline vegetation to buffer pollution.

"This is a historic moment," said Duane De Freese, executive director of the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program.

Cities need a clean-up template, with actions targeted at the most cost-effective ways to counter the worst pollution sources, officials said.

"You need to look at these categories of footprints and (nitrogen and phosphorus) loads," De Freese said. "It's a war with multiple campaigns."

Cities and counties need to pool education resources, said Marine Resources Council Executive Director Leesa Souto. She likened any future successful campaign to clean up the lagoon to social marketing campaigns that reduced teen smoking. "For us to do it, we're going to have to share. We don't have millions of dollars to do this," Souto said. "We need to be much more strategic."

Several government officials called for stricter enforcement of summer bans on fertilizing and more cooperation with state government to secure money to switch homes from septic tanks to sewer systems.

"We need to start working with our legislators to seek funding," Palm Bay City Councilman Tres Holton said during a breakout session.

Sen. Thad Altman and Rep. Debbie Mayfield, who attended Saturday's summit, both sat in on a breakout session about muck dredging.

"I'm a believer in local government," Altman said, adding he wants future state money for muck dredging to continue to go to local governments and to be driven by scientists.

Altman proposed putting more pressure on the federal government to speed up U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permits for muck dredging. "We all need to get together and come down on the feds," he said.

Mayfield suggested a holistic approach.

"This is the whole lagoon," Mayfield said. "To me, it's like a master plan, like a roadway project."

De Freese said he'll consider the lagoon recovered when oysters, clams and other commercial fisheries are once again viable in the region.

"I think if we do this from the grass roots up, we get there," De Freese said in closing.
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Joe Cataldo could well become the hero for south Vero.

Founding owner of Fort Lauderdales outrageously successful nightclub, Josephs, in the 1980s, Cataldo opened The YNot on U.S. 1 at Oslo Road three years ago. Now, hes making an unusual addition to the popular restaurant, bar and nightclub, known for its lilac martini glass and green olive logo.

Cataldos creating The Vero Beach International Bazaar and Antiques Mall, a one-acre, fully-air conditioned bazaar and antiques mall housing more than 120 vendors directly next door to The YNot.

This bazaar and antiques mall will really bring things together down here, says Cataldo. I want to wake this place up, give people something to do. This mall is going to be big.

With vendors selling both new and vintage items including jewelry, clothes, shoes, artwork, furniture, musical instruments and more, Cataldos confident therell be something for everyone. Hes currently accepting applications from vendors and expects booths will sell out before his opening in roughly 90 days.

Im shooting for an opening in late June, but it depends on how quickly permits go through, he admits.

Regardless, Cataldo is pumped about his newest project.

This will attract people from the beach wholl come to shop and stay for lunch, some pizza, a drink, whatever, he says.

Cataldo thinks the south end of Vero Beach is finally coming to life. Once the new I-95 exit at Oslo Road is built, he anticipates attracting visitors from outside the area as well as locals.

Do you know how far people are willing to travel for a big antiques mall like this? he asks. Vero will become a shopping destination.

That new I-95 access has been on the radar screen for some time, says Chris Mora, director of public works for Indian River County. The estimated cost for the project is $30 million. Funding will be from federal, state and county budgets.

Im fairly certain it will happen in two to three years, says Mora. Were still in the process of applying to the federal government for funding. Were sending the Highway Administration a pre-study of the project this summer and hope to hear back by the fall.

When Cataldo opened The YNot in 2011, he wanted to create a restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinner.

They said it wouldnt work in Vero Beach, Cataldo says, but they were wrong.

Today, The YNot serves about 300 breakfasts and lunches a day and does a good dinner-trade every night. The spacious restaurant seats 200 and different nights have their own themes: Monday free line dancing lessons, Tuesday half priced pizza, Friday all you can eat fish fry, Saturday prime rib and Sunday Maine lobster.

Things really change after nine oclock on the weekends when the restaurant transforms into a trendy nightclub. Dining tables are rolled away revealing a large dance floor. Video screens drop from the ceiling. Dance poles come out from their hidings places behind tall potted plants. Two professional pole dancers perform from 10 pm on and D.J. Jeff Poole plays the latest dance hits. Complete with laser shows and smoke, The YNot rocks till one in the morning.

You should see this place after 11:30 at night. The people who come here during the day wouldnt recognize it, says Cataldo. The parkings so crowded youd think a couple of tour buses had pulled in. Its all young people having a great time.

Friday and Saturday nights are mainstream popular dance music and Sunday nights are the hugely popular hip-hop.

The suave, tall Cataldo could easily be Dean Martins brother and looks at home smoking a cigar at a high top table in front of The YNot or inside eating Sunday breakfast with his son Joe of Vero Beach, his grandson Joe who drives up regularly from Ft. Lauderdale and his longtime business associate, Tony Correale.

In fact, if youre wondering whats behind the restaurants unusual name, the answers surprisingly simple.

Ynot is Tony backwards, says Denise Correale, Tonys wife. I suggested the name to Joe when he opened the place.

Cataldo and Correale grew up together in Lynn, MA outside Boston and have worked together in the club business much of their lives.

My grandparents came from Italy and settled in Revere, MA, says Cataldo. My family was in the construction business, Cataldo and Sons. I hated it. I like to be out at night.

Cataldo started his first nightclub 60 years ago in Boston and never looked back. His gentlemens nightclub Josephs a palatial 15,000 square foot, two story building located between the Intracoastal and the ocean near Oakland Park Boulevard Bridge in Ft. Lauderdale set a new bar for clubbing in south Florida.

There were lines around the block, stretch limos, people flew in from everywhere, says Cataldo.

Offering disco dancing upstairs and down, Josephs attracted regulars from Miami and New York City.

We had movie stars like Joe Pesci and heavy weight champions like Joe Frazier, Cataldo says.

The Pointer Sisters performed there regularly as well as heavy metal band Arrowsmith.

We gave Ike and Tina Turner their comeback. We had all the tuxes. It was a class act and the place to be, he says.

Cataldo says the club made five million thirty years ago. He started Josephs in 1980, selling in 1988.

Another nightclub, Joeys at the Twin Pairs had a brief life five years ago, but didnt pan out, not enough parking.

Now, Cataldos planning a new Josephs in Ft. Lauderdale as soon as the Vero Beach International Bazaar and Antiques Mall is up and rolling.

Thatll be my hangout, Cataldo says with a smile.

Currently, hes devoted to the new bazaar and mall as well as making additions to The YNot. About a month ago, Cataldo opened his new pool hall. The red, black and white room adjoins the restaurant and is filled with large black and white photos of the Rat Pack in their heyday circa early 1960s (Rat Pack members included Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr.). Cataldo looks so at home here, he might have stepped out of a photo.

Well play Texas Holdem Poker twice a week, Cataldo says. And pool of course.

Its all about waking up the south end of Vero Beach. For Cataldo, the new antiques mall is the missing piece that will make everything gel.

Working as his own designer and builder, Cataldos even created the color scheme.

It will have light yellow walls, burnt orange shelves and floor and lilac trim, he says. Im kind of creative.

To learn more about Cataldos new mall and bazaar visit www.verofleamarket.com or call 772-713-7995. For more information about The YNOT, see www.ynotvero.com or call 772-299-0092.
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By Nicholas Samuel of TCPalm

PORT ST. LUCIE  A man was hospitalized Saturday evening after he suffered second- and third-degree burns from a cooking accident at a city residence, St. Lucie County Fire District Captain William French said.

The 26-year-old was cooking with oil outside on a grill in the 3100 block of Ramsey Court, Port St. Lucie, when the accident happened, leaving severe burns to his hands and feet, French said.

French said fire rescue responded to the call about 7:46 p.m. The man was flown by air rescue to Orlando Regional Medical Center.

The cause of the cooking accident is still unclear.
Pointing to the power of the handheld's Tegra X1 processor, Plex has upgraded its app so that Nvidia's Shield can run the Plex Media Server locally.

Before this update for the Shield, Plex apps fed mobile devices content streamed from hardware hosting the Plex Media Server. Now users can store hundreds of gigabytes of content on their Shield devices and attach or stream media locally or remotely.

The "Shield is so powerful that it can not only run our Android TV interface better than just about anything out there," says Plex. "It can also run the full media server, including support for hardware-accelerated video transcoding (H.264, MPEG2 and HEVC) with multiple simultaneous streams!"

The handheld's storage capacity of up to 500 GB gives users ample room for storing media files locally. That storage capacity and high-end processor made the Shield suitable for becoming the "first all-in-one Plex box," capable of storage and streaming content from one piece of hardware.

So while Plex says it will look at bringing the all-in-one experience to other platforms, the company warns consumers that the Shield offers the "perfect mix of capabilities." And not many other mobile devices has a comparable combination of capable components.

Plex's Android TV update for the Shield will arrive later this month, as the company is still collaborating with Nvidia on the final details. When it's ready, the update will arrive over the air to deliver the media server components.

The Plex update comes ahead of the Shield's planned support for Netflix HDR and 4K from Vudu, all of which is set to arrive at the same time. Along with supporting HDR from Netflix, the Shield's update will roll out Nvidia's new GameStream service and its support for the technology.

"With both native and GeForce Now games, Shield will soon welcome HDR GameStream into the picture," Nvidia says. "With new, Pascal-based GPUs, gamers will soon be able to stream PC games with HDR from their GeForce-powered gaming PCs to the living room."

RT! Big news, your entire media library anytime, anywhere. @plex Media Server on SHIELD https://t.co/Std8qeJEfShttps://t.co/2aQz6oxP4B  NVIDIA SHIELD (@nvidiashield) June 9, 2016

Meet Plex on @NVIDIASHIELD! First device to run Plex Media Server & the Android TV interface https://t.co/iQ3U61xSCR pic.twitter.com/ChUCe2N4jc  Plex (@plex) June 9, 2016

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Climate change is known to affect some parts of the world more severely than others, such as developing countries being worse hit by droughts and famine. A new study, however, notes that the effects of weather events can reverberate all over the world.

Research from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change in Germany suggested that globalization, which entails greater connectedness among nations, can lead to climate-related issues in one area to be felt throughout the globe.

[P]roduction failure in poor countries can affect richer countries  and that is relevant information that needs to be investigated much more, said study lead author and professor Anders Levermann.

In focusing on global supply chain, the team studied various intricate interconnections, such as nation A depending on nation B for a certain product supply, and Nation C supplying nation B with materials to create such product. They probed how specific climate-rooted supply chain disturbances might affect the entire network.

Rapid Globalization, Not Climate Itself

The researchers formed a model of an economic network worldwide, feeding it with data on global economic trade and daily temperatures from 1991 to 2011 in 186 countries. Analysis was focused on heat stress in mostly tropical regions, which are the hottest parts of Earth in the first place.

They analyzed first-order production losses, which are the direct impact of heat stress and its effects on a countrys laborers and higher-order losses, which comprise the cascading effects of numerous losses in the entire supply chain.

The discovery both first- and higher-order losses climbed during the period, but mostly from 2001 onwards.

This result appears to be at odds with temperature data, which drastically changed in the 1990s. While heat stress has resulted in first-order losses, the overall rise in global temperatures in the last decades did not appear to drive the increase in cascading trade effects observed.

Analyzing global network changes, on the other hand, led researchers to find greater global connectivity from 2001 to 2011, making them conclude that climate per se was not the largest influence in the increased climate-related production losses, but the recent intensification of globalization, making nations much more dependent on each other.

While climate disturbances give birth to the production losses, the single major factor in these losses cascading effect is globalizations rise. Countries like India and China are more linked now to the rest of the world, cited Levermann.

Preventing Future Production Losses

In a business-as-usual climate situation until 2100, as the team simulated, the primary role of globalization will continue. In the 2011 economic network marked by the highest level of global connectivity, for instance, the study model suggested the highest level of production losses.

The researchers concluded that adaptation measures have to be established to prevent these types of production losses. Ideas include promoting greater storage  typically not favored because they mean cash just sitting around and not doing anything  in order to mitigate future losses.

Countries can also source the same product types from many different supplier countries in order to make up for disrupted supply.

The findings were detailed in the journal Sciences Advances.

Other feared effects of extreme weather conditions include drought and high temperatures triggering the accumulation of toxic components in crops. Food crops could be unleashing more chemical compounds proving hazardous to both humans and livestock, warned a United Nations report.

Photo: Richard Allaway | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Is Canada poised to become the next North American destination for cannabis?

Canadian leaders could legalize the use of recreational marijuana by as early as next year, according to a Los Angeles Times report. This could pave the way for pot to be sold at pharmacies as well as province-run liquor stores in the country that has legalized medical marijuana since 2001.

The new legislation will likely set local marijuana growers as well as distributors free from the risks that come with the cannabis trade, including being prohibited from opening a bank account or partnering with big investors.

Last April, Canadian health minister Jane Philpott said before a U.N. General Assembly that their country would file legislation in the spring to legalize and then regulate recreational pot.

The Canada initiative would cover the whole nation. On the contrary, in the United States, a given state may do the same but the federal government still considers marijuana a Schedule 1 drug alongside heroin and LSD.

Marijuana generates up to $150 million in sales in Canada, in contrast with the United States with its whopping $4.3 billion industry. At present, only licensed cannabis producers can distribute medical marijuana by mail to those physician-approved to use it, but even that rule is set to change by August with a federal court ruling that orders Health Canada to allow patients to grow their own source.

The plan could open up a big market for U.S. traders who are keen on exploring the opportunity north of the border, according to Chris Walsh, from Rhode Island-based Marijuana Business Daily.

Two years earlier, for instance, Seattle firm Privateer Holdings emerged as the first American company to put up a commercial medical marijuana production facility in Canada.

Its a matter of time before medical cannabis is legal in the U.S., said Derek Ogden, Ottawa-based National Access Cannabis network chief executive.

The Associated Press reported last January that a year into the experimental run of legal, taxed marijuana in Washington and Colorado, the said states found themselves still competing with the black market.

Since its voters legalized pot in 2012, Washington is said to have been wrestling with legally dubious medical dispensaries and a number of delivery services that advertise selling outside the legal structure. taxes are so onerous that licensed shops find it tough to compete, the report added.

In the medical marijuana front, Ohio just recently approved the bill that allows doctors to prescribe marijuana derivatives for medical treatment. This makes it the 25th state in the country to do so, and follows Missouri nearly two months after it made the same move.

Photo: Cannabis Culture | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Amazon Inc. is reportedly plunging headfirst into a direct competition with established music services such as Spotify and Apple Music.

The largest internet-based retail company is allegedly planning to launch its very own music streaming service in late summer or early fall, according to Reuters. The new music service is expected to cost $9.99 monthly  the same price of a subscription to Spotify or Apple Music.

Better Late Than Never

Although the company already offers on-demand streaming through Prime Music, this service only contains a partial catalog of more than a million songs. In comparison, Apple Music and Spotify both boast a catalog of more than 30 million.

Furthermore, Prime Music costs $10.99 per month  unless users commit to a $99-subscription for a year  with extra benefits such as free two-day shipping on Amazon products and streaming video.

Amazon's comprehensive music service will become a late competitor to the already growing streaming space, but the company believes the service is crucial to its goal of becoming a reliable source of goods and content, one of the Reuters sources said.

"A music service will further increase the daily interactions between Amazon and its customer base," Jay Samit, former CEO of SeaChange International, told Reuters.

Expanding Amazon Echo's Reach

Amazon has yet to release a statement about the full-fledged music service plan, but sources say the company intends to boost the appeal of Amazon Echo.

Apparently, this home speaker, which is capable of searching the internet and ordering products with voice commands, has been a major hit among users. Rival Google has been seeking to emulate the device with a speaker of its own, the Google Home.

Echo supports a diverse range of music services, including Pandora, TuneIn, Spotify and Prime Music, but the full-scale, closely integrated music streaming service could expand its reach further.

The music service will also widen Amazon's subscription offerings, paving the way for a single, yearly subscription. For instance, the company recently allowed its Prime subscribers to pay every month.

Hopes For The Future

Apple Music's launch in 2015 marked a significant shift in consumers' tastes, indicating that listeners now prefer subscription services rather than buying individual songs or albums.

Similarly, Alphabet Inc.'s Google has muscled into streaming in previous years with the goal of weaving itself more tightly in the daily lives of customers.

Amazon wants to do the same. The company hopes its integration of the new music streaming with Echo will help the service stand out and enforce the speaker's dominance, sources said.

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Environment officials in Michigan have released a new water stewardship plan that aims to protect what they consider "globally unique water resources" in the state.

According to the state's Environmental Quality Department, the 30-year Michigan Water Plan is designed to serve not only the government's environmental objectives but also its economic and social goals as well.

The new water strategy begins by raising awareness on the importance of protecting and restoring the various waterways in Michigan and promoting the involvement of communities in order to achieve these goals.

In a meeting with other state leaders in Harrison Township on Friday, June 10, Gov. Rick Snyder pointed out five key priorities that are needed to be addressed regarding the state water plan. These are:

1. Ensuring that Michiganders have safe drinking water

2. Preventing invasive species from getting into state water resources

3. Investing in recreational and commercial harbors

4. Developing water trails systems in the state

5. Reducing phosphorus levels in waterways, particularly in the western basin of Lake Erie

The governor said the state has already started to address the phosphorus levels in Lake Erie through a program that allows local farmers to voluntarily help out in reducing runoffs from agricultural activities.

"We actually have an arrangement going, a partnership with Ohio and Ontario, to look at reducing phosphorous in the Western Lake Erie basin by 40 percent over the next few years," Snyder said. "That's very important."

Runoffs of chemical nutrients such as phosphorous have resulted in the proliferation of toxic cyanobacteria in Lake Erie over the past few years.

The water plan also calls for financing the development of Michigan's water infrastructure. However, Snyder did not mention just exactly how much money is needed to carry this part of the plan out.

U.S. Congresswoman Candice Miller said the state government has undervalued its so-called "invisible" water infrastructure for far too long, and that the impacts of this negligence are beginning to show up all over Michigan. This includes the state's current problems with sewage overflows and the crisis on available drinking water in Flint.

Miller stressed that Michiganders do not have to go through these problems. She believes that the new water plan will help restore real-time monitoring for the Southeast Michigan water system, which was largely abandoned after the initial grant from the federal government ran out.

She said that government officials just didn't have the political will to address these problems.

The remaining parts of the Michigan Water Plan are set to be released throughout the year.

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The World Bank (WB) has approved a $310 million loan to help Vietnam tackle climate change and ensure the sustainable livelihoods of local residents in the Mekong Delta.

Around 1.2 million people in nine Mekong Delta provinces who have been affected by climate change, salinity intrusion, coastal erosion and flooding will benefit from the Mekong Delta Integrated Climate Resilience and Sustainable Livelihoods Project, the bank said in a statement on June 10.

Recent extreme weather in the Mekong River Delta, including drought and salinity intrusion, are negatively affecting the lives of the farmers  most of whom are poor, said Achim Fock, acting country director for the WB in Vietnam. We believe this innovative project brings together an effective multi-sectoral model to help farmers adapt agriculture and aquaculture livelihoods to the impacts of climate change.

Salinity flooding in Can Tho City. Photo by VnExpress/Cuu Long

Vietnams annual rice exports of $4 billion account for more than one-fifth of the global total. The Mekong Delta alone contributes half of Vietnams rice, 70 percent of its aquaculture products, and one-third of Vietnams gross domestic product (GDP). But the region has also been identified as one of the deltas most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change as well as upstream development, according to the WB.

The project will support climate-smart planning and improve climate resilience when it comes to land and water management. It will benefit farmers (especially rice) in the upper delta provinces and aquaculture farms and fishing households along the coastal provinces in the region, including the Khmer ethnic minority people in the provinces of Soc Trang and Tra Vinh.

The WB also said the estimated cost for the project is $387 million. It is unclear where the remaining $77 million will come from.

Turbulent weather, caused by El Nino, has buffeted the Mekong Delta since the end of 2014, taking a heavy toll on rice production. The Delta contributes around 55 percent of Vietnams rice output. As of March 14 this year, 9 out of 13 provinces or nearly 40 percent of the delta area were affected by the historic drought and salinity, government data has shown.

Vinh Long, one of the worst hit province in the Mekong Delta, on Saturday asked the central government to provide VND751 billion ($33.2 million) to help fight the prolonged drought and salinity in the province. The funding will be used to build irrigation projects.

In May, Japan and the EU pledged $2.5 million and $100,000 grants, respectively, to help Vietnam deal with the drought and salinity.

Related news:

> Japan offers $2.5 mln in emergency aid to help Vietnam combat drought

> Mekong Delta ravaged by drought and salinity

> Rice prices bounce back after drought and salinity
Clark County mosquitoes were found to be positive for encephalitis, health officials have reported.

Pools of mosquitoes from four zip codes  89191, 89146, 89120 and 89104  were found to have St. Louis encephalitis. The county has not reported any human infection of the virus since 2007.

Southern Nevada Health District chief officer Joseph Iser assured residents that they should not worry about the existence of the rare disease, but they should be aware that such exists in the county. Mosquitoes in Clark County do not often test positive for St. Louis encephalitis. Since 2004, the health district has been conducting vector surveillance programs, and the only time they found an infected mosquito pool was in 2005.

Iser attributed the rise in infected population to the concurrent increase in the number of visiting birds that infect the local mosquitoes. Iser added that the groups of mosquitoes found positive will be terminated as a means of precaution.

Nevada State Infectious Disease Forecast Station director James Wilson said the St. Louis encephalitis' mosquito-to-human transmission reaches its peak in Nevada in August. He agreed that the result is nothing to worry about, as infected mosquitoes are fairly common around the county during this time.

"It's an early warning indicator telling people to watch out around areas where there are mosquitoes," said Wilson.

The health district's efforts toward mosquito testing and surveillance are heightened as a response to the incidence of Zika virus and West Nile virus. While the mosquito pools have not tested positive for the said viruses, the health district has reported five cases of travel-associated Zika infection.

What Is St. Louis Encephalitis?

St. Louis encephalitis is a vector-born Flavivirus infection transmitted by infected mosquitoes to humans. It is similar to West Nile virus, dengue virus and yellow fever virus.

Many individuals with the infection do not show apparent signs of the illness, but early symptoms could include headache, fever, nausea and vomiting and fatigue.

Older adults are often the ones infected with the neuroinvasive disease, which causes brain inflammation or encephalitis. There were reported cases of prolonged disability and death from the infection. To date, there are no available treatments specific for St. Louis encephalitis. Patients with the infection are afforded with symptomatic care.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises individuals in areas with high concentration of mosquitoes with encephalitis to wear protective clothing and use insect repellent.

Photo: Miika Silfverberg | Flickr

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An unlikely lawsuit started as Citigroup filed a complaint against AT&T, which the credit card company says is infringing upon its trademark.

AT&T did not steal Citigroup's logo or slogan or anything of the sort, but it did have the audacity to use the word "thanks" in a campaign addressing customer-loyalty. The bank sued the telecom company, underlining the fact that it has secured a trademark for the word "thanks" some years ago.

This is not a late April Fool's Day joke, although we really wish it was.

According to the legal complaint that was filed in a Manhattan federal court, AT&T's campaign infringes a few of the trademarks of Citigroup. For example, the credit card enterprise owns both "Citi ThankYou" and "ThankYou." Gizmodo showcases a picture of the patent, in case you need to see it to believe it.

As a reminder, Citigroup has been making use of the "ThankYou" trademark since 2004, when it began a customer-loyalty program. The company says that over seven million of its clients have credit cards with the ThankYou slogan written in big letter across them.

Such numbers stand witness to Citigroup's position as global leader in credit-card lending.

According to the legal issue, Citigroup thinks that AT&T's campaign has a chance to confuse some of its own customers. What is more, the suit points out that the trademark designs borrows some inspiration from the fonts and word placements.

On the other hand, AT&T rejects the claims of the credit-card lending company.

"The law does not allow one company to own the word 'thanks,'" says AT&T's spokesman, Fletcher Cook.

Cook notes that the company is committed to keep thanking its clients, regardless how much this distresses the credit card company.

AT&T deployed its new loyalty program for customers on June 2. The complaint notes that the data carrier knew that Citigroup had similar trademarks in effect, but continued with its campaign anyway.

Citigroup mentions that its own "thankyou" programs are counting roughly 15 million members in the United States. About 1.7 million of the customers own credit cards which AT&T and Citigroup branded together.

Should you want to peruse the legal issue at your leisure, you only have to search for Citigroup v. AT&T, 16-cv-4333. The suit was filed under the U.S. District Court, at the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

AT&T is no stranger to lawsuits, but some of them actually seem to be grounded into common sense. About one year ago, AT&T locked horns with the FCC on account of data throttling.

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Motorola's new Moto Z line made the news well before becoming official, with various leaks and reports anticipating what to expect.

As Motorola was setting out to formally introduce its latest Moto Z smartphones, the general belief was that the new series would come to replace the Moto X line. The rebranding of the Moto X as Moto Z was considered part of Motorola's metamorphosis under its new parent's wing, as it is now a Lenovo company.

Motorola, for its part, unveiled the new Moto G line last month, and announced the Moto Z series this week, but made no mention of the Moto X up until now.

Android Police reached out to Motorola to clarify what the new Moto Z series actually means for the Moto X. Based on Motorola's response, it seems that we're not looking at a replacement here, just a new addition.

The Moto Z smartphones are a new experience, boasting higher specs and adding modular options called Moto Mods, but they're not designed to replace the Moto X line - at least not at this point.

"Moto X is alive and well. In fact, Moto X Force recently launched in multiple new markets around the world," says Motorola, as cited by Android Police. "Moto X and Moto Z do share some great qualities, but they ultimately provide different experiences and make our portfolio more robust for consumers looking for the perfect smartphone to fit their needs."

Motorola adds that the Moto Z targets power users who want the latest and greatest.

In other words, it seems that the Moto X will live on, but its position will slightly shift. Whereas the Moto X used to be the flagship lineup and the Moto G the more affordable, budget offering, the new scheme paints a different picture with the Moto Z as the flagship. The new Moto Z smartphones have all the bells and whistles to make them worthy of the flagship title and the Moto X pales in comparison, so future Moto X devices will likely come in the upper-mid-range segment.

It will be interesting to see how Motorola will evolve under Lenovo and how it will make the distinction between its different lines, but at least the Moto X is not going anywhere.

If you have any thoughts on the matter, feel free to share them in the comments section below.

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A late night kiss from her boyfriend turned out fatal for a Quebec woman who has severe peanut allergy.

Twenty-year-old Myriam Ducre-Lemay died in October 2012 because of complications caused by severe allergic reaction to peanuts. The tragic incident happened after she kissed her boyfriend, who just ate a peanut butter sandwich and who was at the time not aware of her food allergy.

The coroner's report, which was released in 2014, revealed that Myriam's new boyfriend did not know she has peanut allergy when he prepared and ate a peanut butter sandwich before bed. After the couple kissed each other goodnight, Myriam started to have trouble breathing.

Myriam, who went to a party earlier that night with her boyfriend, did not have with her her EpiPen, a medical device used to inject a measured dose of the medicine epinephrine used to treat life-threatening allergic reactions. She did not also have her Medic Alert bracelet, which could have been a lifesaver for her.

Myriam's boyfriend tried to use asthma pump but this did not work so he called and asked help from 911.

Although he tried to give Myriam CPR while waiting for the ambulance to arrive, his girlfriend did not make it. Emergency crew tried to resuscitate her using epinephrine but this also did not work.

Myriam suffered from cardiopulmonary arrest enroute to the hospital, which led to cerebral anorexia marked by oxygen deprivation to the brain.

It has been a while since the tragic incident happened but Micheline Ducre, Myriam's mother, shares her daughter's story now with the hope that this can help raise awareness on the importance of telling one's allergies to those around you and to stress out the importance of always carrying an EpiPen.

Christine McCusker, from Montreal Children's Hospital, reiterated the importance of telling people about food allergies and always carrying the medical device.

"You have to say, 'Listen guys, I have food allergies, I have my EpiPen, if there is a problem, help me,'" she said. "You always have to carry your EpiPen even though you don't want to, and even though it's not cool."

Peanut allergy is among the most common food allergies affecting about 0.6 percent of children in the U.S. Although 20 percent of these kids outgrow the allergy when they reach adulthood, many don't.

For sufferers, exposure to peanuts can cause severe and potentially deadly allergic reactions such as anaphylaxis, which can impair breathing.

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Congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi says United States Government invented iPhone, not Steve Jobs!!!

Move over Steve Jobs, you did not invent the iPhone, United States government did! Or so says an American politician. Apple maybe one of the worlds profitable tech company and undoubtedly its iPhone is the one that triggered the entire smartphone revolution. However, U.S. politician Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives has gone on to say that that the federal government invented the iPhone and not tech giant Apple or its former CEO, Steve Jobs.

During her speech at the Democratic National Convention Platform hearing in Washington, D.C this week, Nancy went on to list different elements of the iPhone that various parts of the government had contributed to in certain ways.

Anybody here have a smartphone? Pelosi asked an audience at a hearing on the Democratic National Convention platform. She then held up her iPhone, and said that In this smartphone, almost everything came from federal investments in research. GPS came from military, flatscreen, digital camera, digital data compression, voice recognition.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.

They say Steve Jobs did a good idea designing it and putting it together. Federal research invented it, she said  implying that GPS technology, special alloys and other government-funded research projects were enough to deem the federal government the inventor of the iPhone.

An Association for the Advancement of Science in America (AAAS) spokeswoman clarified to CNET that an infographic prepared by Association of American Universities was being misconstrued by Pelosi. She said that the infographic only demonstrated the importance of federally funded research and its contribution to some of the technology elements of the iPhone. The spokeswoman added that Congresswoman Pelosi was mistaken in her reference to AAAS.

However, a spokesman for Pelosi, Drew Hammill told CNET that Pelosi knew Steve Jobs personally as a friend and means no disregard for his legacy. But the point she was making is a valid one. Leader Pelosi believes that Steve Jobs and his colleagues at Apple deserve enormous credit for taking federally-backed innovations off the shelf, refining them, commercializing them and turning them into a beautiful device that changed the world, Hammill says in the report.

The House Minority Leaders comments are reminiscent of what President Obama said on the campaign trail in 2012 when he declared that no one has built their own business with intelligence and hard work on their own.

Look, if youve been successful, you didnt get there on your own. You didnt get there on your own, Obama told a crowd of supporters at a rally in Roanoke, Virginia. Im always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something, there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If youve got a business, you didnt build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didnt get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The credit that Steve Jobs encouraged the creation of a smartphone that looked and operated in a way no one could have conceived cannot be taken away from him. While Apple may not have developed the individual components behind the iconic iPhone, it did design, develop and assemble the hardware and software that constitutes the iPhone and have the IP rights to it. After knowing all this, its hard to believe Steve Jobs didnt build that, isnt it?
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
People who commit adultery may face prison sentences according to a new clause which expands upon existing Vietnamese regulations.

Article 182 of Vietnams 2015 Penal Code stipulates that those who commit adultery which results in divorce or suicide of the husband, wife or their children shall be sentenced to up to three years in prison. The same penalty will also be applied to people who try to maintain a relationship that is deemed illegal by a court.

While some people may support the notion of sending adulterers to jail, others may argue its ambiguous language leaves the door open for abuse of the law. Adultery has multiple levels, from simple flirting and dating, to falling in love and extra-marital affairs. When the act of adultery starts to breach monogamy, it constitutes a crime. Offenders can be fined or sent to jail, according to the code, which will take effect on July 1, 2016, replacing the current version which has been in use since 2000.

The concept of "living together as husband and wife" was defined by the Law on Marriage and Family in 2013. It stated that in the case when men and women organize their lives together, they are considered husband and wife. Prison sentences can be applied when two adulterers live together or cause a marriage to break up, driving a spouse and/or children to commit suicide. Serial adultery is also included in the article.
The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) seized two boats and detained 20 Vietnamese fishermen who were busy performing tow coupling activities at the borders of Malaysia's Terengganu and Pahang waters Friday.

Pahang MMEA director Capt Khoo Teng Chuan said the two boats were detained about 67 nautical miles from Tanjung Tembeling, Pahang at 2.30 p.m.

"When we were conducting Op Perkasa and Op Marikh in the waters off Pahang, we detected these two boats in a suspicious manner and found that they were busy carrying out tow coupling activities.

"But, when they noticed our presence, the foreign fishermen tried to flee, however, we managed to arrest them after a five-nautical-mile chase," he told a press conference, here Saturday.

Vietnamese and Malaysian boats destroyed by Indonesia in April. Photo by Reuters

Further investigations revealed that only one of them had valid identification documents while the rest did not have any document nor a valid permit to fish in the waters of this country.

He added they also seized various fishing equipment, boats and catch estimated to be worth Ringgit 1 million ($244,678).

He said, the fishermen, aged between 18 and 45, were taken to the Kuantan MMEA lockup for further investigation while the two boats were towed to the Kemaman MMEA jetty.

The case was being investigated under the Fisheries Act 1985, if convicted, the boats could be confiscated, the skipper could be fined RM1mil while the crew members could be fined up to Ringgit 500,000 each, he said.

In the meantime, he also urged members of the public, especially local fishermen to provide information if they spotted encroachment activities to call the Maritime Eastern Region Operations Centre at 09-5717345.

Related news:

> Unidentified ship sinks Vietnamese fishing boat in Hoang Sa archipelago

> Fishermen seek compensation after another assault by China in East Sea
After several years of making losses and piling up debts, state shipping group Vinalines reported a profit of VND40.3 billion (US$1.77 million) for last year, potentially making it a little more attractive to investors ahead of an approaching IPO.

News website Dau Tu said on Friday that the troubled giant had also managed to reduce debt to nearly VND6.19 trillion ($276.32 million) by the end of December, down 46 percent from the previous year.

Vinalines' its financial problems came to light in 2012. In the years earlier, the group kept posting impressive profits and revenues, even as skepticism grew about its real performance.

After being audited in 2011, the group began reporting huge losses. A government report last year showed that Vinalines had accumulated losses of over VND20.68 trillion ($923.15 million) by the end of 2014.

It began to restructure its operations and debts in 2012, as ordered by the government.

The new profit report came as the company is looking to sell a stake of 65 percent in an IPO later this quarter, the website reported. The company was evaluated at over VND21.28 trillion at the end of 2013, it said, citing the latest estimate available.

Last year's profit, though small, is the best boost that Vinalines can have for its upcoming share sale plan, deputy Transport Minister Nguyen Van Cong was quoted as saying.

The government last week ordered Vinalines to sell its entire stakes in nine seaports around the country after the IPO.

It was also required to sell part of its shares in another five ports, including three foreign-invested ones at the Cai Mep-Thi Vai complex in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau.
Vietnams President Tran Dai Quang (L) and Lao Party General Secretary and President Bounnhang Vorachith at an official welcome ceremony in Vientiane On June 12, 2016. Photo: VNA

Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang arrived in Vientiane on Sunday, beginning his three-day State visit to Laos at the invitation of Lao Party General Secretary and President Bounnhang Vorachith.

Following an official welcome ceremony the same day, the Vietnamese leader held talks with Lao Party General Secretary and President Bounnhang Vorachith, who expressed his belief that the visit would be a milestone contributing to consolidating and further developing the traditional friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between the two Parties, States and peoples.

The host said the Vietnamese Presidents selection of Laos for his first overseas trip after taking office demonstrates the importance Vietnam attaches to its relations with Laos.

For his part, President Tran Dai Quang expressed his delight at remarkable achievements the Lao Party, State and people have attained over the recent past.

Congratulating the Lao side on the successful 10th Lao Party Congress, he noted his belief that the Lao people will fulfill all tasks and targets set at the congress to advance firmly on the path towards socialism.

The two sides agreed to push forward the implementation of agreements reached by leaders of the two countries and outcomes of the 38th meeting of the inter-governmental committee on Vietnam-Lao cooperation, as well as the cooperation plans between the two governments for 2016, the Vietnam-Lao cooperation treaty for 2016-2020, the joint statement issued during the recent Vietnam visit by Party General Secretary and President Bounnhang Vorachith, along with the outcomes of the Vietnam visit by Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith and the Laos visit by President Tran Dai Quang.

The two leaders also reached a consensus on continuing with delegation exchanges, maximizing the operation of bilateral cooperative mechanisms, and enhancing cooperation efficiency across all fields.

They renewed the resolve to well carry out the protocol on bilateral defense and security cooperation for 2016-2020, the protocol on border and border markers and the agreement on border and border gate management regulations signed early this year, and the new agreements on trade and border trade between the two countries.

The two countries will continue to enhance the connectivity and mutual supplementation of their economies while promoting cultural and people-to-people exchanges and coordinating to hold activities to mark the 55th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic relationship and the 40th year of the Vietnam-Lao Amity and Cooperation Treaty next year.

The two leaders shared the view that the regional and world situation is seeing many complicated developments and agreed that the two countries should keep a close watch of the situation and maintain discussions to help each other ensure security and stability in their countries.

They affirmed that the two countries will coordinate closely at international and regional forums such as the United Nations, the ASEAN and sub-regional mechanisms.

President Tran Dai Quang pledged Vietnams active and full support of Laos as Chair of the ASEAN.

The two sides reiterated the intention to coordinate closely to strengthen solidarity among the ASEAN, elevating the blocs central role in the regional security structure.

The Vietnamese and Lao delegations at a meeting in Vientiane on June 12, 2016. Photo: VNA They underlined the importance of maintaining peace, stability, security and safety in the East Sea, and vowed to work together with other ASEAN countries for the peaceful settlement of disputes in the East Sea based on international law, the full and effective observance of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC) and the early conclusion of a Code of Conduct in the East Sea for the sake of peace, stability, cooperation and development in the region and the world as a whole.

The two leaders also agreed to promote coordination with each other and with other countries and international organizations for the sustainable and effective management and use of water resource in the Mekong River.

On the occasion of his visit, the Vietnamese President presented Sekong Province of Laos US$1 million as funding for a school in the province.
Fish at a seafood store in Quang Tri Province, where a batch of scads has been tested positive for phenol. Photo: Nguyen Phuc/Thanh Nien Quang Tri authorities have ordered a local seafood trader to destroy 30 tons of frozen mackerel scads (Decapterus lajang) contaminated with phenol, a harmful chemical substance.

The products were reportedly bought by the owner, only identified as T, soon after fish in the central region began to die.

Tran Van Thanh, director of Quang Tri's health department, said inspectors had tested samples of six fish species at Ts store, including three batches of scads. One came up with a phenol content of 0.037 milligram per kilogram.

Thanh said inspectors will test products of other major seafood traders in the province.

It was unclear how the scads, often caught around 15 kilometers offshore at 30 meters deep, were contaminated with phenol.

Phenol, or carbolic acid, is primarily used to synthesize plastics and related materials. The substance may cause harmful effects on the central nervous system, heart, liver and kidney, resulting in dysrhythmia, seizures and coma.

Vietnam is battling a prolonged fish kill disaster.

In April, hundreds of tons of fish were washed ashore in Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue provinces, apparently killed by industrial effluents.

Frozen mackerel scads (Decapterus lajang) at a store in Quang Tri Province found to be contaminated with phenol on June 11, 2016. Photo: Thanh Loc . Suspicion has centered on Hung Nghiep Formosa Steel Company, a major Taiwanese firm in the Vung Ang Economic Zone in Ha Tinh. The company admitted it has a large sewage pipe going straight into the sea, but it claimed all its discharged wastewater had been treated.

Officials are expected to disclose inspection findings soon.

According to some local fishermen,mackerel scads were not found among the dead fish in April.
An endangered gaur has been found dead in the central province of Nghe An and initial investigation suggested that it was more likely due to natural causes than poaching.

Official statement from the province said several people on Wednesday found its body decomposing at a forest area which has been repurposed for plantation.

Investigation found no signs of human attacks.

Officials said it might have died due to poor heath. The gaur was an adult, but his age has not been determined.

Forest rangers will check the carcass for further investigation.

Local residents said they have seen up to five gaurs in the area.

The species is listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to rapid population decline. It receives strict protection under Vietnamese regulations.

Conservationists estimate there are around 500 wild gaurs in Vietnam, down from more than 3,000 in the 1970s, mostly due to poaching.
Camera footage shows a man snatching an iPad from a child at her house in Ho Chi Minh City on June 7, 2016

Ho Chi Minh City police on Friday arrested a man who was caught on camera robbing a child of her iPad inside her house in Tan Binh District earlier this week.

Tran Huu Tin, 33, was identified as the main suspect after police checked footage from the house's security camera.

On June 7, the family reported to the police that a man wearing a face mask and a motorbike helmet entered the house and snatched an iPad from their daughters hands.

In the video, the man could be seen parking his motorbike and looking around before opening the unlocked gate to enter the living room.

He snatched the iPad before leaving in no apparent rush.

Tran Huu Tin at the police station. Photo: Nguyen Bao At the police station, Tin admitted to the crime and said he had sold the iPad to a shop in Phu Nhuan District.
Tran Hong Nguyen, 32, at a meeting with authorities in Ca Mau Province on June 10, 2016. Photo credit: Tuoi Tre

Authorities in the southern province of Ca Mau on Friday officially apologized a local man for imprisoning him more than a thousand days in a wrongful child rape conviction.

Tran Hong Nguyen, 32, was compensated with VND669 million (nearly US$30,000) for 1,077 days in jail, authorities said.

Nguyen was put into jail in August 2011, two days after his neighbors reported to police that their seven-year old daughter was raped by him.

A Ca Mau court later in the same year sentenced him to 13 years in jail for raping the girl.

An appeal court two years later in Ho Chi Minh City rejected the first court for a lack of evidence, asking fresh investigations into the case.

In July 2014, Ca Mau authorities let Nguyen walk free, suspending the case without mentioning what had happened to the girl.

Deputy head of the Ca Mau Court Tran Trong Huu said that the case is a precious lesson for their judges, promising more careful ruling in the future.
Authorities in Binh Thuan Province on Thursday officially apologized to a 53-year-old man who served 17 years in jail for a wrongful murder conviction in a serious miscarriage of justice.

They admitted that severe mistakes had been made, leading to the wrong sentence for Huynh Van Nen. He was only cleared of the crime in October.

Nen was arrested in May 1998 for the death of his neighbor Nguyen Thi Bong earlier that year. Investigators said Nen admitted to killing her to steal her belongings.

Police also said that Nen also confessed that he and nine of his relatives had killed another woman, Duong Thi My, in 1993. All of them were arrested soon after that.

In August 2000, a court in the central province of Binh Thuan found him guilty of murdering Bong. He was sentenced to life in prison.

One month later, Nguyen Phuc Thanh, a relative by marriage, appealed the verdict on Nen's behalf. Thanh claimed that two of his friends, Nguyen Tho and Ho Van Viet, were the killers and told him about the crime.

The appeal was rejected, as were several others in the following years.

In 2005, after several hearings, Nen and his relatives were cleared of killing My. All of them were apologized to and compensated, except for Nen, who went on to serve his jail sentence for the murder of Bong.

Huynh Van Nen and his wife listen to Binh Thuan authorities' apology on December 3, 2015. Photo: Que Ha

Case reopened

In November 2014, the Supreme Court ordered his case to be reopened. This time investigators concluded that he had not killed Bong.

On October 22, he was released on bail for medical treatment.

On October 28, his wrongful conviction in the death of Bong was finally overturned, after more than 17 years.

Tho, one of the two suspects, was arrested last month. He confessed to the murder. The other suspect, Viet, died in 2001.

The authorities have not mentioned how they will compensate Nen.

I hope that other offices will cooperate with us to rapidly restore Huynh Van Nens full rights, helping him return to his normal life, judge Tran Thi Kim Huong from Binh Thuan said after delivering the official apology.
A file photo shows Nguyen Thanh Chan (in white shirt) in the arms of his relatives when he was released in November 2013

The Supreme People's Procuracy of Vietnam announced Monday that it has ratified charges against a police officer and a prosecutor for falsifying documents, leading to a wrongful conviction in a high-profile murder case.

Dang The Vinh, a senior prosecutor of Bac Giang Provice, and Tran Nhat Luan, deputy police chief of Viet Yen District, will soon stand trial, the top prosecutor's office said, without announcing the exact date.

The investigation into Pham Tuan Chiem, the Supreme Court judge responsible for the case, has been suspended to due his health problems. He reportedly fainted during an interrogation. This has been one of the most notorious miscarriage of justice cases in Vietnam. Nguyen Thanh Chan, 55, had to serve 10 years in prison after a court in Bac Giang in March 2004 found him guilty of murdering a local woman. Four months later, Chiem's court in Hanoi dismissed his appeal and upheld the initial verdict and the life sentence. His wifes investigation forced the real murderer, another local man who was 16 in 2003, to give himself up in October 2013. Chan was released one month later. The Supreme Court officially cleared his name in January 2014 and later offered VND7.2 billion (US$360,000) to Chan as compensation. He had spent 3,699 days in prison and the following 83 days waiting to have his name cleared.

The authorities have publicly apologized to Chan.

In his petition, Chan said three of his children had to quit school. His wife, Nguyen Thi Chien, developed psychological problems during the ten years she spent fighting for justice.

He also sent complaints to different government agencies claiming that police officers threatened to kill him and forced him to plead guilty.
Wildlife trafficking needs to be stopped in Asia Pacific On this year's World Environment Day, the UN is calling on everyone to stop wildlife trafficking.

Foreigner falls victim to robbery by fake cop in HCMC Two robberies of the same fashion happened in the same area within three days.

Vietnam seeks faster bad-debt cleanup with 1st cash purchase The purchase 'will help lay out steps to quicken the bad debt resolution process.'

Vietnamese CEO named among worlds most powerful women If all goes well, the IPO of VietJet will make Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao a billionaire.

Strong growth in card payments boosting Vietnam's economy Card transactions in the country were estimated at around $3.09 billion in Q1.
Russias State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom will use post-Fukushima technology to build Vietnams first nuclear power plant in Ninh Thuan Province, Russian Sputniknews reported on Saturday.

The future generation of Vietnamese nuclear scientists currently studying in Russia have had the chance to train on generation 3+ nuclear technology at the Novovoronezh nuclear power station in central Russia. The first reactor in the world to use this technology has just been fired up at the station, according to the daily.

Vietnam's Da Lat Nuclear Reactor. Photo by VnExpress/Hoang Truong

Currently the Vietnamese government is looking at the design for the plant. The timeframe for the construction of the project is up to the customer. We are talking about 2027-2028. From the Russian side, Rosatom is ready to perform its mission at any time selected by Hanoi, the daily said.

Rosatoms Deputy Director Kirill Komarov told an industry forum on May 31 that the Ninh Thuan 1 is likely to begin commercial operations in 2027 or 2028, about six years later than previously planned.

Vietnam signed an agreement in October 2010 for Russias Atomstroyexport, the engineering arm of Rosatom, to build the Ninh Thuan I Nuclear Power Plant, which will consist of two VVER-1000 or VVER-1200 reactors. In November 2010, Vietnam signed a separate agreement with a Japanese consortium that includes Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Toshiba and Hitachi for two 1000-MW Gen III units at the Ninh Thuan II project.

In March this year, the Vietnamese government decided to push back plans to open its first nuclear power plant until 2028, but it did not specify whether it would be the Ninh Thuan I or Ninh Thuan II.

Related news:

> Vietnams Russian-funded nuclear power plant faces six-year delay

> Vietnam postpones start-up of first nuclear power plant to 2028
People and Syrian Army members inspect a damaged site after a suicide and car bomb attack in south Damascus Shi'ite suburb of Sayeda Zeinab, Syria June 11, 2016. Photo: Reuters/Omar Sanadiki

Islamic State claimed responsibility for suicide and car bomb blasts that struck a Damascus suburb on Saturday near Syria's holiest Shi'ite Muslim shrine, and a monitoring group said at least 20 people were killed.

State television showed debris, mangled cars and wrecked shops in a main commercial thoroughfare near the Sayeda Zeinab shrine, in an area where at least three bomb attacks claimed by Islamic State have killed and wounded scores of people this year.

The ultra-hardline Sunni militants of IS, whose many foes are advancing on a number of fronts in both Syria and Iraq, are avowed enemies of Shi'ites, whom they consider a heretical group within Islam.

State media said at least eight people were killed. But the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the death toll had risen to at least 20, including at least 13 civilians, with the other victims coming from pro-government militias. It said the number was expected to rise because many of the scores of wounded people were in critical condition.

Islamic State, also known as Daesh, said two of its suicide bombers had blown themselves up and operatives had detonated an explosives-laden car, according to the IS-affiliated Amaq news agency.

U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Washington condemned the attack in the strongest terms. "This terrorist act demonstrates once again the inhumanity and brutality of all that Daesh does and all it stands for," he said.

The Sayeda Zeinab shrine is a magnet for thousands of Iraqi and Afghan Shi'ite militia recruits who go there before being assigned to front lines, where they fight against the Sunni rebel groups trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad. Almost every Shi'ite militia fighter bears insignia on his combat fatigues with the words "For your sake, Sayeda Zeinab".

Sectarian split

The heavily garrisoned area near the shrine is also a well known stronghold of Lebanon's powerful Shi'ite Hezbollah group, an Iranian-backed movement that is one of Assad's chief allies.

Non-jihadist rebels say Iran's strong military intervention on the side of Assad, alongside its backing of other Shi'ite militias, is fuelling the sectarian dimension of the nearly six-year Syrian civil war by drawing even more radical foreign Sunni jihadists into the country.

Separately, U.S.-backed Syrian forces made new territorial gains against Islamic State on Saturday, moving closer to another of its major strongholds in northern Syria, according to the monitoring group.

The Observatory said the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), bringing together Kurdish and Arab fighters, were now almost 17 km (10 miles) from the city of al-Bab, an Islamic State stronghold north east of Aleppo.

The SDF on Friday cut off the last route into the encircled town of Manbij from al-Bab after over a week of advances around that area, allowing it to lay siege to the large town from all directions, the monitor said..

In other frontlines in northern Syria, two rebel sources said Russian and Syrian jets stepped up their relentless aerial bombing of their positions in the northern city of Aleppo.

They said fighters had overnight repelled a major Syrian army attack on the Malah front in an drive to reach the strategic Catello highway, which is the only route in and out of rebel-held areas.

The army has for months sought to advance towards the highway to lay siege to rebel-held areas where over 400,000 people live.

A convoy of aid from the International Committee of the Red Cross entered the rebel-held city of Houla in the province of Homs, the third besieged area to receive supplies in the past 24 hours, aid workers said.

On Friday, aid convoys reached two 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.
A Canberra Muslim group expects not to receive news about a potential site for a long-planned mosque until after the election.

The ACT's Ahmadiyya Muslim community has been searching for a permanent mosque site for six years, but a series of failed land bids and unsuccessful searches for suitable sites has left the group with little choice but to rent premises.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Association are not expecting news about a potential mosque site until after the election. Credit:Rohan Thomson

ACT elders branch president Khalid Syed said the association felt it was unlikely progress on a mosque location would not begin until after the election.

"The last we heard was a decision would be made sometime later on [post-election], but we are not sure when," he said.
Charity, self-reflection and patience are not usually exercised during Australian election campaigns.

But for the country's Muslims, those themes will be key for the remainder of the election cycle as they enter the sacred month of Ramadan.

Rahimat Ali feeds son Rehan, 7, at the breaking of the fast for Ramadan at the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association Canberra branch in Fyshwick. Credit:Graham Tidy

For Canberra's Muslims, that means fasting from just before 6am through to 5pm every day, before gathering with family and friends for dinner and prayers in the evening.

Most worshippers began Ramadan on Monday, though the interpretation of when to start the month varies among Muslims.
Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung invited Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang and other Chinese government officials to eat lychees during the ongoing 4th China-South Asia Expo.

Dung made the invitation while Yang was visiting Vietnamese booths at the event, which is taking place from June 12-17 in China's Yunnan Province, according to a statement posted on the Vietnamese government portal on Sunday.

Vietnamese Deputy PM Trinh Dinh Dung (R) and Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang (L) and other officials during the event. Photo by VGP/Xuan Tuyen

Although Vietnam has opened up new export markets for its lychees to reduce its reliance on China, growers are still saving the pick of the bunch for traders from the northern neighbor. China is Vietnam's biggest lychee customer, buying on average some 60 percent of the annual crop, according to official statistics.

This year, 140 enterprises mainly involved in handicrafts, agriculture, fishery, food processing and home appliances from Vietnam are participating at the expo with 280 booths.

About 5,000 enterprises from 89 countries and regions are taking part in the event in Kunming, capital of Yunnan, Xinhua cited the organizers as saying.

Related news:

> Vietnam's lychee farmers still look to China as main export market

> Vietnamese lychee exports grounded by conflicting inspection regulations
A Canberra research professor has been awarded the highest recognition in the Queen's Birthday Honours for his outstanding achievement and service.

The Companion of the Order of Australia is awarded for eminent achievement and merit of the highest degree in service to Australia or humanity at large.

Professor Brian Anderson, from the Australian National University, who has been awarded the highest honour of Companion (AC) in the General Division of the Order of Australia in the Queen's Birthday Honours. Credit:Stuart Hay, ANU.

Distinguished Professor Brian Anderson, from the Australian National University's College of Engineering and Computer Science, has been appointed a Companion, for his work in information and communications technology, his service to engineering and higher education and as a mentor of young scientists.

"I was very surprised. I have been minding my business as a research professor for 10 years doing nothing very dramatic, and my research achievements fall far short of others who have been so honoured. For example, Frank Fenner, or Nobel Laureates like Brian Schmidt," Professor Anderson said.
Aboriginal musician, dancer and artist Duncan Smith is well-known for his role performing at official ceremonies around Canberra, welcoming everyone from visiting dignitaries to new citizens to Australia.

But he gets the greatest kick visiting preschools and daycare centres with his Canberra-based dance group, The Wiradjuri Echoes, teaching children about Aboriginal culture.

Duncan Smith has been awarded a medal in the general division (OAM) for services to Indigenous youth and to the community. Credit:Jamila Toderas

"Just to see kids smile. They're like big sponges, they just soak it up. That makes me happy," he said.

Mr Smith, 47, of Ngunnawal, was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the Queen's Birthday Honours for his service to Indigenous youth and to the community.
Major General David Mulhall, commander joint logistics in the Australian Defence Force in Canberra, was awarded the sole Distinguished Service Cross in this year's Queen's Birthday Honours for his work in Afghanistan.

He received the honour for his "distinguished command and leadership in war-like operations as Commander Joint Task Force 636 and deputy chief of Staff Support Headquarters International Security Assistance Force and Headquarters Resolute Support on operations Slipper and Highroad from May 2014 until May 2015".

Major General David Mulhall, commander joint logistics in the Australian Defence Force, has been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

"In essence, I was the senior logistics officer in the Coalition headquarters in Afghanistan, working to the US four-star officer," he said.

"I had responsibility for logistics  so that's distribution, maintenance, health, telecommunications, contracts, signals and a range of other services.
The Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre is moving this month, from the East Melbourne site where it has been since 1990. There is a large part of me that wants to burn the old place down to the ground; for those peeling walls and all that they've seen to be reduced to nothing. But maybe I also want to keep some of the rubble  possibly in a locket  close to my heart.

Peter Mac treats about 31,000 people each year, more cancer patients than any other Australian hospital. Six years ago I was one of them, having been diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma. I remember talking then to a wonderful colleague  who passed away recently following her long journey with cancer  about the place. "I hate going there," she told me, her lovely strong face in a pained grimace. "Too many sick people."

Yet I found it strangely reassuring. "There are so many people there who are so much sicker than me," I said, realising as I said the words that they sounded cruel and glib in the face of that dark spectrum of illnesses.

Sure enough, my prognosis had been fairly positive from the start  just chemotherapy and radiation to get through  but I also felt that once there, I was safe in the hands of others. My burden was lifted.
Worried about being replaced by a robot? According to some recent forecasts many workers should be. There are gloomy predictions that even high-wage, knowledge jobs in finance, law and medicine won't be spared amid the relentless rise of smart machines.

A striking 2013 study by Oxford University academics Carl Frey and Michael Osborne said 47 per cent of all employment in America is "at risk" of being replaced by computers and algorithms in the next 10 to 20 years. Earlier this year a CSIRO report put the proportion of Australian jobs vulnerable to automation at a worrying 44 per cent.

But now there's some good news  a forensic study for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development suggests the angst about job-killing robots may be overstated.

Rather than gauging the risk that whole occupations will be replaced by smart-machines, economists Melanie Arntz, Terry Gregory and Ulrich Zierahn examined the actual tasks performed in jobs and assessed how easily they could be automated. They discovered most jobs involve a bundle of tasks only some of which could easily be handled by machines.
Because it is so wrenching, we cannot require a victim to tell their story again  after doing so to police, prosecutors, and in the case of a not-guilty plea, the jury in a trial, after surviving the crime, then enduring the prosecution  unless they choose to re-tell it once more. There can be subtle pressure to do so: a belief a sentence will be unjust if they don't; a fear the offender will do it again to someone else if they can't find the strength to write a letter; a worry someone might think the damage done was somehow less if they do not speak. If such an expectation develops, justice will not be done. We would hurt victims again, hurt them once more by a system that is already difficult to endure. The courts have to hear a victim's voice even if it is unspoken. The second problem is the need to vigilantly guard against any perverse incentive for offenders to prey on inarticulate victims. Should sentences be increased on the basis of eloquent accounts of the damage wrought by an offender, the dangerous corollary is that a sentence will be less if no such eloquence is given in court.

The courts have to be so cautious when allowing the views of victims to influence their sentences  even if the position is for a reduced sentence. It has long been taken that a crime is not only an offence against an individual, but one against the whole community, and part of sentencing is not only to punish an offender but to vindicate the dignity of the victim  and to consider the harm done  without needing to hear from the victim when determining what the punishment should be. Victims of crime should be equal in their human dignity, even in the distressing case of homicides in which the victim goes unmourned. Justice has to mourn them, even if no one else does. As one NSW appeal judge, Michael Adams, has put it, it would be "monstrous" to suggest "for some reason killing her should attract a lesser sentence than would be the case if  she had a loving family and grieving relatives". A danger of powerful accounts of victims and their families is not that justice will not be done in the cases in which they are given, but that it will not be done in other cases in which they are not.
Police in Ho Chi Minh City have detained a Vietnamese American man who stole a taxi from outside a hospital in Saigon.

Relatives of Cao Dinh Khoi, 38, accompanied him to the Traumatology and Orthopaedics Hospital in District 5 to treat his broken little finger. Khoi did not cooperate with the doctors there and drove away in a taxi he jacked outside the hospital gates.

Cao Dinh Khoi. Photo by VnExpress/Hai Hieu

The man left the taxi at the crossroads between Nguyen Tri Phuong and 3/2 Street. Police later discovered Khoi was being treated at the FV Hospital and arrested him there.

Related news:

> Vietnamese and Americans are "getting along as human beings": Obama
Oakeshott was one of the independents that helped Julia Gillard form government after the 2010 election, but left his return until the very last minute, only confirming on Friday that he'd return to the fray from which he retired in 2013. "I've still got it in the blood, so I feel obliged to have a crack," he explained - an inspiring message that will make barely any difference to the 13 per cent buffer that current Nationals MP Luke Hartsuyker enjoys. Oakeshott was previously the MP for Lyne but is now contesting Cowper, thanks to a boundary redistribution and the fact that Lyne is held by Nationals MP David Gillespie with an even more resounding margin. And not to imply that Rob's decision was made without all the typical diligence and pre-planning typical to a political campaign, but visitors to www.roboakeshott.com are greeted with messaging that's excitingly unique among 2016's crop of electoral hopefuls: "Can You Make Your Erection Bigger?" Yes, it would appear that after he quit politics his lapsed domain name has been rather unkindly purchased by a company that sells penis pumps - that, or Oakeshott has some unexpectedly detailed knowledge of the intimate concerns of the voters of Cowper.

Incidentally, Oakeshott has indicated that he'd support Turnbull in the event that parliament was um, hung. It's on-message with the Coalition's focus on growth, at least? The Voice of Joyce Speaking of the returned independents of 2013, the chances of Tony Windsor tumbling National's leader, Deputy Prime Minister and international talk show monologue punchline Barnaby Joyce have just improved. Labor will be directing their preferences to Windsor over the Nats, and the AFR's analysis is that this could well make the difference between the return of the beloved independent and the continued political career of the man who just publicly swore at one of his constituents.

Depending on which version of events you choose to believe, either local farmer and anti-mining activist Nicola Chirlian was harassing Joyce in the Top Pub in Uralla and he eventually lost his temper and told her to piss off, or she approached him to ask if he'd attend a Tamworth-based forum regarding the Shenua Watermark mine - which Joyce very publicly opposed, but was unable to use his influence as MP and also Agriculture Minister to prevent - and he expressed his distaste for the invitation in a strongly urine-referencing way. In other indications that the epic length of this campaign is taking a toll on the gentle patience of our pollies, on Saturday Queensland LNP Senator James McGrath mockingly asked a protester "who pays for your dole?" when they were tackling the Prime Minister over local plans for the mighty, as-yet-unfunded and economically-unviable Adani coal mine in the state. And there's still three weeks to go. At this rate, in another fortnight there's going to be knife fights at every campaign stop. The party of economic management!

And while the experienced politicians are making rookie errors, the rookies are making errors that are um, even rookier? And the Liberals have had a fresh embarrassment from their candidate for the Victorian seat of McEwan, Chris Jermyn, with questions raised about where exactly the money raised by Mooter Media went after their international competition Shutterbug Millionaire raised millions in international capital. Jermyn's company Hot Shot partnered with Mooter for the competition and developed the ImageSocial photo sharing platform that was central to the whole thing. They'd gotten as far as signing on Richard Branson as a spokesbeard before the company went very, very quiet, then liquidated with $15k in the bank. It comes after Jermyn turned his big campaign "gotcha!" moment into a mighty public humiliation the other week, when he crashed a Bill Shorten campaign event and then got all flustered when journalists asked him fairly simple questions about his party's health policy. Bless. The party did reportedly consider disendorsing him, but decided to hang on - but internal polling suggests that despite McEwan only being held by a 0.2 per cent margin, Jermyn's hopes of tearing it from Labor seem remote.

The jokes just write themselves Still, a more humiliating situation has come up in the seat of Calwell where Liberal hopeful John Min-Chiang Hsu has been dropped as a candidate and resigned from the party when it came to light that he'd neglected to mention that he was the owner of Frankston brothel Paradise Playmates. You know, as you do. And V from the S feels honourbound to point out that brothels are entirely legal in Victoria and that in a sane and just world sex work would enjoy all the legal protections and employer obligations of every other industry - but if the name of the business rings a bell it might be because you're remembering that time when police found it to have a small dark room containing illegal workers back in 2014. So yeah, not a great look. Since the candidacy deadline has closed, the Liberals will not be running a candidate at all in Calwell - but since it's a safe Labor seat that's been held by Maria Vamvakinou for well over a decade, that's probably not that big a deal. It's hard to work out why the Liberals would have had a problem with it, though. For a start, Hsu would presumably be one of the small and medium business owners ostensibly benefiting from the government's planned company tax cut. What is this, a Liberal war on business?
Broadway leaders and US network CBS have said that they will dedicate that evening's Tony Awards broadcast to victims of the overnight massacre in Orlando, Florida, but did not intend to cancel the show.

Even as James Corden, Oprah Winfrey, the cast of Hamilton and many of Broadway's leading figures gathered Sunday morning in the US before a jubilant crowd for a final rehearsal of the broadcast, sombre network and awards show administrators clustered in aisles and hallways at the Beacon Theatre on New York's Upper West Side, trying to figure out how the show should respond to the nation's worst mass shooting, which occurred early Sunday morning in a gay nightclub.

Performers took to social media to express their condolences and concern about the shooting, which promised to reshape and overshadow the theatre industry's biggest annual event. Officials of the broadcast said they expected Corden, the host of the broadcast, to address the shooting, and there was discussion that presenters might wear some kind of ribbon to express collective concern; it was not clear how other elements of the broadcast might be affected.

The first show to make a change was Hamilton, which is expected to be the night's big winner. Although the cast brandished muskets during the Sunday morning rehearsal for its production number depicting an 18th-century battle scene (Yorktown), a spokesman for the show said that it had decided to eliminate the muskets and would instead use pantomime to depict the warfare.
But no, they're planning a Safer Australia policy, which basically means the government can collect any information about anyone or anything and there's nothing we can do about it. Mal tells them, rather succinctly, that it won't happen on his watch. (Cajones growing.) Jacki, sensing the growth, chases him out and tries to get him back on side. I might be the only friend you've got Mal. She may well be right but what a scary thought. The warpath now takes Mal to the PM's office. Jim's inside on the phone to Charlene just checking up on how things are in his Ramsay Street electorate, but Mal pushes past his chief of staff and gives Jim another big cajone-swelling serve. "Let's start a war and while everyone is shit scared about the foreign hordes, you relieve them of their civil rights." Go Mal. Meanwhile Harriet's still in mourning after Kim's funeral. He arrives at Kim's house. Where is this one folks? I want to move in. Dancer is there and Kim picks him for an ASIO employee. Does it show, he says? Can you pick them? I'm sure my IGA is full of them. People loitering over the melons in their business suits, looking shady. Harriet chucks Dancer out, mopes around a bit listening to Kim's last message, put the clues together and just happens to find the missing SIM card, the clue to everything it seems, in the spine of Edward Snowden's book No Place to Hide. Well that was a bit obvious. Kim should have tucked it into the spine of a Nigella cookbook. Meanwhile Mal's growth spurt has become too hard to handle so he's called his Chinese mistress for a bit of nooky. Who knew Hotel Hotel booked rooms by the hour. Mal's foreplay techniques need working on, he's getting all political with her. Weng Meigui has the line of the episode: "I didn't come here to be lobbied," she says, stepping back and rebuttoning her shirt.

And look, here's Sabine, holed up somewhere that's not Beijing we know for sure now as Zheng is there pouring her a cup of tea. He wants her to sing and give up her choir mates but she's holding strong. Get it, sing. Now Harriet's back hanging out at ANU, just one of those mature age students who won't leave the campus, talking to Felix, about the proposed demolition of Bruce Hall, well not actually, declaring my conflict of interest, but about the SIM card. He's going to rest his laptop on his well-balanced thighs again and try and crack it for her. Now she's meeting with Cassie, Sabine's friend from the choir, walking down University Avenue, that beautiful stretch of grass between Bruce Hall and Union Court. They're walking with much more conviction than I ever did, walking home from Dollies food van late at night. Cassie's other friend Kevin, Max Dalgetty's BFF so it seems, has gone missing now too. They try to call Kevin, but the phone with the missing SIM starts to ring in Felix's room, and they realise they might all be in more trouble than first thought. Harriet catches up with Felix at the Australian Academy of Science's Shine Dome, he's determined to crack the SIM and begs her to let him try. She can't resist his well-balanced thighs and his geek talk and she gives in. Clocking up the kilometres on her travel allowance, she's back at Russell, putting the hard word on young Thomas, Kim's co-worker, who's been caught up in something way above his pay grade. Ominous pan over Glenloch Interchange and the rest of the country is envious of our peak hour traffic.

At work the next day, the most unbelievable story line continues when Harriet's editor Gus gives her money to pay for all of Felix's stuff he needed to crack the SIM. An editor handing over money, oh, unbelievable! So she goes to New Acton for a coffee, somehow manages to get a car park right out the front, and meets Cassie, who's meeting with Kevin at Mocan and Green Grout. Little hipsters. But Kevin's scared, and not just by the beard on the barista, and tells Cassie he's going back to China because he misses home. Which translated means I need to get out of here before I end up floating in the lake like Max. We're back with Mal who's learned of a meeting at the Commonwealth Club between Jacki, McAuliffe and Paul Wheeler, head of ASIO, so he heads over there to bust it up with some great cajone-swelling news. Apparently there's been a bingle between an Australian boat and a Chinese one in the South China Sea and a Chinese sailor has drowned. Hold on kids, we really could be going to war. Poor Harriet, feeling guilty that she hasn't actually written anything this week, just spent a lot of time driving around and hanging out at New Acton, and is at home working on her computer. She may well be getting her groceries or updating Instagram but she looks like a working journalist. Dancer turns up, apparently there's a warrant out for Felix's arrest. They know he is trying to crack the SIM, and everyone's after him.
Nicole Kidman has flown to Sydney to begin shooting Top of The Lake: China Girl with Golden Globe award winner Elisabeth Moss.

Kidman, who was recently ranked Australia's sixth favourite celebrity by Mumbrella, rejoins Oscar-winning director Jane Campion. They worked together on the movie Portrait of a Lady.

Nicole Kidman has flown to Sydney to begin shooting Top of The Lake: China Girl with Golden Globe award winner Elisabeth Moss. Credit:Todd Heisler

"I'm very excited to be coming home to work with darling friend Jane Campion, whose work I respect and admire. I'm also so happy to be joining the incredible Elisabeth Moss," said Kidman.

Moss was also excited about returning to the role of detective Robin Griffin, whose story picks up four years after the end of season one. An unidentified body of an Asian girl washes up on to Sydney's Bondi Beach and again the case seems hopeless, until Detective Griffin discovers that she didn't die alone.
Picture masses of mud-sucking carp, dead, bloated and rising in greeny-yellow heaps, bobbing along the edges of Lake Burley Griffin, Lake Ginninderra and Lake Tuggeranong.

Scientists are confident cyprinid herpesvirus, commonly known as carp herpesvirus, will kill 70 to 80 per cent of Canberra's infamous carp.

Charlie Diedo has caught and released hundreds of carp in Lake Burley Griffin. Credit:Jay Cronan

Last month federal Science Minister Christopher Pyne said hundreds of thousands, if not millions of tonnes of carp would die suddenly in the River Murray when the virus was released in 2018.

Scientists say the virus will spread swiftly. A divisive step within the fishing community, critics have warned a sudden deluge of dead fish will draw all the oxygen from the water while decomposing, killing native fish.
But that's OK, right? Once he wins the election  still the most likely result of this eye-glazing, never-ending campaign  things will change. The real Malcolm will emerge from his conservative chrysalis like a beautiful socially progressive butterfly and lead us into a bright, shining future.

But Bowen wasn't finished. Turnbull is not an adherent of Karl Marx, he explained, but rather American comedian Groucho Marx, who once proclaimed: "Those are my principles and if you don't like them ... well, I have others." It was a pithy new way to say what we all know: Turnbull has abandoned his beliefs for the sake of party unity.

The audience at the April 30 event  to support Labor's candidate for Wentworth, Evan Hughes  was momentarily perplexed. Turnbull was a lot of things, but a communist? Hard to believe given they were gathered just a short walk from the former investment banker's $50 million harbourside mansion.

This seems to be the hope  or even the assumption - among many left and centre voters who still want to believe in Turnbull. That once he's won his own mandate at the ballot box, his conservative colleagues will calm down and fall in line; that he'll finally have the power and authority to lead them, rather than be led by them. That climate change, same-sex marriage and republicanism will all be back on the agenda. That he'll ditch the slogans and start treating us with the respect he promised us when he took the top job.

Don't be so sure. It's time to consider the very real possibility that this is as good as a Malcolm Turnbull prime ministership gets: cautious, indecisive, uninspiring and unprincipled. Hostage to the right and haunted by Tony Abbott's ghost.

If Turnbull were to win a thumping victory on July 2, increasing his majority in the lower house, we might see more of the "real Malcolm"  whatever that means at this point. But that's simply not going to happen. The best he can really hope for is that he limits his losses to a handful of seats. Most governments go backwards in their second terms  John Howard did in 1998, and so did Labor in 2010 - so it would be hard to hold him responsible for a natural correction of four or five seats. This sort of result might give him some latitude to start making some decisions unpopular with the party's right wing.

But if the polls are correct he's on track to lose more seats than that. He may scrape back in on a knife-edge. He may even lose his majority and be forced into some sort of deal with the crossbench. This sort of result would not give him the authority he needs to take the party  or the country  in a new direction.

The conservatives would be emboldened, rather than quieted. Abbott's supporters would claim their guy could have done better. They'll point to 2013 and say actually, he already did. It wouldn't take long for Turnbull's leadership to come under pressure. That's not to say he'd face a challenge in the near future  the party will not return to Abbott and the other contenders are more long-term propositions - but leaders without internal authority must always watch their back. Just ask Julia Gillard.
Vinh Long wants $33 million from state budget to help combat drought and salinity

Vinh Long has asked the central government to provide it VND751 billion ($33.2 million) to help fight the prolonged drought and salinity in the southern province.

The funding will be used to build irrigational projects in the Mekong Delta province, the government portal said in a statement on Saturday while reporting a meeting between Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Vinh Long government officials.

Turbulent weather, caused by El Nino, has buffeted the Mekong Delta since the end of 2014, taking a heavy toll on rice production. The Delta contributes around 55 percent of Vietnams rice output. As of March 14 this year, nine out of 13 provinces or nearly 40 percent of the delta area were affected by the historic drought and salinity, government data has shown.

The province has lost about 100,000 hectares of agricultural land. We do not allow it to get worse, Phuc said. He also asked the province to get ready to deal with even stronger El Nino in the coming time and pay attention to restructuring the agriculture sector to adapt to climate change.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc at the meeting with Vinh Long officials. Photo by VGP/Quang Hieu

Vinh Long is estimated to achieve Gross Regional Domestic Product growth of 4.14 percent in the first half of this year, much lower than the expected 7.2 percent due to the drought and salinity. The combined value of agriculture, forestry and fishery production during January-June is expected to decline by 3.97 percent year on year. The rice output in the province is estimated to fall 10.6 percent from a year earlier, the provincial officials told the prime minister.

Vinh Long is located at the center of the Mekong Delta, more than 100 kilometers away from the nearest coast.

Former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in March ordered relevant authorities to urgently allocate VND139 billion to the nine affected provinces.

In May, Japan and EU have pledged a $2.5 million and $100,000 grants respectively, to help Vietnam deal with the drought and salinity.

Related news:

> Japan offers $2.5 mln in emergency aid to help Vietnam combat drought

> Mekong Delta ravaged by drought and salinity

> Rice prices bounce back after drought and salinity
"He was just a total dad," the mother of a graduating senior said of the president. "No fanfare. You didn't know they were there."

Barack Obama was true to his word Friday. He did not speak at Malia Obama's commencement ceremony, which he and the first lady attended, along with family and friends of other graduates of the private school in Northwest Washington.

"I'm going to be wearing dark glasses," he told a group of lunch companions during a visit to Detroit earlier this year. "I'm going to cry."

When Sidwell Friends School asked the president whether he would like to speak at his elder daughter's graduation, he declined.

If the president did cry during the outdoor ceremony, his tears may have been hidden behind his sunglasses.

Inside the gates of the school's 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.

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 father's term ends.

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 Georgetown's 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, emphasises 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).
Cognitive health is in the spotlight at a new research centre at ANU.

The Centre of Research Excellence in Cognitive Health - headed by professor Kaarin Anstey - will launch on Wednesday with a free public forum.

Researchers are learning more about the importance of cognitive health. Credit:Andrzej Wojcicki

"It's really a new area of focus. A lot of people focus on dementia, and when people think about health they think about mental and physical health but until now they haven't actually been thinking about cognitive health," the centre's director professor Anstey said.

"When we think about health promotion and keeping ourselves healthy, people haven't in the past thought about keeping themselves cognitively healthy."
A 15-year-old boy is in a critical condition with "horrific burns" after a gas bottle exploded in a car in Sydney.

The leaking gas bottle was in the boot of the car in the car park of the Fairfield RSL, in the city's south west. It exploded when the driver lit a cigarette, causing the car to burst into flames.

The teenager was walking past the car when the gas bottle exploded. He is in an induced coma at Liverpool Hospital after suffering critical injuries in the blast.

"Unfortunately, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and it appears he got the worse of it, he suffered some horrific burns," a police spokesman said.
A man questioned over the suspicious death of a toddler north of Brisbane has told of finding the boy blue and gasping for breath in his bed.

Police questioned the boy's stepfather, Andrew William O'Sullivan, after 21-month-old Mason was found at a Caboolture home about 12.30am on Saturday.

The toddler's body was found dead inside a Caboolture home on Saturday.

Police said the toddler suffered injuries, but have not provided details.

The Mr O'Sullivan, 35, was questioned and released without charge on Saturday evening and told the media he loved the boy like his own.
Scientists working in the mine's temporary lab operate in a confined space. Credit:Mark Killmer At 600 metres underground, it starts getting warm. By one kilometre down, the temperature is hovering between 35 and 40 degrees. The dust in the air is as fine as talcum powder. It's humid. But it won't be like that inside the purpose-built lab, which will be set at a comfortable 18 degrees year-round. Scientists will be able to shower and change into a clean pair of clothes before they begin working  although the hard hat, vest and boots are not negotiable. It is after all, a working mine. The temporary lab, in one of the Stawell mine's tunnels, will be replaced once the new lab is completed in 2017. Credit:Rajat Malhotra Among the mind boggling experiments to take place a kilometre underground will be the search for dark matter  that invisible cosmic glue with so much pulling power that it is able to hold our universe together. It accounts for 84 per cent of the universe but scarcely anything is known about what it is.

"Dark matter is one of the great mysteries of our time," says Swinburne University astrophysicist Alan Duffy. "This experiment is truly groundbreaking and it will place Stawell at the forefront of one of the biggest quests in science." Professor Elisabetta Barberio believes it will be Nobel prize-winning work Credit:Eddie Jim This experiment is truly groundbreaking and it will place Stawell at the forefront of one of the biggest quests in science. Swinburne University astrophysicist Alan Duffy. In the four decades since American astronomer Vera Rubin first proposed there was another form of matter binding the universe, dark matter has stubbornly remained one of modern physics' most important and tantalising questions. What we do know is that dark matter is the reason galaxies exist. It provides the gravitational seed for the galaxy to grow. It gets its name because it does not interact with light. It's the dark side of the universe.

The tunnel leading to the lab, one kilometre underground. Credit:Justin McManus If the international team of scientists do strike gold in their mine lab in Stawell, Melbourne University's Professor Barberio has no doubt it will be Nobel prize-winning work. "What we know about what the universe is made of is the tip of the iceberg," she says. "If we understand dark matter, we will understand how the big bang occurred and how the universe evolved and how it might continue to evolve." Melbourne University scientists John Koo and Francesco Tenchini will be among the team hunting for dark matter. Credit:Justin McManus Duffy, one of the project's chief investigators, agrees.

"If you can actually identify the particle, or whatever that dark matter is, that is Nobel prize-worthy. There is no doubt about that." But why a mine? Why does the hunt for the elusive dark matter that holds the universe together have to be undertaken a kilometre underground by researchers trucking to and from the lab, wearing hard-hats and high-vis vests? Simple. It's a way of escaping the constant stream of cosmic radiation arriving on Earth from space. The kilometre of volcanic rock between the mine's surface and the cavernous laboratory acts as a natural barrier, blocking most radiation within the first few hundred metres. However having gone to some trouble to escape cosmic radiation, scientists still have to consider other sources. For a start the laboratory's basalt rock walls are a source of radiation, albeit at very low-levels. Ditto for the scientists.

Even at the lowest levels radiation is enough to contaminate the super-sensitive experiment, which relies on materials being extremely pure to eliminate radioactive "noise". A collection of seven sodium iodide crystals, each weighing six kilograms, will act as a target for the ghostly dark matter that has made it underground. The ultra-pure crystals, custom-made for the Stawell experiment by Princeton University, boast extraordinary low levels of radiation. When a dark matter particle strikes the crystal's nucleus, light will be generated, transformed into energy and collected. This energy is what the researchers are looking for  it will tell them about the mass of dark matter particles. Of the more than 10 laboratories in the northern hemisphere already hunting for dark matter so far only one, DAMA/LIBRA at Gran Sasso near the central Italian town of L'Aquila, has detected strong evidence of dark matter. That was in 1998.

"There is a quest all over the world to repeat this experiment and see it," says Barberio, who was a key member of the international team that confirmed the Higgs boson or "God particle" in 2012. Physicists have long wondered if there are seasonal differences in the amount of dark matter that reaches Earth. Due to be completed in 2017, the Stawell laboratory is the best candidate to settle this dark matter dilemma because it is the only laboratory in the southern hemisphere. If Stawell experiments conducted in December and June deliver the same result as the Italian experiments conducted in the same months, then it will confirm that the amount of dark matter reaching Earth is not seasonal. "If we can do the same experiment and get the same results here in the southern hemisphere ... we will know that we have discovered dark matter," Barberio says. "That's big."

All will not be lost if the results from the twin experiments differ. While scientists will have to accept they were unable to detect dark matter, they will have gathered enough information to rule out other hypotheses. Given the mystery surrounding dark matter, this would still be an achievement. Meanwhile, there will be any number of other experiments going on at the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory, with its low-radiation environment a valuable setting for groundbreaking work in chemistry, biology and even defence science. For example, Duffy says, we don't know how cells deal with radiation damage, which can lead to cancer, or how they grow without radiation because we are never in an environment free of radiation. Experiments could also lead to new gold mapping techniques which involve taking an X-ray of land around a mine. "Just as an X-ray is blocked by a bone in your arm, so too is radiation from space blocked by things like gold," Duffy says. "This will allow us to see a shadow and locate the gold."

"There are a lot of cool technologies and applications that you can pursue when you build something as unique as this underground lab," he says. While there is much excitement within the scientific community, enthusiasm for the project is shared far beyond the boundaries of the mine, which sits in a bush setting two kilometres out of Stawell. The Northern Grampians Shire Council has been an active supporter of the project, well-aware that the international attention will put the Wimmera town on the map and generate jobs. Mayor Cr Murray Emerson also hopes the underground physics laboratory will inspire a generation of local students to pursue a career in the sciences. He is so enthusiastic that he has visited year seven students at the local secondary school to talk about the benefits of finishing school and the opportunities a career in science can present. With international partners including the Universities of Rome, Milan and Princeton, as well as the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, it's an easy sell. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews also sees the global picture. When he announced the state government would chip in $1.75 million to convert part of the gold mine into a particle physics lab last November, he enthused that it could possibly be "the world's next great scientific discovery".
A man has been charged by police after it seized a massive haul of stolen goods from a property he was squatting on in the southern suburbs of Perth.

Officers recovered the stolen items, which included a firefighting trailer and equipment, a boat and trailer, a motorcycle, power tools, jewellery and electrical devices, after Serpentine-Jarrahdale Shire Rangers alerted police after it had seen the 30-year-old man illegally camping on Hopkinson Road in Cardup on Thursday.

The motorbike is one of the many stolen items seized by police. Credit:WA Police

Police believe the stolen property may be linked to numerous burglary and stealing offences across the Mundijong district.

The 30 year old man has been charged with trespassing and breaching bail and was due to appear in the Armadale Magistrates court on July 26.
The tragedy had left the local Muslim community fearful, he said. "We thought we could relax for a couple of years and tell people we are normal human beings." FBI assistant special agent in charge Ron Hopper answers questions from members of the media. Credit:AP Mr Rahman said he planned to add extra security to the mosque and brighter lighting to help reassure followers they were safe amid fears of a public backlash against Muslims. Still, much remains unclear about the motivations of Mateen. He was born in New York of Afghan descent. A classmate from his Florida high school described him as a typical teenager who played football for a Martin County team in Stuart, a small city about a 20-minute drive from Fort Pierce. Mir Seddique Mateen is the father of Orlando shooter Omar Mateen. Credit:YouTube

Samuel King said he often spoke to Mateen after he graduated high school. Mr King said he worked at Ruby Tuesday's restaurant in the Treasure Coast Mall, where Mateen worked at GNC, a nutrition store. Mr King, who is openly gay, said the Mateen he knew until 2009 did not appear to be anti-gay. An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after the deadly shooting. Credit:AP "What is shocking to me is that the majority of the staff at Ruby Tuesday's when I worked there were gay. He clearly was not anti-[gay], at least not back then. He did not show any hatred to any of us. He treated us all like the individuals we were. He always smiled and said hello." Mr King described Mateen as gregarious and talkative in the immediate years after high school, but said "something must have changed" since he last saw him in 2009.

Huge holes were blown out of the side of the nightclub by police in the shooting. Credit:AP Mateen's father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News the massacre was not related to religion. "We are apologising for the whole incident. We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country," he was quoted by the network as saying. Omar Mateen who opened fire inside the crowded gay nightclub early on Sunday. Credit:AP He said his son turned angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago. Mateen's ex-wife, who spoke to The Washington Post, said her former husband was violent and mentally ill and beat her repeatedly while they were married.

FBI interviews The FBI twice interviewed Mateen for having suspected ties to Islamist militants, a process likely to renew questions over whether the US government has a clear strategy or adequate resources to turn Americans away from radicalism. The first investigation took place in 2013 when Mateen made inflammatory comments to co-workers that indicated sympathy for militants, FBI special agent in charge Ron Hopper told a news conference in Orlando. It was unclear where Mateen worked. He had been employed as a security guard by G4S in Florida since September 2007, according to the British-owned multinational company, among the world's largest private security firms. G4S provides security to federal buildings in Florida. It was unclear if Mateen had access to them. He was investigated and interviewed twice but the FBI was "unable to verify the substance of his comments," Mr Hopper said.

In 2014, Mr Hopper said, Mateen was investigated and interviewed again, this time for suspected connections to Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, an American citizen who became a suicide bomber in Syria in 2014. Mr Hopper said Mateen's contact with Abu-Salha was minimal and it was deemed that "he did not constitute a substantive threat at that time". 'Not a stable person' Mr Hopper said Mateen was not under investigation or surveillance at the time of Sunday's attack. Mr Hopper said Mateen called emergency services during the massacre to pledge allegiance to Islamic State, also known as ISIS, which in recent years declared a caliphate over large swaths of Iraq and Syria. But the depth of that commitment is unclear.

One US counter-terrorism official said there was "no evidence yet that this was directed or connected to ISIS. So far as we know at this time, his first direct contact was a pledge of bayat [loyalty] he made during the massacre." Mateen also mentioned the Boston Marathon bombers during the call, which he made 20 minutes into the shootings, authorities said. Mateen's former wife said she met Mateen online about eight years ago and decided to move to Florida to marry him, The Washington Post reported. "He was not a stable person," she said. "He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn't finished or something like that." Mateen had a Florida firearms licence that expired in 2013 and a state permit to work as a security guard, according to public records. He was registered as a Democrat.
Police in Hanoi have arrested female dissident Can Thi Theu from Duong Noi Ward in Ha Dong District for disturbing public order and inciting other people to boycott the elections last month.

According to Major General Bach Thanh Dinh, deputy director of Hanoi Police, Theu and her son had posted photos on their Facebook pages with the aim of inciting people to protest against government land reclamation in Duong Noi and to say no to the elections.

Can Thi Theu (L). Photo provided by Hanoi Police.

Vietnamese citizens went to the polls on May 22 to cast their votes for the 14th National Assembly and Peoples Councils at all levels.

Since 2008, Theu has led a group of 50-200 people in Duong Noi who wear shirts printed with slogans to protest the states policies, the police said. The group has complained to government agencies about land grabs on numerous occasions. On April 25, 2014, Theu was jailed for 15 months for activities against public officials. From February to April this year, Theu led protests at some government agencies and the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi. Police said Theu has slandered the government by saying it violates human rights and cracked down on people who protest land grabs to draw attention from foreign media with the aim of fighting the Vietnamese government.

Related news:

> Vietnam wont let reactionary forces disrupt elections: NA chairwoman

> NA election supervisors: Identify reactionary groups behind independent candidates

> General elections: Hindsight at how Vietnamese voted
Signing with the letter H, which is taken to mean that she wrote the message herself, Mrs Clinton also posted on Twitter: "Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act.  H" Investigators from the office of the medical examiner at Pulse nightclub where a gunman opened fire on Sunday. Credit:AP In a subsequent statement, Mrs Clinton denounced the sickening killing spree as "an act of terror" and called for Americans to "redouble our efforts to defend our country from threats at home and abroad."

With no mention of the claimed IS links, Mrs Clinton added that protecting the US meant defeating international terror groups, including their recruitment and "refusing to be intimidated." Donald Trump responded to Orlando shooting by saying he was right about radical Islamic terrorism. Credit:AP The essential elements of an horrific attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando Florida are: A lone gunman, an Afghan who is a US citizen, called 911 to pledge allegiance to the so-called Islamic State before unleashing an hours-long assault on the gay Pulse club, which ended only when a SWAT team and other security forces stormed the premises  during which the gunman was killed. As security was heightened in cities across the country, the FBI revealed that the gunman had been interviewed twice, in 2013 and again in 2014, over comments to work colleagues about his ties to terrorism  and in both cases the investigation had been inconclusive. Jermaine Towns, left, and Brandon Shuford wait down the street from the multiple shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Credit:AP

And the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms confirmed that "in the last week or so" he had legally purchased the two weapons, including an assault rifle, used in the attack  "He is not a prohibited person so he can legally walk into a gun dealership," a spokesman said. In news reports, the massacre was double-billed as the worst gun massacre but also as the worst terror attack on US soil since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Bomb disposal officers check for bombs at an apartment complex possibly linked to the fatal shootings at the Orlando nightclub. Credit:AP The December massacre at San Bernardino, in California, in which 14 people were murdered, was a massive jolt to the typical American response to such massacres, because the killers claimed allegiance to IS drowned out the customary, and invariably futile, hand-wringing over gun control in the most heavily armed country in the world  more than 88 weapons for every 100 civilians. The backstory to the Orlando gunman, named by the FBI as Omar Amir Siddiq Mateen, from Fort Pierce, Florida, is still emerging.

President Barack Obama has repeatedly called for tighter gun control laws during his administration. Credit:AP In 2006, he reportedly graduated from Indian River State College, in his hometown, with associate's degree in criminal justice technology. His father told NBC News that the 29-year-old became angry a couple months ago when he saw men kissing at Bayside in Miami. His former wife, who divorced him in 2011, told reporters that Mateen was physically abusive and mentally unstable. The Pulse nightclub the day after the worst shooting in US history. Credit:AP But the call to 911 coincides with a recent appeal by IS for lone wolf attacks, especially in the US and Europe.

Urging attacks in the name of IS in the holy Muslim month of Ramadan which began with the new moon on June 5, movement spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, declared: "Make it, Allah permitting, a month of hurt on the infidels everywhere. Omar Mateen who opened fire inside the crowded gay nightclub early on Sunday. Credit:AP "The smallest action you do in the heart of their land is dearer to us than the largest action by us," he said, according to the translation. "Encouraging attacks on civilians over more challenging military targets, he said: "We have heard from some of you that you are unable to do your work because of your inability to reach military targets and because you are too embarrassed to target what is called civilian targets. So know that in the heart of the lands of the Crusaders, there is no protection for that blood, and there is no presence of what we call innocents." As in the San Bernardino case, in which investigators have not yet established that there was a direct link between the killers and IS, the early stages of the Orlando investigation so far have not established that Mateen was linked to IS or that the movement trained him or specifically directed him in the manner of the attack or his choice of target.

The New York Times quoted unspecified court reports that revealed he was born in New York and the FBI confirmed that Mateen had previously drawn the attention of the FBI  though apparently not to the extent that he was barred from working, for a period, as a security guard. FBI special agent Ron Hopper told a press conference in Orlando: "The FBI first became aware of Mateen in 2013 as he made inflammatory comments to co-workers, alleging possible terrorist ties. The FBI thoroughly investigated the matter including interviews of witnesses, physical surveillance and records checks. "In the course of the investigation, Mateen was interviewed twice," he says. "Ultimately we were unable to verify the substance of his comments, and the investigation was closed. "In 2014 Mateen again came to the attention to the FBI," Mr Hopper elaborated. He had been interviewed about claims that he had a relationship with an American suicide bomber, Omar Abu Salah. "We determined that contact was minimal and didn't constitute a substantive relationship or threat at that time," Mr Hopper said. In his first comments on the massacre, President Barack Obama told a shocked nation that the FBI was treating it as an act of terror and investigating any ties to foreign terror groups by a gunman who clearly was "filled with hatred".
Until the past week, Mateen appears to have lived a relatively quiet life, as a security guard and father of a young son who kept a modest two-bedroom condominium in Fort Pierce, a town on east Florida's central coast. Omar Mateen's ex-wife has spoken publicly. Credit:Myspace His ex-wife said his family was from Afghanistan, but her ex-husband was born in New York. His family later moved to Florida. Mateen held jobs as a security guard and appeared to have a fondness for law enforcement, having once talked to friends about becoming a police officer. In a series of Myspace photos, Mateen is seen taking selfies wearing New York Police Department shirts. Ms Yusufiy identified him as the man in the Myspace photos. Sitora Yusufiy, the ex-wife of Orlando shooting suspect Omar Mateen, and her fiance Marcio Dias, give a statement to the media at their home outside Boulder, Colorado. Credit:Autumn Parry

Ms Yusufiy said she was having a difficult time when she first met him and decided to move to Florida to be with him. The two married in March 2009 and moved into a 2-bedroom condominium in Fort Pierce, Florida, that Mateen's family owned. "He seemed like a normal human being," she said, adding that he wasn't very religious and worked out at the gym often. Orlando Police officers direct people away from a multiple shooting at the nightclub. Credit:AP She said in the few months they were married he gave no signs of having fallen under the sway of radical Islam. She said he owned a small-caliber handgun and worked as a guard at a nearby facility for juvenile delinquents. "He was a very private person," she said.

An injured person is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub in Orlando after being shot. Credit:AP Ms Yusufiy said her parents intervened when they learned Mateen had assaulted her. Her father confirmed the account and said that the marriage lasted only a few months. Her parents flew down to Fort Pierce and pulled her out of the house, leaving all her belongings behind. She said she never had contact with Mateen again despite attempts by him to reach her. Ray Rivera, a DJ at Pulse nightclub, is consoled by a friend after the shooting. Credit:Orlando Sentinel/AP "They literally saved my life," she said of her parents.

According to Florida court records, the two formally divorced in 2011. Orlando shooter Omar Mateen. Credit:Myspace After learning about what happened in Orlando, she said: "I am still processing. I am definitely lucky." Mateen later had a son with another woman who also appears to have left him and declined to comment when reached at her current home. But one friend said Mateen became steadily more religious after his divorce and went on a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.

"He was quite religious," said the friend, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. Yet, he added, if Mateen had sympathies for the Islamic State or other terrorist groups, he never mentioned them. For several years, Mateen regularly attended the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce and was there as recently as two days ago, said Imam Shafiq Rahman on Sunday. The imam said Mateen's father and young son would pray with him, and Mateen's three sisters were active volunteers at the mosque, which had about 150 congregants. "He was the most quiet guy; he never talked to anyone," Rahman said, gripping a loop of black and red prayer beads as he held forth in a dingy corridor adorned with images of the Arabic alphabet rendered by children who come here for religious instruction. "He would come and pray and leave. There was no indication at all that he would do something violent." Mateen never sought any spiritual guidance from him, Rahman said. But Rahman's 20-year-old son, a University of Florida senior who declined to provide his first name, recalled Mateen as an "aggressive person."
Even as a UN conference began last week in New York, taking up the subject of ending AIDS, a Kremlin-backed research institute claimed the West is using HIV and AIDS as part of an "information war" against Russia.

The Russian Institute for Strategic Research (RISR) presented a report to the Moscow City Council last week on HIV in Russia where, unlike almost everywhere else in the world, rates of HIV infection are on the rise.

HIV+ woman receives antiretroviral therapy pills from PIH Nurse Natalya Shtrevenskaya in her home in Tomsk, Russia. Credit:Elena Devyashina/ Partners In He

According to RISR deputy director Tatyana Guzenkova and her colleagues, the real goal of the West's fights against HIV "is the implementation of the economic and political interests of US-led global structures, relying on an extensive network of international and quasi-NGOs."

But none of this comes as a shock to Anya Sarang, head of the Andrey Rylkov Foundation.
Washington: As America prepares to choose between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, two of the most unpopular presidential candidates in history, voters have yearned for a third choice.

Now, in a flurry of recent national polls, Gary Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico, has suddenly surged above 10 per cent.

Winning would take a miracle but, with little fanfare, Mr Johnson has emerged as a potential "spoiler" who could cost Mr Trump the White House.

Mr Johnson, 63, who made a fortune in construction, is running as the nominee of the Libertarian Party, which has secured a place on the ballot in all 50 states for the November 8 election.
Only direct scheduled freighter service between Canada and Latin America

MONTREAL, QC and MISSISSAUGA, ON, June 10, 2016 /CNW Telbec/ - Air Canada Cargo and Cargojet Airways Ltd., a subsidiary of Cargojet Inc. (TSX: CJT, CJT.A), ("Cargojet') commenced service today with the first freighter flight to Bogota, Colombia and Lima, Peru, operated with a Cargojet B767-300F aircraft.

The new Air Canada Cargo flights will provide 52 tonnes of net cargo capacity and will also include flights to Mexico City, starting this coming weekend.

Under the arrangement, Air Canada Cargo plans to introduce dedicated freighter service to Europe from Toronto in the second half of 2016.

"We're very excited with today's start-up of Air Canada Cargo service to Colombia and Peru, with Mexico City service starting this weekend," said Lise-Marie Turpin, Vice President, Air Canada Cargo. "Working with Cargojet, we are able to leverage and build upon Air Canada's extensive North American and international network to offer the only dedicated freighter service between Canada and Latin America. We look forward to continuing to grow our dedicated freighter network to Europe later this year."

"This first flight is the beginning of a strategic relationship with Air Canada," said Ajay K. Virmani, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cargojet. "It allows us to optimize our overall freighter aircraft utilization and to expand our range of services and customer base with Air Canada."

Information about the new service, including route and schedule information, can be found at http://www.aircanada.com/cargo/en/shipping/freighter/

About Air Canada Cargo

Air Canada Cargo provides direct cargo services to over 150 Canadian, U.S. transborder and international destinations and has sales representation in over 50 countries. With hubs in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, London and Frankfurt, the Air Canada Cargo network is extended through interline agreements with other air carriers and through ground trucking services offered in selected markets, serving more than 450 destinations in all.

Air Canada Cargo is Canada's largest provider of air cargo services as measured by cargo capacity. Main customers are large freight forwarding companies and businesses whose products require the use of air services to expedite their time sensitive cargo shipments. Shipping solutions are tailored to best meet specific commodities and time requirements of our customers cost-efficiently. For more information, please visit: www.aircanadacargo.com

About Cargojet

Cargojet is Canada's leading provider of time sensitive overnight air cargo services. Cargojet services 14 major city centers coast to coast each business night. Cargojet operates its network across North America carrying approximately 1,300,000 pounds of cargo each business night. Cargojet has a fleet of 22 aircraft consisting of B767-300ER, B767-200ER, B757-200ER and B727-200AF long range freighter aircraft. For more information please visit www.cargojet.com

Notice on Forward Looking Statements:

This news release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements relate to analyses and other information that are based on forecasts of future results and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. These statements may involve, but are not limited to, comments relating to preliminary results, guidance, strategies, expectations, planned operations or future actions. Forward-looking statements are identified by the use of terms and phrases such as "preliminary", "anticipate", "believe", "could", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "may", "plan", "predict", "project", "will", "would", and similar terms and phrases, including references to assumptions. Forward-looking statements, by their nature, are based on assumptions, including those described herein and are subject to important risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements cannot be relied upon due to, amongst other things, changing external events and general uncertainties of the business. Actual results may differ materially from results indicated in forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, including the factors identified throughout this news release and those identified in any issuer's public disclosure record. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release represent expectations as of the date of this news release (or as of the date they are otherwise stated to be made), and are subject to change after such date. However, any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, is disclaimed, except as required under applicable securities regulations

SOURCE Air Canada

CONTACT: Air Canada: Isabelle Arthur (MontrAal), Isabelle.arthur@aircanada.ca, 514 422-5788; Peter Fitzpatrick (Toronto), peter.fitzpatrick@aircanada.ca, 416 263-5576; Angela Mah (Vancouver), angela.mah@aircanada.ca, 604 270-5741; Cargojet: Pauline Dhillon, pdhillon@cargojet.com, 905 501-7373

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DUBAI, UAE, June 12, 2016 --

To celebrate and recognize the true worth of its range of high performance tyres, Dubai based Z Tyre has engaged one of the world's most exclusive jewelers to develop a very special set of Z1 tyres to be unveiled for the first time at Reifen Essen 2016.

Combining 24 karat gold and specially selected diamond stones, this unique set of Z Tyres was designed in Dubai and decorated by Italian artisan jewellers in Italy before being returned to Dubai the application of gold leafing by the very same craftsmen who have worked on the new presidential palace in Abu Dhabi. With the special set of four tyres recently sold for $600,000, Guinness World Records has independently valued and duly recognised them as the "World's Most Expensive Set of Car Tyres".

Commenting on this new world record, Zenises CEO Harjeev Kandhari, said: "We've always treasured the outstanding skills and dedication involved in developing our Z Tyre range so we thought what better way to celebrate this achievement than with a record-breaking special set of tyres especially commissioned for a unique buyer. We are thankful to the Government of Dubai and His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai to have fostered such an environment of creativity in Dubai. This environment has allowed us to "dream big" and develop such world record breaking ideas. In keeping with the spirit of the Holy Month of Ramadan Z Tyres will donate all profits from the $600,000 sale to the Zenises Foundation which focuses on improving access to education across the world".
ELKO  Only three days after Cody Braese was sentenced to a maximum of 35 years in prison for burglarizing the School Resource Office, Elko District Judge Al Kacin issued a consecutive sentence with a maximum of eight years in prison on another burglary case from earlier last year.

Cody N. Braese, 36, pleaded guilty to counts one and seven: burglary and receiving, possessing or withholding stolen goods.

This sentencing included victim impact statements from those who felt violated by Braeses actions.

He had been in our facility as a friend, as a family member, I guess, and so it became more personal, said Jana DeLong, assistant manager at the Elko Municipal Pool.

The pool had to cancel a water aerobics class and lap swimming because of broken glass, said DeLong. She further told the court Braeses ex-girlfriend worked at the pool.

The theft included a laptop, an iPod and two cash boxes with $150 each, indicating one would have to know where the cash boxes were hidden.

Candace Wallace, the owner of Shabby Shanty, told the court she has suffered mental and monetary losses.

The business is in a unique situation, she said, because many of the items sold there are old or used so they cannot be covered by insurance.

Ive become really paranoid, said Wallace. I watch people in the store a lot more than I did before, thinking that theyre in there casing us.

Wallace and other women who work there as vendors discussed the changes that have been made since the two burglaries, and described how the last one left the store a complete mess.

These changes include not being able to work alone, the installation of a security system, and entering and exiting the building differently than before.

Many of the women said they are fearful and felt violated. For some, the Shabby Shanty provides supplemental income; for others, like retired high school teacher Sharon Doke, the income helps pay for over $90,000 in Medicaid bills due to her late husbands stroke.

Today is my 80th birthday and I dont think this is a good place to be, said Lois Shepherd, a vendor who told the court she has been working since she was 15 years old and some of the stolen pieces were quite valuable.

I feel disappointed for him. I just think what a waste of a life to do this, when he could be doing something constructive, she said.

Nancy Abrams described the economic toll the burglaries took on the store, including a decrease in the amount of vendors  from 13 or 14 to 10  and vendors having to close their work spaces one day a week to reset the sale items.

I believe everyone should get a second chance and this gentlemans had his second chance, said Abrams, but she also pointed out Braese was out on bail when the School Resource Office was burglarized in October.

The statements took an emotional turn when Braeses mother, Karen Watson, took the stand.

The guy youre trying is the guy on drugs, she said.

Watson, who is retired and on disability, called Braese upstanding and wonderful and asked for help in his drug addiction. She said he would be dead before he was released from prison.

Before taking her seat with the audience, Braeses mother was crying as she apologized to him.

This looks like a thrill deal to me, said Kacin, explaining to Braese his actions were despicable and his lack of empathy is striking.

Barbara Gallagher, the defense attorney, requested the judge look at this case from the standpoint of addressing her clients substance abuse addiction, which started at a young age.

She said Braese is remorseful of the actions he committed and is often self-loathing at times.

The defense suggested concurrent terms in this case.

However, in his statements to the defendant, Kacin brought up Braeses criminal history of felony convictions, statements made to law enforcement about his addiction in committing these acts, and the fact that he has family support  the latter being something not had by all who abuse controlled substances.

Before pronouncing the sentence, Kacin said the real question was if it should be consecutive or concurrent to the case heard in Elko District Judge Nancy Porters court.

The State, represented by Deputy District Attorney David Buchler, stood silent on this matter.

Buchler said the State recommended a minimum sentence of 128 months and a minimum of 48 months for the burglary charge, and 60 months, with a minimum of 24 months for the stolen goods charge.

Kacin sentenced Braese to a maximum aggregate sentence of 13 years in prison, with a minimum of four-and-a-half years to run consecutively to his prior sentence. This includes a maximum of 96 months for the burglary charge, with parole eligibility after 30 months and 48 days of credit for time served.

For possession of stolen goods, the defendant was given a maximum of 60 months and a minimum of 24 months. Both sentences run concurrently.

Braese is to pay approximately $18,040.07 in restitution.

According to the criminal information filed with the courts, Braese also burglarized BJ Bull Bakery.

The items listed as taken from eight individuals or entities include an Avon gold-colored compact, camera(s) and cash boxes.
Nutson's Weekly Automotive News Digest June 6-12, 2016







By Larry Nutson

Senior Editor and Bureau Chief

Chicago Bureau

The Auto Channel

AUTO CENTRAL Chicago, June 12, 2016; Every Sunday Larry Nutson, Senior Editor and Chicago Car Guy along with fellow senior editors Steve Purdy and Thom Cannell from The Auto Channel Michigan Bureau, give you TACH's "take" on this past week's automotive news in easy to digest mega-tweet sized nuggets. If you wish to know more just click on the link that will take you to the full story as published here on The Auto Channel.

If you are a car and driving fan like we all are here at The Auto Channel, you can easily wish to "catch up" on these stories as well put them in context with the past 20 year's 1,982,111 automotive news, automotive stories, articles, reviews, archived news, video, audio, rants and raves. Just search The Auto Channel's Automotive News Archive.

Hey Boston TV viewers, you can now enjoy The Auto Channel TV Network "Free and Clear" on WHDT Channel 3 in Boston and on your local cable systems. Just added Naples Florida, along with all South Florida auto fans who can continue to watch The Auto Channel TV Network on WHDT-TV Channel 9 in West Palm Beach as well as cable channel's 17 and 438, channel 9 Miami. WHDN launched its full schedule (including The Auto Channel)of broadcasting in the Naples-Fort Myers market on digital PSIP channel 9.1 channel. Enjoy and thanks for the positive feedback and ratings. See You Next Week, LN.

The Past Week's Automotive News Highlights In Easy To Digest Chunks

May 30-June 5,2016

* Cars.com teamed up with MotorWeek to determine the segment leader in its Midsize Sedan Challenge. With a panel of expert judges and a local Atlanta couple in the market for a new sedan, Cars.com evaluated nine of the most popular 2016 models. The tests resulted in the following ranking: 1) 2016 Volkswagen Passat, 2) 2016 Kia Optima, 3) 2016 Chevrolet Malibu, 4) 2016 Hyundai Sonata, 5) 2016 Honda Accord, 6) 2016 Subaru Legacy, 7) 2016 Toyota Camry, 8) 2016 Mazda6 and 9) 2016 Nissan Altima.

* The hotly anticipated VLF Destino is being delivered to customers at last. The Destino  first seen as a concept at the 2013 Detroit auto show  is the opening product of a partnership between ex-General Motors product chief Bob Lutz, former Aston Martin designer Henrik Fisker and entrepreneur Gilbert Villarreal. While the original Karma chassis was produced in Finland, the Destino is assembled in Auburn Hills, MIchigan. Billed as one of the worlds fastest four-door sedans, the 200-mph Destino is the gorgeous offspring of the marriage of a Fisker Karma chassis and supercharged 638HP Corvette ZL1 V-8 engine. The 4,300-pound GT will go from 0-60 in just 3.9 seconds and has a top speed of 200mph.

* Automotive News reports that Volkswagen Group's Skoda unit is considering whether to sell cars in the U.S. where its parent is mired in a diesel emissions scandal. A Skoda spokesman said the Czech value brand is examining the potential of markets where it is not yet present. "That includes North America," the spokesman told Automotive News Europe. No decision has been made, he said.

* NHTSA is looking into suspension failures on the Tesla Model S. The interesting twist is that apparently Tesla has asked customers who experienced the failure and got their car repaired to sign a confidentiality agreement to not speak about it with government officials. The agency has warned Tesla to refrain from encouraging customers not to report safety concerns.

* The LAPD is getting cleaner. BMW of North America announced that it has won its bid to supply the Los Angeles Police Department with 100 fully-electric BMW i3 vehicles for use in the departments transportation fleet. The BMW i3 police cars began hitting the streets of Los Angeles this spring badged with an LAPD insignia. As the departments non-emergency fleet vehicles, the BMW i3s will be used throughout the department as transportation vehicles for officers and in community outreach initiatives.

* Subaru of America, Inc. announced that a Subaru WRX STI Time Attack car piloted by Mark Higgins set a new lap record of the fabled 37-mile Isle of Man TT Road Course with an average lap speed of 128.73 mph and a time of 17.35. This breaks the previous record held by Higgins of 116.47 mph and a time of 19.26. The all-new 2016 Subaru WRX STI time attack car is a joint development of Subaru of America, Inc., and Prodrive, with technical assistance provided by Subaru Tecnica International (STI). The new car is purpose-built for the Isle of Man TT Course.

* Craig Breedlove set a new land speed record of 526 mph in his Spirit of America jet car back in 1964 breaking the 500 mph barrier. Following that he sent his car to Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry for display. Now fifty years later the museum wants too give it back. It turns out they didn't take very good care of the Spirit of American and it is extensively damaged. Craig Breedlove is suing the museum to get them to pay for the restoration and repairs estimated to cost nearly $400,000.

* The sixth running of the modern iteration of the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge starts this week with 115 teams ready to challenge over 8,500 of the worlds most challenging roads. The endurance rally transits 11 nations and will take five weeks to complete. The challenge began in 1907 and today includes both modern and antique cars, including a pre-war Bentley, a 1955 Lancia and even American muscle cars. The route cover crosses the Gobi Desert, Siberia, and Eastern Europe before the finish in France.

* Another huge motorsports event coming up is the annual Pikes Peak Hill Climb in Colorado, celebrating the 100th anniversary of that all-out timed contest up one of the tallest peaks in the Rocky Mountains. Acura will field three new NSX hybrid super cars in the contest. Various classes include nearly stock cars though full-race and rally-racing cars, now including even electric car classes. Acura NSX entries include a full-electric version and two hybrids.

* The CEO of Automobili Lamborghini presided over the reopening of the fully renovated Lamborghini Museum at the company headquarters in SantAgata Bolognese near Bologna this week in honor of the companys 50th anniversary. Part of the celebration is the Miura Tour, a 500 km drive though Emilia, Liguria and Tuscany featuring one of the companys most significant models.

* Pickup fans rejoice - the U.S. Postal Service announced the release of a new series of stamps featuring 4 classic pickups - a 1938 International D-2, 1948 Ford F-150, 1953 Chevrolet and 1964 Ford f-100. The images are produced by Pittsfird, NY artist Chris Lyons. The term pickup is credited to Studebaker based on a 1913 advertisement. These new stamps will go on sale July 15th.

* Fathers Day will be the 29th presentation of one of the most prestigious car shows in the country - EyesOn Design at the Eleanor and Edsel Ford home in Grosse Point Shores, Michigan. The invitational show is unlike other Concours events in that it features the design of automobiles and other things vehicular rather than rarity, excellence in restoration and other criteria. This years theme is Powered by Design featuring classes that showcase how auto manufactures use design to convey power and performance.

* Roush Performance is now taking orders for the new 2017 Stage 3 Mustang powered by a Ford Coyote 5.0-liter V8 making 670 horsepower. The supercharged engine is fully warrantied and built in the U.S. by Roush. The car comes with a variety of other performance and cosmetic options.
Polarizing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has spent the better part of his (ongoing) campaign spewing blunt-force vitriol at all manner of minorities, be they Muslims, women, or Mexicans, as most recently seen with his xenophobic attacks on the federal judge, Gonzalo Curiel, presiding over his Trump University lawsuit. In doing so, the demagoguewhose fathers side, under the name Drumpf, hail from the tiny wine village of Kallstadt in Germanyhas attracted white nationalist supporters, some of whom harbor a fetish for anti-Semitic internet memes. All of this makes The Donald perhaps the ideal audience for Germans & Jews, a new documentary from Janina Quint that asks the question: How do individuals, and societies as a whole, reckon with a history of intolerance?

This is not to forward a specious equivalency between Trump and Hitler (as some have previously done). Rather, its to suggest that the NYC real estate mogul-turned-politician would benefit from listening to the thoughtful means by which Quints subjects try to process the 21st centurys greatest case of genocidal prejudice: the Holocaust. That tragedy is investigated, and discussed, with a degree of reflective maturity thats so far evaded the Republican nominee, whose habit of saying whatever vile thing comes to mindand then, as earlier this week, claiming that such maliciousness was merely misconstruedis wholly at odds with the Germans and Jews featured in Quints film, who through astute comments shine an illuminating light on the way in which communities cope with a heritage steeped in hate.

Though running a fleet 76 minutes, Germans & Jews proves a well-rounded micro snapshot of post-WWII Germany. According to Quints film, the specter of National Socialism continues to loom far and wide over the landscape and its inhabitants, who nowsomewhat stunninglyinclude nearly 200,000 Jewish residents in Berlin alone. That Jews are increasingly emigrating to Germany speaks volumes about the efforts made by the German people to honestly and forthrightly confront what they (and their ancestors) did. Although as the documentary makes clear, the path to this present state has been anything but easy.

Through conversations with citizens, artists, scholars and more, Germans & Jews provides first-hand accounts of what its felt like to be German since the fall of Hitlers Nazi regime. The answer, as it turns out, is complicatedboth for those who grew up immediately after the wars end and had to grapple with the revelation that their beloved parents had played a part in unthinkable Holocaust atrocities, and for those who were born in the ensuing decades and felt great (if somewhat more abstract) blame for their nations indefensible mass-slaughter actions. In candid and revealing recollections, the films German men and women articulate the internal confusion wrought by their post-WWII circumstances in a nation where responsibility, remorse, anger, and shame all coexisted in an uneasy stew, and where attempts to directly confront the Holocaust (as with the broadcast of a 1979 miniseries that riveted all of West Germany) further muddied Germans sense of identity, which was torn between feeling at once connected to, and repulsed by, their homeland.

Despite addressing the multilayered emotions of Germans existing in Hitlers shadow, Germans & Jews is far from an apologia; instead, it proves a level-headed, borderline-detached stab at understanding how Germans, and by extension Germany as a whole, dealt with a still-fresh history of mass extermination and attempted world conquest. As it turns out, they did so in a variety of ways, including decorating towns and cities with memorials that were specifically designed to be unpleasant, unavoidable reminders of what their forefathers had done in WWII. And somewhat unsurprisingly, the countrys efforts to own up to, internalize, and atone for its sins was made more difficult by the fall of the Berlin Wall, given that by 1989, East Germany felt that it had already transcended the Holocaust, while West Germanywhere WWII was the most heavily taught subject in schools, and where monuments were pervasive (including street sign placards detailing the regions 1930s and 1940s anti-Semitic laws)had a cultural consciousness dominated by guilt and disgrace.

Germans & Jews thus provides a revealing window into a post-WWII German psychology fraught with contradictionsalthough the films purview extends to Jews both living in and outside Germany. Like their non-Jewish German counterparts, these individuals struggle with upbringings in which they were taught (while living in Germany, America or Israel) to not trust Germans, since they were all Nazis. However, due to a number of different social, economic and professional reasons, many Jews have returned to Germany over the course of the past fifty years. Their experiences have ranged from the predictably uncomfortable (one man talks about the quiet, but ever-present, anti-Semitism he felt as a student in 1950s German schools) to the surprisingly accepting, peaking with an artist exclaiming thatdespite the admitted presence of neo-Nazis in some regionshe believes Berlin is, today, a safer place for Jews to live than Israel.

Director Quint doesnt challenge such opinionswhich are heard in standard talking-head interviews, as well as during a staged dinner between many German Jews and non-Jewsso much as she allows differing viewpoints to co-exist side-by-side. Employing a conventional Ken Burns-ian non-fiction aesthetic, in which straightforward chats are interspersed with archival photographs (that the camera pans and zooms about), Germans & Jews stays out of its own way, allowing its many voices to evoke the twisted, alternately contradictory and complementary feelings and thoughts that define German-Jewish dynamics. The result is a panorama of perspectives on a thorny and ever-changing paradigmone that, as one speaker notes, even involves philosemitism, the effusive admiration of Jews and Judaism that, in its most extreme form, can potentially veer close to traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes (i.e. the admiring Jews are great with numbers becomes the loathsome Jews are manipulative, greedy shysters).

In respectfully detailing the intricacies of identity formation and redefinition in an increasingly diverse 21st century, Germans & Jews is not simply a depiction of considerate intercultural dialogue, but an example of it as well. Our discord-sowing Republican presidential nominee, could learn a thing or two from it.
Its hard to turn on your television these days (or your computer or phone) without being inundated with further proof that we are a nation divided. After all, there are the violent clashes at Trump rallies, between social justice activists and the police, endless verbal clashes dominating our political discoursenot to mention just about everything that happens on Twitter. With Republican nominee Donald Trump recently lobbing his latest verbal grenade, alleging an American jurist of Mexican ethnicity is unfit to adjudicate matters involving him, and the resulting furor, its hard not to feel as though our country is falling apart  along racial and ideological lines.

And yet in the midst of all of this division has emerged incontrovertible proof that Americans are actually becoming more united and that regardless of what happens in the presidential election come November, Donald Trump has already lost. I dont just mean in terms of his reputation (which I believe will have a hard time recovering among mainstream Americans after this election) but in terms of his efforts to define what constitutes a true American. I hate to break it to Mr. Trump (actually it thrills me to break it to him and anyone else who thinks like him) but not only do people of color like the jurist he critiqued represent the future of America, but mixed race families  in which people of color marry into families just like Mr. Trumps, represent the fastest growing demographic within America.

Based on the numbers, in about a decade or so Donald Trump will likely find himself no longer trying to defend his offensive comments about Judge Curiel to befuddled members of media and the GOP, but to a Latino relative over Thanksgiving dinner. This thought is not only cause for amusement but reflection and celebration.

Today, June 12th marks the 49th anniversary of the Supreme Courts Loving v. Virginia decision, which declared laws against interracial marriage unconstitutional. The last name of the couple at the heart of the story, Loving, sounds like one of those too-good-to-be-true Hollywood twists, but Loving was the real family name of Mildred, a black woman, and Richard, a white man, who took their battle to have their union recognized and decriminalized all the way to the Supreme Court. The aptly titled, Loving, a film about their landmark case screened at the Cannes Film Festival last month, and Saturday marks the celebration of Loving Day nationwide.

Since the Loving decision mixed race couples have begun to transform our cultural and political landscape. Consider this: In 1961 Sammy Davis, was asked not to participate in the inauguration of his longtime friend John F. Kennedy because of his marriage to white Swedish actress May Britt. This was the same year that President Barack Obama would be born to a white mother and black Kenyan father.

More than 30 years later when then Republican Senator and future Secretary of Defense William Cohen began a relationship with African American journalist Janet Langhart he said he had supporters who expressed concern it might damage his career. The two married in 1996. They remained one of the few mixed race couples in the political sphere, but in recent years the families of politicians have begun to more closely resemble the families of a greater number of Americans.

The most high profile example is probably Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, who is white and married to Chirlane McCray who is African American. Unlike Cohens experience two decades ago, McCray and the couples two children were seen as assets to de Blasios quest to lead one of the countrys most racially diverse cities. (A campaign ad starring de Blasios son Dante was seen as particularly crucial in establishing de Blasio as a political ally of communities of color.) But the de Blasios are not the only high profile, racially diverse family in American politics. Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina who is of Indian descent, Congresswoman Mia Love who is black and California Attorney General and current Senate candidate Kamala Harris who is of black and Indian descent all have white spouses. Not only have their unions not drawn criticism  theyve barely been seen as worthy of coverage at all, because they are no longer seen as particularly unique.

With studies showing younger Americans even more open to mixed race unions (more than half of millennials have dated outside of their race) families like these are likely to become the norm. Sen. John McCains son Jack recently took to social media to blast critics of Old Navy who decried the brands use of a mixed race couple in a recent ad. How exactly did he respond to these critics? By posting pictures with his wife Renee, who is black. And former House Speaker John Boehner recently welcomed a black son-in-law into his family.

Why do such unions matter? Well for one thing its impossible to love someone and not have empathy for his or her pain. Reading an article about racial profiling or discussing it with someone is far different from discovering your son-in-law or granddaughter were victims of inequitable treatment. As people of different races move into one anothers families it is inevitable that in many of these instances there will be growth in empathy and understanding. Think of it as a cultural exchange program on steroids. It is worth noting that Mitt Romney has emerged as one of Donald Trump's fiercest critics, despite accepting his endorsement four years ago. Romney has refused to endorse Donald Trump this year and recently accused the mogul of triggering "trickle down racism." A recent profile alleged Romney became so passionate he teared up over the subject. One major change between 2012 Romney and 2016 Romney? He now has a black grandson.

David French, a writer for the National Review who was being mentioned as a possible conservative contender against Donald Trump, said he was harassed by Trump supporters, some of whom singled out his adopted daughter who is Ethiopian. Targeting anyones child is disgusting and cowardly. But it does provide some insight into perhaps the best way to protest Trumps increasingly culturally divisive rhetoric. First, we should all do our part to see that America truly becomes the melting pot it claims to be  the America of Donald Trumps nightmare -- by either welcoming other races into our own families or making sure to show love and support to families that do. But perhaps most of all instead of hoping he is defeated, we should hope that one day soon Donald Trump will find himself welcoming a part Mexican, part black Muslim into his family.

If his head doesnt explode from the experience then his heart might just grow a little, and he might become a better, more loving human being.
ELKO  The Elko Police Department has received several complaints from citizens on a possible IRS scam.

According to reports, people are being called by individuals representing themselves as IRS agents. These alleged agents are telling people the government entity has not received their tax statements and they need to immediately send money to the IRS.

The agents then request individuals purchase some type of money order or make some type of money transactions. Many of these calls are originating from a 906 area code, said a statement from the Elko Police Department.

Police contacted the IRS, which explained it does not call people and request money over the phone.

The IRS has requested contacting it directly regarding any tax returns, said local authorities.

Police want to inform the public this is a scam and to please not send any money to these individuals.
Even more exciting? There are thousands and thousands of books sitting in libraries, personal collections, and book stores ripe for this treatment.

Whats new here is the technology. Scholars have known for a long time that early modern book production used cartonnage (layers of linen or papyrus) composed of fragments of older discarded manuscripts to strengthen the bindings of books. Kwakkel told The Guardian that as many as one in five books produced between the 15th and 18th centuries was made this way. The same technique was used seventeen hundred years earlier by Egyptians, who used manuscripts as papier mache to construct mummy masks for use in the burial of the dead. We knew the documents were hidden in the bindings of the books, but getting them out meant dismantling or destroying ancient historical artifacts.

This new technology, though, allows scholars to read the fragments in the bindings without dismantling the books themselves. It uses macro x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (MA-XRF) to detect iron, copper, and zinc in the medieval ink. Professor Joris Dik, of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, developed this new process. In 2011 he used it to discover a previously unknown self-portrait of Rembrandt underneath another work. The discovery cleared up the questions that surrounded the paintings attribution and value.
MEDFORD, New Jersey  Members of Fellowship Alliance Chapel were gathering to mourn Christina Grimmie when they were learning of 49 more people shot to death by another madman in Orlando, Florida.

Grimmie, 22, was shot Friday night in Orlando while signing autographs after a concert. Kevin James Loibl, 27, fired at Grimmie before he was tackled by her brother Marcus. Loibl killed himself. Grimmie, a budding vocal star and a popular contestant on NBCs The Voice, was rushed to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

A day later and three miles away, the popular gay nightclub Pulse was attacked by Omar Mateen, who used an assault rifle to kill 49 people and injure 53 more.

We as a family, we mourn. We mourn Orlando this morning, which is going through a lot today, again, said elder Bryan Russell, as congregants took their seats for the 11 a.m. service in the church Grimmie attended for most of her life. Its hard and it hurts and it seems senseless. Right now is a time for us to be able to grieve and ask questions.

Two hours earlier, Pastor Marty Berglund began the early service with a video tribute to Grimmie. Two large screens above the church sanctuary played a YouTube video of Grimmie belting out the song In Christ Alone. (The video has been watched more than 2 million times.)

The songs lyricswhich speak of the power of faith to conquer deathmoved many of the congregants to tears.

When something happens like Christina Grimmie getting shot by a murderer, we have to remember that we are part of an unshakeable kingdom that Christina sang about this is the faith Christina Grimmie had, Berglund said as ushers passed boxes of tissues around.

A church greeter, Ed Letts, said he hopes some good might come of the tragedy.

We are people of faith, so as we see it, Christina now stands with Christ, he said. Knowing that in our hearts brings peace, and maybe through her videos she can now get that message out.

After his sermon, Pastor Berglund sat down with The Daily Beast to describe the profound impact Grimmies death has had on the church community and her family.

We were all shaken, he said. Shed been coming here since she was a little kid and sang with the worship team. Then her YouTube videos started getting popular. We watched her star grow.

Berglund said he had been in touch with Grimmies parents, and there has been talk of arranging a funeral service at Fellowship Alliance Chapel.

Grimmie was a devout Christian, and her music had a spiritual core even as she embraced her role as a budding pop icon. Her simply recorded home videos, which feature Grimmie behind an electric piano singing covers of popular songs, earned her critical acclaim and the nickname Queen of YouTube. Grimmie released her self-produced debut EP, Find Me, in 2011.

Grimmie worshiped regularly at Fellowship Alliance Chapel with her family until moving to California in 2012 to join Selena Gomez on tour. The purpose of the tour was to raise money for what would be her first and only studio album, 2013s With Love.

Berglund recalls counseling Grimmie and her parents, Bud and Tina, before the move.

They were afraid to go, they were afraid of the industry, of all the Hollywood stuff, afraid of being swallowed up by the industry, he said.

In 2014 Grimmie placed third on The Voice and earned a brief recording deal with Island Records. But those who know her say that throughout her short rise to fame she was vigilant about staying connected to her roots.

Christina had a tattoo on her forearm. It said All Is Vanity from the book of Ecclesiastes, explained elder Bryan Russell. So every time she performed she could see those words. She never wanted to forget who she was working for and who she represented.

Police believe Grimmies killer, who was armed with two handguns, went to her concert with the intention of shooting her. But they said they have no evidence that he had been stalking her. No motive for the killing has yet been revealed.

Chelsea Tabisz, who now holds Grimmies old spot as female lead in the churchs worship team band, said that while she only met Grimmie once, the young star made an impression on her.

She was really authentic and genuine, and was just so talented, she said, fighting back tears.

Tabisz served in the Air Force and won the 2015 Operation Rising Star contest, an American Idol-style singing competition that was hosted annually by the military for a decade until this year.

Tabisz says Grimmies death has had a chilling effect.

I never once thought that by performing I could be putting myself in danger, it never crossed my mind, she told The Daily Beast. Now Im worried. I mean, [Christina] was so young and was just getting started. Its such a tragedy.
When I was a student at the University of Oregon in 1967, I talked my way onto Governor George Wallaces campaign plane and spent several days with the presidential candidate as he flew across the West giving speeches. At the time the media were portraying the Alabama governor as little more than a crude racist redneck. But it was not just racism that drew the tens of thousands who came to hear him. He was playing to the anger and disenchantment of the white working class. These men and women believed their shot at the American dream was ending, their lives manipulated by a remote power elite and an uncaring government.

I wrote an article about what I had observed for The New Republic, and that led to my career as a journalist. Five decades later I returned to write about George Wallace again in my new book, The Lynching: The Epic Courtroom Battle that Destroyed the Klan.

Wallace was a brilliant politician, and what strikes me are certain parallels between his politics of those of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Wallace is a crucial character in The Lynching. He created the climate of hate that led to the lynching of 19-year-old Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama in 1981 that is at the center of my book. I interviewed Wallaces daughter and son and various aides and learned far more about him than I did in 1967.

As a young Alabama politician in the mid 50s, Judge George Wallace knew that segregation was going to end. He might have taken that knowledge and used it to lead the South in accepting that new reality. It would not have been easy, but he might have become an American version of F.W. de Klerk, the South African politician who working with Nelson Mandela ended apartheid in South Africa.

Wallace chose a different route. He had an understanding of the psychology of the southern white working class like no other politician of his time, and he knew they would not give in easily to an integrated South. If he became their champion, he could become governor and perhaps rise even higher in American politics. It was a profoundly cynical thing to do, disrespectful not only of the American Constitution but of these people themselves, whom he was leading in a direction he knew was wrongheaded and misguided and would fail, but it was the quickest and easy way to power.

Like Wallace, Trump has called forth issues that excite and inspire the beleaguered white working and lower middle class. Unlike Wallace, he did not grow up among them, but he can speak their language like no other politician of our time.

When Trump first announced for president, he needed issues so radical, so daring that they would bring him enormous media attention. Like Wallace, he set out proffering policies that I believe he knows will never be implemented. It would be impossible to deport 11 million undocumented workers, but its a brilliant issue that he used to help the New York businessman become the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The same goes for his idea of not allowing Muslims for a time to enter the United States. It plays well with his most fervent supporters, but its unthinkable that Congress would go along with such a scheme.

Wallace provoked violence in the South. His rhetoric inspired some of the worst excesses of the Klan, including the murder of four black girls in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. On his presidential campaign jaunts to the North, there was always the threat of violence with protesters being throttled or mocked.

Early on in the primary season, I thought that Trump was going to do just the same, provoking demonstrators in such a way that could have easily led to violence. But as the magnitude of these confrontations became apparent, the candidate has backed off from using the provocative language that easily could have stimulated violence.

Wallace entered politics as a populist defender of the working man, promising as governor to advance the masses of the people as no previous Alabama politician had ever done. He had the potential to be for his people a true and honest spokesman working to advance them and the South. In the end, he was the most reactionary governor of his time, doing almost nothing for the workingman and workingwoman while continuing to boast of his ceaseless efforts and serving the interests of the business elite.

The common people of this country have been suckered again and again, and it is no wonder that they are ready to rise in fury. They were suckered by the Democratic Party that stood back and did almost nothing as factories closed all across America, and the plutocrats benefited overwhelmingly from free trade. Out of despair many of these lifelong Democrats migrated to the Republican Party. There they were suckered again by politicians who offered them nothing but meaningless words and bromides. Now in great numbers they have moved on to Trump.

By the mark of the primary votes for Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, and Trump, two-thirds of Americans are looking for some version of radical change. The Trump candidacy is likely to be the one vehicle for that change.

Wallace was an astute politician with great insight into his political life and a man of enormous potential. To my mind, he is a tragic figure. In his last term in office, when he knew he would never run for president again, he became reflective. As I write in The Lynching, one evening his aide Kenneth Mullinax was talking to Wallace in the governors mansion.

I have a lot of regrets, Wallace said, and I really worry about my soul.

But youre born again, Governor, Mullinax said.

I flew all them runs over Tokyo dropping bombs, but that dont worry me none. Its my words. They kilt a lot of people. Thats why Im worried Im going to hell.

Wallace had become a deeply believing Christian, and he truly feared he would go to hell. If one believes in heaven and hell, Wallace was certainly a likely candidate for hell.

Trump is far away from such a regretful moment. So far he has not for the most part been facing the great issues confronting our country with meaningful policy proposals. Trump is about himself. He has squandered much of his time running a self-involved, self-referential campaign that is little more than an endless advertisement for the Trump brand.

Watching Trump campaigning, I keep wondering if he loses will he have a moment of self-awareness and realize how profoundly he blew one of the most extraordinary political opportunities in our history? Like Wallace, will he live the rest of his life in regret?

Laurence Leamer is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including The Kennedy Women and The Price of Justice. His latest, The Lynching: The Epic Courtroom Battle That Brought Down the Klan, is published by William Morrow.
When Hillary Rodham Clinton celebrated her presumed emergence as the first female major party nominee in 2012, she quoted Shirley Chisholm: Those who think that the womens liberation movement is a joke, may I disabuse you of that notion. Its about equal opportunity.

Indeed, women have been turning mens mockery into female feats for years. In fact, the candidacy of the first woman elected as mayorboosters insist to any political office in the United Statesbegan as a sexist prank.

In 1887, feeling empowered from having become eligible to vote four years earlier, women in the Quaker village of Argonia, Kansas, joined the Womens Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Crusading against booze expressed what some historians call maternal feminism, others call municipal housekeeping, going public with the motherly impulse to cultivate virtue.
Because I deal in extremes, utters Brian De Palma, I always get extreme reactions.

He aint kidding. Despite birthing a host of celebrated films, including Carrie, Scarface, and The Untouchables, and receiving heaps of praise from the late New Yorker critic Pauline Kael, who likened him to his New Hollywood contemporaries Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, De Palma remains arguably the most polarizing filmmaker in cinema history. Hes been nominated for 5 Razzie Awards for Worst Directorthe most everand has sparked furious debates about cinema artistry and violence. His thriller Dressed to Kill was even branded a master work of misogyny by Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media.

In this writers mind, however, De Palma is often misunderstood. He artfully combined the psychological suspense of Hitchcock with the operatic gore of Argento, and like Tarantino, is a remix-artist of the first order, from the 360-degree shot in Blow Out to the Notorious-esque staircase shot in Scarface to The Untouchables Odessa Steps sequence. His split-screens, strident scores, and long Steadicam shots all amplify the moviegoing experience, not diminish it.

Youre reviewed against the fashion of the day, and when the fashion changesas it has on many of my moviesand they live forty years later, theyre something that transcends the fashion of the day, he says.

The 75-year-old director is the subject of De Palma, a new documentary by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow. It basically consists of De Palma analyzing and deconstructing his past movies, and provides a fascinating peek at one of cinemas most intriguing filmmakers.

The Daily Beast sat down with De Palma in New York to discuss his storied career.

One anecdote I found fascinating in De Palma is that perhaps your most autobiographical character is Keith Gordons nerd in Dressed to Kill.

Keith had played me in Home Movies, so I wrote this character into Dressed to Kill. But Id build computers as a teenager and won a couple of science fairs in high school.

And like Gordons character, you engaged in a voyeuristic hunt of your own when your mother tasked you with trailing your father in order to catch him in an affair.

I was in a difficult situation. My mother was very unhappy, and she charged me with following my father when I was about 16. I would never do it of my own volition. It was very odd. I was acting as a surrogate for my mother, basically. She wanted to get out of this marriage, and I was the catalyst that got her out of it.

Did that experience of watchingobservingyour fathers affair at such an early age inform your interest in voyeurism?

Maybe. Its a basic tool of cinema, watching something. We watch things through a camera, follow people, use point-of-view shots, we girl-watch. Im always very interested in what are the most basic elements of cinema that make it different from other art forms, and the most stunning thing is that what you see is the same thing as the character sees. This observing is something I use quite a lot.

Another experience you had as a teen was regularly watching your father perform surgeries on patients. I imagine those images were hard to shake. When you grow up in a hospital, believe meand I used to watch my father operate, I used to hang out with the interns and the orthopedic residents summer after summer. I saw a lot of blood. I saw people die, people in terrible pain, limbs being cut off. I saw my father saw off a leg. Tremendous amount of blood. Theres a leg, take it away. My father was a carpenter almost in a sense of, hey son, this is the job. But images are powerful. War coverage drives me crazy because the images we saw out of Vietnam, you see nothing like that today. If youre dropping a bomb and killing people, or your army is over there doing horrendous things, youve got to see what theyre doing.

You dont get enough credit for a lot of things, but one of the things you really dont get enough credit for is discovering Robert De Niro, who made his first film appearance in your 1969 movie The Wedding Partywhich was shot in 63.

No question. He auditioned for The Wedding Party, this movie I made out of graduate school, and I cast him. That absolutely happened. It was the spring of 62 that I first cast Bob out of the Sarah Lawrence acting program. Bob just came in to read for one of the groomsmen, and Bill Finley was playing one of the other groomsmen in the room. Wilford [Leach], whos a great theater director and won two Tonys, looked at each other and said, This guys really good. Then he said, I want to show you something, and he went out of the room. This was over at a loft around 6th Street and Broadway, and its 6 p.m. He comes back in and is ranting and raving. Hes doing a scene from Clifford Odets Waiting for Lefty. Before, he was a funny comic, and here he was showing this incredible power in this impassioned speech. We were blown away. Needless to say, he had the part before he left the room.

Youre also credited with introducing De Niro and Scorsese. I believe youre even given a special thanks in the credits of Mean Streets for it.

Marty [Scorsese] and Bob were introduced at a party at Jay Cocksa Time film critic whos now one of Martys screenwriters. I believe thats where Bob and Scorsese met for the very first time. I took a class at NYU film school for two semesters, and I saw him there because he was already a bit of a star, and we started to hang out, especially when he was working on Woodstock. Thats how that particular group got together.

Its the 40th anniversary of Carrie, and one of the things I never knew about the film until seeing the documentary is that you shared casting with Star Wars, so you and George Lucas were looking at a lot of the same young actors for your films.

We shared an office and looked at every young person that came through. Amy Irving was almost Princess Leia, and you can see her audition online, but she ended up in Carrie. We saw every young actor in New York and L.A.

Now, Carrie has been remade a few times and none of them have worked. Do you have any control over this?

Exactly. I know Kimberly Peirce, because I used to hang out with her and she talked to me while she was making it. But I dont know. I was in the right place at the right time with the right cast, never to be done again. It was the first commercial film I had, and the first one in the studio system.

Back to Star Wars. You will forever be a part of Star Wars lore, and its probably all Peter Biskinds fault. In his book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, he wrote about how you gave some harsh criticism to George Lucas after a test screening of the first Star Wars movie.

Thats right. It wasnt really a test screening, but just for friends. I was there, Steven [Spielberg] was there. Jay Cocks and I rewrote the scrawl at the beginning of the movie, because the first one we saw, you didnt know what the hell was happening in the movie. Jay was a film critic at the time so he and I fixed it up so it made some kind of sense.

But you didnt like that cut of Star Wars, right? No! Thats completely wrong. I have a caustic, sarcastic wit, and if people ask me about something Im going to tell them the truth. We were there to tell George what we thought, and what we thought didnt work. But we were knocked out by this movie.

Steven Spielberg seemed to be the most knocked out. I read that he and George Lucas made a bet on the set of Close Encounters where they basically swapped points because each thought the others movie would do better. And Spielberg has made over $40 million from Star Wars.

Yes, thats true. Its all true. They switched points. There was no question that everybody thought it was great. There was nobody saying, This is a catastrophe. Thats ridiculous, and nobody should ever be given that impression. It was a rough cut, so wed tell him, This doesnt make sense, blah blah. We were just giving out input.

You have this line in the documentary where you say that, more than probably any other director, youve had these huge blow-ups in your career where you have to start from scratch. Why do you think this happens to you?

I think its the case with every one of us. Youve got to recover from the catastrophes. Believe metheyre not going to all be hits. You have to start over again. And a lot of times, the movie you made is very good just not received well, and you have to keep going. Blow Out was a catastrophe when it opened. It goes all the way back to Citizen Kane. And what about the famous Christmas movie that finished Capras career? Its a Wonderful Life. Catastrophe! Didnt make any money, the company [RKO] folded. For me, Bonfire may have been the toughest. I also got married, had a child, and moved north. And Get to Know Your Rabbit, having a film on the shelf that theyre not releasing for a year and re-cutting it and god knows what theyre doing with it, which is torture.

Theres a story you tell in the documentary about Sean Penn getting into a fight with Michael J. Fox on the set of Casualties of War that I hadnt heard before. And Michael J. Fox seems like the least punch-worthy person on the planet.

Sean shoved him to the ground. Just shoved him. Sean I guess felt [Michael] wasnt giving what he should be giving, and there was such tension built up in him over the month that we were there. Michael was just livid. Michael is the sweetest guy in the world, and he was absolutely livid when he got shoved to the ground. And thats the scene thats in the movie.

You also had to throw Oliver Stone off the set of Scarface.

Well, Oliver wanted to be a director and you can only have one director on the set. He was talking to the actors, so he had to leave. You cant have him talking to the actors!

Throughout your career, youve worked with two of the premier Scientologists of the world in John Travolta and Tom Cruise. I read that on your pal Spielbergs War of the Worlds, Cruise had a fully-staffed tent set up during production where theyd lecture people about the benefits of Scientology. Did you witness any of that on Mission: Impossible?

No. Definitely not. My experience with Scientologists is that theyre very honest. Theres no duplicitousness in a Scientologistthey pride themselves on being direct and honestand that, for me, makes them very easy to deal with.

Scarface, too, is a film that has only grown more and more popular with age. And in the documentary, you say that Universal asked you to give the movie a hip-hop soundtrack but you turned it down. Its pretty ironic as its since become very popular within the hip-hop community.

Nobody could have predicted how popular it would become. And thats correctthey wanted to put a hip-hop score on the movie. They could probably sell a lot of DVDs. They come back to me every 10 years and ask me to put a hip-hop score on it, but thats the advantage of having final cut. Its like when they wanted to colorize Citizen Kane. They cant do it because Orson has final cut. Believe me, if they could do it they would have. But with Scarface, its the immigrants rise to power, and many people in the hip-hop community identify with that.

What are your thoughts on the state of cinema nowadays? Its become such an international business and theres so much many at stake that everything is a tentpole. Studios see these high returns on these superhero and franchise properties, and it seems were nearing a bubble.

Thats why I watch the Turner channel a lot. Obviously at my age, there wasnt going to be any way I was going to be interested in comic book heroes or seeing endless sequels, although I thought that the last Star Wars was quite good. They basically just remade the first Star Wars. [J.J.] is a very skilled director. It was fine. But you think of the time and money devoted to that, and you think, Why?! Its repackaging old ideas.

I read your next film is called Lights Out. Whats that about?

Im working on this thing with a blind Chinese girl thats sort of a combination of Mission: Impossible and Wait Until Dark. Shes in her twenties, and like Wait Until Dark, all these people are coming after her because theres something that they want in her house.

Wow.

Wow indeed.
This is part of our weekly series, Lost Masterpieces, about the greatest buildings and works of art that were destroyed or never completed.

As brutalist building after brutalist building is gleefully torn down, possibly the only survivors of the cull will be by the man seen as brutalisms founderLe Corbusier.

Charles-Edouard Jeannet, better known as Le Corbusier, was one of the 20th centurys more formidable architects. The Villa Savoye, High Court of Chandigarh, Unite dHabitation, Notre Dame du Haut, and others still remain iconic. But his greatest (in terms of influence, be it good or bad) legacy lies in urban planning, in both public housing and imagining a car-filled city.

His urban planning ideas were to quite simply, as William JR Curtis notes in Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms, save the industrial city from disaster.

And what did this savior have in mind for Paris in the early 1920s? Total destruction of several square miles on the Right Bank including one of Pariss most popular neighborhoodsthe Marais. And in its place, 18 glass towers.

The then-disease-plagued Marais (which was also historically its Jewish quarter) would be replaced by a gridded phalanx of 18 cruciform office towers over several square miles. The towers would sit in a multi-tiered park. One level was an immense amount of green space. Another level was for transportation. An airport was even included in the designs. Low-rise residential and government buildings appear in the northern corners and along the river.

Where before the streets of Paris were choking on pollution and disease, Corbusiers design created an ordered urban landscape that separated out the different facets of life and gave them space and order.

The Plan Voisin grew out of Le Corbusier's ideas about the Ville Contemporaine, the modern city, which he had made public in 1922. It represented Corbusier's dream of a new age industrial metropolis. Designed for three million people, his planned city ordered nearly the entirety of human lifework, home, transit, and even how its citizens should be occupied in their down-time. It sought to utilize the high-rise tower to create density but maintained large green spaces for light and nature.

When Le Corbusier unveiled the Plan Voisin pour Paris in 1925, at the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs two large dioramas of the Plan Voisin and the Ville Contemporaine faced each other. The theoretical city (Contemporaine) had been realized in an actual one (Plan Voisin).

I think that the Plan Voisin is one of the most misunderstood projects in history, Nicholas Fox Weber, author of the seminal biography Le Corbusier: A Life tells me over the phone. Corbusier gets a bum rap, and people like to describe him as the man who was willing to destroy Paris, or to raze all of Paris, or take down everything that was in the Marais. Instead [says Weber,] we should keep in mind that this was a hypothetical and should be treated as such.

The visitors to the Expositions des Arts Decoratifs where it was exhibited were impressed, architectural historian Jean-Louis Cohen wrote in an email to me. Some of them even commissioned buildings from Le Corbusier. In fact, says Cohen, there were many articles in the press, underlining the American aspect of the plan, admiring its ambition, and seeing in it the ineluctable destiny of Paris.

As one can see from the images of the plan, it called for complete destruction of what is now the popular neighborhood of the Marais. Its narrow twisting streets, today considered one of its main attractions, were dirty and overcrowded in the early 20th century.

Roughly half a century before, another man with outsized ambition planned to tear down large swathes of ParisBaron Haussmannand succeeded.

From 1853 to 1871 he tore down about 2,000 structures and built 85 miles of roads that cut directly across Paris.

Haussmanns was a career that let no crisis go to waste. And from an urban planning perspective, Paris was in crisis in the 19th century. It was filthy, its layout made quashing the frequent rebellions difficult and was seen as impeding the new industrial era.

It was ill-equipped for its rapid population growth (roughly half a million in 1800 to 1.5 million by 1860). Haussmann sought to cure these ills. In doing so, he also bequeathed chunks of Paris an architectural homogeneity with his masculine Second Empire apartment buildings topped by mansard roofs.

Le Corbusier, too, saw a Paris beset by ills that could be solved by modern urban planning. He believed, writes Curtis, that urban planning was a pseudoscience that might guide the destiny of society.

Post-World War I, there was a housing shortage in the metro region of Paris and automobile traffic in the city was becoming a major problem. Like Haussmann, Le Corbusier believed he could not only radically alter the city for residents, but simultaneously make it a city primed to succeed economically in a new era.

The idea of realizing it in the heart of Paris is no Utopian flight of fancy, Le Corbusier declared. There are cold figures to substantiate this thesis. The enormous increase of land-values that must result would yield a profit to the state running into [billions] of francs.

Whether or not he actually believed his Plan Voisin would ever be builtCohen told me he didnt think Corbusier thought that the powers in place in the 1920s had the courage or the resources to implement his planit was still Corbusiers vision for what urban life in one of the worlds capitals should and would look like.

In his office towers, workers would toil away not in the persistent dimness of joyless streets, but in the fullness of daylight and an abundance of fresh air.

At night the passage of cars along the autostrada traces luminous tracks that are like the tails of meteors flashing across the summer heavens.

He asked viewers to imagine themselves in this city.

You are under the shade of trees, vast lawns spread all round you. The air is clear and pure; there is hardly any noise, he writes. What, you cannot see where the buildings are? Look through the charmingly diapered arabesques of branches out into the sky towards those widely spaced crystal towers which soar higher than any pinnacle on earth. These translucent prisms that seem to float in the air without anchorage to the groundflashing in summer sunshine, softly gleaming under grey winter skies, magically glittering at nightfallare huge blocks of offices.

Besides the dreamy futurism, it is hard not to get chills for an entirely different reason. There is a whiff of authoritarianism about the plan.

Le Corbusier also declared that the street as we know it will cease to exist and the Paris of tomorrow could be magnificently equal to the march of events that is day by day bringing us ever nearer to the dawn of a new social contract.

This brings us to perhaps the most controversial issue with Corbusierhis political views. He was a fan of the surgeon Alexis Carrel and had read and underlined his book Man, the Unknown, which has a section on how part of the French people (mentally ill, diseased, and "defective") should be gassed.

He was naive or even idiotic about politics, Fox Weber says. At various times in his life he would have been willing to work with Lenin, Mussolini, Petain, Roosevelt (although he thought Rockefeller was the president of the United States), de Gaulle. And he ended up working with Nehru. But he would have worked with any world leader who wanted him to build.

Fox Weber sees Le Corbusiers authoritarian streak coming not because he was in love with power but because he believed that his ideas would give a maximum number of people a better quality of life. He wanted everybody to be able to look at the sky and at vast expanses. Not to be face to face with brick walls.

And as for his designs seeming a little too much like a science-fiction dystopian cityscape?

All major urban projects have been expressions of power, even more careful and respectful ones than Le Corbusiers, Cohen explained. Building an entire new city or reshaping completely the center of a capital would have entailed a determined act of power. In the post-WWII times, democratic governments implemented such ambitious schemes without necessarily being dictatorial.

The plan would never come to fruition.

In fact, after the praise it earned at the exhibition, its not clear it was even considered at all. Urban projects on this scale were not for Paris at this time.

The heart of Paris would by and large remain untouched (with the exception of the Centre Georges Pompidou). The work of modern architects and new age urban planning would find homes in La Defense, the suburbs, or other French cities.

Even Le Corbusiers submission for the defunct Gare DOrsay (now the Musee DOrsay) was, luckily, unwelcome.

But the Plan Voisin, with its sweeping vision for a new kind of city living, is still a masterpiece of urban planning by one of the 20th centurys greatest architectural minds.

In many ways, whether or not Le Corbusier believed his Plan Voisin would ever be implemented is irrelevant. In todays era of disdain or outright animosity towards brutalism, one glimpse of the Plan Voisin only confirms for many what they already believe20th century modern architects and their attempts to recraft the urban landscape should be consigned to history.
Who is this huckster in politics? asks an angry abolitionist upon Abraham Lincolns nomination for president.Who is the country court advocate?

A man of a different political stripe than that abolitionist, while campaigning against Lincoln in 1860, called him infinitely worse than a Yankee Abolitionist.

Thus did Abraham Lincoln inspire not merely contradictory opinions in men but violently contradictory opinions. Sometimes he inspired different opinions in the same person. According to his law partner, William Herndon, Lincoln was ambitious, secretive, and somewhat selfish  while also full of honesty, integrity, sincerity; open, fair, and candid when speaking or acting.

He seemed paradoxical, writes Sidney Blumenthal in A Self-Made Man, but was of a piece.

Much of what is said about Lincoln in the first of a proposed three-volume set has been presented before; how can that not be true in a book about the most written about human being who ever lived? Seldom, though, has the information been placed in a more illuminating context.

Slavery, for instance. One finds in every Lincoln biography his hatred of slavery; Ive read in at least four biographies of his resentment and humiliation when his father rented him out (at a price of ten to thirty-one cents a day) to split rails, work on farms, and perform whatever other manual tasks someone wanted done for a dime an hour. I did not know of the degree to which the young Lincoln seethed under such a yoke. I used to be a slave, he announced at a campaign event.

His father collected his sons wages, a practice young Lincoln hated. He felt degraded, imprisoned in a world of neglect, fecklessness, and ignorance. It was at the root of his fierce desire to rise. It was also at the core of his belief that If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

Mary Todd benefits greatly from the depth of Blumenthals scholarship and the breadth of his vision. Blumenthal leaves little doubt that he is on the side of the woman often portrayed as desperately clinging to her husbands arm. The daughter of a business partner of Henry Clay, the senator and secretary of state whom Lincoln greatly admired, was a rare woman of the Southern upper class who loved politics  who did not hesitate to offer her strong opinions at a time when women were supposed to remain silent and deferential on the subject.

Though he did not share her fondness for societyHow can you attach such great importance to matters so trivial? he once asked her with a smile. Lincoln needed a wife whose preternatural ambition  would spur him to reach for the highest rewards in politics. There would be only one woman he would ever meet like that.

But life as Lincolns wife bore many burdens. Hendon felt that The world does not know what she bore, and the history of the bearing  This domestic hell of Lincolns life is not all on one side. Marys half-sister, Emilie Helm, thought Oh, how she did love this man!

Simply, there would have been no Lincoln without Mary, and he knew it. He remained smitten and in wonder that she had selected a poor nobody.

Blumenthals greatest contribution is, as the books subtitle indicates, putting Lincoln the politician in bas-relief. Once again, much of this information has been covered in the best Lincoln biographies of recent decades, but Blumenthal provides greater perspective and emphasis on perhaps the preeminent politician in American history.

Modern readers may accept the concept of Lincolns political mastery easier than previous generations, but the accumulated effect of nearly a century of Lincoln biographiesIm thinking of the famous books by Carl Sandburg and James G. Randall, the leading Lincoln scholar from the mid-20s to the 50sis hard to break through. Nearly one hundred years after Lincolns death, he was still being viewed (and for this we may also blame movies starring Walter Huston and Henry Fonda) as a folksy backwoods savant, a philosopher by nature, and a somewhat reluctant politician.

But in fact, Lincoln was, as his assistant secretary of war Charles Dana put it, a supreme politician. He understood politics because he understood human nature. The Great Emancipator did not hold himself above the political give-and-take or dismiss the deal making, or log rolling, as it was called, as repugnant to his higher calling. He did not see politics as the enemy of his principles or as an unpleasant process that might pollute them  He never believed politics corrupted him. Lincoln completely embraced party politics  His idea of politics was not separate from his idea of democracy 

He was a dyed-in-the wool Whig, and his politics, as he put it, were short and sweet, like the old womans dance. I am in favor of a national bank.Thank you, Alexander HamiltonI am in favor of the internal improvement system and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. So we have a pretty good idea of where he would have stood on the issue of funding for the infrastructure as, in Blumenthals words, he would launch his political career on the issue, remaining an unwavering advocate through the creation of the transcontinental railroad.

And he could be ruthless in his support of those policies. Blumenthal calls David Herbert Donald the greatest Lincoln biographer of the late twentieth century, but strongly disagrees with Donalds assertion in Lincoln that Lincolns basic trait of character was his essential passivity.

Well, Lincoln was so passive that he leaked [information] to favored reporters, played newspaper editors against each other, and even offered the post of minister to France to His Satanic Majesty, James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald, a vicious critic, to help win his support for reelection. He went so far as to write articles favorable to himself and his policies for respected publications such as the Atlantic Monthly under the bylines of journalist friends.

The man who would later be called Father Abraham was likely the author  of letters in rustic dialectic in the [Sangamo] Journal under the byline Johnny Blubberhead  maligning a host of Democrats.

He wasnt above provoking a political rival, James Shields, into challenging him to a duel, though he never lost his wit. When asked about the choice of weapons, he replied, How about cow dung at five paces? Yielding to the advice of a congressman who was Mary Todds cousin, the two men agreed to submit their differences to a disinterested panel; Shields withdrew his challenge and Lincoln apologized. More than a decade later, Lincoln approved Shieldss position as a brigadier general in the Union army.

There seems to be some reluctance among academic historians to accept A Self-Made Man for the instant classic it clearly is.

Some of the sniping has to do with the fact that Lincoln himself disappears from the narrative for pages at a time. Its true that Blumenthal devotes large chunks of text to, say, the influence of Mormonism on society and politics when Lincoln was a young man. The Latter Day Saints dont come off well; the ideals of Joseph Smith (who once referred to God as my right-hand man) were overlaid with predatory self-aggrandizing enterprisesa unique mixture of collectivism and cronyism. The Mormons in Lincolns time were, among other crimes, accused of cattle rustling, fraudulent land deals, and counterfeiting.

The conflicts leading to the expulsions of Mormons from one state after another were not driven by persecution, as their chieftains claimed, but by their leaders political wire-working. Lincoln thought they were an autocracy in the center of the republic.

I do not recall reading about the Mormons and their disruptive influence in previous volumes on Lincoln, and I appreciate the time Blumenthal took to fill in this background.

More of the sniping, I think, has to do with Blumenthals being a popular historian in an era when writing an unpopular history is often seen as a badge of credibility. (The back cover endorsements from Lincoln scholars Harold Holzer and James McPherson should alone dispel the notion that Blumenthal is unqualified for this task.)

Some of the criticism no doubt derives from time he spent at the Washington Post and the New Yorker rather than Princeton or Harvard. And lets face it, in a time of unparalleled partisanship, there is much resentment over his political leanings in general. He was a senior advisor during Bill Clintons administration, and has been particularly scrutinized for his association with the Clintons, He wrote The Clinton Wars (2004), and is the author of The Strange Death of Republican America: Chronicles of a Collapsing Party (2008). And yes, he is the Sidney Blumenthal whose name surfaced in Hillary Clintons emails when she was secretary of state.

Well, every historian has some cross to bear. In a particularly snotty review in the New York Times, Steven Hahn sniffed Another book about Abraham Lincoln? And this is the first of a multivolumed biography! The shelves groan with LIncoln studies  When Hahn comes down to a specific complaint, its that a longtime scholar of Lincoln or the nineteenth century he [Blumenthal] is not. (Hahn, whose upcoming book is A Nation Without Borders: the United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910, presumably is such an expert.)

Hahn concedes that Blumenthal shows a nice grasp of the politics of the period, but, not content with nit-picking and condescension, he casts a dim light on Blumenthals next volume, that might serve as a vital hub around which new perspectives on the 19th century could be devised. This is possible  But I have my doubts. This might be called praising with faint damns.

The last thirty or so years have been the golden age of Lincoln scholarship, but the best of these booksLincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills (1992), Doris Kearns Goodwins Team of Rivals (2005), and James McPhersons Tried by War: Lincoln as Commander in Chief (2009)have each focused on a particular area of Lincolns presidency. Blumenthal, in his first volume, seems to be going for the whole Lincoln from the ground up, and he writes with a boldness as if no one has written on Lincoln before.

Make no mistake, A Self-Made Man is to Lincoln what Robert Caros The Years of Lyndon Johnson is to LBJ. Or at least it has started out that way, and Blumenthals subject is far greater.
Doing nothing is a choice.

That was President Obamas message to the country in the wake of the deadliest mass shooting ever on American soil.

The president spoke for just over five minutes, and said the FBI is appropriately investigating this as an act of terrorism. He noted that while we have much to learn about the killers motives and connections, this shooting isnt an anomaly.

The president had already given 19 statements like this over the course of his two terms in office, by CNNs countincluding after the slaughter of schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut, after the mass killing of churchgoers at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and after the murders of moviegoers in Aurora, Colorado.

His comments sounded all too familiar, even to his own ears. Because as Obama spoke he wasnt emotional or angry, as after previous mass shootings. Instead, he just seemed exhausted.

The president said the shooter apparently had an assault rifle and a handgun.

This massacre is, therefore, a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school or in a house of worship, or in a movie theater, or in a nightclub, he said. And we have to decide if thats the kind of country we want to be. And to actively do nothing is a decision as well.

The president also noted that the nightclub where the shooting happened is deeply important to Central Floridas LGBT community.

The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends, to dance and to sing, and to live. The place they were attacked is more than a nightclub, he said. It is a place of solidarity and empowerment, where people come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds, and to advocate for their civil rights.

He continued, So this is a sobering reminder that attacks on any American, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation is an attack on all of us and on the fundamental values of equality and dignity that define us as a country.

Obama ordered flags at the White House to be lowered to half-mast. His calls for stricter gun laws are unlikely to be heeded; previous mass shootings have done little to change the fact that the overwhelming majority of congressional Republicans oppose legislation that makes it harder to buy guns.

Donald Trump, of course, also had a take and an inability to resist a moment to attack Obamanational tragedy be damned.

Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? he tweeted during the presidents speech. If he doesnt he should immediately resign in disgrace!

Trump fan Newt Gingrich chimed in with his own tweet: President Obamas statement on Orlando is as false as his statement on Benghazi. Murderer pledged allegiance to ISIS, yelled Allahu Akbar.

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There was a massacre at a LGBT nightclub in Orlando on Sunday. But you might not have known that, if you read some of the initial accounts by outlets like The New York Times. The word gay wasnt mentioned in headlines at firsta meaningful early signal of a wider denial that bloomed Sunday in the media, and on the part of commentators, as the story of Omar Mateens dreadful massacre continued to unfold.

As it does, a man in Los Angeles has been arrested, allegedly on his way to the citys Pride parade in West Hollywood, armed with assault rifles and explosive devices.

Whether LGBTs are coming under sustained, or any kind of co-ordinated attack during Pride month is unknown. There has been no specific threat received in New York, James P. ONeill of the NYPD told CBS News.

What needs to be repeated over and over again, and interrogated, is that the largest mass shooting in American history was an attack on gay people, LGBT peoplepoliticians and lawmakers must say that, confront that, call it by its terrible, rightful name.

On social media, there is not just grief but also anger on the part of LGBT people, not just at the terrible loss of life, but of the erasure of LGBT people from a narrative that is centered on them, that has been visited upon LGBTs during Pride month. Those marchesin recent times, customized as celebrationwill become far more moving and indelibly political, and rightly so.

Only President Obama, in his moving and concise remarks at the White House, recognized this for what LGBTs feel in the marrow of their bonesthat this was an attack on them, as well as an act of terror.

On television this morning, there has been no one calling Mateens massacre out as a dreadful act of violence against LGBT people. It may be an act of terror as we keep hearingand Mateen radicalized by ISIS, leading to his call to 911, stating his allegiance to ISIS as he carried out his attack.

But who was targeted exactlyand why? Why the resistance to saying it? If it was an act of terror, it was also a hate crime.

It is left to the moving testimonies of those affected to underscore who was attackedof Pulse club-goer Shawn Royston, crying in a CBS News phone interview as he wondered why people hate so much that they would go to a club to kill people; and to the mother who is tearfully trying to locate her son, who was in the club. He had, she said proudly, set up a Gay-Straight Alliance at his high school.

Pulse was a club where LGBT people went to feel comfortable and have a good time; LGBT clubs exist because gay people need places to congregate because they were not welcome or comfortable elsewhere. They should be a safe space, a retreat, breathing space, refuge, dance paradise, fun housenot somewhere to be hurt or murdered.

This was a Latino LGBT night; there is, right now, a complete lack of engagement on the part of the media about any of this, and about the horror visited on the LGBT community. LGBT people have been killed in a place where they should feel safest, and the mediastarting with The New York Times, which later added the gay qualifier to its headlineis rendering them invisible.

Lets say it plainly: This was a mass slaying aimed at LGBT people. Their assassin was a man disgusted by the sight of two men kissing, his father told NBC News. This was a homophobic attack.

If politicians and Pope Francis are horrified by the mass shooting, if they condemn it as strongly as they do, they cannot just compartmentalize the fact it was targeted at LGBT people. So far, all their august statements on the attack have not mentioned that it was an attack on an LGBT club and its patrons.

ABC Newss George Stephanopoulos asked a reporter if Pulse was well-known as a gay club, as if there might be some mystery to this, some strange affix it had been endowed with. The mainstream media seems to be in fearful, nervous retreat from this.

They are not alone. Dont expect certain members of the GOP, and others with prejudice and bigotry running in their bloodstream, to restate this was an attack on LGBT people, because how could they when their own platform and policies propagate exactly the kind of anti-gay hatred that seems to have led Mateen to do what he did.

From Donald Trump, via Twitter, this morning: Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?

We pray for those brutally attacked in Orlando. While we must learn more about the attacker, the victims & families will not be forgotten, tweeted Paul Ryan.

But of course, no mention of LGBT people, or that this was a gay club. Both Trump and Ryan have a pitifully lacking notion of what was attacked Sunday morning, and why those LGBT people were attacked.

The Pulse massacre may be the most extreme manifestation of homophobia, but violence is all too familiar to LGBT people, and its rooted in the legitimacy that anti-gay legislation gives it.

On CBS News and elsewhere, ISISs murderous homophobia is being emphasized as a possible root cause of Omar Mateens actions, and how ISIS spread their message via social mediathe images of ISIS soldiers throwing gays to their deaths, and the like.

Who knows if Omar Mateen saw those images? Perhaps, perhaps not. What we know from his father is that his disgust came from seeing two men kiss on a street, right here in America. And Mateens homophobic disgust, often enacted in law and in despicable words, is shared by the Religious Right and GOP politicians.

Over the next hours and days, as LGBT people and homophobia may continue to be made surreally incidental to their own story, Omar Mateen will also likely be made 'the other'--all will become a marshy soup of 'radicalization,' ISIS operatives,' and briefings by law enforcement sources.

But Omar Mateens anti-gay hatred wasnt beamed in from Syria. It birthed and grew right here.

If both Trump and Ryan, and their colleagues, really want to ensure the victims & families will not be forgotten, they would do something to ensure their party stopped attacking LGBT people, they would actively fight for equality.

Please, no more thoughts and prayers, unless they come with a vocal recognition of this as an attack against LGBT people in an LGBT bar.

Please, no more talk of the Pulse as a nightclub without the word gay or LGBT attached to it.

Please, no more talk on this being an attack on all of us unless LGBT people are accorded the same rights as everyone else.

Please Marco Rubio, no more of your pieties about how dreadful an attack this is when you, like ISIS and the Pulse attacker, share a base desire against LGBT people, who see us as lesser than. You have spoken powerfully about why we do not deserve equality. You believe in discriminating against us. In future, when talking about the massacre, mention us by name, renounce your previous poisonous words against usor just shut up. Your hypocrisy is sickening.

First, this was an attack on LGBT people, and second, the GOP has done everything in its power to make LGBT people, the other, not deserving of the same civil rights as straight Americans.

Certain GOP lawmakers and politicians, responsible for promoting discrimination and discriminatory legislation against LGBT people should be questioned and shamed too in every post-massacre interviewfor it is their words and actions which ultimately give official legitimacy to the violent, bloody acts of killers like Omar Mateen.

We already hear the familiar repetition that Mateen was a lone wolf. He was in one sensein that he killed 49 people and injured 53 others (at the time of writing) with a gun; but he is alsoand this is far scarier, and a far bigger challenge for politicians and out culture to confrontfar from a lone wolf in the disgust and prejudice he felt toward LGBT people.

The entire GOP platform is predicated on ensuring that LGBT people remain lesser in the eyes of the law.

Homophobia is not isolated. Homophobia thrums through our entire culture. Politicians use it to win votes, schoolkids practice it against each other, employers use it against employees. Homophobia is not isolated to the lone wolf, it thrives in the pack, and it thrives in the playbook of craven politicians.

Today, all of those politicians should feel shame, guilt, and complicity. They must be made to realize, and held to account, that their words and deeds cannot be isolated from Omar Mateens actions.

Instead of that necessary recognition, LGBT people will be braced instead to somehow be blamed for this. The religious fruitcakes and right-wing family groups and politicians will find a way.

We keep hearing of best practices, of ISIS preying on troubled souls, in willful denial that Omar Mateen didnt have to alight on the wilder shores of radical Islamist social media for encouragement for his vile deeds.

The painful truth, the truth to be confronted and repeated, is that his homophobia was born in America, and fostered in America.

If politicians profess horror at Mateens actions, the most effective thing they could do would be to ensure that their children know there is nothing strange about two men kissing; that there is everything fine about loving whomever you choose to love; to strike down every anti-gay law on the statute books; to legislate for total equality; to fight homophobia and raise our young people to be accepting of all; and to never give another religious freedom law even two minutes of reading time.

There were so many straight voices commenting on television on Sunday morning, asking their usual agonized questions of what we can do, and beseeching we all come together, of gun laws, and of what the FBI will do, and the police will do, and how to stop people becoming radicalized.

All of this obscures the more painful, homegrown truth that Omar Mateens murderous homophobia seems to have been fed and watered in America.

There are no gay voices thus far on television. There is no one expressing the pain and shock that this should happen in this month of Pride festivals, the time of year dedicated to LGBT people expressing their strength and demand for equality openly.

The politicians and police huddled at microphones are silent on the fact that this was an attack on LGBTs. Nothing.

In Orlando, the ban on gay men donating blood remains in placedespite earlier reports to the contrarywhich is particularly shaming on a day their LGBT friends, loved ones, and peers injured at Pulse urgently need it.

There are no voices yet expressing the pain of the LGBT people and LGBT people of color affected by this.

There is talk of the pain of families, which is immense and awful. How heartening it would be if this definition of family was expanded to the LGBT family that was attacked Sunday morning, of why clubs like Pulse are so vital for people who may have been rejected by families, or who have found alternative families of friends who gather to let loose and connect at venues like Pulse.

This will, as it always is with tragedies that affect us and the political, be left to LGBT people to state bluntly, to own, to process, to support one another, and toas we have done throughout historyfight to assert our right to live equally. And to be heard, and to be represented.

Pride may be a celebration, as it is now relentlessly marketed as, but this year, after the appalling mass murder in Orlando, let it also be a statement of strength, and resistance. We thought we were past this. We are not.

The only good that can come out of the Orlando massacre is that it may shine a light on just how harmful and poisonously corrosive homophobia is, and how necessary, indeed urgent, equality and full social acceptance is.

For that, the straight media and straight body politic needs to acknowledge this as an LGBT tragedy, and one made right here in America.

For LGBTs, dont do as Omar Mateen and his demented ilk would have us do. Dont hide. Dont be scared. Dont retreat. Donate blood. Go to your Pride marches. Kiss your partners, kiss your friends, kiss strangers. Kiss them joyfully, heartily, kiss them in the sunshine, hold them tight in public, in the light. Declare yourselves. With Pride.

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Donate to Equality Floridas GoFundMe fund to support the victims of the Pulse nightclub massacre and their families.
Omar Mateen, of Port Saint Lucie, Florida, came to the attention of federal authorities twice prior to being identified as the gunman in the Orlando gay nightclub mass shooting, a senior law-enforcement source told The Daily Beast.

Mateen killed 49 people and shot more than 100 in total at the Pulse dance club early Sunday morning, in the deadliest mass shooting in American history.

The senior law-enforcement source reports Mateen became a person of interest in 2013 and again in 2014. The Federal Bureau of Investigation at one point opened an investigation into Mateen, but subsequently closed the case when it produced nothing that appeared to warrant further investigation.

Hes a known quantity, the source said. Hes been on the radar before.

The senior law-enforcement source told The Daily Beast that Mateen was born in New York and was married for a time to a woman from New Jersey.

That woman told The Washington Post that he repeatedly abused her during their marriage, which lasted from April 2009 to July 2011.

He was not a stable person, the ex-wife said. He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasnt finished or something like that.

Mateens parents are from Afghanistan but he was not very religious, she said, adding that he seemed like a normal human being.

Mateens father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News that the sight of two men in Miami kissing angered his son.We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident, the father added. We werent aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country.The attack, he said, has nothing to do with religion.But the father may not be the most credible of sources. Hes a supporter of the Afghan Taliban, according to The Washington Post.

Mir Seddique Mateen appears to reside in Florida, but is said to be presently running for office in Afghanistan.

Florida incorporation papers indicate that a Seddique Mateen heads a non-profit organization, The Durand Jirga, Inc. The non-profit was formed in 2010 and is registered at the Port St. Lucie, Florida address where both the father and Omar Mateen appear to reside.

An online posting by the father insists that what is now the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan should be returned to Afghanistan.

Long live Afghanistan, a posting on Seddique Mateens Facebook page declares. To Pakistan death, death, death.

Two law-enforcement officials told The Daily Beast that immediately before starting his rampage, Mateen called 911 and pledged his allegiance to the self-proclaimed Islamic State. (A similar pledge was made online by the San Bernardino terrorists before they shot and killed 14 people last year.)

The first law-enforcement source told The Daily Beast there is no immediate indication that Mateen had any direct connection to ISIS. But ISIS recently called on Muslims across the world to attack targets in the West during the holy month of Ramadan, which began last week.

The message came in an audio recording from spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, released in May. Muslims around the world fast during Ramadan in honor of the first revelation from God to Muhammad. The terrorist group believes it to be a particularly opportune time for attacks.

Ramadan, the month of conquest and jihad. Get prepared, be ready... to make it a month of calamity everywhere for the non-believers... especially for the fighters and supporters of the caliphate in Europe and America, Adnani said.

The Amaq Agency, an ISIS media affiliate, later praised the attack and took credit for it. Yet there is no currently established link between Mateen and the terrorist outfit.

Mateen had a valid firearms license in Florida and worked as a security guard at a facility for juvenile deliquents.

Among the key questions still unanswered was whether the private security company where Mateen worked was aware of any propensity to violence and what kinds of background checks had been performed on him. Officials said Mateen had a gun license by virtue of his work as a security officer and that he legally purchased the weapons used in the attack.

Mateen had been employed since 2007 as a security guard with G4S, a large multinational security company that provides services to more than two-dozen juvenile-detention facilities in Florida.

Mateens ex-wife told The Washington Post that he worked at a juvenile-detention center near their home in Fort Pierce.

A spokesperson at the St. Lucie Regional Juvenile Detention Center, just outside Fort Pierce, declined to provide The Daily Beast with any information about Mateen or to confirm whether he worked at the facility. The spokesman directed all calls to the State of Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.

A spokeswoman there directed all queries to G4S, which released the following statement about Mateen: "We are deeply shocked by this tragic event. We can confirm that Omar Mateen had been employed by G4S since September 10th, 2007. Mateen was off-duty at the time of the incident. He was employed at a gated retirement community in South Florida. Mateen underwent company screening and background checks when he was recruited in 2007 and the check revealed nothing of concern. His screening was repeated in 2013 with no findings. "We are cooperating fully with all law enforcement authorities, including the FBI, as they conduct their investigations. In 2013, we learned that Mateen had been questioned by the FBI but that the inquiries were subsequently closed. We were not made aware of any alleged connections between Mateen and terrorist activities, and were unaware of any further FBI investigations. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the victims of this unspeakable tragedy, and their friends and families."

Daniel Gilroy, who worked with Mateen at the facility, told Florida Today that he was unhinged and unstable. He talked of killing people." Gilroy added that he complained to G4S about Mateens odd, often bigoted, behaviorto no avail. Eventually, Mateen began stalking Gilroy, leaving him 30 or more text and phone messages per day. Gilroy eventually quit.

G4S has come under scrutiny in Florida in the past few years after some of its guards were found to be abusing children in facilities where the company provides security.

At the Palmetto Youth Academy in Manatee County, G4S employee Leroy Bostic Jr. was arrested in 2014 on charges of sexually abusing two teenage boys.

At a facility in Tampa, G4S employee Viviana Hernandez-Trejo was investigated for engaging in sex acts with a boy under her care.

An investigation in 2015 by Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers found records documenting multiple assaults at youth-detention facilities G4S managed in Florida, both against the companys employees as well as minors under its charge. G4S provides security for about 30 juvenile-detention centers in the state of Florida, according to the report.

Im amazed at the amount of violence that goes on over there, both against staff and other inmates, Assistant State Attorney Vicki Nichols, Martin Countys juvenile prosecutor, told the newspaper, referring to a girls facility run by G4S that had a history of violent altercations among staff and children.

Around 2 a.m. Sunday, Mateen, armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle and a handgun, entered the Pulse club and began shooting, officials said. After most of the 320 people there escaped, Mateen took hostages from a group that was hiding in a bathroom. Shortly before 6 a.m., a SWAT unit breached the club doors and engaged Mateen in whats being called a protracted gun battle. Mateen was killed.

The deadliest single-person mass murder in American history before Orlando occured in Bath, Michigan, in 1927, when a man bombed a school, killing 44 people.

with additional reporting by Nancy A. Youssef

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Like nearly every iconic national symbol these days, the phrase American Exceptionalism has become a political pawn in the endless and distracting bickering between Democrats and Republicans. For much of Barack Obamas tenure in office, conservatives have groused that the 44th American president didnt understand the famous phrase, and was insufficiently proud of the United States. In foreign countries, this critique tended to leave people scratching their heads. Of course America is exceptional, they said, and the ascension to the presidency of a child born to a white mother from Kansas and a black exchange student from Kenya is itself evidence of that truism.

Is there any validity to the conservatives broader complaint that modern American progressives are too quick to blame the United States for the worlds problems and too focused on what is wrong with the country? Perhaps, but pointing out Americas shortcomings is not unpatrioticin fact, its quite the opposite, if it leads to improving our country.

Yes, America is exceptional. Since our founding in 1776, we have built our country on the unique principles of equality, self-government, and social mobility. While those principles might not strike a twenty-first century American as noteworthy, they certainly were 250 years ago.

They are the basis for the American Ideathat unique set of principles that drove our founding as a nation. Until this country came along, the idea that you could change your station in life was barely a consideration. If you were born the son of a farmer, you became a farmer. If you were lucky enough to be born into a family with wealth and power, you inherited that wealth and power. In general, we have strived as a nation to build on these ideals. While it hasnt always been a straight line, over the last two-and-half centuries, weve made progress in improving the lives of Americans by staying true to our principles. Like the unfinished pyramid on our dollar bill, America, as a nation, is constantly striving to improve herself, evolving to meet each new challenge as it arises. And America has been a force for good in the world.

No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy, Winston Churchill wrote after World War II ended.1 U.S. history is filled with examples of our nation and its people rising to meet great challenges. Whether facing off against global fascism and mass genocide during World War II, rebuilding Europe with the Marshall Plan, standing up to the expansion of Communism and the suppression of almost two billion people during the Cold War, or brokering the peace accord between Egypt and Israel, when the alarm bells rang, Americans answered the call. We were revered in the world. Americans could go almost anywhere and be welcomeda tacit admission of the status our country held around the globe.

Today, however, we stand at an inflection point in our history. The course we choose will determine whether the twenty-first century is another era of American leadership or if our preeminence comes to an end, as it has for other dominant world powers throughout history, leaving our descendants the depressing task of writing the epitaph of a once great nation.

Our political dysfunction is not only affecting our status in the world, but it is also hindering our ability to live up to our national ideals. One hundred and eighty-five years after Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about Americas great experiment in democracy, our system of self-government is being compromised by a campaign finance system that allows special interests to buy politicians and elections. The parties have become a duopoly and are behaving like onedramatically limiting competition and, by extension, limiting accountability. Social mobility, once a source of national pride, is in jeopardy as a result of these troubling changes.

My stump speech on the 2014 campaign trail echoed this theme. It started with a simple message:

We all know our system of government is broken. We are sending the worst of both parties to Washingtonbitter partisans who care more about pleasing the extremists and special interests in their own party than they do moving our country forward.

As our elected leaders draw childish lines in the sand and refuse to cooperate, inaction has replaced leadership in solving our most pressing issues. Neglect is the result. Without political courage and meaningful action, our problems have grown to almost unmanageable proportions. . . . The sum of our public debt and entitlement deficit is now almost half a million dollars for every American family. And while were spending more and more money as a country, its harder than ever for the average American to get ahead.

Im concerned if we dont start addressing these issues, our standard of living, our status in the world, and the very existence of the middle class in America is at risk.

The cynicism surrounding politics makes it easy to dismiss any candidates stump speech. But the facts supporting those assertions are bracing.

Most voters are aware that our public debt is a huge problem. As a percentage of our nations gross national product its approaching the levels we faced during the height of World War II.

Think about that: During World War II, the United States mobilized over sixteen million soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. We were fighting in Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific. Twenty-four million more Americans marched into defense plants to power the war effort. Three million cars were manufactured in this country in 1941. For the entire duration of the war only 139 private automobiles were made. Instead, Americans built hundreds of thousands of the tanks, planes, ships, rifles, and artillery pieces that won the war. By the time of Japans 1945 surrender, half the worlds industrial production was taking place in the United States.

The result of that massive investment in victory was a national debt exceeding annual gross domestic product. Nonetheless, over the next twenty-five years we dramatically reduced that ratio while simultaneously providing medical care to 600,000 wounded soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, and enacting a GI Bill that sent millions of veterans to college and vocational schools or put them in their own homes. We did all this while rebuilding Europe, constructing an interstate highway system, and sending a manned spacecraft to the moon.

In contrast, since the turn of century weve engaged in a war of choice in Iraqa war that neither established stability for Iraqis nor has yet been paid for by Americans. Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have now lasted longer than the Vietnam War or the American Revolution, have overwhelmed the Veterans Administrations healthcare system and led to the rise of ISIS. We have ignored our impending retirement and health-care crises while social mobility in America has come to a grinding halt. In America today, if youre born in the bottom 20 percent of the economy, the overwhelming likelihood is that youll die there, too.
For someone who craved public notoriety, the Crown Jewels seemed an irresistible temptation. That man, inevitably, was Colonel Thomas Blood.

In mid-April 1671, Blood arrived at the Tower ostensibly to view the Crown Jewels like any other innocent tourist up from the country, curious to see the fabulous sights of London. He was disguised as a parson, wearing a long cloak, cassock and canonical girdle and employing the alias of Dr Ayliff. Accompanying him was his respectable-looking wife, equally excited to have sight of the famous regalia. In reality, she was an imposter in more ways than one: his wife Mary was lying ill at her old family home in Lancashire and so Blood had hired a young Irish actress called Jenny Blaine to take her place.

His true purpose, of course, was to reconnoiter the layout of the Martin Tower, discover any weakness in the security protecting the regalia and to spy out the best escape route from the fortress, across its moat and into and into the anonymous safety of the surrounding teeming streets of East London. Unlike any other tourist, the colonel also needed a feasible excuse to return to the Jewel Tower on further occasions in order to hone his plans.

Bloods strategy was remarkably simple, if not ingenious. It was based on the sound psychological principle of winning a victims trust in order to gain access to the desired objective.

It began with his wife, having admired the Crown Jewels, suddenly becoming ill and feeling faint with a distressing stomach qualm or convulsion. A worried and concerned Blood then asked Mr. Edwards to send for some spirits; Mrs. Edwards fetched them and invited their guest upstairs to repose herself upon a bed until she recovered. After that, the couple departed, thankful for the civility.

If ever there was a convenient illness, this was one. Three or four days later, Blood was back, bearing six pairs of fine white gloves as a generous gift to Mrs. Edwards as a token of his wifes great appreciation for her kindness. Having thus begun the acquaintance, they made frequent visits to improve it, Mrs. Blood professing that she could never sufficiently acknowledge the kindness shown to her.

The honeyed trap was about to be sprung. The colonels tactic was no longer the expression of gratitude and the giving of gifts, but the temptation posed by a powerful bait indeed. This was the fulfillment of every mothers secret dream: the prospect of her daughters socially advantageous marriage to a well-off young suitor.

Blood told a delighted Mrs. Edwards that her daughter Elizabeth was a pretty gentlewoman and suddenly added: I have a young nephew who has 200 or 300 a year [income] in land [which] is at my disposal [to assign]. If your daughter be free and you approve of it, I will bring him hither to see her and we will endeavor to make a match.

The steel jaws of Bloods trap had snapped shut.

One can imagine the happiness his surprising words sparked in the hearts of Mr. and Mrs. Edwards. Overwhelmed, the keeper asked the parson to dine with him that day in celebration. That night, Blood was given a tour of their quarters in the Martin Tower. His real motive, of course, was to ensure there were no weapons available to Edwards when he next came calling. When he departed, Blood blessed the Edwards family and agreed the happy day and hour when he would bring his nephew to introduce him to his intended bride.

This was Tuesday, May 9,1671.

Curiously, Bloods arrival at Martin Tower was set at seven oclock in the morning, an usually early time for wooing, however ardent the bridegroom. Patently Blood wanted as few people for his exploit and old Edwards, doubtless cock-a-hoop at the forthcoming marriage and still naively harboring no suspicious whatsoever, meekly agreed to the arrangement.

At the appointed hour, his daughter was to be up betimes to put on her best dress to impress and charm her intending husband-to-be. While her toilette was nearing completion, her father was surprised to see the parson arrive with three men. In fact there were four, and, unknown to Edwards, all were heavily armed with swordsticks (with rapier blades hidden inside their canes), daggers and a pair of pocket flintlock pistols apiece. As well as Blood, there was his son and Messrs Perrot and Halliwell, the last-named soon to unwittingly play the part of the blushing groom.

The parson, Thomas Blood Jr., and Perrot entered the Jewel House tower, leaving Halliwell outside to maintain a lookout. Edwards daughter considered it would be very immodest for her to come down to greet the party before she was summoned, so Elizabeth sent her maid to take a view of the company and to bring her a description of her gallant.

Blood meanwhile told Edwards that he and his friends would not go upstairs until the wife arrived and apologized for her lateness. To pass the time while they were awaiting her, perhaps he would be kind enough to show the Imperial Crown to them? The keeper happily agreed, possibly considering pocketing of more fees.

[W]ithin seconds, the custodian had become the victim of a cruel and brutal assault.

As soon as the party gathered in the room housing the Crown Jewels, the door was slammed shut behind them and a cloak was thrown over Edwards head as he bent to unlock the wire door protecting the regalia. They clapped a gag into his out which was a great plug of wood.

Blood helpfully informed Edwards, his eyes bulging and now painfully gasping for air, that they intended to steal the Imperial State Crown, the globe and the scepter.

Edwards may have been elderly and possibly infirm, but he was no coward. After making greater noise he was thwacked by the robbers nine or ten times and finally he was stabbed in the stomach with a dagger, causing a deep puncture wound that began to bleed copiously. After his barbarous treatment, he lay prone on the stone slabs of the floor, wisely pretending to be unconscious or dead.

Providence then took an extraordinary turn.

Edwards son Wythe unexpectedly arrived home on leave after his ten years soldiering overseas. The gangs lookout rushed into the Crown Jewels chamber and warned Blood of the sons arrival. The last thing they wanted was to contend with a fit, able-bodied soldier who knew how to handle himself in a fight. Blood was on the floor, trying to pick up the gemstones dislodged by his beating of the crown. The men ran out carrying the stolen regaliabut leaving behind the scepter. Thinking Edwards was dead, they had not bothered to tie his hands. After their departure, he struggled to his feet, clutching his stomach wound, and removed the wooden gag. Painfully he cried out, his voice rising in desperate urgency: Treason! Murder!

His daughter heard his cries and stumbled down the stairs to find her father bruised and collapsed on the floor in a widening pool of blood. After he stammered out what had happened, Elizabeth, with a commendable sense of duty, dashed outside and shouted repeatedly: Treason! The Crown is stolen!

Excerpted with permission from The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood:The Spy Who Stole the Crown Jewels and Became the Kings Secret Agent, by Robert Hutchinson. Reprinted by arrangement with Pegasus Books. All rights reserved.
The Pulse nightclub shootingwhich left at least 50 people dead and 53 injureddrew calls for prayer and gun control from politicians still grappling with the news of the most deadly shooting in American history.

As the horrific details unfolded, politicians cautioned against jumping to conclusions, reiterated previous stances on gun rights.

As devastating mass shootings have come to feel more and more common, its a routine that feels darkly familiar: Republicans blame radical Islamic terrorists, Democrats blame lax gun laws, and everyone sends thoughts and prayers.

On NBCs Meet the Press, Bernie Sanders called for stricter regulations on gun sales.

I believe that in this country, we should not be selling automatic weapons which are designed to kill people, he said, when host Chuck Todd asked for his reaction to the news. We have got to do everything that we can on top of that to make sure that guns do not fall into the hands of people who should not have them, criminals, people who are mentally ill. So that struggle continues.

Jeff Flake, a Republican senator from Arizona, also indicated openness to stricter background checks on would-be gun buyers.

A lot of us have been talking for quite a while in terms of background checks and tightening background checks, particularly as it pertains to those with mental illness, he told Chuck Todd on NBCs Meet the Press. And I think that that debate can and should go on as well as the debate on how to best protect us against those who were inspired or funded or directed by international terrorists.

At a PBS town hall earlier this month, President Obama reiterated his call for barring people on the no-fly list from purchasing guns.

I just came from a meeting today in the Situation Room in which I got people who we know have been on ISIL Web sites, living here in the United States, U.S. citizens, and were allowed to put them on the no-fly list when it comes to airlines, but because of the National Rifle Association, I cannot prohibit those people from buying a gun, he said.

Clintons immediate response to the attack was more restrained than her fellow presidential contenders.

Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL, she tweeted. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H

Later, in a statement, Clinton said it was "an act of terror" and "an act of hate."

She called for the US to "redouble our efforts to defend our country from threats at home and abroad" and stressed the importantance of "defeating international terror groups, working with allies and partners to go after them wherever they are, countering their attempts to recruit people here and everywhere, and hardening our defenses at home."

She then reitereated her call for more gun control.

"[W]e need to keep guns like the ones used last night out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals," she said. "This is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States and it reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets."

Donald Trump fired off a tweet characterizing the attack as really bad, and followed up with another missive complaining about a new Hillary Clinton ad criticizing him. Two hours later, he tweeted that we need to be tough, smart, and vigilant.

One of Trumps top allies, Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, was a bit more articulate. On Fox News Sunday, he cautioned against maligning Islam as a whole.

Theres just, within the wonderful group of Islamic people, a certain group of radicals, and its been there for a long time, and it seems to be growing and we have to accept that fact, we have to be cautious about it, he said.

Sessions chairs the national security committee for Trumps campaign, which includes a ban on Muslims entering the country (Trump has said in recent interviews the ban was a suggestion).

More of these attacks are coming, he continued. Its a real part of the threat that we face, and if we cant address it openly and directly, and say directly that there is an extremist element within Islam, thats dangerous to the world and has to be confronted.

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio echoed those concerns, and suggested that the attack at the gay nightclub had become the latest battleground in the War on Terror.

But, Rubio, who spoke with CNNs Jake Tapper by phone, cautioned against making anything of the fact that the shooters parents are from Afghanistan.

That in and of itself says nothing, he said.

He added that he believes the shooting is an example of the new face of the War on Terror.

It doesnt take a tremendous amount of coordination, he said. You dont need a phone call from Afghanistan or an email from Syria to tell you to go do this. We have seen the way radical Islamists have treated gays and lesbians in other countries.

It is quite frankly not surprising that they would target this community in this horrifying way, he added.

Sen. Bill Nelson told reporters that he was told by staff on the Intelligence Committee that the shooter may have ISIS connections.

I have checked with intelligence [committee] staff and they do believe that there is some connection to ISIS, but I might say that is not official, he said, adding that anyone knows anything about the shooter, to contact authorities.

This appears to be, unfortunately, since its the largest mass shooting, an act of terrorism, but the facts - we cant say that totally yet, he said.

Nelson then decried the violence saying to was time to dig down deep and ask ourselves who we are as a people.

Weve got to think of ourselves as the common denominator of Americans not a hyphenated American or off on some cause, he said. Thats what weve got to explore deep inside at this point.

The impact of the violence in Orlando reverberated around the country but in Los Angeles it hit particularly close to home. Before the kick-off of the Los Angeles Pride parade, Mayor Eric Garcetti addressed reporters about the arrest of a would-be attacker near the parade route with a car full of explosives.

We will not shrink away, we will not be stuck in our homes, we will not go back into closets, said the mayor. We are out here to march, to celebrate, and to mourn. Today we know that we are targeted as Americans because this is a society where we love broadly and openly, because we have Jews and Christians and Muslims and atheists and Buddhists marching together. Because we are white, black, brown, Asian, Native American. the whole spectrum, and every hue and every culture is here. And all of our hearts today are with Orlando.

We are Pulse, we are Orlando, we are Americans, we are all LGBTQ community members today, we are all part of a country that will not be beaten down, he said. We will not go away and today we are proud of who we are.

Read more coverage of the massacre at the Pulse nightclub
Donald Trump couldnt resist making the deadliest mass shooing in American history all about him.

The presumptive Republican nominee tweeted that Omar Mateens slaughter of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, proves he was right about the threat of Muslim terrorists and that the ban he proposed on all Muslims entering the countrysomething he later referred to as a suggestionwould have somehow prevented Mateen (a U.S. citizen) from committing this atrocity.

Trump is also apparently calling on President Obama to resign for not saying the three magic words radical Islamic terrorism, nevermind the fact that Obama called it an attack on all of us.

For Trump, mass murder and tragedy are often opportunities to plug a political belief or flaunt the fact that he got a hasty prediction right.

In the aftermath the San Bernadino terrorist attack last fall, which claimed the lives of 14 people, Trump retweeted someone saying that his poll numbers would go up as a result of these deaths. When EgyptAir Flight 804 crashed on its way to Cairo last month, Trump immediately said it was a terrorist attack before the cause was known and pivoted to politicizing the event.

During a victory speech in March, Trump proudly referred to the November terrorist attack in Paris as something that changed the scope of the race for him, helping to lift his poll numbers. Something happened called Paris, Trump said. And all of a sudden, the poll numbers shot up. And Im just very proud to be a part of this.

Trump released a statement Sunday evening that doubled down on his claim that he predicted more terrorist attacks.

If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore. Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happenand it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We cant afford to be politically correct anymore, the statement read.

Trump also demanded Hillary Clinton drop out of the presidential race if she doesnt use radical Islam to describe the attack in Orlando. He plans on delivering a speech Monday in New Hampshire to address the massacre.

Not only is Trump rushing to profit politically from Orlando; he is also bulldozing the truth to do it.

It appears that Trump copied a tweet from Sebastian Gorka, an Islamophobic writer, alleging unverified reports that Marteen shouted Allah Akbar! during the shooting. CNNs Brian Stelter initially flagged the similarities between the tweets. Gorka was also previously paid $8,000 by the Trump campaign for policy consulting. Gorka told The Daily Beast via email that he was not aware of the Trump tweet and that he is no longer consulting for the campaign. Gorka alleged he got his information from the Daily Mail.

Read more coverage of the Pulse nightclub massacre
The American Association of Retired Persons, as you may discern from the name, is an organization for geezers. I get it mixed up with the SPCA, which is for dogs and cats, but thats why us geezers need all the help we can get.

The AARP was on public television last night, trolling for new members. It sells supplementary insurance to Medicare, it lobbies Congress, it reassures and befriends the elderly, and for a nominal yearly fee will be your saddle buddy for the long ride into the sunset. There are undoubtedly other good deeds, probably too many to get into here. Teaching seniors to float comes to mind. Still more good news: The organization is now sniffing out/snuffing out scams.

Why do geezers need to be protected against scams? Youd think being around longer, theyd be scam-proof. Not so.

***

Let me give you an example of a scam:

Back when my grandmother was losing ground, I helped her for a little while with her checking account. This is known as the blind leading the blind, and during one of our weekly debates I came across a letter from a post-office box in the big cityOmaha, Nebraska. Grandma, who was not rich, had been sending $5 monthly contributions to a nonprofit outfit dedicated to birds. Well, not exactly dedicated to birds. It was dedicated to exterminating cats.

According to the literature, every time you killed a cat you prevented more cats, and saved a thousand birds, which, multiplying dead cats times live birds times baby birds that never got hatched, etc., came to about 100,000 birds, every cat you murdered.

Grandma was a bird lover. She rooted for them from her kitchen window, setting lumps of pork out on steel wires in the winter so the squirrels, who were always raiding the bird feeders, would grab the pork and leave pieces of their mouths attached to the minus-15 degree wire.

On the morning I am thinking of now, I told her the cat killers in Omaha were playing her for a chump. Grandma did not believe much of what I said in those days and did not like that kind of language anyway, and told me to mind my own business.

Grandma continued, as far as I know, to send $5 a month to Omaha for as long as she lived.

***

Here is another example:

On April 25 of this year, a geezer familiar to this column walks into the same drug store where he has been getting his prescriptions filled since he went on Medicare, three years previous.

The pretty young woman behind the counter disappears for a little while, then returns looking embarrassed. But not for anything shes done, or even for something the store did. No, she is embarrassed for him. The geezer is not too touchy about getting oldhe has been too close too many times to file any complaintsbut he is sensitive, and feels he still has the right to know that he is embarrassing himself first, just like the old days, before anybody else is embarrassed for him.

She says, I think theres a problem with the insurance.

From the mouths of babes

Yes, there is a problem with the insurance. It has been canceled.

But we are getting ahead of the story. We want to go back to early December, 2015. Grandma has been dead 47 years, the geezer has quit the movie-writing part of what he does for a living and no longer is eligible for health insurance through the movie writers union. Slowly, surely, he sees Medicare seeping into his life.

He visits his insurance agent, Jim. Jim has been insuring the geezers homes and cars for 20 years, and has never made a mistake. He signs the geezer up for supplemental Medicare insurance with a company called UnitedHealthcare. Actually, there are two policies, with two branches of the same company: UnitedHealthcare and UnitedHealthcareRx. One for regular doctors fees, hospitals, etc., and one for prescriptions.

As it happens, prescriptions are of special interest to the geezer. He has not always lived gently, and for some time now it has taken five or six prescriptions daily to keep his machines all running smoothly. Some of these prescriptions are inexpensive and some of them are not. The one he pays for out of pocket on April 25th, for instance, is $2,200. A month. (Under the heading good news, the same drug has just become available in a generic formula and can now be purchased at only $1,200.)

In any case, we are back in December, in Jim the Agents office, where we find out the bill for prescription-drug insurance comes to $58 a month. Put another way, the geezer wants prescription insurance. And no, as you might guess, the insurance company does not want his business, but is forced to deal with people like the geezer in order to cash in on the industry that is Medicare.

Among the payment options at UnitedHealthcareRx is an automatic bank withdrawal (safe, sure, convenient etc.) and the geezer signs up and, as a further precaution against messing this up, Jim the Insurance Agent fills out the applications. This is common practice, wherein the geezer gives Jim the Agent a voided check to indicate the correct checking account.

But now, now the geezer feels himself getting jumpy. In his life, things like this do not happen. Where are the problems and mistakes?

I dunno.

For almost five monthsDec. 3 to April 25it is strictly smooth water. Right up until the geezer walks into the drug store. That is the moment he finds out that he not only doesnt have prescription insurance, he cant get any for the rest of the year and is subject to a fine in 2017 for not having insurance in 2016.

He writes a check for $4,000 to cover both branches for the rest of the year, half of which is eventually returned as an overpayment. Still, the geezer has no prescription insurance.

The geezer begins making telephone calls and soon he is back in familiar territory. Yes, everything is fucked up. Jim the Agent has forgotten to fill in the checking account number. This he admits openly and spends hours and hours trying to correct. (The application that went to the other branch of the same company was correctly filled out, incidentally, and in its entirety, but UnitedHealthcare did not employ it either. The company now says that because the automatic bank withdrawal is an option, itthe insurance companyis under no obligation to accept it as payment.)

But that is later, this is then. Winter passes, spring comes, the flowers bloom. Geezer has no inkling he is running out of time. Neither UnitedHealthcareRx or UnitedHealthcare contact Jim the Agent or seek the missing information.

For its part, UnitedHealthcareRx sends the geezer three warnings of overdue payments. The letters, however, go to a post-office box no longer in use. No letter is sent to the physical address, no letter is sent by secured mail, no word left with Jim the Agent or even the pharmacy where the geezer continues to pick up his prescriptions.

The geezer calls several times during these four monthsthat gnawing feeling that things are too smooth does not just go awayasking for monthly statements, and is told each time that its impossible to send statements because the company doesnt send statements. At the same time, UnitedHealthcareRx says that no electronic footprint appears showing that the geezer called at all. Perhaps, they offer, the geezer contacted the other branch of the companyUnitedHealthcarewhich, as far as UnitedHealthcareRx is concerned is like writing Santa in care of the North Pole.

Under a barrage of phone calls, UnitedHealthcareRx then contends that it made two phone calls to the geezer, but the geezer has an answering machine and no such messages were ever received.

More phone calls and UnitedHeathcareRx claims that Jim the Agent was never the agent of record, then that it had never received an application for electronic bank withdrawals in the first place, both claims provably false (fax records, etc.).

Another UnitedHealthcare rep tells the geezer that Medicare law prohibits the company from reconsidering the expulsion.

The geezer and Agent Jim both make calls to Medicare, where they are assured no such law exists, and suggest the geezer should call AARP. The AARP rep says everyone over there is sorry. A spokeswoman for their Loyalty Team suggests calling the insurance company and asking for management.

A supervisor at Medicare adds that if it was any consolation, last year Medicare could have stepped in, but this year it cant. Its amazing how a little cheerful news can pick you up, right?

Jim the Agent calls the Washington State Insurance Commissioners office, which says its hands are tied, and advises him to call the insurance company.

The state Health Insurance Benefit Adviser suggested calling the drug companies and pleading with them for discounts.

All attempts to track down UnitedHealthcare management are futile. There is nobody, says a supervisor. Just us. She, however, takes a number for a return call, and three days later the call-back call comes in and the geezer is back on the line with AARP.

And all this time the geezer and his agent have been making calls to UnitedHealthcareRx, to AARP, to Medicare. Dozens of calls. Reps sometimes connect the geezer with a supervisor, but nobody ever gets to the people who decide who gets re-instated. Nobody seems to know. The numbers or address for corporate offices are not available.

And then, finally, a letter, sent the day after the geezer first walked into the drug store and found out he was dead meat.

April 26

Dear (Geezer), We reviewed your request to get your coverage back, and your request has been denied. This is because your request doesnt meet the criteria

This decision is final and cant be appealed.

And thats it, the explanation. The geezer doesnt meet some unknown criteria. In a strange way, it feels like the story of his life. He thinks maybe he should call AARP one more time, the scam-squad.

He has a hot tip, maybe the AARP should look under its own skirt.
Love old or unusual movies but never know when they're on? Here are several I recommend:

Woman in Gold (2015): This is one of those movies that didn't get great reviews, didn't do a ton of business and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think you will, too. It's based on the true story of Maria Altmann (the peerless Helen Mirren) who spent years suing the Austrian government for the return of the famous Klimpt painting of her aunt, "Portrait of Adele Block-Bauer I." Trust me, you'll recognize the painting. Ryan Reynolds plays her young Los Angeles lawyer who helps her. While the movie takes some liberties with the facts, it's a stirring and fascinating look at a classic David-and-Goliath conflict. Plus, you know, Helen Mirren.

Showtime, 2:15 p.m. Sunday

Funny Girl (1968): Superdiva Barbra Streisand has been an "artiste" for so long, it's easy to forget how fresh and funny she was at the beginning of her career. Watching this biographical musical about Fanny Brice, it's almost inconceivable that anyone but Streisand could ever have played the role. From her Jewish Lower East Side origins, through her apprenticeship in vaudeville and eventual triumph in the Ziegfeld Follies, Barbra absolutely owns the screen. Helping her out are Kay Medford, Mae Questal, Walter Pidgeon and or course Omar Sharif as romantic, gambling bad boy Nick Arnstein. This was the second-to-last film in the breathtaking career of director William Wyler, and led to the only tie in Oscar history -- Streisand and Katharine Hepburn (for The Lion in Winter) won Best Actress.

Turner Classic Movies, 7 p.m. Thursday

Persuasion (1995): In the 1990s, moviemakers seemed to discover 19th Century English novelist Jane Austen in a big way. From Clueless to Emma to Sense and Sensibility, Austen was one of the hottest "screenwriters" around. One of the less splashy entries into this pleasant rush of character-driven movies was Persuasion. As usual, the story is concerned with the tension between true romantic love and familial and social duty. Amanda Root plays a young woman who, years ago, was bullied (excuse me, "persuaded") to give up her penniless fiance (Ciaran Hinds). Fate has brought them in proximity once again, and - surprise, surprise -- her ex is now rich and important. Will true love rekindle amidst the pressures of snobbery and time? I wonder . . .

Turner Classic Movies, 9:15 p.m. Saturday

Shall We Dance? (2004): While the original Japanese film (same title, from 1996) was better, this American remake earns its place. Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon play long-married couple who love each other but have drifted apart. When Gere is drawn into a ballroom dancing school run by the sexy Jennifer Lopez. It's charming to watch him get drawn into learning to dance, as his poor wife increasingly becomes convinced he's having an affair. Sarandon has a speech on marriage that's one of my favorite monologues from any movie. Enjoy this lovely movie about love and grown-ups.

Now streaming on Netflix.

Trivia Question #637: What much more famous Jane Austen adaptation came out in 1995?

Answer to Trivia Question #635: Kim Hunter (Zira in Escape From the Planet of the Apes) won an Oscar for A Streetcar Named Desire.

 Bryan native Ray Ivey is a writer and movie fan in Hollywood, Calif. He would love to hear from you at rayivey@ca.rr.com. You can also visit his blog at www.starkravingray.com.
HOUSTON  President Barack Obama has declared a major disaster in 12 Texas counties  including Brazos, Grimes and Washington  that suffered severe flooding last month during heavy rainfall.

The declaration, approved on Saturday, also covers Austin, Brazoria, Fort Bend, Hidalgo, Hood, Montgomery, San Jacinto, Travis, and Waller counties.

It enables residents to received federal grants for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses and other programs to help individuals and business owners recover.

The declaration also approved funding for local and state response costs and sheltering.

As previously reported by The Eagle , the American Red Cross has been working diligently to help the community prepare for the 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.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott thanked Obama and said the declaration lets Texans begin the process of rebuilding their lives after experiencing some of the worst flooding in recent history.

Abbott says more counties could be added to the declaration if a threshold requirement is met.
Eagle Editorial Board

The November election already has made history. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, is the first non-politician to capture a major party's president nomination in more than 60 years. Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is the first woman ever to win a major party's nomination.

While Trump and Clinton appear ready to accept their party's nomination at conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia next month, they bring to the election the highest unfavorable rankings perhaps ever -- upwards of 60 percent each. Many observers have said they want neither candidate to win. Perhaps that is an opening for Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, although Libertarian candidates never have captured even 15 percent of the November vote.

The soon-to-be nominees baffled almost everyone. Trump stunned virtually every political pundit by defeating a rich field of 16 other candidates. He won by understanding very well the anger of Americans toward politics as usual. Trump tapped into that anger to win primary after primary in convincing fashion. Now, some establishment Republicans are looking for a way to deny Trump the party's nomination in Cleveland, but even they admit their efforts are longshot at best.

Those same pundits projected an easy victory for Clinton, but she has been challenged in the primaries by Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who is an independent but usually caucuses with the Democrats. His progressive movement has captured the hearts and support of many young people. Sanders remains in the race as of today, even though he has no chance of capturing his party's nomination.

With both candidates so unpopular, what will happen in November. Will anti-Trump Republicans vote for him anyway or will they vote for Clinton in an effort to defeat their own nominee? Will Sanders' young legions switch to supporting Clinton?

Or will disaffected voters simply stay home on election day, unwilling to cast a ballot for either Clinton or Trump?

It would be a shame if that happens. Voter turnout in presidential elections already averages around 50 percent.

If large numbers don't vote because they dislike both Trump and Clinton, those averages could tumble.

Nothing matters more in the life of this nation than the choices we make for our elected leaders, not just for president, but for Congress, governor, legislators all the way down ballot to city councils and school boards. Elections are important, they matter. A 50 percent turnout of voters for president is embarrassing. Anything less would be shameful.

Of course, we shouldn't make our choice because one is a Republican and the other a Democrat or because one is a man and the other, a woman, but we know many of us will. Rather, we should listen to the candidates as we try to determine who would be the better leader for America for the next four or eight years.

The candidates must earn our vote. Donald Trump must show that he has the wisdom and the temperament to guide our country in the difficult and tumultuous years sure to come.

Clinton must reassure us that she has the character to lead us. The continuing questions over her use of a private email server when she was secretary of State continue to fester and are troubling.

We urge Donald Trump to run a positive campaign, eschewing the racial and religious invectives that have marked his primary race. He also must release his income tax records as did other candidates in the two party races.

Clinton must be forthcoming with the American public, answering all questions put to her honestly and forthrightly. Her natural inclination is to obfuscate, dissemble and dismiss. Continuing to do so would confirm for many voters that she isn't to be trusted.

We hope the candidates and their supporters keep the dialog positive and issue oriented.

We face a serious election in less than five months and we must be sure when we cast our ballot that we are making the best, the wisest choice for all America.
Think you know the pin to the ATM? Have a crack to win your share of $100k
President Tran Dai Quang receives Lao Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith during the minister's official visit to Vietnam (Source: VNA)



The visits, made at the invitation of Lao Party General Secretary and President Bounnhang Vorachith and Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni, are the first overseas trips by Tran Dai Quang in his capacity as President of Vietnam.

Vietnam and Laos boast a fruitful traditional relationship, which was fostered by Presidents Ho Chi Minh and Kaysone Phomvihane, and has been nurtured by generations of the two countries Party and State leaders and people.

Politically, the two sides regularly conducted high-level meetings for their Party, State, National Assembly and Government leaders, and exchanges between their localities.

The latest visits to Vietnam were made by Lao Party General Secretary and President Bounhang Vorachith in April 2016 and Lao Prime Minister Thoongloun Sisoulith a month later. Permanent member of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee (CPVCC)s Secretariat Dinh The Huynh, head of the CPVCCs Inspection Commission Tran Quoc Vuong and Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee Dinh La Thang also visited Laos in the year.

Besides, the bilateral economic cooperation has made big strides in recent years, creating a material foundation to consolidate the special ties between the two countries.

Vietnamese businesses have, to date, invested nearly USD5 billion in 258 projects in Laos, mainly focusing on hydropower, mining, transport and industrial tree planting.

The two sides have also paid heed to collaboration in education-training and human resource development.

At present, close to 9,300 Lao officials and students are studying in Vietnam while 425 Vietnamese students are learning in the neighbouring country.

Cooperation between localities sharing the border have also received due attention, which has been evidenced through the formation of economic and commercial zones at international and national border gates, the signing of a border trade agreement in June last year and the launch of the one-stop-shop customs model at the Lao Bao -Densavan international border gate.

The security-defence cooperation has been maintained at a high level of trust. The two sides completed the project on increasing and upgrading the border marker system.

They also signed two important legal documents, namely the Protocol on Borderline and Border Markers and the Agreement on Regulations on the Management of Border and Border Gates on Land between the two governments.

The completion of the border marker system has contributed to improving the quality of the Vietnam-Laos borderline, both legally and in reality.

The two sides are continuing the search and repatriation of remains of Vietnamese volunteer soldiers and experts who died in Laos.

In order to develop the Vietnam-Laos traditional friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation intensively and effectively, senior leaders of the two countries committed to ceaselessly fostering and promoting the relationship and passing on it to younger generations.

The two sides agreed to strongly push the Vietnam-Laos, Laos-Vietnam comprehensive cooperation in the principles of independence, self-reliance, win-win and equal cooperation, supporting each other for mutual development, for prosperity of each country as well as for peace, stability, cooperation and development in Southeast Asia and the world at large.

On the basis of maximizing strengths and potential of each country, the two sides will expand and improve cooperation in economy, culture, science-technology as well as promote the effective implementation of high-level agreements, cooperation plans between the two governments, and boost cooperation in defence, security, ensuring political stability, security, social order and safety in each country.

Regarding regional issues of mutual concern, the two sides affirmed to continue closely coordinating at international and regional forums such as the United Nations and ASEAN, and Mekong Great Sub-region cooperation mechanisms, contributing to building a strong ASEAN Community, enhancing solidarity and promoting ASEANs central role.

Vietnam gives positive and comprehensive support to Laos as the Chair of ASEAN.

Meanwhile, the Vietnam-Cambodia cooperation and friendship have been continuously developed in all fields, particularly in economy, trade, investment.

Bilateral economic cooperation has seen considerable results. Vietnam has been Cambodias third largest trade partner with two-way trade reaching USD3.37 billion in 2015 and USD944.6 million in the first quarter of this year.

The two countries are striving for USD5 billion in bilateral trade in the coming time.

Cambodia is Vietnams 16th largest export market with steel, fertilizer, garments, equipment and machinery, plastics making up a major proportion.

Vietnamese investments have been present at 16 out of 25 Cambodian cities and provinces. By May 2016, Vietnam ranked fifth among 50 countries and territories investing in Cambodia with 172 projects, mostly in agro-forestry, energy, finance-banking-insurance, post and telecommunications, healthcare and construction, among others.

Regarding tourism, Vietnamese nationals top list of foreign arrivals to the neighbouring country. Some one million visits to Cambodia were made by Vietnamese holiday-makers in 2015 while nearly 210,000 Cambodia travellers chose Vietnam as their tourist destination.

Bilateral cooperation mechanisms such as the Vietnam-Cambodia Joint Committee on Cooperation in Economy, Culture and Science-Technology and the conference on cooperation and development of Vietnam-Cambodia border provinces have held regular meetings to boost collaboration between the two nations.

The two countries ministries, agencies and localities have helped each in economic development, enhanced cultural and people-to-people exchanges and health cooperation as well as signed annual collaboration plans.

On the growing security-defence relations, Vietnam and Cambodia have worked to exchange information and address arising border issues while increasing joint maritime patrols. They have also joined hands in the search and repatriation of remains of Vietnamese volunteer soldiers and experts who laid down their lives during wartime in Cambodia.

The two countries are striving to complete the border demarcation and marker planting along the shared borderline as soon as possible./.
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Events

Brown Bag Series  Smart Payroll Solutions for Small Business

June 13

Noon

Speaker: Jill M. Cape, CPA, CPP, Pay Day Payroll

Kyndle Training Room

Ribbon Cutting  Methodist Hematology and Oncology

1305 N Elm St  Henderson

June 15

11 a.m.

Kyndle After Hours

June 23

5-7 p.m.

Rookies

Sponsored by: People Plus

4th Friday Networking Luncheon

June 24

Noon

Location: TBA

Brown Bag Series  Injury Prevention in the Workplace

June 27

Noon

Speaker: Jim Clouse, ProRehab

Kyndle Training Room

Ribbon Cutting and After Hours Networking Event

Farmer and the Frenchman

12522 U.S. 41 S, Henderson

June 30

4:30 p.m.  Ribbon Cutting

5-7 p.m.  After Hours Networking Event

Members of the community are invited to attend a Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony and Open House for Methodist Hematology and Oncology and Infusion Services on Wednesday, June 15. The event will take place from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the second floor of Methodist Hospital's Elm Street Building located at 1305 North Elm Street in Henderson.

A total of 5,800 square feet on the second floor, formerly occupied by Pediatrics, has been renovated to include both Methodist Hematology and Oncology and Infusion Services allowing all services to operate from a single location, enhancing the continuity of cancer care for patients.

Awards

Nichole Barnett, DDS, a recent graduate of Indiana University School of Dentistry, was recently awarded the $25,000 Delta Dental Foundation Community Commitment Award for her commitment to provide much needed dental care to children and adults in a designated health professional shortage area in Indiana.

Nichole graduated from Henderson County High School in 2004 as a valedictorian before attending Oakland City University in Oakland City, Ind. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with a biology degree in 2008, and soon after acquired a full time position as an assistant to a retinal specialist in Evansville, Ind.

In 2011, Barnett met a dentist who was providing free care to missionaries and children who were in great need of dental treatment, but could not afford it otherwise. As a result of this experience, she felt the desire and calling to enter the field of dentistry. In June, Barnett will begin her career as the lead dentist for Valley Professionals Community Health Center, a federally qualified health clinic in Cayuga, Ind. The addition of dental services to this previously existing clinic will provide this community with access to oral health care where it was once unavailable.

In recently released results, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' Five-Star Quality Rating System recognized Methodist Hospital HomeCare with a 4-star rating in patient satisfaction. According to the data, the Henderson home health provider achieved the highest rating possible in the patient satisfaction category.

The star rating system was instituted by CMS as part of its Home Health Compare website to provide a "tool for consumers to use when choosing a home health care provider." The system ranks providers in two categories: Quality of Patient Care and Patient Satisfaction.

The ratings are highly coveted by home health providers and seen as a key differentiator in the industry.

Methodist Hospital HomeCare is part of LHC Group, a national provider of post-acute care services with over 10,000 employees operating more than 350 locations in 25 states.
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.
BROKEN BOW  For Deb McCaslin, smiles mean more than being photogenic. They mean a changed life.

McCaslin, executive director at Custer Economic Development Corp., returned from Tiajiang County, China, last Sunday after doing mission work with Alliance for Smiles. This was McCaslins seventh trip with the nonprofit group that sends medical personnel abroad to perform free procedures on people with cleft palates. The organization arranges several trips a year to Africa and Asia.

McCaslin has been to Ghana, Zimbabwe and China with the group. Her role on the trips is to speak with the families of the patients, write blog updates on the website and take before and after pictures of the patients who receive surgery. This year, she traveled to Tiajiang County, which is a rural part of China near rice paddies, from May 20 to June 5.

She said a majority of patients attended to are children.

Its a real challenge for these children, McCaslin said.

She said because of their cleft palate, its hard for children to eat. Moms will try to feed the children, but the food seeps out their noses. Not to mention, McCaslin said, the kids deal with bullying and teasing, which causes many of them to be taken out of school because of the severity.

More than once weve had children who are abandoned, McCaslin said of how the patients were once treated as outcasts.

She said every person the group saw had a difficult story. A baby who was found in a trash bin with the umbilical cord still attached was once brought to the group. Some families spend their savings and travel countless hours in hopes of getting medical care for a family member. Parents question why theyve brought a tainted child into the world. Some parents leave their children with grandparents because theyre ashamed of bringing bad luck to the family.

It makes the little hiccups you have here in the States seem like nothing, McCaslin said.

She said many of the people the group serves are from rural areas and dont have much money, let alone access to health care.

If you have money anywhere in this world, youre going to have good medical care, she said. We take so much for granted.

McCaslin said part of what the group does abroad is show the families that their children have a chance at life. She also talks with the families about eating habits during their pregnancy and other things that may have contributed to the cleft palate, which develops early on in pregnancy.

On this trip, she said, 72 surgeries were performed. People camped at the hospital overnight, as all of the rooms and waiting list filled.

The medical staff is not able to attend to every person because of time restraints and health issues. McCaslin said if a person is sick, he or she isnt able to undergo surgery because of the dangers.

Thats the only thing that makes me sad, she said of having to turn people away.

McCaslin got involved with Alliance for Smiles after various coincidences led her to meet the CEO at a dinner. Upon talking with the CEO, she was asked to go on a trip in 2006. She told her husband about the opportunity, of which she said he was supportive.

I thought she was a little nuts, Norman McCaslin, Debs husband, said about first hearing about her opportunity.

But he agreed for her to go, even after seven trips. He said hes in his busy season when shes gone, but he still misses her every time. Its his turn to worry about her while shes away, since she worried about him when he was in the Air Force.

And though he thinks Deb is still a little crazy for traveling so far away, he sees the difference shes helping to make.

Its just amazing that they can do that much for that many children in that period of time, Norman said.

Matthew Richmond, a registered nurse from Alaska who went on the mission with McCaslin, wrote in an email about how the trips impact his life.

Doing these trips reminds me why I went into nursing to begin with, Richmond wrote. To know that we have helped many of these children is the best reward imaginable. When we see these children again sometimes years later, the smiles on their faces say it all.

McCaslin remembered a 7-year-old boy, Shi HaiZhou, who came to the group for help. She said HaiZhou and his family traveled for hours by foot and by bus for treatment. This was his first time ever seeing a doctor, which isnt uncommon among the people Alliance for Smiles serves.

I called him Wild Man, McCaslin said of HaiZhou.

She said she called him that because of his vibrant and energetic attitude. She recalled playing hide-and-seek with him and having such a fun time.

McCaslin said the little boy had a bilateral, which is two splits on his upper lip with a cleft palate. Because of his deformity, he was bullied so harshly that his family took him out of school.

However, she said he was so kind to other kids.

He really understood what it was like to be teased, she said.

After the surgeries, cooperating groups provide psychological counseling and speech therapy for the patients. McCaslin said the counseling helps the patients process any hurt they may have from being bullied. It helps them gain self-confidence.

After Wild Man had his surgery, McCaslin said, he was given a mirror to see his new smile.

At first sight, she said, tears emerged and his eyes swelled. He knew the importance of the surgery and how it would change his life.

Through tears, HaiZhou could only whisper thank you repeatedly in Chinese, McCaslin said.

Heres this chick from Nebraska, she said. And I get to be a part of this.
Randy Lippincott has always had a passion for flying.

At age 5, Lippincott and his older brother, Jerry, took their first-ever flight in a Cessna 172 Skyhawk owned by a relative, Carl Sisskind.

Sisskind picked the boys up on Highway 14, outside their home in Central City, and flew them to Kearney over pastures, highways and the Nebraska countryside.

From the moment they took flight, Randy was hooked.

During the next half-century, Lippincott has flown in various parts of the United States, as well as overseas. For his dedication to the craft, he was awarded the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award, the most prestigious award issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The award is named after the Wright Brothers, the first U.S. pilots, to recognize individuals who have exhibited professionalism, skill and aviation expertise for at least 50 years while piloting aircraft as Master Pilots, according to the award website.

Now a resident of Scottsdale, Ariz., Lippincott was the 68th pilot from Arizona to win the award, but just the second from Merrick County, Neb.

To be eligible for the Wright Brothers MPA, nominees must hold a U.S. Civil Aviation Authority (CCA) or FAA pilot certificate, have 50 or more years of civil and military flying experience, and be a U.S. citizen.

With Lippincotts many adventures, it wasnt hard to meet the criteria. At a young age, he realized the ability to fly was something he never wanted to give up. Even though he couldnt describe it at the time, flying felt like a surreal adventure to Lippincott.

Its really like you can see the whole world from aloft, he said. The fence lines and the gravel roads and the highway, they stretch to the horizon like guitar strings. The whole map is just brought to life.

As Lippincott grew older, his desire to be in the sky grew as well. At 16, he took his first solo flight in a silver classic Cessna 140. It took just nine hours for him to practice and perform a solo flight in a tail dragger, learning primarily by watching the pilots around him.

In addition to Sisskind, Lippincotts father, Dick, and mother, Rosalie, had aviation experience.

Lippincott said his desire to fly was facilitated by his fathers airplane on the farm, although he had always found himself gravitating toward aviation.

When he was 19, he learned to sky dive, later serving in the military as a freefall exhibitionist. He was constantly in the air, either practicing and performing with the team or flying to various shows.

Although I was not at the stick or controlling the aircraft, I was still a part of aviation, Lippincott said.

In June 1983, he moved to Alaska and began work in a medical clinic.

The cold climate and rough terrain limited transportation options, so Lippincott looked to aircraft as his primary way to get around. He said his experiences in Alaska were the springboard for his aviation career.

In that way you could say Im the accidental pilot, he said. Its just something I stuck with and didnt really think about doing it for half a century.

Lippincott settled in Arizona in 1993 and continues to fly today. He has flown many times in many types of aircraft during the past 50 years, but said every flight is similar in some ways.

Each flight has the same consequences as the first flight and it has the same rewards, Lippincott said.

On May 29, almost exactly 50 years after his first solo flight, he was presented his Wright Brothers MPS award. Lippincott was surrounded by family and friends during a family reunion at Mahoney State Park and shared the experience with individuals he had worked with during the past 50 years.

About 60 people attended the presentation and Lippincotts mother and wife spoke about their experiences with him. In addition, a handful of attendees shared the personal flying stories they had with the Lippincott family.

Lippincott said it was a heartwarming experience to have others help celebrate a milestone in his life. Afterward, he wrote thank-you notes to those who attended  not only for their presence, but also for the support they provided during the past 50 years.

That really for me helped bring it full circle, thinking about all these different people who made contributions, Lippincott said. I really appreciated them being there helping me celebrate the magnitude of the event.
Thank You

After a such heart wrenching, unexpected death of our son Joe, we can start to heal with the help of our family and friends and we would like to say thank you for the prayers, food, visits, flowers, plants, memorials, cards and Dan and his staff at All Faiths Funeral Home. Father Canela, who presided over a beautiful Mass, and Wood River Catholic ladies, who gave a wonderful luncheon after, thank you.

A very special thank you to Joes awesome biker friends. They gave Joe his one last ride from the funeral home to Wood River. They were a huge part of Joes life and they took care of him to the end and thank you for that. Thank you to the biker who sang Tears from Heaven, it was beautifully sung and a great tribute.

God blessed us with a caring and wonderful son, husband, brother, dad, grandpa, uncle, nephew, cousin and friend. Now he is back with you and that gives us comfort.

God bless you all,

The Soto Family
Nearly seven months after a deadly fire at Centennial Towers  a high-rise apartment complex owned by the Hall County Housing Authority  tenants are moving back onto the floor where the fire began.

The remodeling is basically done, said Hall County Housing Authority Director Rick Ruzicka. We have some exterior brick work to finish, but the inside is finished.

The ninth floor of the 11-story high-rise had been shut down since Nov. 7, when a tenant who had been drinking and was on oxygen carelessly discarded a cigarette, according to a fire marshals report. That tenant, James Curfman, continues to maintain that the fire started in Apartment 905 when he was cooking and his oxygen hose came in contact with the heating element on the electric stove.

Sarah Both, a 63-year-old woman who lived down the hall from Curfman, was killed in the fire. She pushed out her window air-conditioning unit as her apartment filled with smoke and then either fell or jumped to her death as firefighters and other tenants who had fled the building watched from below.

This was a horrible tragedy and obviously we wish something like this would have never happened, Ruzicka said.

The fire also caused $250,000 worth of damage to 12 apartments on the ninth floor and water damage on surrounding floors.

That damage forced 10 tenants from the ninth floor to be displaced from their homes until June 1, when the ninth floor was turned back to the housing authority after remodeling and the installation of fire sprinklers.

Another 121 families were displaced for three days from other floors in Centennial Towers because the entire building was without water and electricity immediately after the blaze. That caused all tenants, many of whom are on food assistance programs, to lose their perishable food.

Others lost family photos and memorabilia.

But Ruzicka said not everything about the fire was a loss.

We, as an organization, were very pleasantly surprised how the community came together and really supported our residents during this period, he said.

Counselors worked together to provide mental health help. The Red Cross provided blankets. The United Way and Goodwill provided vouchers for replacement clothes and housing items.

Area churches adopted families and gathered furniture, dishes and other household items. Community groups and even coffee klatches pulled together resources to replace lost items for tenants as well.

The donations were to try to replace the things that people had, Ruzicka said. What I dont think people realize is that a lot of our folks have nothing.

Like Musa Adam, who came to the United States from Darfur, Sudan. He has been in Grand Island four years and lost his job at JBS after needing surgery.

Adam was in his apartment that afternoon when the fire alarms sounded. He smelled smoke, pulled on some clothes, and headed down a back stairwell. He and other displaced tenants were bused to area hotels for the night. Three days later, he moved into a seventh-floor apartment in Centennial Towers until his ninth-floor apartment could be renovated.

When he moved back to the ninth floor this past week, Adam hung four items right away  a clock, a calendar, an American flag and a poster of the alphabet from his class at Central Community College.

Through interpreter Michael Wal, Adam said that everything was new in the apartment.

It wasnt just new carpeting, new paint and new fire sprinklers as part of the renovation work. The couch that maintenance workers helped him move up from the seventh floor was something he didnt have until after the fire. The table, chairs and lamps were all new to him after the fire.

So were the double-bed frame and mattress.

All the donated items werent new to Adam just because they were donated. They were new because Adam never had such possessions before.

This is what I sleep on that day of the fire, Adam said, holding up a large black plastic trash bag. I spread it out every night and sleep. Now I have a mattress.

Im not praying that the fire was good, because it is bad, but Im telling the truth  all of this I get because it was donated, Adam said. I have more because of the fire.

The fire brought exposure to some of Grand Islands lowest-income residents. That resulted in generosity and caring that Ruzicka found so unbelievable.

I do think that the exposure we got, about who we serve, has been good for the organization and for those that we serve, he said. More often, were forgotten about or not thought about at all.

This past week, five of the original ninth-floor tenants moved back in. Some of those original tenants have decided not to come back because they became eligible for two-bedroom apartments and were already transferred there. Others preferred to stay in the temporary housing they were moved to, Ruzicka said.

Applications will be taken for the remaining seven open apartments.

Wal said Both will be remembered by many. She was a deacon in his church and he and others prayed over her body at CHI Health St. Francis.

She was a very, very, very nice lady, he said.

Curfman has bounced around between staying with friends and family and renting another apartment since the fire. But he was banned from all Hall County Housing Authority property and will never be allowed to rent there again, according to a letter sent to him by the housing authority.

He said he feels badly about what happened to Both, but feels the housing authority was negligent in not having enough interpreters to assist non-English-speaking tenants when they move in so those tenants know what to do when there is a fire.

Ruzicka said the housing authority has three Spanish-speaking interpreters on staff. They have a form for tenants to use to request interpreters.

The authority works very hard to always provide interpreters for anyone who wants one, he said, but that does get more challenging with the variety of languages and dialects in Sudan.

Each apartment does have an instruction sheet affixed to the back of the door that tells what to do during a fire, a medical emergency or a tornado. Ruzicka said its his hope that more can be done with fire drills or with Fire Department presentations on how to safely exit during a fire.

Before the fire, the housing authority had saved $400,000 to add fire sprinklers to Centennial Towers. Those sprinklers are now in place on floors 5 through 11, Ruzicka said. The first four floors will have to wait until fall as the fire sprinkler installation crews have left to work on sprinklers in Grand Islands new school building projects over the summer when students are gone.

The housing authority is also moving toward a no smoking campus. Smoking has always been banned in public areas, but smoking had been allowed in individual apartments. Ruzicka said all new tenants now have leases that state smoking is not allowed anywhere. However, current residents are still on their old lease, which allows in-apartment smoking.

We have about one-third of the units turn over every year, he said. So we think that within three to five years, this building will effectively be no smoking.

Simply banning smoking wont remove all fire hazards, though, Ruzicka said. Candles and cooking are hazards, too. Perhaps the more important factors are that the 1957 building is all concrete to keep fire from spreading, it has a state-of-art automatic alarm system, and it now has the fire sprinklers.
About 10 years ago, cemetery expert Skip Meyer was told by Grand Island police that gang members ask prospective members to commit vandalism at local cemeteries.

The new members were supposed to bring them something from the cemetery as part of a gang initiation. Representatives of the Grand Island Police Department and Hall County Sheriffs Department do not remember the practice.

But thats not to say it doesnt happen, said Sgt. Jim Duering of the police department. The thing with kids is, everythings just a trend.

In addition, facts about gang membership are often urban legend.

The one that I get asked about a lot, and its been around for 15 years, is gang members will flash their brights at you as part of the initiation, Duering said. If you flash bright lights back at the prospective gang members, they will supposedly turn around and chase you, he said.

Duering has never seen an instance of that happening. For whatever reason, gang tales are sometimes the stuff of folklore, he said.

He has heard of a few cases of gang members gathering at cemeteries on the anniversary of a fellow members death. They might leave gang photos or bandanas at the grave, and shoot videos of themselves. But Duering has never heard of that ceremony turn into vandalism or theft.

As far as current gang initiations, jump-in assaults are still common and something we see periodically, Duering said.

In a jump-in assault, existing gang members beat up a prospective member for a specified period of time to prove the initiate has heart.

Gang activity in Grand Island is down a little over 60 percent from where it was six years ago, Duering said. There has been a small uptick in police contacts with school-age youths who are associating with gangs. But that has not contributed to any increase in violence. Duering thinks much of that contact is related to marijuana trafficking.

Sheriffs departments say cemetery vandalism is not a problem in Boone, Polk, Sherman and Merrick counties. When asked about cemetery damage, several of the sheriffs said, knock on wood, as they reported they havent had any trouble lately.

Vandalism does sometimes occur at Hamilton County cemeteries. Its no higher than normal. But yes, there is, said a spokesman.

In Greeley County, cemetery problems happen once in a while, said Sheriff David Weeks.

In Howard County, vandals pay more attention to civic facilities than the cemetery, said Sheriff Tom Busch.

In Nance County, Weve been real lucky, said Sheriff Davis Moore. The kids are pretty good.

Meyer, who lives in Worms, cares a lot about the state of cemeteries.

Whether damage is caused deliberately or not, he says, many headstones are in disrepair. At the Grand Island City Cemetery, 15 to 20 headstones have been vandalized since last year. In many cases, pieces such as urns or crosses have been broken off. He has also noticed an angel went missing.

Meyer, who has been giving cemetery tours for 28 years, is also an expert on the history of many Nebraska communities. You can learn a lot about a town through its cemetery, he says.
President Tran Dai Quang (right) and Lao Party General Secretary and President Bounnhang Vorachith, who visited Vietnam in April (Source: VNA)



The visit, at the invitation of Lao Party General Secretary and President Bounnhang Volachit, is scheduled for June 12th14th.

The Lao News Agencys PathetLao (Lao Nation) newspaper described the visit as an important historical event in bilateral ties.

It remarked that annual meetings between the Party politburos and governments of the two countries have yielded positive outcomes.

The newspaper also listed recent highlights of Vietnam-Lao economic cooperation, including a trade agreement signed in March 2015 and a border trade pact in June the same year.

Vietnam is now the third biggest investor in Laos, channelling USD4.9 billion into the country to date.

Meanwhile, the Paxaxon (People) newspaper  the voice of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party  stressed the visit aims to reinforce the two countries traditional friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation.

The Vientiane Times noted that President Quangs visit takes place after the President of Laos visited Vietnam in April and is the first foreign visit made by Quang since taking office./.
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Linkedin Intan Tanjung (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, June 12, 2016

Anne Frank would be 87 if she were still alive. Born on June 12, the German-Jewish teenager, Anne became an icon of the Holocaust, the deadly antisemitism genocide that occurred from 1941 to 1945 under the German nationalist Adolf Hitler and his troops. The NAZI's are believed to have killed millions of Jewish people across Europe.

To commemorate her birthday, here are some Anne Frank facts:

Who was Anne Frank?

Anne was the daughter of Otto and Edith Frank, a German couple from Frankfurt. Anne's story became widely known when her diary was found and published in 1947.

Secret Annex

Annes family moved to Holland in the early 1930s and settled in Amsterdam. When Germany troops invaded the country in 1940, Anne and her family chose to hide in a concealed room called Secret Annex -- a room above her fathers office -- with four other Jewish families. Annes family house in Amsterdam has since become one of the citys most visited museums.

(Read also: Dutch Holocaust museum exhibits Jeroen Krabbe paintings)

Anne's diary

On her birthday in 1942, Anne received an autograph book from her father as a birthday present in which she used as a diary that she called Kitty. To Kitty, she shared her stories between June 12, 1942 - August 1, 1944. In the stories, she described the relationships of her family and the events that were happening during her hideout. Before she got captured, she rewrote her stories with a hope that it could be published into a novel, but its never finished because she got caught and sent to a concentration camp.

Betrayal

The location of her family hide out was exposed and, in 1944, Anne and her sister Margot was sent to Westerbork transit camp, then to Auschwitz. They died from typhus at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp a few weeks before British troops liberated the camp. Anne's father survived and returned to Amsterdam after the war ended. (kes)
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Linkedin Intan Tanjung (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, June 12, 2016

Ramadhan, which obliges all Muslims to fast from dawn to dusk, affects almost all aspects of life. It changes day-to-day routines and business flows, especially in big cities. For restaurants, fast-breaking is the busiest time of day.

We had to ensure that half the staff would break the fast at the designated time and the other half 30 minutes later, said Tim Bartholomew, head chef for Hujan Locale, a boutique restaurant in Ubud, Bali, recalling his Ramadhan experience when he served in the kitchen of E&O restaurant in Jakarta.

[Complicating matters], customers all come at the same time and want their food at the same time to break their fast," said Bartholomew, adding that Ramadhan was a vibrant tradition and something he found quite joyous and enjoyable.

(Read also: Expatriates enjoy Ramadhan traditions)

In the kitchen, Ramadhan was the only time that staff members were allowed to make themselves some food to break the fast, so one or two people would be designated every day to make food, drinks and desserts for iftar, so the staff members were really quite excited and celebratory, he said.

Some expatriates also admire the spirit of people who are excited to welcome the holy month, despite having a lack of energy as their eating habits are disrupted while the workload remains the same. For most Muslims, it's quite an exciting period, I noticed. So if anything, their spirits are up, said Aaron Dunes, who works for an international company.

I can see a slight impact in the office, yes. Also the working times are adjusted so everybody can join the fast-breaking time in the factory. We do see people getting a bit less productive, but I don't see less enthusiasm.

(Read also: A simple guide to healthy eating during Ramadhan)

Dunes said he often joined his staff in fasting and his colleagues would often invite him for fast-breaking meals. Aside from the sense of togetherness, he believed fasting did not affect the working life. Well, I have to balance work and religion carefully in the office every day. There are limits to everything. So far I haven't noticed an unacceptable drop in productivity. (kes)
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Linkedin Sudirman Said (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, June 11 2016

Developing clean and renewable energy can be a challenge, but the movement is underway globally and opportunities are wide open to reduce our dependency on fossil fuel.

Indonesia is blessed with abundant renewable energy sources, from geothermal in the subsurface to full-year coverage of free solar power. However, the development of renewable energy is not about ownership of the sources but the technologies that capture them. Unfortunately, along with other emerging economies, our technology and capacity to capture renewable energy sources remain underdeveloped.

At the Conference of Parties (COP) in Paris last year, President Joko Jokowi Widodo delivered Indonesias commitment to reduce the nations greenhouse gas emissions by 29 percent from the current projected level by 2030.

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Linkedin Bambang Muryanto (The Jakarta Post) Yogyakarta  Sat, June 11 2016

Seventy-two artists with 97 works are gathered at Artjog 9 to talk about one thing: Identity

The enormity of the countrys most prestigious annual art fair, Artjog 9, becomes palpable as soon as one sets foot through the entrance of the Jogja National Museum in Yogyakarta, where the event is taking place.



A 36-meter beacon with 10-kilometer coverage to the east of the museum, welcomes every visitor to the exhibition site in a somewhat intimidating way. As if the enormous tower is not scary enough, a giant blower is installed at the north of the building to amplify the sensation.



These two gigantic installations, however, represent positive hopes for the art fair. Carrying the theme Universal influence, the event uses the beacon to symbolize the influence of artists that has spread globally. Meanwhile, the giant blower represents the more practical hopes of the organizer that the event, which lasts from May 27 to June 27, will draw a lot of visitors.



Artjog 9 organizers, Heri Pemad Art Management, chose the revamped Jogja National Museum for the exhibition in order to match the theme. Previously, from 2008, the management held the art event at the citys cultural center, Taman Budaya Yogyakarta.



The museum building was formerly ASRI [The Indonesia Fine Arts Academy], founded in 1957. This campus has had a strong influence on the history of the arts in Indonesia. Many great artists like painter Affandi lectured here, said Artjog 9 curator Bambang Toko Witjaksono.



He hoped the art fair could arouse public awareness and reflective thinking and prevent art from becoming the object of a political, economic and socio-cultural narrative amid the massive flow of information in the internet era.



How are we influenced? Whats our true identity? he remarked.



The questions are apparent in the works of the 72 influential artists invited to participate in Artjog 9. This years event features such luminaries as Nasirun, Agus Suwage and Heri Dono, besides artists from the Philippines, Malaysia, Japan, Australia and Liechtenstein.

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Linkedin Bruce Emond (The Jakarta Post)  Sat, June 11 2016

Joannes Tandjungs sense of fashion began in the home. The Foreign Ministry civil servant would admire his parents as they prepared for a wedding in traditional attire. He notes they were aficionados of batik and other traditional textiles.

They always taught me that as Indonesians we have to be proud of our own culture and heritage, he said from Australia, where he is pursuing his doctorate on Formulation of Trade-Oriented Position of Protection on Traditional Cultural Expression: A Case Study of Indonesian Batik Enters the ASEAN Economic Community.

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, June 11 2016

Indonesia, Southeast Asias biggest economy, saw another decline in national motorcycle sales as the figure dropped by 3.5 percent last month compared to April.

The number of units sold in May was 461,506, a slight decline from the 478,036 recorded in April, the latest data released by the Indonesian Motorcycle Industry Association (AISI) revealed.

AISI previously aimed to sell 6.5 million motorcycles this year, after selling only 6.4 million in 2015, a drop from 7.8 million in 2014.

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Linkedin Farida Susanty, Ni Komang Erviani and Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta/Bali/Medan  Sat, June 11 2016

Lake Toba in North Sumatra is no unknown clime for Ray Ng. The 50-year-old Singaporean visits the largest lake in Southeast Asia at least three times a year, staying every time in the town of Parapat on the lakes shore.



It has immense natural beauty, a suitable climate and a rich culture that provide all the best elements that a tourist could ask for, Ng told The Jakarta Post on Friday.



Lake Toba stretches across an area of more than 1,700 square kilometers; in the middle of the lake lies the island of Samosir, famous for its traditional Batak houses and Sigale-gale wooden puppets, the background of which is shrouded in mysticism.



The government is now developing and promoting the area as a geopark. The Tourism Ministry estimates that there are 40 similar geo-heritage sites in Indonesia that can be developed into future national geoparks.



We have what it takes to boost our green ecotourism. We want these 40 sites to be identified as world-class green heritage, Dadang Rizki Ratman, the assistant for tourism and destination development at the ministry, said recently.



The 40 sites will add to the nations list of globally and nationally recognized geoparks, a list currently comprising two global entries  the Mount Batur caldera in Bali and Mount Sewu in East Java  and four national geoparks: Lake Toba in North Sumatra, Merangin in Jambi, Ciletuh in West Java and Rinjani in West Nusa Tenggara.



The two global geoparks are listed as part of the UNESCO Global Geopark Network. The government hopes to see other geoparks also attain UNESCO recognition and reap the resultant tourism benefits.



Mount Sewu, for instance, saw visitor numbers skyrocket to more than 4 million after it was named a global geopark in 2015, having reached only half that number in 2012.



Meanwhile, the caldera at Mount Batur  an active volcano formed more than 20,000 years ago  now sees at least 2,000 visitors daily after becoming a global geopark in 2012. Bali Tourism Agency head Wayan Adnyana said that he could only dream of such figures prior to 2012.



Foreign tourists trust UNESCO. The good thing about being on the list is that we are promoted and have better access to institutional cooperation, such as with sister geoparks, Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry museum and geopark revitalization team chairman Yunus Kusumahbrata noted.



The government is looking to see the Rinjani park make the UNESCO cut next year and for Merangin, Toba and Ciletuh to follow in 2018.



It also hopes to attract more than 6 million domestic and foreign tourists this year to the national geoparks and other geo-heritage sites and for that number to exceed 10 million by 2019.



However, Dadang and Yunus acknowledged the many objects standing in the way of these ambitions, such as a lack of infrastructure. Its still pretty hard to reach Ciletuh, Dadang said.



The Merangin geopark failed to make the UNESCO list in 2014, falling victim to management issues.



Ng also pointed out the numerous car washes and mechanics garages that blighted the aspect of tourist sites on and around Lake Toba, reflecting haphazard spatial planning in the area.



To solve the matters, the government is planning to issue a presidential regulation on geopark development in Indonesia; the regulation will include a stipulation on the formation of a national geopark committee.



Yunus also said that third-party cooperation, including with private companies, was also planned in order to gain maximum benefits for the areas tourism development.

__________________________________________

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Linkedin Agustian Sutrisno (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, June 11 2016

The city of Yogyakarta is host to two Catholic universities and two Muhammadiyah universities. The presence of two higher education institutions of the same religious denomination and ideological persuasion, offering more or less similar courses in one locality is perhaps one demonstration of the unnecessary duplication of higher education service provision in this country.

Such duplication reflects the nations excessive number of higher education institutions. There are 4,446 higher education institutions in Indonesia serving approximately 5 million students.

More than half are specialized colleges, known as sekolah tinggi. Very few countries with populations similar to or bigger than Indonesias have this enormous number of institutions.

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Linkedin Indra Budiari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, June 11 2016

With only half an hour left before Friday prayers, Guruh Suliano Putra was sitting in front of a four-story building with Chinese features and once in a while he took a smartphone from his pocket to check the time.

The sun was getting hotter as speakers on the building started to broadcast the adzan, a sign that the prayers would soon start. However, Guruh still waited outside and watched people begin to take their positions in the Lautze Mosque.

I was hoping that this could be my first Friday prayer, but the ustadz [Muslim cleric] told me the conversion procedure would be held afterwards, he told The Jakarta Post.

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Bali  Sat, June 11 2016

UNESCOs decision to list Mt. Batur, in Bali as a world geopark has boosted the number of tourists visiting the area, an official has said.

The number of tourists visiting Batur has significantly increased since it was listed as part of the Global Geopark Network, Bangli Tourism Agency head Wayan Adnyana said on Friday.

Located some 60 kilometers north of Denpasar, Mt. Batur is an active volcano with a caldera measuring 10 by 13 kilometers. It is estimated that the volcano was formed between 23,670 and 28,500 years ago.

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Linkedin Esther Samboh and Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, June 11 2016

The main gateway to Indonesia, Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, just outside of Jakarta, will get a major facelift in the next five years to make it a five-star airport and international transit hub.



The airports operator, state-owned Angkasa Pura II (AP II), recently offered its first ever bond to the public to raise Rp 2 trillion (US$149.5 million) to help fund the Rp 4.7 trillion expansion of Terminal 3.



The modern, minimalist Terminal 3 will serve international flights by the end of this year, as well as all flights by flag carrier Garuda Indonesia. The new terminal is hoped to put Soekarno-Hatta on par with Singapores Changi and South Koreas Incheon international.



But that is just the beginning. AP II finance director Andra Agussalam said the company planned to spend a total of Rp 30 trillion over the next five years to develop its 13 airports, 85 percent of which would be for Soekarno-Hatta, which accounts for three quarters of the companys revenue, said finance director Andra Y. Agussalam.



Soekarno-Hatta Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 will get a facelift of airsides, taxiways, runways as well as transit and cargo areas. The international airport will also receive a third runway to increase its capacity to accommodate more incoming and outgoing flights.



Looking ahead five years, the President is already asking for a fourth terminal for Soekarno-Hatta. Maybe by then we can go public, AP II president director Budi Karya Sumadi told The Jakarta Post in a recent interview, unveiling a Rp 10 trillion plan for the airports fourth terminal.



The big picture is encouraging. Indonesia, poised to become one of the worlds top ten airline markets in the next decade, is among the worlds most rapidly growing markets in terms of passenger figures, data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) show. The number of air passengers in Southeast Asias largest economy grew 8 percent last year.



President Joko Jokowi Widodo is pushing for a boost in tourism, with the government waiving visa requirements for citizens of 169 countries visiting Indonesia for up to 30 days in a bid to attract 20 million foreign tourists by 2019, double the figure seen last year.



Airports are a profitable business. Indonesian airports are currently undersupplied. Demand for the services is booming, whereas facilities are lacking. In the future, especially with the development of Terminal 3 Ultimate, demand for airport services will be huge, said Kahlil Rowter, chief economist at Danareksa Sekuritas.



Kahlil, whose company is the underwriter of the bonds, said he believed the bonds would sell like hot cakes because of the high business potential of AP II. The bonds carry an AAA rating from Pefindo, with the coupon ranging from 8.5 percent to 9.25 percent for maturity periods of five, seven years and 10 years.



Budi, an engineer by training who spent more than 25 years in the property business before taking up the top post at AP II earlier last year, envisions Soekarno-Hatta as a global transit hub for international

travelers.



We want to push Soekarno-Hatta to be a five-star airport. A lot of effort will go into it, said Budi, conveying his dream for Soekarno-Hatta to be aligned with Singapores Changi, Seouls Incheon, Tokyos Haneda and Munich international Airport as a five star-rated airport in Skytrax.



The capital expenditure for these plans was extensive, Budi said, adding the measures would require investment of Rp 10 trillion for each of the first two years and another Rp 10 trillion in the next three years.



Budi foresees that the number of transit passengers at Soekarno-Hatta will quickly reach 15 million, up from 12 million today. The airport operator is hoping that 10 to 30 percent of the transit passengers could spur tourism in Indonesia.



AP II is building international class airports, and flights will continue to increase in Indonesia. They are running a very profitable business, said Investa Saran Mandiri analyst Hans Kwee.



In 2015, AP II achieved revenue of Rp 4.01 trillion, down from Rp 4.87 trillion in 2014, but up from just over Rp 1 trillion a year in the period of 2002 to 2006.



Aside of Soekarno-Hatta, AP II also has big plans for the other airports it operates, including Balis Ngurah Rai Internional Airport, Medans Kualanamu, North Tapanulis Silangit, Padangs Minangkabau and Pangkal Pinangs Depati Amir.



Im all excited, said 59-year-old Budi of his companys expansion plans.

________________________________

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Linkedin Reidinar Juliane, Arief Wijaya and Satrio A. Wicaksono (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, June 11 2016

The tiger is not only a charismatic example of megafauna, but also an umbrella species. As a predator at the top of the food chain, tigers maintain the balance between herbivores and the vegetation upon which they feed. Thus, by protecting and conserving tigers, we also help preserve biodiversity and a whole suite of ecological processes within their habitat.

Tigers are mostly solitary, which is why they need a large territory to survive. Unfortunately, habitat loss, along with poaching, has significantly brought down tiger populations. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the world has lost 97 percent of wild tigers in just over a century and less than 3,500 tigers remain in the wild today.

There are currently 13 tiger-range countries in the world, including Indonesia with six priority Tiger Conservation Landscapes (TCLs) in Sumatra, i.e. protected areas to conserve tigers: Ulumasen-Leuser, Kampar-Kerumutan, Bukit Tigapuluh, Kerinci Seblat, Bukit Balai Rejang Selatan and Bukit Barisan Selatan.

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Linkedin Hans David Tampubolon (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, June 11 2016

The scare remains even after the film is over

Director James Wan cements his mark as the master of terror for this generation through his latest work, The Conjuring 2.

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Linkedin Aulia R. Sungkar (The Jakarta Post)  Sat, June 11 2016

A CULTURAL TRIP TO THE CAPITAL OF SOUTH SULAWESI TO RAISE FUNDS FOR LOCAL COMMUNITIES

Early on a Tuesday morning, a group of socialites gathered at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport dressed in sarongs that hinted of South Sulawesi.



They were joining a cultural trip to Makassar that was organized by MARITAGE Indonesia, a non-profit initiative that seeks to economically empower women artisans in developing countries. The acronym stands for Multicultural Art and Heritage.



The three-day/two-night tour, dubbed Makassar yuukkk, or Lets Go to Makassar, followed the success of Solo yuukkk, a cultural trip to Surakarta (Solo), Central Java held in November.



Both tours are part of MARITAGE Indonesias fundraising program in which participants are also the donors, Dhanny Dahlan, MARITAGE Indonesia vice president, said. The proceeds from both tours will be used to support tailoring class for deaf students at the Sana Dharma junior high school for disabled children in Pondok Labu, Jakarta.



Dhanny, who climbed to fame as a model in the 1980s and 1990s, said that both tours were held to promote tourism in Indonesia. This time, Makassar yuukkk was held in conjunction with Femme: Celebes Beauty Fashion Week, the citys 11th annual fashion show.



J+ was one of only three media representatives invited on the trip, which took the participants on a journey where they could feast their eyes on historic sites while enjoying cultural attractions, culinary excitement as well as a shopping spree. Heres our report.



Traditional and Modern Charms



Upon our arrival at Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport, we went straight to Gowa regency on the southern border of Makassar.



In the Dutch era, Gowa was the center of the Makassar kingdom, whose 16th ruler, Hasanuddin, was proclaimed a National Hero for standing up to Indonesias colonial occupiers.



Still sitting magnificently within the borders of the historic kingdom of Gowa are Tamalate Palace and Balla Lompoa.



The palace now functions as a multi-purpose building for occasions such as wedding receptions.



Adjacent is Balla Lompoa. Literally meaning mansion, the former palace is now a museum, housing various displays of traditional attire and heritage objects.



Gowa Regent Adnan Purichta Ichsan, and his wife, Priska Paramitha Adnan, hosted a lunch at Tamalate Palace to welcome those on the MARITAGE Indonesia tour.



While enjoying sumptuous local dishes, we were entertained by the performances of Pakarena and Pepe traditional dances.



The evening was also enlivened by a musical titled I Basse Goes to Bollywood at Trans Studio Makassar.



In a modern setting, the musical blends comedy and romance as it narrates the journey of love of I Basse, which means the girl from Makassar.



Spanning 2.7 hectares, Trans Studio Makassar is one of the largest indoor amusement parks in the country, featuring four play zones with 22 rides and games.

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post)  Sat, June 11 2016

The US is still in shock and grief after the shooting of gorilla Harambe at Cincinnati Zoo. Zookeepers shot to death 17-year-old gorilla Harambe at the zoo when a boy fell into the apes enclosure. According to the zoo administration, it was necessary because the childs life was in danger. A large number of people all over the country condemned this decision and said the zoo administration should have acted otherwise. A Facebook page called Justice for Harambe was also set up and got more than 3,000 likes.

At the same day when Western media was showing sad pictures of gorilla Harambe, Russian air strikes killed more than 60 people in Rebel-held areas in Adlib, Syria. All-night air strikes and more than 40 attacks reduced several buildings to rubble and killed a large number of people, including women and children.

According to recent UN statistics, the death toll of the Syrian war has reached more than 300,000 and despite the temporary pause in Russian air strikes, Irans involvement is turning things from bad to worse. More than 9 million Syrians are still out of the country and trying to cross the Mediterranean in rough weather conditions. More than 2,700 people lost their lives this month alone while trying to cross Mediterranean. Despite the slaughter, the UN, world community and human rights organizations are sitting silent and doing nothing to stop the massacre.

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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, June 12, 2016

Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama showed off the Smart City program in the opening of the 2016 Jakarta Fair on Friday to demonstrate to visitors the city administrations utilization of information technologies.

This is what I want conducted at the fair. I dont want to see the administration only selling products, like traditional food, to visitors. Jakarta shall introduce to the public the applications it has, which can make the life of the Jakartans or people who want to visit this city easier and better, Ahok said at the Jakarta Smart City monitoring room at the Jakarta International Expo center in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, on Friday.

Ahok, who has become a selfie magnet for visitors, hoped that the public could familiarize themselves and utilize the Jakarta Smart City system because it would be helpful for them. For example, visitors could use the system to check public bus schedules and places where they could find healthy meals in the city. The Jakarta Smart City program also offered an electronic library program accessible by the public, Ahok said.

Besides the program, Ahok also introduced the mobile application Qlue at Fridays event.

You can use Qlue to report your subdistrict head if they are not performing, the governor said.

The Jakarta Fair is scheduled to take place from June 10 to July 17 to celebrate the 489th anniversary of the city. It is expected that more than 5 million people will visit this event. (ebf)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, June 12, 2016

The Agriculture Ministry, in cooperation with the Trade Ministry and the Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises Ministry, on Sunday held a subsidized-food bazaar in Pasar Minggu, South Jakarta, allowing people to buy basic commodities at cheaper prices.

Dozens of people packed the bazaar shortly after opening on Sunday morning. All basic commodities, including rice, beef, cooking oil, cayenne pepper and shallots, were sold at significantly low prices.

At the event, consumers could buy 1 kilogram of rice at only of Rp 7,500 ( 56 US cents ) while shallots were priced at Rp 25,000 per kg. Meanwhile, cayenne pepper and beef were sold at Rp 18,000 and Rp 75,000 per kg, respectively.

The bazaar also offered staple food packages, which were sold at Rp 25,000 per package containing 2 kg of rice, 1 liter of cooking oil, 1 kg of sugar and three packs of instant noodles. Each package was worth Rp 60,000 at normal prices. To buy the package, each customer had to show their identity card to the events organizing committee to prevent people from buying more than one package.

Sri Sulihanti, head of the consumption diversification and food safety center at the Agriculture Ministry's food security and education division, said rice currently was normally selling at Rp 10,000 per kg while the market price of beef was Rp 120,000 per kg. Meanwhile, cayenne pepper and shallots were usually sold at Rp 25,000 and Rp 40,000 respectively.

We are selling these staple foods to consumers at lower prices [in order to reduce market prices and to influence] shorter supply chains of basic food commodities starting from the farmers, Sri said on Sunday.

Similar bazaars have also taken place in several areas across Jakarta such as in Cipete, South Jakarta, and near Sarinah shopping center in Central Jakarta.

Sri said the government would routinely hold subsidized-food bazaars to help consumers fulfil their basic needs amid skyrocketing prices of various staple foods. (vps/ebf)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, June 12, 2016

Similar to previous years, electronics vendors remain the prime attraction for visitors at the Jakarta Fair, in which this years annual event is scheduled to be held from June 10 to July 17 at the Jakarta International Expo center in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta.

On Saturday, visitors swarmed to the electronics booths, which appeared more attractive than other sections retailing fashion, handicrafts, home appliances, automotive products and food. At the electronics booths, vendors promoted new products like cameras, cellular phones and laptops.

Some visitors shared with The Jakarta Post their reasoning as to why they prioritized the events electronics section.

Yosef Rizal from Bandung, West Java, said he wanted to buy a camera. I want to buy a good quality action camera at an affordable price, Yosef said. He was also interested to see new automotive products at the event.

Meanwhile, Candra Sagita from Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, said he came to electronics section because he wanted to replace his cellular phone. I want to buy a new phone with better specifications, he said.

Similarly, Ariyanto from Kedoya, West Jakarta, said he planned to buy a cellular phone for his son. My son needs a phone. I want to buy him a cheap Chinese phone, Ari told the Post when visiting an electronics booth.

The 49th Jakarta Fair celebrates the 489th anniversary of the city, where the event is expected to draw 5 million visitors and see Rp 5.8 trillion (US$436.58 million) worth of transactions. A total of 2,700 companies are participating in the event. (rez/ebf)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, June 12, 2016

Publicly listed coal mining firm Golden Energy Mines is upbeat it can double net profits in 2016 to US$4 million as the company has managed to reduce costs and booked more sales.

Sluggish coal prices had put pressure on Golden Energys performance last year, with net profit slumping by 80.7 percent to $2.1 million. Indonesian coal exports to China, the largest coal importer from the country, plunged by 30 percent to 204 million tons in 2015, while exports to India dropped by 15 percent to 132 million tons.

Golden Energy president director Fuganto Widjaja said the company had secured more than 70 percent of its sales target this year. He saw coal supply and demand in balance this year, unlike the coal oversupply amid low demand that squeezed the industry in 2015.

We have locked the selling price, and if the coal price does not change much, we are optimistic to reach the target, he said after the annual general meeting (AGM) in Jakarta on Friday.

The firm targets production of 8.6 million tons and sales of 10.7 million tons in 2016. The company plans capital expenditure of $1.5 million to maintain its infrastructure this year. State-owned electricity company PLN expects coal demand of 82 million tons this year, Fuganto said.

Despite the weakening performance in 2015, Golden Energy shareholders agreed at the AGM to pay out $1.5 million in dividends, equaling 75 percent of the 2015 net income. (sha/ags)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, June 12, 2016

While continuing to hold subsidized-food bazaars, the government is working on a plan to streamline the supply chain of basic food commodities, a minister has said.

There could be at least nine stopping points within a supply chain. If each reseller is one stopping point and takes a 10-percent profit, consumers will experience very high food prices, with an almost 100 percent markup compared to the real price from producers, Agriculture Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman said in Jakarta on Sunday.

The minister said the government had planned to shorten supply chains by collaborating with several parties including the Indonesian Farmer Stores (TTI), cooperatives, state postal service company PT Pos Indonesia and non-profit organization Artha Graha Peduli.

He said under the program, food producers could distribute their products directly to the TTI, which would distribute them to consumers.

Before the system comes into effect, we will keep holding subsidized-food bazaars to stabilize food prices, Andi said.

He said the government had formed a special team to realize the system. The team comprised representatives of the Agriculture, Industry, Trade, and State-owned Enterprises Ministries. Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution would lead the team.

Upbeat -- Industry Minister Saleh Husin (right) talks to journalists on the sidelines of a subsidized-food bazaar in Pasar Minggu, South Jakarta, on Sunday. He said the government had taken measures to lower food prices. (thejakartapost.com/Viriya Paramita Singgih)

Industry Minister Saleh Husin said the nations people should maintain moderate consumption behaviors, especially during the Ramadhan fasting month, as growing uncontrolled food demand could lead to significant price hikes.

We ask consumers not to buy up staple foods exceeding what they need once food prices return to normal as if they want to compete each other in buying up cheap foods. Just do it fairly, he said while visiting a bazaar.

Saleh said the government had been trying to stabilize prices by holding subsidized-food bazaars. However, a sudden big demand in staple foods could increase prices again, he warned.

Andi said it seemed to him that the consumption behavior of Indonesian people contradicted the meaning of Ramadhan.

Our food stocks are more than enough. However, it seems to me their consumption behavior is out of control. People should refrain themselves from excessive food spending during the fasting month, Andi said. (vps/ebf)
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Linkedin Nethy Dharma Somba (The Jakarta Post) Jayapura, Papua  Sun, June 12, 2016

Several journalists have been intimidated and threatened while covering the rerun election in the Mamberamo Raya regency in Papua.

Rivand Nay, of private television station RCTI in Papua, was reportedly threatened by a group of men armed with bows, arrows and machetes at the Kampung Fona I polling station on Thursday. His camera was also confiscated. Rivand was forced to remain inside his house as the armed men continued to mill around outside.

It began on Thursday when I left my house [to cover the election]. I had only walked for around five minutes when I was suddenly blocked by around 10 people who had bows and arrows and short machetes. They told me to turn back and they kept my camera, said Rivand.

The journalist said one of the unidentified persons aimed a bow and arrow at his chest.

On Saturday, Rivand was picked up from Kampung Fona by a helicopter and transported to Kasoanwerja, the capital of Mamberamo Raya regency. I feel safe now, he told thejakartapost.com on Sunday. Rivand said two members of the police Mobile Brigade witnessed the incident during which the people blocked him and seized his camera but they did not do anything.

Cast your votes  Elections officials await voters wishing to cast their ballots during the rerun election in a polling station in Mamberamo Raya, Papua, on Thursday. (Courtesy of the Papua General Elections Commission/-)

Papua Post journalist Gultom Pangaribuan said he and 10 other people were taken hostage at the Kampung Fona II polling station. He said there were two Mamberamo Raya Police officers at the polling station but they were too afraid to take action.

In total, nine journalists from various media outlets were covering the rerun election in Mamberamo Raya on Thursday. Each polling station was covered by one journalist.

All the journalists have been intimidated and prohibited from taking pictures of the election by supporters of one of the regent and deputy regent candidate pairs, Vivanews.com journalist Banjir Ambarita said.

We have reported what we experienced to the election supervisory committee in Mamberamo Raya, said Gultom. (ebf)
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Linkedin Djemi Amnifu (The Jakarta Post) Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara  Sun, June 12, 2016

East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) can play a key role in helping achieve self-sufficiency in terms of salt production in Indonesia, a minister has said.

Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti said Indonesia had the second-longest coastline in the world after Canada, stretching 99,093 kilometers, but 80 percent of the salt it consumed was still imported.

State salt producer PT Garam is our spearhead for achieving national salt self-sufficiency. Our coastline is the second-longest in the world but 80 percent of our salt is still imported. How come? she said at a dialog with salt farmers of Bipolo village in Sulamu district, Kupang, NTT, on Sunday.

As an Indonesian citizen, Susi said, she was sad to see things like this and hoped that PT Garam and related institutions could contact the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry about developing the salt industry in NTT.

It is the farmers here who can help us overcome our shame," said Susi. "Hopefully [...] Kupang can produce good quality salt."

She praised PT Garam for, together with local people, having set up 400 hectares of salt ponds in Bipolo village in just two months.

Im happy because there has been good cooperation between PT Garam and locals, allowing the salt ponds to operate well, said the minister.

Precious commodity  A worker of state salt producer PT Garam flows water into salt ponds in Bipolo village, Kupang, on Sunday.(thejakartapost.com/Djemi Amnifu)

Separately, PT Garam financial director Beny Suharsono said the 400 ha of salt ponds, costing a total of Rp 6.2 billion ( US$464,500 ), had a production capacity of 36,000 tons per year. The ponds will soon be extended to cover up to 1,000 ha and produce up to 40,000 tons.

Beny admitted that Indonesia would still have to import salt to fulfill its annual demand 3.2 million tons. He said NTT had 9,000 ha of salt ponds spread across East Manggarai, Kupang, Nagekeo, Rote Ndao, Sabu Raijua and Sikka regencies.

With 9,000 ha, NTT can produce around 2 million tons of salt. So actually, half of our domestic salt needs can be supplied from NTT, he said.

Beny said around 40 percent of national salt reserves would come from NTT if all the salt ponds in the province produced optimally. Currently, around 70 percent of domestic salt supply comes from Madura, he said. (ebf)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, June 12, 2016

The Maarif Institute for Culture and Humanity has presented awards to this years fighters for pluralism: senior journalist Rudi Fofid, advocate Budiman Maliki and womens peace group Institute Mosintuwu.

The three winners are considered pioneers for change within their respective societies as they have consistently promoted the spirit of unity in diversity. The 2016 Maarif Award targeted ordinary people doing extraordinary work, especially in terms of fighting against intolerance and sectarianism in Indonesia.

Those three recipients represent the idea that the dark past could be a basis for the creation of a better future, Maarif Institute executive director Fajar Riza Ul Haq said during a press conference in Jakarta on Sunday.

They have been involved in the struggle to find peace in Ambon and Poso. They have also been an important part of post-conflict processes, namely reconciliation and rehabilitation.

Rudi is a senior Maluku journalist who promoted peace journalism during sectarian strife that caused the death of 2,000 people in Ambon in 1999. In recent years, he has also spread positive energy among the young generation by producing works of literature and hip-hop music.

The jury panel said Rudi was also a survivor who believed that whoever killed his father and older sister years ago was also a victim of the conflict.

Meanwhile, Budiman is an advocate at the Institute for Civil Initiative Development (LPMS) in Poso, Central Sulawesi, which was home to sectarian conflict between Muslims and Christians between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s. The Maarif Institute praised him as an untainted activist willing to set aside his salary for the LPMS headquarters operational costs. He makes a living for his family by selling popsicles.

Meanwhile, the Institute Mosintuwu is a grassroots community group that empowers women in Poso with education. The organization is considered to have played a crucial role in encouraging women to end conflict and develop tolerance in their homeland.

Nothing will change after these awards. In fact, our responsibilities are getting bigger, said Asni Yati Hamidi, a program director at the Institute Mosintuwu.

The jury members for the 2016 Maarif Award are Clara Juwono from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Islamic scholar Komaruddin Hidayat, Noodjanah Djohantini from Aisyiyah (Muhammadiyah's female wing), Maluku peace activist Jack Manuputty, who was the recipient of the first Maarif Award in 2007, and The Jakarta Post's editor-in-chief Endy Bayuni.

The award is named after the institute's founder, Ahmad Syafii Maarif, who was the chairman of Muhammadiyah from 1998-2005 and championed a more tolerant and inclusive Indonesia. (vps/ebf)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, June 12, 2016

This years Jakarta Fair, an annually held event to attract shopping enthusiasts with great sales, has given visitors a different atmosphere because the event is taking place during the Ramadhan fasting month.

Many visitors said it was less enjoyable for them to visit the Jakarta Fair during Ramadhan because they could not enjoy its culinary delights during their visit. I go the Jakarta Fair with my family every year and apart from shopping, we usually could enjoy its food during our visit, Nurwasti, a visitor from Cibubur, East Jakarta, told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

Similarly, Junaidi from Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta, said he did not enjoy very much the attractions offered at the event. I couldnt enjoy the cuisines available even after breaking fast in the afternoon. Id rather perform tarawih [Ramadhan evening prayers] instead of browsing the events booths. As a Muslim, I want to improve the quality of my religious service during Ramadhan, Junaidi said.

Meanwhile, Wiyardo Ade Mulyono from Depok, West Java, said he could not visit the event in the evening because his wife had to accompany their children carry out religious activities for Ramadhan at the mosque. Besides, we have to perform tarawih together, Ade said.

Ade further said the fair seemed to be getting less popular when compared to last year. Today Ive seen less visitors in the afternoon compared to last years event, he said.

Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama, Home Affairs Minister Tjahjo Kumolo, and Jakarta International Expo managing director Prajna Murdaya jointly opened the 49th Jakarta Fair on Friday, to celebrate the 489th anniversary of the city. The annual event will be held from June 10 to July 17 at the Jakarta International Expo center in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta.

It is expected that this years Jakarta Fair will draw 5 million visitors and register transactions worth Rp 5.8 trillion (US$436.58 million). A total of 2,700 companies have booths at the fair, as well as close to 150 musicians will perform to entertain shoppers. (rez/ebf)
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Linkedin Prima Wirayani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, June 12, 2016

Taxation director general Ken Dwijugiasteadi had to answer a question he claimed he had never received before during a press briefing at his office in Jakarta on Friday.

A journalist from a local media outlet threw a question about his feeling amid the hustle-bustle surrounding taxation in the country lately.

"Is it wrong if I love the DJP [Taxation Directorate General] too much?" he asked to the delight of journalists and his officials.

He went on to say, in a more serious manner, that he would do anything for his office. "People can attack me personally and that is fine. But if [they attack] the DJP, I will stand for it," he said.

Ken was sworn into his position in December last year after his predecessor, Sigit Priadi Pramudito, resigned over the government's failure to meet its tax revenue target.

Ken, who was the tax office's regulation and law enforcement expert before assuming his current position, faces a similar challenge to Sigit. He has seven months left to fill the gap of 70 percent on the 2016 tax revenue target.

Data from the Finance Ministry's treasury directorate general show that Rp 364.1 trillion (US$27.4 billion) in taxes was collected as of May, only 26.8 percent of this year's target of Rp 1.36 quadrillion. (ags)
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FOR the first time, local Chinese brands are equal to international brands in a measurement index -- meaning they are now in many ways perceived as equally competitive, new research found.

According to advertising giant WPP and its market research unit Millward Brown, both multinationals and local Chinese brands score 100 on the metric of Brand Power -- the BrandZ measurement of brand equity.

But Chinese brands have the advantage of upward momentum, while international brands are weakening, it said. In 2010, multinationals scored 115, while Chinese brands scored only 89.

A decade ago, international brands were synonymous with quality in the minds of certain Chinese consumers. They offered status and bling, while local brands could only aspire to being "good enough".

Uncertainty consumers in China once felt toward domestic products is gone. Local brands are challenging and beating global competition and consumers increasingly believe they are comparable, according to Millward Brown.

The total value of BrandZ 2016 top 100 most valuable Chinese brands rose 13 percent in 2015, despite the economic slowdown, as consumers remain confident in their spending and optimistic about living a better life, it said.

Millward Brown said that Chinese brands are doing a better job than their global rivals, in providing quality and value and leveraging the right channels to make its products available to Chinese consumers.

As the information explosion in China makes people more sophisticated, they demand more choice as well as better quality and value. This presents an opportunity for new, niche brands to come onto the market -- and again, local brands are taking the lead, it said.

Chinese brands are also doing better in catching the speed of the mobile wave. China is the most dynamic market in the world in terms of mobile use. The use of cash and credit cards is already perceived as outdated.

In addition, Chinese brands invest more heavily in media than their international counterparts. The top 10 investors on the TV channel CCTV, for example, are all local brands apart from Coca-Cola.

Chinese companies are learning how to develop unique, innovative brands. If international brands can't speed up and change their approach they risk missing the wave, and being replaced, it added.
Phuket Opinion: Scoping change with a 2020 vision

PHUKET: Looking ahead, Thailand is caught between a myriad of juxtapositions  of time and technology; expansion and conservation; freedom and security... to name but a few  all of which have critical implications for Phuket.

opiniontechnologymilitarypoliticspolicetourismimmigration

By The Phuket News

Sunday 12 June 2016, 07:56AM

As part of the Phuket Smart City, tabs will be kept on everyone, everything, everywhere to ensure the utmost accountability, and security. Photo Nicolas Halftermeyer

In this age of surveillance, as the Kingdom scrambles to modernise and upgrade its capacity to counter a multitude of global, regional, national and local threats, all eyes are honing in on Phuket, the Kingdoms original international island, which serves as a hub, home and stomping-ground to a diverse sampling of planet Earth.

Indeed, as residents of and regulars to this 576-square-kilometre cluster of rocks in the Phang Nga Bay, we all harbour a certain love-hate relationship with our beloved host, and at some point, inevitably, will have questioned whether the reasons we originally came, and stayed, remain valid. As the weathering winds of change become ever-more prevalent across the rapidly-transforming landscape, more doubt is bound to cloud ones contentedness with paradise island life.

Cue the Phuket Smart City 2020 agenda, which has been allocated B430 million from this years central fiscal budget. In the words of Pracha Asawateera, head of the Software Industry Promotion Agency (SIPA) Phuket office, the funds will be used to develop digital technology to drive urban infrastructure and also promote the island city as a smart living community focusing on safety and security in both land and marine areas. (See story here.)

Simply put, the government is investing in technology and infrastructure to increase its capacity to monitor, profile and keep track of the Phuket populace, from hereon to be treated as one inclusive, programmable urban centre.

On one hand, the envisioned Smart City will be a clean, safe and efficient machine, where all runs like clockwork (think Singapore), and in which tabs are kept on everyone, everything, everywhere, ensuring maximum accountability and security and thus, it is argued, a better standard of living for all.

On the other hand, the days are numbered for many of the entitlements and loopholes that lured many to Phuket in the first place. Likewise, rights to personal space and privacy will increasingly be challenged by utilitarian appeals from the watchful eye of the state  for better or worse, only time will tell.
The beetles and the axe: double trouble for prized Polish forest

POLAND: The roar of a chainsaw and staccato blows of an axe break the silence deep in Polands majestic Bialowieza forest as loggers swiftly fell a 90-year-old tree.

animalsenvironment

By AFP

Sunday 12 June 2016, 11:00AM

Forest workers cut down a spruce tree suffering from woodworm attack in the Bialowieza forest near Bialowieza, Poland on May 31. Photo: Wojtek Radwanski/AFP

Teeming with wildlife, Bialowieza, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, includes one of the largest surviving parts of the primeval forest that covered the European plain ten thousand years ago.

But today, this peaceful haven is the scene of a bitter battle between environmentalists and officials over a spruce bark beetle infestation that rangers say is damaging healthy trees.

There is no denying spruce bark beetles are having a field day in the forest, also home to the continents largest mammal, the European bison, as well as elks, wolves and lynx.

The wood of a logged spruce reveals a spectacular network of tunnels created by the insects. When their population gets as huge as it is now, the beetles are no longer content just to finish off diseased spruce. They also attack healthy trees, Andrzej Antczak, a local forest ranger said.

Authorities insist the goal of the tree felling is to stop the degradation of the treasured woodland.

But environmentalists and many scientists argue the beetle poses no threat and that officials are more interested in selling wood than protecting the forest.

Spruce trees make up around 30 per cent of Bialowieza and rangers say that beetles have attacked about a fifth of them, translating into about a million cubic metres of lumber.

Each infected tree threatens up to 30 of its neighbours. And warmer weather means that up to five generations of beetles can reproduce over a year.

Cutting a single infested tree and removing it, can save one to two hectares of forest per year, Grzegorz Bielecki, head forest ranger at Bialowieza, said.

Over the centuries, Bialowieza has been spared the loggers by Polish kings and Russian czars who treasured it as the perfect hunting ground brimming with large game.

The forest also survived massive clear-cut logging  when all is felled down to the stem  in the 20th-century by Russian and German occupiers, British industrialists and communist authorities.

Sprawling over 150,000 hectares, Bialowieza reaches across the Polish border with Belarus, where it is entirely protected as a nature park, compared to only around 16% of the Polish part of the forest.

Green activists argue that the entire Polish part of the forest should be designated as a nature park, meaning logging would be forbidden.

But since it was elected in October 2015, the controversial Law and Justice (PiS) government has said it plans to harvest more than 180,000 cubic metres of wood over a decade  triple the amount approved by the previous liberal government.

The PiS insist new trees outnumber ones that are being chopped down and that protected virgin woodlands will not be logged.

The governing conservatives claim logging will protect the forest from beetles and people from being hit by weakened, falling spruce.

Environmentalists, however, accuse rangers of altering the forests unique ecosystem which is described by UNESCO as an irreplaceable area for biodiversity conservation.

A coalition of environmental organisations, including Greenpeace and the Polish branch of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), has lodged a complaint with the European Commission over the logging.

The EU has also said it is concerned by Warsaws decisions to log in Bialowieza and a UNESCO delegation was due to visit Poland from June 4 to 8.

Science professor Rafal Kowalczyk said he opposes the felling, believing the beetle-ravaged trees should be allowed to die naturally and become a habitat for new flora and fauna.

The trees around me look dead, but in reality theyre brimming with life, even more so than when they were growing, because now theyre home to hundreds of insect species, Kowalczyk said, standing in part of the forest where trees fell victim to beetles.

A dead tree is a wealth of biodiversity, added the director of an outpost of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Bialowieza.

To cut down trees in this forest is comparable to what the Taliban does when it destroys works of art!
Vietnam to splurge US$5.5bn to double Hanoi airport capacity

HANOI: Vietnam is planning a US$5.5-billion expansion of Hanois airport to double its capacity by 2030.

tourismtransport

By TTR Weekly

Sunday 12 June 2016, 02:00PM

Vietnam is planning to spend US$5.5 billion on doubling the capacity of Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi.

Tuoi Tre News quoted the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam saying that Noi Bai International Airport would most likely be over-stretched by 2019 due to strong passenger growth.

With a maximum capacity of 25 million passengers, the current Noi Bai Airport will quickly reach that ceiling if the present growth rate of 22 per cent per year is maintained.

The government added a second terminal at the end of 2014 that almost doubled its capacity to 25 million passengers a year. The new extension will boost capacity to 50 million passengers a year by 2030.

An additional terminal building will stand on 720 hectares of land opposite the existing Noi Bai International Airport on the other side of the Vo Nguyen Giap Road.

Details of the plan are not yet finalised and are subject to government approval, the CAAV director Lai Xuan Thanh said.

The countrys air passenger traffic grew 7.9%, last year, to 20.7 million, while growth in the first five months of 2016 leaped 30.9% to 17 million.

Hanoi is set to welcome 21.2 million domestic and international tourists this year, up 6.95% from last year.

Of that total, 17.4 million are domestic travellers, while around 3.8 million are foreigners.

Both markets should generate an estimated US$2.68 billion in tourism revenue up 8.11% from last year.

Read original story here.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) has said that XpressWest's unilateral termination of cooperation with a Chinese company has no impact on its project which a Chinese team led by China Railway International (CRI) also expressed interest to take part in.

"The news about XpressWest has no impact on the California High-Speed Rail Program," the CHSRA told Xinhua on Friday, two days after the private U.S. firm XpressWest unilaterally announced termination of its cooperation with CRI in building a high-speed rail between Las Vegas and Southern California.

A CRI manager responsible for the joint venture has told Xinhua that XpressWest was precipitate and irresponsible to make such a statement while its talks with the CRI were still going on, vowing to spare no effort to safeguard CRI's interests.

As for the California High-Speed Rail Program, the CHSRA said on Friday that approximately 119 miles (190.4 km) of construction were already underway in the Central Valley and a lot of progress was being made.

The Chinese High Speed Rail Delivery Team consisting of CRI and five other companies expressed their interest in participating in the California High-Speed Rail program last September.

CHSRA's CEO Jeff Morales told Xinhua last September that the high-speed rail construction in China during the past 10 years was impressive. He hoped the Chinese team will have a good performance in the fair competition to bid for the California High-Speed Rail project in the future.

The California High-Speed Rail aims to connect Sacramento with San Diego eventually, totaling 800 miles (1,280 km) with up to 24 stations along the line.

The line between the Silicon Valley and the Central Valley will be the first segment to construct and will be completed by 2024 and start operation in 2025.

CHSRA's Chairman of Board Dan Richard told Xinhua in February that the construction of the California high-speed rail was picking up pace.

The California government started to pursue the idea of a Southern California high-speed rail corridor in 1981. On Jan. 6, 2015, the CHSRA held a groundbreaking ceremony attended by Governor Jerry Brown in Fresno, a city in Central Valley, to start the construction of the nation's first high-speed rail system.

Compared with XpressWest, a private project, the California High-Speed Rail program is much bigger and got support from most of the public.

XpressWest's project, if connects Las Vegas with Victorville in Southern California, will have a length of about 300 km and cost around 8 billion dollars, while only the Phase I of California High-Speed Rail will extend about 800 km from San Francisco to Los Angeles and cost at least 68 billion.

In 2002, the California Senate passed a bill to authorize a US$9.95 billion bond measure to finance the California High-Speed Rail system. In November 2008, the bond measure was approved by the state's voters, making it the nation's first ever voter-approved financing mechanism for high-speed rail.

In 2009, US$8 billion in federal funds was made available nationwide as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and California sought and successfully secured US$3.3 billion of the funds.

Besides, a long-term, continuous funding will come from the California Cap-and-Trade program, as the amount for fiscal year 2014-2016 will be US$650 million.

The XpressWest is now facing more difficulties without cooperation with CRI. As the company has no background in transportation construction, it will have to look for new partner for the designing, developing and building of the high-speed rail.

The XpressWest intended to renew its request for the federal loan. Its request of US$5.5 billion federal loan was indefinitely suspended by the Department of Transportation in 2013.
Whale shark spotted by fishermen off Phuket's southwest coast

PHUKET: A Video clip posted on Facebook this morning captures the relatively rare sighting of a whale shark in Phuket's waters.



By Eakkapop Thongtub

Sunday 12 June 2016, 06:05PM

The video clip, which has a length of about one minute, 50 seconds, was posted by Facebook user "Nai Lay Chao Lay Patong" (  ) who claimed that the clip was taken on June 9, 2016, near Laem Phrom Thep cape, off the island's southwest coast.

"We were out on our longtail boat looking for fish, and along comes this whale shark, clearly not scared of us, and play swimming with us. We didn't do anything to it," the post reported.

A whale shark sighting off Phuket was last reported near Nai Yang Beach back in April, which followed another sighting off the island's east coast in October, last year.
Yang Yuanqing, Chairman and CEO of Lenovo showcased the Moto Z modular phone at the 2016 Tech World in San Francisco on June 9, 2016. (People's Daily Online/Han Shasha)

Lenovo displayed and launched a handful of surprising products on Thursday at the 2016 Tech World conference in San Francisco witnessed by over a thousand attendees.

Yang Yuanqing, Chairman and CEO of Lenovo introduced his vision of the future for the company: device innovation, device plus cloud, and infrastructure. "The new era is all about connected computing. Lenovo is aggressively taking this opportunity. If a device is not deeply connected with the cloud, or not with intelligence, its users will be very limited," he said.

Yang announced its first Lenovo Phab2 Pro, the first commercially available phone with Google Tango. The smart phone enables users to do indoor navigation, measurement, playing dominos and other entertaining activities with its Tango mapping technology and next-generation depth-sensing smart cameras.

Chen Xudong, senior VP and co-president of Lenovo's mobile business group, told the reporter that Phab2 Pro is Lenovo's first AR phone. He said "We would like to provide a platform for AR developers." with years of developments, Augmented Reality (AR) is not new, however, many of the applications targets enterprise customers. There is not an open platform for content builders and app developers on smart phones. Now Phab2 Pro has two apps, including an educational one with kinds of dinosaurs, such as the Brontosaurus, Velociraptor, and the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Users could "create" virtual dinosaurs anywhere by clipping the app.

Another "disruptive" product showcased by Yang is Lenovo's Moto Z modular phone. Claiming to be the thinnest premium smart phone, the Moto Z is 5.2mm thick without any Mod accessories attached. And the Moto Z phone comes in a standard model and Moto Z Force version. The later one is thicker at 7mm. While the modular phone has some Moto Mods attached to the back of the phone via 16 magnetic dots to provide a new look, longer battery life, improved audio, a projector, or other extra features.

For instance, short battery life is always a headache for smart phone users. The Power Pack Mod adds a 2,220mAh cell to the back of the phone which will prolong the battery life to extra 22 hours. The Mods are integrated into the phone's software, so when a battery mod is attached to the phone, the user can monitor the charge status of both the internal battery and the mod's cell.

Yang also said at the conference that Lenovo offering a development kit for third-party companies to build Mods themselves. Lenovo's Capital and Incubator Group will set up a $1,000,000 fund for the developer who could develop the best prototype Mod by March 31st, 2017.

"Smart phone makers are willing to add more features to one phone once they thought it's an innovation. While users pay more attention on higher quality than on more innovation," said Chen, "After realizing that, we changed our strategy by making the thinnest phone and enabling users to customize their phone with added mods."

The Phab2 Pro will be available globally for $499 in September. And the Moto Z will be on market in the United States in Summer, and globally in September. In addition to the products that will soon come to market, Lenovo demonstrated two futuristic devices that are not yet products. Cell phones could be snapped onto wrists when one wear clothes without a pocket. Tablets could be folded up as a cell phone when one wants to watch big-screen photos while also needs a normal phone to talk. "Such devices require more than just flexible screen technology. Internal components need to bend for these products to work," Peter Hortensius, CTO of Lenovo told the cheering audience.
It's our annual Labour Weekend tradition ...The Sound 'Hall Of Fame' Countdown... Where we honor the greatest 500 songs of all time as voted by you.
The first labor arbitration case on job discrimination against a HIV positive individual in Guangdong Province will open a court session on Sunday at a local arbitration commission in Guangzhou, capital of the southern province.

The plaintiff, Ah Ming (pseudonym), filed the case against his employer, a local State-run public institution, in April, after he was ordered to quit his job to get enough rest when he was found to have an HIV infection during a physical inspection.

Ah demanded an arbitration because he regarded the companys order as illegal and because he would like to resume his job.

According to a press release sent to the Peoples Daily Online, the 27-year-old Ah had been working with the company for three years on a contract-based job and was applying to get a permanent job at the institution, which required a physical inspection, and hence the termination.

Ah was told that his disease would disallow him to comply with the provincial employment standards for State-run public institutions. The company also asked him to beisolated for treatment and to quit his job for rest.

This reportedly marks the sixth job discrimination case against HIV carriers in China.

Chinas laws and regulations stipulate that HIV carriers and their family members enjoy lawful rights to marriage, and employment and education, all of which are protected by the law.
These photos of a 95-year-old couple in stylish dresses have gone viral on Chinese social media. They are from northern China's Hebei province and they took theses photos to celebrate their 64th wedding anniversary.
BERLIN, June 12 -- Angela Merkel will pay her ninth visit to China on June 12-14 since she became German chancellor in 2005. The frequency of her visits to China is quite rare for a Western country leader and it reflects the depth and width of Sino-German relations.

During her visit, Merkel will co-chair an intergovernmental consultation with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, to further strengthen their top planning for bilateral relations, enrich their comprehensive strategic partnership, and expand and deepen their bilateral cooperation.

Since the mechanism for intergovernmental consultation between China and Germany was established in 2011, both sides have held three rounds of consultation. It is also the first such mechanism established between China and a European country and has become the most important platform for planning and advancing China-Germany cooperation.

How China and Germany will step up their coordination and cooperation under the framework of the Group of 20 (G20) is high on the agenda of the upcoming fourth round of consultation between the two countries, as China will host the G20 summit in September and Germany will host it in 2017.

Facing the weak recovery of the world economy, countries like the United States and Japan have attempted to get rid of their predicament via stronger monetary easing policies, which have generated various negative spillover effects.

China and Germany have always advocated achieving economic growth and sustainable development through innovation and structural reform. Further strengthening macro policy coordination between them will help reinforce the recovery and stability of the world economy.

"Innovation" has been the focus of China-Germany economic and trade cooperation in recent years, and the two countries have decided to push ahead with the establishment of a mutually beneficial "innovation partnership" as their industrial and technological cooperation has deepened.

It is learned that during her visit to China, Merkel will attend a China-Germany economic and technology cooperation forum and a dialogue with business circles and visit a China-Germany high-end industrial park in Shengyang, capital of northeastern China's Liaoning Province.

Currently, the two countries are vigorously pushing for the docking of China's "Made In China 2025" blueprint and Germany's "Industrial 4.0" strategy, and the upcoming intergovernmental consultation will add new contents to the docking.

"Industry 4.0" is the latest industrial trend in Germany which seeks to keep its global competitiveness by integrating conventional industries with information technology, while China has rolled out a "Made in China 2025" strategy to upgrade itself.

There is also great potential for China and Germany to jointly explore a third-party market. With the "Belt and Road" initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank gaining steam, the two countries will jointly boost infrastructure construction in Asia. ' Surely the two sides have to deal with some differences in consultation, such as China's steel capacity and China's market economy status.

It is believed that cooperation between China and Germany -- a weighty member of the European Union -- in properly settling the related issues will contribute to sound development of China-Germany and China-EU economic and trade ties.

It should be noted that only 7.6 percent of China's total steel exports go to the EU market, accounting for 14 percent of the latter's steel imports. Exaggerating China's steel overcapacity issue and trade frictions or differences will mar the China-Germany and China-European relations.

EU should stop basing its anti-dumping investigations into Chinese goods on its "surrogate country system" in 2016 under the agreement signed when China joined the World Trade Organization.

EU has refused to fulfill its obligations under the international treaty and what it practices is a "substitute protection."

Germany is capable of and has the obligation to play an active role in properly solving such issues. It serves German interests and will help expand China-Germany and China-European pragmatic cooperation.
The ACT college entrance examinations in South Korea and Hong Kong got canceled on Saturday, several hours before the test was scheduled to begin. The reason given was that there had been a verified leak of the exam materials, Global Times reported.

The cancellation affected about 5,500 students, all of who will receive refunds for their test fees, according to ACT spokesperson Edward Colby. Colby also said this is the first time the exam has been canceled for an entire country.

The ACT, an Iowa-based nonprofit organization, had planned to administer the exam at 56 locations around South Korea and Hong Kong on Saturday morning. They decided to cancel the test soon after receiving "credible evidence" that test materials had been leaked, Colby explained.

"We are extremely concerned about any activities that could impact the fairness and integrity of the test. When individuals attempt to profit by stealing test materials and selling them, it can hurt thousands of students who did nothing wrong, as it has in this case," Colby said in an email.

Cheating on standardized English and college admissions tests has long been an issue in Asian countries. In January, SAT college entrance exams were canceled in China and Macau over concerns that some students had seen copies of the tests in advance. The same situation occurred in South Korea in 2013, The College Board, the testing firm that oversees the SAT, even had to reduce the exam dates from six times a year to four.
Afghanistan and India on Saturday continued their efforts to secure the release of an abducted Indian woman aid worker but her whereabouts remain unknown.

Judith D'Souza, 40, working with Aga Khan Foundation, an NGO, was abducted on Thursday night while she was returning home after a dinner at a friend's place in the Qala-e-Fatullah area of Kabul.

No group has claimed responsibility for the abduction but it is feared that she may have been abducted by a criminal gang in Kabul motivated by ransom, according to Afghan officials.

Abductions for ransom in Afghanistan are common and criminal gangs have made millions of dollars from kidnapping foreign nationals.

Such crimes by criminal cartels raise fears that hostages may be sold to Islamists who complicate their freedom by raising demands for ransom as well as for securing the release of jailed terrorists.

But the Indian authorities are not ruling out the kidnapping of the Indian aid worker by the Taliban or its allied fighters.

They said there was no fresh update about D'Souza but efforts were on to secure her release.

Her worried family in Kolkata said they have been in touch with the authorities in India and Afghanistan.

"As of now efforts are being made at various levels within the governments of India and Afghanistan," her brother Jerome D'Souza tweeted.

Afghan media reports said the government had left all channels of communication open to hear from suspected kidnappers but did not provide details.

"Afghan officials have said they are doing everything possible to secure the early release of the woman," TOLO News reported.

Sympathizers and well-wishers have appealed to the governments of both countries on social media networking pages for Judith's swift and safe release with #bringbackjudith.

An online petition was also launched at change.org for the release of the "Indian development worker... who went (to Afghanistan) to serve humanity.

"Abducting such people is not only inhumane but also anti-Islamic. We, on behalf of development workers, appeal to the abductors to realise the agony and trauma of her parents and family and set Judith free unharmed at the earliest," said the petition, garnering hundreds of signatures till late Saturday.

"We also request the local community and authority in Afghanistan and government of India to make all-out efforts to rescue Judith unharmed from the clutches of the abductors."

Judith D'Souza, an expert on gender issues, has been working for the Aga Khan Foundation since last year and was due to return home in Kolkata soon.
The Delhi government on Sunday ordered a probe after a woman alleged that some underprivileged children in the city were denied service at a Connaught Place restaurant where she had taken them to dine and celebrate the birthday of her husband.

An angry Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said it was a "typical colonial mindset and cannot be tolerated".

"I have asked district magistrate New Delhi to enquire and report within 24 hours," Sisodia tweeted.

Sisodia also threatened to cancel the license of the restaurant if the allegations were found to be true. "We will not let the restaurant work like this."

The probe order comes after Sonali Shetty said she had taken a few street children to the restaurant in Delhi's Connaught Place to celebrate her husband's birthday.

She alleged that the restaurant manager asked her and the children to leave as they cannot be served at the eatery.

Shetty protested the alleged discrimination on Saturday and was on a sit-in outside the restaurant.

Attempts to speak to restaurant officials failed as repeated telephone calls to the eatery and its office were unanswered.
A man was arrested on Sunday in Santa Monica, who was allegedly carrying explosives, assault rifles and ammunition in his car.

The man in question told the law enforcement officers that he was in the town for the L.A. Pride festival in West Hollywood, reported L.A.Times.

The patrolling officers questioned an individual based on a distrust call near Olympic Boulevard and 11th Street. During the inspection, the officials found aseveral weapons and a lot of ammunition as well as tannerite, an ingredient that could be used to create a pipe bomb,a said the report.

The officials were not able to draw any connection between his arrest and mass shooting at a gay bar in Orlando in Florida on Sunday.

A gunman, identified as Umar Mateen, stormed a gay bar and opened fire indiscriminately killing at least 50 and wounding more than 50 others. He was a US citizen of Afghan descent.

The case is now being probed by the FBI, which is also exploring the terror angle in the worst mass shooting in American history.

In the meantime, the gunman's father told the media that his son's hatred against LGBT community was the main motive behind the shooting. He had also apologised to the victims.
The upcoming dog meat festival in Yulin, southern Chinas Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region began to face increasing pressure from animal rights activists from home and overseas.

Over a dozen animal lovers from Beijing and Dalian, northeast Chinas Liaoning province delivered a petition letter with over 11 million signatures to the liaison office of Yulin in Beijing, calling for local authorities to stop the dog-slaughtering and dog-eating activity, according to animal rights protection NGO China Animal Protection Power.

In front of the Chinese Embassy in London on June 7, TV veterinarian Marc Abraham, UK Labour Party MP Rob Flello and model and reality TV star Lucy Watson also attempted to deliver a petition against the festival, the Associated Press reported.

In Jilin, in northeast Chinas Jilin province, some 100 residents also rallied against the festival on June 4, according to what a local media outlet reported.

The dog and lychee-eating festival, formed spontaneously in the 1990s, is held every year on the summer solstice, which will fall on June 21 this year. It usually draws annual protests from animal rights activists and fierce debate between people who enjoy the tradition of dog eating and others who abhor the celebration.
It is now being confirmed the death toll in the mass shooting in Florida has reached 50 and the official number of wounded stands at 53.

US President Barak Obama issued the following comments following the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida nightclub.

In his remarks from the White House Briefing Room, President Obama called the attack an act of terror adding We know enough to say this was an act of terror and an act of hate. The RBI is appropriately investigating the this an act of terror. We will go wherever the facts lead us What is clear is he was a person filled with hatred.

The US Presidential candidates were among the public figures who responded to the Orlando nightclub shooting attack as well. Their first response was via twitter.

Hillary Clinton

Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H

Donald Trump

Really bad shooting in Orlando. Police investigating possible terrorism. Many people dead and wounded.

A few hours later, Trump sent another message on Twitter, Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I dont want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!

Bernie Sanders told Meet the Press

Our  just  hopes go out to all those who were shot that they can recover, Sanders said, before discussing his previous support for bans on selling automatic firearms in the US.

Twenty-five years ago, I believed that in this country that we should not be selling automatic weapons which are designed to kill people We have got to do everything that we can on top of that to make sure that guns do not fall into the hands of those who should not have them: criminals, people who are mentally ill. So that struggle continues.

President Barak Obama

The photo below is that of the gunman, Omar Mateen, who was killed by police.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem  Published on Isru Chag Shavuos Eretz Yisrael)
Global footwear giant Clarks declared last year to be one of the more challenging in recent history as tough competition, changes in the retail sector and more demanding customers hit profits.

The family-owned, 200-year-old company is still without a chief executive and chief financial officer after the previous incumbents were ditched by the board last year in an attempt to restructure the company and broaden its appeal to a wider market.

Accounts just filed for the year to January 31, 2016 for C&J Clark show that turnover remained flat at 1.5billion, but pre-tax profits fell by two-thirds from 98.8million to 35million.

Taking a tumble: Pre-tax profits at Clarks fell from 98.8milliion to 35million

Just a few months ago the company announced it was making 170 people redundant, mainly from its head office in Street, Somerset, and it is also merging its Continental and UK operations while focusing on product development.

In the UK in particular, Clarks is seen as a childrens brand, much more so than in the rest of the markets were in, said the company.

So we are trying to address that by appealing to a wider audience, as well as having more contemporary styles, being less gender-specific and having a more multi-channel approach, as thats what consumers want.

Founded by brothers Cyrus and James Clark in Street in 1825, Clarks now sells shoes in more than 35 countries.

The directors said in the accounts: There is no doubt that were operating in challenging times, with trading conditions around the world affected by economic uncertainty and social and political unrest. As a global brand we are not immune to some of these macro issues.

Tough conditions: Global footwear giant Clarks declared last year to be one of the more challenging in recent history

Negative effects on trading came from around the world, from milder weather in the UK, to the weak euro, currency volatility in Asia and civil unrest in Vietnam, where some of its shoes are made. Problems also resulted from having too large an inventory, distribution issues and competing in a sector that is heavily reliant on promotions.

But the firm said: We have implemented a number of changes over the last six months which focus on stabilising the company.

'These include inventory management and increasing scrutiny of our operating costs. We are positive that these changes will help put the business on the right path to a stronger financial position in the future.

Long-term employee Melissa Potter become chief executive in 2010, but was axed by the board in 2015 along with Robin Beacham, the finance director. The company is working with headhunting firm Russell Reynolds to find a replacement.

Clarks said: We are now in the final stages and hope to be able to make an offer to the preferred candidate in the next few months.
Poundland looks set to announce a dramatic slump in profits  raising fresh fears over the health of Britains struggling high streets.

The company is expected to reveal annual profits fell to just 4million in the year to the end of March from 36.2million the previous year.

The figures will represent a disappointing finale for Jim McCarthy who is standing down as chief executive at the end of the month after a decade in charge.

Going: The slump in profits will represent a disappointing finale for Jim McCarthy who is standing down as chief executive at the end of the month after a decade in charge

Its slump comes at a difficult time for the High Street following the collapse of BHS and Austin Reed.

Poundland issued a dire profits warning in January after poor Christmas trading, and it has remained under pressure since.

The firm, which bought rival chain 99p Stores for 55million in September after a six-month probe by the competition watchdog, said sales were down 3.9 per cent last year, including a 4.9 per cent slide in the second half.
Greggs is considering branching out even further from its traditional staples

Greggs is planning to ramp up its healthy eating options as customer demand has surged.

Chief executive Roger Whiteside said Britains biggest baker is considering branching out even further from its traditional staples of sausage rolls and doughnuts.

He said: We will always be a bakery and sausage rolls will always be part of that, but were trying to leverage that with demand for healthier options.

'Were looking at a number of things, including a gluten-free range and more vegetarian ideas.

'Were also looking seriously at Mexican food, and its not impossible that well see sushi on the menu one day.

The Greggs healthy food range now accounts for 10 per cent of sales and is seeing double-digit growth, helping the firm notch up a 25 per cent rise in profits to 73million last year.
XIAMEN, June 12, 2016 --Yu Zhengsheng, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, addresses the opening ceremony of the eighth Straits Forum in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province, June 12, 2016. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

XIAMEN, June 12 -- Young entrepreneurs, village chiefs, night market vendors, dispute mediators, meteorologists, among others, are attending an annual cross-Strait exchange event in Xiamen City.

The Straits Forum that began on Sunday in Fujian Province, identified by many people in Taiwan as their ancestral home, is a place to discuss business, friendship and even to find long-lost relatives.

Relations across the Taiwan Strait are at complicated juncture, but the annual forum continues as normal.

With Tsai Ing-wen taking office as Taiwan's new leader, the direction of cross-Strait relationship is unclear. This year's forum is seen as a barometer for how ordinary people feel about the situation.

To the casual observer, the event looks better than ever, with new activities including innovation and youth entrepreneurship forums.

China's top political advisor Yu Zhengsheng told the opening ceremony on Sunday morning that the more complicated cross-Strait relations become, the more ordinary people need to get together. Yu believes that a better future requires peace and cooperation across the board.

Relations have come a long way since the mainland and Taiwan began to talk seriously to one another in 1987. A new phase of friendly interaction began in 2008, with the first Straits Forum held the following year. In 2015, mutual visits across the Strait exceeded 100 million persons.

The mainland has done a lot to make it easier for mainlanders to visit the island and for islanders to come ashore. A plethora of policies, most notably removing entry permit barriers for Taiwan residents, show the mainland walking the walk.

On Sunday, Yu made it clear that the mainland would continue to make it easier for Taiwan's people to live and work on the mainland if they chose, and would support Taiwan's businesses on the mainland in restructuring and joining in the Belt and Road Initiative.

Besides, Yu said, the mainland is happy that so many young people from Taiwan want to study, work and start businesses or families on the mainland, and looks forward to better cooperation in science and technology, as well as more academic exchanges.

Changes may take place in Taiwan's political landscape, but as the bonds of business, amity and family between compatriots grow stronger, the momentum will become irresistible.

The door will not close, but open wider.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon is set to run into further controversy over British jobs this week when he signs a key agreement to buy nine US-made Boeing P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft for $3.2billion (2.25billion).

Fallon is already facing protests over an expected deal to buy 50 Apache helicopters, also made by Boeing, putting the future of 600 aeronautical jobs in the UK at risk.

Fallon visited the US naval base in Jacksonville, Florida, a few days ago where crew learn to handle the new aircraft. He is set to sign a main gate agreement within days.

Dogfight: The US-built Poseidon P-8 replaces BAEs Nimrod, below, which has been scrapped

The P-8 will fill the gap left by the scrapping of the British-made Nimrod, which had been a stalwart of the UKs early warning system since the 1970s.

In 2010 the MoD decided to scrap a 4billion fleet of nine new Nimrods made by BAE Systems, in a move described as vandalism.

This weeks deal is the last step before a final agreement to acquire the aircraft is signed. This is expected to happen at the Farnborough air show in mid-July.

But Fallon faces a rough ride in the UK with the Unite union, which represents 70,000 defence workers, accusing him of failing to live up to the Governments rhetoric of backing British industry.

Fallon is already under fire over an anticipated deal to acquire the 50 Apache helicopters at a knockdown price of 8.5million per helicopter from the US government.

This could jeopardise jobs at rival helicopter maker AgustaWestland in Yeovil, Somerset, and elsewhere. Agusta, owned by Italian defence giant Leonardo-Finmeccanica, maintains the current Apache squadrons and is understood to have lobbied the Government to delay signing the contract until Ministers had considered its own proposals.

Sidelined: BAE's Nimrod is to be replaced by US-built Poseidon P-8

Unite raised concerns over the apparent lack of so-called offset agreements in the proposed deal to buy the P-8s, which are a variant of the long-established 737 airliner.

The unions assistant secretary general for manufacturing, Tony Burke, said: The Government needs to ensure a substantial amount of production work is undertaken in the UK, with all the support work to maintain them in the years ahead. Apparently the P-8 will not be using UK weapons, which is a disgrace.

At the moment barely 5 per cent of the P-8s content by value is sourced in the UK. A rival proposal from Lockheed for a converted Hercules aircraft was said to involve a figure of 80 per cent, while Airbus reckoned it could offer 50 per cent.

The P-8 was chosen without a competitive tendering process. But US defence industry sources suggest a sizeable portion of the $3.2billion total could come to the UK, with Boeing understood to be looking at British-sourced sonar sensors, for instance.

A dozen Royal Air Force crew are already training at the multi-million pound facility at Jacksonville, which includes simulators for the aircraft.

Air crew undertake the bulk of their training in such simulators and defence sources suggest a similar, albeit smaller, facility could eventually be created in the UK. The facility could then also be used to train other nations crews, sources said.

The P-8 is designed to allow for considerable technical expansion and defence sources suggest this could allow for further British input in coming years.

US sources suggest the UK might order more P-8s to replace lost capacity following the scrapping of the Nimrods.

The first three planes are expected to reach operational squadrons by 2020 but Fallon has spoken to the US government about providing a stop-gap measure to cope with increased Russian naval activity. This could see US navy P-8s patrolling from the UK manned by British crews.

Some British manufacturers supply systems to the P-8, including Marshalls of Cambridge, which supplies auxiliary fuel tanks; Martin Baker, which supplies seats; and a British subsidiary of GE, which supplies the weapon mounts.
Former private equity boss Sir Damon Buffinis knighthood, awarded in the Queens Birthday Honours, is an insult to society, the GMB union has said.

Paul Maloney, the GMB regional secretary said he planned to write to the Prime Minister to object.

Buffini was knighted for his charity work. But as a leading figure in the private equity boom Buffinis career has been dogged by criticism from unions and MPs, particularly during a Parliamentary investigation of the private equity industrys alleged tax avoidance in 2007.

'Insult': Former private equity boss Sir Damon Buffinis knighthood, awarded in the Queens Birthday Honours, is an insult to society, the GMB union has said

As chief of Permira until January last year Buffini was involved in high profile deals which saw his group own at one time or other the AA, Birds Eye and string of other firms. Buffinis personal wealth is estimated at 125 million.

The GMBs Maloney, who took a camel to Buffinis Clapham church in 2006 to protest at the sacking of 3,000 AA workers, said this weekend: We will certainly write to David Cameron to say theres no sense in the system.

'Its an insult to society. Hes done absolutely nothing other than make himself a multi-millionaire. The camel was a reference to the biblical saying: It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

The union was critical of the cuts at the AA, saying many disabled employees were targeted and debts of the private equity firms loaded onto the AA.

Buffini was one of a number of business bosses recognised in the honours list.

Ocado boss Tim Steiner was given an OBE for services to the economy, while Paul Marshall, founder of hedge fund Marshall Wace, was honoured for his work with academy school provider Ark.

Martin Dickie and James Watt, the founders of craft brewery Brewdog, got MBEs, while Innocent Drinks founder Richard Reed was awarded a CBE.
(Global Times) 13:17, June 12, 2016

Russian and Chinese warships entered what Japan called the "contiguous zones" near the Diaoyu Islands almost at the same time on Wednesday night.

Speculation has grown in Japan whether this meant China and Russia were joining hands to send a signal to the US-Japan alliance. Tokyo launched a solemn protest to the Chinese Ambassador to Japan, but downplayed the Russian warships' move in order not to escalate the situation, giving only a "notification."

It will be a nightmare for Japan if Chinese and Russian navy and air forces join hands in the West Pacific.

The US is still going against historical currents and trying to solidify its global military alliances. Japan is one of its most active allies.

China and Russia both face pressure from the US. There is a motive for them to become allies. But the leaders of the two countries have not done so. China and Russia have done their part to make sure the world does not fall into serious division and confrontation.

Why is Japan so nervous about the appearance of Chinese and Russian warships near the Diaoyu Islands? It is simply because Japan harbors something that cannot bear daylight. The US-Japan alliance has been showing a growing power to damage peace in the Asia-Pacific region. It is impossible that the outside world does not respond to their provocative actions.

China and Russia are sticking to their flexible Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. But in global issues, the two have been enhancing their cooperation. Their joint military exercises have become more frequent. The closer relationship has resulted from Western pressures. China and Russia both know that if either of them is crushed strategically, it will disadvantage both.

The US, Japan and the rest of the West often talk about China and Russia "growing closer." Such sensitivity results from their own attempts to forge allies. They are aware of their unjust squeezing of China and Russia's space and are worried that China and Russia may join hands to counteract.

China and Russia have greater space for further cooperation. How close they will be depends on whether the US, Japan and the West as a whole will further cross the lines.

The US and Japan should restrain themselves if they do not want to see closer Sino-Russian cooperation in the West Pacific. The US should not seek a military advantage that seriously threatens China and Russia. Japan should not be too high-profile in its allying with the US.

Japan is afraid of both the US and Russia, because both countries have defeated it in the past.

Toyko's different reactions to China and Russia's warships near the Diaoyu Islands are ridiculous. It only tells the world how they should deal with Japan.
XIAMEN, June 11 - Top political advisor Yu Zhengsheng has wished start-ups of young entrepreneurs from Taiwan a success in the Chinese mainland thanks to the supportive environment in the mainland.

Yu, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), made the remarks during a visit to a cross-Strait innovation and entrepreneurship base for youth located in Haicang district of southeastern city of Xiamen on Saturday.

After learning about the work of young Taiwan entrepreneurs, Yu, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, asked relevant government organs to try to solve their outstanding difficulties and problems.

Yu said young people are open-minded and have high aspiration, and the future of cross-Strait relations depend on the young generations.

Young people of the mainland and Taiwan have grown up in different environment, therefore, it is inevitable to think in different ways on some issues, Yu said, adding what is important is that they all hold the same wish of a happy and peaceful life, as well as a prosperous Chinese nation.

He urged creating more opportunities for young people from both sides of the Strait to communicate so that they understand each other better and become good friends, which is significant for the long term development of cross-Strait ties.

Yu also visited the RQ space, a drone and intelligent robot incubator, and the pavilion for Taiwan start-ups in the Haicang base.
BEIJING, June 11 (Xinhua) -- A nationwide education drive will foster socialist core values in the run up to the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC), according to a joint notice issued by seven organizations.

The campaign, "Loving Party, Country and Socialism," by the CPC Central Committee publicity department and Ministry of Education, among others, will showcase the sinicization of Marxism; new thoughts and strategies in state governance; and CPC practice in ruling the Party.

Stressing that the 95th anniversary of the CPC is a major event in the country's political life, the notice promised a campaign that would enhance confidence in the path, theory and system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

China will celebrate the CPC anniversary on July 1.
By Bob Harris

As our school year draws to a close, one must evaluate what our students have accomplished and what more they could have done if there was proper funding. Too many schools need refurbishing and more funding for supplies and modern equipment. Too many school use closets as classrooms, have laboratories which are just old, and have dilapidated halls and rooms.

Many schools do not have supplies such as paper or crayons or modern equipment. Too many teachers spend their own money to buy classroom supplies. Many schools ask parents to send in paper and glue and crayons and paper towels and tissues so their children can have supplies.

It is the middle-class schools which have limited money for disposable supplies. Why do some schools ask parents to send in supplies to the classroom and printing paper to the main office? While schools in poorer neighbors get more money, it is usually not enough. How many schools do not let students write in workbooks because there is not enough money to buy more workbooks? Why do some schools ask parents to buy textbooks for their children?

Some schools do innovative things to fix up their schools. Old, dilapidated lockers built into halls are painted by art class students and covered with bright murals. Too many students have to sell candy or balloons or knickknacks to provide more money for school trips or student government needs or uniforms for teams. Why cant the school system provide money for disposable student needs?

Some of the first things the school budget cuts when there is a shortage of money are art or music or gym or the needs of the special needs children. There programs are the heart of many schools and should not be underfunded. Why do middle class parents have to pay for some of these programs themselves?

Years ago, tuition at city two-year colleges was paid for by the city. Why is the price of public city and state colleges so expensive? Poor people can get all kinds of grants, but the middle class, who have clawed themselves upward, are faced with high college costs for their children. There is lots of money around in the city if the government will just use it wisely. The Department of Buildings could generate so much more money if they would just collect the fines levied for illegal actions. Some illegal construction should be fined at a higher rate to make them really stop.

Too much money is going to charter schools, with high salaries for the managers, expensive private companies providing services with no check on them by city, state or federal regulators. Too many charter schools look good because they do not enroll low-functioning special needs children or low-functioning ESL students or children from dysfunctional families.

Our federal government is spending billions of dollars on the wars in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan and in Libya and in the past in Vietnam and what used to be Yugoslavia. It is amazing how many of these places are now tourist stops and how many are trading with us now. We try to make Afghanistan a stable place. It never was a country but a collection of tribes and clans. The Middle East was owned by the Ottoman Empire and just divided up by the British and the French with disregard for tribal allegiances and religious differences.

The Shiites and Sunnis are Muslims have co-existed for centuries, but we try to work with countries with majorities or minorities of these now at odds with each other groups and we spend billions of dollars there which we could better use for our schools, infrastructure, STEM programs and job training programs. Doesnt anyone realize that if we remove Assad in Syria then his Alawite Muslims will become millions of refuges also seeking places to live?
(Global Times) 08:30, June 12, 2016

Fierce debate on diplomatic immunity has gone viral on Chinese social media on Saturday, after a Chinese journalist accused a US Embassy vehicle of scratching her car and allegedly causing her injuries without apologizing.

Chen Lin, a journalist of the Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television, shared a post on her Sina Weibo account on Friday, in which she said a vehicle with a US Embassy's license plate had scratched her car and left the scene on Wednesday.

According to Lin, she tried to stop the vehicle, which latter dragged her into the traffic stream and injured her.

Lin said the police told her that the owners of the vehicle "may enjoy diplomatic immunity and it's difficult to punish them."

The incident has soon gone viral on Sina Weibo under the hashtag "Can diplomats disobey laws in China?", garnering more than 12 million views and over 3,500 comments as of press time.

"I'm currently resting at home. The police said they would carry out an investigation into the incident. I will respect the procedures," Chen told the Global Times on Saturday, without giving more details of the incident.

The US Embassy and the Beijing police couldn't be reached for comments as of press time.

"It's true that some foreigners who enjoy diplomatic immunity may disobey the local laws, such as violating the traffic rules without paying the fine," Zhou Shijian, a senior research fellow at the Center for US-China Relations at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times on Saturday,

Zhou added that similar incidents happened in many countries.

But Zhu Feng, a professor of international security at Nanjing University, told the Global Times that "diplomatic immunity" can only apply to criminal cases, while in civil cases foreigners must bear liability.

According to the Provisions on the Procedures for Handling Traffic Accidents which took effect in 2009, traffic police can confiscate if necessary driving licenses from foreigners who enjoy diplomatic immunity, while the police department should send reports about the responsibility of traffic accidents to the foreigners or their embassy.

"Having diplomatic immunity doesn't mean the diplomats can ignore the laws. If severe damages were made, the victims can press a charge against the diplomat," Zhou said.

According to Zhou, foreign diplomats can be deported if the case is severe, and such moves will significantly affect the bilateral relations between the two countries.

"In this case, if the US vehicle has truly dragged Chinese citizen and caused personal injuries, the case will have to be dealt with via diplomatic channels, and the US Embassy should pay the medical fees of the victim," an expert in diplomacy who asked for anonymity told the Global Times.
Patrick Johnston/Times Record News Christopher Rye (left) teaches Lauren Seaton, whose husband David was a Scout in the 1980s and '90s, how to shoot a bow Saturday at a reunion at Camp Perkins.

SHARE Patrick Johnston/Times Record News A group of former scouts from Troop 1 share memories during lunch in the Mess Hall of Camp Perkins Saturday. The group celebrated 100 years of scouting with a three-day reunion. Patrick Johnston/Times Record News David Seaton (left) takes a picture of his wife, Lauren, as she shoots a bow at Camp Perkins Saturday. Seaton and other former scouts from Troop 1 celebrated 100 years of the group with a three-day reunion, including a family day out at the camp.

By Patrick Johnston, patrick.johnston@timesrecordnews.com

Most people would say you never want to be the person to follow a beloved, longtime leader.

When it comes to Boy Scout Troop 1 in Wichita Falls, that beloved leader is Jim Hughes, who has been involved with the troop since the 1940s and was the scoutmaster from June 1965 to December 1989.

"I will say Jim Hughes is definitely the man I think of when I think of Troop 1," said Patrick Regan, a former Troop 1 scoutmaster. "He wanted to step away, and who fills shoes that size? Well, certainly not me, but I was a lot dumber than I am now."

Regan agreed to take his place and feels "really fortunate and blessed to have a short part of" the 100-year history of the troop. However, replacing someone who'd left such a mark on so many young lives left Regan with some doubts about if he'd made the right choice.

"As you go through life, you second-guess yourself sometimes," Regan said. "You think: Did I do my best, or did I do what was right for these kids? Sometimes, you think you didn't and wish you could have done more or better or been a better scoutmaster."

He got to catch up with a handful of Scouts from his tenure as leader, which lasted from December 1989 to 1992, during a three-day reunion and centennial celebration that wraps up Sunday with a breakfast at the troop's Scout Hut and church service at Floral Heights United Methodist Church.

Sharing old camp stories and reflecting back on their times together Friday and Saturday, has helped further reaffirm Regan made the right choice.

"They've got fond memories, so I'm happy to leave that judgment to their memories," he concluded. "This has been a great experience  seeing a lot of the Scouts from when I was scoutmaster has just been an absolute joy and a privilege."

Regan, a professional bagpiper and director of bagpiping at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, is still heavily involved in Scouting in the Pittsburgh area.

"A lot of the stories I tell to the new Scouts I work with at a summer camp in West Virginia are the same stories (shared this weekend)," Regan said. "Some of them are embellished just a little bit."

One of his favorites is a canoe trip on the Red River in March 1989 that included snow, eight people and a single tent. Some of the memories shared at Camp Perkins on Saturday included thoughts of sleeping out in the snow to escape the heat in the tent and a ring around the tent where the snow had melted. But, Regan admitted some of the details may have gotten changed over the last 27 years. "It's gone from a light dusting to 8 inches of snow  I think that's a reasonable amount of snowfall," Regan said with a chuckle. " ... To this day, though, I think the eight of us would use it as the standard of a rough trip."
PLAYOFFS?! Breaking down postseason scenarios for local high school football teams

Who's in? Who's out? Who can clinch with a win? We break down the postseason scenarios for every local high school football district.
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By John Ingle of the Times Record News

The Democratic and Republican presidential primaries have been wild and unpredictable, said U.S. District 13 Rep. Mac Thornberry, and he doesn't think the lead-up to the General Election will be any different.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and New York City business mogul Donald Trump have each secured the required minimum delegates for their respective party nominations, Clinton for Democrats and Trump for Republicans, but that doesn't necessarily mean the electorate has settled on a candidate for the White House.

"I think a lot of voters may not have made up their mind yet," Thornberry said. "We still don't know if there might be third or fourth parties on the ballot."

Both major-party candidates have their own baggage to handle over the next several months, as an FBI criminal investigation into the use of a private email server, on which classified communications were maintained, continues to loom over Clinton, and Trump's continuation of vocal missteps, the most recent about District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, and Indiana-born judge in California. They are equally struggling with low favorability among American voters.

Thornberry said a number of people in the Republican party are concerned about Trump's chances to land in the White House, and others are just as concerned about Clinton.

Last week, the congressman said he wasn't comfortable endorsing Trump for a variety of reasons.

When asked about the presumptive Republican candidate's announcement that he will give a speech early next week regarding the Clintons' past, Thornberry said he's going to run the type of campaign he wants to run. At the end of the day, he said, he works in a different branch of government for his constituents in his district.

"We're going to talk about policies, and we're going to talk about what we're for," he said, referring to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan's goal of focusing on platforms and policies that House Republicans are for. "We're a separate branch of government. I don't work for anybody in the executive branch. I work for the people in the 13th District of Texas. We're separate from the other two branches."

Thornberry, who also serves as the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said those in government who handle classified materials have a responsibility to protect information that can harm the country or put the lives of military members in danger if it is revealed.

He said polling shows that Clinton's greatest vulnerability, partly because of the FBI investigation, with voters is integrity and how much they believe she is being honest with the American public. That will be an issue, he said, because the president handles classified information daily, and it has to be done so appropriately.

"Innocent until proven guilty is the standard in criminal law. We generally have a higher standard for people we elect to positions of trust," he said. "I think that's the way it should be.

"I don't know how this investigation by the FBI of the email issue will come out. I hope that whatever is going to happen happens promptly so the country knows before we get too far down the road in this whole election process."

Voters, he said, will eventually have to look at a number of factors, such as character and judgment, when determining the next commander in chief.
SHARE Sogard Sogard Lunns Col

Our beloved Gail Sogard entered the presence of our Lord on June 7, 2016. Devoted husband of 62 years, Gail was residing at Rolling Meadows in Wichita Falls with the love of his life, Nellie Jo Sogard.

Born in Ellsworth, Iowa, Gail was one of twelve siblings born to Harold and Melva Sogard. He enlisted in the US Air Force as a young man. During his 22 years of service he was able to travel the world, touring with the Air Force Chorus and being stationed as far away as Korea and Iceland.

After retiring in 1974, Gail concentrated his energies on his growing insurance business, becoming one of the area's most successful life underwriters.

Gail was a gifted tenor and was known to burst into song and dance at the slightest prompting. He was emcee for the Jerry Lewis Telethon on multiple occasions and often performed in local productions such as The Music Man and Bye Bye Birdie, as well as at countless weddings and other special occasions. His last engagement was June 7, 2014, when he was asked to sing at the Grand Opening of the Museum of Natural History in Seymour, Texas.

A member of First United Methodist Church since 1965, Gail served alongside Nellie Jo as youth counselor, Winsome Class President, choir member and soloist, Sunday school teacher and in numerous other capacities. For many years he was also active in Kiwanis. Gail and Nellie Jo were charter members of the Allegro Dance Club.

Loyal husband, loving father, adoring grandfather and great-grandfather-Gail Sogard loved his family. He loved all people, and he was loved in return. He will be greatly missed.

Gail is survived by his beloved wife, Nellie Jo; daughters, Vicki Partridge and Cheri Althaus; brothers, Bob, Gary and Butch Sogard; sisters, Marilyn Knutson, Marge Sumberg, Cathy Minor and Ann Allen; 6 grandchildren; 2 great-grandchildren; and many nieces and nephews.

Preceding him in death were his parents, Harold and Melva Sogard; his son, Bill Sogard; and brothers, Donnie, Jack, Dean and Alan Sogard.

Visitation will be Monday, June 13, 2016, from 6 to 7 p.m. at Lunn's Colonial Funeral Home, 2812 Midwestern Parkway, Wichita Falls, TX 76308. Funeral services will be held Tuesday at 3 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 909 10th Street (at Travis), Wichita Falls, TX 76308. Interment will follow at Crestview Memorial Park under the direction of Lunn's Colonial Funeral Home.

Memorials may be made to Hospice of Wichita Falls or to First United Methodist Church of Wichita Falls.

Condolences may be sent to the family at www.lunnscolonial.com
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No question but the next president will face a major headache in North Korea's 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 administration's approach of "strategic patience" are meager, but that does not mean a new president should rush to Pyongyang for a negotiation with 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 Korea's largest trading partner and an important, if ambivalent, benefactor.

Sanctions will work if they impose a cost on Kim's 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. 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. 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, 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. 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 Kim's outlandish and frightening peril.

Washington Post
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LONDON  Of the fighting faiths that flourished during the ideologically drunk 20th century, anti-Semitism has been uniquely durable. It survives by mutating, even migrating across the political spectrum from the right to the left. Although most frequently found in European semi-fascist parties, anti-Semitism is growing in the fetid Petri dish of American academia, and is staining Britain's Labour Party.

In 2014, before Naseem "Naz" Shah became a Labour member of parliament, she shared a graphic on her Facebook page suggesting that all Israelis should be "relocated" to the United States. She seemed to endorse the idea that the "transportation cost" would be less than "three years of defense spending." When this was recently publicized, "Red Ken" Livingstone, former Labour mayor of London, offered on the BBC what he considered a defense of her as not anti-Semitic because "a real anti-Semite doesn't just hate the Jews in Israel." Besides, Livingstone said, Hitler was a Zionist (for supposedly considering sending Europe's Jews to Palestine) "before he went mad." As mayor, Livingstone praised as a "progressive voice" an Egyptian cleric who called the Holocaust "divine punishment."

Labour's leader, Jeremy Corbyn, says he wants to cleanse Labour of such thinking. But Corbyn hopes to host at the House of Commons a Palestinian sheikh who calls Jews "bacteria" and "monkeys" and has been accused of repeating the "blood libel" that Jews make matzo using the blood of gentile children.

Leftist anti-Semites invariably say they hate not Jews but Zionism, and hence not a people but a nation. Israel was, however, created as a haven for an endangered people. Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, refutes the canard that "hating Israel is not the same as hating Jews" by saying:

Criticism of Israel is not necessarily anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist. When Sacks asks his audiences if Britain's government can be criticized, everyone says yes. But when they are asked, "Do you believe Britain should not exist?," no one says yes. Then Sacks tells his audiences: "Now you know the difference."

"It is very easy to hate," says Sacks. "It is very difficult to justify hate." Anti-Semitism's permutations adapt it to changing needs for justification. In the Middle Ages, he says, Jews were hated for their religion. In the 19th and 20th centuries, they were hated for their race. Now they are hated for their nation. "The new anti-Semitism can always say it is not the old anti-Semitism."

But it is. It remains, Sacks says, "essentially eliminationist." It disguises its genocidal viciousness, insisting that it seeks the destruction not of a people but only of the state formed as a haven for this people that has had a uniquely hazardous history. The international "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" movement, supported by many American academics, aims not just to pressure Israel to change policies, as South Africa was pressured to abandon apartheid, but rather to delegitimize Israel's existence as a nation.

Sacks notes that although Jews were never more than 2 percent of Germany's population, this did not protect them from becoming the explanation for Germany's discontents.

In a conversation with a supposedly "moderate" British Muslim leader, Sacks asked, "Does Israel have a right to exist within any borders whatever?" The leader replied: "Your own prophets said that because of your sins you have forfeited your right to your land." To which Sacks responded mildly: "But that was 2,700 years ago and surely the Jews have served their sentence."

After World War II, Western nations strove to develop what Sacks calls "a cultural immune system" against anti-Semitism with Holocaust education and other measures. The immune system is not weakening in Britain, other than among Muslim immigrants and leftists eager to meld their radicalism with radical Islam.

Labour's leader before Corbyn, Edward Miliband, who led the party in the 2015 general election, is Jewish, as was the Conservative Party's greatest 19th-century leader (Benjamin Disraeli). Former Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who was educated at Eton, noted, perhaps regretfully, certainly indelicately, that Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet included more "old Estonians than old Etonians."

Seven decades after the Holocaust, some European nations have, remarkably, anti-Semitism without Jews and Christian anti-Semitism without Christianity. Britain just has a few leftists eager to mend their threadbare socialism with something borrowed from National Socialism.

George Will's email address is georgewillwashpost.com.
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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 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 Trump's heart.

No, Trump's 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 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 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 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 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. It still carries many of the ideological convictions I share.

Collectively, however, 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, nonnegotiable 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.

Michael Gerson's email address is michaelgerson@washpost.com.
Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, on August 31, 2015. [Photo: Xinhua]

Ahead of a planned visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping, officials in Serbia say they're confident the trip is going to have a significant impact on the country's ties with China.

Looking forward to Xi Jinping's upcoming visit, President of the Serbian Parliament, Maja Gojkovic, suggests China-Serbia ties are already on a solid footing.

"I hope the visit will be eventful and successful. The relations between Serbia and China have been developing proactively. China is a very sincere friend to us, and it has never cast any vote or made any decisions against Serbia's interests. China has never admitted the independence unilaterally declared by Kosovo. We very much appreciate China's unshakable support on Serbia's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

Beyond political ties, Gojkovic says economic links have also been growing, and she believes new Chinese industrial projects in Serbia could be on the horizon.

"For example, Chinese companies have built bridges in Belgrade, railway lines between Belgrade and Budapest, and remodeled a steel factory in Serbia. More moves have been made to further strengthen our economic ties, for example, the Serbian government representatives led by our Prime Minister will hold talks with their Chinese counterparts about the possibility of establishing a Chinese industrial zone in Serbia, as one of the cooperation prospects."

Gojkovic says investment from China and a strategic partnership with China will only serve to stimulate the development of Serbia's economy.

She says as Serbia continues to seek a membership in the European Union, plans are also in-place to expand cooperation with other countries outside the EU, including China.

Zorana Mihajlovic is Serbia's Deputy Prime Minister, as well as the Minister of Transportation, Construction and Infrastructure.

She says Chinese companies have already been able to improve Serbia's infrastructure since the two countries formed a strategic partnership in 2009.

"Now, we have the high speed railway project from Belgrade to Budapest, and the No. 11 expressway linking Montenegro and Serbia. The total investment from China to Serbia has reached the scale of 2.5 billion to 2.8 billion dollars. We hope the commercial contracts will be signed in a few months after the visit of the Chinese President."

Mihajlovic says much of the work being done between China and Serbia is through a cooperation mechanism, which was established between China and Central and Eastern European countries and known as the 16+1 mechanism.

"We are happy that China chose Serbia as a partner and let us be its biggest partner in the Balkan region. Most of the funds invested by China in the Balkans were eventually flowed to Serbia. Through direct investment to Serbia, it shows that Serbia is the center of the China-CEE 16+1 mechanism, and it is also an important country for infrastructure investment."

The 16 + 1 mechanism was established in 2012 among China and 16 countries which make up central and eastern Europe.

Bilateral trade volumes between those countries and China easily surpassed 50 billion US dollars last year.

Both the Serbian President Tomislav Nikoli? and Prime Minister Aleksandar Vu?i? visited China last year.

The Chinese government is on-record saying it views Serbia as an important partner in its "Belt and Road" initiative, particularly as a distribution hub to move products back and forth from China and the rest of Europe.
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Albany

Kevin Hammer spent his Saturday night celebrating Pride Month at the city's gay bars. The annual Pride Parade was held earlier in the day and by the early morning hours of Sunday, it was the Schenectady man's birthday.

But celebration turned to grief with the mass killing of 50 people and the wounding of scores of others at a gay club in Orlando in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday.

"Fifty members of our community, our brothers and sisters, won't have another birthday," Hammer said at a candlelight vigil outside Rocks bar on Central Avenue Sunday night, his husband Jonathan standing by his side. "I knew that I had to be here tonight to show support for members of our community."

The Hammers joined a chorus of solidarity trumpeted by groups that represent a cross section of Capital Region culture on Sunday night along a roughly three-block stretch of Central Avenue.

As members of the LGBT community gathered at Rocks, members of the Black Lives Matter movement organized another gathering down the block in Townsend Park. The three dozen or so people there formed a circle where people could share their thoughts on the shooting  the deadliest in U.S. history  touching on everything from the AR-15 rifle used in the shooting to "Islamaphobia." Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a 911 call shortly before carrying out the mass killing, according to reports.

Members of the Muslim community gathered outside the Masjid As-Salam Mosque shortly thereafter.

"This culture of violence, terrible assault weapons with crazy people belonging to any community or associating with any religion create havoc like this," said Shamshad Ahamad, president of the mosque. "They silence Muslims particularly because if someone carrying a Muslim name carries (out) this kind of criminal activity then, in a way, the whole Muslim community is to be considered suspicious. Therefore we feel more silent, more depressed with a situation with a criminal act committed by an individual who calls himself belonging to the Muslim community."

Elsewhere in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered increased security at key points and large gatherings statewide and ordered flags be flown at half-staff. He also ordered that One World Trade Center's spire be lit up in the colors of the Pride Flag.

The state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services Watch Center on Sunday increased monitoring of large public gatherings, including sporting events, statewide as the State Police and National Guard increased surveillance of major infrastructure points, including transportation hubs, and large gatherings. Police presence at major New York City infrastructure, including the World Trade Center and Penn Station, also was increased.

Memorial services are planned throughout the week. The Pride Center of the Capital Region will hold a candlelight vigil in Albany's West Capitol Park at 6 p.m. Monday. Schenectady Pride will hold a moment of silence in front of Schenectady City Hall 3 p.m. on Saturday as part of a pre-existing pop-up drag show.

Rocks will hold a benefit at 8 p.m. Saturday, with proceeds from the event and a weeklong donation drive going to families of the shooting victims.

mhamilton@timesunion.com  jlawrence@timesunion.com
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LOS ANGELES  Authorities in Santa Monica found possible explosives as well as weapons and ammunition Sunday in the car of a man who told them he was in town for the L.A. Pride festival in West Hollywood, a law enforcement source said.

Early Sunday, Santa Monica police received a call of a suspected prowler near Olympic Boulevard and 11th Street. Patrol officers responded and encountered an individual who told officers he was waiting for a friend. That led officers to inspect the car and find several weapons and a lot of ammunition as well as tannerite, an ingredient that could be used to create a pipe bomb. The car had Indiana plates.

RELATED: The latest on the mass shooting in Orlando that killed 50

The man was arrested and made comments that he was in town for the Pride event in West Hollywood this weekend. The festival is going ahead with tightened security, and police are looking for the friend mentioned by the suspect. Authorities said they see no connection between the Santa Monica arrest and a gay nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., early Sunday morning.

The Santa Monica investigation has been taken over by the FBI. Santa Monica Police spokesman Saul Rodriguez confirmed that the suspect was from Indiana and that weapons were found in the car, but added that police were not aware of what the suspects intentions were at this point.

Neighbors called police after he was spotted knocking on doors and loitering in the area, Rodriguez said. Santa Monica police were searching the suspects white Acura on Sunday morning near 11th Street and Michigan Street where the arrest was made. All four of the cars doors were open, and a green blanket, red gasoline canister and several other smaller items were being piled on the sidewalk next to it.

A city official in West Hollywood also confirmed the arrest and stressed that officials were beefing up security at the gay pride event.

They found him with weapons that were very disconcerting, said the source, adding officials are taking the appropriate safety precautions.

The parade comes hours after the attack at the Orlando club that killed at least 50 people. At least 53 were injured in the deadliest shooting in modern American history after a gunman took hostages.

The gunman, who was killed in a shootout with police, has been identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, a U.S. law enforcement official said. One source in West Hollywood said there was discussion of calling off the parade but that officials decided to go forward, with heavy security including undercover officers in the crowd.

The sources spoke to the Los Angeles Times on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. West Hollywood City Councilwoman Lindsey Horvath said in a statement that Los Angeles County sheriffs officials are stepping up security efforts around Sundays parade and other festivities.

But she said officials do not believe there is any threat around Sundays activities.

We are hearing absolutely devastating news reports from Orlando this morning, she said. Gun violence on the LGBTQ family during Pride Month makes me sick. The deadliest mass shooting in America happened to LGBTQ people on Latin night. While we mourn this heartbreaking loss, we must also rededicate ourselves to the fight for full equality for all people. No one is equal unless everyone is equal.

A reporter for ProPublica tweeted out a Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department bulletin detailing the arrest.  (Times staff writers Zahira Torres and Frank Shyong contributed to this report.)  2016 Los Angeles Times Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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Albany

The code violations in April that shuttered the Mother Teresa House, a Second Avenue rooming house run by the Rev. Peter Young's Altamont Program, signaled much deeper turmoil inside the once-sprawling nonprofit agency synonymous with addiction recovery.

Young's drug treatment and job-training network  born of his pioneering work in the late 1950s and early 1960s with alcoholics and heroin addicts in Albany's South End  is on life support.

Wounded by an embezzlement scandal that cut it off from millions of dollars in state contracts, the nonprofit is scrambling for cash to keep its core programs running in the Capital Region, according to interviews, court filings and other public records.

Peter Young Housing, Industries & Treatment once stretched from Brooklyn to Buffalo, built over six decades in part on the strength of the priest's charisma and deep political contacts with a succession of governors and legislative power brokers.

While supporters point to the thousands of addicts helped by the organization over the years and New York's growing opioid addiction crisis as reasons to save the organization, the state contends the nonprofit's "legal and financial challenges" make it unfit to receive public dollars.

"They're killing us," said Kevin Luibrand, a Latham attorney and the president of the Peter Young board. "The track the government has been on ... has been to destroy the organization. And our goal is to not let them. And we've succeeded thus far."

The retrenchment last year forced the Peter Young network to sell its most valuable asset, a property in Brooklyn, to keep the Schenectady-based Altamont Program and its drug treatment counterpart, 820 River Street Inc., solvent.

Since January, the Addictions Care Center of Albany  a separate nonprofit that Young also helped found  has taken over management of its five related nonprofits.

The arrangement, accepted begrudgingly by Peter Young officials in an effort to win back the right to bid on new state contracts, also calls for the study of a full-blown merger.

"To a person on our board, we didn't want to do it," Luibrand said. But he said state officials  specifically those at the Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services  have left the board with no alternative by blocking the agency from bidding on jobs contracts even while renewing the certifications of its existing treatment programs for multiple years.

"It's desperate," Young, now 85, saidlast week.

The crisis began in 2010, when a staffer at 820 River Street alerted Luibrand that he believed something suspect was going on inside the organization. Luibrand's investigation discovered that Chief Operating Officer Dennis Bassat had been stealing money, and the organization alerted OASAS, which regulates 820 River Street's treatment programs, he said.

This proved to be a turning point, Luibrand said, because the organization was not obligated to report Bassat but did so because it believed it was the right thing  unintentionally triggering the chain of events that financially crippled the nonprofit.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman prosecuted Bassat for cutting checks to fake employees whom he fraudulently claimed had done work for the nonprofit, stealing at least $200,000 in the process.

Bassat was sentenced to up to six years in prison for grand larceny in 2013. The investigation mushroomed into a broader probe of its operations by both the attorney general and FBI that yielded four other convictions of staffers for theft and fraud.

The investigation also publicized the organization's ties to now-imprisoned Brooklyn Assemblyman William F. Boyland Jr. through the lawmaker's father, William F. Boyland Sr., who worked for 820 River Street in what prosecutors alleged, but never proved in court, "amounted to a no-show job."

The elder Boyland was also a former assemblyman  as was his brother, Thomas Boyland. Young said he became close with Thomas and William Sr. as he hoped to expand into New York City to provide services to returning prison inmates closer to their homes.

According to Schneiderman's office, the younger Boyland helped sponsor more than $1.5 million in state money to the Altamont Program between 2005 and 2009.

Young was never accused of wrongdoing, but the probe did snare other top executives, including another former chief operating officer who among other things was accused but never convicted of filing phony time slips for the elder Boyland.

She ultimately pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors for filing false reports with the state that did not indicate that grant money earmarked for a veterans program in Brooklyn was actually used for a similar program in Buffalo.

Neither Boyland ever faced charges in connection with their association with the Peter Young network, though the son is serving 14 years in federal prison for unrelated bribery, extortion and wire fraud.

"Frank was a good friend, and he was a man who did a lot," Young said of William Boyland Sr., referring to him by his middle name. "I never dealt with junior at all. I didn't like what junior was about."

The fallout from the criminal probes included the suspension of the network's access to Grants Gateway, an online portal to bid on state contracts.

Barred from the portal, the nonprofit has lost about $12 million in state contracts, Luibrand said. The losses have hit the Altamont Program, for which government contracts in 2015 were nearly two-thirds of its revenue, especially hard.

Altamont provides educational and job training programs to recovering addicts and former convicts, relying on state contracts to supply workers to clean government buildings and staff their cafeterias.

Government contracts were $5.1 million of Altamont's revenue last year, according to unaudited financial statements, down more than $3 million since 2012. At least another $5.5 million in state contracts expire this year or next, according to online records from the state comptroller's office.

The jobs are a key part of Young's "three-legged-stool" recovery philosophy  treatment, housing and employment  because they give addicts the stability to keep them off the streets, he said.

But the contracts also generated extra money that Altamont used to help pay other expenses and maintain dozens of buildings run by Peter Young's organization  including, Young said, the Mother Teresa House shuttered by Albany in a April for code violations.

"We couldn't even afford to put tar on the roof," Young said. "We don't even have money for the minor kind of repairs that we normally would have."

The depth of the organization's financial problems was laid out in a legal dispute last year with Schneiderman over the building that housed its Brooklyn shelter and drug treatment programs.

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Schneiderman forced the agency to go to court for approval of the $2.75 million sale of the property operated by Peter Young Shelter Services.

The organization sold the building to a Bronx nonprofit to stave off what it described in legal papers as imminent bankruptcy for the Altamont Program and 820 River Street. The buyer also assumed the remaining $2.7 million mortgage.

In court papers, the Peter Young group acknowledged that "to continue serving its core mission of providing services in the Albany area, and to remain financially viable ... it must narrow its geographic footprint, reduce its debts and dissolve certain of its properties and programs."

In addition to the Brooklyn property, the nonprofit also sold its Syracuse-area outpost, the LeMoyne Manor, and six other buildings throughout the Capital Region. Fourteen others are on the market, Luibrand said.

"We had to pull out of Rochester completely," Young said.

Luibrand said the state should keep its word by allowing the organization to again compete for government work. It signed the agreement with the Addictions Care Center after being promised by OASAS that new management would restore the state's confidence, he said.

"They totally went back on their word," Luibrand said. "What they wanted from us was a new management team, and if we had a new management team, they would lift the (ban on) Grants Gateway."

With the ban still in place, Luibrand said, Altamont continues to miss out on new contracts, accelerating its financial decline.

OASAS spokeswoman Susan Craig said "vendors must demonstrate integrity, experience, ability, prior performance and organizational and financial capacity to do business with the state."

Morris Peters, a spokesman for the state Division of Budget, said the decision whether to restore the nonprofit's access to contracts will be made by consensus of the involved agencies  including the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision and Office of Temporary Disability Assistance - and flagged its recent troubles as the stumbling block.

"The state agencies managing these contracts are working towards resolution of issues with the objective of ensuring continuity of services for clients," Peters said. "Father Young has done a lot for the community over the years, but in light of the organization's legal and financial challenges, they do not currently meet the standard threshold to receive public dollars."

Luibrand said that amounts to the state strangling its cash flow and then using its financial problems as an excuse not to fund it. He said he also suspects the state may be holding the nonprofit's association with the Boyland family against it, even though no wrongdoing was ever proved.

"I think that they believe somehow that there was a link and they never found it," he said. "And they're punishing us."

Young said it's the clients  the addicts and those returning from prison without the dignity of a job to keep them straight  who are being hurt the most.

"We've had to put hundreds of people on the street," he said. "It's tough for me to be sitting on the bench and waiting for the miracle to happen."
A diploma issued by a Chinese university over 100 years ago has been proclaimed the oldest college graduate certificate on Chinese mainland, West China City Daily reported on Sunday. The diploma, issued by Imperial Chinese Railway College, now Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJTU), was written in English.

The Imperial Chinese Railway College was established by Beiyang Railway Bureau after receiving approval from the Guangxu Emperor during the Qing Dynasty. Different from traditional institutions, the Imperial Chinese Railway College focused on both theory and practice, using flexible education methods. In addition to academic studies, the college also promoted physical education.

The college was strict on both its entrance and graduation requirements. It was originally planned that 40 students would be recruited for the universitys first two classes, but fewer students were recruited in the end due to those strict standards. In 1900, only 17 of 39 students graduated. That class was made up of the earliest civil engineering graduates in the history of modern Chinese education. Zhang Xiaoji, the owner of the ancient diploma, was one of them.

The A2 paper-sized diploma is printed with Imperial Chinese Railway College in English at the top, and Zhang's name is written on the right side. The diploma also shows Zhang's grades on his graduation tests, including subjects such as English, Chinese, mechanics and drawing.

The diploma was donated to SWJTU by Zhang in the 1960s. But the university barely knew anything about Zhang except that he worked in the railway department.

Zhang Xueyong, a former professor at the SWJTU archives, disclosed that the university was established in 1896. Short of professional teachers, the faculty was all foreigners, Zhang explained. Therefore, the diplomas were written in English. Now the diploma has been added to the SWJTU archives.
A boy from southeastern China's Sichuan province was recently repatriated from Dubai after smuggling himself into the country by hiding in the cargo area of a plane for nine hours, Chengdu Economic Daily reported on Sunday. The boy, named Xu Xiaojun, explained that he had been seeking fortune and adventure.

Xus parents said that their son had dropped out of school after completing middle school. He then worked at a factory in Jiangsu province. On May 10, he told his parents that he was going to work in a branch factory in Shanghai, but instead he rented a house near Shanghais Pudong International Airport.

After climbing a tree to jump over the airport fence, Xu sneaked into the cargo space of an Emirates Airlines airplane and hid there for the next nine hours. Xu was ultimately discovered by local police when the plane landed. He was then sent back to China.

According to local law, Xu could have been accused of jeopardizing aviation safety and illegal immigration. However, after negotiation with the Chinese consulate, the Dubai procuratorate did not charge him.

Some guessed that Xus reason for traveling to Dubai was to become a junkman, since there were prominent rumors online that it was possible to earn 470,000 yuan ($71,657) every year doing this. Xu explained that he had hoped to work and make money in Dubai, but he also wished to travel there to explore.

Xu is now resting at a relative's. His parents said they plan to discuss his future with him when he gets home. Going back to school is a priority, his father stated, adding that professional training is also an option if Xu doesn't want to study.
Four men from southeastern China's Fujian province recently submitted an application to the Fujian High People's Court for a total of more than 30 million yuan ($4,575,000) in compensation after spending 22 years behind bars due to an unjust verdict, thepaper.cn reported.

Xu Jinlong, one of the four men in question, applied for compensation of 9.89 million yuan for violation of personal freedom and mental damages. In addition, Cai Jinsen, Zhang Meilai and Xu Yusen, the other wrongly convicted men, also applied for compensation totaling 23.8 million yuan.

On Jan. 13, 1994, a villager named Zheng Jinrui from the town of Zhongmen in Putian, Fujian province was murdered in his home. A few months later on March 2, Cai was arrested by police and confessed to robbing Zhengs house together with Xu Yusen, Zhang Meilai and Xu Jinlong.

On June 5, 1995, Xu Yusen, Zhang Meilai and Xu Jinlong were sentenced to death by the Putian Intermediate People's Court. Cai was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve since he was not the primary criminal and had voluntarily confessed to police.

After the first trial, Xu Yusen, Zhang Meilai and Xu Jinlong all appealed to the Fujian High People's Court, claiming that they were tortured by police until they confessed to the crime. On April 4, 1999, the court commuted the mens original sentences to death with a two-year reprieve. The court maintained Cais original judgment.

Though the court had downgraded its judgment, the three men continued to assert their innocence and kept filing appeals. However, the Fujian High People's Court rejected their appeal in 2007 and decided not to order a retrial for the case in 2009. Finally, in February 2014, the People's Procuratorate of Fujian Province suggested a retrial in the Fujian High People's Court, citing a lack of evidence for the original convictions.

Cai's penalty has been reduced six times and he was released on Aug. 9, 2014. Talking to the families of the three men still in prison, Cai decided to appeal once again on their behalf.

In June of last year, the high court allowed the four mens lawyers to review the court records, and the lawyers found that 13 fingerprints of a key witness named Chen Guotai had been faked.

The Fujian High People's Court decided the following December to order a retrial. On Feb. 2 of this year, the Putian Intermediate People's Court acquitted the four men due to a lack of evidence. Now the men are applying for compensation through the Fujian High People's Court.
THE LATEST KANSAS CITY HOMICIDE FOR 2016 PUTS THIS TOWN AT A 5-YEAR MURDER COUNT HIGH VERY EARLY INTO WHAT COULD BE A BLOODY SUMMER!!!

"A man is dead after being shot in Kansas City, Mo. on Saturday.





Police responded to a report of a shooting near 33rd Street and Indiana Avenue shortly after 7 p.m.





Police described the victim as a black male. The suspect is still at large, although police do not have suspect information at this time."

- At this time on the calendar there were only 34 murders.





- 2015 marked a 36% increase in murders from the year before last.





- Tonight's murder pushed Kansas City past 2012 killing total of 44 for early June.

On Memorial Day some of the top ranking denizens of our blog community warned that homicide totals were set to dramatically increase amid a contentious Summer and now that tragic prediction has come to pass.To wit . . .Here's the report for tonight . . .Deets:As always, let's crunch the numbers according to the latest data available from KCPD as of this writing . . .Again, these numbers reveal that Kansas City's murder count is trending upwards despite the efforts of KCNOVA, Aim4Peace, COMBAT and litany of other anti-violence groups subsidized by taxpayers.As always, thanks for reading this week and have a safe and fun Saturday night.
CHECK THIS COMPILATION OF KANSAS CITY LGBT COMMUNITY REAX TO THE LATEST HORRIFIC MASS SHOOTING TARGETING A GAY NIGHTCLUB IN ORLANDO!!!

"KCAVP is devastated to hear of the mass shooting at Pulse, an LGBTQ club in Orlando, last night. We mourn those who have died and send our condolences to their loved ones. The LGBTQ community nationwide is heartbroken right now. KCAVP is currently coordinating with other local LGBTQ organizations to arrange a community space for mourning and solidarity, likely tonight or tomorrow night. Please stay tuned for more details if you're interested in attending. Anyone who wants to speak to an advocate about their grief or other emotions in response to this tragedy can always call us at 816-561-0550, our 24/7 hotline."

"A dark cloud is over the United States today. Heartland Mens Chorus offers our sincere sympathy to all those affected in Orlando and our hearts go out to those who have lost loved ones because of this horrific act. When the gay community has faced oppression and hatred in any form, Heartland Mens Chorus has responded with our voices that enlighten, inspire, heal, and empower. This is why we sing."





Twitter: Our hearts are w/ those impacted #PulseNightclub &entire #LGBTQIA community. #pridemonth









New York Times: What Happened at the Orlando Nightclub Shooting





Fox News: 50 killed in shooting at Florida nightclub in possible act of Islamic terror

Before any other Kansas City news outlet, ournoted the mass murder in Orlando in context of Kansas City's homicide problem.And now . . .Here are links to local LGBT representatives and their words:Here are the links from major media outlets and their info about the massacre:Developing . . .
"Chastain had to wait Friday for security guards to escort him into City Hall.





"He was going to the city clerk's office to deliver his latest set of petitions, proposing another citywide light-rail plan. But Chastain was stopped at the entrance and told he could not go to the clerk's office without a security escort.





"A City Hall spokesman said Chastain is one of about 20 people on a watch list."

Clay Chastain has petitioned City Hall without a single incident of violence for more than 20 years.



Clay Chastain was headed to the clerk's office with his daughter.

Like it or not, Clay Chastain's business with City Hall is documented by a notary often checked with lawyers and the courts. He is a political threat to City Hall but not at all a security risk. All of this questions to politicos over the years have been pointed at best but always polite and professional.

DISAGREE WITH CLAY CHASTAIN OR OTHERWISE . . . HE HAS NEVER POSED ANY SECURITY THREAT TO ANYONE AND THIS SECURITY ESCORT DEMONSTRATES NOT ONLY A CLEAR ABUSE OF POWER BUT ALSO A DESPICABLE USE OF POLITICAL INTIMIDATION WITH CITY HALL SECURITY RESOURCES!!!

"What's the justification for this other than to intimidate me and make the people at City Hall and on TV think Clay Chastain is dangerous?" Chastain asked.

It's not unreasonable to suspect that Mr. Chastain was profiled by City Hall security because an official @ 12th & Oak disagrees with his politics and activism rather than any real security risk given the transit enthusiast poses absolutely no threat of physical harm to anyone.

A tragic abuse of city resources was documented yesterday at City Hall that has greater implications for a growing "bunker mentality" of Mayor Sly James, his administration and our local government in general.Checkit:Deets dutifully reported by Mike Mahoney:#######3A few things to remember . . .Accordingly . . .Mr. Chastain seems to agree . . .Some might bring up a sordid online dating Internets story during the campaign season but it's worth noting that Mr. Chastain sued in that instance and his case was quietly settled.And so . . .This incident should inspire readers to remember thatgiven that KCMO is now the only town in the nation that has their law enforcement governed by some members state appointed board instead of strictly local officials. During the discussion some members of city council laughed off suggestions of corruption and police enforcing the views of elected officials.Accordingly . . .Wondering if TKC is on the list . . . Then realizing that I don't care given that our blog's best blogging comes by way of the mobile Internets and horrible coffee shops.But I digress . . .In the final analysis, the security crackdown against Clay Chastain shows us that City Hall is growing increasingly intolerant of the citizen initiative petition process and their abuse of power and seems tyrannical, irresponsible and petty.You decide . . .
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 12

Trend:

Armenian armed forces have 36 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 12.

Armenian armed forces were using large-caliber machine guns.

Armenian armed forces stationed in Dovekh and Shavarshavan villages of Armenia's Noyemberyan district opened fire at the Azerbaijani positions located in Kemerli and Farakhli villages of the Qazakh district.

Armenian army also violated ceasefire from the positions near Chilyaburt village of the Tartar district, Merzili village of the Aghdam district, Kuropatkino village of the Khojavand district, Garakhanbeyli, Horadiz, Ashagi Seyidahmadli villages of the Fizuli district.

Further on, Azerbaijani positions were shelled from the nameless heights in the Goranboy, Khojavand, Fizuli and Jabrayil districts.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
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The Jeddah-based International Islamic Trade Finance Corp (ITFC) plans to strengthen its global network of offices in an effort to increase the use of sharia-compliant banking in merchandise trade.



"We want to be closer to member countries - to do this we need to decentralise our activities," said Hani Salem Sonbol, chief executive of the ITFC, a member of the Islamic Development Bank Group (IDB).



The ITFC, which currently has offices in Jakarta, Dakar and Istanbul, will move more staff there and open a branch in Dubai this year to serve as a gateway to Africa, he added.



Islamic trade finance, which follows religious principles such as a ban on interest, accounts for only a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars of bank-intermediated trade finance conducted globally every year.



But the ITFC, which uses its expertise and funds to facilitate Islamic trade finance, says it is expanding its activities partly through new business with countries outside the traditional core areas of sharia-compliant finance in the Gulf and southeast Asia.



Last month, it signed financing agreements with Djibouti, Comoros, Mali and Mauritania, and is exploring transactions in Guyana, the newest member of the IDB Group, Sonbol said.



The ITFC approved transactions worth $6.1 billion in the financial year to last October, up from $5.2 billion a year earlier. It more than doubled financing approvals to sub-Saharan Africa; Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey saw some of the biggest individual increases in approvals.



Difficulties in the global economy could dampen further growth but the ITFC aims for around $7 billion of approvals this year, Sonbol said.



Traditionally, Islamic banks have not become heavily involved in trade financing as it often requires large balance sheets; they have left such business for Western banks to dominate.



To overcome this, the ITFC has developed a network of more than 70 financial institutions which last financial year provided $4.2 billion via 25 syndicated deals, representing 68 percent of the institution's total trade financing. The rest came from its own resources.



Strategic partnerships are growing: Last year, the ITFC closed a $350 million export syndication in favour of Turkey's export-import bank, and in February it signed a partnership agreement with Morocco's largest lender by assets, Attijariwafa Bank.



The ITFC's mandate is to promote trade among countries of the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Trade within the group accounted for 19.5 percent of OIC countries' total trade in 2015, up from around 12 percent in 2011, and the ITFC aims for 26 percent by 2025, Sonbol said.



The IDB is the largest shareholder in the ITFC with 37.6 percent of paid-up capital; Saudi Arabia holds second place with 16.9 percent. Last year, the ITFC's general assembly approved an increase of Iran's subscription by 8,500 shares, which once paid would allow it to take third spot behind Saudi Arabia.  Reuters
Qatar Solar Technologies (QSTec), a member of Qatar Foundation, was recently awarded the Best GCC Integrated Solar Company Award by World Finance magazine, a leading bi-monthly business publication.



QSTec won the award in recognition for its advancement along the solar value chain, said a statement from the company.



Dr Khalid Klefeekh Al Hajri, chairman and CEO, QSTec, was invited to attend the award ceremony, which was held at the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in London, UK.



Dr Al Hajri said: We would like to thank Qatar Foundation, SolarWorld, Qatar Development Bank, Centrotherm and our staff for the instrumental role they have played in all of our successes.



This award serves as an affirmation that QSTec is realising its vision to become a world leading integrated solar company through a strategy that has seen it expand from Doha right across the world, he said.



The consortium between QSTec, SolarWorld and Centrotherm was developed to share knowledge, utilise each others key strengths and improve costs and efficiencies, and to win this award based on our strategic direction for advancement is very encouraging for QSTec and the regions solar industry, he added.



In the post-award interviews held at the LSE, Dr Al Hajri stated that the two greatest challenges for the renewable energy sector was the need to continually drive down costs to make renewables even more cost competitive with other forms of electricity production, and the need to make energy storage solutions more available, scalable and at a lower cost, said a statement.



However, he emphasised that the solution involved stakeholders uniting, in the interest of development, to overcome the fragmentation prevalent in the renewable energy industry and join together to address these key issues.



Dr Al Hajri further noted that the success of QSTec in constructing the first of its kind polysilicon production facility in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region coupled with its strategic investments will play a major role in shaping the regions solar industry.



The facility will produce 8,000 metric tonnes of polysilicon and can expand along the value chain to produce over 45,000 tonnes of polysilicon a year. This is will enable the future production of 6.5 gigawatts of solar technologies each year, it added.  TradeArabia News Service
Unilevers Comfort fabric softener and detergent brand Omo have launched their annual clothes donation drive for the first time in Qatar, in association with Qatar Charity.

Share a touch of love this Ramadan with Omo and Comfort encourages people to donate clothes to those less fortunate during the holy month. The campaign, now in its seventh year, has collected over 500,000 clothes in total since its start. In 2014, the campaign set a Guinness World Record for the largest clothing collection drive, and then broke its own record in 2015, Unilever said.

Waqas Javed, marketing director of foods, refreshments and home care at Unilever Gulf, commented: Unilever is delighted to bring the Share a touch of love this Ramadan to Qatar. Comfort and Omo are both brands that have love, sharing and giving built into their core values. The campaign takes that extra dose of love out to the wider community. The people of Qatar are generous, and we are very confident that they will donate enthusiastically. We look forward to the campaign becoming a regular Ramadan tradition in the country.

Amer Mohammad Al Besiri, in-kind donations manager at Qatar Charity, added: Qatar Charity is always keen on supporting those in need through a variety of initiatives including those that cater towards donating clothes. At Qatar Charity, we welcome partnerships with companies and organizations who are eager to play their role in charity works through their corporate social responsibility strategies, and thats why we are proud to partner with Omo and Comfort through this initiative, especially that it is taking place for the first time in Qatar and at the same time coincides with the holy month of Ramada, the month of generosity and giving.

He also noted that Qatar Charity will distribute the donated clothes through its charity initiative Tayf, an initiative that has been exerting its efforts for a long time towards charity and humanitarian activities.

Between June 7 and July 6, the campaign will receive donations at the Omo and Comfort booth at the Landmark Mall in Doha.

This year, the Share a touch of love this Ramada initiative has partnered with popular chauffeur cab booking service, Careem, to arrange collections from peoples homes during weekends as well.

Clothes placed in donation boxes are collected and carefully washed with Omo and Comfort before being packaged and delivered to the families in need and low income individuals through Qatar Charity. TradeArabia News Service
Irans exports of petrochemical products has jumped up by about 30 per cent in weight in the post-sanctions era, a senior official said.



However there has been no rise in terms of value mainly due to the decline in oil prices which resulted in lower prices of petrochemical products, Mehdi Sharifi Nik-Nafas, managing director of National Petrochemical Commercial Company, was quoted as saying by Iran Daily News, citing an IRNA report.



On the export of petrochemicals and the demand for such products in global markets, he said there is demand for the Iranian products in the world markets but the exports should keep up production.



The official said there are three representative offices in Germany, the UK and Switzerland and number of sales offices in Europe will increase in the future in line with exports to those destinations.



More than 46.4 million tonnes of petrochemical products were produced last year which constituted 80 per cent of the nominal production capacity.



Last year, 18.1 million tonnes of petrochemical products were exported, showing a growth of 23 per cent compared to the figure for the preceding year.



This year, 54,700,000 tonnes of petrochemical products will be exported, it said.



Iran's petrochemical output will reach 160 million tonnes in next nine years from the current 61 million tonnes, added the report.
Iran has appointed Ali Kardor to lead the state oil company, promoting him from the role of finance director as the country boosts crude output and seeks more than $100 billion in investment to revive its energy industry.



Kardor replaces Roknoddin Javadi as managing director of National Iranian Oil Company, a Bloomberg report cititng Iran's oil ministrys Shana news service said.



Kardor will also have a seat on the companys board, Shana reported, without giving a reason for the management change.



Iran is producing and shipping more oil after world powers in January lifted economic sanctions targeting its energy industry. The country has roughly doubled exports since then, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said in an interview last week in Vienna. To keep up the momentum, the government is seeking foreign partners at about 70 oil and natural gas fields, which NIOC presented to potential investors in November at a conference in Tehran.



Turning around Irans oil and gas industry is going to be a challenge for anyone in that role, Edward Bell, commodities analyst at lender Emirates NBD in Dubai, said Sunday by phone. Theyve shown that theyre quite capable of raising production so far this year, and whether that lasts or is sustainable depends on bringing in investment.



As NIOCs managing director, Kardor will need to solicit bids and award contracts to partners who can provide money and technology to expand Irans crude production and build advanced refineries and chemical plants. Potential investors are awaiting approval of a contract model that would apply to ventures with international companies. While the draft contracts need to be revised, the government is confident the first deals will be signed within months, Zanganeh said in an interview with Seda weekly magazine. - Bloomberg
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 12

By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:

The agricultural products have been freely delivered from Azerbaijan to Russia by 100 carriages and 33 trucks for the last three days, the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee said June 11.

The delivery of agricultural products from Azerbaijan to Russia has been freely restored.

"Azerbaijan and Russia have eliminated all problems arising while exporting the Azerbaijani agricultural products to Russia," the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee said. "After reaching an agreement, Azerbaijani goods were not returned or delayed on the border."

The corresponding agreement was reached following the discussions between Aydin Aliyev, chairman of the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee and the management of the Russian Federal Customs Service.

Earlier, the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee stated that the agricultural products of the Azerbaijani farmers and entrepreneurs, delivered to Russia, are returned or delayed on the border.

The Russian side said that the Azerbaijani farmers in their documents incorrectly indicate the country where the product was grown.

According to the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee, the Azerbaijan-Russia trade turnover amounted to $465.87 million in January-April 2016. Some $78.5 million of this amount accounted for the export to this country.
All participants of the recent attacks in Kazakhstan's Aktobe have been neutralized and arrested, and their their weapons have been confiscated, Kazakhstan's National Security Committee said on Sunday.

On June 5, unidentified armed assailants attacked two gun shops and a military unit in Aktobe. As a result of the attack, at least 7 people were killed, including three servicemen, and 38 injured. In response, the country's authorities announced an anti-terrorist operation.

"All the participants of the violent acts in the city of Aktobe have been neutralized and arrested by the Aktobe regional operational headquarters for the fight against terrorism," the committee said in a statement.

The committee added that all the weapons at the disposal of the arrested had been confiscated.

According to the committee, the situation in Aktobe is calm and is under control of the law enforcement, who ensure the safety of citizens and the rule of law in the city.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 12

By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:

Iran's Bank Mellat has set up a committee for pursuing $4 billion claim for damages against the UK over freezing the bank's assets since 2010.

Chief executive officer of Bank Mellat Ali Rastegar has met with a group of lawyers to discuss registering a legal case against the British Treasury, IRNA news agency reported.

He retreated that the bank will take all necessary measures to realize its rights.

Earlier in February the European Union's top court ruled that Bank Mellat's assets should not have been frozen since 2010.

The ruling paved the way for the bank to seek hefty damages from the British government.

The court' ruling in favor of Bank Mellat was the first ruling in favor of an Iranian entity after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was implemented January 16.
Tribune News Service

Bathinda, June 11

Demanding regularisation of jobs and release of salaries, members of the SSA-RMSA Teachers Union, Punjab, held a protest march at Phul village.

They alleged that the state government had failed to pay the salaries for the last 14 months to about 100 RMSA lab attendants; for seven months to about 1,200 RMSA teachers; and for three months to about 12,000 teachers under the SSA in the state.

Elaborating on the demands of the union, leaders said around 14,000 teachers recruited under the Sarva shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyaan (RMSA) had been working in government schools of the state for the past seven years on contractual basis.

They demanded that female teachers recruited under the SSA-RMSA schemes should also be given six-month paid maternity leave as it was given to the regular teachers working in government schools.

The leaders said apart from the maternity leave, the female employees must also be given medical and child-care leave among other benefits.

The SSA-RMSA teachers working for the past seven years have been denied the cashless treatment scheme whereas the state government has already extended the cashless health scheme benefit to the newly-recruited contractual employees in many departments. Instead of heeding their demands, increasing their salaries and extending leave and other benefits to these teachers, the government cut 25 per cent of their salaries. Lab attendants working under the two schemes have not been paid for the last 11 months.

Raising slogans against the state government, the RMSA teachers also distributed pamphlets and exhorted the public to be wary of the tall promises being made by the political leaders ahead of elections.

We will intensify our agitation if the government failed to meet our demands. We distributed pamphlets against the government to expose its fake promises at the ground level, said Apar Apaar Singh.

He added that the Centre government in 2013 issued directions to the state government to regularise the RMSA teachers but still the state government had failed to do so.

The Education Minister, on June 3, 2015, made a committee to prepare and handover a report within two months over regularistion of teachers but nothing has been done in this regard, he added.
Sandeep Rana

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, June 12

It was not only his customers that Panchkula-based broker Manav Malhotra allegedly cheated of crores. He did not spare even his business partners.

Malhotra, who allegedly cheated serving Indian Army colonels, Shimla MP Virender Kashyaps younger brother and other high profile people in the name of providing them property, also duped his partners in lieu of investment.

Chandigarh-based Naveen Arora, who joined him as a partner in the property dealing business in 2009, ended up working with him. Manav lured me to invest in the Bhumi Green project, which was to come up near Sukhna Lake adjoining Kishangarh. I invested Rs 40 lakh and he promised that I would get back Rs 52 lakh in three months. I trusted him, being his business partner. However, several months passed and neither did I get the property nor was the money refunded to me. Following this, I stopped working with him, but so far he has done nothing about it and has now gone missing.

Like others, he too was convinced to give cheques in the name of his company Gauransh Associates and not the builder. In most of the cases, when the complainants approached the builders, they replied that they had not got any payment from Guransh.

Like Arora, Delhi-based Dilreet Grewal was also offered to become his partner but before he could join business with the accused, Grewals brother was cheated by Malhotra. He asked me to become his business partner by investing in a good project at Bhiwadi in Panchkula. My brother wanted to buy a flat. Sso he gave him Rs 4 lakh as initial payment around two years ago. But Malhotra has not given him any flat nor returned the money.

He has gone missing now and is unapproachable, added Grewal. Another victim Rahul Kaushik, a resident of Gurgaon, who was working under Malhotra, said Malhotra cheated Kaushiks father and brother-in-law in the name of investment at Bhiwadi.

Assistant Sub-Inspector Mange Ram of the Economic Offence Wing( EOW) of the Panchkula police claimed they had raided several places but he could not be arrested. He is attending parties and roaming around in the district, but the police claim they are unable to arrest him. We doubt the intentions of the police, said Colonel (retd) Rohit Kumar , who has lost Rs 10 lakh to Malhotra.
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 11

As many as 16,000 students appeared for the Punjab Pre-Medical Entrance Test (PMET) 2016 held today in 33 examination centers across the state. The exam was conducted in two shifts 10 am - 1:00 pm and 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm. The candidates are competing for about 700 MBBS and 500 BDS seats in the medical and dental colleges.

The paper had 200 questions (100 from biology and 50 each from physics and chemistry) to be attempted in three hours. Most students found the biology and physics section of the paper difficult.

Dr Arvind Goyal, PMT trainer, said unlike the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-1 (NEET-1), the biology section was not based on the NCERT textbooks and some questions were out of syllabus.

Some of the questions of the biology and physics paper were very difficult. Students and their parents are planning to start a campaign for leniency in evaluation once the university uploads the answer key. The result is expected by June 15.
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 12

Two out of total 13 ambulances impounded by the Chandigarh Police were being operated on fake registration numbers. The police have found that registration numbers affixed on two ambulances were that of a scooter and a car. The police said the chief security officer (CSO) of the PGI on Monday would again be asked to join the investigation and a case under Section 473 would be slapped on the accused.

The police had recently unearthed a racket of unauthorised ambulances running illegally on the PGI campus. Thirteen ambulances were impounded and Gagandeep Singh, alias Fauji, and Satti, who were operating the ambulances, were booked. Seven PGI employees, including three security guards, three persons who pack bodies at the PGI and a mortuary attendant were also arrested for their alleged involvement in the racket.

Inspector Narinder Patial, SHO, Sector 11 police station, said while verifying the ownership of the vehicles it was found that two ambulances had fake registration numbers. While one number was found to be that of an Activa scooter and another was that of an Alto car, the SHO said.

The SHO said the charges for putting fake number plates on the ambulances was going to be slapped against the two accused illegally operating the ambulances at the PGI who had already been booked for cheating and extortion. Section 473 (making or possessing counterfeit seal, with an intent to commit forgery punishable otherwise) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) will be added to the case, he added.

The police said the chief security officer of the PGI on Monday would be asked to join the investigation. He was earlier asked to visit the police station, however he didnt come. We will again ask him to join the investigation, the police said.

The accused used to threaten the ambulance drivers and ask them not to ferry patients or bodies in their ambulances. The attendants were also forced by the accused to hire their ambulances and charged exorbitant fare from them. The PGI employees were the informers who used to alert the accused the moment a patient was discharged or a body had to be transported.
Gurdeep Singh Mann

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, June 11

It seems drug addicts are on the prowl in the city as after robbing an onion seller at gunpoint near the Police Lines last week, a watermelon seller was looted by a group of addicts six days ago. No case has not been registered in this regard yet.

Though the police arrested three out of four robbers in the onion sellers case and also added the recently amended Section 379-B of the IPC  having provision of minimum 5 to maximum 10 years imprisonment  no police action has been taken in the second case.

Dhobiana resident Surinder Kumar said he had been selling watermelons at roadside for the past 20 years on the stretch between Power House Road and bus stand light-point.

It was 10 pm and customers were still there. Three boys came in a three-wheeler. One of them stayed back at the wheel with ignition on while others enquired about the rate, Surinder said.

He added the moment he replied, they pounced upon the galla and took away Rs 7,500.

The victim was injured after the apparently intoxicated youth pushed him.

He said he had just counted the money and kept it aside in the galla for the next days purchase.

I chased them with the help of a customer on a two-wheeler for nearly a kilometer and caught hold of the neck of three-wheelers driver but couldnt hold on due to rush of vehicles, Surinder said.

The accused jumped all lights and escaped towards the railway station.

The police reached 30 minutes after his call. The ordeal was still on as I had to make rounds of Kachehri Chowki the next day. I had to sit for hours but no case was registered. I feel I am the criminal, he said.

Roadside sellers said, The city was now akin to Bihar in terms of crime. In fact, Bathinda has snatched the crown of crime from states like Bihar. Now, we compare our place with places like Nigeria or Botswana.

Bathinda Tribune, when tried to enquire about the matter from the police chowki, the policemen there gave a standard reply, The matter is under investigation and efforts are on to nab the robbers.

We have paraded some criminals in front of the victim but he didnt recognise any of them, they said.

Instead, the policemen said the victim even failed to note down the registration number of the three-wheeler and didnt know where they had gone after the incident.
Nirupama Rao

A PICTURE, as they say, is worth a thousand words. A day after he spoke to the two Houses of the US Congress, the photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi being surrounded by adulatory members of his audience, made it to the front page of The New York Times. Both the medium and the message came together in a happy confluence. The energy and enthusiasm that connotes Mr. Modis approach has been very much in evidence during all his trips since becoming Prime Minister, but nowhere was this more in evidence than in the US. This visit was billed as a consolidation of the impressive build-up in India-US relations, particularly since 2014; as it turned out, it also became a reaffirmation, the raising of the baton for a new symphony in each nations cooperation with the other.

The fallow years in the relationship are clearly over and the India-US relationship does not appear to be in any state of existential doubt  something that seemed to beleaguer it sporadically, through the years. This is not to say that it has attained comfortable cruising altitude  there is a presidential election under way in the US and clairvoyance about the future Presidents treatment of the relationship is difficult. Mr. Trump, particularly, is given to unpredictable sways of preference and predilection, and what this can do for elaborately structured, complex diplomatic relationships and power equations may not be reassuring.

Assistant Secretary Nisha Biswal of the State Department has spoken of the operationalisation of the Modi Doctrine. On reflection, if one is asked to define this doctrine, it must be predicated on the emphasis on co-opting strategic partners for Indias reform to transform agenda for its economy, the willingness to embrace bold initiatives to promote connectivity like Chabahar port, readiness to raise its profile in countries like Afghanistan, no-compromise on terror or terror groups, enlarging the scope of maritime activity in the Indo-Asia-Pacific space, a willingness to engage in joint efforts with the US and Indias Asian partners to build, what US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter called, a principled security network for the region, and seeking recognition of Indias credentials to be a leading global power.

The special appeal of the India-US relationship lies in its capacity to provide traction for attaining many of these objectives. This stems from the still formidable nature of American power, the compatibility of many security interests, and the multiplex nature of the relationship with its bilateral, regional and global nodes. Of course, much depends on Indias ability to chart a vision that while being sensitive to the aspirations of our SAARC neighbours, it also has the drive and dynamism to promote regional commons. There is no automatic track for leading power status, and India under Mr. Modi must be able to calibrate both boldness and restraint in response to emergent situations, and shed the effacing nature that has marked Indias foreign policy in the eyes of the world. Moving beyond the hesitations of history with the US must also entail other key relationships in our foreign policy.

In the case of the US, the primary areas for attention will involve defence, energy (solar and civil nuclear), trade, technology, investment and innovation. The sun is setting on the Obama Administration, and India is, no doubt, carefully charting its policy options concerning the next presidency, both in the near and long terms. The Indian American community is a critical and strategic asset in this regard: in many ways it is our bridge to the pulsating mainstream of the American political life. Also, there is need for agility and sure-footedness in engaging nominees of both parties in the run-up to the November elections. The bipartisan consensus within the US Congress on the promotion of good relations with India is another source of reassurance.

How does the US see the prospects for closer defence and security cooperation with India? Even as much is given to India at a level unprecedented in the history of the relationship, much is also expected. The veteran, seasoned Senator John McCain sees India as a country that can and should fight with us to maintain global security, maintain regional balance against expansionist adversaries in the Pacific, even as the US will begin to treat India as it does close partners and allies in streamlining the approvals for defence exports and joint development of military technologies. Meanwhile, the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) is pending finalisation because it is understood that the internal processes of approval on the Indian side are being completed. There may not be any other reason for the delay in the conclusion of the agreement. It should be kept in mind that the future US Administration, post-January 2017, will have to carry forward the commitments made by the present one.

In the field of civilian nuclear cooperation, the Westinghouse-NPCIL negotiations are work in progress. The construction of a large-scale nuclear power plant, of the sort envisaged, involves a complex process concerning technical and financial aspects that is moving forward according to government sources.

In the advancement of relations with the US, and overcoming the hesitations of history, our policy makers are, no doubt, alert to the reverberations caused on relations with China. We need not be deterred by Chinese negativity. But we must ensure equilibrium in the mandala of all the key relationships, particularly with China, because geography has ordained that it is our neighbour. No underlying meaning needs to be read into the non-mention of the South China Sea in the Obama-Modi joint statement. The statement does underline the settlement of territorial disputes by peaceful means and makes a reference to the exploitation of resources as per international law.

The statement makes a brief reference to trade and economic ties and observers have tended to focus on the relative lightness of the document when it comes to this field. This should not detract from the fact that complex issues like negotiations on IPR, the Bilateral Investment Treaty and Totalisation will take time. The scope of trade and commercial activity between the two countries has grown and Mr. Modis meeting with American investors is believed to have generated considerable pledges for investment.

The Prime Minister has made a clear and cogent investment in better relations with the US. India must now leverage the energies flowing from this process to its advantage in the region. Mr. Modi spoke of the need for new eyes and new sensitivities. The Modi Doctrine must incorporate this aspect while advancing Indian interests at home and abroad.

 The writer is a former Foreign Secretary
Dinesh Kumar

The ongoing conflict and tensions in the South China Sea (SCS) are showing no signs of ending. Rather, a series of incidents on May 25 led the G7 to express concern over China's assertiveness in the East and South China Sea where Beijing has disputes with Japan, Taiwan and several South-East Asian nations. The announcement was preceded by the interception of an American reconnaissance aircraft by a Chinese fighter aircraft on May 17, which Beijing has denied, and followed thereafter with US President Barack Obama lifting a decades-old arms embargo on Vietnam which has major disputes with China in the Sea.

Earlier in March, a Chinese coast guard ship forcibly freed a Chinese fishing vessel being towed by an Indonesian coast guard ship after it was allegedly caught fishing in Indonesia's territorial waters near the Natuna Islands. In February, evidence emerged that China has deployed missile launchers and fighter jets on an island in the Sea, a region considered among the world's most heavily militarised and which accounts for the passage of about 35 per cent of the world's sea trade pegged annually at about $5 trillion. The SCS, a semi-enclosed sea, is the world's only region with several active multiple claimants of sovereignty, incidents of occupation and fortification with maritime zones overlapping each other, thus making it both difficult to resolve and more volatile. The disputed islands and archipelagos can be classified into four groups  (i) Paracel islands, comprising 130 small coral islands and reefs located in the northern part of the Sea and distributed over 15,000 sq km, claimed by Vietnam, China and Taiwan. China forcibly took these islands from Vietnam in 1974 and since then controls all of the Paracel Islands. (ii) Spratly islands, located in the centre of the sea and comprising 750 islands, reefs, islets, atolls, claimed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam in its entirety and by the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia in part; (iii) Pratas islands, located 200 miles south of Hong Kong, claimed by China and Taiwan and (iv) the Scarborough Reef, located 130 miles from the Philippine island of Luzon, claimed by China, Taiwan and the Philippines. Malaysia has built structures on Investigator Shoal and on the Erica Reef in the Spratly archipelago, while Vietnam has upgraded its structures on Cornwallis South Reef and Alison Reef in the middle of the Spratly area. The Philippines has filed five claims against China pertaining to Beijing's nine-dash-line, sovereignty rights, freedom of navigation and the legal status of several maritime features adjacent to Scarborough Shoal and Johnson Reef. Manila is also currently fighting Chinese claims over the Spratly Islands in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague even as Beijing is boycotting the case and said it will ignore the verdict. A more politically and militarily aggressive China, which claims sovereignty over virtually the entire SCS and all islands and other features located in it, has declared the SCS to be a core interest worth fighting for, along with Tibet and Taiwan. Basing its sovereignty on historical maps, China has circulated a map with an arbitrary nine-dash-line that shows its jurisdiction in entirety in disregard to claims by several members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) and in violation of UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which, in turn, does not recognise historical claims and permits coastal states an exclusive economic zone of up to 200 nautical miles and a continental shelf up to 350 nautical miles. China is wantonly building new islands and enlarging some existing islands by reclaiming land in the SCS, creating civil and military infrastructure such as runways, jetties, helipads, military posts and surveillance equipment in addition to deploying surface-to-air missile launchers and operating fighter aircraft. It has unilaterally launched prohibition on fishing in the disputed area. More recently, it has been promoting the disputed Paracel islands as a tourism destination. In addition to it being a major passageway for sea trade, the importance of the SCS stems majorly from the presence of massive reserves of oil and natural gas. Such has been the level of hostility in the region that there have been over 75 major recorded incidents of attacks, clashes, collisions at sea, forcible eviction and occupations, aggressive patrolling, interception and shadowing of vessels in which China has almost always been involved. Over half of these have occurred in the last six years alone starting from 2010, notwithstanding a series of multilateral risk-reduction and confidence-building measures that were put into effect in the years preceding 2010.

The US, which has already rejected Chinese claims, has stationed an aircraft carrier battle group in the Sea. In October last year, the US sent a warship within the 12 nautical mile territorial waters of an island claimed by China to which Beijing had protested. With Washington DC declaring it will continue to send warships and aircraft on patrol missions to the SCS, tensions are only expected to further rise in the region. The US is unlikely to back down considering that it has close relations with Taiwan, South Korea and Japan and any silence on its part could have an impact on its security relations with these three countries. Within Asean, the US has three sets of defence agreements with the Philippines and, ironically, is being wooed by Vietnam for support. India is also viewed by Asean members such as Vietnam as a counter-weight although it is more likely that New Delhi will both politically and militarily tread with caution. Excepting Brunei, all Asean members party to the dispute are expanding their naval and air arms to safeguard their maritime interests. In the years ahead, militarisation and tensions are only expected to escalate as China clearly goes about consolidating and expanding its domination of the South China Sea.

dkumar@tribunemail.com
Our Correspondent

Nurpur, June 12

The death of Akhil Sharma (21) of Badukhar, which comes under the jurisdiction of the Indora police station, due to electrocution on Friday evening led to tension in the area yesterday as a large number of villagers held protest and staged a day-long dharna on the Indora-Badukhar-Talwara link road.

They raised slogans against the Himachal Pradesh State Electricity Board (HPSEB) authorities and Power Minister Sujan Singh Pathania.

They said poor maintenance of power supply lines and equipment in their area was responsible for the incident.

Nurpur DSP, the local police and Indora Tehsildar rushed to the spot.

The protesters demanded compensation for the family of the deceased and action against the erring staff of the HPSEB.

A forensic team from Dharamsala also reached the spot, where the deceased was electrocuted while sitting in his shop, and collected circumstantial evidence.

Later, HPSEB officiating executive engineer, Nurpur division, Balwan Singh, also arrived there to pacify the protesters who were also demanding a high-level probe into the incident.

Balwan Singh assured them of solving the problem of power supply in Badukhar gram panchayat by June 27.

Shopkeepers at the Badukhar market kept their shops closed yesterday to mourn the death of the youth.

As per information, lightening hit a component (pedestal gang switch) of the transformer installed at Badukhar village, which caused a blast.

The deceased who was at his shop got electrocuted after a short circuit.

The youth was rushed to the community health centre at Indora where he was declared dead by the doctor.

The Indora police have registered a case under Sections 336, 337 and 340 against the HPSEB for its alleged negligence in the maintenance of power supply lines in the area.
Tehran, Iran, June 12

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Iran has signed its first post-sanctions contract in the petrochemical field with Switzerland.

Iran's Sadaf Petrochemical Co. and Switzerland's Welding Engineers signed a contract for installing and operating a processing unit in the Iranian factory, IRNA news agency reported June 12.

Ahmad Jazayeri, CEO of Sadaf Petrochemical Co. said the contract was signed after the Swiss company's quality of work was approved by Italy's Versalis.

According to the contract, Welding Engineers will build the final phase of the factory which is for drying and packaging the factory's product for export and domestic use.

Sadaf Petrochemical Co.'s main product is ESBR, a substance used in making tires.
Bhanu P Lohumi

Tribune News Service

Shimla, June 12

The amendment to the Himachal Pradesh Town and Country Act, 1977, by promulgating an ordinance on June 8, 2016, paving the way for regularisation of illegal constructions up to 70 per cent on nominal charges has raised eyebrows.

Experts say the catastrophic move will not only spell doom for environment, but will also negate efforts for planned development of Shimla and other towns.

Illegal and unauthorised constructions in Shimla and its vicinity will be damaged in case of a earthquake, said earthquake expert Arun Bapat, adding that the National Institute of Disaster Management had already declared that there was a possibility of earthquake in Uttarakhand and Himachal.

The ordinance has exposed the real intentions of the government, which is keen on rewarding violators rather than implementing laws to check such constructions strictly. The government made it intentions clear way back in February 2014 when it issued an ordinance in this regard, but later withdrew it. It brought an amendment Bill in the Vidhan Sabha, but later deferred and again promulgated the ordinance which was also withdrawn in September 2014.

The ordinance issued by the government has opened the flood gates for regularisation of illegal constructions as there is no deadline for regularising the constructions. In the past two years, a large number of illegal structures have come up in Shimla, thus qualifying for regularisation as per the ordinance.

A large number of law abiding people, who did not go for construction as their building plans were not approved by the Town and Country Planning (TCP) Department, are upset as the ordinance has come as a bonanza for the violators of the law and surprisingly, the compounding fee is not even 20 per cent of the cost of construction at present.

After the ordinance was withdrawn in September 2014, a spurt in illegal construction was reported and Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh threatened action against those indulging in such activities. He asked the department to keep a check on the violators.

The ordinance provides for regularisation of construction undertaken without approval of any building plan. Deviations and restrictions on number of floors has also been waived. The deviations up to 35 per cent will be regularised on normal rates while the charges will double for the deviations between 35 and 70 per cent.

Section 30-B incorporated in the ordinance is virtual negation of the Town and Country Planning Act as it gives blatant powers to the authorities to regularise illegal constructions up to 70 per cent.

The section says: Notwithstanding anything contained in the Himachal Pradesh Town and Country Planning Act, 1977, or any other law for the time-being in force, the government or any officer, vested with the powers of the Director, may, on application, by order, exempt development on any land or building or class of lands or buildings developed on or before the date of commencement of the ordinance from all or any of the provisions of the Himachal Pradesh Town and Country Planning Act, 1977, or any rule or regulation made there on payment of regularisation fee as specified.

The ordinance explicitly states that all deviations made till the commencement of the ordinance (June 8, 2016) will be regularised, which implies that the owners of illegal constructions will also be rewarded. The ordinance is a glaring example of how political parties join hands in legalising the illegal Acts.

The Citizen Rights Protection Forum, Shimla, has opposed the Retention Policy saying the Town and Country Planning Department and the Shimla Municipal Corporation did not approve the building plans of genuine persons in the name of green, core or restricted areas and even after lapse of four to five years, they have not been allowed to construct the houses, but all those who have brazenly defied the law and waited for the ordinance are making hay.

Officials of the Town and Country Planning Department are upset over the move of the government and feeling let down as all their efforts to ensure planned and regulated constructions have gone down the drain.
Nikhil Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 12

Internal bickering has come to the fore in the Congress leadership in Jalandhar before the visit of AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi to the city. The AICC vice-president will lead a dharna against the deteriorating law and order situation. The dharna was scheduled to be held tomorrow outside the DC office here.

All leaders of Jalandhar have been holding separate meetings with a clear motive to exhibit their show of strength in front of Rahul Gandhi.

Raj Kumar Gupta, former MLA from the Central Jalandhar constituency, today held a separate meeting with his supporters in which district Congress committee president Rajinder Beri, who also fought the election from the same constituency, did not participate. This clearly brought the indifference among the party leadership wide into the open.

Similarly, Sushil Rinku, leader of the dynamic group of Congress councillors, held a separate meeting in the West constituency with party workers. Mohinder Singh Kaypee, former MP from Jalandhar, who is also from the West constituency, did not attend the meeting. This dynamic group was once supported by former PPCC chief Partap Singh Bajwa but he was not on good terms with Kaypee and Henry.

Interestingly, hoardings put up by the Congress leadership welcoming Rahul Gandhi also signalled the differences among the party leaders. Hoardings put up in the city by former Improvement Trust chairman has no photographs of the senior leadership from Jalandhar. Instead, it has pictures of Priyanka Gandhi. Similarly, in the hoardings of Sushil Rinku, photographs of senior leaders Avtar Henry and Mohinder Singh Kaypee are missing.

A Congress leader, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said, Despite losing the election two times in a row in the state, internal bickering in the Congress leadership is still an issue. This shows that our leadership has not learned any lessons from the past debacle. If the situation remains the same, chances are bleak that the Congress could make a comeback in the state

Former MP Kaypee and present MP Santokh Chaudhary are also said to be not on good terms in the political areana.
Tribune News Service

Srinagar, June 12

Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today said the migrant Kashmiri Pandits can go to their native places after their confidence grows in the transit camps.

We will provide them alternative transit accommodation, and as and when they feel like going back and permanently settling at their native places, they should go of their own choice and not by force. Once their confidence grows then they can live wherever they want, Mehbooba said after paying obeisance at the Kheer Bhawani shrine in Ganderbal district.

As a part of this programme, the government has decided to temporarily settle the returning Kashmiri Pandits in mixed transit accommodation till the situation is feasible for them to go back to their native places, she added.

Pointing out that leaders and cadres of most of the mainstream parties and even separatist groups had migrated from their native places because of security reasons, she said: How can we force the Kashmiri Pandits to return to their places?

Mehbooba said the occasions like Mela Kheer Bhawani offered a great opportunity to bring the Kashmiri Muslims and migrant Pandits together to build new bonds of mutual trust and brotherhood, which would in the long run facilitate the return and the rehabilitation of the migrants in Kashmir.

Referring to the Wanpoh incident last night where Pandits devotees were caught in a stone-throwing incident, the Chief Minister said it was a stray incident wherein a stone unfortunately hit a passing vehicle carrying devotees to the Kheer Bhawani shrine.

While some 80 vehicles carrying pilgrims had already passed through the area, unfortunately one vehicle crossed over the same time when some miscreants were throwing stones at the newly established Police Post at Wanpoh, she said, adding that two devotees had suffered minor injuries in the incident and both of them had now reached the Kheer Bhawani temple to join the festivities.

Strongly condemning the incident, the Chief Minister said such mindless acts of stone-throwing and other forms of violence only brought miseries to the people and a bad name to Kashmir, with the tourism sector being the first casualty.

While most of the boys and girls from Kashmir, including the wards of Kashmiri Pandits, are toiling in various states in extreme hot weather conditions to make their careers, unfortunately certain vested interests in Kashmir are hell-bent on ruining the lives and careers of youths, especially from underprivileged sections of society, by misusing them as stone-throwers, she said while urging such quarters to desist from exploiting the poor boys for furthering their vested political interests.
Tribune News Service

Jammu, June 12

Opposition parties in the state legislature have failed to mount pressure on the PDP-BJP coalition government on the issue of land grabbing by Minister for Animal Husbandry Abdul Gani Kohli.

The Vigilance Organisation is probing a case against Kohli and has found that the minister has grabbed around 10 kanals of forest land.

The Animal Husbandry Minister has raised a huge structure on the forest land at Nowabad in the Sunjwan area of Jammu city. A BEd college, ETT college, paramedical school, public school and a branch of J&K Bank along with an ATM are functioning in it.

Despite a prima facie case against the minister and the Jammu and Kashmir High Court directions to the Deputy Commissioner, Jammu, to cooperate with the Vigilance Organisation and demarcate the land, the official hasnt cooperated fully.

Opposition political parties have not done much to force the minister to quit and allow the inquiry to continue freely.

We raised the issue in the Assembly once and did not allow the House to function during Question Hour. We have asked the Deputy Commissioner, Jammu, to submit a report to the Assembly and we will again raise the issue, said Nawang Rigzin Jora, Congress Legislature Party leader.

Sources in the Congress said there were a few elements in the CLP who did not want to pursue the case and only protested for the sake of protest.

Not every legislator is ready to get aggressive against the minister for reasons best known to them, said a source.

Even the main opposition party National Conference (NC) has not taken the matter seriously and has failed to raise the issue in the Assembly.

We did protest and in future also protests will be held, said Mubarak Gul, an NC leader.

Sources said neither of the two opposition parties had demanded resignation from the minister on the issue and had maintained a criminal silence. They said Kohli enjoyed good relations with a few members of both opposition parties and that might have enabled him to save his chair so far.
Suhail A Shah

Anantnag, June 11

Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti held road shows in different village of the Anantnag Assembly constituency and urged people to vote for her as holding her fathers legacy was a matter of pride for her.

Dont think I dont need your votes now that I am the Chief Minister. It is a matter of pride for me to hold on to my fathers legacy, Mehbooba said, addressing a gathering at Chee village on the outskirts of Anantnag town, while urging people not to be complacent about voting this time around.

Mehbooba visited several villages and addressed roadside meetings at KP Chowk, Batpora, Seepan, Mirgund, Chee, Anchidora, Pragashpora, Anzwala, Wantarang, Kehribal, Shalpora, Rampora, Puhru, Mattan Adda, Achabal Adda, Baginder, Mirdantar, Hajidantar, Poshwara, Muniward and Takia Bal.

She said her concern was to fulfil her fathers dreams for the area, which he had wanted to fulfil as a payback to what he called his home.

The PDP has established clear political priorities and we will continue our struggle to seek the resolution of the multiple problems faced by Jammu and Kashmir on political, economic, development, administrative and financial fronts, Mehbooba said.

She said the driving force for the PDPs emergence as a robust regional force is the public support it has got for its pro-people policies, without which the party could not have achieved much. I compliment the PDP cadres for effectively carrying the partys pro-people agenda to the grassroots and working tirelessly towards implementation of Mufti Mohammad Sayeeds political, economic and developmental vision for J&K, she said.

We would continue to work towards accomplishing his (Mufti Sayeed) vision to create a space of dignity, opportunity and prosperity for the people of Jammu and Kashmir, especially our emancipated youth, she asserted. Like other parts of the state, Mufti Saheb always wanted to restore the historic glory of Anantnag, which has faced huge development deficit due to political neglect in the past, she added.

The Anantnag bypolls were necessitated by the death of former Chief Minister and Mehboobas father Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, who was elected at the seat twice in a row.

You have been giving me all the love like you did to my father and I feel humbled, Mehbooba said. Mehbooba told people that her father had certain dreams for the Anantnag constituency and the district, which unfortunately could not be fulfilled.

I want to fulfil all my fathers dreams vis-a-vis Anantnag district and this constituency in particular, Mehbooba said. He held gratitude for the people of this particular district and so do I. To realise his dreams will be a fitting tribute for the people of this area, she said.

Polls for Anantnag are scheduled to take place on June 22, where seven other candidates are in the fray. Congress candidate Hilal Shah, a new comer, who was the runner-up in 2014 elections and defeated by the senior Mufti only by 6,000 votes, is again in the fray.

National Conference (NC), after their senior leader from Anantnag Mehboob Begs shifting to the PDP, has been left in the lurch with a novice Iftikhar Misger, who only managed to garner 1,800 votes in 2014. The NC has been forced to field Misger again.
Dinesh Manhotra

Tribune News Service

Jammu, June 11

The concluding function of the much-publicised Abhinav Gupt yatra was held peacefully this afternoon at the Kheer Bhawani temple in Ganderbal district.

However, the Sangh Parivar leadership is not convinced with the immature decision taken by the coalition regime, of which the BJP is a partner, to ban the yatra without going through the historical facts.

As the BJP ministers in the coalition were echoing the anti-yatra statements of their PDP colleagues in the government, Dattatreya Hosabale, Sah-Sarkaryawah of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) especially came to the Valley to attend the concluding function of the yatra to give a message to the saffron party.

The participation of Hosabale, who is the third in command in the RSS, in the concluding function of yatra is an indication that the Sangh Parivar had made it a point to ensure the smooth conduct of the pilgrimage.

The RSS had thrown its weight behind the yatra, being conducted under the aegis of Acharaya Abhinav Gupt Sheshadri Samroh Samiti, headed by Art of Living Foundation founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

After its annual executive meeting in December 2015, the RSS had announced to take off the yatra to celebrate the literary and spiritual contributions of Abhinav Gupt, a prolific Shaivite philosopher from Kashmir who is believed to have died on January 4, 1016.

Sources said the decision of the state government to ban the yatra had not gone down well with various organisations of the Sangh Parivar because the announcement to not allow the yatra was taken after pressure from Syed Ali Shah Geelani and other separatist groups of the Valley.

The BJP ministers were asked to convey this message (the handling of the yatra) to the coalition partner PDP because there is a feeling (among Sangh Parivar) that succumbing before the separatists on such issues is giving a wrong impression, said a senior Sangh Parivar leader on condition of anonymity.

The BJP representatives in the government also failed to take up the issue effectively before the coalition partner, he added.

On Thursday, when government spokesman and Education Minister Naeem Akhter announced that no such yatra would be allowed in the state, none of the BJP ministers countered his statement.
Tribune News Service

Srinagar, June 12

Three policemen were injured in a militant attack near south Kashmir's Qazigund town on Sunday evening, police said.

Superintendent of Police Kulgam district, Irshad Ahmad told The Tribune that three policemen were injured when militants ambushed a police vehicle. One of the injured is in a critical condition.

All the injured policemen have been taken to a local hospital.

A spate of attacks targeting policemen has been witnessed in recent weeks in the region.

Three policemen were killed in two separate attacks in Srinagar while two others were shot dead in south Kashmir's Anantnag town in the past fortnight.
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 12

Panjab University has emerged as a favourite destination for international students. In the 2015-16 session, the PU is reported to have 205 students from overseas, which is 40 per cent higher than the 2014-15 session.

The PU spokesperson said there had been a substantial increase in the number of foreign students.

He further said 146 international students from 15 countries enrolled in the session 2014-15, which increased to 205, including 69 girls, in the session 2015-16. Online queries from international students had also increased significantly.

PU Dean International Students Professor Deepti Gupta said the PU hosted nearly 205 foreign students from 19 countries, including the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Africa, Brazil, Italy, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Dubai, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand and Vietnam.

In all, 61 foreign students are doing PhD, 53 are doing postgraduation and 91 are doing graduation from the PU. In all, 295 are studying in different affiliated colleges of the PU in Chandigarh.

LLB has emerged as the big draw for international students pursuing bachelors degree. Most of the international students in these courses are from Canada and the US.

Twenty eight international students each are studying Law from the University Institute of Legal Studies (UILS), 26 international students are doing bachelors degree in dental sciences (BDS) from the Dr HSJ Institute of Dental Sciences.

Eight students are pursuing bachelors degree of pharmacy from the UIPS, four students are doing undergraduate courses in economics and three students are pursuing bachelors degree in engineering from the UIET.
Orlando, June 12

A gunman armed with an assault rifle killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday in the worst mass shooting in the US history that President Barack Obama described as an act of terror and hate.

The shooter, identified as Omar S Mateen (29), was killed by the police at Pulse nightclub. Mateen was a Florida resident and US citizen who was the son of immigrants from Afghanistan.

It has been reported that Mateen made calls to 911 this morning in which he stated his allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, said Ronald Hopper, the FBI's assistant special agent in charge on the case.

US officials, however, cautioned that they had no immediate evidence of any direct connection with the Islamic State or any other foreign extremist group.

We know enough to say this was an act of terror, an act of hate, Obama said in a speech from the White House. And as Americans, we are united in grief, in outrage and in resolve to defend our people, he said.

US officials have reached no definitive judgment on the killers precise motives, Obama said. We must spare no effort to determine what, if any, inspiration or association this killer may have had with terrorist groups, he said. Fifty-three people were wounded in the rampage. It was the deadliest single US mass shooting incident, eclipsing the 2007 massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech university.

Pulse was crowded with nearly 350 revelers at a Latin music night when the attack happened.

A hostage situation developed, and three hours later SWAT team officers used armored cars to storm the club before shooting dead the gunman. It was unclear when the victims were killed.  Reuters
New Delhi, June 12

Indians joining al-Qaeda were moved by the 1992 Babri mosque demolition and 2002 Godhra riots and were committed to establish base of terror outfit Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) here, Delhi Police have told a court here.

In its chargesheet filed against 17 accused, the Special Cell of Delhi Police said for the purpose of jihad, some of them had gone to Pakistan and had met Jamat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) chief Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and several other dreaded terrorists.

While delivering jihadi speeches in various mosques, he (arrested accused Syed Anzar Shah) met Mohd Umar (one of the absconding accused) and they discussed atrocities on Muslims in India, especially Godhra and Babri Masjid issues.

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Umar got impressed with his jihadi ideology and speeches and committed himself to the cause of jihad and expressed the desire to receive arms/ammunition training from Pakistan, the chargesheet filed before Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh said. It said that Umar was operating from Pakistan.

The police said arrested accused Abdul Rehman had provided safe hideouts in India to Pakistani militants Salim, Mansoor and Sajjad, all members of Jaish-e-Mohammed, who were later killed in a shootout in Uttar Pradesh in 2001.

These three Pakistani militants had come to India to take revenge of the Babri Masjid demolition and had planned to attack the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya but got killed, the chargesheet claimed.

The police named in its chargesheet 17 accused, 12 of whom are absconding, for allegedly conspiring, recruiting Indian youths and establishing a base of AQIS here.

In its final report, the agency has charged five arrested accusedMohd Asif, Zafar Masood, Mohd Abdul Rehman, Syed Anzar Shah and Abdul Samifor alleged offences under the provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

All the 17 accused were listed in the chargesheet for alleged offences under Sections 18 (punishment for conspiracy), 18-B (punishment for recruiting of any person for terror act) and 20 (punishment for being member of terror organisation) of the UAPA.

The accused were arrested between December 2015 and January 2016 from different parts of the country.

The probe agency has alleged that al-Qaeda was trying to set up its base in India under the banner of the AQIS and some youths from districts of western Uttar Pradesh had already left India and joined its cadre in Pakistan.

It said that 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 jihad.

Besides the five arrested accused, the agency also named in its chargesheet 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
Telecommunication Company of Iran Spokesman Davoud Zareian said the company was able to sign a 1b finance agreement in post-sanction era, IRNA reported.

In addition to the agreement, three MoUs were also signed with some foreign firms.

He said that representatives of K.T Company from South Korea are present in Iran to consult with Iranian companies.

Referring to signing an MoU with Kazakh Company Kazakhtel, he added that besides buying required services from this company, Iran will give required services to Kazakhstan as well.

He also referred to signing an MoU with Italtel company from Italy as another important achievement to equip Iranian network.
Patna/Hajipur, June 11

The alleged kingpin of the topper scam in Bihar intermediate examination, Bachha Rai, was arrested after he surrendered at the Bhagwanpur police station in Vaishali district today.

Rai, who is secretary-cum-principal of controversy-hit Bishun Rai College, arrived at the police station to give himself up from where the police arrested him, Hajipur police sources said.

Arts and science toppers Ruby Rai and Saurabh Shrestha, respectively, who were exposed by television channels, belonged to Rais Bishun Rai College in Vaishali district.  PTI
Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 12

The general discourse at the BJPs national executive meeting today was about the Narendra Modi governments excellent performance on various fronts  governance, growth and economics, defence, foreign policies  and the partys successes in the recently concluded five-state elections. However, the effort to revive the tried and tested Hindutva formula was hard to miss.

BJP president Amit Shah used Kairana and Mathura incidents to target the Samajwadi Party on prevailing lawlessness in the state in his presidential address at the partys national executive meeting. Apparently, the alleged migration of Hindus from Muslim-dominated Kairana and the Mathura cult violence are now part of the BJPs strategic planning for the critical 2017 UP elections. The human face of these unfortunate incidents will back the partys pitch on development and good governance to take on the incumbent Akhilesh Yadav government. Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said Shah called the Mathura violence and Kairana migration violence "unfortunate".

On questions whether the BJP raking up Kairana issue would not take away the focus from development and good governance, Prasad said his party was committed to the two key issues. "Lack of governance and development in UP is very serious issue," he said.

"The country cannot progress without development and good governance. These two major incidents reflect the lack of the two key factors in UP," Prasad said, dismissing the viewpoint that the BJP was raking up Kairana, or for that matter the Dadri beef incident also, to infuse communal colour in the upcoming polls and polarise the electorate.

However, it is clear that in the 2017 UP polls, politics will be played over the alleged exodus of Hindu families from the district in the western part of the state. The state unit of the BJP has already formed a nine-member committee under MP Hukum Singh to assess the situation at the spot. While the BJP is accusing the SP government of patronising those behind the "mass exodus", Opposition Congress and incumbent SP claim that the saffron party is trying to give communal colour to a "non-issue" with an eye on the upcoming polls.

Meanwhile, the police have ordered investigation into the BJP claim that 346 families from the Muslim-majority town left homes after attacks and extortion threats. BJP leaders also claim exodus is not limited to Kairana.

However, according to rival parties, majority of families left Kairana more than five years ago, mostly in search of jobs and better opportunities. At the same time, it is believed that some may have left as recently as two years ago after the murder of some local businessmen.
BEIJING, June 12

China said on Sunday that more talks were needed to build a consensus on which countries can join the main group controlling access to sensitive nuclear technology, after a push by the United States to include India.

China is seen as leading opposition to the US move to include India in the 48-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), but even New Zealand, Turkey, South Africa and Austria oppose Indian membership, according to diplomats.

The NSG aims to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons by restricting the sale of items that can be used to make those arms.

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.

Large differences remain over the issue of non-NPT countries joining the NSG, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in an online statement.

With regard to what to do on the issue of non-NPT signatories joining (NSG), China consistently supports having ample discussion on this to seek consensus and agreement and come to a unanimous decision, Hong said.

The NPT is the political and legal basis for the entire international non-proliferation system, Hong said, adding that China would support the group in further talks to come to a consensus at an early date.

Opponents argue that granting India membership would undermine efforts to prevent proliferation and also infuriate Pakistan.

A decision on Indian membership is not expected before an NSG plenary meeting in Seoul on June 20, but diplomats have said Washington has been pressuring hold-outs. Most of the hold-outs oppose admitting a non-NPT state such as India and argue that if it 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.  Reuters

Issue not taken up in Vienna

Beijing: China insisted that there was no deliberation on the bid by India and other nations at the Vienna meeting that took place last week. There was no deliberation on any items related to the accession to the NSG by India or any other countries that are not signatories to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hong Lei said.

He added that NSG Chair Argentine Ambassador Rafael Mariano Grossi convened an unofficial meeting of the 48-member group on June 9. However, diplomatic sources said earlier that Indias membership was discussed at the meeting and talks had remained inconclusive. PTI

Relevance of Nuclear Suppliers Group

The Nuclear Suppliers Group looks after critical issues relating to the nuclear sector and its members are allowed to trade in and export nuclear technology. The NSG works under the principle of unanimity and even one countrys vote against India will scuttle its bid.
Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 12

The Congress today kicked off its much-awaited reshuffle by naming senior parliamentarians Ghulam Nabi Azad and Kamal Nath as party general secretaries in charge of crucial poll-bound states.

While 67-year-old Azad, Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, has been appointed Congress general secretary in charge of Uttar Pradesh, Kamal Nath replaces Shakeel Ahmed (currently in Canada) as general secretary handling Punjab and Haryana. Punjab and UP both go to the polls next year.

The re-entry of Kamal Nath, 69, into the Congress organisation as general secretary, Punjab, has triggered a controversy, given his alleged role in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The Lok Sabha MP from Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh, who was accused of leading a mob at Gurdwara Rakabganj Sahib that killed two Sikh youths on November 1, 1984, was let off by the Nanavati Commission after questioning for want of evidence of instigating. The Aam Aadmi Party was quick to slam the appointment with HS Phoolka, Sikh riot victims lawyer, saying, By appointing Kamal Nath as Punjab incharge, the Congress has sprinkled salt on the wounds of the 1984 Sikh riot victims. The SAD too criticised the appointment. The Punjabis want to know why the Gandhi family continues to honour perpetrators of the 1984 genocide with plum party posts, asked Daljit Singh Cheema, SAD secretary.

In Haryana, Kamal Nath will have to address factionalism with the distrust between the Bhupinder Singh Hooda camp and state party chief Ashok Tanwar growing. In Punjab, he will have to keep the party united under state president Amarinder Singh.

CongressUP general secretary Madhusudan Mistry, a confidant of vice-president Rahul Gandhi, has been relieved of the post. He will remain incharge, Congress poll committee. With Azad donning a new role, he may be replaced as Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, said a senior leader. Azad, a nine-time Congress general secretary and a long-standing member of the partys working committee, has handled UP twice earlier and is known for his organisational skills.

Meanwhile, sources said Priyanka Gandhi could be drafted for an expanded role in UP where she has so far concentrated on Amethi and Rae Bareli. Chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala termed it mere speculation.
Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

Allahabad, June 12

On the day the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) top brass began their two-day strategy meeting here to chalk out the UP-poll plan, a small group of Congress workers were also holding the fort opposite the iconic Anand Bhawan  the historic residence of the Nehru family  to expose Prime Minister Narendra Modi government .

Tariq Sayeed Aiju, the working president of the City Congress Committee, and Mukund Tewari, General Secretary, UP Pradesh Congress, said they had sought permission to hold a parallel rally a pollkhol rally- from the Anand Bhawan to expose the false promises made by the Prime Minister to the people of the country but were denied permission by the district administration.

Notably, the Aam Aadmi Partys request for holding an anti-PM protest was also shot down by the local administration

The Samajwadi Party is playing into the hands of the BJP and the Modi government, says Sayeed, claiming a saanth-gath  a collusion  between the two political rivals (the SP and the BJP). He said the way the AkhileshYadav-led government had prostrated completely before the BJP and was going out of its way to help it with the preparation and management of the National Executive and the PMs rally made it clear that only the Congress and Mayawati-led BSP could offer hope and respite to people of UP.

He however remained noncommittal about any prospective alliance with the BSP which the BJP is wary of.

Congress leaders say the Samajwadi Party had exposed itself with the way the local administration went out of its way to fail their plans of an anti-Modi Pol Khol Diwas the day of the expose.

Meanwhile, Sayeed claimed Congress president Sonia Gandhi has visited Allahabad  the city once considered the garh, a traditional bastion, of the grand old party  twice. Around February-March, she made two visits to Allahabad and had big plans to reclaim Congress bastion, they say.

In February, Sonia stayed overnight at the Swaraj Bhawan and met local leaders. During her second visit, a surprise and quiet affair, they say, she held closed-door meetings related to Kamla Nehru Memorial Trust. Notably, local leaders have been urging the Central leadership to launch the programmes to mark centenary year of Indira Gandhis birth from Allahabad.

Attempts to revive the Congress partys fortunes from its traditional stronghold have not gone unnoticed by the BJP.

BJP leaders, who claim to be aware of the Congress plans, say Priyanka Gandhi is also in touch with those who either worked with the Nehru-Gandhi family or were closely associated with it more than ever before.

Apparently, this is also a reason  apart from reaching out to the key castes-Brahmins, Thakurs, Dalits, OBCs like Krumis/Patels/ Kushwahas/Maurayas  why the saffron leadership decided to hold the National Executive in Allahabad.

Meanwhile, according to Tiwari, the Congress will continue to expose the claims made by the Prime Minister  the promises he failed to fulfill. Notably, AAP had also sought permission for staging a demonstration-waving black flags from a safe distance to protest against the Prime Ministers maiden visit in Allahabad. After it was denied permission, AAP filed a petition in the Allahabad High Court challenging it.
PK Jaiswar

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, June 12

The police have booked BJPs Kabir Sharma, Youth Akali leader Rajbir Singh Bhullar and their accomplices for opening fire at noted gastroenterologist Dr Gurbilas P Singh late last night.

The latter had to take shelter at the Deputy Commissioners residence to save himself. He was accompanied by his friends Dr Jeet Singh and Dr Ashish Khanna.

Police Commissioner Amar Singh Chahal said Dr Gurbilas lodged a complaint with the Civil Lines police. A preliminary probe was conducted and Kabir Sharma and Rajbir Singh were charged with attempt to murder and under the Arms Act. Kabir Sharma is said to be an associate of Local Bodies Minister Anil Joshi.

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Dr Gurbilas said as he drove towards Basant Avenue, he was obstructed by a white Toyota Fortuner (PN-02-0047)) whose driver would not allow him to overtake. He honked twice and the SUV suddenly came to a halt, resulting in a collision.

As he was parking his car at the roadside, a turbaned youth came out of the SUV and opened fire. Terrified, the doctor sped away. He was chased by the SUV occupants and his car was hit twice. As suggested by his friends, he drove towards the DCs residence and honked frantically to attract the attention of the police personnel there.

Meanwhile, the accused reached there too. Pointing a revolver at the doctor, they pulled him out and thrashed him mercilessly.

A policeman, who came out of the DCs residence, took him and his friends inside to save them.
New Delhi: Delhi Police are considering registering a case for alleged misbehaviour and threat by a prominent restaurant's staff to a woman, who went to the eatery in Connaught Place with eight street children but was denied entry. The AAP government had threatened to cancel the licence of Shiv Sagar restaurant. PTI
New Delhi, June 12

A prominent restaurant in Delhi's Connaught Place denied entry to unprivileged children accompanied by a woman on Saturday, prompting the Delhi Government to order an inquiry.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia termed the incident an example of "colonial mindset" and said that if the allegations against the restaurant are found true its licence will be cancelled.

"If allegations are found true, the Delhi Government will cancel licence of the restaurant," he said.

Sisodia has also ordered the district magistrate of New Delhi to conduct an inquiry into the incident and submit a report within 24 hours.

"This is typical colonial mindset. Can't be tolerated. Have ordered DM New Delhi to inquire & report within 24 hours," he said in his tweet.

Sonali Shetty, a writer, had taken some street children for a lunch to the restaurant to celebrate her husband's birthday on Saturday but was turned away.

"I had taken eight underprivileged children for lunch to Shiv Sagar but the staff there refused to serve us. I was also ridiculed and threatened to keep off the restaurant," she said.

The manager of the restaurant did not respond to phone calls.

Shetty called the incident a "failure" of the society and said she protested outside the eatery for over 10 hours till around 12 but nothing happened.

She said she would fight the restaurant until they apologised.

She also claimed that the policemen who had come to the restaurant on her call also did not help her and instead asked her to the children elsewhere.

Shetty's husband serves in the Indian Army.  PTI
New Delhi, June 12

Indians joining Al-Qaida were moved by the 1992 Babri mosque demolition and the 2002 Godhra riots and were committed to establish a base for terror outfit Al-Qaida in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) here, Delhi Police has told a court here.

In its chargesheet filed against 17 accused, the Special Cell of Delhi Police said for jihad, some of them had gone to Pakistan and had met Jamat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and several other dreaded terrorists.

While delivering jihadi speeches in various mosques, accused Syed Anzar Shah met Mohd Umar (one of the absconding accused) and discussed atrocities on Muslims in India, especially Godhra and Babri Masjid cases.

Umar got impressed with his jihadi ideology and speeches and committed himself to the cause of jihad and expressed the desire to receive arms/ammunition training from Pakistan, the chargesheet filed before Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh said. It said that Umar was operating from Pakistan.

The police said accused Abdul Rehman had provided safe hideouts in India to Pakistani militants Salim, Mansoor and Sajjad, all members of Jaish-e-Mohammad, who were later killed in a shootout in Uttar Pradesh in 2001.

These three Pakistani militants had come to India to take revenge of the Babri Masjid demolition and had planned to attack Ram Mandir in Ayodhya but got killed, the chargesheet claimed.The police named 17 accused, 12 of whom are absconding, in its chargesheet for allegedly conspiring, recruiting Indian youths and establishing a base of AQIS here.

In its final report, the agency has charged five accused  Mohd Asif, Zafar Masood, Mohd Abdul Rehman, Syed Anzar Shah and Abdul Sami  with alleged offences under provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

All 17 accused were listed in the chargesheet for alleged offences under Sections 18 (punishment for conspiracy), 18-B (punishment for recruiting of any person for terror act) and 20 (punishment for being member of terror organisation) of the UAPA.

The accused were arrested between December 2015 and January 2016 from various parts of the country.

The probe agency has alleged that Al-Qaida was trying to set up its base in India under the banner of AQIS and some youths from districts of western Uttar Pradesh had already left India and joined its cadre in Pakistan. It said that one of the modules of the outfit was active in Sambhal district in UP.  PTI
Mumbai, June 11

The CBI arrested Hindu Janajagruti Samiti member Virendrasing Tawde late last night for the murder of noted rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in Pune in 2013. The organisation is linked to Goa-based radical Hindu group Sanatan Sanstha that had come under the scanner for the murder of another rationalist, Govind Pansare, in February 2015.

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It is the first arrest in the case after the Mumbai High Court in May 2014 handed over the probe to the CBI. Dabholkar, an anti-superstition activist, was shot dead on August 20, 2013.  TNS
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 12

By Fatih Karimov - Trend:

Iran plans to build 800 new hotels, the country's Vice-President and the head of the Cultural Heritage Organization Massoud Soltanifar said.

At the present, Iranian private sector is investing for construction of at least 800 one to five star hotels as well as hotel apartments across the country, Soltanifar said, Tasnim news agency reported June 12.

While commenting on physical progress of the projects, he said that the projects are completed by 10 to 90 percent.

He further said that Iran has signed two MoUs with German and Turkish firms on building 20 five-star hotels in different parts of Iran.

The German firm will construct 10 five-star hotels within seven years, he said, adding 10 five-star hotels also will be constructed by Turkish investors.

Iran plans to attract 20 million tourists per year to generate $25-30 billion in revenue by 2025, Soltanifar said.

He further said that currently some 5.2 million tourists visit Iran annually, which is significantly low compared to the target of nine million tourists for 2015.

The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) has suggested that Iran's international tourism revenues in 2013 amounted to $1.3 million.

Meanwhile, the World Bank (WB) reported that 4.96 million tourists arrived in Iran in 2014. The WB statistics indicates 1.18 billion inbound tourists across the globe in 2014 with an expenditure of $1.426 trillion.
New Delhi, June 12

President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday embarked on a six-day visit to three African nations  Ghana, Ivory Coast and Namibia  to boost trade ties with these countries known for having solid political system, where democracy has taken roots.

This is the maiden visit of any Indian President to Ghana and Ivory Coast, whereas to Namibia, such a visit comes after two decades.

Even though Mukherjee has toured a number of countries in the continent, he will be visiting these countries for the first time in his long political career.

He was a given a traditional send off at Rashtrapati Bhavan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vice President Hamid Ansari, Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag among others.

All these countries we look at as good countries in terms of a solid political system, where democracy has taken roots and these are all doing reasonably well in their regions, Secretary (ER) Amar Sinha has said.

The President is accompanied by Minister of State in the PMO Jitendra Singh and MPs S.S. Ahluwalia and Mansukh L. Mandaviya.

Its a very important visit of the President. He is visiting two countries for the first timeIvory Coast and Ghana, besides Namibia where an (Indian) President will visit after 21 years. He is having a number of engagements.

This is not a ceremonial visit. It has an educational component, economic component and a community component, MoS Singh said.

The first stop of Mukherjee will be in Accra, capital of Ghana, where there will be delegation level talks at the Presidents House, which is called Flag Staff House, tomorrow.

The imposing building has been built by a renowned Indian builder, Shapoorji Pallonji.

There are likely to be discussions on some agreements on visa waiver and line of credits is also in the pipeline.

Mukherjee will pay homage to Ghanas first President Kwame Nkrumah at his mausoleum of in Accra.

He will also be unveiling a statue of Mahatma Gandhi which has been gifted by ICCR, besides planting a sapling.

Investment in Ghana is substantial, nearly three billion dollars in various sectors. NRIs, professionals have invested in IT, Pharmaceuticals and other areas. If you look at last three year figures, our trade has gone up nearly three times.

Ghanas main trade consists of gold imports, its nearly 80 percent of total trade. Ghanaian gold is in great demand in India, Sinha said.

The President will also be visiting the India-Ghana Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, set up by India, and will meet its faculty and alumni.  PTI
New Delhi, June 12

President Pranab Mukherjee today embarked on a six-day visit to Ghana, Ivory Coast and Namibia to boost trade ties with these countries, known for having a solid political system, where democracy has taken roots.

This is the maiden visit of any Indian President to Ghana and Ivory Coast whereas to Namibia, such a visit comes after two decades. Even though Mukherjee has toured a number of countries in the African continent, he will be visiting these countries for the first time in his long political career.

He was a given a traditional sendoff at Rashtrapati Bhavan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vice-President Hamid Ansari, Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag, among others.  PTI
Patna, June 12

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today inaugurated Child Labour Tracking System (CLTS) to track rescued kids for their proper rehabilitation besides announcing financial help of Rs 25,000 for every child from the Chief Ministers Relief Fund.

Nitish, at a function on World Day against Child Labour, also said he had in principle accepted the Charter of Demands submitted by the rescued child labour and announced setting up a committee headed by the Chief Secretary for implementation of childrens demands.

Every rescued child will be given Rs 25,000 from the CMs Relief Fund. The money will directly go to their bank account. It (money) will instil a sense of confidence in them. The money will be given to all those registered under the tracking system, Nitish said.

The prominent demands of rescued children are  more schools with all facilities, residential schools for such children, training facilities to get job, a year (from Aug 15, 2016 to Aug 14, 2017) be declared and celebrated as child year etc. The main reasons for child labour are illiteracy and poverty, he said, emphasising the need for a system to track them.  PTI
Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 12

While the general discourse at the BJPs national executive was all about the excellent performance of the Narendra Modi government on various fronts  governance, development, economic, defence, foreign policy  and the partys successes in the recently-concluded five-state elections, the underlying message was hard to miss.

Tested and tried formula of communal polarisation seems very much a part of the BJPs strategic planning for the critical 2017 Uttar Pradesh elections, of course as a backing for the existing discourse on development and good governance.

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It was evident as the way BJP president Amit Shah used the alleged Kairana migration and the Mathura cult violence issues to target the incumbent Akhilesh Yadav government in his presidential address at the partys National Executive meeting today.

Kairana migration and Mathura land-grab violence were two incidents he mentioned to highlight the poor law and order situation in the state.

Read: Denied permission for parallel rally in UP, Cong claims BJP-SP collusion



Briefing about the meeting in which the partys top brass, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated, Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said Shah called the Mathura violence and Kairana migration issue unfortunate.

Lack of governance and lack of development in UP is a matter of serious concern, he said.

Asked whether the BJP raking up the Kairana issue would not take away the focus from development and good governance, Prasad said his party was committed to the two key issues. Lack of governance and development in UP is very serious issue. The Kairana migration issue was being flagged because it related to lack of governance and development in the state, he added.

The country cannot progress without development and good governance. These two big incidents reflect the lack of the two key factors in UP, Prasad said, dismissing the viewpoint that the BJP was raking up Kairana, or for that matter also the Dadri beef incident, to infuse communal colour in the upcoming polls and polarise the electorate.

However, it is clear that in the 2017 UP polls, politics will be played over the alleged exodus of Hindu families from the district in the western part of the state. The state BJP has already formed a nine-member committee under MP Hukum Singh to assess the situation at the spot.

While the BJP is accusing the SP government of patronising those behind the mass exodus, opposition Congress and incumbent SP claims that the saffron party is trying to give a non-issue a communal colour with an eye on 2017.

Meanwhile, the police have ordered investigation into the BJP claim that 346 families from the Muslim-majority town left homes after attacks and extortion threats. BJP leaders also claim exodus is not limited to Kairana.

However, according to rival parties, majority of families left Kairana more than five years back, mostly in search of jobs and better opportunities. At the same time, it is believed that some may have left as recently as two years back after murder of a couple of local businessmen.
Geetanjali Gayatri

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 11

In a day of dramatic twists and turns, the ruling BJP today won both the Rajya Sabha seats in Haryana. While the victory of the partys official candidate, Union Minister Birender Singh, was never in doubt, it was the victory of the other candidate, media baron Subhash Chandra, that left the Opposition stumped.

The Congress and the INLD had backed RK Anand and he was expected to win. The surprise defeat triggered a blame game between the INLD and the Congress.

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Abhay Chautala (INLD), Leader of the Opposition, claimed the Congress MLAs had deliberately used a different pen ink to mark their preferences. Each of my MLAs showed me their vote. We always doubted the Congress and believed the Congress could be bought, he alleged. The Congress countered the charge. We cast our votes as per the norms. There was nothing amiss and every vote was shown to our general secretary before being cast. The INLD is trying to mislead the people to hide its own betrayal, former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda said.

Of the 76 valid votes polled, BJPs Birender Singh got 40 while Chandra got 15 first preference votes.

With 14 Congress votes declared invalid, Anand polled 21 votes. The winning quota was reduced from 31 to 26 after the exclusion of the invalid votes. All first preference votes of the Union Minister beyond this quota were transferred to Chandra, making him the winner.

Sixteen objections were raised by the three parties of which some were resolved. The others were referred to the Election Commission and this delayed the counting. While INLD's Nagender Badhana voted for the BJP "as instructed by his conscience", the lone Akali MLA said he had voted for the BJP as per the directions of his party high command. As the polling commenced at 9 am, Chief Minister Manohar lal Khattar and all BJP MLAs descended on the Haryana Vidhan Sabha.

While Chautala led his flock to the polling booth an hour later, the 13 Congress legislators owing allegiance to Hooda arrived in the afternoon, keeping Congress general secretary BK Hariprasad, CLP chief Kiran Chaudhry and state unit chief Ashok Tanwar waiting.

Surjewala's vote was declared invalid for showing the ballot paper to Chaudhry and violating the secrecy clause. Kuldeep Bishnoi and Renuka Bishnoi cast their vote earlier in the day.
Tribune news Service

Bathinda, June 11

The Bathinda police today canecharged members of the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) Pass Unemployed B.Ed Teachers Union who blocked the Bathinda-Mansa road here as part of their state-level protest.

The protesters, under the leadership of the state president of the union Raghvir Singh, earlier staged a dharna on the Bathinda-Badal Road for over an hour but later changed their venue and blocked Bathinda-Mansa road at the railway over-bridge.

Within a few minutes, the police started canecharging the protesters and removed the blockade so that the traffic flow was resumed. The police detained the protesters and released them in the evening. The Superintendent of Police, Desraj, claimed no case was registered against anyone at that time.

Swaraj Party condemns action

Chandigarh: The Swaraj Party on Saturday condemned the lathicharge on TET-pass BEd unemployed teachers.

In a press note, party president Manjit Singh said they supported the teachersdemands.

While they were demanding that the recruitment process should be expedited as a large number of positions are vacant, the police canecharged them, seriously injuring dozens of them, including ladies, said Manjit.

He demanded action against the police personnel who were involved in the act.
Praful Chander Nagpal

Fazilka, June 12

In a joint operation, personnel of the BSF and the state police today gunned down two Pakistani intruders and seized 15 kg of heroin worth Rs75 crore near the Sivana border observation post in the Fazilka sector.

One of their accomplices, who was injured, has been arrested. The security forces have also arrested two Indian smugglers, Gurdip Singh and Barjinder Singh of Tarn Taran district, who had allegedly come to receive the drug consignment.

Besides 15 kg heroin, one .12 bore rifle, a magazine, 67 live cartridges, two Pakistani pistols, one Pakistani mobile phone and two SIM cards were also seized.

Anil Palliwal, Inspector-General, BSF, Punjab frontier; Eapen PV, DIG, BSF; and Narinder Bhargav, SSP, Fazilka, in a press conference, said following a tip-off, the state police alerted the BSF.

Around 2.30 am today, the BSF ambush party and police officials noticed some movement across the barbed wire fence. The jawans challenged the intruders who opened fire on them. In the retaliatory fire, two intruders were killed, while another Ramzaan (35) of Kasur district in Pakistan was injured. On his arrest, he revealed the identity of the deceased as Soka and Pappa. Ramzaan, who was rushed to the local Civil Hospital, was shifted to Faridkot hospital.

Palliwal said: The matter needs to be probed as we witnessed cover firing from the other side of the border which was made either by accomplices of the intruders or the Pakistani Rangers as the spot is just opposite the Pakistan observation post across the barbed wire fence.

It was evident that the intruders had travelled about 100 metres inside the Indian Territory. A plastic pipe was lying near the cobra wire fencing.
Muktsar: Amid the uproar over the drug menace in Punjab, the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has started a damage-control campaign on the social media. Several Akali activists are uploading messages on Facebook and Instagram, such as: I live in Punjab and I am not a drug addict. Stop defaming us Punjabis. The idea is to portray a clean image of Punjab and Punjabis. Misleading?

Patiala operating in Muktsar mode

Muktsar: Going by the current postings of bureaucrats in Patiala district, it seems that the royal city is being run from Muktsar. The key posts of Deputy Commissioner (DC), Additional Deputy Commissioner (ADC) and Subdivisonal Magistrate (SDM) are held by officers who earlier served in Muktsar district. DC Rambir is a former ADC (D), Muktsar; ADC Kumar Saurabh Raj worked as Assistant Commissioner (under training), Muktsar, and the Gidderbaha SDM; and SDM Harpreet Singh Sudan has also served as Assistant Commissioner (under training) in the CMs district. All three are IAS officers (regular recruits).

Pied Piper, secretariat needs you

Chandigarh: The Punjab Civil Secretariat urgently needs a Pied Piper  not to entertain the babus but to drive away the rats from the multi-storeyed building. The rodents have infested every nook and cranny of the seat of power. Their pet targets are files as well as wires. Fearless, they dont even spare the employees. The latest victim was driver Gurmukh Singh. He was having a siesta in the drivers room on the ground floor when he was bitten by a mouse on the right toe. He received five injections. The employees are hoping that the government will act fast against the not-so-nice mice.

Joshi keeps his cool despite the heat

Bathinda: Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badals Media Adviser and BJP leader Vineet Joshi was welcomed with a power cut at the Circuit House in Bathinda on Sunday. For about 30 minutes, he and the others had a sweaty ordeal in the meeting room that was filled to capacity. Not losing his cool, Joshi wondered why there was an outage when the state had become power-surplus. His quip had the party leaders in splits.

Going gaga over yoga

Chandigarh: With the International Yoga Day fast approaching, a feverish frenzy has gripped senior Punjab Government officials. They are jostling with each other to register themselves for the event to be held in Chandigarh on June 21. They want to be seen at their elastic best before none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Its all about a few asanas, or rather, brownie points.

Cong move to cheque-mate BJP

Mansa: Mocking the Modi governments failure to meet the poll promise of bringing back black money from abroad, the local unit of the Punjab Youth Congress, led by Gurpreet Singh Vicky, is distributing fake cheques for Rs 15 lakh  with the PMs caricature  among local shopkeepers. The leaders, who are also wearing Modi masks, are trying to remind the BJP of its promise of transferring Rs 15 lakh each into peoples bank accounts once the black money is back in India.

When it felt like Shah Rukh Khan

Chandigarh: TII (Tube Investments of India) Chairman and Murugappa Group Vice-Chairman MM Murugappans joy knew no bounds at a press conference held recently in a local five-star hotel. Reason: The presence of scores of mediapersons at the event organised to announce the inauguration of a state-of-the-art-bicycle manufacturing factory at Rajpura (Patiala). Today, Im feeling like Shah Rukh Khan, I thank you all for coming and making this day memorable for me. The group has invested Rs 105 crore in the factory and manufactures bicycles under the brand names of BSA, Hercules, Montra, Roadeo, Mach City, Ladybird etc.

Peace message through literature

Ludhiana: The strained ties between India and Pakistan have failed to stop writers of both countries from bonding over literature. The Indo-Pak Book Club has been founded by Adeeb International and Takhleeq to coordinate in promoting works with the message of peace and brotherhood. Dr Kewal Dheer, chairman of Adeeb International, said, The club aims to create a friendly environment between the neighbouring countries through literature. Takhleeq launched my book, Love Stories from India, in Lahore and Islamabad last month. My 100th book, The Last Waltz, has been released in Ludhiana. It will soon be released in Chandigarh, Delhi and Mumbai in coordination with the book club.

Perseverance pays, ask Babbu

Pathankot: Perturbed at the results of an unofficial survey, Deputy Speaker and Sujanpur MLA Dinesh Babbu is reportedly up and about at the break of dawn every day. After a meeting with sarpanches, he quickly leaves for a tour of villages in his constituency. His perseverance earned him the appreciation of none other than Home Minister Rajnath Singh who attended a function here last week. Rajnath visited Babbus Sujanpur house for a cup of tea, leaving his (Babbus) rivals sulking. Sources say the Home Minister was all praise for Babbu for fighting the odds to bring a degree college to one of the most educationally backward Assembly segments of Punjab.

(Contributed by Archit Watts, Jupinderjit Singh, Sukhmeet Bhasin, Vishav Bharti, Bharat Khanna, Vijay C Roy, Manav Mander and Ravi Dhaliwal)
Rajmeet Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 12

The appointment of Kamal Nath as Congress incharge of Punjab affairs by replacing Shakeel Ahmed though has gone down well with Capt Amarinder Singh and his loyalists, others say the move could cost the party dear in the state Assembly elections over his alleged role in the 1984 riots.

Amarinder welcomed the development saying: It will improve the decision-making process. Shamsher Singh Dullo, former PPCC president, said the eight-time MP was a seasoned politician.

There was a growing criticism within the state Congress over the feedback being given to the high command on Punjab affairs. Amarinders loyalists had openly targeted Shakeel Ahmed in a party meeting for his not taking up the case of nomination of Sunil Jakhar to Rajya Sabha.

Rana Gurjit Sodhi, PPCC vice-president, said it would give direction to the party as he was an experienced leader.
Tehran, Iran, June 12

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon seems to have been gotten wrong in Iran as his service to the cause of the Islamic Republic, namely intense and vast disputes with Saudi Arabia, seems to have been misinterpreted.

It was extraordinary to hear the secretary-general admit publicly June 9 that he had had his arm twisted to change tack in the wake of anger from Riyadh.

Ban Ki-moon publicly acknowledged Thursday that he removed the Saudi-led coalition currently bombing Yemen from a blacklist of child killers - 72 hours after it was published - due to a financial threat to defund United Nations programs.

The secretary-general didn't name the source of the threat, but news reports have indicated it came directly from the Saudi government.

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 report, which was based on the work of U.N. researchers in Yemen, attributed 60 percent of the 785 children killed and 1,168 injured to the bombing coalition.

"The report describes horrors no child should have to face," Ban said at a press conference. "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 many U.N. programs. Children already at risk in Palestine, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and so many other places would fall further into despair."

But although the secretary general seems to have rang a bell for Iran vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia, the harshest of Riyadh critics in Iran seem to have taken him wrong. Many news outlets in Iran criticized Ban for his statements.

Ya Lasarat, a far rightwing Iranian newspaper interpreted Ban's statements as his "prejudice toward Saudi Arabia".

Tabnak filed a report with the headline "Ban has rewarded Saudis".

In the meantime, the Islamic Human Rights Student Association in an open letter to the secretary general chastised him on the grounds of having delisted Saudi Arabia.

Only one news outlet seems to have actually grasped the idea of Ban's statements. The right-wing Keyhan newspaper published a review under the title "Ban confesses UN for rent", stating the very thing Tehran could have used as lever to further pressurize Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia is one of the U.N.'s largest donors in the Middle East, giving hundreds of millions of dollars a year to U.N. food programs in Syria and Iraq. In 2014, Saudi Arabia gave $500 million - the largest single humanitarian donation to the U.N. - to help Iraqis displaced by the Islamic State (aka IS, ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh). Over the past three years, Saudi Arabia has also been become the third-largest donor to the U.N.'s relief agency in Palestine, giving tens of millions of dollars to help rebuild Gaza and assist Palestinian refugees.

Tehran and Riyadh have been engaged in serious dispute over a lot of issues in the recent years. Disagreement over developments in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen on one hand, allegations of human rights violation on the other, not to mention the nuclear activities of Iran.

In late 2015 Iran accused Saudi Arabia of violating the rights of expression by beheading a dissident Shite preacher. Rage over the execution led to the torching of the Saudi embassy in Tehran by protestors. Following that, Riyadh severed ties with Iran.

Around the same time Iran lost around 700 souls in a stampede in the Muslim ritual Hajj held in Saudi Arabia. Tehran directed a heavy barrage of criticism at Riyadh, accusing the Saudi government of mishandling the situation and causing the heavy toll.

Iran also saw itself the main victim of a downward oil price race triggered by Riyadh over a year ago. Tehran later refused to comply with a Saudi-initiated oil output freeze, calling the move a new set of sanctions against the Islamic Republic just at a time when the country was being freed from international nuclear sanctions.
Ferozepur, June 11

Head Constable Krishan Lal (40), posted as a security guard of former state BJP president Kamal Sharma, was found dead today at his residence in Basti Gol Bagh area in the city.

Krishan accompanied Sharma at a religious programme in the cantonment late last night. Sources said he went back to his house after the function around midnight and had food at home before going out somewhere.

Vibhor Sharma, DSP (City), said Krishans wife Radha said she got up around 2 am to check whether he was back home. She saw him lying in a pool of blood on a cot outside his room. The DSP said two bullets fired from Krishans service revolver had pierced his heart. Manminder Singh, SSP, did not rule out suicide.  OC
Tribune News Service

Muktsar, June 11

Congress worker Rajesh Kumar Neeta (45), husband of a former sarpanch of neighbouring Goniana village, was injured in an attack this morning near here on the Malout road. He suffered injuries on the legs, the left arm and the chest.

The victims cousin, Rajesh Kumar, said Neeta was coming back from Goniana village after attending a ceremony at a newly established gurdwara when a white Ritz hit his motorcycle on the outskirts of the town. When he fell down, some youngsters came out of the car and hit him with iron rods. Passersby tried to chase the assailants, but they managed to flee, Neetas cousin said.

The injured was taken to the Civil Hospital here, from where the doctors referred him to Faridkot. Several Congress leaders, including Karanbir Singh Brar  son of local Congress MLA Karan Kaur Brar  and local councillor Tejinder Singh Jimmy Fattanwala reached there. Later, the injured was referred to Amritsar.

The Muktsar Sadar police have started an investigation. The victims statement is yet to be recorded.

Suspecting the involvement of the local SAD leadership, Congress leader Jagjit Singh Honey Fattanwala sought a high-level probe into the attack.
Tribune News Service

Patiala June 11

Punjab Congress president Capt Amarinder Singh today said the Congress had every right to raise the drug issue related to Punjab at every level. He said Rahul was worried over the extent of the problem in the state and he would target the Akali Dal during his visit to the state.

Talking to The Tribune, Amarinder said Rahul was the first to highlight the matter. We are justified. It is not politics but an issue that concerns the states youth and needs to be tackled on priority at every level, he said.

Amarinder justified his invite to Rahul for the Jalandhar dharna saying that the AICC vice-president had logic behind his revelation at Punjab University when he had said that a majority of the state youth were at some point involved in drugs. Instead of self-introspection, the coalition government mocked at him and even presented fake figures to deny the problem, he alleged.

Open to pre-poll pact

Hinting at a possible Bihar-like grand alliance to keep the SAD-BJP away from power, Amarinder said he was in touch with some parties and soon a decision to have an alliance with them will be taken.

Earlier, addressing a delegate session of the state chapter of the United Communist Party of India (UCPI) here today, Amarinder urged the Chief Justice of India to take note of the actual water currently flowing in the state rivers before deciding about the SYL issue. He said he would use all available means to prevent Punjabs water being taken away.

Set your house in order first: AAP

Jalandhar: Ahead of AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi's visit to the district for a dharna against drugs on Monday, AAP leader Sukhpal Khaira on Saturday asked the former to come clean on the involvement of Congress men in drugs and black money cases. Khaira raised the issue of summoning of Jalandhar MP Chaudhary Santokh Singh by the ED in a drug trafficking case. He also talked about the summoning of Raninder Singh, son of PPCC chief Amarinder Singh, in a black money case. Khaira urged the AICC vice-president that before leading a dharna on the issue of drugs, he must clarify Chaudhary's role, who was recently summoned by the ED in the drug trafficking case. He said the probe related to his offshore accounts and black money of his family had begun in 2011 during the UPAs tenure.  TNS
Our Correspondent

Tarn Taran, June 11

NRI Gursahib Singh (27), a resident of Manakpur village, was found murdered today.

Sources said he left home yesterday for Maniala Jai Singh village with his mother and sister-in-law. Palwinder Kaur, his wife, lodged a missing person report with the police.

The body was recovered from Margindpura village. IO Avtar Singh said the body bore sharp- edged injuries. A sum of Rs 30,000, which Gursahib was carrying, was missing while gold rings worn by him were not taken.

The deceased was settled in Dubai (UAE) for more than nine years and had come here recently.

The police have registered a case under sections 302 and 34 of the IPC.
Jalandhar, June 11

Two days before Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhis visit to Jalandhar for a rally against the drug menace in Punjab, PPCC chief spokesperson Sunil Jakhar today demanded the resignation of Sukhbir Badal as Home Minister and a CBI inquiry into the alleged patronage provided by him and his men to criminals.

Accusing the Deputy CM of patronising liquor baron and murder accused Shiv Lal Doda and real-estate developer Neeraj Arora (both lodged in jail), the Abohar MLA produced an audio clip of a telephonic conversation in which Fazilka jail superintendent Amrik Singh is heard saying that Youth Akali Dal south Malwa president Rozy Barkandi and Deputy CMs OSD Satinderjit Manta had visited the Fazilka jail on June 8 to facilitate a patch-up between Doda and Arora.

Jakhar said since Barkandi and Manta were Sukhbirs right-hand men, their visit to the jail showed Deputy CMs patronage to criminals and drug peddlers.  TNS
Ramkrishan Upadhyay

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 12

Yoga guru Ramdev today expressed dissatisfaction at the BJP-led Central governments efforts to bring back black money from foreign countries.

Common people like me are disappointed at the Central government's inability to bring back black money. People complain to me on the issue and I have spoken to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and BJP president Amit Shah regarding it, said Ramdev while addressing mediapersons at the Chandigarh Press Club here today.

Ramdev said he had not forgotten the issue and would continue to raise it at appropriate levels regularly.

He added when parliamentarians were listening to him, he should not speak on the street.

Ramdev, who was in Chandigarh to attend the yoga festival, praised the working of the Prime Minister and his team of ministers for carrying out development projects and Modi's zero-tolerance policy on corruption.

On the controversy revolving around the film 'Udta Punjab', Ramdev said he could not comment on the matter as he does not watch movies. On Congress' proposed protest against drug menace, which will be led by party vice-president Rahul Gandhi, at Jalandhar tomorrow, he said, "One should first ask him (Rahul) whether he ever took drugs in his life."

Ramdev also took a dig at the Congress over its plan to elevate Rahul Gandhi to the post of party president. "If they make Rahul Gandhi president of the Congress, BJP workers shall become lazy as they will have to put in less hard work. But if they chose Priyanka as party president, BJP workers will have to do yoga," he said in a lighter vein.
Tribune News Service

Haridwar, June 12

Chief Minister Harish Rawat today assured saints of providing adequate water at some of the Ganga ghats in Haridwar.

The Chief Minister, who was attending the annual function of the Hari Seva Trust at Hari-Pur-Kalan, said the state government was serious about handling the water crisis and making efforts regularly.

He stressed the need for water conservation and various ways in this regard. He said besides government initiatives, mass efforts also are needed to achieve the goal of water conservation.

The Chief Minister said he had approached Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding water conservation and sought funds. Water conservation is the priority of the state government and Ganga ghats in the Neel Dhara, Sapt Rishi and Bhoopatwala area need to have sufficient water level so that devotees and saints could take a dip in the Ganga dip and perform rituals, he added.

He expressed satisfaction over the response of pilgrims to the Char Dham Yatra and said the revered shrines of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, Yamunotri and Hemkund Sahib are the heritage of the human civilization and our religions.

He said despite having limited resources, the state government was making efforts to improve infrastructure at the Char Dham shrines and provide better facilities to pilgrims.

Swami Chidanand Muni Saraswati, Swami Avdeshanand Maharaj, Swami Harichetnanand Maharaj, Bhagwanpur legislator Mamta Rakesh, Mayor Manoj Garg, Mahant Maheshwar Das Maharaj, Sachiddanand Maharaj, Surendra Puri Maharaj, Satya Mitranand Maharaj, Mahant Mohan Das, Mahant Kamal Das, Mahant Shiv Shankar Giri, Mahant Vinod Giri, Satpal Brahamchari, zila panchayat vice-president Rao Affaq Ali, zila pancahyat member Subodh Rakesh, and OSD to Chief Minister for Ardh Kumbh Affairs Purushottam Sharma were present.
SMA Kazmi

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, June 12

The victory of Congress candidate Pradeep Tamta in the election for one Rajya Sabha seat from Uttarakhand has come as a shot in the arm for Chief Minister Harish Rawat, who has been fighting with his back to the wall against the BJP and the his rivals in the Congress.

The victory of Pradeep Tamta, a former Lok Sabha MP from Almora, has come as a personal victory of Harish Rawat exactly after a month after he won a Supreme Court-monitored crucial floor test in the state Assembly. Although, as far as the numbers were concerned, there was no doubt about the victory of the Congress candidate with the support of six legislators belonging to the Progressive Democratic Front (PDF) but the BJP, which had been keen to wrest the seat from the Congress as part of its nationwide strategy to bolster its number in the upper house, injected an element of suspense by propping up two of its leaders as independent candidates.

However, like the political drama that culminated with Harish Rawat winning the floor test on May 11, the BJP again found itself badly bruised in the fight against the Chief Minister. The BJP managers had calculated that the widespread resentment against the Chief Minister following nomination of Pradeep Tamta, one of his proteges, as the Rajya Sabha candidate would help them in the elections. They had tried and hoped that at least three to four Congress or PDF legislators could be persuaded to vote for Anil Goyal, a BJP leader fighting as an independent candidate to win the seat.

However, in the bargain, Harish Rawat again proved to be a better political manager when the BJP legislator from Bhimtal Dan Singh Bhandari quit his seat a night before the Rajya Sabha poll. To rub salt on the wounds of the BJP, Harish Rawat was also able to persuade Geeta Thakur, another BJP leader who had also filed the nomination as an independent candidate, to join the Congress. The BJP had asked her to withdraw her nomination in support of Anil Goyal. The BJP cut a sorry figure after its general secretary in charge of the state Shyam Jaju was stopped by the police while coming out of the office of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) legislator Sarvat Karim Ansari in Roorkee. The BJP leaders presumably went to him to persuade Sarvat Karim to vote for the party candidate.

The BJP leadership probably in its overconfidence had calculated that after nine Congress legislators joined the BJP, there were other legislators unhappy with the Chief Minister who could jump the fence in the Rajya Sabha poll. The BJP strategy was flawed as it was difficult to persuade the PDF legislators, including three independents, two from the BSP. Three independents originally belong to the Congress and are seeking party nomination in the next Assembly elections. The two BSP legislators could not afford to annoy party chief Mayawati by voting in favour of the BJP.

The victory has come as a morale booster for Harish Rawat, who has managed to run his government after the floor test despite stiff pressure exerted by the BJ- led Union government through a CBI inquiry. There is a possibility that a buoyant Harish Rawat could even go for early state elections in the coming months on the issue of confrontation with the Union government.
DHAKA: More than 5,300 criminal suspects, including 85 militants, have been arrested in Bangladesh as part of an intensified crackdown on Islamists to halt a wave of brutal attacks on minorities and secular writers, the police said on Sunday. As many as 2,128 people have been arrested on the second day of a nationwide anti-terror crackdown, the police said, adding 48 of them belonged to various militant outfits. PTI

Former Nepal PM floats party

Kathmandu: Nepals former prime minister and Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai on Sunday launched a new party, vowing to reform the countrys political system and bring stability by maintaining harmonious relationship with both India and China. Bhattarai said his party Naya Shakti Nepal would bear the historic responsibility of making Nepal prosperous and developed. PTI

UAE military helicopter crash kills two

Abu Dhabi: A United Arab Emirates military helicopter crashed into the sea on Sunday, killing two crew members, the countrys armed forces said in a statement. The aircraft crashed during a routine flight over international waters, causing the death of its pilot and co-pilot, said the statement on an official news agency. It did not specify the type of aircraft or the location that it went down. AFP
Beijing, June 12

Five passengers were injured when a man threw a homemade beer bottle explosive triggering a blast at the Shanghai airport before attempting suicide by severing his throat, state media reported.

The blast at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, the gleaming east Chinese citys main international airport, occurred at around 2:20 pm when a man threw a homemade beer bottle explosive to a check-in counter in Terminal 2, Xinhua news agency reported, citing a statement by the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau.

After the explosion, the man took a knife from his backpack, cut his neck and then fell to the ground, police said. The suspect, currently in critical condition, was under emergency treatment, the report said, adding that five persons were injured but did not clearly mention if it included the man who triggered the explosion.

Four passengers, including a Philippine national, were slightly injured by shards of glass and were being treated in hospital. In an earlier report, the injured were said to include a 53-year-old Philippine man, as well as a 67-year-old man and a 64-year-old woman, both of whom are Chinese. They sustained injuries to their heads, hands and legs, doctors said.

An initial investigation has found evidence suggesting that the mans injury could have been self-induced, hinting he might have set off the blast. A few flights were affected as their passengers were scheduled to check in at the explosion site, but the airport is now in normal operation, it said.  PTI
Dubai International Airport, the world's busiest airport for international travel, closed its airspace for 69 minutes due to unauthorized drone activity on Saturday, causing 22 flights to be diverted, aviation authorities said, Reuters reported.

Government-owned Dubai Airports, which operates Dubai's two main airports, said in a statement the closure lasted between 11:36 a.m. and 12:45 p.m. (0639-0745 GMT), and Dubai Airports chief executive Paul Griffiths said thousands of passengers suffered disruption to their journeys.

Sixteen of the diverted flights went to Dubai World Central, Dubai's other main airport, a Dubai Airports spokesperson told Reuters. Dubai, a trade, tourism and investment hub for the Gulf region, is one of seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

"This is a very serious incident and we obviously take the safety of our customers and our staff extremely seriously," Griffiths told Dubai's Dubaieye 103.8 radio.

"As you can imagine, this is the busiest international airport in the world and there was major inconvenience to thousands of passengers ... There are very clear restrictions and no fly zones around all airports in the UAE, saying that this type of activity is actually illegal."

The flying of drones is prohibited within 5 km (3 miles) of airports, helipads, landing areas or manned aircraft in the UAE.

Around the world the use of civil drones, whether for commercial purposes or just as a leisure activity, is rising.

That popularity has led to increasing reports of near-misses with commercial aircraft, such as when a Lufthansa plane was approaching Warsaw airport last month.

Aviation concerns focus on smaller drones, operated like model planes and flown for recreation, because their users are often not familiar with the rules of the air.

The UK's Civil Aviation Authority issued a warning in July 2015 after seven incidents where drones had flown near planes at different British airports in less than a year.

Recognizing the threat, the European Commission conceded in 2015 that "drone accidents will happen" and has charged its aviation safety agency arm with developing common rules for operating drones in Europe.
DHAKA, June 12

Authorities in Bangladesh have arrested at least 85 militants as part of a broad crackdown on Islamists after a wave of brutal attacks on minorities and liberal activists, police said on Sunday.

A total of more than 5,000 suspected criminals have been arrested since law enforcement agencies began a weeklong drive on Friday to halt a series of targeted killings in the mainly Muslim nation.

All arrests were made on specific charges, national police chief AKM. Shahidul Hoque said, relating to firearms, narcotics and other offences.

"We will have to prevent the emergence of militancy collectively as a whole nation," Hoque said.

In the past week an elderly Hindu priest, a Hindu monastery worker and a Christian shopkeeper were hacked to death in attacks for which Islamic State claimed responsibility. The Muslim wife of a key counter-terrorism police official was also stabbed and shot dead.

Militants have killed more than 30 people in Bangladesh since early last year, with atheist bloggers, liberal academics, gay rights campaigners, foreign aid workers, members of minority Muslim sects and other religious groups among the victims.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for 21 of the attacks since its first claim in September last year and al Qaeda has claimed most of the rest, according to Site Intelligence Group, a US-based monitoring service.

The government denies that either group has a presence in Bangladesh and says that homegrown radicals are responsible.

Last month junior foreign minister Shahriar Alam said that Islamic State was trying to ride a wave of religious radicalisation by falsely claiming killings and said there was enough evidence implicating domestic militant groups.

Police said that two homegrown militant groups  Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen and Ansarullah Bangla Team  were behind the attacks as part of their campaign to impose strict Islamic law on Bangladesh, whose population of 160 million are mostly moderate Muslims.

At least 10 suspected members of the outlawed Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen were killed in shootouts since November, including five last week, police said.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has vowed to track down the killers, blaming the growing violence on political opponents linked to Islamist parties.

The opposition party, led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, denies the accusations and said that mass arrests were a ploy to suppress political opponents.  Reuters
Brussels, June 12

Britain leaving the European Union would strip the bloc of a nuclear-armed global player and prove disastrous for its presence on the world stage, analysts say.

The timing could hardly be worse, as the EU struggles with its biggest migration crisis since World War II and the continent facing a growing threat from terrorism fuelled by conflict in the Middle East.

Analysts said any such division within the bloc would likely be seized upon by Russia, whose ties with the EU have been badly damaged by the Ukraine conflict.

Great powers like the United States, China and India will see an EU weakened politically and geopolitically if there is Brexit, Vivien Pertusot, Brussels-based analyst with the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), told AFP.

The EU has been keen to increase its influence around the world in recent years.

The bloc helped negotiate the landmark nuclear accord with Iran, and has worked closely with Washington and Moscow in an effort to revive stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Analysts said losing a UN Security Council permanent member and NATO lynchpin like Britain would likely diminish the EUs influence and respect around the world, while also making it more inward-looking.

It would be bad news with a view to the role of the EU.

It would increase the loss of image if the EU shrinks for the first time in its history, Janis Emmanouilidis, director of studies at European Policy Centre, told AFP.

The signal would be that the EU gets slowly but steadily in a downward trend, he said, suggesting that such weakness could be exploited.

The Chinese and the Russians might use that... to exert pressure and divide further.

Pertusot said there would also be a loss of influence in areas such as Latin America and Southeast Asia which regard the EU as a model for regional groupings such as Mercosur and ASEAN.

The prospect of a British exit has raised the possibility in some quarters that it would free up the bloc to move ahead on its own in forging a more united global position.

But analysts say there is no appetite for that, adding that most member states look to US-led NATO for security when push comes to shove in a crisis. Of the EUs 28 member states, 22 are members of the military alliance.

Rosa Balfour at the German Marshall Fund of the United States said a Brexit would effectively wreck efforts to forge what the EU now calls its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).

As a major security and military provider in Europe, a British exit... is likely to have a disastrous effect on the EUs CSDP, Balfour told AFP.

Without British assets, it is questionable whether it is worth pursuing defence integration.  AFP
Washington, June 12

An online petition on the White House website has called on the Obama administration to stop shielding American multinational Dow Chemical from accountability for corporate crimes in the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy case.

The petition has crossed the threshold of one lakh signatures, making it mandatory for the White House to respond.

Titled 'Uphold International Law! Stop Shielding Dow Chemical from Accountability for Corporate Crimes in Bhopal, India', the petition dated May 15, says that the more than three decades of protection to Union Carbide (UCC)  which is now owned by Dow Chemicals  must end.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook and Twitter @thetribunechd)

"We insist that the US government meet its obligations under Treaty and international law by immediately serving notice upon Dow to attend court in Bhopal on July 13, 2016," said the petition, which as of June 12 had garnered 102,000 signatures.

Tonnes of toxic Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from Union Carbide's Bhopal factory on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984, killed nearly 25,000 people and injured half million others.

"India charged UCC with manslaughter, but UCC refused to show for trial. Dow Chemical bought UCC in 2001 but has not made UCC available to face charges," the petition said.

"Under a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, India sent four notices to the US Department of Justice to summon Dow to explain UCC's whereabouts. The DoJ has ignored or obstructed every notice. The same DoJ made BP pay USD 4 billion in criminal fines and penalties for Deepwater Horizon. 31 years of US protection of UCC and Dow must end," the petition said.  PTI
Karachi, June 12

A police constable has been arrested for beating an elderly Hindu man for eating and selling food before iftaar, triggering a social media campaign for justice for the victim.

According to the reports, the IG Sindh Police ordered Ali Hussains arrest after the family of the octogenarian victim, Gokal Das, posted pictures of the badly bruised senior.

"The incident occurred last Thursday in Ghotki where Das was selling Iftaari items before Iftaar and Hussain claimed he also saw him eating a banana," a local police official said.

"The constable showed high-handedness in dealing with the matter and he thrashed the old man, who was rescued by citizens," he said.

Social and civil rights activists launched a social media campaign for Das.

Hussain, a policeman who is posted in Ghotki district, has been arrested on charges of torturing and injuring Das after the elderly mans grandson Vinod Kumar registered an FIR against him for assault.  PTI
About 700 shining collector cars were up for auction at the River Spirit Expo at Tulsa Fairgrounds as part of the 44th Leake Auction Company auto auction.
An anonymous bidder agreed at auction to pay $3,456,789 to eat lunch with Warren Buffett, tying the record for the right to dine with one of the world's most admired investors, Reuters reported.

Money will go to Glide, a San Francisco charity that provides food, health care and other services to people who are homeless, poor or struggling with substance abuse.

The five-day auction on eBay (EBAY.O) ended on Friday night. The winning bid matched the sum paid by an anonymous bidder in 2012, the most expensive single charity item sold on eBay.

Buffett has held 17 annual auctions for Glide, raising about $23.6 million.

The Rev. Cecil Williams, co-founder of Glide and pastor since 1963 of the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church, said Buffett's involvement has attracted more interest in the charity, helping it fund its $17-million annual budget.

Glide provides services including an estimated 750,000 free meals, 815,000 syringes, and day care and after school programs for 450 children each year.

"This one was really one of the best we've had in my over 50 years," Williams, 86, said after the auction.

The successful bidder and up to seven friends can dine with Buffett at the Smith & Wollensky steak house in Manhattan. All topics are fair game apart from where Buffett will invest next.

Buffett, 85, is the world's third-richest person, worth $66.5 billion, Forbes magazine said.

He got rich building Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) into a conglomerate with roughly 90 businesses including insurance, energy, chemical, apparel and food companies, plus a railroad. Buffett is donating virtually all of his wealth to charity.

The auction was created by Buffett's first wife, Susan, and continued after her death in 2004.
Fans in Spain and Venezuela are being encouraged to register with UEFA.com in order to access live streaming of five of the UEFA EURO 2016 round of 16 ties.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

The selected fixtures are the last of 28 games streamed on the tournament's official website. Streams will commence 45 minutes before kick-off, starting with today's encounter between Switzerland and Poland in Saint-Etienne.



The matches confirmed as being streamed are as follows:

25 June: Switzerland v Poland (15:00CET)

25 June: Wales v Northern Ireland (18:00CET)

26 June: France v Republic of Ireland (15:00CET)

26 June: Germany v Slovakia (18:00CET)

27 June: England v Iceland (21:00CET)

Please note the remainder of the tournament will be screened by UEFA's broadcast partners in Spain and Venezuela, Mediaset and Meridiano TV respectively.



Fans in other territories will be blocked from accessing these streams and are encouraged to follow the action through the relevant broadcast partners in their home market.
A mass shooting occurred at a nightclub in the United States, Florida, wounding an unidentified number of people, local police reported Sunday.

"Shooting at Pulse Nightclub on S Orange. Multiple injuries. Stay away from area," the Orlando Police department said via Twitter.

According to local media reports, the gunman took hostages at the club. The police were deployed to the scene, and the injured were treated by paramedics at the scene.
US national Omar Mateen has been named as gunman, who killed about 20 people at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, local media reported Sunday.

Earlier in the day, mass shooting occurred at a nightclub in Florida, wounding at least 42 people and killing 20. The gunman was killed by police during the hostage situation.

Mateen comes from Port St. Lucie, Florida, and had no criminal history, CBS News broadcaster reported, citing sources. According to the broadcaster, the authorities were investigating if Mateen had ties to Islamic terrorism.
According to Orlando's mayor, 50 people were killed and at least 53 injured in the shooting.

A gunman went on a shooting spree at the Pulse gay club in Florida on Sunday. He was eventually shot by a SWAT team after taking people hostage.

The process of removing the victims from the club still continues, according to the Orange county sheriff.

US southeastern state of Florida, as well as the city of Orlando announce state of emergency in connection with mass shooting in the nightclub, a local police department said.

The suspect behind the shooting has been identified as 29-year-old US citizen Omar Mateen, US media reported. The CBS network added that the FBI is currently checking whether he was linked to extremists.

US President Barack Obama was informed on Sunday of the deadly shooting in the southeastern city of Orlando, and ordered the provision of federal assistance to the investigation into the incident, the White House said in a statement.
Premier Li Keqiang told visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel here on Sunday that China is confident in the future of China-Germany relations, calling on both sides to create new energy for cooperation, Xinhua reported.



Li met with Merkel, on her ninth visit to China from Sunday to Tuesday, at the Summer Palace in the suburb of Beijing.



During the visit, the two heads of government are scheduled to co-chair the fourth round of China-Germany intergovernmental consultation.



Hailing the progress of bilateral ties, Li stressed that both countries should use innovation to expand their common interests and create new areas of cooperation.



In the upcoming meeting, China is ready to make in-depth exchanges of views with Germany on the integration of China's "Made In China 2025" blueprint and Germany's "Industrial 4.0" strategy, bilateral cooperation in the third-party market, intelligent manufacturing, innovation, entrepreneurship and other fields, Li said.



China welcomes more investment from Germany and other countries, Li added.



The premier also called on the two countries to enhance communication and collaboration in the Group of 20 (G20) to jointly promote global economic growth as well as safeguard world peace and stability.



Merkel spoke highly of the sound development of bilateral ties with China.



As an important mechanism between the two countries, the intergovernmental consultation has promoted the comprehensive development of bilateral cooperation in various fields, said Merkel.



She said Germany is willing to work with China to implement the Program of Action for China-Germany Cooperation issued during the third round intergovernmental consultation in Germany in 2014, and to hold a successful fourth round of consultation in Beijing.



Earlier in the day, Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a meeting with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier on a series of issues of shared interest.
Simi Valley Police help employees of the Chiropractic Orthopedics office escape through a window during a standoff at the Family Dental Care office in Simi Valley on July 1, 2009. Simi Valley police and other emergency response personnel responded to a shooting Wednesday morning at the dentist's office near the intersection of Los Angeles Avenue and Sinaloa Road in Simi Valley, where one person was killed and three others were critically injured. The shooter later surrendered and was arrested, authorities said.

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By Zeke Barlow,Scott Hadly

In what police are calling a domestic dispute, a man opened fire today in the crowded offices of Family Dental Care in Simi Valley, leaving one woman dead, three others in critical condition and injuring another.

The man ? in shorts, no shirt and with a shaved head ? surrendered to police an hour after the first shots were fired around 10:30 a.m., after talking on the phone with a police hostage negotiator, said Simi Valley Police Department Sgt. Dwight Thompson.

Though police would not confirm the identify of the suspect, in the initial call that went out over the police scanner and according to one of the dental office workers, the suspect was married to the victim who was shot to death.

Police arrived at front of the offices at the corner of Los Angeles Avenue and Sinaloa Road within minutes of getting the first 911 call at 10:38 a.m.

"The first cop I saw was a woman, she had her gun out and was crouched behind her car there," said Stephanie Novak, who was visiting her friend Brenda Sharma at a liquor store across the street.

"I heard the first shot but I didn't know what it was," said Sharma. "I thought it was a tire blowing out until I saw the police show up."

Moorpark resident Jose Baca Jr. said his wife, Ana, was at the dentist's office when the shooting started. The 31-year-old mother was waiting for her appointment in the lobby and had just been called for her check-up when she heard yelling and gunshots, her husband said.

Soon after the shots were fired, mechanic Shawn Peloquin, co-owner of Christian Auto Repair Service behind the dental offices, saw a bunch of people running out the back of the dental building and into his driveway. One man, holding his stomach, had been shot. The slug had entered his stomach and exited his back. But he was able to stagger to Peloquin's driveway.

Peloquin and Becky Brown, a volunteer EMT who had been in her office next door, applied pressure to stop the bleeding. The young man, said his name was Christian.

"He kept asking, ?Am I going to die?'" Brown said.

Peloquin said Christian told him "?my sister's been shot a bunch of times in there.'"

Next door to the dental office at Chiropractic Orthopedic Back and Pain, Carley Hodgson, an X-ray technician intern, said she had heard three shots in quick succession.

"It was just a normal day, and then I heard the last three shots," Hodgson said.

After that, six of Hodgson's co-workers huddled in the back room and locked the door for about 30 minutes.

Within minutes of the first officer arriving, a SWAT team and backup got to the scene with a blue armored car. Officers fanned out evacuating the area. Police used automated calls to warn neighboring business owners and residents to remain indoors and lock their doors.

"They told us to stay down because he was still armed," said Sharma.

But inside the dental and a chiropractor's offices, more than a dozen patients and workers remained and were still in danger.

About half-way through the standoff, some people, including Hodgson, began climbing out a side window. In all, 16 people squeezed through the window and into the arms of police, who hustled them away from the building.

Tahseen Zaidi, a clerk at a gas station on the opposite corner from the dental office, saw the patients and employees scampering away looking distraught.

Through the front door, the dentist still in his white coat, came out.

A little later a woman and a child, who looked to one witness to be about 4 or 5 years old, came out looking scared.

"They both were crying," said Sharma.

An hour after the event began and after talking on the phone with a police hostage negotiator, the suspect walked out the front door at 11:38 a.m. Witnesses said he got on the ground and spread out his arms before officers swarmed over him to make the arrest.

As soon as he was cuffed, police got to the victims inside the dental office.

One woman was dead. Another was in critical condition and taken by Ventura County Sheriff's Department helicopter to Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks.

Christian and a critically injured women were taken to Simi Valley Hospital, as was another person who police said had minor injuries.

For several hours police blocked off a large area around the shooting site, turning away traffic along busy Los Angles Avenue and off other nearby streets.

They gathered the witnesses together, including at least two children, and took them to the police department headquarters to be interviewed. Throughout the day employees of the dental office and patients were turned around at various checkpoints.

Herlinda Sandoval works at the dentist office, but had the day off. She had to go to school but showed up after the shooting wanting to find out about her friends and co-workers.

"We're all like a family there," she said as she looked back at her office surrounded by police tape.

"I feel very lucky today," Sandoval said.

? Staff writer Adam Foxman contributed to this story.
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By Megan Diskin of the Ventura County Star

Faced with a growing crime rate, the Oxnard Police Department is returning to a community-oriented strategy that officials say historically has helped reduce the problem.

Oxnard, the most populous city in Ventura County, in 2011 experienced its lowest crime rate at just more than 20 crimes per 1,000 people. But the level has steadily risen since then until last year reaching about 37 crimes per 1,000 people.

"We sat down amongst the command staff and the chiefs and said we need to break out of this because crime is continuing to go up," Assistant Police Chief Jason Benites said. "We're on our fourth consecutive year of significant crime increases."

Police are looking to methods that helped reduce crime in the 1990s.

Crime dropped in that decade in part because of a resurgence of neighborhood watch programs and an effort in 1997 to put officers directly in neighborhoods to be proactive in solving problems. These problems could be related to crime, traffic or quality of life, Benites said.

The assistant chief, who started with the department in the 1990s, said officers had a good rapport with the community during those years. He remembers two officers working the Southwinds neighborhood who would be invited to dinner by the residents.

"Those officers always knew that if there was a problem, they knew who to talk to," Benites said.

Seeing the success of this strategy, the agency stepped up its efforts in 2006 with the introduction of what they call neighborhood policing, or "the district plan."

The city was divided into four areas, or "districts," which were made up of the city's neighborhoods. The plan basically took a group of officers away from responding to calls for service and put them in neighborhoods in what the agency calls "beats" so they could build relationships. Extra officers were put in the four districts to help the neighborhood officers, Benites said.

According to the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, such programs across the country gained steam as authorities sought to ease tense relations with the public in the 1970s, although many agencies didn't fully implement community policing until the 1980s. Federal legislation in the 1990s provided nearly $9 billion over six years to fund 102,000 officers and support community policing nationwide, according to the department.

Concurrently, FBI statistics show a steady decrease in reported crime nationwide since 1994.

Despite its success, Oxnard had to cut back on community policing as calls for service increased in 2013, straining patrol officers. As a result of the demand, all but two officers working under the program had to come back from their neighborhood assignments to respond to calls, Benites said.

"We were just trying to deal with the city's growth," Benites said.

In an effort to cut crime again, there was a push in 2015 to encourage residents to form neighborhood watch groups, an initiative that is ongoing. And now the agency will revive community policing starting Saturday.

The new program will work much like the earlier one, but as the department continues to deal with a large number of calls, some of the officers on neighborhood assignment will be required to respond to calls.

Officers assigned to a neighborhood also will have to report progress to their superior officers overseeing the districts. These groups will meet daily with a sergeant tasked with overseeing their efforts, Benites said.

The skills of the officers working under the 2016 plan make them a versatile team, but one of their priorities is to connect with the community to build relationships and gain trust.

"We want to get back to that point where the officers who are working that neighborhood know everybody, or not necessarily everybody  we are a big city of 200,000," Benites said. "But they will know who to talk to that might point them in the right direction."
MEGAN DISKIN/THE STAR This was the scene Friday night in the 4800 block of Terrace Avenue in Oxnard as police investigated a shooting.

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By Megan Diskin of the Ventura County Star

Oxnard police said Saturday they were investigating the city's fifth homicide of the year after a man was fatally shot the previous night.

Officers and emergency medical crews received a report just after 9 p.m. of a gunshot victim in the 4800 block of Terrace Avenue. Officers on the scene Friday night reported the shooting may have occurred in a nearby alley, but when they arrived, he was found with multiple gunshot wounds in a nearby residence.

He was rushed by ambulance to Ventura County Medical Center in Ventura, where he later died, officials said.

Oxnard Detective Steven Ramirez remained tight-lipped about the investigation Saturday but said an autopsy on the victim was expected Monday or Tuesday.

Yellow police tape cordoned off a stretch of Terrace Avenue from Berkshire to York streets as investigators worked at the scene Friday night. About an hour after the incident, four police cars were parked in the middle of the street as a group of officers shined their flashlights on the ground as they walked up and down the roadway.

Also, a shooting left one person injured Friday night in Santa Paula.

Residents reported hearing gunshots just after 11 p.m. in the 300 block of Citrus Street, where a man was reportedly seen with a rifle, police said.

Officers could not find a gunshot victim or a shooter, but were notified of a 22-year-old Santa Paula man being treated for a gunshot wound at Santa Paula Hospital, officials said. His injuries were not life-threatening, police said.

Authorities are looking for two males who were reportedly seen fleeing the area north on Citrus Street after the incident.
JUAN CARLO/THE STAR Lizette Verduzco (left) talks with teacher Katie Auerbach during Saturday's Rio School District celebration at Rio del Valle Middle School north of the Oxnard Auto Center. They were talking about the History Harvest Project, which took a year to complete.

SHARE JUAN CARLO/THE STAR Jasmine Aguilar (from left), Maribel Tejeda-Ortiz, and Celinda Cervenak sing "This Land Is Your Land" during Saturday's Rio School District celebration at Rio del Valle Middle School. The students belong to the Rio del Norte Elementary Guitar Club. JUAN CARLO/THE STAR Edith Ortiz pedals on a bike to make her smoothie at the Rock the Bike booth during Saturday's Rio School District celebration at Rio del Valle Middle School. JUAN CARLO/THE STAR A group of students watch Hip Hop Mindset perform during Saturday's Rio School District celebration at Rio del Valle Middle School north of the Oxnard Auto Center. JUAN CARLO/THE STAR Jewelle Tatad and her sister Jelynn help clean the robotics room at Rio del Valle Middle School during Saturday's festivities.

By Jeremy Foster, Special to The Star

Community leaders and educators reflected on the Rio School District's accomplishments as it marked its 130th anniversary Saturday and called for many more as they look toward the future.

More than 100 parents, students, teachers and staff members gathered Saturday morning at Rio del Valle Middle School to also celebrate the school's 55th birthday.

Oxnard City Council member Carmen Ramirez lauded the students, teachers, parents and administrators of the north Oxnard-area district for doing "the most important thing in our community: attending to the lives of our children."

"We count on you all," she said. "We hope that in everything you do today, you continue to think of it as affecting the next seven generations."

Eleanor Torres, president of the district board, said Rio has become a model for other districts.

"Years ago, we were having families take their kids out of the district, and now they're waiting in line to come in," she said, attributing much of that change to the K-8 district's emphasis on science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics.

Joe Mendoza, director of Ventura County Office of Education migrant education program, thanked those who gathered to celebrate the district's and school's milestones.

"We should celebrate our accomplishments and improve upon them," he said.

He praised everyone from bus drivers to parents to administrators for playing a role in educating students.

"We teach children not to follow where a path might lead," he said, "but instead to go where there is no path and continue to forge new frontiers."

The day also recognized the devotion of former district board member Ernest Almanza, who died earlier this year and had been elected in 1965 for a position he held until 2004.

School officials in recent weeks opened a time capsule that was housed in a metal cylinder near the Rio del Valle Middle School's flagpole.

The capsule, buried in 1967, included magazines, books on many subjects and clips from the student newspaper and was slated to be opened in 2000.

"New people at the district didn't realize it was there for a while," said Charlie Fichtner, director of maintenance operations and transportation. "Because of the turnover of staff here, the newer staff just thought it was a date for when the flagpole was put in place."

The time capsule got the ball rolling for the birthday celebration, he said.

Fichtner has been with the district for more than 13 years and is impressed with its longevity.

"Some districts come and go, and this one has continued to grow since 1885," he said. "You look at the history of a one-room schoolhouse to a district of over 5,000 students and continuing to grow  you don't see that in other areas of the county."

School records indicate the district started with no more than 13 students and that the first school building was on a ranch. As enrollment increased, the school found a new home on two acres purchased for $400 in gold coins.

Students on Saturday gave visitors tours of the school and showed them new murals on the side of the cafeteria and along a hallway. Other students showed them robotics.

Almanza's son Steve said his father "would be very proud to see the growth, accomplishments and advancements."

"And we're proud to be here to celebrate it," he added.
STAR FILE PHOTO

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By Mike Harris of the Ventura County Star

Illicit activities at some Simi Valley massage establishments appear to be rising, with about 20 misdemeanor charges filed since code enforcement was recently ramped up, officials say.

Police said "a shocking number" of massage businesses are fronts for prostitution, while others are legitimate.

The apparent increase in illegal activities led the City Council to enact an urgency ordinance last week, clarifying language in the city's massage ordinance related to inspections and searches of the businesses by police and code enforcement. Inspections may be made during business hours, with or without notice.

City Attorney Lonnie Eldridge said the urgency ordinance was intended to ensure that the search provisions of the city's massage ordinance are in full compliance with the best practices for code enforcement under state law.

"It is a relatively minor technical change, which ensures that searches ... are initiated for the purpose of verifying compliance with the massage ordinance, rather than the prior language, which read 'all applicable laws,'" he said. "The new language is more focused on the purpose of the search."

Besides the approximately 20 misdemeanor charges that have been filed since February for alleged violations of the massage ordinance, police say there has been a "dramatic increase" in sexually explicit advertising by some of the city's massage businesses, Eldridge wrote in a memo to the council.

That "strongly suggests an increase in illicit activities," he wrote.

The council in January extended its moratorium on new massage businesses for up to another year to allow city staff time to finalize study of the issue. The council initially adopted the moratorium in 2015 as a result of the state returning some regulatory control of massage businesses to local governments.
Islamic State's Amaq news agency said on Sunday that the militant group was responsible for the shooting that killed at least 50 people in a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, according to Reuters.



"The armed attack that targeted a gay night club in the city of Orlando in the American state of Florida which left over 100 people dead or injured was carried out by an Islamic State (IS) fighter," Amaq said.
SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO The Soo Hoo family is loaning this photo of Minnie Soo Hoo Bock to the Museum of Ventura County for inclusion in a traveling Smithsonian exhibit on the Asian Pacific American experience. The exhibit opens June 18. Yee Heaung was born in Santa Barbara in 1878 to merchants Yee Sing and Chin Shee. Missionaries gave her the American name of Minnie. In 1895 she married a merchant named Soo Hoo Bock, and they made their home in San Buenaventura's Chinatown. She passed away from tuberculosis in 1913, at age 35.

By Staff Reports

Several artifacts from Ventura County families of Asian heritage will be on display beginning June 18 when the Smithsonian Institution brings "I Want the Wide American Earth: An Asian Pacific American Story" to the Museum of Ventura County as part of a 21-city national tour.

Ventura artist Hiroko Yoshimoto is loaning ornate kimonos from her father's family and pieces of art made with traditional Sumi ink, according to Stefanie Davis, director of marketing for the museum.

In addition, the Soo Hoo family of Oxnard is loaning family photos. The late Bill Soo Hoo became California's first Chinese-American mayor when he was elected in Oxnard in 1966.

"I Want the Wide American Earth" was created by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service.

It explores how Asian Pacific Americans have shaped  and been shaped by  the course of the nation's history, from the Gold Rush and construction of the Transcontinental Railroad to Japanese interment campus during World War II.

The exhibition is complemented by an e-book, a 14-page illustrated adaptation of the exhibition. It tells the Asian Pacific American story in graphic narrative, featuring work by seven Asian Pacific American comic artists.

The e-book is free to download and viewable on all tablet devices and e-readers.

The exhibit also features a free mobile tour app.

The exhibit closes Aug. 28.

The museum is at 100 E. Main St., Ventura. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

For more information, go to www.venturamuseum.org or call 653-0323.
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Republicans can't have it both ways: If you say you intend to cast your ballot for Donald Trump, that's an endorsement. You can be for him or against him, but not both.

So don't even try to take the untenable position that Rep. Bill Flores, of Texas, 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 don't 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 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 Trump's teleprompter-assisted speech Tuesday evening. "I think it's still time for him to act like a presidential candidate should be acting. So I haven't given up hope."

Face reality, senator. The old saying about putting lipstick on a pig comes to mind.

Why are Republicans gasping as if Trump's 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 they're just noticing Trump's 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, they're not sending their best," he declared. "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

Those were practically the first words out of candidate Trump's 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, he's 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 can't 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 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 didn't think it was necessary. But you know, they have to say what they have to say. I'm 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 he's 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 can't do both.

Eugene Robinson's email address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com. He writes for The Washington Post Writers Group.
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Of the fighting faiths that flourished during the ideologically drunk 20th century, anti-Semitism has been uniquely durable. It survives by mutating, even migrating across the political spectrum, from the right to the left. Although most frequently found in European semi-fascist parties, anti-Semitism is growing in the fetid Petri dish of American academia, and is staining Britain's Labour Party.

In 2014, before Naseem "Naz" Shah became a Labour member of parliament, she shared a graphic on her Facebook page suggesting that all Israelis should be "relocated" to the United States. She seemed to endorse the idea that the "transportation cost" would be less than "three years of defense spending."

When this was recently publicized, "Red Ken" Livingstone, former Labour mayor of London, offered on the BBC what he considered a defense of her as not being anti-Semitic, because "a real anti-Semite doesn't just hate the Jews in Israel." Besides, Livingstone said, Hitler was a Zionist (for supposedly considering sending Europe's Jews to Palestine) "before he went mad." As mayor, Livingstone praised as a "progressive voice" an Egyptian cleric who called the Holocaust "divine punishment."

Labour's leader, Jeremy Corbyn, says he wants to cleanse Labour of such thinking. But Corbyn hopes to host at the House of Commons a Palestinian sheikh who calls Jews "bacteria" and "monkeys" and has been accused of repeating the "blood libel" that Jews make matzo using the blood of gentile children.

Leftist anti-Semites invariably say they hate not Jews but Zionism, and hence not a people but a nation. Israel was, however, created as a haven for an endangered people. Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, refutes the canard that "hating Israel is not the same as hating Jews" by saying:

Criticism of Israel is not necessarily anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist. When Sacks asks his audiences if Britain's government can be criticized, everyone says yes. But when they are asked, "Do you believe Britain should not exist?," no one says yes. Then Sacks tells his audiences: "Now you know the difference."

"It is very easy to hate," says Sacks. "It is very difficult to justify hate." Anti-Semitism's permutations adapt it to changing needs for justification. In the Middle Ages, he says, Jews were hated for their religion. In the 19th and 20th centuries, they were hated for their race. Now they are hated for their nation. "The new anti-Semitism can always say it is not the old anti-Semitism."

But it is. It remains, Sacks says, "essentially eliminationist." It disguises its genocidal viciousness, insisting that it seeks the destruction not of a people but only of the state formed as a haven for this people that has had a uniquely hazardous history. The international "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" movement, supported by many American academics, aims not just to pressure Israel to change policies, as South Africa was pressured to abandon apartheid, but rather to delegitimize Israel's existence as a nation.

Sacks says that when bad things happen to a healthy society, it asks: What did we do wrong? A fraying, insecure society asks: Who did this to us? Sacks notes that although Jews were never more than 2 percent of Germany's population, this did not protect them from becoming the explanation for Germany's discontents.

In a conversation with a supposedly "moderate" British Muslim leader, Sacks asked, "Does Israel have a right to exist within any borders whatever?" The leader replied: "Your own prophets said that because of your sins you have forfeited your right to your land." To which Sacks responded mildly: "But that was 2,700 years ago and surely the Jews have served their sentence."

After World War II, Western nations strove to develop what Sacks calls "a cultural immune system" against anti-Semitism with Holocaust education and other measures. The immune system is not weakening in Britain, other than among Muslim immigrants and leftists eager to meld their radicalism with radical Islam.

Labour's leader before Corbyn, Edward Miliband, who led the party in the 2015 general election, is Jewish, as was the Conservative Party's greatest 19th-century leader (Benjamin Disraeli). Former Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who was educated at Eton, noted, perhaps regretfully, certainly indelicately, that Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet included more "old Estonians than old Etonians." This was not anti-Semitism, just a jest too fine to forgo.

Seven decades after the Holocaust, some European nations have, remarkably, anti-Semitism without Jews and Christian anti-Semitism without Christianity. Britain just has a few leftists eager to mend their threadbare socialism with something borrowed from National Socialism.

George Will's email address is georgewillwashpost.com.
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That sound you just heard was Latinos taking yet another slap in the face. No, not from Donald Trump, but rather from the mainstream media.

What do you expect from an industry that is stuck in a black-and-white paradigm, suffers from being based in New York and Washington while more than half of Latinos live in the Southwest, and remains clueless about America's largest minority thanks to a combination of ignorance and arrogance?

The media have been obsessed with Trump's racist assault on the character of U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, whom Trump seems to believe is "Mexican" first and a jurist second.

Curiel isn't really Mexican; he was born in Indiana. That was just sloppy shorthand by Trump, the kind I grew up hearing in Central California when folks would talk about the "Mexican part of town." Or when some of my high school friends assured me that I would not have gotten into Harvard if I "hadn't been Mexican." Or the kind my parents grew up seeing in the Southwest of the 1960s, where signs in restaurants read: "No Dogs or Mexicans Allowed."

Using a word like "Mexican" (as opposed to something more accurate like "Mexican-American") is how you talk down to people. And that's how Trump intended to talk about this judge, who was putting away drug traffickers as a federal prosecutor and was so good at his job that he wound up with a bounty on his head and spent a year living under the protection of U.S. federal agents  all while Trump was judging beauty pageants in Atlantic City.

Let's not get this twisted. If anyone deserves to be looked down on here, it isn't Curiel.

As you can see, I have strong opinions about this story. Not that the television networks are interested in hearing them. Despite having done television commentary for more than 20 years, I have not been invited to go on television and comment on the Curiel story. And as far as I can tell, neither were any of my fellow Latino commentators who work for a variety of networks.

I might have shrugged this off as a harmless oversight had I not read an op-ed by Felix Sanchez, chairman and co-founder of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts in Washington.

"While all the major Sunday talk shows ... tracked the Trump/Curiel controversy, not one Sunday news show (on June 5) included a Latino journalist or political analyst," wrote Sanchez for the Hill newspaper.

"Frankly, I don't know who is more irresponsible  Trump for the horrendous and unjust damage he has inflicted on the Latino community, or the news media."

As the votes were counted Tuesday night in California, where Latinos make up 39 percent of the population, CNN convened what turned into a 45-minute discussion on the case of the "Mexican" judge without a single Mexican or other Latino on the panel.

That's inexcusable. By not reflecting reality, the media compounded the harm Trump has done, and perhaps ironically for much the same reason. Trump believes "Mexicans" are too culturally biased to offer objective analysis and reach fair conclusions. Do the television networks believe the same thing?

Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. He writes for The Washington Post Writers Group.
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Many employee contracts have a "severe clause" that allows termination for extremely bad behavior without the normal lengthy documentation process. We can impeach a president. But what do we do with presumptive candidates who have secured enough delegates to ensure their selection at their respective party conventions if they are charged with a crime?

The last thing any business owner or political party tends to focus on is how to handle an employee or a candidate who is charged with a crime, much less whether they're convicted. However, even if you consider this is an unlikely scenario, it's a good idea to have at least general rules or a "severe clause" to clarify what to do should the unthinkable occur.

There is clear evidence that many Americans are depressed and frustrated with their choices in November. Both candidates have earned their delegates fairly, and both have loyal supporters who are more than pleased with the choices they have. But recent polls have indicated that such support on both sides of our divide are far from enthusiastic. Neither candidate is rated as trustworthy by a majority of voters.

There is also evidence, despite denials by the candidates and their campaign teams, that both presumed candidates have potential legal issues facing them. Whether it's fraud allegations regarding Trump University or the illegal use of a private server for state department emails and foundation donations, enough questions remain to cause concern for both parties.

With these allegations hanging over their heads, both parties would be wise to consider adding a "severe clause" to their party convention to-do list. Defining what would warrant terminating a campaign for cause would be a challenge as it is for any organization.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in Marmoleio-Campos v. Gonzales, tried clarifying the meaning of the phrase "moral turpitude" in justifying termination. Black's Law Dictionary defines moral turpitude as meaning "conduct that is contrary to justice, honesty, or morality."

The court tried quoting precedent from an earlier case: "Moral turpitude means, in general, shameful wickedness  so extreme a departure from ordinary standards of honest, good morals, justice, or ethics as to be shocking to the moral sense of the community. It has also been defined as an act of baseness, vileness, or depravity in the private and social duties which one person owes to another, or to society in general, contrary to the accepted and customary rule of right and duty between people."

Although that sounds clear, it remains vague, depending on whose values and which community you pick to judge a candidate's behavior. Getting a country, much less a party of partisans, to accept a judgment regarding a candidate's actions being evidence of "moral turpitude" would be all but impossible.

Parties could adopt a clause focused on legal action: A candidate's admission or conviction of, or plea of nolo contendere to, a felony or any other crime involving moral turpitude or misrepresentation other than a crime punishable only by a fine or other noncustodial penalty will result in immediate termination as the party's presidential candidate.

Unfortunately, the time required to charge and convict a candidate would make such a clause unworkable. But it's clear that even a candidate being charged with a crime could clearly hurt the chances of his or her election. Would either candidate being charged impact your vote? Under what conditions should a party act to find a more viable candidate? Should it free delegates to pick a candidate not under threat of legal action despite the delegate count?

If you feel this is a waste of time, think back to Richard Nixon and Watergate. The legal process grabbed the attention of the country and threatened to undermine our republic and diminish our reputation around the world.

Only Nixon's resignation as president helped our country avoid a potential Constitutional crisis involved in prosecuting and removing an elected president. Even with his resignation, the country had to endure a difficult and divisive transition of power to a new president. May we learn from our past to ensure our future.

Terry Paulson, of Agoura Hills, is a speaker and author of "The Optimism Advantage." Email him at terry@terrypaulson.com.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday condemned the deadly shooting at a Florida nightclub and expressed his solidarity with the US government and people, Sputnik reported.



The Orlando massacre has become the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States, surpassing the death toll from the 2007 incident at Virginia Tech, which claimed 32 lives.



"The Secretary-General condemns the horrific attack this morning in Orlando, Florida, in which dozens of people were killed and injured," the UN said in a statement published on its website on Sunday.



The mass shooting occurred at Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando. The city's Mayor Buddy Dyer confirmed that at least 50 people were killed and 53 more were injured in the shooting.



"He extends his deepest condolences to the families of the victims and expresses his solidarity with the Government and people of the United States," the UN statement on Sunday concluded.
Big shot Hanoi buyers are looking to spread the wealth to the provinces

A range of real estate projects have been introduced to Hanois market from Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong, Danang and Nha Trang. The projects include The Charm, Sunrise City, Ocean Villas, Hyatt Regency, Olalani, Fusion Alya, Azura and Blooming Park.

Talking with VIR at a recent road show to introduce Sunrise City, located in Ho Chi Minh, in Hanoi, Novaland Joint Stock Company marketing deputy director Huynh Du An said many units were sold to Hanoians and those from northern provinces.

Meanwhile, a range of other central and southern projects have been rushing into Hanoi. Setia Becamex launched Binh Duong provinces Ecolakes My Phuoc in the capital late last week, a week before TD Group introduced the Costa Nha Trang to Hanoians. This week Singapores Guoco Lands Canary, located at the Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park in Binh Duong province, will be unveiled to northern customers.

Bringing Ecolakes My Phuoc to Hanois market is one of our key marketing strategies. Hanoians are paying more attention to higher standards of living and are interested in ecological housing, said Khoo Teck Chong, general director of Setia Becamex.

VIR was told that for many projects in the central and southern parts, roughly 70 per cent of customers were from Hanoi and other northern provinces.

Matthew Koziora, sales director of VinaCapital - developer of the Azura in Danang, said the first 60 units, out of 225, were launched in Hanoi recently.

Out of the 40 units sold, 90 per cent of the buyers had come from Hanoi.

Hanoi has, according to Koziora, proven itself to be a key market for most new projects in Vietnam, given the demographics of these immediate catchments.

While condominium offerings will always be available in Hanoi due to previous pent-up demands, we can see that not all projects will enjoy a healthy sell-through, as was seen 12 months ago.

We do see, however, given the price differentials between house and land packages in Hanoi versus Ho Chi Minh City, that this market will be better received in the current marketplace and over the next six months as opposed to condominium project offerings at this time, Koziora said

Ngo Huu Truong, managing director of a real estate agency in Ho Chi Minh City, said many customers from Hanoi and Haiphong had come to Ho Chi Minh City to find out information about new projects there.

Demand is real and many projects investors have realised this trend and they are coming to Hanoi to promote their projects, Truong said.

He also said the jury was still out on how effective the promotions were.

I think that these developers [who bring their projects to Hanoi] have at least seen their target to raise their image and brand names in northern customers, Truong said.
The Secretary of HCM City Party Committee inh La Thang has asked the Department of Transport to adjust roads that have been built at levels higher than the ground floor of houses. Photo plo.vn

Due to road upgrades to deal with flooding, thousands of residents houses had been affected, with their ground floors lower than the roads outside, Bui Xuan Cuong, director of the department, said.

The department will temporarily build pavements or ladders to connect residents houses and the street, Thang said.

This has occurred on Kinh Duong Vuong Street, the section in Binh Tan District, he added.

He explained that the section had been affected by floods for several years, and peak flooding had reached 1.68 metres.

The road is nearly one metre higher than the floor of the houses.

Cuong added: The city also has streets much lower than peoples houses, including Hong Ha, Pham Van ong, and Truong Son in Tan Binh and Go Vap Districts.

The roads were upgraded under the Tan Son Nhat  Binh Loi Outer Ring Road Project. The upgrade is to be completed in August.

Cuong said the projects investor had not provided enough information about the project to local residents.

The department would check affected areas and find ways to deal with the situation.
Investors track stock movement at An Binh Stock Floor in Ha Noi. Shares ended with mixed results yesterday.- VNS Photo Viet Thanh

Ending the day, the HCM Stock Exchange (HoSE) recorded 109 advancers and 11 decliners, the VN-index lost 1.42 points or 0.22 per cent to close at 629.84 points while the Ha Noi Stock Exchange (HNX) with 119 advancers and 94 decliners, also rose 0.21 points or 0.25 per cent to reach 629.84 points.

Trading volume on the two exchanges surpassed 190 million shares, worth over VND3 trillion (US$133 million).

After Monday's gains, oil and gas stocks of PetroVietnam Gas Corp (GAS), PetroVietnam Drilling and Well Service Corp (PVD), PetroVietnam Technical Services Corp (PVS) and PetroVietnam Coating Corp (PVB) lost about 2 per cent each yesterday.

The highlight of the day was the rise of stocks with small and medium capital.

Securities stocks of HCM City Securities Corporation (HCM), Sai Gin Securities Inc (SSI) and Bao Viet Securities Company (BVS) gained about 1 per cent each.

Most sugar stocks rose slightly yesterday, too. In particular, after Thanh Cong Tay Ninh Sugar JSC (SBT) registered to sell 21 million BHS shares or 17 per cent stakes of Bien Hoa Sugar JSC, its shares rose more than 2 per cent.

Steel producers Hoa Phat Group (HPG) and Hoa Sen Group (HSG) continued growing while shares of smaller producer of Tien Len Steel JSC (TLH) rose nearly five per cent thanks to good business result in the first five months.

Meanwhile blue chips also ended mixed yesterday, Bank for Foreign Trade of Viet Nam (VCB), Bao Viet Holdings (BVH), and Masan Group (MSN) experienced gain while others of Vinamilk (VNM), GAS and PVD saw losses.

Realty stocks of Vingroup JSC (VIC), Kinh Bac City Development Share Holding Corp (KBC) and FLC Group (FLC) lost around one per cent each on HoSE.

Cash flow on HoSE mostly went to FLC Group JSC (FLC), Hoang Huy Investment Services Joint Stock Company(HHS), Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MBB), PetroVietnam Drilling & Well Services Corporation (PVD), Quang Nam Rubber Investment JSC (VHG), JSC Bank For Investment And Development Of Vietnam (BID), and HPG.

While on the cash flow of HNX went to Sai Gon Thuong Tin Real Estate JSC (SCR), Dai Chau Group Joint Stock Company (DCS), Viet Nam Construction And Import-Export Joint Stock Corporation (VCG), PetroVietnam Technical Services Corporation (PVS), Ha Noi  Kinh Bac Agriculture and Food JSC (HKB).

According to FPT Securities daily report, despite the decrease of VN-Index, strong foreign trading continued yesterday, a three day of consecutive buying with the biggest value since April 22. On HoSE, foreign net buying volume reached 9.85 million shares, worth VND194 billion (US$8.7 million), an increase of 92.3 per cent in volume and 47.7 per cent in value from Monday's session.

On HNX, foreign net buying reached nearly 400,000 shares, worth over VND15 billion, an increase of 107 per cent in volume and 134 per cent in value, the report said.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc is urging the media to serve as a bridge linking the countrys businesses and the State.  Photo VGP

At a meeting in Ha Noi yesterday with journalists participating in a programme on the presss interaction with enterprises and business people, the Government leader said journalists enable Government and State agencies to learn about the views of businesses on various issues, including the implementation of policies and guidelines, thus helping improve State management.

The PM also emphasised the medias role in building brand names for enterprises, promoting their products and spurring their operations. By covering all socio-economic spheres, the press has significantly contributed to rooting out corruption and wastefulness, the leader added.

Other participants at the event said the media helped businesses overcome their limitations in terms of international economic integration, and underlined the need for the two sectors to increase their mutual support and understanding.

It is necessary for journalists to respect the law and steer firms towards lawful business practices, they said, calling on them to play a more active role in uncovering violations of the law committed by either State management agencies or businesses in order to create an equal and transparent climate.
The performance on May 26 in Hanoi depicted the courageous young volunteers who helped Vietnamese troops fight the enemy on the Truong Son battlefields.

The opera was created by a group of renowned Vietnamese artists, including composer Do Hong Quan, playwright Nguyen Thi Hong Ngat, director Anh Tu, choreographer Anh Phuong and the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra.

Red Leaf, a large project involving 150 artists, is significant for its humane ideas. Inspired by the famous song Red Leaf, with lyrics by Nguyen Dinh Thi and music by Hoang Hiep, it depicts the female volunteers as beautiful and strong as the red leaves of the Truong Son range flying in the gusty winds.

In September 2014, work began to stage the opera, which reminded the audience of the harsh but glorious days when generations of young Vietnamese went to the frontier to liberate the south.

'I had many memories of the Truong Son trail because at the age of 18, I was sent there to help the soldiers. I tried my best to write poems in every circumstance to express my feelings. When I was offered to write the script of the opera, I used all of my youths experiences. I chose volunteer girls and sappers to be the main characters', said playwright Nguyen Thi Hong Ngat.

The 2-hour opera told a real, dramatic story of 8 young volunteers who helped to open a strategic supply route along the Truong Son trail linking the north and the south of Vietnam. Everyday they worked hard on building roads and had time to chat with soldiers about their families and lives, feeling satisfied.

The opera reached its climax when the 8 volunteers were buried in a cave by bombs. The undaunted youngsters did not flinch from their difficulties and encouraged each other to live until their last breath.

Peoples artist Pham Anh Phuong, Director of the Vietnam Music, Song and Dance Theatre and choreographer of the opera, said the younger generations who have no experience of war can learn from the opera how their predecessors sacrificed their youth at Truong Son.

'The music and lyrics depicted the harsh, glorious battles and lives of the 8 young girls', he added.

Composer Do Hong Quan incorporated into the opera chanting melodies, folk songs and famous songs by Hoang Hiep, Vu Trong Hoi and Van Dung about the historic Truong Son battlefield. Playwright Nguyen Thi Hong Ngat used lines and verses from poems written by Nguyen Tien Duat and Nguyen Dinh Thi, making the opera more attractive and real to people.

The audience was impressed by Red Leaf because its traditional and modern nuances. Playwright Nguyen Thi Hong Ngat said in the opera Red Leaf, young female volunteers were real, unreal and immortal.

'I created the Mountain Genie, who symbolized the Truong Son range, as a story teller. In Vietnamese cheo or traditional operetta, there is also a story teller. So the opera sounds legendary but logical', she shared.



Opera performers sang without microphones and the volume was controlled by the conductor.

'Do Hong Quan included in the opera excerpts from very familiar songs such as Red Leaf and Marching on Truong Son trail and beautiful folk melodies. Vietnamese traditional music was used in the opera, a genre of classical music originating from the West', said choreographer Pham Anh Phuong.
Thomas McClelland, tax partner of Deloitte Vietnam, said tax authorities difficulties in implementing transfer pricing regulations resulted from a low level of transfer pricing knowledge and a lack of data on comparable transactions.



To address the lack of data on comparable transactions, tax authorities need further cooperation amongst concerning agencies, for example between audit and tax declaration. They will develop their database of comparables.



Overall there appears to be disappointment within tax authorities regarding the very limited results achieved under original transfer pricing regulations, he told VIR.



Despite Circular 117/2005/TT-BTC by the Ministry of Finance in December 2005 promulgating the basic transfer pricing rules and documentation requirements, McClelland said many taxpayers had ignored the requirements and even the filing of the mandatory form for reporting transactions with associated parties.



Although the General Department of Taxation has made adjustments upon audit to items like inter-company service charges, such adjustments have been made under other provisions of the Vietnamese tax law, not specifically under the transfer pricing circular, he said.



Currently, a handful of foreign-backed enterprises have reported losses for several consecutive years to avoid paying tax, while expanding their businesses and production.



According to Ho Chi Minh City Taxation Department, 60 per cent of the 3,500 foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) operating in the city reported losses in 2009 and 50 per cent in 2008.



Meanwhile, Lam Dong statistics showed that there were up to 104 out of the total of 111 FIEs operating in the province having reported losses.



Many experts said transfer pricing was one of the reasons for that situation, meaning FIEs raised the prices of materials bought from their parent companies abroad to evade taxes.

Pham Chi Lan, a veteran economist, said price transfer would create an unequal business environment.



This activity fetches real profits for parent companies abroad, but causes false losses to the FIEs in Vietnam. It also helps FIEs dodge corporate income tax and remittance fees, she said.



To control this situation, Lan said, it was necessary for Vietnam to quickly build a system to keep an eye on world prices and the tax departments to closely check financial reports and compare them to the real import market prices of countries where parent companies were located.



It is not difficult for tax departments to identify information which will be considered the basis to reject FIEs untrue reports, Lan added. Nguyen Trong Hanh, deputy chief of Ho Chi Minh City Taxation Department, said it was unacceptable that FIEs used transfer pricing to avoid paying tax.

FIEs operating and making profits in Vietnam should be responsibile for their business. If they only take care of their own profits and evade taxes, it is not only an illegal activity but also a moral problem, Hanh said.



Vietnamese tax authorities have reportedly received training and cooperation from other governments such as Japan and Australia, and software have been acquired for a transfer pricing database. And with the transfer pricing regulations stated in Circular 66/2010/TT-BTC dated April 22, 2010, tax authorities were more optimistic about transfer pricing enforcement said McClelland.

By Nguyen Trang
Viet Nam and South Africa agreed to redouble efforts to raise bilateral trade revenues to US$3 billion by 2020. - Photo hanoimoi.vn

The decision was made at the third meeting of their joint trade committee, convened earlier this week in South Africa's capital, Pretoria.



Trade revenue hit approximately $1.15 billion in 2015, more than doubling the 2010 figure.



Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Thang Hai underscored South Africa's role as the largest market for made-in-Viet Nam products in Africa.



Hai proposed the signing of a memorandum of understanding on trade promotion and mentioned trade liberalisation and the establishment of a distribution channel for Vietnamese goods in the host nation through direct links with local distributors as key measures to be adopted.



He asked the South African Government to facilitate the export of coal to Viet Nam and investments by local enterprises in thermo-power, wind-power and solar-power in Viet Nam.



He also said he expected local authorities to support Vietnamese investment in their coal mining activities in South Africa.



The Vietnamese official urged South African investors to invest in the export sector of Viet Nam, particularly in garment-textiles and food processing, capitalising on preferential tariffs brought about by free trade agreements.



All of Hai's proposals were received with approval from South African Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry Mzwandile Masina.



The South African official requested that Viet Nam create favourable conditions for the import of farm produce and processed food from his country and called for additional Vietnamese investment in South Africa.



Hai also held a meeting with South African Deputy Minister of Mineral Resources Godfrey Oliphant, who agreed with his suggestions on mineral collaboration.



After the meeting, the two industry-trade ministries, together with the Vietnam Embassy in South Africa, held a trade conference.



The event brought together more than 50 local businesses that are interested in forming partnerships with Vietnamese firms, opening representative offices, making inroads into the retail sector in Viet Nam and exporting coal to the country.



On the occasion, Vietrade signed a co-operation pact with Swaziland Investment Promotion Agency to encourage further trade and investment in industry.
Police in Bangladesh say they have arrested more than 5,000 criminal suspects in the first three days of a nationwide sweep in response to a rash of extremist violence against religious minorities and secular activists.

National Police chief Shahidul Hoque, speaking Sunday, said the arrests include at least 85 militants, and that all the detentions were made on specific charges.

Militants have been blamed for more than 30 deaths in Bangladesh since early last year, including bloggers, gay rights activists, Christians and Hindus. Islamic State extremists have claimed responsibility for more than 20 of the killings.

In the past week, IS militants have claimed responsibility for the deaths of a Hindu monastery worker, an elderly Hindu priest and a Christian merchant. All three were hacked to death. The Muslim wife of a key counterterrorism official was also stabbed and shot dead.

Despite IS claims, Bangladesh authorities continue to insist there are no foreign terror groups operating in the country. Instead, they blame home-grown militants - and in some cases the political opposition - for the violence.

Though officially a secular country, about 90 percent of Bangladeshis are Muslim.

The latest crackdown was launched Thursday, just days after the wife of a senior police official who led raids against drug cartels and militants was stabbed and killed in the southeastern city of Chittagong.

A report released in April by the International Crisis Group said the government crackdown, including the arrest and prosecution of suspects "without due process and transparency, is fueling alienation that [extremist] groups can further exploit."

Despite the uptick in killings, the Dhaka government has rejected those concerns.
A veteran Afghan police commander who was blinded in an attack by one of his subordinates has been named police chief in his home district in southwest Uruzgan province.

Shah Mohammad Shah joined the Afghan National Police 13 years ago and spent time fighting against the Taliban on the front line in Trenkot, a district in Uruzgan where Taliban fighters routinely target police checkpoints.

However, he was betrayed by one of his own men a year and a half ago in the Meher Abaad area, when the man claimed to want to show him the location of an enemy minefield. Dost Mohammad Nayaab, the provincial spokesperson of Uruzgan, said that when they reached the minefield, the man told Shah that its time for you to pay for what you have done. He then detonated a blast that killed four of Shah's men and wounded both of Shah's eyes.

He traveled to India for medical treatment two times, but doctors were unable to restore his vision. So Shah returned to Afghanistan and considered leaving the police force. However, the provinces military council had a different plan.

Nayaab said the council decided to assign Shah as the police chief in his birthplace: Dehrawood, a district where Taliban forces have made gains in recent months and are in danger of seizing control.

The Uruzgan provincial spokesperson said Shah's example was inspiring to the police force, and he is still an expert in neutralizing IEDs.

Despite being blind, Shah Mohammad said he would continue to fight for his country.
At least four Indian policemen were wounded, two of them critically, Sunday after militants attacked their vehicle in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir, Xinhua reported citing police.



The attack was carried out near Qazigund town of Kulgam district, about 72 km south of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir.



"This evening militants fired upon a police vehicle at village Bonigam here, wounding four policemen," a police official posted in Qazigund told Xinhua. "Of the wounded policemen, the condition of two was stated to be critical."



Police officials said the policemen were on a visit to the village in connection with some local dispute, when militants attacked them.



The wounded policemen were immediately removed to nearest medical facility, wherefrom they were referred to Srinagar for specialized treatment.



"All the four policemen had bullet wounds but condition of two of them was critical," a health official posted at trauma hospital Qazigund said.



Police officials said the policemen also fired in retaliation following the attack and the exchange between the two sides continued for about five minutes.



Authorities rushed in police and paramilitary troopers to the village to nab militants. However, none was arrested until last reports came in. Reports said militants managed to flee from the spot after carrying out the attack.



This is the third militant attack in past nine days in the southern towns. Earlier this month militants attacked a convoy of Indian border guards in Bijbehara town killing three Border Security Force personnel and wounding nine others.



Subsequently on June 5, militants shot dead two policemen at bus station in Anantnag town.



Last month four policemen were killed in Srinagar and Pulwama and militants also snatched away two service rifles of the slain policemen.



A local commander of region's indigenous militant outfit -- Hizbul Mujahideen -- Burhan Wani in a video message has warned of intensifying attacks on policemen.



Gunfights between the militants and Indian troops takes place intermittently across the region.



Kashmir, the Himalayan region divided between India and Pakistan is claimed by both in full. Since their Independence from Britain, the two countries have fought three wars, two exclusively over Kashmir.
A powerful bomb blast ripped through a commercial area of Beirut, Lebanon Sunday, severely damaging one of the country's largest banks. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Beirut's Daily Star newspaper quoted a source saying the bomb weighed about 5 kilograms, exploding outside a Blom Bank branch in the upscale Verdun neighborhood, as many nearby residents were at home breaking their day-long Ramadan fasts.

Television footage showed shattered glass and badly damaged vehicles near the blast site.

Investigators were reported working late Sunday to determine the target of the blast.

In recent years, Beirut and its suburbs have been hit with a string of bombings that authorities have frequently linked to the civil war in nearby Syria. However, the Daily Star said Sunday's blast did not resemble those larger explosions, which have mostly targeted Beirut's southern suburbs.
When an Olympic hopeful swimmer attending prestigious Stanford University was recently sentenced to six months in a county jail for the sexual assault of a woman at a fraternity party, social media erupted with fury. The case drew so much attention that Vice President Joe Biden weighed in on the issue with an open letter supporting the victim.

She has chosen to remain anonymous but spoke out on her own behalf in a letter aimed at her attacker.

Interest in the case has been intense in part because victims rarely come forward to address their attackers publicly, and it has put a spotlight on what many see as the U.S. justice system's tendency to go easy on affluent, white defendants.

The swimmer, Brock Turner, was sentenced June 2 for three felony convictions of sexual assault, committed in January 2015 outside a fraternity party on campus.

His victim was a 23-year-old woman who made a last-minute decision to accompany her younger sister to a fraternity party. The woman, who was not a student at Stanford, said in the 7,422-word statement she read aloud in court that she drank liquor too fast and got drunk.

By her account, by Turners, and by those of other witnesses in court records, the victim ended up separated from her friends and alone with Turner behind a trash receptacle outside the Kappa Alpha fraternity house.

Witnesses step in

Two graduate students riding by on bicycles noticed Turner lying on top of her half-naked body, thrusting his hips at her while she remained motionless. The graduate students confronted Turner, chased him and pinned him down until police arrived. They said in their testimony that the victim was unconscious the whole time.

Court statements by Turner and his father portrayed him as an innocent freshman, unused to the drinking and partying that goes on at college and swayed by peer pressure to pursue girls. They blamed alcohol consumption and described the encounter as mutually consensual.

But witnesses told police and the courts that Turner had been aggressively pursuing women at the party all night, kissing girls and touching them without invitation. He had kissed the victims sister, who rebuffed him. When the sister left to walk another friend back to her dorm, Turner and the victim ended up alone together.

I asked her if she wanted to dance, so we began to dance together and eventually started kissing one another," Turner wrote in his statement. I bring up the idea of her coming back to my dorm room, and she agrees to accompany me back there.

I was the wounded antelope of the herd, completely alone and vulnerable, physically unable to fend for myself, and he chose me, the victim argued. Sometimes I think, if I hadnt gone [to the party], this never wouldve happened. But then I realized, it would have happened, just to somebody else.

She railed against Turners reluctance to take responsibility for anything more than overdrinking, saying, We were both drunk. The difference is, I did not take off your pants and underwear, touch you inappropriately, and run away.

A 2015 poll by The Washington Post backed up statistics found previously in a nationwide study that said about 1 in 5 women and about 1 in 20 men had been the victims of some kind of sexual assault on college campuses. In two-thirds of those incidents, alcohol was involved.

Potential 14-year term

Turner was convicted of felony sexual assault for having penetrated the victim with his fingers while she was intoxicated and unconscious. The potential sentence for such convictions is up to 14 years in prison; prosecutors asked for six.

But the judge, Aaron Persky, a Stanford alumnus and former college athlete, gave Turner only six months in a county jail, which can be reduced to three months if Turner behaves well. Persky said a longer sentence might have a severe impact on the young athlete and his future.

Turner is currently in the Santa Clara County Jail. He dropped out of Stanford, and the U.S. Olympic swimming team said he would not be allowed to try out for the team.

But women's rights advocates argued that his sentence was too light.

Persky is now the target of a number of online petitions calling for his recall. Those petitions  the largest at Change.org  have collected more than 1 million signatures. A Stanford law professor, Michele Dauber, has begun a recall effort as well, and members of the California Legislative Womens Caucus have joined it.

The victims decision to speak out publicly is an important step in validating the experience of other victims of sexual assault and may give others the courage to come forward, Terri Poore, policy director of the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, told VOA. She said statistics on sexual assault are hard to confirm because victims are often reluctant to talk about their experiences, afraid they wont be taken seriously.

Poore said, Sometimes people dont even tell friends, much less the criminal justice system. She added, It gives survivors solace and courage whenever they hear another survivors voice this way.

Biden's letter

Biden published his open letter to the victim Thursday on the website Buzzfeed, which had published her statement. You are a warrior, Biden wrote. The statistics on college sexual assault havent gone down in the past two decades. Its obscene, and its a failure that lies at all of our feet.

Court documents said the victim has vowed privately to continue speaking out for victims of sexual assault. She released a follow-up statement saying she planned to remain anonymous at present and added, for now, I am everywoman.

She directed the final paragraph of her statement at other victims of sexual assault:

When people doubt you or dismiss you, I am with you. I fought every day for you. So never stop fighting. I believe you.
The International Labor Organization is spearheading a global campaign to stamp out child labor, which victimizes 168 million children worldwide. To mark this years World Day Against Child Labor, a panel of experts focused on the abusive and widespread practice of child labor in international supply chains.

The Choir for the Abolition of Child Labor, a group of young musicians from Ivory Coast, spreads its message that children belong in school, not at work.

The pulsing beat of the music and the rap lyrics set the right note for the high-level panel discussion on ending child labor in supply chains. Under this system, children are employed all along the line from the manufacture of a product to its final distribution to the consumer.

It involves workers, small producers and enterprises around the world. Most child labor occurs in production for domestic markets, but children also produce goods and services for export. It mainly occurs in the rural and informal economy.

Joint effort needed



Director-General of the International Labor Organization Guy Ryder said the combined efforts of governments, employers, workers unions and consumers are needed to end this nefarious practice.

He said enterprises need to be vigilant to ensure their supply chains are free of child labor.

From enterprises, we need a clear message of zero tolerance of child labor. They need to know what is happening in their supply chains and to back that up with action in their business practices and dealing with suppliers. And, this I believe is the common expectation of business in the 21st century, said Ryder.

Children work for low or no pay in abusive, slave-like and dangerous conditions in agriculture, fishing, garment industries, electronics, manufacturing and in the mineral extractive sector.

Jacqueline Mugo is executive director of the Federation of Kenya Employers. She said employers worldwide are tackling the problem of child labor.

In some cases, she said employers will not hire children if the work is seen to cause hardships to the children or their families.

In East Africa, we found that actually child labor was in many cases exacerbated by families that needed their income. And, so it is important to take this into consideration and there are programs that have been implemented to do this, said Mugo.

But, Philip Jennings, general-secretary of UNI Global Union, a worldwide workers movement, said not enough is being done.

It was Timothy Leary that said tune in, turn on and drop out. There are 168 million reasons why we, as a community, cannot drop the ball and drop out of the conversation on child labor, he said.

Jennings agreed progress is being made. He noted child labor has been cut by one-third in the last decade and governments have committed themselves to eliminating child labor by 2025.

The clock is running. The time for excuses from business is over We simply do not buy the argument that it is all the fault of government.We want business to accept its responsibility and to work with the social partners and local governments to ensure that child labor is not a reality, he said.

Involving communities

Andrew Tagoe heads a program of rural and agricultural workers in Ghana. He described a community program, which intimately involves the inhabitants of Torkor  a small fishing village in Upper Volta  in tackling the problem of child labor.

That is what we have called the Torkor model  that is bringing people on board to address their own child labor, to address their own deficit gap in terms of decent work So, that community people in the village can sit with government and negotiate with government structures what they think they need as community people, he said.

The panelists agree a key element in eradicating child labor is to provide decent jobs to adults and youth of working age. Some of the participants are calling on the ILO to enact a convention on supply chains that spells out the rules for ending child labor in this complex global system.
While U.S. investigators are still trying to determine if there were any actual links between the Orlando shooter, 29-year-old American-born Omar Mateen, and the Islamic State (IS) terror group, supporters of the terrorist organization moved quickly to claim responsibility.

The Amaq News Agency, essentially a propaganda arm of IS, issued statements both in Arabic and English Sunday. The English language statement said the nightclub attack was carried out by an Islamic State fighter, and it claimed more than 100 homosexuals had been killed.

Thats a legitimate claim, said Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

But that doesnt mean that Mateen was directed or acting under the orders of the Islamic State, he said. It could be that Amaq is just playing off news reports that say Mateen swore allegiance to Islamic State either before or during the attack.

Still, experts worry this is the type of attention that IS craves, especially given the growing string of setbacks the terror group and self-proclaimed caliphate has been suffering on the battlefield in Syria and Iraq, as well as in Libya.

From their perspective, it doesnt matter if he (Mateen) was acting under the orders of Islamic State or not, Joscelyn said. Its a big PR win to have one of their supporters do it.

Early indications are that the Orlando nightclub attack may have, at least briefly, reenergized IS followers on social media.

IS English language supporters on Twitter attempting a comeback, terror expert and author J.M. Berger posted on his @intelwire Twitter account Sunday, adding one account tweeting 130+ per hour.
Hundreds of thousands of people marched, danced and dressed up to celebrate and support gay pride around the world Saturday as part of global LGBT Pride Month.

There were gay-pride festivals in many major cities, including in such culturally conservative countries as Croatia, Poland and Italy.

Italy recently passed a civil union law for gay couples, but some of the marchers in Rome said they were still far from meeting their goals, including legalized gay marriage and adoption.

A gay-rights activist parading in Athens said Greece was making its first steps toward recognizing that people can be different and said Saturday's march reinforced the change in attitudes toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Marchers in Seoul watched as police dragged away protesters who tried to stop Saturday's parade. One of the organizers of Saturday's march said he wanted to send a message of equality and respect to Korean society.

Parades were also held in more than a dozen cities in the U.S., where the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage one year ago this month.

The U.S. parades were marked by joyful music and dancing, bright costumes and a family atmosphere.

More gay-pride events are scheduled around the globe throughout June.
Thousands of people, gay and straight, held candlelight vigils in several major cities across the U.S. Sunday night for the 50 people shot dead in the worst mass killing in U.S. history.

Twenty-nine-year-old Omar Saddiqui Mateen -- an American born to Afghan parents -- opened fire in the Pulse nightclub in downtown Orlando, Florida early Sunday morning. Fifty-three people were wounded, some of them gravely.

The nightclub catered to a primarily gay clientele.

Vigils for the shooting victims were held in Orlando itself, as well as in Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Washington, DC.

In Manhattan, lights on the iconic Empire State Building were turned off in sympathy for the victims. Meanwhile, the spire at One World Trade Center -- near the site of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- was lit in rainbow colors, the symbol of gay pride.

President Barack Obama ordered U.S. flags to be flown at half-staff in memory of the victims of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

Obama declared it an act of terrorism and said the FBI is leading the investigation. He said no effort will be spared to find out what inspired the killer or if he had any links to terrorist groups.

The president again said it is easy for someone to get his hands on a weapon to shoot people in schools, churches, movie theaters and nightclubs.

"We have to decide if that's the kind of country we want to be. And to actively do nothing is a decision as well."

He said the murders unite Americans in "grief and outrage."

"This is a sobering reminder that attacks on any American  regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation  is an attack on all of us and on the fundamental values of equality and dignity that define us as a country," a grim Obama said in a White House statement Sunday morning.

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said, "If investigators conclude this was an act of terror directed or inspired by ISIL (Islamic State), it will only steel our resolve to defeat this depraved enemy, prevent the spread of its hateful ideology, and defend our people."

Mateen's former wife Sitora Yusufiy said her ex-husband was bipolar. "He was mentally unstable and mentally ill," she told reporters in Boulder, Colorado. While the couple was married for two years, Yusufiy said they were only together for four months because he was abusive.

A Florida gay rights group has established a crowd-funding campaign on gofundme.com to raise money for the victims and their families. Equity Florida says it is working with "a team of attorneys and experts" who have deployed money raised for victims of other U.S. massive shootings "to ensure funds are distributed correctly." More than a million dollars had been raised by early Monday.

WATCH: Witness recalls shooting in Orlando club

Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson have both canceled trips to Beijing for cybersecurity talks with Chinese officials.

Florida Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency in Orange County, in which the city of Orlando is located.

The city is making public the names of the attack victims after their families have been notified. Orlando citizens lined up for blocks Sunday to give blood for the wounded.

The owner of the Pulse nightclub, Barbara Poma, issued a statement saying she is devastated, and calling her club a place of love and acceptance for the gay community.

Witnesses who scurried from the massacre say the shots came even while the music played on and guests kept dancing.

Mateen traded gunfire with a police officer working extra hours at the club, then left the building and returned, holding a number of hostages for about three hours.

A police SWAT team stormed the club and killed Mateen in a shootout.

Some media reports said Mateen made 911 emergency phone calls during the rampage in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.

Ronald Hopper of the FBI said Mateen had what he calls minimal ties to an American suicide bomber. Agents investigated him three years ago for possible terrorist ties but could not verify the allegations and closed their probe.

Pope Francis has expressed his deepest feelings of horror and condemnation over the Orlando massacre.

The founder of Make Space, an Islamic Center near Washington, DC, told the VOA Afghanistan service "shooting innocent humans is a cowardly act that every Muslim and every human being should condemn."

The Orlando Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement, "We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured. The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence."

The City of Orlando is making public the names of the attack victims as soon as their families have been notified.

Orlando citizens lined up for blocks Sunday to give blood.

WATCH: From the scene of the shooting

On the gay club's Facebook page, a post around 2 a.m. gave early indication of the tragedy that was unfolding.

"Everyone get out of pulse," a page administrator wrote, "and keep running."

Why the club was targeted remains unclear. The shooting comes as many cities around the world celebrate June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transsexual (LGBT) Pride Month.

The Pulse nightclub incident follows another shooting in Orlando by a day.

Singer Christina Grimmie, a 22-year-old YouTube star and one-time contestant of the TV talent show "The Voice," was fatally shot by a man outside her concert late Friday.

Mohammad Habibzada and National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report. Some material for this report came from AP.
An Iraqi general said troops seeking to recapture the Islamic State stronghold of Fallujah have opened a safe corridor that humanitarian workers say has allowed about 4,000 residents to flee the embattled city in the past day.

The escape route, secured Saturday, was hailed by the Norwegian Refugee Council, whose overwhelmed workers struggled Sunday to provide emergency services to the latest refugees.

Council spokesman Karl Schembri voiced relief, while warning that available resources, including safe drinking water, would not meet refugee needs much longer.

"We expect thousands more to be able to leave in the coming days," Schembri told reporters.

General Yahya Rasool said the escape route was secured after troops dislodged insurgents from districts located on the western bank of the Euphrates river.

The United Nations last week voiced concern for the fate of as many as 90,000 civilians believed trapped in the city without basic food and medical necessities.

U.N. humanitarian coordinator Lise Grande told Reuters her agency had raised the number of trapped civilians from 50,0000 to 90,000 based on witness accounts, after underestimating their numbers in the ravaged city.

Iraqi forces poised on the outskirts of Fallujah met heavy Islamic State resistance Saturday in their weeks-old offensive to retake the city, which was overrun by IS fighters in early 2014.

Iraqi Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi claimed during a visit to the battle zone that government forces were advancing along a new front west of the city.

But Al Jazeera TV reported that IS fighters had repulsed government forces trying to enter Fallujah from the south. VOA could not independently confirm either claim.
A stern and somber President Barack Obama took to the podium in the White House briefing room on Sunday to express his condolences to the families of those killed overnight in an Orlando nightclub shooting.

It was the fifteenth time he has had to address the American people after a mass shooting during his tenure in office.

Obama said the massacre "marks the most deadly shooting in American history."

Although its still early in the investigation, we know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate, he added, explaining that he was briefed at the White House by FBI Director James Comey.

The president said "no act of terror or hate can change who we are, adding that that the mass shooting is a "sobering reminder" that an attack on any American is an attack on all of us.

Obama addressed the fact that the brutal shooting and hostage-taking attack took place at an iconic gay nightclub.

Watch: Obama Delivers Statement on Orlando Shooting

This is an especially heartbreaking day for all our friends  our fellow Americans  who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender," he said. "The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends, to dance and to sing, and to live. The place where they were attacked is more than a nightclub  it is a place of solidarity and empowerment where people have come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds, and to advocate for their civil rights.

The gunman responsible for the killing of at least 50 people in an Orlando, Florida nightclub early Sunday has been identified as Omar Saddiqui Mateen, a U.S. citizen of Afghan descent who the FBI said committed a crime that is being investigated as an act of terrorism.

Earlier, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said intelligence officials informed him the shooter may have pledged allegiance to Islamic State.

Presidential candidates react

The presidential candidates also were quick to react to the shootings. The likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, tweeted: "Woke up to hear the devastating news from Florida. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act."

Late in the day, the Clinton campaign and the White House announced they were postponing a planned joint campaign appearance set for Wednesday in the northern state of Wisconsin. No reschedule date was announced.

The presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, directly challenged President Obama, tweeting: Is President Obama going to finally mention the words 'radical Islamic terrorism?' If he doesn't, he should immediately resign in disgrace!

Some Republican leaders and lawmakers have repeatedly called on President Obama to use the words Islamic terrorism when speaking about terrorist acts inspired by radical Islamic leaders. The White House has said the president does not want to tarnish an entire religion practiced by millions of innocent people because of heinous acts conducted by a few.

House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce issued a statement, saying "My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and all those who lost a loved one today," adding that "Jihadist-driven terrorism has hit America again.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi tweeted about the mass shooting on Sunday.

Senator John McCain also issued a statement extending his condolences.
A suspected Turkish serial killer who was being sought for the murder of three people, including a Russian citizen, was caught on a minibus in the western province of Izmir after someone saw him and notified the police on June 12. The police had been on high alert for Atalay Filiz, who was also sought internationally.

"I ate whatever I found, frogs, bugs, etc.," Filiz reportedly said in his testimony, adding that he had been hiding in a mountainous area in the city's Gumuldur neighborhood since May 31.

According to the police, Filiz got on a minibus to go to Izmir's Menderes district early on June 12, when a suspicious passenger saw him and notified the police. Filiz however got off the minibus, prompting a police search of all the minibuses in the district before he was located and apprehended.

Filiz presented a false ID when he was caught, but later admitted who he was, according to reports.

Three fake driving licenses and four fake IDs alongside his passport and authentic ID were found on Filiz, who also said in his testimony that he had tried to travel to Greece with a group of migrants but failed.

Filiz was being kept in the Menderes police headquarters and had received a medical exam.

Izmir Provincial Police Chief Celal Uzunkaya arrived at the headquarters and said the person who notified the police would be rewarded.

"The case was solved with the cooperation of the citizens and the police. We thank the person who notified us," Uzunkaya said on June 12.
The Philippines outgoing president has cautioned his fellow citizens to be avid about defending their freedoms and democracy as a new hardline president is set to take office.

Benigno Aquino, speaking Sunday on the 118th anniversary of the country's declaration of independence from Spanish colonial rule, warned President-elect Rodrigo Duterte could take an authoritarian path reminiscent of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos' 20-year rule.

Aquino said Marcos had deprived Filipinos of their freedoms and warned "if we are not vigilant, this can happen again." Then, using a quote usually attributed to British statesman Edmund Burke, Aquino said "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

Duterte has promised to kill thousands of criminals and has said he will offer a bounty to police and civilians who kill drug dealers.

Rights groups have accused him of overseeing death squads that killed more than 1,100 people during his time as mayor of Davao.

Duterte has drawn scorn over boasts about his sexual escapades and vulgar comments about women. He said during the campaign that he wished he had been first in line in the gang rape of an Australian missionary killed during a Davao jail riot in 1989.

Aquino has compared Duterte to German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Duterte takes office on June 30.
In September 2001, Eritrean authorities launched an unprecedented crackdown on the free press. Seven of the countrys independent newspapers were shut down. At least 11 journalists were arrested in the roundup, and several more were jailed the following month. None of them have been heard from since that time, and their whereabouts are unknown to this day. The Committee to Protect Journalists says approximately 17 journalists remain in prison in Eritrea, although it is not known how many of the prisoners are still alive.

Although they are gone from view, their colleagues, friends and family want to make sure they are not forgotten. At a recent event in Alexandria, Virginia titled Memory for Forgetfulness, Eritreans shared stories about the journalists and advocated for their release.

Among the attendees was Robel Asrat, whose brother Amanuel Asrat was arrested on Sept. 23, 2001 and who has been held incommunicado since then. Amanuel was a celebrated poet and the editor of Zemen, a newspaper covering the arts and literature. His poem The Scourge of War has been translated into 15 languages.

Robel, who was a child at the time, recalled the painful memory of pointing out his home address to security officers dressed in civilian clothes who came to arrest his brother. He said for the first six months of his brothers detention he was kept in Asmara, and the family was able to bring him food, although they could not speak to him. After that Amanuel was transferred, possibly to Eiraeiro, a maximum security prison north of the capital, and has never been heard from since.

After the six months, we were completely in the dark, and those whom we asked werent able to give us information, and they told us not to look for him anymore, he said. Until today we still hope to see him, and my parents have never stopped praying for his release.

Robel remembers his brother as a generous person who never stopped giving to others, even at his own expense. He also wrote poetry for those needing to be cheered up or inspired. Robel says he wishes he could pass on a message to his brother. He always repeated one word...the word he repeated was resilience. I would ask him to be resilient like his word, he said.

There is no problem that stays the same, and one day the problems that look like mountains will be lifted and then there is light, the light that God has created. And he will see the light he has been prevented from seeing.

Crackdown on journalists

The 2001 crackdown on journalists in Eritrea came at the end of a war with Ethiopia that cost the lives of 70,000 to 100,000 people. On Sept. 18, 15 high-ranking officials in Eritreas ruling party, the Peoples Front for Democracy and Justice published an open letter to President Isaias Afwerki calling for reform in government and accusing the president of taking actions that were illegal and unconstitutional. The letter as well as interviews with the dissident members who became known as the G-15 were widely published. What followed was a severe constriction of free speech in the country.

Since that time, President Isaias has claimed that there was never an independent media in Eritrea and that newspapers in operation prior to 2001 were funded by outside sources, including the CIA. In a 2003 interview, he told Radio France Internationale that journalists operating in Eritrea had been paid to sow dissent inside the country. You cannot say a spy is a journalist, he said. In the middle of the war we had to check them. We had to say enough is enough."

'Vital watchdog'

Yosef Berhe, founder of Reem, one of the first independent newspapers in Eritrea, said that prior to the crackdown, newspapers were playing a vital watchdog role in Eritrea. They were exposing corruption, advocating for reform and offering a venue for readers to voice opinions about the future of the country.

One of the good parts of the newspapers is that opinions of regular people were being published, including letters, he said. So they had access. That was a good thing. I feel like it was one of the main benefits If that continued for five to 10 years, how great would that be? Thats the best thing newspapers did for the society, in my opinion.

Keep memories alive

Abraham Zere, executive director of PEN Eritrea, a co-organizer of the event in Virginia and a former columnist for Hadas Eritrea, said he is not optimistic that space will open up for journalists any time soon.

I wouldnt guess that there would be free press in Eritrea in the near future, he said. As long as the regime is there it is not going to allow free press. It is continuing to get worse and there is not a turning point. Unless the regime is no longer in power, I dont expect change or even forgiveness for the ones in jail. We have no hope that they will release those in prison because they are adding crime upon crime, and I dont see any way that they will turn back time.

Others hoped that even if the event does not have a political impact, it keeps the memories of the jailed journalists alive. Bereket Stephanos, an IT professional who trained as a lawyer in both Eritrea and the U.S., knew some of the journalists while he was a student at Asmara University. He hopes they understand that their suffering is not in vain.

I read this quote from a Martin Luther King speech when the four little kids died in a church in Birmingham Alabama, and he said, unmerited suffering is redemptive and God has a way of making good out of evil, and I personally believe that all this suffering will bring about some good, he said.

I personally would like to remind them [that] I did not forget them, and when you look at this maybe 50 years in the future or maybe 100 years in the future, were all going to die, were all going to be dust in history, but they will be the monuments people will remember. None of us will be as big a picture as they are so that should give us some comfort.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who waged a months-long battle with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, says he will meet with her after the last party primary Tuesday in Washington to discuss their political agendas before deciding whether to drop out of the race.

Sanders signaled last week that his campaign was nearing its end, but declined to quit the race until after voters in the heavily Democratic national capital have a chance to vote Tuesday, the last party election in the state-by-state nominating contests that started in February.

Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state, last week clinched enough delegates to the party's July national nominating convention to become the first woman to win the presidential nomination for a major U.S. political party. President Barack Obama quickly endorsed her, but Clinton is faced with winning over Sanders' supporters for the November national election, particularly younger voters who overwhelmingly favored his candidacy.

Priorities



Sanders told NBC's Meet the Press Sunday that defeating the presumptive Republican nominee, billionaire Republican nominee Donald Trump, is his first priority.

But he said he wants to make sure Clinton supports his priorities to battle the influence of Wall Street financial chieftains and fight income inequality in the United States before deciding the extent to which he can support her presidential candidacy.

"I look forward to sitting down with Secretary Clinton and see what kind of platform she is going to support and how aggressive she is going to be,'' he said on the CBS show Face the Nation. "Dependent on how Secretary Clinton comes down on many of these major issues will determine how closely we can work with her."

Sanders' supporters will have their say at the national convention in Philadelphia in shaping the party's policies after he defeated Clinton in 22 states, although she won 28 states and more than 3.7 million more votes than he did because her victories often were in much bigger states. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll Sunday, more than three-quarters of Democrats polled said Sanders should have a "major role" in setting the party's priorities and about 45 percent of the convention delegates will be Sanders supporters.

Clinton, while fending off the Sanders challenge, has for weeks been leveling sharp attacks against Trump. She has zeroed in on his contentious claim that a U.S. federal judge, of Mexican heritage, is biased against him in a consumer fraud case involving one of Trump's defunct businesses, because Trump is calling for construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to halt the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S.

A divided Republican party

Trump is facing even more divisiveness within the Republican party over his candidacy than Clinton is among Democrats.

Numerous Republican party stalwarts have rebuked Trump for his brash comments disparaging Mexicans, Muslims, women, people with disabilities and war heroes.

The 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, says he will not vote for either Trump or Clinton. Romney said Trump's views will lead to "trickle-down racism" in the United States and said his views are "extraordinarily dangerous to the character of America.

"I love this country," Romney told CNN. "I love the founders. I love what this country is built upon and its values and seeing this is breaking my heart."

On Saturday, Trump, a one-time television reality show host, blasted Romney, who lost the 2012 election to Obama, as a "choker" and a "stone-cold loser."

Referring to Clinton, Trump said Republicans "have a war to win against a very crooked politician. The Republican Party has to come together, they have to get their act together.

"I'd like to see the Republican leadership be very strong, very smart and you got to be cool," Trump told a crowd of about 2,000 in a sweltering hangar at the Pittsburgh International Airport. It was a warning to Republican leaders that party members run the risk of losing seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate. "I'm going to win, but a lot of other people are not," Trump said.

With the Trump-Clinton contest for the November 8 national election now a virtual certainty, political surveys are showing Clinton pulling ahead as she seeks to become the first female U.S. president.

Real Clear Politics' current polling data shows Clinton with a 3.8 percentage point edge over Trump in an average of numerous national polls.

Numerous surveys also show her with an edge in the country's electoral college vote that determines the presidential outcome. U.S. presidential elections are not decided by a national popular vote, but rather by state-by-state contests, with each state's vote determined by its population and the size of its congressional representation.
The father of Omar Mateen, the man identified as the killer in the Orlando nightclub massacre, says he is "extremely" upset over the incident and has no idea why his son "committed such an act during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan."



"I do not know what caused this. I did not know he had hatred in his heart," Seddique Mateen said.



Self-proclaimed 'Afghan president'



Seddique Mateen, who lives in Florida, is a self-proclaimed revolutionary president of Afghanistan.



He has been addressing the Afghan people through video messages on his Facebook account.



He has appointed a cabinet for his revolutionary government and has been issuing orders and policy related statements via his Facebook page.



The revolutionary people of Afghanistan, each one of you has the ability to arrest Ashraf [Afghan President Ashraf Ghani], Atmar [Mohammad Hanif Atmar, Afghan national security adviser], Khalilzad [Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. ambassador to Kabul]  and rid Afghanistan of their evil acts, Mateen, dressed in Afghan army garb, said in a Facebook message a few hours before his son killed at least 50 people at the Orlando nightclub.

Watch: Mateen's Latest Message



In his video messages, Mateen has been critical of the Afghan government under President Ashraf Ghani. He says his government will help Afghans get rid of the war and corruption and will guarantee a "prosperous Afghanistan.



In a video message Saturday, he blamed certain individuals inside the Afghan government who, according to Mateen, are plotting against the people of Afghanistan.



Atmar is the leader of Daesh [Islamic State group] who encourages and helps Daesh expand in Afghanistan, and he offers money to people so that they join Daesh and destroy the country, claimed Mateen.



Similarly, he accused former President Hamid Karzai of leading and orchestrating the plans and activities of the Iran and Pakistan-backed Taliban, who kill and kidnap Afghan people across the country.



Mateen traveled to Mexico on June 5-7 and sent messages to Afghans from a boat cruise. Before departing on the trip, he said he was on an official trip.



According to a VOA source who spoke on condition of anonymity, Mateen has established an organization called Durand Line Jirga for political and financial purposes.



He organized a gathering of Afghans a few years ago in Northern Virginia. A number of participants objected as Mateen pursued his own personal agenda, a participant told VOA on condition of anonymity. He wanted to establish contacts with U.S. officials and congressmen, the source said.



Mateen told NBC News that his sons act had nothing to do with religion. He added that his son was enraged when he saw two men kissing a couple of months ago in Miami.



This has nothing to do with religion. We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident. We are not aware of any action he is taking, Mateen said.



Afghan President Ghani and CEO Abdullah Abdullah have strongly condemned the attack. Targeting civilians is not justifiable under any circumstances whatsoever, Ghani said in a statement.



Abdullah said terrorism and terrorists as foes of human being are not representing any faith, religion, ethnicity and race.
Taiwans China-suspicious government has barred former president Ma Ying-jeou from a visit to Hong Kong, citing security reasons and too little contact with authorities on the other side.



Current President Tsai Ing-wens office said Sunday six agencies had met twice during the past week to consider the travel plans of Ma, who stepped down May 20, and who planned to give a speech at a Hong Kong journalism awards ceremony of The Society of Publishers in Asia.



The agencies turned down the trip that would have taken place 27 days after Ma left office because the former leader knew state secrets and other high-level classified information the former leader knew about, the presidents office says in a statement. There is no precedent for this kind of request, the statement adds.



The rejection of Mas travel request marks the strongest statement Tsai has made as president against China and her islands chief opposition Nationalist Party, which backed Ma in office.



Evaluating this case is based on the importance of the former president on national security, the unusualness of the case and its sensitivity, presidential office spokesman Huang Chung-yen says. Ex-president Mas contact with state secrets was huge. These state secrets and other high-level confidential information are important because he stepped down less than a month ago.



Hong Kong is also a highly sensitive region, the statement adds. Its a territory of China, which has claimed sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s.



China insists that the two eventually unify, despite public opinion surveys in Taiwan indicating people on the Asian island prefer todays degree of autonomy.

Ma built a name, after taking office in 2008, on opening dialogue with Beijing and treating it as an economic partner. Tsai takes a more cautious view and unlike Ma rejects Beijings precondition for talks requiring that each side see itself as part of one China.



The ex-president's travel plan came too quickly for the current government to discuss the item with authorities in Hong Kong or mainland China, the government statement says.



Mas party accused Tsai government of a double standard in rejecting the travel plan. Tsais government let another former president, Chen Shui-bian, attend a political dinner earlier this month in Taipei while serving a graft sentence, the Nationalists noted. Both Tsai and Chen are backed by the Democratic Progressive Party.



The Democratic Progressive Party government to first let... former president Chen Shui-bian attend a dinner party, inciting some debate, then today to block a totally transparent trip by former president Ma creates a criminal can creep out, but a law abiders freedom is restricted situation, party spokesman Chou Chih-wei said in a statement.




U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is condemning Saturday's deadly attacks on a Shi'ite shrine in a Damascus suburb.

A statement from Ban Saturday evening said reports from local monitor groups in Syria said several civilians, including women and children, were killed and many others wounded in what he called an "appalling terror attack claimed by ISIL." The U.N. chief said those responsible for attacks on civilians must be held accountable.

Two blasts at the Sayyida Zeinab shrine killed at least 12 people and left many others wounded.

Syrian state media say a suicide bomber struck at the entrance of the shrine. That blast was followed by a car bombing at the heavily guarded shrine important to Shi'ites throughout the world. Some reports say 20 people were killed in the twin bombings.

The attacks took place in an area where several other bombings have taken place in the past, often claimed by Islamic State militants, also known as ISIL.
Mass Shootings in US

Sunday's shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida left 50 people dead and dozens wounded, making it the deadliest mass shooting in US history.

An edited list of earlier mass shootings in the United States:

December 2015: Couple kill 14 after storming California social services agency, are killed in gun battle with police.

November 2015: Gunman kills three after storming Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic; is arrested after hourslong standoff with police.



October 2015: Gunman kills nine at Oregon community college before being killed in gun battle with police.

July 2015: Gunman kills five at U.S. Navy Reserve center in Tennessee before being shot and killed by police.

June 2015: Gunman kills nine people in South Carolina church before fleeing, is captured the following day, awaiting trial.

May 2015: Nine killed in shootout between rival motorcycle clubs and police at Texas restaurant.



October 2014: Teenage gunman kills four teens, two of whom are his cousins, in Washington state high school before committing suicide.

September 2013: Gunman kills 12 people at a naval facility in Washington before dying in a gun battle with police.

December 2012: Gunman kills 26 adults and children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut before killing himself.

August 2012: Gunman kills six people at Sikh Temple in Wisconsin before committing suicide after being shot by police.

July 2012: Gunman kills 12 people during showing of Batman movie in Colorado.

January 2011: Gunman kills six people and wounds U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona.



November 2009: U.S. Army psychiatrist kills 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas.

April 2007: Virginia Tech student kills 32 people before committing suicide.

October 2006: Gunman kills five girls in Pennsylvania Amish school before committing suicide.

January 2006: Ex-postal worker kills eight before committing suicide in California in rare case of female shooter.

April 1999: Two Columbine High School students kill 12 students, one teacher and themselves in Colorado.

November 1991: Gunman kills four University of Iowa faculty members and a student before committing suicide.

October 1991: Gunman crashes pickup truck into Texas cafe, then begins shooting; kills 23 people before committing suicide.

August 1986: Gunman kills 14 postal workers in Oklahoma before committing suicide.

July 1984: Gunman kills 21 people at a McDonald's California before being killed by police.
The U.S. Supreme Court is approaching its scheduled recess for the summer, but before that happens the court is expected to rule on high-profile cases regarding affirmative action, immigration and abortion.

Decisions will be handed down in the most important abortion case in almost 25 years, an affirmative action lawsuit accusing a Texas university of discriminating against white applicants, and a challenge to President Barack Obamas executive order that granted legal status and work permits to four million immigrants in the country illegally.

The outcomes of the cases will directly affect the lives of millions of Americans, but with the court down to just eight justices following the death of Antonin Scalia earlier this year, two of the decisions could get slightly complicated.

Justice Elena Kagan is recused from the affirmative action lawsuit, since she previously worked on it as solicitor general, so a four-judge majority could decide the case. But in the other two cases, a 4-4 ruling would result in a tie, in which case the lower court rulings would stand  essentially giving those courts the final say in the matter.

Immigration

The immigration case, U.S. v. Texas, centers on an executive order issued by Obama that would effectively halt the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants  mostly those with children who are legal citizens  and expand a program that allows those under the age of 16 who are in the country illegally to stay.

Texas and 25 other states sued the Obama administration over the action, arguing that the plan is unconstitutional since it conflicts with current federal immigration law. The administration, though, is arguing that the states have no standing to sue, since immigration law falls under the purview of the federal government.

A lower court previously struck down the Obama action as unlawful and issued an injunction on its implementation until the Supreme Court rules in the case.

During oral arguments the country's top court appeared to be divided 4-4. If that split upholds, the lower court ruling would stand, preventing Obamas plan from taking effect. If the court rules in favor of the Obama administration, which seems unlikely given that the court is divided evenly along ideological lines, the case would be thrown out and the administration could begin implementing the policy.

Abortion

The abortion case, Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, stems from a Texas law passed in 2013 that requires all abortion providers to adhere to the same building standards as outpatient surgical centers. Under the law, doctors at the abortion centers must also have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles  nearly 50 kilometers  of their clinic.

Since the laws passage, the number of abortion clinics in Texas has plummeted from 42 to 19, and abortion activists say the number could drop even lower if the law is fully implemented. Whole Womans Health, the plaintiff in the case, claims the requirements are unnecessary and overburdensome. John Hellerstedt, commissioner of the Texas Health Department of State Health Services, though, argues that the new regulations are necessary to protect the safety of patients seeking abortions.

Since a federal appeals court has already voted to uphold the law, a tie in the Supreme Court would result in the full implementation of the abortion regulations.

Affirmative action

The affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas, arose after a white woman, Abigail Fisher, sued the University of Texas claiming the school denied her admission based on her race.

Thanks to an unusual law in Texas, the state grants automatic admission to the top 10 percent of students of each high school to its state university. For about 25 percent of other students, the school bases its acceptance decision on several factors, including the students race.

Fishers grades werent high enough to put her in the top 10 percent of her class, so she couldnt take advantage of the rule. She was denied admission in 2008, and when she found out UT admitted minority students with lower grades than hers, she sued the school for race-based discrimination.

The university claims its race-based selection policies are necessary to provide a sufficiently diverse campus community, while Fishers attorneys say the 10 percent program is enough to ensure that minorities are included in the selection process.

With Kagan recused from the case, a tie is impossible, so if it is decided along ideological lines, the UT policy will be struck down, which could have major ramifications for universities with similar policies around the country.

The court could also rule that it doesnt have sufficient evidence to rule in the case and send it back down to the circuit court.
President Rodrigo Duterte is set to visit China this October, signaling deeper trade ties with the country. (Photo : Getty Images)

Analysts believe that the Philippines president-elect Rodrigo Duterte will promote warmer ties with China and divert the focus of both governments to matters other than the South China Sea.



Previous reports indicate Duterte's positive manner of dealing with China amid the lingering maritime conflict that the previous administration brought to an international tribunal.



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Because of this, analysts believe that the tough-talking mayor from Mindanao will be pursuing a friendship with China, especially now that he requires support from other nations to fulfill his platforms to the Filipino people.



Analysts' View of Sino-Filipino Ties



A report from the South China Morning Post features statements from some Filipino analysts who believe that Duterte will pursue friendship with the Asian giant for the benefit of his people.



"The key is that Duterte is realistic and he knows that resolving sovereignty disputes takes time," said Philippine Association for Chinese Studies president Chito Sta. Romana.



According to Romana, Duterte's projects for the archipelago appears to be his motivation in promoting a better relationship with China, despite the conflict which seems to have been worse after the Aquino administration filed an international arbitration case against the Asian giant on matters of the South China Sea.



"Duterte has a vision of building a railway in Mindanao--this [seems to be a key] driver of his approach to China," Romana explained. "His government will most likely focus on repairing frayed ties by finding a modus vivendi in the South China Sea, probably through informal agreements if not a formalized deal on joint exploitation of resources."



Meanwhile, an analyst from the other side of the spectrum believes that China may welcome Duterte's offer of exploring the contested territories together.



"Joint exploration is possible. China has always wanted joint exploration even during Aquino's term," Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Asian-Pacific Studies professor Xu Liping stated.



On the International Ruling



While the relationship between China's leader and the Philippines' incoming president becomes warmer by the minute, there is still no guarantee that Duterte's administration would drop the case filed in the Hague.



China had previously called on the Philippine government to drop the case for the betterment of the two countries' relations.



According to Romana, Duterte is not inclined to do so though he "doesn't consider [the ruling] to be an obstacle for improving ties with China."



So far, China has maintained its position on the matter and reiterated that it will not accept nor bend to the international court's decision, which is expected to come within the month.






On 4 June 2016, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, declared that the United States had asked Russia not to strike Al-Qaida in Syria.

In the region of Idleb, troops classified by Washington as moderate rebels commingle with forces of Front al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaida. The 27 February 2016 agreement on cessation of hostilities provided that the Forces supported by the United States were distinct from groups that the UN listed as terrorists. But that was not the case.

Officially, al-Qaida conceived and carried out the September 11 2001 which resulted in 2,977 fatalities. It should be noted that the United States entered into war against the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan and against Iraq on the cover that they had supported al-Qaida (even though since then, Washington has admitted that Iraq had not actually been involved).

In recent years, Al Qaida has financed the Turkish AKP, helped Nato bring the Arab Libyan Jamahiriya to their knees, and, as Laurent Fabius would say, have done a good job in Syria.

After Thierry Meyssans book, The Big Lie was published in March 2002, most Nato State members qualify any challenge to al-Qaidas culpability for the September 11 attacks as conspiracy theory.
Photo: mise en scene: the suburbs of Damas. Seated at the table in the forefront, we recognize Zahran Allouche (who died in December 2015). Saudi Arabia is providing the weapons while the British SAS, the military advisers. The photograph is embossed with the logo designed for the Army of Islam. The ensemble was put together during a communications campaign of the British government.

The Guardian uncovers that sub-contractors of the UK Foreign Ministry of Affairs, working under the supervision of the Minister of Defense, are put in charge of communicating with moderate armed groups in Syria. They produce videos, photos, military reports and brochures with logos of combatant groups.

Following the chemical weapons affair in the summer of 2013, a budget of 2.4 million pounds (3 millions euros) per year is allotted to them. First this was earmarked for the crisis management company Regester Larkin. But today, it Is channelled to Innovative Communications & Strategies (InCoStrat), a company set up in 2014. Colonel Paul Tilley set up the two companies, based in London and Washington. He employs about 50 people in Istanbul. These companies have concluded another contract for the war in Yemen.

This operation is quite separate from the one carried out by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The latter depends on the MI6.

Whats interesting is that the documents the Guardian uncovered, confirm that these companies guarantee communication that promotes the Hazzm Movement and the Army of Islam. According to the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, this group would in reality be a moderate denomination, a cover for Al-Qaeda combatants. However, in the Security Council, the United Kingdom is averse to it being registered on the list of terrorist organizations because it is participating in the Geneva negotiations and this must be encouraged.
U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, R-Bryan, will administer the oath of office to Jon Ker as chairman of the Republican Party of McLennan County at 9 a.m. Monday on the northeast lawn of the McLennan County Courthouse.

If weather is inclement, the ceremony will take place in the courthouse rotunda.

Ker was elected as chairman in the March 1 Republican primary.

The ceremony is open to the public.

Singing Seniors

The Baylor Singing Seniors will host an informal reading session at 9 a.m. Monday in the Choir Suite at First Woodway Baptist Church, 101 Ritchie Road in Woodway.

Choir membership is open to all senior adults, ages 55 and older. No musical training or audition is required.

Choir members will be introduced to new musical selections for their fall performances.

Coffee and refreshments will be provided.

For more information, visit www.baylorsinging seniors.org.

Boat ramps closed

The city of Waco issued a press release Friday stating that all boat ramps are closed on both the Brazos and Bosque rivers and Lake Waco until further notice.

Recent releases from upstream have the river flowing much more swiftly, and parts of the riverwalk are under water. Water activities are not advised on the rivers.

In addition to submerged parks and boat ramps on Lake Waco, there is a lot of floating debris that could endanger anyone who gets on the lake.

The city will notify residents immediately as boat ramps and parks become available for use.

Pro-Life Waco

Pro-Life Waco will meet from 1 to 2 p.m. Sunday in the Parish Hall at St. Marys Church, 1424 Columbus Ave.

John Pisciotta, director of Pro-Life Waco, will give a slideshow presentation of his participation in a three-day protest in April at Bank of America headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The protest challenged Bank of America for its contributions to Planned Parenthood.

An Italian buffet luncheon will precede the meeting from noon to 1 p.m. Meal cost is $3 for adults.

For more information, email prolifewaco@gmail.com or call 644-0407.
A Waco real estate developer is on track to buy the abandoned Cotton Belt Bridge at the Brazos River and adjacent land and donate it for public trail use by Aug. 1.

Rick Sheldon and his wife, Lisa, have the 109-year-old steel truss bridge and riverfront land under contract with Union Pacific, and they plan to deed it to the nonprofit City Center Waco, said Mike Anderson, spokesman for Rick Sheldon Real Estate.

Lisa and Rick have a vision for the bridge, he said. They really think it will be a huge, huge benefit for Waco, for downtown and the east side. This is something theyre committed to.

In the short term, the donation would allow the city of Waco to let a contract late this summer on the $3.3 million east river trail running from Franklin Avenue to McLane Stadium. City officials have struggled to get an easement agreement for the sliver of railroad-owned riverfront between the bridge and Franklin Avenue.

In the longer term, the bridge could be renovated to become part of the trail system and a destination in itself, Anderson said.

A Sheldon-commissioned animation, which made the rounds on YouTube in mid-March, shows that vision in vivid detail. The video depicts a festive walkway along Mary Avenue that would lead to the bridge. The bridge deck would be expanded to allow bikes and pedestrians, benches, landscaping and even an ice-cream kiosk. The bridge would tie in to the east riverwalk on the other side of the river.

Anderson said the vision was inspired by the popular High Line walkway that opened on the west side of Manhattan in 2009, reclaiming an abandoned elevated freight line.

(Sheldon) was just amazed by how it has become one of the top tourist attractions in New York, he said.

Thats where Rick and Lisa got their vision for the conceptual drawing of the bridge. We see Mary Avenue becoming a major pedestrian-way to serve not just downtown Waco but the new downtown. It would tie in Magnolia and the new (Balcones) distillery.

Sheldon and his partners, Joe Beard and FirstCity Financial, own the food truck court at Mary Avenue and University Parks Drive and hope some day to lure a major development, such as a hotel or office building, Anderson said. But he said the rail line would benefit all businesses in that part of downtown.

Anderson estimated that the entire project could cost $4 million, including the environmental remediation of the bridge, which could costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. He said the city could apply for trail grants from the Texas Department of Transportation, which funded most of the east riverwalk, or from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

Assistant City Manager Cynthia Garcia said she is confident Sheldons agreement with UP will allow the city to let the east riverwalk project by Aug. 29, keeping the project on course with state deadlines.

I think were in the homestretch, she said.

Garcia said the future use of the bridge will require much more discussion, but its a promising idea.

It makes sense, having a pedestrian bridge with access to both sides of the river, she said. Its really nice, because it follows Mary Avenue. When I first got here (in 2015) one question I had was, How do we get hold of this and open it as a pedestrian crossing? 

She said the Cotton Belt Bridge and the active UP bridge nearby are a beautiful part of the rivers scenery, and the Cotton Belt Bridge could be enhanced by lighting.

Megan Henderson, executive director of City Center Waco, said her board hasnt yet approved the donation, but she has hired a firm to test and quantify any environmental liabilities with the bridge.

A lot of promise

We are eager to play an active part in redeveloping the bridge, she said. Its hard to overstate our support for the riverwalk. . . . The proposed project is really an exciting one with a lot of promise. We want to make sure we proceed cautiously and in a way that keeps us in a solid ability to move forward.

Sheldon hired the Wallace Group to do both the animation and a structural assessment of the bridge. The engineering firm found that the bridge is likely suitable for conversion to a pedestrian structure based on its sturdy design and the good condition of the steel girders and concrete piers. The wooden railroad ties would be removed and the remnants of paint on the steel should be tested for lead, the report says.

The structure is a good example of a steel-truss bridge, which was the leading bridge design in Texas from 1880 to 1930, according to the Texas Historical Commission website.

The bridge does not have a plate indicating its age. The Wallace Group report and a previous Tribune-Herald story surmised that it was built as the Texas & St. Louis Railway, which reached Waco in 1881. The line, later known as the Cotton Belt or St. Louis and Southwestern Railroad, ran from Birds Point, Missouri, to Gatesville.

But historic newspaper articles, discovered by local rail buff John Linda and Waco-McLennan County Library librarian Sean Sutcliffe, tell a different story.

The Waco Daily Times-Herald reported on June 5, 1907, that the new Cotton Belt Bridge was dedicated that morning to great fanfare, including a performance by the Baylor band at the Cotton Belt station at Third Street and Mary Avenue.

The article describes how the track was removed from the old bridge, and it gives the dimensions of the new bridge: three 200-foot steel spans and one 50-foot steel girder resting on concrete masonry. The piers were set deep into the bedrock of the Brazos using explosives inside caissons.

The bridge could handle the heaviest trains then imaginable, with a moving load of 5,000 pounds per linear foot of bridge, according to the article.

This extraordinary heavy loading is greater than the bridge will be called on to carry for some time to come, the newspaper stated.

Linda, a Waco fire lieutenant, showed modern-day photos of the remnants of the old bridge piers, captured when the river was low.

Linda, 59, has a special love for the bridge because his grandfather worked for the Cotton Belt Railroad as a brakeman.

He used to do the run between here and Gatesville, so I grew up around it, he said.

Linda said he never got to ride on the train, because passenger service ceased in 1952, a year before the tornado destroyed the old Cotton Belt station.

He said hes eager to see a new chapter in the bridges history.

If that guy can restore it as a walkway and do what that plan shows, that would be great, he said.

Waco native Bob Sullivan went to work as a switchman for the Cotton Belt line in 1960 and retired 40 years later from Union Pacific, which had acquired the Cotton Belt system through a series of mergers. He said he thinks the Cotton Belt Bridge in Waco was used as late as the early 1990s, though it was long past its heyday by then.

He remembers when downtown and East Waco were a chaotic jumble of competing train lines, and Mary Avenue was bustling with freight business.

There were three tracks running down the middle of the road, said Sullivan, 79. Ive unloaded cars in every warehouse through there.

Sullivan has his own idea for a tourist attraction on the bridge.

They ought to put a glass-bottomed restaurant on it, he said. Theyd make a million dollars.

Glass-bottomed restaurant or not, Sullivan said hes glad to see the bridge getting some attention.

The history of the bridge is unbelievable, he said. They ran troop train after troop train out of Fort Hood right over that bridge. They carried 10,000 Japanese prisoners of war right over that bridge and down Mary Street. Its got a lot of ghosts on it if you could see them.
Americas Civil War was still a deep wound in 1866, when 18 former slaves formed what would become New Hope Baptist Church in Waco, with the help of Baylor University President Richard Burleson and the Rev. S.G. OBrien, then the pastor of the citys First Baptist Church.

Sunday, with generations filled with both good times and challenges marking the passage of time, the congregation that gathers at 915 N. Sixth St. will celebrate 150 years of Gods grace with special morning and afternoon services that may attract up to 250 people  about triple what New Hope sees for most worship services.

As might be expected, many of those who attend New Hope are well into their 70s and 80s. They can recall the churchs heyday, when many hundreds of voices sung hymns of praise that rung to the roof of the sanctuary that has sheltered worshippers since 1923, according to a historical marker on the grounds.

New Hope remains on solid financial ground because of faithful tithers and sacrificial giving, Pastor Richard Blanton said. But like other inner-city churches over the years, attendance has sagged as young people have moved away and older congregants have died, leaving vacancies in the pews not always easily filled.

Were trying to get young again, said Blanton, 63, a Dallas native who became pastor of New Hope five years ago. Every church has an ebb and flow, a life cycle. We are more senior than young right now, but we are endeavoring to change. Just Sunday before last, we had a young lady join our congregation.

Church members distribute fliers and invitation cards to nearby apartment complexes, and personally invite area residents to visit New Hope. The church also sponsors Vacation Bible School, hoping to attract youngsters who may take the Scripture lessons to heart and attend regular services, possibly with parents in tow.

We have a childrens church and some limited youth activities, such as visits to the circus and zoo. We would love to hire a youth director, Blanton said.

The bottom line, he said, is that the church cant stand still or rest on its laurels, even after 150 years.

Reach for the future

Our theme is to look in the past, live in the present and reach for the future, said Blanton, who remains a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force.

He received a degree in education from Baylor University, a masters in theology from Southern Methodist University and a doctorate in church administration from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

Jocelyn Pierce, 58, who has attended New Hope Baptist for 35 years, said the congregation is getting older but is not faint of heart.

Were all pleased to see the church reach this milestone, and we believe the Lord has left us here for a reason, Pierce said. Back in the day, we would have 300 to 500 people here on Sundays, but you know Waco has a church on every corner, and a lot of our members moved away or died out.

She added, We have not had the stability we should have, but that has not stopped us. Were reaching 150, and still pretty lively.

Pierce described Blanton as the ideal combination of preacher and teacher who is very serious about what he does and holds us accountable for what he gives us.

Blanton himself calls his style unapologetically traditional, and his conservative approach extends to the music of the choir.

But Pierce said the mood remains lively, and members still often let fly with an amen when Blanton makes a point that hits home, or the heart.

Our services are liturgical with a touch of informality, Blanton said. We leave room for the moving of the Spirit.

Doris Wilson King, 78, said her mother was a member of New Hope when she was born, so you could say Ive been going there my entire life.

Same location

Whats amazing to King is that the congregation has been meeting in the same location in the same building for 93 years, with only minor repairs to keep it functional.

She laments the decline in membership at New Hope, saying for decades it was the church of choice among successful black professionals. For example, J.J. Wilson, longtime principal of A.J. Moore High School before the Waco school district was integrated, attended New Hope Baptist Church.

Their children graduated from high school, went off to college and stayed somewhere else, she said, adding New Hope may need to tweak its approach and liven up the services, including the music, to give it a more contemporary feel and to attract teens and young married couples.

Nothing against Baptist tradition, she said, but some of the more progressive churches have dropped that name and become non-denominational.

Asked about changing churches, King said, Im 78 going on 79. That would be almost sinful. But were going to have to do something. Keeping the doors open with this few people is very stressful and hard on the pocketbook. I do occasionally visit other churches, but New Hope remains my home.

Harriet Foreman, 79, said tears came to her eyes on Saturday, as she and other choir members rehearsed for Sundays services.

Its just not the same, Foreman said. Our music was a beautiful thing, either with musical accompaniment or a cappella. Not bragging, but we were good.

She can remember when Baylor invited the much larger choir to perform on campus, and when A.J. Moore graduation ceremonies were held inside the church. Doctors, dentists, teachers and business leaders would pack its pews and fill the balconies in the good old days.

Foreman has faith the church will rise again and prayerfully seeks the arrival of young, and even not so young, congregants.

New Hope on Saturday afternoon hosted the New Hope Heritage Exhibition, a collection of photographs and remembrances of its rich history.

Joining in the Sunday celebration will be two churches that grew out of New Hope Baptist Church. The Rev. George Harrison and the congregation of First Baptist Church NBC will take part in the 11 a.m. service, and the Rev. Nika Davis and the congregation of Second Baptist Church will take part in the service at 3:30 p.m.
When Hershey, Pennsylvania, native Jack Gainer signed up for a delayed enlistment in the military at age 16, he didnt realize how it would alter his life. He assumed hed simply serve his duty, get out and get on with life.

To be sure, there were members of the military in Gainers family. His father was in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War, and his uncles served in the Army and Navy during WW II and Korea. While his father never talked of his service, Gainers uncles did, and the young boy loved their stories.

He remembers the fanfare when Apollo 11 landed on the moon  his first vivid childhood memory. Although he didnt understand it all, it sparked an interest in all things space. Growing up, he followed news on Skylab and became interested in the space shuttle program, among many other things.

So it came as a surprise to Gainers father that his son wanted to join the Marine Corps, which wasnt a popular choice at home. Gainer ended up joining the Air Force instead. His plans were to serve his time, get out, attend college and become an engineer like his father and other family members.

On July 3, 1984, Gainer left for Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, arriving just after his 18th birthday. It was the first time he traveled so far from home  and it was his first plane ride. Within 10 weeks, his plans changed forever.

I started having the time of my life, he said. Gainer traveled, made friends and enjoyed the camaraderie and way of life. I grew up in the Pennsylvania Dutchland, a tiny area. The most exciting thing that ever happened was when a neighbor got a new cow, he said.

Gainer ended up at Lowry AFB in Denver, where he trained as an aircraft armament systems mechanic. Part of his job was to tend weapon systems on fighter and bomber aircraft and load them for combat.

Another twist in career path

For approximately three years, he served in this capacity with the 48th Fighter Intercept Squadron, which was based in Langley, Virginia, during the Cold War. While his friends were in training, he was involved in an active mission, which became his true passion.

In 1988, as he was due to re-enlist, he was recruited to go the Royal Air Force in Alconbury, England, and jumped at the chance. He eventually spent four years there in aircraft armament systems.

While in England, Gainer was deployed to Desert Storm, loading A-10s. He was sent to the forward arming and refueling point in the Iraq-Jordan-Saudi Arabia area, close to combat so planes could be re-armed without the pilots having to return to Saudi Arabia.

Heeding the lure of flight

During this time Gainer met a weapons troop member who had moved into special operations as a helicopter gunner. Gainer decided thats what he wanted to do. He returned to the States to train as a gunner on the Sikorsky MH-53 Pave Low. As he was wrapping up training, he was asked to train on the MH-60 Pave Hawk, a specialized, technologically advanced helicopter.

While Gainer was finishing training on the MH-53, he started training on the MH-60, becoming one of only 10 such gunners in the world at that time, he said. Once again, his career was moving in a new direction.

The MH-60 was used for insertion and extraction of personnel. It could go places where planes couldnt.Four-man teams were comprised of two pilots, a flight engineer and the gunner.

To say it was exciting would be a huge understatement, Gainer said. I had one of the finest crews on the planet  the best of the best, all hand-selected.

Gainer served with the 55th Night Hawks, who were deployed to Italy during the Bosnian conflict, serving the Bosnia-Herzegovina region. In addition to transporting troops, the crew was on constant alert, waiting in case they were needed for a rescue mission.

One night, Gainer, also a radio operator, received a communication unlike anything hed ever gotten. An F-16 Flying Falcon carrying the commander of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion had been shot down and a team was needed to retrieve him.

Little did Gainer know that the mission would not only earn him the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor Device, but it would lead to a friendship with that same downed commander who is now the top officer in the Air Force  Gen. David Goldfein.

NEXT WEEK: Gainer eventually left the Air Force after 22 years. He moved to Texas and joined the TSTC Aircraft Pilot Training faculty in 2014.

Voices of Valor, featuring stories about Central Texas veterans, publishes every Sunday in the Waco Trib. To suggest a story about a Central Texas veteran, email voicesofvalor@wacotrib.com. Voices of Valor is proudly sponsored by Johnson Roofing.
A California judge this month sentenced former Stanford University swimmer Brock Allen Turner to six months in jail for a horrifying sexual assault on an unconscious, alcohol-impaired woman. The resulting uproar over the sentences undue leniency risks missing the most important lesson.

Despite campus conventional wisdom, the Turner case shows that the best way to deal with a campus sexual-assault problem is to rely on law-enforcement professionals to protect women and to pursue justice  not on campus disciplinary systems run by amateur sex bureaucrats.

Two students saw Turner on top of the victim, rushed to her aid and restrained the intoxicated Turner. Police were called and found the now 23-year-old victim unresponsive. They interviewed witnesses and secured physical and medical evidence. Prosecutors won a jury conviction of Turner, now 20, for sexual penetration of the victim with his fingers. They asked Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky for a six-year state prison sentence.

We understand the victims pain and outrage at the leniency of the judges sentence  six months in a county jail, plus three years probation and lifetime registration as a sex offender. But we understand how much better the criminal-justice system operated than the alternative likely would have.

Campus activists at Stanford and nationwide have championed secretive disciplinary processes run by administrators who know little about gathering evidence or about fair procedures. Had this case been initially channeled through the school, critical evidence  including Turners highly incriminating statement to police  might have been lost. Procedural rules are systematically slanted against the accused. And accusers are not subject to meaningful cross-examination, which the U.S. Supreme Court has called the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.

Stanfords disciplinary process for sexual-assault accusations prevents the accused and his representative from cross-examining the accuser or any other witnesses. Adjudicators have even been trained that an accused students acting persuasive and logical should be considered a sign of his guilt. For these and other reasons, a campus finding of guilt inspires little public confidence that justice was truly done.

Yes, six months is too short a jail term. But the stain and notoriety of Brocks crime will mark this athlete-turned-registered sex offender the rest of his life, everywhere he goes. As it should.

KC Johnson is a professor at Brooklyn College. Stuart Taylor Jr. is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Chinese products earn more in selling over Amazon.com and other online selling platforms. (Photo : Reuters)

Small Chinese brands are making big bucks in online selling as a surge of customers from the West appreciate innovative products promoted via the Internet.



According to China Daily, several Chinese businesses are earning more from customers overseas than they do locally.



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Apparently, products like chili sauce and ointment for an embarrassing condition are among those Chinese brands that are quickly gaining popularity on Amazon.com.



Reviews on the Chinese Brands



China had been known for its herbs and spices that are used both in the kitchen and for the sick.



While they may be a rare find in the West, these products surprisingly hold the spotlight in one of the biggest online selling platforms worldwide.



"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," an Amazon.com user wrote in a review of the Mayinglong Musk Hemorrhoids Ointment Cream.



While the product is considered a small brand in China, it gained a 4.3 out of 5 rating in Amazon and even collected 1,000 comments in the website.



"This magic cream will make you whole again," another user commented. "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."



Some even praised China for being the home of such effective remedy.



The Reason Behind the Popularity



Like the ointment, China is also making its way to the top tech developers of the world, with Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi taking the lead.



Natalie Simon, a PhD student in Paris who recently became a fan of the company, explained her theory on why the Chinese company is performing well.



"I searched the Internet for a smartphone with outperforming camera function and Xiaomi came into my spotlight," she said. "Users gave impressive reviews, not only in its camera but the overall performance."



Simon also noted the Chinese phone's price, which is seven times cheaper than the popular iPhone.



Aside from the products, the sudden surge in online buyers of Chinese products from the United States may also have something to do with the entrepreneur's innovative thinking.



Featured in the Internet Retailer, Anker, a Chinese startup manufacturer, became Amazon's no. 1 bestseller, earning the company over $100 million in worldwide revenue in 2014.



The rating provided by consumers for Anker's products are at 4.9 out of 5.0, which means they are very satisfied with the brand.



According to Anker Vice President Gao Tao, the reason why Americans prefer their products over others is the quality.



"We have more than 100 engineers working in product development department," Gao said. "Many of them have work experience at leading international hardware companies, including Huawei, Siemens and JBL. That ensures that Anker always uses leading technology and advanced technology standards when producing our products."






Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (right) welcoming Kazakhstan Prime Minister Karim Massimov during the latter's state visit. (Photo : Twitter)

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang believes his country is still one of the best places to invest in and vowed to create a fairer and more transparent market environment for foreign businesses.



Li made the remarks on Tuesday during a meeting with the delegates for the Fourth Global CEO Council/Round Table Summit, which is hosted by the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.



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In his address, the premier said that there are still a lot of investment potential in the country in fields like telecommunications, health care, and sports, China Daily reported.



Li added that these areas are open to multinational companies wishing to penetrate the Chinese market.



The premier also said that the entry of foreign investors has greatly helped in uplifting the Chinese economy, not only providing more services to consumers and creating more employment opportunities, but also revitalizing traditional industries.



However, to better encourage foreign investors to come in and flourish, Li noted that there is a need to create a more business-conducive environment. He then vowed to push for a fairer and more transparent market that would benefit both domestic and foreign-owned companies, Xinhua reported. Li said he hopes such measures will foster cooperation between the two toward "win-win results."



The premier repeated the promise on Wednesday when he met with visiting Saudi Arabian Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, who chairs the Kingdom Holding Company.



The Global CEO Council is composed of top-ranking officers from notable Fortune 500 companies including Daimler AG, Nike and Nokia.


A member of China's Communist Party waves a flag during a gathering in Kunming, Yunnan Province. (Photo : Reuters)

The Communist Party of China is planning to draft new rules to test the political loyalty of their cadres and penalize those who fail to meet their standards, the Partys top anti-graft chief said, according to a report by the South China Morning Post.



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A statement released by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) on its website quoted Wang Qishan, head of the CCDI, as saying that the regulations would serve as an "institutionalized cage" to implement Party rules.



Wang added that they decided to draft the rules to unite members who were urged by the Party to wear pins as part of the unity drive.



Wang's pronouncements came three weeks after Ling Jihua, a top aide to former president Hu Jintao, was charged with corruption, illegally obtaining state secrets, and abuse of power.



"We must hold people accountable to force implementation, and transform rule over the Party from 'lax and soft' to 'tight and rigid,'" Wang said during meetings in Beijing and Liaoning Province to discuss the regulations.



According to Wang, the rules were drafted to ensure that the Party message is transmitted down to the ranks. Corruption was not discussed in the meetings.



Since 2013, when President Xi Jinping called for "putting power in the cage of institutions," institutionalizing the battle against corruption has been part of the Party's agenda. But it was only in January that details of the new rules were made public at the annual meeting of the CCDI.



At that time, the Party has expressed its plan to draft a set of regulations on accountability of its cadres.



The meeting in Liaoning was chaired by Wang. It was in Liaoning that former Party boss Wang Min was detained for alleged corruption this year.



Top discipline inspectors said in a statement last week that some Liaoning cadres have also "unscrupulously formed their own clans."



In 2009, a set of "accountability regulations" was issued by the central government that punishes only dereliction of duty that results in serious consequences such as massive protest or huge loss of assets.


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Each year in Australia, more than 12 million fluffy chicks are tossed alive into an industrial grinder or suffocated with poisonous gases, simply because they're male.

The mass killings, which have long been part and parcel of the egg industry, could soon come to an end, with researchers now able to identify the sex of chicks before they've hatched.

In the US this week the United Egg Producers pledged to stop the mass culling of male chicks by 2020, or as soon as it's "economically feasible" and an alternative is "commercially available", according to animal welfare group Humane League, which sparked the talks.
The Coalition is set to retain the Brisbane seat of Bonner comfortably, in a sign Labor is failing to make inroads in the key Queensland marginals it needs to win to be in with a chance on July 2.

While the seat has changed hands at every election since it was created in 2004, new ReachTel polling commissioned by Fairfax Media shows the Liberal National Party's Ross Vasta on track to win easily.

The poll shows Mr Vasta leading Labor's Laura Fraser Hardy by 56 per cent to 44 per cent on a two-party preferred basis, which would be an improvement of his 54/46 result at the 2013.
The federal Greens will push for a national standard for free-range eggs that would slash the number of farm hens per hectare by 85 per cent.

Should the party gain the balance of power, Queensland Senate candidate Andrew Bartlett said it would push to crack down on what constituted a free-range egg.

The Greens say free-range eggs should live up to their name. Credit:Justin McManus

It came just over two months since state ministers signed off on a controversial "free-range" definition in March, which stated eggs must come from hens with meaningful and regular access to an outdoor range and a stocking density of up to 10,000 birds per hectare.

But Mr Bartlett, the former national Democrats leader, said that needed to be reduced to 1500 hens per hectare.
"To get a Senate seat now you have to achieve the quota on primary vote, it is effectively a first-past-the-post system for the Senate," Economou says. And for that reason, he predicts, Muir is doomed. Clive Palmer with his MPs and ally Ricky Muir in 2013. Credit:Rob Homer "The whole point of reform of the Senate electoral system was to eliminate him, and he will be eliminated." Muir, as you might expect, isn't so sure. But in many ways he would be the last person to know. Polling for the job he is trying to win back doesn't exist. This week he only had $5500 in publicly raised funds to campaign with. And he has the whole of Victoria to cover, an impossible task. He tends to stick to Gippsland where most of his support is, and where his home is, although he has been to Geelong and also Wangaratta so far in this campaign. The Senate voting changes threaten crossbench senators' seats including those held by John Madigan, centre, David Leyonhjelm, Ricky Muir, Glenn Lazarus, Dio Wang and Bob Day. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

His party's machinery is minimal. He has five on his staff, plus his wife. One in Canberra, four in Sale. A fundraiser was held last weekend in Sale at $28 a head, in a pub. Eighty people came. That's a nudge over $2000. It costs $2000 to even register a candidate for the Senate, which Muir did on Thursday, from his own pocket. So what is this? Naivety? He would have been paid around $1 million for the usual senatorial six-year term had it lasted that long but he in effect voted for an election  with new Senate voting rules  when he voted down the Australian Building and Construction Commission Bill in April. The bill aimed to reprise a Howard-era construction industry watchdog, fiercely opposed by the union movement. Ricky Muir with his Holden Calais 'PLTCLY INCRCT' at a workshop in Sale, Victoria. He built the vehicle for burnouts, and is participating in the Bairnsdale Burnout Competition. Credit:Paul Jeffers The whole point of reform of the senate electoral system was to eliminate him, and he will be eliminated. Dr Nick Economou from Monash University Muir supports union issues. He worked in a sawmill as a supervisor before becoming a senator, was born in Maffra in Gippsland to a family he has called "working class" and identifies himself as "blue-collar". He could have rolled over and voted for the bill and saved himself the grief of a double-dissolution election and pocketed $190,000 a year plus allowances. But he didn't. He went with his conscience and voted it down.

He joked this week that he would get out his guitar and become a busker if he lost his Senate job in the July 2 election. "But that isn't going to happen," he says. "I've got to sound confident here." But seriously, I asked Muir. What will you do? There have been suggestions through his term as a senator for Victoria that the Labor Party was interested in him. "No one from Labor has ever approached me," he says. "Put it this way  someone once told me politics is like a magnet and it keeps pulling you back and I can see myself doing something in politics either in the state or federally." Having tasted aspects of public life and advocacy  and talking about issues to groups of people  he would also like to be some sort of consultant to industries he knows about, most likely the car industry. It all began with the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party, after all, campaigning around road quality, car manufacturing and fuel issues.

The Muir family has eight trail bikes at home. Once, when he was teaching his daughter, then aged five, to ride, he ended up splayed in an electric fence. "She still talks about the time she ran daddy over," says Kerrie-Anne Muir. He builds cars, fixes cars, drives cars and four-wheel-drives. He also shoots. Of course just after he was elected the elitist knives were out and he was accused of being an unintelligent bogan, among other things. He managed a disastrous interview on TV with Mike Willesee  "I have always been exceptionally bad at forgetting that one word in a sentence that I really need to say," he said this week. He was also seen in a video throwing kangaroo poo around and talked about staying in caravan parks in Canberra. "I've never seen such personal vilification of someone in the Parliament since Pauline Hanson," says Economou. "Almost from the moment he was mentioned as a senator people started to lampoon him." Even now, Muir rarely wears a suit. He did in the Senate, but nowhere else. He loves public events because, he says, unlike mainstream politicians no one is there to attack or second-guess him and it means he can talk to ordinary Australians about their lives. Most of this week  in Morwell, Sale, Melbourne, Warragul and Bairnsdale  he wore blue jeans and a shirt. At an event with intellectually disabled people in Morwell he mixed easily and held a captive audience while he chatted about Lego, Hummers and dirt bikes.
Two young children left home alone in Perth while their parents were overseas are now in the government care.

A 28-year-old woman has been arrested and charged with two counts of knowingly engaging in conduct that may harm a child in her care.

A Perth court has to determine if the child accused of rape understands what is going on in court. Credit:John Donegan

WA police went to a Cloverdale home on Wednesday and found the children, aged four and six, who had allegedly been left alone since Tuesday.

"It will be alleged both parents were overseas at the time the officers entered the property," police said in a statement on Saturday.
Would You Backpack or go to Kindergarten if You are a 4-Year-Old?

Wen Wen (Photo : Weibo)

Viral photos of 15 Sichuan schoolchildren climbing an 800-meter cliff every two weeks just to go to school in Atuleer Village using a rickety bamboo stairs became a hit story in social media. The kids were praised for their dedication to learn despite the challenge they need to surmount.



In Jiangxi Province, a four-year-old girl who walks 15 to 20 kilometers a day is also the talk in Chinese social media. However, Pan Wen Wen walks as a backpacker with her parents who decided their daughter would delay attending kindergarten for two years.



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Wen Wen started to walk that long when she was only 15 months old. At that time, she had difficulty coping with her parents backpack journey. However, as she grew older, the child got used to the daily walk across China that she could keep up with her parents who now do 30 kilometers a day, sleeping in tents and subsisting on herbs, reported Womenofchina.



However, when Wen Wens story became viral, the childs parents were criticized for placing bigger priority on fulfilling their wanderlust over the value of education. The parents plan to trek around China for two more years, after which they would enroll Wen Wen in primary school. In the meantime, they are preparing for their next trekking trip to Tibet.



Among the places the family has been through as Yunnan, Guangxi, Guizhou and Sichuan, according to Stuff.co.nz.



Ironically, many Chinese parents are worried about their kids hooked on gadgets at an early age at the cost of enjoying the outdoors, while struggling with weight problems.


The former Stanford swimmer whose six-month jail sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman set off a national uproar about binge drinking and sexual assault sought at his sentencing to minimise his experience with alcohol before he came to the university. But court documents released Friday suggested that Brock Turner had familiarity in high school with alcohol and marijuana.

In photos and phone messages, Turner appears to be holding a pipe for smoking marijuana, as well as talking about drinking and buying drugs.

In a June 2014 exchange, after he was asked "Did you rage last night?" Turner replied he had spent an hour and a half drinking, documents show. Messages extracted from his cellphone include repeated exchanges from that year, when Turner was in high school, about buying and using drugs, including marijuana.
The long list of water-borne bacteria issues that have plagued the 2016 Summer Olympics from the moment Rio pledged to clean its waterways in 2009 may be growing with the addition of super bacteria.

According to two unpublished studies, antibiotic-resistant super bacteria has been found in the water of several of Rio's most popular beaches. The findings would piggyback onto reports from ESPN's "Outside the Lines" and the Associated Press that found Rio's local waterways to be contaminated by sewage and boasting high levels of virus and bacteria. Reuters reports the studies posit the super bacteria is the result of runoff waste initiated at local hospitals and houses.

The first study, reviewed by members of the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in San Diego, revealed microbes at five of Rio's beaches - Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon, Botafogo and Flamengo. Ninety per cent of the samples taken at Flamengo, the location of Olympic sailing events, contained the super bacteria. The Copacabana samples revealed the microbes to be present in 10 per cent of samples. In addition to being the location of open-water and triathlon events, the venues are also a spot for locals and tourists to visit.

The second study was conducted by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation lab and will be published in the July edition of the American Society for Microbiology. This study uncovered the super bacteria genes in the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon, the location of rowing and canoe Olympic events. Exposure to the super bacteria can result in urinary, gastrointestinal, pulmonary and bloodstream infections and meningitis; according to Reuters, the CDC says the studies revealed fatal results in half of those infected.
Public executions were common when the Taliban ruled the country in the 1990s, and tens of thousands of Afghans have been killed during the post-2001 Taliban insurgency. Afghanistan, like neighbouring Pakistan, also has a long history of cultural and religious conservatism associated with violent retribution. But analysts say the scale of the brutality continues to evolve as the Taliban becomes more fragmented and pushes out into additional areas of Afghanistan. Younger Taliban commanders also now operate more independently and are increasingly inspired by other brutal acts easily viewed on the Internet, the say. Over the past month, after a US drone strike killed Taliban leader Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, militant groups have hijacked at least five buses, dragging passengers into the road to execute dozens of them, especially if they or members of their families were suspected of being police officers or soldiers. There also have been three recent deadly attacks on Afghan courthouses or judicial employees. Last month in Jowzjan province, a reported Taliban militant armed with an assault rifle shot and killed a burqa-clad woman for alleged adultery, according to a video of the crime posted to YouTube. "There are now tens of examples of public lashings, executions, and killings," said Abdul Jama Jama, a provincial council member in Ghazni province.

In recent days, the United Nations, Amnesty International and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission also have expressed concern over what they view as a hardening culture of violence here. Brigadier General Charles H. Cleveland, chief spokesman for the US-led coalition, said some of the recent reports of violence "looked like the days pre-9/11." But he cautioned that "the base line is pretty high" for sweeping assumptions about whether brutality generally is worsening. Still, Afghan officials and analysts are worried as the violence also expands into areas of Afghanistan that until recently had remained relatively safe. A push by the Taliban, dominated by ethnic Pashtuns, into northern and central Afghanistan, where large populations of ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks reside, has proved especially destabilising, officials said. Once the Taliban settles into an area, its fighters often begin aggravating historical rivalries among ethnic groups as well as stoking more-localized feuds that in some cases have simmered for decades. That is another reason for the growing brutality, officials said.

"They are changing their war tactics," said Shah Waliullah Adeeb, a former governor of Badakhshan province. "They are trying to show people that the government is weak ... and show that they are in charge." But some analysts say that more fundamental - and dangerous - changes within the Taliban may be leading to greater upheaval. As the original leaders of the insurgency die, they are being replaced by younger commanders who appear less interested in maintaining ties to the local areas in which they are fighting. These fighters also are more connected through the Internet to the global ambitions of militant Islamic groups, which is resulting in some Taliban commanders' attempting to borrow the fear tactics used by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. This month, for example, local officials said a group of Taliban fighters killed a high school student in Ghazni province by cutting off his nose and ears after accusing him of being a spy. "The Taliban had always been the village homeboys, but I think that is changing quite dramatically," said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior security and intelligence fellow at the Brookings Institution. "But the younger generation is more accepting of violence, less remembering of the horrors of the civil war [of the 1990s], and much more socialised to the global agenda."

Other analysts caution that the recent violence is more a symptom of the broader Afghan culture, where a pattern of revenge and killing has been common and disputes among families or villages often have little to do with the war. "People want to settle old scores," said Najib Mahmood, a law professor at Kabul University. "You can hardly find any house that does not own a gun because of the war, and people use a gun even for a minor issue." That historical inability to break the cycle of revenge is one reason that human rights groups and European ambassadors were angered by Ghani's recent decision to resume executions of Taliban figures. Last month, after a truck bomb killed 64 people in Kabul, the government hanged five Taliban prisoners. Since then, the Taliban has pointed to the executions to justify its attacks on the Afghan judiciary. Some analysts also worry that President Obama made a mistake in ordering last month's drone strike that killed Mansour, the Taliban commander.

They note that violence in Afghanistan escalated last summer after it was announced that the Taliban's other former leader, Mohammad Omar, had died two years earlier. They now fear that the trend will accelerate as new Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada seeks to consolidate his power. Akhundzada is an Islamic cleric and the Taliban's former top judge. But many analysts consider him to be even more rigid than Mansour, who was a former Taliban government minister who witnessed the carnage of Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s. "Mansour believed a terrible outcome for Afghanistan would be a protracted civil war in Kabul and the north," Felbab-Brown said. "Many of the younger commanders don't have that restraint." Akhundzada, in contrast, in the past issued religious edicts authorisng suicide bombings as well as Taliban-on-Taliban executions to deal with dissenters, according to Western intelligence assessments.
At 2.39am Mr Justice texted his mother to call police. "Hurry," he wrote. Then he sent her more texts: "He's coming. I'm gonna die." Mina Justice shares the texts her son sent her during the shooting. Credit:mftv.com Ms Justice wrote: "Don't do nothing. Stay down. Baby text me". Later, as she stood outside the nightclub looking for her son and talking to reporters, she said her son also told her that the gunman was holding him hostage. "He has us, and he's in here with us," he wrote. Texts from Pulse nightclub patron Eddie to his mother. Credit:wftv.com

Some Orlando massacre survivors have started to speak about their struggle to stay alive. About 2am at Pulse nightclub, one of the club patrons, Chris Hansen, thought the popping sound was part of the music. "It went with the beat almost," he said later. A man with a gun, an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, was shooting people. Witnesses described dead bodies littering the ground and people trampling over one another in their struggle to stay alive. Texts from Pulse nightclub patron Eddie to his mother. Credit:wftv.com At 2.09am, someone posted a frantic message to Pulse Orlando's Facebook page: "Everyone get out of pulse and keep running." What happened early on Sunday morning in Orlando was the latest example of "soft-target" terrorism, targeting civilians in locations with minimal security and many potential victims.

An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub. Credit:AP The lucky ones were near the exits. But the club was never designed for such a horrifying moment. Alex Choy, a former club employee, told the Miami Herald that the club had two main rooms, one for performances and drag shows to the left of the front door, and a larger dance room to the right that links to an outdoor patio. Ray Rivera, a DJ at Pulse nightclub, is consoled by a friend after the shooting. Credit:Orlando Sentinel/AP "It's a very, very small space," Mr Choy said. "If there was any type of shooting, it wouldn't take much to get everyone. Very close range."

Mr Hansen told AP that he escaped through the back of the venue by crawling on his elbows and knees. Omar Mateen killed 49 people at Pulse nightclub before he was shot dead by police. Credit:Myspace "When I got across the street there was blood everywhere," he said. "I was helping somebody because he was lying down and I wasn't sure if he was dead or alive. I took my bandanna off, I shoved it in this hole, the bullet hole, that was in his back. "After everybody was out, the shooting was still going and the cops were still yelling, 'Go! Go! Clear the area, clear the area!' " he added.

"I was thinking, 'Are you kidding me?' " he said. "So I just dropped down. I just said, 'Please, please, please, I want to make it out.' And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood. You hope and pray you don't get shot." An officer working at the club exchanged fire with the gunman, authorities said. It was then, according to police, that the incident developed into "a hostage situation". Within minutes of the shooting, police vehicles and a SWAT team descended on the club. "I was there," Ricardo Negron posted on the club's Facebook page several hours later.

"Shooter opened fire @ around 2:00am. People on the dance floor and bar got down on the floor and some of us who were near the bar and back exit managed to go out through the outdoor area and just ran. "I am safely home and hoping everyone gets home safely as well." Another man, Jeff Xcentric Lords, posted on Facebook that he'd been shot. "losing blood, love u all" he wrote. Tony Torres, another patron, ran outside and soon posted a video on Facebook showing at least a dozen police cars, sirens wailing, lights flashing, with a helicopter overhead shining a spotlight on the crime scene. "Get back!" police can be heard shouting. Mr Torres can be heard saying, "We barely made it out. That is crazy."

A Snapchat video obtained by WESH-TV recorded more than 20 shots fired in just nine seconds, while a man, sounding inebriated, can be heard saying, "Oh my God, people are getting shot, dude" as a woman screams in the background. Hours later, as investigators surveyed the damage, Orlando Police Chief John Mina told reporters that even veteran police officers and members of the SWAT team had struggled to wrap their minds around the level of carnage inside the club. "Just to look into the eyes of our officers told the whole story," he said. "You could tell that they were all shaken by this incident, by what they saw inside the club. They did an unbelievable job in rescuing as many as 30 hostages." The City of Orlando has started to release the names of the victims.

So far, six men have been formally identified, including Edward Sotomayor jnr, who was 34. Mr Sotomayor was a national brand manager for ALandCHUCK.travel, a travel agency catering to the gay community. Edward Sotomayor jnr Credit:Courtesy orlandosentinel.com Pharmacy technician Stanley Almodovar, 23, has also been named as a victim. Stanley Almodovar Credit:orlandosentinel.com
The Pulse nightclub shooting was a "domestic terror incident", according to Sheriff Jerry Demings, as police have confirmed that around 20 people died and more than 40 were injured.

An "organised and well prepared" shooter armed with an assault rifle and a handgun, and possibly wearing a bomb, shot at the hundreds of people at the nightclub and police, before taking hostages.

Police are still combing the nearby area for possible explosive devices.

The shooter's motive is not known.

Chief of Police John Mina told reporters that a police officer working at Pulse nightclub responded to shots fired at around 2am and engaged in a gun battle. The suspect returned into the club where he fired more shots and took hostages.

Around 320 people were in the nightclub on Saturday night.

At 5am, after being contacted by patrons in the club's bathroom and other areas, police decided to rescue hostages inside. A SWAT team stormed in, and the shooter was killed in the gun battle that followed.

30 people trapped inside the club were rescued alive. Altogether, at least 42 people have been hospitalised.

One officer sustained an injury to his eye, and police believe his Kevlar helmet saved his life.

The FBI has indicated that it will pursue a "slow and methodical" investigation, and is calling for any information from the public that may assist.

Early reports of shots fired outside a nearby hospital and of a second shooter were not accurate, Chief Mina said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang this week to further enhance Sino-German ties. (Photo : Getty Images)

For the ninth time in her chancellorship, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel is slated to visit China from June 12 to 14, according to a China Daily report.



The news was told to the media outlet by German Ambassador to China Michael Clauss, saying that Merkel's trip is part of the fourth round of China-Germany intergovernmental consultations.



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Merkel will be bringing 11 more German ministers and vice-ministers who will meet with Premier Li Keqiang to "continue discussions according to the action plan of Sino-German cooperation to push relations forward."



The plan, which was signed back in 2014 during the last China-Germany intergovernmental consultation, covers 110 cooperation agreements for the next five to 10 years.



The wide-ranging issues that will be tackled include mutual trade and investments, China's economic reform and liberalization, and the Sino-German cooperation in innovation, Clauss said.



The German Ambassador pointed out that other important concerns such as Syria and global economy will also be part of the meeting's agenda.



The leaders are also expected to reach an agreement on cybersecurity that will most likely focus on cracking down on economic spying, he added as he urged both governments to come up with a scheme that would counter cyberattacks.



"Data is extremely important in everything we do, and that means we should ensure that company data and company secrets are secure," Clauss said. "That's very important for both Chinese and German companies. Concepts like Industry 4.0 and Internet Plus will not work without a high degree of data security."



In China, the national government has long expressed its opposition to hacking in any form, saying that "the most effective way to cope with it is international cooperation."



Meanwhile, Clauss shared that China's and German's business exchanges have become more dynamic in the recent period. He added that more Chinese firms have shown intent to invest in German-based and German-acquired companies.



According to a May 2016 report from Germany Trade and Investment, China is Germany's leading foreign direct investor, with 260 out of over 2,300 projects. The figure was a 37-percent increase from last year, the report showed.



As Clauss took note that Germany is an open economy, he said that he is also "looking forward to China opening up more."



"Opening up will help China to accelerate its economic reform. Opening up and reform are two sides of one coin," Clauss said.



Last March, German President Joachim Gauck also visited China to further foster Beijing-Berlin ties.


I don't understand the fuss about the Government supporting a Yes vote?

They put the Bills before Parliament suggesting the change, so it follows they should support them. If they didn't support them, why place them before Parliament to present to the populace?

Where I do think the opponents have an argument is the obscene expenditure of public funds.

Of course they were required to spend money so the Commission could educate the citizens on what the changes were about. It is folly to claim otherwise.

The other sticking point for me is how the results were (not) released by the Parliamentary Commissioners office.

According to Mr. Carl Bethel former Attorney General, The suppression of the Referendum results by this Government is a grotesque abuse of power and violation of the democratic process!

The Law calls for the Returning Officer in each Constituency to proclaim the results on the spot! And as soon as the preliminary results are determined by the first count when the Polls are closed.

I realise Mr. Bethel is a political partisan, but what he suggests was always the practice when I worked election polls and campaigns.

A laymans read of Clause 65 or The Bahamas Parliamentary Elections Act, 1992 seems to confirm he is correct as well. More here

In this regard it seems this government is slipping further and further away from the stated democratic roots of their partys Founding Fathers.

Its ironic really. Supporting the Yes vote then suppressing information.
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Friends normally share their secrets among themselves. The tough part comes when one so-called friend discloses them to other people. (Photo : Getty Images)

For a couple who share a deeper kind of love, their lifetime promise to each other may include a line like this: Til death do us part.



Those, on the other hand, sharing a different kind of bond, their motto may be friends for keeps, or in todays more popular way of saying it online, #BFF.



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Best friends forever, that is.



How can one essentially determine that another person is worth keeping for as a friend?



How can people spot the telltale signs that their professed friends are not truly what they deem them to be and whom they may eventually wish to strangle to death once the nagging feeling of betrayal sets in?



Making Friends--Its All Human Nature



Abdullah Almaatouq, Alex Pentland and Erez Shmueli wrote a preliminary paper about the fundamental characteristic of human beings called friendship in Are You Your Friends Friend?



The researchers said that people generally think friendships are reciprocal in nature.



They added that the more intimate the relationship becomes, the more the friendship is reciprocated. They also mentioned in the paper that social status serves as a better indicator for reciprocity.



Still, they reminded about the reality that some individuals dont reciprocate the friendship entrusted to them.



Great Expectations



In their final paper published by the scientific journal PLOS (Public Library of Science) ONE and titled Are You Your Friends Friend? Poor Perception of Friendship Ties Limits the Ability to Promote Behavioral Change, the researchers, now including Laura Radaelli, said that individuals have difficulty in judging the reciprocity and directionality of their friendship ties (i.e., how others perceive them).



The authors of the study conducted a survey where 84 students (40 percent male, 60 percent female) aged 23-38 and taking up an undergraduate university course participated.



On a 0-5 scale--0 for I do not know this person, 3 for Friend and 5 for One of my best friends--the participants gave a score to all their fellow participants. Afterward, they scored themselves based on how they thought other participants might possibly score them.



The researchers said that the participants showed high expectations of reciprocity, but sadly, almost half of the friendships are actually non-reciprocal.



A Bad Judge



Shmueli said, We found that 95 percent of participants thought that their relationships were reciprocal, according to Science Daily, a research news website. It turns out that were very bad at judging who our friends are.



In writing the paper, he and Radaelli from the Department of Industrial Engineering at Tel Aviv University in Israel collaborated with Pentland, an American computer scientist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S., and Almaatouq, a graduate research assistant at MIT Media Lab-Human Dynamics Group.



A senior lecturer at TAU and heads the universitys Big Data Lab, Shmueli added: If you think someone is your friend, you expect him to feel the same way. But in fact thats not the case--only 50 percent of those polled matched up in the bidirectional friendship category.



Now how many friends do you have?






One arrested, two to the hospital after hit-and-run crash on I-24 in Christian County
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Jun. 10, 2016 | PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Jun. 10, 2016 | 05:45 PM | PADUCAH, KY

The McCracken County Fair 5K walk/run is set for June 18 at Noble Park.



The Run/Walk will begin and end in Noble Park, near Shelter 19, and runners/walkers of all ages are welcome.



Cost to participate is $20 for pre-registration, $20 day of race. Each participant will receive a runners pack. All pre-registered and paid participants will receive a T-shirt. There will be a limited quantity & sizes of T-shirts for those registering the day of the run/walk.



Race day registration is from 7:00-7:30 am, packet pick up is from 7:00 am to 7:45 am.



The 5k will begin at 8:00 am, and the KidK will begin about 8:45 am.



A registration form for runners can be found at www.mccrackencountyfair.com - the form must be mailed to the event coordinator or brought to the event.



Sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of South Paducah.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Jun. 12, 2016 | 12:10 AM | GRAVES COUNTY, KY

A Fancy Farm man has been arrested on DUI and drug charges.

According to the Graves County Sheriff's Office, a deputy was on patrol on Ingersoll Rand Road just south of Mayfield traveling north. As the deputy topped a hill, he met 29-year-old James Thomas traveling south.

Thomas was reportedly in the deputys lane of travel and almost struck him head on. Deputies said Thomas was also traveling 60 MPH in a 35 MPH zone.

The deputy stopped Thomas at the intersection of Dodson Road and Old Dukedom Road. During a search of Thomas, deputies found a bag that contained methamphetamine.

Thomas was arrested on charges of operating on a suspended operators license, DUI 4th offense, possession of controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia and other traffic charges. He was lodged in the Graves County Jail.

Thomas has a pending case in Graves County Circuit Court where he was charged by the Mayfield Police Department for possession of controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff Jun. 11, 2016 | 11:36 PM | NEW CONCORD, KY

A Calloway County man has been arrested on marijuana and methamphetamine charges.

The Calloway County Sheriffs Office said it received information regarding an illegal indoor marijuana growing operation in the New Concord area. Deputies obtained a search warrant and conducted a search at 6333 Shoemaker Road.

During a search of the home, deputies seized 92 marijuana plants, 82 of which police said were hydro grown. Police also seized a small amount of methamphetamine, devices used to produce marijuana wax, cultivating and grow devices, a small amount of cash and firearms.

Forty-year-old Brandon McCuiston of New Concord was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, cultivating marijuana, trafficking in marijuana, possession of methamphetamine, possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.

McCuiston was lodged in the Calloway County Detention Center.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Jun. 12, 2016 | 05:26 PM | TRENTON, TN

The Gibson Electric Membership Corporation's Change for The Community committee is currently accepting applications for funds that will be awarded in July.

If you know of a not-for-profit organization in the counties of Carlisle, Hickman, Fulton and Graves in Kentucky or Obion County in Tennessee, please have a representative of the organization contact Gibson EMC's Hickman office at 270-236-2521 to request a Change for the Community application.

Please note that applicants must serve members of Gibson EMC. Applications will be accepted through June 30, 2016, at which time they will be reviewed to determine who will receive the funds.

The Change for the Community program receives its funds by the cooperative rounding up its Hickman members' electric bills to the nearest dollar. The change is then added to the Change for the Community fund to support organizations in the counties that Gibson EMC serves.

Past recipients of the funds were local senior citizen centers, rescue squads and organizations that provide food and clothing for people in need in our communities.
Students take the annual college entrance exam or "gaokao" in China. (Photo : Getty Images)

Education experts are urging colleges and universities to find new recruitment methods for them to enroll enough students as the number of gaokao takers dropped this year, China Daily reported.



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Gaokao or China's annual national college entrance test, which began on Tuesday, had 9.4 million takers this year, which is 20,000 fewer than 2015's figure.



Data shows that at least 13 of 34 Chinese municipalities saw a decline in the number of students who registered to take gaokao this year.



According to an annual gaokao survey published by portal eol.cn, the number of takers has fallen to record-breaking lows in Bejing, Liaoning and Jiangsu provinces.



Gaokao is regarded as the most important test in China, "as only a small proportion of the students can be enrolled at top universities each year."



Eol.cn editor-in-chief Chen Zhiwen noted that this news will especially affect lesser-known universities and colleges, "as it will be more difficult for [them] to recruit enough students."



Chen believes that the decline is caused by the shrinking college-age student populace, in addition to the increase of Chinese students eyeing to study abroad.



Population authorities noted that in 1990, around 25 million people were born, which led to the record-high number of gaokao takers in 2008. After 1990, the number of babies born diminished, consequently decreasing the number of gaokao takers from 2009 to 2013.



The decline halted in 2014 and the figure became stable for two years at an average of 9.4 million.



Meanwhile, as for the number of Chinese students who went overseas to study, China has recorded the highest statistic last year of at least 520,000.



Chen predicted that with such circumstances, colleges and universities might continue to experience a student recruitment issue.



Xiong Bingqi, vice president of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, suggested one solution: to foster the strengths of academic institutions.


Rita Redmond was a true lady who felt that every pupil had something to gift to the world
India's BrahMos missiles were displayed during a Republic Day parade in New Delhi. (Photo : Reuters)

India has increased efforts to sell an advanced cruise missile system to Vietnam and 15 more markets amid concerns of Chinas military build-up, according Reuters.



India's shift from being the world's biggest arms importer to seller of the supersonic BrahMos missile is seen as a move to bolster the defenses of its partners as well as boost revenues.



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The Reuters report cited an Indian government note which stated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ordered BrahMos Aerospace, the country's missile producer, to accelerate sales to five countries that included Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, Chile and Brazil.



The note, which sources said was issued early this year, also has a second list that included 11 other countries led by the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates.



The BrahMos missile, said to be world's fastest cruise missile with a top speed of three times the speed of sound, has been requested by Vietnam since 2011, which China considers as destabilizing.



Indonesia and the Philippines also asked for the BrahMos, which has a range of 290 kilometers and can be launched from sea, land and submarine. The air-launch version of the missile is currently being tested.



Although India has no territorial dispute in the South China Sea, unlike Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, its land border claim with China is still unsettled and it is concerned with China's expanding presence in the Indian Ocean.



India has also complained about the military assistance given by China to its rival, Pakistan, and for allowing Chinese submarines to dock in Sri Lanka.



"Policymakers in Delhi were long constrained by the belief that advanced defense cooperation with Washington or Hanoi could provoke aggressive and undesirable responses from Beijing," Jeff M. Smith, Director of Asian Security Programs at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, said.



"Prime Minister Modi and his team of advisers have essentially turned that thinking on its head, concluding that stronger defense relationships with the U.S., Japan, and Vietnam actually put India on stronger footing in its dealings with China," Smith added.



After Indian Prime Minister Modi's tak with U.S. President Barack Obama, India is set to join the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). The country's inclusion in the MTCR will give it more credibility to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group. India's membership in the two groups would give it greater access to research and technology.



BrahMos Aerospace, owned by both the Indian and Russian governments, said that it is still discussing with several countries on the missile exports.



The country is continuing to build military ties with Vietnam, and gave it a $100-million credit line.



In a statement on Monday, June 6, the Indian defense ministry said that Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar and his Vietnamese counterpart General Ngo Xuan have agreed to exchange information on commercial shipping as well as expand hydrographic cooperation.



India was also expecting to clinch the negotiation to supply BrahMos to Vietnam by the end of the year while planning to offer the country a battleship armed with BrahMos missiles.


Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/06/2016 (2327 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Before we begin, Ross Jeffers, owner of the 1958 cafe at 761 Westminster Ave., would like to take this opportunity to pass along his sympathies to the family of Toni Chiappetta, who died in May.

Chiappetta  for decades the Toni in Tonis Barbershop on Sherbrook Street  was Jeffers barber for almost 50 years. Appropriately, he might turn out to have been the last person to ever cut Jeffers hair.

He was 86 at the time, and even though it took him about an hour to do a 15-minute cut, it was well worth it because he was such a fun guy, Jeffers says with a chuckle.

There were many times I felt like that proverbial square peg in a round hole, whereas this space is very much about me and what makes me comfortable Ross Jeffers

Heres the thing: after Jeffers bid adieu to a 38-year career in the commercial printing industry 2 years ago, he promised himself two things: 1) No more suits and ties, and 2) he was going to let his hair down  literally.

When I worked in a corporate environment, I shaved every day and rocked those khakis just like the rest of the world. Honestly, though, I struggled for most of my career being comfortable in my own skin, he says, sporting baggy shorts, a Winnipeg Jets hoodie and a black, beanie-style chefs hat, under which is tucked his flowing, grey locks, which, he guesses, havent seen a pair of scissors in 30 months.

There were many times I felt like that proverbial square peg in a round hole, whereas this space is very much about me and what makes me comfortable.

ZACHARY PRONG / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Simon (Cookie) Daintree serves Jeffers' daughter Grace, 11, and his wife, Jenny.

Jeffers grew up in River Heights. When he was 10, his parents purchased a share of an existing restaurant at the corner of Grant Avenue and Centennial Street, which they and their partners renamed Mamas. The business, a dine-in/takeout pizza joint, was only in the family for a brief spell, Jeffers recalls. Nonetheless, he considered it the coolest thing ever to wash dishes, wait on tables and putter around in the kitchen.

Jeffers was 19 when he got a job at Saults & Pollard, a printing company now known as Pollard Banknote. Through the years he worked for various printing firms, including Printcor and Coronet/Fahlke. As the father of six children, however, he often took part-time positions as a waiter or bartender in order to make ends meet.

I loved the service industry  loved it to death  and I always told my wife if it would have paid the bills, I would have quit my 9-to-5 (job) in a heartbeat and done that instead, he says.

In December 2013, Jeffers found out his position at LightVisions was being downsized. He received a bit of a package and was considering retirement, but because his youngest child was still in grade school, he asked himself, What the heck am I going to do if Im home all day? Having a restaurant of his own had been in the back of his mind since those early days at Mamas. So rather than try to catch on at another printing company, he decided the time had come to pursue his dream.

Jeffers visited property after property looking for a locale that matched exactly what he had in mind  a smallish nook people could pop into for a sandwich and bowl of soup during the day, then return to for an ice cream cone at night. After months of searching, he found what he considered to be the perfect spot  a 500-square-foot space in Wolseley only 50 paces away from where he lived on Chestnut Street.

This used to be Hollow Reed (Holistic) and had been vacant for quite a while when I came in for the first time  completely gutted except for the bathroom, he says, taking a seat at his four-stool, Pop Shoppe-style lunch counter.

I immediately went home and put together a business plan, which I presented to my wife, whos an accountant. She laughed, said I was crazy and why didnt I pick something just a little more volatile than a 10-seat restaurant.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Ross Jeffers, owner of 1958, says he sees his Wolseley cafe 'as a hipster destination.'

Undeterred, Jeffers signed a one-year lease Aug. 1, 2014. His intention was to be up and running by Oct. 1 of that year. October came and went, as did November. By Christmas, Jeffers was almost out of cash because of a series of legal roadblocks. First he didnt need a commercial oven, then he did. He was originally told a grease trap wouldnt be required, then later that it was; same deal with new flooring. Problem was, Jeffers had already spent the bulk of his pension fund bringing the joint back to life and had no clue where any additional funds were going to come from.

His wife suggested Kickstarter, an American-based crowdsourcing platform geared primarily toward creative endeavours such as films, theatre productions and food-related projects. Within a couple of months, 44 individual donors contributed almost $8,000 toward Jeffers vision. On April 7, 2015, the Tuesday after Easter, he replaced his Coming Soon placard with one that read Open.

Jeffers knew he might just be onto something last July when he arrived for work on a Sunday morning (Saturdays and Sundays are the only days 1958 serves breakfast) and there were 25 people patiently waiting on the sidewalk outside his front door.

You know we only have 10 chairs, right? he asked the throng, as he fumbled for his keys.

Yeah, we know, said a fellow at the front of the queue, but its all good  we have a plan.

My customers are really amazing people, Jeffers says, nodding yes, that antique coffee grinder parked next to an equally ancient-looking milkshake mixer is fully functional and grinds every ounce of joe he serves. I see us as a hipster destination, but not wannabe hipsters or trucker-hat, beard-sporting hipsters.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Eggs Benedict is among the breakfast dishes served.

Were more of a guy-who-bought-that plaid-shirt in-1972-at-the Folk-Fest-and-is-still-rocking-it-in-2016 kind of hipster place. (When a scribe asks for a clarification, inquiring whether or not he should instruct his wife to put a comb through her hair before heading over for Jeffers eggs Benedict, he responds, Totally not, cause if she does, shes going to stand out.)

About the limited, ever-rotating menu: yes, the sign above the door matches the year Jeffers was born, but it turns out 1958 is more a nod to simpler times simpler food than the date on his birth certificate, he explains.

Take his clubhouse sandwich, for example. A devoted fan of the late, great Wagon Wheel restaurant, Jeffers mimics the work ethic of Louis Mathez, the person at the helm of the Hargrave Street icon from 1958 until his death in 2010, by arriving early every weekday morning to roast a few birds for that days fare. Or his pulled pork on a pretzel bun  a combo one online reviewer described as a stroke of genius.

I dont shop on price, I shop on what I believe is quality, he says, noting his Reuben sandwich is probably his biggest seller. All my sausage products and bacon come from Winnipeg Old Country Meats, my chickens are all free-run and all of my breads are picked up daily and baked right here in the city.

Cooking technique is a part of it, I suppose, but if youre working with good enough products, you cant really f it up unless you really put some effort into it.

Jeffers, an only child growing up, pauses and takes a deep breath when asked if his mother, Darlene, whom he credits for teaching him how to cook as soon as I could stand up on a chair and reach the stove, is still living.

No, theres a lot of my mom here, though, he says, waving his arm in the air. I make my potato salad exactly the way she made it her whole life. Everything I bake here is her recipe. I never realized what a great cook my mom was until I got older and started eating at friends places. Id be like, Holy s, what the f is this? when a meatloaf or roast hit the table. Thats when I said to myself, Man, this woman can cook.

As for what the future holds, any retirement plans are currently on the same back burner as his cream of asparagus soup. Declaring hell be here till Im not here anymore, the grandfather of three compares the diner to his six offspring, who range in age from 11 to 32.

I love my kids to death and would walk through fire for any one of them. But none of them were planned, whereas this is the baby I spent a lifetime planning for  a lifetime forming in my head how its life was going to go. Im happy to say that so far, things have been going pretty much according to plan.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca

ZACHARY PRONG / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The Westminster Avenue cafe opened in April 2015 with the help of Kickstarter funding.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/06/2016 (2327 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After a mass shooting on Sunday that killed at least 50 people and injured dozens more at a gay nightclub in Florida, many Canadians were reflecting on what the violence means for the LGBTQ community.

A gunman wielding an assault-type rifle and a handgun opened fire inside a crowded gay nightclub in Orlando early Sunday morning. He was shot and killed by police.

Candlelight vigils to mourn the victims were planned in several Canadian cities Sunday night. Hundreds gathered for a vigil in Toronto in a predominantly gay neighbourhood.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale answers a question during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Friday, June 10, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Some carried flags  Canadian, American and Pride  while others held signs. Speakers called for love in the face of violence.

A handful of uniformed police officers patrolled outside the vigil, and others provided security within the crowd.

In Vancouver, hundreds joined a vigil at the art gallery, holding white candles in red plastic cups as speakers emphasized the importance and strength of the community.

City councillor Steve Thomson told the crowd he never imagined in his nearly four decades of fighting for equal rights that this kind of hatred could exist.

We have to face that there are people who want to put us back in the closet, if not kill us as they did in Orlando. But that wont stop us. That wont stop any of us, he said.

The attack came during Pride month, both in the U.S. and Canada.

The executive director of Pride Toronto, a not-for-profit with the goal of bringing together the citys LGBTQ community, said the massacre was a grim reminder of the setbacks his community faces.

It reminds us that hate and discrimination are still a big part of this society, and that because of this, some of our brothers and sisters this morning lost their lives, Mathieu Chantelois said on Sunday.

The organization also runs Torontos pride month, and Chantelois said Pride Toronto was already working with city police and the RCMP but would see if there were any additional security steps that could be taken.

The main objective of Pride is to create a safe space for our community to gather together and feel comfortable, he said.

Spencer Chandra Herbert, a member of the British Columbia legislature, was in Quesnel, B.C., celebrating the small towns second annual pride celebration with his husband when he heard the news. His immediate reaction was disbelief.

To think that in this so-called accepting day and age that this hatred is still there and could strike at any time, its unbelievable, Chandra Herbert said.

Hearing about the massacre was especially crushing in the wake of celebrating love with a small community.

Ive been hearing from people how much it means to them to see somebody there, a politician there with their husband, walking hand-in-hand down the main street, Chandra Herbert said. It sends a pretty strong signal that we here believe in diversity and will stand up against hatred for love.

The violence shows theres still work to be done in educating people and spreading awareness and understanding of LGBTQ issues, said Chandra Herbert, who has repeatedly tried to get transgender rights legislation passed in B.C.

(Education) is still vitally important because there are still people hiding in closets, afraid of coming out because of violence or fear of being disowned by family members or being beaten up at schools. Its still an issue, Chandra Herbert said.

In Montreals gay village, many people reacted with shock and sadness Sunday afternoon while pointing out that many LGBTQ individuals still face violence, even in Canada.

Francis Cavanagh, a bartender at Bar Aigle Noir, said the incident proves homophobia is not a thing of the past.

Its a reminder that we still need gay villages, we still need Pride parades, and we still need solidarity to show we are all together, he said. These things dont just happen in Russia or in faraway places.

In Edmonton, people attending Mayor Don Ivesons annual pride brunch reflected on the Florida massacre.

Lorne Stelmach said he feels safer in Canada because gun-control laws are different here.

There are pockets of bigotry here and there, and we try to deal with those as best we can, Stelmach said. Hopefully, as we grow as a community, we will extinguish all that bigotry.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered Canadas condolences to the victims, calling the massacre a domestic terror attack.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, who is openly gay, wrote on Twitter that her thoughts were with the LGBTQ community while B.C. Premier Christy Clark tweeted that she was incredibly saddened by the evil brutality of the Florida shooting.

With files from Gemma Karstens-Smith in Vancouver, Morgan Lowrie in Montreal, Rob Drinkwater in Edmonton and The Associated Press.
Related Hot weather across Egypt to extend through weekend

Egypt is expected to witness an increase in temperatures Monday after a few days of mild weather, according to the Egyptian Meteorological Authority.

In a statement issued Sunday, the authority reported that there would be an increase in temperatures across most of the country except on the northern coast which would continue to enjoy mild weather.

Temperatures are expected to reach a high of 39 degrees Celsius in Cairo and 33 degrees Celsius in the coastal city of Alexandria.

In Upper Egypt, Luxor will struggle with 46 degrees and Aswan also 46.

Hurghada on the Red Sea will see 42 and Sharm in south Sinai 40.

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The students enrolled in Winona Senior High School Spanish 4 language class had the opportunity to assist a good cause, as well as demonstrating what they have learned throughout their four years of learning Spanish, by writing, editing, illustrating, and publishing a childrens book  written entirely in Spanish  in order to donate to school library in Matagalpa, Nicaragua.

This project was made available through a partnership between WSHS and Gundersen Global Partners, a program of Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation which regularly sends groups of volunteers to Nicaragua and Ethiopia. Susan Larsens spring semester classes completed 28 books. Every semester, a Gundersen Lutheran representative who has visited Nicaragua, visits Larsens Spanish 4 class in order to teach the students about the country and the school in Nicaragua. Larsens spring semester classes were the second group to send books this year.

Students didnt lack any creativeness; topics ranged from chickens to farmers that were bananas. Aside from the comedic nature of some of the stories, each one includes information about the WSHS student author and illustrator, as well as a glossary of some of the words used throughout the book translated to English.

WSHS junior Brian Aeling explained that, Writing the book really let me see how much we have learned in these last four years of Spanish.
In March 2015, eight local residents and I took the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to court. We went to court to make accountable a state agency that no longer fulfills its mission to protect our natural resources for the next generations.

At issue were the destruction of wetlands in the La Crosse River Marsh and an expansion of rail lines to carry more volatile crude oil through our community. The DNR allowed BNSF Railway to take this action because the agencys leadership has changed its rules so that it no longer needs to do thorough reviews of pollution or wetlands destruction permits.

We firmly believe that the DNR failed to look closely at the risk and impact of derailments and spills to wetland and river ecosystems, air and ground contamination, tax revenues, tourism and commerce.

The DNR did not do a comprehensive review before issuing the wetlands permit to allow BNSF to expand in the La Crosse River Marsh and in many aspects simply accepted the railroads conclusions without the agencys own independent, careful review. Many questions asked by the public and even scientists were not answered.

Unfortunately, our case was dismissed in May because the court felt its hands were tied and that it was required to accept the DNRs conclusions that are allowed by the new streamlined but insufficient rules. But the DNR can and should do better to protect our safety and our environment.

The risk to our community is made worse by outdated federal pre-emption laws that are slanted to favor the railroads and allow them to construct projects in neighborhoods, near schools and near environmentally sensitive areas without local people having a say.

What happens to the marsh may have a major role in the future health of La Crosse as a flood plain, a place for recreation and tourism, a living classroom for outdoor education, and an important wildlife habitat.

We still need deeper environmental review regarding the impact of the rail line on the marsh, and there needs to be more precautionary planning on the federal and state levels.

We need to know if we have the right equipment to clean up a spill in the marsh and what would happen to the wetlands if a spill took place. We need to know whether losing even more wetlands will impact flooding and endangered species. And we need to know if federal laws and standards for trains that carry volatile crude oil, ethanol and other hazardous chemicals will prevent explosions or spills in our community.

We arent alone in this effort to hold our government accountable for protecting our water and land. Other rail towns are fighting similar battles. Dozens of rail-related projects threaten the entire Upper Mississippi River Basin with potential negative impacts on wetland and river ecosystems, air and water contamination, and local issues such as flooding. There are communities all over the country upset, and they are starting to fight back.

The number of federal and state inspectors available to look at rails and bridges is deplorably low. The mandated phasing out of unsafe rail cars will be slow. Local emergency responders are saddled with the stress of training people how to handle crude oil derailments.

Our local officials are doing their best to train local responders, and to formulate evacuation plans and other protocols as best as they can, should the next derailment happen here and not just miles away up and down the Mississippi River, as we sadly have seen.

Over time we have made more citizens and legislators aware of rail issues that threaten communities. Citizens Acting for Rail Safety-Midwest now has affiliate chapters in the Twin Cities, Milwaukee and Watertown, Wis., to defend our communities. Our work has contributed to important federal bipartisan legislative changes.

We are just one community of many standing up, and we are proud of our efforts, our attorneys, and the many great citizens who supported us in this battle for our community. And I am satisfied that our lawsuit has meaning beyond the decision.

This challenge demonstrates how the DNR has strayed from its mission and its former deep commitments to the way that Wisconsin protects its wetlands and other natural resources. The DNR is continuing to water down standards, and this must stop.

We need our state Department of Natural Resources to be vigorous in policy and research in its mission to protect and enhance our natural resources.
Western-backed forces encircle key town in northern Syria  BEIRUT  Kurdish-led fighters completed their encirclement Friday of a key town held by the Islamic State group in northern Syria, part of a Western-backed offensive that could see a major strategic victory over the militants. The advance on Manbij, near the Turkish border, coincided with a Syrian army offensive supported by Russian airstrikes that brought troops closer to the city of Raqqa, the IS extremists de facto capital.

Panel: Polands new police law allows privacy infringement  WARSAW, Poland  An international human rights commission has criticized Polands new law regulating police surveillance powers as leaving too much room for breaching the privacy of individuals. The Venice Commission, the Council of Europes body of constitutional law experts, 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.

Uganda to withdraw troops from Central African Republic  KAMPALA, Uganda  Uganda plans to withdraw all of its 2,500 troops from a mission in Central African Republic whose goal is to hunt down members of the Lords Resistance Army rebel group, a military official said Friday. Ugandan military spokesman Lt. Col. Paddy 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.

Hindu holy man hacked to death in Bangladesh  DHAKA, Bangladesh  Assailants hacked a Hindu holy man to death Friday in northern Bangladesh and fled without anyone witnessing the attack, which police suspect was carried out by Islamist militants who have waged a violent campaign targeting the countrys 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.
For every Facebook, Twitter and Instagram follower that shares dairy-related images such as attending a dairy breakfast, enjoying Wisconsin dairy products or on the farm with dairy animals on their social media pages using #GiveGallons, Badgerland will donate two gallons of milk, up to 1,000 gallons to Second Harvest Foodbank and Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin.

To give to the cause without a submitted image, Badgerland is teaming up with Second Harvest Foodbank and NBC15 during June with a goal of 500 donors to donate a days worth of milk through the Adopt a Dairy Cow promotion at www.givedairy.com. In honor of its 100th anniversary, Badgerland Financial will match the first 100 donations. For more information, visit www.badgerlandfinancial.com.
Madeline, a fluffy 3 -year-old golden doodle, helps comfort Home Health United  St. Clare Hospice House hospice patients nearing end-of-life.

Animals have long been recognized as being a positive force in the healing process, and can bring a calming and therapeutic effect to hospice patients. Therapy animals can offer physical contact, and offer some relief to the boredom, loneliness, and lack of control that can come with terminal illnesses.

Madelines presence brings comfort, peace, and companionship to many hospice patients that come to stay at the St. Clare Hospice House. One hospice patient we visited with really loved animals. We had several visits with her. The last time, she wasnt responsive. Madeline lay close to her bed; the woman reached out to pet her but didnt have the strength. So, Madeline laid her head on the womans hand and just stayed there for the rest of the visit, said Susan Eldred-Kujawa, Madelines owner and handler.

But its not just the patients who benefit from Madelines visits; its the staff as well. Healthcare can be incredibly stressful, and providing end-of-life care brings its own challenges. For Hospice House staff, being able to take a short break and pet an incredibly fluffy dog helps them to cope.

Madeline and Sue are wonderful additions to our hospice volunteer program and team. They bring a unique and valuable service to our pet-loving patients residing at the St. Clare Hospice House. If you are a dog lover, you know how important the companionship of a pet is. Madeline knows just how to brighten someones day and bring a level of comfort only a furry friend can provide, said Rebecca Herndon hospice volunteer coordinator.

Madeline is not only a hospice therapy dog; she also visits Catholic Charities Adult Day Care Center, St. Marys Hospital, St. Clare Hospital, Kids Ranch in Baraboo, libraries, and Edgewood College during exam week.
After years of complaints about tainted drinking water and weed-choked waterways, proposals for tighter state restrictions on industrial-scale dairy operations are in the works, the Department of Natural Resources disclosed in a letter appended to a 124-page audit report that was released earlier this month.

But clean-water advocates werent celebrating. Last week they were still digesting the audit findings, which raised new doubts about Wisconsins ability to enforce laws protecting its drinking water, lakes and streams from the manure the dairy industry generates.

One leading lawmaker is worried that without adequate law enforcement, the state could slide back toward the polluted conditions that existed before enactment of the federal Clean Water Act in 1972, and hes not sure the Legislature is prepared to make needed changes.

State Sen. Robert Cowles, who initiated the audit in his role as co-chairman of the Legislatures audit committee, wants laws changed so more of the fee revenue the DNR collects from polluters stays with the department to pay for more enforcement staff.

The Green Bay Republican said Wisconsin residents have a right to be upset about the report compiled June 3 by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau that detailed shortcomings in the DNRs enforcement of laws limiting water pollution.

My constituents who saw the story wondered What the heck is going on?  Cowles said. The people of this state believe in water quality. We brag about our lakes and rivers and having great places to fish in and swim in.

The audit provided the clearest picture to date of deficiencies raised previously by conservation advocates and the federal government about DNR environmental enforcement, inspections and the writing of permits aimed at limiting pollution from sewage treatment plants, large farms and private manufacturers.

Inadequate staffing and heavy turnover appeared to contribute to the problem, auditors said.

Cowles said more money for staff is needed and it could come from fee revenue. But its far from clear that Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans who have controlled the Legislature since 2011 will agree.

Agency full-time staffing has been in a general decline since at least the 1990s under both parties. Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle oversaw reductions in full-time staff in water pollution regulation programs after the 2008 recession hit. Staffing levels increased in 2011 when Walker and his fellow Republicans took control of state government, but two years later cuts resumed.

DNR leaders said they are currently reorganizing in response to elected officials who want the department to focus on an unspecified core mission.

The DNR collects $5 million to $7 million annually in fees from concentrated animal feeding operations, known as CAFOs, municipal sewer plants and private industry, but it typically keeps less than $90,000, with the rest going to the states general fund.

Cowles said lawmakers are giving their attention to fall elections, and he hasnt been in contact with the Legislatures top leaders about the audit. He said he would like the Legislature to provide the DNR with more enforcement dollars as soon as possible, but he isnt confident.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, hasnt read the audit and wasnt available for comment, his spokeswoman said Thursday. A spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, didnt respond to emails.

Any specifics related to the DNRs budget will be presented in the governors budget proposal next year, said Walker spokesman Tom Evenson.

DNR spokesman Jim Dick said Friday that after the audit was completed, department employees were able to find documents indicating the agencys performance in assuring that permit holders were in compliance with regulations may not have been as poor as it appeared in the audit report.

As the Wisconsin State Journal previously reported, auditors found no documentation that the DNR took enforcement action for months or even years in five incidents where monitoring wells showed CAFOs were contaminating groundwater with substances harmful to human health.

Auditors found violations were issued to private industry and sewage treatment plants in just 33 of 558 instances serious enough for such citations under DNR policies over the last 10 years.

Municipal and industrial dischargers submit monthly electronic monitoring reports that DNR uses to identify violations, but auditors said when it came to CAFOs, problems with DNR record-keeping made it impossible to determine how often violations led to enforcement action.

CAFOs are expected to notify the DNR if they spill manure or apply it to fields in a way that endangers groundwater or threatens to run off into streams and lakes where it can cause beach closings and unnatural growths of weeds and algae. Violations also can be discovered through citizen complaints and DNR inspections.

The DNR has increased the number of CAFO inspections it conducts, but often their value was questionable because they were performed so far in advance of  or in some cases after  a permit was renewed, auditors said.

And even after average annual inspection numbers peaked from 2010 to 2014, fewer than half of the large livestock feeding operations were being inspected twice during each five-year permit term, the goal the state set for itself.

In a letter responding to the audit findings, DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp said the department is reducing that goal to once every five years to mirror the less stringent national standard recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The change may mean fewer opportunities for the department to have contact with permit holders and, when there are problems, learn about them early enough to informally obtain compliance with regulations without formal enforcement action, Dick said.

A law firm that has challenged the DNR said low enforcement standards were an open invitation to polluted water.

Safe water is too important to bet on industries maintaining compliance even when its well-known that the responsible regulatory agency is inspecting less, enforcing less, and charging fewer fines when violations do come to light, said Tressie Kamp of Midwest Environmental Advocates. Particularly for industries like CAFOs where the permitting system is set up for self-regulation and self-reporting, add decreased state monitoring on top of that and it becomes clear that were just not doing enough to protect our states water resources.

Stepp also disclosed a series of changes DNR has begun aimed at better protecting the aquifer that supplies drinking water to many people in places like Kewaunee County, where a shallow layer of topsoil and porous bedrock can allow manure to taint groundwater.

Pollutants associated with animal waste have been found in 30 percent of wells tested in the county, which has a high concentration of CAFOs. Last summer, after citizens groups and conservationists complained to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the DNR formed a series of work groups  made up of farmers, other residents, conservation advocates and government officials  to study the problems.

The DNR has adopted a recommendation to set tighter restrictions on spreading of manure in places like Kewaunee County, Stepp said in the letter. Farm operators have been asked to follow the restrictions voluntarily while the department begins its rule-making process, she said. The process can take months or years, depending upon several factors, including how long the governor and lawmakers take to review the changes.

The department hasnt decided if it will use emergency rule-making authority to speed up the process, Dick said.

State Dairy Business Association lobbyist John Holevoet said he wasnt close enough to the work groups to be able to comment on the recommendations, but he said its possible some of the unfavorable audit findings are misleading.

Acting on other work group recommendations, the DNR has already begun to perform more audits of manure-spreading practices, has reallocated staff to fill CAFO program vacancies and formed internal teams to consider changes in the way the department responds when new contamination of drinking water is discovered, Stepp said.

Several recommendations from the Legislative Audit Bureau regarding CAFO enforcement noted DNR employees didnt have time to adequately review annual reports submitted by CAFOs or plans describing how they will spread manure without polluting.

Stepp said in the letter the equivalent of 10.5 full-time employees in regional offices handle permitting and compliance duties that auditors said needed improvement. Currently, there are 31 CAFO permits for each staff member. The ratio needs to be reduced to 20-to-1 for required work to be accomplished, Stepp said. She didnt include an estimated cost.
The health ministry has closed a private hospital in Egypts coastal city of Alexandria for committing violations, including the refusal to provide medical treatment to two teenagers who were badly injured in a road accident.

Earlier this month, photos showed a teenager laying on a mattress placed on the sidewalk of the private hospital Talaat Mustafa while covering his naked body with a blanket. The photos, which went viral on social media, were taken after the hospital refused to let him and his nephew check in because they were unable to pay fees for medical treatment.

Both teenagers were suffering from serious injuries to the skull and bone fractures which resulted from a road accident while they were riding a motorcycle.

Although the closure decision was announced on Saturday, the ministry said that it was following up on their case and that both teenagers were referred to Ras El Tin public hospital last week where they are currently receiving treatment.

Meanwhile, the deputy head of Alexandria's health directorate said in press statements on Saturday that the hospital was also closed for committing other violations including operating a dentistry clinic and test lab without a license.

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The talked centred on military cooperation between the two countries

Egypt's Minister of Defence Sedqi Sobhi held talks Sunday with Vincent Stewart, head of the US military's Defense Intelligence Authority (DIA) in Cairo, discussing military cooperation between the two countries.

Stewart, who is head of an official military delegation, also met with Egypt's military chief of staff Mahmoud Hegazy, tackling issues of bilateral security cooperation and exchanging military expertise.

The talks were attended by Stephan Beecfort, the US ambassador to Egypt, and other Egyptian military commanders.

The US provides Egypt with annual military aid worth $1.3 billion. In October 2013, the United States announced the suspension of its aid to Egypt in protest at the government's crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood supporters following the ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi in July the same year.

In March 2015, the Obama administration resumed US aid to Cairo despite its continuing criticism and "concerns" over Egypt's human rights record.

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MPs on Sunday approved President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisis decision in March to appoint former prosecutor Hesham Badawi as new chairman of the Central Auditing Agency, the countrys top corruption watchdog, after previous chairman Hisham Geneina was fired and charged with spreading "false news".

Parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Al told MPs that in accordance with Article 216 of the constitution, the president of the republic can name the chairmen of the countrys watchdog institutions only upon the approval of the majority of parliamentary deputies.

As you all know, President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi issued decree no.232 on 21 March, deciding that Hesham Geneina, chairman of the Central Auditing Agency be fired from his position, and in order for this decree to be effective it should gain the approval of the majority of MPs, Abdel-Al said.

A total of 329 MPs voted in favour of appointing Badawi as the countrys new top auditor.

As you see, the approval of 329 MPs meets the requirement stipulated by Article 216 of the constitution and as a result I officially announce that former prosecutor Hesham Badawi has become the new chairman of the Central Auditing Agency, said Abdel-Al.

Abdel-Al said Badawi has a proven record of outstanding performance in prosecution and watchdog institutions.

After he graduated from Cairo Universitys faculty of law [in the 1970s], Badawi was appointed as a prosecutor, said Abdel-Al, adding that because of his remarkable performance, Badawi was promoted several times until he became top prosecutor of the state security prosecution court and then chairman of Cairos Appeal Court.

Badawi was also appointed chairman of the anti-corruption authority and then deputy chairman of the Central Auditing Agency, said Abdel-Al, adding that as you see Badawi is a very good choice to be the countrys new top auditor.

Geneina was removed from office in March befoe prosecution referred him to trial on charges of announcing false figures about the value of corruption in Egypt for political reasons.

Geneina said last December in a press interview that corruption in public institutions between 2010 and 2015 has cost Egypt as much as EGP 600 billion.

Geneina's statement sparked a backlash from MPs, who accused him of both trying his best to tarnish the government of President El-Sisi as well as allegiance to the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

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University Student Wins Cosplay Prize at Wales Comic Con

This article is old - Published: Sunday, Jun 12th, 2016

Wales Comic Cons winning cosplay designer already has her eyes on the prize as new Wrexham dates for the popular event are announced.

Sophie Johnson, 18, won first prize for Best Craftsmanship for her cosplay outfit in last months Wales Comic Con, held in Wrexham.

She designed her whole outfit based on a character called Vi from the computer game League of Legends.

Sophie has just finished her first year at Wrexham Glyndwr University studying Applied Art, and is already making a new costume for Wales Comic Cons next event at the university in November.

Speaking about the competition, Sophie said: Last year was the first time I entered the competition and I came runner-up, so this year I thought Ill pull out all the stops and aimed to win. Most of the costume I handmade and customised.

There were people from all over the world at the event, so I was against about 24 adults in my category. It was so much fun being part of the event and meet other eager people who love cosplay.

Its great seeing all the children excited and coming up to me and people asking for my advice for their own cosplay.

Wales Comic Con have announced they are returning to Wrexham Glyndwr University for another fun-packed weekend on November 5th-6th.

Acts already lined up stars from Game of Thrones, Torchwood, Smallville and Buffy.

Sophie won various prizes at last months event including a trophy, VIP passes to Novembers Wales Comic-Con weekend and subscription to SFX, a science fiction and fantasy magazine.

Her next costume is based on the character Princess Mononoke from the Japanese anime film.

Sophie, from Kinmel Bay, Conwy, said: My costume is steam punk again but it is more complicated than Vi was. Theres electrics and moving parts on this new costume and Im making a full mask, so Im designing everything myself.

Im eager to enter again, I dont care if I win or not as its just for fun but Im working hard on my costume.

My university work has helped me develop an understanding of what I can do with my costumes and what materials to use. I like to visit the wood department and use wood for my outfits so its helped me understand what and how to use it and build more complex costumes.

For more information about Wales Comic Cons next event visit www.walescomiccon.com
Former MP Tawfik Okasha will remain barred from television, though the channel he owns will be allowed back on the air

An Egyptian court ordered Sunday a moratorium on a decision banning a TV channel owned by former MP Tawfik Okasha, who was sacked from parliament for hosting the Israeli ambassador to Egypt at his home.

Okasha, who is also a TV presenter on his own channel, Faraeen, is still banned from appearing on TV, according to the ruling, which should be put in effect but can still be appealed by the involved state body.

Egypt's Media Free Zone, which controls broadcasting permits, was the body that ordered the suspension of Faraeen in March and banned Okasha from appearing on TV.

The suspension order was a result of numerous complaints the authority received that the channel "has violated the law and principles of operation in the media zone," head of the Media Free Zone Hossam El-Haddad said at the time.

Later on, a majority of parliament members voted to strip Okasha of his seat on the grounds that he "violated the principles of the separation of powers and flouted parliament's regulations."

The meeting with Israeli ambassador Haim Koren sparked outcry in the media and in parliament, with one MP assaulting Okasha with a shoe.

Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, but relations between the two countries have remained cold, with many political forces  including workers and professional syndicates  rejecting any normalisation of ties.





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ORLANDO, FL. (WTXL)-- The City of Orlando has released names of some of the victims from the Orlando nightclub shooting on their website.

Here is the information:

On this very difficult day, we offer heartfelt condolences to todays victims and their families. Our City is working tirelessly to get as much information out to the families so they can begin the grieving process. Please keep the following individuals in your thoughts and prayers. #PrayforOrlando

The below list of individuals includes victims who have lost their lives during the early morning incident, and next of kin have been contacted. As we continue to reach out to the families of victims, we will continue to update this post.

Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34 years old

Stanley Almodovar III, 23 years old

Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20 years old

Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22 years old

Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36 years old

Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22 years old

Luis S. Vielma, 22 years old

Kimberly Morris, 37 years old

Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30 years old

Darryl Roman Burt II, 29 years old

Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32 years old

Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21 years old

Anthony Luis Laureanodisla, 25 years old

Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35 years old

Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez, 50 years old

Amanda Alvear, 25 years old

Martin Benitez Torres, 33 years old

Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37 years old

Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26 years old

Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35 years old

Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25 years old

Simon Adrian Carrillo Fernandez, 31 years old

Oscar A Aracena-Montero, 26 years old

Enrique L. Rios, Jr., 25 years old

Miguel Angel Honorato, 30 years old

Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40 years old

Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32 years old

Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19 years old

Cory James Connell, 21 years old

Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, 37 years old

Luis Daniel Conde, 39 years old

Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33 years old

Juan Chevez-Martinez, 25 years old

Jerald Arthur Wright, 31 years old

Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25 years old

Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25 years old

Jonathan Antonio Camuy Vega, 24 years old

Jean C. Nives Rodriguez, 27 years old

Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala, 33 years old

Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49 years old

Yilmary Rodriguez Sulivan, 24 years old

Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32 years old

Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28 years old

Frank Hernandez, 27 years old

Paul Terrell Henry, 41 years old

Antonio Davon Brown, 29 years old

Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, 24 years old

Akyra Monet Murray, 18 years old

Geraldo A. Ortiz-Jimenez, 25 years old
TALLAHASSEE(WTXL)-- Community members were taught how to save a life Saturday with the Sixth Annual Press the Chest Event.

According to officials, the event is meant to provide participants with skills, knowledge, and confidence in performing CPR.

Along with Compression-Airway-Breathing, Leon County EMS taught the community the new "Hands-On" Technique which was recommended by the American Heat Association. Participants were also learned how to use an Automated External Defibrillator and at the during the event were provided with a CPR kit, equipped with their very own CPR Mannequin.

Although the event does not provide certifications, it has taught over 7,000 people since it began in 2010. Over 600 people participated this year.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Talks continue this weekend at Florida A & M University, as the board of trustees holds a summit to discuss strategies for the upcoming school year.

FAMU officials spent Saturday morning in a training workshop focusing on why rallying around the president is so important. Dr. Elmira Mangum's performance has recently been under the scope. In fact last year she was nearly forced out by trustees. Earlier this week a local pastor sent a letter to officials asking them not to renew her contract.

On Friday, trustees voted to delay that decision so that they could analyze her performance, but R.B. Holmes says either way, it's time for change. Mangum supporters also attended the talks and say its way too soon to ask for change.

June 30th is the deadline for the trustees to declare their intentions on the contract. Since their next meeting isn't until September, it's unclear how the delay will affect the discussion. If no decision is made, then Mangum must leave by the end of April.
On Jan. 23, The Sunday Oregonian published an obituary for Elizabeth Dunham, who had died a week earlier at 49.

Nothing in the five-paragraph obit indicated that when she died, Dunham took with her a troubling piece of Oregon history.

Although she has remained anonymous until now, Elizabeth Dunham was the victim whom former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt raped in the mid-1970s, beginning when he was mayor of Portland and she was a young teenager. As long as she was alive, the media withheld her name.

We're identifying her nowafter much internal discussionfor two reasons.

First, the list of things Goldschmidt stole from Dunham should not include her identity. Second, the story of this powerful man's abuse can be more fully told now that his victim can no longer suffer from it.

(For what others think of that decision, see "Naming Names" below).

Dunham died Jan. 16 after spending most of the last month of her life at Hopewell House, a hospice in Southwest Portland's Hillsdale neighborhood. Her death came after decades of battling substance abuse and mental illness.

Dunham's mother, who had worked for then-Portland Mayor Goldschmidt in the mid-'70s, told WW she was at her daughter's side when she died.

The tragic arc of Dunham's life was not preordained.

A 1975 yearbook photo at Portland's St. Mary's Academy shows a ninth-grader with wavy chestnut hair, big glasses and the final traces of the pudginess that in elementary school earned her the nickname "short and fat and curly toes."

But in high school, the onetime ugly duckling became a beautiful young girl. Her transformation did not escape the notice of teenage boys, according to Anne Grgich, a Portland artist and Dunham's friend since fifth grade.

"She was very pretty and had so much potential," Grgich says.

She also captured the attention of Goldschmidt, a family friend 21 years her senior.

Goldschmidt, a handsome and charismatic married father of two young children, was putting Portland on the map and becoming a national political player.

He transformed a downtown expressway into Tom McCall Waterfront Park and a surface parking lot into Pioneer Courthouse Square, and engineered the beginnings of Portland's light-rail system.

As mayor, Goldschmidt worked only five blocks from St. Mary's, where Dunham went to high school, and his home was only six doors away from the Dunham family's in Northeast Portland's Alameda neighborhood.

He saw Elizabeth at political eventsher mother was a City Hall aide and campaign stafferand she also served as a City Hall intern and as his children's baby-sitter (Goldschmidt's ex-wife disputes that Dunham baby-sat for the couple; others, including Dunham, say she did).

When Dunham was a St. Mary's freshman and classmates were stressing over homework and dances with boys from Jesuit and Central Catholic, Goldschmidt lured her into a sexual relationship.

Dunham confided to friends that she had met Goldschmidt for sex dozens of times. The meeting places were manyin her basement, at the Hilton Hotel, at a downtown apartment and at friends' houses on Alameda Ridge.

Illicit sex with a political powerhouse would be a lot for anybody to process, let alone a young teen navigating adolescence.

People who knew Dunham well say she never came to terms with the impact Goldschmidt had on her life.

"She wasn't able to contend with issues of abuse she'd suffered and still feel OK about herself," says former boyfriend Zorn Matson, a Portland photographer who lived with Dunham from about 1979, when she was 18, until 1982.

"She tried to ignore negatives in her life," Matson says. "But they eventually destroyed her."





Only snippets of Elizabeth Dunhamas story saw publication during her lifetime (see aThe 30-Year Secret,a WW, May 12, 2004).

One of the questions the previous coverage left unanswered was how long Goldschmidt's abuse of her lasted.

When WW first reported the story, we referred to Dunham by the pseudonym "Susan" and wrote that the sexual abuse started when she was 14 and continued for three years.

(That abuse would have constituted statutory rape, but the statute of limitations expired before Goldschmidt's actions came to light.)

That chronology of abuse came from court records related to a $350,000 settlement Dunham and her lawyer, Jeff Foote, reached with Goldschmidt in 1994. In return for the payment, Goldschmidt required Dunham to never speak of his abuse.

When WW broke the story, Goldschmidt tried to soft-pedal his conduct. He said the abuse, which he called "an affair," lasted "nearly a year."

Mitru Ciarlante, director of the Teen Victim Initiative at the National Center for Victims of Crime in Washington, D.C., says the word "affair" is inappropriate.

"First of all, we're talking about a crime," Ciarlante says. "But we are also talking about an imbalance of power and exploitation at a time in a child's development when she is particularly vulnerable."

Since that time, Dunham, in conversations with WW and others, has said the abuse started not when she was 14, but rather 13. She also said the relationship continued not for three years but through Goldschmidt's divorce in 1991, until she was nearly 30 (although after she turned 18, legal issues would have ceased to apply).

Dunham's account to WW is consistent with what she had told close friends before and after the story became public.

A former boyfriend, Portland lawyer Mark Smolak, with whom Dunham lived from 1989 to 1993, confirms that's what Dunham told him as well.

"Apparently it was a 14- or 15-year event," Smolak says.





Another unanswered question is when Elizabeth Dunham's troubles with substance abuse, mental illness and despaira descent counter to Goldschmidt's continued rise to influence and wealthbegan.

Classmates say Dunham, who was born in Eugene, was among the brightest in her class at All Saints Elementary in Northeast Portland.

"She was really charismatic and smart and had a lot of savvy," says Grgich.

Dunham spent her eighth-grade year in Zaire, where her parents temporarily relocated. (After working at City Hall, Dunham's mother, Pamela, later served as a TriMet spokeswoman and then joined the Foreign Service, where her postings included stints in Bangkok, the Bahamas, Rome and Ankara, Turkey).

But by the time Dunham entered high school, she'd lost interest in academics.

"She skipped a lot of school but skated on the homework because she was so smart," Grgich says.

At 15, Dunham dropped out of St. Mary's. She later earned a GED and briefly enrolled at the University Oregon, but she was primarily self-taught.

"She had books all over the place," says Philip Sawyer, a Portland real-estate agent who says he first met Dunham in 1979. "She was extremely well-read and she knew so much."

In her late teen years, Dunham ratcheted up her consumption of booze, speed and cocaine, Grgich and others say.

"It's hard to put a date on when things went wrong," says Matson, the Portland photographer.

There were times during the 1980s when Dunham functioned well enough to hold a job.

She waitressed at the now-defunct Pink's, a bar on Southwest Jefferson Street near I-405, and at the Lovejoy Tavern on Northwest 21st Avenue, now Swagat, an Indian restaurant.

"Pink's was her best time," says Sawyer. "She had a small French car and a nice apartment. She was happy and went to work on a regular basis."

Sawyer says that on good days, Dunham was "as charming as you can imagine."

"She was very polite, extremely funny and solicitous," Sawyer says. "She knew everything about music and was a phenomenal cook."

On at least one occasion, Dunham tried to put Portland and her increasingly complicated entanglements behind her. She moved to New York in 1982, when she was 21, and enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

That experiment did not last long.

"I was good at improvisational comedy, but I could not sing," Dunham told WW in 2004.

Dunham's inability to focus or follow through is typical of victims of teenage sexual abuse, says Ciarlante.

"Teen sexual abuse victims are very likely to develop PTSD, depression and alcohol problems," Ciarlante says. "All of those on top of the trauma of sexual abuse make it very difficult for teen victims to have goals and succeed in life."

Another attempt on Dunham's part to break away from Portland ended in disaster.

In 1988, in the middle of Goldschmidt's term as Oregon governor, Dunham's erratic behavior in Portland became increasingly threatening to his career. She was simply talking too much.

Goldschmidt arranged a job at a Seattle law firm where a former colleague at the U.S. Department of Transportation (Goldschmidt was secretary of the department under President Jimmy Carter for two years) worked as a senior partner.

In Seattle, on Dec. 13, 1988, a man named Jeffrey Jacobsen abducted Dunham at knifepoint, took her to her apartment and raped her. Jacobsen was convicted and sentenced to 53 years in prison.

Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition for which she would receive monthly Social Security payments, Dunham moved back to Portland, where her life continued to spiral downward. It was about this time, when she was in her late 20s, that her sexual relationship with Goldschmidt ended.

Over the next four years, she would be arrested more than a dozen times, mostly for drug- or alcohol-related offenses.

For part of that time, she lived with Smolak, a criminal defense lawyer.

"She was curious about my work, and for a while she tried working with my private investigator," Smolak recalls.

But Dunham could not stay focused. "She was a roller-coaster gal," Smolak says. "She could be on top of the world one minute and in the depths of hell the next."

After her four-year relationship with Smolak ended in about 1993, Dunham entered an in-patient facility for substance abuse. But she was soon on the street hanging out with a rough crowd.

A 1992 police report described her being found face down in a pool of blood on the South Park Blocks near the exclusive Arlington Club, the epicenter of Goldschmidt's sprawling network of corporate and civic leaders.

In 1992, Dunham pleaded guilty to cocaine distribution. She served five months at a federal penitentiary in California.

The prison time and the monthly $1,500 check resulting from Dunham's 1994 financial settlement with Goldschmidt prompted a stretch of relative stability.

In 1996, she married Steven Cummings, a sometime taxi driver and air-conditioning contractor from California. The couple relocated to Las Vegas, where she stayed out of trouble. Living off the monthly settlement check and a monthly$400 Social Security stipend for PTSD, she helped Cummings raise his daughter, devoted herself to her dogs, Zoe and Harley, and rode horses.

But Dunham and Cummings divorced in 2006 and she moved back to Portland, where she continued to struggle with alcohol until her death.





Whether Dunham's parents knew about Goldschmidt's abuse of their daughter while it was occurring remains a matter of speculation.

People who knew the Dunhams say that when Goldschmidt "adopted" Elizabeth as his protegee, it was a point of pride for Pamela Dunham.

Whether the Dunhams ignored or overlooked the evidence that Goldschmidt's mentoring of their daughter went much further, only they know.

Barbara Bingham, Pamela Dunham's niece, says that based on conversations she had with Elizabeth and Elizabeth's late maternal grandmother, and Bingham's own observations, she believes Pamela Dunham knew Goldschmidt was having sex with her daughter by the time Elizabeth was 16.

Bingham is less certain about Arlyss Dunham, Elizabeth's father, who Bingham says was only sporadically present during her teenage years.

Bingham says she once witnessed Elizabeth sitting on Goldschmidt's lap and making out with him in the Dunhams' basement when Elizabeth was 15 or 16.

She says she asked Pamela Dunham's mother, who lived in the house, whether Pamela knew about Elizabeth and Goldschmidt spending so much time alone.

"She [the grandmother] said, 'I've told Pam, and nothing happens,'" Bingham recalls.

Asked when she learned of the abuse, Pamela Dunham told WW, "That's none of your business." Asked what she did when she learned Goldschmidt abused her daughter, Dunham said, "I confronted him," but declined to answer further questions about what she did.

In 1986, when Elizabeth was 25, her mother took a paid position with Goldschmidt's gubernatorial campaign.

Bingham's outspokenness on what she perceives as the Dunhams' failure to protect Elizabeth has caused her estrangement from the family.

"The way I see it, they let that girl down, and it got to the point where there was nothing left of her to save," Bingham says.





Although her adult life was a chronicle of nearly uninterrupted misery, Dunham expressed a range of conflicting feelings about Goldschmidt.

As a young girl, friends say, she was thrilled to be the object of a powerful leader's attention.

Later, she would come to blame him for her problems. But, according to friends, there was always a part of her that was lovestruck, a part that felt he was, in her words, "a savior."

WW first interviewed Dunham in April 2004, when she was prohibited by the terms of her legal settlement from speaking honestly about her sexual abuse. Even so, Dunham referred to Goldschmidt as "a mentor" and "a visionary" to whom she and all Oregonians owed "a debt of gratitude" for his public service.

She also talked about the impact Cry, the Beloved Country, a 1948 novel about pre-apartheid South Africa, had on her. Goldschmidt gave her the book when she was a teen, and she said it remained among her favorite books.

Smolak says the relationship with Goldschmidt dominated Dunham's life, and her unresolved feelings about him plagued her.

aNeil Goldschmidt was her savior one moment and the devil incarnate the next,a Smolak says.

"Goldschmidt had an enormous impact on her life," adds Matson, a former boyfriend. "She was probably in love with him as a teenager and flattered by his attention. But she was very damaged, and she was a person who could not help herself."

Ciarlante, whose group works with victims all over the country, says predators manipulate teens to create a sort of psychological dependency.

"What we've seen is that children can form very unhealthy attachments to their abusers," Ciarlante says. "The abuser creates a dominance and may frame himself as a protector. The victim may have conflicting feelings and a resentment and shame that they are never able to resolve."

One of the many medical professionals who treated Dunham over the past four decades says this of Goldschmidt: "He took everything from her except her life."

And now, that is gone as well.



Naming Names

There will be readers who ask, "Why name Elizabeth Dunham now?"

Part of the answer is her death. The journalistic convention of protecting sex crime victims' identities aims to spare them anguish while they are alivenot afterward. When murder victims are also raped, the latter crime is often disclosed and, of course, the victim is identified.

During her life Dunham agreed not to talk about Goldschmidt in exchange for a $350,000 settlement. In effect, he purchased her silence, her story and her right to use her own name. But there is ample evidence Dunham wanted her story told. After "The 30-Year Secret," WW's 2004 report of Goldschmidt's sex abuse, Dunham gave lengthy interviews to WW and others. She also worked extensively with Hollywood screenwriter Bryce Zabel, a former Oregon television reporter. He wrote and sold a script for a TV movie that has never been produced. He met repeatedly with Dunham and spoke to her dozens of times.

"She wanted to tell her story, fully and completely, to somebody," Zabel says. "She wanted to go on the record, almost as an act of cleansing."

Still, journalism ethics experts disagree on naming Dunham.

"My personal opinion is that the story has been told. Goldschmidt has suffered the consequences," says Tom Bivins, chairman in media ethics at University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication. "I don't see any justification for exposing her memory and her family and friends to further inquiry and potential embarrassment this far after the fact."

But professor Stephen Ward, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin, says preserving Dunham's anonymity beyond her death would be dishonest.

"It is time to name the victim, to put a human (and specific) face on an anonymous victim," Ward wrote in an email. "Putting a name on the victim adds strength to your storyit allows you to tell readers about a real, identifiable person. Specifics in stories of this kind can be very important."

On Tuesday, The Oregonian published its profile of Goldschmidt's victim but did not name her.NJ

WWeek 2015
Birding has been a part of Granger teens life as long as he can remember
Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva is heading a delegation on a two- day visit to Cairo that started Sunday which aims to strengthen political and economic ties between Egypt and Portugal.

The objective of the delegation's visit to Cairo is also for the two countries to be able to exchange viewpoints on regional developments and to increase bilateral trade.

The Portuguese FM will also meet a number of officials including his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry.

An Egyptian-Portuguese trade committee is set to meet in Cairo in the second half of 2016.

Egypt's Trade and Industry Minister Tareq Qabil had met with the Portuguese ambassador Madalena Fischer to Egypt last week where they discussed ways to increase trade and investments in Egypt.

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The "Bins of Light" public art was scheduled for installation on the Lincoln Avenue underpass in Yakima this fall. It has been delayed, likely until spring. (Submitted photo)
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Sitting shirtless in sweltering temperatures at a homeless encampment in East Yakima, Dee carved small melons into chunks that he handed to nearby friends.

Were just out here doing what we do: take care of each other  survive, said the 37-year-old.
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The attack at the gay nightclub in Orlando left 50 dead and at least 53 injured

Egypt's foreign affairs ministry condemned the Florida nightclub shooting on Sunday that left 50 people dead and dozens injured.

The ministry expressed Egypt's condolences to the U.S. government and people, in a statement released late Sunday.

"Egypt stands by the American people in these hard times, and offers its condolences to the victims' families and wishes a fast recovery for the injured," the statement read.

The statement reiterated that Egypt believes it necessary to fight terrorism which "has neither boundaries nor religion, and contradicts all humanitarian principles and ethics."

"There needs to be international solidarity to defeat this phenomenon in all parts of the world," the statement read.

The gunman who carried out the deadly rampage at the Pulse Orlando gay nightclub was identified as Omar Mateen and was shot dead by police, according to U.S. authorities.

A senior FBI official said that Mateen might have had leanings towards the Islamic State militant group, Reuters reported.

The attack is reported to be the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

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DUBAI- CIA chief John Brennan said on Sunday he expects 28 classified pages of a US congressional report into the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States to be published, absolving Saudi Arabia of any responsibility.

"I think the 28 pages will be published and I support their publication and everyone will see the evidence that the Saudi government had nothing to do with it," Brennan said in an interview with Saudi-owned Arabiya TV. His comments were dubbed into Arabic.

The withheld section of the 2002 report is central to a dispute over whether Americans should be able to sue the Saudi government, a key U.S. ally, for damages.
Israelis and Jews around the world are celebrating the harvest festival of Shavuot on Saturday Sunday. In Israel. the agricultural holiday is primarily celebrated on kibbutzim and moshavim..

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Shavuot, coming exactly seven weeks after Passover, is the holiday which celebrates the day when the Jews received the Torah on Mt. Sinai, thereby becoming a unified nation. It is also celebrated as the holiday when the first wheat harvest is carried out. Dairy products such as cheesecake, cheese blintzes, sambusak, siete cielos cake, and other dairy foods are traditionally eaten on the holiday.

Kibbutz Dafna began the festivites with a tractor parade while on Kibbutz Amir the pensioners opened the festival a "scooter dance" followed by dancing to music by the Israeli band Givatron.

Shavuot at Kibbutz Amir (Photo: Aviyahu Shapira)

Shavuot at Kibbutz Amir (Photo:Aviyahu Shapira)

"Scooter dancing" at Kibbutz Amir (Photo: Aviyahu Shapira)

Dan Rudolph, one of the older members of Kibbutz Amir, said that "the celebrations (at Kibbutz Amir) were always modest. At the beginning, everything was connected to agriculture, but the drought forced us to dismantle several parts of the kibbutz such as the fish ponds and our alfalfa fields."

"However," Rudolph continued, "this holiday and all of us gathering here together is still very important. You can see how everyone is coming and taking part in the celebrations. That's what's great about the kibbutz."

Tractor parade at Kibbutz Dafna (Photo: Aviyahu Shapira)

Tractor made out of hay on Kibbutz Ein HaShofet (Photo: Itzik Shifrin)

The Gaza border kibbutzim also celebrated the holiday on Saturday. Tali Achitov from Kibbutz Nirim said that "Shavuot is a big and important event on our kibbutz, and lots of people come to our events from all over the country. Our celebrations include everything, and we put a special significance on our first wheat harvest. The adults of the kibbutz go out into the fields with sickles and scythes to cut and harvest the wheat. Afterwards, we have a huge dairy meal accompanied by dancing."

Cutting the wheat with a scythe on Kibbutz Nirim (Photo: Barel Ephraim)

Children picking wheat at Kibbutz Nirim (Photo: Barel Ephraim)

Shavuot festival in Nesher (Photo: Reuven Cohen)

Even the urbanites celebrate the holiday. In the Nesher suburb of Haifa hundreds participated in a first harvest festival which included a short presentation by children from the local school; a farmers market selling cheeses, wine, and olive oil; workshops on basket weaving and wool processing, drum circles, a petting zoo, and donkey rides.

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The holiday continues on Sunday with celebrations around Israel, including a massive celebration at the airfield next to Kfar Yehoshua in the Jezreel valley which begins at 5:30pm
DUBAI- Dubai International Airport, the world's busiest airport for international travel, closed its airspace for 69 minutes due to unauthorised drone activity on Saturday, causing 22 flights to be diverted, aviation authorities said.

Government-owned Dubai Airports, which operates Dubai's two main airports, said in a statement the closure lasted between 11:36 a.m. and 12:45 p.m. and Dubai Airports chief executive Paul Griffiths said thousands of passengers suffered disruption to their journeys.

Sixteen of the diverted flights went to Dubai World Central, Dubai's other main airport, a Dubai Airports spokesperson told Reuters. Dubai, a trade, tourism and investment hub for the Gulf region, is one of seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
ERBIL- Iraqi troops attacked ISIS positions south of Mosul on Sunday as the US-led coalition intensifies its campaign against the militants on multiple fronts across their self-proclaimed caliphate.

Officers involved in the operation said Iraqi forces had advanced in tanks and armoured vehicles towards the village of Haj Ali, about 40 miles south of Mosul, under cover of coalition airstrikes and artillery fire.

Iraqi forces are also advancing on the edge of the ISIS bastion of Falluja further south, while in Syria US-backed forces are encircling the militant-held town of Manbij.
An IDF report has come out following a recent exercise carried out at the battle laboratory of the Land Forces Weapons Department located in the Tel Hashomer base outside of Tel Aviv.

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As opposed to other, smaller, platoon-sized drills, this exercise was carried out at the brigade level, and included soldiers from the Golani Brigade, the IDF 7th Tank Brigade, a tactical drone unit, IDF combat engineers and more  all under florescent lighting and in air-conditioned offices.

Some of the weapons systems which were tested are unable to be tested in live fire drills either due to budgetary issues or because their safety hasn't been proven yet.

The majority of the new fighting systems being tested out in these simulators are still works in progress, and are top secret. However, one of the systems which are allowed to be written about is the "Spark". The "Spark" is a next generation anti-tank missile which is expected to replace the "Gil" missile which is currently in used by the IDF. There are many benefits to the "Spark" which include an upgraded targeting system and a considerable reduction in weight, thereby enabling greater ease of maneuverability by ground forces.

Drilling on the digital battlefield (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

There was also the testing of a brand new, first of its kind precision GPS guided mortar, a command and control ground forces system which enables ground forces to coordinate directly with air force pilots in the air, and small observation balloons which are expected to be used by all ground forces in the coming years.

A high ranking ground forces commander responsible for developing the advanced weapons explained that "the development of these new weapons takes a lot of time and money and is full of risks. Our goal is to minimize these risks from the beginning. This is what we did when we began to develop the "wind screen" system (which protects tanks and humvees against RPGs and other anti-tank missiles) and the Mars multi-sensor detection system  a system which is being used on the border with Syria - a decade ago."

(Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

The soldiers trained taking over Hezbollah controlled villages, and fought against Hezbollah platoons  but via giant plasma screens, keyboards, joysticks, virtual reality goggles, and various other simulators. It was like a giant war videogame, with over 150 soldiers online, around the clock, for two days.

The soldiers in the tanks and the Golani ground forces' yells can be heard amongst the HD screens as the encounter "Hezbollah" forces hidden in buildings and popping out at them at close range. Walking between the computer terminals is the Golani commander, Col. Ghassan Alian. Above them are the IDF weapons developers who are taking notes, listening to comments, and are tweaking the weapons systems in real time. These are systems which will be used in the next war with Hezbollah  in the future Third Lebanon War.

The simulators which were used in the drill were developed by Ground Forces Command programmers, many of whom are 19-year-old "computer geniuses," and were based on games such as Call of Duty and Battlefront. However, the graphics and 3D imagery in these simulators would put even the most advanced videogames to shame.

Golani soldier during the drill (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

In one of the giant rooms sat the "Hezbollah unit," made up of IDF soldiers and officers playing the part of the terrorists fighting the IDF Golani and tank forces in the drill.

The major who was in charge of the "Hezbollah unit" said, "In general, we only bring a single platoon of soldiers. But this time, we brought an entire brigade. This is the largest drill to be held in this lab since it was built 20 years ago."

The commander then explained his objective as "Hezbollah unit commander." He said "our objective is to defend the area around the Lebanese village. We drew up our battle plans based on actual Hezbollah strategies and weapons that IDF intelligence has collected on the Lebanese terror group. In pretending to be Hezbollah we used their actual strategies, such as the use of terror tunnels."

(Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

He was fighting against soldiers of the 51st Golani platoon, commanded by Capt. Amichai Hod.

"When you're running and sweating in the field, there are certain things that you don't pay attention to. Here (in the lab), you can concentrate on these new issues. It enables me to have flexibility as a company commander, and gives me the ability to improve (my skills) on the weapons systems which I will be using in the future," the company commander said.

Outside the labs where the "fighting" is taking place, the head of the IDF 7th tank brigade, Col. Dan Newman, already knows what he wants out of the new weapons.

(Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

"We need a lot more lethality with fast rates of fire and at high speeds. As a commander of a combined brigade, I want more (intel) collection capabilities and more accurate attack capabilities so that I won't need to chase after some terrorist on a motorcycle."

It seems he may just get what he wants.
On Sunday, Florida police reported that a gunman wielding an assault-type rifle and a handgun took hostages and opened fire inside Pulse, a crowded gay nightclub based in Orlando, FL, killing approximately 20 people and wounding 42 others before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers.

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Outside Club Pulse (Photo: AP)

Police Chief John Mina also said the shooter had some sort of "suspicious device." He said the suspect exchanged gunfire with an officer working at the club around 2 am, then went back inside and took hostages.

Around 5 am, authorities sent in a SWAT team to rescue the hostages, afterwhich a gunfight broke out. During the fight, the suspect died.

Mina said police have not determined the exact number of casualties, but that "approximately 20" people were found dead inside the club.

Police press conference following the shooting

During a news conference, Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special Agent in Charge Danny Banks said that the mass shooting was being investigated as an act of terrorism. He said authorities are looking into whether this was an act of domestic or international terror, and if the shooter was a lone wolf.

"This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as a domestic terror incident," said Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings.

Police on the scene (Photo: AP)

Police had previously said on Twitter that there was a "controlled explosion" at the scene of the shooting at Pulse. Mina said that noise was caused by a device intended to distract the shooter.

Mina Justice was outside the club early Sunday trying to contact her 30-year-old son Eddie, who texted her when the shooting happened and asked her to call the police. He told her he ran into a bathroom with other club patrons to hide. He then texted her: "He's coming."

"The next text said: 'He has us, and he's in here with us,'" she said. "That was the last conversation."

Dozens of police vehicles, including a SWAT team, swarmed the area around the club. At least two police pickup trucks were seen taking what appeared to be shooting victims to the Orlando Regional Medical Center.

Scene of the shooting (Photo: EPA)

Pulse posted on its own Facebook page around 2 am: "Everyone get out of pulse and keep running." Just before 6 am, the club posted an update: "As soon as we have any information we will update everyone. Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love."

Police said local, state and federal agencies were investigating the case.

The inside of Pulse on a previous night

Jon Alamo said he was at the back of one of the club's rooms when a man holding a weapon came into the front of the room.

"I heard 20, 40, 50 shots," Alamo said. "The music stopped."

Club-goer Rob Rick said it happened around, 2 am, just before closing time.

"Everybody was drinking their last sip," he said.

He estimated more than 100 people were still inside when he heard shots, got on the ground and crawled toward a DJ booth. A bouncer knocked down a partition between the club area and an area in the back where only workers are allowed. People inside were able to then escape through the back of the club.

Police and civilians outside the club (Photo: AP)

Christopher Hansen said he was in the VIP lounge when he started hearing gunshots. He continued to hear shooting even after he emerged, where police were telling people to back away from the club. He saw injured people being tended to across the street.

"I was thinking, are you kidding me? So I just dropped down. I just said please, please, please, I want to make it out," he said. "And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood. You hope and pray you don't get shot."
Air strikes carried out by Syrian or Russian warplanes killed more than 20 people in the northwestern city of Idlib on Sunday, monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

Areas hit included a market, and at least five children were among those killed, the British-based Observatory said. It said the death toll was expected to rise because of the number of people seriously wounded.

It said it did not know whether Syrian or Russian jets had carried out the strikes. Both are operating in the area.

Russia deployed warplanes to Syria last year to support President Bashar al-Assad against rebels seeking to end his rule, and have supported Syrian government forces in a separate fight against Islamic State (IS) group further east.

Idlib city and the province by the same name is a stronghold of rebel groups including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. Air raids in the town of Maarat al-Numan, about 30 km (20 miles) south of Idlib killed another six people, the Observatory said.

There has been heavy bombardment of areas in Idlib province in recent weeks, including air strikes that killed at least 23 people last month.

Fighting in Syria's five-year civil war has intensified since a February ceasefire deal which took hold in the west of the country but excluded al Qaeda and IS group, but quickly began to unravel.

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DHAKA- Authorities in Bangladesh are continuing a nationwide crackdown on thousands of criminal suspects to try and stop a growing wave of brutal attacks on minorities and activists in the country.

Police spokesman Kamrul Ahsan said Sunday that police arrested 5,324 people over the weekend, including 85 suspected Islamist radicals. The majority of those arrested have petty criminal records. More arrests are expected through this week.

The attacks have alarmed the international community and raised questions about whether Bangladesh's secular government can protect minorities and secular writers and intellectuals in the Muslim-majority nation.
The Tel Aviv University (TAU) Alumni Organization celebrated the 60th anniversary of the founding of the university with a massive concert event attended by over 5,000 alumni.

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The TAU Alumni Organization is the largest of its kind in Israel, boasting over 60,000 members, amongst them world leaders in the fields of industry, science, economics, and the social sciences. TAU counts over 170,000 people as alumni.

Tel Aviv University celebrated 60 years (Photo: Eitan Goldstein)

Notable alumni from the university include Knesset members from all across the political spectrum, former IDF chiefs of staff, Supreme Court justices, artists, actors, economists, captains of industry, and even Israel's first astronaut.

The event began at Jacob Square on the university quadrangle where attendees were treated to gourmet hamburgers, goose breast hotdogs, and all manner of coffees and pastries. There was also an open bar sponsored by 647 Bar Experience, with Weihenstephan beer and various Israeli wines on offer.

Some of the food on offer (Photo: Eitan Goldstein)

647 Bar Exprience at the event (Photo: Eitan Goldstein)

The gates finally opened, and those in attendance filed into the stadium which had been set up for the concert. Several notable speakers spoke at the event, including President of TAU Yosef Clapter.

He said during his speech that "together, we constitute a huge force with which to lead not only Israel but the whole world in a meaningful way. The TAU Alumni Organization was established to keep and develop the special connections formed between the alumni. It aims to strengthen the relationship with the community and create a place for mutual growth."

TAU President Professor Yosef Klaptor with Sigal Eder, Head of the Friends of TAU Associatin (Photo: TAU Alumni Association)

Following his speech, Sigal Ader, Chairwoman of the Friends of TAU Organization and one of the initiators of the TAU Alumni Organization spoke. She said in her speech that "the TAU Alumni Organization is a lot more than its name, it is a wide ranging system of bonds of friendship whose goal is to improve the lives of all. It is an organization which works not only for itself, but also has the power, the skills, and the ability to work for the benefit of others."

The chairwoman of the Organization , Sigalit Ben Hayoun, then gave her speech. In it, she said that "we are proud that TAU that the university has decided to celebrate its 60th birthday with this major event for the university's alumni and families. The Alumni Association was established a year ago, and was only in touch with about 20,000 alumni. We've since tripled our numbers and are now in communication with over 60,000."

Alon Almog with his wife Didi alongside Sigalit Ben Hayoun, Chairwoman of the TAU Alumni Association (Photo: TAU Alumni Organization)

Finally, TAU alumnus and Israel Prize recipient, Gen. (ret.) Doron Almog took the stage. He said in his speech "I would like to raise two flags tonight; the flag of personal excellence and the flag of social excellence. I often ask myself if the ivory tower can turn into a lighthouse for society. I call on TAU to take more steps towards social giving. I believe that this can positively affect Israeli society, and strengthen the whole of society."

After these moving and powerful speeches, it was finally time for the main performance to begin.

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Shalom Hanoch in action (Photo: Eitan Goldstein)

Shalom Hanoch, considered to be the father of Israeli rock, came out onstage with his entire big band. Despite the fact that he is pushing 70 years of age, he performed with the spirit and energy of a performer 40 years younger. The happiness, energy, and enthusiasm he clearly had while performing on the TAU stage was felt by all in attendance, and continued throughout the concert. Despite the fact that he perfromed for almost three hours straight, he seemed to have no sign of weariness, and could have gone on all night.

Ninet Tayeb (Photo: Eitan Goldstein)

After performing some of his most famous songs, he invited Ninet Tayeb onto the stage. It was evident from the beginning that the two were in sync with each other, with Tayeb's vocals perfectly accompanying Hanoch's amazing rock skills and guitar riffs, and her energy only adding and dovetailing with Hanoch's on stage. With Tayeb's powerful vocal performance alongside Hanoch's incredible musical talent, the experience turned almost religious in nature.

Aviv Gefen (Photo: Eitan Goldstein)

Finally, Aviv Gefen took the stage with Hanoch for a truly rocking experience. Gefen's beautiful voice complimented Hanoch's musical talents to provide a unique experience for the attendee. By the time Gefen took the stage, the majority of the concert goers had left the bleachers and swarmed the stage to get as close as possible to these incredible musicians.

With great food, inspirational speeches, and an amazing concert, it is clear that the TAU Alumni Organization will have a positive impact on all of those who are associated with it, and will continue to be a light for all of Israeli society.
Tens of thousands of people celebrated the Jewish holiday of Shavuot at leisure sites all over Israel on Sunday. Beaches on the Sea of Galilee and on the Mediterranean were completely full with thousands of visitors.

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Shavuot, coming exactly seven weeks after Passover, is the holiday which celebrates the day when the Jews received the Torah on Mt. Sinai, thereby becoming a unified nation. It is also celebrated as the holiday when the first wheat harvest is carried out. Dairy products such as cheesecake, cheese blintzes, sambusak, siete cielos cake, and other dairy foods are traditionally eaten on the holiday.

Israelis at the Sea of Galilee (Photo: Kinneret Authority)

Campers at the Sea of Galilee (Photo: Kinneret Authority)

Approximately 40,000 people were at beaches around the Sea of Galilee by the afternoon hours.In one of the more ingenious schemes to keep the Sea of Galilee clean, employees at Dugit beach gave trash bags to families, and any family which collected three bags full of garbage would receive free parking.

Meanwhile, Dor Beach next to Zikhron Yaakov was closed due to overcrowding.





People swimming in the Sea of Galilee (Photo: Kinneret Authority)

Three full trash bags gets you free parking at this Sea of Galilee Beach (Photo: Kinneret Authority)

Ein Gedi Nature Reserve Manager Dudi Greenbaum said, Its always packed in Ein Gedi. Regardless, its always crowded. Its always full of people. He went on to say that at least 2,000-3,000 people arrive daily to visit the reserve.

Car show in Karmiel (Photo: Karmiel Municipal Spokesperson)

On Saturday, some 100,000 people visited national parks and nature reserves around the country. Particularly arge crowds were spotted at Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv, Gan Hashlosha National Park, Achziv National Park and HaBonim Park in Jerusalem.

Girls riding horses in the Golan on Shavuot (Photo: Merom Golan Tourism)

Holiday activities included a rodeo show at Kibbutz Merom Golan followed by a dairy-centric feast. Another holiday feast is due to take place on Sunday at 17:30 in the fields of Moshav Kfar Yehoshua.

The city of Karmiel hosted its annual exhibit of rare automobiles. Some 10,000 visitors attended the exhibit, which included hundreds of cars and motorcycles.
It's the event that has gotten under Lebanese merchants' skin: Mamdouh L. is a businessman whose dealings include a chain of electronics stores. Thanks to his seniority and reputation, he was able to arrange for himself a monopoly on providing equipment and spare parts for dozens of television channels operating in Beirut. It's he who purchases equipment, sends technicians, is responsible for the proper operating of broadcasts, and manages the training center. At the end of the month, he stuffs his bank accounts with impressive sums. He lives like a king in an expansive villa, keeps a fleet of cars and a retinue of servants, and his children learn in the US's most expensive universities.

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But a fortnight ago, an economic-political storm landed on Mamdouh. Assistant Secretary for the Department of the Treasury of the United States Daniel Glaser, responsible for intelligence, went to Beirut with a "blacklist" of senior Hezbollah officials and insisted that the governor of the Central Bank close the accounts of 100 commanders in Hezbollah's military wing, political wing, ministers identified with the organization, and members of parliament.

When it comes to criminal organizations that work on the lines of an international mafia, Glaser said, we do not differentiate between combatants and propagandists. For us, the political wing gives orders, and the military wing is the architect of their enactment.

Nasrallah (Photo: AFP)

It is interesting that Washington did not bother to call Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Congress's decision to define the organization as a criminal empire fed by a regular, monthly flow of money from Tehran and as the recipient of side incomes in the amount of hundreds of millions of dollars from arms smuggling, drug trafficking, and money laundering in Europe, South America, and Africa.

Now Mamdouh L. is up to his neck in it. As a Shi'ite, his heart is with the growing activity in Dahiyeh in Beirut, but his head is with his fortune. He's signed a long-term contract with the Hezbollah channels Al-Manar and Al-Mayadeen. The authorities have informed him that his name is currently on probation, off the intelligence service's blacklist. But if he continues to work with Nasrallah's broadcasting studios, his electronics store will go out of business, and he himself will be in the crosshairs. On the other hand, if he tries to get away, he'll get into trouble with the Revolutionary Guards and with Hezbollah's military wing. He might find a bomb under his Mercedes one morning.

Hezbollah's economic activity stands at around 40 percent of Lebanon's economy. With the US administration pressuring on the one hand and Saudi Arabia stopping its annual infusion of cash on the other, its financial system has starting working under the table. Hezbollah ministers are being paid unofficially, and members of parliament are receiving their salaries in cash. Like a drowning man who threatens to drag down his rescuer.

But Glaser won't be anyone's fool. Before he left Beirut, he left the managers of the banks and the stock exchange instructions to report any unusual activity: anybody suddenly closing all his accounts, anybody opening new accounts in straw men's names, and anybody who suddenly withdraws large amounts.

Because of Hezbollah's long arms, Lebanon hasn't managed to select a president for the past five years. Tourists, an important revenue industry, are deterred. If we add the flow of refugees from Syria, which creates a sharp increase in unemployment, Lebanon is beginning to choke. The administration in Washington made sure to purposefully impose sanctions before Ramadan began last week. This impedes the opening of the "merciful tables" for the needy, stops charitable donations, and neutralizes the bonuses for the families of fighters in Syria.

Nasrallah has warned the banking heads not to cave to American "crime," and he is already establishing channels that will bypass sanctions. In contrast, the interior minister is revealing whispers behind the scenes. Even Hezbollah has prepared a "blacklist" of collaborators. Both are on the verge of suffocating, ready to swear behind the scenes that Israel is the one who assembled for American intelligence the "100 list."
Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a member of the Hamas Politburo, indicated that Fatah and Hamas will unlikely reach a reconciliation agreement in the coming weeks. Al-Zahar told Donya Al-Watan, a Palestinian news outlet, "Abu Mazen (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) does not want reconciliation" on Saturday night.

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Al-Zahar argued that Hamas and Fatah have failed to reach an agreement because the latter has refused to implement previous reconciliation agreements. He said that the Beach Agreement, signed in April 2014, requires the government to hold legislative elections, but "Abu Mazen doesn't want them because he will lose them."

Al-Zahar added that differences on security coordination have also complicated talks with Fatah: "We agreed with Egypt that Israel is the enemy, and Abu Mazen says that security cooperation with Israel is holy."

Member of the Hamas Politburo Mahmoud Al-Zahar (Photo: Reuters)

Hamas has increased its criticism of the Palestinian Authority since the beginning of the recent round of violence for its security cooperation with Israel. For its part, the PA has continued security cooperation, despite multiple threats to end it.

Al-Zahar also issued a harsh critique of the French Initiative: "The French Initiative is like any other initiative, negotiations for the sake of negotiations and without results. We have rejected the principle of negotiations."

In a separate context, Al-Zahar revealed that the Hamas Politburo will hold elections at the end of this year. He said heard during his most recent trip to Doha that current chairman of the Hamas Politburo Khaled Mesha'al does not intend to run for another term as chairman.

Fatah Spokesperson Osama Qawasmeh responded to Al-Zahar's statements on Sunday morning: "In light of the Arab efforts to end the black coup wherein Hamas exploited Palestinian blood, divided the homeland, and did terrible things to our people and the Palestinian issue, we hope that Al-Zahar and those similar to him will stop this recklessness.

"We, in Fatah, will not lower ourselves to that level of statements that do not seek to do anything, but ensure the continuation of the coup and strengthen the division that Israel has created."

Saudi and other Arab leaders had stated this week that Hamas and Fatah may sign a reconciliation agreement before the conclusion of Ramadan. Moreover, the Hamas-affiliated Al-Risalah reported that Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Mesha'al will meet next week in Doha.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement on Sunday evening following the shooting in Orlando: "On behalf of the people and government of Israel, I extend our deepest condolences to the American people following last nights horrific attack on the LGBT community in Orlando.

"Israel stands shoulder to shoulder with the United States at this moment of tragic loss.

"We send our heartfelt sympathies to the families of the victims and wish a full and speedy recovery to the wounded."
NEW YORK - Sunday evening's Tony Awards have been dedicated to those affected by the Orlando nightclub shooting that killed at least 50 people.

In a statement Sunday, the Tony Awards said "our hearts are heavy for the unimaginable tragedy." The awards, it said, will be dedicated to the friends and family of those affected by the most deadly mass shooting in US history.

Organizers didn't say how the evening's broadcast would be affected. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the star and creator of "Hamilton" who's expected to be the night's big winner tweeted a rainbow-colored heart with "Orlando" written beneath it.
WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama decried the deadliest mass shooting in American history on Sunday as an "act of terror" and an "act of hate" targeting a place of "solidarity and empowerment" for gays and lesbians. He urged Americans to decide whether this is the kind of "country we want to be."

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Speaking hours after the shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Obama said the FBI would investigate the shooting as terrorism but that the alleged shooter's motivations were unclear. He said the U.S. "must spare no effort" to determine whether the suspect, identified by authorities as Omar Mateen, had any ties to extremist groups.

"What is clear is he was a person filled with hatred," Obama said of the alleged shooter.

Obama speaking after the attack

Obama said this was "an especially heartbreaking day" for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, and a sobering reminder that an attack on any American is an attack on all, regardless of their race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

"The shooter targeted a night club where people came together to be with friends to dance and to sing -- to live," Obama said. "The place where they were attacked is more than a night club. It was a place of solidarity and empowerment, where people have come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds and to advocate for their civil rights."

For Obama, the hastily arranged remarks were the latest in what's become a tragically familiar routine. Since he took office in 2009, Obama has appeared before cameras more than a dozen times following mass shootings and issued written statements after many others. The massacres have brought him to places like Newtown, Connecticut; Tucson, Arizona; and Charleston, South Carolina, to offer condolences and implore the nation to finally get serious about stemming gun violence.

After a gunman in Newtown killed 20 first graders and six adults in 2012, Obama dedicated much of the start of his second term to pushing legislation to expand background checks, ban certain assault-style weapons and cap the size of ammunition clips. That measure collapsed in the Senate, and since then, the political makeup of Congress have made new gun laws appear out of reach. Still, Obama has sought to take incremental steps using his own authority to tighten rules for obtaining a gun.

Obama spoke from the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, named after the former press secretary who was shot and permanently disabled in an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.

He also signed a proclamation on Sunday ordering flags to be flown at half-staff until sunset on Thursday in honor of the victims.

Vice President Joe Biden canceled a planned trip Sunday to Miami to hold a fundraiser for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. Biden's office said he would remain at his family home in Delaware while receiving updates about the shooting before returning to Washington in the evening.
ORLANDO, Fla. - A gunman wielding an assault-type rifle and a handgun opened fire inside a crowded gay nightclub early Sunday, killing at least 50 people before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers, police said. It was the deadliest mass shooting in American history.

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Authorities were investigating the attack on the Florida dance hall as an act of terrorism. The gunman's father recalled that his son recently got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami and said that might be related to the assault.

At least 53 people were hospitalized, most in critical condition, officials said. A surgeon at Orlando Regional Medical Center said the death toll was likely to climb.

Mayor Buddy Dyer said all of the dead were killed with the assault rifle. "There's blood everywhere," Dyer said.

Witnesses described a chaotic scene when the gunfire began shortly before the club known as Pulse was to close. "Some guy walked in and started shooting everybody. He had an automatic rifle, so nobody stood a chance," said Jackie Smith, who had two friends next to her get shot. "I just tried to get out of there."

The suspect exchanged gunfire with a police officer working at the club, which had more than 300 people inside. The gunman then went back inside and took hostages, Police Chief John Mina said. Around 5am, authorities sent in a SWAT team to rescue the hostages.

Authorities were looking into whether the attack was an act of domestic or international terror, and if the shooter acted alone, according to Danny Banks, an agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

"This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as domestic terror incident," Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said.

The previous deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. was the 2007 attack at Virginia Tech, where a student killed 32 people before killing himself. The suspect in the Orlando attack was identified as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida.

Rep. Alan Grayson named the shooter, citing law enforcement officials. A federal law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation also confirmed the name. The official was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mateen's father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News about his son seeing the men kissing a couple of months ago.

"We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident," Seddique said. "We are in shock like the whole country."

FBI agent Ron Hopper said there was no further threat to Orlando or the surrounding area.

When asked if the gunman had a connection to radical Islamic terrorism, Hopper said authorities had "suggestions that individual has leanings towards that." Mateen's father said the attack had nothing to do with religion, he said.

In addition to the guns, the shooter also had some sort of "suspicious device," the police chief said. Authorities said they had secured the suspect's vehicle, a van, outside the club.

A SWAT truck and a bomb-disposal unit were on the scene of an address associated with Mateen in a residential neighborhood of Fort Pierce, Florida, about 118 miles southeast of Orlando.

Relatives and friends, many in tears, gathered outside the hospital to learn the fate of loved ones. Smith did not know the conditions of her friends and came out of the hospital and burst into tears.

Christine Leinonen drove to Orlando at 4 a.m. after learning of the shooting from a friend of her 32-year-old son, Christopher Leinonen, who was at Pulse and is missing.

She has not heard from her son and fears the worse. "These are nonsensical killings of our children," she said, sobbing. "They're killing our babies!"

She said her son's friend Brandon Wolf survived by hiding in a bathroom and running out as the bullets flew.

A woman who was outside the club early Sunday was trying to contact her 30-year-old son, Eddie, who texted her when the shooting happened and asked her to call police. He told her he ran into a bathroom with other club patrons to hide. He then texted her: "He's coming."

The alleged shooter

"The next text said: 'He has us, and he's in here with us,'" Mina Justice said. "That was the last conversation."

Pulse posted on its own Facebook page around 2 a.m.: "Everyone get out of Pulse and keep running." Just before 6 a.m., the club posted an update: "As soon as we have any information, we will update everyone. Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love."

President Barack Obama was briefed on the attack and asked for regular updates on the investigation, the White House said.

Jon Alamo said he was at the back of one of the club's rooms when a man holding a weapon came into the front of the room.

"I heard 20, 40, 50 shots," Alamo said. "The music stopped."

Club-goer Rob Rick said the shooting started just as "everybody was drinking their last sip."

He estimated more than 100 people were still inside when he heard shots, got on the ground and crawled toward a DJ booth. A bouncer knocked down a partition between the club area and an area where only workers are allowed. People inside were then able to escape through the back of the club.

Christopher Hansen said he was in the VIP lounge when he heard gunshots. He continued to hear shooting even after he emerged and saw the wounded being tended across the street.

"I was thinking, 'Are you kidding me?' So I just dropped down. I just said, 'Please, please, please, I want to make it out,'" he said. "And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood. You hope and pray you don't get shot."
In the wake of the attack on an Orlando gay bar, killing 50 persons and injuring dozens of others, two survivors of the Barnoar shooting in 2008 discussed their reactions with Ynet while Israelis manifested their solidarity with the American victims.

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Tel Aviv City Hall (:  )

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Tomer Raviv, 24, was young when he was injured in the Barnoar attack in 2008. Since then, he has become a police officer, he studies law and works as a personal trainer. He heard about the attack on the gay club in Orlando while a Shavuot meal. "Undoubtedly it took me back," he said and response to the posts he read on social media. "I saw posts that say, 'They deserve it; we need to kill and burn the gays. They have no right to exist.'

Tomer Raviv (Photo: Katriel Kraus)

"This shows how racist, intolerant, and unsupportive our society is. The responses of people on social media are exactly the same responses as those of the Barnoar attack. This brings me backmy heart is broken into pieces every time I hear LGBT people are murdered because of who they are. In my opinion, we are a population under threat-being LGBT is a dangerous matter.

Soldarity demonstrations (:    )

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"I know that I cannot go to certain cities holding hands with my boyfriend, because if I walk holding hands with a man, that could bring about great harm to me, even death. It follows us everywhere, even in Tel Aviv, and our house. It is impossible to run away from homophobia."

Zion Square in Jerusalem

He added, "We must raise our consciousness and wake up the government because such an event could happen Israel again. The writing is on the wall, and it is just a matter of time."





Supporter in Jerusalem (Photo: Gil Yohanan)

Yonatan Box was also injured in the Barnoar shooting and is now disabled. He shared his reaction to the Orlando attack: "Hatred against LGBT people is not new and does not surprise me. I am trying not to look at the past.

Tel Aviv City Hall

"Yes, I have fears that this will happen again in Israel. I do not understand why it is impossible to live in peace and quiet. I am going at the end of the month to the gay pride parade in Haifa, and I have fears that something will happen like what happened in Jerusalem, Barnoar, or abroad."





Gan Meir in Tel Aviv (Photo: Matan Turkiya)

Box harshly rebuked the government for their handling of his and other Barnoar survivors' cases: "The state has abandoned usthey don't treat us like victims of a terrorist attack. The state didn't care. I don't intend to discuss this with the press again. I dont see any reason to go any deeper into this; it only depresses me more. I am trying to be as optimistic as possible."





Orlando (Photo: Reuters)

A number of solidarity events with the victims of the Orlando attacks took place around Israel on Sunday afternoon and evening. The Tel Aviv Municipality lit its southern facade overlooking Rabin Square to display the LGBT pride, American, and Israeli flags, and a candlelight vigil was held at Gan Meir. In Jerusalem, a group of people gathered in Zion Square holding rainbow flags and signs of support.
A powerful explosion occurred outside the headquarters of the Lebanese Blom Bank in the western part of the Lebanese capital Beirut late on Sunday, causing damage to the building, security sources and witnesses said.

The sound of ambulance sirens was heard in the area near the busy shopping district of Hamra Street.

The interior minister told Reuters that the headquarters of Lebanon's Blom Bank was the target of the bomb.

In a statement to Lebanon's news agency LBCI, Lebanon's Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk said that no casualties reported the explosion in Hamra.

The Lebanese Red Cross said two people received minor injuries, the National News Agency reported.

Smoke rose from the Verdun area of Beirut after the blast. Local television showed footage of a damaged building and said shattered glass had fallen to the ground from several storeys up.

A security source said the bomb had contained 2 kg (4 lb) of explosives.

"Politically it is clear that target was Blom Bank only," he said, adding that the attack had nothing to do with Islamic State (IS) group, which has mounted suicide bombings in Beirut. Machnouk said initial reports indicated there had been no fatalities.

The last bomb attack to hit the Lebanese capital killed more than 40 people in the southern suburbs, an area where the Shia Muslim Hezbollah group is dominant. The bombing was claimed by the Sunni IS group.

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A suicide bomber killed three and wounded seven at a field hospital for forces fighting Islamic State (IS) group in their Libyan coastal stronghold of Sirte on Sunday, a security source said.

The bombing caused extensive damage to the hospital, about 50 km (30 miles) from the front line, the source said. Two other attempted suicide bombings against forces positioned just outside the centre of Sirte did not cause casualties, he said.

Brigades aligned with Libya's UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) have made rapid advances over the past month. This week they entered Sirte, engaging IS group militants in street battles and targeting them with air strikes.

The brigades, made up mainly of fighters from the western city of Misrata, have faced suicide bombings, snipers and mines. At least 120 brigade members have been killed and more than 500 wounded, security and hospital officials say.

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The Housing Industry Association (HIA) said those raising oversupply concerns need to realise the importance of the residential construction industry to national economy and has warned of the danger that could come if there was a slowdown in the sector.

Regardless of particular views around Australias different apartment markets, the last thing the Australian economy needs is an abrupt decline in new home construction activity. That outcome would severely dent economic and employment growth, HIA chief economist Harley Dale said.

Current discussion around new apartment markets in Australia and the potential for oversupply needs to remain balanced and grounded in order to maintain confidence in the new home building sector, Dr Dale said.

But while the HIA believes the good associated with the apartment construction boom outweighs the bad, others have raised concerns about the viability of continued construction in the sector.

Those problems could soon be even more pronounced as the impact of stricter lending polices begins to materialise in the off-the-plan sector.

While lending restrictions have been commonplace for Australian investors recently, a number of lenders have recently ramped up their restrictions on foreign borrowers, with many completely stopping the practice.

Ian Hosking Richards, chief executive officer of Rocket Property Group, said those moves have already resulted in additional properties, including new units, hitting the market.

Westpac screwed up and lent a lot of money to people that probably dont even exist with forged documents theres a possibility that a lot of off the plan purchases will fall over and come back on to the market, Hosking Richards told Your Investment Property.

Weve already noticed it. Were getting access to stock thats fallen over because it was sold to a foreign investor previously, he said.

There has also been concerns raised after the Victorian, New South Wales and Queensland governments raised property taxes for foreign buyers.

The Queensland government was the latest to do so, with foreign buyers facing an additional 3% stamp duty on residential purchases.

That move has been heavily criticised by the Real Estate Institute of Queensland (REIQ), who claims foreign buyers have accounted for nearly a fifth of the record number of new apartments built in the city recently.

This is potentially disastrous news for our apartment market where some estimates have foreign buyers at around 15% to 20% across Brisbane in the new apartment market, REIQ chief executive officer Antonia Mercorella said

The Gold Coast apartment market also relies on foreign investment levels and this could be a significantly negative impact on that market, Mercorella said.

[The] additional surcharge on those buyers will significantly impact that market, at a time when we cant afford to lose buyers,

According to the HIA, residential construction, which has been at record levels recently, is set to remain elevated over the near future.

The HIA expects 1% rise in total new dwelling commencements in 2016/17, followed by a decline of 13% in 2016/17 which would take commencements to a still historically high level of nearly 189,000. The cycle is forecast to bottom in 2018/19 at around 163,600 commencements.
Gunman killed 50 people and injured 53 in a gay nightclub early on Sunday in Florida before being shot dead by police, in what authorities call the deadliest mass shooting in American history

Reaction to the Florida mass shooting at the Pulse Orlando nightclub Sunday when police say a gunman wielding an assault-type rifle opened fire before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers; at least 50 people were killed and dozens of others wounded.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said the attack was the deadliest single US shooting incident, eclipsing the 32 people killed in the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech university, Reuters reported.

The father of the man named as the shooter in a massacre at a gay Florida nightclub says he's in shock and that he wasn't aware of anything his son might have been planning.

Mir Seddique is the father of Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida. Seddique told NBC News that his son got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago and thinks that may be related to the shooting.

Seddique says: "We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident. ... We are in shock like the whole country."

The father also says the incident has nothing to do with religion.

The shooter, who was identified as Omar S. Mateen, was among the 50 killed, and that they're investigating whether the incident was an act of terrorism, officials said.

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President Barack Obama says the nightclub shooting in Orlando was an "act of terror" and an "act of hate."

He said Sunday that the FBI is investigating it as an act of terrorism and that no effort will be spared to determine whether the shooter was affiliated with terrorist groups.

Obama has ordered flags to be flown at half-staff at the White House and federal buildings until sunset Thursday "as a mark of respect for victims of the act of hatred and terror" at a gay Florida nightclub.

He's also directing the same observance at embassies and other US government facilities abroad.

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Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani said in a tweet that he "severely condemn the heinous & unforgivable crime in Orlando. It was a coward act of terror. Praying for all those affected by this tragedy."

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Egypt condemned Sunday's Florida nightclub shooting, according to a foreign ministry statement.

"The foreign ministry spokesperson assured that Egypt stands by the American people in these hard times, offering condolences to the victims' families and wishing for fast recovery for the injured," the statement read.

"It's horrific, it's unthinkable. And just hopes go out to all those who were shot that they can recover." Bernie Sanders, Democratic presidential candidate, speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press."Pulse Orlando said on its Facebook page, "Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love."

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"I was thinking, 'Are you kidding me?' So I just dropped down. I just said, 'Please, please, please, I want to make it out.' And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood." Christopher Hansen, who was in the VIP lounge when he heard gunshots.

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"This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as domestic terror incident." Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings.

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"Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, families and all those affected by this horrific tragedy. We are a strong and resilient state and we will devote every resource available to assist with the shooting in Orlando." Gov. Rick Scott.

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"We are heartbroken and angry that senseless violence has once again destroyed lives in our state and in our country. Gay clubs hold a significant place in LGBTQ history. They were often the only safe gathering place and this horrific act strikes directly at our sense of safety." Equality Florida.

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"Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act." Tweet from Hillary Clinton, Democratic presidential candidate.

Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

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Donald Trump, Republicans presidential hopeful Tweet, "Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!"

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

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French President Francois Hollande "condemns with horror" the mass killing in Florida and "expresses the full support of France and the French with America's authorities and its people in this difficult time." Statement from Hollande's office.

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"We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured. The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence." Rasha Mubarak, Orlando regional coordinator for Florida's chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

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The Vatican says Pope Francis is expressing the "deepest feelings of horror and condemnation" over the massacre. Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi says the pontiff denounces the "homicidal folly and senseless hatred." He added that Francis joins the families of victims and injured in "prayer and compassion."

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"Our heart is with our American brothers." Tweet from Italian Premier Matteo Renzi.

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"Aghast by the ever more dramatic news of the nightclub massacre." In a tweet from Italy's foreign minister, Paolo Gentiloni.

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UK Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs Philip Hammond said in a tweet that he is "shocked by shooting in Orlando", and that his "thoughts with the victims and families". He added that the UK foreign office is in contact with local authorities.

Shocked by shooting in #Orlando. More than 50 killed or wounded. FCO in contact w/local authorities. Thoughts are with victims & families  Philip Hammond (@PHammondMP) June 12, 2016

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News

Washington, DC - Leaders from five state departments of agriculture and eight U.S. agribusinesses and organizations will accompany Agriculture Acting Deputy Secretary Michael Scuse on a trade mission to Ukraine and Romania June 11 to June 18 to expand export opportunities for U.S. food and agricultural products.

"Both Ukraine and Romania offer potential as markets for U.S. farm and food products," Scuse said. "U.S. exports to Romania have been on the rise, and could be further helped by passage of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. In Ukraine, the continuing economic and political transition could likewise lead to new business opportunities. I look forward to joining U.S. agricultural leaders as we seek to enhance our trading relationship with both nations."

Mission participants come from across the United States and represent a range of agricultural products and commodities. They will meet with potential customers and host government representatives, forging relationships and learning about the market conditions and business environment in Ukraine and Romania.

Mission participants include representatives from the Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and Oregon departments of agriculture, as well as the following companies and organizations:

American Commodity & Shipping Inc., Vienna, Va.

Case IH (Case New Holland), Washington, D.C.

Cuba Beverage Co., San Diego, Calif.

JM Grain, Garrison, N.D.

LL International, LLC, Corte Madera, Calif.

Missouri Rice Council/USRPA, Cape Girardeau, Mo.

Unverferth Manufacturing Company, Inc., Kalida, Ohio

Valley Milk, LLC, Turlock, Calif.

USDA trade missions open doors and deliver results for U.S. exporters, giving them the opportunity to gather market intelligence and develop strategies to start or expand their sales in key markets overseas. For more information, visit www.fas.usda.gov/topics/trade-missions.

The past seven years have represented the strongest period for American agricultural exports in the history of our country, with U.S. agricultural product exports totaling $911.4 billion between fiscal years 2009 and 2015.In fiscal year 2015, American farmers and ranchers exported $139.7 billion of food and agricultural goods to consumers worldwide. Since 2009, USDA has worked to strengthen and support American agriculture, an industry that supports one in 11 American jobs, provides American consumers with more than 80 percent of the food we consume, ensures that Americans spend less of their paychecks at the grocery store than most people in other countries, and supports markets for homegrown renewable energy and materials. USDA has also provided $5.6 billion in disaster relief to farmers and ranchers; expanded risk management tools with products like Whole Farm Revenue Protection; and helped farm businesses grow with $36 billion in farm credit. The Department has engaged its resources to support a strong next generation of farmers and ranchers by improving access to land and capital; building new markets and market opportunities; and extending new conservation opportunities. USDA has developed new markets for rural-made products, including more than 2,500 biobased products through USDA's BioPreferred program; and invested $64 billion in infrastructure and community facilities to help improve the quality of life in rural America. For more information, visit www.usda.gov/results.
News

El Paso, Texas - A citizen of Mexico wanted for a 2009 rape in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosi was deported Tuesday by officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).

Juan Humberto Collazo Sanchez, 39, was turned over to Mexican authorities at the top of the Stanton International Bridge.

Collazo Sanchez is wanted for rape in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, according to a Mexican arrest warrant dated Oct. 26, 2009.

On Nov. 24, 2015, Collazo Sanchez illegally entered the United States near Douglas, Arizona; he was arrested five days later and served with a notice and order of expedited removal, Form I-860.

On Jan. 25, the Mexican attorney generals office in El Paso advised ERO El Paso of Collazo Sanchez warrant issued by the office of the attorney general in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, for rape. The attorney general of Mexico requested EROs assistance in turning him over to Mexican law enforcement officials at the time of removal.

ERO El Paso took custody of Collazo Sanchez on May 26, and transferred him from the Reeves County Correctional Institution, in Pecos, Texas, to the El Paso Processing Center (EPC) in El Paso.

Since Oct. 1, 2009, ERO has removed more than 1,150 foreign fugitives from the United States who were sought in their native countries for serious crimes, including kidnapping, rape and murder. ERO works with the ICE HSI Office of International Operations, foreign consular offices in the United States, and Interpol to identify foreign fugitives illegally present in the United States. Members of the public who have information about foreign fugitives are urged to contact ICE by calling the toll-free ICE tip line at 1 (866) 347-2423 or internationally at 001-1802-872-6199. They can also file a tip online by completing ICEs online tip form.

In fiscal year 2015, ICE conducted 235,413 removals nationwide. Ninety-one percent of individuals removed from the interior of the United States had previously been convicted of a criminal offense.

ICE is focused on smart, effective immigration enforcement that targets serious criminal aliens who present the greatest risk to the security of our communities, such as those charged with or convicted of homicide, rape, robbery, kidnapping, major drug offenses and threats to national security.
Latest News

Washington, DC - Three International Space Station crew members are scheduled to depart the orbiting outpost Saturday, June 18. NASA Television will provide coverage of their preparations for departure and return to Earth, beginning at 9:15 a.m. EDT Friday, June 17.

Expedition 47 Commander Tim Kopra of NASA, Flight Engineer Tim Peake of ESA (European Space Agency) and Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko of the Russian space agency Roscosmos will undock their Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft from the space station at 1:52 a.m. Saturday and land in Kazakhstan at 5:15 a.m. (3:12 p.m. Kazakhstan time).

Their return will wrap up 186 days in space for the crew since their launch in December 2015. Together, the Expedition 47 crew members contributed to hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science aboard humanitys only orbiting laboratory.

NASA TV will air coverage of the departure and landing activities at the following dates and times:

Friday, June 17

9:15 a.m. -- Change of command ceremony in which Kopra hands over station command to NASA astronaut Jeff Williams

10:15 p.m. -- Farewell and hatch closure coverage (hatch closure scheduled for 10:35 p.m.)

Saturday, June 18

1:30 a.m. -- Undocking coverage (undocking scheduled for 1:52 a.m.)

4 a.m. -- Deorbit burn and landing coverage (deorbit burn scheduled for 4:21 a.m., with landing at 5:15 a.m.)

7 a.m. -- Video File of hatch closure, undocking and landing activities.

6 p.m. -- Video File of landing and post-landing activities and post-landing interviews with Kopra and Peake in Kazakhstan.

At the time of undocking, Expedition 48 will begin aboard the station under Williams command. Williams and his crewmates Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos, will operate the station for three weeks until the arrival of three new crew members.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency are scheduled to launch July 6 (Eastern time) from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

Check out the full NASA TV schedule and video streaming information at:

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

Keep up with the International Space Station, and its research and crew, at:

http://www.nasa.gov/station
Yuma News

Yuma, Arizona - Today, at approximately 8:35 a.m., officers responded to the Chevron located at 500 E. 32nd Street in reference to an armed robbery.

An unknown male subject took a Ford F350 after threatening the driver with a hand gun. The suspect fled the scene to Country Club drive where he abandoned the vehicle and got into a gray or silver Toyota sport like vehicle with a spoiler and a temporary license plate. The vehicle then fled north bound on Arizona Avenue.

An off duty Border Patrol agent was at the Chevron when the armed robbery occurred and attempted to apprehend the suspect while at the Chevron and on Country Club Drive. Shots were fired between the suspect and the Agent. The Agent is uninjured, it is unknown if the suspect was injured.

The suspect is only described as a male. We have no further description at this time.

The Yuma Police Department encourages anyone with any information about this case to please call the Yuma Police Department at (928) 373-4700 or Sergeant Freedman at (928) 373-4749 or 78-Crime at (928) 782-7463 to remain anonymous. Remember if your information leads to an arrest you may receive up to a $1,000 cash reward.
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In his solo exhibition Affiche Plaisir, graphic designer Adam Abd El Ghaffar offers a selection of new posters for well known Egyptian films

Adam Abd El Ghaffar is displaying his work in a solo exhibition named Affiche Plaisir in Gallery Misr until the end of Ramadan.

Showcasing redesigns of posters from iconic Egyptian movies is a rather new creative endeavour that this young Egyptian artist with a background in advertising and graphic design has decided to take on.

In the statement accompanying the display, the artist says that the traditional commercial role of the film poster is changing and the artists should take the lead to define its new function.

Ahram Online met with Abd El Ghaffar in an attempt to understand more about his artistic vision.

Ahram Online (AO): After a career of ten years in the commercial advertising field, why this shift to exhibit in an art gallery?

Adam Abd El Ghaffar (AAG): Painting was my hobby since childhood, though I did not study art academically. I graduated from the faculty of commerce, then I started working in a print house in the graphic design field. I took many courses and I became a professional designer working for renowned advertising companies.

Though advertising is a creative field, you do not really express yourself beyond the limits of the commercial requirements. For example, I love cinema, and I wanted to draw alternative posters for my favourite films. At the beginning I did think about an exhibition. I designed four posters for the films by director Marawan Hamed and sent them to the director. He liked them and suggested that I continue. This is how it started.

I had my first exhibition in Egypt in 2015, followed by an exhibition in Lebanon where I included ten Lebanese film posters. I also exhibited in Tunisia with a few more Tunisian film posters. I believe that my works represent a different perspective of how the film poster can look.

AO: Your style differs from what we see in the posers design field on a large scale. Do you think your design style could be adopted in this sector?

AAG: Poster art is known around the world but in Egypt we use posters only as an advertising tool not as an art that could express certain ideas or directions. In the 1990s, people hung on the walls posters that included representations of their favourite stars. This is where it ended.

Moreover, the role of the poster has changed throughout the decades. Now people watch the trailers, hence the visual function of the posters has changed as well. As follows, it is time to change how the posters look. My idea is to go more minimalistic, to use fewer items to express the concept of the film, while keeping the artistic value as a creative function.

AO: So you believe your designs could respond to the new expectations?

AAG: The audience is me and you, when people needed the crowded poster they had a different taste and life style. I belong to the minimal design school. Now, people need to see different things and they are ready for the change. The problem is that we do not fulfill their needs. Based on the feedback of the people who visited my exhibitions I can say they liked this way.

AO: But did they like your work as art works displayed in a gallery or would they want to see them as film posters on billboards?

AAG: I guess if they see those posters in billboards they will like them too, but there is not yet a chance for that to happen. I believe that if people liked my posters in an exhibition, they will like them as real film posters.

AO: How do you choose your films?

AAG: First I have to love the film. It is difficult for me to design a beautiful poster for a film that I do not like. When I see a film that I want to make a poster for, I ask myself three questions: What the director wants to say and can I translate his message visually? What was the turning point in the film? What is the main visual icon in the film and which image would summerise it the best? The answer is the poster.

AO: Can you give us examples of how you implement this strategy in your designs?



AAG: In Sherif Arafas 1993 film Al-Mansi, in the party scene, the main characters match box is finished and when someone hands him a lighter, he takes control of everyone in the room. Hence, the lighter is my item in this poster.



In Mohamed Khans The Wife of an Important Man (1987), the death of Abdel Halim Hafez was the turning point for the main characters and for the country. That was the time when romanticism died and when the life of the wife and the husband changed. That is why I chose Abdel Halim Hafezs face and a black stripe for the film poster.



On the other hand, in the poster of 1949, Ghazal Al Banat by Anwar Wagdi, you can see that the impression of Naguib el-Rihani. His sadness and frustrations and the bad luck he had appears on his face, and that is why I used his face for the poster.

AO: In many of your posters you use the English language (with a few exceptions where we find Arabic calligraphy for the film titles and credits). Why would you use English when presenting Arabic films? What is your target audience?

AAG: [In Egypt], we have many xenophiles, we like things when they have English or a foreign language. My target is to go international. I am looking forward to exhibit abroad and to be understood by an international audience who can know more about the films if they Google them. The great film director Youssef Chahin used French language posters for some of his films.

I keep the original Arabic title, only when it is beautifully written and when it could be a visually added value, like the one you find in the poster of the The Emperor (El Imbarator, 1989) by Tarek Al Eryan.

AO: Tell us more about your technique.

AAG: The tool does not matter as much as the final result. I use digital tools and I believe digital art aims to facilitate the work of the artist and to save his time. l love digital art more, it gives you different options to try different solutions, all in a very short time.

I think any painter, even those who use oil, would love to see their works with different colours or different solutions. Estimations are very important for the artist.

I could draw and paint but it would take a very long time and effort, which would be translated into more expenses.

I start with drawing a sketch summing up the idea, then I do the rest on the computer. I make only 10 copies of any given poster.

AO: And what is your upcoming project?

AAG: I hope to exhibit this collection in Dubai later this year and then Ill move to my next project which is about music. I have considered exploring different techniques in the future as well, for example silk screen print is something I like a lot.

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Sunday inaugurated 'Child Labour Tracking System (CLTS)' in order to keep a track of rescued child labour for their proper rehabilitation besides announcing financial help of Rs 25,000 for every rescued child labour to be given from Chief Minister's Relief Fund.

Kumar, who was participating at a function on World Day against Child Labour here, also said he had in principle accepted the 'Charter of Demands' submitted by the rescued child labour and announced setting up a committee headed by Chief Secretary for implementation of children's demands.

"Every rescued child will be given Rs 25,000 from Chief Minister's Relief Fund. The money would directly go to their bank account. It (money) would instill a sense of confidence among the children. The money would be given to all those children who will be registered under the tracking system," Kumar said while addressing the gathering on the occasion.

The prominent demands of rescued children are- more schools with all facilities, residential schools for such children, training facilities in order to get job, a year (from Aug 15, 2016 to Aug 14, 2017) be declared and celebrated as child year etc.

The main reasons behind the child labour are illiteracy and poverty, he said and emphasised the need for such Child Labour Tracking System (CLTS).

Talking about the significance of the tracking system, the Chief Minister said "Even if they are rescued from working as child labour, there is no guarantee that they (rescued child labour) would not be forced to work. So there is need for tracking those children who have been rescued besides, monitoring such children as to what they are doing."

Expressing surprise over the prevalence of child labour, Kumar wondered saying that "there is still child labour despite the fact that government is giving every facility to the needy right from their birth and Anganwadi Kendras. There is mid day meal, uniform, books, cycles etc."

Education Minister Ashok Choudhary, Labour Resources Minister Vijay Prakash, Cooperative Minister Alok Mehta, Social Welfare Minister Kumari Manju Verma, Labour Department secretary Dipak Kumar Singh, Social Welfare Department Principal Secretary Vandana Kinni and other prominent persons also spoke on the occasion.
New Delhi: Virendra Tawde, a Sanatan Sanstha activist arrested in connection with the murder of Narendra Dabholkar in 2013, was on Sunday remanded to CBI custody till June 16.

Tawde, a doctor, associated with right wing Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, was arrested on Friday from his residence at Panvel in Raigad district of Maharashtra and was produced in a Pune court, a day later.

CBI sources said they had been questioning Tawade over the last few days to probe his role in Dabholkar murder case. According to News18, CBI in its report claimed that Tawde was in constant touch with Akolkar, a wanted in 2009 Goa blast case.

Anti-superstition activist Dabholkar, an Indian rationalist and author was shot dead by unidentified assailants while he was on a morning walk on the bridge near Omkareshwar temple in Pune on August 20, 2013.

He was murdered days after the Maharashtra government assured that it would introduce the anti-superstition Bill - opposed by many right-wing groups as "anti-Hindu." It was his campaign that led the state government to draft the Bill
Berhampur: Biju Patnaik Adarsha Vidyalaya, a residential school for scheduled tribe (ST) students, is being set up on Palur Hill in Rangeilunda block of Ganjam district.

The foundation stone for the school, regarded as the first of its kind in the state, was laid by Chief minister Naveen Patnai yesterday.

The school, which will be managed by the SC&ST development department will impart quality education to around 3,000 students from Class VI to XII. It is likely to start functioning in the next two years after completion of the construction of the academic block, hostel buildings and other infrastructure facilities, said Director, SC&ST development department, RC Sia.

The school will impart education in English and affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). The main aim is to provide quality education to ST students in the state, he said.

The government has sanctioned Rs 45-crore for the school this year, he said. An academic block, hostel building, staff quarters, playground and boundary wall will be constructed with the money, he added. The district administration has provided 20 acres for it.

Higher education minister Pradeep Panigrahi said trafficking of tribal students on the pretext of providing quality education in other states will be checked with the functioning of the school.

The government has already established 100 model schools affiliated to the CBSE in each of the 100 blocks. These schools started functioning from April under the school and mass education department. The proposed Adarsh School is different from these as it is exclusively meant for ST students, said the Director.
Allahabad: With an eye on the crucial Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) national executive will begin its two-day meet here from today.

The executive meet will be be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah among other senior leaders. The Prime Minister will address a Parivartan Rally in Allahabad as soon as the National Executive concludes today.

According to ANI report, BJP posters is seen all across Allahabad ahead of party's 2-day National Executive meeting.

The broad idea behind the meet is to highlight the achievements of the Narendra Modi government in the last two years and the alleged corruption of the Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh. The meeting will also discuss what the BJP says is the deteriorating law and order, corruption and misrule in Uttar Pradesh.

Earlier, there were speculations that Home Minister Rajnath Singh will be projected as the party`s chief ministerial candidate in Uttar Pradesh. However, the possibility was denied by the Home Minister on Saturday.

According to News18, the UP chief ministerial candidate issue is not likely to figure in Allahabad. In fact, the party will not have any discussion regarding projection of Uttar Pradesh chief ministerial candidate in the national executive meet.

The meet will primarily focus on listing achievements of Modi government in the last two years and expanding the party base in the country.
Chandigarh: Yoga guru Ramdev on Sunday voiced dissatisfaction with the scale of efforts being made by the Centre to bring back the black money stashed abroad even as he said when lawmakers are "listening" in Parliament, one should not "speak" on the street.

"Because of lack of effective steps (by the government) on the black money issue, I and people in the country are dissatisfied," Ramdev said.

"I have spoken with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and BJP President Amit Shah on this issue. When people are listening in Parliament then we should not speak on the street. At least they are listening," Ramdev said.

The yoga guru, however, praised the central government for carrying out development projects and its zero tolerance policy on corruption.

"In Modi government, Railway minister Suresh Prabhu has been working in a big way. Transport minister Nitin Gadkari is also doing a commendable job on road projects. Because of zero tolerance policy of the government on corruption, steps are being taken against corrupt people," said Ramdev.

In December last year, Ramdev had spoken out against NDA government's initiatives to bring back blackmoney from foreign countries but hoped that it will soon act on the issue.

On the controversy revolving over film 'Udta Punjab', Ramdev said he could not comment on the matter as he does not watch movies.

"But the use of drugs in the country is growing which should be stopped and efforts are required to be made by everybody in this regard," he said.

On Congress' proposed protest against drug menace and "deteriorating" law and order situation in the state tomorrow at Jalandhar which will be led by party's vice President Rahul Gandhi, Ramdev said, "one should first ask him (Rahul) whether he took drugs in his life ever."

He also took a dig at Congress over plans to elevate Rahul Gandhi as party president.

"If they make Rahul Gandhi the President of the party, the BJP workers shall become lazy as they will have to put in less hard work. But if they chose to make Priyanka as President then BJP people will have to do Yoga," he said in a lighter vein.

On RJD chief Lalu Prasad lauding him last month for attaining "huge" success through "sheer hard work", Ramdev said, "some people cannot digest as Lalu ji has stopped abusing Ramdev."
Beijing: China said on Sunday that more talks were needed to build a consensus on which countries can join the main group controlling access to sensitive nuclear technology.

Large differences remain over the issue of non-NPT countries joining the NSG, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said in an online statement.

With regard to what to do on the issue of non-NPT signatories joining (the NSG), China consistently supports having ample discussion on this to seek consensus and agreement and come to a unanimous decision, Hong said.

The NPT is the political and legal basis for the entire international non-proliferation system, Hong further said, adding that China would support the group in further talks to come to a consensus at an early date, as per Reuters.

China is seen as leading opposition to the US move to include India in the 48-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), but other countries, including New Zealand, Turkey, South Africa and Austria, also oppose Indian membership, according to diplomats.

Opponents argue that granting India membership would further undermine efforts to prevent proliferation. It would also infuriate Pakistan, which responded to Indias membership bid with one of its own and has the backing of its close ally China.

Pakistan joining would be unacceptable to many, given its track record. The scientist that headed its nuclear weapons programme ran an illicit network for years that sold nuclear secrets to countries, including North Korea and Iran.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has formally asked the United States administration and Congress last week to support its application for joining the NSG.

According to Dawn, Pakistan submitted a formal application in Vienna last month, expressing its desire to join the group But the US did not yield to Islamabad's demands.

In a letter to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Pakistan's Ambassador Jalil Abbas Jilani reminded Congress that Pakistan had taken a series of steps that qualify it for joining the NSG.

"Pakistan's desire to participate in the NSG stands on solid grounds of technical experience, capability and well-established commitment to nuclear safety. Pakistan has operated secure and safeguarded nuclear power plants for over 42 years. Safe and sustainable civil nuclear energy is essential for Pakistan's future energy security and its economic development," he said, as per ANI.

A decision on Indian membership is not expected before an NSG plenary meeting in Seoul on June 20, but diplomats said Washington has been pressuring hold-outs.

Most of the hold-outs oppose the idea of admitting a non-NPT state such as India and argue that if it 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.

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.

(With Agency inputs)
Allahabad: Once one of the three pillars of the BJP along with Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi is now nowhere on the party's leadership spectrum here at the National Executive meeting.

Joshi, a former party president, is nowhere to be seen on the posters and hoardings here, even in those that feature both Vajpayee and Advani.

BJP sources said Joshi, who represented this city in parliament for three terms, has been here for two days, but no one from the party has paid him any attention.

Some party workers have put up posters expressing their protest against what they see as an insult of a senior leader.

"What is it if not an insult to Joshi ji? He is deliberately being belittled. Why is he being treated like this?" a leader who is close to Joshi told IANS.

He said the BJP has marginalised Joshi in his own 'Karmabhoomi' Allahabad where he studied, taught, and started his political career.

After being pushed out from Allahabad, Joshi contested the Lok Sabha election from Varanasi in 2009 and from Kanpur in 2014. The BJP fielded businessman Shyama Charan Gupta, who came from the Samajwadi Party, from Allahabad in 2014.

Allahabad represents the broader trend in the BJP whereby the party leaders have been pushed out by the outsiders, said sources.

"Outsiders have now more say in BJP than the party leaders. The BJP itself is becoming 'Congress-yukt' (permeated with Congress), rather than 'Congress-mukt' (free of Congress)," they said.
Allahabad: With eye on next year's assembly polls in five states, including Uttar Pradesh, and on "Mission 2019", Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday exhorted BJP party workers to preserve the massive goodwill the party received in 2014 till the next general elections.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah, in his speech, trained his guns at the state's Samajwadi Party government and raised the issue of alleged "migration" of Hindus from Kairana, in Shamli district, and the recent Mathura violence.

The Prime Minister, addressing a meeting of party office bearers in Allahabad before the official inauguration of the party's two-day National Executive meet, said: "The need of the hour is to preserve the massive goodwill that the party got in 2014, like a monsoon downpour," according to a BJP leader, who attended the office bearers meet.

The Prime Minister also asked the party leaders to preserve its 11 crore members.

Reminding party leaders of "Mission UP" and the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Modi said the party needs to preserve these 11 crore people as "voters and members" of the party by involving them with social initiatives and campaigns of the BJP government.

Modi also gave tips to party leaders to change in accordance with technology, time and age, keeping in mind the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh which are due next year.

However, Amit Shah targetted the Samajwadi Party and the Congress in his speech.

He attacked the SP government over the "atmosphere of violence" in Uttar Pradesh.

"The incident at Kairana where a large number of people are migrating is very unfortunate. The Mathura violence was also very unfortunate. The SP government has been unable to control the situation," Shah said in his presidential address.

"There is no peace. Here, the atmosphere is of violence and the state government has failed to control all these," the Bharatiya Janata Party president said.

Shah also directed his ire against the Congress, saying its politics of obstructionism had become the hallmark of the main opposition party in the last two years.

This is also the reason for the weakening of the Congress, Shah maintained.

Providing to the media highlights of the party president's address, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad later said that Shah compared the performance of the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre with that of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.

"While there was policy paralysis in the Congress-led government, our government has made progress with clear policy decisions -- where policy decisions are taken by the political leadership and the executive implements them," Prasad quoted Shah as saying.

"The previous government was marred by policy paralysis. Our government has been a decisive government that has ended a lot of dilemmas of the previous regime," he said.

The BJP president pointed out that the two years of the Modi government have been corruption-free.

He also asserted that the NDA government's two years have been exceptionally good and a lot has been achieved.

"This year, two important things have happened. First, our government, led by Narendra Modi, at the Centre has completed two years. And second, the performance of the Bharatiya Janata Party has been very good in the state assembly elections," he said.

Referring to the recent polls, Shah said: "The victory in Assam has opened the gates to north-east India for the BJP."

"From Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Kutch to Guwahati, the BJP is expanding," he said at the meeting, which was attended, among others, by senior ministers, BJP chief ministers, party MPs and state unit chiefs.

He said: "The Congress-led UPA government was in a dilemma whether rural development should take precedence over urban development. Whether there should be reforms or social welfare?"

"Our government has overcome all such dilemmas by striking a fine balance between rural and urban development, reforms and social welfare and issues of governance," Prasad quoted Shah.

The party chief also said that unlike in the past the "disconnect between the foreign and defence policy" has also been done away with in the last two years.

He also expressed confidence that the party will return to power in Uttar Pradesh in 2017 and the Centre in 2019 as well.

Shah referred to the top civilian honours accorded to Modi by two prominent Islamic countries, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, in a clear message to Muslims who continue to be wary of BJP due to its Hindutva agenda.
New Delhi: President Pranab Mukherjee is leaving on a six-day three-nation tour to Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Namibia today.

On the first leg of his visit, he will reach the Ghanaian capital Accra later this evening, where he will hold talks with his counterpart John Mahama on bilateral, regional and multilateral issues of mutual interest.

This is the first ever visit to Ghana by the head of the state and comes as a part of the Government's efforts to deepen ties with the African countries.

A number of agreements are likely to be signed between both the countries including on visa waiver and line of credit.

Apart from bilateral level talks President Mukherjee will also have engagement with the business community in Accra as India plans to scale up its investment in the mineral and gas rich nation.

Indian Investments in Ghana is substantial and amounts to nearly 3 billion dollars in various sectors and trade between both the countries has gone up three times in the last three years.

The President's visit is expected to open up new opportunities of cooperation between the two countries.
Fazilka: In a major development at the Indo-Pak border area two Pakistani smugglers were shot dead by BSF jawans.

The two Pakistani smugglers were killed and one was injured in a gunfight in Fazilka city in Punjab on Sunday.

What actually happened?

The incident took place at a border out post called Sawana at around 2:30 am, when the soldiers on duty noticed some unusual activity beyond the fencing, but still inside the Indian territory and when they challenged the infiltrators, they opened fire on the jawans.

In retaliation, the BSF jawans also fired and two smugglers were killed and one was seriously injured and was rushed to the hospital.

Following the encounter, 15 packets of heroin and weapons were also recovered from them, including two pistols and a boregun.

The incident comes in the wake of the spotlight being on Punjab over extensive drug smuggling and multiple cases of drug abuse.
Srinagar: Ignoring the opposition from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Sunday retracted her decision to put separatists leaders, Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq under house arrest to prevent them from holding a protest rally against the proposal to set up a Sainik Colony in Kashmir.

The separatist leaders Geelani and Farooq, who were arrested earlier today ahead of their meeting on the Sainik Colony issue, have been released.

Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Chief,Mohammad Yasin Malik, who was also arrested today morning for the same issue, is still in custody.

Mehbooba, according to ANI report, decided to go soft on the separatist leaders and gave a nod to their release.

Both factions of the Hurriyat Conference and the JKLF have earlier too launched protests in joint effort against the state government's decision to set up separate colonies for Sainiks and Kashmiri Pandits in the valley.

Hizbul Mujahideens commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani had earlier released a video warning attack on such colonies if they are set up in the valley. The video was reportedly directed at the J&K Police warning them of further attacks.

Though the Jammu and Kashmir Government has reiterated that it has no plans to set-up a Sainik colony in the valley, the controversy was raked up after reports said the government is planning to set up shelters for "floating population" and implement a new industrial policy that allows a non-state subject to get land on lease anywhere in Kashmir for 90 years.
Srinagar: Separatist leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq were put under house arrest on Sunday ahead of their meeting on the Sainik colony issue.

Meanwhile, Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Yasin Malik has also been arrested.

According to reports, both factions of the Hurriyat Conference and the JKLF are launching a joint effort against the state government's decision to set up separate colonies for Sainiks and Kashmiri Pandits in the valley.

Post the 2008 Amarnath land row, this is reportedly the first time in eight years the separatists are assembling at one platform.

Though the Jammu and Kashmir Government has reiterated that it has no plans to set-up a Sainik colony in the Valley, the controversy was raked up after reports said the government is planning to set up shelters for "floating population" and implement a new industrial policy that allows a non-state subject to get land on lease anywhere in Kashmir for 90 years.
London: Going by the pace at which social media has begun to dominate the world, it is not surprising that people would resort to the virtual space to know about people.

This said, the first place one would go to gain an insight about someone is the largest social media platform, Facebook.

Facebook is one platform, which connects everyone at a global level and today, almost every single person's profile can be found there with a simple click.

So, it doesn't come as a surprise that many girls and boys log on to Facebook to 'check' on their respective boyfriends and girlfriends.

However, it's the stalking that people do after a breakup, that has made the news. As per a new study, trailing and tracking your ex's on Facebook could hamper your mental health.

"Participants who remained Facebook friends with the ex-partner, relative to those who did not remain Facebook friends, reported less negative feelings, sexual desire, and longing for the former partner, but lower personal growth," said psychologist Tara Marshall of Brunel University London.

Marshall analysed the data provided by 464 study participants that revealed that Facebook surveillance was associated with greater current distress over the breakup, according to the study published recently in the journal of Cyberpsychology, Behaviour, and Social Networking.

"Overall, these findings suggest that exposure to an ex-partner through Facebook may obstruct the process of healing and moving on from a past relationship," she added.

The study results emerged after controlling for offline contact, personality traits, and characteristics of the former relationship and breakup that tend to predict post-breakup adjustment.

Earlier studies have linked Facebook stalking to increased levels of anxiety.

(With IANS inputs)
Dhaka: Facebook, Microsoft and Google have agreed to work with Bangladesh government over "inappropriate contents" on the Internet, the Parliament was told on Sunday amidst a series of brutal killings by Islamists of secular bloggers and minorities.

Speaking at a question-and-answer session, State Minister for Telecoms Tarana Halim said that not only social media giant Facebook, but the two internet behemoths, too, have also agreed to respond to the government's request within two days.

"After intense discussion with Facebook, Google and Microsoft, it has been agreed that they will respond to requests with 48 hours," she said.

Last year, the Bangladesh government suspended the use of Facebook, its messenger app, and some other communication apps for 22 days, citing security reasons following the murder of two foreign nationals and the attack on a police check post.

Before the 22-day ban, the government had blocked some popular calling and messaging services such as WhatsApp and Viber for several days during a three-month agitation by the BNP-led alliance early last year.

Police had said then they were having trouble tracking down saboteurs, as they were using these apps to communicate.

In November last year, Halim had written to the Facebook authorities, conveying her wish to discuss with them a gamut of issues related to the social network site and its messenger app.

The minister subsequently held a meeting at Facebook's Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore and told reporters about the social media giant's promise to cooperate.

Facebook's half-yearly 'Government Request Report' in April this year showed that it had, for the first time, responded to requests from the Bangladesh government.

Between July and December last year, the government had sought information on 31 Facebook users. The report said that it had responded to 16.67 per cent of the requests.

But between January 2013 and June 2015, government's request on 37 users had failed to evoke any response from the social media site.

Replying to another query, Minister Halim said that Google, too, had agreed to remove videos from its Youtube arm following requests from the government.

Bangladesh has been witnessing a string of brutal attacks by Islamists. The ISIS and al Qaeda in the Indian Peninsula have claimed some of the attacks but government denies the presence of these groups in Bangladesh.

The attacks since last year, which has left more than 30 people dead, has put Bangladesh under a global spotlight for failing to prevent such attacks.

On Friday, a 60-year-old Hindu ashram worker was hacked to death by ISIS jihadists, days after another priest was killed by the same terrorist group in the Muslim-majority nation.
Dhaka: Bangladesh police have detained over 5,000 persons, including many belonging to Islamist parties, in the first two days of an ongoing week-long nationwide anti-militant crackdown which began on Friday.

At least 2,132 people, including 48 militants, across the country were detained as part of the drive in the last 24 hours till 6 a.m. (local time) on Sunday, Xinhua news agency reported.

Police earlier detained 3,192 people, including 37 suspects in the first 24 hours of the clampdown against militants.

Among the militants arrested on the second day, 47 are reportedly members of banned militant outfit Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) while one belongs to Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT).

The week-long clampdown was aimed at dismantling all terrorist outfits and their networks in the country, an official said.

Bangladesh has been witnessing 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.


Kolkata: In the wake of a series of attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, the minority community there wants Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian government to take up the matter with Dhaka to ensure their safety and security.

"The Hindu community, which is the biggest minority community in Bangladesh, is vulnerable in Bangladesh. Fundamentalist and Jamat forces are trying to wipe out Hindus from Bangladesh.

"We feel that India being a Hindu majority country, should do something. We have high hopes on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He should act and take up the matter with Bangladeshi government and ensure the safety and security of Hindus," Rana Dasgupta, general secretary of Bangladesh Hindu

Buddhist Christian Unity Council and noted Human Rights activist, told PTI.

A 60-year-old Hindu ashram worker, Nityaranjan Pandey, was hacked to death on June 10 by suspected Islamists, becoming the fourth person from the minority community to be killed in a series of brutal attacks on secular activists in the Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

"The religious majority and the fundamentalist groups want to eliminate the Hindu community. Since last two years, this religious cleansing has gained further pace. Stability in the Indian subcontinent region can never be achieved with Bangladesh turning into a fundamental state. So if India wants stability in the region it should act to stop the annihilation of minorities in our country," Dasgupta, who is also Prosecutor of International Crimes Tribunal, claimed.

Pandey's murder comes within a week of killings of a Hindu priest, a Christian grocer and wife of an anti-terror police officer. 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 Islamist forces. Bangladesh has also seen a series of attacks on secular and liberal bloggers in 2015
Chennai: A day after BJP hit out at DMK chief M Karunanidhi for criticising the Central government's 'linguistic and cultural chauvinism' in promoting Sanksrit and Hindi, AIADMK on Sunday mocked at the nonagenarian leader-led party for using Hindi during elections.

AIADMK mouthpiece "Dr Namadhu MGR" today caricatured Karunanidhi and reproduced his views asking how the Centre could go ahead in promoting Hindi and Sanskrit.

Seeking to mock the party for using Hindi selectively, the caricature had in the backdrop a poster put up by DMK during an election in chaste Hindi.

A cartoon of a DMK worker was also depicted asking Karunanidhi how he "sang a Hindi song" during a previous Lok Sabha poll to seek support for party candidate Dayanidhi Maran, his grand nephew.

Karunanidhi had said on June 10 that BJP regime was "obstinate in thrusting Sanskrit as it is a convenient route towards fundamentalist Hindutva."

He had cited media reports to say that the Centre may set up a board for Vedic education.

He also referred to introduction of Sanskrit as a third language in CBSE schools and efforts to get Hindi empanelled as an official UN language to buttress his point that Sanskrit and Hindi were being promoted vigorously.

BJP State president Tamilisai Soundararajan had yesterday hit out at him for criticising the Centre for its move to set up a board of Vedic education and charged him with indulging in politics in the name of language.

She had alleged that Karunanidhi had "ignored" divine Tamil and had demanded to know if it was not a "betrayal" of the Tamil people.

She also had asked, "Can you (Karunanidhi) deny that your party posters in Hindi were pasted in areas dominated by North Indians (during polls)? Can you deny this is brazen opportunism?"
Allahabad: On day one of the BJP's national executive meeting here, party president Amit Shah told office bearers on Sunday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given decisive leadership to NDA govt in last two years.

He also raised the issue of lack of development and governance in Uttar Pradesh. At the same time, the BJP chief pointed out that there was an atmosphere of violence prevailing in UP and cited the recent Mathura and Kairana incidents while attacking Samajwadi Party government.

Addressing the media here, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad quoted Shah as saying, "Amit Shah ji while addressing the executive meet said, 'gateway to the north east has been opened for BJP'."

"From Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Kutch to Guwahati, the BJP is expanding," the BJP chief said.

Prasad added that Shah had compared the performance of the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government with that of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.

"While there was policy paralysis in the Congress-led government, our government has made progress with clear policy decisions - where policy decisions are taken by the political leadership and the executive implements them," Prasad said quoting Shah.

"The previous government was marred by policy paralysis. Our government has been a decisive government that has ended a lot of dilemmas of the previous regime," the BJP president said, as per IANS.

Prasad said that the BJP chief had pointed out that the two years of the Modi government have been corruption-free.

Shah told the meeting, attended by senior ministers, BJP chief ministers, party MPs and state unit chiefs, among others, "The Congress-led UPA government was in a dilemma whether rural development should take precedence over urban development. Whether there should be reforms or social welfare?"

"Our government has overcome all such dilemmas by striking a fine balance between rural and urban development, reforms and social welfare and issues of governance," Prasad quoted him as saying.

The two-day conclave will conclude tomorrow, followed by a rally to be addressed by PM Modi.

The national executive meet is likely to set the agenda for the Assembly elections in UP which is less than a year away.

Posters have come up across the city displaying the header 'Mission 265 Plus' a term coined by Shah who has repeatedly exhorted workers to aim at achieving a thumping majority for the party in the 403-strong UP assembly, as per PTI.

The BJP at present has less than 50 MLAs in the house, a massive decline since the 1990s when it used to be the top political group in the state.

BJP has brought several new faces to its national executive, the highlight being some former Congress leaders, including former Odisha CM and tribal leader Giridhar Gamang and saffron party leader KV Singh Deo, also from that state. Deo is a former state party chief.

Himanta Biswa Sarma, who defected from Congress to BJP and played a key role in its big Assam win, and former Uttarakhand CM Vijay Bahuguna, a new entrant to the saffron party, have also been inducted into the national executive.

(With Agency inputs)
Allahabad: Speaking to office bearers at BJP's national executive meeting here, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Sunday that the party needed to reinvent itself.

As per reports, he also said that the Bharatiya Janata Party needed to move ahead with new ideas and thoughts.

PM Modi arrived at the meeting today evening. Party president Amit Shah is chairing it.

The national executive meet is likely to set the agenda for the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh which is less than a year away.

The two-day conclave will conclude tomorrow, followed by a rally to be addressed by PM Modi.

Posters have come up across the city displaying the header 'Mission 265 Plus' a term coined by Shah who has repeatedly exhorted workers to aim at achieving a thumping majority for the party in the 403-strong UP assembly.

The BJP at present has less than 50 MLAs in the house, a massive decline since the 1990s when it used to be the top political group in the state.

BJP has brought several new faces to its national executive, the highlight being some former Congress leaders, including former Odisha CM and tribal leader Giridhar Gamang and saffron party leader KV Singh Deo, also from that state. Deo is a former state party chief.

Himanta Biswa Sarma, who defected from Congress to BJP and played a key role in its big Assam win, and former Uttarakhand CM Vijay Bahuguna, a new entrant to the saffron party, have also been inducted into the national executive.

(With PTI inputs)
Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh BJP has decided to take up the matter of mass exodus of Hindu families from Kairana city in Shamli district of UP in a big way and has formed a nine-member committee to assess the situation on the spot.

According to reports, the fact-finding team, comprising mainly members of Parliament, will most likely visit Kairana on June 16 to come out with the factual situation prevailing in the city and will submit a report to the state BJP unit at the earliest.

Recently, BJP MP and former Union minister Hukum Singh had claimed that there was a mass exodus of Hindu families from Kairana town. The leader released a list of 346 families that had deserted he Muslim-majority city since 2014 leaving their properties behind after they were allegedly targeted and persecuted by another community.

The MP went to the extent of alleging that there have been at least 10 communal killings in the town, that has become a 'new Kashmir', in the past three years.

Reportedly, the families, mostly 'well-off', fled the city due to repeated extortion and loot by by goons of noted gangster Mukim Kala, currently lodged in a jail.

Government on the issue

The Uttar Pradesh BJP has decided to take up the matter of mass exodus of Hindus and has thus formed a high level team for inspection and is also planning to launch a protest against the Akhilesh Yadav-led government on the matter.

Reacting to the mass exodus report, the National Human Rights Commission had on Friday issued a notice to the Uttar Pradesh government over the alleged exodus from Kairana due to fear of criminals belonging to another community.

No police action taken

The move came on the heels of a complaint that a Hindu woman was recently gangraped and later murdered in the area, but no police action was initiated due to political pressure.

Recently, a Zee Media correspondent, Rahul Sinha, travelled to Kairana and he found that people there were afraid of speaking on camera fearing for their lives.

One of the locals on condition of anonymity revealed that four businessmen were murdered in the area recently. The atmosphere here is not good. After (Muzaffarnagar) riots, relief camps were established here. The atmosphere has turned bad after that, another resident told Zee Media.

While BJP MP and Union Minister Sanjeev Balyan has accused the states Samajwadi Party government of patronising those behind the violence, rivals have alleged that the BJP is trying to stoke simmering communal tensions in the state for electoral benefits.

At least 346 Hindu families have migrated from Kairana due to goondaism and extortion threats. This figure has been provided by none other than Kairana MP Hukum Singh (BJP).
Muzaffarnagar: Two persons sustained bullet injuries during a clash between two groups over irrigating their fields from a government tubewell at Bhawada village here, police said.

Nusralt Ahmad and Khalid were fighting yesterday over using government tubewell to irrigate their fields which later turned into a violent clash in which fire arms were used.

The two injured were identified as Lukman and Jalil.

A case has been registered against four persons in this connection, police said
Kabul: At least 15 insurgents were killed in a military operation in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province.

The 20th Pamir Army Division in a statement said that in addition fifteen other insurgents were arrested, reports Tolo news.

The operation was launched in the area in a bid to prevent insurgent activities in the province.

The statement said that there were no civilian casualties during the operation. It, however, did not provide details over casualties of the security forces during the operation.

The military operation comes in the wake of the recent abduction of at least 200 hundred bus passengers on the outskirts of the city by the militants. Though most were later released, at least 12 were killed after being accused of working for government security organizations.
Chicago: Two men have been killed and at least 17 other people were shot in a 17-hour time span beginning Friday morning.

Chicago Tribune reported on Saturday that this is an equivalent of someone shot every 53 minutes.

A 27-year-old man was shot multiple times in the South Chicago neighbourhood and pronounced dead in hospital afterwards; and a 26-year-old man was killed in the 200 block of West Garfield Boulevard, Xinhua reported.

The shooting victims also include a five-year-old girl hit by a stray bullet and a 73-year-old man shot in the face.

Chicago Police Department is bracing for increased violence.

Chicago has just experienced the deadliest May in the past month, when 66 were killed.
Pittsburgh (US): Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has alleged that China is the "biggest and best abuser" as it was dumping its goods into the US, stealing intellectual property and imposing hefty taxes on American companies doing business in that country.

"China is the biggest and best abuser. Mexico is a smaller version of China," Trump told his cheering supporters in this steel city of Pittsburgh, which is said to be a key swing state for November general elections as he hit out at several countries including Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Trump said he believes in free trade, but it needs to be fair. "I believe in free trade. But for free trade, you need to have smart people on our side. I want to make good deals. I do not want care what you call it," he said.

"I do not want China to dump steel into our country. They are dumping. They are steeling our intellectual property," Trump alleged and warned them of consequences if he is elected as the president of the country.

"If they do not behave, we will put tax on them. They (Chinese) tax us. But we do nothing about it. This is one-way street. ...We got ripped off," he said. "If in November if you pull the right trigger, we are going to have so much fun together," he said, urging people to come out in large number and vote in November presidential elections.

The real estate tycoon from New York claimed he would have a good relationship with China and would enter into a deal with them that would benefit the US and create jobs in the country. "China, when I deal with them, it is going to be great deal. They (Chinese) have no respect for Obama. They have even less respect for crooked Hillary," Trump said.

Trump slammed Obama in his speech. Observing that he never thought Obama would be a great president but believed that he would unite the country. "He (Obama) is a great divider. The country has never been so divided ever," he alleged, adding he would unite the country. "President Obama is incompetent," he claimed.

"I will unite the country, the richer, the poor. I would unite the country through old schools of thoughts by creating jobs. I would not let other country take the jobs," he said asserting that factories would resume manufacturing and create jobs if he is elected as the president in November.
Kabul: The Afghan forces have adopted an aggressive stance against Taliban in the northern region as more than three dozen armed militants have been killed since Friday, officials said on Saturday.

To eliminate militants, the government troops launched major operations against Taliban in Sarkh Kotal, Dand-e-Shahabudin and Dand-e-Ghori districts of the northern Baghlan province on Friday, Xinhua quoted army spokesman Ahmad Jawed Salim as saying.

According to Salim, 15 militants have been killed and nearly a dozen others wounded since the crackdown was launched on Friday.

Aimed at taking back Sarkh Kotal area, the operations would continue until the law and order were restored there, the official said.

The strategically important Sarkh Kotal was captured by Taliban fighters weeks ago and since then the militants could threaten a major highway connecting the capital of Kabul to eight northern provinces.
New Delhi: The attacker behind the deadly Florida nightclub shooting has been identified as 29-year-old US-born citizen Omar Mateen.

Here's what the ABC News and AFP have put out about him;

# Omar Mateen is accused of shooting dead at least 50 people and injuring 50 others at the Pulse Nightclub, a gay club in Orlando, Florida.

# Mateen's parents were born in Afghanistan.

# Mateen was "on the radar" of US officials for some time, but was not the target of a specific investigation.

# A police officer working at the club exchanged fire with Mateen at 2 am.

# Mateen then took hostages, holding them for hours.

# At approximately 5 am, a SWAT team shoots Mateen dead.

# Authorities are yet to rule out Islamic extremism angle.

# Mateen's father said that his son was motivated by hatred of gays and not by his Muslim religion.
Orlando: At least 50 people were dead and more than 53 injured in a shooting that erupted at a nightclub in downtown Orlando, Florida, early on Sunday.

The shooting occurred at the Pulse nightclub which advertises itself on its website as 'Orlando`s hottest gay bar'.

As per reports, the incident began at around 2:00 am (0600 GMT) when a heavily armed gunman seized hostages, prompting a police SWAT team to storm the venue.

Police stormed the venue using explosives and breaking through a wall with a wheeled armored vehicle known as a BearCat.

The shooter was shot dead by the police.

"We have cleared the building, and it is with great sadness that I share we have not 20 but 50 casualties in addition to the shooter. There are another 53 that are hospitalized," Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer told a news briefing, raising the death toll from 20 previously.

Chief of Orlando Police, John Mina, said, "One of the worst mass shootings in our nation's history."

"It appears he was organised and well-prepared," the chief added. He also said that the attacker had an assault-type weapon and a handgun.

Mayor Dyer: 50 dead in Pulse nightclub shooting. @ChiefJohnMina Suspect had handgun and AR15 type rifle.  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

Quoting law enforcement sources, US television networks named the shooter as Omar Mateen, who was born to Afghan parents in 1986 and lives in Port St Lucie, Florida, about two hours drive from Orlando.

CBS News reported that Mateen has no apparent criminal history.

However, police have yet to officially identify the gunman.

Reports said that it was unclear whether all the victims were killed by the gunman or if some died in the ensuing shootout with police.

Meanwhile, a number - 407.246.4357 (city's crisis hotline) - was issued, which said that people could call on it if they were looking for a family member.

On the other hand, Orlando Health (A not-for-profit network of leading community hospitals, specialty hospitals and cancer center) tweeted saying -

Hotline set up for the victims loved ones and families to call: 407-246-4357 in Pulse nightclub mass shooting @OrlandoPolice @FBI  OCSO FL News (@OrangeCoSheriff) June 12, 2016

The current victim count is 50 casualties, and 53 hospitalized. Our focus is on IDing victims, and contacting families.  Orlando Health (@orlandohealth) June 12, 2016

They also said:

At this time, law enforcement is contacting family members. If you know anyone who was or may have been at Pulse, contact @OrangeCoSheriff.  Orlando Health (@orlandohealth) June 12, 2016

And the official Twitter handle of Orlando Police posted the following:

Pulse Shooting: The shooter inside the club is dead.  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

. @ChiefJohnMina officers shot & killed the suspect. In gunfire OPD officer shot: Kevlar helmet saved him pic.twitter.com/L51ynmRAfm  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

Anyone who was at Pulse nightclub and was a witness Please come to the Orlando Police HQ, 100 S. Hughey Ave.  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

Pulse Shooting: If you have any information, call @FBI Hotline: 1-800-CALL FBI  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

If you are looking for a family member. Please call the city's crisis hotline at 407.246.4357 pic.twitter.com/iJxdD3QAHG  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

Earlier the Orlando Police had warned people to stay away from the area.

Shooting at Pulse Nightclub on S Orange. Multiple injuries. Stay away from area. pic.twitter.com/5Di2mc6XUY  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

Pulse shooting: next update by 4:30 am. Media stage at Orange and Gore.  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

At the same time, officials said that the incident was being investigated as a terrorist act.

"Anytime we have potentially dozens of victims in our communities, that I think we can qualify that as a terrorist activity. Whether that`s a domestic terrorist or international one is something we will get to the bottom of," said Danny Banks, of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Office, as per AFP.

Asked whether there was any reason to believe there was a connection to Islamic terrorism, FBI special agent Ron Harper said investigators would be looking into 'all angles'.

"We do have suggestions that that individual may have leanings toward that particular ideology but we can`t say definitively," he said.

(With Agency inputs)
Lagos: A militant group notorious for devastating attacks on Nigeria`s oil industry in the 2000s on Sunday called for dialogue to end renewed violence that has cut oil output.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said its previous attempts to cripple Nigeria`s oil industry did not work and appealed to another armed group, Niger Delta Avengers, to give peace a chance.

"Our message to the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) is simple: The Niger Delta struggle is beyond attacks on oil installations," MEND said in a statement.

MEND urged the Avengers, who rejected on Wednesday a government truce offer, to join negotiations with authorities and to put down their weapons.

Despite the "euphoria of each successful attack", said Jomo Gbomo, who claims to be a spokesman for MEND, the group realised "the gargantuan problems which confront our region" like corruption and pollution continued to grow.

Most of the recent attacks on oil facilities in the oil-rich south have been claimed by the NDA, who want a fairer share of revenue from the sector for local people.

President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered enhanced security in the delta as NDA sabotage of pipelines and attacks on installations have reduced crude production to 1.4 million barrels per day.

The emergence of militant outfits recalls the situation in the 2000s, when groups with broadly similar aims came together under the MEND banner.

The rebels were bought off in the government-brokered amnesty deal but Buhari`s initial announcement to wind down the programme by 2018 is said to have contributed to the re-emergence of militancy.

NDA rebels are also thought to be sympathetic to the prominent former MEND leader Government "Tompolo" Ekpemupolo, who is wanted on multi-million dollar corruption charges.
District of Columbia: President Barack Obama has been briefed by his homeland security and counterterrorism aide on the mass shooting at a gay club in Orlando that left around 20 dead and 42 injured, the White House said Sunday.

Obama asked to receive regular updates on the unfolding investigation into one of the worst mass shootings in US history, and instructed the federal government to provide any assistance necessary, a statement said.
London: A terrified hostage locked himself in a bathroom of a Florida nightclub when the gunman struck the facility early on Sunday.

He sent a text message to his mom, saying, Tell them I'm in the bathroom. He's coming. I'm gonna die.

This was revealed by his mother as she recounted the horror that unfolded in the club. His fate is still not known.

Mina Justice was trying to contact her 30-year-old son Eddie Justice when she received the test message. He asked her to call the police.

In the next text he said, 'He has us, and he's in here with us,' the MailOnline quoted his mother as saying adding, That was the last conversation.

Mommy I love you. In the club they shooting, another text from Eddie read.

His mother then responded: 'U ok,' They say stay them (sic) is anybody hurt. Which bathroom u in.'

Mina Justice was going through hell as she stood outside the nightclub waiting to learn more information regarding the shooting, the Mail said.

Police said a gunman, identified as Omar Matten, shot dead at least 50 people and injured 53 others in a crowded gay nightclub before being killed.

The shooting took place early on Sunday when more than 3o0 people were reportedly inside the club.
Florida: Reports on the gunman who attacked a Florida gay nightclub and triggered a shooting that left 50 dead paint a picture of a violent and prejudiced young man.

The suspect, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, is a Muslim American of Afghan descent and police are investigating whether he may have had a terrorist motive.

US law enforcement is investigating whether he had ties to or was inspired by Islamist extremism, after a source linked to the Islamic State group claimed the attack.

And the FBI confirmed that they had received reports that he made a call just before the massacre to claim allegiance to the Islamic State group.

But relatives interviewed by US media say Mateen, who worked as a security officer, was not especially religious.

But he did have anti-gay views and had regularly assaulted a former wife.

Mateen`s shocked father, Mir Seddique, said his son had recently been offended to see two gay men expressing affection on a Miami street.

"We were in downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music," the father told NBC News in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

"And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry," Seddique said.

The father is a minor celebrity in Afghan political circles, hosting an occasional television show in which he expressed hardline views.

In the "Durand Jirga Show," available on YouTube, he rails against the Pakistani government and announces a quixotic bid to seek the Afghan presidency.

Sunday`s attack, which became the worst mass shooting in modern US history, was carried out in the Pulse nightclub, a well-known gay hangout.

"We are in shock like the whole country," Seddique added. "This had nothing to do with religion."

In a separate interview, a former wife of the suspect who left him in 2011 fearing for her life, said he was violently abusive."He was not a stable person," the ex-wife told the Washington Post, which did not identify her because she fears for her safety.

"He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn`t finished or something like that," she told the Post.

According to the wife`s account the pair had met in New York but in March 2009 had moved in together in Fort Pierce, Florida.

The woman`s parents rescued her from the relationship and the pair were later divorced, according to a court document seen by AFP.

She described him as a "private person" but not especially expressive about his Muslim faith.

In a separate interview with the Washington Post, the leader of the Fort Pierce mosque where Mateen prayed described him as a quiet man.

"He would come and pray and leave. There was no indication at all he would do something violent," Imam Shafiq Rahman told the paper.

Rahman said Mateen would attend prayers with his father and three-year-old son.

The imam`s son, however, described Mateen as "an aggressive person" who used to work out regularly.

Mateen owned a small caliber handgun and worked as a guard at a secure facility for juvenile delinquents. Police said he bought an assault rifle before the attack.

According to the FBI, Mateen was investigated twice for possible extremist views and contact with a US suicide bomber in 2013 and 2014 but never prosecuted.

According to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services website, he had a gun license set to expire in September of next year.
Vatican City: Pope Francis on Sunday appealed to the international community to redouble efforts to end the "modern slavery" of child labour.

The pontiff was speaking on World Day Against Child Labour, sanctioned by the International Labour Organization.

"We must all relaunch efforts to remove the causes of this modern slavery", he said in his weekly audience in St Peter's Square.

"Millions of children are deprived of some of their fundamental rights and find themselves exposed to grave dangers. There are so many slaves today!"

The ILO estimates there are around 168 million children working around the world, around half of whom are doing hazardous jobs that put their health at risk, such as in mines or in quarries.
Beirut: Air strikes on a market in Syria's Al-Qaeda-held city of Idlib killed at least 21 civilians Sunday, as hundreds fled a besieged Islamic State group bastion near the Turkish border.

Five children were among those killed in the air raids on Idlib, which is held by Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front and its allies, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Peace talks towards ending Syria's five-year war have stalled, with no immediate end in sight to a conflict that has killed 280,000 people.

It was not clear who carried out the Idlib strikes, but the Observatory has reported previous air raids by the regime and its Russian ally on Idlib province, which is also controlled by Al-Nusra and rebel allies.

Footage the Observatory said was filmed after the Idlib strikes showed emergency workers training water hoses on a tall building amid a haze of smoke.

In Maaret al-Numan, an area south of the provincial capital, unidentified warplanes also killed at least six civilians including a woman and her four children, the Observatory said.

Russia launched air strikes in support of the Damascus regime in September, allowing forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad to advance against the rebels and IS.

The Britain-based Observatory relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria for its information.

It says it determines what aircraft carried out raids based on their location, flight patterns and the types of planes and munitions involved.

The Observatory said Russian air strikes killed 23 civilians in strikes on Idlib city on May 31, but Russia denied carrying out raids there that day.

Suspected government strikes killed at least 37 civilians in Maaret al-Numan in April, sparking condemnation from Syria`s opposition amid faltering peace talks.Meanwhile, hundreds of civilians escaped the IS stronghold of Manbij in nearby Aleppo province on Sunday, helped by a US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance surrounding the town.

Tens of thousands had been trapped inside Manbij after the alliance encircled the town on Friday in a major blow to the jihadist group controlling it.

"Around 600 civilians fled on foot towards areas held by the Syrian Democratic Forces alliance south of the town," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The SDF "transported them to safer areas".

Those still inside the town were terrified by heavy air strikes in the area, Abdel Rahman said, and food was becoming scarce after the SDF alliance blocked all roads in and out.

At least 223 IS fighters and 28 SDF troops had been killed -- as well as 41 civilians in coalition air raids -- since the alliance offensive against Manbij began on May 31, according to the Observatory.

Manbij lies at the heart of the last stretch of IS-controlled territory along Turkey`s border.

The siege has severed a key IS supply route that had channelled money and weapons from the Turkish border to the group`s de facto Syrian capital of Raqa city.

IS has come under attack on several fronts since declaring a cross-border "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq in 2014.

Millions of people have been displaced since Syria`s civil war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

Peace talks hit deadlock after the opposition walked out of negotiations in April over the escalating violence and lack of humanitarian access.
District of Columbia: CIA chief John Brennan said Saturday that secret findings of a 2002 congressional investigation into the 9/11 attacks should not be taken as evidence of official Saudi complicity.

A decision is expected soon on whether to release the classified 28-page section of the report by the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Former senator Bob Graham, who headed the Senate intelligence committee at the time, has alleged that Saudi officials provided assistance to the 9/11 hijackers and has said the 28 pages should be made public.

"These 28 pages, I believe they are going to come out, I think it`s good that they come out. But people shouldn't take them as evidence of Saudi complicity in the attacks," Brennan said in an interview with Al Arabiya, a Saudi-owned television news channel.

He noted that the report was produced just a year after Al-Qaeda hijackers flew airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.

It "was a very preliminary review, trying to pull together bits and pieces of information, reporting about who was responsible for 9/11," Brennan said in a clip of the interview posted on the station`s website.

"Subsequently the 9/11 commission looked very thoroughly at these allegations of Saudi involvement, Saudi government involvement and their finding, their conclusion was that there was no evidence to indicate that the Saudi government as an institution or Saudi senior officials individually had supported the 9/11 attacks," he said.

The 9/11 Commission, which was set up by then-president George W. Bush, presented its report in 2004.

Brennan added that over the past 15 years the Saudis "have become among our best counter terrorism partners," according to an account of the interview on Al-Arabiya`s website.
London: In a brutal attack which resembled the savage tactics used by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Taliban has cut out a man's eyes, skinned him alive and then threw him to death from a high cliff in Ghor area of Afghanistan.

The victim, a 21-year-old labourer, was targeted because one of his relatives, they claimed, had killed a Taliban commander in December last year.

Fazl Ahmad was still screaming as he was 'skinned alive', the MailOnline quoted a member of parliament in the area Ruqiya Naeel as saying.

Naeel reportedly said that his attackers carved skin off his chest and left his heart exposed.

The barbarity of the killing is similar to those which ISIS have carried out in Syria and Iraq, the Mail said.

The Taliban's atrocities continue unabated in the war-torn even as Afghanistan has hailed Washington's decision to expand the US military's authority to tackle a resurgent Taliban insurgency.

The decision will allow US troops to collaborate more closely with local forces in striking the Taliban.
Washington: US President Barack Obama on Sunday called the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Florida, in which at least 50 people were killed and 53 others injured when a "lone wolf" gunman opened fire early on Sunday, an "act of terror" and "act of hate".

"Although it`s still early in the investigation, we know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate," Xinhua quoted Obama as saying.

The gunman, identified by authorities as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida, was found dead inside the nightclub after a shootout with the police.

Then the suspect went back into the club to continue shooting and took hostages.

About three hours after the shooting first broke out, police shot and killed the suspect during actions to rescue the hostages.

"It appeared he was organised and well-prepared," said Orlando Police Chief John Mina at an earlier press conference, adding that the suspect had an assault-type weapon and a handgun.

Islamic State (IS) terrorist group has claimed the responsibility for the shootings.

In a message published on the group`s semi-official news agency, Amaq, it described gunman Omar Mateen as a "soldier of the caliphate", The Telegraph (UK) reported.

Although the statement did not clarify Mateen`s relation to the group, but the language appeared to suggest he was viewed as a lone wolf attacker.
SAS said it had not calculated how much money it was losing because of the strike, but financial analysts estimated it was costing the airline at least $1.2 million (1.06 million euros) a day

Mediators on Sunday called striking Swedish pilots and employer representatives to the negotiating table, the SAS airline said on the third day of a walkout over wages that has left 50,000 passengers stranded and cost the carrier millions.

"The mediators have called us to a meeting," SAS spokesman Fredrik Henriksson told AFP, adding that the airline did not yet know whether the Swedish pilots union SPF had agreed to the talks.

SPF did not return AFP's calls for a comment.

"We want to sit down at the table as soon as possible," Henriksson said.

On Sunday, SAS cancelled 220 flights operated by Swedish pilots, affecting 26,000 passengers. On Friday and Saturday, another 24,000 passengers were stranded by cancelled flights.

Flights operated by Danish and Norwegian pilots were running as normal.

The walkout comes during a peak travel season, and has hit charter groups hard.

The strike began on Friday at 6:00 pm (1600 GMT) after the pilots union rejected the mediators' proposal of a 2.2 percent wage increase, insisting instead on a 3.5 percent raise.

The employers' organisation however said the pilots' overall demands, including employment contracts offering greater job security, would entail a 10 percent cost increase.

"That would mean a cost increase of almost 100 million kronor ($12 million, 10.7 million euros) a year for SAS. We can't afford that given the current competition," SAS chief executive Rickard Gustafson told news agency TT.

SAS said it had not calculated how much money it was losing because of the strike, but financial analysts estimated it was costing the airline at least $1.2 million (1.06 million euros) a day.

Analysts said the losses could be even greater if customers were to lose confidence in the airline's dependability because of the strike.

"SAS has to weigh the loss of prestige against the consequences of higher wage costs ... People might be hesitant to choose SAS next time," air industry analyst Matts Hyttinge told TT.
After months of negotiations, the Swedish pilots union SPF rejected the mediators' proposal of a 2.2 percent wage increase, insisting on a 3.5 percent increase

Striking Swedish SAS pilots and employer representatives returned to the negotiating table Sunday, the pilots' union said on day three of a walkout over wages that has stranded 50,000 passengers and cost the carrier millions.

"We are in talks now. Hopefully we will be able to come to an agreement," SPF union chief Martin Lindgren told AFP.

On Sunday, SAS cancelled 220 flights by Swedish pilots, affecting 26,000 passengers. On Friday and Saturday, another 24,000 passengers were stranded by cancelled flights.

Flights operated by Danish and Norwegian pilots were running as normal.

The walkout comes during peak travel season, and has hit charter groups hard.

The strike began on Friday at 6:00 pm (1600 GMT) after the pilots' union rejected a proposed 2.2 percent wage increase, insisting on a hike of 3.5 percent.

The employers' organisation however said the pilots' overall demands, including employment contracts offering greater job security, would entail a 10 percent cost increase.

"That would mean a cost increase of almost 100 million kronor ($12 million/10.7 million euros) a year for SAS. We can't afford that given the current competition," SAS chief executive Rickard Gustafson told news agency TT.

SAS said it had not calculated how much money it was losing because of the strike, but financial analysts estimated it was costing the airline at least $1.2 million (1.06 million euros) a day.

Analysts said the losses could be even greater if customers were to lose confidence in the airline's dependability because of the strike.

"SAS has to weigh the loss of prestige against the consequences of higher wage costs... People might be hesitant to choose SAS next time," air industry analyst Matts Hyttinge told TT.
With the market moving heavily in recent weeks, Jim Cramer suspects that it was in consolidation mode on Friday. And the bad news is that stocks won't be able to rally until oil stops declining.

Next week, rather than have his eye on individual companies that report, he will be monitoring macro data.

"It is a critical week nonetheless because these big picture forces are playing havoc with our markets and making it a lot more treacherous to own individual stocks," the "Mad Money" host said.

Tuesday: U.S. retail sales, eurozone industrial production

Cramer refused to believe that anyone would be foolish enough to own a German 10-year bond.

"I'm telling you that this is one where if we get some strength, you are going to feel like a knucklehead owning German 10-year bunds, which yield almost nothing and may be the most overvalued pieces of paper in the world," he said.





Oilman Harold Hamm would be the last person on the planet Jim Cramer would turn to if he were to ask the opinion of the future of oil prices.

The chairman and CEO of Continental Resources (NYSE: CLR) told CNBC on Thursday that the price of oil was at a turning point. Hamm believes that it could be ready to launch to $69 or $72 all the way up from $49 a barrel.

"In the years since I have gotten to know this delightful, giving man, I have come to know him as the ultimate wrong-way prognosticator for oil," Cramer said about Hamm.

Another energy company that Cramer has been watching is Entergy, which is part of the red-hot utility group. With the Federal Reserve seemingly on hold, these steady companies have juicy dividend yields that seem much more attractive than a bond.

Entergy is the southern utility with a stock up more than 15 percent for the year. Its chairman and CEO shared why investors would migrate to a pure utility play like Entergy: "Effectively the utility business versus the merchant business are two different commercial operations. And the merchant business is subjected to a lot of volatility. Gas prices drive the marginal price and in all of the markets that we sit and gas is a very, very volatile commodity."

Story continues





This week CNBC unveiled its Disruptor 50 list of innovative companies. At No. 18 was Phononic, which took on the task of reinventing the refrigerator.

Phononic uses solid state semiconductor technology to create a process called thermoelectric cooling. Essentially, it runs electric currents through materials to create a temperature differential, which makes one side hotter and other side cooler.

This technology allowed for Phononic to create a better refrigerator with no moving parts that will break down, no cooling liquid, almost no noise and it consumed approximately 25 percent less power than a traditional heat exchange refrigerator.

Cramer spoke with Phononic's founder and CEO Tony Atti, who explained that the company had to build the entire supply chain and contract assembly backside from scratch.

"We use the word displace versus replace, because we want to take the existing solution; scrap it and come up with something entirely different and better," Atti said.

When Ralph Lauren (NYSE: RL)'s new CEO Stefan Larsson presented his turnaround plan on Tuesday, the market didn't know what to make of it. That confusion led Jim Cramer to do his homework and find out if Larsson's new plan really has legs.

"The market's reaction was downright schizophrenic," Cramer said.

Initially Wall Street seemed to hate the plan, with the stock plunging $10 to $84 a share at the open. However by the close, the stock had rebounded back to $94.

The reality is that turnarounds take time. Cramer saw the same trajectory outlined with PVH, the parent company of Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, which took years to pull off.

Eventually, Cramer thinks Larsson will be able to deliver, though there could be short-term pain. Ultimately he thinks this one will make it.

"Why? Because in the end, the brand is iconic as ever, it was just too ubiquitous and too dated. Larsson is ending that, so call me a believer," Cramer said.

In the Lightning Round, Cramer gave his take on a few caller favorite stocks:

8x8, Inc: "Voice over internet protocol. A lot of people think there is going to be a takeover. I think it's time to ka-ching, ka-ching. I'd take a little off the table."

Seres Therapeutics Inc: "I think that one is a buy, buy, buy."





More From CNBC


SATURDAY, June 11, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Prospects for people with type 2 diabetes and heart disease may be grimmer than previously believed, researchers report.

"Type 2 diabetes accompanied by an acute coronary syndrome needs much more attention, especially in order to prevent yet another major cardiac event," said study leader Dr. William White. He is a professor with the University of Connecticut Health Center's Calhoun Cardiology Center.

The study included more than 5,300 people around the world with type 2 diabetes. Those admitted to the hospital for congestive heart failure had a 24 percent to 28 percent chance of dying within 18 months. That's five times higher than the risk among those not hospitalized for a major heart problem, the researchers said.

The risk of heart disease is two to three times higher among people with type 2 diabetes than in the general population, the study authors pointed out.

In all future studies of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, heart failure outcomes should receive the same amount of scrutiny as stroke, heart attack and unstable angina, White said in a university news release.

The reason heart disease and type 2 diabetes are linked is partly because obesity and problems such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels contribute to both conditions. But there are also concerns that some medications to control blood sugar in people with diabetes may also damage the heart, according to the researchers.

The study, to be presented Saturday at the American Diabetes Association's annual meeting in New Orleans, was also published online in the journal Diabetes Care.

More information

The American Diabetes Association has more about type 2 diabetes.
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AFP News

Rishi Sunak on Tuesday became Britain's third prime minister this year and the first person of colour to lead the former imperial power, vowing to overcome an economic crisis provoked by the "mistakes" of Liz Truss's calamitous 49-day tenure. In his first order of business, Sunak retained Jeremy Hunt as chancellor of the exchequer, bidding to keep financial markets on side after Truss's budget plans shocked investors, and also retained her foreign and defence ministers, among others. Sunak, a practising Hindu who at 42 is Britain's youngest leader since 1812, became the ruling Conservatives' new leader on Monday after a prior stint as chancellor himself. Addressing the nation in Downing Street Tuesday shortly after his appointment by King Charles III, Sunak said the country faced "profound economic crisis". "I will place economic stability and confidence at the heart of this government's agenda," Sunak vowed, capping the latest extraordinary twist in UK politics following Boris Johnson's demise in July. - 'Mistakes' - Truss -- chosen by Tory members over Sunak in the summer to replace Johnson -- left office as the UK's shortest-serving premier in history. The 47-year-old wished the new leader "every success", noting she remained "more convinced than ever" that Britain needs to be "bold" in confronting the challenges it faces. Sunak countered that, though Truss was motivated by a well-intentioned desire to kick-start growth, her tax-cutting measures were "mistakes nonetheless". "And I have been elected as leader of my party and your prime minister in part to fix them," he said. "The government I lead will not leave the next generation... with a debt to settle that we were too weak to pay ourselves," he added, helping to drive the pound more than one percent higher against the dollar. Sunak, a wealthy descendant of immigrants from India and East Africa, secured the top job after rival contender Penny Mordaunt failed to garner enough nominations from Tory MPs and Johnson dramatically aborted a comeback attempt. Breaking his silence, Johnson offered his "full and wholehearted support" to Sunak -- having privately blamed his ex-minister for toppling him in July. Sunak in turn praised Johnson, but in a nod to the many scandals that brought Johnson down, vowed his own premiership would offer "integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level". - Cabinet continuity - In some of the other cabinet retentions aimed at stability, Sunak kept James Cleverly as foreign secretary, Ben Wallace in the defence brief and Kemi Badenoch in international trade. Just days after she left Truss's cabinet, hardline right-winger Suella Braverman was re-appointed as interior minister, in charge of policing and immigration control. Grant Shapps, who had briefly replaced Braverman, was named business secretary with partial oversight of climate policy, instead of Johnson loyalist Jacob Rees-Mogg. Sunak brought close ally Dominic Raab back as deputy prime minister and justice secretary, and veteran cabinet member Michael Gove to tackle the country's entrenched regional inequality. Mordaunt remains in a post overseeing government business in parliament, which may disappoint the ambitious centrist who had been tipped for a more senior role. The line-up "reflects a unified party and a cabinet with significant experience, ensuring that at this uncertain time there is continuity at the heart of government," a Downing Street source said. The new top team is set to meet early Wednesday, British media said, before Sunak faces his first weekly face-off with opposition parties at "Prime Minister's Questions" in parliament. - Foreign calls - In his first call with a foreign leader, Sunak told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Britain would continue its "steadfast support" following Russia's invasion. He also spoke to US President Joe Biden, who had earlier hailed his appointment as the first British-Indian prime minister as "groundbreaking" and "pretty outstanding". "President Biden said that the UK remains America's closest ally, and the Prime Minister agreed on the huge strength of the relationship," a Downing Street spokeswoman said. European leaders offered their own congratulations, while Irish premier Micheal Martin reminded Sunak of their "shared responsibility" to safeguard peace in Northern Ireland following tensions under Johnson and Truss. Domestically, Labour leader Keir Starmer praised Sunak on "making history as the first British-Asian PM". But he reiterated accusation the Tories "have crashed the economy" and that the public needs "a say on Britain's future". Sunak has rebuffed opposition calls for a snap general election after becoming the latest leader who lacks a direct mandate from the electorate. Pollster Ipsos said that 62 percent of British voters want an election by the end of the year. Voters in London Tuesday spelled out the scale of his challenge. "The whole country is in shambles at the moment, he has got to make a difference, if he doesn't there's going to be riots," insurance adviser Helen Gorman told AFP. bur-jj/ah
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece has been approached by three parties interested in buying a minority stake in state-run power grid operator ADMIE, Energy Minister Panos Skourletis said in a newspaper interview released on Saturday.

"The characteristics of the potential investors for the sale of a percentage of ADMIE are known ... We've already been approached by three parties," Skourletis was quoted as telling the weekly newspaper Ethnos.

"The experience and knowledge of the potential investors in this particular field will determine which one will be chosen, in combination of course with the offered price," he added.

Under the terms of its third multi-billion euro bailout, Greece has promised to sell up to 24 percent of ADMIE, a grid of more than 11,000 kilometres of high-voltage power cables that is fully-owned by the public power utility PPC.

Earlier this week, PPC's chairman and chief executive Manolis Panagiotakis told Reuters the launch of the tender would be approved by the company's general assembly on June 30 and be published a few days later.

(Reporting by Lefteris Karagiannopoulos; Editing by Helen Popper)
YEREVAN, JUNE 10, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Justice of Armenia Arpine Hovhannisyan attended the 107th plenary session of the Venice Commission on June 10, during which the preliminary conclusion of the Venice Commission on the Electoral Code of Armenia adopted at the first reading was discussed and confirmed.

Arpine Hovhannisyan thanked for the conclusion and referred to the key proposals of the Venice Commission included in the Code, as well as introduced justifications for those not included.

Concluding her speech, the Justice Minister asked the Commission to submit a new conclusion on the already adopted Electoral Code, considering the proposals made in the preliminary conclusion that were implemented by the Armenian authorities. In this respect, I ask you to authorize the keynote speakers to publish their conclusion on the adopted Electoral Code at the end of June. Before that I hope there will be some opportunities to meet with them and discuss the changes, particularly, taking into account that the doors are not close and some amendments are still possible. From this perspective, the opinion of the speakers is of great value for us, Arpine Hovhannisyan said.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the Ministry of Justice, interestingly, the Venice Commission has added a new paragraph in its preliminary conclusion with the following content,

The Electoral Code was adopted by the National Assembly on May 25, 2016 with 102 votes for, 17 against and 3 abstentions. It entered into force on June 1, 2016. The Venice Commission and the OSCE / ODIHR record that the Armenian authorities have made major efforts to take into account their recommendations while adopting the Electoral Code, ensuring broad inclusiveness for domestic actors. The Armenian authorities have asked the Commission to submit a new conclusion on the Electoral Code adopted on May 25. Therefore, in the next conclusion the Venice Commission and the OSCE / ODIHR will evaluate the latest amendments in the code and their correspondence with the recommendations presented in the preliminary conclusion.
YEREVAN, JUNE 11, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan on June 11 visited the Russian Embassy in Armenia to congratulate Russian Ambassador Ivan Volynkin, the Embassy staff on the occasion of the national holiday of the Russian Federation the Russia Day.

The President wished all Russian people prosperity and success.

He participated in the special cultural event organized by the Embassy staff, press service of the Presidential administration informed "Armenpress".

Serzh Sargsyan also sent congratulatory letters to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

In a congratulatory letter to the Russian President, Serzh Sargsyan said with satisfaction the Armenian-Russian allied cooperation is always persistent both in the bilateral inter-state level, as well as within the framework of the international and regional unions. I am confident that we with our joint efforts can contribute to the further development of relations between our states, the implementation of the agreements which aim to ensure stability and security, the message reads.

In a congratulatory message to the Russian Prime Minister, the Armenian President stated that this special holiday is an integral part of the deep transformations of all sectors of Russia that are directed towards the welfare of the Russian citizens and strengthening the countrys role in the international sphere.
American farmers have won a $50m (35m) settlement from dairy companies they claimed conspired to drive down milk prices.

The co-op, Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), will have to pay almost 9,000 farmers in the countrys north-east $4,000 (2,765) each on average.

The case dates back to 2009, when the regions farmers launched a class-action lawsuit against DFA, its marketing wing Dairy Marketing Services and manufacturer Dean Foods.

Producers complained the firms had worked together to monopolise the market for liquid milk.

They claimed this kept prices lower than they should have been in a normal, competitive market.

See also: Australian dairy in turmoil after co-operative crisis

Dean Foods agreed to a $30m (21m) settlement with farmers in 2010, but the suit with the other firms rumbled on until this year.

Judge Christina Reiss approved the deal in a court in Vermont on Tuesday.

Future measures

The dairy firms also agreed a raft of other measures to avoid future problems. These included the creation of an ombudsperson to investigate farmers concerns, the appointment of an independent member of the companies advisory council and enshrinement of fairer milk testing.

In her ruling, Judge Reiss said the combined $80m (55m) settlement, across both deals, was not insubstantial and offered farmers a modest recovery.

Farmers who have produced milk for liquid since 2002 can now choose to make a claim to the court for some of the money. They do not necessarily have to have supplied DFA and their exact share will depend on their production.

But not all farmers were happy with the deal.

Pennsylvania farmer Mike Eby, chairman of the National Dairy Producers Organization, said he was disappointed but not surprised by the result.

The union had pushed for a pricing provision from DFA, which would have forced the company to reflect production costs in their farmgate payments.

He said he and more than 100 other producers intended to launch their own suit, taking the co-op to a trial.

The co-operative management structure must be held accountable, he told newspaper Lancaster Online.

The Vermont court did not find in favour of either the farmers or the dairy companies, which still claim there was no wrongdoing.

DFA spokeswoman Monica Massey said she was pleased the judge had approved the settlement because legal action was costly and distracting.

For these reasons, settling the matter is in the best interest of our members, she said.

The case covers farmers in the states of Delaware, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Complicated milk pricing system

Milk pricing in the US is run by a complicated system of federal milk marketing orders.

Under these, minimum prices are published for milk of different classes depending on its end use.

American milk prices had held up better than other parts of the world during the current crisis, but have recently felt the pressure.

The price of class-four milk, used for butter and powders, was roughly 19-20p/litre in April.
Fresh details emerge on the mass sack from the Nigerian army which was announced in the early hours of Saturday, June 11. SK Usman, the army spokesperson, explained the retirement of the officers was based on service exigencies.

It may signify that cases of partisanship (unfair practices during the 2015 election and in the war against Boko Haram) and corruption (Dasuki gate scandal) are behind the decision.

The exact number of officers is still unclear. According to TheCable, the latest move affected 58 officers. At the same time, Vanguard put the number at about 200.

However, the first list with 47 names and their ranks has become available on the following day, Sunday.

Read the first batch of names below:

1. Ojogbane Adegbe, a colonel and a former aide-de-camp (ADC) to ex president Goodluck Jonathan

2. Mustapha Onoiveta, a brigadier general and a former ADC to ex president Umaru Musa YarAdua

3. Nicholas Achinze, a colonel and a former military assistant to the former national security adviser (NSA) Gen. Owoye Azazi (rtd.) and the former NSA Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd.).

4. Maj Gen FO Ali

5. Maj Gen EG Atewe

6. Maj Gen Ejemai

7. Maj Gen MY Ibrahim

8. Maj Gen IN Ijioma

9. Maj Gen Koleoso

10. Maj Gen PAT Akem

11. Maj Gen LC Ilo

12. Maj Gen SD Aliyu

13. Brig Gen Onibasa

14. Brig Gen IM Lawson

15. Brig Gen D Abdusalam

16. Brig Gen Bashir Mormoni

17. Brig Gen ASH Sahaad - a former ADC to the late president Musa Yar'adua

18. Brig Gen Koko Essien

19. Brig Gen LM Bello

20. Brig Gen MG Ali

READ ALSO: Sacked military officers should return salaries to treasury

21. Brig Gen Oyefesobi

22. Brig Gen Ogidi

23. Brig Gen Fiboinumama

24. Brig Gen Agachi

25. Col OU Nwankwo

26. Col DR Hassan

27. Col TT Minima - a younger brother of the former chief of army staff Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minimah

28. Col CK Ukoha

29. Col FD Kayode

30. Lt Col Oladuntoye

31. Lt Col Adinmoha

32. Lt Col CO Amadi

33. Lt Col Baba Ochanpa

34. Lt Col Dazang

35. Lt Col TE Arigbe

36. Lt Col Egemole

37. Lt Col A Suleiman

38. Lt Col A Mohammed

39. Lt Col AS Mohammed

40. Lt Col Enemchukwu

41. Maj TA Williams

The list obtained by SaharaReporters contained 47 names. The new names are:

42. Maj General TC Ude

43. Maj Gen Letam Wiwa - a younger brother of the murdered environmental rights activist and author Ken Saro-Wiwa

44. Brig General Okonkwo

45. Brig General PE Ekpeyong

46. Col Audu

47. Lt Col GC Nyekwu

Source: Legit.ng
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Future Martian explorers might not need to leave the Earth to prepare themselves for life on the Red Planet. The Mars Society have built an analogue research site in Utah, USA, which simulates the conditions on our neighbouring planet.

Practicing the methods needed to collect biological samples while wearing spacesuits, a team of Canadian scientists have studied the diverse local flora. Along with the lessons that one day will serve the first to conquer Mars, the researchers present an annotated checklist of the fungi, algae, cyanobacteria, lichens, and vascular plants from the station in their publication in the open-access journal Biodiversity Data Journal.

Located in the desert approximately 9 km outside of Hanksville, Utah, and about 10 km away from the Burpee Dinosaur Quarry, a recently described bone bed from the Jurassic Morrison Formation, the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) was constructed in 2002. Since then, it has been continuously visited by a wide range of researchers, including astrobiologists, soil scientists, journalists, engineers, and geologists.

Astrobiology, the study of the evolution and distribution of life throughout the universe, including the Earth, is a field increasingly represented at the MDRS. There, astrobiologists can take advantage of the extreme environment surrounding the station and seek life as if they were on Mars. To simulate the extraterrestrial conditions, the crew members even wear specially designed spacesuits so that they can practice standard field work activities with restricted vision and movement.

In their present research, the authors have identified and recorded 38 vascular plant species from 14 families, 13 lichen species from seven families, 6 algae taxa including both chlorophytes and cyanobacteria, and one fungal genus from the station and surrounding area. Living in such extreme environments, organisms such as fungi, lichens, algae, and cyanobacteria are of particular interest to astrobiologists as model systems in the search for life on Mars.

However, the authors note that there is still field work to be executed at the site, especially during the spring and the summer so that the complete local diversity of the area can be captured.

"While our present checklist is not an exhaustive inventory of the MDRS site," they explain, "it can serve as a first-line reference for identifying vascular plants and lichens at the MDRS, and serves as a starting point for future floristic and ecological work at the station."
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 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.

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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.

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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.
The combination of type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease can be deadly.

New research from a global study led by a physician from UConn Health has found that patients with Type 2 diabetes admitted into the hospital for congestive heart failure face a one in four chance of dying over the next 18 months.

The results were presented on June 11 at the American Diabetes Association's (ADA) annual meeting in New Orleans and published online in the ADA journal Diabetes Care. The findings paint a much grimmer picture of the outcome for diabetes patients with severe heart disease than was previously known.

"Type 2 diabetes accompanied by an acute coronary syndrome needs much more attention, especially in order to prevent yet another major cardiac event," says Principal Investigator Dr. William B. White, a professor in the Pat and Jim Calhoun Cardiology Center at UConn Health.

Patients with type 2 diabetes have two to three times the heart disease risk of the general population. This is partly because obesity and other illnesses such as hypertension and elevated cholesterol contribute to both diseases, but there are concerns that some of the medications that help control blood sugar may also damage the heart. Even insulin, a hormone that healthy people make naturally but some patients with type 2 diabetes often need as a medication, can contribute to heart disease.

Because of the diabetes-heart disease link, all new diabetes drugs are now required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to undergo formal testing for their impact on heart and stroke outcomes.

White, along with colleagues at 898 medical institutions around the world who were investigators in the EXAMINE trial, were testing the diabetes drug alogliptin (Nesina) which is a member of the family of medications known as DPP-4 inhibitors. The researchers recruited 5,380 patients with type 2 diabetes after the patient had a major but nonfatal acute coronary syndrome such as a heart attack, or hospitalization for unstable angina. The researchers randomly assigned the patients to take either alogliptin or a placebo, and then followed their progress for up to three years. The primary findings of the study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2013, showed no differences for alogliptin versus placebo patients in the major endpoint of cardiovascular death, heart attack or stroke.

Now, the researchers provide new insights on mortality in the EXAMINE trial from a series of new analyses. People with type 2 diabetes admitted to the hospital for heart failure faced a 24 to 28 percent chance of death during the remainder of the trial, on aloglipin or placebo respectively. That's more than 5 times the risk of death seen in the patients who had no additional non-fatal cardiovascular event while in the study.

"It's a very dramatic result," says White. "A person with type 2 diabetes requiring hospitalization for heart failure in the EXAMINE trial was a harbinger of a very poor outcome."

The researchers are now trying to discover other new insights from data taken during the study. White and co-researchers from the EXAMINE study have teamed up with collaborators from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's hospital to find patterns of proteins known as biomarkers in the blood that might provide early signals for elevated risk of a second cardiovascular event, including heart failure and death.

White emphasizes that congestive heart failure is by no means inevitable for people with type 2 diabetes but the problem should be receiving a great deal more attention. According to White, in all future studies of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, heart failure outcomes should receive the same amount of scrutiny as stroke, heart attack and unstable angina.
God, theres a lot.

Thats economist Craig Alexander exhaling deeply in an interview about the labour market. Its not an expression of exasperation about the latest labour force survey from Statistics Canada, in which we see a relatively flat job market and the ongoing structural adjustment to lower energy prices. But the substantive issues that lie behind the changing profile of the labour market and our readiness for the future demands of work.

Education, by example.

The global labour market is evolving quicker than our institutions seem to be able to change, Alexander says. So as the labour market changes and skills demand change, the education system doesnt actually change the way its delivering that education, or the outcomes our kids are experiencing. As a consequence you fall behind and you fall behind and you fall behind until theres a feeling that theres a crisis that needs to be dealt with and you get some policy action.

Alexander is vice-president of economic analysis at the C. D. Howe Institute and ex of the TD Bank, so hes lived the life of monitoring financial market responses to statistical data. But today hes wondering about high school guidance programs that appear ill-prepared to help students make informed decisions as to what programs to take in university. Parents about to send their daughters and sons off to their first-ever university experience this fall can no doubt relate.

I think most kids take programs based on what theyre interested in, not on what employment opportunities are going to look like on the other side of the degree. That contributes to the skills mismatch, he says.

(In our own household, the Grade 9 Careers course was an utter waste of time. Perhaps your own experience has been different.)

Alexander has worked up a chart, as you might expect. He charted graduate rates by discipline  How many students are going through the university system and graduating with a general arts degree and what percentage are coming out with degrees in engineering, math, sciences. If you compare the graph of what kids are studying in university with a graph that shows employment rates by graduation, theyre inverted.

Those who have followed labour force mismatches have known this for some time.

I think [the education system] has fallen very far behind where we need it to be for the labour force in the 21st century, Alexander continues. Their structures and their programs are often delivering the experience that students needed in, for example, the Nineties, not what they need today.

We could talk about financial literacy for days. More than four years ago Ontarios Ministry of Education adopted a strategy of weaving financial literacy into the curricula for students in Grades 4 to 12. Entrepreneurism  a vital focus, in Alexanders view  is knitted into the introduction to business courses in high school, electives in Grades 9 and 10, and standalone courses in Grades 11 and 12.

We need to encourage more entrepreneurism among our young people, Alexander says. And offer expanded apprenticeships and co-op programs. And place an enhanced focus on literacy. If you dont have strong literacy and numeracy skills going in to university, you often wont have them when you come out of university. I think employers have been very clear about the fact that they want work ready employees.

There are a lot of things we should be doing to improve the education system to help our students be better prepared before they even go into the post-secondary system, he says. And once they get into the post-secondary system we need that system to start delivering a better outcome in terms of delivering young people to the labour market who are going to have good outcomes.

Alexander is conscious of the fact that he has gone quite negative on the education system throughout the interview. Education in Canada compared to other countries is quite good, its just that we could be doing more. We have a skilled work force. But we have the possibility to make it even more skilled and more productive.

The nature of the economy is changing. The changes are structural and long term. The world is moving very rapidly, Alexander says. Unless we change the way we do things we are going to end up with the same outcome.

jenwells@thestar.ca

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Robots are one step closer to being able to experience an essential human feeling: pain.

Researchers in Germany are currently creating a nervous system that would mimic a pain response in robots, allowing them to quickly react and avoid harmful situations.

Pain is a system that protects us, researcher Johannes Kuehn told a conference of engineers recently. When we evade from the source of pain, it helps us not get hurt.

The researchers programmed their robot to experience a hierarchy of pain through a variety of different stimuli, such as blunt force or heat. Depending on the threat, such as a harsh movement or intense heat, the robot is programmed to retract from the danger. The more dangerous it registers the threat to be, the faster the robot will retract and the longer it will avoid the hazardous force.

A robot needs to be able to detect and classify unforeseen physical states and disturbances, rate the potential damage they may cause to it, and initiate appropriate countermeasures, i.e., reflexes, the research paper states.

Kuehn said a built-in pain response could protect robots potentially operating heavy machinery or other tools in factories from potential harm, thus saving companies from the fallout of damages. It also means a better safety environment for human workers, who often work side-by-side with robots on the factory floor.

Its the synthesis of a pain sensation that encourages robots to experience a sense of self-preservation. Robots built to automatically detect human collisions have been around for a while: researchers from Stanford and University of Rome-La Sapeinza created a reflexive robot arm that detects and avoids collision with humans in 2011.

But to equip these robots with a nervous system forces them to prioritize avoidance of their own pain, thus programming them to avoid destroying themselves as well as avoiding collision with humans, according to Kuehn. This will trigger different reactions in the robot than just crash avoidance.

The concept of robots that feel a physical sensation is not new. Sensitive robot skin was developed by researchers at Georgia Tech in 2014. The skin makes use of flexible touch sensors that communicate with a memory device that can store tactile interactions, mimicking human sensory memory. It allows the robot to adjust the pressure of its touch based on the object it comes into contact with, letting it grip soft objects, such as fruit, without destroying them.

This touch-sensitive technology will allow for robotic applications outside of the hard machinery of the factory floor and into other spheres, such as assisting the disabled with daily household tasks.

But what about the ethics of empowering robots with a sense of touch, and on the other end of the spectrum, a sense of pain? After all, research shows that humans actually do feel bad when robots get hurt.

A study in the journal Scientific Reports became the first research to observe a sense of human empathy for robots experiencing pain. Subjects hooked up to electroencephalography (EEG) devices to measure their electrical brain activity were then exposed to a series of images of violence both on humans and on robots. The study found that subjects did register a sense of emotional concern for the robots who were subjected to pain, albeit to a much lesser degree than their human counterparts.

The reasons for this phenomenon are unknown, though some have speculated that it has to do with exposure to human-like robots in popular culture.

In the journey to equip robots with a pain response, researchers still have a long way to go. But the recent paper is an important first step.

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The Trudeau Interview, final in a five-part series

One more, Justin Trudeaus communications director said.

She was letting me know my interview with the prime minister, in his office on the third floor of Parliaments Centre Block, was about to end.

I had already asked Trudeau about medically assisted dying, electoral reform, federal-provincial co-ordination on infrastructure and climate change, and the delicate balance between human rights and commerce in international relations.

In such circumstances, with detailed answers on headline topics safely tucked away, the last question is often a bit of a flyer. Change the subject radically. If it doesnt work, no harm done.

I want to ask about your day off in Tokyo, I said.

On May 25 the prime minister, in Japan for a G7 leaders summit, took a day off to celebrate his 11th wedding anniversary with his wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau. They paid for the inn they stayed at. It wasnt their anniversary precisely  that day fell when Trudeau was back in Canada, at the Liberal convention in Winnipeg  but at the time he defended the day off as the kind of work-life balance that Ive often talked about as being essential in order to be able to be in service of the country.

Ive wondered since that day what, precisely, Trudeau had in mind. John Englishs 2009 biography of Pierre Trudeau, Just Watch Me, written with assistance from the Trudeau family, details the way the former prime ministers preoccupation with work eventually ended his marriage.

Justin Trudeau himself referred to the burden of work on a political family in a 2012 interview, when I asked him whether he was considering running for the Liberal leadership. Nobody knows better than I do what the pressures of party leadership can do to a young family, he said then. It tore mine apart.

So now I put the question to him again. A failure to strike a good work-life balance blew up Pierre Trudeaus family. Is that the sort of thing Justin Trudeau thinks about?

In time-honoured Liberal fashion, he rejected the premise of my question.

You know, when I think about my fathers work-life balance, I actually think of it in the other direction, he said, not hesitating at all in the face of this very personal question from a guy  me  who generally prefers not to ask them.

I think of it in terms of how he brought us with him on so many world trips. And I know that feeling like he was a good dad  and being active and present, having one-on-one time with you  was important for him as a person, as a dad. But I also know that having us along with him for those trips kept him balanced and made him a better leader.

Trudeaus family life is part of his political life for  well, you could say for a growing number of reasons. At the Montreal Liberal convention in 2014 he interrupted his opening speech to visit, by video link, with Sophie, who was at home and very pregnant with their third child, Hadrien. The children travelled with the Trudeaus to Washington, and Barack Obamas Oval Office, in March.

And the use of public funds to pay for nannies has been an enduring controversy, which led to the announcement this week that one of the two nannies will be fired from the public payroll and paid by the Trudeaus personally.

Just about any member of Parliament whos a parent has family on the brain while trying to do the publics business. Trudeau said hes never been an exception. Before he became prime minister, on my drive back to Montreal after three days in Ottawa, Id look back and say, OK, did the work I do in Ottawa as a simple backbencher MP contribute to a world that is better enough to compensate for the fact that I wasnt there to put my kids to bed for three nights in a row? 

I snuck in one more question. How do the kids  Xavier, 8; Ella-Grace, 7; and 2-year-old Hadrien  travel?

Reasonably well. Reasonably well. Certainly, in terms of adjusting to jet lag, I think Ive had a lifetime of experience that leaves me better off than they are. But in terms of being excited about new places and trying new things and tasting new food, theyve been great.

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After a mass shooting on Sunday that killed at least 50 people and injured dozens more at a gay nightclub in Florida, many Canadians were reflecting on what the violence means for the LGBTQ community.

Candlelight vigils to mourn the victims were planned in several Canadian cities Sunday night, including Toronto and Vancouver.

A gunman wielding an assault-type rifle and a handgun opened fire inside a crowded gay nightclub in Orlando early Sunday morning. He was shot and killed by police.

The attack came during Pride month, both in the U.S. and Canada.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered Canadas condolences to the victims.

In an official statement, Trudeau said he was shocked and saddened to learn so many people have been killed and injured following a mass shooting in Orlando.

While authorities are still investigating and details continue to be confirmed, it is appalling that as many as 50 lives may have been lost to this domestic terror attack targeting the LGBTQ2 community.

On behalf of the Government of Canada, Sophie and I offer our condolences and prayers to the families and friends of those lost today, and wish a full recovery to all those injured. We stand in solidarity with Orlando and the LGBTQ2 community, he said.

We grieve with our friends in the United States and Florida, and offer any assistance we can provide.

The executive director of Pride Toronto, a not-for-profit with the goal of bringing together the citys LGBTQ community, said the massacre was a grim reminder of the setbacks his community faces.

It reminds us that hate and discrimination are still a big part of this society, and that because of this, some of our brothers and sisters this morning lost their lives, Mathieu Chantelois said on Sunday.

The organization also organizes Torontos pride month, and Chantelois said Pride Toronto was already working with city police and the RCMP but would see if there were any additional security steps that could be taken.

The main objective of Pride is to create a safe space for our community to gather together and feel comfortable, he said.

A manager at a prominent Toronto gay bar said the massacre likely wont prompt his establishment to increase security at the club.

You cant live in fear because of one incident, said Cameron Rennie, a manager and bartender at Woodys in Toronto.

In Edmonton, people attending Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson's annual pride brunch reflected on the Florida massacre.

Lorne Stelmach said he feels safer in Canada because gun-control laws are different here.

"There are pockets of bigotry here and there, and we try to deal with those as best we can," Stelmach said. "Hopefully, as we grow as a community, we will extinguish all that bigotry."

Genny Ranson-Ratusn and Cameron Herron agree it's better in Canada, but both had personal examples of homophobia they or friends faced.

Ranson-Ratusn said a trans friend posted Sunday morning on Facebook about a man who made threats and used homophobic slurs this weekend on Jasper Avenue, the main street in Edmonton's downtown. Herron said he, too, gets called "the f-word" sometimes when he's downtown.

Herron said he felt different leaving home Sunday.

"I felt if this can happen in America just on any night, it could happen here also. I could have been shot down on the street. You would never see it coming," he said.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, who is openly gay, wrote on Twitter that her thoughts are with the LGBTQ community while B.C. Premier Christy Clark tweeted that she is incredibly saddened by the evil brutality of the Florida shooting, and that her province stands united with (Orlando) against terror and hate.

Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre has announced that the city will fly the rainbow flag at City Hall in solidarity with the LGBT community.

Rona Ambrose, interim leader of the opposition, wrote in a Facebook post that we must remain steadfast and strongly condemn terrorism, in all its forms, around the world.

With files from The Associated Press

More on thestar.com:

50 killed at Florida gay nightclub in worst mass shooting in U.S. history

Florida nightclub shooting suspect was known to FBI, official says

Toronto vigil to be held Sunday for victims of Orlando nightclub massacre

Ideology usually just a rationale for mentally ill attackers, says expert

Photos: Aftermath of the Florida massacre, deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history

Survivors of Orlando mass shooting recall struggle to stay alive

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A Toronto man is apparently the first documented person to contract a rare, drug-resistant strain of HIV, despite taking a miracle drug every day that is used by tens of thousands of people across North America to prevent the spread of the virus.

Researchers say the 43-year-old contracted the virus after engaging in unprotected anal sex with multiple sexual partners. They claim his case is the first reported failure of Truvada  a medication that blocks the transmission of HIV  where a patient took the antiretroviral drug daily but still became infected.

Even though the patient was taking the drug every day, the HIV virus overpowered the medication and infected him, said the mans doctor, Dr. David Knox, an HIV-specialist and primary care physician at Torontos Maple Leaf Medical Clinic.

Knox reported his finding at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infection in Boston this past February. He explained the case serves as stark reminder for gay or bisexual men to continue wearing condoms instead of relying solely on Truvada.

A spokesperson for the biopharmaceutical company who manufactures the drug said the Toronto case is the first Truvada failure they are aware of. Still, they emphasized that several large-scale clinical trials have shown the medication is safe and effective.

It is important to note, however, that no single intervention is 100 per cent effective in preventing HIV, wrote Gilead Sciences Inc.s Ryan McKeel in an emailed statement to the Star. McKeel explained that the individual in this case contracted the virus after he was exposed to a rare strain of HIV that is resistant to both of the drugs included in Truvada.

However, little is known about the person who the mutated virus came from.

It could be someone in Toronto, it could have been someone who was travelling through, said Knox. We dont know for sure but yes, this resistant strain could be in Toronto.

Public Health Ontarios chief of infection prevention and control Dr. Gary Garber said this case is also a reminder that nothing in this world is 100 per cent and taking medication as a preventive measure may not give you the protection that you think.

Dr. Darrell Tan, a clinical scientist and infectious disease expert at St. Michaels Hospital who co-authored the presentation, said the drug remains a fantastic new tool to be used alongside condoms.

This was a demonstration of what could happen in extremely rare circumstances if we arent careful so lets continue to be careful, he said.

A Health Canada spokesperson told the Star health care providers must prescribe the drug as part of a comprehensive prevention strategy, including safer sex practices, as Truvada is not always effective in preventing the acquisition of HIV-1 infection.

Truvada  a chemical cocktail containing emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate  was traditionally a first-line treatment option for HIV-positive people before being approved for daily preventive use in the U.S. in 2012. Health Canada gave it the go-ahead for preventive use in late February of this year.

The drug has so far proven itself to be a hot seller in the U.S. Truvada brought Gilead some $2 billion worth of sales south of the border last year.

In Ontario, Truvada is not listed under the provinces drug benefit program as a prescription for HIV prevention, only for HIV treatment. (Knoxs patient had been taking the drug, acquired via off-label prescrition, for two years when he got infected.) Each tablet costs $28.57.

Similar to birth control, the small, oval-shaped blue pill is most effective when taken consistently, not just before sex. This approach is known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP and refers to the use of Truvada by healthy, non-infected people as a pseudo-biochemical condom to prevent contracting HIV.

An ongoing study at the HIV Prevention Clinic at St. Michaels Hospital aims to measure the effect the prevention pill has on safe sex practices. According to the CBC, early results from the study suggest condomless sex between HIV-positive and HIV-negative men on the drug is increasing.

Public health experts have previously warned the medication could provide users with a false sense of security, promote riskier sex and erode condom use. Knox said his patients case illustrates why physicians should still be reinforcing condom use, widely considered to be a cornerstone of HIV prevention strategy.

However, Chris Thomas, a spokesperson for the AIDS Committee of Toronto, stressed that just because the pill didnt do its job in this case does not mean its not beneficial.

Yes, this was an unfortunate exemption that occurred in our community, he said. But science has also suggested this is a highly effective method of preventing HIV, so its important to keep that in mind.

Ongoing HIV transmission remains an issue of concern to the Public Health Agency of Canada. Government data suggests there were over 2,500 total new infections in 2014 alone  more than half of which stemmed from male-to-male sexual encounters.

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PETERBOROUGH, ONT.Ruth Schaeffer found out from the newspaper that no criminal charges would be laid against the OPP officer who killed her schizophrenic son in a remote camping area in 2009.

She had already been in a bad place for months, since officials from Ontarios police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit, turned up on her doorstep to inform her that her youngest child and only son, Levi, was dead.

She spent weeks in hospital for depression, was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and had difficulty leaving the house.

Devastated, she was about to begin the biggest fight of her life  one that she doesnt regret, but for which she would pay a heavy price.

Because not only had Ruth discovered from the paper that no officer would stand trial, she also learned that the SIU director could not conclude what exactly happened that day because the two officers involved had consulted a lawyer before preparing their notes, as was standard practice at the time. There were no other witnesses.

It puts me in the position of not really knowing how my son died, which is unreasonable, she said. He was killed by public employees, who should have been able to tell me exactly what happened, without a lawyers assistance.

A self-described poorly resourced citizen, Ruth would find herself at the centre of an expensive legal battle that would last more than four years.

Along with the family of Douglas Minty, a 59-year-old developmentally delayed man killed by an OPP officer in a separate 2009 incident, Ruth took the case against the police to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled in a landmark 2013 decision that officers under investigation could not speak with a lawyer before writing their notes.

It ensured that the record of an incident was independent and contemporaneous, which did not happen in the Schaeffer and Minty cases.

Put simply, appearances matter. And, when the communitys trust in the police is at stake, it is imperative that the investigatory process be  and appear to be  transparent, wrote Justice Michael Moldaver.

Manifestly, the legislature did not intend to provide officers with an entitlement to counsel that would undermine this transparency.

Just weeks after the provincial government announced an independent review into police oversight bodies, including the SIU, Ruth reflected on that gruelling legal challenge.

As beneficial as it was to police accountability, it wiped out her life savings and most of her possessions, leaving her bankrupt and her emotional recovery that much more difficult.

Her story is indicative of the challenges to overhauling police practices in Ontario, says her lawyer, Julian Falconer. Its rare that politicians will take the lead on these issues, he says; the job falls to the victims and their families.

It was extremely insulting that I would have to have a bake sale to raise money to change the laws so that people would be safer in Ontario, Ruth said.

The Ministry of the Attorney General has tons of money and could have done the legislative process. They certainly didnt have to wait for me.

She pointed out that problems affecting investigations into the police, including note-taking, had already been highlighted before the court case by former Ontario ombudsman Andre Marin, a former SIU director who published two reports on the oversight body.

Sitting in a friends backyard, she must at times take long pauses, as the tears flow freely down her face. After all these years, her emotions are still raw, and her frustration with the government and its sluggish pace toward reform still very strong.

What I did, by taking the police up to and including the Supreme Court, was not actually my job to do, it was my governments job to do, and I had already paid them for doing that job through my taxes, but they didnt do it.

Some changes to communications between the SIU and police were made as the legal challenge moved through the courts. For example, the government has prohibited witness officers from using the same lawyer as the subject officer  the officer responsible for causing death or serious injury.

I want to express my sympathy to Ms. Schaeffer, said Ministry of the Attorney General spokeswoman Jenna Mannone. It is incredibly hard to lose a loved one and I recognize that these were especially difficult circumstances.

It was shortly after noon on June 24, 2009, when two OPP officers from the Pickle Lake detachment, about an eight-hour drive north of Thunder Bay, arrived at 30-year-old Levi Schaeffers isolated camping area, reportedly looking for a stolen boat. One was never located.

There was an interaction of sorts, wrote Ian Scott, then the SIU director, in the public portion of his report included in a Sept. 28, 2009, news release, and the subject officer discharged his firearm at Mr. Schaeffer, causing his death.

Beyond that, I am not sure what happened.

Const. Kris Wood, who killed Levi, was told to prepare notes that only the police association lawyer would review, Scott wrote. After the notes had been approved, Wood then wrote in his memo book, two days later, an account that was the combination of his confidential notes to the lawyer and the discussions with him.

Acting Sgt. Mark Pullbrook, the other officer on scene, was advised to do the same. Neither officer shared their first set of notes with the SIU.

The SIU director . . . concluded that he had no information from which he could base his conclusion as to what happened in the death of Mr. Schaeffer as a result of counsels involvement, Moldaver would later write in the Supreme Court ruling. Surely this is not the stuff out of which public confidence is built.

Falconer, who has represented a number of families of people killed by police, goes as far as calling it a corrupt practice that had festered for too long.

It is troubling, the kind of burden that members of the public should have to bear to fix what so clearly should be fixed by government, and that is a reality in the policing world, he said. Far from Ruths situation being unique, we live in a society where the police lobby is so powerful that, generally, political leaders follow. They dont lead.

He believes the government should compensate the Schaeffer and Minty families.

Im not against police officers, Im against what happened in this situation, said Douglas Mintys sister, Diane Pinder. They have unlimited funds. We dont. And they fight you each step of the way.

The families case was thrown out in Superior Court in Toronto, but they won at the Court of Appeal, after which the police took them to the Supreme Court, where their victory was upheld.

My son never embarrassed me, said Ruth of Levi, who became ill when he was about 18 or 19 years old. My son had an illness. If he had cancer and found himself in pain in public, then somebody would help him. He had a mental illness and sometimes found himself in pain in public, but nobody helps.

She said she soon realized the mental health system was not prepared to let him live a full and satisfying life. Quite adept in the great outdoors, Ruth discussed with Levi the possibility of living on his own in a secluded area.

She had just saved up enough money to buy him a piece of land, as well as one for herself, and false teeth, when the knock came at her door.

I opened, took one look at the guy and said, Its my son, is he dead? I just knew.

From what she understands  as a result of the legal challenge and the coroners inquest into her sons death  Levi had gone down to the water when the two officers arrived in Woods personal boat, asking if he could be of assistance. She believes that at some point, Levi panicked. According to Woods account, Levi was advancing with a knife.

I think I would panic if I was on a small area of land with two armed men, one of whom was becoming very aggressive toward me, she said. (Wood and Pullbrook declined to comment through an OPP spokesman.)

Before her son died, Ruth was in the happiest period of her life. She was working as a human-rights worker with the Elizabeth Fry Society, often at the Lindsay jail, and spending a lot of time with her two daughters and grandchildren.

I had stopped worrying so much about my son, she said. I had been terribly worried about him for a long time and didnt really expect him to make it, and then he decided on a dream and started working actively toward it.

That life would be shattered by Levis death and the subsequent court case, leaving Ruth a shell of her former self. She had to give up her home and move in with friends and then a rooming house. She sold practically everything she owned. And those savings for the pieces of land  between $20,000 and $30,000  were completely depleted.

She now rents a small two-room apartment, but trying to fit her six grandchildren inside isnt even an option. Shes unemployed, living on government assistance, and regularly sees a psychotherapist and takes classes to manage her PTSD.

Because (the government) doesnt do their job, they destroy people. They have completely financially destroyed me, and they have also made my recovery process a lot harder than it should have been, she said.

Would Levi be proud of his mothers fight? She believes so. He was proud of all of his family members, maintaining strong bonds with his two sisters.

If he were alive today, Ruth knows exactly what he would be doing.

He would be on that piece of land, in his cabin. Happy.

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A highly anticipated road safety plan to be unveiled by the city on Monday will take a targeted approach by reducing speed limits and reconfiguring intersections on dangerous streets in a bid to lower pedestrian and cyclist injuries.

The strategy, in the works for over a year, aims to reduce the number of vulnerable road users killed and hurt on the citys roads.

I think the stats speak for themselves. We can no longer ignore this . . . We need to have a plan and we need to execute it, said Councillor Jaye Robinson (Ward 25, Don Valley West), who chairs the public works committee. Theres no level of fatalities that are acceptable and my vision is to try to get to zero.

According to the city, 168 pedestrians and cyclists died in traffic collisions between 2011 and 2015, and 1,029 were seriously injured.

Mayor John Tory is expected to join Robinson at the launch on Monday to highlight the benefits of the plan.

The mayor knows people of Toronto care about each other and want to do their part to prevent accidents and the tragic loss of life. There are concrete steps the City can take to do our part, Torys spokeswoman wrote in an email.

Robinson said she couldnt discuss specifics of the strategy before it was unveiled, but it will present 40 safety measures under five key areas  pedestrians, cyclists, school zones, aggressive and distracted driving, and seniors  to be rolled out over several years, according to Robinson, and will include education, enforcement, and engineering initiatives.

Robinson and others familiar with the report told the Star that through an extensive analysis of collision data, transportation staff have identified about 15 pedestrian safety corridors they consider particularly dangerous for vulnerable road users. Most of the corridors are downtown, where collisions with pedestrians and cyclists are concentrated.

These hot spots will be targeted for safety upgrades like reduced speed limits, physical alterations to the roadway, and signal changes that favour pedestrians.

About 14 additional streets or intersections have been identified to undergo safety audits that will determine future safety improvements at those locations.

Its not one-size-fits-all, its a very tailored strategy, said Robinson.

But Maureen Coyle, a member of the steering committee for pedestrian-advocacy group Walk Toronto, said that focusing on areas where injuries have already occurred is too reactive.

If youre only looking behind you then youre only looking at a part of the picture, said Coyle, who was one of the stakeholders the city consulted while drafting the plan. She noted that other cities that have implemented strategies modelled on Swedens lauded Vision Zero campaign have made their policies citywide.

Coyle also took issue with the level of funding staff is expected to recommend be put toward the plan: $68 million over five years, or roughly $40 million more than currently dedicated to road safety initiatives.

If youre looking at real culture change, which we have to look at here, both in terms of space and in terms of behaviours, then we need to start looking in the hundreds of millions (of dollars), she said.

Stephen Buckley, the citys general manager of transportation, defended the targeted approach, arguing that it makes sense to focus resources on areas that where vulnerable road users are most often killed or injured.

When you look in the downtown core, you have consistently, year over year, the same types of numbers and the same types of locations, he said.

This gives us a little bit more of a laser focus.

The public works and infrastructure committee will debate the strategy at its June 20 meeting.

By the numbers

2,142: average number of annual pedestrian collisions, 2005-2014

27.3: average number of annual pedestrian fatalities

16: average number of pedestrian fatalities involving people 55 and older

1,235: average number of annual cyclist collisions

6 p.m.: time of day when highest portion of injuries and fatalities occurred

31: pedestrians killed by distracted drivers between 2011 and 2014

Source: City of Toronto

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Hundreds of members of Torontos gay community and their supporters honoured the victims of the shooting spree in Orlando with a candlelight vigil Sunday evening at Barbara Hall Park, on Church St.

The vigil, organized by a queer nun collective dubbed the Toronto Sisters, invited people to bring a candle, say a prayer, seek or give comfort (and) stand in solidarity with our queer Orlando brothers and sisters. Love conquers all.

Supported by The 519, a LGBTQ community centre, the vigil was just one of many ways Torontonians expressed their horror over the massacre of 50 people when a lone gunman opened fire at the Pulse nightclub early Sunday.

A group of equity officials in Ontario schools encouraged schools province-wide to discuss the incident in classrooms on Monday. The Equity Summit Group also urged schools to fly their flags at half-mast, create announcements explaining the reason June has been designated Pride month, build support groups for LGBTQ staff, challenge schools that dont have active Gay Student Alliance groups, and simply speak out for people who feel silenced.

Durham Region schools will fly their flags at half-mast. Barry Bedford, principal of equity at the Durham District School Board and co-chair of the equity group, wrote: It's time to step up. This event has not only robbed countless people of their loved ones, partners. Husbands and wives, it has also stolen any sense of safety within our LGBTQ community. Step up. Words alone mean nothing!

In a statement issued Sunday afternoon, Pride Toronto described the shooting as horrific.

This tragedy is a painful reminder that our community still faces hate and discrimination. Together we mourn the loss of life, and our hearts and thoughts go to the friends and families of those involved, the statement said. As a community, we will together stand united during this painful and difficult time.

The statement also said Pride Toronto will continue to work with our full security team and the City of Toronto to create a festival where safety and accessibility are a priority.

The co-chair of Pride Toronto, Alicia Hall, said she wasnt aware of any threats made against Torontos Pride activities.

The reality is, the violence (against the LGBTQ community) does happen, and it happens every day and it happens around the world, so we just stand in solidarity against it, the 519s director of philanthropy, John R. Farrell, told the Star.

The shooting also drew condemnation from politicians.

This terrifying and horrific act of violence is devastating to the LGBTQ community around the world, and to all of us who support their right to live and love freely and safely, Mayor John Tory said in an official statement condemning any and all acts of violence against the LGBTQ community as well as ongoing resistance to gun regulations in the U.S. that oculd help prevent these mass killings.

The Toronto sign in Nathan Phillips Square was lit in rainbow colours to honour the Orlando victims.

We rededicate ourselves to making sure Toronto is a beacon of acceptance and equality to the world, Tory said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also issued a statement, saying he was deeply shocked and saddened to learn about the shooting.

On behalf of the Government of Canada, Sophie and I offer our condolences and prayers to the families and friends of those lost today, and wish a full recovery to all those injured. We stand in solidarity with Orlando and the LGBTQ2 community. We grieve with our friends in the United States and Florida, and offer any assistance we can provide.

Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose said she was horrified by the news, offering her condolences and emphasizing the terror aspect of the shooting.

This attack is a reminder that we must remain steadfast and strongly condemn terrorism, in all its forms, around the world, she said. As we await further details of the ongoing investigation, we stand shoulder to shoulder with our American allies and all those who have been impacted by this brutal and unwarranted act of terror.

Outgoing NDP Leader Tom Mulcair tweeted that he was terribly shocked to learn of the shooting. We stand with Orlando and the #LGBT community today & always, he said.

Shocked and heartbroken by the news of the #Orlando terrorist attack. Our thoughts are with the entire #LGBTQ2S community, Premier Kathleen Wynne tweeted.

Toronto police spokesperson Const. Jenifferjit Sidhu said the service's LGBTQ liaison officer has reached out to police in Orlando for details and appropriate next steps, but that Toronto police currently have "nothing to indicate" that there is any threat to Pride Toronto events or the LGBTQ community.

Toronto response to Orlando mass shooting

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Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, railed Friday against Donald Trump at a closed-door meeting of Republicans in Park City, Utah, comparing him to demagogues like Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Whitmans comments came at Mitt Romneys annual retreat of Republican donors, leaders and business executives, and were confirmed by three attendees who heard her remarks, but declined to be identified because the meetings were private. They were first reported by The Washington Post.

Whitman, according to one of the attendees, warned the gathering that if they compromised their principles this one time to win an important election, they would be entering fraught territory.

What happens next time? she asked, implying it could lead to more compromises and more candidates like Trump.

Whitman, who ran for governor of California in 2010 and was Romneys 2012 finance cochairwoman, was part of a group of major donors who mounted an effort to stop Trump during the primaries through paid advertising. She has been explicit about her disdain for him.

I wont be voting for Donald Trump, she told CNBC in March. Look at the comments hes made about women, about Muslims, about reporters. Its just repugnant.

The group at the retreat represented a mix of the Republican Party, divided between those who have said they cannot support Trump, like Romney, and those who have grudgingly endorsed him, like Paul Ryan, the House Speaker from Wisconsin, who was Romneys running mate in 2012.

If the attendees were mixed on Trump, they were decidedly bullish on the partys 2012 ticket. The two largest applause lines, said one of them, were statements that Mitt Romney should have been president and that Paul Ryan should run for president.

For those unwilling to support Trump, there was talk of writing in Romney, simply not voting in the presidential race, or even supporting Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Partys nominee.

In an emailed statement, Trump dismissed Whitmans comments.

I never met Meg Whitman, but the job she is doing at Hewlett-Packard is not a very good one, Trump said. Based on the disastrous campaign she ran in California, and the tens of millions of dollars she wasted, I have learned a lot from her. I do not want her support.

Whitman spent $140 million (U.S.) of her own money in her unsuccessful campaign for governor.

On Saturday morning, Trump also took to Twitter  his preferred form of rapid response  to criticize Romney.

Mitt Romney had his chance to beat a failed president but he choked like a dog, Trump wrote, reprising a line he sometimes uses on the campaign trail. Now he calls me racist  but I am least racist person there is.

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Rev. Jesse Jackson announced his support for Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, in a Saturday afternoon news conference with reporters in Chicago and called for reconciliation between her and her rival, Bernie Sanders.

Jackson, 74, recalled meeting Clinton in the Mississippi Delta and cited her work with the Childrens Defense Fund and, later, in the White House for a comprehensive health-care system.

We trust her to work on health care, to fight for the poor, said Jackson, with a couple of sheets of note paper in his hand. We trust her to fight in the defence of children.

Jackson said he had the highest regard for Bernie, recalling Sanderss support for him during his own presidential campaign, and praising Sanders for his work on Wall Street reform and for a $15 hourly minimum wage.

The campaign is technically over, but the crusade is not, Jackson said. I support Hillarys campaign and Bernies crusade, and they are reconcilable.

Jackson called on the candidates to work toward that reconciliation, saying he had been in touch with Clintons spouse, former president Bill Clinton, and with Sanderss campaign manager, Jeff Weaver.

Fighting to keep the issues on the table that have been raised is appropriate, he said. The fight can keep going but in ways that does not give the adversary sound bites.

The reverend, who attended Fridays funeral services for Muhammad Ali in Louisville, spoke Saturday at a memorial that bears the names of several hundred children who were slain in street violence in Chicago.

I wanted people around the nation to see the sense of desperation here, he said when a reporter asked him about his choice of the location for his speech. Down the streets, you see abandoned buildings and vacant lots.

Jackson said he expected that Clinton would develop an urban policy to relieve what he called this scourge of violence and create more economic opportunity.

Public housings not being built. Private housings been foreclosed, he said. Theres analysis every day about disparities in terms of employment, education and life options. There appears to be no remedies, no commitment to invest and alter our condition.

Jacksons endorsement is the latest by a major Democratic figure since Clinton secured enough delegates to effectively end the partys long primary season with a victory at the polls in California on Tuesday. President Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) endorsed the former secretary of state on Thursday.

Bill Clinton is expected in Washington on Saturday.

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LGBTQ communities around the world are mourning but calling for strength and solidarity after a gay club in Orlando was targeted in the deadliest shooting in U.S. history early Sunday.

The now-deceased shooting suspect, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, reportedly became angry after recently seeing two men kissing in downtown Miami, his father told NBC News Sunday.

"We were in Downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry," Seddique told NBC News. "They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, 'Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that.' And then we were in the men's bathroom and men were kissing each other."

Mateen also allegedly pledged allegiance to Daesh in a 911 call shortly before the shooting at Pulse Orlando, described on its Facebook page as Orlando's Premier Gay Nightclub and Ultra Lounge / Bar.

The shooting left at least 50 dead and 53 wounded.

Global community response to mass shooting

In a statement, Stuart Milk, nephew of iconic gay-rights activist Harvey Milk and co-founder of the Harvey Milk Foundation, called the shooting the worst domestic terror attack since 911 that has tragically hit American LGBT families head on.

The LGBT Orlando community and our allies in Central Florida are both strong and unified But our love and prayers are simply not enough. Hate and separation continue to bring forth too much grief, too many stolen lives across the whole world, the statement said.

As we reach out to comfort the Orlando families, and as we support the courage for the injured to heal, may we also have the strength to address and deal with the roots of hatred and separation that target any minority community with violence, anywhere in the world.

Egale Canada Human Rights Trust, a charity that promotes LGBTQ human rights, said it was deeply saddened by the deplorable hate crime.

When a violent act targeting members of the LGBTQI2S community becomes the worst mass-shooting in U.S. history, the sense of hurt and loss resonates globally, the statement said.

As further details surrounding these events come to light, it is imperative that we find solace in solidarity with each other, and not reflect the hatred that was demonstrated this morning. While the LGBTQI2S community in North America has enjoyed considerable progress in the last decade, today is a reminder that many continue to wish violence and death upon those who identify and love as they please. We must honour the victims of this tragedy by continuing to embrace inclusivity in the face of adversity, and demonstrate that hatred and violence accomplish nothing of value or merit.

In a tweet Sunday morning, LGBQT activist and American actress Laverne Cox said she was deeply moved that in the face of tragedy Orlando & Americans everywhere are coming together to give blood, love & support.

This is who we are, Cox said.

A statement released by Pride Toronto said they were shocked and saddened over the horrific events that took place at LGBT nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida, early this morning.

This tragedy is a painful reminder that our community still faces hate and discrimination. Together we mourn the loss of life, and our hearts and thoughts go to the friends and families of those involved. As a community, we will together stand united during this painful and difficult time.

As we look ahead to the rest of our events through Pride Month, Pride Toronto will continue to work with our full security team and the City of Toronto to create a festival where safety and accessibility are a priority, the statement said.

Toronto Mayor John Tory described the incident as horrific. In honour of the innocent victims, John Tory announced that the Toronto sign will be lit in rainbow colours today.

More on thestar.com:

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LONDONSo, on June 23, will the appeal of Little England win over the promise of Great Britain? In the U.K.s historic referendum about its future place in Europe, will its citizens actually take the leap and pull the drawbridge up?

Incredibly, the answer to both questions will quite possibly be yes.

This has been a particularly tense week in the referendum campaign, full of wild and unsubstantiated claims. With less than two weeks to go before Britons vote on whether their country remains a part of the 28-nation European Union, or leaves, there are now polls showing for the first time that the leave or Brexit side may have the momentum to win. In reaction to these polls, the British pound swung wildly on currency markets last Monday in a way not seen since the 2008 financial crisis.

To a Canadian observer, there are obvious parallels to the Canada/Quebec referendums. The threats by big business that the sky will fall if the U.K. votes to leave are getting louder. This makes it more than possible that cautious Britons, having peered into the abyss, will pull back, catch their breath and vote to remain in the EU.

But we now live in the world of Donald Trump, and all bets are off. Here in Britain, like in the rest of Europe and in the U.S., there is growing suspicion of establishment politicians about whose interests they protect in our political system. In a normal world, that would be a good thing, but the aftershocks from this rebellion have been ricocheting in the wildest of directions.

Just as many of us have been astonished that millions of Americans are willing to support Trumps insane leap into the dark, it is similarly stunning to see how many Britons support turning their back on Europe for reasons based on outright lies or bogus promises.

This is partially explained by the overwhelming anti-Europe bias of Britains powerful press. Britain is a country that still cherishes its newspapers. Its national newspapers, dominated by Londons racy tabloids, sell 6.7 million copies a day. Their influence is amplified by daily radio and TV segments about what the press is reporting on all of Britains news networks.

Most newspapers want Britain to leave the European Union, arguing virtually every day that the country has become powerless to stop the influx of immigrants. Their readers account for more than five million of the 6.7 million people who buy papers every day. Significantly, these newspapers express their opinions with a tone that is unrelenting and shrill.

Here are some front-page examples from just one day  Thursday  of this past week: Thatcher minister quits Tories in Brexit row (The Daily Telegraph); Brexit boost as business billionaire votes to leaves (The Times); Outrage at bid to rig EU vote (Daily Express); Debate hero hits out: quit UK if we vote Remain (the Sun); Brave Lions stand up to Euro terror (Daily Star); The Albanian double killer whos lived freely in open borders UK for 18 years (Daily Mail).

At the beginning of the campaign, supporters of the Brexit side, led by former London mayor Boris Johnson, cited Canada as a model for the road ahead, post-referendum. They pointed to Canadas tentative trade deal with the European Union as an example of how Britain could manage. But the Canadian model has faded from the debate as a growing anti-trade movement in Europe threatens to kill the Canada-EU deal.

Johnson has become a lightning rod in the campaign as the internal civil war among British Conservatives becomes ugly. Although a fellow Conservative, Johnson is at loggerheads with Prime Minister David Cameron and hopes to succeed him. But last weekend, former prime minister John Major, who has long supported British-European ties, called the pro-leave Brexit campaign squalid and deceitful and described Johnson himself as a court jester.

However imperfect the European Union may be, an irony in this campaign is that so many of the alleged grievances against the EU are misdirected. On British matters of war and peace, national security, austerity, welfare and the like, there have been awful mistakes, yes. But, overwhelmingly, these mistakes were not made in Brussels by the EU, but in Londons Westminster Parliament.

On June 23, we shall see whether this ruse to shift the blame elsewhere will have succeeded.

Tony Burman, former head of CBC News and Al Jazeera English, teaches journalism at Ryerson University. Reach him @TonyBurman or at tony.burman@gmail.com .

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The research subjects are asked to watch a video of two men hanging laundry. Or another on how to make concrete. They might be asked to transcribe the references from an academic article, or take a phone book and cross out every letter a.

In all cases, the experiment is seemingly simple: to induce boredom. You just want to poke your eyes out, says John Eastwood, a professor of psychology at York University.

For over a century, boredom has been mostly ignored as a topic of sustained research. Boredom, part of the furniture of life, was itself too trivial to investigate.

But in recent years, psychologists have begun to probe common thought processes that were once uncommonly studied: nostalgia, daydreaming, mind-wandering. In the case of boredom, that research is beginning to sketch the contours of a dynamic mental state, one with a web of associations to other behaviours, both negative and positive.

Boredom is very a complex, multi-faceted experience, says Eastwood. The field is in its infancy, he notes. But over the last 15 years, weve come to realize theres something that deserves a closer look.

Like others, Eastwood was drawn to boredom in part because the studies that did exist had linked boredom to a whole host of disorders: depression, anxiety, substance abuse, binge eating.

People who say they experience a lot of boredom also say they struggle with x, y, and z. And yet we know so little about it, Eastwood says. That really fascinated me.

Yet scientists did not have a universal definition of boredom, and did not have validated ways to manipulate and measure it experimentally  to ensure their research subjects were actually feeling something everyone could agree was crushing, mind-numbing boredom, and how much.

A consensus definition is still in the works, though most researchers agree it is some combination of wanting to engage with the environment and not being able to.

In 2011, to accompany questionnaires designed to measure an individuals boredom proneness, Eastwoods lab developed a test for boredom in the moment. That scale helped provide scientific footing for experiments.

For Eastwood, I was interested in trying to understand: is boredom different from depression, or is it really, when it gets severe, just another name for depression? How does it overlap, or how is it distinct from feeling that life is not meaningful?

In interviews with chronically depressed people, Eastwood and his colleagues found anecdotally that boredom often triggers depressive thoughts. In a study published in 2003, another team found that cancer patients depression could be ameliorated with medication, but boredom did not respond the same way. The particulars of how boredom causes or is correlated to depression are still muddy.

Theyre not the same thing. But theyre closely related, and understanding exactly how theyre related is an interesting and unresolved question, Eastwood says.

Studies of boredom and depression have helped confirm a perhaps obvious truth: boredom is not distributed evenly among us.

Teenagers are more boredom-prone than adults. But why? Is it psychosocial  because when they want to change lifes circumstances they usually lack the means to do so? Or is it neurological  because the frontal lobes of the brain, responsible for functions like impulse control and planning, are the last to develop?

In ongoing research at his University of Waterloo lab, cognitive neuroscience professor James Danckert is investigating whether individuals who choose a scattered, disorganized approach in a berry-picking digital game are more boredom-prone. Danckert is interested in self-regulatory fit: the idea that boredom arises when an individual has a goal but chooses a plan of action that doesnt match that goal, whether because they get distracted, cant compel themselves to even start, or any number of other reasons.

Both Danckert and Eastwood caution against concluding that boredom is a pathological mental state. Boredom is an uncomfortable feeling that we will take drastic steps to try to eliminate. Perhaps some steps, like binge-eating or endlessly streaming Netflix, are simply counterproductive.

But boredom itself is actually quite functional, says Wijnand van Tilburg, a lecturer in psychology at Kings College London. It reminds (people), very strongly, that the behaviour theyre currently engaging in is purposeless.

Van Tilburg began researching boredom because he is interested in how people create meaning and purpose in their lives. Adhering to social identities  clubs, teams, patriotism  is one way people do that.

When van Tilburg and his collaborator Eric Igou, a senior lecturer at Irelands University of Limerick, bored their research subjects, they discovered these stultifying activities induced nostalgia, a font of meaningful memories.

In a paper still in press, bored study subjects also avowed more extreme political opinions, whether left or right wing. In another experiment, bored Irish study subjects were more likely to give a longer prison sentence to an outsider in a fictional scenario, an Englishman who beat up an Irishman, or a lenient one when the nationalities were reversed.

Boredom, often accompanied or defined by a sense of purposeless, may motivate people to find meaning. But it doesnt have to have constructive consequences, says van Tilburg.

The applications for boredom research extend beyond simple curiosity. Educators are intensely interested in whether boredom negatively affects learning. But researchers emphasize that the field is still young. Of the studies that have been published, few, if any, have been replicated: the scientists have more questions than answers about what boredom is and does. Is boredom the same across cultures? Do animals feel boredom, and what does that say about its evolutionary benefits?

They know one thing for sure. Boredom is not boring, says van Tilburg.

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A law enforcement official says the shooter in the massacre at a gay Florida nightclub was known to the FBI before the incident and had been looked at by agents within the last few years.

Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida, has been identified as the shooter in a massacre at a gay Florida nightclub Sunday.

The official told The Associated Press that the matter for which Mateen came under investigation was open and closed pretty quickly. The official was not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation and on spoke on condition of anonymity.

A gunman wielding an assault-type rifle and a handgun opened fire inside Pulse Orlando early Sunday before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers, police said.

Rep. Alan Grayson named the shooter, citing law enforcement officials. A federal law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation also confirmed the name. The official was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The father of Mateen says hes in shock and that he wasnt aware of anything his son might have been planning.

Mir Seddique told NBC News that his son got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago and thinks that may be related to the shooting.

Seddique says: We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident . . . We are in shock like the whole country.

The father also says the incident has nothing to do with religion.

Mateens ex-wife has spoken with the Washington Post, telling them he was abusive and not a stable person.

The ex-wife, who the Post said spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared for her safety in the wake of the mass shooting, said, He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasnt finished or something like that.

Officials say the shooter was among the 50 killed, and that theyre investigating whether the incident was an act of terrorism.

A SWAT truck and a bomb disposal unit are on the scene of an apartment complex in a residential neighbourhood in Fort Pierce, Florida associated with Mateen. Fort Pierce is nearly 200 kilometres southeast of Orlando.

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Londons mayor is pledging to fight to the bitter end to persuade voters to remain in the European Union in a June 23 referendum.

Sadiq Khan told The Associated Press on Sunday that it was time for political leaders who want the country to stay in the 28-nation bloc to present a more unified front  fighting together in common cause. Speaking on the sidelines of Queen Elizabeth IIs birthday celebrations, Khan offered an impassioned appeal to put aside differences that have dogged the message of the remain campaigners.

If we believe that the European Union is important for our way of life, weve got to campaign together  door to door, street to street, city to city  to persuade our fellow citizens why this is so important to our future, Khan said. I believe it is.

Khans remarks reflect the perception that the race has grown ever tighter as the vote draws near. Though Khan, of the Labour Party, has campaigned with Prime Minister David Cameron, of the Conservatives, such high-profile efforts have been rare.

Much of the frustration of remain campaigners has been directed at Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is seen as a less-than-enthusiastic supporter of the cause. In a Channel 4 interview, Corbyn put his commitment to remaining in the EU at seven on a scale of 10.

Labour for its part, on Sunday pledged extra support for communities facing pressure from migration as part of an effort to push more voters toward remain. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown will lead the efforts to counter the charges of Brexit campaigners who warn of a threat to jobs and services from the influx of European workers.

In the end, people are patriotic British citizens, Brown told Sky News. They are proud of our country and they are proud most of all when we lead, not stand apart, not standing outside isolated as some would want us to do.

Khan argued that it was time to stop seeing the discussion through the prism of the ongoing fight within the Conservative Party, which has been riven by the vote.

Its much more important than that, he said of party politics. Its about our children and grandchildren.

He urged voters to consider the consequences, particularly to the economy.

What would happen if we left? Khan said What would happen to those businesses that are American, Japanese, Chinese, that have their headquarters here in London? Khan said, referring to the fact that many international businesses use the capital as the jumping off point for access to the single market of some 500 million.

What happens to the business we do with Germany, France, Spain, Italy? he said. Its really important.

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Your death, your choice.

We dont choose to be born. It just happens. When we are young and vulnerable, we have little say in how we live.

It is not until we grow older that we begin to hopefully have choices. While we may be limited by economic reality or health challenges, it is basically up to us, citizens in a free, participatory democracy, to choose our priorities and goals.

Rarely though, do we have an opportunity to voice our thoughts about a seminal issue facing our Parliament. Both Houses, our elected Commons and our unelected Senate, are grappling in real time with the one of the most critical issues we will ever face as a nation, the right to medically assisted death. Raw politics and complex ethical decisions are in danger of a collision unless strong leadership is demonstrated quickly.

The background to the epic battle is legal. Unlike the lack of choice when we were born, our Supreme Court in the groundbreaking Carter decision has clearly stated that competent adults with grievous and irremediable medical conditions that cause intolerable suffering, will now have the right to medically assisted death. By leaving individuals to endure uncontrolled suffering, the court reasoned that certain kinds of suffering impinge on the security of the person under section 7 of the Charter.

The court went on to carefully note that  nothing in this declaration would compel physicians to provide assistance in dying and that the Charter rights of patients and physicians will need to be reconciled in any legislative and regulatory response to this judgment.

Having made that legal finding, the court then properly turned to Canadian legislators to come up with a coherent, transparent framework for the protection of all. Not an easy task and a task made harder by the imposition of deadlines that perhaps were too ambitious. Because the deadline passed, a yawning void (somewhat like Ottawas sinkhole) has opened up and the provinces have had to jump in to fill in the dots. This is not a sustainable situation. Individual patients and health-care workers are waiting to have answers. Time is literally running out for some people.

When the right to die with dignity issue became a leading policy discussion in the 2015 election, all parties knew this would be difficult. The Liberals promised to introduce legislation quickly yet it was not until April of this year that legislation was tabled after a House of Commons committee report, whose more expansive recommendations were ignored by cabinet.

This left only a few weeks for the new, improved Senate with its combustible mixture of warhorses from both the Liberals and the Conservatives to mix it up with eager, independent newbie Senators to come up with approval of the legislation.

Clearly, this will now not happen in a timely way, as senators have amended the legislation. At the time of this writing, the Senate, which used to be seen as a prom date for whichever government was in control, is now a blind date. Who knows if there is a long-term relationship ahead?

This week, I participated in the unveiling of a stunning painting by Toronto artist, Stephanie MacKendrick, which I had commissioned to honour the extraordinary nursing team on 5AFell, the surgical spinal floor at Toronto Western Hospital. These nurses literally saved my life last year and supported me with compassion and strength in the tough days that followed.

Returning to the hospital setting a year later, memories came flooding back. I realized how much I would want the right to medically assisted suicide, should my pain and suffering ever become intolerable and I also realized the impact that those decisions would have, not only on doctors, but on nurses, pharmacists, personal support workers and carers.

Procedural jousting is often normal parliamentary procedure when faced with conflict over legislation and can in fact, be a healthy exercise in democracy. Nevertheless, procedural games, partisan issues and any attempt by one House to one up the other, are dangerous at this stage and should not distract us from the fact that medically assisted death, is in fact, a game changer, potentially for each of us personally and for our country.

You have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to use your voice in this issue. It is not too late. Call your MP. Call your senator.

It is your life. Maybe your death. Your choice.

Penny Collenette is an adjunct professor of law at the University of Ottawa and was a senior director of the Prime Ministers Office for Jean Chretien.

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There is only one behaviour that stains our carefully polished self-portrait as those nice Canadians more than our sanctimonious anti-American finger wagging. It is our feigned Presbyterian parsimony about the private expenditure of public officials  or worse, their abuse of our money to support their self-indulgent lives.

Rarely a month goes by without some lazy reporter, certain of a front-page story, digging up the shocking total of hotel costs of some well-travelled trade minister, or the abomination of the two bottles of Ontario wine consumed at a working dinner with a visiting dignitary. (the quotes conveying always the some work, some dinner! sneer).

Sophie Gregoire Trudeau showed considerable class making fun of the childish nature of her critics at the Ottawa Press Gallery dinner this month. One doubts they will get the message, sadly.

It never seems to strike Canadians as curious that this is a tabloid journalism weakness that we share with almost no other advanced democracy. Our closest cousins, in this below stairs Downton Abbey vulgarity are the Aussies  who really do have a society riven with class envy, so it is perhaps more understandable. But what is our excuse?

Has there ever been a story about the millions of dollars wasted by Barack Obama in his sayonara jet-setting about Asia. Did you read in the New York Times what the outrageous cost of the White House desserts were at Canadas official dinner? Neither did I.

Oh, but you probably did see the sneering coverage of Margaret Trudeaus attendance. As if the Obamas would never have shown the grace to offer such a famous former first lady an invite without a demand from the PMO. And the snide cutlines under the photos of the Trudeaus celebrating their anniversary in Japan, which was called a working visit (nudge, nudge).

This would be merely a mildly irritating national weakness, pumped by news organizations confident that this People magazine snark will sell more newspapers more cheaply, in any event.

Except when it goes to the next level.

That is when the attacks turn on the housekeeping arrangements of a prime minister with a young family, or worse, frames his partner as some bling-obsessed termagant deserving of public shaming. One wonders if the mostly male editorial writers at Canadas two national newspapers could plausibly claim to be such staunch guardians of the public purse, if they were attacking a First Man and his choice of tailor.

The same gang tried it on Mila Mulroney and Laureen Harper, from time to time. But now they have doubled down.

One of them had a clever, if totally bizarre, defence for their outrage at our public support for young parents who together help run a country, raise a family and try to maintain a life together, 15 to 18 hours a day, seven days a week. There is no position in the BNA Act for a First Lady! they thundered. Astonishing! Isnt that the same Act with no voting or public role for women, period? I dont believe there is a First Lady article in the U.S. Constitution, either, but I may have missed it.

George Brown editorially complaining about Sir John A.s granting his sick wife a seat in his official carriage is believable. But for the these papers to do so today, one can only echo Justin Trudeaus adroit put down, In 2016? Really? Neither the Conservatives nor the NDP should be proud of their indulgence in this claptrap.

Sophie Gregoire Trudeau happens to be an accomplished, popular and valuable champion of Canada and of several charities, and reportedly, a devoted mother. Are we really going to whinge about the domestic support we provide her in those roles, or the costs of the Canadian designed gowns she wears, or what the cost of the orange juice she consumes might be? It is demeaning, but not of her or her husband.

Of us.

The final insult, and even a dangerous precedent, is the suggestion, from some of the schoolyard gossips that Well, theyre rich and they get free housing . Why should we pay for it? They can afford it!

Oh, that is a very sound democratic principle. If youre rich you can be a senior public official, if you are willing to pay for it yourself. We used to require that of our MPs and our leaders, when they got miserly stipends. We didnt get too many of either who were ordinary Canadians in those roles.

Come on, lets drop this veiled sexism and embarrassing class-envy. Lets be proud of a committed young family, raising their children in the public eye, while attempting to lead the country, and to be exemplars of Canadian values to the world.

This is not a partisan issue. This is about honouring the same Canadian tolerance and values we do about everything else  well, except about Americans, of course.

Robin V. Sears, a principal at Earnscliffe and a Broadbent Institute leadership fellow, was an NDP strategist for 20 years.

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In what appears to be an international chess game between Iran and Canada, a 65-year-old Canadian-Iranian anthropology professor at Montreals Concordia University seems an unlikely and unfortunate pawn.

Homa Hoodfar, who was in Iran on a personal visit and to conduct research on gender and Islam, was arrested Monday and imprisoned in that countrys notorious Evin prison. She had been detained in Iran since March when members of the powerful Revolutionary Guards raided her flat and seized her passports just before she was due to leave.

Now it seems her detention is a power play by Iran to force Canada to hand over Canadian-Iranian Mahmoud Reza Khavari, former chief of the Melli Bank of Iran. Officials want to question him about a $2.6-billion embezzlement and money-laundering scandal. Iranian Justice Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi complained to the media on Wednesday in Tehran that Canada has rejected repeated requests to hand over Khavari.

But Khavaris case is one for diplomatic negotiations. Hoodfar is an innocent bystander who should not be imprisoned, without anyone even knowing under what charge, because Iran has been frustrated in its efforts to question another person.

Canada must do everything in its power to obtain her release. That includes, if necessary, putting the new relationship it was forging with Iran on hold. In February Ottawa lifted economic sanctions against Iran and announced it was ready to reopen diplomatic ties that were broken off in 2012.

It wouldnt be a stretch to say Hoodfars life may be in danger. After all, who can forget what happened to Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist who was imprisoned in Evin in 2003 after she was found taking pictures of the jail? She was held in a solitary cell before being raped, tortured, beaten and killed. A doctors report later revealed she had broken fingers, missing fingernails, a skull fracture and severe bruising.

For her part, Hoodfar, who is suffering from a rare neurological condition after suffering a stroke, is being held without access to her family, a doctor, a lawyer or medication.

In February, when Canada lifted almost all sanctions against Iran, Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion said Ottawa was doing so with our eyes wide open, knowing Iran was a regime that is a danger to human rights.

His words could not have been more prophetic. If Ottawas eyes are, indeed, wide open, it must see that its time to shut down efforts to open up diplomatic relations with Iran until Hoodfar is safely released.

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Re: Tory senator's cosmetic test ban a sensible idea, June 6

Tory senator's cosmetic test ban a sensible idea, June 6

I agree with Thomas Walkoms position that the government should support Senate Bill S-214 to ban animal testing of cosmetics. It is quite appropriate to be influenced by the position of other jurisdictions such as the European Union, which has banned animal-tested cosmetics since 2013. In movies, fashion magazines and advertisements, European actresses and models continue to look quite healthy and presentable despite the lack of new animal-tested cosmetics.

Bruce Couchman, Ottawa

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Austin Ellis, a member of Metropolitan Community Church, carries a cross with a sign in memory of the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting as he marches in the Gay Pride Parade on June 12 in Philadelphia. (Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images)

On Thursday, at the White Houses annual pride event, President Obama took note of the extraordinary violence that members of the LGBT community face around the world. Weve got work to do when LGBT people around the world still face incredible isolation and poverty and persecution and violence, and even death, the president told a rapt audience. Naturally, he had no idea how violence and death would play out at a popular gay club in Orlando but three days later.

For gay men and lesbians of a certain age, both the fear of violence  not to mention the real thing  has long been part of our consciousness. We remember all too well the assassination of gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk in 1978. Dianne Feinstein, then president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, announced that Milk had been shot and killed .

That late November day, I sat in the dark in my apartment in Durham, N.C., debating with myself whether it was safe to come out. I decided it wasnt safe.

[50 dead in worst mass shooting in U.S. history]

Alas, fear is not limited to LGBT boomers, who came of age in the shadow of Stonewall. It also affects millennials and Gen Xers.

Twenty-four-year-old Jacob Tobia, a genderqueer writer and advocate, told me how people like me are constantly subjected to immense violence. I expect violence walking alone late at night. I expect violence in the prison system. I expect random acts of hate violence on the street. But, Tobia added sharply, I do not expect violence when I am dancing at an LGBTQ club or when I am visiting the LGBTQ center.

James Parker Sheffield, a director at an LGBT-focused nonprofit, echoed Tobias point of view. It scares me because it could have been just about any queer space. . . . I feel scared because someone could just walk into my workplace, a queer workplace. Its terrifying to me.

LGBT people, of course, are not the only ones to experience the sudden shock that comes with murderous violence intruding into a formerly safe space. In recent years weve seen killings in a movie theater, an elementary school, a Charleston, S.C., church, and too many workplaces and college campuses to bear.

We all now go about our days with a new anxiety percolating beneath the surface, a new fear of shopping malls and other formerly benign places. But for LGBT people, this is different. This shooting reinforces the deep-seated fear that, for us, nowhere is really safe.

Weve long known that violence can erupt on a sidewalk, in a park, a diner or a restroom, whether were alone, with a partner, even with our families  anywhere we are identified as LGBT in front of the wrong person. But this, a focused attack on a clearly LGBT crowd, shakes us to our core.

President Obama made a statement on the shooting in Orlando from the White House briefing room. (AP)

As the president noted in his solemn remarks: This could have been any one of our communities. . . . The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends, to dance and to sing and to live.

And yet the president took careful note of how heartbreaking this massacre is for the LGBT community.

It is more than a nightclub. It is a place of solidarity and empowerment. Yes, it is  especially for those still seeking to come out, to find like-minded friends in our communities that, despite much progress remain too unaccepting of LGBT people.

[What we know about the Orlando nightclub mass shooting]

On Sunday, I had an emotional conversation with Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage. Before we ended the conversation I asked him one last question. Are you afraid, personally?

That is absolutely there, he said without hesitation. Thats always a risk when you stand up and fight for something that others dont want, but I try not to think about it to that level. I cant let that paralyze me or stop me from my advocacy work. I cant let that stop me from fighting for others.

At that moment, I thought I was speaking with Harvey Milk, who had once said prophetically: If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.

I hung up the phone, and before I cried, I said to myself: This is not who we are. History cannot repeat itself.

Agree or disagree with my point of view. Let me know in the comments section below.

Join Petrow for a live online chat Tuesday, June 21, at 1 p.m., at live.washingtonpost.com.

Email questions to stevenpetrow@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @stevenpetrow.
A day intended to be one of celebration and jubilance for Washingtons gay community took on a more somber tone Sunday as participants reacted to reports that the gunman who killed at least 50 people in an Orlando gay nightclub may have targeted them because of their sexual orientation.

Sundays Capital Pride Festival, which attracted hundreds of thousands of people, became a symbol for participants who said it represented both the recent triumphs of the LGBT community but also underscored the work that remains. There is still hatred. There is still reason to fear. Even in a moment of celebration.

Its a sad day for all of us and a powerful reminder that theres still a lot of hatred in the world, said David Mariner, executive director of the DC Center for the LGBT Community. Much work remains all around the world. And much work remains right here in the District of Columbia.

[Gunman in Orlando pledged allegiance to ISIS; at least 50 killed in shooting rampage at gay club]

Authorities say Omar Mateen, 29, opened fire inside the crowded Pulse nightclub early Sunday, killing 50 people and injuring 53 others in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. During the attack, authorities say, Mateen made a 911 call in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. Mateen, whose family is from Afghanistan, also cited the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon.

At D.C. Pride on Sunday, the LGBTQ community expresses sorrow and stands in support with the victims of the deadly mass shooting that took place at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. (Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)

President Obama said federal authorities were investigating the attack as an act of terrorism. The Islamic State-linked Amaq News Agency said in a message Sunday that the Orlando shooting was carried out by an Islamic State fighter.

In statements Sunday, local elected officials expressed heartache upon learning of the attack.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said he reached out to Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), who has issued a state of emergency, to lend support and assistance. We offer our most sincere condolences to the family and friends of the innocent victims of this act of terror, and our deepest gratitude to the first responders and law enforcement who responded to this tragedy with bravery and courage, Hogan said.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) tweeted: Im heartbroken by the news of sons & daughters lost last night in Orlando. Praying for victims, families & an end to senseless gun violence.

Also on Sunday, authorities in Los Angeles said they arrested a heavily armed man who said he was going to the L.A. Gay Pride festival in West Hollywood. Authorities found possible explosives as well as an assault rifle and ammunition in his car.

[Man with weapons and other dangerous material wanted to harm gay pride event in Santa Monica, Ca.]

In the District, the question that suffused the festivities was how to celebrate the LGBT communitys growing prominence in the national ethos at a moment of violence and uncertainty.

A moment of silence is held during the Capital Pride festival along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post)

For many, the answer was to celebrate as usual  if not more so  while paying respect to the lives lost. The Gay Mens Chorus dedicated its festival performance to the victims. A moment of silence punctuated the festival early Sunday afternoon as hundreds of revelers hugged, held hands and hoisted rainbow flags.

Supporters planned several vigils in the region Sunday night, including a Rally for Peace at the U.S. Capitol and a candlelight vigil at Dupont Circle  and there was no indication that turnout at the Pride festival was any lower than it would have otherwise been.

[It was just complete chaos: Orlando massacre survivors on the desperate struggle to stay alive]

People are not staying away; they are actually coming down here in the show of solidarity, said Bernie Delia, Capital Pride Alliance board president. He added: Theres a duality of emotions going on. Theres sadness, theres anger, but theres also resolution and people are resolved to go forward.

He said event organizers heightened security  as did District police. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said more police were added to the streets to monitor Sundays festival and popular LGBT hangouts.

This morning, our hearts are heavy after hearing about the tragedy in Orlando. Just yesterday, we held the annual Capital Pride parade, a celebration of the rich diversity and contributions of the LGBTQ community in the District of Columbia, Bowser said Sunday. Today, as always, we will not be deterred by hate as we gather to celebrate love.

Thats why James Dallas Dunn, 28, of Arlington decided to come. Dunn, who served eight years in the Marine Corps, said he talked with his boyfriend Sunday morning about skipping the festival. They werent sure it was safe.

But in the end, he said he wouldnt be cowed by the Florida attack. After he arrived, he said he felt his senses heighten. Another attack could happen anywhere. I would definitely say my Marine mentality is kicking in  just visually, looking around, he said.

That fear intensified calls among some managers of gay establishments to institute stronger security at popular community hangouts. The Paris attacks  and now Orlandos  have exposed the vulnerabilities in crowded and loud social settings.

That could have been any gay bar, any gay club in any community, said Brock Thompson, an emcee at Saturdays Pride parade, walking with friends in Shaw.

After the Paris attacks, David Perruzza, general manager of JRs Bar, prohibited patrons from bringing bags inside. Given the Orlando massacre, he said hell keep that policy in place indefinitely. This tragedy in Orlando needs to be a wake-up call to all of us, he said on Facebook. If you are a bar patron, if you see something, say something.

On Sunday, two other gay bars, Cobalt and Green Lantern, also prohibited bags. Given the events in Orlando, and because the safety of our patrons is our top priority, we ask that you leave all bags at home until further notice as no bags will be allowed in the Green Lantern, the bar said on its Facebook page. Were all in this together. Stay safe out there and Happy Pride!

Muslims in the Washington region said they also were reeling from the attack. Some expressed outrage while privately worrying of the backlash that the attack could bring.

There have been numerous attacks on mosques around the country, and any time an act [such as in Orlando] happens, thats always in the back of my mind, said Rafi Ahmed, an official with Dar Al-Noor Mosque in Northern Virginia, who called the gunman demented.

We refuse to be represented by him, Ahmed said. He does not represent us. And he doesnt represent our religion. Were outraged. It was declared a hate crime, and thats what it is.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community urged calm and offered its condolences to the friends and families of the victims. The Virginia chapter of the community planned to hold a prayer service at the Mubarak Mosque in Chantilly, Va., and said all faiths were welcome.

Randy Shulman, editor of Metro Weekly, a publication that covers gay life in the District, said hes seen a lot of violence against the community in his 30 years of living an openly gay life  but nothing like this. I cannot remember a single act of violence against the gay community in any way shape or form like this, he said.

Those of a younger generation, however, said that they came of age in a time of greater tolerance and said the attack showed how much was left to be done.

Our generation of the LGBT community has never not seen the progression of acceptance, Dunn said. Events like this make us remember how little weve really progressed.

You want to be happy, but youre sad about whats happening down there, said Kris Archer, 33, of Greenbelt, Md. You dont have to look, you dont have to agree with us, but you dont have to kill us.

In Dupont Circle, where the Capital Pride parade thundered through the streets Saturday, others grappled with the difficult questions. Had their movement  which has notched so many victories, from growing prominence on television to the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage  fomented a violent backlash?

Gay visibility is going to inevitably make life a little worse for gay people before it gets better, said Matthew Viator, 31, as he walked down P Street with his mother. You are going to stir a hornets nest of people who really, really wish you dont exist. And they are going to strike.

Others refused to dwell on such perceived ramifications. Orlandos attack should embolden the LGBT community, some people said. Pride has always been about celebration, said Mariner of the DC Center for the LGBT Community. But its also about community. And I cant imagine a day when our community needs to be together more than this day.
Bernie Sanders speaks during a rally Thursday in D.C., saying a win in the nations final primary would still mean something. (Molly Riley/AFP/Getty Images)

Democrats heading to the polls Tuesday for the Districts presidential primary will participate in an odd ritual: Theyll vote, but the results wont matter.

The partys intensely fought battle between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is over  decided last week, when Clinton racked up enough victories across the country to secure her partys nomination.

The citys inconsequential status is largely a function of its dead-last place on the primary calendar, something Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) says she wants to change for future presidential contests.

But that feeling of futility and sense of invisibility go beyond presidential primaries: They underscore the civic experience in the District, residents say.

Despite the fact that more people live in the District than in Vermont or Wyoming, the city has no voting representation on Capitol Hill. Residents elect shadow senators and a shadow representative, who have no seats in either chamber, and a delegate who does get a seat but not a vote. D.C. voters approve ballot measures concerning local matters, only to see Congress occasionally nullify their vote.

1 of 27 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  On the ground for the primary elections in six states View Photos California, New Jersey, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota voters cast their ballots on Tuesday. Caption California, New Jersey, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota voters cast their ballots on Tuesday. June 7, 2016 Hillary Clinton acknowledges supporters during her primary night victory rally in Brooklyn after clinching the Democratic Partys presidential nomination. Julio Cortez/AP Wait 1 second to continue.

D.C. is the last colony, as I like to say. Were always forgotten. Weve had taxation without representation for so long  this election is just another example, agreed Denise Woodson, a 45-year-old social worker who added that she had to dig deep to summon the will to participate in early voting last week after it was clear that Clinton had already won.

For all the enthusiasm of the I Voted! stickers residents sport after leaving the polls, the exercise can feel empty, some say.

Here it is again  D.C.: The last and the least, said Eugene Puryear, a member of the Statehood Green Party. Why would you even vote at this point? . . . All the motivation has been stripped away to stand up and feel like your vote counts.

Voters will be able to decide a handful of D.C. Council races on Tuesday, and those results do count. But during one of the most heated presidential contests in years, it feels like small consolation.

D.C. deserves better, said Martin Ayaba, a native of Cameroon who just finished a masters degree program and voted early last week  for Clinton.

For months, residents of the nations capital waited patiently as the presidential primary contests rolled along, drawing national attention to the concerns of faraway voters.

Iowans, they learned in January, were preoccupied with terrorism and the economy; Wisconsinites with education and health-care costs. In April, the nation dissected which candidate had the right New York values.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at her Brooklyn headquarters June 7. She thanked supporters and said that rival Donald Trump is "trying to wall off Americans from each other." (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)

With each passing state, every uptick in the delegate count, the despairing reality for D.C. Democrats again sets in.

On Tuesday  for the ninth time in 11 presidential contests  the partys voters will cast ballots after the presumptive Democratic nominee has been determined.

That means almost no say for the Americans who will deal most directly with the next president, from motorcades that snarl traffic to administration policies that alter the character of the city.

It really should be the other way around, said Jamison Gillespie, 28, a defense contractor who lives on Capitol Hill and attended a rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) Thursday night outside RFK Stadium. Voting in D.C. never means anything. . . . We should be the first, maybe even before Iowa, but I dont think thats going to happen.

D.C. Republicans held their primary in March, handing a victory to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, although it didnt help much  he dropped out of the GOP race days later.

But in a city where 75 percent of registered voters are Democrats, most residents have been passively watching presidential politics.

Indeed, its Democratic dominance of D.C. during the past 50 years that is partly to blame. Because the city is overwhelmingly blue, the Democratic primary has become the de facto election. To lengthen the campaign season for local contests, the D.C. Council has tried to stretch out the partys primary season, often selecting one of the last slots available on national party calendars in presidential years.

And that has kept D.C. largely off the radar during primary contests since 1961, when Congress granted residents of the capital the right to vote for president. The citys residents were the last in the country to win that right.

In 2008, to meet new federal requirements so military voters could be accommodated, the District shifted its primary to February, joining Maryland and Virginia in what was known as the Potomac Primary. Voters in the District and its neighboring states backed Barack Obama, adding a wave of Mid-Atlantic momentum to the campaign of the then-Illinois senator.

Running separate presidential and local primaries, however, costs the District about $1 million extra. To save money, the D.C. Council in 2012 combined the two and moved the date to later in the spring.

Bowser wants the D.C. Council to return to separate primaries, even if it costs more. Many, many states have done it to boost the clout of their voters, she said.

Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) seems amenable. Being dead last is just a terrible idea, he said.

If the District could play a greater role in presidential primaries, it could draw more national attention to its push for statehood, Bowser said. The mayor will help convene a constitutional convention this week and put a measure before voters in November to petition the next Congress and president to make the District the 51st state.

Since the civil rights era of the 1960s, every Democratic nominee for president has pledged to support some kind of voting representation for the District in Congress, but not one has pushed to make it a reality once elected.

They are all here now, campaigning, paying lip service to D.C.s problems, like lack of statehood, but I dont think they know what it means, said Woodson, the social worker who cast her ballot during early voting.

When Obama ran for office in 2007, he said it was unjust that D.C. residents lacked a voice in the federal government. Thats wrong, he said. Residents shouldnt be treated like tenants. But a deal in Congress that would have given the city one voting member in the House of Representatives fell apart in his first year in office, and he hasnt substantively addressed the issue again.

The fact that the heavily African American city did not make any progress under Obama, the nations first black president, has especially disappointed some local activists.

Now, city activists and politicians have united around full statehood  with voting representatives in Congress  as the only answer.

[Related: D.C. is about to declare its independence  from Congress]

At a campaign stop Friday, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the citys nonvoting representative to Congress, stood beside Clinton at a bakery in the citys Shaw neighborhood. Norton pointed toward the ceiling, where the owner had installed a sign advocating for D.C. statehood.

Im in favor of it, Clinton said when asked by a reporter, echoing an opinion piece she penned on the topic last month.

Sanders also gave a plug for D.C. statehood during his rally, which attracted more than 2,000 people to RFK Stadium. He noted that the citys election on Tuesday will take place in a non-state.

I am aware of this problem here in Washington, D.C., Sanders said. And I hope that the next time Im back, were going to be talking about the State of Washington, D.C. 
Narrowing achievement gaps is not always a sign of improvement in school districts. It can also signal trouble. (istockphoto)

Never have I found the uselessness of our fascination with achievement gaps better illustrated than in two lists from an admirable paper by Stanford University researchers, which that universitys Center for Education Policy Analysis published in April.

The Geography of Racial/Ethnic Test Score Gaps was written by Sean F. Reardon, Demetra Kalogrides and Ken Shores. It identifies the 20 U.S. school districts with the smallest white-black and white-Hispanic achievement gaps in 2009 to 2012, based on standardized reading and math tests in elementary and middle schools.

The study has gotten a lot of attention. It reveals what creates gaps and the surprising places they occur. Americans assume that big achievement gaps are bad and little ones are good. Which school district, I wondered, had the smallest gaps?

I have been resisting reading glasses, so when I first looked at the lists I thought I had missed something. I squinted. I gasped. The national champion of achievement gaps, scoring pretty close to zero in the difference between whites and those two minorities on that scale, was Detroit.

Detroit is our nations worst school district, or close to it. Yet it tops this list because its white students are as poor and disadvantaged as its black and Hispanic students. It wins first prize in a weird contest that, I think, should be discontinued.

There are several ways that narrowing achievement gaps can signal trouble, not improvement. Low-income student scores can drop while high-income student scores drop even more. Low-income scores may stay put as high-income scores decline. Low-income scores could improve while high-income scores dont.

We should instead be looking at how each group is doing, celebrating gains and addressing declines without comparing groups with different issues. I applaud programs that raise achievement for low-income and minority students, but also note that our best-performing students have sometimes not made the same progress. There shouldnt be a ceiling on achievement.

One source of our obsession with academic differences can be found in this years political campaigns. The income gap in America has become a huge issue. Our resentment of company executives making 200 times as much as their average workers is distorting our view of education. Making money and learning about the world are different enterprises with different consequences.

I understand the distaste for billionaires who own several homes, boats and offshore bank accounts and who avoid paying taxes. But can anyone learn too much? Wisdom tends to enrich everyone who comes in contact with it, particularly in a free society. Mega-mansions in McLean dont help the rest of us nearly as much.

The Stanford study provides the first comparable measures of ethnic achievement gaps in every U.S. school district, Reardon said. He said the academic disparities are larger in places where white and minority students families differ more in socioeconomic conditions, . . . in more segregated places, . . . and in more affluent places. He said wide gaps in affluent yet integrated communities like Shaker Heights, Ohio, may stem from competition for educational success being particularly strong in such places.

The paper says one consistent predictor of achievement gaps is the differential rate of exposure between whites and minorities to poor classmates, but it found little or no association between achievement gaps and available measures of school quality.

Reardon told me that studying gaps is useful despite my objections because educational success is at least partly what sociologists call a positional good  meaning that ones educational success has value partly because of where one ranks relative to others.

Hes right that many people feel that way, but it seems wrong. The happiest people I know enjoy growing intellectually and dont see any point in resenting what elevated intelligences like Stephen Hawking, Oprah Winfrey and Malcolm Gladwell have achieved.

We should be working to raise everyones level. The gaps dont matter, particularly if you are going to school in Detroit.
The Kings Dominion theme park north of Richmond shut down Saturday night after power failed, the park said.

There was a partial power failure at the park shortly before 8 p.m., the park said on its Facebook page.

It said all rides were stopped and evacuated safely.

It said about 9 p.m. that power had been restored.

The park said it would remain closed Saturday night, but it said it planned to reopen Sunday.
How rude: The statue of Abraham Lincoln at Judiciary Square has lost a finger since the last time this columnist saw it. (John Kelly/The Washington Post)

The train was out of service at Judiciary Square. Everybody off, the Metro train operator said. I could wait or I could walk. I decided to walk, seven blocks west and four blocks north.

It was one of those cool mornings that remind us Washington can be as nice a place to walk in as any city in the world. I emerged facing the Pension Building, that lovely red brick behemoth that never looks better than when its framed against a deep-blue sky, then made a 180 and walked through the police memorial.

I remember when the memorial wasnt there, but then I remember a lot of things. Thats a side effect of getting older.

I can never keep all of the various courthouse buildings straight: Circuit, Superior, Appeals. . . . I was sure about one building, though: I last visited it in 1987, when I applied for a marriage license.

Then I walked to E Street. Ive always liked the statue of Abraham Lincoln that stands there. Alas, since the last time I saw him, Abe had lost the white marble index finger on his right hand. Did someone snap it off? It looks like hes making a rude gesture.

Six shiny chrome spigots with bright-red handles caught my eye on the side of a building at Ninth and E streets NW: They look like piglets. (John Kelly/The Washington Post)

I walked behind the Canadian Embassy and the Newseum. I gazed up at the apartments at the top of the Newseum and decided I probably couldnt afford one. But maybe I could open it up to visitors  see a journalist in his natural habitat!  and deduct the rent.

I turned right on Seventh Street NW, where I saw something called Protein Bar but smelled something called Hill Country BBQ, the meaty odor tickling something primal in me.

I crossed Seventh. A sign said Blue State Digital. Around the corner on D Street, another sign: Red Apron.

Blue. Red. Must everything be political? And then in answer, another sign: a bar called the Partisan.

A woman walked past me carrying a box of Cheerios.

At the corner in front of CVS, a man sat next to his backpack. At his feet was a plastic soda cup from Nats Park. Change? he said.

Across the street, a couple waited for the light to change: a naval officer dressed in blinding summer whites and a blond woman in a diaphanous light-blue dress that billowed in the breeze. Shed stepped out of a Botticelli painting, and I blushed when I passed her.

The doors to Weschlers, at 905 E St. NW, were open, but the auction house was not. (John Kelly/The Washington Post)

On E Street, I was enamored with six shiny chrome spigots with bright-red handles that sprouted from the side of a building. I crouched to take a photo.

Thats a good call, a woman said approvingly as she walked past. Thats a good picture.

They look like piglets, I said to her back.

Across the street was what used to be Penn Camera.

The doors to Weschlers, at 905 E St. NW, were open, but the auction house wasnt. (Viewings Mondays, auctions Tuesdays.) Wafting from inside was the familiar smell of old things, dusty and warm, like upholstery in the sun.

I passed the McDonalds where that former Marine was assaulted and the theater where that president was assassinated.

I passed Lincolns Waffle Shop, where I always take foreign visitors. (This is where Lincoln ate his last waffle, I intone solemnly.)

It was only 9:45 a.m., but a drummer named Bernard Aljaleel had already set up on the sidewalk and was pounding a go-go beat: ticka-ticka TOK a-ticka. I tossed two bucks in his bucket and snapped a photo.

I passed E Street Cinema, where I saw Chimes at Midnight. (We start out being Prince Hal, dont we, then 30 years later we look in the mirror and realize weve become Falstaff. I know thee not, old man.)

I passed the flag-bedecked Harrington Hotel  the citys oldest  where a sign announced Serving Breakfast.

[Washingtons oldest hotel inspires memories from longtime guests]

So timeless, that sign. So welcome to a hungry traveler. Id wager that preserved somewhere in Pompeii is a wall daubed with the same thing.

North on 13th Street, past the steakhouse that used to be a seafood restaurant.

Live in a place long enough and you see things come, go, come again, go again. That used to be d.c. space. That used to be Penn Camera. Recently: That used to be The Washington Post. Soon enough: That used to be the FBI building.

The bells of Epiphany Episcopal told me it was 10 oclock as I crossed G Street. The bells of New York Avenue Presbyterian were my second source. From the open window of a passing car came the true soundtrack of Washington: a snatch of NPR bumper music.

The food trucks had staked out their spots along Franklin Square, their generators thrumming. I stopped to look at my new favorite tree: a sycamore on the northeast corner of the park, its gray-white bark smooth and striped like a barber pole.

And then I was at work, gladdened by the walk Id been forced to take.

Twitter: @johnkelly

For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly.
From left to right: Suspected Orlando shooter Omar Mateen; San Bernardino killer Tafsheen Malik; Fort Hood shooter Hasan Nidal. ( Omar Mateen via Myspace via Reuters; FBI via AP; Bell County Sheriff's Office via Getty Images )

The deadly attack at an Orlando nightclub early Sunday is raising serious concerns among global security experts and criminologists about a convergence between terrorism and the American phenomenon of mass shootings.

Armed with an AR-15  the weapon of choice for mass shooters  Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State during an attack that killed 50 people at a popular gay club called Pulse, authorities said. The rampage echoed several recent high-profile terrorist attacks on U.S. soil in which extremist sympathizers used firearms instead of explosives, once a terrorism staple.

[Gunman in Orlando pledged allegiance to ISIS before rampage ]

Nidal Malik Hasan, a follower of radical imam Anwar al-Awlaki, gunned down 13 people in 2009 at Fort Hood, Tex. Last July, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, seeking martyrdom, fatally shot five service members in Tennessee. And late last year, not long after terrorists in Paris shot up cafes and a theater, a radicalized couple in San Bernardino, Calif., killed 14 people at an office holiday party.

Terrorism and mass shooting experts say the use of firearms in terror attacks, particularly among lone wolves, is probably not a coincidence. For attackers without direct ties to experts in terrorist networks, the countrys nearly 60,000 gun dealers offer plenty of high-caliber options.

The gunman who killed at least 50 people in a shooting rampage at an Orlando nightclub has been identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen. Here is what we know about him so far. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)

Its becoming increasingly apparent that mass shootings can be just as deadly as bombings, said Adam Lankford, a University of Alabama criminal justice professor and author of a book on mass shooters and suicide bombers. And the scary part is that its often much easier to pull off.

Making bombs is complicated. Buying materials and seeking assistance from others  online or in person  can tip off law enforcement officials. And bombs have a way of either blowing up attackers during construction or failing to detonate when needed.

Its much easier to purchase and learn how to shoot a gun than it is to learn how to make a bomb, said James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University professor who studies mass killings. You have more tactical control with a gun than a bomb.

And there are psychic rewards, too, for radicalized mass killers.

Theres a certain level of satisfaction they can get by shooting people, Fox said. With a bomb, its sudden and over. With shooting, you have tremendous power and control over your victims. One by one you can see them suffer and die.

Statistics on terrorist tactics generally involve completed attacks, not those that have been disrupted, so its difficult to know with precision how terrorist playbooks are evolving, according to William Braniff, the executive director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START).

But the groups statistics offer clues.

Orlando shooter Omar Mateen used an AR-15 style rifle to kill at least 50 people, officials say. Heres what you need to know about the gun some are calling the gold standard for mass murder. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)

From 1970 to 2014, explosives were the primary weapon in more than half of terrorist attacks in the United States, according to START. Several times during that period, no firearms were used in U.S. attacks. But in 2014, 14 of the 29 terrorist attacks involved firearms. And STARTs research shows that between 1970 and 2014, 40 percent of terrorist attacks with firearms were deadly, versus 4 percent in attacks without guns.

Firearms are available, lethal and frankly they get a lot of media attention, Braniff said. As a country, we obsess over it. We have a gun culture.

And what makes the potential convergence so terrifying, experts said, is that defending against mass shootings in public places, whether by extremists or psychopaths, is nearly impossible.

[Most mass shooters arent mentally ill. So why push better treatment as the answer?]

After James Holmes killed 12 people at a Colorado movie theater in 2009, theater chains added security and metal detectors. Experts say the measures reflect the way policymakers and businesses often deal with mass shootings  protecting against the last attack, not the future ones that are more difficult to imagine and predict.

We tend to react to the latest episode as if its the same way every time, said Fox, the Northeastern professor. There are plenty of ways they can get us, and if we respond by having an armed guard at every night club, theres plenty of other places that will still be vulnerable.



Fox argued that extreme security measures actually give terrorists what they want.

The thing about terrorism is that we wind up victimizing ourselves, he said. Weve seen it in airports, inconveniencing ourselves well beyond whats appropriate. That plays into the desire of terrorists. They dont just want us dead. They want us to suffer.

What are the solutions?

The gun lobby has one: More guns, so good guys with guns can kill bad guys with guns.

The National Rifle Association called for more armed guards after Adam Lanza killed 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. But school officers have been present at other school shootings, including the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School.

Braniff, the executive director at START, said close monitoring of social networks is crucial to disrupt threats, particularly because so many attackers are radicalized there. Mateen was investigated by the FBI twice, in 2013 and again in 2014, for inflammatory remarks to co-workers and alleged ties to the first American to carry out a suicide attack in Syria, a spokesman said. Both times the investigations were closed for lack of evidence.

[Active-shooter training used to be about hiding. Not anymore.]

How far should the government go in monitoring communications? That debate, dating back to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is still ongoing in the United States.

In the meantime, schools, businesses and other organizations are hiring specialists to train employees how to respond to active shooters  not just hiding under desks and behind doors, but even fighting back.

G4S, the security company where the Orlando shooter reportedly worked, offers the training.

These violent situations, the company says, are dynamic, complex and unpredictable.
For the roughly 15,000 Americans who need a liver transplant, its a waiting game. With demand for donated livers far outstripping supply, patients may spend months or years on a waitlist, their position gradually improving as they get sicker. A recent study suggests that this system may be changing, but not necessarily for the better.

To get or keep a good performance rating from the federal government, transplant centers have been labeling some patients too sick to transplant and dropping from the waitlist some who may have been viable candidates, the study found. The researchers also determined that, despite the centers actions, one-year survival rates for transplant recipients didnt improve.

The study examined delisting at 102 liver transplant centers and looked at the cases of 90,765 waitlisted adults who died between 2002 and 2012.

Midway through that period, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services implemented a new policy for transplant centers that participate in the Medicare program.

To meet CMSs new performance standards, which the agency recently eased somewhat, liver transplant centers have to achieve certain survival rates. Centers that fall short may be required to revamp their programs or risk losing their Medicare funding. (In a letter last month about the guidelines, CMS noted that one-year survival for liver transplant patients increased from 87.7 percent in 2007 to 90.8 percent in 2014.)

But something happened when the policy took effect in 2007: The percentage of patients that centers considered too ill or unsuitable for a transplant rose by 16 percent, and the likelihood that a candidate would be delisted continued to increase through the end of the study period. Compared with earlier, patients who were taken off the waitlist after the CMS policy change were more likely to be 55 or older and have more-severe liver illness.

The studys authors speculate that the new standards made transplant centers more averse to risk and encouraged them to drop sicker patients who might negatively affect their survival statistics.

Some suggest theres a different way to look at the impact of the CMS policy. Maybe centers are making the internal decision of trying to choose the best candidates, said David Goldberg, medical director for living donor liver transplantation at the University of Pennsylvania.

The most common reason for a liver transplant is cirrhosis, or scarring of the liver, often caused by hepatitis C or alcoholic liver disease.

The severity of patients illness is evaluated based on their Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) score, a number between 6 and 40 that predicts the risk of death within three months and is calculated based on three laboratory values.

Nationwide, 6,729 liver transplants were performed in 2014, but 1,821 patients died on the waitlist. Another 1,300 people were removed from the waitlist because they were considered too sick for a transplant.

Theres no common definition for when someone is too sick to transplant, said the studys lead author, Natasha Dolgin, an MD/PhD candidate at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Patients health may deteriorate to the point that a transplant is no longer advisable, for example, or they may contract an infection that makes delisting necessary. But those reasons dont explain the increase in delisting following the introduction of the CMS policy, according to the study.

Still, Dolgin said, she doesnt blame transplant centers for their waitlist decisions. Once there is a benchmark, you try to meet that.

Kurt Schnier, an economist at the University of California at Merced who has examined the impact of the CMS policy on kidney transplant practices, said the standards have lengthened the time patients are on the waitlist. (That research is under review for publication.) The CMS policy may also affect surgeon behavior at centers that dont meet the standards, leading them to conduct fewer transplants, for example.

Its a well-intended policy, Schnier said. The problem is that it creates perverse incentives at the physician level that may undermine the personal welfare of the general population.

This is part of the culture now, said Hillel Tobias, medical director of New York Universitys liver transplant service and chairman of the medical advisory committee of the American Liver Foundation. You cant take a chance, because if your numbers go down, youre going to get canned.

One of the goals of the CMS policy was to improve outcomes, a goal prompted by concerns about quality and service at transplant centers. Yet the study found that the new standards didnt have a statistically significant impact on mortality rates within a year of transplantation.

Liver transplants are complicated, and the fact that survival didnt improve might reflect complications that are not preventable, Goldberg said.

Asked to comment on the study, a CMS official said the agency is reviewing available evidence about the impacts of our policies on organ transplant centers. After thorough review we will determine a course of action.

This column is produced through a collaboration between The Post and Kaiser Health News.
Oregon

Fines for Union Pacific are highest in nation

Union Pacific penalties surpass those of every railroad nationwide for the past two years, a media organization said.

The Oregonian/OregonLive obtained inspection records and said that the Federal Railroad Administration fined Union Pacific more than $7 million from 2014 to 2015.

An Oregon Department of Transportation inspection found repeated safety violations the day before Union Pacific train cars carrying crude oil derailed and caught fire along the Columbia River Gorge on June 3.

The issues listed by state inspectors appear to be unrelated to the derailment.

There had been a history of violations that we thought were concerning, said Rail Administrator Hal Gard of the Oregon Department of Transportation. He said inspectors were repeatedly visiting two yards.

Conductors left trains in Portland yards without setting breaks on multiple occasions, which an expert said could lead to runaway trains.

Inspectors also found four instances since September when switches were left unlocked and made it possible for anyone to pull a lever and reroute a train.

A Union Pacific spokesman said the railroad stands by its safety record.

 Associated Press

New Mexico

Man suspected in deaths of wife, children

Authorities are searching for a man who they think shot his wife and four daughters to death in their New Mexico home.

Roswell police identified Juan David Villegas-Hernandez, 34, on Sunday as the suspect in the shootings.

They said he may be driving a red four-door Ford pickup with New Mexico license plates.

A relative found the bodies of a woman and four children between the ages of 14 and 3 late Saturday.

Police have not officially confirmed the identities of the victims. Investigators said they think the victims are the suspects wife and children.

 Associated Press

Texas

Bullet-scarred D-Day flag sells for $514,000

The American flag flown on the stern of the boat that led the first U.S. troops onto Utah Beach on D-Day was sold Sunday for $514,000 at an auction in Texas.

Heritage Auctions spokesman Noah Fleisher said the 48-star flag from the guide boat was sold during a live auction in Dallas. He said he had no information about the buyer.

The pre-sale estimate for the flag was $100,000. The banner has one bullet hole, blamed on a German machine gun, according to the Dallas-based auction house.

Online bidding began about two weeks ago, Fleisher said, and ended Saturday night with a top bid of $125,000. Live bidding started Sunday at that level, he said.

D-Day occurred June 6, 1944, when the Allies landed during World War II on the beaches of Normandy, France, beginning the liberation of Western Europe from the Nazis.

 Associated Press
MEXICO

Accused rapist is suspect in slaying 11

Mexican authorities believe a man jailed on charges of raping a woman several years ago is the prime suspect in the brutal slaying of the woman and 10 of her relatives.

A law enforcement official said authorities believe two attackers fatally shot the woman and her family, including two girls. The killers also slashed a male victim believed to be the womans partner and may have tried to decapitate him. The official was not authorized to be quoted by name and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The killings took place Thursday night in the remote hamlet of San Jose el Mirador, in the municipality of Coxcatlan in the central state of Puebla. Prosecutors said late Friday that two suspects were being sought and may have fled into neighboring Oaxaca state.

The Puebla state prosecutors office said that one of the dead women had been raped and had a child by one of the attackers, apparently several years ago. Five witnesses survived and were under government protection. They told authorities the attackers arrived at the remote mountain village on foot, and opened fire and left.

 Associated Press

Italy picks up thousands of migrants at sea since Thursday: Italys coast guard said Saturday that it had picked up at sea 1,348 migrants in 11 rescue operations between Sicily and North Africa, bringing the total number of people saved over the past three days to more than 3,000. Two thousand people were rescued on Thursday when the coast guard coordinated operations involving migrants traveling on 15 different boats. Almost 50,000 migrants have come ashore in Italy this year, about 10 percent less than the same period last year.

Arrests made in car bomb attack that killed 11 in Turkey: Turkeys state-run news agency says three suspects have been ordered jailed pending prosecution in connection with Tuesdays car bomb attack in Istanbul that killed 11 people. A Kurdish militant group, an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, claimed responsibility for the attack and warned tourists that Turkey was no longer safe for them.

Bangladesh rounds up 1,600 in deadly attacks: Authorities have rounded up about 1,600 criminal suspects, including a few dozen believed to be Islamist radicals, in a nationwide crackdown aimed at halting a wave of brutal attacks on minorities and activists in Bangladesh, police said Saturday. The attacks  including two Hindus in the last week  have alarmed the international community and raised questions about whether Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas secular government can maintain security for minorities in the Sunni-majority country.

Peace activists rally outside U.S. air base in Germany: Thousands of peace activists demonstrated Saturday outside Ramstein Air Base in Germany to protest the facilitys reported role in the U.S. drone program. Among the participants was Germanys Oskar Lafontaine, a leftist maverick and former finance minister, who called the U.S. drone program contrary to international law.

Thousands march for gay rights in Italy, Poland, Croatia: Several thousand people marched Saturday in colorful gay pride events in Italy, Poland and Croatia urging support for minority rights in the mostly Catholic nations. The parades in Poland and Croatia come amid mounting right-wing sentiments that pose new challenges to gay rights activists. In Italy, however, the gay pride celebration comes after lawmakers granted some legal rights to same-sex couples.

 From news services
OF ALL the threats facing the global economy, none has more destabilizing potential than Chinas decelerating growth rate. After years of booming by exporting and investing, the Peoples Republic has begun accumulating debt and excess industrial capacity; yet the Communist leadership in Beijing seems unwilling or unable to make the necessary transition to greater reliance on services and domestic consumption. Chinas bloated state-run industries, especially steel and aluminum, are desperately trying to raise cash by flooding the United States and Europe with cheap products, a global fire sale that threatens jobs in those countries, triggers retaliatory measures  and adds to geopolitical tensions already high over the maritime boundary dispute in the South China Sea.

The United States and China this month concluded their annual strategic and economic dialogue in Beijing, and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew took the occasion to warn his hosts in terms that were relatively blunt, by the standards of such confabs. Excess capacity has a distorting and damaging effect on global markets, he said, and implementing policies to substantially reduce production in a range of sectors suffering from overcapacity, including steel and aluminum, is critical to the function and stability of international markets. In response, China pledged to undertake further steps, even as senior officials protested that they shouldnt be blamed for overcapacity because it resulted from Chinas stimulus spending during the global financial panic in 2008  for which it was praised by the United States and Europe.

Beijing has a point about that; indeed, some state factories and mines have downsized in recent months, laying off thousands. No one should doubt the sheer difficulty, both economic and political, of restructuring the vast Chinese economy  or that U.S. domestic political interests are behind the Obama administrations demands, just as the Chinese complain.

Nevertheless, those U.S. demands are legitimate, and the proof is that Beijing itself has repeatedly acknowledged the need for a new economic model, based more on private-sector investment and private household demand. But entrenched special interests enjoy privileges under the existing system and resist and undermine reform, with alarming success. Meanwhile, President Xi Jinping steadily reduces the space for political debate in China, which decreases his governments legitimacy, which makes it all the harder to disarm the special interests.

What leverage does the United States have beyond words such as Mr. Lews? More than you might think. China badly wants to be recognized as a market economy by the World Trade Organization. This designation would entitle Chinese export industries to greater legal protection from WTO-authorized retaliatory trade measures by the United States and Europe, thus relieving some of the pressure on them to restructure. Beijing claims that, under the 2001 agreement by which it joined the WTO, the market economy designation should happen automatically at the end of this year. The United States and many of its Western allies are balking, because they dont share Chinas view of the law, because they dont want to give up this particular source of clout  and because China is not, in fact, a market economy.

The Obama administration should not yield on this point, unless and until China shows irreversible progress on economic reform, including, specifically, its subsidized excess industrial capacity. For the sake of prosperity in both countries, its a fight worth having.
Hillary Clinton faces a strategic choice. She can concentrate on closing off Donald Trumps potential openings with the white working class. Or she can build large leads among more affluent voters, many of whom are moderate and see Trump as dangerous, extreme and temperamentally unfit.

She will necessarily do some of both  she needs a decent share of the blue-collar vote to hold key Midwestern states  and she will have to rally what have been core Democratic constituencies: younger voters, who eluded her during the primaries, African Americans and Latinos. But the direction of her campaign and her selection of a running mate will depend in significant part on the class tilt of her strategy.

For the moment, however, her decisions are easy compared with those confronting Republicans. Trumps stubborn refusal to transition away from his persona during the primaries has put the partys leaders in an impossible position.

They can try to prop up their presumptive nominee in an effort to avert a quick collapse that could endanger their entire party in November. Or they can distance themselves from him now in the hope of disentangling their ticket from what is beginning to look like an epic disaster.

But this is a classic Catch-22: The very process of pulling back from Trump further weakens him, making the calamity the party fears even more likely. And Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg says Republican candidates for the House and Senate would risk large defections from their base if they are seen as sabotaging Trump.

The Fix's Chris Cillizza explains the two presidential nominees' responses to the June 12 mass shooting in Orlando, Fla. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

This is why House Speaker Paul Ryan ended up in the anomalous position of reiterating his support for Trump even as he was condemning the racism of his candidates attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel. Endorsing Trump means always having to say youre sorry.

Clinton set up what was by far the best period of her campaign with a sweeping assault on Trump to which he offered only a feeble reply  while drawing little defense from his own party. Clintons primary victories last week opened the way for endorsements from President Obama and Elizabeth Warren even as Bernie Sanders signaled he understood that his campaign was nearing its end.

Yet Sanderss comments after a White House meeting with Obama pointed to the choice Clinton confronts.

Sanders promised to work as hard as I can to make sure that Donald Trump does not become president of the United States. But he also pledged to continue 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. Sanderss enthusiasm for the first objective will depend in part on Clintons enthusiasm for the second.

Still, theres a lot to be said for the upscale strategy. Clintons forceful emphasis on Trumps character and Vice President Bidens talk of Trumps authoritarianism will resonate in better-off suburbs and urban precincts.

I do think his temperament and divisiveness are going to discredit him with voters who might otherwise have been available to a Republican nominee among the white college-educated, said David Axelrod, formerly Obamas senior adviser. And given a Democratic leaning in the electorate reflected in Obamas 5 million-vote margin from 2012, Trump is unlikely to gain enough in the white working class to offset his losses among the well-to-do. He cant trade votes and win, Axelrod said.

Moreover, Greenberg sees a focus on Trumps personal volatility as having helpful ricochet effects with other constituencies. To the extent that Trump is forced by the party to tone down his rhetoric (just watch his flat, teleprompter-driven address from last Tuesday), he may start losing some of his magic with working-class voters.

And Greenberg argues that Clinton knows she has to offer a strong economic message with a populist feel to win over the millennial voters who flocked to Sanders. Appeals aimed their way will simultaneously help earn Sanderss blessing and pick up the white working-class votes shell need.

The fact that the strategic playing field now favors Clinton points to how urgent it is for Trump to turn the campaign narrative to her weaknesses, which he says hell do this week.

His challenge is that while most of the negative information about Clinton is already well-known, each day seems to bring new revelations about Trumps past business practices and personal habits. And out-of-control attacks on Clinton will only provoke more questions about Trumps temperament.

For the first time all year, being Hillary Clinton is easier than being Donald Trump.

Read more from E.J. Dionnes archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
George Voinovich in 2009. The former U.S. senator and two-term Ohio governor preached frugality in his personal and public life and occasionally bucked the Republican establishment. (Susan Walsh/AP)

George Voinovich, a former U.S. senator and two-term Ohio governor who preached frugality in his personal and public life and occasionally bucked the Republican establishment, died June 12 at his home in Cleveland. He was 79.

His wife, Janet Voinovich, confirmed the death. The cause was not immediately known.

His death came as a surprise to friends. The Republican had delivered remarks Friday at a 25th Slovenian Independence Day event at Cleveland City Hall. He was set to be a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next month.

In June 2003, doctors implanted a cardiac pacemaker because Mr. Voinovichs heart rate had slowed down over several years due to a condition called progressive sinus bradycardia, and he had experienced various health challenges in recent years.

Twice elected to the Senate, Mr. Voinovich announced in early 2009 that he would not run in 2010. During his 12 years in the Senate, he occasionally found himself at odds with Republican conservatives. He was an early supporter of a proposed federal bailout for the auto industry, which employs thousands of people in Ohio, and he was the rare Republican during the George W. Bush administration to suggest raising taxes to pay for the war in Iraq and hurricane relief.

George Voinovich in 2010. (Alex Brandon/AP)

As he left office, Mr. Voinovich counted among his accomplishments the passage of a global anti-Semitism bill, an effort to expand NATO and a bill to protect intellectual property. He also touted what he called a nuclear renaissance, pushing to make it easier for nuclear power plants to get new licenses and financing, and to improve the oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

He was succeeded by fellow Republican and former congressman Rob Portman.

Mr. Voinovich cultivated an image as a debt hawk and opposed President Obamas $787 billion economic stimulus package, saying it was weighed down by too much spending that wasnt stimulative.

He also prided himself on his own frugality. He shined his own shoes, bought his clothes on sale and as governor banned bags of peanuts and other snacks on state airplanes to save public money. He also sold one of the states airplanes in 1993 to a South American tourist company for $350,000.

In 2003, Mr. Voinovich stood firm against the size of Bushs $726 billion tax-cut proposal, saying a country with a multitrillion-dollar debt couldnt afford it.

Weve spent money like drunken sailors, he said.

In his December 2010 farewell speech in the Senate, he asked his colleagues to come to grips with a fiscal situation on life support, saying that he didnt agree with legislation to prevent an income tax increase. But he complimented Obama and legislative leaders for working out a compromise.

In 2009, Mr. Voinovich was among those who unsuccessfully campaigned against an Ohio ballot issue that paved the way for the building of casinos in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo.

As governor in the 1990s, he preached a mantra of working harder and smarter, doing more with less, and vowed to streamline state government. He began programs to roll back environmental regulations and struck deals on long-term contracts with state employee unions, promising security but little money.

Mr. Voinovich also cut $720 million from the state budget in two years. But in 1993, Voinovich and leaders of both parties in the Ohio legislature pushed a tax increase to shore up the states finances. The move angered some conservatives who began questioning the governors commitment to their cause.

Also that year, about 400 inmates rioted at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. A guard and nine inmates were killed.

Mr. Voinovich was a prized commodity in the Ohio GOP: a Republican who could deliver his home town of Cleveland, a Democratic stronghold.

But his political path also included heartbreak. In 1979, while he was running for Cleveland mayor, his 9-year-old daughter, Molly, was killed when she was hit by a van that went through a red light. Molly, the youngest of four children, was returning to school after lunch.

When one loses a child, things come into focus  what is important, what is unimportant, Mr. Voinovich said. You see more. You feel more. You experience more. We all take so much for granted.

Although he was one of Ohios most popular Republican politicians, Mr. Voinovich lost his first Senate bid in 1988 to the Democratic incumbent, Howard Metzenbaum. He attacked him for not being tough on child pornography, but the move backfired and Metzenbaum soundly carried the election.

George Victor Voinovich was born July 15, 1936, in Cleveland. His parents were immigrants of Serbian and Slovenian descent.

Mr. Voinovich served in the Ohio legislature from 1967 to 1971, winning support from Cuyahoga Countys heavily Democratic voters because of his connection to the ethnic communities and his easygoing style.

By the late 1970s, Cleveland was in default and most people blamed the Democratic mayor, Dennis Kucinich, who constantly fought electric utilities, the citys banking community and other big-business interests.

Mr. Voinovich defeated Kucinich, who later became a congressman, and went on to serve a decade as mayor, winning credit from Republicans and Democrats for turning the city around.

In 1990, Mr. Voinovich was elected to the first of two four-year terms as governor.

Vulnerable to his emotions, Mr. Voinovich once broke into tears when protesters gathered outside the governors office to demand that he restore cuts the legislature made to welfare.

He later angrily defied the Federal Aviation Administration by violating a no-fly order during a 1995 visit to Columbus by then-President Bill Clinton. Sitting in a state plane at one of the citys airports, Mr. Voinovich told his pilot to take off.

The FAA fined him $1,500.

 Associated Press
After the deadly shooting in an Orlando, Fla., nightclub on June 12, politicians were quick to respond. Some pushed for stricter gun control while others asked for prayers, and presidential candidate Donald Trump ignited controversy with his tweets. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

After the deadly shooting in an Orlando, Fla., nightclub on June 12, politicians were quick to respond. Some pushed for stricter gun control while others asked for prayers, and presidential candidate Donald Trump ignited controversy with his tweets. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Three of the most contentious questions in American culture and politics  gay rights, gun control and terrorism  collided in a horrific way in an Orlando nightclub early Sunday.

It is not entirely clear what inspired Omar Mateen to commit the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, or what might have been done to stop it.

But it happened in a gay club, just two weeks shy of the first anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, and on a weekend when cities across the country, including Washington, were holding gay pride festivals.

It was perpetrated during the holy month of Ramadan by an American-born man whose family originally came from Afghanistan. During the attack, he reportedly made a 911 call pledging allegiance to the Islamic State.

He did it with a handgun and an AR-15  the same semiautomatic rifle that was part of the arsenals used to kill 12 people in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater in 2012; 20 first-graders and six adults later that year in Newtown, Conn.; and 14 others at a holiday party in San Bernardino, Calif., last December.

The gunman who killed at least 49 people in a shooting rampage at an Orlando nightclub has been identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen. Here is what we know about him so far. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)

The confluence of all these currents in a single incident is more likely to muddy our already-sodden politics than to bring any clarity or sense of purpose.

It has always been true that the toughest issues are those that pit our values against our fears. And in this tragedy, as with so many before it, both parties are certain to seek political leverage.

[It was just complete chaos: Words from the massacre survivors]

Meanwhile, the countrys anxieties have been rekindled. In one sense, all of this seems so far out of control, you just wonder if theres any way of ever getting it under control, said George Pettice, an insurance agent from Charlotte, N.C. Do we now start locking ourselves up in our houses, afraid to go anywhere?

Not since 9/11 has a moment like this brought the nation together, and that evaporated quickly. Since then, calamity seems only to drive the left and the right further apart, while faith in the nations institutions deteriorates further.

Across the ideological and partisan divide, it no longer seems possible to even explore  much less agree upon  causes and solutions. So the response has been muddled, even while the next tragedy looms.

Although its still early in the investigation, we know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate, President Obama said Sunday. And as Americans, we are united in grief, in outrage, and in resolve to defend our people.

1 of 38 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  The scene in Orlando after a gunman opened fire at a nightclub View Photos Officials say at least 49 people were killed and dozens were injured in the shooting. Caption Officials say at least 49 people were killed and dozens were injured in the shooting. June 12, 2016 An injured person is carried out of Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Steven Fernandez/Associated Press Wait 1 second to continue.

Immediately after Obama left the White House briefing room, however, GOP nominee-in-waiting Donald Trump tweeted: Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesnt he should immediately resign in disgrace!

While Obama refrained from speculating about whether Mateens religious beliefs might have been a factor in the rampage  or even saying the word Islam  he did make an appeal for tighter gun control.

The shooter was apparently armed with a handgun and a powerful assault rifle, the president said. This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub.

And we have to decide if thats the kind of country we want to be, Obama added. And to actively do nothing is a decision as well.

Obamas comments reflected his frustration over the failure of his efforts to tighten the nations gun laws following the Newtown massacre. Recent polling suggests that support for gun control is on the decline.

[Trump and Clinton and their very different responses]

Critics, however, would argue that Obamas observation about doing nothing could also apply to failing to face up to the religious component of many acts of terrorism.

If Muslim beliefs were behind the attack, said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), common sense tells you he specifically targeted the gay community because of the views that exist in the radical Islamic community with regard to the gay community.

I think its something well have to talk about some more here, across the country, Rubio said.

Others pointed out that many other religions have no claim to moral superiority, when it comes to their attitudes toward gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people.

We want to get on the moral high ground when it comes to policing homophobia in other religions, ESPN commentator Jemele Hill, a former Orlando resident, said in an interview. Were not the ones to be engaging in this, as if we have always been supportive of these issues. History says just the opposite.

Tough  and intolerant  rhetoric has often been a winner for politicians at times when Americans are worried about their security.

Trump, who advocates putting a temporary ban on Muslims entering this country, saw his poll numbers rise significantly in the wake of the San Bernardino attack, as well as after a series of terrorist assaults in Paris last November.

That may be why presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton struck a purposeful tone in her response to the Orlando mass shooting, although she, like Obama, did not make reference to a specific religion.

For now, we can say for certain that we need to redouble our efforts to defend our country from threats at home and abroad, she said. That means defeating international terror groups, working with allies and partners to go after them wherever they are, countering their attempts to recruit people here and everywhere, and hardening our defenses at home.

She, too, gave a nod to the need for tighter gun control, saying Orlando reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets.

Yet there is danger in going too far to politicize a nations grief, even if that happens smack in the middle of a presidential election year.

The key thing here is, this was not a political event, said GOP pollster David Winston. It is a tragedy the country has to deal with.

And perhaps, at some point, to demand a solution.
Some people advocating for a British exit from the European Union have used Norway as a prime example of how the U.K. would survive and thrive outside the E.U. But many Norwegian politicians and business people are wondering why. (Griff Witte/The Washington Post)

Some people advocating for a British exit from the European Union have used Norway as a prime example of how the U.K. would survive and thrive outside the E.U. But many Norwegian politicians and business people are wondering why. (Griff Witte/The Washington Post)

To advocates of a British exit from the European Union, the prosperous and fjord-flecked lands of Norway prove that the doomsayers have it all wrong.

Life within Europe but outside the clutches of the E.U. isnt apocalyptic. Its the best of all worlds: Norway gets access to Earths largest single market without sacrificing its sovereignty.

But to this countrys political and business leaders, Britains flirtation with the Norwegian model is nothing short of baffling.

If Britain votes to leave the E.U. on June 23 and follows Norways lead as an E.U. outsider, officials here say, the British should be prepared for less control over their own affairs, not more. That is because Norway still must abide by E.U. rules and regulations, even though it has no say in shaping them.

[Norwegian prime minister: The U.K. shouldnt follow our lead post-Brexit]

Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg, left, posing with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at the European Commission on March 2 in Brussels. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images)

Yes, we have access to the single market. But were also subject to legislation that we cant influence, said Kristin Skogen Lund, director general of the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise. The U.K. is a big member of the E.U., and they have crucial influence. Why would they give that up?

The drawbacks to the Norwegian model  and to every other existing model for trading with Europe from outside the E.U.  represent one of the greatest obstacles for those advocating a British vote to leave, popularly known as Brexit.

As pro-Brexit forces make their pitch in the final days of a campaign that polls show could go either way, they have struggled to articulate a coherent vision of what Britain would look like once it leaves. Some have cited Norway. Others, Switzerland. One prominent leader of the Brexit campaign even suggested that Britain could be like Albania. (He soon dropped the idea.)

All of them argue that Britain will continue to swap cars, wine and other goods and services with the rest of the E.U.  trade that accounts for half of Britains total  while unshackling the country from the burdens of Brussels bureaucracy.

But as Norwegian leaders can attest, that sort of relationship simply isnt a possibility. Norway not only has to accept the E.U.s rules for commerce, it also has to embrace its core principles. Among them is the free movement of people, a critical sticking point for Brexit advocates who chafe at record immigration levels to the United Kingdom.

Every time I speak to Brits about this and I start to explain how [Norways deal with the E.U.] functions, they sort of say, I dont think that will work for Great Britain,  said Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg.

The absence of a clear paradigm for Britains relationship with the E.U. post-Brexit is one reason why divorce proceedings could be particularly messy. If British voters choose to leave, the countrys diplomats will have two years to negotiate the terms of a departure, the first in the E.U.s history.

Eager to halt a possible contagion of defections, E.U. leaders have signaled that they will not be in a generous mood. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker noted pointedly last month that deserters will not be welcomed back with open arms.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble said in an interview published Friday in the German weekly Der Spiegel that Britain will have no access to the European common market if it votes to leave. In is in, he said. Out is out.

Solberg acknowledged that Britain  the worlds fifth-largest economy  undoubtedly would have more negotiating clout than her tiny country, which has a population less than one-tenth the size. But in an interview at her residence in central Oslo, she predicted that European leaders would be loath to allow Britain the benefits of membership without the responsibilities.

I dont think they will allow pick-and-choose participation, she said.

Our own voice

Solberg knows the E.U. well. Her country may not be a member, but its destiny is shaped by the decisions made in Brussels. Her government has a small army of bureaucrats assigned to the E.U.s capital city, where they watch from the outside as other countries enact laws and regulations that will help define virtually every aspect of how Norwegians live and work.

The peculiar arrangement came about as a result of Norways own referendum, in 1994, when the country narrowly passed up a chance to join the E.U. With farmers and fishermen leading the way, the countrys anti-E.U. forces successfully argued that Norway would be better off in a looser arrangement known as the European Economic Area, or EEA. Two other small countries. Iceland and Liechtenstein, also are EEA members.

Despite the frustrations of Norwegian political and business leaders, the countrys people dont seem to mind the arrangement. Opinion polls show a healthy majority favoring the status quo, while support for E.U. membership has plummeted.

Kathrine Kleveland, a farmer and politician who leads the countrys No to the E.U. movement, said Norwegians are fiercely protective of their sovereignty, which they gained only recently by European standards. Norway was bound in a union with Sweden for nearly a century, ending in 1905. Before that, it was under Danish hegemony for four centuries. The country also was occupied by the Germans during World War II.

The last thing that Norwegians want to do, Kleveland said, is to yield to Brussels.

We want to decide our own laws and regulations, and have our own voice in international affairs, she said. The world is bigger than the E.U.

Kleveland said she is hoping that Britain votes to leave but acknowledged that a place in the EEA would be a poor outcome given the constraints the agreement places on national decision-making. Other models in Europe  including a more flexible Swiss arrangement in which agreements are negotiated one by one  arent much better.

Perhaps none of the models work well, she said, suggesting that Britain will need to chart its own path.

[Boris Johnson clashes with rivals in highly charged Brexit debate]

Any public dissatisfaction in Norway with the EEA has been masked by the extraordinary success of the Norwegian economy, which for decades has floated on the wealth of North Sea oil.

The countrys prosperity has been all the more striking when compared with the plight of the E.U., which has been weighed down by debt, unemployment and a seemingly unending string of crises.

Any public backlash over Norways lack of a voice in E.U. affairs has also been muted by the fact that the E.U.s policies generally align with Norwegian interests, said Jan Erik Grindheim, who leads a pro-E.U. advocacy group.

The decisions coming out of Brussels arent that bad, Grindheim said. Thats the only reason we dont have a revolt.

Still, the countrys outsider status does occasionally lead to trouble.

Lund, who leads the Norwegian business association, said E.U. law recently prohibited a tax incentive that Norway had been using to encourage companies to set up shop in the countrys remote Arctic region. But businesses only learned of the switch at the last minute because, she said, Norwegian authorities werent involved in the decision-making.

Circumstances change for business all the time, she said. But its very bad to get a change like that with so little notice.

Thats one reason that Solberg, the prime minister, favors Norwegian membership in the E.U. But she said she would respect the voters will and not push for it while public support remains so low  even as she urges Britain to stay in.

Hence one of the ironies as Britain prepares to vote:

We made a mistake with the referendum in 1994. We lost sovereignty with no compensation, said Erik Oddvar Eriksen, director of European studies at the University of Oslo. Now Norwegian politicians warn the U.K. to stay. But they dont take up the issue at home. Theyre afraid of another referendum.

Karla Adam contributed to this report from London.

Read more

As polls tighten, Cameron pleads with unhappy voters to back away from Brexit

A British vote to leave the E.U. could shatter the United Kingdom

Whats a Brexit? A guide to Britains E.U. drama for confused non-Europeans.

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
The gunman who killed at least 50 people in a shooting rampage at an Orlando nightclub has been identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen. Here is what we know about him so far. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)

The gunman who killed at least 50 people in a shooting rampage at an Orlando nightclub has been identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen. Here is what we know about him so far. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)

Sometime after 2 a.m. Sunday, Omar Mateen dialed Orlandos 911 service to alert the dispatcher to the carnage unfolding at one of the citys most popular gay bars. He spelled out his full name and location, and then he offered an explanation: He was a follower of the Islamic State.

By 5 a.m., Mateen lay dead, killed in a gun battle with police in a violent finale to the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. But while the enormity of the crime was quickly apparent, authorities were just beginning to sort through the jumble of motives that may have led the 29-year-old immigrants son to open fire on scores of young men and women inside the Pulse nightclub.

[Orlando rampage reflects convergence of terrorism and mass shootings]

While Mateen claimed allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, no evidence had emerged by late Sunday pointing to actual ties to terrorist groups or a significant association with jihadist causes. And although family members said Mateen had expressed anger about homosexuality, the shooter had no record of previous hate crimes.

He had twice come under investigation by the FBI  once for comments suggesting an affinity for Islamist groups, and a second time for vague connections to another Florida man who traveled to Syria to become a suicide bomber. Neither probe turned up evidence of wrongdoing, and Mateen had a blemish-free record when he applied for a Florida license to carry concealed weapons and again when he legally purchased two firearms, including an assault-style semiautomatic rifle, just a few days before the shootings.

Indeed, as the first day of the investigation neared an end, U.S. officials struggled over how exactly to label the attack, which President Obama described on Sunday as both an act of terror and an act of hate.

[50 dead in worse mass shooting in U.S. history]

We have reached no definitive conclusions, Obama said at a news conference, adding: What is clear is that he was a person filled with hate.

Also clear is the fact that, until the past week, Mateen appears to have lived a relatively quiet life, as a security guard and father of a young son who kept a modest two-bedroom condominium in Fort Pierce, a town on east Floridas central coast.

Born in New York, he was the son of an Afghan immigrant who moved his family to Florida when Mateen was a child. The older Mateen would eventually open a business and attempt to dabble in Afghan politics from afar, starting a YouTube channel in Florida in which he sometimes expressed favorable views about the Taliban.

Mateen would spend his youth and young adulthood in Florida, attending a local high school and obtaining an associates degree in criminal justice from nearby Indian River State College in 2006, according to college spokeswoman Michelle Abaldo. He held jobs as a security guard and appeared to have a fondness for law enforcement, having once talked to friends about becoming a police officer. In a series of Myspace photos, Mateen is seen taking selfies wearing New York Police Department shirts.

Florida public records confirm that Mateen had a permit to carry a concealed weapon and was a licensed security guard, first at a facility for juvenile delinquents and later for G4S, a security company.

1 of 38 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  The scene in Orlando after a gunman opened fire at a nightclub View Photos Officials say at least 49 people were killed and dozens more were injured in the shooting. Caption Officials say at least 49 people were killed and dozens were injured in the shooting. June 12, 2016 An injured person is carried out of Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Steven Fernandez/Associated Press Wait 1 second to continue.

But there also were early signs of emotional trouble and a volatile temper, according to Sitora Yusifiy, who was briefly married to Mateen. Yusifiy described Mateen as an abusive husband who beat her repeatedly while they were married.

He was not a stable person, she told The Washington Post. He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasnt finished or something like that.

[It was just complete chaos: survivors on the struggle to stay alive]

Yusifiy said she met Mateen through an online dating service and eventually agreed to move to Florida to be with him. The two married in March 2009 and moved into the Fort Pierce condo that Mateens family owned.

He seemed like a normal human being, said Yusifiy, who divorced Mateen in 2011.

Acquaintances gave conflicting views about Mateens religiosity. Yusifiy said her former husband wasnt very devout and preferred spending his free time working out at the gym. She said in the few months they were married he gave no signs of having fallen under the sway of radical Islam.

He was a very private person, she said.

Mateen later had a son with another woman who also appears to have left him and declined to comment when reached at her current home.

But one friend said Mateen became steadily more religious after his divorce and went on a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.

He was quite religious, said the friend, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. Yet, he added, if Mateen had sympathies for the Islamic State or other terrorist groups, he never mentioned them.

For several years, Mateen regularly attended the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce and was there as recently as two days ago, said Imam Shafiq Rahman on Sunday.

The imam said Mateens father and young son would pray with him, and Mateens three sisters were active volunteers at the mosque, which had about 150 congregants.

He was the most quiet guy; he never talked to anyone, Rahman said, gripping a loop of black and red prayer beads as he held forth in a dingy corridor adorned with images of the Arabic alphabet rendered by children who come here for religious instruction. He would come and pray and leave. There was no indication at all that he would do something violent. Mateen never sought any spiritual guidance from him, Rahman said.

But Rahmans 20-year-old son, a University of Florida senior who declined to provide his first name, recalled Mateen as an aggressive person.

It was just his demeanor, he said. He used to work out a lot.

[Another national tragedy drives Americans further apart]

Mateens father, Seddique Mateen, insisted in interviews Sunday that his sons violent deeds had nothing to do with religion. He said Mateen had become enraged a few months earlier at the sight of a pair of gay men being affectionate with each other.

We were in downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry, the father told NBC News. They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that. 

Seddique Mateen had himself become embroiled in controversy as the host of the Durand Jirga Show on a channel called Payam-e-Afghan, which broadcasts from California. In it, the elder Mateen speaks in the Dari language on a variety of political subjects. Dozens of videos are posted on a channel under Seddique Mateens name on YouTube. A phone number and post office box that are displayed on the show were traced back to the Mateen home in Florida. Mateen also owns a nonprofit organization under the name Durand Jirga, which is registered in Port St. Lucie, Fla.

In one video, the elder Mateen expresses gratitude toward the Afghan Taliban, while denouncing the Pakistani government.

Our brothers in Waziristan, our warrior brothers in [the] Taliban movement and national Afghan Taliban are rising up, he said. Inshallah the Durand Line issue will be solved soon.

It is unclear if his statements ever attracted the attention of the FBI.

The Durand Line was drawn as a demarcation of British and Afghan spheres of influence in 1893. The historical line is a source of conflict for members of the Pashtun ethnic group, whose homeland straddles the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Just hours before the Orlando shooting, Seddique Mateen posted a video on a Facebook page called Provisional Government of Afghanistan  Seddique Mateen. In it, he seems to be pretending to be Afghanistans president, and he orders the arrest of an array of Afghan political figures.

I order national army, national police and intelligence department to immediately imprison Karzai, Ashraf Ghani, Zalmay Khalilzad, Atmar, and Sayyaf. They are against our countrymen, and against our homeland, he says, while dressed in army fatigues.

William Wan, Steve Friess and Brian E. Crowley in Fort Pierce, Fla., and Julie Tate, Jennifer Jenkins and Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

Dozens hurt in domestic terror incident; suspect identified
A young Ache girl combs her hair in Cerro Moroti, Paraguay. Many poor indigenous families in rural Paraguay allow affluent urban households to informally adopt their children, a practice that the government is seeking to outlaw. (Jorge Saenz/AP)

Tina Alvarenga never asked her mother why, at the age of 10, she was handed over to an upper-middle-class couple here in Paraguays capital to begin a harsh new life of domestic work and routine humiliation.

She had seven brothers and sisters, but as her indigenous Guarani parents struggled to make ends meet in the dusty town of Puerto Casado, on the border with Brazil, she was the only one who was given away.

Of the many psychological wounds she suffered in her new home, that bewilderment still hurts the most, says Alvarenga, now a 52-year-old indigenous rights activist and consultant to UNICEF.

The question never goes away, she said. I will be thinking about it for the rest of my life.

Alvarengas experience remains tragically common in Paraguay, one of the last bastions in Latin America of a colonial-era system of child labor known here as criadazgo. The practice, in which impoverished rural families allow affluent urban households to informally adopt their children, is still found in Peru and Haiti, as well, but to a much lesser extent.

Tina Alvarenga, a former criada, is an indigenous rights activist and consultant to UNICEF. You lose your roots, your sense of identity, she says of the system. (Simeon Tegel)

Paraguays most recent census, in 2011, showed 46,993 boys and girls  2.5 percent of the countrys juvenile population  to be criados, some of them as young as 5. The verbal understanding between the families involved is that the children, many of whom are indigenous, will be given education, food and other basic necessities in return for domestic work. The reality, rights advocates say, is that many are routinely kept out of school to finish their chores or, worse, abused.

Few ex-criados grow up to achieve Alvarengas level of success, with many ending up on the streets.

Its easy to tell the criados, said Marta Benitez, head of Global Infancia, a Paraguayan nonprofit group that focuses on childrens rights. They wear hand-me-down clothes and have their hair very short. They usually eat apart from the family and go to a different school, a state school, while the biological children go to a private one.

For those that do make it to school, she added, it is the only place where they can be children. But even there, they are so tired from waking early to do domestic work that they often fall behind.

Still widely accepted in Paraguayan society, criadazgo finally became a topic of national debate in January after a 14-year-old girl, Carolina Marin, was allegedly beaten to death by the couple for whom she worked.

The scandal prompted the National Congress to issue a declaration condemning the practice. But several lawmakers insisted that the wording specify abusive criadazgo.

No one justifies child abuse, but you cannot prohibit criadazgo, said Bernardo Villalba, of the ruling Colorado Party. This is a national custom, and it is going to take generations before we eradicate poverty. We cant close the door on these children in the meantime, on their chance of a better life.

Bernardo Puente, who spent 15 years advocating for childrens rights in Paraguay with the International Labor Organization, disagrees. You need to tackle poverty and lack of opportunities where you find them, instead of removing kids from their families, he said. I have never heard a criado defend the practice.

Even when there is no abuse and the informal agreement is fully honored, as in Alvarengas case, the impact can be devastating.

You lose your roots, your sense of identity, she said. You are never part of the new family. They think you are, but they treat you differently.

But many youngsters experience a worse fate than lack of affection. Some are turned out of their new homes in adolescence. According to Puente, 90 percent of Paraguays cases of teenage sexual exploitation involve former criados.

Girls suffer more than boys. The latter typically run errands and are sent to learn a manual trade, allowing them to develop a life outside the home. Girls rarely escape the confines of their new household.

A legal loophole has helped the practice survive, says Teresa Martinez, a human-trafficking prosecutor. She has to rely on general anti-slavery laws whose highly specific evidentiary requirements can be impossible to meet in criadazgo cases.

It ties our hands, she said. We have to criminalize this behavior by its name, so that society understands it is unacceptable.

Paraguays Ministry of Childhood and Adolescence is now doing exactly that, preparing a draft bill to outlaw criadazgo. Still, many issues remain to be resolved, including how to distinguish between abusers and families that are sincerely, if misguidedly, trying to help impoverished youngsters. A first step will be to require families who have informally adopted children to sign up in an official register.

The ministry is also evaluating how to avoid a wave of kids being dumped on the streets as a result of the new law, which will mandate jail terms of up to eight years for transgressors.

Ernesto Benitez, a government legal adviser, said he hopes the legislation will be sent to Congress early next year.

Alvarenga welcomes the measure. For eight years, she recalls, she awoke at 5 a.m. every day to make breakfast for the 50-something retired army major and his French-instructor wife who had taken her in after their own children were grown.

I was never sexually abused, but I was always afraid, she said.

In the evenings, she had to clean the house, prepare the supper and stand beside the table to serve the couple. She could eat oranges and bananas but was not allowed to touch anything else in the fruit bowl.

Alvarenga was also, occasionally, beaten with a belt.

The one saving grace was that the major made her use his personal library, often demanding she recount to him what she had read.

Yet nothing makes up for the cold way she was treated, says Alvarenga, remembering the reaction of the majors wife to her request to visit her home on hearing of a sisters passing.

What for? Shes already dead, Alvarenga says the woman told her.

The new law, she hopes, will not only stop obvious cases of child slavery but also save future generations from exposure to that kind of casual cruelty.

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting funded the travel for this story.

Read more

The horrific child rape case that is tearing Paraguay apart

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
In this Jan. 20, 2012, file photo, passengers queue up for a security check at Pudong International Airport in Shanghai, China. A small explosion at a check-in area of Shanghai's Pudong airport injured a few people Sunday, June 12, 2016, Chinese authorities said. (Eugene Hoshiko/AP)

A man detonated a homemade explosive device in Shanghais busy Pudong International Airport on Sunday, injuring five people, including himself, the city government said.

The airports management authority said the blast occurred at 2:20 p.m. (2:20 a.m. Eastern time) Sunday in the check-in area of Terminal 2.

According to an initial police investigation, a man took homemade explosive materials in a beer bottle out of his backpack and threw it at [the] ticketing counter, the government said. After the bottle exploded, the man reportedly took out a knife and slashed his neck, inflicting serious injuries.

Four people were slightly injured by flying glass, the city government said.

A video circulated by state media showed people starting to run before a bright flash of light and a billow of smoke engulfed part of the check-in area.

A beer bottle filled with white smoke rolled right by my feet. I was scared and made off at once, Ni Bowen, an eyewitness, told the Associated Press.

Another video showed a person on a gurney being taken away by medical personnel.

In July 2013, a man using a wheelchair detonated a small bomb in Beijings main international airport. He was the only person injured.

It later emerged that he blamed security forces for a 2005 beating that paralyzed him from the waist down. The man, Ji Zhongxing, was sentenced to six years in prison.

Gu Jinglu and Xu Jing contributed to this report.

Read more:

China tries to combat terrorism through the Web

China expels French journalist for terrorism coverage

War on terror: China and Islam in Xinjiang

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Earlier this week, Steve Hernandez hugged his mother for the first time since 1995  21 years after Maria Mancia returned from work one day to find her home empty, her son and his father gone, leaving no trace of Hernandez.



No photos, no paperwork. Not even his ultrasound from her pregnancy.



Their reunion comes as the conclusion of a years-long abduction investigation, the San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office in California announced Thursday.



"We contacted the mother and she was overcome with emotion and very thankful," Karen Cragg, a senior investigator in the DA's office, said in a news release.



Cragg continued, "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."



Officials allege that Hernandez was abducted by his father, Valentin Hernandez, in 1995, during a period of turmoil in the relationship between Valentin and Mancia.



For years afterward, the only photo of Steve that Mancia had was one she sought back from her family in El Salvador, which she had earlier sent them.





California Mom Reunites with Her Son, 21 Years After His Abduction: She Never 'Gave Up After All These Years'| Crime & Courts, Personal Success, True Crime, Real People Stories

Investigators with the DA's Child Abduction Unit pursued leads over time and, during the course of their investigation, the DA's office also learned that Valentin had died, though the office has not been able to confirm that.



A warrant for kidnapping and child abduction remains outstanding for Valentin, according to the release.



 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.



In February 2016 they received a tip that a Steve Hernandez, an American citizen, was living in Puebla, Mexico.



"We weren't positive we located the right person," Cragg said in the release. "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."



After "extensive coordination and planning," the Department of Justice and Mexican authorities assisted in collecting a DNA sample from Steve; and on May 31, his identity as Mancia's long-lost son was confirmed.



On Thursday, the two reunited, with hugs and tears.



"She had never given up after all these years, but had accepted the fact that she may never know her son," Cragg said in the release. "Maria never gave up, and neither did our office."
Presumptive presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump offered contrasting responses to the terror attack at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., early on Sunday morning.

For now, we can say for certain that we need to redouble our efforts to defend our country from threats at home and abroad, Clinton said in a statement released by her campaign. That means defeating international terror groups, working with allies and partners to go after them wherever they are, countering their attempts to recruit people here and everywhere, and hardening our defenses at home. It also means refusing to be intimidated and staying true to our values.

She also said that it was an act of hate and noted that it took place during Pride month.To the LGBT community: please know that you have millions of allies across our country. I am one of them. We will keep fighting for your right to live freely, openly and without fear, she said. Hate has absolutely no place in America. She added that we need to keep guns like the ones used last night out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals.

On Twitter, Trump wrote, Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?

He later tweeted, Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism. I dont want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart! Bernie Sanders also released a statement. All Americans are horrified, disgusted and saddened by the horrific atrocity in Orlando, he said.

At this point we do not know whether this was an act of terrorism, a terrible hate crime against gay people or the act of a very sick person, but we extend our heartfelt condolences to the victims families and loved ones and our thoughts are with the injured and the entire Orlando LGBTQ community.

Update: Trumps campaign released a lengthier statement Sunday afternoon, calling on President Obama to resign.

Story continues

In his remarks today, President Obama disgracefully refused to even say the words Radical Islam. For that reason alone, he should step down. If Hillary Clinton, after this attack, still cannot say the two words Radical Islam she should get out of this race for the Presidency.

If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore. Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen  and it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We cant afford to be politically correct anymore.

The gunman, identified as Omar Mateen, was a U.S. citizen born in New York.

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Media Coverage of Orlando Tragedy Follows Familiar Scripts
In the wake of Saturday night's horrific mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., in which 50 people were killed and 53 more wounded, many looked to see the reactions of the presumptive presidential nominees on Sunday. The act of terrorism marks the worst mass shooting in American history.

Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton first took to Twitter to say, "Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act."

Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H

- Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump also woke up to the news, and continued to tweet throughout the morning.

Really bad shooting in Orlando. Police investigating possible terrorism. Many people dead and wounded.

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

But it was his tweet referencing "congrats" over being "right on radical Islamic terrorism" that caused a swift reaction on social media, with many questioning how Trump would handle such a massacre if he were indeed elected president of the United States.

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Throughout their morning coverage, CNN questioned Trump's continual tweeting as the news developed, and others, such as George Takei, John Legend and Eric Stonestreet, criticized Trump's handling of the situation. According to Buzzfeed News, Clinton's campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri responded to Trump's words as well, stating, "This act of terror is the largest mass shooting in American history and a tragedy that requires a serious response. Hillary Clinton has a comprehensive plan to combat ISIS at home and abroad and will be talking to the American people in the coming days about steps she would take to keep the country safe."

Story continues

Palmieri also stated: "In contrast, Donald Trump put out political attacks, weak platitudes and self-congratulations. Trump has offered no real plans to keep our nation safe and no outreach to the Americans targeted, just insults and attacks. In times of crisis more than ever, Americans are looking for leadership and deserve better."

JUST IN: Clinton campaign's @jmpalmieri responds to Trump statement on Orlando shooting: pic.twitter.com/jQGTmKOT6u

- Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) June 12, 2016

Once again, Donald, you have shown why you cannot lead us. 50 people are dead, and you bask in congratulations. https://t.co/pUN7ceAff7

- George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) June 12, 2016

Forget presidential, this isn't even a vaguely human way to react to a tragedy. His devotion to ego is infuriating. https://t.co/L8bmrynuCb

- Rou Reynolds (@RouReynolds) June 12, 2016

Trump is truly an awful person. https://t.co/vQp3CQ9Nmv

- John Legend (@johnlegend) June 12, 2016

Is this the grossest tweet in Twitter history? Yes. I think it is. https://t.co/G8W6UlMyM0

- Eric Stonestreet (@ericstonestreet) June 12, 2016

Dear Mr Trump. I'm not sure that today is a day for any kind of congrats and jelly and ice cream. https://t.co/QTaVYe7TJo

- Adil Ray (@adilray) June 12, 2016

.@realDonaldTrump You're congratulating yourself because 50 people are dead this morning in a horrific tragedy?

- Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) June 12, 2016

President Barack Obama addressed the nation on Sunday, saying the White House is working with the FBI and national security to investigate the shooting. He called it "the most deadly shooting in American history."

As Obama began his address, Trump again took to Twitter.

Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

On Sunday afternoon, Clinton released a statement seconding Obama's earlier statements, calling the events an "act of terror" and also "an act of hate."

"This was an act of terror. ... This was also an act of hate." - Hillary on the attack in Orlando https://t.co/MmaGjrSufr

- Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

Read Clinton's full statement, which she shared via her Twitter account, below.

I join Americans in praying for the victims of the attack in Orlando, their families and the first responders who did everything they could to save lives.

This was an act of terror. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are hard at work, and we will learn more in the hours and days ahead. For now, we can say for certain that we need to redouble our efforts to defend our country from threats at home and abroad.

That means defeating international terror groups, working with allies and partners to go after them wherever they are, countering their attempts to recruit people here and everywhere, and hardening our defenses at home. It also means refusing to be intimidated and staying true to our values.

This was also an act of hate. The gunman attacked an LGBTQ nightclub during Pride Month. To the LGBT community: please know that you have millions of allies across our country. I am one of them. We will keep fighting for your right to live freely, openly and without fear. Hate has absolutely no place in America.

Finally, we need to keep guns like the ones used last night out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals. This is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States and it reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets.

This is a time to stand together and resolve to do everything we can to defend our communities and country.

Clinton continued to tweet after releasing her statement.

"To the LGBT community: please know that you have millions of allies across our country. I am one of them." - Hillary https://t.co/MmaGjrSufr

- Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

"We need to keep guns like the ones used last night out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals." - Hillary on the FL attack

- Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

Trump later released his own statement on his official website. In that, he echoed his tweet directed at Obama by saying that "our nation was attacked by a radical Islamic terrorist," calling the incident "the worst terrorist attack" in the U.S. since 9/11. After expressing his sympathy for the victims, Trump criticized Obama and Clinton for not using the words "Radical Islam," saying they should both resign.

"If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore," Trump continued. "Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen - and it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can't afford to be politically correct anymore. "

He claimed that Clinton "wants to dramatically increase admissions from the Middle East, bringing in many hundreds of thousands during a first term - and we will have no way to screen them, pay for them, or prevent the second generation from radicalizing."

He said he would protect all Americans from "Radical Islamic Terrorism."

Read Trump's full statement below.

Last night, our nation was attacked by a radical Islamic terrorist. It was the worst terrorist attack on our soil since 9/11, and the second of its kind in 6 months. My deepest sympathy and support goes out to the victims, the wounded, and their families.

In his remarks today, President Obama disgracefully refused to even say the words 'Radical Islam'. For that reason alone, he should step down. If Hillary Clinton, after this attack, still cannot say the two words 'Radical Islam' she should get out of this race for the Presidency.

If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore. Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen - and it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can't afford to be politically correct anymore.

The terrorist, Omar Mir Saddique Mateen, is the son of an immigrant from Afghanistan who openly published his support for the Afghanistani Taliban and even tried to run for President of Afghanistan. According to Pew, 99% of people in Afghanistan support oppressive Sharia Law.

We admit more than 100,000 lifetime migrants from the Middle East each year. Since 9/11, hundreds of migrants and their children have been implicated in terrorism in the United States.

Hillary Clinton wants to dramatically increase admissions from the Middle East, bringing in many hundreds of thousands during a first term - and we will have no way to screen them, pay for them, or prevent the second generation from radicalizing. We need to protect all Americans, of all backgrounds and all beliefs, from Radical Islamic Terrorism - which has no place in an open and tolerant society.

Radical Islam advocates hate for women, gays, Jews, Christians and all Americans. I am going to be a President for all Americans, and I am going to protect and defend all Americans. We are going to make America safe again and great again for everyone.

The shooter, who has been identified as Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, stormed the Pulse nightclub late Saturday night wielding an assault-type rifle and a handgun, opening fire on the crowd before being killed in a gunfight with SWAT officers, police said on Sunday.

The tragedy rocked the nation and the LGBT community, occurring mere hours before parades were to kick off around the country in celebration of Pride Month.

Follow all of The Hollywood Reporter's updating coverage on the breaking news story here.

Read More: 49 Killed in Orlando Gay Nightclub Shooting; Largest Mass Shooting in U.S. History
The creative team of The O.C. reunited Sunday at the ATX Television Festival.

Series creator Josh Schwartz sat on a panel with exec producer Stephanie Savage, writer Leila Gerstein and music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas at the Austin, Texas TV fest to discuss the hit teen drama, which ran for four seasons on Fox and ended nine years ago.

The panelists revealed behind-the-scenes tidbits from The O.C. Heres what we learned

1. Peter Gallagher was the first person cast on the show.

The first person we cast on the show was Peter Gallagher os Sandy Cohen, Schwartz revealed. We wanted to send the message that this was a show that could be for adults, as much as for kids.

2. The famous line welcome to the O.C., b-tch was inspired by water polo players at USC where Schwartz went to school  and so was the shows title.

The most famous line of the series, uttered by Luke (Chris Carmack) to Ryan (Ben McKenzie), came from Schwartz, who was playfully making fun of the water polo players at USC.

When I was at SC, there were all these waterpolo guys that refer to Orange County as the O.C.as if they were referring to the LBC,' Schwartz said, laughing that Orange County is not nearly as hard as Long Beach, but the blonde athletes definitely thought it was.

It was always a bit of an ironic title for us, Schwartz said.

3. Josh Schwartz never celebrated Chrismukkah.

Its not a holiday that we celebrated, the show creator said about his childhood. So how did the famous TV holiday come about?

It felt like it really spoke to what we were trying to do with the show, Schwartz said. We had a lot of Judaism on the show, he said, bringing up the Passover sedar scene from Season 1.

Schwartz said that Chrismakkah really emphasized the idea is that Sandy had married the ultimate shiksa goddess.

He cracked, It was a way to get even more presents!

4. The Cohens were originally named the Newmans.

Stephanie Savage joked that the core family got a little bit more Jewish as the show was developed. Asked how Fox felt about the whiny Jews at the center of the show, Savage laughed that the network was medium okay with it.

Story continues

5. Arcade Fire was the one band that Josh Schwartz wanted to feature on The O.C., but never did.

Not getting Arcade Fire on the show is still a sore subject for Schwartz.

The O.C.s music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas was on the panel and spoke about all the great artists that the show did get. The panel agreed that Imogen Heaps Hide and Seek is one of their favorite moments from the entire series.

6. Kailtin Cooper was originally played by Shailene Woodley (in case you forgot).

When Marissas little sister came back all grown up, she was played by Willa Holland, but Shailene Woodley originally played the part in a recurring role in the first season.

Where is Shailene? Schwartz joked of the actress whos gone onto star in the Divergent series, among other big blockbusters. I think Shailenes doing just fine, he added.

Savage shared that a young Woodley sent the writers a hand-written note and a drawing of Seths toy horse when she was no longer on the show.

7. The writers still think about killing off Mischa Barton.

Its complicated. There were a lot of factors involve and it was something we really wrestled with, Schwartz said. There were reasons both creative and just in terms for the show itself and where we were with the network.

Its something we still wrestle with, he admitted, adding that he got lots of anger and fan art.

8. The writers loved Taylor Townsend.

Autumn Reesers character made her debut in Season 3 and became a series regular in Season 4, following Marissas (Mischa Barton) death.

The writers loved writing for Taylor Townsend, said Leila Gerstein, writer on The O.C. who went on to create the CWs Hart of Dixie with Rachel Bilson. She was so annoying and so delicious, Gerstein continued, speaking about Taylor Townsend. We as a group fell in love with her and we were like, we have to keep her around.

9. Doing more than four seasons was never a strong possibility.

Schwartz said he knew that Season 4 was going to be it.

Going into it, we had a pretty good sense that was going to be a final season, so it was very freeing creatively, Schwartz said. We took some chances that we probably would have felt uncomfortable doing before that.

While the team didnt ever strongly consider a fifth season, Savage explained that the fourth season was a more adult version of The O.C., so the writers and producers began to understand what a more mature version of the series going forward could have been. Savage noted that transitioning teen dramas is not easy, after they graduate high school. Once we were in Season 4, we realized we couldnt do this forever, she said.

10. The Valley was never going to be a real spinoff.

We got really into The Valley,' Schwartz said of the show-within-a-show parody. Asked if he ever considered doing a real spinoff series, Schwartz joked that he planned 14 seasons of The Valley.

While The Valley isnt coming to TV any time soon, Schwartz predicted where the next big teen drama may land.

I dont know that the next great teen drama is going to be on network [television], he said. I think youre going to find it somewhere else  something else that starts with N thats not network.'

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Tripoli (AFP) - Gunmen have killed 12 Libyans after their release from jail for taking part in acts of repression during the 2011 revolt against Moamer Kadhafi, officials said on Sunday.

A Tripoli court ordered the conditional release of the former regime officials on Thursday, and on Friday their bullet-riddled bodies were found in the capital, the prosecution said on its Facebook page.

An investigation into the murders has begun, it added.

The victims had been imprisoned on charges of committing abuses during the NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed Kadhafi.

They were freed on condition that they report to the prosecutor every two weeks.

The UN special envoy to Libya Martin Kobler condemned the murders and called for a prompt and "transparent" investigation.

Kobler tweeted that he was "shocked and dismayed by the reports of murder of so many detainees released by a Tripoli court".

The Government of National Accord also denounced what it called a "despicable crime".

A statement on its Facebook page called on security and judiciary authorities to find the assailants and bring them to justice.

Seddiq es-Sour, of the prosecutor's office, told Libyan television the bodies were found in various parts of the capital and confirmed that all were former prisoners.

He said they had been arrested between 2011 and 2014.

The identities of the victims were not immediately released.

Earlier this month, es-Sour had said the supreme court had ordered the release of six Kadhafi regime officials pending an appeal, for reasons linked to their health and age.

Dozens of people are on trial in Libya for their role in the violent suppression of the revolt, including two sons of Kadhafi and ex-government officials.

In July 2015 several people were sentenced to death, including Seif al-Islam, Kadhafi's son and one-time heir apparent.




Don't mess with Adele.



Last week, David Bowie's producer Tony Visconti suggested to The Daily Star that the British songstress's vocals could have been "manipulated" to make them sound better.



"You turn the radio on and it's fluff, you are listening to 90 per cent computerized voices," he said. "We know Adele has a great voice but it's even questionable if that is actually her voice or how much has been manipulated. We don't know."







Visconti continued by calling the current era the "worst time ever in the music industry."



Adele responded to the criticism during one of her shows, and she didn't hold back.



"Some d---head tried to say that my voice was not me on record," Adele said. "Dude, suck my d---."









On top of her stunning vocals, Adele fans are always in for a surprise at one of her gigs. So far on her 25 tour, she's covered a Spice Girls song, helped a couple get engaged and taken a selfie with her look-alike.
Beirut (AFP) - Air strikes on a market in Syria's Al-Qaeda-held city of Idlib killed at least 21 civilians including five children on Sunday, a monitor said.

It was not clear who carried out the raids on the northwestern provincial capital, which is controlled by Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front and its allies, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Footage shared by Observatory showed a burnt-out car as emergency workers trained water hoses on a tall building.

Below a haze of smoke, a red plastic container lay empty among the rubble.

The Britain-based Observatory relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria for its information.

It says it determines whether strikes were carried out by Syrian, Russian or US-led coalition aircraft based on the location of the raids, flight patterns and the types of planes and munitions involved.

The Observatory said Russian air strikes killed 23 civilians in strikes on Idlib city on May 31, but Russia denied carrying out raids there that day.

Russia launched air strikes in support of the Damascus regime in September.

Al-Nusra is not party to a Russian- and US-brokered ceasefire between the regime and non-jihadist rebels that began on February 27 and is now in tatters.

An alliance between Al-Nusra and rebel groups drove the regime out of Idlib province last year.

More than 280,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since Syria's civil war started in 2011.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Air strikes carried out by Syrian or Russian warplanes killed more than 20 people in the northwestern city of Idlib on Sunday, monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. Areas hit included a market, and at least five children were among those killed, the British-based Observatory said. It said the death toll was expected to rise because of the number of people seriously wounded. It said it did not know whether Syrian or Russian jets had carried out the strikes. Both are operating in the area. Russia deployed warplanes to Syria last year to support President Bashar al-Assad against rebels seeking to end his rule, and have supported Syrian government forces in a separate fight against Islamic State further east. Idlib city and the province by the same name is a stronghold of rebel groups including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. Air raids in the town of Maarat al-Numan, about 30 km (20 miles) south of Idlib killed another six people, the Observatory said. There has been heavy bombardment of areas in Idlib province in recent weeks, including air strikes that killed at least 23 people last month. Fighting in Syria's five-year civil war has intensified since a February ceasefire deal which took hold in the west of the country but excluded al Qaeda and Islamic State, but quickly began to unravel. (Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Clelia Oziel)
By Hamid Ould Ahmed ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika named new energy and finance ministers on Saturday in a cabinet reshuffle, as the OPEC member tries to cope with a sharp fall in oil and gas earnings that have placed increasing pressure on its finances. Nouredine Bouterfa, the head of state power firm Sonelgaz, was named as the new energy minister, replacing Salah Khebri, while junior budget minister Hadji Baba Ammi was appointed to replace Abderrahmane Benkhalfa at the finance ministry, a statement carried by state media said. No reason was give for the changes, but the reshuffle comes as Algeria struggles to revive its economy and boost oil and gas production, with divergent views over how hard to push for foreign investment and for domestic economic reform. The North African state has taken some measures to adapt to falling income, including raising subsidised fuel and electricity prices, cutting back on infrastructure projects and trimming budget spending. But reform has been sluggish, held back by a debate between reformers keen to lessen dependency on oil and gas revenues, and an older guard reluctant to liberalise a state-dominated system. Economic change is also widely seen as being hampered by uncertainty over a possible succession, with rivals manoeuvring in expectation that Bouteflika will step down before the end of his term in 2019. Among the changes announced on Saturday was the creation of a new position of junior minister for the digital economy and modernisation of financial systems, to be held by Mouatassem Boudiaf. Bouteflika also named former foreign minister Boualem Bessaiah as a special adviser, the presidency said in a separate statement. It is the fifth reshuffle under Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal since he took office in 2012. Khebri and Benkhalfa had only been in their jobs for just over a year, brought in during the last cabinet shakeup in May 2015. Late last month President Bouteflika fired central bank chief Mohammed Laksaci after more than a decade in the job. Laksaci had been under pressure over his handling of the oil price drop. Oil and gas still account for 60 percent of Algeria's budget and nearly 95 percent of exports. The country has a cushion of about $140 million in foreign reserves, though these have been falling, and energy earnings fell by nearly 50 percent in 2015. (Reporting by Hamid Ould Ahmed; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Dominic Evans)
Japanese protesters on Sunday demonstrated against the heavy US military presence on the island of Okinawa, as tensions run high after a base employee was arrested following the rape and murder of a local woman.

Some 100 people marched through the streets of downtown Tokyo, with many of them holding banners reading "no more base".

The protest, calling for plans to create a fresh US base on the southern island to be scrapped, came a week before tens of thousands on Okinawa plan to hold their own rally against the foreign military presence.

A series of crimes including rapes, assaults and hit-and-run accidents by US military personnel, dependents and civilians have long sparked protests.

Last week Kenneth Franklin Shinzato, 32, a former US Marine employed at the US Air Force's sprawling Kadena Air Base, was arrested for the alleged rape and murder of a 20-year-old woman.

He had earlier been arrested for disposing of the body of the victim, identified by local media as Rina Shimabukuro.

The case has intensified longstanding local opposition to the military presence on the strategic island, which reluctantly hosts about 75 percent of US bases in Japan by land area.

A sailor was arrested in early June for allegedly driving the wrong way down a street while intoxicated and injuring two people, one seriously, leading to further opposition and an alcohol ban for US navy personnel stationed in the country.

More than half of the 47,000 American troops in Japan under a decades-long security alliance are stationed on Okinawa, the site of a major World War II battle that was followed by a 27-year US occupation of the island.

In 1995 the abduction and rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US servicemen prompted Washington to pledge efforts to strengthen troop discipline to prevent such crimes and reduce the US footprint on the island.

But a plan agreed by the US and Japanese governments to relocate a US base from Okinawa's heavily residential area to another site on the island has faced strong resistance from many Okinawans.
By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Sunday she is canceling her plans to attend the China Cyber Ministerial in Beijing and returning to Washington, D.C., to monitor developments following the deadly shooting in Orlando, Florida.

I have been briefed by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and FBI Director James Comey on the horrific terrorist attack in Orlando and will continue to receive updates on the situation," Lynch said in a statement.

"My thoughts and prayers are with the victims families during this very difficult time."

A gunman armed with an assault rifle killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida on Sunday in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Timothy Gardner; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
Azalea Banks apologized to fans, and promised to stop using a gay slur, because she realizes that hurting others is just not worth it.

The 25-year-old Harlem native shared the stream of consciousness on Facebook early Friday (June 10), and announced that shes never saying the word F****T ever again.

Banks explained that she might have tough skin, but that doesnt mean she has to offend people.

The amount of people that get hurt when I use the word vs. the amount of people Ive said it to are just not worth it, she wrote. Honestly This isnt a cop out, its just me realizing that words hurt. and while I may be immune to every word and be thicker skinned than most, it doesnt mean that I get to go around treating people with the same toughness that made my skin so thick. Because, that IS how people get thick skin by being subjected to name calling/belittlement/abuse and its [sic] not fair. Not fair to my fans, not fair to my peers but most importantly, Not fair to myself.

Banks also feels her words dont always reflect her true self. I paint the picture of someone who is used to suppressing things, and being defensive, Banks continued. I paint the picture of someone who cannot allow themselves to be vulnerable or at the very least, Happy. when I am ALL of those things. Im kind, Im caring, Im generous, I love to make people laugh and above all of it, I LOVE ART.

To close, Banks made direct amends with her fans. I want to SINCERELY apologize to my fans for having let so many of you down over the years. I know that you all want nothing else for me but to see me win, and I thank the many of you who saw the beauty in me and have stuck around this far. The #Kuntbrigade loves me more than Ive EVER felt love in my life and it would be so sacrilegious to throw away my blessings that way.

With so many social media feuds on record, the The Big Big Beat rapper has had plenty of time to reflect, and maybe tone her things down. Twitter suspended her account last month after she called Pillowtalk crooner Zayn Malik a punjab, and subsequently spiraled into an offensive diatribe that involved a spat with 14-year-old Disney star, Skai Jackson. She later clarified her comments with an essay on mental illness.
Bangladesh police have arrested an additional 2,000 suspected criminals including Islamist militants in an ongoing crackdown on extremists following a spate of gruesome murders, an officer said Sunday.

More than 3,000 people, including suspected ordinary criminals with existing warrants against them, were arrested on Saturday after police launched a controversial anti-militant drive across the Muslim-majority nation.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina vowed on Saturday to catch "each and every killer" as Bangladesh reels from a wave of murders of religious minorities and secular and liberal activists that have spiked in recent weeks.

Among those arrested in the latest sweep were 48 suspected militants, many of them members of banned group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), police said.

"We have arrested 2,132 people including 48 Islamist militants on the second day of the special drive," Deputy Inspector General of Police A.K.M Shahidur Rahman told AFP.

JMB is one of two local groups blamed for most of the recent killings. The government rejects claims of responsibility from the Islamic State (IS) group and a South Asian branch of Al-Qaeda, saying international jihadists have no presence in Bangladesh.

- Mounting pressure -

The arrests come as a part-time imam was detained in northwestern Pabna district over the latest killing, that of a Hindu ashram, or monastery, worker hacked to death on Friday.

"He is a suspect and is being questioned over the murder," local police chief Abu Quddus told AFP.

Bangladeshi authorities have come under mounting international pressure to end the string of attacks, which have left nearly 50 people dead in the last three years.

But Bangladesh opposition parties have accused police of using the crackdown to suppress political dissent, saying many of those arrested were "ordinary and innocent people".

The week-long crackdown is part of ramped up efforts to halt the killings, with five suspected Islamists members shot dead in gunbattles with police in recent days.

Story continues

Hasina accuses the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Islamist party ally, Jamaat-e-Islami, of orchestrating the killings to destabilise the country after they failed to topple the government in last year's transport blockade.

In recent days an elderly Hindu priest was found nearly decapitated in a rice field, while a Christian grocer was hacked to death near a church. IS claimed responsibility for those murders as well as that of the 62-year-old monastery worker.

In addition to the arrests, police said they had seized nearly 1,000 motorcycles.

Motorbikes have been used in many of the attacks, with the government recently announcing a ban on motorcyclists carrying more than one passenger.

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.

Although the country is officially secular, around 90 percent of Bangladesh's 160 million-strong population is Muslim, while some eight percent is Hindu.

Other victims have included liberal activists and secular bloggers along with two foreigners and two gay rights activists.

Experts say a previous government crackdown on opponents, including a ban on Jamaat following a protracted political crisis, has pushed many towards extremism.
Early Sunday morning, a gunman walked into Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and opened fire. He was armed with an assault-type rifle and a handgun, according to the Associated Press, and killed at least 50 people.

The shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism, prompting many online to speculate about possible religious motivation. But as presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders explained to Chuck Todd on NBCs Meet the Press Sunday, the real culprit, according to Sanders, is gun control  or more precisely, lack thereof.

I believe that in this country, we should not be selling automatic weapons which are designed to kill people, Sanders said, according to an emailed statement from NBC. We have got to do everything that we can on top of that to make sure that guns do not fall into the hands of people who should not have them, criminals, people who are mentally ill.

The Vermont senator called the shooting horrific and unthinkable, adding that he believes there to exist a very broad consensus in this country between most, but not all, gun owners who believe we have got to do everything that we can to prevent guns from falling into the hands of people who should not have them. That means expanding the instant background checks, it means doing away with the gun show loophole, it means addressing the straw man provision.

Sanders has traditionally taken a less aggressive stance on gun rights than has his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, maintaining that individual states should legislate on the issue but that certain measures should remain in place to keep guns out of the wrong hands. At the time of writing, Sanders was the first and only candidate to have framed the shooting as a problem of gun control.

Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H

Really bad shooting in Orlando. Police investigating possible terrorism. Many people dead and wounded.

The shooter has been as Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old man from Port St. Lucie, Florida. So far, no information is available on the provenance of the weapons he used. The shooting, which left an estimated 50 people dead and 53 wounded during Pulses Upscale Latin Saturday event, comes in the middle of LGBT Pride Month.
By Joe Brock JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African Paralympic gold medalist Oscar Pistorius will be sentenced this week for the 2013 murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, ending years of legal twists and turns. Pistorius, 29, known as "Blade Runner" for the carbon-fiber prosthetic blades he used to race, faces a minimum 15-year jail sentence and cannot appeal after the country's top court ruled in March that he had exhausted all his legal options. The track star, whose lower legs were amputated when he was a baby, initially received a five-year sentence for culpable homicide, South Africa's equivalent of manslaughter. The conviction was later upgraded to murder after an appeal heard by the Supreme Court. Original trial judge Thokozile Masipa will begin hearing pre-sentencing arguments at Pretoria High Court on Monday, with Pistorius expected to discover his fate by the end of the week. The athlete's legal team is expected to call witnesses who will argue that Masipa should be lenient because of the athlete's mental fragility, physical disability and good behavior during almost a year behind bars for the original manslaughter conviction. State prosecutor Gerrie Nel will cross-examine and call his own witnesses as he seeks to convince Masipa that Pistorius is not remorseful -- a key consideration in sentencing -- and that it is in the interest of South African justice that the athlete receives a lengthy jail term. Pistorius could take the stand himself, as could Reeva's father Barry Steenkamp, who has given a number of emotional interviews calling for justice that he says would not be served if Pistorius is treated leniently. The athlete's legal team did not respond to phone calls for comment. State prosecutors said they would not disclose who their witnesses would be. Pistorius's final days in court will mark the end of a dramatic fall from grace for an athlete who was once considered a heroic example of triumph over adversity. The sprinter became the first double amputee to compete against able-bodied athletes when he raced at the London 2012 Olympics after a five-year fight for the right to run on equal terms. He was released from prison last October after almost a year behind bars and allowed to serve out his term under house arrest on his uncle's property in a suburb of Pretoria. But in December, the Supreme Court upgraded the conviction on appeal and Pistorius was allowed to stay at his uncle's mansion pending the final decisions on appeals and sentencing. Pistorius denies deliberately killing model and law graduate Steenkamp, saying he mistook her for an intruder when he fired four shots through a locked toilet door in his Pretoria home. (Editing by David Goodman)
By Ahmed Elumami TRIPOLI (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed three people at a field hospital for forces fighting Islamic State in their Libyan coastal stronghold of Sirte on Sunday, a security source said, and medical staff appealed for help in treating the wounded. The bomber also wounded seven others and caused extensive damage to the hospital, about 50 km (30 miles) from the front line, the source said. Two other attempted suicide bombings just outside the center of Sirte did not cause casualties, he said. Brigades aligned with the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord have made rapid advances over the past month. This week they entered Sirte, engaging Islamic State militants in street battles keeping up air strikes against them. The brigades, made up mainly of fighters from the western city of Misrata, have faced suicide bombings, snipers and mines. At least 120 brigade members have been killed and more than 500 wounded, security and hospital officials say. Islamic State took advantage of lawlessness and political chaos to expand into Libya from late 2014. It has launched attacks at numerous sites along Libya's Mediterranean coastline but Sirte is the only city where it has taken full control. Officials in Misrata have long cited a lack of medical capacity to treat the wounded as a constraining factor in their efforts to fight the ultra-hardline group. Medical facilities are overflowing in Misrata, where, for example, the waiting room of the central hospital has been turned into a makeshift ward with room for 12 patients. "The wounded here at Misrata hospital are in a very bad state. The hospital care rooms are at full capacity, the private hospitals are also at full capacity," a medical official in Misrata, Malek al-Qualaib, said. The hospital is running low on medical supplies and has no emergency back-up stocks, hospital spokesman, Aziz Issa, said. "We have a lack of specialized doctors, and nurses, who left Misrata before the battle due to unpaid salaries, as well as a shortage of anesthesia and X-ray equipment," he said. "We appeal to the international community and international organizations to help us in providing necessary medical treatment for the wounded." More than 150 wounded fighters have been sent abroad for treatment, to Tunisia, Turkey, Italy and Algeria, but the departure of some wounded fighters had been delayed or prevented because they had not received visas, Issa said. Qualaib said there had also been delays because of problems getting permission for flights into European air space and because of lack of funding for evacuating the wounded. (Additional reporting by Ayman el-Sahli in Misrata; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Louise Ireland)
Tripoli (AFP) - Forces allied with Libya's unity government battled Sunday to retake the Islamic State group's last redoubts in its stronghold of Sirte, facing fierce resistance including a series of suicide car bombings.

They entered Sirte on Wednesday and have been advancing more quickly than expected against IS, which seized control of the coastal city last year and turned it into its main base of operations in North Africa.

The loss of Sirte would be a major setback for IS, which has also been losing territory in Syria and Iraq where the jihadist group established its self-declared "caliphate" in 2014.

The jihadists are surrounded in a densely populated area of around five square kilometres (two square miles) in the city centre and putting up a stiff fight.

"Three explosions from cars driven by Islamic State suicide bombers targeted our forces in Sirte," Reda Issa, a spokesman for the unity government's forces, told AFP.

Two of the bombers hit gatherings of pro-government forces and another struck at a field hospital, he said.

At least one person was killed and four wounded in the blasts, Issa said.

Pictures published on the Facebook page of the loyalist forces showed the mangled remains of a vehicle and a crater probably caused by one of the blasts.

Several damaged military-type vehicles, some mounted with heavy guns, could also be seen.

Sunday's attacks came a day after pro-government forces said they had recaptured the port in Sirte, the home town of Libya's ousted dictator Moamer Kadhafi, and residential areas in the city's east.

- Heavy street fighting -

The forces are allied with Libya's Government of National Accord, which is backed by the international community as the country's legitimate authority.

The GNA, led by prime minister-designate Fayez al-Sarraj, has been struggling for months to assert its authority in the face of rival administrations vying for power in the chaos of post-Kadhafi Libya.

Story continues

The pro-GNA forces are mostly made up of militias from western cities, notably Misrata, and the guards of oil installations that IS has repeatedly tried to seize.

They have engaged in heavy street fighting with the jihadists, deploying tanks, rocket launchers and artillery in the fight for the city.

The Misrata militia forces -- who have an arsenal that includes MiG fighter jets and attack helicopters -- have also carried out dozens of air raids against IS.

The operation announced on Sunday on Facebook that it had launched fresh air strikes against IS positions and vehicles in central Sirte.

Much of the fighting has been around a sprawling Kadhafi-era conference centre which once hosted international summits but now houses an IS command centre.

IS has responded to the offensive with machineguns, mortar rounds and sniper fire, as well as car bombings.

A medical official in Misrata said on Saturday that at least 137 pro-GNA fighters had been killed and 500 wounded since the operation began with a sweep towards Sirte on May 12.

- US hails 'rapid progress' -

Foreign intelligence services estimate IS has 5,000 fighters in Libya, but its strength inside Sirte is unclear.

The establishment of an IS bastion in northern Libya, just across the Mediterranean from Europe, raised widespread fears.

Sirte has an international airport and a port and lies just 350 kilometres (220 miles) from the Italian coast.

Foreign powers backing the GNA have welcomed the offensive on Sirte, where IS has carried out atrocities against residents and set up a base to train foreign jihadists.

The UN envoy to Libya, Martin Kobler, said Saturday on Twitter that he was "impressed" by the "rapid progress" of pro-GNA forces.

He also urged "all fighters to respect international humanitarian law," saying "civilians must not be targeted".

Most Sirte residents have fled but officials have said some 30,000 civilians remain in the city.

Washington's anti-IS envoy Brett McGurk also said Friday he was "encouraged by the progress" being made in Sirte, adding there was a good chance IS forces there "could crack pretty quickly".

The United States and Britain are reported to be providing intelligence support for the operation, with the Washington Post reporting earlier this month that a small group of US special forces had been sent to Libya to work with the militias.

Analysts have warned that retaking Sirte would not spell the end of IS in Libya, where the jihadists have fed on political and military divisions since the 2011 uprising that ousted and killed Kadhafi.
BERLIN, June 12 (Reuters) - A British vote to leave the European Union would hit large German banks, given their heavy exposure to London, the head of German financial watchdog Bafin said in an interview with German newspaper Tagesspiegel.

Bafin President Felix Hufeld told the newspaper in an article to be published on Monday that he hoped Britons would vote to remain in the European Union.

If not, "the biggest banks would have the biggest problems," the newspaper quoted Hufeld as saying. "They have the most activities in, and with, London," he said.

Hufeld said the European Central Bank planned to closely monitor the situation and the banks themselves had internal groups looking at the possible consequences.

Deutsche Bank AG and Commerzbank AG are the German banks with the largest business dealings in Britain.

Britons are due to vote in a June 23 referendum on the country's membership in the EU, a choice with far-reaching consequences for politics, the economy, defence and diplomacy in Britain and elsewhere.

British support for leaving the EU stood at 43 percent in a poll published Saturday by The Sunday Times, marginally ahead of the 42 percent who want to remain part of the bloc.

Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, told the German newspaper Bild in a separate interview that it could take seven years to revamp Britain's ties to the European Union.

He said each of the then remaining 27 members of the bloc, and the European Parliament, would have to agree to new terms.

Hufeld told the Tagesspiegel newspaper that Bafin was continuing to look intensively at 11 German banks involved in setting up offshore companies disclosed by the "Panama Papers" investigation, but cautioned it would take some time for the watchdog to reach a conclusion.

Four decades of documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specialises in setting up offshore companies, showed widespread usage of those companies by those who want to hide their wealth, triggering investigations across the world.

Bafin in May said it had asked banks named in the Panama Papers for all original documents linked to the affair.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal in Berlin and Jonathan Gould in Frankfurt; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
By Ethan Lou TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada is willing to "find a solution" with Bombardier Inc as the parties consider the company's dual-class share structure during talks on a $1-billion government fund-infusion, the minister responsible said late on Saturday. The struggling Canadian aircraft maker Bombardier has asked for $1 billion from the federal government to support its new CSeries passenger jet, though sources have said the government is concerned by the share structure that grants the founding family control despite their holding a minority stake. Critics say the structure means it is hard to push through needed reforms. "We're willing to find a solution with them, but these are part of the discussions we're having," Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains said when asked whether the government will still invest in Bombardier's CSeries planes if it keeps the share structure that favors the Bombardier-Beaudoin family. Bains was speaking on the sidelines of an event in Toronto by the Indo Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Bombardier's CSeries had been billions of dollars over budget and years late. The province of Quebec, where Bombardier is based, has already invested $1 billion in the series. The company's chief executive Alain Bellemare has since said the company has turned the corner with its CSeries, after Delta Air Lines in April made a pivotal order of 75 planes. But rival jetmakers and analysts say the planes were heavily discounted, and may cause other potential customers to demand similar prices, keeping the CSeries in the red. Bains said the government's priority in the talks is in making sure jobs, research investment and the company's headquarters remains in Canada. The talks on federal investment are ongoing, though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has told Reuters he does not see the government walking away. Brazilian planemaker Embraer SA has said it may challenge the state funding received by Bombardier before the World Trade Organization, saying that gives the Canadian company an unfair advantage. Bombardier could not be immediately reached for comment. (Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
Police officers outside of the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. (Photo: AP)

The country woke up on Sunday to learn of the horrific Orlando nightclub shooting that killed 50 and left 53 injured, making it the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Just like the rest of us, celebs are sickened by the news and took to social media to express their grief and send condolences to the victims and their families affected by the tragedy. The overall message seems to be we need to put an end to the senseless violence.

My thoughts and prayers are w my brothers and sisters who were at Orlandos Pulse Nightclub. RIP to those who lost their lives.  ADAM LAMBERT (@adamlambert) June 12, 2016

Sobbing.  Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) June 12, 2016

What gives? My heart is breaking right now for the victims and families of this heartless act. I just dont get it.#PrayForOrlando  Justin Timberlake (@jtimberlake) June 12, 2016

I am gay and I am not afraid. Love conquers all. #PrayforOrlando  Ricky Martin (@ricky_martin) June 12, 2016

My is breaking for you #Orlando! Sending love to all those affected by this ridiculous violence and () pic.twitter.com/oQ2mOLzuJN  Enrique Iglesias (@enriqueiglesias) June 12, 2016

 to all my friends in the LGBTQ community. My thoughts and prayers are with you.(2/2)  Enrique Iglesias (@enriqueiglesias) June 12, 2016

This was an act of terror.  This was also an act of hate. Hillary on the attack in Orlando https://t.co/MmaGjrSufr  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

To the LGBT community: please know that you have millions of allies across our country. I am one of them. Hillary https://t.co/MmaGjrSufr  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Love is the only answer. #prayfororlando  Usher Raymond IV (@Usher) June 12, 2016

Madness. Hideous and cruel madness. To the survivors, and families of those slain, Im so sorry. #StopGunViolence  olivia wilde (@oliviawilde) June 12, 2016

Heartbroken about the shooting in Orlando. My prayers and thoughts are with you all in America. I pray for this world to change!  Boy George (@BoyGeorge) June 12, 2016

Military weapons belong in the military . pic.twitter.com/dXv3hH40dN  Chris Rock (@chrisrock) June 12, 2016

Devastated by the news out of FL. Whatever the madness behind this, let us all come together first to support victims & their loved ones.  George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) June 12, 2016

Please remember Isis may be Muslim but not all Muslims are Isis. All serial killers are white guys but not all white guys are serial killers  Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) June 12, 2016

RIP Orlando victims who lost their lives and quick recoveries for those wounded. Deepest sympathies to their friends and families.  Kirstie Alley (@kirstiealley) June 12, 2016

My heart goes out to everyone affected by the tragedy in Orlando. Keeping you in my prayers. pic.twitter.com/pZ2PYQ9PZU  LLCOOLJ. (@llcoolj) June 12, 2016

My heart goes out 2 the families & friends of those who lost their lives in Orlando last nite. A sad, horrific day in US history.  Sean Hayes (@theseanhayes) June 12, 2016

We are absolutely devastated Orlando is our hometown and to know people are hurting breaks our hearts.  backstreetboys (@backstreetboys) June 12, 2016

To the family and friends of the Orlando victims, we stand by you. #PrayForOrlando.  backstreetboys (@backstreetboys) June 12, 2016

My heart goes out to all those affected by this terrible tragedy in Orlando. There are no words. Sending love and prayers.  Matt Bomer (@MattBomer) June 12, 2016

I pray for all the victims families  during this shooting epidemic. That their pain be met with compassion and support from the world.  Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) June 12, 2016

Its a traumatizing & emotional time for a many people. I dream of the world reflecting on what we can do to change this violence. #Orlando  Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) June 12, 2016

Stand strong w/ ur pride, it belongs to u. Love is opposite of hate. My sincerest mourning 4 LGBTQs suffering 2day pic.twitter.com/0n3A143GEg  Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) June 12, 2016

Plane just landed. Turned phone on. I wasnt ready to see that headline. What will it take just to have a conversation about #GunControl?  Questlove Gomez (@questlove) June 12, 2016

I will never understand why people hate. No words can express how sad my heart feels about the tragedy in Orlando #EqualityMeansEverybody  Pharrell Williams (@Pharrell) June 12, 2016

Praying for the victims, their families & friends affected by the mass shooting in Orlando last night. Hate is a sickness 2 rarely treated.  Johnny Weir (@JohnnyGWeir) June 12, 2016

Im heartbroken for the victims, for Orlando, for the LGBT community, for our country. When does it end?  josh groban (@joshgroban) June 12, 2016

Heartbroken. My thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims #PrayforOrlando  pic.twitter.com/RbZtG7SLM4  Kris Jenner (@KrisJenner) June 12, 2016

There are no words. Just tears. https://t.co/5RoDFDD6rn  Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) June 12, 2016

Heartbroken. Scared. Angry. So much senseless death in Orlando & across this country. Sending love & prayers to all suffering. Horrific  Gabrielle Union (@itsgabrielleu) June 12, 2016

Hearing about this senseless & horrific tragedy in #Orlando. Heartbroken for my LGBTQ brothers & sisters. Time for change. #GunControlNow  Jesse Tyler Ferguson (@jessetyler) June 12, 2016

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

1 John 4:11 NIV  #PrayForOrlando  Hillary Scott (@HillaryScottLA) June 12, 2016

This morning stop and take a moment to pray for those in Orlando.  Maria Shriver (@mariashriver) June 12, 2016

Those who lost their lives those injured those who have families those who are scared those tending the wounds. The police. All of us.  Maria Shriver (@mariashriver) June 12, 2016

Love who you are with life is so fragile  Maria Shriver (@mariashriver) June 12, 2016

NO WORDS GOOD ENOUGHWHEN UR HURT, WOUNDED, MURDERED WE ALL CRYWE ALL MOURN WE R ALL LESS WITHOUT U MY EXTENDED FAMILY#URNOTALONE  Cher (@cher) June 12, 2016

My heart is broken this morning. So much hate in this world. So many beautiful innocent lives taken last night in Orlando. #PrayForOrlando  Nick Jonas (@nickjonas) June 12, 2016

Heartbroken by the senseless shooting in #Orlando. My love & prayers go out to the families & friends of the victims.  #PulseNightclub  Fergie (@Fergie) June 12, 2016

Seeing the news this morning & my heart truly hurts. My thoughts and prayers are with all the victims families.. pic.twitter.com/phACO5YV4N  Lea Michele (@msleamichele) June 12, 2016

so. much. violence. it hurts my heart. sending as much Light and love as I possibly can to anyone and everyone I can possibly reach.  Ariana Grande (@ArianaGrande) June 12, 2016

Also, its #LaPride today. be safe, proud and full of love. They will never win. Really wish I could be there with y'all. I love you.  Ariana Grande (@ArianaGrande) June 12, 2016

My thoughts & prayers go out to my Orlando LGBT community brothers and sister during this senseless act of violence.

Love is Love!  SHAQ (@SHAQ) June 12, 2016

This is devastating. Our hearts are breaking for the victims in Orlando and their families. #PrayForOrlando  Fifth Harmony (@FifthHarmony) June 12, 2016

Deeply moved that in the face of tragedy Orlando & Americans everywhere are coming together to give blood, love & support.This is who we are  Laverne Cox (@Lavernecox) June 12, 2016

I am sickened to awake to the horrific news out of #Orlando. Smiling, happy, dancing people gunned down for no reason. Hug your friends.   Ross Mathews (@helloross) June 12, 2016

50 dead in Orlando.

Such a tragedy.  Lisa Vanderpump (@LisaVanderpump) June 12, 2016

When will the violence end? #PrayingForOrlando  Kristin Chenoweth (@KChenoweth) June 12, 2016

My heart aches over these senseless acts. Pray for their families & friends. Tell your family you love them. Life is precious. Do it now.   Jordin Sparks (@JordinSparks) June 12, 2016

My heart breaks at the very thought of the victims in Orlando & their families. With my head bowed I send love your way. There are no words  Wilson Cruz (@wcruz73) June 12, 2016

Im truly at a loss for words. To everyone in Orlando affected by this massacre, my thoughts, love, & prayers are with u   Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) June 12, 2016

Thoughts and prayers to those suffering in Orlando and throughout our country. #PrideForever #Love  Rob Lowe (@RobLowe) June 12, 2016

I just cant believe this is the world we live in today.  KATY PERRY (@katyperry) June 12, 2016

Praying for Orlando. Praying for the world. Praying for peace.  AshleyTisdaleFrench (@ashleytisdale) June 12, 2016

Horrified by the mass shooting in Orlando. When will we do something to prevent these killing sprees?  John Legend (@johnlegend) June 12, 2016

Tweeting about this kind of tragedy feels so insignificant. But lets all pray for Orlando FL today. And the world. Im in disbelief.  Brad Paisley (@BradPaisley) June 12, 2016

A celebration of pride, identity, love & life, now ends w hate & horrible horrible tragedy. This world man. My heart goes out

Devastating  solange knowles (@solangeknowles) June 12, 2016

No words for more senseless killing. #love to all the families suffering today. #Orlando pic.twitter.com/xPJVAmkYOr  Minnie Driver (@driverminnie) June 12, 2016

Im gutted over the news in Orlando- the tears will not stop. My thoughts are w my gay brothers and sisters and their families.  Lance Bass (@LanceBass) June 12, 2016

Im horrified & deeply saddened by the senseless, tragic shooting in #Orlando. My heart breaks for the victims, their families & loved ones.  Paula Abdul (@PaulaAbdul) June 12, 2016

These shootings are a regular occurrence. You dont get to be "shocked anymore unless you take action to stop them. Ban automatic weapons.  Seth MacFarlane (@SethMacFarlane) June 12, 2016

Sickening news. All my love to Orlando.  Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) June 12, 2016

Im done. I will never again vote for a politician who does not make the passage of reasonable gun laws a priority in this country. #orlando  Ben McKenzie (@ben_mckenzie) June 12, 2016

Omg how sad. What an effed up world. We better be thinking carefully about this election. So scary.  Bethenny Frankel (@Bethenny) June 12, 2016

Another unthinkable mass shooting. A never ending nightmare. We must find a way to stop the hate. Love is the only way.  Cheyenne Jackson (@cheyennejackson) June 12, 2016

Horrified and appalled by the #Orlando shootings. My heart grieves for the victims and their families.Terrible,terrible-when will this stop?  Mira Sorvino (@MiraSorvino) June 12, 2016

Cant even fathom what the people in Orlando are going through right now. My prayers are with the victims families & all those affected  Mario Lopez (@MarioLopezExtra) June 12, 2016

No. My heart is broken for the victims and friends and families of the people killed and wounded https://t.co/VUNQ9V0NQb  moby XX (@thelittleidiot) June 12, 2016

Waking up to this horrifying and heartbreaking news. I dont know what to say anymore. #PrayForHumanity #Orlando   Kourtney Kardashian (@kourtneykardash) June 12, 2016

Our prayers to the victims of the Orlando tragedy and their loved ones.  Marc Anthony (@MarcAnthony) June 12, 2016

#prayfororlando  A photo posted by Julianne Hough (@juleshough) on Jun 12, 2016 at 11:11am PDT

I am speechless, sick, and so sad reading the news from Orlando. Sending strength to my gay brothers and sisters. 50 people!!!! FIFTY  Andy Cohen (@Andy) June 12, 2016

If we cant get rid of guns, can we get rid of homophobia???  Andy Cohen (@Andy) June 12, 2016

My heart goes out to those affected by the horrific shooting in Orlando I am devastated. Lets just love and nothing else.  Ellie Goulding (@elliegoulding) June 12, 2016

Orlando my thoughts and prayers are with you  Simon Cowell (@SimonCowell) June 12, 2016

#loveislove Lets shout it for the whole world! #StopTheHate  LeAnn Rimes Cibrian (@leannrimes) June 12, 2016

As we pray4 victims&families-we must also ACT.Thoughts&prayers alone-particularly from lawmakers-r simply not enough pic.twitter.com/m5b941QqLb  Kristen Bell (@IMKristenBell) June 12, 2016

Another embarrassing day to be a human. My thoughts and prayers are with #orlando, the #LGBT community and sane people everywhere.  Jim Gaffigan (@JimGaffigan) June 12, 2016
PARIS (Reuters) - Chinese conglomerate HNA Hospitality group said on Sunday it had not discussed buying shares in French hotel group AccorHotels (ACCP.PA) and had no plans to hold such talks.

HNA said it was issuing the statement in reaction to recent reports that AccorHotels was trying to combine its forces with those of HNA to thwart an attempt by another Chinese group Jin Jiang to increase its stake in AccorHotels.

"At this stage HNA Hospitaity Group did not discuss buying capital with the French group AccorHotels, nor expects to hold such discussions. Reports about it are false," the statement said.

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
PARIS (Reuters) - Chinese conglomerate HNA Hospitality group said on Sunday it had not discussed buying shares in French hotel group AccorHotels and had no plans to hold such talks. HNA said it was issuing the statement in reaction to recent reports that AccorHotels was trying to combine its forces with those of HNA to thwart an attempt by another Chinese group Jin Jiang <600754.SS> to increase its stake in AccorHotels. "At this stage HNA Hospitality Group did not discuss buying capital with the French group AccorHotels, nor expects to hold such discussions. Reports about it are false," the statement said. (Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
SHANGHAI, June 12 (Reuters) - China's state-owned currency marketplace said on Sunday it was preparing to open branches in London and New York as part of efforts to promote the yuan's global status.

The China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS), a subsidiary of China's central bank, said in a statement that by expanding its network offshore, it aims to serve more overseas institutions and become a "main trading platform and pricing center" for the yuan globally.

China has been gradually loosening its capital controls to allow more foreign participation in its onshore yuan market. Beijing is also fostering offshore yuan centers to promote international use of the Chinese currency.

CFETS provides an electronic bidding system for the yuan against foreign currencies. It also offers cross-rate trading, as well as RMB interbank lending and bond trading. Yuan-based trading on CFETS totalled 618.12 trillion yuan ($94.24 trillion)in 2015, according to official Xinhua News Agency.

The CFETS said that it would further strengthen cooperation with overseas trading platforms, and aim to eventually provide trading services 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The market platform extended its trading hours for China's onshore yuan this year to end trading at 11:30 p.m. local time (1530 GMT) from 4:30 p.m. previously.

"CFETS is willing to provide comprehensive service and support to British institutions who participate in China's inter-bank market, and strengthen cooperation with them as Chinese companies go offshore," Sun Jie, executive vice president of CFETS, told an event in Shanghai.

The event, focused on the topic of yuan's internationalization, was attended by Chinese and British regulators, as well as financial institutions.

Britain and China have been working hard in recent years to strengthen their economic relationship, despite strong differences due to Britain's criticism of China's human rights record. Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a state visit to Britain last October to seal what both call a "golden time" in relations.

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Xavier Rolet, CEO of the London Stock Exchange Group , told the same event on Sunday that London is now the world's biggest offshore yuan center after Hong Kong.

LSE is working with the Shanghai Stock Exchange to launch a cross-border investment scheme to link the British and Chinese stock markets.

($1 = 6.5590 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Samuel Shen and Michael Martina; Editing by Clelia Oziel)
DUBAI (Reuters) - CIA chief John Brennan said on Sunday he expects 28 classified pages of a U.S. congressional report into the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States to be published, absolving Saudi Arabia of any responsibility. "So these 28 pages I believe are going to come out and I think it's good that they come out. People shouldn't take them as evidence of Saudi complicity in the attacks," Brennan said in an interview with Saudi-owned Arabiya TV, according to a transcript provided by the network. The withheld section of the 2002 report is central to a dispute over whether Americans should be able to sue the Saudi government, a key U.S. ally, for damages. The U.S. Senate passed a bill on May 17 allowing the families of Sept. 11 victims to do so, setting up a potential showdown with the White House, which has threatened a veto. Saudi Arabia denies providing any support for the 19 hijackers - most of whom were Saudi citizens - who killed nearly 3,000 people in the Sept. 11 attacks. Riyadh strongly objects to the bill. It has said it might sell up to $750 billion in U.S. securities and other American assets if it became law. Brennan called the 28-page section merely a "preliminary review." "The 9/11 commission looked very thoroughly at these allegations of Saudi involvement ... their conclusion was that there was no evidence to indicate that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually had supported the 9/11 attacks," he added. The Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence is reviewing the material to see whether it can be declassified. Former U.S. Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired the congressional inquiry into the attacks, said in April that the White House will likely make a decision by June on whether it would release the classified pages. (Reporting By Noah Browning, Sami Aboudi and Ali Abdelatti; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Paul Simao)
Orlando (AFP) - The nightclub Pulse that was the site of the deadliest mass shooting in US history was co-founded by a woman whose brother died in 1991 after battling HIV, and called itself "more than 'just another gay club.'"

Barbara Poma and her older brother John grew up in a strict Italian-American family that did not condone homosexuality. But when John came out as gay, the family's outlook transitioned to "one of acceptance and love," the club said on its website.

In 2004, Barbara Poma and a friend opened the club Pulse to keep her brother's spirit alive, and named it in honor of John's heartbeat.

"Utilizing a venue built on family and drive, Pulse Orlando continues to make strides towards equality, awareness and LOVE for all," the site said.

Pulse, which featured drag shows and was hosting a Latin-themed party the night of the shooting, worked to raise HIV awareness and education through supporting various organizations and events including Equal at UCF, Make A Wish and the Gay Games.

US President Barack Obama has made gay rights one of the signature issues of his administration.

Last summer the US Supreme Court issued a ruling legalizing same-sex marriage throughout the country.
Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, the nominee of the Libertarian Party, has wasted little time making a mark in the presidential campaign. And so far, at least, his third-party candidacy appears to be playing to the advantage of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Johnson, of course, has no chance of winning the election and at best will appear on the ballot in just 32 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. But in a tough general election campaign in which Clinton and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump both suffer from historically high negative ratings among voters, Johnson has the potential of playing spoiler or kingmaker by mustering even a modest showing among libertarians and disaffected Republicans and Democrats.

Related: Obamas Risky Decision to Endorse Clinton Before FBI Probe Is Concluded

A new national poll of registered Republicans and Democrats by Fox News shows Johnson already a factor in the campaign, drawing 12 percent of the overall vote. His double-digit showing shortly after claiming the Libertarian Party nomination is far better than most of the former Republican candidates could muster before Trump closed the door on the GOP nomination.

Clinton leads Trump in the poll by the narrow margin of 39 percent to 36 percent, or well within the polls four-point margin of error. This spread is similar to the results of previous head-to-head matchups, according to the Real Clear Politics composite average. But the telling development is that Johnson appears to have served as a drag on support for Trump, who lost about six percentage points since the last Fox New survey three weeks ago.

With Johnson out of the race, Clinton prevails over Trump, 42 percent to 39 percent. But both candidates continue to be viewed negatively by large swaths of voters. Fifty-eight percent of voters have a negative view of Trump, which is just slightly worse than Clintons 56 percent negative rating.

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Johnson, 63, is running on a ticket with Bill Weld, the former Massachusetts Republican governor who has alienated many libertarians with his past opposition to legalizing marijuana.

Related: Sanders Wouldnt End His Campaign, So Obama Just Did It for Him

Johnson, a former Republican governor, has run once before for president, and espouses many of the same views as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the runner-up to Clinton in a hard-fought Democratic primary season.

On the politically explosive issue of immigration, Johnson supports a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, a deal-breaker for conservative Republicans but approved by most Democrats. He is pro-choice, he vigorously backs same-sex marriage, he favors equal pay for equal work and he would decriminalize marijuana.

Like Sanders, Johnson is wary of further U.S. entanglements overseas. But unlike Sanders, who favors taxing the rich to finance a social revolution of free college tuition and national health care, Johnson is vehemently anti-tax. He has said that he would sign virtually any tax cut measure that crossed his desk.

Related: Heres Why Libertarian Gary Johnson Could Pick Off Bernie Supporters

Johnsons 12 percent showing in the Fox News poll was a decent showing for a candidate that most voters dont know, or dont know is a former governor, or dont know is a presidential candidate, David Weigel wrote in The Washington Post. But if Johnson is to become a real factor this year, he will have to continue to be included in prominent national polls and move up to 15 percent or better in order to qualify for inclusion in the fall presidential debates.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
LONDON (Reuters) - With just days to go to a referendum on whether Britain should stay in the European Union, the leading figure in the campaign to quit the bloc was at the centre of a media storm on Sunday -- about whether or not he dyes his hair. Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London famed for his comic wit and instantly recognisable in Britain and beyond thanks to his dishevelled platinum mop, was quoted in an interview in the Sunday Times magazine as answering "yes" when asked if it was dyed. As is the case with U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Johnson's hair is his most distinguishing physical feature. It has been a topic of media speculation during his rise from journalist to TV personality to political A-lister. The revelation in the interview immediately became a talking point in political TV chat shows and on social media, but Johnson's sister Rachel, a well-known media personality, swiftly cast doubt on its accuracy. "The Boris hair dye reveal is a massive headline-grabbing wind-up. All Johnsons are natural blondes!" she said on Twitter. Shortly afterwards, Johnson, 51, was reported as saying that he had been joking when he said yes to the hair dye question. "I do remember saying 'yes' in what was a satirical voice. I remember thinking 'God I hope he doesn't take that seriously,'" he was quoted as saying by the interview's author on Twitter. Asked where the truth lay on the vexed issue, Johnson's official spokesman said: "Of course Boris doesn't dye his hair." (Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
chris murphy

Following a horrific shooting at a gay club that left 50 dead in Orlando on Sunday, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy slammed Congress for failing to pass significant gun-control legislation.

On Sunday, the Democratic senator said that his peers in Congress were "complicit" in the deaths of victims in mass shootings.

"This phenomenon of near constant mass shootings happens only in America  nowhere else," Murphy said.

He continued: "Congress has become complicit in these murders by its total, unconscionable deafening silence. This doesn't have to happen, but this epidemic will continue without end if Congress continues to sit on its hands and do nothing  again."

Murphy has been one of the most vocal members of congress advocating gun-control since 2012. As a member of the House of Representatives, Murphy's district included Newtown, Connecticut, where a 2012 shooting left 27 people dead, including 20 children.

In his statement on Sunday, Murphy expressed condolences for the victims, saying that he was saddened by the pattern of mass shootings in the US.

I'm aching for the victims, their loved ones, and the people of Orlando, and I pray that all those injured have a quick and full recovery," Murphy said.

"I know the pain and sadness that has brought too many communities  Newtown, Oregon, Aurora, San Bernardino, and now Orlando  to their knees, and I can only hope that America's leaders will do something to prevent another community from being added to the list."





More From Business Insider


By Chris Kahn NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bernie Sanders may have lost his bid to become the Democratic nominee for the White House, but party members don't want the U.S. senator from Vermont to step off the stage. More than three-quarters of Democrats say Sanders should have a "major role" in shaping the party's positions, while nearly two thirds say Hillary Clinton - who beat him for the nomination - should pick him as her vice-presidential running mate, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. In a sign that Democrats hope their party can unite after a fierce primary season, two-thirds also said that Sanders should endorse Clinton, a former secretary of state and senator who appears bound for a showdown with Republican Donald Trump in November's presidential election. Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist, managed to turn his long-shot run into a mass movement with hard-line proposals to combat wealth inequality, increase access to health care and education, and defend the environment. His challenge to Clinton, one of the best-known figures in American politics, lasted far longer than expected, as he racked up strong results in a number of state nominating contests and stayed in the race even when the delegate count seemed to spell his doom, and yielded record numbers of small donations to his campaign. Sanders so far has not conceded defeat, even though Clinton recently clinched the nomination and won endorsements from President Barack Obama and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts - a favorite of the same left-leaning voters who supported him. Sanders has said he will continue to push for a liberal agenda heading into the Democratic National Convention in July - when Clinton's nomination is expected to become official - though he has hinted he does not want his presence to hurt the Democrats' chances of keeping the White House. "We will not let Donald Trump become president," Sanders told supporters last week. The poll, conducted June 7-10 - right after Clinton sewed up the delegate majority to become the presumptive Democratic nominee - showed that while most Democrats want Sanders to line up behind Clinton, about 44 percent would like him to make an independent run for the White House. Some 47 percent said he should not. The poll included 455 respondents and has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 5.3 percentage points. (Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Leslie Adler)
Prison Break star Dominic Purcell on Saturday night made his first public appearance since he was seriously hurt in an accident on the set of the new event-series installment of the Fox drama in Morocco on May 30. Deadline spoke with the Aussie actor at the party for the US launch of Bausele  the Australias first luxury watch company  for which hes the Global Ambassador. Purcell, who was joined tonight by his girlfriend, actress AnnaLynne McCord, suffered a broken nose and head injury when a set piece was dislodged and an iron bar fell on his head. Twelve days later, Purcell sported two deep gashes on the top of his head, the larger of which required 150 stitches.

He also received 20 stitches on his left elbow, stitches for his broken nose and near his left eyebrow and had minor cuts on his arms that are healing. But less than two weeks after the accident, Purcell is back in fighting form, telling Deadline that he will resume filming Prison Break on Monday. After a location shoot in Morocco, which doubles for civil war-torn Yemen, where the breaking-out-of-prison action is set, production is returning to Vancouver next week. Purcell recounts the grisly accident  he thought he was going to die  and its aftermath, including the search for medical help in rural Morocco. He also shares details about the plot of the anticipated 9-episode Prison Break revival, from series creator Paul Scheuring, reveals whether the accident will be written into the show and if the mishap cost Purcells character Lincoln any scenes.

DEADLINE: How are you feeling?

PURCELL: Physically, Im fine. The accident was shocking, more than anything else. I mean, it was a scene where I was running into the prison, and I felt this extraordinary explosion on my head that Id never experienced. It wasnt like someone was slowly cutting my arm kind of pain; it was this sudden explosion. I dropped to my knees, and I was in shock. It was like, what the f**k has just happened to me? And then Im just leaning over and the blood is just pouring out like a shower, and my stunt guy came up beside me, and I looked at him and said, Dude, what the f**ks going on? What happened? And he said, Your heads split right open, I can see your skull, your nose is on the other side of your face. I kind of just sat there for a moment in shock. Im not being hyperbolic when I say this  I expected that I was either going to black out or die, because in my brain, when he said my skull was showing, I just assumed that my skull was cracked, and blood was going to go into my brain, and I was going to f**king die in Morocco. I thought I was going to die

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But after about three or four minutes, nothing happened. I didnt have any concussion, didnt have any symptoms at all, and I just stood up and said, All right. Get me to a hospital. The first hospital or clinic was closed; were in Ouarzazate (Morocco)  where American Sniper, and Black Hawk Down, and all these great films were made  which is in the middle of nowhere. The medical infrastructure isnt the best, and they took me to another hospital. I walked in and there were cats walking in the hospital. Again, I was in shock, still, and I walked into this little surgery place, and a whole bunch of doctors were just arguing over who was gonna work on me, and there were blood stains on the sheet. I sat there and looked at everyone, and I just calmly got off this operating table and walked out of the hospital. And thats when my girl, AnnaLynne, she just took control, poured alcohol on my head, and wrapped me up in gauze, and then Fox got a helicopter and they flew me out from Ouarzazate to Casablanca. Everything just lined up because this doctorDoctor Bensoudahe is one of the best plastic surgeons there (in Casablanca), and also has clinics around the world. He looked at me and said, Oh, wow! Lucky. And then he put me under anesthetic, straightened my nosere-broke it to straighten it againand he said I have extra layers of skin around my skull, which actually prevented the fatal blow.

So physically, Im one hundred percent. You wouldnt believe ityou saw the picturesIm good to go. I actually start filming Prison Break on Monday.

DEADLINE: Where did that iron bar come from?

PURCELL: When youre working in foreign countries, especially countries where language is a problemIm not going to comment on whos responsible, but all I will say is the scene required me to run into a prison, which was a caged dome kind of thing, and I ran through and extras were coming my way, and one extra hit meI smashed him, and he hit the fence, and I kept running, but all of the sudden, this iron bar, this thing just cracked my head.

DEADLINE: Was anyone else hurt?

PURCELL: No, it was just me. Lucky me.

DEADLINE: What more can you say about the scene you were shooting at the time?

It was just basically me running into this prison to look for my brother, Michael (Wentworth Miller). I cant reveal too much of the plot, obviously, but there was a reason why I was running in, and a reason why all the guards were running out of the prison. Because basically, the regime in Yemen had collapsed, it was in complete chaos and turmoil, and the gates were open so all the prisoners were released. And Im running in trying to get through and find Michael, and I cant. But then the iron bar hit me on the head, and apparently, the whole cage then collapsed on me after I hit the ground. But I didnt feel that.

DEADLINE: Will your scars from the accident be covered up or included in the show?

PURCELL: Were jumping to episodes eight and nine, which we havent shot, and were going to play the injuries in it. Theyll just write something where Lincoln gets bashed in the head with an iron bar or something. No one expected me to recover so quickly. If you look at my face now, we can get away with it. My nose is still swollen up here and my eyes are still a bit swollen, I have bone fragmentsbecause my nose was smashed on the sidethat Im getting taken care of at the end of the year. Im going to go back to Casablanca, and the same doctors going to work on me again.

DEADLINE: Looking at you now, they could just as easily cover it all up.

PURCELL: Totally, and you wouldnt notice, but I think its great for the show. I mean, Lincolns always got bruiseshes always fighting and getting in scraps, so it just works perfectly with the character.

DEADLINE: How many days of filming did you miss?

Weve been shooting in Vancouver and then we shot exteriors in Morocco, so we were in Morocco for about three weeks. What happened was, I had four more days of shooting left, and what they did was that they used my stuntee, who looks very similar to me, in wide shots in scenes, so when we get back to Vancouver, theyll come in tight on me.

DEADLINE: Have you been written out of any scenes?

PURCELL: No. Im in everything.

DEADLINE: Is this your first experience with an on-set injury?

PURCELL: Look, I grew up in Australia, I played rugby league for most of my lifeIve broken legs, Ive broken arms, I broke my nose when I was 15. Dislocated that, popped my ACL. Im a physical guy. I love sport, I box; Im kind of used to getting bashed around, but certainly nothing like this has happened. That kind of injury was something on another level.

DEADLINE: So no previous on-set injuries?

PURCELL: I popped the bone here (pointing to his shoulder).

DEADLINE: What more can you reveal about storylines of the Prison Break reboot and your character?

PURCELL: Its tying into whats going on in the world today with terrorism. The show is taking place in Yemen; were dealing with ISIS and ISA, and obviously we left off with Michael presumably dead. He wasnt, he ended up working for this organization. It got to the point where he couldnt do it anymore, and they threw him in a jail in Yemen to change his mind. He didnt change his mind, they set him upPaul Scheuring has written all of the nine episodes. Honestly, the fans are going to be blown away by this. Its really a riveting, high-tension thriller. Its an extraordinary, extraordinary show. Ive seen the dailies of it, and it looks like a cross between Bourne Identity and American Sniper. Its crazy. Its really, really cool.

The new Prison Break is slated to premiere in the spring.

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On Sunday, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump released a statement on the mass shooting at gay Orlando nightclub Pulse in the early hours of the morning.

At least 50 people died and another 53 were injured when a gunman opened fire on crowds and launched a gun battle with police tactical teams. The suspected shooter, 29-year-old Port St. Lucie man Omar Mateen, reportedly called authorities amid the rampage to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State group. ISIS subsequently claimed credit for the attack, though it is unclear the group's operatives had any contact with Mateen, who was born in the U.S., and his family has pointed out Mateen might have had homophobic motivations as well.

Trump's response to the attacks, however, seemed more fixated on the implications for him and his presidential run  and whether he "said this was going to happen"  than the victims of the rampage:

Trump's full statement on the Orlando attack is what you'd expect.pic.twitter.com/9Dj4wvu9KP https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ckxy0FqVAAAbKRY.jpg:large

In his seven-paragraph statement, Trump wrote President Barack Obama "disgracefully refused to even say the words 'Radical Islam'" and called on presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to "get out of this race" if she does not use his preferred nomenclature. The real estate mogul also blamed the attack on the "more than 100,000 lifetime migrants from the Middle East each year. Since 9/11 hundreds of migrants and their children have been implicated in terrorism in the United States."

The "terrorist, Omar Mir Saddique Mateen, is the son of an immigrant from Afghanistan," Trump continued.

If that wasn't clear enough, Trump reiterated the attacks were "just the beginning," and called attention back to his proposed "total and complete shutdown" of all Muslim entry to the U.S. as a solution.

Story continues

What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough

LGBT people, the apparent target of the assault, were only mentioned once in the entire statement.

Through additional tweets earlier in the day, Trump congratulated himself for supposedly predicting the attack.

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!

To Donald Trump, Sunday's tragedy is just another opportunity for him to boast about "being right"  and that he would like it very much if you just paid attention to him.

June 12, 2016, 5:50 p.m. Eastern: This story has been updated.
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]
Donald Trump sparked outrage on social media after he tweeted appreciate the congrats for being right about radical Islamic terrorism in the wake of Sundays deadly shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, which at least 50 people dead and 53 injured.

The controversial GOP candidate was also critical of President Obama for not being tough enough against Islamic terrorists.

Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesnt he should immediately resign in disgrace! he tweeted.

In a statement, Trump added that Hillary Clinton should get out of the race for presidency if she cant say the worlds Radical Islam.

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

The gunman, identified as 29 year-old American citizen Omar Mateen, had reportedly called 911 to pledge his allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group before the deadly attack, and ISIS is believed to have taken responsibility for the shooting. However, law enforcement sources told Reuters there is still no direct link between Mateen and the terrorist group.

Last year, Trump vowed to send Muslims back to where you came from following terrorism attacks in Paris and San Bernadino. He has also promised to build a wall to keep Meixcan immigrants from entering the U.S.

Stars and gay community activists criticized Trumps self-referential tweets as being insensitive and inappropriate given the mass shooting in Orlando, one of the worst in U.S. history.

CNNs Brian Stelter also points out that one of Trumps was plagiarized from one of his previous campaign consultants, ex-Breitbart editor Sebastian Gorka.

It looks like Trump flagrantly copy & pasted @SebGorka's unsourced 2:03pm tweet, tweaked it, and posted at 2:52pm pic.twitter.com/aAHWUHvvnH  Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 12, 2016

Relationship between Trump and @SebGorka: last fall, Trump's campaign paid him $8,000 for "policy consulting" https://t.co/GGqIABOBfg  Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 12, 2016

Backlash following Sundays tweets:

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Once again, Donald, you have shown why you cannot lead us. 50 people are dead, and you bask in congratulations. https://t.co/pUN7ceAff7  George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) June 12, 2016

.@realDonaldTrump You're congratulating yourself because 50 people are dead this morning in a horrific tragedy?  Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) June 12, 2016

Is this the grossest tweet in Twitter history? Yes. I think it is. https://t.co/G8W6UlMyM0  Eric Stonestreet (@ericstonestreet) June 12, 2016

Trump is truly an awful person. https://t.co/vQp3CQ9Nmv  John Legend (@johnlegend) June 12, 2016

Trumps tweets about the incident:

Reporting that Orlando killer shouted "Allah hu Akbar!" as he slaughtered clubgoers. 2nd man arrested in LA with rifles near Gay parade.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Really bad shooting in Orlando. Police investigating possible terrorism. Many people dead and wounded.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

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DUBAI (Reuters) - Dubai International Airport, the world's busiest airport for international travel, closed its airspace for 69 minutes due to unauthorized drone activity on Saturday, causing 22 flights to be diverted, aviation authorities said. Government-owned Dubai Airports, which operates Dubai's two main airports, said in a statement the closure lasted between 11:36 a.m. and 12:45 p.m. (0639-0745 GMT), and Dubai Airports chief executive Paul Griffiths said thousands of passengers suffered disruption to their journeys. Sixteen of the diverted flights went to Dubai World Central, Dubai's other main airport, a Dubai Airports spokesperson told Reuters. Dubai, a trade, tourism and investment hub for the Gulf region, is one of seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE). "This is a very serious incident and we obviously take the safety of our customers and our staff extremely seriously," Griffiths told Dubai's Dubaieye 103.8 radio. "As you can imagine, this is the busiest international airport in the world and there was major inconvenience to thousands of passengers ... There are very clear restrictions and no fly zones around all airports in the UAE, saying that this type of activity is actually illegal." The flying of drones is prohibited within 5 km (3 miles) of airports, helipads, landing areas or manned aircraft in the UAE. Around the world the use of civil drones, whether for commercial purposes or just as a leisure activity, is rising. That popularity has led to increasing reports of near-misses with commercial aircraft, such as when a Lufthansa plane was approaching Warsaw airport last month. Aviation concerns focus on smaller drones, operated like model planes and flown for recreation, because their users are often not familiar with the rules of the air. The UK's Civil Aviation Authority issued a warning in July 2015 after seven incidents where drones had flown near planes at different British airports in less than a year. Recognizing the threat, the European Commission conceded in 2015 that "drone accidents will happen" and has charged its aviation safety agency arm with developing common rules for operating drones in Europe. (Reporting by William Maclean; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
The Hague (AFP) - Pilots operating flights out of Amsterdam for low-cost carrier EasyJet will go on strike on Tuesday in a dispute over pay and pensions, their union said on Sunday.

The walkout is to last from 6:00 am to 2:00 pm (0400 to 1200 GMT) on Tuesday, the VNV union said on its website, with Dutch news agency ANP reporting dozens of flights are expected to be affected.

The union argues pilots are expected to do too many flying hours for the salary they earn and only receive a fraction of their pay when they are sick, and that the company does not contribute enough to their pension fund, according to ANP.

"We are very sorry for our passengers who will be the victims of this action, but at the moment we see no other solution," the union said.

The strike action comes a month after the British no-frills airline reported net losses of 20 million ($29 million, 25 million euros) for the first half of its fiscal year, following the Brussels attacks and after taking a big hit from adverse foreign exchange moves.
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's Beltone Financial, a unit of billionaire businessman Naguib Sawiris's OTMT, said on Sunday it planned to convert up to a third of its share capital into Global Depositary Receipts (GDRs) listed abroad. Beltone executives will present the plan at the next general assembly on June 27, when they will also ask shareholders to approve a previously-announced 1 billion Egyptian pound ($113 million) capital increase and the acquisition of two small finance companies. In a notice published in Egyptian newspapers, Beltone did not give a reason for the move, but the investment banking firm has seen its shares repeatedly suspended on the Egyptian stock exchange in recent months as the stock price has soared. GDRs, which are issued by depository banks that buy shares of foreign firms, make it easier for investors in developed markets to invest in emerging markets companies. The prices of the GDRs are based on the underlying shares but are traded independently. Sunday's announcement comes after sources said on Thursday that plans for Beltone to buy Commercial International Bank's (CIB) investment arm for 924 million Egyptian pounds had been dropped because the deal had failed to win regulatory approval. The acquisition was agreed in February. ($1 = 8.8799 Egyptian pounds) (Reporting by Ehab Farouk, Writing by Lin Noueihed; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
Sri Lanka chase 362 for victory as England declare on 233-7 in their second innings. Heres what we learned from a rain-affected day four

MAN OF THE DAY  ALEX HALES 94

It probably wont make Hales feel any better, but only two other Englishman have registered three 80-plus scores in a Test series without scoring a century. They are Jack Hobbs and Ken Barrington. And they didnt do too badly. He looked inconsolable as he walked off, six short of a precious Lords hundred. But, whether its tonight or tomorrow night when the Test series is done, he can reflect on an impressive series in which he has made the opening spot his own. The questions emerging about his ability against spin were temporarily put to bed as he played Rangana Herath expertly out of the rough: sweeping with conviction and even coming down the wicket to smash him for six down the ground. He was lucky, too: dropped early on, he was bowled today on 58 by Nuwan Pradeep, only for Rod Tucker to call him for a no ball that wasnt (more later). But finally  finally!  Alastair Cook has a partner at ease.

PROTEST OF THE DAY



The replay of the no ball clearly showed that a small part of Pradeeps heel had broken the line. Tuckers call was incorrect. Quite why he was making the call on the field is peculiar given this time last year he would have checked with the TV umpire first. It does seem that on-field umpires are looking to call these on sight. Sri Lanka were furious, sending team officials to speak to ICC match referee Andy Pycroft to complain. They draped their flag over their balcony before they were asked to take it down by the MCC, 45-minutes after it was first put up.

MINI-SESSION TICKED OFF

Chris Woakes bowled a back of a length ball, in line with off stump. Dimuth Karunaratne moved his weight back and flicked the ball through square leg for four. That was the moment you realised Sri Lanka were going for these runs to try and wrestle some pride back from this Test series. Together with Kaushal Silva, they took the score to 32-0 under the gloom and artificial lights. Silvas edge was threatened and passed by James Anderson, but both played with a quiet assurance. The Test series is lost and Sri Lanka have nothing to lose. If they do win tomorrow, with this inexperienced side, this series might well be deemed a success.

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COOKS SIX

Coming it at number seven must have felt strange for Alastair Cook. Ironically, he was made to feel at home with his opening partner Hales at the crease with him. England needed quick runs and those dont usually come from Cook. However, something clicked. It wasnt necessarily pretty: he mistimed a few dabs and scoops, at one point getting a ball on the full and ramping it into his arm. But then there was the magnificent: a strong six over wide mid on and into the stands in the last over of the Englands second innings. It was 11th six in 231 Test innings.

WHAT NEXT

The pitch is still good, even if there were a host of deliveries misbehaving  the ball that took out Hales off stump skimmed his boot laces. There is also a good deal of turn, meaning Moeen Ali will do a lot of bowling and be expected to put in a shift, presumably from the Nursery End. With just 330 needed, and Sri Lankas batsmen in decent form as a collective, who knows? The biggest issue will be the weather. Showers are forecast from 12pm onwards, with a bigger downpour expected at around 3pm. If youre interested, 20 tickets are available from the Lords North Gate. Weather permitting, it should be a cracker.
By Elizabeth Piper NEWCASTLE, England (Reuters) - With a waxed jacket over a crisp suit, and very southern vowels, former commodity broker Nigel Farage cuts an incongruous figure in England's industrial north as he campaigns for Britain to leave the European Union. But his populist, anti-immigrant message touches a chord among the crowd at a rally in the city of Newcastle, just as it has in other parts of the north, where many working-class voters have been alienated by the demise of much of the region's coal and steel industries. Farage is campaigning for Britons to vote "Leave" in a June 23 referendum on the country's EU membership, pitting him against Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and the main opposition Labour Party. Looking beyond the referendum, Farage is a headache for Labour, which fears his UK Independence Party (UKIP) is stealing Labour supporters in traditional strongholds. Stopping to debate with admirers and critics in rain in Newcastle, a city about 250 miles (400 km) northeast of London, Farage relishes the exchanges. "One thing I have noticed in a lot of big northern cities and towns is that people's feeling of patriotism, of nation, is very much more on their sleeve than it might be in Surrey," Farage told Reuters, referring to the affluent southern English county. "So I think in a lot of these northern towns and cities, it's a very important battle ground," he said of the referendum that will determine Britain's future in Europe and shape the domestic political landscape before a 2020 parliamentary poll. FEW HOPES Farage is a polarizing figure. And while he gets heckled by younger voters who ask him how much he earns and others questioning whether he's racist - something he denies - his message hits home for many in the northeast, where Britain's changing economy has offered little for those left without work. With unemployment levels close to 9 percent, compared to last year's national average of 5.4 percent, many feel abandoned by a far-off government in the capital and are turning their backs on Labour, which they see as out of touch. It is by no means UKIP territory yet. At the last election in 2015, won by the Conservatives, Labour held onto many of its seats in the northeast. But Farage's party moved into second place in several constituencies, prompting Labour to start some soul-searching. "Socially conservative, working-class voters who value family, work, fairness and national security are the most likely to have deserted the party," said an independent inquiry on Labour's future which was published last month. Local polls on May 5 did little to change that picture despite the election last September of a new leader, Jeremy Corbyn. "Has Labour been learning the lessons of (its parliamentary election) defeat and making progress? The results suggest not," the report said of the party's fewer than expected election gains. Though four years remain until the next parliamentary election for Labour to gain ground, the loss of support in its traditional heartlands has sparked concern among Labour officials. Labour did not comment specifically on its strategy in the northeast, but said the party's goal with its "Labour In for Britain" campaign was "connecting with Labour voters". "Our goal is to get Labour voters to vote to remain," a spokesman said. But self-described "reformed socialist", 75-year-old former local government worker Peter Curtis is a case in point. A lifelong Labour supporter, he now backs Farage. "Labour has lost its grass roots. People feel disenfranchised, especially over Europe," said Curtis, whose birthday coincides with the vote when he is hoping to receive his "best possible present" of a British exit, or Brexit. "This is my last passion in life to come out of the European Union." (Editing by Janet McBride)
MUMBAI (Reuters) - Exiled tycoon Vijay Mallya said on Sunday that Indian authorities trying to recover about $1.4 billion from his collapsed Kingfisher Airlines had no legal grounds for sequestering certain assets in a money laundering case.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) tweeted on Saturday that it had "attached" properties worth 14.11 billion Indian rupees ($210.78 million) in the case involving a loan from state-owned IDBI Bank (IDBI.NS) to Kingfisher to buy properties abroad.

The assets were purchased several years before Kingfisher was launched, Mallya said in a statement to the media on Sunday.

"There is no rationale nor any legal basis for the series of actions initiated by the ED which is now making it more difficult to raise resources to pay the banks," Mallya said.

The ED says Mallya's United Breweries Group used 4.3 billion rupees of Kingfisher bank loans to buy property overseas.

Mallya's statement said Kingfisher had provided evidence that the funds were used for legitimate business purposes.

Creditors, led by State Bank of India (SBI.NS), have rejected an offer of partial repayment by Mallya, who had given a personal guarantee for the Kingfisher loan. They want the former billionaire, who is living in Britain, to attend a hearing in India's Supreme Court.

The foreign ministry in April revoked a diplomatic passport that he carried as a member of parliament's upper house. A judge in Mumbai has non-bailable warrant for his arrest.

($1 = 66.9423 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Swati Bhat; Editing by Louise Ireland)
MUMBAI (Reuters) - Exiled tycoon Vijay Mallya said on Sunday that Indian authorities trying to recover about $1.4 billion from his collapsed Kingfisher Airlines had no legal grounds for sequestering certain assets in a money laundering case. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) tweeted on Saturday that it had "attached" properties worth 14.11 billion Indian rupees ($210.78 million) in the case involving a loan from state-owned IDBI Bank to Kingfisher to buy properties abroad. The assets were purchased several years before Kingfisher was launched, Mallya said in a statement to the media on Sunday. "There is no rationale nor any legal basis for the series of actions initiated by the ED which is now making it more difficult to raise resources to pay the banks," Mallya said. The ED says Mallya's United Breweries Group used 4.3 billion rupees of Kingfisher bank loans to buy property overseas. Mallya's statement said Kingfisher had provided evidence that the funds were used for legitimate business purposes. Creditors, led by State Bank of India , have rejected an offer of partial repayment by Mallya, who had given a personal guarantee for the Kingfisher loan. They want the former billionaire, who is living in Britain, to attend a hearing in India's Supreme Court. The foreign ministry in April revoked a diplomatic passport that he carried as a member of parliament's upper house. A judge in Mumbai has non-bailable warrant for his arrest. ($1 = 66.9423 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Swati Bhat; Editing by Louise Ireland)
By Hamid Shalizi KABUL (Reuters) - A series of kidnappings and murders on Afghanistan's highways has some officials and travelers questioning the NATO-backed strategy that reduced security check posts protecting roads in order to free up police and soldiers to go after the Taliban. Since the end of May, more than 200 people have been reported kidnapped and at least 21 murdered in northern and eastern Afghanistan. Roads have long been dangerous in the war-torn country, as the Taliban insurgency and other Islamist militant groups expanded their reach. But the spike in abductions and killings, widely blamed on the Taliban, comes a few months after the NATO-led international mission encouraged Afghan security forces to close many smaller checkpoints. In late May the Taliban also named a new leader, although it is not clear if they have changed tactics to go after softer targets. Defence ministry spokesman Mohammad Radmanish said measures were being taken to make travel safer. The vast majority of Afghan individuals and businesses have to use roads, because flights are either unavailable or unaffordable to them. "Kidnapping of innocent people, which is a new tactic by the Taliban, is a concern for us," said Radmanish. "We have increased the number of patrols and bases ... on major highways during the day time." The move to staff fewer checkpoints was aimed at reducing casualties among security forces as well as bolstering offensive operations, and the coalition says it still supports the policy. "The reduction of checkpoints has actually allowed the Afghan Security Forces ... to respond more quickly to enemy activity and move from a defensive mindset to one that's more offensive in nature," coalition spokesman Brigadier General Charles Cleveland said in a statement. The road attacks against civilians, however, have taken Afghan officials by surprise, and the government is reviewing the policy, said one senior Afghan military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Cleveland said he was optimistic Afghan security forces would be able to better secure transportation routes. "TALIBAN ARE EVERYWHERE" Bus drivers and passengers described a growing sense of fear, despite government efforts to stop the attacks. "The Taliban are everywhere and take hostages whenever they want to," said bus driver Nasrullah, who travels between the capital Kabul and Kunduz in the north and uses one name. "Some passengers are so afraid (that they) keep talking to family members on the phone, sometimes the whole journey." Ghazni province, where 12 people were killed and nearly 50 kidnapped in road attacks on Wednesday, lies astride the vital highway from Kabul to Kandahar in the south. Soldiers still try to patrol the route during the day, but with many checkpoints closed they only provide a temporary presence, said Hanif Rezaee, spokesman for the army in Ghazni. "There are still small checkpoints, but at the end of the day, the soldiers move back to their bases," he told Reuters. "It is very difficult for us to provide 24 hour patrolling." Security officials said the Taliban's ploy may be to expose the government's weakness outside major urban centers. "By kidnapping passengers, the Taliban are trying to provoke people against the government, showing that it can't provide security," said Mohammad Qasim Jangalbagh, police chief of Kunduz, where security forces have rescued at least 140 hostages kidnapped in May. CRIMINALS ALSO BLAMED Sediq Sediqqi, spokesman for the Afghan interior ministry, said the government was re-examining its highway security strategy in light of recent attacks. "We have decided to increase the number of checkpoints on major highways and also increase the number of regular patrols." Asked why road attacks had increased markedly, he replied: "The Taliban had high expectations when they started their spring offensive, but since then Afghan forces have hit them hard, and killed hundreds of their commanders and shadow governors. "Now the Taliban want revenge or to compensate (by attacking) innocent people." The Taliban have not claimed all recent road attacks, and a spokesman was not immediately available to comment. Insurgents are not the only ones profiting from lawlessness, according to bus driver Mohammed Shir, who travels between Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, another northern city. "There are always Taliban stopping cars and searching," he said. "Sometimes they are thieves and only want your belongings. Such incidents happen more often from evening till dawn when there are no government security forces." The number of bus passengers has dropped sharply, and those who can afford it are opting for air travel, said Mohammed Zakaria, who runs a bus company in Mazar-i-Sharif. Those who cannot go by air increasingly travel only during the day. Off-duty members of the security forces are frequently targeted by militants. When Sher Baz, a police officer based in Ghazni, travels to Kabul to see his family, he often hides his identification card to avoid being targeted should he be stopped. "It is a very difficult journey, but I have to make it because there is no direct flight," he said. (Additional reporting by Feroz Sultani in KUNDUZ; Writing by Josh Smith; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Tony Awards, American theater's highest honors, will be handed out on Sunday at the Beacon Theater in New York. The following is a list of nominees in major categories: Best musical: "Hamilton" "School of Rock - the Musical" "Bright Star" "Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed" "Waitress" Best play: "Eclipsed" by Danai Gurira "The Father" by Florian Zeller "The Humans" by Stephen Karam "King Charles III" by Mike Bartlett Best revival of a musical: "She Loves Me" "Fiddler on the Roof" "Spring Awakening" "The Color Purple" Best revival of a play: "Blackbird" "Long Day's Journey Into Night" "Arthur Miller's The Crucible" "Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge" Best performance by a leading actress in a musical: Laura Benanti, "She Loves Me" Carmen Cusack, "Bright Star" Cynthia Erivo, "The Color Purple" Jessie Mueller, "Waitress" Phillipa Soo, "Hamilton" Best performance by a leading actor in a musical: Alex Brightman, "School of Rock - The Musical" Danny Burstein, "Fiddler on the Roof" Zachary Levi, "She Loves Me" Lin-Manuel Miranda, "Hamilton" Leslie Odom Jr., "Hamilton" Best performance by a leading actress in a play: Jessica Lange, "Long Day's Journey into Night" Laurie Metcalf, "Misery" Lupita Nyong'o, "Eclipsed" Sophie Okonedo, "Arthur Miller's The Crucible" Michelle Williams, "Blackbird" Best performance by a leading actor in a play: Gabriel Byrne, "Long Day's Journey Into Night Jeff Daniels, "Blackbird" Frank Langella, "The Father" Tim Pigott-Smith, "King Charles III" Mark Strong, "Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge" Best book of a musical: "Bright Star" "Hamilton" "School of Rock - the Musical" "Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed" Best original score: "Bright Star" "Hamilton" "School of Rock - the Musical" "Waitress" Best choreography: "Hamilton" "Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed" "Fiddler on the Roof" "Dames at Sea" "On Your Feet! The Story of Emilio and Gloria Estefan" (Reporting by Chris Michaud; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)
By Jonathan Landay and Yeganeh Torbati WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Afghan-born father of Omar Mateen, the man police identified as the gunman who killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Florida on Sunday, hosted a political show on an U.S.-based Afghan satellite channel that took a hard anti-Pakistan line. In an interview with NBC News on Sunday, Seddique Mateen, also known as Mir Siddique, said his son's rampage had "nothing to do with religion." He described an incident in downtown Miami in which his son saw two men kissing in front of his wife and child and he became very angry. "We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident," NBC News quoted him as saying. "We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country." Seddique Mateen lives in Florida, according to public records, but it was not immediately known when came to the United States. He did not immediately return messages left on his phone, which appeared to be turned off, or respond to an email. Omar Khatab, the owner of the California-based satellite channel Payam-e-Afghan, said in an interview that Seddique Mateen occasionally bought time on his channel to broadcast a show called "Durand Jirga," which focused in part on the disputed Durand Line, the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan demarcated by the Indian subcontinent's former British rulers. "Three or four times a year, he would show up in Southern California," Khatab said in a phone interview on Sunday. "He'd talk for about two to three hours. He'd buy his own time and come here and broadcast and leave within a day." Khatab said Seddique Mateen's political views were largely anti-Pakistan. One of Seddique Mateen's videos refers to the "killer ISI" - the acronym for Pakistan's main military-run intelligence service - and says the agency is the "creator and father of the world's terrorism." U.S. officials have accused Pakistani intelligence of backing violence against U.S. targets in Afghanistan, although Pakistan denies the allegations. A U.S. congressman said Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old Florida resident and U.S. citizen, may have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group. U.S. officials cautioned that they had no immediate evidence of any direct connection with Islamic State or other foreign extremist group, nor had they uncovered any contacts between the gunman and any such group. Fifty-three people were wounded in the rampage. It was the deadliest single U.S. mass shooting incident, eclipsing the 2007 massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech university. Seddique Mateen interviewed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in January 2014, according to a video posted on his YouTube channel. The interview touched on economic development and youth unemployment in Afghanistan. Khatab said Mateen conducted the interview in Kabul and brought it to California for broadcast. (Additional reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb in San Francisco; Editing by Bill Trott)
The father of Omar Mateen, the man authorities named as a suspect in a mass shooting at gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida that left at least 50 dead and 50 wounded on Sunday, says the massacre was likely motivated by homophobia.

The death toll of 50 makes the massacre the deadliest mass shooting on American soil in modern U.S. history.

"We are apologizing for the whole incident," the suspect's father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News. "We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country."

WATCH: Father of shooter in Orlando club tells NBC News: "We are apologizing for the whole incident"https://amp.twimg.com/v/a1f07521-0c53-4010-b539-d7bf433f0361 ...

"This had nothing to do with religion," the father added. According to him, the event may be tied to an incident several months ago in which Mateen became enraged upon seeing two men kissing in downtown Miami.

Speaking to Fox News, Florida Rep. Alan Grayson said "It's a gay club. It might be that we've seen a commission of an awful hate crime last night."

"It might be that we've seen a commission of an awful hate crime last night." - Congressman @AlanGrayson #Pulsepic.twitter.com/00j6ViyW0b

This is a breaking news story and will be updated when more information becomes available.

June 12, 2016, 5:24 p.m. Eastern: This story has been updated.
REFRESH FOR UPDATES

UPDATE, 9:30 AM, June 13: Much being made this morning of media reports clarifying that authorities reports Sundays 50 deaths at the Orlando club had included the shooter, who was killed at Pulse club after a 3-hour hostage situation. Also making some headlines this morning, the walking back of hasty reports, based on a statement published by an agency with close ties to ISIS, that ISIS had claimed responsibility for Sundays shooting, which also injured 53, several of whom remain in grave condition this morning.

The attack that targeted a nightclub for homosexuals in Orlando, Florida and that left more than 100 dead and wounded was carried out by an Islamic State fighter, ISIS said in that statement, which some US TV news outlets chose not to report, and others had done so skeptically, though some media reported it as statement of fact. President Obama this morning held a news briefing at the White House in which he said authorities are conducting a terrorist investigation but there is no evidence at this point that the gunman was directed by external ISIS authorities, and indications are the worst mass shooting in US history was an act of homegrown extremism.

Additionally, 48 of those 49 victims have been identified; 36 families of the victims have been notified. Of the 53 wounded in the shooting, more than half remain hospitalized and at least five are in grave condition, authorities said.

UPDATE 2:19 PM: Nihad Awad, executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations, the countrys largest Muslim-advocacy group, held a news conference strongly condemning todays Orlando attack and politicians who would score points off the mass shooting.

This is a hate crime, plain and simple. We condemn it, he said. For many years members of the LGBTQIA community have stood, shoulder to shoulder, with the Muslim community against any acts of hate crimes, Islamophobia, marginalization, and discrimination. Today we stand with them shoulder to shoulder As Muslims and Americans, now is the time to speak out and make it clear we will not give in to hate and not give in to war.

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Addressing ISIS, which has taken credit for the attack, he said, You do not speak for us. You do not represent us. You are an aberration, you are an outlaw. He also cautioned politicians who may try to exploit this tragedy, saying this is not the time to score points. This is not the time to exploit fear. This is the time for unity and strength.

UPDATE: 1:30 PM: ISIS has claimed responsibility for the shooting, according to Amaq Agency which reportedly has ties to the organization. The attack that targeted a nightclub for homosexuals in Orlando, Florida and that left more than 100 dead and wounded was carried out by an Islamic State fighter, ISIS said in a statement, though some US TV news outlets reporting did so skeptically.

PREVIOUS, 12:48 PM: Major League Baseball has announced all teams today will observe a moment of silence in memory of the Orlando shooting victims:

All MLB clubs are observing a moment of silence in memory of the #Orlando victims. https://t.co/FVnQ5gOF4fhttps://t.co/e8aiH6k1tb  MLB (@MLB) June 12, 2016

PREVIOUS, 11:04 AM: Though it is still earlywe know enough to say it was an act of terror and of hate, President Obama said in a five-minute speech from the White House about the early morning slaughter of 50 in Orlando that is the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

Obama took no question, and today ordered the U.S. flag to be flown at half staff at the White House and government and military buildings, bases and vessels worldwide, until June 16.

Meanwhile, the presumptive GOP and Dem party candidates to replace Obama, tweeted:

Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

In contrast to:

"This is a time to stand together and resolve to do everything we can to defend our communities and country." Hillary on the attack in FL  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

"This was an act of terror.  This was also an act of hate." Hillary on the attack in Orlando https://t.co/MmaGjrSufr  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

PREVIOUS, 10:35 AM: KABC reporting a suspect was taken into custody in Santa Monica after discovering his vehicle contained explosive powder and assault weapons and that he planned to head to the LA Pride Festival in West Hollywood. The incident was determined to be unrelated to the shooting in Orlando, and todays parade would continue as planned, authorities say. The city is on heightened alert. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the incident appears to be unrelated to the early-morning shooting in Orlando that has left 50 dead and 53 wounded and is the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

Meanwhile Washington D.C. local authorities report they have stepped up security in the city ahead of todays Capital Pride Festival, TV news outlets report.

PREVIOUS, 9:49 AM: News networks reported additional details about the suspect in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that left 50 dead and at least 53 injured, perpetrated by a lone gunman:

His name was Omar Mateem. It is a name I will not mention again for the rest of the show, CNNs Jake Tapper said of the suspect in the 2 AM shooting at Orlando nightclub, Pulse. The 29-year-old was trained as a private security guard, his parents are from Afghanistan, he was on on the FBIs radar, suspected of being an ISIS sympathizer, though authorities did not have knowledge of a planned attack, Tapper said.

The suspect called 911 in the course of the hostage situation at the nightclub, his support to ISIS, and mentioned 2013 Boston Marathon bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

The suspect is a private security guard, working for a major company that provides services for the federal government, news outlets reported. That security guard license enabled him to obtain weapons with a minimum questions asked, including the semi automatic weapon he had purchased legally in the last couple weeks.

The shooting began when an off-duty police officer working security at the gay nightclub exchanged fire with the suspect at the club door; the gunman ran inside, creating a hostage situation at the packed club. The hostage situation lasted about three hours.

Mateen had been interviewed twice by the FBI in 2013, after he made inflammatory comments to co-workers alleging possible terrorist ties, according to Ron Hopper, FBI special agent in charge of its Orlando office. Mateen was interviewed again in 14 for possible ties to an American suicide bomber; FBI found both investigations inconclusive Hopper added.

PREVIOUS: In two successive nights weve had killings (in Orlando), Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) told reporters in a news conference. The singer performing live at the Plaza shot down two nights ago and then his horrific act. So what is happening to our country? We are going to have to dig down deep and ask ourselves who we are as a people. Weve got to think of ourselves as common denominator Americans, not as hyphenated-Americans off on some cause.

Gov. Rick Scott also held a news conference announcing he had declared a state of emergency in the county where the shooting took place to make sure state resources would be made available immediately to organizations dealing with the aftermath of the mass shooting. He deflected reporters questions about gun control: Right now, this is the time to find out exactly what happenedtime to pray for those that have lost their lives.

Presidential candidates responded this morning:

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

Early this morning Today show host Willie Geist reported NBC News had contacted the father of the shooter and read his comments on air: We are apologizing for the whole incident. We werent aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country. This has nothing to do with religion. Geist said the father claims his son got angry when saw two men kissing in downtown Miami a couple months ago and says he thinks that may have caused this.

And NBC News former evening news anchor Tom Brokaw early this morning said: It should be part of the political debate and both parties should discuss gun control in rational fashion.

Industry reactions began coming as word of the shooting spread:

Sobbing.  Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) June 12, 2016

Hard to contemplate devastating news of worst mass shooting in US history in Orlando at LGBT club. Thoughts & prayers w families of victims.  Craig Zadan (@craigzadan) June 12, 2016

We are absolutely devastated Orlando is our hometown and to know people are hurting breaks our hearts.  backstreetboys (@backstreetboys) June 12, 2016

Prayers and thoughts to our brothers and sisters. RT @huffpostqueer: 50 casualties in Orlando LGBT nightclub shooting  Greg Berlanti (@GBerlanti) June 12, 2016

My heart goes out 2 the families & friends of those who lost their lives in Orlando last nite. A sad, horrific day in US history.  Sean Hayes (@theseanhayes) June 12, 2016

Horrified by the mass shooting in Orlando. When will we do something to prevent these killing sprees?  John Legend (@johnlegend) June 12, 2016

Very difficult to work this morning. My heart, my soul and my anger are in #Orlando.  Dustin Lance Black (@DLanceBlack) June 12, 2016

I am gay and I am not afraid. Love conquers all. #PrayforOrlando  Ricky Martin (@ricky_martin) June 12, 2016

If you live in Central Florida, blood donations are needed after mass shooting at #PulseNightclub https://t.co/g0Hg5FK1sY  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) June 12, 2016

PREVIOUS The Sunday Beltway shows werent, sadly, politics as usual today, as coverage of the horrendous mass shooting at an Orlando gay dance club dominated all news coverage. The shooting, which, at last count, left 50 dead and 53 injured is the worst mass shooting in American history.

There are a lot of dead bodies in the club, a tearful woman told ABC News George Stephanopoulos in one of the mornings most heart-rending moments. Her son was inside the club and unaccounted for, and her emotional interview seemed to leave Stephanopoulos momentarily stunned. At approximately 6:15 AM and 10:15 AM ET, and throughout, ABCs This Week broke into special reports to cover the shooting, as all of the Sunday Beltway shows scrambled to re-focus.

CNN, like other news organizations, was converging on Florida, with correspondent Boris Sanchez in Orlando, and Erin Burnett, Alisyn Camerota and Carol Costello en route. Victor Blackwell and Pam Brown will anchor from Orlando today. Also Orlando-bound for CNN are Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon, John Berman and John Vause.

Fox News Channel plans special live editions of its Americas Newsroom program from noon to 7 PM ET, anchored by Eric Shawn, Arthel Neville, Shannon Bream, Leland Vittert, Jon Scott and Heather Nauert. Chief political anchor Bret Baier will anchor the 11AM/ET and 1PM/ET hours. Continuing into the evening, Fox Report Sunday hosted by Harris Faulkner will be live at 7PM/ET before Bill OReilly takes over for a live edition of The OReilly Factor at 8PM/ET. Megyn Kellys show will be live as well. Legends & Lies, scheduled to air from 8-9PM/ET will be pre-empted.

On Fox News Sunday, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) warned Baier More of these attacks are coming, stomping for the need to address it openly and directly, and say directly there is an extremist element within Islam that is dangerous and has to be confronted, we need to slow down.

For ABC News, correspondent Lauren Lyster started reporting on the shooting overnight; Linzie Janis jumped in to early coverage. Anchor Amy Robach and correspondent Gio Benitez were en route, as were Senior Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas, NewsOne Correspondents Marci Gonzalez and Liz Hur, and radio correspondent Jim Ryan. ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross is reporting from New York.

Todays Willie Geist contacted the shooters father, who, according to Geist, claims his son got angry when he saw two men kissing in downtown Miami a couple months ago and says he thinks that may have caused this.

The White House, which said that President Barack Obama will address the nation at 1:30 pm ET, released the following statement:

The President was briefed this morning by Lisa Monaco, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, on the tragic shooting in Orlando, Florida. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of the victims. The President asked to receive regular updates as the FBI, and other federal officials, work with the Orlando Police to gather more information, and directed that the federal government provide any assistance necessary to pursue the investigation and support the community.

The shooter was identified by law enforcement as Omar Mateen, an American citizen from Port St. Lucie, Fla. The shooting at the Pulse nightclub, which began at about 2 AM ET Sunday, is being described by local officials as domestic terrorism and a hate crime.

The shooting put Orlando, home of Disney World, in the national spotlight for the second time in as many days, following the murder of The Voice finalist Christina Grimmie following an Orlando concert Friday night.

At the Pulse club, police exchanged fire with the gunman following a three-hour hostage stand-off, killing the man described by the FBI as an Islamist radical. The shooter was armed with an assault rifle and a handgun.

Deadline will have more as the story develops.

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There are films, and then there are films directed by Luca Guadagnino, set in Italy, starring Tilda Swinton, with wardrobe by Raf Simons during his time at Dior. Yes, two quite different things.

Released earlier this year, A Bigger Splash marked Swinton, Guadagnino and Simons' second film collaboration (the first was I Am Love)  and it made everyone want to go on holiday looking fabulous.

The very epitome of chic, Swinton plays Marianne Lane, a world-famous rock star holidaying in the sleepy Italian town of Pantelleria. Though her character is recovering from throat surgery which renders her speechless for the entire two hours of film, Swinton has never been more captivating. Oh and she's joined by a rather sweaty Matthias Schoenaerts, a wickedly pompous Ralph Fiennes and a brooding, scantily clad Dakota Johnson.

If you're unfamiliar with Guadagnino's style, it's long, lingering shots of nature (sometimes he grants plants divine capabilities), close-ups of food, silences and lots of them, sumptuous sceneries, grand architecture and breathtaking styling.

Simons worked with Guadagnino's friend, the costume designer Giulia Piersanti, on the wardrobe. She told i-D about the inspiration for Marianne's clothes: "We specifically wanted Marianne Lane, Tilda's character, to be a bit more elegant than her surroundings. It was important for her to have a wardrobe that was a bit over the top. In the end it was also important in the acting and portrayal of the character for her to be nonchalant about it and very effortless. She's a star, and she doesn't hide it. Even when she goes out into the piazza she's a bit overly dressed, like an old movie star would be. She needed to keep that glamour in her wardrobe."

Despite the striking simplicity of Marianne's style  billowing jumpsuits, shirt-dresses and thong sandals  it's the devilish details that make this film one of the finest examples of dressing well in the heat. For your viewing pleasure (but still watch the film), we've selected the most memorable fashion moments. Warning: you will want to do away with all your hot pants, crop your hair, and buy some silver shades immediately.

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This steamy moment was made hotter by the butter-soft leather beige dress Tilda wore.

Tilda barely takes her silver shades off and her mediterranean sea-blue shirt is something everyone should pack to wear over swimwear. The shirts were a collaboration with Charvet in Paris. Photo: REX

A simple white bathing suit made interesting by the cut-away effect front-on, and the backless reveal. Photo: REX

Tilda's dramatic, monochrome look of a black blouse and billowing white skirt, cinched by a thick leather belt is proof that style on holiday doesn't have to be a compromise.

Tilda and Ralph's chemistry on screen is electric, as is the Hollywood glamour of her modern Monroe jumpsuit and gold eye-shadow. Perfect against the town's painted houses. Photo: REX

Piersanti explained to i-D why this look was her favourite in the film: "Tilda's look at the end of the movie, where she's wearing a big checked skirt and matching top. We went to Dior with this picture of Ingrid Bergman from Journey to Italy where she has this big heavy checked coat and wool skirt, and we turned it into something very modern and summery."

This shirt is everything. The twisted seam, the button detail, Tilda...

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Awesome: extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear. It's a word that gets overused on the internet (probably by me), but I would argue that daisy-chaining 5000 fireworks together, jacking them up on a piece of heavy machinery and filming the result qualifies.

That's exactly what strange British YouTube man Colin Furze did to celebrate his channel hitting three million subscribers. Pointless, yes; awesome, absolutely.

DON'T MISS: Forget Fathers Day and buy these 10 gifts for yourself

The rig was pretty simple: 58 giant boxes of fireworks, electrically wired together to go off at the same time. Each box had a bunch of smaller fireworks inside, which shot off in sequence over the course of 30 seconds or so.

https://youtu.be/gEUBLIFMgnY

The boxes were arrayed in a half-sphere for maximum effect. The end result is totally stunning, and also a little bit unsafe.

How unsafe? Well, take a look at this screenshot:

furze

I'm not an OSHA inspector, but something about this scene seems not right to me.

Then again, we've got to bear in mind exactly how Mr Furze reached three million subscribers. It's been a wild ride, and not an entirely safe one. Highlights (for me, at least) have included building a mostly working hoverbike, a new way of cooking turkey using pressurized boiling water, a thermite launcher, and a jet bike.

On second thoughts, a marginally unsafe, completely gratuitous pyrotechnic display is the perfect celebration.

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This article was originally published on BGR.com
Florida Governor Rick Scott held a press conference in Orlando, FL, at 12:20 p.m. (ET) following the mass shooting that began after 2 a.m. in an Orlando LGBT nightclub that left 50 people dead.

"This is clearly an act of terror," Scott said of what is the now worst mass shooting in U.S. history. "To take that number of lives is clearly an act of terror."

The Republican governor dodged a question about potentially changing his views on gun legislation following the mass shooting, saying, "Right now, this is the time to find out exactly what happened, it's the time to pray for the families of the victims and the victims. There will be plenty of time to deal with how our society comes together [after a mass shooting]."

"For anybody who thinks they should do this, I can tell you the state of Florida and local law enforcement will be swift in their justice," Scott said.

Scott declared a state of emergency in Orange County and hailed the individuals who entered the club to help last night, knowing full well there was an active shooter inside. He said the names of the deceased have not all been revealed to their families yet.
By Tife Owolabi YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) - A group of Nigerian former militants have urged the Niger Delta Avengers, who have claimed responsibility for a recent string of attacks on oil and gas facilities, to join in discussions with the government, a statement said on Sunday. Last week, the Avengers said they would not cooperate with a government initiative to start talks with them and other militants over their demands for a greater share of oil wealth and pollution in the impoverished southern swamp area. The attacks have cut Nigeria's oil output to a 20-year low. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said: "If indeed your cause is to avenge the injustice done to the Niger Delta region then, we urge you to ceasefire and join us to the table of negotiation with the federal Government." MEND, one of largest militant groups until it signed up for a government amnesty in 2009, said in a statement it had nominated a team of negotiators on its own behalf. "Following useful exploratory discussions held with high ranking officials of the current administration... MEND has constituted (a team) to dialogue with the federal Government on the immediate, medium and long-term future of the Niger Delta region," it said. MEND has said some of its former commanders and fighters make up the Avengers, claims denied by the group. Security officials have also linked a MEND commander to the Avengers, though he denies this. The government has moved in army reinforcements to the southern swamps but Western allies such as Britain have said widespread poverty and oil spills in the Niger Delta need to be addressed to stop the militants. (Additional reporting by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Louise Ireland)
(Adds interior ministry clarification) PARIS, June 12 (Reuters) - France's interior minister said on Sunday he backed UEFA's threat to sanction England and Russia if their fans repeated the violence seen over the last few days in Marseille and urged hosting cities to consider a ban on alcohol around match days. "It is absolutely necessary that the national federations whose supporters create incidents of this nature be punished for what happened inside the stadium, and also outside," Bernard Cazeneuve told a news briefing. A spokesman for the ministry clarified that the minister was not specifically calling for the two countries to face sanctions, but that he was merely supporting UEFA's decision to warn Russia and England over their fans' future behaviour. UEFA earlier in the day said that the two countries could be disqualified from the Euro 2016 tournament if fan violence continued. Cazeneuve said he asked police chiefs in nine hosting cities to take all measures to prevent the sale, consumption and transportation of alcohol on the day before a fixture and on the match day. Anybody arrested for violent incidents could also be banned from all stadiums, fan zones and popular public areas in all host cities, he added. (Reporting by John Irish; editing by Richard Lough and Ros Russell)
PARIS, June 12 (Reuters) - France's interior minister called on tough sanctions against England and Russia after violent clashes in Marseille and urged hosting cities to consider a ban on alcohol around match days. "It is absolutely necessary that the national federations whose supporters create incidents of this nature be punished for what happened inside the stadium, and also outside," Bernard Cazeneuve told a news briefing. Cazeneuve said he asked police chiefs in nine hosting cities to take all measures to prevent the sale, consumption and transportation of alcohol on the day before a fixture and on the match day. Anybody arrested for violent incidents could also be banned from all stadiums, fan zones and popular public areas in all host cities, he added. (Reporting by John Irish; editing by Richard Lough)
A federal ban on blood donations from most gay men remains in effect following a deadly shooting in Orlando, despite reports that local blood donation centers had decided to ignore the rule as LGBT advocates and politicians called for it to be lifted.

All FDA guidelines remain in effect for blood donation, OneBlood, an Orlando donation center, said in a tweet. There are false reports circulating that FDA rules were being lifted. Not true.

The donation center urged local residents to donate blood following a shooting that killed at least 50 people and left dozens more injured. People lined the streets to donate in response, but a spokesperson for OneBlood described the response as a little too much, too soon. In that chaos, reports on social media emerged suggesting that the blood center was ignoring the ban for the time being.

But that wasnt the case. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration prohibits men from donating blood for a year after their last sexual contact with another mana policy that remains in effect.

Many people in the LGBT community, as well as political leaders, spoke out against the prohibition on Sunday in the wake of the mass shooting in Pulse Orlando, a gay nightclub, which is the deadliest in U.S. history and is being investigated as an act of terror.
BEIJING (Reuters) - Germany and China have agreed to set up an "early warning system" to avoid problems for German non-governmental organizations from a new Chinese law that restricts such groups, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday. Merkel told reporters that she and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang had agreed to stay in close touch about potential issues once the new law goes into effect on Jan. 1. The law grants broad powers to Chinese police to question NGO workers, monitor their finances, regulate their work and shut down offices. German rights groups and political foundations have said they fear that the law will hamper their work. Merkel said Chinese officials had agreed that the work of the NGOs benefited both sides, and it was important to avoid negative consequences from the new law. "That is why we ... agreed to be in close touch with each other via the foreign ministries or other organizations. I think that is the right way to react initially," Merkel said. Merkel had said before leaving for Beijing that she planned to raise the issue with Chinese officials. The trip is her ninth to China since she took office in 2005. (Reporting by Andreas Rinke in Beijing; writing by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Lille (France) (AFP) - Ukraine boss Mykhaylo Fomenko hailed world champions Germany as a "machine" after his side lost their first Euro 2016 game 2-0 on Sunday.

"Germany are a machine, their team is full of great players," said Fomenko.

"There are no surprises with this team. A machine is a machine."

Shkodran Mustafi's early header and Bastian Schweinsteiger's first international goal for five years in stoppage time got Germany off to a flier in Group C in Lille.

However, they had to toil for long spells as Ukraine threatened an equaliser, particularly in the latter stages of the first-half.

Manuel Neuer made a fine save from Yevhen Khacheridi, whilst Jerome Boateng made a spectacular acrobatic clearance of his own line.

Fomenko believes his players' confidence will be intact when they face Northern Ireland on Thursday.

"We understand of course that it is going to be very difficult when you play in a game against Germany.

"We have to forget about it now and move onto the next match.

"I think physically and mentally everything will be ok for the next match.

"The most important thing is the next game and our chance to win the next game."
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Despite breakup rumors, Zigi's very much alive, and Gigi has Zayn's back.

Zayn Malik canceled a show on Saturday due to anxiety, and his girlfriend, model Gigi Hadid, is right by his side through his struggle. Hadid tweeted a note of support to Malik, writing, "I've seen the battles you go through and the way you fight to get to a place that allows you to get up there for your fans."

SEE ALSO: Zayn Malik is finally free to make his own mistakes on 'Mind of Mine'

Hadid assured Malik that he has fans who know that his mental health should be his top priority.

"Those who can find compassion now are the ones that deserve to watch you continue to grow," she wrote.

Malik was set to perform at Summertime Ball at Wembley Stadium in London alongside Ariana Grande, Nick Jonas and Little Mix. It would have been his first British show as a solo artist.

Malik left One Direction in 2015 after four albums and four world tours in four years, citing the pressure of the spotlight and the stress of touring as two of the reasons he decided to part ways with the band.
SOMERSET WEST, South Africa (AP) -- Oscar Pistorius is going back to jail. The only question now is for how long? It could be 15 years.

The double-amputee Olympic runner's sentencing hearing opens Monday after he was convicted of murder by South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal for shooting girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

It'll be the second time Pistorius has been sentenced for the killing following an appeal by prosecutors. The three-year legal saga that began with the fatal gunshots in the pre-dawn hours of Valentine's Day 2013 now appears to be near its end.

A recap of the case:

---

WHY IS PISTORIUS BEING SENTENCED AGAIN?

Pistorius was initially convicted of the lesser charge of culpable homicide, or manslaughter, at his 2014 trial for shooting Steenkamp through a closed toilet door in his home. He testified he mistook the model and reality TV celebrity for a nighttime intruder hiding in a bathroom, and shot with his 9mm pistol in self-defense fearing an attack. The trial judge accepted part of Pistorius' story, and he was given a five-year jail sentence based on the judge's ruling that he acted recklessly, but didn't mean to kill. After serving a year in jail, Pistorius was released on parole in line with South African procedure and has been living under house arrest at his uncle's mansion since October last year.

But following Pistorius' manslaughter verdict, prosecutors appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that the former star athlete, a multiple Paralympic champion, should have been found guilty of murder. They argued that Pistorius intended to kill someone - even if he didn't know it was Steenkamp in the toilet cubicle - when he shot four times through the door with no justification.

In December, a panel of Supreme Court judges agreed with prosecutors, overturned Pistorius' manslaughter conviction, and raised it to a more serious murder conviction. Pistorius must now be sentenced for murder.

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Supreme Court Justice Lorimer Leach said: ''The accused ought to have been found guilty of murder on the basis that he had fired the fatal shots with criminal intent.''

---

WHAT IS HE FACING?

Possibly 15 years in prison. That's the minimum sentence for murder in South Africa, which no longer has the death penalty.

Legal experts say a judge can reduce that sentence in some circumstances, and that Pistorius' disability and the fact that he is a first-time offender could be taken into account. He has also already served a year in prison.

Pistorius will return to the same courthouse in Pretoria where his dramatic seven-month murder trial played out in 2014 to be sentenced again. The hearing has been scheduled to last a week and Pistorius' punishment will again be decided by Judge Thokozile Masipa, who acquitted him of murder at his trial but had her decision overturned by the Supreme Court.

Pistorius appears set to be starting a long prison sentence when the 2016 Olympics and Paralympics - where he intended to end his acclaimed track career - take place in Rio de Janeiro.

In a statement ahead of the sentencing hearing, Pistorius' family said they do not know ''what the future holds for Oscar after this week.''

---

DOES HE HAVE ANY CHANCE OF APPEALING?

No. Pistorius has exhausted all his options. After his conviction was changed to murder by the Supreme Court last year, Pistorius appealed to South Africa's highest court, the Constitutional Court, to review his case. The Constitutional Court dismissed that appeal in March and Pistorius now has no chance of escaping the murder conviction.

---

WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING WITH PISTORIUS?

Pistorius last appeared in public in April at a brief court hearing that scheduled dates for his sentencing.

Other than that, the 29-year-old has spent almost all his time since being released from prison in October at his uncle's luxurious house in an upscale suburb of the capital, Pretoria. Pistorius has remained under house arrest there and can only leave the home briefly and at set times. He needs permission from authorities to travel farther than 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the house.

Yet Pistorius is never far from the news. In March, police said they launched a sting operation with the help of Pistorius' family to catch a man attempting to scam Pistorius out of money by offering to quash his murder conviction.
By Chris Michaud NEW YORK, (Reuters) - The 2016 Tony Awards were generating more buzz than usual ahead of Sunday's ceremony, with all eyes on the musical "Hamilton," a pop culture phenomenon that was expected to take the lion's share of honors at Broadway's annual salute to itself. "Hamilton," with its record-setting 16 nominations, tells the story of ill-fated U.S. founding father Alexander Hamilton with a deft melding of hip-hop and rap, R&B, ballads and traditional Broadway showstoppers. The show is considered shoo-in for Best Musical, the top award. But an attack on an Orlando, Florida gay club early on Sunday morning that killed 50 people and injured 53 others was sure to cast a pall over the festivities. "Our hearts are heavy for the unimaginable tragedy that happened last night in Orlando," the event organizers said in a statement. "Our thoughts are with the families and friends of those affected. The Tony Awards dedicate tonight's ceremony to them." Before the attack, the 70th annual Tony Awards, airing on CBS at 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT), had been expected to reverse a recent slide in TV ratings, as both "Hamilton" devotees as well as people who have simply heard the fanfare boost interest. The show's success has played a big part in a record-breaking Broadway season, including attendance of 13.3 million and $1.37 billion in sales. "'Hamilton' has had an amazing effect on this season," said Heather Hitchens, president of the American Theatre Wing, which runs the annual awards presentation along with The Broadway League. Charlotte St. Martin, president of the Broadway League, expects Hamilton's impact to persist, even though its star and creator Lin-Manuel Miranda will leave the show on July 9. "A rising tide lifts all ships," she said. "I don't think there's any doubt that 'Hamilton' will be doing that." The musical, the most talked-about since "The Producers" in 2001, has legions of fans who have never seen a moment of it beyond televised snippets. Tickets sell out months in advance as they become available. Prime seats on the secondary market fetch thousands of dollars. In a year when the Oscars drew criticism for lacking non-white nominees, the Tonys, led by "Hamilton"'s multi-cultural cast, stand rich with diversity, which could also boost viewership. Late-night TV host and Tony winner James Corden will head up the three-hour telecast. Despite the excitement, "Hamilton" appears unlikely to equal "The Producers" with its record 12 wins. Beyond Best Musical, "Hamilton" is favored for best book and score, both for Miranda, as well as the Tonys for featured actor and actress and best director. It is also likely to win costumes, lighting and orchestrations, Broadway watchers say. Miranda, as Hamilton, is vying for Best Actor in a Musical but faces stiff competition from co-star Leslie Odom Jr. as nemesis Aaron Burr. Both are in a horse race with Broadway veteran Danny Burstein in the well-received "Fiddler on the Roof" revival. Other likely winners on Sunday include Jessica Lange, poised to win her first Tony as morphine-addicted Mary Tyrone in "Long Day's Journey into Night," Frank Langella, playing an Alzheimer's-afflicted patriarch in "The Father," and Cynthia Erivo, star of "The Color Purple," also favored to win Best Musical Revival. The family drama "The Humans" is the clear Best Play frontrunner. For its 70th birthday, the Tonys will boast appearances by powerhouse stars including Barbra Streisand, Cate Blanchett and Oprah Winfrey, who may collect an award as a "Color Purple" producer. (Additional reporting by Frank McGurty; Editing by Frank McGurty, Alan Crosby and Meredith Mazzilli)
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You've probably heard the news by now: Uber and Lyft have left Austin.

The ride-hailing companies suspended operations in early May after voters upheld strict regulations on the companies and their drivers  specifically, fingerprint-based background checks, a requirement that cars must be clearly marked with the companies' logos, and rules on where drivers can pick up and drop off passengers.

But it's what's happened in the aftermath of the two companies leaving town that should make Uber and Lyft take notice.

Crowdsourced ride-hailing

Arcade City Austin / Request a Ride is a Facebook group that has grown rapidly in the weeks following Uber's and Lyft's departures. The group, which requires approval to join, is currently populated by more than 33,000 members who use the group to find rides to and from their destinations. Arcade City's rules are simple:

Post your request for a ride in the group

Delete the request once you've been connected with a driver

Ask for an Uber or Lyft profile if you'd like

"Be cool to each other."

Arcade City's website describes the service as "an open marketplace where riders connect directly with drivers," and an app version is currently being beta-tested by seven drivers in Austin, according to The Guardian.

But for now, the residents of Austin are simply using the Facebook page to connect with someone who's willing to give them a ride. According to the page, there's no surge pricing, no need to give the company a cut (for the time being, anyway), and the option to schedule a ride well in advance, a feature Lyft already offers and Uber just unveiled.

There's also no set format for how and what to pay. Drivers can either set the price ahead of time or riders can pay whatever they think is fair for the length and distance of the ride.

The advent of this peer-to-peer service has brought about another phenomenon: Drivers offering up their time to help out those in need. Solomon Hapshire, a former Lyft driver, transports a blind man to his job as often as three times a week.

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Sometimes he pays me a good amount, sometimes he pays me [just] what he can, but it doesnt matter, because Im helping," he told The Guardian.

Natalie Williams, a former Uber and Lyft driver, told The Guardian that she recently got up in the middle of the night to pick up a young woman who seemed like she was in an "uncomfortable situation." Williams took her home and gave her some advice along the way.

Zipcar and new apps step up to the plate



Ever hear of getme, Fare, Fasten, Wingz, zTrip, RideAustin, or InstaRyde? Austin residents are about to.

The new ride-hailing apps have launched or are set to launch in Austin soon, which means residents may have even more options for catching a ride if they're willing to try something new.

While some of these apps had already set up shop in Austin before Uber and Lyft left town, according to The Texas Tribune, they'll likely receive more traffic as residents begin looking for new ways to get around  if these new apps are willing to comply with the city's regulations, that is.

Zipcar isn't missing out on the opportunity of the ride-hail giants leaving town, too. For students at University of Texas-Austin, Zipcar is offering incentives to join and to rent cars more often. Students at Zipcar's university partners nationwide  which includes UT Austin  can join for $15, but UT Austin students can now also rent cars for a discounted rate. According to The Daily Texan, students can rent cars for $9 Sunday through Thursday from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m.

What this means for Austin's future

Amid all the ride-hailing drama, one key component of Austin's transportation future remains up for grabs: the city's application for a $50 million grant from the US Department of Transportation. Austin is one of seven finalists in the Smart Cities Challenge, along with Denver, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Portland, Columbus, Ohio, and Kansas City.

Part of its application contains a section on transportation-network companies (a name for services like Uber and Lyft), in which the city says it's going to work toward becoming an incubator for those types of services, specifically naming some of the new apps springing up around the city. It also knocks Uber and Lyft in the process:

Unfortunately, Uber and Lyft declined to participate in a community conversation on these issues to help develop new forward looking government structures, choosing instead to initiate an election (which they lost) and then to leave town. The invitation for Uber and Lyft to operate in Austin and to join in the community conversation remains open, even while the City is welcoming new innovation and models.

So what does this all mean? That Uber and Lyft may have left town, but the city of Austin seems to be doing just fine without them.

NOW WATCH: We tried the 'Uber-killer' that just landed a $300 million investment from Volkswagen





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Orlando club shooting

The Harvey Milk Foundation (HMF) issued a powerful statement on the Orlando mass shooting that left 49 people dead early Sunday.

The shooting, now being called the deadliest in US history, also appeared to specifically target the LGBT+ community.

It happened at Pulse, a gay nightclub, during LGBT Pride Month, and nearly a year after the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide.

The Harvey Milk Foundation is a gay-rights-advocacy group named after Harvey Milk, a civil-rights leader and one of the first openly gay elected officials in the US. He was assassinated in San Francisco in 1978.

In its statement, the group said, "These victims had their futures stolen ... their dreams stolen ... their potential contributions stolen from us all."

The statement continued, "Hate and separation continue to bring forth too much grief, too many stolen lives across the world. May we also have the strength to address and deal with the roots of hatred that target any minority community with violence anywhere in the world."

Though the 29-year-old gunman, Omar Saddiqui Mateen, was on an FBI list of suspected ISIS sympathizers, Mateen's father told NBC News that his son's actions had "nothing to do with religion." He noted that his son got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago and thinks that may be related to the shooting.

Here's the Harvey Milk Foundation's full statement:

My heart aches to release such a sad statement. Orlando LGBT community and leaders being held in our prayers! #hope pic.twitter.com/btw7HZCPeG  Stuart Milk (@StuartMilk) June 12, 2016

In the wake of the shooting, long lines formed at the local blood bank, OneBlood, forcing the location to begin turning people away.

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Earlier reports incorrectly suggested that existing FDA guidelines regulating blood donation by some LGBT donors had been lifted. It has been particularly difficult for gay men to give blood due to those FDA recommendations designed to prevent the transmission of HIV. Those rules were relaxed late last year.





More From Business Insider


A man was arrested early Sunday after police allege they found him in Santa Monica, California, armed with guns and possible explosives and on his way to the L.A. Pride Parade in West Hollywood, the Los Angeles Times reports



Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti confirmed the man's arrest in a Sunday news conference, saying, "An individual here, completely unrelated, said he was coming to Priide and was heavily armed and was arrested by Santa Monica Police Department."



It was not immediately clear what charge or charges the man faced. Police found him armed with assault rifles, ammunition and tannerite, which can be used in the creation of pipe bombs, according to the Times.



"They found him with weapons that were very disconcerting," a source told the Times.



A reporter with ProPublica tweeted the apparent arrest bulletin shared with L.A. law enforcement.





Source: this just went out to top LA law enforcement officials. Suspect w/ assault weapons, camo arrested in WeHo. pic.twitter.com/9pfBt72spK a Robert Faturechi (@RobertFaturechi) June 12, 2016





 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.





Related Video: Gunman Opens Fire in Gay Club in Worst Shooting in U.S. History





Authorities made it clear that there is no known connection between the man's arrest and the mass shooting that same day at a popular gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.



Meanwhile the famous Pride parade in West Hollywood, California, continued as planned Sunday, with officials telling the Times that security would be increased appropriately.



More than 400,000 people were expected to attend, according to NBC Los Angeles, and some planned to wear black arm bands in memory of the Orlando shooting victims.



"Today, we are heartbroken that so many of our brothers, sisters and allies were lost in this tragic attack," said L.A. Pride President Chris Classen, according to NBC. "As we remember them today at our moment of silence, we must continue to show our pride, not just today but every day."
The deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history took place at the Orlando, FL, gay nightclub Pulse early Sunday morning, killing 50 people and leaving 53 hospitalised. The majority of those in the hospital are in critical condition and many are in need of blood donations. The Orange County Fire Fighters tweeted that there is an urgent need for O negative, O positive, and AB donations, but also stated that all types are needed.

.@my1blood is now asking for all blood types. Please donate.  O.C. Fire Fighters (@Local2057IAFF) June 12, 2016

The Orlando Health hospital network sent out a tweet suggesting that if you would like to donate blood, it's more useful to go to blood banks than local hospitals. Blood banks are currently at capacity for Sunday, according to the Orlando Sentinel, but OneBlood, an organisation that oversees blood banks, is encouraging people to schedule appointments for the next few days. If you are in the Orlando area and want to donate, you can visit Oneblood.org or call 1-888-9-DONATE to find out where to go.

Please do not come to local hospitals to donate blood, and instead work with local blood banks to arrange donations.  Orlando Health (@orlandohealth) June 12, 2016

To support victims and their communities, there are several GoFundMe campaigns you can contribute to. The Pulse Tragedy Community Fund, started by several local LGBT organisations and centres, goes toward a hotline and on-site grief counselling at The GLBT Community Centre of Central Florida in Orlando. If you're a mental health professional, the centre is seeking therapists to offer counselling Sunday night through Wednesday and is taking volunteers through a document shared on Facebook.

Another campaign created by the LGBT rights organisation Equality Florida aims "to support the victims of the horrific shooting at Orlando's Pulse Nightclub."

To make a donation, get a ride to a blood bank, or discuss the shooting with a counsellor, you can call the centre's hotline at 1-407-228-1446.

The FBI is currently investigating the shooting. If you have any information, you can call 1-800-CALL-FBI.

Pulse Shooting: If you have any information, call @FBI Hotline: 1-800-CALL FBI  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

To determine whether you know anybody affected by the shooting, use Facebook's Safety Check feature to search for them. If you know someone who may have been a victim, you can call the police hotline at 407-246-4357 or go to the Hampton Inn at 43 West Columbia Street for updates.

Our focus right now is on identifying the many victims in this tragedy and notifying their family members. Hotline 4 family: 407-246-4357.  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

Anyone looking for information on a family member should go to the Hampton Inn at 43 W. Columbia, or call 407-246-4357.  Orlando Health (@orlandohealth) June 12, 2016

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

Police Identify Victims From Orlando Mass Shooting

Stanford Rape Victim's Sister Questions Brock Turner's Lack Of Remorse In Statement

President Obama's Statement & More Reactions To The Deadly Orlando Nightclub Shooting
Heres how you can help the Orlando shooting victims by donating blood

Heres how you can help the Orlando shooting victims by donating blood

America is waking up to the news this morning that at least 50 people lost their lives last night in a shooting at a LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Details are still emerging about this senseless tragedy, but it has already been declared the worst mass shooting in our nations history.

Were absolutely heartbroken over this tragic turn of events. In the days and weeks to come, were sure there will be numerous ways to help the victims and their families and communities. At the moment, the most pressing need is for blood donations. The Orlando Sentinel reported this morning that there is an urgent need for blood, particularly types O Negative, O Positive and AB Plasma.

OneBlood is Orlandos blood donor center. Its website appears to be overloaded today, but if youd like to help by donating blood, heres a list of the donor center locations:

Their website is overloaded but here's a list of OneBlood donation centers in Orlando, FL. pic.twitter.com/usEqapwS2O  Joanne (@joanne_stocker) June 12, 2016

Our hearts are heavy today, and our thoughts are with everyone affected by this horrible tragedy.

The post Heres how you can help the Orlando shooting victims by donating blood appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Donald Trump demanded Sunday on Twitter that President Obama finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism in connection to the massacre in Orlando or immediately resign in disgrace. Obama didnt use that language, and almost certainly wont in the future.

Obama called the slaughter an act of terror and an act of hate but said authorities have reached no definitive judgment on the precise motivations of the killer.

Ive directed that we must spare no effort to determine what  if any  inspiration or association this killer may have had with terrorist groups, he said Sunday afternoon from the podium of the White House.

Trump responded to Obamas speech with a lengthy statement that, among other things, again called for the presidents resignation. In his remarks today, President Obama disgracefully refused to even say the words Radical Islam, Trump wrote. For that reason alone, he should step down. If Hillary Clinton, after this attack, still cannot say the two words Radical Islam she should get out of this race for the Presidency.

Amid news reports indicating that the alleged shooter pledged loyalty to ISIS, as the terrorist army is also known, in a 911 call, Obamas remarks sounded like authorities were looking into whether the group inspired or directed the attack  even though the president did not mention it by name or as ISIL, as the U.S. government tends to call it.

A close look at Obamas rhetoric shows he has not referred to the Islamic State by that name since he plunged the U.S. military into an undeclared but escalating war against the group two years ago. Obama, who tends to stick with ISIL, explained his thinking roughly one month after the first U.S. airstrikes against the group.

ISIL is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents. And the vast majority of ISILs victims have been Muslim, he said on Sept. 10, 2014. And ISIL is certainly not a state. 

Obama went on, it is recognized by no government, nor by the people it subjugates. ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.

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Senior administration officials say the presidents reasoning has not changed: Why needlessly alienate Muslim partners in the war on ISIS? Why lend any credence to the groups claim to uphold Islamic tenets, helping it cloak violence in religion?

Obamas critics  mostly Republicans, but also some Democrats  have charged that his refusal to describe the threat as originating in extremist Islam reflects politically correct naivete that risks hampering the war effort.

Theres a political dimension too.

In the aftermath of the Brussels attacks, Trump suggested on NBCs Today in March that his own rhetoric on terrorism, including his call for a halt to Muslim immigration and tourism to the United States, was why Im probably No. 1 in the polls.

He may not have been wrong. A February 2016 poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that 65 percent of Republicans and independents who lean toward the GOP wanted the next president to speak bluntly even if critical of Islam as a whole.

For Democrats and independents who lean left, it was just 22 percent.

Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clintons reaction to the attack in Orlando roughly tracked with Obamas: She called it an act of terror but stopped short of explicitly diagnosing a direct connection to ISIS.

Still, the former secretary of state said in a written statement, keeping America safe means defeating international terror groups, working with allies and partners to go after them wherever they are, countering their attempts to recruit people here and everywhere, and hardening our defenses at home.

Its not just an argument about words. Obama asked Congress last year to explicitly authorize him to use military force against ISIS and loosely defined associated forces.

How those forces are defined  whether by name, geography, allegiances, tactics or goals  may shape the war on terrorisms global battlefield for years. Defining the global conflict, Americas enemies and victory (or at least progress) carries enormous weight in that sense because it will determine how, when and where young Americans will fight, and against whom.
Hillary Clintons campaign will begin advertising ahead of the general election against Donald Trump later this week, beating Trump and the Republicans to the airwaves as Democrats lay plans for a hard-fought summer-and-fall campaign.

The one-minute ad, slated to begin showing on Thursday, contrasts some of Trumps more extreme statements with Clinton, who narrates the video.

Today, we face a choice about who we are as a nation, Clinton says in the ad. Do we help each other? Do we respect each other? Do we stand together? Trump, meanwhile, makes repeated cameos in the ad with clips from his rallies saying Id like to punch him in the face in reference to a protester, and Knock the crap out of them, would you? as well as mocking a disabled New York Times reporter.

Clinton, shown at different points during her primary campaign greeting voters, then explains the underlying message of her campaign: Its wrong to pit people against each other, Clinton says. I believe we are always stronger together.

Donald Trump quickly rebutted the ad on Twitter, denying that he mocked the New York Times reporter.

The new Clinton ad joins three general election ads aired by Priorities Action USA, the pro-Clinton superPAC that has been supporting her bid against Trump. Together, the ads seek to portray Trump as mean-spirited and divisive. The Clinton campaign did not say how much it cost to place the ads.

Clinton will campaign in swing states this week, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, as well as a Wisconsin event with President Obama.
hillary clinton

Hillary Clinton expressed sympathy for the victims of the Orlando terror attack and called for greater measures to combat ISIS-inspired acts, including better intelligence and stricter gun control laws.

In a statement released Sunday afternoon, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said the US needed to take additional action to stymie ISIS recruitment after a gunman who pledged allegiance to the terror group killed 50 and injured scores more.

"This was an act of terror," Clinton said.

"We need to redouble our efforts to defend our country from threats at home and abroad," she added. "That means defeating international terror groups, working with allies and partners to go after them wherever they are, countering their attempts to recruit people here and everywhere, and hardening our defenses at home. It also means refusing to be intimidated and staying true to our values."

The former secretary of state noted that the attack occurred during LGBT pride month, labeling the shooting an "act of hate" against the LGBT community.

"The gunman attacked an LGBT nightclub during Pride Month. To the LGBT community: please know that you have millions of allies across our country. I am one of them. We will keep fighting for your right to live freely, openly and without fear. Hate has absolutely no place in America," Clinton said.

Clinton also echoed President Barack Obama's call for greater gun control efforts

"We need to keep guns like the ones used last night out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals," Clinton said. "This is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States and it reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets."

For his part, Donald Trump went on the offensive, telling supporters on Twitter that Sunday's attacks proved that he was the better candidate to protect the US against terror threats.

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The presumptive Republican presidential nominee thanked supporters who congratulated him for "being right" about the dangers of terrorist acts committed by extremists, and retweeted a tweet claiming that Clinton could not make the US safe.

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

NOW WATCH: Donald Trump claims he never said these things  lets look at the footage





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Presumptive presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump took very different approaches in response to a horrific mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, which left at least 50 people dead.

In a series of tweets on Sunday, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee highlighted the shooter's potential links to terrorism.

"Really bad shooting in Orlando. Police investigating possible terrorism. Many people dead and wounded," Trump wrote.

Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Later in the afternoon, Trump thanked supporters who congratulated him for "being right" about the dangers of terrorist acts committed by extremists. He also knocked President Barack Obama's decision not to say "radical Islamic terrorism" when referring to religious extremists, which Obama refuses to do because he says it propagates the notion that the US is at war with Islam.

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Clinton was decidedly more reserved in her response.

The former secretary of state expressed her condolences for the victims, tweeting out the message in English and in Spanish.

Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

Desperte con la devastadora noticia de FL. Mientras esperamos mas informacion,mis pensamientos estan con los afectados de este horrible acto  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

In an interview on "Meet The Press," Sen. Bernie Sanders also weighed in, expressing his sympathy for the victims and calling for stricter gun-control laws.

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"It's horrific, it's unthinkable, and my hopes go out to all those who were shot that they can recover," Sanders said. "And I've got to tell you, 25 years ago, I believe that in this country, we should not be selling automatic weapons which are designed to kill people. We have got to do everything that we can on top of that to make sure that guns do not fall into the hands of people who should not have them  criminals, people who are mentally ill."





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Hillary Clinton condemned the Orlando nightclub shooting as an act of terror and hate and called for action to reduce access to weapons of war in a statement Sunday.

I join Americans in praying for the victims of the attack in Orlando, their families and the first responders who did everything they could to save lives, she said. This is a time to stand together and resolve to do everything we can to defend our communities and country.

The presumptive Democratic nominee for president called for a strengthening of efforts to fight terrorism and alluded to support for stronger measures to restrict access to guns.

In the wake of the shooting, Clinton and President Obama postponed their first joint campaign appearance, which was scheduled in Green Bay, Wi. on Wednesday.

She also identified herself as an ally of LGBT Americans in the statement. The mass shootingthe deadliest in American historyoccurred at a gay nightclub.

We will keep fighting for your right to live freely, openly and without fear, she said. Hate has absolutely no place in America.

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump also responded to the tragedy, thanking people for congratulating him on predicting more terrorist attacks. He also called for greater toughness & vigilance in fighting terrorism. His response faced swift backlash.
hillary clinton

Donald Trump's off-the-cuff campaign speeches have enthused Republican primary audiences all year.

But some of Trump's most controversial comments from his campaign rallies have quickly become fodder for Hillary Clinton's television advertisements.

Clinton's first official television ad of the general election highlighted Trump's call to supporters to "knock the crap" out of protesters at his rallies, as well as his controversial imitation of a disabled New York Times reporter.

The ad attempts to cast Clinton as a steady alternative to Trump, interspersing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's inflammatory quips with shots of Clinton smiling and meeting with voters.

"Today we face a choice about who we are as a nation," Clinton said in the ad.

"What kind of America do we want to be? Dangerous and divided, or strong and united?" Clinton said.

According to The New York Times, the ad will begin airing on Thursday in several swing states.

Trump took to Twitter on Sunday to respond, denying that he mocked Times reporter Serge Kovaleski over his disability.

Clinton made a false ad about me where I was imitating a reporter GROVELING after he changed his story. I would NEVER mock disabled. Shame!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Though Clinton's ad on Sunday is the campaign's first official television buy of the general election, her super PAC has also been working to use Trump's most eyebrow-raising comments against him in viral ads.

A top super PAC supporting the former secretary of state has already provoked Trump's ire over its ads hammering the real-estate magnate for his derogatory statements about women's bodies.

Watch the ad below:

NOW WATCH: Heres the $5.3 million mansion the Obamas will reportedly live in after the White House





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- Creator, trained by Steve Asmussen and ridden by Irad Ortiz, edged Destin at the wire to win a scintillating 148th Belmont Stakes. Creator, who went off at odds of 16-1, lived up to his closer's reputation to claim the final leg of US flat racing's Triple Crown by a nose. It was just the fourth time that the Belmont was decided by a nose. "I was glad to see them put that number up! They came to the wire together," said Asmussen after watching Ortiz bring Creator through the stretch on the outside and overtake the Todd Pletcher-trained Destin. Lani, the temperamental Japan-based colt trained by Mikio Matsunaga and ridden by Yutaka Take, finished third.

AFP
* Comes from 12th place with dynamic charge * 16/1 chance edges out Destin by a nose * First Belmont win for trainer, jockey (Adds details, quotes) June 11 (Reuters) - Creator made a brilliant charge down the stretch to edge past Destin by a nose at the wire and win the 148th Belmont Stakes on Saturday, the final leg of U.S. racing's Triple Crown series for three-year-olds. Joining in a thrilling finish was hard-charging, Japanese-based Lani, who finished third in the 1 1/2 mile (2.4 km) race, one lap around the massive Belmont Park track in Elmont, New York. Creator, winner of the Arkansas Derby, came from 12th place in the 13-horse field, hugging the rail as jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. saved ground around the final turn before exploding through a tight gap and moving out in the straight to win the $1.5 million race. "He was coming," Ortiz told NBC while still on the horse. "When he got clear, he started running. I know he passed the horse (Destin). "It's an amazing feeling. It's very, very important for me," he said, pumping his fist and patting his heart as his voice broke with emotion. Creator, a 16/1 chance, paid $34.80, $14.60, $9.40 for a $2 bet. Destin paid $9.40, $6.20, while Lani returned $6.60. Exaggerator, the 6/5 favourite, faded down the stretch to finish 11th, 14 3/4 lengths back, as jockey Kent Desormeaux eased his horse once it became obvious his race was run. The result meant three different winners in the Triple Crown series as Nyquist won the Kentucky Derby, and Derby runner-up Exaggerator triumphed in the Preakness Stakes. MIRACLE RUN The race was run on a fast track although the threatened rain on a hot, humid day began to fall after the start. Speed horse Gettysburg set the pace before Destin overtook him on the turn for home. The long final straight set up a heart-pounding finish as Creator ran down Destin with virtually the final stride to cover the distance in two minutes, 28.51 seconds, while Lani made an electric charge of his own as the three gray colts left the rest behind. It was a first Belmont win for jockey Ortiz and trainer Steve Asmussen, who earlier this year won election to the racing Hall of Fame. Asmussen praised Ortiz. "I thought Irad gave him a dream trip," the trainer said. "Won it by inches, saved feet." Creator rose to the occasion after a disappointing 13th in the 20-horse field in the Kentucky Derby, 18 lengths back. "He proved his worth today," said Asmussen. As the rain poured down during the trophy ceremony, celebrity chef Bobby Flay summed up the exuberant joy of Creator's connections, having bought a minority interest in the colt on Wednesday from owner Kenny Troutt. "Creator created a miracle," said Flay as the rain washed over the victory party by the winner's circle. (Reporting by Larry Fine in New York; Editing by Andrew Both)
Kiev (AFP) - More than 700 gay rights activists held a peaceful march through central Kiev on Sunday amid an unprecedented security operation in the ex-Soviet country where homophobia remains widespread.

Sunday's march was the third such gay pride rally in Ukraine but the first ever to be held in the centre of the capital Kiev.

Several thousand police and National Guard officers lined the route during the event, which lasted about 20 minutes.

"They did an excellent job on security this year. That's unprecedented," said one of the organisers Anna Sharygina.

"According to our information all the participants got home safely without problems," she said.

National police spokeswoman Katia Dekanoidze told Interfax-Ukraine news agency that 57 people were briefly detained on the sidelines of the march.

Participants held "KyivPride" placards and banners bearing the slogan "LGBT rights are human rights."

Some carried rainbow flags and Ukrainian national flags and chanted "Human rights come first!"

"Rights should be respected irrespective of genre and orientation," said 25-year-old activist Darina Kovalyuk.

"In a modern society, no one should face discrimination for these reasons."

A number of Ukrainian politicians took part, including two from President Petro Poroshenko's parliamentary bloc.

A spokesman for the Pravy Sektor ultranationalist movement Artyom Skoropadski had warned on Facebook that the march could turn into a "bloodbath."

Before the march began, a group of five protesters held up a placard saying "Kiev opposes propaganda of sodomy, I am against gay pride in Ukraine."

Police surrounded them and moved them away from the marchers.

At the end of the peaceful march, some activists sang the Ukrainian national anthem.

- 'Civilised and tolerant' -

Homosexuality was illegal in the USSR and homophobia is still rampant in Ukraine where the Orthodox Church has a strong influence.

Story continues

The march went ahead after Amnesty International rights group sent an open letter to Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko calling for him to make sure the event was adequately policed. Signatories including Ukraine's Eurovision Song Contest winner Jamala.

Klitschko responded with a statement saying he would do everything he could to keep the peace, urging both activists and opponents to behave in a "civilised and tolerant way."

The previous year's gay pride event -- held far from the centre -- lasted only a few minutes before stone-throwing nationalist protesters clashed with the participants and at least 10 people were injured and 25 detained.

In 2013 a small march on the outskirts of Kiev went ahead peacefully but a 2014 march was cancelled after police refused to ensure participants' safety.
Beirut (AFP) - Hundreds of civilians escaped a besieged jihadist bastion in north Syria on Sunday helped by a US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance surrounding the town, a monitor said.

Tens of thousands had been trapped inside Manbij after the alliance encircled the transit town on Friday in a major blow to the Islamic State group controlling it.

"Around 600 civilians fled on foot towards areas held by the Syrian Democratic Forces alliance south of the town," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The SDF "transported them to safer areas," said Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman.

Those remaining inside the town were terrified by heavy air strikes in the area, Abdel Rahman said, with food becoming scarce as the alliance has blocked all roads in and out.

At least 223 IS fighters and 28 SDF troops had been killed -- as well as 41 civilians in coalition air raids -- since the alliance offensive against Manbij began on May 31, according to the Observatory.

To the west and northwest of the town, heavy fighting was ongoing as IS fighters launched a counteroffensive against the SDF in a bid to regain control of the road west out of town.

The Britain-based Observatory relies on a network of sources on the ground in war-torn Syria for its information.

Manbij lies at the heart of the last stretch of IS-controlled territory along Turkey's border.

Its siege has severed a key supply route for IS fighters, money and weapons from the Turkish border to the group's de facto Syrian capital of Raqa city.

Syria's war has killed 280,000 people and displaced millions since it erupted with the brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2011.

IS has come under attack on several fronts since declaring a cross-border "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq in 2014.
Hundreds of people have showed up to donate blood in the wake of a mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando Florida, which killed at least 50 people and wounded more than 50 others on Sunday morning.

After OneBlood issued an urgent request for blood donations to help care for the victims of the incident, concerned citizens formed long lines to do their part.

On @WFTV #OrlandoStrong Hundreds line up 2donate blood 4 #PulseShooting victims @OrlandoPolice @FBI @OrangeCoFLpic.twitter.com/EalZNcSpoe https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ckwo7E-UUAI-aBP.jpg:large

Blood center is overloaded with people wanting to give blood in the aftermath of the #Pulse mass shootingpic.twitter.com/rFAsbPdGGu https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ckwax0gUgAUlfPp.jpg:large

Some good: a video of the line to give blood in Orlando right now (taken by my best bud)pic.twitter.com/0jx8JKvm6D

Orlando coming together as a community to help donate blood. #OrlandoStrongpic.twitter.com/zDrXu449Hq https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CkwwviHWkAAwkAs.jpg:large

Look at that line of Floridians waiting to donate blood to victims of he #Orlando terror attackpic.twitter.com/JwghMDd4lI https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CkwrzFfWEAA-j3p.jpg:large

At least six separate donation sites are seeking blood in the wake of the attack, reported the G.

Story continues

Blood donations are being sought after the Orlando shooting. Here's a list of donation sites http://trib.al/9Z4HBJq pic.twitter.com/1o1U4beObK https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ckwn30gVEAAmu_p.jpg:large

Authorities are currently investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism. Alleged gunman Omar Mateen's father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News the crime may have been motivated by his son's hatred of gay people.

The lives taken on Sunday can never be replaced. But as several Twitter users noted, it's heartening to see so many Floridians and others lining up to help.

THIS is how we come together in #Orlando. And we do it immediately! #GiveBlood #wftv #Pulse #PulseShootingpic.twitter.com/Uh7X9268RY https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CkwmCOeUgAEK2ch.jpg:large

Incredible to see lines of people waiting to donate blood in Orlando. (From @WESH)pic.twitter.com/BkTJQTjWrG https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CkwwfQdUkAARKo4.jpg:large

The lines of people forming to give blood in Orlando is heartwarming. Not everyone is an asshole. Most people are good. #dividedwefall

To the over 600 people lined up outside the hospital to donate blood/plasma thank you. You are showing there are still good people. #Orlando

June 12, 2016, 5:45 p.m. Eastern: This story has been updated.
Indebted tycoon Vijay Mallya on Sunday accused Indian government agencies of deeming him "guilty without trial" and lambasted the countrys financial crime fighters for leading a "heavily biased" investigation against him.

The flamboyant 60-year-old beer baron left India in March for the UK, under hot pursuit from banks over $1.34 billion in loans granted to his collapsed carrier Kingfisher Airlines and yet to be repaid.

He has repeatedly failed to appear before investigators at the Enforcement Directorate, a financial crimes agency, who suspect him of misusing funds loaned by a state bank.

In a rare statement, Mallya responded to reports that India's federal investigative agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, was taking further steps to probe him and the airline.

"It is, indeed, sad and disappointing that the thousands of documents submitted by us and interrogation of several executives seems insufficient to convince them there has been no wrongdoing, he said.

I have maintained and continue to maintain that there has been absolutely no misappropriation or diversion of funds and strenuously deny any allegation to the contrary.

Mallya rejected reports he had refused to go before the Enforcement Directorate, which has issued three summons for his appearance, but said he had simply sought time to sell assets to pay employees, tax authorities and the banks.

He added that he had offered to appear before officials via video conference.

"It surely appears as if these agencies are pursuing a heavily biased investigation and are already holding me guilty without trial after which I need to prove my innocence, he said.

"Purely civil matters such as loan recovery are being connected with criminal allegations without any basis whatsoever.

A spokesman for the Enforcement Directorate was not immediately available for comment.

The government revoked Mallya's diplomatic passport in April after he repeatedly failed to appear before investigators.

Story continues

Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in May the government would seek to extradite the indebted tycoon after Britain turned down its request to deport him.

Once dubbed the King of Good Times for his lavish lifestyle, the entrepreneurs massive debt has become a symbol of Indian banks' vast volume of bad loans -- meaning in default or close to it -- seen as a threat to financial stability in Asia's third-largest economy.

In an interview with the Financial Times in April, Mallya said he was prepared to settle millions of dollars owed to banks but had no plans to leave Britain.

A former MP, he resigned from his seat in the parliament's upper house ahead of a likely expulsion over his huge debt defaults.

India and the United Kingdom signed an extradition treaty in 1993.
By Maher Chmaytelli, Ahmed Rasheed and Isabel Coles BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - The Iraqi army said on Sunday it had secured the first safe exit route for civilians to leave Islamic State's besieged stronghold Falluja, and a Norwegian aid group said thousands of people had already used it to flee in the first day it was open. While it pressed on with its offensive in Falluja, the army also launched a fresh advance in the direction of the northern city of Mosul, Islamic State's de facto Iraqi capital, under cover of airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition. The assaults by the Iraqi army are taking place at the same time as advances against Islamic State by U.S.-backed fighters and Russian-backed Syrian government forces in Syria, at the opposite end of the militants' self-proclaimed caliphate. Fighting on a range of fronts in both Iraq and Syria in recent weeks amounts to some of the biggest pressure on the militants since they swept across much of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and declared their rule over all Muslims from territory that is home to millions of people. In Iraq, the government launched a major operation last month to recapture the Islamic State bastion of Falluja, an hour's drive from Baghdad. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said troops are delaying advances to protect civilians. The United Nations fears for the fate of up to 90,000 people believed trapped inside Falluja with little food or water. The new exit route, known as al-Salam (Peace) Junction, was secured on Saturday, southwest of Falluja, Joint Operation Command spokesman Brigadier-General Yahya Rasool told Reuters. "There were exit routes previously, but this is the first to be completely secured and it's relatively safe," said Rasool. About 4,000 people had fled the city over the past 24 hours through the al-Salam Junction, said Karl Schembri, a spokesman in Iraq for the Norwegian Refugee Council, which has been assisting people who escape the city. "We expect thousands more to be able to leave in the coming days," he said. The al-Salam Junction route was secured after troops dislodged insurgents from districts located on the western bank of the Euphrates river, opposite Falluja's city center on the east bank, said Rasool. He did not give a number for the civilians who were able to flee so far using it. More than 20,000 people have managed to flee the city and its surrounding area since the Iraqi army began the offensive on May 23, the United Nations said on June 8. But the lack of secure routes made their escape extremely difficult and dangerous. At least a dozen people were reported to have drowned while crossing the Euphrates. Those who managed to reach government-held lines said they walked for days to avoid sniper fire and explosive devices planted by Islamic State insurgents along roads to delay the army's advance. A government official said the militants were putting up a tough fight defending the city, long an insurgent bastion where U.S. forces fought the heaviest battles of their own 2003-2011 occupation. The army is receiving air support from the U.S.-led coalition and ground support from Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias and Sunni tribal fighters. CAMPAIGN NEAR MOSUL The Falluja campaign veers from Washington's battle plan, which sees the main fight looming in Mosul, the biggest city in either Iraq or Syria under Islamic State control. Iraqi troops captured a village on Sunday that they could use as a crossing on the Tigris river as part of an eventual campaign near Mosul in the north. The Haj Ali village sits on the eastern bank of the Tigris, opposite the Islamic State hub of Qayyara, where there is an airfield the army aims to capture and use as a staging ground for future operations on Mosul. The U.S.-led coalition said it carried out eight strikes near Qayyara on Saturday, destroying tactical units, mortar systems, rocket rails and facilities to produce car bombs. Islamic State overran Mosul two years ago and went on to proclaim a caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria, but has come under increasing pressure in recent months, losing ground to an array of forces. Last week, Iraq deployed an armored division along with boats and bridges, to prepare for an eventual crossing of the river to Qayyara. (Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Maher Chmaytelli; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Peter Graff)
ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi troops advanced against Islamic State south of Mosul on Sunday as the U.S.-led coalition intensifies its campaign against the militants on multiple fronts across their self-proclaimed caliphate. Officers involved in the operation said Iraqi forces had moved toward the village of Haj Ali in tanks and armored vehicles under cover of coalition air strikes and artillery fire, capturing another village on the way. "In the beginning they resisted but when they saw the force they withdrew," said an Iraqi officer speaking from the newly recaptured village of Kharaib Jabr, adjacent to Haj Ali. Haj Ali sits on the eastern bank of the Tigris river, opposite the Islamic State hub of Qayara, where there is an airfield that is set to serve as a staging ground for future operations to recapture Mosul, about 60 km (40 miles) north. Islamic State overran Mosul two years ago and went on to proclaim a caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria but has come under increasing pressure in recent months, losing ground to an array of forces. Iraqi forces are also advancing on the edge of the Islamic State bastion of Falluja further south, while in Syria U.S.-backed forces are encircling the militant-held town of Manbij. Iraqi troops were deployed to the northern Makhmour area earlier this year and launched an operation in March touting it as the beginning of a bigger campaign to retake Mosul - the largest city under militant control. Since then, Iraqi forces have made modest gains, capturing a handful of villages on the eastern bank of the river Tigris. The commander of the operation blamed the slow pace on a lack of tanks and said he did not have enough men to hold ground after it was retaken from the militants. Last week, Iraq deployed an armored division along with boats and bridges to cross the river to Qayara, control of which would also isolate Mosul from territory the militants control further south and east. (Reporting by Isabel Coles; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Elaine Hardcastle)
The Islamic State group, the infamous terror organization which has taken over large swathes of Iraq and Syria and orchestrated mass-casualty attacks against civilians in Paris and Brussels, Belgium, claimed responsibility for a massacre at gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida on Sunday.

Multiple sources reported ISIS claimed credit for the gun rampage, which killed at least 50 people and wounded more than 50 others when a man wielding an assault rifle and a pistol opened fire on the crowd, took hostages and then engaged police tactical teams in a firefight. Suspect Omar Mateen, who was killed by police, reportedly pledged loyalty to ISIS in a call to authorities.

ISIS issued the statement via affiliated news agency A'maq.

ISIS's A'maq news agency claims Florida attack was "carried out by a soldier of the Islamic State"pic.twitter.com/NY9kt2piEy https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CkxTMNBWgAE21Fk.jpg:large

Islamic State claims responsibility for Orlando nightclub shootinghttp://reut.rs/1XQ5n4R

The statement of responsibility does not indicate ISIS had any prior knowledge or involvement in the planning of the Pulse killings. Terror organizations have an incentive to take credit for attacks in which they have little or no direct involvement for the purposes of boosting their own infamy. In this case, it's clear why the group would want to claim responsibility.

ISIS claims credit after everyone spends hours online giving them credit. #Orlando

After San Bernardino, it took two days for ISIS to claim some credit. After Brussels, took the group hourshttp://wpo.st/io1f1

If you are surprised by ISIS claiming credit, and believe that's proof they were involved, please contact me about an investment opportunity

Reminder: Just because ISIS takes credit doesn't mean they were actually involved. Their propaganda is based on seeming larger than they are

"Terrorism is primarily a form of communication," Rand Corporation senior adviser Brian Jenkins told LiveScience in 2010. "So in some cases, it's competitive, and then you have rival claims for a particular attack. In some cases there are false claims, where organizations take credit for operations they did not order to be carried out."

However, as New York Times al-Qaeda and ISIS correspondent Rukmini Callimachi explained on Twitter, the group has sought to encourage sympathizers in the Western world to launch terror attacks in their home countries.

26. As early as 2014, ISIS explained that *anyone* could carry out an act of terror in their name. "Do not ask for permission," Adnani said

28. Idea is simple: ISIS floods the internet with their gory propaganda hoping to incite anyone inc the mentally unwell, then claims credit

29. In recent yrs we have seen pattern unfold. Take San Bernardino. Same day as Dec 2 attack, assailant posted pledge of allegiance on FB

32. And oath of allegiance is usually directed to "Amirul al-Mumineem," or "Emir of the Believers," the honorific used to refer to Baghdadi

After a December 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California that resulted in 14 casualties, federal authorities discovered a Facebook post written by one of the attackers that professed allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State.

The post provided crucial evidence that alerted the FBI to the radicalization of the attackers, Tashfeen Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook. ISIS also claimed responsibility for the attack via the group's al-Bayan Radio channel, saying, "We pray to God to accept them as martyrs."

However, the FBI was never able to establish a direct link between the couple and ISIS.

While the shooter in Orlando may have been influenced by ISIS' ideology, his family says other factors played a role as well  such as homophobia.

"We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country," Mateen's father, Mir Seddique, said in an interview with NBC News. "This has nothing to do with religion."

Instead, he indicated his son's bigoted attitudes towards gay people may have been a motivation, relaying an incident several months ago in which Mateen became enraged upon seeing two men kiss in Miami.

President Barack Obama, in a statement to the nation, additionally sought to draw a connection between the attack and other mass shootings across the U.S. in recent years.

"The shooter was apparently armed with a handgun and a powerful assault rifle," Obama said. "This massacre is, therefore, a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school or in a house of worship or a movie theater or in a nightclub. And we have to decide if that's the kind of country we want to be, and to actively do nothing is a decision as well."

Brianna Provenzano contributed additional reporting to this article.

Sunday, June 12th at 6:28 p.m.: This article has been updated.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the mass shooting attack in an Orlando gay club on Sunday that left at least 50 people dead.

The attack that targeted a nightclub for homosexuals in Orlando, Florida, and that left more than 100 dead and wounded was carried out by an Islamic State fighter, the group said in a report on its official Amaq news agency. The message was attributed to an unnamed source and distributed over the Telegram messaging app on Sunday afternoon. On Monday, an ISIS-run radio station also labeled the man identified as the shooter, Omar Mateen, as one of the soldiers of the caliphate in America.

The claim comes after law-enforcement officials quoted by multiple news organizations, including NBC News and the New York Times said the suspected shooter, Omar Mateen, called 911 before the attack in order to swear his allegiance to ISIS. Speaking at a news conference in Orlando on Tuesday afternoon, an FBI official confirmed that Mateen had made a call to 911, but did not indicate the content of the call. A security company, G4S, said Sunday that Mateen had been employed there since 2007, adding that it was shocked and saddened by the shooting. We are cooperating fully with all law-enforcement authorities, the company said.

Read More: Orlando Shooting: What We Know

The claims underline a pattern in which ISIS seeks to inspire sympathizers to carry out attacks  with or without operational support from the group  and then claims responsibility for the carnage after the fact. In such plots, the connection to ISIS as a central organization may exist only in the attackers mind, but the resulting violence is no less lethal.

Declarations of allegiance to ISIS and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi have been a hallmark of past attacks by jihadist sympathizers, including the San Bernardino, Calif., shooting in December. One of the two shooters in the Garland, Texas, shooting in May 2015 indicated support for ISIS in a post on Twitter just before the attack.

Story continues

Read More: Orlando Shooting Deadliest in U.S. History

The mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub on Sunday came weeks after a top ISIS official issued a call for attacks throughout the world during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which began on June 6.

In an audio recording released on May 22, ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani called for a month of calamity everywhere for the non-believers, saying his appeal was especially for the fighters and supporters of the caliphate in Europe and America.

In the recording attributed to al-Adnani, he specifically focused on ISIS supporters who are no longer able to reach ISIS-held territory in Iraq and Syria and join the so-called caliphate. The message seems geared toward inspiring lone wolves  attackers who are inspired by ISIS but may have no organizational ties with the group whatsoever.

Read More: What to Know About the Pulse Club Gunman

The smallest action you do in their heartland is better and more enduring to us than what you would if you were with us. If one of you hoped to reach the Islamic State, we wish we were in your place to punish the Crusaders day and night, Adnani was quoted as saying.

Ramadan  a holy month of dawn-to-dusk fasting, prayer and reflection  is observed by Muslims worldwide. But militant groups including both ISIS and al-Qaeda have used Ramadan as a pretext to ramp up attacks and gain attention. A recent report from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War argues that ISIS is seeking to use Ramadan as an occasion to reorient its strategy with attacks both in its core arena of operations in Iraq and Syria and abroad.

This year, ISIS will likely take action to reverse serious losses in Iraq and Syria while expanding its attacks against the non-Muslim world in an attempt to spark an apocalyptic total war, the report states.

ISIS, which seized huge sections of territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014 and declared a caliphate, is currently giving ground on multiple fronts. In recent months it has lost key cities in Iraq and faces a new offensive by the Iraqi military and allied militias in the city of Fallujah. In northern Syria, near ISISs de facto capital in the city of Raqqa, the group is also battling an offensive by U.S.-backed pro-Kurdish forces. As it loses ground on the battlefield, analysts say ISIS may use spectacular acts of terror as a way of seizing headlines and regaining the initiative in the eyes of its supporters.

In Iraq, ISIS accelerated attacks on civilians in the weeks leading up to Ramadan, and on June 9, the group claimed responsibility for a pair of suicide bombings that killed 31 people in Baghdad. On May 17, a triple bombing in Baghdad killed at least 77 people.

Read More: The Orlando Shooting

Statements by government officials have also fueled speculation that the Orlando shooting could have been carried out in connection with or out of sympathy for ISIS.

At a news conference in Orlando, FBI assistant special agent in charge Ron Hopper confirmed that the alleged shooter, Mateen, 29, had been investigated by federal authorities over possible militant ties in 2013 and 2014, but that the investigations had been inconclusive. Mateen, a U.S. citizen born in New York to Afghan parents, was killed when police raided the club in response to the shooting.

Earlier on Sunday, Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN that security officials had informed him that him that the shooter had proclaimed his allegiance to ISIS. What Ive heard from the Department of Homeland Security this morning is that, according to local police, he made a pledge of allegiance to ISIL, he said. Speaking from the White House on Sunday afternoon, President Obama said the shooting was being investigated as an act of terrorism. This was an act of terror and an act of hate, he said.

Other evidence about Mateen also points to personal bigotry as a possible motivation. In an interview with NBC, Mateens father said that Mateen got very angry after he saw two men kissing in public. This had nothing to do with religion, said the father, Mir Seddique. In an interview with the Washington Post, the suspects ex-wife said Mateen was abusive, mentally unstable and not overly religious. He was not a stable person, the ex-wife is quoted as saying.

In addition to its record of mass violence toward women, religious minorities, other Muslims and civilians everywhere, ISIS has a history of brutality toward people accused of homosexuality. Among many other restrictions on civilian life, the jihadists ultraconservative penal code criminalizes sodomy, a law it has been known to enforce in extreme fashion. In January 2015, the group published graphic images appearing to show ISIS officers executing men accused of sodomy by shoving them off a high-rise building in northern Iraq.
CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamic State's Amaq news agency said on Sunday that the Islamist militant group was responsible for the shooting that killed at least 50 people in a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. "The armed attack that targeted a gay night club in the city of Orlando in the American state of Florida which left over 100 people dead or injured was carried out by an Islamic State fighter," Amaq said. (Reporting by Ali Abdelaty; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
CAIRO (Reuters) - A Twitter account associated with Islamic State on Sunday posted a photo purported to be Omar Mateen, identified by U.S. authorities as the shooter who killed at least 50 people in a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

"The man who carried out the Florida nightclub attack which killed 50 people and injured dozens," the caption accompanying the photo read. There was no official Islamic State statement.

It was not possible to verify whether the picture was in fact of Mateen. Other Twitter accounts linked to Islamist militancy also carried photos of the same individual, and Islamic State supporters posted messages of praise for the attack.

(Reporting by Ali Abdelaty; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
TV festival highlights winning series

From:Shanghai Daily | 2016-06-11 00:55

OUTSTANDING TV productions were honored by the Shanghai International Film and TV Festival last night at Shanghai Oriental Art Center.

More than 50 entries, selected from around 800 international productions, were vying for this years Magnolia awards in TV film, TV series, documentary and animation categories.

French production No Second Chance took the TV film/miniseries award.

The suspense drama depicts a brave mother who spares no effort to find her missing 6-month-old daughter after her husband is murdered.

American fantasy Game of Thrones was named best foreign series.

In the Chinese TV series category, historical epic Legend of Miyue by Zheng Xiaolong took the best TV series award.

Kong Sheng and Li Xue shared the award for best TV series director for the epic Nirvana In Fire. Jiang Qitao won the best screenplay award for historical drama Young Marshal.

Hu Ge was named best actor for his touching portrayal of a man who avenges his familys life and honor after years of scheme in Nirvana In Fire.

I was so lucky to have a part in a series with such an outstanding team, said Hu. It is an honor for everyone devoting to the production.

Sun Li won the best actress award for her impressive performance of Miyue  the first empress dowager in Chinese history  in The Legend of Miyue.

When I shot the series, my daughter was only 4 months old, Sun said. It was a very difficult decision for a mother.

Japanese documentary Toras Family  22 Years Story, a heartwarming film about the changes between generations in an ordinary family, took the best documentary award.

The best animation award went to British production Stick Man.

Following the TV gala, the Shanghai International Film Festival kicks off tonight with a star-studded red carpet and grand opening ceremony. Chinese-American director Ang Lee, American actor Bradley Cooper, and South Korean heartthrob Lee Min-ho will be among those attending the ceremony.
(Reuters) - Florida Senator Bill Nelson said on Sunday that a claim made by Islamic State's Amaq news agency that the militant group was behind a shooting in Orlando, Florida, that left 50 dead was not yet confirmed.

"The Islamic State's news agency has just issued a statement that says that they are responsible. That has not been confirmed," Nelson told reporters in Orlando. "We'll have to see what those connections are once we get the details."

(Reporting by Timothy Ahmann; Editing by Chris Reese)
MILAN (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said premiers should be limited to two terms in office, as he gears up for a referendum on constitutional reform that some fear could give excessive powers to the government and its leader. Italy sets no limit on how many times someone can become prime minister, and critics say that the reform, which would drastically reduce the powers of the Senate and grant the lower house more, could create more conducive conditions for premiers to win an unlimited number of mandates. "I think we should do at the most two mandates ... I would be ready to sign any law in this sense," Renzi said in a debate shown on Italian daily La Repubblica's online TV channel. "Whoever governs, wears himself out ... that's enough of politics for life," Renzi said during the debate. The 41-year-old, who came to power two years ago by ousting grand coalition-leader Enrico Letta, has staked his political future on winning the referendum which he says is crucial to more stable and stronger government. In April, Italian lawmakers agreed constitutional reform to drastically reduce the powers of the Senate, granting relatively stronger authority to the lower house. That is now being put to a popular vote in October. While governments in Italy have historically changed before their terms were completed, frequently prompting economic problems, some politicians have repeatedly returned as premiers. In the last three decades, Silvio Berlusconi was prime minister four times for three different governments. Asked about Brexit, Renzi reiterated his belief that a vote to leave the European Union would be disastrous for Britain and would create financial turbulence in the very short term. "In the mid- to long-term, however, I don't have an apocalyptic view. For Italy and Europe it won't be a tragedy," he said. (Reporting by Stephen Jewkes; Editing by Louise Ireland)
The Sky Suite 777 will be featured on flights along JALs Singapore-Haneda route from August. (Photo: Nicholas Yong/Yahoo Singapore)



Singaporeans flying to Tokyo on Japan Airlines (JAL) can soon look forward to more legroom and an improved business class experience, as part of JALs efforts to distinguish itself from competitor All Nippon Airways (ANA).

Starting this month, the Japanese national carrier is rolling out the JAL Sky Suite 777 on 11 of its Boeing 777-200ER aircraft. Thai passengers will be the first to enjoy the new amenities from 18 June on the Bangkok-Haneda route.



Singaporeans can experience the revamped cabin interiors from August when they fly from Changi Airport to Haneda Airport, a route that JAL currently flies twice a day.



New features include wider seats and up to four inches more legroom for economy and premium economy passengers, as well as a 3-4-2 seat configuration which provides for easier aisle and seat access.



Business class passengers will also enjoy new fully flat seats and a 17-inch personal TV screen, among other amenities.

The economy seats aboard the Sky Suite 777. (Photo: Nicholas Yong/Yahoo Newsroom)

Why the revamp?



Accommodating all of these new features has meant a reduction in capacity of up 76 passengers aboard each B777 craft.



Speaking to reporters at the Sky Suite 777 launch in Tokyo, Japan Airlines spokesman Jun Kato acknowledged that the move was indeed a gamble.



But he noted that the first version of the Sky Suite was introduced on JALs European-American routes in 2013, with reduced capacity and higher price points. In response, the airline saw more returning passengers and higher demand.



So we have confidence, said Kato.

The retrofitted cabin interiors are also part of JALs strategy to differentiate itself from ANA by focusing on quality service in order to attract repeat customers, he said.



When asked how JAL planned to make itself more visible in Singapore, one of its primary Asian markets, Kato said: Were just beginning to try to be more visible overseas. We are a little late to the market, but we are very focused on expanding to not only Asia, but also generally overseas, and on getting the name Japan Airlines more well known.


Amman (AFP) - The Islamic Action Front, the political arm of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, said on Sunday it will take part in September parliamentary elections which it had boycotted in 2010 and 2013.

The Islamists are Jordan's main opposition group and have considerable grassroots support, but their relations with the authorities have been strained over the demands for political reforms.

The IAF boycotted the previous elections in protest at the electoral system which they say weakens political parties in favour of tribal and other pro-government candidates.

Party chief Mohamed Zyoud told a news conference that the Islamists believe it is "their national duty" to take part in legislative polls slated for September 20, even in the absence of reforms.

Zyoud called for "transparency" during the election and "for an end to intervention by the authorities throughout the voting process and the announcement of the results".

Jordan amended its electoral law in March to allow political parties to submit lists, and divided the tiny desert kingdom into 23 electoral districts.

The number of seats in parliament was also reduced from 150 to 130, with 15 reserved for women.

Jordanian authorities view the Brotherhood as an illegal organisation because its licence was not renewed in accordance with a political parties law adopted in 2014.

But the IAF is not bound by any restrictions.

Relations with the government soured after the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings that shook the region, toppling leaders in several countries.

Last year the Brotherhood's second-in-command Zaki Bani Rsheid was sentenced to 18 months in prison for criticising a decision by the United Arab Emirates to blacklist the group. He was freed in January.

Also last year, the government authorised the formation of a breakaway group known as the Muslim Brotherhood Association, sparking accusations that it was seeking to weaken the organisation.

In April this year authorities shut seven Brotherhood offices across Jordan.

The Islamists won only six seats in the 2007 election.
Kevin Hart and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson arrived at the Central Intelligence world premiere in full force, with their red carpet entrance being accompanied by screaming fans (from both Team Hart and Team Johnson) in buses. Although the duo has jokingly argued over who has the better fans, both Hart and Johnson expressed they have nothing but love for each other.

"We met each other for the first time probably two or three years ago at an awards show," Johnson told The Hollywood Reporter, "but we always knew we wanted to work with each other. Since working with him I can honestly tell you that I've never had this type of brotherly chemistry with anyone that I've worked with and it's a cool thing."

"If we never do another movie again, then I know I got a brother for life who I have this crazy chemistry with," Johnson added. "It's like having a brother. We talk shit to each other. We give each other shit. We compete with each other but we have fun."

Read More: Dwayne Johnson Joins 'Jumanji' Reboot

Johnson will have the opportunity to once again star with Hart in the upcoming Jumanji reboot, which is slated for a 2017 release.

Hart expressed that their dynamic relationship in the film is just as strong, if not stronger, offscreen. "I think the best thing on set is when you can work with somebody that you don't run away from. On breaks what actors normally do is you run to your trailer, you run to your personal space. On this set there was "cut" and we would sit and talk and we would laugh. There's 40 minutes of downtime that flew by in seconds because you have other things to talk about."

"There's a substance, there's life and there's values and that's what I think we respect the most about each other where the friendship is really going," added Hart. "We both have an understanding for the separation of business and family. You need that and I think here it's what you have so I think this is what you guys are getting to see what you see."

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Director Rawson Marshall Thurber told THR that the action comedy was the best directorial experience of his life thanks to working with Hart and Johnson. "We took Dwayne Johnson, the biggest action star in the world, and make him the funny guy, and we took Kevin Hart, one of the funniest people in the world, and made him the straight man, so we're just flipping the roles a little bit."

Thurber continued: "When you start with Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart in your movie, you're starting with pocket aces and you are trying to not screw up the hand. It's very collaborative, open and trusting. You can't ask for more as a director."

Central Intelligence centers on two high school classmates, with Hart's character as the popular kid who grows up to be an accountant and Johnson's character as the overweight, bullied teen who years later ends up working for the CIA. After they connect with each other via Facebook, Hart is dragged into an action-filled mission with Johnson to return encryption keys to a U.S. spy satellite program. Aaron Paul also stars in the film along with some surprise appearances.

Read More: 'Central Intelligence' Trailer: Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart Are Odd Couple of Espionage

"It's lots of fun but we have this really important anti-bullying message at its core that especially now with social media and cyberbullying, it's really an important message to shine a light on that and say this is not OK," said Thurber. "Even a mean Instagram post can really have an effect."

Hart and Johnson not only made filming memorable for Thurber but also for most of the cast, including Danielle Nicolet (who plays Hart's high school sweetheart and wife) who expressed that the dynamic between Hart and Johnson spread throughout the set, creating a funny and collaborative environment.

"I so appreciated about this film and about Rawson that he wrote two women that are very funny and different in their own rights, and that I never had to apologize for finding a joke on the page. I do a lot of comedy and it's the first time I ever experienced that. I took that away with me. Kevin [Hart] and Rawson made me so much more brave with my content."

Amy Ryan, who plays a CIA agent in the film, also enjoyed getting to be one of the boys. "It's fun to be badass," Ryan told THR. "It's nice to not be the wifey-poo, but to be a strong woman with a job and a leader of other men behind her. It feels good."

Following the screening of the film, guests including Johnson's Furious 8 co-star Scott Eastwood and Tia Mowry-Hardrict made their way to the afterparty outside the theater where the street was transformed to a high school reunion bash, similar to the one in the film, complete with a dance floor, letterman jackets and the centaur high school mascot.

Central Intelligence hits theaters on June 17.

Read More: Mel Gibson Planning 'Passion of the Christ' Sequel (Exclusive)
Baghdad (AFP) - Fighters from the Islamic State group killed at least 18 members of two families as they attempted to flee the besieged jihadist bastion of Fallujah, relatives said on Sunday.

IS has been using civilians as human shields to defend its stronghold since Iraqi forces launched a vast offensive on May 22-23, on multiple occasions shooting those who tried to escape.

Civilians who reached the safety of displacement camps south of the city and several aid organisations have reported cases of residents being shot dead, mostly as they tried to cross the Euphrates River to reach Iraqi government forces.

In the worst known case so far, IS fighters killed at least 18 members of two families Friday as they attempted to flee, southeast of the city, relatives and a security officer told AFP by phone.

"A number of residents were trying to flee and as they neared the Al-Salam intersection, Daesh (IS) opened fire on them, killing 18 and wounding dozens," a senior officer at the Joint Operations Command told AFP.

The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to talk to the press, said the army was able to rescue some of the wounded.

Relatives said the initial group that tried to sneak out of IS-controlled areas on Friday included around 100 individuals, including a majority of women and children.

The group were all from the same two families -- Albu Hatem and Albu Saleh -- and had made a previous failed attempt to leave days earlier.

"When they got near the intersection, which is the meeting point with the Iraqi forces, two gunmen on motorbikes arrived and sprayed them with gunfire," said Ahmed al-Ghneim, a relative.

Two of the survivors, relatives from the Albu Saleh family, are staying at his home in Amriyat al-Fallujah, south of Fallujah.

"Some of the residents jumped into the canal, some fled to a nearby house. When they entered it, it blew up on them because it was booby-trapped," he said.

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"Some survivors were forced to go back inside Fallujah. Daesh took 17 of the wounded to Fallujah hospital," Ghneim said.

Sami Abu Hatem, a relative who was already living in a camp in Amriyat al-Fallujah, confirmed that version of events.

"Three of my direct relatives, a man with two young children, were among those massacred," he said.

Abu Hatem he said he knew of 18 members of the group being killed and added that more were feared missing after jumping in the nearby canal.

According to aid groups running displacements camps outside Fallujah, only small numbers of residents have managed to flee the city centre.

Most of the 24,000 people who have escaped IS rule since the start of the operation three weeks ago are from outlying rural areas.
Omar Mateen, identified as the gunman who killed about 50 people and injured at least 53 at a popular gay nightclub in Orlando, pledged his support for ISIS and invoked the names of the Boston marathon bombers in 911 calls made amid his attack on the crowded venue, according to the FBI.

Ronald Hopper, FBI assistant special agent in charge, in a news conference Sunday confirmed the shooters references to the terrorist network. An agent for the ATF said the shooter had legally purchased two guns, a handgun and a long gun, within the past week.



Hopper also said the FBI is not pursuing a second suspect at this time.

President Obama called the mass shooting, an act of terror and an act of hate in remarks on Sunday, and ordered flags flown at half-mast in honor of the victims.

Direct links have not yet been established between Mateen and ISIS, Hopper said, but the terror group claimed responsibility for the shooting, the most deadly mass shooting in U.S. history, through a statement on its Amaq news agency.

Mateen, 29, was born in New York. His parents are from Afghanistan. The family later moved to Florida, according to published reports and he has recently lived in Fort Pierce, Fla., in St. Lucie County, which is roughly 123 miles south of Orlando.

The investigation into this mass shooting is still developing, and much remains unknown about Mateen and the full scope of his motive in the shooting. Here is more on what we know about the shooter:

Mir Seddique, the suspected shooters father, told NBC News that the shooting had nothing to do with religion. He also said Mateen got angry when he saw two men kissing in downtown Miami a couple of months ago and that he thinks that may have been a trigger in the shooting.

We are apologizing for the whole incident, he told NBC News. We werent aware of any action he [was] taking. We are in shock like the whole country.

Authorities have identified the suspected gunman in Sundays mass shooting that left at least 50 dead in Orlando as Omar Mateen. (Photo: Courtesy of WABC)

Mateens ex-wife in an interview with The Washington Post, called the shooter unstable and reported he was physically abusive to her during their brief, months-long marriage in 2009.

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He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasnt finished or something like that, she told the newspaper.

Related: Slideshow: Shooting rampage at Florida nightclub >>>

Speaking to media, Florida Sen. Bill Nelson earlier said he was told by intelligence sources that there is some connection to ISIS, that had not yet been confirmed officially.

Facts seem to connect this to terrorism, but we cant say that totally yet, he said.

CNNs Evan Perez said that Mateen had rented a car in Fort Pierce so that he could travel to Orlando for the attack and that he worked as a security officer.

Online records show he was a registered Democrat.

Law enforcement officials told ABC News that Mateen had been on the radar of U.S. authorities for a while, but that he was not the target of an investigation.

Florida Rep. Alan Grayson said Mateen was an American citizen, though he said he has several family members who arent.

From left, Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs, Orlando police chief John Mina and FBI agent Ron Hopper speak at a news conference on Sunday after a deadly shooting attack at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. (Photo: Kevin Kolczynski/Reuters)

Orlando Police Chief John Mina said at a news conference that an officer responded to gunshots outside Pulse nightclub around 2 a.m. and exchanged gunfire with the suspect. At that point, the gunman ran inside the dance club, opened fire again and took hostages, Mina said.

Officers from various law enforcement agencies throughout the region responded, and a SWAT team stormed the building in an attempt to rescue the hostages, shooting and killing the gunman, he said.

The suspect is dead. He appeared to be carrying a rifle, an assault-type rifle, and a handgun, and had some type of [explosive] device on him. Thats what were doing right now. Checking the area for devices, Mina said.

Gov. Rick Scott released a statement saying his thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families and everyone affected by the tragedy.

We are a strong and resilient state and we will devote every resource available to assist with the shooting in Orlando, the statement reads. Our state emergency operations center is also monitoring this tragic incident. I have been in constant communication with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs and state and local law enforcement this morning. I would like to also thank all the first responders who quickly came to assist and help those in need.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said he issued a state of emergency for the city and that he had called Scott to request that they do the same at the state level.

He said they will focus on identifying the victims and notifying family members. They also set up a hotline for concerned family members: 407-246-4357.



RELATED VIDEO:


Kuwait City (AFP) - Kuwait has asked the public prosecutor to open an investigation into a scrapped deal with US firm Dow Chemical that resulted in a $2.2 billion fine, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Citing an unnamed high-ranking source, Al-Qabas daily said the government last week sent a large number of documents to the public prosecutor all the details about the deal.

The documents included the names of officials who have been associated with the $17.4 billion joint venture, the daily said.

Kuwait and US petrochemicals giant Dow Chemical signed the deal in 2008 but the emirate unilaterally scrapped it later in the same year due to a political dispute between the government and parliament.

The International Chamber of Commerce, acting as an arbitrator, later ordered Kuwait to pay a penalty of $2.2 billion for scrapping the deal.

The government paid the fine in May 2013 although parliament had warned against making the payment before conducting a probe.

The oil-rich Gulf state's move comes six months after a parliamentary probe into the case urged the government to prosecute 24 ex-officials, including two former oil ministers and several top former industry executives.

The parliamentary probe report, debated by MPs in December, charged the officials of squandering public funds and making illegal profits.
UPDATE, 2:50 PM: James Howell told police he wanted to harm the LA Pride parade, rep Saul Rogriguez said this afternoon at a news conference to update media on this mornings arrest. They said they knew of no connection between the incident and the shootings in Orlando. Howell is from Indiana and the vehicle he was driving has Indiana plates. It contained several firearms, three assault rifles, high powered magazines, and chemicals that could be used to make an explosive device. Howell was taken into custody in Santa Monica this morning after discovering his arms-laden vehicle and he said he planned to head to the LA Pride Festival.

PREVIOUS, 10:55 AM: The 46th annual LA Pride Parade began in West Hollywood at 1o:45 AM with a moment of silence for the 50 victims of this mornings shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando:

We will observe a moment of silence today along the entire Parade route at 10:45 am.  LA PRIDE (@LAPRIDE) June 12, 2016

More than 400,000 people were expected to line Santa Monica Boulevard for the annual celebration that carried on despite the early-morning shooting  the deadliest in U.S. history.

Meanwhile, a suspect was taken into custody in Santa Monica this morning after discovering his vehicle contained explosive powder and assault weapons and that he planned to head to the LA Pride Festival. Authorities said the city is on heightened alert, but Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the incident appears to be unrelated to the Orlando shooting.

Forty six years ago, members of the LGBTQ community came out in cities across the country in response to the Stonewall Riots, LA Pride President Chris Classen said this morning. Today, we are heartbroken that so many of our brothers, sisters and allies were lost in this tragic attack. As we remember them today at our moment of silence, we must continue to show our pride, not just today but every dayOur brave founders made this happen to show the world who we are. We will be loud. We will be proud and we will celebrate in honor of all those lost.

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Added Garcetti, Once again, a shocking act of violence forces us to reflect on the price of allowing easy access to fearsome weaponry. We must distinguish between the freedom to bear arms and the irresponsible policies that open the way, again and again, for our enemies to turn their hatred into explosions of deadly mass violence.

West Hollywood City Councilwoman Lindsey Horvath said in a statement that Los Angeles County sheriffs officials are stepping up security efforts around todays parade and other festivities. While we mourn this heartbreaking loss, we must also rededicate ourselves to the fight for full equality for all people. No one is equal unless everyone is equal.

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Star-studded Shanghai International Film Festival kicks off

From:Shanghai Daily | 2016-06-11 22:01

THE 2016 Shanghai International Film Festival raised the curtain on its film celebration tonight at Shanghai Grand Theater with a star-studded red carpet show and grand opening ceremony.

British actor and scriptwriter Ian McKellen, Chinese American film maker Ang Lee, American actor Bradley Cooper, Hong Kong actor Chow Yun-fat, Taiwan actress Shu Qi, South Korean heartthrob Lee Min-ho and mainland actress Fan Bingbing were among the big-name stars attending the event.

On his first visit to China, Cooper revealed that he will have two movies to shoot in China.

"The city of Shanghai is amazing," said Cooper. "I am deeply touched by its vitality."

Taiwan actress Shu Qi said that her new film will be a Chinese remake of the famous Hollywood comedy romance "My Best Friend's Wedding."

British actor and scriptwriter Ian McKellen, known for his portrayal of Gandalf in the Peter Jackson trilogy "The Lord of the Rings," said it is his first time in Shanghai, a beautiful city.

McKellens 1995 film Richard III will be screened in the festival's "Shakespeare on Film" program to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeares death this year. He will also talk with local college students about his experience of theater and film acting.

At the opening ceremony, McKellen also presented an episode from "As You Like It" while acclaimed mainland theater actor Jiao Huang staged an episode from "Hamlet."

Ang Lee recalled his first time attending the Shanghai International Film and TV Festival 10 years ago.

"I have been amazed at a flourishing Chinese film industry over the passing 10 years," Lee said.

Celebrated Serbian Director Emir Kusturica, known for "Time of the Gypsies" and "Underground" will be the jury president of the coveted Golden Goblet awards.

Kusturica expressed his joy to be in the middle of cinema and movies in the following days, adding that they will choose good movies.

Fourteen feature films of diverse styles and genres will compete for this years Golden Goblet awards. The festival will also honor excellent documentary and animated movies.

This 2016 Shanghai International Film and TV Festival runs till June 19.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti sent a message of solidarity to the victims of the mass shooting at a gay nightclub on Sunday, June 12, from the thousands of Angelenos celebrating Pride. A huge crowd joined the annual parade in West Hollywood amid a heightened security presence to mourn the lives lost when a gunman opened fire inside Orlandos Pulse nightclub early Sunday.

Fifty people were confirmed killed and a further 53 injured in the mass shooting that police are investigating as an act of terrorism. Credit: Twitter/@MayorOfLA
The two-hour Season 3 premiere of TNTs drama The Last Ship will not air tonight as scheduled out of respect to the victims of the massacre in an Orlando nightclub where 50 people lost their lives last night. I hear the premiere contains a scene involving a shooting at a Vietnamese nightclub.

As a result of the shootings this weekend in Orlando, tonights originally scheduled season premiere of The Last Ship has been postponed, TNT said in a statement. Our hearts are with the victims and their families.

Tonights season debut of The Last Ship was to feature two back-to-back episodes. The first, which is said to feature the scene in question, is titled The Scott Effect. In it, CNO Tom Chandler (Eric Dane) is sent to Asia to investigate a possible mutation of the Red Flu. Captain Slattery (Adam Baldwin) and his crew deliver cure to Southeast Asia but there may be an unexpected threat in the region.

In the second episode, Rising Sun, Chandler must find a way to return to his old crew and investigate a dangerous new foe. Here is the shows Season 3 trailer:



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Photo: AP/Phelan M. Ebenhack.

Update: The death toll from Sunday morning's attack on Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL, has been confirmed at 49, plus the death of the shooter.

The names of the last few victims remaining to be identified were posted to the city of Orlandos website. Authorities have been waiting until after families were notified to release the names.

You can read the list of names and details about victims here.

Update: 8:55 p.m.: Trevor Velinor, assistant special agent in charge at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) Tampa Field Division, confirmed in a press conference that the shooter obtained the firearms used in the Orlando shooting legally within the last week.

Update: 8:30 p.m.: Florida Governor Rick Scott has asked for a moment of silence tonight at 6 p.m. EDT (11 p.m. GMT) in memory of the victims of the Orlando shooting.

I ask the nation to pause in a moment of silence at 6:00 PM this evening in honor of the victims of this horrific tragedy.  Rick Scott (@FLGovScott) June 12, 2016

The mayor of Orlando announced that the city has set up a website where names of the deceased can be found after their next of kin are notified.

We are setting up a website. https://t.co/ITWG4Mihvq will be updated with the names of the deceased after the next of kin is notified. 7/11  Mayor Buddy Dyer (@orlandomayor) June 12, 2016

Update: 7:30 p.m.:The New York Times reports that officials from the Department of Homeland Security and local law enforcement told members of Congress that the shooter called 911 to declare allegiance to ISIS before he committed this deadly act. Those officials warn that despite this declaration, there is no indication at this time that he had any direct ties to the terrorist group, was trained by it, or was acting on its instruction.

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The N Y Times also reports that law enforcement officials confirmed that the shooter had previously "drawn the attention of the FBI," but did not reveal any details.

Update: 6:10 p.m.: The FBI is investigating this as a terror crime and asks that anyone with information call its tip hotline at 1-800-CALL-FBI.

Florida Governor Rick Scott has taken to Twitter to condemn the shootings.

This is an attack on our people. An attack on Orlando. An attack on Florida. An attack on America. An attack on all of us.  Rick Scott (@FLGovScott) June 12, 2016

This story was originally posted on June 12 at 5:30 p.m.

A gunman killed 50 people inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, FL, around 2 a.m. Sunday, according to the Associated Press. 53 more were hospitalised. The death count makes this the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

"Some guy walked in and started shooting everybody," eyewitness Jackie Smith told the AP. "He had an automatic rifle, so nobody stood a chance." Another witness, Fatriana Evans, said it "sounded like fireworks  pop, pop, pop  and then everybody scatters." Shortly after the shooting, Pulse posted on its Facebook page, "Everyone get out of pulse and keep running."

BREAKING: 50 people killed in mass shooting at gay nightclub in Orlando, police chief says.  The Associated Press (@AP) June 12, 2016

The police are considering it a "terror incident," according to The New York Times.

Dr. Mike Cheatham, a trauma surgeon at Orlando Regional Medical Center, where 46 of the patients were taken, told the AP that most of them were in critical condition and the death toll would likely rise. About 50 people, including family and friends of the patients, have gathered outside the hospital.

The shooter was identified as Port St. Lucie, FL resident Omar Mateen, U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson told reporters. The deaths include the shooter himself, who used an AR-15-type assault rifle and also carried a handgun.

Pulse shooting: In hail of gunfire in which suspect was killed, OPD officer was hit. Kevlar helmet saved his life. pic.twitter.com/MAb0jGi7r4  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

The Orlando Police Department tweeted that the Florida and Orlando governments have both declared a state of emergency.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott said in a statement released to the AP that he would "devote every resource available to assist with the shooting in Orlando." President Obama has been briefed about the shooting and the FBI is investigating the case to provide him with updates.

Those looking to locate family members involved in the shooting can call the crisis hotline at 407-246-4357, according to a tweet by the Orlando Police Department.

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If you're LGBT, waking up to learn that the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history had happened the night before in a gay nightclub is akin to being a parent and reading about Sandy Hook, or being African-American and finding out that yet another black church has been burned down. The horror and sadness that kind of news unleashes in you lies outside the realm of language; it is terror. It's as if the bloodshed that transpired in the moments after closing time at Pulse - a popular Orlando club that brought together men, women, whites, blacks and Latinos, as you can plainly see from the photos on its Facebook page - that robbed the lives of 50 people and injured over 50 more Sunday night took place in your soul. Opened by co-owner Barbara Poma as a means to promote Orlando's LGBT community and honor her gay older brother who died of AIDS, Pulse will now be known to the world as the site of the worst U.S. hate crime since 9/11.

Shooting at Orlando Nightclub Leaves 50 Dead in Largest Mass Shooting in U.S. History

Since Stonewall and well before, gay clubs have been our schools, our places of worship. Nightclubs are where we've long learned to unlearn hate, and learn to become and love our real selves. They're our safe spaces; places where music and dancing and the joy of our collective togetherness unlocks our fears and extinguishes our lingering self-loathing. This is why the first important public post-Stonewall gay disco in Manhattan was named Sanctuary; why one of the biggest and longest-running queer dancefloors of London is called Heaven; and why the most beloved current LGBT club in San Francisco is known as Oasis. For many who've never known the security of a truly secure and happy home or school or work life, these places are the homes and churches where we celebrate and extinguish despair with our families of choice.

This is not the first time LGBT people have been killed en mass in their clubs. In 1973, New Orleans' UpStairs Lounge, a second-story gay bar, was burned down on the night the Metropolitan Community Church - the first gay church, founded in Los Angeles in 1968 - held a dinner for its congregants. Thirty-two people trapped inside died of fire or smoke inhalation. But even today, very few know about the event because the only suspect committed suicide, and the news at time was largely ignored, despite it being the deadliest arson in New Orleans history. It was a time when families neglected to claim the bodies of their own flesh and blood because their shame was too great.

Like the UpStairs Lounge, many other gay venues have held events for their people. From 1971 to '74, a Manhattan community center known as the Firehouse hosted Manhattan's pioneering Gay Activist Alliance, which funded itself by throwing dance parties there with the goal of "fostering gay solidarity and understanding through social contact among all members of good will in the gay community." But like the UpStairs, the Firehouse was also destroyed by arson. Back in the early '80s when disco was supposedly "dead" and AIDS was called Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID) or simply "gay cancer," legendary New York clubs like the Paradise Garage and The Saint - once again, notice those names - held some of the earliest benefits by Gay Men's Health Crisis, an organization born in 1982 to fight a plague that not even doctors yet understood. Since then, millions of dollars in AIDS funding has been raised at club events and circuit parties hosted by organizations like Lifebeat, the music industry's response to the epidemic. In its 12-year existence, Pulse itself hosted many fundraisers for Equal at UCF, Make a Wish and other community partners. On the day of the shooting, Pulse's Facebook page called out to "our Latinos, Latinas & everyone that loves a little Latin flavor!"

Music Stars React to Orlando Nightclub Massacre, Deadliest Mass Shooting in U.S. History

In a concluding episode of Vinyl, HBO's fictionalized series about the record industry circa 1973, there was an extended montage of people dancing to upbeat R&B -- a sequence meant to represent the very birth of disco. Club after club was shown, and yet you had to squint or freeze-frame to identify even one same-sex couple dancing together. That's not how things went down. The history of dance music in America and the history of LGBT folks - particularly those of color - coming together to create a cultural utopia was and still is inseparable. Neither would have happened without the other.

Sounds and styles have changed since the time when African-American LGBT icon Sylvester sang gay anthems like "Take Me to Heaven" or Paul Jabara - the songwriter behind Donna Summer's "Last Dance" who, like Sylvester, also died of AIDS - penned his own, "Heaven Is a Disco." But the message of Xenia Ghali's "Under These Lights" - the title currently topping Billboard's Dance Club Songs chart - is exactly the same. "Under these lights, embracing all life/We are lost within these beautiful sights  Let's spread the warmth we've found," goes the pitch-shifted, gender-indeterminate vocal. That's why anyone of any race or any sexuality goes to a club like Pulse - to lose oneself. But these dance temples are also where generations of LGBT people found their true selves. Without them and the freedom and safety they ordinarily afford, we're collectively lost.
Tripoli (AFP) - Forces allied with Libya's unity government are closing in on Islamic State group fighters in Sirte in a month-long operation aimed at ousting the jihadists from their North African stronghold.

Here is some background on Sirte and its fall to IS.

Strategic importance

Sirte is on the Mediterranean coast roughly half way between Libya's capital Tripoli in the west and Benghazi in the east.

A major port city, it lies just 350 kilometres (220 miles) from the Italian coast.

It is also a mere 150 kilometres west of Libya's main oil-producing area and export terminals.

Oil is a vital source of income for Libya, and several groups have fought to control its wells and pipelines since the fall of Moamer Kadhafi in 2011. The IS presence in Sirte had raised fears it would attempt to seize the fields to fund its North Africa operations.

Population

Sirte used to have around 120,000 residents, most of them in the city centre or spread along the coast.

All but around 30,000 have fled since IS took over in June last year, a spokesman for pro-government forces, Reda Issa, told AFP.

Most people in Sirte belong to three major tribes including the Kadhadfa tribe of Kadhafi.

Infrastructure

Sirte has a large port, an international airport and an important military base. It also hosts one of North Africa's largest conference venues, the Ouagadougou conference centre which IS militants have been using as a command centre.

Kadhafi era

The home town of the former dictator, Sirte had a privileged position in Libya during his four-decade rule, not least because many residents belonged to the Kadhadfa tribe.

Post-Kadhafi

Sirte suffered major damage during the 2011 uprising.

Kadhafi loyalists used the city as a base to attack rebels in both the west and the east.

The dictator himself fled there after Tripoli fell to rebels at the end of August 2011. After Sirte also fell, gunmen tracked him down and killed him.

Sirte paid the price for supporting the regime. Heavy fighting destroyed entire streets. Residents accuse post-Kadhafi authorities of marginalising them in revenge for the dictator's rule.

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Jihadist takeover

IS announced on June 9 last year it had captured Sirte. It has used it as a rear base, training foreign fighters to carry out operations overseas.

It hung its flags along the main streets, forced people to pray five times a day and banned women from leaving home without a male chaperone.

The group ruled Sirte through fear, brutally punishing dissent.

In May, Human Rights Watch said IS had beheaded or shot at least 49 people in Sirte for alleged crimes including blasphemy, sorcery and spying.

Forces loyal to the UN-backed Government of National Accord have been closing in on IS in the city since the operation began in mid-May.

IS forces are holed up in a dense residential district near the city centre, suggesting that the battle has become a street fight that could devastate the city even further.
Los Angeles (AFP) - Thousands marched in grief and defiance through the streets of Los Angeles for a Gay Pride parade held hours after the deadly Orlando shooting, as police arrested a man over an unrelated plot to attack the California event.

"We won't be silenced and we won't be curtailed no matter what kind of aggression they throw at us," said Marpa Franzoni, 28, as he marched through the heart of Hollywood.

"I'm in shock. It's more important than ever to show our visibility and support for our community."

Acting on reports of a prowler, police in nearby Santa Monica arrested a heavily-armed man who said he wanted to "harm" the Los Angeles parade, taking place under tight security after the massacre at the Pulse club in Florida that left 50 people dead and 53 wounded.

James Howell, 20, was detained at dawn with a car full of weapons, ammunition and powder for explosives, according to police who said he had no apparent connection to the carnage in Orlando.

Authorities said they considered calling off the parade in Los Angeles but decided to go ahead with the festivities with a beefed up police presence.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who marched waving a rainbow-colored flag and carrying a sign that read "We love Orlando," said the violence once again showed the heavy price paid from easily accessible weapons.

"We are here to march, to celebrate, and to mourn," he told the crowd estimated at 150,000 people.

Authorities identified the gunman behind Sunday's attack in Orlando as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, a US citizen of Afghan descent, who is believed to have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State radical group before the massacre.

- 'It's a hate crime' -

"Today, we are heartbroken that so many of our brothers, sisters and allies were lost in this tragic attack," organizers of the Los Angeles parade said in a statement. "As we remember them today at our moment of silence, we must continue to show our pride, not just today but every day."

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Several people said the carnage made them think twice about attending the parade but decided a heavy turnout was the best answer.

"Today is yet another example in a long line of examples of why we need more rights, more protection for the LGBT community and how we need to combat hatred with love," said Matt Reents, 32, public affairs spokesman for the British consulate in Los Angeles, which took part in the event.

One Israeli spectator who survived an attack on a gay pride march in Jerusalem last year in which six people were stabbed, one fatally, said the slaughter in Orlando was clear evidence that no place was safe.

"If we must all live in fear then we just don't leave the house," he said, declining to be identified. "We're just going to live our lives, educate people to not be homophobic, racist, against Arab people, Islamophobic and scared all the time."

Many of those attending the event weren't even aware of the Florida shooting or the number of victims until they arrived.

"We're all still in shock," said attorney Perry Handy, 48. "I've been coming to the parade for 20 years and last night's event was clearly a step backward in our culture."

Kyre Stucklin, 45, lamented that the focus was more on the gunman's possible links to terror groups than on the fact he targeted the LGBT community.

"It's terrible that all they are talking about is international terrorism before they realize it's a hate crime," she said, breaking down in tears. "All they want to talk about is the name of the person who did it.

"Fifty gay and gay-friendly people were killed," she added. "The greatest, worst mass shooting in US history is a hate crime, no matter what else it was, even if it was terrorism."
Los Angeles Pride is continuing their scheduled music festival parade in West Hollywood, California, today, amid the tragic news that 50 were found dead, including the gunman, and 53 injured following a shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday morning.

ET spoke to the Los Angeles Police Department, who said they will be on standby for today's L.A. Pride event, which is headlined by Carly Rae Jepsen, and that if the West Hollywood Sheriff needs assistance from the LAPD, there will be units and officers ready to go.

NEWS: LGBT Groups, Celebs & Public Figures Pay Tribute After 50 Killed in Orlando Nightclub Shooting

Lt. Edward Ramirez from the West Hollywood Sheriff's Department tells ET that "the Los Angeles County sheriff department is fully prepared to respond to a similar situation should the need exist."

"We have instructed all deputies working the city of WeHo to have in their possession all of their response gear, which includes gear to respond to an active shooter situation," Ramirez explained. "We want to ensure the public that we do have a large law enforcement presence, and we encourage them to come out and enjoy the parade, music, food, and festivities."

"Our emergency operation bureau team takes into consideration such unfortunate events as Orlando, and they are prepared when they are making their operations plans for such large events as this parade," he added.

"We stand in solidarity with our community and grieve for the victims and families affected by this horrific and senseless act of violence," the official Twitter account for L.A. Pride wrote on Sunday. "We will observe a moment of silence today along the entire Parade route at 10:45 am."

NEWS: Tony Awards Dedicating Sunday's Ceremony to Victims of Orlando Mass Shooting

We will observe a moment of silence today along the entire Parade route at 10:45 am.  LA PRIDE (@LAPRIDE) June 12, 2016

Our hearts are with you, Orlando. pic.twitter.com/e0WWYUPcmd  LA PRIDE (@LAPRIDE) June 12, 2016

During a press conference in West Hollywood Sunday afternoon, an FBI official said there are no known threats to Los Angeles County. West Hollywood Mayor Eric Garcetti added that "we are safe and protected today," and "we continue to love in the face of hate."

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Belinda Carlisle, lead vocalist of The Go-Go's, took to Twitter to let fans know she would proudly be in attendance.

"LA pride parade today," she wrote. "Proud To be marching with #PFLAG and especially after #Orlando to show #lovewillprevail."

LA pride parade today proud To be marching with #PFLAG and especially after #Orlando to show #lovewillprevail pic.twitter.com/NYjj2EUHmQ  Belinda Carlisle (@belindaofficial) June 12, 2016

ET is attending the parade, which begins at 11 a.m. local time. More updates to come.

As previously reported, the shooting in Florida occurred around 2:20 a.m. local time at Pulse nightclub, described as "Orlando's hottest gay bar." The gunman was identified as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida. Orlando Police Chief John Mina said the suspect was found with a handgun and an assault rifle. According to CBS News, Mateen called 911 at the time of his attack in order to pledge his allegiance to ISIS, and he also mentioned the Boston bombers.

WATCH: 50 Dead in Orlando Gay Bar Shooting

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BAMAKO (Reuters) - A Malian pro-government militia has killed eight Islamist fighters in a gunbattle in northern Mali, two security sources said on Sunday. Clashes between the militia and the Macina Liberation Front erupted on Saturday in Gourma-Rharous village, in the Timbuktu region of Mali which has long been plagued by Islamist militants, a military source and one from the militia told Reuters by telephone. They had no details of how the clashes started. Mali's government and various separatist groups signed a peace deal last year but it has failed to prevent periodic violence in northern Mali by Islamist militants, who have also staged assaults on high profile targets in the capital Bamako, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked the Security Council to add just over 2,500 peacekeepers to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has claimed an attack on two U.N. sites in northern Mali at the end of last month, in which a peacekeeper from China and three civilians were killed and over a dozen others wounded. French forces intervened in 2013 to drive back Islamist fighters that had hijacked the Tuareg uprising to seize Mali's desert north in 2012, but it has since proved difficult to prevent Islamists staging deadly attacks. (Reporting by Tiemoko Diallo; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Ros Russell)
A with guns, ammunition and possible explosives in his car was arrested in Santa Monica, California, early Sunday morning, the Los Angeles Times reported. He was allegedly planning to go to the Los Angeles Pride parade, according to the paper.

Santa Monica police approached the man near Olympic Boulevard and 11th Street after receiving a call about a suspicious individual. After the suspect said he was waiting for a friend, authorities searched his car and found the weapons and ammunition, according to the LA Times. Authorities also found tannerite, a substance that is often used to make pipe bombs. The investigation has been turned over to the FBI, the paper reported.

There is no known link between the man's arrest and the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, which killed at least 50 people and left more than 50 injured.

Los Angeles authorities are beefing up security at the Los Angeles Pride Parade, West Hollywood City Councilwoman Lindsey Horvath said in a statement.

June 12, 2016, 5:35 p.m. Eastern: This story has been updated.
The Santa Monica Police Department arrested a man armed with various weapons and possible explosives on his way to the LA Pride Parade in West Hollywood, Mayor Eric Garcetti confirmed in a press conference on Sunday.

Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrook identified the man as James Howell of Indiana, and wrote on Twitter that he had no known connect to circs in FL. Seabrooks said that the man told an officer of wanting to harm the Pride event as he was being arrested.

At about 4:59 a.m, police responded to a call of a suspected prowler near Olympic Boulevard and 11th Street, according to Santa Monica police. The suspect had been knocking on a residents door, which prompted the call.

Authorities said that Howell was seated in his vehicle, where they recovered three assault rifles, high capacity magazines and ammunition. Officers also discovered a five gallon bucket with chemicals capable of forming an improvised explosive device.

Ed Ramirez of the West Hollywood Sheriffs Station confirmed that the Santa Monica Police Department arrested a suspect early Sunday morning, and that the FBI is assisting in the investigation.

The news came just hours after it was revealed the 50 people are dead after a shooting at an Orlando, Fla., nightclub. The shooting is the deadliest in U.S. history. The shooter was killed after a shootout with police.

In regards to the Santa Monica arrest, Garcetti said We believe it is completely unrelated to the Orlando shooting.

A spokesman for the Sheriffs Department said in a statement that any possible nexus with this individual and the Pride event in West Hollywood is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.



(Pictured: Police on the scene after the Orlando nightclub shooting.)

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Stockholm (AFP) - Mediators on Sunday called striking Swedish pilots and employer representatives to the negotiating table, the SAS airline said on the third day of a walkout over wages that has left 50,000 passengers stranded and cost the carrier millions.

"The mediators have called us to a meeting," SAS spokesman Fredrik Henriksson told AFP, adding that the airline did not yet know whether the Swedish pilots union SPF had agreed to the talks.

SPF did not return AFP's calls for a comment.

"We want to sit down at the table as soon as possible," Henriksson said.

On Sunday, SAS cancelled 220 flights operated by Swedish pilots, affecting 26,000 passengers. On Friday and Saturday, another 24,000 passengers were stranded by cancelled flights.

Flights operated by Danish and Norwegian pilots were running as normal.

The walkout comes during a peak travel season, and has hit charter groups hard.

The strike began on Friday at 6:00 pm (1600 GMT) after the pilots union rejected the mediators' proposal of a 2.2 percent wage increase, insisting instead on a 3.5 percent raise.

The employers' organisation however said the pilots' overall demands, including employment contracts offering greater job security, would entail a 10 percent cost increase.

"That would mean a cost increase of almost 100 million kronor ($12 million, 10.7 million euros) a year for SAS. We can't afford that given the current competition," SAS chief executive Rickard Gustafson told news agency TT.

SAS said it had not calculated how much money it was losing because of the strike, but financial analysts estimated it was costing the airline at least $1.2 million (1.06 million euros) a day.

Analysts said the losses could be even greater if customers were to lose confidence in the airline's dependability because of the strike.

"SAS has to weigh the loss of prestige against the consequences of higher wage costs ... People might be hesitant to choose SAS next time," air industry analyst Matts Hyttinge told TT.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's government said on Sunday it had arrested the leader of a dissident teachers' union for alleged corruption, redoubling efforts to impose its authority on an education reform that has sparked months of protests in the country. Deputy attorney general Gilberto Higuera told a news conference that Ruben Nunez, head one of the most combative factions of the CNTE union, had been held on suspicion of receiving money of illicit origin through the organization. "This is another step in the process of full application of the law, and respect for the rule of law," said Javier Trevino, deputy minister of education. Nunez is secretary general of the CNTE's Section 22 in the southern state of Oaxaca, a longstanding hotbed of resistance to government efforts to reform the education system. According to Higuera, Section 22 made a deal with companies supplying the teachers' union to charge an illegal 3.5 percent commission on sales, money its leaders then used for personal ends and to fund demonstrations by its members. Between 2013 and 2015, more than 24 million pesos ($1.29 million) were acquired by Nunez as part of the scheme, he added. The CNTE was defiant following Nunez's arrest. "We're not going to give up our fight," Section 22 member Juan Garcia told a crowd of supporters in Oaxaca's capital, Oaxaca City. Organizing marches and protests that have frequently caused chaos in the Mexican capital, the CNTE has spearheaded efforts to resist the education reform, in particular its mandate to carry out evaluations of teachers. Critics argue many teachers in the poorer south lack the financial support to meet required standards. President Enrique Pena Nieto has staked his name on the reform, describing it as the most important for Mexico's future. In the past month the government has said over 4,000 teachers in the states of Michoacan, Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas on the Pacific seaboard will be dismissed. Two other senior figures in Nunez's group have also been arrested in recent days, and the three men are in prison in the northern city of Hermosillo, officials said. ($1 = 18.6235 Mexican pesos) (Reporting by Dave Graham, Adriana Barrera and Jose de Jesus Cortes; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)
CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) -- For a ninth-place hitter who hits few home runs, Edgar Michelangeli has taken dramatic long balls and flamboyant bat-flips to new heights in the last few weeks.

The junior third baseman hit a three-run homer and a grand slam in Mami's super regional-winning 9-4 victory over Boston College on Sunday at Mark Light Field.

''I don't know how to answer that question,'' said Michelangeli when asked about the power surge that has seen him hit three of his five career homers since May 26. ''You don't really try to hit home runs. It was a full-count, bases loaded. I knew they didn't want to walk me.''

Miami coach Jim Morris said he had a great feeling after the home run.

''It was like the kiss of death,'' Morris said. ''It was over.''

Miami (50-12) reached the College World Series, which starts June 16 in Omaha, Nebraska, for the second straight season. Miami is the No. 3 national seed and will play Arizona in its first game at Omaha.

Boston College (35-22) fell one win short of what would have been its first trip to the CWS in 49 years. The Eagles, though, are just 2-15 at Miami, and one of those wins came Saturday.

The two home runs resulted in a career-high seven RBIs for Michelangeli. He touched off a near brawl when he celebrated his grand slam - which made the score 9-3 in the seventh inning - by running around the bases with his right hand up.

Just before he crossed the plate, Michelangeli exchanged angry words with BC catcher Nick Sciortino, who took exception to the show-boating. After Michelangeli scored, he ran to where his team had gathered outside the first-base dugout, where there was some brief pushing and shoving with BC players.

Both teams were warned, but there were no ejections.

''It was too loud - I didn't really hear what (Sciortino) said,'' Michelangeli said. ''I was very happy. I had a lot of emotions. I was screaming, 'Let's Go!' That's it.''

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Michelangeli had similar emotions on May 26, when he hit a go-ahead three-run homer against North Carolina State in the ACC Tournament. That was Michelangeli's first experiment with a dramatic bat flip, and it caused a stir.

On Sunday, Michelangeli was relatively calm on his first homer, except for a few high-step moves just before he crossed home plate.

But when he hit his grand slam, Michelangeli enjoyed himself to the max, and the Eagles were obviously not amused.

''You never want to see the benches clear,'' BC coach Mike Gambino said. ''You don't want to see a little scuffle like just happened.

''What we talk about in our program is character, toughness and class. ... I think our boys play hard. I think they play the game the right way. I think they respect the game and their opponents.''

Gambino said the toughness part of his team's mantra came into play when the scuffle broke out, adding that his players ''had each other's backs.''

After the commotion had subsided, Miami closer Bryan Garcia picked up a four-out save. He has 42 career saves, a Miami record, including 18 this year.

NO HAND SHAKES: Due to the scuffle, NCAA officials decided to not have the hand-shake line after the game.

CONTROVERSIAL PLAY: The Canes had a run taken off the board in the fifth inning. With the bases loaded and one out, Chris Barr hit a groundout to first baseman Mitch Bigras, who flipped to second for an out. The relay to first was not in time, allowing a run to apparently score.

But Jacob Heyward's slide into second was ruled to be late, and the inning was ended with no run scoring.

PITCHING CHANGE: Miami scratched sophomore right-hander Jesse Lepore (9-0, 2.20 ERA). Lepore has been battling shoulder tightness since lasting just three innings in his previous start.

He was replaced by freshman right-hander Andrew Cabezas, who lasted 2 2/3 innings (two runs allowed) and 47 pitches. Cabezas had also thrown 37 pitches in relief on Saturday night for a total of 84 tosses in less than 24 hours.
Supermodel Karlie Kloss had a less-than-super experience recently when flying Philippine Airlines. The former Victorias Secret model took to social media to complain about the terrible customer service after missing her flight home.

@flyPAL has the worst customer service of all time, the model shared with 1.28 million followers. Most budget airline. Rude and disrespectful. Shame on you. Her picture, which was originally shared on Snapchat, had text that read, No one flying Philippine Airlines and now I know why.

@flyPAL has the WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE OF ALL TIME. Most BUDGET AIRLINE. Rude & disrespectful. Shame on You @flyPAL pic.twitter.com/5vEul2HyTY Karlie Kloss (@karliekloss) June 7, 2016

The 23-year-old expanded on her upsetting incident: I travel international on a weekly basis and I have never had a worse customer experience than I have tonight. Thanks Philippine Airlines. The airline responded within an hour saying, Hi, Karlie. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience and the disappointment you felt. Please send us your ticket details.

Kloss is one of the many celebrities who has taken on commercial airlines lately. Weatherman Sam Champion got into a Twitter war with American Airlines recently, accusing them of excessive delays and pulling him off a plane. Hey @AmericanAir, he wrote. Delayed twice... now pulled off a flight after waiting all day and not getting home. An exchange ensued on social media between American Airlines and Champion, with fans getting in on the action.

Other classic airline rage moments have come from everyone from A-listers to musicians. Will.i.am lashed out at United, tweeting that the airline had kicked him out of a first class lounge. Amanda Seyfried accused American Airlines of tipping off the paparazzi. Kristen Chenoweth accused a flight attendant on the same airline of becoming verbally abusive. And Alec Baldwin complained about an American Airlines attendant forcing him to turn his phone off before take off.

Story continues

Read on for more epic airline complaints by celebrities.

[View the story "Celebrities Complain About Airlines" on Storify]

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Muslim leaders across the United States are condemning the shooting that killed at least 50 people and injured at least 53 others in Orlando Sunday morning.

The shooter, Omar Mateen, pledged allegiance to ISIS Saturday night during a 911 call, and a news organization affiliated with the terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Nihad Awad, executive director and founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called ISIS "an aberration," and said he had "a word for ISIS and their supporters."

"You do not speak for us. You do not represent us. You are an aberration," he said at a press conference in Washington DC.

He continued: "They never belonged to this beautiful faith. They claim to, but 1.7 billion people are united in rejecting their extremism, their interpretation and their acts of senseless violence."

Meanwhile, the Orlando regional coordinator of the council's Florida chapter issued the following statement:

"We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured. The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence."

Rizwan Jaka, executive officer of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, said his organization condemns the attack and "rejects any possible motive."

"This attack that happened in Orlando should not be used to vilify or stereotype peaceful, law-abiding Muslims in America. Islam absolutely condemns and forbids terrorism and extremism," he said at the Washington press conference.

Here are some of the statements from American Muslim groups:

We are saddened by the news of the shooting in Orlando, Florida and express condolences to the families of the victims. #OrlandoShootings  ISNA HQ (@ISNAHQ) June 12, 2016





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Illustrations: Mallory Heyer.



Growing up as Chinese-Americans in the predominately white Bay Area of the 90s, Jenny and Willa Jin knew their eyelids were different. If only you had double eyelids, it would make your eyes look bigger and youd look better, Willa, now 21, recalls hearing her parents and family members remark.

Double-eyelid surgery, or blepharoplasty, was an oft-discussed subject in the Jin household. Both sisters were born with monolids  an eye shape characterized by a lack of crease. When Jenny, who is now 28, was 18, their mother offered to pay for double-eyelid surgery. I definitely didnt feel like she was pressuring me, says Jenny. It was more giving me the option and letting me know it would be okay if I wanted to.

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So, in the summer of 2006, a few months before Jenny started her freshman year of college, she flew to China, where the procedure is less expensive. (Willa, then 11, came along for moral support.) The two sisters, who once had nearly identical eyes, are now set apart by a subtle piece of skin. Yet Willa, who has often been asked if she wants to get the surgery, too, has never taken the leap. Willa and Jennys story highlights the gray area of family, physical alteration, and cultural pressure.

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According to the sisters, double-eyelid surgery is fully accepted in Asia. "Theres less stigma around plastic surgery and almost none around double-eyelid surgery, says Willa. It was encouraged by my Chinese mother and grandmother. Things may be shifting in the the U.S., too: According to a study conducted by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, blepharoplasty is the second most popular plastic surgery procedure following rhinoplasty (nose surgery) in this country.

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Jennys blepharoplasty lasted no more than an hour and only local anesthesia was used. It was really freaky, she recalls. Imagine being fully conscious and having your eye region numbed, but being fully aware that surgeons were essentially sewing up your eyelids. She went home that same day, swollen lids and all. It looked like someone punched both of my eyes, she says. After a week of healing, her stitches were removed and her new double lids were revealed. I was super excited! I could do so much more with my makeup, she recalls. I still felt like I looked the same, just with a subtle alteration.

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Although monolids are most commonly associated with those of Asian descent, the trait is seen on European and African faces, too. Many critics view double-eyelid surgery as a desire to conform to Western beauty ideals. I dont think my mindset was that I wanted to look less Asian or more white, Jenny says. It was more that I thought double eyelids would enhance my face."

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Still, its hard to ignore the cultural aspect. Like natural hair, stereotypically Asian features, like monolids, arent considered conventionally beautiful by todays standards, says Willa: "It plays into the Western dominance over the rest of the world, not just in beauty standards but in other ways, too. No matter what, even subconsciously, its still an influence."



An awareness of sociocultural pressures have not insulated Willa against them. "I have felt a certain level of shame in my life. Everyone around me was telling me I needed to look a certain way to be beautiful, she says. In high school, when she was first beginning to dip her toes into the makeup world, she was frustrated by the number of YouTube tutorials that catered to double eyelids. I always felt like I wasnt the norm, she says. Today, age and wisdom have informed her decision to abstain from the surgery. Over the past couple of years, Ive become a lot more comfortable with myself, she says. I was born this way, so why should I try to change it?

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For her part, Jenny never regrets her own decision to go under the knife. I had something done to positively enhance my features and its made me more confident, she says. She makes the distinction, though, that surgery is not a panacea for low self-worth. For people who feel like theres something wrong with them, plastic surgery is not going to completely solve your problems, she says. Its more beneficial to people who are already comfortable with themselves, but just want that extra boost.

The question remains: How does Willa feel staring into her own sisters double-lidded eyes from her own unaltered monolids? At this point, I cant remember what Jenny looked like before. I was young, I just accepted it. At the end of the day, she continues, Its a personal choice. If getting double-eyelid surgery makes someone feel more confident, I dont feel like theres anything wrong with that. Who am I to shame someone else for doing something for themselves?



Related: The One Product That Transformed My Brows

By: Mi-Anne Chan
REFRESH FOR UPDATES

CBS says tonights Tony Awards broadcast at 8 pm ET will go on as scheduled, but other networks are busy shuffling primetime schedules for coverage of todays Orlando nightclub shooting. NBC is airing the 2016 Stanley Cup Final at 8 pm, while TNT has postponed the Season 3 premiere of drama The Last Ship. Deadline will update this roster, along with other schedule changes, as the information becomes available.

SUNDAY

ABC:

ABC News David Muir will anchor a special edition of World News Tonight from Orlando tonight and tomorrow.

ABC News will air a one-hour 20/20 Special Edition on the Orlando nightclub shooting tonight, 10 pm ET. Nightclub Massacre: Terror in Orlando will be anchored live by Muir from Orlando and Elizabeth Vargas from New York.

Nightline will have a special digital edition tonight anchored by Byron Pitts from New York, available across ABC News digital and social platforms.

CBS:

Scott Pelley will anchor a one-hour special edition of the CBS Weekend News at 6 pm ET, before boarding a plan for Orlando.

60 Minutes will begin with the latest on the shootings at 7 pm ET/PT.

Fox News:

Fox Report Sunday hosted by Harris Faulkner will cover Orlando at 7 pm ET, with Bill OReillys The OReilly Factor taking over at 8 pm ET. The previously scheduled Legends & Lies at 8 pm has been canceled.

Megyn Kelly will host a special edition of The Kelly File at 9 pm, followed by Geraldo Rivera anchoring a special hour live from Orlando at 10 pm. Justice with Judge Jeanine will air from 11 pm to 1 am, followed by overnight coverage hosted by Heather Childers and Gregg Jarrett.

NBC:

Lester Holt will anchor from Orlando on NBC Nightly News, with correspondents Gabe Gutierrez, Janet Shamlian and Stephanie Gosk reporting from Orlando and justice correspondent Pete Williams from Washington, D.C.

At 7 pm ET/PT, Holt will anchor a Dateline NBC special report from Orlando, with Dennis Murphy, Keith Morrison, Cynthia McFadden, Kate Snow, Harry Smith, Andrea Canning and Josh Mankiewicz filing stories.

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MSNBC

Brian Williams will continue to anchor from NYC throughout the evening.

MONDAY

ABC:

Good Morning America will cover the aftermath and latest updates, anchored by George Stephanopoulos with Amy Robach from Orlando.

David Muir will anchor a special edition of World News Tonight from Orlando.

CBS:

CBS This Morning will cover the latest with Charlie Rose and Gayle King anchoring from Orlando. CBS THIS MORNING (7:00-9:00 AM).

CBSNs Josh Elliott will anchor streaming news service CBSN live from Orlando throughout the day.

Scott Pelley will anchor CBS Evening News at 6:30 pm live from Orlando.

Fox News:

FNCs Bill Hemmer and Greta Van Susteren will anchor Americas Newsroom (9-11 am ET) and On the Record (7-8 pm ET), respectively, from Orlando. Fox & Friends First will begin coverage at 4 am ET.

NBC:

Matt Lauer will anchor Today from Orlando.

MSNBC:

Coverage will continue in the morning with Chris Jansing, Jose Diaz-Balart, Kate Snow, Craig Melvin and Thomas Roberts anchoring from Orlando, with correspondents Sarah Dallof, Gabe Gutierrez and Kerry Sanders in Orlando; Jim Miklaszewski, Kelly ODonnell and Pete Williams in Washington; and Richard Lui is in NYC.

Related stories

50 Dead At Orlando Nightclub In Worst Mass Shooting In U.S. History -- UPDATE

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JK Rowling Mourns Orlando Victim Employed On Harry Potter Universal Ride, Blasts Trump
How to describe our excitement? The thrill, the pride, the tingle of joy, with a woman, finally, in reach of the White House?

Wait. Im talking about 1984, when Geraldine Ferraro ignited waves of euphoria as the first woman to run for vice president on a major party ticket. A Ticket for History, boasted Newsday after Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale selected her as his running mate. Ferraro, a smart and sassy three-term congresswoman  a liberal from a blue-collar district in Queens, New York  seized the moment: American history is about doors being opened, she said, as millions of women inhaled the fresh wind of change flattening two centuries of political barricades.

One week later, her acceptance speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention was electrifying. An ocean of women on the floor of the Moscone Center in San Francisco (wearing coveted floor passes donated by male colleagues, so they could savor the moment) danced in the aisles, turning the presidential nominating convention into a giant group hug. In the New York delegation, leading feminist and three-term Congresswoman Bella Abzug passed out cigars stamped, Its a girl!

Related: Obamas Risky Decision to Endorse Clinton Before FBI Probe Is Concluded

As the ABC News Correspondent assigned to cover this unique race, I kept my own satisfaction in check when Peter Jennings asked me to describe the supercharged crackle on the floor. She is a genuine star, and these people hardly know her, I said into my microphone. Although I keep running into members of Congress who all suddenly insist they are her best friend. From the podium, the 52 woman with the firm voice confirmed the promise in so many hearts:

If we can do this, we can do anything.

As columnist Ellen Goodman noted, breaking the secret for many of us, An unprofessional wave of goose bumps went up my writing arm.

So, how come Im not feeling the tingle today?

Dont get me wrong: Hillary Clinton is more than the right candidate for the Democrats, for America, for a world trying to navigate the critical challenges of the 21st Century. And not because shes the lesser of two evils. Strike that. Theres only one evil force. But somehow, Hill-a-ry doesnt get the emotional juices flowing the way Ger-ry once did.

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Maybe its because Ferraro was our first First, even though her role was secondary. And maybe its because pushing the presumptive button doesnt trigger the same elation as I accept your nomination. Or maybe its because Clintons wonkiness and hyper-caution, shaped by decades of missteps and hostility in public life, just arent as sexy as the short-lived pizzazz from a newcomer known as a housewife from Queens.

And maybe the emotional thing doesnt matter at all. But it surely has a lot to do with the woman thing.

Related: Sanders Wouldnt End His Campaign, So Obama Just Did It for Him

Remember, Ferraro was appointed, after a lobbying effort from her few sisters in the House, by a man who sought a woman at a time when the gender gap was working against the Republicans. It was a leap of hope for the Democrats uphill fight against a very popular Ronald Reagan, and damn the critics who whined about pandering. Half the human race is not a special interest, Gloria Steinem explained.

Thats largely how Ferraro campaigned: This candidacy is not just a symbol, its a breakthrough, she said repeatedly. "It's not just a statement: It's a bond between women all over America." That line guaranteed cheers on the stump, from women  and men  of both parties, who came to be part of the history. They brought their children, mostly little girls, and held them up during rally after rally to show them the possibilities for their own future.

Compare the Clinton campaign.

Shes been elected by her party because her credentials are catnip for anyone who cares about experience, because shes got plans and policies and a vision that might just work. And while shes a first class feminist who has fought for womens rights and human rights  a moral equivalency she first advocated nearly two decades ago  she stopped pitching her historical case when it wasnt working. So, when Donald Trump accused her of playing the womans card, I had no idea what he was talking about, other than his own inability to play with a full deck. Of course, Clinton is running as a woman. Whats her alternative? But she doesnt bring it up so much now because voters dont seem to care so much.

Ironically, shes the victim of her own, and Ferraros, success.

Related: The Democrats Big Guns All Train Their Fire on Trump

In the Reagan Republic of 1984, Ferraros previously unthinkable candidacy was about possibilities. Wed welcomed one female Supreme Court justice, several female NASA astronauts, and yes, a few lonely voices in history, from Belva Lockwood and Victoria Woodhull during the suffrage years, to last centurys Margaret Chase Smith and Shirley Chisholm, who had launched brave little test runs for President. But never before had someone in a skirt actually been on a major party ticket, or on the debate stage, right up there with the potential Prez. A pro-choice Catholic, she was the first major politician to talk about abortion and credibly say, If I were pregnant

It was, we said, time.

Ultimately, the ecstasy didnt translate into votes. The Democrats lost every state but Minnesota in 1984. And while folks generally dont cast their ballots on vice presidential candidates, Ferraros lack of foreign policy experience, and the allegations about her husbands business dealings didnt help. (Her husband, John Zaccaro, pled guilty to a misdemeanor fraud charge in 1985 and was found not guilty on charges of extortion in 1987). She had to defend hisdecision about releasing tax returns.

Ferraro also had to prove that femininity was no barrier to leadership. When asked on NBC's Meet the Press, Could you push the nuclear button?,Ferraro responded simply and strongly: "I can do whatever is necessary to protect the security of this country." And during her debate with George H.W. Bush, she found the sitting vice president patronizing when he offered, Let me help you with the difference about a Middle East issue. That was just after Barbara Bush had publicly called Ferraro, I cant say it, but it rhymes with witch.

It wasnt a smooth ride. But being on the ticket broke a barrier for more female presidential wannabes. The breathtaking possibility became a given. And while Sarah Palin briefly turned our feminist dream into a joke, the fact remains: if Palin could run, couldnt anyone?

Related: The Strategy That Gave Hillary Clinton the Democratic Nomination

Now, it isnt just anyone, it is Hillary Clinton, whose unlikely path from First Lady to U.S. Senator to Secretary of State, makes her a candidate like no other. We no longer say, Isnt it time? We say, Isnt it time, already? Shouldnt this have happened already? What are we waiting for?

I wont bother listing all the double standards Clinton has had to duck. But look where we are: shes debated more men than could ever qualify for the Oxford, sometimes three in an evening; shes negotiated the Middle East treaties that once were created by men; and shes the one insisting her likely male opponent cannot be trusted with the nuclear codes.

No, Clinton is not a saint. But we dont need a saint. And Im sorry that surveys say people dont find her likable, but politics is the art of the possible, not the lovable. And that speaking voice? As New York Times columnist Gail Collins says, she is the only candidate who has been simultaneously criticized for yelling and for putting people to sleep.

Give me a break.

In 1984, we thought the millennium had arrived. In fact, it took six more election cycles to get a woman on the ticket  but it was Palin. Two more cycles, and here we are.

Weve gone from begging, then settling, for a room of our own to demanding the keys for, then kicking in the doors to all those other rooms; from banging our heads against all those obstructive glass ceilings to slipping through the 18 million cracks leading to higher floors and the world of opportunity. Once, like Little Lulu, we fumed at being locked out of the clubhouse where Tubby had scrawled No Girls Allowed; now, we claim the White House, where anatomy is no longer destiny.

So, excuse me if theres no time for goosebumps, not right now. Theres too much work to do. But come next January, when the hand on the Bible is one that has struggled with pantyhose and changed diapers and signed treaties, Im guessing that the electricity will start to flow again. I can almost feel it now.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Following the mass shooting in an Orlando LGBT nightclub that left 50 people dead, the New York Police Department issued a statement on how it's making safety preparations following the worst mass shooting in American history.

"We are in contact with law enforcement authorities in Florida, as well as the FBI, and we are closely monitoring developments in the investigation. Meanwhile the NYPD has placed our Patrol and Counter-terrorism resources, including CRC, SRG and ESU personnel, on alert pending further information," the NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Public Information said in a statement.

Shooting in Orlando Nightclub Leaves 50 Dead

The Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen -- who opened fire at the LBGT nightclub Pulse around 2 a.m. on June 12 -- seems to have been specifically targeting LGBT people. Speaking to NBC News after the incident, Mateen's father shared a recollection of his son becoming enraged at the sight of two men kissing in Miami a few months ago. According to CNN, the gunman called 911 during his attack to pledge his allegiance to ISIS. The extremist Islamic organization has made a point of killing gay people in the past.

As June is National Pride Month, Pride parades in major U.S. cities are ongoing. In an incident that is believed to be unrelated, Santa Monica police stopped a man driving with an assault rifle and ammunition who reportedly said he was in L.A. for the Pride festival in West Hollywood, which runs June 10-13. Billboard reached out to Santa Monica police for further details.
Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama condemned the "horrific massacre" of 50 revelers at an Orlando nightclub Sunday, an attack that is already fueling rows over guns, gay rights and how to defeat the Islamic State group.

Fifty people were killed and 53 others wounded during a late-night assault on "Pulse," a nightclub popular with Florida's gay community.

Police have pinned the slaughter on 29-year-old Omar Mateen, a son of Afghan immigrants who is said to have pledged allegiance to IS before going on a rampage with an assault rifle.

"This was an act of terror and an act of hate," Obama said in a somber White House address to mark the worst mass shooting in US history.

"The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends, to dance, sing and live."

"As Americans, we are united in grief, in outrage, and in resolve to defend our people," Obama said.

During his eight years in office, Obama has had to appear publicly after more than a dozen mass shootings.

He has called the slaying of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, the worst day of his presidency.

But this latest shooting comes in the middle of a vitriol-filled campaign to see who will replace Obama in the white House next year.

An Islamic State-inspired attack in San Bernardino, California in 2015 prompted Republican White House hopeful Donald Trump to call for a blanket ban on Muslims entering the United States.

That call was pilloried by many as racist and unconstitutional, but it propelled Trump -- now the Republican party nominee -- to center stage in the 2016 race.

The identity of the presumed Orlando shooter, his target and the fact that his weapons were legally purchased, will only fan the political flames.

Trump is expected to focus a speech Monday on national security, rather than the alleged shortcomings of his rival Hillary Clinton as planned.

Meanwhile, a first joint campaign event between Democratic nominee Clinton and Obama, scheduled for Wednesday, has been postponed.

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In his statement, Obama was careful not to inject too much politics into the issue.

"We've reached no definitive judgment on the precise motivations of the killer," he added, saying that the FBI was nonetheless threating the attack as an "act of terror."

"We must spare no effort to determine what, if any, inspiration or association this killer may have had with terrorist groups."

- Trump slams Obama -

Trump was quick to point out that Obama has repeatedly refused to associate such attacks with Islam.

"Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!" he said on Twitter.

The last week had offered Obama a rare glimmer of hope in the fight against the Islamic State, with the group under series pressure in Libya and Syria.

Democrats have honed in on evidence that Mateen bought two weapons legally in recent days to call for tighter gun control.

"The shooter was apparently armed with a hand gun and a powerful assault rifle," Obama said.

"This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub."

"We have to decide if that's the kind of country we want to be. And to actively do nothing is a decision as well."

The flag at the White House was lowered to half-staff and Obama ordered all government buildings to do the same.
Paris (AFP) - Shocked by the Orlando massacre, gays around the world on Monday flocked to vigils for the victims of one of the deadliest attacks in the history of the gay rights movement.

From Berlin to Bangkok, gay and lesbian groups organised gatherings in solidarity with Americans after Sunday's massacre at a gay nightclub that left 49 people dead in the worst mass shooting in modern US history.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge was lit with the rainbow colours of the gay community flag as hundreds gathered to condemn terror and homophobia.

"This could have happened anywhere," Australian Paul Savage told AFP at a candlelit vigil for the victims on the busy strip that hosts Sydney's annual Mardi Gras pride march.

"He could easily have walked into a bar in Sydney," he said, pointing out that Australia's tighter gun laws were "much more helpful" in preventing the mass shootings that claim hundreds of lives each year in the United States.

- 'Could have been us' -

In Berlin, more than 100 people gathered outside the US embassy to lay flowers, light candles and wave rainbow flags.

Helmut Metzner, a leading member of the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany, condemned what he called an attack on the global gay "family".

"It could have hit any single one of us," he told AFP, adding: "We must stand united and defend our lifestyle and not back down. That is what the terrorists want, and that's a favour we won't do them."

US President Barack Obama denounced the attack at the Pulse nightclub by slain shooter Omar Mateen, which also wounded 53, as "an act of terror and an act of hate".

In an outpouring of solidarity similar to that seen after the Paris and Brussels attacks, social media were awash with messages of support for the families of the victims.

Using hashtags such as #loveislove or #lovewins, many shared images of ribbons -- some black, others carrying the Stars and the Stripes of the US flag on one side and rainbow colours on the other.

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Global landmarks were swathed in the colours of the rainbow, with Paris' Eiffel Tower set to follow suit Monday night after similar displays lit up New York's One World Trade Center and Sydney's iconic bridge.

"Paris is with Orlando," tweeted Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, which is still recovering from the November jihadist attacks in which 130 people were killed.

The Islamic State group, which was behind the Paris and Brussels attacks, also claimed responsibility for the Florida bloodshed.

- 'Stop hate' -

Whether Mateen, a US national of Afghan origin who had homophobic tendencies, was part of a wider jihadist conspiracy, as claimed by IS, remains unclear.

German lawmaker Cem Ozdemir, co-chair of the left-leaning Greens Party, told AFP that whatever the outcome of the investigation, "Islamism and homophobia are two sides of the same coin."

In one of several vigils across the United States, hundreds gathered in New York's Greenwich Village on Sunday to leave flowers beside a sign reading "Stop Hate".

Despite the defiant tone struck at many of the gatherings, some people expressed fear.

"It does scare me a bit, being gay and working in a gay bar," admitted Saleem Khan, a 30-year-old barman in London's Soho district, the heart of the city's gay scene.

Obama said the FBI was investigating the latest in a string of mass gun killings in the United States "as an act of terrorism".

French President Francois Hollande reacted "with horror" to the attack, which threatens to increase anti-migrant hostility in Europe where populist xenophobic parties are on the rise as the continent struggles with its worst migration crisis since World War II.

The prime minister of Belgium, where 32 people were killed in jihadist attacks on Brussels' airport and metro in March, also sent his condolences.

And German Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed for tolerance.

"Although such deadly attacks cause profound sadness in us, we are resolved to continue with our open and tolerant lifestyle," she said on the sidelines of a visit to China.

Pope Francis expressed shock at Mateen's "homicidal folly and senseless hatred".

The condemnation was echoed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has cracked down on gay pride events.

"Nothing can justify killing of civilians," President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan tweeted.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After Sunday's shooting in Florida, President Barack Obama has postponed a trip on Wednesday to Green Bay, Wisconsin, in which he would have participated in a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton, the White House said on Sunday.

At least 50 people were killed in the shooting, the deadliest in U.S. history. The rally had been planned to be Obama's first joint appearance with Clinton since he endorsed her for president.

Democrat Hillary Clinton has postponed the campaign rally scheduled for Wednesday in Wisconsin.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Chris Reese)
(Valve)

OG has done it again. After coming into the Manila Major with one of this years majors under their belt  they won at Frankfurt back in November  the European roster stormed through both the group and bracket stages, taking home 1st place and the $1.11 million prize. They took down the tournament favorites Team Liquid in the grand finals.

Interestingly, this is the exact same roster that has been in place since after The International 2015. While most teams have shifted their lineups around drastically in the past year, OG seems committed to continuing their hot streak with the exact same players theyve been playing with for the last 9 months.

As for Team Liquid, Manila marks the second major in a row in which theyve finished in 2nd place. At both Manila and Shanghai, they fought their way back through the lower bracket, only to fall 1-3 in the grand finals. Expect them to play hungry and angry (hangry?) once The International 2016 rolls around in August.

Keep your eye on Yahoo Esports for more breakdowns of the Manila Major.

Taylor Cocke, for one, welcomes his new European Dota 2 overlords. Follow him on Twitter @taylorcocke.
The first episode of ESPNs OJ: Made in America, focuses on OJ Simpsons early years, and only hints at the tragedy to come: and the trial that involved Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro, Marcia Clark, Chris Darden, F. Lee Bailey, Judge Lance Ito, Kato Kaelin, Mark Fuhrman and many more.

He Married His Best Friends Girlfriend

Childhood friend Joe Bell recalls how Simpson stole his best friends girl  convincing his first wife Marguerite to marry him instead of Al AC Cowlings.

Also Read: OJ Simpson's Robbery Sentence Too Harsh, Says DA in Murder Case

Cowlings, of course, was the endlessly supportive friend who took the wheel as Simpson fled police in the white Bronco.

Im Not Black. Im OJ.

Sociologist Harry Edwards  featured prominently in Made in America  tried in the late 60s to get black athletes to take political stands.

Also Read: Here's OJ Simpson's New Mug Shot (Photo)

We were trying to get black athletes to understand they have a role in the current Civil Right movement, Edwards said. His response was, Im not black. Im OJ.

Though Simpson was skeptical of the gesture at the 68 Olympics, one of the jurors in his case  a former Black Panther  raised a fist to Simpson after finding him not guilty of murder. (The moment was dramatized in The People v OJ Simpson)

Theres also the story of his first date with Nicole Brown Simpson. She and her friend Ron Goldman were murdered in 1994, and Simpson was acquitted.
At least 50 people are dead and more than 50 others are injured after a gunman entered Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and opened fire, first on patrons and staff and then on responding law enforcement personnel.

Law enforcement sources told CBS News they have identified the suspect as Omar Mateen, a U.S. citizen from Port St. Lucie, Florida, who was born to Afghan parents in 1986. The LA Times' Matt Pearce confirmed authorities had given the name to the paper's D.C. bureau as well.

Orlando gunman tentatively identified as Omar Mateen, 29, a U.S. law enforcement officials tells my colleagues in our Washington bureau.

In an interview with NBC News, the suspect's father, Mir Seddique, apologized and said the massacre had "nothing to do with religion." Instead, he said, the shooting may be tied to an incident several months ago, when Mateen became enraged upon seeing two men kissing in Miami.

WATCH: Father of shooter in Orlando club tells NBC News: "We are apologizing for the whole incident"https://amp.twimg.com/v/a1f07521-0c53-4010-b539-d7bf433f0361 ...

"At this point, this is an incident, as I can see it, we can certainly classify as a domestic terror incident," Orange County Sheriff's Office spokesman Jerry Demings said, according to CBS News.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

June 12, 2016, 11:10 a.m. Eastern: This story has been updated.

Correction: June 12, 2016

A previous version of this story misidentified the news outlet to which Mir Seddique gave his statement. That outlet is NBC News.
The Once Upon a Time cast is having a blast on summer vacation

The Once Upon a Time cast is having a blast on summer vacation

Summer hiatus for the Once Upon a Time cast isnt what you think: Its not full of hours lost to margaritas on the beach, and binging new releases on Netflix. Instead, the summer schedules for the cast members of ABCs hit show are keeping them seriously busy! Heres a breakdown of their impressive, busy plans.

For Sean Maguire and Colin ODonoghue, their roles as Robin Hood and Captain Hook have spilled their summer plans, literally. Maguire and DDonoghue have been hard at work brewing their personal brand of craft beer, By Hook or By Crook. Maguire has been documenting their foray into craft brewing on his Instagram account.

The making of "By hook or by crook" part 4 A video posted by Sean Maguire (@iamseanmaguire) on Jun 7, 2016 at 1:21pm PDT

The making of hook or by crook part 2 A video posted by Sean Maguire (@iamseanmaguire) on Jun 6, 2016 at 1:30pm PDT

Meanwhile, Jennifer Morrison is making her directorial debut with a film called Sun Dogs, which according to Deadline is about a young misfit, Ned (Michael Angarano), in his repeated failed attempts to join the Marines and serve his country.

Day 1 #sundogs A photo posted by jenmorrisonlive (@jenmorrisonlive) on Jun 4, 2016 at 4:44am PDT

This summer is also baby time for three other Once Upon a Time cast members. Ginnifer Goodwin and Josh Dallas have just welcomed a new son, Hugo Wilson, to their family. Hugo is the couples second son together, they also have a two year-old son named Oliver Finlay. Congrats to Prince Charming and Snow White!

And for Belle French, played by Australian actress Emilie de Ravin, this summer will be full of lots of cute photos and sleepless nights. The 34-year-old actress, along with her partner Eric Bilitch, recently welcomed her first child, a wonderful little girl named Vera.

Hello world! Thank you for a wonderful first month. Everything is amazing here! Love, Vera A photo posted by Emilie de Ravin (@emiliede_ravin) on Apr 12, 2016 at 11:13pm PDT

And lastly, Robert Carlyle, who plays Mr. Gold, is having a seriously busy summer reprising his role as Francis Begbie in Trainspotting 2 . Its been 20 years since the first Trainspotting was released, but when its a good story, better late than never.

Season 6 of Once Upon a Time returns to ABC this fall, and lets hope the stars get some time to rest (and try that homebrew) before they come back!

The post The Once Upon a Time cast is having a blast on summer vacation appeared first on HelloGiggles.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - An explosion in central Istanbul killed one person and injured another on Sunday after what could have been a gas leak, CNN Turk reported. Emergency crews found the body of a street vendor at the scene in an apartment block in the upscale Cihangir neighborhood, the channel said. A taxi driver was badly hurt when falling cement hit his car, it added. It was too early to say what caused the explosion which also sparked a fire in the unoccupied flat, the TV station said. Istanbul and the capital Ankara have been rocked by a series of bomb attacks in recent months blamed on Islamic State and the armed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that have killed hundreds of people. Turkey is battling insurgencies by both groups. (Reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
Friends and family members embrace outside Orlando police headquarters on Sunday, after a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub, which left at least 50 people dead. (Steve Nesius/Reuters)

Police have confirmed that 50 people were killed in the Sunday morning shooting rampage at an Orlando nightclub, making it the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

The gunman, identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, opened fire inside the popular gay club Pulse in Orlando at around 2 a.m. According to police, the shooting  which authorities described as a domestic terror attack  quickly turned into a hostage situation, as the 300-plus people inside the club tried to escape.

Mateen was ultimately killed by SWAT team officers approximately three hours after he began shooting.

Pulse Shooting: The shooter inside the club is dead.  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

It was initially reported that 20 people had been killed in the attack, but at a news conference later Sunday morning, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said the death toll was approximately 50, in addition to Mateen.

Slideshow: Shooting rampage at Florida nightclub >>>

The U.S. has a long history of mass shootings. Prior to Sundays attack in Orlando, the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting had been the deadliest, with 32 fatalities in addition to the shooter.

(AP/Yahoo News)

Other mass shootings in recent years include the 1999 attack that left 13 dead at Columbine High School in Colorado; the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that killed 26; the June 2015 shooting spree that killed nine people at a church in South Carolina; and the December 2015 attack at a holiday party in San Bernardino, Calif., that left 14 dead.





Follow here for live updates on the Orlando nightclub shooting.
By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) - The co-owner of Pulse, the Orlando gay nightclub that became the scene of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history on Sunday, founded the club to honor her brother who died of AIDS and to support the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Barbara Poma, whose brother died in 1991, opened Pulse in 2004 with business partner Ron Legler. The venue promoted gay rights and put on events supporting happenings in the gay community, ranging from Come Out with Pride to Gay Games, according to the club's website.

Pulse's patrons and others in Orlando's gay community were reeling on Sunday after a gunman killed 50 people and wounded 53 others overnight in what police said was a targeted, well-planned attack.

The shooter, who held off police for three hours before a SWAT team killed him, was identified as Omar S. Mateen, a Florida resident who might have had leanings toward Islamic State militants, a senior FBI official said.

Pulse is one of the Florida city's five gay bars, a hub for Latin music, drag performances, diva nights, bar dancers, drinks served by muscular bartenders and wild fun.

"This is a week I'll be going to funerals all week long. I don't even know who was there, but I know I'll know them," said Raymond Michael Sharpe, 55, a bartender at another gay bar, who has spoken to Pulse employees and patrons who survived the shooting.

He said Poma is alive, as was Pulse manager Cindy Barbalock, who got out and got home. Reuters was not able to reach Poma by phone on Sunday and Legler declined to speak when he was contacted.

Hundreds of people sent prayers, thoughts and condolences on the club's Facebook site.

Pulse bartender Juan Orrego said on his Facebook page: "I'm home. OK. I only got shot in the leg. Thank u everybody for your prayers."

The shooting happened at 2:00 a.m., toward the end of one of the club's popular Latin nights, with bachata, merengue and salsa music. Many of the family members seeking their loved ones at local hospitals after the shooting were Hispanic.

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One regular said he lost friends who were frequent patrons.

"There were faces we had seen all the time," Luis Burbano told CNN, describing how he and his friends got out alive and tried to help the wounded. "We heard about mutual friends who did not make it."

"One of our longtime bartender friends was in a small little fitting room with 10 other people, hiding in there, waiting for a miracle, waiting for someone to come in and rescue them."

(Additional reporting by Justin Madden in Chicago; Writing by Fiona Ortiz in Chicago; Editing by Frank McGurty and Nick Zieminski)
Orlando (AFP) - The father of the suspected gunman in Sunday's Orlando mass shooting said on Sunday he believed his son was motivated by hatred of gays -- not by his Muslim religion.

"This had nothing to do with religion," Mir Seddique told NBC News. He said his son, Omar Mateen, recently lashed out in his presence after witnessing a gay couple embracing in downtown Miami, and suggested the incident may have triggered the atrocity.

"He saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry," Seddique told the network.
A gunmans attack on the Pulse Orlando gay nightclub early Sunday left 50 people dead, police said, which makes it the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

The shooter, Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida., opened fire with an assault-type rifle and a handgun at the crowded club at about 2 a.m. Sunday. In addition to the 50 people who were killed, an additional 53 were injured, officials said at a press conference.

The death toll makes the attack deadlier than the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, in which student Seung-Hui Cho shot 32 people to death before killing himself, and the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., in which gunman Adam Lanza killed 27 people before killing himself.

Here is a list of Americas deadliest mass shootings.

50 people, June 12, 2016 After a gunman opened fire at a prominent gay club in Orlando early on Sunday morning, 50 people were killed and 53 injured. Police killed the shooter after he held some locals in the club hostage.

32 people, April 17, 2007 A 23-year-old student at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia killed 32 people in shooting spree in two locations. The shooter, Seung-Hui Cho pre-recorded a video of him ranting about rich brats and complaining about being bullied. Cho killed himself on the scene.

27 people, December 14, 2012 20-year-0ld Adam Lanza gunned down 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, as well as six adults and school staff before killing himself. Lanza committed suicide.

23 people, October 16, 1991 George Hennard crashed his pickup truck through the walls of Lubys Cafeteria, a packed restaurant in Killeen, Texas. The 35-year-old then shot and killed 23 people before killing himself. A former roommate said he hated blacks, Hispanics, gays and said women were snakes.

21 people, July 18, 1984 A security guard fired from his job entered a McDonalds in San Ysidro, California with a shotgun and killed 21 employees and customers, including children. The guard, 41-year-old James Huberty, was killed by a police sniper an hour after he started shooting.

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18 people, August 1, 1966 A 25-year-old former marine, Charles Joseph Whitman, went to the top of a tower at the University of Texas at Austin shortly after killing his wife and mother, and shot and killed 16 people on the campus , wounding 30. He was then killed by a police officer.

14 people, December 2, 2015 Husband-and-wife couple Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik opened fire at an employee gathering in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people. Both were radicalized in the United States and discussed jihad in private messages to each other.

14 people, August 20, 1986 A part-time mail carrier in Edmond Oklahoma, Patrick Henry Sherrill, armed with three handguns, kills 14 postal workers 10 minutes before killing himself.

13 people, November 5, 2009 Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people and injured 32 in a shooting at Fort Hood, Texas during a shooting rampage. He was caught and sentenced to death.

13 people, April 20, 1999 Students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, shot and kill 12 other students and a teacher. They committed suicide in the schools library.

13 people, February 18, 1983 Three men robbed 14 people in a gambling club in Seattle, shooting each of them in the head and killing 13. Two of them were were convicted of murder, while the third was convicted of robbery and second-degree assault and deported to Hong Kong in 2014.

13 people, September 25, 1982 40-year-old prison guard and army veteran George Banks killed 13 people in Wilkes-Barr, Pennsylvania, including five of his own children. He was sentenced to death but the ruling was overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court after finding Banks mentally unfit.

13 killed, September 5, 1949 A 28-year-old World War II veteran named Howard Unruh killed 13 people on the street of Camden, New Jersey with a German Luger pistol. He was found insane sent to a mental institution.

12 people, September 16, 2013 James Holmes, a 24-year-old recent neuroscience PhD at the University of Colorado, killed 12 people and wounded 58 in a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Holmes is serving life in prison without parole.

12 people, July 29, 1999 44-year-old Mark Barton of Atlanta killed his wife and two children at his Atlanta home, then opened fire in two separate stock brokerage houses, killing nine people and wounding 12.

12 people, September 16, 2013 Aaron Alexis, a 34-year-old former Navy officer shot and killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard.
The entertainment industry was quick to react to the Sunday morning mass shooting at gay nightclub Pulse Orlando. Fifty people were killed and 53 more injured, making the "domestic terror incident," as authorities are classifying the tragedy, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

The shooting has rocked the nation and the LGBT community, with many politicians, including presumptive Democratic and Republican presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and other public figures also sharing their thoughts on social media.

The Pulse massacre took place just hours before the Tony awards in New York, which will be dedicated to the victims of the shooting. The awards show's Twitter account expressed the organization's sympathy for those affected. Meanwhile, Laura Benanti, set to perform on Sunday's show, declared that her performance would serve as an additional tribute. "Tonight, every note I sing will be in remembrance of the lives taken in Orlando," she wrote on social media.

Keep track of THR's live updates on the news story here and read reactions from Hollywood stars and public figures below.

Read More: 50 Killed, 53 Injured in Orlando Gay Nightclub Shooting; Largest Mass Shooting in U.S. History

Our thoughts are with the families and friends of those affected. The Tony Awards dedicate tonight's ceremony to them. (2/2)

- The Tony Awards (@TheTonyAwards) June 12, 2016

Our hearts are heavy for the unimaginable tragedy that happened last night in Orlando. (1/2)

- The Tony Awards (@TheTonyAwards) June 12, 2016

Tonight, every note I sing will be in remembrance of the lives taken in Orlando.

- Laura Benanti (@LauraBenanti) June 12, 2016

I am sickened to awake to the horrific news out of #Orlando. Smiling, happy, dancing people gunned down for no reason. Hug your friends. /p> - Ross Mathews (@helloross) June 12, 2016

Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H

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- Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Just heard about the horrifying attack in Florida. My love and prayers go out to our brothers and sisters. Heartbreaking.

- Patricia Arquette (@PattyArquette) June 12, 2016

Our hearts go out to the victims of the unspeakable tragedy in #Orlando, their families and all who grieve with them.

- Tim Cook (@tim_cook) June 12, 2016

Another unthinkable mass shooting. A never ending nightmare. We must find a way to stop the hate. Love is the only way.

- Cheyenne Jackson (@cheyennejackson) June 12, 2016

I am so sad and heartbroken over the tragedy in #Orlando. My thoughts and prayers are with you.

- Billy Ray Cyrus (@billyraycyrus) June 12, 2016

Every time I log on....when does it end? Praying for Orlando...

- Zendaya (@Zendaya) June 12, 2016

My heart breaks for the lives lost in Orlando. Just breaks.

- Uzo Aduba (@UzoAduba) June 12, 2016

My heart goes out to all those affected by this terrible tragedy in Orlando. There are no words. Sending love and prayers.

- Matt Bomer (@MattBomer) June 12, 2016

Horrified by the mass shooting in Orlando. When will we do something to prevent these killing sprees?

- John Legend (@johnlegend) June 12, 2016

Our love and prayers are not enough. GUN. CONTROL. NOW. #LGBTPOWER #Orlando

- Dustin Lance Black (@DLanceBlack) June 12, 2016

Very difficult to work this morning. My heart, my soul and my anger are in #Orlando.

- Dustin Lance Black (@DLanceBlack) June 12, 2016

Devastated by the news out of FL. Whatever the madness behind this, let us all come together first to support victims & their loved ones.

- George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) June 12, 2016

We all form the Pulse of America. #OnePulse pic.twitter.com/braFLJOHFM

- George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) June 12, 2016

To help support the victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting, there is now a gofundme page: https://t.co/UGbgnNWS5m

- George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) June 12, 2016

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

We will observe a moment of silence today along the entire Parade route at 10:45 am.

- LA PRIDE (@LAPRIDE) June 12, 2016

We stand in solidarity with our community and grieve for the victims and families affected by this horrific and senseless act of violence.

- LA PRIDE (@LAPRIDE) June 12, 2016

There's enough hate in this world. It's just too much. Let people live their lives. Let them love. Enough hate. Let the madness end now.

- Paul Feig (@paulfeig) June 12, 2016

When does this end? When do we demand a change? When do we finally wake up from this God awful nightmare? https://t.co/wJICoKBQ96

- Audra McDonald (@AudraEqualityMc) June 12, 2016

.@HRC will be marching in silence at #LAPRIDE today as we mourn the tragedy in #Orlando.

- Chad Griffin (@ChadHGriffin) June 12, 2016

.@HRC is devastated by the tragic act of violence in #orlando. #loveconquershate https://t.co/EtMCbKZ6Fc pic.twitter.com/nggxquZSoQ

- HumanRightsCampaign (@HRC) June 12, 2016

I can't. No words, too much sorrow. #stoptheviolence #stopthehate #orlando

- Constance Zimmer (@ConstanceZimmer) June 12, 2016

Oh God. I just woke up to the news about #Orlando. My heart has just been kicked. I am so FUCKING tired of mass shootings. E-N-O-U-G-H!!!!

- Josh Gad (@joshgad) June 12, 2016

Take time to mourn those lost in #Orlando & pray for their families.Terror & violence have no place in our world. We must fight it together.

- John Kasich (@JohnKasich) June 12, 2016

Sobbing.

- Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) June 12, 2016

What...keeping Orlando in my prayers!! Foreal though this is sick smh

- Jeremy Lin (@JLin7) June 12, 2016

My heart aches to release such a sad statement. Orlando LGBT community and leaders being held in our prayers! #hope pic.twitter.com/btw7HZCPeG

- Stuart Milk (@StuartMilk) June 12, 2016

Heartbroken for the devastating loss of life in Orlando. When will we change our guns laws! Praying for the victims and families.

- Billie Jean King (@BillieJeanKing) June 12, 2016

Our hearts break for the victims and families of this horrific act of violence. We stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ community in #Orlando.

- GLAAD (@glaad) June 12, 2016

I am gay and I am not afraid. Love conquers all. #PrayforOrlando

- Ricky Martin (@ricky_martin) June 12, 2016

W/ every slur we throw about so carelessly& every turned cheek we possess,these crimes will continue.#PrayForOrlando pic.twitter.com/MrxWHxaJll

- Jussie Smollett (@JussieSmollett) June 12, 2016

We aren't afraid. pic.twitter.com/BmY1FGuhyA

- Rob McElhenney (@RMcElhenney) June 12, 2016

I'm truly at a loss for words. To everyone in Orlando affected by this massacre, my thoughts, love, & prayers are with u

- Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) June 12, 2016

Also, it's #LaPride today. be safe, proud and full of love. They will never win. Really wish I could be there with y'all. I love you.

- Ariana Grande (@ArianaGrande) June 12, 2016

Hearing about this senseless & horrific tragedy in #Orlando. Heartbroken for my LGBTQ brothers & sisters. Time for change. #GunControlNow

- Jesse Tyler Ferguson (@jessetyler) June 12, 2016

I'm gutted over the news in Orlando- the tears will not stop. My thoughts are w my gay brothers and sisters and their families.

- Lance Bass (@LanceBass) June 12, 2016

Hate is a poison. It destroys everything it touches & undermines our most precious American value: freedom. pic.twitter.com/jiVYXDosEb

- Aisha Tyler (@aishatyler) June 12, 2016

pic.twitter.com/D7HSofDxLK

- Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) June 12, 2016

NEW YORK: There will be a vigil for the victims of the terror attack in Orlando at 6 PM tonight outside the Stonewell Inn.

- Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) June 12, 2016

Devastated for our friends and family in the queer community. Our hearts, our anger, our tears are for you today. pic.twitter.com/l0Yw97XcPK

- Tegan and Sara (@teganandsara) June 12, 2016

Paris stands with #Orlando, we are thinking of you #lovewins pic.twitter.com/uYJrSRW0Ob

- Paris (@Paris) June 12, 2016

So sad about this tragic news #OrlandoShooting praying for the families of those who lost loved ones.

- Danielle Brooks (@thedanieb) June 12, 2016

My is breaking for you #Orlando! Sending love to all those affected by this ridiculous violence and... (1/2) pic.twitter.com/oQ2mOLzuJN

- Enrique Iglesias (@enriqueiglesias) June 12, 2016

pic.twitter.com/eE8ULMPYX8

- Nigella Lawson (@Nigella_Lawson) June 12, 2016

No words for more senseless killing. #love to all the families suffering today. #Orlando pic.twitter.com/xPJVAmkYOr

- Minnie Driver (@driverminnie) June 12, 2016

#orlando #lovewins pic.twitter.com/KrdBEKQaMh

- Frankie James Grande (@FrankieJGrande) June 12, 2016

Love is the weapon of the brave ones. Let's learn to use it.#LoveIsLove #PrayForOrlando pic.twitter.com/0Lv0svBv4n

- Antonio Banderas (@antoniobanderas) June 12, 2016

I pray for all the victims families during this shooting epidemic. That their pain be met with compassion and support from the world.

- Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) June 12, 2016

In solidarity with the #city of #Orlando #lovewins pic.twitter.com/riAoH4tXLs

- Tel Aviv (@TelAviv) June 12, 2016

How many people have to die for the Republicans to stop blocking even the mildest reform of US gun laws? pic.twitter.com/D3dsNXvXMA

- Alan Cumming (@Alancumming) June 12, 2016

My heart goes out 2 the families & friends of those who lost their lives in Orlando last nite. A sad, horrific day in US history.

- Sean Hayes (@theseanhayes) June 12, 2016
Orlando shooting

The mass shooting at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub early Sunday morning is the deadliest in US history.

At least 50 people were confirmed dead and 53 more injured after a gunman, reported as Omar Mateen, opened fire and barricaded himself inside a gay nightclub Sunday morning in what is now being investigated as an act of terrorism.

The FBI special agent in charge said there were indications that Mateen subscribed to a radical Islamic ideology, and Rep. Adam Schiff - a top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee - said that Mateen had pledged allegiance to ISIS.

The shooting had more fatalities than either the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 (32 dead) and the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012 (27 dead).

It's the deadliest incident on US soil since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to Rep. Michael McCaul, the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, who was a congressman serving the district encompassing Newtown in 2012, said Congress "has become complicit in these murders."

I'm aching for the victims, their loved ones, and the people of Orlando, and I pray that all those injured have a quick and full recovery," the Democrat wrote in a statement. "I know the pain and sadness that has brought too many communities  Newtown, Oregon, Aurora, San Bernardino, and now Orlando  to their knees, and I can only hope that America's leaders will do something to prevent another community from being added to the list."

"This phenomenon of near constant mass shootings happens only in America  nowhere else," Murphy continued. "Congress has become complicit in these murders by its total, unconscionable deafening silence. This doesn't have to happen, but this epidemic will continue without end if Congress continues to sit on its hands and do nothing  again."

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Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, called on Americans to "unite to defeat terrorism's threat to our nation's society."

My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families and the brave men and women who risked their lives to save others," the Republican senator wrote. "My committee will work to support the federal role in investigating this terror attack and protecting against further threats. As Americans we must unite to defeat terrorisms threat to our nation's security.

Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.

NOW WATCH: Trump said hes willing to do what no sitting US president has ever done





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UPDATED: In an act of domestic terrorism that ranks as the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, at least 50 people were killed and 53 others wounded after a gunman opened fire in a popular Orlando, Fla., nightclub early Sunday morning.

The gunman was identified as Omar Mateen, 29, a U.S. citizen born in 1986 to Afghan parents who lived in Port St. Lucie, about 130 miles south of Orlando. The gunman died at the scene in a shootout with police.

We had a crime that will have a lasting effect on our community, said Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer at a press conference. We need to stand strong. We need to be supportive of the victims and their families.

Mateens father, Mir Seddique, said his son had been angered when he recently saw two men kissing in Miami.

We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident, his father told NBC News. We werent aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country. This had nothing to do with religion.

Mateen was said to have been known to law enforcement officials, but the FBI closed its 2013 and 2014 investigations into his activities when it did not find anything that warranted further investigation.

According to NBC News, Mateen had called 911 and pledged allegiance to the leader of ISIS just before the attacks.

The death toll from the Pulse shootings surpasses the previous high of 33 dead in 2007 when a gunman went on a rampage at Virginia Tech college. A mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif. last December left 14 dead and 21 wounded, while the 2013 killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., left 28 people dead and one injured.

In November, a coordinated series of attacks in Paris, including slayings at the packed Bataclan nightclub during a performance by Eagles of Death Metal, left 130 people dead, jolting the world as a brazen act of terror.

The shooting in Orlando began at roughly 2 a.m. ET on Sunday at Pulse, a gay bar, before escalating into a hostage situation that lasted until around 5 a.m. when police entered the club.

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Police shot and killed the gunman, who used an assault weapon, a handgun, and an unidentified device. As the shooting began, Pulse posted on its Facebook page, Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.

One Orlando police officer was shot during the exchange of gunfire but was likely saved from death by his helmet, officials said. Police said they were looking into reports that the gunman may have had radical Islamist beliefs.

We do have suggestions that that individual may have leanings toward that particular ideology, FBI Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge Ron Hopper told media outlets. But right now we cant say definitively, so were still running everything to ground.

Authorities said that the shooting is not connected to the murder of Christina Grimmie, a former contestant on The Voice, who was shot Friday night after performing a concert in Orlando. It is an active, ongoing investigation, but officials say that this appears to be an isolated incident.

The scene outside the three hospitals where the Pulse shooting victims were taken was frenzied, as people crowded around looking for family and friends believed to have been in the nightclub on Saturday night.

An eye witness interviewed by CBS News said that the club had themed nights and Saturday was Latino night.

Police urged anyone who was at the club on Saturday or those with information about the shooting to come forward and assist the investigation.

Local officials also put out an urgent call for blood donations to help the 53 victims. Within hours, local media showed pictures of long lines outside of blood donation centers.

GLAAD issued a statement about the shooting later on Sunday: Our hearts are broken for the victims and families of the horrific tragedy in Orlando, said GLAAD president & CEO Sarah Kate Ellis. This unimaginable atrocity has not only robbed countless people of their loved ones, it has also stolen a sense of safety within the LGBTQ community. As we mourn the victims of this unspeakable attack, we are also reminded that the work to end hate in all its forms must continue.

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At least 50 people were killed and more than 30 hospitalized when a gunman opened fire at a nightclub in Orlando early Sunday morning. Authorities are calling the attack on Pulse, a popular gay bar in the city's downtown, an act of domestic terrorism.

4 Pro-Gun Arguments We're Sick of Hearing

Orlando Police Chief John Mina said that the gunman, armed with an assault rifle, a handgun and a suspicious "device," began shooting inside the club at around 2 a.m., the New York Times reports. He continued shooting outside the venue, where an officer tried to confront him, then returned to the club and started shooting again while taking hostages. Police identified 29-year-old Omar Mateen as the shooter.

At around 3 a.m., the club posted an ominous note on its Facebook page: "Everyone get out of pulse and keep running."

At 5 a.m., police detonated a "controlled explosion" to clear the club and rescue the hostages, according to the Times. After a shootout with at least nine police officers, the gunman was found dead inside Pulse. Police were searching the club for possible explosives Sunday morning.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is assisting local authorities handling the incident, the Orlando Sentinel reports. Agents said that the suspect "may have leanings toward extreme ideologies." Police said that the suspect was not from the Orlando area and was "organized and well-prepared," the Times reports.

"This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as domestic terror incident," said Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings, according to the Washington Post.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both reacted to news of the shooting. "Really bad shooting in Orlando," Trump tweeted. "Police investigating possible terrorism. Many people dead and wounded."

"Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL," Clinton wrote. "As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act."

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Orlando police said the event is unrelated to the murder of Christina Grimmie, the popular Voice singer who was killed while signing autographs after her Orlando show.

Related
gay men protest

The horrific shooting that has claimed at least 50 lives at a nightclub in Orlando has brought up a hot-button issue for the gay community  the ability to give blood.

Since 1983, the Food and Drug Administration has barred gay and bisexual men from giving blood.

The ban was loosened last December when the agency declared that gay men who have been celibate for a year or more can donate.

The new rules still bar men who are in long-term monogamous relationships.

Countries around the world have thrown out rules barring blood donations for gay men, because there's no science to support a ban on gay blood donation. Additionally, in nightmarish times like this, a community needs any able-bodied person who can and wants to give blood to do so.

OneBlood, a blood-donation center in Orlando said that it is in "urgent need" of blood donors following the shooting, but FDA regulations remain in place:

All FDA guidelines remain in effect for blood donation. There are false reports circulating that FDA rules were being lifted. Not true.  OneBlood (@my1blood) June 12, 2016

Many have taken to social media to criticize the FDA regulations:

Its legal to buy an AR-15 assault rifle. Its illegal for a gay man to donate blood to victims of the massacre. The world makes no sense.  John Barcus (@johnrtworld) June 12, 2016

To the gay men who can't donate blood for our fallen brothers, just being there for each other is helping. Stick together. #PrayForOrlando  Mo: Space Chicken (@Moreh_SC) June 12, 2016

Despite the FDA regulations, hundreds of Orlando residents have turned out to local blood banks to donate.

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Line is out the door at blood bank as our community comes together in crisis. #sayfie #fdp #prayfororlando pic.twitter.com/HYJqgOr1UX  Darren Soto (@SenDarrenSoto) June 12, 2016

Blood center is overloaded with people wanting to give blood in the aftermath of the #Pulse mass shooting pic.twitter.com/rFAsbPdGGu  Christal Hayes (@Journo_Christal) June 12, 2016

So many people have come out to donate at OneBlood that the donation center has asked people to leave and return in the coming days to donate, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

Ive been here 13 years and never seen a response like this, Pat Michaels, a spokesman for OneBlood, told the Sentinel. The sentiment is understood and appreciated, but its a little too much, too soon.





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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump, saying that he had predicted attacks on American soil by terrorists, reiterated his call for a ban on foreign-born Muslims entering the country, in a comment posted on Twitter. "What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough," Trump wrote on Twitter. (Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
Theaters in Orlando, Fla., were determined to stay open for business on Sunday despite the tragic mass shooting overnight at a gay nightclub in the city's downtown area that left at least 50 people dead and scores more injured in what is being described as an act of terror.

Orlando, also home of Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando Florida, is a robust moviegoing market with a wide offering of cinema choices. Several of the bigger multiplexes are located nearer to the theme parks, versus downtown, including the AMC Universal Cineplex 20, the Cinemark Artegon Marketplace and the Regal Cinemas Pointe Orlando 20.

Cobb Plaza Cinema Cafe 12, which is less than two miles away from the Pulse nightclub, the site of the shooting, was likewise open for business on Sunday. (A manager told The Hollywood Reporter he couldn't comment.)

Orlando theaters are sure to have a visible security presence in the wake of Sunday's shooting, although cinemas across the country have been on high alert since last summer's shooting during a screening of Trainwreck that left two dead. The incident prompted theater owners to revisit and reinforce security measures they implemented after the Aurora, Colo., mass theater shooting in 2012 that left 12 dead.

Read More: Defiant: L.A. Pride Parade Marches as Nation Reels From Orlando Massacre

Larger theater chains, including Regal, Cinemark and AMC, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A staff member at the Cinemark Artegon told THR that officers with the Orlando police department are always present.

Hollywood studio executives on Sunday were loath to address whether the Orlando mass shooting will dampen moviegoing in general, but noted that in the past, such tragedies haven't.
The gunman who opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday morning may have targeted the location because he harbored anti-LGBT views, his father told NBC News. The father said his son expressed anger after seeing two men kissing in Miami. "This had nothing to do with religion," the father said.

Omar Mateen  the man law enforcement officials identified as the shooter  died in a gun battle with police at Pulse after he killed at least 50 people and injured 53 others.

Authorities haven't called the shooting a hate crime. But it may be . As President Barack Obama noted on Sunday, it is also the country's deadliest mass shooting to date.

It's the irony of LGBT Americans' increasing visibility: With the Supreme Court's legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide last June and a national focus on transgender rights this spring, the LGBT community has become easier to target.

More than 250,000 Americans above age 12 were victims of hate crimes from 2007 to 2011, according to a 2013 study from the U.S. Department of Justice. Available numbers show lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and HIV-affected people are disproportionately the targets of hate crimes, including those where race, national origin or religion may also be a motivating factor. But only a third of all hate crimes are ever reported to law enforcement.

What's more, many hate crimes that are reported to law enforcement don't end up in the FBI's tally. A recent Associated Press investigation found that thousands of law enforcement agencies have failed to report hate crimes to the FBI. More than 2,700 city police and county sheriff's departments, or 17% of all agencies, have not submitted a single hate crime report in the past six years, according to the AP.

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Father of Pulse nightclub shooting suspect says massacre motivated by anti-LGBT views (via @TODAYshow)pic.twitter.com/48lEuCWgQh

More than 8 million people, or 3.5% of the U.S. population , openly identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in 2011, according to a , a public policy organization that does research on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Police direct family members away from the deadly shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando .

The Orlando shooting occurred during the month of Pride, when the LGBT community create awareness around discrimination, violence, politics and health-related issues. In addition to Sunday's shooting, police in Los Angeles arrested a man with guns and ammunition in his car who was allegedly planning to attend the city's Pride parade, and police in Washington, D.C. stepped up security at the celebrations there.

"While the full facts are still unknown, unfortunately it is not surprising that the LGBT community was targeted," the SPLC said in a statement released Sunday. "This community has long been vilified by those opposed to LGBT rights and is too often the target of violent hate crimes."

The Anti-Defamation League's Florida branch said the Orlando LGBT community should know that it isn't being forgotten in the scramble to determine Mateen's true motivations. "As we have just marked the beginning of Pride month, together as a society we stand resolute that hate shall not diminish the pride of tolerance, the pride of acceptance, and the pride of unity," Hava Holzhauer, the ADL's Florida regional director, said in a statement Sunday.

A man holds up a tribute to the victims of the Florida nightclub shooting, during a gay pride celebration in Philadelphia .

A man holds up a sign for the victims of the Florida night club shooting .

Mateen, 29, had been licensed to work in professional security. The FBI revealed that it had monitored Mateen for a few years, aft er . Militants operating the Middle East have been

In a statement delivered at the White House on Sunday, Obama indicated that federal authorities were investigating Mateen's actions as a terror attack. The president also called it a "heartbreaking day" for LGBT people.

President Barack Obama speaks about the Orlando nightclub shooting from the White House on Sunday.

"The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends, to dance and to sing, and to live," Obama said. "The place w here th ey we re attacked is more than a nightclub. It's a place of solidarity and empowerment where people have come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds, and to advocate for their civil rights."
Equality Florida, the state's biggest LGBT civil rights organization, has started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the victims of Pulse nightclub's mass shooting early Sunday morning, which left at least 50 dead and 53 wounded.

A quickly exceeding their $100,000 target, the campaign upped the goal to $500,000, which too was quickly surpassed, prompting them to create a new goal of $1 million. The cycle repeated itself and after meeting their goal, they upped it to $1.5 million. As of this writing  22 hours into the campaign  the total is nearing $1.4 million with an updated target of $2 million.

The shooting is the deadliest in modern U.S. history.

"We are heartbroken and angry that senseless violence has once again destroyed lives in our state and in our country," the GoFundMe campaign page reads. It was set up by Ida Eskamani, Equality Florida's development officer.

Source: GoFundMe

"Gay clubs hold a significant place in LGBTQ history," the description continues. "They were often the only safe gathering place and this horrific act strikes directly at our sense of safety. June commemorates our community standing up to anti-LGBTQ violence at the Stonewall Inn, the nightclub that has become the first LGBTQ site recognized as a national monument."

Equality Florida said it would not conjecture the motive of the attack and will wait for more information to be released, concluding simply, "We stand in solidarity and keep our thoughts on all whose lives have been lost or altered forever in this tragedy."

June 13, 2016, 8:45 p.m. Eastern: This story has been updated.
By Angela Moon NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facebook Inc activated its Safety Check function on Sunday for the first time in the United States after a gunman massacred 50 people at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The Safety Check, first introduced in October 2014, allows Facebook users to spread the word that they are safe in wake of a natural disaster or a crisis, and allows searches for those who might be in the affected area. "Waking up this morning, I was horrified to hear about the shooting in Orlando. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families and the LGBT community," said Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on his official account. A gunman armed with an assault rifle killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Orlando on Sunday in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. Police killed the shooter at the Pulse nightclub, who was identified as Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old Florida resident and U.S. citizen. The incident quickly emerged as a top trending topic on Facebook and Twitter with hashtag #PrayforOrlando being one of the top posts throughout the day. Last year, Facebook vowed to turn on the Safety Check more often during disasters in response to criticism that it enabled the function after Islamic State militant attacks on Paris and not a day earlier when a bomb killed at least 43 people in Beirut. (Editing By Frank McGurty and Alistair Bell)
Washington (AFP) - White House hopeful Donald Trump lost no time Sunday in claiming a massacre in a gay nightclub showed he has been right about Islamic extremism.

The Republican flag-bearer demanded that President Barack Obama stand down if he refuses to blame the attack on what Trump called "radical Islam".

And the property mogul went to Twitter to double down on his promise to ban Muslims from travelling to the United States if elected.

Obama had earlier branded the attack an act of "terror" and "hate" but the FBI investigation into the slain suspect's motives is continuing.

The attack by a US citizen left 50 dead in the worst mass shooting in US history and has been claimed by a media source close to the Islamic State group.

In a series of Tweets starting just hours after the shooting began and as reports were still sketchy, Trump said the tragedy supported his views.

"Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism," he said. "I don't want congrats, I want toughness and vigilance. We must be smart!"

Later, he followed up with a strongly-worded statement.

"In his remarks today, President Obama disgracefully refused to even say the words 'Radical Islam'. For that reason alone, he should step down," he said.

"If Hillary Clinton, after this attack, still cannot say the two words 'Radical Islam' she should get out of this race for the presidency."

Clinton, Trump's Democratic rival for the White House, had been due to campaign with Obama on Wednesday, but cancelled the event while the FBI probe continues.

"If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore," Trump warned.

"Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen -- and it is only going to get worse.

"I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can't afford to be politically correct anymore," he warned.

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Trump has previously argued that events like the San Bernardino shooting in December last year show that the United States should ban Muslim travelers.

In his statement, Trump did not repeat this call for a visa ban -- promising simply to make a detailed national security speech on Monday.

But he quickly returned to Twitter to repeat and underline what has proved one of his most controversial campaign promises.

"What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning," he tweeted. "I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough."
Ronald Robinsons bar does not have security. And the deaths in Orlando will not change that.

Im not going to fall prey to them, says the 59-year-old bar owner of Larrys Lounge as to why he will not hire security following the killing of 50 people at a gay nightclub in Florida. The Washington, D.C. gay bar will function normally Sunday night, without pat-downs or metal detectors.

Ive already been through a lot of anti-gay in life, said Robinson, who is gay. If we sit there and bow down to them, then we lose.

Robinson sums up the feelings of some gay bar owners. By increasing security, bar owners said it would appear they have been terrorized by the attack.

Gay bars were the only place where gay people could be with other gay people in a safe space, said Art Johnston, the 72-year-old owner of Sidetrack, a Chicago, Illinois gay bar known for its showtunes and LGBT activism. Sidetrack has a security staff of at least three people for the 34-year-old bar. Johnston says large items, like backpacks, have been banned for decades, but patrons are not patted-down.

Were going to continue to do everything we can to make people comfortable, he said. (LGBT people) all understand what its like to be under attack.

Read More: The Gay Bar as Safe Space Has Been Shattered

But some bar managers are changing policies, if only slightly, in the wake of Orlando. And night club security experts believe increased screenings and other preventive measures could prevent future attacksthough in regards to the largest mass shooting in American history, they acknowledge the Florida killing was unprecedented.

Its not really a one-off. Its a hundred-off, said Pat Murphy, an expert witness in nightclub and bar trials from Texas, of the shooting. He said nightclubs and bars need to have robust plans for what to do if there is a shooting.

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In a loud, dark environment where many people have been drinking alcohol, staff must be especially prepared to approach something that may never happen, Murphy said.

Murphy and Chris McGoey, a security consultant in Los Angeles who has helped nightclubs manage patrons for 30 years, agreed security officers should not be armed. They also agreed increased screenings could help prevent at least some crimes.

Its unclear how Omar Mateen, the suspected Orlando shooter, accessed Pulse and whether the club had any screening process.

Nightclub owners need to have a comprehensive screening process at the door, McGoey said. Security experts said security screenings, including pat downs or metal detectors, are becoming more common, especially in urban areas. But he acknowledges where that logic ultimately ends.

Every bar, every club, every store would have to be a version of the airport. Were not there yet in this country, McGoey said. But thats what this is all about.  To prepare for the worst case scenario, no business will operate if thats the standard.

At Cobalt, Brian Blanchard is excited to host the after party for Washington, D.C.s 2016 Gay Pride celebration this weekend. Cobalt can accommodate 500 people, and Blanchard, the bars manager, said he expects it to be full Sunday night.

Cobalts security officers always check bags. But tonight, in wake of the shooting, the club will not allow in anything more than a small purse, Blanchard said.

The next step up would be to do pat-downs, Blanchard said. Thats not something you expect when you go to a dance club, but it might have to go to that level.

Miguel DeCoste views pat-downs as a no-brainer. With 20 years experiencing working in, managing and consulting for the nightclub industry, he said the club environment  drinking, tight spaces, noisy, dark, lots of people moving in different directions  make it even more difficult to prepare for a shooting.

If someone barges in guns blazing, theres not a whole heck of a lot you can do, DeCoste said.
How people at the Pride Parade in West Hollywood are standing with Orlando

How people at the Pride Parade in West Hollywood are standing with Orlando

Today, we awoke to the news of a tragedy, a mass shooting in Orlando that left at least 50 dead. The shooting took place in a gay nightclub and comes during Pride Month. President Obama addressed the nation about the shooting, saying, We know enough to say this was an act of terror and act of hateThis is an especially heartbreaking day for our friends who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

In West Hollywood, California, the annual L.A. Pride Parade is continuing today as planned and attendees are showing support for Orlando in the most amazing ways.

Memorials in honor of #Orlando are popping up at #LAPride #PrayForOrlando A photo posted by kost1035fm (@kost1035fm) on Jun 12, 2016 at 12:13pm PDT

GAY FUCKING PRIDE #GAYPRIDE #NOTAFRAID #Orlandoshooting #LAPride A photo posted by Hendrix Elbaz (@freesoul_jah) on Jun 12, 2016 at 12:06pm PDT

#lapride A photo posted by Hiko Mitsuzuka (@thefirstecho) on Jun 12, 2016 at 12:03pm PDT

#orlando #weho #lapride #orlando #lovewins A photo posted by Laura Robinson (@laurarobinsontv) on Jun 12, 2016 at 12:21pm PDT

Love for #Orlando at the #pride parade in #Weho. #loveislove A photo posted by Melissa MacBride (@abc7melissa) on Jun 12, 2016 at 11:57am PDT

#lapride #weho #weareorlando #mayor #ericgarcetti #pride #loveislove #lovewins A photo posted by Danielle (@danibro14) on Jun 12, 2016 at 11:55am PDT

But perhaps the most beautiful thing of all is that love is winning and people are carrying on, sharing amazing displays of love and affection and warmth.

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My heart is so heavy today. From yesterday sharing laughter and love supporting the LGBT community at LA Pride, to today hearing all the news of those dead in Orlando and someone getting arrested for weaponry on their way heading for the LA Pride festival now. It's insane that people celebrating love are getting attacked by hate; my heart is with them all and I always and forever stand supporting the community. #lovehasnogender #loveislove #noh8 #lapride A photo posted by Jessica Keller (@jessykaayy) on Jun 12, 2016 at 12:00pm PDT

The post How people at the Pride Parade in West Hollywood are standing with Orlando appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Philippine authorities have arrested a man accused of kidnapping an Italian businessman who was held hostage for six months by Islamic militants, the military said Sunday.

Retired Catholic priest Rolando Del Torchio, was abducted at his pizza restaurant in the southern city of Dipolog on Mindanao island last October. He was released unharmed on the Abu Sayyaf stronghold of Jolo island in April.

Sehar Muloc, also known in the area as Commander Red Eye, helped the kidnappers select and stalk their Italian target, regional military spokesman Major Filemon Tan told AFP.

"He (Muloc) is linked with the Abu Sayyaf. We have no information on whether he is also a member," Tan said referring to the kidnap group, which is also blamed for the deadliest bombings in the Philippines.

Muloc was arrested near the town of Naga, about halfway between Dipolog and Jolo, early Sunday and will be charged with kidnapping, Tan added.

Authorities had earlier said they suspected Del Torchio was abducted by local gunmen who handed him over to the Abu Sayyaf group in Jolo, 230 kilometres (143 miles) to the southwest.

Del Torchio, then 56, had worked as a missionary for the international organisation PIME in the south from 1998 before retiring in 2000 to set up his restaurant, colleagues told AFP shortly after he was abducted.

The Abu Sayyaf murdered a Canadian hostage in April but subsequently released 18 Indonesian and four Malaysian captives.

The group still holds another Canadian man, a Dutchman and a Norwegian, along with five Filipinos, the military said.

The kidnappers have threatened to kill either the Canadian or the Norwegian if a multi-million-dollar ransom is not paid by Monday.
Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis on Sunday appealed to the international community to redouble efforts to end the "modern slavery" of child labour.

The pontiff was speaking on World Day Against Child Labour, sanctioned by the International Labour Organization.

"We must all relaunch efforts to remove the causes of this modern slavery", he said in his weekly audience in St Peter's Square.

"Millions of children are deprived of some of their fundamental rights and find themselves exposed to grave dangers. There are so many slaves today!"

The ILO estimates there are around 168 million children working around the world, around half of whom are doing hazardous jobs that put their health at risk, such as in mines or in quarries.
Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis, addressing an audience of 20,000 sick and handicapped people at the Vatican on Sunday, decried the marginalisation of those with disabilities, pointing to the way body image has become big business and "anything imperfect has to be hidden away".

Speaking on the last day of the Vatican's weekend jubilee for the sick and disabled, he said: "The world does not become better because only apparently 'perfect' people live there, but when human solidarity, mutual acceptance and respect increase."

The pope told those gathered for the special mass in Saint Peter's Square that in "an age when care for one's body has become an obsession and a big business, anything imperfect has to be hidden away, since it threatens the happiness and serenity of the privileged few and endangers the dominant model."

The crowd of sick and handicapped faithful had come to Rome for the jubilee which ran from Friday to Sunday.
Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis on Sunday condemned as "homicidal folly and senseless hatred" a massacre at a gay nightclub in the US in which at least 50 people died.

The attack "has caused in Pope Francis, and in all of us, the deepest feelings of horror and condemnation... before this new manifestation of homicidal folly and senseless hatred", said a statement from the Holy See.

The attack in which a gunman opened fire at the packed nightclub in Orlando, Florida, is the worst mass shooting in US history.

"We all hope that ways may be found, as soon as possible, to effectively identify and contrast the causes of such terrible and absurd violence," the Holy See statement added.

The FBI said they were investigating the possible radical Islamic "leanings" of the suspect, identified by US media as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, a US citizen of Afghan descent.
Mammootty's Rorschach hits all the right notes, except in the end | Movie Review
Pope Francis on Sunday joined a chorus of condemnation after a shooter killed at least 50 people in a Florida gay bar in the early morning hours.

The pope called the attack at Orlando's Pulse nightclub an example of "homicidal folly and senseless hatred."

"We all hope that ways may be found, as soon as possible, to effectively identify and contrast the causes of such terrible and absurd violence," the pope said in a Holy See statement just as President Barack Obama gave brief remarks on what's being dubbed the deadliest mass shooting in American history.

Read: Mother Shares Chilling Texts Her Son Wrote While Held Hostage in Orlando Gay Bar: 'He Has Us'

The president called the attack a terrorist act and an act of hate.

The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends to dance and to sing and to live, Obama said. The place where they were attacked is more than a nightclub it is a place of solidarity and empowerment where people come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds and to advocate for their civil rights.

Police believe Omar Mateen first opened fire in the Pulse parking lot before a police officer engaged him. It then became a hostage situation inside the bar.

With an AR-15 style assault rifle, authorities believe Mateen mowed down dozens of people in the crowded club before police shot him dead.

Mateen's father believes his son was motivated to kill after seeing men kiss each other during a trip to Miami. Authorities have also suggested Mateen harbored ISIS sympathies.

Leaders and political candidates from coast to coast have spoken out against the attack.

Read: 50 Clubgoers Shot Dead in Orlando Gay Bar Rampage

Democratic candidate for president Hillary Clinton posted a statement on the attack to her website.

"The gunman attacked an LGBT nightclub during Pride Month. To the LGBT community: please know that you have millions of allies across our country," she said. "I am one of them. We will keep fighting for your right to live freely, openly and without fear. Hate has absolutely no place in America."

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Meanwhile, Donald Trump took the opportunity of Obama's statement to criticize the president.

As Obama began his remarks, Trump tweeted:

Trump tweeted as Obama began speaking: "Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!"

Watch: University of Kansas Student Allegedly Raped by Football Player Comes Forward in Emotional Video

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Beirut (AFP) - A bomb blast rocked the western part of the Lebanese capital late Sunday, with the interior minister saying the target was a major bank.

An AFP correspondent saw almost all the entire glass facade of the headquarters of BLOM BANK, one of the country's largest, blown out, with debris littering the ground.

Interior Minister Nuhad Mashnuq told AFP a bomb containing about 3-4 kilos (6.6-8.8 pounds) of explosives had been "placed behind the back wall of BLOM BANK".

"It is clear that the bank was the target," he said.

Mashnuq gave no further details, but in comments to LBCI television channel he said the blast was "different" from other explosions that have occurred in Lebanon over the past few years.

Veteran Druze politician Walid Jumblatt linked the bombing to a law voted in December by the US Congress to impose sanctions on banks that deal with the Shiite movement Hezbollah.

In May, Lebanon's central bank instructed the country's banks and financial institutions to comply with the US law.

Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc warned at the time that the move could push Lebanon towards bankruptcy.

"We have entered a cycle of attacks," Jumblatt told LBC television, and called for a "roadmap between Hezbollah and (Lebanese) banks" to ease tensions.

Jumblatt also told the Arabic-language newspaper An-Nahar that he had "issued a call for a calm dialogue concerning the American sanctions... but some are refusing that."

The blast "is a blow aimed against the economy and the banking sector," he told An-Nahar.

Washington has labelled Hezbollah a global terrorist group since 1995, accusing it of a long list of attacks including the bombing of the US Embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983.

BLOM BANK director general Saad al-Azhari told reporters that no threats had been received by the bank ahead of Sunday's blast.

A civil defence official said one person had been lightly wounded in the attack.

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There was confusion over where the bomb had been placed.

The National News Agency said it had been left under a car, but police chief General Ibrahim Basbous said it had been put in a plant pot.

The AFP correspondent saw damaged cars near the scene of the blast in the Verdun business district before an army patrol arrived and kept journalists back.

Twin bombings in the densely populated neighbourhood of Burj al-Barajneh in November last year killed 44 people. They were claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.

Burj al-Barajneh is in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where the Hezbollah group holds sway.

Last year's twin bombings came after a string of attacks in 2013 and 2014 targeting the group by Sunni extremist factions which cited Hezbollah's military support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
President Obama addressed the horrific massacre in Orlando from the White House on Sunday, saying his thoughts and prayers were with the families of victims.

In his short speech, the president was terse; many of the details were still unclear, but he said he knew enough to call the shooting an act of terror and an act of hate. At least 50 were killed and another 53 wounded in the shooting early Sunday morning at Pulse, a gay nightclub.

We know enough to say this is an act of terror and an act of hate, Obama said Sunday. As Americans we are united in our feelings of outrage and our feelings of grief. 

President Obama said he had wrapped a meeting with the director of the FBI James Comey shortly before taking the podium Sunday. Obama said authorities are still learning all of the facts in the case and have made no definitive judgments on the killers motivations. He did, however, note that Sundays mass shooting is the worst in American history.

What is clear is that he was a person filled with hatred, Obama said of Omar Mateen, the suspected shooter. This could have been any one of our communities As a country we will be there for the people of Orlando today, tomorrow, and all of the days to come.

This is an especially heartbreaking day for all of our friends who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, Obama added, calling the venue more than a nightclub, but a place of solidarity.

An attack on any Americanis an attack on all of us, Obama said. No act of hate or terror will change who we are and the values that make us Americans.

He added, In the face of hate and violence we will love one another.

In the past year alone, the president has spoken in the wake of tragedies in Charleston, South Carolina, San Bernardino, Calif., and Oregon and the presidents tone has gotten increasingly tense with each incident. After Charleston the president was reflective, singing Amazing Grace at the funeral of Emanuel A.M.E. church pastor Clementa Pinckney. After Oregon, the president showed flickers of anger during a speech in the James Brady Press Briefing Room. As I said just a few months ago, and I said a few months before that, and I said each time we see one of these mass shootings, our thoughts and prayers are not enough, he said. Its not enough. The presidents frustration was apparent again, after the shooting in San Bernardino, Calif.

On Sunday, the president was focused. The statement was brief and to the point. The events in Orlando touched on a number of different issuesthe shooting was the worst in American history and it happened at a gay club, all while people speculated about the shooters motives. While the president noted that the incident was a reminder of how easy it is for anyone to get their hands on a powerful weapon, the president didnt dwell on the issue of gun access in his short statementan issue that has been a thorn in his presidency.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will deliver a statement on the Orlando shooting, the deadliest in U.S. history, at 1:30 ET, the White House said. The White House said earlier that Obama had been briefed by Lisa Monaco, the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, about the shooting in which at least 50 people were killed. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner and Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
Following Sunday's deadly shooting at an Orlando, FL, nightclub, stars, politicians, and LGBT activists expressed their shock and sorrow, and called for gun control in the wake of the deadliest shooting in U.S. history, which left at least 50 people dead.

President Obama, visibly shaken, made a brief statement following Sunday's deadly shooting as the White House lowered flags to half-staff. The president sent prayers to the victims' families and the people of Orlando after an "act of terror and an act of hate."

While the president mentioned that the motivations for the shooter are still unknown, he was clear that the shooter "was a person filled with hate." He also added that "this is a sobering reminder that attacks on any American...is an attack on all of us.

The president then pivoted to a call for action on gun violence. He said the shooting was "a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon." And once again said that the country would have to make a choice on whether to take action  through stronger gun control measures.

Meanwhile, other politicians used their social media platforms to express sympathy. Florida Gov. Rick Scott took to Twitter on Sunday morning, saying that his prayers with the victims' families.

My prayers are with the victims families & all those affected by the shooting in Orlando. We will devote every resource available to assist  Rick Scott (@FLGovScott) June 12, 2016

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, said that her "thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act" in a tweet.

Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was one of the first politicians to react amid claims that the attacks were terrorism. He wrote a series of tweets asking when America will get "tough, smart & vigilant."

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Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted about the need for blood donations for survivors.

If you live in Central Florida, blood donations are needed after mass shooting at #PulseNightclub https://t.co/g0Hg5FK1sY  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) June 12, 2016

A Vatican spokesperson told The Associated Press that Pope Francis expressed "deepest feelings of horror and condemnation" over what he called "homicidal folly and senseless hatred." The pope also asked for "prayer and compassion" for the victims and their families.

A statement from the Tony Awards expressed sympathy to the victims' families and noted that tonight's performances will be dedicated to the lives lost.

LGBT activist Stuart Milk, nephew of Harvey Milk, shared a statement on social media, sending "a world of love and prayers to all those who are grieving today."

My heart aches to release such a sad statement. Orlando LGBT community and leaders being held in our prayers! #hope pic.twitter.com/btw7HZCPeG  Stuart Milk (@StuartMilk) June 12, 2016

Ellen Degeneres was one of many celebrities who shared their sorrow on social media.

Sobbing.  Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) June 12, 2016

I'm heartbroken by this tragedy. Praying for Orlando and the suffering created by this senseless violence.  Reese Witherspoon (@RWitherspoon) June 12, 2016

A celebration of pride, identity, love & life, now ends w hate & horrible horrible tragedy. This world man. My heart goes out...

Devastating  solange knowles (@solangeknowles) June 12, 2016

I'm truly at a loss for words. To everyone in Orlando affected by this massacre, my thoughts, love, & prayers are with u   Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) June 12, 2016

Every time I log on....when does it end? Praying for Orlando...  Zendaya (@Zendaya) June 12, 2016

My heart is broken this morning. So much hate in this world. So many beautiful innocent lives taken last night in Orlando. #PrayForOrlando  Nick Jonas (@nickjonas) June 12, 2016

Also, it's #LaPride today. be safe, proud and full of love. They will never win. Really wish I could be there with y'all. I love you.  Ariana Grande (@ArianaGrande) June 12, 2016

Other celebrities called for change, specifically tougher gun restrictions.

Madness. Hideous and cruel madness. To the survivors, and families of those slain, I'm so sorry. #StopGunViolence  olivia wilde (@oliviawilde) June 12, 2016

Horrified by the mass shooting in Orlando. When will we do something to prevent these killing sprees?  John Legend (@johnlegend) June 12, 2016

Ppl who would most need guns for "protection" in America (as pro-gun people say they need guns for) are always the victims of gun violence  Rowan Blanchard (@rowblanchard) June 12, 2016

In one week: our hearts break for Christina Grimmie and her family, her fans. Our hearts break for the queer community in Orlando, unsafe even in a space they created for themselves. Our hearts break for a country where this is what the news looks like day after day. The concerned citizens of the United States of America demand change. A photo posted by Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) on Jun 12, 2016 at 7:29am PDT

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Prince William added a personal touch when he addressed Queen Elizabeth II directly as he spoke at the Patrons Lunch celebrating her 90th birthday on Sunday, June 12. After talking about her work as patron of over 600 charities, he turned his attention to her role as head of the family, saying, Granny, thank you for everything you have done for your family. We could not wish you a happier birthday. Credit: YouTube/The British Monarchy
All hail the Queen and Princess!

Princess Charlotte made her first public appearance on Saturday during Queen Elizabeth's official 90th birthday bash at the Trooping the Colour parade in London, England.

WATCH: Kate Middleton Shares Sweetest Photos of Princess Charlotte on Eve of Daughter's First Birthday

The royal family came together to celebrate the Queen  who's birthday is actually April 21 -- but it was little Charlotte who stole the show. The 1-year-old wore a smocked dress and shoes in pale pink, and her hair was swept to the side by a matching pink clip. But most importantly, she waved to the crowd, just like her big brother did during his Buckingham Palace balcony debut during last year's annual military parade.

ETONLINE

The Queen looked just as smashing, marking her milestone birthday in a vibrant green coat and dress by Stewart Parvin and matching hat by Rachel Trevor Morgan, which was decorated with cerise colored flowers.

The Queen and the Royal Family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace #TroopingtheColour #Queenat90https://t.co/vA2xcOkwWr  The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 11, 2016

NEWS: Princess Charlotte Gets a Flower Named After Her

The streets of London were filled with more than 1,400 parading soldiers, 200 horses and approximately 400 musicians. The parade route extended from Buckingham Palace along The Mall to Horse Guards Parade, Whitehall and circled back.

Over 1400 officers and men are on parade, together with 200 horses and over 400 musicians #TroopingtheColourhttps://t.co/DlFyVSjI3P  The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 11, 2016

And the Cavalry! A great roar goes up in The Mall as troops arrive for final stage #QueensBirthdayParade #Queenat90 pic.twitter.com/4pYSyTfBt5  The Army in London (@ArmyInLondon) June 11, 2016

WATCH: Queen Elizabeth Celebrates Prince Philip's 95th Birthday

The three-hour event ended with an Royal Air Force fly-past, watched by members of the royal family from the Buckingham balcony.

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ETONLINE

Queen Elizabeth has enjoyed several celebrations, including an opulent horse show with many members of her family and a recent visit from Barack and Michelle Obama.

In honor of the Queen's birthday, Twitter also created a purple crown emoji that pops up when you write #Queenat90 or #HappyBirthdayYourMajesty.

NEWS: How Prince William Is Making Sure Prince George and Princess Charlotte Have a Normal Childhood

Britain's longest-reigning monarch also landed her second Vanity Fair cover. She shared the spotlight, per her request, with her four dogs, Holly, Willow, Vulcan, and Candy.

Her canine companions were also part of a series of portraits shot for the magazine's summer issue, which were taken by iconic fashion photographer Annie Leibovitz.

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Omar Mateen, the primary suspect in a mass shooting at gay Orlando nightclub Pulse that killed at least 50 people and wounded over 50 others on Sunday morning, had previously attracted the attention of law enforcement agencies and may have ideological ties to the Islamic extremist group ISIS, multiple sources reported.

One report on CNN stated the gunman called 911 "to pledge allegiance to ISIS and mention the Boston bombers," per one U.S. official.

According to , Mateen "was on law enforcement radar in [the] last five years." CNN reported the 29-year-old "was known to the FBI, the officials said  one of hundreds of people on the agency's radar suspected of being ISIS sympathizers."

JUST IN: Omar Mateen was on law enforcement radar in last five years, @jeffpeguescbs reports http://cbsn.ws/24JDRVk pic.twitter.com/Wm5aamNN4v https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ckw0iS_XEAI6OWt.jpg:large

That account was mirrored by reporting by the Daily Beast, which wrote "Mateen became a person of interest in 2013 and again in 2014. The FBI at one point opened an investigation into Mateen but subsequently closed the case when it produced nothing that appeared to warrant further investigation."

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, issued a statement: "This attack is so painfully reminiscent of the terrible attack at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris, and other ISIS-inspired attacks in recent years. The fact that this shooting took place during Ramadan and that ISIS leadership in Raqqa has been urging attacks during this time, that the target was an LGBT night club during Pride, and - if accurate - that according to local law enforcement the shooter declared his allegiance to ISIS, indicates an ISIS-inspired act of terrorism. Whether this attack was also ISIS-directed, remains to be determined."

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According to CBS News, however, ISIS has not claimed credit for the attack.

@RepAdamSchiff has received intel briefing on Orlando attack. Calls it "painfully reminiscent" of Bataclan attackpic.twitter.com/SE6JVOctLJ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ckw3diaXAAAUhTp.jpg:large

Mateen's father, told NBC News, "We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country." He added the attack may have been motivated in part by an incident months before in which Mateen became enraged upon seeing two men kissing in Miami.

An ex-wife of Mateen says he was abusive. According to progressive site T, Mateen had licenses to own firearms and carry a concealed weapon.

UPDATE: Omar Mateen had a concealed carry license and a state firearms licensehttp://thkpr.gs/3787424

This is a breaking news story and may be updated as more information becomes available.

June 12, 2016, 1:48 p.m. Eastern: This post has been updated.
Queen Elizabeth released a statement of sympathy Sunday afternoon for those affected by the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando.



" Prince Philip and I have been shocked by the events in Orlando," she said in a statement to PEOPLE. "Our thoughts and prayers are with all those who have been affected."



Other world leaders have also taken to Twitter to express their grief and support.



United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron was "horrified" to hear the tragic news.









I'm horrified by reports of the overnight shooting in Orlando. My thoughts are with the victims and their families. a David Cameron (@David_Cameron) June 12, 2016





Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau released a statement in solidarity with the LGBT community.





We grieve with our friends in the US & stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ2 community after today's terror attack: https://t.co/nwP2MR2xUm a Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) June 12, 2016





Lars LAkke Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark, spoke out about the importance of equal rights.





Horrified by attack in #Orlando. Let's unite in the fight for

equal rights. My thoughts are with the victims and all affected. a Lars LAkke Rasmussen (@larsloekke) June 12, 2016





The president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, said "Europe mourns" the Orlando tragedy.





Europe mourns the victims of the horrific gun attack in Orlando. Their families and the people of Florida are in our thoughts and prayers a Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) June 12, 2016





Jens Stoltenberg, NATO's secretary general, "condemned" the attack.





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@jensstoltenberg LGBT work of the devil, a perversion of God a   (@orion566) June 12, 2016





And Turkey's prime minister, Mehmet Simsek echoed similar sentiments about the shooting.





I condemn, unequivocally, the horrific terrorist attack in #Orlando - as we've seen time & again, terrorism knows no religion, creed or race a Mehmet Simsek (@memetsimsek) June 12, 2016





According to police, a shooter opened fire just after 2 a.m. local time on Sunday at Pulse, a popular gay club in Orlando. Authorities say that at least 50 people have been killed and at least 53 are injured, making it the deadliest mass shooting in American history.



 Reporting by SIMON PERRY
London (AFP) - Thousands of people gathered in the rain for a street party outside Buckingham Palace on Sunday, part of a weekend of celebrations to mark Queen Elizabeth II's 90th birthday.

With The Mall lined with Union flags, picnickers donned plastic ponchos as a summer shower hit central London.

But guests insisted that the downpour would not put a dampener on the event.

"Rain won't spoil the party," said picnicker Noreen Chisholm. "Everybody is so happy to stand in the rain to be part of the queen's birthday."

"The British spirit will come through the rain," added fellow guest Andy Moor.

Around 10,000 people attended the Patron's Lunch on The Mall where the queen gave a short speech thanking them for their birthday wishes and joked about the length of the festivities, which have spanned several months.

A smiling queen, dressed in fuchsia, and her husband Prince Philip emerged from Buckingham Palace after the rain had stopped in a chauffeur-driven, open-topped 4x4 to wave at crowds who lined The Mall to see her.

Briefly addressing the crowds to thank them for their good wishes, she added: "How I will feel if people are still singing 'Happy Birthday' in December remains to be seen."

Tickets for the event cost A150 (190 euros, $215) with most of the guests from over 600 organisations with which the queen has links.

Guests dined on hampers containing sandwiches, snacks and puddings from British producers, while adults even got a can of Pimm's, a fruit punch popular at summer garden parties in Britain.

The queen's grandson and future king Prince William paid tribute to the monarch's "sharp wit" and "strong health".

"The queen at 90 is the only head of state that world leaders can turn to for a first hand perspective on the arc of history over the last six decades," he said.

- Three days of festivity -

The not-for-profit picnic event brought to an end several days of celebrations to mark the queen's official 90th birthday, which began on Friday with a special service at St Paul's Cathedral in London.

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On Saturday, the queen took the salute at the Trooping the Colour military parade which drew a crowd of thousands.

After Trooping the Colour, members of the royal family gathered on the balcony of Buckingham Palace to watch a military flypast, including Prince William and his wife Kate, plus their young children George and Charlotte.

At least 1,000 smaller street parties were also expected to take place across Britain to mark the birthday.

Each year, the queen celebrates two birthdays as part of a royal tradition which dates back over 250 years.

The actual date of her birth is April 21, 1926 but her official birthday is also marked in Britain on a Saturday in June.

This year, her 90th birthday celebrations started on April 21 with the lighting of 1,000 beacons around Britain.

They also included a pageant at her Windsor Castle home last month featuring equestrian displays and music.
Beirut (AFP) - Air strikes on a market in Syria's Al-Qaeda-held city of Idlib killed at least 21 civilians Sunday, as hundreds fled a besieged Islamic State group bastion near the Turkish border.

Five children were among those killed in the air raids on Idlib, which is held by Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front and its allies, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Peace talks towards ending Syria's five-year war have stalled, with no immediate end in sight to a conflict that has killed 280,000 people.

It was not clear who carried out the Idlib strikes, but the Observatory has reported previous air raids by the regime and its Russian ally on Idlib province, which is also controlled by Al-Nusra and rebel allies.

Footage the Observatory said was filmed after the Idlib strikes showed emergency workers training water hoses on a tall building amid a haze of smoke.

In Maaret al-Numan, an area south of the provincial capital, unidentified warplanes also killed at least six civilians including a woman and her four children, the Observatory said.

Russia launched air strikes in support of the Damascus regime in September, allowing forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad to advance against the rebels and IS.

The Britain-based Observatory relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information.

It says it determines what aircraft carried out raids based on their location, flight patterns and the types of planes and munitions involved.

The Observatory said Russian air strikes killed 23 civilians in strikes on Idlib city on May 31, but Russia denied carrying out raids there that day.

Suspected government strikes killed at least 37 civilians in Maaret al-Numan in April, sparking condemnation from Syria's opposition amid faltering peace talks.

- Civilians flee IS bastion -

Meanwhile, hundreds of civilians escaped the IS stronghold of Manbij in nearby Aleppo province on Sunday, helped by a US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance surrounding the town.

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Tens of thousands had been trapped inside Manbij after the alliance encircled the town on Friday in a major blow to the jihadist group controlling it.

"Around 800 civilians fled on foot towards areas held by the Syrian Democratic Forces alliance south of the town," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The SDF "transported them to safer areas".

Those still inside the town were terrified by heavy air strikes in the area, Abdel Rahman said, and food was becoming scarce after the SDF alliance blocked all roads in and out.

At least 223 IS fighters and 28 SDF troops had been killed -- as well as 41 civilians in coalition air raids -- since the alliance offensive against Manbij began on May 31, according to the Observatory.

Manbij lies at the heart of the last stretch of IS-controlled territory along Turkey's border.

The siege has severed a key IS supply route that had channelled money and weapons from the Turkish border to the group's de facto Syrian capital of Raqa city.

IS has come under attack on several fronts since declaring a cross-border "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq in 2014.

Millions of people have been displaced since Syria's civil war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

Peace talks hit deadlock after the opposition walked out of negotiations in April over the escalating violence and lack of humanitarian access.

Near Damascus, regime forces dropped 44 so-called barrel bombs -- crude, unguided explosive devices -- on rebel-held Daraya, the Observatory said.

The attacks prevented for the third straight day distribution of food aid delivered on Thursday for the first time since 2012.

The Syrian opposition in exile denounced what it labelled a "vicious act".

"There is still no aid distribution and people are still holed up at home for fear of the bombing," Shadi Matar, a member of the opposition local council in Daraya, told AFP.
This article originally appeared on time.com.

Having your boss catch you sleeping on the job is an employees worst nightmarebut can imagine if they took a picture, too?

Virgin Group founder Richard Branson did just that on a recent trip to visit the Virgin Australia offices, according to a post on his Virgin.com blog.

I popped into the office and the airport to say hello and check in to see what the team are up to. This guy wasnt up to much at all I caught him sleeping on the job! Wow, did he get a shock when I woke him up, the billionaire wrote. He must have thought he was dreaming because he went straight back to sleep. To be fair, he was on standby, getting some much needed rest.

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NAIROBI (Reuters) - Rwanda has expelled about 400 Burundians back to their country accusing some of them of espionage and fuelling tensions between the two small neighbors whose relations have been strained by Burundi's political crisis, an official said on Sunday. It's the second such expulsion in about a month and brings the total number of Burundians deported over the period to at least 1,700. One of those expelled, a young man who did not wish to be named for fear he might be targeted, told Reuters Rwandan officials accused some of them of spying for Burundi. "We were accused of being envoys of Burundi government and sent there to spy on Rwanda," he said. Renee Mukandori, a Burundi local government official, confirmed the expulsion to Reuters and said it occurred on Thursday and Friday. Those deported mostly came from the Bugabira district of northern Burundi. 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 a third term last year. Rwanda has denied Burundi's accusations. But the violence in Burundi has rattled Rwanda and other countries across the central African region were there are still fresh memories of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which like Burundi has a Hutu majority and Tutsi minority. Rwandan President Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, has said in the past he would not allow a repeat of the genocide in the region and has been critical of the handling of the crisis by President Pierre Nkurunziza, who led a Hutu rebel group in Burundi's civil war. About a quarter of million people have fled the violence in Burundi and most of them are now in refugee camps in Rwanda and Tanzania. Gille, another man who was sent back to Burundi, said those expelled were not newly arrived refugees and that they had come to Rwanda years ago seeking economic opportunities. "We went to seek for better life. Once we got there, some of us rented fields and cultivated...we were not given time to go to harvest what is on our land," he said. Rwandan officials could not be immediately reached but foreign minister, Louise Mushikiwabo, told reporters last week the Burundians being expelled were in the country illegally. (writing by Elias Biryabarema; editing by Ros Russell)
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is trapped in a nightmarish situation of his own making in which he must defend a presumptive Republican presidential nominee whose racist-tinged comments are abhorrent to him. However, Ryan is staunchly resisting calls from Mitt Romney and other establishment Republicans to block the nomination of billionaire Donald Trump at next months GOP national convention.

"The way I see it, is he won the thing fair and square," Ryan said during an interview with ABCs This Week that was aired on Sunday. "Seventeen people competed, one person won and he got the delegates. The delegates ultimately decide these things, but he won fair and square."

Related: After Endorsing Trump, Paul Ryan Decries Anger and Division in Politics

Ryan has publicly denounced Trumps ideas for barring Muslims from entering the country, building a wall along the southern border with Mexico, rounding up and deporting 11 million illegal immigrants  and most recently,  insisting that a federal district judge in Texas couldnt fairly preside over a lawsuit involving the now defunct Trump University because of his Mexican heritage.

Yet Ryan insists that a Trump presidency would be preferable to Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton winning the White House and continuing the policies of President Obama who formally endorsed his former secretary of state for president last week.

Hillary Clinton is promising to double down on the Obama policies, he told host George Stephanopoulos. Those policies are wrong. Theyre not helping. Our country is going in the wrong direction. Were offering the country an alternative. And we need a Republican president to put that alternative together.

Later, Ryan told host John Dickerson on CBSs Face the Nation that he fervently hopes that the tone of Trumps campaign improves as time goes by, although there is little indication that Trump will abandon his highly divisive, insulting and destructive tactics that served him so well throughout the 2016 GOP primary contest.

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Related: Donald Trump Out Negotiates Paul Ryan in Endorsement Deal

Ryan, Mitt Romneys vice presidential running mate in the Republicans unsuccessful 2012 campaign, briefly stood out this year as a beacon of Republican leadership resistance to a Trump nomination and growing despair within the GOP establishment over the direction of the party.

In March, shortly after succeeding John Boehner as speaker, Ryan delivered a widely reported speech to a group of congressional interns urging the GOP to become a party of vision and positive ideas for change, which many read as an implicit criticism of Trumps new brand of combative and seemingly mindless politics.

And when Trump surpassed the 1,237 delegates he needed to claim the presidential nomination, Ryan refused to join many other party leaders including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in rallying behind the billionaire. Instead, Ryan shocked many by telling Jake Tapper of CNN he wasnt quite ready to do so and wanted to learn more about what Trump actually stood for.

However, under mounting pressure from many House conservatives who favored Trump, flaws and all, Ryan finally relented and endorsed Trump a week ago in a column he penned for Wisconsins Janesville Gazette, his hometown newspaper.



Related: Obamas Risky Decision to Endorse Clinton Before FBI Probe Is Concluded

Yet the next day, he was compelled to publicly denounce Trumps racially charged attacks on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel who was presiding over a fraud class action suit that was brought against Trump University.

From the beginning, Ryans big hope has been to play a leading role in shaping the Republicans platform and planting the seeds of a new congressional agenda after the November election. And to that end, he has begun rolling out a series of position papers, with the first two targeted at reducing poverty and strengthening national security and defense.

But unhappily for him, Ryan has become the man in the middle of a raging internal Republican party debate over whether leaders should simply hold their noses and climb aboard the Trump bandwagon or somehow block him at the convention or get behind a third party challenge.

Ryan was hammered with a series of tough questions and comments from major GOP donors and political operatives Friday who had gathered for Romneys annual ideas conference in Park City, Utah, as the Washington Post first reported. Campbell Brown, the former CNN anchor and founder of an education news site, pressed Ryan on how she could explain to her own child why the GOP was nominating someone who has repeatedly spewed racial epithets against Hispanics, blacks and Muslims.

Related: Obamas Final Campaign Begins in Earnest with Assault on Trump

And Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett Package Enterprise and an unsuccessful candidate for governor in California in 2010, compared Trump to Hitler and Mussolini and warned of the long-term dangers of her party compromising on its principles, according to media reports.

Ryan reportedly was startled by the intensity of the questioning and comments. He gamely sought to explain that he had little choice but to endorse Trump because of pressure he was receiving from many conservative House members from districts where Trump was very popular. Moreover, he tried to make the case that Trump would be far better than Clinton, and that with a Republican in the White House their party would have a much better chance of advancing their domestic and foreign policy agenda.

But few found Ryans explanation convincing.

Trump, in typical fashion, lashed out at Whitman, calling her a failed politician and badly flawed business executive. During an appearance today on ABCs This Week, Trumps campaign manager and chief strategist, Paul Manafort, denounced Romney for being a coward who chose not to run again for president this year but now is attacking the partys almost-certain standard bearer.

Manafort said that Romney, Whitman and other GOP malcontents are sitting in their little cocoons far removed from the political world.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, commenting on Sunday's mass shooting in Orlando, said: "As we heal, we need to be clear-eyed about who did this. We are a nation at war with Islamist terrorists." Ryan, the top elected U.S. Republican, also said in a statement he had ordered flags above the Capitol to be flown at half-staff in honor of the victims of the attack. (http://spkrryan.us/1U8a60L) (Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)
PARIS, June 12 (Reuters) - France's Sanofi said on Sunday that two late-stage Phase III clinical trials of its LixiLan diabetes drug had met their targets, readying it for approval in the United States in August and Europe early next year.

LixiLan consists of a single-injection combination of Lyxumia, a drug developed with Danish drugmaker Zealand Pharma , and Sanofi's Lantus. It targets patients suffering from type 2 diabetes.

"Both studies met their primary endpoints, demonstrating statistically superior reduction of HbA1c (average blood glucose over the previous three months) with the titratable fixed-ratio combination versus comparators," Sanofi said in a statement.

Sanofi said the results, unveiled at a meeting of the American Diabetes Association, had been included in regulatory submissions to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency.

The company expects the drug to be approved in August in the U.S. and during the first quarter of 2017 in Europe.

LixiLan sales are expected to reach around $1 billion in 2020, according to consensus forecasts compiled by Thomson Reuters Cortellis. The medication is likely to compete with NovoNordisk's Xultophy.

Nearly 400 million people worldwide have diabetes, with type 2 accounting for more than 90 percent of cases. Without proper treatment or lifestyle changes, those numbers are expected to grow substantially in the coming years.

(Reporting by Matthias Blamont; Editing by James Regan)
Santa Monica police reportedly arrested a man who may have had explosives, assault rifles and ammunition and was planning to attend L.A. pride, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Santa Monica police would not confirm any information to The Hollywood Reporter and said the department's watch commander was "not taking calls."

Police were reportedly called about the man who was in the area of Olympic Boulevard and 11th Street. He told police he was waiting in the area for a friend, The Times reports, citing "sources."

Read More: L.A. Pride Responds to Orlando Massacre With Heightened Security, Moment of Silence

Police, suspicions of the man, checked his car and that is when they found the weapons and explosives, according to The Times.

The suspect reportedly told police he was in town for the pride event in West Hollywood this weekend.

This news comes hours after the worst mass shooting in an Orlando, Fla. night club where at least 50 people were fatally shot in a night club. More than 50 people were injured in the shooting. The gunman was killed during a shootout with police.

It is unclear if a connection exists between the Orlando shooter and the man reportedly arrested by Santa Monica police.

Read More: 50 Killed, 53 Injured in Orlando Gay Nightclub Shooting; Largest Mass Shooting in U.S. History
Law enforcement agencies have stepped up security at theme parks in Southern California following the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that more deputies would be in and around Universal Studios on Sunday. Patrols in Universal City also have increased, authorities said.

Anaheim police told THR that the department takes Disneyland "very seriously" and the park would be closely watched, adding that the park always has a high police presence.

Bob Iger, Disney CEO released a statement on the shooting: "We are all heartbroken by the tragic and horrific events in Orlando, and offer our thoughts, prayers and support to everyone in our community affected by this senseless act."

Disney continuously reviews its security procedures and make adjustments as necessary.

Los Angeles police declined to comment on how many additional officers were on duty Sunday, but numerous police choppers were in the Hollywood air.

Read More: Santa Monica Police Arrest Man With Explosives, Guns Going to L.A. Pride

SeaWorld issued a statement on the Orlando, Fla., shooting: "Our thoughts and prayers are with all of those touched by the unimaginable events that occurred in Orlando early this morning."

It is unclear what additional precautions the parks in San Diego and Orlando are taking concerning security measures.

Early Sunday, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti revealed Santa Monica police arrested a man who had explosives and guns in his car and told police he intended on going to L.A. Pride.

It remains unclear if that suspect has any connection to the shooter who killed at least 50 people when he opened fire in Orlando's Pulse nightclub on Saturday night.

Garcetti reassured Pride fest attendees and viewers watching his news conference that "we are safe."

Read More: 50 Killed, 53 Injured in Orlando Gay Nightclub Shooting; Largest Mass Shooting in U.S. History

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Our thoughts and prayers are with all of those touched by the unimaginable events that occurred in Orlando early this morning.

- SeaWorld (@SeaWorld) June 12, 2016
Playing an entire set of songs from his critically acclaimed latest album Mr. Misunderstood to a stadium full of country fans at CMA Music Fest early Friday night apparently wasn't enough for Eric Church. In the wee hours, the Chief took to a tiny stage at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop on Nashville's Lower Broadway to sit in with Charlie Worsham, the host of a special three-night Midnight Jamboree.

CMA Music Fest 2016: Our Best Photos From Day Two

Church posted the ambling performance to his Facebook page with a note reading: "Sometimes CMA Fest brings the unexpected, and a 1AM jam with Charlie Worsham in a 130F degree room is right up there."

Backed by Worsham and his tight band, Church sang a pair of covers: Merle Haggard's "Heaven Was a Drink of Wine" and the Band's classic "Ophelia."

Singing songs by the Band at late-night gigs during CMA Fest is becoming something of a tradition for Church, who performed "The Weight" at Marty Stuart's Late Night Jam last year, along with Chris Stapleton and members of Little Big Town.

Along with Church, Worsham also welcomed surprise guest Brandy Clark, who sang Buck Owens' "Together Again" and "Daughter," off her new album Big Day in a Small Town. A gleeful Worsham posted clips online of he and his famous friends performing onstage, and police controlling the crowd outside. "This is exactly what we dreamed about when we put this together."

Worsham's Midnight Jam continued tonight in Nashville, but at a different, more modern venue down the block to accommodate the overflow crowd and, most importantly, provide adequate air conditioning in the near 100-degree temperatures.

Related
Selena Gomez canceled her meet and greet and paid beautiful tribute to Christina Grimmie

Selena Gomez canceled her meet and greet and paid beautiful tribute to Christina Grimmie

Everyone is still reeling from the The Voice alum Christina Grimmies tragic death in Orlando this weekend, including her good friend Selena Gomez.

Gomezs stepfather, Brian Teefey, is Grimmies long-time manager and not only have Gomez and Grimmie performed together on the Stars Dance and We Own the Night tours, but they considered one another family. In 2011, Grimmie told Seventeen that when she was just 16 years old, Teefey contacted her about representation after seeing her perform in a YouTube video. She and Gomez became fast friends. In the interview, Grimmie said, Im so blessed that theyre in my life. Theyre literally like a family  Selena has been so encouraging ever since we got hooked up. Its crazy! Its very much a fairy tale.

Grimmie was shot and killed on Friday night during a post-concert meet and greet after performing in Orlando. The following night, Gomez was scheduled to perform in Miami as part of her Revival tour. She took the stage as planned, but canceled the meet and greet scheduled for afterward. During the concert, she dedicated the song Transfiguration to Grimmie and, with tears in her eyes, said, One thing about Christina and her family is that she holds her faith so closely to her. I think its not about a religion and its not about good deeds. I think she just had faith and I dont really understand how this really happened, but I would like to dedicate this song to her.

She also shared a heartbreaking message on Twitter, saying, My heart is absolutely broken. I miss you Christina.

My heart is absolutely broken. I miss you Christina pic.twitter.com/KWGwZZlj4t  Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) June 11, 2016

Grimmies death is shocking and terrible, and its totally understandable why Gomez would cancel her meet and greet under the circumstances. Police have identified the shooter, who took his own life after killing Grimmie, but are still investigating the motive behind the tragedy.

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Gomezs step-father has also set up a GoFundMe page for Grimmies family, where he wrote:

Words cannot begin to describe the pain I am feeling. I learned this business through the eyes of a father and Christina was like a second daughter to me. All I wanted to do was assist her in achieving her musical dreams while protecting her from the pitfalls associated with the business. I never could have imagined this horrific event being one of the pitfalls needing to be avoided. In Christinas honor I have created a Go Fund Me page to assist her family in their time of need. As family Mother, Father, and Brother made the ultimate family sacrifice to support Christina on her musical journey. They did nothing but love her and support her as family the best they knew how, the only worry I want them to have at this point is that of recovery.

Our hearts go out to Gomezs family and everyone who knew and loved Grimmie.

The post Selena Gomez canceled her meet and greet and paid beautiful tribute to Christina Grimmie appeared first on HelloGiggles.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Democratic U.S. senator on Sunday called on Congress to ban military-style weapons and stop firearm sales to suspected extremists following the largest mass shooting in U.S. history.

"It's time for Congress to finally act on gun violence and ban military-style weapons, put limits on clips and magazine sizes, ban those on the terrorist watchlist from purchasing firearms and require background checks on all gun sales," Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania said in a statement.

"We know that the shooter in Orlando used a high-powered weapon that allowed him to fire a large number of bullets in rapid succession," he said.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator Dick Durbin, of Illinois, called for Congress to pass a new gun control law or the legislative body would be "complicit in the next killing." "We have the power to act, and we must," Durbin, who is the second-ranked Democrat in the Senate, said. "The bottom line is that we allow dangerous people to buy guns in America and that has got to change. In the coming days, Congress must take a stand against hate, terrorism, and this horrific gun violence. (Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
Speculation is swirling about the possibility of Hillary Clinton choosing Elizabeth Warren, the outspoken progressive U.S. senator from Massachusetts, as her running mate (though there are reasons to believe that wont happen).

Related: Are Warrens Attacks on Trump a Rehearsal for Clintons Veep?

But even if the presumptive Democratic nominee does not pick Warren, with whom she met Friday morning after gaining her endorsement, there could be a place for Warren in a Clinton Cabinet  and for other accomplished women.

Among the women who could find a seat at a President Clintons table are:

Elizabeth Warren



A darling of the far left, Warren has been a fierce critic of Wall Street and is widely considered the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As a former Harvard Law professor and Republican with expertise in commercial law,

she has the credentials to be Treasury Secretary, among other positions, though the opposition from the financial community would presumably be fierce. Two black marks against her among Clintonistas: She and Hillary have had sometimes frosty relations, and she declined to back either Clinton or Bernie Sanders until it was apparent that the Vermont senator had lost.

Sheryl Sandberg



Sandberg is another woman who could be fill a number of posts. Because of her best-selling book about women empowerment, Lean In, and her very public face as the chief operating officer of Facebook, Sandberg has significant name recognition. Picking her as a running mate might be a stretch (though she could bring in bundles of cash from Silicon Valley and Corporate America for the expensive general election campaign and would be the first Jewish vice-president). Sandberg also has Washington experience: She was chief of staff to Larry Summers when he served as Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton. Recently, Sandberg said she wasnt interested in being a candidate to succeed Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, where she serves on the board.

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Related: 18 Possible Picks for Hillarys Vice President

Loretta Lynch



The current Attorney General is one Barack Obama appointee who might retain her job in a Clinton presidency. A Harvard Law School grad and tough former federal prosecutor appointed as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York by Bill Clinton, Lynch also served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Lynch is the first African-American woman AG. She might be in a tricky position, however, if the FBI refers Hillary Clintons email case to the Justice Dept. for prosecution: Lynch would be the one who would have to decide whether to move forward.

Amy Klobuchar



A lawyer educated at Yale and the University of Chicago, Klobuchar is a former prosecutor and second-term senator from Minnesota. Because the Democrats want to regain control of the Senate, picking a senator for a Clinton Cabinet could be risky in some cases. But Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton whom Klobuchar succeeded as senator is (like Klobuchar) a member of the Democratic-Farm-Labor Party, an affiliate of the Democratic Party, and would be expected to appoint a member of his party to replace her.

Kirsten Gillibrand



Gillibrand, the junior senator from New York, is in a position similar to that of Klobuchar. If she moved from the Senate to a Clinton Cabinet, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo would replace her with another Democrat. And since the state hasnt had a non-Democratic senator since Conservative Jim Buckley was elected in 1970, the seat would almost certainly remain safely Democratic in a special election to fill Klobuchars unexpired term. Gillibrand was herself selected to replace Hillary when Clinton was chosen as Secretary of State by Obama. She has campaigned for Clinton but is seen as considerably more moderate or even conservative on some issues. As a corporate lawyer, she represented Philip Morris in tobacco litigation.

Related: Will Clinton Follow Obamas Legacy in Taking On Big Business?

Ursula Burns



The first African-American woman to head a Fortune 500 company, Xerox Chairman and CEO Burns will step down when the corporation splits into two companies later this year. She will become chairman of the printer-copier company that comes out of the split but is expected to leave that post in 2017. Burns is a Democrat and Clinton donor with deep experience in Corporate America beyond her work at Xerox. She clearly has the chops for Commerce Secretary, among other jobs.

Tammy Duckworth



Duckworth is a former Army pilot and an Iraqi War veteran who lost both legs when her Black Hawk helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. An Asian-American who served as a representative from Illinois, Duckworth is running against Republican Senator Mark Kirk, who this week announced that he would not support his partys presumptive nominee, Donald Trump. Duckworth was an assistant secretary in the Veterans Affairs Dept. in Obamas first term. Should she lose in the race against Kirk, she could be a candidate for a position in a Clinton Cabinet.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Shark fin soup

Shark fin soup is a traditional Chinese dish that has become popular across the globe. It is viewed as a delicacy, so many restaurants are able to charge top dollar for the seafood broth.

With declining populations of sharks worldwide, there have been multiple bans on the sale of shark fins in the United States. However, some species are still allowed to be sold. It is also almost impossible to stop the sale of shark fins, Sea Shepherd says, because many Asian markets often lie about the species they have caught and laws arent always upheld.

This so-called delicacy also leads to some major health problems.

The reason indulging in this dish can be so harmful is because of bioaccumulation, explains the Shark Research Institute. Toxins concentrate in animals when they move up the food chain. Since sharks are some of the largest and longest-living species in the ocean, they have a high position on the food chain, so they consume huge amounts of toxins that have accumulated in their prey.

A study published in Science of the Total Environment in 2014 measured levels of monomethylmercury (MMHg), the most toxic and volatile form of mercury, in 50 dried unprocessed fins of 13 species found in international trade, as well as 50 samples of shark fin soup prepared in restaurants across the United States. They found that concentrations of MMHg in fins ranged from 9 to 1720 ng/g and concentrations in fin soup were 0.01 to 34 ng/mL. The highest values came from sharks at the top of the food chain, like hammerheads. The consumption of a 240 mL bowl of shark fin soup containing high MMHg concentrations is 17% more than the EPAs recommended amount.

This is a major problem for expecting mothers. A 2015 study published by researchers at Rutgers University measured mercury levels in different fish species in New Jersey. They found that most mako sharks, a fast-swimming large mackerel shark, has mercury levels exceeding 1.0 ppm, with the highest being 1.8 ppm.

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Less than 2 parts in a million may seem trivial, but the US Environmental Protection Agency has set the limit at 0.3 ppm and the US Food and Drug Administration set their own level at 1.0 ppm. The US FDA has said that pregnant women should avoiding eating shark meat because prenatal doses can lead to behavioral deficits in infants and lower results on cognitive performance tests.

Shark-tagging-research-trip

More symptoms of mercury poisoning can include harm to the brain, heart, kidneys, and immune system.



University of Miami researchers published a study in 2012 on a cyanobacterial neurotoxin (a nervous system-affecting toxin produced from photosynthesizing bacteria) known as BMAA. They sampled fin clips from 7 different shark species in South Florida. BMAA was detected in fins of all species they examined with concentrations ranging from 144 to 1836 ng/mg wet weight.

Sharks found both in areas with cyanobacterial blooms and without had the toxin in them, possibly due to their migratory lifestyles. This study found that shark size or lifespan didnt have a significant effect on how much of the toxin was present. This means that even if the fin in your shark fin soup is from a smaller shark, there is still a chance it could be affected.

BMAA has been linked to neurogenerative diseases like Alzheimers disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Eating shark fins can increase human exposure the toxin. Scientists at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center have published evidence suggesting this could be due to BMAA being improperly incorporated in the skin, leading to problems in the formation of connective tissue.

So while shark fin soup may appear to be an extraordinary dish to indulge in on a special occasion, it is definitely dangerous. Although there are bans, the soup can still be found in restaurants across the nation. Be sure to think twice the next time you consider ordering one of Asia's most famous dishes.

NOW WATCH: We may have been wrong about good cholesterol all this time





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Orlando (AFP) - Fifty people died and another 53 were injured early Sunday when a heavily-armed gunman opened fire and seized hostages at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, police said, in the worst mass shooting in US history.

Terrified survivors -- who moments before were laughing and dancing with friends -- described how the gunman named by media as a US citizen of Afghan descent raked the club with bullets, prompting a police SWAT team to storm the venue.

"We have cleared the building, and it is with great sadness that I share we have not 20, but 50 casualties in addition to the shooter," Mayor Buddy Dyer told a mid-morning news briefing in Orlando, more than doubling the previously given death toll.

"There are another 53 that are hospitalized."

President Barack Obama was being kept up to date by his homeland security and counterterrorism aide on what Florida officials are investigating as a terrorist attack.

FBI official Ronald Hopper told reporters officials were "confident" there was no immediate further threat to the area, or to the United States.

Because of the scale of the crime, however, Orlando's mayor declared a city-wide state of emergency and has asked the Florida governor to take the same measure state-wide. The federal government has offered its full support with the probe.

Police have yet to officially identify the gunman but US television networks quoting law enforcement sources named him as Omar Mateen, who was born to Afghan parents in 1986 and lives in Port St Lucie, Florida, about two hours drive from Orlando.

CBS News reported that Mateen -- who died in a shootout with police after the siege -- has no apparent criminal history.

Hopper said authorities were looking into whether the suspect had "leanings" toward Islamic extremism, but Florida officials also invited a local Islamic leader to address the media in a bid to preempt a possible backlash against the Muslim community.

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- 'Rescue hostages' -

The chaotic events unfolded over a three hour period, beginning at around 2 am (0600 GMT) when shots rang out amid the throbbing music at the Pulse Orlando nightclub near closing time.

Police said the shots were fired by a gunman armed with an assault rifle and a handgun.

A police officer working "extra duties" at the club responded, joined by two other officers, who engaged the suspect in a gun battle, Orlando police chief John Mina said.

"The suspect at some point went back inside the club where more shots were fired. This did turn into a hostage situation," he told reporters.

"At approximately 0500 hours (0900 GMT) this morning, the decision was made to rescue hostages that were in there."

Police then stormed the venue, using explosives and breaking through a wall with a wheeled armored vehicle known as a BearCat. Mina said about 30 people were rescued during the operation.

It was unclear whether all the victims were killed by the gunman or if some died in the ensuing shootout with police.

The attack coincides with gay pride month in the United States, with festive marches and events being held all over the country including in Orlando last week.

It was the second shooting incident in the city in just over 24 hours, coming shortly after singer Christina Grimmie was shot dead late Friday by a gunman who stormed a theater where she had just finished a gig.

Mina said there was no indication of a link between the two shootings.

- 'Non-stop firing' -

Speaking to Sky News, clubber Ricardo Negron, who was inside when the shooting began, described how the gunman raked the club with bullets.

"People just dropped on the floor. I guess the shooter was shooting at the ceiling because you could see all the glass from the lamps falling," he told the network.

He described hearing "non-stop firing" which probably lasted less than a minute but felt like a lot longer.

"There was a brief pause in the shooting and some of us just got up and ran out the back."

The Pulse club advertises itself online as "Orlando's hottest gay bar." On its Facebook page, the club warned patrons: "Everyone get out Pulse and keep running."

- 'Blood everywhere' -

Witness Christopher Hanson said he heard "loud banging noises, like gunshots going off."

"I didn't see any of the actual shooters. I just saw bodies going down and I was ordering a drink at the bar.

"I fell down. I crawled out. People were trying to escape out the back. I just know that when I hit the ground, I was crawling and I hit my elbows and my knees," he told CNN.

He said there was "blood everywhere."

Rosie Feba was at the club with a friend when the shooting broke out.

"She told me someone was shooting. Everyone was getting on the floor," Feba told the Orlando Sentinel. "I told her I didn't think it was real, I thought it was just part of the music, until I saw fire coming out of his gun."

The incident came on the heels of a deadly shooting at the nearby Plaza Live Theater in which a heavily-armed gunman shot and critically wounded singer Grimmie, a former contestant on the popular TV talent show "The Voice."

She was rushed to hospital but died of her wounds.

The Plaza gunman, 27-year-old Kevin James Loibl, then killed himself. His motive remains unknown.
BEIJING (Reuters) - Siemens (SIEGn.DE) has no interest in becoming a white knight for German robot maker Kuka (KU2G.DE), which is the target of a 4.5 billion euro ($5.06 billion) takeover bid by Chinese home appliance maker Midea , Siemens' chief executive said.

"If we had been interested, we would have acted on it some time ago," Joe Kaeser told German broadcaster ntv in an interview.

Midea's bid has fanned a furious debate over Chinese takeovers in Europe, with politicians such as German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel calling for tougher restrictions. It has also prompted Berlin to consider whether Kuka's technology is crucial for the digitalisation of German industry, an economic priority.

Kaeser, speaking to the broadcaster on the sidelines of Chancellor Angela Merkel's trade visit to Beijing, said he believed Gabriel, who is also Vice Chancellor, was relaxed about Kuka's situation.

"I don't believe that Mr Gabriel has a concern," Kaeser said.

"As Economy Minister, he's looking out for his country... in that sense, it's quite natural that he should look at alternatives," Kaeser added.

Gabriel said earlier this month there was an effort under way to develop an alternative offer for Kuka.

Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily reported that Gabriel had spoken to German car manufacturers and Siemens about mounting a possible counter-bid for Kuka. But sources close to the government and Siemens told Reuters the idea had met with little enthusiasm.

Andy Gu, vice chief executive of Midea, told Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper that his company's bid for Kuka was motivated by business interests and aimed at helping the German company target the huge Chinese market. It was a not a political undertaking, he said.

"We are a private company. It's not important to us what the Chinese government demands," the newspaper quoted Gu as saying.

Gu said Kuka would remain independent, adding that he expected Chinese authorities to approve the takeover, according to the newspaper.

($1 = 0.8890 euros)

(Reporting by Andreas Rinke in Beijing; Writing by Jonathan Gould; Editing by Clelia Oziel)
By Tony Munroe and Joyce Lee

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's Lotte Group, whose hotel unit faces a July deadline to complete an initial public offering (IPO) worth up to $4.5 billion, said on Sunday that it is "difficult" for it to modify the listing document.

The statement came two days after prosecutors raided the offices of Lotte Group and several companies in the conglomerate, including Hotel Lotte.

Three people with direct knowledge of the matter said the raids were part of an investigation into a possible slush fund, dealing a new blow to the hotel unit's planned IPO, which could be the world's biggest this year.

Earlier last week, Hotel Lotte cut the size of the IPO and pushed back the listing from June to July, in a revision to its listing document, after prosecutors launched a bribery investigation into a director.

"Carrying out procedures such as a modified filing to protect investors are currently physically difficult," Lotte Group said in a statement on Sunday.

According to stock exchange 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.

"Hotel Lotte's listing is a key issue to improve Lotte Group's governance structure, including lowering Japanese shareholders' stakes and diversifying shareholders, so we will closely discuss with advisors and regulators on what to do in the future," Lotte Group said.

The Lotte Group, South Korea's fifth-largest family run conglomerate, or chaebol, has grown from its founding in Japan 68 years ago as a maker of chewing gum.

But last year's highly public power struggle within the founding Shin family fueled resentment at the grip the chaebol hold over the Korean economy. Some Koreans also criticized the group's close ties with former colonial ruler Japan.

Late on Friday, the group's Lotte Chemical Corp unit said it withdrew from the bidding for U.S.-based Axiall Corp, which went to a rival suitor for $2.33 billion, citing "the difficult situation Lotte has faced in Korea recently and heated competition".

(Reporting by Tony Munroe and Joyce Lee; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
London (AFP) - Sri Lanka were set a target of 362 to win the third Test at Lord's on Sunday.

England captain Alastair Cook declared his side's second innings on 233 for seven on the fourth day.

Cook was 49 not out and Chris Woakes unbeaten on nought after opener Alex Hales made a Test-best 94, with England already 2-0 up in the three-match series.

If Sri Lanka chase down their target they will set a new record for the most runs scored in the fourth innings to win a Test at Lord's.

That was set by the West Indies when they made 344 for one, requiring 342, against England at Lord's in 1984, when Gordon Greenidge (214 not out) and Larry Gomes (92 not out), made light of a seemingly difficult chase.
Stacey Dash used the murder of at least 50 people inside gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida Sunday morning as an opportunity to praise Donald Trump and bash President Barack Obama.

In the wake of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, Dash, who is notably anti-transgender, insinuated that shooting suspect Omar Mateen was a registered Democrat and voted for Obama, and that a Trump presidency would be tough on Islamic terrorism.

My heart and prayers are with the LBGT community. This atrocity would not go unanswered under President Trump I promise!! #PrayingForOrlando

A photo posted by Stacey Dash (@realstaceyldash) on Jun 12, 2016 at 10:35am PDT

Twitter uses were quick to call out Dash  who recently said trans people should use the bathroom "in the bushes" as to protect the safety of her children  for using the massacre as a moment to campaign for Trump and to remind her of her blatant hypocrisy.

@REALStaceyDash WTF? Why are you making this tragedy political?

@REALStaceyDash I see you have still remained Clueless.

@REALStaceyDash You said trans people should go to the bathroom in the bushes. Keep your prayers.

Authorities have yet to release an official motive for the shooting. Mateen's father said his son became "enraged" after seeing two men kiss in Miami months earlier. Manteen also reportedly had ties to ISIS.

Read more:

 Bernie Sanders Just Nailed the Real Culprit Behind the Mass Shooting in Orlando

 In the Wake of the Orlando Nightclub Shooting, the LGBT Community Won't Be Intimidated

 Father of Pulse Nightclub Shooting Suspect Says Massacre Motivated by Anti-LGBT Views
(PALO ALTO, Calif.)  Stanford University graduating students and womens rights advocates used the schools commencement ceremony to again express their anger over the six-month jail sentence given to a former student for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

A handful of students demonstrated Sunday during Wacky Walk, a rambunctious, slow-moving stroll by graduating students dressed in zany costumes that precedes the official graduation events.

One person held a sign that declared Stanford protects rapists. Another graduates sign was a message to the victim: You are a warrior.

Organizers said they wanted to show solidarity to the woman sexually assaulted on campus last year by former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner.

Its very important to amplify the voice of survivors, said Brianne Huntsman, a protest organizer.

The victims emotional statement to the court about how the assault devastated her life was widely shared online, attracting national attention to the case.

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, whose rousing keynote speech called on Republicans to reconsider their endorsement of Donald Trump, closed his address urging sexual assaults be taken seriously.

If someone tells you they have been sexually assaulted, take it effing seriously and listen to them, said Burns, who is the father of four girls. Maybe someday well make the survivors eloquent statement as important as Dr. (Martin Luther) Kings letter from the Birmingham jail.

Turners six-months in jail sentence, which also orders him to register as a sex offender for life, touched off an emotional national debate about leniency and campus sexual assault and sparked outrage with critics collecting thousands of signatures to demand trial Judge Aaron Persky be removed from the bench.

Turner, 20, of Oakwood, Ohio, is scheduled to be released from Santa Clara County jail in September, after completing three months of his sentence due to good behavior.

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The womens advocacy group UltraViolet submitted more than 800,000 signatures to the Commission on Judicial Performances San Francisco offices Friday in a symbolic effort for Perskys removal. The group also has filed a formal misconduct complaint.

A small plane carrying a banner reading Protect Survivors. Not Rapists. #PerskyMustGo that was commissioned by the group flew over Stanford University Stadium ahead of Sundays commencement ceremonies.

Stanford students are justifiably outraged over a so-called justice system that protects privileged white rapists over the survivors of their crimes, said Nita Chaudhary, co-founder of UltraViolet. With one in four women sexually assaulted while in college, we need judges that take rape seriously, and thats why Judge Persky should be removed from the bench.

UltraViolet said it has also paid for a full page ad in The Stanford Dailys graduation issue inviting students and alumni to take a stand against rape and that bicycles carrying billboards calling for the judges removal will accompany student protesters. The bikes are a nod to two graduate students who were riding their bicycles when they confronted the freshman as he attacked the unconscious victim by a garbage bin.

I sleep with two bicycles that I drew taped above my bed to remind myself there are heroes in this story. That we are looking out for one another, the woman said in her statement to the court.
Stockholm (AFP) - Striking Swedish SAS pilots and employer representatives returned to the negotiating table Sunday, the pilots' union said on day three of a walkout over wages that has stranded 50,000 passengers and cost the carrier millions.

"We are in talks now. Hopefully we will be able to come to an agreement," SPF union chief Martin Lindgren told AFP.

On Sunday, SAS cancelled 220 flights by Swedish pilots, affecting 26,000 passengers. On Friday and Saturday, another 24,000 passengers were stranded by cancelled flights.

Flights operated by Danish and Norwegian pilots were running as normal.

The walkout comes during peak travel season, and has hit charter groups hard.

The strike began on Friday at 6:00 pm (1600 GMT) after the pilots' union rejected a proposed 2.2 percent wage increase, insisting on a hike of 3.5 percent.

The employers' organisation however said the pilots' overall demands, including employment contracts offering greater job security, would entail a 10 percent cost increase.

"That would mean a cost increase of almost 100 million kronor ($12 million/10.7 million euros) a year for SAS. We can't afford that given the current competition," SAS chief executive Rickard Gustafson told news agency TT.

SAS said it had not calculated how much money it was losing because of the strike, but financial analysts estimated it was costing the airline at least $1.2 million (1.06 million euros) a day.

Analysts said the losses could be even greater if customers were to lose confidence in the airline's dependability because of the strike.

"SAS has to weigh the loss of prestige against the consequences of higher wage costs... People might be hesitant to choose SAS next time," air industry analyst Matts Hyttinge told TT.
T ex-wife of 29-year-old Omar Mateen  the suspected lone gunman who opened fire at a gay Orlando, Florida, nightclub  said her ex-husband was mentally unstable and physically abused her during their marriage.

"He was not a stable person," the woman, who spoke anonymously, told the Washington Post. "He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn't finished or something like that."

She told the Washington Post she and Mateen met eight years ago online, and she moved to Florida to be with him. Once her parents caught wind of the abuse, she said, they flew down to Florida and forcibly removed her from the house.

"They literally saved my life," she told the Washington Post.

While the FBI has not publicly identified Mateen as the attacker, his father, Mir Seddique, gave a statement to NBC News saying he and his family were "apologizing for the whole incident."

Omar Mateen's father says suspect is married w/3-year-old son & "got very angry" when son saw 2 men kissing http://nbcnews.to/1ULkANt #Orlando

Seddique told the network that his son, who had a 3-year-old son of his own, became enraged after he witnessed two men kissing in downtown Miami recently. He said he did not believe that the attack had been motivated by religion.
MONTREAL (Reuters) - The head of luxury group LVMH's Swiss watchmaking business said on Saturday the company is pushing its TAG Heuer brand in the Chinese market, as rivals scale back their investments due to weaker demand.

"We're pushing a lot, we're especially pushing now, much more than ever because all the brands are disinvesting," TAG Heuer Chief Executive Jean-Claude Biver said in an interview. "This means our investment now becomes much stronger."

TAG has only minimal exposure to China and Hong Kong and its growth this year is mainly from the United States, Britain, Japan and Australia, Biver said in Montreal, during a company event for the Canadian Grand Prix.

Biver said TAG's sales grew 20 percent during the first five months of 2016, compared to the same period in 2015, on greater demand from the four countries and for its "smartwatches" that connect to the Internet.

While Biver previously expected to sell 40,000 to 50,000 of the connected watches, he said he now hopes to deliver 60,000 and is facing demand for 80,000 watches.

Biver said he still expects double-digit sales for the TAG Heuer brand in 2016.

"We will try to keep the pace," he said. "But the world is so difficult at the moment."

He said Swiss watch industry sales declined 9 percent during the first five months of 2016 on an annual basis, because of weaker demand from China and other emerging markets. He said the Swiss watch industry as a whole has greater exposure to China than TAG does.

"For me the most important thing is that I beat the Swiss watch industry," Biver said. "If I do better than the industry it means I gained market share. The more the market is difficult, the more important it is to gain market share."

(Reporting By Allison Lampert; Editing by Bill Rigby)
Taiwan's new government on Sunday refused former president Ma Ying-jeou permission to visit Hong Kong, citing national security considerations, sparking an angry response from his party.

Ma, who stepped down on May 20 after eight years, applied to the presidential office early this month for permission to make a trip on June 15 to the semi-autonomous southern Chinese city.

He was to deliver a keynote speech at the Society of Publishers in Asia awards.

Ma, an advocate of rapprochement between Taiwan and China, was to have spoken about cross-strait relations and the Northeast Asia situation, according to his office.

But the office of new President Tsai Ing-wen, from the China-sceptic Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), rejected his application, which was reviewed by a special panel grouping senior officials from various government agencies.

The DPP trounced Ma's Kuomintang party in presidential and parliamentary elections in January.

"The presidential office has decided not to approve the former president's application," Tsai's spokesman Alex Huang told reporters.

Huang termed Ma's application as "sensitive", "unique" and "crucial in a national security perspective".

"The former president had been in charge of or in contact with massive amounts of top state secrets, and the plan came about less than a month after his retirement," Huang said.

"Hong Kong has been a highly sensitive area considered from Taiwan's national security point of view," he said, adding Ma must respect a state secrets law introduced in 2003.

Ma's office strongly condemned the decision, saying the purpose of the planned trip was transparent. The suggestion that secrets might be leaked "is disrespectful of a retired president and has damaged the international image of Taiwan's freedom and democracy".

While the DPP urged Ma "to look at and accept this decision in a rational manner", the Kuomintang accused the new government of using a "ridiculous" excuse to block Ma's trip.

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Ma was born in Hong Kong in 1950 to parents from the Chinese mainland. That has become something of a political handicap as Taiwan started to develop a more pronounced sense of its own identity.

China and Taiwan split in 1949 after the Kuomintang lost a civil war on the mainland to the communists and fled to the island.

Beijing still considers the island part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.

Tensions eased markedly and 21 agreements between the two former bitter rivals were signed during Ma's tenure.

But public sentiment in Taiwan has recently turned against closer ties with Beijing, with voters saying trade deals have been agreed in secret and not benefited ordinary citizens.

Ties have become frosty since Tsai won Taiwan's presidential election as Beijing does not trust her independence-leaning party.

Chinese leaders have repeatedly offer to reunite Taiwan with the mainland using the "One country, two systems" adopted to re-integrate Hong Kong and Macau.

The proposal has been flatly rejected by Taiwan.

China last month warned Tsai against seeking independence, cautioning that peace would be impossible if she made any moves to formally break away.

The remarks came just hours after her inauguration speech struck a conciliatory note, calling for a "positive dialogue" with China.
A massacre that left 50 dead and 53 wounded Sunday at a packed gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, is now the deadliest shooting in U.S. history. But the rampage may also have set another disturbing precedent, marking the first large-scale attack inspired by Islamist extremism that successfully targeted the LGBT community in a Western country.

The shooter who stormed the Pulse nightclub, identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, declared his allegiance to the Islamic State in a 911 call shortly before he cut down dozens of people and set off a scene of unspeakable carnage that ended with his own death Sunday morning. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack through its Amaq news agency, but authorities said it was unclear if Mateen had clear links to the group, or if he was merely a lone wolf inspired by its propaganda.

Over the past year, the Islamic State has orchestrated major attacks in Paris and Brussels at concert halls, cafes, subway stations, and airports that aimed at killing as many people as possible in an arbitrary fashion. But the group has not previously singled out the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in its deadly assaults in the West.

In Syria and Iraq, however, the group has brutally executed gay men in towns under its control, posting grisly videos of blindfolded victims being thrown off the roofs of buildings. At least 36 men have been killed by militants on the basis of draconian sodomy charges enforced by the Islamic State, according to OutRight Action International. In Bangladesh, Islamist militants have for years targeted gay bloggers, among others, for assassination; on Sunday, authorities there detained thousands of suspected militants in a pre-emptive raid.

President Barack Obama called the shooting an act of terror and an act of hate and noted that it occurred during Pride festivities across the country, an annual celebration of the LGBT community.

The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends, to dance and to sing and to live, Obama said Sunday at the White House. So this is a sobering reminder that attacks on any American  regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation  is an attack on all of us and on the fundamental values of equality and dignity that define us as a country.

Story continues

Obama said that authorities have no definitive judgment on the precise motivations of the killer, or what  if any  inspiration or association this killer may have had with terrorist groups.

The Islamic State claimed the gunman as one of its own: The armed attack that targeted a gay nightclub in the city of Orlando in the American state of Florida which left over 100 people dead or injured was carried out by an Islamic State fighter, the groups Amaq agency said.

But Mateens father said his son never demonstrated much of an interest in radical Islamist doctrine or religion, though he had expressed anger recently over seeing two men kissing in Miami. And his ex-wife said Mateen had beat her and was mentally ill and unstable.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said that a number of signs  including the Islamic States calls for attacks during Ramadan, the gunmans declaration in his 911 call, and his targeting of a gay nightclub during Pride  indicated that the attack was an ISIS-inspired act of terrorism. He added: Whether this attack was also ISIS-directed remains to be determined.

Mateen was hardly unknown to federal authorities: The FBI investigated him on two separate occasions. In 2013, he came under suspicion for making inflammatory comments alleging he had ties to terrorists, but authorities could not find sufficient evidence to pin charges on him. Then, in 2014, the FBI looked at Mateens possible ties to a notorious figure, Moner Mohammad Abusalha, the first American to carry out a suicide attack in Syria.

The FBI concluded that the contact between the two men  who both lived in Fort Pierce, Florida  had been minimal and that Mateen did not constitute a substantive threat at that time, Ronald Hopper, assistant agent in charge of the FBIs Tampa division, told reporters in Orlando.

Western governments have struggled to contain the fallout from hate-filled propaganda touting Islamist violence, even as the Islamic States so-called caliphate continues to shrink on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria, experts said.

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi knows if he calls for terror it will come, said author Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and now a fellow at the Brookings Institution. He doesnt need any direct human connection or even a web connection. His message is so pervasive in the media and so simple it is certain to inspire the angry.

Theres plenty of anger to stoke. Hate crimes based on sexual orientation are commonplace in the United States, but those attacks have not been on a large-scale or linked directly to foreign terrorist groups or their propaganda. A 1990 bombing of a gay bar in Greenwich Village in New York that injured three people was eventually blamed on a suspected Islamist terrorist.

According to the FBIs most recent statistics, in 2014, hate crimes against gay Americans accounted for more than 18 percent of the 1,017 such incidents across the country, with about 2 percent occurring in gay bars or nightclubs.

Orlandos tragedy threw the 2016 election into stark relief Sunday, drawing markedly different responses from the two presumptive presidential nominees, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The former secretary of state emphasized it was both terrorism and a hate crime, while Trump initially made no mention of the LGBT community and accepted congratulations from his Twitter followers for having foreseen an attack.

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I dont want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance, the Republican tweeted. We must be smart! Later Sunday, he piled on, calling for the presidents resignation and for Clinton to drop out of the presidential race. In a final statement Sunday evening, he said, Radical Islam advocates hate for women, gays, Jews, Christians and all Americans, concluding, We are going to make America safe again and great again for everyone.

Trumps campaign said hell give a speech Monday on the attack, immigration, and national security.

Clinton, a Democrat who has made national security central to her campaign, vowed to continue the Obama administrations fight against the Islamic State and its ilk, stressing the role of multinational coalitions and the need to upend terrorist recruitment networks. It also means refusing to be intimidated and staying true to our values, she said, promising as well to fight for the rights of the LGBT community.

Hate has absolutely no place in America, Clinton said. To the LGBT community: Please know that you have millions of allies across our country. I am one of them.

Beyond the politics of the presidential race, in Orlando, the attack has left a sense of disbelief, pain, and outrage.

Theres a lot of anger, Florida State Sen. Darren Soto, who represents Orlando, told Foreign Policy on Sunday. Many of us woke up shocked to find our happy little town was the site of the largest mass shooting in American history.

We have a large and proud gay community here thats a fundamental part of our culture, and for them to be targeted in a potentially international terrorist attack is just upsetting and mind-boggling.

Photo credit: YURI GRIPAS/Stringer
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has faced a social media backlash for what some perceive as anti-gay commentary after Sundays mass shooting at an popular Orlando, Florida, gay nightclub.



Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows, Patrick tweeted Sunday morning, hours after a mass shooting at Orlandos Pulse which left, at least 50 people dead and 53 injured. Officials have called the attack the deadliest mass shooting in American history.



Patrick posted the same verse to his Facebook page soon after. Both posts were deleted before noon.



It was not immediately clear if Patrick was commenting on the Orlando shooting. Representatives from his office did not immediately respond to PEOPLEs request for comment.







Many users on both platforms read Patricks quotation as anti-gay, as that verse (and the one succeeding it) have frequently been quoted as evidence of Christianitys intolerance of gays.



Youre such a poor example of Texas, and of Christianity. May those affected my this mornings violence be protected from the thoughtless words of idiots like you, one Facebook user commented on Patricks post.



Another wrote, What a horrific post. Disgusting. But then, I guess you failed to remember that the entire book of Galatians was written to the CHURCH, and that Pauls anger was to the bigotry and selfishness within the Christian church at Galatians. In other words  he was talking about people like you.



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On Twitter, businessman and sometimes Shark Tank guest Chris Sacca responded, "You pervert Christianity in a way that would make Jesus cringe. Where is your compassion?





@DanPatrick You pervert Christianity in a way that would make Jesus cringe. Where is your compassion? a Chris Sacca (@sacca) June 12, 2016





Patrick, a Republican, opposed gay marriage and has spoken out against the White Houses requirement that students be allowed to use the school bathroom that matches their gender identity.



Authorities do yet know a motive for the shooting, and an FBI spokesperson said Sunday morning that this is an ongoing investigation and wouldnt classify it as a terror or hate crime.



The father of the reported suspect told NBC News that it has nothing to do with religion, and instead pointed toward his sons recent anger at seeing two men kissing.
Hours after the horrific murder of 50 people in a gay nightclub, Dan Patrick, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, tweeted a biblical verse that appeared to equate the event with divine punishment.

The tweet cited a verse of Galatians from the New Testament, saying Do not be deceived; God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.

Patrick, who has been criticized by the LGBT community for promoting laws against transgender bathrooms, has since deleted the tweet, which went live at 7 am Sunday morning.

But many Twitter user reproduced the original tweet while delivering a reproach to Patrick:

You deleted this disgusting tweet @DanPatrick now #deleteyouraccount & resign. You don't represent America pic.twitter.com/MM07jxkkEY  mia farrow (@MiaFarrow) June 12, 2016

TX Lt. Governor @DanPatrick, you are a disgrace to your state in this time of national sorrow. You should resign. https://t.co/zOD2oi1XWD  George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) June 12, 2016

A Patrick spokesman has since posted a statement regretting the unfortunate timing of the tweets, and urging readers to be assured that the post was not done in response to last nights tragedy. The post was designed and scheduled last Thursday.

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The statement urged everyone to join us in praying for the people of Orlando in this awful time but did make any reference to the LGBT community, or to the gay nightclub where the massacre took place.

Story continues

Some people on Twitter appeared to agree that Patricks tweet was not tied to the nightclub tragedy.

that Dan Patrick tweet looks scheduled to me. looking thru his media, his account tweets Bible verse images every Sunday morning  shrillary tintin (@theshrillest) June 12, 2016

A review of Patricks past tweets confirms that the account does post a biblical quote every Sunday.

Meanwhile, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump is also under fire for a tweet this afternoon that thanked people for congrats on classifying the massacre as terrorism.

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Details of the murders, which were reportedly carried out by Omar Mateen, a U.S. citizen, are still emerging.

President Obama, in a press conference, described the events as an act of hate, and ordered flags at the White House and federal buildings to be flown at half-mast until as a mark of respect for victims of the act of hatred and terror.

See original article on Fortune.com

More from Fortune.com
By Jon Herskovitz

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - The office of Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, a Republican and evangelical Christian, on Sunday deleted a tweet many saw as offensive and insensitive that was sent out shortly after the deadly attack on a gay nightclub in Florida.

"Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows," read the Bible verse Patrick sent out on his official Twitter account a few hours after the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that left at least 50 dead.

His office was not immediately available for comment but has told local media, including the Dallas Morning News, that the tweet had been scheduled for release well before the shooting. The office, which regularly sends out a Bible verse on Sundays, has since deleted it and replaced with another passage, they said.

But the deleted tweet from a politician who has condemned same-sex marriage and fought against LGBT rights still raised the ire of those who accused Patrick of blaming the victims.

"You are a disgrace to your state in this time of national sorrow. You should resign," prominent LGBT activist George Takei wrote on Twitter.

The Texas Democratic Party called on Patrick to apologize immediately.

"Make this right. We are better than this," it said in a statement.

Patrick is currently out of the country and has not yet made comment to media about the tweet.

The new verse sent on his account reads: "The salvation of the righteous comes from the Lord; He is their stronghold in time of trouble."

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand's 88-year-old king, the world's longest reigning monarch, has shown signs of improvement following surgery for narrowing of the arteries, the palace said in a statement on Sunday. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-reigning monarch, has been treated for various ailments during a year-long hospitalization in the Thai capital. He was last seen in public on Jan. 11, when he spent several hours visiting his Bangkok palace. The king's heartbeat, breathing and blood pressure were normal, the palace said, adding that an electrocardiogram showed an increased supply of blood to the heart. The king, who celebrated 70 years of his reign on Thursday, is seen as a unifying figure in a country that has faced decades of often deadly political upheaval. On a few occasions the monarch has intervened when events threatened to plunge the country into crisis. In a June 7 statement, the palace said the king had received treatment for narrowing of the heart arteries with "satisfactory results". News about the royal family is tightly controlled in Thailand. Laws protecting the royals from insult make it a crime to defame, insult or threaten the king, queen, heir to the throne or regent. (Reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Ros Russell)
From the Los Angeles Pride parade to New York City's historic Stonewall Inn, people are showing their support for the LGBT community following the horrific shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida.



Several people at the Pride event in L.A. wrote on signs that said, "We won't be silenced." One trending hashtag for the event is "#ThePrideMustGoOn." The Pride event had been scheduled to take place in West Hollywood, California, on Sunday ahead of the attacks.



The Pride event itself was the subject of a would-be attack. A man was arrested in Santa Monica, California, early Sunday morning after he was allegedly found heavily armed en route to the parade. Authorities said that the incident was unrelated to the Orlando shooting.





#ThePrideMustGoOn: LGBT Community Rallies for Pride Parades in L.A. and D.C. in Wake of Orlando Attacks| Crime & Courts, Death, Shootings, Terrorism, True Crime











We are streaming the #LAPride parade live now from the L.A. Times float. Join us: https://t.co/JGwMaIJuvi pic.twitter.com/DR95AJyfOk a Los Angeles Times (@latimes) June 12, 2016











Still, Pride went on, although they made sure to show solidarity with the victims in Orlando.



"Today, we are heartbroken that so many of our brothers, sisters and allies were lost in this tragic attack," said L.A. Pride President Chris Classen in a press conference. "As we remember them today at our moment of silence, we must continue to show our pride, not just today but every day."











Just wrapped #LAPride. No doubt there were rattled nerves, but the love was stronger than ever #TrumpEvilwithLOVE pic.twitter.com/K0ezCnRkkm a Crystal Egger (@crystalNBCLA) June 12, 2016





The Capital Pride parade and festival also took place in Washington, D.C. on Sunday. The event offered support and love for those affected by Sunday's shooting.





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Glad to see how many people are having a good time @CapitalPrideDC pic.twitter.com/2lpW17lV3O a Javier J (@thatwasdeep) June 12, 2016











The historic Stonewall Inn in N.Y.C. increased security in light of the attack, according to their Facebook page. The bar was the scene of the famous Stonewall riots following a police raid in 1969. It is often thought of as the birthplace of the modern day gay rights movement.



In addition to security, the bar will host a vigil for the Orlando victims on Monday night. Meanwhile, other supporters came by the bar to bring flowers and positive messages.





Extra security at Stonewall Inn in NYC following mass shooting at gay club in Orlando. #nbc4ny pic.twitter.com/iUjrN5J2gw a Lori Bordonaro (@Lori4NY) June 12, 2016







Growing tribute outside Stonewall Inn in NYC. Paying tribute to victims of Orlando shooting. #nbc4ny pic.twitter.com/fo6nLGTl5R a Lori Bordonaro (@Lori4NY) June 12, 2016





"Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and families in Orlando," The Stonewall Inn posted on Sunday after news of the attacks. "We stand in solidarity and in sadness with our entire LGBT community."



According to police, a shooter opened fire just after 2 a.m. local time on Sunday at Pulse, a popular gay club in Orlando. Authorities say that at least 50 people have been killed and at least 53 are injured, making it the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.



On Sunday, President Barack Obama called the attack an "act of terror and hate."
Orlando shooting

ISIS has claimed responsibility for another massacre: an attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that killed at least 50 people early Sunday morning.

The shooting was the deadliest in US history. The suspected gunman, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS, the terrorist group also known as the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh, in a 911 call.

After news outlets reported this, the ISIS-affiliated Amaq news agency released a statement on its online propaganda channels claiming responsibility for the attack.

But the statement differed from those released after recent ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris and Brussels. In the Amaq statement released Sunday, the ISIS link to the Orlando attack was attributed to a "source." The brief statement also did not describe or provide any details about the attack.

While the Paris and Brussels attackers had direct ties to ISIS leaders, it's unclear how closely Mateen is connected to the group.

Michael Horowitz, a geopolitical and security analyst at the Levantine Group, a Middle East-based risk consultancy, told Business Insider that there had yet to be anything "that even remotely proves the attacker was in contact with ISIS."

Horowitz said in an email:

The Amaq statement provides very little details regarding the attack, and even uses a relatively cautious phrasing by saying 'source to al-Amaq,' suggesting the group had no prior knowledge of the attack. The statement also refrains from directly saying that ISIS is responsible for the attack but rather indicates that 'an Islamic State fighter' carried out the attack. Both these elements suggest the attack was ISIS-inspired rather than directed or financed by the group.

Rita Katz, an expert on ISIS propaganda and cofounder of the SITE Intelligence Group, made a similar assessment.

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"There is no doubt that this message from Amaq is different than the claim after the Brussels attack," she told Business Insider in an email. "ISIS' Amaq message claim that shooter, Omar Mateen, is an ISIS fighter, seems to be based on the media reports that he pledged to ISIS."

Orlando shooting

The method in which the statement was released is also unusual. For past attacks, ISIS has released official statements that are directly from the group rather than from the ISIS-linked Amaq, which acts as a news service for ISIS but is not officially part of the terrorist group's media wing.

"A direct statement from ISIS would have had more weight," Horowitz said.

"It is not uncommon for ISIS to release its first  and sometimes only  claim via al-Amaq, yet major 'operations' such as the Paris attack or the downing of the Russian plane [in Egypt] have been claimed through official ISIS statements first, and later an al-Amaq communique."

The social-media response from ISIS supporters has also been muted compared with past attacks.

After the Paris and Brussels attacks, ISIS' online channels encouraged supporters to blast out canned messages on their social-media accounts. Channels on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, which ISIS uses to send out information to supporters, asked followers to post canned messages celebrating the attacks and threatening more violence.

With the Orlando attack, there was no similar campaign.

"ISIS supporters praised the attack on social media, however, there is no overwhelming output from pro-ISIS media groups" as there was after the Paris and Brussels massacres, Katz said.

This further indicates that the Orlando shooting is likely to be a "lone wolf attack and was not coordinated with ISIS leadership as an ISIS operation," she noted.

san bernardino

The lone-wolf strategy

ISIS' leadership has showed it does not need to have had a direct role in planning an attack to claim the attack as its own. Such was the case in the shooting in San Bernardino, California, last year, which was carried out by ISIS supporters.

"With the ISIS accepting all who pledge to it, the Amaq report on the shooter being an IS fighter doesn't necessarily mean he coordinated with the IS prior to the attack, but acted in their name and they accept it as their own," Katz said.

ISIS has been encouraging so-called lone-wolf attacks as it loses ground in the Middle East. Much of the group's recruitment efforts are based on the message that ISIS is "remaining and expanding"  thousands of foreign fighters flocked to ISIS' de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, when the group looked like an unstoppable force.

But that message has been damaged recently as ground forces backed by a US-led coalition have succeeded in taking back territory from the group. Thus, to maintain its powerful image, ISIS has started relying more on external attacks.

The group has gone from calling all Muslims to come to its self-declared caliphate in the Middle East to encouraging its supporters to remain in their home countries and commit attacks there.

Last month, ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani released an audio message calling on ISIS supporters to mount attacks in Western countries.

"The smallest action you do in their heartland is better and more enduring to us than what you would if you were with us," Adnani said in the statement. "If one of you hoped to reach the Islamic State, we wish we were in your place to punish the Crusaders day and night."

Adnani also noted that some supporters were reluctant to kill civilians. He then provided justification.

"Know that inside the lands of the belligerent crusaders, there is no sanctity of blood and no existence of those called 'innocents,'" Adnani said. "Know that your targeting those who are called 'civilians' is more beloved to us and more effective, as it is more harmful, painful, and a greater deterrent to them."

ISIS map

Horowitz noted that these messages could be effective as calls to action for radicalized people.

"These messages by ISIS's leadership are meant to maximize the psychological impact of these attacks among the Western public," he said.

"They create the perception that ISIS does control these attacks from within the 'safety' of its Caliphate in Iraq and Syria. In general, however, ISIS has little control over these radicalized individuals, other than pushing them to act within a specific timeframe."

And ISIS might have seen this latest attack as an opportunity to claim a success story on US soil.

"For the first time, the group seems to be 'taking a risk' by claiming an attack without being fully aware of the surroundings of the alleged 'pledge of allegiance,'" Horowitz said. "This may stem from the group's situation, as it faces multiple offensives in Iraq and Syria, and would also explain the phrasing 'source to al-Amaq' before the statement."

Horowitz said on Twitter that ISIS haste in claiming the attack showed "just how much the group was waiting for it to boost its morale as it faces multiple offensives" in the Middle East.

Mateen was known to US law enforcement. He was on an FBI list of suspected ISIS sympathizers, and federal authorities had looked into him in 2013 and 2014, officials said Sunday.

NOW WATCH: The number of times Obama has had to respond to mass shootings during his presidency is staggering





More From Business Insider


Tripoli (AFP) - The Islamic State group carried out three suicide car bombings Sunday against forces allied with Libya's unity government battling to retake the city of Sirte, an official said.

"Three explosions from cars driven by Islamic State suicide bombers targeted our forces in Sirte," Rida Issa, a spokesman for the unity government's forces, told AFP.

"There are several wounded among our forces," he said, without providing further details.

One bomber blew up his car a few metres (yards) from a group of pro-government fighters near the Abu Hadi roundabout in the city's southeast, Issa said.

The other bombers targeted pro-government forces and a field hospital in the city's west.

Forces loyal to the unity government have been fighting deadly street battles to retake Sirte, a coastal city 450 kilometres (280 miles) east of Tripoli that IS seized last year and turned into its main North African bastion.

The loss of Sirte, former dictator Moamer Kadhafi's home town, would be a major blow to IS at a time when it is under mounting pressure in Syria and Iraq.
TNT has postponed its previously scheduled season three premiere of The Last Ship in the wake of a mass shooting in an Orlando, Fla., nightclub.

As a result of the shootings this weekend in Orlando, tonights originally scheduled season premiere of The Last Ship has been postponed, TNT said in a statement on Sunday. Our hearts are with the victims and their families.

The scheduling change is likely due to the fact that the episode reportedly featured a shooting at a Vietnamese nightclub. The Orlando shooting is the deadliest in U.S. history, killing 50 people and injuring 53 more. The shooter was killed in a shootout with police.

The Last Ship season three premiere clocks in at two hours. Its not yet been announced when the episode will air.

TNTs scheduling change may be the first of several, as the TV world reacts to the mass shooting. The Tony Awards on CBS, while not postponed, is expected to address the shooting on Sunday night. The production has been dedicated to the victims at the shooting at gay nightclub Pulse.

Post-apocalyptic drama The Last Ship is executive produced by Michael Bay, and focuses on the aftermath of a pandemic that wiped out 80% of the worlds population.

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Tony Awards: Winner Frank Langella Gives Impassioned Speech on Orlando Attack

'Hamilton' Star Pays Tribute to Orlando Victims at Tony Awards: 'Love Cannot Be Killed' (VIDEO)

Media Coverage of Orlando Tragedy Follows Familiar Scripts
TNT is changing its schedule in the wake of the massive Orlando, Fla., shooting.

The cabler is pushing the two-hour season-three premiere of drama The Last Ship that was set to air Sunday evening after the events that left at least 50 dead and 53 more injured. The episode features a gunman opening fire in a Vietnamese nightclub, killing many people.

"As a result of the shootings this weekend in Orlando, tonight's originally scheduled season premiere of The Last Ship has been postponed," the Turner network said Sunday in a statement. "Our hearts are with the victims and their families."

Several other networks are set to pay tribute to the victims, such as the Tony Awards on CBS. Sunday's awards ceremony will now be dedicated to the victims of the shooting, which took place at a gay nightclub. In addition, there are reports that the cast of Hamilton will drop the use of muskets from the number being performed during the Tony telecast.

Read More: Tonys: Awards Ceremony to be Dedicated to Victims of Orlando Shooting

The shooting has been labeled the largest mass shooting in U.S. history.

TNT's The Last Ship, executive produced by Michael Bay, among others, is a post-apocalyptic drama that centers on the aftermath of a global viral pandemic that wipes out over 80 percent of the world's population.
On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court issued its Loving v. Virginia decision, which blocked states from passing laws that banned inter-racial marriages. Here is a brief recap of the this landmark civil rights case.

EarlWarren400

Earl Warren

As of 1967, 16 states had still not repealed anti-miscegenation laws that forbid interracial marriages. Mildred and Richard Loving were residents of one such state, Virginia. They had fallen in love and wanted to get married.

Under Virginias laws, however, Richard, a white man, could not marry Mildred, a woman of African American and Native American descent. The two travelled to Washington D.C. where they could be married, but they were arrested under a Virginia state law that prohibited inter-racial marriage.

Link: Read The Full Decision

Because their offense was a criminal conviction, after being found guilty, they were given a prison sentence of one year. The trial judge suspended the sentence for 25 years on the condition that the couple leave Virginia.

On appeal, the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia ruled that the state had an interest in preserving the racial integrity of its constituents and that because the punishment applied equally to both races, the statute did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, reversed the Virginia Courts ruling and held that the Equal Protection Clause required strict scrutiny to apply to all race based classifications. Furthermore, the Court concluded that the law was rooted in invidious racial discrimination, making it impossible to satisfy a compelling government interest.

Under our Constitution, wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.

The Loving decision still stands as a milestone in the Civil Rights Movement.

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The dress rehearsal for the 2016 Tony Awards answered a lot of questions  from what song the cast of Hamilton will perform to which award Barbra Streisand will present  but attendees at the Sunday morning run-through still had one lingering uncertainty when it was all over: How will the Tonycast acknowledge the shootings in Orlando that occurred less than 24 hours before Broadways biggest night?

Representatives for Hamilton, the musical expected to come out on top at the awards ceremony, have confirmed that the shows Tony number will drop the use of prop muskets. Those muskets were used during the rehearsal itself, during which no formal mention of the events in Florida was made, except for one crew member, standing in for a winner at the podium, sending his thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families.

They mentioned it once, but I thought it would have been nice if they did something a little bit more, said Karen Russell from upstate New York, who attended the rehearsal through a charity auction.

Other audience members at the rehearsal acknowledged the challenges in taking note of the tragedy in a sensitive fashion, but believed it should  and ultimately would  be done.

Its a hard thing to do, but it probably should be mentioned, considering the venue of the shooting, said Astrid Cook from Brooklyn. Theres strong support for the LGBTQ community in the New York theater scene, and I suspect that [ceremony host] James Corden will probably work something in tonight. I wouldnt be surprised if he says something at the beginning of the show.

The events in Orlando will also likely effect security at the Tony ceremony. Theres been no formal announcement made by the Tony producers, but attendees did get an email in the afternoon warning them to arrive at the venue half an hour earlier than usual, due to main street closures in the area of the Beacon Theater, the Upper West Side theater where the ceremony will take place.

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It seemed certain, in any event, that last nights shootings will be in the minds of many as the telecast hits the airwaves.

The show must go on, but they also must be aware of reality, said Juan-Jose Gonzalez of BroadwayWorld Spain, one of the many press outlets attending the rehearsal. Theater cannot be outside of what happens in the world.

For now, Tony Awards Productions has sent out the following statement via email and social media: Our hearts are heavy for the unimaginable tragedy that happened last night in Orlando. Our thoughts are with the families and friends of those affected. The Tony Awards dedicate tonights ceremony to them.

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Tony Awards: Winner Frank Langella Gives Impassioned Speech on Orlando Attack

'Hamilton' Star Pays Tribute to Orlando Victims at Tony Awards: 'Love Cannot Be Killed' (VIDEO)
The show will go on.



Broadway is honoring the victims of the tragic shooting in Orlando, Florida, that took the lives of at least 50 people and injured at least 53 more by devoting the Tony Awards broadcast to them on Sunday night.



"Our hearts are heavy for the unimaginable tragedy that happened last night in Orlando. Our thoughts are with the families and friends of those affected," an update on the Tonys website reads. "The Tony Awards dedicate tonight's ceremony to them."





The 2016 #TonyAwards are dedicated to those affected by the events in Orlando. pic.twitter.com/ILNbbhxSHD a The Tony Awards (@TheTonyAwards) June 12, 2016









Many Broadway actors including Lin-Manuel Miranda and Audra McDonald took to social media to weigh in on the tragedy.











WAKE UP AMERICA! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! OR WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE IN OUR SLEEP! https://t.co/V8ndz0ry1L a Audra McDonald (@AudraEqualityMc) June 12, 2016







When will the violence end? #PrayingForOrlando a Kristin Chenoweth (@KChenoweth) June 12, 2016





President Barack Obama ordered all flags to be flown at half-staff in the wake of the shooting, and the Orlando Eye will be lit up in rainbow colors tonight. In addition, Sunday night vigils are being organized throughout the country, including outside the Stonewall Inn in New York City, the site of historic demonstrations by members of the LGBT community against a police raid in June 1969.



According to police, a single gunman opened fire just after 2 a.m. local time at Pulse, a popular gay club south of downtown Orlando. An officer working at the club initially responded to the shooter, "engaging in the gun battle with the suspect" before the suspect went back into the club, Orlando Police Chief John Mina said at a Sunday morning news conference.



The shooter held several people hostage for several hours. At 5 a.m., police moved in to rescue the hostages. More gunshots followed, and police also used explosives in an attempt to distract the suspect. Eventually, the gunman was shot and killed.



 With reporting by MICHELLE TAUBER
The Tony Awards, airing tonight at 8 p.m. ET on CBS, will be dedicated to the families and friends of those who were affected by the early Sunday morning shooting massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that left 50 dead, including the gunman, and more than 50 injured.

A source close to the production tells ET that the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history will be addressed at the beginning of the live broadcast at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. Ahead of the ceremony, a special message recorded by host James Corden of The Late Late Show will also be aired, the source adds.

NEWS: 50 Dead in Orlando Gay Bar Shooting

"Our hearts are heavy for the unimaginable tragedy that happened last night in Orlando," a statement posted to the Tony Awards' official Twitter account read. "Our thoughts are with the families and friends of those affected. The Tony Awards dedicate tonight's ceremony to them."

The 2016 #TonyAwards are dedicated to those affected by the events in Orlando. pic.twitter.com/ILNbbhxSHD  The Tony Awards (@TheTonyAwards) June 12, 2016

Tony nominee Laura Benanti, who is set to take the stage to perform with Zachary Levi, Jane Krakowski, and the cast of She Loves Me, also took to Twitter, writing, "Tonight, every note I sing will be in remembrance of the lives taken in Orlando."

Tonight, every note I sing will be in remembrance of the lives taken in Orlando.   Laura Benanti (@LauraBenanti) June 12, 2016

Gloria Estefan, who is also performing, paid tribute to the victims of the shootings via Instagram.

"My heart breaks for the friends and families of the souls whose lives were taken by two senseless acts of violence in two days in Orlando, Florida, a place I consider my home," she wrote. "As these massacres become commonplace it becomes even more important for us to love each other as much as humanly possible and to never lose hope that we can somehow make things better. Love will always win and lead us through the darkness into the light... May the souls of the victims rest in peace."

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Danielle Brooks, nominated for The Color Purple, echoed Estefan's sentiments, writing, "So sad about this tragic news #OrlandoShooting praying for the families of those who lost loved ones."

So sad about this tragic news #OrlandoShooting praying for the families of those who lost loved ones.  Danielle Brooks (@thedanieb) June 12, 2016

As previously reported, the shooting occurred around 2:20 a.m. at Pulse nightclub, described as "Orlando's hottest gay bar." The gunman was identified as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida. Orlando Police Chief John Mina said the suspect was found with a handgun and an AR-15-style assault rifle, according to CBS News.

NEWS: LGBT Groups, Celebs & Public Figures Pay Tribute After 50 Killed in Orlando Nightclub Shooting

A GoFundMe account was created by Equality Florida, the state's LGBT civil rights organization, to help support victims of the massacre.

"We are heartbroken and angry that senseless violence has once again destroyed lives in our state and in our country," a message on the page reads. "Gay clubs hold a significant place in LGBTQ history. They were often the only safe gathering place and this horrific act strikes directly at our sense of safety. June commemorates our community standing up to anti-LGBTQ violence at the Stonewall Inn, the nightclub that has become the first LGBTQ site recognized as a national monument."

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LONDON, June 12 (Reuters) - Olympic triathlon champion Alistair Brownlee showed he is in great shape to defend his title in Rio de Janeiro in August with an emphatic win in a world series race in Leeds on Sunday. Briton Brownlee broke clear of brother Jonny at the start of the running stage and surged to victory over his younger sibling by 32 seconds, roared on by packed crowds in their home city. Australian Aaron Royle finished third with world champion Javier Sanchez of Spain fourth. "Thank you Leeds, the people absolutely made it today. We had support like I've never known it," Alistair Brownlee told reporters after claiming his 20th world series title and first for more than a year. "I think we've shown that Leeds loves sport, that's by far the best world series crowd there's ever been." American world champion Gwen Jorgensen won the women's race, coming from behind at the start of the run to overhaul world series leader Flora Duffy of Bermuda. Briton Vicky Holland finished third. (Reporting by Ed Osmond; Editing by Tony Jimenez)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called on President Barack Obama to resign from office because he did not say the words "radical Islam," in a statement in response to the Orlando massacre where 50 people were killed.

"Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen  and it is only going to get worse," Trump said in a statement. "I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can't afford to be politically correct anymore."

Trump's campaign said he will address the attacks in a speech he already had scheduled to deliver on Monday addressing national security and responding to criticism from Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Chris Reese)
Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. June 11, 2016. REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called on President Barack Obama to resign because he didn't use the words "radical Islamic terrorism" to describe the shooting at a nightclub in Orlando.

"Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism?" Trump tweeted moments before Obama addressed the nation Sunday afternoon. "If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!"

He later followed up his tweet with a full statement.

"In his remarks today, President Obama disgracefully refused to even say the words 'Radical Islam,'" the statement read. "For that reason alone, he should step down. If Hillary Clinton, after this attack, still cannot say the two words 'Radical Islam' she should get out of this race for the Presidency."

In his speech, Obama did not specifically use the words "radical Islamic terrorism." The president, however, did call the massacre an "act of terror."

A gunman killed 50 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando early Sunday. It was the deadliest shooting in US history and the deadliest terror attack on US soil since 9/11.

Omar Mateen, the suspected shooter, reportedly pledged allegiance to the terrorist group ISIS (also known as the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh) in a 911 call.

It was not immediately what the attacker's specific connection to ISIS was.

Business Insider has reached out to the Trump campaign for further comment.

NOW WATCH: 'Youre a sleaze!': Here are all the insults Trump hurled at the press during a bizarre press conference





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Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures during a campaign rally in Tampa, Florida, U.S. June 11, 2016. REUTERS/Scott Audette

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump blasted Democrats and renewed calls for a ban on Muslim immigration to the US after a gunman on early Sunday morning shot dead 50 people at an Orlando LGBTQ nightclub.

In a statement, Trump called on President Barack Obama to "step down" for not using the words "radical Islamic terrorism" and challenged Clinton to use the phrase when referring to the Orlando attack which ISIS claimed responsibility for.

He also warned against admitting migrants from the Middle East and renewed calls for a ban on Muslims entering the US.

"What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning," Trump wrote on Twitter. "Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough."

He added in his statement:

We admit more than 100,000 lifetime migrants from the Middle East each year. Since 9/11, hundreds of migrants and their children have been implicated in terrorism in the United States.

Hillary Clinton wants to dramatically increase admissions from the Middle East, bringing in many hundreds of thousands during a first term  and we will have no way to screen them, pay for them, or prevent the second generation from radicalizing.

We need to protect all Americans, of all backgrounds and all beliefs, from Radical Islamic Terrorism  which has no place in an open and tolerant society. Radical Islam advocates hate for women, gays, Jews, Christians and all Americans. I am going to be a President for all Americans, and I am going to protect and defend all Americans. We are going to make America safe again and great again for everyone.

Clinton has said that the US should increase the number of Muslim refugees allowed into the US, calling on the US to admit 65,000 refugees from Syria due to the humanitarian crisis there.

When Trump previously called for a ban on Muslims entering the country, critics blasted the proposal as ineffective and bigoted. Since then, Trump backed away from that rhetoric and said that the ban was "just a suggestion."

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Paul Manafort, the chief strategist and chairman for Trump's campaign, said last month that Trump would "moderate" and "soften" his stance on a Muslim ban.

A representative for the Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

NOW WATCH: Trump said hes willing to do what no sitting US president has ever done





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By James Oliphant and Ginger Gibson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gave an aggressive response to the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, quickly claiming the attack was the work of an Islamist militant while calling on President Barack Obama to resign and for Democrat Hillary Clinton to exit the presidential race. For Trump, it was an attempt to frame the attack in Orlando in a light favorable to his campaign for the Nov. 8 presidential election. Early on Sunday, when few facts were known about the shooting, he boasted on Twitter that it proved he had been right about his warnings over "radical Islamic terrorism." In a tweet just hours after the incident, he wrote: "Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance." Trump has made combatting the threat of groups such as Islamic State a central part of his candidacy. It was last December's attack in San Bernardino, California that killed 14 people that led Trump to propose a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. Trump re-visited the proposal on Sunday after at least 50 people died in the attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. "What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough," Trump wrote on Twitter. In a statement late Sunday, the businessman went further than U.S. officials investigating the shootings by asserting that the attack in Orlando was the work of a "radical Islamic terrorist." Islamic State, which controls land in Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for the shooting but U.S. officials said they had seen no immediate evidence directly linking the militant group to the massacre. The shooter, U.S.-born Florida resident Omar Mateen, was killed by police. Mateen, 29, called 911 on Sunday morning and made comments saying he supported the Islamic State militant group, officials said. Trump ripped Obama for his long-standing refusal to refer to Islamic State and other extremist groups as in part representative of the religion of Islam. "In his remarks today, President Obama disgracefully refused to even say the words 'Radical Islam'. For that reason alone, he should step down," Trump said, adding that, "if Hillary Clinton, after this attack, still cannot say the two words 'Radical Islam' she should get out of this race for the presidency." Trump's day-long barrage of tweets and statements contrasted with more cautious approaches taken by Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and her fellow Democrat Obama. In remarks at the White House, Obama said the investigation into the shootings was ongoing and declined to speculate on the motives of the shooter. "Weve reached no definitive judgment on the precise motivations of the killer," Obama said. "The FBI is appropriately investigating this as an act of terrorism. Similarly, Clinton, in a statement, called the attack an "act of terror" but did not speculate about the ideology of the gunman. "Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are hard at work, and we will learn more in the hours and days ahead," said Clinton, who expressed her sympathy for the victims and said "weapons of war" have no place on U.S. streets. Trump's campaign said that a speech scheduled for Monday that was to be devoted to criticizing Hillary and Bill Clinton would now be centered on national security and counter-terrorism. (Additional reporting by Alana Wise; Editing by Caren Bohan and Alistair Bell)


Credit: Gary Gershoff/WireImage

I like to feel good. I know that's not a philosophical breakthrough or anything, but at the end of the day, I hope that my beauty routine results in somewhat positive vibes. I know that's a tall order, but it's better than glass half empty, no?

So, when I had the chance to sit down with Kate Bosworth who was speaking on behalf of Aczone and her experience struggling with acne, I wanted to talk to her about what makes her feel good and what she gets crazy passionate about, whether it's an indulgent facial or highlighter (I'm guilty of the latter).

Obviously, I also wanted to know the ins and outs of her skin-care routine (girlfriend actually glows) and her product faves. Here's a few highlights from our convo, which led to my leaving totally inspired to step up my cooking game, FYI.

On learning how to take care of her skin and the pros that helped her.

Turns out, Kate really became aware of her skin in high school due to acne, but she kicked it up a notch in her 20s, seeking the advice of specialists that helped her refine her routine.

"When I was in Morocco, I had a little bit of Melasma triggered, so I realized I had to seek someone out who could help me with that. The woman who was truly been a lifesaver magician with my skin is Faith Tatro. She's in Los Angeles. She has her own establishment called Faith Tatro Aesthetics. She's a medical aesthetician. She just has the knowledge and instinct with skin that's unmatched--she's brilliant. I've been seeing her since I was about 22 or 23. The facialist I see here is Joanna Vargas, who I adore and love. She's lovely. She's also incredible in her work. When I was shooting in London this last year, I met a doctor named Dr. Nigma, who's philosophy is one that starts from the inside out....Between those three people, I've been really lucky to have a balance with my skin and health in general."

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RELATED: Kate Bosworth's Beauty Transformation

Kate also revealed that at night she cleanses with Aczone, moisturizers, and tops off her routine with an eye cream.

On the healthy foods that make her feel good...

BTW, I left this interview with Kate completely starving because she's apparently an amazing chef? Not only did she tell me she eats "like three avocados a day" (same), but she also has a delish recipe for chia seeds with goat milk and toppings like honey and berries, and she also makes a mean chickpea salad.

"I'll just saute and warm up some chickpeas in olive oil and salt and pepper. You can add anything. You can add garlic, chili flakes, anything you want to pack it up. Then, I'll usually chop up an avocado, cucumber, tomatoes, sometimes I pickle beets, pepitas, a little bit of goat cheese. Then, I make my own vinaigrette. It'll be like olive oil, Dijon, and a little bit of rice wine vinegar. You can add anything. You can throw in some cilantro, some fresh herbs, but that's super, super quick and the chickpeas have such great complex carbs, high protein, and avocado is good fats."

Yum is really the only word I can think of at the moment.

On the products she geeks out over.

Like I mentioned, I have a serious highlighter hoarding issue. But Kate?

"I like anything that is multipurpose, like a lip to cheek to eye. Obviously, the NARS Multiple ($39; nordstrom.com) is an old staple. I also love the Rose Marie Swift color pots--those are so great. She also just came out with something called the Master Mixer ($38; nordstrom.com), which is a really beautiful golden bronze that you mix with her other ones and kind of dab everywhere. Glossier, I love. I'm the type of person who's not spending hours on myself everyday, so anything I can have in my arsenal that's effective and easy."

RELATED: Why Kate Bosworth Will Always Love Blue Crush

On learning to love workouts and her favorite fitness routines

In Kate's group chat where she addressed her skin concerns and Aczone, she also mentioned that she woke up in the AM for a quick workout. Super Woman, clearly.

So, I had to ask her if there were any workouts she's learned to love over time.

"I love to run now, but if I'm going to the gym, I run about two and a half miles. When I first started, I was like, 'This is so hard. I don't know how I'm ever going to get used to this. It's impossible.' But I also knew when I was done with it, I felt so good. I was like, 'OK, if I can just keep that in mind, then it'll start feeling good and I'll just remember what the effect is.' If I'm in a routine with anything, it gets easier and more enjoyable. I also really love Pilates and horseback riding. That's my favorite exercise, really."

On indulging in beauty...

Kate told me about a magical place called Beverly Hot Springs, where you apparently feel totally "reborn" after a treatment. Anyone up for a vacay?

She also told me she indulges in what's called a Sapphire Treatment by Faith Tatro, which is a cold laser that lasts for about three hours.

"It's really high frequency blue and red lasers... What it does is it stimulates the collagen and the cells underneath the basal layer of your skin, so by the time it turns over, and for me it's about 10 days, all the sudden you look at yourself and you're thinking things are looking really, really good just because of a turnover and how she stimulated it," she said.
By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history prompted calls on Sunday by some members of Congress for legislation to tighten control of weapons sales, although there were slim hopes for much change after 50 people were killed at a gay nightclub in Florida. Democratic Senator Robert Casey said he would announce a bill on Monday that would ban anyone convicted of a misdemeanor hate crime from owning a firearm. Under current law, those with felony convictions are prohibited from buying or possessing a gun, but those convicted of misdemeanor hate crimes are not. Casey planned to make the announcement in his home state of Pennsylvania after a meeting with members of Pittsburgh's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Lawmakers, including some Republicans, have sought some gun restrictions after earlier mass shootings, but even minor changes failed to gain enough support to become law. Backed by the powerful gun lobby, many members of Congress see controls of weapons sales as a threat to Americans' constitutional rights. Other Democrats also called for Congress to act after Sunday's attack in Orlando, some in strong terms. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said the killings would prompt debate but not action. "The bottom line is that we allow dangerous people to buy guns in America and that has got to change," he said. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said the "epidemic" of gun violence would continue if Congress does not act and also said lawmakers shared responsibility. "Congress has become complicit in these murders by its total, unconscionable deafening silence," he said in a statement. "This doesn't have to happen but this epidemic will continue without end if Congress continues to sit on its hands and do nothing  again." A gunman killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in Murphy's home state, Connecticut, in 2012. The suspected Orlando attacker, identified as Omar Mateen, 29, a U.S. citizen who was the son of immigrants from Afghanistan, was carrying an AR-15 style assault rifle and a handgun, authorities said. The shooter in Newtown also had an AR-15. Many Republicans, including the presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump, focused on the threat from Islamist militants after the shooting, citing reports that Mateen was inspired by Islamic State. The FBI said Mateen had twice been interviewed after making comments to co-workers indicating he supported militant groups, but neither led to evidence of criminal activity. (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Peter Cooney and Bill Trott)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nihad Awad, the leader of the U.S. Muslim group CAIR, strongly condemned the Orlando massacre, saying the killer does not represent the Islamic faith.

"This is a hate crime, plain and simple, we condemn it in the strongest possible terms," Awad said. "We will not give into hate. We will not give into fear."

(Reporting by Alana Wise and Ginger Gibson; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
By Jonathan Landay and Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Islamic State claimed responsibility on Sunday for the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, but U.S. officials said they had seen no immediate evidence linking the militant group to the massacre in Orlando, Florida.

Islamic State's claim was carried by Amaq, the organization's news agency.

"The armed attack that targeted a gay night club in the city of Orlando in the American state of Florida which left over 100 people dead or injured was carried out by an Islamic State fighter," said the Amaq statement.

At least 50 people were killed and 53 others were wounded in the Pulse nightclub before the gunman was shot dead by police.

The shooter was identified by authorities as Omar Mateen, a Florida resident and U.S.-born son of Afghan immigrants who a senior FBI official said might have had leanings toward Islamic State.

The FBI official cautioned, however, that proving the suspected link to radical Islamism required further investigation.

Three U.S. officials familiar with the investigation into the massacre said that no evidence had yet been found showing a direct link with Islamic State or any other militant group.

There is no evidence yet that this was directed or connected to ISIS. So far as we know at this time, his first direct contact was a pledge of bayat (loyalty) he made during the massacre," said a U.S. counter-terrorism official, referring to a 911 call the suspect made on Sunday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.

A U.S. intelligence official said it was not unexpected that Islamic State would claim responsibility given that the group has been suffering serious losses of fighters and territory in Iraq and Syria.

"The fact that a website connected to Daesh applauded it doesn't mean anything," said the U.S. intelligence official, using an Arabic language acronym for Islamic State. "They are losing on their home turf, and it's not surprising if they're looking for some kind of twisted victory."

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Speaking at the White House, President Barack Obama called the attack "an act of terror and an act of hate," and said the FBI would spare no effort to determine whether the suspect had been inspired by any extremist group.

The two officials familiar with the investigation said a leading theory was that the suspect somehow was inspired by Islamist militants.

One official said early information, the nature of which he did not disclose, indicated that the shooter was motivated by a mixture of "hate" and religion.

'ACT OF TERRORISM'

U.S. Representative Adam Schiff of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement issued after a briefing on the massacre that several factors indicated the attack was an Islamic State-inspired "act of terrorism."

He noted that the incident occurred during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, that Islamic State had called for attacks during that period, the target was an LGBT nightclub and it was hit during Gay Pride weekend.

Schiff said that, if accurate, "according to local law enforcement the shooter declared his allegiance to ISIS (Islamic State)."

An audio message purportedly issued last month by the spokesman of Islamic State called on followers to launch attacks in the United States and Europe during Ramadan, which began on June 5 in the United States.

Ramadan, the month of conquest and jihad. Get prepared, be ready ... to make it a month of calamity everywhere for the non-believers ... especially for the fighters and supporters of the caliphate in Europe and America," said the statement allegedly made by Abu Muhammad al-Adnani and distributed over Twitter accounts usually associated with Islamic State.

The smallest action you do in their heartland is better and more enduring to us than what you would if you were with us. If one of you hoped to reach the Islamic State, we wish we were in your place to punish the Crusaders day and night, said the audio clip, the authenticity of which could not be verified.

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay and Mark Hosenball; Editing by Peter Cooney and Alistair Bell)
U.S. political leaders on Sunday offered their condolences in social media tributes after a mass shooting inside a gay nightclub in Orlando left at least 50 people killed and 53 others wounded.

A gunman opened fire and took hostages at the popular nightclub, Pulse Orlando, at about 2 a.m. before being killed in a gun battle with authorities. The FBI says the attack is being investigated as an act of terrorism.

President Barack Obama was briefed about the shooting early Sunday and has directed federal officials to provide any necessary assistance to pursue the investigation and support the community, Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of the victims, the statement said. Vice President Joe Biden also sent his condolences and is closely monitoring the situation, his spokesperson said in a statement.

Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump also responded to the tragedy. Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL, Clinton wrote on Twitter. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act.

In an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC News Meet the Press, Sen. Bernie Sanders condemned the attack. Oh, its horrific, its unthinkable, he said. And just hopes go out to all those who were shot that they can recover.

Trump alerted his supporters on Twitter to a really bad shooting in Orlando. Police investigating possible terrorism. Many people dead and wounded, he tweeted.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott offered his condolences and said every resource is available for assistance efforts. My prayers are with the victims families & all those affected by the shooting in Orlando, he tweeted. Condolences also came from House Speaker Paul Ryan and Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

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Florida Senator Marco Rubio also said prayers are with those injured and killed in the horrifying act of terror in Orlando.

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy slammed Congress in the wake of the shootings. Congress has become complicit in these murders by its total, unconscionable deafening silence, he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Governor of Texas Dan Patrick, who is known for his conservative views, came under fire for tweeting a Bible passage after the shooting that read: Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The post was deleted and was not written in response to the Orlando tragedy, Patricks advisor Allen Blakemore said in a statement.

Lt. Governor Patrick and every Texan is stunned and saddened by the outrageous act of domestic terrorism that has occurred in Orlando, Blakemore said, adding that the specific tweet was scheduled to go up on Sunday after being drafted last week. We regret the unfortunate timing of these posts and ask everyone to join us in praying for the people of Orlando in this awful time.
Abu Dhabi (AFP) - A United Arab Emirates military helicopter crashed into the sea on Sunday, killing two crew members, the country's armed forces said in a statement.

The aircraft crashed "during a routine flight over international waters, causing the death of its pilot and co-pilot," said the statement on the official WAM news agency.

It did not specify the type of aircraft or the location that it went down.

On May 15, the armed forces also announced that an Emirati military jet crashed during training killing the pilot and trainer who were on board.
America Ferrera had the crowd erupting in cheers when she joked during a show reunion at ATX about Hulu picking [Ugly Betty] back up for a two-hour special.

To the crowds disappointment, Ferrera admitted it was a gag, but she did end up urging the crowd to start a Twitter campaign to make that joke a reality. After struggling to figure out a hashtag, Ferrera, along with the rest of the cast assembled on the stage, urged fans to tweet Hulu with the hashtag #hulubringbackbetty  later changed to #hulubringbackuglybetty, so as not to be confused with Betty White, who guest starred on the ABC series. Lets all tweet it out and were going to get Hulu to buy a 2 two hour special, Ferarra added.

These things tend to happen at festivals like ATX, and by and large they go nowhere, but as pointed out by the panel moderator, last year Gilmore Girls had there own reunion at ATX and have since been revived for a four episode run on Netflix.

So what would a hypothetical reunion look like. Somecast members had an idea of where their characters would be if the show returned. Betty has been in London for 6 years and now shes coming back home, Ferrera suggested. Judith Light meanwhile imagined her character would be back in the sanitarium. Creator Silvio Horta was also open to the idea of a revivial, telling the crowd that the only thing I know for sure, if we were to do somethings it would be a dream but everybody on the would have to be involved, and Becky Newton, who was not able to attend due to illness.

Judging from the reaction of the audience and panelists alike, it seemed everyone attending the event would be on board.

When Horta first pitched the show, he envisioned Betty as an FBI agent but was met with crickets from the ABC execs. They suggested he stay with the original concept from the telenovela because it worked. Horta also shared that before the shows premiere, ABC had changed the its title to Betty The Ugly but he rebuffed the name change. On every script we kept putting Ugly Betty.

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Ferrera recalled catching wind of the show from EP Salma Hayek, when the two stumbled upon each other at a hotel. I hadnt heard anything about the show and she ran up to me and said, You are my Ugly Betty! Hayek went on to pitch Ferrera the show. Its about this girl looks like a train wreak she comes into this world of fashion and she turns everyone else beautiful from the inside out. I just knew right away that that show had to exist.

Ugly Betty didnt shy away from social issue, one in particular that was a topic of discussion during the panel was about young Justin (played by Mark Indelicato) and him struggling with his sexual identity, which paralleled with the actors life. I was discovering myself and my sexual orientation at the same time and we really helped each other and guided each other, Indelicate revealed . What you see on screen was so personal and so real. Horta praised the young actor for being able to handle everything in an adult way.

Another big one was issue of transgender and acceptance. If you recall, Rebecca Romijn character was introduced as Alexis Meade, the transgendered sister of Daniel Meade. To this Romijn said It opened up minds. Light lauded the show for challenging the idea of beauty and its strong message to end bigotry and the shunning of the other.

The panelist on stage included Ferrera, Horta, Light, Indelicate, and Romijn along with co-stars Michael Urie, Tony Plana, Eric Mabius, Ana Ortiz, Vanessa Williams, and Ashley Jensen

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London (AFP) - Prime Minister David Cameron warned Sunday that Britain faces a "lost decade" if it leaves the EU, as he races to persuade undecided voters less than two weeks before a close referendum.

With several recent opinion polls suggesting momentum is with the "Leave" camp, Cameron is making a string of television appearances to try to convince people to back "Remain" on June 23.

A string of global institutions including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and G7 have backed Cameron's argument that Britain's economy would be damaged by Brexit.

But "Leave" supporters argue that Britain could thrive outside the EU, where they say it would be freed of red tape.

One of the leading pro-Brexit campaigners, UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, said that voters were putting "two fingers up" to establishment figures like Cameron.

The prime minister told the BBC on Sunday that there could be a "lost decade for Britain" after a vote to leave the EU as the political system gets gummed up with negotiations.

"I think we'd be looking at a decade of uncertainty," he added. "It would suck the energy out of our government and our country."

A Sunday Times/YouGov online poll found that Cameron's "Remain" campaign is lagging the "Leave" side by 42 percent to 43 percent.

Eleven percent of people surveyed said they did not know how they would vote, while four percent said they would not take part in the ballot.

Averaging out the last six opinion polls, both sides are tied on 50 percent, according to academics at the What UK Thinks project. Their figures exclude undecided voters.

- 'Putting two fingers up' -

"Nobody knows what these polls are saying," Cameron told the BBC, while stressing he was optimistic of victory.

But Farage insisted that they showed a real movement towards his side.

"There has been a shift in the last fortnight," the UKIP leader said.

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"People have had enough of being threatened by the prime minister and the chancellor and I think collectively people are beginning to put two fingers up to the political class."

The "Leave" camp has repeatedly focused on concerns about immigration from the EU to Britain and the possibility of Turkey joining the bloc.

Cameron dismissed this as a "complete red herring" in Sunday's BBC interview, insisting: "There's no prospect of Turkey joining the EU in decades".

Ministers have also denied a story in this week's Sunday Times that British diplomats had considered letting up to 1.5 million Turkish citizens have visa-free travel to Britain.

The paper published details of five diplomatic documents which it said could mean a planned deal giving Turkish citizens easier access to the EU's Schengen area being extended to Britain.

The EU agreed in March to offer Turkey visa-free access, increased aid and speeded up accession talks in return for Ankara controlling the flood of migrants crossing into Greece.

But in a joint statement, Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said "selectively leaked quotes" had been used "to give a completely false impression that the UK is considering granting visa liberalisation to some Turkish citizens".

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told ITV television he was "pretty much" in favour of leaving the EU.

Assange, holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning over a rape allegation which he denies, said the EU was bad for Britain "because it permits a lack of democratic accountability".
UnREAL creators admit Constance Zimmer turned down the role of Quinn  a bunch

UnREAL creators admit Constance Zimmer turned down the role of Quinn  a bunch

Fans of Lifetimes breakout hit UnREAL know the show is anchored by two incredibly powerful, complex female characters: Rachel, played by Shiri Appleby, and Quinn, a character that feels conjured out of executive-wear and scotch, played by the inimitable Constance Zimmer. As hard as it is to even consider anyone else in those roles, it turns out both were nearly played by other actresses, and Constance was particularly hard to nail down.

She turned us down like 16 times, show creator Sarah Gertrude Shapiro admitted recently, during a panel at the ATX television festival in Austin, Texas. The Hollywood Reporter also mentions Shapiro adding that another actress played hard-bitten Quinn in the original 2013 pilot. We had someone else playing Quinn so weve seen what thats like and I never want to go back there, Shapiro recalled. No offense to the actress but it was just wasnt the right thing.

We never want to go back either, Ms. Shapiro! Constance Zimmer is a force of nature as Quinn, the executive producer of show-within-a-show Everlasting, a character who walks a fine line between being the mentor to wayward soul Rachel, and being a manipulative mom-figure villain a la Mother Gothel in Tangled. According to a profile in the New York Times, Zimmer was initially wary of playing yet another no-nonsense career woman and of starring on a Lifetime show. She was eventually persuaded by the strong feminist themes of the show and its unusually dark tone.

The risk of taking the role has so far paid off major dividends for Zimmer, as UnREAL has been hailed by critics, revitalized the Lifetime network, and earned special accolades for the actress, who won a Critics Choice award for her portrayal of Quinn. With a second season bringing the drama on Monday nights and a third already greenlit by the network, we look forward to being even MORE grateful from week to week that she finally took the role.

The post UnREAL creators admit Constance Zimmer turned down the role of Quinn  a bunch appeared first on HelloGiggles.
In the June heat of LGBT pride month, a gunman walked into Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and opened fire. He was strapped with an assault rifle, a handgun and was possibly armed with an explosive device. The casualties of the attack number at least 50; the number of wounded is estimated at 53.

And yet, even in the face of deadly violence, the gay community has already begun to vocalize that it won't be intimidated  and its refusal to let hate win.

It's #Pride Month. March. Show up. Wear a black #OrlandoPride armband for those who can't. They can't take our pridehttps://twitter.com/tlrd/status/741962219190128640 ... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ckv6tD3UYAAbtLi.jpg:large

You're celebrating #LGBT #pride month. You're dancing and laughing A man arrives to kill you. Murder your friends. Hate cannot win. #Pulse

The shooting happened on "Upscale Latin Saturday", the weekly celebration of the club's Latino clientele.

You have just energized the LGBT community to work for #gunsense. We passed gay marriage. We ARE change. #Pulse

According to Orlando Police Chief John Mina, at 5 a.m., Orlando police "[detonated] two explosives to distract the gunman and help clear the club."

We will overcome this tragedy! #prayfororlando #prayforpulse #lgbt #pride @ Pulse Orlando https://www.instagram.com/p/BGjfuYpiQW2/

In the early hours of Sunday morning, the nightclub took to its Facebook page to post that everyone currently inside the club needed to "get out of Pulse and keep running."

This club is a place of love & acceptance Don't let fear make you think you don't have the right to live the life God gave U #Pulse #PRIDE

Authorities are currently investigating the shooting as a "domestic terror incident," the Associated Press reported.
barack obama

President Barack Obama called the deadliest mass shooting in US history an act of terror and an act of hate after a gunman left 50 people dead in an Orlando nightclub early Sunday morning.

In the worst terror attack on US soil since 9/11, a gunman who pledged allegiance to ISIS opened fire in an LGBT nightclub, killing 50 and leaving dozens more injured.

Obama said on Sunday that the FBI was investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism.

"We know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate," Obama said on Sunday.

The president expressed his grief for the LGBT community, which he said was specifically targeted by the shooter.

"This is an especially heartbreaking day for all of our friends, our fellow Americans, who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender," Obama said.

"The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends, to dance, to sing, and to live. A place where they were attacked was more than a nightclub. It was a place of solidarity and empowerment, where people came together to raise awareness, to speak their minds, and to advocate for their civil rights."

The president also noted that Sunday's attack was the most deadly shooting in American history and reiterated his call for greater measures to curb gun violence.

"This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or a house of worship, or a movie theater, or a nightclub. And we have to decide if that's the kind of country that we want to be," Obama said.

He added: "To actively do nothing is a decision as well."

Since Congress failed to pass more comprehensive gun-control laws in 2013, Obama has addressed the nation over a dozen times the wake of over a dozen mass shootings.

After ISIS-linked shooters killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, last year, the president urged Americans not to project the actions of extremists onto Islam as a whole.

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"Heres what else we cannot do. We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam," Obama said.

"That, too, is what groups like ISIL want. ISIL does not speak for Islam. They are thugs and killers, part of a cult of death, and they account for a tiny fraction of more than a billion Muslims around the world  including millions of patriotic Muslim Americans who reject their hateful ideology."

Obama has also repeatedly called for stronger gun-safety measures following horrific mass shootings.





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Los Angeles (AFP) - Police in California found weapons, ammunition and bomb-making material in a car belonging to a man who told them he was planning to attend Gay Pride festivities on Sunday, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The discovery came hours after the deadliest mass shooting in US history, which took place at a gay nightclub on the other side of the country in Orlando, Florida.

Fifty people were killed and 53 wounded after a gunman identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, a US citizen of Afghan descent, opened fire in a shooting that US President Barack Obama was calling a terror attack and hate crime.

The LA Times cited a law enforcement source as saying police discovered the weapons cache after responding to a complaint about a prowler in the beachside city of Santa Monica, west of downtown Los Angeles.

The man, who was arrested, told police he was waiting for a friend.

Santa Monica Police spokesman Saul Rodriguez told the newspaper that man was from Indiana but that authorities "were not aware of what the suspect's intentions were at this point."

The FBI was investigating possible links between the man and the Gay Pride event, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said in a statement.

Sheriff's officials noted that there were no "specific or credible" threats against the greater Los Angeles area, but had stepped-up security at the Gay Pride event.

Some 400,000 people had been expected to attend a Gay Pride parade on Sunday before the Orlando shooting took place.

It went ahead, but with a slightly somber mood.

Attorney Perry Handy, 48, was watching the parade with friends but said he had thought twice about coming out after hearing about the car full of weapons and ammunition.

"We're all still in shock. I've been coming to the parade for 20 some years and last night's event was clearly a step backward in our culture," he told AFP.

Alice Stanford, 46, who was marching in the parade with a union representing hotel employees, said participants were "heavy-hearted" but would not be kept away.

"Our lives go on and we are not going to be stopped by fear and violence. We celebrate who we are in spite of events like this," she said, wearing a T-shirt that read "Love has no borders."
Survivors of the Sunday morning massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando are sharing their harrowing experiences escaping from the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

The gunman, identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, fatally shot about 50 people and injured another 53 at the popular gay club before law enforcement officers stormed the building and killed him, authorities said.

As authorities investigated the incident on Sunday, several people who survived the shooting came forward to talk about how they ran for their lives and helped others to safety.

Joshua McGill, who was dancing at the club with his roommates, told ABC News that he did not know what was happening at first and was in kind of a daze because he did not see the shooter or gunshots.

Related: Slideshow: Shooting rampage at Florida nightclub >>>

It was just a loud sound, so we didnt know what it could have been, McGill said to the station.

He and his friends sneaked out the back door and climbed over a fence. But they knew they had to help when they saw someone covered in blood stumbling through the parking lot, he said.

An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after a shooting rampage early Sunday morning in Orlando. (Photo: Steven Fernandez/AP)

McGill removed his shirt to make a tourniquet, a type of bandage used stop the flow of traumatic bleeding, for the bullet wounds on the mans arms.

I said a prayer for him, and I let him know that Ill be there waiting for him as long as I can, McGill told ABC News. He added that he has been in touch with the mans friends.

Luis Burbano, another witness at the club, had a similar experience outside Pulse. He said he was getting ready to leave when gunfire erupted.

The DJ was playing a typical set that incorporated gunshots, which we thought was part of the music, Burbano told CNN. Four shots, pop-pop-pop-pop. But for some reason it was different. No one put two and two together until the fifth and sixth. Between 10 and 20, thats when it started really getting real.

During a 10-second break in the gunfire, Burbano said he and 20 to 30 people managed to make a break for the door.

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As he fled, Burbano said he saw someone who had collapsed right in front of him.

I grabbed him, not realizing that his forearm had split in two, he said. And then I realized he had a gash on his side as well.

Burbano took off his shirt to create a makeshift bandage for the young mans arm.

After they reached safety, he started talking to another wounded 20-something to keep him calm. Burbano learned the victim was visiting Orlando from Jacksonville for the weekend.

Before you knew it, this guy was pacing, looking for a family member, back and forth, and he had a bullet sticking out, he said.

Ray Rivera, a DJ at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, is consoled by a friend outside of the Orlando Police Department after a mass shooting early Sunday morning that left at least 50 people dead. (Photo: Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP)

Burbano took off his other shirt to help stem the flow of blood from the second mans leg. He kept them both by his side until paramedics arrived.

Once they took them off about 10 or 15 minutes later, then we were told to quickly evacuate and move farther up the street as far as we could.

Several witnesses identified themselves and shared their stories on Pulses official Facebook account. Ricardo J. Negron Almodovar, for instance, said people on the dance floor dropped to the ground when the shooter opened fire and that some people managed to escape through the back exit and just kept running.

Another customer kindly offered to take three of us to our homes. Forever indebted to him! he wrote.

Almodovar said security does not check for weapons before patrons enter Pulse but that from his experience, the club is usually nice and very safe.

Another club-goer, Christopher Hansen, said the gunshots, which started just as he took the first sip from his drink, sounded like they could have been part of the song that was playing. It was not until he saw victims falling to the ground that he realized the gravity of the situation.

I looked over and I saw bodies falling, people screaming. The person next to me was shot  the blood splattered. I fell down and crawled out. I was crawling, and people stomped on me, he told NBC News. When I crouched down, I was zigzagging just in case because you could still hear the bullets going off, so you have no idea whether they were outside, inside.

Hansen, who recently moved to Orlando, said he was pleased with how quickly law enforcement responded to the shooting. Officers were already there by the time Hansen was leaving the building, he said.

There were so many people responding. The whole community did, he said.

Similar to McGill and Burbano, Hansen also rendered aid to someone else using an article of clothing. He said he used his bandana to help stop the blood flowing from someones leg.

Early Sunday afternoon, President Obama said the FBI is leading an open investigation into this act of terror in partnership with local law enforcement. He said the shooting was especially heartbreaking for members of the LGBT community.

The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends to dance and to sing and to live, Obama said. The place where they were attacked is more than a nightclub. It was a place of solidarity and empowerment, where people have come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds and to advocate for their civil rights.

The commander in chief also said the day was a sobering reminder that an attack on Americans  regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation  is an attack on all Americans and the nations fundamental values of equality and dignity.
With less than 24 hours to go before Microsoft's E3 2016 press conference, an image of the Xbox One Slim (or Xbox One S) has leaked online at NeoGAF.

READ MORE: Our 9 most anticipated games of E3 2016

As was originally reported by Kotaku last month, the new Xbox One is 40% smaller than the original, features a 2TB hard drive, 4K Ultra HD video support, High Dynamic Range, a streamlined controller and a vertical stand. Although the image didn't give any indications as to a release date, the slim console is expected to launch in August.

Xbox One Slim

Microsoft is also said to be working on an upgraded Xbox One with a faster processor and Oculus Rift support. There's a chance we will see both the Slim console and the upgraded console at tomorrow's event in Los Angeles.

Sony decided to forego a big E3 unveiling for its "high-end PS4," opting to announce it via a Financial Times interview instead.

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Watch the EA E3 2016 press conference live stream right here

Our 9 most anticipated games of E3 2016

A guide to E3 2016 announcements: Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and more

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#police Man put under emergency detention for allegedly killing wife, 2 sons Police on Wednesday made an emergency apprehension of a man in his 40s on suspicion of killing his wife and their two teenage sons at their home in Gwangmyeong, just south of Seoul...

#DP Opposition leader blasts gov't over Legoland crisis Opposition leader Lee Jae-myung blasted the government Wednesday over its handling of a debt default linked to the Legoland theme park project, warning it could lead to an economic...
Lenovo unveils new phone amid faltering sales Updated: 2016-06-12 14:17 By Ma Si(chinadaily.com.cn)

Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang holds up the new Phab2 Pro phone during the keynote address at the Lenovo Tech World event, Thursday, June 9, 2016, in San Francisco. [Photo/IC]

Lenovo Group Ltd unveiled an augmented-reality-enabled smartphone, as the Chinese tech giant struggles to revive faltering smartphone business and declining personal computer sales.

The new handset, Phab2 Pro, is based on Google Inc's Project Tango, a technology designed to overlay virtual objects and characters on top of real life physical environments.

The 6.4-inch screen device is equipped with four cameras and various sensors, which help host many augmented reality applications, such as helping people navigate the world, play virtual dinosaur games and visualize whether appliances fit in a simulated room in a home.

Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo, said that with the Phab2 Pro, Lenovo becomes the first company to apply AR technology to handsets, without the need for a headset or being connected to a high-end computer.

Lenovo expects about 25 Tango apps to be available at launch and about 100 by year end. Starting at $499, Phab2 Pro will be available in China and the United States in September.

The new handset comes as Lenovo reported dismal March quarter results and its first annual loss in six years, and as it continues to wrestle with the integration of a US acquisition and a slowdown in demand for smartphones and computers.
New study for London-Shanghai stock project Updated: 2016-06-12 14:30 By WU YIYAO in Shanghai(chinadaily.com.cn)

A plausibility study is underway to prepare for the proposed London-Shanghai Stock Connect programme, with an official project update expected by the end of the year.

Sherry Madera, Minister-Counsellor and Deputy Director General of UK Trade and Investment, made the commitment at a Lujiazui Forum 2016 sideline meeting, on Sunday morning.

She said the plausibility study covered technical collaborations, infrastructure and research for true demands.

British Consul-General of Shanghai, John Edwards, said China and the UK had been collaborating on a wide range of aspects in the financial market, including issuance of offshore renminbi-denominated bonds, green finance, investor education and infrastructure.

Britain is the guest country of honor at the Lujiazui Forum 2016.
Orlando nightclub shooting

The ISIS-affiliated news agency Amaq News broadcast a claim of responsibility from ISIS for a shooting rampage at a gay nightclub in Orlando that left 50 people dead over the weekend.

The agency said the shooting was the work of an "ISIS fighter," multiple media outlets have reported.

The gunman, identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, called 911 sometime Saturday night and pledged allegiance to ISIS, mentioning the Boston marathon bombers during the call.

Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said Sunday in a news conference that Mateen, who was from Fort Pierce, Florida, had "some connection to ISIS," and Rep. Adam Schiff  the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee  said Mateen had pledged allegiance to ISIS, according to information he had received from the Department of Homeland Security.

"This is clearly an act of terror," Gov. Rick Scott of Florida said in a news conference on Sunday. President Barack Obama called the shooting an "act of terror" and "an act of hate."

Law enforcement confirmed that the incident was being treated as an act of terrorism.

Mateen was on an FBI list of suspected ISIS sympathizers and was looked into by federal authorities once in 2013 and again in 2014. He was the subject of a brief FBI investigation in 2014 before the case was closed.

"The FBI first became aware of Mateen in 2013, when he made threats to coworkers, including possible ties to terrorist activities," an FBI spokesman said Sunday in a news conference.

"In 2014, Mateen again came to the attention to the FBI because of possible ties to an American suicide bomber, Moner Abusalha. The FBI interviewed Mateen and determined that contact was minimal and did not constitute a substantive threat at the time."

Mateen legally purchased the two firearms used in the attack on the nightclub  a handgun and a long gun  in the past few days, a police spokesman said in a news conference on Sunday.

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'ISIS-directed' versus 'ISIS-inspired'

Mateen's connection to ISIS does not necessarily mean he was in direct contact with the radical jihadists or that the group directed him to carry out the attack. Nelson, the Florida senator, noted that the apparent connection to ISIS was not "official," and US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters they had yet to uncover direct contacts between the gunman and any extremist group.

"There is a big difference between ISIS-directed and ISIS-inspired," national-security analyst Juliette Kayyem said on CNN.

The Islamic State said in a recent message to followers that they should mount attacks during this month, which is the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Mir Seddique Mateen, Omar Mateen's father, told NBC News that his son's actions had "nothing to do with religion." He said his son got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago, and he thought homophobia may have inspired his son to attack the nightclub.

mateen

"We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident," Seddique said. "We weren't aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country."

Seddique, an Afghan immigrant to the US, has his own YouTube channel where he has expressed his support for the Afghan Taliban, and he recently declared his candidacy for the Afghan presidency.

The YouTube videos come from a television show Seddique hosted called "Durand Jirga" on a channel called Payam-e-Afghan, which broadcasts from California, The Washington Post reported.

Chris Harmer, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, told Business Insider on Sunday that "at this point, it's anyone's guess as to how involved Omar Mateen was with either Al Qaeda or ISIS."

"The 911 call pledging allegiance to ISIS shows he was emotionally or intellectually sympathetic to ISIS, but does not show that he had any contact with ISIS," he said. "Bottom line, it is clear that Mateen was, at a minimum, influenced by ISIS, expressed some loyalty to ISIS, but it is not clear that he had any communication or connection with ISIS beyond that."

JM Berger, an expert on the Islamic State and coauthor of "ISIS: State of Terror," largely agreed.

"His pledge of allegiance to ISIS does not necessarily mean he was affiliated, although that may turn out to be the case. We're still very early in the investigation," Berger told Business Insider.

"Calling 911 minutes before to pledge allegiance is like what happened in San Bernardino," Mia Bloom, an ISIS expert and former fellow at the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Penn State, told Business Insider.

Orlando shooting

Tashfeen Malik, the female shooter in the San Bernardino attack that left 14 people dead, pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Facebook during the rampage.

"This was an act of terror and an act of hate of the LGBT community," Bloom added. "ISIS is well known for despising and hunting down gay people, throwing them off the tallest buildings in Raqqa, etc. But we need more information to know whether there was anything more than a superficial (and last-minute) connection to ISIS."

He 'was not a stable person'

The overnight shooting at Pulse nightclub  a gay club in central Orlando  is the deadliest shooting in US history, with more fatalities than the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007 (32 dead) and the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012 (27 dead).

Mateen, a US citizen, was born in New York in 1986. An FBI representative said he "was organized and well-prepared" to carry out the attack.

Mateen's ex-wife told The Washington Post that he beat her and "was not a stable person."

"He beat me," she said. "He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn't finished or something like that."

Friends and family members embrace outside the Orlando Police Headquarters during the investigation of a shooting at the Pulse night club, where as many as 20 people have been injured after a gunman opened fire, in Orlando, Florida, U.S June 12, 2016. REUTERS/Steve Nesius

One of Mateen's former coworkers described him as "unhinged and unstable" and said he spoke of killing people often.

But the imam at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, where Mateen went often to pray, told reporters in Fort Pierce that Mateen "was the most quiet guy  he never talked to anyone."

"He would come and pray and leave," Imam Shafiq Rahman said. "There was no indication at all he would do something violent.

Rahman's son, on the other hand, said Mateen "seemed like an aggressive person."

"It was just his demeanor," he said. "He used to work out a lot.

Mateen reportedly had a 3-year-old son whom he would take with him to the mosque.

islamic center fort pierce

Mateen worked as a security guard in Fort Pierce and rented a car to drive to Orlando and carry out the attack, CNN's Evan Perez reported.

The leader of Orlando's Islamic faith community, Muhammad Musri, urged people not to rush to judgment or "sensationalize" the shooting.

"I call on my fellow faith leaders ... please pray for the victims and their families at this hour," he said during a press conference. "I want to caution anyone from rushing to judgment or sensationalizing the story, because we do not want the focus of the story to shift from what it is: a horrible tragedy. We are mourning, we are heartbroken."

Mateen entered Pulse shortly before 2 a.m. after exchanging fire with an off-duty police officer working security at the club, the police said in a news conference. He was armed with an AR-15 assault rifle and a handgun, according to law-enforcement officials' description of the incident. TMZ has reported that Mateen had a state firearms license.

Mateen barricaded himself inside the nightclub and took hostages just after 2 a.m. and was negotiating with the police when he gave them his name, according to CNN. A SWAT team stormed the club about three hours later and shot him dead.

At least 53 people were wounded and transported to local hospitals. About 320 people were inside the nightclub at the time of the shooting, according to the Orlando police. A state of emergency has been declared.

"Everyone get out of pulse and keep running," the nightclub said on its Facebook page at 2:09 a.m.

Pulse markets itself as "Orlando's premier gay nightclub." It was Latin night at the club, according to its Facebook page.

NOW WATCH: The number of times Obama has had to respond to mass shootings during his presidency is staggering





More From Business Insider


On Friday, Japans largest messaging app Line Corp. announced plans to file an initial public offering (IPO) next month, and list shares in both Tokyo and New York. It would value the app at 588 billion yen, or $5.50 billion.

Lines IPO could be the biggest of the year for Japan; the company, which is owned by South Koreas Naver Corp., is planning to use the funds raised to expand at home and internationally.

The messaging app plans to sell 13 million new shares in Japan and 22 million abroad, with a price of 2,800 yen each. Naver will offer as much as 5.25 million existing shares in case there is stronger than anticipated demand. Lines parent company's ownership will fall to as low as 80.8%.

On July 11, Line will set the final price of its shares, after determining investor interest and demand. The goal is to list in New York on July 14 and in Tokyo on July 15. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Nomura are managing the IPO.

After rounds of serious investigations, we determined that it is important that we are evaluated on the same market as other top global services. Furthermore, listing on the NYSE will help strengthen our branding as a global company, a Line spokesperson told TechCrunch. LINE is a company that takes on challenges, and our simultaneous listing in Japan and the US is a declaration that we are ready to take on the world.

Line has had quite the journey. After the earthquake and tsunami disaster back in 2011, the company had to change course and launched the messaging app NHN Japan to help with communication during the aftermath, Reuters reports.

While Line boasts the most users among messaging apps in Japan, it falls far behind Facebooks FB WhatsApp and Messenger. At the end of March, Line had roughly 218 million users, but this number has started to taper off recently after tripling over the past three years. In comparison, WhatsApp and Messenger has 1 billion and 900 million monthly active users, respectively.

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Based on these statistics, the company is the seventh-most used messenger app on a global scale. Chinas WeChat is also well above Line, with 697 million users. The only other markets that Line is a leader in is Taiwan, Thailand, and Turkmenistan.

WhatsApp and Messenger have a considerable lead in user numbers in comparison to Line, and it will be difficultthough not impossiblefor Japans top messaging app to gain a strong foothold in major Western markets. So right now, WhatsApp and Messenger can sit comfortably, but should still be aware of Lines soon-to-be public presence.

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(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)
An investigator from the prosecution office carries boxes containing confiscated articles at Lotte Group's headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, June 10, 2016. Choi Jae-gu/Yonhap via REUTERS

By Tony Munroe and Joyce Lee

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's Lotte Group, whose hotel unit faces a July deadline to complete an initial public offering (IPO) worth up to $4.5 billion, said on Sunday that it is "difficult" for it to modify the listing document.

The statement came two days after prosecutors raided the offices of Lotte Group and several companies in the conglomerate, including Hotel Lotte.

Three people with direct knowledge of the matter said the raids were part of an investigation into a possible slush fund, dealing a new blow to the hotel unit's planned IPO, which could be the world's biggest this year.

Earlier last week, Hotel Lotte cut the size of the IPO and pushed back the listing from June to July, in a revision to its listing document, after prosecutors launched a bribery investigation into a director.

"Carrying out procedures such as a modified filing to protect investors are currently physically difficult," Lotte Group said in a statement on Sunday.

According to stock exchange 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.

"Hotel Lotte's listing is a key issue to improve Lotte Group's governance structure, including lowering Japanese shareholders' stakes and diversifying shareholders, so we will closely discuss with advisors and regulators on what to do in the future," Lotte Group said.

The Lotte Group, South Korea's fifth-largest family run conglomerate, or chaebol, has grown from its founding in Japan 68 years ago as a maker of chewing gum.

But last year's highly public power struggle within the founding Shin family fueled resentment at the grip the chaebol hold over the Korean economy. Some Koreans also criticized the group's close ties with former colonial ruler Japan.

Late on Friday, the group's Lotte Chemical Corp unit said it withdrew from the bidding for U.S.-based Axiall Corp, which went to a rival suitor for $2.33 billion, citing "the difficult situation Lotte has faced in Korea recently and heated competition".

(Reporting by Tony Munroe and Joyce Lee; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
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'It would cost almost $17 billion dollars per yr 4 Ontario's government 2 meet its carbon dioxide reduction targets'On Wednesday, the Government of Ontario released its new Climate Change Action Plan, a complement to the cap and trade plan that the government has been gradually elaborating over the past few months. While the cap and trade plan is supposed to create economic incentives for businesses and consumers to reduce their own emissions, the action plan details how the government will spend the proceeds from cap and trade auctions to reduce emissions further.The plan outlines a grab bag of measures, some explained in detail, some rather vague, some with emissions reductions attached, others promising future reductions after the life of this plan from 2017 to 2020. The cost per tonne of emissions reductions indicated in the document ranges from an affordable $5 per tonne to add renewable natural gas to Ontarios gas distribution system to $425 per tonne to reduce emissions from multi-residential buildings or $525 for greenhouse gas reductions from building the GO Express. The costs of some of these measures are extremely high  but on second glance, they may even be higher. The document indicates a cost estimate over four years thought it reports emissions reductions estimates only for 2020. But if one assumes that the spending and emissions reductions ramp up evenly over the 4-year period from 2017 to 2020, that means that roughly 40% of the total reductions would be achieved in 2020. If the government spends a mid range of its estimates  around $7 billion  to achieve roughly 10 million tonnes of reductions by 2020 (or roughly 25 million tonnes over a four year period) that means that the average cost of reduction is $280 per tonne. Furthermore the costs of many of the specific reductions listed look a lot higher as well  the cost of reducing emissions through renewable natural gas closer to $30 per tonne, while the cost of reductions from multiresidential buildings may be over $3000 per tonne.Ontarios strategy seems not to rely on carbon pricing to incent businesses and individuals to reduce their emissions, but to use cap and trade revenues as a way of raising money to purchase much more expensive reductions. For 2020, the gap between Ontarios projected emissions and its target is about 19 megatonnes. The current plan will get about 3 megatonnes of reductions from cap and trade. If the governments plan succeeds in buying another 10 megatonnes of reductions, that leaves 6 megatonnes to meet the target  presumably by buying allowances from California. But to achieve the governments 2030 target of a 37% reduction below 1990 levels, there is a gap of roughly 70 megatonnes between projected emissions and the target. If cap and trade reductions triple to 10 megatonnes, then that means 60 megatonnes to close the gap. At $280 per tonne, that would cost almost $17 billion dollars per year for the government to buy its way to meeting our reduction targets.The best way to reduce emissions is to rely on a strong carbon price signal to do most of the work, and let businesses and consumers figure out how to respond to it. They can be given the resources to pay for higher fossil fuel energy and other costs by cutting other businesses and personal taxes. Instead, the Ontario plan treats carbon pricing as a kind of sin tax that is used to raise money for a highly expensive subsidy program  a program that is excessively costly in the short run, and in the long run completely unsustainable. It is time for Ontario to go back to the drawing board and design a carbon pricing system, such as a revenue neutral carbon tax, that lets price, not subsidies, do the work.#eatingtheirown @sunlorrie and the point of doing so would be what?
Bangladesh police say they have detained about 900 people as part of a crackdown on militants following a series of deadly attacks.

Police launched the weeklong campaign on June 10, saying they were focused on arresting Islamist militants.

About 40 people, including secular bloggers, academics, and members of religious minorities, have been killed in attacks in recent years.

The latest was a Hindu monastery worker who was hacked to death in Pabna district on June 10.

Reports said Nityaranjan Pande, who was in his 60s, died on the spot after several people attacked him.

The police drive is sweeping up various types, not just terrorism suspects.

Police are using lists of wanted criminals, but say the main goal is to disrupt the terror networks.

It will be several days before it becomes clear whether they have managed to arrest members of the groups carrying out the sectarian killings.

The government says home-grown militants with links to opposition parties such as the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami are seeking to destabilize the country.

The international militant groups Islamic State and Al-Qaeda have claimed responsibility for some of the attacks.

Based on reporting by BBC and dpa


CLEAR LAKE  Kevan Paul of Clear Lake has turned his experience in retail and his love of fishing into a multi-faceted North Iowa business venture.

As owner of Kevan Pauls Guide Service he offers full-service open-water and ice-fishing trips. Although Paul concentrates on Clear Lake, he will consider bookings on other waters within about a 30-mile radius.

Anywhere the bites good, Paul said.

Paul partnered with fellow guide Chris Scholl of Manly to found the Yellow Bass Bonanza. Started four years ago with a Facebook page and a $25 (DNR) permit, the Bonanza has grown into what many believe to be Iowas premier ice-fishing tournament.

Most recently, Paul and Scholl teamed up again to start the areas newest fishing supply store, Clear Lake Bait and Tackle Inc.

Opened April 30 at 524 Highway 18 East in Clear Lake, the shop offers an array of bait, tackle and other fishing accessories with an emphasis on high-quality merchandise and locally or regionally made custom products.

Paul and Scholl hope to offer more than just merchandise at their store.

As active fishing guides, they will be able to provide advice about equipment and techniques as well as frequently updated fishing reports.

They also plan to organize special events, host fishing seminars and offer product demonstrations.

We want it to be something that will draw people to the region, Paul said. Its not just about taking peoples money. We want to educate people and be ambassadors for the sport.

Forest City native

A Forest City native, Paul developed his love of fishing as a youngster plying the banks of the Winnebago River.

Id ride my bike across town every day and go catch northerns, Paul said. I always wanted to be a professional fisherman.

Instead, during high school Paul worked at the local Pamida, where he was eventually promoted into management.

An opportunity in the company took him to Winter, South Dakota, where he continued to hone his passion for fishing as well as hunting. Thats also were he met his wife, Lisa.

Thats why I married my wife, Paul joked. She had the hunting ground.

Another transfer took the couple to Iowa, where Paul worked in Chariton and spent his free time fishing Lake Rathbun.

Yet Paul wasnt completely satisfied.

Retail wasnt for me at that time, he said, especially working for someone else.

He decided to return to North Iowa, settling in Clear Lake. After a brief stint selling cars, he worked for several years as a salesman with Captains Choice Seafood.

By then the Pauls had started a family (their son Houston is now 8 and daughter Navaeh is 7) and the frequent travel required by his job didnt mesh with his desire to be an involved father.

Id come home and I felt like Id missed a month, Paul said.

His next job, selling masonry products, kept him home more and saw him laid off in the winter.

Revisited his dream

With free time on his hands, Paul revisited his dream of being an angling professional by offering guided ice-fishing trips. His initial aspirations were modest and he quickly exceeded them.

My first-year goal was 10-15 trips, Paul said. I did 35.

Soon Paul was getting referral and repeat business. His ice clients also began inquiring about open-water trips.

Before long Paul was busy with ice clients most of the winter, while his weekends and vacation days during warmer months were spent guiding on the water.

I was making more on a weekend of guiding than during a week at work, Paul said.

Before long, demand was exceeding his supply of free time, forcing Paul to turn down potential clients and presenting him with a difficult choice.

I need to try it or not, Paul remembers thinking.

It was giving up his job and becoming a full-time guide, a leap Paul took in 2011. The results exceeded his expectations.

Before you know it Im doing 200 trips a year, Paul said. So far its been taking off really well.

So well, in fact, that Paul needed some help.

Even guiding full-time, demand again began to exceed Pauls availability. Rather than turn away business, Paul decided to recruit someone to take on a portion of his trips.

Having developed a friendship with Scholl through area fishing tournaments and similar events, Paul was confident Scholl would provide the level of service and expertise he wanted for his clients.

I knew he was a good fisherman and good with people, Paul said.

Being good with people is as important  or perhaps more important  than being able to catch fish, Paul has discovered.

He said some guides become so focused on results that they end up catching most of the fish themselves rather than working with clients to help them develop the skills needed to do it on their own. Paul learned quickly this was a mistake.

Let (clients) catch fish and have fun, Paul said. They want to learn. Its not about just going out and catching 100 fish.

Helping clients become better fishermen helps Paul build a relationship that leads to repeat business, he said. It also buys him some latitude on those inevitable days when things dont go as planned.

If theyre not catching anything and they know youre working hard, theyre going to forgive you for it, Paul said.

Building relationships is also critical for professional development, Paul noted.

Building a brand

Early in his guiding career, Paul became involved with Clam Outdoors, which opened doors for marketing and promotion.

Theyre really the ones who got my name out there and got me off the ground, he said. Its basically about building a brand.

Through Clam Outdoors, Paul was able to participate in trade shows, media events and fishing seminars, all of which increased his visibility.

If you dont have a lot of money, you work a little harder for it, Paul said.

Clam officials noticed Pauls hard work and success. They rewarded it by making him an Ice Team Pro, a select group of the best ice anglers in the country.

The reputation and connections Paul developed along the way helped immensely with recruiting sponsors and volunteers when Paul and Scholl decided to start a Clear Lake ice-fishing tournament.

First held in 2013, the Yellow Bass Bonanza, believed to be the largest fishing tournament in Iowa and among the largest in the Midwest, draws over 500 participants and awards over $30,000 in cash and prizes.

Paul stays busy with his guide business and organizing the tournament while Scholl holds a regular job as a truck driver in addition to his guiding duties.

Guiding, however, involves long hours and hard work. Paul realized its not a pace hell want to maintain indefinitely.

I need a retirement plan down the road, Paul said.

Open shop

Paul and Scholl realized they were drawing a lot of anglers to Clear Lake and decided it was only logical for them to take advantage of some of the revenue that generates by opening their own bait and tackle shop.

A brief search led them to the former NAPA Auto Parts building, which was already set up for retail and offered an ideal location.

There was $10,000 in shelving already here and youve got 10,000 cars a day driving by, Scholl said.

Despite his extensive retail experience, Paul sought lots of advice and assistance to start the enterprise.

Friends in the business world gave him pointers and reviewed many of the associated legal documents.

He also worked with a lawyer, an accountant and a computer specialist who installed a point-of-sale system for inventory and billing.

As with previous endeavors, Paul is keeping his initial expectations modest.

I want it to be able to support itself and pay the payroll, he said.

Right now its baby steps, Scholl said

While Paul and Scholl will put a lot of hours in at the shop themselves, they also have two part-time employees in avid local anglers Dave Van Syoc and Jim Cash.

Pauls wife has been helping quite a bit as well, and he anticipates it could become a family affair down the road.

My kids will have something to do when theyre older, maybe, Paul said.

His visions for the business by that point arent so humble.

I believe this can be one of the best shops in the state, he said.

In the meantime, though, Paul is just happy to be living his childhood dream.

I grew up going to pro-ams (fishing tournaments) and getting autographs from some of the guys Im working with now, Paul said. I could be working in a factory, but I get to fish!
MASON CITY  Recent awards presented to Henkel Construction Co. of Mason City represented the ultimate honors in construction awards, Henkel officials said.

The masters and safety awards were presented earlier this year at the annual convention of the Master Builders of Iowa (MBI).

It was like winning the Oscars, Henkel President Gary Schmit said. In the masters and safety categories, Henkel Construction was the overall winner for all four awards in which we were a finalist.

The masters awards are given by the Master Builders of Iowa (MBI). The safety awards were from the MBI and the Iowa Occupational Safety and Health Administration (IOSHA).

Henkel was recognized as the industry leader in the $5 million-to-$10 million category for its work on the energy center and loading dock at Mercy Medical Center-North Iowa.

Deemed a complicated, labor-intensive project by hospital officials, the project was completed in 2015.

Henkel also won a Masters Award in the over-$10 million category for its work as trade contractor on the south end zone expansion project at Jack Trice Stadium at Iowa State University, which was also completed in 2015.

The masters award recognizes exceptional management skills, imagination, perseverance under unusual and challenging conditions, responsiveness to client needs and innovative construction techniques, according to the MBI.

Its the process of how a building gets built, Schmit said.

The multi-phased Mercy project included installation of a new emergency power generation and distribution system for the entire hospital.

Henkel crews installed two 2.25-megawatt emergency power generators, the first of their kind installed in Iowa, according to the company. The project also included an expansion of the hospitals loading dock, waste-removal system, paving, site work and underground storm water retention system.

The project involved many carefully scheduled shutdowns of all critical areas of the hospital, often at night, Schmit said.

Henkels work at Jack Trice Stadium included metal work on stairwells, railings and exterior concrete work on the enclosing of the South End Zone. For this project, Henkel was the trade contractor.

The $60 million, 40,000-square-foot Sukup South End Zone Club was completed in August and features two levels of premium seating and club space.

As important to Henkel officials is the Outstanding Company Safety Achievement Award given for its overall safety record. One of the more prestigious safety awards in Iowa for the construction industry, the safety award recognizes the company that demonstrates the best practices in accident prevention and promotes the sharing of the industrys best achievements to advance safety at all levels, Schmit said.

That is the one that Im most proud of, Schmit said. Its a credit to our workers, project managers, estimators everybody.

The company performed about 180,000 hours of onsite work in 2015 with one reported injury, and had just previously achieved a 12-month period without a single injury, Schmit said.

Julie Weide, Henkels safety and training leader, received the MBIs Safety Professional Award as the top safety professional. Schmit credited this to her training programs for field employees in worksite safety practices and her assistance to project managers and superintendents to ensure compliance with all safety programs. Under her direction, potential work hazards were analyzed each day and a mitigation program developed.

Henkel is like family, said Weide, who started as a laborer at Henkel in 1987 and worked up to field superintendent. When the company created her current position, I knew it was something I wanted to do, she said.

Henkel superintendents and employees also perform site safety audits on all current projects on a quarterly basis, Schmit said. A company safety committee meets regularly to look at ways to improve the companys safety culture.

We reward people for their safe habits and actions, Schmit said.

The MBI Safety Champion Award was given to Henkel superintendent Duane Hanley for renovation work at Marston Hall at Iowa State University. In this project, Henkel employees removed 75 percent of the 1903 buildings internal walls to create larger, more open and modern classrooms. During the process, 17 shoring towers extending nearly 70 feet from the roof trusses to below the basement floor were installed to support the weight of the roof while a new steel support structure was erected.

Two elevators were added and classrooms and hallways opened up, said Hanley, a Henkel employee since 1984.

My job is to direct my help and my subcontractors where they need to be and what needs to be done, said Hanley, who is in charge of safety, quality and schedule at Henkel.
In every love life, theres always The One That Got Away.

He got away because you were both too young, too scared, too broke, or too different. Things were said that couldnt be unsaid, done that shouldnt have been done. It just didnt work out then, but now? In the new novel, I Almost Forgot about You by Terry McMillan, hell never get away twice.

It should have been an ordinary run-of-the-mill Monday.

Thats the way it started for optometrist Georgia Young: new prescriptions, return clients, follow-ups, and one new Monday-morning patient who  big surprise!  turned out to be the daughter of a man Georgia dated in college and had fallen for. She never told the guy she loved him, though, and she never would  because he was dead.

Shaken to the core, Georgia began to think about all the men shed slept with, and the ones shed fallen in love with. How would life have changed if shed stayed with any one of them? Shed been divorced twice; would that number have been higher or lower? Would she have more than her two daughters, live somewhere other than San Francisco , travel, cook for two?

At nearly 55 years old, she figured shed never find love again, but she at least needed closure. With the urging of her BFF, Wanda, Georgia made a list of the men shed once loved, and she promised herself shed find them  not because she wanted to rekindle anything, but because she had so many questions for them and for herself.

Finding her ex-husbands was easy. Michael happened to be moving back to California, and Niles was out of jail for his white-collar crime; both were happy and had moved on with their lives. Georgia was even able to stop hating them.

But Abraham wouldnt be easy to find. Neither would Lance. There were two Jameses, two Harolds, Thomas, Horace, and others, and one white guy that Wanda remembered, and added to the list. Georgia knew shed never find them all, especially since she had a business, a busy family, and a life to live.

Still, they were all men shed remember forever. But would they remember her?

Show of hands: who hasnt spent girlfriend-time talking about boyfriends? Probably nobody, so I Almost Forgot about You is a comfortably familiar story.

Thats not to say that its same-old, though. Like she did in many of her other novels, author Terry McMillan gives readers a cast of strong-minded, smart women who lean on other strong-minded, smart women. In this book, however, we see a few more bruises from living, rather than from relationships: Georgia and her friends are looking toward retirement, a little less stress, and no more drama. Even so, they get drama anyhow, and youll be glad for it.

Definitely, this is a novel for anyone whos lost a love and wondered, What if? Its a book youll want to share with your BFFs. I Almost Forgot about You is a book you shouldnt let get away.
A funeral Mass for will be held 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 15, at St. Mary Catholic Church in Roseville with Monsignor Brunken celebrating. Burial will be at Roseville Cemetery with military honors.

Visitation will be 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 14, at St. Mary Social Hall in Roseville, and will continue one hour prior to the funeral service at the church on Wednesday. There will be a 7 p.m. Scripture service followed by a Knights of Columbus rosary Tuesday evening.
I recently stayed with a friend who lives just a few miles from the Mexican border, and from the start of the Pacific Crest Trail. Since I was there anyway, I thought, what the heck? I might as well hike a bit of it.

Id walked less than a quarter mile from the wall at the border  yes, theres already a wall along much of the border  when Border Patrol stopped me.

Out taking nature photography, miss? the man asked. That your Toyota?

The next time I went out, I returned to find Border Patrol parked behind me, inspecting my car.

The last time I was on the trail, at about nine miles from the border, I could see the highway for a brief section of my hike. I watched a white and green Border Patrol vehicle pass. Then another.

I jokingly thought I should start counting them, but I doubted Id see any more. Then three more passed in about as many minutes.

I hope theyre either making a major drug bust or going to a staff meeting, I thought. Because otherwise this is ridiculous.

Unfortunately, ridiculous is winning out.

Our country will shell out upward of $14 billion to blanket our country with Border Patrol agents this year. Yet about 40 percent of undocumented immigrants arrive legally and overstay their visas, so any effort to secure the border with a wall or patrols wont catch them.

As for the people actually apprehended at the border, NPR reports that a growing number are refugees fleeing violence in Central America who turn themselves in voluntarily.

I dont know about you, but Im not all that concerned about letting in 13-year-old Salvadorian girls escaping murder threats back home.

The other major stick the government uses with undocumented immigrants is deportation. But that may be making the situation in Central America worse, since deported gang members contribute to the violent situation there, driving more people to flee northward.

And consider how crops rotted in the fields in Alabama and Georgia when those states stepped up immigration enforcement and the undocumented laborers who worked on farms there were forced out.

In short: What are we doing?

I dont claim to have all the answers, but it appears that simply doubling down on border enforcement isnt one of them.

In the era of Trump, any policy that can be called amnesty may sound politically toxic. But what if we did grant amnesty to law-abiding undocumented immigrants who are already here?

That could free up our immigration authorities to focus on criminal drug cartels and terrorist threats instead of people who came here peacefully to support their families.

As for the drug gangs, wouldnt it be smarter to deprive them of their lucrative business? Already there are signs that the legalization of marijuana in a few states has taken a big chunk out of their profits.

Or we could modernize our immigration quotas, so that coming here legally wouldnt mean waiting upward of 20 years as it does now for Mexican families.

It stands to reason that if one could come here legally, one would choose to do so. The alternative  crossing a desert on foot at great expense and risk of death, and then hiding in the shadows once here  is a much worse option.

Instead of simply focusing on border policing and deporting anyone who lacks documentation, we should take a more systematic approach to assess our priorities  and then craft policies that achieve them in a cost-effective and humane way.
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This weekend marks the 15th year that the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party has taken over Madison Square Park and its environs, and though things have changed and grown considerably since 2003, the meat festival remains the best opportunity you're going to get to try some of the most popular BBQ in the country while not actually dealing with TSA airport security lines.

Anyway, the rain held off yesterday, the crowds were huge as always, and I ate almost everything that all 14 pits fired up. Plus dessert. If you go todayand you should, because it's great, but go early... like, leave right nowhere's what you can expect.

Best Ribs

Ribs are always the best overall meat genre at the block party, and though my perennial favorite Pappy's Smokehouse was a no-show this year, John Wheeler's Memphis Barbecue Co. ably filled the hole Pappy left in my heart. These Baby Backs are smoky, ridiculously tender, just the right amount of sweet, totally addictive. Solid fallbacks are 17th Street from Murphysboro, Illinois, and Baker's from Dallas.

Best Whole Hog Sandwich

Ed Mitchell's gets most of the attention in this categoryand rightly so; this is good pigbut I'm giving the nod to Sam Jones's Skylight Inn, for his juicy, crackling, well-balanced sandwich. Bonus: due to its location near 27th Street and Jones's comparatively low profile, there was literally no line here, even at around 1:30.

Best Beef Brisket

Brooklyn's own Hometown Bar-B-Que sold out of everything by about 2:30, but since you can go to Red Hook anytime, it's better to try the Texans anyway. Scott Roberts's Salt Lick is back, and his brisket is as a good as ever (plus he throws in an excellent sausage), but the surprise winner here is first-timer Hutchins BBQ from Dallas, whose fatty, melty, peppery, funky meat was also possibly the best dish I ate all day.

Best Other:

I realize that Blue Smoke is located right down the block all year round, but Jean-Paul Bourgeois's Alabama White Wings are a welcome addition to your mouth anytime. They're creamy, complex, freshly-fired and popping with grease, and if I didn't have ten pounds of other meat to eat, I might have just settled in here all afternoon. Blue Smoke also did a crawfish boil yesterday, which is always fun, if a little frustrating for its effort-to-meat ratio.

Best Dessert

Fried Pies get all the love here, and they're ok, but if you want something sweet (and you do, after all that meat), head over the small Sugaree's tent in the "corporate-sponsor area" for a huge slice of gooey, sugary layer cake, straight from Mississippi. There are about a half-dozen varieties, and I can assure you that not only is the Rainbow slice totally Instagam-ready, it's also damn delicious. Happy Pride!

If you're making a day of it you should probably spring for a $125 Fast Pass, which is loaded with $100 worth of credit and gets you and your buddy onto shorter (though not necessarily short) lines. The Big Wig VIP Pass is still available for $275, which grants access to an exclusive lawn with an open bar and buffet of all the meats. But you can also just pay-as-you-go, and there were enough quickly moving lines, especially early in the day, that you could have scored a large meaty meal without a huge commitment.
A woman was fatally struck by a driver as she attempted to cross the street near Herald Square yesterday evening.

Police say that Po Chu Ng, 52, was attempting to cross the intersection of Sixth Avenue at W 30th Street inside the crosswalk when the incident happened. A 27-year-old male driver, who was in a 2013 GMC Suburban, struck her as he made a left turn onto northbound Sixth Avenue. The victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

The driver, whose name hasn't been released, stayed at the scene. No arrests have been made, and the NYPD's Collision Investigation Square is investigating the incident.

This is the second time in the past week that someone was fatally struck by a driver in the vicinity: the driver of a Chevy Suburban SUV ran over a woman crossing Eighth Avenue in the crosswalk at 38th Street last Monday. A group of bystanders had to collectively lift up the back of the vehicle so that others could drag the victim out from under the SUV. She later succumbed to her injuries at Bellevue Hospital, and the driver was arrested on a charge of failure to yield to a pedestrian.




The Republican Liberty Caucus of Florida announced on Saturday that it has endorsed Debbie Mayfield in the Florida Senate District 17 race.





Of the candidates in this race, Debbie Mayfield best personifies the values and principles of the Republican Liberty Caucus," said RLC Florida Chairman Bob White.



"For more than twenty years the Republican Liberty Caucus has been a strong voice for the principles of limited government, free enterprise and individual liberty within the Republican Party. We believe that less government means more liberty and we work through local chapters and with our member activists all over the country to oppose government excess and demand accountability to the people and the Constitution. Based on our conversations with Debbie, we are convinced that she is equally committed to these principles and values.











Debbie Mayfield is a native Floridian. She was the owner/operator of a small business and is the mother of three sons. She was first elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 2008 and subsequently re-elected to represent District 54, which includes all of Indian River County and part of St. Lucie County. Mayfield now resides in Brevard County. State Senate District 17 includes most of Brevard County and all of Indian River County.





Mayfield is currently Chair of the Business and Regulation Subcommittee for the Florida House of Representatives. She also serves on the Agriculture & Natural Resources Appropriations Subcommittee, Energy & Utilities Subcommittee, Justice Appropriations Subcommittee, and the Regulatory Affairs Committee.





Debbie is a strong fiscal conservative who believes in a smaller and smarter government, White continued. She is a property rights advocate and has been a champion for education reform, having led the fight against Common Core, and filing legislation to return the Florida Commissioner of Education post to an elected rather than an appointed position. The Republican Liberty Caucus of Florida is proud to endorse Debbie Mayfield in her race for the Florida Senate!




Names and faces

Liz Cavin, naturopathic doctor, has opened her new office at 1075 N. Rodney St., Suite 108. Complementary and alternative health care provided by a woman for women is what you will experience at her new clinic. Cavin has experience working with thyroid and hormonal issues, insomnia, digestive problems, high blood pressure, autoimmune disease, fatigue or inflammation. She is also a certified medical provider for DOT CLD physicals. Insurance billing will be taken care of by her local professional billing service. Call 406-996-1223 to schedule an appointment. Visit her website lizcavinnaturopath.com or follow her on Facebook facebook.com/lizcavinnaturopath.

***

Sarah Yoder is now a shareholder in The Wendt Agency, Montanas longest-standing full-service advertising agency. Wendt became an employee-owned corporation in 1955 and currently has nine employee owners.

Yoder has been a social media specialist/account manager at Wendt since 2010. She develops strategic social media plans that allow clients to achieve success through a real-time conversation with their audiences.

Yoder has bachelors degrees in advertising and communications studies and resource recreation and tourism from the University of Idaho.

***

Rachel Mattern, PA-C, a certified physician assistant employed by Lewis & Clark Emergency Physicians at St. Peters Hospital, was recently awarded a specialty credential called a Certificate of Added Qualifications (CAQ) from the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants.

Mattern received the CAQ in emergency medicine, a distinction earned by meeting licensure, education and experience requirements and then passing a national exam in the specialty. She is one of only seven certified PAs in Montana to earn a CAQ since the programs inception in 2011.

***

Carroll hires development vice president

Carroll College announced that it has hired Michael Larkin as the vice president for institutional advancement. Larkin comes to Carroll with 30 years of fundraising and development experience, predominantly in Catholic education.

Major gift organizations directly under Larkins leadership have raised more than $350 million. He has successfully organized start-ups (at Loyola School in New York City and the Foundation of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey), served as the first major gift director for a university in a significant ($150 million) comprehensive campaign (Fordham University in New York), and led two universities to successful campaigns (Saint Peters College in New Jersey and St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas).

Larkin earned a B.S. in philosophy from Haverford College and an M.S. in education from Fordham.

News and notes

M-M acquires

Wyoming firm

Morrison-Maierle announced that it has acquired Vista West Engineering of Sheridan and Casper, Wyoming.

Based in Sheridan, Vista West Engineering began in 2006 when it acquired the civil engineering portion of TSP. As the working environment in Wyoming changed and Vista West was ready to grow. Principal, Randy Bomar said the company added a second office in Casper in 2014.

***

Thrivent Financial gets superior rating

A.M. Best has affirmed Thrivent Financials A++ (superior) rating as well as its stable outlook. The rating is the highest of the agencys 16 categories.

A.M. Best cited Thrivent Financials prominent market presence within the Christian community, favorable trend of operating earnings, superior risk-adjusted capitalization, and growth in life insurance in-force. Thrivents high quality capital structure, which utilizes no debt and full retention of all product-related risks on its balance sheet, was also cited.

Thrivent Financial is represented in the local area by Autumn Keller. She has offices at 2001 11th Ave. Ste. 27, and can also be reached at 442-6091.

***

Pre-check

appointments

still available

The Transportation Security Administration announced that about 90 appointments are still available to enroll in TSA Pre at Helena Regional Airport until Friday, June 17. Hour are Monday-Thursday 10 a.m.-1 p.m. and 2-7 p.m. On Friday, the hours are 8 a.m.-1 p.m. and 2-5 p.m.

The three airlines that serve Helena including Alaska Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines participate in TSA Pre. A passenger must be flying on a participating airline in order to be eligible to use the TSA Pre lane.

The enrollment center is located on the second floor of the terminal near the restaurant. This location is pre-security.

Travelers who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents can begin the process by pre-enrolling online at universalenroll.dhs.gov. Click on the words, Get Started and follow the prompts to set up an appointment to visit the enrollment center in Helena.

Please note that applicants must bring a current U.S. passport or a driver's license and certified copy of a birth certificate. There is a nonrefundable application processing fee of $85.

Awards and honors

Shodair recognized

for safety

Shodair Children's Hospital, known for expert emotional care for children and its world-renowned genetics program, recently received the Jeff Martin Award for Excellence from the Yellowstone Insurance Exchange.

The award recognizes efforts made by an organization to improve patient safety and quality care in the communities it serves. Shodair earned the award for educating staff and community members about Adverse Childhood Experiences. Shodair was awarded $1,200 to put toward any type of risk manager education.

***

Dick Anderson in top 400

Dick Anderson Construction was recently named as one of the top 400 contractors in the United States by Engineering-News Record. They were ranked 359 out of 400 in the U.S. in an article released May 19. Dick Anderson Construction has been in business for more than 40 years and serves clients throughout the western U.S.
MISSOULA -- A massive fire completely destroyed three apartments in the University Villages on South Avenue on Saturday afternoon, forcing the evacuation of dozens of University of Montana students and their families from several nearby complexes.

Firefighters responded to a call a little after 2:30 p.m. of huge flames leaping out of the second story of an apartment located within a building in Elliott Village that houses seven other units.

Were not sure how the fire started, but when I arrived, we had lots of fire going on the exterior, kind of on the breezeway on the deck, said Derek Mullins, a battalion chief with the Missoula Fire Department. The fire spread to both adjacent apartments on the second floor.

Crews got inside and used foam spray to quickly knock down the exterior flames. Once inside, they found that all the occupants were safely outside already.

There are no injuries that I know of so far, Mullins said. Its looking pretty good right now.

Firefighters had to use a crane and a large saw to cut vent holes in the roof because the fire got into the attic as well. The foam penetrates through the wood better and doesnt evaporate as quickly, Mullins said.

The occupants were out upon arrival, and I didnt get any information on whether they suffered any smoke inhalation injuries, he said. The ambulance is here and we didnt transport anyone to the hospital and they didnt look at anybody so far.

UM owns the student housing complex, which is exclusively for students and their families.

Cameron Poler, a junior at UM, lives next door to the first apartment that caught fire.

I heard people screaming and I ran outside and saw flames, he said. There was a little smoke in my apartment, but I think it was coming through the windows.

Poler frantically tried to throw as much of his belongings out the window as he could before he got out for good.

I threw out all of my clothes, a friggin laundry basket, some shirts, he said. It was insane.

Poler's dog made it out OK as well. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
Bill and Betsey War marked their 50th wedding anniversary on June 11, 2016.

Bill and Betsey were high school sweethearts at Cathedral High in Helena, and both attended Carroll College, Betsey becoming a registered nurse and Bill following up with a graduate degree at Montana State in chemical engineering. They were married at the Cathedral of St. Helena; and have three wonderful children, two daughters and one son, as well as eight grandchildren.

Bills career in the chemical and petroleum industries took the family from home to home starting in Bozeman and over the years residing in Midland, Michigan; Denver (three times); Salt Lake City (two times); Cody, Wyoming; Billings; Seal Beach, California; New Orleans; and Midland, Texas. After retiring the vagabond shoes, they moved back to Helena where they intend to stay.

The Wars will celebrate with family over the 4th of July weekend at their Canyon Ferry Cabin.
Living on Helenas Upper East Side, Doris Davis and Mary Kelley look to the South Hills and realize the idyllic backdrop could one day pose a threat to them and their neighbors.

Wildfire models show that Helena is not immune from the type of blaze that burns quickly from the wooded hills and into neighborhoods, torching homes and potentially costing lives. With that information in mind, the duo spearheaded a day-long wildfire event in March, bringing in fire officials to talk about preparation and mitigation and what families can and should be doing in advance. On Saturday June 18, Davis and Kelley are facilitating a wildfire simulation they hope will resonate with the public about a threat that must be taken seriously.

We learned about the good work of Tri-County (FireSafe Working Group), and we didnt know what we could do but we volunteered at different times and places, Davis said. Since October weve been putting our heads together because we have different ways of doing things but its worked very well.

Saturdays program features One-Third Mile to Safety: A Familys Story (see companion story for more information), the devastating tale of a southern California wildfire trapping residents with only one-third of a mile to travel to the local fire station.

Attendees will walk a one-third mile staff ride featuring simulations of the actual events in which experts will talk about the overwhelming conditions and what may have been done better.

Were just trying to make it real  the community at large needs to realize this is a very real danger and were not cry wolf, we just want people to be prepared and do everything they can to save their homes, save their lives and save their childrens lives, Davis said.

Kelley believes the duo brings a sensitive and insightful message that resonates with both men and women. She often sees men thinking about the outside of the home and mitigation possibilities while women are focused on inventorying assets  both are extremely important, she says.

It comes down to neighborhoods and communities sharing responsibilities because while firefighters go above and beyond to save people and property, they cant be put in harms way if residents do not properly prepare their homes, Kelley said.

Communities arent the same as they used to be when we were growing up, she said. People dont talk to each other in the neighborhood anymore and its harder to get neighborhoods working on a project together. Weve tried to get the word out publically not just in our own neighborhoods but in the city because everyone needs to be prepared.

Kelley and Davis credit the foundation set by fire officials on the working group and the valuable information and resources available to the public. The hope more area residents will listen.

We all have something in common that we live here in this beautiful state and this beautiful community and were all in jeopardy should a fire decide to rear its ugly head, Davis said.
The ink has run like a river torrent ever since the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Water Compact was introduced -- and approved -- in the previous legislative session.

Most of this ink has been spilled in service to explaining to Montana legislators, residents, farmers, ranchers and government officials the many various details of this complicated agreement. Thats only right, as clear understanding is essential to crafting good legislation.

However, a great deal has also been diverted to defending the compact from opponents who either dont understand the point of the agreement, or who seek to derail this critical resolution of historic water rights and turn it into a condemnation of state, tribal or federal authority -- or all three.

On May 26, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester stepped out of the stream for a moment in order to introduce the compact legislation into the Senate. Such was largely expected of the Montana senator who has repeatedly introduced water compacts for the Blackfeet, and Gros Ventre and Assiniboine tribes; he also sponsored the Crow water compact, which languished in Congress for more than a decade before finally being ratified in 2010. Tester deserves applause for being a steadfast supporter of these duly negotiated agreements, and for taking on yet another monumental piece of legislation.

Thats no exaggeration. The 1,400-page CSKT Water Compact, decades in the making, will cost some $2.3 billion. Although the vast majority of this will be spent on critical water infrastructure, the sheer amount is still a large lump for Congress to swallow. Compounding this is the fact that our countrys Congress is not known for acting with speed even when confronted with the simplest of common-sense bills. A highly detailed bill that affects such a small portion of the nations population is likely to fall ill with that most deadly of congressional diseases: indifference.

Thats why it is even more important that all three of Montanas congressional delegates, who have expressed various degrees of support for the compact in the past, work together to keep this compact alive and to push for its successful passage -- as well as Montanas other outstanding water compacts. It is past time to wrap up the last of Montanas seven tribal water compacts, and provide water rights holders throughout the state with the assurance they deserve that their rights will not be disputed as water becomes ever more valuable.

The entire purpose of the compact is to provide that assurance by finally settling historic water rights on and off the Flathead Reservation. It also resolves the tribes water claims with both the state and with the federal government, avoiding immeasurable litigation costs.

The compact will allow drinking water and wastewater systems in the region to receive necessary upgrades, as well as irrigation and water infrastructure though the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project. It also establishes funds for the expansion of agriculture development, from livestock barriers to noxious weed control.

CSKT Tribal Chairman Vernon Finley says the infrastructure and restoration projects will combine to create over 6,330 jobs and an economic impact of $52.9 million per year  providing a major boost to the economy while enhancing the regions landscape and ecosystem.

Further, Finley says, This legislation also helps remedy some of the devastating impacts to our culture and children caused by failed federal policies relating to the water resources of the Tribes by supporting our cultural and educational programs.

According to a description from Testers office, the compact will also:

 Establish the right for CSKT to develop and market any hydroelectric power generation projects within the Flathead Reservation;

 Quantify CSKTs allocation of water rights and usage for the Hungry Horse Reservoir;

 Protect the water rights and allocation for existing on-reservation irrigation users;

 Provide for water leasing allocations off of the Flathead Reservation;

 Protect fishing habitats by establishing CSKT and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks as co-owners for existing off-reservation basins;

 Establish the Unitary Administration and Management Ordinance and Water Management Board to administer water rights on the Flathead Reservation

For these reasons and others, the compact has earned strong bipartisan support throughout Montana. Sen. Chas Vincent, a Libby Republican, introduced the bill into the 2015 Legislature and deserves the credit for educating legislators on the particulars of Senate Bill 262.

The compact has bipartisan support outside the legislature as well, from the Montana Farmers Union and Montana Stockgrowers Association, local elected officials, tribal officials and conservation groups. Montana's Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock supports the compact, as does Montana's Republican Attorney General Tim Fox.

Now, Montanas bipartisan congressional delegation must guide it through Congress.

Unfortunately, Congress has done a poor job of ratifying Montanas previous tribal compacts. The first to test Congress, the compact for the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation, was passed by the Montana Legislature in 1985 and never ratified by Congress. It was allowed to take effect only because it was not attached to federal funding.

Congress has taken no action on the compact for Fort Belknap. The Blackfeet Water Compact sponsored by Tester was approved by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and will hopefully receive a floor vote some time before the next decade. Meanwhile, the House Natural Resource Committee, of which U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke is a member, has gone so far as to hold a hearing on the Blackfeet compact.

Technically, if a compact is not ratified within four years of the governors signing, it may be withdrawn. That may be exactly what opponents of the CSKT Water Compact hoping for.

Zinke, Tester and U.S. Sen. Steve Daines must not allow the passage of time and the leaky dam of Congress to endanger the hard work, countless hours and expert involvement that went into this water compact. Ultimately, its really not that complicated.

-- The Missoulian
Earlier this month near the banks of the Yellowstone River, I joined dozens of hunters, anglers, hikers, bikers, boaters, skiers and wildlife watchers to announce a vision for Montana that I believe is one of a governors fundamental responsibilities: protecting access to our public lands.

Sadly, weve seen that access come under attack in Montana.

In our state, the size of your checkbook doesnt determine whether or not you can spend a day alone with a fly rod on the river.

You dont have to own a big piece of property to experience some of the best hunting and fishing in the world.

You dont have to have friends in high places if you want to explore our mountains and trails with cameras, or hiking boots, or mountain bikes.

Taking our families to these places, enjoying them, and being responsible stewards of them, are what makes us Montanans.

All of our public lands have a tremendous impact on our economy. According to the Outdoor Industry Association, our outdoor recreation economy is responsible for more than 64,000 direct Montana jobs and nearly $6 billion per year in economic activity.

Thats why Im asking the Montana Legislature to create The Office of Outdoor Recreation. This new office will be housed in the Governors Office of Economic Development. And its role will be to cater to the unique challenges of Montanas lucrative outdoor recreation economy  to ensure our visitors keep visiting and spending money.

Make no mistake, we all respect private property rights. We must always defend them. But there are places that the public always has access to, like our streams and rivers.

We still have folks out there who want to try to do away with that access, and theyll go to great lengths to do it.

We still have pockets of public land that are virtually impossible to get to because theyre surrounded by private lands, or blocked by gates.

We still have disputes about whether the public is allowed on public land.

So based on input from folks across Montana, Im announcing that my administration is creating a new position within the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation called a public access specialist.

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.

Im also asking Montanas elected lawmakers to do their part as well in upholding the Montana value of keeping it public.

Created in 1987 and funded by hunting and fishing license fees, the Habitat Montana initiative opens the door to allow the state of Montana purchase lands to open up for hunting and fishing, and to protect our wildlife.

Over the past two sessions of the Montana Legislature, Habitat Montana has been under attack. Last session, lawmakers froze the funds for Habitat Montana, and Im asking them to open it back up, without restrictions, to protect Montanas outdoor heritage.

After all, protecting Montanas public lands and access to them is an issue that transcends party politics in Montana. It isnt about what Democrats or Republicans or independents want. Its about doing whats right for all Montanans.

I recently created a new email address to solicit ideas from all Montanans about how best to champion our public lands. I encourage all Montanans to send us an email at keepitpublic@mt.gov.

And with your input, well continue to make Montana the best place possible for all who value our open land, our water, our wildlife, and our way of life.
HAMILTON  Bitterroot Valley resident George G. Simmons left the valley when he was 18 years old.

He served in the U.S. Army in the Philippines during World War II and died at age 25 as a prisoner of war.

His remains have been identified and now he is coming home, 80 years after he left.

Army Cpl. George G. Simmons was assigned to Battery H, 60th Coast Artillery Regiment on the Philippine Island of Corregidor.

On Dec. 8, 1941, Japanese forces invaded the Philippines. Simmons and his unit engaged in intense fighting until May 6, 1942, when the U.S. fortress of Corregidor fell.

Thousands of American and Filipino service members were taken prisoner, including Simmons, who was taken by ship to Manila, then by train and eventually on foot to the Cabanatuan POW camp, said a press release. More than 2,800 POWs perished in this camp during the remaining years of the war. On Nov. 19, 1942, 14 Americans, including Simmons, were reported to have died and were buried by their fellow prisoners in Common Grave 717 in Cabanatuan Camp #3 Cemetery.

After World War II, American Graves Registration Service personnel exhumed those service members and relocated their remains to a temporary U.S. military cemetery near Manila.

In late 1947, the service again exhumed the remains in an attempt to identify them. The individual remains could not be identified due to the circumstances of the prisoners deaths and burials, the commingling and the limited identification technologies of the time. The service members were reburied as unknowns in the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, a permanent American Battle Monuments Commission cemetery in the Philippines.

With advances in technology and the ability to match DNA, in 2014, the Secretary of the Army granted permission to exhume the 10 graves associated with Cabanatuan Common Grave 717, where Simmons was believed to have been buried. The remains were accessioned into the DPAA laboratory on Aug. 28, 2014.

The DNA was taken from two cousins to match and identify Simmons.

To identify Simmons remains, scientists from DPAA and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used forensic identification tools, including mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome Short Tandem Repeat DNA analysis, which matched the DNA samples provided by two cousins; anthropological analysis; as well as historical and circumstantial evidence, the press release said.

Simmons remains are now being returned to his family for burial with full military honors on June 18 in Corvallis.

Don Thorson is the director of the Corvallis cemetery.

It is a wonderful miracle when you think they are working to return these people to their families, Thorson said. Simmons was a survivor of the Bataan Death March, interred in a prison camp in a city on the east coast of the Philippines. Thats where he died.

Thorson said the Army identified the remains after they came to Corvallis and took a DNA sample from his cousin, Al Simmons, of Corvallis.

They thought they had found George in a mass grave in the Philippines, Thorson said. They did not have DNA testing at the time, but now there is a way to identify the soldiers.

Al Simmons, now 90 and a World War II veteran, said he remembers his cousin.

He was eight years older than I was but we werent buddy-buddy. He had his own friends, Al Simmons said. Eight years difference does not make for good playmates. He was drafted in 1941 and served in the Philippines, and he died defending his country.

The Army press release issued Friday said, On Dec. 8, 1941 while Simmons was assigned to Battery H, 60th Coast Artillery Regiment on the Philippine Island of Corregidor, Japanese forces invaded the Philippines. Simmons and his unit engaged in intense fighting until May 6, 1942, when the U.S. fortress of Corregidor fell. Thousands of American and Filipino service members were taken prisoner, including Simmons, who was taken by ship to Manila, then by train and eventually on foot to the Cabanatuan POW camp. More than 2,800 POWs perished in this camp during the remaining years of the war. On Nov. 19, 1942, 14 Americans, including Simmons, were reported to have died and were buried by their fellow prisoners in Common Grave 717 in Cabanatuan Camp #3 Cemetery.

Thorson said, Simmons is synonymous with the Chaffin name.

The Chaffin family came to the Bitter Root in 1864 and settled in Corvallis.

A Chaffin daughter married a Simmons, resulting in Simmons off-spring, Thorson said. Two of them are living. Al, who lives in Corvallis, and Loyce Teller, who was the Corvallis school secretary for many years who is now 93 and lives in an assisted living home in Washington.

Al Simmons said a number of family members will come for the internment service that will be held in the Corvallis cemetery, 11 a.m. on June 18.

Thorson said George Simmons will be buried beside his mother and father.

Fortuitously, his parents bought an extra grave, Thorson said. I presume they had hopes that some day, some way, he would come home.

For additional information on the Defense Departments mission to account for Americans who went missing while serving our country, visit the DPAA website at www.dpaa.mil or call 703-699-1420.
BILLINGS -- The Yellowstone County Sheriffs Office confirmed Saturday night that the person missing after a rafting incident Friday night has been accounted for, safe and sound.

Sheriff Mike Linder said that an aerial search Saturday had produced no sighting, but his office received word that the missing person, who was not identified, had been in the water but was safe, according to contacts the sheriffs office made Saturday.

Sometimes, people dont even realize that were searching for them, Linder said.

The incident occurred about 8:30 Friday night. Three people were rescued after making it to shore. A woman was placed into an ambulance and transported to a hospital, according to Billings Battalion Chief Dave Gilbert. A fourth member of the party was later reported safe, but the whereabouts of the fifth member was unknown, Linder said.

According to second-hand information given to a sheriffs deputy, one man who tried to control the raft with a piece of wood fell out of the raft. The craft apparently went under a log, which pushed the other rafters into the water.

They had no oars and no life jackets, no way to control the raft, Linder said.

On Friday night, Sheriffs Office personnel set up bases at Riverfront and Coulson parks, using boats to search the area and equipped with thermal imaging equipment. A Billings Police Department K-9 unit was also employed during the search Friday.

By 11 oclock Friday evening, the search  conducted by multiple law enforcement and fire departments  had to be called off because of darkness.

A Billings Flying Service helicopter allowed Linder and Lt. Kent ODonnell to search by air for about two hours Saturday morning. The helicopter flew low to the water, searching several miles of water, river channels, river banks and islands. The sheriff said they hoped to find what was at the time two missing people stranded but OK.

But no luck, Linder said.

The woman reported missing was confirmed later on Saturday to be safe, Linder said.

On Saturday, the water was running high and fast, which made the river dangerous and the search more difficult. But Linder said the water level seems to be receding.

Deputies had been working to pin down the names of all the individuals who were on the raft, Linder said, to try to discover whether the missing rafters had made it out of the river.

They just got out of the water and wandered off, not even thinking that we would be looking for them, Linder said.

Linder praised the response effort on the part of his department, the Billings Police Department, Billings Fire Department, U.S. Water Rescue and the Lockwood Fire Department.

It was a collaborative effort, he said. We used just about every local public agency.
DECATUR  At a time when Decatur firefighters are busier than ever, they work in stations with leaky roofs, plumbing backups and other structural problems that could cost millions to fix.

An architectural firm's report commissioned by the Decatur City Council showed problems in all of the citys seven fire stations and estimated that it would cost $8 million to solve them all. Some issues are in danger of causing more serious, expensive damage if they are not addressed.

Three stations have too many problems and should be rebuilt, the firm recommended.

Its not a question of comfort, Fire Chief Jeff Abbott said, or one of aesthetics. The firefighters work hard to maintain their stations and keep conditions as good as possible. After all, they live there when they're working.

But not addressing these problems could cost the city more in the long run.

We make do with what weve got. Theres just some stuff that is beyond what we can do, Abbott said. We just need square buildings that drain water off the roof in an appropriate manner, thats all were looking for, and that the plumbing doesnt back up every other day.

Why seven stations?

The citys fiscal woes contributed to the backlog of fire station maintenance and repairs. There is less money, in part, because there are substantially fewer people living in Decatur than there used to be.

So, do we really need seven fire stations?

Heres the issue: Declining population did not translate to declining geographical boundaries. Decatur sprawls over 47 square miles. Firefighters evaluate themselves by how fast they can be there, wherever the emergency is, and they aim to meet national standards of less than four minutes, 90 percent of the time.

Each fire station covers about seven square miles, Abbott said. Eliminating one station would mean slower response times in at least part of the city.

Where do you close? And who are you going to determine gets the worst coverage, even though theyre a taxpayer in the city of Decatur? he said.

Compared to other cities, Decatur lags behind.

Springfield, with its 54 square miles, has 12 fire stations, one for every 4.5 square miles. Bloomington has similar coverage with five fire stations in 22 square miles. In fact, all of Decaturs comparable communities cover less ground per fire station, on average.

The workload for Decatur firefighters is also greater than ever.

Last year, they responded to a total of 10,317 incidents, according to city records. More than half were emergency response calls. There were good intent calls, service calls, hazardous conditions and more than 600 false alarms. Just 265 of the calls were fires.

Abbott said the number of calls has doubled in 20 years, even as the number of structure fires has decreased. It is not clear why.

Because firefighters respond to so many different types of emergencies, their trucks are outfitted with plenty of resources to make them versatile.

It can answer an EMS call. It can fight a fire. It can help extricate somebody out of a car accident. It can provide monitors to test your house to see if you have a gas leak or a carbon monoxide leak, he said. Its not just a fire truck. Theres so many tools that allow us to cover those 10,000 calls.

Slew of problems

The city council hired Dewberry Architects Inc. in November to assess the fire stations and deliver a report. Dewberry sent a team of engineers to each station, with the findings presented to the council in April.

The results were sobering.

In general, there are constant problems with plumbing and heating, ventilation and cooling systems. All of the stations have structural issues and accessibility compliance problems. Three have leaky roofs.

Some vehicle bays are too small, which makes it impossible for the department to extend the lifespan of certain expensive vehicles by moving them to different stations. Part of the ceiling collapsed in the dorm room of Station 5 last summer, revealing mold that had to be removed.

Dewberry recommended rebuilding three of the stations: Station 3 in Fairview Park, which is 89 years old and cramped; Station 5 near Brettwood Village, which has several serious issues and also would be more beneficial in another location; and Station 7 at the Decatur Airport, which is not owned by the city and also could be moved to decrease response times.

Firefighters do what they can. Abbott and City Manager Tim Gleason have praised the departments employees for taking pride in their stations.

Theyve allowed us to keep our head above water, even though it might be only slightly, and now its my turn to get things taken care of, and I am, Gleason said.

The fire department, like all the other areas of city government, suffered during the budget crisis of the past six years. Only about $40,000 to $50,000 has been allocated for station maintenance each year, and that includes paying water and garbage bills, Abbott said.

When emergency repairs arise, the department has been forced to take money from other line items. The blow has been cushioned by a few grants for equipment, but those can only go so far.

Youre trying to be a good steward with the money and replace only what needs to be replaced, when you can do it, Abbott said. In an unexpected situation like the roof falling down or the furnace going out, when that happens, theres something else down the line that you then cut out.

City moves toward fixes

Dewberry identified a total of $8.1 million in renovation and rebuilding costs for the fire stations, though $1.8 million would cover the most immediate needs in the next one to three years.

Gleason said he had directed Abbott to identify repairs that are most crucial to be done in the next two years. Beyond that, the city will look to develop a plan for the three stations that need to be rebuilt.

Do we have opportunities for relocation, given what the city looks like today and what we expect the city to look like 20, 30 years down the road? Gleason said.

In the future, the council could seek a bond of $8 million to $9 million, for which Gleason said a revenue stream is already in place because of a property tax increase the council approved in December.

Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe said it was unfortunate that the problems were not limited to one station.

She said the council did not want to raise any more taxes and would find a way to fix the problems without doing that.

We need to be strategic in where theyre placed so we can get to businesses and homes and people as quickly as possible, but we have to do our job of making sure they have the facilities they need, she said. Were not talking about the Taj Mahal. Were talking about leaks in the roof and things functionally not working.
As reported by WisPolitics.com, the Joint Finance Committee approved redirecting more than $21 million in bonding to offset rising costs for Milwaukee and Racine counties as they build new facilities for young offenders. Meanwhile, one committee member warned inflation will likely raise the 
MARION -- The man who died in the single-engine plane crash on Friday afternoon at the Williamson County Regional Airport was John Alleman, 56, of Carbondale, according to an official from the Williamson County Coroners Office.

The other passenger in the aircraft, Todd Greiner, of West Frankfort, remains in critical condition after he was airlifted on Friday to a St. Louis area hospital, said Chief Deputy Coroner Scott Kinley, speaking at a news conference on Saturday afternoon at the Williamson County Regional Airport.

Aaron Sauer, principal operations inspector with the National Transportation Safety Board, said that it will be several months before a report is finalized detailing exactly what led to the crash.

A preliminary review shows that Alleman and Greiner departed the airport as part of an instructional flight and were performing touch-and-go maneuvers at some point prior to the crash. He said it is too early to say what they were doing at the time of the crash.

Greiner is a certified flight instructor, and Alleman has a private pilots license. The flight was called an instructional flight, though Sauer did not say specifically what was the purpose of the flight, again, noting those details would come later with the investigation.

Pilots in the United States are required to take a flight review every two years. The review is required by federal aviation regulations for all pilots who intend to operate an aircraft and meant to provide a periodic assessment of ones flying skills, according to a publication of the Air Safety Institute.
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.
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.
Maybe its time Illinois drove into the ditch.

The state is approaching one year without a state budget and its likely the new fiscal year will dawn on July 1 without a budget. While those that depend on social service agencies have suffered, along with universities and colleges, in large part the state has continued on without a budget.

Lets unplug the auto-pilot and let reality set in.

Lets send all but the most essential state workers home and stop paying them. Heck, send them all home.

Announce that schools wont open in the fall.

Close the public universities until further notice.

Close the parks and museums.

Basically, shut the state down. Close the doors and lock them until Gov. Bruce Rauner, House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton find a way to put sound policy ahead of politics.

Were half serious.

Obviously, shutting down the state would cause a lot of harm to a lot of people. However, the threat of such a shutdown would undoubtedly solve this budget crisis quickly.

The most likely scenario is that sometime this summer the party leaders will decide on a stopgap budget that will keep the state operating and make sure schools open in the fall. That will delay any real discussion about the budget mess until after the November election. Those few legislators involved in contested races  the majority are unopposed  dont want to take any unpopular votes too close to Election Day. Job preservation is always the top priority in the General Assembly. Cullerton and Rauner have both already said that they would consider a stopgap budget.

Delaying the problem wont solve it, however. The state will still spend more than it takes in. That clicking sound you hear is your tax bill getting higher.

The main reason that no budget deal has been reached is that none of the politicians are immune to the heat thats been generated. Because of court decisions and legislative mandates, 90 percent of the state spending is continuing without a budget. Those being harmed are not political forces. Add in the fact that most legislators are in gerrymandered protected districts and any pressure placed on them is easy to ignore. Comparisons to Nero fiddling while Rome burns are not overstated.

However, if schools didnt open in the fall the pressure would build rapidly. Parents faced with finding care for their children would not be happy to see summer vacation extended. Teachers facing a few weeks or months without paychecks wouldnt sit idle. Parents wanting their older children to head off or back to college, would not want them lazing around home for a few more months. Empty nesters like their empty nests.

And, state workers would not be happy with an unpaid vacation.

The state is basically bankrupt, so why not just close the doors and see what happens? It would be ugly and it would be a disaster. But one has to wonder if thats what has to occur to force Rauner, Madigan and Cullerton to figure out a solution. The ignominy of being the worst-run state in the nation, perhaps the world, hasnt forced their hand. Maybe its time for a more drastic solution. Maybe its time to take the state into the ditch.
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.
Losing your job, whether you have advance notice or not, can be a traumatic event. In addition to financial and practical needs, you should also attend to your own mental and emotional health in the immediate aftermath of a job loss.

Youll likely want to take practical steps right away. First, try to understand why you were let go and what to expect in your personnel file. You may want to consult with an attorney before signing any paperwork from your employer. At the very least, carefully review anything you are asked to sign and dont be afraid to ask questions. File for unemployment and explore your health insurance options. If necessary, work with your bank and other creditors to deal with debt obligations.

At the same time, pay attention to your mental and emotional health. Research from renowned psychologist Marie Johoda shows that in addition to being a source of income, jobs fulfill five specific life needs: time structure, social contact, collective purpose, status and activity. Left suddenly without a job to anchor our lives, we can experience feelings of isolation and a lack of purpose, conditions that ultimately contribute to poor mental and physical health.

The key to weathering a bout of unemployment is to find anchor points outside of work:

Time structure: Keeping a regular schedule is essential. Set up a daily schedule, allocating time for job hunting, building skills, exercise and social activities. Some job seekers also find the added structure of a part-time job helpful.

Social contact: People often feel guilty or embarrassed about having fun or socializing while unemployed, but focusing exclusively on your job search can be isolating. Interacting with others keeps you engaged socially and helps build your network. Look for free or low-cost social events, community education classes or meet-up groups. Even going to a coffee shop to work on your job search, rather than doing so alone, can make a difference.

Collective purpose: Losing a job can mean losing a sense of purpose in your day-to-day life. Consider getting involved in a cause, volunteering or helping out at your childs school. Purpose can come from a number of places, not just our work.

Status: Finding another source of identity is challenging because social status in the United States is highly tied to employment. A key first step is learning to tell your story in a way thats truthful and comfortable for you. Youll likely have to tell it to friends, family and potential employers. Try to objectively evaluate what you can learn from the experience and focus on the positives you bring to an organization.

Activity: Keep yourself busy with activities that provide social engagement and a sense of purpose, two needs crucial to your well-being.

Keep in mind that its normal to experience a wide range of emotions. If you feel angry, sad or even relieved, its better to deal with those emotions than to ignore them. Find supportive friends and family members or talk with a counselor.
Maybe it helps that Evan Absher, one of the top policy officers for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, has a background in theater. It prepared him to dodge rotten tomatoes tossed on stage.

Absher works on Kauffman Foundation programs to spur entrepreneurism in states, regions and cities, a process that often begins with ranking those places on factors such as startup rates, high-growth economies and Main Street businesses.

Kauffman scored Wisconsin 50th among the 50 states for startups a year ago, so it took some gumption to stand before 300-plus people and explain to them why their state could stand some improvement when it comes to company creation.

Even my Uber driver complained about that ranking on the way from the airport, Absher joked during a luncheon Wednesday at the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs Conference in Madison.

He quickly followed up that while such rankings and reports are extremely useful for states, regions and cities that hope to analyze what works and what doesnt, the actual rankings should be taken with a grain of salt.

For example, the leading startup state in the same Kauffman report that ranked Wisconsin 50th was Montana, almost entirely for per-capita reasons.

There are eight people in Montana and Jeff just started a company, he dead-panned.

The serious issue facing Wisconsin, however, is the need for better strategies for creating companies. Other rankings suggest Wisconsin does a solid job of keeping young companies alive, and that it has a higher proportion of smaller Main Street businesses than most states. The biggest challenge is launching enough young companies of all types  from bakeries to biotechs  to keep the economic pipeline full.

Most of the reasons for Wisconsins low startup rate are easily explained: manufacturing and agriculture are capital-intensive and therefore not always startup-friendly; the labor force is slightly older and less educated than the U.S. average; rural Wisconsin barely has recovered from the Great Recession; and a low immigration rate works against Wisconsin because newcomers are twice as likely to start a business as native-born Americans.

The past week in Wisconsin featured forums that examined startup trends and practices that work through the eyes of outsiders and home-grown citizens alike. Those included visits by the Atlantic Council and Kauffman, which also took part in a Mayors Summit on Entrepreneurship in Madison on Thursday, as well as the annual entrepreneurs conference. Some broad takeaways:

States, cities and regions that focus on entrepreneurship and building companies from the ground up are more likely to succeed than those that spend time and money on smokestack chasing.

Tax incentives aimed mostly at incumbent industries dont work, especially if those industries are mature in terms of job creation.

Fence-me-in government regulations or scared-lawyer laws stifle economic dynamism by erecting barriers to competition.

Attractive, safe and affordable places to live, work and play really do matter.

Kauffman data underscored the fact that young companies create most net new jobs in the United States, and have done so for decades. Since 1988 there have been only eight years in which older U.S. companies added net new jobs and 16 years in which those companies lost jobs or barely broke even. In stark contrast, new companies (five years or less) added at least 1 million jobs collectively in every year since 1988 but one  the peak recession year of 2009.

States, cities and regions that focus too much on raiding companies from elsewhere or cutting taxes without strategic goals in mind are simply taking away dollars that can be used to support entrepreneurship, Absher said.

Absher, an attorney himself, also criticized what he described as scared-lawyer laws that make it harder for young companies to compete for contracts, customers and other business in jurisdictions where such laws are passed.

In Wisconsin, where there is tension between the state and local governments over the sharing of control, thats an emerging issue. State laws that would restrict certain types of research or make it harder for workers to move within companies have been defeated in Wisconsin  for now  but the threat remains.

So, whats the secret sauce? While theres no single make-or-break factor, healthy entrepreneurial communities exist in places where theres a mix of talent, financial capital, early customers, support services, public policies that promote company creation and a culture that tolerates risk and failure while rewarding innovation, networking and wealth creation.

Depending on where you live in Wisconsin, many of those ingredients exist. Instead of throwing tomatoes, we should save them for a better startup stew.
Hyde, a Milwaukee startup with a sleek, new concept for a life vest may have won the top prize in the 2016 Wisconsin Governors Business Plan contest, but if there was an unseen victor, it would have to be Thomas Rock Mackie.

Mackie, a UW-Madison professor emeritus of medical physics and engineering physics and director emeritus of medical engineering at the Morgridge Institute for Research, is co-founder of two of the finalists in this years contest, Asto CT and Linectra, as well as one of last years finalists, OnLume.

Linectra tied for second place in the advanced manufacturing category, behind Hyde. Linectra is developing a heavy-duty 3D printer that can print metal parts for industrial components.

Asto CT finished in third place in the life sciences category. It is working on a device to conduct CT (computed tomography) scans of horses  in particular, their legs and heads.

The UW veterinary school came to us, Mackie said. We are developing a system that can go in multiple directions.

Mackie said the device, based on a scanner used for security checks of large luggage, is designed to let veterinarians see the start of a fracture in a horses leg before it turns into a full break that topples the horse. Activities such as racing, jumping and dressage can all cause stress fractures, he said.

OnLume is working on a medical device for use in cancer surgery in coordination with drugs that light up cancerous tumors. Currently, those tumors have to be viewed in the dark; OnLumes technology will let the surgery be performed with the lights on, Mackie said.

He said a prototype for use with animals is just being completed.

With three device-based startups in the nest, Mackie has set up his own business incubator at 3300 Commercial Ave. We call it The Clubhouse, he said.

The prolific scientist and entrepreneur  who still is a liaison for Morgridge  also is co-founder of HealthMyne, a health information technology company. Founded in 2013, HealthMyne mines data from tumor images to help radiologists better diagnose and treat cancerous tumors.

HealthMyne received $4.5 million from investors in 2015, and has about 25 employees. In January, it was named most promising company at the Personalized Medicine World Conference in Silicon Valley.

The four young companies are just a few of Mackies endeavors. He is best known as co-founder of TomoTherapy, the Madison company with a radiation-based cancer treatment machine that is now part of publicly traded Accuray, of Sunnyvale, California.
Chris Rickert | Wisconsin State Journal Urban affairs, investigations, consumer help ("SOS") Follow Chris Rickert | Wisconsin State Journal Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

What the city of Madison really needs is not a $400,000 study of its already well-regarded police department.

What it needs is an impartial mediator  or maybe a therapist  hired for far less money to sit down with the police chief and the City Council to explain each to the other, while letting both know that on some issues, there simply is no understanding, much less consensus.

And that sometimes, circumspection is the better part of city government. Let the chips fall where they may, and move on.

On Tuesday, the council overwhelmingly approved allocating another $350,000  in addition to an already allocated $50,000  for an outside review of the Madison Police Department, the supposed need for which stems mostly from the March 6, 2015, fatal shooting of unarmed black 19-year-old Tony Robinson by a white police officer. (A state investigation has deemed the shooting justified.)

In an angry, sarcastic, bullying blog post two days before the council vote, Police Chief Mike Koval made it clear he wasnt a fan of the spending, even though he has repeatedly said he welcomes scrutiny of his department.

Weirder, though, is that Koval also used the forum, as well as his time at the City Council meeting on Tuesday, to bemoan the councils lack of support for police in the wake of the Robinson shooting.

Now, as at least one council member noted on Tuesday, the council is not known for denying its cops support in the form of money. Then again, its not known for putting the budget squeeze on city employees generally.

This is a city that did not want the tools 2011s Act 10 provided for breaking public-sector unions and shifting more of the costs of employee benefits onto employees, and that even in hard times has found ways to give city employees raises.

But its simply not realistic to expect council members to  as Koval suggested  push back against members of the public who lob cheap shots at police during meetings, or refrain from proposing a resolution declaring a Tony Robinson Day, or show up at ceremonies honoring cops.

Thats not just because in the Robinson killing, social-justice-minded council members saw a chance to be part of the national Black Lives Matter movement (even if the circumstances of Robinsons killing dont exactly fit the Black Lives Matter narrative).

Its also because in Madison, people who run for office on a traditional law-and-order platform dont get elected.

Also weird is that Koval anchored his opposition to the $400,000 study in concern for the citys budget, noting that with a tough budget year looming, the council was willing to take $350,000 out of the citys annual rainy day fund.

Its not a police chiefs job to worry about the rainy day fund, or about city budget policy in general. For Koval to make it his job suggests hes less worried about the money than about what the moneys being used for.

Koval made it clear that hes hoping for more officers and spending toward a new police station, so I guess it makes some sense that hed be worried about the budget. Still, he told me Wednesday that he would have been happy if some other city need got the $400,000.

The response to Kovals blog from council members and what he calls Madisons perpetually offended activist class was predictable: a kind of passive-aggressive who, me? that was as lacking in self-awareness as it was ripe with condescension and allegations of racism.

One of the most telling parts of Tuesdays council meeting came when Ald. Matt Phair counseled Koval that he needed to develop thicker skin, and then 11 minutes later, Ald. Maurice Cheeks chastised Koval for his alleged snicker, almost dismissively, in response to another council member. Four minutes after that, Ald. Shiva Bidar-Sielaff broke down crying as she recalled some of the alleged PTSD-inducing language in Kovals blog.

With even more years on the citys police force, 33, than Paul Soglin has in the citys mayors office, Koval surely could have predicted such a response. He knows the common default modes of Madison activists and elected officials. What he apparently doesnt know is what a fools errand it is to trigger them.

Speaking of the mayor, Ive been wondering for weeks where he stands on the $400,000 police study.

He didnt respond when I asked him that question last month after the spending was approved by the citys finance committee. At the time, he said only that the spending should be considered as part of the 2017 budget. He didnt take a position on whether the city needs a $400,000 police study in the first place.

He wasnt at Tuesdays council meeting and he didnt respond last week when I brought it up again.

Thats too bad. Youd think the leader of a city would want to, you know, lead on a matter thats become a flashpoint in the citys approach to law enforcement and race.
A 46-year-old Sun Prairie man was arrested Friday night after allegedly driving under the influence and striking a Sun Prairie police car.

According to Sgt. Ray Thomson, police received a report of a reckless driver near Highway 151 and West Main Street in Sun Prairie just after 11:30 p.m. The on-duty officer involved in the crash spotted the reported vehicle going eastbound on West Main Street as the officer was going westbound on the same street.

The operator of the reported vehicle, Douglas Smith, crossed into the officer's lane of traffic and struck the front driver's side of the squad car, said officials.

Officials said that Smith continued driving after striking the squad car, drove into a commercial parking lot, and struck a small tree and a building.

Both vehicles are significantly damaged, but neither Smith or the officer were transported to the hospital, according to Thomson.

Smith is facing a tentative second OWI charge and was cited for having open intoxicants in a vehicle, operating after suspension, inattentive driving, and for a hit and run, according to officials.

The accident was investigated by the Dane County Sheriff's Office.
The JEE (Advanced) results have been announced today, June 12. This year, Aman Bansal from Jaipur bagged the fist position followed by Bhavesh Dhingra from Yamuna Nagar and Kunal Goyal from Jaipur who secured the second and third positions in the test respectively.

By India Today Web Desk: The JEE (Advanced) results have been announced today, on June 12. This year, Aman Bansal from Jaipur bagged the fist position followed by Bhavesh Dhingra from Yamuna Nagar and Kunal Goyal from Jaipur who secured the second and third positions in the test respectively.

A total of 36,566 candidates qualified the examination out of 1.47 lakh. Among the girls, Riya Singh topped the examination with 133 rank.



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If students score the same rank, they will be judged by the Mathematics score. If that does not happen, they will be shortlisted by the Physics score. If this too cannot be done, the students will be given the same rank.



Here are category-wise and zone-wise topper list: Take a look



Category-wise topper:

OBC: Duggani Jeevithiesh, Vijaywada

SC: Chinmay Awale, Navi Mumbai

ST: Chaitanya Naik

Physically Disabled: Hari Prasad K, Guntur

The candidate who qualifies in more than one category will be considered in all the categories to which he/she belongs.



Zone-wise topper: Number of students qualified

IIT-Bombay: 8,810

IIT-Madras: 6,702

IIT-Delhi: 5,941



This year, a total of 569 seats have been increased as compared to that of last year.



The cut-offs are expected to be normal this year, i.e. 10 per cent per subject and 35 per cent overall as against 7 per cent per subject and 24.5 per cent overall in 2015, according to FITJEE



Every year, the IITs onducts the exam for admission to various Bachelor's degree programmes in eighteen IITs and Indian School of Mines (ISM), along with other reputable engineering institute.

For more updates, follow India Today Education or you can write to us at education.intoday@gmail.com .

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AAP accused the Congress party of adopting double standards about state's drug problem and said Rahul Gandhi's protest against drugs is ridiculous as the party had itself failed to take any action when the Election Commission of India had brought the matter to the notice of the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

By Manjeet Sehgal: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Sunday raised eyebrows on Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's Monday Jalandhar visit during which he along with other Congress leaders will protest against the state government's failure to curb the menace of drugs.

AAP accused the Congress party of adopting double standards about state's drug problem and said Rahul Gandhi's protest against drugs is ridiculous as the party had itself failed to take any action when the Election Commission of India had brought the matter to the notice of the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

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'CONGRESS PARTY NEGLECTED DRUG MENANCE IN PUNJAB'

"The then Election Commission of India Dr SY Quraishi had informed Manmohan Singh about the enormity of drug menace in Punjab during the 2012 assembly polls. It had also cited seizure of 53 kg heroin and 434 kg opium besides other drugs and had requested the union government to take action. The PM did nothing and just acknowledged the letter. Congress should tell what action did it take against Badal government after receiving Quraishi's letter," AAP leader Sanjay Singh asked.

Singh said that ED had summoned senior Congress leader and Jalandhar MP Chaudhary Santokh Singh in the Rs 6000 crore synthetic drugs case as the diary seized in 2014 from of the accused Chuni Lal Gaba had revealed that he had also paid money to Chaudhary.

Hitting out at the Congress on the issue of involvement of its leaders in drug smuggling, Sanjay Singh questioned the stoic silence of the party on the character of its leaders.

"Present State Congress chief Captain Amrinder Singh in a letter written to AICC chief Sonia Gandhi had informed her that the then Punjab Congress chief Pratap Singh Bajwa's close relatives were involved in drug smuggling but the party did not take any action against the leader who was later rewarded with a Rajya Sabha seat," Sanjay Singh said.

Giving another example, Sanjay Singh said that former Punjab Congress minister Gurchet Singh Bhullar had also created a controversy by demanding opium vends in the state besides saying that 'illicit liquor distillation' also be legalised. All this was done in the presence of Captain Amrinder Singh who was addressing a rally .

"Congress is helping Akalis do the drug business.That's why Captain Amrinder Singh did not demand a CBI probe into the Rs 6000 crore synthetic drug case involving state's cabinet Minister Bikramjit Singh Majithia who was named by as much as three arrested synthetic drug racket accused including Jagdish Singh Bhola, Bittu Aulakh and Jagjit Singh Chahal," Sanjay Singh said.

The AAP leader said that with such glaring revelations Rahul Gandhi and his senior party leaders completely stand exposed and have no moral right to hold protest demonstration against the menace of drugs.

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Lashing out at Badals, the AAP leaders said they should be concerned about the 'Ujadta Punjab' and not about the Bollywood movie Udta Punjab which was an eye-opener and portrayed the real picture about Punjab.

Also read: Epidemic of drug addiction now grips Punjab's women too

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By PTI: From Abhishek Shukla

Accra, Jun 12 (PTI) President Pranab Mukherjee today arrived here in the first leg of his six-day visit to three African nations - Ghana, Ivory Coast and Namibia, as part of "outreach to Africa" focussing on trade, education and boosting relations with these countries.

This is the maiden visit of any Indian President to Ghana and Ivory coast whereas to Namibia, such a visit comes after two decades.

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On his arrival here for a two-day visit, he was received at the airport by Ghanas Vice-President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah- Arthur.

Even though Mukherjee has toured number of countries in the continent, he is visiting these countries for the first time in his long political career.

"All these countries we look at as good countries in terms of a solid political system, where democracy has taken roots and these are all doing reasonably well in their regions," Secretary (ER) Amar Sinha has said.

The President is accompanied by Minister of State for the PMO Jitendra Singh and BJP MPs - SS Ahluwalia and Mansukh L Mandaviya.

"As you know this is the part of the Outreach to Africa, which was kicked off with the visit to Morocco and Tunisia by Vice President... Then the President has taken on the responsibility of these three country visits," he said.

In the tightly packed schedule spread till Jun 14 afternoon, Mukherjee will attend eight events which begin today with a banquet hosted by Ghanas President John Drahami Mahama in his honour.

The President will be given a ceremonial welcome tomorrow followed by delegation level talks at Presidents House which is called Flag Staff House.

The imposing building has an Indian touch as it is constructed by an Indian company Shapoorji Pallonji.

In the delegation level talks, there are likely to be discussions on agreements on visa waiver and about two Line of Credits could also be deliberated.

Mukherjee will also pay homage to Ghanas first President Kwame Nkrumah at his mausoleum here. He will also be unveiling a statue of Mahatma Gandhi which has been gifted by ICCR besides planting a sapling there. MORE PTI ABS SUA SUA

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By PTI: From Gurdip Singh

Singapore, Jun 12 (PTI) A mobile app exploring Sikhs history in Singapore has been launched here, according to media reports.

Partially funded by the National Heritage Board, the Sikh Heritage Trail app was developed by Ishvinder Singh, a 29-year-old project engineer in an aerospace company, and was launched yesterday, The Sunday Times reported.

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Available both on the Android Google play store and the Apple app store, the SGD 20,000-appcovers a trail of Sikh imprisoned in 1850 in Singapore, then a penal colony of British Empire.

The late Maharaj Singh is revered for his bravery and for planning a revolt with his followers against the British Raj in Punjab.

Bhai Maharaj Singh, Sikh martyr,was jailed in 1850 at the now-defunct Outram Prison. He died here in 1856.

His unmarked tomb in the forested grounds, where Singapore General Hospital is today, was relocated to the Silat Road Sikh Temple (Gurdwara) in 1966.

Among other trails, the app has the Sepoy Lines area around Outram Road and Cantonment Road where the sepoys, or Indian soldiers in the British Raj, built their barracks.

The app trail through Bukit Brown Cemetery and its surrounding cemeteries, home to 30 pairs of Sikh guard statues, is also featured in the app.

Othersites featured include the Upper Barracks and Lower Barracks on Pearls Hill, which were built in 1934 for the Sikh Contingent of the Straits Settlement Police to live in.

Ishvinder Singh and his team of two full-time app developers Chris Cai, 29, and Melody Ho, 24, as well as head researcher Vithya Subramaniam, 27, a South Asian studies graduate student at Columbia University, spent about three years putting together the app.

Their research involved site visits, conducting interviews with heads of Sikh temples here, and browsing materials from the National Archives of Singapore as well as overseas libraries. MORE PTI GS KIS

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Since the Modi government came into power, different Sikh representations have demanded reopening of the 1984 riot victim cases.

By Kamaljit Kaur Sandhu: Home Ministry appointed SIT is all set to re-examine around 75 closed cases related to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in the national capital. This move comes as political parties are getting battle ready in poll-bound Punjab.

Riots following the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984, lead to killing of 3000 Sikhs. Since the Modi government came into power, different Sikh representations have demanded reopening of the 1984 riot victim cases.

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Delhi alone accounted for 2,733 deaths and most of those killed were Sikhs, the leading community in Punjab where assembly polls are due in 2017.

Delhi had 237 anti-Sikh riot cases that were closed because of non-availability of victims or lack of evidence. After reviewing their documents, the SIT has decided to re-examine about 75 cases so far.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had, on the first week of June, written letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to expedite investigation into the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

Kejriwal had called the SIT formed by the Centre to probe the riots "eyewash". He asked Modi to consider winding up the SIT and allow the Delhi government to set up a special investigation team for "proper investigation and justice for the victims".

2016 marks the 32nd anniversary of the anti-Sikh massacre. AAP had alleged that in these 32 years, 10 commissions and committees were formed but they only eluded the victims. It was a long-standing demand of the Sikh community that an SIT be set up.

INCREASED COMPENSATION

Home Ministry had earlier in May approved increased compensation to as many as 1,020 families, who were hit by the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and migrated to Punjab from different parts of the country, will be given Rs 2 lakh as part of a centrally-sponsored rehabilitation scheme.

The move came following a recommendation of Justice (retd) G P Mathur Committee, which was set up by the Narendra Modi government in December 2014 to look into various grievance.

Government had also approved the recommendation of the committee to provide skill and upgrading of skill for members of the affected families to the Ministry of Skill Development and government of Punjab with the request to formulate a scheme in this regard.

STATE POLITICS



But this new development may be seen as a bid for one upmanship between AAP and BJP. While another important player in Punjab elections, the Congress could perhaps point this to be a political move.

Alliance partners Shrimani Akali Dal (SAD) and BJP will be put to rest in 2017 state assembly elections, with new entrant in Punjab politics, AAP to be a serious challenger.

Congress party which is now out of power for a decade in Punjab is also attempting to make a come back.





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Also Read:

Govt sets up new committee to monitor aid to 1984 anti-Sikh riot victims1984 Sikh riot: They took their time to kill between meals

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A special investigating team (SIT) of Bihar police which was set up at the directive of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to probe the scam, had been on the lookout for Bachcha Rai but he managed to evade arrest until now.

After being on the run ever since the merit scam was exposed, Bachcha Rai, principal of Bishun Rai College, surrendered near his college on Saturday.

By Giridhar Jha: The alleged kingpin of Bihar's infamous toppergate, Bachcha Rai, was taken into custody after he surrendered at Bhagwanpur in Vaishali district on Saturday.



AN INDIA TODAY TV EXPOSE

Rai, principal of Bishun Rai College, Kiratpur, had been absconding ever since a merit scam in the Intermediate examinations conducted by the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) was unearthed following a media interview of the Arts and Science toppers, Ruby Rai and Saurabh Shrestha, recently. Rai, however, denied the charges.

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In an India Today TV expose, Ruby was shown referring to political science not only as 'prodigal science' but also as a subject related to cookery.

Two other toppers - Rahul Kumar and Shalini Rai - were among several students who had appeared from the college run by Rai. Shalini also happens to be the daughter of Rai.

RAI HAS CLOSE LINKS WITH RJD?

A special investigating team (SIT) of Bihar police headed by Patna's senior superintendent of police Manu Maharaj, which was set up at the directive of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to probe the scam, had been on the lookout for Bachcha but he managed to evade arrest.

He finally surrendered near his college where he was finally arrested. Patna SSP Manu Maharaj said that he would be interrogated.

Rai has been accused of having close links with the Rashtriya Janata Dal, a charge denied by the party president Lalu Prasad. He was named as the accused in an FIR lodged by the education department with the Kotwali police station in Patna.

ALSO READ:

Bihar toppers scam: This lawmaker has just made the most sensational revelation yet

Bihar topper scam: Baccha Rai's top political connections exposed



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By Rohit Kumar Singh: RJD chief Lalu Prasad and his Deputy Chief Minister son Tejaswi Yadav have launched a counter-offensive on BJP by releasing picture of Union Minister Giriraj Singh with toppers scam mastermind Baccha Rai.

The father-son duo attacked Giriraj Singh after sources in SIT disclosed that Baccha Rai has admitted that he had links with a Central Minister and that Rai was planning to open a medical college with the help of the Minister.

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Sources say that during searches carried out at Baccha Rai's college earlier this week, the SIT had stumped on a picture of Union Minister Giriraj Singh with Rai.

On being questioned about this picture with Union minister, Baccha is believed to have said that he was planning to open a medical college with help from the Union minister.

TEJASWI SAYS GIRIRAJ SINGH IS BACCHA RAI'S FAMILY FRIEND



Releasing the pictures of Union Minister Giriraj Singh with Baccha Rai on Sunday, Deputy CM Tejaswi Yadav accused that PM Modi's favourite minister is a family friend of Baccha Rai.

"PM's favourite minister is seen with toppers scam accused and his father. The minister is family friend of Rai's. All malpractices in Rai's college were taking place probably in encouragement of the Union minister. The minister regularly joins college functions to distribute awards to students", alleged Tejaswi.

Lalu too attacked BJP over the picture if Giriraj Singh with Baccha Rai.

"What has BJP got to say on this picture now?", questioned Lalu.

Lalu and Tejaswi's counter-offence on BJP came after pictures of Baccha Rai with Lalu Prasad came out and BJP alleged that Rai has close connections with Lalu. Interestingly, Baccha Rai was seen sharing stage with Lalu several times during last year's Assembly elections.

"Lakhs of people join our rallies during elections. Does BJP do a character check on all the people joining their rallies?", questioned Tejaswi through his tweets.

RELEASE PHOTOS OF LALU WITH BACCHA RAI, GIRIRAJ SINGH DARES TEJASWI



On the other hand, Union minister Giriraj Singh downplayed the pictures of him being shown with Baccha Rai. Speaking to India Today, the minister dared Tejaswi to release pictures of Lalu Prasad with Baccha Rai. Admitting that he had gone to Baccha Rai's college as he was invited. Singh even questioned that did he ask Baccha Rai and Lalkeshwar Prasad to do the toppers scam?

Giriraj Singh even demanded Nitish Kumar's and Tejaswi's resignation since the scam has happened in their government. "People invite us at such public events but does that mean that I encouraged Baccha Rai and Lalkeshwar Prasad to indulge in scam? Nitish and Tejaswi should resign since such a scam has happened in their government", Giriraj reacted.

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ALSO READ | Bihar toppers scam: Main accused Baccha Rai surrenders

Bihar topper scam: Baccha Rai's top political connections exposed





--- ENDS ---
The Uttar Pradesh BJP has formed a nine-member committee under local MP Hukum Singh to assess the situation on the spot.

BJP MP from Kairana - Hukum Singh has claimed that 346 families have deserted the village since 2014

By Shuja-ul-Haq : Politics is heating up over the alleged exodus of Hindu families from Western Uttar Pradesh's Kairana district. The Uttar Pradesh BJP has formed a nine-member committee under MP Hukum Singh to assess the situation on the spot.

Here is all that we know in the story

District Magistrate of Shamli, Surjeet has order an inquiry into the allegations of mass exodus of various families who were living in threat and persecuted by another community from Kairana town of Shamli. The BJP has accused the Samajwadi Party government of patronising those forcing the mass exodus. BJP MP from Kairana - Hukum Singh has claimed that 346 families have deserted the village since 2014 - due to threat of extortion and loot - by goons of gangster Mukim Kala. Facing charges of murder, loot and kidnapping - Mukim Kala is languishing in jail along with a dozen of his goons. Most of the exodus families do not want to comment on camera as they fear for life. While many families have shifted to nearby Haryana villages - due to terror of Mukim Kala gang - Police and administration have remained tight lipped over the issue. The business of exodus families have been captured by others and properties are being sold properties at lower price than prevailing market prices. Reacting to the mass exodus report, the National Human Rights Commission had on Friday issued a notice to the Uttar Pradesh government over the alleged exodus from Kairana due to "fear of criminals" belonging to another community. When we spoke to the owner of cinema hall Rama Pradeep Mittal. He said that he is planning to wind up his business as he has been kept getting extortion calls. The issue has also sparked a political tussle in Uttar Pradesh where assembly elections are slated to be held next year and parties are wooing various communities and caste groups while using any ammunition available to target rivals.

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Also Read

In Akhilesh Yadav's Uttar Pradesh, mobster forces Hindu exodus



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The schools have either dropped references to girls and boys in their dress codes or have rewritten their uniform policy to say that pupils as young as five can dress in the uniform in which they feel most comfortable.

By Press Trust of India: As many as 80 schools in the UK have introduced "gender neutral" uniforms, allowing boys to wear skirts and girls to wear trousers if they prefer, as part of Britain's new government-funded drive for educational institutions to be more sensitive to "trans" children.

The schools have either dropped references to girls and boys in their dress codes or have rewritten their uniform policy to say that pupils as young as five can dress in the uniform in which they feel most comfortable.

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SCHOOLS MORE SENSITIVE TO "TRANS" CHILDREN

It is part of a new UK government-funded drive for schools to be more sensitive to "trans" children who are questioning their gender identity. Around 80 state-run schools have introduced the "gender neutral" uniform policies.

Diversity campaigners have warned schools that current policies risk discriminating against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender pupils (LGBT).

SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES THAT ALLOW GENDER NEUTRAL DRESSES

Brighton College, a leading independent school, announced a transgender-friendly uniform code earlier this year.

Some Christian organisations in the country have raised concerns that introducing a choice of uniform could confuse young children and lead older pupils to question their identities at a time when they need reassurance.

Allens Croft School in Birmingham is believed to be the first state primary to declare that it has a "gender neutral" uniform.

Under the rules, which are the same for both sexes, boys can wear a grey or black skirt or pinafore while girls can wear grey or black trousers.

"At Allens Croft, we aim to promote each child's right to express their gender and personality in whichever way feels right for them.

"To support this aim, our uniform policy is gender neutral. This means that whilst we expect all of our children to wear school uniform, the rules for boys and girls are the same and we do not insist that they wear specific items of clothing," the policy stated.

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One smuggler who was injured in the gunfight has been caught alive with 15 kgs of heroine, two pistols and another weapon.

By India Today Web Desk: The Border Security Force (BSF) today shot down two Pakistani smugglers in Fazilka sector of Punjab near the Indo-Pak border.

The incident occurred late night on Saturday night.

One smuggler has been caught alive with two pistols and another weapon.

Visuals of spot in Fazilka (Punjab) where 2 Pak smugglers were killed & 1 got injured in a gunfight with BSF troops pic.twitter.com/hjVos0k7qA ANI (@ANI_news) June 12, 2016

Punjab: 15 packets of heroin and weapons recovered from the Pakistani smugglers who were killed in gunfight with BSF pic.twitter.com/4IvWTraTsB ANI (@ANI_news) June 12, 2016

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15 kgs of heroin has been recovered from the spot.

More details awaited.

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In a statement on Sunday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry suggested that recent reports indicating India's entry was to be considered at the Vienna meeting were incorrect.

By Ananth Krishnan: China said on Sunday that the informal meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group in Vienna on June 9 did not discuss the matter of India's entry and some of the group's 48 members were "still divided" on the issue.

In a statement on Sunday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry suggested that recent reports indicating India's entry was to be considered at the Vienna meeting were incorrect. Last week, NSG members Mexico and Switzerland had voiced support for India's bid during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visits to those countries, raising expectations that momentum was building on the issue.

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The Chinese Foreign Ministry however said on Sunday: "There was no deliberation on any items related to the accession to the NSG by India or any other countries that are not signatories to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)."

"The NSG Chair Argentine Ambassador convened an unofficial meeting on June 9. The Chair said that this meeting has no agenda and is only convened to heed opinions from all parties on the outreach of the NSG and prepare for a report to be submitted at the NSG Plenary Meeting in Seoul later this month," the statement added, stressing that the question of membership was not on the agenda.

Pakistan has also put forward its case for NSG membership, a move seen by some analysts as done in coordination with China. Considering Pakistan's track record on proliferation, some diplomatic sources have suggested that with its entry currently unlikely, the bid may be aimed at slowing down India's bid or even opening the door for Pakistan's eventual entry into the group as a possible condition for India's accession.

Suggesting that China was perhaps far from ready to back India's bid at the upcoming NSG plenary in Seoul, the statement reiterated Beijing's stand that the bids of all non-NPT countries should be considered together, in a criteria-based approach that did not make an exception for India.

"China has noted that some non-NPT countries aspire to join the NSG. When it comes to the accession by non-NPT countries, China maintains that the group should have full discussion before forging consensus and making decisions based on agreement. The NPT provides a political and legal foundation for the international non-proliferation regime as a whole. China's position applies to all non-NPT countries and targets no one in particular," the statement said.

Beijing has also suggested it was not the lone opponent of India's entry. According to reports from Vienna, other countries that have voiced concerns include South Africa, Turkey, Ireland and Austria.

"The fact is that many countries within the group also share China's stance," the statement said. "There has been some discussion within the group on the NSG membership of non-NPT countries, but NSG members remain divided on this issue. Looking forward, China will continue to support further discussion within the group to forge consensus at an early date. China will proceed with relevant discussion in a constructive manner."

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The United States has been pushing India's case, and last week Mexico and Switzerland became the latest supporters of India's bid by confirming their support during the Prime Minister's visits to the countries.

Indian officials have rejected the Chinese argument that all non-NPT countries, such as Pakistan and Israel, should be considered together. They have pointed to the 2008 waiver granted to the India-US civilian nuclear deal. China backed the exemption being given to India on that instance. As a result of the waiver, India took on a range of commitments, from accepting export guidelines on a par with other NSG members, to separating civilian facilities and accepting IAEA safeguards.

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By PTI: From K J M Varma

Beijing, Jun 12 (PTI) Fired by swelling middle class and rapid increase in insurance coverage, Chinas insurance sector last year posted its best performance since the global financial crisis in 2008, with profits surging over USD 47 billion, the countrys insurance regulator said.

"Chinas insurance sector saw its best performance in 2015 since the global financial crisis, with premium income reaching 2.4 trillion yuan (USD 366 billion)," Chairman of China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) Xiang Junbo said at Lujiazui Forum in Shanghai.

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Profits rose to 282.4 billion yuan (over USD 47 billion) on top of 12.4 trillion yuan assets for the entire insurance sector last year, Xiang said.

This was mostly driven by growing demand for insurance by the middle class, he was quoted as saying by state run Xinhua news agency.

About 67 per cent of Chinas population, or 920 million people, are covered by medical insurance and the medical bill reimbursement ratio has been raised by 10-15 percentage points, he said, adding that the insurance sector should work to extend its coverage in the rural areas.

Chinas insurance sector will continue to improve to meet demands for the swelling middle class and an aging population, he said.

Xiang said insurance firms have been encouraged to invest in elderly care services, including senior care homes and reverse home mortgages.

"Commercial insurance should be made a major pillar of Chinas social security net," he said.

The insurance sector also has great potential to generate employment opportunities as the sector added 1.8 million jobs last year while another 560,000 got employed during the first four months of this year. Many, according to Xiang, are employees recently made redundant. PTI KJV AYP AKJ AYP

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By PTI: New Delhi, Jun 12 (PTI) Power tariff is likely to increase by 8-10 per cent in the country after Coal India decided to hike the commoditys prices, Tata Power CEO and Managing Director Anil Sardana has said.

He also warned against early exuberance over the UDAY scheme and claims of electricity surplus by the government.

"Coal price has increased from 13 per cent to 19 per cent. So the minimum increase that will happen, will be 13 per cent for thermal. If the variable price will go up by 13 per cent, then the average price of power will go up by 8 to 10 per cent," Sardana told PTI in an interview.

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Last month Coal India had increased weighted average coal prices by 6.2 per cent over the current price to garner additional revenue of Rs 3,234 crore this fiscal.

Commenting on UDAY scheme, meant for the revival of debt ridden discoms, he said: "At this stage nothing has changed. It is too early to assume they (discoms) will come out of their challenges and start to buy more power. They just got bonds. They are paying for arrears. You have to give them more time."

"In past also we had many schemes, which always attempted and assumed that they will reduce their losses and improve their performance. If that does not happen then rest part of UDAY will sequentially has a challenge. One has to wait and see how actually they change their performance."

On the recent Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL) order setting aside compensatory tariff allowed by Central Electricity Authority (CERC), he explained, "CERC adjudicated under removal of difficulties. It is not the right way to do but force majeure is the right way to do."

He further said, "They (APTEL) have reverted it back to CERC saying you please determine the compensation with force majeure. You cannot envisage impact under force majeure. What we could not envisage was change (increase) in coal prices."

Sardana was also of the view that it is time to change gears and talk about consumers, which is not happening for last many years.

"Our per capita consumption has not changed in many years. We are still at 1,000 Kwh per person in a year. Has consumer started to consume more. If that has not happened then scratching my back, saying I have improved, I am surplus... I think we should wait in making such claims."

The Centre has planned to be power surplus nation by having overall energy surplus of 1.1 per cent with a target of generating 1,178 billion units during this fiscal.

On the plan to provide energy efficient air conditioners to consumers through state-run firm EESL, he said, "Good part is that they are bringing a lot of awareness. The bad part is, I always say that government should not be in business of business." (MORE) KKS SID ABK ABK

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By PTI: New Delhi, Jun 12 (PTI) Coal imports declined by 19.2 per cent to 16.38 million tonnes last month on the back of sufficient availability of domestic fuel.

Imports in May last year stood at 20.29 million tonnes, according to mjunction services, an online procurement and sales platform jointly floated by SAIL and Tata Steel.

According to mjunction services CEO & MD Viresh Oberoi, the import of non-coking coal was lower as most of the domestic coal-based power plants, particularly PSU power plants, had cut down significantly on their use of imported coal due to ample availability of domestic coal.

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As per data available with mjunction, in April, there was a 50 per cent decline in coal imports by domestic coal based power plants which use imported coal for blending purposes, he said.

The coal import by these plants stood at only 2.30 million tonnes in April this year as compared to 4.56 million tonnes imported in the same month of 2015.

However, coal imports by imported coal-based power plants during the month stood at 3.83 MT, up 3 per cent.

Oberoi said there appears to be some slowdown in non-coking coal import by cement plants as well as some of them have switched to pet coke due to comparatively soft trend in prices of pet coke from November last year.

Pet coke imports in April was up 12.79 per cent compared with the corresponding month of previous year, he added.

Helped by a record coal production by the worlds largest coal miner Coal India Ltd (CIL), India reduced its import bill of the dry fuel by more than Rs 28,000 crore last fiscal.

"Record coal production by CIL leads to a reduction in import by 34.26 million tonnes (MT). Results in a saving of Rs 28,070 crore in foreign exchange during 2015-16," Coal Secretary Anil Swarup had earlier said in a tweet.

The government had earlier said India plans to completely stop thermal coal imports in 2-3 years that would result in annual savings of Rs 40,000 crore. PTI SID ABK ABK

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By Ashhar Khan: Just a day after the results of the crucial Rajya Sabha polls were announced, the Congress has decided to start the process of the long-awaited change. The Congress party today appointed two new in-charges of the poll-bound states. Veterans Ghulam Nabi Azad and Kamal Nath have been inducted as general secretaries of the Congress.

Azad will be the in-charge of the all important state of Uttar Pradesh while Kamal Nath will look after Punjab along with Haryana.

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Since the debacle of 2014 Lok Sabha elections, there was a buzz of reshuffle in the Congress organisation. There have also been demands that Rahul Gandhi takes over as the Congress.

Madhusudan Mistry, the former in-charge of Uttar Pradesh was facing a lot of criticism from the state. Inspite of him being there, the Congress had sent Azad to manage the recently concluded Rajya Sabha elections. Under Mistry, around five Congress MLAs cross-voted and went against the official Congress candidate. The same thing happened during the legislative council election in the state.

Sources say that the Congress has set in motion the process of change. This time round it's unlikely to be in one go. If sources are to be believed, it will be a slow change. It is a tightrope walk for the Congress high command as the choice is between experimenting with new faces or going with sturdy faces who can manage the states with its myriad leaders

While the former incharge of Punjab and Haryana Shakeel Ahmed is away to Canada on a personal visit. He is expected to be out for about two months. Shakeel was under criticism that he could not bring about a truce between the former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and the current Haryana Congress chief Ashok Tanwar. Under his watch only the then Punjab Congress chief Pratap Singh Bajwa was unceremoniously removed. Though, Bajwa was later compensated with a Rajya Sabha nomination

Azad is the trusted hand of the Congress high command. He was the key negotiator with the alliance in Tamil Nadu with DMK. He was the observer in Uttarakhand just before the crucial trust vote took place. Incidentally, Azad was responsible for Uttar Pradesh when the last Congress government was in power in 1989.

When the situation is tricky, the Congress party relies on Kamal Nath. He was the last Parliamentary Affairs minister of the UPA government. In the last minute, he was asked to deal with the Arunachal Pradesh Congress rebel Kaliko Pul. Though the matter fizzled out. The stature he commands will help him deal with Hooda and Tanwar rivalry in Haryana. While he will also balance the Captain Amarinder Singh versus the anti-Captain group in Punjab.

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Finally the Congress has shown that it is relying on trained hands. This would certainly dampen the dreams of young turks of the party. It would be extremely interesting to watch in the coming days how these two senior leaders deal with consultant Prashant Kishor. Till now, Kishor was dealing with comparative lightweights, while these two senior leaders are connected to the very top in the Congress.

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By PTI: Pune, Jun 11 (PTI) A local court today remanded Virendra Tawade, a member of Hindu Janjagruti Samiti (HJS) and an accused in the murder of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, to CBI custody till June 16.

Tawade, arrested by CBI in Panvel near Mumbai last night, was produced before Judicial Magistrate First Class N Shaikh who accepted the investigating agencys plea that custodial interrogation of the accused was required to establish his links with other suspects in the case.

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Sending Tawade, an ENT surgeon, in CBI custody till June 16, the Judge said that considering the seriousness of the offence and the stage of investigation, his custodial investigation was required.

HJS is an offshoot of Sanatan Sanstha, a Goa-based right wing Hindu outfit. Tawade is the first accused to be arrested in the nearly three-year-old case.

During arguments on custody plea, CBI lawyer B N Raju told the court that the central agency had proof Tawade was in touch with other suspects through e-mails.

When the Judge asked Tawade if he has been ill-treated after arrest, the accused said he was slapped twice by a CBI official.

Tawades arrest is being seen as a major breakthrough in the case which has remained unsolved for the last three years.

Dabholkar was shot dead by unidentified assailants here on August 20, 2013 when he was taking a morning walk on a bridge. The murder of the 67-year-old prominent campaigner against religious superstition the whole country.

After Pune police drew a blank in tracing the culprits, the case was transferred to CBI in May 2014 on a directive from the Bombay High Court while hearing a PIL. PTI SPK HBJ RSY PAL

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Joy Shaw has duped people of over Rs 1 crore on the pretext of government jobs and projects with leading power companies.

Shaw moved around in a sedan with a red beacon, 'Government of India' printed on the number plate and a forged sticker of the Union Home Ministry on its windshield.

By Mail Today: A qualified mechanical engineer, Joy Shaw, arrested by Delhi Police, posed as an IAS officer working with the home ministry or as a senior cop in CBI to dupe people by offering them government and private sector jobs, the police alleged.

The Crime Branch of Delhi Police arrested him as he duped a Delhi-based businessman to the tune of Rs 85 lakh.

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POSED AS MHA AND CBI OFFICIAL

Shaw moved around in a sedan with a red beacon, 'Government of India' printed on the number plate and a forged sticker of the Union Home Ministry on its windshield.

The police have seized the car, along with several forged documents including identity cards and agreement papers regarding power companies.

He has duped people of over Rs 1 crore on the pretext of government jobs and projects with leading power companies, pretending to be a top official posted at the Union Home Ministry, CBI and BHEL, police said. "As he wanted to earn quick money, he presented himself as a senior engineer of BHEL and duped Rs 4/5 lakh each from scores of unemployed youth on the pretext of offering them a job in BHEL. He operated from different cities like Bhubaneswar, Bhopal and Kolkata. More so in Bhubaneswar, where he continued his illegal activities and presented himself as deputy director in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and there too he duped scores of people on the pretext of providing jobs in BHEL, CBI and Kendriya Vidayala," Ravindra Yadav, joint commissioner, Crime Branch said.

Last year too, Delhi Police arrested a fake IAS officer, who claimed to be a 2008 batch IAS official deployed as an assistant commissioner of sales tax.



DUPED BUSINESSMAN OF RS 85 LAKH

According to the police, the accused, Shaw, allegedly cheated a businessman in Delhi to the tune of Rs 85 lakh, promising him a project with power companies, pretending to be a senior IAS officer posted at the MHA. On other occasions, he allegedly cheated people of several lakhs promising them jobs, pretending to be a senior IPS officer posted at the Central Bureau of Investigation and at times as senior engineer at Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited.

Shaw was involved in several cheating cases across Delhi, West Bengal, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh. He was earlier arrested in Kolkata once, police said.

He was tracked by police with the help of documents which he had produced at the hotels, verifying the same with all leading organizations he claimed to be an employee of, police said. He had employed a middleman, identified as Nagender Tripathi, who used to introduce Shaw to potential victims.

Tripathi used to project himself as a broker with expertise in deals related to power companies, especially shutdown plants. In May 2015, the Delhi-based businessman, who is the complainant, reached Bhubaneshwar, where Shaw took him to plants in his car and convinced him about his contacts with top officials of private power companies. He led a lavish life at a rented flat in Bhopal, from where he was arrested earlier this week by Delhi Police's Crime Branch, police said.



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ALSO READ:



Natwarlal: The king of con





--- ENDS ---
By PTI: Mumbai, Jun 12 (PTI) Almost three years after it was shut for want of fuel, private utility Essar Power is planning to start operations at its 500 mw natural gas-based power plant at Hazira in Gujarat in the next quarter, a top company official said.

The Bhander Power-Hazira plant was commissioned in 2006 and commenced full commercial operations in October 2008, but due to high price of the fuel, the company had kept the operations suspended since the past three years.

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It is a natural gas-fired combined-cycle captive power plant.

"We had shut operations at two of our gas-based plants with a capacity of 500 mw and 515 mw each at Hazira due to non-availability of the fuel.

What was available was so expensive, almost at USD 12-14 per mmbtu, that we could not even dream of generating power so we had to shut operations," companys Executive Vice-Chairman Sushil Maroo told PTI here.

However, since the prices are now falling, the company will commence operations at least at the Bhander plant in the next quarter, he said.

"The prices have gone down to almost USD 4.5-5 per mmbtu. Though we expect it to further come down to a comfortable level, at this rate also we can at least start instead of keeping the plant idle," Maroo said.

He said the idea is to operate it at an optimal capacity and the company will sell the power to Essar Steel, which is responsible for providing the natural gas required for the plant.

Maroo further said the company has also kept the 515 mw Essar Power-Hazira power plant on ready mode but will operationalise it only if gas prices go down further.

The Essar Power-Hazira is a multi-fuel (naphtha, high-speed diesel, natural gasoline liquid and/or natural gas) combined-cycle power plant.

The company has signed PPAs with Essar Steel and Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Limited (GUVNL) to buy power from the plant commissioned in October 1997.

He, however, said that even if they procure gas at lower rates, the next problem faced by the company is LNG regasification.

"We do not have adequate regasification facility in the country. So even if I get gas, I am stuck with the LNG regasification. We are trying to find out a solution for that and we think the regasification capacity should go up as gas is another good source of energy," Maroo added.

PTI PSK RSY ANU ABK

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Speaking at a question-and-answer session, State Minister for Telecoms Tarana Halim said that not only social media giant Facebook, but Google and Microsoft have also agreed to respond to the governments request within two days.

By PTI: Facebook, Microsoft and Google have agreed to work with Bangladesh government over "inappropriate contents" on the Internet, the Parliament was told today amidst a series of brutal killings by Islamists of secular bloggers and minorities.

Speaking at a question-and-answer session, State Minister for Telecoms Tarana Halim said that not only social media giant Facebook, but Google and Microsoft have also agreed to respond to the governments request within two days.

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"After intense discussion with Facebook, Google and Microsoft, it has been agreed that they will respond to requests with 48 hours," she said.

WHEN THE USE OF FACEBOOK WAS SUSPENDED IN BANGLADESH



Last year, the Bangladesh government suspended the use of Facebook, its messenger app, and some other communication apps for 22 days, citing security reasons following the murder of two foreign nationals and the attack on a police check post.

Before the 22-day ban, the government had blocked some popular calling and messaging services such as WhatsApp and Viber for several days during a three-month agitation by the BNP-led alliance early last year.

Police had said then they were having trouble tracking down saboteurs, as they were using these apps to communicate.

In November last year, Halim had written to the Facebook authorities, conveying her wish to discuss with them a gamut of issues related to the social network site and its messenger app.

The minister subsequently held a meeting at Facebook's Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore and told reporters about the social media giant's promise to cooperate.

FACEBOOK RESPONDS TO GOVERNMENT'S REQUEST



Facebook's half-yearly Government Request Report in April this year showed that it had, for the first time, responded to requests from the Bangladesh government.

Between July and December last year, the government had sought information on 31 Facebook users. The report said that it had responded to 16.67 per cent of the requests.

But between January 2013 and June 2015, governments request on 37 users had failed to evoke any response from the social media site.

Replying to another query, Minister Halim said that Google, too, had agreed to remove videos from its Youtube arm following requests from the government.

ISIS AND AL-QAEDA ATTACKS ON BANGLADESH



Bangladesh has been witnessing a string of brutal attacks by Islamists. The ISIS and Al-Qaeda in the Indian Peninsula have claimed some of the attacks but government denies the presence of these groups in Bangladesh.

The attacks since last year, which has left more than 30 people dead, has put Bangladesh under a global spotlight for failing to prevent such attacks.

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On Friday, a 60-year-old Hindu ashram worker was hacked to death by ISIS jihadists, days after another priest was killed by the same terrorist group in the Muslim-majority nation.

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Many people have been killed and about 42 people were taken to hospital.

Bystanders wait down the street from a multiple shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., Sunday, June 12, 2016. A gunman opened fire at a nightclub in central Florida, and multiple people have been wounded, police said Sunday.

By Reuters: Gunfire erupted at a gay nightclub in Orlando early on Sunday, causing mass casualties and leaving one suspected gunman dead inside, police said.

Officers said in a Twitter message that there were "multiple injuries" at the Pulse nightclub and local media reported that between seven and 20 people had been shot.

The dance club urged patrons to "get out" and "keep running" in a post on its Facebook page.

Pulse Shooting: If you have any information, call @FBI Hotline: 1-800-CALL FBI Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

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20 DEAD, 42 INJURED



According to the police chief John Mina, an Orlando police officer engaged in a gun battle with the suspect. Many people have been killed and about 42 people were taken to hospital. Mina described the shooting as a "domestic terrorism" incident. Law enforcement are investigating whether the shooter was a "lone wolf," or if there were more gunmen.

How Omar Mateen wreaked havoc at Orlando gay nightclub: Timeline



Several patrons had posted on social media that a gunman was holed up inside and holding hostages. One man who said he was inside the club posted that the shooting broke out around 2 am and that he heard about 40 shots being fired.

WHAT HAPPENED



Javer Antonetti, 53, told the Orlando Sentinel newspaper that he was near the back of the dance club when he heard the gunfire.



"There were so many (shots), at least 40," he said. "I saw two guys and it was constant, like 'pow, pow, pow,'."

Police said they had carried out a "controlled explosion" at the club hours after the shooting broke out, but did not say why that was done. They described the scene as a "fluid situation."

RESCUE OPERATION



Video posted online showed a large number of police and emergency vehicles outside the nightclub. Bomb sniffing dogs were also on the scene, CNN reported.

. @orlandomayor Our community is strong. We will need to help each other's get through this. pic.twitter.com/XyUa8g5PT8

Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016



It was the second deadly shooting at an Orlando night spot in as many nights. Late Friday a man thought to be a deranged fan fatally shot Christina Grimmie, a rising singing star and a former contestant on "The Voice," while she was signing autographs after a concert in the Florida city.

Also Read

Shooting erupts at Florida gay nightclub, multiple injuries reported





--- ENDS ---
By PTI: From Richa Banka

Addis Ababa, Jun 12 (PTI) For Ethiopians, Bollywood is synonymous with "Mother India" and such is the popularity of the Nargis-Sunil Dutt starrer movie that it continues to enthral them even after 59 years of its release.

While recent Bollywood blockbusters like "Veer Zara", "Kuch Kuch Hota hai", "Karan Arjun" have earned their actors Salman and Shah Rukh Khan a huge fan following, thanks to their dubbing in local language Amharic, Ethiopians embraced the Mehboob Khan helmed classic without even understanding a word of Hindi.

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Earlier, Indian movies were available with subtitles or sometimes even without that. But still the people understood them without any knowledge about Hindi.

"I watched the movie (Mother India) some 40 years ago. Now a lot of people know and watch Indian movies. Even if they do not understand it, they watch it. In terms of Indian movies, almost everybody now is able to have a cable TV in their house even in the remote areas," Soloman Tadesse, CEO of Ethiopian Tourism Organisation said here.

Almost everyone who was asked about Bollwyood in the country- everyone has a unique story to share about Mother India.

"I love Mother India and cried for half an hour after watching it," said Dorse, owner of a souvenir shop.

Other movies like "Karan Arjun", "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai", "Veer Zara" are favourites with Shah Rukh and Salman being the most loved actors in the country.

"I have watched Karan Arjun and I love Shah Rukh and Salman," Deteste, an employee at the Kuriftu Resort in Bahir Dar said.

With the advent of cable television, movies are now being translated in the local language Amharic and made available to Ethiopians.

"Cable TV brings Indian movies. Recently an Ethiopian company started dubbing the movies in Amharic. There is a lot of similarity in the mindset, culture and temperament among the people of both the countries," Tadesse said.

With the beautiful landscapes in Africa, many Bollywood movies have been shot in countries like Egypt and South Africa but Ethiopia has been untapped by the Bollywood producers despite the scenic beauty of the place.

The tourism department is now working to draw Indian producers to the country.

"We are in talks with Indian producers and trying to get them to picturise the movies in our country," said an official of the Ethiopian Toursim Organisation. PTI RCB MRJ

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Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) Congress on Sunday said the elections were not fair following the reports of cross voting and deliberate attempts to use unauthorised ink besides leaving the ballots blank.

By Manjeet Sehgal: The elections for two Haryana vacant Rajya Sabha seats conducted in Chandigarh on Saturday have kicked off a controversy after 14 votes allegedly polled by Congress MLAs were rejected.

Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) Congress on Sunday said the elections were not fair following the reports of cross voting and deliberate attempts to use unauthorised ink besides leaving the ballots blank.



MYSTERY VOTER

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It is still not known who left the ballots blank and who used unauthorised ink as there were no serial numbers on the ballots which can reveal the identity of the voter. Sources say the ballots were left blank so that the votes get rejected and a particular person wins the election.Congress Spokesperson and Haryana MLA Randeep Singh Surjewala's vote was allegedly rejected as he showed the ballot after casting the vote to R K Anand.

Indian National Lok Dal has claimed that only three Congress MLAs including Kuldeep Bishnoi, Renuka Bishnoi and Kiran Choudhary voted for R K Anand and former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and his faction voted for the rival candidate.

Factionalism in Haryana Congress has come to the fore after the election controversy. While the Hooda faction claimed they voted for party backed candidate, his rivals suspected the claim. Refused to comment on camera, Haryana Congress chief Dr Ashok Tanwar said the party will take action against the MLAs if found guilty.

"We will take the legal course to find out the truth.The elections should be fair. We are going to file a complaint with the Election Commission of India.The party high command is keeping an eye on the situation and action will be taken against the MLAs if found guilty and backstabbing the party," Dr Ashok Tanwar said.

Former Haryana chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda demanded re-elections and accused ruling BJP and opposition INLD of hatching a conspiracy to benefit BJP backed candidate.

Hooda said that a forensic examination of ballots will reveal the truth as Congress MLAs were asked to leave their pens outside the polling booth and only the government employees or ruling party can indulge in the shameful act. He claimed that his party MLAs have voted for R K Anand who should file a complaint.

"This is a controversy against the Congress party. How one can claim that the votes rejected were polled by the Congress MLAs. Some say the rejected ballots had names of R K Anand. The Election Commission should look into it and if R K Anand's name has been ticked in the rejected ballots he should be declared a winner. We demand action against the people behind the conspiracy. Congress MLAs were asked not to take their pens to the polling boot. Who changed the ink then? " Hooda asked.

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POLITICAL BLAME GAME

A blame game among the political parties has also started after the election controversy. INLD has accused Congress of hobnobbing with the BJP and has termed it as the B team of Manohar Lal Khattar government.

Media baron Subhash Chandra won one of the Rajya Sabha seats on Saturday.He got total 29 votes out of which 15 were first preference and 14 votes as second preference.He is also believed to have got the votes of five independents and one Akali Dal MLA.

Sources said Chandra also benefited from cross voting as one INLD MLA Nagendra Singh Bhadana voted for him. The party

has already announced action against the MLA.

Congress, INLD backed candidate R K Anand could only manage to get 21 votes . INLD claims 18 votes were polled by its

MLAs besides three by Congress MLAS.

It is still not known whether the 14 rejected votes were polled by Congress or MLAs of any other Party. Former chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda claimed the 14 votes were polled to R K Anand and if they are validated he will win the election.



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By PTI: London, Jun 12 (PTI) Scientists have sequenced the entire genomes of the Cape bees, an isolated population of honeybees living in South Africa that has evolved a strategy to reproduce without males.

Researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden compared the genome with other populations of honeybees to find out the genetic mechanisms behind their asexual reproduction.

Most animals reproduce sexually, which means that both males and females are required for the species to survive.

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Normally, the honeybee is no exception to this rule: the female queen bee produces new offspring by laying eggs that have been fertilised by sperm from male drones.

However, one isolated population of honeybees living in the southern Cape of Africa has evolved a strategy to do without males.

In the Cape bee, female worker bees are able to reproduce asexually: they lay eggs that are essentially fertilised by their own DNA, which develop into new worker bees.

Such bees are also able to invade the nests of other bees and continue to reproduce in this fashion, eventually taking over the foreign nests, a behaviour called social parasitism.

The explanation for this unique behaviour is unknown, however researchers have come closer to uncovering the genetic mechanisms behind it.

The team sequenced the entire genomes of a sample of Cape bees and compared them with other populations of honeybees that reproduce normally.

They found striking differences at several genes, which can explain both the abnormal type of egg production that leads to reproduction without males, and the unique social parasitism behaviour.

"The question of why this population of honeybees in South Africa has evolved to reproduce asexually is still a mystery. But understanding the genes involved brings us closer to understanding it," said Matthew Webster, researcher at Uppsala University.

"This study will help us to understand how genes control biological processes like cell division and behaviour," Webster said.

"Furthermore understanding why populations sometimes reproduce asexually may help us to understand the evolutionary advantage of sex, which is a major conundrum for evolutionary biologists," he added. PTI MHN AKJ MRJ

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Nearly 350 families have reportedly fled from Uttar Pradesh's Kairana city since 2014 due to repeated extortion and threat calls from gangster Mukim Kala.

Uttar Pradesh BJP has decided to take up the matter of mass exodus of Hindus.

By Sharad Malik, India Today Web Desk: Criminals rule the roost in western Uttar Pradesh's Kairana city where an organized extortion syndicate has left farmers and traders fearing for their lives. Nearly 350 families have reportedly fled the area since 2014 due to repeated extortion and threat calls from gangster Mukim Kala. While locals said the city, falling under Shamli district, has "turned into Pakistan", BJP MP Hukum Singh accused the Samajwadi Party government for "lawlessness" in the state.

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EXTORTION RACKET RUN BY GANGSTER FROM JAIL



Local traders said extortion calls were made from inside the jail where Kala is currently lodged. "We are getting threats on phone and through letters. If one refuses to give protection money, he is killed by the henchmen. We have no option but to leave the city to save our lives," a trader said.

Sompal, a farmer, said he received a demand for Rs 10 lakh after he sold a piece of land. "I was threatened that they will kill me if I refused to pay the money. Police can't help us. I have sold my land, now I am planning to leave this city forever," he said.

Another trader, Shiv Kumar Saini said Kairana had "become Pakistan", where murder, loot and extortion were rampant. The district magistrate says he has been informed by the MP and got a list from him of the families that have purportedly fled the city. "We have constituted a committee under the leadership of SDM Kirana to verify the allegation" the DM said.

MUKIM KALA RACKET: A POLL ISSUE



The issue has also sparked a political tussle in Uttar Pradesh where assembly elections are slated to be held next year and parties are wooing various communities and caste groups while using any ammunition available to target rivals.

The BJP announced this week that would send an 11 member team of Members of Parliament, mostly from western UP, to asses then situation.

KAIRANA MASS EXODUS OF HINDUS



The local MP claims 346 families have deserted the Muslim-majority city over the past two years due to extortion and loot by goons of gangster Mukim Kala who is in jail along with a dozen of his aided on charges of murder, loot and kidnapping. Kala allegedly killed three businessmen in 2014 for not paying hush money. He still runs an extortion racket from inside jail, say sources.

Many families have shifted to nearby Haryana villages due to the terror of Kala's gang.

While BJP MP and Union Minister Sanjeev Balyan has accused the state's Samajwadi Party government of patronizing those behind the violence, rivals have alleged that the BJP is trying to stoke simmering communal tensions in the state for electoral benefit.

The National Human Rights Commission recently issued a notice to the Uttar Pradesh government over the alleged exodus. It also directed the state's DIG (Investigation) to depute a team of officers for a spot inquiry in the matter covering all the allegations made in the complaint and submit a report within two weeks.

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The move came on the heels of a complaint that a Hindu woman was gang-raped and murdered in the area recently, but no action was initiated due to political pressure.

UTTAR PRADESH GOVERNMENT TURNS MUTE SPECTATOR

"According to the complaint dated June 10, 2016, a woman belonging to Kashyap caste was abducted, gang raped and killed, yet no action has been taken by the police against the offenders. Two of the businessmen, Shankar and Raju, both brothers, were shot dead by the criminals in broad daylight in the market when they did not pay protection money to the criminals," the NHRC said in a statement.

A lawyer in Kairana, Meherban Qureshi, supported the BJP MP's claims, saying an atmosphere of fear has gripped the city where "no person has the liberty to roam around freely".

ALSO READ:

#OperationMathura: How UP govt sat on intelligence inputs, ignored warnings



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By PTI: New Delhi, Jun 11 (PTI) Two persons, including the personal staff of a senior doctor at Apollo Hospital here, were today arrested in connection with the kidney racket busted last week, taking the total number of arrests in the case to 12.

The arrested persons have been identified as Brajesh Chauhan alias Dharmendra (40), personal staff of a nephrologist in Apollo Hospital, and Deepak Kar (55), who was like a mentor to the rackets kingpin Rajkumar Rao, a senior police officer said.

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While Chauhan was detained by police from Delhi yesterday, Kar had surrendered at a police station in West Bengal on Monday, hours after Raos arrest. Both of them were arrested today and Kar is being brought to Delhi on transit remand.

Chauhans role came into light after the interrogation of Rao and inspection of documents obtained from the hospitals internal assessment body for verifying documents related to transplant surgeries, the official said.

Initially, investigators were not clear about Kars involvement in any of the cases but later it emerged that he was in touch with the middlemen. His involvement was further confirmed with the police analysing his call detail records.

The investigators have so far come across 10 cases of kidney transplants facilitated by the racket in Apollo Hospital here. It is suspected that they had facilitated more transplants and two other prominent city hospitals are also under scanner.

During interrogation, Rao has named over 30 persons linked with the racket, in connection with which the police have so far arrested, three middlemen, three personal staff of senior doctors, four donors, the kingpin and his mentor, the officer added. PTI DEY RG

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By PTI: Washington/Riyadh, Jun 12 (PTI) CIA chief John Brennan says that he believes the 28 redacted pages of the 9/11 Commission report will prove that the Saudi Arabian government had no involvement in the 9/11 al Qaeda terror attacks.

The families of those killed in the attacks have long wanted the pages from the 2002 report -- officially titled the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 -- made public.

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There had been widespread speculation that these pages concern Saudi Arabia, its wealthy citizens and the financing of terrorist operations.

But whatever was actually contained in those 28 pages was ultimately redacted from the report, and the families have been waiting 14 years to read the governments conclusions.

Brennan, in an interview with the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV network, said that the pages were part of a "preliminary" joint inquiry that was published in 2002 -- just a year after 9/11.

The inquiry at the time had tried to "pull together bits and pieces of information reporting about who was responsible for 9/11."

Following this initial report, Brennan said, the 9/11 commission "looked very thoroughly at these allegations of Saudi involvement, Saudi government involvement and... their conclusion was that there was no evidence to indicate that the Saudi government as an institution -- or as senior Saudi officials individually -- had supported the 9/11 attacks."

"I think its good that (the pages) come out," CNN quoted the CIA chief as saying during the interview.

He said subsequent reviews and assessments "really have shown that it was very, very unfortunate that these attacks took place. But this was the work of al Qaeda, of Bin Laden, (current al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri), and others of that ilk."

The US House Foreign Affairs committee held a hearing in May on a controversial bill passed by the Senate that would create rights for victims of the 9/11 terror attacks to sue the country of Saudi Arabia.

At the time, White House press secretary Josh Earnest renewed the threat that President Barack Obama will veto the bill, saying it "would change long standing international law regarding sovereign immunity."

The Saudi government had warned of economic reprisals if Congress passed the 9/11 bill. PTI AKJ AKJ

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The PM addressed the members for 10 minutes and emphasised on reinventing the party in sync with the changing times.

Senior members of the Union Cabinet, chief ministers of BJP-ruled states and members of Parliament are also taking part in the meet. Party president Amit Shah along with the prime minister inaugurated the executive meeting.

By India Today Web Desk: With an eye on the crucial Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Allahabad to attend BJP's two-day national executive meeting.

In his address at the conclave, BJP president Amit Shah asked the party to gear up for the UP elections. Shah said that winning Uttar Pradesh is very important for the party.

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The prime minister also addressed the members for 10 minutes and emphasised on reinventing the party in sync with the changing times.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS



Senior members of the Union Cabinet, chief ministers of BJP-ruled states and members of Parliament took part in the meet. Party president Amit Shah along with the prime minister inaugurated the executive meeting. Meanwhile, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the National Executive will not name any chief ministerial candidate for the UP polls, noting that such a decision can be taken only by the party s Parliamentary Board, its highest decision-making body. According to sources, for the crucial state polls in the Hindi heartland, the party will play the card of caste and polarisation. It will also highlight Modi government achievements. "There is goonda raj in Uttar Pradesh under Akhilesh Yadav. The cocktail politics of Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Congress and Rashtriya Lok Dal have ruined the state," BJP national secretary Srikant Sharma said. The national executive on its first day and Shah in his speech did not refer to the party s core issue of Ram Temple with Prasad saying that it was not necessary to take it up in every meeting but it was a matter of faith not elections for the party. PM Modi also visited the historic Allahabad High Court in Uttar Pradesh today. Modi reached the high court premises at 4 PM and was received by judges led by Acting Chief Justice V K Shukla and members of the Bar Association. He spent nearly an hour at the institution currently celebrating 150 years of its establishment. Allahabad has turned into a fortress for this crucial meet of the BJP party. Almost all the streets and roundabouts are dotted with billboards and posters. Ahead of BJP's national executive meeting, rival parties have announced plans for protests in the city though AAP has been denied permission for it, prompting it to move high court. Congress said it will observe 12 June, the day of commencement of the Prime Minister's visit, as 'Pol Khol Diwas' (Day of Expose) while its youth wing has announced a city bandh on Sunday.

Also read: With eye on UP polls, BJP national executive meet begins in Allahabad: 10 things to know



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By PTI: gov

New Delhi, Jun 10 (PTI) 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.

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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. (MORE) PTI TDS SMJ RG SMJ

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SDMC standing committee chairman Shailender Singh instructs Public Health Department to treat all breeding points in the schools as health of children is of paramount importance.

The SDMC has been concentrating on the prevention and control of the Dengue and other vector borne diseases. As per instructions of The Chairman SDMC Standing Committee Shailender Singh the supervisory staff and DBC inspected various public schools under the jurisdiction of the corporation.

They inspected 26 educational institutions where large number of students are being imparted education. Shailender Singh has instructed the Public Health Department to treat all breeding points in the schools as children are of paramount importance.

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THE SCHOOLS



The DBCs along with supervisory staff thoroughly checked the premises to find out breeding of Aedes mosquitoes. On finding breeding at Blue Bells International School Greater Kailash, DAV Public School Kailash Hills, GLT Sarswati Bal Mandir Nehru Nagar, Deshbandhu College, Kalka Public School Alaknanda, St. George Public School Alaknanda, Delhi Public School Sunder Nagar, Mothers International school, Vasant Vallay school Vasant Kunj, NK Bagrodia school Sector-IV Dwarka and Queen Valley school Sector-VIII Dwarka, their authorities were issued notices by the SDMC's Public Health Department.

The inspections were conducted during last couple of days. The department has already treated all places where breeding was detected. Shailender Singh has asked the Public Health Department to leave no stone unturned in eliminating breeding of mosquitoes in the localities/offices/important premises including educational institutions.

The department has been organising Reorientation Training Programme for all field and Supervisory staff, Malaria Inspectors, Field workers and DBC workers in all the four Zones of SDMC. The programmes are being organized to make aware the field staff about the need of intensive checking of the mosquito breeding and other preventive measures. Regular anti-larval measures are being taken in all the drains and water samples are being lifted on weekly basis.







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By PTI: From Anisur Rahman

Dhaka, Jun 12 (PTI) More than 5,300 criminal suspects, including 85 militants, have been arrested in Bangladesh as part of an intensified crackdown on Islamists to halt a wave of brutal attacks on minorities and secular writers, police said today.

As many as 2,128 people have been arrested on the second day of a nationwide anti-terror crackdown, police said, adding 48 of them belonged to various militant outfits.

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The other arrested militant suspects belonged to banned outfits like Jagrota Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) or Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT).

Altogether 5,320 people have been arrested, including 85 militants, since Friday morning, when the drive kicked off, police said. Yesterday, 3,192 people had been arrested.

"The rest of the arrested 5,320 persons were mostly fugitives who are wanted in different criminal cases including narcotics charges," a police spokesman said.

Bangladesh launched the drive after a high-level meeting held by Inspector General AKM Shahidul Hoque on Thursday. The anti-militant drive involved the paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh and the elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion.

Bangladesh has been witnessing a string of brutal attacks by Islamists. Islamic State and al-Qaeda in the Indian Peninsula have claimed some of the attacks but the government denies the presence of these groups in Bangladesh.

The government attributes the murders to homegrown militant outfits like JMB, saying key-opposition BNP and its fundamentalist ally Jamaat-e-Islami were patronising the attacks under an orchestrated plot against the government.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Friday told a meeting of her ruling Awami League party that police would stamp out the violence and vowed to catch "each and every killer".

The attacks since last year, which has left more than 30 people dead, has put Bangladesh under a global spotlight for failing to prevent such attacks.

On Friday, a 60-year-old Hindu ashram worker was hacked to death by IS jihadists, days after another priest was killed by the same terrorist group in the Muslim-majority nation.

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. The same month, a Hindu tailor was hacked to death and Bangladeshs first gay magazine editor was murdered in his Dhaka flat by Islamists. PTI AR NSA AKJ KUN

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By PTI: Karachi, Jun 12 (PTI) A Hindu man aged over 80 years was beaten up by a police constable in Pakistan for allegedly eating and selling food before iftaar, triggering a social media campaign that led to the arrest of the cop.

Gokal Das was badly beaten up by constable Ali Hussain in the remote village of Hayat Pitafi in Ghotki district of the southern Sindh province where he was selling food before iftaar, the evening meal with which Muslims end their daily Ramadan fast at sunset.

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Hussain claimed he also saw him eating a banana.

Bachal Qazi, the Station House Officer of the Jawar police station in whose jurisdiction the village falls said that the constable and his brother "threw the old man on the ground and beat him badly before people rescued him."

Das was later taken to a hospital for treatment as he was bleeding.

The pictures of the incident showing Das with a injured hand and blood stained shirt were widely circulated on social media.

Following the publication of the pictures, a social media campaign was launched calling for justice for the old man.

Social and civil rights activists and even ordinary citizens criticised the intolerance exhibited by the police in the month of Ramadan, which started on June 7 and called for giving him proper punishment.

It prompted the government to take quick action and arrest the police constable and his brother.

Qazi said that the IG Sindh police ordered the arrest of the constable after that.

A sizeable number of Hindus live in Pakistans Sindh province.

Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari, daughter of former president Asif Ali Zardari, whose Pakistan People?s Party is in power in Sindh, took to social media to announce the arrest of the cop.

"The policeman has been arrested," she tweeted.

Dawn reported an FIR had been registered in Jarwar police station against the policeman for assaulting the senior citizen. PTI SH/Corr MRJ NSA AKJ NSA

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